chapter nine: falling
Alone was the last thing Draco needed to be.
When he’d left the library, he had wandered the halls of Hogwarts searching for a distraction.
He’d peeked his head inside the Room of Hidden Things, but after passing in front of it three times while thinking of what he needed, he’d found only charred junk inside the room in which Crabbe had been killed. Maybe his thoughts had not been clear enough or loud enough to produce a better result. Or maybe the room was broken, the magic forever sundered by the Fiendfyre Crabbe had summoned.
He trudged through the snow using his power of heat to raise his body temperature and keep himself warm. When he’d ended up at the Quidditch pitch, he’d turned right around and gone straight back to the castle. Flying— No. For as long as Draco remained attracted to Weasley, she and the act would always be tied together. He couldn’t fly without her.
At one point he’d stopped in the middle of a corridor and considered seeking out Finnigan. He didn’t think the drunk would be willing to share his drink with a monster, so he’d gone on, continuing his search. Draco was certain that Finnigan was the one painting the messages all over the castle. If that was true, then Draco was the last person with whom Finnigan would ever share his stash of contraband booze.
After an hour or so, Draco had ended up on top of the Astronomy Tower. And lo and behold—Weasley was waiting for him on the battlement. With alcohol. Draco could have kissed her.
He shuddered, the thought too pleasant for his dour mood. Now that the idea was in his head, he couldn’t help but play it to its ultimate conclusion and imagine her lips pressing against his. What would they feel like? What would they taste like? He would never know because she would never choose him.
Between the stairs and the battlement, Draco transformed, this skin feeling more comfortable around her than the one he was born in. He didn’t remember removing his robe or dropping it carelessly on the floor. The blast of frigid air didn’t faze him as he stepped outside. Nothing mattered anymore, not his clothes or his secret. Nothing except her.
The light from the setting sun cast Weasley in hues of orange, electrifying her hair. She approached him, raising a bottle of good old Ogden’s in greeting.
“I didn’t know the kitchens stocked this,” Draco said as she poured some of the honey-golden liquid into a glass.
“They don’t." She smiled. “This was a birthday gift from Ron.”
Draco opened his beak wide and poured the alcohol down his throat, letting it warm him from the inside. He could already do that himself, but it felt better when he didn’t have to concentrate on maintaining the warmth. “Ah,” he said. “And you’ve decided to share your gift with me?”
Weasley set the bottle at her feet and leaned against the parapet, sipping her own drink lightly. She shrugged. “Why not? Who else should I share it with?”
“Potter maybe.” He hated how petulant he sounded, hated that he couldn’t suppress it or hide it underneath the squawky undertone of his voice.
“Harry and I are done. I told him on Halloween.”
He looked up, interested. “How’d he take it?”
“With relief.” She sighed and shifted her feet. “We weren’t meant to be. He knew it; I knew it. We just didn’t know how to say it to each other.”
Draco’s heart thundered in his chest, pumping the alcohol through his veins faster. Or maybe that was his doing, the heat from his powers circulating through him without thought, without any effort on his part, just like Lovegood said it could.
“I’m glad,” he said, his voice dark, much deeper than it would have been had he been human at the moment.
“Are you?” Weasley stared at him, her expression searching. “What do you care about it? You can’t even antagonize Harry over it. It was a mutual decision.”
He wanted to laugh at himself and his self-pitying thoughts concerning the loneliness of the upcoming Christmas holiday earlier. The denial was impossible to continue in the face of Weasley’s wide brown eyes and the hope he thought he saw there. Draco wasn’t fond of her. No, he had moved far beyond fond into new and terrifying territory.
Before Draco could stop himself, words spilled out of his beak, lubricated by the alcohol. “I don’t care about Potter. I care about you.”
Her cheeks reddened, and Draco knew her ears would be even darker underneath her knit hat.
Closing her eyes with a grimace that resembled pain, she said, “That’s the bond talking.”
“It’s not.” He moved closer, taking her glass out of her hand and setting it on the nearby crenel. “I’m drawn to you, and I understand why now, but the bond doesn’t dictate my heart.”
She could have stepped away from him if she really wanted to. He was close now, but not so close that she couldn’t escape. The troublesome muscle that resided within his chest pounded, the sound loud in Draco’s ears.
“I’ve been so cruel to you,” she said, her voice cracking, her eyes remaining shut. “I know exactly what it’s like to not be in control of myself, to be afraid of what I am and what I’ve done. It was pure selfishness that made me keep seeing you when I knew you couldn’t control yourself around me. I’m so sorry for making things difficult and confusing.”
“The only thing that confuses me is whether or not you feel the same way about me as I feel about you.”
She looked at him. Draco held his breath while he waited for her response, his attention split between her luminous eyes and her mouth, which he so desperately wanted to kiss.
One of her hands rose to his face, her fingers brushing his beak and then cupping his cheek.
He had been practicing since Lovegood gave him that advice by the lake. For the last few weeks, he’d spent his free moments exploring the limits of his instincts. The practice had paid off enough that it was easy for Draco to keep the wings and claws out while transforming his Veela face back into his human one.
Weasley’s brow creased. “You don’t have to do that with me.”
“I know, but I want to kiss you with my own lips,” Draco replied before he tilted her chin up with a gentle, taloned finger and placed his mouth over hers.
As soon as their lips touched, an inferno came to life inside Draco. This time he was too overwhelmed to cull it or guide it, so he let it scorch him and he relished the burn.
Weasley ran her gloved hands along his chest, reaching behind him to explore his back and pull him even closer, until they were flush against each other, he half-dressed and she bundled up in her winter clothes. A groan of frustration escaped her lips and Draco swallowed it, sending a thrill down Draco’s spine and making his wings flare open.
A high-pitched scream pierced the night, and Draco and Weasley sprang apart in alarm.
Breaths heaving, they turned to find they were not alone on the battlement any longer. Padma Patil pressed herself against the wall of the tower, eyes wide open in fright, her wand drawn.
“I knew it! I always knew you were a monster!” she cried.
“Padma, please, we can explain,” Weasley said.
“No! What is there to explain? I’ve been trying to warn everyone about him for months because they seem to have forgotten what he’s done. The proof is right in front of me, and everyone should know!”
Draco’s mouth was dry now, his hands shaking as he raised them in defense. He tried to shift back into his human form to help de-escalate the situation, but he was frozen. The power he had controlled so easily a few minutes ago was now locked up inside him. He remained stuck in this half-Veela, half-human body.
Patil was sobbing now, her wand shaking as she swung it back and forth between Weasley and Draco.
Draco’s fear ratcheted up every time the wand stopped in front of Weasley. His left wing flexed slowly, attempting to shield her from view.
“I can’t believe you would be with him, Ginny!” Patil said as tears streamed down her face. “After everything we’ve been through because of him and his family! You don’t know what it was like this summer, when Parvati found out about Lavender. You don’t know what it was like to see your sister so broken because she hadn’t been there to help her best friend.”
“I do know what that’s like!” Weasley said, her voice hitching.
Draco couldn’t look away from Patil and her wand, but Weasley’s tears were obvious in her heavy breathing and stilted words.
“I lost my brother, too!” she continued. Then she moved forward, stepping around Draco’s wing. She was trying to approach and console Patil the same way her brother, Potter, Longbottom, and Thomas had captured Finnigan in Hogsmeade.
Patil stopped swinging the wand back and forth and instead aimed it at the encroaching threat. Her hand steadied as Weasley drew closer.
