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Wondrous Lands and Oceans	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10108 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 9
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Chapter Ten—A World Full of Wonders

            “We have to decide what we’re going to tell them back in the camp.”

            Harry started. He’d spent an hour staring into the flames, letting them mesmerize him, which seemed easier at the moment than facing up to Draco. Half the time he wanted to defend himself based on their previous conversation, and half the time he wasn’t sure there was anything to defend himself from. That Draco had been silent most of the evening didn’t help.

            But this, this was something he could respond to. So he swung himself around, used one of his winds to send the smoke from the fire streaming upwards when it would have blown into his face, and said, “You mean about Rasatis? I had assumed we would tell them the truth. I don’t think there’s anyone who would want to seek her out or think we shouldn’t have Obliviated her.”

            “They might change their minds when they know that I was the one who cast the spell.” Draco sat motionless, with his arms around his legs, staring into the fire. In fact, he sat so motionless that Harry wasn’t sure his lips were moving at first; he had to concentrate to see them do so. “Or they might decide that if they have one Death Eater out of the camp, why not another one?”

            “I won’t let them do that,” Harry said. “I’ll lie, if I have to.”

            “Would you lie to Teddy?” Draco turned his head to stare at Harry, his eyes still as remote as the moons.

            “He’s not old enough to understand this,” Harry said, blinking at him. Did Draco think Harry would let Teddy make decisions that he wasn’t old enough for simply because Harry loved him? But that was one mistake of Dumbledore’s that Harry never intended to repeat with Teddy.

            “If he was old enough, would you lie to him?” Draco stretched forwards, although with his chest and face and not his arms, which he kept wrapped around his legs. “Would you lie to him for my sake?”

            “I dislike the way you keep positioning this as a choice between you and Teddy,” Harry pointed out. “I tortured Rasatis the way I did for information, but also because she tried to hurt you. Teddy isn’t even here.”

            “I was only saying that the fact she’s here might change things,” Draco said, and this time he turned his head to stare off into the darkness beyond the fire, that of the hills where the mummid had leaped down to form their circle. “They might start wondering why they put up with me so long.”

            “The loss of everyone weakens us,” Harry said firmly. “We could barely afford to let Primrose leave. I would have convinced her to stay if I could. The smart ones, Hermione and Ron and George, know that letting you leave would remove one of our best protectors and best workers, and they’ll convince the rest.”

            “You think so?” Draco gave him a grim smile. “I don’t.”

            Harry closed his eyes and tried to ground and center himself for a moment. Calling up wind was the way to do that, or at least had been the last time he felt this desperately in need of it, back on Earth. He sat there picturing a revolving wheel, and only when Draco cursed and said something about sparks landing on his skin did Harry realize that the wheel was real, and had sent embers leaping out of the fire.

            “Sorry, sorry,” he muttered, opening his eyes and gesturing the fire back towards him, so that the wheel kept it in its pit instead of stretching outside it.

            “I don’t think we should tell them anything,” Draco said. “Not about Rasatis, not about the hand we found, not about the mummidade and their creation ritual. They’ll only worry and pick.”

            Harry stared at him in silence. “Rasatis I’ll give you, because of personal reasons and because I don’t really feel like talking about what I did there, either,” he said at last. “But why in the world should we hide the snake-shark from them? They’ll need to know about it if we move our camp to the sea.”

*

            Draco grimaced and bowed his head, rubbing his forehead, snorting when he saw how strangely Harry looked at him. He knew that he didn’t have a scar there the way Harry did, but why should that affect the way his head hurt?

            He didn’t want to admit anything because he thought he and Harry would have more power if they kept these secrets. Mentioning Rasatis would be a bad idea all around. The secret of the mummid’s ability to create children could matter to no one but them, with no one else in the camp partnered with someone of the same sex, and no one else bonded by the wild magic. The shark-snake was a legitimate danger, but if the seashore didn’t sound interesting, no one would want to move there, and they could share the warning with someone else who did approach it, like the Weasley girl, later, and individually.

