Chapter 3: Culture Shock

(Disclaimer: Harry Potter and the gang were created and are owed by JK Rowling and her publishing company. I am a poor but honest writer seeking to entertain lovers of Ms. Rowling's characters, so… PLEASE DON"T SUE ME! It'll cost you 1000 times more than I got to do it. All praise the Goddess JK and her wonder creations.)

It has been three hours since Draco found out that he was part-veela from his father, he has sat in the same seat staring into the fire ever since; having not moved an inch. His father has worked at his desk, and ran errands all the while Draco has sat there motionless. Finally, Lucius was making an evening fire call to Gringott's Bank when a goblin appeared in the flames.

"Who's this then, that would call, the Personal Accounts Office at 10 pm on a Friday night?" Said the irate Goblin Glinch. "Oh, Mr. Malfoy, sir, didn't see it was you, how may I help you?"

"Yes, I have a couple of things I want checked out in with my accounts and some transfers completed as well." Said Lucius.

"Um, sir, is he quite all right?" Said the Goblin Glinch, as he looked at the stunned Draco.

"Hmm?" Lucius looked over at Draco. "Draco, (no response), Draco, (still no response), DRACO!" screamed Lucius.

Draco blinked a few times then looked at his father and meekly said, "Uh, yes Father?"

"Draco, could you go be stunned or shocked or traumatized in your room, I'm trying to conduct business here and you are alarming the Goblin." Lucius said coolly.

"Yes, Father." Said Draco as he mechanically rose out of the chair and headed to his room.

Draco looked around his room; it surprised him. His king size bed with the green and silver embroidered dragon cashmere bedspread, still looked the same with the nine silver and green silk covered pillows. His large 17th century French oak desk on which he was working on his summer holiday's homework still looked the same; indeed his homework was still positioned as he had left it. The walls of his room were still in the same near pastel Slytherin green, with the light silver accented ceiling; it still looked the same. His 17th century French oak dressers, Chester, and matching nightstands, still looked the same. His own huge personal brick fireplace still looked the same, off to the left of the fireplace sat his favorite seat that was similar to the wing back chairs in his father's study; it too was still the same, and it all amazed him that everything looked exactly as before and yet, his whole world had changed. Draco took his favorite seat near the fireplace, the wing back chair and just stared into the flames.

"Not human. Not human. Not human. Not human." he murmured over and over again under his breath.

It was 10:30 pm when Narcissa Malfoy came to check on her son.

She heard his little mantra.

"Human is highly overrated if you asked me." She said sort of haughtily as she sat on the side of Draco's bed.

"What? Mom, how can you say that?" Said Draco.

"I'm just kidding Puff, you seemed so lost, I just thought I would shock you out of it." She said with a small smile.

"Do you have to call me Puff, I'll be sixteen in a hour or so, I think I'm too old for you to be calling me 'Puff, the Magic Dragon." He said, as he leaned back in his chair.

"Hmm, you grew up so fast Puff." Said Narcissa as she looked into the fire.

"Mother, please." Said Draco.

"Look, young man I don't care if you are 16 or 600 you are still my little Puff, so you might as well, just suck it up. I'm your mother, I've earned the right to call you damn near anything I want." She said pointedly.

"Fine, all ask is that you don't embarrass me by calling me that in public." Said Draco in a tired kind of tone.

"I'll do my best, but as your mother, I'm obligated by law to embarrass you at least once per public outing. I'm sorry but I must fall the laws of nature dear." She said smiling.

Draco sighed and kept looking at the fire.

"Puff, I know your father told you about your inheritance. He gave you the bare bones of it. I know it's a lot to take in but it's not really so bad, is it?" She asked.

"I don't know, Mother. I'll get to be even more dashingly handsome than I am, though I find it hard to believe that nature could improve on the perfection that is already Draco Malfoy. And I'll get a power boost to my magic, and some of the other perks seem cool; like the allure ability, and the sex charm those seem like I could have a lot of fun with. But the mate thing and the transformation seem kind of…" he trailed off.

"Scary?" She said. "Puff, it's an unknown and the unknown is always scary, but you know what? You can't be brave without being scared. If you are brave and never been scared, then you aren't brave you're just stupid, and say what you will about Slytherins, we are anything but stupid. In the end, it'll be all right, you'll see."

Draco sighed, with a worried look on his pale face.

"Puff, from now on all things to do with your veela life you come to me about, not your father."

"Why Mother?" He asked.

"Did you know that we veela have our own community, just like the wizards do?"

"No, I didn't. I took 'Care of Magical Creatures' but I didn't like that oaf Hagrid and didn't really learn anything." Said Draco.

