picture artist: alekart on ??? (search alekart fanart and plenty of their work should come up)
Sitting criss-crossed with two knights and one castle, Harry furrowed his brow and demanded movement from his pieces. They floated along in whichever direction he told, not too fussy for chess pieces, though maybe it was because he was winning. Ginny, also criss-crossed on his bed, was having a hard time getting her team's morale up.
"Check."
"C'mon, guys, it's not over yet! I swear, if my king would just move to—"
"It's all doomed!" cried the king. "We're all dead! Not again, please!" He waddled over to his next spot with tears in his eyes, and Ginny was the only one in the room who didn't see the queen set diagonally across the board.
The queen cackled as she raised her sword. "Check mate," Harry barely managed to whisper before his queen was zipping across the board with her enormous sword shattering the king's body.
"God," Ginny whined, leaning back and dangling off the bed, "how did you win three games?!"
Harry smiled and shrugged, packing up the pieces as they'd promised. "Just takes time. Your brother's a menace at this game, I'm surprised you're so bad."
"Hey!" Ginny whisper-shrieked, flicking his forehead after bouncing back onto his bed. "I'll have you know I'm much better at Quidditch! Why don't we go race, huh? Then we'll see who's laughing!"
"What about my ears?" Harry really did want to go out to the field, but after Blaise raised his voice just a smidgen, his entire head had lit up in flames. The field wasn't worth that pain.
"Oh," Ginny considered. "Oh, what about we cover them? We can stuff them with cloth or cotton or something."
Harry was already jamming his feet into shoes and dashing into their bathroom for a mirror at the suggestion. It was an easy-enough plan: see somebody, fly away and hope they don't think you hate them or hope they're not persistent, and then flag them down the next day and explain that you bursted the one part of your body you really shouldn't have.
What a brilliant idea, Harry admitted, deciding that he had been searching for any excuse to get out of that blasted dorm since he'd been in there for two hours and it was nearing four in the afternoon already.
They practically raced for the brooms themselves, shoving with elbows and trippy feet, and Harry nearly ran face-first into Pansy Parkinson, who adorned a deep scowl. "Harry!" she whispered, clearly about to chew him out.
"We're getting earplugs," Ginny rushed to clear up, and Harry nodded reverently as Luna came up behind Pansy. She crept her fingers over Pansy's spaghetti strap-covered shoulders, and Pansy startled, only held facing them by Luna's tightened grip.
"He's a grown boy, Pansy," Luna smiled, staring at the back of Pansy's head as the raven-haired girl relaxed into her touch, "you should really stop worrying so much. If he knows what he wants and a safe way to get there, he's ready to fly the nest."
With a festered disdain, Pansy's eyes flicked up to meet Harry's, and she murmured, "I don't care about you, Potter. It's only that Hermione would have my head on a platter if she found out I let you do anything stupid."
"Stupid like what?"
"Like burst your sonus filtres because you walked down the one corridor you weren't supposed to." Pansy nearly lunged at him, restrained only by Luna's sudden hug. "Now look what you've done! Blaise has gone mad because of you, lost to that stupid fucking illness. Why'd you have to go and fuck with—"
"Blaise is sick?" Harry asked, eyes widened. How could he be sick? And especially at Harry's fault, considering Harry wasn't sick at all.
"You both are! Blaise has got that DMS or whatever the fuck because you couldn't keep your scent to yourself." Pansy scoffed, and she rolled her eyes. Harry couldn't believe his ears, mostly: what the hell is—
"DMS?" Ginny asked, clearly as lost as he was.
Luna smiled as she wrestled Pansy around, tugging on limbs here and nearly biting there. Her feet lifted off the ground and Pansy walked over to the couch with her on her back despite the struggle, desperate to get the blonde off her. Mid-drop, Luna informed, "DMS is Desperational Mating Sickness: it occurs in Doms who engage in mate-like activities, commonly scenting, with a Sub they're not mated to. It can cause Doms emotional and physical pain, psychological trauma, and the inability to the Mate if any symptoms occur at all, since it can also be asymptomatic! Luckily that one wasn't on our tests today!"
