Trials of Affliction and Light Sleeping

 

Chapter 6

 

         So, Draco Malfoy had chosen Harry
Potter as his mate.

         Insane, right?

         Not really, Hermione mused after she
had thought things through.  As a Veela,
Malfoy had essentially been looking for a mate who was strong, good-looking,
powerful and fertile and of good breeding. 
Harry was basically all those things and more.  Hermione couldn’t vouch for the fertile-thing,
but assumed all was fine in that department since Draco wouldn’t have approved
of Harry otherwise.  Not that fertility
was an issue in this case, neither of the two having a womb and all. 

         After Malfoy had retreated to his dorm,
Hermione had hasted herself up to Gryffindor tower to try and find Harry to see
how he was doing.

         Not very good.

         Hermione had had to sit next to him for
over a half an hour, soothingly rubbing his back while he was deeply breathing
in and out into a plastic bag. 

She really couldn’t blame her friend for hyperventilating after what had
transpired just then.  The poor boy’s
view about himself and the world around him had been turned upside down.

For about the umpteenth time.

Harry’s reality had been: he fancied girls, Draco Malfoy was a royal
pain in the ass and the first guy who would dare to come up and kiss him would
get punched in the face.

        

         And now that reality had been changed
over night.  All Hermione wanted to do
was tell Harry that Malfoy was a Veela so he wouldn’t have to go through this
identity crisis.  Even though she wasn’t
a professional consultant, she still felt that she had to respect Malfoy’s
privacy.  All she could tell Harry was
“It’s not your fault” over and over again. 
But without any hard data, that didn’t bring much solace.  Eventually Harry had dozed off and Hermione
had left to get some sleep herself.

She really wanted to, but she just couldn’t bring herself to blame
Malfoy for this messed up situation.  It
wasn’t his fault that he was a part-Veela. 
Still, thinking about the way she had seen him molesting Harry last night
-even if Harry had been more than a willing recipient- was nothing less than
disturbing.  Harry was her best friend
and she had honestly never truly regarded him as a sexual creature.  She had never even seen him kissing a girl
(she knew he had, but had never been there to witness it) so why would she?

And last night she had walked in on him passionately snogging Draco
Malfoy.

         And the fact that Hermione had found it
one of the most arousing sights she had ever laid eyes on did not make the
situation any better.  Now Hermione had
finally come to the understanding as to why lots of men liked to fantasize
about two women in erotic scenarios.  And
the knowledge that she had always considered such men to be rather sad individuals
hadn’t made her feel any better either. 

Harry might have been like a brother to her, but she wasn’t blind and
knew that her friend had grown into a handsome young man.  And Malfoy was two extremes all wrapped up
into one person: extremely rotten on the inside and extremely beautiful on the
outside.  She liked to pretend that he
was as ugly as he was within, but he was gorgeous and she knew it.

And sadly so did he.

         At least one good thing had resulted
out of last night’s debacle.  Malfoy had
now finally accepted Hermione’s help, which he truly needed.  She supposed that he first had to be pushed
to the limit before realising the magnitude of the situation.

         Him shoving Harry up the wall in the
middle of detention apparently had done the trick.

         Even though Hermione had finally gotten
her way, it was only now that she truly had come to the understanding on what
she had gotten herself into exactly.  To
stop Malfoy from randomly pouncing on Harry she would be forced to stalk him
24/7 until the end of the month.

         Jolly!

         Malfoy might be willing into letting
her accompany him, but he was still a ferret-faced brat and not exactly a joy
to be around.  This was something that
had already become evident on the first morning after their agreement.  The boy was complete and utterly emotionally
retarded!

         “If you want me to be able to help
prevent you from jumping Harry or anyone finding out about you being a Veela,
you have to tell me exactly what you’re going through!”  Hermione pressed.

         “I already did” Draco insisted while he
was pacing around their common room.

