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Nature of the Beast	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 48976 -:- 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-Five—Naming and Nurturing
            Harry decided that, while he would still go along as much as he could with the ruse he and Draco had devised, he would have to speak up now. There were ways and ways of being submissive.
            Especially to people like this, who can’t understand us and who haven’t even chosen to get themselves involved in politics enough to know about the bond when it happened.
            Harry turned and laid a hand against Draco’s side, where they wouldn’t see it, under the table. Then he looked up at Draco with huge, appealing eyes that he tried hard to make have a slight sheen of tears. That would probably show submissiveness to people like this, with their limited definition of it.
            “Harry,” Draco said, turning towards him. His wings flexed for a moment; his talons unfolded and shone, and his voice dropped into a growl. “Do you need something?” His eyes darted around the table vigilantly, although Harry didn’t understand why until he seemed to focus on Horalda. Draco thought someone had cast a hidden spell to hurt him, the way Maundy had with the Pain Geis.
            I must have done the work of coaxing the tears out a little too well, thought Harry, unaccountably amused, and fluttered his eyelashes some more. “To speak,” he whispered, and while he might be supposed to have asked permission nonverbally, Draco had told him that sometimes submissives could ask aloud. “Please?” He tried to tilt his head winsomely, although he had the feeling he wasn’t very good at it.
            Draco stared down at him as if he had become the center of the universe, his mouth a little open. His eyes looked dazed, Harry noted, carefully concealing his amusement. Then he blinked, and his gaze snapped and locked on Harry.
            “Yes, you may,” he said, and turned towards Horalda and the others, his hand resting proudly in the middle of Harry’s shoulder blade. “My mate wishes to address the table,” he said. His wings opened out in some gesture Harry didn’t know, rising as if he would launch himself from the ground, then drooping and dropping back down as slowly as whirling leaves.
            “Yes,” said Horalda, eyes curious as she fixed them on Harry.
            “You should know that I was raised in the Muggle world,” Harry whispered. Draco tensed horribly next to him, and Harry could almost hear his thoughts: You’re going to tell them the truth?
            Harry pressed his hand reassuringly against Draco’s side again, and if he trusted Draco enough to go along with this charade, it seemed Draco trusted him enough to break it, because he relaxed again and let his wing brush the back of Harry’s neck. Harry took that as the only permission he needed, and turned around again. “I didn’t fully accept the bond, because I couldn’t,” he told Horalda. “I reacted badly and wanted to get away from Draco. Then I wanted to use him somehow. Using him as the proxy in the duel seemed to be a good way to do that.”
            Harry could sense Draco blinking beside him. He had never said anything about this, and he knew Draco would be studying him with a wondering stare, trying to locate the moment when Harry’s mind had changed and he had decided on this particular lie.
            Harry reached out and squeezed Draco’s hand, but didn’t take his eyes from Horalda. She only looked at him as if he was an unusual creature but not one completely outside her experience, the way a Muggle-raised Veela mate would be for most wizards, and nodded. “And you’ve accepted the bond now?”
            Harry knew his blush was probably visible from space, but then, all the people around him, Horalda included, knew what a Veela bond consisted of. They knew he and Draco must have had sex to establish the bond.
            “Yes,” he whispered, and he probably looked like a submissive right now, enough to suit them all, if the glance he darted at Draco and then at the ground was any indication. Harry hadn’t even planned on that; it just happened.
            From the corner of his eye, he could see Horalda shrug. “So your mate was a little behind in accepting the bond,” she told Draco, and it was clear that she thought Harry would keep silent for a time. “Did you fight the duel for him?”
            “Yes.” Draco spread his wings and half-bowed his head, in what might be a ceremonial gesture that Harry didn’t know, or just a way to please Horalda and the rest. Perhaps they would like a dominant Veela to be submissive to them, Harry thought, however much they might approve of him being in control of his mate. “Tamara Maundy used a proxy as well, a jeweled dragon of her own creation. I thought the least I could do was appease my mate when he asked for my help.”
            “Appease,” said Horalda, and smiled a little. “I see. And you won the duel?”
            “Yes.” Draco repeated the word with a different cadence than before, and leaned forwards, peering intently from face to face. “And it saddens me to see Maundy using you as her proxies in this duel, trying to push against my mate, when her dragon and her direct political intervention and her Pain Geis failed to control him.”
            Harry mouthed Pain Geis? because that wasn’t something they had discussed bringing up either. He looked at Draco, but Draco wasn’t looking at him. He was watching the reactions that Horalda made with a satisfied smile.
