chapter five: research
GO HOME DEATH EATER
The dripping red letters were reminiscent of the warnings about the Chamber of Secrets that had decorated the corridors in Draco’s second year of school. However, unlike his twelve-year-old self, Draco did not applaud the author of the message that met him and his classmates while departing from Charms.
The words were fresh and dripping with red paint (he refused to imagine they’d been painted in blood) and rendered the entire class speechless. Pansy’s hand brushed against his limp fingers, a brief, private gesture of support when Draco knew her instinct was to grasp his hand in hers. Flitwick shoved through the crowd to see what was holding everyone up and squeaked in surprise when he saw what had captured their attention.
As if the professor’s utterance had awoken her from a trance, Granger took action and went straight into Head Girl mode.
“Move along, everyone! You have another class to get to!” she said, ushering students down the corridor and away from the scene of the crime. She did not look at Draco, and she didn’t force Longbottom or Weasley to leave with the rest of the class.
“Professor Flitwick,” she said as the crowd began to disperse, leaving Pansy and Granger’s friends behind, “the headmistress will need to know about this.”
“Of course, yes!” said Flitwick before rushing to his office to send Professor McGonagall a message.
Draco could feel Weasley’s gaze drilling into his back, and instead of facing any of them, instead of acknowledging his too-recent past splashed up on the wall, he turned on his heel and departed down the corridor.
“Wait!” Granger called after him. “You need to speak to the headmistress!”
He ignored her in the hopes she’d see the ridiculousness of her statement. The message was directed at Draco. What could he possibly tell Professor McGonagall about it?
At the end of the corridor, he paused, uncertain where to go, which is when he became aware of Weasley following him. She stopped at his side, no hostility directed at him, her expression open and composed.
Even though those eyes still haunted him as surely as his dreams did, her proximity only produced a comfortable warmth in him, the blazing heat that crippled and transformed him absent for once. Maybe he was growing used to her. Maybe he was becoming immune to whatever enchantment tied them together.
Her ears peeked out of her hair, and they reddened under his scrutiny. She turned her head toward the window for a reprieve, which gave Draco one as well. He caught his breath while he had the chance.
She didn’t give him much time to recover because she looked at him again, a smile now spreading across her lips.
“Fancy some Quidditch?” she asked.
“Quidditch won’t solve my problems.”
“It’s fun though. Might get your mind off things.”
If she had an ulterior motive, Draco couldn’t discern it from her earnest expression, and the fact remained that Weasley coming after him kept Granger’s nagging at bay.
“You won’t stop, will you?” he asked with a resigned sigh.
She grinned cheekily. “I will not.”
Draco rolled his eyes and gave in. It seemed easier than arguing, and never mind the fact that he didn’t particularly feel like arguing anyway.
They were silent all the way to the pitch, but Weasley’s silence was a facade. Draco could tell by the way she gnawed on her lower lip that she wanted to speak. For some reason she held herself back.
She continued to show restraint as she passed him a broom from the broomshed, as they kicked off from the ground, and as they flew two warm up laps around the pitch. Draco tried not to follow Weasley’s every move, but every time he directed his broom one way, he found himself swaying back in her direction, whichever direction kept them as close together as possible.
When Weasley paused in the middle of the pitch, hovering in mid-air, he stopped next to her.
“Have you tried flying with your wings?” she asked.
Draco couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed that she was poking her nose into this subject. He could only blame himself for showing her his Veela form, and so he was resigned to her questions. Besides, her curiosity served the purpose of distracting him from the message painted on the wall, which he preferred not to think about at the moment.
“No, Weasley, I’d rather not have them at all.”
“But you do have them, so why not see what they can do?”
Draco looked over the stands of the pitch. From the air, he could see students leaving the castle to take a walk on the grounds or going to and from the greenhouses. “Here?” he said with a sardonic twist of his lips. “Do you want me to expose myself?”
“No!” Weasley said quickly. Her ears and cheeks flushed with color in a way that made Draco’s mouth curve upward in an amused grin and his heart skip with excitement. Teasing her was an unexpected pleasure.
“We could go out onto the lake. The far side of it, where students don’t typically go. The forest might provide enough coverage, and we could cast extra privacy charms to keep people away.”
Draco stared at Weasley for the first time in a very long time.
In the years just before the war poked its head in Hogwarts’s corridors, Weasley had been a popular figure around the castle. Draco wasn’t sure why. He supposed she was considered friendly and attractive; even Blaise had appreciated her good looks. Draco hadn’t been able to see anything attractive about her beneath the mud of her associations. Her family’s poverty and poor social connections, including her own extremely bad judgment in dating Potter, had tainted anything positive Draco could have found in her physical appearance.
