Chapter Twenty-Eight of 'Temporary Mate'- The Sky So Blue
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
Title: Temporary Mate (28/29)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, past Harry/Ginny and Harry/Michael Corner
Content Notes: Angst, violence, creature fic (Draco is a Veela), action/adventure, Auror fic, minor character death
Rating: R
Summary: Escorting Malfoy on a dangerous mission in another dimension to speak to French Veela, Harry and his fellow Aurors are attacked and left for dead. Harry and Malfoy are the only survivors, and wounds the attackers inflicted have released Malfoy’s Veela heritage. Now he’s probably going to die unless Harry can successfully bind himself to Malfoy as a temporary mate-and they still have to survive the trek to reach the Veela stronghold.
Author’s Notes: This fic will be updated whenever I finish a chapter. It should be anywhere from ten to twenty chapters long.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Eight-The Sky So Blue
“You still haven’t explained exactly why the formal bonding is so important.”
Draco rolled his eyes and tightened the loose tie around Harry’s throat. In the end, he had wanted to wear something so much like a school tie that Mother complained she couldn’t tell the difference between that and the kind of attire Harry would have worn as a Gryffindor student-except of course that this one was brilliant blue edged with white. “I’ve already told you. I lent you books that told you.”
Harry tensed for a second, as if he would move away, and then nodded. “You did. I’m just more nervous than I thought.”
“You know I love you. You know you love me. What could possibly-”
“Because I never actually was ready for marri-bonding or marriage before. And it seems strange that less than a month ago I wasn’t even considering it, and now here I am, getting ready to do it.”
Draco clasped him close in his wings. “Less than a month ago, I hadn’t come into my Veela powers yet.”
“That’s true enough.” Harry leaned up to kiss him, and then turned to face the entrance of the small stone room where they stood, off a wing of the Manor reserved for wedding preparations. Harry had wanted to get married at Draco’s Home, but Draco had been adamant about keeping it as a place for just the two of them, and after a moment’s thought Harry had consented. “Can we stop smoothing and tying things and go out and get bonded? I have needs, you know.”
“Would one of those needs be to lie underneath me in our bed soon?”
“Yes. And to get the congratulations and dancing over with.”
Draco paused with one wing on Harry’s shoulder and one hand on the door, staring at him. “You are nervous,” he realized.
“Of course I bloody well am.”
“But I know you stood up in front of the press and Aurors every day and gave ridiculous speeches full of hope and goodwill-”
“Those didn’t really matter, Draco. People filled in the blanks themselves if I said something wrong or something that didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. But this is important. We’re going to be bonded the rest of our lives, and I don’t want to mess it up for you.”
“For both of us,” Draco swore, leaning forwards and gently sliding one hand up into Harry’s hair at the back, ruffling it and sending pleasure through his fingers until Harry closed his eyes in sheer bliss. “I promise, Harry, everything will be fine. And if you want to skip everything but the first dance, we can do that.”
“Why can’t we also skip the first dance?”
“It’s one of the parts of the ceremony that establishes the bond. We won’t have the full bond if we don’t do it.”
“Fine, just get used to crushed toes tonight,” Harry muttered, and then opened the door and stepped out before Draco could point out that everything would be fine and Harry’s dancing couldn’t possibly be that bad. Draco shook his head and followed him.
Outside, the Manor gardens had been trimmed and prepared with an inch of their lives. Draco saw that some of the young trees had been removed, to be replaced with the quartz and blue-tinted boulders that matched their bonding colors. Draco rolled his eyes, but inwardly. Mother would have changed the course of rivers for this if they let her.
The decorations that hung on the trees chimed softly, crystal birds and wings shaped like Veela wings. Ribbons floated in the air, blue and white and so many soft shades of green that Draco did give in and roll his eyes this time. Green had at one point been on the Black family coat-of-arms, and it was in the grass. Mother was convinced that every color present at their bonding had to echo some other.
“Ready, m-Harry?”
Draco bristled, all his feathers rising, but managed to smooth them back down when Harry gave him a pointed glance. He did appreciate Weasley’s efforts to not call Harry “mate,” he reassured himself. He just didn’t think Weasley was doing enough if he still caught himself in occasional slips of the tongue.
“Yeah,” Harry said, and stepped forwards. He had his bonding robes, the shining blue ones, on now, but no cloak. Weasley was the one who ceremoniously draped a cloak of white over him, silk with Draco’s feathers woven into the edgings instead of lace.
Draco shivered as he watched. He was already wearing the heavy green cloak Mother had chosen, with slits for his wings, and he knew every step of this dance. But that didn’t change how magnificent Harry looked.
“Come on, then.”
Weasley was wise enough not to touch Harry as he led him through the gardens and down a path that the new boulders defined, towards the flat area at the far end where they would bond-or not.
Draco thrust the doubts from his mind and followed. Between one moment and the next a shadow made of light was walking next to him. Draco sneaked a glance sideways, even though he was supposed to be watching his mate at all times to make sure that he didn’t slip away. He had more confidence in Harry than that.
