[one-shots]: Silence, Fury, Laughter, R, 2/2

[lomonaaeren]

Title: Silence, Fury, Laughter
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters; I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Rating: R
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Creature!fic (Draco is a Veela) and AU after HBP. Angst, mentions of torture, violence, OC character death, bloodplay, sex, very slight D/s dynamics.
Wordcount: 18,000
Summary: Sequel to ‘Blood, Flesh, Silence’ and ‘Fear, Silence, Wisdom,’ and the last in the Silence Trilogy. Harry and Draco move on with their lives, in darkness and in light.
Author’s Notes: Written for severkarogeuova, who made a generous donation to help_japan, and asked for a sequel to ‘Blood, Flesh, Silence.’ Since I’d already started writing an immediate sequel, this is the third one in the trilogy. I hope you like it, severka! This really won’t make sense if you haven’t read the previous two stories.



Silence, Fury, Laughter

“You’re doing what.”

Harry smiled a little at the expression on Ron’s face. He could understand what had put it there, and a few weeks ago, he would have felt the same emotions. He reached across the table and gripped his best friend’s hand.

Good job that Draco agreed to give us privacy for this meeting, he thought with a slight grimace. Otherwise, bits of Ron would probably be all over the floor already, for daring to touch me.

“Sorry,” he said. “I know it comes as a shock. But—Ron, I don’t want to stay here. All the people staring at me. No, it’s not that I think Draco has the right to hurt them for looking, but I don’t like it. I want to go somewhere I can retreat to when things get tough, and breathe, and think, and just be.”

“But you’ll have him with you.” Ron’s mouth twisted when he said the word “him,” as if one of the most basic English pronouns had become suddenly foul. “How much relaxing will you really be able to do?”

“I accept him as part of me now,” Harry said simply. “As part of my life, like my scar or the fact that Voldemort is dead. And he’ll be with me. He’s willing to give me silence and space when I require it. See?” he added, gesturing around the room where he and Ron sat alone.

Ron snorted. “I wouldn’t trust him to give you a backrub,” he said.

“I might not, either, with those claws,” Harry said, and smiled. Ron continued frowning at him. Harry sighed and leaned back in his chair. “We only have about five more minutes before he comes back. What is it that you really want to say, Ron?”

“That’s it!” Ron snapped, exploding from his chair. “Mate, you didn’t get a choice about being a bloody hero, or about having to fight V-Voldemort, or about having a Horcrux in you. And then it turned out that you could survive having the Horcrux taken out of you, and you didn’t have to die after all.”

“Because of Draco’s help,” Harry said evenly. He tried to hide the shudder that ran down the middle of his spine. Having Draco chew apart his scar and then swallow the Horcrux didn’t count as one of the most pleasant experiences of his life.

“But that’s it,” Ron said. “You talk about accepting him and all that load of bollocks, but he’s just another thing that was forced on you, just when you were getting the chance to live your life properly, of your own free will!” His eyes glinted with the passion of his argument as he leaned forwards. “You resented him so much at first, and wanted him to go away, and wanted us to find ways to break the bond. And now—what? Because he fucks your brains out once, you’re committed to him for life!”

Harry narrowed his eyes, but made sure to keep from rising from the chair and keep his voice calm and level. That would be carrying the argument onto Ron’s ground, and Harry didn’t want to do that. He had learned a fair bit about manipulating arguments from Draco, and he didn’t mind using it against his friends when they were having a row with him about something like this. Draco couldn’t change, and he wasn’t going away.

Of course, he couldn’t really blame Ron and Hermione, either, given how long it had taken him to accept that at first.

“Actually, he only fucked my brains out once I ordered him to. He does what I tell him, Ron. As witness he actually left us alone for once.”

Ron’s face turned the color of wine. “Merlin, Harry,” he whined. “I didn’t need to know that.”

Harry laughed and shook his head. “Then next time, don’t ask me!” He softened his voice, because Ron really did look unhappy, and, well, Harry would have felt the same way if a Veela had claimed his friend against his will, except perhaps more so, because Ron had Hermione to live with and love. “I’m okay, Ron. Really. I won’t pretend that I’m in love with him, yet, but I trust him to obey orders and listen to me when I say that I really can’t endure any more hugging right now. That’s an improvement over a few weeks ago.”

“Yeah, yeah, but don’t you want to marry someone you chose?” Ron looked at him imploringly.

Harry hesitated. He knew this was important, and he had come to terms with it himself, but he wasn’t sure that the words that made so much sense in his head would actually make sense when he voiced them to someone else.

Ron stared at him, though, so Harry nodded and muttered, “I thought about that. But—surviving when Voldemort wanted to kill me changed things so much. I had to think about what I wanted. And I never had a clear vision of what I wanted after the war, because I thought I’d be dead. Now I know it probably isn’t going to be a normal family life and kids—not the kind of life that you have with Hermione, anyway.”

“Will have,” Ron said, suddenly ducking his head, and this time Harry could see that the flush went all the way down his neck. “No kids yet.”

Harry grinned at him. “Good. It’s nice to know that I wasn’t quite that oblivious.”

