Title: Fire and Wonder

Prompt: #76, for knowmefirst: Harry is a dark powerful veela and he wants Draco.

Rating: R

Pairing(s): Harry/Draco, some mentions of canon pairings

Word Count/ Art Medium: 15,500

Warnings (if any): Some violence, minor character death, AU, angst, non-linear timeline, Dark-ish Harry.

Disclaimer: JK Rowling retains the ownership of all characters and settings borrowed from the Harry Potter series of books.

Summary: Everything changed after Voldemort's defeat. Now the wizarding world is almost unrecognizable, and Harry Potter and his mate Draco Malfoy are at the helm, guiding it for their own version of the "greater good." Perhaps this was their destined course from the day Harry grew his black wings.

Author's notes: knowmefirst, I hope you like this fic! My thanks to my beta Karen, who looked over this story with a thorough and expert eye. Any errors remaining are my own.

Fire and Wonder

Draco turned his head. He stood still for a moment, listening. Then he quietly put down the book he had been reading and left the room.

He was aware, as he moved along the corridors of the Manor towards the front doors, that he might not ever return to it.

But above him was the sound which had captured his attention, and had to command it. Draco might have thought it was the surf, except he knew already that it would be the beating of enormous wings.

He stood inside the front doors for a long moment while the wings came down to the grounds and settled there. He stood, and faint images of his parents came and went behind his eyes, and images of the Dark Lord.

Draco had to smile and open his eyes when he realized he was imagining the Dark Mark overlaid with a flying raven. The eagle had the serpent in one of its talons and was choking the life out of it. The other talon lay on top of the skull, tightening to crush it.

The sound of the wings had stilled.

Draco opened the great door on almost silent hinges, and carried the small creak it did make down the steps to what awaited him there.

"None of us thought things had changed that much at first. I mean, Harry woke up and he had wings. And that was pretty startling. But aside from trying to research and find out where they'd come from, we didn't pay much attention. We had so many other things to do then, in the wake of the war.

"By the time we thought to pay a lot of attention, Harry had found Malfoy, and it was too late."

-Dean Thomas, interviewed in the Daily Prophet, special edition, "Friends of His Raven-Winged Majesty," 2006.

"Harry, what did you do to yourself?"

Harry woke groggily. He didn't think he'd even heard Hermione come in to the boys' bedroom at Hogwarts. He turned his head, meaning to ask if he couldn't get one day off from lectures. He'd just defeated Voldemort yesterday, after all.

But he woke up pretty fast when he saw the black feathers out of the corner of his eye, and had to sit up to stare at them. They moved when he did. Harry's first thought was that someone had sneaked up here and stuck them to him for a joke. Probably Seamus. It didn't seem like Neville's or Dean's style, not now.

Then he reached behind him to scratch his shoulder blade as an itch happened there, and the shoulder moved as though it had extra joints in it, and huge black wings extended on either side of him.

Hermione squeaked. Harry stared at his wings in silence. The feathers had a sheen to them, purple-black and blue, that reminded him of a raven or a starling. He flapped, and his sheets blew to the end of the bed and some loose paper lying on the trunk near the bottom scattered into all the corners of the room.

"Don't do that, mate!" Apparently he'd blown Ron's wand along with the paper, and Ron was sticking it back in his pocket now, shaking his head reproachfully at Harry.

"Um. Sorry." Harry waited and blinked some more. He looked up in time to see Hermione casting a spell. But whatever it was, it didn't work the way she wanted it to. She shook her head as it faded into what looked like a cluster of fireworks, and shrugged at Harry.

"I'm sorry, Harry. I assumed it was a curse, but it's not. It must be a Transfiguration instead."

"Well, either that or he transformed. The way werewolves do."

"Ron, lycanthropy is specifically a disease linked to the moon, and that means…"

Harry tuned out their arguing and extended his right wing to the side, studying it for a moment. It was huge, and it blazed and shimmered with magic at the edges, blue crackling flames that winked out of existence when Harry looked at them straight on. He supposed that meant he would fly just by magic alone. He didn't feel like he was any lighter, anyway.

Fly? Am I seriously thinking of flying with these things?

Slowly, Harry began to grin. Yeah, he was. He had to admit, now that Voldemort was gone, he didn't see the reason to panic and automatically assume this was someone cursing him. He ought to get to fly and do what he wanted instead of panicking.

And now that he had wings, what else was he supposed to do with them?

He stood up, distracting Ron and Hermione from their argument. Hermione focused on him with a frown.

"Harry? What is it? Do the wings hurt?"

Harry shook his head and raised his wings some more, making both his friends gasp. He thought they hadn't really seen how large they were before, since he'd been sitting down and the wings had mostly been behind him. "No. I'm going to leap from the window. Ron, do you mind opening the shutters?"

Ron rushed to do it, while Hermione shouted in alarm. Harry winked at her and lifted his wings higher, soaring across the room for a moment.

It was to a broom what a broom was to walking. In seconds Harry was in front of the window and staring down at the ground far below.

"Do it, mate," Ron whispered from beside him. When Harry looked over, Ron had the most insane grin on his face.

And Harry sort of felt insane, too, but he thought he was going to fly. He stepped out and fell for a moment.

Then the knowledge or muscles or whatever he had already used kicked in, and his wings spread wide and cast a fleeting shadow below him, and he aimed up and twisted and was flying, wheeling, his wings bearing him up. Harry leaned on the wind and shut his eyes for a moment. He knew he could trust his wings completely, that they would never betray him, never fold when he needed them to flap and let him fall.

It was a complete trust Harry thought must be magical. He knew he should probably distrust it instead. Everything that had seemed innocent once, like Scabbers and Tom Riddle's diary, was really evil.

Or so he should probably think.

But he didn't, and his laughter rang out, drifting over the towers and turrets of the castle, luring people outside to see who was flying, who was dipping, who was soaring.

"I still think the only thing that would have helped was for Harry to never inherit his wings in the first place. Once he had them, he was a different person. He walked instead of flew. He talked to birds instead of us.

"The first raven came to him that night, you know. Just slanted down in the Great Hall in front of everybody and landed on the table and stared at him. And we thought Harry could only talk to snakes, but then he opened his mouth, and this babble of croaks came out. The raven nodded like it understood him and flew away, and came back with this hawthorn wand in its beak. Then it flew across the Great Hall and gave it to Draco Malfoy.

"Maybe that was the real beginning. Ron thinks it was. That was the event that probably formed the connection between Harry and Malfoy. But if he'd never had the wings, nothing else would have happened."

-Hermione Granger, talking in La Trompette from her French residence, three days before her return to Britain.

Draco always remembered the moment that a raven landed in front of him and offered him his wand back.

He didn't remember it because he was so surprised, or because the raven was so close, or because of who sent it. He remembered it because there was an odd smell to the raven's feathers, a shaggy smell, like they were fur polished by the wind.

And because he looked up and met Potter's eyes, and saw the way his wings stretched out, and he saw what apparently no one else did.

Potter had two shadows on the wall behind him. One was his normal shadow. A much larger, still winged one reared over that and encompassed it.

And Potter's eyes burned.

Draco still reached out and took the wand, because he had to. But his arm shook.

The wings made a noise like words muttered in the middle of thunder.

Draco took a step back and looked up. Potter was crouched in front of him, but it was his wings that caught Draco's attention, rising and flapping again even though Potter had come to a stop, their shadow spread out over the whole of the Manor's grounds.

What that shadow touched, it changed.

The grass grew brighter and sharper. Draco appreciated that Potter didn't want to kill the grass of his childhood home, only transform it, but it was still hard to watch its edges become silver and its roots freeze and sparkle. Draco followed the spreading path of silver and shadow to the edge of the house.

The marble there trembled, wavered, and then released a flock of brightly-colored birds. Red and yellow, with glorious blue crests on their heads, they circled around Draco and Potter in a singing wave. Then they lifted their wings and fled past both of them, and Draco had no idea where they had gone or what would happen to the rest of the stone in the Manor.

For now, the shadow didn't reach that far. But it could. He knew.

Potter was a small thing, dwarfed by the wings, when Draco thought of him this way. Still, he knew that Potter's was the guiding intelligence behind that magic. When the wild force partnered with him did awful things, it was as a result of his anger. If the changes here had been harmless or beautiful or protective, it was because of what Potter felt towards Draco.

Because Draco was his mate.

Draco turned, and Potter was there, dipping his head a little to make eye contact.

Draco moved towards him and turned his hands up. He accepted. He had to, and part of him—a small buried part, the one that had dreamed of making the Boy-Who-Lived his friend and going with him on magical adventures—was screaming in joy.

