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
- 18
- 19
- 20
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Nineteen—Broken

            Draco scowled and sat back, staring at the parchment on his desk. He’d been doing this for the last half-hour. By now, if he had held true to his intentions when he first sat down, he should have filled the parchment with a list of things that he was going to talk to Harry about the next time he saw him.

            And then he would think that it was ridiculous, even childish, to make a list like that, and he should sit down with Harry, start talking, and let the words come naturally.

            But when he did that, he only seemed to get himself into further trouble, either lying or saying things that hurt Harry. So he should make the list.

            But that wasn’t the sort of thing he had envisioned ever needing to do once he had found his chosen. It seemed stupid and artificial. He wanted a pure bond of the kind that he’d dreamed of and read about in his ancestors’ diaries and observed in action between Owen and Lucy.

            So the end result was that he had nothing written yet, and the conflicting thoughts in his head were strong enough to make his hand shake.

            Draco hissed and tossed his quill on the table. If he couldn’t make a list on parchment, then he would start one in his head and see what luck he had.

            The truth. That was the first thing, Draco thought. It had to be. He hadn’t lied to Harry until they actually had the confrontation. All he had done was provide Pansy with information that she could have got elsewhere, from any pure-blood family who kept the common records of the marriages and exchanges between them. So he would tell Harry that Harry couldn’t fairly accuse him of trying to release Laurent.

            Draco would have liked to, yes. That was not the same thing.

            And next, that he never wanted to be held down by Harry’s magic again. He understood Harry got angry and resorted to his magic in an attempt to defend himself, but Draco hadn’t approached him, hurt him, or even tried to touch him. He hadn’t spread his wings or showed any other Veela features, either. There was no need for that kind of thing.

            And next, that he needed…

            That was where he ran into problems, because his need was Harry’s nightmare.

            Draco massaged his forehead and tried to decide what he could reasonably ask of Harry. Time spent with him. Honest conversation, and honesty when Harry was wounded and needed help. More attention to his own life, which Harry had practically agreed to give already. Gentle touches. Unquestioning defense, the kind of thing that would be easy for Harry, because he gave it to everyone who crossed his path or who asked him to defend them.

            He wanted more than that. He wanted Harry to touch him, kiss him, and let Draco sleep in the same bed. Invitations to Harry’s house and eating food that Draco had prepared were next on the list. And there was the problem of the Blazing Season, but Draco set that looming specter aside for now, because he literally couldn’t think of a solution so far, and it would only distress him.

            How far can I go in asking for the things I want?

            Draco sighed. He had wanted to come to a certainty, as he had about the things he would tell Harry, but there wasn’t a way to do that. He would ask Harry to stretch his limits and go as far as he comfortably could. This part of their relationship had to depend a lot more on Harry’s willingness to act than on Draco’s willingness to speak.

            I knew the parchment wasn’t the right way to do this, Draco thought triumphantly, and crushed it into a ball, flinging it in a corner of the room.

            A house-elf appeared at once, picked it up, and vanished with it, but it was the principle of the thing.

*

            Lucy spread her wings.

            Harry had expected it, and it was still a shock. He stared at the feathers and found himself clutching his wand. He knew he had put it away when he first came into the house. But there it was, and it felt like the only shield between him and being seized and held securely in a prison that he couldn’t escape.

            Such a fragile shield, he thought, and then Lucy leaned towards him.

            Harry felt his mind fracture with panic. He leaped to his feet and retreated behind the chair. Lucy’s lips tightened in exasperation, and she lifted her hands as if she wanted to show him that she still had human fingernails instead of claws.

            It didn’t matter. Harry was gasping and shaking, and he would start whimpering in a minute.

            “I am not hurting you,” Lucy said. She had drained all emotion from her voice, so Harry couldn’t hear the contempt he was sure she felt for him. “I have a chosen of my own, and don’t want to hold you. I only spread my wings now because you asked, and I’m sure Draco would say the same thing. What pleasure would he have in frightening his chosen out of his wits? You are here to learn, remember.”

            Harry lowered his wand with a gigantic effort. Then he stepped out from behind the chair and walked closer to Lucy.

            It hurt. The fear manifested in his chest as the inability to breathe, and he huffed and heaved and stopped a foot away, swaying. He could feel his lungs working without producing any effect. He would faint in a moment from sheer lack of air.

