Black Truth

Chapter Seven: As the Truth is Dragged Out

Ron and Hermione sat in stunned silence as Harry's tirade finished. Ron was the first to recover, turning to Hermione looking puzzled.

"Hermione... is it even possible to have a pink aura?"

Hermione frowned. "Yes, I suppose anything's possible."

"Guys, the strange conversation Malfoy started coming back up to the castle is not the point here," Harry groaned, falling back on to the conveniently placed couch. "Why in Merlin's name did Malfoy help me?"

"I don't know Harry-" Hermione started.

"Probably wants something in return." Ron muttered.

"-And before I was interrupted!" Hermione gave Ron a pointed look and Ron smiled sheepishly, "I was going to say not to dwell on it. You shouldn't be complaining that he stepped in after all. It's better in the long run for you."

"He didn't demand anything in return right?" Ron asked sharply.

"No. All he said afterwards was that thing about the aura. Then he said nothing. We walked back to the school and he took the potions' stuff and left."

"Maybe he doesn't realize why he did what he did," Hermione spoke thoughtfully, and then yawned.

Harry grimaced. "Sorry I woke you guys up." He realized that dragging his friends out of bed (Ron literally from his bed and Hermione by yelling up at the girl's dorm) might not have been the nicest thing to do, but he'd been freaked.

"Don't worry about it. I would have done the same thing," Ron admitted. "Well, let's go to bed and think on it in the morning."

"Good idea," Hermione agreed, then pulled Ron back as Harry walked into the dorm. "I need to talk to you. Wait until Harry falls asleep, then come back down."

Ron nodded, not waiting to ask why. Hermione would explain it later as she always did.

Ron came back down to see Hermione sitting on a chair with a book in her hands. "What's up?"

"I know why Malfoy did what he did tonight."

"You mean 'last night'; it's after midnight. But why did he do it?"

"Because of his Veriae blood."

Ron frowned. "You'll need a long explanation for this, Hermione."

The girl nodded. "Don't stop me until I'm done then."

Ron flopped onto a couch and waited.

"When I saw Malfoy's feather fall to the ground that day he went ballistic on you, I picked it up so that I could research what he was. I was very careful never to directly touch the feather itself because it was razor sharp. I found one book which had a description of a feather, but it was in the restricted section so it took a while to get permission to read it. By then the school knew he was a Veriae, but so what. I wanted to find out more about his powers. But the book didn't tell me that, apparently the Veriae is taught by his auctor... that's the reason Lucius Malfoy is here by the way. Anyway, what the book did tell me was the life... cycle I guess, of the Veriae. It also told me of the Veriae's soul mate. It works almost like the Veela, in that the Veriae also look for their perfect mate. But the Veriae don't sniff out their mates like Veelas do, they look at the aura of the soul. When they find the person that matches their own, they've found their soul mate. This mate is very important, but not necessarily vital to their lives. If their soul mate never rejects them, they won't die and can live without their mate. However, if they tell their mate and their mate rejects them they die at midnight of that day. Now I was just reading about another purpose of the mate when Harry walked in. The feather of Draco's was on the table. When Harry touched it, it reverted back to its soft silken form. This is because the Veriae instinct wouldn't want to hurt their mate in any way."

"So you're telling me Harry is Malfoy's soul mate?"

"Yes. But he doesn't have to bond with Malfoy. He just cannot reject Malfoy openly or else Malfoy dies."

"And Malfoy would never tell Harry, because Malfoy hates him."

"Exactly."

"Then that's okay then, and we all go on as we have."

"But tonight, Malfoy stopped an attack on Harry. We need to be ready for any situation. We're Harry's friends and Harry's smarter than he lets on in Potions class, you know. If he finds out himself, we need to support whatever decision he might make."

"You mean if he chooses to be with Malfoy. Yeah, I can almost see him doing that."

"You know Harry has the attitude that love is love no matter which gender it comes from, and despite what Malfoy has done to him, the Veriae part of him would make sure that Harry is never hurt... by anyone or anything."

"But you're overlooking the fact that Harry hates Malfoy."

"There is also that. I'm just telling you this so that no matter what happens, we can support Harry."

"Of course we'll support Harry. We're his friends. I mean, sure, when he explained his views on love to us this summer I was a bit shocked, but I can deal with this."

"You're sure?"

"Positive. I mean, hurting Harry's friends hurts Harry, so Malfoy can't start anything with us either right? All we do is ignore him. Easy."

Hermione smiled. "Exactly."

Lucius Malfoy had tuned out his son's ranting hours ago and just let Draco continue talking until he had repeated himself three or four times, worn himself out pacing around, and stormed off to his bedroom. Raising an eyebrow at some of Draco's last statements on how it wasn't fair because he wasn't even going to be punished for being so stupid as to help Potter because it was following Veriae instinct, Lucius just stored the entire few hours away as temporary insanity and returned to his book.

He'd known this was going to happen after all. Why else had he deserted Voldemort? Honestly, Draco himself should have suspected that Potter was his soul mate after that. Oh well. Draco was, after all, an adolescent, and adolescents sometimes couldn't find something if it hit them on the side of the head, relationships being one of those things. What would come would come, and Draco would never actually tell Potter that he was his soul mate, so what was Draco worried about anyway?

By Friday morning, Draco had carefully built a manor on the left bank of "denial" and was comfortably living in it without any thought whatsoever. The potion had been finished and he'd given the stupid vial to be tested to Potter, saying to test it if he wanted to but Draco knew it was perfect and had left the room before Potter might have swallowed it. So Potter didn't know anything whatsoever about the aura of Draco's soul and both boys (along with respective friends/bodyguards) were ignoring each other... but Draco was dreadfully wrong about one thing.

