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The Horns of Elfland	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 8726 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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            “I found the person who sounds like hunting horns,” Harry told his hands as he sat beside Hermione in Potions that morning. They were the only ones in the classroom. Hermione always wanted to get there early in case the world ended and she could only read her Potions book one more time, Harry supposed, and she was always inviting Harry to go with her. She seemed pleased he’d accepted that morning.
            Hermione put down the book and paid attention to him at once. “Who is it?” she whispered excitedly.
            Harry started to answer, and then paused. He hadn’t realized it until now, but Hermione’s sound, the jangling tune, was gone.
            He was almost hopeful until he remembered another part of the book she had found about elves, and sighed. When the noise of the horns of Elfland touches the ears of an elf exiled in the mortal world, he will cease to notice other music.
            “You’re not going to like this,” Harry said, and scrubbed his fingers through his hair for a moment.
            “I would like anyone who could stop you from fading,” said Hermione, and now her voice was sharp. “Your skin is a bit more shiny and translucent than usual, have you noticed? I don’t want to see you go to Elfland.”
            Harry started and glanced down at his hand. As a matter of fact, he hadn’t noticed. It had only seemed as though he hadn’t picked up a tan. Staring hard at his wrist, he didn’t think he could see his veins and bones any better than usual.
            “Anyway.” Hermione was almost bouncing in her chair. “Who is it?”
            Harry grimaced. “Draco Malfoy.”
            Hermione froze in mid-bounce, mouth open, which was pretty impressive, Harry thought. He reached out after a moment, the impulse irresistible, and gently touched Hermione’s mouth closed.
            Hermione plopped back into her chair and considered things for a moment, shaking her head. Harry nodded. He suspected that the sheer incredulity of everything was overcoming her. What the fuck was he supposed to do now?
            But Hermione said something else a moment later, something that hadn’t even come up in Harry’s thoughts of how it could be Malfoy that would keep him here. “Are you even gay?”
            Harry stared at her. “What?” he asked a second later. “What does that matter?”
            “I just wondered if it might be part of why you never got back together with Ginny.” Hermione blushed a little when Harry stared at her, but defiantly kept her head high. “After all, if you had figured out that you preferred boys—men—then you’d want to stay away from her and not give her false hope.”
            “I don’t—it doesn’t matter—” Harry began, and then considered something he hadn’t even considered in the stress of finding out that he’d have to speak to Malfoy about this and he’d have to spend the rest of his life with Malfoy.
            He’d have to have sex with Malfoy.
            Harry let his head fall into his hands.
            “Yes, I suppose it might be possible for elves to have mates of the same sex when they’re not gay,” Hermione murmured, sounding sympathetic. “Their primary purpose is to keep you from fading, after all.” She patted Harry’s hand. “Still, I’ll look it up and see if that means you have to have sex with him.”
            “You’d do that?” Harry put his head up. He knew how much Hermione liked researching, but on the other hand, this had to be embarrassing for her. “Thank you, Hermione!”
            She gave him a gentle smile, and then paused when Harry turned his head. “What is it?”
            It’s hunting horns drawing near the classroom, that’s all. Harry wished he could give a reply as light and humorous as that. He bit his lip and smiled at her. “He’s coming. I can hear it.”
            “Oh, of course.” Hermione nodded. “Have you told him yet?”
            Harry fidgeted.
            “You have to, Harry!” Hermione reached out and clutched his hand for a second. “You know you have to, right?”
            “Well, of course,” Harry said, and found some relief in rolling his eyes. “I mean, I can hardly go up to him and start kissing him or something without an explanation.”
            “But are you going to do it soon?”
            Harry hesitated again, and peeked over his shoulder as Malfoy entered the Potions classroom. Honestly, nothing about him spoke at all to the soft, haunting tones that the hunting horns were playing, Harry thought in irritation. Why did he have to have something that sounded like that? Harry would have been happier if the jangling music was his and not Hermione’s, even if that meant he would have to listen to it for the rest of his life.
