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Draco’s trial ended on a Tuesday. He watched the members of the Wizengamot gather around the high desk and express their judgement, a tired, “this court will not convict an individual for crimes committed while underage. Free of all charges,” uttered just before he was ushered out of the courtroom and replaced by the next person in line awaiting their trial. After days and nights of dread and terror, it was entirely anticlimactic.
His parents’ trials the day before had concluded a little differently, with frozen bank vaults and seized belongings, but Draco’s own inheritance remained untouched, and so the three of them booked the first portkey to Paris that very same Tuesday and didn’t look back. It was a couple Apparition jumps to get from Paris to Saint-Étienne after that, besides the time spent in the portkey offices and the time difference; they ended up standing at the threshold of their riviera-style cottage, at last, in the early hours of the next morning, arms around each other’s shoulders, hoping to get the support they couldn’t find on their own unbalanced feet.
The first handful of months passed slowly, every minute excruciating, every loud noise making them spring up to their feet, their wands held in tight, shaky fists. Sleepless nights were the only thing Draco knew, and he refused to venture outside the four walls of the cottage. He and his parents barely said a word those days, only holding each other closely through the most difficult nights, the darkest part of the winter.
He feared it would never end. Until, one day, it did.
Little by little, the war eased the hold it had kept around his chest and fresh air made its way into his lungs. Spring came to Saint-Étienne, wisteria bloomed along the porch of the cottage, purple teardrops insinuated themselves around Draco’s bedroom window. His wand, pushed behind candles and papers on his bedside table, began to collect dust. His mother’s smiles became more frequent. He heard his father snore through the night after months of fitful sleep.
Impossibly, there seemed to be a new beginning for them, right there in their small corner of the south of France.
Saint-Étienne itself had always been a second home to Draco; most of his summers as a child had been spent in its cobbled streets and cheerful markets, learning a loud, foul-mouthed French that made his mother throw her head back in laughter when he used it. Once the dust settled and he could venture outside the cottage, he felt as though he was walking amidst those sunshine-dripping memories, and he slipped into the ease of everyday life as though into a favorite coat.
Every morning he walked to the market to pick up fresh fruit and eggs, as well as chicken and cured meats for the day. After breakfast, he slipped on plastic boots and helped his mother around the garden, where she was growing a small vegetable patch. They didn’t talk much while they worked, would sometimes mutter, “Look how well these leaves are coming in,” or, “Oh, dear, spider,” but mostly spent their mornings in companionable silence until the sun was high and they could hear his father moving about the cottage, the pipes creaking as he bathed, and they went back inside to cool down with a wet cloth to the nape of their necks and a glass of lemonade. His mother didn't carry her wand. His father, when he came downstairs to help them put their lunch together, didn’t either. They didn’t mention it. They never mentioned it.
As it was, magic itself would part around their house like a stream around a rock, and move out of their way as they walked through town, would waver when showing them the few wizarding alleyways, a blurred screen that they looked away from without effort. It eluded them. Draco could tell, and based on his nightly studies he supposed it was because the magic could sense their discomfort around it. It behaved, strangely, like a child that could tell you didn’t like them. When Draco reached for his wand one time in April, it seemed to shiver in his hand, producing only a shy light when he ordered it before putting it down again. He took mental note of it. It wasn’t as though he’d been a great caster, before, but the change was significant. It would be something to pay attention to, if he ever returned to England.
He didn’t think he’d ever return to England.
The cottage grew lovelier around them each day, lived-in, evidently well-loved. Wisteria took over the façade, his mother’s garden thrived, Draco’s money kept them comfortable. They entertained themselves with any odd thing, his parents took up painting and knitting, and Draco would spend his days walking around town, or sitting in cafes with books he found in the small cottage library, reading and thinking about his present, only. Months passed, his hair grew longer, his magic sleepier.
