Harry Potter and the Trouble With Veela

Chapter 2: Instincts

Harry spat out the mouthful of dust he'd all but inhaled when shoved down to the ground by someone he couldn't see, and turned to ask what exactly they thought they were doing, assaulting an Auror like that, but the words seemed to have been Vanished, elsewhere. He'd been expecting to see Ron pinning him to the ground, as though trying to forever make amends for things in the past that had little bearing on the present, but met instead a very different face. He must have struck his head harder than he'd thought, because it looked as though Draco Malfoy was curved around him in a protective stance. Yes, Harry was clearly concussed. When he attempted to move, however, a hand, stronger than he'd have anticipated, pressed down between his shoulder blades and made him snog the dirt once again.

"What gives?" he asked the ground, glasses knocked askew and getting rather uncomfortable, trapped as he was.

"Shut up and don't move," Draco hissed above him, in a whisper that he felt rather than heard. The shadow of something like a claw clicked directly above his spine, and Harry decided to obey, for now. Minutes ticked by on a clock not controlled by human hands, and he was decidedly impatient. He was an Auror for Merlin's sake, not some child to be coddled!

With a grunt of effort, he finally dislodged the body restraining him, and fully intended to give Draco a talking-to, but was rather unsettled by the blond's expression. Before he could ask why Draco looked like someone had cancelled Christmas, however, he was thrown into the melee without so much as a how do you do. Dark spells were flying like deadly butterflies of bedazzling light, and Harry's wand seemed directed by a hand that could see things he couldn't, anticipating his intentions almost before he'd spoken the incantations.

Draco's mouth went strangely dry, watching Potter fight like that. He might have been dancing to the music of the fae for all the attention he appeared to be paying to his surrounding, and yet, no errant curse struck him. Draco had been expecting Potter to move like a lumbering bull, but instead, he was quick and agile and almost, pleasant, to watch.

Pushed rather rudely behind a hastily erected ring of protection, Draco was left to observe Potter, as he whirled through the cloaked enemies (of course they would be disguised) like a dervish, protecting the children who had been playing outside, enjoying the abnormally warm Spring day. With age came certain responsibilities, he supposed, eyeing them, curled against his back and shaking. They were too young to understand war or hatred, and their innocence lightened his heart minutely. He petted the golden head of the young girl nearest him absently, and was about to say something comforting, when a horrible scream reached his ears.

Age could not, however, take away the horror of witnessing one's mother being tortured 'just because.'

"MOTHER!" he shouted on a strangled note, attempting to break through the protective barrier at any cost to reach her, when Harry Potter made it suddenly quite unnecessary.

"You shouldn't have done that," Harry said in an eerily quiet voice, breaking the bastard's line of fire with his own body as a shield, though the spell quickly dissipated in the wake of his retaliation.

The Auror's wand cracked through the air like a whip, and indeed struck Narcissa's assailant much like the same, as he recoiled from a wide gash on his wand arm, so fixated on the pour of red that he scarcely seemed to notice when he'd been Bound and Disarmed. Draco could smell his fear from where he crouched, and blinked. Potter was quite serious about his duties, when push came to shove and for that, he was thankful.

"Thank you, Mr. Potter," Narcissa whispered softly, once she had breath enough to speak, held against his side carefully.

Harry smiled awkwardly at her, before separating the wards enough to pass her through to a very anxious Draco.

"You're welcome Mrs. Malfoy. Er, Draco," and the name was foreign on his tongue, but, it would have been even stranger at that moment to call him by surname only, "I'll leave her to you, yeah? There are more of these bastards; I can feel them," and then looked vaguely abashed for his language. Parental or authority figures always did put him in a strange state of mind.

There was a most curious sensation in Draco's chest as his keen eyes followed Potter's progression through the field.

"Guess those awards and Order of Merlin aren't just for show after all," he muttered against his mother's brow, wrapping her tightly in his arms and wishing to help, somehow.

Something burned hot and fierce in his chest as though he'd just taken a long draught of Firewhisky and drained it rather more quickly than was his custom. When this mess was cleaned up, and she was feeling steadier, he'd be having a talk with his mother.

"RON!" Harry yelled, struggling three to one as he saw his best friend fall to the ground, not moving. With a roar worthy of his former House, Harry blew them back and down, and shot to his side quick as, lightning.

Harry visibly shook as he approached the prone redhead, but his wand arm was solid as he circled the man that Ron had been duelling.

"You'd better be thankful, that this is not during a time of war, or you'd be dead where you stand," Harry spat, slashing the holly wand through the unmistakeable arc of an Incarcerous. His opponent neatly side-stepped it, watching Harry through narrowed eyes, sneering as though such paltry spells were entirely beneath him.

