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Veela-Struck	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 52830 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

Chapter List
- 1-Veela-Struck
- 2-Changed
- 3-Thought-Through
- 4-Met
- 5-Challenged
- 6-Snapped
- 7-Struggled
- 8-Lost
- 9-Dazed
- 10-Worried
- 11-Shamed
- 12-Hidden
- 13-Dazzled
- 14-Astounded
- 15-Marked
- 16-Damaged
- 17-Chosen
- 18-Shuddered
- 19-Broken
- 20-Spoken
- 21-Influenced
- 22-Gifted
- 23-Promised
- 24-Distressed
- 25-Held
- 26-Tempted
- 27-Warded
- 28-Rumored
- 29-Fought
- 30-Flayed
- 31-Identified
- 32-Practiced
- 33-Enchanted
- 34-Blazed
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Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Nine—Fought

            The next few days were quiet, though Harry kept waiting for more announcements that would transform his life. But no one firecalled him and offered him another house. No one told him that Laurent was freed—the news he had been trying to brace himself for ever since Draco mentioned Parkinson’s interest in finding Laurent. No one dashed up screaming about some ridiculously lethal disease you could only get from dating Veela.

            He and Draco spent a lot of time together, but not every waking moment. Draco visited his parents and some other friends and informants that Harry didn’t know, spreading more false information and tracking the spread of the rumor about Laurent influencing key people in the Ministry with his allure. And Harry visited Ron and Hermione, and the chaos of the Burrow during a family dinner once, and thought about going to King and Lucy, although he didn’t do so.

            Fleur came up to him during that dinner and surveyed him in silence for long minutes. Harry, who was playing with Dominique, looked up at her warily, wondering if he’d made a mistake.

            But instead, Fleur bent down, slowly enough that he could see her coming and decide whether he wanted to accept the gesture, and kissed his head. “It eez so good to see you feeling better,” she murmured.

            Harry relaxed, though an odd, cool tingle spread out from the place where her lips had touched, not exactly a pleasant sensation. He wondered if that was the attempt of the influence to keep him from finding another Veela attractive.

            It didn’t need to worry (assuming a kind of magical bond between people could be said to worry). Harry was noticing more and more things about Draco every day that made it hard to even think of other Veela.

            Draco seemed to spend most of his time now moving around in a kind of white haze, although Harry didn’t know how much of that was real and how much a product of the magic between them. His movements were slower, out of consideration for Harry’s tendency to be startled, and when he did reach out and lay his hand on Harry’s shoulder or back or arm, extra warmth came with it. His smile caused new lines in his face, lines that Harry hadn’t seen before and found fascinating to watch.

            His fingers itched and his mouth watered when he was around Draco now. He wanted to touch him just because, although he mostly refrained because he thought he would raise expectations in Draco’s mind that he couldn’t gratify.

            And then came the night that he woke up sweating and shaking, the way he often did after nightmares, but with the sheets at his groin wet with more than sweat. The images faded, too, the images of an ordinary dream, rather than the unnatural clarity that the nightmares and memories attained in his head, a clarity that, Harry knew now, came from his fear of Laurent as much as anything else.

            He hadn’t had a simple sex dream in…ages. Since before the rape.

            Harry sat up, his hand coming to rest on his leg, and shut his eyes. He tried to recapture the images that had made him come, but it was hard. Now and then a glimpse of white, like spread wings, returned to him, or a lash of wetness, a tongue licking down his spine, but they always faded again. He sighed.

            But at least it confirmed something he had suspected for some time now: Desire was returning to his life.

            After that, he began to touch Draco more when he wanted, to lean on him if he offered his shoulder, to breathe against his ear without terror that Draco would turn around and open his arms and he would run.

Draco noticed, of course, and watched him with eyes as bright as heat lightning. Now and then he coughed, a cough in the middle of which the word “practice” could be clearly discerned.

            But Harry didn’t think he was ready for that yet. Not exactly. They were waiting for something specific and sure to happen in the saga of Laurent, for Parkinson and Russell du Michel to take some concrete action.

            And then it came, in the form of a blunt owl demanding a meeting with Draco on du Michel property.

*

            Draco cradled the letter in his claws—they had grown the moment he realized who the owl was from—and read it again. Harry was reading it over his shoulder. Draco had refused to give it to him yet, because, whether Harry realized it or not, his magic was making the shelves rattle. Draco didn’t want the letter destroyed, because it might be valuable evidence.

