[From Samhain to the Solstice]: As Proud as Love, Harry/Lucius, R, 3/4

[lomonaaeren]

Part Two.

Part One.

Title: As Proud As Love (3/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Lucius, background Draco/Astoria and Ginny/OMC, past Harry/Ginny and Lucius/Narcissa
Rating: R
Content Notes: Veela-fic, ignores the epilogue, unrequited love, angst, drama
Wordcount: This part 4000
Summary: Some idiot invented a potion after the war that gives whoever consumes it the characteristics of a Veela—and people keep taking it to find their mates or impress their lovers. A shame that the transformed people are violent and leak allure until they find their true mates. Harry Potter, immune to the Veela allure because of his unrequited love for his ex-girlfriend, provides guardianship for transformed Veela against other people and their own impulses until they can find their mates. Guarding Lucius Malfoy should have just been another such duty. But Malfoy is taking an unusually long time to find his mate.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. This should have four parts.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Three

“This must be quite different from what you imagined would happen.”

“No different from what you had to imagine, I’m sure,” Harry murmured, looking around the room that Healer Arcanus had moved them into. It was a small, bare place, or had been, but Harry had changed the color of the walls and floor to a soothing blue that he knew from past experience with transformed Veela helped calm their nerves. He hoped it would work on him, too.

There was a small table in the room, for the meals he would share in private with Lucius; a pair of beds, each with simple white sheets and a few pillows; a door that led to the bathroom and another that led to the cupboard holding clothes Harry had retrieved from his flat and Lucius had had sent over from the Manor; and a small bookshelf with the books they’d both chosen. Harry sighed and sat down heavily on the chair next to the shelf, watching Lucius approach him.

The minute they were in private, Lucius had gained enough strength to stand up for the first time since Harry had seen him, which just argued that Harry really was his mate. Seclusion was one of the Veela requirements for courting and mating, at least until the bond was strong enough that they could show their mates off in public without worrying they’d be stolen. Lucius must have relaxed and decided that no one was going to take Harry from him.

Now he knelt down in front of Harry and rested his hands on the arms of his chair. His eyes were still silvery, but sharp, considering.

“Why would my Veela nature have chosen you?” he asked.

“I don’t think people understand much of that for natural-born Veela, let alone the transformed,” Harry murmured, staring into his eyes and trying to think about the last time he had let someone who wasn’t Ron or Hermione this close. He honestly couldn’t remember. “But I can tell you my theory.”

“Please.” Lucius tipped his head to the side, a motion that Harry noticed drew attention to his collarbone and slender throat. “I love to hear you speak.”

Harry blinked, caught off-guard. It wasn’t like his voice was melting or musical. But he shrugged a second later. “I think it’s because your Veela nature has been through a shock. It’s just come into existence. A transformed Veela is caught off-guard, and searching for the one person who will make them feel most comfortable and secure. For you, that was me. I don’t know why. Perhaps just because I was there and was able to stop the pain.”

“You disappoint me.”

Harry breathed out slowly, ignoring the jolt of pain in the center of his chest from his own side of the forming bond. He should have known this was coming. Lucius was still a Malfoy, changed by the potion or not. “Oh?”

“A comfortable, secure relationship?” Lucius leaned a little nearer. “I hoped that it would be more exciting.”

Harry swallowed, and felt the edges of Veela allure touching him, like the brush of feathers, for the first time since he was fourteen. He closed his eyes, and Lucius stroked his face, tracing down along the line of his chin and jaw.

“Perhaps it still can be.” Lucius sounded almost as if he was talking to himself. “You are a wonder, Harry Potter.”

“Okay?” Harry didn’t mean his voice to come out so high-pitched, but there it was.

“But I am making you nervous.” From the sound and the feel of the allure, Lucius was standing up and backing off. “Perhaps you can come and sit close enough that we can touch, while you tell me about your last relationship.”

Harry opened his eyes and licked his lips nervously. He didn’t want to betray Ginny—

Lucius hissed at him, his wings appearing for a second and flaring out of his back.