         “I don’t believe you” Hermione
scoffed.  The things Malfoy had shared
with her had been textbook and vague.  He
was keeping things from her and she knew it. 
“For instance, why did you suddenly need to borrow my ‘Sleekeazy's Hair
Potion’?  You have curls, don’t you?”

         “I don’t have curls!”  Draco sneered.

         “Are you sure?”  Hermione retaliated.  “So you won’t mind if I were to pore this
glass of water on your head to see?  I
could dry it with a flick of my wand afterwards, no harm done.”

         “You wouldn’t dare!”  Malfoy said while raising his head proudly in
defiance in a manner only he could.

         “I would” Hermione replied
truthfully.  She really would.

         A few more moments passed where the one
tried to stare the down other one, till...

         “Fine, I have curls” Draco
relented.  “Big deal!  They just appeared one morning and I couldn’t
go out looking like that, now could I?”

         “You’ve got curls?”  Hermione snorted in merriment, having a
mental picture of Malfoy with hair like a blonde Shirley Temple. 

         “It’s not funny!”  Draco spat.

         “Jeez Malfoy, have a sense of humour”
Hermione sighed.  “It’s probably just a
result of your hormones acting up.  So
what else haven’t you been mentioning to me?”

         “Nothing” Draco replied defiantly.

         Hermione rolled her eyes in annoyance.

        

Why did she always have to be so damn nice?

Lets face it, if Harry wasn’t involved in this she still wouldn’t have
let Malfoy hanging like this.  If
Hermione had never gotten the reason why people called her a goody-goody, she
well understood now.

On the other hand, spending time with Malfoy was a unique
opportunity.  Following the steps of the
first known Male Veela during mating season is a notion biologists would drool
over.  Hermione just couldn’t help
herself in gloating over the fact that she was the first to see, even though
she had to put up with Ferret Boy to do so.

“Fine then” Draco spat as he flopped himself on the sofa.  “You really want to know every single
embarrassing little detail that comes with being a Veela?  Fine! 
In a nutshell: I have a tail, I have curls, I’m randy as hell, I’ve got
a constant concealing charm on my pants because several boy scouts could camp
inside my trousers and I’ve been jacking off for an average of 20 times a
day.  Off course that was only until I
found out that Potty is my mate, as of which I seem to have started suffering
from ejaculatory incompetence.  Anything
else?”

         “Does that mean you-?”

         “Can’t get off, yes,” Draco
grunted.  If he had thought that wanking
over 20 times a day was rough, he hadn’t considered the idea of not being able
to.  If he couldn’t get an orgasm,
masturbation just made the whole thing worse. 
Getting to the edge and not being able to get his sexual release was
worse than torture.

         “Right” Hermione said, while a little
blush had crept unto her cheeks.  “But
how do you feel?”

         “Dammit Granger, you’re not going to
force me to talk about my feelings are you?”

         “It’s important!”

         “That’s such a girly thing to say,” he
said mockingly.

         “Oh please!”  Hermione said scornfully.  “There’s nothing wrong with a man who talks
about his feelings.”

         “Alright, you win!”  Draco said in mock-defeat.  “I feel... that I’m hungry and want to
go to breakfast.”

         Hermione rolled her eyes in contempt.

         “Smart Ass!” she huffed.    

It appeared that Hermione was going to have a long day...

         “My ass is indeed smart, but you should
see my brain” Draco said sarcastically as he started walking towards the
portrait hole.

         A very long day.

*

         For
convenience sake, Draco and Hermione had seated themselves together for
breakfast.  They had placed themselves at
a secluded area of the Slytherin table, since Draco had absolutely refused to sit
at the Gryffindor one.  Hermione had
informed her friends that she and Malfoy had some important things to discuss
in regard of their duties as Head Boy and –Girl.  They had given her their sympathies and
thankfully hadn’t questioned her explanation.

