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
- 14
- 15
- 16
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fifteen—Marked

            “Harry!”

            Ron’s voice shouted down the corridor, but Harry couldn’t turn around and face him, couldn’t do more than give a hurried shout back. He was working with fierce concentration on the wound in his leg, which Yvonne Mullins had cut with a well-placed curse before he could subdue her.

            Mullins moaned in ropes now, her legs twitching feebly, but that didn’t mean Harry could relax. No one, in his experience, relaxed when hit in the femoral artery. He was glad that the battle-rage hadn’t been so fierce this time that he hadn’t felt the pain until later, the way it sometimes happened.

            “Mate!”

            Ron skidded to a stop beside him and fell to one knee, staring at the wound in horror. Harry nodded at him in acknowledgment but didn’t stop wrapping the bandage he’d conjured around and around his leg. He’d already cut off the legs of his robes and his trousers so that he could reach the injury without distraction.

            “Here, let me help,” Ron whispered, sounding heartbroken, as if he thought Harry was really going to die. He reached out.

            “No,” Harry said sharply, slapping at his wrist without stopping. Ron looked stricken, but Harry didn’t much care. Pausing to let Ron interfere would probably doom him, because it would be a moment of no pressure on the wound. “I’ll be all right. But I have to stop the bleeding now, and there’s nothing you can do that I can’t do for myself.”

            “Except carry you, right?” Ron looked over at Mullins and shook his head when she still managed to give him a defiant look, although Harry had gagged her and bound her hands so that she couldn’t cast a spell. “There’s no way you’re going to manage walking by yourself, and I’d think it was my partnerly duty to knock you down if you tried.” He smiled, but a swift glimpse told Harry that the expression was sick and wan.

            “Sure,” Harry said. “You can use Mobilicorpus and conjure a stretcher to get me out of here.”

            “Here” was the house not far from Hogsmeade where an anonymous owl had led them. It had been loaded with traps, but Harry and Ron had worked together to disarm them, and then Harry had seen Mullins fleeing down a narrow corridor and chased her. Harry hoped he wasn’t going to die here. This particular room was dim—the main reason he hadn’t seen Mullins leveling her wand at him—and had dingy walls. It would be a depressing last memory.

            But I’m not going to die, he reminded himself. The bandages were finally complete, as tight as he could wrap them, and he took the time to reach out and squeeze Ron’s hand in reassurance. The shivers that were breaking out over his body were problematic, but it was time to cast the spells that would ease his pain and shock. He did, chanting the incantations without a pause, without a falter. He had done this many, many times before. Being an Auror was not an easy job, and had become harder since Laurent, when he had so few other people he could trust.

            “This looks really bad,” Ron whispered. Harry knew without glancing at him that he was staring at the blood spilled on the floor.

            “I know,” Harry said briskly. “But it looks worse than it is. Remember that head wound I had last year that you thought was going to be fatal? Same principle here. Lots of blood, but not much actual damage.”

            “If you got it wrapped right,” Ron said, his body shifting as he probably turned to look at the bandages.

            “There’s no particular reason to think I don’t.” Again Harry cast a charm that would ease the pain, because it was starting to crawl up his leg and distract him, and then reached out a commanding hand. Ron hastily took it and let him hop up to his feet. Harry gritted his teeth. No, there was no way that he could walk out of here, and Ron had to take Mullins, too. Mobilicorpus and a stretcher it was.

            “Mate.” Ron was speaking in a whisper, as if the wound would hear him and magically get worse if he talked too loud. “This needs—you need to go to the Healers.”

            “No,” Harry said, and hoped that firm word and his freezing look combined would destroy Ron’s idiocy.

            “Yes,” Ron said, and his face was filled with rising color and his voice was short. Harry sighed. He had hoped that Ron wouldn’t be tiresome like this. He needed Ron to transport him, after all, and he needed to know that he could trust him. “There’s no—you don’t fool around with something like this, Harry. You give me permission to take you to the Healers, now, or I’ll Stun you and do it against your will.”

            Harry shut his eyes. “Ron,” he said. “They’ll want to restrain or drug me if you take me there. They’ll give me painkilling potions at the very least.”



