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Temporary Mate	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 17288 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
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-Three—Controlled Jealousy
“The letter is from Ron and Hermione. Um. They want to talk to me at the Burrow. And they want me to come alone.”
Draco shut his eyes and let out his breath in a little huff. Harry, sitting with the parchment folded tightly in his fist, watched him. Finally Draco opened his eyes again and nodded. “Okay.”
“You’re really okay with this?”
“Of course not. But they’re your friends, and I know you love them. I have to trust that neither of them is going to run off with you when I know how much you love me, too.” Draco reached across the table and cradled Harry’s hand, the one that didn’t hold Hermione’s letter, in his. “I’ll stay here, I promise. Just—don’t linger, okay? Come back as soon as you can, even if that isn’t for hours.”
Harry stood up and walked around the table to kiss him on the cheek. “I think these days alone with me have been good for you,” he breathed into Draco’s ear, making him shudder. “I can’t imagine you letting me go and spend time alone with Ron and Hermione before this. You didn’t even want me alone with them in Kingsley’s office.”
Draco nodded and let his fingers trail gently around the curve of Harry’s cheekbones. It was Harry’s turn to shudder. He’d had no idea how sensitive his face was until he started spending time with Draco.
“I have to control my jealousy. I know that. But it’s going to still be bad if someone makes you a romantic proposition while you’re there. Stay—” Draco clenched his teeth for a second. “Stay away from Weasley’s little sister. If you can.”
Harry nodded. “Honestly, I doubt Ginny will be there. Hermione said in her letter that she and Ron are going to be alone in the Burrow, too. Whatever this is, it’s something they don’t want Ron’s family to overhear, either.”
Draco stood up and forced Harry a step back, kissing him harshly, urgently. Harry leaned on the table and gave in, gripping Draco’s shoulders hard enough to feel the bone drive into his hands. Merlin, this was different with Draco than it was with other people he’d flirted with. He didn’t mind possessive kisses when he trusted the person giving them to him.
Draco stepped back. “I hope it’s not bad news.”
“Me, too. I’ll be back as soon as I can.”
Draco didn’t respond. Harry looked at him over his shoulder as he walked towards the fireplace, and Draco smiled a little and said, “I know you will. But I’m going to stay over here in case my instincts take over at the last minute and start insisting that I go with you.”
“Such a flatterer,” Harry murmured, and smiled, and threw the Floo powder, and was gone.
*
Draco sighed and bowed his head. Maybe the hours alone would give him the time, too, to decide what he should do about the letter from Lucius that had come yesterday, and that he hadn’t shown Harry yet because of how it would hurt him.
That’s going to hurt us both. It wasn’t as though Draco knew how to distance himself from Harry’s pain.
Draco opened his eyes and took the letter out of his pocket. He would read it over again and try to find a loophole in his father’s implacable words. Of course Father would have tried not to leave one, but Draco was his son. He had had an education in finding loopholes as well as crafting precise words that ought not to have them.
Draco,
While your mother approves of the way that Potter handled the reporters’ inquiries into your intimate life, I was appalled. A man like Potter should have enough presence to quell such questions before they arise, and should not indulge his temper by threatening lawsuits. Somehow we have coped with Skeeter’s vulgarity for a decade without threatening her.
I wonder what you think, having chosen a mate without tactic, discretion, or control of his temper.
Then came his father’s flourishing signature. A short letter, to overturn half of what Draco had admired about the way Harry handled the reporters yesterday. But an important one.
Draco spread his wings and swooped through the large doorway from the dining room, up the staircase and through other doorways that would be wide enough to accommodate him. He was going to meditate and settle things in his mind so that, by the time Harry came home, he knew exactly what course of action he should suggest.
*
“What’s the matter? Did someone get hurt? Is it Charlie?”
That was the only thing Harry could think of when he came through the Floo into the Burrow and saw how white and tense Ron and Hermione’s faces were. There was always the possibility of someone being injured, and since Charlie worked with dragons, he was the most likely candidate.
But Ron and Hermione only gave each other long glances, and then Hermione turned back to him and shook her head. “No. It’s what we found out about Veela bonds and what happens when the temporary ones turn into permanent ones.”
Harry relaxed with a little sigh and let them usher him into the kitchen. There was tea waiting, steaming and prepared just the way he liked it, and a pile of biscuits that he knew Mrs. Weasley must have made. Harry settled into the chair nearest the plate and nibbled while he watched his friends take seats across from him.
“Please don’t interrupt at first.” Hermione’s eyes were haunted. “I know you want it to work with Draco. But I need to say this. All right? Can you just listen to me?”