            The woman had actually turned away from them, Harry realized, and was staring at the other members of her little group as though they were having an intense, silent conversation. Maybe they knew each other well enough for that; Harry had no idea. She turned back, and there was a clipped sound to her voice. “It is true that Maundy was the one who informed us of your mate’s intervention in the peace process. But she never mentioned he was mated. And as he is the submissive, and won’t be leading a political life anymore, we find Maundy’s attempts to use us and misinform us annoying.”
            Harry opened his mouth, but Draco got there before him. “Pardon me, but he will have a political life,” Draco said calmly, resting his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “It’s my will that he does.”
            Harry wanted to spit something, but he knew this was the best compromise that Draco could offer at the moment. And it would explain their actions in the future, should Horalda and the others actually hear about them, in much the same way as Harry’s tale about late acceptance of the bond had resolved their concerns about a submissive acting independently.
            “Why?” Horalda now looked at Draco as if he was far stranger than Harry was. “A politically active submissive might gain many ideas that you would wish he hadn’t.”
            “I am secure in my concern for Harry, my love for him, and he is the same when it comes to me,” said Draco in a calm, clear voice, his wings spreading out and over his head the way they did when he came in for a landing. Harry had to smile at him, which Draco returned with one corner of his mouth, his eyes on Horalda. “I know that he needs a political life to be happy, and Veela always want what makes their mates happy. You knew that, I trust?”
            “The truth we have all forgotten, I think.” Horalda appeared to mull it over for a minute, and then she nodded and gave Harry a benevolent smile. “Would you give me permission to ask your submissive one question, Mr. Malfoy?”
            “Yes.” Draco didn’t consider the question or consult Harry, which, honestly, was fine with Harry. He was eager to talk to someone who spoke to him as if he was a real live human being capable of making up his own mind.
            I can pretend to be submissive for the sake of a political end, but there’s no way I could pretend for life, he thought with a slight shudder, as he awaited Horalda’s question.
            “Why did you set out to interfere in the peace process in the first place?” Horalda asked. “I am vaguely aware of the sort of life you must have led at Hogwarts and before, although I wouldn’t pretend to understand the inner politics of Gryffindor House.”
            Harry bit the inside of his cheek to avoid snapping that there were no politics in Gryffindor. He understood now why that was a stupid thing to say, although he could sit there and think it as much as he wanted.
            “But nothing in that life suggests to me that you would want to spend the rest of your life struggling with a hopeless task.” Horalda splayed her fingers under her chin and spent a few moments contemplating Harry. “In fact, I would think that you’d welcome the chance, as a Veela mate, to bow out and spend the rest of your life being pampered.”
            “Wouldn’t I be doing the pampering?” Harry muttered before he could stop himself, but Horalda only gave him a sort of perplexed look. She either hadn’t heard fully or wouldn’t ask a second question when she had begged permission for only one, so Harry inwardly rolled his eyes and continued. “I wanted to stop the next war that I thought would break out soon if pure-bloods and Muggleborns had the same sort of tension between them. I fought in one war. I don’t want to fight in another.”
            “There can never be absolute peace, though,” said Horalda, and shook her head. “It seems as ridiculous that you would want to intervene in it as that you would assume there’s absolute peace to be had.”
            “I want to lessen the chances of a war,” said Harry shortly. Just like some musty pure-blood to ask me a question and then not listen to the answer. “I know there might be another war someday. But I want to prevent one in my lifetime and from the same sort of tensions. If the Muggles attack us or something, then yeah, that’s a war I can’t stop. But even in that kind of war, things would work better if we had a coordinated defense instead of wizards squabbling over whose grandparents were more important.”
            “Those matters are important,” said Horalda softly. “Without knowing lineages, we wouldn’t be able to—”
            “Divide yourselves?” Harry snapped. He thought Horalda could have been talking about all wizards and witches with “we,” but he also thought it was unlikely. No, far more likely that she did mean only pure-bloods, and somehow the Muggleborns and others were supposed to fit in around them. “That leads to more of the same sort of stupid categories. I can’t ensure peace for all time, but I can at least work on it for my time. And that’s what I’m going to do.”
            Everyone at the table, except Horalda, was gaping at him now. Horalda only turned to Draco and shook her head in a slow and tragic fashion. Harry got ready to call his magic if he needed to.
            “Mr. Malfoy,” said Horalda, in accents as heavy as the shake of her head, “I don’t envy you the possession of your mate.”
            Draco smiled a second later, and shot a glance at Harry that made Harry envy Draco the possession of his wings. He would have liked to fly at that moment. “I didn’t really know what to do with him at first,” Draco said serenely. “He was a surprise. But now I wouldn’t trade him for any other mate in the world.” He draped a wing around Harry’s shoulder and pulled him close.
            Harry went with it, letting his eyes slip shut as he sighed softly. Yes, this was what he wanted. Someone to embrace him, someone to hold him close and bear him up.