            Malfoy saw him staring and gave him a strange look. Harry bit his lip and turned furiously away, concentrating on his cauldron as though Slughorn was already there and had given them the instructions for the potion. Hermione leaned over and murmured in a voice so low there was no chance Malfoy could hear, “You’ll have to tell him soon.”
            “I know! I just have to find the right—the right place,” Harry finished, inspired. “You know the middle of the Potions classroom isn’t the right place.”
            “It probably isn’t,” Hermione agreed, and gave him one more look before she waved her wand and Summoned the book on elves she’d shown him before. She immediately began flipping through it, and Harry settled back in his chair with a resigned sigh, trying to get used to the feeling of his fingers—which were still longer in reality even though they looked as normal as ever under the glamour—on the stirring rod and tapping on the table. He didn’t feel like himself.
            And he tried to ignore, as well, the persistent soft calling of the horns from behind his shoulder, and how they sounded wild and longing.
*
            The right place wasn’t the Great Hall at lunch, either. Or the Quidditch pitch, where he saw Malfoy riding his broom alone. Or Defense, which was taught by a witch who seemed absent-minded about marking their homework but always noticed someone whispering in her class. Or dinner, either.
            Harry held up his hand in front of the mirror in the bathroom that night in Gryffindor Tower, when he was sure that the rest of the boys were asleep, and released the glamour. Immediately he felt as if his vision had become keener and brighter, and he could make out that the points to his ears, which had been small at first, had grown incredibly sharper in the last little while.
            But he could also make out that the skin of his hand was shining as though it was made of paper and someone had a light behind it.
            Harry swallowed and restored the glamour. He supposed he would have to take the chance of speaking with Malfoy tomorrow. The thought of spending the rest of his life with someone who hated him was horrible. The notion of having sex with Malfoy was—awful.
            But he had to at least try. Because the thought of fading was worse.
*
            “Malfoy? Can I talk to you a minute?”
            Harry knew he had utterly failed to sound casual and normal. Or suave and compelling, for the matter, which would have been his second choice. Still, Malfoy stopped walking ahead of him and turned around with a blank expression on his face. Blank was better than threatening.
            “What, Potter?” he asked as Harry came nearer. His eyebrows curled up his face as Harry raised privacy charms around them, but he didn’t start spitting with anger or run away, which Harry thought was a positive sign.
            In fact, now that Harry was close to him, he looked…well, different. Not that he had started to change into an elf, the way Harry had, but his features were diamond-sharp instead of just pointed, and he had clearer grey eyes than Harry had thought, eyes that could see beneath surfaces. Malfoy narrowed them even as Harry watched and the horns sighed around them.
            “You’re wearing a glamour,” Malfoy said.
            Harry nodded and waved his wand to release it. He supposed he could have tried explaining, but he thought having Malfoy see what was happening to him would be a clearer illustration.
            Malfoy’s eyes widened, and for just a second, Harry thought he would hurry away; he certainly pressed his back against the wall as if he meant to do that. But then he shook his head and stepped up to Harry, reaching out one hand towards his hair while he gave Harry a cautious glance.
            “Can I touch?” he asked.
            Harry nodded. He assumed that Malfoy meant to touch one of his pointed ears, and, well, that was all right with him. The tone of the horns was so loud and sweet that it was drowning out everything else, including the thoughts that said sleeping with Malfoy or telling him the truth wasn’t a good idea.
            But Malfoy’s fingers only spent a moment tracing the point of his ear; then they sank into his hair, and Harry tilted his head back and gave a full-body shiver. That was so, so wonderful, all the touching Malfoy was doing. It ached and spread through him, a tingle that made soft, colored impressions dance upon the back of his closed eyelids.
            He breathed in and out, and saw again the image of the leaping Fiendfyre, and the way he had flown with Malfoy over it. At least Malfoy had known what was good for him then, and hadn’t made any attempt to hurt or “capture” Harry while they were flying. Harry couldn’t say that the good sense would be repeated if they had to do it again, but he thought so. Malfoy really had got some sensible ideas in that head of his, more sensible than Harry had thought he was.
