lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2013-03-05 03:31 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2013-03-05 03:31 pm
[one-shots]: Glory Be, R, H/D, 1/4
Title: Glory Be
Prompt: Veelas are strong and deadly and as such, are perfect assassins for hire. After his trial, Draco left behind his old life and embraced the creature inside of him. And he now gets paid to kill. When someone pays him to kill Harry Potter, he’s not quite so sure he can go through with it…
Pairing(s): Draco/Harry
Word Count/Art Medium: 33,000
Rating: R
Warning(s) (Highlight to view): *Some graphic violence, death of original characters, mild torture, angst*
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Hat tip to L. for the beta, as always. Incredible work. This was written forfreakingcrups in the 2013 Valentine Veela Fest.
freakingcrups, I hope you enjoy this! The assassin prompt really inspired me.
Summary: Draco—Draco Malfoy, skilled assassin, powerful and wealthy Veela, former Death Eater—has always known what to do, where to go, who to kill. And then Harry Potter came along: Harry Potter, Unspeakable, former Auror, the most powerful wizard Draco has ever seen. And Draco catches a glimpse of glory he may be unable to live without.
Glory Be
Draco circled gently above the roofs, his head bent as he studied the snowy landscape beneath him. So much snow, so many boulders. Such stillness. He knew that there was life elsewhere, including human life, but in this particular corner of Siberia, there was nothing save the quiet.
Well, and one human, somewhere down there, toiling north in the snow with the secrets he thought he’d got away with stealing. And above, one Veela.
Draco smiled, feeling the cold blow through his teeth. Such an unequal contest. One could feel pity, if one did pity, if anyone worth being did pity.
A small plume of smoke rose from behind a hillock, and Draco turned in that direction, his wings beating and closing in great quiet. Veela weren’t naturally silent flyers, but a lot of that came from the shrieking and fireball-flinging. Draco had studied owls, and learned and invented charms that would muffle the sound of his flight to be like theirs. Now he was among the best assassins in the world.
He had to be, considering some of the jobs he had been sent on. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
He flew until the smoke was beneath him and he could see the tiny fire set up next to the even tinier hut. The man Draco tracked was a wizard; he could have used Warming Charms. Which meant the fire was either for cooking and he was no good at the other household charms he should have studied, or he was sending a message of some kind.
Not for long.
Draco dipped his wings and circled lower. He had no fear of the man, who stomped his feet in the snow beside the fire, spotting him. His glamours protected him, enhancing the naturally pale colors of his hair, skin, and wings, and making him nearly invisible against the piling clouds. Down he came, and down.
At the last moment, the man looked up. Draco saw the face of his quarry—not that there was ever any doubt who it would be. Draco was too good at tracking.
But it was too late now, it had been the moment the man stole the secrets, and Draco’s body was locked in the great, killing peregrine dive. He hit the man full front and center, in the chest, his boots driving in, his wings coming down and around as his prey fell sprawling in the snow, breaking the arm that rose towards him. The man screamed in agony as his wand flew away from him. Draco whirled one foot towards it and stepped on the wand, breaking it, then wheeled back and knelt on the man’s chest.
The blue eyes in front of him widened. Then the wizard closed his eyes, whimpered, and began some plea for his life.
Draco didn’t intend to listen. His hands closed around his prey’s throat, and he wrenched and squeezed both at once, breaking the thief’s neck and snapping his windpipe. He fell dead.
Little blood, Draco noticed, stepping back and scanning the body. A bit of it from the broken arm where the bone projected through the skin, nothing more.
Draco made a systematic search of the man’s clothes, satchels, and hovel, recovering the list from the false bottom of a chest with a little sigh. Did no one ever think of original hiding places? He might weep, were the business not so profitable.
And were he not so happy to be alive, and killing.
He carried the body aloft and dropped it in the deepest snow he could find, sweeping more over it with casual scoops of his wings. The body might be found by someone determined enough, but there was no identification, and probably hungry predators would find him before then. Draco smiled to think of a tiger eating it. Perhaps that would repay the man’s shade, to give back to the country he had stained with his presence.
When the body was covered, the fire smothered, the hovel destroyed, and several other interesting objects in Draco’s possession, he rose, his wings out, his body aimed straight upwards, and soared back towards the Apparition point. Miles of snowy miles of countryscape he passed over, and he the deadliest thing in it.
It was a wonderful feeling.
*
“Well done.”
Draco smiled as he received the bag of Galleons from the man in the black cloak. It was always a black cloak, for some reason. Draco considered his own silvery-grey robes, modified as necessary in the back when his wings were out, the ultimate in fashion statements, but no one else seemed to agree with him.
He took the money, bowed his head, and tried not to sound too eager as he said, “And the next assignment?”
“Is forthcoming.”
Draco inclined his head again. That probably meant they didn’t have work for him at the moment, but had passed his name on to someone who did. He didn’t much care what they gave him, who he had to kill. Perhaps he would object to killing a Muggle, who couldn’t present as interesting a challenge as a wizard, but so far no one had asked him to kill one. It was thieves instead, other assassins, Aurors, and people who went too far in blood feuds, too far in this case being defined as “not having enough money to hire a Veela assassin before someone else hired him first.”
Draco had nearly made it to the door of the small room before the man called after him, “Is there anyone you couldn’t kill?”
Draco turned around and looked at him. Of course, with his eyes concealed and his cloak pulled around his body tightly enough that it was difficult even to discern his shape, he arguably had the advantage, but he flinched back from Draco as if he didn’t, bowing his head a little against the piercing factor of Draco’s gaze.
“I haven’t met him yet,” Draco said. “I have more raw power than any wizard due to my heritage.” He thought about calling and flexing his wings, but he kept them wrapped under his shirt most of the time he was on the ground, and it would be a bore to bring them out for someone who couldn’t appreciate them. “And it’s speed and strength that matters in these contests, even more than power.”
The man seemed satisfied. At least, the hooded cloak nodded, and the voice repeated, “Work will be forthcoming.”
Draco waited until he was outside to toss the bag of Galleons in the air again, smiling. That meant a real challenge, and that meant entertainment. Not that money didn’t; Draco regularly spent his earnings on things he liked to do.
But for the sheer thrill, the rush of adrenaline and the gratification of the killing instincts that Draco possessed as a mixture of a Dark wizard and a Veela, it was hard to think of things he enjoyed doing more.
Draco Apparated home. His wings ached from the long flight through high cold air, and he wanted to pamper himself. At the moment, a roaring fire and the newest Dark grimoire he intended to acquire from a collector sounded ideal.
*
“We have a proposition for you.”
Draco leaned back against the wall of the small cave that he’d been summoned to—an actual cave, this client was even more paranoid than some of them—and eyed his new employer critically. He wore the same heavy hooded cloak that seemed standard fare for those plotting mayhem from Death Eaters on down, but there were differences to be found from Draco’s usual hirers even under that. His hands moved back and forth nervously, and he kept picking up the bag of Galleons and the sheaf of papers in front of him and putting them down again. Then he seemed to realize what he was doing and clasped his hands in his lap, lifting his head almost enough for Draco to see his face under the hood.
He wants me to kill someone dangerous. No, someone he fears personally. That made Draco suspect blood feud. Members of some pure-blood families would start believing superstitiously in the power of blood enemies they hadn’t killed after a few tries. They might think even a Veela assassin was useless.
Draco had spent five years proving them otherwise. He had worn a shirt with slits today, so he extended his wings, and let the man gape at them for a moment, the way that his feathers sliced the air, the way the wings whispered like knives as he folded them back. “Does that reassure you I can get the job done?” he asked flatly. “Because I can.”
The man watched him in rapt silence for a minute or two, then started and nodded. “We thought you might not want to go after him because you knew him,” he said, and looked down at one particular piece of paper on the table. “But my—colleagues reminded me that that was ridiculous, that of course you knew him as an enemy.”
Draco blinked, and licked his lips, while his heart sped up. His target was a former Death Eater, then, almost certainly. He had wanted to hunt one of them for a long time, but he disdained to use his skills for anything except money. “Give me his name.”
The man hesitated, and hesitated, until Draco was close to reaching out and strangling him for the name. His excitement was keen enough to arouse, to blaze beneath his skin, and the man finally swallowed and gave in.
“Harry Potter.”
Draco blinked. Then he shook his head. He understood the reason for the man’s secrecy, but he had become excited, in truth, over nothing.
“Harry Potter is an Unspeakable,” he said. “Caught up in research and taking artifacts away from those deemed too incompetent to possess them, like all the rest of his kind. That isn’t—that isn’t something that makes him threatening. And he hasn’t proven himself powerful, either. He acknowledged that the way he killed the Dark Lord was mere luck.”
