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Fairest Creatures	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 22177 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Eighteen—Visits From Mad Healers

            “Auror Potter. I’ve finally got through to you.”

            Harry opened his eyes and rolled over at once with his wand in hand. He’d got a few owls in the last week that called him Auror Potter, but no one who did it face to face. Draco always used his first name, his friends did too when they Flooed him, and the teachers used a mixture of “Mr. Potter” and “Harry” depending on how close they felt to him.

            Or maybe the way the wind is blowing today. Harry kept getting it from Professor Grunnell even though all she had done was welcome him to the school and teach him the same things in class that she taught everyone else.

            His Floo connection was lit and open, because of course it was. Harry had wanted to leave it open in case something happened to Hermione or Ron or another of the Weasleys during the month he was here that they needed to tell him about immediately. But he was starting to think he should just shut the stupid thing. At least it would keep people from using it to contact him when he didn’t want them to or sneaking into his rooms.

            “Auror Potter,” said Healer Kilhoun, and leaned forwards and lowered her voice a little as though she assumed Harry slept with some sort of guardian on his virtue who would come storming into the room the instant they heard voices there. “I’m so glad I managed to reach you. I was afraid someone else would before I did.”

            Harry blinked. That did sound like something had happened he had to know about, although not to any of the Weasleys. “Is there bad news from the wizarding world?” he whispered, and sat up, keeping the sheet tucked in around his waist.

            That impulse prickled against his skin, and he paused for a moment. He wouldn’t have hesitated to appear in front of a Healer without a shirt before. And his wings could close around him and hide most of his skin if he was modest, anyway.

            But just now, he felt as though no one should see or touch his chest, even if old scars were the most embarrassing thing they’d see. That was for his mate.

            Stupid Veela thoughts, Harry thought, and focused on Kilhoun as she nodded and said, “Very bad news.”

            Harry breathed in smoothly, then exhaled, reaching for the “Auror calm” he’d been taught to comfort people who didn’t yet know they’d lost loved ones to a murder or accident. “All right. What is it?” He made his voice soothing, too, because people who were excited and yelling weren’t the most coherent witnesses.

            Healer Kilhoun leaned towards him again. Even green from the light of the flames, she looked somber.

            “Healer Veraz went to your superiors and convinced them,” Healer Kilhoun whispered with all the solemn air of a secret, “that the stripes on your feathers were just ordinary blue.”

            Harry closed his eyes. Then he spent a moment breathing through his nose, so he could preserve that Auror calm and not simply scream at Kilhoun until she disintegrated like the nightmare she’d just become.

            “Auror Potter? Are you listening to me? We could have a serious situation on our hands. If Veraz manages to convince them that you’re an ordinary Veela transformation instead of an unusual one, then they might cut some of our funds to study forced transformations.”

            Harry opened his eyes and looked at the flames above Kilhoun’s head and around the sides of her cheeks. It was the only way he could even imagine remaining calm right now. He said, with emotions that he clamped down on, “You know my transformation was unusual. You saw it and studied it yourself. All you have to do is let some of the Aurors look at your notes.”

            “But then Velaz would steal them,” Kilhoun protested. She shook her head, and leaned towards him again. “No. I need a feather from you, or even better, a personal testimony. Can you come to the Ministry with some proof that the stripes on your wings are cerulean?”

            Harry avoided screaming by thinking about how it would probably bring Draco flying into his room, certain that he was being murdered, and the last thing Harry wanted to do was disturb Draco’s sleep. He also avoided it by looking away from the fireplace and speaking in a light voice. “You wouldn’t get the proof that you need, anyway. My stripes look different now.”

            And he spread his wings and exposed the black bars around the blue ones to Kilhoun’s eager eyes, even as he thought that he should keep them close and tucked down. No one but his mate deserved to look at his naked chest, and no one but his mate deserved to look at his mate bars.

            Everyone sees them every day.

            But they’re other Veela, with the hope of mates of their own. It’s different.

            Harry clenched his teeth and spread his wings to his widest span. He knew where those thoughts came from now, and he wanted to work with them, not against them—when he was with Draco. But he also wanted to keep his head and know that he had the means to send nosy Healers packing if he had to.

            Healer Kilhoun gaped at his wings, then leaned back in the fireplace and shook her head a little. “What makes those different colors appear, I wonder? Does it have something to do with the intensity of the cerulean? Or feather growth since you arrived at the school? There can be no doubt that your wings are fully-grown in now, if they weren’t when you were still under our care—”

            “The black bars means that I have a mate,” Harry said, trying hard not to clench his teeth so he wouldn’t scream in frustration. “That’s all they mean. My mate and I have compatible magic. That’s what it means. You don’t have to come up with any theories about feather growth or different colors.”

