Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Flare	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 21800 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three--Exigencies of Living

            "I want to know why you didn't come straight back to the Ministry."

            Head Auror Mercy Fletcher spoke the words gently, but Harry shuddered. Ron looked as though he'd rather be out of the room.

            Harry gestured to his wings. He hadn't been able to sit in an ordinary chair with a wooden back like the ones that Fletcher normally kept for all her guests. The wings had tangled around it, hung uncomfortably off the sides, and left him unable to lean back because of the bulges they made between his shoulder blades. Ron had gone and found him a stool instead, and Harry had enlarged it so that he was at Fletcher's eye level. He had the gloomy feeling that there would be many, many more things that the wings would make harder than usual for him in the near future. "The wings, madam. I thought it best to have St. Mungo's check them out first."

            Fletcher nodded meditatively. She was a tall woman with dark hair, dark eyes, and a personality that resembled nails rolled in tar. "And it never occurred to you that you were giving everyone a chance to figure out that our best Auror had become a freak?"

            Harry didn't flinch. Fletcher had found out his reaction to that word early on, when she'd accidentally used it around him, and used it again and again until Harry stopped wincing. Her philosophy was that she wanted her Aurors to be proof against any emotional or psychological distress their enemies might try to inflict on them with mere words.

            Harry was of the opinion that that was all so much bollocks and she simply liked torturing people, but it had worked the way she said it would. "If I hid and didn't show them off," he said simply, meeting her eyes, "then it would drive the reporters mad with curiosity, and they wouldn't stop investigating until they learned the truth. Then it would become the story of why the Ministry is persecuting poor innocent Harry Potter and why they'd want to hide the story of one of their best Aurors acquiring immortality. Or else that I was playing around with illegal potions and the Ministry was covering it up."

            Fletcher nodded. "You are immortal now?"

            "I don't think so, no," Harry said fervently. God, I hope not. That's all I'd need. "But the wings are here, and they aren't the sort of thing I can hide, either."

            Fletcher nodded a third time. He thought he had convinced her with the tales of conspiracy stories about the Ministry. She cared greatly for the Ministry if not as much for individual Aurors. "Very well. Then you are relieved from duty until such time as the Aurors with you make their reports on the death of Hyperion Rosier and until you find a way to wear a shirt that doesn't look like paint." She didn't look at Ron, but Harry saw his ears turn red anyway.

            Harry nodded back to her--he knew from past questions that he would be paid during this unofficial holiday--and rose carefully to his feet. The wings twitched and shifted on his shoulders, the feathers stretching in random directions. Harry cursed under his breath. He'd worked hard since he got into Auror training, learning to control himself: his temper, his tendency to assume things, his bad eyesight, his muscles. It was infuriating to feel like a teenager again, reduced to clumsy stumbling at a time in his life when he should be past that.

            "The wings are no practical use, then, I take it?"

            Fletch had been watching him handle them, no surprise. Harry shook his head. "As a source of donated phoenix feathers for the Ministry Potions makers or St. Mungo's, madam. Nothing else."

            "Best that you get rid of them as soon as possible, then," Fletcher said, and reached up to snatch a floating memo, motioning to them to get out. Ron led the way, while Harry followed cautiously in his wake. The wings still trailed on the floor, although he had found a fairly simple upwards lift that would make them rise a few inches. He reckoned it was useful.

            On the other hand, he didn't want to learn how to use them. The more he knew about them, the sooner he could get rid of them, as Redusson had explained to him, but the longer he worked on them--and he could only study them by spending time with them--the more used his body would become to them, as well. And soon there might be an unbreakable bond between his body and the wings, to the point that he would grow them back if he cut them off.

            Harry would have been close enough to it anyway, if he had a sufficiently sharp knife. That was enough to make him think about reading up on cutting spells instead of phoenixes.

            "Potter."

