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Nature of the Beast	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 48976 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Sixteen—Desires and Devices
            Harry could feel the pain curling through him, and accelerating as it spread down his limbs. All the while, there was a voice hissing in his ears and his blood and even in his eyes, it seemed like, a voice that was a cold, dead version of the tone the Maundy woman had used to speak to him.
            Agree to come with me. Obey me. Give this up. Burn the evidence.
            It was just her bad luck, Harry thought with the part of him that was still himself, hanging back and watching the conflagration take place, that she’d got someone who had suffered both the Imperius Curse and the Cruciatus Curse.
            He couldn’t help shaking from the effects of the Pain Geis, but he managed to keep from crying out. He forced it back, bore down on it with his will, the way he had when he was fighting Voldemort’s Imperius Curse in the graveyard. And while Tamara Maundy was evil and dangerous in her own way, she was no Voldemort.
            Malfoy was draped in feathers beside him, his wings hunching and his nose pointed long and thin. Harry leaned against him, hoping that Veela protective instincts would make Malfoy want to stay with him. Harry wanted to tell him that it was okay, that Maundy’s spell wouldn’t work the way she wanted it to or even make Harry suffer the way she wanted him to, but he couldn’t fight the spell off and say that at the same time. He settled for grabbing Malfoy’s hand and squeezing as hard as he could.
            Malfoy snatched him up and held him close. Harry shut his eyes. To his surprise, the warmth of Malfoy’s arms, and then his wings, around Harry gave him a background to concentrate on, a floating cushion of heat on which he could balance as he crushed the pain and the command that Maundy had tried to inflict him with.
            He crushed them, and the pain in his blood spluttered and died. Harry lifted his head and opened his eyes.
            At first, all he saw were white feathers. Harry lifted a hand and pushed with gentle firmness on the wings in front of him, and they opened out and drooped off to the sides. Malfoy huffed a little, as though he hadn’t told his wings to do that and wondered how Harry had learned to command them.
            Maundy looked at him with a white face. There was no expression of surprise on it, but more important to Harry, there wasn’t one of triumph either. He shook his head, not turning away from her.
“You should have known better than to do that,” he said. “Didn’t the stories tell you that I can resist the Imperius Curse?”
            Shouting broke out at that, with Ron demanding, “She tried to Imperius you?” and Hermione calling for order and several of the other prominent pure-bloods at the table trying to take control of the situation because that was what they’d always done and they could probably see some political advantage in it.
            Throughout it, Harry looked at Maundy, and Maundy looked at him, and he was sure there was greater danger for him than ever in the grey-knuckled grip she had on her wand.
            Malfoy tilted his head back and screeched. It was an effective sound, Harry supposed, since it made everyone else jump and wince and cover their ears. He only heard it like the chime of a great clock, unexpected but not painful.
            “It wasn’t the Imperius Curse,” he said, when he could be sure that other people would listen. “It was the Pain Geis. She wanted me to obey her and do as she said, and in particular to get rid of the evidence of Muggle ancestors in the Maundy line. The spell was to cause me pain if I didn’t.” He stepped forwards, and maybe because of the assured way in which he moved, Malfoy lifted his wings and dropped his arms and let Harry do it. “You ought to have known better. I’ve resisted the Imperius Curse, and I’ve been through worse pain than that.”
            Maundy just looked at him.
            Ron was the one who drew Harry’s attention away from her, by leaning forwards and clasping Harry’s arm. He seemed to want to feel that the bone was unshattered, and he shook Harry’s arm back and forth a few times. Malfoy uttered a low hiss, but calmed down when Harry reached back and stroked one of his wings.
            “What’s the Pain Geis?” Ron whispered, but the room was silent enough that everyone heard him. Harry was a little surprised the shouting hadn’t already started up again, but he’d take it.
            “It’s a spell that forces the victim to suffer until they do what the caster wants,” said Harry, and he looked back at Maundy again. She seemed in no hurry to leave. He wondered if she was that confident in her own magical power. “They know that they’re under the spell and they can resist it, unlike the Imperius Curse, but they also suffer so much that most of them don’t. And most of them don’t talk about it, either.”
            “How did you know what it was?” Malfoy’s voice might have been snowfall. “It’s not a very common spell to use as punishment on someone, anymore.”
            Harry managed to smile. He hoped it was a smile, at least. Ron was giving him a concerned look again. “Someone tried to cast it on me right after the war.”
            “Who?”
            Harry shook his head. He was too alert to Malfoy’s moods not to know how much danger that little whisper held. “It doesn’t matter. The Ministry found them, and they agreed not to do it anymore, on penalty of going to Azkaban.” He faced Maundy again.
            Malfoy nuzzled the back of his neck. “You will tell me who.”
            “Later,” said Harry. “Not now.” And Malfoy seemed to understand what he meant, because he nodded and looked over Harry’s shoulder at Maundy himself.