Sometime in August, the shopkeeper he bought bread from every week started looking at him, really looking at him, with a wide, dimpled smile and eyes so dark Draco tripped over his words whenever he paid close attention.
“I added two chocolatines,” he said to Draco one morning, grinning wide as he handed him his warm paper bag. “And my number. I’m Jules.”
Cheeks warming, looking anywhere but his eyes, Draco nodded, then paused. “But I don’t have a phone.”
“What?”
And so his first date went like this: a train-ride up to the city to buy a cell-phone and get dinner with a boy a year younger than him. Jules was beautiful, entirely uncomplicated and charming, his jokes made Draco laugh harder than he had in years, and he didn’t comment when Draco side-stepped questions about his schooling and his life in England. Instead, he let him talk about the garden and his studies on the local flora, and in return he told stories about customers.
The second date went just as smoothly, as did the third and the fourth, and soon Draco was stopping by the boulangerie multiple times a week, just to chat, or read by the window as Jules made next day’s bread and fed him little pieces to try.
His first kiss happened while they strolled along the markets one evening, hand in hand, and it was warm and sweet and everything he’d never even thought to hope for. With Jules’ full lips against his, Draco felt an emotion so big he dared name it happiness bubble up at the bottom of his belly.
It lasted all of two seconds.
Pain exploded inside him, sudden and powerful, like a fire-tipped arrow piercing right through his chest. He doubled over, gasping like a drowning man, every lungful of air burning him. He could hear, distantly, Jules’ panicked questions, his “What is it, what is it?”, could hear a commotion in the market, but couldn’t focus beyond the sound of his own screaming and the cobblestones against his side as he collapsed onto the ground, arms tight around his middle, before everything went black.
His consciousness came and went, snapshots of scenes and conversations, the blue of the sky, darkness again, his mother’s voice, darkness again, pain, pain, through it all, heavy embers piled on his chest.
It was there, it was there. And then it was gone.
Draco opened his eyes to find himself in his bedroom in the cottage, the evening sun slanting through the window, where a man stood watching him. There was something familiar about his silhouette, the slant of his jaw, the shape of his shoulders.
It took him a moment to realize it was Potter, or so he thought, but the sheets over his body changed colors and the room around him shifted to become the Slytherin dorm, and Potter had no reason to be there at all.
“W–what,” Draco tried to ask, but his voice was raspy and faint, and the darkness claimed him once again.
The next time he woke, it was to his mother pressing a cup of tea to his lips.
“Oh, my darling,” she whispered when she realized he was awake. “I was so worried about you.”
The tea tasted like mint and something else that took him a moment to recall, a tug at a long-unused corner of his memory — asphodel root. He furrowed his eyebrows, but when he went to sit up, his mother pushed him back into the bedding gently.
“Don’t strain yourself.”
“You’re growing magical plants?” He couldn’t quite keep the accusation out of his voice, husky as it was. His mother didn’t reply.
“Has the pain passed?”
Draco closed his eyes, considering. The weight on his chest remained, but it no longer burned, was only uncomfortable if he took deep breaths.
“So-so.”
His mother leaned over him, worry etched into every line of her face, the delicate features that he’d inherited almost as though she’d photocopied herself.
“Tell me what happened.” He asked. He did not doubt her knowing, it was clear in the look in her eyes, and after a moment’s pause, she nodded.
“Do you remember your fourteenth birthday? When we talked about your great aunt Adelaide?”
Draco recalled his parents calling him into his father’s study the night before he turned fourteen, showing him pictures of his ancestors, telling him about their legacy and how he should honor them. He remembered the picture of a beautiful woman, with long, fair hair and piercing clear eyes.
“This,” his father had said that day, “was my father’s sister, Adelaide. She brought ruin upon our family and was the reason we left France.”
She’d gotten pregnant out of wedlock. Draco didn’t remember details, couldn’t figure out how she was connected to this moment, except…
He sat up abruptly.
