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Nature of the Beast	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 48977 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 5
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Thirty-Four—Pure-Bloods and Positioning
            “Harry? I’m sorry to disturb you, but I think this is something you need to see right away.” Hermione was already moving through the Floo of Malfoy Manor as she spoke.
            Harry looked up and nodded. Honestly, he wasn’t going to hold Hermione back if she thought that, although Draco shifted restlessly behind his chair, wings spreading. His hand wavered on Harry’s shoulder for a moment, as though he was considering whether he should pull it back to spare Hermione’s sensibilities.
            Harry grabbed it and held it there. Draco’s fingers flexed, and the slight hint of prickling talons Harry had felt vanished. Draco bent his head down next to Harry’s face and crooned softly. Hermione waited until he was done, which Harry flashed a smile at her for as he held out his hand. Hermione was carrying a thick sheet of parchment.
            It had a silvery seal at the bottom of it that Harry didn’t recognize, a swan in crown and chains. On the other hand, he hadn’t recognized the mark of Maundy’s little dueling club, either. He looked up at the top.
            So settled by the pure-bloods in Britain that Harry Potter is a threat to the pure-blood way of life.
            Harry rolled his eyes. “Except the ones who have come to the meetings, and the ones who support me, and the ones I’m living with,” he muttered, and held out the letter so that Draco, bending over his shoulder, could see it. Hell, Harry would have had trouble reading it at this point no matter what, because Draco’s wings were casting it into shadow.
            “What nonsense,” said Draco. “Although perhaps my mother would agree that you’re a threat. Just not to the pure-blood way of life.” He brushed his wing back and forth over Harry’s head, feathers rasping into his hair. “Unless the life of one house counts.”
            Harry grinned, and, as Draco’s wing had moved, turned back to reading the letter.
            The threat must be met. Harry Potter is directed to appear at a meeting at Stonehenge at noon on the first of the month.
            “Can you get any more typical of what Muggles think of you?” Harry asked, with a shake of his head and a sigh, and he passed the letter up to Draco, who was looking impatient to read the rest.
            “This is a serious matter, though, Harry,” Hermione said. She was wringing her hands, and looking back and forth between him and Draco as though she expected Draco to break into screeching at any moment. He probably would have, Harry had to admit, before they started to understand each other and Draco had realized that not every threat to Harry was a threat to his life. “I mean,” Hermione continued, drawing Harry’s attention back to her, “they speak for almost all the pure-bloods in England.”
            “Not me, and not mine,” Draco said decisively, putting the letter down. “I’ve never seen that seal before, and it’s the kind of thing my father would have made sure I knew.” If he saw the way Hermione flushed and stood a little straighter at the mention of Lucius Malfoy, he’d obviously determined to ignore it. “They don’t have shit to say about my bond with Harry.” He paused abruptly.
            “Do you think they know, then?” Harry thought he could at least follow what train of thought Draco was likely to be considering, even if he couldn’t sense all the emotions that he should be able to as part of the bond.
            “How can they not know? The papers were full of it for days!” Hermione threw up her arms. “Harry, you need to consider this seriously and decide what you’re going to do.”
            “I think you’re right, Hermione, but that doesn’t mean I need to decide right now.” He turned towards Draco and cocked his head. “Well? Do you want to tell me why you think they don’t know?”
            “Because they would have mentioned it,” Draco said, and brandished the letter again. “Which they don’t. And older pure-blood families tend to isolate themselves from newspapers and rely on their own gossip circuits. And because this seal is new.” He nodded to the seal on the letter again. “The swan isn’t a common symbol for pure-blood families. It was associated with one particular family a few decades ago, though.”
            “Which one?” This time, Harry thought Draco had paused for effect, but he was more than willing to play along and see what happened.
            “Maundy,” said Draco, and smiled at him.
            “She can’t do that, though, can she?” Hermione exclaimed in distress. “I mean, she can’t just roll over and expect you to take this? You made a deal! She’s barred from politics now!”
            Draco snorted. “But rumor and gossip aren’t politics. She could have told someone else who was reactionary enough to move forwards on rumor alone just what she wanted them to know, and they would have reacted without thinking. Probably.” He touched the seal again. “I could be wrong. But I know this isn’t an ancient organization that lots of pure-blood wizards and witches are being invited to join, let’s put it that way.”
            “I thought it might be official if they had a seal,” said Hermione, and shook her head. Harry appreciated that Draco didn’t smirk at her or say anything bad, only nodded and took up the letter again.
            “I think it’s Maundy,” said Draco calmly. “Which means that you can’t face her again, because the duel was supposed to be the end of any engagement with her. But you can do something else.” He hesitated and looked towards Harry. “If you’ll trust me, because it puts you in kind of a submissive position.”
            Hermione made a loud squawking noise of uncertain protest. Harry only raised his head, and waited for a moment. Draco nodded to him and said quietly, “You can go as my claimed mate. That’ll make a lot of the pure-bloods back off.”