Pansy flipped and overhead slammed Luna down onto the couch, and she smiled down at the young girl. "Can't wait to see you in VH, Potter. With an active Sub like that, I'm sure you'll be a handful."
Even as questions swirled through Harry's head, Ginny tapped on his shoulder and pulled his attention away from the girls talking. She pointed at the brooms and then at the exits, flicking her eyes back over to the distracted Pansy. Harry nodded, and he grabbed his Firebolt out of the closet, stealthily creeping out of the room with Ginny by his side. They slid out and smiled at each other when they froze at the noise of Pansy shifting around the commons area, though she didn't follow them out.
They ventured into the hallways after stuffing Harry's ears with cotton, and Harry realized a lot of his unconscious paranoia is uncovered when his hearing is taken. His tense muscles and stiff walk, his craning neck and cautious steps, worked to tell the story of his inability to stay still on their walk. Every corner was taken with caution and a trail of goosebumps over his arms and along the back of his neck. He could still hear the shrieks of those Doms grabbing at any part of his body that they could get to, hands wandering and gripping and tearing. Despite his change of clothes, he still remembered the holes they bared.
By the time they made it to the field, Harry was holding Ginny's hand to settle and hide the shake of his own. She indulged him without a fuss, and she even wrapped a hand around his shoulders when Doms walked by, sneering at them over her shoulder if they got too close when she thought Harry couldn't see.
It didn't matter how protective Ginny was and how much Harry appreciated it; at the field, two figures made their way from the center of the sky, a ball passed between them, to the ground of the field, for some reason eagerly walking towards them. He couldn't hear his own voice, but Harry still leaned over and pressed his lips to Ginny's ear and whispered, "What are they doing?"
Her response was lost on him, but the clarity of the two figures approaching didn't appease his queasy stomach. He could smell them from here: two sweaty Doms in desperate need of showers and some protein shakes. It made Harry sick.
"Why is it always Malfoy?" Harry complained as they were approached, and Ginny cut him off, clearly, considering the two Doms' attention went right to the redhead.
Harry pulled out the cotton blobs blocking his hearing, trusting Ginny told the duo to keep quiet. Draco looked more or less exactly how he smelt: his face was flushed red with his unusually loose blond hair curled down to stick to his forehead. His chest was rising and huffing with quiet breaths pushed out of his nose, clearly an effort by Draco to retain his loudness. His attention was flicking between both of the Subs as Ginny spoke. "Are you guys still using the field or are we okay to fly?"
"No, you can have it," the second Dom smiled, eyes flicking over to Harry. His attention lingered on him, and Harry didn't trust the curly brown hair slick with sweat, or the pearly white teeth peeking behind pink lips, or the slight stubble creeping along his jaw and under his nose. Though, his electric blue eyes did their best to pull at Harry, to keep his eyes held onto his own.
"Thanks," Ginny smiled, and she walked around the duo towards the field. When Harry attempted to follow, to slip past Draco's side, the second Dom stepped between them and struck his hand out.
"I'm Chance Vancouver of Italia." It was insistent, the way his hand nearly jabbed at Harry's chest and the way his eyes lasered in on Harry with his body placed where he had tried to exit the interaction.
Harry nodded and greeted, "I'm Harry Potter. Er, of—"
"Of Britain," Draco interrupted, smacking the back of Chance's head. Chance shot a look over his shoulder, one that Harry couldn't read, but he saw the sneer Draco leveled him with in response. "We were just leaving, right Chance?"
"No, no, don't be silly, I'm introducing myself. It would be rude not to!" Chance turned back to him and smiled again, and the space between them diminished for a second as Chance took a step forward. Harry quickly recovered with a step backward. "There will be a gathering in the Dominants' dorm tonight, would you like to come along? I'm sure the others won't mind."
Harry was starting to get freaked out by his all-knowing eyes, by the glow and brightness of them, and he stepped back again, waving off, "I don't think that's a good idea, I really wouldn't be welcome."
