[one-shots]: A Choice of Wings, Harry/Draco, R (2/2)
Second part of a long one-shot. Don't start reading here.
Harry turned on his broom and flew left. He could hear the muffled thunder of wings beneath him as the doves tracked his movements, and he laughed and turned to the right. The spiral of birds immediately adjusted itself so that it could come after him.
The doves were out flying for exercise this morning, inside wards that essentially built a bigger, invisible aviary atop the one they lived in most of the time. Harry didn’t want his birds to get unhealthy and lonely, and they enjoyed following him across the sky, he thought, as much as he enjoyed leading them. He dipped and rose and circled, and the doves echoed him in great patterns of grey feathers and gleaming breasts and flapping black wings.
“Potter.”
Harry started, and pulled up. Bodies crashed into his back, and Harry drew his wand and cast a hasty spell that would keep the birds from falling to the ground, if any of them had been so unlucky as to break a wing.
“Malfoy,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. By now, he thought he would have known who it was even if he hadn’t recognized that nasal voice. Who else popped up as frequently as Malfoy did, and for no reasons?
“It didn’t work out with Blaise.”
Harry turned his broom so that he could see Malfoy, hovering in the middle of the aviary on those wide wings. He must have broken through the wards, Harry thought, easy to do so because they were designed to stop birds and not people.
He lifted his head to scan the sky, and there were several doves escaping, soaring up in little, uncertain loops. He swore and sent his broom hurtling after them, ignoring Malfoy’s indignant squawk. He would have to remember to tell Malfoy later that he sounded exactly like a brooding mother who’d been disturbed.
It didn’t take him that long to corral the birds, a few of them white and more of them glinting grey, Harry’s personal favorite color, with rings of green around their throats and blue on their heads. They weren’t used to flying around on their own anymore, and he was safety and food to them, and sometimes spells that eased their various aches and pains. He swirled and danced next to them as he herded them back towards the wards, and when they were safely back on their perches, he leaned over his broom and panted.
“I didn’t mean to make you do that, Potter.”
This time, besides the voice, there was a hand in the middle of his back, large and surprisingly warm. Harry straightened up slowly, both to enjoy the heat-which he did more than he wanted to admit to himself-and to make sure that the hand didn’t come close to touching his bare skin. “It’s all right,” he said. “But this isn’t the best place to talk. Let me get the birds back inside their pens, and we’ll go to the office.”
Malfoy pulled his hand away, but fluttered around in front of Harry. He was handling his wings much better than he had weeks ago, when he came to Harry’s house in the middle of the night, Harry had to admit.
“I have a suspicion as to why Blaise and I didn’t suit,” Malfoy said softly. “I don’t know that much about being a Veela, which was why I had to keep asking you, but one of the things I do know is that I won’t bond to a partner if I have a better one still waiting out there somewhere.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Obviously. The whole point of my forms and birds is to try and give you the right partner. Or at least one that’s equal in compatibility to the perfect one,” he added. He knew that a lot of Veela didn’t find their “ideal” mates, but they could find people who were on the same level of goodness, however their bodies and souls and magic judged that quality.
Malfoy didn’t answer. He reached out of the clamor of his wings, beating strongly up and down to maintain his position in the air, and laid his hand on Harry’s cheek.
Harry closed his eyes. He could feel a warmth trickling out of the touch and through him, much more than the hand on his back had provided.
“You’re suitable for me,” Malfoy whispered, and shifted closer.
Harry shuddered, a ripple of such strength traveling down his body and neck that he shrugged himself away from Malfoy’s touch, and that meant he could think again. He reached out and caught Malfoy’s arm, carefully on the part that was clothed, shaking his head. He was glad that Malfoy had modified his shirts once his wings had appeared rather than simply going naked from the waist up, the way some Veela did. “No. Wait.”
“I don’t want to.” Malfoy’s voice had deepened, and now he sounded like a bird of prey. “I’ve waited long enough, and I want to do all the things I’ve promised myself I would the minute I found my partner.”
He moved closer, and Harry had to flip the broom away and upside-down. “We wouldn’t get along,” he snarled at Malfoy from under his own legs. “We would fight, and you don’t approve of the things I use my money for or the way I live, and you would insult my friends constantly. No.”
“What about the way I can make you feel?” Malfoy’s eyes were huge and his smile dark, the way the flare in his eyes the other night had been. “Doesn’t that matter to you at all? Having a mate isn’t only pleasant for the Veela.”
Harry hesitated. He knew Malfoy wasn’t lying about that much. He’d been witness to too many of the right joinings, either in his office or at the weddings and bondings that his grateful clients had invited him to attend. So it wasn’t as though being a Veela’s mate was some horrible slavery that he didn’t want to go through.
But at the same time, those people had all been more compatible than he and Malfoy had. Harry hadn’t heard them exchange a cross word.
Malfoy was still looking at him with that obsessive glitter in his eyes. Harry decided he might as well push. “What about what you wanted? That mixture of fire and passivity that you say is so hard to find? The person who can sometimes take your attention and sometimes insist on paying you attention?”
Malfoy laughed, rich and deep. That was one thing Harry couldn’t deny to the bastard at least. He was handsome. Attractive. Harry would have been drawn to the way he looked if he hadn’t known all that he did about him.
“That describes us rather well, don’t you think?” Malfoy flew a little nearer, and Harry floated back upright. Hanging like that was starting to make blood rush to his head, and it hurt. “When I wanted your attention, you wouldn’t give it to me. But you were so insistent on finding out what I was doing during sixth year. And you yield to people you like, but you fight back when they make too many demands of you.”
Harry shook his head. “You’re talking about the way we both were in school. We’ve changed since then.”
“I paid attention to the papers,” Malfoy whispered, as if sharing a secret across a meter of air. “I saw it when they said that you threw up your hands and walked away from a promising Auror career, even though the public and the wizarding world insisted that you remain to defend them. And you decided to do this because you like helping people, even if they weren’t good to you. You just kept trying to find the right partner for me. And those others that you mentioned, I suppose,” Malfoy added, as if they were worth less than nothing compared to him. “You didn’t leap out in front of them to defend them from the horror of the wrong mate. You’re more optimistic, less sacrificial, than you used to be. I think that means that you could put up with my demands but prevent me from going too far.”
“All right, say that I’m the right mate for you,” Harry said. He could hardly refuse to consider that when he had been the first one to consider that Malfoy was displaying the behavior of a courting Veela. “But how do I know that you’re the right mate for me?”
Malfoy’s smile flowed across his face like water. “Beyond the way you felt when I touched you?”
“I know this might escape you, being a Veela and all, but we can’t spend all our time in bed.”
Malfoy laughed aloud and bowed low, his hands spread out and his fingers fluttering at the ends of them, matching the sudden fast dance of his wings. “We go out on a date. How many people have you told to do that when they made faces at their potential partners? They should give them a chance.”
Harry thought about that. The more he considered, the less ridiculous it seemed. Yes, all right, Malfoy was drawn to him, and Harry was drawn back, but that wasn’t the basis for a good relationship. Then again, the magic that made his doves give him certain names wasn’t foolproof, either. All the Veela he advised could do was go on those dates and see what clicked for them with a particular person.
“Will you give me permission to date you?”
Malfoy’s voice was low again, and he hovered right in front of Harry now, his tone as serious as though he was asking someone’s parents for an old-fashioned arranged marriage. Harry bit his lip to avoid blurting out laughter that he knew Malfoy wouldn’t understand, and he nodded, holding Malfoy’s gaze.
“But I want to warn you that it might not go well,” Harry said. “And I’m leaving if you insult me or my friends.”
“Agreed,” Malfoy said. “As long as you won’t deliberately sabotage it because you don’t like me.”
Harry had to smile. “No. I promised you a fair chance. And that’s what you’ll get. A chance,” he added, when Malfoy looked as if he might forget what birds he was supposed to resemble and crow.
Malfoy nodded and leaned in. Harry didn’t realize what he intended until his lips were a few brushes away from Harry’s, and then Harry dodged and dropped, spiraling back down towards the aviary to enclose his birds in the smaller cage again.
“Exactly what was that, if not sabotage?” Malfoy demanded, winging down after him. Most of his feathers, and even some of his hair, seemed to be standing on end.
Harry glanced back at him and raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean? You were going to kiss me before the first date, and I’m not that sort of bloke.”
And then he went into the aviary and shut the door after him, listening to Malfoy’s frustrated hissing. It was a good test. If Malfoy couldn’t put up with this minor amount of aggravation, there was no way that he was going to make good dating material for Harry.
But long after Harry thought Malfoy would have given up and left, he glanced out the wire and saw Malfoy standing in the middle of the path between the aviary and his office. Malfoy bowed with his hand across his breastbone, and murmured, “Will you join me at the Royal Swan?”
Harry nodded, impressed despite himself. The Royal Swan was an exclusive restaurant in Diagon Alley. Harry had only eaten there once, as a member of the wedding party when one of his wealthier clients had invited him to witness her bonding.
“Good,” Malfoy said. “Around seven next Saturday, then. Even for someone as rich as me, it’ll take that long to get a reservation.” He gave Harry a lingering glance and spread his wings, holding them at full extension for a second before he sprang into the air. When he flew off, he did so with a smug look on his face.
When Harry realized why, he sighed to himself. Malfoy knew very well that Harry had been admiring the shimmering colors in his wings, the same pearl-grey that he liked so much when it showed up in his doves’ feathers.
Malfoy was still arrogant and demanding of too much of Harry’s time and attention. He was full of himself and reveled in his wealth. And no matter what he said about them being able to trade the equality of the relationship back and forth, Harry thought it was going to get wearing, sometimes, being the focus of his obsessive gaze on dates.
But it couldn’t hurt to try.
*
“You’re primping.”
