Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
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Chapter Eleven—A Sort of Welcome

            They made it back to the camp by that evening. Draco hadn’t realized before how fast Harry’s winds could go—and how slowly they had traveled that first time, when Harry wanted to investigate what lay between the camp and the ocean.

            No more exploring for right now? he asked Harry, as the hill with the stream came into sight before them, and Harry stopped them for a moment, hovering, before he cut the wind and allowed them to drop.

            For a long moment, he thought Harry hadn’t heard him. He was staring at the water with a ridiculous expression on his face, as soft as the dawn sometimes appeared here before expanding into Hurricane’s hard-edged day.

            Then he turned to look at Draco, and smiled. No more exploring for right now, he admitted, and began to spiral down in a wide circle that should get the attention of the Weasleys below as well as allow them to realize that the people approaching them weren’t enemies.

            Draco sniffed, and followed him.

            It wasn’t that he wasn’t glad to see the grass swell beneath him and the hills open up, revealing the small houses and the greenhouses and what looked like a trampled piece of ground where the youngest Weasley was probably training her bird. It was just that he would have been as happy, or happier, hunting on their own, and Harry knew it.

            Harry tilted his head towards Draco, said silently, I know, and then fled away from him, in the direction of the house where Teddy and Andromeda lived. Draco followed him slowly, shaking his head.

            Technically, that’s the house where I live, too, Harry said in the back of his head.

            But not where I do.

            Harry paused for a second, hovering on invisible wings, even though he could surely hear the shouts from below by now, the ones that said people had seen and recognized them. And were welcoming them, Draco thought, or at least welcomed Harry. For a second, they stared at each other.

            Then Harry swept his head down, said aloud, “You’re right. I should do something about that,” and dropped.

            Draco cut the air and fell after him, turning gracefully the way he would on a broom, and thinking. Having their own house wouldn’t alleviate all the worries he felt about the Weasleys not accepting him, all the hurt he felt when his aunt pushed him away and tried to cling on to both Teddy and Harry. And it wouldn’t lessen the longing he felt to have Harry to himself, perhaps with a child thrown into the bargain.

            But it would be a start.

            Then he was touching down, and Harry stood in front of him, swinging Teddy around and around in his arms with a blissful look in his face, while his friends crowded around him and made admiring noises as though they couldn’t believe that he had come back alive. Granger and Weasel-the-original nodded at Draco, but no one made any attempt to come over and hug him. Draco folded his arms and stood there, silent.

            Then…

            Then Harry set Teddy on the ground so he could hug his friends, and Teddy ran as hard towards Draco as his legs could carry him. Draco didn’t open his arms in time to catch him, but only because he couldn’t actually believe that Teddy was heading for him. He was, though. He caromed into Draco, and Draco grunted and bent down to embrace him. Teddy laughed, and his dark hair changed to blond.

            “Cousin Draco!” he said. “Cousin Draco will be back.” Someone had probably told him that while Draco was gone, Draco thought in slightly stunned incomprehension, as he lifted the squirming two-year-old into his arms.

            Except, who would have, if everyone here hates you?

            The thought could have been Harry’s or his own, because Draco did look up and find Harry standing there with his eyes fixed on him.

            But Teddy hugged him and babbled, and Draco had to pay attention to him, and to the fact that someone had missed him after all, and that he resented Teddy-the-abstraction, Teddy-the-boy-whom-Harry-placed-in-front-of-him, not the real, living, breathing Teddy who laughed up at him and changed his eyes to be grey.

*

            Harry turned away with a small smile and used wind to float up a few of the vials that contained the silver flower-heads, purely for the pleasure of watching Hermione’s eyes widen and her hands twitch as she reached out.

            “These are beautiful,” she whispered. “Where did you find them?”

            “This was this enormous field of silver flowers we found on our way to the ocean,” Harry said, smiling as he remembered it. It was the most beautiful sight they had seen on the way, always excepting the mummid’s creation ritual. “It seemed to respond even more to the wind than most of the grasses on the plain do. We brought parts of several back so that you could look at them.”

            Hermione nodded, giving them the kind of rapt look that Harry was used to seeing from Neville. Well, Neville hadn’t come with them, so Hermione would have to replace him as their Herbology person. “I think I can see a few ways now that Hurricane plants are different from Earth ones,” she murmured. “Thanks for bringing these, Harry. I can’t wait to start the experiments on them.” She lowered the vials and gave him a gleaming smile that looked better when it wasn’t distorted by the glass.

            “That couldn’t have been the only thing you saw,” Ron said, leaning forwards. Harry smiled at him. Ron had always been more interested in animals than in plants, although not enough to keep taking Care of Magical Creatures when the rest of them had dropped it. “Any other creatures of Hurricane?”

