Title: Record It As a Victory

Pairings: Harry/Draco

Summary: There are several people missing, and no answers. Only a vampire in a silver cage, and the questions he asks.

Rating: R

Warning(s): Some angst, creature!fic (Draco is a vampire), elements of D/s

Word Count: 13,000

Author's Notes: Many thanks to my beta L., without whom I could not have done this. For corona_0304, in the Draco Tops Harry Fest, who prompted Harry capturing a vampire Draco during a missing persons case, a vampire Draco who only asks him questions instead of responding to them.

Record It As a Victory

Malfoy looked up when Harry stepped into the dungeon.

Harry locked one hand into a fist, and locked the fist against the wall as he locked the door itself with a flick of his wand. This was not a dungeon, he reminded himself irritably for at least the ninth time since he had captured Malfoy. This was a perfectly ordinary house in Hogsmeade that had been abandoned by its owner when he had to flee the country just ahead of people interested in collecting on the Galleons he owed. The Aurors had taken it over after the Ministry auction and used it now as a safehouse. And sometimes for other things. Harry had chosen this cellar because it had stone walls and wards that even a vampire would have a hard time dismantling.

It wasn't a dungeon. Even if some streaks of dampness on the walls, and moss here and there in the cracks of the stones, kind of made it look like one.

Harry whistled out an irritated breath, and approached the cage. It was made of pure silver, and he checked the bars, avoiding Malfoy's gaze. He wished that vampires still breathed, which was something he'd wished for about as often as he'd called this place a dungeon. It would make it more tolerable if Malfoy breathed, shifted around, cursed Harry, called him an idiot, tried to bargain for his freedom, did something that was normal for a prisoner. Harry was an experienced Auror now. He'd had his share of prisoners under control, sometimes for days and nights in an isolated place until help could reach him.

All Malfoy did was sit and stare, and sometimes respond to Harry's questions. Not with answers, of course not, Harry thought, pulling back and returning scowl for stare. Not with anything as normal as that.

"You know," Harry began, the way he usually did, "I'm a better choice for your confession than the majority of other Aurors would be. There's no way that most of them would believe you didn't really have anything to do with the crimes, when all those missing people were last seen in your company before they disappeared. They'd leap to conclusions. Conclusions based on the way you drink blood, and based on—" he let his eyes turn to Malfoy's left arm "—that."

The Dark Mark hadn't disappeared with Malfoy's transformation into a vampire, even though Harry had thought it natural that it would. Instead, it still remained, like a brand on a unicorn's silky white flesh. Harry knew from experience that Malfoy's arms still retained a brutal strength, though, that that silky skin overlay muscles. He'd had a brief, fierce struggle with him before he found himself holding his wand to Malfoy's throat and Malfoy sprawled on the ground beneath him, raising his hands slowly for the sky.

He'd smiled, then, the way he was now, revealing his fangs. Harry squinted at him, and tried to pretend that he couldn't see his reflection in those glittering teeth.

"Don't you care about what happens to you?" Harry tried. "I took you and kept you safe because I think there are people in the Ministry who would condemn you without a trial. But we're going to need answers eventually, you know. I'm already breaking all sorts of rules by holding you here."

"Who would have believed that you would break rules?" Malfoy whispered.

Harry felt a shiver invade his limbs, and tried to shake them back into stillness and normality. Malfoy's voice was one thing that had changed with his transformation. Malfoy had acquired a sonorous, bell-like tone, clear, but so deep that it seemed like it might be hoarse until you listened closely.

Harry knew what happened to people who listened to vampires too closely, though. They ended up like Braxton Brewer, or Julia Stone, or Robert Tedrin. All those people who had last been seen in Malfoy's company, and then had vanished. All those people Harry had taken Malfoy to find.

They're more important than all the rules I'm breaking, Harry reminded himself, and met Malfoy's gaze squarely. "You know that I can keep you down here until you start starving to death," he said.

Malfoy gave what Harry thought was a laugh, but it made no sound. It just caused his throat to flutter oddly. It was something he'd done before, and it never failed to irritate the piss out of Harry. People ought to laugh aloud, even if they had become blood-sucking creatures of the night.

"You expect me to believe that the noble Harry Potter would let anyone starve to death?" Malfoy clasped his hands piously beneath his chin. "Do you know that little of me?"

Harry took a step back. Malfoy's eyes were still grey, but more piercing, of a kind with all the other disturbing changes that had become part of him.

"I wouldn't let you starve, fine, you found me out," he said. "At the point where you start getting hungry, I'll just turn you over to the Ministry and see what they think of an unregistered vampire running around."

Malfoy seemed to half-sit up, but the next instant, he had slumped back into that eerie stillness. "Would you do that?" he whispered. "Would you?"

"You tell me, since you're so good at predicting humans," Harry snarled at him, and stomped out, slamming the door of the dungeon behind him.

Cellar, it's a cellar, Harry reminded himself again, and climbed the stairs. It was almost time for his daily firecall from Ron. Harry kept reassuring Ron that he was all right, but that he needed all this time in the field to hunt down the vampire who had made those people vanish—and in fact, that was true. Harry had gone into the case only knowing it was a vampire, based on the reports of witnesses. He had been beyond astonished to find that Malfoy was both a vampire and implicated. He had thought Draco Malfoy had gone abroad with his parents years ago, and was living quietly somewhere in the middle of France right now.

He had Malfoy, but he was still hunting the vampire. Either it was a separate beast from Malfoy, it was the thing that wouldn't answer Harry's questions and kept throwing irritating rhetorical questions at him in return, or there was a whole murder of vampires involved. Harry had thought that from the beginning. The disappearances were so sudden, so complete, and had happened to people who were known to be skilled with their wands and wary from either war experience or experience in the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. One vampire working alone couldn't have taken them by surprise. Malfoy had a murder somewhere, a group of vampires working together.

And he was going to tell Harry where they were and what they were doing with these people. Or he would tell the Ministry interrogators.

"Do you ever get tired of flaunting yourself?"

Harry scowled at Malfoy again as he stepped into the cellar room and shut the door behind him. He'd waited a day and a half since his last visit, hoping that the extra time to get thirsty would soften Malfoy up. And he had brought some psychological warfare with him, in the form of a glass of water he was planning to sip from ostentatiously while he questioned Malfoy.

Because he had to be contradictory to expectations even when he was a vampire, though, Malfoy was sitting up in his cage, and smiled when he saw Harry. And he was the one who had asked that question, instead of Harry, who should have had the right.

"It seems to me that you would be the expert on that," Harry said, knowing the retort was weak, and that he should be the one winning answers. But sometimes you had to get a little in order to give. He conjured a chair—he had practiced that spell on dust in this house until he could manage it with ease, and wouldn't look strained—and sat down in it to take his first sip of water. "Now. What happened to Braxton Brewer?"

Malfoy leaned back with his arms around his knees again. His body seemed more flexible than any human body Harry had ever seen, able to bend in more directions. He watched Harry with a calm, alert gaze, now and then tilting his head up and down as if he wanted to sweep the whole of Harry's body with his eyes.

But he didn't answer. Harry gritted his teeth, took one more sip of water, and set the glass aside. Malfoy's eyes didn't even follow it. Trying to use that to stimulate his thirst and make him confess faster wouldn't work, then. Time to step up matters and try something else.

Harry took his time rolling his left sleeve back, the adjustments so slow that he thought Malfoy might not know what he was doing. Then he slid his wand against his wrist and whispered, "Diffindo."