The door rattled abruptly, and Harry got up and turned to face it. His hands were shaking, he realized, and he jammed them into his pockets so that he could hide that a little from Ron. His face was bright with emotions that probably couldn’t be hidden, but that was okay, he could deal with that. Ron wouldn’t want to look.

Draco stepped through the door, crouching so that his wings wouldn’t tear splinters out of the frame. His gaze was fastened on Harry as though he had kept his eyes in the same place even before opening the door, which was the case if Harry knew anything about his Veela. His claws were twisting and flickering up and down like blades even before he caught sight of Ron, and then he bared his teeth. The same ones that had eaten Harry in the dungeons, they bristled with sharper points than human teeth would.

“It’s all right,” Harry said, and stepped forwards with his hands held out. Draco ducked his head and licked a stripe up his right wrist, then grabbed it and hauled Harry against him, surrounding him with his wings. Harry leaned back against them, enjoying the slight scratch of feathers on his spine, and nodded in response to the way Draco stared at him. “I’m still yours.”

“He touched you,” Draco said. His voice bubbled and boiled with sharp, sweet sounds that ran out in hisses. Harry reached up and gripped a handful of his fine hair, letting it trickle slowly out between his fingers.

“I know,” Harry said. “But not sexually, and not for long.”

For a moment, Draco’s hand tightened on his wrist so hard that Harry thought he might break it. Then he said, “As long as you know you’re mine,” and bent down to grip Harry’s mouth in a kiss.

Harry gave in willingly, reaching up so that he could rake his fingers through Draco’s hair and leave scratches on his scalp, as good as he got. Draco pulled back with glazed eyes, panting, his gaze fastened on Harry’s face.

“Now,” Harry said, and nodded to the floor. Draco started to pull him down.

Ron coughed, so loudly that Harry thought people probably heard him in Brazil. Then he forced his way past them. Harry laughed, and Draco, after a moment of staring after Ron as if he couldn’t believe that Ron had almost touched his wings, laughed as well.

He turned back, though, and his mouth was soft and his eyes were hungry and his claws hovered over Harry’s groin, as though he wanted to shred the trousers but didn’t quite dare. “Permission?” he whispered.

“If you do it gently,” Harry replied. “And don’t tear the cloth.”

Draco wanted to, he could see that, but the bunched tension in his shoulders melted after a moment, and he nodded obediently, pulling Harry’s cock out as though it was fragile. Well, in some senses that’s true, Harry thought, as he lay back on the floor and spread his legs, and Draco lowered his head and lashed his tongue on the place along the head where it felt most brilliant, keeping his claws well back. Draco’s control over his claws and how much damage they could cause Harry came and went, though it was much better since Harry had stopped resisting him so strenuously.

Some things are worth putting up with, Harry thought, and wondered for a moment how Ron would see it, whether he would think constant sex and having someone who would always be with him, always put him first, was worth the other demands of having a Veela in his life—

And then Draco licked and sucked hard, at the same time, and Harry gasped and stopped thinking about Ron.

*

Harry was happy.

Draco knew that from the way he turned, slowly, around in the middle of the house that Draco had found for them, shaking his head and biting his lips as though he assumed he couldn’t grin without Draco taking it the wrong way. Draco stood back in the doorway, for once wide enough for his wings, folded his arms, and watched.

“I’ll bite,” Harry said, turning around, and Draco half-closed his eyes so that he could hide the automatic response in his body when Harry said things like that. “How did you find a place like this?”

“A house that another Veela had lived in at one point, and that no one wanted since then.” Draco reached out and stroked Harry’s arm. The constant need to touch him, casually, was one of the more annoying parts of his condition, but Harry rolled his eyes tolerantly and let him do it. “For the excellent reason of how high off the ground it is.”

“I noticed that,” Harry said, and slipped across the room to stare out the window. “I rather like it.”

Draco did, too. It meant that it wouldn’t be easy for someone else—even another Veela, once they had the place properly warded—to sneak up on and seize his Harry.

The “house” was more like a pair of simple rooms, enlarged on the inside with wizardspace, sitting on a platform cradled in the branches of a huge oak. The floor and ceiling were wooden planks, the walls made of branches trained to grow together and close gaps. The firepit was in the center of the floor, beneath a hole that Draco knew they would have to ward carefully so that smoke could escape but wet and cold couldn’t come in. Not to mention the wards that the firepit would need not to burn the house down. The windows, deliberate gaps in the branches, were rough and ungainly in shape. Draco knew there would be disadvantages to living here, and it was certainly nowhere near as beautiful as the Manor.

On the other hand, he no longer belonged in a place like the Manor, and he didn’t think Harry did, either. And where he was, Harry would be.

Harry turned towards him. He was trying to keep calm, but Draco could see the pulse jumping in his throat and the way that his hands flexed as if he wanted to take hold of something. Draco slipped towards him. He would be the thing that Harry held if he needed to grip.

“Thank you,” Harry said. “I know that we talked about a place like this, but I never imagined that you would manage to find one.”

“All the more reason for me to look, then,” Draco said, and buried his face against Harry’s throat, his teeth nipping gently. Harry took a breath and reached up to cradle the back of his head. His fingers dug deep and then held still. Draco smiled. Harry might not know what he wanted, and that was all right. Draco would help him figure it out. “I do so enjoy proving you wrong.”

