Furry Magic

Title: Furry Magic, chapter 34

Disclaimer: I do not own any of the recognizable characters. HP is not mine.


Harry tilted his head and stopped walking. Draco stopped next to him, instinctively inching closer to the other boy. Harry had gone eerily still, as if he was a statue, not alive.

\"What is it, Potter?\" Draco whispered as quietly as he could, skin tightening in a ripple of anxiety.

\"I thought I heard...\" Harry mumbled, head canted, as if he was listening. Draco listened as hard as he could with his human senses, but heard nothing. He was about to say it, when Harry twitched, the tension melting away from his long, slim body as he moved off.

Harry took a few running steps. Draco watched, moving after him without hesitation. He\'d known of course that Harry was an athlete. They\'d played Quidditch together after all. They\'d been pretty equal on that field. Not any more. The way Harry moved now, it was beyond athletic. It was all feline, hunter\'s grace, impossible to look away from. Merlin, Draco realized with a shock, Potter was beautiful when he moved.

Harry rounded the corner, the disconcerted blond man following him, and froze. Draco felt the change in the body in front of him as they collided because of Harry\'s abrupt halt. He heard the hitch of Harry\'s breath, felt the pain vibrating through the taut body. Not knowing how he knew it was pain, but sure of it.

Harry let out a sound that was more sob than anything else. Draco wrapped his arms around the slender torso of his friend. Harry was crying, his chest heaving. Why? My ghod, why?

\"Harry!\" Draco hissed urgently, turning the other man towards himself, holding him tight, stroking his perennially disheveled, raven hair. \"What is wrong?\"

Then he saw them, way down the hall in an alcove. Tangled arms and legs, dark caramel skin bisected by pale ivory. Long silver, gold hair, meshed with lush darkness. They were stunning together, light and dark. Slender and ethereal, coupled with powerful masculine muscle.

His father and Troy, one of the young-lings from the year before Harry was turned. Troy\'s blue-black hair fell in a wave to the floor, thick and shining, his head thrown back, lips parted, gasping, throat bared for his king\'s attentions, gloriously nude head to foot. And Lucius was paying the throat homage, biting and licking while his lower body moved against the body of his young-ling, while Troy\'s legs wound round his king\'s hips.

Now Draco could hear the sounds of sex that had drawn Harry\'s attention. He could not look away, even as he held Harry\'s face against his chest, so the Chosen could not see it. My ghod, he thought, my father, he is...there is no one who can compare to him. His eyes raked over the proud muscles, and perfect male form. He had never noticed before. But then, what son looked at his father that way? Lucius had always been his father first. Now he was seeing him with a stranger\'s eyes.

Draco knew Troy was not one of the Claimed and Marked before today, he was a kitten of the pride, but now he was Lucius\', if his father chose to advertise it to the pride. Draco also had assumed that Lucius was falling for Harry. In purely human terms, he\'d thought his father was going to be faithful to the sobbing young man who he now held, tightly, trying to comfort him.

Now, Draco remembered, saw it from a split perspective. Draco was human, his father was not. Lucius Malfoy was all pride-king. He took pleasure with his people where he wished. But, Harry was still too human to cope. He had had no warning of this, Draco himself had not thought to tell him. Harry\'d been admitted to the king\'s bed, a thing never done. Naturally, he\'d expect to have the kind of relationship that showed he was special. The Gryffindor would think he deserved human-type fidelity in the choice of lovers.

\"Harry...\" Draco started, seeking words that would help, and finding none.

Harry let out a scream, brimming with pain, and wrenched himself away from Draco, too strong for the other youth to stop, fleeing in the opposite direction of the king and his new paramour. Lucius looked up, startled by the sound, lowering his body to protect the young-one under him. Saw his son, and Harry as he disappeared around the corner.

Draco would never forget the look of surprise, then concern on his father\'s face. It was very clear that Lucius didn\'t understand exactly what was wrong. He recognized that his Chosen was upset. He looked for threats, found none, was puzzled by the outburst. Feline to the core, he was having trouble figuring it out, understanding, why. Kittens weren\'t permitted jealousies and possessiveness. Those emotions came with power and position. Lucius expected Harry to submit and accept.

Draco understood both points of view. He ached for Harry, and was enraged at his father for being caught by the youth in this situation. Though he knew it was the right of the king to take whomever he wished. A right Draco had never questioned. A right that, had he become king, he would have exercised. Sex was affection in the pride.

Love and devotion were separate things from sex. No one loved his father more than Amrys and Graeme. But, as far as Draco knew, the second and third rarely had sex with Lucius, if ever. When the three had been younger, it was not unusual to find them locked together, passionately entwined on any convenient flat surface within the Manor. Now, though, most of their public touches were gestures of dominance and submitting to authority of the king, the love between them was far more obvious. At least to Draco and to the pride.

But Harry was human. Harry didn\'t know. No one had given him any teaching. He did not stay with the other young-lings, he had not learned what it was to be a kitten from them. Harry had refused to obey, to keep to his place. And now he was being hit in the face with the realities of pride life. Draco ran after his friend. He had to find a way to explain it all to Potter. Then he was going to have a talk with his father.

Even a king could learn.

ne\'ichan
faestion1@yahoo.com