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Reap the Hurricane	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 11501 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Ten—Masters of the Air

            Harry half-closed his eyes. His senses were spinning outwards from him again, along many different directions, the way that they had done when he flew on his own above the earth. He no longer knew if it was merely the winds that were carrying them, or whether his own affinity for the winds of Hurricane meant that he spread along trackless paths of magic, too.

            It didn’t matter, not when, either way, they were telling him that an enormous bird was ahead of him.

            And its shape was irregular on the bottom. Harry doubted that came solely from the curved talons. He could envision the sharp edge that Malfoy had caused when he cut off one claw too clearly for that.

            He darted a glance at Malfoy. He was turning his head back and forth, his fingers poised in front of him, flying the broom with his knees alone. Harry soothed the way that his muscles wanted to bunch. Malfoy had already proved the other day that he was more than sufficiently skilled to fly without his hands. Harry didn’t need to worry about him. He probably had to worry more about the bird’s beak and talons and the ways it might use the wild magic of Hurricane against them.

            “You feel it?” he whispered.

            Malfoy nodded. “You knew I did a minute ago, when you looked at me,” he said. Harry flushed, and then nodded. “I’m readying my weapons,” Malfoy added, and swept his hand up and down in front of him. If he squinted, Harry thought he could make out a flash of torn wind, like a series of glass knives slicing the air.

            Harry smiled. A dense cocoon of air began to gather around his shoulders, like a cloak he held close. “Good idea.”

            Malfoy opened his mouth. Harry thought, from the way he squinted and held his head back, that he was going to say something about how he always had good ideas, and it had taken Harry long enough to notice that.

            But he didn’t get the chance, because Harry’s sense of the enemy moved, and the air tore in front of them with a series of screams as the bird dropped out of the racing clouds and straight towards them, dark blue light dancing at the edges of its wings.

*

            Draco gestured without thinking about it. It was one thing to flatten or cut the grass and another to wound a great beast that was flying directly at him.

            The knives he had imagined fastened to his fingers made a few feathers whirl loose and drop into the abyss, but Draco had lost sight of how big his enemy was. The small pains didn’t seem to register. It loomed over them, its legs as big as their brooms, and lashed out, claws unfolding and extending like a cat’s.

            Draco flew backwards and down at the same time, and tried not to think about how his muscles were shrieking, how difficult it was. He should have practiced more with flying and less with magic in the past few days—

            But he escaped. The foot chasing him snapped short, and the bird screamed, a noise that literally shook the air around Draco and forced him further down, towards the earth that he could barely see.

            Potter was closer to the foot with the longer reach, and Draco thought he would use a hammer of wind to batter it away, or perhaps simply duck. Either way, he didn’t expect Potter to take any injury.

            And neither did he expect Potter to fly closer, swooping around the bird’s leg like a trailing ribbon, and then leap off his broom and grip its leg.

            The bird screamed again. This time, Draco was somewhat ready for it and could control his broom, but not his eyes. Potter held onto the scales around the claws, and laughed. Then he dug his fingers in and whistled, a sound so harsh it made Draco’s eyes water.

            The winds came. Draco felt Potter rip them from the bird’s control—it seemed to wield them instinctively, and so probably didn’t know how to react when someone brought conscious mastery against it—and slam them into the creature’s belly. Draco looked up and saw that belly sag and bend. The bird whirled and staggered in midair and went flipping and flying away, struggling to recover its balance.

            And it took Potter with it, still clinging to its leg.

            “Potter!” Draco screamed, more to relieve his feelings than because he thought the idiot would hear, and took off in pursuit.

*

            Harry was flying faster than he ever had before. He knew that. His hands and his skin stung with the revelation, and with the bird’s screams from above, and with the rings of hard, horny scales he gripped that scoured his palms. He knew he would die if he fell. A few seconds of the plunge would probably be enough to kill him, from the speed alone.

