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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
- 7
- 8
- 9
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eight—Lost

            “Well, this is awkward.”

            That comment won a quick, faint smile from Harry—less than Draco had hoped to win, more than he expected. He did his best not to lean too close to the fire, or to show how much simply seeing Harry, willingly near him and not pulling away or wincing in disgust, helped him. It burned away the ashy sluggishness that had consumed him when he was dealing with rejection. It made his eyes keener, and the air in his lungs seemed to burn and spark in a way that made each breath a pleasure.

            And you can lose it all again just as easily, Draco reminded himself, pulling his chair closer to the fireplace. “I want to say I’m sorry again,” he murmured.

            Harry shook his head. His hair was flopping wildly in every direction, and Draco’s hands twisted as he thought about what it might be like to reach up and run his fingers through it. “I wasn’t being entirely fair,” he said. “I would have understood what you were doing if I’d thought about it more. You didn’t come towards me, after all, the way you would have if you wanted to—embrace me.” He spoke as if the words burned his throat, and turned his head away for a minute to stare into his room, which was invisible from Draco’s angle. “You stood in front of your parents. Of course you were protecting them.”

            “But could you think just then?” Draco asked quietly.

            Harry shook his head again, his cheeks flushing with a deep red that Draco thought might be either anger or humiliation. “And I hate it,” he added. Before Draco could reassure him, Harry turned around again, his jaw stuck out. “That’s the main reason I agreed to talk to you again. Because I want these stupid reactions under control.”

            Draco nodded slowly. “You realize it can’t happen all at once,” he warned. He wasn’t going to promise Harry anything that he couldn’t deliver, not this time. “And maybe not ever completely.”

            Harry clenched his hands into fists on his knees. “I’m going to do my best to make sure it’s complete.”

            “If you can’t, are you going to blame yourself?” Draco asked. Harry cast a quick glance at him. Draco forced himself to swallow before continuing. He knew his voice had probably grown sweeter, with a hint of the croon. “I can’t stand to see you doing that. Please don’t.”

            “I don’t know,” Harry said. The words came out in a sigh. “I didn’t blame myself before, but that was because I thought I really had achieved control, and it didn’t take that long. I don’t know what I’ll do if it stretches out to months.”

            “I’ll help you,” Draco whispered. It was physically painful not to reach through the fire, but he had done harder things, including being without Harry for a week. “That’s one of the reasons I want to be there.”

            Harry gave him a wan smile and shifted. Draco thought he was probably curling further in on himself, though it was hard to tell when he couldn’t see Harry’s body. “This was rough on you, huh?”

            Draco fought back the impulse to reassure Harry it hadn’t been so bad. Yes, it was a Veela instinct to downplay what they suffered so that their chosen ones wouldn’t have to worry, but Harry wouldn’t appreciate being lied to. And Draco didn’t want Harry coming back to him out of guilt only.

            “Yes, it was,” he said at last. “I was depressed, mainly. It was hard to convince myself that I should get out of bed in the morning. I walked around in a daze or a fog. I would have got over it if you hadn’t changed your mind, but I’m not going to deceive you. When Weasley showed up with his offer, I was delirious with joy.”

            “We owe him a lot,” Harry said.

            Draco nodded. He once would never have thought of agreeing with such a statement, but he hadn’t known Weasley was such a good friend to Harry, either.

            Harry was silent for some minutes, scratching the side of his head as if he was trying to figure out how to phrase his words. Then he said, carefully, “How bad was the pain?”

            “The pain?” Draco looked at him blankly. “The point of being without your chosen is that it’s not really pain. All sensation numbs. I could look at something for hours and not realize what I’d been staring at. That kind of thing.”

            Harry’s eyes darkened. Then he said, “He told me that every minute of being without your—person, once you’d settled on him, was like being dipped in fire. Your ribs ached. Your wings ached. Your legs hurt so badly you couldn’t walk.” He was scanning Draco rapidly from head to foot, as if trying to figure out where Draco hid all those wounds he must have suffered. “Didn’t you feel that?”

