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 Thirty--Veela Justice
“If you would explain what happened when Mr. Lavelle brought what he said was a gift to your room, Mr. Potter?”
Harry nodded and spent a moment scrubbing the sweat off his hands against his trousers. He hadn’t expected the professors to bring in any Veela from the outside to make their judgment, given that both Kevin and Lavaliere were students of the school. But apparently they were intent on making this as unbiased as possible. The woman in front of Harry wore silver rings that shimmered with protective magic so intense it hurt his teeth, and her hair was braided and hanging most of the way down her back.
And she had both black bars and silver ones on her wings, which meant she was probably mated to the tall Veela woman on the other side of the room who had the same colors in opposite rows.
“He said that he was supposed to give the gift to me and my mate both at once, so Draco wouldn’t think he was trying to woo me away,” said Harry. He found it easier to keep his eyes on the tall woman, as intimidating as she was—she had said her name was Pearlina, but Harry couldn’t call her that—than on Kevin and Lavaliere, slumped on chairs to his left. “I told him Draco was asleep. Then he had me bend down to open the gift, and sent the powder up into my face.”
Pearlina nodded, and glanced at Testig. Testig turned without ceremony to Kevin and said, “Tell us if that’s true, Mr. Lavelle.”
Kevin didn’t look up or act as if he’d heard, he was so involved in his trance of despair. “It’s true.”
“Did your mate tell you what the powder did before she told you to take it to Potter and Malfoy?” Testig asked.
“She told me. She said it would render them unconscious. She said I had to get both of them because otherwise the remaining mate could track them.”
There was a long, indrawn breath among several of the professors. Harry saw Helios shaking his head in disgust.
But Pearlina, who took up the questioning in turn, didn’t look as if she was particularly disgusted. She only appeared blank. “And why did you do as she asked? To hurt fellow students you had no quarrel with?”
“I’m in love with her.” Kevin had never sounded like he was in love, Harry thought, only like he was doing something he didn’t like, but then again, that wasn’t any different than he had sounded so far. “And they’d insulted Valena. I had to—I had to do what she told me.” Kevin was staring at his hands.
“What did she intend to do to Potter and Malfoy once you captured them both?”
“She didn’t tell me that.”
Pearlina faced Lavaliere this time, and spread her wings. Harry blinked as he saw the colors on her wings beginning to rotate. He glanced at Draco, wanting to ask whether they could do that. Draco’s wide eyes told him as surely as words that Draco didn’t know, however.
“Look at me, Valena Lavaliere, pure-blood Veela, the aggressor we are here to try.”
Lavaliere’s neck jerked abruptly straight up. Her eyes were painfully wide, her claws digging into her hands. But she didn’t look away from the colors. Perhaps she couldn’t, Harry thought, and was glad that he had managed to avert his eyes before he was captured the same way.
“Tell me what you intended to do with Mr. Potter and Mr. Malfoy once you had captured them.”
“I was going to make sure that neither of them ever saw each other again.”
Draco erupted into the air, or tried. His wings were spread and he was aiming his face at Lavaliere with an odd look of peace on it, as if he was concentrating very hard on a problem in Arithmancy.
Harry grabbed Draco’s ankle and dragged him back down on the chair. He thought some of the professors were staring, or maybe nodding, but he couldn’t take the time to look at them. He was too busy holding Draco back by wrapping his arms around him and holding him while he bucked and struggled.
“Thank you, Mr. Potter,” said Pearlina, without turning a hair. “Now, Valena, I want you to explain what you meant by that statement.”
“I was going to take their eyes. So that they couldn’t see each other again.”
Harry ducked his head against Draco’s hair to muffle his own screech. Those Veela instincts were rising up in him again, but this time, they were urging him to tear into the woman across from him. What did she think she was doing? Did she not realize it was dangerous, or did she just not care?
“Why did you want to do that?” Pearlina still sounded unmoved.
“They’re transformed Veela. They shouldn’t be here. They insulted me! And then one of them scarred me. How can I live like this?”
A whining tone was creeping into Lavaliere’s voice. Harry held tight to Draco, and shook, and hoped the questioning would be over soon. He wasn’t sure what he would do to Lavaliere if she remained within his reach.
“I was under the impression that the scarring only took place after you had kidnapped them.”
“They annoyed me,” said Lavaliere, and her wings rattled. Harry clenched his teeth. He didn’t want to go over there and kill her. Pearlina and the professors were here so that he wouldn’t have to kill her, so Draco wouldn’t try to take justice for him. He had to remember that.
He hoped again that the questioning would end soon.
