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lomonaaerenSecond part of a long one-shot.
Harry felt as though someone had shoved him out of a cellar where he’d spent most of his life and into sunlight. But they hadn’t given him any advice about the sunlight, how to survive it. It had simply happened, and he had to flail around for himself—
But Malfoy said no flailing would be allowed—
And discover the truth—
But Malfoy seemed determined that he would be an integral part of Harry’s discovery of the truth, whether or not Harry wanted him to be.
Harry took a deep breath and shut his eyes. At the moment, held so close by Malfoy and prevented from moving further off by Malfoy’s wings, it was the only privacy he had. He could almost feel Malfoy’s stare sharpening, trying to pierce through the fragile barrier of skin and veins that hid Harry’s thoughts.
But he didn’t object, which gave Harry the first chance he’d had to think his own thoughts without having someone—one of his friends, one of the Order, a trainee, Malfoy—interrupt them.
And a thought that was so unaccustomed Harry almost killed it as the first sign of Legilimency wormed out of hiding and waved an embarrassed limb at him.
Maybe…maybe it wasn’t a sign of weakness or a horrible fault that Harry felt so tired and wanted to surrender. Maybe, sometimes, surrender was inevitable. He wouldn’t fail anyone if he gave in to Malfoy. Voldemort was dead. The wizarding world needed helping hands, but there was no reason that he needed to be the most important person in the rebuilding. He could vanish into the help, become less important and more anonymous than he had been.
Harry bit his lip. He had assumed, without thinking, that of course he needed to get away from Malfoy. It was what his friends wanted. It was necessary to give Malfoy a real choice; he would wake up sooner or later and disdain Harry, no matter what he thought right now. It would give Harry time to recover.
But if Malfoy was here to stay, could he live with that?
Yes. He had lived with harder things before, including the knowledge that he had to die and, lately, the knowledge that he hadn’t died. Maybe he could endure this, maybe it wasn’t harder than a death sentence.
And maybe, if he treated Malfoy as though he was serious and wanted to be Harry’s anchor for however long he would be around, then he would manage to do more than endure. He might manage to live.
He opened his eyes and nodded. “All right. For the next few months, we’ll take it as read that I’m staying with you,” Malfoy’s eyes brightened with an emotion that made Harry embarrassed on his behalf, and he looked away, coughing. “But there’s something I want to ask of you.”
“You’ve never done that except when I forced you to.” Malfoy’s voice was breathless. His hands roamed over the back of Harry’s head now and cupped it, as though there were a lot of hard floors and walls that he needed cushioning from in the near future. “You can’t think how happy I’ll be to do anything you ask of me.”
“Silence,” Harry said.
Malfoy blinked at him, but said nothing. Harry stared back, and realized why a moment later.
A soft, warm blow seemed to hit him in the belly. He bit his lip and tried to resist the temptation to moan. It made no sense to him, he had never thought he was the sort of person who would rejoice in having the power to command others—
Which is of course why you made such a horrible leader.
Harry discarded the notion impatiently. He didn’t think, now, that most of what he had learned about himself during the war was worth anything. He hadn’t had the time for joy and pleasure, much less the time for the moral dilemmas that would have cropped up if he had recognized things like this about himself and his own desires.
But now, it was the beginning of something new and he could look at Malfoy’s closed mouth and blinking eyes and acknowledge that it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
“I want you to speak as little as you can,” Harry said. “Come with me, be with me, but leave me silent for thinking. If I stop talking, don’t press me. Of course, sometimes you’ll have to speak to me, I know,” he added generously, thinking of the way that Malfoy tended to forbid him from moving too far away and nag him to eat. “But unless it’s your Veela instincts driving you to, I want silence.”
“Yes,” Malfoy said. He looked entranced, stroking his claws down Harry’s face. It was like being petted by a wildcat, and Harry only kept his eyes from moving sideways with supreme effort. “Can I ask why?”
“Because I have to find myself in you, and I have to find myself apart from you,” Harry said. “Both, if the world’s going to make any sense. Both, if I live the way I want to and the way I have to. All right?”
Malfoy’s tongue flickered out to curl around Harry’s fingers, and he nodded in silent assent.
*
They went flying.
They had mated on the wing already, of course, and Draco thought he would hold the memory all the more precious now that Harry seemed less inclined to crawl into his arms and yield to Draco’s hands on his cock.
But then again, Harry was less yielding about everything lately. Granger and the Weasel had come to him with some new plot to free him from Draco’s “unfair domination.” He had dismissed them with harsh words and a few glares that Draco wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of, and then spent the next hour sitting in Draco’s arms and scowling at the wall. Draco had licked his neck and said nothing, well-pleased. His beloved standing up for him and their right to remain together were worth all the words that he could pour out in pleading or in defense.
Later that night, Granger had knocked on their door, and Harry had turned around at once. Draco had tightened his arms around his waist, and although Harry had shot him one irritated look, he hadn’t tried to move away. He’d given the command to enter, instead, and Granger had come in and stood looking at him helplessly, as though he squatted on the other side of a huge gulf.
Draco ducked his head to be safe from any charge of annoying Granger on purpose and rolled his eyes. As though they couldn’t have Harry back the minute they stopped trying to act as if the time in the dungeons hadn’t changed him.
The minute they stopped trying to act as though he didn’t belong to a Veela, or shouldn’t belong to one.
“You won’t try to get free of him?” Granger asked Harry, as though Draco wasn’t there. But no matter what her words lied, her eyes told the truth. They focused on Draco’s face and then darted away as though she had never seen anything more disgusting.
Draco knew how beautiful he was, knew how beautiful Harry was in his arms. She was welcome to look, anyone was, as long as they didn’t look with desire. Draco spread his wings wider and smiled at Granger.
“Not now,” Harry said. His voice was tired, but he smiled at Granger and put out his hand. Draco cupped his arm with the edge of a wing. He could put up with it if Harry wanted to touch his friend, though it strained his patience, but he would make sure that he was touching him at the same time.
“I know you’re trying to help, Hermione,” Harry whispered. “But I think—I think this is going to stay, just like the way he changed my scar. It would be better to get used to it than to spend all my time whining about how it’s not fair and how I want things to change.”
“You’ve never whined,” Granger whispered. Tears shone in her eyes, and Draco cocked his head to the side, seeing her friendship for the pure, strong thing it was, despite all the missteps along the way—missteps that he would have thought strong enough to destroy any friendship, at least if Harry’s friendships were like his own. “Well. Except during fifth year, but that was Voldemort in your head.”
Harry gave her a tired smile. “Right. Well, he’s gone now, and I want to deal with that. I’ll be all right,” he added when she looked at him doubtfully. “I don’t think Malfoy will let me come to harm.”
“At least when he’s not the one hurting you.” Granger gave Draco another steely look. Draco purred at her and lifted his wings so that they formed a gleaming silver barrier between her and Harry. Now she wouldn’t be able to touch him even if she wanted to.
“I think we’ve settled that,” Harry said. “Well. I think so. I don’t believe he always has control of his claws.”
Granger snickered, and Draco wanted to rise and fly at her, but Harry was in his arms, and placed a restraining hand on his elbow. Draco turned his head and let his nose fill with the scent of Harry’s blood in the vein, warm under the surface of his skin.
“Fine,” Granger said. “I’ll tell Ron what you said, and maybe he can finally stop mourning for his best friend being stolen by a monster.” She paused and stared into Harry’s eyes hard enough to make him wince and shift, as though he would get up. Draco closed his claws gently on Harry’s hip to suggest what a bad idea that would be, and Harry settled down again, although he glared at Draco. “But if you ever change your mind,” Granger continued softly, “if you ever need help, then let us know. Okay?”
Draco snarled. He found the way that Granger ignored him—with both eyes and words, this time—insulting. As though he wouldn’t know any plan that Harry made to leave him almost before he made it, and would stop it!
Harry ignored him, too, squeezing Granger’s hand hard enough to make her knuckles pop. “Thanks, Hermione. I’ll remember that. Always.”
