Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 2
- 3
- 4
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Three—Thought-Through

            “How are you, Hermione?” Harry smiled down at his friend and took Ron’s place beside her bed. Ron had gone out of the room to deal with a firecall from his mother, who seemed unsatisfied unless she had an update on Hermione’s condition four times a day.

            Hermione gave him a tired smile and reached out to catch his hand. Harry squeezed her wrist and looked with a certain amount of awe at her belly. Hermione had been pregnant for months and he’d got used to the sight, but now she really did look—well, swollen, as if she was an egg that might burst if it didn’t hatch at the right moment.

            “Oh, not you, too,” Hermione said, drawing Harry’s eyes right back to her face. “Ron’s looked at me like I’m a dragon who might eat him if I’m not propitiated, and you’re starting. The dragon is hungry and tried and not up to eating anyone right now.”

            “I know,” Harry said. “Have the Healers—”

            “Oh, they say the same thing they’ve said for the past week.” Hermione made an impatient little gesture with the hand that wasn’t holding Harry’s. “It’s close, but not time yet. Birthing a child who’s waited this long is very delicate, Mrs. Weasley. She has powerful magic, and you wouldn’t want her born without it.” Hermione slapped at his arm, not because she was irritated with him, Harry knew, but because she was irritated with the situation in general. “I want her born healthy. I don’t care if she’s a Squib or a witch. She’s my daughter.”

            Harry smiled at her. “They won’t let you use spells to make her be born earlier?” he asked. “Ginny’s talked about doing that, when she and Neville have their first.”

            Hermione sighed, a sound that seemed to rattle around her throat for long minutes before it came out her nose. “I had the misfortune to be placed under the care of Healer Miriam Madder,” she said. “And I’m sure she’s skilled. She was probably the best Healer in Britain—twenty years ago. The thought of using spells to hasten a birth is barbaric to her.” Hermione’s voice rose in the middle of the word, in a way that Harry was sure was an imitation of the Healer. He snickered. “But with the second,” Hermione added, “which I’m going to make sure only comes along when Madam Madder is in her grave, I’m using the spells at the beginning of the ninth month, and no one’s going to stop me.”

            Harry nodded and rubbed her shoulder soothingly. In the drawing room, he could hear Ron going through the same patient litany with his mother that he always did. They were through the first twenty or so of the hundred questions, Harry thought.

            “What’s happened to you?”

            Harry blinked and looked over at Hermione; the question was so much like the one he normally asked her when he came to visit that he actually thought he had asked it for a moment. Then he realized her eyes were fastened on him, and that her companionable hold of his hand had changed to a worried clutch.

            Her eyes—

            Her eyes had the look that Harry had come to call the oh-no-my-best-friend-has-been-raped look. He turned sharply away and said, “I’m fine.”

            “No, you’re not, or you wouldn’t look like that,” Hermione said quietly. “Come on, Harry. What is it?” Her fingers closed down so hard Harry felt the circulation cut off, and he tugged to get his hand free. “Did they decide that they should end Laurent’s sentence early after all?”

            Harry shook his head. Some members of the Wizengamot had argued that Laurent didn’t deserve fifty years in Azkaban, because he had been following the call of his instincts, no matter how repugnant those instincts were. The lawyer handling the case had promptly pointed out that, in that case, Laurent would have had to register with the Ministry as a dangerous magical creature and undergo regular check-ins, as happened with vampires and the werewolves on the Wolfsbane Potion. Because he hadn’t, he was considered capable of controlling himself and had to be treated like an ordinary wizard. Harry would have heard if the sentence had been challenged or changed.

            “Then what?” Hermione asked.

            Harry hesitated, but given the decision he had already three-quarters made, his friends would have to know about Draco sooner or later, and he would rather tell Hermione first than Ron. “Draco wants to date me,” he said.

            “Why is that a problem?” Hermione looked over Harry’s shoulder as if she expected to see Laurent’s angry shadow hovering there. “Unless…was there another curse?”