            Harry hesitated, then chose to tell them about the most harmless one. “This creature came out of the sea,” he said. “It formed itself out of water, and acted like it was imitating us. That was pretty interesting at first, but then it tried to drown Draco and reached its arm out to me when I was lying asleep on the beach this morning, so we decided we didn’t want to spend any more time around it.”

            Hermione was suddenly paying attention again, eyes very wide. “Did the ocean seem like a place of the wild magic?” she whispered.

            Harry nodded. “The winds are more intense there. And there are colors in the water that can’t come from just reflecting the sky. I don’t think all of it is dangerous,” he added hastily, because Hermione looked at the flowers in the vials with distrust. “But Draco and I had to fight one battle that could have killed us if we had less powerful magic.”

            “The way that everyone else here does,” Ron said, his eyes narrowed as he chewed on his lip. Harry was reminded of the way Ron looked when he was contemplating some difficult puzzle in Auror training. “We should wait a while before we move there, then.”

            “Is that something people were already talking about?” Harry asked.

            Ron nodded. “After Ginny brought back that milk, Andromeda was saying we should go.” He grinned. “I think she’s getting a little tired of seeds and meat. So am I, but wishing won’t make something so.”

            Harry nodded back, while his mind raced. Why hadn’t they seen any of the trees that Ginny had found? Because they had gone to a different part of the shore, of course. Once again, he felt stupid for not seeing the obvious. If they got Ginny to lead them back to the beach she had visited, then maybe they would avoid the snake-sharks and wherever the village of Rasatis’s group was. Then they could live by the ocean in safety.

            Well. Not perfect safety, of course. He looked over to where Draco was still listening to Teddy, and smiled as he felt the pulse of Draco’s low, contented emotions. Maybe not enough safety that he would want to risk Teddy. But there must be other places. Foolish to think the one they had found was the only one.

            “Harry?”

            Harry blinked and turned around. Ginny stood not far away, gnawing her lip like Ron had. He nodded encouragingly. “Is something wrong?”

            “Not wrong, exactly.” Ginny shook her head, her brow furrowed. “But the bird is starting to get bored with the rabbit meat, I think. He screams at me and throws it away when I try to give it to him.”

            Harry frowned. “We brought back some fish from the ocean, but we’re not sure it’s safe to eat. We should test it first. Sorry, but we didn’t see anything else, exactly, that we could eat.” He shuddered. “We killed one, though.”

            “What one was that?” Hermione wanted to know, speaking at the same time as Ron. They grinned at each other a moment later in what Harry knew could have been was embarrassment, but also knew wasn’t.

            Will Draco and I ever look at each other that way?

            Why is that particular way important? Draco said, not looking at him, but with his emotions flowing and forming as crisply in Harry’s mind as though he was immediately beside him. Isn’t what we have enough?

            It is, Harry said, with a pause and a touch to the back of Draco’s mind that he tried to make as gentle as possible. And I brought up the snake-shark. Are you comfortable with me talking about it right now?

            Silence. And Draco strode towards them with Teddy and planted himself at Harry’s side, ignoring the way Ron and Hermione blinked. Blinked, Harry noticed, more and more pleased, and didn’t try to draw away or curl their lips or make disparaging noises. Yes, there was potential there, if he could encourage all of them to realize it.

            Don’t push it, Scarhead.

            Harry grinned, glad now that no one else could hear them, since they wouldn’t exactly understand Draco’s terms of endearment.

            Draco rolled his eyes at him and turned to Ron and Hermione. “That creature was one I killed,” he said. “A combination of shark and snake, and it could fly.”

            He’d struck exactly the right tone. Ron and Hermione leaned forwards in interest, and Teddy curled up in Draco’s arms and listened steadily, although Harry thought he couldn’t understand most of the words yet.

            Draco was a good storyteller, too, making dramatic gestures at the right moment and stretching the tension out by talking about how he had been paralyzed at first. He made the ending of the battle a little less gruesome for the sake of Teddy’s ears, Harry thought, but it was still impressive, and left Ron and Hermione literally gasping. Even Ginny, who had been looking anxiously back at the place where she kept her bird, was drawn in, enough to demand whether they had brought any of the meat back.

            “I did bring some,” Draco said, and shook his head loftily when Harry blinked at him in turn, taking a different collecting vial out from his pocket with strips of grey flesh in it. “You can think me later, Weasley,” he added, as Ginny snatched it and ran back to her hatchling.

            You’re such a good storyteller, Harry told him, resting a hand on his lower back and reaching out to take Teddy from him.

            You think I might be to our own children? Draco’s voice was sly.

            Harry blinked. Sometimes Draco picked up on things going on in the bottom of his mind that Harry hadn’t noticed. Was I thinking that?

            Somewhat.

            Harry sighed and leaned his head for a moment against Draco’s. Hermione had hurried away with the flower-heads, and Ron stood near them with his arms folded and his gaze fixed firmly on the sky, giving them some privacy. Then I was thinking that, yes. He tickled Teddy, listening to his giggles as he squirmed against Harry. Not that you seem to mind this one that much when you’re around him.