"Magical creatures,' honestly, I've always hated being referred to as a 'magical creature' it seems dehumanizing to me, like they are trying to say that we are less than them. Really, human and veela have a genetic difference of only .5 percent. Muggle and Wizards have genetic difference of .25 percent, and yet we get classified as a magical creatures like unicorns and grindylows. I find it insulting." She said as she crossed her arm over her chest.

"Puff, think of it this way, you are not less human, you are just human plus. You are human PLUS veela. We have our own community, society and laws. And even wizarding law does apply to us under certain circumstances." She said.

"Wizarding law doesn't apply to us? Doesn't that mean we are less than them?" Draco implored.

"No, it doesn't. Humans like the idea of monogamy, but we veela actually are, much like swans, we will have one mate for our entire life, and we would die to protect our mate and young and we'll kill to protect them as well. Once a person is perceived by a veela as a threat to their mate it is entirely with in the veela's right under wizarding, muggle and veela law to destroy them. Though in the case of muggle it's a little known law that only comes up in the rare instances where veelas have killed muggles, it's never advertised." She said matter of factly.

"Why is it excused?" Draco inquired.

"Because they can't stop us when we go into protection mode. Our power increases ten fold with what is essentially magical adrenalin. A protective veela has been known to take down an entire company of wizards single handedly, and will keep fighting until stopped by death, or the perception that our mate is safe, or by our mate. Puff darling, we are literally a force of nature." Narcissa said proudly.

Draco thought on this moment, and then changed the subject. "Mother, why don't you want me to talk to Father about anything veela?"

"Puff, the veela community is a matriarchal. It's government and family units are run by women. Even in same sex relationships the partner who is deemed most feminine is usually consider the lead in the relationship. The wizarding community is of course patriarchal. When your father and I agreed to be a family after the death of our true mates, we decided that he would lead the family in the wizarding community, while I would lead us in the veela community, so far there has not been that big a conflict, so it's worked out pretty well for us."

"Okay…wait, both of your true mates are dead?"

"Yes, Lucius' true mate was my twin brother Narcissus, and my true mate was Lucius' best friend Aaron Truelove. (A/N: I actually know a family name Truelove so don't think I just made it up.) They died six years before you were born. We are each other's number two. Our magical prowess is about the same so our allure basically cancelled each other out. Well, actually that's not true, I could control your father with mine but I just never saw the need to, so I let him think they cancelled each other out." She said with a sly smile.

"As you know I'm sure Lucius told you a number two will in general have a lot in common with your true mate. With Narcissus it was obvious why I was Lucius' number two, but with Aaron it was that they both had this pride in being pureblood and the same platinum blond hair, people often asked if they could be brothers, or at the very least cousins, but they weren't related. I'll dig up the photo album tomorrow so you can see for yourself."

"Mother, if both of your true mates are dead shouldn't you and father be dead as well? I thought you couldn't live without your mate, isn't that part of being a veela." asked Draco.

"Normally, yes, your father and I would have died after our true mates did, but you see we weren't bonded at the time of their deaths. We were actually going to do it the next week, but then they died, we were a tight group and we wanted to have the same anniversary. It nearly killed us, anyway, it was so painful, and even now we are still kind of empty inside." Said Narcissa with a sadness in her eyes that Draco had noticed on and off over the years.

Draco thought on what he had heard and it sort of made sense now, his father and mother relationship didn't have the kind of passion and love one would expect from a veela and it's mate if the stories were true, so of course, they had to be the number twos. Draco looked at his mother as she stared into the fire. He could almost feel her loneliness for her lost love.

"Mother the transformation still worries me." Draco said suddenly, trying to change the subject.

"Well, I don't know what tell you Puff. I'm more veela than your father, when I came into my inheritance, I was engulfed in a white light, it didn't hurt at all, and I gained a stronger allure ability than your father's and a weak sex charm ability as well. My magical power boost wasn't really that impressive at all, but I did get to become stunning beautiful. I was rather plain before my transformation." She said kind of sheepishly.

"I find it hard to believe you were ever plain, Mother." Said Draco with a smile.

"Well, think about it, how many truly beautiful pureblood women have you seen? Too much inbreeding if you ask me. When I get the photo album out tomorrow, you'll see for yourself." She said. "It's getting late. Look You still have two months of the summer holidays left to learn to control your allure and sex charms, and to learn to control your magic since you will undoubtedly get a nice power boost. Oh Puff, don't forget you are tweener; you know that means your going to be very special." She said smiling at her son.

"Tweener?" Said Draco as he raised in eyebrow.

"Puff, I told you about this already, true you were five, but still you should remember. Tweeners are children born at midnight, the moment BETWEEN today and tomorrow. It is actually very rare for a magical child, be they veela or wizard, to be born in that minute. Actually, I only know of two in your age group that were, you and Harry Potter. And you well, you know how special he is." She said.