            King moved behind him and clapped him on the back.

            Harry gasped, and that made new air flood his chest. He looked into Lucy’s eyes and focused on them, narrowing his vision to exclude everything else, until he was sure that he would continue to breathe on his own. Then he turned to the wings again.

            They were—intimidating. They shimmered, and Harry felt as if the haze of light they shed had moved into his eyes and was trying to blind him, but he forced himself to squint past it and concentrate on the structure of the wings themselves, using his Auror skills.

            They were made of layered silver feathers, fading to white at the very tips. Here and there was a spot of black or deep blue. Harry didn’t know what that meant. Laurent hadn’t been interested in explaining the wings to Harry, just in using them on him.

            Harry’s teeth chattered and a cold shudder crawled up his spine, which made it try to curve. He wanted to fall on the floor and hide his face. He wanted to wrap his arms around himself and stay there until this went away.

            He wanted to use his magic to remove the menace in front of him, and the glass in the windows was shivering from the force of that desire.

            “You can do this,” King said from right beside Harry’s ear. His voice was so steady and calm that Harry’s throat ached. “I have faith in you, and so does my Lucy, or she never would have volunteered for this in the first place.”

            Harry nodded, exhaled, and focused on the wings again. The pattern of blue and black dots was regular, he noted. It formed a fan-pattern around the central point of Lucy. The wings trembled and flexed, and he thought he could see how Lucy would fly, how they would hurl her upwards and she would circle overhead on light vanes, swifter and more gracefully than anyone could fly on a broom.

            A pang of envy struck him. Harry wasn’t proud of that, but he closed his eyes, soaking in the emotion, reveling in it. It was the first time since Laurent that he had felt something other than fear when looking at a Veela’s wings.

            King tapped him on the shoulder. “Open your eyes,” he said. “Looking away like this accomplishes no purpose.”

            Shivering, helpless between the forces of his fear and his determination, Harry looked again. Lucy arched her head back and expanded the wings still further. They blazed around her body like a peacock’s tail.

            Blazed…

            Harry sagged to his knees, vomiting. The bolts of rage and shame and fear that traveled through him felt like random electric impulses, appearing and vanishing again so quickly that he didn’t really have time to feel them before they were gone.

            He curled up when they were done and knelt there, hugging his knees, his head hanging.

            Hatred curled through him in black tendrils so thick that they threatened to strangle him. It was hatred for himself, though the hatred for Laurent was mixed in there and formed no small part of it. He should have been able to stand on his own feet. He shouldn’t need help in the first place. He shouldn’t be afraid of something as small as a pair of spread wings, not when he had faced down Voldemort and the Dark magical creatures and wizards that he hunted without blinking.

            It was hatred, and not the love that Draco would probably say that it was, which forced him back to his feet. King, who had been holding out a hand as if he would touch Harry’s shoulder, stepped back, eyes narrowed as they focused on him. Harry glanced to the side and noticed that someone had already Vanished his vomit. Good. He fixed his gaze on Lucy, who had retracted her wings, and said, “Let’s try again.”

            “You are shaky on your feet,” King said, in the tone of someone only making an observation, but it still made Harry grit his teeth. “We should wait.”

            “I don’t want to,” Harry said. “I want to get through as much of this stupid fear as I possibly can.”

            “This is not a perfect cure,” Lucy said, studying him as if she didn’t know whether he was brave or an idiot. “You will still be uncomfortable around Veela and tend to start when your consort suddenly reveals himself.”

            “I know that,” Harry said. “But coddling myself for the last few years has done no good at all. I thought I was mostly over it, and then I realized that I could think that way because I just didn’t see any Veela. Spread your wings again. Please,” he added begrudgingly, when he realized that Lucy’s stare had sharpened.

            For some moments, she stood there and seemed to debate whether or not they should continue. Then she said, “Understand that I am doing this more for Draco’s sake than yours.”

            Harry laughed grimly. “You think I’d want you to do it for mine? I’d be happy to stay away from all Veela for the rest of my life, if it was up to me. But it’s not.”

            “So this healing is for Draco?” King’s voice asked swiftly from behind him. “Not for yourself?”

            “Yes,” Harry said. “Oh, I want to not get sick to my stomach every time I look at a Veela’s wings. That part is for me. But if I didn’t have a Veela lover, I wouldn’t feel such a pressing need to get used to this.”

