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 Four—Accommodations
            “I have the room immediately next to yours, Potter.”
            Harry nodded slowly. Then he beamed at Malfoy and asked, “Do you want to get some dinner? I haven’t had anything except the tea since I arrived here, and I didn’t want to drink too much of that because I thought Grunnell had put a sedative in it.”
            Malfoy stopped all at once, his limbs jerking to a halt and his eyes widening. Even his wings, which he carried with the careless grace of balanced mops on his shoulders, seemed to have stopped fluttering.
            Harry blinked. He wanted to frustrate Malfoy, but that didn’t include making him die of asphyxiation. Someone, probably Professor Testig, would find a way to blame him if he did that.
            “You want to share food with me?” Malfoy’s voice was a soft rumble that was probably dangerous if you were a seed or a nut or something. He turned towards Harry and arched his wings higher, so once again Harry saw the flashes of blue around the black bars on them.
            “What did you—” Harry began, and then remembered what Grunnell had said about mates sharing food. Or at least people who were intimate doing that. His throat clogged up, and he thought he might run screaming back into his room. This wasn’t something he’d planned on backfiring so badly when he decided to be nice to Malfoy.
            But instead of running and screaming, he summoned up as brave a smile as he could and murmured, “I don’t see anyone else around here to eat with, do you?”
            Malfoy blinked, and blinked again, while his wings swayed back and forth like blankets in a windstorm. Harry hoped he had managed to convey the correct kind of innocence. Malfoy had to wonder now if Harry understood all the implications of his offer. He might think Harry did, but right now, there was no way to prove that.
            A second later, Malfoy seemed to have decided not only to believe it, but to strike back with weapons of his own. He gave Harry a smile that was broader and brighter than anything he’d shown him before and reached out, delicately taking hold of his elbow. “Yes, you should eat with me. Since there’s no one else to eat with.”
            Oh, shit, this is probably Malfoy’s version of possessiveness or not wanting me to mate with anyone else or something. But Harry didn’t run and didn’t flinch. He said, “Okay!” in a bright voice, and then carried on as though he hadn’t noticed the way Malfoy’s fingernails were digging into his elbow. “So, what classes do you like best? Which are the hardest? Do you think you’ll be out of here soon?”
            Malfoy hesitated as though he didn’t know what to do in the face of all that bubbly cheer, which was exactly what Harry had planned on. But then he shook his head a little and murmured, “I like almost all of them equally. I wanted to leave as fast as I could before you came. But now that I’ve met you…”
            And he gave Harry that bright, deep smile again. Harry gave him a bland one back and said, moving his arm in a casual shrug that took Malfoy’s hand off his elbow, “But we met years ago. Don’t you remember?” He adopted an anxious expression and added, “Is becoming a Veela going to do anything to my memory? I’d hate to forget what I’ve learned in Auror training and Hogwarts and all the rest of it.”
            Baffled for the moment, Malfoy trailed a little behind him as they went back to the dining hall. Harry noticed only a few Veela in the corridors on the way, and Malfoy hunched up his wings and almost hissed at them every time they glanced curiously at Harry. Harry shook his head when he saw the unsubtle eyerolls and how the women glanced away again.
            No one’s interested in competing for me as a potential mate. How like Malfoy not to see that and to assume his interests are threatened anyway. He never noticed that Ron didn’t get to be my friend by appealing to my sense of snobbishness, either.
*
            “The meals are mostly vegetarian,” Malfoy announced, as he handed Harry a plate covered in salad, with a small arrangement of cheese and bread off to the side. “They’re afraid meat could arouse a Veela’s predatory instincts.”
            “I wasn’t aware that Veela had that many, or that it would be a problem,” Harry said, and sat down at a table. He gave an absent smile to a woman at the next one, or a girl, really. She looked no more than sixteen, and the stripe in her wings was blue, the same as his.
            The girl started to smile back, and then Malfoy hissed and clapped his wings together. She immediately pretended the book she had picked up was the most interesting thing in the universe. Harry sighed. His only regret about his little pretense was that it could make Malfoy rude to other people.
            “We can have a lot,” said Malfoy, and focused on him again. “Veela can resemble eagles and hawks and other predatory birds. Not owls, generally. Some of the theory I’ve learned says that’s one reason that wizards decided to tame owls instead of some other kind of bird to carry their post.” He paused. “You’re not eating.”
            “Oh.” Harry hadn’t consciously realized that. He shook his head and picked up a forkful of peas. “I was listening.”
            Malfoy’s wings fluffed out at once. “Really?”
            “Yes.” Harry blinked at him. “I’ve never heard that Veela had predatory instincts or resembled different birds of prey. I meant that. But I’ll eat now, if it means so much to you,” he added hastily, since Malfoy was reaching out towards his plate and might have more on his mind than just readjusting it. Harry hastily swallowed and then reached out and picked up a piece of bread, too.
