lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2016-04-01 03:02 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2016-04-01 03:02 pm
Entry tags:
[One-shot]: Fire and Wonder, H/D, R, 1/2
Title: Fire and Wonder
Prompt: #76, for knowmefirst: Harry is a dark powerful veela and he wants Draco.
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco, some mentions of canon pairings
Word Count/ Art Medium: 15,500
Warnings (if any): Some violence, minor character death, AU, angst, non-linear timeline, Dark-ish Harry.
Disclaimer: JK Rowling retains the ownership of all characters and settings borrowed from the Harry Potter series of books.
Summary: Everything changed after Voldemort’s defeat. Now the wizarding world is almost unrecognizable, and Harry Potter and his mate Draco Malfoy are at the helm, guiding it for their own version of the “greater good.” Perhaps this was their destined course from the day Harry grew his black wings.
Author's notes: knowmefirst, I hope you like this fic! My thanks to my beta Karen, who looked over this story with a thorough and expert eye. Any errors remaining are my own.
Fire and Wonder
Draco turned his head. He stood still for a moment, listening. Then he quietly put down the book he had been reading and left the room.
He was aware, as he moved along the corridors of the Manor towards the front doors, that he might not ever return to it.
But above him was the sound which had captured his attention, and had to command it. Draco might have thought it was the surf, except he knew already that it would be the beating of enormous wings.
He stood inside the front doors for a long moment while the wings came down to the grounds and settled there. He stood, and faint images of his parents came and went behind his eyes, and images of the Dark Lord.
Draco had to smile and open his eyes when he realized he was imagining the Dark Mark overlaid with a flying raven. The eagle had the serpent in one of its talons and was choking the life out of it. The other talon lay on top of the skull, tightening to crush it.
The sound of the wings had stilled.
Draco opened the great door on almost silent hinges, and carried the small creak it did make down the steps to what awaited him there.
*
“None of us thought things had changed that much at first. I mean, Harry woke up and he had wings. And that was pretty startling. But aside from trying to research and find out where they’d come from, we didn’t pay much attention. We had so many other things to do then, in the wake of the war.
“By the time we thought to pay a lot of attention, Harry had found Malfoy, and it was too late.”
-Dean Thomas, interviewed in the Daily Prophet, special edition, “Friends of His Raven-Winged Majesty,” 2006.
*
“Harry, what did you do to yourself?”
Harry woke groggily. He didn’t think he’d even heard Hermione come in to the boys’ bedroom at Hogwarts. He turned his head, meaning to ask if he couldn’t get one day off from lectures. He’d just defeated Voldemort yesterday, after all.
But he woke up pretty fast when he saw the black feathers out of the corner of his eye, and had to sit up to stare at them. They moved when he did. Harry’s first thought was that someone had sneaked up here and stuck them to him for a joke. Probably Seamus. It didn’t seem like Neville’s or Dean’s style, not now.
Then he reached behind him to scratch his shoulder blade as an itch happened there, and the shoulder moved as though it had extra joints in it, and huge black wings extended on either side of him.
Hermione squeaked. Harry stared at his wings in silence. The feathers had a sheen to them, purple-black and blue, that reminded him of a raven or a starling. He flapped, and his sheets blew to the end of the bed and some loose paper lying on the trunk near the bottom scattered into all the corners of the room.
“Don’t do that, mate!” Apparently he’d blown Ron’s wand along with the paper, and Ron was sticking it back in his pocket now, shaking his head reproachfully at Harry.
“Um. Sorry.” Harry waited and blinked some more. He looked up in time to see Hermione casting a spell. But whatever it was, it didn’t work the way she wanted it to. She shook her head as it faded into what looked like a cluster of fireworks, and shrugged at Harry.
“I’m sorry, Harry. I assumed it was a curse, but it’s not. It must be a Transfiguration instead.”
“Well, either that or he transformed. The way werewolves do.”
“Ron, lycanthropy is specifically a disease linked to the moon, and that means…”
Harry tuned out their arguing and extended his right wing to the side, studying it for a moment. It was huge, and it blazed and shimmered with magic at the edges, blue crackling flames that winked out of existence when Harry looked at them straight on. He supposed that meant he would fly just by magic alone. He didn’t feel like he was any lighter, anyway.
Fly? Am I seriously thinking of flying with these things?
Slowly, Harry began to grin. Yeah, he was. He had to admit, now that Voldemort was gone, he didn’t see the reason to panic and automatically assume this was someone cursing him. He ought to get to fly and do what he wanted instead of panicking.
And now that he had wings, what else was he supposed to do with them?
He stood up, distracting Ron and Hermione from their argument. Hermione focused on him with a frown.
“Harry? What is it? Do the wings hurt?”
Harry shook his head and raised his wings some more, making both his friends gasp. He thought they hadn’t really seen how large they were before, since he’d been sitting down and the wings had mostly been behind him. “No. I’m going to leap from the window. Ron, do you mind opening the shutters?”
Ron rushed to do it, while Hermione shouted in alarm. Harry winked at her and lifted his wings higher, soaring across the room for a moment.
It was to a broom what a broom was to walking. In seconds Harry was in front of the window and staring down at the ground far below.
“Do it, mate,” Ron whispered from beside him. When Harry looked over, Ron had the most insane grin on his face.
And Harry sort of felt insane, too, but he thought he was going to fly. He stepped out and fell for a moment.
Then the knowledge or muscles or whatever he had already used kicked in, and his wings spread wide and cast a fleeting shadow below him, and he aimed up and twisted and was flying, wheeling, his wings bearing him up. Harry leaned on the wind and shut his eyes for a moment. He knew he could trust his wings completely, that they would never betray him, never fold when he needed them to flap and let him fall.
It was a complete trust Harry thought must be magical. He knew he should probably distrust it instead. Everything that had seemed innocent once, like Scabbers and Tom Riddle’s diary, was really evil.
Or so he should probably think.
But he didn’t, and his laughter rang out, drifting over the towers and turrets of the castle, luring people outside to see who was flying, who was dipping, who was soaring.
*
“I still think the only thing that would have helped was for Harry to never inherit his wings in the first place. Once he had them, he was a different person. He walked instead of flew. He talked to birds instead of us.
“The first raven came to him that night, you know. Just slanted down in the Great Hall in front of everybody and landed on the table and stared at him. And we thought Harry could only talk to snakes, but then he opened his mouth, and this babble of croaks came out. The raven nodded like it understood him and flew away, and came back with this hawthorn wand in its beak. Then it flew across the Great Hall and gave it to Draco Malfoy.
“Maybe that was the real beginning. Ron thinks it was. That was the event that probably formed the connection between Harry and Malfoy. But if he’d never had the wings, nothing else would have happened.”
-Hermione Granger, talking in La Trompette from her French residence, three days before her return to Britain.
*
Draco always remembered the moment that a raven landed in front of him and offered him his wand back.
He didn’t remember it because he was so surprised, or because the raven was so close, or because of who sent it. He remembered it because there was an odd smell to the raven’s feathers, a shaggy smell, like they were fur polished by the wind.
And because he looked up and met Potter’s eyes, and saw the way his wings stretched out, and he saw what apparently no one else did.
Potter had two shadows on the wall behind him. One was his normal shadow. A much larger, still winged one reared over that and encompassed it.
And Potter’s eyes burned.
Draco still reached out and took the wand, because he had to. But his arm shook.
*
The wings made a noise like words muttered in the middle of thunder.
Draco took a step back and looked up. Potter was crouched in front of him, but it was his wings that caught Draco’s attention, rising and flapping again even though Potter had come to a stop, their shadow spread out over the whole of the Manor’s grounds.
What that shadow touched, it changed.
The grass grew brighter and sharper. Draco appreciated that Potter didn’t want to kill the grass of his childhood home, only transform it, but it was still hard to watch its edges become silver and its roots freeze and sparkle. Draco followed the spreading path of silver and shadow to the edge of the house.
The marble there trembled, wavered, and then released a flock of brightly-colored birds. Red and yellow, with glorious blue crests on their heads, they circled around Draco and Potter in a singing wave. Then they lifted their wings and fled past both of them, and Draco had no idea where they had gone or what would happen to the rest of the stone in the Manor.
For now, the shadow didn’t reach that far. But it could. He knew.
Potter was a small thing, dwarfed by the wings, when Draco thought of him this way. Still, he knew that Potter’s was the guiding intelligence behind that magic. When the wild force partnered with him did awful things, it was as a result of his anger. If the changes here had been harmless or beautiful or protective, it was because of what Potter felt towards Draco.
Because Draco was his mate.
Draco turned, and Potter was there, dipping his head a little to make eye contact.
Draco moved towards him and turned his hands up. He accepted. He had to, and part of him—a small buried part, the one that had dreamed of making the Boy-Who-Lived his friend and going with him on magical adventures—was screaming in joy.
But he couldn’t hide the way his hands trembled, either.
When Potter bowed his head, Draco realized he didn’t need to. Potter’s tongue flickered out, a single hot point, and touched the center of his right palm.
Draco caught his breath, because if Potter’s shadow could change what it did, surely his tongue would change even more. Would his skin become metal, or sunflowers, or melt and run from the bones of his hand?
It did neither. It only warmed, and grew wet, the way it would from the lick of anyone’s tongue.
Draco moved slowly forwards, into the embrace of the raven Veela Potter had become. Potter looked at him with fierce need, and the devouring delight of a raptor closing in on its kill.