“And what’s wrong with painkilling potions?” Ron had his jaw stuck out.

“Because I don’t k now what else they’ll give me while I’m under them,” Harry snapped.

            Ron shook his head. “I don’t want to betray you trust, Harry,” he said. “But I’m more worried about your life. You can always hate me afterwards, but this time, there might not be an afterwards for you to hate or forgive me.”

            “That doesn’t change my feeling,” Harry said. He knew he sounded stubborn and childish, but Ron simply didn’t understand how much he hated Healers. They thought they knew better. They had thought it was best to restrain him last time. And they would give him all sorts of orders, and impose their will. The thought made Harry’s skin crawl.

            Ron rubbed his face, then suddenly sat bolt upright like someone who had had a sudden inspiration. “What about Malfoy?” he asked. “What if I take you to him?”

            Harry’s head was spinning now. He wondered if it was pain or blood loss, and had to think about Ron’s words before he could answer.

            Draco. Absently, Harry shifted his wrist so that he could feel the weight of the heartbeat bracelet. Draco was probably frantic, if he had felt the way that Harry was sure his heartbeat had changed when he confronted Mullins and then his wound. It would probably be for the best if Harry went and soothed him.

            Fleur’s words about responsibility rang in his head. What he had taken on, allowing the Veela in Malfoy to choose and court him, was a larger task than any single desire he might have to take care of this on his own. Yes, he should go to Draco and allow him to share in this burden. It was the only way to protect him.

            “All right,” he said, and then realized he had slurred the words. He glared at Ron, but Ron was so busy conjuring a stretcher and Summoning Floo powder that Harry decided he couldn’t have done anything to make Harry more tired. It probably was just the injury.

            Just the injury.

            Harry closed his eyes and leaned against the wall to keep himself upright. Mullins’s house had to have a working Floo, he heard Ron mutter, and he was inclined to agree. She had been kidnapping victims and experimenting on them almost undetectably; it would have been easier to use the Floo for some of the interior locations that the victims had disappeared from than Apparition, which the wards around those houses would prevent.

            He felt as if he were still caught up in the excitement of solving the case, and wondered whether he should be worried about that. Then he tilted, and then he was flat on his back in a stretcher, and then his world was dancing and he was sure that he had other things than Mullins to worry about.

            Though he still didn’t like the way Ron had just left her lying on the floor like that. It was their duty as Aurors to take their captured criminals in immediately.

*

            “Malfoy?”

            Draco stepped forwards at once. Ten minutes ago, Harry’s heartbeat in his ears had surged erratically. It still wasn’t settled, though sometimes it beat faster than other times. Draco had been biting his cheek as hard as he could, and holding back the temptation to firecall Harry. After all, he wouldn’t be at home anyway if he was hard at work on a case. It was needless worry. Harry would talk to him that evening and tell him that it had been normal and everything was all right, and they would laugh over Draco’s worry together.

            It should have been that way. It should have been.

            Instead, Weasley was calling for him, and he looked so strained and anxious that Draco knew what the question would be before he asked it.

            “Harry’s losing blood fast,” Weasley said. “Or else he’s already lost enough to put him in danger. He refuses to go to St. Mungo’s. Can I bring him through?”

            “Yes, of course,” Draco said. “Anything to keep him safe. Anything—” He realized he was babbling and cut himself off. Both Weasley and Harry would need him to be stronger than that. He moved out of the way, caught his breath, and made sure that his voice was calm and as smooth as ice when he spoke again.

            “Bring him through.”

            Weasley’s head vanished briefly. When he stepped into the room, Draco had his hands clasped behind his back—easier to hide his twisting claws that way—and his gaze fixed straight ahead, so that he would see Harry immediately.

            Weasley had had the good sense to conjure a stretcher. Harry was lying on it, his face so pale that Draco couldn’t look at it for long. He looked down instead.

            Harry had cut away most of the cloth he wore, but Draco could take no pleasure in the unexpected sight of bare skin. He saw, too quickly, the thick white bandage with a thicker spot of blood soaking it through.

            The femoral artery.

