lomonaaeren

Chapter Twenty-Nine.

Title: Veela-Struck (30/34)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco (past Harry/OMC)
Rating: R
Warnings: Rape (past, but described and depicted in flashbacks), violence, creature!fic (Veela Draco), profanity, sex, deep angst. This assumes the epilogue does not exist.
Summary: Veela don’t have destined mates, and thank Merlin for that. Draco wants to date Harry Potter because Harry is one of the few people in the wizarding world who treats him decently. But when Harry refuses, with his refusal focused on Draco’s creature blood, Draco sets out on a different journey than he ever expected.
Author’s Notes: This story is very angsty, and deals with issues of consent. Please think carefully before reading it.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty—Flayed

Harry was still cursing himself for having allowed Parkinson to creep up on him. It was true, he hadn’t been looking for someone who was also under an Invisibility Cloak, and he had been focused on Draco, wondering if he would have to intervene and rescue Russell from himself.

And he had been focused, too, on comparing Russell to Laurent in his head, finding the similarities and the differences, and willing himself to stand there instead of run away.

But now Parkinson had her wand under the snake, and Harry was standing still because that was what Auror training dictated in these situations: calmness to put your captors off-guard, until you could understand what they wanted, their weaknesses, and the best way to throw them.

When Draco began to transform, though, Harry understood that he might not have much choice about acting.

Draco half-fell to the ground. Harry’s gaze immediately snapped to Russell, his first thought that the bastard might have cast something at his Draco. But Russell’s mouth was open, his eyes as protruding as Luna Lovegood’s, and one hand had risen as though to hold away the impact of the change.

Harry looked back in time to see the white blaze spared around Draco, riding the edges of his spreading wings, ruffling the feathers into the sharp brilliance of scales. At the same moment, his face rippled and erupted, growing a long beak, and talons replaced his hands. Yes, the fingernails were claws, but hard scales also raced up his arms, crooking his hands into weapons and guarding his skin from danger. Close white flaps cloaked the rest of his body, shredding his clothes aside; Harry wasn’t actually sure if they were feathers or scales.

The most horrifying thing, perhaps, was that, even transformed like that, Draco was stunningly beautiful. More beautiful than he had been when he looked human. More beautiful than Laurent. More beautiful than the wizards and witches Harry had seen trying to spare their lives with Enhanced Glamour Charms during his years as an Auror, mostly by charming the ones hunting them.

The air around Draco wavered as if it was made of heated glass. A continual low trill accompanied him, rather like the white light. He stalked forwards, half-standing and half-supporting himself with his slowly beating wings, and he was more beautiful than death.

Parkinson stood absolutely still. Harry whirled away from her without a problem and then cast Incarcerous on her, so that she fell over, bound. Not even that disrupted her trance or the way her gaze stayed locked on Draco, Harry saw, with a mixture of disgust and fear.

He turned in time to catch Russell’s Stunner on his Shield Charm. The Stunner ricocheted off into the air, and Russell ran forwards to meet him, face pale. Maybe he was more resistant to Draco’s charms than Parkinson was because of his Veela heritage, Harry thought, whether or not he expressed it.

“Stop!” Harry shouted at him. “He’s going to kill Parkinson if we don’t stop him!”

“Tell me what you know about Laurent, and I’ll stop,” Russell retorted, hurling an Earth-Popping Curse that tore open small explosions of dirt and grass at Harry’s feet.

Harry swore and sneaked one glance over his shoulder. Parkinson lay flat, staring dreamily upwards, and Draco hunched over her, wings working open and then shut again. The white glare and the music were both diminished. Harry didn’t have any hope that that was because Draco had turned human again, though. It was because he was focusing all his efforts on one particular victim.

If Draco harmed her…

Harry knew more now, after studying those books Draco had gifted him with, about what Veela were capable of when pushed far enough to transform.

If he could have, he would have broken away from the fight with Russell and gone to Draco. His chosen’s presence would help calm and soothe him. It might spare Parkinson’s life. But he was locked into this stupid fight instead.

Harry threw a vicious Stunner, hoping that would hit Russell and end the conflict. But Russell darted aside, with a smug grin, and then whirled Harry into the chaos of a duel, using more and more spells that verged closer and closer to Dark Arts.