But his hands were still human when they clasped Draco’s, and the mouth he brought down to Draco’s was still human, and the wings he raised higher and higher, growing like stormclouds, were meant to shield their kiss from the sight of anyone who might watch, Draco knew, and not to change him into someone more to Potter’s liking. The whole point of what Potter had become, from what Draco had learned of him—of it—of them—of him—was that Potter wanted him because he was prickly and difficult, resistant, and there would have been no point in forced compliance in a raven Veela’s mate.
Because—
Draco’s thoughts were spinning and drifting, pieces breaking apart from each other, as Potter’s hands caressed him and pushed him towards the ground, even as small winds from his wings sneaked under his clothing and caressed his skin.
Because that was what raven Veela were. Were made to be.
Draco was on the ground, his legs spread wide. Potter literally hovered before him, and his eyes burned with fire the darkest shade of green, where it verged on blue, shining and fierce.
Because raven Veela were conquerors.
Draco arched his back, and that was the only invitation Potter needed.
He landed.
Draco fell.
*
Dear Harry,
Please don’t tear up this letter. I have a feeling you’ll want to, once you realize what I’m talking about, so the only thing I can ask is that you don’t.
I know what you are. A raven Veela. Apparently they’re rare enough to be legends even among the Veela—sort of to them what ordinary Veela are to Muggles. There are legends of black-winged men appearing among her grandmother’s kind, Fleur told me, and when they did, then war came, because that was what they did.
Ordinary Veela are creatures of seduction. They use magic to make people want to do things for them, and that’s all right in a limited sphere. The effect doesn’t last long, especially because it works on the emotions of lust and romance, and a lot of people either aren’t influenced that much by lust or are already involved in a romance. When the Veela leaves, the allure goes with them.
Raven Veela are creatures of force. They change things, and what they touch remains changed. They don’t value easy gifts or rewards or promises, either. They want to take.
Harry, please, you have to be careful. I know you told me that you just swatted that reporter aside the other day because he was trying to steal a feather from your wings, and I believe you. And it’s perfectly understandable that you changed that attacking Nundu into a harmless kitten. The wizards who brought it into Britain shouldn’t have had it anyway.
But more than that, I think you could end up doing things you don’t want to. And I don’t even know how you being a raven Veela will combine with you being the Master of Death.
Please write back to me, Harry.
Love,
Hermione.
-Letter found in the private files of Harry Potter after his death, a notation in the margin: “Too late.”
*
The first steps were so easy.
A few people approached Harry and asked him to negotiate with the goblins. Apparently, the goblins favored ambassadors who didn’t look human or were part-human. Professor Flitwick used to talk with them sometimes, which surprised Harry.
But now Professor Flitwick was busy rebuilding Hogwarts and soothing students. It didn’t seem like a huge favor for Harry to approach the goblins and show them his black wings and ask them if they would lend some extra money to wizards who needed it.
And it wasn’t. The goblins took one look at Harry’s wings and burst out laughing. Harry blinked as he stood there with his wings spread and trembling in a large cavern beneath the bank. Lately, even though he knew perfectly well how big the bloody things were, it seemed as if he needed extra room around the edges of the feathers. As if someone had come and extended them without his noticing.
Or as if his shadow needed its own space. Or at least the shadow of the wings.
But the goblins calmed down after that and nodded and said the loans would be easy, too. Of course they understood that some people without vaults were among the victims of the war who needed to build new homes and buy food and save up to send their children to Hogwarts. Of course they knew that Hogwarts didn’t have its own vaults anymore—not really, they’d been drained to fund the attendance of people who didn’t have their own trusts—and needed money anyway. Of course they would give the money.
Harry didn’t know what to make of the smiling glances they kept giving his wings, or the whisper he heard between two goblins when he was leaving Gringotts. Most of the time, the goblins talked to each other in their own tongue. Of all they’d said that wasn’t directly to Harry while he was there, this was the only bit that was actually in English.
“They’ll get what they deserve, with the return of the raven.”
That part was hard. And only made sense later.
*
Of course there are lots of reasons a raven Veela could be born. Because the people on one side of the war used the proper rituals. Because an ordinary Veela found a dark-souled human and decided to bear a child to him. Because the need of all magical creatures reached the point where magic created a champion to fight for them.
But why Harry Potter in particular grew raven wings cannot be answered. Most attribute it to a combination of his personal power, the sudden fall of a Dark Lord who had left a mark in evil magic on the world, and perhaps something else.
After all, there would be little point in creating a raven Veela through the old rituals, or through the prayers and desires of magical creatures, if they would only involve the world in endless war.
Raven Veela are created to end war. To bring peace.
-Excerpt from How the World Changed: Speculations and Theories, by Percy Weasley, living in exile in France, 2021.
*
The relentless tide of longing had begun to pull him towards Malfoy.
Harry knew it as well as he knew his own name now, as he knew the weight of his wings, the way they could flap and send him reeling up to the ceiling of Grimmauld Place. Sometimes he slept there, clinging like a great bat, and then he would fly down and startle whoever had come through the Floo or to the door.
There were more people than just Ron and Hermione now who could come see him through those doorways. Or who wanted to.
And there was the pull. Wherever Harry went, he knew exactly where Malfoy was, how far away. He could stand in Diagon Alley and turn his head towards Malfoy Manor. Once, when he had gone to Ireland to free some selkies caught in a trap there, soaring silently over the night-darkened water, he had felt Malfoy turn over in his bed. He had known how many wingbeats it would take to carry him there.
For now, Harry could resist. He knew what he was—not by reading about names so much as because he felt it, the different kind of tide that guided his own beating heart and reached out as if it would sweep up others when they came near him.
Some people were more susceptible than others. George, looking for leadership and an anchor in the wake of Fred’s death, was happy when Harry gave him some direction about what pranks he should develop next. Ginny went starry-eyed, but no longer as a prospective lover. She was a little sister happy in another brother’s protection and in learning tricks about flying that someone with wings could teach her.
Ron and Hermione, at least, turned clear gazes on him. Harry was glad. He never wanted to enchant his friends.
But he was more complacent with others. The few Death Eaters left free, including Fenrir Greyback, who had tried to attack him so far had become slow and dazed as they neared him. Harry had only to spread his wings, and they ended up bowing before him and standing motionless as the Aurors took them away.
Greyback had tried to lick his feet. Harry tried not to think about that. There were limits he wanted to his power even if he no longer had them.
Malfoy, though…
Malfoy was different. Harry wanted to bear him away and hold him in mid-air as he fucked him again and again. He wanted to hold out his wings and let the tips of the black feathers brush just against Malfoy’s cheeks and do whatever he needed to to get Malfoy to react.
There was that, and so much in return: the desire to build a nest for Malfoy, to build a throne for him if that was what he wanted, to walk with him through Diagon Alley, holding his hand, and to have Malfoy kneel at his feet and touch his wings. The images stormed through Harry’s head when he lay in bed at night.
He didn’t understand them. And unlike the question of why exactly he had turned into a black-winged Veela instead of someone else, he couldn’t put it aside and not worry about it until later. He wanted to know now. He wanted to know desperately.
Nothing in Hermione’s research had revealed the truth so far. Not that she’d concentrated much on finding out why Malfoy would be a suitable candidate for a mate, Harry had to admit. Nor would she much care whether he was. She was now researching ways to turn Harry back.
She had told him, the last time they’d had dinner together in the shadows of Grimmauld Place, Harry’s wings big enough that one of them stuck out the door of the kitchen into the drawing room, that she thought the transformation had gone far enough.
“Everything I’ve been able to find says the wizarding world needs these Veela sometimes.” Hermione had touched his hand, while her eyes shone at him. “But none of them became—well, none of them turned this suddenly, Harry. And none of them had wings this big.”
Harry had blinked. “What does the size of my wings have to do with it?”
“It’s the shadow they cast.” Hermione had looked at the wavering black shape on the floor, stretching away from the table towards the fireplace. “Where your shadow touches the world, the world changes, Harry.”
Harry rolled his eyes a little. “I didn’t think you paid that much attention to Skeeter’s whinging, Hermione.”
He picked up a handful of beef and began to chew. He’d acquired a taste for raw meat since his transformation, and for some reason, Kreacher seemed particularly pleased to serve that kind of food to him. Then again, Kreacher had started staring dreamily at his wings the first time he saw them and calmed down quite a bit from his old habit of muttering about the glories of the Black family.
“It’s not Skeeter. It’s the simple truth. From everything I’ve been able to find—”
Hermione broke off and stared at something on the wall. Harry turned towards the fireplace, wondering if someone had come through the Floo and the wards on the house hadn’t let him know, although he didn’t know why they wouldn’t.
But instead, she was watching the shadow of his right wing. Harry rolled his eyes. “What? It’s not doing anything.”
“Look,” Hermione whispered, and raised her wand and cast a complicated charm that Harry already knew was a variant on a Lumos. She’d tried it on his wings last week, although she hadn’t mentioned the shadow at the time.
The light flickered to life and moved the shadow a little, but left it present on the wall, just above where it had lain. Hermione pointed. Her hand shook. “See? The wall is new and shiny where your wing’s shadow was. Dingy as ever where it wasn’t.”
Harry blinked and peered more closely. He supposed, when he looked, that he could see a difference in the colors. But that was a pretty mild change, and one that he didn’t think he needed to be worried about.
“If it could be that easy to clean up the wizarding world,” he muttered as he picked up his plate again, “then I’d like it.”
“Don’t wish for things like that.”
Harry stared at Hermione, flinching back before he could help himself. Hermione held her fork as if she was going to stab him—or herself. Her eyes were wide and staring.
“Hermione?” Harry whispered.
Hermione went on as if he had responded to her statement. “Because they might come true,” she said, and then turned and went on with her meal.
