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
- 20
- 21
- 22
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-One—Influenced

            “Are you sure about this?” Kingsley leaned forwards in his seat, studying Harry as if he thought there was a chance that Harry had been replaced by a shapeshifter.

            Or at least someone using Polyjuice, Harry thought as he smiled back at Kingsley, and he was able to keep his smile and posture partially relaxed because that had actually happened last year. The imposter had been revealed when he ignored Ron as not worth speaking to. “I am, sir. I’ve talked to several people now, and they all think it’s for the best.” “Several people” were Draco, Ron, Hermione, and King. A few of the other Aurors, who had overheard Harry and Ron’s discussion, had lent their voices as support, which surprised Harry. He hadn’t realized how many other people in the Department had deduced that he’d worked too much.

            Of course, he had a bad habit of not noticing people in general unless they were in trouble or already mattered to him. That was one of the things he would have to try to cure, Harry thought.

            Kingsley, shaking his head and glancing sideways at Harry as if he expected Harry to speak up and stop this at any moment, took up a quill and scrawled a few orders on a piece of parchment. Harry watched him, making sure to do nothing more than smile encouragingly at every glance.

            Copies of Aurors’ orders were sealed with a heavy, ugly signet ring with a dragon and a chain on it. Kingsley picked it up but didn’t lower it, instead staring at Harry. “You’re sure?” he asked in a whisper.

            “Sir,” Harry said, stung into irritation at last, “what’s so unusual about an Auror wanting time off?”

            Kingsley sighed. “That’s not the point, Harry. The point is that you never asked for it. We always had to force you to go on holiday. Until you started dating Malfoy. I don’t like sudden changes in my most important Aurors.”

            Harry felt a small glow of pride to hear Kingsley call him that, but he shook his head. “I was wrong never to ask for it. There were times I felt like I was about to drop with weariness or pain, but I forced myself to come to work anyway. I thought there was nothing wrong with that as long as I didn’t faint in the middle of a case, but several people have told me I shouldn’t be so hard on myself.” If he emphasized the number, maybe Kingsley would stop thinking that it was only Draco’s advice or that Draco had forced Harry to change against his will.

            “I didn’t know that.” Kingsley bowed his head. “I would have insisted you stay away longer if I did.”

            Harry smiled. “I know, sir. I didn’t tell you, so how could you have known? And like you said, you had to force me to go on holiday. I wanted to be here because I was needed, and I like that. But there are other things that I need to concentrate on right now.”

            Kingsley nodded. “Just as long as you know that you’re free to come back before the end of the fortnight if this doesn’t work out.”

            “Understood, sir,” Harry replied, and watched as Kingsley stamped down the signet ring and sealed the orders. He already had a copy of them, folded neatly in his robe pocket.

            As he walked back to their office, he tried to stop feeling as if he might reel off a cliff or throw up. This was the best thing for him. He would need a lot of time to think, to talk, to decide what he wanted to do, and he would treat work as either a distraction from that—which the victims of the cases he investigated didn’t deserve—or as salvation, which would just set him back again.

            But…he had never been anything but a fighter. First he’d fought Voldemort, and then he’d trained to be an Auror, and then he’d been an Auror. He battled the monsters under the beds and in the closets and stealing through the windows. It felt lazy to lean back in his chair and work on healing himself.

            Not lazy, Harry reminded himself firmly as he slipped into the office, where Ron was waiting for him. It’s going to be a harder battle than most of the ones that I’ve fought so far. Maybe that’s the reason I tried to ignore it for so long.

            He rubbed the sweat off his palms and smiled at Ron’s raised eyebrow. “I got it,” he said, taking out the copy of the orders and holding them up. “A fortnight’s holiday, with pay.”

            Ron smiled in turn. “Good.” Then he stood up, crossed the room, and put his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry fidgeted. He didn’t like being studied from so close. It made him feel scrutinized in the same way that being stared at by the press from behind their cameras did.

            “You know you deserve this, right?” Ron whispered. “I can’t think of anyone who deserves it more.”

            Harry forced himself to stand still. “I know. But it’s so different from anything I’ve done before. And what happens if you get some hard case during the next few weeks that you need my help to solve?”

            Ron snorted. “Not all of us are as dedicated to our jobs as you are, Harry.” Harry opened his mouth to protest—Ron was a fine Auror—but his friend pressed down with one hand to tell him to shut up. “I’ll work while you’re gone, but I won’t be handling any cases that I would need a partner to work safely on. That was your specialty, even before Rose was born.”