“I lost Fred and Colin, and my family lost so many friends. I know what it’s like to watch my family grieve and not be able to help them.”
“Then why?” Patil asked, her voice savage as she turned her anger on Weasley. Her vicious expression and her red, swollen eyes made her look just as inhuman as Draco. “I wrote those messages so people would stay away from him, so they would punish him. Why would you ever let him touch you? Why would you kiss him?”
“You wrote the messages?” Draco asked. All this time he had assumed Finnigan was behind the painted warnings and Slytherin’s shattered hourglass because of what he’d seen on the grounds during the Sorting ceremony. Patil had been the culprit all along?
“Stop!” The wand swung back to Draco. “Don’t come any closer!”
“Padma, please,” Weasley begged.
“I said STOP!”
A bolt of light shot out of Patil’s wand. It happened almost in slow motion, but too fast for Draco to tell at whom the spell had been aimed. He turned, reaching for Weasley as she stared in horror at the oncoming attack. He managed to wrap his arms and his wings around her just before he was hit in the back. The force of the blast sent them over the parapet and falling through the sky.
Everything returned to normal speed when Weasley slipped out of his grasp and screamed. As if he was dreaming, he saw the snow-laden ground coming closer, saw her body smashing into the compact snow and heard the sickening thud of it in his mind as clearly as if it had already happened. He didn’t have time to think or be afraid. He had to act now.
As if she were a Snitch in a Quidditch match, Draco drew his arms and legs together, straightening his body and angling it towards the ground so that he sliced through the air instead of plunging like a rock. He managed to pick up enough speed to close the distance between them. Weasley’s arms flailed, reaching for him, and he grabbed onto one of her hands and jerked her up against his body. She scrambled for purchase, her gasps hot against his ear as she wrapped herself around him and secured her hold on his neck.
They continued to fall… fall… fall… The ground approached at breakneck speed… Draco opened his wings and they billowed like a parachute, stopping their fall suddenly enough to give them whiplash. The force of the wind strained the muscles of his back until he pulled himself upward, shooting straight up into the sky, completing a Wronski Feint without a broom. He stopped mid-air, his wings flapping to keep him aloft as both he and Weasley gathered their breaths.
A chorus of cheers sounded from the castle, and both Draco and Weasley craned their necks to see students’ heads peeking out of various windows, pointing at them and screaming to each other from differing levels.
“Draco! You’re flying!” Weasley breathed, returning her attention to the fact that they were hovering thirty feet in the air.
“I’m aware,” he said, but he was smiling widely, in relief at protecting her and evading death and in exultation at his success.
“How are you doing this?”
Draco didn’t have a straight answer. When they’d fallen, when he’d watched her slip out of his arms, the urge to protect her had taken over. As they had never done during flying practice, Draco and the wings had worked together to accomplish that goal.
“Instinct,” he said as he turned his shoulders and let the wind and the occasional flap of his wings carry them gently back to the ground. Weasley renewed her grip around his neck, which sent another thrill through him.
As they approached the front steps of the castle, more heads gathered in the windows, the amazement in their voices clear. Draco’s stomach sank at the realization that his secret was well and truly out. There was no hiding his wings or his identity now as he flapped two more times and landed feet-first in the snow.
He put Weasley down on shaky legs that refused to hold her.
“Just leave me here,” Weasley said, her breath heaving as if she was about to be sick. “I have no intentions of ever moving again.”
A clatter from the great oak doors revealed an army racing down the steps toward them, consisting of the Head Boy and Girl and the Headmistress and her Deputy Headmaster.
“Miss Weasley, are you quite all right!” Flitwick asked in alarm just as Granger fell to her knees next to her.
McGonagall stopped and placed her hands on her hips. “What happened here? Miss Weasley? Mr. Malfoy!”
“He flew, Professor,” Weasley answered, her voice weak. Just then, the contents of her stomach were dispelled through her mouth, landing in the snow and splattering on Flitwick’s robes.
“Miss Granger, please take Miss Weasley to the hospital wing at once!” McGonagall said, her voice stern in her concern.
Granger had already been in the process of helping Weasley to her feet.
As they passed Draco, the attentions of Macmillan, McGonagall, and Flitwick were drawn to the wings protruding from Draco’s back. The sight of his appendages either distracted them from the fact that Draco was standing in the December evening air shirtless or added to the absurdity of the scene.
“You too, Mr. Malfoy.” McGonagall’s voice shook with uncertainty. “To the hospital wing with you. We will continue our discussion after Madam Pomfrey looks you over.”
The block on Draco’s powers seemed to have been removed, because he suddenly had no trouble returning to his human form.
It was probably the shock from the whole ordeal that inspired his giddiness, but Draco treasured the sick expression on McGonagall’s face as she witnessed the wings shrinking and disappearing into his retreating back.
Ginny’s shoulder had been sprained when Malfoy grabbed her from the air, but she had been equipped with a sling and given a pain reliever. She would be good as new in a couple weeks as long as she did not over-extend her arm. Madam Pomfrey released Ginny and Malfoy into McGonagall’s care as soon as she ascertained that they had received no other lasting damage from their ordeal.
Two hours later, they left the headmistress’s office only to be met by a whole party of people:
Hermione, who was wringing her hands and pacing the width of the corridor. Luna and Neville talking quietly in front of a portrait. Parkinson, who had been glaring at the entrance to McGonagall’s office. Those four Ginny had expected to see. Unexpectedly, Parvati, looking very distressed, and Seamus, looking very angry, were also among the group.
They all stood at attention upon Ginny and Malfoy’s appearance from behind the stone gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the headmistress’s office. After a couple moments of silence, they all began throwing questions at them, the babble too confusing to decipher.
“Please, please! One at a time, please!” Ginny called.
Parvati rushed forward and began speaking in the lull caused by Ginny’s interruption.
“I’m so sorry, Ginny. Padma told me what she did. Professor McGonagall’s already spoken to her, and please don’t be angry with her. She did all of it for me, and it was wrong, but she’s sorry, I know she is!”
“If she’s so sorry, why isn’t she here groveling instead?” Malfoy seethed.
Ginny glanced at him to find his expression cold, his eyes flat, his brow and nose scrunched with utter derision. If looks could kill, his would freeze a person in place first so that frostbite could consume them whole. In contrast, his body heat began to rise in significant increments to be noticeable to Ginny through their robes, through her sling. She reached over and put a hand on his arm, hoping to help calm him, even though she knew her touch never had that effect. Her gesture of support could be the very gesture to make him shift into his Veela form, but it was a risk she had to take.
Malfoy clenched his teeth as he tore his eyes away from Parvati and focused on Ginny.
“She would have killed you,” he said, the timbre of his voice changing. Transforming. His anger was getting the better of him, and soon his lips would shift into the beak that went with the voice he’d just used.
A part of Ginny wondered if this was the bond between them talking. Was he angry because the magic that connected them couldn’t bear for the bond to break? Or because he truly cared about Ginny? There was so much still to learn about Malfoy as a Veela—and Malfoy as a man.
Parvati, clearly overwhelmed with emotion, burst into tears. Malfoy’s arm trembled beneath Ginny’s hand. Any moment now the Veela would come out, and though his dual-identity would be impossible to hide after tonight’s heroics, this still wasn’t an appropriate time or place to introduce Ginny’s friends to the creature underneath his skin.
Ginny removed her hand and placed it high on Malfoy’s back, stroking reassuringly between each shoulder blade where his wings would protrude in his Veela form.