Granger turned and walked away, even the lines of her arse humiliating. Draco knocked Harry on the bed and whispered soft words to him, heated words, angry words, slicing through the cloth over his groin and taking him in hand. Harry panted into his face, and came after a few strokes, arching his back in a way that made Draco come without any provocation.
No, he would never let Harry go.
And they went flying in much the same mood, in much the same silence.
Harry leaned on his broom, his eyes aimed forwards as though he would find the path in the clouds to the land where he could shed his troubles. Draco circled beside him, wings spread so wide that he could shelter Harry with them most of the times he circled past him. Harry had ceased to hunch and scowl at him for the circling after a few passes. He only swooped and dodged on his broom, with the same grace as always but a distinct lack of the same enthusiasm, his face set.
Draco watched him and said nothing, because that was what Harry had asked for. The silence was a less severe penance than he had thought it would be. It left him more time to study Harry’s face and wonder about the clench of his jaw, the way his fingers shifted on the wood of the broom shaft, the twitch of muscles in his thighs. He needed to know everything about Harry, and he knew so little as yet.
And it left him time to lift his head and look about him, to the sides, to notice the boiling shapes of the clouds and the tears in the grey where the sunlight and the blue came down. He flew more gracefully than he had as a human, more surely, without needing to fear that the magic that bore him up would fail. His would never fail as long as he had the closeness of his beloved.
In many ways, he was faster, stronger, better as a Veela than he had been as a human. He didn’t know if he was smarter; he hadn’t had the chance to find out yet, with so much of his attention bent to courting a reluctant beloved. But he couldn’t say that he was entirely displeased with the change.
Would you go back to human, if someone offered you the chance?
Draco rubbed his throat, letting his claws stroke and score his throat. Tiny drops of blood came out, only. It was difficult to hurt himself even when he tried.
No, he didn’t know that he would. He’d been a terrified child the last time he’d been human, struggling between fear for his family and fear for himself, strangled by it, drowned by it, buried by it. Now he was out of the darkness and he had the sun to fly in, the rain to gently soak the edges of his wings, Harry to hold and protect.
Perhaps there were things he would have changed if he could. He would have made Harry more accommodating to him. He would have created a nest for them far away from the prying friends and the adoring worshippers that he thought only made Harry’s life miserable. He would have sought out new, young wizards who could become acceptable companions for Harry. He would have ignored the wizarding world except when Harry wanted to go back to it.
None of those were possible. Draco could accept that, and he could turn his gaze back on Harry and see what he wanted there.
Harry glanced over at him, and if his smile was slow and pained and reluctant, still it was there, and Draco reached over to take his hand, winding his claws through Harry’s fingers. Harry turned over their hands, looking at them both.
“I wish I could fly like you do,” he whispered. “It looks wonderful.”
Draco opened his arms in invitation.
Harry’s eyes flickered from him to the broom. Then he nodded, touched the broom with a whispered command to return to the Order of the Phoenix—a charm that the Order had placed on all their brooms, he’d told Draco, to prevent them from losing one of their best forms of transportation to the Death Eaters—and stepped over to Draco, reaching out his arms.
Fearless, across all that gulf of air.
It was only one of the reasons that Draco wanted him.
Draco wound his fingers around Harry’s wrists and swung him away from the broom and then up. Once he had to turn and toss him, so that Harry would rest in the proper position, held against his chest, Draco’s arms wrapped around his shoulders and his waist. Harry only closed his eyes with a faint smile and tossed his head back, so that the wind traveled through his hair like a series of caressing fingers.
Draco laid his nose in the crook of Harry’s neck to soothe his jealousy.
“You needn’t be jealous of anyone else,” Harry said softly. “I’ve been thinking.”
Draco would have denied that he was jealous, but it thrilled him too much to think that Harry had started to notice when he was and where it came from, instead of dismissing it as an absurd reaction, because who could want him? And Harry had asked for silence. And it was also thrilling to hear that Harry had been thinking, instead of simply turning aside from the responsibility that awaited him. Draco caressed his throat to make him forget about the wind and fastened his eyes on Harry’s. He had already locked his wings so that they would glide in large, noiseless circles.
“I—don’t think the old plans I made could work,” Harry said softly. “I’m not just a sacrifice. I’m not just someone who was there to defeat Voldemort. I didn’t even do that, in the end.”
“You did something more important,” Draco murmured, because at this point, asking him to keep silent was too much.
Harry glared briefly at him, as if reminding him of the broken promise, and then nodded his head, eyes softening in forgiveness. “So I have to get beyond that. And drifting around doing nothing only sounded good until I thought about how long it would take. I’m still young. I’ll be alive for at least eighty years or so, barring illness or accidents.”
And longer, Draco thought, his arms tightening around Harry again. I’ll keep you safe.
“What am I going to do?” Harry asked. He sounded as if he was talking to himself, and Draco rustled a few of his primaries at being forgotten, but didn’t interrupt. This might be the way that Harry needed to get through some of the issues that plagued him. “Not just sit around. Not remain a hero forever. I can participate in rebuilding the wizarding world, but that won’t take the rest of my life, either.”
He lifted his head, and his gaze was piercing. “That’s why you’re comforting,” he said. “Because you’ll always be there, and I know that your regard for me can’t change. An anchor, like you said. Is that perverse? To be happy that something won’t change, instead of accepting that it will?”
“If it is,” Draco said, “then I’m perverse, too.”
“Yes, but we knew that,” Harry said distractedly. “You’re not human any longer. I can use you as a model for myself.”
Draco ground his teeth and resisted the temptation to say that a lot of things would be easier if he did. Silence, remember?
“I thought about children,” Harry said, “but not deeply, because they never made sense with those dreams that I had of fighting Voldemort, or the knowledge that I had to die because of the Horcrux.” He ran his fingers up Draco’s arms, not seeming to notice what he was doing any more than he would notice touching a couch or a chair while he thought. Draco held his breath, thrilled by it, yearning for more at the same time. “And now—I don’t think about them that much. I want a family, I always wanted that, but what I dreamed of most of all was someone to care for me.” He lifted his head and met Draco’s eyes with a significant look.
Draco couldn’t keep silent this time. “So you believe that I do care for you as something other than food?” he asked.
Harry moved his head back and forth, looking uncertain for the first time since they’d taken to the air. “Sort of? Knowing that you also care about me as food is the strange part. Sometimes you can sound obsessive, sometimes like I’m just prey and you’re just a predator, and sometimes like any normal person who—well, is willing to stay.” He sounded as if he didn’t know how to quantify it any more than that, his hands opening and closing.
“No one else will ever care for you as I do,” Draco said quietly.
“When most people say that, they’re trying to imply their feelings are just deeper,” Harry said, and met his eyes. “But it’s more than that for you, isn’t it.”
It didn’t sound like a question, but it was still a direct address, so Draco didn’t feel bad answering. “Yes. No one else will ever care enough to eat you. No one else needs to feed on you to survive. No one else will care enough to gut your enemies preemptively before they can try to hurt you. No one else will feel so thrilled when you command them, because that’s what you want to do and they want to hear it.” His voice deepened.
Harry’s face turned almost purple. “I can’t believe you felt that.”
Draco laughed harshly and curled his arms more strongly around Harry so that the chance of his falling away from Draco was nonexistent. “You like to command people,” he said. “Or maybe you only like to command me, because of the history we had and because I make you feel helpless in other ways. It doesn’t matter. I want to indulge that, Harry. I want to feel you hold down my head when I suck you, to order me to back off and not speak for a time, to tell me to fuck you until you come without being touched, because at least it means that you’re paying attention to me instead of looking away.”
Harry stared at him for long moments and then closed his eyes, the flush of his face impossibly deepening. “God, we’re messed up, aren’t we?” he muttered.
“I don’t think so.” Draco bit his ear, though he had to crane his neck and swing Harry a little below him to do it, and Harry moaned, a thick noise that sounded as if he had tried to choke it back several times on the way up his throat. “We are what we became, and what we changed ourselves into in order to survive.”
