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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 Nineteen—Rebuilding and Rejecting
            Harry took a deep breath before he could tell himself it was ridiculous. But there was something in the air of Hogwarts that tasted fresher than air anywhere else, he told himself, to somewhat defend against the ridiculousness. Maybe it shouldn’t, but it did. That was the only excuse he could offer for his desire to fill his lungs with it, and then turn and face the group that had gathered to discuss the rebuilding of the school, restored.
            The group would be contentious enough. There were the Greengrasses off to the left, along with a few of the other pure-blood families who had attended the meeting in the Leaky Cauldron. There were several of the Muggleborns Harry had invited to come back to the wizarding world, most of them staring at Hogwarts with much the same expression as Harry had. There were groups of people Hermione knew, and a representative from the Ministry, and—
            Harry blinked. There were also three centaurs, all of them standing so that they formed a triangle. Their hoofs scraped lightly at the ground, and they turned their heads to look at him all at the same moment.
            Harry nodded at them. He could welcome them, although he hadn’t thought they would involve themselves either in rebuilding Hogwarts or in the peace effort. They didn’t have much to do with wizarding wars, most of the time.
            He tapped his throat with his wand, and cast Sonorus. Malfoy stirred behind him, moving into a place where he could spread his wings. Even before Harry spoke a word, that attracted attention, and people turned and looked at him instead of the building.
            Harry smiled at Malfoy. He looked as if he was basking in it. Harry wondered at the simple things that could apparently make a Veela happy.
            Your mate. The things that can make your mate happy.
            Harry was one of them, for whatever strange reason determined by fate.
            He put it out of his mind, and turned back to the gathering again. “Thank you for coming,” he said, his voice echoing without effort. “I wanted to discuss putting the school back together physically again, but also doing it in a way that means the people who are making a good-faith effort to get along aren’t excluded again.”
            “So this new school will only be for those people who agree with you?” Helena Greengrass wore the politest and most inquiring expression in the place.
            “Oh, no,” said Harry, smiling at her. “But their parents probably won’t agree with me. I want to make a school for all children, of all groups and political persuasions. Their parents need to feel free not to contribute time or money or work, though, if that won’t make them happy.”
            “Why should they get to benefit from work we do?” demanded one of the Muggleborn witches. Her name was Julia Maranth, and she was powerful. Harry could feel the wind of her magic against his skin when he thought to reach out. “If they don’t work, why should they send their children here?”
            Helena Greengrass turned to keep Maranth under observation. Harry made sure to keep smiling. “Because you can’t punish the children for what their parents did,” he said. “They can still attend. Their parents are the ones who won’t have as much input.”
            “Because you intend to exile them?” asked Carnavon, who was there again.
            Of course he is, Harry thought. We can’t give up a chance to create trouble, can we? “Because they aren’t here and presumably don’t care,” he said. “They would be happy to keep up separate House rivalries and stereotypes about other people and all the rest of the nonsense, wouldn’t they? We have to be the ones who can think beyond that. We can, since we’re here.”
            “You can’t force the Houses to get along.” Carnavon said that as if it was some sort of sacred truth. Beside him, his wife sighed.
            “No,” Harry agreed. “But we can try to make sure that everyone knows the school is for everyone, not just the people gathered here today. The ones who aren’t here won’t be able to pick out the colors of the stone we choose for the walls or help us raise the wards, though. Since they aren’t here.”
            Keep to simple ideas, Hermione had told Harry when he began this campaign. It hadn’t always worked, particularly when Harry got tangled in some of the arguments about blood purity, which was supported by some complicated nonsense. But it worked when he could follow it.
            Carnavon subsided into grumbling silence, and Harry looked around. The crowd was smaller than he had thought it would be, but, well, he would work with what he had. “Does anyone have suggestions to make about where we should begin?”
            Maranth leaned forwards. “With some kind of assurance that the Houses constructed for the Muggleborns won’t be invaded by pure-bloods.”
            “There won’t be separate Houses for people based on blood status,” said Harry, blinking. Could someone have misunderstood the references he was making to Houses that badly? “That would only exacerbate the problem.”
            “But it would preserve these separate cultures that people are always chattering about.” Maranth cast a burning glance at Greengrass. “That way, they could have their culture and we could have ours.”
            “The people at stake here are your children,” said Harry. He didn’t know if Maranth had children, but the point stood. “Not you, personally.”
            “You know what I mean,” said Maranth.
            “No,” said Harry. “Not exactly. I thought you were more open-minded, simply because you had been among the group that got discriminated against, but if you choose to turn against the pure-bloods because—”
            “Turn against the pure-bloods,” said someone in a high, mocking imitation of his voice from back in the crowd. “As though we could. As though we would have enough power to matter.”