            You are trying to keep me from seeing my cousin Laurent du Michel. You claim to have good reasons for that, solid reasons. I want you to come to me and tell me what those reasons are, and perhaps I’ll give up the search if they’re good enough. Be at my house tomorrow morning at eight if you’re serious. A pair of Apparition coordinates followed, detailed enough that Draco knew he could find the place.

            So could Harry, for that matter. But it never occurred to Draco to let Harry go alone, or be the one to Apparate them both there. He might try to leave Draco behind for his own “good.”

            “I see,” Harry said. His voice was heavy, and when Draco glanced over his shoulder, he saw Harry touching his wand and staring into the distance as if he were trying to think about how many curses he could cast before someone stopped him. “Do you think this is sincere, or an attempt to trick us?”

            “I don’t know, right now.” Draco folded the letter gently. “There are some spells I can cast on the parchment and ink that might tell me more about his state of mind when he wrote it, and since he was likely thinking about the future when he laid down the words, that’s a more reliable method than some others. Then I can decide whether I’m going to go.”

            Harry blinked, looking baffled, and then his eyes focused on Draco again. Draco was pleased to see that. He liked it best when his chosen was looking at him, though those glances were never as desperate as the ones Draco knew he himself tossed at Harry. “You have spells that can do that? Why haven’t I heard of them?”

            “Because they’re illegal?” Draco offered dryly. “I doubt the Ministry wanted to keep them legal when they could be used against their correspondence, too.”

            Harry laughed. “That makes sense.” Then his face changed again. “What do you mean, whether you’re going to go?”

            This was the argument Draco had feared. He faced Harry, outwardly calm, and spread his wings. Harry simply stared back at him, unimpressed, and Draco cursed behind the mask of his serene expression. He hadn’t really wanted to frighten Harry, but it would have been nice if he had taken the spreading of Draco’s wings and what it meant seriously.

            “I have to protect you,” Draco said. “We’re coming up on the Blazing Season, and you know what that means.”

            “Rape,” Harry said, nodding.

            Draco shot him an intense irritated glance, breaking the calm, and saw by Harry’s sly smile that that was exactly what his little remark had been intended to do. Draco took another deep breath and then said, “It’s more than that. I have to protect you. I’m already having trouble sleeping because I imagine that someone’s going to come through the window and hurt you. I’ve fought myself not to suggest that you move to Mabinogion House now. And to stay apart from you at night is—painful.” He’d been going back to his own house at ten each night, and his muscles ached and twitched for an hour after he lay down in his empty bed.

            Harry blinked. “I don’t understand. I thought the whole point of Blazing Season was to parade me around and show other people they couldn’t have me. How can you do that if I’m hidden away?”

            He sounded interested, not hurt, Draco thought gratefully. Maybe there was the chance that he could persuade him after all. “I’ll want to show you off as we get closer to the Season itself, and as long as this situation with Laurent and Pansy and Russell is resolved by then. But right now, with you in danger and my instincts awakening for the first time with a new chosen, I want you safe.”

            Harry regarded him in silence for a few moments, then said, “That makes sense. But I’m going with you to this meeting with du Michel.”

            “You can’t,” Draco said.

            “I’m not most chosen,” Harry said, folding his arms. “And you’re not most Veela. Most Veela wouldn’t have had the time and the patience to court me like you have, to go slowly, to put up with my fears and insecurities. And now, I don’t want you to ruin it for us by denying me something as simple as the right to face my accuser.”

            “Harry,” Draco said, his wings fluttering a little as the emotions rose and dashed through him like colliding waves. On the one hand, Harry’s determination to stand by his side was romantic, adorable, endearing. Draco didn’t know how to express his pride that Harry wanted to face someone related to his rapist, that he had the courage to do that.

            On the other hand, let Harry come along, and Draco’s whole mind would be focused on keeping Harry safe, instead of on countering Russell the way he must.

            “You can’t,” he settled for saying again, leaning forwards and trying to catch Harry’s eye. He thought he would have more of a chance of persuading him if Harry wasn’t deliberately staring past him at the wall. “I’ll be distracted. I have to keep calm and watch for Russell’s suspicious actions, if there are any.” He still didn’t know whether the summons to this meeting was genuine or not. “Please stay here.”