            Draco choked on his anger. Harry moved warily back from the fireplace, and his hand dropped down as if he was picking up his wand. Draco nodded to him, hunched his shoulders and shut his eyes, and waited until he was sure the wings wouldn’t come bursting out of his back.

            They wanted to, though. How they wanted to. And while Draco had plenty of experience in repairing his shirts and robes when it happened unexpectedly, there were so many other reasons to avoid doing that in front of Harry that he gasped to think of them.

            “That’s another thing Laurent lied about, huh?” Harry’s voice was flat, but that didn’t hide the old emotions bubbling in the back of his voice.

            Draco opened his eyes and nodded. “Yes. The pain is all mental. It’s horrible, but it’s survivable, the way grief is. Most Veela manage to accept that some of the people they choose aren’t right for them, and they’ll move on and find someone else. Nothing like you described happens, even if a long-term partner breaks the relationship off. Laurent was trying to blackmail you into never leaving him, it sounds like.” His voice soared again, but at least this time he knew, from the harsh, ringing tones, that he was nowhere near the croon.

            More silence. Harry scratched his temple again. Draco watched him curiously, letting his anger ebb. There was nothing that he could do about it right now.

            “I don’t understand,” Harry said at last, his voice soft and distant but his eyes hard. “Why is Laurent so different from you? Why would he lie about anything and everything to keep me? Why would he rape me, and blame it on being a Veela, when you can keep yourself in check?” He looked at Draco now, but his eyes hadn’t lost their hardness. “Why?”

            Another mire to walk. Draco couldn’t give less than the truth, though, and only hoped that such truth would be acceptable to Harry.

            “Veela are different in the same way that wizards are different, Harry,” he said. “Being all of one species doesn’t make us all the same.”

            “But you’re defined by your characteristics,” Harry said, “in a way that wizards aren’t.” He gestured with his hand, and Draco could see that he was holding his wand now. “The books and he agreed on that. The wings, the magic, the need to choose and comfort a partner. It seems that you have a lot more in common than most wizards have in common.” He eyed Draco sideways.

            Draco let his eyes narrow and his displeasure show through. Harry ought to be able to deal with anger. “We have those traits,” he said. “Yes, you could argue that we’re more similar to each other than you’re similar to Weasley, or any other human wizard. But that says nothing about our personalities, Harry! Some Veela abuse their partners. Some don’t. Some resist what they are and stay celibate and some find their partner right away and some go through life lonely because they want a partner but can’t find someone who fits their needs. Some are good at acting and lying, and some aren’t. Why are you trying to shove us all into some neat little box? I’ve never known you to do that with anyone else, even Death Eaters.”

*

            Harry felt himself go pale. Draco was right, and he hadn’t even realized he was doing that. His words would have sounded ridiculous if he’d tried to apply them to Hogwarts students or centaurs or merfolk, but…

            He had thought he was a better person than that. He had thought that Laurent hadn’t managed to corrupt him in the depths of his personality. He had changed Harry’s behavior, but not who he was. That had been Harry’s article of faith ever since he had fought his murderous rage back for the first time.

            But he had been wrong.

            “I’m sorry,” he mumbled, trying to think of some way that he could make up for what he had said, and not seeing it. Shame raced through him like heartburn. Why had he been trying to make Draco pay for Laurent’s mistakes? Why had he thought all Veela were the same? He had been at least able to say they weren’t before Draco asked him to date him, even though he hadn’t wanted anything to do with them. What had made him go backwards and become a worse person than he had been?

            “Harry, it’s all right,” Draco said. “I know you’re blaming yourself, and you should be blaming Laurent instead.”

            Harry shook his head, keeping one hand on his forehead. It felt as if he had a fever, so fast were the thoughts speeding around his mind. “Thanks for saying that, Draco, but he didn’t command me to say and think those things. I did that.”

            “You’ve been through trauma.” Draco’s voice was even softer, and Harry was glad that he wasn’t looking at Draco just then, because he didn’t know if he would have been able to stand a tender expression if Draco wore one.

            “But that can’t excuse everything,” Harry said. He would have liked to cut off the firecall and work through things on his own, but Draco was concerned in this now. Harry had admitted him to his confidence, and he couldn’t arbitrarily shut him out. He looked up at Draco. “I did tell you that I might make mistakes,” he said, laughing in spite of himself. The expression on Draco’s face was more impatient and less tender than he had thought it would be. “Can you live with this one?”

