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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty—Veela and Various Surprises
            “You can ask me anything you want,” Draco said, and spread his wings a little and bowed, trying to show how sincere he was. He didn’t know if he and Harry spoke the same language of gestures; that was the only thing holding him back from crooning with approval when Harry asked for more information about Veela.

            Harry paced slowly back and forth in front of him. This time, they were in one of the first-floor sitting rooms at the Manor where nothing negative had ever happened between them. The books on the shelves were strictly legal ledgers pertaining to Malfoy business, and Harry had said he wouldn’t get distracted by them. Draco had no problem retrieving his attention if he did become distracted, honestly. This was probably his best chance to make sure that Harry understood more about some situations he should have asked about long since.
            He would have asked about them long since, if he was a normal mate. Or he wouldn’t have had to ask because he would know.
            Draco sighed and reminded himself of the speech Harry had given at Hogwarts, in which he’d more than admitted his ignorance. Draco shouldn’t want to berate him any longer.
            Maybe I’m not a normal Veela any more than he’s a normal mate, if I want to. On the other hand, Draco didn’t think a normal Veela could cope with Harry Potter.
            “Ask your questions,” he finally prompted, when Harry kept pacing. “Don’t worry about phrasing them diplomatically. Fling them at me. I would rather know more about what you’re thinking than anything else in the world.”
            Harry turned around and gave him a faint, strained smile. “You may come to regret that,” he murmured, but he shook his head and finally gave in. “All right. I want to know how often Veela bonds actually happen.”
            “To wizards?” Draco sat down in one of the chairs he had Transfigured when they came into the room, removing the back and the arms so he could stretch his wings more comfortably. He never took his eyes from Harry, though. While he was doing better with a lot of things himself, just as Harry was, he couldn’t shake the feeling that Harry would bolt for the door the minute Draco looked away. “Not often. A lot of Veela find their mates among their own kind, or even other magical beings. Or Muggles.”
            Harry nodded distractedly. “I was wondering if Hogwarts swarmed with them, and I just didn’t notice.” He came over and sat on a chair in front of Draco.
            “How would you notice?” Draco murmured, bristling on Harry’s behalf, even though it was his mate criticizing himself, not someone else doing it. “You had a war to fight. You were above mere matters of love and romance.”
            Harry shrugged. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have been trying to be.” He tapped his foot on the floor, a fast beat that he stilled when he saw the way Draco looked at it. But he didn’t apologize for it, and neither did Draco. “What exactly happens with egg-laying?”
            Draco blinked, but answered. He could never predict the way Harry’s mind was going to leap. He didn’t know why this particular question had surprised him so much. “The Veela and the mate do have sex. But they pour the energy that the sex raises into the bond, instead of just using it make each other feel good—”
            “You can do that?”
            Draco blinked again, and again. He had thought Harry would know this, he realized with a dull thump in the back of his mind. The one thing everyone knew about Veela, surely, was the way they could enchant, the incredible pleasure they could cause with their touch.
            Perhaps it’s just as well if I stop assuming, he told himself firmly again, and released a long breath. “Yes,” he said. “It would take a bond that was working fully, so you could feel my emotions, but I can make you feel incredibly good during sex.” He had been about to say that “a Veela” could “make his mate” feel, but he didn’t want to do that. He didn’t want to shove Harry away from the notion, which seemed to have surprised him, but not upset him.
            “Huh,” said Harry. “Well—I suppose that makes more sense why people would regard a Veela bond as such a blessing.”
            Draco held back the instinctive defense he still wanted to give, and instead nodded. “I wouldn’t do it without your consent,” he said. “And like I said, it wouldn’t work anyway until we manage to repair the bond.” He wouldn’t let himself use the word “unless.” Not now, not like this.
            Harry watched him through heavy-lidded eyes for a second, conjuring up all sorts of delightful pictures in Draco’s mind. Then he shook his head, and said, “Go back to explaining about egg-laying.”
            “They take the energy and pour it into a container they’ve already prepared,” said Draco, and was proud of himself for keeping his voice almost dry, a lecture instead of an attempt at seduction. “This needs to be something like a basket, or a hollowed-out stone. The magic transforms it into the shell of the egg. Then the Veela and the mate cast more spells on the egg, for several days, and that fills the egg with enough power that it reaches a—a peak where it can either spill over or has to be used somehow.”
            “I think I know what you mean,” Harry said, lifting a hand as Draco paused and fumbled for words. “Sometimes I can feel the magic rearing up in me like that.”
            Draco bit his tongue against the question he wanted to ask, which was How are you still alive, then? For a wizard to be able to raise that much magic on his own was rare. To withstand the onslaught was almost unknown. Perhaps Harry had always been able to use it immediately after he raised it, which would have solved the problem.
            “You can ask it, if you want,” Harry told him, and lounged against the back of the chair in what Draco thought was a pose of indifference only. “The thing that everyone wants to ask after they hear about that.”