            Harry raised an eyebrow. “A few minutes ago, here wasn’t sufficient for you, no matter how good my wards.”

            Draco clenched his teeth. Anxiety of this kind felt a lot like heartburn. “Yes, I want you to go to Mabinogion House. Will you do that for me, Harry? Please? There’s no other way I can satisfy my instincts and still do what we have to do to counter Pansy and Russell. And both of these are important.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I’ll come along with you, but I’ll be under my Invisibility Cloak. Those are so rare that most people don’t spend money on the wards to counter them. All right?”

            “Not all right,” Draco whispered.

            Harry stepped in and hugged him. Draco wrapped his wings around him without thinking of the implications, and Harry stiffened once and then spoke on, as though he hadn’t noticed. “I’m sorry this is so difficult for you. But, among other things, I want to see Russell before we have to meet him in a more hostile environment, like the Wizengamot courtroom. I want to make sure I can handle it.”

            Draco bent his head and sniffed as much as he could reach of Harry’s neck and back. He fought for calm. It sounded as though Harry was going to go along, and there was nothing Draco could do about it, unless he wanted a much worse argument than the one they were currently having. With some other people, Draco might have locked them in a room and trusted them to forgive him, but that wasn’t going to happen with Harry, and he should never try it given what he knew about Harry’s past.

            But right now, he had his wings around his chosen, and Harry was tolerating it, despite a slightly accelerated pulse rate and a flush on his skin that Draco didn’t think was the result of arousal. If his chosen could overcome that—if he could give Draco all the gifts he had so far—then surely Draco could struggle against his protective instincts enough to give this gift in return.

            Then he thought of something else, brought into his mind by the word protective, and he relaxed more than he had since the owl came. Stepping back enough to look into Harry’s face, though he kept his wings in place, he asked, “Would you let me give you one more Malfoy heirloom as a gift?”

            That at least got Harry’s attention; he’d been turning his head from side to side, eyes widening as he looked at the height and thickness of the silvery-white feathers around him. “Wh-what?” he asked, and swallowed.

            Draco reluctantly pulled his wings back. Someday, he thought, Harry would go to sleep cradled in his wings, but this wasn’t the day. “Because it’s something that will help keep you safe, and keep me from going mad with you there,” he explained, stroking Harry’s shoulder with one fingertip. “Will you?”

            Harry’s jaw firmed for a second, as though he was considering an argument, and then he nodded. Draco smiled at him, knowing it was a drunken and adoring smile and not caring, and then turned to summon a house-elf.

*

            Harry hadn’t known what to expect when the house-elf came back, but it wasn’t a huge, overlapping, necklace-thing made of what looked like jade and gold. And in the shape of a serpent, he saw as Draco held it up, a serpent coiled over itself with its head draped so that it would point down the chest of someone wearing it. It was supposed to go around his neck, Harry could tell that much, and click closed with a clasp that he located after searching for it a moment, a clasp shaped like a slightly wider scale.

            The snake shimmered with light as if moving, as if alive. It was exquisite, although Harry couldn’t tell what kind it was meant to be. It had no fangs, but he thought nervously that it might, when the proper danger presented itself.

            “What is that?” he asked, ducking when Draco tried to lock it around his neck.

            Draco clucked his tongue in exasperation. He sounded so much like Mrs. Weasley that Harry stood still in spite of himself, and the next moment the necklace was fastened in place and Draco was smoothing down the clasp as if he thought it might come off on its own. Harry stared at his own shoulders and neck, as much as he could of them, now buried beneath expensive artificial snake. The jade and gold were warming much faster than they should.

            “This is something that keeps you safe from all magic outside yourself,” Draco said quietly. “The snake will catch curses, dissipate spells that are meant to break your bones or do other internal damage to you, and bite attackers who try to hit you physically. Its poison is extremely potent,” he added, and his smirk made him resemble the old Draco Harry had known.

            Harry reached back to touch the clasp. Draco promptly put up a hand to cover his. “Don’t do that, please,” he said quietly.

            “Can it unlock that easily?” Harry tried to twist around and see it, but of course all he did was move Draco’s hand a little further, down to clasping his back. “Maybe I shouldn’t wear it if it’s going to come undone every time I move.”

