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A Year's Temptation	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 28515 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, nor any of the characters from the books or movies. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-A Year of Temptation
- 2-February
- 3-March
- 4-April
- 5-May
- 6-June
- 7-July
- 8-August
- 9-September
- 10-October
- 11-November
- 12-December
- 9
- 10
- 11
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten- October

            “You understand, I hope,” said Kingsley, his voice sharp enough to cut glass, “that you should have come to me at once.”

            Harry kept his head bowed, even as he nodded. If he looked up too soon, then Kingsley would see the defiance in his eyes.

            He understood that he should have reported the mysterious letters and attacks to his superior, yes. He had already apologized for that. A prolonged scolding was something that he didn’t need, and which no one else in the Hermes Corps had ever received, at least since Harry had joined them. It was as if Kingsley believed he was still a fifteen-year-old boy at heart, and wouldn’t learn without being told that he was a naughty child.

            Kingsley sighed. Harry was sure he had just pulled off his glasses and rubbed his eyes, because he tended to do that when dealing with Harry. Harry sat in a chair in front of his desk, and Kingsley had pushed his own seat quite a distance away on the other side, as if sitting so close to Harry disgusted him.

            Expecting more sharp words, Harry was surprised, a moment later, to hear his boss murmur, “You face threats that no one else ever has, Harry, and the consequences of your actions don’t just vanish. Death Eaters aren’t spells. You should have come to us at once because you face greater problems, not because you’re incompetent to take care of yourself. And from what you’ve told me about Snape running free...you were lucky not to be killed dealing with him.”

            Harry looked up at last. Kingsley had pushed his chair close to the other side of the desk again, and gazed at him seriously.

            “I understand, sir,” Harry said at last. “And now that- well, now that you know everything, I think you may know why I didn’t.”

            Kingsley grunted, as though to say that his understanding didn’t really matter one way or the other. “You’re to be suspended from Hermes Corps for a number of months this time, Harry,” he said. “An absence from the Ministry for at least a fortnight, with bodyguards, and then you’ll be on paperwork duty until the end of the year, without bodyguards only when you’re in the Ministry.”

            Harry clenched his jaw. He had known the punishment would be severe. He supposed he should feel lucky not to be sacked. And to be alive, as Kingsley had said; when he shifted, he could still feel his robes pulling over the large amount of barely healed new skin on his back.

            “Yes, sir,” he said reluctantly. “But what about Ralph? Since he needs a partner for work in the Corps- ”

            Kingsley had started to sign a piece of paper that was probably his official or semi-official reprimand, but at Harry’s words he paused. “I have already told him my decision,” he said. “You can speak with him about it yourself, if you’d like.”

            Harry peered anxiously at Kingsley, disliking the tone in his voice, but from that moment on, Kingsley seemed to have become both blind and deaf. He signed Harry’s paperwork and explained the schedule of the rotating bodyguards in a monotone voice. Harry was to have Aurors with him at all times, including inside Number Twelve Grimmauld Place. One would remain in the bedroom with him at night, while the other would guard outside the door. Harry could be alone to use the loo, but that was virtually the only privacy he would have.

            Harry might have tried to argue him out of it, but he knew he had used up all his slack with Kingsley this time. And he recognized none of the names of the Aurors assigned to him, which meant they were older men and women, from the generation of Magical Law Enforcement that Harry had worked with least. Some of them might be in awe of him, but they would do their duty in a way that Harry’s friends might have been persuaded out of.

            At one point, as he fought to accept it instead of sulking, Kingsley looked up and caught his eye.

            He frowned, then leaned across the desk and spoke in a tight voice. “I should make this very clear right now, Potter. There is no place in the Hermes Corps for someone who disregards his own life in the way you’ve done. Someone who does that might very well disregard his partner’s, and that’s not what we’re here for.”

            “No, sir,” Harry agreed tightly, and sat back in the chair, carefully counting his breaths and trying not to make the office rattle with his magic. Kingsley eyed him once, sniffed, and went back to reading.

            His first bodyguards met him as he departed the office, a stolid-looking fellow named Tallow and an older witch with a friendly smile but cold eyes named Selene. Harry gave them dismal nods and turned down the corridor. Since he had to leave the Ministry immediately and not return for two weeks, he couldn’t speak with Ralph right now.

            He wished he could. He wanted to know how a friend, not someone who wanted to gossip about the Boy-Who-Lived, had taken the news of his relationship with Draco. Tallow and Selene, of course, seemed disinclined to comment on it even if their orders would have let them do so.

            But, as much as had changed, he didn’t want to upend his life further by losing his job. So he left the Ministry, tried to remember what books in the Black library had looked as if they might actually intrigue him, and settled in to wait.

            He didn’t want to admit how much an owl from Draco, arriving a few hours later, helped.

*

            “You wanted to speak with me?” Draco asked Branwen’s back. His coach had kept him after practice and guided him into her private office at the back of the pitch, where no Falcons usually went unless they’d done something incredibly idiotic in practice. Draco knew that wasn’t him. He had been brilliant, just as he had been ever since his liaison with Harry back in February.

            Branwen turned around and stared hard at him. She was an imposing woman, so much so that someone intimidated by her easily forgot that her face looked like slabs of meat put together by clumsy hands. It had been a year since Draco was afraid of her. He watched her politely, his hands folded behind his back.

            “You’re a Veela, Malfoy,” said Branwen, as if that connoted something obvious, and then paused.

            “Very well done,” Draco murmured. It wasn’t as if the Daily Prophet hadn’t been repeating it nonstop, along with speculations that Draco had used his Veela charm and nothing else to induce Harry into falling for him. Since Branwen hadn’t spoken to him about it before now, Draco had assumed she wanted to ignore the whole thing and replace the taunting articles with the news of a Falcons victory.

            Branwen worked her jaw back and forth several times. Then she said, “You’re off the team, Malfoy.”

            Draco smiled thinly. He had been preparing himself for those words for a long time, particularly since the Daily Prophet occasionally got bored and dug out the tales of his “Death Eater” days again. Branwen had always ignored them, but Draco had always known the owners of the team might one day take fright at the bad publicity and pressure her into sacking him.