“That’s a pathetic excuse,” said Pearlina, making Harry jump. Other than the words, though, there was no change in her voice, no sign that she disliked Lavaliere. “I want to know what the real reason was.”
“I—wanted them gone. They stared at me and despised me for having a human mate. They didn’t see that I was beautiful. They should never have been admitted to the school in the first place.”
“Still a pathetic excuse. I want the real reason, Valena.”
Lavaliere writhed, in the corner of Harry’s vision, as though someone was dragging a hot rope over her skin. Her scar shimmered and burned as if someone had stroked it into life. Harry still had to close his eyes, though. He had the urge to fly over and give her another strike down her face that matched it.
“Perhaps I can provide some insight, if she won’t speak?” That sounded like Professor Grunnell, but Harry still didn’t dare to open his eyes and check.
“Please do so, Miranda.”
“Valena had recently begun to neglect her classes. Some of them, I think she thought were beneath her level, things she already knew because she grew up as part of our culture. Others she had simply failed. She spent too much time bragging that she was good at partner flying, and then when Professor Helios chose to test her, she turned out to be incapable of not injuring the one she was flying with.”
“And that is enough to make her kidnap someone?”
“There is the reason behind the neglect of her classes, Honored Inquisitor.”
At least she’s better than Umbridge, Harry thought, and then had to concentrate on the way Draco held onto him and breathed against him. Thoughts of Umbridge were not helping him calm down.
“Well? Continue.” From the sound, Pearlina had beat her wings down hard, once.
“She had begun to fear that her human mate meant she was not as good as the Veela who took Veela mates. She told me, more than once, that she worried what her mother would think.”
“Did she not have her mate when she left her home?”
“It is my understanding that she pretended to be mated to a young Veela who had only visited her parents’ nest once, Honored Inquisitor. Once she got away, then she came here with Kevin. And the fear festered at her and drove her steadily mad. She was near the end of her time here, if she had continued to concentrate on her classes. Then she would have to go home and explain her human mate to her family.”
Kevin made a small moaning noise. Harry could imagine what he was feeling, both because he knew what he would feel if Draco was ashamed of him and because it must hurt to love Lavaliere so much and know part of her disdained him.
But that didn’t mean Harry felt any sympathy for him. Sympathy was going to be impossible as long as he remembered what Kevin and Lavaliere had done, and the scar no longer seemed like enough punishment.
Holy shit. Is this what Draco feels when he thinks about the Dursleys and the Ministry?
If so, well, Harry still didn’t want Draco killing anyone for him, but he was going to have to apologize for doubting the intensity of his feelings.
“And what reason does that give her to attack another mated Veela pair who had done nothing to her?” asked Pearlina.
“She was doing it because she was jealous and she’s young, Honored Inquisitor,” said Professor Grunnell, and she was uncomfortable, if the rustling of her wings was any indication. “It doesn’t give her an excuse. But I have to say that I think that’s why she did it.”
“Mr. Potter. We have something to ask you. You shall have to look up.”
Harry cautiously sat back a little, although he kept his arms around Draco, and turned to face Pearlina before he opened his eyes. It was all right, he decided. He didn’t want to see Lavaliere right now, but he didn’t have the compulsion to attack her. “Yes?” He didn’t think he could make the title of “Honored Inquisitor” not sound sarcastic.
“Tell me about the kind of magic that you felt when you were trying to escape the crate and answer the call of your mate.”
Harry told her about that willingly enough, the burns on his fingers and wings, and the way that Draco had burned himself trying to break in. Pearlina’s face changed for the first time, turning cold and hard. But she never looked at Lavaliere.
That might have been what made Lavaliere whimper in fear a moment later, in fact. Better to be looked at than completely ignored like that.
“She could not have managed that much on her own,” said Testig, a second later, her wings quivering and her eyes as hard as talons. “Are you prepared to consider my theory, Honored Inquisitor? It’s true that I don’t think Valena was the villain behind this, but she was a tool for the people who were.”
More enemies?
Draco turned his head so that his cheek was brushing Harry’s. His croon was so soft and calm that Harry felt it more than heard it. He felt it shudder through him and soothe him, and he sighed and slumped a little.
From the discussion that followed, it appeared the enemies were nothing to do with Harry and Draco. Rather, Testig and some of the other professors had suspected for a time that a different Veela enclave wanted to discredit the school because they taught skills that those other Veela supported only passing down through the families.
Apparently they think that transformed Veela like Draco and me shouldn’t be taught at all, Harry thought drowsily, and let his mind dart in and out of the words. There was a lot of technical language he didn’t understand, and a lot of speculation about how they might have manipulated Lavaliere through her prejudices.