            “Potter?”
            The daze snapped, along with any further visions that Harry might have seen. He opened his eyes and gazed at Malfoy, who had stepped back and was leaning against the wall again, with a neutral face.
            “What?” Harry whispered. His throat ached.
            “What did you show this to me for?”
            Harry took a deep breath. He hoped this would sound as sensible as he had just been thinking Malfoy had been in the Room of Hidden Things, but then again, Malfoy had grown up in the wizarding world. Maybe he had heard of this before. “I got hurt by some elf-shot in the Forbidden Forest. I’m turning into an elf. And I’m going to fade unless I find my true mate.” He held up his hand and showed Malfoy the glimmering ghostliness of his skin. “I can find my mate by hearing a sound like hunting horns around them.” He looked at Malfoy expectantly.
            It took longer for Malfoy to grasp it than Harry had thought he would. He narrowed his eyes as though he was listening for the hunting horns himself, and then abruptly leaped to the side and lifted his hands like he was pressing on a fence.
            “No.”
            “What?” Harry breathed the word. He had to admit, that had been his own reaction when he had realized Malfoy was the source of the hunting horns, but he had never thought it would be Malfoy’s.
            “I just barely have my own life back.” Malfoy’s eyes were still narrow, but now his face had flushed, and he was panting furiously. “I barely have my freedom. It’s only because you testified and shit.” He waved a hand at Harry. “I would give a lot to repay the life-debts I owe you, but the one thing I won’t give is my life.”
            “I wouldn’t make you die,” Harry said, a little shocked. He wondered if Malfoy had misinterpreted what Harry was asking him for, and he stepped forwards with one hand soothingly extended. “I only want you to keep me from fading.”
            Malfoy looked him full in the face. “And you want me to share your life. Your bed.”
            Harry hadn’t put it in those terms even to himself, but he knew he was flushed enough as it was right now. He nodded shortly.
            Malfoy closed his eyes and hissed in something that looked like pain before he shook his head. “No,” he said. “And no again. I would give up a lot, Potter, but not my life. Not my self. And not my freedom.”
            “I’m not asking that much.” To Harry’s horror, he could hear his voice cracking. “We wouldn’t have to stay around each other or sleep together or see each other much. Just—just enough to keep me from fading.”
            “No.” Malfoy’s voice was steadier now. “I’m sorry you’re turning into an elf. I’m sorry you have to deal with this. But I’m no self-sacrificing Gryffindor. You’re—you’re a hero. You figure out someone who wants to be with you because they’re heroic. That’s the way it’ll have to be.”
            Harry opened his mouth to continue arguing again, only to see Malfoy striding away.
            Harry would have said something, but he couldn’t. Malfoy’s turned back was too eloquent, and he had a jerkiness in his movements that said he wouldn’t return no matter how much Harry begged him to.
            Harry closed his eyes and touched one hand to his head. He wanted to scream. He wanted to go find Hermione and explain that she was wrong and things hadn’t worked out. He wanted to find whatever elf had planted that bit of elf-shot in the Forbidden Forest and strangle them, if only to see what happened.
            But for now, he had his own fading to attend to.
            He turned and walked towards Gryffindor Tower. At least he didn’t break into a run until he was halfway there.
*
            “It didn’t work out? Oh, Harry.”
            In the end, Harry had had to go and find Hermione and Ron in the library. From the slightly ill look Ron gave him, Hermione had told him the truth about Malfoy being Harry’s mate, but he reached out and bravely patted Harry’s arm anyway.
            “I knew he was a right bastard,” Ron muttered. “But I didn’t think he would try to avoid helping someone survive.”