            Kilhoun ignored him, frowning at the largest of the black bars until Harry had the urge to tuck his wing against his side to hide it. “But I wonder what that means? That one? It has a curve to it. It seems to follow the edge of the wing. I wonder…”

            “I told you what it means.” Harry leaned forwards and spoke both slowly and loudly. “I have a mate.” He knew the individual black bars didn’t have different meanings. It was the sort of thing both Testig and Draco would have delighted in telling him, so it wasn’t true.

            “And it does change the color of the original stripes.” Kilhoun tapped her finger against her teeth. “I never heard of a Veela having two colors before.” She gave Harry a smile that she probably meant to be comforting instead of frightening, but Harry recoiled anyway, it was so full of enthusiasm. “You might be even stranger than we’ve been led to believe, Auror Potter! Please come to St. Mungo’s as soon as you can for some more tests.”

            “Did you hear me?” Harry demanded. He thought he knew what was happening—the same way people would ignore werewolves when they tried to appeal for their rights—but he had never thought it would happen when Veela were so like humans and had that allure. “I know what it means! I don’t need to come in for more tests!”

            “You must have misunderstood. I’ve never heard of a Veela having more than two colors befo—”

            Harry did what he should have done in the first place, and waved his wand to close down the Floo connection. Hearing Kilhoun’s voice break off in mid-word was so great a relief that he dropped straight down to the pillows with a huff and sprawled in the middle of his spread wings.

            He had never thought that someone was capable of so literally ignoring a magical creature’s requests for them to shut up and stop. Why would they be? Magical creatures who could speak—and who didn’t spend all of their time apart from humans, the way the centaurs did in the Forbidden Forest—should be able to make themselves heard.

            Not if the human doesn’t want to listen.

            Harry nodded and sat up. This time, he cast Floo powder into the fire and waited until an image of Hermione appeared. It was early in the morning, but he knew she wouldn’t care much about the time given what had happened.

            Sure enough, Hermione sounded alert when she appeared in the fire. “Harry? What’s wrong?”

            “I just had my first taste of having someone ignore everything I was saying because I’m a Veela,” said Harry, and saw the way that she smiled, like a fox getting a bite of something small and crunchy. “I mean, it was one of the Healers who first saw me when I transformed, which doesn’t argue well for their sanity, but—”

            “It makes you feel small,” Hermione interrupted, as though she was reading from a book. “It makes you feel as though everyone is standing there and ignoring you even as they take other people seriously.”

            “Yes, exactly,” said Harry, and felt his wings relax. Maybe his Veela instincts didn’t want him showing the black bars on his wings only to people they perceived as threats, because he felt perfectly comfortable sitting up in front of Hermione with no sheet on. “I don’t know if we can hit the Healers with anything legal, but there has to be something we can do.”

            “How did they contact you? By owl?” Hermione was already rustling around, from the sounds of it, probably pulling down parchment and a quill.

            “No, by Floo,” said Harry shortly. “Somehow Healer Kilhoun got access to my Floo connection. I mean, I know it was only because I had it open, but I didn’t really think anyone from the Ministry or St. Mungo’s could just Floo me.”

            Hermione looked up with a little chuckle. “You didn’t give her permission? You didn’t write her a letter that said she could treat you that way or anything?”

            “No, of course not. Why would I want to listen to a lot of Healers who only wanted to argue about the color of the stripes on my wings?”

            “The color of your what?”

            “Exactly,” said Harry, with a wave of his hands.

            After a moment of staring, Hermione evidently decided that she didn’t need to know all about that, and only shook her head and went back to writing. “There are laws about Healers and members of the Ministry contacting Veela when they sojourn among their own kind,” she said in satisfaction. “They were started long ago to keep infatuated boys from bothering Veela women, but they’ll work just as well for your case. There’s nothing in the laws that say the person contacting you has to be male, or in love. If you felt bothered, that’s enough.”

            “But why would it matter if it was by Floo or owl?”

            “Floo’s considered more invasive under the law,” said Hermione, twining a frizz of hair around one finger. “And if you’d sent them an owl first, of course they would have your permission to contact you. Or they could pretend they had it, anyway. But this way…we’re going to give her so much trouble, Harry.”

            Harry could grin back, and remind himself of the scary side of Hermione he’d seen when he visited her the other day.

            It seemed he would need to get used to having scary people on his side. They were there whether or not he wanted them to be.

*

            Harry reached out a hand in curiosity as he watched the owl winging towards him as he and Draco walked to the dining hall for lunch. He wondered if it was Healer Kilhoun writing with an apology. Maybe Hermione had confronted her already.

            But when the owl landed on his arm and held out its foot, the letter it bore turned out to be from Ron.

            Mate, what in the world did you say to Hermione? She’s been tearing around the house this morning cackling, and she actually called the Ministry and begged a few hours’ leave from this meeting she was supposed to have. She’s too busy to tell me much beyond “Veela” and “Healers,” and I tried to Floo you but you weren’t in your room. You have to tell me!