He'd practiced that spell, too, in the last few years, when he'd had to cut through all sorts of ropes and chains that criminals used, and sometimes his own constricting robes when he fell into a pit trap or a water one. Skin was nothing next to the tougher materials. It parted almost without pain, and a thin trickle of blood began to leak down his arm.

Harry turned his wrist to face Malfoy. Malfoy's nostrils flared, but they were the only things on his whole body that moved. He didn't even show his fangs in a smile the way he'd been doing to Harry only the other day.

Disappointed, Harry stood up and circled around to the side of the cage. At least he was rewarded with the slow, almost mechanical turn of Malfoy's head. But Malfoy still looked infuriatingly polite and still, as though he was indulging Harry's tricks because it pleased him to do so.

Harry leaned forwards, thrusting his arm back and forth so that the still air in the cellar would carry the scent of blood to Malfoy. This time, Malfoy lifted his lips. It was hard to tell whether he was showing those shiny fangs in a smile or not, though.

"You know that I might be willing to give you my blood if you answered some of my questions," Harry murmured, lowering his eyelids. He knew he wasn't the best at flirtation, but he had learned from a few of his lovers that he could look innocent, seductive, or tempting if he wanted to. And it had to be easier to tempt Malfoy than a similar human being, because he wanted Harry's blood before he wanted anything else. Harry didn't have to be easy on the eyes or accommodating in behavior or even famous. He just had to have blood running in his veins.

Or down my skin, he corrected himself as he watched Malfoy shift a little closer. His nostrils were wide open, and he was sniffing almost continually. In a moment, he gave up even the pretense of stillness and came forwards to lock his hands on the bars of the cage, swaying as he leaned in.

Harry twisted his arm encouragingly.

Malfoy looked up at him, and his mouth twitched. Then he took a step back from the bars, and resumed his position in the center of the cage, folding up again like a giant spider. As Harry watched in disbelief, he arranged himself so that he was facing Harry but otherwise might not have moved. He did show a bit of fang in what could have been an amused smile, though, so Harry reckoned he had to think of that as a victory.

"Do you want it at all?" Harry countered. His voice was scratchy, which he hadn't expected. He sounded as if he was the one who had been talking, confessing, for a long time. Roughly, he sealed the wound on his arm with a sharp charm, wincing a little as he did it. That was considerably more painful than he had thought it would be.

"Do all vampires want blood?" Malfoy did move now, as if he was more comfortable with the temptation of food gone from the room, sinking his chin onto a palm gaping wide to receive it. His eyes didn't move from Harry's face. They were wide and curious. "Or are we more complex creatures than that, desiring more, capable of being something other than ravenous beasts?"

"I don't fucking care what you are," Harry told him. That wasn't true, because knowing which of those categories Malfoy fit into would have helped his investigation, but he'd had enough of the vampire's damn rhetorical questions. "I know that you were involved in the disappearances of at least three people, but I don't think you could have acted alone. I'm trying to give you a chance to turn in your partners and escape harsh punishment. I'm trying to help you here!"

Malfoy tilted his head to the side a minute amount. It was a curious gesture, Harry thought, unlike anything else Malfoy had done so far. He held his breath.

"Do you think this is help?" Malfoy asked, and gestured at the cage around him.

Harry made sure to slam the door behind him as he went out. At least it was a heavy door, good for making noise with if nothing else.

"I don't know what to do, Ron." Harry leaned back in his chair and rested his booted feet on the stool in front of him, regarding them gloomily. It felt good to be able to vent his frustration to Ron, even though he wasn't telling Ron all the truth. Ron thought he was hunting down a slippery murder of vampires who took every opportunity to vanish. He didn't know about Malfoy being in the cellar.

Good. I thought of it as the cellar, and not the dungeon.

Harry was so pleased with himself that he almost missed Ron's next question. He shook his head and sat up a little. "What?"

"Did one of them bite you?" Ron nodded at his arm. "It looks like you had a gash there and didn't manage to heal it." He gave Harry a chiding look. Both he and Hermione were prone to tease Harry about his incompetence with basic Healing charms. Harry had insisted that he was just better with defensive magic, but according to both Ron and Hermione, Healing was part of self-defense, so he ought to have managed better.

"Oh." Harry looked down at the faint line from the cut on his arm and shook his head. "I scraped it against a door when I was running after one of them, and I had to heal it quickly, before the smell of blood attracted them. Or the bleeding slowed me down," he added, because Ron looked a little skeptical.

"Huh. Well, you could let Hermione come over and heal it."

Harry was glad that Ron sounded resigned to Harry not letting her do that; otherwise, Harry might have started quietly panicking. Hermione was just too smart. If she came into this house and looked around, Harry thought she might guess he had a captive vampire downstairs from some stray spot of dust in the corner. And then he would be in so much trouble that having Malfoy escape from the cage and rip out his throat would look mild in comparison.

"No, thanks," he said. "I'll try another charm on it later. You know I can usually manage if I rest before I try one."

"All right." Ron considered him slowly. "Are you sure that you want to be alone on this case? It might be better to bring in some more Aurors."

Harry considered that for one bare second before he rejected the notion. Malfoy was enough trouble with just Harry in the house. He could manage to charm someone else, someone who wasn't as aware of his dark past as Harry was, and there went all of Harry's attempts to keep the secret safe. "No. Like I said, the Aurors who wandered around after Brewer was declared missing caused more harm than good. You don't send a whole bunch of Crups tracking your prey when want you want is a cat."

"First time I heard you make that comparison, mate." Ron grinned at him, but there was a shadow in his eyes that Harry could see well enough. "Just take care that some bigger predator doesn't jump on you first."

Harry was able to smile sourly, thinking of the way Malfoy had at least been attracted by the blood on his arm, if not enough to launch himself forwards through the cage bars. "Too bad for them, if it turns out I have claws."

"Potter."

Harry picked himself up slowly. His head hurt, and he felt dizzy and half-numb. Had Malfoy thrown him back from the cage bars? It was the only thing Harry could think of that might make him feel this way, but he didn't remember it, if it had happened.

When he turned around, though, they weren't in the dungeon-cellar and in front of the silver cage at all. He lay on a thick red rug that covered most of an enormous, polished wood floor. Somewhere behind him, a fire flickered softly on a stone hearth. The only furniture in sight was the red couch, the same dusky color as the rug.

And seated on the couch, legs folded beneath him and hands in his lap, was Malfoy.

Harry snatched up his wand, his heart hammering. Any lump he might have on the back of his head, or any broken ribs, ceased to exist. He'd fought under extreme pain before, and he was going to do whatever he had to, to make sure that Malfoy didn't harm him.

Malfoy made no move to do so, though. When Harry squinted at him, wondering if this was a new trick, he saw faint, very faint, cage bars in front of him. They seemed to be made of smoke and darkness, wavering back and forth in the air stirred by the fire's flames.

"Malfoy?" Harry asked at last. He was starting to feel dizzier than he had when he first woke up. Where was this place?

"Potter," Malfoy said again, with enough of a curl to his lips that Harry was sure it amused him. He leaned forwards, to the point where Harry waited hopefully for him to unbalance on the couch and crash to the floor, but it didn't happen. His eyes were odd, shadowy, as if the fire couldn't touch them. "What do you want most in your life?"