As he had thought, the shadow was his ancestor, Lucretia Malfoy, the last of his line to have full Veela heritage. She inclined her head to him, but pressed a finger against her lips and nodded to Harry. Draco nodded back and turned around again.
He felt a slight stripe of warmth down his back where Lucretia’s wing had pressed.
They arrived at the broad area of grass where the ceremony would take place, and there was, in fact, a small, winding brook there that hadn’t been there yesterday. Bright blue, of course. Draco didn’t roll his eyes, but only because Mother stood there and it would have hurt her feelings.
Mother’s smile widened when she saw the ghost of Lucretia next to him, and she curtsied in a way that made Draco wonder if she would ever do that for him or Father. In the meantime, Harry was moving forwards on his other side, trailed by Weasley. Weasley kept his arm hovering next to Harry’s instead of on it even when he turned around in front of Granger and the other Weasleys and Longbottom and the different guests who had been invited to their bonding.
The youngest Weasley wasn’t there, Draco saw with immense satisfaction. Neither was the Michael Corner bloke that Harry had dated for a time. Perhaps they knew their place.
“We are here to celebrate the bonding of our son, Draco Malfoy,” Mother said. She turned and looked expectantly to the right, and Father stepped forwards, his face perfectly neutral. He carried the giant silver cup with two handles that had been used in Malfoy bondings in ages past. “Who speaks for his mate?”
“We do.” Granger had moved up next to Weasley, but it was Weasley who spoke. Granger still gave Draco a vaguely unhappy glance now and then. At least Harry had assured Draco that she wouldn’t interfere in the bonding when she knew it made him happy. “Harry is our friend and has been for years. And he is the-mate of Draco Malfoy.”
At least he only stumbled a little over the words, Draco thought, and turned to face Harry, his ancestor hovering to the side and a little behind him. The next part of the ceremony was Harry’s.
*
Fuck, I’m going to forget all the words, I know it-
But in the end, the memory of the fortnight they’d spent drilling came to his rescue. Harry stood and smoothed down his robes, and ignored the way they pulled at him. The tailor had done his best, but they still didn’t allow him the full range of movement that his Auror robes did.
“I come to ask that we bond,” he said, looking straight at Draco. Draco’s wings were rustling and twitching, and Harry knew the same impulse to reach over and touch his mate on the shoulder. Well, they would just have to wait. “I come to ask that we share our lives.”
“And why do you ask this?” inquired Narcissa Malfoy, her hands folded in front of her and her face as cool as her husband’s.
Lucius still doesn’t entirely approve of me.
“Because I love him.” Harry smiled at Draco, and watched the way his wings tensed and fluttered again. There was still part of him that didn’t really believe everything that had happened, Harry thought. Or maybe he believed that Harry was going to change his mind and walk away even now. “Because I’m his mate. Because I want to be with my Veela for the rest of time.”
Draco lowered his head and crooned. Lucius looked an inch away from slapping his hand over his face. Luckily, he didn’t. Narcissa only paused as if to allow the interruption its own time to die, and then spoke half-sternly to Harry. “Is that true? Show that it’s true.”
Draco had warned him about this. Harry stepped forwards and wrapped his hands around Draco’s left wrist, concentrating as hard as he could. Wandless magic stirred in the bottom of his chest and shot up towards his heart. “Catena amoris,” Harry breathed.
The magic hurt as it left his hands, but Draco never flinched. The magic, glittering silver-white and so brightly that it hurt to look at, formed a swift bracelet around Draco’s wrist. Draco bent his head and nudged it with his lips, and crooned again.
Harry stared at the bracelet. It had cooled down to the sheen of platinum, and it had both their names on it beneath a modified crest of the Potter coat of arms, a rearing lion with its paws clutching two pots. No one had told him it would do that.
Maybe that was why Narcissa and Draco hadn’t fought harder on the matter of changing his name, for that matter. No reason to when they would be marked as belonging to each other in another way.
Ron coughed and stepped forwards. He was reciting the words slowly, as though he was reading them from a parchment, but Harry didn’t care. He couldn’t look away from Draco’s beaming face anyway. “One claim is settled. The claim of the Veela remains to be, um, proclaimed.”
Harry didn’t blame Ron. He thought those words were awkward and clanging himself.
Draco sighed a little, as if he disagreed, but he didn’t get into it. Instead, he simply inclined his head and murmured, “I come to ask that we bond. I come to ask that we share our lives.”
“And why do you ask? Um, ask this.”
Draco rippled his wings as if he wanted to lift up and tear Ron’s face off, but Harry pressed his fingers into Draco’s wrist and frowned, and he calmed down at once, his eyes a clear grey and filled with adoration. Harry shivered a little as he realized that he’d get to see those eyes for the rest of his life.
All he wanted. Draco was his. They were each other’s.
“Because I love him,” Draco said, and his voice was rich and slow. He reached out to push Harry’s fringe back from his forehead and trace the edge of the scar with one finger. “Because I’m his Veela. Because I want to be with my mate for the rest of time.”
“Is that true? Show that it’s true.”
