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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-Five—His Move
“I wish you would tell me what you’re going to say about Skeeter.”
Harry grinned a little and leaned up to kiss Draco on the cheek. “Why? This way, you get to be surprised along with everyone else.”
“But I’ll probably be gaping.” Draco slid his arms around Harry’s waist and lowered his head so that his nose was right next to Harry’s neck. Harry held back a groan as his lips and tongue followed the path. “It will seem like it’s news to me. Do you want me to do that? It could make people doubt the truth of what you’re saying.”
“How—so?”
From Draco’s deep intake of satisfied breath, he really liked that pause in the middle of Harry’s words. “Because why would you keep information like that from me, your Veela and your partner in life? What purpose does it serve?”
“That—” Harry nearly bent over as the sparks shot straight to his groin and he felt himself begin to swell. “Draco, please. If we start shagging on the kitchen table, we’re never going to get to the meeting on time.”
“I wouldn’t mind that,” Draco murmured, hands sliding lower, around, across. “I think we should show them exactly how much we respect their time.”
“By—Oh Merlin—missing the meeting?”
“It’s an announcement, really. One where you tell them what you knew about Skeeter that was so important...” Draco left the words dangling, and let out another huff when Harry didn’t rise to the bait. “Harry.”
“Draco,” Harry imitated back, and slid free with a shake of his head and a smoothing-down of his robes. A quick, muttered charm made his erection subside. He had the feeling it was a spell he’d be getting a lot of use out of. “Let’s destroy their respect for Skeeter first, then we can destroy our reputation in their eyes.”
Draco sighed and marched over to the Floo. He had informed Harry this morning that he would be going first, in case a threat was waiting on the other side. He’d blinked when Harry had agreed.
But, honestly, Harry was still relieved and a little smug at the thought that he now had someone to take care of him. He didn’t intend to fight that when the manifestations were harmless.
And when they afford me the ability to watch a fine arse go through the Floo in front of me, he thought happily as he waited for Draco to clear the fireplace, and then tossed the powder in with a flash of green.
*
Draco smiled a little as he watched Harry stalk up to the fountain in the middle of the Atrium, the exact same place that he’d stood when they held the press conference before this one. The reporters increased their mumbled certainty that Harry would turn out to have called this meeting for nothing, that he’d really have no interesting information to announce.
Don’t they see the way he fucking walks? That’s a man who’s in command of himself and his environment and has important things to say.
Then again, the wizarding world had overlooked the important things about Harry since he was a child. All the more reason for Draco to wrap himself happily around his mate and stand there with wings draping him and Harry smiling at him in exasperation.
Draco lowered his head and chirped into Harry’s ear. It was his turn to smile as Harry shivered.
“Shall we get started?” Skeeter spoke up first, of course, light gleaming off her glasses and the bright blonde hair that Draco hoped had never fooled anyone. “I have important interviews to conduct later today, you know.”
“Of course. Since what I have to say concerns you most of all, I can see why you want to hurry up and hear it.”
Skeeter frowned and blinked. Draco stepped to Harry’s side instead of behind him so he could more easily curl an arm around his waist, and maybe display the smug smile that hopefully wouldn’t alert Skeeter of what was going on.
“What do you mean by that, Auror Potter?”
Harry smiled at the young man who had asked the question, one Draco didn’t know but thought had been there at the first press conference they gave. “I’m glad you asked! One thing you should be aware of is that not everyone is as heroic as they present themselves.” The smile dropped off Harry’s face, and he sighed, reaching out to touch the rim of the Fountain’s bowl. “I’ve committed errors in my time, you know, some of which got reported on in the Daily Prophet.” His eyes flashed to Skeeter this time, but she still didn’t run, which to Draco was remarkable. He would have with someone looking at him like that. “But other people have also made mistakes. I—kept their secrets for a while. I find myself unable to do so now.”
“Do tell, Mr. Potter,” Skeeter purred. She probably thought he was throwing a Weasley or Granger to the press.
How did she ever become a household name, let alone a reporter other people respect?
“For example,” Harry went on in a grave voice, looking around the other reporters as though what he had to say didn’t apply to Skeeter in particular, “did you know that Rita Skeeter is an illegal Animagus?”
Draco found himself gaping with the rest. A few people were wheezing. But everyone at once had turned to look at Skeeter, whose face was suddenly the color of curdled milk.