            “The point isn’t who has the most power,” Harry said quietly. “The point is that we don’t want another war, and part of the war was started and encouraged here, in the corridors that watched Gryffindors and Slytherins battling. And if anyone insists on separation, then we’ll end up with a situation that’s similar in outline, if not in the particulars.”
            “The particulars matter a lot,” said Helena. “I think that most of our—neighbors would agree with me.” She nodded to the group of Muggleborns. “Why shouldn’t we have separate cultures flourishing side by side? Children who need to be taught extra terminology about the wizarding world, and children who can receive advanced lessons from the time they’re elven, because they grew up in that world?”
            “There would be no question of advanced lessons,” said Maranth, and her face was cold. “If we had to learn your culture, your children would have to learn ours.”
            Helena’s face wore the small smile that Harry had seen on Daphne’s when she thought she was winning something. “But why should we? You hardly live in the Muggle world, and no one that I’ve raised would want to do so, either.”
            “If you think our culture is the Muggle culture—”
            “I think your culture is the interfering one,” Helena clarified smoothly. “The interloping one. The one that insists that we should conform to all the sensibilities and prejudices you don’t even realize you have, because to you everything you do and think is rational.”
            Harry sent up a volley of sparks from his wand, spattering silver against the air and falling back down on the crowd. Helena and Maranth turned to stare at him.
            “If you care more about that argument than about rebuilding Hogwarts,” Harry said, “I’ll ask you both to leave.” He felt Malfoy shift behind him, wings straightening out, as though he was going to shield Harry from blows, but both Helena and Maranth seemed content to fight this contest with words and stares. “You can come back and continue your argument another time. Or reunite once you leave here and continue it.”
            “I care about the future of my children,” Maranth said stiffly. “I want to raise them here in the wizarding world, if it becomes less stagnant.”
            “And I want to raise mine in a world that has respect for their traditions,” Helena retorted.
            “I wish I had grown up in a wizarding world that realized children needed to know more than what they come in with when they’re eleven,” Harry interrupted them. “For one thing, apparently everyone knows about Veela bonds and doesn’t discuss them, because they’re a fairy tale that most people don’t expect to happen to them.”
            Malfoy’s wings rattled anxiously. Harry turned and smiled at him, and whether from that or from the emotions that might be flowing through the tattered conduit of their bond, Malfoy seemed to trust him. He relaxed, and Harry squeezed his hand once and turned to face the crowd again.
            “I would have caused my mate less pain, if I knew about them,” Harry said. “But no one took the time to teach me. Everyone assumed I knew it. Or they didn’t know about it at all and didn’t know they could learn.” He tilted his head towards Hermione, also managing to include Maranth in there, since she stood in the same general direction. “So children like that—children like I was—need more people to stop assuming that they know everything, and they need more people to stop assuming there’s nothing to learn. We need both.”
            “Not many people are like you, Mr. Potter,” said Maranth, with a smile that she probably thought was soothing. Harry thought it was incredibly patronizing.
            “Really?” Harry arched his eyebrows. “You think I’m not like a Muggleborn because of who my father was? You think that most children will be coming in with more ignorance than I did? That I had some kind of instinctive knowledge because of my last name?”
            Maranth seemed to realize what she had said, and scrambled to retain a lost position. “I was referring to the matter of your fame—”
            “Then take the testimony of another Muggleborn,” said Hermione crisply, and stepped up beside Harry. “A real one, if Harry isn’t real enough for you. I read and reread my schoolbooks before I came to Hogwarts. I could answer most of the questions that the professors asked on the first day.” Remembering Snape and how he had ignored Hermione’s raised hand in Potions class, Harry nodded. “But I was only knowledgeable about that. What happened outside of classes, the history behind blood purity beliefs and even the war, what I needed to do to avoid offending people or fit in with them—I didn’t know any of that. This ‘separation’ and ‘preservation’ nonsense isn’t going to accomplish anything. It’ll only result in generation after generation growing up ignorant.”
            Silence. Maranth and Helena looked at each other as if they were reconsidering the possibility of an alliance in the face of an allied Harry and Hermione. Harry doubted it would lead to a full reconciliation any time soon, but at least it was giving them ideas.
            “The problem would be solved if there weren’t so many Muggleborns coming into our world,” said Helena.
            Harry turned to face her. “If you’re a proponent of that particularly loathsome proposal put into circulation a while ago—the one about suppressing Muggleborns’ magic and Obliviating them—then you might as well leave now. I won’t tolerate that.”
            “You think your opinion is the only one that matters here?” Helena could be an immovable wall when she wanted to.
            “No,” said Harry. “But I think that no one else here is in favor of that, either.”