The man hesitated once more, then sat up. “Harry Potter is more than he seems, like all Unspeakables are,” he stated. He tried to make it sound like the kind of flat statement Professor Snape would make, an absolute truth, but Draco saw through the assumption and sneered. The man continued speaking, his voice gone staccato with nervousness. “He’s caused trouble for friends of mine. I assure you we need him removed.”
Draco stood there and thought about it. It was true that the last wizard he had killed hadn’t been particularly powerful, only hard to find. And if Potter had learned anything as an Unspeakable, then he could be challenging to track down, and he might have a few artifacts that could make their final confrontation more interesting.
But it still wasted Draco’s time, and he was irritated that he had been summoned. Potter had spent years and years after the war painstakingly making sure everyone understood the truth of his mother’s sacrifice and the debt the wizarding world owed to her, a Mudblood. Draco would rather have owed the debt to Potter, even with his wand and all, but he was convinced by the story. It was the only way Potter could have had protection against the Dark Lord when he was a baby and not yet the Master of the Elder Wand.
Perhaps he’s still its master. That might make the challenge a little more interesting.
Draco didn’t really think so, because he would have heard about that. But he did think he would have wasted a trip coming out here if he didn’t accept the offer, and he hated to think of wasting time.
“I accept,” he said crisply, nodding to the man. “Tell me where you want me to kill him, and give me all the information you have.”
The hood sagged forwards, and the man whispered reassurances and thanks as he swept the papers together into a pile, followed by the Galleons, and gave them to him. Draco shook his head a little when he saw the number, twice the usual fee. These people feared Potter, then. It must be the result of artifacts he carried with him and not his personal skills. Everyone was agreed that he hadn’t been the greatest Auror.
“Can you finish the kill within a fortnight?” the man asked.
Draco paused to stare at the man, until he squirmed as if he didn’t know whether Draco or Potter was his greatest fear, after all. “I am unaccustomed to working under a time limit,” Draco said coolly.
“I know you did it on your last case.” The man must have had some remnant of courage after all, because he trembled but didn’t back down in front of Draco’s affronted gaze. “You had to find that thief before he released the secrets he’d taken.”
Draco grunted. That was true. And it might be a similar case this time. Perhaps Potter was set to testify in a certain case—though Unspeakables rarely did so—or close to figuring out the location of a Dark artifact that would cost the man and his friends deeply.
“Fine,” he said. “A fortnight it is, presuming that your information can tell me enough.” He hefted the sheaf of papers.
The man stood and bowed to him. “He can die at any workable location. And anything else that you need to know, please feel free to ask us.”
Draco thought of asking after their names, but he had done that once, as a joke, and immediately lost his contract. He didn’t want to lose contracts. It would mean losing, ultimately, the thrill of challenge that prickled along his skin, and the opportunity that he would be able to have fun and earn money while doing so.
He settled for a polite nod to his employer, and turned away, the papers in hand, to learn more about his newest prey.
*
Harry Potter was boring.
Draco supposed he might not be to someone who believed the legends, or someone who was reading about his career on paper for the first time. Most of the time, the wizarding world considered Unspeakables dangerous. And they thought that transferring into them after a moderately successful career in the Aurors would make someone powerful and exciting, mysterious.
But Draco knew what Potter had been, or supposedly had promised to be. This was, indeed, boring.
He flicked through page after page of information, including details of the wards on Potter’s private home, the wards on the Wesasley houses that he regularly visited, the restaurants he patronized, the people he was seen to spend time with at the Ministry other than the Weasleys. Potter didn’t work his way up the ladder of power in the Ministry by currying favors and offering them, the way so many other people did, but then, he didn’t have to. Other people fell over at the sound of his name.
But if you looked beneath the surface? No real power there, Draco thought, shaking his head. No awareness of what was going on. Potter hadn’t been a good Auror because he didn’t obey the rules. He couldn’t get the rules through his head. That suggested someone who wasn’t very smart.
And what did he do instead of trading on his fame, instead of making something of himself and claiming the victory that a full school of spectators had seen him win? Disclaimed it, said it was his mother’s love, and then expected everyone to continue adoring him anyway. Draco wondered idly if it had been a shock when he was expected to work as an Auror, and then work for a transfer to the Unspeakables, instead of being granted it just because of who he was.
Yes, Potter pretended to modesty, but he seemed sincere in his desire for an ordinary life. And in that loss of potential, Draco found something to make his wings shoot out and then tense around his body in irritation.
Potter wasn’t lying about his lack of power, at least. That would make him far less challenging to kill. He didn’t even have Draco’s wand anymore, which might have protected him and raised Draco’s heartbeat a bit. He’d sent the hawthorn wand back to Draco after the war.
Draco glanced over at his wand, resting beside him on the couch in an honored place. He didn’t use it in his kills; he preferred his Veela talents. But he wielded it in his normal, everyday life.
The life that other people thought he had, at least, the life of the millon-Galleon playboy. Draco went on holidays in expensive places and flirted with whoever he chose and bedded the vast majority of them. The Ministry had ceased watching him because they thought they had nothing to fear from him.
For a moment, the idea drifted across Draco’s mind that Potter’s lack of power and carefully humble stories might be the same kind of façade.
Then he dismissed the idea with a snort. No, Potter had told the truth because he was supposedly so honest and true and then discovered, too late, that his audience didn’t respect honesty. Going after him would be a pleasure after all, Draco decided. It would remove a heavy waste of potential from the world.
*
It didn't take Draco long to choose the time or the place for the kill. Potter was an Unspeakable, and Draco respected the defenses of the Department of Mysteries in the way that he didn't respect Potter's power. Potter's home also had formidable wards on it, probably the gift of his contacts rather than products of his own ability.
So it had be a place outside both of them, and that meant as Potter was coming out of the Ministry one night, shaking his wrists and yawning and mumbling farewells to someone inside the building Draco couldn't see. Draco waited, his hands sinking into the side of the building he clutched. He wouldn't do this in front of witnesses. There weren't enough Veela assassins in the world to make it impossible if the witness tried to trace him back to his employers, and Draco didn't kill people he hadn't been hired to. Not challenging enough.
But no one else joined Potter, and he took a few steps towards the Apparition point that an increasingly paranoid Ministry had placed further and further from the protection of the walls. That took him into an alley. Shadows crowded the way. Draco arched his wings and could hear his own heartbeat crowding his ears, singing in them.
Draco struck.
He came down and forwards, aimed at Potter's back, his wings beating in the same silence he had used to complete his last hunt in Siberia and his hair flying around him. His hands had claws on them at the moment, perfect carving instruments. His senses hummed with the presence of skin, of flesh, of blood--
And power.
Just as Draco drew his left hand back for the blow that would sever Potter's spinal column, shields flared into being around Potter, blue and white and left and front and back, and Potter spun around with his wand upraised and his eyes turned almost black in the changing shadows of his spells.
Draco rolled, tucking his feet close to his belly the way he would in a Quidditch flight and drawing his arms to his sides. His wings, however, had to beat madly to bear him up and away, and the trailing edge of the left one touched a purple shield.
The heat made Draco shriek aloud. It felt as though a gong had rung in his bones, a fierce, quivering musical note that changed the speed of his blood and the pace of his breath, and he wheeled drunkenly out of the sky, clanging into a building with a force that made his eyes go black.
From beneath him, Potter snarled a spell--a spell Draco had heard only once before, from one of his victims, a spell that no one was supposed to know unless they had Veela blood themselves. Which the Potter line manifestly didn't, and Draco refused to consider the possibility that a Mudblood could have.
The spell centered low in the middle of Draco's back, exactly where he would have placed it, and he screamed again as it rippled up and down his spine, heading for his wings, trying to break their connections to the flight muscles. Let Potter land that blow as it was meant, and Draco would never fly again.
Draco knew the remedy, luckily. He snatched his wand out of his belt and placed it on his right wing, chanting desperately. The magic raced through him and into the spreading force of Potter's, where they clashed like swaying cobras. Draco held his breath, trying to relax as much as possible. If his heart beat too hard, it would drive the curse through his body with his blood.
But his countercharm won, though Draco had the uneasy feeling it was only because this was his body and not because he was stronger. Potter's magic faded into nothing. Draco turned, clinging with his claws to the side of the building, and stared below, absently noting that blood was sliding into one of his eyes.
Potter stood beneath him, staring up. His wand dangled in his fingers as his glare found Draco's face.
"Malfoy?" he demanded.