“That’s—not true, Mr. Potter,” she said a second later. Her hand rose as though to pat down stray strands of her hair. “It’s not true at all. If the best thing you can come up with against a fighter for the truth is to spread scurrilous rumors—”
“She is,” Harry went on, in almost a musing voice. “A beetle. That’s how she gets close enough to overhear private conversations where everyone involved would have sworn no one else was in the room with them. I found out in my fourth year at Hogwarts but let it go, because I thought it was possible that she would reform and never trouble me or anyone else again now that someone knew her secret. And I did think that her reports were a little more truthful for a while. But after that article last week...” He slowly shook his head.
Draco controlled his laughter. The last thing he wanted to do was cost Harry this. He forced his face into stern lines and nodded a little.
“Do you want me to do something about this, Harry?”
“Oh, no. I think we should let the consequences fall on her. I’ve shielded her for too long. I thought she would learn better. I thought she would admit it herself. I even though maybe she’d already been tried and punished for it, until I realized that I would have read about that story in the Prophet.” Harry smiled a little. He could do a truly devastated look when he wanted to. “I was young and stupid. I was party to keeping someone out of prison. But now I think we need to let all the consequences fall where they do.”
Skeeter was backing up. Then she turned and began to run towards the fireplaces. Harry sighed, pulled out his wand, and Stunned her. She lay where she fell, and Harry turned towards the other reporters with a blink and a shake of his head.
“You probably have questions,” he began.
The questions erupted then, and as he listened, Draco realized another reason that Harry had done this. Now all they could talk about was Skeeter being an Animagus and Harry keeping it concealed. No one cared about Skeeter’s article on their sex lives anymore.
He had also done it at the cost of an impact on his own reputation as an Auror. He was too smart not to realize that, but Draco didn’t know what he did intend. He would ask as soon as they were alone.
In the meantime, he bowed his head and licked the back of Harry’s neck, and ignored the tremor that raced through his mate. His mate was impressive and in command and sexy, and he deserved to know he was wanted.
*
“Unpleasant interrogation?”
Harry snorted as he took off the Auror robes that he’d ended up wearing into a conversation with Kingsley when he took Skeeter in to be arrested. “You could say that,” he said, and sat down at the dining table.
There was already food laid out. Draco had obviously eaten some of it. Harry felt himself relax further as he saw that. Draco felt himself to be too responsible for Harry as it was. It was better if he cared for his own needs when Harry was unavailable.
“He was actually angry that you’d kept the word of her Animagus status from him?”
“Of course he was. If the Aurors had known earlier, then they might have been able to control her and prevent some of the articles that she wrote about them.”
Draco stared at him for a second. Then he said, “The hypocrite.”
“Oh, yes. I didn’t get in trouble for knowing and not saying, not the way you’re probably thinking. I’m hardly going to be arrested and taken to Azkaban tomorrow. But he was angry that I used the knowledge in my own way and not for the good of the Aurors.”
“Did you take that hit to your own reputation on purpose, then?”
Harry nodded and began to serve himself from the large bowl of soup in the middle of the table. He wasn’t entirely certain what was in it, but honestly, it smelled good enough that he didn’t care. And the floating leaves might be basil, anyway. “I don’t know if I want to be an Auror any longer.”
“I don’t want you to retire because of me.”
“And if I say it’s because of me and some of the things the Aurors do? Are you going to forbid me or not?”
Draco turned slowly red. Harry nodded and began to eat his soup. Draco remained silent until he’d finished that bowl and got another and also eaten some of the bread slathered with soft dipping sauce.
“What kinds of things have the Aurors done? You seemed willing to return to them before.”
“And I’ll probably keep working for them for at least a little while longer,” Harry said, when he’d swallowed and cleared his mouth of the obstacle in the way. “But they’re simply too rule-bound. And they’re not flexible enough to accommodate things like a Veela mate and the fact that I am going to be looked at differently because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived. I’ve tried to act like an ordinary Auror and like it doesn’t matter, like I’m the same. Kingsley scolded me for giving press conferences.”
“Why?”
“Because most Aurors wouldn’t do that. Or at least they would only speak in public after they’d had a discussion with Kingsley to see what they should say.”
Draco rose and prowled around the table and behind Harry. Harry closed his eyes and leaned forwards, letting Draco reach his shoulders to massage them. He knew Draco needed to touch him right now.
Hell, after the conversation with Kingsley earlier and some of the realizations that he’d come to, Harry needed it, too.
“He wants you to shut up?”
“Not—really. He doesn’t want to treat me differently, either, but he means that I should be able to have normal hours and the expectation of privacy and all that. But then I come back with a Veela mate and trampling around in public and announcing that I knew about Skeeter’s Animagus form, and it makes it difficult for him.”
“Too fucking bad.”