“She carried the Veela gene, father said, the one that’d been dormant for generations before her.” His mother nodded. Draco’s mind raced. “But how … why are you telling — No. No. I asked you that day, I asked you both, and … I’m a male, you said it was impossible.”
His mother met his gaze, the weight of her sadness and exhaustion evident. “We told you what we thought was true, baby. But here are the facts,” she brought a hand up. Between finger and thumb she held a single white feather, fine, long as her forearm.
Words escaped his tongue, escaped his brain. He couldn’t think. There was no way, he wasn’t —
“Can I see?” He held his hands out for it, but his mother pulled it close to her chest, away from him.
“There will be no more. A single feather when the allure manifests for the first time, is what history says, and never again. We’ll keep it.”
Draco thought to protest, but he didn’t think he wanted to see it all that badly, if he was honest with himself. His stomach was in tatters, empty for god-knew-how-many hours, and his throat felt as though he’d swallowed sand. Fragments of dreams hung in the back of his mind, but he couldn’t chase any of them without them losing clarity. He leaned forward and let his forehead fall onto his knees.
“What does this mean?” He whispered, trying to remain calm. “Why now?”
His mother’s hand sifted through his hair, and came to a rest at the back of his head, cradling.
“That Jules boy came when you were brought earlier. He said you were … right before. Was that your first?”
Draco nodded, not saying anything. His mother hummed.
“I’m not sure what this means,” she admitted, fingers gentle at his nape. “Even if you are a … you should be able to kiss whomever you wish. We need to research.”
That, at last, made Draco sit up straight once again. His mother’s face was grave and serious, softened by the low light of the morning sun coming in through the window. He hated that he knew what it meant.
“There’s not enough information here,” he said, not a question. His mother nodded.
“You will have to go.”
“No,” was his only answer. She closed her eyes. He closed his, too.
The explanations his father could give him in the following days were not nearly enough. He said his aunt was a mysterious woman he only ever met a couple times, and that Draco’s grandfather had always shut down the conversation if ever it turned to her. Draco was left exactly where he started — knowing nothing.
He tried to go on as though nothing was happening, but the pain would pop up a few times a day, blazing and all-consuming for all of two seconds before disappearing once again, blinding him to the world while it lasted. It seemed to happen more often when he ventured outside the house, making him black out in the middle of the street more than once. He couldn’t even think about Jules without it starting up a fireball beneath his ribs, let alone visit him. He was forced to spend his time inside, alone.
His parents devoted their days to the garden and old potions books, and would brew different versions of analgesics they thought might help, but it was futile. The brief episodes somehow worsened every single day.
“I’m going to Paris,” Draco decided one night at dinner, after a long day of many episodes, nearly back to back. It had been nearly three months. His father had been in the middle of an explanation of a new powdered root he’d read about that day, and he trailed off, staring at Draco. He cleared his throat and pressed on. “It hurts. It really, really hurts. I can’t — I just need to find better books, better ingredients.”
He was expecting an argument, a worried lecture. But that wasn’t what he got.
“We’ll come with you,” his father said.
His mother nodded and took his hand between hers. “Yes.”
“Okay.”
They would leave the next day.
Much like the time he’d tried before, Draco’s wand seemed to shiver when he reached for it in the morning, as though shaking off a slumber, and he was acutely aware of the magic flowing freely between the object and him for the first time in a long time. It felt like a breath of fresh air after months of suffocating, like regaining a limb he hadn’t realized he’d been missing.
He closed his eyes and felt the shape of his own magic, the vessels carrying energy like his arteries carried blood. When he opened his eyes, the world seemed sharper through every one of his senses.
“Why’d I ever let you go?” He whispered, and felt his magic surge up inside him, a reflection of the sentiment.
He met his parents at the porch, their eyes were clear with what he imagined was a similar epiphany to the one he’d just had, and they linked hands in an echo of the position they’d taken when arriving what felt like centuries before. They travelled like that, carried by his father’s magic first to Lyon and then to Paris, two jumps in quick succession.