Draco just rolled his eyes.

"So I would like to see what your powers will be like and what you will look like since as you say it will be hard for nature to improve upon your perfection." She said it with a gentle grin. "So do you feel better now, Puff?"

"Yes, I do, actually. Its still kind of… you know, but I believe it'll be okay in the end." Said Draco. "Thanks Mother."

"Well, it's 10 minutes to midnight, do you want me to stay and welcome your birthday with you or do you want to be alone and we celebrate it when the sun comes up?"

"When the sun comes up is fine, I think I want to be alone to process all this."

Narcissa rose up off the bed gracefully, and walked over to her son; she bent down and gently gave him a hug. "As you wish, Puff, I'll see you in the morning, we can start to prepare for your party, and you're guests will start to arrive about 3 pm. Have a good night Puff." And then she left.

"Night Mother." Draco called after her.

Draco changed into his favorite green and silver silk pajamas. He got on the bed, and looked at the clock on the wall, it was 11:58 pm, two minutes until his birthday. He felt better after talking to his mother.

"I wonder when it will happen." He thought as he looked at the clock, 11:59 pm.

"15 seconds… soon I'll be legally able to do magic outside of school." he thought. "10, 9, 8, …3, 2, 1. Happy birthday to me." he said quietly, then felt a tickle in his throat, cough.

Cough, cough, cough, cough, "What the…?" cough, cough, cough. He did one big, hard cough and this thick liquid filled his mouth, before he could make it off the bed it soon became too much for him to hold in and spurted forth from his mouth, but it didn't act like saliva, or mucus, it hardened as it hit the air. This stuff acted like a thing alive, and it was still connected to him down his throat into his body. Draco tried to talk; to call for help, but it was all he could do to get air to pass in and out of is body at all. This substance hung like a huge 3-inch thick spider web from his mouth, and then it began to move like some sort of snake; it seemed to look around the room then up to the ceiling. Draco stared his eyes the size of saucers, 'what the hell is happening?' he thought.

The substance looked to the corner of the room, near the right side of the fireplace, a place in the room that looked dark no matter what time of day it as, and it whipped over to that corner and to the ceiling and attached itself there. Draco was panicking now, he didn't understand what was happening, his mother said she had only glowed a bit, his father, just said that he simply came into his meager inheritance, but this was something that seemed like it was complete unrelated to what either of them had gone through. Fear gripped his heart, and then the substance or web pulled on him. Draco turned and grabbed the edge of his mattress to resist, but it just pulled harder. Draco tried to scream but the substance to seem to anticipate this and seem to inflate itself in his mouth and so, it was now very difficult for him to breath and he could feel himself getting dizzy from the effort of resisting and the general lack of oxygen. He was getting weaker and holding on to his mattress was barely possible after a couple of minutes, fear and the struggle to seem to burn up his air far quicker than normal. The pull from the substance ultimately won out and his hands didn't have the strength to hold on. He was being dragged across the floor and toward the corner where the substance had secured itself. He was barely conscious but had thought to make some noise or something to get someone to help him. He kicked the floor with his heels as he reached the corner then as was dragged up the ceiling he kicked the walls very meekly as he was about to lose consciousness, suddenly he heard a 'pop' just as he was lost in darkness.

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July 1st

Privet Drive

It was midnight; Harry Potter sat in his room. Hedwig had returned some four hours ago. She sat in her cage quietly sleeping it seemed that she had had a busy day and tired herself out too much to be awake tonight. He looked at his beautiful snow-white owl that he called friend, and watch her sleep with her head slightly tucked under her wing.

He looked around his little bedroom with its ragged furniture he was sure that Uncle Vernon must have gotten from yard sales. His plain student desk was made of particleboard, with some sort pale wood veneer that was peeling at the corners and in other places, was where he did his homework. He finally thought to put a sheet at the bottom of the door so that light wouldn't shine letting his family know he was doing homework. His dresser was made of similar material as his desk as were the nightstand and the chair, yes it was all of the cheapest and lowest quality, much like everything he got from the Dursleys. Harry had to smile at the irony. He was actually kind of rich, not very but enough that would have made life better for him and the Dursley's if they had shown him just the least little bit that they actually cared about him or wanted him around. He would have shared with them, just like he would have shared with the Weaseleys, but they were a proud family and would never take his money.

Harry had finished all of summer homework, two nights ago, so now he faced two full months without anything to do. He had received an owl from Ron a couple of days ago saying that he may be able to spend the last month of the holidays with him and his family. For the first time since attending Hogwarts he wasn't sure he wanted to go to "Burrow." It wasn't mad at the Weaseleys; no, he loved them. It just that he didn't feel he could handle them being sympathetic about Sirius.