Draco had one moment of confusion to act in, and he decided to take it. Potter was stronger and more aware than Draco had counted on, but that didn't mean he was strong enough to face this.
Draco flipped out from the building and dropped like a striking hawk, straight down. Potter's shields had diminished with his surprise. Emotion-based magic, then, and vulnerable to all the vagaries of someone's feelings. Potter would be hard-put to it use to magic at all when he was astonished or confused.
Draco accepted the shock of passing through the outer shields, the pain that made his muscles shudder, in return for the kill he was sure he would make. His legs were spread out in front of him, wings poised beside him. He would land on Potter's chest and shatter his sternum with a kick, break his arm with a wing the same way he had done to his victim on his last hunt, and then he would--
The shields in front of Draco tightened up, impossibly fast. No one should have been able to react to an attack coming at them as rapidly as Draco's, but Potter had, and Draco bounced flat on the shields. He squirmed for a second, trying to realign himself, trying to understand.
Then Potter took a step forwards beneath him, and Draco snapped into focus, his senses reporting the real world to him again, not the one he had made up out of his assumptions.
Draco always felt magic through his Veela senses as heat. Some wizards, ill-trained because of their own poor memories and their little power, felt like smoldering embers. Some more powerful ones, like McGonagall, were bonfires. And the vast majority fell in between, mostly candles, or hearthfires when they really pushed themselves. All the Weasleys were like that, for example.
The magic that beat and soared around Potter was like the heat from a forest fire, and filled Draco's face and nostrils with the same stinging sense of imminent doom.
Draco rolled from the first curse, rolled and fell, and then flew. His wings seemed to confuse Potter, or else he just wasn't used to fighting flying enemies; Draco dodged, and the magic went around him. He ended up on top of the building across the alley, turning to stare down, crouched on all fours with his wings arched and waving above him.
Potter looked up at him fearlessly, no surprise left. His fingers played along his wand, and he nodded, his head turning slightly to the side. Draco knew he was calculating angles from which he could strike, ways he could kill. He would strike now with no pity and no weakness restraining his hand.
And Draco could only stare, not move to safety and plan another attempt later as he would ordinarily have, or close and finish it.
He could feel his face flushing, his chest expanding, his nostrils flaring to bring him the scent of Potter through the scent of the magic.
This was...
This was the sensation Draco had read about, but never thought to find. He trembled and crept close to the edge of the roof, though all his senses and his instincts were screaming to him about what a good target he would present to Potter that way.
His wings twisted and jerked, but Draco didn't know which direction they would launch him in if he rose from the roof now. Not away, though, of that he was fairly certain. And after hovering for a moment, he would descend. He didn't have much choice, not with the longing growing tight in his chest.
Potter took a step closer, face as intent as a flame, wand already weaving the beginning patterns of his next curse.
Draco should Obliviate him, at the very least, if he wasn't going to kill him. No, he should kill him. No, he should land in front of Potter and do his best to explain when he was stumbling over his own tongue in the process.
His heartbeat made his cheeks tingle. He stretched out a hand, and Potter ducked, interrupting his current spell, dashing into the shadow of a building. That was one good thing, at least, Draco's distant brain noted. That meant they couldn't close in a duel at the moment and hurt each other.
He didn't want to hurt Potter.
Draco grimaced. That rather put some of the plans he'd been making out of commission, if he couldn't continue with the kill.
But there was magic here. There was power. There was competence, from the way that Potter crouched in the shadow of the building and studied the alley for another way to attack Draco. There was refusal to retreat, a stubborn pride that Draco could read in the way Potter cocked his neck back and bared his teeth in a snarl.
There was so much that needed to be done, and things shifted in Draco's head until they found a new and comfortable purchase for themselves and he understood what needed to happen. He rose with careful sweeps of his wings, hovering over the middle of the alley, in plain sight and plain striking distance.
Potter fell back a step, as Draco had hoped, and watched for the trick instead of attacking immediately. Draco bowed his head and spread his hands, a gesture he thought Potter might know, the way he had known the spell that nearly deprived Draco of his wings.
Potter stiffened and straightened. Then he touched his wand to his throat, and his voice rose, cold and deep and strengthened with the Sonorus Charm. "You're mental, Malfoy."
Draco raised his head. The flush hadn't left his cheeks yet, and they still tingled as he stared at Potter and said softly, "I choose you."
Potter shook his head. It didn't look like the motion of trapped prey, the way Draco would have thought it would when he finally came to choose someone unsuspecting. "You were trying to kill me just a minute ago. You think I'll believe this?"
Draco took a deep breath, and his lungs snapped free of the invisible threads that wound around them. "Listen, Potter. A choosing is important to the Veela, more important than anything else. More important than earning money, or living a good life in wizarding society, unless that's what it takes to catch the chosen."
He smiled at Potter. His head was as icy clear and sparkling as the stars he had hunted under tonight. He could feel the tension outstanding between them shifting into a different kind of tension, at least on his end.
And Potter would understand soon enough. From the dawning comprehension on his face, he understood already and wanted to put it off. He didn't fall back, but he did raise one hand, fingers spread, as though that was enough to hold Draco back.
"I can't be your chosen," he said.
"Why not?" Draco asked, laughter, of a sort, bubbling in his throat. He was not sure that it was the laughter he would usually have chosen, but it worked, and it made a mad kind of sense, one that made him want to spin along with his wings full of wind. "Why the fuck not? You're the most powerful wizard I've ever met. Veela are attracted to power. Surely you know that."
And now his eyes were caressing Potter's shoulders, Potter's stance, Potter's green eyes, Potter's scar. Even his wild and untamed hair now looked as if it might be that way because of the power bursting through it. Draco rumbled and dropped closer, his wings backbeating air that drove down and made Potter's magic rise against it.
"You were trying to kill me just a minute ago," Potter repeated, but belief had crept into his face.
"Yes," Draco said. "Sometimes it happens that way. Now I know you. Now I'm coming." He dipped his wings for a dive down.
Potter folded his arms across his chest and bowed his head, and simple caution made Draco hesitate. He had no desire to lose his ability to fly because Potter didn't believe him yet.
Potter Apparated.
Out of an area where no one should have been able to Apparate, out of a sheltered area the Ministry had tried to protect. Right from beneath the Veela who'd chosen him.
Draco could have attributed it to special Unspeakable permissions or an artifact he carried that allowed him to break through wards, but he knew what he wished to attribute it to: Potter's power. He flew home with a smug little smile breaking out on his face.
*
"What do you mean, you can't kill him?"
Draco shrugged with wide wings spread, and watched the face of his employer. Or, rather, the hooded cloak where his face hid. Draco wasn't curious to see it. He would learn enough by watching the man's actions and attending to the tones of his voice. A Veela's senses were more than keen enough for that.
Especially the senses of a Veela who had chosen. Ever since making his decision about Potter, Draco felt as if he had been breathing air like strong wine.
"He is much more powerful than I thought he was," Draco said, and lowered his eyes, tucking his wings in close to his body. Let them think he was crouching. Let them think anything, as long as they gave Draco enough clues to protect his chosen from other assassins in the future. "And he had an artifact with him, one that glowed with blue light..."
The man behind the table sat up and nearly let his cloak fall from his head, but snatched it back up at the last moment. "Blue light?" he whispered hoarsely. "Or white?"
How easy they made this, Draco thought. Then again, he had always known that fortune favored him. He bobbed his head a little, slowly. "It might have been white light," he murmured. "Or blue. It hit me so hard..." He clutched his hands to his head, which in some cases would have been ridiculous overacting, but which he knew was not so here.
The man shifted in place and gave a sound like a moan. Then he shook his head again. "You will return the fee we gave you, of course."
"Of course," Draco said, and tossed the pouch to him. He felt no tugging of the heartstrings to part with it. After all, he would have more than enough money to live on from the Potter vaults.
The fool looked almost more wretched to receive the money back, from the way he bobbed his head. Draco wanted to laugh, but contented himself with a sharp flirt of his wings. Do you think to hire another assassin to go after him? How will that one feel, to face me in all my power?
"It is imperative that we find someone who can destroy him," the man muttered. He gave Draco a look, or so Draco assumed, from the way the hood tilted. Draco stood silent and impassive, only the bobbing of his wings giving him away. And this man was not one of the rare ones who knew how to read Veela signals.
Potter is. A Veela must have taught him that spell.
The realization was not actually easy for Draco, because primarily it made him want to shriek in mindless jealousy and hunt down the other Veela who had dared to touch Potter. But certain civilized courtesies were expected, even in caves. He stood and waited for the fool to come to a conclusion.
"Do you know someone?" the man asked gingerly.