            “Because of my last name, I reckon,” he said.

            Branwen slapped her hands together and glared at him. “Of course not,” she said, as if he had insulted her. “Because Veela have bloody wings, and I can’t let you have an unfair advantage over everyone else.”

            Draco stared at her a moment. Then he said, still with a feeling of suppressed hilarity bobbing up in him, “But I can control the wings. I would never summon them during a match.”

            “Quidditch regulations,” Branwen said darkly. “We can’t hire a Veela for the teams, or, for that matter, any other magical creature who can fly. It puts the other players at too much of a disadvantage.”

            Draco had never really imagined that prejudices against magical creatures in the wizarding world would apply to him.- especially not once he found out he was a Veela. One simply did not sack a creature who could appear beautiful enough to make dozens of people want to fuck him.

            He briefly considered using the allure on Branwen. But it wouldn’t work for long; even if he could convince her that she didn’t really want to be rid of him, sooner or later someone distant from him, probably one of the team’s owners, would notice and do something Draco couldn’t counteract. And then the Daily Prophet would have an even grander time calling him something violent, inhuman, and ready to use his magic for his own advantage than they were already having.

            He bowed a bit, making sure Branwen could see his eyes and knew how displeased he was with this.

            She stared back at him, frowning, hands on her hips, and then shook her head. “You should have come to me about this when you first had your accident,” she said. “It was announcing yourself as a Veela publicly that did it. We could have found some way to keep it quiet if you’d let me know.”

            Draco blinked for a moment. He had assumed she was glad to see him go. “You don’t want me to leave?”

            “With you on the team, we win, Malfoy,” said Branwen, waving one heavy arm. “Now we have to lose you and train another Seeker at the same time, with our first matches of the season not far away. No, I didn’t want you to leave.”

            Feeling oddly comforted- he had never accounted Branwen a friend, but he would not have wanted to consider her an enemy either- Draco gave her a short nod and then turned to depart the room and fetch his broom and Quidditch gear. For the first negative result beyond mere attention and stress from his relationship with Harry, this one had been surprisingly mild.

            And he would do the same thing all over again in order to save Harry’s life, or have him in his own.

            As he drew his gloves out of his trunk and hooked them to his belt, Draco smiled slightly. And this leaves me more room and time to court Harry, as well as making sure that Pansy doesn’t embarrass me further. The discovery of his Veela had meant loud and public sympathy for Pansy and the little Weasley, but Draco intended to turn that around when he finished his enchantment of Pansy. Someone slobbering and wailing over a firmly mated Veela would inspire only revulsion and laughter, not sympathy.

            And she still had at least one more cache of the photographs to give him, hidden somewhere neither Draco nor the house-elves had been able to discover or persuade out of her. Draco didn’t really mind people gaping at his naked body, but he bristled at the mere thought of someone else drooling over his mate that way.

*

            Harry sighed and waved his wand, burning the Howler that had come in through the window. Not even the presence of his bodyguards could control them entirely, and Harry sometimes listened to them for entertainment.

            There was so little else to do.

            He had never realized how much his job formed the center of his days. Before this crisis with the Veela, Ginny had been the bigger part, the person he looked forwards to spending time with, but she was gone now- and in any case, her company hadn’t been a source of pleasure for months. Draco had said he would stay away from Harry for a week, to give the rumors a chance to settle and Harry’s bodyguards time to lose suspicion of him. That left Harry to read in the Black library, hold uninteresting conversations with his bodyguards (they claimed talking with him distracted them from their tasks), and listen to, and then burn, Howlers.

            Unless he wanted to think.

            Harry had avoided that for as long as possible, but now he thought he had no choice.

            He leaned back in his chair, hands behind his head, and stared at the ceiling. Tallow and Selene were on duty again today, and the one thing Harry enjoyed about their company was that they didn’t consider themselves entitled to his thoughts, as a few of the others, who seemed to believe Harry might run off again at any moment, did. He could think for hours on end, and the only thing they might ask was if he were hungry.

            So, he had to think again: what did he want now?

            He knew he wanted Draco in his life. But in what capacity? He had read a little more about Veela, and the more he read, the more nervous he felt, instead of better-informed. Different books argued about the origin of the Veela’s magic and how long and successfully they had interbred with wizards and witches, but they were absolutely clear on one point: in every case, the mate and Veela became the center of each other’s lives. The bonding and the few months before it were the clearest examples. The Veela would court its mate constantly, obsessively, at least until it was sure that the mate wouldn’t turn away from it on a whim or pay more attention to anyone else than to it. Only afterwards would normal friendships and life with people outside the immediate pair of them resume.

            Harry had thought he could deal with limited amounts of contact like that, and by the time they bonded-

            It’s a matter of when, not if, now.

            - he would have accepted the idea that he had to have full-out sex with Draco. But he didn’t like the idea of months of intense courting, to begin the moment Draco decided to ignore the constant front-page articles the Daily Prophet deemed them worthy of.

            One thing that bothered him was how little he knew of Draco as an ordinary person, in ordinary moments. Sharing desperate sex and occasional games of Quidditch and life-saving battles was all very well, but how was he to know that he would like the person he would end up tied to for the rest of his life? In their Hogwarts days, all Harry had really known was Draco the right smarmy git. Could he reacquire that personality the moment they finished bonding? Would he?

            And now you sound like a girl.

            Harry ran a hand irritably over his face. He wished he could run, which might soothe his feelings the way it had when he had thought his enemy was still hunting him. But Tallow and Selene would insist on going with him, and while Harry’s Muggle neighbors could ignore one man panting along the streets, the same followed obsessively by a man and woman would look unacceptably strange.

            Maybe he should think about Snape instead- except that he already believed he knew how the Potions master had managed to escape detection for so long, and in any case, thinking about him would only increase Harry’s desire to start hunting him, right now, which he couldn’t do for months.

            He stood abruptly and walked towards the kitchen, where he would prepare tea for himself and something else that would take a long time to cook but involve relatively simple steps. Tallow and Selene followed him at once, their wands out and their eyes on the walls as if the house were still full of the same dark secrets it had harbored in Sirius’s time. Harry hardly kept himself from snorting aloud.

