Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Fairest Creatures	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 22177 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 4
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Three—Classes
            “I realize this room is small. But it is private.”
            Harry blinked at the room and said nothing. If Grunnell thought this was small, he wasn’t sure that he wanted to see what she’d consider large. The room would have covered half the flat he lived in, would have held his cupboard twenty times over. Even though it was only a bedroom, with one corner against the wall that held a handsome desk and a window, that didn’t matter. They had passed plenty of bathrooms and kitchens.
            “It’s fine,” Harry said, and moved a few steps forwards, looking around again. The walls were all brilliant, bright wood, sometimes white and sometimes honey-blond. The floor shone with clean white tiles. Harry did give the tiles a curious glance.
            “This is more usual in a room for shapeshifters,” said Grunnell, who hadn’t ceased watching him. “When they shed feathers and dust and the like, tile is easier to clean.”
            “Oh.” Harry could see how it would be. He stood on his tiptoes to look through the window, since the desk took up all the space in front of it. It looked down on a neat, smooth green expanse and the edge of a huge red rose garden.
            “If we had known beforehand what color your wings were, we would have decorated the room to match.”
            Harry turned to her. “But they’re white, just like my wings.”
            Grunnell’s shoulder twitched. “I meant the stripe in your wings. Blue, isn’t it?”
            At least someone can be sane about the color. Harry nodded. “What does that mean?”
            “The stripes? They tell you something about the inner affiliation of the Veela. Blue usually means a steady personality, someone who doesn’t back down easily from conflict.” Grunnell nodded at him in approval. “My own silver means someone who is deeply restrained and doesn’t like talking about her secrets.”
            “You don’t mind telling me about Veela…”
            “That’s not my secret.” Grunnell sounded a little shocked. “That’s information you need to know to be a good Veela.”
            “And if I have no interest in being a good Veela?” Harry muttered it, but this time there could be no mistaking the shocked expression on Grunnell’s face. He sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to…”
            “Your life has changed, and you have no context for it.” Grunnell seemed to have recovered already. “Yes, I understand. Even though I was raised to it, when I first began changing, I could not find comfort. Hearing about the change was not the same as living through it.” She moved briskly over and tapped her wand on the window. The colors seemed to brighten for a second, and then a round hole opened in the glass. Harry squinted at it, and then stepped back in surprise as a few books tumbled through it.
            “Not used to that?” Grunnell gave him a sympathetic smile as she collected the books in her arms and gave them to Harry. “Every part of this school is linked to every other part. It’s easy to summon books from the library or food from the kitchens. We need that, since we have to make do without house-elves here.”
            “That sounds incredibly useful,” Harry had to admit. “Could you tell me about the spells, so I could tell my friend Hermione? She fights for the freedom of house-elves. If she knew there was another way of doing things…”
            “I’m afraid it won’t work outside any area that isn’t saturated with Veela magic.” Grunnell turned to him a second later. “Of course, if you gain control of your powers and then spend a lot of time in her house or yours, then it would work.”
            Harry sighed. “I’ve already decided that I’ll stay here.”
            “Because you want to master your powers?”
            “Because I don’t want to spend the rest of my life in the pain and depression you described.” Harry shook his head at the look in Grunnell’s eyes. “It’s not any more complicated than that. Don’t make it into something that it’s not.”
            “If you insist.” Grunnell nodded without taking her eyes off him. “Do you want me to show you the classrooms?”
            Harry grimaced. “I have to see them?”
            “If you want to be able to find your way around the school when you begin attending them tomorrow, then yes.”
            Harry finally nodded in resignation and followed her. He didn’t hate the thought of attending Veela classes that much, he thought. Only that he would probably have to share them with students already so advanced they would look at him disdain.
            And Malfoy.
            Think of the git. Malfoy was lounging against the side of a high, arched doorway that led into what Harry thought was the dining hall, from the sounds of clinking glasses and laughing voices. Malfoy straightened up when he saw Harry, but looked at him without much expression.