            King opened his mouth, and then shut it again. He was frowning, but he didn’t say anything. Lucy said, “I am going to grow my claws as well as my wings. Look at me, please.”

            It was the most polite she’d been to him since he got there. Harry focused on that and not on the sense memories that abruptly swarmed over him, the memories of Laurent’s claws parting his skin and gripping his hips. He stepped back until he was sure he would be able to see all of Lucy and then nodded.

            He watched the way the wings slid out of her body this time, which was something he hadn’t been able to think about since Laurent was arrested. He watched her shoulders hunch and the skin there part into bloodless slits, from which the wings extended and unfurled like new leaves. He didn’t get to watch the transformation of her nails into claws in the same way; when he looked at them, they were already long, slender, spiky things, tipped with hooks and looking as if they were made of glowing crystal.

            Harry swallowed. Then he swallowed again. His throat was so dry that it clicked when he did so.

            Lucy moved a step nearer to him. Cloaked in those silvery wings, she looked unearthly, inhuman. Harry shivered and fought the urge to back away, or strike out at her with his magic.

            The window behind her shattered as his power sought some other outlet. King stepped around Harry, but Lucy shook her head and held up one hand. It was a perfect tool to grip someone, Harry thought, staring at her thin fingers and her claws as if hypnotized. And to rip them open.

            “No,” Lucy said. “He did not hurt me. And I think this is what he needs—the ability to defend himself as a Veela walks towards him. To choose.”

            She went on moving, lifting and placing her feet slowly, delicately, taking short steps. But she was advancing, and the distance between her and Harry was becoming smaller and smaller, a matter of inches rather than feet now.

            And still, Harry hadn’t destroyed her.

            There were glass slivers in her hair and cold sweat all over his body. But she was still there.

            Lucy smiled. Harry didn’t think the smile was for him, but for something more abstract. For how much he cared about Draco, perhaps, or his self-control. “Good,” she said. Her voice was higher-pitched than it had been when she was speaking to King, and Harry felt his breathing speed up. Lucy nodded to him, proving she had noticed, and said, “I am going to trill now. This is something necessary to Veela.”

            “Is it?” Harry asked, his voice bitter and foreign to him. He didn’t know he was going to say the next words until he had spoken them. “Laurent only used it when he wanted to make me fall asleep or do what he wanted.”

            “It is an expression of love,” said Lucy. “The more I hear of your Laurent, the more I want to kill him.” It was softly said, but Harry blinked. Lucy was already going on by the time he thought of trying to say something—not that he really knew what he would have said. “It is meant to soothe the chosen, yes, but more than that. It reassures the chosen, tells him that he will always be protected.” For a moment, she gave a private smile in King’s direction. By the time she faced Harry, her face was cool and remote once more. “It forms a bond between them, and ties them together all the more strongly.”

            Harry squared his shoulders and shifted his feet. He hated the thought of being tied to and dependent on someone else.

            Then he reminded himself that was the kind of thing that made him afraid he might abuse Draco. Being tied to someone could mean any number of things, and it didn’t necessarily make him the childlike one that Draco could rape. But neither could it make Draco into a slave who did only what Harry wanted.

            “All right,” he said.

            He didn’t hear himself say it, and tried to repeat the words, but his voice was strangled. Luckily, either from the movement of his lips or from something else, Lucy understood. She nodded and opened her mouth.

            The trill was what Harry remembered: a high, piercing, shrill sound that turned indefinably sweet as it continued, reminding Harry of lost childhood dreams of home and family. He had wanted someone to reassure him like that when he was a boy on Privet Drive, trying to believe that things would be different someday and yet not quite believing no matter how hard he labored.

            But I’m not a child, and I don’t need this now!

            Harry shuddered and reminded himself that he might need it in a different way. Draco needed it; that should be enough.

            And if he could only forget the way Laurent had used it to soothe him back into bed during those three days when he had awakened, dazed and confused, and nearly walked out of the room, remembering his job—

            The trill stopped, but the sound didn’t. Harry was screaming, he thought, and clapped his hand over his mouth, biting his fingers to make himself stop.