            I wish Kingsley hadn’t chosen Aurors who take their duty so damn seriously. It would hardly do them some harm to relax and acquire a sense of humor.

            Harry knew what Kingsley would say if he mentioned that, of course. He would say levelly that Harry obviously didn’t value his life enough, or else that he was obviously uneasy and required more company. And then, the next time Harry looked, the number of bodyguards would have increased to three.

            A sudden thought made his steps slow, and he had to think more deeply about this subject than he would have liked.

            Do I really value my life enough, where Draco is concerned? My death would kill him. I don’t want to do that; I want to keep him alive. But if I really value that, why do I snort and chafe and insist that I can take care of myself? I really couldn’t in the battle with Snape. I would have died if not for Draco.

            Harry went to the kitchen in a calmer mood than he’d been since his suspension. At least it was something new, to think that he didn’t really value the promise he had made to Draco because it was so hard for him to keep it.

*

            “Are you sure that you want to do this, darling?” Draco made sure that his voice was soft and tender, his eyes focused on Pansy. “You don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, you know. We can stop now, and I can come to the bed, take you in my arms, and- ”

            “No!” Pansy said, sounding a little desperate, and arched her hips. Her naked body, which Draco had once found attractive, bounced a little as she shifted positions. “I want to do this.”

            Draco smiled. Let her take it for an encouraging expression, which she undoubtedly would, since she was under the dominion of the Veela allure, when really it was only relief that he wouldn’t have to perform actions he could only truly imagine doing with Harry now. “Arrange yourself with your hands above your head then, love. I have to be sure that you aren’t touching any part of your body.”

            Pansy eagerly wriggled into position, breathing lightly, her eyes fixed on him. Draco concealed his disgust as best as he could with another smile, and then began to murmur.

            “You haven’t seen me all day. You’re not sure where I am, but you know that when I return, you’ll feel the greatest pleasure of your life, so you’re willing to give me some time to return. You tire, and so you lie down here, on our bed, where we’ve made love so often. You close your eyes, but you don’t quite go to sleep; your ears are still listening for me. You can’t open your eyes, however.”

            Draco himself didn’t think his words a convincing imitation of the Imperius Curse, but once again it seemed that the books he’d read about Veela were more correct than he had given them credit for. Pansy was already under the influence of the allure, and just as she found it easier to do anything he said than resist, so she found it easy to listen to him where most people would have struggled against his words. Her eyes fell shut, and every single twitch of her body lapsed into attentive stillness.

            “You hear me coming at last,” Draco whispered, while increasing the allure so that it would rise in Pansy’s mind like a mist. He stalked a few steps closer, eyes intent, though if Pansy opened her eyes she would not see the true emotions that made them so. “Such soft steps, as though I sense that you’re half-asleep and don’t want to disturb you.”

            “Disturb me, Draco,” Pansy said, and arched her back like a stereotype of a virgin sacrifice on an altar. If there was ever a time in her life when she could have played the virgin convincingly, however, that was long gone. The moan she gave a moment later, full-throated, proved that. Draco found himself comparing it to the soft noises Harry had made during their latest time together in bed, and discovered it was entirely lacking. “Please. Make me writhe. Make me yours.”

            “Patience, patience, love,” Draco whispered, his mouth set in a fake grin. He didn’t think his control would falter, but he had pushed further than he should have and had Pansy rebuff him before this. He wouldn’t take the chance now. “Can you hear me coming? Can you hear my footfalls? Can you sense the love you bear for me, even with only your ears to bring it to you?”

            Pansy moaned again, and gooseflesh spilled over her skin, starting in the valley between her breasts and working down towards her legs. “I can hear you so well, Draco. Please, touch me.”

            “I am,” Draco said softly. “My hand is on your left thigh.”

            Pansy started and squealed. Draco still stood several feet from the bed, of course, so he could not really have touched her at all, but Pansy was deep enough in the hypnosis that he created not to know that. She was the one who had suggested this game in the first place, with Draco trying to make her come with his voice alone, but now she seemed to believe it was entirely real. She whispered, “Your hand feels so good. So warm.”

            “Of course it does,” said Draco. He halted a few feet away from her and wondered how long this would take. He wanted to write a letter to Harry proposing they meet in a few days, and since Harry’s last letter had been cautious, for some reason, Draco would have to choose his words carefully so as not to scare him off. “Every time I touch you feels warm, Pansy.”

            “It does, it does,” she murmured, with the sound of someone chanting a mantra.

            “I slide my hand towards your crotch,” Draco said softly. “What will I find there? Wetness?”

            “Yes, yes!’ Again she arched her back, and her head rolled towards him. If she could have opened her eyes, Draco was sure he would have seen her pupils fully dilated, a deep, worshipful, reverent gaze directed at him. “Draco, I’m so wet for you. No one else could ever arouse me like this, never.”

            I can believe that. At least his allure had this side effect now: he could control her without touching her. Draco had been willing to manage sex with her a few months ago. Now he didn’t think he could have forced himself hard no matter how he thought about Harry. His heart and his body would both know that it wasn’t Harry in the bed with him.

            He sighed and proceeded to talk his way through the verbal seduction of his wife, with Pansy reacting every time as though he had actually touched her, moaning and sighing out her arousal and adulation. At last Draco said that he bit her shoulder and told her to come, and Pansy vibrated with an orgasm that literally shook her and then dropped her into a limp, sobbing heap.

            Draco moved over and stroked her shoulder. If all went well, she should mistake the gesture for a much more tender one in the depths of her hypnosis.

            She opened her eyes and turned a look on him. Draco’s hand faltered in mid-stroke.

            The books had described this, too, but it was usually on the face of someone who had spent much more time in the presence of the Veela allure than Pansy, often when a wife or husband didn’t realize that their spouse had become a Veela at all. Pansy’s pupils were nothing more than tiny black pinpricks. She put out a groping hand and caught his, and every muscle of her frame trembled until he spoke.

            She was his. He could do anything now, up to and including an order that she kill herself, and she would not oppose him.

