Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 22
- 23
- 24
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Three—Dragons and Dread
            Draco beat his wings steadily, knowing he had to gain height and get away from any of the trees on the ground. Their branches would tangle his wings, and he would be much less effective fighting against a dragon that might breathe fire if he was around wood.
            Might breathe fire.
            He knew it was hard to fight created animals, much less created animals that he didn’t know anything about. But there were certain things he could do as a dominant Veela fighting to protect his mate that he couldn’t have done if he was merely struggling for his own survival.
            He broke into a patch of clear sky and spun around with his heart singing within him and his face already flickering. Draco wondered for a moment if his mouth and nose would completely transform into a beak, the way he had sometimes seen with Veela who were born with their full magic and didn’t need to mature into acquiring wings. That transformation might be painful, and the pain could distract him.
            The pain was not going to distract him, not when he had a mate to defend.
            He focused on the dragon, still a speck above him, and spread his wings. In seconds, he was floating motionless in the air, not beating his wings, not rising and falling. He could feel the wind around him tingling and stirring with his magic.
            The dragon seemed to decide Draco was vulnerable now that he was holding still. Or maybe the will of its creator wouldn’t let it hesitate any longer. It came diving at him, straight down from the clouds, aimed at the top of Draco’s head like an arrow.
            Draco waited for it. He could have circled away from it, he could have resisted, but it needed to come close enough that he could embrace it. He was breathing, he knew that, but it seemed to him that his breathing and blood were suspended like his body in the air. He looked at the dragon, and he couldn’t look away.
            Now it was close enough that Draco could make out its eyes. It opened its flat jaws and snorted out fire and chaos. Yes, it could breathe fire, and if the flames touched his feathers, Draco knew the pain he would suffer as his wings burned.
            The dragon came within the circle of his wings, and Draco acted.
            When he swept his wings forwards, the magic around him stirred and charged. Draco smiled. He was doing this for his mate. All he had to do was think about Harry, and the fire went out, and the dragon was left hanging in midair looking foolish. It opened its mouth as if it was going to bite him, and Draco hit it.
            The dragon’s body was solid, thick with metal and jewels, but it was a lot smaller than Draco, small enough to sit on his shoulder. He hit it and bowled it over and over, so that he had to flap harder, once he was flying again, to catch up with it. But the magic that stirred and tingled in the air still moved with him, and it closed around the dragon when Draco was close enough to surround it with his wings once more.
            Draco thought of what that fire would have done to Harry, if Maundy had set the dragon on Harry and fled. He thought about Harry’s hair catching on fire and Harry’s voice crying out in pain.
            Draco’s throat swelled. He opened a mouth that wasn’t a beak, but did feel more sharp and pointed than normal, and screamed.
            The dragon jerked and jolted to the side. Draco shrieked again, and something else inside it, some delicate organ made of silver or crystal or diamonds, shattered in sympathy with his note. The dragon’s left wing was barely flapping now, and it listed in a circle, before stretching out its claws and trying to dive at him.
            Draco didn’t bother screeching this time. He wanted to get his hands on an artifact that Maundy had made, and actually rend it to pieces. The one he had destroyed at the meeting in the Leaky Cauldron hardly counted.
            When he grabbed the dragon, it promptly sank its claws into his arms in retaliation. Draco ignored that. He brought up his legs and smashed them into the dragon’s hind legs, and then he was flying upside-down, drawing the dragon in to his chest, his mouth open and his panting filling the small, intense heated space between their wings.
            The dragon shrieked itself, hard enough to bring tears to Draco’s eyes. But he was still defending his mate, and he could ignore that easily enough.
            He slammed his foot into the dragon’s belly. The magic flowing through him made him strong enough to dent the silver, and that dent crashed into something else sensitive inside the dragon. Draco heard what sounded like glass breaking, and the dragon’s other wing stopped working.
            Draco smiled. Now all he had to was drop the bloody thing, and it would fall, and the condition of whoever touched the ground first losing the duel would be fulfilled.
            But when he tried to let the dragon go, he found its claws had sunken deep into his flesh. And it leaned near him and opened its mouth, and Draco wasn’t sure that he still had enough magic left to stop its fire.
            It wasn’t fire it breathed, though. Instead, its long, metallic forked tongue extended, and it spat a hard wash of yellow liquid into Draco’s face. Draco jerked his head back, but he wasn’t in time to prevent the liquid from soaking his skin and dripping into his mouth.
            Immediately, it began to burn. Draco screamed. There was nothing of the Veela’s menacing shriek left in that sound, as much as he wished there was. This felt like poison, and he could feel his throat already swelling again, this time shut.