Harry stared at him pointedly. “You aren’t in pain right now,” he said. “You just don’t like me thinking about her. And I need to think about her, and work through my own feelings, if I’m going to tell you about her.”

The very thought made him want to curl up protectively around himself, the way he would have if someone had kicked him in the groin. This was going to be—difficult.

But Lucius didn’t want to hurt him. And if he was right about the formation of the bond, then Harry would have to do something about his love for Ginny.

He’d just never thought he would have had to.

“Come, Harry.” Lucius was speaking gently, his hand extended. “Come sit with me.”

The only choice where they could sit side-by-side was one of the beds, and Harry knew it. He swallowed to contain his own nervousness and stood up, taking the hand. Beads of warmth slid up his arm and lodged themselves in his shoulder, and spread out in a long flutter that made his muscles relax.

“Wow.” Harry darted a glance at Lucius. “Is that an echo of what you felt when I touched you? That’s—really nice.”

Lucius smiled smugly and drew Harry further towards him. “Come with me.”

Harry sat down on the nearer of the two beds, and Lucius sat beside him. He leaned his face against the side of Harry’s neck and inhaled deeply, and Harry didn’t flinch. He’d expected something like this, having seen the way other Veela behaved with their mates. He expected Lucius to continue nuzzling, essentially preening, him for a time.

But instead, Lucius gave a huff and drew away. Harry blinked at him. “What?”

Lucius looked more human at the moment, his eye dark grey with frustration. “You feel nothing of the allure at all, do you?”

“I felt it a minute ago.”

“But I am projecting it as hard as I can at you, and you are not responding.”

“How terrible that you’ll have to work for it instead of me just falling into your arms int a swoon.”

That made Lucius bare his teeth. Harry bared his back. The standoff held for a moment, and then Lucius gave a soft laugh and raised his hand.

“Courting you is nothing like courting Narcissa was for me.”

Harry did his best to ignore the pain that stuttered down the center of the bond. It might have been Lucius’s pain or his, and he honestly didn’t think he could separate them at this point. “Why don’t you tell me about that?”

“If you promise me to be honest about your relationship with Weasley.”

Harry nodded and turned so that he could see Lucius’s face. “I will. Please tell me.”

Lucius nodded. He had one arm curled around the middle of Harry’s back, but he also smoothed his other hand up and down Harry’s left arm as he spoke. “All right. I noticed her first in school, and I thought she was beautiful. I also noticed that although she was soft-spoken, she could defend herself. That was something I wanted. Not someone who slunk into the shadows and told no one what she was doing.”

Harry blinked. “Is that in reference to someone specific?”

“Andromeda Tonks. She didn’t rebel against her family openly, not until after she’d married that—” Lucius paused for a long moment. “Muggleborn.”

“Thank you.” Harry didn’t think he should have to thank people for being decent, but on the other hand, it was enough of a struggle for Lucius at the moment, and he would do better with encouragement.

“I had no idea that you ever had an interest in Andromeda,” Harry added. He couldn’t picture it. Andromeda was a formidable woman, but Harry had only known her as someone who helped the Order of the Phoenix and spoke up for Muggleborns and had accepted a werewolf as a son-in-law. This shy teenager Lucius was talking about had no place in the image.

“I was looking among all the eligible young women near my age for a wife, and she was a Black. Of course I considered her.”

“Pureblood young women.”

“Yes.” Lucius paused. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

“I can let the past go,” Harry said evenly. “If you start bringing up blood purity now, or lament people who oppose it, then I’ll have to remind you that your mate is a half-blood.”

“Such a beautiful one.” Lucius turned to face him directly, lifting his hands to tilt Harry’s face back and forth. Harry was also sure that he was once again feeding the allure out, but by now, blocking it was second nature for Harry.

“My mother was still Muggleborn,” Harry said right back to him. “And she was the one who really defeated Voldemort, not me. At least the first time.”

Lucius dropped his chin as if burned. “Must you mention his name?”