            “Good news from Weasley?” Draco asked, moving up to Harry’s back and touching him on the nape of his neck and the ends of his hair with one wing.

            Harry sighed and canted his head back until the whole back of his neck was resting on the edge of Draco’s wing. “Yes. Sort of. I told you about the Healer and Hermione.”

            “Yes.” Draco hissed the word. He was as vengeful as Hermione, but he favored “more direct methods,” as he had called them when Harry asked him to explain. Then Harry had had to persuade him out of flying to the Ministry or St. Mungo’s and ripping Healer Kilhoun’s face off.

            “Well, Hermione’s too busy to tell Ron what’s going on. Or enjoying the secret. So Ron owled me to find out.”

            Draco chuckled, low and vicious. “I think you should tell him. He’s closer to the Healer than I am, and he can punish her without killing her.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “He doesn’t have the same kind of stake in it that you and Hermione do. He wouldn’t punish her. I’ll write to him after lunch.”

            He continued walking for a minute, and then realized he was walking alone. He turned around and frowned at Draco. “Are you coming?”

            “Yes.” Draco followed him slowly, his head cocked as if he literally wanted to study Harry from a new angle. “You really think he wouldn’t go after the Healer to punish her?”

            “Why would he?”

            “Why wouldn’t he? If he doesn’t, then he’s not much of a friend.”

            Harry felt as though someone was pulling at the feathers in his wings, making them stand on end. “Listen,” he said. “You just shouldn’t say that about Ron. We’ve earned our friendship, okay?”

            It wasn’t just the troll and the Horcrux hunt and all the other things in between that Ron had been there for. It was training as Aurors together, and the way that people had tried to separate them after the war, either because they wanted to date him, or date Ron, or because they believed someone like Ron Weasley wasn’t “worthy” of the celebrity they thought of Harry as being. It was one of the main reasons Harry hated admiring attention. Sooner or later, other people would decide they knew what was best for him, and that included picking his friends.

            “Sorry.” Draco blinked and looked at Harry as if it really did surprise him that insults to Ron would bother him.

            “He wouldn’t punish her,” Harry said, smoothing down his wings and resisting the urge to preen them with his nose as Draco sometimes did. There was such a thing as being too bird-like. “He would laugh, though. That’s one reason I want to write.”

            “Because it’s so amusing, people stalking you and ignoring you,” said Draco, leaning over Harry and using his own fingers to preen Harry’s feathers. Harry sighed and dropped his head forwards a little. For once, he was grateful for Veela customs. The parade of people passing them for lunch flapped over or walked around them, paying no attention.

            “I like making people laugh,” Harry said, shrugging and starting to walk again. “Whether or not it’s personally amusing for me.”

            Draco seemed to be thinking about that, and he didn’t say much during lunch, only grunting a little when Harry asked him if he wanted more cheese or a different kind of bread. When Harry finally waved a wing in front of his face, though, Draco caught the tip and stroked it once before letting it go. Harry had to work to swallow back an inappropriate response.

            “There’s something you could do to make me laugh,” Draco said.

            “What? And don’t say it’s letting you at Healer Kilhoun,” Harry added, before that option could come up again. “Because I would still say no.”

            Draco pouted and ducked his head, but shook it, too. “No. I wouldn’t ask you that.” He hesitated some more, and Harry ate most of a pile of crisps before he started talking again. “I want to know if you’ll come with me on a courtship visit.”

            “Where?”

            “The Manor.”

            “If we can stay away from the cellars and other areas that have bad memories associated with them,” Harry said, and had to pause to blink at the look of dawning wonder on Draco’s face, as if he had never thought that he would get a chance to visit there with Harry. “Then sure.”

            Draco seized Harry’s hand and kissed it. Harry closed his eyes and trilled in pleasure, and Draco chuckled.

            “Then,” Draco said, pushing back from the chair and standing with a bow made a lot more dramatic by his wings, “excuse me. I have to go and make the Manor ready to be seen by a potential mate.”

            “What about your afternoon classes?” Harry called after him. At the very least, Draco had History with him and a class in mastering allure that Harry wasn’t advanced enough to be in yet.

            Draco glanced over his shoulder, over the shining curve of one wing, and pinned him with a stare. “What do you think I consider more important?” he asked. “Really?”

            Harry sat back with a pleasant shiver and watched with a smile he couldn’t help as Draco made his way out of the dining hall. Some things about Veela were still ridiculous, like most of the thoughts he’d had when confronting Kilhoun, but at least there was a lot he liked.

*

            SP777: Well, a young married couple where one of them constantly wants to kill people, yes.

            I’m sorry to hear about the cockatoo.

            Skybee: Thank you!
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