            “I think the question is whether you can,” Draco said.

            Harry shrugged. “I want to get myself under control. I want to be stronger than I was, less prone to react hysterically.” One of Draco’s hands rose as if he would reach through the fire, and Harry shifted back before he thought about it. He shrugged again when he saw Draco looking at him. “But that’s not the same thing as getting there.”

            “I told you that I wanted to help,” Draco said. “I will. What would help you the most right now?”

            Time alone, Harry thought, but he knew from experience that he would either brood on what had happened and promise to be stronger next time without a clue on how to change things, or dive into a pile of paperwork to avoid thinking about his mistake at all.

            God, healing sucks.

            “Show me your wings,” Harry said.

            Draco’s mouth fell open, and Harry got to enjoy the sensation of having surprised him for once, though it didn’t last long as Draco’s eyes narrowed and he shook his head. “I don’t think you’re ready for that,” he said. “And I won’t be responsible for traumatizing you further.”

            “You know what hurt me worse than anything else, when Laurent was done with me and I was in my right mind again?” Harry asked.

            Draco shook his head, looking more apprehensive than ever, as if he thought he was going to hear about a crime so evil that he couldn’t comprehend it.

            “He treated me like a toy,” Harry said. “He didn’t think of me as a living human being, or even a chosen one like the Veela sometimes do—if I can believe the books.” Draco didn’t smile, or look away, or blink. Harry wondered nervously if he could put up with all that attention for days at a time. “I was his toy. He lied to me and cast charms on me to keep me faithful to him and did anything else he wanted to, because I couldn’t oppose it, but even more because it didn’t really matter to him. You don’t consider the feelings of a doll if you leave it face-down in a corner of the room. You can do that if you want to.”

            Draco licked his lips and apparently tried to look helpful instead of murderous. “And how can I avoid doing that?”

            “Stop acting as if you know my feelings better than I do,” Harry said. He was shivering, his teeth chattering so that he hoped Draco could still understand all his words, but he kept on regardless. Planning had never really helped him face his fears. He was better at the short, sharp struggle, which he thought was one reason he had won the fight with his emotions when he wanted to kill Laurent. “If I collapse in terror, it’s my own stupid fault. But let me see your wings.”

            Draco looked at the floor, giving a sharp shudder, as though Harry had asked him to do something much more difficult than obey a natural instinct. But in the end he nodded, and turned away to pull off his shirt.

            Harry felt sweat spring out on his hands and lips and chest. He rubbed one palm over his heart and tried to ignore the way that it was beating, so fast that he felt as if he might fly to pieces. He could bear this. He had to bear this. He would.

            The sight of Draco’s back was obscured with what looked like a soft bloom of white, as though flowers had grown from his shoulder blades. Harry clung to that delusion as long as he could, trying to avoid acknowledging the definite edges of the white mass.

            But then Draco turned and spread them, and Harry couldn’t ignore that they were Veela wings any longer.

            Harry was breathing harshly as he dug his fingers into his knees. Laurent had used his wings to “shield” Harry—in reality, to keep him from escaping, to keep him from fighting, and to make him half-drugged and incapable of making his own decisions. He had said that he had done it out of love, and Harry had heard other Veela who came to testify at Laurent’s trial claim the same thing. They had denied that any Veela could abuse his chosen one, and looked at Harry with dubious eyes.

            They had disbelieved him.

            But Draco had come seeking him, had listened to him, had begged him for a second chance, had given him a second chance. Harry focused on Draco’s face in the middle of those wings and struggled furiously to see them as part of the same being, the former Death Eater who had softened towards him over the past few years and shown that he had the ability to be a decent human being after all.

            Harry’s tension vibrated, stretched to breaking point. Draco watched him with solemn eyes, and the minutes stretched, and still Harry wanted to flinch back and shut the Floo, or cast a spell that would chop those wings from Draco’s back.