But he couldn't hide the way his hands trembled, either.

When Potter bowed his head, Draco realized he didn't need to. Potter's tongue flickered out, a single hot point, and touched the center of his right palm.

Draco caught his breath, because if Potter's shadow could change what it did, surely his tongue would change even more. Would his skin become metal, or sunflowers, or melt and run from the bones of his hand?

It did neither. It only warmed, and grew wet, the way it would from the lick of anyone's tongue.

Draco moved slowly forwards, into the embrace of the raven Veela Potter had become. Potter looked at him with fierce need, and the devouring delight of a raptor closing in on its kill.

But his hands were still human when they clasped Draco's, and the mouth he brought down to Draco's was still human, and the wings he raised higher and higher, growing like stormclouds, were meant to shield their kiss from the sight of anyone who might watch, Draco knew, and not to change him into someone more to Potter's liking. The whole point of what Potter had become, from what Draco had learned of him—of it—of them—of him—was that Potter wanted him because he was prickly and difficult, resistant, and there would have been no point in forced compliance in a raven Veela's mate.

Because—

Draco's thoughts were spinning and drifting, pieces breaking apart from each other, as Potter's hands caressed him and pushed him towards the ground, even as small winds from his wings sneaked under his clothing and caressed his skin.

Because that was what raven Veela were. Were made to be.

Draco was on the ground, his legs spread wide. Potter literally hovered before him, and his eyes burned with fire the darkest shade of green, where it verged on blue, shining and fierce.

Because raven Veela were conquerors.

Draco arched his back, and that was the only invitation Potter needed.

He landed.

Draco fell.

Dear Harry,

Please don't tear up this letter. I have a feeling you'll want to, once you realize what I'm talking about, so the only thing I can ask is that you don't.

I know what you are. A raven Veela. Apparently they're rare enough to be legends even among the Veela—sort of to them what ordinary Veela are to Muggles. There are legends of black-winged men appearing among her grandmother's kind, Fleur told me, and when they did, then war came, because that was what they did.

Ordinary Veela are creatures of seduction. They use magic to make people want to do things for them, and that's all right in a limited sphere. The effect doesn't last long, especially because it works on the emotions of lust and romance, and a lot of people either aren't influenced that much by lust or are already involved in a romance. When the Veela leaves, the allure goes with them.

Raven Veela are creatures of force. They change things, and what they touch remains changed. They don't value easy gifts or rewards or promises, either. They want to take.

Harry, please, you have to be careful. I know you told me that you just swatted that reporter aside the other day because he was trying to steal a feather from your wings, and I believe you. And it's perfectly understandable that you changed that attacking Nundu into a harmless kitten. The wizards who brought it into Britain shouldn't have had it anyway.

But more than that, I think you could end up doing things you don't want to. And I don't even know how you being a raven Veela will combine with you being the Master of Death.

Please write back to me, Harry.

Love,

Hermione.

-Letter found in the private files of Harry Potter after his death, a notation in the margin: "Too late."

The first steps were so easy.

A few people approached Harry and asked him to negotiate with the goblins. Apparently, the goblins favored ambassadors who didn't look human or were part-human. Professor Flitwick used to talk with them sometimes, which surprised Harry.

But now Professor Flitwick was busy rebuilding Hogwarts and soothing students. It didn't seem like a huge favor for Harry to approach the goblins and show them his black wings and ask them if they would lend some extra money to wizards who needed it.

And it wasn't. The goblins took one look at Harry's wings and burst out laughing. Harry blinked as he stood there with his wings spread and trembling in a large cavern beneath the bank. Lately, even though he knew perfectly well how big the bloody things were, it seemed as if he needed extra room around the edges of the feathers. As if someone had come and extended them without his noticing.

Or as if his shadow needed its own space. Or at least the shadow of the wings.

But the goblins calmed down after that and nodded and said the loans would be easy, too. Of course they understood that some people without vaults were among the victims of the war who needed to build new homes and buy food and save up to send their children to Hogwarts. Of course they knew that Hogwarts didn't have its own vaults anymore—not really, they'd been drained to fund the attendance of people who didn't have their own trusts—and needed money anyway. Of course they would give the money.

Harry didn't know what to make of the smiling glances they kept giving his wings, or the whisper he heard between two goblins when he was leaving Gringotts. Most of the time, the goblins talked to each other in their own tongue. Of all they'd said that wasn't directly to Harry while he was there, this was the only bit that was actually in English.

"They'll get what they deserve, with the return of the raven."

That part was hard. And only made sense later.

Of course there are lots of reasons a raven Veela could be born. Because the people on one side of the war used the proper rituals. Because an ordinary Veela found a dark-souled human and decided to bear a child to him. Because the need of all magical creatures reached the point where magic created a champion to fight for them.

But why Harry Potter in particular grew raven wings cannot be answered. Most attribute it to a combination of his personal power, the sudden fall of a Dark Lord who had left a mark in evil magic on the world, and perhaps something else.

After all, there would be little point in creating a raven Veela through the old rituals, or through the prayers and desires of magical creatures, if they would only involve the world in endless war.

Raven Veela are created to end war. To bring peace.

-Excerpt from How the World Changed: Speculations and Theories, by Percy Weasley, living in exile in France, 2021.

The relentless tide of longing had begun to pull him towards Malfoy.

Harry knew it as well as he knew his own name now, as he knew the weight of his wings, the way they could flap and send him reeling up to the ceiling of Grimmauld Place. Sometimes he slept there, clinging like a great bat, and then he would fly down and startle whoever had come through the Floo or to the door.

There were more people than just Ron and Hermione now who could come see him through those doorways. Or who wanted to.

And there was the pull. Wherever Harry went, he knew exactly where Malfoy was, how far away. He could stand in Diagon Alley and turn his head towards Malfoy Manor. Once, when he had gone to Ireland to free some selkies caught in a trap there, soaring silently over the night-darkened water, he had felt Malfoy turn over in his bed. He had known how many wingbeats it would take to carry him there.

For now, Harry could resist. He knew what he was—not by reading about names so much as because he felt it, the different kind of tide that guided his own beating heart and reached out as if it would sweep up others when they came near him.

Some people were more susceptible than others. George, looking for leadership and an anchor in the wake of Fred's death, was happy when Harry gave him some direction about what pranks he should develop next. Ginny went starry-eyed, but no longer as a prospective lover. She was a little sister happy in another brother's protection and in learning tricks about flying that someone with wings could teach her.

Ron and Hermione, at least, turned clear gazes on him. Harry was glad. He never wanted to enchant his friends.

But he was more complacent with others. The few Death Eaters left free, including Fenrir Greyback, who had tried to attack him so far had become slow and dazed as they neared him. Harry had only to spread his wings, and they ended up bowing before him and standing motionless as the Aurors took them away.

Greyback had tried to lick his feet. Harry tried not to think about that. There were limits he wanted to his power even if he no longer had them.

Malfoy, though…

Malfoy was different. Harry wanted to bear him away and hold him in mid-air as he fucked him again and again. He wanted to hold out his wings and let the tips of the black feathers brush just against Malfoy's cheeks and do whatever he needed to to get Malfoy to react.

There was that, and so much in return: the desire to build a nest for Malfoy, to build a throne for him if that was what he wanted, to walk with him through Diagon Alley, holding his hand, and to have Malfoy kneel at his feet and touch his wings. The images stormed through Harry's head when he lay in bed at night.

He didn't understand them. And unlike the question of why exactly he had turned into a black-winged Veela instead of someone else, he couldn't put it aside and not worry about it until later. He wanted to know now. He wanted to know desperately.

Nothing in Hermione's research had revealed the truth so far. Not that she'd concentrated much on finding out why Malfoy would be a suitable candidate for a mate, Harry had to admit. Nor would she much care whether he was. She was now researching ways to turn Harry back.

She had told him, the last time they'd had dinner together in the shadows of Grimmauld Place, Harry's wings big enough that one of them stuck out the door of the kitchen into the drawing room, that she thought the transformation had gone far enough.

"Everything I've been able to find says the wizarding world needs these Veela sometimes." Hermione had touched his hand, while her eyes shone at him. "But none of them became—well, none of them turned this suddenly, Harry. And none of them had wings this big."

Harry had blinked. "What does the size of my wings have to do with it?"

"It's the shadow they cast." Hermione had looked at the wavering black shape on the floor, stretching away from the table towards the fireplace. "Where your shadow touches the world, the world changes, Harry."

Harry rolled his eyes a little. "I didn't think you paid that much attention to Skeeter's whinging, Hermione."