Harry shoved him away, and then they were wrestling, tussling across the floor, Draco concentrating so that he wouldn’t hurt Harry with either claws or wings. Harry came up sitting on his chest, his face flushed and his hands knotted in Draco’s shirt the way he sometimes knotted them in his hair.

“Bastard,” he said, eyes bright and laughing. “I want you to do something for me.” He tugged suggestively on the shirt, one of the special ones that Draco had modified so that it would cover his chest but leave his back free, with room for the wings.

Draco smiled and let his head fall back. This was something he had never thought he would have in the wake of Harry’s refusal at first to stay with him or even put up with the idea of the bond between Veela and human, and which he thought he would never tire of now that he had it.

“Your wish is my command,” he said.

“Yeah,” Harry said, his eyes sparking. “Yeah, I like that.”
*

“Mr. Potter.” McGonagall’s voice was soft and harsh, and she reached up to push her white hair back with a hand that shook. “What you are telling me is—welcome news. But I will only discuss it with you alone.”

Harry studied her for a long time before he replied. McGonagall was the one who had kept Hogwarts safe and sheltered as much as possible, a sanctuary alive in what had looked like the ruins of the school. It turned out Dumbledore had planned better than anyone knew, and the wards around the school would cast the complicated illusion if enough destruction was rained on the walls. Some students, some professors, and a few of the bravest refugees had huddled there until Ron and Hermione brought the news that Voldemort was dead.

But as Ron had predicted, no one believed the rumors without proof, so Harry came himself, holding a Pensieve with the memory swirling inside. And McGonagall seemed prepared to accept his word.

But she wasn’t prepared to accept Draco. Her eyes kept sliding sideways to him, and her hand would grip her wand. Meanwhile, Draco had heard the suggestion that he leave Harry alone with someone else, and his claws already held Harry’s shoulder.

“Once you see the memory, you’ll understand,” Harry said. He kept his voice as gentle as possible. McGonagall had seen and suffered a lot, and the people crowded behind her, tense and unhappy and still afraid, wouldn’t be benefited by a loud argument. “I wasn’t the one who killed him. That was Draco.”

McGonagall’s face paled, and she took a step away from him as though she thought he had madness and it was catching. “Then how can you be sure that he’s dead?” she whispered. “We’ve all heard the prophecy by now.”

“We figured out what it meant,” Harry said, “and Draco removed the last guarantee of his immortality from me. It was something in me that was keeping him alive.” He had agreed with the rest of the Order that they wouldn’t mention the word “Horcrux” unless they absolutely had to. “Once that was gone, anyone could kill him. And Draco did.”

“Why?” McGonagall turned and stared at Draco with blank eyes. Her wand rose, and this time, it didn’t waver. “Why would someone on You-Know-Who’s side turn against him?”

“He did this to me,” Draco said, baring his fangs at her as Harry opened his mouth to explain. Harry shut his mouth again and smiled. It was occasionally good to be reminded that Draco could speak for himself, could decide for himself. “Transfigured me into a Veela because my work wasn’t good enough for him. I would have died of starvation in a pit if not for Harry. And he would have laughed.”

McGonagall shook her head, eyes still unfocused. “We can’t have him in the sanctuary with us. We can’t have anyone in the sanctuary with us except those who have served and suffered in the wake of the war.’

Harry shivered as he watched her. He had thought Sirius reckless, yes, but if this was what hiding away from the war did to someone, then he could understand his godfather’s need to be doing something active on the battlefield instead of cowering and waiting for the war to pass overhead. Harry was glad, for a moment, of the prophecy. Hiding had never been a option for him.

“Then we’ll speak out here,” he said.

“No. I don’t want him in my domain.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder and shifted a step away from Draco. Sometimes, he would let Harry get further away from him than at other times.

This wasn’t one of the permissive times. His claws closed down hard enough that Harry heard his shoulder blade creak in warning, and Draco bowed his head, whiffling out a harsh breath as he nuzzled against one of his marks on Harry’s neck.

Harry nodded. He could have asked permission to go with McGonagall and likely forced his point through with Draco, but frankly, he didn’t want to. Draco had put up with enough already without this.

“We’ll speak out here or not at all,” he said. “I could leave the Pensieve, and you could look at it at your leisure.” He held the Pensieve out.

McGonagall’s eyes focused, and she looked honestly surprised. “You would leave us without your direction and guidance? Without your direct story?”

“Yes,” Harry said. “Because you refuse to acknowledge that I’m partnered to a Veela now, and that makes a difference. If you won’t acknowledge that, then it doesn’t surprise me if you would miss the implications of the story I could tell you, too, even if I spoke with you face-to-face.”

For the first time in this meeting, McGonagall looked like the woman he had known who gave Harry and his friends detention for being out of bed at the wrong time. “Mr. Potter,” she said coldly. “I don’t think you know what we have endured, the ones who had to wait for the war to finish instead of doing something to stop it.”

Harry met her gaze as gently as he could. “I don’t,” he said. “But you don’t know what I endured, either. And Draco is part of me now, his life entwined with mine. I understand that you don’t like that, but you have to put up with it.”

“He’ll scare the children,” McGonagall said.