Chance smiled and claimed, "Oh, they would love you. They'd be all over you, nearly, but of course I would keep them away." A step forward, then two.
"No, really, that's a nice thing to offer, but I wouldn't want to intrude."
"But—"
Draco was standing at Chance's side with his arm struck out before Harry could blink, and he was blocking his progression with a polite smile on his face. "What he means," Draco ticked an eyebrow up, his fist crumpled with the cloth of Chance's clothes, "is that you're not invited because you're a Sub, as I would not be invited to a Submissive gathering. Really, it's great you don't want to go because you know as well as I that a group of unmated Dominants enticed by any Sub is a little handsy."
Harry paused, and it took him a second to register what he was saying. How did he know about—
Draco shrugged. "We talk just as much as you do. And it didn't go over anyone's head—" he turned his attention to Chance, that sneer creeping back into his expression— "that Harry Potter almost got Mated in the middle of some Hogwarts corridor. What a shame that would've been."
Chance broke their staring contest, glancing off into the empty field, and Harry was more focused on getting away than dissecting what was going on. "It would've been," he started, and Draco looked back at him, "but nothing happened. And I'm okay, so I just want to fly for a little."
Draco nodded, and he finally dropped his hold on Chance's chest, shoving him away without another word. "As you were."
Then something strange happened.
Draco turned to walk away with Chance glued to his side, and he stepped just close enough to Harry that his scent was nearly tangible. It wasn't one that was new to Harry, and it certainly wasn't anything to cheer at—the beautiful lavender plant fused with the refreshing concentration of eucalyptus—but there was another scent, one that was new and unfamiliar, clinging to Draco's own. It was just under a second that Draco stood close enough for it to be smelt, suggesting strongly that it was just hours old, but the distinction of roses, of other pretty flowers, spread across his clothes and even his exposed skin was now occupying the forefront of his mind.
Harry could tell that Draco had been with a Submissive recently, and he'd been extremely close to them as well. Likely the Sub was grabbing or hugging or even holding him for an extended amount of time, considering an unmated Dom and Sub would only carry their combined scents for minutes if the exposure was short. This exposure was long and the smell clung to his wrists and neck, and it had likely occurred multiple times over the last two days.
Draco had been holding and scenting a Submissive for an extended period of time.
And that meant nothing to Harry because he didn't care about Malfoy. He didn't care who he hung out with, didn't care who he cuddled, and especially didn't care who he scented. It was just an observation he made, something he wouldn't mention to Ginny, who was suspiciously present again only when the two Doms had made their exit, and something he himself wouldn't be thinking about again.
It's just that . . .
They carried on their way to the center of the field, but Harry couldn't shake the thought of Draco Malfoy, of mysterious, broody, annoying, pest-like Draco Malfoy getting cozy with a Submissive who had just arrived at Hogwarts, someone he'd never met before extremely recent, someone who was . . . someone who was unfamiliar. After all the years Harry had known him, he'd never known him to be friendly or inviting even to people who had expressed interest in his general direction after years of friendship, let alone people he met so recently their time together could be practically counted in hours.
It is just that he is acting unusually, and that is why I am fixated on this, Harry nodded, and that was the only reason, considering there weren't any other options. The only other reason he would care about this was that he cared who Draco Malfoy spent his time with, and that just wasn't true. Like with any of his friends, he would be concerned over an unexpected disruption of their normal behavior.
As the duo mounted their brooms and raced into the sky, Harry shoved down the voice in the back of his head whispering, But he's not your friend.
The air stinging his face and whipping against his clothes was a feeling so liberating, Harry couldn't be pulled down from the sky without extensive convincing. It was fresh and new, and everything around him felt that way, really, but this was fresh and new and still so familiar. Harry was surprised at his own emotional response to the air, to that sense of knowing something and this feeling for so long, and yet everything happening was new, was foreign. He smiled even as he descended from the sky, and he didn't lose the smile until he and Ginny were walking back from the field to the school grounds.