"You imprisoned and dead," Harry said. Then he hesitated. No, he couldn't want that, or he would have handed Malfoy over to the Ministry already, wouldn't he? "No, I mean, I want the names of the vampires you were working with. Who were they?"

Malfoy remained still. More still than anyone human could, Harry thought, staring openly. Humans had their heartbeats to rock them back and forth even when they thought they were being perfectly still. He'd seen it.

"If you could only have one thing at the moment, contained in this room," Malfoy said after a dreamy pause, "what would it be?"

Harry stared around. There didn't seem to be any change in the room no matter how long he looked, though. Still the same rug, and fire, and couch, and Malfoy. The walls loomed up beyond the end of the rug, distant and dim. He couldn't see a door.

"My wand," he said finally, and held it close to him. "Since I have it, I don't want anything else."

He thought that might make the dream end, or Malfoy hiss and rush him. But instead, Malfoy draped himself over the couch like a boneless snake and studied Harry as if he had suddenly become interesting. Harry tightened his hands.

This was a dream, it had to be. He wondered if other vampires in Malfoy's murder could do this. Harry had never heard of it as a vampire ability, but there were some books he'd read that said individual groups of vampires could grow abilities in common with each other. This might be one of those.

And he wondered if this was how the other disappearances had started, with Malfoy contacting those Aurors or other Ministry workers in their dreams and promising them something wonderful.

"You didn't make an interesting choice," Malfoy said. "I thought you would make one that was more interesting." He was silent for a moment, rubbing his finger along his fangs, and Harry resisted the impulse to say something. Because the impulse felt oddly like he wanted to apologize to Malfoy, and even in a dream, that was weird.

"I think," Malfoy began, after a moment, "that I want to know something else. What are you drawn to? What do you desire?"

"To solve this mystery and go home." Harry had no idea what Malfoy was getting at. Harry had told him that every time he went into the cellar and Malfoy was there. Did Malfoy think he was lying or something? Or was he sure that Harry was because Harry hadn't yet handed Malfoy over to the more skilled interrogators at the Ministry?

"What kind of person do you desire?" Malfoy's voice had become like the crackling of the fire, blending with it, so that Harry heard only one sound instead of two. He realized that he was breathing slowly in and out, in time with that crackling, and stopped, appalled. That really did seem like the kind of thing that would allow Malfoy to gain control of him through a dream.

"Not the kind you are," Harry said.

Malfoy made a little discontented noise and shifted his position on the couch as if a spring was poking into his royal arse. "Another uninteresting answer. Let us try one more time. What do you think of in your secret dreams, the ones that only you can see, the ones that take place in the innermost heart?"

And before Harry could stop himself, he was thinking of it, of those dreams, the images playing before him bright and vivid. As much as they were images, anyway. They were mostly sensations, the sensation of someone on top of him, sinking into him, sometimes blending with his strength, filling him with warmth.

He had woken from those dreams before wrestling with a blanket, trying in vain to get from it the heat and the feeling of being pinned that he needed, and always, always disappointed.

"That's much better," Malfoy whispered, and Harry was sure that he had seen the images. Yes, this had to be a power that his murder had. "And what else do you dream of? Why haven't you been able to find someone who can do that for you?"

Harry, his face burning with humiliation, told himself that this had been worth it, even if Malfoy now knew some of his strangest fantasies, for the knowledge he had gained in return. Yes, Malfoy and his murder were preying on people through their dreams, and this was one of the ways they did it.

If this is a dream, I ought to be able to fight it. To wake up now that I know it's not real.

He lunged out with his mind, pushing as hard as he could. He saw Malfoy's eyes shine for a second with what could have been surprise, and then the colors of flame and pallor, fire and vampire skin, dissolved.

Harry sat up in his own bed, breathing hard and looking around his bedroom. Then he seized his robes and his wand and ran towards the cellars.

When he stepped through the heavy door that barred the way to Malfoy's room, Malfoy lifted his head from within the cage and regarded him. He had started to lean against the bars now, ignoring the hum of magic at his back, Harry saw. Good. That meant he was losing strength.

Malfoy drew himself up and blinked. Harry blinked back, while prowling slowly around the cage to make sure that the wards and the spells he had cast to make the bars sturdy still held. He couldn't see anything that was cracked or weak. Malfoy hadn't broken a ward to reach out with his dream-reading power, then.

In a way, that only made him scarier, but it also meant that Harry thought he was closer to solving the case. If Malfoy wouldn't cooperate with him, Harry really would just take him to the Ministry, and hunt down the rest of his murder using the clues he already had.

"What are you thinking?" Malfoy whispered.

Harry turned around sharply. Malfoy's voice was too close to what it had been in his dream: drifting, soft, as if he could coax Harry into making an answer if he just kept on like this. He thought he would wear Harry down.

Well, he had done it in the dream, hadn't he? Harry had answered at least a few of his questions. Harry could feel his cheeks burn when he remembered it.

"You can tell me," Malfoy said, leaning one hand on the bars of his cage and then opening it there, as if he wanted Harry to reach through the bars and take it. His fingers opened like the petals of some obscene orchid.

Harry stared at it until he realized he was staring. Then he jerked his eyes away and turned around to leave the room. He had been wrong about thinking there would be clues here that would tell him how Malfoy had done it. He was better off going up and firecalling Ron, telling him that he had one of the vampires captive, and then searching for more signs of the murder.

"Wait."

Harry turned around and folded his arms. "Have some information that you'd like to give me, Malfoy?" he asked. "Finally? You think that you'll put me off my duty by talking to me in my dreams?" He saw no reason to conceal the fact. After all, Malfoy knew he had been there, and Harry knew. The way he had spoken just now was proof of that.

Malfoy only shook his head, eyes intense and bright as he scanned Harry. Despite the lack of response to his question in words, Harry had to admit he was interested enough to linger. This was the closest Malfoy had come to involving himself in the interrogation, instead of sitting back and letting Harry's words roll off him.

"I have a question about the dream," Malfoy whispered. "Tell me and I might answer some of yours."

Harry sniffed. He didn't like the way all the information was flowing from him to Malfoy instead of the other way around. He knew the Aurors who had taught him interrogation in the Ministry would be worse than disapproving, would be disturbed that Malfoy had got away with as much as he had. But he had the chance for a good bargain, and it would be stupid to let past deeds or past dislike of Malfoy trick him out of that.

"Fine," he said, when the silence told him that Malfoy wanted a verbal reply, too. "Tell me what you want to know."

Malfoy arched his back and rubbed his cheek against the bars as though he was a cat. "What baffled you more in your dream," he whispered, "that you couldn't answer my question about the person you desired, or that the person you desired was right there in the room with you?"

Harry froze and stared at him. It made no sense, but if it made no sense, he also knew that it shouldn't have made his heart feel as if it was humming in his ears.

Malfoy lifted his hands and held them quietly forth, not on the bars, but near them, as if willing Harry to look at them.

And Harry did, with his head full of the dream and the way both he and Malfoy had behaved in it, and he remembered. Remembered those stupid images that he had shown Malfoy when he asked, for no better reason than that he had asked.

He knew those hands could hold him down the way he desired. He knew that Malfoy's body, lean but stripped of everything that wasn't strength, could lie on top of him and pin him to the bed the way he wanted.

Then Harry flicked his head, and tore himself free of the spell—probably another form of magic that Malfoy's murder could practice. No. That might promise to fulfill part of his fantasies, but it could never fulfill all of them. For one thing, Malfoy's body was cold, and he couldn't give Harry that warmth he craved.