Draco wanted to laugh, it was so similar to the requests he had received in the past to introduce the requester to a Veela who hadn't chosen yet. But he was still being civilized, so he simply lowered his head and shook it. "I'm afraid not. I am the best I know of. I always make my kills. But not this time."
The fool must have known it, or he would have hired someone less expensive than Draco to take care of Potter. He visibly sagged towards his table. Draco watched him, and waited.
"We'll find someone." Finally, the fool waved his hand at him to indicate he could go.
Draco turned for the cave entrance feeling as though balloons were strapped beneath his wings. This was as close as he would get to permission to hunt Potter, chase Potter, touch Potter, corner Potter.
Of course, usually the choosing didn't involve the chase. Most Veela had potential partners surrounding them, they were courted rather than courting, and it was a matter of deciding who was most interested in and devoted to them, or who would please them most.
Potter would hardly welcome Draco's interest and attention. But Draco thought he would enjoy even that, and the disgusted looks Potter would certainly toss him when Draco pressed closer.
This is the way it should be. It's no wonder that I never found anyone who suited me before this. Someone who stands still isn't much of a challenge.
*
Draco sprawled full-length on his belly on the roof of the house next to Potter's, his breathing light and his wings fanning around him. It would have been impossible to land on Potter's house itself, with all its wards, but no such paranoia, or protections, excluded the neighbors on either side of him. They were old wizards who went to work on stolid, unexciting jobs in the Ministry, and didn't seem to care that an Unspeakable lived almost on top of them.
Draco's lips twitched. I'll be relieving their minds a little when I take Potter back to the Manor with me. There, I can present the chase to Potter in the light of a good deed.
He had already learned that Potter went to work in the Department of Mysteries early in the morning and didn't return until after dark, or perhaps late light in the case of the summer. It wasn't summer now, it was autumn, and Draco had used a glamour to conceal the brilliant white of his wings. He would be almost invisible flying against a cloudy sky, but not crouched on washed grey stone.
Darkness approached, and with it, Potter. Draco heard the pop of Apparition he had already learned to recognize on the street below him, and lifted his head.
Time for the show.
Draco waited until Potter walked up to the front gate of his garden and paused to do something complex with the web of wards around his property. That was the one disadvantage of such fearsome protections; they always took at least a moment to recognize even the person most keyed to them.
A moment was all an assassin as skilled as Draco needed.
He flung himself off the roof in a twisting, corkscrew plunge, straight towards Potter's back, towards where his wings would have grown if he had been a Veela. Potter whipped around to face him, a shield shimmering around him.
Draco wasn't trying to kill him, though. He had truly and honestly given that up, and wouldn't try to salve his lost pride with it again.
He pulled up right in front of Potter, though, less than an inch away from his shield, and bowed in midair, his wings humming and hovering and hammering. Potter stared at him. Draco smiled and turned his back with nothing more than a twitch of his shoulders, looking over one of them, stretching his wings wider and wider.
The message was clear for anyone with eyes to see. Look what a good flyer I am. Look how graceful, how skilled. You won't be ashamed by accepting me as your mate.
Potter, though, was blind in certain special ways that had nothing to do with his glasses. He made an alarming gesture with his wand, and Draco rolled away, somersaulting in midair. The curse crackled through Potter's shield and then the air beside him.
But it didn't touch his body, and that wasn't because Potter had decided to aim past him. Draco pulled up again and bowed a second time, hands insistently extended towards Potter. Potter couldn't miss that he was unarmed.
Potter simply watched him, body canted in a way that made Draco's mouth water, his head lifted.
And that power was there, all around him, the forest fire, the altar-fire burning to immolate lesser sacrifices, the holocaust.
Draco couldn't take his eyes from Potter. He burned to know how Potter had hidden his magic this long. It couldn't be a matter of glamours, not when magical creatures like Draco would have run into him and could have spread rumors when they sensed the truth. What was it? What did he do to make himself seem so much less than he was?
Not that Draco would tolerate that when Potter had accepted his choosing, of course. But it spoke to cleverness and skill of a different sort than Draco had ever believed Potter possessed, and that made him more interesting.
"Go away," Potter said, his words striking like blows from a whip.
"I don't want to," Draco said. "I chose you, and you ought to know what that means."
"I don't, as a matter of fact."
Draco's skin tingled, the sign that his chosen was lying to him. He sighed. "You do. I've selected you as the only one worthy to bear my company and share my bed on a permanent basis. It's like mating, but choosing is a more elegant word." He paused and darted what he knew was a wicked smile at Potter. "Chosen."
Potter shook his head. His face was still, his arm that held the wand steady, his stance still braced for violence or flight. Draco cocked his head and hummed. Had there ever been a chosen with the ability to match his? He thought not. "You don't understand what I'm saying. I refuse your choosing, and there has to be at least one person in the past who did that."
Draco tilted his head to the side to watch the view over Potter's shoulder. "Not many."
"Tell me about the ones who did." Potter held his eyes. "Did the Veela pursue them and rape them? Or respect their choices and let them get away?"
Draco smiled, feeling the thrill travel through his veins like sex, like the flutter of wings when he was getting ready for the killing dive. "You have to understand, Potter, that most of the time, Veela are the ones being sought for what they are, not being avoided."
"Bunch of bloody mind-rapists."
"You think it's the allure that makes people want us?" Draco clucked his tongue sharply. "And I had such hopes for you."
As he had hoped would happen, Potter drew a step closer at that, though Draco was afraid he would have to attribute it to curiosity and not Potter falling madly in love with his smile. "What is it, then?"
"We can focus on our chosen," Draco said. "Some people like that, the sensation of being cherished, cradled." In fact, he knew no one who didn't, but he granted magnanimously that Potter might have had to push that desire so far down his list of wants that he no longer felt it much. Most people wouldn't think the Savior of the Wizarding World needed to be held. "We can work together as a team with them, granting our intense magic and immense wills to the accomplishment of any project they desire." Ah, yes, Potter's eyes had grown brighter. "And we can bring them pleasure as intense as our magic." He folded his wings back along his body, dropping to the ground, and smiled at Potter.
Potter pondered him from closer, at least, though still without the focus that Draco would have liked, and then shook his head. "I don't think so."
Draco bowed his head, fooling Potter, in the same way he had the man who had recently employed him, into thinking he had given up. "May I ask why not?"
"What you offer sounds good," Potter said quietly. "Too good. Plus, you were trying to kill me a short time ago. Like hell I think you've switched your loyalties that fast."
Draco hummed. "And if I gave you information about the people trying to kill you? Would that prove that I've sufficiently abandoned that contract and now consider you mine to protect?"
Potter made a careless little gesture with one hand, as though he assumed Draco would never do such a thing. "Sure, if you had some information to offer. I know how assassins work. They don't betray their contracts, because no one would hire them again."
"They were hunting you because they fear you," Draco said, and waited a moment until Potter looked up and met his eyes. "I made up a story about being held away from you by intense blue light, and the man promptly asked if it was white. When I said it could have been, he looked ready to faint from fear."
Potter stared into the distance, and his face gradually hardened. Draco shivered in delight. It would be something beyond ordinary luck, beyond even the fortune that life had granted him so far, to have a chosen who could hunt at his side the way Potter's face promised he could.
"You know who they are," Draco whispered.
"I have an idea who one of them is," Potter said, moving his head like a charmed snake. "That doesn't mean--" He looked at Draco and nodded. "Perhaps I'll repay your favor with a favor, Malfoy."
"Becoming my chosen sounds more like a favor for you than me." Draco leaned a centimeter away from the wards, his head cocked to the side and his smile the kind he hoped would provoke Potter to attack. He wanted another glimpse of that battle-grace, that deadly dance on the killing field.
"I didn't mean that kind of favor." Potter stood taller. "Name what you want. Information. Money. A word whispered in the right ears."
"Information." Draco pressed forwards when Potter nodded. "Tell me the best way to win your heart."
Potter looked at him steadily for a moment. Then he said, "I feel sorry for anyone, human or Veela, wizard or Muggle, who's so obsessed with someone else that they can't stand on their own." And he turned away and slipped through the wards and into his house. The hole in the wards sealed before Draco could even think about attacking it.
Draco sighed and floated backwards, his wings fanning out around him again. He admired the curve of Potter's arse and the sway of his robes as he disappeared from view. A moment later, a light went on in one window of the modest stone house. It had the dull orange color of firelight. Draco imagined the room Potter probably stood in right now, restrained and simple in taste, and he imagined Potter's bedroom. No better than cotton sheets, surely, and a small bed, because Potter spent most of his time alone.
Draco imagined fucking him in that bed, and had to fly away and take care of his hard-on.