Hermione was leaning against the far wall of Harry’s room, watching him. Harry rolled his eyes and draped the green cloak around his shoulders, turning so that he could look at it critically in the mirror on the wall before him. After a second, he shook his head and took it off. The cloak was too long, and the hem was embroidered with gold, which was something Harry had forgotten; it had been years since he wore it. He returned it to his cupboard and took out another one, in a shade that was more blue than green.
“I don’t understand why you decided to date Malfoy in the first place.”
Hermione’s voice was full of suppressed, bubbling laughter. Harry rolled his eyes at her reflection in the mirror this time. “I’ve told you again and again, and you were the one who told me that I should get out there and try to find someone.”
Hermione gasped out the laughter, then nodded. “I know. But I didn’t know that you would pick a Veela. You’ve said to me more than once that you don’t think you could stand being someone’s mate.”
“Well, none of the Veela that came through A Choice of Wings was my mate.” Harry ran his hand through his hair and studied the effect in the mirror. Picturing the expression on Malfoy’s face made him snicker. And for some reason, the blue-green cloak looked better on him when his hair was ruffled like that. He nodded and fastened the brooch that closed it at the throat. “All of them had someone else. It’s different when it’s you.”
Hermione opened her mouth to continue asking questions, Harry thought, although he’d already told her and Ron all about Malfoy and why Harry had wanted to date him. For that matter, Harry couldn’t make out why she was even here. She had said that someone should watch Harry set off and make sure that he was all right and not a mass of nerves, but all she’d done was ask questions that were designed to set Harry’s nerves jangling.
But then someone knocked on the door, and Harry felt the wards do a little dance. He knew now why they hadn’t reacted to Malfoy’s passage through them that night he crashed into Harry’s window: he was tied closely enough to Harry through being a potential mate that they had welcomed him the way they would someone Harry was already dating.
“That’s him?” Hermione was smiling at him, her eyes bright enough that Harry laughed.
“That’s him,” Harry confirmed, and decided that the cloak was good enough, and went with the blue robes he wore under them better than he would have thought it did. If he didn’t look fancy enough for Malfoy, then Malfoy would just have to deal with it, or perhaps leave him here and go to the Royal Swan alone.
As he opened the door, he wondered what would greet him: Malfoy in expensive robes that Harry could never match, Malfoy with wings spread, or Malfoy with a bunch of white roses. Malfoy seemed serious about the courting aspect of the potential mate thing. Harry wouldn’t put the roses past him.
But it was none of those. Malfoy wore expensive robes, sure, but nothing nicer than some of the robes in Harry’s wardrobe. Well, all right, a few of those robes. Maybe one. But the point was, he wore dark grey robes that accented the glow of his hair and didn’t make Harry feel cast in the shade, and he’d probably judged to a nicety what he could get away with and what he couldn’t.
He smiled at Harry and held out his hands. Harry stepped forwards, not sure whether Malfoy wanted him to shake hands or what, and then felt something cool and smooth snap into place around his wrist.
Harry blinked and looked down. What hung there felt loose and heavy, but not much like a bracelet, which was the only gift Harry could imagine Malfoy wanting to fasten on his arm. He turned it over. A series of large, flat links of silver led up to the face of a watch, glowing with golden numbers.
“Thank you,” Harry murmured, looking up at Malfoy. “Did you take some of your inspiration from Muggle watches?” Most wizards carried watches on chains like the one that Molly had given him.
Malfoy shook his head and leaned forwards, glancing a finger over the clock face. Harry followed the gesture of his hand and saw the numbers shimmer and change, swimming around each other for a few seconds. When the face of the watch cleared again, it was a softly shining silver blank, except for a metallic dot of light off to the side.
“Look,” Malfoy whispered, and moved to the side. The dot at once shifted around the face of the watch to follow him.
“It’s tuned to you?” Harry blinked. He had heard of spells that could do that, but most wizards used them the other way around, to find objects they often misplaced, like wands. To charm a watch so that it reflected Malfoy’s presence was an unusual gift.
“Yes,” Malfoy whispered, leaning forwards so that his breath caressed Harry’s ear. The light slid with him, flaring in the middle of the watch. “It’ll dim and shrink down to a corner when I’m far away, and glow when I’m with you. You can always know where I am.” He reached down and ran his fingers under the back of the watch, lifting it from Harry’s wrist. Harry shivered violently at the touch, and knew that Malfoy didn’t miss it, from his smile. “Not to mention the protection charms.”
Harry laughed a little. “You made me something that functions like the knowledge you have of my location?” He knew that Veela, at least once mated, could know where their mate was, in terms of direction and distance.
Malfoy nodded. “Not to mention something that can defend you when I’m not with you.”
“I do have a wand, you know.”
“But a captor might take your wand from you, and not notice a piece of jewelry.” Malfoy’s eyes were direct and intense and serious, and he moved his fingers so that he was pressing the watch down onto Harry’s wrist instead of holding it up from underneath. “This way, you have a defense with you at all times.”
Harry shook his hand a little, but Malfoy showed no intention of letting go of it. “People don’t really do that kind of thing to me anymore. Not since I stopped being an Auror.”
Malfoy leaned nearer, and his shadow seemed like a warm caress against Harry’s face, along with the lips and the breath against his earlobe. “Indulge me.”
Harry shuddered. If they traded places as the focus of each other’s time and attention, well and good. He thought it would be an even better idea if it happened soon. Being Malfoy’s focus was dizzying.
And then Malfoy stepped back and held out his hand, as if he had heard the thought and wished to indulge Harry. “We should be going. Not even for someone rich is the owner of the Royal Swan understanding when someone makes reservations and then doesn’t show up.” His eyes tilted back behind Harry. “Good evening, Granger.”
Hermione. Harry had honestly forgotten she was there. He started and turned around, but Hermione just pressed her hand to her mouth and shook her head.
“Go,” she said. “Have fun.” She shut the door of his house gently behind him, and Harry blinked and turned back to Malfoy.
“You’re ready, then?” Malfoy was studying the hang of his cloak and robes now as if making sure they were good enough for the Royal Swan. Harry straightened himself up and recovered most of his composure.
“Unless you think I should go back in and change my clothes or something,” he said.
Malfoy caught his hand and pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist, under the watch he had got Harry. “Indeed not,” he said, voice lingering and soft. “You have everything that I could want.” He extended an arm towards the Apparition point, a motion that seemed as if it should have been accompanied by the movement of a wing. “Shall we?”
Harry took an unsteady breath and nodded. And they walked to the Apparition point with Malfoy’s hand firmly in the small of his back.
*
“What kind of place has a chandelier at every table?” Harry kept his voice low. Malfoy had told him that shouting was vulgar.
“A restaurant as expensive as this one.” Malfoy was lounging, or so it seemed, even though he was also sitting perfectly upright with a glass of wine held to his lips. His eyes gleamed at Harry. “You look stressed. Is there something I can do to help you relax?” His hand stole across the table, his fingers rubbing gently up and down beneath Harry’s wrist, in the place he had kissed once before.
Harry shook his head and looked around the Royal Swan again. Last time he had been here, he had enjoyed himself. The food had been delicious, and he was celebrating yet another successful bonding that A Choice of Wings had helped establish. He wasn’t sure why he felt so out-of-place this time.
Maybe it was the décor, which really did have a chandelier hanging over every table and snowy white marble walls and little channels in the floor filled with running water. On the channels sailed real swans, their white wings perfectly arched to cover most of the middle of their backs. Now and then a pair passed with necks entwined. Veins of gold coursed through the water, traces of color that Harry was sure were the result of specific spells, and the gold appeared also in the cracks between the flagstones on the floor.
Of course the floor was flagstones, perfectly polished ones fitted together so snugly that Harry wondered if those veins of gold were the result of spells as well. And each table was round and small, so that couples could sit intimately, but with a sort of wing that could be extended out to the side to place food on. At the moment, their table, rich with the glow of mahogany, was piled with plates of what Malfoy said was the first course: meat glazed with honey, what Harry thought were entire small birds stuffed with vegetables and spices, and the carafe of what seemed to be an icy wine, ready to be poured and served.
“This sort of meal isn’t to your taste?” Malfoy stole his attention back by caressing his hand again.
Harry turned to him, then hesitated and shook his head. “No. The food is good, of course. But that wine is too sweet, and I don’t know, Malfoy. I think this place is more to your taste than mine.”
“Call me Draco,” Malfoy said, with a quick little shadow-smile that was more enchanting than Harry wanted to admit. “But I see what you mean. I’ll order a different wine.” He raised his hand, and one of the waiters was at his side in seconds. Harry shook his head. This was one of the few restaurants he’d ever been in where humans served him, instead of him going to get the food or it being house-elves’ responsibility.
Then again, he supposed he should have known it didn’t have house-elves, or Hermione would have made more of a stink about this than she had.
And I’m thinking of irrelevant things to try and keep my mind off what’s really bothering me.
Harry tried the new wine that appeared, but said, “All right, Draco. But what about the décor? I feel like I’m in the middle of this huge cold house, and I have to sit absolutely still so that I don’t get my hostess’s furniture dirty.”
“Not the kind of cold that you can dissipate with Warming Charms.” Malfoy-well, Harry could get used to thinking of him as Draco-nodded thoughtfully. “Well. Let me show you one part of the Royal Swan that I hadn’t planned for us to visit. I didn’t think you’d want to go there so soon.” He held out his hand, and pulled Harry to his feet when Harry hesitantly reached back to him.
Harry opened his mouth to say that he didn’t really want to visit a bedroom, but Malfoy had his arm around his shoulders and was escorting him on, and it seemed pointless and rude to try to pull free.
They ended up in the middle of a ballroom that clever use of pillars and screens had shaded entirely from Harry’s view up until that point. He tilted his head back and gaped at the ceiling, which was done in warmer shades of red and blue and seemed to show a unicorn galloping through a field of flowers, although the patterns were so curlicue and abstract that it was hard to be sure.
“Here.”
Draco was waiting for him, holding out his arms and watching Harry with a trust and confidence that Harry hadn’t seen from him since he walked into A Choice of Wings. Harry hesitated again in spite of himself.
