Hello my darlings. It has been a while hasn't it? I don't think that I can offer enough apologies, even if you would be willing to believe a single one. Regardless, we are moving on the story. This will be the last chapter where Harry is staying in the Snape-Dawsen household. As much as I'd like to stay here for the rest of the story the plot must move on.
Hopefully I will be seeing you again soon. Though I make no promises.
O~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~O
Harry lounged on the couch, his chin tucked down so that he could read the book he was holding on his chest. The low hum of the television was in the background of the room. He was alone, probably the only time he had been completely alone in the house since he has been here. Sure he had been alone in a room but normally it was with the knowledge that Snape was just down the hall, ready with a potion stirrer or book in hand. Today was different though.
Snape had left to go talk to a doctor. A psychiatrist, he said. An interview for a new doctor to talk to his students. Harry knew that Snape had multiple kids in his house that he would send out to doctors. In theory. It was still hard to acknowledge that there were so many kids, so many Slytherins, which needed that kind of help. It was easy to acknowledge it with himself, he had sat in front of his potions professor staring at the black notebook of his fucked up mind. With Draco he could imagine it clearly because he had seen proof of the need himself. But to think that so many Pureblood, aloof, sneaky, Slytherins would need a therapist. It just didn't seem real, and it made him feel all the worse. After all, plenty of people probably thought that about the golden boy Gryffindor.
To try and ignore the niggling feeling of pity, self and not, Harry decided to distract himself from the pestering silence. So he put on the TV and when that doesn't work he grabs a book. He had grabbed a book called The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. A weird book of crazy aliens, the words 'don't panic' and the absolute insistence that you never go anywhere without your towel. He was in the middle of the description of the terrible poetry of the Vulgans when the fire suddenly flared up. Assuming that it was Snape he barely glanced up from his page.
"Fuck." A curse rung out in the room. Well, that wasn't Snape. Harry dropped his book and rose in a flurry of limbs. He rose, wand in his hand to see a shock of blond hair. Out of the fireplace stumbled Draco Malfoy. He had a hand pressed tightly to the left side of his face with small rivulets of blood seeping in between his fingers. The blood was slowly dripping onto his crisp white button down. He was also wearing a pair pf black slacks that were rolled up past the ankle and no socks or shoes.
Harry scrambled. Grabbing he towel he had been using as a coaster for his tea cup.
"Malfoy? What the hell are you doing here?" He asked, approaching the injured boy. His words cause the blond to look at him with surprise.
"Potter." His voice was calm but wavered slightly with barely controlled energy. "I could ask you the same question." Harry snorted at his non answer and motioned him to drop his hand. He barely glanced at the injury before pressing the towel to the wound, putting pressure to stem the bleeding. His face looked like it had been cut, starting from the outside corner of his left eye and down to his jawline just outside the chin. There were also a number of smaller scratches that littered his cheek and forehead.
"Really. What are you doing here?" Draco insisted, swiping at Harry's hand like an annoying fly. He grabbed the towel himself, wiping his dirty hand on his shirt. Harry wrinkled his nose but didn't say anything. He didn't want to think how expensive that shirt would be.
"I have been living here for the summer." He finally answered. "Why are you bleeding?" He sat down on the edge of the sofa.
"My father threw a 300 year old crystal tumbler at me. Caught me in his office. He was drunk enough to throw one of his favorite heirlooms, but sober enough to have decent aim." With confident stride he went over to the liquor cabinet. He flicked open the door and dug deep into the cabinet with his unoccupied arm. First he pulled out an amber bottle, placing it so hard on the coffee table that it was still shaking when he turned back. Next he pulled out a simple pine box. He tucked it under his arm, grabbed a glass and slammed the door shut. Harry watched as he pulled out the cork with his teeth, splashed the liquor in his glass. Once it had been filled to generous two fingers he left the bottle, not bothering to even recork the bottle. He did this with all the quick and stabbing motions of a tightly-wound, adrenaline filled spring. He flopped down onto the couch with deceivingly relaxed lounge.
"Why where you in your fathers office?" Harry asked as he watched the other boy drink.
"For this." Draco sneered, sticking his hand into his shirt. He pulled out a tightly bound sheath of parchment. He tossed them onto the table next to the box. Harry leaned forward and picked it up, unwrapping the hastily tied string to revel a parchment covered in numbers and notations. Not that Harry could really understand anything that he was reading but he could tell that it had something to do with money.
"You let yourself get hit in the face with a glass for some papers?" Harry grinned at the flash of annoyance that crossed the other boys face at being accused of letting himself get hit in the face. He stood up to grab the first aid kit that Snape had moved to the hall closet.
"I snuck into his office. That's the reason he struck me. He didn't know I had those papers. He would've done a lot worse if he had." Draco replied, shouting so that Harry could hear him down the hall. Suddenly his lack of shoes made a little more sense. "Those papers are essential to my father downfall."