            “That was stupid of you, to cast such a spell on a Veela’s mate,” said Malfoy casually. Harry once again touched his wing, and Malfoy bowed his head in what Harry understood as another nod, although he didn’t think anyone else did. “Why did you do that?”
            Maundy waited until everyone was looking at her; even the red-faced Carnavon had calmed down and seemed to want an answer. “I despise Muggles,” she said, in a clear voice like a ringing bell. “I despise the people who would force me to associate with them. I despise Muggleborns.” She looked at Hermione. Harry wondered how she could have hidden the loathing that carved deep lines in her face, but clearly she had managed. “I will have none of this nonsense that says we should associate with each other, or be friends, or marry into them.”
            Her children drew close around her at the last word. Harry wondered if that was just because Hermione had found a few books and scrolls and records that indicated other members of the Maundy family had slept with Muggles, or because of something else.
            “No one’s saying you have to,” Hermione began. “We’re just saying that it’s silly to say Muggleborns are lesser creatures because—”
            “They are,” said Maundy. “They utterly are.” She turned to Harry. “It would have been simpler if you would have let me command you into leaving me alone. I do not care what other families do, as long as the move to permit Muggles into our world does not grow too big.”
            “I was never going to let that happen,” said Harry. “You know I want peace, and that means some acceptance.”
            “There is not going to be that,” said Maundy. “And the Pain Geis was the lesser price. I came here today as my own representative.” She raised her hand, and something small and dark red rose buzzing from her palm.
            Malfoy screeched and shielded Harry with his wings again. Staring up at the red thing, Harry thought it looked like a dragon, made of glass or some other transparent material. Its wings clattered fast enough that it had to be artificial, not real.
            The buzzing thing looked at him, and then dived down at him.
            Harry reached for his wand, but Malfoy had already blurred off the ground, straight at the thing. Harry blinked, and saw a white shape hit a red one. For a moment, the red shape tilted off-center, and Harry thought he saw a burst of blood. But it was bright scarlet glass, ringing down around Harry in shards. He raised an Impervious Charm to avoid it, and grabbed Hermione, who was staring with her mouth open and hadn’t cast her own charm. Ron had already prudently ducked beneath Harry’s.
            Malfoy gave a flutter of his wings and settled back on the ground. For a second, Harry thought he’d been injured, and started forwards, but then he realized Malfoy was holding a single piece of glass. It looked as though he’d punched it.
            “I ask you again,” Malfoy said, and his voice had become a growing buzz, so he sounded like a swarm of bees. “Why would you attack a Veela’s mate when you had to know the price?”
            Maundy might have looked a little paler, but Harry had to admit, it was hard to see against her naturally paler coloration. She managed to laugh and shake her head, and hold out one hand as though she was cupping another invisible dragon in it.
            “Everyone knows that the bond you have isn’t strong,” she said. “How can it be, when you’ve been enemies since you were children and the first thing Mr. Potter did was reject you in the middle of the Ministry?”
            Harry stepped out from behind the Impervious Charm this time. Malfoy was standing as though Maundy had caught him with a Stoneskin Spell of her own, and Harry knew they had to respond, or make it seem as if Maundy had won.
            “Your spies haven’t told you the latest gossip,” he said. “I wonder if you can still trust them? It would be amusing if you can’t.”
            Maundy’s neck jerked a little. Harry smiled. He had practiced and practiced that tone, talking with other people and by himself, until it was perfect. They might hate him and think he was a blood traitor and a Muggle-lover—or someone who was way too forgiving of pure-bloods, if they were Muggleborn—but they had to pay attention when he talked like that.
            Maundy waited, and Harry waited. Maundy didn’t have as much patience as he did, though. She had probably never waited on someone to give her food in her life. “What gossip?” she asked, and it was a hiss.
            Not the kind I want to understand with Parseltongue. “I’ve moved into Malfoy Manor,” Harry said, raising his head and looking at her through half-closed eyes. “I’ve decided to give this bond a go. It might be harder than I thought, but at least I’m not running the other way. Malfoy needs me, and I’d like to give him a chance.”
            Maundy stood as if turned to steel. Malfoy edged slowly backwards, as though thinking Harry would run any second, and leaned a wing against his shoulder. Harry tilted his head so that his cheek rested on the feathers, and he closed his eyes. He didn’t need to look at Maundy to know that she wouldn’t try anything else.
            There was the rush of fire, and when Harry opened his eyes again, Maundy and her brood were gone.
            Harry smiled.
*
            “We have to get someone from Diagon Alley or the Ministry to take a look at this glass and see what that dragon was made of…”
            Granger had taken possession of the shard of glass Draco had saved from the dragon and was clucking and talking over it. Sometimes Harry answered her. But Draco felt distant from them, as though he was underwater.