He picked up a handful of beef and began to chew. He'd acquired a taste for raw meat since his transformation, and for some reason, Kreacher seemed particularly pleased to serve that kind of food to him. Then again, Kreacher had started staring dreamily at his wings the first time he saw them and calmed down quite a bit from his old habit of muttering about the glories of the Black family.

"It's not Skeeter. It's the simple truth. From everything I've been able to find—"

Hermione broke off and stared at something on the wall. Harry turned towards the fireplace, wondering if someone had come through the Floo and the wards on the house hadn't let him know, although he didn't know why they wouldn't.

But instead, she was watching the shadow of his right wing. Harry rolled his eyes. "What? It's not doing anything."

"Look," Hermione whispered, and raised her wand and cast a complicated charm that Harry already knew was a variant on a Lumos. She'd tried it on his wings last week, although she hadn't mentioned the shadow at the time.

The light flickered to life and moved the shadow a little, but left it present on the wall, just above where it had lain. Hermione pointed. Her hand shook. "See? The wall is new and shiny where your wing's shadow was. Dingy as ever where it wasn't."

Harry blinked and peered more closely. He supposed, when he looked, that he could see a difference in the colors. But that was a pretty mild change, and one that he didn't think he needed to be worried about.

"If it could be that easy to clean up the wizarding world," he muttered as he picked up his plate again, "then I'd like it."

"Don't wish for things like that."

Harry stared at Hermione, flinching back before he could help himself. Hermione held her fork as if she was going to stab him—or herself. Her eyes were wide and staring.

"Hermione?" Harry whispered.

Hermione went on as if he had responded to her statement. "Because they might come true," she said, and then turned and went on with her meal.

Harry did the same thing, now and then looking at the dingy wall and wondering what had unnerved her about it. After all, she and Ginny and Molly had been after him to clean up Grimmauld Place almost from the time he'd moved in.

But she didn't want to discuss it after the meal, only avoiding his eyes and hurrying away. Harry sighed and went up to bed, closing his eyes to dreams of swooping down on running rabbits from the skies and tearing them to shreds with his hands, which seemed more hooked and clawed than he remembered them.

And those gave way to dreams of Malfoy, where Malfoy was shuddering and gasping beneath him in bed, and Harry was tearing him in rather different ways.

Dear Mother,

I'm not sure how I can describe my daily life to you. It's so different from even the kind of life that I knew Father hoped I would have someday when he was powerful before the first war. But I'll try.

I wake up in the morning and find house-elves waiting to draw me a bath. I spend maybe an hour soaking in the hottest water I've ever felt. I understand that the dragons sent a Swedish Short-Snout egg to Harry in tribute a while ago, and the hatchling is growing now and heating the water for us. It likes breathing flame and it's given all the meat it wants. Apparently it's a beneficial arrangement.

(And this is the kind of thing that I wouldn't even have noticed a year ago. Being with Harry makes me more sensitive to the feelings of magical creatures, anyway.

…Please don't read that last part to Father).

After the bath, I dress myself in the kind of robes that are necessary for court, eat a swift breakfast, and go there to sit on the black throne Harry built for me. It's ornamented with his own feathers, which can come alive and…discourage people from getting too close. The throne itself is basalt, but you wouldn't believe the kinds of Cushioning Charms Harry's cast on it.

Various people come to talk to me. Most of them are the ones not brave enough to be there when Harry holds court. They know what it's like to be in the shadow of his wings, and I can't exactly blame them.

Even though it's so often boring, I'm still using the education you and Father insisted I have. I seek out the roots of tangled blood feuds and cut through them. I ask the people talking to me not to insult my intelligence with lies. I'm a judge, and part of me enjoys it.

I spend lunch in the garden, eating under a tree by a stream. It's the mildest place imaginable, with blue roses growing everywhere. Harry learned years ago that they're my favorite flowers, and he used a day to coax everything in this little walled place with his magic. Since then, they've grown like weeds.

Sometimes, faeries join me.

I know you might wonder about the spelling change, but trust me, these faeries deserve it. Mother, I've seen the Sidhe, who we thought had abandoned our world so long ago. I've watched silver swans glide up to the bank of a pond and then change shape into people so beautiful there's no use even thinking of them in human terms. Cats like black leopards have come to speak to me, and I have to be careful to promise them nothing.

I always need to remember that I'm not simply myself, that I'm a representative of something larger, when I negotiate with magical creatures.

I go from the garden to a music session, or another court session if needed, or a flight with Harry. I wish I had the words for the way I feel when he's carrying me, in a special harness he fashioned, beneath him while his wings beat above us. But that's something else as much beyond words as the Sidhe are.

I always eat dinner and spend the night with Harry. And while I could describe the dinners to you—the candles and the music and the shadows that dance and get golden-edged from the fire—I'll ask you to excuse me from describing the nights.

One thing you should know, Mother, and never doubt. I'm happy. Harry fulfills my desires in ways I never knew he could before I came here, and he's taught me new ones. That he fulfills, and I can fulfill on my own, too. We do have lives outside each other.

I came here because I knew I didn't have much choice, and I hoped to spare my family the bad consequences. But I stay for my own sake.

Never doubt that.

Yours in love,

Draco.

Harry rose slowly above the North Sea, hovering with languid beats of his wings. It shouldn't have been possible for him with wings this huge, he knew that, but on the other hand, most of his magic was about achieving the impossible.

So he hung, shadowing the island that had become his kingdom, and waited.

The dragon appeared suddenly from the east, a dark shape against the rising sun. It dipped its wings to him once in greeting, and Harry had time to make out the distinctive shape of a Hebridean Black before it began to spiral, up and up and up, into the dance he had come here to celebrate with it.

Harry bowed his head a little in return and followed it.

The dragon remained in a spiral until it reached the height that was the correct one—Harry had never figured out how the dragons knew which one it was, but it was the same each time—and then suddenly dropped like a stone, wings wrapped around it. Harry described a circle beneath it, and was there when the fall began. He stooped like a hawk, and the ocean turned golder than the sun where the shadow of his wings fell.

The dragon tumbled and arced through the salmon color of the sunrise. Its scales refused the light and reshaped it. Harry laughed soundlessly and spun into the whirling cocoon of his wings.

He learned something new each month he did this dance, and this time, it was this: dragons could change the world the way he did.

The sight of a dragon dancing, at last, in ancient celebration of its kind, and the births that were beginning with planted eggs in the ruins of Muggle buildings, hit Harry like someone had reached into his chest and stripped the breath out.

The Black rose again, and this time Harry spread his wings to their fullest extent and followed, rising so steeply that his sight blurred. Then the soft weight settled on his left wing from the side, and he smiled.

Wingtip to wingtip, Harry and the Hebridean Black soared above an island at peace with wild and magical things.

"What did we have to give Mr. Potter? Unconditional surrender.

Many people misunderstand what that involves. It was the surrender of desires as well as of our wands, if that was what he felt he needed to make sure we would be peaceful. We had to give up wanting to drive Muggleborns out of the wizarding world and exercise our power over Muggles.

"Why, did you not know? A raven Veela has sensitivity to his mate's desires, and also to the desires of the family of his mate. But while His Raven-Winged Majesty might want to gratify every one of our son's wishes, he knew enough about me and my wife to look into our souls and demand that we stop feeling what we were feeling.

"Is it worth the price? Especially given the ravens who follow us day and night, an honor guard and yet also a company of prison wardens?

"To see our son safe and happy, yes, it is."

Lucius Malfoy, interviewed in the Daily Prophet, special edition, "Family of His Raven-Winged Majesty," 2005.

Draco knew when the raven came slanting down towards the Slytherin table that it carried a courtship gift. Of course it did. This particular raven, a large one with feathers that shone almost blue in the backs of its wings, had delivered almost every gift so far, including Draco's wand. He held his hand out to receive it, smiling a little.

It was almost March, and even if neither of them had formally spoken the word "courtship" aloud yet, Draco knew what it meant as much as Harry did.

The raven landed in front of him and bowed its head in a courteous gesture. Draco took the knife it held in its beak, a gleaming blue blade folded and tempered in a way that Draco had only ever seen in pictures of old swords. The hilt was of silken black wood, with a single blue stone in it like a staring eye.

"Thank you," Draco murmured to the raven, and then looked up and towards Harry, meaning to speak his thanks in that direction as well.

Beside him, a Slytherin fifth-year named Oscar Tharassin reached out abruptly and grabbed the knife's hilt. "That looks exactly like a knife that someone stole from my ancestors a long time ago," he said, his eyes narrow. "Where is your Veela getting these from, Draco?"

Oscar twisted the knife a little more, and the blade cut Draco's palm, spilling blood to the table. Draco hissed and flinched.