Malfoy was
absentmindedly chewing his food until suddenly his attention seemed to be
caught by something behind Hermione. 
Hermione found the sight to be quite amusing.  It was like watching a dog reacting to a
whistle that humans couldn’t hear.

         “Who is she?”  Malfoy asked with narrowed eyes.

         Hermione turned around in her seat to
see whom Malfoy had been referring to. 
She was surprised to note that he was apparently talking about Luna
Lovegood, who had just joined her classmates at the Ravenclaw table.

         “That’s Luna Lovegood” Hermione said as
she turned back to Draco.  She was a
little taken aback when she noticed that his eyes were still fixated on Luna in
a gaze that bordered on murderous.

“Why?”  Hermione asked worriedly.

         “I don’t like her” Draco all but
growled.

         “You don’t even know her” Hermione
stated dumbfounded. 

         “I don’t care” Draco spat as he went
back to eating his food.

         Hermione suppressed the urge to ask him
for an explanation since Malfoy seemed to be rather pissed off all of the
sudden.  Still, she found it rather
peculiar that Draco had just immediately declared his dislike for Luna after
spotting a glimpse of her from the other side of the Great Hall.  Granted, Hermione herself wasn’t all too fond
of the girl, but at least she had enough information to base it on.  They were just too different to start out
with.  Luna had her head in the clouds
while Hermione was a girl whose two feet were firmly set on the ground.  They would never be the best of friends, but
Hermione respected Luna’s opinions and could deal with her company.  Whatever Draco’s problem was with Luna, it
obviously had something to do with the Veela-part of him.

         Then suddenly Draco dropped his cutlery
and stood up from his seat.

         “Malfoy, where are you going?”  Hermione hissed at him, warning bells going
off inside her head.

         When Malfoy didn’t answer her, she
quickly got up, ran after him and went to stand in front of him.

         “What are you doing?” she asked
anxiously when she noticed that he had started to approach the Gryffindor
table.  When it seemed that he wasn’t at
all bothered about Hermione being in his way, she saw herself forced to walk
backwards while hovering in front of him.

         “Marking my territory” Malfoy growled.

Hermione’s eyes widened at the comprehension of what that meant.

         “Oh, no you’re not!”  Hermione stated firmly and then did something
rash that neither of them had expected.

         She jumped on his back.

*

                  

Jumping unto
Malfoy’s back in the middle of the Great Hall didn’t exactly prove to be the
most thoughtful of strategies.  But it
was the only thing Hermione had been able to come up with while being put on
the spot, so she was just going to work with what she had.

“Granger, what are you- umpff?” 
Draco said as Hermione suddenly covered his mouth with her one hand and
enclosed his eyes with the other.

         “This
is exactly the thing what I’m here for: keeping you from making an ass out of
yourself” she said as she tried not to give in to Draco’s attempts to throw her
off his back.  Hermione also selectively
ignored the fact that the entire Hogwarts population was currently monitoring
their Head Boy and -Girl’s strange antics with great merriment.

“Now, go to
the right” she whispered, and was replied with a grunt in refusal.

         “I said right!”  Hermione ordered as she hit her heals against
Draco’s leg, as one would do to spur on a horse.  Draco gave up and did as told, wobbling his
way out of the Great Hall.  Right after
she had said that her lips quirked into a smirk.  She noted that she quite liked it this
way.  Hermione in control and Draco mute,
as it always should have been if it were a perfect world.  If this were permanent, she would actually
consider keeping him as a pet to carry her around like a mule.

         After a good twenty steps, Hermione
removed the hand that blocked Draco’s vision.

         “Go to our dorms” she instructed.

Even though Malfoy’s muteness was refreshing, Hermione was very curious
by nature and just couldn’t help herself from asking him a question.

         “Mind telling me what that was all
about?”  Hermione asked as she finally
removed her hand from Draco’s mouth.

         “Mind getting off my back?”  Draco asked angrily in reply.

         “Do you always have to answer a
question with a question?”  Hermione
asked while she wrapped both her arms casually around his neck.