            Finally, it was too much. Harry buried his face in his hands and began to shiver so hard that he felt as if he would need a ring of fire to recover from it. “Please,” he whispered. “Put them away. Please.”

            He heard stretching and rustling sounds, and then Draco’s voice said, “They’re gone, Harry. Harry, can you look at me, please?”

            It was an age before Harry could. His body was convinced that it needed to run or fight, and he knew he would hurt Draco if he reacted too hastily. He tried to concentrate on his breathing, but it hurried like a frightened rabbit’s, and so that was no use. He finally lifted his head, eyes scrunched tightly shut, and then unscrewed them bit by bit, ready to shut them again if he saw a glimpse of white.

            There was nothing there but Draco, gazing at him in such compassion that Harry flushed and turned away again. “I’m sorry,” he muttered. “You must think me so weak.”

            “I’m concerned about what Laurent did to you, yes,” Draco said, but his voice had a steely tone to it that made Harry smile. He wasn’t going to accept the generalizations that Harry always made about himself. Good. I think I need someone to do that. “That’s a different thing.” He paused. “Would it help you to talk to someone else about this? A Mind-Healer, maybe?”

            Harry snorted. “They always wanted to know the details of the rape.”

            “And you didn’t want to talk about it?’ Draco asked quietly.

            Harry glanced back at him again, impelled to by his incredulity. “Of course not! Especially not when I spoke with the first one, who acted as though she wanted all the gory details so that she could imagine them and wank to them at night.”

            Draco looked somewhere between nauseated and outraged. “I hope you got rid of that one as soon as you possibly could.”

            Harry nodded. “Of course, but the others weren’t much better. They wanted me to talk about it all the time, and they wouldn’t let me talk about other things, like the way I felt when I thought the Wizengamot might not sentence him.” His skin crawled, and he cut abruptly away from that memory in his mind; he thought he really would throw up if he had to keep thinking about it. “They told me that I wouldn’t be able to go back to my job. They wanted me to act as if the rape was the most significant fact in my life, and I had to spend every moment brooding about it. It was strange,” he added, thinking about those last few days he’d spent in St. Mungo’s. “Most of them were sorry for me, but they weren’t more than that. They didn’t think I could heal. They thought that they’d be able to spend the rest of their lives pitying me, and to do that, they couldn’t let me change.”

*

            Draco’s anger had changed targets, or at least grown to include more people. He now wanted to rip apart the Mind-Healers who had made Harry feel this way as well as Laurent.

            But it was in the past, he reminded himself, and this time he didn’t even have names to go on. Though it would be considerably easier to sneak into St. Mungo’s than it would be to sneak into Azkaban…

            With a hiss, Draco forbade himself the fantasies. This was about healing Harry, helping him if he could, and not indulging his instincts for revenge.

            “Then no Mind-Healers,” Draco said. “Is there anyone else? I don’t want you to have only me to turn to.”

            “Well, Ron and Hermione know, of course,” Harry said, blinking. “But they just had a baby. I’m not sure they’d want another challenge.”

            “From what I saw of Weasley, he would be much more insulted if you didn’t let him help,” Draco said dryly. He was still amazed at the depth of Weasley’s loyalty and courage, and he had to wonder now how much of that hadn’t existed during Hogwarts and how much he had simply missed. “But I was thinking about someone even beyond that. Someone who would be a professional about it, but not in the way the Mind-Healers would be.”

            Predictably, Harry’s jaw clenched. “I don’t want to trust anyone else with the knowledge. We can’t be sure that it would work out.”

            Draco licked his lips. “I think I might know of someone,” he said. “Someone who would understand, someone who has dealt with these kinds of situations before, and someone who wouldn’t blame you for succumbing to a Veela’s deeper allure or think that Laurent was just following his ‘instincts.’”

            “But?” Harry said, watching him steadily. “Kingsley sounds the same way when he’s giving me cases with a catch in them. Is this person a Veela?”

            Draco bowed his head. “She is.”

            “No.”

            Draco considered whether that answer could be fought with, and then decided that it couldn’t. Harry sounded as though he would close a door to shut out the whole world, if that was what it took. “All right,” he said. “But will you consider it later, when, maybe, you can stand to be around me and other Veela more?”