There was no warning. The raven sprang up and hooked its claws into Oscar's cheeks, beak aiming and stabbing straight for his eyes.

Oscar howled and tumbled backwards. The knife fell from his hand. Draco snatched it up and felt the blue jewel grow warm against his hand, as if drawing strength from the blood. As people surged to their feet around him, yelling, Draco shouted, "Look! I have the knife! It's okay! He didn't take it from me!"

The raven didn't appear to hear him. It clung to Oscar and stabbed again and again. Darker fluids than blood were coursing down Oscar's cheeks now, and he was sobbing and trying to beat the raven off with his arms.

Draco yelled again. He couldn't understand why the raven wouldn't listen to him. It was punishing Oscar because he'd hurt Draco. But surely it could see Draco was all right now? It had to see!

Then Draco became aware of the weight of a trembling shadow on his head. He turned to look and saw Harry watching from the Gryffindor table, his arms folded but not his wings. They were extended, and they gave a little jerk of satisfaction each time a new yelp or moan came from Oscar.

And Draco understood, then. The raven wouldn't listen to him because it wasn't angry that Oscar had hurt Draco. Harry was.

And the ravens listened only to Harry.

Draco held his hands up in entreaty to Harry. He couldn't make himself heard over the screams, but he tried to draw Harry's attention away from them by mouthing, "See? I'm all right. Please stop."

Harry studied him for a second. Then he raised a hand and a wing at the same time, and the raven turned and soared away, up through the window in the Great Hall it had come through.

The horrified professors mobbed the Slytherin table then, and bore Oscar away to the hospital wing, before Draco could even see how bad it was. But Draco turned his head, tick by tick, and saw Harry licking blood from his hand.

"We come here together to commemorate the dead slain in the Rising.

"I want it to be known that I'm not going to punish anyone for that rebellion, or because they had family members who died in it, or because they might have had family members involved in the assassination attempts since. That's not the way to live. I punish people for what they do, not who they're related to.

"The people who have fled to France and other places have nothing to fear from me, either, unless they try to return. I knew when I really understood what my wings meant that I wouldn't be able to bring peace to the whole world. This island of Britain is enough.

"So. Mourn with the dead. Dance with the ravens who will bring you whatever food you request. And remember that the Door is still open. If you want to go through the Door as the Muggles and some former members of our world did, the Door the dragons and the winged nundus came through, go to the clump of trees behind Albus Dumbledore's tomb and knock on any trunk. You will see the shadows move, and then the glimpse of golden light that awaits you beyond."

-Speech from Harry Potter, on the first anniversary of the Rising that attempted to destroy him and all his works, May 2nd, 2019.

"This is no way to live."

Harry didn't answer Hermione. He was standing on the topmost balcony of the Astronomy Tower, leaning out a little. He could feel the wind calling to him to fly, as it always did, and the stones of the Tower subtly shifting under his shadow, becoming cleaner and more magical, shedding the dark residue still left there from the night of Dumbledore's death.

But most of all, he could see the door that was clearer and clearer to him.

Harry didn't know what to call it, other than a door. The shape of it shimmered in various places: on the Quidditch pitch, behind the Burrow when he visited it with Ron over the Easter holidays, on the wall in the Great Hall when he looked up and saw the outline of his shadow. But this was the place it was clearest.

It was an enormous door, and maybe that was why Harry thought he could see it most clearly here, where it had the space to spread out. It marched in a jagged shape, like a drawbridge with part of the top broken off, and it encompassed hills and trees and clouds, imprinted on the air and earth both, like the huge shadow cast by a racing car over flat country. But this was always upright, and it had hinges made of pearly, faint gold, and it grew clearer and clearer as Harry watched.

Sometimes he worried about what was beyond it. But most of the time, like tonight, he simply anticipated it.

"I said," Hermione repeated, stepping up beside him, "that this is no way to live."

Harry turned to her. He knew what Hermione had said, but not what she meant. "Looking out from the top of Astronomy Tower?" he asked her, a little perplexed. "But that's the only way I can see the Door."

"I mean," said Hermione, "causing fear in others. Hurting their joy."

Harry shook his head. "If people attack others I care about, Hermione, then my ravens are going to attack them. That's the way it is. I can't even restrain the ravens myself, and Merlin knows I've tried." He'd dismissed the ravens, flown with them, held them off with spells, screamed at them to go away. They were always there again the next time he turned around and wanted something.

Harry was starting to suspect that they were really manifestations of his own desire, or longing, or however one wanted to talk about it. They wouldn't go away because he couldn't stop wanting things.

Especially when I look at Malfoy.

"But you can restrain yourself," Hermione insisted. "Go away to another place. Clear your head. Stop desiring so much."

So she'd suspected the truth about the ravens, too. Harry breathed out slowly. "Do you think that will work?"

Hermione opened her mouth, and then stopped. Harry looked back at her, and while he didn't know exactly what his eyes looked like, he could guess.

Hermione abruptly threw her arms around him and began to sob, holding him so tightly that Harry's ribs hurt. Harry caressed her hair, and Hermione whispered, "No. Oh, no. I don't think you could do that, I don't want you to do that, but, Harry—" The sobs shook her again. "What's happening to you? Why can't I do something to stop it?"

Harry gently draped his arms around her shoulders. He didn't do the same with his wings, not sure how much that would change her. "I don't know," he said. "Maybe we don't need to do anything. Maybe we just need to accept this as a gift and work with it."

His gaze strayed over Hermione's head, back to the clear, twilit air where he had seen the Door. But the sun had set now, and it was always harder to see in the darkness. In the end, Harry led her down the stairs and back to Gryffindor Tower, deciding to spend the night with his friends there, even though it was hard to fit through the portrait hole with his wings.

I know what's coming. And I don't even know if I want to resist it.

The way he looks at me, the way his ravens send me gifts, the way I find myself going to the west windows of the Manor and staring out, waiting for some sight of dark wings against the stars…

I know I'm Potter's mate. I know that Harry is going to come and claim me someday.

I just don't know what it's going to be like.

Will I still have my freedom? Will I be able to fly on my broom, or is he always going to insist on carrying me with his own wings from now on? Will I have an honor guard of ravens? Could I stop them from attacking them anyone who says a disrespectful word about me?

Even harder, sometimes, to admit in my heart of hearts…

Sometimes I think that I wouldn't want to stop the ravens from attacking someone. Sometimes I think that I'd enjoy the chance to sit back and watch them whirl down on people who insulted me. Mostly Gryffindors, admittedly, which Harry might not like. But I suspect not even he can completely control the ravens.

There's a dark desire in me that matches the desire I can feel burning in Harry's eyes, even when I can't see them. I don't doubt that he's standing at a window in the distance and gazing out it, thinking of me.

I don't know which part of me will win out when the time to go with him finally comes, though.

-Extract from Draco Malfoy's private journal, June 2001.

Harry woke with the knowledge that the morning had come. There was a black flame burning around him, ornamenting his wings and surprisingly not burning the bedclothes. Or maybe not that surprising when he thought about it.

After all, this bed was the one that he planned to bring his mate to.

Harry walked out to the front window of his house—well, he called it a house, although Hermione sometimes told him that words like "palace" were more appropriate—and stood looking through the brilliant stained glass for a few minutes. There was a garden of white and red flowers in front, busy with hummingbirds. The hummingbirds had appeared from nowhere, like the ravens. At least they only did things like chirp and dart around the garden, instead of attacking people.

Then the heat of the fire burning under his breastbone cut at Harry again, and he took a step back and shook his head.

No. He didn't need to think about hummingbirds and ravens right now. He needed to think about his mate.

The word filled his mouth and his thoughts, and desire changed the flames so that he was now clad in glittering blue, and grey, and the more complex and subtle shades of white, as the fire burned hotter and hotter.

Harry opened the window and rose, his shadow making the hummingbirds leap up to greet him and the ravens swirl from the top of the goblin-built towers, which the masons had simply showed up to build one day, much the way the birds had.

Draco.

Harry always knew exactly where he was. Now he set his course, and flew to claim his mate.

"Yes, I think it's a horrible thing to do. I know Harry says that there's a Britain exactly like ours on the other side of the Door, and that means the Muggles and the wizards who don't want to stay are going to go through and they won't really lose anything. They'll have towns and cities and places where they can do anything they like.

"But does he know that? He hasn't gone through the Door himself to make sure, because once you do that, you can't come back. So I don't know why he thinks that everyone should just accept his word.

"Besides, there's the fact that it's supposed to be an exchange. If people go through the Door one way, then someone needs to come the other way. People could have used the Door at other times when a raven Veela ruled, but they didn't, because the country over there is uninhabited and there's no one to come through.