"Your father's downfall?" Harry quirked an eyebrow as he walked back in.
"That is a list of all of my father's business deals. His real business deals. Including bribes to government officials, pay offs, purchases of illegal items and a true account of his banking statements. For the past two years I have been making copies and storing them here. Collateral for later." He accepted the three potions bottles. With skilled eyes he examined the different unlabeled bottles before quickly thumbing off the corks and downing them with a gulp. He drained the rest of his glass, swirling the drink around his mouth before swallowing it. He sucked his tongue against his teeth at the mixed tastes before leaning for the bottle again.
"Don't you think Snape will notice?" Harry asked in regards to the bottle, watching as the other boy pour another generous glass.
"He hasn't yet, or at least he hasn't said anything yet." Draco explained, swiping at the blood that had dribbled down to his chin. The cut was healing quickly but there was still a lot of blood that was flowing now that the towel had been tossed aside. "He got it as a gift years ago but doesn't like the brand. Hell, he may be letting me drink it because he doesn't want to." Harry nodded at the explanation before a question popped into his head.
"Wait? Does your dad know that you are here?"
"No, he thinks I'm at Theodore's."
"Notts?"
"Yeah."
"But what if he tries to find you? What if he calls them and they say that you are not there?"
"If my father bothers to call, not that he ever has before, Theo will say that I am there."
"He will?"
"Well it is his day." Draco drawled, leaning against the armrest so that his torso was facing Harry.
"His day."
"We all have a rotation plan. If it is the first week of the month every even day I'm at Theo's, odd days I'm at Daphne's, on weekends I'm with Greg, Second week if it is an even day I am with Pansy, Odd days I am with Theo, on the weekend I am with Vincent. And so on so forth. Each one of them has their own schedule and rotation that is seemingly randomized. That way if a parent decides to check there will be a person there to conform but also, if they try to see if a friend is lying there won't be any confused overlap."
"That's complicated." Harry said in slight aw of the plan. Draco shrugged in a non-committal way.
"You do what you have to. No one wants their parents catching them doing something shady. We all have an understanding that if we all want to be protected then we have to work together."
"You didn't mention Zabini." Harry noticed, sinking back into the cushions. The potions had done their work and he could not even see any evidence of the original wound except for the blood.
"Blaise? Nah, you can't trust that fucker." Draco snorted with derision. He placed his drink down and hefted himself up. He dragged the box to himself with a single finger. He tapped the box with his wand. The wood shuddered as it grew to twice its size. He opened the lid to reveal dozens of shrunken scrolls lining the bottom. It looked like there were enough papers to start a book.
"As opposed to the other Slytherins." Harry joked lightly, ignoring the stink eye that he was given.
"Just because someone is ambitious, cunning, and sneaky doesn't mean that they can't be trusted. It just means that you need to figure out their beliefs in deals before you make one." Draco explained, shuffling the papers in the box before slamming the lid shut.
"Beliefs in deals? What the hell is that?" Harry queried. Draco sighed in annoyance.
"People have different beliefs in how one makes a deal. For the most part a normal person makes a deal with the understanding that you try your hardest to honor your deal. That way people will trust you and that will be willing to work with you again. That it is normal to hold onto trust and to try and be trusted yourself. This is true for most, especially with Hufflepuffs and Gryffindors. Slytherins though, well they have a bit more variation in the way that they think."
"What do you mean?"
"Well for example. Some Slytherins may work on deals in an attempt to build trust with the understanding that they plan to betray you later on. You build up a base with someone using small, innocuous deals. Once the person trusts you to a certain level you can go and use that as leverage. Either to obtain secret information they would not tell other than a trusted ally or just a full on betrayal. If they trust you and believe that you follow through with your deals and bargains it will take them longer to catch you or they will proclaim your innocence themselves.
"Some, or should I say many, Slytherins believe all deals come with a caveat. That a deal will be upheld up until the point that the inconvenience of sticking to the deal outweighs the benefits of keeping that persons trust or the end results." Draco explained, holding his glass by the rim with just his fingertips. He swirled the liquid around, no longer attempting to down the amber liquid as fast as he possibly could. "In that case there is an extra challenge. Because you have to figure out what a person considers an inconvenience. Is it money, time, reputation? And what would be the tipping point that it becomes too much. And also how a person would leave the deal. Will they try to make another one? Will they try to burn the deal and leave it as a pile of smoldering ashes? Will they try to make breaking the deal seem like the other parties fault?"
