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Nature of the Beast	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 48977 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Chapter Fifteen—Maundys and Misery
            “Mr. Potter. Thank you for inviting us.”
            Harry gave Tamara Maundy a reserved smile as he shook her hand. “Thank you for responding. It’s not everyone who would.”
            “People can be fools,” said Maundy, casually swinging off the cloak she wore and hanging it over the back of her chair. It was the exact color of the iron-grey hair that swayed next to her shoulders, Harry noticed. Maundy sat with the same grace and continued watching Harry. “They need to understand where the next wave of change comes from.”
            Three months ago—or maybe three minutes ago, without Malfoy’s warning—Harry wouldn’t have noticed that she hadn’t said she would go along with that wave of change. Now, Harry gave her the polite smile and nodded to Malfoy as he came up alongside Harry. “I don’t know if you know my Veela mate, Draco Malfoy.”
            Maundy extended one hand. Malfoy didn’t hesitate in clasping it. It was probably some kind of insult if he did, Harry decided, and held back a groan. Pure-blood politics.
            “I congratulate you. To capture a Veela is quite the coup.”
            Malfoy straightened for a moment with his wings opening wide, and Harry shrugged. “I think you could say that fate captured both of us. It was a surprise, certainly.”
            Malfoy nodded and folded his wings to his back again. Maundy glanced between the two of them with slight blinks as the other wizards who had accompanied her—her children, Harry was sure—settled themselves around her. “Oh, really? I had thought the Veela knew before the mate, and that was why he sought you at the Order of Merlin ceremony.”
            “One does know,” said Malfoy, with a tone that made it sound as if he had a stuffed nose. “But the timing of the knowledge doesn’t preclude that knowledge from being a surprise.”
            There came a moment when Harry thought they were being judged. Then Maundy gave them a smile like the heart of winter. “Yes. Quite so.”
            Malfoy bowed to her, all precise and correct, Harry supposed, and then put a hand in the middle of Harry’s back. “Nice to meet you, Madam Maundy. If you’ll come with me, Harry, we should take our seats. The meeting can’t start until then.”
            They moved off. Harry arched himself a little forwards so that he didn’t feel as if Malfoy was towing him along like a prize cow on the end of a line, and murmured, “What do you think?”
            The sound of his voice was covered by the sound of coughing and shuffling feet as people took their seats, luckily. Also luckily, Malfoy didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “I think she’s dangerous. But I did tell you that. If she wants to preserve a polite façade for now, it could mean that she thinks you’re dangerous, too. Or it could mean that she’s hoping you’ll underestimate her and let her strike.”
            Hermione was waiting at the head, next to a chair withdrawn a little from the table. Harry nodded his thanks, and Malfoy came to a stop, his wings arching over them like willow branches. Harry sighed and glanced at him. “What is it?”
            “There’s no chair for me.”
“Of course there is…” Harry trailed off when he realized what Malfoy meant. Yes, there were enough seats in the room, but Malfoy’s was a long way down the table. Ron and Hermione had the chairs on either side of him.
“How could anyone have overlooked such common etiquette?” Tamara Maundy asked, raising her voice from her place. “Nicholas, stand up and surrender your chair to Mr. Malfoy immediately. It will move to the head of the table on my command.” She held a sparking wand in her fingers. Harry had never seen the color of pink light that illuminated the end before, and instinctively, he disliked it.
As well as any other move that Maundy made, really. Maybe he was relying too much on Draco’s advice, but the sense of leashed danger around Maundy was palpable.
“No need to put yourself to inconvenience, Madam Maundy,” he said, and smiled at her. She paused as though she wasn’t used to having people contradict her, and her son, rising from his chair, froze in place like a rabbit. Harry continued smoothly. “But I do appreciate the way that you sprang immediately to service. So sweet.” He nodded to Ron. “Change chairs with Draco, please.”
Ron stared at him for only a second before he smiled and nodded. Harry was relieved that Ron wouldn’t make a fuss about it. Then again, the way that Ron seemed to acknowledge the bond between him and Malfoy more than Hermione did was one reason he had chosen Ron to move. Hermione would have made a fuss, and that was what they didn’t need right now.
Malfoy only blinked at him a time or two as Ron shifted down the table, and the Maundys settled back. But he jumped into life when Harry would have taken his chair. He drew it further back for Harry—in fact, to the perfect distance where Harry could step up to the table without feeling like he was squeezing in.
Harry stared at him. Malfoy tilted his head down and muttered, “Don’t make a big deal of it. The Maundys are watching.”
Harry relaxed. Yes, it was true that he could hardly use a Veela bond for political capital and then go back on it in public.
Malfoy pushed the chair in for Harry as well, and slid one hand along his arm in a caressing gesture. For a moment, the shadow of his wings moved over Harry like a blessing.
Harry sighed. In some ways, what Malfoy was offering sounded nice. Someone who would care for his well-being and pull out chairs for him and give him advice about political complications was someone he could use in his life.