            Nearly drunk with the sense of power, Draco bent, smoothing a curl of her blonde hair back behind her ear, and breathed on her face. Pansy sighed.

            “Dear?” he whispered.

            “Love,” she said at once. Her eyes remained open, dreaming, but still slightly fixed on him, as if she saw only him, surrounded by a background of light.

            “Where is the last cache of photographs, Pansy?” he whispered, while his hand moved in a constant, gentle stroke. When she didn’t respond, he lifted his palm, and she whimpered in distress, but she also told him what he wanted to know.

            “Grin-Gringotts,” she breathed. “The Parkinson vault.”

            Draco smiled, and went back to petting her. “Good girl,” he said.

*

            Harry shook his head a little as he stared at the front page of the paper. The Daily Prophet said Draco being sacked from the Falmouth Falcons had happened several days ago, but either Draco’s coach had waited until now to release the news or else the constant speculation about their relationship had pushed it off the front page until now.

            Harry stared at it a little longer, then stood decisively. He’d spent too much time sitting at a distance, stewing over what he couldn’t do, when he could be comforting- and confronting- Draco. Draco would probably deny that he needed comfort for anything, especially this, but Harry thought he would at least appreciate the gesture, as coming from his mate. And he owed Draco for the days and nights he’d sat by his bed in hospital.

            And, he had to admit, he missed him and wanted to see him. If he loved Draco, he shouldn’t need an excuse.

            “Where are we going, sir?” Selene asked from behind him. She was always the more formal of the pair; no matter how times Harry asked her to address him by his first name, she would simply smile and use the title next time. Tallow might have allowed Harry to get away with more if he guarded him alone, which had made Harry realize, grudgingly, how intelligent Kingsley had been to assign the guards in the pairs he did.

            “To Malfoy Manor,” said Harry, and lengthened his strides as he left the library and headed towards the stairs. He could hear them following him, but for long moments they said nothing, and he hoped they wouldn’t.

            “Oh,” said Tallow suddenly, in a small voice. Harry halted and glanced back at him. A faint blush stained his cheeks, as if one of the pictures of Draco sitting by Harry’s bedside in St. Mungo’s had just appeared before him. “I- that is to say, the stories are true? You’re really dating him?”

            Harry snorted. “If you want to call saving each other’s lives dating. He’s a Veela and I’m his mate, yes. That part is true.”

            Tallow gave a small shake of his head. “But he doesn’t need you to save his life now, does he?”

            Harry narrowed his eyes and studied the other man more closely. Tallow was determinedly avoiding his gaze a moment later, though. “Probably not,” said Harry. “But I want to see him. Is there a problem?”

            “I’ve known several Malfoys,” said Tallow shortly. “They don’t- you can’t trust them, sir. There are probably reasons that you’re sleeping with him and saving his life. I wouldn’t know them, because you have your own honor, sir. But I think it’s a mistake to assume that you’re friends.”

            Harry just went on staring. He had expected people to hate him for cheating on his wife and succumbing to a Veela’s attraction. He had not taken Draco’s past into account when this came up.

            “I am at least his friend,” he said at last. He couldn’t say Draco was a good man, because he strongly suspected that Draco was only a good man towards him, but he would say this. “And if you have a problem with my going to Malfoy Manor and referring to him as at least my friend, I suggest you stay here. Or, better, tell Kingsley that you don’t want to guard me any more when you return to the Ministry, and I am sure that he can find some way of sparing you this onerous task.”

            Tallow flushed, and shifted position as if he were a Gryffindor student facing McGonagall’s full wrath. “I didn’t mean to question you,” he said. “I just- it just doesn’t seem right to me, that’s all.”

            “Noted,” Harry said dryly, and briefly glanced at Selene. She just regarded him with a faint smile, as if to say it was all one to her whether they stayed in Grimmauld Place or went to Malfoy Manor; she could defend him just as well in either place.

            Shaking his head sharply, Harry began walking again. He knew he would have to step outside the house and Apparate, not least because he had no idea if the Floo connection at the Manor was open for him, and because his guards wouldn’t want him traveling by a method that was as likely to spin them apart as keep them together. He spent the few minutes turning different words over in his head, wondering if he should speak them to Draco or not.

            I missed you? Certainly true, but he didn’t know if Draco wanted to hear them.

            Why didn’t you tell me that you’d been sacked? Not the most diplomatic opening to a conversation, and since Draco hadn’t included that news in his letters to Harry, it was possible that he didn’t want to talk about it at all.

            I wanted to see you. Truest, and simplest, and probably best.

            They appeared on the outer grounds of Malfoy Manor, at the absolute limit of the anti-Apparition wards on the house. Harry was startled and disconcerted for a moment, until he remembered that the exception Draco had built into the wards for him wouldn’t include the Aurors. He shook his head and began walking briskly up the path, deliberately calming his breathing all the way.

            A house-elf appeared to meet them when Harry knocked on the door, its ears fluttering and its eyes bulging. “Master Malfoy is not being here,” it squeaked. “But he said that Harry Potter is always welcome, always.” It gave a dubious look at Tallow and Selene, but Harry suspected he could persuade the little creature to let them in. He smiled and opened his mouth to do so.

            “What are you doing here?”

            Startled, Harry looked up. Pansy had swept down the main spiral staircase of the Manor to stand behind the elf, who squeaked again and darted out of the way, tugging on its ears to punish itself. Pansy paid no attention to it. Instead, she stared at Harry with a look of intense dislike on her face.

            Harry blinked. He knew that Pansy probably hadn’t taken the news of his and Draco’s deepening relationship much better than Ginny had, but Draco had confirmed that they had married each other out of convenience and because they’d suited each other at the time. He’d imagined that she had already left, content with enough money to cover her living expenses.

            This woman didn’t look at all as though she intended to move out, or stop being Draco’s wife. She glared at him with open hatred that could have rivaled the look Snape had worn when Harry was at Hogwarts, and she trembled now and then, as if it took all her self-control to keep from flying at him.

            “I came to see Draco,” he said cautiously.