Harry winced. During the trial, the wizards scanning Harry’s body had found several spells that Laurent had cast on him, including a Hopeless Fidelity Curse. Harry would have remained desperately in love with the bastard and incapable of being unfaithful to him even if Laurent had found someone else and moved on.

Hermione had blamed herself for not noticing the spells and deciding that Laurent was evil long before that particular Blazing Season. Harry had tried rational argument, yelling, and kicking the bed to make her stop thinking that way. Nothing worked.

“No,” Harry said. “Nothing like that.” His throat was thick again, and he had to struggle against the taste of vomit for a minute before he could tell her. Hermione waited patiently, her hand stroking his now. “Draco has Veela blood.”

Hermione’s face clouded at once. “Does he know about this?” she asked, not loudly. She hadn’t spoken loudly when she tried to cast the Castration Curse on Laurent, either. “And he insists on forcing his way into your life anyway?”

“He didn’t know,” Harry said. “He proposed dating me. I told him I didn’t date Veela, he asked me why, and this came out.” He was shaking, he realized, and he had to stand up and walk swiftly around the room, reminding himself that he could. The instant he escaped Hermione’s tight hold, he relaxed.

This is stupid. How in the world could I ever be Draco’s lover? Or anyone’s lover? The minute they tried to hold onto me, I would need to be free.

            Harry shook his head. He hadn’t decided to be Draco’s lover. Accepting Draco’s offer of help was a long way from that.

            “Then why are you angry now?” Hermione asked. “Did he say that you had to give him what he wanted even after he knew the truth?”

            “He said that he wanted to help me heal,” Harry said. He stopped pacing and looked at Hermione, trying to gauge what she thought from the expression on her face. “That he didn’t care if we never dated, but that I wasn’t over it yet, and he thought he could help me regain control of my life.”

            He had expected disapproval. It would be a relief, he had to admit. Despite the decision he was coming to, he had his doubts, and to have someone else express them would give him something to argue against.

            Instead, Hermione’s eyes filled with tears. “Oh, Harry, and you’re going to let him,” she whispered. “I’m so glad. You deserve to have so much more than you’ve allowed yourself.”

            Harry blinked. “What the—Hermione, you know that I’ve done well. I’ve got over the memories that the Healers said I had to conquer. I can talk about him without flinching. I can bear for someone to touch me, and I can do my job, and I don’t need to lock myself up at night anymore. Why would you think I needed more help?”

            “You’re doing well, Harry,” Hermione said earnestly. “Better than anyone could have expected.” She hesitated, then continued, “But you still don’t like being held.” She nodded to Harry’s wrist, and he realized he was rubbing the place where she’d touched him. “You don’t date anyone. It hurts my heart to see the wary way you study people.”

            “Oh, you want the normal Harry Potter back?” Harry spat, one of the random rage-storms that still swept him sometimes building like clouds in the back of his mind. His head pounded, and his fingernails drove into his palm. “The unstained one, the one who could defend himself?”

            “Harry, stop.” Hermione shook her head desperately, while tears leaked out of the corners of her eyes. “It’s not any such thing!”

            At the deepest level, he knew that, and Harry managed to grit his teeth and ride out the rage in silence, reminding himself all the time, He’s in prison. Let him suffer in the middle of stone walls, in a cell where he can’t even spread his wings fully. Let him go through each Blazing Season without the one he most wanted.

            It wasn’t enough, but then, nothing would have been enough except for the rape not to have happened in the first place, and Harry had given up on thinking that he could change the past. He raked his fingers through his hair several times, then faced Hermione and nodded.

            “He could be good for you,” Hermione said gently. “And yes, I never thought I would say that about Malfoy, but I’ve suspected for a while that he wanted you. I’ve seen the way he turns his head when you enter a room, the way he gets irritated when someone blocks his line of vision.” She smiled. “That’s the only time I’ve ever seen him make an abrupt movement, when he wanted to see you and had to look around someone else.”

            “He probably does that when someone blocks his way to his favorite wine, too,” Harry muttered, but there was no spite in it.

            “Are you going to try?” Hermione asked.