But utter submission was the price, and it wasn’t one Harry could pay. If Malfoy had been willing to accept something else, something that took a while to build and needed time for the affection and didn’t depend on this notion of service to the dominant…
But he wasn’t. Maybe it wasn’t even possible for a dominant Veela, someone who had grown up with the instincts and the expectations, to want something else. Malfoy would probably sour on Harry and the bond as soon as he realized that there was no way Harry was ever going to give in to him.
Harry sighed, touched Malfoy’s hand and nodded in thanks, and then turned to the meeting.
*
Draco kept his eyes away from Harry as much as he could. For one thing, he didn’t want to disconcert Harry by staring, which he knew he would do too much of if he didn’t watch out.
For another, the political dynamics of the table were honestly fascinating. If his father had asked him, as a mental exercise, to consider the makeup of a group like this, Draco would have guessed Harry’s involvement at once, and the Weasleys’.
Everyone else was a surprise.
Daphne sat with her head turned away from them now, and her mother frowned. Draco wondered whether their coming here, and to Harry’s other gatherings, was prompted by a belief in what Harry talked about at all, or only the desire to have Harry stand beside Daphne as a political tool.
You can’t have him!
He’d seen Harry reject Daphne, though, and that helped a lot with Draco’s instinctive urge to scream and cling to Harry himself. He managed to relax his locked muscles, and continue on with his study.
Maundy and her children listened in utter silence to the recitation of names and places and people and families that Harry chose to start off with. Utter stillness, too. Draco found them all the more frightening for it. They had their own version of truth, and it didn’t depend on preserving an illusion that they had no connection with Muggles, not if it turned out to be an illusion. They would simply destroy the truth, bury anyone who knew about it, and continue on their way.
That wasn’t true of other people at the table, of course. Long before Harry had reached the end of his list of families who had Muggle heritage, others were starting to splutter and stand up.
“See here,” said Alexander Carnavon. He had a thick moustache that was almost more impressive than the black beard he wore tucked into his waist, or the thick wooden staff he carried around. He aimed the end of the staff at Harry now. “You aren’t going to tell me that my wife’s grandmother was a Squib! That makes no sense! Why, no proper wizard would have married her!”
“Eris Yaxley came with all the wealth that the Yaxley family had at the time,” said Harry, watching Carnavon narrowly. He didn’t have his hand on the wand beneath the table, which Draco couldn’t help thinking was a mistake. “She was her parents’ only child. If it hadn’t been for a few of your wife’s aunts and uncles agreeing to take the Yaxley name so that their line could continue, there would be none of them around today.”
“That’s impossible,” said Carnavon, and this time put down the staff and wagged a finger. Draco hid a snicker. He was mental if he thought that would work better to threaten Harry. “And anyway, a Squib’s no Muggle!”
“Her family had ties to the Muggle business world, in an attempt to secure a sort of fortune for her if it turned out they couldn’t legally leave her theirs,” Harry said, and his voice was gentle and blank and intelligent. They would be fools if they discounted the intelligence, Draco thought. Harry turned over the page and scanned it for a moment, although Draco had the odd feeling—odd because of the complete trust in Harry that it implied—that he knew all about Eris Yaxley already. “Yes, here it is. They encouraged her to associate with Muggles, and did it themselves. They wanted her to marry a Muggle if they couldn’t find a wizard who would accept her.”
“Even that’s different than having Muggle ancestors!”
“Oh, I can move on from the Yaxleys, if you like,” said Harry, and again Draco hid a crowing chuckle. Yes, they really should pay more attention to what they were saying to Harry. Harry picked up another piece of paper and read down the list. “Yes, here we are. Henrietta Carnavon—well, she became Carnavon after she married your grandfather—but she was Henrietta James before that, and a Muggleborn. That means Muggle great-grandparents for you.” He looked up with the bland little smile that, like the bland voice, Draco was learning he could wield to devastating effect. “I think that’s the right degree of ancestry? Forgive me, I’m a half-blood, and uneducated in such things.”
Carnavon gave a wordless roar of fury, and he would have left his seat and stalked around the table, Draco thought, if his wife hadn’t caught his sleeve and leaned in to whisper urgently to him. No doubting who had got the brains in that family.
Carnavon sat back in his chair, and he was shaking his head, but his red color remained at a dangerous level. “You—you take that back. You can’t go around spouting those lies.”
“If they were lies, I couldn’t have made them up,” Harry said. “I don’t know that much about pure-blood genealogy, and until recently, I never bothered to learn. It’s the truth. You had Muggle great-grandparents.”
“What is the point of this?” asked Lucinda Kelley, one of the witches that Draco was surprised hadn’t said more before this point. The Kelley family had always been made up of half-bloods, and no one would let them forget it, but for just that reason, they were always trying to prove themselves as pure as the Blacks in custom and the way they acted.
“It’s to prove that we’re not split into separate divisions.” Harry locked his hands on either side of the table, and his eyes swept them up and down. “We’re not Muggleborn this, half-blood that, and pure-blood without a ‘taint’ of Muggle ancestry over here. The lies we’ve been telling ourselves aren’t true.”