“Voldemort changed you,” Harry said, opening his eyes to stare again. “You didn’t change yourself.”
Draco shook his wings out. “If I can forget about that, so can you. I was thinking about whether I’d want to go back to human, and I don’t think I would. Not when I would lose what I have with you.”
Harry frowned at him. “But it’s the Veela that’s making you think that, not the human.”
“They’re not separate for me anymore,” Draco said. “You think in terms of a ‘real’ Draco who’s human and the Veela who’s false, but I don’t. And I don’t think in terms of a ‘real’ Harry who’s pure and upright and good and a ‘fake’ Harry who has these desires that you hate, either. Both of them are real to me.”
*
Is it that simple?
Then Harry snorted. The last thing he would call something like this was simple. He had beaten thoughts about in his head for the last week on the topic, and Draco had watched him with the same hungry expression that never varied. He had been thinking himself, Harry decided. The words that spilled from his mouth were too learned and complicated to be the product of a momentary impulse.
But it sounded simple, now that they’d come to the conclusions. Draco couldn’t change being a Veela. He didn’t want to. Perhaps they could break the bond between them or find someone else to be his beloved, but Draco didn’t want that, either.
And neither did Harry.
That had been the hard part, the part that had kept him sweating awake at night: that he actually liked the way Draco was absolutely devoted to him, that he had the one person with him who knew what it was like in Voldemort’s dungeons and that he had no reason to run off and sell the story to a newspaper, that he could order Draco and—
And Draco would obey.
Harry hated those parts of himself, but both he and Draco knew they were there, and so it seemed a bit pointless to deny them any longer. Besides, leaving Draco would have meant eventually starting over with someone else who Harry would have to keep them concealed from, and that sounded like such work.
So. Not for the noblest of reasons, not for the best, but he had reasons to yield.
“It doesn’t need to be for the noblest of reasons,” Draco whispered, breath hot on Harry’s face, and Harry didn’t know if Draco had read his thoughts—if that was possible—or if he had simply guessed them from Harry’s probably very revealing face. “You can have me, you can have all of me, no matter what you are.”
Harry opened his eyes and regarded him. “You’re attached to me because of what I am,” he said. “Not because of my scar, or what I did in the past, or because I’m a Gryffindor and your friend, but because I was there.”
Draco smiled. It contrasted oddly with the hunger in his eyes, because his smile was actually gentle instead of the baring of teeth it usually was. “Yes.”
“If someone else had been there, you would have been attached to them just as well.” Harry had to talk it through, had to hear all the alternatives so that he wouldn’t be disappointed or ambushed by those thoughts later. He wound his fingers through Draco’s shirt. “Just as deeply.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Draco said, and rested his head against Harry’s neck. “Not as deeply. You’re the deep one.”
Harry ignored that, because of course it hadn’t happened, and the only thing he and Draco could live with was the circumstances, the story, they were actually a part of. “And you don’t want to leave me? You won’t want to leave me, even if my friends revile us or the other Veela comes after you?”
“What claim do the other Veela have on me, when I’m Transfigured instead of a Veela by heritage?” Draco asked simply. Then his hands tightened on Harry. “And what claim do your friends have on you, except that which you want them to?”
So simple.
Not the process to reach them, no. But the conclusions themselves were bright and sharp as diamond knives, and they struck so deeply that Harry moaned slightly as he leaned up to kiss Draco.
Draco cradled him close, closer, closest, smashing Harry’s mouth against his chest, which was bare, as always. He had only modified a few shirts to work with his wings and no robes, as yet, and since he spent most of his time around Harry, he hadn’t seen why he should wear them. Harry wondered if he had any modesty left, and then the thought was crushed out of him as Draco’s arms tightened further.
I hope he doesn’t.
“Let’s land,” he pulled back his head enough to gasp. “Please. I want you—I want you to fuck me, just the way I tell you to, following whatever orders I give you.”
Draco didn’t speak. He licked his lips instead, and then he spread his wings and whirled them away from the headquarters. Harry didn’t know where they finally landed; it was a small, flat clearing in the midst of a surrounding circle of trees, wet and cold, and that was all he knew. He didn’t worry about the cold. Draco was already communicating heat to him with the tiniest of touches, the sparks dancing from his fingertips, and he didn’t think that the wetness would last long, either.
Draco crouched on the ground, watching him, his wings folded and drooping back from his shoulders. Harry looked at him and couldn’t keep from licking his lips in turn. Draco watched his tongue move, and then reached out and used his claws to shift Harry’s trousers aside, because Harry was still working on his shirt. He didn’t seem to tear them, but one moment Harry was clothed from the waist down, and the next he wasn’t. Except for his pants, which were constricting him, with a damp spot growing on the front, and which Malfoy was staring at as if his eyes could tear apart the fragile barrier that hid Harry’s cock from him.
“Malfoy,” Harry said. It was a moan. He arched his back, bringing his erection closer to Draco’s mouth, just to see what would happen.
Draco opened his mouth, but didn’t move.
Harry blinked at him. Then he understood, and this particular warmth almost made his legs fold under him, it pulsed through his body so deliciously.
“Malfoy,” he said, “suck my cock.”
And Draco leaned forwards, nuzzling and rubbing at the wet cloth, using his tongue and his breath to give Harry an intimation of heat, before sinking his teeth deep and tearing. The cloth fell apart in his half-fangs, and he was there, gripping Harry’s hips with claws that felt like petals or paper against his skin, his mouth open.
And swallowing.
Harry closed his eyes and stood there, trembling, trying not to give in. But soon it was too much, and he sank down to the ground, his legs spread wide so that Draco could fit between them, his head leaning back against a rock behind him as he gave himself up, completely, for the first time. Even when he was in the dungeons, he hadn’t done that. He had wanted to die in the right way. He had cared when he thought Draco was someone keeping him from the monster Voldemort had sent him to be devoured by, until he realized that Draco was the monster.
But now he yielded. But now he surrendered. And Draco was devouring him, but in a new way, throat and lips busily working, swallowing around him, and pausing to lick at a vein or a drop of liquid, and then swallowing again.
Harry had dreamed of this, wanked to fantasies of this, wanted this. Even then, though, the vision had had a strong, hazy component to it, a heat that wrapped around him when he thought about doing this with someone he loved.
The only heat here was in Draco’s mouth, and somehow, that didn’t bother Harry too much. He reached down and yanked on strands of Draco’s hair, directing his head to the right when his cock felt neglected on that side. Draco only groaned and looked up at him with eyes that shone more than the silver they usually resembled.
He’s feeding, Harry thought. Draco had said something to him about how Veela could feed on the noises their partners made, on their desires, on the sheer need that came from them when they were having sex.
So Draco gave in and obeyed, and that fed him somehow, that made it better for both of them—
And when orgasm came, it originated from somewhere deep down inside Harry, somewhere that made him yowl and cry out and come to the steady slurping of Draco’s tongue around him.
Draco sat back when Harry gestured for him to do so; otherwise, it looked like he would have been happy to go on cleaning Harry’s cock until someone found them. He stared at Harry, and his brighter eyes were brighter still. He shone like stardust and moonlight.
“God,” Harry said, his voice weak, breathless, but still able to give commands. He extended his hand. “Come here.”
Draco sprawled on top of him, all lean leonine muscle and slim weight, and nuzzled Harry’s face. His breath was warm and slightly sour. Harry kissed him and tried to avoid thinking of where the sour smell had actually come from. There were some things that he just wasn’t ready to face, yet.
“What do you want?” Harry asked, when he had been kissed to the point that his brain was buzzing and his heartbeat in his fingers made them hurt.
Draco shook his head so that his pale hair—and the feathers that it tangled and grew into—flopped around him. “What you want, remember?”
“Right. And right now, I want to know what you want.” Harry tried to look as though he did this all the time, even though Draco was the first proper lover he’d had at all, never mind the first one he’d ordered around.
