Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Veela-Struck	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 52830 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

Chapter List
- 1-Veela-Struck
- 2-Changed
- 3-Thought-Through
- 4-Met
- 5-Challenged
- 6-Snapped
- 7-Struggled
- 8-Lost
- 9-Dazed
- 10-Worried
- 11-Shamed
- 12-Hidden
- 13-Dazzled
- 14-Astounded
- 15-Marked
- 16-Damaged
- 17-Chosen
- 18-Shuddered
- 19-Broken
- 20-Spoken
- 21-Influenced
- 22-Gifted
- 23-Promised
- 24-Distressed
- 25-Held
- 26-Tempted
- 27-Warded
- 28-Rumored
- 29-Fought
- 30-Flayed
- 31-Identified
- 32-Practiced
- 33-Enchanted
- 34-Blazed
- 5
- 6
- 7
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Six—Snapped

            “We would be most pleased to see your Potter here whenever he chooses to come.”

            Startled, Draco looked up from the dessert he’d been eating, which had so much whipped cream on top that he wasn’t actually sure what it was meant to be. Pie, perhaps. “What did you say, Mother?”

            Narcissa regarded him patiently, her eyes so bright that they made the scar on her face seem like nothing. “I’m sure you heard me, Draco. When Mr. Potter feels comfortable coming to us, when you have begun officially dating, we look forwards to a visit from him.”

            Draco picked up the glass of champagne that still sat beside him, although it was empty, and licked a drop from the rim to give himself more time to think. Of course his parents would want to meet Harry. They’d implied, and said, as much before. And Draco hadn’t let them know exactly how fast his relationship with Harry was advancing, which lent him a bit of plausible deniability should something happen.

            But how was he going to excuse the fact that Harry wouldn’t want to eat any food that house-elves had made?

            “Um,” he said.

            “Something else is wrong, I know,” said Narcissa, with a gentle, encouraging smile. She reached out her hand to Lucius in that way they had, the way that made Draco’s throat ache. Lucius caressed her fingers and released them only so that he could continue eating, and pat delicately at the whipped cream that had smeared itself on his cheek. “We have learned that Mr. Potter has not dated for the past three years—well, nearly three, I suppose, if one must concern oneself with fractions.”

            Draco found a smile for his mother’s mincing, ridiculous manner, even with as hard as his heart had suddenly begun to pound.

            “Even granted that he would have a hard time finding someone not intimidated by his fame,” Lucius said, pointing his fork at Draco, “that seems excessive. And surely he could arrange matters privately if he wished. Is that the answer, Draco? Has he simply been discreet before, and does he worry about our discretion now? Pray assure him that there is nothing we will not do to see our son happy.”

            Draco swallowed and looked at his hands for a long moment. He still couldn’t betray Harry’s secret to his parents, but he knew they would welcome Harry and close ranks around him in defense if they understood even a tenth of what had happened.

            The problem was convincing Harry of that.

            “Simply speak to him, Draco,” his mother said, and rose from her chair to lean over and kiss him on the cheek. “I can see that you are interested in him and invested in his happiness as you have been with no one else in years. That increases my own interest in his happiness. There are no old grudges left, and no new ones to invent. Also reassure him that we have forgiven him for aiding us, if he needs that.”

            Draco nodded, mumbled something that he feared sounded stupid, and returned to his dessert. His father made small talk for the rest of the evening, and by the time that Draco was ready to step back through the Floo to his own house, he would have said that Lucius had entirely forgotten about the dinner conversation.

            Narcissa laid her hand on his arm, though, and looked into his eyes with a wise patience that Draco found himself meeting with a prickling flush.

            “Remember that we will wait for him,” Narcissa whispered. “Whatever is wrong can be healed and brought full circle.” She kissed Draco’s cheek a second time and finally let him go, leaving him to stumble rather than step neatly through the Floo.

            Draco collapsed into his favorite chair the minute he came out of the fireplace and didn’t move for ten long minutes, sitting there with his fingers across his face while he breathed slowly and steadily.

            He had remembered something he should have remembered before. His parents had nothing like the influence they had possessed before the war, when the very name “Malfoy” had been one to, literally, conjure with, but they still had money, contacts in the Ministry, and cunning. It wasn’t impossible that they could find out what had happened to Laurent, and, from there, guess what had happened to Harry.

            Draco wondered if he should tell them before they could find out that way—or warn them to back off.