Draco shook his head. “You don’t have to dance with me if you don’t want to. But I thought it would warm you up.”
There was a teasing undertone to his words that was what Harry needed to hear just then. He moved forwards, putting a hand in Draco’s. “I should warn you that I haven’t improved much in my dancing since the Yule Ball,” he muttered.
Draco bowed his head so that his nose hovered a short distance above Harry’s neck and began to move, swirling them across the floor so lightly that Harry couldn’t believe he didn’t have his wings out. “Even with all the weddings that you’ve been invited to?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “After they saw me dancing at the first one, word spread, and people usually excuse me from opening the ball or doing anything more strenuous than responding to toasts.”
“Their mistake.” Draco breathed it into his hair this time, and set off a new round of shivers. “How are you ever to learn to dance if no one teaches you?”
Harry opened his mouth to retort, and then became aware that he was moving perfectly nicely around the floor, even though he thought this dance was a simple one. “Well, not everyone is as good as you at it,” he said half-heartedly. He wanted to praise Draco for a job well done, but he thought his head might swell up if he did.
Draco lifted his head and looked him in the eye, and his face had transformed. Harry couldn’t help raising his hand to touch one warm and, yes, slightly glowing cheek. “What did I say?” he asked. “I didn’t know you rated your dancing that highly.”
“You complimented me,” Draco said thickly. “Being praised is an erotic experience for a Veela.”
Harry blinked, then laughed. “Of course it is,” he said. He ought to have known that, from all the blushing and preening he’d seen his clients do when their partners said something sweet to them. “Well. Let’s see what else I can say.”
Draco continued moving, but barely, his hands on Harry’s hips now, and his eyes on Harry’s.
“You’re kind when you want to be,” Harry said. “I thought you would care more about what you wanted than what I did, but you got up and decided to try and warm me up when I said I was cold. That was nice of you.”
With a rustling noise, followed by a larger tearing noise as they made their way through the cloth of his shirt, Draco’s wings unfolded. He didn’t move them forwards and around Harry, but that didn’t matter. Harry could feel their shadow on him like a blessing anyway.
Harry moved closer to Draco and bit his lip, trying to think of what else he could say that Draco would like and that was something he really thought, rather than a soothing compliment offered simply to placate Draco’s Veela nature. “I think that it was brave of you, to admit that you weren’t finding a partner on your own and come looking at A Choice of Wings,” he said, his hand rising to stroke Draco’s cheek. “You knew that I was running it and we hadn’t got along in the past, but you came and tried anyway.”
Draco plucked Harry’s hand off his cheek and turned it to give Harry a kiss on the palm. He was almost shaking from the force of his emotions, and he bent down and kissed Harry on the lips then.
Harry felt himself go still. He wasn’t sure if it was too soon, if maybe he should have waited, but-
This felt bloody fantastic. Kind of like gliding around a dance floor in the arms of someone he knew wouldn’t taunt him.
Harry threw his arms around Draco’s neck and kissed back as hard as he could, almost hard enough to lift Draco off the ground. Draco’s wings flared out and ruffled in surprise, and then settled against his shoulders again. His kiss this time was, Harry thought, both dramatic and heartfelt, softening the moment Harry’s mouth opened to let him in.
He pulled back then, shaking his head a little as he locked eyes with Harry. “Are you sure?”
“What is it?” Harry asked. He felt his head whirling, but compared to the expression on Draco’s face, he was calm and alert. Some of the stillness that had first overtaken him when he kissed Draco was with him now. “Is kissing someone with your tongue in his mouth the secret signal for Veela bonding?”
Draco smiled, but his eyes were desperate. “Not all the time. But for someone like me, someone who waited so long to find his mate…” He shivered. “I think it might make me all the more desperate to do something I shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t with someone who’s unwilling,” Harry said, and slipped his arms around Draco’s neck. “Who said that I was unwilling?”
“Merlin,” Draco sighed out, as though he was praising someone, and bent down. His eyes were wide and shimmering silver, and Harry finally let go of his visions of Veela clients in his office and the half-wistful thought that he might not ever get to experience something like that. He couldn’t be unhappy when all that shining light was directed at him. “You have to think about it, though, Harry,” Draco went on, his voice calm, but his fingers tightening hard on Harry’s waist and shoulders. “I don’t think I can bring myself to step away.”
“To step away?” Harry wasn’t sure what that meant.
“To back off and say that I need to find someone else, if you change your mind about being willing later and you don’t want to date me.” Draco’s voice was low, but slow, and Harry knew that he was fully thinking about the consequences of what he was saying.
Harry closed his eyes. He had been exasperated enough with Draco in the past month that he had to admit it was a wise objection. Could he really be with someone who popped up to stare creepily up at him, and complained all the time, and thought it was his right to firecall Harry in the middle of the night and wake him up?
Someone whom the wards on his house had opened to, recognizing him right away? Someone who had brought a gift to Harry like the one that rested on his wrist now?
“I think I’ll take a chance,” Harry said, and leaned forwards and smiled at Draco.
Draco shuddered again, a ripple that flowed up his wings to their tips and made them tremble like flowers in a field, and which Harry couldn’t think was disgust no matter how insecure he was. “What you do to me,” he whispered. “What your attention does to me.”
Harry grinned. “Like standing in the middle of a bonfire, isn’t it?”
Draco cocked his head to the side, the most bird-like movement Harry had seen him perform so far. “How do you know that? Did you see some Veela clients in your office who looked at their mates like that?”
Harry shook his head. “Earlier this evening, when you were looking at me and I thought that it was nice but I wouldn’t like to be looked at like that all the time. I felt the bonfire.”
Draco laughed aloud, a sound that made the rafters ring and the swans start on their artificial pool. “I suppose we have the requirement for my mate that we switch our attentions back and forth pinned down, then,” he muttered.
Harry nodded and extended his hand. “I’d like to take you home. To my house, where you’ve already been. Will you come with me?”
“With pleasure,” Draco whispered, and his hand landed in Harry’s.
*
Harry stepped into his drawing room and turned around, smiling at Draco. “I could take you to the bedroom, but I thought a fire might be nice.”
“What, you don’t have a fireplace in your bedroom?” Draco was fanning his wings out, though, slowly. He’d headed for the Floo from the restaurant, but Harry had guided him out the front door. Harry knew he’d appreciated that on two levels-so he didn’t have to pull his wings back in trying to spare them from the sides of the fireplace, and so everyone could see them parading out together.
The Chosen One and the Death Eater. Harry already knew the headlines would scream something like that.
But they’d already screamed when Harry retired from the Aurors, and a few times since he had opened A Choice of Wings; there were people who seemed to think that the choice of Veela mates should be entirely a matter of chance, and not a matter of doves matching people’s preferences with a name. Harry was inured to Rita Skeeter and her kind by now.
“I do,” Harry said. “But I thought you’d prefer the chance not to have to try and fit in a bed.” And he lit the fire with one wand movement, while he conjured a thick blanket with the other.
Draco was gaping at him as he shook out the blanket, larger than Draco’s wingspan and a mixture of dim, rough reds and browns, and spread it on the floor. Harry sat down on it, smiling at Draco and holding out a hand.
“What? Don’t you have a romantic bone in your body?”
Draco slid across the room in that way Veela had, fast without looking like it, and knelt down beside him, his hand tightly clasping Harry’s. “It’s beautiful,” Draco breathed. “It’s wonderful.” He lifted Harry’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “Just unexpected. Like so much about you.”
“Sometimes,” Harry said, lying back on the blanket and wriggling his shoulders into its softness, “it’s best to just stop talking about giving and take.”
Draco’s eyes flared, and he hovered over Harry with his wings spread as if actually hanging in the air. Harry caught his breath.
The allure slid over his skin like a warm shadow, from the groin up, covering his chest and creeping towards his face. Harry closed his eyes and moaned softly. It made his skin prickle and his nipples rise and his hair wave in response. It felt so good that he moved a hand down without thinking, and then a delicate, cool hand as strong as iron caught his.
“I think I’d like that to be mine,” Draco breathed out in his face, sending warm breath over Harry’s lips as well. “One of the first things I take. If you don’t mind.”
Harry smiled and pulled his hand back, watching Draco with eagerness that he might have tried to hide if he was with anyone else. Draco shifted his position and reached down to unbutton Harry’s shirt.
The delicate motions of his fingers, combined with the gentle movement of his wings, made Harry close his eyes and squirm, tossing his head restlessly. Draco didn’t bother soothing him. He kept up a flow of sound, sometimes breathing out, sometimes panting.
And then he began to speak.
“Magnificent, the way you look. I can’t even imagine how many people would give anything to be in my place.”
Harry turned his head to the side and smiled a little. Well, yes, he looked very nice, if he did say so himself, and better than he used to when he was run ragged by either the stress of Auror work or the war with Voldemort.
“But no one else can be in my place,” Draco said, and had Harry raise his arms so that he could ease the shirt off over his head. He bent over, and Harry gasped and bucked despite himself as Draco pinched his nipples. “And I like that.”
Now the allure was steaming like heat directly on his skin. Harry lay still, because it was what Draco seemed to want, and opened his eyes. Draco’s admiring gaze fought the allure for the sheer effect it was having on him, and won.
“Yes, you’re hard now,” Draco breathed, but although he slid his hand down Harry’s body, he never took his gaze from Harry’s face.
Harry shut his eyes again. Draco’s hand was so warm, with the sort of soft heat that didn’t mean a fever, that it was like being caressed by the sun itself. And the heat intensified as Draco bent down towards him and whimpered, “Let’s get you out of these trousers.”
“Do you want me to-undress you?” Harry reached up with one hand, but it fell limp with the surge of pleasure through him.
“Mmm, no. Just lie there and enjoy for me. Can you do that?” Draco leaned over before Harry could reply and nipped at his earlobe. “There is the part where sometimes I want my partner to be passive.”
