Title: Seven Days
Author: Dark_One Shadowphyre
Fandom: Harry Potter
Genre: Drama/Romance
Rating: R
Pairing: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter
Summary: Draco is in his seventh year at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, and things might just be looking up for him, until his heritage catches up with him. He's tried to ignore it, but now it's too late. Now, he only has seven days left.
Warnings: Blood, transformations, general strangeness.
Disclaimer: I don't own Draco Malfoy, Harry Potter, or any other characters created by J.K. Rowling. I'm just borrowing them, and I hope they're still recognizable when I'm done.
Notes: This story was inspired in part by gothangelic's story "Hush" (Story ID: 527702), at least insofar as Draco's ancestry and transformation ability. For that little idea, I owe her. Big time. Then I thought about some of the other things that might happen with the whole being half-something-other-than-human, and this kind of jumped out at me. The title was taken as much by chance (looking through my CD collection) as by my somehow liking the time limit equals desperation/suspense factor. Call me a cruel bitch if it makes you feel better-- I already know I am!
Distribution: FanFiction.Net profile; The Shadow Realm, my site; the Broom Flies Mailing List; anywhere else-- ask, and ye shall receive.
Prologue
Charge of the Night
It was an hour past midnight when the owl woke Draco, tapping at the window of his dorm room in Serpens Tower. He sat up hastily, automatically glancing around the room to make certain that his dormmates were still quite thoroughly asleep; they were. All the better, to Draco's way of thinking. If they were asleep, he wouldn't have to explain why an owl was outside the window at one in the morning instead of waiting to deliver its message at breakfast with the rest of the post owls. Or they might insist on seeing the message, which would be a very bad thing. Draco sighed. No good news was ever delivered after dark.
Quietly, he slid out of bed and went to the window. As soon as he had it open, the owl gliding in and settled on the back of a chair. The aggitated ruffling of wings and the cold glare Draco received as the owl stiffly thrust its leg toward him informed the young wizard quite clearly that this was not his messenger's preferred way of spending the evenings. Draco's lips quirked as he untied the message; in that, he could agree completely with the bird. The owl clicked its beak at him and launched itself into the air, soaring out of the still-open window. Draco watched it fly away, then closed the window again and bent his attention to the message.
He'd been expecting his mother's looping, flowing cursive, or his father's precise, almost clinically neat script. He found neither. The handwriting, he realized with a start, belonged to his older sister Cassiopeia, who he hadn't seen since he'd turned eleven and she had graduated from Hogwarts. She had kept in touch for the first three years of his own schooling, but the letters had become more and more infrequent. Now, he barely remembered what his sister looked like, aside from being tall and willowy, with the white blond hair and silver grey eyes that marked all the Malfoys of the past three generations. It was with shaking handds, then, that Draco opened the message and began to read his sister's words.
Dearest Draco,
No doubt Mother and Father have forgotten about this particular time in your life; you were only ten when I came into my powers. I know it will be rougher for you, having to face this at Hogwarts.
As I am sure that Mother and Father have forgotten that you, too, are like me - us - I have taken the liberty of informing Headmaster Dumbledore about your situation. I'm sure that everything will be alright, Draco. Who have you set your eyes on?
Give my best to our parents, from me and Ash. Happy mating!
Love,
Cassie
Draco lowered the letter to his lap. His hands were shaking, and he knew he must look as pale as a sheet. He devoutly prayed that his dormmates would remain asleep and, therefore, unaware of his current trauma.
Mating.
The word froze his heart even as it sent fire racing through his blood. He'd tried so hard! He'd tried everything he could think of to keep this from happening, from not transforming to a few charms and spells against his kind's magic. Nothing worked. And now, Cassi had sent that damned letter, reminding him of who he was-- and what he was. With that remembering came others about his nature, each more unsettling than the last.
Draco was part Veela, on both his mother's and his father's sides. His father managed to stay fairly balanced between his human and Veela aspects, while his mother preferred her draconic Veela beauty to her human form and was thusly rarely seen in public. Draco flinched, remembering a comment that Harry Potter had made regarding the pinched, carefully controlled look of disgust his mother often wore on those few occasions. Thank Merlin that Potter hadn't read anything more into it. No, wait, he ammended. Thank Merlin that Granger hadn't! He didn't think he could have dealt with that. Not then, in fourth year. He didn't want to deal with it now, either, but Cassi had taken that out of his hands. As she had subtly pointed out, he had no choice, and he may have fooled their parents, but Draco had never been able to fool his sister! Like it or not, he was a Veela.
Which was precisely the problem, he thought in frustration. Veela came into their powers on their eighteenth birthdays, and that was also when they chose their permanent mate. Cassi's mate, Ash, was of elven descent. His parents, of course, had mated to each other. His third cousin, Fleur Delacour, hadn't needed to worry about it, since she did not possess the right genetic make-up to become a true Veela.
Draco, unfortunately, was stuck with it. He grimaced, balling the letter up in his fist. The laws of Veela nature said that he must choose a mate to stay with for life. He didn't even know anyone at Hogwarts who he wanted to spend more than an hour with!
Except....
Draco shut down that stray thought with vicious brutality. It would do him no good to dwell on the impossible. Even if there was nothing against a mated pair of the same sex, in either the wizarding world or in Veela society, Draco knew that the one he secretly desired was beyond his reach. Hatred was too great a hurdle to surmount.
But what if....
"No!" Draco hissed to himself, stalking back to his bed and flinging himself down on it. He was going to go back to sleep. Mating, being a Veela, unrequitted love, all those could damn well wait until tomorrow to deal with. He was too tired now to be able to think rationally about his situation. The last thing he needed now was to panic about this. After all, he still had until his eighteenth birthday to--
Draco sat bolt upright. His eighteenth birthday was in one week! How had he so completely lost track of time like that? But that meant... Draco swallowed. That meant that his mating must happen in a week as well, or he'd die!
He only had seven days left.
To be continued...