            “He was probably afraid of what it would cost him.” Hermione watched Harry with shrewd eyes as he collapsed into the chair and stared down at his hands, trying to judge how much they’d gone transparent since this morning. He thought that his fingernails, at least, looked a little dimmer, despite his reapplied glamour. “That was it, wasn’t it?”
            Harry just glanced up and nodded without moving his head much.
            “Yes, I thought so,” Hermione muttered, and opened the book in front of her wider, flipping through the pages for a minute. “I don’t know what the elf-magic was thinking of, choosing him. But I found something that might help.”
            “Oh, good,” said Harry, and ignored the way Hermione frowned at him. Yes, he knew he didn’t sound enthusiastic. Well, neither would you if it turned out that your one chance of having a normal life, or a life at all, had walked away because it was too much trouble to help you.
            “No, really,” said Hermione. “You can persuade someone else to be your mate. It says so right here. But you can only do it if your first mate rejects you. That’s why you couldn’t do it until you heard the horns.” She turned the book around, and Harry glanced listlessly down the page of pictures. They mostly seemed to be of trees.
            Harry finally found a picture that he thought must be what Hermione was talking about. There was one tree that had a huge bole, and at the foot of it stood an elf—Harry could tell by the absurd pale glow that the artist had thought necessary to put around it—holding the hand of a human. Walking away was another human with leaves in his hair and a scowling expression.
            The text beneath the picture did say, If an elf hears the horns around a mate and desires another mate, he may persuade another to become that mate. He must convince them so within a month of hearing the horns. Otherwise, a quarter of his body will fade, and so on each month that passes since he first heard the horns.
            Harry swallowed. “And I just have to talk to someone else, and explain the situation, and they’ll be my mate? That’s it?”
            Hermione shrugged. “And you have to get Malfoy to go through a simple renunciation of his status as your mate. It shouldn’t take long, if what I found was true.”
            Harry looked up slowly. The truth was that he had never wanted Malfoy as his mate, and he should have been perfectly relieved that he could find a solution to the whole stupid problem.
            The truth was…
            He wasn’t attracted to anyone else, either. And someone who agreed to become his mate would probably be really attracted to him. And Harry wasn’t sure that he wanted to lie to someone else and ruin their lives the way his had been ruined.
            Why could I not put up with that, but I could put up with being bound to Malfoy for the rest of our lives?
            Harry shrugged. “Who do you suggest I choose?”
            “I suggest Ginny,” said Ron firmly.
            “That wouldn’t be very kind to her, though,” Hermione pointed out. “She was really in love with Harry, and if Harry tells her that he doesn’t love her right now but needs her to keep him from fading—”
            “But Ginny’s a Gryffindor,” Ron countered at once. “She’ll know how important this is, and she’ll do it anyway! She can be a hero.”
            I’m no self-sacrificing Gryffindor, came Malfoy’s words back to Harry.
            “No,” said Harry loudly. Both Ron and Hermione turned to him, looking a little startled that he had interrupted their bickering. “Not Ginny. Hermione’s right. It would be unfair to lie to her and pretend I’m in love with her.”
            “Who’s asking you to lie?” Ron leaned forwards and poked him in the chest. “Tell her the truth. I think she’ll still want to help.”
            “And you might grow to love her later,” said Hermione, nodding. “I think that’s probably true, Harry.” She looked at his translucent hand, and her voice grew softer. “At least, it’s your best chance.”
            It is, Harry told himself firmly. The best one. There’s nothing else I can do but accept a different mate. Malfoy walked away. Ginny won’t. And I wasn’t in love with Malfoy. He’ll probably be glad to speak the words of renunciation.
            That was what he thought. That was what he told himself.
            But his heart still ached and twisted in his chest the way it had since Malfoy had told him no, and he couldn’t catch his breath until almost dinnertime, when he had to avoid looking at the Slytherin table at all.

*
dracohermione: Sorry! I really don’t have time.
starr: Thanks!
DinaTheCat: Thanks!
Fenrirsboy: You get a more complete picture next chapter.
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The Horns of Elfland