Harry did the same thing, now and then looking at the dingy wall and wondering what had unnerved her about it. After all, she and Ginny and Molly had been after him to clean up Grimmauld Place almost from the time he’d moved in.
But she didn’t want to discuss it after the meal, only avoiding his eyes and hurrying away. Harry sighed and went up to bed, closing his eyes to dreams of swooping down on running rabbits from the skies and tearing them to shreds with his hands, which seemed more hooked and clawed than he remembered them.
And those gave way to dreams of Malfoy, where Malfoy was shuddering and gasping beneath him in bed, and Harry was tearing him in rather different ways.
*
Dear Mother,
I’m not sure how I can describe my daily life to you. It’s so different from even the kind of life that I knew Father hoped I would have someday when he was powerful before the first war. But I’ll try.
I wake up in the morning and find house-elves waiting to draw me a bath. I spend maybe an hour soaking in the hottest water I’ve ever felt. I understand that the dragons sent a Swedish Short-Snout egg to Harry in tribute a while ago, and the hatchling is growing now and heating the water for us. It likes breathing flame and it’s given all the meat it wants. Apparently it’s a beneficial arrangement.
(And this is the kind of thing that I wouldn’t even have noticed a year ago. Being with Harry makes me more sensitive to the feelings of magical creatures, anyway.
…Please don’t read that last part to Father).
After the bath, I dress myself in the kind of robes that are necessary for court, eat a swift breakfast, and go there to sit on the black throne Harry built for me. It’s ornamented with his own feathers, which can come alive and…discourage people from getting too close. The throne itself is basalt, but you wouldn’t believe the kinds of Cushioning Charms Harry’s cast on it.
Various people come to talk to me. Most of them are the ones not brave enough to be there when Harry holds court. They know what it’s like to be in the shadow of his wings, and I can’t exactly blame them.
Even though it’s so often boring, I’m still using the education you and Father insisted I have. I seek out the roots of tangled blood feuds and cut through them. I ask the people talking to me not to insult my intelligence with lies. I’m a judge, and part of me enjoys it.
I spend lunch in the garden, eating under a tree by a stream. It’s the mildest place imaginable, with blue roses growing everywhere. Harry learned years ago that they’re my favorite flowers, and he used a day to coax everything in this little walled place with his magic. Since then, they’ve grown like weeds.
Sometimes, faeries join me.
I know you might wonder about the spelling change, but trust me, these faeries deserve it. Mother, I’ve seen the Sidhe, who we thought had abandoned our world so long ago. I’ve watched silver swans glide up to the bank of a pond and then change shape into people so beautiful there’s no use even thinking of them in human terms. Cats like black leopards have come to speak to me, and I have to be careful to promise them nothing.
I always need to remember that I’m not simply myself, that I’m a representative of something larger, when I negotiate with magical creatures.
I go from the garden to a music session, or another court session if needed, or a flight with Harry. I wish I had the words for the way I feel when he’s carrying me, in a special harness he fashioned, beneath him while his wings beat above us. But that’s something else as much beyond words as the Sidhe are.
I always eat dinner and spend the night with Harry. And while I could describe the dinners to you—the candles and the music and the shadows that dance and get golden-edged from the fire—I’ll ask you to excuse me from describing the nights.
One thing you should know, Mother, and never doubt. I’m happy. Harry fulfills my desires in ways I never knew he could before I came here, and he’s taught me new ones. That he fulfills, and I can fulfill on my own, too. We do have lives outside each other.
I came here because I knew I didn’t have much choice, and I hoped to spare my family the bad consequences. But I stay for my own sake.
Never doubt that.
Yours in love,
Draco.
*
Harry rose slowly above the North Sea, hovering with languid beats of his wings. It shouldn’t have been possible for him with wings this huge, he knew that, but on the other hand, most of his magic was about achieving the impossible.
So he hung, shadowing the island that had become his kingdom, and waited.
The dragon appeared suddenly from the east, a dark shape against the rising sun. It dipped its wings to him once in greeting, and Harry had time to make out the distinctive shape of a Hebridean Black before it began to spiral, up and up and up, into the dance he had come here to celebrate with it.
Harry bowed his head a little in return and followed it.
The dragon remained in a spiral until it reached the height that was the correct one—Harry had never figured out how the dragons knew which one it was, but it was the same each time—and then suddenly dropped like a stone, wings wrapped around it. Harry described a circle beneath it, and was there when the fall began. He stooped like a hawk, and the ocean turned golder than the sun where the shadow of his wings fell.
The dragon tumbled and arced through the salmon color of the sunrise. Its scales refused the light and reshaped it. Harry laughed soundlessly and spun into the whirling cocoon of his wings.
He learned something new each month he did this dance, and this time, it was this: dragons could change the world the way he did.
The sight of a dragon dancing, at last, in ancient celebration of its kind, and the births that were beginning with planted eggs in the ruins of Muggle buildings, hit Harry like someone had reached into his chest and stripped the breath out.
The Black rose again, and this time Harry spread his wings to their fullest extent and followed, rising so steeply that his sight blurred. Then the soft weight settled on his left wing from the side, and he smiled.
Wingtip to wingtip, Harry and the Hebridean Black soared above an island at peace with wild and magical things.
*
“What did we have to give Mr. Potter? Unconditional surrender.
Many people misunderstand what that involves. It was the surrender of desires as well as of our wands, if that was what he felt he needed to make sure we would be peaceful. We had to give up wanting to drive Muggleborns out of the wizarding world and exercise our power over Muggles.
“Why, did you not know? A raven Veela has sensitivity to his mate’s desires, and also to the desires of the family of his mate. But while His Raven-Winged Majesty might want to gratify every one of our son’s wishes, he knew enough about me and my wife to look into our souls and demand that we stop feeling what we were feeling.
“Is it worth the price? Especially given the ravens who follow us day and night, an honor guard and yet also a company of prison wardens?
“To see our son safe and happy, yes, it is.”
Lucius Malfoy, interviewed in the Daily Prophet, special edition, “Family of His Raven-Winged Majesty,” 2005.
*
Draco knew when the raven came slanting down towards the Slytherin table that it carried a courtship gift. Of course it did. This particular raven, a large one with feathers that shone almost blue in the backs of its wings, had delivered almost every gift so far, including Draco’s wand. He held his hand out to receive it, smiling a little.
It was almost March, and even if neither of them had formally spoken the word “courtship” aloud yet, Draco knew what it meant as much as Harry did.
The raven landed in front of him and bowed its head in a courteous gesture. Draco took the knife it held in its beak, a gleaming blue blade folded and tempered in a way that Draco had only ever seen in pictures of old swords. The hilt was of silken black wood, with a single blue stone in it like a staring eye.
“Thank you,” Draco murmured to the raven, and then looked up and towards Harry, meaning to speak his thanks in that direction as well.
Beside him, a Slytherin fifth-year named Oscar Tharassin reached out abruptly and grabbed the knife’s hilt. “That looks exactly like a knife that someone stole from my ancestors a long time ago,” he said, his eyes narrow. “Where is your Veela getting these from, Draco?”
Oscar twisted the knife a little more, and the blade cut Draco’s palm, spilling blood to the table. Draco hissed and flinched.
There was no warning. The raven sprang up and hooked its claws into Oscar’s cheeks, beak aiming and stabbing straight for his eyes.
Oscar howled and tumbled backwards. The knife fell from his hand. Draco snatched it up and felt the blue jewel grow warm against his hand, as if drawing strength from the blood. As people surged to their feet around him, yelling, Draco shouted, “Look! I have the knife! It’s okay! He didn’t take it from me!”
The raven didn’t appear to hear him. It clung to Oscar and stabbed again and again. Darker fluids than blood were coursing down Oscar’s cheeks now, and he was sobbing and trying to beat the raven off with his arms.
Draco yelled again. He couldn’t understand why the raven wouldn’t listen to him. It was punishing Oscar because he’d hurt Draco. But surely it could see Draco was all right now? It had to see!
Then Draco became aware of the weight of a trembling shadow on his head. He turned to look and saw Harry watching from the Gryffindor table, his arms folded but not his wings. They were extended, and they gave a little jerk of satisfaction each time a new yelp or moan came from Oscar.
And Draco understood, then. The raven wouldn’t listen to him because it wasn’t angry that Oscar had hurt Draco. Harry was.
And the ravens listened only to Harry.
Draco held his hands up in entreaty to Harry. He couldn’t make himself heard over the screams, but he tried to draw Harry’s attention away from them by mouthing, “See? I’m all right. Please stop.”
Harry studied him for a second. Then he raised a hand and a wing at the same time, and the raven turned and soared away, up through the window in the Great Hall it had come through.
The horrified professors mobbed the Slytherin table then, and bore Oscar away to the hospital wing, before Draco could even see how bad it was. But Draco turned his head, tick by tick, and saw Harry licking blood from his hand.
*
“We come here together to commemorate the dead slain in the Rising.
“I want it to be known that I’m not going to punish anyone for that rebellion, or because they had family members who died in it, or because they might have had family members involved in the assassination attempts since. That’s not the way to live. I punish people for what they do, not who they’re related to.
“The people who have fled to France and other places have nothing to fear from me, either, unless they try to return. I knew when I really understood what my wings meant that I wouldn’t be able to bring peace to the whole world. This island of Britain is enough.
“So. Mourn with the dead. Dance with the ravens who will bring you whatever food you request. And remember that the Door is still open. If you want to go through the Door as the Muggles and some former members of our world did, the Door the dragons and the winged nundus came through, go to the clump of trees behind Albus Dumbledore’s tomb and knock on any trunk. You will see the shadows move, and then the glimpse of golden light that awaits you beyond.”