"Harry, what in the world do you think you're doing?"

-Hermione Granger, as quoted in the Daily Prophet in the aftermath of Harry Potter's announcement about the Door.

Draco sat alone in his chambers at Malfoy Manor one night, and looked at the dim mirrors and windows, as they were without even a single candle lit. He had one moment in time to perform this Divination ritual that would tell him what he wanted to know.

He didn't think he had the Sight, not the way that fraud Trelawney had defined it. But he did think that he had some of the right kind of desperation and strength that those who wanted to see the future needed to have, from the reading Draco had done since the war.

He had arranged the shallow silver pan of water, standing on a table made of ebony wood next to the window on the night of the full moon. The light fell on the edge of the table for now, but soon it would fall in the center of the pan. Soon it would brighten the water.

And Draco would see what he—

He closed his eyes for a second, and gentled his breathing, knowing he needed to be poised and waiting for the moment the moonlight came, knowing also that moment was not yet.

He opened them again, and moved to the pan, as the moon shifted position. Slowly, while Draco tried to think of his mind as a crystal ball, the moonlight moved, closer and closer to the center of the pan and the truth that awaited it there. Draco saw the edges of the pan brighten. The water rippled as he pressed down on the table. He moved his hands out of the way.

Then the moonlight was within the water, and the moment had come for Draco to act.

He stared straight down into the pan, and plunged his head down.

Water filled his mouth and nostrils, his ears and eyes. Draco opened his mouth and breathed it in, ignoring the feeling of panic and the ringing in his ears that followed as he began to drown.

This was what he wanted. This was the only way to see the future that he thought was coming for him, but which he couldn't be certain about until he could see.

The moonlight flashed in front of his eyes, and Draco thought again of a crystal ball. He was the center of that brilliance, the shattering fall of white radiance. He was standing in the middle of it, and looking, and it didn't matter if he died, if he drowned, it was worth the price.

The minute he thought that, he was calm. He could no longer hear the ringing or feel the pain in his lungs as water leaked in. He looked ahead, and the white flashed once and resolved into a vision made of silver and black.

Harry Potter sat on a black throne made of flapping stone ravens with their talons clenched around each other's heads. His wings spread on either side of him, and a raven sat on his shoulder, and his smile was as beautiful and warm as the Dark Arts.

Kneeling at his side, head against his leg, was Draco.

A Draco the watcher didn't recognize, though. His hair was even paler, and his skin. But he wore fine black robes of the kind that his family couldn't afford anymore, and when he tilted back his head and looked up at the raven Veela on the throne, his face was full of peace.

The peace of someone who had accepted his destiny.

Draco opened his eyes and jerked his face out of the water. The moonlight was past, and with it, the moment when he could keep his face where it had been and not drown.

He stood there, dripping and shaken, and tried to decide whether that vision would be enough to convince his parents. They had told him they would not oppose Potter staking a claim on him, but only if Draco himself didn't object. If Draco didn't want to be with Potter, they would flee the country or go through the Door.

Draco didn't want them to have to do that. The Malfoys had no connections or power on the Continent to match what they had in England. And while he didn't think Potter would exile people to death unwillingly, there was no telling what lay on the other side of the Door. Those who had made the crossing didn't come back.

Besides, there was part of him, small and quivering and winged, that wanted to know what it would be like to have power, second only to Potter himself. And to have that power focused on him, the center and fulcrum of it.

To be at peace.

Draco looked up at the moon again, and made his choice.

"I don't think Harry ever expected the Rising, as we called it, to start from within. That was why it took him by surprise. He wasn't looking for family members.

"I won't say that I despise my brothers. They did what made political sense to them at the time, and my brother George's wife Angelina is Muggleborn. Her parents and brother wanted to live in the wizarding world with her, but the more distant cousins and aunt didn't, so they got put through the Door. It made sense that George would fight. And so would Percy. He was always interested in the kind of government the Ministry offered. He didn't see the sense in having a single monarch.

"To be honest, lots of people still don't.

"But anyway, I think that Harry handled it the best way he could. He doesn't have to punish anyone who fought against him, because they won't dare come back to a Britain where the very forests would attack them and ravens would swoop down from the skies. I had a hard choice myself, about whether I would go with my brothers or stay here. After all, even though I hadn't fought, I didn't want to give up the chance of seeing them again.

"In the end, what decided me was that my wife is part-Veela. And she has so much more freedom under Harry's rule, and so do my children. I didn't even know how much she was holding back, and teaching them to hold back. Plus, I have these scars on my face—they were caused by a werewolf attack, yes—and I realized no one was going to stare at me any longer when they had moonbirds and dragons and nagas to gape at.

"So it's a pretty open secret that I go to France and Romania to visit my brothers. Harry knows about it. He doesn't try to prevent me from going, and in turn, I don't smuggle back weapons or information that anyone can use against him.

"This is the best arrangement for us. I wouldn't try to dictate to anyone else. I don't have that right. But no, I won't join any new rebellion. Thanks for asking."

-Bill Weasley, speaking to the Daily Prophet on the second anniversary of the Rising, Mary 2nd, 2020.

Harry sat down hard on the bench in the corner of Gringotts and stared at Griphook. The goblins had appointed Griphook to deal with Harry, maybe under the impression that he would be best able to do it because he'd known Harry before he changed.

"You—a throne? Really?" Harry shook his head. "You think I should sit on a throne?"

"Why not?" Griphook was unruffled, checking a number on a sheet in front of him and writing down something on a different sheet. He was always busy with accounts whenever Harry saw him, as though his business couldn't be suspended for a single moment. Maybe it couldn't. "The humans attach a lot of importance to a throne. You would impress them more if you were sitting on one."

Harry stirred his wings and thought for a moment about when he had stopped thinking of himself as one of the humans. But then he said, "You're talking like I'm setting myself up as a King."

Griphook wrote down another number and then gave Harry the full benefit of his unblinking, yellow-eyed attention. "You don't think that everyone already refers to you that way? Perhaps behind your back, if you have expressed your distaste for it as done to your face, but they are doing it."

Harry stared up at the ceiling. He wanted to say that he was only an ordinary person, just Harry, and after Voldemort the wizarding world should gradually have forgotten about him, moved on to other celebrities, let him have a normal life—

But if all that was true, then he would have done something about the ravens. Not sought to open the Door. Not decided that the Muggles who had found out about the wizarding world and proclaimed the need to "end wizards" needed to be exiled. Not—

Assumed authority.

"Well, if I'm a bloody king, I reckon I did it to myself," Harry muttered, and turned back to Griphook, who had a smile on his face.

"You have been a better liaison with the wizarding world to us than any wizard has ever managed," said Griphook, and he bowed a little as he stood. "In the meantime, why not allow us to make the throne and weave the protection spells in with the rest of the decorations? That would guarantee you a long life and us a long and profitable alliance."

"What kind of decorations were you thinking of?"

"Ravens."

"Of course, what else?" Harry asked dryly, but he had to admit he was smiling when he said it, and Griphook gave him a sharp-toothed smile back.

"Harry has always been my best friend.

"That's been the hard thing for so many people to understand. How could I go along with him if he was doing things that were wrong? And how could I oppose him and tell him he should stop sometimes without being a traitor?

"But see, the thing is, there were times Harry and I had huge arguments before. And we always reconciled after them. That's why I can do it. Because I don't put as much stock as some people do in the idea that once you fight, that's it and the end of your friendship. I know it's not the end."

-Ron Weasley, Ambassador to Magical France, in the Daily Prophet "Profiles of the Weasley and the Famous," May 2nd, 2022.

Narcissa had sat with Draco through most of that afternoon and into the evening. Draco looked at her sometimes, but since she didn't seem to have any purpose different than he did—which was to watch the sun set over the garden—he didn't say anything.

They did watch the sun set, powdering the sky with red and orange and touches of peach and gold that Draco admired. Then his mother stirred and sighed and turned to him with tears gleaming in her eyes like flecks of diamond in a ring.

"If you're doing this only for our family, Draco," she whispered, "you don't need to. Your father and I would have supported you no matter what you chose."

Draco blinked and stared at her, taking a long minute to realize what "this" must be. Then he shook his head and knelt in front of his mother, taking her hand. That shocked Narcissa enough to make her stop her imminent weeping and stare at him.

Draco smiled a little. It wasn't something he would have done years ago, or at least he would only have done it with a lot of grumbling about it. But now, he had lots of practice in kneeling.

Some times are more pleasant than others, he had to admit, in the moments before he focused on his mother again.

