Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Here to Live and Die	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 5833 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 9
- 10
- 11
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ten—Mediation

“We got a bit more of it this time.”

            Draco nodded, trying to smooth disappointment away from his face, as they followed the mummidade towards the center of the meadow. As he watched, the herd broke into group-individuals, mostly quartets or trios, although a few pairs manifested. He recognized none of them except Westshadow, who galloped gravely in front and now and then glanced over one or two shoulders as if to keep track of them.

            “We’ll master the dance eventually,” Harry continued, apparently irritated that Draco hadn’t answered him already.

            Why say apparently, when you can read my thoughts?

Harry rolled his eyes. I thought you might not want me to right now. You seemed to be brooding about something.

Draco shook his head and glanced sideways at Harry as he saw the Weasleys waiting ahead, in the center of the meadow, and beasts and riders dropping from above, their wings wide-spread to counter the effects of the sharp winds blowing right now. I do know that we’ll get there eventually, and that we got further this morning. But I’m currently more concerned about this meeting than anything else. They seem to be gathering to judge you.

Harry’s face went brilliant and remote, and even the bond thrummed at a lower note than usual. It took Draco perhaps five seconds to unravel Harry’s emotions, which had a kind of coiled, patient waiting in them that was not anger.

            Why not? Draco asked, sure that Harry could follow enough of his private conversation to know what Draco was talking about.

            Because they fear me, Harry said. But not mindlessly, not the way some people in the wizarding world did. They fear me because they think I might endanger their survival, but they’re willing to give me the chance to talk about it. He turned his head and gave Draco a faint smile, then faced forwards again. They were almost there, Draco saw, and the edges of the mummidade herd had already run into the riders, walking fearlessly between the talons and claws of their beasts.

            I want to know what I can do better, and see what ideas they have for fighting those storms.

Westshadow broke away from the rest of its herd and formed up the quartet of four bodies between the nearest rider and Harry, hooves braced, heads held back so that the horns formed an interlocking series of arcs. Draco closed his eyes and felt the bond curve through his chest and neck and brain with the usual wearisome shudder. Open Wings had come forwards to the edge of the gathering, as well, Draco saw when he opened his eyes, and the rider stood in the pose that he usually assumed for one of these bonds, his hand on the neck of his partner and his eyes steady and nearly sad.

            You fear me, Harry told him, without waiting for Westshadow to turn his heads or Open Wings to acknowledge his presence. Why? Is picking apart a storm something that has never happened before?

Despite the communication bond operating more as words than images or emotions the way that his and Harry’s bond did, Draco had the feeling that Open Wings paused and searched for long moments before he spoke. We know the storms as powerful opponents, he said. We knew the Darkness in the North as a powerful opponent. We came to think that we could not defeat them, that we would have to live with them. We are barely over seeing the Darkness in the North defeated and knowing that one threat to our lives is ended forever. And now you stroll in and offer the chance to end the storms as well, or at least place them under your control. Call it—the feeling that you are changing the very foundations of our world, and we do not know how to adapt to it.

Draco pursed his lips. That was a more reasonable answer than he had thought they would receive. Of course, looked at another way, Open Wings was bound to be one of the most reasonable of the riders, as he was the most courageous; he was the one who had dared to speak to them first, and maintain his place in the negotiations with them.

            Harry nodded, slowly, his arms folding tighter and tighter, as though he was going to burst out with them like wings and flap someone to death. Draco leaned against his shoulder, less being there and more lending Harry the kind of silent support that everyone needed.

            Harry clenched his hand down on Draco’s in silent appreciation and continued speaking to Open Wings. All right. Is there a way I could take down these storms that would comfort you more? That would make—I don’t know, that would make things all right, in the way that simply conquering them doesn’t?

Open Wings turned and looked at a few of the riders, who chattered and chirruped to him. Draco tried to listen, but the bond filled and flowed through his mind in a way that made it difficult. There were some words he might know, but the bond overcame them in its great silence.

            Open Wings turned back. You should explain to us what you did with the storm. And when another one comes, why will you not flee?

Harry shook his head. Because the storm might destroy the houses that we built, and the other places that we’re trying to use to live. We can’t flee before the storms the way you and the mummidade can. We don’t have wings, and this is our home.

Open Wings puffed himself up like a bantam rooster Draco remembered seeing once. No less is it ours.

Harry turned red, while Westshadow stamped all sixteen hooves in a drum-like rhythm that Draco thought was supposed to give congratulations to Open Wings for the clever shot. I’m sorry, Harry said a few seconds later. But I mean—we establish more permanent places. We have places we don’t want to abandon. And the gardens that feed us aren’t like the herds that feed you, who can move of their own free will. We can’t start all over again every time a storm blows past.

