Author's Note: It's snowing and for once the schools around here canceled school with plenty of warning. Thus I have another chapter for you all. Thank you to everyone who has reviewed so far; please keep them coming!
It was over a month before a veela specialist, Healer Balev, from Bulgaria was able to portkey in to look at Draco. He was a portly balding man with a large mustache who reminded me of Uncle Vernon, except with a much more pleasant disposition and a wand. He was not the type of wizard I thought of when I thought of a veela specialist. Veela were tall, elegant, and graceful and this man was not. But he was nice, kind, and apparently highly knowledgeable regarding veela. I was glad he was finally here to look at Draco and answer all of my questions.
Draco had been doing better since the egg incident. Culver and Harper were back from their vacation, so I'd gone back to my usual afternoon/evening eight hour shifts. That meant I was once again the man on duty during tea and supper time. At first I'd taken nursing Draco back to health a little too seriously. After the miscarriage all of the weight he'd put on fell right off and he started looking like he was starving to death. My solution was to encourage him to eat and the first night I took it too far. He'd eaten too much and ended up puking during Harper's shift. Since then I'd scaled my efforts back and the incident hadn't been repeated. Who knew that Draco Malfoy was so susceptible to suggestion?
As I paced back and forth, I really hoped that Healer Balev would recognize what good care I'd been giving Draco. It wasn't all progress and I'm not just talking about the little overfeeding incident, but overall he was doing better now. There had been a few times when I'd gotten upset and said negative things, not paying attention to how it would affect him. Turns out that veela are sensitive to all forms of rejection and I'd noticed that his hands tended to tremble whenever I was upset with him. But once I'd figured that out and started watching what I was saying around him, his condition had improved.
The healer was supposed to arrive this morning to examine Draco, but he'd gotten hung up at the Ministry for hours. That worked out to my advantage, because it meant that he was here now, during my shift, instead of this morning during Jackson's shift. Jackson wasn't nearly as interested in Draco's health as I was; he was happy to let Draco mope around all day and not eat a thing. And Draco slept through Harper's shift, so often it felt like Narcissa and I were the only two people who cared whether Draco got better or not.
The disadvantage to the healer coming during my shift was the wait. I had nothing to do except pace back and forth along the hallway. Finally, after what felt like hours, Healer Belav came out to talk to me.
"Well, how is he?" I asked eagerly.
"Hanging in there, but if he ofulates again vithout mating he'll be in big trouble," Belav said in a thick accent. "His body has healed from the delifery. I vouldn't recommend a home birth vithout proper medical treatment, but luckily the egg vas small enough to pass through vithout tearing."
"So he's alright then?"
"Not entirely. His body takes the lack of fertilization as rejection. If he's rejected by his mate again, the damage may vell be permanent."
"And he'll die?"
"Not immediately, but yes, slowly he vill die."
"What if he…you know…starts making an egg again without his mate here?"
"He vill not go into ofulation vithout his mate present. The presence of a mate is critical to triggering egg production in feela."
"Oh…good. Then that won't happen again. I wonder who his mate is…"
"You can narrow down vho the mate is by vhen he vent into ofulation; a feela always ofulates vithin the first six months of contact. Forming a child is fery important for sealing the mate bond. I think his mate might be one of the guards, because he doesn't show signs of mate deprifation. He has nefer copulated with his mate, but I think he is close by."
"No, I really don't think that's possible. Both Harper and Jackson are married."
"Nefer-the-less, you should keep an eye out for signs that he is going into ofulation again."
"Which are?"
"Moodiness and veight-gain."
"Alright," I said, thinking that Draco was always a bit on the moody side, but I could watch for the weight-gain easily enough. Then a disturbing thought occurred to me. "Is he going to ovulate and make more eggs after this first one?" I was picturing Draco with a dozen little hatchlings, like a mother hen. He would hate it if he turned into Mrs. Weasley.
"Once the mate bond is sealed vith the first child, ofulation can be suppressed vith potions. It can be suppressed now, but that vould only trigger the vasting avay. If he's in contact vith his mate, they need to consummate the relationship vith a child to ensure his health."
"Okay… Um, can you explain how it's possible that he looks like a bloke, but lays eggs?" This was my number one question and the thing I most wanted to know about the situation.
"It has to do vith genetics. Sex in feelas is determined differently than it is in humans. Do you know about the human sex chromosomes, X and Y?"
I had a small amount of sex-ed back in muggle school when I was ten, so I replied, "Vaguely."
"Vell in humans, ve hafe an X chromosome and a Y chromosome, or at least males do. Females hafe two X chromosomes. In feela, they hafe Z and W chromosomes instead. Males hafe two Zs, vile females hafe one of each. If Mr. Malfoy was entirely feela, he vould be entirely female. But since he is mostly human and has only the feela sex chromosomes, his secondary sex characteristics are human and male."