            “No,” Draco said. “I just—let me look at you, please, without fearing that you’re going to take it off.”

            Harry raised an eyebrow and stood still. Draco moved back from him, eyes taking the same journey Harry’s had, over his chest and neck, over the snake’s drooping head and coils that made Harry nervous. Why was he wearing something that luxurious? He would have liked to take it off not because he found it confining, but just because, if he ran around with that much wealth around his neck, something would happen to it.

            “Yes,” Draco whispered. “Perfect.”

            Harry smiled uncertainly. There was a note in Draco’s voice that he didn’t understand, and bad things usually happened when that occurred. “What?”

            Draco’s eyes rose to his face, and Harry thought the heat in them was pure human, without a trace of the Veela. “I like to see you surrounded and embraced by something of mine,” he said softly, “if it can’t yet be me.”

            Harry felt his face flame. He never knew how to respond to words like that, and not because it was a compliment. It was because Draco put so much behind the words that they never seemed like a mere compliment. He wasn’t saying this to get Harry’s attention or flatter him or seduce him; he really believed it.

            Harry clenched his fingers one more time on the jade-and-gold snake, and then told himself that Draco wouldn’t have lent it to him if he thought Harry would damage it permanently. “All right,” he said. “Can we make our plans now?”

            Draco adjusted the snake to a non-existent better fit, smiled at it, and then nodded. “Now we can.”

*

            “What is this about, du Michel?”

            Draco was impressed with himself. He managed the perfect bored, drawling tone, the perfect mixture of resignation and patience, as he moved across the grass towards the house where Pansy’s Russell stood.

            All that, all those emotions balanced in his voice, despite his hyper-awareness of Harry standing under the Invisibility Cloak off to the side. Well, the cloak and the snake. The thought of the snake kept Draco from spreading his wings and bellowing a challenge to the man who stood watching them come with cold eyes.

            Russell du Michel was shorter than Draco had been expecting for a man who could take Pansy’s fancy, and also more intense, with an expression on his face that suggested he almost never smiled. His hair was bright blond, enough to make Draco squint in the sun, and had to have been touched with charms. His eyes were dark, his skin pale, as if he’d spent years in a dungeon.

            And his hands twisted together with a strength that suggested he wasn’t about to feign calm the way Draco had thought he would, the way the spells he’d cast on the ink in the letter had told him the man was trying to do when he wrote it.

            “You know,” Russell said. “You seemed friendly and helpful at first to my quest to find my cousin, and then you turned against me. I want to know why. Laurent can’t have done something so wrong that you would want to hold me away from him as if we had been lifelong enemies.”

            Draco shook his head. More blunt than I expected, too. That’s what being raised outside of England will do for you. “I told Pansy the truth. It concerns my chosen. If you have Veela relatives, you must know how protective we can be of our chosen.”

            “Laurent isn’t like that,” Russell said.

            “Isn’t like what?” Draco wondered if this would be easier than he thought. Russell seemed to have bull-headed determination only, with no sign of intelligence or tact. “Someone who would defend his chosen, or someone who could be a threat to mine?” Saying the word mine felt wonderful, although this wasn’t the context he would have selected if he could have.

            “Someone who could be a threat to yours.” Russell stood as straight as a spear, staring at Draco with a contempt that Draco reckoned he could understand. He might feel the same if someone had tried to prevent him from visiting his imprisoned parents. Then again, even in a world that hated them, his parents had been intelligent enough not to do something that would land them in Azkaban. “I don’t know much about Veela. I don’t know much about him. But I do know that the rumors you’re spreading are only rumors.”

            “So,” Draco said, widening his eyes and moving to a tone of faux-innocence to emphasize his words, “you don’t know anything about your cousin, or the allure that he might have been taken to prison for, and you admit that, but you still expect me to trust your opinions about the general situation?” He paused. He had to admit it was an exquisite pause.

            There was a slight shuffle of feet in the grass as Harry moved around him to the side. Draco rapidly calculated distances in his head, and then relaxed. Harry could still be covered by his wings if Draco spread them, and shielded from any curse thrown.

            Of course, he wore the snake, too, as Draco remembered after a moment’s thought. That didn’t make as much difference as he had hoped it would to his desire to hold Harry safe.