Open Wings stroked his talons slowly through the feathers on Swoop’s neck. I begin to wonder whether you should not have come to Hurricane, he said soberly. This is what summer on Hurricane is like. This is the way you will have to live.

Harry folded his arms and shivered as though he was standing in front of a strong, cold wind he could not tame. Maybe, but then we’ll starve to death. We’re here now. We have to try and survive.

Open Wings was still. Harry took a step towards him, spreading his hands out, palms open, and ignoring the way that some of the riders’ wings and the mummidade’s hooves creaked and rustled around him. Look. We did one thing that you thought was impossible already, taking down Bodiless. We can do another one, right? I can try picking storms apart, and in a way that doesn’t frighten you? Let me try.

Open Wings glanced at him with, Draco thought, eyes bright and pitiless as a hawk’s. How can you practice that? You must wait until another storm comes, and that may be too late. It may be more powerful than the one you destroyed.

Harry gave a thin smile. I could raise a storm.

Open Wings shuddered back, and two of the mummidade turned to look at them. Not ones who were part of Westshadow, Draco thought, but others. Westshadow was busy feeding the news to the rest of the listening group. The humans loosed various murmurs of shock and horror. The mummidade clicked their horns together, which could really have meant anything. The riders sat still, their long arms folded. Draco had no idea what they felt, if anything.

            How could you do that? Open Wings demanded.

            Harry raised his eyebrows and turned his hands out. Winds began to whirl around them. Within seconds, Draco saw, the winds had visible presence, turning cold and grey, the color of tornadoes. Harry lifted his hands and held them close to his face, and the separate whirlwinds joined. The air in front of him had turned into stormclouds, and Draco could feel the temperature plunging in the immediate area, the cold rising.

            Open Wings reared back. We believe you! he roared down the bond. Your control over the winds of Hurricane is good enough for that? At least his last words didn’t sound as if he was frightened out of his mind, the way Draco had thought they might.

            Harry lowered his hands and shook his head, keeping his gaze fixed on the riders. Not my control over the winds of Hurricane. If it was that good, then I would have kept the storms from rising in the first place. Instead, I can control my own winds, and they will raise a storm that exactly mimics the one I destroyed. That would be under my control, and I could unweave it in a moment if it got dangerous.

One of the other riders nudged his beast forwards, standing a little to the right and behind Open Wings. Then it would not be exactly the same as the one you destroyed. That one, you admitted was beyond your control.

Harry turned towards that rider and inclined his head. At first, it was. But eventually, I learned it. Now I can weave it forwards, backwards, all concentrated in a moment, or spread out. I only meant that I could keep the project from being actually dangerous to anyone who was in the meadow or elsewhere, watching me do it.

Draco could see how attractive that prospect was to the riders, the way their beasts shifted and glanced at each other along with the riders themselves. Then Open Wings leaned towards them again, one hand busily scratching in the feathers at Swoop's neck. You are utterly certain that you could do this?

Harry stood tall, his hair stirring in the winds that pushed past him, his gaze bright as it slipped from face to face. I could do it right now, if you wanted me to.

             Open Wings turned his head in a long, angled sweep, more directions than Draco had known a rider's head could turn. He came back to Harry with an inclination. We are agreed that it would be a good idea for you to practice, or at least, there are none who want to make their opposition known. The mummidade do not distrust you as some of us do. But what about your humans? Would they want you to wait?

Draco turned from face to face. Westshadow had only thrown open the bond to a few people most of the time, but this time, others could hear and participate, as the second rider's interaction showed. What did the others think of what Harry proposed to do?

            Granger, of course, nodded at once. I think it's a wonderful idea, Harry. You need to show them, and us, what you can do, and nothing works as well as a demonstration.

            Andromeda folded her arms and glanced back and forth between the riders, Draco, and Harry. How do you know this storm will not get out of control and endanger Teddy?

            Harry approved of the question, as Draco could tell both by the bond and his eyes, how they shone. Of course, he had come to Hurricane in the first place to protect Teddy, and would be glad if Andromeda showed the same concern for him.

             I would stop in an instant if I thought that was happening, Harry said, softly, warmly. I promise you that.

            Andromeda gave a small snort. And would you be able to gain control of the storm in time, if it began to spiral out of control?

            I do think so. Harry once again spread his hands and called the whirlwinds, so quickly this time that Draco suspected he had held them ready and waiting. He tried to reach down the bond to make sure one way or the other, but it was difficult to read much of Harry’s mind right now. Westshadow’s communication bond still overlay it.

            Andromeda sighed. Then I have no objection.

            Draco looked back and forth between the rest of the Weasleys. Most of them looked fascinated, and as if they wanted to see what would happen if Harry called the storm. The werewolf still sniffed and glanced away, but he no longer made overt objections to everything Harry wanted to do, and that was good enough for Draco.