-Speech from Harry Potter, on the first anniversary of the Rising that attempted to destroy him and all his works, May 2nd, 2019.
*
“This is no way to live.”
Harry didn’t answer Hermione. He was standing on the topmost balcony of the Astronomy Tower, leaning out a little. He could feel the wind calling to him to fly, as it always did, and the stones of the Tower subtly shifting under his shadow, becoming cleaner and more magical, shedding the dark residue still left there from the night of Dumbledore’s death.
But most of all, he could see the door that was clearer and clearer to him.
Harry didn’t know what to call it, other than a door. The shape of it shimmered in various places: on the Quidditch pitch, behind the Burrow when he visited it with Ron over the Easter holidays, on the wall in the Great Hall when he looked up and saw the outline of his shadow. But this was the place it was clearest.
It was an enormous door, and maybe that was why Harry thought he could see it most clearly here, where it had the space to spread out. It marched in a jagged shape, like a drawbridge with part of the top broken off, and it encompassed hills and trees and clouds, imprinted on the air and earth both, like the huge shadow cast by a racing car over flat country. But this was always upright, and it had hinges made of pearly, faint gold, and it grew clearer and clearer as Harry watched.
Sometimes he worried about what was beyond it. But most of the time, like tonight, he simply anticipated it.
“I said,” Hermione repeated, stepping up beside him, “that this is no way to live.”
Harry turned to her. He knew what Hermione had said, but not what she meant. “Looking out from the top of Astronomy Tower?” he asked her, a little perplexed. “But that’s the only way I can see the Door.”
“I mean,” said Hermione, “causing fear in others. Hurting their joy.”
Harry shook his head. “If people attack others I care about, Hermione, then my ravens are going to attack them. That’s the way it is. I can’t even restrain the ravens myself, and Merlin knows I’ve tried.” He’d dismissed the ravens, flown with them, held them off with spells, screamed at them to go away. They were always there again the next time he turned around and wanted something.
Harry was starting to suspect that they were really manifestations of his own desire, or longing, or however one wanted to talk about it. They wouldn’t go away because he couldn’t stop wanting things.
Especially when I look at Malfoy.
“But you can restrain yourself,” Hermione insisted. “Go away to another place. Clear your head. Stop desiring so much.”
So she’d suspected the truth about the ravens, too. Harry breathed out slowly. “Do you think that will work?”
Hermione opened her mouth, and then stopped. Harry looked back at her, and while he didn’t know exactly what his eyes looked like, he could guess.
Hermione abruptly threw her arms around him and began to sob, holding him so tightly that Harry’s ribs hurt. Harry caressed her hair, and Hermione whispered, “No. Oh, no. I don’t think you could do that, I don’t want you to do that, but, Harry—” The sobs shook her again. “What’s happening to you? Why can’t I do something to stop it?”
Harry gently draped his arms around her shoulders. He didn’t do the same with his wings, not sure how much that would change her. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we don’t need to do anything. Maybe we just need to accept this as a gift and work with it.”
His gaze strayed over Hermione’s head, back to the clear, twilit air where he had seen the Door. But the sun had set now, and it was always harder to see in the darkness. In the end, Harry led her down the stairs and back to Gryffindor Tower, deciding to spend the night with his friends there, even though it was hard to fit through the portrait hole with his wings.
*
I know what’s coming. And I don’t even know if I want to resist it.
The way he looks at me, the way his ravens send me gifts, the way I find myself going to the west windows of the Manor and staring out, waiting for some sight of dark wings against the stars…
I know I’m Potter’s mate. I know that Harry is going to come and claim me someday.
I just don’t know what it’s going to be like.
Will I still have my freedom? Will I be able to fly on my broom, or is he always going to insist on carrying me with his own wings from now on? Will I have an honor guard of ravens? Could I stop them from attacking them anyone who says a disrespectful word about me?
Even harder, sometimes, to admit in my heart of hearts…
Sometimes I think that I wouldn’t want to stop the ravens from attacking someone. Sometimes I think that I’d enjoy the chance to sit back and watch them whirl down on people who insulted me. Mostly Gryffindors, admittedly, which Harry might not like. But I suspect not even he can completely control the ravens.
There’s a dark desire in me that matches the desire I can feel burning in Harry’s eyes, even when I can’t see them. I don’t doubt that he’s standing at a window in the distance and gazing out it, thinking of me.
I don’t know which part of me will win out when the time to go with him finally comes, though.
-Extract from Draco Malfoy’s private journal, June 2001.
*
Harry woke with the knowledge that the morning had come. There was a black flame burning around him, ornamenting his wings and surprisingly not burning the bedclothes. Or maybe not that surprising when he thought about it.
After all, this bed was the one that he planned to bring his mate to.
Harry walked out to the front window of his house—well, he called it a house, although Hermione sometimes told him that words like “palace” were more appropriate—and stood looking through the brilliant stained glass for a few minutes. There was a garden of white and red flowers in front, busy with hummingbirds. The hummingbirds had appeared from nowhere, like the ravens. At least they only did things like chirp and dart around the garden, instead of attacking people.
Then the heat of the fire burning under his breastbone cut at Harry again, and he took a step back and shook his head.
No. He didn’t need to think about hummingbirds and ravens right now. He needed to think about his mate.
The word filled his mouth and his thoughts, and desire changed the flames so that he was now clad in glittering blue, and grey, and the more complex and subtle shades of white, as the fire burned hotter and hotter.
Harry opened the window and rose, his shadow making the hummingbirds leap up to greet him and the ravens swirl from the top of the goblin-built towers, which the masons had simply showed up to build one day, much the way the birds had.
Draco.
Harry always knew exactly where he was. Now he set his course, and flew to claim his mate.
*
“Yes, I think it’s a horrible thing to do. I know Harry says that there’s a Britain exactly like ours on the other side of the Door, and that means the Muggles and the wizards who don’t want to stay are going to go through and they won’t really lose anything. They’ll have towns and cities and places where they can do anything they like.
“But does he know that? He hasn’t gone through the Door himself to make sure, because once you do that, you can’t come back. So I don’t know why he thinks that everyone should just accept his word.
“Besides, there’s the fact that it’s supposed to be an exchange. If people go through the Door one way, then someone needs to come the other way. People could have used the Door at other times when a raven Veela ruled, but they didn’t, because the country over there is uninhabited and there’s no one to come through.
“Harry, what in the world do you think you’re doing?”
-Hermione Granger, as quoted in the Daily Prophet in the aftermath of Harry Potter’s announcement about the Door.
*
Draco sat alone in his chambers at Malfoy Manor one night, and looked at the dim mirrors and windows, as they were without even a single candle lit. He had one moment in time to perform this Divination ritual that would tell him what he wanted to know.
He didn’t think he had the Sight, not the way that fraud Trelawney had defined it. But he did think that he had some of the right kind of desperation and strength that those who wanted to see the future needed to have, from the reading Draco had done since the war.
He had arranged the shallow silver pan of water, standing on a table made of ebony wood next to the window on the night of the full moon. The light fell on the edge of the table for now, but soon it would fall in the center of the pan. Soon it would brighten the water.
And Draco would see what he—
He closed his eyes for a second, and gentled his breathing, knowing he needed to be poised and waiting for the moment the moonlight came, knowing also that moment was not yet.
He opened them again, and moved to the pan, as the moon shifted position. Slowly, while Draco tried to think of his mind as a crystal ball, the moonlight moved, closer and closer to the center of the pan and the truth that awaited it there. Draco saw the edges of the pan brighten. The water rippled as he pressed down on the table. He moved his hands out of the way.
Then the moonlight was within the water, and the moment had come for Draco to act.
He stared straight down into the pan, and plunged his head down.
Water filled his mouth and nostrils, his ears and eyes. Draco opened his mouth and breathed it in, ignoring the feeling of panic and the ringing in his ears that followed as he began to drown.
This was what he wanted. This was the only way to see the future that he thought was coming for him, but which he couldn’t be certain about until he could see.
The moonlight flashed in front of his eyes, and Draco thought again of a crystal ball. He was the center of that brilliance, the shattering fall of white radiance. He was standing in the middle of it, and looking, and it didn’t matter if he died, if he drowned, it was worth the price.
The minute he thought that, he was calm. He could no longer hear the ringing or feel the pain in his lungs as water leaked in. He looked ahead, and the white flashed once and resolved into a vision made of silver and black.
Harry Potter sat on a black throne made of flapping stone ravens with their talons clenched around each other’s heads. His wings spread on either side of him, and a raven sat on his shoulder, and his smile was as beautiful and warm as the Dark Arts.
Kneeling at his side, head against his leg, was Draco.
A Draco the watcher didn’t recognize, though. His hair was even paler, and his skin. But he wore fine black robes of the kind that his family couldn’t afford anymore, and when he tilted back his head and looked up at the raven Veela on the throne, his face was full of peace.
The peace of someone who had accepted his destiny.
Draco opened his eyes and jerked his face out of the water. The moonlight was past, and with it, the moment when he could keep his face where it had been and not drown.
He stood there, dripping and shaken, and tried to decide whether that vision would be enough to convince his parents. They had told him they would not oppose Potter staking a claim on him, but only if Draco himself didn’t object. If Draco didn’t want to be with Potter, they would flee the country or go through the Door.
Draco didn’t want them to have to do that. The Malfoys had no connections or power on the Continent to match what they had in England. And while he didn’t think Potter would exile people to death unwillingly, there was no telling what lay on the other side of the Door. Those who had made the crossing didn’t come back.
Besides, there was part of him, small and quivering and winged, that wanted to know what it would be like to have power, second only to Potter himself. And to have that power focused on him, the center and fulcrum of it.
