Title: Going Concern

Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

Pairing: Harry/Draco, others mentioned

Rating: R

Warnings: Alpha/beta/omega dynamics, violence, AU, implied knotting

Wordcount: 4000

Summary: There are lots of views on Harry Potter. There are even some on how Harry Potter and Draco Malfoy would acceptably engage in a sexual relationship. There are only two views that matter, though.

Author's Notes: Advent fic based on a request from kitty_fic for an H/D omegaverse fic. I haven't written A/B/O fic before, so hopefully this came out interesting and not too skewed. Happy Advent!

Going Concern

When rumors spread of the defeat of You-Know-Who at Harry Potter's hands, the wizarding world reeled at first. Then it celebrated. Then people began to nod their heads knowingly, and the knowledge of how it had happened became common.

Of course Harry Potter was a powerful Alpha, they said. The most powerful to be born in centuries, undoubtedly. You-Know-Who had attacked him not knowing that, and for a less powerful Alpha to go up against a stronger one was suicide, especially when neither of them would back down. The one had been too stubborn to back down, and the other too young. That was what had happened. Definitely.

In a year or so, the picture was set in stone in most of the wizarding world's minds: a baby Alpha standing up in his cot with a roar distorting his mouth, the fang-like teeth some Alphas got young projecting from it in a circle, and You-Know-Who's answering roar dissolving into a howl as the magic bounced straight back at him, powered by Harry's rage.

A lot of people nodded knowingly. A lot of pure-bloods (smaller than the previous number, but not by that much) made quiet, knowing plans. Harry Potter was growing up in the Muggle world, among people who all just bred like apes, without any distinction of Alpha, Beta, or Omega. He would come into the wizarding world holding power and not knowing how to wield it in his day-to-day life. He would need...guidance. Advisors. People who knew their place at the back of such a powerful Alpha, but also how to use that rage and impulsive nature to their advantage.

There were ideas of betrothals, about exposure to Omega children with the right aura at the right time, about bonds and the flexible social structures that had developed, that had had to develop, among wizards in the wake of unbalanced generations: one generation dozens of Alphas, the next every child but a few born an Omega, and then weak Alphas intermixed with powerful Omegas. It probably didn't help that wizards used magic on their unborn children so often, trying to influence everything from magic to gender to eye color. Or maybe that was the cause.

Harry Potter would fit into a dozen plans. Or one. Someone would find him at the right moment, in the right amount of heat, and he would be bound. And perhaps he would accept a second mate, as most Alphas did in generations where there were few of them, and he would have many children, and there would be the chance of that powerful, blazing magic for the pure-bloods' own grandchildren.

And then Harry Potter came to the wizarding world, and upset all those plans. And not for the first or the last time.

Draco Malfoy was an Alpha, of course. The Malfoy family had discovered, and perfected, a ritual generations ago that ensured every child of theirs was born an Alpha. They would accept nothing less, and took no account of the new-fangled theories that claimed an Omega was the powerful one in a relationship, as they controlled the Alpha with their auras of peace, or that a child without extreme magical power could be as useful and beloved. What nonsense. Abraxas and Lucius Malfoy did not hold with nonsense.

They had served the Dark Lord because he was the strongest Alpha in the world. When he fell, Lucius had continued on with his own life, moving smoothly into the power vacuum that opened in the Ministry. And when he heard about the news that Harry Potter was now a strong Alpha, he listened, because Potter would be in the same year at school as his Draco, and might try to dominate him.

He instructed Draco carefully in the approach he was to take to Potter. "Overwhelm him with your magic," he said. "Show him that you can grow fangs. Show him the claws, if you have to." A Malfoy's claws were their deadliest secret, poison-tipped, curved, literally metallic hooks that retracted under their fingernails. "But make him understand that you are the most powerful."

Lucius Malfoy's plans were among the most violently upset when Harry Potter finally came into the wizarding world.

Draco Malfoy met Harry Potter first without knowing who he was. There was no aura of power to announce him. He didn't roll over and show his belly to Draco, or whine pathetically, or bare his teeth, either. There was nothing special, just an ordinary, green-eyed boy who didn't seem threatened by Draco, but rather interested.

They chatted genially about Quidditch, and Harry said a few things that contradicted Draco's beliefs, like the gamekeeper, Hagrid-who as a result of his giant blood had no characteristics of either Alpha or Omega, and therefore no rightful place in their world-being brilliant. But Draco let him go not feeling as though he was particularly impertinent. Interesting, maybe, with the way he listened, as if he absorbed everything through his ears instead of eyes and nose like most people Draco knew.

But not particularly inspiring. Or eye-catching. Or attention-getting.

The second time Draco Malfoy met Harry Potter, he recalled everything his father had said, and came in with his power blazing, his mouth open so that he showed his teeth. They lengthened as Potter watched, and Draco came near to shooting his claws, but he thought it might be premature.