He saw her now. The shine of her hair glinted with gold in the warm September sun. Her face still held color from her previous embarrassment, hiding some of the freckles that marred her skin. As unsightly as those blemishes were, Draco could still see the appeal of them. He found himself strangely fascinated, as if he could decipher her secrets by searching the pattern of her freckles for a message.
Weasley stared back at him with wide brown eyes, patiently waiting for him to make a decision. She didn’t push, she didn’t nag, which was more than Draco could say for his closest female friends. Pansy would have ordered Draco to do her bidding, but Weasley met him gaze for gaze and demonstrated more restraint than he’d thought a Weasley capable of.
Finally, Draco spoke. “We?”
He’d expected her to flush in embarrassment again, to backtrack and exclude herself from her own idea because she thought that was what Draco wanted. To be alone.
But she didn’t.
“You asked for my help,” she said. “I intend to give it to you.”
Draco heard the unspoken Whether you like it or not at the end of that sentence.
“Fine.” It was the right thing to say. Something inside Draco settled at his acquiescence, snapped into place. “Saturday then. Meet me in the entrance hall after breakfast. Bring your broomstick.”
She nodded with stoic agreement, but as she raced away to fly another lap, Draco did not miss the pleased smile that stretched across her face. Or the way his heart leapt at witnessing her happiness.
Meet me in the library at lunch.
The note had been delivered during breakfast the next day without a signature indicating its sender, but Draco had a good idea of the author. His deduction was confirmed when he and Pansy arrived in the library only to be immediately accosted by Weasley, who grabbed Draco’s arm and pulled him toward the stacks near the Restricted Section.
Granger shook her considerable mane and huffed in displeasure at their arrival, but she said nothing as Draco and Pansy paused behind the seats across the table from her. In fact, she hadn’t said more than ten words to Draco since the night on the Astronomy Tower, which was just fine by him. He’d thought a lot about what she’d said to him in her rage, and he hated the idea that she could have been right.
If Veela blood indeed ran through his family tree, no matter how insignificant the connection, his parents would never admit it to anyone, not even to Draco. They’d raised him to believe that purity was tantamount to royalty and that his blood was the purest because of his descendancy from the noblest of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families, the Malfoys and the Blacks. To learn that his lineage, his very identity, might be a lie was a devastating truth to face, and it called into question other values Draco had been taught in his childhood. He wasn’t ready to accept any more truths until this one was confirmed.
So Draco was just fine with Granger avoiding him.
“What is this?” Pansy asked.
“You weren’t even invited,” Granger grumbled without lifting her head from the book in which her nose was stuck.
Pansy opened her mouth to argue, but Draco interrupted her. “I don’t know what this is about, but I’ll leave. Pansy goes where I go.”
“Ha!” Granger said, the sound both a scoff and a laugh. “What is she, your little dog?”
“Hermione,” Weasley warned as she sat down next to Granger.
Draco grit his teeth. “We don’t have to explain ourselves to you.”
Pansy leaned over the table menacingly. “Oh, that’s original. Like I’ve never been called a bitch or Pugface Pansy or Draco’s lap dog before. You’ll have to try harder to insult me, Granger.”
“We don’t have to explain ourselves to them,” Draco said again, this time to Pansy.
“You don’t have to explain yourselves to me,” Weasley cut in, her brows knit in anger, “since I’m the one who invited you. It doesn’t have to be like this. We can all behave.”
Granger sniffed, her head still lowered.
“What are we doing here?” Draco asked, his teeth grinding together. He could feel needlepoints in his palms where he clenched his hands, and he tried to smother the sensation, tried to shove the talons back into his fingertips by will alone. Simmering heat circulated within him, but he breathed deeply to cool it. He sat down across from Granger and Weasley so he could hide his hands in his lap if the worst happened, Pansy reluctantly following suit.
The way Weasley eyed him told Draco that she was aware of the short tether on his control.
“I told you Hermione couldn’t resist a new research project. She found some information about Veela in the Restricted Section.”
Granger finally lifted her head, but she did not make eye contact as if Draco and Pansy were not worth her consideration.
“I just don’t see how the information is relevant. Nothing I’ve read even mentions the possibility of male Veela, so we can’t know that any of this pertains to you.”
“Leave that to us to decide,” Pansy said with a sneer as she snatched the book out of Granger’s grasp.