For another, he was a vampire, and Harry's suspect, and while Harry knew that he broke the rules and did things he wasn't supposed to and in general was a plague upon his superiors, he really didn't think that he would ever stoop to fucking a suspect in a murder case. Or at least a disappearance case. Harry hadn't found any evidence of murders, but he hadn't found a lot of evidence of anything, really.

He opened his eyes and found that he was still standing there, that he hadn't moved away from Malfoy's ridiculous offer.

No, not even that. Malfoy was enjoying showing off his power over Harry, but that didn't mean he would ever go through with it even if he was free. He would probably tear out Harry's throat and leave.

Harry turned and marched deliberately out of the cellars, slamming the door behind him.

"I didn't enjoy it when you ran away from me, you know."

Harry opened his eyes to white stone, this time. He seemed to be standing in the Great Hall of a castle a lot like Hogwarts, but everything in sight was made of pale marble, and there was a shifting rainbow of soft colors on the ceiling of instead of a proper imitation of the sky. It made him feel sick and dizzy.

He refused to turn around and face Malfoy. From the sound of his voice, he was a distance behind Harry. There was no furniture in sight, so he was probably standing.

Then Harry sneered at himself. In the last dream, he had been lying on the floor, but Malfoy had had his right regal arse perched on a couch. So this time, he was probably in a throne and looking down on Harry.

Harry reached out and began the process of waking up from this dream, the same way he had woken up from the last one. He didn't need to stay here longer and listen to the temptations and threats of a vampire who had nothing to give him anyway. First thing tomorrow, he would march Malfoy into the Ministry and confess everything.

"Wait."

The voice seemed to ring in the marble castle in a way it hadn't in the dark red room. Harry did find himself pausing and turning around. He was curious why Malfoy had chosen this setting instead of the last one. Had he gone from wanting to seduce Harry to wanting to crush him and overawe him?

Malfoy wasn't sitting in a throne, though. He was standing on his own two feet, his eyes locked on Harry. No, on his throat, Harry decided. Malfoy swayed slightly back and forth, as if he was no longer used to supporting his own weight without the pressure of cage bars.

"Did you misunderstand what I was offering you?" Malfoy whispered.

Harry only shook his head, wordless. He had no idea what Malfoy was going on about now, and his hopes of getting an answer to his questions were sinking bit by bit. He really should have accepted that Malfoy was lying to get a meal in the first place and hoping to lure Harry close enough to the cage that he could bite.

What would happen if Malfoy bit him in a dream?

The thought was so disturbing that Harry again pressed outwards with his will, trying to shatter the images and wake up.

"Stop."

The walls of the dream firmed, and Harry realized he was still standing inside it. He brought up his wand on instinct, panting hard enough that his body shook. That should not be happening. He had been resisting Malfoy, and he hadn't taken any of his gifts or listened to him. Why should Malfoy's power over him be stronger now in dreams than it had been the last time when Harry rebelled?

Then Harry felt a flush invade his face as Malfoy took a step towards him. Perhaps he was listening more than he realized. Perhaps he wanted what Malfoy was trying to give him more than he'd realized.

That made him want to kill Malfoy, to hurt him. He aimed his wand at Malfoy before he realized what he was doing. He didn't know if he could hurt him in these dreams, any more than he knew if Malfoy could bite him, but it seemed that there weren't any cage bars between them this time and Harry thought he was the one far more likely to get hurt.

"Harry."

Harry was getting tired of feeling as though someone was stabbing him with lightning bolts. Just because he had one on his forehead didn't mean that he enjoyed the sensation. He shook his head and said the first thing that came to mind. "You don't get to talk about me like we're friends. You must know we're not."

Malfoy studied him for long enough that Harry tried to break out of the dream again. But Malfoy's strengthened barriers still seemed to hold, and Harry cursed softly as he crashed back into the marble hall.

"I think we should go somewhere more comfortable," Malfoy said at last, and raised his hand, spreading his fingers and fluttering them.

The air tore open where he touched, and color and warmth leaked out. Harry assumed that he would find himself back in the dusky red room where he had spoken with Malfoy before, but instead, he stood in a bedroom colored green and silver. The bedsheets were sparkling green, the pillows silver, and there was a bloody Slytherin banner on the wall. Harry snorted and crossed his arms. "Do you think you're going to intimidate me because you brought me to your old bedroom in the dungeons? You're mental."

And that was true, as far as it went. Harry was intimidated for other reasons already. The appearance of the room didn't add anything to it.

Malfoy merely smiled at him and turned his back to Harry, walking towards the bed. "This isn't a place where I have been," he said. "Only a place that I would like to be." He placed his pale hand against the sheets, and Harry couldn't look away from the way it shone there, like a dazzling star.

Malfoy turned around and sat down, focusing on him, and the effect was suddenly even stronger. Harry heard a soft, hoarse noise, wondered for a second if Malfoy had someone else hidden here who would ambush him, and then started. It was his own breathing.

"Would you like to be over here with me, Harry?" Malfoy whispered.

Harry scanned his face rapidly. Then he forced himself to do it again. Now that he looked, smoky bars of darkness still floated between him and Malfoy.

The relief made him dizzy. Malfoy was still locked behind the wards and spells that Harry had impregnated in the bars of the cage. Harry was safe, at least from the kind of idiocy Malfoy was trying to perpetrate on him.

"I don't want to, no," Harry said casually. "Because then you would probably bite me and drink from me, and I don't want that."

His words made the light in Malfoy's eyes flare, and Harry had to look away, and it was a wrench. He really, really wished that he hadn't said that.

Not so much because of Malfoy, really, but because of himself. Because now the image was in his head, trembling, like a bit of paper blown by the wind. Because now his breath was coming all short and ragged, and it was already loud, and Malfoy would probably think that he was a careless prey animal any vampire could run down.

"Your fantasies can confuse me," Malfoy said. Harry saw a stir from the corner of his eye that might be Malfoy crossing his legs, folding his arms, but he refused to look at him and be caught again. "I will ask you another question. Answer it honestly."

Harry's mind seemed to hum. Malfoy might have strung a wire between his ears, one that would thrum when thoughts traveled along it. And Harry decided, with a sinking feeling, that Malfoy might be able to affect his mind in the dreams, of not his body.

"Would you like me to bite you?" Malfoy whispered.

Harry's hands drove into his arms, pitting his skin with the marks of his fists. He had seen, both on this investigation and on another involving vampires, the marks that a vampire's fangs left. They looked painful. But the victims who had gone willingly always insisted that it wasn't, or only at first, and that it was the pleasure that kept them still and tilting their heads, the lassitude, the sensuous feeling of being wanted intensely for something no one else could provide.

I don't think like this. This is Malfoy thinking like this, and not me.

A vampire could put him at the center of its world. A vampire could hold him there without effort, and the warmth could come in time.

I am not thinking like this, Harry decided, and threw his mind against the barriers of the dream again.

Maybe because Malfoy was distracted, this time they parted, like veils, and let him through. Harry escaped to the outside, telling himself that he didn't hear the whisper that traveled with him, either, soft and forgiving and relentless.

Come and seek me out when you wake, Harry. I would like to taste you.

Harry bounced out of bed, his skin more slick with sweat than it had been the last time, panting. He spun around the room, his wand in his fist, and scanned all the corners for signs of a broken ward or some intruder. Maybe Malfoy could get out of the cage any time he wanted and was just playing with Harry, making the bars appear in the dream to make Harry think he was safe. Harry had heard of vampires with feline tempers like that.