Draco’s nostrils quivered. A tremor rang through his claws, and he whispered, “We can’t lie down on my back. The wings would object. I want—I want—”
“Yes?” Harry encouraged. Funny that Draco should be this timid, when he hadn’t seemed at all shy about asking for what he wanted before, or even breaking Harry’s order for silence when he had to. “Ask.”
*
“What you said before,” Draco said at last, and the words broke and fractured like teeth breaking on rock in his mouth. “I want that.”
“To fuck me?” Harry spoke the words as though he had practice, although Draco’s Veela instincts had already told him that Harry didn’t bear the needs or the knowledge that would have marked him as incredibly experienced. “I said that you could, and I meant it. Come here.” He kissed Draco fervently and lay back, kicking open his legs so that Draco was more between them than ever before. “But we’ll need something to use as lube.”
Draco put two of his claws into his mouth and spat. The saliva that coated them was thicker than usual, dripping, bubbling with soft white foam that made a harsh contrast to his skin.
Harry’s face flickered, and one hand twitched as if he would have Vanished the saliva without his wand. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” Draco said. “We can use something else if you want, but—” He glanced around the wilderness area that he’d brought them to, a good fifteen miles from the headquarters of the Order. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but if he had to leave and go to find lube, then he knew that Harry’s mood would be broken by the time he came back.
“No,” Harry said, and from his tone, he was thinking the same thing and was determined not to let it happen. “No. Let’s—let’s do this.”
And he lifted his legs and hooked his own hands under his knees, fingers running down to his arse cheeks as if he could part them efficiently from that angle, his breath rasping and rushing noisily and his eyes defiant.
Draco bit him high on the leg, because he had to, but didn’t chew deeply enough to leave a hole that he would need to fill with feathers, because he knew Harry hated that. He simply sipped the blood, the emptiness inside him being crushed further and further by the taste, and then slammed his fingers into Harry.
For a moment, he thought he might have lost control of the claws again; Harry’s features twisted, and his eyes squinted shut as though he was fighting a painful headache. Draco made himself keep his fingers still.
“Christ,” Harry muttered at last. “That’s not what I ordered you to do.”
And so Draco fucked him, with his claws first, then his fingers, all the while spitting out more of the saliva so that it coated Harry’s arse as they needed it to, and nipping at Harry’s flesh, tasting his blood when he drew it in small, sharp pricks, using his tongue a moment later to soothe the wounds. His cock was painful by the time he finally lined it up to Harry’s arsehole, but Harry’s was, too, thick and red again, wet. Draco had to control the impulse to ignore Harry’s orders and suck him again instead as he pushed in.
Harry’s eyes were wide now, his breath desperate and harsh. He reached up and locked one hand on Draco’s shoulder, near the wings. Draco swept the wings forwards immediately so that they surrounded them both and screamed his triumph out loud, so that anyone who stepped into the forest would hear and understand it.
“What did you do?” Harry whispered. “It feels so good. Is that more of your Veela magic?”
Draco smiled at him. He could smile instead of simply bare his teeth and hunch over his beloved, who was also his prey, but it took him a conscious effort. “No,” he said. “This is, though.” And he gathered up the diffuse silver power that sometimes swirled behind his eyes and sometimes behind his wings and sometimes his claws, and pushed it directly into Harry’s body.
Harry jolted and screamed, and Draco began to thrust, the friction burning him even with all the slickness around and over his cock. Harry tensed up under him several times, but Draco knew that he would have felt the pain, as he was feeling—and feeding on—the pleasure that shuddered into the air around them.
They were the center of a silent maelstrom, the heat and the slickness and the white flashes exploding behind Draco’s eyes and the black flashes exploding to either side of his head and the strength that flowed into him through his claws where they touched Harry and his cock where it touched Harry and his hips where they touched Harry. He did bare his teeth then, wishing that Harry would let Draco tear into him and feel the power coming from them, too.
“Damn,” Harry said. He was chanting a litany of curses under his breath, Draco realized, and that was only the latest one. He glanced up at Draco and then pulled aside his hair, showing his throat.
Draco froze, staring at him.
“I didn’t tell you to do that, either,” Harry snapped. “I ought to be able to ask what I like without words. What kind of Veela are you?”
Draco bent down, and ground his hips forwards in the same moment that he fastened his teeth on Harry’s throat.
Harry went limp beneath him, groaning quietly. He had stopped cursing. That meant more than Draco could say. It said more than he could say about the effect he was having on Harry, and that made the flashes on either side of his sight redouble and his body go rigid with pleasure and satiation and longing.
He lapped at the blood and leaned back, dribbling the liquid across Harry’s chest. Some of it fell on his nipples, and Harry jerked and sobbed. Draco reached down and traced the hard nub that his right nipple had turned into, looking at the crinkled skin, thinking about how easily it could break apart under his claws, if that was what he willed, and shed more of the life-giving, pleasure-giving blood.
Harry looked up at him, limp and unresisting.
It was not quite the same as trusting, and yet Draco knew that the differences weren’t of the kind that could matter to him. He snapped his hips again, and smiled into Harry’s face, which became set and defiant as Harry stared back at him, and said, “Here’s something else that you didn’t order me to do.”
He lifted the silver magic and sliced it down Harry’s body, touching every place where he’d marked and battered and bitten Harry—the scar on his forehead in the shape of a wing, the holes in his chest and leg that he’d filled with feathers, the throat and the hand. Harry screamed again, this time with the noise becoming one of shock, and lifted his hips back in answer to Draco’s challenge and came.
Draco turned and made the silver power flow back again when he was done, and Harry came again. Draco bent down and lapped at his semen, and lost control of his magic altogether as he came, flowing into Harry’s body, flowing through Harry’s body, making the feathers in his wounds shine like stars.
The silver was everywhere. The silver was all. And there was blood on his tongue and pleasure in his chest and fulfillment in his loins, and Draco no longer knew what was real.
*
Harry came back to himself slowly, fitfully. It felt as though he was gathering pieces of himself that had tumbled to the far corners of a room, and as for making his muscles work, it was a long moment before he found that piece.
He turned his head and looked at Draco resting beside him, cushioned with his head on a wing. He stirred even as Harry looked at him, seemingly unable to sleep if his beloved was awake, and looked back. His teeth were streaked with blood and come; Harry saw streaks of the same high on one of his wings, where the feathers began to melt from grey to silver.
“God,” Harry said hoarsely.
“Yeah,” Draco said, and stretched his wings behind him with a rustling noise. He yawned. Then he set about carefully licking the corners of his mouth, and his cheeks—yes, his tongue was longer than a human’s, Harry was certain—and the corner of his wing, which he brought to his lips with an unexpectedly agile movement. He sat back and looked at Harry when he was done, one hand resting proprietarily in the center of Harry’s chest. He seemed content to stay there until Harry moved.
“That’s part of why people stay with Veela,” Harry said at last, although Draco hadn’t said it and didn’t look as if he would. “Because they can make their beloved feel like—that.”
Draco showed his teeth again, and locked his gaze on Harry’s throat. Harry reached up and found that the wound was bleeding again. “Yes,” Draco said simply.
Harry shivered. What they had just had done had been wild, dirty, bloody. He hadn’t thought that he would enjoy something like that, any more than he had thought he would enjoy commanding his partner in bed.
But he had.
And he didn’t think that he could go back. There was no real Harry Potter abandoned behind him, just like there was no human Draco that Draco could somehow unfold his wings to join again. They had to trust that the way forwards was the only way.
Harry…thought he could live with that.
“I’m staying,” he said.
A radiance seemed to pass through Draco, rather like the radiance that Harry had felt when he reached out and touched all those wounds at once. His hand shifted from Harry’s chest to his forehead, where it covered the scar with a simple, heavy weight of palm. “Good,” he said simply.
Harry turned his head and nipped at Malfoy’s arm. Malfoy swept his wings forwards to cover them again, his eyes going hungry.
This isn’t what I used to be, Harry thought, as he arched up to turn the bite into a kiss, and Malfoy moaned steadily into his mouth, his wings fluttering wildly as he awaited Harry’s next order.
This is better.
The End.