            “Maybe.” Harry was drawing in on himself, and Draco hated to see that, so he immediately changed the subject.

            “When do you want to firecall me again?”

            Harry relaxed and glanced at him with a grateful smile that it took Draco a few minutes to understand. He reckoned Laurent had never given up on pushing Harry when he was uncomfortable, or maybe it was the Mind-Healers who hadn’t. Draco nearly growled. What the fuck was he thinking? What the fuck were they thinking? You’d think that they would realize they were dealing with a rape victim, and more than that, someone magically powerful who wasn’t accustomed to thinking of himself as a victim.

            “Near the middle of the week, maybe?” Harry offered. “Kingsley usually gives me a new case on Monday, and I’ll probably be busy sniffing out clues and making sure that I know what I’m doing. Preliminary research.”

            “Is Weasley going with you?” Draco asked casually, and tried not to show the way his shoulders were tensing. Harry, away from Draco, was strong and capable, but there were more dangers in the world than Veela who might rape him.

            “No,” Harry said, raising his eyebrows as if he wondered what planet Draco’s mind was on. “He’s still on leave to spend time with Hermione and Rose.”

            “Who’s your temporary partner when he’s gone?” This time, Draco knew his voice was too sharp, and Harry straightened slowly, staring at him.

            “I don’t have one,” Harry said. “Most of the Aurors don’t when they’re investigating routing cases and their partners are on holiday. Kingsley knows that I can take care of myself.”

            Draco gritted his teeth. He had no doubt what the emphasis in that sentence meant. “I know that,” he said. “And you’re powerful, capable. I have no doubts about you being able to take care of yourself. But accidents happen, and Dark wizards who want to target you specifically also happen.”

            “Oh, you’re thinking of that case last year?” Harry smiled, but his eyes were still hard. “I was never in danger. The papers like to exaggerate.”

            Draco stared at him. “You were in hospital and had lost almost enough blood to die.”

            “And I was out of hospital that very same evening, which wouldn’t have happened if I had really come that close to death.” Harry laid his fingers along his elbow and shook his head at Draco. “I told you they like to exaggerate.”

            Draco swallowed. He hadn’t paid as much attention at first to some of the things Harry had talked about when he was mentioning that he liked to be in control of his life. It had seemed more important that he wanted to cook his own food than that he wouldn’t let someone else tend his wounds.

            Now…

            “Please,” he said. “Be careful, for my sake.”

            Harry’s eyes softened. “Of course. I promise. And I’ll firecall you no later than Wednesday. Good-bye.”

            The Floo shut with a whooshing noise. Draco leaned back in his chair and sucked in deep gulps of air. His chest felt too tight.

            Harry. Please be safe.

            He wondered again if he really wanted to do this, with all its challenges and all its drawbacks and all its barriers and all its restrictions on him.

            But he remembered how his body had seemed both to lighten and to burn when he saw Harry again, and he knew it was more than the ending of the vague depression that had plagued him when he had thought Harry wasn’t coming back. To be with Harry made his life more vivid and intense.

            He could not give that, or Harry, up.

*

            paigeey07: Glad you liked it.

            SP777: Thanks. I wanted to write a different Ron than usually appears in my stories, and of course in this case, he was probably the only one Harry would have listened to.

            It means Romance.

            Drisowen: Thank you!

            Caldonya: Thanks. Ron and Hermione do know all about the rape. They’re the only ones Harry really trusts with the knowledge.

            Sneakyfox: And since he’s become an Auror, although we don’t get to see much of him being an Auror during this fic.

            Lady_of_Clunn: Thanks!

            Draco does explain his parents’ reactions in more detail later.

            Harry has a large problem giving up control like that.

            mrequecky: Thanks!

            luvlustblood: Thanks! One of Harry’s problems is that it takes him a long time to admit that he can’t do everything on his own. Obviously, this is one of the examples of that.

            Bedroom happenings will eventuate, but not immediately.

            SecondStoreyStairwell: Thanks! I can assure you that neither Harry nor Draco will forget Harry’s problem. Harry resents it and would like to stop thinking about it, but having Draco in his life ensures that won’t happen.
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