            Yet even that warning might be more than Harry wants me to say, he thought in misery as he leaned back, opened his eyes, and mopped at his forehead. It was covered with a light sheen of sweat. I don’t know if he would ever agree to let someone who doesn’t absolutely need to know hear about it, given how well he’s hidden it from the wizarding public and most of the people who would have been sympathetic.

            He would ask, though. Surely that could do no harm.

*

            Harry rolled out of another troubled dream of Laurent and sharp kisses and nibbling hungry sounds when he heard someone shouting his name. It took a moment’s struggle with his bathrobe, but he was finally something other than barefoot. He snatched his wand as he ran towards his fireplace.

            Ron’s head floated in the flames. His eyes were so wide that Harry’s mind immediately flashed to the way he had looked when Fred was buried. Had something happened to his parents or siblings?

            “Mate?” Harry asked quietly, dropping to one knee and reaching towards Ron. He could feel calm settling over him like a suit of armor. When there was something to be done, someone to be defended, he became this person, this tower of strength. What Draco had said about the instinct to protect being in his blood was correct.

            And that he has a similar instinct?

            Harry ignored the temptation to follow the thought. There were more important things going on right now, and Ron’s hurried gasp confirmed that—though the words he spoke weren’t the ones Harry had anticipated.

            “Hermione’s having her baby! Right now!”

            Harry couldn’t hide a smile as he thought about what a relief this would be to Hermione, but it was Ron’s first child, and it made sense that he would be panicking. He nodded and stood up, reaching for his Floo powder. “I’ll come right through.”

            By the time he tumbled into Ron’s drawing room, Ron was pacing back and forth, his hands on his head. He whirled around and flung himself into Harry’s arms, and Harry stared. Ron’s fingers were entwined with red hairs that Ron had literally tugged from his scalp.

            “It’s going to be all right,” Harry said to his best friend, rocking him back and forth and trying not to think about the tightness of Ron’s arms twining around him. This wasn’t the same way Laurent had clutched at him. He’d used his wings, and Ron didn’t have them. Ron was solid Weasley, none more human. Harry just needed to remember that. “Hermione’s the strongest woman I know. She’ll have the baby just fine, and then you’ll have a beautiful little girl to be proud of.”

            Hermione’s scream rang out from her bedroom just then. Or maybe it was more like a shout, Harry thought, blinking. He had expected a wordless noise of pain. Instead, it seemed Hermione was cursing the Healer attending her. Harry smiled.

            “Listen!” Ron wailed, clinging at Harry again. “What if she’s dying?”

            “She’s not,” Harry said firmly. “She’s too strong and smart for that. You’ll have a beautiful little girl, Ron, and—”

            Hermione screamed again, this time something about how she would hex people when she had her wand.

            “I want to go in!” Ron detached himself from Harry and ran up to the bedroom door, then turned and ran back the other way again. “But I can’t,” he told Harry dismally, halting right in front of him, panting. “They told me not to. They said I was a nuisance and I was getting in the way. Just because I fainted! Once. You should see Hermione’s face. Who wouldn’t faint from that?”

            Harry bit his lip firmly to stop himself from laughing and patted Ron on the shoulder. “I know that I probably would have,” he said. “I can’t even imagine what it looked like.”

            “Horrible.”

            Harry managed to turn a snicker into a cough. “You know what you ought to do, Ron?” he asked thoughtfully.

            Ron turned to him with a hopeful, big-eyed look on his face. “Anything you can come up with would help, mate.”

            Harry nodded. “Then why don’t you practice on your Auror training exercises?” Ron gave him an incredulous look, and Harry continued soothingly, “It means that you’ll take your mind off what Hermione’s suffering, and you’ll be keeping in shape for your job when you go back to it, and you’ll be calm and relaxed when they hand your daughter to you so that you don’t drop her.”

            Ron nodded back and then flung himself on the ground, doing push-ups. Harry walked around him, offering critical comments for Ron to respond to occasionally, and keeping one eye on the door of the bedroom.