The Apparition point in the center of Paris was crowded, way too crowded and much colder than their porch in Saint-Étienne had been. Draco held the lapels of his jacket closer to himself and huddled closer to his mother as they queued to be allowed into the city.
“Next.” The Apparition officer’s voice was bored, monotone, and he motioned his father near and checked his magical signature in a harassed manner. “Welcome to Paris. Next.”
It was Draco’s turn. He stepped forward, extending his right arm for the check-up. The officer, a slim, middle-aged man with a truly impressive mustache, looked up at him and his face shifted — something about the curve of his mouth, something in the glint in his eye, and before Draco could figure it out, the man’s face was right in front of him, his thick hands in Draco’s hair,
“So pretty,” he murmured, swaying closer to Draco, gaze manic. Draco was frozen to the spot, unable to move, unable to push the man away, or say anything. He saw the man’s dark eyes run down his face, his body. “Come here, pretty thing, I can show you —”
“Confundus.” His father’s voice came firm and clear, and then Draco was being pulled away and into the city, leaving the swaying guard behind.
He loved Paris, he always had, but he could barely pay attention to the streets and cafes near the Apparition point that he would have normally stopped to observe, and not even the sounds of cars and scooters sliding past them could pull him out of his haze as his parents dragged him deeper into the city. His heart pounded inside his chest, the familiar fire burning unpleasantly, but without pain.
They stopped at last outside an imposing building with a façade made of red brick and cast-iron window frames. It was a place he knew, one he’d visited often when he’d been at Hogwarts so he could study material his peers wouldn’t even dream of accessing, L'Académie des Archivistes. The Archivists’ Academy. The wide wooden doors opened at the feel of his father’s magic, and Draco took in a lungful of the comforting, dusty scent of ancient knowledge.
Only then could he find words inside himself.
“What just happened?”
His father turned to him, the corners of his mouth downturned with worry. He reached up to brush Draco’s hair behind his ear, the strands that had slipped out of his bun at the guard’s touch.
“Come on in, my boy. If it’s as I fear, Archivist Beauvais will be able to explain it much better than I ever could.”
He was right. Marceline Beauvais, a severe woman decked in the dark mauve robes that marked her as a senior Archivist, took one look at Draco, made a curious choking noise and immediately cast a shield around herself.
“Lucius,” she said, “what is this? Draco, do turn that down, please.”
Draco didn’t know what to say. His mother cleared her throat.
“It’s a recent development. I don’t think he’s aware that he is …”
“Oh dear, is that true?” Marceline’s eyes widened. “Draco, will you come a little closer? Lucius, what are you doing standing there? Hugh is in the courtyard, tell him it’s an emergency.”
She cupped Draco’s chin with her pale, freckled hand, and looked into his eyes. He held her gaze, refusing to show his confusion.
“You were in Saint-Étienne, yes? That’s almost entirely Muggle.” He nodded. “How long?” This was easier to figure out.
“Almost three months. I,” a flush heated his cheeks, and he looked away, down at his feet. “I was kissed. Since then.”
That seemed to tell Marceline something, for her eyes cleared, and when Lucius came back into the room, accompanied by Hugh, she didn’t hesitate to say, “His allure was triggered three months ago, and has gone that long without a magical target.”
Hugh had been Draco’s tutor in the weeks he’d spent in the Academy as a teenager, and his dark eyes were a wonderful, familiar sight. He hummed, pulled Marceline’s hand away from Draco’s face by the wrist and brought his wand near Draco’s temple. It was evident that he’d cast a shield before entering the room, and his diagnostic magic washed over Draco, warm and comforting.
“Yes,” Hugh replied, simply. “Draco, your allure is in overdrive. We’ll brew you a containtment potion. Do you remember what that is?”