            Draco swallowed back jealousy that he wasn’t the first one who had ever wondered about Harry’s powerful magic, and asked instead, “Lots of people ask you about Veela eggs and the way that you would pour the power into one?”
            That at least made Harry laugh, and Draco watched in helpless devotion as the corners around his eyes crinkled. “No,” said Harry, and a smile lingered on his lips as the laughter died. “I mean they ask me how I got powerful. If it’s some sort of legacy from Voldemort or the like.”
            “Well,” Draco said, and hesitated.
            “No,” said Harry. “It isn’t. And honestly, I don’t think that I’m so much stronger than other people.” Draco snorted, but Harry shook his head with a quickness that Draco was already learning meant Harry was serious. “No, hear me out. I think what it is, is that most people use their magic more than I do. I mean, to cast ordinary, everyday spells. I don’t use it as often, so it seems more impressive when it builds up like that and then I unleash it in a burst like I tend to.” He grinned at Draco. “You use magic to fetch your books and change your clothes and clean up after yourself. I was raised by Muggles.” For once, he didn’t say it bitterly. “There are still all sorts of things I think of doing with my hands.”
            “Maybe,” Draco said doubtfully. He thought there did have to be something special and different about his mate, or there was no way that magic, destiny, fate—call it what you will—would have picked him for Draco, but perhaps that was something he could leave Harry to reveal in time. “Anyway. You want me to go back to telling you about the egg?”
            Harry nodded. He was serious and intent again, just like that, eyes measuring Draco as though he was thinking about the moment when they would create the egg together. Draco smiled at Harry, reassured.
            “When the egg is full of magic, brimming with it,” Draco said softly, “they cast a spell that takes hold of the deepest wishes of their hearts for the child. The wishes blend. Neither parent gets exactly what they want. If one of them wants a son, for example, but wishes mostly that the child would be healthy, then they might get a healthy daughter if the other mate wished for a girl more. It’s all about strength of desire.”
            “And then they warm the egg, how?” Harry asked. “By sitting on it? Does the baby actually hatch from it?”
            Draco turned his head to the side in a dignified way. “I’ll have you know that Veela resemble birds, but they aren’t them. We do not sit on our precious eggs, no. We trust the charms to keep them warm. And yes, the children hatch. Less messy and painful than a normal human birthing, you know.”
            Harry raised his eyebrows. “But I’ll wager there are some Veela who sneak in and cuddle the eggs to their bare chests when their mates aren’t looking,” he said with deadly accuracy.
            Draco felt his mouth drop open. “You—you couldn’t have guessed that if you didn’t know anything about Veela,” he said. “Did you read it in a book somewhere?”
            Harry snorted. “No. I only know that Veela seem to be notoriously sentimental, and that’s what they’d do. They might not be birds, but they resemble them, as someone told me just a moment ago.” He folded his arms and tipped his chin up.
            “That’s too accurate,” said Draco, and he stood up and crossed to Harry, who only watched him come, blinking in the way he did when he wanted to object to something Draco was doing but didn’t have a reason to do it yet. “Did—did you get the image from my head via the bond?”
            “How could I?” Harry slowly stood to face him, looking around as though he expected to see Aloren looming up with a lecture in mind. “You know the bond doesn’t work right.”
            “It could be healing.” Draco couldn’t help the excited croon that crept into his voice. “It could be—it could be that the bond will heal over time if we leave it alone, and just spend time with each other and be honest with each other.”
            “But Aloren would have said something about it, then.” Harry’s lips had pulled into a frown.
            “Would it be so terrible a thing to have a normal bond?” Draco couldn’t help but ask wistfully. “To be able to trust each other completely? You would always know if I was lying, then, and what my desires were. It’s one of the things that help the Veela couple to create an egg,” he added, thinking Harry might want to hear that, with his interest in children. “Because they can trust each other and see into each other’s hearts, they know that neither of them wants something terrible for the child.”
            “I don’t want a normal Veela bond because that would make me a submissive slave to you. And I’m not going to be.”
*
            Malfoy was watching him as though Harry had just knocked away a ladder he was standing on. Harry gave his head an irritated little shake. Really, what did he think Harry was? Harry had changed his views on the idea that Malfoy was trying to sneak around him or use him somehow, and he could—tentatively—accept that he had been acting silly in the past. But that was a long way from thinking that he wanted the “normal” kind of bond Malfoy was always prating about.
            “I thought we were past this.” Malfoy’s voice was cracking softly, frozen, like ice that Harry had once stepped on when he was still a stupid child living on Privet Drive and believing some of the things Dudley told him, like that you could skate on ice without skates if you just tried hard enough. “If you thought I was trying to enslave you—”

            “I don’t think that,” said Harry, and he didn’t. He ran a hand through his hair, wondering how something so simple had turned into this mess. “You said that a normal bond, before, would involve a normal submissive. That is never going to happen. Never.”