Harry felt as though someone had shoved him out of a cellar where he’d spent most of his life and into sunlight. But they hadn’t given him any advice about the sunlight, how to survive it. It had simply happened, and he had to flail around for himself—
But Malfoy said no flailing would be allowed—
And discover the truth—
But Malfoy seemed determined that he would be an integral part of Harry’s discovery of the truth, whether or not Harry wanted him to be.
Harry took a deep breath and shut his eyes. At the moment, held so close by Malfoy and prevented from moving further off by Malfoy’s wings, it was the only privacy he had. He could almost feel Malfoy’s stare sharpening, trying to pierce through the fragile barrier of skin and veins that hid Harry’s thoughts.
But he didn’t object, which gave Harry the first chance he’d had to think his own thoughts without having someone—one of his friends, one of the Order, a trainee, Malfoy—interrupt them.
And a thought that was so unaccustomed Harry almost killed it as the first sign of Legilimency wormed out of hiding and waved an embarrassed limb at him.
Maybe…maybe it wasn’t a sign of weakness or a horrible fault that Harry felt so tired and wanted to surrender. Maybe, sometimes, surrender was inevitable. He wouldn’t fail anyone if he gave in to Malfoy. Voldemort was dead. The wizarding world needed helping hands, but there was no reason that he needed to be the most important person in the rebuilding. He could vanish into the help, become less important and more anonymous than he had been.
Harry bit his lip. He had assumed, without thinking, that of course he needed to get away from Malfoy. It was what his friends wanted. It was necessary to give Malfoy a real choice; he would wake up sooner or later and disdain Harry, no matter what he thought right now. It would give Harry time to recover.
But if Malfoy was here to stay, could he live with that?
Yes. He had lived with harder things before, including the knowledge that he had to die and, lately, the knowledge that he hadn’t died. Maybe he could endure this, maybe it wasn’t harder than a death sentence.
And maybe, if he treated Malfoy as though he was serious and wanted to be Harry’s anchor for however long he would be around, then he would manage to do more than endure. He might manage to live.
He opened his eyes and nodded. “All right. For the next few months, we’ll take it as read that I’m staying with you,” Malfoy’s eyes brightened with an emotion that made Harry embarrassed on his behalf, and he looked away, coughing. “But there’s something I want to ask of you.”
“You’ve never done that except when I forced you to.” Malfoy’s voice was breathless. His hands roamed over the back of Harry’s head now and cupped it, as though there were a lot of hard floors and walls that he needed cushioning from in the near future. “You can’t think how happy I’ll be to do anything you ask of me.”
“Silence,” Harry said.
Malfoy blinked at him, but said nothing. Harry stared back, and realized why a moment later.
A soft, warm blow seemed to hit him in the belly. He bit his lip and tried to resist the temptation to moan. It made no sense to him, he had never thought he was the sort of person who would rejoice in having the power to command others—
Which is of course why you made such a horrible leader.
Harry discarded the notion impatiently. He didn’t think, now, that most of what he had learned about himself during the war was worth anything. He hadn’t had the time for joy and pleasure, much less the time for the moral dilemmas that would have cropped up if he had recognized things like this about himself and his own desires.
But now, it was the beginning of something new and he could look at Malfoy’s closed mouth and blinking eyes and acknowledge that it wasn’t entirely unpleasant.
“I want you to speak as little as you can,” Harry said. “Come with me, be with me, but leave me silent for thinking. If I stop talking, don’t press me. Of course, sometimes you’ll have to speak to me, I know,” he added generously, thinking of the way that Malfoy tended to forbid him from moving too far away and nag him to eat. “But unless it’s your Veela instincts driving you to, I want silence.”
“Yes,” Malfoy said. He looked entranced, stroking his claws down Harry’s face. It was like being petted by a wildcat, and Harry only kept his eyes from moving sideways with supreme effort. “Can I ask why?”
“Because I have to find myself in you, and I have to find myself apart from you,” Harry said. “Both, if the world’s going to make any sense. Both, if I live the way I want to and the way I have to. All right?”
Malfoy’s tongue flickered out to curl around Harry’s fingers, and he nodded in silent assent.
*
They went flying.
They had mated on the wing already, of course, and Draco thought he would hold the memory all the more precious now that Harry seemed less inclined to crawl into his arms and yield to Draco’s hands on his cock.
But then again, Harry was less yielding about everything lately. Granger and the Weasel had come to him with some new plot to free him from Draco’s “unfair domination.” He had dismissed them with harsh words and a few glares that Draco wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of, and then spent the next hour sitting in Draco’s arms and scowling at the wall. Draco had licked his neck and said nothing, well-pleased. His beloved standing up for him and their right to remain together were worth all the words that he could pour out in pleading or in defense.
Later that night, Granger had knocked on their door, and Harry had turned around at once. Draco had tightened his arms around his waist, and although Harry had shot him one irritated look, he hadn’t tried to move away. He’d given the command to enter, instead, and Granger had come in and stood looking at him helplessly, as though he squatted on the other side of a huge gulf.
Draco ducked his head to be safe from any charge of annoying Granger on purpose and rolled his eyes. As though they couldn’t have Harry back the minute they stopped trying to act as if the time in the dungeons hadn’t changed him.
The minute they stopped trying to act as though he didn’t belong to a Veela, or shouldn’t belong to one.
“You won’t try to get free of him?” Granger asked Harry, as though Draco wasn’t there. But no matter what her words lied, her eyes told the truth. They focused on Draco’s face and then darted away as though she had never seen anything more disgusting.
Draco knew how beautiful he was, knew how beautiful Harry was in his arms. She was welcome to look, anyone was, as long as they didn’t look with desire. Draco spread his wings wider and smiled at Granger.
“Not now,” Harry said. His voice was tired, but he smiled at Granger and put out his hand. Draco cupped his arm with the edge of a wing. He could put up with it if Harry wanted to touch his friend, though it strained his patience, but he would make sure that he was touching him at the same time.
“I know you’re trying to help, Hermione,” Harry whispered. “But I think—I think this is going to stay, just like the way he changed my scar. It would be better to get used to it than to spend all my time whining about how it’s not fair and how I want things to change.”
“You’ve never whined,” Granger whispered. Tears shone in her eyes, and Draco cocked his head to the side, seeing her friendship for the pure, strong thing it was, despite all the missteps along the way—missteps that he would have thought strong enough to destroy any friendship, at least if Harry’s friendships were like his own. “Well. Except during fifth year, but that was Voldemort in your head.”
Harry gave her a tired smile. “Right. Well, he’s gone now, and I want to deal with that. I’ll be all right,” he added when she looked at him doubtfully. “I don’t think Malfoy will let me come to harm.”
“At least when he’s not the one hurting you.” Granger gave Draco another steely look. Draco purred at her and lifted his wings so that they formed a gleaming silver barrier between her and Harry. Now she wouldn’t be able to touch him even if she wanted to.
“I think we’ve settled that,” Harry said. “Well. I think so. I don’t believe he always has control of his claws.”
Granger snickered, and Draco wanted to rise and fly at her, but Harry was in his arms, and placed a restraining hand on his elbow. Draco turned his head and let his nose fill with the scent of Harry’s blood in the vein, warm under the surface of his skin.
“Fine,” Granger said. “I’ll tell Ron what you said, and maybe he can finally stop mourning for his best friend being stolen by a monster.” She paused and stared into Harry’s eyes hard enough to make him wince and shift, as though he would get up. Draco closed his claws gently on Harry’s hip to suggest what a bad idea that would be, and Harry settled down again, although he glared at Draco. “But if you ever change your mind,” Granger continued softly, “if you ever need help, then let us know. Okay?”
Draco snarled. He found the way that Granger ignored him—with both eyes and words, this time—insulting. As though he wouldn’t know any plan that Harry made to leave him almost before he made it, and would stop it!
Harry ignored him, too, squeezing Granger’s hand hard enough to make her knuckles pop. “Thanks, Hermione. I’ll remember that. Always.”
