Note For the purposes of this story, veela are “dark” creatures[^210126-4]. I have chosen to create a version of veela that justifies the suspicion that Molly, Hermione and Ginny view Fleur with.
Veela have some of the strongest inheritances from the Thrones of all humanoid magic users. The pure veela is not an example of a primordial people. Rather, the veela race comes from an example of true perfidy. They originate from the crimes of a particularly evil witch, whose crimes drew her to the attention of both (on the good side) the Powers, Principalities and Archangels, and of the fallen angels (on the bad side). Their actions resulted in a wide variety of far reaching hereditary effects (this is the cumulative effects over the course of history):
At one point we (humanity and the nephilim community) knew which parts of this list came from enemy action and which parts of this list came from punishment inflicted upon the veela community for their many crimes. The incredibly harsh nature of their punishment was intended as a warning to the rest of the world to cease the making of humaniform beings, and the archangels made sure to make sure every nephil community knew what had been done and why. However, the nephilim are particularly good at ignoring and suppressing knowledge of things they do not want to acknowledge - see Appendix G on Original Sin. As this happened back in the ages of mundane myth and legend, the Church has not been able to recover reliable accounts, see the backstory for our best effort at reconstructing this history from available evidence.
Incidence
All veela are decendants of the (single) original veela. The female child of a veela and a full human is always either full human or full veela. There is no known instance of someone inheriting a partial copy of the veela curse when the father is human. This makes the veela curse very different from normal nephilim inheritance, where each trait inherits independantly. Most veela world-wide result from such unions. Veela across the globe now show a few varieties of physical appearances when in bird form, and some communities have ‘locked’ physical features when in human form as well (see Nephilim Inheritance). Each of these differences comes from a particular decendant of the original veela who, through great virtue or great vice, caused a noticable and (as history shows) inheritable change in herself. It is not true, as some nephilim scholars have claimed, that veela can vary within a family line, nor is there any evidence of a “male” veela despite its persistance in nelphil fictional litterature.
When the father is nephilim however, the situation becomes complex. In this situation the veela magical abilities still appear to inherit as a single trait, however the physical aspects of the curse such as life expectancy, maturation rate, physical appearance, and concupisence each appear to inherit as a separate trait both from each other and also separate from magical ability. Each of these traits appears to follow known rules of Nephilim Inheritance. This then is a second source of ‘locked’ traits in some the human forms of certain veela communities, as the ‘locked’ traits have, in some cases, been inherited from the father’s line, and pass on with probability separate from the veela curse itself.
We stated that the magical traits of the veela curse inherit as single trait when the father is a nephil. This is true, however, this single trait appears to, in this case, follow known rules of Nephilim Inheritance, including the possibility of inheriting a weeker form of the mother’s powers. Thus we have several types of so called “half-veela,” which, properly speaking, ought to be categorized entirely separately.
- There are instances where the magical ability appears to have been inherited in part from the mother, with no inheritance from the father. This results in something that resembles a full veela except with weaker abilities across all areas the mother had abilities.
- There are instances where the magical ability appears to have been inherited in full from the mother, but the child also appears to have some or all of the father’s abilities.
- There are instances where the magical ability appears to have been inherited solely from the father, except that the individual still the mother’s veela animagus form.
Like magical ability, and unlike animagus form (see below), life expectancy appears to have a range of inheritance options. The female child of a veela and a nephilim will usually inherit from her mother alone, but will occasionally inherit either from the father or some hybrid of the two.
A “full veela” is a veela with a full human father and a full veela parent or a full nephil father and a full veela mother who did not inherit any magic from her father.
A “half veela” is a veela with a full nephil father and a veela (either a full veela or a half veela) parent who (against the odds, see Magical Beings), inherited magic from her father.
Gender
As stated in incidence, all veela are female, a male child of a veela will inherit solely from the child’s father in terms of magic. This is a control placed on the punishment to ensure it does not itself become an uncontrolled problem.
Physical changes
Like nephil, all veela have an animal form. While normally the animal form varies with nephil, all veela have a bird for their animal form. Moreover, the form is not that of a random bird, but that of a specific bird. Which bird it is follows particular family lines. Where nephil control the shift to/from their animal form (though in the modern age, most nephilim subconsciously suppress this ability and must re-gain it through one or more rituals, see Rules of Magic) the veela has no control, and is incapable of obtaining control. Her form will shift to that of a bird’s any time her wrath, sloth, greed, or gluttony exceed her (incredibly minimal) control over them. This applies to half-veela as well, there is no known instance of any female child of veela decent having any other form.
