Chapter 6

So, Draco Malfoy had chosen Harry Potter as his mate.

Insane, right?

Not really, Hermione mused after she had thought things through. As a Veela, Malfoy had essentially been looking for a mate who was strong, good-looking, powerful and fertile and of good breeding. Harry was basically all those things and more. Hermione couldn't vouch for the fertile-thing, but assumed all was fine in that department since Draco wouldn't have approved of Harry otherwise. Not that fertility was an issue in this case, neither of the two having a womb and all.

After Malfoy had retreated to his dorm, Hermione had hasted herself up to Gryffindor tower to try and find Harry to see how he was doing.

Not very good.

Hermione had had to sit next to him for over a half an hour, soothingly rubbing his back while he was deeply breathing in and out into a plastic bag.

She really couldn't blame her friend for hyperventilating after what had transpired just then. The poor boy's view about himself and the world around him had been turned upside down.

For about the umpteenth time.

Harry's reality had been: he fancied girls, Draco Malfoy was a royal pain in the ass and the first guy who would dare to come up and kiss him would get punched in the face.

And now that reality had been changed over night. All Hermione wanted to do was tell Harry that Malfoy was a Veela so he wouldn't have to go through this identity crisis. Even though she wasn't a professional consultant, she still felt that she had to respect Malfoy's privacy. All she could tell Harry was "It's not your fault" over and over again. But without any hard data, that didn't bring much solace. Eventually Harry had dozed off and Hermione had left to get some sleep herself.

She really wanted to, but she just couldn't bring herself to blame Malfoy for this messed up situation. It wasn't his fault that he was a part-Veela. Still, thinking about the way she had seen him molesting Harry last night -even if Harry had been more than a willing recipient- was nothing less than disturbing. Harry was her best friend and she had honestly never truly regarded him as a sexual creature. She had never even seen him kissing a girl (she knew he had, but had never been there to witness it) so why would she?

And last night she had walked in on him passionately snogging Draco Malfoy.

And the fact that Hermione had found it one of the most arousing sights she had ever laid eyes on did not make the situation any better. Now Hermione had finally come to the understanding as to why lots of men liked to fantasize about two women in erotic scenarios. And the knowledge that she had always considered such men to be rather sad individuals hadn't made her feel any better either.

Harry might have been like a brother to her, but she wasn't blind and knew that her friend had grown into a handsome young man. And Malfoy was two extremes all wrapped up into one person: extremely rotten on the inside and extremely beautiful on the outside. She liked to pretend that he was as ugly as he was within, but he was gorgeous and she knew it.

And sadly so did he.

At least one good thing had resulted out of last night's debacle. Malfoy had now finally accepted Hermione's help, which he truly needed. She supposed that he first had to be pushed to the limit before realising the magnitude of the situation.

Him shoving Harry up the wall in the middle of detention apparently had done the trick.

Even though Hermione had finally gotten her way, it was only now that she truly had come to the understanding on what she had gotten herself into exactly. To stop Malfoy from randomly pouncing on Harry she would be forced to stalk him 24/7 until the end of the month.

Jolly!

Malfoy might be willing into letting her accompany him, but he was still a ferret-faced brat and not exactly a joy to be around. This was something that had already become evident on the first morning after their agreement. The boy was complete and utterly emotionally retarded!

"If you want me to be able to help prevent you from jumping Harry or anyone finding out about you being a Veela, you have to tell me exactly what you're going through!" Hermione pressed.

"I already did" Draco insisted while he was pacing around their common room.

"I don't believe you" Hermione scoffed. The things Malfoy had shared with her had been textbook and vague. He was keeping things from her and she knew it. "For instance, why did you suddenly need to borrow my 'Sleekeazy's Hair Potion'? You have curls, don't you?"

"I don't have curls!" Draco sneered.

"Are you sure?" Hermione retaliated. "So you won't mind if I were to pore this glass of water on your head to see? I could dry it with a flick of my wand afterwards, no harm done."