Granger rolled her eyes and took another tome off the top of the stack next to her.
Draco and Pansy put their heads together to read the parchment of handwritten notes Granger had left tucked inside the book, and then they looked through the pages she had bookmarked. The text was a journal of one wizard’s attempt to raise a young Veela orphan. What could have been an interesting and perhaps humorous tale turned out to be rather horrifying and sad.
“That reminds me of you,” Pansy said, pointing to a passage halfway down the current page.
The young pouts at me when I offer her food, obstinately refusing everything. She eats no fish, no beef, no veal. She sniffs at chicken and then pushes it away with a hiss and a snap of her sharp teeth. I try vegetables and fruits and breads, but the more I put in front of her, the more agitated she becomes. Her eyes darken, turning as black as the abdomen of an acromantula queen, her snout transforming into that of a hawk, razor sharp and snappish. The wings emerge and flap ominously behind her, lifting her from the chair. She lunges at me, claws extended, but I draw my wand just in time and shield myself, stunning her. Next time, if I must, I will strap her down and hold her jaws apart to make sure she eats to my satisfaction.
Draco wasn’t sure which part of the passage reminded Pansy of him. The transformation being triggered by frustration and anger? Or the guardian threatening to tie the Veela down?
Draco had spent the rest of the summer after his birthday staying out of his father’s way. Every time Lucius set eyes on him, he shuddered with disgust, and every time Draco transformed near Lucius, his father left the room in a rage. By the end of the summer, he had indeed threatened to bind Draco’s wings to keep the unsightly appendages from assaulting his vision.
After Granger’s outburst on the Astronomy Tower, Draco now understood his father’s disgust. The wings, the beak, the claws, they were proof of an impurity in Draco’s bloodline. It made sense that seeing those impurities in his son would set Lucius off. Perhaps Lucius felt betrayed by the Black family, as if realizing twenty years later that the product that had been advertised to him when he and Narcissa were betrothed was actually defective.
“What are you reading?” Draco asked Weasley.
She lifted the cover of her book to show him the title: Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. Draco was familiar with the text. There was a copy of it in his family’s library as well.
“I don’t know how useful it will be, but I figured it was a good start. Even if no Veela are recorded in here as part of the Malfoy or Black family, I might be able to find a discrepancy that leads to one.”
“This book is rubbish,” Pansy said with a sneer as she slammed the journal closed. “The author treats this Veela like an animal. Worse than an animal.”
Granger stared at Pansy and said with sarcasm, “Oh no, why would someone ever mistreat a living being? How could someone other an entire population of people and do terrible things to them, like imprison or kill them or confiscate their wands?”
Pansy’s eyes narrowed. “I get it, Granger. You don’t approve of me. You think it’s a double-standard for me to be concerned about Draco while still hating people like you.”
“It’s completely a double-standard!”
“Then why are you doing this? If you hate us so much, why are you here, and why are you researching Veela?”
“Well, I’m not doing it for you!”
Pansy, Draco, and Weasley stared at Granger, waiting for an explanation. Granger looked between the three of them, anger chiseled across her forehead in a frown.
“I researched Veela several years ago, during the Triwizard Tournament when Harry told me that the core of Fleur’s wand was a hair from her Veela grandmother. I was curious about Veela, especially after seeing them at the World Cup earlier that summer, so I did more research on them to see if Fleur would have an advantage over Harry in the tournament.”
Granger scoured her bag and withdrew a book that was dwarfed by the other books littering the table, but by no means light itself.
“This is Noémie Leblanc’s memoir. She became famous as a dancer in France in the early 1900s after Fleur’s grandfather discovered her during his travels in the Balkan region. He named her, taught her French, and eventually married her when she became pregnant with Fleur’s mother.”
“What does this have to do with you begrudgingly helping me?” Draco asked.
“I told you, I’m not helping you.” Granger placed her hands on top of the book and raised her nose higher in the air, annoyingly prim and annoyingly self-important. “Noémie wrote of her human lovers prior to marrying, in particular… how she chose them. I’m not doing this research for you. I’m doing it for Ginny.”
Pansy and Draco looked at one another, both dubious and both still not catching on to Granger’s meaning.
“What about me?” Weasley asked, seemingly just as lost.
“I’ve noticed the way he looks at you,” Granger said. “The way his whole body shifts in your direction in class and in the Great Hall, even when he tries to pretend you don’t exist. It’s like he’s attuned to your presence. But you’re not affected by his Veela charm. Even I’m affected by it, though I’ve learned to work around the inconvenience of it.”
