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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eight—Opportunities and Odd Qualities
            “Where is my son?”
            Harry took so long to drag his mind back from the speech he was writing that he wasn’t surprised by the glare on Narcissa’s face when he finally looked up.
            Not that he could do anything about it. “He was in the library the last I knew,” Harry said, and finished with the last line of the speech. Then he scanned it quickly. He thought it made sense. He was going to be part of a group of people celebrating the reopening of Hogwarts and the four-month anniversary of the war’s ending. He thought that a few references to Dumbledore’s tomb were okay, since that was what they were speaking in front of, but he didn’t want to overdo it. Luckily, it didn’t seem as if he would.
            “That answer is not answer enough,” Narcissa said, and put a hand on his desk.
            Harry met her eyes without blinking. She was in his rooms, and he had thought that no one would simply stride in and interrupt him here. It showed how foolish he had been, he supposed. “That’s where I left him. If he’s not there, then I don’t know where he is.”
            “I have just come from speaking with him.” Narcissa’s head was low, and she hissed at him like Nagini used to. “I know the way that you nearly destroyed him, nearly broke his heart.”
            “Then you know where he is, so why are you asking me?”
            Narcissa’s lips pursed, and her hand rose. Harry had his wand out in a flash. And that finally made her pause, and look at him as though considering her options.
            “You would not dare to curse me,” she said.
            “You were moving like you were going to hit me.”
            She said nothing, but lowered her hand back to her side, observing him closely. “You know that you will have to endure a great deal in a Veela bond,” she said.
            “If he thinks he can abuse me and get away with it, then I’ll disembowel him,” Harry said, and thought it was the calmness of the threat rather than the threat itself that made Narcissa shrink, hands curled in front of her like the husks of butterflies, her eyes so bright and suspicious that Harry thought she might weep.
            “It is not—abuse,” said Narcissa at last. “But I know what you did to him in the library. He described it to me. He says that you do not want to be part of the bond at all, that you hate him. A Veela would prefer being disemboweled to hearing that.”
            “What do you want me to say?” Harry asked her. “That I welcomed him? No. I thought I was making myself clear enough by going along with everything without enthusiasm. Now I see I wasn’t. I explained things to him. I don’t think anything less clear would be accepted.” He waited, saw her mouth open, and spoke before she could. “You were the one who gave me the clue that I had to, by telling me that this was like a marriage and Malfoy thought he was married to me already. Then I saw that I had to be clear.”
            “You were not clear. You were brutal.”
            “He thought I wanted him,” Harry said. “That I was his submissive, that I was in love with him. Look. I’m making it clear now that this is political, and for his survival. He has to realize that I’m not the submissive he wants. I’ll give him what I can without disrupting my other commitments.”
            “This should be the most important of your commitments.”
            “Let me tell you something,” said Harry. He knew from the slight narrowing of her eyes that he had thrown her off, but he proceeded before she could say something. “I’m selfish. I’m not the great hero that people think I am. I’m not ready to give my life for the world again.”
            “It sounded as though you were unselfish enough to consider my son’s needs,” said Narcissa slowly. Harry knew she was turning the words every direction in her mind, finding ways to interpret them that were favorable to what she and Malfoy wanted.
            “I’m selfish because I never want to fight a war again.” Harry thought it was probably safe to move his hand away from his wand. Probably. “I’ll give everything else up, sacrifice everything else, for the chance to live in a world at peace. Malfoy might be able to help me with that. He’s already promised some ways he could. So he’s part of it, and I’ll make the sacrifices needed to keep him happy.”
            Narcissa was looking sick, but Harry didn’t know why until she almost whispered the words. “No submissive would wish to do that. Privacy—privacy is their home and their heart and their desire.”
            Harry shrugged. “I understand that. But I’m not a submissive.”
            “Draco is a dominant. There is nothing else you can be.”
            Harry wanted to say how much he despised that notion, that only certain things existed and there was no other way for things to be. For the Dursleys, you were normal or a freak. You weren’t a kid terrified out of his wits by the strange things he could do and not understanding anything until your eleventh birthday. He had thought wizards would be better than Muggles about that, but he should have known better. People were people.
            “I can apologize to Malfoy. But it won’t be the truth, and I think he’d be able to tell that.”
            “Yes, he knows when you lie.”
            Then how did he mistake what we had so far for enthusiastic consent? But Harry thought he probably did know. Malfoy was so proud of his heritage and so sure that anyone else would be thrilled to be part of it, too, that he’d neglected to really pay close attention to the emotions that surged between them. Harry thought he would now.
            “Then I can’t apologize,” said Harry. He laid his hands flat on top of the table, so Narcissa could see there was nothing in them, no weapon or threat. “I explained my position, and I think he understands it.”
