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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
- 15
- 16
- 17
Thanks again for all the reviews!

Chapter Sixteen—Damaged

            Harry opened his eyes slowly. He knew that he wasn’t in his own bed, but he didn’t know where he was. At the same time, pain clouded his mind, which made him lie still for long, dangerous moments before the full impact of that thought hit him.

            He promptly surged to his elbows when it did, reaching for his wand with one hand and his glasses with the other. Yes, he could use his wand to Summon his glasses, but he would probably need the ability to cast a spell that would fend off his enemies more than he needed a free hand.

            “You’re awake. That’s good.”

            Draco’s voice was soft and filled with so much relief that Harry paused. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes. What would Draco be doing here, if it was dangerous?

            Draco sat on a chair across from the bed, hands folded in his lap. His eyes were bright as they focused on Harry, but not at all calm. “Do you always wake up that way?” he asked. “Or only when you have nightmares? Which I heard you having, a few times during the night. But by the time I came into the room, they were always over.”

            Harry lowered his eyes. He had remembered what had happened to him now, and Draco’s promise not to spend last night in the same room. Harry felt a blend of relief that he had kept the promise, shame that Draco had overheard his screams, and annoyance that he had had to stay here after all.

            “I would have been all right by myself,” he muttered, a sentiment that he didn’t intend for Draco to hear.

            Draco slammed his hand down, so hard that Harry heard the wood of the chair he was sitting on crack. There was a brief whirlwind of action, and then Harry found himself pushed up against the pillow, his wand aimed at Draco. Draco stared at him through half-lidded eyes, breath panting slowly in and out of his lungs.

“You would not have,” Draco said. “You could have bled to death. Or you might have forced yourself into going back to work too quickly. I firecalled Weasley after you slept, when something occurred to me. He said that you often go to work the next day after a major wound like this. The next day. The only times that doesn’t happen is when Shacklebolt forces you to take some time off, and then you whinge so much and inundate his office with so many owls that he lets you come back sooner than he should. How long have you been abusing yourself like this, Harry? And why? Is it connected to Laurent?”

“Not everything in my life leads back to that bastard,” Harry said, flushing and wishing that Draco had chosen a different question. Harry knew the answer to this one, but it was never an answer that anyone liked to hear, and he wasn’t looking forwards to yet more mockery and complaints that that couldn’t really be the way he felt.

“I understand that,” Draco said. His tone had softened. He stood up and prowled towards the bed. Harry flinched, and he stopped, head cocked to one side like a curious cat. “But I want to understand why this is happening to you, why you don’t wait for your partner when you dash into danger the way Auror training says you’re supposed to, why you shrug off wounds as if they don’t matter when you have to know they could.” His voice lowered. “Do you know what would happen to me if you died, Harry?”

“I didn’t die.” Harry hated the way he felt right now, and he refused to look at Draco. He felt as though he were wrong and deserved to suffer because of it. There was no bitterer guilt than the guilt that his friends inflicted on him, he thought, and the worst thing was, they wouldn’t let him make up for it in the ways he knew best.

            “You could have,” Draco said. “And that would have hit me as nothing else could, even your refusing to have anything more to do with me. I would have mourned for a year, at least. It was almost that long after I realized that Pansy was the wrong choice. I would recover, but I don’t enjoy the notion of that pain at all.”

            Harry flinched. “You’re doing this on purpose,” he accused, looking up and staring into Draco’s eyes. “And after I’ve already gone fast for your sake, pushed the boundaries, kissed you when I didn’t have to—”

*

            Draco knew what he was doing. He was sorry for it. He didn’t know how well he could tread the boundary, how he could keep Harry safe and win what he needed from him while at the same time not hurting him too much.

            But Harry was going to die if he kept on. And what he had done so far would only recoil on him if he persisted. He had come so far, so fast, and now that Draco thought about it, such progress was unnatural. It had happened only because Harry willed it, and if he regretted it or if his will faltered for a second, then they might turn backwards again.

            “I know you’ve gone fast,” Draco said, in a low voice that he hoped would force Harry to shut up and listen. Harry scowled at him, but did. “I probably pressured you into it. For that part, I’m sorry.”

            Harry was good at listening for nuance even when he was bedridden. His eyes narrowed. “For that part only?”

            Draco nodded and sat down on the edge of the bed, which was big enough that Harry could be quite a distance from him even while he was here. “I won’t apologize for caring about you, for wanting to see you healed, or for wanting you to date me. Emotions aren’t crimes. Deeds are. I’ll try to be as patient as I can, so that you can give in to me when you’re ready.” He toyed with the heartbeat bracelet on his wrist, a lovely gift that, still, was a product of Harry’s charging ahead before he was really ready.

            “I want to see you healed,” he repeated. “I told you that from the first. I didn’t realize how literal it was going to be, but I still want it.”