“Why isn’t she, then?” Pansy asked, and Draco could tell by her sarcasm that she was losing patience.
Granger squared her shoulders, clearly pleased to be the center of attention and spouting knowledge to her ignorant audience.
“People typically think Veela charm only works on beings of the opposite sex, but that’s not wholly correct. Veela charm is not affected by gender or sex, but rather sexual attraction.”
“But Longbottom is affected by Draco,” Pansy said. “Are you saying Longbottom is sexually attracted to Draco? Or men in general?”
Granger, who had previously looked satisfied with herself, now blushed and stuttered. “I mean, I don’t know that with any certainty because he’s never mentioned—”
Weasley interrupted her, her own face flaming with color as she said hurriedly, “I’m not attracted to Malfoy, but I am attracted to men in general. Could that be why I’m unaffected?”
Granger quickly recovered from her previous stumble. “That’s the second exception to the effectiveness of the Veela charm. The attraction is reversed for mates. The Veela is charmed by a compatible mate, lured in by an unbreakable connection, but the mate is unaffected by the Veela’s proximity, which means the Veela must put in an effort to win their mate’s affection. The mate must choose the Veela; they can’t be swayed by magic.”
Both Weasley and Draco drew back, twin expressions of disbelief on their faces.
“That makes sense,” Pansy said with a shrug.
“It does?” Granger and Weasley said at the same time, but Pansy didn’t bother to elaborate on her conclusion.
“Anyway,” Granger continued after a moment, “I remembered reading about Noémie’s experiences with her mates—”
“Mates? As in multiple?” Draco asked.
“Yes! Veela might have multiple compatible mates in their lifetime, but they can choose to be monogamous and mate for life.” Granger huffed at the interruption and narrowed her eyes at her audience in a warning not to do it again before continuing her earlier thought. “I remembered reading about Noémie’s experiences with her mates, and I wanted to see if male Veela exhibit the same behavior. That’s why I’m doing this research. If Ginny is compatible as your mate, I want to know everything about Veela mating rituals to keep her safe.”
Pansy and Draco shared a brief look at the confirmation of Draco’s theory that Granger would help them if it meant helping Weasley.
Draco still had so many questions. He didn’t doubt Granger’s knowledge, but he wanted to read about it for himself, preferably privately, without Granger’s suspicious scrutiny or Pansy’s smug looks or Weasley’s—
Well, Weasley hadn’t reacted at all.
She was withdrawn, staring down at Nature’s Nobility without reading a word of it.
“You know,” she said, “I think I am hungry after all.”
She stood up without looking anyone in the eye and stumbled when someone ran into her.
“Oh, sorry, Seamus,” she said as she steadied Finnigan, but she didn’t stay long enough for him to say anything in return.
Finnigan watched her depart for a moment before glancing over their table, eyes narrowing at Draco and Pansy sitting with Granger and, formerly, Weasley. He opened his mouth.
Draco grit his teeth and clenched his fists together in his lap, urging the Veela underneath his skin to stay there instead of coming out at the first sign of a threat. Whatever Finnigan wanted to say, he seemed to think better of it, because he shook his head and stalked away without a word.
Draco released the breath he’d been holding but the tension did not leave his body. A suspicion had just implanted itself in his brain, stoked to life at the sight of Finnigan’s retreating back. Everyone at the table knew about Draco’s transformation, but Finnigan didn’t know that. He could have easily made a scene in the quiet and busy library; he could have threatened Draco by revealing his secret to everyone around him. It didn’t make sense that he’d kept the secret to himself since their return to Hogwarts instead of using it against Draco.
Unless Finnigan was waging a silent war, intimidating Draco with painted threats instead of verbal ones. GO HOME DEATH EATER. The words floated in Draco’s mind, glistening under flickering light, still-wet paint dripping from the ends of each letter. Finnigan could have written those words, but why he had brought attention to Draco’s war allegiances instead of his beastly form, Draco didn’t know. He would find out, though.
Once Finnigan was out of sight, Draco’s tension finally eased, and he turned back to Granger.
“May I borrow that?” he asked, gesturing toward the Leblanc memoir as if nothing had happened. To Granger, who didn’t know what Finnigan knew, nothing had.
“It’s published in French.”
Pansy rolled her eyes. “We can read French, thank you.”
Granger scowled and slid the book across the table. “I neither like nor trust either of you.”
“Noted,” Draco said as he pocketed the book and stood. “Believe me, the feeling is mutual.”