            Harry sat down beside her again and let his hand rest on her arm. That was one of the things he loved about Hermione. She understood, in a way that other people didn’t, why demands bothered him, since Laurent. She would ask questions instead and leave the choice up to Harry, something Ron still had trouble doing.

            “I don’t know,” Harry said. “I sort of want to, but with his blood, it might cause more trouble than it’s worth. Or at least set Draco up for disappointment. If he struggles along and then discovers that I can’t let him have me—”

            “He deserves the disappointment, if he’s only doing this to have you,” Hermione said firmly. “You’ve been as honest as you can with him. He’ll take risks as well as you if you decide to start this.”

            Harry stared at the far wall while he thought about things. He wanted control of his life back, and Draco might be able to give him that. And he knew that he wasn’t completely healed, at least not in the eyes of people who watched him, like his best friends, and saw things about himself that Harry didn’t know existed.

            At the same time, he thought he was doing pretty good for someone who’d been raped. He was productive at work. He still went out and laughed with his friends and didn’t obsess over what had happened to him every night of the week. He could cope with the memories. He was used to being touched. Did he want to risk that—all the poise, all the calm he’d fought so hard to win—for the mere hope of something more?

            “Do you really think I need to heal more?” he asked impulsively, turning to Hermione.

            Hermione’s voice was so low when she answered that it seemed to mingle with the crackle of the flames in the fireplace, and Harry had to strain his senses to hear her.

            “I know that you still flinch,” she said. “You’re changed from what you were, and no one could blame you for that, but you hold yourself too stiffly, you look around with wide eyes in a way I hate to see you have to endure, and you’re deprived of things no one had any right to take from you. Yes, I think you need healing.”

            “Thanks,” Harry said, and then Ron came back in, flushed from his mother’s endless interrogation and ready to complain, and Harry was glad for it. They had talked enough about him for one evening.

            That was another objection, the last one, that niggled at him as he walked home from the Apparition point. (He didn’t often Apparate close to his own house anymore, because he might carry someone inside the wards with him).

            If I date Draco, or just be with him, then I’ll have to talk about myself all the time. Do I want to do that? It sounds so selfish. Draco’s not a Healer, to be paid to listen to me whinge.

            Well, Harry decided at last as he shut the door behind him and cast the locking spells again, he would tell Draco his worries and let him decide.

            Yes, I’m going to do this.

*

            “Welcome, dearest.”

            Draco smiled and leaned in to kiss his mother on the cheek. “How have you been this week, Mother?” He sat down in the chair next to her and turned it so that he could see her fully. Narcissa gave him the same mild reprimanding look she always did, as if to say that she would be there whether he gazed at her or out into the garden. Draco ignored it, the way he always did.

            “Tolerably well,” she said. “The house-elves burned the meal again the other night. Having them free is simply not the same as having them bound.”

            Draco made sympathetic clucking noises, while privately admitting that he remembered a few burned meals from the time he was a child. His parents had given up their house-elves and then hired the ones who wished to remain back as a public gesture of good-will and support for the winning side in the war. Draco doubted that it made much difference, except for adding a new subject they could complain about.

            Narcissa talked on about the garden and the social visit she had received from Emily Parkinson, a litany Draco knew so well that he could nod and say the right things in all the right places. Meanwhile, Draco let his eyes study her face, something he did often now. The attack on her had occurred more than a year ago, but Draco didn’t see his parents every day, and still had to let his eyes adjust each time he visited.

            A long, heavy scar cut from Narcissa’s chin across to the right side of her face, bending up like a curlicue around her cheekbone. It was a deep purple and the first thing you noticed about her. It would always be the first thing anyone noticed about her now, Draco knew, and that fact touched his proud mother as deeply as she would allow herself to be touched.

            A thump behind him alerted him, and Draco made sure he had the proper, bland, smiling mask on his face as he stood. “Father.”

            Lucius, leaning heavily on the cane he had walked with as a toy for so long, reached out one long, thin arm. Draco embraced him, and told himself it was his imagination his father had lost weight since the last time he came here. The attack had scarred Narcissa and injured Lucius’s right leg, but thanks to Harry’s furiously roping in every Healer he could find and paying them with his own Galleons, it was certain that no lingering curses contaminated his parents’ bodies. They had suffered, that was all, and there was no dispelling certain of the effects of suffering.