Sirius, Harry missed him so much. He missed him as Sirius and as 'Snuffles,' the big, black, bear of a dog. Sirius was a 'marauder' a member of Harry's dad's click at school. Even after graduation, they had remained close friends. Harry loved Sirius like a father, and it hurt him so deeply that he was gone. Harry took a deep breath and let out a long sigh to keep from choking up at the thought of Sirius. Now there were only two marauders left, the true and good Remus Lupin, whom Harry had always thought of as godfather as well, and the traitor who should never have been a marauder, Peter Pettigrew.

Harry hated these lonely moments at night where he played out memories of the past, the things that he can't change. He needed to think to do something, so he quietly got up off his bed and went downstairs. The house was clean, say what you will about Aunt Petunia, but the woman did know how to clean a house. True, Harry did clean it, earlier today, but since then Aunt Petunia had to feed Dudley and Vernon, it would be easier to feed the 7th infantry. Harry decided to get a jump on the day, it's was a little after midnight so he decided to quietly clean out the freezer, and then start to work on cleaning his cupboard. The cupboard hadn't been clean in a least five years and he figured it's about time he put that little piece of his past behind him.

The cupboard seemed somehow smaller than it did before, maybe that was because he, himself had grown a bit in the five years since he last had to sleep in there, but still it did hold some powerful memories for him. He got a lamp from an end table and set in the floor a little to the side of the cupboard to provide light. The place was over run with dust bunnies, dead insect bodies and live insects. Some of his old school books for Hogwarts were stored there, as well, as his rotten old cot that he called a bed, once up a time. He took out everything as quietly as he could to get the space to just floor and walls, then he got the broom and swept it out. The whole process seemed to give him closure on this part of his life, it seemed. As he cleaned, it was being transformed in his mind from being a deep, dark dungeon into being just simple cupboard a place for storage. He swept the floor, then the walls to get rid of spider webs. He then got the mop and mopped the entire room walls and all. Then he went through the things that would go back into the cupboard; he placed his books on the shelves in order of year then alphabetical by title. Then he took the sheets of the cot and added them to the laundry that was to be done the next day and made a mental know to shake the mattress of the old cot out, when he had time tomorrow. He wasn't planning to ever wind up in there again, or ever use that cot again, but it was helpful to help to clean away all the bad feelings attached to these things. He found some old potion ingredients and check and dated them, and disposed of the ones that were by now far too dangerous to be in a muggle home. By the time he was done, it was about five full hours later; he decided that he would start a new policy with the Dursleys. If this was to be his prison, then he may as well be a prison trustee.

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July 1st 8 a.m.

Malfoy Manor

"Puff, happy birthday dear." Said Narcissa as he entered her son's room. She looked for Draco to be in his bed, but it looked like the mattress was half pulled off the bed. The sheets were in total disarray. "Puff? Puff?" She checked his private bathroom and he wasn't in there. "Dilly."

"Pop"

"Morning, Madam Malfoy, ma'am how may Dilly serve you?" he said with a bow.

"Dilly, have you seen my little Puff?" She asked.

"No, Dilly heard a noise in here, last night but didn't see Master Draco." Dilly assumed he was in with his mother or in the library. Narcissa paced back and forth a few times then,

"Dilly, have the other house-elves find Puff and tell him to come to my rooms immediately." She said. Something did not feeling right, Puff always liked to sleep late on his birthday. Narcissa just thought it would be nice to get him up early this time because today he can use spells at home freely for the first time. She had a special veela spell she was anxious to teach him.

As she turned to leave, she heard a noise above the right side corner of the fireplace; she looked and screamed.

Lucius ran in from his rooms down the wall, Dilly reappeared with a pop. They looked at Narcissa who stood opened mouthed and white faced pointing at the corner. There was a huge pulsating mass stuck to the ceiling.

"You, you don't suppose that's… that's Puff, do you?" she said weakly, already suspecting the answer.

Before Lucius could speculate, the mass slowly oozed down to the floor in front of them. All three backed up slowly as it appeared to block the door. They worried about this for a moment before remembering that they could all teleport, one way or another, if the need arose. Suddenly a small slit appeared in the pulsating mass, and a great mess of thick white and red fluid began to pour unto the floor. Slowly a hand reached out through the slit and they heard, "Mother, help me." came from the pulsating mass.

End chapter 3-------------

(A/N: Hi guys hoped you like the story so far, please feel free to leave reviews. Also don't forget to use the story alert feature under the Review section. Story alert will email you when I update the story, saving you the time to come and check periodically. Well, I hope you all review, it's the only way we authors can tell you like our work. Have nice day and see you next time.)

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