A Happy Birthday ficlet for hippymamalove (FF.net)
“Son.” Lucius Malfoy stood in the doorway of Draco’s rooms, looking unwontedly ill at ease. “May I come in?”
Their relationship had been strained since the war. Draco found he resented his parent’s slavish early devotion to the Dark Lord while simultaneously being grateful they’d broken free at the end. They were grateful he was alive and resented his surly attitude. It made for uncomfortable mealtimes and they tended to avoid each other between those meals.
“Of course,” Draco said with as much graciousness as he could muster. “It’s your house, after all,” he muttered as his father stepped across the threshold.
Lucius grimaced at that but didn’t say anything, just settled himself in one of the arm chairs Narcissa had had covered to match the green bedspread the year Draco had decided he wanted only Slytherin colors in his room. “Draco,” he began, “when a boy grows up he may experience certain… changes. You may begin to feel urges that – “
Draco cut him off. “Father,” he said, his voice tight with embarrassment, “I’ve known how to do a contraceptive charm for quite some time now.”
“That’s… that’s good but it’s not,” Lucius stopped and shook his head. “Have you actually…” He trailed off.
“Not that it’s any of your business,” Draco said, his arms crossed as he glared at his father, “but no. The war kind of made that impossible. But you don’t need to worry about me coming home with a half-blood embarrassment. Hogwarts made sure we all knew how to –“
“It’s not that,” Lucius said.
“- And I’ve known for years that masturbation doesn’t make you blind and – “
“ – And I’m eighteen years old so don’t you think this little sex talk is a tiny bit late?”
“You’re a Veela.” Lucius just got the words out as quickly as he could
Draco’s mouth had been open to continue talking but just gaped at his father and no words came out until, at last, he said, “Not possible. We’re purebloods.”
Lucius nodded. “Of course, but Veela blood isn’t considered impure, and once you find your mate it won’t even impact your life that much.”
Lucius took a deep breath and, now that Draco was really paying attention began to explain. Malfoy men were Veela. It wasn’t well known outside certain select families but it was true. When they matured they began to experience intense cravings for a single sexual partner. The bond was irreversible and absolute. At the mention of ‘marking’, a term that made Draco cringe, he stopped his father’s horrifying monologue.
“A Mark?” he said. “I think I’ve had enough ‘Marking’ to last me forever.”
“You won’t be able to…” Lucius sighed. “It’s not like what happened with…”
“You mean it won’t seem like a good idea at the time only to turn into a bloody chain tying me to what is not a good idea at all?” Draco demanded.
“When you find your mate –“
“A mate. Like a fucking swan. Or an albatross. Great.”
“ – You’ll understand. When your mother and I – “
“No. I refuse to think about you biting mother in some hideous, animalistic bonding ritual. That is just… no.” Draco looked like he wanted to throw up.
Lucius sighed again. “Draco,” he said, trying to be as patient as he could. “You don’t have a choice.”
“If you don’t find a mate – your mate, because you’ll fixate on one woman – you’ll waste away.”
“This just gets better and better,” Draco said. “So, find a nice girl, explain I’m not a pureblood but some vile creature, and, oh, by the way, would she mind if I started gnawing on her shoulder because if I don’t I’ll pine away into nothingness.” He slouched into the armchair that matched the one Lucius was in. “Any more bad news? Do I have to drink blood or do I turn into a wolf at the full moon or anything?”
“No, no werewolf,” Lucius said. “No vampire. There are the wings, of course, – “
“Wings?” Draco lifted his head. “Wings?”
“- And claws but only if you aren’t able to control your emotions.”
Draco mouthed something that might have been ‘fucking great’ but didn’t say anything else out loud; he just slumped lower in his chair and buried his face in his hands.
“You’ll know your mate when you meet her,” Lucius said in a tone that was probably meant to be encouraging. “Now that you’re an adult and the… the urges… are going to start happening you’ll know her the moment you see her, even if you’ve walked past her a hundred times before and never noticed anything. We’ll have a party, invite everyone we can, you can just mingle and you’ll find her.”
“Because if I don’t I waste away,” Draco muttered. “And then I get to convince some girl to let me start chewing on her.”
“You’re a Malfoy,” Lucius said, a hint of the familiar arrogance back in his voice now that this painful conversation was almost over. “And the old pureblood families all know about Veelas. No one will – “
“Object that I’m some filthy magical creature. I get it.” Draco shuddered. “Could you get out now? Please?”
After Lucius nodded and left Draco raked his fingernails down his arm, over the Mark he couldn’t get rid of, couldn’t hide, leaving a series of long red lines before he bent over and tried not to sob. “Why couldn’t he just been talking about wanking off?” he muttered to himself. “Why?”
The party was a success, even by Narcissa Malfoy’s high standards. Despite their family’s questionable social standing after the war she’d managed to convince enough people that this affair – supposedly a fund-raiser to help rebuild small businesses in Diagon Alley – was not to be missed that both ballrooms had been opened and people flowed from one to the other, champagne glasses in hand, while house elves bobbed in and out of the crowd balancing trays of starters on hands held above their heads.
Draco moved through the crowd a smile plastered to his face, sleeves down to hide his Mark. He’d begun to feel the urges his father had discussed and the need to find this woman had started to feel all-consuming. They weren’t even sexual, which was what he had expected. He just needed to find her and smell her, touch her. He’d sit at her feet and ask nothing more if she’d just let him.