Ron’s voice sounded steadier this time. Harry had to grin. He didn’t have Hermione’s doubts about the topic of their bonding-which was one reason why Ron and not Hermione was performing this part of the ceremony-but he would naturally want to see if Draco could really form that bracelet.
Draco reached out. His ancestor was moving behind him, draping her wings over his and closing her eyes. Harry braced himself for heat and pain, but he felt nothing except the cool touch of Draco’s fingers.
And then there was magic, and pleasure, and a wash of heat, but nothing worse than he would get when standing in front of a large fire. Harry opened his eyes in time to catch the swirling, sliding silver that had invaded Draco’s gaze, and he felt soft and liquid down to his bones.
In the end, he had a platinum bracelet around his wrist, as well, and it had the Malfoy coat of arms on it, a capital letter M with a delicate serpent rearing in front of it. Harry examined it with a smile, barely feeling it as Ron replaced the white cloak on his back with a blue one.
Then he leaned up and kissed Draco, a second before he thought Draco would have seized his shoulders and kissed him instead. Ron coughed, then clapped. Hermione and the others clapped, and George gave a loud whistle that made Harry blush. Behind Draco, he noticed that the ghostly ancestor bent her head to whisper into Draco’s ear before she vanished.
And Draco blushed. Harry could hardly wait to find out what for.
“It is done. They are bonded.”
The instant Narcissa made the declaration, Harry gasped. There was something else springing through him now, like but greater than the rush of heat Draco had made in him when he willed the bracelet into being. This was-
This was like standing on a mountain as bluebells grew around him. This was like looking up and seeing a dragon soaring overhead. This was like the moment when he had looked at Draco and realized that he wouldn’t mind spending the rest of his life with him.
Draco shivered and spread his wings. He was shielding Harry from the sight of the others. Harry reached up and caressed his cheek, whispering, “Hey. We still have to do the first dance, you said.”
“I should have known better. Our bond was real and deep already. We don’t need to do the first dance.”
“But-”
“Are you actually arguing in favor of dancing?”
Harry clapped his mouth shut and thought about that. “No.”
Draco nodded and looked up. “Thank you for coming, guests and family. Now we are departing. We should be back in time for the celebration in the Manor this evening.”
“Draco-”
“Harry-”
But the next minute they’d whirled away into Apparition, and Harry recognized the stone beneath his feet the minute they landed on the step of Draco’s Home. He leaned up and nipped along Draco’s throat, aiming for all the sensitive places. Draco was pressing him back against the door, looming over him, making him feel as though he was cocooned in warmth.
“Good. Now come to bed.”
And Harry, although he could have walked into the house on his own and would have demanded to do so at any other time, let his Veela pick him up and carry him.
*
Harry was crying out beneath him.
Draco had slid inside him almost as soon as they reached the bedroom they liked to use. He didn’t need lube. Harry was ready for him, and had been since he slipped the bracelet with the Malfoy coat of arms around his wrist. A side-effect of the bonding magic, Draco knew.
He knew that with part of himself. A small part. The rest of him was overwhelmed with the blinding heat and tightness around him, and with the way that Harry’s eyes had dilated and his head was tossed-back and moving against the pillow. With the way his arse clenched around Draco and held him. With the way his hands were clawing at Draco’s shoulders and sometimes pulling his wings.
He knew that he didn’t belong anywhere else except here. And he thrust faster and faster, with Harry practically moaning himself to death beneath him.
“Harder! Please.”
Draco slowed his pace instead, because he wanted to, but made sure that he thrust as hard as Harry wanted. Harry clutched at him. Draco bent down and hissed into his ear, “You bonded with me in front of everyone. They’ll know that we’re here having sex. How does it make you feel?”
“Wanted!”
Draco smiled and sped up his thrusts again. It seemed no matter what he did, Harry responded, and clenched, and reached for him. “What else?”
“Claimed! Owned.”
“Tell me that you like being claimed and owned.”
“Yes. I do. I n-never thought I would, but I d-do. Draco.” Harry almost whined the last word, and then drew his breath in hard and blurted out a full sentence. “You can make love to me after this, just fuck me. Please!”
Draco’s body sped up without any input from him. The Veela wanted his mate. Draco wanted Harry. And he had them both.
It only took two more thrusts to make Harry come, without a single touch to his cock. Harry’s jaw was sagging, his eyes closed, his body straining for more and more pleasure as he spent himself on Draco’s chest.
Draco followed immediately, staring into his mate’s eyes as they opened again, feeling the bond between them thicken until the magic felt strangling. And then only pleasant, and he sagged over Harry never having felt so good in his life.
Harry gathered him close. Draco shut his eyes. He thought of his family knowing exactly what he was doing, including Father, and the Weasleys, and smiled.
Then he focused back on Harry. This was his mate. Harry made it all worth it.
“No one can ever take you from me now that we’re bonded,” he whispered.
Harry stroked his forehead as if he was the one who had the mystic scar. “Did you think I’d ever let them?” he murmured back. “Go to sleep. We have to be rested if we’re going to go to the bonding party later.”
Draco draped a wing over Harry’s chest and went to sleep at once, safe in the arms of his bonded mate.
Chapter Twenty-Nine.
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