            Narcissa looked him in the face the way Harry thought she would probably look at the sun, not caring for what it could do to her. “I shall never forgive you for what you have done to Draco. Not if you live a hundred years.”
            “Don’t worry, I won’t. I’ll almost certainly be killed in pursuit of the peace process.”
            Narcissa did some more staring, her face gone smooth and metallic again. Then she whirled and strode towards the door of the bedroom. Harry watched her until it shut, and then went back to studying his speech again.
*
            “Draco? Are you well?”
            Draco nodded slowly. He was standing in the middle of his bedroom, flexing his wings, and wondering why it felt as though he was moving them against an invisible net that was closing in from beside him and above. At least he could flap them altogether. That was better than the loss of them.
            He had been almost convinced he would lose them after what Potter had said.
            He flinched from the memory, and turned towards his mother with a faint smile. It vanished when he saw the way she stood in the doorway with one hand on the frame and watched him. He swallowed and shrugged. “Potter. He—told you something about leaving the house?” It made the most sense, after what he had shouted at Draco.
            “No,” said Narcissa. “He told me that he continues to regard you as one of his commitments, but he will do everything in the name of the peace process.”
            “I—understand that now, I think,” said Draco. His words came out sore and slow, as though his mouth was the part of him most bruised by Potter, instead of his heart. “He thinks that I’m someone else he needs to serve.” That word felt the strangest of all on his tongue. A month ago, when he had first begun to understand that Potter was his mate, he would have been thrilled by the sound of it. Submissive mates served their dominants out of love, and the dominants accepted out of love.
            But that was before Draco had understood what Potter meant by service.
            Thinking about it, he supposed, it should have been obvious. Potter didn’t throw himself at the feet of people in the school and beg to help them. What he did was something like throwing his life in front of the Dark Lord’s wand and dying if he needed to. Draco didn’t understand all the details about why he had survived, but he knew one thing. Potter had gone into the Forest expecting to die.
            Draco couldn’t comprehend it. To die for one person, yes, he could do that, he would die for his submissive. Or his family. But not so many people. Not a world, a huge abstraction that didn’t have any way to love you back.
            “Potter’s service is self-immolation,” Draco told his mother, because she was still staring at him, and her silence waited. “He doesn’t hold back. He doesn’t much care who he hurts, either, I think.”
            “He said something about being selfish, and devoting his life to making sure that he never has to fight another war.”
            “I can see that.” Draco moved his hand down and touched the scars on his chest. Could even that be part of the reason Potter was doing this? he wondered. Were those part of the sacrifice? He felt sorry for scarring Draco, so he would go as far as sleeping with him and doing a few other things, but nothing else?
            Then Draco reached out and touched the tentative connection that was forming between him and his mate, and winced, shaking his head. No, he didn’t think so—hadn’t thought so. The sheer congealing throb of his mate’s emotions was all spiky, and regret was part of them, but not guilt. Potter seemed to have shed guilt.
            Except how what he’s doing has guilt written all over it.
            Draco nodded as he thought about that. How many lives did Potter regret not saving? How many nightmares tormented him?
            He thinks that I’m one more person he has to do something to placate. Like the pure-bloods that he’s meeting with, or the Muggleborns. What I want from him is—
            Draco closed his eyes. A hurricane of emotions and emotional colors wanted to overwhelm him, and he wanted to blurt out how different it was and then go flying and find Potter, right now.
            But his mother knew how different it was, or should be, and she wasn’t the one that he needed to convince.
            “I don’t know what to do,” he whispered. “I understand now, but I need more. I always did.” His mother didn’t ask him to explain that, and Draco was glad, because his words had more than a few implications that he wasn’t proud of. “I can’t just go along and take this loveless bond that he wants to offer me because it would be more convenient.”
            “Of course not,” said Narcissa. “I told him that. His only response was telling me that he expected his life to be consumed in the service of the peace process and to imply that he didn’t have time to think about anything else.”
            “Did he hope to get married, then?” Draco wished now that he had let Potter keep speaking about Weasley’s sister when he’d had the chance. He wanted to grow claws at the mere thought of her being near his mate, but he had no idea what Potter really wanted. “Who was he going to look for? A politician’s wife?” Daphne?
            “He said nothing about it. I do not know.” Draco finally opened his eyes, and saw his mother standing by his bedroom window, looking at the ground far below and frowning. “I do not think that he knows properly, himself. This is something he is so committed to that it seems to have swallowed everything else…”
            Draco sighed. “That’s the main problem, then.”
            “His political commitments? That he will not value you over them?” His mother gazed at him curiously over her shoulder. “I thought you knew that already.”
            “Not that,” Draco said. It was hard to admit this, hard and his throat was lined with acid and his tongue had a bit on it, but he did it anyway. “That—I wanted him to love me like that, to the exclusion of all else, to swallow everything else, and I had a rival that I never even suspected.”