Harry laughed, but rolled limply to one side. Draco scooped up his hip with casual grace and worked his trousers down his legs. Then he pulled Harry’s pants down, but teasingly, slowly, letting them catch the tip of his cock.
“It’s going to be your fault if I come before you can get anywhere,” Harry said, and gasped only a little when Draco’s skilled fingers closed around him.
“It’s going to be my pleasure,” Draco corrected, and this time he reached out and down, the coolness of his wings on Harry’s body moving. Harry finally had to look again, because he didn’t know what Draco was doing.
Draco smiled at him from between Harry’s legs, and as he shoved the pants out of the way onto Harry’s arse and opened his lips further, Harry mouthed his name in anticipation.
But Draco didn’t suck him. He just kept hovering there, and what touched Harry was his breath and the allure, as before.
Harry parted his legs as best as he could when he was lying on his side, and Draco winked at him and kept his mouth open. Harry arched forwards, and Draco moved with Harry’s motion so that he was the same distance away. Harry growled, and got nothing but a wink for his trouble.
“Trust me,” Draco whispered. “I know what I’m doing.”
Harry rolled his eyes, but shut them again, and let the warmth touch him. Such teasing, fugitive touches, to the side and back and forth, so that Harry felt his cock sway as if stirred by wind. His skin tightened and pebbled with the cold, and still Draco kept his mouth in the exact same place. Harry could appreciate the delicacy, but he didn’t really see how this was going to get him off.
Then Draco released a concentrated blast of allure at him, at the exact same moment as he huffed out.
The pleasure wasn’t as long-lasting as being wrapped in Draco’s tongue would have been, but it was far more intense. Harry bucked and tried to say something, but that was overwhelmed by the way his voice choked off.
He didn’t come, but it was close.
He rolled onto his back, gasping, and Draco flapped his wings once and glided into position over him. He was taking off his trousers, kicking them as if he didn’t know why he had been wearing the bloody things at all. He panted a little, but his eyes burned all the same, with no way to release the heat.
Harry grabbed his neck and yanked him down. Draco squeaked a little, and only barely maintained his position by flapping hard.
“Harry-I need to get these-”
“I know,” Harry muttered, and his hand groped around on the floor until he found his wand. He cast a spell that peeled the cloth neatly back from Draco’s groin, and another that slicked him up. He grinned and ran his fingers over the sticky mess of viscous oil spread around Draco’s groin, liking the way that Draco’s hair grew softer and softer to the sides down there, until it felt like pinfeathers. “There.”
“That’s not enough,” Draco whispered, but he sounded as if he would have liked it to be.
Harry leaned forwards to nudge Draco’s cock with his nose. “I know,” he said, and cast another spell on his hand. Then he braced his heels on the blanket and moved up a little, so he could reach himself.
And so Draco could watch.
Draco was suitably drop-jawed as Harry felt carefully around his hole and finally managed to slide a finger inside. Then Harry slid another two, both at once, and Draco made a sound. It didn’t have a name, but it was a satisfying sound to listen to, just as Draco’s expression was satisfying to look at.
Harry clenched around his fingers, biting his lip. “I almost envy you,” he said, stroking in and out of his own warmth. “To be able to stick your cock in there.”
“I’ll give you something to feel,” Draco panted, and slid Harry’s hand out of the way with one hand on his wrist, and positioned himself at Harry’s entrance at the same time.
And hit him with allure simultaneously, too.
Harry would have liked to make a sarcastic remark about how much better Draco was at accomplishing multiple tasks at the same time now than he had been, but he was gasping and red-faced and rutting on the blanket with his arse, and on Draco, who hadn’t moved yet. So there went that brilliant option. From the way Draco bent over and made the nameless sound again next to his ear, he might have been able to sense what Harry was thinking.
Then he began to move.
It was thick, fast, hard, glorious fucking. Harry rode with it, flexing his hips and bending his legs in a way that Draco seemed to find absolutely delicious, if the way his eyelids drooped was any indication. He kept flapping his wings, so he was lighter than normal and Harry could move faster than normal.
“Is sex-with you-going to be like this all the time?” Harry finally managed to ask around the edge of a gasp.
“If-I have my wings-and you,” Draco said, choking on what sounded like a mouthful of eagerness.
Harry said, “I can only-help you with one thing,” and drove himself down, clenching again. He wanted Draco to come before he did.
Draco resisted for longer than Harry would have thought possible, his eyes shutting so hard that it looked like he’d do himself damage. But at last his hips stiffened, and so did his wings, sticking out to the side with only the most minute flutters in the tips. Harry felt him release heavily a second later.
He should have known that Draco would get his revenge, and he had it in the way Draco opened an eye a second later and waved a hand at his cock.
Heat was around Harry, holding him so tight, so warm, that he was thrusting before he realized what he was doing, jolting and shaking Draco above him, hissing under his breath as the pleasure rode him the way Draco had-
And he came with the same kind of thrusting that he thought Draco had done, although since he hadn’t felt that from the outside it was hard to be sure, and the warmth was kindling him, and when he slumped panting back on the blanket he was already dying to go again. He would have suggested it if his body could have stood up for another round.
“What was that?” he whispered, when he was sure that he had his breath back completely.
Draco bent down to kiss him again, and Harry eagerly reached up and looped his arms around Draco’s neck. Draco nipped carelessly at his lips before drawing back again and smiling at Harry, shaking his wings down around them the way that Harry had sometimes had lovers shake their hair. Harry sighed in contentment.
“That was a side-effect of the allure,” Draco said, and glanced sideways at him. “I wasn’t sure it would work. Not all Veela can do that.”
“Of course you would manage,” Harry said, and reached up to slide one finger behind Draco’s ear, since that part had inexplicably escaped investigation before. “You’re the best.”
Draco caught his hand and kissed it, but his eyes were intense. “Do you mean that? Or do you think that you’ve been changed by becoming my mate?”
Harry tilted his head to the side, listening. He’d certainly had enough Veela clients to know what he was listening for. Yes, there was the faint humming that signified the mating connection, a hum that came more through his bones and blood than anything else.
“I think that becoming your mate clarified things for me,” Harry said. “But it wasn’t that which made me think you were handsome, or not tighten my wards up when you first came through them, or even go through the process of choosing mate after mate for you. I still think we’ll fight sometimes.” He touched Draco’s hair again. “But I still think that this is the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Draco smiled, and bent down, and kissed him again.
*
“I noticed that you had a new client today.”
Harry nodded and didn’t bother looking up from the papers on his desk. He was currently trying to decide which doves he should feed Samantha Huckster’s forms to; she seemed to want so many contradictory things in her mate that she was actually worse than Draco, something he hadn’t believed was possible until now. “She stayed and talked to me for hours, too. Sometimes she wanted a man, and sometimes a woman, and sometimes a perfect person who could grant her everything she’s been missing. As exasperating as possible.”
Draco took a stride towards the desk, and that was unusual enough to finally make Harry look up. Draco was staring at him with a dark ring around the outside of his grey eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Harry asked. Usually, he only saw that when Draco’s Veela instincts were aroused and angry in some way, but he couldn’t think of anything that would have caused that this time.
With a growl, Draco grabbed the back of Harry’s shirt and hauled him out of his chair. Harry went yelping and flailing. Draco hung Harry in front of him and stared into his face. “She touched you,” he said.
“We shook hands when she came in,” Harry snapped. “Well done, you.”
Draco stared some more. Then he abruptly plopped Harry back in his chair, took a few turns around the office that were so rapid Harry got dizzy watching him, and began to laugh.
“Well, good for you, again,” Harry said, and made a show of dusting himself off. “Are you going to explain what that was all about?”
“No one else I know would dismiss it that way when their Veela mate gets angry,” Draco said, shaking his head. “They would cower sometimes or apologize, or encourage the jealousy because they like it. Or they might get angry back. You did none of those things.” He smiled at Harry, and the dark ring had retreated from his eyes. His wings had come out. “You’re the right mate for me.”
“Because I argue with you?” Harry scowled at him. “And I was angry.”
“Not killingly, not the kind of anger that you once feared would destroy our bond.” Draco settled his hands on Harry’s shoulders and wrapped his wings around them, sweeping them in a way that blew Huckster’s papers from the desk and scattered them all over the floor. Harry didn’t think that was really an accident, and he objected, but Draco just carried on holding him, oblivious. “Just the kind of anger that’s necessary for someone who’s going to stand up to me. Someone like you.”
His voice had deepened towards the end. Harry smiled up at him, and then leaned in and kissed him. Two months after their first date, and that first round of sex, he was still getting used to Draco and some of the strange things he did and said, but he didn’t think he could ever grow tired of him.
Draco kissed him back eagerly, his wings wrapping them in a cloudy cocoon of warmth and silver, and made Harry glad that Huckster had been his last client of the day. He did step away finally, gasping. “I have to feed the doves before I leave,” he explained, to Draco’s slowly demanding look.
Draco snorted and strode to the office door. He rarely wore a shirt now when he was alone with Harry, since his wings would only pop out anyway, and he flexed them hard, making the muscles ripple and drawing Harry’s attention. “I’ll help you.”
“I didn’t think you liked my doves,” Harry protested, as he struggled into the thick clock that Draco was insisting he wear now that it was getting cold outside.
Draco came back and made sure the cloak was settled properly, then looked into Harry’s eyes. “I don’t mind them,” he whispered. “They were useless in my case, but you like looking after them, and that’s enough to win them a place in my regard.”
Harry laughed aloud, because it was do that or throw his hands up in the air, and he didn’t feel like doing that right now. He accompanied Draco out the door.
The cooing in the aviary grew louder as they approached, but although he still cared for his doves, and would as long as he operated the business, Harry had to admit his favorite wings were the ones that Draco continued to keep wrapped around him as they walked.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/634809.html. Comment wherever you like.