Draco nodded. A containtment potion, a simple regulator that would bring down his magical levels. He remembered his lesson with Hugh, how they studied it as a supplement used to diminish accidental magic. It was, he recalled as well, very, very fallible.
“Is that going to be enough?”
“No,” Hugh admitted. “It won’t diminish the allure, but it might help you not feel pain while you’re outside magical areas. I imagine that has been a problem.”
Draco’s mother hummed, and he nodded. “I blacked out a few times.”
“There you have it. I’ll brew it for you now, and we’ll discuss what to do about your allure tonight. While you three are here, you should go to the Veela section of the main library, I believe you will find some answers there.”
Draco closed his eyes, relief washing over him.
“Thank you,” he said, sincerely.
Hugh smiled. “No need.”
They were led into the main library by Marceline, though Draco would’ve found his way there blind and asleep, he knew the place like his own mind. His parents seemed more at ease than they had in the last three months, and Draco was suddenly very grateful to have them, despite everything.
“I’m really glad we came,” he whispered. “Incident with the Apparition guard notwithstanding.”
His mother laughed her pearly, gorgeous laugh, and each of them tackled a shelf of the Veela section, wanting to cover as much information as they could in the hours they had before Hugh came back with Draco’s potion.
Most of the books were old, heavy tomes depicting terrifying sketches of winged women tearing men apart with their claws, but underneath all the gruesome information, Draco started to find a pattern in the way the allure was discussed — as heavy mind magic that most Veela were able to keep under control, meant to attract a powerful wizard to mate with. The notion made him blush.
They pored over the books for hours, his parents calling his attention a few times so they could read a particular passage together. Past the middle point of most books, the information turned to mates, the mechanics of the bond between a Veela and their partner, the all-encompassing energy tying them together through mind magic. It was fascinating, and it perfectly explained why Draco had been feeling the way he had for the past months — the allure’s power without a magical target, unanswered. It made sense that Jules’ kiss had been what triggered it. Not only was he without magic, he simply wasn’t Draco’s mate.
Veelas mate for life.
That was something all books agreed on.
He considered the possibility of a mate, a man to love, who would love him back, who would undoubtedly be his one and only. He’d never thought himself a romantic, but if he was honest with himself, he truly had always wanted to be loved, to be someone’s most important person, to be connected to someone in a way nobody else could. It seemed nearly too good to consider.
Later that night, when Hugh came to him with a vial of his potion, Draco asked him, “Can there be a Veela without a mate?”
Hugh seemed to know what he was truly asking, for he smiled and drew Draco close to his side, an arm around Draco’s shoulders. “Yes. There are Veelas who do not want a mate at all, but they usually develop a different version of the allure. The fact that you are here at all tells me that, somewhere inside you, your magic already recognized its mate.”
“How will I know who they are?”
“Trust me,” Hugh said. “You’ll know.”
He left the Academy with a crate full of vials of his containment potion, and instructions to stay within a magical area. He shouldn’t go back to Saint-Étienne, Hugh said, until he’d learned to control his allure a bit better.
“It shouldn’t be so bad. As long as you spend some time around magical people and it recognizes potential targets, it shouldn’t hurt you, and I am sure it will become easier to control. And if someday, after you’ve learned, you feel that control slipping …” Hugh smiled. “Look out for your mate.”
His parents booked a room at a magical hotel for the night, and Draco felt the ever-present fire inside his chest disappear completely for the first time since Jules’ kiss as he drank the containment potion. He breathed in the scent of magic in the room, and at long last had a full night of rest.
He dreamed of magic and potions, and of a green-eyed man watching him, just out of reach, always a few steps away from him no matter how much he walked.
The next morning, he knew what he had to do.
He got dressed, gathered the small bag he’d packed in Saint-Étienne the day before, and woke his parents up.
“Go home,” he told them. “I’m going back to England.”
His mother’s eyes widened, and his father made a curious choking noise.
“Why?”
“I think I know who my mate is.”