            He wanted to go back to the camp and use that as a holiday from everything they had discovered outside it, everything that was making him have arguments with Harry and everything that pressed on him with new claws and new ideas. Even the water-creature could potentially be threatening if they didn’t handle it just right. He could think of people who wouldn’t want to be told it was lurking on the beach, people who wouldn’t want to come here if they knew, and people like the werewolf who would probably try to kill it and eat it.

            Everything would just be easier if they didn’t tell the truth. Hurricane was wide. They could always go back to the ocean later and say they had missed something along the way. They would never have found Rasatis if she hadn’t happened to come in their direction, the hand was coincidence, and the snake-shark had only attacked them because they approached the island that, if Harry was right, was a rookery. It was doable. They could go back, and show the fish and flowers they had discovered, and that would be enough for everyone right now.

            But from the way Harry was slowly shaking his head, Draco knew he wouldn’t agree, even if he didn’t know why. He clenched his hands in front of him and tried not to feel as though he would snap at Harry if he didn’t get perfect agreement.

            “I’m sorry, Draco,” Harry whispered. “But I do think we owe them the truth about something as dangerous as the snake-shark, no matter what other secrets we keep. Rasatis—maybe it would cause trouble to talk about how I tortured her and how you Obliviated her. But I think we should tell Ron and Hermione about her. They’re more likely to understand.”

            “They didn’t want to know you were fucking a Death Eater,” Draco pointed out. Make it as blunt and dirty as possible, and Harry might understand the way he felt. “They wouldn’t want to know you spared one, either.”

            Harry blinked. “You thought that was about the Mark? No. It was about you. You were the one who caused Bill’s scars, and the one who caused enough trouble for me in the past that they’re not going to accept us just being together without some kind of explanation. I never heard of Rasatis before we met her, and neither did they. They’d be angry at her for trying to kill us. They wouldn’t put you in the same category as her.”

            Draco did some more staring. Then he said, “You sound very sure.”

            Harry shrugged. “I know my friends.”

            “What about the rest of them? This seems like it could spark that tired old debate about whether I’m going to betray you again.”

            Harry was silent, gazing into the fire. Then he said, “If we need to admit everything about Rasatis and the Memory Charm, then we also need to admit I tortured her. That should give them something to think about other than what you did.”

            Draco opened his mouth, blinked, and then shut it again. Finally, he said, “Knowing that about your reputation could tear the camp apart.”

            Harry hunched his shoulders a little, but his voice was desperately, deliberately calm as he replied. “I don’t think that matters. And I don’t think it’ll happen. They—they distrust both of us, some of the time, but keeping secrets won’t help things along. Especially since Ginny’s bird will hatch, and she’ll be able to come here, too. We need each other to survive.”

            “We don’t need them,” Draco whispered, touching again the seductive vision he had tried to explain to Harry before, only for Harry to shut him down and turn him away. “We could live on our own, leave and live.”

            Harry smiled distantly. “There are times that would be nice, but I still don’t want to go without Teddy. Or Ron and Hermione. And what would the others do if we abandoned them?” He shook his head, and his eyes came clear again as he looked at Draco. “This is our world. We’ll never leave it now. The least we can do is share its wonders with the others. Maybe then, they’ll learn to see it the way we do.”

            Draco clenched his teeth together. He hadn’t thought Harry would take it in that spirit.

            Now that he had, it seemed almost childish to object.

            “If you’re sure,” he said. “And how much should we tell them about Rasatis, anyway? That’s the most dangerous secret we have.”

            Harry sighed. “We don’t have to explain everything to them in graphic detail. They probably don’t want to hear that I pressed drills of air into her ears. But we can explain enough that they know she was dangerous, and we didn’t want to bring her back as a prisoner. We already have scouts and guards on the camp, and we took at least one of her brooms, and we know that we didn’t say where we were from. That ought to keep us safe for a while.”