From within the walls of Hogwarts, Professor McGonagall's voice boomed a sudden announcement:
"Veela, please lend your ears! Our first classes will be starting in twenty minutes, and the division of students will be explained right now. If you have questions after the explanation, please ask a nearby professor for help.
"If your last name begins with A through J, please report to classroom 3C for your first-hour Veela Heritage class. Last names K through O, please report to classroom 1B for your first-hour Veela Connections class. And lastly, last names P through Z, please report to classroom 4F for your first-hour Creature Basics class. Again, that is A through J to class 3C, K through O to class 1B, and P through Z to class 4F.
"Class begins in twenty minutes, and any Veela caught not attending classes will be removed from the grounds immediately. Additionally, these are your permanent class groups, so any fights that arise during your stay will also result in immediate expulsion from the event, and any students attending Hogwarts will be serving a semester of lunch detentions when school is back in. Thank you."
Harry looked at Ginny and then he smiled and wrapped her in a hug, swinging side to side as he gasped, "We're in the same group!" Ginny laughed and hugged him back, joining in his excitement before footsteps folded grasses beneath them, and Harry looked up and saw three people walking toward them. Ginny looked up, too, and he sighed as he let go over her. "Can't get enough of me, can you?"
Draco let the ghost of a grin entertain his lips before he was back to sulking. "I wouldn't be here if I wasn't dragged," Draco claimed, and he ticked his head to the two others with him. "They're here to see the Weaslette, and I'm surprised you haven't got her that leash and collar yet."
Harry rolled his eyes and corrected, "It's Ginny, and just because you said she needs a leash and collar doesn't mean I'm going to—"
"I would love to banter some more," Theo interrupted, a sleek brow propping up, "but classes begin soon and we need to walk fast. Ginny, the mandrakes are screaming despite us putting them back in their pots, and some kid already got his eardrums shattered by not having his earmuffs on—side note, what a fuckin' dumbass—and we need your help."
Ginny looked alarmed as she shot right out of Harry's hold. "Did you feed them that serum?"
"What serum?" Seamus asked, and his candy-like Submissive scent was edging on a burnt distress the longer they continued to talk. "What do you mean?!"
Ginny smacked her head and cursed the stupid Dom and Sub for having "the lowest IQ's" she's "ever heard of," and then the trio is suddenly off, jogging into the distance with the tick of seventeen minutes in the back of their minds.
Harry watched them go before rounding on the person left behind. He turned, and Draco was already looking at him with a suspicious squint. At the same time, they both asked, "Why didn't you go with them?"
Draco looked nearly offended as he offered, "You think I know anything about plants?"
Harry shot back, "You think I know anything about plants?" Draco shrugged and looked off after their friends' traces, and Harry stared at him, waiting for his next move. He saw the tension of his jaw clicking, the line of muscle that tightened down his pale throat as his teeth ground together, and Harry glanced behind Draco at the sight of Hogwarts looming a hundred feet away, the sun tipping behind the school and covered entirely by clouds. The air around him had never been so clear, and it had certainly never cleared his mind so completely in the presence of a Dom, be it someone he knew or he didn't. He felt the oxygen flooding his nose and lungs, and the scent of—
The scent of roses clung to the pores of his skin.
Harry's eyes flicked back to Draco's, and he wondered how long the Dom had been looking at him.
Draco cleared his throat. "Where?"
"Pardon?" Harry cocked his head to the side, and the corner of his vision caught students jogging to the school, finally making it back from their big or small group trips to the Black Lake.
A sharp noise sounded and Harry looked back at Draco. "What class do you have? Where is it?" Because of where the sun was positioned, Harry felt the coldness of being in Draco's shadow, of being protected and cloaked in the cool darkness surrounded by the blazing sun. It lasered his focus in on the Dom.
Harry thought for a second. "4F. The History of Magic classroom on first floor. Where are you off to?"
"Room 1B on ground floor." Draco looked over his shoulder at Hogwarts, and then his stormy grey eyes were back on Harry. He was taking in Harry's features, if his glancing eyes were anything to go by, and there was a tangible tension in the air, a follow-up offer and action that were going unmentioned between them for fear of what that step may bring.