            She laughed loudly and abruptly. “Of course you did,” she said, and then put one hand over her mouth as though to hold in the giggles. “Of course,” she whispered, but when she dropped her hand, there was no smile beneath the palm. “You are making a nuisance of yourself. Draco doesn’t want you in his life anymore. He told me so himself, before he left this morning.”

            Harry blinked again. There was a time when he might well have believed that, but now it sounded like a transparent and ridiculous ploy to get him to slouch away in dejection and never come back.

            Much like the way she took photographs of us together, as a matter of fact, and then was stupid enough to tell Draco about them.

            “Mrs. Malfoy,” he said, because no matter what his exception for Draco he certainly didn’t feel comfortable enough to address Pansy by her first name, “are you quite well?”

            “Quite well!” she said, and began to giggle again. The giggle vanished like the first one had, and then she narrowed her eyes and said, “I’ll raise the wards against you if you don’t leave right now.”

            Harry shook his head slowly from side to side. Pansy’s behavior reminded him of nothing so much as the behavior of some Death Eater victims when they’d been under the Imperius Curse for long enough to permanently twist their minds, and he couldn’t dismiss the impulse to think that some enemy had broken into the Manor and set a trap for Draco that ended up catching Pansy. One eye remaining on Pansy just in case she tried something, he drew his wand and aimed it at her.

            “Finite Incantatem,” he murmured, putting all his power behind it. When he truly concentrated, he could project some of his will with the countercurse, giving the victim of an Imperius his own ability to resist its commands. That should awaken Pansy if anything could.

            Pansy only sniffed and put her nose in the air. “I’m his mate now,” she said. “He told me so himself.” Her mood abruptly altered again, and her face became soft and dreamy, as if she were envisioning Draco naked in front of her. Harry told himself that feeling jealous and possessive right now was ridiculous. After all, it was not as though Draco would sleep with her by choice anymore.

            I think.

            But that left the question of what had happened to Pansy. Harry tried speaking her name softly and then again in an interrogative tone; the only thing that happened was that her dreamy gaze moved slowly back and forth, as if she could hear someone calling her but not see the person.

            Harry turned to Selene, who stood nearest to him; Tallow had remained a few feet back, as though even approaching the home of a Malfoy would taint him with invisible dirt. “Do you know what this is?” he breathed. He knew that Selene worked in a group of Aurors who specialized in identifying and defusing certain Dark Arts spells, and often spent more time with the victims than the criminals.

            “I’m afraid I do.” Selene’s voice was neutral, and her blue eyes, which Harry had never seen without some trace of a smile before this, watched him as though she were certain he would begin to yell any moment.

            “Well?” Harry demanded.

            “Veela allure.” Selene’s eyes hardened a bit. “I’ve seen several use it to persuade a reluctant mate to come to bed, and a few half-Veela wizards have been criminals who used it to aid in their crimes.” She nodded at Pansy. “Use it long enough and hard enough, and the victim is left without any free will of her own.”

            Harry closed his eyes, feeling sick. He had agreed, without much thought, to Draco’s plan when Draco told him that he was using Veela allure on Pansy. He had envisioned it as persuasion, slow and simple, so that Pansy would come to think all her actions were her own idea. He had not foreseen this.

            He had to do something, obviously. He was the one who had discovered the problem, and that made him the one who should fix it.

            “Harry?”

            Harry winced, and turned around. Draco stood behind Tallow, his eyebrows raised, an expression of cautious delight on his face. It really was hard to tell that he was Veela unless you knew already, at least when he looked like this, Harry thought. His pale hair had perhaps a touch more light than normal, and his eyes could glitter to match his smile, but he had to turn a certain way, adopt a certain attitude, to make himself seem beautiful.

            Or just use the allure.



            At the moment, Harry was not inclined to find Draco beautiful.



            “Draco,” he said neutrally. “I thought you’d be here.”

            “I had an errand at Gringotts.” He strode a few steps nearer, stepping around Tallow as though he were a worm, and all the while looking at Harry with a bright gaze that had no traces of the hunger or passion that Harry had thought would be there if the Veela were controlling him. He looked- happy to see him. As if he wanted to spend time with him. The same emotions that Harry felt welling up in his chest, in fact, and had to struggle hard against, if he wanted to hold Draco accountable for what he had done.



            “Don’t look at him like that!” Pansy’s voice was sharp with spite.

            Draco swiveled around in a moment, and gazed at her sternly. Harry thought he could see the moment when bolts of the allure struck from his eyes and into Pansy’s brain. She melted with a little shiver and a moan, and her face became so vague and dreamy Harry felt disgust rising up in him.

            “Of course, Draco, just as you like,” she murmured.

            Harry reached over and clenched one hand down on Draco’s arm, making sure to squeeze hard enough to cause a little pain. “We need to talk,” he snarled, when Draco turned to look at him.

*

            Ah. He found out the full extent of Pansy’s disability, then. And he obviously doesn’t approve.

            Not that Draco cared. Harry had done wrong things, too, keeping secrets that could have killed him and then jumping in front of Draco during the battle, forgetting that if he had died from Snape‘s spell, it wouldn’t have mattered how much he’d protected Draco, since the Veela would have followed its mate.

            Draco had accepted the inevitable long before Harry had, and done what he had to do to ensure the continuation of the most important bond in his life. For Harry to object to that now was a bit hypocritical.

            “Yes, we need to,” he said, turning his hand to grip Harry’s arm back, and gave Pansy a smile. “Just prepare the eastern room for us, will you, dear?”

            And Pansy, who would have objected to being ordered about like a house-elf only a few weeks ago, murmured, “Yes, of course, love,” and vanished. Draco sneered at her back. The last stack of photographs made his robe pocket heavy. Pansy had given him the key to the Parkinson vault herself, and the only question she’d had was whether Draco didn’t want to take some of her Galleons as well. She had assured him over and over that she wouldn’t mind.

            “We can’t allow Harry to be alone in a room with you, Malfoy,” the heavyset man Draco had already classified as an Auror said suddenly. “God knows what you’ll do to him.” His tone was finicky, but charged with personal animosity, too. Another one of those fools who hated him for his last name, he knew, even before he turned around.

