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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.

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Chapter Twenty-Six—Meditation and Melioration
            “I wanted to surprise you,” Draco said, in response to the way that Harry opened his door and blinked at him.
            Harry nodded slowly. His hair was so tousled Draco could hardly resist reaching out and smoothing it down and feeling the strands slipping past his hand, but he refrained. He gestured instead to the tray floating beside him, floating within the curve of one wing. He could have had a house-elf bring it as easily, but this was special.
            “Will you let me give you breakfast in bed?” Draco whispered.
            It took long, long moments, it seemed, for the words to slide through whatever protective barriers Harry kept around his mind. But then he smiled, and Draco felt as though he could have looked at that expression for hours. Maybe he was getting some emotion through the bond, too, he thought. It wasn’t like him to be so content with something so small.
            “Of course,” said Harry, and gestured Draco in.
            Draco escorted the tray into the room, and then left it to hover while he led Harry back to bed. Harry climbed onto it, and then snorted and went beneath the covers at Draco’s insistence, giving Draco a look that Draco was used to seeing across a broom. It said that Harry thought something was ridiculous—in this case, not Draco’s attempt to be good at catching a Snitch—but would go along with it anyway.
            Draco had to admit, he much preferred this particular setting to see that smile in.
            “Now,” said Draco, “I wasn’t sure what kind of chocolate you like, so I brought several different kinds.” He waved his wand, but he also moved his wings, and they were the more spectacular things, so of course Harry watched them. Draco smiled and folded them again, well-pleased. He wouldn’t ever display for a submissive mate and dazzle them with his feathers the way he had once imagined he would, but this was better.
            “How can there be different kinds?” Harry eyed the tiny steaming silver cups and then glanced at Draco. “I mean, chocolate is chocolate. There isn’t a different kind.”
            Sometimes his wealth enabled him to impress Harry or at least surprise him the way he had by showing up with the tray at the door. Draco smiled. “Then you’ve never had chocolate spiced with orange or hazelnut or other flavors? I pity you. And I wonder where you were at some of the meals in Hogwarts. I know they had it occasionally.”
            “I was probably too busy gorging myself on treacle tart,” Harry replied, and only looked pleased when Draco laughed, which Draco thought was something new as well. “Anyway.” He settled himself back on the pillow and opened his mouth.
            More compliant than I thought he’d be, Draco decided in a daze, and reached for the first cup of chocolate, the orange-spiced one. And then a searing insight struck him, and he nearly cried aloud as he clutched the cup to keep from spilling it.
            Part of Harry was enjoying this. He might not want to be pampered without a choice—he didn’t want the constricting bindings of the submissive role—but he liked to be fussed over sometimes. It must have been a long time since it last happened.
            And that knowledge could only have come to Draco through the bond. Draco didn’t know enough about Harry to be so certain of it, and he didn’t think Harry knew it, either, so the chance was small that Draco would pick up on it through accidental Legilimency.
            It’s strengthening.
            “Are you all right, Draco? You’re just standing there and staring at me like I already have food on my face.”
            Draco laughed shakily, and managed to steady his hand at the same moment as his voice. He didn’t want to spill the chocolate everywhere. “Sit up a little, so that I can get it into your mouth instead of on the blankets. You’re very cute this way, but it’s hard to reach your mouth.”
            Harry’s face flamed as he sat up so hastily that the blankets flew away. Draco tucked them gently back and murmured, “What is it? You’re not used to hearing that you’re cute?”
            “I’m not used to people looking at me the way you’re looking.” Harry shifted a second later, and added, “Well, okay, sometimes they do. But it’s mostly when I’m making speeches or they’re waiting to be introduced to me, and it’s not me they’re seeing. It’s my fame, or my heroism, or whatever they think I’m special for.”
            Draco paused. He wanted to feed Harry the chocolate, but he also wanted to discuss this. Maybe he could limit it to one question, and use a Heating Charm on the chocolate if he had to. “You don’t think you were a hero?”
            “For killing someone? No.”
            “You only did what this prophecy said you had to do,” Draco murmured, wishing he could take Harry in his wings and hug him, but it wouldn’t be the right gesture at the moment. “You know he would have killed you and a lot of other people without it.”
            “I know,” said Harry, and sighed. “I didn’t feel that bad right after I did it. I told myself all the justifications. And Dumbledore was depending on me to do it, and Snape, and he killed my parents. The dead and the living needed me. That’s what I told myself.”
            “So,” Draco said slowly, “was that another reason that you became so involved in the peace process? You’d done something you thought was wrong, so you wanted to do something that no one could argue was right. Well, except pure-bloods like Maundy, but you didn’t pay much attention to them anyway.”
            Except he tried to bring even Maundy and her kind into the alliance. Maybe that hadn’t been simply a political maneuver or foolish naïveté, the way Draco had considered it at first. Maybe it was Harry trying to make sure he reached out to everyone so he could give everyone a fair chance and not hurt anyone.
            “Guilt isn’t the best motivation for that,” Draco said.