            “I’ll take him around to the classrooms, Miranda,” said Malfoy.
            “No, I rather think he would prefer my escort.” Grunnell continued walking, gesturing towards the arched doorway and ignoring Malfoy’s outraged gape. “That’s where you’ll eat, as you can hear. It’s a noisy place, but I’ve often made my best friends over a shared meal.” She cocked her head at Harry. “That’s one thing you’ll notice when you’re in the dining hall. Everyone is on their best behavior. Sharing meals is an important thing among Veela, and none of us want to listen to allure-dazed people stammering through mouthfuls of food.”
            “Why is sharing food so important?” Harry had to keep his head turned so he was mostly looking at the dining hall, and also keep his voice innocent. He would burst out laughing if he did anything else. The look on Malfoy’s face…
            “Because it’s something that most often, only mates do. Doing it in a larger environment, such as a dining hall, lessens most of the intimacy of the gesture but preserves a little, fostering friendships between Veela.”
            Harry felt as though someone had filled his spine with electricity. “The last letter from my Healer said something about mates, but I didn’t know what she meant. Can you tell me?”
            “You want Miranda to show you around and you don’t know about mates?”
            Harry ignored Malfoy, keeping his gaze fixed on Grunnell. She hesitated, sighed, and then said, “I will, because I don’t think you should go into Professor Testig’s class in utter ignorance. But since she teaches Veela Mate Culture, I don’t want to step too much on her toes, either.”
            “The only Veela I knew before this was only part-Veela, and she married the brother of a friend of mine. Does that mean she was mated to him?”
            “Your ignorance pollutes my nostrils, Potter.”
            Grunnell seemed to have adopted Harry’s course of ignoring the interjections Malfoy tried to make completely. She shook her head. “She would only have been mated to him if she felt a great pull to him. Or if his color matched hers.”
            “She didn’t have wings. Neither did he. I have no idea what you mean.”
            “There are spells that can cast the color of your wings—well, what would be the color of the stripe on your wings if you had them—on a parchment or wall. I’m sure your friend would have done that the instant she found herself attracted to this man. If they weren’t compatible, she would never have pressed forwards.”
            “Sad, that a professor at a school for Veela would think that compatibility was enough to mate.”
            Grunnell’s back tightened, but she still ignored Malfoy, to Harry’s delight. She paused in front of a large room down the corridor from the dining hall. “This is Professor Helios’s classroom. You’ll come here to learn to manage your wings and fly. The class is called Wing Management.”
            Simple enough, Harry supposed. He had been a little afraid that all the terminology in the school would be French, which probably wouldn’t respond to a Translation Charm if it was only isolated French words in English sentences.
            He looked around the Wing Management classroom. It was made of white wood, rather like his bedroom, but with muffling pale tapestries on the walls and cushioned mats on the floor. Harry thought about crashing into a wall at high speed, and his feathers ruffled before he could keep them still.
            “I know, but there hasn’t been a fatal accident here in years.”
            “What happens if a Veela breaks a wing?”
            “I did,” said Malfoy, abruptly pushing his way in between them, as if he couldn’t stand the thought of being ignored any longer. “And you couldn’t tell from the way I move and hold my wings. See?”
            He raised his wings. Harry rolled his eyes. “Yes, you’re perfect, Malfoy.”
            “Really?”
            “No.”
            Malfoy looked oddly crestfallen. Harry turned away from him again and towards Grunnell, who was hiding her amusement badly. “What about the other classes? Which one is your room?”
            Grunnell led him off at a brisk pace. Harry thought they’d suddenly run out of time on the tour, but Grunnell apparently only wanted to leave Malfoy behind. The instant they did, she murmured to him, “Did you notice the stripe on Monsieur Malfoy’s wings?”
            “No,” Harry said blankly. He had noticed only their general shape, and while it was true that he couldn’t see any sign of a break, he also didn’t intend to minister to Malfoy’s vanity by telling him that.