            He didn’t know what to feel about Harry’s declarations. He knew that they had most likely only happened in the first place because Harry wanted the political advantage of the bond, and none of the political disadvantages. He wanted to look strong in front of Maundy and her ilk, and not weak.
            But Harry had made him a promise to tell him a secret later. He had told Maundy that her information was outdated. He had done something to show that he accepted the bond, which was more than Draco had ever thought he would get from him.
            “Malfoy? Are you all right?”
            It was Weasley’s voice, strangely enough. Draco turned towards him. Weasley was standing with his body angled towards Granger, but his attention was all on Draco.
            “Yes,” said Draco, and coughed. His voice hadn’t come out quite right enough to convince someone else that he was okay. “I don’t have a settled bond yet, and Maundy attacked my mate. There’s a limit to how comfortable I can feel.”
            Weasley considered him so closely that Draco shifted his wings. Then Weasley whispered, “Do you want me to talk to Harry?”
            “I think he knows Maundy is dangerous now and he can’t invite every pure-blood who seems interested to these meetings,” said Draco, and then caught Weasley’s eye and shook his head. “No. Not about the bond. Granger investigated and told him some things about the heart of the house, and that irritated him enough to fling me against a wall. You have to leave us to work this out.”
            And isn’t that a surreal thing to say to a Weasley. But perhaps Draco should have considered his life surreal since the day he’d found out Harry Potter was a mate.
            “You didn’t talk to him about the heart of the house?”
            Draco flushed a little. “Well, I wanted him to show interest in the bond, and ask, and he didn’t. And I thought he must have known something.”
            “Harry was raised outside the wizarding world, Malfoy. He doesn’t know.”
            “So everyone keeps telling me.” Draco glanced again at Harry, who was performing some sort of detection spell on the piece of red glass now. “And I realize that he doesn’t have any idea of a Veela bond being an honor. But it would help me if he would ask, and show that he does care about it, after all.”
            “It’s more than that, Malfoy,” said Weasley, and blinked slowly at him. “You’re talking like Harry was raised by a family of Muggleborns or something. But Harry was raised in complete ignorance of his being a wizard. He thought he was a Muggle until he was eleven. He thought his parents were Muggles.”
            Draco raised one hand before his face as if to capture a leaf. His heart was beating as slowly in his chest as Weasley had blinked, and he wanted to tell Weasley that was ridiculous, that no one could have been as ignorant of their heritage as that, that there had to be a different, alternative explanation.
            But it would explain a lot about Harry. To go in one day—one month?—from someone ordinary to a wizard, and then the Savior of the Wizarding World. Maybe it could explain even the things about Harry Draco had thought were more than a bit mental.
            “Accidental magic,” he said, or asked. He wasn’t sure that he could tell, from the croaking nature of his voice, which one.
            Weasley shook his head. “He thought they were weird things that happened around him. He didn’t know they were magic.” He snorted a little. “Honestly, Malfoy. You know how carefully the Ministry tries to keep Muggles separate from wizards. Most Muggles don’t think about magic because they know it doesn’t exist. Harry just thought that he was weird somehow. A freak. That’s what he said his Muggle family called him.”
            Draco stared at Harry, and his heart pounded some more. He wanted to talk to Harry, to take him away and ask him if even now he realized how special he was.
            But he had to, right? He was making political connections now, and taking advantage of his fame to play a role in the peace process. He cast spells and even used wandless magic in a way that was as natural as breathing. He had to know.
            Harry looked up and caught his eye. Draco nodded in reassurance. Probably too early to hope that the bond was transmitting his emotions back to Harry.
            He looked at Weasley. “I don’t want to ask more,” he said firmly. “I promised Harry that I would wait until he wanted to tell me about that part of his life. But it—helps, a little, to know that he didn’t know he was a wizard.”
            “No, he never did,” said Weasley, and his face twisted in pity he probably hated to feel as much as Draco hated to see it. “And there are things you can ask him about, right? Things since the war?”
            Draco nodded, wondering what Weasley was on about now.
            “Then maybe ask him why he knows so much about the Pain Geis.” Weasley cast Harry a look that Draco didn’t know how to interpret. “Ask him why he’s driving himself to the point of collapse to get this peace resolved.”
            “He said you knew,” said Draco, stunned into speaking.
            “I know what he’s said,” Weasley muttered. “But I don’t think that’s all there is to it.”
            Draco watched Harry, how he stood with his attention focused on Granger but an abstract expression on his face all the same, as if he was thinking distantly of all the plans he wanted to put in motion. Yes, maybe not.
*
Marron: Unless Maundy has something even more important to her than the threat of being attacked by a Veela.
Meechypoo: Harry hasn’t even unleashed his magical power yet. He doesn’t see a need unless his life is genuinely in danger—and Draco took care of the one threat he would have used a spell on. So Harry’s abilities would probably continue to be underestimated.
delia cerrano: Yes, and it shows him more ways he can help.
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Nature of the Beast