GO HOME DEATH EATER
The dripping red letters were reminiscent of the warnings about the Chamber of Secrets that had decorated the corridors in Draco’s second year of school. However, unlike his twelve-year-old self, Draco did not applaud the author of the message that met him and his classmates while departing from Charms.
The words were fresh and dripping with red paint (he refused to imagine they’d been painted in blood) and rendered the entire class speechless. Pansy’s hand brushed against his limp fingers, a brief, private gesture of support when Draco knew her instinct was to grasp his hand in hers. Flitwick shoved through the crowd to see what was holding everyone up and squeaked in surprise when he saw what had captured their attention.
As if the professor’s utterance had awoken her from a trance, Granger took action and went straight into Head Girl mode.
“Move along, everyone! You have another class to get to!” she said, ushering students down the corridor and away from the scene of the crime. She did not look at Draco, and she didn’t force Longbottom or Weasley to leave with the rest of the class.
“Professor Flitwick,” she said as the crowd began to disperse, leaving Pansy and Granger’s friends behind, “the headmistress will need to know about this.”
“Of course, yes!” said Flitwick before rushing to his office to send Professor McGonagall a message.
Draco could feel Weasley’s gaze drilling into his back, and instead of facing any of them, instead of acknowledging his too-recent past splashed up on the wall, he turned on his heel and departed down the corridor.
“Wait!” Granger called after him. “You need to speak to the headmistress!”
He ignored her in the hopes she’d see the ridiculousness of her statement. The message was directed at Draco. What could he possibly tell Professor McGonagall about it?
At the end of the corridor, he paused, uncertain where to go, which is when he became aware of Weasley following him. She stopped at his side, no hostility directed at him, her expression open and composed.
Even though those eyes still haunted him as surely as his dreams did, her proximity only produced a comfortable warmth in him, the blazing heat that crippled and transformed him absent for once. Maybe he was growing used to her. Maybe he was becoming immune to whatever enchantment tied them together.
Her ears peeked out of her hair, and they reddened under his scrutiny. She turned her head toward the window for a reprieve, which gave Draco one as well. He caught his breath while he had the chance.
She didn’t give him much time to recover because she looked at him again, a smile now spreading across her lips.
“Fancy some Quidditch?” she asked.
“Quidditch won’t solve my problems.”
“It’s fun though. Might get your mind off things.”
If she had an ulterior motive, Draco couldn’t discern it from her earnest expression, and the fact remained that Weasley coming after him kept Granger’s nagging at bay.
“You won’t stop, will you?” he asked with a resigned sigh.
She grinned cheekily. “I will not.”
Draco rolled his eyes and gave in. It seemed easier than arguing, and never mind the fact that he didn’t particularly feel like arguing anyway.
They were silent all the way to the pitch, but Weasley’s silence was a facade. Draco could tell by the way she gnawed on her lower lip that she wanted to speak. For some reason she held herself back.
She continued to show restraint as she passed him a broom from the broomshed, as they kicked off from the ground, and as they flew two warm up laps around the pitch. Draco tried not to follow Weasley’s every move, but every time he directed his broom one way, he found himself swaying back in her direction, whichever direction kept them as close together as possible.
When Weasley paused in the middle of the pitch, hovering in mid-air, he stopped next to her.
“Have you tried flying with your wings?” she asked.
Draco couldn’t bring himself to be annoyed that she was poking her nose into this subject. He could only blame himself for showing her his Veela form, and so he was resigned to her questions. Besides, her curiosity served the purpose of distracting him from the message painted on the wall, which he preferred not to think about at the moment.
“No, Weasley, I’d rather not have them at all.”
“But you do have them, so why not see what they can do?”
Draco looked over the stands of the pitch. From the air, he could see students leaving the castle to take a walk on the grounds or going to and from the greenhouses. “Here?” he said with a sardonic twist of his lips. “Do you want me to expose myself?”
“No!” Weasley said quickly. Her ears and cheeks flushed with color in a way that made Draco’s mouth curve upward in an amused grin and his heart skip with excitement. Teasing her was an unexpected pleasure.
“We could go out onto the lake. The far side of it, where students don’t typically go. The forest might provide enough coverage, and we could cast extra privacy charms to keep people away.”
Draco stared at Weasley for the first time in a very long time.
In the years just before the war poked its head in Hogwarts’s corridors, Weasley had been a popular figure around the castle. Draco wasn’t sure why. He supposed she was considered friendly and attractive; even Blaise had appreciated her good looks. Draco hadn’t been able to see anything attractive about her beneath the mud of her associations. Her family’s poverty and poor social connections, including her own extremely bad judgment in dating Potter, had tainted anything positive Draco could have found in her physical appearance.