            “It is black.”
            “Does that mean he’s still a Death Eater?”
            Grunnell frowned at him over her shoulder. “You must give up that insistence on his old allegiance. I understand the temptation, but with the transformation into Veela comes a new set of allegiances and responsibilities. By bringing them up continually, you are the one who will come off as rude.”
            Harry shook his head. He wanted to say that he didn’t plan to spend enough time around other Veela to care if he had a reputation for being rude, but he also thought Grunnell probably wouldn’t want to hear that. “What does the black bar mean, then?”
            “Great passion. Sometimes it manifests as concern for others, sometimes as self-centered care for the actions of that person only.”
            “No guesses as to where Malfoy falls.”
            “I think there must be a guess.” Grunnell sounded a little exasperated with him. She turned, walking backwards, and pinned him with a fierce, evaluating gaze. “I asked you for a reason if you noticed the color on his wings.”
            Harry scowled. “Then remember I’m new at this and tell me what that reason was. I don’t have any idea about this!”
            “Nor will you, if you use these opportunities to peck away at me and others instead of learning to your advantage what I could teach you.”
            Harry bit the inside of his cheek again, then said slowly, “I’m sorry. But I don’t know what the colors on the wings mean, and I don’t know why I should expect to notice Malfoy’s color in particular.”
            “There are now faint bars of blue around his stripes.”
            Harry blinked. “What, is he reacting to the presence of a rival or something?”
            “No,” said Grunnell, and at least this time she went on talking instead of waiting for him to guess. “He is reacting to the presence of a potential mate.”
*
            “There was no need to scream at me like that, Monsieur Potter.”
            Harry lowered his head and stared sullenly at the mug of hot tea in his hands. Grunnell had insisted he drink it. That made Harry think it probably had a sedative in it. “I’m sorry, but it’s hard to be told that your potential mate is someone you despise,” he muttered. Then he drank half the tea at a gulp.
            Grunnell winced, maybe at his lack of manners. “It is an honor for a transformed man to find his mate in another Veela,” she said stiffly. “Most of the time, your kind simply have no mates. They have to marry like humans, on the chance of love rather than the certainty of it.”
            “I’m still going to do that,” Harry reassured her, with a smile that she drew back from as if she found it offensive. “I don’t care about mating with another Veela. Not a transformed one, not a born one, not female or male. I’m learning how to control my powers and I’m getting out of here.”
            “I certainly hope that you learn how to control your powers.”
            Harry turned around. Another female Veela was standing at the entrance to the dining hall, where Grunnell had brought Harry after his little incident earlier. She had the same poise as Grunnell, but a much blanker face and less friendly appearance. Her silver hair was twined up in a severe crown of braids that made her neck look pulled and pale, and her blue eyes cut into Harry with a familiar disapproval. It was the exact same kind of look Aunt Petunia used to give him when she thought he had done something freakish.
            “I could feel the pull of your undisciplined magic all the way down the corridor,” the woman continued, stepping into the dining hall and taking her place on the opposite bench from Harry. “Comfort me, protect me, love me, it said. You never once thought of asking if any of the potential recipients of that magic wanted to do any of those.”
            Harry stared back at her. “Who are you?”
            “Professor Philomela Testig,” said the Veela woman, and gave him another look that made her seem as though she was about to attack him. Harry leaned away from her. “I teach Veela Mate Culture, as Professor Grunnell should already have warned you.”
            “She said something about it,” Harry said. And yeah, it was a warning, although I didn’t realize that at the time.
            “Then you should know something about your magic,” said Testig, so slowly and carefully that Harry had the impression of disdain even though she had no emotion in her voice at all. “You should know that you must get it under control. It will try to find a mate for you, but you cannot let it out like that. It is an intrusion into others’ privacy.”
            “How can I help that until it is under control?” Harry exclaimed.