“I do feel sorry for him. He just doesn’t know what to do. There are certain things he’s allowed to do, and none of them work for this situation.”
Draco bent down and licked the back of his neck the way he had during the press conference. Harry shivered, and reached up and cupped his own hand around the back of Draco’s neck, because right now, he was free to respond that way.
“Shall we wait until you’re done eating and then go upstairs, so I can show you how special you are?” Draco asked in a low voice.
“I’m done eating,” Harry said, and stood up, and spun around, and caught Draco in a kiss.
*
Draco woke with a start. He felt that he shouldn’t have woken up. He was beside Harry, who still breathed softly, lying in the bed, and he knew that he would have slept longer unless his mate was in danger.
Was that it? Draco lay still and looked around the room moving only his eyes. He could see nothing and no one, and there was no broken twang of wards in his head. He dared to lift himself onto an elbow, and found nothing there, either.
The stillness was getting to him, given the sharp insistence in the back of his head that something was still wrong.
Draco stood and prowled towards the middle of the room, his wings flaring out and his hands reaching for something invisible. Just before he touched something that seemed to run like a humming clothesline across the center of the chamber, he remembered where he’d felt something like this before. After he fell from his broom once, as a child, this humming had appeared around him and—
The line seemed to snare his hands and sent him tumbling through the air. Draco came out of the fall rolling, his wings tucked closely to his body.
Sent him somewhere else. That was what it had done. It was a Malfoy spell to summon a child of the line who had ventured into danger.
Draco turned around, wings spreading again, feeling ready to fly back to France if necessary. Father was sitting in a chair in front of him, and only the expression on his face kept Draco from either shrieking or attacking. He looked—tired.
“You’ve chosen him,” Father said, gaze moving slowly across Draco’s face as if his eyes would tell Father something different from his cheekbones. “And you won’t forsake him.”
“No. What convinced you at last?” Draco let his wings fall, slowly. He still didn’t like the way he’d been summoned away from Harry’s side, but so far, there seemed to be no danger. And the wards around Draco’s Home would keep Harry safe.
“Hearing about what happened today. He endangered his own reputation and career, for you.”
“Yes, he did.” Draco didn’t intend to tell his father that Harry had apparently reconsidered his commitment to the role of the Auror.
“Is it true that Skeeter was an unregistered Animagus?”
“The Aurors took her in and cast the spell that could force her to change shape. Yes, it is, even though it hasn’t been reported publicly yet.”
“But that does not lessen the—scolding that Mr. Potter received from his Head Auror?”
“No, it didn’t.”
Father looked off to the side and frowned. Draco continued watching him. So far he was sensible. It didn’t mean he would stay that way.
Father finally turned back and cleared his throat, a long, painful process, from the sound. Then he said, “I was wrong.”
At least now I know why it sounded so painful for him. “How so?”
“I thought that Potter simply enjoyed the prestige of having a Veela mate, and perhaps had some glee at the thought that he’d enthralled his former rival. But he really is committed to you. He’ll take risks. He’ll make sacrifices.”
“It’s good that you’ve realized it,” Draco said, and then enforced what he had to enforce. “So long as you grasp that I’ll do the same thing for him, and never flinch.”
Father said nothing for long enough that Draco thought he might have to leave and come back and repeat the lesson again. But he’d only just turned towards the nearest fireplace when Father blurted out, “I know you don’t flinch. I never thought you would manifest Veela traits or mate with someone. And can you understand why I didn’t want you to mate with Potter, of all people, if you were going to do that?”
Draco turned back and shook his head a little. “Not now. The instincts that would have said Harry is a bad match for me don’t exist anymore.”
Father looked at his hands, at the carpet, at his hands again, and finally up at Draco’s face. “Then I will welcome him into the Malfoy family,” he said. “And create a certain—kind of bonding.”
Draco smiled at his father. “Thank you. But I believe we can plan our own bonding. Are you going to attend?”
Father grimaced, but nodded. He knew, as well as Draco, why Draco was saying this. “Very well. I—” More grimacing, to the point that Draco thought he might leave before his father broke the silence. Then he said, “Congratulations on the strength of the man you chose.”
“Thank you,” Draco repeated, inclined his head, and then went to find more Floo powder. There was a warm weight of contentment in his gut, one that he couldn’t wait to share with Harry.
This had been a very good day, indeed.
*
Whitmore: Thank you! And in this story, it's been a long, long time. Narcissa usually prefers subtler tactics.
SP777: Harry wanted to achieve the balance of making Lucius listen without infuriating him enough that he wouldn't. And e-mail me about your idea!
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Temporary Mate