Draco refused to speak to Hermione when they were back in the office, walking ahead of her purposefully and closing the office door before she could reach it.

She slammed open the door and stood in the door glaring.

"You're going to tell me what the hell is going on, Draco Malfoy, or else."

He raised an eyebrow in answer as if to ask, Or else, what?

"I will go back and ask Harry, who I know will tell me the truth."

He smiled at her. "Don't count on it."

"Draco, c'mon!"

He licked his lips, tasting what was left of Harry on them. "Potter and I are shagging."

"Well I could figure that much out on my own," she looked at the floor, tapping her foot impatiently before glaring back up at him again, "How long?"

Draco tried to think. "Since...sixth year, I think? Or seventh. I can't seem to..."

"WHAT?"

He laughed out loud, shaking his head. "Come off it, Hermione. Do you honestly think Potter would deem to lay his hands on me if not for a dire life or death reason?"

She wobbled forward now, eyes cold as ice down his back, "WHAT...is going on?"

Draco suddenly found his nails horribly fascinating while he mumbled, "Potter has something he needs...help...with, and I am...helping...him."

Her frustrated shriek made him smile and he heard her footsteps echoing down the hall in her wake before everything was silent again.

The silence gave him time to think.

He'd actually allowed Potter to kiss him, kissed him back, and enjoyed it.

There was obviously something wrong with him.

He covered his face with his hands and sighed dramatically.

Maybe Lion Pox was contagious.

Over the course of the next two weeks, Harry started to feel the changes.

They were slight, but he noticed them more and more as each day progressed. He could smell things from feet away; sometimes from even into the next room or two rooms from where he stood. He once knew Hermione was coming even before she appeared which may have been partly due to wishful thinking, but he doubted it.

There was also the overwhelming urge to stay up all night and roar that he would admit to having felt before but now, now, he could act on it.

He could feel it in his bones, wanting to become what his body knew he needed to be.

Still, he didn't try, instead forcing himself to broaden his activities more. He went to St. Mungos much more than he'd had in the last year and tended to the sick, freeing some lost minds and trying not to get involved inside them.

It was all so confusing, most of the time. He wished he could talk to Professor Dumbledore, and then remembered why he hadn't allowed one of the Professor's paintings to be hung in Grimmauld Place.

Dumbledore was dead.

"Harry?"

Harry's ears perked and he looked over his shoulder at Lupin, feeling an inhuman roar in his throat. "Yes?"

Remus ran a hand through his hair, looked around the room for a moment, and then smiled. "Would you like to come to Diagon Alley with me? I was..."

Harry cut him off sharply, turning away. "No."

"...going to look into some dreams I've been having lately. They've put me off."

Harry was silent, clenching his muscles and grinding his teeth. He wanted nothing more than to attack, tear, kill. His muscles were taut with strain, but he held tight and ignored the feeling.

"Harry...I...I wanted to tell you about them. I..."

Harry didn't turn.

"I believe Sirius is trying to speak to me."

His hands curled into claws and he felt his nails lengthen, but he bit his tongue and whispered, "Please leave."

Lupin put his hand on Harry's shoulder and the contact felt like acid on his skin, making his claws dig into the wood grain of the desk in front of him and tearing large visible holes. "I would do anything to..."

Harry growled suddenly and turned, causing the older man to take a step back and pale considerably. "Harry, what's...what...what...?"Remus whispered, confused.

He backed away, eyes wide and senses on full alert. The call of a predator was in the air and the wolf wanted blood, but knew when to bow to its betters. "Harry..."

Harry bit his lips hard enough to draw blood and whispered, "GO."

Lupin did.

The Gryffindor stood, throwing back his chair and crawling into bed, curling up on his side and fighting his muscles. He didn't want this.

But his mind and body said otherwise.

He growled quietly, closing his eyes tight and trying to let go.

It was darker outside now than it had ever been and Draco spent more of his time thinking about the dark than most humans thought about light.

There was probably something to that, but he hadn't the time or patience to care either way. He sat at a black mahogany desk in his father's study, staring out at the grounds as they were drenched with water from one of the most violent storms he'd seen in quite some time.

Normally he loved storms because it gave him time to think and sometimes just feel, instead of thinking before every thought and never having an honest emotion that he hadn't carefully planned out minutes or hours ahead.

Malfoys do not succumb to things like emotional attachment, Draco. You will learn this lesson in due time.

He remembered being six years old, begging his father for a hug after his favorite snake Gelder died and hearing those words, memorizing and studying them, wanting so desperately to please his father.

Obviously, his father was extremely happy now down in the fiery depths of hell with all his Death Eater friends and laughing at the state of Draco's life.

"Master Draco?" a tiny voice called out, bringing him from his thoughts.

Draco didn't even turn. "Yes?"

"There be a man here to see you, sir."

He turned and barked out roughly, "Who the," before trailing off into a sigh.

Remus Lupin was standing in the doorway, looking so horribly perplexed that Draco felt an urge to laugh.

"Malfoy I..."

He rolled his eyes and stood up, grabbing his coat off the back of the chair he'd been sitting in and walking ahead of Lupin without much acknowledgement. "What now? Did he turn into a butterfly?"

"I don't know how you even know about Harry's..."

Draco went into the sitting room across the hall and lit a fire, watching as the green flames licked over the wood. "You mean how his body made the choice to become a bloody Animagus without telling him first? That, Lupin?"

He stepped into the fire with floo powder in his hand. "Bloody Gryffindors," he mumbled before calling out,"12 Grimmauld Place!" and disappearing into the flames.