On Thursday night, Harry Potter had dumped the entire clear contents of the vial of the completed potion into his pumpkin juice and had watched everyone's auras for exactly one hour. He'd delightedly told Hermione of her aura (apple red) and had told Ron he didn't want to know (Slytherin green) and had then looked at his own to find it was ebony black. Which he thought was fitting, thank you very much... and then Draco had walked in. Harry had felt annoyance when he realized that Draco and he had the exact same aura. Who did that git think he was, having the same aura as he? Then his brain had started working... maybe it was something about being a Veriae. He still hadn't checked out... er..."borrowed" that book on Dragontongue from the Restricted Section... and a resolution was made to translate exactly what those wyverns had said about Draco and himself on Monday. After all, he still remembered very clearly what the hissing had sounded like... strange what one remembered without really meaning to.

So he had left dinner, had trespassed into the library's restricted section, and promptly spent all night learning to speak Dragontounge. He doubted he could really speak it fluently, but he would understand it. There were only a few differences between it and Parseltongue, because dragons were capable of making a snarling "kh" and "rrrk" sound that snakes couldn't do. So at exactly 3:48 a.m. on Friday morning, Harry looked at the translated sentence one wyvern had spoken to another.

"Lucky boy. It's too bad that you're the intended of a Veriae."

Intended of a Veriae? What did that mean? Hmmm. Hermione had that book on Veriae-people before, maybe she checked it back in. But looking revealed that, no, she hadn't. Well, then he would just have to ask her to see it.

Hermione looked at him for a long moment before smiling and fetching the book from her dorm, saying something like, "What's mine is yours, Harry, you know that," and left him to his reading. Harry thought that look was rather odd, but he walked up to his dorm and collapsed on the bed. Merlin, he was tired. A nap would be good right now. He'd skip whatever class he might have this morning and sleep in, then he'd look up what that "intended" thing was, and then go down to Care of Magical Creatures. Yes, very good plan Harry, he told himself. Sleeping sure looked good right about now.
Hermione and Ron were waiting for Harry at the entrance to the grounds, as they always did on Fridays, to walk down to their Magical Creatures class. But they noticed that something was different about Harry this Friday as he made his way over to him.

"Something wrong mate?" Ron asked.

"Sorta. I'll tell you when we get to class."

Harry's two friends shared a knowing look as they followed Harry across the grounds. Another person too, had noticed the slight difference in Harry, but was trying to convince himself that he didn't care.

Wonder what's wrong with Scarhead? Draco thought. Well, Potter would tell his friends soon enough, most likely in Creatures (Draco still didn't know why he himself continued to take that class...). Ah, the joys of being a Veriae... it was rather windy today. One of the things Draco liked about breezes... they were very chatty. He couldn't speak to them himself, but they had the uncanny ability to figure out what he wanted to know. And so, every part of the conversation Potter and his friends had would be heard by Draco.

"You know, then?" Ron asked as they stood away from the other groups that were taking care of their latest charge... a mini-dog-looking-thing that had a strange fish-like tail and webbed paws.

"You mean you read the book too?"

"No, 'Mione told me. What are you going to do?"

"What can I do? I like Draco Malfoy as much as you do."

"Which isn't very much then," Ron met Hermione's glare. "What? I'm being truthful."

Harry smiled softly. "I know you're trying your best to support me, Ron. Stop looking at him like that, Hermione. After all, as long as I don't reject Malfoy over there, nothing bad happens."

"Are you sure about this Harry?"

"Positive. I will not be bonded to Malfoy."

"Thank you Merlin," Ron muttered under his breath, earning another glare from Hermione.

All three started at Pansy's shriek. "Professor! It's Draco! He fainted!"

Hermione turned shocked eyes to Ron and Harry, who shrugged and continued watching the sleeping "mini-dog-like-thing".

"He couldn't have heard us Hermione. He's half a field away, for Merlin's sake. You could hardly see him from here," Ron pointed out.

Hermione nodded. "Yes, I'm just jumping to conclusions." But deep down, she wondered if she was jumping to the right conclusion. "Harry, you know how you always carry your cloak with you?" she asked, emphasizing "cloak" so Harry would know what it meant.

"Yeah, why?"

"May I borrow it?"

"Sure... wait right now?"

"I want to find out what's going on."

Harry shook his head but relented. "Just make sure you don't get caught."

Hermione nodded, slipping into the shadows of invisibility.

Lucius Malfoy burst into the infirmary, wings snapping in anger, followed by a somewhat irate looking Professor Snape who'd been sent to fetch the elder Malfoy. All eyes in the room (which included any staff who weren't teaching at the moment) were trained on the boy lying, deathly pale, on the bed.

"I don't know what happened," Madam Pomfrey said worriedly. "According to Hagrid, he just fainted. There was no cause. He doesn't have any characteristics of being sick... he just won't wake."

Lucius cradled his son's hand in his own, his fingers tracing the vein back up the boy's arm to the point when it was nearest the surface. Draco's blood was as cold as ice. What had Potter done? For the first time in his life, the Malfoy facade threatened to crumble.

"Dumbledore. I will be taking Draco to his room," he spoke abruptly, his eyes searching out those of the Headmaster and then those of Snape. The Potion Master's own eyes widened in recognition as Dumbledore gave his permission despite Madam Pomfrey's protests.

After Lucius had left, cradling his son's body to his own as if he would never have the chance to do so again, Snape spoke. "Don't bother trying to protest, Pomfrey. Draco should at least be able to die in his room with his remaining family."

"Die?"

Shrouded eyes widened as Hermione made her way out of the room. Draco had heard Harry. Now all she had to do was get to Harry to tell him. But would Harry care enough to save him even though that meant practically chaining himself to Draco Malfoy for the rest of his life?