Part Two.
Prompt: Veelas are strong and deadly and as such, are perfect assassins for hire. After his trial, Draco left behind his old life and embraced the creature inside of him. And he now gets paid to kill. When someone pays him to kill Harry Potter, he’s not quite so sure he can go through with it…
Pairing(s): Draco/Harry
Word Count/Art Medium: 33,000
Rating: R
Warning(s) (Highlight to view): *Some graphic violence, death of original characters, mild torture, angst*
Disclaimer:Harry Potter characters are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
Notes: Hat tip to L. for the beta, as always. Incredible work. This was written for
freakingcrups in the 2013 Valentine Veela Fest.freakingcrups, I hope you enjoy this! The assassin prompt really inspired me. Summary: Draco—Draco Malfoy, skilled assassin, powerful and wealthy Veela, former Death Eater—has always known what to do, where to go, who to kill. And then Harry Potter came along: Harry Potter, Unspeakable, former Auror, the most powerful wizard Draco has ever seen. And Draco catches a glimpse of glory he may be unable to live without.
Glory Be
Draco circled gently above the roofs, his head bent as he studied the snowy landscape beneath him. So much snow, so many boulders. Such stillness. He knew that there was life elsewhere, including human life, but in this particular corner of Siberia, there was nothing save the quiet.
Well, and one human, somewhere down there, toiling north in the snow with the secrets he thought he’d got away with stealing. And above, one Veela.
Draco smiled, feeling the cold blow through his teeth. Such an unequal contest. One could feel pity, if one did pity, if anyone worth being did pity.
A small plume of smoke rose from behind a hillock, and Draco turned in that direction, his wings beating and closing in great quiet. Veela weren’t naturally silent flyers, but a lot of that came from the shrieking and fireball-flinging. Draco had studied owls, and learned and invented charms that would muffle the sound of his flight to be like theirs. Now he was among the best assassins in the world.
He had to be, considering some of the jobs he had been sent on. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
He flew until the smoke was beneath him and he could see the tiny fire set up next to the even tinier hut. The man Draco tracked was a wizard; he could have used Warming Charms. Which meant the fire was either for cooking and he was no good at the other household charms he should have studied, or he was sending a message of some kind.
Not for long.
Draco dipped his wings and circled lower. He had no fear of the man, who stomped his feet in the snow beside the fire, spotting him. His glamours protected him, enhancing the naturally pale colors of his hair, skin, and wings, and making him nearly invisible against the piling clouds. Down he came, and down.
At the last moment, the man looked up. Draco saw the face of his quarry—not that there was ever any doubt who it would be. Draco was too good at tracking.
But it was too late now, it had been the moment the man stole the secrets, and Draco’s body was locked in the great, killing peregrine dive. He hit the man full front and center, in the chest, his boots driving in, his wings coming down and around as his prey fell sprawling in the snow, breaking the arm that rose towards him. The man screamed in agony as his wand flew away from him. Draco whirled one foot towards it and stepped on the wand, breaking it, then wheeled back and knelt on the man’s chest.
The blue eyes in front of him widened. Then the wizard closed his eyes, whimpered, and began some plea for his life.
Draco didn’t intend to listen. His hands closed around his prey’s throat, and he wrenched and squeezed both at once, breaking the thief’s neck and snapping his windpipe. He fell dead.
Little blood, Draco noticed, stepping back and scanning the body. A bit of it from the broken arm where the bone projected through the skin, nothing more.
Draco made a systematic search of the man’s clothes, satchels, and hovel, recovering the list from the false bottom of a chest with a little sigh. Did no one ever think of original hiding places? He might weep, were the business not so profitable.
And were he not so happy to be alive, and killing.
He carried the body aloft and dropped it in the deepest snow he could find, sweeping more over it with casual scoops of his wings. The body might be found by someone determined enough, but there was no identification, and probably hungry predators would find him before then. Draco smiled to think of a tiger eating it. Perhaps that would repay the man’s shade, to give back to the country he had stained with his presence.
When the body was covered, the fire smothered, the hovel destroyed, and several other interesting objects in Draco’s possession, he rose, his wings out, his body aimed straight upwards, and soared back towards the Apparition point. Miles of snowy miles of countryscape he passed over, and he the deadliest thing in it.
It was a wonderful feeling.
*
“Well done.”
Draco smiled as he received the bag of Galleons from the man in the black cloak. It was always a black cloak, for some reason. Draco considered his own silvery-grey robes, modified as necessary in the back when his wings were out, the ultimate in fashion statements, but no one else seemed to agree with him.
He took the money, bowed his head, and tried not to sound too eager as he said, “And the next assignment?”
“Is forthcoming.”
Draco inclined his head again. That probably meant they didn’t have work for him at the moment, but had passed his name on to someone who did. He didn’t much care what they gave him, who he had to kill. Perhaps he would object to killing a Muggle, who couldn’t present as interesting a challenge as a wizard, but so far no one had asked him to kill one. It was thieves instead, other assassins, Aurors, and people who went too far in blood feuds, too far in this case being defined as “not having enough money to hire a Veela assassin before someone else hired him first.”
Draco had nearly made it to the door of the small room before the man called after him, “Is there anyone you couldn’t kill?”
Draco turned around and looked at him. Of course, with his eyes concealed and his cloak pulled around his body tightly enough that it was difficult even to discern his shape, he arguably had the advantage, but he flinched back from Draco as if he didn’t, bowing his head a little against the piercing factor of Draco’s gaze.
“I haven’t met him yet,” Draco said. “I have more raw power than any wizard due to my heritage.” He thought about calling and flexing his wings, but he kept them wrapped under his shirt most of the time he was on the ground, and it would be a bore to bring them out for someone who couldn’t appreciate them. “And it’s speed and strength that matters in these contests, even more than power.”
The man seemed satisfied. At least, the hooded cloak nodded, and the voice repeated, “Work will be forthcoming.”
Draco waited until he was outside to toss the bag of Galleons in the air again, smiling. That meant a real challenge, and that meant entertainment. Not that money didn’t; Draco regularly spent his earnings on things he liked to do.
But for the sheer thrill, the rush of adrenaline and the gratification of the killing instincts that Draco possessed as a mixture of a Dark wizard and a Veela, it was hard to think of things he enjoyed doing more.
Draco Apparated home. His wings ached from the long flight through high cold air, and he wanted to pamper himself. At the moment, a roaring fire and the newest Dark grimoire he intended to acquire from a collector sounded ideal.
*
“We have a proposition for you.”
Draco leaned back against the wall of the small cave that he’d been summoned to—an actual cave, this client was even more paranoid than some of them—and eyed his new employer critically. He wore the same heavy hooded cloak that seemed standard fare for those plotting mayhem from Death Eaters on down, but there were differences to be found from Draco’s usual hirers even under that. His hands moved back and forth nervously, and he kept picking up the bag of Galleons and the sheaf of papers in front of him and putting them down again. Then he seemed to realize what he was doing and clasped his hands in his lap, lifting his head almost enough for Draco to see his face under the hood.
He wants me to kill someone dangerous. No, someone he fears personally. That made Draco suspect blood feud. Members of some pure-blood families would start believing superstitiously in the power of blood enemies they hadn’t killed after a few tries. They might think even a Veela assassin was useless.
Draco had spent five years proving them otherwise. He had worn a shirt with slits today, so he extended his wings, and let the man gape at them for a moment, the way that his feathers sliced the air, the way the wings whispered like knives as he folded them back. “Does that reassure you I can get the job done?” he asked flatly. “Because I can.”
The man watched him in rapt silence for a minute or two, then started and nodded. “We thought you might not want to go after him because you knew him,” he said, and looked down at one particular piece of paper on the table. “But my—colleagues reminded me that that was ridiculous, that of course you knew him as an enemy.”
Draco blinked, and licked his lips, while his heart sped up. His target was a former Death Eater, then, almost certainly. He had wanted to hunt one of them for a long time, but he disdained to use his skills for anything except money. “Give me his name.”
The man hesitated, and hesitated, until Draco was close to reaching out and strangling him for the name. His excitement was keen enough to arouse, to blaze beneath his skin, and the man finally swallowed and gave in.
“Harry Potter.”
Draco blinked. Then he shook his head. He understood the reason for the man’s secrecy, but he had become excited, in truth, over nothing.
“Harry Potter is an Unspeakable,” he said. “Caught up in research and taking artifacts away from those deemed too incompetent to possess them, like all the rest of his kind. That isn’t—that isn’t something that makes him threatening. And he hasn’t proven himself powerful, either. He acknowledged that the way he killed the Dark Lord was mere luck.”