Harry turned on his broom and flew left. He could hear the muffled thunder of wings beneath him as the doves tracked his movements, and he laughed and turned to the right. The spiral of birds immediately adjusted itself so that it could come after him.
The doves were out flying for exercise this morning, inside wards that essentially built a bigger, invisible aviary atop the one they lived in most of the time. Harry didn’t want his birds to get unhealthy and lonely, and they enjoyed following him across the sky, he thought, as much as he enjoyed leading them. He dipped and rose and circled, and the doves echoed him in great patterns of grey feathers and gleaming breasts and flapping black wings.
“Potter.”
Harry started, and pulled up. Bodies crashed into his back, and Harry drew his wand and cast a hasty spell that would keep the birds from falling to the ground, if any of them had been so unlucky as to break a wing.
“Malfoy,” Harry said, rolling his eyes. By now, he thought he would have known who it was even if he hadn’t recognized that nasal voice. Who else popped up as frequently as Malfoy did, and for no reasons?
“It didn’t work out with Blaise.”
Harry turned his broom so that he could see Malfoy, hovering in the middle of the aviary on those wide wings. He must have broken through the wards, Harry thought, easy to do so because they were designed to stop birds and not people.
He lifted his head to scan the sky, and there were several doves escaping, soaring up in little, uncertain loops. He swore and sent his broom hurtling after them, ignoring Malfoy’s indignant squawk. He would have to remember to tell Malfoy later that he sounded exactly like a brooding mother who’d been disturbed.
It didn’t take him that long to corral the birds, a few of them white and more of them glinting grey, Harry’s personal favorite color, with rings of green around their throats and blue on their heads. They weren’t used to flying around on their own anymore, and he was safety and food to them, and sometimes spells that eased their various aches and pains. He swirled and danced next to them as he herded them back towards the wards, and when they were safely back on their perches, he leaned over his broom and panted.
“I didn’t mean to make you do that, Potter.”
This time, besides the voice, there was a hand in the middle of his back, large and surprisingly warm. Harry straightened up slowly, both to enjoy the heat-which he did more than he wanted to admit to himself-and to make sure that the hand didn’t come close to touching his bare skin. “It’s all right,” he said. “But this isn’t the best place to talk. Let me get the birds back inside their pens, and we’ll go to the office.”
Malfoy pulled his hand away, but fluttered around in front of Harry. He was handling his wings much better than he had weeks ago, when he came to Harry’s house in the middle of the night, Harry had to admit.
“I have a suspicion as to why Blaise and I didn’t suit,” Malfoy said softly. “I don’t know that much about being a Veela, which was why I had to keep asking you, but one of the things I do know is that I won’t bond to a partner if I have a better one still waiting out there somewhere.”
Harry rolled his eyes. “Obviously. The whole point of my forms and birds is to try and give you the right partner. Or at least one that’s equal in compatibility to the perfect one,” he added. He knew that a lot of Veela didn’t find their “ideal” mates, but they could find people who were on the same level of goodness, however their bodies and souls and magic judged that quality.
Malfoy didn’t answer. He reached out of the clamor of his wings, beating strongly up and down to maintain his position in the air, and laid his hand on Harry’s cheek.
Harry closed his eyes. He could feel a warmth trickling out of the touch and through him, much more than the hand on his back had provided.
“You’re suitable for me,” Malfoy whispered, and shifted closer.
Harry shuddered, a ripple of such strength traveling down his body and neck that he shrugged himself away from Malfoy’s touch, and that meant he could think again. He reached out and caught Malfoy’s arm, carefully on the part that was clothed, shaking his head. He was glad that Malfoy had modified his shirts once his wings had appeared rather than simply going naked from the waist up, the way some Veela did. “No. Wait.”
“I don’t want to.” Malfoy’s voice had deepened, and now he sounded like a bird of prey. “I’ve waited long enough, and I want to do all the things I’ve promised myself I would the minute I found my partner.”
He moved closer, and Harry had to flip the broom away and upside-down. “We wouldn’t get along,” he snarled at Malfoy from under his own legs. “We would fight, and you don’t approve of the things I use my money for or the way I live, and you would insult my friends constantly. No.”
“What about the way I can make you feel?” Malfoy’s eyes were huge and his smile dark, the way the flare in his eyes the other night had been. “Doesn’t that matter to you at all? Having a mate isn’t only pleasant for the Veela.”
Harry hesitated. He knew Malfoy wasn’t lying about that much. He’d been witness to too many of the right joinings, either in his office or at the weddings and bondings that his grateful clients had invited him to attend. So it wasn’t as though being a Veela’s mate was some horrible slavery that he didn’t want to go through.
But at the same time, those people had all been more compatible than he and Malfoy had. Harry hadn’t heard them exchange a cross word.
Malfoy was still looking at him with that obsessive glitter in his eyes. Harry decided he might as well push. “What about what you wanted? That mixture of fire and passivity that you say is so hard to find? The person who can sometimes take your attention and sometimes insist on paying you attention?”
Malfoy laughed, rich and deep. That was one thing Harry couldn’t deny to the bastard at least. He was handsome. Attractive. Harry would have been drawn to the way he looked if he hadn’t known all that he did about him.
“That describes us rather well, don’t you think?” Malfoy flew a little nearer, and Harry floated back upright. Hanging like that was starting to make blood rush to his head, and it hurt. “When I wanted your attention, you wouldn’t give it to me. But you were so insistent on finding out what I was doing during sixth year. And you yield to people you like, but you fight back when they make too many demands of you.”
Harry shook his head. “You’re talking about the way we both were in school. We’ve changed since then.”
“I paid attention to the papers,” Malfoy whispered, as if sharing a secret across a meter of air. “I saw it when they said that you threw up your hands and walked away from a promising Auror career, even though the public and the wizarding world insisted that you remain to defend them. And you decided to do this because you like helping people, even if they weren’t good to you. You just kept trying to find the right partner for me. And those others that you mentioned, I suppose,” Malfoy added, as if they were worth less than nothing compared to him. “You didn’t leap out in front of them to defend them from the horror of the wrong mate. You’re more optimistic, less sacrificial, than you used to be. I think that means that you could put up with my demands but prevent me from going too far.”
“All right, say that I’m the right mate for you,” Harry said. He could hardly refuse to consider that when he had been the first one to consider that Malfoy was displaying the behavior of a courting Veela. “But how do I know that you’re the right mate for me?”
Malfoy’s smile flowed across his face like water. “Beyond the way you felt when I touched you?”
“I know this might escape you, being a Veela and all, but we can’t spend all our time in bed.”
Malfoy laughed aloud and bowed low, his hands spread out and his fingers fluttering at the ends of them, matching the sudden fast dance of his wings. “We go out on a date. How many people have you told to do that when they made faces at their potential partners? They should give them a chance.”
Harry thought about that. The more he considered, the less ridiculous it seemed. Yes, all right, Malfoy was drawn to him, and Harry was drawn back, but that wasn’t the basis for a good relationship. Then again, the magic that made his doves give him certain names wasn’t foolproof, either. All the Veela he advised could do was go on those dates and see what clicked for them with a particular person.
“Will you give me permission to date you?”
Malfoy’s voice was low again, and he hovered right in front of Harry now, his tone as serious as though he was asking someone’s parents for an old-fashioned arranged marriage. Harry bit his lip to avoid blurting out laughter that he knew Malfoy wouldn’t understand, and he nodded, holding Malfoy’s gaze.
“But I want to warn you that it might not go well,” Harry said. “And I’m leaving if you insult me or my friends.”
“Agreed,” Malfoy said. “As long as you won’t deliberately sabotage it because you don’t like me.”
Harry had to smile. “No. I promised you a fair chance. And that’s what you’ll get. A chance,” he added, when Malfoy looked as if he might forget what birds he was supposed to resemble and crow.
Malfoy nodded and leaned in. Harry didn’t realize what he intended until his lips were a few brushes away from Harry’s, and then Harry dodged and dropped, spiraling back down towards the aviary to enclose his birds in the smaller cage again.
“Exactly what was that, if not sabotage?” Malfoy demanded, winging down after him. Most of his feathers, and even some of his hair, seemed to be standing on end.
Harry glanced back at him and raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean? You were going to kiss me before the first date, and I’m not that sort of bloke.”
And then he went into the aviary and shut the door after him, listening to Malfoy’s frustrated hissing. It was a good test. If Malfoy couldn’t put up with this minor amount of aggravation, there was no way that he was going to make good dating material for Harry.
But long after Harry thought Malfoy would have given up and left, he glanced out the wire and saw Malfoy standing in the middle of the path between the aviary and his office. Malfoy bowed with his hand across his breastbone, and murmured, “Will you join me at the Royal Swan?”
Harry nodded, impressed despite himself. The Royal Swan was an exclusive restaurant in Diagon Alley. Harry had only eaten there once, as a member of the wedding party when one of his wealthier clients had invited him to witness her bonding.
“Good,” Malfoy said. “Around seven next Saturday, then. Even for someone as rich as me, it’ll take that long to get a reservation.” He gave Harry a lingering glance and spread his wings, holding them at full extension for a second before he sprang into the air. When he flew off, he did so with a smug look on his face.
When Harry realized why, he sighed to himself. Malfoy knew very well that Harry had been admiring the shimmering colors in his wings, the same pearl-grey that he liked so much when it showed up in his doves’ feathers.
Malfoy was still arrogant and demanding of too much of Harry’s time and attention. He was full of himself and reveled in his wealth. And no matter what he said about them being able to trade the equality of the relationship back and forth, Harry thought it was going to get wearing, sometimes, being the focus of his obsessive gaze on dates.
But it couldn’t hurt to try.
*
“You’re primping.”
Hermione was leaning against the far wall of Harry’s room, watching him. Harry rolled his eyes and draped the green cloak around his shoulders, turning so that he could look at it critically in the mirror on the wall before him. After a second, he shook his head and took it off. The cloak was too long, and the hem was embroidered with gold, which was something Harry had forgotten; it had been years since he wore it. He returned it to his cupboard and took out another one, in a shade that was more blue than green.
