Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Veela-Struck	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 52830 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

Chapter List
- 1-Veela-Struck
- 2-Changed
- 3-Thought-Through
- 4-Met
- 5-Challenged
- 6-Snapped
- 7-Struggled
- 8-Lost
- 9-Dazed
- 10-Worried
- 11-Shamed
- 12-Hidden
- 13-Dazzled
- 14-Astounded
- 15-Marked
- 16-Damaged
- 17-Chosen
- 18-Shuddered
- 19-Broken
- 20-Spoken
- 21-Influenced
- 22-Gifted
- 23-Promised
- 24-Distressed
- 25-Held
- 26-Tempted
- 27-Warded
- 28-Rumored
- 29-Fought
- 30-Flayed
- 31-Identified
- 32-Practiced
- 33-Enchanted
- 34-Blazed
- 13
- 14
- 15
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fourteen—Astounded

            “Happy Christmas, Harry!”

            Harry, stepping out of the fire, barely caught the present that Hermione tossed at him in time. He bent around it, grunted, and slammed his elbow into the mantle as he tried not to fall in the fire. Laughter rose from around him, indicating that his attempt had been noticed and thought less than successful by more than a few people.

            “Look, it’s Hermione’s annual attempt to murder Harry!” George held up his glass of Firewhisky in a toast to Hermione. “Quite good, Hermione. Full marks, except for the part where he didn't die.”

            Hermione flushed, but laughed instead of glaring, especially when Harry straightened up and gave her a melancholy shake of his head. “Watch out, George,” Harry told him. “She’s secretly betting on me not dying, and that’s how she makes her money out of you.”

            George turned his own fake glare on Hermione, and the room broke apart in laughter again. Harry smiled and moved away from the fireplace, receiving a clap on his shoulder from Ron, a nod from Bill, and a hug from Mrs. Weasley all in a few paces.

            Coming to the Burrow for Christmas was something special in his year, Harry thought, as Mr. Weasley handed him his own glass of Firewhisky and Harry pretended to sip. The Weasleys had gatherings on Easter and on birthdays, too, but Christmas had its own unique atmosphere. The house was full of children—Bill and Fleur’s son and daughters, Percy and Audrey’s toddlers Lucy and Molly, George and Angelina’s son Fred, and now Rose—and the air full of excitement looking for a place to land. It wasn’t always comfortable, but he could tolerate the more distressing parts of it, and in the meantime his own spirits were raised and shaken about until it was hard to remember what had last hurt him.

            “How’s your shoulder doing, mate?” Ron asked, pausing behind Harry’s chair to lean over and yell in his ear. Harry rolled his eyes good-naturedly. From the fumes, Ron was already halfway to drunk.

            “Fine.” Harry rolled and straightened it, to prove he could. He’d had a run-in with one of the tougher Dark wizards he and Ron had fought this year, and the bastard had got a curse in at Harry’s shoulder that shredded the muscle before they took him down. But a few careful healing spells and some advice from Hermione had set the shoulder more than right. It barely ached at all.

            “Good, that’s good,” Ron muttered, and then stood there swaying, as if he had forgotten that he had somewhere else to be. Harry turned around and raised an eyebrow at him, wondering what he wanted now.

            “How’re you getting along with Malfoy?” Ron asked suddenly, and not more quietly than he had the last time.

            Several people fell silent and turned to stare, Percy among them. His lips were tight with disapproval, and Harry tried to smile diplomatically at him while privately wishing that Ron would shut up. “Uh, fine,” he said, trying to remember if Percy had any grudge against Draco. He didn’t think so, but it was possible that Percy, like other members of the Ministry, disapproved of the acquittal the Wizengamot had given the Malfoys. “We’re taking it one day at a time.”

            “Taken what one day at a time?” Percy asked, moving a step forwards. His wife, delicate and pretty red-haired Audrey, looked interested as well, and Bill, and Fleur, and Ginny, who raised an eyebrow as if encouraging Harry to tell the truth.

            “Nothing important,” Harry started to say.

            “A friendship,” Hermione said, with a sharp glance at Harry as if to say that she would let him call his relationship with Draco a lot of things, but never unimportant. “Malfoy approached Harry about letting old grudges fade completely and starting over. Harry’s accepted his hand in friendship.”

            Bill and Audrey nodded and turned back to their children, who were currently trying to murder each other and needed supervision. Percy watched doubtfully a moment longer, but grunted and went to fetch more Firewhisky. Ginny and Fleur moved closer.

            “Sorry,” Ron mumbled at Harry. His face and his hair looked like one giant blob of contrasting color with his newest blue Weasley jumper.