"I'm with Harry because of my family," Draco said. His mother tried to take her hands away to cover her face, but Draco didn't let her. "And because he makes me deliriously happy. Heart-poundingly happy. Head-spinningly happy."

Narcissa peered down at him with a tentative smile, but didn't look as if she knew what he was talking about. "Draco—what do you mean?"

"I mean that when we go flying and he shows me the forests that are growing in Wales," Draco said, "made of obsidian and glass, I think about how I'm seeing things no other wizard has ever seen. And when I lie in his arms, I know I'm closer to him than anyone else. Of course he still spends a lot of time with Weasley and Granger, but he spends more with me."

"With you kneeling at his feet."

Draco took a little breath. His mother still believed that? Well, maybe Draco shouldn't be surprised. He visited his parents often, but they didn't often speak of what Draco experienced with Harry. It was the same way that his parents would have treated a spouse or lover they found unworthy of Draco, so not a surprise.

But Draco realized now that something else lay behind it. They thought Harry was forcing Draco to submit to him, or—something. They thought he was a slave, an unhappy sacrifice who had only decided to go with Harry because of the money it would mean for his family.

Draco shook his head with a little smile and stood up, leaning in to kiss his mother on the cheek. Narcissa stared at him again.

"It's not the same as you think," Draco whispered. "When I'm there, I can feel how he shifts. I can hear his breathing quicken when he gets impatient and when he's keeping himself from rolling his eyes. I can smell him."

"Commendable for a lover, perhaps," his mother said, in tones that showed she still didn't understand. "But I never needed to kneel at your father's feet for him to know how I felt, or how to treat me."

"Commendable for someone who's the lover of the King of Magical Britain," Draco said. "Oh, Mother," he added then, because her voice was so baffled. "It's a duty. Everyone expects to see the consort subordinate to the King, and everyone thinks they know one fact about raven Veela."

He paused. Narcissa was the one who had to speak, although the dragging tone in her voice showed how much she hated it. "They know that raven Veela demand absolute submission from those close to them."

"But do you think that's true?" Draco shook his head. "Harry doesn't treat his friends that way. No one seems to connect that fact and the one that sometimes I'm not kneeling at his feet, that sometimes I'm sitting beside him. Or the fact that he makes his enemies submit to him and then usually forgives them."

"I didn't know that you were sitting at his side. No one brought that rumor to me."

Draco snorted a little. "Because it's not as juicy a rumor. If you ever came to court and looked at me, then you would know." He touched his mother's hair gently. "I thought you stayed away because you didn't like owing Harry the debt we did after the war, or because you still don't think I should be the consort of a half-blood. But Mother, it's so different from what you think."

"What makes it tolerable to you, then?"

Draco smiled. "The sitting at his side, and what happens when we leave the court and are behind closed doors."

And then Draco had to laugh, because of all the impossible things—or things he had once thought were impossible, a category that had diminished drastically since he became the consort of a raven Veela—he had made his mother blush.

"To the care of the raven Veela Harry Potter, currently known as the King of Magical Britain, commonly called His Raven-Winged Majesty,

"And to the care of his consort, Draco Malfoy, sometimes known as the Slytherin Prince or the Snake Prince Consort,

"We commend the magical orphan Thérèse LaFontaine-Rosier, illegitimate daughter of the French half-Veela witch Marie LaFontaine and the second-generation English Squib Andrew Rosier, to be adopted by you, raised by you, protected by you, and treated as your daughter, on account of the death of her parents and her Veela heritage, her choosing of you and your promise to treat her in all ways as you would your blood daughter."

-Records from the French orphanage, name deliberately kept secret, in which Thérèse Malfoy-Potter resided before her adoption at the age of eight, July 22nd, 2008.

"I have called you here today to witness justice done."

Harry let his voice echo around the great hall at the center of his court. It was shaped like an egg, although that was hard to see when the ceiling was so high and the walls were so far away. The walls were the smooth, polished black marble that Harry could turn all stone into with the shadow of his wings when he wished, and what seemed to unnerve most of the petitioners who came to him was that the marble had no break or seam to it. Instead, it simply covered the inside of the egg.

Both the black color and the egg-shape comforted Harry. He had tried to resist the comfort for the first year of his reign, but then he had given in and done it. If he could concentrate on the cases in front of him instead of how he felt, then he would give better justice, anyway.

The witch and wizard who watched him were both nervous, the witch more visibly so. She was a tall woman with dark skin and dark hair braided so that it coiled above her shoulders, although it was much longer than that. She was Carola Zabini, and Harry had had sixteen letters from her down the years, but never seen her before.

Her opponent was Gregory Goyle's uncle, Geoffrey Goyle. He was as hulking as his son, but with more glittering eyes and paler skin and slicked-back auburn hair. He shifted his weight as Harry looked at him.

Harry didn't read too much into that. Lots of people were nervous when appearing before—he snorted to himself as the title popped up in his head—His Raven-Winged Majesty.

He rose from his throne, sparing one glance at Draco in the throne beside him. Draco smiled back and nodded subtly towards Mrs. Zabini.

Harry nodded, but still held up his arm. Draco's instincts and his might tell him to favor Zabini's part of the case, but Harry didn't make decisions like that. You had to make them with some flair, some drama, or people didn't pay that much attention and might even be inclined to doubt.

One of the royal ravens landed on his arm with a furious squawk. Harry knew from the way everyone in the court jerked that this one had simply formed itself into being right above the thrones, rather than soaring down from the rafters. He honestly didn't bother to keep track anymore.

"You have both claimed that the other one instigated the illegal duel that destroyed two homes and wounded two uninvolved wizards," Harry said calmly. "Both of you will have to pay a minimum fine for the destruction no matter what, but the one who started casting spells will pay more."

He tossed the raven into the air. It circled the room once, disappearing into shadows and making the people whose first time at court this was jump and shout when it veered back into view near the throne.

Zabini didn't jump and shout. Neither did Goyle. They both looked at the raven as if they were willing it to come to them and declare them innocent. Zabini squinted a little more.

The raven hurtled downwards. It managed to aim at a point between the two petitioners until a few seconds before it would have to land, and then it whisked to the left and landed delicately on Zabini's shoulder.

"Well," said Harry, and smiled a little at the enthralled expression on Zabini's face as she watched the raven, before he turned to Goyle. "Mr. Goyle, you'll need to pay the fines as soon as possible. Or accept exile for a year—"

Goyle had aimed his wand suddenly. And not at Harry, but at the smaller throne, decorated with black swans, that held Draco.

Harry snapped his wing out. The shadow extended more than three times its length now, and it ate the spell that Goyle fired at Draco like a giant crocodile's jaws opening and snapping shut.

Harry dropped his wing and took a moment to check on Draco. Other than a little white around the outsides of his eyes, he was fine. He smiled shakily at Harry, though.

Harry nodded once and turned back to Goyle. The people who had come to attend the court were already pushing back towards the walls. They knew what it meant when Harry had that particular look in his eyes.

They might not know what happened when someone attacked his consort. It had been years since someone was foolish enough to try.

Harry held Goyle's eyes and waited until he saw some dawning of terror in them. Then he said, "I will accept your life. Your heirs will pay the fines," and clapped his hands three times.

Shreds of black filled the air and tumbled together, coalescing into a gigantic cloud of ravens. Goyle didn't seem to understand his danger and start to run until there were already forty or fifty swarming above him.

Then they dived at him.

Some people had to leave the room while the beaks pecked and dashed, and claws clacked, and hoarse ringing voices echoed around the chamber. Harry didn't. He stood there, and watched.

He would always watch when he condemned someone to death. Some people thought it was out of compassion. Other people thought it was justice, that if Harry was going to execute someone, he shouldn't look away from the consequences.

Draco, Harry thought, as the beaks stabbed, and possibly Ron and Hermione, were the only ones who knew that it wasn't either of those. Harry executed people only for attempting to harm him, those under his direct protection, or magical creatures when they hadn't attacked first. Those people were dangerous.

Harry watched to make sure they died.

"There have been many misunderstandings of the nature of a raven Veela. Some say they are conquerors. Some say they come to bring peace. Some say they are simply the creation of a Veela playing with Dark Arts and no special significance would attach to them if not for their power.

"I am here to tell you differently. They are all those and more, and living with one is different from hearing legends about one, or fighting one, or even living under one.

"I knew my adoptive Veela father better than anyone except my adoptive human father, Draco Malfoy. I knew what it was like to shelter under the shadow of his wings. I knew what it was like to watch him punish people with his ravens, when he decided that they had to die.

"I'm the only one who can tell you how complex he really was, and the softness as well as the temper in his eyes. The softness most people never saw."