“Your father would have killed me, too, but I don’t blame you for that. And you would have killed Dumbledore, if you could have, on the very same tower. But your father didn’t succeed, and neither did you, and neither did Padma.”
She kept her voice low and soothing, like she had months ago when rescuing the injured Augurey in a Care of Magical Creatures lesson.
“What Padma did isn’t Parvati’s fault. And we can’t blame Padma for being scared or angry, can we? Can you understand how desperate she must have felt?”
Second by second, the tension in his body began to relax until Malfoy nodded at Ginny as if to say he was in control of himself again.
When she turned back to the gathered group, there were a lot of wide-eyed stares and some gazes averted in discomfort. Parvati couldn’t quell her blubbering, and it was the only sound in the corridor.
“I’m just so sorry,” she said. “I’d give anything to take back what she did.”
“You don’t have to—” Ginny began to say, but Malfoy ushered her past Parvati, but not without stopping to offer her a warning.
“Your sister only saw half of what I am. Both of you better pray you never see me at full power. You will if you ever come near me or Ginny again.”
The color drained from Parvati’s face, and she turned and fled down the corridor.
“Parvati—!” Ginny turned, torn between going after Parvati and castigating Malfoy for terrorizing her, but he wouldn’t remove his hand from her back, and she could feel the pinpricks of his burgeoning talons through her clothes. Suddenly, her energy began to flag. The events of the evening had caught up with her well over an hour ago, and the painkiller she’d taken for her shoulder was wearing off. Patching things up with Parvati would have to wait until tomorrow, after a night of much needed rest. Or maybe the day after. Possibly after Christmas hols.
“Was that necessary?” Seamus asked.
Malfoy shoved past Neville, Luna, Hermione, and Parkinson without stopping, but Seamus followed behind, his voice rising in frustration.
“Does it feel good to frighten girls with your crazy eyes and possessed voice?”
Malfoy spun on his heel to face Seamus, and Ginny, still in Malfoy’s grasp, was getting dizzy from all the movement.
“You forget, I’ve seen the full of you. No matter how much I drink, I can’t forget what I saw. You must love—”
Malfoy put a taloned hand on Seamus’s chest and shoved hard enough to send him sprawling against a wall, the breath knocked out of him.
“Malfoy, please don’t,” Ginny said. Her voice was weak with exhaustion.
Malfoy spun in a circle, meeting the eyes of each person who had waited for them outside of the headmistress’s office, waiting to judge, to interrogate, or whatever it was that had brought them to this corridor tonight.
“Let me make one thing clear,” he said, addressing the group as a whole, even Seamus, who hadn’t fled like Parvati but kept his distance. “I jumped off a tower to save Ginny, not because I’m a nice man, but because the thought of existing without her is like… like….” He shook his head, trying to find words.
Ginny swallowed compulsively to loosen her throat, which had grown so tight at the sudden appearance of despair on Malfoy’s face. The rage had receded as quickly as it had been stoked to life, replaced with utter desolation at the mere thought of a future without Ginny in it. She blinked quickly to dispel an onslaught of tears. Was this the bond? Or was this her? She had to know.
“Like sitting a little too closely to a fire, so closely you can feel your skin begin to burn. But you can’t move away because not only is that fire keeping you warm, it’s the only thing keeping you alive. A life without Ginny would be like someone dousing that fire with ice cold water, extinguishing it before you’re ready, and then feeling colder than you did before the fire came to life.”
When Malfoy looked up, he met everyone’s eyes again. Everyone’s except Ginny’s. “She’s the fire. Don’t you get it? The thought of her flame going out….” He shuddered, his entire body wracked with a tremendous shiver. “I would do anything to keep her flame alive. I’ll scare whoever I have to scare. I’ll threaten whoever I have to threaten.” He looked at Seamus. “Frightening Patil didn’t feel good. It felt necessary.”
And now—finally—he looked at Ginny. “And I will not apologize for it.”
At his declaration, Ginny could do nothing but shake her head in agreement. At least, until the niggling fear that had burrowed inside her during their last Hogsmeade visit made itself known, and she quietly said, “What about Parkinson?”
“Me?” Parkinson seemed shocked to be acknowledged.
Ginny’s face heated all the way to the tips of her ears. “I thought… well, I guess I assumed that you and Malfoy….”
Now that she’d voiced her worry aloud, it felt insecure and ridiculous. Malfoy hadn’t made any declarations about how necessary Parkinson was to him. He’d said those things about Ginny. He’d jumped off a building without knowing if he could fly... for Ginny.
As Ginny’s meaning became clear, laughter burst out of Parkinson, as raucous as hyena cackles. “You think I am Draco’s mate? Me?” She laughed some more as if she couldn’t help herself.
“You’re not affected by his charm, just like me. I thought—”
“You have nothing to fear from me, Weasley.” Parkinson’s laughter subsided, but an amused smile still lingered on her lips and in the tears of mirth that sparkled at the corners of her eyes. “Granger said it herself, didn’t she? The charm is activated by sexual attraction, and as much as I’m sure it disappoints Draco, I am not sexually attracted to him. Or men at all. In fact, I’m partial to bushy-haired know-it-alls with a penchant for research.”
“You are?” Ginny, Hermione, and Malfoy said at the same time.
“But I’m with Ron!” Hermione added, her cheeks flushing with color.
Parkinson shrugged, her smile stiffening, the mirth in her eyes diminishing. “I’m aware. Luckily, I’m not a Veela. I can handle my feelings being denied.”
Everyone was staring, and Malfoy… his expression was one of faint distaste. “Granger?” he said in disbelief.
Ginny smacked him with her good arm at the same time Parkinson’s head nodded jerkily and she began to back away.
“I think I’m done here. We’ll catch up later.” She wrapped her arms around herself for just a moment before dropping them to her sides and striding off down the corridor, her head held high.
It didn’t escape Ginny’s notice that Hermione watched Parkinson’s retreat, brow furrowed in thought. Ginny was not surprised when Hermione looked back at her and said, “I just came to hear what the Headmistress had to say. But we can talk later, can’t we?”
“Of course,” Ginny replied.
Hermione left in the same direction Parkinson had gone. A moment later, Luna followed her without an explanation for her departure, only waving at Ginny and Malfoy in dismissal.
“Is that what you are, then? A Veela?” Seamus asked, eyes wide in shock.
Ginny jumped. She’d forgotten Neville and Seamus were still there.
Malfoy’s scowl grew even more severe, but Seamus kept talking. “I wondered. I told Dean what I saw that night during the Sorting Ceremony, and he said I was too shit-faced to know what I saw. I wanted to say something every time I ran into you, but I thought I’d made it all up.”
“Congratulations. You didn’t.”
Seamus squared up with Malfoy, and Ginny shifted her body, ready to put herself between the two before they could put hands on each other.
“I don’t blame Padma for trying to expose you. She was right all along. I don’t need to be drunk to see the monster you are.” He turned to Ginny, his glare making her flinch. “I drink because I can’t forget what last year was like without Dean, wondering if he was okay, if he’d even survive. Malfoy was a part of that, so I don’t understand this, Ginny. Why him?”
Malfoy tensed next to her, but he didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. She could feel the tension in him, feel the way he held himself together, not only by maintaining his human form, but by refraining from attacking Seamus for his cheek in asking such a question.