Veela lifespans vary with family line. On the low end, vulture type veela have a lifespan of approximately 30 years.1 On the high end, eagle type veela have a lifespan approximately 50 years. As stated above, the half-veela may suffer this as well, but may have an altered inheritance based on her father. This can get progressively more similar to the uncursed nephilim depending on the number of half-veela in her lineage.
The original veela community were all vultures, and a few veela/vultures exist to this day, particularly in parts of eastern Europe. Some centuries after the original veela were created, some veela came to realise that their culture was an evil one, and rebelled against both their upbringing and their own twisted nature. In reward for this, their form was shifted to that of an eagle, and their lifespan increased from the by about 20 years, making them almost, but not quite, equal to the full humans, but still well below the nephilim from whom they descend. Later, as rewards for other acts of virtues, some of the eastern communities were transmuted from vultures to hawks, but were not granted additional lifespan.
In the modern era, most hawk type veela are in Bulgaria and Roumania, and all modern hawk type veela count at least one half-veela in their ancestry. Most eagle type veela are in Spain and France, and many of these, but not all, also count many half-veela in their ancestry. There are very very few vulture type veela anywhere, few if any of these count any half-veela in their ancestry.
Per the backstory, the fallen angels, full of wrath over their success in so thoroughly corrupting a community being undermined, the veela nature was further corrupted. Her vices, such as her temper, to get locked in place as a perpetual temptation for her, and her decedents, to fight hopelessly against. This can be considered an extreme case of concupiscence.
Thus, between this “revenge” against her and the consequences of her own vice normal to any nephil (see Appendix H), her concupiscence was vastly increased. A full veela has perhaps 20% of the ability to go against her instincts that a full human does. A half-veela will generally have much more free will, divine providence generally ensures that a being that is not bound by the limits here described for full veela inherits her father’s self control.
Her reproductive system was warped such her body is sufficiently actively hostile to male sperm that female births outnumber male births by at least three to one. She produces a natural spermicide that only affects male sperm. This is generally true of half-veela as well.
Her physical maturation is human like from age zero to the onset of puberty, but then becomes more rapid like that of a bird’s until she reaches full physical maturity. In the original veela community, this physical maturation would take approximately one year for a full veela after the onset of puberty, but over time different veela communities have experienced a number of [Screwtape] style mutations have occurred, some making the veela more human, and others less so. Thus now there are communities that take as little as three days to fully mature and others that take as much as five years.
Partial veela tend to take proportionately longer, averaging the normal rate of human (or nephil) maturation with that typical for the community from which her mother comes. This still results in abnormally rapid maturation, and causes young veela (and part veela) girls to face situations they are not mentally ready for.
The veela’s mental maturation is not accelerated during this time of accelerated physical growth, putting a mentally young girl in an adult’s body for a period of years (with all the extra self control issues adding adult hormone levels to that lack of mental maturity would imply). This is why Fleur’s classmates dislike her so much - people tend to expect someone who appears older to behave older. They remember the brat.
Magical Abilities
Her inheritance from the Dominions was severely restricted (leading some scholars to mistakenly think that veela are descendent from a primordial population). While in human form she always produces a super-abundance of pheromones. She cannot not produce them, though with considerable effort she can control how much she produces. This is true of half-veela as well, though there have existed individuals who can use the magic inherited from their father’s side to increase the level of suppression to 100%.
If a veela falls in love, her pheromone ability inverts, instead of producing pheromones that bewitch others, she produces pheromones that perfectly mimic those produced by the person she has fallen in love with. Combined with her weakened will power (see above), she is very poorly equipped to control the production of these pheromones, causing her own magic to essentially enslave her to the one she loves. This remains true of the “half-veela.”[^210916-2] Many scholars believe that this was intended as a punishment to drive the veela towards repentance (they may or may not be correct).
In avian form, she can only produce a form of naphtha that catches fire instantly when exposed to oxygen, though fortunately (for everyone else) she has some control over this (unlike the pheromones). Some veela/eagle communities have mastered a partial transformation between avian and human forms. While in these partial forms, the veela is restricted to producing naphtha, like that of the full avian form, but retains a (very) small portion of her human intelligence.
She can transmute herself between forms, but unlike an animagus, her shift is not under direct conscious control, but is rather tied to her (incredibly limited) ability to control herself. Some full veela spend nearly their entire lives as a bird. This is also true of half-veela, though they tend to have greater control over their temper, (and other vices) and thus tend to spend much more time in human form. In a sense, the full veela is becoming an animal. Had that process completed, if any veela ever did live her entire life as a bird, it is doubtful that her descendants would have an immortal soul at all.
Her inheritance from the Powers was restricted such that it cannot combine with her inheritance from the Dominions. No full veela is capable of permanent transmutation, and a “half-veela” is capable of it only to the extent her male parent was.
Like in Maskirovat.↩︎