Grimly, Harry made his decision. Draco might kill Parkinson, but Russell would almost certainly kill one of them, either Harry or Draco, if Harry turned his back. He had to deal with Russell first, and hope that Draco wanted to take his time and play with Parkinson, the way most books about Veela said he would.

I hate this, knowing I might be the instrument of someone’s death.

Harry gritted his teeth, forced himself to remember that Parkinson and Russell had been the ones who decided to push for information about Laurent instead of leaving well enough alone—who had been stupid enough to assault a Veela’s chosen near the Blazing Season—and went into battle.

*

She had tried to hurt his chosen. Draco knew that, and it was the only thing he wanted or needed to know. His chosen was away from her now, and safe. Draco would have known in an instant if he was wounded or dying, so that had to mean he was safe.

She lay on the ground, staring up at him. Draco crouched over her and spread his wings, while using his claws to cut the ropes that bound her arms. She shivered dreamily and reached out as if she would stroke the edge of his left wing. Draco moved it away, though he kept it near enough, tantalizingly so, that she continued to reach. No one but his chosen was going to touch his wings, but almost letting her do so put her arm in the perfect position.

“I’ll teach you a lesson,” he said. He didn’t recognize his own voice, wouldn’t have known it for his own except that he felt the thrum of it in his mouth and chest. He felt highly disconnected from his body, from everything except his intentions. “You don’t threaten my chosen.”

“Hmmm,” she agreed mindlessly, still reaching. She felt what he wanted her to feel, and right now that was incoherent desire.

That would change soon.

Draco lowered his claws delicately towards her arm, watching her face so that he could judge the depth of her enchantment. She didn’t blink, and her gaze stayed fixed on the white light Draco knew reflected from his wings. He clacked his beak in satisfaction and drew his claws along her arm.

Her skin slid off in neat layers, sifting down like plaster knocked from a wall. The blood that followed was a smaller amount than a knife of the same size would have caused. Draco cocked his head, admiring his own skill. He had never done this before, but that didn’t matter.

A Veela’s claws were made for caressing his chosen, for holding him close, for defending him. And they were delicate tools that could flay an enemy.

She gave a little gasp now and stared up at him with eyes welling with tears. Draco could see the struggle in her face, as conscious thought tried to surface enough to tell her what the cause of the pain was. He lifted the music that tingled around him, and once again her face smoothed out, consciousness lapsing. She reached for his wings again, only moaning like a child who had fallen and skinned her knee.

Draco would keep her like that all through the flaying, tilting back and forth between realization of pain and enslavement in his thrall, only letting her come fully back to herself when he had removed all the skin on both arms.

With precision, with the desire to protect foremost in his mind, with delight in her pain, Draco began to remove another layer of skin.

*

Russell had trained as a formal duelist, that was certain. Harry had already rolled aside from Transfiguration spells, dodged curses that would have ruptured his head from the inside or deprived him of sight or hearing, and used his shields to batter back the storms of knives and rocks and lightning that Russell tried to release on him. He could never manage to take the offensive, because he was worried about hurting Russell and he knew Russell wasn’t concerned at all about hurting him.

And all the while, Draco was torturing Parkinson behind him. Harry could make out muffled sobs and cries of pain, all of which faded again, so he was probably keeping her under with the thrall.

If this goes on much longer, then I’m going to be responsible for any guilt that Draco might feel, and I’m going to be responsible for someone else being hurt by a Veela.

That thought delved into Harry’s head and finally made him frantic enough to use a Dark Arts spell of his own. “Rapio!” he bellowed, and jerked his wand in the expected direction, up and to the side, so hard that he nearly lost his grip.

Russell shrieked as his legs went out from under him and the spell rolled him neatly into a ball, dropping him into an invisible box or cage that would prevent him from unwinding at all from a highly uncomfortable position. Harry only waited long enough to be sure that it had truly caught him before he had turned and was running towards Draco and Parkinson.

Parkinson offered up another little sob. Draco’s white light and music tilted—Harry wasn’t sure how else to describe it—and Harry thought that meant he was pleased by the effect he was having on her. Harry grimaced and flung himself the last small distance, landing so that he knelt beside Parkinson, in the shadow of Draco’s wings.

Parkinson’s right arm was a bloody mess. Harry could see the outlines of muscle, bone, and tendon, and could also see the expression on her face, which was one of drunken, dazed pleasure.