The man hesitated once more, then sat up. “Harry Potter is more than he seems, like all Unspeakables are,” he stated. He tried to make it sound like the kind of flat statement Professor Snape would make, an absolute truth, but Draco saw through the assumption and sneered. The man continued speaking, his voice gone staccato with nervousness. “He’s caused trouble for friends of mine. I assure you we need him removed.”
Draco stood there and thought about it. It was true that the last wizard he had killed hadn’t been particularly powerful, only hard to find. And if Potter had learned anything as an Unspeakable, then he could be challenging to track down, and he might have a few artifacts that could make their final confrontation more interesting.
But it still wasted Draco’s time, and he was irritated that he had been summoned. Potter had spent years and years after the war painstakingly making sure everyone understood the truth of his mother’s sacrifice and the debt the wizarding world owed to her, a Mudblood. Draco would rather have owed the debt to Potter, even with his wand and all, but he was convinced by the story. It was the only way Potter could have had protection against the Dark Lord when he was a baby and not yet the Master of the Elder Wand.
Perhaps he’s still its master. That might make the challenge a little more interesting.
Draco didn’t really think so, because he would have heard about that. But he did think he would have wasted a trip coming out here if he didn’t accept the offer, and he hated to think of wasting time.
“I accept,” he said crisply, nodding to the man. “Tell me where you want me to kill him, and give me all the information you have.”
The hood sagged forwards, and the man whispered reassurances and thanks as he swept the papers together into a pile, followed by the Galleons, and gave them to him. Draco shook his head a little when he saw the number, twice the usual fee. These people feared Potter, then. It must be the result of artifacts he carried with him and not his personal skills. Everyone was agreed that he hadn’t been the greatest Auror.
“Can you finish the kill within a fortnight?” the man asked.
Draco paused to stare at the man, until he squirmed as if he didn’t know whether Draco or Potter was his greatest fear, after all. “I am unaccustomed to working under a time limit,” Draco said coolly.
“I know you did it on your last case.” The man must have had some remnant of courage after all, because he trembled but didn’t back down in front of Draco’s affronted gaze. “You had to find that thief before he released the secrets he’d taken.”
Draco grunted. That was true. And it might be a similar case this time. Perhaps Potter was set to testify in a certain case—though Unspeakables rarely did so—or close to figuring out the location of a Dark artifact that would cost the man and his friends deeply.
“Fine,” he said. “A fortnight it is, presuming that your information can tell me enough.” He hefted the sheaf of papers.
The man stood and bowed to him. “He can die at any workable location. And anything else that you need to know, please feel free to ask us.”
Draco thought of asking after their names, but he had done that once, as a joke, and immediately lost his contract. He didn’t want to lose contracts. It would mean losing, ultimately, the thrill of challenge that prickled along his skin, and the opportunity that he would be able to have fun and earn money while doing so.
He settled for a polite nod to his employer, and turned away, the papers in hand, to learn more about his newest prey.
*
Harry Potter was boring.
Draco supposed he might not be to someone who believed the legends, or someone who was reading about his career on paper for the first time. Most of the time, the wizarding world considered Unspeakables dangerous. And they thought that transferring into them after a moderately successful career in the Aurors would make someone powerful and exciting, mysterious.
But Draco knew what Potter had been, or supposedly had promised to be. This was, indeed, boring.
He flicked through page after page of information, including details of the wards on Potter’s private home, the wards on the Wesasley houses that he regularly visited, the restaurants he patronized, the people he was seen to spend time with at the Ministry other than the Weasleys. Potter didn’t work his way up the ladder of power in the Ministry by currying favors and offering them, the way so many other people did, but then, he didn’t have to. Other people fell over at the sound of his name.
But if you looked beneath the surface? No real power there, Draco thought, shaking his head. No awareness of what was going on. Potter hadn’t been a good Auror because he didn’t obey the rules. He couldn’t get the rules through his head. That suggested someone who wasn’t very smart.
And what did he do instead of trading on his fame, instead of making something of himself and claiming the victory that a full school of spectators had seen him win? Disclaimed it, said it was his mother’s love, and then expected everyone to continue adoring him anyway. Draco wondered idly if it had been a shock when he was expected to work as an Auror, and then work for a transfer to the Unspeakables, instead of being granted it just because of who he was.
Yes, Potter pretended to modesty, but he seemed sincere in his desire for an ordinary life. And in that loss of potential, Draco found something to make his wings shoot out and then tense around his body in irritation.
Potter wasn’t lying about his lack of power, at least. That would make him far less challenging to kill. He didn’t even have Draco’s wand anymore, which might have protected him and raised Draco’s heartbeat a bit. He’d sent the hawthorn wand back to Draco after the war.
Draco glanced over at his wand, resting beside him on the couch in an honored place. He didn’t use it in his kills; he preferred his Veela talents. But he wielded it in his normal, everyday life.
The life that other people thought he had, at least, the life of the millon-Galleon playboy. Draco went on holidays in expensive places and flirted with whoever he chose and bedded the vast majority of them. The Ministry had ceased watching him because they thought they had nothing to fear from him.
For a moment, the idea drifted across Draco’s mind that Potter’s lack of power and carefully humble stories might be the same kind of façade.
Then he dismissed the idea with a snort. No, Potter had told the truth because he was supposedly so honest and true and then discovered, too late, that his audience didn’t respect honesty. Going after him would be a pleasure after all, Draco decided. It would remove a heavy waste of potential from the world.
*
It didn't take Draco long to choose the time or the place for the kill. Potter was an Unspeakable, and Draco respected the defenses of the Department of Mysteries in the way that he didn't respect Potter's power. Potter's home also had formidable wards on it, probably the gift of his contacts rather than products of his own ability.
So it had be a place outside both of them, and that meant as Potter was coming out of the Ministry one night, shaking his wrists and yawning and mumbling farewells to someone inside the building Draco couldn't see. Draco waited, his hands sinking into the side of the building he clutched. He wouldn't do this in front of witnesses. There weren't enough Veela assassins in the world to make it impossible if the witness tried to trace him back to his employers, and Draco didn't kill people he hadn't been hired to. Not challenging enough.
But no one else joined Potter, and he took a few steps towards the Apparition point that an increasingly paranoid Ministry had placed further and further from the protection of the walls. That took him into an alley. Shadows crowded the way. Draco arched his wings and could hear his own heartbeat crowding his ears, singing in them.
Draco struck.
He came down and forwards, aimed at Potter's back, his wings beating in the same silence he had used to complete his last hunt in Siberia and his hair flying around him. His hands had claws on them at the moment, perfect carving instruments. His senses hummed with the presence of skin, of flesh, of blood--
And power.
Just as Draco drew his left hand back for the blow that would sever Potter's spinal column, shields flared into being around Potter, blue and white and left and front and back, and Potter spun around with his wand upraised and his eyes turned almost black in the changing shadows of his spells.
Draco rolled, tucking his feet close to his belly the way he would in a Quidditch flight and drawing his arms to his sides. His wings, however, had to beat madly to bear him up and away, and the trailing edge of the left one touched a purple shield.
The heat made Draco shriek aloud. It felt as though a gong had rung in his bones, a fierce, quivering musical note that changed the speed of his blood and the pace of his breath, and he wheeled drunkenly out of the sky, clanging into a building with a force that made his eyes go black.
From beneath him, Potter snarled a spell--a spell Draco had heard only once before, from one of his victims, a spell that no one was supposed to know unless they had Veela blood themselves. Which the Potter line manifestly didn't, and Draco refused to consider the possibility that a Mudblood could have.
The spell centered low in the middle of Draco's back, exactly where he would have placed it, and he screamed again as it rippled up and down his spine, heading for his wings, trying to break their connections to the flight muscles. Let Potter land that blow as it was meant, and Draco would never fly again.
Draco knew the remedy, luckily. He snatched his wand out of his belt and placed it on his right wing, chanting desperately. The magic raced through him and into the spreading force of Potter's, where they clashed like swaying cobras. Draco held his breath, trying to relax as much as possible. If his heart beat too hard, it would drive the curse through his body with his blood.
But his countercharm won, though Draco had the uneasy feeling it was only because this was his body and not because he was stronger. Potter's magic faded into nothing. Draco turned, clinging with his claws to the side of the building, and stared below, absently noting that blood was sliding into one of his eyes.
Potter stood beneath him, staring up. His wand dangled in his fingers as his glare found Draco's face.
"Malfoy?" he demanded.
Draco had one moment of confusion to act in, and he decided to take it. Potter was stronger and more aware than Draco had counted on, but that didn't mean he was strong enough to face this.