            “I can’t,” he said, when he took his hand away and immediately began to babble. “I can’t, I can’t, it’s too soon, this is too hard, I can’t listen to that—”

            “No one expected you to be able to do everything all at once,” King told him, eyes kind. Harry was glad he’d interrupted; he thought it was the only reason he was able to shut up. “Your progress so far is wonderful.”

            Harry bowed his head and rubbed at his aching neck and the sweat that had gathered there. “But is it enough for Draco?” he asked.

            “I cannot answer that question,” Lucy said, sounding as offended as though Harry had tried to shake the answers out of her. “Different Veela need different things from their chosen.” Harry concealed a sigh. Of course. “But you might ask what he needs before you spring to the conclusion that you cannot be it.”

            “In some ways,” Harry said, deciding that he would tell Lucy this since there was no way he could tell Draco, “it would have been easier if he never chose me. He would never have been subjected to what he’s had to go through, and neither would I.”

            Lucy looked at him the way a hawk would look at a mouse. A confused hawk, Harry corrected himself in his mind. She was puzzled behind the haughtiness. “His not choosing you would not have prevented the rape.”

            “No,” Harry said. “But it would have prevented…this.” He looked at the place on the floor where he had vomited.

            “That is nonsense,” Lucy said, and now she was moving towards him, and she still had the wings and the claws even if she had put the trill away, and Harry instinctively raised his wand. Lucy didn’t seem to notice, or to be inclined to stop. Her eyes were fierce and furious. “You would rather go unhealed? You would rather Draco suffer the loss of the person he most wanted? You would rather that you, yourself, be without someone who will love you and protect you?”

            “I could do without the protection, yes!” Harry snarled. Another window shattered, and King stepped up behind Lucy, resting his hands between her wings. Harry hoped that would calm her. “Stay back!”

            “No,” Lucy said, and she didn’t shout. Her voice was low and cold. “Why should I? You are a coward, your great reputation nothing but a lie. You would have hidden within yourself if Draco hadn’t chosen you, and shivered, and wondered why everyone always avoided you. You would have ended up driving your friends away at last, because you could let no one in, and you were obsessed with controlling all around you. And you dare to lament that someone chose you who did not have to, that a Veela will give you the blessing of his companionship? You are a limited man, a coward, cringing back from the consequences of the rape and making no attempt to build a life for yourself, determined to bleed out before you would allow someone to lift a hand to help, curled around the rape as if it were the only defining thing that ever happened to you—”

            Harry snarled.

            He very nearly killed Lucy. He very nearly did.

            But he remembered, at the last moment, the words in the book about how the consorts of Veela could become their abusers, and the way Draco’s eyes had looked when Harry used his magic to pin him to the floor.

            He raised his power to create walls around him instead, shimmering transparent shields that turned into walls of white marble, stronger than any Veela’s wings. A brief storm raged there, spikes of sharp rain falling on Harry’s head.

            Because it was magical rain, it did not simply wet his hair. The water trickled into his ears, and with it came Lucy’s words and the nearly identical ones he had whispered to himself over and over since those three days he had spent under Laurent’s control.

            You’re a coward.

            You should have done something to stop him before it got that far.

            You should never have allowed him near you in the first place. You should have seen what was false behind his smile and his pretty words. You should have known that he could never have wanted to date you.

            You should have been stronger. You should have been wiser. You should have been faster. You’re not deserving of Draco’s love.

            You don’t deserve to be healed.

            The rain went on and on, the words searing across and scarring Harry’s brain, and Harry could do nothing but curl under the pounding. He was weeping, or so he thought, but the tears mingled with the magic washing down his face and lost their identity in it. He was screaming, because his throat hurt, but the walls trapped the sound and made sure that he was the only one who heard it.

            As it should be. Harry did not want relative strangers to see his breakdown, especially not one stranger who had contributed to it.

            It went on and on, waves of words and waves of magic, hitting him and folding into his body and becoming a part of him. Harry had thought some of those things before, but never all at once. He had hidden them under his consuming need for independence and his anger at Laurent, and then at Draco. He had kept them imprisoned because he knew they could damage him. He had scabbed the wound over and forbore to pick at the scab.

            He had done the best he could. But his best wasn’t enough.

            In a place where no one else could intrude and see that, Harry was able to admit that, finally. He had tried. He hadn’t deserved what happened. He had been careful around Laurent at first, concerned that here was someone else who only wanted him for his fame and the rewards that would come from hanging around him. But Laurent had acted differently, and Harry could accept and trust him, for a time.