Neville watched her, too, eyes wary. He’d spent the last few weeks helping to research male Veela, ever since he’d been filled in on Malfoy’s secret after Luna found out. He knew Ginny was Malfoy’s mate, but she couldn’t blame him for being curious about why she helped him, why she accepted him.
“I don’t know,” Ginny said, voice soft. “It started out as fascination. Curiosity. Intellectual interest. It grew into something more.”
She didn’t know what this was, why she was attracted to him despite everything he’d done before and during the war. Ginny would have to come to terms with that if she wanted to pursue this with him—whatever this was.
There was something about the creature within him, something Ginny couldn’t deny appealed to her. She thought of the intensity in his eyes when he looked at her, the tightly coiled tension that he kept leashed in her presence, the way she’d felt in their first Potions class together when he’d sat down next to her, unable to sit anywhere else except the seat to her direct right. That kind of attention from Draco Malfoy might have sent another girl running, but Ginny had sensed the danger and had been intrigued by it instead.
She recalled the expression that transformed his face for a split-second every time he’d seen those messages painted on the walls of Hogwarts, the dismay and terror. Not anger. Fear. He’d never retaliated, not even when Padma revealed herself as the author of those messages. His priority had been Ginny’s safety, not revenge.
Every time he’d failed at flying, falling out of the air and into the water, he’d always returned the next day or the next weekend for another attempt. There was something admirable about him failing and trying again, never giving up even though she knew he had been tempted to on several occasions, even though she knew he would have in the past.
And then there was what she’d told him before their first flying lesson, about how no one had ever asked Ginny for help before. She had never felt needed the way Malfoy needed her, whether he needed her to help him figure out what and who he was, needed her to help him learn to fly, or needed her near him because the bond between them deemed them compatible and demanded her proximity.
But none of that explained why fascination had turned into attraction, why his Veela intensity had never frightened her, why she’d craved his kiss over common sense. Maybe that’s why she was his mate. Maybe the magic that made Ginny charming to Malfoy found something inexplicable about her that was perfect for him. Because the Veela charm didn’t work on her, it was up to Ginny to explore for herself whether he was perfect for her as well.
She’d locked gazes with Malfoy the whole time she’d been considering her response further, and she only looked away when Seamus huffed in annoyance. Maybe at her lack of an answer, maybe at the gross way she and Malfoy had been staring at each other.
Her cheeks flushed as she looked at Seamus and Neville. “Why Malfoy? Because I chose him. If that’s not a good enough answer for you, then I’m sorry, but it’s the only answer I have.”
She turned back to Malfoy, who had inhaled sharply at her words, though his expression remained blank to the untrained eye. “Until he gives me a new reason to change my mind, I choose him.”
He swayed toward her, but he maintained control. Ginny couldn’t have that, not after the declaration she’d just made. She took his hand, her heart so much lighter than it had been since the kiss on the Astronomy Tower. Tugging him closer, she lifted up on her toes to press her mouth to his—
“Gross,” Seamus said with a noticeable tone of disgust. “Can’t you wait until we’ve gone to do that?”
Ginny paid no mind to their audience once Malfoy’s mouth slanted against hers, his arms wrapping around her. The thrill that went through her as he deepened her kiss and tightened his hold felt a lot like falling.
Luckily, Malfoy was there to catch her.
Draco reread his letter one more time before folding it up and sealing it with wax. His mother deserved to know the information Fleur Weasley had obtained from the Ministry about his heritage. Ever since he’d returned to the Slytherin common room after dropping Weasley off at the Gryffindor portrait hole, he’d pored over his mother’s letters in search of some sign that she had known about his Veela grandmother. After rereading each letter twice, he was fairly certain that Narcissa Malfoy had been kept in the dark about the impure bloodline into which she had married.
Draco didn’t know what his information would do, if it would impact her relationship with his father in any way, but he could not let her continue to fret over Draco’s mysterious condition needlessly. At least that one worry could be assuaged by his news.
He planned to go to the Owlery before class the next morning to have the letter sent off. Tonight he needed rest. The last six hours had felt as long as days, and his whole body ached, particularly his arms and shoulders, from carrying himself and Weasley on wings unaccustomed to flying.
He groaned as he climbed into bed, the soft mattress and cloud-like duvet heaven on his sore body. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, as suddenly and violently as he and Weasley had fallen off the Astronomy Tower.
He landed amongst flames—the nightmare that had plagued him since his birthday. Automatically he flinched away from the fire that surrounded him, but he was unable to avoid the fire that consumed him. Hands rising to inspect himself, he realized that this time he wasn’t burning. The flames tickled his hands with the same sensation he’d felt by the lake when he’d conjured fireballs for the first time. There was no agony, no baking or peeling or melting skin.
Draco felt right at home.
He glanced around at his surroundings and quickly became aware of the beast he’d never seen before, still hiding within the blaze. As soon as he acknowledged its presence, all of the flames disappeared, revealing the sitting room at Malfoy Manor and a Veela standing in the middle of it, her wings tucked against her back.
She turned, and Draco gasped at the inhuman beauty, the beaked face, the black eyes. Is this how Pansy saw him when he transformed? Weasley? Without the Veela charm to compel them, how had they ever had the courage to stay with him through the many transformations they had witnessed?
The Veela suddenly shifted, her wings flaring and then disappearing as if in a flash of light. Draco blinked and in her place stood a woman—the Veela’s own human form. There was something about her face that was familiar. Perhaps the angular jaw? The pointed nose?
“Are you… my grandmother?” Draco asked, his voice raw and squawky, though he was fairly certain he was still human.
She nodded. A smile crossed her lips as she raised a hand and placed it on her heart. Holding the gesture, she bent at the waist in a shallow bow. Draco returned her greeting, understanding it as gratitude, but for what he didn’t truly comprehend.
As he straightened from his bow, a wash of sadness overcame him for the young life that had been taken, the grandmother he would never know. Would the Malfoys have been different people if this woman had raised Lucius instead of the woman Abraxas Malfoy had passed off as Lucius’s mother? There was no way to know.
Suddenly, she was standing right in front of him, smiling with sharp, vicious teeth. She touched Draco’s heart as if to say, I live in you.
Now that he could control his powers, maybe living in her memory was not such a bad way to live his life.
She nodded again and disappeared in a burst of flame, like a phoenix.
He slept peacefully through the night. When he awoke, refreshed for the first time in months—perhaps even years—the thought occurred to him that flying and falling were basically the same act. The only difference between them was the landing.
And Draco planned to land on his feet.
end
Alone was the last thing Draco needed to be.
When he’d left the library, he had wandered the halls of Hogwarts searching for a distraction.
He’d peeked his head inside the Room of Hidden Things, but after passing in front of it three times while thinking of what he needed, he’d found only charred junk inside the room in which Crabbe had been killed. Maybe his thoughts had not been clear enough or loud enough to produce a better result. Or maybe the room was broken, the magic forever sundered by the Fiendfyre Crabbe had summoned.
He trudged through the snow using his power of heat to raise his body temperature and keep himself warm. When he’d ended up at the Quidditch pitch, he’d turned right around and gone straight back to the castle. Flying— No. For as long as Draco remained attracted to Weasley, she and the act would always be tied together. He couldn’t fly without her.
At one point he’d stopped in the middle of a corridor and considered seeking out Finnigan. He didn’t think the drunk would be willing to share his drink with a monster, so he’d gone on, continuing his search. Draco was certain that Finnigan was the one painting the messages all over the castle. If that was true, then Draco was the last person with whom Finnigan would ever share his stash of contraband booze.