            “Your manners are atrocious, Potter,” Malfoy murmured, but he was smiling.
*
            Harry leaned back from the fire and sighed. “So that’s the main thing I’ve learned,” he told Hermione, and yawned. He was more exhausted than he’d thought he’d be from his first day of walking around with the wings dangling off his back. “That people here take small things way too seriously, and that Malfoy thinks we could be potential mates.”
            “Oh, Harry.” Hermione looked torn between amusement and sorrow. “I think you have to remember that they’re more Veela than human now.”
            “That’s the last thing I thought I would ever hear you say,” Harry muttered, and he did feel as though his eyes were bulging out of his head. Hermione acting as though someone who was human-shaped most of the time didn’t matter? She had more compassion for house-elves.
            “I didn’t mean—” Hermione shook a rapid hand back and forth. “I didn’t mean you’re not intelligent and deserving of all sorts of protection, Harry. Only that you’re among people with a different culture than humans.”
            “Well, it’s not mine.”
            “I think you have to try to learn as much of it as you can while you’re there,” Hermione told him, and her voice was calm and steady enough that Harry frowned at her. Sometimes he hated the way that she absolutely didn’t take any nonsense and gave him sensible ideas. More often he was grateful for it, but not right now. “You’re going to be living there for at least the next month. Is it really a good idea to antagonize them for no reason?”
            “It wouldn’t be no reason,” Harry muttered.
            “Then what it would be?”
            “A good reason. Because I want to mess with Malfoy’s head and make him drop the idea of this potential mate business.”
            “It’s harder to drop for Veela,” said Hermione, and sighed when Harry glared at her again. “I’m not saying that Veela can’t control their impulses or just go after whoever they want when they see them.”
            “Thank you.”
            “But I’m saying that their culture encourages that kind of performance in front of a mate. And it’s not like humans always have such great impulse control, either. Or you wouldn’t have as many people cheating on their spouses and then claiming they couldn’t help themselves.”
            Hermione’s voice was a little prim. Harry knew why. One of her undersecretaries had cheated on his wife and then made everyone else in the office complicit in his little drama when he tried to blame it on the stress his work put him under.
            “Complicit in his little drama” was Hermione-speak, but Harry had remembered it because she’d told him the story of Cheating Egbert Borias many times by now. “I know that. But I don’t want a mate.”
            “Even if your Veela side really wants one?”
            Harry shrugged. “So far, the only thing that’s happened to me as a result of turning into a Veela is wings, Malfoy, and a lot of mad Healers arguing about exactly what color the stripes on my wings are. I haven’t had urges that drive me to do something.”
            “Well, you might not recognize them yourself yet. That’s one thing the classes are designed to teach you: how to hold yourself back when you’re about to make a decision because of your powers.”
            Harry sighed. “So you think I should stay here and take the classes.”
            “Of course. Those potions the Healers offered you are still experimental and not fully-tested yet. And I think they only offered them to you because they’re eager to see what might happen to you as a result.” Hermione sniffed. “Utterly irresponsible, to treat you like an experiment instead of a patient.”
            “Well, I’m going to stay. I just don’t plan to indulge Malfoy’s little whims and desires.”
            “I’ve been reading, and the fact that you don’t want to do that argues that he’s not a good potential mate for you, in spite of you becoming a potential mate for him…”
            Harry relaxed and let Hermione’s soothing voice wash around him. He didn’t care that much about the Veela trivia she had looked up, but he appreciated that she cared enough about him to want to do it.
*
            Harry woke swiftly. There had been a grinding noise nearby, one that sounded distinctly out of place in a bedroom, even a Veela one.
            Harry rolled over and grimaced as his wing brushed against the sheets. That would alert someone trying to break in. Harry still hadn’t worked out a comfortable way to sleep on his back or sides with the wings, so he’d lain on his stomach and learned how to breathe even though the pillow was mostly in the way of his nose.
            But the grinding noise went on instead of stopping. Harry wondered if he had the luck to have attracted a thief who didn’t have good hearing. Or maybe much luck at the job. Harry supposed that there might not be a lot to steal in a school this isolated without someone suspecting you right away.
            When he rose, there was a deadening rustle from his wings as they dropped down his back. Harry grimaced. But still the grinding noise didn’t stop, and it did come from the door. As Harry watched, the knob began to turn.
            Harry glided forwards. A meter or so from the door, he stopped and waited. The knob jiggered again, then froze, and Harry raised his eyebrows. Maybe it was a thief without a lot of experience after all, someone who had heard that the Great Harry Potter was in the school and thought he would have things worth stealing.
            He tried to remember if Grunnell had had a key to the door. He thought she did. But this person hadn’t even tried to engage the Locking Charms on the knob yet, which suggested that they were more concerned about the lack of a key.