“Because of who he used to be?” Harry asked. “Or because of who he is now?” He hadn’t heard that Voldemort had used any Veela in attacks, but it could have happened, and it would make sense, the way they flinched from Draco’s wings and claws.

“Because of who he used to be,” McGonagall said, putting paid to that theory. Her voice softened when Harry raised a doubting eyebrow. “Please, Mr. Potter. Please try to understand our point-of-view. We’ve lived for what feels like centuries with the fear of Death Eaters finding their way through our glamours, and although You-Know-Who is dead, they haven’t gone. I know it.”

Harry glanced back over his shoulder, to see if Draco could understand their point-of-view. Draco smiled back at him, a gentle expression for being made with lips redder than human normal around a mouthful of what was essentially fangs.

And didn’t move.

Harry shook his head. “I have someone else to look out for now, and please, and consider as part of myself,” he said. “Make up your mind, Headmistress.” He thought addressing her that way might remind her that she would have to be more than the guardian of this band of refugees, if the school was ever to recover. “Speak to us here and now, or not at all.”

McGonagall remained still, as though not believing that she’d lost the battle. Then she raised a glamour charm that hid the terrified people behind her and sat down on a piece of broken stone from one of the outer walls of Hogwarts, the one structure that Voldemort and the Death Eaters had managed to do some damage to. Her mouth was a line that rocks could have cracked on.

“Talk, Mr. Potter.”

Harry did, avoiding her eyes. He knew that he would find forgiveness here difficult, if he found it at all. But in the end, he’d made his decisions, and he wasn’t going to spend the rest of his life looking over and regretting them. Others would get used to him being with Draco, or they would continue to stew about it.

Either way, Harry refused to make it his problem.

*

Draco spread his wings and soared upwards.

The ground spun below him, dizzily far away. The enormous tree that held their home lingered a little closer to him, a little longer. The branches reared as if they would like to pierce his wings, although Draco knew that attributing such emotion to pieces of wood was folly. And in the house, Harry lay cradled, sleeping.

Draco could feel him like a silver chain binding him to the earth, to a life that he loved, to a life that he had to think about and make preparations for. He had once believed that he would die in the oubliette. Then he had believed that he would die because Harry was so determined to ignore him. Both fears had passed. He had survived the way a Malfoy should, under difficult conditions.

But he was more than a Malfoy now, more than any Malfoy had ever been, if he embraced the chances handed to him. And he was more than just Harry’s Veela.

High above the tree, when its branches faded to only one more black blur among the rest below him, Draco held his wings out and began to practice flying.

He most often had Harry with him when he flew, either because he wanted to fuck him on the wing or because he delighted in showing Harry what the world looked like without a broom. Or else his mind remained with Harry; he patrolled in the air, and he had made sure that all the approaches that someone might make when flying or coming on a broom to their house were covered with glittering midair wards.

But this…

This, he did for himself.

He flew backwards first, testing the strength of his wings, learning to love the sound of the wind as it traveled past the enormous primary feathers. His body tilted and balanced against the breeze. He tipped over and flew parallel to the ground, noting that it was the easiest position, and then spread his arms to stretch alongside the wings and measured the distance between his spread fingers and the earth.

He had to know all of it. To defend Harry, yes, and because he suspected that someday he would face a person or a creature who flew better than he did. But also because the wings were part of his body, not something that he only possessed some of the time the way that natural-born Veela did, and he refused to be helpless in the face of them or feel them as a dragging weight on his back.

The war had cut across his consciousness and the flow of his life, damming it like a river. Draco knew that he hadn’t really dealt with the damming yet. There had been the sudden, unstoppable flood that was Harry’s arrival in his life, and since then, he had had enemies to fight. Harry’s friends, who didn’t want them together. Harry, who didn’t want them together. His own Veela instincts, that sometimes made him a danger to his beloved.

Draco smiled wryly into the darkness. All that effort, simply to prevent one Veela and one beloved from being together. He thought that ordinary Veela, if they knew what he was going through, would laugh.

But he wasn’t ordinary Veela, and so he had to learn. He paddled forwards a bit, and then folded his wings and fell towards the trees beneath him.

The one that contained their house loomed up with alarming force and speed. Draco’s body shivered with intense fear and exhilaration at the same time. He could barely open his wings against the pressure of the wind, but that was what made it fun. He knew that he could end up a hanging corpse on those branches, like a butcherbird’s cache.

But he did not wish to, and when he used a pulse of magic that left his wings outlined in silvery light, they opened. Draco wheeled back up from the reaching branches and towards the stars, which exerted their own kind of pull.

He screeched at the top of his flight, and wheeled over and over again, flipping upside-down, teaching himself the ways that this was different from doing barrel-rolls on a broom. The sky was his. The cold air no longer burned his lungs the way it once had. He only used Warming Charms when he flew for Harry’s sake. Even the currently bare skin of his chest—he had taken off his shirt so that there was no chance the cloth would restrict the movement of his wings---only tingled and smarted a bit, rather than freezing.

This was the way he was now.

Draco looked back at his reflection in the mirror of the night and the world, and found it good.

*

“Mr. Potter! We wanted to speak to you about your sudden change of heart as regards You-Know-Who.”