"Some people only make deals that they know will end up hurting the other party. Specifically using wording and contracts so that the other person will be forced to act in a way that will only hurt them. Others may make deals in a way that hurt themselves, setting them up as martyrs for a cause or to cast someone else in the role of the enemy. Politicians love that one. Regardless there are thousands of variations that you have to deal with and in Slytherin there is always the belief that you never go to the table without an escape exit and always assume the other person has one foot out the door."
"That hurts my head." Harry grumbled, though he couldn't say anything to disagree with what he was saying.
"Zabini can't be trusted because he doesn't follow that model. It's easier to make a deal when you know where a person stands and what they desire. Blaise, well he enjoys a challenge too much. He likes to make barters that he was every intention of breaking. He likes when his reputation for keeping a promise lessens because it makes the next deal that much harder to get and that much more satisfying to win. He goes out of his way to stir up drama. Causing drama can be a useful too. You never know when having the light shine on someone else can benefit you. But he just just does it for morbid curiosity which makes him chaotic. Definitely not worth the risk. These are traits he gets from his mother." Draco sneered.
"That sounds . . . needlessly complicated." Harry muttered.
"No truer statement could be said about Zabini, except to add that he tends toward vindictive sadist."
"Is that why he was being such an ass last year?"
"Oh yes. With me staying in the background his normal entertainment was disappearing, so he decided to make some himself. I think he got a taste for it, taking a more active role. I would watch out for him." Draco warned, biting his lip in contemplation.
"So what about you?" Harry asked.
"What about me?" He replied.
"How do you manage deals?" Harry pressed, smirking slightly.
"You aren't subtle are you Potter?"
"I have never been accused of subtly before, why would I start now?" Harry quipped back. Draco quirked an eyebrow at him but smirked back at him.
"Well I will say that I am not a fan of Zabini's approach. Other than that? Well I suppose you will have to figure out that yourself."
"You sneaky bastard." Harry groused but smiled any way.
"Thank you." Draco toasted him. Harry chuckled. He settled back into the couch.
The boys chatted for hours. They spoke about the things they had done that summer. Apparently Lady Malfoy had gleefully taken the news of her husband's impotence. She flounced of to Italy to spend the summer at their villa with her handsome gardener and a large purse of galleons that refilled whenever it got empty.
"She just left you behind?" Harry asked.
"Why would I want to go with her? We have nothing in common and I don't want to watch her flirt with Gio all day." Draco shrugged in response.
Meanwhile Lord Malfoy was dealing with his new found disability by drinking, raging and leaning heavily on his political pawns. As a result his criminal activities had increased leaving Draco with plenty of ammunition, and a few injuries to match. They continued to chat until the fireplace flared green again.
"Draco." Snape acknowledged, barely blinking at the sight of the other boy. He didn't even mention the half empty bottle of liquor or the fact that the boys shirt was covered in blood that they had not bothered to try and wash out. "Isn't nearly time for you to return home for dinner?"
"Yes sir." Draco agreed. He packed everything back into his box. He stood with only a small stumble. He placed the box in Snapes waiting hands before disappearing into the fire place with a little wave.
"That boy." Snape muttered, flicking his wand so that the bottle and glasses would sort themselves away. The towel with blood was spelled into the fireplace and went to ash.
"He just showed up." Harry said, half reporting fact half making an excuse.
"Yes, he is apt to do that. I would say it was because he was an only child but I have yet to see any young person who didn't think that they had the right to stomp wherever they wanted with impunity." Harry snorted at the derisive comment.
"So how was your meeting?"
"Unproductive at best." Snape sneered.
"I'm sorry." Snape just hummed noncommittally at the apology. Harry picked up his book and closed it properly, setting it on the edge of the table.
"Harry. . ." Snape paused to a moment, looking at him inscrutably. "Before I came back today I spoke with the Headmaster."
"What about."
"You. It seems that he has decided to bring you from your home for the last part of the summer. He will be coming to pick you up from your Uncles house the night of your birthday."
"Oh." Harry sighed. He didn't know how to feel. It was great that he was supposed to be rescued. He would probably spend the next few weeks with the Weasleys or with Sirius. And that made him really happy. But it also meant that he would have to leave the Dawsen-Snape household. He really didn't want to leave. But there wasn't much of an option. Dumbledore didn't know he was here. If he wasn't back at his uncle's place when he showed up there would be a man hunt. Harry wouldn't be able to stay hidden forever and Voldemort would be aware that he wasn't in the safety of his home.
"You do not need to worry about your Uncle. He will be informed that under no uncertain terms what he should keep to himself. Alex will be there as his normal pest self to make sure that the transition happens smoothly." Snape explained softly.
"Thank you." Harry replied in the same tone. Snape stared at him for a moment more. He didn't say anything, not offering false words or placating tones. Instead he turned towards the kitchen, getting ready to make dinner the way that he does every night. Harry slumped against the couch with a great sigh, staring at the ceiling as he listened to his professor moving pans and running water.