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Temporary Mate	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 17288 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Eleven—The Test of Separation
Harry looked around the room the Veela had showed him into. It was the very highest floor of a tower, with high, narrow, glass-less windows and a thin door that towered over him into an arch and glistened like blue ice. The only furniture was a low bed with a dip in the middle of it that was obviously meant to cradle someone with wings. Harry conjured a pillow and looked around for a sign of the bathroom.
No sign. I suppose I’ll just have to piss out the window, then. But until he wanted to do that, he was going to raise protective barriers and make sure that no one could just toss something in at him.
He’d cast about three spells when someone knocked on the blue door. Harry turned his head, but even though the door was almost transparent, all he could tell about the Veela on the other side was that they were tall.
“Yes?” he called, and cast another protective spell. This one spread along his skin, everywhere it was exposed from his robes: wrists, palms, fingers, face, and hair. Perhaps he wouldn’t need it. But as his instructors in the Auror training program said all the time, better not to need it and have it than the other way around.
The Veela responded in a low, breathy voice that didn’t sound familiar to Harry from the Veela they’d met so far. “They granted me permission to come and speak to you. My name is Elentaeri.”
Harry waited, but she didn’t open the door, so he strode over and opened it himself. The Veela woman outside looked at him with shimmering blue eyes, and then cast down her gaze and bowed. Her silver wings made it graceful. She wore what seemed to be a blue dress, but it flowed and draped around her like a cloth on a statue, and had no seams or buttons that Harry could see.
“Why are you here?” Harry asked.
“May I come in?”
Harry stepped back and let Elentaeri in, but he still eyed her as she stooped, then turned around in the middle of the room and let her wings spread and light flash from them. He blinked a little. Yes, they were dazzling; they reminded him of the bells and gongs and flowers he’d seen on the way in. But he didn’t know what she was doing here, and suspicion prevented him from appreciating the beauty or relaxing.
“Why are you here?”
“I know that you are mated currently,” Elentaeri began, her voice slow and sweet. “And until the bond dissolves, you cannot voice your interest in someone else. But I want you to know that I am unmated, and I felt a pull towards you when I saw you fly overhead. It is takes a long time to find a perfect mate. You deserve to be courted and respected. If you wish to stay here and take a new Veela mate when your old bond dissolves, I am available.”
“I’m not interested. Leave.”
Elentaeri’s eyes widened until they seemed about to overflow her face like pools of water. “But I felt the pull. That could not be if you were only interested in male mates or if you did not care for Veela.”
“I am already mated,” Harry said, and felt as though he’d like to reach out and slap her pretty face until she woke up. “My bond is not going to dissolve. It’s a real one. Go away and stop making a fool of yourself.”
Elentaeri looked as if she had lost all the blood in her face, if she had any at all. She put a hand to her throat and swayed. Harry would reckon that no one had ever told her to stop being a fool. She shook her head once and said, “You are cruel.”
“You wouldn’t think that if you could see yourself,” Harry said. “Do you know how much I care about Draco? You can’t. You can’t feel that, or you never would have come here.”
“But you mated fast. I heard the story. He was not a Veela before a few days ago. That means it cannot be a true bond.”
“Maybe that just means that you’re too particular,” Harry said sweetly, and gestured with his wand. The door banged open again. “Out you go.”
Elentaeri did, but she kept moving with her head turning back so that her eyes were always fixed on him. Harry kept the harsh expression on his face. Honestly, they couldn’t even wait until after the test? If they were so sure that his bond would break and that he deserved to be courted and respected, why not wait?
Because they must not be so sure after all. They want to try and change my mind just in case it doesn’t happen.
Harry snorted and stalked over to flip the door shut again. He might have hesitated and felt bad about hurting Elentaeri’s feelings, but honestly, it wasn’t much different than the young witches (and occasional wizard) at home who had thought they were in love with him because of his fame. He had practice in dealing with people who thought he was something he wasn’t.
And I’ll deal with any others the same way. Although I hope that she’ll tell them how—unreceptive—I am. And that might mean I don’t get any other visitors.
*
“You cannot believe that you’ve found your perfect mate.”
Draco ate a delicate slice of the meat in front of him—the Veela of Asovima apparently favored meat and fruit and bread cut so thin as to be translucent—before he responded. “Yes, I can believe it.”
Caleigh sighed and sat back. “When you have lived as long as I, and seen so many young Veela who think someone they have known for two months is their perfect mate, then perhaps you will have my point-of-view.”
“Yes, perhaps I would have,” Draco said. “But I am not your age, and I have no intention of separating from my mate simply to—what? Possibly find someone who might suit me better? I do not understand what you intend with this test.”
“I intend to give you the best mate possible. The best chance. There might be someone here who would be appropriate for you—”
“I have someone better than appropriate in Harry.”