Draco flipped out from the building and dropped like a striking hawk, straight down. Potter's shields had diminished with his surprise. Emotion-based magic, then, and vulnerable to all the vagaries of someone's feelings. Potter would be hard-put to it use to magic at all when he was astonished or confused.
Draco accepted the shock of passing through the outer shields, the pain that made his muscles shudder, in return for the kill he was sure he would make. His legs were spread out in front of him, wings poised beside him. He would land on Potter's chest and shatter his sternum with a kick, break his arm with a wing the same way he had done to his victim on his last hunt, and then he would--
The shields in front of Draco tightened up, impossibly fast. No one should have been able to react to an attack coming at them as rapidly as Draco's, but Potter had, and Draco bounced flat on the shields. He squirmed for a second, trying to realign himself, trying to understand.
Then Potter took a step forwards beneath him, and Draco snapped into focus, his senses reporting the real world to him again, not the one he had made up out of his assumptions.
Draco always felt magic through his Veela senses as heat. Some wizards, ill-trained because of their own poor memories and their little power, felt like smoldering embers. Some more powerful ones, like McGonagall, were bonfires. And the vast majority fell in between, mostly candles, or hearthfires when they really pushed themselves. All the Weasleys were like that, for example.
The magic that beat and soared around Potter was like the heat from a forest fire, and filled Draco's face and nostrils with the same stinging sense of imminent doom.
Draco rolled from the first curse, rolled and fell, and then flew. His wings seemed to confuse Potter, or else he just wasn't used to fighting flying enemies; Draco dodged, and the magic went around him. He ended up on top of the building across the alley, turning to stare down, crouched on all fours with his wings arched and waving above him.
Potter looked up at him fearlessly, no surprise left. His fingers played along his wand, and he nodded, his head turning slightly to the side. Draco knew he was calculating angles from which he could strike, ways he could kill. He would strike now with no pity and no weakness restraining his hand.
And Draco could only stare, not move to safety and plan another attempt later as he would ordinarily have, or close and finish it.
He could feel his face flushing, his chest expanding, his nostrils flaring to bring him the scent of Potter through the scent of the magic.
This was...
This was the sensation Draco had read about, but never thought to find. He trembled and crept close to the edge of the roof, though all his senses and his instincts were screaming to him about what a good target he would present to Potter that way.
His wings twisted and jerked, but Draco didn't know which direction they would launch him in if he rose from the roof now. Not away, though, of that he was fairly certain. And after hovering for a moment, he would descend. He didn't have much choice, not with the longing growing tight in his chest.
Potter took a step closer, face as intent as a flame, wand already weaving the beginning patterns of his next curse.
Draco should Obliviate him, at the very least, if he wasn't going to kill him. No, he should kill him. No, he should land in front of Potter and do his best to explain when he was stumbling over his own tongue in the process.
His heartbeat made his cheeks tingle. He stretched out a hand, and Potter ducked, interrupting his current spell, dashing into the shadow of a building. That was one good thing, at least, Draco's distant brain noted. That meant they couldn't close in a duel at the moment and hurt each other.
He didn't want to hurt Potter.
Draco grimaced. That rather put some of the plans he'd been making out of commission, if he couldn't continue with the kill.
But there was magic here. There was power. There was competence, from the way that Potter crouched in the shadow of the building and studied the alley for another way to attack Draco. There was refusal to retreat, a stubborn pride that Draco could read in the way Potter cocked his neck back and bared his teeth in a snarl.
There was so much that needed to be done, and things shifted in Draco's head until they found a new and comfortable purchase for themselves and he understood what needed to happen. He rose with careful sweeps of his wings, hovering over the middle of the alley, in plain sight and plain striking distance.
Potter fell back a step, as Draco had hoped, and watched for the trick instead of attacking immediately. Draco bowed his head and spread his hands, a gesture he thought Potter might know, the way he had known the spell that nearly deprived Draco of his wings.
Potter stiffened and straightened. Then he touched his wand to his throat, and his voice rose, cold and deep and strengthened with the Sonorus Charm. "You're mental, Malfoy."
Draco raised his head. The flush hadn't left his cheeks yet, and they still tingled as he stared at Potter and said softly, "I choose you."
Potter shook his head. It didn't look like the motion of trapped prey, the way Draco would have thought it would when he finally came to choose someone unsuspecting. "You were trying to kill me just a minute ago. You think I'll believe this?"
Draco took a deep breath, and his lungs snapped free of the invisible threads that wound around them. "Listen, Potter. A choosing is important to the Veela, more important than anything else. More important than earning money, or living a good life in wizarding society, unless that's what it takes to catch the chosen."
He smiled at Potter. His head was as icy clear and sparkling as the stars he had hunted under tonight. He could feel the tension outstanding between them shifting into a different kind of tension, at least on his end.
And Potter would understand soon enough. From the dawning comprehension on his face, he understood already and wanted to put it off. He didn't fall back, but he did raise one hand, fingers spread, as though that was enough to hold Draco back.
"I can't be your chosen," he said.
"Why not?" Draco asked, laughter, of a sort, bubbling in his throat. He was not sure that it was the laughter he would usually have chosen, but it worked, and it made a mad kind of sense, one that made him want to spin along with his wings full of wind. "Why the fuck not? You're the most powerful wizard I've ever met. Veela are attracted to power. Surely you know that."
And now his eyes were caressing Potter's shoulders, Potter's stance, Potter's green eyes, Potter's scar. Even his wild and untamed hair now looked as if it might be that way because of the power bursting through it. Draco rumbled and dropped closer, his wings backbeating air that drove down and made Potter's magic rise against it.
"You were trying to kill me just a minute ago," Potter repeated, but belief had crept into his face.
"Yes," Draco said. "Sometimes it happens that way. Now I know you. Now I'm coming." He dipped his wings for a dive down.
Potter folded his arms across his chest and bowed his head, and simple caution made Draco hesitate. He had no desire to lose his ability to fly because Potter didn't believe him yet.
Potter Apparated.
Out of an area where no one should have been able to Apparate, out of a sheltered area the Ministry had tried to protect. Right from beneath the Veela who'd chosen him.
Draco could have attributed it to special Unspeakable permissions or an artifact he carried that allowed him to break through wards, but he knew what he wished to attribute it to: Potter's power. He flew home with a smug little smile breaking out on his face.
*
"What do you mean, you can't kill him?"
Draco shrugged with wide wings spread, and watched the face of his employer. Or, rather, the hooded cloak where his face hid. Draco wasn't curious to see it. He would learn enough by watching the man's actions and attending to the tones of his voice. A Veela's senses were more than keen enough for that.
Especially the senses of a Veela who had chosen. Ever since making his decision about Potter, Draco felt as if he had been breathing air like strong wine.
"He is much more powerful than I thought he was," Draco said, and lowered his eyes, tucking his wings in close to his body. Let them think he was crouching. Let them think anything, as long as they gave Draco enough clues to protect his chosen from other assassins in the future. "And he had an artifact with him, one that glowed with blue light..."
The man behind the table sat up and nearly let his cloak fall from his head, but snatched it back up at the last moment. "Blue light?" he whispered hoarsely. "Or white?"
How easy they made this, Draco thought. Then again, he had always known that fortune favored him. He bobbed his head a little, slowly. "It might have been white light," he murmured. "Or blue. It hit me so hard..." He clutched his hands to his head, which in some cases would have been ridiculous overacting, but which he knew was not so here.
The man shifted in place and gave a sound like a moan. Then he shook his head again. "You will return the fee we gave you, of course."
"Of course," Draco said, and tossed the pouch to him. He felt no tugging of the heartstrings to part with it. After all, he would have more than enough money to live on from the Potter vaults.
The fool looked almost more wretched to receive the money back, from the way he bobbed his head. Draco wanted to laugh, but contented himself with a sharp flirt of his wings. Do you think to hire another assassin to go after him? How will that one feel, to face me in all my power?
"It is imperative that we find someone who can destroy him," the man muttered. He gave Draco a look, or so Draco assumed, from the way the hood tilted. Draco stood silent and impassive, only the bobbing of his wings giving him away. And this man was not one of the rare ones who knew how to read Veela signals.
Potter is. A Veela must have taught him that spell.
The realization was not actually easy for Draco, because primarily it made him want to shriek in mindless jealousy and hunt down the other Veela who had dared to touch Potter. But certain civilized courtesies were expected, even in caves. He stood and waited for the fool to come to a conclusion.
"Do you know someone?" the man asked gingerly.