“And why would that matter, even if it’s so?” Tamara Maundy this time, and Draco kept his gaze away from her. He was afraid that he would bristle if he looked at her, and they couldn’t really afford to look defensive right now.
“Because we’re a small world,” Harry said, and his face was aglow with passion. Draco bit his lip, hard. If Harry never looked like that for him, at least Draco could say that he’d seen the look on his face. “We can’t afford to charge around blaming each other and having bloody civil wars.” Draco jumped a little at the abrupt change of tone, but most of the other people around the room looked enthralled—if unwillingly. “We should come together and accept that we’re bound and can’t kill each other or go into exile. We have to put up with each other.”
“What an inspiring vision you offer,” said Maundy.
Harry swung on her. “And what did Voldemort’s vision offer? What has it gained us? Nothing but dead wizards. Most of them pure-bloods, you realize.”
“I would not have said his vision was the substitute,” said Maundy, and Draco narrowed his eyes. Instead of looking upset about Harry contradicting her, she had a faint smile on her mouth that worried him. “I would have said that the ancient ways were the substitutes, when wizards lived in their own enclaves separate from Muggles.”
Harry rolled his eyes.
Rolled his eyes. Draco stared at him. He had thought that Harry was trying to preserve a detached, bland façade that his enemies would find it hard to put cracks in, and now he had just done that to a witch among the most dangerous in Britain.
Draco found himself reaching instinctively for the conduit that connected him and Harry, and dug his fingernails into his arm when he realized that he could feel nothing through it right now. Whoever, whatever, had damaged the bond, he hated them more than he had since Aloren revealed the ragged nature of the bond’s extent.
“I’m not actually suggesting that we drop the protections we have up against Muggles and become friendly with everyone who might fear our magic,” said Harry. “I’m suggesting that we stop debating the exact number of magical ancestors that someone has—if we count back far enough, there’ll be a Muggle ancestor for everyone here—and concentrate on healing the wounds that plague our world.”
“There are some people for whom honor is more important than life,” said Maundy.
She wasn’t saying she was one of them. Draco tensed up. Harry would fall into the trap, and then he would—
“Agreed,” said Harry. “And for me, peace is more important than my life.” He drew his fringe back and showed the scar on his forehead. Draco saw more than one person in the room flinch, Carnavon among them, although not Maundy. “I’ve died once already, you know. I know exactly what my life is worth.”
Maundy’s face went still and cool. Draco half-twitched his wings, thinking she might have her hand on her wand under the table, ready to soar up and defend Harry if he had to. If he could carry Harry all the way down the Manor stairs to the fireplace, he thought he could bear him up to the ceiling of this room before any spells could strike him.
“You are, it is true,” said Maundy, “the only one in this room who can make that claim.”
Harry nodded. Draco shut his wings again, but he was wary. For all he knew, Maundy was about to lure Harry into another political trap since her last one hadn’t worked the way she wanted it to.
“But I wonder,” said Maundy, “if you would be willing to come to a meeting of my allies, the way I was willing to come to a meeting of yours?” She looked around the room and seemed to separate everyone in it from herself, although Draco knew plenty of people there were closer to Maundy in beliefs than they were to Harry.
“It would depend on where the meeting was, and who would be there, and what oaths you’re willing to swear as to my safety,” said Harry. “I don’t meet with former Death Eaters without oaths.”
Draco winced a little. Without looking away from Maundy or changing expression or appearing to notice at all, Harry reached out beneath the table and laid a hand on Draco’s, squeezing tight.
He doesn’t consider me in the same category as those people.
It should have been obvious, or Harry would have required an Unbreakable Vow before moving into Malfoy Manor. But Draco still felt something tight and coiled at the bottom of his stomach ease up.
“There are no former Death Eaters among my people,” said Maundy, a faint smile on her face now. That smile scared Draco. “Only those who want to live the way I mentioned, holding to the old traditions.”
Harry considered her in utter silence and stillness. Then he said, “Your people or your allies?”
Oh, well done, Harry. That wasn’t a catch Draco had made himself, and he started breathing a little more easily. Harry might be able to handle himself without trouble when Draco wasn’t around, after all.
“My allies,” said Maundy. The smile was gone. “I will owl you with the appropriate information.” She stood and moved towards the Floo, her children following her, one with the cloak she had shed earlier.
Draco watched her as he went. So he saw her wand hand move to the side, in a pattern that looked oddly like she was tracing a crescent moon on the air.
And he felt and saw and heard and felt the moment when Harry began to convulse in silent pain.
*
moodysavage: Not only that, but learning to like Harry’s competence.
Marron: Yes. Although Harry and Draco might have different definitions of “interesting.”
delia cerrano: Yes. Hermione means well, but is having a little trouble letting go of the idea that Harry and Ron need her constant watching over them the way they did with homework.
SP777: Daphne won’t go after Harry directly again, but she might do something drastic because of her disappointment.
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Nature of the Beast