Apparently, Harry noted, Draco doesn't fear whatever that step is.
"History of Magic is only a few minutes from Transfiguration. We could walk there. Only to make sure you're not stupid enough to walk down another wrong corridor, though." Harry logged in the back of his mind that Draco wouldn't look at him now compared to the almost magnetic appeal he had on him moments ago, and the long-held eyes he'd had for the entirety of their . . . of how long they've known each other.
"We could," Harry started, breezing past the Dom and finally heading for Hogwarts, "but I won't walk down a wrong corridor. Only reason I did earlier was because I was unfamiliar with the legal routes, and now I know better thanks to Ginny."
Still, Draco assumed the empty space beside him and matched his pace, and there was something festering in Harry, something ugly building on itself the longer he could smell the other. "Well, how should either of us know for certain where the other Dominants are? The reverse could happen to me additionally: I could run into a group of Subs. It's unsafe."
"You're always worried about yourself, you know," Harry tossed into the air, not really caring but settling into the stupid, unimportant, nonsensical arguments he grew to expect from the other. "Why don't you worry about someone else for a change."
They reached the shade of the castle and its cold metal doors, and Draco reached forward to pull the wooden door open, allowing Harry to walk through still hot on his tail. There wasn't space allowed to grow between them; even as Harry set a languid, purposefully irritating pace that would secure their tardiness, Draco matched it without so much as a peep.
Seconds passed, and Draco shrugged. "Well, what do you think I'm doing walking you to your class?"
Harry's pace slowed more, and eventually came to a stop. With guarded eyes, Harry glanced over Draco's face, the boy also having stopped. "What are you doing?" Harry asked, and it was only then that he digested what the other had said: I'm worrying about other people by walking you to your class. I'm caring about—
Draco's attention was hard to hold, and he couldn't keep it if he tried. The Dom was about as close to spinning in circles with his eyes shut as someone standing still with cautious features could get. "I don't know . . ." he trailed, and then he turned, continuing to walk on. This time, Harry jogged to catch up with him. "Is it illegal to be kind? I'll go back to bullying you if that's your fancy."
"No, no, no," Harry quickly cautioned. "You were a fucking pest when you did that."
A smile cracked across his face, and they were finally walking side by side again as they took the entrance stairs up to the first floor. Each step was pressed by a silence Harry felt incredulous to understand and accept. "You weren't much better," Draco shrugged, and he paused for a second as Harry took the last step up the stairs before they made an immediate right. "You were just as annoying as I was."
"Oh really?" Harry tilted his head and gave the boy a side-eye, and he couldn't help the words that fell from his mouth next. "Was I the one climbing trees and screaming from the top of them or was that you?"
Draco stopped in the hallway and leveled him with the most flabbergasted look Harry had ever seen: eyes blinking slowly with a fallen jaw and slow breaths taken in a broad chest, all pulled together with wide eyes and a morphing expression. "I did not!"
"You did!" Harry laughed, turning now and pointing. "You called at me from the top of that tree in fourth year! How long were you even up there? Were you just waiting for me to chance walk by?"
Draco couldn't pull himself together as he flushed a pink that crawled across his cheeks and down his neck past where his cloak covered unmarred skin. He stuttered out, "How dare you, I was in that tree for fun before you walked by! I wasn't waiting on anyone! I didn't know you were allergic to a good time, Potter."
Harry threw his head back and laughed, knowing damn well nobody sat in a tree silently with two goons for ten minutes only to break the silence to yell at some kid they disliked for fun. "Oh sure, Draco. And you're walking me to class because you hate me oh so much."
Finally, Draco tightened his jaw and crossed his arms, looking away with a huff. "Lord, just shut it, would you? I am about to leave you in the middle of this hallway and never speak to you again."
Harry grinned and shrugged his shoulders. "Fine by me. I'm about to be late anyway." He turned and started on his walk, slowly pacing across the hall as he waited for the inevitable to happen.