            Harry sighed and punched him in the arm. “I know, mate. It’s all right. Considering what you’ve done for me and him, making me answer a few questions isn’t a big deal.”

            Ron, restored to grins and smugness, went lumbering across the room to break up a struggle for toys between Fred and Victoire. Harry rolled his eyes and settled into the chair, sipping at his Firewhisky as if he didn’t have a care in the world.

            “You know, I wondered what Malfoy was doing there,” Ginny said, leaning a hip against Harry’s chair as she bent to peck his cheek. Harry tilted his head up to receive it, smiling at her. If he hadn’t been gay and Ginny hadn’t needed someone in her life who was there more often than an Auror could be, they would have made a good couple.

            “Last month, when you were wounded,” Ginny continued, as if there was a chance that Harry could misunderstand her. “I didn’t think your schoolboy rival was high on the list of people you would have chosen to comfort you.”

            “Not chosen,” Harry said. “Not as such. He was the one to offer me his hand first. I accepted.” Those were careful words that told the truth without actually telling the truth about his and Draco’s relationship. A tug low in his stomach warned Harry, for whatever reason, that he shouldn’t lie about it.

            “It eez more than that,” Fleur said, so suddenly and softly that it took Harry a moment to hear her and longer to understand what she was implying. “Eez it not?”

            Harry caught his breath and looked at her. She was watching him with calm, sad blue eyes, one hand reaching out to instinctively stop Louis as he hurtled past her, yelling, to the other side of the room. The little boy looked up at his mother, nodded, and then walked off at a more sedate pace. Harry understood why. There was something about Fleur that was commanding without being harsh. Her children all obeyed her better than they did Bill.

            Harry had had fewer problems around her than he would have imagined after Laurent’s arrest, but it was still—hard. She didn’t look as much like a full Veela as Laurent had or Draco could, and her allure doubly had no effect on him, given his orientation as well as his natural resistance. She couldn’t really hurt him. Not really.

            But this was the closest he had been to her in three years, and it was one thing to have a shouted conversation from the other side of the room and another to sit in a chair right below her. Especially when it seemed that she might be near guessing the truth of his and Draco’s relationship. Harry looked down, toying with his glass.

            “More than that?” Ginny asked, bright suspicion in her tone. “What does she mean, Harry?”

            Harry shut his eyes and tried not to throw up. Ron and Hermione were the only Weasleys who knew all the gory details of what Laurent had done to him. Ginny and her parents knew that Laurent had been arrested, tried, and quietly sentenced because of something he had done to Harry that meant Harry couldn’t continue dating him; the other Weasley siblings and spouses knew less than that. But he had never confessed…he had never…

            You don’t have to, said a voice in the back of his head, reassuring and calm. Harry had trained himself to hear that voice in the really bad situations, after he realized the Mind-Healers would be less than useless to him. The voice usually sounded like Hermione, but now it had some of Draco’s force and attitude. You only have to tell them what they need to know. They’re not going to push for or suspect more.

            Harry took a deep breath, opened his eyes, and managed to smile. “Draco and I are dating,” he said. “Taking it slowly. There’s a lot between us. A lot of history to overcome.” Especially on my side, he thought wryly. “But it’s building.”

            Ginny had a soft, slow smile that she gave sometimes when she was really pleased. She used it now. “Harry, I’m so glad,” she said, taking and squeezing his hand. “I didn’t know if you would ever date again.”

            Fleur nodded her congratulations, too, but there was an alertness in her eyes that told Harry she didn’t completely believe him. Or perhaps that she knew something about Draco that Ginny didn’t. Could Veela smell other Veela, or sense the touch of them somehow? It was only last week that Draco had run his fingers over Harry’s skin.

            Come to think of it, Fleur was looking absently at Harry’s back and shoulders, where Draco had touched him. It might only be coincidence, but…

            “Gin!” Hermione called from across the room. “Do you want to come and hold Rosie?”

            Ginny was across the room in a flash. Hermione laughed and then raised her voice again. “Fleur! I think Rose misses you. You know you’re her favorite.”

            “In a moment,” Fleur said, never taking her eyes from Harry’s. Harry had started to smile at Hermione’s efforts to protect him, but he let his face freeze now, and returned Fleur’s gaze as evenly as he could. Fleur bent closer to him and whispered, “He eez a Veela, thees Draco of yours. Are you his chosen?”

            It wasn’t the question Harry had been afraid she would ask, and he was able to relax a little as he replied. “Yeah,” he said. “But I don’t—that is, I never asked a Veela to come along and choose me like that. I’m a little skittish about not having my own life after Voldemort and the prophecy and the people who wanted to control me, you know? And so we’re slowly building our trust so that I can make sure I don’t take off on him and he can make sure I’m what he really wants.”

