2. Chapter

Surprising Revelations

Draco awoke with start. He was desorientated and slightly afraid. The light of the chandelier above his bed fell brightly into his eyes. It was late evening, perhaps already night. Suddenly he felt a hand on his shoulder und spun around. His Godfather set next to him on his big and cozy bed, looking at him with worried eyes.

Draco let his breath out. He hadn't been aware that he had been holding his breath. His tense shoulders began to loosen up and he let his back rest at the headboard of his bed.

"Were you able to reach her, Draco?", the quite voice of his Godfather startled him.

Draco blinked. A surprised look appeared on his face. Was he able to reach whom? He had been sleeping, hadn't he? So how in Merlin's name could he reach someone while sound asleep? Confusion added itself to the suprised look on his face.

Then suddenly it all came back. He had turned sixteen and had therefore transformed into a fullblooded, light veela. And then there was the problem with his mate. He hadn't been able to reach her during his transformation and that was why he had tried to reach her now with the professional help of his Godfather Severus.

With a yelp the young Malfoy heir jumped out of his bed, rushed to his startled Godfather, grabbed his arm and dragged him out of his room in the direction of the big saloon of their Mansion, where he suspected his parents would be at the moment.

"Draco, stop it! What the heck! I can walk for myself, thank you. Now, Draco, let go of my arm! Draco, stop, argh!"

With that Severus stumbled against the big couch in the saloon, caught himself before falling over it and let himself sink down on it slowly. Draco had let go of his arm and stood now leaning heavily on the armchair in front of him, while taking deep breaths. His parents sat each in one of the big armchairs in front of the couch, both reading old, expensive looking books. A quesitionig look was on their faces, his father had one eyebrow raised. Slowly Draco walked around the chair and let himself sink down on it gracefully.

He threw an apologetic gaze at his Godfather.

"I'm sorry, Uncle Sev, but it was really important to meet here with my parents as soon as possible."

He was now visibly nervous, his hands were shaking a little bit and he tapped his right foot repeadly on the floor.

"I know who my mate is."

His parents were now smiling brightly, while Severus' eyes had widened considerably.

"We, well no, I have a problem."

Three different eyebrows rose in union. Draco took a deep breath and lifted his gaze to look directly in the eyes of the other three occupants.

"My mate is Harriet Potter."

"..."

"Could you please confirm that, Draco? Your mate is the one and only Harriet Potter, the girl who lived?"

Draco only nodded his head. Severus let the breath escape, which he had been holding. Lucius and Narcissa didn't understand what Severus' problem was. They let their questioning gazes wander from their nervous son to their desperate best friend. Feeling the three gazes on him, Severus felt himself compelled to explain his attidute further.

"No need to worry. I don't have a problem with Harriet Potter being Draco's mate. The girl is very intelegente, good looking, educated, loyal, brave, a little cunning and nothing like her idiot of a father. She much more reseambles her mother in her loving and caring attidute.

I personally suspected her to be Draco's mate, as I knew that both of her parents were fullblooded veelas from a different clan than yours and that there aren't that many other fullblooded veelas attending Hogwarts at the moment. No, the problem is that it will be difficult as hell to retrieve her from the care of her loving relatives."

At the mention of her relatives, Draco had a suspicious look on his face.

"What do you mean by that, Severus?"

Severus sighed.

"It is kind of a known fact between all of the teachers that Harriet is not treated very well by her realtives. Madame Pomfrey and I think that she is mistreated and even could be abused by them. There are some facts that would confirm our suspicions. For example, every year she returnes to school severly underfed and in dear need of medical treatment.

She doesn't like to be touched, tries not to be near people, she flinches and is scared when someone shouts or rises his or her voice a bit. We have been speaking with the Headmaster several times; every year at the beginning and at the ending of the school year.

But Dumbledore refuses to let her stay elsewhere. He says that she is totally safe there and that we are all just exaggerating."

Severus shifted and directed his gaze back to the other occupants of the room.