But Potter...didn't do what he was supposed to do.

There was no answering roar, no shimmering of the air around him as though it had turned to fire. He didn't leap on Draco and try to pound him into the floor of the Hogwarts Express. He did nothing but watch Draco with his eyes blinking a bit, before his jaw acquired a stubborn lift and he answered back.

"I think I can choose who the right sort are for myself, thanks. And close your mouth, you look like you're trying to swallow the train."

Draco snapped his jaws quietly shut, not in obedience, but in astonishment. He stared at Potter, and then he sniffed, trying to suck in the scent of an Omega. It was hard to smell Potter separately, with Weasley, weak Omega that he of course was, sniveling beside Potter and crouched with his head down at the spectacle of an enraged Alpha.

But no, there was nothing there, although Draco had been sure for a second that perhaps Harry Potter was a powerful Omega after all and that was how he had defeated the Dark Lord, natural antithesis to natural antithesis, a power so submissive that it had swallowed and buffeted back the Dark Lord's attempt at an Alpha strike.

Harry Potter still stood there and looked perfectly normal, if you discounted those green eyes that showed his wizarding heritage-gold or green or amber eyes so often did-and the lightning bolt scar on his forehead that came from the Dark Lord marking him with one jagged bite. And the way he refused to cower in front of a strong Alpha.

Draco vacated the train compartment, utterly baffled.

He felt the same way when Potter challenged him on his broom, and didn't back down from Professor Snape, a bitter Alpha who would never take a mate, and made friends with Weasley and a Mudblood girl who smelled of Alpha but confused and repressed, as if she didn't know what to do with the power coiling in her blood. Draco thought about it for days on end, and finally he wrote a letter to his father, explaining what he had observed.

Meanwhile, other people were writing other letters, especially those children of pure-blood families who had counted on Harry Potter's Alpha status to regenerate their dying blood. And as more and more wizards and witches noticed that Harry Potter didn't show his belly or his teeth, didn't back down like an Omega but also didn't seem interested in contesting for status like an Alpha, new rumors began to spread.

He was the most powerful Omega ever born.

That, everyone could agree on. It was strange how they had been fooled before into thinking that Harry Potter was a powerful Alpha instead. On the other hand, You-Know-Who was an Alpha, and it was probably a natural conclusion to leap to, that an Alpha could only be defeated by another Alpha.

Instead, Harry Potter was an Omega whose magic hadn't come to the surface yet. That was a common staple of old fairy tales. The stronger they were, the later Omegas matured. Instead, they would have their wand magic show up first, without an aura of power, because they would probably have to fend for themselves and protect their lives until their destined Alpha showed up. Omegas in the old tales were always falling into trouble. They would wander away from their families and be raised by tolerant dragons, or they would get abandoned in the woods and be raised by wolves, or they would be abused and escape from their abusers and hide out in crystalline caves where voices spoke to them from the rock. They were natural shapeshifters (Metamorphmagi, said some more skeptical modern voices). They had wands before they were eleven. They came to Hogwarts with an escort of unicorns or flying horses or giant snakes.

Then they found out Harry Potter was a Parselmouth, and that increased the relieved nods. Of course, there had been Parselmouths who were Alphas, but hadn't Slytherin, the most famous Parselmouth of all, been an Omega? And his peaceful and submissive aura hadn't developed until he was almost forty, at which point he had refused to accept himself and had deserted Hogwarts and the wizarding world. There were people who would watch Harry Potter and make sure that wouldn't happen, of course. An unmanifested Omega could be trained and protected and guided until he did manifest.

That was the solution. That was the secret. And many plans changed, although only in form and not intent. Even if Harry Potter didn't manifest until he was forty, that wasn't too old for a wizard to have children. And his children would be almost unimaginably powerful. There were dreams and small smiles on many lips, and Lucius Malfoy wrote to his son instructing him to shift his strategy. He could keep on challenging Potter, the way he was doing, but he should mainly direct his plans not to hurt Potter or get him in trouble, but to show how strong and clever he was. That way, Potter would choose Draco as the best of the Alphas, the only potential mate for him.

Rita Skeeter was already engaged in writing long articles about the similarities between Salazar Slytherin and Harry Potter, that she would eventually gather in a book, The Alphas of the Omegas.

There was one person who didn't think like that. And even though he was a strong Alpha, he was young yet, and he knew he couldn't challenge his father.

But Draco Malfoy watched Harry Potter, and while he saw some compassion, he also saw a lot of snarling bloody-mindedness. Harry Potter believed in House rivalries the same way that anyone raised in the wizarding world would. He showed no special tendency to flush and fluster in the presence of Alphas. It was easy to get him angry, but he didn't try to calm the tensions of a rising fight; he exacerbated them. With the ways, known and rumored, that he defeated the Dark Lord every time they fought, Draco was starting to think that Potter fought not out of a desire to end the war or because he loved the battle, but because that was what he had to do to survive.