            Harry sighed and lowered his eyes. “Sorry,” he said. It was true he had treated Rose’s birth, and the times before that when Ron was sick or assigned somewhere else, as free periods when he could take on more dangerous cases and act recklessly. For some reason, he’d never quite got around to thinking about how that would affect his friends.

            “It’s all right,” Ron said. He squeezed Harry’s shoulders once more and then removed his hands. “But you’ve got to remember that the rest of us are in this with you, and that we have our own opinions and our own standards of behavior. I’ve been reluctant to tell you when I think you’re being an idiot for the last little while, because I know what you’ve suffered. But—”

            “You were reluctant to tell me that?” Harry fluttered his eyelashes in exaggerated fashion at Ron. “I must have really been bad.”

            Luckily, Ron laughed. “I’m glad that you’re coming back, mate,” he said, slapping Harry on the shoulder. “I’ve missed you. Dinner with me and Hermione tonight?”

            “Tomorrow night,” Harry said firmly. “I have to go and talk to Draco tonight.”

            “Yeah, I can see why you would.” Ron cocked his head curiously. “Where are you meeting?”

            “His house,” Harry said. “I’m cooking.”

            A shadow of a smile crossed Ron’s lips, and he nodded. “Tomorrow night, though?”

            “Of course,” Harry said, and touched Ron briefly on the back as he went to his own desk, where he had a few reports to finish filing before he could leave on his holiday.

            He spent the rest of the afternoon working there, and could sense Ron glancing over at him with a smile more than once.

            I didn’t realize I was causing my friends that much stress, Harry thought as he waved to Ron on his way out the door. Lucy was right about one thing, if not everything. I was pushing the people close to me away because I was trying to control what happened to me so strictly.

            That has to stop.

            The courage he had gained from Lucy’s outburst last night had faded by now. That meant he would have to ask Draco for help, or, even worse, more tolerance while he struggled to recover his balance on his own.

            Harry shut his eyes and shuddered. Then he opened them so he could find his way to the lifts, and from there to the Atrium, and from there to the Floos, and from there to Diagon Alley so that he could buy the ingredients he would need to make dinner tonight.

            Ignoring the people around me has to stop. Trying to control them has to stop. And one of the best ways to stop that is to trust them when they say that they want to help.

            I’m going to do my best.

*



            Draco raised his eyebrow when Harry stepped through his door carrying many delicate baskets full of what looked like plants. Under the leaves were reassuring glimpses of meat and the white bags full of ice that some of the shops in Diagon Alley used to preserve their more delicate vegetables, but the plants were the most prominent. Draco could see why Harry had wanted to Apparate instead of Flooing.

            “What are all of those?” Draco asked, poking at one of the plants and then leaping back as a cloud of scent seemed to assault him. It was musky and got into his nose like dust, making him sneeze.

            “Spices,” Harry said, rolling his eyes as though Draco had asked the stupidest question in the world. Draco, miffed, trailed after him to the kitchen, where Harry set the baskets down on the counters and began to remove their contents, arranging them in neat piles. Draco recognized a few—ginger, nutmeg, rosemary—from using them in potions, but there were many more that he simply stared at in bewilderment.

            “What are you going to make?” he asked. “Spice soup?”

            Harry took out what was clearly a whole chicken, wrapped in a Preservation Charm, and gave him a patient look. “I didn’t know what spices you might be allergic to,” he said. “Magical creatures have sensitivities that don’t exist in humans. So I brought as many along as I could.”

            “You don’t have to cook everything,” Draco said, pacing around the counter so that he could stare at the clumps of green leaves from the other side. “I could have told you what I like, or I could have made part of the meal.”

            “Yes, I do have to cook everything.”

            Draco paused, glanced up at Harry, and recognized that this was not an area where he could press further. Harry’s eyes glittered like ice, and he was gripping the handle of a basket hard enough to crack it. Draco reached out, playing as though he hadn’t noticed anything, and wound his fingers around Harry’s hand, gently loosening his grip.

            “Of course,” he said. “I understand. You couldn’t have someone as clumsy as I probably am around the kitchen messing it up.”

            It worked. Harry glared for one more moment, then relaxed into a light smile. “You have house-elves to do everything for you,” he said, as he started moving the spices into different clumps, according to some recipe or set of instructions that were invisible to Draco. “Have you ever cooked in your life?”