He saw her now. The shine of her hair glinted with gold in the warm September sun. Her face still held color from her previous embarrassment, hiding some of the freckles that marred her skin. As unsightly as those blemishes were, Draco could still see the appeal of them. He found himself strangely fascinated, as if he could decipher her secrets by searching the pattern of her freckles for a message.
Weasley stared back at him with wide brown eyes, patiently waiting for him to make a decision. She didn’t push, she didn’t nag, which was more than Draco could say for his closest female friends. Pansy would have ordered Draco to do her bidding, but Weasley met him gaze for gaze and demonstrated more restraint than he’d thought a Weasley capable of.
Finally, Draco spoke. “We?”
He’d expected her to flush in embarrassment again, to backtrack and exclude herself from her own idea because she thought that was what Draco wanted. To be alone.
But she didn’t.
“You asked for my help,” she said. “I intend to give it to you.”
Draco heard the unspoken Whether you like it or not at the end of that sentence.
“Fine.” It was the right thing to say. Something inside Draco settled at his acquiescence, snapped into place. “Saturday then. Meet me in the entrance hall after breakfast. Bring your broomstick.”
She nodded with stoic agreement, but as she raced away to fly another lap, Draco did not miss the pleased smile that stretched across her face. Or the way his heart leapt at witnessing her happiness.
Meet me in the library at lunch.
The note had been delivered during breakfast the next day without a signature indicating its sender, but Draco had a good idea of the author. His deduction was confirmed when he and Pansy arrived in the library only to be immediately accosted by Weasley, who grabbed Draco’s arm and pulled him toward the stacks near the Restricted Section.
Granger shook her considerable mane and huffed in displeasure at their arrival, but she said nothing as Draco and Pansy paused behind the seats across the table from her. In fact, she hadn’t said more than ten words to Draco since the night on the Astronomy Tower, which was just fine by him. He’d thought a lot about what she’d said to him in her rage, and he hated the idea that she could have been right.
If Veela blood indeed ran through his family tree, no matter how insignificant the connection, his parents would never admit it to anyone, not even to Draco. They’d raised him to believe that purity was tantamount to royalty and that his blood was the purest because of his descendancy from the noblest of the Sacred Twenty-Eight families, the Malfoys and the Blacks. To learn that his lineage, his very identity, might be a lie was a devastating truth to face, and it called into question other values Draco had been taught in his childhood. He wasn’t ready to accept any more truths until this one was confirmed.
So Draco was just fine with Granger avoiding him.
“What is this?” Pansy asked.
“You weren’t even invited,” Granger grumbled without lifting her head from the book in which her nose was stuck.
Pansy opened her mouth to argue, but Draco interrupted her. “I don’t know what this is about, but I’ll leave. Pansy goes where I go.”
“Ha!” Granger said, the sound both a scoff and a laugh. “What is she, your little dog?”
“Hermione,” Weasley warned as she sat down next to Granger.
Draco grit his teeth. “We don’t have to explain ourselves to you.”
Pansy leaned over the table menacingly. “Oh, that’s original. Like I’ve never been called a bitch or Pugface Pansy or Draco’s lap dog before. You’ll have to try harder to insult me, Granger.”
“We don’t have to explain ourselves to them,” Draco said again, this time to Pansy.
“You don’t have to explain yourselves to me,” Weasley cut in, her brows knit in anger, “since I’m the one who invited you. It doesn’t have to be like this. We can all behave.”
Granger sniffed, her head still lowered.
“What are we doing here?” Draco asked, his teeth grinding together. He could feel needlepoints in his palms where he clenched his hands, and he tried to smother the sensation, tried to shove the talons back into his fingertips by will alone. Simmering heat circulated within him, but he breathed deeply to cool it. He sat down across from Granger and Weasley so he could hide his hands in his lap if the worst happened, Pansy reluctantly following suit.
The way Weasley eyed him told Draco that she was aware of the short tether on his control.
“I told you Hermione couldn’t resist a new research project. She found some information about Veela in the Restricted Section.”
Granger finally lifted her head, but she did not make eye contact as if Draco and Pansy were not worth her consideration.
“I just don’t see how the information is relevant. Nothing I’ve read even mentions the possibility of male Veela, so we can’t know that any of this pertains to you.”
“Leave that to us to decide,” Pansy said with a sneer as she snatched the book out of Granger’s grasp.