         “Do you?”  Draco spat.

         “Stop being so annoying!”  Hermione said in irritation.  “You were going to do something stupid and I
saved you from doing so!  I know you
couldn’t help what you were doing, but I could do with some support.”

“I can’t control the way I was born!” 
Draco said while hooking his arms around Hermione’s legs to relieve some
of her weight from his back.

         “Just like I’ve been telling you for
almost seven years,” Hermione said pointedly.

         “What?”

         “A person can’t help it if he or she is
born as a Veela, a Pureblood, a Muggleborn, a Muggle, a Squib, a Kneazel, a
Krumplehorned Snorkack or what not” she said wisely.

“A Krumplehorned what?”  Draco
asked in confusion.  “Oh wait, this is
one of those things where I should be learning something isn’t it?”

“Well, are you?”

“No!”  Draco huffed while
blatantly refusing to see her point, which contradicted with every value he was
thought. Nevertheless, his own line of thinking had never put himself in the
negative light, a manner in which he really didn’t like to think of himself. But
neither did he like to be proven wrong.

So he found himself in a bit of an impasse on that account.

“Oi, where are you going?” 
Hermione asked when suddenly Draco rounded a corned that she knew led to
a detour.

“We can’t go there,” Draco said warily.

“Why not?”  Hermione asked.

“There’s a bathroom there.”

“So?”

“They smell” Draco said with a disgusted face.

“Off course they smell” Hermione said. 
“They’re bathrooms!”

Draco turned his head and gave her a look that was basically a mimes way
of saying ‘Are you stupid?’

“Veela’s have a heightened sense of smell,” he said while pointing at
his nose.  “I can’t go past a bathroom
without wanting to hurl.”

“Right” Hermione sighed.  “Why is
that anyway?”

“What?” he asked.

“The heightened sense of smell?” 
Hermione asked.  “How does that
help during mating season?”

“Do you have any idea what smell can give you for information?”  Draco said. 
“It’s uncanny how much odour can cling to a person’s body.  You can wash and wash and wash but it’s still
there.  It tells you things.  I know things”

         “You know things?”

         “Yes.”

         “Like what?”  Hermione asked.

         “I know that all girls from fifth year
on get their period at the same time as the girls they share their dorm with”
Draco said.

         “I know” Hermione said.  “Women who’ve lived together for a long
period of time often have synchronised menstrual cycles.  So... you can actually smell that?”

         “It’s quite easy to smell blood,” Draco
said offhandedly while Hermione wrinkled her nose in disgust.  “I also know that Professor Vector has had a
bad case of the runs last week, that that Finch-Fletchly chap wanks an average
of seven times a day and that Parvati Patil uses perfume with animal pheromones
in it.”

         Hermione chuckled at this.  Parvati really was the type of person to mess
around with crap like that.

“And I also know who fancies who” Draco continued.  “Pheromones are all over the place, let me
tell you that.  And there are
surprisingly many gay people here. Sometimes I just want to smack that
Creevy-idiot over the head and order him to tell his girlfriend to shove off.”

         “Why should he do that?”  Hermione asked in surprise.

“She isn’t even able to give him sweaty palms” Draco huffed.  “But you should smell him when he’s looking
at McMillian.  Whew!”

“Creevy’s gay?  Really?”  Hermione asked, but then remembered the boy’s
odd fascination with Harry and she actually wasn’t all that surprised.

Suddenly a thought occurred to her.

“Was that what just happened in the Great Hall?”  Hermione asked while she tried to turn her
head so she could see Malfoy’s reaction. 
“You smelled something?”

Draco just groaned in reply.

“I just flipped out a bit, that’s all” he said.  Draco still felt really uncomfortable in
talking about his sudden fascination for Harry Potter.  And the excuse that it was only physical
didn’t relieve any of the discomfiture. 
Another thing that was disconcerting was the fact that the only person
who knew about his current debacle had the uncanny ability to figure things out
with minimal information.