“Must you pretend that my being your mate means that I’m not who I actually am?”

They stared at each other in tense silence, and then Lucius jerked his chin down. “We were—speaking of our past relationships.”

Harry would take it as the peace offering it was, for now. He had meant what he said, both about forgiving the past and about not tolerating it if Lucius thought he could somehow make Harry swallow blood purity nonsense. “If you wanted someone who stood up for herself, then I’m surprised that you didn’t court Bellatrix.”

Lucius spluttered, and then drew himself up and said with immense dignity, “I will forget that you said that.”

“I won’t. I want to know why you didn’t.”

“Even then, she was mad.” Lucius shuddered a little, and Harry felt a tug on the bond in the center of his chest. He reached out and gently stroked his hand down Lucius’s cheek. Lucius sighed and leaned against him. “Narcissa was what I was looking for. I admired her will, her determination, her beauty, and the fact that she didn’t have her head turned solely by my wealth and prestige. She’d grown up with that kind of thing herself.”

Harry just nodded. Andromeda had told him a few things about her childhood that made him doubt the “wealth” part, but it was true that genteel poverty was still a lot better than what many people in the wizarding world dealt with. “All right. How long did it take you to convince her to marry you?”

“Three months.”

Harry snorted. “Okay. And you love her still. I understand that.”

“I wanted to be with her,” Lucius said quietly. “I took the potion because I thought I would be.” He reached up to cradle Harry’s face again, with just one hand this time. “But I cannot say I regret what has come of my choices. Not truly.”

Harry felt himself flush bright red. He cleared his throat and nodded. “Thank you for telling me.”

“And your Weasley.”

Harry ignored the tone on the last name. “She was someone who had gone through some of the same things I had. Someone who knew what it was like to be possessed by that bastard, which not many people did.” He eyed the man who had been responsible for that possession.

Lucius blew air through his nostrils. “I am sorry.”

“It would mean more if you said it to her.”

“I will, if you want me to.”

Lucius looked like he was about to charge into battle. Harry nodded. “Fine.” He ignored the voice in his head, which sounded like Hermione’s, saying that Lucius would have apologized before this if he was a good person. Yes, he would have and he should have, but they were dealing with limitations and the situation as it stood, not as it should have been. “And she was beautiful, and she was brave, and bold, and a great Quidditch player.”

“That mattered to you?”

“Being a pureblood mattered to you?”

Lucius twisted his head a little. “I am well-served for having wished for someone who was determined,” he murmured. “But tell me more about your relationship with her.”

Harry sighed. “We dated for a few months at Hogwarts in my sixth year. Then I broke up with her when I went—hunting to destroy the artifacts that were keeping You-Know-Who alive.”

“I held the diary.” Lucius’s voice was soft. “I know very well what a Horcrux is, Harry.”

Harry nodded once. “Maybe I was stupid to break up with her, but I didn’t feel I could share the information about the Horcruxes with her the way I did with Ron and Hermione. And so we led our seventh years apart. She stayed at Hogwarts and was brave, while I ran around on a quest I didn’t understand half the time.”

Lucius was quiet for long moments. Then he said, “That doesn’t explain to me why you are still stuck on her now. A few months’ relationship when you were sixteen…”

“We got back together after the war, of course. She was a heroine in her own right, and she knew exactly what she wanted to do.”

“Play Quidditch for the Holyhead Harpies.”

“I didn’t sneer about Narcissa, Lucius. I’m going to ask you not to sneer about Ginny.”

After long moments, Harry more felt than saw Lucius nod his head. Harry nodded back. “She wanted to do what she wanted to do because she wanted it. I wanted to be an Auror, but that was something I felt as if I had to do, because all I’d really known was chasing Dark wizards. I didn’t make the decision on my own. I had it made for me because of my history, you could say. She had that will I wanted to have.”

“So you admired her.”

“Yes. And she was one of the few people who didn’t go after me for my fame and my wealth, not when she’d known me since she was ten years old. A lot like the traits that you valued in Narcissa. She was honest, and she accepted it when I told her I liked men as well.”