I can’t let him do this. Harry turned to face Draco, moving so that Draco’s eyes—directed towards Parkinson—would have no choice but to focus on him. If he sees me, maybe he’ll care more about my presence than about hers.

*

Draco was pleased with his progress. He had stripped all the skin from one of her arms, and next he would begin on her shoulder. Then there would be the neck, the breasts, and the other arm. He wasn’t entirely sure if he would proceed to her face or her legs next. Probably the legs, since he wanted to leave her eyes undamaged enough to see what he was doing to her when he chose to release her from the thrall.

A movement behind him startled him, but it wasn’t repeated. Draco started to return to his work.

The next moment, his chosen was kneeling beside him, reaching out one hand as though to touch his wing. Draco tilted his head back, warbled in glad surprise, and held out his bloody talons. They couldn’t harm Harry, of course, and he hoped Harry would excuse their state at the moment and accept their touch.

Harry flinched a little, but didn’t move away when the talons landed on his shoulder. Draco didn’t like the flinch, though, and moved closer to him, releasing her without care. His thrall would keep her in place more effectively than any chains while he tended to the needs of his chosen.

“Draco,” Harry said, his voice richer to Draco than his own music. “Please don’t do this.”

Draco blinked and tilted his head. The words were pleasant for him to hear, but they made no sense. How could he not take vengeance on someone who had hurt his chosen the way she had hurt Harry? Or perhaps Harry was objecting to being greeted with blood. Draco quickly clenched his talon and shook it so that the blood flew away, then offered it again.

“You’re going to wake up afterwards and feel sorry for torturing her,” Harry said quietly, never moving. He didn’t look at Draco’s newly cleaned talon, either, which Draco allowed himself to feel a shiver of indignation for. “Please believe me. Torture doesn’t help anything. I thought about torturing Laurent, too, but I was a better person for not doing it.”

Oh. That was his argument. Draco leaned back on his heels and carefully rearranged his face so that he could talk. He didn’t need his beak until the end, when he would pluck her eyes out with it.

“I’m not you,” he told Harry. “I’m not the same person, with the same instincts. The only reason I would regret this after I ‘wake up’ is because I haven’t hurt her enough.”

Harry shivered, and then shook his head. “This isn’t you, Draco,” he said, though his tone of desperate reason had begun to falter a bit. “You don’t hurt people for no reason.”

Draco stretched his wings and moved forwards. Harry was on his back in moments, just like her, with Draco hovering over him. Draco had no malicious intent this time, but he wasn’t about to let even his chosen get away with a statement like that.

“It isn’t for no reason,” he said. “She would have hurt you.” He took a moment to check that the snake was still around Harry’s neck, but it did little good, when he could imagine her wand stabbing Harry easily beneath it. He fought back the ringing scream that wanted to rise up his throat. This close to Harry, all it would do was deafen his chosen, not proclaim his ownership of Harry in the way he wanted to do. “I can never hurt her enough for that, but when she dies with the skin stripped off her body, then I will have come as close as I can.”

Harry stared up at him with a look of horror. Draco crooned and fought to keep from reaching out with his allure, which could soothe Harry and take that emotion away that must be as uncomfortable for him to feel as it was for Draco to see it.

“You’re mine,” Draco said, deciding that it would be best to explain it in simple words and without reference to blood. “If someone hurts you, that person has to die. That’s all.”

*

Harry came as close as he ever would to kicking Draco away from him and running off. He couldn’t, he couldn’t love someone who would torture like this.

And then he told himself not to be stupid. Draco was still Draco, and Harry had always known that he had the Veela instincts and thus this potential for violence, and he had accepted him anyway. Running away now was tantamount to declaring that he had never loved Draco in the first place.

Besides, how easily things could have gone the other way when he confronted Laurent. Harry’s principles had barely won the struggle against his rage.

Would Draco have been right to declare that he could never love Harry, that no one could ever love him, if Harry had broken and killed or tortured Laurent?

His rage was kindred to Draco’s rage. Harry sighed out and reached up to stroke Draco’s cheek, concentrating hard on the strange feeling of sharp feathers and soft skin under his fingers to keep from panicking. A Veela is looming over me.