            The original Weasley—Ron, Draco supposed he could call him—caught Harry’s eye and grinned. Remember that I can dissipate magic, mate. If the storm tries to destroy something, then I can help you get it under control.

            Harry nodded, and stepped back. Westshadow dropped the communication bond at the same time. Draco wondered if it was because Westshadow thought they didn’t need it anymore, with the main purpose of the meeting accomplished, or because they had no interest in remaining connected to Harry’s mind while he called the storm.

            Draco, of course, had no choice. He stroked their bond as Harry began the magic, and found an underlying, steel-hard path of determination, which seemed to have replaced the usual soft and shifting nature of their connection. Down that path would run the power. Down that path would run Harry’s emotions for the foreseeable future.

            No, if worst came to worst, Draco thought they wouldn’t have to fear, either.

            He did see Ron standing nearby, keeping his watchful eye on Harry, as Harry began to turn and the winds began to turn with him, centering on his body. Draco nodded. Ron’s presence pleased him. Harry would be in the eye of the storm, but the eye of the storm was traditionally next to the most destructive part. There was the small chance that Harry would fall so thoroughly into his own power that he would never realize that he needed to step out of it and end the winds before they ripped something apart.

            Small chance, Harry’s voice whispered in Draco’s head.

            Draco nodded, and the next moment, his hair blew straight back behind him.

            He didn’t see the need to seek shelter, the way Andromeda immediately did with Teddy. Harry had promised that he could control this. That meant he wouldn’t harm any of the humans or other people standing in the direct path of the storm, either.

            The riders didn’t flee, although Draco could see the ripple in their wings and knew they wanted to. The mummidade trotted a short distance away, but that could as easily have been because a few of them wanted to or because the grass was better there. Draco sometimes felt he would never understand the mummidade’s serenity in the face of danger, and sometimes he was grateful for it.

            This might have been both.

            Harry gave a sigh that puffed his cheeks out for a moment, and when his breath emerged again, Draco was sure that it joined with the winds. The storm was dark above Harry’s head, wispy grey where it spread out at the sides. Lightning was there, and rain that briefly shone and spat and faded.

            Draco raised his eyebrows. This, he thought, was new. Harry hadn’t been able to summon lightning and rain before, only wind.

            Harry turned towards him, and for a second his eyes caught Draco’s and a spinning force developed in the storm that Draco didn’t know if he could control. It’s new? I didn’t know—I didn’t realize what I was doing—

            And if you let this go now, then you’ll just have confirmed everyone’s fears and taught them not to trust your word, Draco snapped back. Come on, Harry, hang onto it and make sure that you can do this.

            The words calmed and steadied Harry, as Draco had known they would; he often did know what would, he had found. The lightning flickered and faded, and the winds retreated into the eye of the storm and all turned the same direction again. Harry clenched his hands into fists and then delicately flicked his first two fingers. The air near him shimmered and turned hot. Draco took a step back.

            “This is the difference, then,” Harry said aloud, although he had to know that only the humans would understand him. “I can control winds, I’ve always been able to do that, but Bodiless’s death and the gateway mean that I can control storms.”

            Draco had no time to think about the differences between those words before Harry’s storm rose and spread over the entire meadow, outlining it. But there was only darkness and wind inside the borders, not outside it, and the clouds backed away from the points where the grass began to run into the foothills. Draco discovered himself grinning like an idiot.

            He can control it.

            Harry wrapped his fingers around what looked to Draco like an invisible rope and yanked, and the storm bobbed down towards him, moving like a kite. Draco got ready to jump if he needed to. The situation didn’t look very stable, and although he trusted Harry, Harry might still overestimate the strength of someone else when it came to how they could resist the storm.

            But the storm danced far above Draco, and the lightning was leaping from cloud to cloud in an organized pattern that Draco had never seen with any other tempest on Hurricane. He was sure, now, that Harry was controlling it, and adding magic of his own to make it do exactly as he wanted.

            None of the riders had fled. Now Open Wings held up his hand, talon-fingers spread as though to feel the wind blowing through them, and nodded to Harry, that human gesture he liked so much. Harry grinned back, wound his fingers around that invisible string again, and manipulated his hands up and down.

            The storm clarified, white pouring through it. Draco didn’t know whether the white was sunlight or just a different color of clouds, and he didn’t know if he would be able to find out. The storm was breaking into wavering streamers, and through the bond flowed a formless excitement, so that Harry’s thoughts weren’t much guide to what he was doing at the moment, either.

            Draco found a stone to lean against, and decided that he might as well enjoy the spectacle of the storm as long as it lasted.

*

            It made sense, now.