            Draco held back his immediate desire to screech and attack the one who had hurt Harry like this. It wasn’t Weasley. He had to push aside the Veela’s protective instincts and replace them with the ones more likely to matter to this situation: the instincts that would let him heal and comfort his chosen.

            “What has been done so far?” he asked, drawing his wand and elongating the couch so that Weasley could put Harry on it. He willed his movements towards the swift, his voice towards the brisk. If he started crooning and didn’t stop, he wouldn’t be able to cast spells.

            “Harry bound the wound, and I think he was using spells to reduce the pain,” Weasley said. His voice was thick, his gaze fixed on Harry’s face as if nailed there, and Draco remembered the way he had spoken about his nightmares of Harry dying the day they conversed in Harry and Weasley’s office. “I’m not sure whether he collapsed from blood loss. He ran ahead of me to attack the woman we were hunting, and she cast the curse, I know, but I’m not sure how long it was before I got there.”

            Draco nodded and bent over Harry, letting his claws grow. He couldn’t hide that level of agitation, and they didn’t badly damage his grip on his wand. He studied the bandage, and shook his head. “It needs to be tightened, and the blood clotted,” he said. “Adstringo. Adstringo cruorem.”

            The red patch might have faded a bit, though Draco didn’t have much hope of that. He licked his lips, allowed himself a moment to stare at Harry’s shut eyes, and then reached out and caressed his shoulder. It was a liberty Harry wouldn’t have allowed Draco had he been awake, which made Draco rather shamefully glad he wasn’t.

There are other reasons to be glad of that, he thought a moment later, beating back the guilt. He would get in the way and insist on doing things that he shouldn’t be doing in the first place if he was awake.

He pulled back and nodded to Weasley. “I think he will survive now, but we have to get the bandage undone and see the wound. Whether we’re going to bind it more firmly or do something else, the bandage is doing no good as it is now.”

Weasley nodded heavily and murmured a charm. The bandage unwound itself. Despite the Blood-Clotting Spell he had used, Draco hovered, ready to clap his hand down in an instant if the wound spurted.

His spells had done their work, thank Merlin. Draco hated to think of his own reaction if they hadn’t. But the cut made by the curse had a nasty, dark red rim to it that Draco recognized at once, and which explained why Harry had fainted. He hissed under his breath, and his nails twisted fully into claws. Weasley seemed to notice for the first time and looked back and forth between them and Draco’s face for a moment.

“Weasley.” Draco made sure he kept his voice cool. Nothing to be gained by shrieking. “I need you to go into my potions lab and fetch the small vial filled with green crystals that you’ll find on the left edge of the topmost shelf to the right of the door.”

            “Where’s your lab?” Weasley asked, though with some lingering suspicion, as if he thought that Draco might have gone to all these lengths to poison Harry.

            Or perhaps he’s only thinking about Harry’s reaction when he wakes up and finds out that we fed him a potion without his permission, Draco told himself, in an effort to be charitable. He fixed his smile on his face and said, “Down the corridor behind you, the second door.”

            Weasley nodded and ran off with commendable speed—which left Draco alone with Harry and with privacy to say many of the things that he couldn’t have said with an audience.

            “Fucking idiot,” Draco whispered harshly. He didn’t shake Harry, but only because that might have started the blood flowing again. “What were you thinking? Do you really not care about your life? Or do you have a death wish?”

            “Neither. I was only thinking that I can take care of myself.”

            Draco started. He hadn’t seen the gleam of green beneath Harry’s eyelids that indicated he was awake. He swallowed and sat down on the couch beside Harry, shaking his head and thinking that Weasley was taking an egregiously long time with the potion. “I don’t think you can, if the result is this. Two near-fatal wounds in as many months?”

            Harry’s half-smile promptly faded. “The first one wasn’t nearly fatal,” he said.

            “A hole in your stomach,” Draco said. “A hole in your stomach.” His voice was lowering, he knew, but that wasn’t a Veela trait in and of itself, and it shouldn’t set Harry off. Indeed, he looked more indignant than anything, if the way he folded his arms and tried to stare Draco down was an indication.