            “I brew potions,” Draco said, surprised to realize how much of his sulkiness at the accusation was real. He wanted to be able to take care of his chosen in any way his chosen needed, and if Harry didn’t trust house-elf meals, then Draco would have cooked for him. Standing back and letting Harry prepare the food made his fingernails itch. “That can’t be much different.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “They’re sufficiently different that I’m good at cooking, while I was never any good at Potions.”

            Draco started to say that Harry had become good at one out of necessity, while he’d had no such incentive to master the other, and then bit savagely at his lip, just in time to stop the stupid words from escaping. “Maybe it was Professor Snape’s teaching,” he said instead. “I admired the man, but Merlin knows his temper was horrid.”

            Harry nodded. “Yes. I learned to respect him after he was dead. I was sorry I never had the chance while he was alive.” His hands were moving with quick cleverness, dancing among the spices, setting some of them aside. Draco tried to tell himself that having a chosen who knew so much was a point of pride strong enough that he didn’t need to regret his inability to provide food for Harry. “Can you tell me if you’re sensitive to paprika?”

            Draco shook his head. “I’ve eaten it often enough to know.” At least he knew what Harry was talking about. That was in his favor, right?

            “Good.” Harry laid some more things aside. “Coriander?”

            “I don’t know,” Draco said. “In any case, I have an objection to leaves in my food.” The thing Harry was handling at the moment looked very leafy.

            Harry gave him a wry look. “This is the raw ingredients, Draco. It’s not going to look like that when it goes into your food, I promise you.”

            Draco blinked. He hadn’t realized how far down Harry’s paranoia ran. “You mean…you grind and prepare the spices yourself?” He looked again at the collection of leaves, which in some cases connected to peppers, in some to roots, and in some cases to things he didn’t recognize at all. “Oh.”

            “Is that a problem?” Harry gave him a falsely innocent look, but his shoulders were tense and his head lowered like that of a bull about to charge.

            Draco reached out, keeping one eye on Harry’s face so he would know if he was refused permission to touch. After what looked like a minute of silent struggle, Harry slashed his chin down in a nod, and Draco sighed and cupped Harry’s shoulder, moving his fingers in a circular pattern. “Of course not,” he whispered. “You are who you are, and the only parts of you I wish to change are the unhealthy defenses that you’ve raised against the world.”

            “Really?” Harry sounded as though he disbelieved but wanted to be persuaded otherwise. He turned his head to watch as Draco moved behind him, taking the time to massage both of Harry’s shoulders now.

            “Yes,” Draco said. “The things that hurt you, or make life inconvenient for you, should alter because they do that. Even if certain other traits make me wish you could be different, they aren’t important enough to make me change my mind, or I wouldn’t have chosen you at all. And in the right light, some difficulties and rough edges can be charming.”

            “Hmmm.” Harry’s eyes were closing, his shoulders relaxing under Draco’s touch. His head drooped, and the motion exposed the back of his neck. Draco’s eyes locked on it. It wasn’t a patch of skin he had seen bared often, unlike Harry’s face and hands, and he would have liked to take it in his teeth and hold Harry there, gently still, calmly caught. He refrained. “It’s still strange to hear you talk like that.”

            “I can’t believe that I’m the only one who would.” Draco thought Harry had dropped the knot of tension he’d picked up when they were talking about food, so he moved his hands down Harry’s sides and rested them on his hips. “You’re so beautiful.” His breath sighed out of him, and he gave in to one temptation and brushed his cheek against Harry’s nape.

            Harry wriggled against him, and Draco pressed down. If he could hold Harry just a little longer, then he would feel better. He couldn’t make dinner for his chosen, he couldn’t bite him, but if he could hold—

            “Draco. Off.”

            The tone told Draco he would find himself on the wrong edge of a wand in a moment. He dropped his arms and backed away. Harry glanced over his shoulder, bristling, and then abruptly choked and buried his head in his hands. Draco frowned. He couldn’t tell whether Harry was on the edge of laughter or tears, and he should be able to tell.

            “Harry?”

            “I’ll be all right.” Harry shook his head and sighed, lifting it again. His fringe hung in his face. Draco reached out to brush it away, but Harry did that himself, only raising one eyebrow as if to ask Draco what he was doing. “It’s—hard, that’s all. Going between emotions so quickly like that.”

            “So quickly?” Draco kept his voice as low and gentle as he could, hoping that would encourage Harry to talk. He didn’t understand everything about what Harry was feeling, and he should. He wanted to. That meant he should have the knowledge, if it was knowledge of his chosen and he wanted it.