            “I’m a Veela,” he said. “And we guard our mates more sternly than my family has ever guarded its gold. I assure you, he’ll be safe with me.”

            At least the woman who had come with Harry looked as if she had better sense and knew what he said to be true, but the man only leveled his wand at Draco. “Unhand him, now,” he said.

            Harry snarled, and moved in between Draco and the other Auror at once. Draco, knowing there was no serious danger this time, felt rather gratified by his mate’s protectiveness than otherwise. He put his chin on Harry’s shoulder and fluttered his eyes at the Auror, who flushed deeply.

            “I can be alone with him, Tallow,” Harry said. “I intend to be.” Draco wondered if he was even aware of the way he pressed his back into Draco’s chest, seeking more contact than their joined hands would allow them. Draco curved his free arm around Harry’s waist, and gave his stomach a slow, possessive stroke. Harry responded by leaning back, but since he had his wand in his free hand now, he didn’t appear to realize how very much like an already bonded mate he was acting. “If you don’t like it, by all means tell Kingsley; I expect he’ll suspend me from the Ministry another week or put me on paperwork duty another month. But don’t expect me to stay away from someone I know means me no harm.”

            The subtle emphasis did the trick. Perhaps this Tallow had heard what happened when Draco attacked Mulciber, he thought, as he watched the Auror glare in frustration but slowly lower his wand.

            “An hour,” said the woman suddenly. Draco glanced at her, and found blue eyes, sharp and clear as his mother’s had once been, studying him. “You can have an hour of private conversation, and then we come back.”

            “That will do,” said Draco, and pulled Harry with him up the steps. Harry went suspiciously, walking backwards and watching the two Aurors all the while. Draco couldn’t keep a drowsy purr of pleasure from rising up his throat, and he nuzzled the back of Harry’s neck and breathed in his scent. God, he’d missed him.

            He’d even missed his stubborn temper and disinclination to listen to sense, which he was sure he would be bearing the full brunt of the moment he was out of danger.

            And, in fact, Harry whirled around when the door shut behind them, and scowled, and yanked his hand free. Draco could have retained it- the Veela’s superior strength allowed him to do that- but he settled for brushing his fingers lightly over Harry’s retreating palm, and then flicking his tongue over their tips.

            Harry flushed, and said, “I suppose you have a good explanation for what you did to your wife?”

            “Please, Harry,” Draco said, and swept his arm out. “The eastern room. It’s much more comfortable for this sort of conversation, I assure you.”

            “The one where I’ll probably be hurling hexes in a moment?” Harry took a few steps down the corridor Draco had indicated, all the while glaring at him in stern disapproval.

            “The one where we have serious moral issues to talk about,” said Draco, and reveled in the expression of utter surprise on Harry’s face before following him. He could feel excitement humming in his veins like wine. Perhaps it was not very healthy to feel this way about a fight with Harry, but he did, and he refused to smash it flat just because Harry might consider it inappropriate. He and Harry were still separate people, however much else they had come to share.

*

            Harry looked around, impressed in spite of himself. He wasn’t quite sure how it had been achieved, but the light falling through the windows into Draco’s eastern room looked interspersed with panes of green and pale blue glass, making it cool and refined. Perhaps a spell he couldn’t sense, perhaps something in the windows themselves. The only furniture was several cushioned chairs scattered about the room, with a small wooden table in front of the hearth occupying pride of place. Draco dragged a pair of chairs towards the table with obvious intent, and then paused and glanced at him impatiently when Harry stayed on his feet instead.

            That look reminded Harry that he was irritated with Draco, and that he had a perfect right to be, after what Draco had done to Pansy. “I won’t sit down, Malfoy,” he said, and started to pace back and forth. “I need room for a row.”

            Draco folded his arms. His face was expressionless. “Will you tell me that everything you’ve done in pursuit of this bond has been perfectly moral and right, Potter?’

            “You know perfectly well it wasn’t,” Harry retorted in irritation. “But at least I never tried to control Ginny’s mind and turn her into a worthless pet who couldn’t find a reason to object to us being together.”

            “Yes. A pity, that.” Draco crossed his legs, too, and leaned back against the mantle above the fireplace. “It would certainly have made things easier.”

            Harry growled at him, and was taken aback when Draco did nothing but offer him a slow, cool grin.

            “It’s still wrong,” Harry insisted. “Selene said that people put under that level of Veela allure usually never recover.”

            “Hm.” Draco examined his fingernails for a moment, then shrugged. “That might be true. And if so, then I’m a bit sorry. I don’t want a slave, I have house-elves. But I did want to make Pansy so devoted to me that she wouldn’t interfere in what went on between us.”

            Harry remembered Pansy’s face again, and had to turn away from Draco, his belly squirming with nausea. “She’s like a puppet, Draco,” he murmured. “She has no will of her own anymore. Did you really do this just to get her to tell you where she’d hidden those photographs?”

            “Partially,” said Draco, tilting his head back and half-closing his eyes. “And partially to make sure that I could eventually dump her as someone obsessed with me and no longer a fit spouse, when the news that I was Veela eventually emerged. I wanted other people to laugh at her and pity her, not consider her an example of an unfairly deserted wife. I certainly didn’t anticipate that people would know I was Veela and that we were sleeping together the way it happened.”

            “That news is out now,” Harry insisted. “So you can just push her out of the Manor. I don’t think anyone expects you to stay married to her.”

            Draco snorted and opened his eyes fully again. “I admit, I also did it so that she couldn’t do anything else to interfere with us after I leave her. I’m somewhat surprised that she restricted herself just to taking photographs, in fact. Something more active was usually Pansy’s style.”

            Harry flushed in spite of himself, remembering the list of things Draco hated that Pansy had given him.

            Draco, of course, noticed. He straightened and stepped away from the mantle in seconds. “What, Harry?” he purred. “She did something else, didn’t she? And this is another of those secrets you’ve been keeping from me so very stubbornly.”