            “A hole in my stomach that I didn’t die of,” Harry said evenly. “And I—” He shifted his leg just then, and gasped. One of his hands tried to reach down and touch the wound, but even that much exertion was beyond him. He shook his head. “I can’t—what happened? It shouldn’t hurt that much after all the spells I cast on myself.”

            “She cast the Repeating Hex along with the spell that cut this hole in you,” Draco said, and thought he did remarkably well in speaking those words like a rational adult.

            Harry’s mouth fell open. “But I didn’t hear her do that,” he said, as though it was unfair for such a thing to have happened.

            “Well, she did.” Draco leaned forwards. “Now, tell me something, Harry. If you don’t have a death wish and you do care about your life, how is it that you end up with near-fatal wounds so much more often than any other Auror? What happens to make it this way?”

            He was shaking by the time he hissed the last words. Panic that he hadn’t permitted to rise so far made his head dim and sticky, his thoughts slow. He clenched one hand in front of him and imagined driving the fist into Harry’s attacker. But since she was probably going on to a long life in Azkaban, he wouldn’t even have that satisfaction.

            “Nothing happens,” Harry said, his face withdrawn and his eyes sulky. Even that, though, was an improvement over the cheerfulness he had affected when Draco saw him behind the barrier in the Ministry. “I just do my job. It’s a dangerous job. Do you know how many Aurors are killed on duty every year?”

            “And yet some of them, like Weasley, manage to escape unscathed,” Draco said. “Tell me what the difference is.”

            “Here’s the potion.”

            Weasley seemed to have timed his return well. Draco started and reached out for the vial, which Weasley—good man—made sure not to give him until Draco’s hand stopped shaking with anger. Draco nodded shortly and then held up the vial so that Harry could see the light spark off the green crystals inside.

            “You can take them all at once and get rid of the Repeating Hex,” Draco said evenly, “and the risk that it carries of ripping open old wounds as well as that one. Or you can struggle and fight us and pout, and we’ll take you to St. Mungo’s.”

            Beside him, Weasley sucked in one enormous breath and was still. Harry clenched his fists and whispered, “I trusted you.”

            “And you still trust me, I hope,” Draco said. “But I will see you safe at any cost. You know that you don’t have the magical strength right now to handle the countercurses to the Repeating Hex.” If you ever did, he thought, but he made sure to keep that part to himself. He had already seen how Harry responded to the suggestion that he might not be able to do something. “I won’t let you have the time to make up your mind when that time would lead to your death.”

            Harry clenched his jaw and seemed unable to respond for a minute. Then he said, “I don’t trust the Healers to take care of me.”

            “I know,” Draco said, doing his best to soften his voice. He could be gentle with Harry when he had to, and he didn’t want to alienate him. On the other hand, this was not the moment to let him think that he could do exactly as he liked. “I’ll respect your wishes if I can. But if you don’t trust me to take care of you, either, then it’s them.”

            As he had hoped it would, the reference to Harry’s trust in him weakened Harry’s sheer contrariness. Harry swallowed, nodded, and reached out a hand to accept the vial. Draco gave it to him.

            “This is a potion that Professor Snape developed to forestall the Repeating Hex when he was still alive,” Draco told Harry. He suspected this would be easier for his chosen if Harry knew what the potion did. “The crystals interact with the magic better than a liquid form would. They’ll strip away the flesh that contains the spell before it can anchor itself to you.”

            Harry set his jaw. “It’ll hurt?”

            Draco nodded. Weasley shifted from foot to foot and sucked nosily at his teeth, but he had the sense not to say anything.

            Harry appeared a bit more cheerful as he opened the vial and poured the crystals into his mouth. He seems to think everything that happens to him should hurt, Draco thought sadly, although he knew the reality was both more complex and simpler than that.

            A moment later, Harry’s eyes shut and his hands stiffened, trembling, at his sides. Draco took hold of the nearest one and caressed his claws gently up and down Harry’s palm. There was no way for his claws to harm his chosen, or he would have spent some time concentrating to turn them back into nails.

            Harry audibly ground his teeth. Draco heard a series of popping sounds and looked back at the wound in Harry’s leg.