            “One moment I’m calm and happy that you’re there, and the next moment I want to shove you to the other side of the room and stalk out the door.” Harry flicked his forehead with his fingers. “I didn’t do that most of the time in the last three years. I wasn’t fully healed, now, but I wasn’t some volatile mess of reactions, either.”

            Draco licked his lips. “I think you’re healing, but I also think that you’re coming under my influence.”

            In moments, the gentleness was gone from Harry’s face. He leaned forwards, hands clamping down on the counter as though he would tear the wood and marble apart. “Explain.”

            “It’s not the allure,” Draco said. “I promise.” He found it hard to breathe when Harry was that angry at him.

            Perhaps some of that showed on his face, or else Harry trusted him enough to believe he was telling the truth, because he nodded and said, “All right. It isn’t. But that doesn’t explain what it is. Explain.”

            Draco bared his teeth, anger welling up in him. “Don’t talk to me like that. It’s not as though I did it on purpose.”

            “But you didn’t tell me about it, either.” Harry stepped around the counter. Draco, as irritated as he was, could take that as a positive sign: at least Harry wasn’t retreating from him. “Explain.”

            “I shall get very annoyed if you keep repeating that,” Draco told him. “The reason I didn’t mention it is because not every Veela-and-chosen pair feels the influence. Most of them don’t need it. Lucy and Owen didn’t. I never felt it with Pansy.” He bit down on his tongue to keep from saying that Harry probably hadn’t felt it with Laurent, either, because he was not an idiot, current appearances to the contrary. “It’s meant as a tool to bind together two who are reluctant, for some reason.”

            “Just like the allure,” Harry said. His tone was so sharp that Draco nearly replied, but his face was haunted.

            “No,” Draco said. “The influence affects the Veela, too. It guides them into pushing the boundaries, sensing what would make their chosen comfortable and trying to go a bit beyond that. It fixates them until the relationship is settled and the influence is no longer needed.”

            “Until we have sex?” Harry was gripping his own arm now.

            Draco shook his head. “No. Just until they’re certain that their chosen isn’t going to walk away.”

            “So you can’t really say when that will happen,” Harry said. “And it’ll affect you until then.”

            His voice had softened, and it wasn’t until Draco saw his expression that he realized why. He stood up straight, his claws emerging. His wings strained and burned, but he kept them down. “Don’t you dare pity me,” he snarled at Harry. “I don’t mind being subject to this. It’s part of me. Not everyone resents being controlled, you know.”

            Harry raised his eyebrows, but said only, “What does the influence do to the—the chosen?” He still stumbled on the word when it came to him.

            “It heightens their emotions around the Veela,” Draco said. “That means that the Veela—me—knows at once if something I do doesn’t work.” He was going to personalize this and make it impossible for Harry to ignore. “You can’t pretend to ignore it. In other words, you can’t do things anymore just because you believe that I might need them. You’ll react with anger or fear or joy before you think about it.”

            Harry scowled. “That seems like a roundabout way of making a relationship happen.”

            Draco smiled, because he had to. “Can you think of another way that would work for us?”

            Harry hunched his shoulders and looked away in a way that told Draco he was still refusing to accept those words as they applied to him, personally. If he had been Veela, his feathers would have been ruffled. “I don’t like being controlled,” he said. “Not by this influence, not by anything.”

            “And yet, you are and will be,” Draco said, deciding to drop the conciliating words and go straight for the direct ones, since Harry had stopped responding. “The best you can do is face up to what controls you and wrestle with it or live with it, rather than denying it exists.”

*

            Harry winced. Draco spoke the truth, and if he had forgotten the courage that Lucy’s words left him with, he hadn’t forgotten the revelation: that there was no way to control everything that might touch him.

            But he could control how miserably he acted about it.

            “All right,” he said. “But will you tell me when you think that you’re doing something because of this influence—” he spat the word, the only way he could express his hatred of it “—that you wouldn’t do otherwise?”

            Draco looked at him instead of answering. Harry tried not to feel insulted. He reminded himself that he’d come to make dinner, and he had to be in the right frame of mind to cook. He looked at the chicken and began selecting among recipes in his head, trying to forget what Draco had told him.

            “I’ll try,” Draco said at last. “I don’t always know. I took some time to recognize the influence operating, just now.”

            Harry nodded shortly. “All right. That’s the best I can ask for.”