"And how, exactly, do veela have sex, if both of their sexes look the same down there?" I hadn't been able to find the answer to this question in a book. Granted I didn't like to read that much and Hermione refused to look it up for me, but still, this information was impossible to find. I've found about a dozen books with diagrams of the veela sex organ, which in both cases was a weird knobby thing, but no mention on how two knobby things were brought together in coitus.
"The same vay all birds do it."
"Right." I knew even less about bird sex, but I was too embarrassed to ask again. At least his explanation on how Draco was both a girl and a boy at the same time made sense.
"You need to make efery effort to find out vho his mate is. It vill be someone he is drawn to; if you see his head turning and his eyes consistently following one specific person or if someone says something negatife to him and he starts trembling, then that is likely his mate."
"No, he's really sensitive to rejection from everyone. Last week I accidentally said that his Quidditch team is rubbish and he started shaking."
"Are you sure?"
"Yes, that sort of thing has happened several times now."
"Then perhaps it is you vho is his mate."
"No, I couldn't be."
"It is not normal for a feela to show the negatife effects of rejection from anyone other than a mate."
"Yeah, but he just had the miscarriage; he's more sensitive right now."
"Perhaps or perhaps not. It could be that you are fery close to his mate and he sees rejection by you as tantamount to rejection by him."
"Maybe…he did say his mate wasn't a Death Eater."
"Good, you vill keep an eye on him and figure out vho his mate is. If he goes into ofulation again or if he starts vasting avay, contact me. Other than that, he should be fine."
"Um, one more thing."
"Yes Auror Potter?"
"The egg, is that normal for girl veela?"
"Full female feela do lay eggs like that one, yes. The only difference is that one is much too small to contain a healthy feela embryo."
"So how does that work exactly? Does the egg stay inside him for nine months or does he sit on it for months?"
"The egg takes three months to form vithin his body, before it is full size. The embryo inside the egg is much smaller and takes another year to hatch. The feela baby comes out much more defeloped than a human baby, but then it has to eat solid food from the beginning, so it vould hafe to be more defeloped."
"Solid food? No milk?"
"Nein, feela do not make milk; their babies come out eating soft foods and sitting up."
"Okay…that's weird."
"It's the nature of a bird. It's getting late; I'm afraid I must be getting home."
"Right… But how do veela pick their mate? Is it someone he's dated or is it someone predetermined since birth?" I asked, hoping to get some clues to help me with my task.
"Neither. A feela choses its mate around the time of puberty, but not consciously. For a female feela, it is normally someone she sees as a good profider vho vill be able to acquire adequate food and protect her and her eggs. Often it is someone vho has shown interest or has vhooed her, but if no one has done so, it is often a strapping young man. Oh, and this doesn't happen often, but if someone safes a female feela's life, she'll almost assuredly pick him, efen if he is already married or an inappropriate mate-choice for some other reason."
"So, if say I were to have rescued Draco from a burning room by pulling him onto my broom during the war?" I asked hesitantly.
"Then he vould pick you. Did that happen? You are probably his mate."
"Yeah, but my friend Ron saved him too! Oh wait, no, Ron punched him after I stunned Draco's attacker. But that was the final battle of the war; I saved tons of people that night! Some say that I saved all of wizarding Britain when I killed Voldemort."
"Vere any of the others feela?"
"No, not that I know of…"
"Good, then you vill only hafe the one feela permanently bonded to you. You safed him tvice and you thought his mate could be anyone else? How daft are you son?"
I didn't answer that one. My mouth was busy hanging open and the healer's words were echoing in my head, so no answer came.
"If that is all, I hafe to be going," he said.
I couldn't think of any more questions, so I let Healer Balev go. I went back to Draco's room, where he was sitting on his bed reading a book, and resumed my watch. At least I tried to act like I was watching Draco, but really I couldn't stop thinking about the information I'd just found out; not the fact that I was probably his mate, because I couldn't process that, but the other things. I couldn't help thinking of a little newborn human hatching out of a silver painted egg. And then it occurred to me that I needed to picture a larger baby hatching out of the egg. Balev said that the babies were old enough to sit up and eat mashed foods…that combined with the fact that the entire veela pregnancy lasted six months longer than human pregnancy meant that I should probably be picturing a six month old human hatching out of the human egg. I imagined it would be a pointy blond haired grey eyed Malfoy baby, whose nose was sharp enough to crack the egg.
In the days that followed I would have to tell my boss about the possibility that I was Draco's mate. I would even have to confront Draco and find out if I really was his mate. But before any of that could happen, I would have to admit the possibility to myself and contemplate what that would mean for me and for him. There might even be a green eyed egg baby in my future, but for now, I was busy trying to process the simpler information; the rest of it would have to wait. Maybe I could get Hermione involved. I had promised Draco I wouldn't tell her and it was September now, so she was back at Hogwarts, but I really needed to talk to her. I couldn't turn to Ron about something like this.
Author's Note: So now Harry knows and the veela backstory is out of the way. I'll be skipping ahead quickly in this story, so Lucius' trial will start next chapter. Snow is predicted for Thursday, so maybe the next chapter will be up then. Please Review!