But there was nothing. Only his bedroom, calm and empty and boring. Harry collapsed into the middle of his bed and put his head into his hands.

The thrumming in his head had started up again, although he was sure that Malfoy wasn't anywhere near him. This time, the words traveling along it were the command that Malfoy had given him as he was escaping from the edge of his dream.

Come and seek me out when you wake, Harry.

Harry shuddered. If he went down to the cellars now, it would seem like he was obeying the command, and that was the last impression that he wanted to give Malfoy. On the other hand, if he didn't go down, he might miss a vital clue as to how Malfoy was doing this. This dream had been deeper than the last one, more intense. Malfoy might be weaker from sending it, and let something slip.

Then Harry shivered and let his hands fall away from his face.

He had done what Malfoy wanted for the last little while, hadn't he? He'd stopped trying to leave the dream when Malfoy ordered him to, for instance. It had been subtle enough that he hadn't noticed the first time, hadn't connected it to Malfoy's orders, but had come up with excuses of his own for it.

The thing was…

Harry's throat quivered, and he turned his head. He almost felt that Ron was in the next room and would stare at him through the wall, judging him.

But he was alone, quite alone, except for the thrumming thought in his head and the vampire in the cellars below.

The thing was, Harry had never given in easily. He had resisted Voldemort's commands and his threats on Harry's life. He had chosen to come back when he could have stayed in death, in King's Cross Station. He had resisted the Imperius Curse and the attraction of Veela. He had been a fighter all his life. He didn't do well against Legilimency most of the time, but he'd fought back against Snape and even got into the git's head once.

So this impulse to surrender and do what Malfoy wanted made no sense. At least, it made no sense if Malfoy was conquering his will. Unless the vampire powers that Malfoy's murder had were different from all the other ones that Harry had ever heard of.

Harry bounced to his feet, and strode to the door. He would obey the order throbbing in his mind right now. And then he would either get answers, or he would do something else that he thought Malfoy wouldn't like.

Of course, his threats hadn't been very effective so far. But he thought he understood better what Malfoy was after, now.

"Harry."

His name, breathed out the way a lover would say it, nearly made Harry falter as he opened the door. He could hear all of that dusky red room in it, and the fire, and the bedroom that had been in the last part of his second dream. He swayed, and for a second he had to lean on the door.

But he forced himself forwards, he kept moving, and soon he stood in front of the cage. Malfoy was in front of him now, resting his hands lightly on the bars. His expression was utterly rapt, and he gazed at Harry as though he was looking for some evidence that Harry was as infatuated with him.

Harry thought about asking questions, but he knew Malfoy better by now. Malfoy wouldn't answer them. Whether that was because he wanted to enchant Harry or because he wanted to protect his murder, Harry didn't know and wouldn't care.

So he stepped away and laid a finger against his throat like a blade. Malfoy looked at it in a way that made his attention in the dream seem like a picture of a fire against the real thing.

Harry swallowed, and Malfoy's attention only grew sharper. Harry forced himself to speak without moving his finger. "I had to work hard to admit those fantasies to myself, but now I have."

The shadow of a frown crossed Malfoy's face, the only expression Harry thought he had worn without wanting to, in the last few days. But he waited.

"You've helped me see a side of myself I would have denied otherwise," Harry continued, with forced lightness in his voice, "a side that wants to be held down and—and even commanded, if the one doing the ordering around could cherish me. I know that I could get away, but that's not the point. The point is that the person doing it would desire me. So. That's it. I can do things that I never thought I could if someone wants me."

Malfoy had no breathing to suspend, but he continued to watch.

Harry dropped his finger from his throat and shrugged. "I thought about cutting my veins open to let out more blood—"

He had to pause at the croon that came from Malfoy's throat, a soft singing hissing sound that made Harry's mind go blank for a minute. He knew that he could take a step up to the cage, and it would bring him the most incredible pleasure.

But he was still what he was, someone who could resist the Imperius Curse and choose his destiny. He smiled a little and made himself continue. "But that would be cruel to you, and it wouldn't serve my purpose. Instead, I'm going to make my fantasies come true. I've been working hard. I deserve a rest."

Malfoy's eyes had light in them.

"So I'm going to find a lover who can give me what I want." Harry smiled at him. "When I'm back from my holiday and in a better mood, I'll deal with you. I don't think you'll tell me anything else, so I've decided to take you to the Ministry. I can't do it right now because I know that I'm too irritated to deal with you fairly. But when I'm back from the holiday, then I can more properly appreciate the contribution you made to my mental health." He swept a little bow to Malfoy and turned to the door.

He was anticipating the order this time, and still, it crackled through him like a lightning bolt.

"Stop."

Harry shivered and wondered how he could have mistaken his own earlier desire to obey for the simple coincidence of believing that Malfoy controlled his ability to leave the dreams. This was the impulse not to move, transformed as if he was telling his own feet not to do it.

And like the croon that had broken from Malfoy's throat earlier, it made him weak with pleasure.

Because Malfoy had only ordered him to stop walking and not turn around, it was a bit before Harry let himself look over his shoulder and make out the soft, small noises coming from Malfoy. But he didn't regret it when he did.

For once, Malfoy had lost the dreamy softness that he had been using to tempt Harry so far and make the orders feel as if they were a natural part of conversation. His face was twisted, his fangs showed in obvious threat, and he gripped the bars.

The wards sparked and spat, shocking him back. He raised his palms and turned them outwards to Harry, as if asking him why that had happened.

Breathing fast, Harry inclined his head. "I didn't anticipate you having the power to reach me in my dreams," he whispered. "But I knew that a vampire's voice and eyes could be hypnotic. So the bars react when you're trying to reach aggressively beyond them."

Malfoy didn't respond. He prowled in a circle instead, head turned so that he kept Harry under observation the entire time. Harry didn't know how he did it. Then again, vampire muscles were probably weird after the transformation.

"What about me taking another lover makes you so upset?" Harry asked, his voice lulling. Maybe this was one question he would actually get an answer to.

But Malfoy, although he paused and sat down in the center of the cage, didn't answer it directly. "That's not a question that connects to your investigation."

Harry felt the compulsion on his muscles loosening. Malfoy must not want him to stay still quite so much anymore. Harry turned and faced him fully.

Malfoy's eyes at once lingered on his throat and wrists, and Harry rolled his eyes. So that was the reason that Malfoy had wanted him to turn around.

"I don't know yet," Harry said. "I don't know why your murder sought out those particular people and killed them, or made them disappear, or whatever else they did. Why don't you tell me?"

"You're not like any of them."

Harry frowned. "The people you made disappear? But the way you reached into my dreams suggests you did it before." The burning in his stomach didn't make Harry feel good about that, either, but it wasn't like he could make Malfoy suddenly not have past lovers because he wanted to.

Malfoy lifted his head, his eyes gone bright again. "You're-you're more responsive than they were. Deeper. Quicker to come to my hand."

There was a different kind of burning in his stomach this time, but Harry was too pleased with the transformation of his jealousy to analyze why. He came forwards a step. "Then what do you want from me?" he whispered. "More sips of blood? More time spent in the dreams?"

"You know what I want," Malfoy said, and his voice was so deep that Harry could feel it buzzing in the walls around his heart. "The same thing you want."

Harry shook his head. "You could hold me down, but you couldn't make me warm."