After an hour or so, Draco had ended up on top of the Astronomy Tower. And lo and behold—Weasley was waiting for him on the battlement. With alcohol. Draco could have kissed her.
He shuddered, the thought too pleasant for his dour mood. Now that the idea was in his head, he couldn’t help but play it to its ultimate conclusion and imagine her lips pressing against his. What would they feel like? What would they taste like? He would never know because she would never choose him.
Between the stairs and the battlement, Draco transformed, this skin feeling more comfortable around her than the one he was born in. He didn’t remember removing his robe or dropping it carelessly on the floor. The blast of frigid air didn’t faze him as he stepped outside. Nothing mattered anymore, not his clothes or his secret. Nothing except her.
The light from the setting sun cast Weasley in hues of orange, electrifying her hair. She approached him, raising a bottle of good old Ogden’s in greeting.
“I didn’t know the kitchens stocked this,” Draco said as she poured some of the honey-golden liquid into a glass.
“They don’t." She smiled. “This was a birthday gift from Ron.”
Draco opened his beak wide and poured the alcohol down his throat, letting it warm him from the inside. He could already do that himself, but it felt better when he didn’t have to concentrate on maintaining the warmth. “Ah,” he said. “And you’ve decided to share your gift with me?”
Weasley set the bottle at her feet and leaned against the parapet, sipping her own drink lightly. She shrugged. “Why not? Who else should I share it with?”
“Potter maybe.” He hated how petulant he sounded, hated that he couldn’t suppress it or hide it underneath the squawky undertone of his voice.
“Harry and I are done. I told him on Halloween.”
He looked up, interested. “How’d he take it?”
“With relief.” She sighed and shifted her feet. “We weren’t meant to be. He knew it; I knew it. We just didn’t know how to say it to each other.”
Draco’s heart thundered in his chest, pumping the alcohol through his veins faster. Or maybe that was his doing, the heat from his powers circulating through him without thought, without any effort on his part, just like Lovegood said it could.
“I’m glad,” he said, his voice dark, much deeper than it would have been had he been human at the moment.
“Are you?” Weasley stared at him, her expression searching. “What do you care about it? You can’t even antagonize Harry over it. It was a mutual decision.”
He wanted to laugh at himself and his self-pitying thoughts concerning the loneliness of the upcoming Christmas holiday earlier. The denial was impossible to continue in the face of Weasley’s wide brown eyes and the hope he thought he saw there. Draco wasn’t fond of her. No, he had moved far beyond fond into new and terrifying territory.
Before Draco could stop himself, words spilled out of his beak, lubricated by the alcohol. “I don’t care about Potter. I care about you.”
Her cheeks reddened, and Draco knew her ears would be even darker underneath her knit hat.
Closing her eyes with a grimace that resembled pain, she said, “That’s the bond talking.”
“It’s not.” He moved closer, taking her glass out of her hand and setting it on the nearby crenel. “I’m drawn to you, and I understand why now, but the bond doesn’t dictate my heart.”
She could have stepped away from him if she really wanted to. He was close now, but not so close that she couldn’t escape. The troublesome muscle that resided within his chest pounded, the sound loud in Draco’s ears.
“I’ve been so cruel to you,” she said, her voice cracking, her eyes remaining shut. “I know exactly what it’s like to not be in control of myself, to be afraid of what I am and what I’ve done. It was pure selfishness that made me keep seeing you when I knew you couldn’t control yourself around me. I’m so sorry for making things difficult and confusing.”
“The only thing that confuses me is whether or not you feel the same way about me as I feel about you.”
She looked at him. Draco held his breath while he waited for her response, his attention split between her luminous eyes and her mouth, which he so desperately wanted to kiss.
One of her hands rose to his face, her fingers brushing his beak and then cupping his cheek.
He had been practicing since Lovegood gave him that advice by the lake. For the last few weeks, he’d spent his free moments exploring the limits of his instincts. The practice had paid off enough that it was easy for Draco to keep the wings and claws out while transforming his Veela face back into his human one.
Weasley’s brow creased. “You don’t have to do that with me.”
“I know, but I want to kiss you with my own lips,” Draco replied before he tilted her chin up with a gentle, taloned finger and placed his mouth over hers.
As soon as their lips touched, an inferno came to life inside Draco. This time he was too overwhelmed to cull it or guide it, so he let it scorch him and he relished the burn.
Weasley ran her gloved hands along his chest, reaching behind him to explore his back and pull him even closer, until they were flush against each other, he half-dressed and she bundled up in her winter clothes. A groan of frustration escaped her lips and Draco swallowed it, sending a thrill down Draco’s spine and making his wings flare open.
A high-pitched scream pierced the night, and Draco and Weasley sprang apart in alarm.
Breaths heaving, they turned to find they were not alone on the battlement any longer. Padma Patil pressed herself against the wall of the tower, eyes wide open in fright, her wand drawn.
“I knew it! I always knew you were a monster!” she cried.
“Padma, please, we can explain,” Weasley said.
“No! What is there to explain? I’ve been trying to warn everyone about him for months because they seem to have forgotten what he’s done. The proof is right in front of me, and everyone should know!”
Draco’s mouth was dry now, his hands shaking as he raised them in defense. He tried to shift back into his human form to help de-escalate the situation, but he was frozen. The power he had controlled so easily a few minutes ago was now locked up inside him. He remained stuck in this half-Veela, half-human body.
Patil was sobbing now, her wand shaking as she swung it back and forth between Weasley and Draco.
Draco’s fear ratcheted up every time the wand stopped in front of Weasley. His left wing flexed slowly, attempting to shield her from view.
“I can’t believe you would be with him, Ginny!” Patil said as tears streamed down her face. “After everything we’ve been through because of him and his family! You don’t know what it was like this summer, when Parvati found out about Lavender. You don’t know what it was like to see your sister so broken because she hadn’t been there to help her best friend.”
“I do know what that’s like!” Weasley said, her voice hitching.
Draco couldn’t look away from Patil and her wand, but Weasley’s tears were obvious in her heavy breathing and stilted words.
“I lost my brother, too!” she continued. Then she moved forward, stepping around Draco’s wing. She was trying to approach and console Patil the same way her brother, Potter, Longbottom, and Thomas had captured Finnigan in Hogsmeade.
Patil stopped swinging the wand back and forth and instead aimed it at the encroaching threat. Her hand steadied as Weasley drew closer.
“I lost Fred and Colin, and my family lost so many friends. I know what it’s like to watch my family grieve and not be able to help them.”
“Then why?” Patil asked, her voice savage as she turned her anger on Weasley. Her vicious expression and her red, swollen eyes made her look just as inhuman as Draco. “I wrote those messages so people would stay away from him, so they would punish him. Why would you ever let him touch you? Why would you kiss him?”
“You wrote the messages?” Draco asked. All this time he had assumed Finnigan was behind the painted warnings and Slytherin’s shattered hourglass because of what he’d seen on the grounds during the Sorting ceremony. Patil had been the culprit all along?
“Stop!” The wand swung back to Draco. “Don’t come any closer!”
“Padma, please,” Weasley begged.
“I said STOP!”
A bolt of light shot out of Patil’s wand. It happened almost in slow motion, but too fast for Draco to tell at whom the spell had been aimed. He turned, reaching for Weasley as she stared in horror at the oncoming attack. He managed to wrap his arms and his wings around her just before he was hit in the back. The force of the blast sent them over the parapet and falling through the sky.