            Harry’s eyes were so enormous, the pupils so dilated, that Draco would have thought he was drugged with some kind of potion if he didn’t know better. The potion that he had fed Harry yesterday would have dissipated by now. “I can tell you the truth,” Harry said. “But you’ll just laugh at it. Everyone else did.”

            “I can’t see Weasley or Granger doing that,” Draco said.

            Harry flushed and looked away. “Well, maybe they didn’t. But they still didn’t understand.”

            Draco folded his arms so that he wouldn’t be tempted to reach out and touch Harry before he had permission. “Tell me.”

            Harry shut his eyes and seemed to hold his breath for a long moment. Then he jerked his head in a swift nod and opened his eyes so that he could look at Draco.

            “I want to help people,” he said. “That’s really all it is. I see a chance and I have to take it. If I’d waited for Ron last night, then Mullins might have escaped, and other people might have died. I have the high capture ratio that I do because I take chances. And then people can sleep more easily in their beds at night, and other families have justice, and I can remember that I’ve done what I like best.”

            Draco shook his head. It wasn’t that he didn’t understand, he thought, but that Harry was ignoring some fairly obvious flaws in what he was saying. “Why is the only way that you can help people to capture criminals?” he asked.

            Harry gave him a sharp look. “Because I’m an Auror,” he said, with strained patience, “and that’s my job.”

            “But you could do it just as well if you were more patient, if you worked with your partner to set up ambushes that would let you capture these people without endangering yourselves,” Draco said. “And then you know that you’ll live and go on to make more captures. What happens if you die young? A lot of your good deeds will go undone.”

            “I can’t think about that,” Harry said. “I can only do the task that’s in front of me. And what would happen if someone got away because I was cautious and killed another victim? I would be placing my own life above that person’s. I would never forgive myself.” From the dark, liquid look of his eyes, Draco knew he wasn’t exaggerating.

            “But you need to think about the future,” Draco said. “What would happen if you ended up not dead but so badly wounded that you couldn’t be an Auror anymore?”

            Harry’s nostrils flared. “I can’t—that won’t happen, Draco. It’s not like I try to get wounded on purpose.”

            “But you don’t guard yourself, either.” Draco could feel his patience crumbling. He glanced down, watched his nails twist into claws, and counted the gleams of light from their crystalline tips before he trusted himself to go on. “You were always good at Defense Against the Dark Arts when we were in Hogwarts. When did you give up practicing defensive magic? That was something else Weasley said when I asked him. That you barely defend yourself, that you don’t try unless someone else manages to get in the fight on your side. It’s always offensive. You focus on bringing them down before anything else. Why?”

            “Because that’s what I like to do.” Harry’s voice was soft and dry. “Because it contents me, the same way that being near me contents your Veela. I knew that trying to explain this to you wouldn’t work.”

            “But it would make more sense for you to take precautions so that you could go on doing what you like to for longer,” Draco said.

            Harry only looked at him in stubborn silence.

            Draco sighed and cast around for another tactic that would help him. “How often do you see the people you help?” he asked. “The families of the victims, or the ones that you rescue before the Dark wizards can kill them?”

*

            Harry blinked. He couldn’t remember anyone asking him this question before. Of course, Ron was the one who had most often talked it over with him, and he knew the answer, since he was present for this part of Harry’s work.

            “Sometimes,” he said guardedly. “When I interview the families for information about the victims. Or when we get there before the Dark wizards can kill someone they’re torturing.” He grimaced. Unfortunately, most of the people he hunted were the kind who would kill their victims when they realized the Aurors were arriving.

            “But not often?” Draco pressed. “You don’t often have to stare into their eyes and hear them praise you or rage at you?”

            Harry frowned. “No. What are you getting at?”

            “That these staring eyes of your victims are more your imagination than anything else,” Draco said. “The same way you imagined more people dying during the war than actually did. Yes, the people who died were terrible losses, I’m not denying that.” His voice softened; Harry didn’t know if that was in response to memories of his own or because of the expression on Harry’s face. “But you’re driving yourself mad, you’re hurting yourself and your friends and me, for the sake of people who may not know you exist, or might think of you fleetingly and be grateful, or who might worship you but whom you never meet. What in that is right, Harry? What’s sensible?”

            Harry shook his head. He felt as if he were wearing a robe that was too tight, the collar constricting around his throat. “That’s not—you don’t understand, Draco.”

            “Then tell me.” Draco leaned closer, his eyes haunted by a watery flicker that Harry made sure to look away from in time. “I want to understand everything about you. Tell me.”

