A/N: for some strange reason, the quotation marks and line breaks wouldn't show up, so i had to reedit them in, and i didn't realize until i read a review earlier. sorry about that!

The pain was excruciating.

He bit so hard into his lower lip he could feel it start to bleed. His shoulder blades popped and his arms flailed for a second before stilling, his eyes rolling. His legs convulsed, his toes cramped, and his stomach was rolling over as if it had been put into a rock tumbler. A thin layer of sweat covered his body, dampened the tips of his hair and the thin fabric of his shirt. He needed to call for help. He didn't want to face the issue, and he didn't want to deal with it. He preferred running from his problems, but he couldn't move of his own will right now, let alone stand up and sprint. This was a problem he couldn't avoid, and he knew what it was.

Draco Malfoy was coming into a creature inheritance. He knew enough about it to know the symptoms and the changes. A momentary lapse in the pain in his jaw gave him a chance to call out for some sort of help, if anyone would hear him, but as soon as he tried to part his lips, the shooting jolts went up through his bones and up to his temple, where it expanded and seemed to explode. The first sound he'd managed to make finally escaped him; a soft moan that sounded almost as if he were warbling. The sound was piercing to his ears, pounding with blood as it rushed with his rapid pulse.

He couldn't stay awake much longer. Everything hurt, and he lived alone in his apartment. He'd released the house elves after the death of his mother because they always seemed to remind him of her. It was just his luck that he never had help when he wanted it. Draco knew he wasn't supposed to request help; to each one his own. But he needed it. He couldn't do this by himself. As he finally felt his mind fold into unconsciousness, tears began to form in the corners of his eyes, but would not fall. Malfoys never cried.

The next morning, he felt fine. He pulled himself out of bed and went to pick up up his wand to cast a quick Tempus when he suddenly found the flashing red numbers in front of him. His fingers twitched over the wood on the nightstand and he flinched. Creature blood in the line of Malfoys! There were a few distant imperfections and flaws, but for them to manifest in him, and so far after his seventeenth birthday was strange, and uncommon. He'd check the Manor later, if he could bring himself to go. Draco had bought the flat a few days after his mother's passing because he couldn't possibly stay in his childhood home any longer. It was unbearable. The blonde left it as it had always been; only now, it lacked inhabitants.

A shower, first. He preferred them to cleaning charms, and since he ran his own Potions supply from his home, he operated on his own time, therefore taking as long as he wanted. He closed on random, if he felt the need to, and only accepted commissions he found worth his time. Draco didn't really need the money, although a large sum had been demanded out of his fortune from the Wizengamot as compensation for the war. Working provided him with something to do, and brewing was a comfort. Potions had always been his forte; he enjoyed it, did well with it, and it seemed natural to keep that in his life and become a brewer.

As he stepped in the bathroom, Draco glanced towards the mirror, a habit he had yet to break. What he saw stopped him dead in his tracks, his fingers scrabbling at the counter's edge with a strangled gasp. He didn't look like himself anymore. His hair, previously kept the same as his late school days, was longer, shaggier, softer looking; it was even lighter colored than before, nearly pure white. His features were, dare he say, more feminine and rounder; the aristocrat features he'd obtained from his father had melted away to become less harsh. His skin, if even possible, was paler but seemed to glow

When the shock wore off, he stepped back from the mirror and groaned desperately. Of all the things - Vampyres, Incubi, Nymphs he was a Veela. He knew enough about them from Dark Arts class and random scatterings of information to know that male Veela were rare, and coveted. He didn't want the fame that he had yearned for in his childhood. If he had, he wouldn't run his shop under a false name, because he would have plenty of recognition for that. He wouldn't have shed his friends not that he had many after the war like coats in summer if wanted all of that. All Draco wanted was a quiet, relatively simple life. And now, a huge problem sat in front of him; Veelas had destined mates mates, and he was to find his unless he wanted to die.

"It's bloody strange, Harry. It's like he dropped of the face of the earth! He's planning something, I know it. It could be dangerous, you know. It's our job as Aurors to figure out what he's up to!"

Harry glanced up momentarily from the paperwork spread across his desk, covered with his messy writing. Ron had developed this theory about Draco Malfoy trying to raise a second Dark Lord. Harry knew it was an insane idea; he'd seen Draco at his weakest moments; the way his hands shook and his eyebrows furrowed when he had his wand raised at Dumbledore, or the way that his eyes watered when he tried to escape the fiendfyre in the Room of Requirement. He'd seen sides of Draco other people didn't know existed well, maybe his parents had seen that side of him. That true side of Draco didn't want a new Dark Lord anymore than he'd wanted the first one.

He'd done his best to defend the Malfoys during the postwar trials. There was little he could say to protect Lucius Malfoy, though he tried, and the older man had been sent to Azkaban for the Dementor's kiss. Narcissa had been easier to save; he'd shared his memory in the Forbidden Forest of Narcissa telling Voldemort he was dead, when he was very much alive. She'd been given house arrest, forced to pay a large fortune, and banned from various Wizarding activies. Draco had gone a free man, though his name was forever soiled, as was his family.

A few months after the trials, Narcissa Malfoy had been murdered. The killer hadn't been caught; anti-war groups ran rampant, sometimes even going against Harry and the dubbed 'heroes' of the war. Narcissa had been a wake up call for Harry, but people didn't want to listen. It was infuriating. The Death Eaters had just been terrorized people as well, with the exception of a few, and they had ended up on the losing side. He remembered how repulsed he'd been, arriving at the Malfoy Manor with a team of Aurors. Narcissa had been tortured prior to death; her innards pulled out, her eyes gouged from their sockets, her hair yanked off her scalp and scattered all across the stained carpet. Various house elves were dead was well, by the killing curse.

