𝐃𝐑𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐘 𝐀𝐍𝐈𝐌𝐀𝐆𝐔𝐒 2008

White Feathers

Author: empress_jae
Title: White Feathers
Pairing(s): Harry/Draco
Rating: NC-17
Summary: In reparations, the grounds of Malfoy Manor have been donated to the Ministry for Auror training. A curious peacock has taken a keen interest in the exertions of one particular trainee.
Warnings: PWP, Pseudozoophilia (but no bestiality).
Total word count: 3,252

White Feathers

Malfoy Manor looked at its glorious best in the late summer sun, with pinpricks of light reflecting off the leaded glass windows like the refracted dazzle off a fine diamond worn around a beautiful woman's neck. Only a careful observer would be able to tell the house was empty, and then only because the ornamental bushes were just beginning to lose their carefully sculpted shape. Harry Potter stood at the end of the long driveway, surveying the landscape in something akin to awe, wondering what it must have been like to grow up and know that one day all this splendour would be yours. He felt sorry for Malfoy in that moment, sorry for the little boy who'd had no inkling that his life would change so much, and that his inheritance would prove so difficult to claim.

Harry reset the Ministry's security wards on the gates behind him and set off along the gravel driveway, drinking in the vista as he walked. There was so much more than a grand manor house here; the surrounding land as far as the eye could see was all attached to the property, and the formal gardens Harry knew lay hidden behind the house rolled out into grassland and wild meadows and finally, dense forests at the furthest borders of the land. It was a dream world, a place of peace and tranquillity where the outside world need never reach, but the poor choices made by Lucius Malfoy had brought judgment to his front door and shattered the shelter that should have been. That he had taken his wife and moved to France did not surprise Harry, because he understood only too well how intrusive the press could be. Escape Azkaban he might have done, but there was no escape from the public who wanted their pound of flesh for his past offences. And Lucius Malfoy, seeing no benefit in the deal for himself, had abdicated his claim on the land and simply taken his leave without a backwards glance. Draco was rumoured to have separated from his parents, but with no legal reason to monitor their movements Harry had lost track of his whereabouts, and it was almost as if he had never been a part of Harry's life; he was a barely-remembered memory, a regret, the only part of Harry's childhood he truly wished he could change. How different things might have been...

In one final, perhaps desperate, act of reparation Lucius Malfoy had penned a note to the head of Magical Law Enforcement and offered the use of the lands surrounding his family seat for the training of Aurors, clearly seeking to align himself in some way with the moral majority as well as securing the good opinion of the Ministry. The house was not part of the deal, and Harry couldn't say he blamed the man however much he disliked him. The thought of transient groups of clodhopping trainees mucking up the silk upholstery and carving their initials into the delicate mahogany banisters bothered even him with his ignorant eye for beautiful things. So the house remained closed, but the land was a blank canvas for training exercises of every type, and Harry meant to use his visit to sharpen his newly acquired skills in defensive magic, and continue setting an unreachable bar as the best Auror ever to complete training; solidifying his positing not just as the Boy Who Lived, but also as the Man who had Grown.

Forgoing a simple cooling charm, Harry removed his Auror robes to find relief from the stifling heat of the late afternoon sun. He continued his path around the manor house towards the back gardens in search of the entrance to the elaborate elf-made rose labyrinth. The maze, having been on the lands centuries before the Malfoys had claimed their personal stake in Wiltshire, had become Harry’s favourite obstacle course during the extent of his training. Not only did the intricate twists and turns and hidden shadows provide a notably unfair advantage in the honing of one’s reflexes and stealth Disapparition skills, about which the senior Aurors complained almost daily, but also the feeling of losing one's self in an endless world of old and unused magic. However regulated by the Ministry, the magic always gave Harry a sudden surge of ambitious power and knowledge, and he soaked it up like a sponge.