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Nature of the Beast	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 48977 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Four—Poisons and Patience
            “Is all the poison out of him?” Harry asked. If he sounded ridiculous, he thought as Madam Pomfrey gave him a sideways glance and waved her wand again over Malfoy, then he could put up with that.
            He would put up with a lot, not to have Malfoy dead.
            “Most of it,” said Madam Pomfrey, after she’d spent a few minutes examining Malfoy so closely that Harry had to hold his breath the way he would if he was underwater. “Some of it got absorbed into his blood, and I’ll keep him overnight and make sure he’s not still suffering the effects of that.” She waved her wand again, and a flask of some dark green potion floated over to her. “This will keep him from suffering too much,” she added, as she poured the potion down Malfoy’s throat. “He’ll get the poison out through sweating, mostly, instead of having to vomit it up.”
            Harry nodded, his eyes on Malfoy’s still face. He didn’t think Malfoy was unconscious—sometimes he stirred and groaned, and he reached a hand towards Harry whenever Harry moved even a short distance away—but he was drifting near it. “What kind of poison was it?”
            “Oh, a conjured kind,” said Madam Pomfrey casually, and stepped back to consider Malfoy from what looked like another angle. “I see it often enough here when someone’s been playing silly buggers with Potions.”
            Harry had to grin. It was a nice reminder that some things were going on as usual at Hogwarts, or would be going on once students returned to the school in numbers. Right now, Madam Pomfrey and some professors were the only ones here on a permanent basis.
            Pomfrey gave him a close glance, then added, “There is one more thing.”
            “Yes?” Harry sat up. He had to wonder whether Maundy had added something more insidious than a potion that would infiltrate the bloodstream into her poison. It wouldn’t surprise him.
            “My magic can sense a bond when it’s in its first year of formation,” Pomfrey said carefully. “Veela bonds, wedding bonds, all sorts. After that, it usually slows and settles, and it’s hard to detect anymore. But this feels more like a broken limb than a settled bond.”
            Harry sighed. “Yeah. I’m afraid that’s my fault. I didn’t—I can’t be the kind of submissive mate that most dominant Veela would have, and I told him that. The bond hasn’t taken. Another Veela said that it looked tattered, and we can’t feel each other way we ought to be able to do.”
            “Have you considered methods that might help the bond settle?” Pomfrey asked gently.
            Harry shrugged at her. “I’ve tried to spend more time with him just talking about harmless things, and learning to trust him. But I can’t become the kind of kneeling, orders-taking submissive that he dreamed about. I care for him, I don’t want him to die, but there are things I can’t do. Even for him.”
            “Yet you care for him more than you did at the beginning,” said Pomfrey, and she hesitated for a long moment. Harry waited, since he knew she had something else she wanted to say. He had become good at telling when someone felt that way.
            “You remember that I treated you when you got that injury in the attack at the Ministry?” Pomfrey asked.
            “Which one?” Harry asked for a moment, before he remembered. There had been several attacks at the Ministry, mostly from people who were angry at him and still had the appropriate security clearance to be around him, but only one where Madam Pomfrey had treated him. “Oh, right. That one where you removed the ice darts from my chest.”
            Pomfrey nodded. “I remember thinking that you seemed very subdued, compared to the way I remembered you. Not even the warrior that I saw defeat You-Know-Who on that last day of the war. Fighters have to have some passion.”
            Harry shrugged a little. “I’ve poured my passion into the peace effort.”
            “Yes, and you hardly answered my questions and acted as though your wounds only mattered because they might mean that you couldn’t attend some bloody meeting that night,” said Pomfrey.
            Harry blinked at the transformation. Pomfrey seemed to have increased in size, and she put her hands on her hips and stared at him so sternly that it made Harry squirm.
            “It was a lot different from the way you’re acting now. Concerned about someone who could have been a burden to you. About something that’s not related to the peace process at all.” Pomfrey shook her head at him. “I think you should consider the possibility that the bond is changing you in some ways, awakening emotions that you’d locked away. I think you’re right that it will never turn you into the kind of natural submissive Mr. Malfoy wanted. But it might change you into someone he could want, not a submissive but someone else. Yourself.”
            She held Harry’s eyes for a second, and then turned around and said, “I need to go and get another potion that will prevent the sweating from hurting Mr. Malfoy too much. Excuse me.” She disappeared calmly into the Potions cupboard at the back of the hospital wing, as though she’d said nothing at all.
            Harry sat there with Malfoy’s hand in his, and his mind whirling.
*
            Draco had to spend a large portion of the next day on his back, his wings stuck through a specially-designed mesh net at the bottom of the bed that let them dangle until the tips almost touched the floor. He didn’t like that. He also had to watch Harry leave his bedside at times, to speak with his friends or some of his fellow participants in the peace process or who knew who else. Draco felt his nature really only settle when Harry came back and sat down in the seat at his side again, and smiled at him.
            But at least he was awake for the most important visit: the one where Maundy came to concede the duel to Harry.