-From the introduction to Growing Up Under Black Wings, a memoir by Thérèse Malfoy-Potter.

"Draco? Are you asleep?"

Draco shook his head and rolled over, stirring the puddled dark blue sheets of the bed. "You already suspected I wasn't, or you would have crept into bed without waking me. And probably stared at me all night in that creepy way you have."

He heard the soft ripple of feathers, and Harry dropped onto the bed beside him. The movements above him made Draco think of the dark wings like a canopy arching overhead. They were so big and so magical that they didn't always seem like part of Harry's body.

"How can you stand to be with me?"

"Oh, dear, is this Self-Loathing Night?" Draco asked in the most unimpressed voice he could muster. It was already so much easier than it had been last year, which was easier than the first time he had seen a raven stoop towards him with a courtship gift. "I didn't know it was this early in the moon-cycle. I thought I would have a few more nights of unbroken sleep before it happened."

The light in the room was muted, as always in the presence of that shadow, but he could make out Harry's scowl without help.

"I didn't come to you to be mocked. I need—"

"You want agreement that you're a horrible person and you should do something to make up for it. Like build another orphanage, or spend more time with Thérèse. Well, I won't tell you that. I think you should build orphanages and spend time with Thérèse just because you want to."

Harry flopped back on the bed, wings lifted above him, stirring the air. When Draco couldn't see them, though, they were honestly more like magical breezes than anything else. He reached out and dragged Harry towards him, rolling his eyes when Harry resisted a little.

"You don't need to come to me to hear yourself scolded and blamed," Draco muttered as he stripped off the pants that were the only thing he wore to bed. "You don't even need to go to your enemies. Your conscience does a good enough job on its own."

Harry shut his eyes and shook his head, but his wings were spreading and arching now, and he turned so that he was up against the pillows near the headboard. Draco leaned in and kissed him roughly, feeling those wings descend on his shoulders and wreathe him in warm darkness.

It was the feeling of safety that had first made him sleep through the night in this bed. Nothing could ever hurt him here. When those warm and almost self-breathing wings were wrapped around him, he believed it.

"You still want to think, in part of you," said Draco, as he reached for the lube and slid his fingers into himself with an excited shudder, "that you're wrong, because that's what people told you all your life. The press isn't blaming you now and your relatives are gone, so you want to find a substitute for the blame. Well," he said, and gasped as he reached deep enough to make pleasure join the excitement, "you won't make me into that substitute."

"I don't want people to blame me. I think our lives are going great. I just want—"

"Someone to fight and struggle against and brace yourself against. I know the impulse. You had to fight for so long. But you said you wanted peace, you were going to bring peace, so relax and enjoy the bloody peace, all right?"

Harry might have tried to answer with words, but instead it was a groan as Draco rose on his heels and then slid himself down onto Harry's cock. This was another thing that Draco would never have known he enjoyed without Harry manifesting as a raven Veela, and sometimes Draco shuddered to think he might have gone through life in an arranged marriage with the vague feeling something was missing—

The thoughts fled as Harry shook beneath him and reached up hands to curve around his hips. Draco slammed himself home once and opened his eyes.

Harry stared at him in that devouring way, fingers flexing open and shut on Draco's skin. His eyes were dazed and filled with power. He looked as though he was about to flip Draco over and drive into him.

Draco smiled at him and wriggled his hips to show that was fine, if Harry wanted to do it.

But it seemed, tonight, that Harry was caught up in a different display of power instead. He flapped his wings, staying in a sitting position, and they rose from the bed. Draco tingled all over with the thought of the magic that must be spreading and whirling across the room to do that, not to mention the sheer physical strength it took Harry to do it with just the muscles in his back and shoulders. He drove himself down with even greater force, to meet Harry's thrust up.

And then they both flung themselves into the center of the whirlwind that was making love to a Veela, scraps of pleasure everywhere that Draco snatched, the inhuman heat inside him and beneath him, the sliding sweat-slick skin of Harry's shoulders and the warmth of the wings beating past, feathers brushing on Draco's cheek—

The feathers slid down his spine and touched him on the back of the arse, deliberately. Draco came.

You always do that, he thought, panting as the sweat and the orgasm seemed to explode from his skin at the same time. For revenge, he reached down and bit at the tender skin of Harry's throat, worrying it back and forth.

Harry came, too, and Draco felt the intense heat shooting up into him like scalding water. It never left any damage, and over time, it had stopped being strange. It was almost a mark of honor, he thought, as he sprawled slowly over Harry's chest and closed his eyes. No one else had received that mark from Harry, and no one would. A raven Veela had only one mate.

"What was I even unhappy about?" Harry whispered suddenly, making the darkness around Draco echo. "I can't remember."

"Good, then," said Draco sleepily. "It was probably stupid, whatever it was."

And—no one else would have believed this who had seen Harry making judgments in court—all Harry did was laugh softly at the insolent words and use his huge wings to nudge Draco a little closer to him. Draco smiled and shut his eyes, listening to the soft rustling and the distant caws of ravens circling around the home they lay in. There were always birds nearby, who could come to Harry's call and pounce on someone if they had to.

It was just the way things were.

"It is absolutely untrue that any Veela traits Harry and Draco had were passed on to their daughter. For one thing, Thérèse inherited—I won't call them normal, but pale Veela traits. She isn't a raven Veela, which you would see if you looked at her photographs. But I understand that's a little hard when people are more involved in seeing what they want to be there rather than what is.

"Thérèse played with my own children many times, and they're still close friends. Yes, of course Thérèse was drawn away from them by the currents of the court and politics as they got older. I never thought their friendships would stay exactly the same. Ron's friendship with Harry didn't. Mine didn't. Why should hers?

"I know that what you want is some trouble, Skeeter. But you really are looking in the wrong direction. You won't find any if you keep investigating Thérèse. Honestly, your best option if you want trouble is to publish your unfounded speculation about Harry's daughter and see what happens. Lots of it then."

-From an unpublished interview between Hermione Granger and Rita Skeeter, found in the archive of Skeeter's papers in the 2030's.

"Papa."

Thérèse's voice was soft and precise. She'd learned to speak English slowly, although that wasn't a problem since Draco spoke French and could translate for her. And when she made a toss of her white hair or a poke of her chin in a certain direction, or manifested a beak and screamed, Harry knew how to translate those Veela things.

Now, he put aside the quill he was using to write down a new law, and moved his wings so she could sit on a stool beside his desk. "What is it, Thérèse?"

She sat down and looked up at him, a nine-year-old girl with blue eyes that sometimes changed to filmy silver, usually when she was in the middle of a Veela tantrum. She had gleaming pale hair and sometimes, when she ran with her hands held out and her hair floating behind her, Harry thought he could see the wings.

Draco said over and over that she looked exactly like a Malfoy child should look, and gloated. Harry didn't need dark hair or green eyes to find the ways in which she was his daughter, though.

"Fred said that you are an evil king."

"That's sometimes a fair characterization. Do you want to talk about it?"

Thérèse looked as if she hadn't expected him to say that, but then, she often looked that way. Harry thought he was learning to separate the times she was surprised and the times she just didn't understand the English word.

"Why are you evil?" Thérèse asked, leaning forwards so she had her elbows on her knees and her gaze fixed on him. "I mean, why would you want to be? Father says that often results are best accomplished by careful study."

Harry nodded once. "But I had to be stern when I opened the Door. The Muggles were going to a version of Britain almost exactly like this one, but empty of magic. I couldn't let any of them stay unless they showed they could get along with magical creatures. But that could be evil, couldn't it? I could have trusted them and waited to see if they would. Instead, I gave them tests of a month for each village or city. I could have used two months. I was strong enough to win if they tried to fight back against me."

Thérèse looked a little overwhelmed. Then she said slowly, "But then why would Fred say you are evil?"

"I don't know why. It might have been something different than what I was thinking about. I was just telling you one example people use."

Thérèse frowned. "I don't think I like the people who use it."

"But you should still try to make your own independent judgment," Harry told her, and hoped he didn't sound earnest enough to put her off. "You should remember that you shouldn't excuse me from doing wrong because I'm one of your fathers."

"But I want to," said Thérèse. "What if I want to make my independent judgment to not listen to that kind of…bollocks?" She sounded especially proud of herself for producing that word.

"Then you can make it." Harry bent down and kissed her face where the shadow of his wing lay across it. He had been worried when they first adopted her that he would change even Thérèse, although her own Veela magic might protect her from it. But he had learned after a short time that his wings didn't change things he didn't want to change.

It was only that there had been so many things to change, at first.