            Then he had raped Harry.

            It had happened. There was no going back or getting over it. That much, Harry knew he had accepted a long time ago.

            But he had not accepted the other part of the truth: that there was no saying it wouldn’t happen again, that there was no way of making himself safe forever from another Laurent. Unless he simply shut down and refused to date at all, and even then, an enemy could subdue him with magic and hurt him. His efforts had hurt him, and sometimes other people, without protecting him.

            His magic hovered over his shoulders and sang in his ears. Great power, yes. But it couldn’t deal with all threats.

            No matter how many healing spells he learned, he could never heal all his wounds. There would always, possibly, be a Dark wizard just a little bit faster with his wand, and that would mean he could die.

            No matter how careful he was with his food, someone could still poison the ingredients he bought, or enchant them, or drug them.

            No matter how much he refused to let someone touch him, no matter how many embraces he threw off, that wouldn’t erase the possibility that someone could pin his arms to his sides, or hit him with Incarcerous, take his wand away, and do whatever they wanted.

            No matter how hard he tried, there was no way that he could be absolutely safe.

            Harry didn’t know how long it took him to stop shaking. Long enough for both the tears and the magic to fade from his face, at least. He stood up, stretched, and gestured, knocking back the marble walls that had sprung up around him with the flex of a thought.

            They were paper walls, anyway. His real strength would have to come from others.

            Lucy and King stood waiting for him, apprehensive. Lucy was still clad in her wings and claws. Harry shuddered when he looked at her, but at least he managed not to run away screaming, and he knew that was a real accomplishment.

            “All right,” he said quietly. “I know that I’m not going to be able to do this all at once. But the more I look at the wings and the claws, the more indifferent to them I’ll be. So we’ll keep trying that, shall we?”

            Lucy exchanged looks with her consort and then bowed her head to him. “Forgive me, Auror Potter. I had no right to say the words I did.”

            “Maybe not,” Harry said calmly. “But they made me think, so thank you for that, at least. And now, I want to continue with these lessons. When would be the best time for me to come back and talk with you again?”

            Hesitantly, looking as if she couldn’t believe that he wasn’t upset, Lucy named a time. Harry nodded.

            King walked him to the door, where he stopped him with a hand on his arm. “You know that this is not a permanent solution,” King said quietly. “There is newfound courage in your eyes, now, but it will not last forever.”

            Harry grimaced. “I know.” That was the worst thing he had to deal with: the knowledge that his feeling of determination right now would fade and have to be renewed. “I’ll just have to take advantage of it while it does.”

            King nodded cautiously, studying Harry all the while. “You do not need to hammer every single flaw in you into submission,” he said. “People are allowed to make mistakes, even mistakes that hurt others.”

            “Yeah, but I’d like not to make the ones that kill people or depress them for years,” Harry said, thinking of what Draco had told him would happen if he had to give up Harry as his chosen. “I’ve accepted that it’ll take more than one session like this, though. I’ll come back when she said I should.” He nodded to King. “Thank you again.”

            King looked as if he’d have liked to say something, but Harry stepped firmly out the door and shut it behind him. Then he leaned against it for a few moments, head bowed.

            It was time to do another thing he must, before his courage ran out and he would have to start leaning on others.

            It was time to go talk with Draco.



*

            polka dot: Draco’s justification was that Pansy would just have gotten it somewhere else.

            thrnbrooke: We’ll see.

            Lady_of_Clunn: Neither of them are really capable of staying away from each other, especially right now.

            SP777: Yes, Draco is needy, but a lot of that is the fact that he badly pissed Harry off and doesn’t have contact with him right now. He went from a steady diet of contact to absolutely none.

            And I don’t think “Slytherin” is the same thing as “doesn’t need anyone.” Since Draco is a Veela in this story, he was always going to be softer now than he was before his Veela traits manifested.

            Thanks! Harry doesn’t want to beat Laurent, though, because he doesn’t ever want to see him again.

            You can send the story idea if you like, but right now, I’m kind of burned out writing to prompts, thanks to writing three fest-fics in a row.

            mrequecky: Thanks!

            luvlustblood: Thanks! I think Harry speaking honestly with Draco will also help.

            Night the Storyteller: Yes, in a way, though given what happened, maybe not the insights he was looking for.
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