            Harry immediately stood up when she came into the hospital wing, and his face wasn’t the bland mask Draco was used to seeing when Harry was dealing with someone he wanted to involve in the peace process, even if he didn’t like them. He moved to stand a little in front of Draco, and his hand was on his wand. He didn’t take it off even when Maundy met his eyes and made a brief little gesture with one hand that Draco knew was appealing for someone to put away his weapon.
            “Harry,” Draco whispered, touching his back. Harry tensed, but didn’t turn. “She wants you to put your wand down.”
            There was a long moment that tilted on the edge of a knife-blade, and Draco knew Harry was seriously considering not doing it. In the end, he stepped out of the way, but he kept one sharp eye on Maundy all the way.
            If she does anything stupid, Draco thought, impressed in spite of himself, then she’s going to wish she hadn’t.
            And this…maybe Draco was indulging in wishful thinking, but he thought there was something different about the way Harry was moving and standing. The consideration didn’t seem to come from Harry’s usual calculation of minute political advantages. Draco thought he was thinking about something else.
            Me?
            Harry sat down beside Draco, and took his hand again. Draco had to bite his lip hard, and not just because Harry was showing himself more willing to engage with Draco than ever before. He was sitting down when he should have accepted Maundy’s surrender standing. It was an insult that wouldn’t have meant a lot to Draco, but would have to his mother, and definitely to a pure-blood as starched as Maundy.
            For long moments, Maundy only stood there. Then she held out a steel dagger. Harry surged to his feet again.
            “This is a sign of the peace treaty,” said Maundy, her voice as bland as her face. “There is nothing that says I can harm you with it. In fact, it is enchanted so that I cannot harm you with it.”
            “Draco,” said Harry, and Draco’s heart leaped and thrilled so hard at the murmur of his first name that he almost didn’t pay attention to what Harry said next. “I read once that Veela can sense harm to their mates. Is that true?”
            “It depends on how present the threat is,” said Draco, wondering for a moment where Harry could have read that, and how come he hadn’t read about dominant and submissive mates in the same book. “I could sense that someone in a room had murderous thoughts towards you, but I couldn’t sense a threat from someone who was only daydreaming about how much more convenient it would be to have you out of the way.”
            Harry nodded. He had his blank political face on again, but the words that emerged from his mouth weren’t political at all. “Then just test that dagger for me, wouldn’t you.”
            Draco swallowed and reached out one hand, palm up, to accept the dagger. Maundy gave him a look of silent scorn and passed it over. Draco didn’t pay attention to that. He concentrated, instead, on the way that the metal pressed against his skin, and how it made his senses light up and flicker and spark, and nodded gravely in the end.
            “It could be threatening in the sense that someone else could use it to stab you,” he told Harry, and handed the blade back to Maundy. She was the one who had to give it to Harry, directly. “But she’s right about it being enchanted so she can’t use it that way.”
            Harry gave Maundy a smile that exhilarated Draco. Where had this defiant and stubborn risk-taker been hiding the rest of the time they were together? Where had he been hiding since Hogwarts, in fact? Draco shook his head to try to clear it.
            Maundy, luckily, was focused on Harry right then and didn’t pay enough attention to realize that Draco might have been distracted and thus not on-guard. She grimaced and handed Harry the blade, turning it as if she wouldn’t mind should some edge scratch him. “Your stakes are claimed,” she said. “I will withdraw from politics and cease opposing you.”
            Harry opened his mouth as if he would have liked to add something, but luckily, he seemed to know that was impossible, because he nodded instead and murmured, “They are claimed.”
            The steel blade glowed abruptly with a red tint that made Draco stare and hiss. But the sense of danger never grew any worse. This wasn’t real heat, only an enchantment of some sort that Maundy had added to her dagger to make it look more impressive at the moment of claiming.
            “Good,” said Maundy, and her gaze lingered for a moment on Harry’s face. “You acknowledged the rules of honor.”
            Harry was smarter than to think that was a congratulations of any sort. He waited, and Draco waited, bristling, with him. He would have put a hand on Harry’s shoulder to remind him that he didn’t stand alone, but he thought Maundy would take that as an announcement of vulnerability.
            Maundy, her face consumed with disgust and hatred that made it wrinkle hard, bent towards Harry and whispered, “But only the rules. Not the honor itself. I still hate you. I still wish you had never conducted the research that revealed any dirty blood in my family. The moment you slip and stray outside the arena of politics, where I can strike at you, then I plan to do so.”
            “Aren’t you a little stupid to tell me about it, then?” Harry asked, hardly moving his lips.
            Maundy whirled away from him and strode out of the hospital wing. Draco did put a hand on Harry’s shoulder, then, and drew him close. Harry remained on alert until the sound of Maundy’s footsteps faded, even to Draco’s enhanced senses.
            “You were magnificent,” Draco said, when he could listen to something other than the threat he thought was leaving.
            Harry started and turned to him. He flushed a second later. Draco watched in covert delight. He thought Harry was trying to tamp down some of the anger and other emotions that had flowed out of him when he was confronting Maundy, but it was very hard for him to do.