Granger turned and walked away, even the lines of her arse humiliating. Draco knocked Harry on the bed and whispered soft words to him, heated words, angry words, slicing through the cloth over his groin and taking him in hand. Harry panted into his face, and came after a few strokes, arching his back in a way that made Draco come without any provocation.
No, he would never let Harry go.
And they went flying in much the same mood, in much the same silence.
Harry leaned on his broom, his eyes aimed forwards as though he would find the path in the clouds to the land where he could shed his troubles. Draco circled beside him, wings spread so wide that he could shelter Harry with them most of the times he circled past him. Harry had ceased to hunch and scowl at him for the circling after a few passes. He only swooped and dodged on his broom, with the same grace as always but a distinct lack of the same enthusiasm, his face set.
Draco watched him and said nothing, because that was what Harry had asked for. The silence was a less severe penance than he had thought it would be. It left him more time to study Harry’s face and wonder about the clench of his jaw, the way his fingers shifted on the wood of the broom shaft, the twitch of muscles in his thighs. He needed to know everything about Harry, and he knew so little as yet.
And it left him time to lift his head and look about him, to the sides, to notice the boiling shapes of the clouds and the tears in the grey where the sunlight and the blue came down. He flew more gracefully than he had as a human, more surely, without needing to fear that the magic that bore him up would fail. His would never fail as long as he had the closeness of his beloved.
In many ways, he was faster, stronger, better as a Veela than he had been as a human. He didn’t know if he was smarter; he hadn’t had the chance to find out yet, with so much of his attention bent to courting a reluctant beloved. But he couldn’t say that he was entirely displeased with the change.
Would you go back to human, if someone offered you the chance?
Draco rubbed his throat, letting his claws stroke and score his throat. Tiny drops of blood came out, only. It was difficult to hurt himself even when he tried.
No, he didn’t know that he would. He’d been a terrified child the last time he’d been human, struggling between fear for his family and fear for himself, strangled by it, drowned by it, buried by it. Now he was out of the darkness and he had the sun to fly in, the rain to gently soak the edges of his wings, Harry to hold and protect.
Perhaps there were things he would have changed if he could. He would have made Harry more accommodating to him. He would have created a nest for them far away from the prying friends and the adoring worshippers that he thought only made Harry’s life miserable. He would have sought out new, young wizards who could become acceptable companions for Harry. He would have ignored the wizarding world except when Harry wanted to go back to it.
None of those were possible. Draco could accept that, and he could turn his gaze back on Harry and see what he wanted there.
Harry glanced over at him, and if his smile was slow and pained and reluctant, still it was there, and Draco reached over to take his hand, winding his claws through Harry’s fingers. Harry turned over their hands, looking at them both.
“I wish I could fly like you do,” he whispered. “It looks wonderful.”
Draco opened his arms in invitation.
Harry’s eyes flickered from him to the broom. Then he nodded, touched the broom with a whispered command to return to the Order of the Phoenix—a charm that the Order had placed on all their brooms, he’d told Draco, to prevent them from losing one of their best forms of transportation to the Death Eaters—and stepped over to Draco, reaching out his arms.
Fearless, across all that gulf of air.
It was only one of the reasons that Draco wanted him.
Draco wound his fingers around Harry’s wrists and swung him away from the broom and then up. Once he had to turn and toss him, so that Harry would rest in the proper position, held against his chest, Draco’s arms wrapped around his shoulders and his waist. Harry only closed his eyes with a faint smile and tossed his head back, so that the wind traveled through his hair like a series of caressing fingers.
Draco laid his nose in the crook of Harry’s neck to soothe his jealousy.
“You needn’t be jealous of anyone else,” Harry said softly. “I’ve been thinking.”
Draco would have denied that he was jealous, but it thrilled him too much to think that Harry had started to notice when he was and where it came from, instead of dismissing it as an absurd reaction, because who could want him? And Harry had asked for silence. And it was also thrilling to hear that Harry had been thinking, instead of simply turning aside from the responsibility that awaited him. Draco caressed his throat to make him forget about the wind and fastened his eyes on Harry’s. He had already locked his wings so that they would glide in large, noiseless circles.
“I—don’t think the old plans I made could work,” Harry said softly. “I’m not just a sacrifice. I’m not just someone who was there to defeat Voldemort. I didn’t even do that, in the end.”
“You did something more important,” Draco murmured, because at this point, asking him to keep silent was too much.
Harry glared briefly at him, as if reminding him of the broken promise, and then nodded his head, eyes softening in forgiveness. “So I have to get beyond that. And drifting around doing nothing only sounded good until I thought about how long it would take. I’m still young. I’ll be alive for at least eighty years or so, barring illness or accidents.”
And longer, Draco thought, his arms tightening around Harry again. I’ll keep you safe.
“What am I going to do?” Harry asked. He sounded as if he was talking to himself, and Draco rustled a few of his primaries at being forgotten, but didn’t interrupt. This might be the way that Harry needed to get through some of the issues that plagued him. “Not just sit around. Not remain a hero forever. I can participate in rebuilding the wizarding world, but that won’t take the rest of my life, either.”
He lifted his head, and his gaze was piercing. “That’s why you’re comforting,” he said. “Because you’ll always be there, and I know that your regard for me can’t change. An anchor, like you said. Is that perverse? To be happy that something won’t change, instead of accepting that it will?”
“If it is,” Draco said, “then I’m perverse, too.”
“Yes, but we knew that,” Harry said distractedly. “You’re not human any longer. I can use you as a model for myself.”
Draco ground his teeth and resisted the temptation to say that a lot of things would be easier if he did. Silence, remember?
“I thought about children,” Harry said, “but not deeply, because they never made sense with those dreams that I had of fighting Voldemort, or the knowledge that I had to die because of the Horcrux.” He ran his fingers up Draco’s arms, not seeming to notice what he was doing any more than he would notice touching a couch or a chair while he thought. Draco held his breath, thrilled by it, yearning for more at the same time. “And now—I don’t think about them that much. I want a family, I always wanted that, but what I dreamed of most of all was someone to care for me.” He lifted his head and met Draco’s eyes with a significant look.
Draco couldn’t keep silent this time. “So you believe that I do care for you as something other than food?” he asked.
Harry moved his head back and forth, looking uncertain for the first time since they’d taken to the air. “Sort of? Knowing that you also care about me as food is the strange part. Sometimes you can sound obsessive, sometimes like I’m just prey and you’re just a predator, and sometimes like any normal person who—well, is willing to stay.” He sounded as if he didn’t know how to quantify it any more than that, his hands opening and closing.
“No one else will ever care for you as I do,” Draco said quietly.
“When most people say that, they’re trying to imply their feelings are just deeper,” Harry said, and met his eyes. “But it’s more than that for you, isn’t it.”
It didn’t sound like a question, but it was still a direct address, so Draco didn’t feel bad answering. “Yes. No one else will ever care enough to eat you. No one else needs to feed on you to survive. No one else will care enough to gut your enemies preemptively before they can try to hurt you. No one else will feel so thrilled when you command them, because that’s what you want to do and they want to hear it.” His voice deepened.
Harry’s face turned almost purple. “I can’t believe you felt that.”
Draco laughed harshly and curled his arms more strongly around Harry so that the chance of his falling away from Draco was nonexistent. “You like to command people,” he said. “Or maybe you only like to command me, because of the history we had and because I make you feel helpless in other ways. It doesn’t matter. I want to indulge that, Harry. I want to feel you hold down my head when I suck you, to order me to back off and not speak for a time, to tell me to fuck you until you come without being touched, because at least it means that you’re paying attention to me instead of looking away.”
Harry stared at him for long moments and then closed his eyes, the flush of his face impossibly deepening. “God, we’re messed up, aren’t we?” he muttered.
“I don’t think so.” Draco bit his ear, though he had to crane his neck and swing Harry a little below him to do it, and Harry moaned, a thick noise that sounded as if he had tried to choke it back several times on the way up his throat. “We are what we became, and what we changed ourselves into in order to survive.”