But Laurent had never transformed this far, and that helped. Harry’s voice was only a little shaky when he said, “I understand. But I would prefer it if you didn’t hurt her anymore. Taking all the skin off one arm is enough, isn’t it?”

Draco lowered his head further and stared into Harry’s eyes from so close that panic set Harry on fire. He never knew how he managed to ride through it and keep lying still, to let Draco look at him. Maybe the same way that he ridden through his desire to kill when he had first come out of Laurent’s thrall.

Everything seems determined to remind me of those memories today, Harry thought, and felt his belly fluttering. He really, really hoped that he wouldn’t vomit into Draco’s face.

“You’re asking me?” Draco whispered. “You’re asking me to make you this gift because it’s near the Blazing Season and you’re my chosen?”

“Yes,” Harry said, and hoped that this would work out. He really had no idea what he was doing. He wouldn’t have known what to do in a normal situation like this, with an infuriated lover protecting him, and the Veela instincts made everything more complicated. “Yes, please.”

“Then I can do that,” Draco said, and gave him a smile that was truly disturbing in how much it dazzled Harry. He shouldn’t be that beautiful, he really shouldn’t, Harry thought, in his transformed state. At least he’d got rid of the beak. “I can do that happily. Come here, Harry.”

He reared back up, holding Harry in his arms, pulling him along. Harry gritted his teeth and fought another battle, this time not to lash out and stand on his own. Draco’s arms around his waist and shoulders were strong, sure. Harry knew Draco wasn’t about to let him drop, but also not about to let him go, and fighting would make it worse.

So Harry relaxed by main force and leaned his head back against Draco’s shoulder as Draco set him gently on his feet. He felt the rasp of feathers and scales against his cheek as Draco dug his nose into the crook between Harry’s neck and shoulder and sniffed.

“You smell so good,” Draco moaned, and the words, as much as anything else, set Harry’s face on fire again. They were so…unabashed. Draco didn’t seem to care that they were standing in the middle of a field with Parkinson there, even if she was under thrall, and Russell possibly watching them, although the spell was probably keeping him too compressed to pay much attention to anything but the thunder of his heart. “Mine.”

I can endure this. Harry reached back and smoothed his hand gently along Draco’s arm, reminding himself again that he had known this could happen, and that it wouldn’t have if he’d been more alert and considered for one minute that someone else could have an Invisibility Cloak. I really can. “Yours,” he responded, softly.

Draco crooned again, and one of his hands brushed across Harry’s groin. Harry groaned, and Draco responded with a croon that went deeper this time, rattling his bones, rousing the dormant arousal that curled through his veins.

I want him.

Harry wondered for a minute how much of this was real lust and how much was induced by the Veela thrall, and then remembered that he had been as immune to Draco’s light and song as Russell had seemed. He couldn’t completely let go and enjoy it, because he was keeping their audience in mind—an audience they had questions to ask—but he thought he could relax about being influenced in that way, at least.

He opened his eyes and studied Draco’s face bent over him, mostly human, but made pale here and there by the touch of those feathers, gracefully backed by the sweep of his great wings, and his eyes, silvery and dazzling. A realization hit Harry so hard that it made him sway. Perhaps he would have fallen if Draco hadn’t been there to hold him up.

I want him even like this, even knowing what he just did, what he might do.

Draco bent further over him, as if he could sense that, and moved his wings forwards, enclosing Harry in a fluttering, feathery tent. Like being in a grove of silvery leaves, Harry thought, and once again swallowed panic. He reached out, without thinking about it, and trailed his finger down the edge of the nearest wing.

Draco jerked, and Harry pulled his hand back hastily, opening his mouth to give an apology. His daze had begun to fade. He wouldn’t have done that in an ordinary mood; he would have considered that it might be painful for Draco or at least touch a sensitive spot. He shouldn’t have—

Draco locked his lips on Harry’s and acted as if he wanted to suck his soul out of his mouth. Harry shuddered and thought he knew now how Draco had felt when Harry touched his wing.

“Mine,” Draco said as he moved his head back. “Want.” He reached out with one bloody claw and sliced Harry’s shirt back as if he was unpeeling an apple with a knife.

Harry blessed the daze that still half-enclosed him; it helped him not to think about Draco flaying him the way he had flayed Parkinson. “Not yet,” he whispered. “I don’t want to do this in the open, right now.”