Everything returned to normal speed when Weasley slipped out of his grasp and screamed. As if he was dreaming, he saw the snow-laden ground coming closer, saw her body smashing into the compact snow and heard the sickening thud of it in his mind as clearly as if it had already happened. He didn’t have time to think or be afraid. He had to act now.
As if she were a Snitch in a Quidditch match, Draco drew his arms and legs together, straightening his body and angling it towards the ground so that he sliced through the air instead of plunging like a rock. He managed to pick up enough speed to close the distance between them. Weasley’s arms flailed, reaching for him, and he grabbed onto one of her hands and jerked her up against his body. She scrambled for purchase, her gasps hot against his ear as she wrapped herself around him and secured her hold on his neck.
They continued to fall… fall… fall… The ground approached at breakneck speed… Draco opened his wings and they billowed like a parachute, stopping their fall suddenly enough to give them whiplash. The force of the wind strained the muscles of his back until he pulled himself upward, shooting straight up into the sky, completing a Wronski Feint without a broom. He stopped mid-air, his wings flapping to keep him aloft as both he and Weasley gathered their breaths.
A chorus of cheers sounded from the castle, and both Draco and Weasley craned their necks to see students’ heads peeking out of various windows, pointing at them and screaming to each other from differing levels.
“Draco! You’re flying!” Weasley breathed, returning her attention to the fact that they were hovering thirty feet in the air.
“I’m aware,” he said, but he was smiling widely, in relief at protecting her and evading death and in exultation at his success.
“How are you doing this?”
Draco didn’t have a straight answer. When they’d fallen, when he’d watched her slip out of his arms, the urge to protect her had taken over. As they had never done during flying practice, Draco and the wings had worked together to accomplish that goal.
“Instinct,” he said as he turned his shoulders and let the wind and the occasional flap of his wings carry them gently back to the ground. Weasley renewed her grip around his neck, which sent another thrill through him.
As they approached the front steps of the castle, more heads gathered in the windows, the amazement in their voices clear. Draco’s stomach sank at the realization that his secret was well and truly out. There was no hiding his wings or his identity now as he flapped two more times and landed feet-first in the snow.
He put Weasley down on shaky legs that refused to hold her.
“Just leave me here,” Weasley said, her breath heaving as if she was about to be sick. “I have no intentions of ever moving again.”
A clatter from the great oak doors revealed an army racing down the steps toward them, consisting of the Head Boy and Girl and the Headmistress and her Deputy Headmaster.
“Miss Weasley, are you quite all right!” Flitwick asked in alarm just as Granger fell to her knees next to her.
McGonagall stopped and placed her hands on her hips. “What happened here? Miss Weasley? Mr. Malfoy!”
“He flew, Professor,” Weasley answered, her voice weak. Just then, the contents of her stomach were dispelled through her mouth, landing in the snow and splattering on Flitwick’s robes.
“Miss Granger, please take Miss Weasley to the hospital wing at once!” McGonagall said, her voice stern in her concern.
Granger had already been in the process of helping Weasley to her feet.
As they passed Draco, the attentions of Macmillan, McGonagall, and Flitwick were drawn to the wings protruding from Draco’s back. The sight of his appendages either distracted them from the fact that Draco was standing in the December evening air shirtless or added to the absurdity of the scene.
“You too, Mr. Malfoy.” McGonagall’s voice shook with uncertainty. “To the hospital wing with you. We will continue our discussion after Madam Pomfrey looks you over.”
The block on Draco’s powers seemed to have been removed, because he suddenly had no trouble returning to his human form.
It was probably the shock from the whole ordeal that inspired his giddiness, but Draco treasured the sick expression on McGonagall’s face as she witnessed the wings shrinking and disappearing into his retreating back.
Ginny’s shoulder had been sprained when Malfoy grabbed her from the air, but she had been equipped with a sling and given a pain reliever. She would be good as new in a couple weeks as long as she did not over-extend her arm. Madam Pomfrey released Ginny and Malfoy into McGonagall’s care as soon as she ascertained that they had received no other lasting damage from their ordeal.
Two hours later, they left the headmistress’s office only to be met by a whole party of people:
Hermione, who was wringing her hands and pacing the width of the corridor. Luna and Neville talking quietly in front of a portrait. Parkinson, who had been glaring at the entrance to McGonagall’s office. Those four Ginny had expected to see. Unexpectedly, Parvati, looking very distressed, and Seamus, looking very angry, were also among the group.
They all stood at attention upon Ginny and Malfoy’s appearance from behind the stone gargoyle that guarded the entrance to the headmistress’s office. After a couple moments of silence, they all began throwing questions at them, the babble too confusing to decipher.
“Please, please! One at a time, please!” Ginny called.
Parvati rushed forward and began speaking in the lull caused by Ginny’s interruption.
“I’m so sorry, Ginny. Padma told me what she did. Professor McGonagall’s already spoken to her, and please don’t be angry with her. She did all of it for me, and it was wrong, but she’s sorry, I know she is!”
“If she’s so sorry, why isn’t she here groveling instead?” Malfoy seethed.
Ginny glanced at him to find his expression cold, his eyes flat, his brow and nose scrunched with utter derision. If looks could kill, his would freeze a person in place first so that frostbite could consume them whole. In contrast, his body heat began to rise in significant increments to be noticeable to Ginny through their robes, through her sling. She reached over and put a hand on his arm, hoping to help calm him, even though she knew her touch never had that effect. Her gesture of support could be the very gesture to make him shift into his Veela form, but it was a risk she had to take.
Malfoy clenched his teeth as he tore his eyes away from Parvati and focused on Ginny.
“She would have killed you,” he said, the timbre of his voice changing. Transforming. His anger was getting the better of him, and soon his lips would shift into the beak that went with the voice he’d just used.
A part of Ginny wondered if this was the bond between them talking. Was he angry because the magic that connected them couldn’t bear for the bond to break? Or because he truly cared about Ginny? There was so much still to learn about Malfoy as a Veela—and Malfoy as a man.
Parvati, clearly overwhelmed with emotion, burst into tears. Malfoy’s arm trembled beneath Ginny’s hand. Any moment now the Veela would come out, and though his dual-identity would be impossible to hide after tonight’s heroics, this still wasn’t an appropriate time or place to introduce Ginny’s friends to the creature underneath his skin.
Ginny removed her hand and placed it high on Malfoy’s back, stroking reassuringly between each shoulder blade where his wings would protrude in his Veela form.
“Your father would have killed me, too, but I don’t blame you for that. And you would have killed Dumbledore, if you could have, on the very same tower. But your father didn’t succeed, and neither did you, and neither did Padma.”
She kept her voice low and soothing, like she had months ago when rescuing the injured Augurey in a Care of Magical Creatures lesson.
“What Padma did isn’t Parvati’s fault. And we can’t blame Padma for being scared or angry, can we? Can you understand how desperate she must have felt?”
Second by second, the tension in his body began to relax until Malfoy nodded at Ginny as if to say he was in control of himself again.
When she turned back to the gathered group, there were a lot of wide-eyed stares and some gazes averted in discomfort. Parvati couldn’t quell her blubbering, and it was the only sound in the corridor.
“I’m just so sorry,” she said. “I’d give anything to take back what she did.”
“You don’t have to—” Ginny began to say, but Malfoy ushered her past Parvati, but not without stopping to offer her a warning.
