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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-Three—Moving On
“Hermione insisted that I speak with you, Harry.”
Harry had just come out of the bathroom and was preparing to leave for breakfast. For once, Draco had got so impatient that he’d gone ahead and left Harry behind to finish his shower. It was something the professors had encouraged, so that they would get more used to being apart from each other.
Harry was just glad that he was already clad in a dressing robe that covered his chest but left his back bare so his wings could droop out. He didn’t want to imagine Draco’s outrage if Kingsley had seen him naked. Or even half-naked.
He’d deliberately left his Floo open so that Kingsley could call if he wanted to, but he hadn’t expected him to. Just now, Harry wondered what would happen if he turned to the side a little and flared his wings, sweeping them up and down so that it was impossible for Kingsley to mentally edit them out of his picture of Harry.
Sure enough, Kingsley flinched a little. Harry nodded. “If Hermione told you to Floo me, then it wasn’t your idea. Right?”
Kingsley tapped his fingers on something, and then said, “I regret the way we parted, Harry. But it’s true that a Veela can’t serve as a traditional Auror. What Hermione told me was that she’d come up with a solution.”
“Yes, and it’s one Draco and I are looking into. But it would involve us both. You can’t have one without the other now.”
“She mentioned that, too.” Kingsley looked as though he was trying to suck one of Dumbledore’s lemon drops. “You understand that we can’t make exceptions for Veela instincts? If one of you gets injured and the other goes mad and kills someone, then you’ll still be tried for murder.”
Harry gave him a smile that made Kingsley jump and stare. “Not so, sir. Hermione brought me some interesting legal documents.” He swept on before Kingsley could try to object that “interesting” and “legal documents” should never be together in the same sentence, the sort of joke Harry would have made with him before all this started. “Ministry of Magic employees who are part-being have been accommodated in the past. Aurors have been given special training to resist Veela allure. And part-goblin employees have been allowed to negotiate with Gringotts at special times and places, even though the Ministry generally tries to ignore the goblins as much as possible. And half-giants have been given bigger offices.”
“That’s all different than—”
“I just gave you a Veela example,” said Harry softly, and stirred his wings. He knew it made him look bigger, and it apparently also made him look a little intimidating, if Kingsley’s expression was anything to go by. “I know that it might take some extra training, but the Aurors who worked with me and Draco would need it anyway.”
“Why?”
“To get used to working with winged partners. And to make sure no one was working with us who was going to taunt Draco for his past or that Mark on his arm.”
“Surely your longest-time partner would object to that the most!”
It took Harry a moment to realize he meant Ron. He snorted. “You think Ron and Hermione have a problem with this? That Hermione would be helping me look up laws if she did?”
“I only meant…” Kingsley trailed off, and went back to watching Harry’s wings as if they were dangerous weapons. Harry didn’t intend to tell him they could be. Kingsley already seemed convinced that Harry was more likely to use them against fellow Aurors than criminals. “Auror Weasley is well-known to be prejudiced against Mr. Malfoy.”
Harry toyed for a moment with the idea of telling Kingsley that he should call Draco “Veela Lord Malfoy,” but Kingsley had probably read the legal documents, too, and knew no such titles existed. “I know, but he’ll do anything for me. Including accepting my mate.”
Kingsley tapped his fingers again. “I want you back, Harry. I mean it. I just don’t know how this is going to work. You won’t be able to do the same kinds of tasks that you did before, and I know you would expire of boredom if you were doing paperwork.”
“That’s why I won’t be doing that,” said Harry pleasantly. “Unless you do want me to walk away and seek employment elsewhere. The Ministry can learn to work with me.”
“Ultimately, I’m concerned for you, too, Harry.”
“Why, if you’re not going to assign me to clearing mountains of paperwork?”
“Because people will taunt you. And I know what happens when it comes to taunting a Veela’s mate. The other Veela explodes in rage.”
“Draco and I have had some training in managing that, too, Kingsley.” Harry grimaced as he thought of the professors’ session yesterday, when Grunnell and Testig had held Draco back, and Professor Helios had insulted Harry. Draco had dragged the other two professors several feet across the floor, leaving claw marks in it in the process. “We’ll be all right.”
“So you say.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “You know I always kept my word before, if not kept to the rules. Why the distrust now?”
Kingsley just looked at him uncomfortably, and Harry jerked his head as the answer came to him. Before, he’d been human. Now he wasn’t. Ultimately, as Kingsley would say, all the words about rage and wings and the rest came down to that.
“It’s different because we have wings and allure,” said Harry. His mouth tasted bitter. He licked his lips, but it didn’t get better. He turned his head to the side and looked blankly at the far wall. Right now, he almost wanted the door to open and Draco to come back looking for him. “It’s always going to be different.”
