Harry lay awake in bed once more, clad in baggy pyjamas with his wings extended, just thinking. Funny how he had done that a few times since the emergence of his Veela heritage. Everything was such a confusing mess, and it suddenly required actual thought rather than blind impulsiveness. He had thought he had had it all straightened out, but now it had all become more confusing and his life was just so fucked up now.

The simple stuff made sense of course. His name was Harry Potter, he was 19 years old, he had defeated the greatest Dark Wizard of all time less than a year ago. Then, the slightly more confusing things. His closest friends were Hermione and Ron, although he wasn't as sure where he fit anymore, and he did NOT want to be an auror. Then the absolute nonsense things that seemed to dominate his life now. He was a veela, and his mate was Draco Malfoy. Even though he and Draco Malfoy were enemies, and always had been… even though he was alright sometimes?

With his head still buzzing with thoughts that made it impossible to sleep, Harry rolled out of bed and made a start on the transfiguration essay he had been neglecting.

~oOo~

Harry stretched as the sun finally rose above the trees of the forbidden forest, and let out a yawn. He had been completely unable to sleep, but on the upside he had managed to finish multiple assignments, a first for him. Eyes drooping and neck aching, Harry shrugged on his robes and headed down to the great hall for some breakfast.

It was still really early, so Harry was alone as he made his way through the long stone halls of the castle, his steps echoing loudly. It was slightly eerie for the castle to be this silent without it being 3am, but Harry was prone to midnight excursions anyway, so it wasn't too unfamiliar.

When Harry arrived in the Great Hall, there was only a few other students in there, three Hufflepuffs and a couple of Raven claws, all of which looked as if they, like himself, had been up all night. Harry poured himself a large mug of coffee, noticing the quiet whispers as he entered. However, none of them approached him, and it was a nice change from the usual invasive questions.

Harry sighed as he realised that when the rest of the school started coming down for breakfast, he would probably get at least twice the usual amount of probing questions and curious stares. Hogwarts gossip moved quickly, he would be surprised if there was a single student in the school who was unaware that he was a veela this point.

So much for staying inconspicuous.

~oOo~

Draco Malfoy woke up in a surprisingly good mood for once. Ok, Potter may have fucked everything up and exposed their veela-ness to the school, but on the upside, he was now the talk of pretty much the entire school and it was fabulous.

Draco had always loved being the centre of attention and he definitely wasn't ashamed to show it. He loved being showered with gifts, adoration, or really any kind of attention, positive or not. It was like that one muggle saying… all attention is good attention or something.

So, of course, Draco was very excited to make the most out of being openly veela.

He put on his best robes, double checked the straightening charm on his hair, making sure not a strand was out of place, and fully extended his wings. It actually felt quite freeing not to be forced to glamour them. He stretched, cast a grin at his own reflection, and headed down to the Great Hall for breakfast in a dramatic swish of robes.

Due to the fact that it was mid-morning by now, many students were roaming the corridors, alone or in groups, many making their way to breakfast. However, almost all of them stopped and stared at him as he swept dramatically through the castle like a fabulous bat. With his excellent veela hearing, he heard glimpses of conversation as he made his way through.

"Wow, is that Draco Malfoy?"

"Look at his face!"

"mated to Harry Potter-"

"His wings are enormous!"

Draco smirked at the last one. Yeah, they were enormous. Enormous like his d-

"Mister Malfoy, the headmistress has asked me to give you this."

Professor Sinistra, the astronomy teacher interrupted his train of thoughts by handing him a tightly bound scroll of parchment. With a look of disapproval in his direction, she walked off, to wherever it is that teachers go when they're not teaching.

Draco, far too busy basking in the attention of his peers to bother opening the note yet, put it in the pocket of his robe, and continued to make his way down to the great hall.

By the time he arrived in the hall, he had received various interesting reactions to his presence, the most notable one being a 2nd year girl fainting at the sight of him. Clearly when he really let his veela side shine it proved too much for some. He smirked at that thought.

Extremely and blissfully aware of the countless stares, Draco started making himself a hearty breakfast of croissants and jam, before remembering the scroll he had been given by professor Sinistra. Confused, Malfoy pulled it from his robes and ripped open the note, to reveal a message inscribed in McGonagall's neat cursive.

"Mister Malfoy.

As the session yesterday proved effective, I have allotted you and Mister Potter two hours a week as bonding time. This time will be spent in the room of requirement from 2-4pm on a Thursday, and will serve as a way for the two of you to become closer. You can decide between the two of you what activities you wish to take part in at this time, but it must be contained within the room. I hope these sessions prove useful for the two of you.

Headmistress McGonagall, Order of Merlin, 1st Class."

Great. The time before hadn't been too bad, but he definitely wasn't relishing the idea of a few hours alone with Potty. He couldn't even argue, as McGonagall had clearly included her order of merlin as a show of power. How exciting, he was once more going to be locked in a room with the other boy for an extended period of time. He could almost jump for joy, he thought drily.