"Try what I can do when my body is filled with blood." Malfoy curled his hands into delicate fists near the bars, without being foolish enough to try and hold onto them.

"But for that," Harry said, "I would have to feed you. And for that, I would have to let you out of the cage, and risk subjecting myself to the same sort of fate that you had in mind for the people you made disappear." He was whispering, and he had stepped close to the cage. Well, that was a risk he was willing to take. "I think we're speaking at cross-purposes."

"You wouldn't let me out even if I gave you the knowledge you wanted." Malfoy's nose twitched as if he was sniffing the coppery scent from Harry's veins. "I have no reason to give it to you."

Harry nodded once. "Does that mean that you would tell me that you did kill those people if I let you out? Because then I would hand you over to the Ministry interrogators."

Malfoy's face looked like a porcelain mask. "The question is an impertinence. Kneel."

This time, Harry let himself feel it, the desire that ran through his veins like blood pumped in, not drained out, that filled him with burning darkness and quicksilver. He let himself drop to his knees, not because he could not have resisted, but because he wanted to obey, and that was the most intoxicating option. Several meters still separated him from the cage, but he thought Malfoy had some plan for overcoming the distance.

Malfoy extended one hand as best as he could; the cage's wards were letting him reach further than before because he didn't intend to hurt Harry. "Come here."

Harry had only got one knee up before Malfoy's eyes flashed again. "Did I tell you to stand?"

Harry swallowed, deeply, and crawled across the floor to the cage. It didn't hurt his knees, but that didn't come from any cushioning property of the flagstones. It came from Malfoy's eyes and the commanding position they held in his gaze.

"Good," Malfoy whispered, when his face was only a short distance from the bars. Harry stopped. "Will you let me lick you?"

Harry understood, then, even as desire collared him and raced around his throat. Malfoy could order him because Harry wanted him to order him, but for the final approach, Malfoy wanted to see what he would do if his choice was left free.

Harry leaned his head in. Malfoy's hands twitched as though lightning leaped between them and animated his fingers, and he reached towards the cage bars again.

"What happened to them?" Harry whispered.

Malfoy jerked back, and then retreated towards the far side of the cage. He kept his back turned to Harry. Harry didn't stand, and didn't retreat. He just waited, breathing easily against the pressure of the invisible collar that Malfoy had put on him.

"You only care about your investigation, then?" Malfoy might have been whispering the question to the still air of the cellar.

"What do you think would happen if I let you out of this cage?" Harry asked. "Would I continue to have a choice because you wanted me to? Or would your instincts overpower you? Is this cage the only thing that gives me a choice?"

Malfoy scraped his nails up and down against the cage bars. His nails weren't particularly long, but they still sparked a complicated tangle of magic that made his fingers glow white for a second. He pulled his hands back.

"Well?" Harry asked, and stared into Malfoy's face as he turned around, while his heart continued to sing and circulate the blood in his veins, the blood that nearly made him dizzy, now that he knew Malfoy wanted it.

"Come here," Malfoy said, and his words pulled a rope that Harry hadn't known was attached to the center of his stomach.

Harry crawled around the cage, and Malfoy stuck out his tongue through the cage bars. Harry extended his tongue to meet it.

It was a sort of kiss, harder than Harry had thought it could be at that distance, wetter than the kiss with Cho, sparking like the magic that had held Malfoy's hands back, and Harry made a hungry noise and wrapped his hands around the bars. The wards leaped as if to shock him, then hesitated.

And Malfoy's hands clasped his.

Harry shivered. He could feel the strength in them, so wild and trapped that he wanted to promise to fling the cage door open at once, to invite it out and into his bed.

But if he did that, there was the fear that the energy would devour him.

Wouldn't it be a fine end, though?

Malfoy lifted his head, withdrawing his tongue from Harry's. His eyes were soft and dazed, but not the rest of him. The skin seemed to have drawn tighter over the bones of his cheeks and face. His teeth shone when he smiled, the fangs that Harry's eyes were drawn to. He knew the urge to reach out and skim a finger down the edge of one.

"You should let me out," Malfoy whispered, his words riding the edge of coercion.

Harry trembled. There was so little holding him back right now-duty, that was a small word when faced with Malfoy's fangs-and so much drawing him forwards. Desire. The promise in Malfoy's face. The shine in his nails, which could rend flesh as easily as his fangs. Pleasure, which waited for him in every move Malfoy made.

But Harry shut his eyes and made himself draw back. When he looked again, he saw Malfoy staring at him as if Harry had withdrawn a pardon when Malfoy was about to be executed.

"I think I know what happened to them," Harry whispered, and because he hadn't asked a question, Malfoy listened in breathless stillness instead of interrupting. "I do think I know. They became your lovers, or your pets, or whatever you want to call them, the same silly way that I'm offering, and you used them and flung them aside when you didn't need them anymore."

"Would a vampire like me, with the powers that I've demonstrated, have any need to cast aside the ripe young bodies of people who could feed me?" Malfoy whispered in response.

"Would a vampire like you have remained without a companion this long?" Harry asked.

"Would someone like me have failed to seduce people who wanted the same things you did?" Malfoy paused, maybe remembering that he had said Harry was different from the others. "If less intensely than you?" His fingers curled around what seemed a palmful of white lightning not far from the edge of the bars.

"Would someone who was really that powerful and disdained what I thought of him fear to tell me what happened to his previous lovers?" Harry swallowed again and stood up. His knees protested, not because they ached but at the withdrawal of what had felt like delicious contact with the floor. "Would someone who had only done what people asked of him have a need to order me around?"

"I order you because you love it. Stay."

Harry dropped down again, gasping. His stomach throbbed, and so did his throat-and not only because of the way Malfoy was looking at it, though when Harry checked over his shoulder, Malfoy was indeed looking at it.

"Oh, God," Harry moaned, and didn't drop his stomach down to rub himself against the floor only because Malfoy hadn't ordered him to.

"I promise you this." Malfoy was prowling in a circle near the cage door, now, and Harry felt the extra distance between them as an aching wound. "I promise that you will have everything you need from me if you let me out."

Harry licked his lips. That might mean that he would have the information about the missing Aurors and Unspeakables he needed from Malfoy's mouth. Or he might have everything he needed, without having what he wanted.

There was no reason that he should want instead of need the information about that case. This was why he had tracked and captured Malfoy in the first place.

"Answer me a question first," Harry whispered. "Did you let yourself be captured, so that you could be closer to me?"

Malfoy's mouth curved in a gentle smile. Harry wondered how many times that smile had been someone else's last sight.

"If I did," Malfoy whispered, "did I find the cage stronger than I suspected, and the will harder to bend, or did I find it exactly as I expected?"

The question contained the seeds of its own answer. Harry closed his eyes and bowed his head. He could feel the heat that Malfoy had promised, even if it was only his own blood pumping through his veins, flowing to his cock, heating his cheeks.

"Harry," Malfoy whispered, distant, and the voice was a lover's caress. "Unlock the cage."

The order resonated to the tang and leap of Harry's blood. He lifted his wand and waved it in the pattern that would command the wards to relax. They did it with a soft sigh, a complaining sound if Harry had ever heard one.

The door flipped open without Malfoy touching it.

Malfoy stepped out of it and came towards Harry, bending down over him. One cold hand touched Harry's overheated cheek. Harry raised his head, and his eyelashes trembled. Malfoy's fangs were only a short distance from his lips.

This time, it was Harry who gave the order.