“I don’t understand why you decided to date Malfoy in the first place.”
Hermione’s voice was full of suppressed, bubbling laughter. Harry rolled his eyes at her reflection in the mirror this time. “I’ve told you again and again, and you were the one who told me that I should get out there and try to find someone.”
Hermione gasped out the laughter, then nodded. “I know. But I didn’t know that you would pick a Veela. You’ve said to me more than once that you don’t think you could stand being someone’s mate.”
“Well, none of the Veela that came through A Choice of Wings was my mate.” Harry ran his hand through his hair and studied the effect in the mirror. Picturing the expression on Malfoy’s face made him snicker. And for some reason, the blue-green cloak looked better on him when his hair was ruffled like that. He nodded and fastened the brooch that closed it at the throat. “All of them had someone else. It’s different when it’s you.”
Hermione opened her mouth to continue asking questions, Harry thought, although he’d already told her and Ron all about Malfoy and why Harry had wanted to date him. For that matter, Harry couldn’t make out why she was even here. She had said that someone should watch Harry set off and make sure that he was all right and not a mass of nerves, but all she’d done was ask questions that were designed to set Harry’s nerves jangling.
But then someone knocked on the door, and Harry felt the wards do a little dance. He knew now why they hadn’t reacted to Malfoy’s passage through them that night he crashed into Harry’s window: he was tied closely enough to Harry through being a potential mate that they had welcomed him the way they would someone Harry was already dating.
“That’s him?” Hermione was smiling at him, her eyes bright enough that Harry laughed.
“That’s him,” Harry confirmed, and decided that the cloak was good enough, and went with the blue robes he wore under them better than he would have thought it did. If he didn’t look fancy enough for Malfoy, then Malfoy would just have to deal with it, or perhaps leave him here and go to the Royal Swan alone.
As he opened the door, he wondered what would greet him: Malfoy in expensive robes that Harry could never match, Malfoy with wings spread, or Malfoy with a bunch of white roses. Malfoy seemed serious about the courting aspect of the potential mate thing. Harry wouldn’t put the roses past him.
But it was none of those. Malfoy wore expensive robes, sure, but nothing nicer than some of the robes in Harry’s wardrobe. Well, all right, a few of those robes. Maybe one. But the point was, he wore dark grey robes that accented the glow of his hair and didn’t make Harry feel cast in the shade, and he’d probably judged to a nicety what he could get away with and what he couldn’t.
He smiled at Harry and held out his hands. Harry stepped forwards, not sure whether Malfoy wanted him to shake hands or what, and then felt something cool and smooth snap into place around his wrist.
Harry blinked and looked down. What hung there felt loose and heavy, but not much like a bracelet, which was the only gift Harry could imagine Malfoy wanting to fasten on his arm. He turned it over. A series of large, flat links of silver led up to the face of a watch, glowing with golden numbers.
“Thank you,” Harry murmured, looking up at Malfoy. “Did you take some of your inspiration from Muggle watches?” Most wizards carried watches on chains like the one that Molly had given him.
Malfoy shook his head and leaned forwards, glancing a finger over the clock face. Harry followed the gesture of his hand and saw the numbers shimmer and change, swimming around each other for a few seconds. When the face of the watch cleared again, it was a softly shining silver blank, except for a metallic dot of light off to the side.
“Look,” Malfoy whispered, and moved to the side. The dot at once shifted around the face of the watch to follow him.
“It’s tuned to you?” Harry blinked. He had heard of spells that could do that, but most wizards used them the other way around, to find objects they often misplaced, like wands. To charm a watch so that it reflected Malfoy’s presence was an unusual gift.
“Yes,” Malfoy whispered, leaning forwards so that his breath caressed Harry’s ear. The light slid with him, flaring in the middle of the watch. “It’ll dim and shrink down to a corner when I’m far away, and glow when I’m with you. You can always know where I am.” He reached down and ran his fingers under the back of the watch, lifting it from Harry’s wrist. Harry shivered violently at the touch, and knew that Malfoy didn’t miss it, from his smile. “Not to mention the protection charms.”
Harry laughed a little. “You made me something that functions like the knowledge you have of my location?” He knew that Veela, at least once mated, could know where their mate was, in terms of direction and distance.
Malfoy nodded. “Not to mention something that can defend you when I’m not with you.”
“I do have a wand, you know.”
“But a captor might take your wand from you, and not notice a piece of jewelry.” Malfoy’s eyes were direct and intense and serious, and he moved his fingers so that he was pressing the watch down onto Harry’s wrist instead of holding it up from underneath. “This way, you have a defense with you at all times.”
Harry shook his hand a little, but Malfoy showed no intention of letting go of it. “People don’t really do that kind of thing to me anymore. Not since I stopped being an Auror.”
Malfoy leaned nearer, and his shadow seemed like a warm caress against Harry’s face, along with the lips and the breath against his earlobe. “Indulge me.”
Harry shuddered. If they traded places as the focus of each other’s time and attention, well and good. He thought it would be an even better idea if it happened soon. Being Malfoy’s focus was dizzying.
And then Malfoy stepped back and held out his hand, as if he had heard the thought and wished to indulge Harry. “We should be going. Not even for someone rich is the owner of the Royal Swan understanding when someone makes reservations and then doesn’t show up.” His eyes tilted back behind Harry. “Good evening, Granger.”
Hermione. Harry had honestly forgotten she was there. He started and turned around, but Hermione just pressed her hand to her mouth and shook her head.
“Go,” she said. “Have fun.” She shut the door of his house gently behind him, and Harry blinked and turned back to Malfoy.
“You’re ready, then?” Malfoy was studying the hang of his cloak and robes now as if making sure they were good enough for the Royal Swan. Harry straightened himself up and recovered most of his composure.
“Unless you think I should go back in and change my clothes or something,” he said.
Malfoy caught his hand and pressed a kiss to the inside of his wrist, under the watch he had got Harry. “Indeed not,” he said, voice lingering and soft. “You have everything that I could want.” He extended an arm towards the Apparition point, a motion that seemed as if it should have been accompanied by the movement of a wing. “Shall we?”
Harry took an unsteady breath and nodded. And they walked to the Apparition point with Malfoy’s hand firmly in the small of his back.
*
“What kind of place has a chandelier at every table?” Harry kept his voice low. Malfoy had told him that shouting was vulgar.
“A restaurant as expensive as this one.” Malfoy was lounging, or so it seemed, even though he was also sitting perfectly upright with a glass of wine held to his lips. His eyes gleamed at Harry. “You look stressed. Is there something I can do to help you relax?” His hand stole across the table, his fingers rubbing gently up and down beneath Harry’s wrist, in the place he had kissed once before.
Harry shook his head and looked around the Royal Swan again. Last time he had been here, he had enjoyed himself. The food had been delicious, and he was celebrating yet another successful bonding that A Choice of Wings had helped establish. He wasn’t sure why he felt so out-of-place this time.
Maybe it was the décor, which really did have a chandelier hanging over every table and snowy white marble walls and little channels in the floor filled with running water. On the channels sailed real swans, their white wings perfectly arched to cover most of the middle of their backs. Now and then a pair passed with necks entwined. Veins of gold coursed through the water, traces of color that Harry was sure were the result of specific spells, and the gold appeared also in the cracks between the flagstones on the floor.
Of course the floor was flagstones, perfectly polished ones fitted together so snugly that Harry wondered if those veins of gold were the result of spells as well. And each table was round and small, so that couples could sit intimately, but with a sort of wing that could be extended out to the side to place food on. At the moment, their table, rich with the glow of mahogany, was piled with plates of what Malfoy said was the first course: meat glazed with honey, what Harry thought were entire small birds stuffed with vegetables and spices, and the carafe of what seemed to be an icy wine, ready to be poured and served.
“This sort of meal isn’t to your taste?” Malfoy stole his attention back by caressing his hand again.
Harry turned to him, then hesitated and shook his head. “No. The food is good, of course. But that wine is too sweet, and I don’t know, Malfoy. I think this place is more to your taste than mine.”
“Call me Draco,” Malfoy said, with a quick little shadow-smile that was more enchanting than Harry wanted to admit. “But I see what you mean. I’ll order a different wine.” He raised his hand, and one of the waiters was at his side in seconds. Harry shook his head. This was one of the few restaurants he’d ever been in where humans served him, instead of him going to get the food or it being house-elves’ responsibility.
Then again, he supposed he should have known it didn’t have house-elves, or Hermione would have made more of a stink about this than she had.
And I’m thinking of irrelevant things to try and keep my mind off what’s really bothering me.
Harry tried the new wine that appeared, but said, “All right, Draco. But what about the décor? I feel like I’m in the middle of this huge cold house, and I have to sit absolutely still so that I don’t get my hostess’s furniture dirty.”
“Not the kind of cold that you can dissipate with Warming Charms.” Malfoy-well, Harry could get used to thinking of him as Draco-nodded thoughtfully. “Well. Let me show you one part of the Royal Swan that I hadn’t planned for us to visit. I didn’t think you’d want to go there so soon.” He held out his hand, and pulled Harry to his feet when Harry hesitantly reached back to him.
Harry opened his mouth to say that he didn’t really want to visit a bedroom, but Malfoy had his arm around his shoulders and was escorting him on, and it seemed pointless and rude to try to pull free.
They ended up in the middle of a ballroom that clever use of pillars and screens had shaded entirely from Harry’s view up until that point. He tilted his head back and gaped at the ceiling, which was done in warmer shades of red and blue and seemed to show a unicorn galloping through a field of flowers, although the patterns were so curlicue and abstract that it was hard to be sure.
“Here.”
Draco was waiting for him, holding out his arms and watching Harry with a trust and confidence that Harry hadn’t seen from him since he walked into A Choice of Wings. Harry hesitated again in spite of himself.