To be at peace.
Draco looked up at the moon again, and made his choice.
Prompt: #76, for knowmefirst: Harry is a dark powerful veela and he wants Draco.
Rating: R
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco, some mentions of canon pairings
Word Count/ Art Medium: 15,500
Warnings (if any): Some violence, minor character death, AU, angst, non-linear timeline, Dark-ish Harry.
Disclaimer: JK Rowling retains the ownership of all characters and settings borrowed from the Harry Potter series of books.
Summary: Everything changed after Voldemort’s defeat. Now the wizarding world is almost unrecognizable, and Harry Potter and his mate Draco Malfoy are at the helm, guiding it for their own version of the “greater good.” Perhaps this was their destined course from the day Harry grew his black wings.
Author's notes: knowmefirst, I hope you like this fic! My thanks to my beta Karen, who looked over this story with a thorough and expert eye. Any errors remaining are my own.
Fire and Wonder
Draco turned his head. He stood still for a moment, listening. Then he quietly put down the book he had been reading and left the room.
He was aware, as he moved along the corridors of the Manor towards the front doors, that he might not ever return to it.
But above him was the sound which had captured his attention, and had to command it. Draco might have thought it was the surf, except he knew already that it would be the beating of enormous wings.
He stood inside the front doors for a long moment while the wings came down to the grounds and settled there. He stood, and faint images of his parents came and went behind his eyes, and images of the Dark Lord.
Draco had to smile and open his eyes when he realized he was imagining the Dark Mark overlaid with a flying raven. The eagle had the serpent in one of its talons and was choking the life out of it. The other talon lay on top of the skull, tightening to crush it.
The sound of the wings had stilled.
Draco opened the great door on almost silent hinges, and carried the small creak it did make down the steps to what awaited him there.
*
“None of us thought things had changed that much at first. I mean, Harry woke up and he had wings. And that was pretty startling. But aside from trying to research and find out where they’d come from, we didn’t pay much attention. We had so many other things to do then, in the wake of the war.
“By the time we thought to pay a lot of attention, Harry had found Malfoy, and it was too late.”
-Dean Thomas, interviewed in the Daily Prophet, special edition, “Friends of His Raven-Winged Majesty,” 2006.
*
“Harry, what did you do to yourself?”
Harry woke groggily. He didn’t think he’d even heard Hermione come in to the boys’ bedroom at Hogwarts. He turned his head, meaning to ask if he couldn’t get one day off from lectures. He’d just defeated Voldemort yesterday, after all.
But he woke up pretty fast when he saw the black feathers out of the corner of his eye, and had to sit up to stare at them. They moved when he did. Harry’s first thought was that someone had sneaked up here and stuck them to him for a joke. Probably Seamus. It didn’t seem like Neville’s or Dean’s style, not now.
Then he reached behind him to scratch his shoulder blade as an itch happened there, and the shoulder moved as though it had extra joints in it, and huge black wings extended on either side of him.
Hermione squeaked. Harry stared at his wings in silence. The feathers had a sheen to them, purple-black and blue, that reminded him of a raven or a starling. He flapped, and his sheets blew to the end of the bed and some loose paper lying on the trunk near the bottom scattered into all the corners of the room.
“Don’t do that, mate!” Apparently he’d blown Ron’s wand along with the paper, and Ron was sticking it back in his pocket now, shaking his head reproachfully at Harry.
“Um. Sorry.” Harry waited and blinked some more. He looked up in time to see Hermione casting a spell. But whatever it was, it didn’t work the way she wanted it to. She shook her head as it faded into what looked like a cluster of fireworks, and shrugged at Harry.
“I’m sorry, Harry. I assumed it was a curse, but it’s not. It must be a Transfiguration instead.”
“Well, either that or he transformed. The way werewolves do.”
“Ron, lycanthropy is specifically a disease linked to the moon, and that means…”
Harry tuned out their arguing and extended his right wing to the side, studying it for a moment. It was huge, and it blazed and shimmered with magic at the edges, blue crackling flames that winked out of existence when Harry looked at them straight on. He supposed that meant he would fly just by magic alone. He didn’t feel like he was any lighter, anyway.
Fly? Am I seriously thinking of flying with these things?
Slowly, Harry began to grin. Yeah, he was. He had to admit, now that Voldemort was gone, he didn’t see the reason to panic and automatically assume this was someone cursing him. He ought to get to fly and do what he wanted instead of panicking.
And now that he had wings, what else was he supposed to do with them?
He stood up, distracting Ron and Hermione from their argument. Hermione focused on him with a frown.
“Harry? What is it? Do the wings hurt?”
Harry shook his head and raised his wings some more, making both his friends gasp. He thought they hadn’t really seen how large they were before, since he’d been sitting down and the wings had mostly been behind him. “No. I’m going to leap from the window. Ron, do you mind opening the shutters?”
Ron rushed to do it, while Hermione shouted in alarm. Harry winked at her and lifted his wings higher, soaring across the room for a moment.
It was to a broom what a broom was to walking. In seconds Harry was in front of the window and staring down at the ground far below.
“Do it, mate,” Ron whispered from beside him. When Harry looked over, Ron had the most insane grin on his face.
And Harry sort of felt insane, too, but he thought he was going to fly. He stepped out and fell for a moment.
Then the knowledge or muscles or whatever he had already used kicked in, and his wings spread wide and cast a fleeting shadow below him, and he aimed up and twisted and was flying, wheeling, his wings bearing him up. Harry leaned on the wind and shut his eyes for a moment. He knew he could trust his wings completely, that they would never betray him, never fold when he needed them to flap and let him fall.
It was a complete trust Harry thought must be magical. He knew he should probably distrust it instead. Everything that had seemed innocent once, like Scabbers and Tom Riddle’s diary, was really evil.
Or so he should probably think.
But he didn’t, and his laughter rang out, drifting over the towers and turrets of the castle, luring people outside to see who was flying, who was dipping, who was soaring.
*
“I still think the only thing that would have helped was for Harry to never inherit his wings in the first place. Once he had them, he was a different person. He walked instead of flew. He talked to birds instead of us.
“The first raven came to him that night, you know. Just slanted down in the Great Hall in front of everybody and landed on the table and stared at him. And we thought Harry could only talk to snakes, but then he opened his mouth, and this babble of croaks came out. The raven nodded like it understood him and flew away, and came back with this hawthorn wand in its beak. Then it flew across the Great Hall and gave it to Draco Malfoy.
“Maybe that was the real beginning. Ron thinks it was. That was the event that probably formed the connection between Harry and Malfoy. But if he’d never had the wings, nothing else would have happened.”
-Hermione Granger, talking in La Trompette from her French residence, three days before her return to Britain.
*
Draco always remembered the moment that a raven landed in front of him and offered him his wand back.
He didn’t remember it because he was so surprised, or because the raven was so close, or because of who sent it. He remembered it because there was an odd smell to the raven’s feathers, a shaggy smell, like they were fur polished by the wind.
And because he looked up and met Potter’s eyes, and saw the way his wings stretched out, and he saw what apparently no one else did.
Potter had two shadows on the wall behind him. One was his normal shadow. A much larger, still winged one reared over that and encompassed it.
And Potter’s eyes burned.
Draco still reached out and took the wand, because he had to. But his arm shook.
*
The wings made a noise like words muttered in the middle of thunder.
Draco took a step back and looked up. Potter was crouched in front of him, but it was his wings that caught Draco’s attention, rising and flapping again even though Potter had come to a stop, their shadow spread out over the whole of the Manor’s grounds.
What that shadow touched, it changed.
The grass grew brighter and sharper. Draco appreciated that Potter didn’t want to kill the grass of his childhood home, only transform it, but it was still hard to watch its edges become silver and its roots freeze and sparkle. Draco followed the spreading path of silver and shadow to the edge of the house.
The marble there trembled, wavered, and then released a flock of brightly-colored birds. Red and yellow, with glorious blue crests on their heads, they circled around Draco and Potter in a singing wave. Then they lifted their wings and fled past both of them, and Draco had no idea where they had gone or what would happen to the rest of the stone in the Manor.
For now, the shadow didn’t reach that far. But it could. He knew.
Potter was a small thing, dwarfed by the wings, when Draco thought of him this way. Still, he knew that Potter’s was the guiding intelligence behind that magic. When the wild force partnered with him did awful things, it was as a result of his anger. If the changes here had been harmless or beautiful or protective, it was because of what Potter felt towards Draco.
Because Draco was his mate.
Draco turned, and Potter was there, dipping his head a little to make eye contact.
Draco moved towards him and turned his hands up. He accepted. He had to, and part of him—a small buried part, the one that had dreamed of making the Boy-Who-Lived his friend and going with him on magical adventures—was screaming in joy.
But he couldn’t hide the way his hands trembled, either.
When Potter bowed his head, Draco realized he didn’t need to. Potter’s tongue flickered out, a single hot point, and touched the center of his right palm.
Draco caught his breath, because if Potter’s shadow could change what it did, surely his tongue would change even more. Would his skin become metal, or sunflowers, or melt and run from the bones of his hand?
It did neither. It only warmed, and grew wet, the way it would from the lick of anyone’s tongue.
Draco moved slowly forwards, into the embrace of the raven Veela Potter had become. Potter looked at him with fierce need, and the devouring delight of a raptor closing in on its kill.
But his hands were still human when they clasped Draco’s, and the mouth he brought down to Draco’s was still human, and the wings he raised higher and higher, growing like stormclouds, were meant to shield their kiss from the sight of anyone who might watch, Draco knew, and not to change him into someone more to Potter’s liking. The whole point of what Potter had become, from what Draco had learned of him—of it—of them—of him—was that Potter wanted him because he was prickly and difficult, resistant, and there would have been no point in forced compliance in a raven Veela’s mate.