"You wouldn't dare!" Malfoy said while raising his head proudly in defiance in a manner only he could.

"I would" Hermione replied truthfully. She really would.

A few more moments passed where the one tried to stare the down other one, till...

"Fine, I have curls" Draco relented. "Big deal! They just appeared one morning and I couldn't go out looking like that, now could I?"

"You've got curls?" Hermione snorted in merriment, having a mental picture of Malfoy with hair like a blonde Shirley Temple.

"It's not funny!" Draco spat.

"Jeez Malfoy, have a sense of humour" Hermione sighed. "It's probably just a result of your hormones acting up. So what else haven't you been mentioning to me?"

"Nothing" Draco replied defiantly.

Hermione rolled her eyes in annoyance.

Why did she always have to be so damn nice?

Lets face it, if Harry wasn't involved in this she still wouldn't have let Malfoy hanging like this. If Hermione had never gotten the reason why people called her a goody-goody, she well understood now.

On the other hand, spending time with Malfoy was a unique opportunity. Following the steps of the first known Male Veela during mating season is a notion biologists would drool over. Hermione just couldn't help herself in gloating over the fact that she was the first to see, even though she had to put up with Ferret Boy to do so.

"Fine then" Draco spat as he flopped himself on the sofa. "You really want to know every single embarrassing little detail that comes with being a Veela? Fine! In a nutshell: I have a tail, I have curls, I'm randy as hell, I've got a constant concealing charm on my pants because several boy scouts could camp inside my trousers and I've been jacking off for an average of 20 times a day. Off course that was only until I found out that Potty is my mate, as of which I seem to have started suffering from ejaculatory incompetence. Anything else?"

"Does that mean you-?"

"Can't get off, yes," Draco grunted. If he had thought that wanking over 20 times a day was rough, he hadn't considered the idea of not being able to. If he couldn't get an orgasm, masturbation just made the whole thing worse. Getting to the edge and not being able to get his sexual release was worse than torture.

"Right" Hermione said, while a little blush had crept unto her cheeks. "But how do you feel?"

"Dammit Granger, you're not going to force me to talk about my feelings are you?"

"It's important!"

"That's such a girly thing to say," he said mockingly.

"Oh please!" Hermione said scornfully. "There's nothing wrong with a man who talks about his feelings."

"Alright, you win!" Draco said in mock-defeat. "I feel... that I'm hungry and want to go to breakfast."

Hermione rolled her eyes in contempt.

"Smart Ass!" she huffed.

It appeared that Hermione was going to have a long day...

"My ass is indeed smart, but you should see my brain" Draco said sarcastically as he started walking towards the portrait hole.

A very long day.

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For convenience sake, Draco and Hermione had seated themselves together for breakfast. They had placed themselves at a secluded area of the Slytherin table, since Draco had absolutely refused to sit at the Gryffindor one. Hermione had informed her friends that she and Malfoy had some important things to discuss in regard of their duties as Head Boy and –Girl. They had given her their sympathies and thankfully hadn't questioned her explanation.

Malfoy was absentmindedly chewing his food until suddenly his attention seemed to be caught by something behind Hermione. Hermione found the sight to be quite amusing. It was like watching a dog reacting to a whistle that humans couldn't hear.

"Who is she?" Malfoy asked with narrowed eyes.

Hermione turned around in her seat to see whom Malfoy had been referring to. She was surprised to note that he was apparently talking about Luna Lovegood, who had just joined her classmates at the Ravenclaw table.

"That's Luna Lovegood" Hermione said as she turned back to Draco. She was a little taken aback when she noticed that his eyes were still fixated on Luna in a gaze that bordered on murderous.

"Why?" Hermione asked worriedly.

"I don't like her" Draco all but growled.

"You don't even know her" Hermione stated dumbfounded.

