Title: Being the Other Man
Disclaimer: I do not own any of the characters you see here. That belongs to JK Rowling and other wonderful people that are not me.
Warning: Umm...surprises? Cussing. Uh...mention of sexual behavior
Summary: It all began with biscuits and hot chocolate.
Author's Notes: Hello Beautiful People. So it took me a while but I have put forth another chapter. This chapter is one hundred percent, without a doubt, not editted. Literally, I finished the chapter and then went to post it. I'm trying to finish this before I go off to school, and it is drawing to a close. So, even if it is illegible, I hope you enjoy haha.
With that said:
Being the Other Man
Chapter Ten
Back to where we were (a very good place to continue a story…)
The silence in the cave was only interrupted by the sound of crashing waves. Harry could barely hear past the pulse pounding in his ears. The accursed words, "Draco is my mate" repeated over and over in Harry's head as everything began to click.
"It hurts, doesn't it?" Montague sneered. He was unable to free himself from the bindings around him, but still managed to gain much of his poise and grace back. "When the thing you most fear is the only thing that makes sense."
"Shut up!" Draco barked, to which the veela swiftly obeyed. The roaring began to quiet as Harry looked up at Draco who looked anything but calm. Harry didn't have to ask, because he knew.
"He's…he's telling the truth isn't he?" he asked, his voice suddenly hoarse. The terse nod from the blonde was all Harry's dreams needed to shatter. There it was then. Any chances…they were apparently not even meant to be through fate. Instead, Draco was meant to be with a veela, which was apparently one of the greatest honors through man-kind.
Funny, Harry didn't feel much like congratulating him.
"Harry," Draco began, but was interrupted by a hand raised to stop him.
"So, I can't kill you then?" Harry asked the veela. The veela remained silent until Draco gave him permission to speak again.
"Not unless you want to kill Draco as well," Montague replied, for once without the manic glint in his eyes but an abstract form of pity. "And you couldn't kill Draco even if you had to." As much as Harry wanted to argue, he knew that much was true.
"But how did this happen?" Harry asked, confused. "When did you two…?"
"My beloved fell into my arms five years ago," the veela whispered, reveling in remembered delight.
Five years ago…
"Do you love him?" Harry asked, cursing his voice for cracking. Draco sighed.
"It's complicated."
It had happened while they were dating. This…twist of fate had been the very reason for his break up. Even then, he hadn't been Draco's one and only. Suddenly Harry felt very sick—and pissed the fuck off!
However, before he could even begin to vocalize his turmoil, Draco turned on Montague. "Don't you fucking lie, Titus," Draco spat. "I did not fall into your arms at all, unless you meant that I was cursed to fall there!"
"Well, yes, the bond of a veela is kind of like a curse…"
"No, you pile of shit! You cursed me, with your wand, to 'fall into your arms'. Had I been semi-conscious you would have been rotting away in Azkaban again!" Harry was surprised that Titus seemed hurt, but for the most part bored.
"Yes, yes, I know you tell me this all the time," Titus moaned. "But I knew it was the only way to forge the bond!"
"Wait, aren't veela supposed to be loving towards their mate?" Harry interrupted. "Why would you curse him if you loved him?"
Both the veela and Draco looked back at Harry as if he had four heads.
"Well, I am evil," Montague said slowly.
"Oh, right," Harry said, suddenly remembering.
"And I do love him, with all of my heart," the veela continued, looking forlorn. "So I just kept him under my spell in order to make sure that we were able to bond. After that, he seemed under the impression that he had to set everything right which was not a sentiment that I truly understood, but…"
"That's when you broke up with me," Harry murmured. Draco slowly nodded.
"I'm so sorry, Harry," Draco whispered.
"But you came back, how did you…?" Harry's mind was all jumbled.
"Well, when he came back to me, he threatened to kill me you see," Montague said. "I told him that he would die in the process but that he didn't care, and well I couldn't have that so I managed to keep him under my allure for three glorious years. But, somehow—probably due to how strong my mate is—he broke through. Then he began running. I chased him all over the world, you know, but could never quite catch him. Then…he returned to England."
"And found me," Harry said. He glanced at Draco who was looking determinedly down at his feet.
"How did you find us once we left the country?" he asked. "You shouldn't have been able to detect us from across the Atlantic."
"Draco isn't the only one that has his mate," the veela said with a laugh. "Yes, it was unfortunately true that I could not track him from across the Atlantic when he ran away from me. But it was not too hard to find the man who treasures you nearly as much as I treasure Draco, Mr. Potter. Too bad I had to kill him." Harry and Draco looked at each other doubtfully, wondering who on earth he could be talking about. "Oh please, do I have to spell it out for you?" the veela exasperatedly asked.
"English would be nice," Harry chimed in.
"The sparkly fellow," Montague replied.
Both Draco and Harry asked in alarm, "SPITZ?"
"Present!" said a rather recognizable, slightly squeaky voice from outside of the cave. Draco's wand shot out and pointed in the sound's direction when a small, pale hand reached over the ledge and grabbed on to the cave floor. Following it came another arm with multicolored glitter and feathers. A few more lifts up and standing before them was Gerald Spitz, quite alive in fact.
"Why did you say I was dead?" Gerald asked the veela, sounding rather hurt. The veela shrugged.
"You were late. I improvised."
"Oh, okay," with Harry very distracted and shocked, Gerald quickly disarmed Harry and Draco then untied Montague with a few swift swishes of his wand. "I suppose that's alright."
"Alright?" Harry asked, the new horror of the situation dawning on him. "How in hell is this alright? What's going on, Gerald?"