            Sooner than he would have thought, the screaming stopped. Harry felt his muscles tense to the point of snapping as he stared at the door. He’d spoken reassuringly to Ron, but what if he was wrong? What if Hermione had actually died trying to give birth to the baby? What if Ron had to deal with—

            The Healer, a stern-looking older witch whose grey hair was somewhat disarranged around her face, opened the door and nodded to them. “Congratulations, Mr. Weasley,” she said, raising an eyebrow as Ron scrambled to his feet. “You have a daughter, and both mother and little one are healthy.” She sniffed. “Of course, they would be better-off in St. Mungo’s, where they could be looked after properly—”

            Ron lurched past her into the bedroom. The Healer turned to stare after him, and then had another reason to be offended, since Harry was right behind his best friend.

            Hermione was sitting up against the pillows, cradling a small, white-wrapped bundle to her chest. She nodded to Harry, who was more than a little awed that she could look so calm after so much time of that, and then held out the baby for them to see.

            She was small and squashed, pink and scrunched-looking. Harry smiled and made approving noises, while Ron took the baby with arms that trembled so much, Hermione stubbornly maintained a half-grip to keep Ron from dropping her.

            “What are you going to name her?” Harry asked. Hermione and Ron had discussed so many names that he had never been sure what the latest one was that they’d settled on, or when they were next going to have a violent row about it.

            “Rose,” Hermione said.

            Ron turned about, frowning, and opened his mouth. Hermione gave him a look that would have done justice to a gorgon and said sweetly, through clenched teeth, “You didn’t go through hell for five hours to get her here.”

            Ron nodded, looking a little shame-faced, and then stared down at his daughter as if he had just now noticed that she was there. “Rose,” he whispered. Then he lifted his head and stared at Harry in turn.

            “Mate, I’m a dad,” he said dazedly.

            Hermione snatched Rose quickly back to her chest, and Harry leaped forwards so that he was in the best position to catch his friend, as Ron fainted again.

*

            Draco chewed the end of the quill. He was trying to write a sensitive letter to Harry that would warn him of the danger if Lucius and Narcissa started asking around about the last person he had dated, but also one that wouldn’t make Harry suspect Draco was trying to force him into a corner.

            I don’t know so much. I could hurt him so badly without meaning to.

            Draco huffed and shook his head. Well, he had known that when he started dating Harry, and he had still decided to go ahead, hadn’t he? If he was feeling tired of or impatient with it now, he should tell Harry, who might be happy to back off.

            I can’t stand that, either. I want him so badly. And I’m on the way to falling in love with him. It would kill me to see him with someone else, or alone and suffering for the rest of his life.

            Draco finally dipped the quill in the ink, gave up on writing the perfect letter, and wrote what he honestly felt.

            Dear Harry:

            My parents are becoming curious to know you. One of the problems is that they might have enough money or power to find out what happened to Laurent; not all of their political contacts with the old Ministry have faded, even if they will look the other way when my family is assaulted now. Can I tell them what happened? Or at least tell them some sort of plausible cover story, or that you don’t want to discuss it? Otherwise, I’m afraid that they’ll think they’re justified in taking revenge if they do discover it.

            Please tell me what you’d like me to do. They also want to meet you, but I don’t know about that, either, since it would involve going to the Manor and eating dinner. Is there anything that would explain your not eating the food the house-elves prepare?

            Love, Draco.

            Draco sealed the letter and went to find his owl, running the words over in his head and wondering what unexpected memories they might trigger in Harry. Then he shook his head and did his best to think about the latest letter from Pansy, who wanted advice on how to get ahead in the Muggle business world. Why she thought Draco would have that advice, Draco had no idea.

            If I do something wrong, Harry will forgive me.

*

            Harry paced around the drawing room and glared at Draco’s letter. It lay innocently enough on the table next to the fireplace, but it had started this whole cascade of thoughts in his head on what ought to have been a happy weekend; he didn’t have to go to work, and Ron and Hermione and Rose were all still fine.

            “I have to make some decision,” Harry said aloud, just to hear the words, and then flinched. Laurent had made fun of Harry’s habit of talking to himself, telling him pointedly that it would make most of the people who only knew him from the papers think of him as mad. He had said that anything Harry wanted to confess or argue over, he could say to Laurent.

            I don’t want to spend this much time thinking about him.

            Harry took a deep breath and nodded. Yes, he had spent too much time obsessing over Laurent—a lot more in the weeks since Draco had asked if he could date Harry. He wanted to break free. He wanted to do something bold and reckless, something courageous, something that the old Harry would have done.