“Your sister only saw half of what I am. Both of you better pray you never see me at full power. You will if you ever come near me or Ginny again.”
The color drained from Parvati’s face, and she turned and fled down the corridor.
“Parvati—!” Ginny turned, torn between going after Parvati and castigating Malfoy for terrorizing her, but he wouldn’t remove his hand from her back, and she could feel the pinpricks of his burgeoning talons through her clothes. Suddenly, her energy began to flag. The events of the evening had caught up with her well over an hour ago, and the painkiller she’d taken for her shoulder was wearing off. Patching things up with Parvati would have to wait until tomorrow, after a night of much needed rest. Or maybe the day after. Possibly after Christmas hols.
“Was that necessary?” Seamus asked.
Malfoy shoved past Neville, Luna, Hermione, and Parkinson without stopping, but Seamus followed behind, his voice rising in frustration.
“Does it feel good to frighten girls with your crazy eyes and possessed voice?”
Malfoy spun on his heel to face Seamus, and Ginny, still in Malfoy’s grasp, was getting dizzy from all the movement.
“You forget, I’ve seen the full of you. No matter how much I drink, I can’t forget what I saw. You must love—”
Malfoy put a taloned hand on Seamus’s chest and shoved hard enough to send him sprawling against a wall, the breath knocked out of him.
“Malfoy, please don’t,” Ginny said. Her voice was weak with exhaustion.
Malfoy spun in a circle, meeting the eyes of each person who had waited for them outside of the headmistress’s office, waiting to judge, to interrogate, or whatever it was that had brought them to this corridor tonight.
“Let me make one thing clear,” he said, addressing the group as a whole, even Seamus, who hadn’t fled like Parvati but kept his distance. “I jumped off a tower to save Ginny, not because I’m a nice man, but because the thought of existing without her is like… like….” He shook his head, trying to find words.
Ginny swallowed compulsively to loosen her throat, which had grown so tight at the sudden appearance of despair on Malfoy’s face. The rage had receded as quickly as it had been stoked to life, replaced with utter desolation at the mere thought of a future without Ginny in it. She blinked quickly to dispel an onslaught of tears. Was this the bond? Or was this her? She had to know.
“Like sitting a little too closely to a fire, so closely you can feel your skin begin to burn. But you can’t move away because not only is that fire keeping you warm, it’s the only thing keeping you alive. A life without Ginny would be like someone dousing that fire with ice cold water, extinguishing it before you’re ready, and then feeling colder than you did before the fire came to life.”
When Malfoy looked up, he met everyone’s eyes again. Everyone’s except Ginny’s. “She’s the fire. Don’t you get it? The thought of her flame going out….” He shuddered, his entire body wracked with a tremendous shiver. “I would do anything to keep her flame alive. I’ll scare whoever I have to scare. I’ll threaten whoever I have to threaten.” He looked at Seamus. “Frightening Patil didn’t feel good. It felt necessary.”
And now—finally—he looked at Ginny. “And I will not apologize for it.”
At his declaration, Ginny could do nothing but shake her head in agreement. At least, until the niggling fear that had burrowed inside her during their last Hogsmeade visit made itself known, and she quietly said, “What about Parkinson?”
“Me?” Parkinson seemed shocked to be acknowledged.
Ginny’s face heated all the way to the tips of her ears. “I thought… well, I guess I assumed that you and Malfoy….”
Now that she’d voiced her worry aloud, it felt insecure and ridiculous. Malfoy hadn’t made any declarations about how necessary Parkinson was to him. He’d said those things about Ginny. He’d jumped off a building without knowing if he could fly... for Ginny.
As Ginny’s meaning became clear, laughter burst out of Parkinson, as raucous as hyena cackles. “You think I am Draco’s mate? Me?” She laughed some more as if she couldn’t help herself.
“You’re not affected by his charm, just like me. I thought—”
“You have nothing to fear from me, Weasley.” Parkinson’s laughter subsided, but an amused smile still lingered on her lips and in the tears of mirth that sparkled at the corners of her eyes. “Granger said it herself, didn’t she? The charm is activated by sexual attraction, and as much as I’m sure it disappoints Draco, I am not sexually attracted to him. Or men at all. In fact, I’m partial to bushy-haired know-it-alls with a penchant for research.”
“You are?” Ginny, Hermione, and Malfoy said at the same time.
“But I’m with Ron!” Hermione added, her cheeks flushing with color.
Parkinson shrugged, her smile stiffening, the mirth in her eyes diminishing. “I’m aware. Luckily, I’m not a Veela. I can handle my feelings being denied.”
Everyone was staring, and Malfoy… his expression was one of faint distaste. “Granger?” he said in disbelief.
Ginny smacked him with her good arm at the same time Parkinson’s head nodded jerkily and she began to back away.
“I think I’m done here. We’ll catch up later.” She wrapped her arms around herself for just a moment before dropping them to her sides and striding off down the corridor, her head held high.
It didn’t escape Ginny’s notice that Hermione watched Parkinson’s retreat, brow furrowed in thought. Ginny was not surprised when Hermione looked back at her and said, “I just came to hear what the Headmistress had to say. But we can talk later, can’t we?”
“Of course,” Ginny replied.
Hermione left in the same direction Parkinson had gone. A moment later, Luna followed her without an explanation for her departure, only waving at Ginny and Malfoy in dismissal.
“Is that what you are, then? A Veela?” Seamus asked, eyes wide in shock.
Ginny jumped. She’d forgotten Neville and Seamus were still there.
Malfoy’s scowl grew even more severe, but Seamus kept talking. “I wondered. I told Dean what I saw that night during the Sorting Ceremony, and he said I was too shit-faced to know what I saw. I wanted to say something every time I ran into you, but I thought I’d made it all up.”
“Congratulations. You didn’t.”
Seamus squared up with Malfoy, and Ginny shifted her body, ready to put herself between the two before they could put hands on each other.
“I don’t blame Padma for trying to expose you. She was right all along. I don’t need to be drunk to see the monster you are.” He turned to Ginny, his glare making her flinch. “I drink because I can’t forget what last year was like without Dean, wondering if he was okay, if he’d even survive. Malfoy was a part of that, so I don’t understand this, Ginny. Why him?”
Malfoy tensed next to her, but he didn’t move, didn’t make a sound. She could feel the tension in him, feel the way he held himself together, not only by maintaining his human form, but by refraining from attacking Seamus for his cheek in asking such a question.
Neville watched her, too, eyes wary. He’d spent the last few weeks helping to research male Veela, ever since he’d been filled in on Malfoy’s secret after Luna found out. He knew Ginny was Malfoy’s mate, but she couldn’t blame him for being curious about why she helped him, why she accepted him.
“I don’t know,” Ginny said, voice soft. “It started out as fascination. Curiosity. Intellectual interest. It grew into something more.”
She didn’t know what this was, why she was attracted to him despite everything he’d done before and during the war. Ginny would have to come to terms with that if she wanted to pursue this with him—whatever this was.
There was something about the creature within him, something Ginny couldn’t deny appealed to her. She thought of the intensity in his eyes when he looked at her, the tightly coiled tension that he kept leashed in her presence, the way she’d felt in their first Potions class together when he’d sat down next to her, unable to sit anywhere else except the seat to her direct right. That kind of attention from Draco Malfoy might have sent another girl running, but Ginny had sensed the danger and had been intrigued by it instead.