Harry thought about it, then nodded. It was probably going to be incredibly hard, but he knew his friends. They wouldn’t have brought this up at all if they didn’t think it was important. He would try to listen to them and be unbiased.
“Thank you.” Hermione breathed the words, and then spread papers out on the table in front of her and lowered her face until her nose almost touched them. Ron sat there, eyes flicking worriedly back and forth between Harry and Hermione. “In the majority of all known temporary bonds that turned into true ones, the human partner eventually fell out of love.”
Harry clenched his teeth on the inside of his cheek. He had promised that he would listen.
“It seems that the human partners felt caught up in the grandeur and drama of the moment, but then, when they ventured back into the outside world and started speaking with the people they’d known before the Veela requested to bond with them, they realized they wanted other things. Things other than the Veela’s constant protectiveness and hovering over them, I mean.” Hermione brushed hair out of her mouth and kept reading. “They wanted to spend time with their friends, alone with their friends. They wanted to date other people. They wanted to go to their jobs without a Veela shadowing them.”
Harry curled his hand into his knee.
“And the Veela also tended to fall out of love. True bonds take time to form. It’s not like Veela just pin someone random to the ground and f-fuck them.” Hermione’s cheeks turned so red that Harry knew exactly what it had cost her to say those words. “They have to find a mate who’s compatible with them. Sure, they can form temporary bonds when it’s their life or nothing at all, but they want—more than just spur-of-the-moment compatibility. They want someone they can court, who will grow with them over the years. And that person is a human only fifty percent of the time.”
Harry took a deep breath. He had to admit, that part scared him more. He trusted Draco when Draco said he loved Harry, but if he opened his eyes one day and wanted to go through the courting process again…
“Both Veela and human in temporary bonds always felt rushed. That they’d jumped past the steps that would let mates get to know each other, straight to the sex. The romance wasn’t part of it. And both the Veela and the human wanted romance in the end.”
Hermione looked up. Her eyes were brilliant with what Harry suspected were tears getting ready to fall. Her mouth was strained. Ron reached over and held her hand.
“That’s the summary?” Harry asked in an even tone, when she hadn’t spoken for a little while.
“Yes. I have all the sources if you want to look them over—”
“No, I trust that you’re summarizing what they said accurately. It’s just—Hermione, what do you call this?”
“Um.” Hermione darted her eyes around to follow the motion of his hand. “The Burrow?”
“No. I mean that I’m alone with you here. Draco didn’t fly into a rage when I got your letter and suggest we were going to have a threesome. He was unhappy about it, but he did let me go.”
Ron had turned so red that Harry thought he might never look at Harry again. Harry ignored that. He knew it was the threesome comment, and he honestly had more important things to worry about.
“Well, that’s true, but you’ve also been isolated.” Hermione kept her voice gentle, the way she might talk to someone on the Janus Thickey Ward, Harry thought. “This is the first time you’ve been out of his reach for a long time since you came back. Do you think he can keep from bursting through the door or the Floo?”
“Yes.”
“Why?”
“Because he promised.”
“Lots of Veela make promises to their mates,” Hermione said, and gave a mournful shake of her head. “That doesn’t mean they always keep them.”
Harry leaned back with his hands folded behind his head and faced Ron. “The Cannons,” he said. “How are they doing?”
“Fine!” Ron said, in automatic defense as always, and then blinked. “Not that I don’t appreciate the subject change, mate, but you’re usually a little less blatant than this.”
“We’re going to talk about something other than Draco, or me, or temporary bonds turning into true ones, or Veela mates,” Harry said firmly. “We’re going to talk for at least—Hermione, how much time would it take to convince you that he’s not coming after me? And don’t say days.”
“I wasn’t going to say days.” Hermione crossed her arms. “An hour. That’s more than any Veela in a temporary bond turned into a true one ever managed.”
Harry nodded and turned to Ron. “Okay. Honestly, you’re going to have to carry most of the conversation. I wasn’t paying any attention to the Cannons before I went to that other dimension with Draco.”
“That’s because you’re not sensible,” Ron said, firing up. “All right. Listen. Imagine that there’s this line dividing all Quidditch teams in the world up, right? It’s based on potential. Not how many games they actually won. Those can depend on luck and things like the Seeker seeing the Snitch right away. How many they could win. That’s what matters. Okay—”
Harry grinned and fell into listening. He had to admit he’d missed this: Ron’s waving hands and bright face and the way that he came up with all sorts of “facts” Harry never would have thought about.
He didn’t miss Hermione’s scowl in the corner, in either sense of the word. But he ignored her. Draco wasn’t going to come after him. He’d promised. And Malfoys and Veela both kept their promises.