            “I don’t care about what’s sensible,” Harry said, which wasn’t completely true but the only way he could put it. “Not in comparison to what I can do to help people. Being an Auror is the only thing that gives me meaning in life. I don’t have a big family, like Ron does, or a sense of burning justice, like Hermione, or children. I probably never will have children,” he added, because he was thinking of how easy it would be for some of the criminals he hunted to strike at him if they could kidnap his children. “I don’t have a tradition of family pride like you do, or if I did, I never knew about it. I only have what I can cling to, my friends, and what I’m good at, rescuing people. That’s it. I know that other people can give me friendship and love and so on, but that’s not something I inherited or that’s part of me. It depends on the goodness of other people. But if I’m good at being an Auror, that’s something I am good at, something that makes me meaningful. You see?”

            Draco was still for long moments, staring so hard that Harry thought he would sprain something. Then he dipped his head and said, “While I’m not convinced that you can only be good at this, I do see.”

            Harry’s relief was short-lived. Draco reached out and took his hand, and Harry gave it to him after a moment’s hesitation. Draco had claws right now, but at least he didn’t look as if he would grip Harry’s shoulders and tear his skin to shreds the way Laurent had liked to when he rode Harry.

            “But I also see that you can’t keep going like this,” Draco whispered. Harry tried to jerk his hand away, but Draco pressed his nails absently against the vein in Harry’s wrist, and he froze. Draco continued to speak, his words soft but so intense that it was like being pummeled by hail. “Sooner or later, you’re going to become so badly wounded that you can’t continue. Or you’ll get older and not be able to work as well as you can now. Or the Ministry will finally take notice and make you obey all the rules that the other Aurors do. I wonder that you don’t obey them on your own, since I thought you wanted a normal life when we were in school,” he added.

            That was another thing no one had ever said to him before. Harry felt as though someone had opened a slow, burning pit of shame and strangeness beneath him and then tossed him into it.

            “I don’t want those things to happen to you,” Draco said. “I would defend you from them if I could. But they’ll happen because you don’t take care of yourself, and then you’ll be left maimed or helpless or slowly growing bitter, and you will have no meaning in your life anymore.”

            Harry felt his breath click in his throat. He shook his head. “I don’t—”

            “I don’t want to speculate too much,” Draco said, and he let Harry’s hand go, but only so he could take both at once and turn them over to caress the palms, “but I almost wonder if you’re trying to die before age or a crippling wound finds you, so that at least you never have to face the loss of what you’ve pinned everything on.”

            Harry shut his eyes. He didn’t speak. He was going to say something completely inappropriate if he did. Or just sob.

            He couldn’t accuse Draco of misunderstanding him now, though he still would have argued that he didn’t really have a death wish. But he could wish that the words were unspoken, that Draco had been less ruthless in tearing down his illusions, that he had been allowed to walk out of here with his confidence unshattered.

            Now that he knew this, how could he act as thoughtlessly as he had so far? He knew Ron and Draco and Hermione would say that he couldn’t and that was a good thing, but it also meant that he would forever be hesitating, distrusting himself, wondering if this was the time that he lost the ability to do what he loved.

            Or it meant that he would have to find another meaning.

            He shivered. “My meaning can’t be you,” he whispered. “Not just you. For the same reason that you can’t lean on your chosen for every scrap of importance in your life.”

*

            Draco sagged, his grip on Harry’s hands faltering. Relief made him feel as if he stood under a shower of icy water.

            Oh. He had wondered. He had doubted. He had been sure, at one point, that he wouldn’t manage to persuade Harry of the madness of letting everything hinge on being an Auror.

            But he had. And though he understood—he thought it best, in fact—that this might stymie the progress of their relationship for a time, at least he would be the one who could help Harry to move on and find something else to attach meaning to. He could help Harry heal and grow, as he had wanted from the beginning.

            The mental contact would take the place of physical contact for a time. Harry was right. Draco couldn’t be his meaning, and so Harry would want to withdraw and stand on his own. But Draco thought he would still welcome suggestions and advice, if not an attempt to pull him onto a certain path.

            I can live with this. I can. And when Harry comes back to me and kisses and touches me again, I can be sure it’s of his own free will.

            “I know that,” Draco said, when he realized Harry was staring at him with desperate eyes and he still hadn’t responded to the declaration that he couldn’t be Harry’s meaning. “I don’t want to take the place of your Auror work, because, seeing how obsessive you are about that, I’m not sure I could survive being the focus.”

            Harry smiled, but the smile was mechanical, and he looked around. “What am I going to do?” he asked. “If I really have to change my whole life…”

            “I never said that,” Draco said. “There’s no reason that you can’t keep being an Auror. We just need to wean you from being so dependent on it that you’ll endanger your life to keep doing it.”

            Harry snorted, a gleam already returning to his eyes. “Wean me? I’m not a child.”