"The biggest problem with her being Draco's mate however won't be her problem with her angst of being touched; though this could slow down the mating process considerably. No, it will be Dumbledore.

Dumbledore and his manipulations of people he thinks inferior than himself. Harriet's home is highly warded. Only Harriet, her relatives and Dumbledore are able to set a foot on the ground of the house. All other people would activate an alarm by passing the wards, which will inform the Headmaster, the Order and the Aurors within seconds of their existence and would then be cursed severly by the protecting bloodwards around the house."

Silence remained in the saloon after Severus' lecture. All occupants had grave looks on their faces. Severus and Lucius were deeply in thought, thinking about their possibilities and the pros and cons of them. Narcissa tried to calm her agitated son, who was afraid of loosing his mate before they could even get to know each other better.

Though it was Draco to be the one to break the oppressing silence.

"There has to be a way to get her out of this house and free her of these people, who dare to call themselfes relatives of her. We...we could ask Dumbledore. Yes, Dumbledore! He couldn't deny us this favor. Veela law is above wizarding law.

And to keep the mate of a veela is strictly forbidden and severly punished. Not even Dumbledore with all his might and supporters could keep us from retrieving Harriet from the house of her relatives. If we don't get her, she could be killed in the changing process. Her relatives won't be aware and not be prepared in the slightest for what is going to happen. They won't have any Pain Relievers and Sleeping Draughts to help her through the process.

Dumbledore has to allow us to get her. Otherwise he would willingly endanger her life!"

Draco was happy, absolutely happy to be honest. Dumbledore couldn't keep his mate from him. It was forbidden by wizarding and veela law. He couldn't do anything against this. Next to him his parents were slightly smiling, a mixture of pride and mirth on their faces. They had yet to mate, had yet to even meet each other after having transformed and Draco was already protective of her.

The poor girl would be spoiled rotten by their son within the next few days. But after what they had heard about her living conditions, it would do her some great good to have someone to care for her and to love her with his entire heart. Severus, however, was sadly shaking his head, interrupting their thoughts.

"We should not inform Dumbledore of Harriet's new blood status. He isn't aware of her or her parents being fullblooded veelas. This would ruin the plans he has made for Harriet. As I am sure you know the Dark Lord was for a long time searching for a prophecy containing information about him and the one to be able to fully vanquish the Lord.

Dumbledore thinks that Harriet is the one to oppose the Dark Lord and I have to admit, it could very well be. There are several hints that lead us to this conclusion. She has the mark, she opposed him more than any other person, alive or dead, and is still alive. But the problem with this kind of prophecies is that they only respond to wizards, not to magical creatures.

Until her transformation Harriet will officially remain a witch. With her transformation fulfilled she will have become a fullblooded magical creature. The prophecy would not respond to her, there would officially be nobody to give the light wizards and witches hope. There would be no one with the ability to destroy the Dark Lord for good. Dumbledore knows this pretty well. And now there comes the tricky part."

Severus took another deep breath, making sure everybody was listening.

"Harriet is the submissive one of you two, we already know that. It is common knowledge that the submissive one can't oppose the social, economical and political opinions of his or her dominant. To say it in other words: Harriet won't be able to oppose Draco's opinion of the Dark Lord, the dark arts and the importance of being a pureblood.

She will be submissive and will think that what Draco thinks is the correct way of things in politics, will be the correct way for her, too. You don't have to be afraid of that, Draco. She will not be forced to believe this. In the bottom of her heart she knows, what are the right and the wrong things to do. The problem is, Dumbledore knows about this fact.

If we would arrive in his office, demanding to get Harriet Potter for being the Draco's submissive mate, Dumbledore would be aware of Harriet being a magical creature und you being her dominant. He would never allow this. In fact, I think, he would try to vanquish her magical creature blood from her body, risking to kill her during this process, just so he won't loose her to the dark side.