He kept the thoughts to himself, and he kept to himself, as well, the startling realization that he was more attracted to that stubbornness than to the softly glowing manifestation of any Omegas in his year. He wasn't sure what he was going to do with either of his thoughts yet.

"You must be an Alpha if you're not an Omega," said Ron earnestly to Harry one morning at the breakfast table, when they were in their sixth year and Ron was starting to get impatient waiting for Harry to manifest.

"I told you that I don't feel like either of them, though," Harry said, and swallowed a bite of breakfast. "And don't Omegas manifest late if they're powerful and Alphas manifest early if they are?" He looked at Hermione.

Hermione nodded. She had a new, confident glow to her cheeks lately, and Harry wasn't going to mention how hard it was for Ron to take his eyes off her. Ron knew, if Hermione hadn't noticed she was an idiot-which meant she had noticed and was trying to decide how to deal with it in her own time-and Harry didn't consider it his business. "Most powerful Alphas manifest their fangs and rage as children. Most Omegas manifest their aura of peace when they're around nine or so. It only happens later in life when-"

"Anyway, I'm not that powerful in the way you're talking about," said Harry, and shrugged when Ron looked at him incredulously. "I'm not. I would have noticed, I think."

I'm just Harry. He had told people that from the beginning. He still told them that, now that the papers were calling him the Chosen One and making a big deal about how he was supposed to save the world from evil.

If I was powerful, I could have saved Sirius last year, Harry thought bitterly. Sirius had been a bitter and twisted Omega, driven crazy by caging him away from any Alpha in Azkaban for twelve years, and then not knowing how to deal with any Alpha when he was free. Backing away from Bellatrix's roaring had sent him stumbling through the Veil, in a battle he would never have been in in the first place if he'd been allowed to grow up normally.

I could convince Remus there's nothing wrong with what he is, either. Remus had a rare form of manifestation called lycanthropy, after the extinct, highly infectious werewolves, that meant his teeth could infect any Omega he bit and turn them into an Alpha. Lycanthropes were shunned and chased away and denied sexual partners. To Harry the solution seemed easy-a charm that could place soft covers on the Alpha's teeth, preventing the bite from transferring any infection because the teeth wouldn't meet in the blood and flesh of the Omega-but everyone else he had mentioned that to seemed shocked. Of course an Alpha had to bite an Omega when they mated. It couldn't happen any other way.

If I was powerful, then I could make Voldemort calm down and stop attacking people. Harry had bitterly resented not being an Omega only once in his life, when he had read about what strong auras of peace could do. That was the one really useful gift he could have had, and of course it was denied to him.

The only things that power could be useful for, he couldn't do. That meant, Harry had decided, that he had to concentrate on being himself, not on being powerful. Roars and claws and teeth, auras of peace and submission around an Alpha? You could keep it.

After Harry Potter defeated the Dark Lord, with the help of the Elder Wand and a series of coincidences, the pure-bloods and the others who had known all along what he was were left not knowing what to know.

He hadn't done it by snarling and showing his teeth. The Dark Lord's teeth had been out all the time; many of those who knew him best were surprised that he hadn't simply launched himself at the boy and ripped his throat out, surrendering to the primitive manifestation of Alphas rather than the magic that could be used through a wand. And if Potter had met him with fangs, then at least one side of the debate would have felt satisfied.

Potter hadn't conquered by gazing into the Dark Lord's eyes and influencing him to drop his wand, the way the most powerful Omegas could. He hadn't acted as though he resented the war at all, really, for shoving him into such a prominent place. Most Omegas would have.

There were people who came up with their own opinions afterwards. Losing his parents at such a young age had suppressed Potter's natural manifestations, either way. The sacrificial protection of his mother's magic, generally acknowledged now, had balanced out emerging Omega tendencies with Lily Potter's Alpha power, and therefore Potter would never be anything, either way. Or maybe he could be both, in private, with the right person, whispered the most persistent ideas that refused to die.

Harry Potter did in fact learn the truth during some of the research he did on the Horcrux hunt, delving into old books. But he kept it to himself and his friends for years, because why should anyone else need to know it? His friends could accept him for who he was and not make up silly stories of Voldemort's soul-piece influencing him against becoming his "natural" self. Someone who wanted him for an imagined power, either kind, wouldn't.

Draco Malfoy had his suspicions. He had his thoughts. He had his desires, which were in large part those of his father.

But he was an Alpha, no matter what Harry Potter was, and the core of him was his essential fire, the rage that shone in his fangs when he snarled, that made the air around him blaze. And he burned all the potential mates his parents showed him with the fires of rejection, and drove them away, and then he went and made the Declaration in Form, as an Alpha should, to Harry Potter, who had always drawn his attention.