Granger rolled her eyes and took another tome off the top of the stack next to her.
Draco and Pansy put their heads together to read the parchment of handwritten notes Granger had left tucked inside the book, and then they looked through the pages she had bookmarked. The text was a journal of one wizard’s attempt to raise a young Veela orphan. What could have been an interesting and perhaps humorous tale turned out to be rather horrifying and sad.
“That reminds me of you,” Pansy said, pointing to a passage halfway down the current page.
The young pouts at me when I offer her food, obstinately refusing everything. She eats no fish, no beef, no veal. She sniffs at chicken and then pushes it away with a hiss and a snap of her sharp teeth. I try vegetables and fruits and breads, but the more I put in front of her, the more agitated she becomes. Her eyes darken, turning as black as the abdomen of an acromantula queen, her snout transforming into that of a hawk, razor sharp and snappish. The wings emerge and flap ominously behind her, lifting her from the chair. She lunges at me, claws extended, but I draw my wand just in time and shield myself, stunning her. Next time, if I must, I will strap her down and hold her jaws apart to make sure she eats to my satisfaction.
Draco wasn’t sure which part of the passage reminded Pansy of him. The transformation being triggered by frustration and anger? Or the guardian threatening to tie the Veela down?
Draco had spent the rest of the summer after his birthday staying out of his father’s way. Every time Lucius set eyes on him, he shuddered with disgust, and every time Draco transformed near Lucius, his father left the room in a rage. By the end of the summer, he had indeed threatened to bind Draco’s wings to keep the unsightly appendages from assaulting his vision.
After Granger’s outburst on the Astronomy Tower, Draco now understood his father’s disgust. The wings, the beak, the claws, they were proof of an impurity in Draco’s bloodline. It made sense that seeing those impurities in his son would set Lucius off. Perhaps Lucius felt betrayed by the Black family, as if realizing twenty years later that the product that had been advertised to him when he and Narcissa were betrothed was actually defective.
“What are you reading?” Draco asked Weasley.
She lifted the cover of her book to show him the title: Nature’s Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. Draco was familiar with the text. There was a copy of it in his family’s library as well.
“I don’t know how useful it will be, but I figured it was a good start. Even if no Veela are recorded in here as part of the Malfoy or Black family, I might be able to find a discrepancy that leads to one.”
“This book is rubbish,” Pansy said with a sneer as she slammed the journal closed. “The author treats this Veela like an animal. Worse than an animal.”
Granger stared at Pansy and said with sarcasm, “Oh no, why would someone ever mistreat a living being? How could someone other an entire population of people and do terrible things to them, like imprison or kill them or confiscate their wands?”
Pansy’s eyes narrowed. “I get it, Granger. You don’t approve of me. You think it’s a double-standard for me to be concerned about Draco while still hating people like you.”
“It’s completely a double-standard!”
“Then why are you doing this? If you hate us so much, why are you here, and why are you researching Veela?”
“Well, I’m not doing it for you!”
Pansy, Draco, and Weasley stared at Granger, waiting for an explanation. Granger looked between the three of them, anger chiseled across her forehead in a frown.
“I researched Veela several years ago, during the Triwizard Tournament when Harry told me that the core of Fleur’s wand was a hair from her Veela grandmother. I was curious about Veela, especially after seeing them at the World Cup earlier that summer, so I did more research on them to see if Fleur would have an advantage over Harry in the tournament.”
Granger scoured her bag and withdrew a book that was dwarfed by the other books littering the table, but by no means light itself.
“This is Noémie Leblanc’s memoir. She became famous as a dancer in France in the early 1900s after Fleur’s grandfather discovered her during his travels in the Balkan region. He named her, taught her French, and eventually married her when she became pregnant with Fleur’s mother.”
“What does this have to do with you begrudgingly helping me?” Draco asked.
“I told you, I’m not helping you.” Granger placed her hands on top of the book and raised her nose higher in the air, annoyingly prim and annoyingly self-important. “Noémie wrote of her human lovers prior to marrying, in particular… how she chose them. I’m not doing this research for you. I’m doing it for Ginny.”
Pansy and Draco looked at one another, both dubious and both still not catching on to Granger’s meaning.
“What about me?” Weasley asked, seemingly just as lost.
“I’ve noticed the way he looks at you,” Granger said. “The way his whole body shifts in your direction in class and in the Great Hall, even when he tries to pretend you don’t exist. It’s like he’s attuned to your presence. But you’re not affected by his Veela charm. Even I’m affected by it, though I’ve learned to work around the inconvenience of it.”