            Draco sat there silently. There was still part of him that didn’t like it, that would have preferred to keep the secrets and have the power.

            But he had felt contempt for the Weasleys’ ignorance when they distrusted him and Harry. If he wanted that trust, then perhaps he had to make a few steps, give up a few secrets, of his own.

            “All right,” he said. “We’ll do it your way.”

            Harry smiled, an expression of extraordinary sweetness, as the bond between them pulsed blue, like Hurricane’s sky. “Thank you, Draco. It’s your way, too, you know. You pointed out that we didn’t think of the best solution for handling Rasatis until later. You can think about it, and if you come up with something better, then I promise, I’ll listen.”

            Draco snorted to himself, and thought, again, that that was unlikely to happen. But Harry reached across the fire and took his hand, and Draco leaned in to kiss him, and the prospect of a voyage back to the camp tomorrow no longer seemed impossibly hard.

*

            Harry lay awake, staring up at the dawn that seemed to come from all directions. The winds muttered and whispered around him, and he knew that a storm was building in the east—or, well, the part of the sky that he thought of as the east, because the brightest light shone from that slice of the horizon.

            He didn’t know if he and Draco would get home before it hit. But at least he knew riding the storm was possible now, if not comfortable. If it blew up, then he would get them back to the shelter of the hills that had protected them last time and keep them safe there.

            Something splashed beside him.

            He turned his head and stared at the long finger of water that was creeping up the beach.

            Harry felt his winds come down around him and form a protective cocoon even though he had issued no such command. They did it automatically, then, reacting to the changes in his mood and mind.

            Draco might be said to do the same thing. At least, when Harry reached out to put a hand on his shoulder and shake him, he was already awake, his wand in hand and his eyes glinting. The way he held his left hand told Harry that the claws had sprouted there, and the bond, pulsing low red and lavender, told him that Draco was reluctant to use the claws unless there was no other choice, since they had gone through the sea-creature once before without hurting it.

            “We’ll move quickly,” Harry said, in a voice so soft that the air hardly carried it, and might not have if he didn’t rule the winds. “I’ll cage it and you perform a spell that affects water. We don’t know its intentions, but I don’t like the way that it’s coming. All right?”

            Draco said nothing aloud, but the knowledge that he was ready and consented flooded Harry’s mind. Harry wished he had more time to enjoy the agreement. They had it so seldom.

            But the finger of water had reached his foot, and was foaming up, growing taller, gathering strength, before sprouting what looked like clumsy imitations of human fingers and lunging for him. Harry whipped the winds forwards, and they spattered a few drops on the beach as they caught and gripped.

            Not much, though. This water looked more solid than it had before, more under the control of a single will. Perhaps the sea-creature had decided that simply mimicking them was no longer enough, and wanted a specimen to study.

            As the water twisted and thrashed like an eel, Draco struck. His wand flicked, and his eyes narrowed as he performed a nonverbal spell. Harry snorted. Show-off.

            The bond was so thick with Draco’s smugness that it was like breathing in pipe smoke. Harry coughed and choked and caught the edge of the spell as it slammed into the water.

            The water began to boil. Ripples of heat rose off it, the blue and the other colors in the middle that seemed to have nothing to do with reflecting the sky changed and swerved back and forth between rose and yellow and lilac, and the water was suddenly pulling back towards the sea, while other arms rose out of the ocean as though to embrace and protect it. When they tried to get close, however, they recoiled. Harry laughed.

            We must seem evil to the poor thing, Draco said.

            I don’t care, Harry retorted. This isn’t like the alliance we have with the mummidade. We don’t even know if we can reason with this creature, and I don’t like the way it was trying to grab me.

            Draco hummed in response, while Harry made a private note to himself that Draco seemed more likely to object to violence against humans than against the native magical creatures of Hurricane. Well, there were all sorts of reasons for them, many understandable, and Harry didn’t think he needed to bring it up unless it became a problem.