That was the voice that made Harry turn around. The rest of the reporters’ questions had been normal: questions about Draco and how he had become a Veela and how Harry had become his lover, accusations that he had turned his back on the wizarding world because he wasn’t personally guiding the effort at rebuilding, shouted demands that he explain when he had become bent. But this was a new one.

Harry turned slowly enough that he wouldn’t trigger Draco’s defensive instincts, and smiled as he felt Draco shift to stand at his shoulder. That ought to be close enough to handle anything these people did, while not close enough to be immediately threatening to those who were looking for it. “What do you mean?” he asked the woman who’d spoken. “I hated Voldemort until the end.”

He was pleased to see it made her flinch. But she straightened her shoulders in the next instant and forged forwards. She was a small woman with bright brown hair and collarbones that for some reason stood out, pressing against her skin. Harry didn’t see anything that would indicate her name, but her notebook had the logo of the Witches’ Voice, a small paper, on it.

“I mean that you didn’t kill him,” she said. “Despite the prophecy that said you should and the large number of people who thought you would.” Harry restrained a scowl, but did think that he would have to speak with Ron and Hermione and ask who in the Order had leaked the news about the prophecy. “Why did you leave it up to Draco Malfoy to do so?”

Draco’s claws scraped Harry’s shirt. He nodded to him and leaned back against him so that he could keep Draco’s arms busy, as well as removing himself from the conversation so Draco could answer the question.

“That sounds like something you want to ask me instead.” Draco fixed dazzling eyes on the woman and smiled, sweet and slow. His allure flowed out in a blast of summer air, and for the first time, Harry got to see it affect other people. Draco had been too focused on making Harry agree that they should stay together to use it on members of the Order.

He watched the dazed and blinking eyes, the way that hands faltered on quills and went to the collars of shirts, and the lips that parted as their gazes focused on Draco.

And for the first time that he could remember since seeing Dean and Ginny together in sixth year, jealousy poured over him in molten waves.

Behind him, Draco drew in a slow, satisfied breath. Of course, he could probably smell Harry’s emotions by now. Harry held himself ruthlessly still, and watched as the brown-haired woman, the one nearest them, sniffled and whimpered and stuttered before she managed to recover. She had pulled herself together with impressive speed given that she’d received a full blast of the allure, Harry had to admit, but at the moment, he didn’t really want to be rational.

“I—I meant,” she said, “that you must have had some motive for killing You-Know-Who instead of letting the Chosen One do it. Why did you?” That was as much as she could get out. She shut her eyes and swayed on her feet, and Harry set his own feet so that he wouldn’t swat Draco’s hands from his shoulders and punch her. Draco’s allure was meant to be for him alone.

Then he realized that the jealousy sliding through him, clear and strong as some of the wine that Draco had tried to introduce him to, really had no place in this situation, either. Harry did his best to hold still and bite the corners of his mouth so that he wouldn’t say something juicy for the reporters to write down. This was the situation as Draco had chosen to handle it, for whatever reason, and Harry had to trust him.

Draco’s hands caressed his shoulders, claws rippling up and down in minute strokes, and Harry relaxed with a small sigh. At least there were parts of their bond that Draco had chosen to keep between them, where they belonged.

“I didn’t choose it,” Draco said. “It was instinct, to protect my beloved by doing whatever I could to eliminate his enemies. At that particular time and place, his enemy was Voldemort.”

The crowd that wasn’t so much under his allure swayed backwards in fear this time. Harry smirked at them. Yeah, he went through the dungeons and the Transfiguration and all the torture that the bastard could inflict on him, and he’s still less afraid of saying the name than you are, who never saw him.

Hermione’s voice sounded briefly in the back of Harry’s head, reminding him that these people had been frightened like everyone else when the Order of the Phoenix fought their war, and that he could try to be more charitable to them. But Harry didn’t feel like it.

“Then—does that mean—” The reporter in front of them was fighting off the effects of the allure. She took a deep breath and then said, “Then you would do the same thing to any enemy of your beloved that you found?”

The silence that flowed into the alley after that made Harry want to chuckle. He didn’t, because that would also spoil some of the effect that Draco was trying to create, but he had to stare at the sky and bite his lips hard so that he wouldn’t do something stupid.

“Yes,” Draco said, and his voice had gained a resonant undertone that Harry didn’t know how to describe, because he’d never heard it before. It wasn’t an effect of the allure. It promised conquest, though. “Harry is my choice and my responsibility. And we all know that he has enemies left.” He lifted his head and turned it slowly from right to left, his eyes sweeping all the faces in the crowd as though he was trying to determine who among them would be the rogue Death Eater.

Someone must have been, because someone panicked.

A bright violet curse cut towards Draco from the back of the crowd. Harry pushed backwards with his elbows, instinctively, hurling both of them to the ground so that the curse went over them and struck the side of a shop. He heard a sharp crackle and hiss, and glanced over his shoulder to see that it had fused several separate bricks together.

Draco came back up with a roar, and opened his wings so that they loomed against the sky. Harry snarled and tugged at his arm, wanting him to get down. Standing like this, he was too easy a target for anyone who might want to cast at them.

Draco shook off his grip and lifted his wings higher still, until they reached the top of their curve and arched towards each other. The space between them began to glow with brilliant, eye-watering light.