Dumbledore mustn't know that Harriet is a veela and that she is Draco's submissive. He clearly mustn't."

Draco was slowly but surely growing desperate. Every time they came up with an idea to being able to retrieve her from her relatives, Severus was crushing their hopes. He wasn't angry at Severus for constantly doing this - it saved their and Harriet's lifes numerous times - but nevertheless he was getting the impression that it was clearly impossible to get to Harriet. And that would slowly but surely kill him.

"I think there might be a chance for us to get her. After she has transformed, the bloodwards won't respond to her and will vanish without informing anyone of their disappearance and why they disappeared. We have to be prepared, waiting for the right moment to get her, when her transformation begins.

I know, where she lives. We won't have any difficulties with observing the house and waiting for the right moment. With a bit of luck, we won't have to ..."

A searing, breathtaking pain suddenly errupted in Draco's heart. He couldn't breath and his vision began to become blurry. Slowly he was sinking to his left side, falling out of his chair. He didn't notice. In fact, he didn't notice anything at all. His body was on fire, every single bone in his body hurt. He couldn't hear. There was a shrill ringing, constantly getting louder.

A face was beginning to form in the blurriness of his vision. It was the once beautiful face of a dark haired girl, her face screwed up through the pain she endured. He could see her starting to convulse. The pain was getting worse. Over the ringing in his ears he could hear another sound, quite words were spoken, like murmurs. Suddenly a scream, filled with inhuman pain and angony, errupted out of nowhere, letting his blood run cold.

Draco's head snapped up. He was laying flat on the floor and his breath was troubled, coming out in small, ragged gasps, making it hard for him to recover. Next to him were kneeling Severus and his parents with worried looks on their faces, talking to him in agitated voices. Seeing that he had regained consciousness, they quieted down a bit and helped him getting seated in the chair. With wide eyes was he staring at them.

"It has begun. Harriet's transformation has begun. We have to leave now and hurry up!"

With this words Severus roughly grabbed Draco's and Lucius' arm - Narcissa was holding her husband's other hand - and apparated all of them to Privet Drive Number 4.

Privet Drive looked exactly how everybody had expected the girl who lived would live. The neighbourhood was nice, everything and plainly everything starting with the houses, the colours, the gardens, the flowers and even some of the cars looked exactly the same.

For someone, who was not used to perfection this sight would have been very disturbing. It was late at night, past midnight to be exactly. Every single window of these houses was dark, as normal people would sleep at such a light hour. The exception was, like normally, Privet Drive 4, the home of the well respected and totally normal family Dursley.

In Privet Drive 4 there was the light on in the small room of the first floor on the right. If one knew where to look, one could find hints on the small window of this room that once there had been bars. The window pane was dirty, as if no one had cleaned this window in a long time.

At five past midnight four figures could be seen as they appeared out of nowhere just in front of the front door. All four of them wore long robes which billowed in the soft wind. One of them wore only black, two of them wore robes of a silvery colour and the last person wore an elegant grey. They stood still and looked around as if they were not sure whether they were at the right place or not. The one in the grey robes rose his hand to knock on the door, when a loud scream and inarticulate cursing disrupted the silence of the night.

"That was Harriet. Something's wrong. We really have to hurry. Alohomora!"

With that the front door opened silently and the three Malfoys and Snape entered the house.

If one liked perfection and normality, he would have loved it here. Everything was clean. There was no dust nor any dirt to be seen in the whole entrance hall. The walls were painted in a clean and lovely white, there were photos everywhere, showing a happy family of three. A tall, horse like, blond woman was on each of the photos, trying her best to smile. Next to here was the big form of a man, with a slightly purple face and sweating, even in winter. The third person was a huge, enormous boy with greasy, blond hair and the smile of a hay. On none of the pictures was Harriet Potter, a small, dark haired girl, to be seen. Had they not known better, they would had believed that Harriet wasn't living here.