            Not all the time. Not in the way that Ron had told him other Veela submissives functioned at first. The image of Camilla kneeling like a statue that someone needed to march around was one that Harry thought would wake him up in cold sweat for a while.
            “Well, it’s your life and not mine.” Horalda was shrugging when Harry opened his eyes to look at her again. “Thank Merlin,” Horalda added, with what looked like a little shudder, and then she stood. “I shall tell the others, including the ones who sent us as representatives, that we misunderstood the situation and you shouldn’t be bothered.” She glanced at Harry. “Even if we will always think of what you’re doing as wrong.”
            Draco’s wing pressed into the small of his back as Harry prepared to utter a hot retort. Then he remembered that it was probably sort of a big deal for Horalda to be talking to him at all, since she would have thought most of the time that he was a doll who needed a button pushed in his back—
            Or whatever the musty pure-blood equivalent of that kind of doll is—
            So he only gave her a tight smile instead, and Draco’s wing gave him an approving caress.
            “Thank you for coming to meet us, Mr. Malfoy,” said Horalda, and gave Draco a little gesture with spread palms that Harry didn’t know. Draco returned it, echoing it with his wings.
            That seemed to be as much ceremony as the meeting needed to end. Two of the other wizards came up to talk to Horalda, and Harry felt Draco steering and pulling him away. He stayed obediently silent until they reached the Apparition point and arrived back at the Manor, and then he gave a snort hard enough to shake his own bones.
            Draco laughed. “I could tell how much you were struggling to hold that in,” he said, and his hand rested on Harry’s shoulder for a second, a gentle pressure.
            “They’re just infuriating,” Harry muttered, shrugging Draco’s hold off and pacing up and down on the gravel drive in front of the Manor. Draco walked towards the house, and Harry followed, still pacing. “Oh, yes, we’ll pat you on the head and tell you how cute you are, and then say that we hope your greatest desire fails. Oh, yes, how gracious of them.”
            “They were being as gracious as they knew how,” said Draco, and his voice had gone cool. Harry stopped and scowled at him. He really didn’t think that Draco, who had been so good about understanding the unusual nature of their bond lately and trying to compromise with Harry on it, would suddenly have started sharing the beliefs of a bunch of creaky old families.
            “Are you going to start calling Muggleborns names again? I thought you didn’t agree with them!”
            “I was raised with the same ideals, if a more modernized version of them. It’s hard for me not to agree with them.” But Draco shook his head a second later and ran his hand through his hair, then down the edge of one wing in what Harry recognized as a calming gesture. “But there’s one thing I need to ask you. Is stopping the war, or easing the tensions between Muggleborns and pure-bloods, or whatever you want to call it, your greatest desire?”
            Harry opened his mouth to answer that of course it was, he had just told Draco so, and then he saw Draco’s slightly averted eyes and his trembling, drooping wings.
            He sighed and came over, throwing his arms around Draco. Draco held back for a second, as if he didn’t want to embrace Harry without an answer, but then both arms and wings curled around Harry’s waist and shoulders, holding him silently and desperately.
            “I’m sorry,” Harry whispered. “I forgot how those words of mine can hurt you.”
            “An affirmation or a denial would be good about now, Harry.” Draco’s head turned to the side, and his mouth seemed to nudge into Harry’s hair, which Harry didn’t understand for a moment, until he figured out that a beak had replaced Draco’s mouth and nose.
            Harry reached up and nodded, smoothing his hand gently down the curve of Draco’s wing, too. “That was my greatest political desire, I should have said. I can split desires into different categories,” he added hastily, when he saw Draco’s beak opening to give what was probably a scream. “My greatest personal one is for you.”
            There was a white shimmer around Draco’s head for a moment, cold and threatening, like the glare off snow. Then it slimmed away, and Draco rested his hands on Harry’s shoulders and nuzzled into his hair with a human mouth and a sigh.
            “Thank you,” he said. “I know it seems silly, to need reassurance like that…”
            Harry snorted. “No sillier than it is that I keep forgetting about how you’re affected by certain things I say. If that’s what you need, then it is. I think we’ve both mostly been good about giving each other the things we need?” He looked hesitantly up into Draco’s eyes.
            Draco smiled for a second, a raw, quicksilver dart of a gleam that spread along his face and made it shine even after the smile faded. He nodded.
            Harry stood beside him in the embrace of his wings for a few minutes more, then let Draco fly him into the house and carry him upstairs and cuddle with him on the bed. He knew that Draco needed it.
            And honestly, after facing a bunch of pure-bloods who still acted as though there was an indefinable distance between themselves and Muggleborns, and having them speak to him only when they thought he was under control like a wild beast, Harry needed it, too.
*
Meechypoo: Yes, Harry and Draco have a pretty unique bond, and they’re probably the only ones who fully understand it.
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Nature of the Beast