“Ah. I had been wondering why you seemed so accepting of a male mate.”

Harry shrugged a little. “I haven’t seen the Veela bond work yet to mate two utterly incompatible people. Of course, I’ve only worked with transformed Veela, not the ones who were born that way.”

Lucius touched his arm in a caress, and something that might have been the allure floated around Harry again. “Tell me more about why you feel you cannot love someone else.”

Harry faced Lucius. He had to say this in such a way that it wouldn’t hurt Lucius or feel like a rejection, and yet still in a way that acknowledged the reality which lay between them.

“She was honest until the end. She told me when she fell in love with someone else—suddenly, passionately. That’s just the way she is.” Harry clenched his hand in the sheets for a moment, ignoring the way that Lucius reached towards it and then stopped, as if he would prefer that Harry was touching him. “Combine that with the way she didn’t care about my fame and the way she knew me from the inside out, and where am I going to find someone like that again? I don’t deserve her, I know that, but—”

Lucius gave a displeased snarl, his eyes locked on Harry. Harry blinked and shut up. Lucius bent towards him, his eyes glowing with the silvery sheen that meant he was going full Veela.

“Please do not talk to me again about you not deserving Weasley,” Lucius murmured. “I am not pleased to hear you telling me that my magic somehow chose a mate with something inferior about him.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “It’s more about Ginny’s superiority than my inferiority.”

“Have you tried to find someone else who would not care about your fame? Have you sought out one of the multitude of honest, determined people who exist in the world?”

“No. I was hoping Ginny would change her mind.”

Lucius gave him a light shake. “Have you dated anyone in the years since her?”

“No.”

Lucius’s face went oddly blank, while the bond in Harry’s chest tugged again. “Have you shared a bed with anyone since her?”

Harry’s face burned for a second. “No.”

Lucius stared at him in incredulous disdain, and then closed his eyes. “Well, at least I need not worry about you being faithful,” he muttered.

“I’ll be faithful to you because it’s what you need,” Harry said instantly. “No, you don’t have to worry about that.”

“The transformation opened new corridors in my mind for my thoughts to rush down,” Lucius murmured. “I did not wish to use them, because that would mean fully accepting the transformation and my role in it. But now…”

He tilted Harry’s head up with the slight pressure of his fingers, and Harry caught his breath again. The silvery sheen had given way to a deeper, brighter grey, blending the best of the human and Veela colors.

Harry had never thought to himself before that Lucius Malfoy was beautiful, but now, he could see it.

“This bond is also about what you need,” Lucius murmured. “And I think that is not to keep hoping and waiting for the return of a woman who chose someone else.”

Harry opened his mouth to object to that characterization of Ginny—it made it sound like she was at fault—and Lucius kissed him.

The sensation started out like a buzz on his lips, and then traveled up through his throat and towards the heart of him. Harry caught his breath, and found himself floating. His head spun. Warmth wrapped around him, and the soft song he had heard rising up from around Lucius once before curled into his bones.

He lifted his hands and cupped Lucius’s cheeks. Lucius might have laughed, but if so, it wasn’t enough to disturb the perfect heat of the kiss between them. He bore Harry gently backwards, and Harry went with it, because—

Lucius knew what he needed, even if that was because of the bond blossoming between them rather than because he was a naturally empathetic person. He wouldn’t press Harry further than he was ready for, or into a situation that he wasn’t ready for.

Harry landed on soft sheets, and Lucius moved so that he was arched over Harry, not straddling him. Harry had the tumbling thought that this position must be awfully hard on his mate’s neck, and then Lucius kissed him hard enough to chase the thought away. Lucius’s hand was on Harry’s thigh, gently massaging, making him shift and raise his hips.

He didn’t know what he wanted. Not a touch to the cock, not yet, but something else.

Lucius found it, letting his hand rest between Harry’s thighs without moving higher. Harry caught his breath. The sensations that danced through him burned like heat lightning, and he didn’t think it was all the bond.