            I can still hear you, you know.

            Harry didn’t look away from the last boiling and evaporating of the watery arm, but only because he didn’t want to meet Draco’s eyes with his cheeks flushing like that.

            The water was gone in wisps of steam, and the other arms danced and swayed around nothing. They didn’t stop dancing and swaying, either. Harry, watching, wary both of what might happen next and of assigning human emotions to something made of water, still thought they seemed puzzled.

            Surely they were used to bits of water melting away and not coming back, though? It would happen every time it got hot here, and every time it rained they would have something new to contend with.

            Perhaps he shouldn’t think about such things when they had danger in front of them, said Draco’s sudden tension from the side, and this time several dozen arms of water materialized from the surface and reached towards them.

            Harry reacted without thinking. He might not be able to use his wand to cast the kind of curse Draco could, but he raised his own arm in response, and the winds blew up, racing along joyously above the surface, splattering and scattering. The arms tried to assemble themselves again, but the winds could turn faster than they could work, and came back, churning the calm surface into a flurry of waves, dancing and interfering utterly with what the sea-creature was trying to do. Harry laughed again.

            Should we laugh at them? Draco asked, pale and stern in his mind.

            They won’t know what human laughter means even if they hear it, Harry retorted.

            This time, though, nothing reached out of the water when his winds were done and had come back to him, dancing around his head like puppies anxious to be petted. Harry let them run through his fingers and watched the surface. Nothing. The sea-creature was watching them, perhaps, or simply waiting and pondering what to do next.

            “I’m ready to go home,” Harry told Draco, without removing his gaze from the water. “What about you?”

            Draco’s mind flickered back and forth like a sunbeam on the water, but the general conclusion was the same, Harry knew. They moved further up the beach to light the fire and eat their breakfast, and then, after Draco had made sure that he had the fish and the silver flower heads they had collected in his vials, they took to the winds and soared out of there.

*

            Home.

            That was the song in the back of Harry’s mind as they flew, cutting away from dark areas of the sky and places where Harry could feel magic gathering in order to escape the storm he was afraid would catch them. Now and then Draco caught glimpses of faces, sometimes with unfamiliar expressions on them, that he thought were memories.

            He didn’t mind that, entirely. The bond between them was deepening, changing even into something else, and they would grow closer as that happened. Draco could always make use of that closeness.

            But what was home to Harry wasn’t home to him.

            Granger tolerated him. So did the original Weasley, and his sister, and maybe the dragon-keeper; at least he would work beside Draco at their mutual tasks without complaining. And Teddy loved him because he was too little to know anything about adult politics or the war that had killed his parents.

            But when Draco’s own aunt didn’t like him, when his first impulse about everything they had discovered near the sea was to keep it to themselves, what did that mean? And Teddy would grow up eventually, and learn about the Death Eaters, and although Harry might do his best to counteract Andromeda’s poison, she was Teddy’s grandmother. What would happen when he listened to her, when he learned that some of the people with the same Mark on their arms as Draco bore had killed his parents?

            I will be there.

            Draco started. Bond and all, memories and all, he was still sometimes startled when Harry responded to something he was thinking. Perhaps because Harry had been reluctant to initiate anything that had to do with the bond at first.

            I’m here now.

            Draco dipped his head, and flashed back the sum of what he was feeling, which was easier than trying to put it into words. He did catch a glimpse of Andromeda’s face in his own memories, so at least Harry would know which person it had the most to do with.

            Silence, mental silence filled with bright and dancing sparks. Draco watched the way Harry turned broadside to meet the wind, into the best flying position, and admired the way his muscles also flexed, and tried not to worry that that silence concealed something worse.

            I meant it, Harry said at last. I will be here. I will help you if Andromeda tries to turn Teddy against you—although I’m sure she would start out with the intention of driving you away, first. She wants him safe before anything else, but she’s too timid to speak directly against you if I told her to stop.