            Russell’s face darkened, as if he had finally begun to see how ridiculous his behavior was. “Laurent is the only family I have left, excluding the ones I grew up with,” he said. “I want to see him, yes. You can’t stop me.”

            “I’m only trying to prevent unnecessary grief,” Draco said. “To me and to my chosen, and to my family. I couldn’t care about your grief if you paid me, but you might consider that I’m doing you a favor, as well. If you found Laurent and he didn’t match your dream of him, what would happen to your faith and your trust in your own conclusions?”

            Russell abruptly leaned forwards, hands reaching out as if he could choke an answer from Draco. “Have you seen him? Do you know him? What is he like?”

            Draco gave him a smile as thin as the edge of the crescent moon. “Why would you trust anything I say, when you have only recently accused me of spreading false information?”

            Russell shut his eyes and sprawled back against the doorway of his house, a smaller structure than Draco would have expected. On the other hand, he could easily have used wizardspace inside it. “I want to know,” he whispered. “And the longing will never ease until I see him with my own eyes.”

            “So finding out that he’s mad or a real criminal wouldn’t deter you at all?” Draco asked. He wanted to be sure, and he thought Russell was too honest for his own good and would probably give Draco the real truth.

            “He can’t be,” Russell said. “Madness doesn’t run in our family.”

            “Just like Veela heritage doesn’t?” Draco turned his head at another shuffle, and then realized it had to be Harry again, since it was coming from behind him. Harry was still within reach of his wings, luckily.

            “Don’t be stupid,” Russell said. His face was flushing now. “I never claimed that Veela heritage didn’t.”

            “But you seem as familiar with the possibility of one as of the other,” Draco said. “Your cousin is a Veela, and you aren’t. And your cousin is mad, and you aren’t.”

            “Rumors,” Russell said. “Lies. Nothing that would make it possible for me to believe you, and nothing that will substitute for seeing Laurent for myself.”

            Draco rolled his eyes, and didn’t care if Russell saw. He had hoped to find Laurent’s cousin more reasonable than Laurent was. When he had realized that the man wasn’t a Veela, he had held out even more hope. Russell wouldn’t have the same instincts that might, as could sometimes happen when a Veela idolized someone he had never seen, have decided that his cousin was his chosen. And like many human wizards, he might be willing to accept that there were some things that he didn’t know about Veela.

            But he was at least as stubborn and stupid as Laurent, if not as much of a rapist.

            “Then why did you call me here?” he asked. “I can’t persuade you, and you can’t persuade me, not when it’s a matter of love for both of us.”

            Russell flashed him a small, mean smile that made Draco narrow his eyes. At the same moment, a scuffle broke out behind him.

            Draco whirled around. Two muffled figures struggled there, and then both of them appeared. One was Pansy, tearing off two Invisibility Cloaks, one that she had obviously been wearing herself, and Harry’s.

            The other person was Harry, standing very still. When Draco moved to the side, he saw why. Pansy had her wand inside the clasp holding the snake around Harry’s neck, placing the wand firmly against the skin.

            “If I can threaten your chosen,” Pansy told Draco, her eyes bright with triumph, “then I can control you. And that means that you’ll step aside, or even aid us in our search for Laurent.” Her hand clenched down warningly when Draco lifted a foot. “I’ll use the curse that boils his bone marrow, Draco, I swear I will.”

            She had probably expected Draco to crumple helplessly to the ground, weeping and begging her not to hurt his chosen. That was the stereotype of Veela that persisted in popular novels by authors who had never met one.

            Instead, Draco went mad.

*

            SP777: Yes, she did, though more as a gift all-around than a wedding gift.

            Draco and Harry are attempting to work on arrangements like that when the immediate danger is past.

            Evil Cliffhanger Lady: Thank you! Narcissa has a lot to say about the events of this chapter in the next one.

            thrnbrooke: He might, if he gets frightened enough.

            nette: I think Pansy’s love will be her undoing in more ways than one.

            mrequecky: Thank you!

            angelmuziq: Draco is going to “handle” her in more ways than one.

            Night the Storyteller: He isn’t necessarily evil, but he is stupid and doesn’t know when to give up.

            Lady_of_Clunn: Harry has accepted that Draco and he will have sex during the Blazing Season. But that doesn’t mean he isn’t nervous about it.

            Thank you!
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