            “Do I have to wear chains, or follow orders, or bow down at your feet, or anything like that?” Harry asked equally quietly.
            Draco shook his head at once. “But they will assume that we’ve had sex, and that I’m the dominant. And they’ll ask me questions and talk to me. You would have to remain silent unless one of them asked you a direct question.”
            “Harry, you can’t,” Hermione said. “This is exactly the kind of bollocks that you wanted to stop when you agreed to become his mate.”
            “It’s my decision to make,” Harry told her, and faced Draco. “How easily can we fool them? I mean, if they asked a question and I answered the same way as I always do, that wouldn’t be very convincing, would it?”
            Draco paused. “It would depend on what you said, and whether they thought you were answering that way because I had decreed that you could.”
            “Then work with me,” said Harry. “Tell me what would come across to them that way, and what wouldn’t. This is your world,” he added, when Draco looked doubtful. “I can tell you sometimes what the pure-blood families who were willing to deal with me think of Muggleborns, and what a lot of them think of the peace process, but that’s not the same thing as what they would interpret as insolence.”
            “I know,” said Draco softly, and for a moment, light shimmered around his wings the way it had when they made love. Harry bit his lip, hard, to keep from blushing in front of Hermione. “But you trust me that much.” He sounded full of wonder, and his hand slipped out and caressed Harry’s cheek. “I just—Harry. You trust me.”
            “That’s why you want him to be submissive, isn’t it?” Hermione muttered. “Because that gets you everything you want without you having to fight for it?”
            Draco rolled his eyes at her. “Yes, because Harry hasn’t fought me every step of the way,” he said, and turned back to Harry. “I don’t want you to be uncomfortable. We’ll work together and figure out what you need to say and what would only make them suspicious.”
            “And in the meantime, he’ll be submissive in public.” Hermione shook her head at Harry. “Exactly what you didn’t want.”
            “How is using their perception of the bond against them showing anything other than that ‘natural submissiveness’ a load of bollocks?” Harry asked incredulously.
            Hermione hesitated. “But they aren’t going to know that,” she said finally.
            “Them not knowing that is the whole point of this little exercise,” said Draco, and held out his hand to Harry. Harry smiled and stepped up to him, giving Hermione a little shrug. He understood why she was concerned; if Draco had suggested this tactic right after they’d bonded, Harry would have baulked. But this time, he did trust Draco.
            “Well, all right.” Hermione looked back and forth between them, then stared at their clasped hands as if she thought that they would burst into flames of sheer contrariness any moment. Harry hid his smile and turned to Draco.
            “Teach me what to say and what not to say.”
*
            “Mr. Malfoy, thank you for responding to our summons.”
            Draco held his head up and the howling laughter that he really wanted to give back. He inclined his head in its place, and murmured, “Thank you for realizing who your original invitation should have been addressed to.”
            The pure-blood woman in front of him, who looked as if she spent all her time sucking on lemons, glanced back and forth between him and Harry and said nothing. She looked bewildered. Poor thing, Draco thought, and smothered a chuckle. No, Maundy didn’t tell her. She had only realized that Draco was the “dominant” in this bond and they should have sent the letter to him when Draco had shown up at the Apparition coordinates with Harry tucked under his arm.
            Draco glanced sideways at Harry for a moment. Harry had adopted a calm expression that probably came as second nature to him after all those months of suppressing his emotions for the sake of the peace process. He met Draco’s eyes now, and smiled a little. A second later, he ducked his head.
            “Yes, keep your eyes down,” said Draco, in an imitation of the haughty tone that once would have been as real for him as Harry’s suppressed emotions, and turned back to the woman in front of him. “How was it that the letter came addressed to Harry at all?”
            “We—we were not aware of the existence of a Veela bond.” The woman wasn’t stupid enough to admit that Maundy was the one who had told them about Harry, if that was indeed the case, but then again, Draco couldn’t imagine that she would be. Maundy had ridiculous allies, but they might be politically astute within small circles. “We would not have spoken to a submissive without permission otherwise.”
            Draco felt Harry twitch under his arm. Probably at the notion that his life would have been even more restricted than he’d known before if he was a “natural” submissive.
            “You should have been,” said Draco. “You should have known everything about us before you sent so imperious a demand.” Most dominant Veela would have used the “us” like that, and the woman in front of him knew it. She cleared her throat and turned to the table behind her, arranged in front of Stonehenge, behind a shimmering anti-Muggle spell, on a circle of green grass. Five other pure-bloods were sitting around it, two of them witches and three wizards. All wore the long, rich robes that were more like shawls around the shoulders, marking wizards of the generation before Lucius’s.
            “Or,” Draco continued, with chilling hauteur that he knew would make them flinch, “do the traditions of Veela bonds not matter anymore?”