            Not a professor. A fellow student.
            Harry drifted to the side. His wings hampered his ability to move quickly and quietly, but that didn’t mean much when he still had his Auror training. He slowed his breathing and waited.
            The knob shook one more time. Then someone outside gave a little hiss as the lock gave way—
            Only for the door to immediately freeze as it got stuck in the Locking Charms. The person outside cursed this time, loud and long.

            That was enough for Harry to recognize the voice. He strode over and said, “Malfoy?”
            Silence. Harry flung the door open, barely remembering to cancel the Locking Charms in time so the door wouldn’t bounce back and hit him in the face.
            Malfoy did stand in the corridor outside, and after the low level of light provided by the fire in the bedroom, the torches flashing off his hair almost dazzled Harry’s eyes. He thought, at first, that was why Malfoy looked strange.
Then he shook his head and stared again.
No. Malfoy still wore something that looked like a large white gown, except for the holes in the back that left space for his wings to sprout. And he still showed bare skin when he shifted in front of Harry’s incredulous gaze. There was lace along the cuffs and hem and collar, like Ron’s hideous dress robes in fourth year. Harry turned back to Malfoy and stared some more, trying to show what he felt with blinking.
Malfoy didn’t say anything, but continued to stand there with his wings a little lifted and some skin showing through the robe. Only when Harry saw that did he decide what in the world Malfoy was doing.
“Are you—trying to seduce me?” he finally asked.
            Malfoy stared at him some more, and blinked. Then he flashed his wings up and down, as if he assumed he could hypnotize Harry with the blue bars around the black one that way.
            “That would be a yes, then?” Harry knew he probably still sounded dazed, but, well, honestly. Malfoy thought he could break into Harry’s room in the middle of the night and pin him to the pillow or something?
            Or something, Harry decided, as Malfoy’s wings flared out and came to rest on either side of his neck. It was a threatening posture when someone tried to do something like that with blades or wands, and Harry began to lift his own wand carefully. He would strike back if Malfoy tried to hurt him.
            “You don’t understand what I see in you,” Malfoy breathed. “You don’t understand the wonderfulness of a potential mate. Since I came here, they told me I probably wouldn’t find one. True Veela rarely make mates out of transformed ones.”
            He paused dramatically. Harry knew he was supposed to ask why that was true, or maybe coo sympathetically about Malfoy’s revelation and ask him why he’d chosen Harry.
            But Harry was having a lot of fun doing the unexpected.
            “Well, I would understand the wonderfulness more if you didn’t ambush me in the middle of the night,” Harry said frankly, and reached up to push the tip of Malfoy’s wing out of the way. It didn’t sharpen and cut him, and that was a good thing. “I’m used to a full night’s sleep, you know, when I’m not on a case. I was looking forward to sleeping through the night here.” He sighed. “I suppose I should have known that wouldn’t happen. What did you want to tell me?” He tried to put on the same expression of strained patience Ron wore when Hermione was in the middle of a lecture.
            Malfoy stood frozen and looked at him. Harry nodded encouragingly, and Malfoy whipped away from him and stood on the far side of the corridor.
            “I didn’t want to disturb your rest,” Malfoy whispered. “Only impress you.”
            “It’s kind of you,” said Harry, and while he couldn’t muster enthusiasm, he thought his tone was bland and polite. “Can we do it in the morning, though? I’ll be better able to appreciate your talents then.”
            Malfoy turned around and gave him a heated look. Harry had been on the receiving end of lots of those, though, with the celebrity thing, and only smiled back. Malfoy finally nodded, his eyes hooded a little.
            “Yes. Of course. I hoped—but it doesn’t matter. Of course.” He bowed to Harry and then turned away and walked down the corridor. Harry sighed at his back and opened the door, ignoring the cue to call after Malfoy, also dramatically.
            He rearranged himself in his bed. So he didn’t have to worry about violent enemies here—other than maybe Professor Testig if she felt he wasn’t doing well enough in class—but he had to worry about interruptions to his rest.
            The Floo flared. Harry rolled over and blinked. For a second, he could see no face in the flames, but then the familiar one of Healer Veraz appeared. “Ah,” he said, and nodded at Harry and put a finger to his lips.
            Harry just stared.
            “I’ve arranged secret Floo access so I could contact you,” Veraz whispered. “It’s very important that you listen to me and not Kilhoun about what color the stripes on your wings are.”
            Harry got up, walked across the room, and shut the Floo connection. Then he lay back down on the bed and tried to remember the way to all the classrooms Malfoy had showed him that day.
            Anything that would keep him from screaming in frustration and proving to Malfoy that he was still awake would be a help, right now.
*
Jess: Rather, it is a crack-laced Healer theory.
sara101: Thank you!
Skybee: Thanks very much!
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