"I don't care" Draco spat as he went back to eating his food.

Hermione suppressed the urge to ask him for an explanation since Malfoy seemed to be rather pissed off all of the sudden. Still, she found it rather peculiar that Draco had just immediately declared his dislike for Luna after spotting a glimpse of her from the other side of the Great Hall. Granted, Hermione herself wasn't all too fond of the girl, but at least she had enough information to base it on. They were just too different to start out with. Luna had her head in the clouds while Hermione was a girl whose two feet were firmly set on the ground. They would never be the best of friends, but Hermione respected Luna's opinions and could deal with her company. Whatever Draco's problem was with Luna, it obviously had something to do with the Veela-part of him.

Then suddenly Draco dropped his cutlery and stood up from his seat.

"Malfoy, where are you going?" Hermione hissed at him, warning bells going off inside her head.

When Malfoy didn't answer her, she quickly got up, ran after him and went to stand in front of him.

"What are you doing?" she asked anxiously when she noticed that he had started to approach the Gryffindor table. When it seemed that he wasn't at all bothered about Hermione being in his way, she saw herself forced to walk backwards while hovering in front of him.

"Marking my territory" Malfoy growled.

Hermione's eyes widened at the comprehension of what that meant.

"Oh, no you're not!" Hermione stated firmly and then did something rash that neither of them had expected.

She jumped on his back.

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Jumping unto Malfoy's back in the middle of the Great Hall didn't exactly prove to be the most thoughtful of strategies. But it was the only thing Hermione had been able to come up with while being put on the spot, so she was just going to work with what she had.

"Granger, what are you- umpff?" Draco said as Hermione suddenly covered his mouth with her one hand and enclosed his eyes with the other.

"This is exactly the thing what I'm here for: keeping you from making an ass out of yourself" she said as she tried not to give in to Draco's attempts to throw her off his back. Hermione also selectively ignored the fact that the entire Hogwarts population was currently monitoring their Head Boy and -Girl's strange antics with great merriment.

"Now, go to the right" she whispered, and was replied with a grunt in refusal.

"I said right!" Hermione ordered as she hit her heals against Draco's leg, as one would do to spur on a horse. Draco gave up and did as told, wobbling his way out of the Great Hall. Right after she had said that her lips quirked into a smirk. She noted that she quite liked it this way. Hermione in control and Draco mute, as it always should have been if it were a perfect world. If this were permanent, she would actually consider keeping him as a pet to carry her around like a mule.

After a good twenty steps, Hermione removed the hand that blocked Draco's vision.

"Go to our dorms" she instructed.

Even though Malfoy's muteness was refreshing, Hermione was very curious by nature and just couldn't help herself from asking him a question.

"Mind telling me what that was all about?" Hermione asked as she finally removed her hand from Draco's mouth.

"Mind getting off my back?" Draco asked angrily in reply.

"Do you always have to answer a question with a question?" Hermione asked while she wrapped both her arms casually around his neck.

"Do you?" Draco spat.

"Stop being so annoying!" Hermione said in irritation. "You were going to do something stupid and I saved you from doing so! I know you couldn't help what you were doing, but I could do with some support."

"I can't control the way I was born!" Draco said while hooking his arms around Hermione's legs to relieve some of her weight from his back.

"Just like I've been telling you for almost seven years," Hermione said pointedly.

"What?"

"A person can't help it if he or she is born as a Veela, a Pureblood, a Muggleborn, a Muggle, a Squib, a Kneazel, a Krumplehorned Snorkack or what not" she said wisely.

"A Krumplehorned what?" Draco asked in confusion. "Oh wait, this is one of those things where I should be learning something isn't it?"

"Well, are you?"

"No!" Draco huffed while blatantly refusing to see her point, which contradicted with every value he was thought. Nevertheless, his own line of thinking had never put himself in the negative light, a manner in which he really didn't like to think of himself. But neither did he like to be proven wrong.