“Voldemort changed you,” Harry said, opening his eyes to stare again. “You didn’t change yourself.”
Draco shook his wings out. “If I can forget about that, so can you. I was thinking about whether I’d want to go back to human, and I don’t think I would. Not when I would lose what I have with you.”
Harry frowned at him. “But it’s the Veela that’s making you think that, not the human.”
“They’re not separate for me anymore,” Draco said. “You think in terms of a ‘real’ Draco who’s human and the Veela who’s false, but I don’t. And I don’t think in terms of a ‘real’ Harry who’s pure and upright and good and a ‘fake’ Harry who has these desires that you hate, either. Both of them are real to me.”
*
Is it that simple?
Then Harry snorted. The last thing he would call something like this was simple. He had beaten thoughts about in his head for the last week on the topic, and Draco had watched him with the same hungry expression that never varied. He had been thinking himself, Harry decided. The words that spilled from his mouth were too learned and complicated to be the product of a momentary impulse.
But it sounded simple, now that they’d come to the conclusions. Draco couldn’t change being a Veela. He didn’t want to. Perhaps they could break the bond between them or find someone else to be his beloved, but Draco didn’t want that, either.
And neither did Harry.
That had been the hard part, the part that had kept him sweating awake at night: that he actually liked the way Draco was absolutely devoted to him, that he had the one person with him who knew what it was like in Voldemort’s dungeons and that he had no reason to run off and sell the story to a newspaper, that he could order Draco and—
And Draco would obey.
Harry hated those parts of himself, but both he and Draco knew they were there, and so it seemed a bit pointless to deny them any longer. Besides, leaving Draco would have meant eventually starting over with someone else who Harry would have to keep them concealed from, and that sounded like such work.
So. Not for the noblest of reasons, not for the best, but he had reasons to yield.
“It doesn’t need to be for the noblest of reasons,” Draco whispered, breath hot on Harry’s face, and Harry didn’t know if Draco had read his thoughts—if that was possible—or if he had simply guessed them from Harry’s probably very revealing face. “You can have me, you can have all of me, no matter what you are.”
Harry opened his eyes and regarded him. “You’re attached to me because of what I am,” he said. “Not because of my scar, or what I did in the past, or because I’m a Gryffindor and your friend, but because I was there.”
Draco smiled. It contrasted oddly with the hunger in his eyes, because his smile was actually gentle instead of the baring of teeth it usually was. “Yes.”
“If someone else had been there, you would have been attached to them just as well.” Harry had to talk it through, had to hear all the alternatives so that he wouldn’t be disappointed or ambushed by those thoughts later. He wound his fingers through Draco’s shirt. “Just as deeply.”
“I can’t imagine that,” Draco said, and rested his head against Harry’s neck. “Not as deeply. You’re the deep one.”
Harry ignored that, because of course it hadn’t happened, and the only thing he and Draco could live with was the circumstances, the story, they were actually a part of. “And you don’t want to leave me? You won’t want to leave me, even if my friends revile us or the other Veela comes after you?”
“What claim do the other Veela have on me, when I’m Transfigured instead of a Veela by heritage?” Draco asked simply. Then his hands tightened on Harry. “And what claim do your friends have on you, except that which you want them to?”
So simple.
Not the process to reach them, no. But the conclusions themselves were bright and sharp as diamond knives, and they struck so deeply that Harry moaned slightly as he leaned up to kiss Draco.
Draco cradled him close, closer, closest, smashing Harry’s mouth against his chest, which was bare, as always. He had only modified a few shirts to work with his wings and no robes, as yet, and since he spent most of his time around Harry, he hadn’t seen why he should wear them. Harry wondered if he had any modesty left, and then the thought was crushed out of him as Draco’s arms tightened further.
I hope he doesn’t.
“Let’s land,” he pulled back his head enough to gasp. “Please. I want you—I want you to fuck me, just the way I tell you to, following whatever orders I give you.”
Draco didn’t speak. He licked his lips instead, and then he spread his wings and whirled them away from the headquarters. Harry didn’t know where they finally landed; it was a small, flat clearing in the midst of a surrounding circle of trees, wet and cold, and that was all he knew. He didn’t worry about the cold. Draco was already communicating heat to him with the tiniest of touches, the sparks dancing from his fingertips, and he didn’t think that the wetness would last long, either.
Draco crouched on the ground, watching him, his wings folded and drooping back from his shoulders. Harry looked at him and couldn’t keep from licking his lips in turn. Draco watched his tongue move, and then reached out and used his claws to shift Harry’s trousers aside, because Harry was still working on his shirt. He didn’t seem to tear them, but one moment Harry was clothed from the waist down, and the next he wasn’t. Except for his pants, which were constricting him, with a damp spot growing on the front, and which Malfoy was staring at as if his eyes could tear apart the fragile barrier that hid Harry’s cock from him.
“Malfoy,” Harry said. It was a moan. He arched his back, bringing his erection closer to Draco’s mouth, just to see what would happen.
Draco opened his mouth, but didn’t move.
Harry blinked at him. Then he understood, and this particular warmth almost made his legs fold under him, it pulsed through his body so deliciously.
“Malfoy,” he said, “suck my cock.”
And Draco leaned forwards, nuzzling and rubbing at the wet cloth, using his tongue and his breath to give Harry an intimation of heat, before sinking his teeth deep and tearing. The cloth fell apart in his half-fangs, and he was there, gripping Harry’s hips with claws that felt like petals or paper against his skin, his mouth open.
And swallowing.
Harry closed his eyes and stood there, trembling, trying not to give in. But soon it was too much, and he sank down to the ground, his legs spread wide so that Draco could fit between them, his head leaning back against a rock behind him as he gave himself up, completely, for the first time. Even when he was in the dungeons, he hadn’t done that. He had wanted to die in the right way. He had cared when he thought Draco was someone keeping him from the monster Voldemort had sent him to be devoured by, until he realized that Draco was the monster.
But now he yielded. But now he surrendered. And Draco was devouring him, but in a new way, throat and lips busily working, swallowing around him, and pausing to lick at a vein or a drop of liquid, and then swallowing again.
Harry had dreamed of this, wanked to fantasies of this, wanted this. Even then, though, the vision had had a strong, hazy component to it, a heat that wrapped around him when he thought about doing this with someone he loved.
The only heat here was in Draco’s mouth, and somehow, that didn’t bother Harry too much. He reached down and yanked on strands of Draco’s hair, directing his head to the right when his cock felt neglected on that side. Draco only groaned and looked up at him with eyes that shone more than the silver they usually resembled.
He’s feeding, Harry thought. Draco had said something to him about how Veela could feed on the noises their partners made, on their desires, on the sheer need that came from them when they were having sex.
So Draco gave in and obeyed, and that fed him somehow, that made it better for both of them—
And when orgasm came, it originated from somewhere deep down inside Harry, somewhere that made him yowl and cry out and come to the steady slurping of Draco’s tongue around him.
Draco sat back when Harry gestured for him to do so; otherwise, it looked like he would have been happy to go on cleaning Harry’s cock until someone found them. He stared at Harry, and his brighter eyes were brighter still. He shone like stardust and moonlight.
“God,” Harry said, his voice weak, breathless, but still able to give commands. He extended his hand. “Come here.”
Draco sprawled on top of him, all lean leonine muscle and slim weight, and nuzzled Harry’s face. His breath was warm and slightly sour. Harry kissed him and tried to avoid thinking of where the sour smell had actually come from. There were some things that he just wasn’t ready to face, yet.
“What do you want?” Harry asked, when he had been kissed to the point that his brain was buzzing and his heartbeat in his fingers made them hurt.
Draco shook his head so that his pale hair—and the feathers that it tangled and grew into—flopped around him. “What you want, remember?”
“Right. And right now, I want to know what you want.” Harry tried to look as though he did this all the time, even though Draco was the first proper lover he’d had at all, never mind the first one he’d ordered around.