            The wings crossed in front of Harry's body without him thinking about it, which was the problem. He didn't want phoenix instincts on top of everything else. He folded them back again with an effort, and shook his head when the source of the voice stood revealed. "Malfoy. What do you want?"

            Malfoy moved a step closer. "Really," he murmured. One of the most offensive things he did, Harry thought, was just ignore Ron, without effort, as if Ron wasn't worth acknowledging. "I had thought I would receive a more generous reception." His eyes caressed the feathers.

            "Why?" Harry asked. "Have you come up with a potion that can remove this? That would get you a hug, and the wings, if you want them."

            "I could use some feathers, yes," Malfoy said crisply. "And if I had an extra one, then I might be persuaded to begin studying it in such a way as to permit you to remove them earlier. If you're sure that you want to." His gaze returned to Harry's face, and it burned in a way that made Harry's blood buzz.

            "Huh," said Harry, not that persuaded, but willing to listen. Malfoy was a genius Potions maker, that much was true, and if Harry gave him some feathers, then maybe he would go away and wank with them and leave Harry alone. "Fine." He reached up, plunged his hand into the feathers on the edge of one wing, and yanked.

            It hurt. Harry went to his knees, screaming once before he managed to choke it off in mid-cry. He was aware of furious heat on his hand, as though his blood was part fire, and the feathers were damp against his fingers. He flung them at Malfoy, hoping they landed, and kept his eyes closed. He didn't want Malfoy or Ron to see his fucking tears of fucking pain.

            "Potter, you idiot."

            Someone was kneeling beside him and trying to help him to his feet. Harry was afraid that it was Malfoy, so he kept his eyes closed so he wouldn't have to see and braced his hand on the offered arm. He could pretend that it was Ron if he really tried, he thought as he scrambled to his feet.

            Granted, that was a little harder when the person helping him leaned closer and tried to fit in the circle of Harry's unwounded wing. Ron would have had better sense. But Harry just turned his head to the side and made sure that his eyes would focus on Ron over the wound.

            "How bad is it?" he asked.

            Ron grimaced and nodded at the hole among the feathers. Harry looked. It ought to have hurt no more than tearing out a clump of hair, he thought--painful, but not worth falling to his knees and howling about it.

            It looked considerably worse, though. The edges of the hole were jagged, and still leaking blood and fire. Harry reached out and touched them, and his whole body, along with the stupid wing, flinched backwards before he could stop it.

            "Hold still."

            Malfoy was indeed on Harry's other side, standing closer to him than Harry liked or thought was legal. He reached out with one hand and tapped his wand against the hole, muttering what sounded like a simple Healing charm. Well, Harry reckoned that he would pick those up, working in St. Mungo's the way he did.

            The hole hissed and spluttered like a fire that someone had dumped water on, but didn't close or stop bleeding the way Harry knew the charm should have made it do. It just kept leaking.

            "Fuck--" Harry dashed a hand across his eyes, furious that he was still weeping, and reached out again.

            The moment his wet hand touched the hole, it seemed to bend inwards and melt and soften, as if it had been heated. The blood sighed and stopped falling. Then a few new, ragged feathers, softly fuzzy like the down Harry had seen on baby chickens, sprouted and rose up to close the hole. Harry stared at it, then at his hand, wondering what the hell had just happened.

            "Well." Malfoy's voice was cool again, but he stepped in closer, his arm curving around Harry's waist as if he had the right to be there. "Congratulations. It seems that you've inherited the healing properties of phoenix tears."

            "Inherited is the wrong word, you stupid sod," Harry muttered, but it did look like Malfoy was right. At least, he couldn't think of anything else that he would have done to make the hole heal itself. He shook his hand to get the last remnants of tears and blood off it, and then started to pull away from Malfoy.