Caleigh said nothing for some moments. Draco leaned back and looked around the softly lit and gleaming dining room they sat in. There were windows everywhere, framed with curtains of silver and white and pale blue, and the walls were only a few shades of blue deeper. Breezes heavy with the scent of flowers, but brisk and light, blew through the windows and whipped the curtains back and forth. The table itself sat beneath floating globes of crystal filled with delicate light, whiter than the candles Draco was used to. The cutlery gleamed like purest silver, although it felt like wood.
And the Veela were everywhere, quiet and beautiful and delicate. Draco felt heavy and awkward among them, although he knew he had the same body and facial structure since the spell that had changed him.
“I have seen so many young Veela whose bonds shatter,” said Caleigh, and drew Draco’s eye back. He was sipping what looked like water, except that it sparkled more like the crystalline globes, from a goblet of snowy metal. “I don’t want to see the same thing happen to you. The test has become standard for anyone who bonds with a mate after less than a year of acquaintance.”
“But I’ve known him for fourteen years,” Draco said, frowning a little. Had that part not come across clearly in the conversations they’d had so far? He’d thought it had. “Since we were eleven.”
A dozen forks halted in the same movement, and all the Veela on the other side of the table stared at him. Probably the ones on his side were doing the same thing. Draco lifted his chin and spread his wings in defiance.
“You did not mention that,” Caleigh said.
“I told you that we had been at school together,” Draco said tightly. “And I told you that we had been—”
“Enemies for years.” Jenara, the silver-haired Veela who had questioned them on their flight in, leaned forwards. Her mate overlapped her wings with one of her own wings, but Jenara paid no attention. “You cannot expect us to believe that you were enemies for years and then just happened to find each other as perfect mates.”
“No. I didn’t go out looking for a mate. I had no idea that my wounds would force me to transform. But I’m saying that it’s not so strange that we would know each other well enough to be compatible mates.”
There was more exchanging of glances, and Caleigh finally said, with a twitch of his pale blue wings, “It is still too much of a coincidence for me that you would enact a temporary bond with an enemy and have it turn into a permanent one.”
“For you, maybe. But that’s what happened.”
Conversation fell silent for a while after that, as some of the Veela exchanged glances that didn’t include him and others went back to eating and a few asked him about being a human. Draco answered their questions only until he realized that they were talking about it as if being human was a disease with thrilling symptoms. He ate quietly himself after that, and stood up when the rest of them did.
“Tomorrow, at dawn,” Caleigh told him, “the test will begin.”
Draco nodded. He considered making it lower, more like a bow, because it was obvious that most of the Veela here respected Caleigh and considered him their leader, but he didn’t want to. After a second, Caleigh and Jenara and a few of the others turned away.
A male Veela, more heavyset than most of the others Draco had seen, took a long step towards him. Draco studied him. His hair was silver and his eyes were aqua, and Draco supposed he was pretty in an exotic way.
But then he realized that he was only looking into those aqua eyes for shades of green that reminded him of Harry, and he smiled. The man came to a stop and gave him a long glance, then a faint smile in return.
“There are Veela looking for mates who might interest you,” he said. “The others are concentrating on whether different Veela might interest your human mate, but there are some who can appreciate beauty when they see it.”
“I’m so glad,” Draco said. “Then you know how beautiful my mate is. I’m honored you think so. Good night.”
He stepped out of the dining room, ignoring the movement of the man’s reaching arm behind him, and soared towards the tower they’d given him a room in. It was a low one, only halfway up, and with a narrow balcony. Draco thought that might be meant to be an insult.
He honestly didn’t care. He wanted tomorrow to come, and the test to come. He knew he and Harry would pass.
Not because he really knew what the test was like, or that the Veela of Asovima would be fair. They would pass because he utterly refused to let anything else happen.
*
Harry stood with his arms folded and his wand tucked in his sleeve on a platform on top of the highest tower he had seen yet. Jenara had woken him up not long before dawn and brought him here.
This platform was flat, bare, and open on all sides. Harry was glad that he wasn’t afraid of heights. He kept his gaze fixed on the brown-haired woman, Talai, who had been behind Caleigh yesterday. Draco stood on the other side of the platform from him, his gaze heated as it bored into Harry. Talai stood between them.
“You have been selected for the test of separation,” Talai said, her voice high-pitched and soft but somehow still audible above the whistling of the wind. “We will see if your bond is a true one. Bonds created with forbidden blood magic cannot survive this test.” She turned and faced Draco. “Spread your wings.”
Draco did it without taking his eyes from Harry. Harry was sure he saw Talai’s shoulders twitch with annoyance. He bit back a smile. Well, it was their fault for insisting on this stupid test in the first place.
It has at least as much to do with unmated Veela among them wanting mates as it does with us.
“You are to cut the palm of your hand with one of your nails,” Talai went on, and several of the Veela hovering around the platform leaned forwards. “Turn and make sure that at least three drops of blood hit the platform.”