He’s meant to protect you, Harry reminded himself, past the fear that was threatening to make him incoherent. And his wings are weapons.

Draco brought down his wings then, and the light brewing between them crackled like lightning away from them and into the portion of the scattering crowd that the blow had come from—or at least, Harry thought so. It was hard to keep track of where people had stood seconds ago with the way they were screaming and running. Still, he also trusted Draco not to harm an innocent.

He turned and started to brace an arm beneath him so that he could climb back to his feet—

And Draco was there, hauling Harry up so quickly that he twisted his arm behind his back. Harry hissed in protest, but Draco ignored that the way he had ignored Harry’s demands to be alone when they first came out of the dungeons, nuzzling him on the back of the neck and muttering in what sounded like Parseltongue. Harry couldn’t understand it, though, and reckoned it was just the normal series of noises that Veela made when they were upset.

“You killed him!”

Harry looked up swiftly. The reporter who had confronted them before was crouched over a steaming, well-cooked body, her hand resting on its shoulder where some of the cloth had escaped the flames, staring at Draco as though his allure couldn’t charm her now. Her eyes were wide, and edged with tears.

“Turner,” she whispered. “Mr. Turner. He was the one who taught me how to meet deadlines. How dare you do that?” And then she whipped out a wand of her own and stood up, aiming it between Harry’s eyes.

Harry managed to raise a Shield Charm ahead of her just in time. Once again, the light sprang from Draco’s wings, and it would have roasted the woman the same way if it hadn’t met Harry’s magic. Draco hissed in his ear as the shield flexed and bowed and ultimately stood up under his assault, raining the light down like drops of molten iron on the cobblestones.

“Let me through, Harry. Unless you’re protecting her because she’s more important to you than I am?” And his claws were on Harry’s throat now.

Harry closed his eyes and concentrated on calm breathing so that he couldn’t panic and stir Draco up further. Of course, compared to what they had survived when Draco was eating the Horcrux out of him, Harry thought, he might as well be calm for the rest of his life. Nothing else was ever going to be as bad as that again, which meant everything else had to be better.

“No,” he said. “I’m protecting her because of you.”

“Explain that,” Draco said, and nuzzled into his neck, his claws scraping up and down now, so tender that they shaved off only small peelings of skin.

“You could get into trouble if you hurt her, or someone like her.” Harry tilted his head back and let the claws slide over him, caress him, touch him, flex as if they would pierce a vein. His trust for Draco only made that possible. Three weeks ago, before he had accepted what he and Draco had, inevitably, to mean to each other, he couldn’t have done this. But this wasn’t three weeks ago. He reached up and squeezed Draco’s wrist, then turned around and looked up into his eyes. “Are you going to listen to me?”

There was a long pause, and then Draco nodded jerkily, his wings rattling around them like clashed pieces of armor.

“Good.” Harry kissed his chin, and Draco ducked his head so that their foreheads rested together. Good, Harry sighed again, in his head this time. He had more confidence that he could actually persuade Draco to listen to him when he was acting like this. “We have to live in a world full of wizards that don’t like you, don’t understand me, and think you should act like any ordinary Veela—not so attached to your beloved that you would murder someone who attacked him.”

“Other Veela would do the same,” Draco muttered, but Harry knew that he didn’t really believe it. Draco had just begun to do research into what differences there might be between Transfigured Veela and natural-born ones, and he was finding more and more disturbing, profound things than he had thought existed.

“I don’t know that,” Harry said. “But the point is that we can’t exile ourselves completely from the wizarding world.”

“Why not?” Draco asked, and his face shone like a crystal lit from behind. “We have our house, and you can Transfigure clothes for yourself out of anything, and I can hunt for us—”

“Because,” Harry said, “I don’t want to.”

His words acted like a charm on Draco, who turned his head to the side and rubbed his cheek along Harry’s forehead, above the scar that looked like a wing now.

“Then you should have what you want,” Draco said simply.

Harry sighed in relief, gripped Draco’s arm once, and then turned towards the crowd. “I’ll defend anyone from my chosen, if I know that he intends to attack in time,” he said. “But he’ll defend me from anyone. Do you understand? It’s useless to try and claim that that bloke wasn’t trying to kill us. I know he was.”

They stared at him with blank incomprehension. Harry knew why. They had looked upon him and Draco as a diversion, a good story, or sometimes a source of truth (those were the ones who thought there was some grand conspiracy about Voldemort’s death and they would find out the truth if they kept close to Harry and Draco). But the diversion wasn’t supposed to turn dangerous. They weren’t supposed to find themselves analyzing the light in a Veela’s eyes and wondering whether his claws could rip them apart.

No Aurors came; the Ministry was still pulling together the remnants of that particular group and using them, right now, for only the most serious matters, like reported sightings of Death Eaters. Harry knew that trying to finish their shopping would be useless right now, too. He turned to Draco and nodded. “I’d like to go home.”

Draco gripped him under the arms and rose with him, so fast that several of the people in the crowd flinched and a few fell. Draco Apparated the moment they were above the tallest buildings. He would have liked to fly home, Harry knew, but there was too much chance that someone could track them, or bring them down with a well-placed curse. He was getting good at Apparating mid-flight, though.