            “Somehow, other untrained Veela here manage it. Then again, I suppose that you think yourself too good to need to learn from subhumans how to control your magic.”
            “I’ve never thought Veela were subhuman.” Harry turned and looked at Grunnell. “The Healers who were treating me were mad for no reason. Is everyone here going to look down on me for no reason?”
            “I did warn you that you would get a reputation for rudeness,” said Grunnell, and shook her head a little and sipped at her own tea.
            Harry turned back to Testig, and tried to control his own temper enough to smile at her. She looked so unimpressed with it that Harry decided he might as well drop the smile and speak honestly. “I don’t know anything about this. I only got changed two days ago, and this is my first day at the school.”
            “Your compatriot did not cause so much trouble in the first day he was here.”
            “Compatriot?”
            “That would be me, Potter.”
            Harry turned around. Malfoy was leaning against the table. When he saw Harry was looking at him, he lifted his wings, which he had acquired again, and turned them around.
            Harry saw the glittering black bar surrounded by blue, and he grimaced and shoved himself back from the table. “Excuse me,” he muttered. “I think I need to go be sick.”
            “You need to think about controlling yourself,” said Testig.
            “Having a potentially compatible mate does not mean that you must mate with him,” said Grunnell.
            “I think you ought to be honored, Potter. And listen to me,” said Malfoy.
            Once Harry sorted out who’d said what, he shook his head. “I promise that I’ll try to be less rude,” he said, because it was the only thing he could bring himself to say right now. “But I don’t want to mate. I’m only here to attend classes and then I’ll leave. Excuse me,” he repeated, and stumbled out of the dining hall.
            He made his way into a bathroom and muttered at himself while splashing water on his face. Then he stopped and looked into the mirror and watched the wings dangling behind his shoulders, down to touch the floor. He shook his head.
            “Useless. I ought to have stayed with the Healers after all.”
            Then Harry had to stand there and try to decide whether he would rather have listened to endless arguments about the bars of color in his wings or to the comments of superior Veela. He grimaced.
            I don’t think Kilhoun and the others will ever stop arguing. Whereas Grunnell isn’t bad, and Malfoy’s never going to change but it’ll only be a month, and I won’t be in class with Testig all the time.
            Harry finally stepped out of the bathroom, decision made. He was going to ask Grunnell if she could show him a few more of the classrooms, but the only one standing there was Malfoy. Harry rolled his eyes.
            “You ought to be honored that I want to escort you,” said Malfoy, and turned away. “You ought to be honored to have me as your escort in any sense of the word,” he added, in a voice that Harry didn’t think was meant to be really under his breath.
            “It would be different if I was paying you. Then I could expect a certain standard of behavior.”
            Malfoy snapped his head back and sneered at Harry, then turned firmly forwards. “If you look at this wall,” he began loudly, “you’ll see…”
            Harry resigned himself to using Malfoy as a guide, and to watching the feathers ruffle all up and down the curve of Malfoy’s wings. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he thought calm behavior might be his best bet, and not just because it would please Grunnell and Testig.
            Malfoy thinks this is some kind of honor, and he’ll only insist the more on it the more I flinch. But if I pretend to be enthusiastic, he’ll get bored with me easily. Malfoy thrives on being my rival. He doesn’t know how to be anything else.
            “Your smile is sometimes disturbing.”
            Harry snapped back to himself and smiled some more. No problem like the present for putting a plan in motion. “Only when I’m listening to something I really want to listen to,” he purred.
            Malfoy stared at him, then turned away with a shake of his head and continued walking up the corridor. Harry watched his wings to gauge his feelings, and saw them ruffling and settling continually, as though someone was holding an invisible comb above them.
            At the very least, Harry thought cheerfully, it’ll confuse the hell out of him.
*
SP777: The Healers would be happy to argue with you!
For a while, I was having trouble; I’m not now.
sara101: Thanks! Either that, or Harry will provoke a meltdown in Draco.
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