An Alpha's mate had to hold an Alpha's attention. There was no other requirement, as far as Draco was concerned.

When he had made the Declaration-which involved kneeling before Potter, baring his neck as an Alpha never would again, showing him his claws as a token that he trusted Potter with his secrets, and asking him quietly if he would accept-Potter looked at him for a long moment with motionless eyes. They were in his office at the Ministry, where Potter worked for the Department of Magical Creatures, its name recently changed thanks in great part to Potter's own pushing. Those magical creatures included lycanthropes, not classified as wizards.

"What do you think I am?" Potter finally asked.

Draco rose to his feet and answered, "I think you're a Beta. They used to be common enough-the wizards who could wield wand magic, but had no manifestation, who experienced the impulses to rage and peace both at the same time, and usually in about equal strength. But people got preoccupied with modifying their children into Alphas and Omegas, and no one tried to keep up the inheritance with Betas. In time, they just stopped being born." He paused. "It's strange, to think that other people I know could have been Betas, but their parents probably changed them into something else before they got out of the womb."

He didn't mention the amount of research it had taken him to find out, or how he had sat staring at the page in silence for a long time when he first discovered it, or how he had thought up the most likely reason. The Potters had been a pure-blood family in the finest tradition, once, but had been drifting from it for generations, and probably James Potter and his Muggleborn wife hadn't planned to use magic on their children at all. And so their Beta son was born, and confounded everybody.

"It has nothing to do with how I defeated Voldemort, you know," Potter said, and Draco knew he would have to get used to not flinching at the name. "That really was my mum's sacrifice and the wand connection, just like I said. So if you've come here in hopes of finding the all-powerful solution to any difficulty you're experiencing, you should leave now."

There was a sheen of vulnerability in his eyes, and Draco reached out and carefully cupped a hand beneath Potter's jaw, not letting his claws slip out. "I came here for you," he said. "Because it wouldn't matter to me if you were an Omega or another Alpha or a lycanthrope or-or nothing at all. You're Harry, and I want you."

Potter's eyes widened, and he moved forwards, regarding Draco intently. Draco smiled to himself. That wasn't a challenge stare, and he'd never thought of it that way, although he knew some Alphas would have.

This was his chosen mate, and he couldn't think of Harry as challenging him any more than an Omega would.

"What's going to happen, now?" Harry murmured. "Can you really adapt to having someone who's not an Omega as your mate?"

"My research said that Alphas and Betas mated all the time," Draco murmured back, and then moved closer. "But let's be certain here. You asking that question must mean that you've accepted my Declaration. Doesn't it?"

"Don't use that bossy Alpha voice on me," Harry snapped, firing up.

Draco kissed him. That was a much better way to shut him up than ordering him, and he had the sensation that it was one he would use a lot.

The shocked gasps at the revelation of Harry Potter's Beta identity-which had to be published in the official mating papers, the way that all mates' statuses had to be-could be heard throughout the wizarding world.

And this time, the pure-blood families weren't the ones with the most urgent questions running through their heads. That was the people who wrote to the Daily Prophet and demanded answers to their questions. How were an Alpha and a Beta going to have children? How were they going to have sex? Was it true that Betas were a sort of lycanthrope who grew a vagina and testicles every full moon, like the werehermaphrodites of legend? How could Lucius Malfoy permit his son to bond to someone so manifestly unworthy of him? How could Harry Potter take an Alpha mate instead of an Omega, who might (perhaps) have been able to bear his children?

How was this going to work?

But their questions went unanswered. Draco Malfoy's Declaration in Form was duly sworn and witnessed by his Beta mate, and Harry Potter's Beta status was confirmed by a mediwitch trained in the old ways, and the wizarding world was left to eat itself alive with curiosity. The bonding ceremony took place in utter privacy, only the required four witnesses (two from the-well, the Beta's side, his best friends, and two from the Alpha's side, his parents) attending.

"You know that we're going to have to use a lot of lube," said Draco warningly on their bonding night, when Harry was lounging on the fancy bed in the private room they'd built for themselves, waiting for him.

"What else is magic for?" Harry asked, and widened innocent eyes at him. Draco growled and showed his teeth. Harry stared back, unintimidated, and Draco calmed down and strolled over and kissed his Beta mate.

There was a lot of lube, and Harry huffed and complained about his size, and Draco thought the knotting was a bit more uncomfortable than he might have expected, and Harry also objected to the bite that he didn't have the magic to beg for. But, as Harry said when they lay on the bed afterwards and panted at each other, they had a lot of time to get it right. They were both young wizards.

They had a lot of time to decide what to do in general, in fact.

And in the end, what they decided to do was the only answer to the questions that mattered.

The End.