When they were home again, Draco nuzzled Harry’s shoulder for a long moment and closed his eyes. “Stay safe,” he said. It was as much plea as command, which made it a lot easier for Harry to tolerate. He had learned to hear the nuances in Draco’s voice.

“I know,” he said. “I’ll try.”

Draco made love to him with violent, desperate frenzy that night, but he was much better about controlling his claws now, and Harry had no injuries. He was grateful for that.

*

Draco stepped out of the house’s largest window, which he regularly used as a launching area, and then twitched his head to the side and sniffed. Then he flew above the house and sniffed again. His final stop was the clear air on the far side of the trees, where the wind was blowing and could bring him the scents.

Yes. There was no mistaking it. The scent of another Veela lingered around the tree and their house.

Draco was in a calm mood after Harry had spent the night with him and talked with him about killing the man yesterday, and made it clear that he didn’t blame Draco. So he didn’t immediately screech to proclaim his ownership of Harry, or assume that the other Veela was hunting for a beloved. Instead, he landed on top of the house and brought his wings together, brewing light between them.

“You do not know what you are doing, little brother.”

The Veela appeared a good distance above Draco, held back by some of the midair wards. She was in human form, with long silvery hair and a chiding expression. She floated on a broomstick rather than using her own wings, and Draco controlled the impulse to spit in contempt.

"The way you live, the way you hold your beloved, the way you cling to what you have been instead of what you have become..." The Veela stretched out along the broom. "You did not learn our ways, the way you should have. If you had come to us when you changed, we would have taught you, and you would be stable."

I'm more than stable enough to knock you out of the air. But Draco didn't think it was a good idea to reveal that. In Voldemort's dungeons, he had learned to hide his strength. He pulled his wings in closer to his body, and the light brewing between them grew more intense.

"You do not even respond to me." The other Veela's voice sharpened. "Have you become so much like an animal that you forget human speech?"

"How should I address someone who does not give me her name?" Draco dragged the words, bouncing and rattling like stones in a tin can, out of his throat. He had no desire to speak to her, that much was true, and he wanted her to underestimate him, but he needed to learn how she had discovered their location. That merited a faint effort at politeness.

"True," said the woman, and flashed him a smile. "My name is Vasya." The smile slid off her face as though it had been painted on. "And in the meantime, you should tell me how you, a Malfoy with only faint traces of our blood in his, became a Veela."

"Your remarks implied that you knew already." Draco dropped his wings down again; her eyes had focused on the light between them, and he doubted that he would be able to take her by surprise the way he had the man in Diagon Alley. "I was Transfigured by Voldemort. He meant me to die, but I survived and found my beloved."

"Not in the right way," Vasya whispered. Her eyes were narrowed, and she moved her head from side to side in snake-like movements, as though gulping his scent through different sets of nostrils. "Not in the way that you should have, if you were going to take a beloved at all. The traditions of our kind are different. We offer a choice to the humans who associate with us. You did not."

"I was starving," Draco said, and estimated the distance between her and him. Not close enough, he thought, if he was going to destroy her. She would have to come nearer, and he would probably also have to destroy the wards to get at her. "Dying. Would you have been noble enough to resist the call of your instincts at such a time?"

"You are not dying now." Vasya sat up on the broom, her long purple robes shifting around her. "You could have surrendered him when you were conscious of the world again. You could have come seeking us. We would have changed you, instead of letting you linger in this pitiful, half-human state."

"I don't find it pitiful." Draco flexed his hands and looked down at the long claws that adorned his fingers. Let Vasya think he wasn't paying attention for just a few moments. "I can fly, and I have the human features that let me fuck my beloved. Yes, I am satisfied with this."

"Is he?" Vasya whispered. "Can you be sure? Or does he merely say yes to please you?"

Draco had to laugh at that. It was more than plain that she didn't know Harry. "He's the one who makes demands."

"It is a partnership with us," Vasya said, and shifted as if she would jump off the broom and grow her wings for a moment. Draco remained still, waiting, watching, and she settled back again. "Not a relationship with someone who can demand something of us."

"I do as he asks," Draco said. "Fuck him like he asks. It's what he likes, what I like, and it's more than that. I found this house for him. I've killed for him. He's overcome his own fears and his friends' disapproval for me. You don't understand."

Vasya gave him a tolerant smile. "The cry of every adolescent and child down the centuries." Again the smile melted from her face. "My grandmother felt the disturbance of our magic when you entered the world, and again when you took your beloved. That spell used to Transfigure you has not been used in centuries. It should not have been used now. I came to redress that balance." Her hair began to glow.

"How?" She had still not attacked him. Draco rustled his wings into a more flight-ready position.

"By charming your beloved free of the chains you have put on him," Vasya said simply. "Then I can take you back to my grandmother, and she can free you from the spell. You can be normal, human again." The glow spread down her hair and began to work her features into something else, something polished, beautiful.

Draco sprang at her and soared through the wards, which shredded like cobwebs around him.

Vasya turned to him and flung fire--real fire, not the white light that Draco had conjured to burn Harry's enemy. It flew towards Draco, and he opened his mouth and spread his wings wide to embrace it.