The two Malfoy parents decided to inspect the house further. Narcissa entered the perfect clean kitchen and Lucius entered the big and cozy living room, both of them trying to understand what was going on in this family and trying to take as much information in as possible.

At that moment a loud crash could be heard, followed by another curse and another bang. Both Draco and Severus spun around. The noise had come from upstairs. Draco started to run, followed by Severus, reached the stairs, rushed them up and finally came to stop in front of a door with dozens of different locks on it. A soft light could be seen, shining through under the closed door. The cursing and the sounds which reminded them of something hard hitting something soft were definitely coming from this room.

Dreading what he might see, Draco lifted his wand and shouted another hex at the door. No second later did the door fly open and crash into the wall. With a pounding heart and fear in every part of his body, Draco entered the room.

He didn't know what he had expected, but surely it wasn't this. Harriet lay on her bed in a big puddle of her own blood, which was expanding with disturbing speed. Over her stood the sorry excuse of a man, holding an iron bar with a strong grip in both of his hands, while he tried to hit the now unconscious girl in front of him with full force where ever he could.

Draco blinked.

The scene was so surreal that he wasn't sure, whether to believe what he saw or not. But unfortunately the scene remained the same. On the bed lay the passed out form of his mate, bleeding and broken. Over her, next to her bed stood a man, obviously her uncle, with a deep purple face, sweat everywhere on his body and panting with great difficulty. The long and thick iron bar in his big hands made contact after contact with the poor girl under him.

Anger, hate and a lot of fear began to circulate through his body. Here was his mate, hurting from the changing process she was enduring and her uncle was standing there, trying not to help her but to definitely to kill her! Draco strated shaking. He was barely able to contain his hate and not try to kill the muggle in front of him or hex him into the next century. Behind him he could feel Severus entering the room, too. As he came to a stop next to him, Draco felt his Godfather stiffen up and he could clearly hear him sucking in his breath.

This sound was all he needed to break free of his angered thoughts. His attention came to focus on the fat man in front of him, who until now had yet to notice them. With a snarl and hate clearly written on his face, he lifted his wand and cursed the muggle.

Hit by a strong invisible force the man was sent flying across the room until he hit the wall on the other side and he fell down to the floor, remaining laying there unmoving. Draco jumped next to the bed and gathered the still passed out figure of his poor mate into his arms. The sight of her was heartbreaking.

Bruises and cuts were to be seen on her face, her arms and every other visible part of her body. Her breath was irregular, it came in small, forced gasps and she was shaking lightly. Blood dropped from the back of her head and started to ruin Draco's robes, but he didn't care. The transformation had begun and there would be no force on earth which could possibly stop this process. Her body shape and facial features were already slowly beginning to change.

With a sigh he took the motionless form of his mate in his arms, stood up and turned around to leave this hellhole of a room. Severus stepped aside and held the door open, so that leaving would be easier. Draco left the room, followed by Severus, and with long, fast steps did he go down the stairs, where he met his parents in the entrance hall.

At the sight of the broken form of his mate both of them gasped. Their eyes had grown wide and tears started to appear in them. His mother began to tremble and started to sniff. Lucius tried to support his wife by taking her in his arms and murmuring soft, sweet words of comfort to her. Severus let one hand fall on his Godson's shoulder and squeezed him lightly.

"We have to hurry. Her body is beginning to change and soon her wings will appear. If we don't hurry up and give her some Pain Relievers and Bloodrestoring Draughts, she will be in a hell of pain and bleed to death."

Draco's voice was quite, yet strong. He had come to safe his mate and he would be damned if he was going to loose her now when he finally got hold of her.

Severus increased the grip on his shoulder and with a loud and final bang four veelas and a pureblooded wizard left the Privet Drive 4 for good. The Dursleys had been spared for now, but four very agitated people were sure that there would come the time, when Harriet Potter, the beaten and broken mate of their son and Godson, would finally be able to enjoy her fair revenge on them. They would have to wait for a while though, that much was sure.

But, boy, they would enjoy this.