            The Repeating Hex, which would cause the wound to reopen again and again as long as it stayed attached to Harry’s skin, was ripping loose slowly, reluctantly. The dark red flesh that represented its holding place curled off Harry’s injury like a picked scab. Draco hissed at it, the only way he could express his revulsion right now.

            “Thank Merlin you saw that,” Weasley said in a low voice. “If it had ripped itself open again tonight, when he was alone, he might have bled to death.”

            Draco nodded, although he had no intentions of letting Harry be alone tonight.

            They continued to wait until the circle of flesh was entirely free and lying on the floor beside the couch. Then Weasley burned it while Draco cast the spells that would tell them whether any trace of the hex remained in Harry’s body. There were none, a piece of good fortune which made Draco want to fall on his knees.

            Harry finally relaxed with a groan. His hand in Draco’s went limp, and Draco spent a few more minutes rubbing mindlessly at it until Harry drew it back. “Thanks,” he said.

            “Will you tell me now,” Draco asked softly, “why you get wounded so much more than most other Aurors?”

            “Part of it was my fault,” Weasley said, and Draco knew from the tone of his voice that this was one of a long series of excuses that he had made up for Harry’s sake. “If I had run faster when I saw Harry start running after Mullins, then I would have been there when he confronted her, and that would have meant that she had two of us to curse.”

            Draco raised his hand. “There are two sides to every story, Weasley,” he said. “Why did Harry run so fast that you couldn’t keep up with him, instead of waiting for you to catch up?”

            Harry stared at him. “She might have escaped.”

            “Or she could have circled around behind Weasley and ambushed him,” Draco said. If he won’t listen to reason about himself, he ought to listen to it about his friends. “Did you think of that? Really? Or was it something else that got pushed out of your mind in your haste to protect the innocent?”

            Harry stared at his hands for a moment. Then he said, “It’s not that I don’t care about my life. Or my friends’ lives.” He gave Weasley a guilty look that Draco resolved to remember. “Or you.” Now Harry lifted his head and looked straight at Draco, and Draco did his best not to be charmed by the sheer brilliance of Harry’s eyes. “It’s just that—I take risks, and they don’t always pay off.”

            “I want to take care of you tonight,” Draco said. He knew he had won a victory, and shouldn’t push for more than Harry was willing to offer. Now was the time for gentleness, the time when his Veela qualities could most thrive. “Will you let me? Stay here, so I can give you a bed, food, and someone to be nearby in case the Repeating Hex returns, your wound opens again, or you need something else.”

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, “As long as you’re not in the same room all night.”

            Draco winced. He had hoped for that. But… “I won’t be,” he said.

            Weasley cleared his throat. “Then I’ll go back and pick up Mullins,” he said. “It’s time that she goes to a secure cell in Azkaban.” He hesitated, then touched Draco on the shoulder. “Thanks for saving his life.”

            He was gone into the Floo in an instant, leaving Harry and Draco to look at each other.

            “Yes,” Harry finally said, “thank you.”

            Draco nodded at him. He didn’t think he could say anything right now.

            There has to be a way to let him work as an Auror and yet make him stop risking himself all the time. There has to be.

*

            polka dot: From his enthusiasm in the books, I think it’s more likely that he would value the holiday more because now he has people who actually like him and will give him presents.

            Sneakyfox: Yes, though that’s going to come back to haunt him shortly.

            Thrnbrooke: Thanks!

            Byond_repair: But what makes you assume that I will get to Laurent in this story?

            SP777: Oh, I don’t mind. I think you’d be able to tell if you’d really offended me.

            Right now, I think Draco’s the pin cushion.

            K-chan: Thanks! I thought it was something Harry would think was a good idea.

            Sneakyfox: Thanks!

            SisterGryffin-SisterSlytherin: Thanks so much! I do like working with people who have something broken in them and need to return to health in one way or another.

            SpiritOfBeyond: Thanks! What are you procrastinating on?

            luvlustblood: Thanks!

            fudge: Perfectly understandable. I will say that Harry has only made the progress he has so far because he is able to look at Draco as someone in need of protection; Fleur didn’t exactly mean what Harry thought she did when she spoke of him needing to defend Draco. And he is going too fast. That is going to rebound on him.
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