*
Draco had flown twice around the whole of his house. He was covered with sweat now, and not all of it was from the effort required to beat his wings. He dropped down into the middle of the gardens and swore, bending over. His back ached and twitched. He wanted Harry to be there to rub a soothing hand over it.
Harry wasn’t there.
And maybe he was letting someone else touch him, right now. Maybe he was going to come back and tell Draco that the youngest Weasley daughter, or someone else, was at the Burrow, and they were so sweet and kind and all he wanted, and he didn’t think he could take the pressure of being mated to a Veela anymore—
Draco jerked his head back and bared his teeth in a silent snarl. No, he couldn’t say that, he couldn’t think that, he couldn’t do that. Or he would go tearing off to England and drag Harry back home with his teeth locked in the scruff of Harry’s neck.
That was too appealing an image to let go right away. Draco thought about what he would do the next time they were in bed together, and then slammed again into the realization that there might not be a next time.
No. He said there would be.
And Harry keeps his promises.
Draco dragged himself back under control with a growl and a shake of his head, and called for one of the house-elves to bring him tea.
*
“Okay, it was an hour without him. But it was an hour of chatting about the Cannons.”
Harry blinked at Hermione as he reached for the Floo powder. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“If you’d spent an hour talking about when you used to date Ginny or Michael, or the other options that you have out there besides Malfoy—”
Harry reached out and put a hand on Hermione’s shoulder. She shut up and blinked at him. Harry took a breath and said quietly, “I’m never going to talk about that again, Hermione. Because I don’t want it. I know you’re trying to help by doing things like compiling those statistics, but this doesn’t help.”
Being Hermione, she probably would have argued harder, but she must have seen something in his eyes that she realized she was better off not arguing against. She nodded and said, “Okay, Harry.”
“Take care with Malfoy, mate.” Ron shook his hand. Then he leaned over while Hermione shuffled through the papers for something she wanted to give Harry and whispered, “I don’t like Malfoy that much, but I think you’re doing fine with him. I only agreed to be here because Hermione was so insistent.”
Harry smiled back, and then shook his head at the paper Hermione tried to give him. “No, Hermione.”
“But—”
“No. Seeing those statistics would hurt Draco. And we’ve already established that he can control his jealousy and that he isn’t going to come storming through the Floo after me. I’m going to leave it here.”
“But it would still be better if he didn’t have jealousy. I mean, jealousy is wrong. Even if he can control it.”
“Jealousy is part of who he is as a Veela. If it was terrible and he wouldn’t let me go anywhere by myself, I would leave him. You know I would, Hermione,” he added firmly, when her mouth trembled open again. “But I’ve chosen to accept this. I love him. I’m going to stay with him.”
Hermione chewed her lip for a second. Then she gave a long, deep sigh, and Harry smiled, because he knew that meant she was giving him up convincing him that temporary bonds turned into true ones weren’t a good thing. “All right. But if you ever change your mind—”
“I know you would be there for me.” Harry hugged her, shook Ron’s hand again, and then dropped the Floo powder into the flames. He didn’t really want to call the name of their home in front of them, but he reasoned that they wouldn’t do anything with it unless it was an emergency. “Draco’s Home!”
Just like he always did, he stumbled out of the fire, and was brushing soot off his clothes when Draco seized him.
Harry laughed and leaned back against the mantel, gently touching Draco’s cheeks and eyebrows. He hadn’t even reacted violently, the way he would if most people grabbed him, he thought. Draco was already too familiar to him for that. Scent or sound or something else, he knew him. He could never be upset or surprised when Draco was the one holding him.
“You’re back, you’re back,” Draco muttered, and he kissed the side of his neck and touched the side of his shirt.
“Yes. And next time it’ll be easier.”
Draco’s wings trembled for a second, and then he sighed and nodded. “Yes, I suppose you’re right. We have to have a next time, don’t we?”
And that moment, right then, when they were smiling at each other, was the moment when the owl swooped through the window and dropped the Howler in the middle of the drawing room table, where it exploded, shouting in Lucius’s voice.
“Have you seen what they printed in the papers, Draco? That you’re as weak as I always thought you were, wrapped around that child like they said you were, that you’re a Veela and that means more to you than being a Malfoy, that you want—things—that are unspeakable. I give up. From this moment forwards, I no longer consider you my son.”
The shouting stopped, and Draco stared in silence at the small pile of red pieces of parchment in the middle of the table. Harry wrapped his arms around him and held on.
*
Jan: Well, Harry did his best. Unfortunately, it didn't stop Skeeter.
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Temporary Mate