            Harry hadn’t really understood how the gateway affected him, before. The magic had seemed to pour in exactly where he needed it, sometimes, and not at others. He could strengthen others’ talents, but not his own. He could unpick a storm, but he couldn’t sense exactly where one would come from.

            Now he knew. The magic came from beyond the gateway, pouring and splashing down on Hurricane. Before, the storms had been part of it, but not the major part. Bodiless reserved so much power to itself that, instead, the wild magic had manifested mostly in its own strength, in its power to dominate Hurricane and enslave any sentient species who had too much magic and wasn’t pair-bonded.

            Now, because Harry’s magic was the wind, the storms were the major manifestation of the wild magic on Hurricane.

            And that included the lightning and rain they tended to bring as well as the wind.

            Harry closed his eyes, and he was in the heart of the storm, part of it, riding the winds but with his consciousness also scattered among and amidst cloud and light and electricity and water. All of them primal forces, all of them charged with magic as they surged up from the plains and oceans of Hurricane, away from the mountains, all of them responsive to the turning of the planet as it headed towards summer.

            Harry wouldn’t change the turning of the seasons, although the power humming in the back of his blood said he might. But that would be silly and wasteful. He concentrated, instead, on the way that the storms linked to it, the immensely complex and altering pathways that they traced above the mountains and the meadow. Bodiless had liked the storms to rage there because it liked the idea of no one being powerful enough to keep a permanent settlement near it.

            But this was home to Harry, and he wanted to be a sharer, not a ruler. With a tap, he reached out to those pathways, altering them as he had altered the model storm, and they bent a little bit, warping here, warping there, winds rising, air settling, moisture shifting to fall on the sea instead of in the meadow. There would still be rain, but not the kind where drops broke bones and hail rang and rode along with the water. Harry had heard all his life that spells that changed weather could bring about the most dreadful consequences, but not when you were connected to its patterns all over Hurricane and could see the bigger picture. The storms breathed when he breathed, exhaled when he did. There was power, and there was grace, and he brought it down and folded it within himself, so he would remember what it was like.

            Only then did he open his eyes.

            Draco stood near him, his face blazing with wonder and one hand held out. Harry took it and turned to face the riders. Open Wings might have bent a bit nearer, but otherwise, there seemed no change in his posture.

            “I can do as I wish with the storms,” Harry said aloud. He knew that Westshadow would need to link them into the bond again before he could transfer his words to the rest of the riders, but he wanted to hear them said now, to know that he had properly understood his power and the limitations on it, and to reassure the rest of the humans who understood English best. “I can command them to go away and come and make them a little less harsh. That’s what I’ve done with the ones that go over the meadow, so that you don’t need to fear me going up to face the ones that come again. Alone or otherwise.”

            The bond slammed back into place, Westshadow glancing in four different directions, and Open Wings said, slowly, This is wondrous. In the meantime, will you hunt down the one you have unleashed now?

            Harry glanced up blankly. The storm overhead was turning in whorls of dark grey and white. Harry held out a hand and clucked, and the storm turned back into light alone, funneling into his hand.

            Open Wings bowed. I believe now that you can control the things. And having someone who can adjust the weather and bring gentler rain will be quite a boon. There are times in the past that our herds have nearly starved, after the storms have flattened the grass or drowned everything and made us unable to come back down for days.

            Harry bowed back. You will have what you need. We’ll all have what we need, he added, turning to look at the other humans and the mummidade, though their flat golden eyes were as serene as ever.

            That was what he had to do. He had left some of the responsibilities of leadership behind, but this wasn’t leadership. This was standing aside or standing in the way of the power flowing through him as necessary, so that others could have what they needed.

            This was the sort of work he would have liked to do in the wizarding world, and hadn’t ever been able to, except in the one case of killing Voldemort.

            This was what he wanted to do.

            You’re going to do it, Draco said back, and Harry knew without asking that the others couldn’t hear those words, that they came down the private bond the two of them shared, devoted to each other, and he smiled back at Draco.

*

            Sasunarufan13: The mpreg story is “On the Outside, Looking In,” one of my Until the Solstice Rises one-shots. It’ll be in that story.

            The riders thought Harry was like a wild beast and going to him would backlash on him. Not really rational, but not so hard to understand when you think about Harry’s power, I think.

            Moon: The main problem is just that they’ve only been there a few months, and while people might sing as individuals or make art on their own, that’s not enough time to develop an art aesthetic of their own. Especially when new problems keep confronting them (first the birds, then the mummidade, then the riders, then Bodiless, then the need to move north). Give them a while in one place, and they’ll develop something more.

            SP777: None of them have been published or anything like that. And I have a lot of original stories.

            They will definitely try the dance again. It’s just that Draco is feeling discouraged by his inability to do it NOW NOW NOW and have the child NOW NOW NOW.
- 9
- 10
- 11
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Here to Live and Die