"Take me to bed."

Malfoy was on top of him, the way he had promised, his hands pinning Harry's hands to the pillows. Harry arched up so that he could feel the hardness of Malfoy's muscles against him, and sighed. For right now, his own heat was more than making up for the lack of it in Malfoy's body.

"You aren't hard yet," Harry whispered against Malfoy's throat. Malfoy hadn't drunk from him yet either. He was sniffing at Harry's neck, his fangs skimming and grazing the skin, his tongue darting out and running the same path, and driving Harry mental. Harry arched his neck and whined deep in his throat.

"I'll get hard when I've drunk," Malfoy said. He pulled back and smiled at Harry, the most human smile Harry thought he had seen him give yet, even though it showed off his vampire teeth so well. He was smug and proud and pleased with himself, far more like the Draco Malfoy Harry had known all those years ago than someone else. "And something's wrong if you're not panting and wordless yet."

Harry started to retort, but Malfoy's fangs slid into his throat, and his words vanished.

The blood went swirling through his body, all concentrating into that one point. Harry grunted and tried to say something. The words died on his tongue. Malfoy's tongue was licking now, licking inside him, into the cut, and Harry could do nothing but turn his head and open his lips and trust Malfoy to understand his message that way.

Malfoy seemed to. His hands grew so strong on Harry's wrists that Harry strained against them, once, for something to have. And then even his physical perceptions began to mix and blend and swirl down the invisible drain that his blood was pouring down, too.

As he fed, Malfoy grew warm on top of Harry. He moaned and shifted, and there was hardness where Harry wanted it, sliding between his legs, poking him, pinning his own erection as much as Malfoy's hands were pinning his wrists. Harry opened his legs, and closed his eyes.

He had no strength for anything else.

His brain danced back and forth, wavering like a candleflame blown by a strong breath. Malfoy was on him. He knew that. Malfoy could drain him to death. He knew that. Malfoy could command him to do anything now that he was free, his dangerous tendencies not held back by the bars of the cage.

Harry couldn't bring himself to care.

Malfoy licked and fed and spoke to him at the same time, his voice echoing in Harry's mind. He whispered terms of praise for Harry's blood and body that Harry could never remember afterwards, except for the taste of warmth they left behind. He whispered that Harry was more responsive, had such depths to his mind, fantasies that Harry had never known he had, fantasies that he needed to explore. But he could only explore them in the company of someone who could take him that deep.

Malfoy could.

Images came dancing into Harry's brain, too, as Malfoy fed, blowing like candleflames of their own. He saw the faces of Brewer, and Stone, and Tedrin, and how they had come dancing up to Malfoy, whether or not they knew they were engaged in the dance. He saw how they had come into dreams, and come in dreams. They had woken shaken, more than he had, because none of them held Malfoy captive and none of them knew exactly where the dreams came from.

When they did, they had been just as caught as Harry was, just as prone to surrender.

Harry gasped and dived into the images, making them splash around him, seeking the answer that Draco offered. Here, with his blood on the vampire's tongue and fangs slicing into his body and Draco granting him the sensation of being held down, unable to rise, that he had always wanted, there was nothing else to call him.

He saw how each of the missing ones, Brewer and Stone and Tedrin, had confessed that they didn't really like the lives they were living. They had little time to themselves, less time off from their jobs, too much pressure from their Departments to perform perfectly. They knew that even this minor surrender would be seen as a major sin.

And Draco had helped them. Had helped them to walk away from lives that were too oppressive and stifling, had helped them to disappear. There was no murder of vampires, all with the same dream-reading power. There was only Draco, powerful and able to help people who wanted to help themselves.

Harry knew, now. It was no wonder that the disappearances had been so complete. Not buried bodies and shallow graves, after all, but people who had training in going undercover and didn't want to be found.

The knowledge rushed through him like returning, stolen heat, and he was back in his body, aching with the pleasure, and the even greater thwarted pleasure that he knew Malfoy had taken from him. Malfoy overhung him with shining eyes and shining hair. His body was warm now, and as hard as Harry needed it to be.

"I thought it more than time for you to come back to yourself," Malfoy said, in a soft, warning tone, and swept a hand across his neck. Harry could feel a faint line from the new-bitten scar. He wondered if that would stay that way, and if he would walk out of here with a new scar. He wondered if he would walk out of here at all.

He didn't care.

"Now," Malfoy whispered, and bent over Harry. His hands were splayed out on Harry's wrists again, and he pressed down so hard that Harry gasped a little, working his body against Malfoy's hold. "Now. Resist me if you can."

Harry lunged up against his grasp, and squirmed, trying to get a leg out so that he could knee Malfoy in the groin. He didn't really want to, but Malfoy had told him to, and that was enough to stir a certain kind of desire.

He couldn't move, even though only Malfoy's knees were pressing down against his, even though only legs were resting on top of his legs. He tried to turn his head to the side, and only managed that for a centimeter or two before Malfoy moved his head a certain way and he couldn't do it anymore, either.

He tingled and gasped. Nothing had ever been able to resist him like this, and at the same time keep him so completely safe.

"You aren't struggling," Malfoy observed quietly, watching him with a pensive look that hid his fangs.

Harry didn't want to see that. He wanted to be reminded what was different about Malfoy, to be told, to be ordered, to be held down.

"That's because I can't, Malfoy," he said simply. "You're too strong-"

He cried out as Malfoy bit him again on the throat and tossed his head to the side. This bite gave him no pleasure. "What did I say?" he whispered, and this time did struggle in earnest. But Malfoy laid his neck down across Harry's, breathing bloodily into his face, and Harry couldn't do anything to turn away, except close his eyes. Which he wouldn't do.

"If you cannot call me Draco now, after all that we have done..."

Harry snarled in return, and then said, "You still haven't fulfilled my deepest fantasy, Draco."

"I fail to see what is lacking." Draco's voice was light again, and his hands flexed open on Harry's wrists, then shut. Harry almost smiled. Draco knew that he wasn't going to pull away, for the same reason that he had accepted Draco's overpowering him in the first place. He wanted to be here, and it wasn't in Draco's power to make him back away.

"The fantasies I had were always about a lover. You haven't fucked me yet."

"Hmm." Draco's tongue darted out to touch the bite wound on Harry's neck, and Harry nearly fainted, his head spinning with white spots. But he could hear Draco's voice on the other side of the glare. "There are some vampires that don't fuck their lovers. They think the slide of fangs into someone else's body is enough, that that is a more intimate joining than anything else they could do."

"Yeah, but you aren't like that." Harry mumbled it, turning his head so that his lips brushed against Draco's fangs and were cut open. He knew he didn't imagine Draco's little gasp as small streams of blood began to run down his chin.

"How do you know?" Draco's voice shook, rather like the hands that he lowered to run over Harry's body.

"Because I don't want you to be," Harry said. "And what I want matters to you, or you wouldn't have done this in the first place."

Draco paused and blinked. Then he laughed, and leaned back and up. Harry watched him breathlessly.

Draco raised one hand. His nails gleamed, long and sharp and glinting so hard that Harry found it difficult to focus on them. Draco reached out and slid his fingers gently from Harry's collarbone to his waist, touching only cloth all the way, not marking the skin beneath. Harry found himself breathing in time with Draco's fingers, and those nails didn't claw up his moving chest, either.

Draco tossed his shirt aside, and did the same thing for his trousers, although he had to arch up and reach behind himself to shred all the cloth. Harry moaned a little as the weight retreated, but Draco smiled at him, a smile like a chain, and Harry settled back against the pillows and waited.