Assuming he could find her.
If he couldn’t it became clearer with every passing day that his father hadn’t been exaggerating when he said, “waste away.”
He’d walked through the party for hours, making endless small talk with his mother’s friends and their boring daughters and felt nothing. Not a spark. Not a flicker. Nothing. He’d had a brief, truly horrifying moment, when he’d seen Ron Weasley and Harry Potter and felt something churn in his stomach but it had been some kind of false alarm. The three of them had exchanged tense pleasantries and Harry had mentioned that that Mudblood friend of his would be along later with Ron’s little sister.
Draco hoped, the strangest hope he’d ever had, that it would be Ginny Weasley. His father had told him, in a second equally awful conversation, that his mate would be equally drawn to him. “Like a bee to nectar,” he’d said.
“Or a moth to bloody flame,” Draco had muttered but he’d been grateful to realize that he wasn’t going to have to actually court this mystery woman. She might be as unhappy about the entire situation as he was but she’d no more be able to control her urges than he would.
Ginny Weasley was pureblood, at least, and taking the Chosen One’s girlfriend would give him a certain malicious amount of pleasure even if she was a blood traitor and kind of irritating.
“I’ll be so good to you, whoever you are,” Draco whispered under his breath as he made his way to the foyer to try to breathe in a little cooler air before he reentered the fray. “I’ll do anything you want, just make this burning need for you go away. Just keep me from dying. I know I’m a… just…”
Ginny Weasley came out of the small lounge, her head turned to talk to someone behind her, and Draco felt nothing. Not her, then. Well, that was to be expected. Hundreds of girls at this damn party and not one of them was his mate. Not one of them was his lifeline. He turned to trudge back into the ballroom when he felt a hissed intake of breath behind him followed by the sound of glass shattering on the marble floor.
He turned. Hermione Granger was standing there, her hand to her mouth and a broken champagne flute at her feet.
“You’ll ruin your shoes,” Draco said stupidly as he stared at the splashes of wine on what looked like satin high heels.
Ginny looked from one of them to the other, her confusion evident. “Hermione,” she said, “are you okay.”
“I don’t… I need to sit down,” Hermione whispered.
Draco rushed to drag a chair across the floor to her, the Weasley girl staring at him as if he’d grown a second head – or sprouted wings, he thought with a frown – the whole time.
“Thank you,” Hermione said as she sat down. “I just… I’m sorry; this is very embarrassing. I just felt suddenly faint. I’m sure…” She put a hand out as if to steady herself and Draco leaned down to kiss the back of it. She jerked when his lips brushed against her skin and he felt his own stomach lurch.
“Granger,” Draco said, then tried again, “Miss Granger. I have something I need to tell you.”
By the time he was done Ginny Weasley had dragged over a chair of her own, ordered more champagne from a passing house elf, and peppered him with questions while Hermione sat there, as if in a state of shock, her hand nervously playing with his hair. She’d run her fingers down a strand and then let it go, only to pick it up again. Draco knelt in the puddle of champagne at her feet, bits of glass cutting into his lower legs, as he explained and re-explained the situation.
“This is not fair,” Hermione said at last.
“I am aware,” Draco said, fighting the urge to rest his cheek on her knee. He expected her to rail against her own unwelcome bond to him, to the boy who’d made her school years unpleasant with taunts, who had thought of her as a Mudblood not an hour ago.
“How can you be just trapped like this,” was, however, what she said. “You… no one even told you? Not until you were on the cusp of dying because you had to find… is this party really about Diagon Alley?”
“I can assure you,” he said, “a not insubstantial sum has been raised to help businesses rebuild.”
“But this was to find me,” she said.
“The Malfoy family is matching all donations,” Draco said helplessly as he wiped his sweating hands on his trousers.
“Was it the war?” she demanded. “Did no one warn you because of the war?”
Draco looked at her, confused, but Ginny was beginning to smirk. “The bond really does go both ways,” she said. “Well, Draco Malfoy, welcome to having Hermione Granger outraged on your behalf.” She stood up. “I need to go find Ron. This is the best thing ever. He might actually turn purple.”
“Shite,” Draco looked at Hermione. “You’re with Weasley. I…” The earlier idea that he’d enjoy gloating on getting to steal the Chosen One’s girlfriend was replaced by horror at the idea Hermione might be made upset in any way at all.
“No,” Hermione shook her head. “We realized almost immediately after the war that… are you bleeding?”
Draco looked down at his knees. The blood from where her broken glass had cut him had seeped through his trousers and was tinting the puddle in which he was kneeling. “Just a little,” he said. “It’s not a – “
“Do you lack any sense of self-preservation at all?” she asked in an aggrieved voice. “Merlin, get up and let me heal your knees.”
He pulled himself to Ginny’s chair and flinched as the witch next to him yanked broken glass out of his skin with one incantation. “Thank you,” he said right before she leaned over and, as if unable to help herself, pressed her lips into his. He groaned and pulled her forward over the heavy chair until she was half in his lap, her mouth on his, his tongue licking uncertainly at hers.
That was how Harry Potter and Ron Weasley found them.
For years whenever Ginny told the story of how she was there when Draco and Hermione Malfoy realized they were meant to be, she ended it with, “And Ron did turn purple. Three different shades.” She always sounded so pleased about that. “Three,” she’d say, shaking her head with pleasure. “Three shades, if you can believe it.”
(More dramione drabbles by colubrina on FF.net)