            For the first time in the two years since the war, something in his heart woke up and sang.

            Harry doubled down and avoided the searching sweep of a talon as the bird tried to use its left foot to scrape him off the right one. The world was dark around him, a blur of sensation. He didn’t know whether he was feeling or hearing what the bird would do next, but he knew that a claw through his body would be the next result. The bird had a better sense of where he was now, and it would take the threat more seriously after the blunt blow that Harry had slammed it with.

            Harry opened his arms, called the magic until it filled him, and leaped off the bird’s leg with the song of his heart inside him.

            There were no words but verbs as he fell through the air. Spin. Tumble. Tremble. Jostle. Snatch. Lose. Seize.

            Fly.

            He rose, and the bird’s next strike, made with the enormous beak that sounded like an iron gate closing above him, missed. Harry spun and rose again next to the bird, hovering on a whirlwind, watching as the head swung back and forth, flat eyes trying to focus on him.

            Malfoy was coming in from the other side, and from the way his hands were splayed in front of him, he held weapons that would inflict deep wounds. Harry only had to capture the bird’s attention until then.

            Harry doubled up his hand, his heart still singing frantically, violently, like a bird trying to break free of its cage with the power of its voice alone, and lashed out. The wind spun around and imitated his fist, and by the time that it reached the bird, it was traveling fast. It hit the bird in the eye, and made it stagger in the air. Harry held his breath, waiting to see the result.

            The bird flapped its wings heavily, turning in a ponderous circle, and came for him with both beak and talons aimed in the same direction.

            Harry knew what Malfoy’s intent would be before he did it. How could he not, with his own power throbbing in his belly and blood and Malfoy’s rising in concert? Harry flung himself backwards, down, sideways, and laughed as the bird circled after him, and laughed as the bloody spray exploded from the side of the bird’s left wing, as Malfoy’s weapons scythed into being and began to carve it like a turkey.

            This was dangerous, horrifying, uncontrollable…

            Glorious.

*

            It was always a good thing, Draco reckoned, to know that your hunting partner was mad instead of only suspecting it.

            He knew that Potter was holding the bird’s attention for him, but no one else Draco knew would have thought of punching it in the eye, even if they could. And no one else would have been laughing as they somersaulted down the air currents. The bird almost snatched Potter out of the sky twice on his corkscrewing fall, but he didn’t seem to notice, or care.

            He might not care until the talons are already on him, Draco thought, and swept his hand back the other way.

            The trick, he had found, was to imagine that he held long weapons, and sharp ones, ones that were capable of creating real damage instead of only a bit. Those razored not only feathers off the edge of the great bird’s wings, but also flesh, and the raptor was screaming and wheeling back towards him, then towards Potter again as he pummeled it with wind, unable to decide which enemy was more worth punishing.

            Draco caught Potter’s eye, and found that Potter was nodding to him. About what? Draco wasn’t capable of communicating silently with him all the time, only when they were close and their magic was in tandem.

            But Potter swerved towards him, and some of that silent communication came back. Potter was suggesting that he drive the bird towards Draco while Draco hurt it more and more. At some point, it would have to die from blood loss.

            Draco couldn’t have said whether he read all that from Potter’s mind, or from Potter’s magic, or whether the frantic, senseless gestures that Potter was making in midair suddenly made sense to him. But he knew what Potter wanted, and he put the plan into action while Potter was still dodging a buffet from the bird’s tail.

            Draco’s weapons carved a shallow slash down the bird’s breast. It screamed loud enough to wake the dead from the camp it had devoured and this time chose its target, diving at him with feet thrown wide enough that Draco knew he couldn’t dodge. Things were already not working out the way that Potter had hoped.

            But since when is that unusual?

            Draco concentrated his efforts on its wings this time. He would chop and cut the feathers, send them spiraling away, and begin to slice into the flight muscles. The bird wouldn’t be able to keep itself aloft for long, and the closer to the earth it fell, the higher he and Potter could ascend, and the more of an advantage they would have over it.