“I trust you, Harry. I trust that you’ll come up with some way to make sure that your differences don’t unduly influence other Aurors.”
Harry only shook his head and said nothing. He couldn’t really believe this, but now that he thought about it, he supposed there were always signs. People who made jokes about magical creatures as though they didn’t have any intelligence. Some Aurors who insisted on asking him all those questions about Fleur, even though they’d only seen her once when she visited Harry and Ron at the office.
As though they thought they would uncover the secret to seducing her or…make me not like her or something if they kept asking.
“Harry?”
Harry swallowed and turned to face Kingsley again. “I understand that you’ve gone through a lot of stress recently,” he said quietly. “But that’s not the same thing as the stress I’m going through. And I’m not going to act as if I’m not a Veela because it would make some people more comfortable.”
“You would have to keep your allure under control in any case,” said Kingsley, and he looked a little embarrassed. Good. Harry hoped it was about his thoughts. “I’m not asking you to pretend that you’re human, Harry.”
“The problem is,” said Harry, and he folded his wings so that he wouldn’t start beating them and maybe actually put out the fire and end the Floo call altogether, “I hear you say ‘human,’ but what you really mean by that is ‘good person, trustworthy, someone I don’t have to worry about hurting other people.’ Even though Aurors hurt other people all the time!”
Kingsley jumped, and then frowned. “If you have specific concerns about one of your fellow Aurors, Harry, you could have come to me a long time ago. It didn’t have to wait for this.”
“You don’t even understand what I mean,” Harry said in wonderment. “You sit there all concerned that Draco and I are going to cause trouble because of what we are, and you don’t understand what I mean.”
“This isn’t what I wanted to happen, Harry.” Kingsley’s voice was soft and slow. He held out one hand as if he hoped that Harry would come near and clasp it and be drawn through the Floo. Leaving the school and his mate and all the rest of it behind. “I meant—I meant that I wanted you to think seriously about your ambitions.”
“I’m thinking about them,” said Harry, and ruffled up his feathers. It occurred to him that another Veela would have understood instantly what that meant, but Kingsley didn’t. He relaxed and dropped his hand, smiling at Harry.
“Then you’ll know the kind of training I’ll want you and Mr. Malfoy to go through before I let you really join the Aurors again.”
“I’m thinking about it,” Harry continued in a slightly larger voice, “and I’ve decided I don’t want to be part of the Aurors anymore.”
Kingsley’s mouth tumbled open a little as he stared at Harry. Harry started straight back, his heart so furiously pounding that it almost muffled Kingsley’s voice when he spoke again. Was he sure about this?
I’m sure I don’t want to be in a place where I’m treated as inferior because of something that I couldn’t help happening to me. Or where Draco is treated like an inconvenient accessory that I insist on carrying around with me.
“I know you never even considered another career! You’ve wanted to be an Auror since you were a kid! Harry—”
“Kids don’t always make up their minds right away,” Harry said, and met Kingsley’s gaze calmly, even though part of him was shattering and being replaced with something else. “And they aren’t always right when they do.”
Kingsley ran his hand through his hair, shaking his head. The headshake was slow and disbelieving. “I don’t know what to say.”
“I know,” said Harry, and decided that he could toss him a bone, for the sake of the man Kingsley had shown himself to be when Harry didn’t have wings. “And when I couldn’t fly on my own, then you were probably right. Being an Auror was all I ever wanted. Now I just have more things to want, that’s all.”
“Like what?” Kingsley spoke as if he imagined that Harry had an alternate career waiting for him, and was jealous of it.
He had asked, which meant Harry didn’t have to feel bad about it. He smiled at Kingsley. “Like my mate, and the life that we can have together.”
“Harry?”
That was Draco, coming back through the door as Harry had thought he eventually would. He reached out a hand, and Draco took it. He didn’t look happy about Harry not being fully dressed, despite the robe, but he didn’t spread his wings protectively. He was getting better about that, too. Instead, his eyes simply traveled back and forth between Harry and the fire, a question in them.
“I was just telling Kingsley that we don’t want to be Aurors anymore,” Harry said, holding Draco’s eyes and hoping he wouldn’t react with outrage. He hadn’t thought Draco was really committed to the Auror plans, so much as he was committed to remaining close to Harry, and training as Aurors was a way to do that.
Draco gave him a wondering glance, and then touched the tip of Harry’s wing and smiled. “That’s right. We’re independently wealthy enough to survive a while without a career, anyway. We can do whatever we want.”
“Yes,” Harry breathed, pleased to have guessed right. He bent down to kiss Draco’s cheek, but Draco turned his head and made it a full kiss.
Kingsley uttered a choking sound.