            “You should have had that,” said Narcissa. “I do not know what the destiny in charge of giving mates to Veela is, or exactly what it does. But you need someone to take care of you, and that is not what you received. I am angry.”
            “What?” Draco whispered.
            “I was expressing—”
            “No.” Draco had to sit down, the way he’d had to for almost three hours after what Potter had shouted at him. “You thought I needed someone to take care of me? But it’s the dominant who takes care of the submissive. Why would you—did you really expect me to be a dominant, Mother?”
            “If it comes to that,” his mother said, clasping her hands precisely in front of her the way Draco sometimes remembered her doing when talking with his father, “I was not sure. But no one is perfectly sure when the destiny makes the choice, the way that you did not know who your mate would be until then.”
            “No,” said Draco. “No. I don’t need someone to take care of me. I need someone to love me, to—follow me the way a submissive follows a dominant, but I didn’t need someone to take care of me.”
            “You need someone who would enjoy following you,” said his mother. “Part of that following includes caretaking. Defense of your emotions, not butchering them the way Potter has done. The desire to protect you, not be the one to wound you, as Potter has done. The desire to—”
            “That’s what a dominant is supposed to do for a submissive,” Draco said, stunned that he had to say this to her, when she had grown up with the same rules he had, when she had been the one who taught him most of those rules. “To make them feel comfortable, and loved, and safe. To defend them from danger.”
            His mother said nothing.
            “The submissive loves the dominant, of course. Stays safe, and does what he’s told to, and cares for the children, and keeps the dominant’s heart safe by keeping himself safe.”
            The words were so much wind blown down a long tunnel, from the silence that his mother was preserving. Draco moved in a mad rush. “Are you disappointed that I grew wings and turned out to be the dominant? Because you know no submissive has wings.” They didn’t need them, when they had someone to pick them up and fly them. But the wings were simply a visible indicator of prestige and power, not the only benefit. What really separated submissives and dominants were their attitudes.
            “I am not disappointed,” his mother said, and knelt down in front of him with a rustling of her robes. “I may question the choices or the fates or the forces that led you to become so, but I am not disappointed.”
            That loosened one string binding Draco’s chest, at least. He cleaned his lungs out with a few deep gulps and murmured, “I need to find some way past this obstacle. If Potter can treat me as an obstacle, I can do the same thing with his bloody political commitments.”
            His mother lifted one swiftly protesting hand. Draco glanced at her. “Yes?”
            “You say that he prefers self-immolation. I do not want you to be burned along with him.”
            Draco shook his head. “One of my goals is to keep him from getting burned, or from dying in the political process, or committing suicide, or whatever it is he thinks he’s doing by dumping his entire life into negotiations.”
            His mother gave him a faint smile and shook her head. “What can you do, my dear?” she murmured. “He wants to do this, he will do it.”
            “But I want him,” Draco said, and sat up more strongly. “What I need to do is figure out how to make him see that I could help. Or that I’m desirable.” It was humiliating to say that, when a dominant Veela should be desired by his submissive simply in the course of reality, but he said it, and knew from his mother’s nod that she approved.
            “If you need him to exist, of course you need to try and reclaim him from this suicidal course,” she said. “The only thing is that I do not see how you can, without flying close enough to singe your wings.”
            “There’s one thing I can do,” Draco said, and stood up with his back aching and his throat feeling now as though someone had stuck a hand down it. “Only a first step, but it might make Po—Harry see that I mean business, if I came up with it on my own.” He should be calling his mate by his first name, not his last name, no matter how alienated it made him feel that Harry persisted in addressing him as “Malfoy.”
            “What is that?” his mother asked.
            “Apologize for attacking Daphne,” Draco said. “And see if that—changes his opinion at all of me.”
*
MoonlightVampiress: Harry will, at the moment, not accept someone threatening him.
SP777: He’ll get what Harry has stated he’ll give, unless something else changes.
delia cerrano: Harry would agree with you that he’s going to give everything. The problem is that he didn’t have any choice in this any more than Draco did, and what he’s doing is trying to lead the life he wants without giving everything up for Draco, who wouldn’t want it anyway if he couldn’t do it in the way Draco was raised to believe a Veela submissive should.
BlueNova: Thank you!
Nessa: Thank you!
BAFan: Once again, Narcissa provides sort of the unwitting epiphany. It’s not that Draco isn’t dominant, because he does have those wings, but he can’t go on working with Harry based on what he thinks the perfect roles of dominant and submissive are.
MaryRoyale: Yes, those stories irritate me as well, because you can’t expect someone who’s never heard of what you’re demanding to read your mind. This story was generated out of frustration with that aspect of some Veela fics.
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Nature of the Beast