            Draco nodded and probably would have said something else, but other people were starting to come up to them, and the first one was Andromeda. She touched Harry’s arm and said, “Harry, could I talk to you? In private.” She probably meant her glance to spear Draco, and Harry could feel it doing that, but not in the way she had hoped for. Draco simply turned his back, took Teddy from Harry’s arms, and continued talking to him. Teddy squirmed to be let down, and then ran away, with Draco after him, to play a hiding game.

            It will be all right, Harry told Draco’s back. I’ll make it be all right.

            But what if that means alienating her as well, and making it so that you can’t see Teddy?

            Harry shook his head slightly, holding Andromeda’s eyes and noting the way that she flinched when she saw the motion. She hadn’t got used to the idea of him communicating silently with Draco yet, he thought, although that had been part of the bond from the first day. I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen.

            Silence, and then trust, lapping him up and down like a lick from a warm, wet dog’s tongue.

            Harry felt Draco’s indignation when he noted the comparison, and then the sense of him faded a little as he and Teddy moved further away. Harry turned to Andromeda, and nodded when she repeated, “Can we talk?” Now the one she glared at was Bill, who was getting the story of how Harry and Draco had fought the snake-shark from Ron.

            Bill tilted an eyebrow upwards when he saw that, but nodded, said, “Good job,” in Harry’s general direction, and went back to examining the vials of fish. Harry would bet that he’d test that meat for safety before any of the rest of them did.

            Harry walked with Andromeda over towards the hills that sloped down near the creek. When Andromeda finally turned around, having decided they were far enough away from the others, Harry set winds rotating around them, to further scatter sound and keep anyone from creeping up to overhear.

            Andromeda paled when he did that, although she didn’t feel him using the wild magic the way Draco did, and so the only indication she had was the sudden pounding of air in their immediate area, and the way the fluttering breezes tugged at her hair. Harry narrowed his eyes when he realized that. Interesting.

            “I don’t think we should be letting my nephew near Teddy,” Andromeda said.

            A more direct attack than Harry had expected, but she’d probably had the time while he was away to work up her courage to that wording. He only nodded. “I know you think that,” he said. “But I don’t agree. Draco did what he did during the war before he was terrified—and what he did wasn’t against anyone on the ‘Light’ side, if you want to put it that way, except when he came after me in the Room of Requirement. He refused to identify me when the Snatchers brought me to Malfoy Manor. He tortured Death Eaters at Voldemort’s command. Death Eaters, not people on our side.”

            “He acquired a taste for torture from that,” Andromeda said flatly.

            Harry hoped that Draco did eventually want to tell the full story about Rasatis, because the only thing he could think of when Andromeda said that was the way Draco had cringed when Harry assaulted Rasatis with wind. “He told you that?” he asked.

            Andromeda shook her head. “No, of course not. He wants to fit in here, so he wouldn’t say it. But things like that leave a mark on a person.” She gazed at him with huge, earnest eyes.

            “So do other things,” Harry said softly. “For example, I threatened to torture that reporter who threatened Teddy. Did you think about why I did it?”

            Andromeda blinked. “You wanted to keep Teddy safe.”

            Harry nodded. “But for me to make that kind of threat shows that the war marked me, too. Normal people don’t do that.” Normal people also didn’t have reporters breaking into their house on a daily basis and threatening their godsons, but Harry didn’t intend to say anything about that for right now. “And I was showing other signs of something wrong even before we left home. I had that wind magic.” He brought down one wind in a slicing motion close to his side, and watched Andromeda.

            She jumped. Then she paled and wrapped her arms around herself, her eyes never leaving his face.

            “But you wouldn’t hurt me and Teddy that way,” she whispered. And whether she wanted it to or not, the rising inflection on the end of her voice turned it into a question.

            Harry turned his back and paced a few steps away, breathing deeply. Andromeda wasn’t the people who had thought he was mad simply for being able to speak Parseltongue. She had never treated him like he was anything special for the scar on his forehead, and that included fearing him.

            Now she did.

            “If you’re afraid of people with powerful wild magic,” he said, staring blindly up the hill and watching the sun glint on the water, “and people who make threats of torture, then you ought to be afraid of me, too, just because of what I am. Draco hasn’t done anything else. Teddy adores him, and you know that he’d like to get to know you, too.”

            “He did do horrible things in the war,” Andromeda said. “Letting in that werewolf who scarred Bill’s face.”