Draco drew back and looked at him doubtfully. His eyes had taken on a steady shimmer which Harry found fascinating to look at. Draco seemed to sense that, because he gave an entirely new, predatory smile and stepped forwards, driving his knee between Harry’s legs.

Harry gasped, and his world spiraled down and collapsed in new directions. He reached out to steady himself with his hands on Draco’s shoulders, and found that Draco had ducked and come smoothly up again, so that Harry’s hands dropped onto his wings instead.

This time, Harry could feel what Draco felt, the sweet shock that ran through him like someone filling his blood with sugar, and the irresistible urge to fuck that followed that, surging back up from his belly, out through his wings, and into another body. Harry was at once Draco and himself, at once the one experiencing the touch and the one touching, and he didn’t know how to make sense of the sensations except to whine and press closer.

Draco finished shredding his shirt off and lowered him to the ground, spreading his wings out so that Harry was sheltered fully from both the sun and everyone else’s sight. The light came through to them in a silvery haze because of the overlapping feather-scales. Harry gasped and blinked, and Draco whispered soothing nonsense words and reached for his trousers.

Merlin knew what would have happened if Harry hadn’t heard the sharp pop at that moment which signaled the end of the spell he’d used on Russell.

He pushed up against Draco, who was now kneeling between his legs and caressing his groin with the edge of one wing. Draco caught his wrists and held them easily, smiling at him. “Hush, Harry,” he said, voice deep and musical. “We’ll be there in a moment.” He bent, arching his neck farther than Harry would have thought he could, and licked a stripe across Harry’s stomach, not that far from his cock.

Harry was grateful for his self-control then, because it made him able to writhe for a moment only before he regretfully shook his head. “I love you,” he whispered. “I want you. But soon—” and he could only describe the impulse that made him say this as pure inspiration “—Russell du Michel and Pansy Parkinson are going to be standing up and trying to look at me.”

*

Draco reared back, the lust in his mind dissipating as fury like sunlight burned through it.

He couldn’t allow anyone else to see his Harry. He couldn’t allow anyone else to touch his Harry.

And if either Pansy or Russell saw Harry the way he looked now—half-naked, lying on the ground, staring up with bright eyes and parted, swollen lips and swollen cock—they would try.

Draco stood up, pulled Harry into his arms, wrapped his wings around Harry’s chest so that his chosen would have the dignity of a covering without a shirt, and then waggled one wing in the direction of Russell, who was getting back to his feet, shaking his head.

In a moment, Russell was off his feet and lying on the ground again as brilliant flashes of blue-green fire chased themselves over his skin. Draco smirked and faced Pansy. Another wing-waggle tied her down with more fire, though he didn’t think she would be coming out of the trance any time soon.

Then he turned back to Harry. A Harry standing quietly within the embrace of his wings and not complaining. A Harry who was glorious and trusting and not recoiling or turning his face away because Draco had flayed the skin off Pansy’s arm.

“This is what I am,” Draco said. “Can you live with that?”

He didn’t say any more, because Harry should know what he meant perfectly well, and Harry would either accept it or not.

Harry turned his head and thoughtfully surveyed the bloody ruin of Pansy’s arm. Then he looked back up at Draco again and seemed to silently absorb the changes Draco knew had occurred in his own body: the full talons, the wings, the feathers and scales and things in between that were both littered across his skin.

Harry kissed him and said, “At the moment, I’m more concerned about how they discovered I was here and hiding under an Invisibility Cloak.”

Draco tugged him closer and rubbed his cock against Harry’s leg for a moment. He couldn’t have done anything else. Harry tensed, but didn’t move away, and then began working the tension out of his muscles with a series of individual sharp shakes.

“Good,” Draco whispered. “Good. We’ll get answers to that and other questions before we take them to the Aurors.”

He could feel the ragged strips of his shirt and robes against his wings, the tackiness of drying blood on his talons, and the still-present rage and fear butting against the back of his mind. But none of that meant anything next to Harry’s weight and warmth, or the quiet way he stood close.

He can be right next to me and not want to back away. He can look at the worst I’ll do in defense of my chosen and not tell me that I’m a horrible person.

He’s mine.

Draco gave in to temptation one more time and wrapped his wings around Harry from hair to boots, cradling him, keeping him safe from the world.

Harry went pale, and exhaled hard.

But he didn’t move away.