            “Um. You think so?” Harry scratched at the back of his neck and then shrugged and looked at the ground. “I don’t know. It—it makes me feel so uncertain, wondering if I’m going to turn her inside out any second.”
            “You were never near that,” Draco said. “I would have felt a threat, remember?”
            “Including a threat to her?” Harry looked frankly disbelieving, and Draco could understand why. It didn’t seem to chime at all with what Harry had read about the Veela, wherever he had read that.
            “A threat to yourself, in this case,” Draco said. “Because that kind of anger could get turned on yourself.”
            “Oh.” Harry looked interested. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
            “Well, you didn’t ask,” said Draco, and ignored the anxious way that his wings were fluttering in the mesh netting at the bottom of the bed. He had to confront his mate this way, if they weren’t going to have normal conversations without it. “And I’m wondering about something. Come here.” He held out his hand.
            Harry had started some protest that seemed to include the word, “But—” He stopped and walked over to Draco when Draco asked him to, though. His gaze was frankly evaluating as he put his hand in Draco’s.
            Draco closed his eyes and concentrated as hard as he could. Before, he hadn’t been able to feel much of anything through the bond except for flashes now and then. He had accepted that as the “natural” state of the bond after what Aloren had told him.
            But he found himself wondering, now, if it was really down to that, or down to something else. Perhaps he hadn’t been able to sense the true reason their bond had failed because he hadn’t known how to look for it.
            Now, he reached out with senses whose possession was still new to him and sent a soft throbbing pulse of emotion up the bond, along Harry’s arm. A normal Veela would have been able to do this without physical touch, but then again, a normal Veela would also have been able to order his submissive to speak the truth, and the submissive would have, whether or not he knew the truth consciously.
            Draco was going to try to stop regretting what he didn’t have, and rejoice in what he did.
            He slowly traced the line of his consciousness up and down Harry’s arm, and the pulse came back to him at last. Draco opened his mouth, and it flooded his tongue with the coppery taste of adrenaline and anger.
            He opened his mouth more fully, swallowed, and stared Harry in the face as he murmured, “I think I might have found the true reason behind the failure of our bond.”
            Harry stiffened. The mask of wariness he raised was painful, but nothing like the true indifference that Draco thought he had felt before. For one thing, Draco could now feel the pulse slamming away in Harry’s wrist. “Oh?” Harry asked tightly.
            Draco nodded and traced his fingers for a moment over Harry’s wrist, trying to make him calm down. It didn’t seem to work. Harry just kept watching him.
            “It’s nothing like a secret from your past,” Draco finally said, having decided that was the ultimate source of Harry’s tension. “Or if it is, it’s only a secret from the part that you already told me about. You’ve changed since the duel began. You know that, right?”
            Harry nodded, his eyes guarded. For a moment, he looked down at their clasped hands, then back at Draco’s face. “Madam Pomfrey said that maybe the bond was finally settling. But I don’t know what the difference was.”
            “You’re feeling so much emotion now,” Draco said quietly. “You didn’t feel much of anything before, except when you flung me into the library wall, and even that didn’t last long. You were trying to put up with what had happened to you instead of either embracing or rejecting it. The bond, I mean,” he added, when Harry squinted at him as if he didn’t know what “what had happened to you” meant.
            “But that’s what I have to do,” Harry said. “I mean—I have to try to make the world better. I can’t either just accept it the way it is, with all these stupid bloody prejudices, or give up on it.”
            Draco smiled at him, relieved, triumphant. “I know, but you told me that you were holding back all this anger and trying not to feel it. You got angry during the duel, didn’t you?”
            Harry blinked. “Yes. When I realized that she was taunting me about you, and then especially when I realized she’d given the dragon poison.” His face was turning red now, and Draco didn’t think it was because he was embarrassed.
            Draco nodded to him. “Well. I think that you essentially used your own magic to suppress not only anger but a lot of other emotions, too, all emotions that would have interfered with your peace process. Impatience. Boredom. Even pleasure, because it might distract you. And—well, the spell snapped. So those emotions are coming back, and that was what was interfering with our bond. Your own will, holding back the emotions that might have made you react in any deep way to the bond, positively or negatively.”
            Harry stared at him with his mouth open for a little, but didn’t reject the explanation, either. Draco gently tightened his hold, glad for the chance to just hold onto Harry’s hand and gaze at him.
            Then Harry whispered, “So what happens now?”
            “I start getting to know the real you,” Draco said. “And bonding with the real you, not some submissive out of my imagination or the perfect politician you were trying to imagine yourself into being.”
            Harry cocked his head. “Well. It’ll be interesting to see what happens.”
            Draco could have called it other things, but he could also agree with this. “Yes,” he said simply, and basked in Harry’s smile.
*
Meechypoo: She really was only trying to hurt Harry, not Draco.
(Not that that makes it much better).
CareLessLover: Harry didn’t do anything to Maundy directly. He couldn’t, not with the rules in place.
Naomi: Thank you!
SP777: For right now, that he’ll stay with his mate.
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Nature of the Beast