            Harry whipped around. “What he did was always accidental,” he snapped. “As much as what I did to save the world was accidental! I didn’t know Snape had those kinds of memories that would tell me the truth about what I needed to do. I stumbled over him and his death scene by accident. I could have marched into the Forest and tried to duel Voldemort, and it would all have gone wrong! I made the right decision when I knew everything, but I didn’t know all the consequences of my actions. Draco was the same way. He let in those people because he thought it would save his parents, and not because he wanted to scar Bill’s face. At least blame him for the things he did because he knew they would happen, not for the things that got out of his control.”

            “He should have known better,” Andromeda whispered. “He was of an age where he could have.”

            “He was a teenager,” Harry said. He felt very tired, despite the energy that stirred in him and made the winds rotate. “So was I. So was almost every bloody person who fought on the front lines. Or they were adults, and they died. We made mistakes. I’m not going to deny that, Andromeda, and I see why you’re uncomfortable with him. But you should be uncomfortable around me, too.”

            Andromeda’s eyes shifted away from him. She swallowed.

            “Oh, shit,” Harry said, and sat down on the grass and bowed his head so that his forehead rested on his crossed wrists. “You are.”

            Andromeda rushed up to him, but halted well short of touching him. Her words reminded him of the nervous piping of a fluttering bird. “It’s not what you think, Harry! It’s not—oh, Harry, I never feared you. I never thought you would hurt Teddy. I know you love him. I know you would do anything for him.”

            Harry looked up at her silently, and waited for the rest.

            Andromeda knelt down in front of him, and hesitantly touched his shoulder. “I just think Malfoy should go,” she whispered. “If he left, you would settle down. You would be like you were before. That wasn’t horrible, was it? When it was just you and Teddy and I living together, and you put Teddy to bed every night, and sang to him all the time?”

            Harry shook his head. “It can’t be like that,” he said. “Not now that we’re here. It never can be again.” He looked up and into her face, and took her hand, pressing it. “Do you understand why?” he added gently. “We need to help in the running of the camp, the defense of the camp. I love Teddy, he’ll always be important to me, but I can’t spend every minute with him. I didn’t spend every minute with him even when we were back on Earth.”

            Andromeda let out a breath that made her tremble a little. Then she said, “Then we could go back through the gate. Back to Earth. I understand that the gate won’t let everyone who passed through it back, that—that it’s most set up to let people onto Hurricane, and nothing more than that. But we could go home.”

            “You didn’t want to come, did you?” Harry asked softly, gently. He felt as if he were falling down a long, long hole.

            Andromeda shook her head, her eyes dull and full of tears. “But you were so determined to have a new life for Teddy, and I knew I would lose you both if I resisted. So I came. But this world—it’s too strange, I’m too old to start over. I want to go home.”

            Harry shut his eyes. Draco had warned him against taking on too much, making the burdens and guilt of the camp his, but he didn’t see any way to foist this off on someone else. It was, exactly, his problem and his burden.

            “I’m sorry, Andromeda,” he whispered. “I can’t make Teddy choose between his grandmother and his godfather. I’ll send both of you back to the gate, if you want.”

            “And you’ll come with us?” Andromeda’s hand on his arm was as strong as a chain.

            Harry shook his head. “There’s nothing for me back there, except Teddy, especially with the way the Ministry tried to stop me as I came through the gate. And there’s nothing for Draco. And I don’t think the bond between us would dissolve if we were back on Earth. It would just remain, and make us all more miserable.”

            “But you can leave.”

            Harry looked up and smiled weakly. “No, I can’t,” he said. “I’m hanged neatly by my own rope. I want to be with you and Teddy; my love for you won’t go away, and neither will Teddy’s need for a safe home. But the bond with Draco won’t go away, either. If you feel that you have to leave, Andromeda, I can’t go with you.”

            Andromeda shut her eyes, and there were soft, silent tears on her face. “I can’t take Teddy from you,” she whispered. “I hate this place.”

            Harry simply nodded, and squeezed her hand. He had no idea what to say. They had to live on Hurricane; they had to live with the winds, and the mummidade, and the dangers of the sea, and the bond the wild magic had forged for them. They had to live with the fact of their pasts, and the disgusting things they had each done in the wars, and the dislike Andromeda had for Draco. None of it was going away. None of them could escape it.

            Andromeda thought of going back to the wizarding world as an escape, but Harry knew it wasn’t. If they simply assumed the life they had been living before—which they couldn’t, not with the Ministry after them—then Andromeda would never go out, would have no friends. She would simply remain in the house and sometimes join Harry in taking care of Teddy.

            She couldn’t escape her grief, either.

            Which meant they had to start facing it.

            Harry gently squeezed Andromeda’s hand, and went on doing so until she looked up at him. “I have an idea,” he whispered.



*

            SP777: Draco may think he knows that, but Harry sure as hell doesn’t agree.

            unneeded: Draco hasn’t thought that much about sharing Harry with a child of their own! Although he should, if he wants Harry to agree.

            And what you described would probably be Draco’s ideal situation.
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Wondrous Lands and Oceans