            Harry was staring hard at him. “I suppose so,” he said, and it took Draco a moment to realize what he was agreeing to. “I just—look, I didn’t want another war. And I was selfish enough. I told you that.”
            “Guilt can be selfish,” Draco agreed.
            Harry sighed and rolled his head to the side. That didn’t suit Draco’s plans, so he waited until Harry rolled back and muttered, “I reckon it could be that. I just didn’t think about it that way.”
            “Well, it’s something to consider,” said Draco peacefully, and motioned with the cup of chocolate again. “Do you want to drink this after all?”
            Harry seemed to think hard about it, but then he nodded and relaxed against the pillows. “I have even more to think about than I thought,” he muttered.
            Draco touched his shoulder with a light hand, and waited until Harry was looking at him. “That’s not a bad thing,” he said quietly.
            Harry blinked, hesitated, then said, “I suppose not.”
            Draco smiled, and proffered the chocolate cup again. And then they spent an enjoyable few minutes determining that Harry liked the orange-spiced chocolate best, and disliked hazelnut flavors, and actually liked the vanilla that swirled in the largest cup of chocolate quite a bit, but not enough to sacrifice the orange for it, and Harry made Draco laugh by grabbing the orange cup out of his hands when Draco pretended he was going to put it away and guzzling a good bit of it.
            The other things were there with them, moving under the surface, but at least Draco knew they could sometimes concentrate on pleasure.
*
            Harry leaned back softly against the cushioned wall of the meditation room that Draco had introduced him to. Harry had asked about a quiet place, never dreaming the Manor had something like this.
            It was large and bright, with soft, flickering, transparent panes of glass that didn’t simply show a view out, the way most enchanted windows did. Here, the way the glass looked was part of the view, the beauty of the large and lozenge-shaped panes crisscrossed with strips of purple and iron something the eye was meant to absorb.
            Or so Draco had said. Harry didn’t know much about all that, and didn’t know what to make of Draco’s sideways glance and low steely mutter that said he would learn.
            Harry only knew that he liked this, the slow sliding quiet, the round walls of the room, the padded cushions against his back and the smell of incense in his nostrils although none burned. Harry centered himself and dived into his mind.
            It had been too long since he’d done this. Tranquility came and went, as elusive as the light through the windows. Harry reminded himself forcefully that he couldn’t chase peace, any more than he could fall asleep by willing it. He opened his eyes and looked out the windows again.
            Gradually, his mind calmed down. Harry drifted through the center of himself, and watched the emotions that danced around him.
            They were brighter than before. In the deep, solemn peace he had managed to attain, it took Harry far longer than it should have to figure out why.
            Yes, his magic had held back his emotions. It hadn’t been particularly to resist the bond; after all, Harry hadn’t known the bond existed or could exist when he had begun this suppression. He had wanted to get rid of the anger, in his horror at turning Marena Sibley’s foot inside out. He had wanted to get rid of the pain.
            And the guilt.
            Draco was right about that. The guilt was there when he thought about it, which wasn’t often. He didn’t like dwelling on it. He had tortured, he had used spells that he shouldn’t have, but Voldemort’s was still the only human life he had ever deliberately taken. Quirrell might count, but Harry hadn’t set out to kill him.
            You used the wand against him, and in the end, he killed himself.
            That was what Hermione had said. Harry had listened to her, and agreed with her, although only on the surface. He had thought the guilt wouldn’t cripple him, and he could get on with doing something better, something that, if his name had to be remembered at all, would give it something much better to be remembered for. He hadn’t realized how deeply and persistently part of himself didn’t agree with Hermione’s notions.
            Harry let out a noisy breath that nearly snapped him out of his meditation trance. Fine. If he could use his magic to change himself in one way, to hold back all the feelings he thought were interfering, surely he could use it to change himself another way?
            A fierce rush of—well, emotion, went through him, and Harry started. That nearly broke the trance, too, and he had to fight to hold onto it.
            No. He wasn’t going to use his magic to change himself into a better mate for Draco, no matter how much sense it might make, and no matter how comfortable it might make Draco. He didn’t want to change.
            So. His magic might have the ability to affect his mind, but he couldn’t deliberately use it to make himself better, or stronger, or wiser. Thinking about it made him want to spit with revulsion. He could try to become a good person. He couldn’t will himself there.
            Either by suppressing his anger, or becoming easier with Draco’s desires, or opening himself up by force to talk about his past. He would have to be the one to make the decision, and reverse his own prohibition, and talk to Draco face to face if that was what he wanted to do.
            Hesitant, Harry opened his eyes and looked out the marvelous crystal windows again.
            There might be one thing he could do. One thing that would use his magic and usefully employ that dangerous little ability he had to change his own mind, but not make him into a robot, the way he had almost become with that change he hadn’t known was going to happen.
            Carefully, Harry focused on what he wanted now. He wanted to be a good person, someone who cared about other people instead of just taking what he wanted. He wanted to be a strong person, someone who was able enough to survive the strain of the peace process and still keep contributing to the wizarding world. He wanted lots of things.