"Fuck you, Harry, you're the dumbest wizard I know," Draco huffed, and he was by his side seconds later, easing into this new routine of cat and mouse, except they continued to switch roles. "At least I didn't spend all of sixth year stalking someone."
"You were up to no good," Harry defended, and it was just as they walked around the corner that the newest problem arose, "I definitely wasn't sta . . ."
They arrived at the classroom entrance to Harry's class in 4F, but there stood a small line of Veela outside; unfortunately, all of them were Doms. He didn't know why, but Harry was getting chills again, the ones that crept along his arms and the back of his neck, and they came in waves of nervous ticks, threatening to restrict his breath and successfully slick his palm with sweat. Five Doms stood with eyes now on them just a few feet away, and they were being respectful waiting to get into the class, none of them acting out of the ordinary for average people, and yet the air was condensing on him, and the room was growing smaller and smaller, and what was that noise?
Harry glanced to his left at the snap of something, and Draco's voice floated into his ears as he rambled about nothing at all. "—talk my way out of it, surely, especially when I'm her favorite student. I reckon she'll even let me bully some of the kids without too much fuss."
"What are you even saying?" Harry breathed, winded and unaware of his wandering hand as they stepped up to the back of the line. That anxiousness wasn't wavering, and it flickered in the pit of his stomach until it was eating his insides and nearly making him break out into a sweat.
"I'm saying I don't think Ms. McGonagall will be too harsh on me when I arrive late. The bullying thing was a joke, she wouldn't tolerate it." Harry's eyelids rose and fell, each second it took to blink feeling like minutes had passed between them. His hand was clenching, was grabbing and unrelenting, and suddenly everything was too much and gravity was slowly losing its hold on the room as it tried to pick up in speed and—
". . . Lord, I can't believe you didn't read my letter. Promise me you won't read it now. It doesn't make any sense now."
The floor, Harry thought. The floor is beneath my feet and the ceiling is above my head and the walls aren't moving towards me and Draco is . . . Draco is still talking?
"Pansy has been a good friend to me recently. Sure, she's always been there, but she was really my best friend yesterday. I reckon you'd really like her if you gave her a chance."
The line was moving up, and suddenly they were next to enter the class. Professor Flitwick is in front of me. He's talking and moving and breathing and living, and he's right there, right in front of me. An arm pulled around his shoulders, and Harry's hand, which had snagged cloth in it for the last however long, pressed against relaxed muscle as the door to the class was closed with just a crack in it.
"—like me in a lot of ways. I don't give her enough credit, really. I guess I should just . . ." Draco trailed off, and Harry felt his feet touching the ground and his side heating up. The room was an average temperature, and it wasn't spinning. Nothing was moving, everything was still, and Harry closed his eyes. "You need to be in class, Harry."
His eyes flew up and he suddenly bursted from Draco's hold, realizing he had allowed the Dom, maybe even encouraged it himself, to tuck him under his arm, to crumple his shirt in his panicked grasp. Harry jumped away from him, looking up and down the hall with half his breath stolen from him, and he had half the mind to exclaim, "What the hell was that?!"
Harry could feel the heat of his face, and he see the heat of Draco's, that pink blush from his embarrassment coming back lighter than before to line his eyes and crown his cheeks. "I don't know, just go to class," Draco waved off, giving him a strange look like he was . . . He gave him a strange look like he was imagining it. "I'm going to be late now, because of you."
Harry took a step back, a step towards the door of his class. "No, you're going to be late because you decided to walk over here in stand in line for no good reason." Harry felt the dip of his tone and sword's edge of his words. Draco needed to walk away. "Go to your class."
Thankfully, the Dom didn't push any further. He raised his hands in surrender, in such a non-threatening way that almost made Harry acknowledge the tug of his heart, and walked back towards the stairs to the ground level, and only when Draco disappeared and Harry's heart stopped racing did he enter his first class of the day.
ENDING NOTE: for some reason i wrote this chapter bigger than a 5k in two weeks, and the average for this book is 3k a month, so idk why i went beast mode. PLS LEAVE COMMENTS, I LOVE THEM!
Word Count: 5.056