            Malfoy maintained his hold. "You need to be seen," he said, in the same tone that Harry thought he would have used to instruct an erring apprentice to add more dragonsbane to a potion. "The wound may be healed now, but we don't know what other damage you've done to yourself. And an experienced Healer could give you some tips on how to live with these wings, as well as easing the--" his eyes came back to Harry's face, and Harry swallowed a gasp at the hunger in them "--obvious mental distress that you're experiencing."

            Harry stared at the floor. Yes, there was a clump of phoenix feathers lying there, matted with blood. His feathers.

            No. Thinking like that would probably hasten the process of his body acclimating to the wings, and Harry had no intention of keeping these things longer than the day someone found a cure. He stooped down and gathered up the feathers--a process made much harder by the way that Malfoy hung onto him as if Harry was his own personal teddy bear--and pressed the soaked things into Malfoy's wand hand. "Here. You have what you wanted. Now, let me go." He pulled, hard, and managed to break free of Malfoy's grasp.

            For about one second, since Ron caught him from the other side.

            "Mate, I think he's right."

            Harry turned around, mouth opening as he stared incredulously at Ron. Ron met his eyes and held them, and didn't laugh in the next moment at the incredible joke he was playing, the way Harry had assumed he would. "Come on," Harry said. "Did you see the way that he--"

            "Tried to help you? Yes." Either Ron thought Malfoy's weird wing fetishism was healthy for some reason, or he hadn't noticed the wing fetishism at all. He shook his head instead, frowning. "Mate, you had a hell of a night, and you haven't allowed yourself time to recover at all."

            "I already went to the Healers. I was heading home," Harry said icily. "Where I was going to rest. Without Potions brewers who ask for feathers and then don't want to take them when I offer them."

            "Why, yes, Potter, you're very welcome," Malfoy murmured.

            Harry flushed and glared at him. Malfoy looked back with a raised eyebrow, and Harry could have pretended that everything was normal, given his smirk, if not for those stupid burning eyes.

            Maybe he just looks like that because he's jealous. Maybe he wants phoenix wings for himself. But no matter how much he told himself that, Harry would meet his gaze and know that he was wrong.

            "Thank you," he said grudgingly. "But Ron, I am going home to rest. Alone."

            Ron still blocked his attempt to escape, and he looked so serious that Harry paused unwillingly to listen. "Harry, the way you tore those feathers off..." He glared until Harry nodded. "You're under a lot of stress, and I would feel better if I knew that you weren't alone. I'd go with you, but you know Fletcher. She didn't give me a holiday. Take Malfoy. Please."

            Harry nodded unwillingly. He didn't want to get his best friend in trouble, which he would if Ron left with him now.

            "Thanks," Ron said, with an exhale that seemed to use up most of the air in his body. He nodded in a friendly way to Malfoy. "Hurt him and I'll cast a spell that splinters your bones and sends all the splinters directly to your brain. Have a nice day."

            He turned and strode down the corridor. Harry stared after him, then sighed and began the weary process of folding up the wings again.

            Malfoy's hands fell on the edges of the wings, stroking and molding, and Harry shivered at the jolts that traveled through him in response. "Why are you doing this?" he whispered, refusing to look at Malfoy. "There are simpler ways to get Potions ingredients."

            "I intend to do an intensive study of you," Malfoy whispered in his ear, and his hand caressed Harry's right wing in a way that made Harry have to close his eyes.

            This is so bloody weird.

*

            unneeded: Not a problem. I know AFF reacts that way sometimes. And thanks for the offer to make a masterlist. I will do it someday; there are just lots of other things that need doing.

            SP777: As you can see, Harry does have a few other traits besides phoenix wings, so I would still call it a creature-fic.

            Talltree-san: Thank you!

            heartstar: Very much so. Especially because some people around him think the wings are interesting and some agree with him that they're inconvenient.

            I would draw a picture of Harry with the wings if I could draw.

            SamuraiSaaya: Thank you!

            kumori: Close, but not completely right. The problem is that Harry is resisting thinking of the wings as part of his body. Thinking of them that way would give him more control...but could also make them permanent.
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