Draco did that. Harry didn’t know if he had blinked yet. His hand wriggled back and forth for a second, and the blood tumbled out of the small cut. Harry hissed under his breath. He didn’t like seeing someone wounded without being able to do something about it.
“Mate, you are not to interfere.”
Harry rolled his eyes. They must not think much of humans. He had more self-control than that. For example, he hadn’t told them yet what idiots they were all being.
Draco lifted his hand to his lips and licked the wound clean, unblinking still. Harry smiled at him and listened as Talai said, “Now, Veela, you will take flight. Mate, you will try to cross the platform and mingle your own blood with the Veela’s. The test has been failed if your blood reacts badly, if a wind arises to hold you back, or if you touch before the tester has declared the ritual complete.”
That must be the trick of it, Harry thought, as he watched Draco take off. He didn’t retreat more than a meter from the platform, hovering with long sweeps of his wings as though nothing mattered but keeping in one place, and his eyes were still on Harry. The Veela and the mate don’t like to see each other bleeding.
Harry gave Draco a smile and began walking forwards. Talai stepped aside if she didn’t want to be contaminated by the touch of his hands. Harry ignored her. Draco was the important thing right now, and Draco was hovering ahead of him.
And winging swiftly in towards the platform.
“No,” Harry said. He kept his voice calm, not a shout, and saw the way that Draco managed to check himself, his wings slanting backwards for a second. “You don’t need to touch me, Draco. That will happen when we’ve proven that we’re compatible.”
Draco hissed. Harry nodded. “Yes, I know. It’s stupid that we have to go through with this in the first place,” he said, ignoring the reactions of the Veela gathered around the platform. “But we’ll be done with it quickly enough. See?” He was already halfway across the platform, walking steadily. “It’ll be all right.”
Draco slowly slid back until he was at about half the distance he’d been originally. He watched fiercely as Harry came over to the puddle of blood and looked down at it. Harry laid his wand on his palm. “Diffindo,” he said.
His blood began to trickle out. Harry turned his hand so that it could mingle with the tiny pool Draco had left on the platform.
There was a whoosh above his head, and Harry instinctively dropped into a crouch. Draco’s reaching hand missed his shoulder. Harry rolled his eyes and shouted up at him, “I know it’s hard, but they want us to fail! Stay back so that we can avoid gratifying all these miserable bastards!”
That got him even more reactions, but Harry kept his gaze locked on Draco. Draco flew higher and waited, his lips a slash in his face like a badly-carved mouth on a statue.
Harry shook his head and looked down at the puddle of their blood. It lay there. He turned his head towards Talai, who had come up on his right side. “Well? Do we pass the test? What is it supposed to do if it’s a bad reaction?”
Talai stared at their blood with bulging eyes. “How is this possible?” she hissed.
“I have no idea what you’re talking about, because I have no idea what a bad reaction is,” Harry said, and stood up. He was impressed with Draco’s self-control, since he was still hovering beyond the platform. The end of the test hadn’t been declared yet, and Draco understood that even in his anger. Harry was the one who faced Talai and put his back to the edge of the platform. “What? Was our blood supposed to bubble like a potion and make a rose bloom from it or something?”
Talia simply chopped her wings in and out. Then she turned and launched herself off the edge of the platform. Harry tensed, but she passed Draco by without trying to hurt him. He turned back, seeking Caleigh.
The blue-haired Veela was moving towards him, holding his hands out. “The test is passed,” he called. “Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy are indeed true bonded mates.”
Harry exhaled carefully and lifted his arms. He was just in time to catch Draco as he came slanting down, and Harry hugged him, resting his chin on Draco’s shoulder. Draco hissed at the other Veela in attendance.
Caleigh stood quietly in place, his eyes intent. Harry shook his head at him. “What did you think would happen?”
“Either that the blood would turn black, showing that you had used Dark magic to seal the bond, or that a wind would arise and keep you from walking across the platform,” said Caleigh simply. “That would have been the magic of our world keeping both of you from binding yourself to someone less than perfectly matched. But instead, it seems that the bond you told me about it is indeed strong.” He bowed his head. “Have tonight to rest. We will listen to your message in the morning.”
He was smiling as he flew away, but most of the Veela weren’t. Harry was sure that he saw Elentaeri whispering with a few other women.
Draco didn’t seem to notice. He grasped Harry’s face, nuzzled at him, and then said, “Let’s go.”
“Go where?” Harry laughed a little as Draco dragged him to the edge.
“To privacy,” Draco said, and grabbed Harry around his ribs and flew. Harry turned his head in time to see more faces tilt back, following them like white flowers rising to a strange sun.
Let them, Harry thought, as he settled more firmly into Draco’s arms. This bond isn’t something I anticipated ever having, but I wouldn’t give it up now.
*
SickPuppy: No, it really is more about magical compatibility.
Jun557: Thank you!
Jan: Thanks for reading.
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Temporary Mate