            The dragon was trying to crawl up his chest towards his eyes, probably so it could spit the poison again. Draco whirled around and thrust his hand into its mouth, reaching straight down and into the innards.
            In seconds, the dragon was struggling madly against him, and Draco was flying sideways, struggling to find something that would—he didn’t know. It was unlikely that Maundy had given her dragon an antidote against its own poison, but that was what Draco wanted to find.
            Or, at least, he would wrench something vital inside the dragon out and make Maundy pay for his death by destroying her creation.
*
            One of the first things that Harry had done was cast a spell that would sharpen his sight and let him see most of what was happening hundreds of meters above his head. He noticed Maundy had cast the same spell, but she didn’t say anything about his use of it, even to torment him. She simply kept her head tilted back, the way Harry did.
            Harry saw the moment when the dragon began its dive towards Malfoy, and he swore softly as Malfoy just hung there, awaiting it. What did the idiot think he was doing?
            “Perhaps worried that your champion will lose?” Maundy asked in a calm voice, without taking her eyes from the fight.
            “It’s a proxy, not a champion, your idiocy said so,” Harry snapped back. He could feel a rustle and a stirring going through the people around him, and Ron and Hermione exchanging glances, but he couldn’t take his eyes from Malfoy any more than Maundy was about to take hers from her dragon, so he couldn’t see why.
            Maundy laughed. “When one is watching the creature that will conquer, it matters little what one calls it.”
            At that point, the dragon’s flames that Harry had been so worried about went out, and it began lurching about the sky. Harry laughed, a vicious sound that startled him. It felt like he hadn’t laughed like that in years. “You were saying?”
            Maundy didn’t reply, but from the corner of his eye, Harry saw her lips tighten. That was enough to content him as he watched Draco shriek and attack the dragon.
            The shriek made a few people wince and grab their ears, at least from their pained murmurs, but Harry heard it as a sweet sound. He shook his head, bemused. Was that a sign that his bond with Malfoy was changing, and Harry could be around him now without worrying about the painful sounds that he’d seen Veela make?
            If the bond was changing, then…
            He didn’t actually know what to make of that.
            The battle seemed to go well for a minute or so. Then the dragon got so close to Malfoy Harry couldn’t see what was happening, and he shifted around in place, leaning past Dumbledore’s tomb, trying to get closer, or as close as he could when he was standing on the bloody ground.
            A second later, Malfoy screamed again. And this time, Harry didn’t need an expert on Veela to tell him that that sound was pure pain, without the echoes of sweetness or power that the first one had had.
            Harry’s hands were clenched so hard that he knew he’d broken some of his fingernails. The pain was distant, though, as he watched Malfoy flying in ungainly motions, all over the sky, jerking closer and closer to the ground.
            “That would be the poison, I suppose,” Maundy remarked.
            Harry snapped his gaze away from Malfoy for the first time since Malfoy had spread his wings. He stared at Maundy. She didn’t return his look, but a small, pleased smile lifted the corners of her mouth.
            “Poison?” Harry said. He took a step towards Maundy, but she shook her head and went on gazing into the sky as though what was happening up there was much more interesting than the vengeance that Harry had planned to take on her.
            “I suspect you should watch,” Maundy replied. “These may be the last minutes that you will see your lover alive. And,” she added, so softly that it sounded like the whisper of the dying, “I told you that you would pay for crossing me.”
            Harry turned away from her, trembling violently. No. Malfoy was more important than she was, more important than fighting or killing her, more important than his anger. He tilted his head back and tried to watch, telling himself that if Malfoy was really in trouble, then he would Summon a broom and go flying up to rescue him, rules of the duel be damned.
*
            Draco could feel something thick and throbbing under his fingers, something that squished a little when he squeezed his hand down. He smiled and wrenched his hand sideways, feeling his breath cutting off, but not caring. He would crush the dragon’s heart, or the thing that stood in for it, and that would mean that Maundy would still lose. Draco would make sure her dragon’s corpse hit the ground first.
            That way, he would have died defending his mate. He could accept that. A Veela sometimes hoped to die like that, and it was probably more common in cases where their mate didn’t love them.
            Didn’t love them…didn’t want to bond with them…had some problem about bonding with them…Draco didn’t know which it was in Harry’s case, and anyway, it was getting harder and harder to think with the poison cutting his breath off…
            The dragon went motionless, nothing more than a hunk of metal clinging to Draco’s chest, the instant Draco tore the heart out of its chest. Draco concentrated intently so he could pull his arm out and shove the dragon away from him. It would fall. He only had to keep on the wing for a few more seconds.