            Fleur looked steadily at him for some time longer, the compassion in her eyes wide and enormous. Then she bowed her head and murmured, “If thees will help you, then I have nothink to say against it.”

            Harry managed a smile. “Why should you? He’s been gentle with me. And he understands why I might not want to date a magical creature who could control me with the allure.”

            Fleur waited a second, smoothing a hand down the arm of the chair as if that would help her understand things better, and then looked up.

            “I know what happened,” she said. “With Laurent. I could sense it when I next saw you.”

            Harry froze. It felt as though his eyelashes, his eyeballs, his mouth were all part of one glittering mask of ice. Someone could have slapped him and he would have shattered, he was sure of it. But within him, his emotions weren’t frozen. They ran in circles, screaming.

            “I am hopink that you are done with that,” Fleur said, and Harry had the impression that she was picking her way across a field of shattered eggshells, moving as delicately as she could. “But thees…to be with a Veela eez enormous, Harry. Responsibility, time, work. You do not tend to him as he will tend to you, but you must let go and let him take care of you, or it will be impossible. It will be painful.” She touched Harry’s shoulder. “Can you do thees? I fear for you and I fear for him.”

            Harry looked down, his fists clenched so tightly that his hands hurt, and didn’t answer. What in the world could he answer? There was no response that wouldn’t condemn him somehow.

            And besides, his emotions still circled, and screamed, around that one central point. Fleur had known. Someone Harry didn’t want to tell the secret to knew what had happened between him and Laurent.



            “Can you do thees?” Fleur repeated, her accent thicker with agitation. Her hand pressed down as if she would wear through his shoulder, and her eyes darted over Harry’s face, seeing and absorbing God knew what and drawing God knew what conclusions.

            Control, control, Harry chanted to himself, a chant that he rarely needed to say anymore, so ingrained had the need for control become in him. He licked his lips, met Fleur’s gaze, and said, “I don’t know. We’re—it’s a trial basis for now. He knows that, and he knows that it’s hard for me to let a Veela near me at all, let alone in the position of a lover.” He glanced expressively at Fleur’s hand on his shoulder.

            She drew it back at once, face more flushed than Harry had ever seen it. “Pardon me, Harry,” she said, and then her expression grew cooler. “But for most Veela, there ees no trial. The choosing, it ees a serious thing, yes? You must treat it seriously.”

            Harry raised his eyebrows. “I know. But Draco knows the risks, like I told you. And I know that Veela can recover and make the choice again if it turns out that the first one is the wrong one for them. Draco told me that he already chose wrong once before. He probably wouldn’t have tried with me if he had known what happened with Laurent.”

            Fleur pulled back from the arm of the chair, but continued to pin Harry with intense eyes. “Veela can make another choice, yes,” she said. “But it ees very hard on them, so hard that some are—what ees the right word?—depressed ees perhaps best. Yes, depressed, and very hard for them to recover.”

            Harry flinched. “I didn’t—I don’t want that. But I don’t know what else to do. I know he needs me, but there’s only so much I can give him.”

            Fleur was silent for a little, hand ticking back and forth by her side like a metronome. Then she said, “He will need you, almost more than you need him. He will need you to be there for him, to touch and soothe and defend him.”

            Harry sat up in his chair, new energy flooding his muscles It felt as if he had taken a drink from the almost-forgotten glass of Firewhisky in his hand. “Why didn’t you say that?” he demanded. “I’ve felt that, but I haven’t ever heard anyone say it.”

            Fleur stared at him, her face a mask of puzzlement. “What?”

            “That he needs me to defend him,” Harry said. “I can do that. I can give him that. It’s what I can do best.”

            Fleur squinted at him this time. “It ees not the only thing he needs, Harry,” she said very gently. “And you must not urge yourself so far that you fall over the cliff, or cannot stand to be near him.”

            Harry waved that away. He wasn’t near that yet. He knew he wasn’t. If he could bear to have Draco touch him all over the other night and still not rear up and drive him away, then he was close to other things as well. And those things must be inherently less difficult for him, because he was doing them to protect Draco.

            “Thanks, Fleur,” he said, grinning at her. “Among other things, I know what to get Draco for Christmas now.”

            Tentative, looking unsure if she had done a good thing or not, Fleur smiled back.

*

            “Happy Christmas, Draco.”