            Of course, by that point a vindictive witch, by waiting a crucial few minutes too long, had ensured that Narcissa would always bear a scar. But Harry had descended like an avenging angel and used a combination of bribery and threats of the Chosen One’s displeasure to make sure that was the worst consequence the Malfoys would endure.

            He wonders why I want him, Draco thought, remembering the way Harry’s face had blazed as he stood there, yelling at a whole troop of cowed Healers. I doubt he realizes what he did for us. Such rescues are everyday affairs for him.

            “What new project do you have in hand, Draco?” Lucius settled into his chair beside Narcissa. She reached out her hand for his, though she made the gesture seem so casual Draco thought it would have fooled most strangers. Lucius touched her hand with the same apparent lack of importance and studied his son critically. “I know that you have something going forwards. Nothing else lends such brilliance to your eyes. Or to your smirk,” he added dryly.

            “I think I’ve met someone I could trust to stay with me,” Draco said carefully, “someone I could fall in love with.”

            He didn’t appreciate the look his parents exchanged then. Surely they should remember that it was Pansy who decided that she didn’t want me, not the other way around.

            “An eligible match, we hope, Draco,” Lucius said, his voice barely a murmur.

            “We wish for your happiness first,” Narcissa said, “always. But an eligible match will ultimately be necessary to satisfy you. Remember that you are human as well as Veela, and both have certain standards.”

            “I think he’s going to last because I know him,” Draco said. “But you might not think the same thing. And he might not, for all I know.”

            “He?” Lucius pitched his voice low, but Draco could still hear the relief. Evidently Lucius could think of more unsuitable female candidates than male ones. “Who is he, Draco? Enough with the mystery.”

            I barely had a chance to keep the truth from them, Draco thought, but it was the kind of objection he rarely made anymore, when he remembered how close he had come to not being able to exchange words with his parents at all. “It’s Harry.”

            No matter how many men they might have known of that name—and there were not many—the tone in his voice would have told them the truth, Draco thought. There were so few people he spoke of like that. After a single startled flicker of glances, his father leaned forwards and said, “Eligible, indeed. We never hoped that you would aim so high, Draco.”

            “Because you didn’t trust my taste, after Pansy.” Draco rubbed the arm of the chair, though he would have liked to tear it to splinters. Indulging his Veela features was hard on the furniture as well as Harry’s patience.

            “Well, yes,” his mother said tranquilly, as if she didn’t know why Draco would find it hard to accuse himself of a lapse of taste there. “And we had reason. But Potter…he must have many suitors after him, but he hasn’t chosen a one in the past two years. Are you sure that he’s the right one for you, Draco?”

            “He hasn’t agreed to date me yet,” Draco said. “And it turns out that he doesn’t like a lover who has Veela blood.” That was as close as he would come to revealing Harry’s secret without his permission.

            “Ridiculous,” said Lucius at once. Draco envied the hand gesture he used to dismiss the whole complication of Harry’s rape and fear of Veela, tossing it over his shoulder as if it was a handful of dust. “Veela make the best lovers, and they can protect their chosen ones against pain, fear, and suffering. Why should Potter hold back?”

            “He’s used to taking care of himself, to being the hero.” And that was true, Draco told himself, and still not a betrayal. The trouble was, he hadn’t thought of any comfortable lie to prepare the way; he had assumed that he would get either a rejection, in which case he would never mention to his parents that he had asked Harry to date him, or an acceptance, in which case he wouldn’t need to hide anything.

            “Tell him that heroes still need care,” said Narcissa, with a private, soft smile that Draco knew he couldn’t fully understand in his father’s direction. Draco knew Lucius was the reason that his mother hadn’t been hurt worse than she had in the attack on them—and the reason that his father limped—but he hadn’t been able to draw all the details from them even in all the time since it happened. “Of course, Potter has never been married, or had a close family,” his mother continued thoughtfully. “That will make it worse.”