Because—
Draco’s thoughts were spinning and drifting, pieces breaking apart from each other, as Potter’s hands caressed him and pushed him towards the ground, even as small winds from his wings sneaked under his clothing and caressed his skin.
Because that was what raven Veela were. Were made to be.
Draco was on the ground, his legs spread wide. Potter literally hovered before him, and his eyes burned with fire the darkest shade of green, where it verged on blue, shining and fierce.
Because raven Veela were conquerors.
Draco arched his back, and that was the only invitation Potter needed.
He landed.
Draco fell.
*
Dear Harry,
Please don’t tear up this letter. I have a feeling you’ll want to, once you realize what I’m talking about, so the only thing I can ask is that you don’t.
I know what you are. A raven Veela. Apparently they’re rare enough to be legends even among the Veela—sort of to them what ordinary Veela are to Muggles. There are legends of black-winged men appearing among her grandmother’s kind, Fleur told me, and when they did, then war came, because that was what they did.
Ordinary Veela are creatures of seduction. They use magic to make people want to do things for them, and that’s all right in a limited sphere. The effect doesn’t last long, especially because it works on the emotions of lust and romance, and a lot of people either aren’t influenced that much by lust or are already involved in a romance. When the Veela leaves, the allure goes with them.
Raven Veela are creatures of force. They change things, and what they touch remains changed. They don’t value easy gifts or rewards or promises, either. They want to take.
Harry, please, you have to be careful. I know you told me that you just swatted that reporter aside the other day because he was trying to steal a feather from your wings, and I believe you. And it’s perfectly understandable that you changed that attacking Nundu into a harmless kitten. The wizards who brought it into Britain shouldn’t have had it anyway.
But more than that, I think you could end up doing things you don’t want to. And I don’t even know how you being a raven Veela will combine with you being the Master of Death.
Please write back to me, Harry.
Love,
Hermione.
-Letter found in the private files of Harry Potter after his death, a notation in the margin: “Too late.”
*
The first steps were so easy.
A few people approached Harry and asked him to negotiate with the goblins. Apparently, the goblins favored ambassadors who didn’t look human or were part-human. Professor Flitwick used to talk with them sometimes, which surprised Harry.
But now Professor Flitwick was busy rebuilding Hogwarts and soothing students. It didn’t seem like a huge favor for Harry to approach the goblins and show them his black wings and ask them if they would lend some extra money to wizards who needed it.
And it wasn’t. The goblins took one look at Harry’s wings and burst out laughing. Harry blinked as he stood there with his wings spread and trembling in a large cavern beneath the bank. Lately, even though he knew perfectly well how big the bloody things were, it seemed as if he needed extra room around the edges of the feathers. As if someone had come and extended them without his noticing.
Or as if his shadow needed its own space. Or at least the shadow of the wings.
But the goblins calmed down after that and nodded and said the loans would be easy, too. Of course they understood that some people without vaults were among the victims of the war who needed to build new homes and buy food and save up to send their children to Hogwarts. Of course they knew that Hogwarts didn’t have its own vaults anymore—not really, they’d been drained to fund the attendance of people who didn’t have their own trusts—and needed money anyway. Of course they would give the money.
Harry didn’t know what to make of the smiling glances they kept giving his wings, or the whisper he heard between two goblins when he was leaving Gringotts. Most of the time, the goblins talked to each other in their own tongue. Of all they’d said that wasn’t directly to Harry while he was there, this was the only bit that was actually in English.
“They’ll get what they deserve, with the return of the raven.”
That part was hard. And only made sense later.
*
Of course there are lots of reasons a raven Veela could be born. Because the people on one side of the war used the proper rituals. Because an ordinary Veela found a dark-souled human and decided to bear a child to him. Because the need of all magical creatures reached the point where magic created a champion to fight for them.
But why Harry Potter in particular grew raven wings cannot be answered. Most attribute it to a combination of his personal power, the sudden fall of a Dark Lord who had left a mark in evil magic on the world, and perhaps something else.
After all, there would be little point in creating a raven Veela through the old rituals, or through the prayers and desires of magical creatures, if they would only involve the world in endless war.
Raven Veela are created to end war. To bring peace.
-Excerpt from How the World Changed: Speculations and Theories, by Percy Weasley, living in exile in France, 2021.
*
The relentless tide of longing had begun to pull him towards Malfoy.
Harry knew it as well as he knew his own name now, as he knew the weight of his wings, the way they could flap and send him reeling up to the ceiling of Grimmauld Place. Sometimes he slept there, clinging like a great bat, and then he would fly down and startle whoever had come through the Floo or to the door.
There were more people than just Ron and Hermione now who could come see him through those doorways. Or who wanted to.
And there was the pull. Wherever Harry went, he knew exactly where Malfoy was, how far away. He could stand in Diagon Alley and turn his head towards Malfoy Manor. Once, when he had gone to Ireland to free some selkies caught in a trap there, soaring silently over the night-darkened water, he had felt Malfoy turn over in his bed. He had known how many wingbeats it would take to carry him there.
For now, Harry could resist. He knew what he was—not by reading about names so much as because he felt it, the different kind of tide that guided his own beating heart and reached out as if it would sweep up others when they came near him.
Some people were more susceptible than others. George, looking for leadership and an anchor in the wake of Fred’s death, was happy when Harry gave him some direction about what pranks he should develop next. Ginny went starry-eyed, but no longer as a prospective lover. She was a little sister happy in another brother’s protection and in learning tricks about flying that someone with wings could teach her.
Ron and Hermione, at least, turned clear gazes on him. Harry was glad. He never wanted to enchant his friends.
But he was more complacent with others. The few Death Eaters left free, including Fenrir Greyback, who had tried to attack him so far had become slow and dazed as they neared him. Harry had only to spread his wings, and they ended up bowing before him and standing motionless as the Aurors took them away.
Greyback had tried to lick his feet. Harry tried not to think about that. There were limits he wanted to his power even if he no longer had them.
Malfoy, though…
Malfoy was different. Harry wanted to bear him away and hold him in mid-air as he fucked him again and again. He wanted to hold out his wings and let the tips of the black feathers brush just against Malfoy’s cheeks and do whatever he needed to to get Malfoy to react.
There was that, and so much in return: the desire to build a nest for Malfoy, to build a throne for him if that was what he wanted, to walk with him through Diagon Alley, holding his hand, and to have Malfoy kneel at his feet and touch his wings. The images stormed through Harry’s head when he lay in bed at night.
He didn’t understand them. And unlike the question of why exactly he had turned into a black-winged Veela instead of someone else, he couldn’t put it aside and not worry about it until later. He wanted to know now. He wanted to know desperately.
Nothing in Hermione’s research had revealed the truth so far. Not that she’d concentrated much on finding out why Malfoy would be a suitable candidate for a mate, Harry had to admit. Nor would she much care whether he was. She was now researching ways to turn Harry back.
She had told him, the last time they’d had dinner together in the shadows of Grimmauld Place, Harry’s wings big enough that one of them stuck out the door of the kitchen into the drawing room, that she thought the transformation had gone far enough.
“Everything I’ve been able to find says the wizarding world needs these Veela sometimes.” Hermione had touched his hand, while her eyes shone at him. “But none of them became—well, none of them turned this suddenly, Harry. And none of them had wings this big.”
Harry had blinked. “What does the size of my wings have to do with it?”
“It’s the shadow they cast.” Hermione had looked at the wavering black shape on the floor, stretching away from the table towards the fireplace. “Where your shadow touches the world, the world changes, Harry.”
Harry rolled his eyes a little. “I didn’t think you paid that much attention to Skeeter’s whinging, Hermione.”
He picked up a handful of beef and began to chew. He’d acquired a taste for raw meat since his transformation, and for some reason, Kreacher seemed particularly pleased to serve that kind of food to him. Then again, Kreacher had started staring dreamily at his wings the first time he saw them and calmed down quite a bit from his old habit of muttering about the glories of the Black family.
“It’s not Skeeter. It’s the simple truth. From everything I’ve been able to find—”
Hermione broke off and stared at something on the wall. Harry turned towards the fireplace, wondering if someone had come through the Floo and the wards on the house hadn’t let him know, although he didn’t know why they wouldn’t.
But instead, she was watching the shadow of his right wing. Harry rolled his eyes. “What? It’s not doing anything.”
“Look,” Hermione whispered, and raised her wand and cast a complicated charm that Harry already knew was a variant on a Lumos. She’d tried it on his wings last week, although she hadn’t mentioned the shadow at the time.
The light flickered to life and moved the shadow a little, but left it present on the wall, just above where it had lain. Hermione pointed. Her hand shook. “See? The wall is new and shiny where your wing’s shadow was. Dingy as ever where it wasn’t.”
Harry blinked and peered more closely. He supposed, when he looked, that he could see a difference in the colors. But that was a pretty mild change, and one that he didn’t think he needed to be worried about.
“If it could be that easy to clean up the wizarding world,” he muttered as he picked up his plate again, “then I’d like it.”
“Don’t wish for things like that.”
Harry stared at Hermione, flinching back before he could help himself. Hermione held her fork as if she was going to stab him—or herself. Her eyes were wide and staring.
“Hermione?” Harry whispered.
Hermione went on as if he had responded to her statement. “Because they might come true,” she said, and then turned and went on with her meal.
Harry did the same thing, now and then looking at the dingy wall and wondering what had unnerved her about it. After all, she and Ginny and Molly had been after him to clean up Grimmauld Place almost from the time he’d moved in.