            Draco inclined his head, not wanting to trust his voice when he was so happy. Harry had agreed to spend Boxing Day at his house, and though he had had to explain gently that he didn’t want to go to the Manor and see Lucius and Narcissa yet, Draco had spent the last week in joyful dreams of what would happen when he came.

            But dreaming of it was not the same as seeing it happen, and Harry climbed out of the fire and walked towards him now, real, firm, there, with a box in his hand wrapped in silver paper and a smile on his face that was joined by a blush when Draco took his free hand.

            “You’re here,” Draco said dazedly. He felt almost drunk. He clasped his hands into a ring and ran them up and down Harry’s arm, delighting in the different feel of the muscles, in the bends and folds and ripples of his shirt. Then he paused, wondering fearfully if he should have asked permission.

            But Harry laughed aloud, face shining, and then leaned towards Draco, touched his hand firmly to the back of his neck, and kissed him.

            Draco froze. He knew a response was called for, but he couldn’t give one, he couldn’t His whole being was focused on his lips, and the way that Harry turned his head gently back and forth, as if he wanted to taste what flavor Draco’s mouth had from each angle. Draco’s fingers trembled and opened, and he leaned forwards, melting against Harry’s chest.

            “Easy, easy,” Harry said, perhaps because Draco was half-collapsing against him. Even the puffs of breath from his words on Draco’s ear were a wonder and a miracle. “It’s all right. I would have done this long since if I had known what you wanted. It’s all right.” And then he nuzzled Draco’s ear with his lips.

            Draco turned his head and kissed passionately back, darting his tongue out, moaning continually. He would have been ashamed of that, but why should he? He was a Veela, he was with his chosen, and his chosen had chosen him, had finally responded and started to mark him the way Draco felt he should be marked. His hands clamped down on the back of Harry’s neck, and he pulled him impatiently closer.

            Harry cried out suddenly into his mouth, and the cry was not one that could be mistaken for desire. Draco let him go at once, his muscles locked tight with knowledge of the distress that he had caused him. Harry stumbled back, raising one hand to his mouth as if surprised to find that he still possessed lips.

            “You went too far,” Draco said. His voice was low, and he almost didn’t recognize it. When he glanced down, he saw that claws had replaced his nails, giving him weapons to defend his chosen if needed. He unobtrusively changed them back. This was not an enemy that could be fought, except in the confines of Harry’s mind.

            “Yeah.” Harry bent over, bracing his hands on his knees as if he had run a long distance, and continued to breathe for a time without meeting Draco’s eyes. When he did straighten back up, his whole body shook, though he controlled that after a massive flinch. “I didn’t—I wanted to comfort you, but it didn’t work.”

            Draco stood still, licking the taste of disappointment away from his lips as he would lick the salt from seawater. “So you didn’t do this because you wanted to,” he said, “because you were suddenly overcome with desire for me. You did this because you thought I needed it, and it’s your way to protect people.”

            Harry’s eyes flickered with complicated emotions, of which guilt was only one. Then he ducked his head and sighed. “I wanted to,” he said. “I wanted to because I thought you needed it, but it wasn’t—only that. I wanted to see what would happen if I kissed you. I hoped I could bear it longer than that.” His voice thinned. “I want Laurent’s effect on me to be gone so, so much.”

            Draco couldn’t help himself. It was an instinct as strong as the need to breathe, and he stepped forwards, crooning.

            Harry’s face went white. But he gripped the box in his hand so hard that Draco feared he would crush it and didn’t back away. He even closed his eyes and visibly forced himself to listen to the croon, the soothing sound that was meant for defense of one’s chosen, bowing his head to it, engaging in a surrender as fierce as any battle.

            More tension eased from Draco’s shoulders as he stepped up beside Harry and sang softly into his ear. The tension seemed to flow into Harry, who swallowed and, once, gasped as if something had stung him, but kept listening. He even let Draco put his hands on his shoulders and work to massage some of the tightness out, though Draco was doubtful about how much good that did.

            The need to croon eased as Harry stopped flinching, and finally Draco clamped his mouth down on the noise and strangled the last few puffs. Harry raised his head, blinking, and smiled weakly at Draco.

            “You don’t need to do that again simply because you think I want it,” Draco murmured. He would have been happiest, of course, if he could have enfolded his chosen in his wings and held him close, forcing healing sleep on him, but at least Harry didn’t back away from him or pace around the room. “I’ll get by fine without it. It’s you I’m worried about, you I want to focus on.”

            Harry made a peculiar choking noise. It took Draco a moment to realize he was laughing.

            “Isn’t that perfect, then?” Harry gasped through the laughter. “A fine pair we make.”