            That didn’t mean that he was going to explain his rape to the Malfoys, of course. He agreed with Draco; they would feel compelled to take revenge for the rape on Laurent, and that was what Harry would most hate. He would go to them himself and tell them a story that most people had thought was the truth in the past.

            He wrote a response to Draco’s letter telling him that he would be pleased to go to the Manor for an afternoon visit whenever he liked, as long as he didn’t have to eat anything, and then picked up a case file and buried himself in it.

*

            “We’re so pleased to see you again, Mr. Potter.”

            “Please, call me Harry,” Harry said, smiling at Narcissa. Draco was pleased to see that he could evidently notice something in her face other than the scar that crossed it; his eyes stayed on her eyes instead of straying. Of course, Harry also knew what it was like to be stared at because of a scar.

            “Of course,” Narcissa said, and made a little curtsey to Harry without rising from the chair. “I appreciate the privilege. I imagine that not many of those whom you protect get to address you by that name.”

            Harry sat down opposite from her, in a chair that Draco had chosen for him, one from which he could see the door of the sitting room. “Well,” he said, “it’s true that I don’t often have as, um, extensive an association with them as I do with you.”

            Draco’s mother laughed quietly. “Meaning that you have had to rescue us multiple times?”

            Harry smiled at her again. Draco’s breath caught. He would have liked to embrace Harry or touch his shoulder simply for being nice to his mother, but he suspected that Harry might get angry if he did, so he settled for nodding fiercely to him and sitting in the chair nearest him. Lucius hadn’t come in yet, though Draco knew that the house-elves had gone to fetch him when Harry arrived.

            “You could say that,” Harry said. “Or you could say that I’ve known you from the time I was a child, even if we haven’t always been on good terms, and that I’ve been more interested in what happens to you than I am to most people after the crisis is over.”

            “What is this I hear?” Lucius asked, the soft thumps of his stick marking his progress into the sitting room. Draco knew Harry must have heard him coming even before then, because he turned his head with no sign of surprise. “That you have some contempt for those who need your help?”

            Harry laughed, and Draco, who had started to tense up because he thought Harry might not understand or like his father’s joke, relaxed again. “Of course not! But I know what I am. I understand my own flaws. I’m mostly interested in saving and defending people. When I can’t do that anymore, either because they don’t need my help or because it turns out that they need things I can’t provide, I have to stop worrying about them and move on to the next case. Otherwise, I’d be driven mad.”

            Draco growled softly in his throat. Does Harry see himself as saving or defending me? Is that one reason that he’s so reluctant to go further than he has so far and admit me into his life?

            “An admirable philosophy for an Auror to have,” Lucius said, and lowered himself into his usual chair next to Narcissa. Draco hadn’t missed the way his father’s eyes, bright and contemplative, stayed on Harry’s face. He was going to ask an uncomfortable question next, Draco just knew it. “Now, do you mind us asking why you have broken a self-imposed dry spell to date Draco? Not that we not delighted, of course. But it does seem shocking that you should have chosen Draco when he asked you, and no one else before or after.”

            Harry turned his head and looked at Draco. Draco swallowed at the gentleness of his smile.

            “The simple truth is that I’ve got tired of people who look to me for things I can’t give them,” Harry said. He folded his hands in his lap and crossed his legs, and if it hadn’t been for the way his gaze went compulsively to the door every so often, Draco might have been fooled and thought that he was completely relaxed and casual. “People who want me to stop being an Auror. People who demand that I rescue them from impossible situations they create themselves. People who pretend to hate my fame and then revel in the attention that I get from the press, or promise that they’re all right with it and then break up with my because of the pressure. Draco doesn’t fit into any of those categories. Besides, I know him and I like him. That’s something I can’t say about the majority of people who’ve asked me to date them in the past.”

            Draco sighed in relief. The story sounded plausible, and in fact was what he had thought himself before he approached Harry—when he hadn’t thought the man was simply so consumed with his job that he had let casual things like a personal life fall by the wayside.

            “Forgive me,” Lucius said, and his eyes grew brighter and shimmered like dew on leaves, “but I had understood that the problem was something else. Multiple witnesses that I have been able to find indicate that your last relationship ended badly. No one seems to know what happened to the young man, in fact. You were seen entering the Ministry with him one night and then—nothing. What did happen, Mr. Potter?”

            Harry tensed like a serpent coming to attention, and his face froze. “I would rather not answer those questions, Mr. Malfoy, thank you all the same,” he said.