Harry didn’t care that much about it. Luckily, he didn’t have to care. The issue was settled that Lavaliere and Kevin would have to leave the school and return to her parents.
Lavaliere did speak up then, in a stuttering voice that told Harry Professor Grunnell had probably been right about how much she feared to bring a human mate home to her parents. “P-please don’t make me. Let me finish my last classes here, and then—then I’ll go somewhere else and take my m-mate with me. But please don’t exile me.”
Pearlina paused as if she was considering something, and then said, “In such instances, the criminal may only be spared the designated punishment if the victim speaks up and asks that it be so.”
She turned to Harry. In the same moment, Harry felt Draco’s arms grow tight around him, as if Draco was afraid that he might actually do it.
But Harry had no impulse to do so, even if he might have in other circumstances. Lavaliere had hurt his mate. She had wanted to do worse. She had tried to separate them, tried to kill them, and had intended to blind them. He could forgive a lot for himself, but none of that for Draco. He snuggled his chin into Draco’s neck and stayed silent.
Draco’s arms relaxed when he figured out Harry wasn’t going to speak up, and of course he wasn’t going to, either. Pearlina nodded as if it was only mildly interesting that they hadn’t, and she nodded to Lavaliere.
“The punishment stands. Immediate return to her family.”
“Is that all?” Draco asked then, and his wings spread and beat up and down as if he wanted to lift both himself and Harry off the chairs they sat in. “It doesn’t seem like much for attempted murder.”
“You do not understand the full consequences of the punishment, I see,” said Pearlina, with a faint smile that made Harry wonder if she was holding back stronger emotion, or if she really felt none. “When she leaves the school, it is supposed to be a sign that she has finished training her powers and assumed the status of an adult. The fact that she won’t have means she will never be seen as an adult in our society. She will always be a child. Her parents, or anyone else they appoint, will forever have legal power over her.”
Draco gave a small hissing sound like a bird frightening away a predator, and nodded. Harry thought about it, and nodded, too. That would have to be enough. Combined with the scar Draco had given her, he thought Lavaliere and Kevin probably wouldn’t find a welcome anywhere in Veela society.
“I beg you.”
Harry turned around, startled by Kevin’s voice, but not surprised to find himself suddenly enfolded in Draco’s wings so that he couldn’t even see Kevin. He did, though, push the edge of Draco’s wing down. He wanted to see him.
Kevin was kneeling in front of their chairs, his arms held out in front of them and his palms turned upwards. He ducked his head and murmured, “Please forgive her. Please. You don’t know what her family is like, how traditionalist. They’ll hate her more for having a human mate than she hates you for being transformed Veela.”
“What a lucky stroke of fate,” said Draco, in a cheerful voice. “Then she gets to see exactly why it was wrong for her to turn her hatred on us and expect us to simply roll over and accept it.”
“Please,” Kevin repeated in a whisper, sprawling forwards until his palms rested on the floor at their feet.
Harry stirred uncomfortably. Draco wrapped him up in his wings again and crooned at him, and Harry found himself relaxing against his will. Draco was the one who spoke to Kevin. “She only regrets it because she got caught and I scarred her. She doesn’t regret it for any other reason. She would try to kill us again if she thought she would get away with it. Go back to your worthless mate and let her pretend that someone in the world loves her.”
Harry winced, but even Pearlina was only nodding as if this was accepted Veela justice. He watched Kevin walk brokenly back to Lavaliere, and bend down to whisper something in her ear. She began to sob, a sound that cut Harry like knives.
Then Draco blocked Harry’s view with his wings again.
“I think we’ve had enough of that,” he said, and patted Harry’s cheek with a claw that felt more like a fingernail. “Let’s go back to our room and leave them to make their way to Lavaliere’s family.” He paused and looked up at Pearlina. “There’s no reason that you would need us for more, is there?”
“You have done quite enough.” Again there was a faint smile on Pearlina’s lips. “Yes, you may return to your rooms, Mr. Malfoy.”
Harry was glad when Draco escorted him from the room so that he didn’t have to look at Kevin and Lavaliere again. Part of him still felt sorry for them, although mostly because he could remember what it was like to have your family look at you in disgust for something you couldn’t help.
But he was even gladder that he had a mate who would protect him and prevent him from acting on that guilt.
If that makes me more Veela than I was, at least I’m going to enjoy it.
*
Meechypoo: Thank you! Draco was feeling rather smug about that himself.
SP777: Thanks! I have done a few in the past where the wings could be retracted, but I thought it wouldn't be appropriate here, since I doubt the Veela here would think they needed to do it.
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