Draco’s nostrils quivered. A tremor rang through his claws, and he whispered, “We can’t lie down on my back. The wings would object. I want—I want—”
“Yes?” Harry encouraged. Funny that Draco should be this timid, when he hadn’t seemed at all shy about asking for what he wanted before, or even breaking Harry’s order for silence when he had to. “Ask.”
*
“What you said before,” Draco said at last, and the words broke and fractured like teeth breaking on rock in his mouth. “I want that.”
“To fuck me?” Harry spoke the words as though he had practice, although Draco’s Veela instincts had already told him that Harry didn’t bear the needs or the knowledge that would have marked him as incredibly experienced. “I said that you could, and I meant it. Come here.” He kissed Draco fervently and lay back, kicking open his legs so that Draco was more between them than ever before. “But we’ll need something to use as lube.”
Draco put two of his claws into his mouth and spat. The saliva that coated them was thicker than usual, dripping, bubbling with soft white foam that made a harsh contrast to his skin.
Harry’s face flickered, and one hand twitched as if he would have Vanished the saliva without his wand. “You’re kidding.”
“No,” Draco said. “We can use something else if you want, but—” He glanced around the wilderness area that he’d brought them to, a good fifteen miles from the headquarters of the Order. It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but if he had to leave and go to find lube, then he knew that Harry’s mood would be broken by the time he came back.
“No,” Harry said, and from his tone, he was thinking the same thing and was determined not to let it happen. “No. Let’s—let’s do this.”
And he lifted his legs and hooked his own hands under his knees, fingers running down to his arse cheeks as if he could part them efficiently from that angle, his breath rasping and rushing noisily and his eyes defiant.
Draco bit him high on the leg, because he had to, but didn’t chew deeply enough to leave a hole that he would need to fill with feathers, because he knew Harry hated that. He simply sipped the blood, the emptiness inside him being crushed further and further by the taste, and then slammed his fingers into Harry.
For a moment, he thought he might have lost control of the claws again; Harry’s features twisted, and his eyes squinted shut as though he was fighting a painful headache. Draco made himself keep his fingers still.
“Christ,” Harry muttered at last. “That’s not what I ordered you to do.”
And so Draco fucked him, with his claws first, then his fingers, all the while spitting out more of the saliva so that it coated Harry’s arse as they needed it to, and nipping at Harry’s flesh, tasting his blood when he drew it in small, sharp pricks, using his tongue a moment later to soothe the wounds. His cock was painful by the time he finally lined it up to Harry’s arsehole, but Harry’s was, too, thick and red again, wet. Draco had to control the impulse to ignore Harry’s orders and suck him again instead as he pushed in.
Harry’s eyes were wide now, his breath desperate and harsh. He reached up and locked one hand on Draco’s shoulder, near the wings. Draco swept the wings forwards immediately so that they surrounded them both and screamed his triumph out loud, so that anyone who stepped into the forest would hear and understand it.
“What did you do?” Harry whispered. “It feels so good. Is that more of your Veela magic?”
Draco smiled at him. He could smile instead of simply bare his teeth and hunch over his beloved, who was also his prey, but it took him a conscious effort. “No,” he said. “This is, though.” And he gathered up the diffuse silver power that sometimes swirled behind his eyes and sometimes behind his wings and sometimes his claws, and pushed it directly into Harry’s body.
Harry jolted and screamed, and Draco began to thrust, the friction burning him even with all the slickness around and over his cock. Harry tensed up under him several times, but Draco knew that he would have felt the pain, as he was feeling—and feeding on—the pleasure that shuddered into the air around them.
They were the center of a silent maelstrom, the heat and the slickness and the white flashes exploding behind Draco’s eyes and the black flashes exploding to either side of his head and the strength that flowed into him through his claws where they touched Harry and his cock where it touched Harry and his hips where they touched Harry. He did bare his teeth then, wishing that Harry would let Draco tear into him and feel the power coming from them, too.
“Damn,” Harry said. He was chanting a litany of curses under his breath, Draco realized, and that was only the latest one. He glanced up at Draco and then pulled aside his hair, showing his throat.
Draco froze, staring at him.
“I didn’t tell you to do that, either,” Harry snapped. “I ought to be able to ask what I like without words. What kind of Veela are you?”
Draco bent down, and ground his hips forwards in the same moment that he fastened his teeth on Harry’s throat.
Harry went limp beneath him, groaning quietly. He had stopped cursing. That meant more than Draco could say. It said more than he could say about the effect he was having on Harry, and that made the flashes on either side of his sight redouble and his body go rigid with pleasure and satiation and longing.
He lapped at the blood and leaned back, dribbling the liquid across Harry’s chest. Some of it fell on his nipples, and Harry jerked and sobbed. Draco reached down and traced the hard nub that his right nipple had turned into, looking at the crinkled skin, thinking about how easily it could break apart under his claws, if that was what he willed, and shed more of the life-giving, pleasure-giving blood.
Harry looked up at him, limp and unresisting.
It was not quite the same as trusting, and yet Draco knew that the differences weren’t of the kind that could matter to him. He snapped his hips again, and smiled into Harry’s face, which became set and defiant as Harry stared back at him, and said, “Here’s something else that you didn’t order me to do.”
He lifted the silver magic and sliced it down Harry’s body, touching every place where he’d marked and battered and bitten Harry—the scar on his forehead in the shape of a wing, the holes in his chest and leg that he’d filled with feathers, the throat and the hand. Harry screamed again, this time with the noise becoming one of shock, and lifted his hips back in answer to Draco’s challenge and came.
Draco turned and made the silver power flow back again when he was done, and Harry came again. Draco bent down and lapped at his semen, and lost control of his magic altogether as he came, flowing into Harry’s body, flowing through Harry’s body, making the feathers in his wounds shine like stars.
The silver was everywhere. The silver was all. And there was blood on his tongue and pleasure in his chest and fulfillment in his loins, and Draco no longer knew what was real.
*
Harry came back to himself slowly, fitfully. It felt as though he was gathering pieces of himself that had tumbled to the far corners of a room, and as for making his muscles work, it was a long moment before he found that piece.
He turned his head and looked at Draco resting beside him, cushioned with his head on a wing. He stirred even as Harry looked at him, seemingly unable to sleep if his beloved was awake, and looked back. His teeth were streaked with blood and come; Harry saw streaks of the same high on one of his wings, where the feathers began to melt from grey to silver.
“God,” Harry said hoarsely.
“Yeah,” Draco said, and stretched his wings behind him with a rustling noise. He yawned. Then he set about carefully licking the corners of his mouth, and his cheeks—yes, his tongue was longer than a human’s, Harry was certain—and the corner of his wing, which he brought to his lips with an unexpectedly agile movement. He sat back and looked at Harry when he was done, one hand resting proprietarily in the center of Harry’s chest. He seemed content to stay there until Harry moved.
“That’s part of why people stay with Veela,” Harry said at last, although Draco hadn’t said it and didn’t look as if he would. “Because they can make their beloved feel like—that.”
Draco showed his teeth again, and locked his gaze on Harry’s throat. Harry reached up and found that the wound was bleeding again. “Yes,” Draco said simply.
Harry shivered. What they had just had done had been wild, dirty, bloody. He hadn’t thought that he would enjoy something like that, any more than he had thought he would enjoy commanding his partner in bed.
But he had.
And he didn’t think that he could go back. There was no real Harry Potter abandoned behind him, just like there was no human Draco that Draco could somehow unfold his wings to join again. They had to trust that the way forwards was the only way.
Harry…thought he could live with that.
“I’m staying,” he said.
A radiance seemed to pass through Draco, rather like the radiance that Harry had felt when he reached out and touched all those wounds at once. His hand shifted from Harry’s chest to his forehead, where it covered the scar with a simple, heavy weight of palm. “Good,” he said simply.
Harry turned his head and nipped at Malfoy’s arm. Malfoy swept his wings forwards to cover them again, his eyes going hungry.
This isn’t what I used to be, Harry thought, as he arched up to turn the bite into a kiss, and Malfoy moaned steadily into his mouth, his wings fluttering wildly as he awaited Harry’s next order.
This is better.
The End.
