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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 Eight--A Chamber of Secrets

            “You should eat before you start consuming these secrets, Mr. Potter. You might not have an appetite afterwards.”

            Once again they were sitting on cushions in a room with white walls, but this time it was Testig’s room, or office, or whatever it was, not a classroom. The effect was less overwhelming here, although Harry did notice a kind of faint spiral in the ivory walls that he had a hard time looking away from. And there were low couches amid the cushions, almost indistinguishable from them.

            Harry stared down at the bowl of what looked like crushed ice and cream Testig had pressed into his hands, and took a bite. It melted down his throat, sweet and also a little slimy. He shook his head. “I won’t be able to eat this anyway.”

            “You should still eat it,” Malfoy said. He sat on a blue cushion across from Harry, wings tucked decorously into his sides. “You’ll need some sugar for the words ahead.”

He turned away when Harry tried to catch his eye. Harry grimaced and sucked on a shred of ice. He reckoned that should be safe enough.

“Now,” said Testig. “I notice you don’t use your wings much, Mr. Potter. You tend to keep them as still as possible. You shrug as though you forget they’re there. You almost sat on them when you made your way to that cushion. Why is that?”

“I’ve only had them for a few days. Is it that surprising that I haven’t learned to use them yet?”

“Many of those who become Veela,” said Testig, surveying him from within the castle of her own wings, “are overjoyed to have them. They look forward to learning how to fly. And they incorporate them smoothly into their gestures.”

“I could already fly,” Harry snapped. He saw the way she stared steadily at him, and closed his eyes, picking up another piece of ice. This time, some of the cream got into his mouth, and he choked.

            “Does this resistance to your wings come solely from your love of Quidditch, then?”

            Testig’s voice had softened. Harry still didn’t look at her as he shook his head, because he didn’t see the need. “I haven’t even played in years. It comes because I could already fly. And I want to learn what I can and go home. Go back to my friends and my job.”

            “You think everything is going to be the same. Despite your wings and your transformation.”

            Testig’s voice had no discernible emotion this time. Harry still nodded and opened his eyes, although he looked at her walls more than at her. “Yes, of course. Why wouldn’t it be? I’m not going to quit my job, and once I get control of my allure and anything else dangerous, then I won’t hurt my friends.”

            “Veela are different from non-Veela.”

            “Maybe people who have family heritage or who wanted to be turned into Veela are. But not me. Mine was accidental.”

            “They are different because they have to be, because they need to think of their actions and bodies in a different way.”

            “Not me.”

            “I see.” Testig abruptly sounded weary. Harry turned back to her and saw her crossing her wings in a way that made him think of exasperation. Although she’d probably say that crossing your wings and crossing your arms mean different things, too, he thought in faint disgust. “Mr. Malfoy, I invited you along because you are Mr. Potter’s mate, but I think this is one area in which you would do a better job of explaining than I would.”

            Harry turned to face Malfoy, biting the inside of his cheek in exasperation. Why would he? Malfoy seemed to be exactly like Testig. He thought the wings were wonderful and being Veela made him non-human.

            Malfoy waited a second instead of leaping immediately ahead, his expression calm and meditative. That at least made Harry relax. Then Malfoy nodded and said, “I’m a transformed Veela, too. You knew that?”

            “I know male Veela generally are.”

            Testig shifted, but said nothing. Malfoy only nodded again. “But I didn’t tell you the story of how I transformed.”

            “No.” Harry focused on him and tried to ignore the shimmery feeling tugging at his attention, the one that wanted him to crawl over and nestle against Malfoy.

            “I used a potion.” Malfoy arranged himself on his cushion so none of his skin touched the floor. “I wanted to be beautiful and powerful. I wanted to be different from what I was.”

            So not like me, then, Harry thought.

            “But when I woke up, I found out it wasn’t like that. I thought I was—going to pick up another set of tools. Like the wings were tools I would use, and so were the allure and any other powers I’d gained by changing. But that’s not the case. Things that are part of your body can’t be tools. Unless you’d say that your magic is only another tool, only as important to you as your wand?”

            “No,” Harry conceded. “I would still be a wizard even if you took my wand away.” And not a Veela. He wondered how much he could emphasize that, what it would take for them to understand.

            “Exactly.” Malfoy relaxed and smiled at him. “But I wouldn’t still be a Veela if someone ripped the wings off my back. And no, Potter, I know that was offered to you as an option, but those potions really are experimental. The only Veela they’ve actually tried them on are ones who either got their wings crippled in accidents and so couldn’t fly again, or whose mates died. Both of them classes of people who thought they would be happier without being what they’d been born as or turned into.”

            “And?” Harry didn’t like the tone with which Malfoy said “classes of people.”

            Malfoy looked straight at him. “They still suffered depression. In some cases, they killed themselves. The ones who didn’t spend most of their time staring out the window and watching birds fly. They can’t stand to be around other Veela. Do you want that to happen to you?”