~oOo~

Harry looked up from the note that a gawping second year had just handed him just in time to watch Malfoy flounce dramatically into the great hall. He groaned under his breath. He had just wanted a relatively quiet year, which had been made impossible by the veela transformation, but clearly Malfoy wanted to draw even more attention to himself than necessary.

Thanks to his newly improved eyesight, Harry could see the extra effort Malfoy had put into his hair and robes from across the other side of the room, plus his massive flipping wings that were raised proudly behind him. Harry sighed. He should have known Malfoy would do something like this, he had always been a huge drama queen. He could think of so many examples of the boy's melodramatic temperament off of the top of his head, but one example that stood out particularly vividly was the great hall ceiling incident of fourth year.

The ceiling spell had been malfunctioning for a while, as the enchantments keeping it in check were sadly out of date. The great hall would show a night sky instead of the sunny one outside, or snow in July. However, during this particular incident, it had been raining heavily outside, great torrents of water gushing from the skies. Somehow, the ceiling managed to manifest real rain, and soon everyone was drenched with water. Most took shelter under bags or tables, conjured up umbrellas or summoned raincoats, but Malfoy of course had to go the extra mile. He had stood up from his seat, hands clasped over his hair, and let out an anguished scream, before sprinting from the room, shrieking all the while about his hair curling up. The malfunction was fixed now, but it was unlikely that anyone who had been present would ever forget it.

So of course he should have guessed that something like this would happen. Harry wouldn't have minded, except that now, with all of the other rumours flying around, this would attract even more unwanted attention to him. Already seeing curious heads swivelling away from Malfoy and towards him, he tried his best to duck behind a nearby bowl of fruit. This was much easier than it would have been in previous years, due to his smaller stature now, but he doubted it would help much.

At this point, Parvati and Lavender walked into the Great Hall, both giggling about something together, the scars on Lavender's face as prominent as ever. As they entered, Parvati's eyes fell on Harry, and she nudged Lavender. As soon as both girls saw him, they made a beeline directly for Harry.

Lavender had been very fortunate to be able to attend Hogwarts this year, but they were all glad that she had. After the attack on that battle of Hogwarts, Lavender had been rushed to St Mungo's in a deep coma, and she remained at the hospital for a few months while healers battled to keep her alive. Apparently Parvati had stayed with her the whole time, and was there when she finally awoke. She had been allowed to come to Hogwarts this year, as long as she attended daily check-ups with Madame Pomfrey, and her friendship with Parvati was as strong as ever. However, while a lot had changed, mentally, both girls were still light hearted, gossipy teenagers.

The two girls both sat down on either side of Harry, Lavender greeting him with a "Hi Harry!" Harry did not respond, and instead focused on piling sugar onto his crepe. After a few minutes of awkward silence, and the small mountain of sugar growing steadily higher, Parvati spoke. "So it's true then? The rumours?" She clarified. Harry sighed in defeat. "About me being a veela? Yeah." He responded dully, before turning his focus back to his crepe, and beginning to squeeze lemon juice onto it. "What about the other rumour?" Lavender asked eagerly. "You know, the one about Draco Malfoy being your dominant veela?" Harry's shoulders dropped. "Yeah, it is…" He sighed, too tired from the lack of sleep to bother withholding information that they would find out sooner or later anyway.

Suddenly, Harry straightened up, and turned to her indignantly. "Wait, why would you just assume that I'm the submissive veela, I mean-" Parvati cut him off. "Of course you're the submissive, why else would you have come back from the holidays so small and cute?" She squealed, smiling down at him. Lavender nodded enthusiastically in agreement, and continued, "Yeah, I mean, you're too adorable with your cute little dimples now, and when you go all red-" With his face flaming red, Harry decided that he didn't want to hear about this, shoved half of the crepe into his mouth and fled from the Great Hall.

He bumped into Ron and Hermione in the entrance hall, who were both looking at him with expressions of surprise. Ron opened his mouth to ask a question, but Harry shook his head and mumbled something through his bulging mouth of crepe, before continuing to head up several staircases to Gryffindor tower.

The corridors were now much fuller than earlier, and every single student he passed simply gawped at him, vividly reminding him of his first week at Hogwarts. Hopefully the staring would die down over time, as it did then, but today was bound to be the worst, in terms of gawking. He sighed as one student actually tripped over from craning their neck to look back at him as they walked past.

This was going to be a long day.

Ok, so that was a chapter! I'm sorry it took a while, but I wanted to write at least 2k words, especially as a few of you said that you liked longer chapters. It probably would have been longer, but I wanted to thank Gcgray for leaving a review because it motivated me to get my shit together lol. Anyway, I hoped you liked this chapter, and I'll see you in the next one, whenever that comed out.

Sera xx