But she didn’t want to discuss it after the meal, only avoiding his eyes and hurrying away. Harry sighed and went up to bed, closing his eyes to dreams of swooping down on running rabbits from the skies and tearing them to shreds with his hands, which seemed more hooked and clawed than he remembered them.
And those gave way to dreams of Malfoy, where Malfoy was shuddering and gasping beneath him in bed, and Harry was tearing him in rather different ways.
*
Dear Mother,
I’m not sure how I can describe my daily life to you. It’s so different from even the kind of life that I knew Father hoped I would have someday when he was powerful before the first war. But I’ll try.
I wake up in the morning and find house-elves waiting to draw me a bath. I spend maybe an hour soaking in the hottest water I’ve ever felt. I understand that the dragons sent a Swedish Short-Snout egg to Harry in tribute a while ago, and the hatchling is growing now and heating the water for us. It likes breathing flame and it’s given all the meat it wants. Apparently it’s a beneficial arrangement.
(And this is the kind of thing that I wouldn’t even have noticed a year ago. Being with Harry makes me more sensitive to the feelings of magical creatures, anyway.
…Please don’t read that last part to Father).
After the bath, I dress myself in the kind of robes that are necessary for court, eat a swift breakfast, and go there to sit on the black throne Harry built for me. It’s ornamented with his own feathers, which can come alive and…discourage people from getting too close. The throne itself is basalt, but you wouldn’t believe the kinds of Cushioning Charms Harry’s cast on it.
Various people come to talk to me. Most of them are the ones not brave enough to be there when Harry holds court. They know what it’s like to be in the shadow of his wings, and I can’t exactly blame them.
Even though it’s so often boring, I’m still using the education you and Father insisted I have. I seek out the roots of tangled blood feuds and cut through them. I ask the people talking to me not to insult my intelligence with lies. I’m a judge, and part of me enjoys it.
I spend lunch in the garden, eating under a tree by a stream. It’s the mildest place imaginable, with blue roses growing everywhere. Harry learned years ago that they’re my favorite flowers, and he used a day to coax everything in this little walled place with his magic. Since then, they’ve grown like weeds.
Sometimes, faeries join me.
I know you might wonder about the spelling change, but trust me, these faeries deserve it. Mother, I’ve seen the Sidhe, who we thought had abandoned our world so long ago. I’ve watched silver swans glide up to the bank of a pond and then change shape into people so beautiful there’s no use even thinking of them in human terms. Cats like black leopards have come to speak to me, and I have to be careful to promise them nothing.
I always need to remember that I’m not simply myself, that I’m a representative of something larger, when I negotiate with magical creatures.
I go from the garden to a music session, or another court session if needed, or a flight with Harry. I wish I had the words for the way I feel when he’s carrying me, in a special harness he fashioned, beneath him while his wings beat above us. But that’s something else as much beyond words as the Sidhe are.
I always eat dinner and spend the night with Harry. And while I could describe the dinners to you—the candles and the music and the shadows that dance and get golden-edged from the fire—I’ll ask you to excuse me from describing the nights.
One thing you should know, Mother, and never doubt. I’m happy. Harry fulfills my desires in ways I never knew he could before I came here, and he’s taught me new ones. That he fulfills, and I can fulfill on my own, too. We do have lives outside each other.
I came here because I knew I didn’t have much choice, and I hoped to spare my family the bad consequences. But I stay for my own sake.
Never doubt that.
Yours in love,
Draco.
*
Harry rose slowly above the North Sea, hovering with languid beats of his wings. It shouldn’t have been possible for him with wings this huge, he knew that, but on the other hand, most of his magic was about achieving the impossible.
So he hung, shadowing the island that had become his kingdom, and waited.
The dragon appeared suddenly from the east, a dark shape against the rising sun. It dipped its wings to him once in greeting, and Harry had time to make out the distinctive shape of a Hebridean Black before it began to spiral, up and up and up, into the dance he had come here to celebrate with it.
Harry bowed his head a little in return and followed it.
The dragon remained in a spiral until it reached the height that was the correct one—Harry had never figured out how the dragons knew which one it was, but it was the same each time—and then suddenly dropped like a stone, wings wrapped around it. Harry described a circle beneath it, and was there when the fall began. He stooped like a hawk, and the ocean turned golder than the sun where the shadow of his wings fell.
The dragon tumbled and arced through the salmon color of the sunrise. Its scales refused the light and reshaped it. Harry laughed soundlessly and spun into the whirling cocoon of his wings.
He learned something new each month he did this dance, and this time, it was this: dragons could change the world the way he did.
The sight of a dragon dancing, at last, in ancient celebration of its kind, and the births that were beginning with planted eggs in the ruins of Muggle buildings, hit Harry like someone had reached into his chest and stripped the breath out.
The Black rose again, and this time Harry spread his wings to their fullest extent and followed, rising so steeply that his sight blurred. Then the soft weight settled on his left wing from the side, and he smiled.
Wingtip to wingtip, Harry and the Hebridean Black soared above an island at peace with wild and magical things.
*
“What did we have to give Mr. Potter? Unconditional surrender.
Many people misunderstand what that involves. It was the surrender of desires as well as of our wands, if that was what he felt he needed to make sure we would be peaceful. We had to give up wanting to drive Muggleborns out of the wizarding world and exercise our power over Muggles.
“Why, did you not know? A raven Veela has sensitivity to his mate’s desires, and also to the desires of the family of his mate. But while His Raven-Winged Majesty might want to gratify every one of our son’s wishes, he knew enough about me and my wife to look into our souls and demand that we stop feeling what we were feeling.
“Is it worth the price? Especially given the ravens who follow us day and night, an honor guard and yet also a company of prison wardens?
“To see our son safe and happy, yes, it is.”
Lucius Malfoy, interviewed in the Daily Prophet, special edition, “Family of His Raven-Winged Majesty,” 2005.
*
Draco knew when the raven came slanting down towards the Slytherin table that it carried a courtship gift. Of course it did. This particular raven, a large one with feathers that shone almost blue in the backs of its wings, had delivered almost every gift so far, including Draco’s wand. He held his hand out to receive it, smiling a little.
It was almost March, and even if neither of them had formally spoken the word “courtship” aloud yet, Draco knew what it meant as much as Harry did.
The raven landed in front of him and bowed its head in a courteous gesture. Draco took the knife it held in its beak, a gleaming blue blade folded and tempered in a way that Draco had only ever seen in pictures of old swords. The hilt was of silken black wood, with a single blue stone in it like a staring eye.
“Thank you,” Draco murmured to the raven, and then looked up and towards Harry, meaning to speak his thanks in that direction as well.
Beside him, a Slytherin fifth-year named Oscar Tharassin reached out abruptly and grabbed the knife’s hilt. “That looks exactly like a knife that someone stole from my ancestors a long time ago,” he said, his eyes narrow. “Where is your Veela getting these from, Draco?”
Oscar twisted the knife a little more, and the blade cut Draco’s palm, spilling blood to the table. Draco hissed and flinched.
There was no warning. The raven sprang up and hooked its claws into Oscar’s cheeks, beak aiming and stabbing straight for his eyes.
Oscar howled and tumbled backwards. The knife fell from his hand. Draco snatched it up and felt the blue jewel grow warm against his hand, as if drawing strength from the blood. As people surged to their feet around him, yelling, Draco shouted, “Look! I have the knife! It’s okay! He didn’t take it from me!”
The raven didn’t appear to hear him. It clung to Oscar and stabbed again and again. Darker fluids than blood were coursing down Oscar’s cheeks now, and he was sobbing and trying to beat the raven off with his arms.
Draco yelled again. He couldn’t understand why the raven wouldn’t listen to him. It was punishing Oscar because he’d hurt Draco. But surely it could see Draco was all right now? It had to see!
Then Draco became aware of the weight of a trembling shadow on his head. He turned to look and saw Harry watching from the Gryffindor table, his arms folded but not his wings. They were extended, and they gave a little jerk of satisfaction each time a new yelp or moan came from Oscar.
And Draco understood, then. The raven wouldn’t listen to him because it wasn’t angry that Oscar had hurt Draco. Harry was.
And the ravens listened only to Harry.
Draco held his hands up in entreaty to Harry. He couldn’t make himself heard over the screams, but he tried to draw Harry’s attention away from them by mouthing, “See? I’m all right. Please stop.”
Harry studied him for a second. Then he raised a hand and a wing at the same time, and the raven turned and soared away, up through the window in the Great Hall it had come through.
The horrified professors mobbed the Slytherin table then, and bore Oscar away to the hospital wing, before Draco could even see how bad it was. But Draco turned his head, tick by tick, and saw Harry licking blood from his hand.
*
“We come here together to commemorate the dead slain in the Rising.
“I want it to be known that I’m not going to punish anyone for that rebellion, or because they had family members who died in it, or because they might have had family members involved in the assassination attempts since. That’s not the way to live. I punish people for what they do, not who they’re related to.
“The people who have fled to France and other places have nothing to fear from me, either, unless they try to return. I knew when I really understood what my wings meant that I wouldn’t be able to bring peace to the whole world. This island of Britain is enough.
“So. Mourn with the dead. Dance with the ravens who will bring you whatever food you request. And remember that the Door is still open. If you want to go through the Door as the Muggles and some former members of our world did, the Door the dragons and the winged nundus came through, go to the clump of trees behind Albus Dumbledore’s tomb and knock on any trunk. You will see the shadows move, and then the glimpse of golden light that awaits you beyond.”
-Speech from Harry Potter, on the first anniversary of the Rising that attempted to destroy him and all his works, May 2nd, 2019.