Draco shook his head. “You don’t have to dance with me if you don’t want to. But I thought it would warm you up.”
There was a teasing undertone to his words that was what Harry needed to hear just then. He moved forwards, putting a hand in Draco’s. “I should warn you that I haven’t improved much in my dancing since the Yule Ball,” he muttered.
Draco bowed his head so that his nose hovered a short distance above Harry’s neck and began to move, swirling them across the floor so lightly that Harry couldn’t believe he didn’t have his wings out. “Even with all the weddings that you’ve been invited to?”
Harry rolled his eyes. “After they saw me dancing at the first one, word spread, and people usually excuse me from opening the ball or doing anything more strenuous than responding to toasts.”
“Their mistake.” Draco breathed it into his hair this time, and set off a new round of shivers. “How are you ever to learn to dance if no one teaches you?”
Harry opened his mouth to retort, and then became aware that he was moving perfectly nicely around the floor, even though he thought this dance was a simple one. “Well, not everyone is as good as you at it,” he said half-heartedly. He wanted to praise Draco for a job well done, but he thought his head might swell up if he did.
Draco lifted his head and looked him in the eye, and his face had transformed. Harry couldn’t help raising his hand to touch one warm and, yes, slightly glowing cheek. “What did I say?” he asked. “I didn’t know you rated your dancing that highly.”
“You complimented me,” Draco said thickly. “Being praised is an erotic experience for a Veela.”
Harry blinked, then laughed. “Of course it is,” he said. He ought to have known that, from all the blushing and preening he’d seen his clients do when their partners said something sweet to them. “Well. Let’s see what else I can say.”
Draco continued moving, but barely, his hands on Harry’s hips now, and his eyes on Harry’s.
“You’re kind when you want to be,” Harry said. “I thought you would care more about what you wanted than what I did, but you got up and decided to try and warm me up when I said I was cold. That was nice of you.”
With a rustling noise, followed by a larger tearing noise as they made their way through the cloth of his shirt, Draco’s wings unfolded. He didn’t move them forwards and around Harry, but that didn’t matter. Harry could feel their shadow on him like a blessing anyway.
Harry moved closer to Draco and bit his lip, trying to think of what else he could say that Draco would like and that was something he really thought, rather than a soothing compliment offered simply to placate Draco’s Veela nature. “I think that it was brave of you, to admit that you weren’t finding a partner on your own and come looking at A Choice of Wings,” he said, his hand rising to stroke Draco’s cheek. “You knew that I was running it and we hadn’t got along in the past, but you came and tried anyway.”
Draco plucked Harry’s hand off his cheek and turned it to give Harry a kiss on the palm. He was almost shaking from the force of his emotions, and he bent down and kissed Harry on the lips then.
Harry felt himself go still. He wasn’t sure if it was too soon, if maybe he should have waited, but-
This felt bloody fantastic. Kind of like gliding around a dance floor in the arms of someone he knew wouldn’t taunt him.
Harry threw his arms around Draco’s neck and kissed back as hard as he could, almost hard enough to lift Draco off the ground. Draco’s wings flared out and ruffled in surprise, and then settled against his shoulders again. His kiss this time was, Harry thought, both dramatic and heartfelt, softening the moment Harry’s mouth opened to let him in.
He pulled back then, shaking his head a little as he locked eyes with Harry. “Are you sure?”
“What is it?” Harry asked. He felt his head whirling, but compared to the expression on Draco’s face, he was calm and alert. Some of the stillness that had first overtaken him when he kissed Draco was with him now. “Is kissing someone with your tongue in his mouth the secret signal for Veela bonding?”
Draco smiled, but his eyes were desperate. “Not all the time. But for someone like me, someone who waited so long to find his mate…” He shivered. “I think it might make me all the more desperate to do something I shouldn’t.”
“Shouldn’t with someone who’s unwilling,” Harry said, and slipped his arms around Draco’s neck. “Who said that I was unwilling?”
“Merlin,” Draco sighed out, as though he was praising someone, and bent down. His eyes were wide and shimmering silver, and Harry finally let go of his visions of Veela clients in his office and the half-wistful thought that he might not ever get to experience something like that. He couldn’t be unhappy when all that shining light was directed at him. “You have to think about it, though, Harry,” Draco went on, his voice calm, but his fingers tightening hard on Harry’s waist and shoulders. “I don’t think I can bring myself to step away.”
“To step away?” Harry wasn’t sure what that meant.
“To back off and say that I need to find someone else, if you change your mind about being willing later and you don’t want to date me.” Draco’s voice was low, but slow, and Harry knew that he was fully thinking about the consequences of what he was saying.
Harry closed his eyes. He had been exasperated enough with Draco in the past month that he had to admit it was a wise objection. Could he really be with someone who popped up to stare creepily up at him, and complained all the time, and thought it was his right to firecall Harry in the middle of the night and wake him up?
Someone whom the wards on his house had opened to, recognizing him right away? Someone who had brought a gift to Harry like the one that rested on his wrist now?
“I think I’ll take a chance,” Harry said, and leaned forwards and smiled at Draco.
Draco shuddered again, a ripple that flowed up his wings to their tips and made them tremble like flowers in a field, and which Harry couldn’t think was disgust no matter how insecure he was. “What you do to me,” he whispered. “What your attention does to me.”
Harry grinned. “Like standing in the middle of a bonfire, isn’t it?”
Draco cocked his head to the side, the most bird-like movement Harry had seen him perform so far. “How do you know that? Did you see some Veela clients in your office who looked at their mates like that?”
Harry shook his head. “Earlier this evening, when you were looking at me and I thought that it was nice but I wouldn’t like to be looked at like that all the time. I felt the bonfire.”
Draco laughed aloud, a sound that made the rafters ring and the swans start on their artificial pool. “I suppose we have the requirement for my mate that we switch our attentions back and forth pinned down, then,” he muttered.
Harry nodded and extended his hand. “I’d like to take you home. To my house, where you’ve already been. Will you come with me?”
“With pleasure,” Draco whispered, and his hand landed in Harry’s.
*
Harry stepped into his drawing room and turned around, smiling at Draco. “I could take you to the bedroom, but I thought a fire might be nice.”
“What, you don’t have a fireplace in your bedroom?” Draco was fanning his wings out, though, slowly. He’d headed for the Floo from the restaurant, but Harry had guided him out the front door. Harry knew he’d appreciated that on two levels-so he didn’t have to pull his wings back in trying to spare them from the sides of the fireplace, and so everyone could see them parading out together.
The Chosen One and the Death Eater. Harry already knew the headlines would scream something like that.
But they’d already screamed when Harry retired from the Aurors, and a few times since he had opened A Choice of Wings; there were people who seemed to think that the choice of Veela mates should be entirely a matter of chance, and not a matter of doves matching people’s preferences with a name. Harry was inured to Rita Skeeter and her kind by now.
“I do,” Harry said. “But I thought you’d prefer the chance not to have to try and fit in a bed.” And he lit the fire with one wand movement, while he conjured a thick blanket with the other.
Draco was gaping at him as he shook out the blanket, larger than Draco’s wingspan and a mixture of dim, rough reds and browns, and spread it on the floor. Harry sat down on it, smiling at Draco and holding out a hand.
“What? Don’t you have a romantic bone in your body?”
Draco slid across the room in that way Veela had, fast without looking like it, and knelt down beside him, his hand tightly clasping Harry’s. “It’s beautiful,” Draco breathed. “It’s wonderful.” He lifted Harry’s hand to his lips and kissed it. “Just unexpected. Like so much about you.”
“Sometimes,” Harry said, lying back on the blanket and wriggling his shoulders into its softness, “it’s best to just stop talking about giving and take.”
Draco’s eyes flared, and he hovered over Harry with his wings spread as if actually hanging in the air. Harry caught his breath.
The allure slid over his skin like a warm shadow, from the groin up, covering his chest and creeping towards his face. Harry closed his eyes and moaned softly. It made his skin prickle and his nipples rise and his hair wave in response. It felt so good that he moved a hand down without thinking, and then a delicate, cool hand as strong as iron caught his.
“I think I’d like that to be mine,” Draco breathed out in his face, sending warm breath over Harry’s lips as well. “One of the first things I take. If you don’t mind.”
Harry smiled and pulled his hand back, watching Draco with eagerness that he might have tried to hide if he was with anyone else. Draco shifted his position and reached down to unbutton Harry’s shirt.
The delicate motions of his fingers, combined with the gentle movement of his wings, made Harry close his eyes and squirm, tossing his head restlessly. Draco didn’t bother soothing him. He kept up a flow of sound, sometimes breathing out, sometimes panting.
And then he began to speak.
“Magnificent, the way you look. I can’t even imagine how many people would give anything to be in my place.”
Harry turned his head to the side and smiled a little. Well, yes, he looked very nice, if he did say so himself, and better than he used to when he was run ragged by either the stress of Auror work or the war with Voldemort.
“But no one else can be in my place,” Draco said, and had Harry raise his arms so that he could ease the shirt off over his head. He bent over, and Harry gasped and bucked despite himself as Draco pinched his nipples. “And I like that.”
Now the allure was steaming like heat directly on his skin. Harry lay still, because it was what Draco seemed to want, and opened his eyes. Draco’s admiring gaze fought the allure for the sheer effect it was having on him, and won.
“Yes, you’re hard now,” Draco breathed, but although he slid his hand down Harry’s body, he never took his gaze from Harry’s face.
Harry shut his eyes again. Draco’s hand was so warm, with the sort of soft heat that didn’t mean a fever, that it was like being caressed by the sun itself. And the heat intensified as Draco bent down towards him and whimpered, “Let’s get you out of these trousers.”
“Do you want me to-undress you?” Harry reached up with one hand, but it fell limp with the surge of pleasure through him.
“Mmm, no. Just lie there and enjoy for me. Can you do that?” Draco leaned over before Harry could reply and nipped at his earlobe. “There is the part where sometimes I want my partner to be passive.”