            He turned back in time to catch sight of Draco’s brilliant smile. He held out one hand as if he were reaching for Harry in spite of himself, and then started to draw it back. Harry caught it and squeezed it briefly.

            “Let’s have dinner,” he said in determination, turning to face the food again.

            He had expected Draco to sit back, perhaps asking occasional questions while Harry worked. Instead, he fussed and fidgeted about as Harry removed charms, chopped and ground—mostly by means of spells—and started fires burning. He asked so many questions that Harry sometimes lost track of his preparations to answer, and then had to start the count over again.

            “Look,” he said at last, “could you sit down and let me do this? I like you, but I need concentration when I’m cooking.”

            Draco sighed. “I’d only wriggle around and suppress my questions and annoy you just as much, I’m afraid.”

            Harry blinked at him. “Why?”

            “Because my instincts say I should be the one to take care of my chosen,” Draco said. “To feed him, to provide for him, to buy him clothes and the like.” He shrugged helplessly. “I’m trying to learn what I can so I can cook for you someday.”

            Harry had a sudden sense memory of Laurent pouring cream into his mouth and feeding him chicken sandwiches that Harry didn’t get to choose. That had been before he made Harry Veela-struck, but he still was nearly sick. He glanced aside and nodded.

            “I understand,” he said in a delicate voice. “But can we agree that you can’t do anything about it right now? Can you sit down and relax?”

            Draco paused, then settled. Harry looked over to see him watching with his elbows propped on the counter and his hands beneath his chin.

            “As long as you don’t mind me watching,” he murmured. “You’re still the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

            “Person,” Harry muttered as he began to slice up the chicken.

            “Pardon?”

            Harry glanced narrow-eyed at Draco. “I’m not a thing.”

            Draco smiled, and it was genuine and warm. “Of course not. Can you bear the staring?”

            “It’ll do,” Harry said, and restricted himself to tiny glances in Draco’s direction as he worked. He could feel the stare on the side of his face, and sometimes on his back and arse when he bent down or turned around to work, but he had done harder things under harder conditions. He made a mental note to check in the mirror when he got home, though, and try to work out what had fixed Draco’s attention.

            The chicken, in a marinade that Harry had designed himself, was a success, and their conversation stayed away from Laurent or the Blazing Season or any difficult topics during dinner. And as they ate, Harry let himself do something he hadn’t done before: he softly unfocused his eyes and studied Draco, looking for what attracted him.

            Draco’s way of moving, for one thing, he decided. His hands floated through the air, and he could slice through a motion and yet end it precisely where he needed to be. It was hard to imagine him knocking over cups or hitting dishes with his elbows. Harry was sure that he could be hard in a fight, but he wasn’t that way all the time, battle-tempered, the way Harry knew he himself was.

            And Draco’s voice, soft and full of laughter, was attractive, too. It matched the way his hair fluffed around his face now and how his eyes sparkled when he had them on Harry. He was less like a carved bone ornament, the way he had seemed a year ago, and more like a swan or greyhound, a living creature.

            Harry felt a stirring in his groin and quickly returned his attention to the food, somewhat terrified by how quickly his arousal had risen.

            When Harry left, Draco cupped his chin in his hands and stood there staring into Harry’s eyes for a long moment.

            “Thank you for dinner,” Draco murmured. “I have hope that someday you’ll let me do the same thing for you.”

            Harry couldn’t make a promise about that, and experience had taught him not to try. But there was something else he could do.

            He leaned forwards and kissed Draco, thoroughly, gently, even edging his tongue a little past Draco’s lips when they opened. He kept his eyes closed, because if Draco suddenly manifested Veela features he couldn’t stand to see it.

            But it was a kiss, and it left Draco looking pleasantly dazed when Harry murmured, “Good night,” and turned away.

*

            Draco was sure he looked ridiculous to anyone who might have watched him, standing there for ten minutes and touching his lips after Harry had left.

            He didn’t care.

*

            SpiritOfBeyond: Thanks! Of course, that honesty doesn’t stop Draco from being (honestly) impatient.

            Lady_of_Clunn: Thanks! It won’t last long, as you see in this chapter, but they can try to have other days on which good things happen.

            luvlustblood: Thanks!

            thrnbrooke: So do they.

            Night the Storyteller: That’s one of the reasons Harry is taking the holidays, so he can be away from work for a while.

            mariahs_fantasy: Thank you! I am sure Draco would like something more formal, but whether Harry can stand anything like that is an open question.
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