            That’s his Auror voice, Draco thought. The one that he uses to stop criminals from babbling and witnesses from asking him things they have no right to ask. He stood up, not caring how awkward he might look in his desire to prevent this from going further. “Father—”

            “But you should answer them,” Narcissa said, tone gentle with surprise. “Why would you not do so, Harry? We are concerned for Draco’s happiness. We have uncovered evidence that something happened to destroy your last relationship, so perniciously that the young man involved has not been seen in Britain since. What could it be? If the same is likely to happen to Draco, we would like to know now. Of course he is grown and can make his own choices, but you cannot expect the protection of parents to cease simply because their child has reached a certain age.”

            Harry rose to his feet. The magic rolling out from him caused the walls to ripple and made a ringing sound start in Draco’s ears. “With all due thanks to your hospitality,” Harry said, “I should be going now.” He turned towards the door.

            “There is something, isn’t there?” Lucius said. He pointed his cane at Harry, and his eyes were fierce. “I have also learned that the young man in question was Veela, as Draco is. That makes it even more likely that Draco might suffer the same fate, at least if his fate had anything to do with his blood. Did it?”

            Harry swung around.

            Draco had never seen anything like the expression on his face, so twisted and murderous that it might have belonged easily on Voldemort’s. He moved so that he was between Harry and his father, but that didn’t seem enough. It couldn’t be enough, not when Harry’s magic was now intense enough to sweep like a storm around the upper corners and ceiling of the room.

            So he reacted without thought, and chose the only weapon he had that possessed a chance of protecting his father or containing Harry’s magic.

            His wings burst free of his back and extended out, swaying and shining, cloudy masses of white feathers shading to silver at the tips, and the strongest defense known to the magical world. Draco took one step forwards.

            Harry’s expression twisted again, and he fell to the floor. It was as though his legs had simply given out from beneath him. He raised one arm to cover his face and extended the other hand towards Draco.

            “Please,” he whispered. “Please don’t touch me.”

            Draco couldn’t have moved for a million Galleons. Harry had gone from warrior to child in an instant, and seemed to have forgotten his wand entirely. His teeth were chattering, from the sound, and then he gagged and vomited a small puddle of bile onto the floor of the sitting room.

            Draco had heard about Harry, how he remained calm and self-possessed in the face of some of the most horrific murders the Aurors had ever faced. He wasn’t throwing up because he had seen Dark magic he couldn’t deal with. He was vomiting from sheer fear.

            And it would be all the worse for him because he was betraying this weakness in front of Draco’s parents, as well as Draco.

            “Harry,” Draco whispered.

            Harry sprang to his feet as though the word had been a charm to release him from his terror and shook his head. His eyes were mad, and his magic had gone back into his body, but still buzzed there with a rattle that hurt Draco’s teeth.

            “Just don’t come near me again, Malfoy,” he said. “I’ll hurt you next time. This is over.”

            He vanished from the Manor, Apparating straight through the wards. Draco cried out in loss before he could stop himself. He knew how much breaking through the ancient magic would hurt Harry, and he wanted to find and hold him.

            The one thing he could not do.

*

            Sneakyfox: Thank you!

            Paigeey07: Alas, I fear you will not say the same thing about this chapter.

            polka dot: Yes, and some people probably encourage them to indulge in it, too.

            Sarah: Thank you! And poor Draco, he wasn’t even really succumbing to his desires when this happened.

            Amiyom: The dance will have to continue for a while longer.

            Kibou32: I am going to write three more chapters for Sympathy for the Predators. In fact, two are written, but I dislike them and haven’t worked up my courage to editing them. I need to do that soon.

            Lady_of_Clunn: Yes, although it would probably be easier if he did already have someone he could talk about the nightmares with.

            Night the Storyteller: He no longer blames himself as much as he used to for not helping people—as he says here, he knows that sometimes he just can’t help them—but it ‘s frighteningly close to the only method he has to relate to people.

            luvlustblood: This will serve as a setback to any “steamy” developments, I’m afraid.

            SP777: Your little play is very, very accurate!

            Harry really, really doesn’t want anyone to hurt Laurent. It would be like negating the control he displayed when he arrested him, and that means that Laurent has won again. And Harry is obsessed with control, as you noted.

            Your picture of Harry defending someone is very much like mine!
- 5
- 6
- 7
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Veela-Struck