            He’d fought so hard, he thought, to have something resembling freedom. He might still be restrained by the thoughts of people dear to him and sometimes by what the public would think about something he did, but at least in private life, he was free. He ate when he chose and wore what he liked and went where he wanted. The mere thought of someone taking that away from him made sweat stand out on his palms.
            Malfoy gave him a measured look. “I’ve already accepted that any bond I shared with you would be changed from the normal one.”
            “You did?” Harry wished he could sound less like a helpless child. But Malfoy was at least easing back now and tilting his head instead of reacting with anger.
            “Yes. I know that—I would like more access to your emotions and thoughts.” Malfoy breathed out softly. “But I don’t want you to change your personality and become someone different than you are.”
            Harry spent a little while thinking about that. Malfoy let him think, but didn’t move away and didn’t cease his tight monitoring of Harry’s face.
            So, some consequences of the bond, and not others? As long as he doesn’t want the whole package…
            Harry slowed his breathing and nodded. “All right. I misunderstood. I’m sorry. And there’s something else I want to understand further. The heart of the house. What exactly does it mean?”
            “What Granger told you,” said Malfoy, and he eased back on his heels and gave Harry a confused look. “I was eavesdropping when she told you, remember. What she said, about a Veela submissive controlling the house and the portraits in the house…that’s all true. The house’s defenses are under a submissive’s control.”
            “But it must mean something more than that, to mean so bloody much,” said Harry, taking the latent, left-over anger and channeling it into finally requesting information on what he didn’t know. “Because it also has something to do with the submissive staying home all the time and caring for the children, right?”
            Malfoy closed his eyes. Harry started to speak, and he shook his head. “No, wait, Harry. I’m not going to deny you an answer. I’m trying to put something into words that’s always been at least two-thirds instinctive understanding for me.”
            Harry bit back the snort at the word “instinctive,” and waited. Finally, Malfoy opened his eyes and spoke slowly.
            “A heart of the house blends with the house. His senses become the house’s senses. He sees with the eyes of the portraits, feels with the earth of the gardens when someone walks on it—someone who should be there, and someone who shouldn’t. He can hear a baby’s cry anywhere in the house. He can feel it when his mate needs him, as long as that needing happens in the house. The Veela is the one who defends his mate outside the house, because the Veela’s senses function in the open air a lot like the heart of the house’s do inside four walls.”
            Harry grunted. That sounded a little more special than Hermione had read about to him, and a little more rational. But it didn’t make him any more keen on the idea. “Is there any particular reason that the heart of the house has to be the submissive one, and not the Veela?”
            Malfoy’s eyes were back on him in an instant, parted from their abstract stare into the distance. “You said that you didn’t want anyone else to be the submissive, either. I thought.”
            Harry sighed. “I phrased that badly, then. You’re not the only one who does things like that.” He shook his head. “But why couldn’t the submissive and the Veela share the responsibility for caring for the house between them? Or why doesn’t the one who stays home feel stronger? Or the one who was born in the house? It seems like it would make more sense for you to know when something’s wrong in the Manor, because you were the one who was raised here.”
            “That’s not the way it works,” Malfoy said. “Just as both partners among birds don’t usually defend the nest equally.”
            “But Veela aren’t birds, you said.”
            Malfoy scowled a little. “Are you going to throw all my words back into my face?”
            “I’m trying to understand,” Harry said. “Why this is a good thing, why you want it so much. And why it wouldn’t be a good idea to share this power, if it exists. It sounds like the Veela and the mate share the making of their child. Why don’t they share anything else? Why is so much of their partnership separate?”
            Malfoy paused and gave a dazed blink. “I never thought about it like that,” he said.
            Harry nodded. “I think that’s something we need to consider,” he said. “We need to—talk about a lot of things.” He was still more intrigued than he should be at the thought that Veela could make sex pleasant for their partners. It was worth exploring, or seemed like it, but at the same time, it seemed sort of childish when it came to the list of things that were important to understand.
            “Including some about you.” Malfoy melted towards him.
            “What?” Harry looked sharply at him.
            “I won’t ask about the things that you told me not to ask about.” Malfoy’s voice was soft and breathy as he wrapped his arm around Harry’s waist. “But I want to know about the other things. More about the aftermath of the war. More about your beliefs, and why you’re so set on not having a normal bond.”
            Harry hesitated, then shrugged. “Why not, if it’ll help?” He left up in the air what it would help, and he noticed the sweet, smug smile from Malfoy that suggested Malfoy had his own thoughts on what Harry had meant. He turned around to lead the way out of the room. “But let’s have lunch first. I’m starving.”

*
NadiaMalfoy: Thanks! But Draco would say haughtily that related does not mean identical.
kit: Thank you! I really did enjoy writing that chapter, if that eases your embarrassment. ;)
SP777: Yes.
LilyWolfShipsDrarry: Thanks! And I can promise an ending that is at least not sad.
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Nature of the Beast