            He drove his magic down into the foundations of his mind, strengthening them, adding little weaves of will. His magic couldn’t make him into someone else, but it might be able to make him be himself, as strongly as he could be.
            No longer held back by false guilt and fear. He would still feel those things, because he was human—no matter what some people wanted to think—but they had to be real, not delusions that were so strong Harry hadn’t even known they were sitting on part of him.
            The magic didn’t immediately work, but Harry opened his eyes feeling more refreshed, more open than he had even after he’d “woken up” during the duel and confronted Maundy in the hospital wing. He could make his own decisions. He would still do his best by others, but that code had to come from within himself, not imposed by others, however well-meaning.
            Not Hermione. Not Draco. Not Veela tradition. Not the “practical” means of getting ahead that he’d been trying to learn from other people in politics, because they’d told him he would never succeed if he didn’t listen to them and do what everyone else was doing. Himself.
            And that meant Harry could consider whether he was the one who wanted to do something, rather than the imaginary person he’d been making up in his head. The one who had to do certain things because too many people would be frightened or disappointed otherwise. Some of those things he’d been avoiding were so private that Harry had to shake his head. Who would ever have known about some of those deprivations he’d been inflicting on himself?
            And one of the things he wanted to do was give a scrap of his past to Draco, and see how he would react.
*
            Draco rose to his feet with his wings trembling when Harry came out of the meditation room. Harry had asked Draco not to come in with him, and reluctantly, Draco had had to agree that that was sense. He could have kept silent, but he knew from experience during (bitter) Occlumency practice that even an interested gaze could have an impact.
            But now, he knew. The Harry who opened the door of the meditation room wasn’t the same one who had walked through it.
            Harry looked at him, smiled a little, and said, “I’m hungry. Can we go have lunch, and I’ll tell you something?”
            “Of course,” Draco whispered, his vision swimming, wondering for a moment if the “something” would be that Harry wanted to end the bond.
            But whatever difference, or clarity of mind, or strength of emotion, had come to Harry, it didn’t appear that ending the bond was what was on his mind. He stretched out a hand and said, “It’s okay. I did use up a lot of magical energy, though. If I have it, I might as well make it work for me.”
            Draco took his hand and pulled him down the corridor towards the nearest sitting room that was mostly clear of furniture and could stand to have crumbs or stains dropped in it, asking in as teasing a voice as possible, “What did you use it for?”
            “To be myself, as hard as I can,” Harry said. “I decided I didn’t want to be a different person. I wanted to be me.”
            Draco reached out with one wing and touched Harry’s heart, before he could think. His wings had been half-folded along his back in the relaxed posture he usually kept them in, and suddenly one was there, an instinctive gesture, like escorting the tray in had been. “Sorry,” he whispered, and pulled it back.
            “What was that for?”
            At least Harry looked curious, and the shimmering chord in the back of Draco’s mind played a note that he thought was curiosity, too. He swallowed and said, “I’ve been waiting to hear you say that. It’s you I want, not someone else. Not someone who’s—a mask, or a perfect politician, even if that would be the best Harry Potter for the masses. You’re the one I was supposed to be mated with.”
            Harry blinked, twice. “But if the real me is the one who rejected you in the Ministry, why would you want that person?”
            “Because I know better now,” Draco retorted. “And so do you, I hope.”
            “Yes,” said Harry, although he frowned through the rest of their journey to the sitting room. A house-elf brought them sandwiches with more mustard than Draco found comfortable, but Harry bit in with gusto. Draco settled back with a small nod. If the elves could sense Harry’s moods and consider his tastes, he was settling in here. It would never be the same as a submissive Veela’s birthright gift as the heart of the house, but it didn’t need to be.
            “Listen,” Harry said, when he’d eaten his way through two sandwiches. “I’m going to tell you something. About the things I didn’t want you to ask about.” He put the plate back on his lap, and his eyes were brilliant and direct as he held Draco’s.
            “Tell me already.” Draco knew his voice had a hint of a screech in it, a parrot’s raucous scream. His hands curved into claws in his lap.
            “But you have to promise not to start yelling about it,” Harry said.
            Draco threw his head back and said, “That will be very hard,” as his wings unfolded and flapped above his head. He had known he would learn things about Harry’s past that wouldn’t please him, but the tone in Harry’s voice, the look in his eyes…
            “I know,” said Harry. “I’m going to ask you for it anyway. If you start swearing or talking about vengeance, then I’ll just have to interrupt you and argue with you, and that would stop the conversation.”
            Draco hesitated once, then nodded. “All right.”
            And Harry took a deep breath, and said, “I slept in a cupboard under the stairs at my aunt and uncle’s house until I was eleven years old.”
            Draco’s wingbeat carried him off the chair, and his scream echoed around the room. Harry only watched him, though, his hand making big dents in his sandwich, and waited until Draco settled back on the chair.
            Draco found his human voice somewhere, and whispered, “Go on.”
*
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Nature of the Beast