            The bird watched him with glittering eyes, and continued to sweep closer. Draco prepared to drop straight downwards, if he had to. It would carry him out of striking range—

            No, it won’t. Only your imagination limits your magic.

            Draco dropped like a diving trout, and out of range of the bird’s claws. Then he envisioned longer claws on his fingers than he had borne yet, and punched straight up and out, the weapons on his knuckles shining in his mind, made of tempered steel that would bend a little but not break at the opposition.

            Bleeding holes appeared in the bird’s leg and breast, and it broke off its dive with a screech and whirled away. Though almost deafened by the noise, Draco smiled. He thought they had done it some serious damage at last.

            Well, he had. That didn’t settle the question of where Potter was.

            Draco glanced around, and saw Potter above the bird, in the shadow of a cloud. Potter’s eyes touched his, and Draco tensed without knowing why, his magic flexing in front of him and shortening instinctively. The last thing he wanted to explain to the Weasels was how Potter had managed to dive onto Draco’s weapons from a height, impaling himself.

            Potter threw his arms wide. The air above him stirred and began to rotate. Draco frowned. He had seen Potter use similar whirlwinds at the gate into Hurricane, but Draco didn’t know how effective they would be against something so much bigger than the pieces of paper Potter had flung around there.

            Then Draco heard a steady roar, and his eyes widened.

            Potter wasn’t calling a whirlwind. He was calling a true hurricane.

*

            Harry was spinning. He sometimes thought he had forgotten everything outside the motion, everything outside the moving. He knew that the breath in his lungs danced circular patterns, and his arms could have flown away from his shoulders and he wouldn’t have known. His heart thumped in orbit. His blood flowed in spheres. His legs were gone, nothing left but the whirl.

            And he as spun, the winds came and spun around him.

            There was no other way to defeat the bird. Malfoy could carve away at it, but it had much better control of the winds than Harry had thought it did. He had discovered that when he rose above the bird’s head again and felt a net of wind try to snare him. They could chip and cut, but the bird had resources waiting in reserve, more magic than Harry could grasp. And if it began to truly hurt, it could always fly away, and they would have a hard time finding it again.

            So he danced.

            The winds were all around him now, a thick grey cocoon, revolving so fast that Harry’s eyes streamed and wept trying to keep up with them. But he knew they were centered on him, that he was in the eye of the storm, and that when he wanted to move in a different direction, the hurricane would follow him.

            Time to make this planet live up to its name.

            Letting go of the spin was the hardest thing Harry had done in his life. It seemed so right, so natural, by now, to rotate and let the wind try to catch up with him. But he dropped it, and fell straight down, towards that bird that he could still feel beneath him, trying to catch back the wind Harry had stolen.

            The howl of the storm was the first thing he’d properly heard for minutes. And his heartbeat and his bloodbeat were still dazzling him, masking exactly what he had done from him, which meant he was blinking and skidding through the outer edges of the storm before he could see what had happened.

            The bird was screaming and flailing in the hurricane, blood and feathers being sucked away from it in a visible stream. Harry felt its magic unfolding and springing away from it at the same time, trying frantically to harness the storm. It had no idea what it was doing, and for the first time in their battle, its instinctive competence was losing out against the product of a plan. Harry smiled and pumped up one fist.

            And then he saw Malfoy’s broom, caught in the edge of the storm, with no Malfoy on it. A quick survey beneath him saw Malfoy crouched in a forcibly still patch of air, cutting away all the wind that tried to come near him. That meant he wasn’t hurt, but it did mean that he was falling, if in slow freefall.

            Harry swore, knew that he should have asked Malfoy if he was in position before he used that particular plan on the bird, and darted after him.

*

            Stupid Potter.

            One could be in perfect understanding with someone, Draco thought, as he sliced away another part of the storm trying to tug at his trousers, and still not be able to survive the magic they unleashed because they hadn’t bothered to make it clear where and when that magic would strike.