That day had been the last day he'd seen Draco, standing at the top of the foyer stairs, staring down at the remains of his mother without shedding a tear. Harry remembered enough to see how upset Draco was, knew enough to reason that the blonde would mourn privately. He hadn't expected it to be this private, to be honest, for Draco had simply disappeared. He didn't exist in the public world anymore; he wasn't seen, and the Manor was blocked off by ward after ward.

"Harry! Are you in there, mate?"

Ron reached over and tapped Harry's skull lightly with his knuckles. The brunette responded with a roll of his eyes and a mumbled, 'yes'. The response was so lackluster that Ron shot off into another rambling accusation against Draco. This had to end. Harry set down his quill and ran his fingers through his hair, sighing through clenched teeth. Ron looked at him like an eager puppy, and Harry stared back at him.

"Fine. I'll look for him. I will do it on my own though you're too eager to find fault in this so called 'case', and we won't be telling Kingsley, either, because he's still on my ass about that thing with Neville."

Ron's face was so easy to read. He was a bit upset that Harry was going to do it on his own, and then he was overjoyed that they were keeping it from Kingsley, the head of the Auror department. He was far too controlling for either of the boys to enjoy... and he assigned too much paperwork, as was evident by the stacks on both of their desks.

"You get what I'm saying now, right? It's just driving me out of my head!"

Harry laughed; Ron's honesty was refreshing as ever, and Harry had to admit that he was curious to find out exactly where the Malfoy heir had gone off too. He could have just holed himself up in the Manor, as far as they knew. People didn't pay much attention to the pureblood families anymore, or else Draco's disappearance might have been brought into the light much sooner.

"Where are you gonna start looking for him, Harry? There's barely any leads on him, I've been checking papers for a while now with nothing."

The brunette tapped his fingertips on his thigh, chewing lightly on his lower lip in thought.

"Well, I suppose I'll start with the obvious. Tell Kingsley I don't feel well. I don't work weekend shifts, anyways, and since today as Friday I might as well take an early off, you know? I've got loads of days, anyways."

Ronald laughed heartily and punched him on the shoulder. Harry nudged him right back and then looked to the parchment on his desk. It could wait; he had the entire weekend, and it wasn't like there weren't 10 other Aurors doing the same backup paperwork. He shuffled everything into as neat a pile as he could manage before standing and stretching. His back popped from being in the chair so long since the defeat of Voldemort, there weren't many major cases to take care of anymore, which meant less action for them and more desk time.

Now... where would a Malfoy hide? He assumed that the easiest place to start would be the Manor; a few people had tried to get in, but after the attack on Narcissa, the wards had been tripled. He could still approach the gate, though, and call into the place. He didn't particularly like the Malfoy home, considering the events that had occurred there, but it would satiate his curiosity and Ron's nagging.

Draco had been in the extensive library of his childhood home nearly all day. This was maddening; there was barely any details on a male Veela, no matter where he scanned and how hard he looked. He'd managed to gather, at a rough estimate, perhaps two paragraphs of useful things to know. He'd scribbled the notes down onto a scrap piece of parchment, ink blotting some lines in his carelessness. He was so anxious and this sucked. It was days like these when he wished he hadn't sacrificed what little friendships he had.

He continued his reading, the speed of which he was doing so worthy of the Know-It-All Granger, and then paused as there was a little tingle in his head, pulsing at his temples. He frowned. Another side effect? He pushed it from his mind and instead switched his focus to the notes he'd taken. There were a few things he already knew; Veela were bird creatures, with wings and beaks and croons. They took only one mate in their life; if they discovered it. When with the mate, they wanted to please and protect, and were rather possessive of the intended. The only thing he'd found so far that he didn't know was that when a Veela came into an inheritance at a strange time, it was because the Veela was attempting to help the human, and activated the dormant blood. This could happen for a number of reasons; impending death of the host, a want to protect a loved one...

Basically, there was very little information on male Veelas. Everything else he'd read talked about female Veela and the allure they had to make boys fall in love with them, in an attempt to find their mate. In some cases, the magic of the pair would be so strong as to draw them together... And sometimes, the mate could even be Muggle. Draco tried not to flinch too much at the thought.

He was distracted again by the tingling of his skin, now stronger and impossible to ignore. What was that? Suddenly, he shot up from his seat, realization dawning on him; someone was pushing at the wards, asking for permission. He wasn't going to give it... Still, Draco wanted to see where it was, and headed down into the foyer where the looking glass rest to give him insight.

To say he was surprised by the sight of Potter at his gates was an understatement. He was rather shocked, and he stared at it, blinked, rubbed his eyes a few times, and was still in a state of disbelief. Then, Potter called his name, and suddenly the Veela was busting at the seems, a croon falling from his lips to spiral into the air. Draco didn't know what was coming over him; his shoulders hurt again, an intense itching suddenly relieved as wings sprouted from his back, spreading out, the wingspan some impressive length. Before he could register what he was doing, he was tapping at the wall, registering Potter into the wards.

The Boy-Who-Lived was waltzing right onto his property, down the little cobblestone path to the front door of the Manor, and Draco had done it. Draco was out of control for the moment, unable to keep the Veela leashed. He could hear the footsteps getting closer, and Potter was calling his name again, and the Veela couldn't take it anymore. He threw open the door, went to take a step to Harry.. and then a wand was drawn at him. Draco was hissing, backing away from, it, not wanting his mate -

Oh, shit. Harry Potter was his mate.

The song that burst from his throat must have scared Potter, because suddenly, a spell had hit him in the chest, and he was out like a light.