Draco was the first one to draw back from the kiss, which was unusual, and give the Floo a heavy-lidded glance of satisfaction. “We thought about it, but ultimately, what we need is each other’s company. And the company of people who don’t think of us as dangerous simply because we don’t look human.”
Harry nodded, and spent a moment burying his head in Draco’s wing. Then he lifted it again and told Kingsley, “Thanks for the thought. It seems we won’t be troubling you after all, so you don’t have to come up with special training courses. I’ll be the one to tell Hermione.”
Kingsley closed his eyes. “Would it make a difference if I said that I was a sorry?” he whispered. “And that I wish it hadn’t worked out this way?”
Draco tensed in Harry’s arms as if he thought that meant Harry would go back to being in the Aurors. Harry gently stroked his head, soothing Draco as best as he could with his touch and a soft croon, and then nodded. “It makes a difference in the way I think of you. But I’m still not coming back.”
“What are you going to do, then?”
“Take some time to think about it.” Harry pulled back enough to smile down at Draco’s bowed head. “We do have all that wealth, and I’ve never figured out how to spend mine properly. We should decide what we want to do, not just jump into the first idea that comes up. But we’ll do it together.”
Draco slowly raised his head and studied Harry for a minute. Then he smiled.
For the first time since the professors had started insisting that they practice their separation, he looked strong and determined, the mate Harry had first met. He took Harry’s hand and kissed the back of it, lingeringly, ignoring the sound of Kingsley coughing in the background.
Harry didn’t feel bad, either. A kiss on the hand was nothing compared to what he had seen some Auror partners get up to when they thought no one was looking. And if Kingsley was really uncomfortable because they were both Veela, well, he wouldn’t ever have to get used to that now.
“Harry, if you would—”
“Mr. Shacklebolt,” Harry said lightly, “I think this is the place where the conversation ends. If it’s Hermione you’re afraid of, don’t worry. Like I said, I’ll be the one to tell her.” Hermione would be relieved for one reason, he thought, even if she did mourn the loss of one legal battle she could have used to test her stance on creature rights.
“It didn’t have to end this way.”
“No, it didn’t. But prejudice is a hard thing to work against,” Harry said, still keeping his head turned away from the fire.
It took longer than Harry had thought, a count of almost fifty by his heartbeat, but in the end, Kingsley gave a huge sigh and closed the Floo. Draco rattled his wings out, staring intently at Harry.
But he didn’t say anything that Harry had expected. Instead, he cocked his head and murmured, “The professors are going to think that we’re making love again because we can’t stand to be apart. Come on. We should get to breakfast.”
Harry nodded and went to put some clothes other than the dressing robe on. No chance that he would forget and walk out of the room like this with Draco here. He would be thinking too much of all the potential victims Draco could murder, if they caught a glimpse of Harry’s bare chest.
He started in surprise when he saw the light sparkling around him and Draco, the light from Malfoy Manor, their courtship gift. He hadn’t seen it in a while, he thought, since the healing Draco had performed on him after he’d rescued Harry from Lavaliere.
“I do love you.”
Draco’s voice was slow and rich, and Harry was glad just then that there was no one else here, probably for some of the same reasons Draco was. He didn’t want to think of any other Veela sharing this. He leaned back against Draco with a sigh and closed his eyes as Draco’s hand traced and outlined half the feathers on his wings before easing back. When he turned around, Draco had his eyes lowered and a look of peace on his face.
“I know you didn’t do it just for me,” Draco whispered. “They were just as prejudiced against you as they were against me.”
“I know. But they might have accepted it with the kind of training sessions that Hermione talked about, and because I used to be one of them and I’m so famous.” Harry touched Draco’s chin, tracing his fingers around the outline of Draco’s jaw. “I wanted a sincere acceptance or nothing at all, though.”
“And do you think—you said you used to be one of them. You don’t think of yourself as a failed Auror now?”
Draco’s wings were trembling, which would have been a clue to the right answer even if Harry was a lot more stupid than he actually was. But he found his smile turning wry, not angry, and he said, “No. I’m your mate. And Harry Potter, who doesn’t need an Auror’s title to make himself look good.”
Draco leaned towards him and kissed him, so delicately that Harry felt a stir of hunger leap to life in his body, and that hunger wasn’t for food. But when he would have turned Draco sideways and pressed him up against the wall, Draco recovered with a sidestep and a gasp. “We have to go to breakfast.”
Only the thought of the professors bursting in when they were in the midst of making love made Harry sigh and step back, then reach for an actual open-backed shirt. “Okay.”
But it was easier this time, and didn’t leave either of them looking devastated, which Harry thought was a good sign that they were gaining some control over their bond.
If the way Draco eyed him up was any indication, they were doing that without losing control of other parts.
Harry was more than pleased.
*
SP777: Do you want to make that scene from Draco's POV a request for an Advent fic? ;)
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