Reappearing in the fireplace in Harry's bedroom he stepped out, sighed loudly, and angrily stamped across the room.

Harry was on his side in bed, sweating profusely and holding his muscles taut enough that Draco could see the strain through his clothes. "Bloody hell, Potter, let go!"

"Fuck off, Malfoy."

"Oh no way now, you stupid bloody...god, I can't believe this! You do everything else like clockwork but when someone asks you to just go limp you throw a fit and lock up all your limbs like they're about to bugger you. It's no wonder you're still a virgin."

Harry's teeth were clenched when he growled out, "Am not," and Draco smiled, "Oh yeah? Enlighten me, Potter. Tell me all about your sordid love affairs with Longbottom and cheeky little twats like Thomas and even the future Miss Longbottom herself. Does she know you shagged her boyfriend before she did?"

Harry growled, loud and long and raised yellow eyes up to glare at Draco. "Shut your..." he moaned and threw back his head, groaning deeply.

His muscles were on fire and he opened his mouth to scream but no sound came out.

"Relax, Potter. You have to..."

Harry's eyes refused to focus but he could smell Draco nearby, close enough to touch but far away enough to save himself if anything bad were to happen. "Go..."

"Your wolf woke me at four in the damn morning, Potter, I'm not leaving here until I see a...DAMN IT, POTTER. RELAX. Your muscles need..."

There was a noise, finally, from the fireplace and Draco never took his eyes away from Harry while he stood, close but still clear across the room from the bed.

"Harry?"

Harry closed his eyes tightly and screamed, loud and long, feeling tears in his eyes and forcing himself to keep them closed. He rolled onto his side and curled into a ball, trying to relax and failing miserably.

"Oh god, he's..."

"A bloody stupid lion is what he is. Damn it, Potter. You...stupid, stupid, idiot."

Draco's familiar pounding footsteps echoed in Harry's head before he felt hands turn him onto his back and winced, opening his eyes. Draco was staring down at him looking angrier than Harry had ever seen him look. "I'm trying. It HURTS."

Draco sighed and whispered, "You owe me," before pressing his lips to Harry's.

Instantly Harry felt his body respond, clutching at Draco's shoulders and relaxing into the feel of it, he shuddered, feeling his muscles releasing themselves as he rolled Draco over.

The blonde pulled him closer, digging nails into his skin and rolling them again until they fell. Harry distantly heard Lupin gasp as Draco's head hit the floor, but neither of them broke contact until Harry felt his body changing.

Draco stared up at him, trying to catch is breath. Harry threw back his head and growled, just as Draco changed, disappearing into safe snakeskin.

There was a lion in the house.

Remus stepped forward slowly, holding out his hands for Harry to smell. "That's it," he whispered, still unsure of himself.

The lion stared at him then turned away, sniffing the ground. Draco slithered by and the lion tried to step on him, which made the Slytherin change back into form. "Bloody fucking hell, Potter! Kill me why don't you?"

The lion stared down at him, then purred, burying its nose into Draco's hair to smell him.

"Get your nose away from my..."

Lion Harry stepped on his chest to keep him still, then preceded to lick his face.

Lupin held back a laugh. "I think he likes you."

"Potter, get your tongue out of my shirt before I pluck all the hair off your body and use it for love potions."

Harry changed smoothly, curled on Draco like he belonged there and moved his tongue from inside the neck of Draco's shirt to his lips, kissing him again before Draco was able to push him off and stand.

Lupin looked horribly surprised and Harry more content in his own skin for the first time in two years, which made Draco a little bit satisfied before he realized that he was not supposed to.

"And that, is transfiguration," he mumbled, wiping off his pants and not looking up at either of them again before apparating back into his own bedroom.

Draco fell back onto his bed with a grizzled sigh, closing his eyes.

Then he heard a pop and froze, not opening even an eye to get a look.

Damn it.

"They already sell a Potter love potion, if you're interested," came the lazy voice, its owner moving closer and sitting himself on Draco's bed.

Draco refused to move.

"Thanks. That's all I wanted to say, before you ran off. I couldn't have done it without you."

He feigned sleep and knew Harry was laughing at him.

"Goodnight Draco."

When he heard the now irritatingly familiar crack Draco opened his eyes, staring up at the black canopy above his bed. The walls were decorated in light gold and green swirls, one of his mother's old designs from the beginning of his parents' marriage and just shortly before his own birth.

She used to sit him down at night and tell him about those times, how happy she'd been to be so in love, and how it had all shattered when she'd realized Lucius was like all the 'others' before him.

'The day after the healer announced you were healthy enough for me to leave the house that he would no longer have any use for me. I'd given him his heir, and that was all I'd been needed for. Wizard blood, especially Black blood, was my only purpose.'

She'd touched his cheek then, kissing his cheek and before the final, 'But I'll always have you,' that kept him alive throughout his adolescence.

He rolled onto his side and pressed a hand to the wall, feeling the pattern.

There was so much love in this room, but pain echoed the walls like a cacophony.

"Master Draco?"

"I do not wish to be disturbed."

The house elf, one of the very last he'd kept around, hastily whispered, "There's is a letter, Master."

Draco rolled over, sitting up and accepting the letter without even looking the elf in the eye.

Not that it would have looked back. Father had taught them well.

He opened it with one hand and pulled out the note inside.

You are a horrible actor.

Just so you know.

Am able to change now on my own, albeit shakily, and on a whim I've decided to keep the tail. Stop by, if you'd like, and maybe I'll show it to you.

H.

He smiled, feeling the paper in his fingers.

"Bloody lion," he mumbled, still smiling even as the letter burned with a flick of his wrist.