"Oh ho! Is precious Potter so worried for his ickle friends that he's willing to go to Azkaban for it? What happened to your sense of righteousness, or has it just always been self-righteousness, -Potter-?" And boy if he didn't spit Harry's name the way Malfoy once did. "Are you really so far above the law that you can just toss people aside as you please?" The man scoffed with a nasty curl of his lip, heavily Glamoured of course.

In answer, Harry threw a particularly unpleasant Blasting Hex his way and knocked him off of his feet. His Incarcerous did not miss.

"You'll be read your rights later you piece of shit," he snarled, and cast nearly-hysterical eyes about the area to see how the rest of them were faring before sprinting to Ron's aid.

"Ron! RON! Can you hear me?" he asked frantically, putting a gentle hand on the side of his friend's face. He was terrified. "Ron?" he tried again, voice hitching despite his best efforts. "Mate, please, -please- talk to me." They didn't have time to stop, but Harry had no choice. That was his best friend, and if these attackers had killed an Auror, there would be –blood.-

Harry was getting a little sick from craning his neck at such an angle, and looking in seven different ways all at once, but he really couldn't take his eyes off of Ron, -or- the fight, but he had to know, one way or, the other…

What felt like an hour later, Harry finally saw a flicker of blue as Ron's eyelids fluttered in an attempt to open them.

"Thank Merlin!" he cried in relief, before Levitating his best mate up and over behind the barrier as well. "I know you'll be pissed at me later for this Ron, but until this is taken care of, I've got to know you're safe too."

Ron was amazingly compliant, most likely due to his rather muddied state of mind. Harry would worry about potential brain damage later, for now, he had to jump straight back into the fray because the trainees were forgetting all of their training, and Dean could only do so much by himself.

Draco watched with a quiet intensity as Potter drove the remaining assailants into a corner and bound their hands and took their wands from them, and wondered what that must feel like, such soul-deep devotion as Weasley had from Potter. He supposed it must be nice. The mysterious, warm pulse in his chest seemed to agree, and he wondered why he had the sudden urge to go the Auror, whether to hex him, or something else he didn't care to extrapolate on at the moment, he could not be sure.

Draco sighed in the commotion. Why did his life always have to tip upside down when Potter became involved? Couldn't the bastard just leave him in peace, ever? He imagined that Potter might feel somewhat the same way, but he wasn't interested in what that bloke felt, truly, even if a tiny, niggling voice (that sounded suspiciously like Narcissa) in the back of his mind argued otherwise. But if that were true, it contested softly, then why had he moved to protect Potter in the first place, and why was he taking the time to think it over, if he already knew the answer?

There were indeed more of the attackers waiting for them, just like Harry had predicted, and he swore loudly as Dean narrowly avoided being gutted like a fish by one of their spells. This had to end, now, before any more damage could be done, and before those assholes managed to break through the ward Harry had erected. He shook his head free of that awful prospect and drew on magic he'd reserved for such an emergency. If Ron hadn't been out of commission, their odds would be better, but as it stood, they might lose, and he refused to let that happen.

He'd researched (with Hermione's help of course) about tapping into one's magical core for a temporary boost of power. (Sometimes, a still-young part of his mind liked to think of it as a special attack move, a finishing combination really, like in some of Dudley's video games that he remembered from what felt like an entirely different life).

Harry shook his head. Now really wasn't the time, was it? Thusly refocused, he brought to mind the emerald glow of his magic, wrapped around him like a warm, green cocoon, and called to the seat of his strength, requesting its aid. Without it, under the circumstances, well, Harry preferred not to think about the possible ramifications.

He Conjured a chain that sizzled as it swept through the air, capturing the remaining enemies and tethering them together with ties that would not be easily broken, indeed, would not be dissolved at all until Harry himself did something about it. He tittered in his head at his 'chain of justice,' and would have chided himself for such paltry humour, but was currently too disoriented to really do much else other than slide limply to the floor, the protective barrier dissipating as he hovered just this side of consciousness.

"Potter you great idiot!" Draco shouted, catching him as he swayed on his feet, frowning down into the ashy face beneath him and feeling his forehead for the tell-tale fever that went with magical exhaustion. Potter was burning up.

He swore under his breath before addressing the other Veela who had come out to see what the commotion was all about.

"The Aurors were injured. Help me bring them inside," he said sternly, half-carrying, half-dragging Potter inside. "No one goes outside until they've recovered and have finished securing the perimeter. No one!"

'Come on Potter, you can't die yet! I've got some questions for you, and my mother,' Draco thought fervently, grey eyes fixed on Harry's too-pale face. "Who else am I supposed to take the mickey out of through this, eh, Potter?"

Harry's first thought was that Malfoy was being entirely too charitable given their history, recent and not. His second was that Malfoy's hand against his cheek was pleasantly cool, and tried to press more of his face against it, but the effort required strained him just that tiny bit further, and Harry knew no more as everything faded to grey and black.