            He looked around, and found no nods of support for Helena, not even from Carnavon. Probably most people, even if they didn’t hate the idea, knew that such a tactic would require too much coordination. The Obliviators already had trouble keeping knowledge of the wizarding world from Muggles. What was going to happen if they started concentrating on keeping Muggleborn children under control as well?
            “Do you believe it?” Harry demanded. “Do you think that the only way to reconcile with Muggleborns is to cheat them out of their magic?”
            Helena stood still, and said nothing.
            “Then leave,” said Harry, and Draco lifted his head and uttered a long shriek that seemed to tear its way out of his chest.
            Helena fell back a step, her hands going to her ears. Harry stared at her curiously. Sure, the shriek had been loud, but it hadn’t hurt his ears, and no one else was reacting in the same way. Maybe this was yet another of the Veela powers that no one had bothered to explain to Harry.
            I need these things explained. Maybe it’s time to put a stop to meetings for a few hours so I can sit down with Draco and really lay out all the things mated Veela are capable of, and which of them can protect me and which of them I have to be careful not to rouse.
            “You heard me,” said Draco, and his arms came around Harry’s waist as he leaned forwards. Unusually, he had his wings fanned back as if he wanted to keep them out of the way, and Harry imagined for a second what he must look like: a falcon or hawk with uplifted pinions, getting ready to swoop. “If you can’t endure my voice, you can’t be near my mate.”
            A murmur traveled through most of the pure-bloods gathered there, and even some of the Muggleborns. Harry stifled a sigh. Another bloody thing that I don’t know and have to find out. I need to dedicate a whole day to this, not just a few hours.
            “He’s right,” said Carnavon’s wife, after a few glances at her husband that Harry knew meant she was waiting for him to speak up. The woman herself sounded grimly resigned. “A Veela’s shriek can’t hurt anyone except someone who wishes his mate ill. And if it hurts you, then you would be a liability anyway. We have to deal with Mr. Potter, and where he is, of course his mate will be as well.”
            They accept it so easily, Harry thought. He couldn’t envision the world where he would, but it was also hard for him to think about what his life would have been like if his parents had lived. Maybe that was one of the things he would have known then, and rejoiced in.
            “Go,” said Draco, and his wings moved so that Harry could just see the moving shadows out of the corners of his eyes. “Unless you want a taste of my claws as well as of my scream.”
            Harry tensed. A threat like that would hurt the success of their campaign, or would have if it was uttered under other circumstances.
            But it seemed that Helena wasn’t someone who would bring up those circumstances. She stood still for a long time instead, her eyes so bright and vicious and wild that Harry did think she would attack, and touched his wand where it sat up his sleeve.
            In the end, she chose to turn and walk away. Harry sighed. He wondered if she had always pretended to go along with what he believed and had only been using him for political advantage, or if the way she acted had only changed to this after Harry rejected her daughter. He didn’t think he would ever know, though, and he didn’t want to waste time on questions he couldn’t resolve.
            “Now,” he said, and faced the other groups standing there. “Can we get back to talking about Hogwarts instead of utter nonsense that no one should support?”
*
            The signals were there, subtle ones that Draco doubted anyone else would notice. But then, he didn’t want those people to notice them. They were for his eyes alone.
            Well, all right, it would have been satisfying if Aloren had been there, him with his conviction that their bond was tattered and would never heal, and could blink when he noticed how Draco’s mate was responding to him. But that was the only audience Draco would have wished for.
            Harry no longer started when Draco embraced him, or when his wings moved. In fact, he argued and spoke some of the time as if he had forgotten Draco was holding him.
            Not a victory, for most Veela, but in this case, when Harry had been so stiff and rejected even the barest touches, Draco was prepared to count it as one.
            There was the way, too, that Harry had leaned towards him when Helena had started speaking. It could be a mixture of revulsion for what he felt towards that (ridiculous, Draco had to agree) suggestion about suppressing the magic of Muggleborns and determination to get away from Helena, but Draco didn’t think so. He thought Harry was finally feeling that instinctive trust in their mate that most submissives felt from the beginning.
            In this case, it was worth more, because Draco had earned it. He knew he could have done things that would have made Harry distrust him and edge towards Granger instead. But he hadn’t.
            And now he had his reward: the soft tickle of Harry’s hair under his chin, the smell of him echoing through Draco’s nostrils, the shifts in his muscles that Draco knew how to read.
            And he had driven an enemy away, and he knew Harry would ask him about that later. The thought of his mate’s words warmed him like wine.
            He rested his chin on top of Harry’s head, and fanned his wings back and forth, and enjoyed the rest of the meeting.
*
delia cerrano: Yes, he still looks like a human being, except with the wings, and on occasion his fingers transform into claws.
SP777: It will never be like the ordinary Veela bond, but it’s getting closer to being a true relationship.
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Nature of the Beast