him forward…forward towards the wall…
'Hey!' said Draco, staring at Harry and Ron, both of whom had flung themselves at the wall and seemed to be attempting to climb it. Reaching out, he seized the two of them by the backs of their robes and yanked them bodily back down. 'Snap out of it!' he shouted, dragging them away from the wall. Thankfully, the singing had begun to fade. 'Both of you!'
Ron wrenched his robe of out Draco's hands and snarled, 'Snap out of what?'
'You were going to climb over the wall,' said Draco.
'No we weren't,' protested Ron.
'Yes we were,' said Harry, whose robe was still gripped in Draco's hand. 'What was that, Malfoy?'
'The singing noise? That was veela song,' said Draco. 'Pretty, wasn't it?'
'Veela?' repeated Ron, looking astounded.
'Looks like the place is guarded by veela,' said Draco. 'Bit of a clever idea, that.'
Ron snorted. 'What're they going to do, kiss us to death?'
Draco gave him a disgusted look.
'What?' snarled Ron, nettled.
'You don't know anything about veela, do you Weasley?' Draco said.
' True veela have only two uses for human men. Procreation… and food.'
'Food?' echoed Ron, looking faint.
'Food,' repeated Draco. He grinned. 'I read my great-great grandmother's diary once,' he said. 'There was this passage in there about how this human man invited her over for dinner, only of course he didn't realize that she thought he was going to be dinner, and there she was caught short with no carving knives. Fortunately he had an extensive penknife collection, and I can tell you're going to be a tough audience for this story, so I'll just shut up right now.
Suffice it to say, veela are dangerous. They're Dark magic creatures.'
Harry looked horrified. 'Lupin,' he said.
'Oh, Fleur's only a fourth veela,' said Draco, with equanimity. 'The most she'll do is nibble on his earlobe.'
'I could have done without that image,' said Ron.
But Harry was looking at Draco. 'What do we do?' he said.
'Well,' said Draco, 'either you can go wandering in there and be veela snack food in about ten minutes, or you can wait here while I go in and talk to them.'
'Won't you get eaten?' said Ron, sounding rather hopeful.
'I'm part veela,' said Draco. 'They won't bother me.'
Harry looked at him. 'Are you sure?'
Draco took a deep breath. 'I'm sure,' he said. 'Can you lift me over the wall?'
Harry took his wand out. 'Yeah, I can,' he said. He took a step back, pointed the wand at Draco. 'Wingardium leviosa!' Draco rose up in the air slowly, and landed on the top of the wall on his hands and knees. He looked down at Harry, standing below him with his wand out, his green eyes tense but steady.
'Malfoy,' said Harry.
'What?'
'You'll come back, right?'
'I'll come back,' said Draco, and jumped down from the wall into the garden.
As soon as his feet touched the ground, a wave of frigid air washed over him, redolent with the scent of dust and rotting flower petals.
The light seemed to fade, although the sun was still high overhead.
It was as if a dim, shimmering curtain had dropped down before his eyes — he saw dusty rows of flowerbeds, interspersed with indistinct hedges starred with pale and withered flowers. In the distance, he could see the gray hulking wall of the tower.
He could still hear the veela song, although it too was dimmed, as if his ears had been stuffed with cotton wool. When he started to move forward, even the sound of his boots on the gravel came faintly to his ears. Everything was incredibly still, there seemed to be no movement at all — until he caught a the faintest flicker of white light at the corner of his eye, like the glancing wing of a white butterfly, and turned and saw them.
They evolved out of the shadows between the shrubbery; white on darkness, a half-dozen or so tall, pale, beautiful women with long hair that shimmered like silver in the dim light. For all his talk, Draco had never seen a pureblooded veela up close. He felt as if a chilly fist had squeezed his heart, felt terror and admiration in equal measure. He stood his ground as they came up to him — there seemed little point in running away.
They approached slowly, not hurrying — it was hard to tell how many of them there actually were they seemed to flit back and forth like butterflies. There was a taller one in the center of the group who seemed to walk a little ahead. Draco decided she was the head veela, an assumption that seemed to be borne out when they stopped, a mere foot from him, and the tall veela gestured the others to be silent.
'You have been unwise in coming here, human man,' she said to Draco, her red lips parted over her sharp white teeth and she stared at him.
'Look at me,' said Draco, trying to keep his voice steady. 'Do I look human to you?'
The veela blinked.