So he found himself in a bit of an impasse on that account.

"Oi, where are you going?" Hermione asked when suddenly Draco rounded a corned that she knew led to a detour.

"We can't go there," Draco said warily.

"Why not?" Hermione asked.

"There's a bathroom there."

"So?"

"They smell" Draco said with a disgusted face.

"Off course they smell" Hermione said. "They're bathrooms!"

Draco turned his head and gave her a look that was basically a mimes way of saying 'Are you stupid?'

"Veela's have a heightened sense of smell," he said while pointing at his nose. "I can't go past a bathroom without wanting to hurl."

"Right" Hermione sighed. "Why is that anyway?"

"What?" he asked.

"The heightened sense of smell?" Hermione asked. "How does that help during mating season?"

"Do you have any idea what smell can give you for information?" Draco said. "It's uncanny how much odour can cling to a person's body. You can wash and wash and wash but it's still there. It tells you things. I know things"

"You know things?"

"Yes."

"Like what?" Hermione asked.

"I know that all girls from fifth year on get their period at the same time as the girls they share their dorm with" Draco said.

"I know" Hermione said. "Women who've lived together for a long period of time often have synchronised menstrual cycles. So... you can actually smell that?"

"It's quite easy to smell blood," Draco said offhandedly while Hermione wrinkled her nose in disgust. "I also know that Professor Vector has had a bad case of the runs last week, that that Finch-Fletchly chap wanks an average of seven times a day and that Parvati Patil uses perfume with animal pheromones in it."

Hermione chuckled at this. Parvati really was the type of person to mess around with crap like that.

"And I also know who fancies who" Draco continued. "Pheromones are all over the place, let me tell you that. And there are surprisingly many gay people here. Sometimes I just want to smack that Creevy-idiot over the head and order him to tell his girlfriend to shove off."

"Why should he do that?" Hermione asked in surprise.

"She isn't even able to give him sweaty palms" Draco huffed. "But you should smell him when he's looking at McMillian. Whew!"

"Creevy's gay? Really?" Hermione asked, but then remembered the boy's odd fascination with Harry and she actually wasn't all that surprised.

Suddenly a thought occurred to her.

"Was that what just happened in the Great Hall?" Hermione asked while she tried to turn her head so she could see Malfoy's reaction. "You smelled something?"

Draco just groaned in reply.

"I just flipped out a bit, that's all" he said. Draco still felt really uncomfortable in talking about his sudden fascination for Harry Potter. And the excuse that it was only physical didn't relieve any of the discomfiture. Another thing that was disconcerting was the fact that the only person who knew about his current debacle had the uncanny ability to figure things out with minimal information.

"Did you smell that Luna fancies Harry?" she asked.

"Hm" Draco grunted in compliance. He had been watching Potter's seat from the moment he had sat himself down, not being able to turn his gaze away. When that Lovegood-person passed by Potter's seat Draco could smell the girl's excitement spiralling from across the other side of the room. With that, Draco suddenly had had this incredible urge to mark Potter as his for all to see, especially miss What's-Her-Name. It was quite unsettling for him to realise that he had quite the possessive streak, Veela blood or not. If he were to catch someone making a move on his mate, he wouldn't hesitate to claw his or her eyes out. Therefore, Lunana –or whatever- would do better to keep her hands to herself.

"So, what else can you smell?" Hermione asked. She had been quite surprised to hear Luna's apparent affection for Harry, never having noticed anything to remotely indicate that. But Luna is... well, Luna. So she was inclined to believe Draco and that supersensitive nose of his. She also wasn't going to press this matter any further since all it would do was get Draco pissed off again. And Hermione really didn't want to have him marching back into the Great Hall to disembowel Luna or pounce on Harry while she was still clasped to his back.