            It turned out to not be even that. Draco was able to see the dragon fall into the trees and plummet past them to slam into the earth, but then his eyes crossed and shut. Black and dark red patches bloomed across his sight.
            He tried not to fight for his breath, tried to dip his wings in one final salute to Harry. That would be more dignified than simply dying fighting against suffocation.
            But he was still alive, and whether or not he was a Veela, whether or not he had a mate who loved him, he still had to breathe. Draco choked, and then he was fighting after all, his wings chopping the air. It didn’t matter, because the dragon had already fallen, but he wished—
            In seconds, someone grabbed him around the waist, and Harry’s voice whispered into his ear, “I don’t know if this will work, but you fought for me, and you would have died for me. Accio poison!”
            Draco spasmed as something seemed to stir deep inside him, the way the dragon’s inner organs had when he crushed them. He tried to gasp out and protest that Harry shouldn’t be here, but instead of words, a dark green liquid poured out of his open mouth. His throat hurt. He thrashed, and Harry reached out and restrained his wings.
            Draco opened his eyes. He was draped on his stomach over a broom—it must be a school broom from Hogwarts, from the looks of it, an old Comet—and Harry had one hand on his back and was waving his wand again.
            “Accio the rest of the poison!”
            Draco vomited. It hurt so much that he moaned, but the sound of the moan was lost in the sound of him emptying his stomach, he was sure. Harry kept one hand in the middle of his back, though, and murmured a response now and then, and Draco reminded himself of who he was and who he cared about, and went on trying to clear his stomach of the poison instead of begging for it to stop.
            Finally, nothing more was coming out, and Harry nodded. “There’s still some in your blood, but you aren’t struggling for breath, now,” he muttered. “I think we should take you down and get you to Madam Pomfrey. You should still be seen by someone who knows what they’re doing.” He laughed in what sounded like embarrassment. “Merlin knows that I don’t.”
            They began rapidly to descend, and Draco managed to turn his head slowly. “How did you get up here so quickly?” he asked, and then flinched. His voice was sharpened with bile, and he was sure he sounded horrible. “How did you know what to do?”
            “Maundy told me about the poison, and I Summoned a broom.” Harry’s eyes were bright when they met his eyes, the way they had been before the duel when he was thinking about dueling Maundy in flight. “I seem to be Summoning a lot of things today.”
            Draco shook his head in wonder and reached up with a shaking hand towards Harry’s cheek, although he didn’t make it, probably due to his weakness. “How did—why are you acting as if you care about me so much?”
            Harry paused and blinked, and Draco was immediately sorry for asking. He felt awful anyway, his head reeling and his throat and stomach aching, and he probably wouldn’t be able to appreciate the answer even if it was a favorable one, which it wouldn’t be. Harry hadn’t realized until now that he was acting more gently, and he would distance himself from Draco in an attempt to make this mate bond what he wanted it to be.
            Draco closed his eyes and waited for that moment.
But instead, Harry whispered, “That must be what they were all gasping about,” as he steered the broom towards the castle.
“What who was gasping about?” Draco winced a second later. He really should stop talking. His throat hurt so much that his head was starting to throb in sympathy with it.
“I lost my temper with Maundy,” said Harry. “I said something that had actual life in it. And it was because I was so angry that it looked like you were just hovering in midair and about to lose your life.” There was a long pause when Draco could only feel the wind sliding past his ears and his own relentless hope. “It—I don’t know. I was angry with you before, when I threw you against the library wall. I don’t know why this time was different.”
Draco shook his head and stayed silent. He knew what he hoped for, that seeing him in danger had made Harry realize he didn’t want to lose Draco, but he didn’t dare assume that was what had really happened and now things would change permanently.
Draco still had no idea what had made their bond fail. If it was Harry’s past, then he didn’t think things would change until Harry spoke to him willingly about it. If it was related to the war, then probably Harry needed to succeed in his peace process or move further away from the war before he would feel ready to love Draco.
And even then, Draco doubted the bond would be the same as any other Veela bond he had seen. Most dominants didn’t give up like he had done; they would at least fight their way back to their mate’s side. Most submissives didn’t come and rescue their dominants the way Harry had done with him.
On the other hand, how had Draco been able to wield the special magic a dominant Veela could only use in the defense of their mates, if he wasn’t one?
Draco sighed and shut his eyes. He didn’t know, and right now, thinking made his head hurt. He would like to yield and just let someone else care for him for a while.
The last thing he felt was Harry’s hand rubbing soothing circles at the center of his back.
*
Meechypoo: I don’t think Harry’s luck exactly passed to Draco, but it did help Draco in the end, because Maundy just couldn’t resist the temptation to brag.
- 22
- 23
- 24
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Nature of the Beast