It bounced from a shield before it could touch him, though. Draco turned his head to the side, and saw Harry hovering on a broom behind him, his face twisted into a snarl of the kind Draco thought he must have worn when captured by Voldemort. He lifted his wand again, and a tight series of glittering shields began to spin around Draco, a strong one replacing a potentially weaker one every few seconds.

"You cannot do this," Vasya said to Harry, voice low and shocked. "Do you not wish to be free? Do you not wish your Veela to be human again?"

"I would only want that if Draco wanted it." Harry spun his broom closer to her, his wand tip glowing red. "And he's made it abundantly clear that he doesn't."

Joy burst through Draco like the white light between his wings. Harry finally trusted him. Instead of hesitating, declaring that he needed Draco's decision, making him confirm again that he wanted to be where and who he was, Harry had accepted that he'd already made the choice.

He stared at Harry, because he couldn't not, and so Vasya's next blast that arched over the shields caught him by surprise in the chest.

He heard Harry shout, and smelled feathers burning. At that point, he became aware that he was on fire, and his first thought was that the flames might catch the house and burn their home down. He dived into sheer air, his wings swimming around him, and turned upwards as he fell so that he could see Vasya's next strike.

Harry was flying against her, screaming in fury, his wand swinging to create a myriad of lines of bright light as he cursed her. Vasya continued to dodge at the moment, the expression on her face tolerant. Draco remembered that she had said she wanted to charm Harry away from him and "free" him from Draco that way.

The combination of outrage from the memory and comfort that Harry was defending himself allowed Draco to focus on putting out the fire in his wings for the moment. He beat them hard, sending up gouts of white light from the edges. The white light ate the fire, and grew stronger and brighter for his efforts, so that it gleamed and sparked like light would from the edge of a blade.

Draco smiled, and glanced up, and sent the light at Vasya.

The two brooms twined and whirled high up in the air, barely distinguishable from each other except by a Veela's eyes that would always find the form of his beloved first, but Draco's aim was true. As he straightened himself out a few feet above the ground, the flames curled around Vasya and cut into her at the same moment as they burned her.

Her hair stood straight up from her head like a flame itself. She spat as her shape began to shift, and a great bird turned and clacked its beak at Draco. Draco, already soaring back to the battle, spat in response. He would defend Harry to the last of his blood, and the other Veela who might consider him low or common for it could go hang.

Or burn, as Vasya would if she didn't counter his fire soon.

She seemed to realize that at the same time, and broke away with a long, upset, shivering screech. The fire part of the blast died away--sensible, since it was her own magic to command anyway--but the white light kept shining, digging claws into her that emerged bloody. Vasya tossed her whirling hair out of her face and let her eyes dart back and forth between them as if she really believed that she should have won the battle.

"You will regret this," she whispered. "You will regret this all your lives."

"Not if we kill you before you can report back," Harry said, and his spell this time was nonverbal. Vasya's chest began to bulge. Draco felt a surge of vicious satisfaction. Harry was cutting the heart out of her, summoning it to his hand, where he could hold it and crush it at his leisure.

Vasya stopped the spell with a sharp movement of one hand, but after that, she had evidently had enough. She vanished with a star-like burst of light that shrank in on itself, and swallowed both her and the broom. The only sound left to them was the rushed panting in and out of Harry's lungs, and the soft creak and snap of Draco's wings keeping him aloft.

Then Harry turned and flung himself at Draco.

"Draco," he whispered, cocking his head back and staring at him hungrily before his mouth began to devour him.

Draco lifted his hand to cradle the back of Harry's head, fanning his wings forwards around them and folding them back as little as possible so that he could create a privacy screen for them. Of course, that meant they began sinking slowly towards the house, but that didn't matter much, not when Draco's wards detected no other enemies.

Then they were inside the house, and Harry, ignoring the stink of burned feathers and hair, shoved Draco backwards onto the bed, ripped down his trousers, and got his mouth on Draco's cock, all the time providing a running commentary of fury only interrupted by his sucking.

"Thought you were dead--can't believe how stupid she was--why did they think they could interfere--you're mine--mmm--Draco--can't believe how protective--mhmh--wonderful--I'm glad you're alive--caa--I don't want to leave you, never want to leave you--"

Then he settled down to serious sucking, and Draco flung his head back on the bed and stroked Harry's hair with his claws folded like reeds, his breath lifting in and out of his lungs and turning the smoke-ripened air fresh and clean again.

When he came, it was with a force that made Harry choke, but he scrambled up beside Draco in the next moment and kissed him breathless, so as to share the experience. Draco turned over and enfolded him in wings and arms, kissing him back, and pushing his silvery power into Harry's body at an appropriate moment, when he was sure that Harry was thoroughly distracted.

Harry arched and came at his silent command. The pleasure rippling through him made Draco feel sated, almost too full, as he fell back to earth. It was Harry, more than Draco, who arranged them into a loose pile of limbs and closed his eyes with a sigh.

There would be consequences from this battle and from refusing the invitation, Draco knew. He ought to be up and thinking of them, thinking of ways that he could guard Harry from the inevitable explosion.

But he wasn't, and when he closed his eyes and let himself drift away, the only thing he could think of was that Harry had fought to defend him, too.

The Veela wouldn't have succeeded in separating them.

Part Two.