            “I know,” Draco said, and decided that he could dare a joke, since Harry looked as if he could smile. “A child doesn’t have problems this complex.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “You know what’s strangest?” he added reflectively. “You’re speaking to me almost the same way a Mind-Healer would, but I don’t feel the panic and the resentment about it that I did when they were haranguing me.” He looked at Draco as if he were studying him for glasses and a Healer’s emblem this time, instead of for Veela features. Draco smiled. By itself, this was a step forwards; Harry was no longer acting as if Draco wasn’t human. “What makes you different?”

            “I care about your welfare more than they do,” Draco said, which was honestly what he believed. He also thought the Mind-Healers who had tried to “help” Harry couldn’t find their arses with a map, but Harry didn’t need help to hate them for that.

            Harry made that little clicking noise in his throat again as his breath caught. He stared at Draco, and then said, “You do. You really do. And I don’t—that’s not overwhelming. It doesn’t make me fight to stand on my own in response just because. That’s—you’re remarkable, Draco.” He looked dazed.

            Draco relaxed again. If he couldn’t touch his chosen as freely as he would have liked for a while, at least this meant Harry was paying him compliments and singling him out from all the other people in his life. Draco had been able to do something they hadn’t.

            It also told him what worked with Harry. Reason, or as close to it as he could stick, would be listened to as long as Draco kept up with his arguments and the situation wasn’t desperate. And from the intensely thoughtful expression in Harry’s eyes, Draco could at least hope the desperate situations wouldn’t arise as often now.

            They sat there for a moment, smiling at each other, and then Draco heard a whoosh from the other room. He rolled his eyes and stood up. “That’s probably Weasley, wanting to know how you are,” he said. “Excuse me a moment?”

            Harry nodded. Draco stepped out of his room, shut the door gently behind him—he didn’t want their conversation to disturb Harry in case he decided to go back to sleep—and went to answer the firecall.

*

            Harry wanted to lie back in his bed and think. There were so many new thoughts and insights stirring in his head that it would take ages to sort them out. He might as well start now, so he could have something intelligent to say when Draco came back.

            But his gaze focused on the closed door and couldn’t move away. Why would Draco shut it? Surely Harry had the right to hear anything that Draco said to Ron.

            The longer he lay there, the more it bothered him. So he got up at last, opened the door, and stepped out into the corridor that led to the room where he had lain last night.

            Draco was speaking in a whisper to someone; Harry could hear the rasping sound of his voice if not make out the words. Harry padded towards it, hesitating next to the corner. He knew the other person’s voice wasn’t Ron’s, and he wasn’t sure if he wanted to appear half-naked in front of someone he didn’t know.

            “No, Pansy,” Draco said then. “I already told you everything I knew, gave you all the information I had. If that’s not sufficient for them to find him, how is that my fault?”

            Harry grinned. What’s this, Draco? Are you investigating a little side venture of your own? Who wants to be an Auror now? He listened in more closely, hoping that Parkinson would reveal what Draco had helped her with.

            “You haven’t held out on us?” Parkinson was disgruntled. From what Harry could remember of her during Hogwarts, that wouldn’t be a new experience for her.

            “Why would I?” Draco said. “I have no particular interest in whether or not your friends find this—Laurent, did you call him? I don’t.”

            Harry had experienced moments in the past when he felt as if all the air in his chest turned cool and he had time to think through what would follow, if not act. It usually happened when he was staring down someone’s wand and knew this might be his last moment. The last time it had happened, Ron had been wounded and Harry had been able to envision all the bad consequences of not moving fast.

            This was a moment like that. It lasted longer than normal.

            When he returned to himself, Draco was finishing the firecall. Parkinson still sounded out of sorts when she pulled her head back.

            And she has reason to sound that way, Harry thought as he stepped forwards to meet him.

            Draco looked startled when he saw Harry, and then annoyed. “You’ll tear open your wound again,” he scolded, coming towards him.

            “Much like you’ve just torn open the wounds of mine that concern Laurent?” Harry asked.

            Draco froze in turn. Harry watched him and waited, not really expecting an answer. It would be a denial at worst, a stammered excuse at best.

            He wondered if he should thank Draco for giving him a new experience.

            Is this how losing the potential love of your life feels?

*

            Sneakyfox: But he really doesn’t have an interest in healing anyone besides Harry.

            polka dot: Oh, this isn’t the case Harry was working on, the Sandys case. That’s still unsolved.

            SP777: Thank you!

            Lady_of_Clunn: Sorry, not much detail on the night, but I hope this chapter satisfies anyway.

            And I thank Draco would be inclined to agree with you.

            SpiritOfBeyond: Thank you!

            Do you want to know if the story has a happy ending, or not?

            Byond_repair: Thanks!

            I think that Harry got too used to fighting, and this version of him definitely feels burned by his seeking after pleasure (which he did in the past, as Draco thinks in the first part, but he flung himself into the work after Laurent, and stayed there).

            mrequecky: Thanks!

            Night the Storyteller: You were right to be bothered.
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