            A bit unwieldy for general situations, that maxim. Then again, there weren’t going to be general situations for Draco ever again unless he could get control of his fall.

            Draco rose to his feet, balancing, and stared down at the ground beneath him. It was growing closer and closer, enough that he could see individual waves of grass and the small hills buried beneath them now. He wondered for a moment if anyone other than Potter would mourn if he smashed himself to death on them.

            Would Potter mourn?

            Little time to answer the question. Draco had come up with a tactic that he thought might work, as long as he imagined the necessary degree of flexibility in his weapons. He threw a hand down and saw the claws in his mind, the curve of them and the way they shot away from his body, how they would stab and plant themselves in the dirt—

            They did, while he was still at least a hundred meters above the earth, and bowed and bent, flinging Draco upwards as if he was on a bouncing ball. He caught a glimpse of Potter wheeling past him, probably because he’d flown down to rescue Draco and been caught by surprise when he rescued himself, and laughed dizzily.

            “You call hurricanes,” he shouted to Potter, “and I save my own life!”

            His arm ached from the way that his claws were stabbing in, and as he reached the top of his arc, he whirled to bring his other arm into play. He would imagine the same thing, and be supported by claws on that hand, too, and then he would imagine them on his feet, and shorten them bit by bit until he was crouching on the ground.

            A shadow blew over him, and the grass rippled and bent. Draco swore as he swayed and Potter wheeled away from him like a butterfly caught in his own storm.

            The bird had recovered enough to chase them.

            The wings pointed downwards and stroked in small, short bursts that Draco was sure were responsible for the problems they were experiencing. Wind broke from the cage the bird was herding it into and hit them both, and Draco, at least, had no power that could stand up to that. He shortened the claws in his hand immediately, and dropped downwards, beneath the level of the first currents it hurled.

            But they chased him, and he knew that he couldn’t go fast enough to escape and still be safe. He was too new at imagining his magic, at creating the perfect circumstances to rescue himself.

            He might have to turn to Potter after all.

            The thought painted the inside of his mouth with sourness, but Draco wanted to live more than he wanted to not owe another life-debt, so he looked around for Potter. He found him hovering in the middle of the cleared space that Draco had just vacated, his head tilted up and his eyes fastened on the bird.

            Draco felt a momentary hope. Things that Potter looked at like that didn’t survive.

            But the bird had mastery of the wind, and although it was covered with wounds, it seemed it was simply too big to hurt. In a normal creature, Draco knew, at least one of his strikes would have uncovered bone. There was no glimpse of that, though, only muscles working as the bird spun in place like Potter had, throwing wind at them, and as Draco’s eyes streamed and his hair was plastered flat to his skull, he had even fewer glimpses.

            Potter turned his head to look at Draco.

            Draco almost recoiled before the look of harsh, sleepy purpose in his face, until he remembered that Potter was, at least nominally, his ally. He nodded and tried to wait for whatever it was Potter wanted to communicate to him.

            Potter held out his hand. Draco raised his hand to grasp the air on a parallel line, although he didn’t know why he bothered. He should pay attention to anything else, including the way the bird was almost upon them and the delicate balancing act he had going on with the long steel poles that he had to imagine growing out of his feet and stabbing into the earth beneath him.

            Potter’s intention came reeling to him like a flung line across the air, and Draco gasped as it smacked him in the throat. It was a plan that Potter was informing him about, unlike the hurricane he had called, and it was one that stood a good chance of succeeding, also unlike the sole use of wind against a creature that was master of the wind. And for it, he needed Draco’s help.

            Draco thought it was that which recommended the plan to him most of all.

            The moment he nodded, Potter ascended like a dragon. That speed, that precision, carried him around the edge of the bird’s wings and into the sky above it before it could react. It pulled up and hovered—not something such a huge creature should have been able to do, but then, its magic could enable it to do lots of things that it shouldn’t, like break through the wards on a wizarding encampment.