Draco wanted to laugh, it was so similar to the requests he had received in the past to introduce the requester to a Veela who hadn't chosen yet. But he was still being civilized, so he simply lowered his head and shook it. "I'm afraid not. I am the best I know of. I always make my kills. But not this time."
The fool must have known it, or he would have hired someone less expensive than Draco to take care of Potter. He visibly sagged towards his table. Draco watched him, and waited.
"We'll find someone." Finally, the fool waved his hand at him to indicate he could go.
Draco turned for the cave entrance feeling as though balloons were strapped beneath his wings. This was as close as he would get to permission to hunt Potter, chase Potter, touch Potter, corner Potter.
Of course, usually the choosing didn't involve the chase. Most Veela had potential partners surrounding them, they were courted rather than courting, and it was a matter of deciding who was most interested in and devoted to them, or who would please them most.
Potter would hardly welcome Draco's interest and attention. But Draco thought he would enjoy even that, and the disgusted looks Potter would certainly toss him when Draco pressed closer.
This is the way it should be. It's no wonder that I never found anyone who suited me before this. Someone who stands still isn't much of a challenge.
*
Draco sprawled full-length on his belly on the roof of the house next to Potter's, his breathing light and his wings fanning around him. It would have been impossible to land on Potter's house itself, with all its wards, but no such paranoia, or protections, excluded the neighbors on either side of him. They were old wizards who went to work on stolid, unexciting jobs in the Ministry, and didn't seem to care that an Unspeakable lived almost on top of them.
Draco's lips twitched. I'll be relieving their minds a little when I take Potter back to the Manor with me. There, I can present the chase to Potter in the light of a good deed.
He had already learned that Potter went to work in the Department of Mysteries early in the morning and didn't return until after dark, or perhaps late light in the case of the summer. It wasn't summer now, it was autumn, and Draco had used a glamour to conceal the brilliant white of his wings. He would be almost invisible flying against a cloudy sky, but not crouched on washed grey stone.
Darkness approached, and with it, Potter. Draco heard the pop of Apparition he had already learned to recognize on the street below him, and lifted his head.
Time for the show.
Draco waited until Potter walked up to the front gate of his garden and paused to do something complex with the web of wards around his property. That was the one disadvantage of such fearsome protections; they always took at least a moment to recognize even the person most keyed to them.
A moment was all an assassin as skilled as Draco needed.
He flung himself off the roof in a twisting, corkscrew plunge, straight towards Potter's back, towards where his wings would have grown if he had been a Veela. Potter whipped around to face him, a shield shimmering around him.
Draco wasn't trying to kill him, though. He had truly and honestly given that up, and wouldn't try to salve his lost pride with it again.
He pulled up right in front of Potter, though, less than an inch away from his shield, and bowed in midair, his wings humming and hovering and hammering. Potter stared at him. Draco smiled and turned his back with nothing more than a twitch of his shoulders, looking over one of them, stretching his wings wider and wider.
The message was clear for anyone with eyes to see. Look what a good flyer I am. Look how graceful, how skilled. You won't be ashamed by accepting me as your mate.
Potter, though, was blind in certain special ways that had nothing to do with his glasses. He made an alarming gesture with his wand, and Draco rolled away, somersaulting in midair. The curse crackled through Potter's shield and then the air beside him.
But it didn't touch his body, and that wasn't because Potter had decided to aim past him. Draco pulled up again and bowed a second time, hands insistently extended towards Potter. Potter couldn't miss that he was unarmed.
Potter simply watched him, body canted in a way that made Draco's mouth water, his head lifted.
And that power was there, all around him, the forest fire, the altar-fire burning to immolate lesser sacrifices, the holocaust.
Draco couldn't take his eyes from Potter. He burned to know how Potter had hidden his magic this long. It couldn't be a matter of glamours, not when magical creatures like Draco would have run into him and could have spread rumors when they sensed the truth. What was it? What did he do to make himself seem so much less than he was?
Not that Draco would tolerate that when Potter had accepted his choosing, of course. But it spoke to cleverness and skill of a different sort than Draco had ever believed Potter possessed, and that made him more interesting.
"Go away," Potter said, his words striking like blows from a whip.
"I don't want to," Draco said. "I chose you, and you ought to know what that means."
"I don't, as a matter of fact."
Draco's skin tingled, the sign that his chosen was lying to him. He sighed. "You do. I've selected you as the only one worthy to bear my company and share my bed on a permanent basis. It's like mating, but choosing is a more elegant word." He paused and darted what he knew was a wicked smile at Potter. "Chosen."
Potter shook his head. His face was still, his arm that held the wand steady, his stance still braced for violence or flight. Draco cocked his head and hummed. Had there ever been a chosen with the ability to match his? He thought not. "You don't understand what I'm saying. I refuse your choosing, and there has to be at least one person in the past who did that."
Draco tilted his head to the side to watch the view over Potter's shoulder. "Not many."
"Tell me about the ones who did." Potter held his eyes. "Did the Veela pursue them and rape them? Or respect their choices and let them get away?"
Draco smiled, feeling the thrill travel through his veins like sex, like the flutter of wings when he was getting ready for the killing dive. "You have to understand, Potter, that most of the time, Veela are the ones being sought for what they are, not being avoided."
"Bunch of bloody mind-rapists."
"You think it's the allure that makes people want us?" Draco clucked his tongue sharply. "And I had such hopes for you."
As he had hoped would happen, Potter drew a step closer at that, though Draco was afraid he would have to attribute it to curiosity and not Potter falling madly in love with his smile. "What is it, then?"
"We can focus on our chosen," Draco said. "Some people like that, the sensation of being cherished, cradled." In fact, he knew no one who didn't, but he granted magnanimously that Potter might have had to push that desire so far down his list of wants that he no longer felt it much. Most people wouldn't think the Savior of the Wizarding World needed to be held. "We can work together as a team with them, granting our intense magic and immense wills to the accomplishment of any project they desire." Ah, yes, Potter's eyes had grown brighter. "And we can bring them pleasure as intense as our magic." He folded his wings back along his body, dropping to the ground, and smiled at Potter.
Potter pondered him from closer, at least, though still without the focus that Draco would have liked, and then shook his head. "I don't think so."
Draco bowed his head, fooling Potter, in the same way he had the man who had recently employed him, into thinking he had given up. "May I ask why not?"
"What you offer sounds good," Potter said quietly. "Too good. Plus, you were trying to kill me a short time ago. Like hell I think you've switched your loyalties that fast."
Draco hummed. "And if I gave you information about the people trying to kill you? Would that prove that I've sufficiently abandoned that contract and now consider you mine to protect?"
Potter made a careless little gesture with one hand, as though he assumed Draco would never do such a thing. "Sure, if you had some information to offer. I know how assassins work. They don't betray their contracts, because no one would hire them again."
"They were hunting you because they fear you," Draco said, and waited a moment until Potter looked up and met his eyes. "I made up a story about being held away from you by intense blue light, and the man promptly asked if it was white. When I said it could have been, he looked ready to faint from fear."
Potter stared into the distance, and his face gradually hardened. Draco shivered in delight. It would be something beyond ordinary luck, beyond even the fortune that life had granted him so far, to have a chosen who could hunt at his side the way Potter's face promised he could.
"You know who they are," Draco whispered.
"I have an idea who one of them is," Potter said, moving his head like a charmed snake. "That doesn't mean--" He looked at Draco and nodded. "Perhaps I'll repay your favor with a favor, Malfoy."
"Becoming my chosen sounds more like a favor for you than me." Draco leaned a centimeter away from the wards, his head cocked to the side and his smile the kind he hoped would provoke Potter to attack. He wanted another glimpse of that battle-grace, that deadly dance on the killing field.
"I didn't mean that kind of favor." Potter stood taller. "Name what you want. Information. Money. A word whispered in the right ears."
"Information." Draco pressed forwards when Potter nodded. "Tell me the best way to win your heart."
Potter looked at him steadily for a moment. Then he said, "I feel sorry for anyone, human or Veela, wizard or Muggle, who's so obsessed with someone else that they can't stand on their own." And he turned away and slipped through the wards and into his house. The hole in the wards sealed before Draco could even think about attacking it.
Draco sighed and floated backwards, his wings fanning out around him again. He admired the curve of Potter's arse and the sway of his robes as he disappeared from view. A moment later, a light went on in one window of the modest stone house. It had the dull orange color of firelight. Draco imagined the room Potter probably stood in right now, restrained and simple in taste, and he imagined Potter's bedroom. No better than cotton sheets, surely, and a small bed, because Potter spent most of his time alone.
Draco imagined fucking him in that bed, and had to fly away and take care of his hard-on.
Part Two.