She recalled the expression that transformed his face for a split-second every time he’d seen those messages painted on the walls of Hogwarts, the dismay and terror. Not anger. Fear. He’d never retaliated, not even when Padma revealed herself as the author of those messages. His priority had been Ginny’s safety, not revenge.
Every time he’d failed at flying, falling out of the air and into the water, he’d always returned the next day or the next weekend for another attempt. There was something admirable about him failing and trying again, never giving up even though she knew he had been tempted to on several occasions, even though she knew he would have in the past.
And then there was what she’d told him before their first flying lesson, about how no one had ever asked Ginny for help before. She had never felt needed the way Malfoy needed her, whether he needed her to help him figure out what and who he was, needed her to help him learn to fly, or needed her near him because the bond between them deemed them compatible and demanded her proximity.
But none of that explained why fascination had turned into attraction, why his Veela intensity had never frightened her, why she’d craved his kiss over common sense. Maybe that’s why she was his mate. Maybe the magic that made Ginny charming to Malfoy found something inexplicable about her that was perfect for him. Because the Veela charm didn’t work on her, it was up to Ginny to explore for herself whether he was perfect for her as well.
She’d locked gazes with Malfoy the whole time she’d been considering her response further, and she only looked away when Seamus huffed in annoyance. Maybe at her lack of an answer, maybe at the gross way she and Malfoy had been staring at each other.
Her cheeks flushed as she looked at Seamus and Neville. “Why Malfoy? Because I chose him. If that’s not a good enough answer for you, then I’m sorry, but it’s the only answer I have.”
She turned back to Malfoy, who had inhaled sharply at her words, though his expression remained blank to the untrained eye. “Until he gives me a new reason to change my mind, I choose him.”
He swayed toward her, but he maintained control. Ginny couldn’t have that, not after the declaration she’d just made. She took his hand, her heart so much lighter than it had been since the kiss on the Astronomy Tower. Tugging him closer, she lifted up on her toes to press her mouth to his—
“Gross,” Seamus said with a noticeable tone of disgust. “Can’t you wait until we’ve gone to do that?”
Ginny paid no mind to their audience once Malfoy’s mouth slanted against hers, his arms wrapping around her. The thrill that went through her as he deepened her kiss and tightened his hold felt a lot like falling.
Luckily, Malfoy was there to catch her.
Draco reread his letter one more time before folding it up and sealing it with wax. His mother deserved to know the information Fleur Weasley had obtained from the Ministry about his heritage. Ever since he’d returned to the Slytherin common room after dropping Weasley off at the Gryffindor portrait hole, he’d pored over his mother’s letters in search of some sign that she had known about his Veela grandmother. After rereading each letter twice, he was fairly certain that Narcissa Malfoy had been kept in the dark about the impure bloodline into which she had married.
Draco didn’t know what his information would do, if it would impact her relationship with his father in any way, but he could not let her continue to fret over Draco’s mysterious condition needlessly. At least that one worry could be assuaged by his news.
He planned to go to the Owlery before class the next morning to have the letter sent off. Tonight he needed rest. The last six hours had felt as long as days, and his whole body ached, particularly his arms and shoulders, from carrying himself and Weasley on wings unaccustomed to flying.
He groaned as he climbed into bed, the soft mattress and cloud-like duvet heaven on his sore body. It didn’t take long for him to fall asleep, as suddenly and violently as he and Weasley had fallen off the Astronomy Tower.
He landed amongst flames—the nightmare that had plagued him since his birthday. Automatically he flinched away from the fire that surrounded him, but he was unable to avoid the fire that consumed him. Hands rising to inspect himself, he realized that this time he wasn’t burning. The flames tickled his hands with the same sensation he’d felt by the lake when he’d conjured fireballs for the first time. There was no agony, no baking or peeling or melting skin.
Draco felt right at home.
He glanced around at his surroundings and quickly became aware of the beast he’d never seen before, still hiding within the blaze. As soon as he acknowledged its presence, all of the flames disappeared, revealing the sitting room at Malfoy Manor and a Veela standing in the middle of it, her wings tucked against her back.
She turned, and Draco gasped at the inhuman beauty, the beaked face, the black eyes. Is this how Pansy saw him when he transformed? Weasley? Without the Veela charm to compel them, how had they ever had the courage to stay with him through the many transformations they had witnessed?
The Veela suddenly shifted, her wings flaring and then disappearing as if in a flash of light. Draco blinked and in her place stood a woman—the Veela’s own human form. There was something about her face that was familiar. Perhaps the angular jaw? The pointed nose?
“Are you… my grandmother?” Draco asked, his voice raw and squawky, though he was fairly certain he was still human.
She nodded. A smile crossed her lips as she raised a hand and placed it on her heart. Holding the gesture, she bent at the waist in a shallow bow. Draco returned her greeting, understanding it as gratitude, but for what he didn’t truly comprehend.
As he straightened from his bow, a wash of sadness overcame him for the young life that had been taken, the grandmother he would never know. Would the Malfoys have been different people if this woman had raised Lucius instead of the woman Abraxas Malfoy had passed off as Lucius’s mother? There was no way to know.
Suddenly, she was standing right in front of him, smiling with sharp, vicious teeth. She touched Draco’s heart as if to say, I live in you.
Now that he could control his powers, maybe living in her memory was not such a bad way to live his life.
She nodded again and disappeared in a burst of flame, like a phoenix.
He slept peacefully through the night. When he awoke, refreshed for the first time in months—perhaps even years—the thought occurred to him that flying and falling were basically the same act. The only difference between them was the landing.
And Draco planned to land on his feet.
end
Author notes:
I of course meant to update this a lot sooner, and I didn't think rewriting the last chapter would take so long. But, you know, Corona didn't help. If anyone read this fic during the fic exchange in 2018, the last chapter isn't much different from the original last chapter. The only part that got a good rewrite was the section in the middle, and all I did was expand it a bit so it wouldn't feel so rushed and to better tie off some loose ends.
I've included the original prompt down below in case you want to see what I was working off of. As I mentioned during the exchange: I took a particular liberty with the prompt in the concept of Ginny being one of potentially many mates for Draco. It was important to me that Ginny have a choice in this, and that Draco have enough choice not to make Ginny feel pressured to be with him, which I think would happen if she were his ‘one’ and he could never have or want anyone else. Soulmate bonds don’t give anyone any choice, and while I do adore the trope despite the lack of choice, I had a hard time writing it myself, especially in a Hogwarts setting. And so we have Draco and Ginny choosing each other, as you’ve just read in this story. :)
I hope you enjoyed the ride! Thank you for reading!
Noelle's Prompt 3:
Basic premise: veela!AU—Draco Malfoy is livid when he discovers he has Veela blood on his eighteenth birthday. Especially since he already agreed to go back to Hogwarts for his 'eighth' year, at his mother's insistence. And when he spots Ginny Weasley back at school, he quickly realizes who his mate is. Of course.
Must haves: curious and sympathetic!Ginny, snarky but vulnerable!Draco, a solid Ginny/Hermione friendship, a solid Draco/Pansy friendship
No-no's: Trio bashing, HP/HG
Rating range: Any
Bonus points: Ginny and Draco bond over her first year and why she hates the idea of anyone not being in control of their feelings/body; Hermione is the first person to realize why Draco is acting so strange around Ginny; smut; Harry and Ron meet everyone during a Hogsmeade trip and are surprised to see Draco is a part of the group.
The End.
idreamofdraco is the author of 51 other stories.
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