            Harry didn’t feel the slightest touch of allure on his free will, and yet he still discovered the desire to back up as Draco approached him. He stood firm, however, and even managed to ignore the light touch of Draco’s palm to his cheek, cupping it and tilting his head back for a kiss. When Draco’s lips were a few inches from his own, he murmured, “Yes. She brought me a list of your weaknesses. She wanted me to taunt you with them. But since she said that you hated being ignored most of all, that’s what I was trying to do to you at the beginning of June.”

            Draco stopped, his nostrils flaring. Then he shook his head. “She deserves everything I did to her and more.”

            “No, she didn’t.” Harry raised his hands and clenched them around Draco’s wrists. “Don’t you see, Draco? I held back on hurting you because it wouldn’t have been right. This isn’t, either.”

            “You can’t expect me to agree with you on that,” Draco whispered. “I may have changed a great deal, Harry, but I won’t give up my moral convictions for you.”

            “And I can’t give up mine.” Harry loosed a hissing breath, and then released Draco and whirled away from him in the same moment. “I don’t see how this can ever work,” he told the far wall. “I enjoy being with you in bed, and we’ve saved each other’s lives, but there isn’t really more than that, is there? We might as well live apart from each other and never attempt to strengthen this bond, the way we go on.”

            “That’s where you’re wrong, Harry,” Draco said calmly, without, however, attempting to cross the floor between them and touch him. “I felt such a strong impulse to protect you from Pansy, and we’re obsessed with each other at the moment, because we haven’t bonded. Once we do, we can take notice of people beyond each other again, and I won’t see everyone else as an obstacle in the way.”

            “But once we’re bonded, we’ll have to spend the rest of our lives with each other.” Harry swung around and looked at him critically. “And that doesn’t trouble you?”

            Draco smiled slightly, his face as cool as the blue-green light. “Not particularly.”

            “Why?”

            And then Draco smiled, and Harry caught his breath, and not at its beauty. Draco looked sincere for the first time that Harry could remember, along with happy. He didn’t resist this time as Draco came over to him, took his hand up, and kissed the back of it.

            “Because I have, apparently, more faith in this than you do,” he said, with only a slight trace of sarcasm in his voice. “Because I don’t think we have to solve every problem we’ll have in the next two months and expect that to be it for good and all. Because I think that we’re best-suited to each other, some of the time, when we’re arguing. Because I look forwards to disputing with you as much as I do having you all to myself for the rest of our lives. Because I don’t think not completely meshing and complementing each other is the worst fate a couple can suffer. Because we have time to learn the things about each other that we don’t know right now.”

            And he brought an almost violent hand to the back of Harry’s head, and kissed him.

*

            Draco was glad when Harry finally stopped talking and gave in enough to kiss him back. What Harry had been saying was exasperating, for all sorts of reasons.

            How much did he have to give up, anyway? How many scoldings did he have to endure, from the little Weasley and Pansy and the Howlers of people who were displeased with him?

            This would work because, by this point, they really had no choice but to make it work. They had come too far to give up. They loved each other, fragile as it might be right now. They were not so completely different that Harry’s little temper tantrums of worry could drive them apart.

            And still Harry acted and reacted as if the first crisis would make Draco abandon him, as if there were no chance that they could come to like each other as well as love each other, or as if they were of two different species.

            Draco piled his frustration into his kiss, and then pulled back, leaving Harry looking dazed and happier than he had, long enough to say firmly, “I’m selfish, Harry. I care very little for strangers. I think myself above most people. I’ve always been like that, and I really see no reason to change.” He ran a caressing finger up and down Harry’s arm. “But none of that means I don’t love you, and none of that makes me impossible to live with.”

            “It makes me wonder how you’ll treat Ginny, now,” Harry said, but his voice was softer, and he caressed Draco’s cheek as if he couldn’t help his own tenderness.

            Draco shrugged. “I don’t see her as a threat. I would hate it if she tried to get you back, of course, but I also don’t see her trying that when she really has no chance. I can get along with people, Harry. I just do it from a position of greater aloofness than you do, and not as warmly.”

            “What you did to Pansy is- ”

            “Still wrong, I know.” Draco smoothed his hand down Harry’s arm. “But an important part of my life is to live it with no regrets. I can’t change what happened to Pansy. I’ll stop using the allure on her and turn her out, but I can’t change it. Will you let this stop you from being with me?”

            Harry sighed, and bit his lip. “Won’t you be arrested anyway?”

            “No,” Draco said. He wondered if he should kiss Harry again, but really, he was quite content to stand like this, simply talking, as long as Harry’s attention was fixed on him, and not sent elsewhere. “Believe me, after being sacked from my team simply for having wings, I’ve made very sure of the laws surrounding Veela. Using allure on someone else is not a crime. For one thing, most Veela who are born that way can’t help it. For a second, the ones like me who appear at a later date often use it unconsciously and don‘t realize what‘s happening until people close to them begin to manifest the symptoms, and what’s the use of persecuting someone for magic they didn’t know about and couldn’t control? I’m safe.”

            “I hate that you were sacked from the team for something you couldn’t help,” Harry growled, his eyes glowing dangerously.

            Draco took a moment to revel in the fact that Harry was angry on his behalf right now, and not for the sake of the little Weasley or Pansy or anyone else who might have some claim on him.

            Then Harry’s gaze darkened a bit. “Do you need...?”

            “No,” Draco said quietly. “I haven’t felt the Veela at all this month. It’s gone, I think, or at least blended with me.” He leaned back, so that Harry perforce followed him, and guided him towards the chairs he’d been enough of an uncivilized Mudblood not to take. “I’d rather hear about Snape, I think, and why he hasn’t attacked you. And why did he come with Mulciber?”

            “Oh, it’s a pattern that I’ve seen before,” Harry said casually, sitting in the chair across from him but not letting go of his hand. Draco hid a snicker. Harry would probably think he was making fun of him if he heard, rather than simply feeling proud and pleased at how casually Harry could accept that intimacy between them now. “Someone intelligent enough works behind the scenes, through a number of lackeys who take most of the risks and draw most of the attention. If they’re arrested, the intelligent person can always pick up and move elsewhere. The first former Death Eaters we caught in the year immediately following the war always had some plan like that. They’d intimidated other wizards into working for them, and eventually we caught the people who knew who they were. Alecto and the rest we captured in April may really have believed that their boss was Mulciber, especially if Snape lent him some of his power at times. Snape, of course, was controlling Mulciber and God knows how many others.” Harry stirred suddenly and looked at him. “But I can’t figure out why he attacked you.”