            “I know,” Draco said, grateful to seize this new subject of conversation. “Right now, I’m waiting for him to finish making up his mind.”

            “Why aren’t you out there persuading him?” Lucius leaned in, eyes so bright with disbelief that Draco flushed and looked away.

            How can I make them understand?

            “Draco probably still has doubts himself,” Narcissa said, frankly saving him. “Remember, Lucius, we do not manifest the Veela traits in the same way. Draco can have anyone he wants, of course, but he has chosen Potter. If he feels that he is truly a good choice, then he need not hurry himself. He can afford to wait.”

            Draco nodded enthusiastically. His parents both had traces of Veela blood from intermarriages so long ago that they no longer showed the signs automatically, the way that someone like Fleur Delacour or the other Veela girls of Beauxbatons had. Something about their combination of blood had made Draco show more traits, but again not as many as a full Veela. There was a part at which chasing down fractions of heritage became unimportant even for pure-bloods, however, so Draco called himself “Veela” and had done with it.

            For Harry’s sake, he would have wished to be different.

            And then he sat up and sucked in a deep breath. No, not really. I could wish that my blood wasn’t such a barrier between us, but I’m proud of what I am. If Harry doesn’t choose me, I’ll eventually find someone else. I’m not going to be dependent on his good opinion.

            And if Harry could accept Draco’s help and heal somewhat, he might be as grateful for Draco’s blood as Draco was himself. The wings could soothe Harry, if he could only adapt to the idea of another person sharing the responsibility for protecting him. The croon could give him dreamless sleep. Draco’s embrace could heighten his sexual pleasure to the point that he would forget himself, the bad memories, and the world around him.

            Laurent probably did the same thing to him.

            Draco shifted jealously at the reminder of that, and hoped that he wouldn’t always have to think about Harry’s Veela rapist. Harry didn’t seem inclined to mention him often, fortunately.

            “Draco?”

            Lucius spoke as if he had missed the most important part of the conversation. Draco sat up, radiating alertness, and his father and mother exchanged another glance before Lucius continued. “When you feel comfortable, bring Potter to the Manor. We would like to meet him. And he should eat at least one meal in truly luxurious surroundings, which your home could not provide.”

            Draco rolled his eyes, not caring that his parents saw and would see it as a breach of good manners. He had moved out of the Manor because he needed his own place, but he visited as much as he could, and his house was comfortable enough. He didn’t need all the sprawling space that his parents did. He didn’t yet have custody of the Manor heirlooms or house-elves. “Yes, Father. I will.”

            If he agrees, Draco thought when he took his leave. If he does.

            Waiting for him at home was a brilliant white owl that shifted in place when it saw Draco and glared as if it knew about his hidden wings and that they were more beautiful than its own. Draco smiled soothingly at it and took the letter it bore.

            Yes, it said, in Harry’s handwriting.

            Draco was glad he was alone then. It would have been embarrassing for someone else to see his dance around the kitchen with his wings out and the trill breaking forth from his throat, and it did send the owl fleeing out the window with a reproachful hoot.

*

            Axel: Thank you!

            paigeey07: He does, but it will be a struggle for both of them.

            Thrnbrooke: Thank you!

            Sarah: Thanks, but I think you probably confused this with another story, since this one only started a few days ago.

            momoko: Thank you!

            rita ennui: Thanks! Ron and Hermione do know, and as for Laurent, I haven’t decided, but probably not.

            Night the Storyteller: You were right about Hermione, at least, and probably Ron, too, when he knows the truth about Draco’s interest in Harry.

            Harry is afraid of what he will have to do for and tell Draco, at this point.

            SP777: As far as Harry is concerned, what he needs is to regain control of everything. Confronting Laurent would probably not be helpful for that.

            Lady_of_Clunn: It will. Thanks for reviewing.

            polka dot: If Draco loses control, it certainly will.

            luvlustblood: Thank you!

            mrequecky: Thanks!

            Shiro_neko: Thanks. I hope your sad weekend improved.

            Amiyom: Interesting. That is essentially the same way Hermione sees him.

            fudge: Thank you!
- 2
- 3
- 4
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Veela-Struck