"Thank you, I suppose," said Thérèse. Then she froze. "Wait. If I thank you for it, am I making my own independent judgment after all?"

Harry laughed and shook his head. Those were the kinds of philosophical questions Thérèse and Draco could spend hours debating, but Harry had no patience for them. "Go away, will you? I have to finish this law."

Thérèse stood there looking earnestly at him for a moment, and then she bent down and grabbed him around the neck and kissed him. "You are not an evil king," she said. "You are a good one."

"A good one who needs to make laws."

Thérèse smiled at him one more time and left his study. Harry watched her go, and listened to a few of the Veela children he had invited from France to give her companionship singing in the garden. Even they had got over their fear of him enough that they didn't cower anymore when he flew overhead and the blackness of his wings swept across the ground and above them.

There were even a few magical people in France who had asked Harry if he could get rid of their Muggles the way he had got rid of Britain's.

Harry shook his head now, the way he had at every offer from outside Britain. The kingdom of one island was all that he could manage.

And sometimes not even that, he thought, as he turned back to wrestling with the law.

"I think one thing most people don't understand is how various definitions of happiness are. There were people who said they could never be happy when Harry took over Britain, but some of them are still living here now, and I haven't heard any of them say anything suicidally despairing lately.

"Another thing most people forget is how you can get used to things. One day changes are unthinkable; then they're dreams; then they've happened and you get used to them, and life goes on much as before. We were used to living in small corners of this island with the Muggles ruling most of the space. Sometimes we dreamed of something different, but no one took those people seriously.

"And then it happened, and everyone will have to get used to it."

-Consort Draco Malfoy, speaking to a large gathering celebrating the fifteenth anniversary of Voldemort's defeat, May 2nd, 2013.

That first time…

Draco found himself flat on his back without knowing exactly how it had happened, gasping as if he was winded.

Potter loomed above him, eyes enormous and dark. Oh, they were green if Draco looked hard enough; they hadn't really changed color. But the power that washed over him with every languid beat of Potter's wings, the magic that danced and coiled teasingly around his throat and stomach and groin, all the vulnerable places, drew a veil of darkness around his face anyway.

Draco shivered and arched his head back as the shadow of Potter's wing made his clothes dissolve off him. I chose this, I chose this, he kept reminding himself in his head.

And then it became possible to believe he had, because the shadow of the left wing swept over his body, and with it came the pleasure.

Draco actually breathed out in a shocked scream as it flooded over him, lapping higher and higher until he felt it wrap his face, like he was drowning. The darkness of it! The height, the depth, the intensity! His hand shook as he clawed at the grass, and worse when Potter shook his head and picked up Draco's hand and sucked on his fingers, denying him any outlet that didn't focus around Potter.

Then the right wing swept back again, and Draco felt the force of Potter's desire.

It was a growling beast, scarcely leashed, even as Potter balanced on his heels with his wings flapping and stared down in appreciation. He traced a slow hand over Draco's breastbone, and Draco shuddered again. It wasn't so much the feeling itself as the forced lightness of it. He knew, he knew, that Potter was capable of making him feel so much more, and he began to shiver as he wondered when it would press forwards.

Potter met his eyes and mouthed, Now.

Then he kissed Draco, and it wasn't like drowning but like falling off a mountain. Draco grabbed hold of his shoulders for sheer life. Potter's wings drew in tight around them as he hissed in appreciation.

"Yes, you," he said, and turned his head so that he was rubbing his cheek along Draco's arm and leaving his scent there. Draco knew it was scent without even asking. "You're the one who's meant to be my true mate."

He hooked his arms around Draco and then they were suddenly flying, tumbling through the air. To Draco it felt as if they had fallen, instead of taking off. He squeaked and buried his head against Potter's breastbone.

Potter laughed in a way that rumbled through him. "It's like this for all raven Veela when they mate," he said, and then reached down and captured Draco's chin in one hand and effortlessly wrenched his head up so that Draco had no choice but to stare at him. "Are you going to join in with me, or cower?"

Apparently, Draco was still susceptible to being called a coward by Harry Potter, even when so many other things had happened. He straightened at once. "I'll join with you, of course!"

"Because you're afraid?" Potter had gone still in body, even though his wings still beat about them, supporting them. His eyes were fixed on Draco's face.

Draco managed to roll his eyes, and felt immensely better once he'd proved he still could. "You accuse me of being afraid to mate with you, and then you're upset because I want to?" He reached out, hooked his nails, and dragged them down Potter's arm, even though he knew his nails were nothing compared to the sharpness of Potter's talons. "I'm afraid, but I'm courageous. And I'm not doing this because I think you'll rape me, or just to keep my family safe."

"But keeping your family safe is part of it."

"Like your instincts are part of it," Draco shot back instantly. He was still gasping a little because of the fall beneath them, if nothing else, but he could do this. Battling Potter was part of his soul. "We're neither of us completely free, so let's not pretend that you were my first choice and I was yours, okay? Let's go with what's there now." And he leaned forwards to ferociously kiss Potter.

And that worked. That was enough.

Potter flew them higher into the sky, his wings so enormous that Draco was blocked from even a glimpse of the ground. His arse was wet and even relaxed with a careless sweep of one wing, the shadow on his arse changing things to the way Potter wanted it to be. Draco cocked his legs open, the way he'd already done once on the ground, and Potter ducked his head and gave a remarkably bird-like hiss.

Then Potter slipped in.

Draco stiffened as though someone had rammed a rod of iron up his spine, which was pretty much what it felt like. Then he shuddered and buried his head again against Potter's chest as Potter fucked him slowly, slewing back and forth in the air sometimes.

"Look up."

Draco raised his head and opened his eyes, and found himself meeting Potter's intense, blazing gaze for only a moment. Then he twisted a little, and he could see the ground after all, in between the opening and closing of Potter's wings.

Down, beneath them, below, was a pattern of green and blue and brown and grey and white with the changing motions of the trees and water and earth and sky and clouds. Draco had a moment to gasp and find it beautiful.

Then Potter dropped them down towards it, his wings pulled in close to his sides and his feet probably streaming behind them.

Draco shrieked. But there was something deeper than pure fear behind that shriek, and he felt Potter feel that and join his voice to Draco's in praise of that beauty. Draco shuddered a little, but he never once feared Potter might drop him.

The clouds roiled and parted, and there was such a fantastic dance of colors beneath him that Draco's breath slammed into the back of his throat. He and Potter fell faster and looser, fearlessly into the middle of all that.

Potter clawed at his shoulder when they were near enough to the ground that Draco could make out the shapes of buildings, and then scraped the side of his neck. Draco knew Potter was coming, and even though he arched away from the pain that he knew was the claiming mark and opened his mouth to cry a protest—

So was he.

They swirled around like gently dropped leaves, despite Draco's fear that they would simply crash, and when they touched earth again, it was in the back gardens of the Manor. Draco lay there, feeling as if he should be covered in much more liquid than was in fact the case. The blood from the slash on the side of his neck was already stopped, in fact.

Potter lifted his head from where he'd been licking the side of Draco's neck and looked at him with luminous eyes.

"You were—trying to kill us, maybe?" Draco asked, wheezing more than a little.

"No," said Potter, and his voice was feral and a hammer that struck and shattered the pieces of Draco's growing new confidence, because this wasn't Potter but something else speaking through him. "This is the way it had to be."

Draco shivered, staring up at him. He had thought he could mate with Potter, the man and Veela who needed him and wanted to fuck him on the wing. He wasn't sure that he could mate with the creature staring out of Potter's eyes.

Then Potter gave a single great shudder and dropped his head down to rest on Draco's shoulder. "Sorry," he whispered. "Sometimes it takes me like that. But I think that's why I need a mate." His claws rippled restlessly on Draco's shoulders. "Why I need you."

"To hold you here and let you be human?" Draco raised his hands to shape Potter's shoulders, looking small under the enormous drape of his wings. "I've never had any training at that. I'm not sure how good I'll be."

Potter raised his head, eyes wide and staring past Draco into depths that seemed to frighten even him.

"I've never had any training at this, either," Potter said, his wings rising and banging. "But that's the way it has to be."

Draco nodded slowly. Then he leaned up and kissed Potter—Harry—again, remembering the force of his desire and the way he had gripped Draco as if he was the one person on earth or above it who could do something for him.

The blood from the claiming mark had already ceased to flow, and the desperation in Harry's eyes was fading. Draco leaned himself against Harry's side and tried to picture the future.

Too much in flux. He couldn't do it.

But lying there under those drooping wings whose shadow didn't affect him anymore, Draco thought he could make a prediction. "We're going to be great."

The End.