-1In Golden Ecstasy
Chapter 1: Maedha
An owl sleepily waddles from its nest in the darkened woodlands as the Sun sinks completely on the horizon. Shaking its wings once to dry them, it launches into the night air. As it circles, it flies closer and closer to a great white building over which the Sun still lingers. Malfoy Manor is peaceful, every one of its occupants asleep but one. The owl pauses by a window, looking into a room. It is beautifully furnished, everything of the highest quality, but the owl notices none of this, instead fixated on a boy with blond, shoulder-length hair, lying on the bed. Appeased, the owl flies away. The boy was not changed. His Master would be disappointed.
Spotting a mouse, it decides to delay for a snack. Just as it closes in for the kill, screams rent the night air, shattering the peaceful silence, carving alarm out of safety, until drops of blood-red terror run in the minds of the animals in the Malfoy Grounds.
At once, the mouse jumps and scurries away, and, though its mind lingers for a moment on the prospect of the lost meal, the owl has lost interest. At last! Something to tell the Master. The screams could mean only one thing: the Malfoy boy had changed. A second later, he launches off the forest floor and into the sky. A flash in his right eye startles him as a blue-banded hawk crashes into him, the beak of his adversary blinding the same eye, then snapping to his throat. Exhausted, the owl gives himself up. The last thing he sees before he dies is a silver eye glinting in the blackness of his everlasting night.
Draco screamed. In her sitting room where she lay on a fluffy sofa, Narcissa Malfoy winced and waited for he husband to return.
I just can't bear to see him in so much pain. She commented to Lucius.
Then don't look! Was the brusque reply. Then: the pain is an important part of becoming one of the Maedhaï. Why do you think I performed "Crucio!" on him all these years? I wanted him to be accustomed to pain, to make it easier. And he hates me for it.
I know, darling. Narcissa sighed. You'll just have to explain to him.
Mmmm…Lucius was silent for a moment then said suddenly. I've got two owls, a deer and a brace of pheasants. Will that be enough?
Should be. Mused Narcissa. Are you coming back then?
Of course.
A second later, there was a thump! and a blue-banded hawk landed, carrying impossibly in its claws the promised prey. The image of the hawk seemed to blur and change, until Lucius Malfoy drew his wand and began to help levitate the meat inside.
"What now?" She asked.
"Now? We wait."
Draco woke in darkness. Pain, still lingering in his muscles from the previous hour, washed over him as he pushed himself into a sitting position. Trembling fingers reached for a mirror. Taking a deep breath, he looked.
He had changed. His ears were pointed, his hair stretched to halfway down his back, and his eyes were blue-flecked molten silver. And he had claws a full inch long on the ends of finer-boned, slenderer fingers. Muscles all over his body were taut and accentuated, and bones in his cheeks had rearranged, giving his face a slimmer, exotic look to it.
There was a gentle knock at the door, then it opened to reveal his mother and father both carrying an owl and six pheasants each, with a deer (a doe, he noticed) slung between them.
"Are you hungry?" Lucius asked his son, who said not a word but fell on the raw meat. Whilst he was eating, the parents studied him. Mr Malfoy's expression brightened as he took in the silver eyes. "Draco, you are a dominant." The new Maedha stopped eating for long enough to say "Cool!", then resumed gorging himself on meat. "It is not just "Cool!". You are a dominant, which means you will be the one to seek out your mate. What will happen when you touch them?"
"There will be a sense of completion." Narcissa explained, as Draco was still eating. "Your mate, if male, will be wracked with pain twice as bad as what you have just been through. This will also last must longer; exactly 50 hours. The reason for this is that their body is rearranging to make it possible for them to bear children. They will need your support. It is advisable, once this is completed, to change them, if they are not changed already, and once you have explained. However, even before they are changed, as soon as you touch them they will subconsciously try to find you and be drawn to you in both a practical and sexual way."
Draco nodded, at last finished with the raw meats.
"Will you teach me to change form and hunt before I go to school, father?" He queried.
"Of course."
"Don't ask silly questions." His mother snapped.
He sighed.
"What's wrong, mother?"
"What are you going to do?" She cried, chewing her lower lip. "Everyone at Hogwarts will tease you, and Dumbledore will ask ridiculing questions."
"He'll have to wear a glamour, of course." Lucius said.
"No."
"What did you say?" His father shouted.
"No." Draco was defiant, his mouth set in a grim line. "I refuse to hide my heritage. It is something to be proud of. I refuse."
"Lucius, let him." Narcissa sighed.
"Fine." he snorted, making his way to the door. "Oh, and, Draco, son?"
"Yes, father?"
"Happy seventeenth birthday."
Harry woke in the dark before dawn, panting, trying to recall his dream. Draco had been in it, at Malfoy Manor, and an owl… An aching sense of loneliness washed over him, and one word sounded in his head over and over again in a never-ending mantra:
Mate.
He stubbornly ignored the thought away, deciding to catch another few hours of sleep.
Sleep was a slow visitor.