            “Of course not! But I think the Healers would have told me about that if it really happened—”

            “You think? When they didn’t tell you anything else?” Malfoy leaned forwards, and Harry was aware that Testig was fading back towards the wall. He supposed she thought Malfoy would become closer to his real mate by lecturing him or something.

            Harry gritted his teeth. He didn’t want to be here, didn’t want to be listening.

            “They were busy. They didn’t have time to tell me anything else—”

            “If they were arguing about things like what shade of blue the stripe in your wings was, they could have taken time to tell you.” Malfoy unfolded his wings, drawing Harry’s eyes, as always, to the blue bursts around the black bars on their upper curves. “As it is, I’m not angry that I need to tell you. I can finally correct some misconceptions you have about mates.”

            “They seem random to me.” Harry tore his eyes away from their mingled colors on Malfoy’s wings and glared at his face. “We’ve never got along. We barely know each other now. Why would this magic match us as mates?”

            “Ah.” Malfoy inclined his head. “That is something that it’s hard to find answers to—”

            “I knew it.”

            “Which doesn’t mean the answers don’t exist.” Malfoy shook his head at Harry as Harry’s mouth snapped shut. “You need to listen to me instead of simply charging straight ahead.”

            Harry shrugged. “Then tell me the answers that the Veela have discovered. With centuries of research, no doubt.”

            “Research, and living with wings, and the magic that chooses mates.” Malfoy’s face became tranquil, to the point that Harry thought he looked like a professor himself. “The magic is mysterious, but it matches up people with a long-term chance of success. Not a short-term. They might not like each other at first, but they get to know each other long-term.”

            “And there are no mate pairs where they keep disliking each other?”

            “Not uncomplicated dislike, no. The kind of thing that you think you feel for me.”

            Harry was trying to listen, so he didn’t snap and snarl, the way he wanted to, but said, “I hate being told that I don’t feel what I know perfectly well I feel. Too many people have told me that I really felt I had to support their causes or whatever else they wanted from me. That I really loved them if they were my fans and obsessed with me, for example.”

            “I’ll try to explain,” said Malfoy, although his wings snapped out suddenly. “The dislike these mated people felt for each other was not as simple as not wanting to be around each other. They might work together quite effectively as political teams, for example, despite not making successful marriages. They were drawn to each other and couldn’t fall away. I know about teams of Unspeakable partners, government allies from opposing parties, Ministers and their spouses, and so on, who were Veela mates.”

            “I have no desire to do any of that.”

            “I know. You want to be an Auror.”

            “I am an Auror. And that’s the sort of lifestyle you’ll have to fit into, unless you want me to leave you behind. Do you think you could become an Auror?”

            “No,” Malfoy said simply. “But I told you, there are pairings of mates that work like that. It doesn’t mean they all do. The magic that made us mates may have meant us for a different existence. An existence more like a traditional marriage.”

            “Impossible.”

            “You keep saying that. You haven’t provided any proof so far.”

            “I shouldn’t have to.” Harry’s own wings sprang out with a rattle like armor, and he decided not to tuck them back against his sides. “We’ve always disliked each other! You keep assuming here that I’m your mate and I’m just going to surrender to you. There’s no reason I should become your mate, really. You just want me to. Well, I don’t want to. I want to go away and resume my normal life.”

            “I’m not talking about a surrender.” Malfoy had sat up and was staring intently at Harry with narrowed eyes. “If you think that I am, then maybe that’s one reason we’re not getting along well. I’m talking about a relationship where both of us would be equal, but it would be a struggle. The magic has paired us because we’re good together, but not all the time.”

            Harry bit his lip and tried not to snap. That did sound more like a real romance than the dreamy-eyed, swoony sort of thing he had thought Malfoy was talking about.

            But he still had questions to ask. “If you think that it means we would have to work at it—”

            “I do think that.”

            Harry pressed his hands flat against his knees and kept on. “Then why were you talking about a claim and getting jealous when other Veela approached me? Why did I just melt when you touched me earlier?” Malfoy looked so smug at that that Harry wished he hadn’t mentioned it. “That doesn’t sound—real. It sounds stupid and the kind of thing that people always think Veela are doing.”

            “People who aren’t Veela, yes.” Malfoy leaned towards him, eyes brilliant. “The magic that bonds us needs to ease us through the initial process, especially since we don’t seem intuitive choices for each other. So it increases my jealousy to hasten the bonding. It gives us some incentives, like feeling good when we touch, to have us remain near each other.”

            Harry gave a single shudder. “But I can’t just be—controlled by my groin.”

            Malfoy blinked once. Then he said, “I never thought you were. But until you master your allure, you’re going to influence other people that way.”

            “I want to master it! I just don’t want to melt around anyone and surrender to them!”

            “I told you it wasn’t.”