            “Of course they matter,” said the woman. She seemed to be getting some of her confidence back now, the consciousness of her mistake fading. “Of course they do,” she repeated, and with that, her ease returned. She bowed her head. “Please forgive us for not realizing. My name is Esther Horalda, Head of Horalda House.”
            Draco kept his face passively cold, but inwardly, he was impressed. Houses were the way that pure-blood families used to identify themselves, when they lived in only one property that their elves and blood would become linked to, rather than multiple houses like the ones the Malfoys owned. And Horalda was a family that had contributed a lot of members to the Wizengamot, the Hogwarts Board of Governors, the Ministers of Magic, and every other office of honor Draco could think of.
            But they were also exactly the sort of stuffy pure-blood who would shut themselves away from newspapers and any other method they might have of learning about things like the Veela bond.
            “I do hope,” continued Horalda, “that you’ll forgive us.”
            “We will,” said Draco, and moved forwards, his arm like a chain around Harry’s shoulders. Harry didn’t act like he minded, though. He was looking mildly from face to face, as if he was a submissive who had no concern in the world because his dominant would decide for him. “Sit, Harry.”
            He pulled out the chair, of course. There was only one, but none of the other pure-bloods said anything about conjuring a chair for Draco. They knew the etiquette. Dominants stood, protecting the submissives under their control. Draco spread his wings to shield Harry from the mild sun, and nodded to the other pure-bloods.
            They introduced themselves, also all members of the families that Draco had thought they would represent, but speaking briefly. They had chosen Horalda to speak for them, and they wouldn’t go back on their choice because she had made a mistake.
            Draco once would have sympathized with that attitude more than he did now. But he’d had to learn flexibility, or he and Harry would have destroyed each other. He listened, his hand on the back of Harry’s chair, as Horalda took her place at the head of the table and nodded to them both, reserving most of her gaze for Draco. Looking too directly at a submissive could be taken to imply that you wanted to claim them.
            “We are sorry that we did not know about the Veela bond,” said Horalda. “It changes things now that we do.”
            “How?” Draco smiled at her. “I mean, besides who you’ll address your letters to in the future.”
            Horalda didn’t smile. “It matters,” she said. “If we can know that Harry Potter is bonded to someone who can control his actions, then we won’t have to worry about his efforts to destroy pure-blood traditions.”
            Harry tensed so much that Draco was amazed he was the only one at the table who’d noticed. Then again, he was pleased that he was, because it meant that he was the only one who was that close to Harry, the only one paying that much attention to him.
            “What has he done that convinced you he would do that?” Draco asked. “He was praised for his peace meetings that included pure-bloods as well as Muggleborns.”
            Harry said nothing, but his hand found Draco’s side beneath the table and poked him with one finger. Draco knew this wasn’t part of the script. Then again, he hadn’t expected the families they met to bring up the issue of power and control and protest against Harry acting independently so soon, either.
            “A woman who knows Harry Potter and his disrespect for the pure-blood way of life well told us,” Horalda began.
            “That woman’s name is Tamara Maundy,” said Draco. He ignored the sin he’d committed in interrupting. He was going to do worse than that before this evening was out, and time they got used to it. “I know. You don’t have to pretend that she’s some mysterious source you can only quote and not name.”
            Horalda tried to stare him down. That didn’t work. With Harry under his arm, Draco was more than willing to fight and the pure-blood families would simply have to understand that.
            “Very well,” said Horalda. “How did you know? She mentioned no previous acquaintance with you.”
            And if you’re smart, you’re wondering how she could have both known about the Veela bond and neglected to inform you of it, Draco thought. Aloud, he murmured, “She challenged Harry to a duel. He won, using me as his proxy. The price was that she withdraw from politics and opposing Harry. She is using you as her tools instead.”
            One man from the side of the table, whose dark hair and eyes had already marked him as a member of the Jerson family before he even opened his mouth and introduced himself as Samuel Jerson, made an angry spluttering sound. “Do you mean to say that she has manipulated us?”
            “Yes.” Draco turned to look at him with a mostly blank face. “Successfully.”
            That led to some more waving around of arms and complaining, but Draco had been prepared for that. He stood with one arm wrapped lightly around Harry, and let them wrangle. He had no stake in which one of them won the dispute, as long as they recognized Maundy’s cheat and shifted their allegiance.
            Finally, Horalda gained their attention again by clearing her throat, and she turned back to Draco. “This changes things,” she said. “Of course we will need to consider her accusations more clearly, and which of them were made with tainted information.” She paused. “But one thing still concerns me.”
            “Yes?” Draco thought he knew what it was. And he also didn’t know how they were to get around it. Not yet.
            Horalda leaned forwards, slowly switching her gaze more to Harry. “You said that Harry Potter is your submissive, but that Maundy challenged him. In what way will you resolve that contradiction? Have you bonded or not?”
*
Meechypoo: Thanks! I think that his going along with the submissive game in this chapter shows how much he trusts Draco and is committed to him.
eros: Thank you!
SP777: Thanks!
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