            Draco’s lip twisted. “The days of our friendship are a long time behind us, Harry, or he would have let me know he was alive. And he swore an Unbreakable Vow to my mother to protect me, but that was only during the time I was trying to kill Dumbledore. I think he was trying to put me under control with that illusion instead of kill me, but he wanted to kill you. That alone makes him my enemy.”

            “I don’t want to force you to choose between him and me,” said Harry, looking perturbed, of all emotions.

            Draco leaned forwards, wound a hand firmly in his hair, and tugged on it. “You’re my mate,” he said. “I love you. I felt admiration for Snape, but this is different. There’s no choice for me, not ever again.”

            Harry looked down at the tabletop. Draco smiled. Harry would just have to get used to the embarrassment of someone loving him first, caring about his welfare before all else.

*

            Harry blinked a bit as he stepped into his office. The crumpled paper he and Ralph had always filled the corners with was gone. He wondered idly if Ralph had had to take on a temporary partner who had not understood the inherent practicality of cleaning up with charms instead of throwing every piece of parchment away at once.

            Then he noticed Ralph’s desk was gone, and he suspected something else had happened.

            “So you are back.”

            Harry swung around, automatically stepping back a little so that his guards would have room to maneuver, and then shook his head as he remembered that he could be without them in the Ministry. Ralph leaned against the doorway, his arms crossed, his eyes hot and angry.

            “I am,” Harry chose to say, neutrally. “And it looks as though you’ve decided that it’s not worth your while to be my partner anymore.”

            Ralph snorted bitterly. “That’s rich,” he said. “You can stand in front of me after cheating on one of the most beautiful women in Britain and accuse me of anything? When I knew you were hiding a secret, Harry, I never imagined it was anything like this. I thought we were friends.”

            Harry was silent for a long moment, studying his partner. Ralph had a deeper anger in his eyes than Harry thought could be accounted for by his secrecy, especially when he’d told Ralph he couldn’t tell him the secret unless the other people involved in it agreed. His crush on Ginny must have been deeper than Harry ever suspected.

            “The way things fell out- ” Harry began at last.

            “Fell out,” Ralph mimicked. He unfolded his arms and took an angry stride towards Harry. “No, you chose to make them fall out this way. You must really have wanted that bastard Malfoy, or why would you have cheated on Ginny?”

            “First of all,” Harry said, his hand itching for his wand, “don’t say things like that about Draco.”

            Ralph snorted again.

            “Second,” Harry said, “I would have had a death on my conscience if I didn’t. That would be better, I suppose?”

            “Of course it would!” Ralph exclaimed. “I mean, I’d feel sorry for anyone who had a Veela roused in him by a magical accident if it wasn’t someone like Malfoy. Do the words ‘former Death Eater’ mean nothing to you? Have you forgotten that he’s just like the people we hunt? And that you could have caused pain to your wife, to a woman I would have been happy to have married- ” He choked abruptly and stepped away from Harry, as though he hadn’t meant to say that.

            Harry studied him in silence again. He supposed, in one way, that this was good for him. He’d had very little contact with anyone in the past two weeks but Draco and his bodyguards. There were people out there who would disapprove of their relationship simply because of Draco’s past and Harry’s title as the Boy-Who-Lived. He had to get used to them, he had to face them, now.

            And this attack was sure to be milder than some of them would be.

            To Harry’s own astonishment, he was calm in the face of it, without the contrariness that had driven him to Draco’s bed in August when Ginny had ordered him not to go. He was now sure that he loved Draco. Warily, yet, and not at all in the same way he had loved Ginny, but he did. And he was interested in him, wanted to see what would happen to him, and wanted to know what would change in his own life as a result of this. Accusations like this wouldn’t drive him away because he wanted to stay.

            Besides, Ralph had not the least idea of what the situation really was, or he wouldn’t have made accusations like this. And instead of the impulse to explain, Harry regarded him with a bit of pity.

            “Draco was cleared of all the Death Eater accusations by the Wizengamot,” he said at last. “He certainly never killed anyone during the War, the way I had to. He’s kept quietly to himself since then. He couldn’t help being Veela, and not all the decisions I made when I learned he was a Veela were made out of simple desire for him and a decision to betray Ginny.”

            “You admit, then, that you did want to betray her?” Ralph seemed determined to pounce on whatever slender bit of evidence he could find in Harry’s speech.

            Harry was sorry for it. It seemed Ralph was more Ginny’s friend than his. But at least he had found it out like this.

            “Maybe I did,” he said, shrugging. “I certainly enjoy myself more with Draco than I ever did with her.”

            One of Ralph’s eyelids twitched violently.

            “But that wasn’t the main part of it,” Harry said. “And I don’t think I have to tell you what the main part of it was, if you won’t be my partner anymore.”

            Ralph gave him a look of disgust. “Do you really think anyone in the Hermes Corps will partner you with now?”

            “I assume that I’ll be partnered with a trainee,” Harry said evenly. God, it was wonderful to have control of his temper, to think that no matter what Ralph said, he had Draco waiting for him. Not that he would tell Draco what Ralph had said, of course; Merlin knew what Draco would do in retaliation. “If he couldn’t find me a partner at all, Kingsley would have transferred me to another part of the department.”

            “What you did was wrong,” Ralph declared.

            Harry shrugged.

            Ralph’s breathing grew quick, the way it always did when he was frustrated. “Don’t you care?” he suddenly burst out. “Everything is going to change for you now.”

            “It already has,” Harry said, and sat down at his desk to work on the reports that Kingsley had assigned him.

            Ralph evidently assuaged his feelings by stalking off in high dudgeon.

            Harry let him go. After a few minutes, when he was sure his former partner didn’t linger outside the door, he laughed quietly.

            Let them do their worst. I really think I can stand it.

            Besides, I refuse to have less faith in the future than Draco does. He can’t win that easily.
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A Year's Temptation