“Why isn’t she, then?” Pansy asked, and Draco could tell by her sarcasm that she was losing patience.
Granger squared her shoulders, clearly pleased to be the center of attention and spouting knowledge to her ignorant audience.
“People typically think Veela charm only works on beings of the opposite sex, but that’s not wholly correct. Veela charm is not affected by gender or sex, but rather sexual attraction.”
“But Longbottom is affected by Draco,” Pansy said. “Are you saying Longbottom is sexually attracted to Draco? Or men in general?”
Granger, who had previously looked satisfied with herself, now blushed and stuttered. “I mean, I don’t know that with any certainty because he’s never mentioned—”
Weasley interrupted her, her own face flaming with color as she said hurriedly, “I’m not attracted to Malfoy, but I am attracted to men in general. Could that be why I’m unaffected?”
Granger quickly recovered from her previous stumble. “That’s the second exception to the effectiveness of the Veela charm. The attraction is reversed for mates. The Veela is charmed by a compatible mate, lured in by an unbreakable connection, but the mate is unaffected by the Veela’s proximity, which means the Veela must put in an effort to win their mate’s affection. The mate must choose the Veela; they can’t be swayed by magic.”
Both Weasley and Draco drew back, twin expressions of disbelief on their faces.
“That makes sense,” Pansy said with a shrug.
“It does?” Granger and Weasley said at the same time, but Pansy didn’t bother to elaborate on her conclusion.
“Anyway,” Granger continued after a moment, “I remembered reading about Noémie’s experiences with her mates—”
“Mates? As in multiple?” Draco asked.
“Yes! Veela might have multiple compatible mates in their lifetime, but they can choose to be monogamous and mate for life.” Granger huffed at the interruption and narrowed her eyes at her audience in a warning not to do it again before continuing her earlier thought. “I remembered reading about Noémie’s experiences with her mates, and I wanted to see if male Veela exhibit the same behavior. That’s why I’m doing this research. If Ginny is compatible as your mate, I want to know everything about Veela mating rituals to keep her safe.”
Pansy and Draco shared a brief look at the confirmation of Draco’s theory that Granger would help them if it meant helping Weasley.
Draco still had so many questions. He didn’t doubt Granger’s knowledge, but he wanted to read about it for himself, preferably privately, without Granger’s suspicious scrutiny or Pansy’s smug looks or Weasley’s—
Well, Weasley hadn’t reacted at all.
She was withdrawn, staring down at Nature’s Nobility without reading a word of it.
“You know,” she said, “I think I am hungry after all.”
She stood up without looking anyone in the eye and stumbled when someone ran into her.
“Oh, sorry, Seamus,” she said as she steadied Finnigan, but she didn’t stay long enough for him to say anything in return.
Finnigan watched her depart for a moment before glancing over their table, eyes narrowing at Draco and Pansy sitting with Granger and, formerly, Weasley. He opened his mouth.
Draco grit his teeth and clenched his fists together in his lap, urging the Veela underneath his skin to stay there instead of coming out at the first sign of a threat. Whatever Finnigan wanted to say, he seemed to think better of it, because he shook his head and stalked away without a word.
Draco released the breath he’d been holding but the tension did not leave his body. A suspicion had just implanted itself in his brain, stoked to life at the sight of Finnigan’s retreating back. Everyone at the table knew about Draco’s transformation, but Finnigan didn’t know that. He could have easily made a scene in the quiet and busy library; he could have threatened Draco by revealing his secret to everyone around him. It didn’t make sense that he’d kept the secret to himself since their return to Hogwarts instead of using it against Draco.
Unless Finnigan was waging a silent war, intimidating Draco with painted threats instead of verbal ones. GO HOME DEATH EATER. The words floated in Draco’s mind, glistening under flickering light, still-wet paint dripping from the ends of each letter. Finnigan could have written those words, but why he had brought attention to Draco’s war allegiances instead of his beastly form, Draco didn’t know. He would find out, though.
Once Finnigan was out of sight, Draco’s tension finally eased, and he turned back to Granger.
“May I borrow that?” he asked, gesturing toward the Leblanc memoir as if nothing had happened. To Granger, who didn’t know what Finnigan knew, nothing had.
“It’s published in French.”
Pansy rolled her eyes. “We can read French, thank you.”
Granger scowled and slid the book across the table. “I neither like nor trust either of you.”
“Noted,” Draco said as he pocketed the book and stood. “Believe me, the feeling is mutual.”
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