"What do you mean what's going on? I'm finally getting what I deserve!" Gerald exclaimed back.
"Gerald, untie me right now," Harry said slowly.
"Later, love, when we begin our lives together!" Gerald said, glee sparkling in his eyes, "First, we must explain. Right, Montague?"
"Indeed, glitter-boy, although I already told Potter that Draco was mine," Montague said thoughtfully.
"Oh, really?" Gerald asked, frowning a bit. "Shame I missed it."
"Gerald, how could you do this?" Harry asked in a growl.
"How could I?" he asked incredulously, "How could I not, Harry? You always ignored me even after our magical night together. Every advance I made was shot down. Every costume I wore for you was ridiculed. And I never got the support from my coworkers that I needed to cope! Shacklebolt always made me stay late to vacuum the feathers, you know? Every night, it was torture!"
"You could have just not dressed like a twit," Draco sneered.
"I am not a twit!" Gerald snapped, raising his wand to the blonde. The immediate growling from both Titus and Harry made him put it back to his side, and he continued.
"But," he now turned back to Harry, starry-eyed, "But even through all of that you were kind to me. Although you rejected my repeated offers of sex, blowjobs, handjobs, spooning, forking…"
"We get the picture," Draco snapped. Gerald looked ruffled again for a mere moment.
"But you'd always talk to me so tenderly, and really…Harry…" Spitz bent down and lifted Harry's chin with his wand, "it just pissed me the fuck off."
"So you turned evil?" Harry asked, aghast.
"Well, yes. I found a pitifully gorgeous man skulking around the Ministry, and I walked up to him, befriended him, and took him to coffee. Turned out the man was Montague and, I admit that I was a bit startled." Gerald giggled and then sighed. "But he told me how his mate had run off and he was trying to find him. When he told me who the mate was, I knew that you would be with him. It only took a little bit of wheedling until I found out where you were, and after a lovely bit of planning, here we are!"
"So what do you plan to do now?" Harry asked, feebly hoping some idea of what to do would pop into his head to get them out of this mess.
"First, I will obliviate you. Montague will take Draco and I'll bring you back to the Ministry, claiming that I saved you from the terrible veela and then you'll love me without knowing that I stopped Malfoy from stealing you from me." Gerald said with joy.
"The one problem is," Draco said, standing up from his spot, arms freed from his ropes and wand in hand (Harry vaguely remembered Draco being outrageously good at casting wandless spells), "that Harry could never love you anyway." Draco cast a stupefy at Spitz and Montague. Then, he looked back at Harry for a brief moment and nodded, as if assuring himself of something. He hurried to Harry and untied him, getting his wand back to Harry.
"Thanks," Harry said, rubbing his wrists gently. He looked at the other men with disdain. "So should we send these two to the Ministry?"
"Not yet," Draco said. "You've got to do one more thing before then."
"What would that be?" Harry asked. At the silence, he turned to look at Draco and saw a look of fierce determination on his face.
"Kill him," he said, pointing at Montague.
"What?" Harry exclaimed. "But if I do then-,"
"Do it, Harry. He'll never stop," Draco sighed. "You have to do this, for the good of the Wizarding World."
"You know I seem to do a lot of things for them," Harry growled. "But you can't expect me to kill you!"
"No, I can't, but I know that you will," Draco said staring into Harry's eyes with such intensity it made his heart hurt. "Because otherwise Montague will continue killing people."
"I can't kill you, Draco," Harry bit out.
"Harry," Draco said with the weariness of a much older age than he. "Can I admit something?" Harry nodded. "To live in a world where I have to be mated with the craziest, most evil veela ever imagined is a terrible place. It's dark and bloody and so suffocating that I can barely breathe." At that, the blonde took a very deep breath. "But to live in that world knowing that I once had you is pure agony."
Harry bit his lip looking away. "Harry, I can't stand living like this any longer. To want you so much, but knowing that I can never have you has been tearing me apart since the day I left you five years ago. Please, kill him and take the pain away."
Harry stood there staring at the other man, who for the first time in Harry's entire life had his face covered in tear tracks. His heart already beginning to tear into pieces, Harry slowly nodded.
"Thank you, Harry," Draco whispered.
"What can I say?" Harry said, his voice unmistakably bleak. "For the Wizarding World."
Without letting himself have time to try to squirm out of this, Harry turned sharply to Montague and shouted "Avada Kedevra!"
He heard the breath rush out of Montague like a flame blown out by a forceful wind.
Harry only had to wait a moment for the telltale thump of Draco's body hitting the floor. Draco lay on the floor where he'd once stood.
Harry didn't know what to do with himself. His body was coiled up like a tight string and his heart felt as though it'd been ripped to shreds, and he fell to his knees. He stayed there, knowing that he was now surrounded by one glittery auror and two dead blondes, but not caring. Harry stared at his wand for the longest of times before looking over at Draco's limp body. Vision funneling, he could hear a sound ringing in his ears—which turned out to be his own screams. Slowly he crawled to the body, and wrapped his arms around the pale flesh that had once held the soul of one who had caused great torment and great love.
"Draco, I'm so sorry," he moaned. He continued shaking and groaning until his voice was sore. Still he held the body, cradled in his arms so tightly that the slight movement he felt could have easily been his own twitching arms. Still, it made him open his eyes against the tears and look down slowly, as if he were in a slow-motion film. "Draco?"
Suddenly, there was a rasping breath that lifted the blonde's chest a centimeter and let it fall. Rushing, Harry put his ear to the man's chest and fingers to his throat. A small, feeble pulse was under his fingertips. Not letting himself hesitate for a second, he took his and Draco's wand with him as he apparated to St. Mungo's.