            “It still feels like a surrender to me.”

            Malfoy threw both his hands and his wings in the air. “I’m telling you the truth. How is it my fault if you disbelieve me just because you want to?”

            Harry rubbed his forehead. Then he said, “I don’t know the first thing about mastering my allure, and I want to do that before I spend a lot of time making eyes at you and lying in your lap.”

            “Now that your allure has manifested,” said Professor Testig abruptly from the side, actually making Harry leap to his side and drop the stupid ice-and-cream confection she’d given him, “you’ll have to master it in the presence of your mate. With the help of your mate.”

            Harry closed his eyes. No matter what he heard, the bad news seemed to grow worse.

            “So there’s no going back to my normal life,” he whispered. “I’m stuck with wings I don’t want, with a mate I don’t want, with a life I don’t want.”

            “That life can be better than the one you so mourn leaving behind.”

            Testig sounded as condescending as Bellatrix Lestrange. Harry opened his eyes and glared at her. “Could be. But it sounds like an awful lot of work, especially given who this mysterious Veela magic chose for my mate.” He glared at Malfoy, who turned his head to the side. “And it means that once again, I don’t get a choice. Once it was a prophecy dictating everything, and now it’s an accident. Malfoy wanted a different life and it turned out even more different than he thought it would, fine. But I never wanted this.”

            Testig was silent, studying him. Then she said, “Most people who want to be Veela want the grace and glamour and fame.”

            Harry laughed until he choked, ignoring the way that Testig was still silent and still studying. He finally pushed his hair away from his scar. “Tell me what I don’t know about fame.”

            “The grace and glamour, then?”

            Harry shook his head. “I have people yelling at me and calling me ugly, sure, but I have even more people claiming that I’m the most beautiful person they’ve ever seen and they fell in love with me at first sight. I don’t need anything that you say most people dream of having when they turn into Veela.”

            “I see more about why you are so resistant to it.” Testig turned to Malfoy. “And in this case, I think Mr. Malfoy might be the one best-suited to answer you.”

            Harry spread his wings with a sigh of resignation and faced Malfoy. “What do you think we can have besides a mostly-broken partnership?” he asked.

            Malfoy sat still, but he no longer looked despairing or exasperated. He looked far more like he was drinking Harry in. Harry braced himself against simply giving in because that was what Malfoy wanted from him.

            “We can have a stronger partnership than you think,” Malfoy finally said. “I don’t think ours is going to be the like the ones I told you of, with only one purpose where we can work well together. I have no desire to be an Auror.”

            “I’m going to be one.”

            Malfoy nodded. “But your job isn’t your life, is it? I can provide you a partner who loves you—”

            “But how are we going to know what’s love and what’s this magic pulling us together?”

            “When you can be as content in my presence as you are during those moments when I’m touching you and you feel the magic thrumming through you and relaxing your muscles.”

            Harry blinked and felt his wings drop a little. It was a better definition than he had expected Malfoy to come up with. “Oh,” he said, and smoothed down a feather in his right wing. It was easier than meeting Malfoy’s eyes head on.

            “Yes, ‘oh,’” Malfoy shook his head. “Harry, I don’t want you to feel trapped in this. That’s not why the magic and the mate bonds exist. They exist to give us greater freedom, and let us find something larger than ourselves to be a part of.”

            Harry had no idea what to say to that, so he changed the subject. “So how do I learn to control my allure? And what other powers might I get?”

            “Your allure is the most potent of those powers,” said Testig. “The others you might gain would be the partial transformation that Mr. Malfoy showed in the corridor this morning when he sought to defend you from the Veela attracted to you, the ability to hurl fire, and the ability to call swans to you.”

            “Swans?”

            “They are the birds that Veela resemble the most.” Testig stepped back and held her hands out with a little flourish to Harry. “But, as I told you, those powers must be explored at the side of your mate now that they have manifested. Because you are claimed and mated, there is no way to use them on your own.”

            Harry faced Malfoy again. He felt as if he had sand on his tongue, but on the other hand, he could be generous. He cleared his throat a little and murmured, “Would you help me with them, Malfoy?”

            “Call me Draco.” Even as Harry opened his mouth to do it, because he had to, Malfoy hastily added, “Not as some kind of price. I’d help you either way. But I like the sound of your voice saying my name.”

            Caught with his mouth open, Harry stared. Malfoy’s face was vulnerable, nervous, and pale. He didn’t look away from Harry’s eyes, though, and that alone told Harry how brave he felt.

            Harry swallowed back the protest—of any kind—he could have made, and said, “All right, Draco. Sure.”

            The light that blazed like a star in Draco’s eyes didn’t convert Harry to completely accept his hypothesis about them being content with each other, but it did make it look a little more likely.

*

            SP777: Well, Harry will at least try now, which is an improvement.

            And yes, I am old enough to remember Mighty Mouse. ;)
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