As Draco walked on, he couldn't help but become aware that it actually felt good in being able to talk to someone about this. He could pretend that Granger was just following him around, but he knew very well that he depended on her. Not just for his physical well-being, but also his mental one. He didn't really want to, but the thought that he could talk to someone felt rather comforting. Even though he hadn't actually said much yet, he really had never talked this openly to another person before. He'd never say it out loud, but this whole thing was quite scary. Hell, his whole self-image had been shattered and he was just supposed to be able to carry on as if nothing has happened? Yesterday he had even cried.

Draco Malfoy had cried.

In public!

In front of a Mudblood.

But then again he had never had this many new things to deal with all in one go. Being a Veela in mating season was like going through puberty all over again in an accelerated speed. He had always found it rather silly that people needed to talk about their experiences during puberty. He never did. Mentioning your worries and weaknesses made you vulnerable.

He has never really had many worries in his life, his pampered upbringing shielding him from many difficulties conventional families had to deal with. But now Draco found himself in a position in which he had never felt more vulnerable in his life and for some reason wanted to get his troubles off his chest. And besides, Granger was to much of a goody-goody to betray his trust by blabbing. If she wanted to know what he was going through he was just going to just answer her questions.

Reluctantly off course.

"I also know who's shagging who... and where... and how," Draco continued.

"Really?" Hermione asked.

Draco nodded as he marched up the set of stairs that led to the next floor, careful not to topple over backwards from the excessive weight.

"People can rinse their mouths or other cavities all they like, I can still smell semen and natural lubrication from a mile away," he explained.

"Ew!" Hermione replied.

"I know" Draco said. "But you get used to it."

In all honesty Draco had been thoroughly disgusted at first by all the odours.

So many crappy smells!

People should brush their teeth more often. And hasn't anyone heard of deodorant? And on top of that, people are constantly farting all over the place.

Even girls!

Draco quite liked to pretend that they didn't do that, that they had some sort of magical digestion system that didn't come with smelly unpleasantness.

He couldn't do that now, now could he.

But as he said, he got used to it. It was either 'suck it up' or 'go insane', so Draco picked the first.

And besides, what doesn't kill you makes you stronger.

He just hoped that Granger would be civil enough to keep all fumes inside until she had climbed off his back.

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End of Chapter 6

Disclaimer: The line 'My ass is smart, but you should see my brain' is dedicated to my friend An, who was so nice as to say that to me when I called her a smart ass.

A little warning: the next person who asks me again if/when/how this is going to be a Draco/Hermione story will get a piano dropped on his/her head! Mind you, these chapters aren't just fillers before the 'good stuff' comes along. If these things didn't happen, neither would the Draco/Hermione pairing.

Thanks for your reviews!

slyswn28, MagicFairyDuster, sw33tdohtee, hermyandron4evr, charmed piper, dracolov, Alenor, fallenRain27, Hermione Double, WriterLady1031, Undying at Midsummer, yanely1167, MagicFairyDuster

Queen of Serpents: About the 'jelled' error: I'm afraid I have to pull the "I'm not English and the story isn't Beta'd"-card again. I'll try to correct it when I have the chance. And yes, the story is on AFF too, but so far nothing is different from this one. When the juicy bits pop in, I'm going to put up a big notice to send everyone over there. :-) Not that much Harry/Draco juiciness though, although I do understand your fascination with two boys snogging each other to death. For Harry/Draco snogs/shags/whatever, you'll have to consult my other fics. ;-)

Mandabella: Yes, I am a Veela. My magic works through the Internet. :-)

Male-chan: Don't you see the piano hanging over your head? ;-) And I would have put it in the summary, but there just isn't any room for it.

Munku-JGSPTV: 'The chaos it causes amongst us all increases the fun'? I think it's turning my hair grey! ;-) And trust me, Harry's 'ending' will increase my disgruntled reviews. I'm not saying what will happen, all I'm saying is that I've done it to him before. And people keep disliking it even though I think it's one of the most cannon things in my fics. And therefore I keep doing it. :-)