“Did you smell that Luna fancies Harry?” she asked.

“Hm” Draco grunted in compliance. 
He had been watching Potter’s seat from the moment he had sat himself
down, not being able to turn his gaze away.  When that Lovegood-person passed by Potter’s
seat Draco could smell the girl’s excitement spiralling from across the other
side of the room.  With that, Draco
suddenly had had this incredible urge to mark Potter as his for all to see,
especially miss What’s-Her-Name.  It was
quite unsettling for him to realise that he had quite the possessive streak,
Veela blood or not.  If he were to catch
someone making a move on his mate, he wouldn’t hesitate to claw his or her eyes
out.  Therefore, Lunana –or whatever-
would do better to keep her hands to herself.

“So, what else can you smell?” 
Hermione asked.  She had been
quite surprised to hear Luna’s apparent affection for Harry, never having
noticed anything to remotely indicate that. 
But Luna is... well, Luna.  So she was inclined to believe Draco and that
supersensitive nose of his.  She also
wasn’t going to press this matter any further since all it would do was get
Draco pissed off again.  And Hermione
really didn’t want to have him marching back into the Great Hall to disembowel
Luna or pounce on Harry while she was still clasped to his back.

As Draco walked on, he couldn’t help but become aware that it actually
felt good in being able to talk to someone about this.  He could pretend that Granger was just following
him around, but he knew very well that he depended on her.  Not just for his physical well-being, but
also his mental one.  He didn’t really
want to, but the thought that he could talk to someone felt rather
comforting.  Even though he hadn’t actually
said much yet, he really had never talked this openly to another person
before.  He’d never say it out loud, but
this whole thing was quite scary.  Hell,
his whole self-image had been shattered and he was just supposed to be able to
carry on as if nothing has happened? 
Yesterday he had even cried.

         Draco Malfoy had cried.

         In public!

         In front of a Mudblood.

But then again he had never had this many new things to deal with all in
one go.  Being a Veela in mating season
was like going through puberty all over again in an accelerated speed.  He had always found it rather silly that
people needed to talk about their experiences during puberty.  He never did.  Mentioning your worries and weaknesses made
you vulnerable.

He has never really had many worries in his life, his pampered
upbringing shielding him from many difficulties conventional families had to
deal with.  But now Draco found himself
in a position in which he had never felt more vulnerable in his life and for
some reason wanted to get his troubles off his chest.  And besides, Granger was to much of a
goody-goody to betray his trust by blabbing. 
If she wanted to know what he was going through he was just going to just
answer her questions.

Reluctantly off course.

“I also know who’s shagging who... and where... and how,” Draco
continued.

         “Really?”  Hermione asked.

         Draco nodded as he marched up the set
of stairs that led to the next floor, careful not to topple over backwards from
the excessive weight.

         “People can rinse their mouths or other
cavities all they like, I can still smell semen and natural lubrication from a
mile away,” he explained.

         “Ew!” 
Hermione replied.

         “I know” Draco said.  “But you get used to it.”

         In
all honesty Draco had been thoroughly disgusted at first by all the
odours. 

So many crappy
smells!

People should
brush their teeth more often.  And hasn’t
anyone heard of deodorant?  And on top of
that, people are constantly farting all over the place.

Even girls!

Draco quite liked to pretend that they didn’t do that, that they had
some sort of magical digestion system that didn’t come with smelly
unpleasantness.

He couldn’t do that now, now could he.

But as he said, he got used to it. 
It was either ‘suck it up’ or ‘go insane’, so Draco picked the
first. 

And besides, what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.

He just hoped that Granger would be civil enough to keep all fumes
inside until she had climbed off his back.

**********

End of Chapter 6

Disclaimer:  The line ‘My ass is smart, but you should see
my brain’ is dedicated to my friend An, who was so nice as to say that to me
when I called her a smart ass.