It was five years since he’d had sex. It was—there weren’t words for the reawakening of his pleasure, like a limb that had gone numb so long ago he’d got used to walking without it.

Lucius drew back at last, staring down at him. Harry panted, staring upwards. Lucius touched his cheek, the side of his neck, his thigh again, and said, “I think that you needed this even more than I thought.”

Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t feel the sense of betrayal that he’d assumed he would if he ever kissed someone other than Ginny. Was that strange?

Or was it that he never would have felt the sense of betrayal all that keenly, but his years of telling himself that he would had convinced him?

“Have you spoken with Weasley in the last five years?” Lucius’s hand moved slowly, hypnotically, down his side.

Harry swallowed and shook his head. “She didn’t want to.”

“Then I am not surprised that you froze the past into an idealized image, and that your pining was stronger than your reality.”

Harry lay there, quiet, thinking about it. Then he said, “But there must have been some truth about that—I mean, that I was really in love with her and couldn’t love someone else. Or why would I have been able to resist the Veela allure and help people transformed by the potion?”

“I seem to remember that I saw you resist an Imperius Curse cast by the Dark Lord himself. Your incredible will, and your commitment to helping people, could have had nothing to do with it?”

Harry blinked. “I didn’t think that, because strong-willed people still succumb to Veela allure.”

“And strong-willed people still succumb to the Imperius Curse.” Lucius’s gaze was more than satisfied as he ran it down Harry’s body. “The strength of his will is only one more thing that is extraordinary about my mate.”

Harry blinked, then laughed. “You don’t have to sound as though you’re solely responsible for it.”

“I am not, but I am responsible for appreciating you as you should be appreciated.”

Lucius leaned in and would have claimed another kiss, but Harry managed to raise his hand and stop him. Lucius’s tongue licked out to touch his palm, of course, and Harry shuddered in response, but kept his voice from turning too breathy. “Have you thought about how your family’s going to react to this?”

“Narcissa, unfortunately, is no longer my family.”

Harry caught his breath through the jealousy that heated his belly for a second, and said, “But Draco?”

“Draco will accept it because I am happy and this happened long after his mother and I parted.”

Harry wasn’t so sure about that, but he did think that Draco was probably going to be more upset about Lucius’s choice of mate than the fact that he had one.

“And yours?”

Harry shifted a little harder into Lucius, for the acceptance that the Weasleys were his family. “Hermione will be happy that I’m finally moving on from Ginny, I think. She’s buried me for years in psychological literature about how it’s unhealthy to stay caught up in a crush for too long. Ron and the others are going to have a harder time. They still hate Malfoys.”

Lucius snorted. “We have done nothing to them since the war.”

“But you did plenty before it,” Harry said dryly. “And I didn’t say they would hate you forever. Just that they had reason to think of it in different terms.”

“I will go with you to meet them or stay behind you, as you decree,” Lucius said. “But I will not tolerate them hurting you.”

“They wouldn’t beat me up or curse me. Don’t be ridiculous.”

“I meant emotionally, and you well know it.”

Harry sighed. “But you can’t protect me from that forever or in all ways. Can you accept that? Because things will be more than awkward if you can’t.”

“Yes. But the harm that I can guard you from, I will.”

Harry kissed the center of Lucius’s hand that rested on his shoulder, and sat up. He kept his eyes closed, although he knew that wouldn’t prevent Lucius from feeling what he was down the bond.

His life was cracking, falling to pieces around him. He had always imagined it would if and when he finally began to think that Ginny was never coming back to him and he might be with someone else.

But strangely, the cracking and falling to pieces felt as if it was the process of hatching from an egg, not crumbling like stone.

He—might be all right. He’d heard words spoken against Ginny, and he hadn’t flown into an immediate rage. He’d been accused of idealizing the past, and he’d accepted and considered those words on their own merits instead of denying them.

He had been kissed by someone else, and it had felt good.

The world might be all right.

“More than all right,” Lucius breathed into his ear.

Harry leaned against him, and went on hatching.