*
“This is no way to live.”
Harry didn’t answer Hermione. He was standing on the topmost balcony of the Astronomy Tower, leaning out a little. He could feel the wind calling to him to fly, as it always did, and the stones of the Tower subtly shifting under his shadow, becoming cleaner and more magical, shedding the dark residue still left there from the night of Dumbledore’s death.
But most of all, he could see the door that was clearer and clearer to him.
Harry didn’t know what to call it, other than a door. The shape of it shimmered in various places: on the Quidditch pitch, behind the Burrow when he visited it with Ron over the Easter holidays, on the wall in the Great Hall when he looked up and saw the outline of his shadow. But this was the place it was clearest.
It was an enormous door, and maybe that was why Harry thought he could see it most clearly here, where it had the space to spread out. It marched in a jagged shape, like a drawbridge with part of the top broken off, and it encompassed hills and trees and clouds, imprinted on the air and earth both, like the huge shadow cast by a racing car over flat country. But this was always upright, and it had hinges made of pearly, faint gold, and it grew clearer and clearer as Harry watched.
Sometimes he worried about what was beyond it. But most of the time, like tonight, he simply anticipated it.
“I said,” Hermione repeated, stepping up beside him, “that this is no way to live.”
Harry turned to her. He knew what Hermione had said, but not what she meant. “Looking out from the top of Astronomy Tower?” he asked her, a little perplexed. “But that’s the only way I can see the Door.”
“I mean,” said Hermione, “causing fear in others. Hurting their joy.”
Harry shook his head. “If people attack others I care about, Hermione, then my ravens are going to attack them. That’s the way it is. I can’t even restrain the ravens myself, and Merlin knows I’ve tried.” He’d dismissed the ravens, flown with them, held them off with spells, screamed at them to go away. They were always there again the next time he turned around and wanted something.
Harry was starting to suspect that they were really manifestations of his own desire, or longing, or however one wanted to talk about it. They wouldn’t go away because he couldn’t stop wanting things.
Especially when I look at Malfoy.
“But you can restrain yourself,” Hermione insisted. “Go away to another place. Clear your head. Stop desiring so much.”
So she’d suspected the truth about the ravens, too. Harry breathed out slowly. “Do you think that will work?”
Hermione opened her mouth, and then stopped. Harry looked back at her, and while he didn’t know exactly what his eyes looked like, he could guess.
Hermione abruptly threw her arms around him and began to sob, holding him so tightly that Harry’s ribs hurt. Harry caressed her hair, and Hermione whispered, “No. Oh, no. I don’t think you could do that, I don’t want you to do that, but, Harry—” The sobs shook her again. “What’s happening to you? Why can’t I do something to stop it?”
Harry gently draped his arms around her shoulders. He didn’t do the same with his wings, not sure how much that would change her. “I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe we don’t need to do anything. Maybe we just need to accept this as a gift and work with it.”
His gaze strayed over Hermione’s head, back to the clear, twilit air where he had seen the Door. But the sun had set now, and it was always harder to see in the darkness. In the end, Harry led her down the stairs and back to Gryffindor Tower, deciding to spend the night with his friends there, even though it was hard to fit through the portrait hole with his wings.
*
I know what’s coming. And I don’t even know if I want to resist it.
The way he looks at me, the way his ravens send me gifts, the way I find myself going to the west windows of the Manor and staring out, waiting for some sight of dark wings against the stars…
I know I’m Potter’s mate. I know that Harry is going to come and claim me someday.
I just don’t know what it’s going to be like.
Will I still have my freedom? Will I be able to fly on my broom, or is he always going to insist on carrying me with his own wings from now on? Will I have an honor guard of ravens? Could I stop them from attacking them anyone who says a disrespectful word about me?
Even harder, sometimes, to admit in my heart of hearts…
Sometimes I think that I wouldn’t want to stop the ravens from attacking someone. Sometimes I think that I’d enjoy the chance to sit back and watch them whirl down on people who insulted me. Mostly Gryffindors, admittedly, which Harry might not like. But I suspect not even he can completely control the ravens.
There’s a dark desire in me that matches the desire I can feel burning in Harry’s eyes, even when I can’t see them. I don’t doubt that he’s standing at a window in the distance and gazing out it, thinking of me.
I don’t know which part of me will win out when the time to go with him finally comes, though.
-Extract from Draco Malfoy’s private journal, June 2001.
*
Harry woke with the knowledge that the morning had come. There was a black flame burning around him, ornamenting his wings and surprisingly not burning the bedclothes. Or maybe not that surprising when he thought about it.
After all, this bed was the one that he planned to bring his mate to.
Harry walked out to the front window of his house—well, he called it a house, although Hermione sometimes told him that words like “palace” were more appropriate—and stood looking through the brilliant stained glass for a few minutes. There was a garden of white and red flowers in front, busy with hummingbirds. The hummingbirds had appeared from nowhere, like the ravens. At least they only did things like chirp and dart around the garden, instead of attacking people.
Then the heat of the fire burning under his breastbone cut at Harry again, and he took a step back and shook his head.
No. He didn’t need to think about hummingbirds and ravens right now. He needed to think about his mate.
The word filled his mouth and his thoughts, and desire changed the flames so that he was now clad in glittering blue, and grey, and the more complex and subtle shades of white, as the fire burned hotter and hotter.
Harry opened the window and rose, his shadow making the hummingbirds leap up to greet him and the ravens swirl from the top of the goblin-built towers, which the masons had simply showed up to build one day, much the way the birds had.
Draco.
Harry always knew exactly where he was. Now he set his course, and flew to claim his mate.
*
“Yes, I think it’s a horrible thing to do. I know Harry says that there’s a Britain exactly like ours on the other side of the Door, and that means the Muggles and the wizards who don’t want to stay are going to go through and they won’t really lose anything. They’ll have towns and cities and places where they can do anything they like.
“But does he know that? He hasn’t gone through the Door himself to make sure, because once you do that, you can’t come back. So I don’t know why he thinks that everyone should just accept his word.
“Besides, there’s the fact that it’s supposed to be an exchange. If people go through the Door one way, then someone needs to come the other way. People could have used the Door at other times when a raven Veela ruled, but they didn’t, because the country over there is uninhabited and there’s no one to come through.
“Harry, what in the world do you think you’re doing?”
-Hermione Granger, as quoted in the Daily Prophet in the aftermath of Harry Potter’s announcement about the Door.
*
Draco sat alone in his chambers at Malfoy Manor one night, and looked at the dim mirrors and windows, as they were without even a single candle lit. He had one moment in time to perform this Divination ritual that would tell him what he wanted to know.
He didn’t think he had the Sight, not the way that fraud Trelawney had defined it. But he did think that he had some of the right kind of desperation and strength that those who wanted to see the future needed to have, from the reading Draco had done since the war.
He had arranged the shallow silver pan of water, standing on a table made of ebony wood next to the window on the night of the full moon. The light fell on the edge of the table for now, but soon it would fall in the center of the pan. Soon it would brighten the water.
And Draco would see what he—
He closed his eyes for a second, and gentled his breathing, knowing he needed to be poised and waiting for the moment the moonlight came, knowing also that moment was not yet.
He opened them again, and moved to the pan, as the moon shifted position. Slowly, while Draco tried to think of his mind as a crystal ball, the moonlight moved, closer and closer to the center of the pan and the truth that awaited it there. Draco saw the edges of the pan brighten. The water rippled as he pressed down on the table. He moved his hands out of the way.
Then the moonlight was within the water, and the moment had come for Draco to act.
He stared straight down into the pan, and plunged his head down.
Water filled his mouth and nostrils, his ears and eyes. Draco opened his mouth and breathed it in, ignoring the feeling of panic and the ringing in his ears that followed as he began to drown.
This was what he wanted. This was the only way to see the future that he thought was coming for him, but which he couldn’t be certain about until he could see.
The moonlight flashed in front of his eyes, and Draco thought again of a crystal ball. He was the center of that brilliance, the shattering fall of white radiance. He was standing in the middle of it, and looking, and it didn’t matter if he died, if he drowned, it was worth the price.
The minute he thought that, he was calm. He could no longer hear the ringing or feel the pain in his lungs as water leaked in. He looked ahead, and the white flashed once and resolved into a vision made of silver and black.
Harry Potter sat on a black throne made of flapping stone ravens with their talons clenched around each other’s heads. His wings spread on either side of him, and a raven sat on his shoulder, and his smile was as beautiful and warm as the Dark Arts.
Kneeling at his side, head against his leg, was Draco.
A Draco the watcher didn’t recognize, though. His hair was even paler, and his skin. But he wore fine black robes of the kind that his family couldn’t afford anymore, and when he tilted back his head and looked up at the raven Veela on the throne, his face was full of peace.
The peace of someone who had accepted his destiny.
Draco opened his eyes and jerked his face out of the water. The moonlight was past, and with it, the moment when he could keep his face where it had been and not drown.
He stood there, dripping and shaken, and tried to decide whether that vision would be enough to convince his parents. They had told him they would not oppose Potter staking a claim on him, but only if Draco himself didn’t object. If Draco didn’t want to be with Potter, they would flee the country or go through the Door.
Draco didn’t want them to have to do that. The Malfoys had no connections or power on the Continent to match what they had in England. And while he didn’t think Potter would exile people to death unwillingly, there was no telling what lay on the other side of the Door. Those who had made the crossing didn’t come back.
Besides, there was part of him, small and quivering and winged, that wanted to know what it would be like to have power, second only to Potter himself. And to have that power focused on him, the center and fulcrum of it.
To be at peace.
Draco looked up at the moon again, and made his choice.