Now that he had his answer as to what had happened to the people Draco had helped to disappear, he thought he could wait for any other thing that Draco wanted to give him.

Draco settled his hands with a sharp shake, and what was left of Harry's trousers and pants came with them and flew to a far corner of the room. Draco licked his lips and settled over Harry's groin. He didn't waste time, but reached out and placed one hand on Harry's wand, left beside the bed.

"May I?" he asked.

Harry grinned, dizzy, drunk with the pleasure of Draco's asking, and nodded. Draco cast the spell that coated his fingers with oil, and shrank his nails back to normal as he reached down to Harry's arse. Harry breathed out as he spread his legs, and it felt like the first time in his life he had ever really exhaled.

Draco smoothed his fingers in circles before he slid them in. They didn't go in completely without pain, but Harry was used to that. It was like the pain that he had felt when Draco was guiding his fangs into Harry's neck, anyway. No need to rebel against it, no need to thrash and scream and fight to get away. It was so wonderful, and he couldn't stop panting, opening his mouth to get in more air.

He got more of Draco's tongue instead, sliding around his teeth and learning them, and then his fangs, sliding along the cuts in his lips and opening them further. Blood slipped between them as they kissed, and the passage of Draco's fingers into his hole grew easier and easier.

Harry was fully open by the time that Draco sat back and lifted his pale cock in one palm. Harry realized that he didn't know when Draco had got naked, and it didn't matter. He had probably done it as they came into the room. What mattered was that Harry could see all of him now.

"Yes," Harry whispered, answering the final question as soon as he realized that it was a question.

Draco's cock breached him with a motion that simply didn't end. There was no bottom to this the way Harry had felt with his other lovers, no moment when his lover swore and said that he couldn't get in any further. There was just Draco, and when he did stop moving, Harry thought it was just because he had wanted to.

"Being seated in you is wonderful," Draco said. He didn't pant, of course; what breath filled his lungs was there simply to make him speak. He watched Harry between drooping strands of shining hair.

Harry nodded and kept his eyes open. He didn't know what Draco would do to him if he closed them.

With a smile that it would be easy to mistake for sweet, Draco began to rock. Harry moaned. Yes, Draco was deep inside, as deep inside as he had wanted to be, and as Harry had wanted him to be, and he wouldn't be leaving any time soon. Harry stirred a little, wanting what he wanted without knowing how to ask for it.

Then he had it. Draco lay down on top of him, clasping his wrists against the pillow again, without ceasing his easy thrusts inside Harry.

Harry closed his eyes and sighed. This was the way it had to be, the way he wanted it to be, the way he would have it-

Draco's right hand moved a little and gripped his neck, shaking it, and Harry started and opened his eyes again. Draco bent over him, fangs against his throat, and breathed, "You're going to look at me when I'm fucking you."

Harry nodded a little and opened his eyes further. This probably wouldn't last very long, anyway. Draco would fuck him and leave him.

But the movement of Draco's cock drove that out of his head, and then the graze of the fangs against the scar on Harry's throat, and then the sharp drive of his hips just when Harry had thought he was getting the rhythm. Every time that he did start to understand the rhythm, Draco would move to the side, or shift the tempo of his thrusts, or clamp a knee down over his ribs, and that changed things again.

There was pleasure building, pressure, warmth, but Harry wished he knew how to hold it off. He would give a lot to keep doing this forever, for nothing to change, and for everything to change, for Draco to anticipate the direction of his thoughts and always counter them and keep him pinned down.

But then Draco's back arched, and he shut his own eyes. Harry scratched the back of his nearest hand in response, or tried. His nails skidded off the warm skin as though it was actually metal instead of skin.

Draco grunted, whispered, "This is you, all you," and slammed his hips forwards hard enough to make Harry recoil. Then he did come.

And his hand shifted enough that his fingernails, if not his fangs, were pressing down on the line of the bite scar on Harry's throat.

Harry gave himself up to the expanding, burning cloud that rose to consume him. It whirled him around and roasted him from the inside out. The pleasure rose, and went on rising, with no breaking, with no plateau. His hands clawed at pillows, at air, at Draco's hands, at nothing, and the bed bucked beneath him with the continued arching of his back.

It was an experience too wonderful to give up.

Harry took his time in opening his eyes. For one thing, Draco was draped across him, warm with his blood and their fucking, and still casually holding him down, and that fulfilled that fantasy he had had for too long.

For another, he wondered whether Draco would really agree to do this with him again. It seemed that he was attracted to people who were dissatisfied with their jobs, and he could help them disappear. Then he might go on fucking them, Harry supposed, wherever they were and whoever they were now.

But Harry wasn't dissatisfied with his job, and he had no intention of disappearing.

He opened his eyes at last, because the warmth was fading and not even the force holding him down could last forever. It couldn't. He stirred and looked at Draco, and when Draco went on gazing at him, not blinking, because apparently a vampire didn't need to, Harry was finally moved to speak. "Well?"

"I was unaware that you had asked a question I had to respond to." Draco licked Harry's lips, then went on gazing at him from nearer.

"I-well, I don't know what to do," Harry said. "I can carry some tale back to the Aurors about how I found out that these people disappeared on their own, and let you go." Draco smiled in a way that suggested he had never thought Harry would do anything but let him go, which Harry found irritating. He gritted his teeth and continued, "But then what happens? Will I ever see you again?"

He winced at the whiny tone in his own voice, but decided to let it stand. Draco had already been inside his head, his blood, and his body. He wasn't any stranger to how much Harry needed this. Needed him.

Draco placed a casual hand around his neck. "I told you once that you were the most responsive of all of them," he breathed.

Harry nodded, holding his breath this time because he wanted to, not because he had to.

Draco smiled down at him, gently enough that Harry nearly despaired. He didn't know if Draco would be gentle with anyone he was thinking about staying with.

But then Draco ran a single curved nail down the side of his face, and whispered, "I enjoyed your blood. I enjoyed your fantasies. I enjoyed the way that you yielded to me because you wanted to. I shall have that again. I think I shall go on having that as long as I like."

Harry smiled. He wasn't worried about what Draco had said, in any way, because what Draco had said he wanted would only happen as long as Harry wanted it, too. It made it easier for Harry to start breathing again and reach up to clasp his hand around Draco's. "You'll escape?" he whispered. "And give me what evidence I need to prove that Brewer and Stone and Tedrin and the rest wanted to leave?"

Draco's eyes flashed, once. "That last was not part of our agreement."

Harry laughed at him. "We never made a formal one. Will you?"

Draco eyed him for long enough that Harry would have grown nervous, but Draco was still there, holding him down, and he was showing his fangs without grimacing, and Harry had confessed his desires and not been scorned for them. Harry felt that he could fly.

"As long as you remember that you can ask for things," Draco said at last, "but I give the orders."

How did I get lucky enough to find so much of what I wanted on a case like this? The possible disapproval of the Aurors didn't matter to Harry, not when he was sure that he could come up with a plausible lie that was close to the truth, and no one had been murdered, and Draco wanted him, and they would do this again.

Harry reached up and kissed Draco, hard enough, long enough, to cut his lips open again on Draco's fangs. Draco's tongue promptly darted out to scoop up the blood, and he leaned in, and Harry heard him whisper into his ear.

"Don't move."

Harry smiled, and did as he was told.

The End.