            From above, Draco heard the roar and shriek of rising air. Potter was calling up his magic.

            Draco stretched his hands out and began to imagine a huge net woven above him, a razor-wire net, with sharp corners and glittering strands that looked quiescent until someone passed between them. Then they would unfold and stab into the flesh and skin of the unlucky victim like a horde of beestings.

            It was a creation of pure imagination, but Draco could still see and feel it sparking into being above him, there when he turned his head, gone when he looked at it full-on.

            The bird seemed to sense it, too, and opened its wings further.

            But at that moment, Potter hit it with all the wind at his command, and Draco straightened his net and snapped it out, and the bird had run out of options.

*

            The plan worked just as Harry had envisioned.

            He punched the bird in the back this time with the full force of the hurricane he had called concentrated into a single blow. This was what he should have done before, but no time to think of that now, only time to think of power, blowing up and letting loose, striking down and forcing the bird downwards—

            And Malfoy’s trap was waiting. Harry could feel that much, even if he didn’t know exactly what Malfoy had done.

            The bird fell, flailing its wings uselessly for purchase on its magic that was simply weaker than Harry’s, and hit the trap. One moment, Harry could see it there, struggling, its feet waving up, its beak turning as if it could feel the things entwining it and break them apart, the bonds of pure magic.

            Then there came a great, silent, vicious blossom of blood and flesh, as Malfoy’s flower unfolded and shredded the bird to pieces.

            Harry had to fly up to escape the violent gush of blood, and he saw Malfoy duck to avoid a tumbling claw—the one he had broken last time, Harry saw with a sense of unreality. He hovered, staring, and watched the falling-apart of the broken body, all the slices of poultry anyone could want tumbling down to the red-soaked grass.

            Harry continued staring. This was—something he hadn’t thought was possible, and something that he hadn’t meant to create. He had come up with the plan, of course, and driven the bird into the net so it couldn’t escape, but his mind simply hadn’t been able to encompass the extent of the destruction.

            He looked down, past the last plummeting cuts of meat, and met Malfoy’s eyes.

            Malfoy smiled at him.

            And Harry flew down to him, and around him, while Malfoy shortened the supports holding himself up and dropped to the ground, not trying to touch Malfoy, because there was no need for it.

            No need, either, for lots of explanation. They both Summoned their brooms—although Malfoy used his wand and Harry did it by sending out a wind to find it and bring it back to him—and in the moments until they arrived, stood silent and soundless, facing each other but not leaning in, feeling the thrum of their connected magic.

            They had done something unbelievably violent and powerful, and they had done it together.

            Harry noticed the way that Malfoy looked at him as they mounted their brooms, constant little twitches of his head to check that he was there, because he was looking at Malfoy in the same way.

            It would have been a too-short flight back to the encampment, and other people who would require them to speak. By one accord, they went hunting for the nest instead.

In the moments before they took off, Malfoy reached out and graced a hand down Harry’s wrist. Harry turned his head to him and returned the touch blindly, shoulder and forearm and Dark Mark.

            He didn’t want to go back. He would have been perfectly happy to fly forever above the bending grasses, to battle beside Malfoy, to hunt with nets full of bursting blood.

            Only the memory of Teddy would compel him to return.

*

            TalisRuadair: This may be the only bird that had discovered how good humans tasted. However, there will almost certainly be others, though perhaps not that many; there are always fewer predators than there are herbivores.

            Larimar: Thank you! The link will have its own problems, but then, so does everything on Hurricane.

            moodysavage: Bill is technically not a werewolf, even though Draco calls him one. He doesn’t change. On the other hand, Hurricane seems to be exaggerating his traits.

            SP777: I think this chapter is enough action for anyone, really.

            unneeded: That will depend on whether Harry and Draco leave any of them alive to tell the tale!
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Reap the Hurricane