            Draco stared at him, and tried not to get lost in how perfect he found everything from the shine in Harry’s eyes to the arch of his eyebrows. “I don’t understand.”

            “I need to do what you want,” Harry said. He rested his hands on Draco’s arms and smiled, and Draco was entranced; he thought it was the most honest look Harry had ever given him. “And you need to do what I want. We’re so busy sacrificing ourselves for each other and scolding when it turns out that the other person is forcing himself past his boundaries that we don’t realize we’re doing the exact same fucking thing.”

            Draco felt his mouth fall open. How in the world had Harry noticed that? It was the sort of thing that Veela were supposed to be good at noticing.

            “I just want you to really want me,” he muttered, not knowing what else to say.

            “I know,” Harry said. “But it’s going to take me the longest to get to that. I’m barely comfortable with the arousal I felt when you touched me last week.”

            “You were aroused?” Draco could feel his neck pulsing as if the silver feathers that only grew there in the Blazing Season would force themselves out now.

            Harry smiled softly at him and nodded. “Yes. You’re very—convincing. But accept what I can give you for now, all right? It’ll be more in time. I promise, Draco, it’ll be more than that. I like you a lot. I’ll get comfortable with wanting you, because I can't imagine anything else.” He offered the box he held. “Happy Christmas, again.”

            Draco shredded the silver paper on the box with the claws that had once again replaced his nails. Harry raised an eyebrow, but said nothing.

            Inside the box was a silver bracelet of thick, flat, jointed links that fell apart into two halves when Draco touched it. He blinked at Harry, seeking some explanation, even as his hand closed down on it because Harry had given it to him.

            “It’s enchanted,” Harry said unnecessarily, and picked up the half that lay nearer him on Draco’s palm—or tried. He had to wrestle with it for a moment, as Draco’s fingers didn’t want to let it go. Harry smiled at him and laid the bracelet half against his wrist. It gleamed, writhed, and closed into a whole circle. “Put on the other one.”

            Draco did. For a moment, he felt only cool metal against his skin, gradually warming as it picked up his body heat.

            And then he heard a steady, muffled noise. He glanced over his shoulder; it sounded so close that it might have been right behind him.

            “That’s my heartbeat,” Harry said quietly. “As long as you can hear it, and how fast it’s beating, then you’ll know I’m still alive.”

            Draco couldn’t speak. He moved slowly towards Harry again, wary of frightening him off, but Harry had obviously braced himself to bear this, and Draco could hug him. He burrowed his head into Harry’s neck, sniffing, and listening all the while to the noise of his heart, like someone pounding a hammer inside a tunnel of velvet.

            “I’m sorry,” he whispered, physically incapable of raising his voice. “I only got you a book on Veela, the most accurate one I know. I thought that would help you understand me better. But I didn’t get you anything like this. I thought it was presumptuous.”

            “I know.” Harry hesitated for long moments, then wound his arms slowly around Draco. “It’s all right. I’m the one who has to make those sort of decisions. It’s all right.”

            Draco stiffened suddenly. A faint, chill trace clung to Harry, the trace of another Veela. Draco raised his head. “Have you been near someone else?” he asked. “You didn’t—tell me that you didn’t go to Azkaban to visit Laurent.”

            Harry laughed, a bark that cut through Draco. “No. Fleur Delacour—do you remember her?—married Bill Weasley. I was over there yesterday.” He paused. “She was the one who warned me that you might need more from me than you’d got so far, and gave me the idea for your gift.”

            “Then she’s brilliant,” Draco said firmly, and hugged Harry again, luxuriating in the ability to hold Harry and have Harry hold him back.

            Even when Harry stepped away again, his face caught somewhere between wariness and wonder, Draco felt relaxed and calm. The dinner that followed was the happiest he could ever remember, and the tentative kiss that Harry brushed across his cheek before he vanished back through the fire was the best he’d ever had.

            He went to bed that night with the bracelet close to his cheek and the sound of his chosen’s heart in his ears.

*

            Lady_of_Clunn: Thanks!

            It's wonderful how many things there are waiting in the background to crash down on them, isn't it?

            SP777: Sorry if I sound defensive; I don't mean to. But it's true that I feel more connected to Harry than Draco. He's easier for me to write.

            Harry is panicked about things like the wings and the croon because they are the tools that Laurent used to control him. Notice that he barely blinks at the claws here. They're a Veela trait that doesn't have much resonance for him because Laurent didn't use them directly to control him. Far more than sex—although it's tied to that—he has a desire for power in his life.

            SpiritOfBeyond: Thanks! I think he takes another one here.

            luvlustblood: Thanks, and no need to apologize.
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