            I don’t know about that. If she convinced herself it was for the best, or that she wasn’t really doing that, she was just telling him the history of his parents…

            I know. More silence, but this time, Draco thought, the sparks had collected into a solid bridge that connected them and bound them, through and against all the pressures that someone else could bring to bear.

            What I mean, Harry said at last, painfully but painstakingly, too, is that I’ll be there, and I’ll fight for you. There might be some of the Weasleys who think that getting rid of you is the best solution—

            Might be?

            Just like you think going off on our own is the best solution, Harry continued, firmly. But if they drive you away, I go. They’ll lose me, too. And they don’t want to. And if you tried to leave when they haven’t done anything, you would have to do it without me.

            Would I? Draco didn’t mean for his voice to come out low and slow and drawling, a cross between a threat and the way he used to speak when they were both schoolboys in Hogwarts together, but that was what happened.

            More silence, but this time charged and crackling. Then Harry said, Yes, Draco. In the end. If you were being driven away, then I would take Teddy and Ron and Hermione and anyone else who wanted to come and go with you. But if it was only because you wanted to leave, then I would have to stay behind.

            The bond won’t let you.

            I can fight the bond.

            Draco slammed back wordless frustration, beating the air like broken wings. Harry dipped his head in return, in recognition and acceptance, and then kept on flying straight ahead like none of it mattered. Bastard.

            I can feel what you feel, Harry whispered. I would notice, now, the way I might not on my own, if someone was persecuting you and making you feel like you had to leave.

            Draco was silent in turn, shoving the silence back at him.

            But the other part of it is that if you just wanted to leave—the way you have told me you want to several times, that we can survive on our own—I wouldn’t go. Because Teddy couldn’t live that way.

            Teddy, Teddy, always Teddy, Draco snarled back at him. I didn’t come into this bond looking for someone who would be tied down.

            No, you came into it because I rescued you that night and you chose to stay after that, Harry snapped. Which means you’ve known from the beginning that I was tied to Teddy, that I came to Hurricane for his sake. This is it, Draco. This life, here, right now, is real. We escaped the wizarding world, but we can’t flee this. I can’t escape the bond or my responsibilities for Teddy, and the only thing I can ask is that you not deliberately try to make me choose.

            If someone else makes you…

            They’re the ones who are in the wrong, and I’m on your side.

            Draco was silent, wishing he could speak, wishing he could want someone who would put him first without sounding like an arsehole about Potter’s commitment to Teddy.

            I don’t think that’s a bad thing to want. Harry’s voice was very gentle. And I put you first. I put you beside him.

            I don’t want to share that place.

            More silence, this time wordless gentleness. Harry knew how he felt, and was sorry, and wouldn’t change.

            Draco flew on, scowling. He disliked the idea that they were tied up in knots they couldn’t escape, when one reason he had come to Hurricane was in order to escape his past.

            But for now, this was the best haven and the best offer he was going to get.

            He did press one more thought down the bond between them. Teddy won’t always be little.

            No, he won’t be.

            And then there was a vision of glory opening in Harry’s mind: the plains and the ocean, distant and endless, full of wind and wild magic.

            Even knowing that vision was shared helped. Draco flew on, and was comforted.

*

            SP777: Thank you for the advice. Ultimately, I think I want to become better at expressing pure emotion and not as much psychological analysis, which I have been told is a weakness.

            Yes, the hand could be coincidence (although the line in this chapter about this rather refers to it being coincidence that they found it). But Harry and Draco are kind of paranoid now about that being all it is.

            Draco doesn’t want Harry to become even more dangerous than he already is, essentially.

            unneeded: Thank you. I think that Harry doesn’t want to be cold and hard, but he will do it (like so many other things) for Teddy’s sake.

            moodysavage: Thank you for letting me know! I perfectly understand.
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Wondrous Lands and Oceans