Harry laughed, but rolled limply to one side. Draco scooped up his hip with casual grace and worked his trousers down his legs. Then he pulled Harry’s pants down, but teasingly, slowly, letting them catch the tip of his cock.
“It’s going to be your fault if I come before you can get anywhere,” Harry said, and gasped only a little when Draco’s skilled fingers closed around him.
“It’s going to be my pleasure,” Draco corrected, and this time he reached out and down, the coolness of his wings on Harry’s body moving. Harry finally had to look again, because he didn’t know what Draco was doing.
Draco smiled at him from between Harry’s legs, and as he shoved the pants out of the way onto Harry’s arse and opened his lips further, Harry mouthed his name in anticipation.
But Draco didn’t suck him. He just kept hovering there, and what touched Harry was his breath and the allure, as before.
Harry parted his legs as best as he could when he was lying on his side, and Draco winked at him and kept his mouth open. Harry arched forwards, and Draco moved with Harry’s motion so that he was the same distance away. Harry growled, and got nothing but a wink for his trouble.
“Trust me,” Draco whispered. “I know what I’m doing.”
Harry rolled his eyes, but shut them again, and let the warmth touch him. Such teasing, fugitive touches, to the side and back and forth, so that Harry felt his cock sway as if stirred by wind. His skin tightened and pebbled with the cold, and still Draco kept his mouth in the exact same place. Harry could appreciate the delicacy, but he didn’t really see how this was going to get him off.
Then Draco released a concentrated blast of allure at him, at the exact same moment as he huffed out.
The pleasure wasn’t as long-lasting as being wrapped in Draco’s tongue would have been, but it was far more intense. Harry bucked and tried to say something, but that was overwhelmed by the way his voice choked off.
He didn’t come, but it was close.
He rolled onto his back, gasping, and Draco flapped his wings once and glided into position over him. He was taking off his trousers, kicking them as if he didn’t know why he had been wearing the bloody things at all. He panted a little, but his eyes burned all the same, with no way to release the heat.
Harry grabbed his neck and yanked him down. Draco squeaked a little, and only barely maintained his position by flapping hard.
“Harry-I need to get these-”
“I know,” Harry muttered, and his hand groped around on the floor until he found his wand. He cast a spell that peeled the cloth neatly back from Draco’s groin, and another that slicked him up. He grinned and ran his fingers over the sticky mess of viscous oil spread around Draco’s groin, liking the way that Draco’s hair grew softer and softer to the sides down there, until it felt like pinfeathers. “There.”
“That’s not enough,” Draco whispered, but he sounded as if he would have liked it to be.
Harry leaned forwards to nudge Draco’s cock with his nose. “I know,” he said, and cast another spell on his hand. Then he braced his heels on the blanket and moved up a little, so he could reach himself.
And so Draco could watch.
Draco was suitably drop-jawed as Harry felt carefully around his hole and finally managed to slide a finger inside. Then Harry slid another two, both at once, and Draco made a sound. It didn’t have a name, but it was a satisfying sound to listen to, just as Draco’s expression was satisfying to look at.
Harry clenched around his fingers, biting his lip. “I almost envy you,” he said, stroking in and out of his own warmth. “To be able to stick your cock in there.”
“I’ll give you something to feel,” Draco panted, and slid Harry’s hand out of the way with one hand on his wrist, and positioned himself at Harry’s entrance at the same time.
And hit him with allure simultaneously, too.
Harry would have liked to make a sarcastic remark about how much better Draco was at accomplishing multiple tasks at the same time now than he had been, but he was gasping and red-faced and rutting on the blanket with his arse, and on Draco, who hadn’t moved yet. So there went that brilliant option. From the way Draco bent over and made the nameless sound again next to his ear, he might have been able to sense what Harry was thinking.
Then he began to move.
It was thick, fast, hard, glorious fucking. Harry rode with it, flexing his hips and bending his legs in a way that Draco seemed to find absolutely delicious, if the way his eyelids drooped was any indication. He kept flapping his wings, so he was lighter than normal and Harry could move faster than normal.
“Is sex-with you-going to be like this all the time?” Harry finally managed to ask around the edge of a gasp.
“If-I have my wings-and you,” Draco said, choking on what sounded like a mouthful of eagerness.
Harry said, “I can only-help you with one thing,” and drove himself down, clenching again. He wanted Draco to come before he did.
Draco resisted for longer than Harry would have thought possible, his eyes shutting so hard that it looked like he’d do himself damage. But at last his hips stiffened, and so did his wings, sticking out to the side with only the most minute flutters in the tips. Harry felt him release heavily a second later.
He should have known that Draco would get his revenge, and he had it in the way Draco opened an eye a second later and waved a hand at his cock.
Heat was around Harry, holding him so tight, so warm, that he was thrusting before he realized what he was doing, jolting and shaking Draco above him, hissing under his breath as the pleasure rode him the way Draco had-
And he came with the same kind of thrusting that he thought Draco had done, although since he hadn’t felt that from the outside it was hard to be sure, and the warmth was kindling him, and when he slumped panting back on the blanket he was already dying to go again. He would have suggested it if his body could have stood up for another round.
“What was that?” he whispered, when he was sure that he had his breath back completely.
Draco bent down to kiss him again, and Harry eagerly reached up and looped his arms around Draco’s neck. Draco nipped carelessly at his lips before drawing back again and smiling at Harry, shaking his wings down around them the way that Harry had sometimes had lovers shake their hair. Harry sighed in contentment.
“That was a side-effect of the allure,” Draco said, and glanced sideways at him. “I wasn’t sure it would work. Not all Veela can do that.”
“Of course you would manage,” Harry said, and reached up to slide one finger behind Draco’s ear, since that part had inexplicably escaped investigation before. “You’re the best.”
Draco caught his hand and kissed it, but his eyes were intense. “Do you mean that? Or do you think that you’ve been changed by becoming my mate?”
Harry tilted his head to the side, listening. He’d certainly had enough Veela clients to know what he was listening for. Yes, there was the faint humming that signified the mating connection, a hum that came more through his bones and blood than anything else.
“I think that becoming your mate clarified things for me,” Harry said. “But it wasn’t that which made me think you were handsome, or not tighten my wards up when you first came through them, or even go through the process of choosing mate after mate for you. I still think we’ll fight sometimes.” He touched Draco’s hair again. “But I still think that this is the best decision I’ve ever made.”
Draco smiled, and bent down, and kissed him again.
*
“I noticed that you had a new client today.”
Harry nodded and didn’t bother looking up from the papers on his desk. He was currently trying to decide which doves he should feed Samantha Huckster’s forms to; she seemed to want so many contradictory things in her mate that she was actually worse than Draco, something he hadn’t believed was possible until now. “She stayed and talked to me for hours, too. Sometimes she wanted a man, and sometimes a woman, and sometimes a perfect person who could grant her everything she’s been missing. As exasperating as possible.”
Draco took a stride towards the desk, and that was unusual enough to finally make Harry look up. Draco was staring at him with a dark ring around the outside of his grey eyes.
“What’s wrong?” Harry asked. Usually, he only saw that when Draco’s Veela instincts were aroused and angry in some way, but he couldn’t think of anything that would have caused that this time.
With a growl, Draco grabbed the back of Harry’s shirt and hauled him out of his chair. Harry went yelping and flailing. Draco hung Harry in front of him and stared into his face. “She touched you,” he said.
“We shook hands when she came in,” Harry snapped. “Well done, you.”
Draco stared some more. Then he abruptly plopped Harry back in his chair, took a few turns around the office that were so rapid Harry got dizzy watching him, and began to laugh.
“Well, good for you, again,” Harry said, and made a show of dusting himself off. “Are you going to explain what that was all about?”
“No one else I know would dismiss it that way when their Veela mate gets angry,” Draco said, shaking his head. “They would cower sometimes or apologize, or encourage the jealousy because they like it. Or they might get angry back. You did none of those things.” He smiled at Harry, and the dark ring had retreated from his eyes. His wings had come out. “You’re the right mate for me.”
“Because I argue with you?” Harry scowled at him. “And I was angry.”
“Not killingly, not the kind of anger that you once feared would destroy our bond.” Draco settled his hands on Harry’s shoulders and wrapped his wings around them, sweeping them in a way that blew Huckster’s papers from the desk and scattered them all over the floor. Harry didn’t think that was really an accident, and he objected, but Draco just carried on holding him, oblivious. “Just the kind of anger that’s necessary for someone who’s going to stand up to me. Someone like you.”
His voice had deepened towards the end. Harry smiled up at him, and then leaned in and kissed him. Two months after their first date, and that first round of sex, he was still getting used to Draco and some of the strange things he did and said, but he didn’t think he could ever grow tired of him.
Draco kissed him back eagerly, his wings wrapping them in a cloudy cocoon of warmth and silver, and made Harry glad that Huckster had been his last client of the day. He did step away finally, gasping. “I have to feed the doves before I leave,” he explained, to Draco’s slowly demanding look.
Draco snorted and strode to the office door. He rarely wore a shirt now when he was alone with Harry, since his wings would only pop out anyway, and he flexed them hard, making the muscles ripple and drawing Harry’s attention. “I’ll help you.”
“I didn’t think you liked my doves,” Harry protested, as he struggled into the thick clock that Draco was insisting he wear now that it was getting cold outside.
Draco came back and made sure the cloak was settled properly, then looked into Harry’s eyes. “I don’t mind them,” he whispered. “They were useless in my case, but you like looking after them, and that’s enough to win them a place in my regard.”
Harry laughed aloud, because it was do that or throw his hands up in the air, and he didn’t feel like doing that right now. He accompanied Draco out the door.
The cooing in the aviary grew louder as they approached, but although he still cared for his doves, and would as long as he operated the business, Harry had to admit his favorite wings were the ones that Draco continued to keep wrapped around him as they walked.
The End.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/634809.html. Comment wherever you like.