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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.

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Chapter Twelve—Introductions

            “But you don’t know that he was born from the magic that was released when you destroyed Bodiless.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. He had thought that Bill might be upset about Nuisance coming into the meadow, or maybe Andromeda, with the way that she seemed to think every new manifestation of the wild magic was a danger to Teddy. But instead, the one who had the greatest problem with it was Hermione. She stood with her hands on her hips, eyes following Nuisance’s every movement as he pranced around the houses with Victoire on his back. Victoire was laughing, her arms wrapped around Nuisance’s neck, and Teddy was waiting his turn to have a ride with his arms folded and a scowl on his face.

            “Is what’s making you upset that you don’t know exactly where he came from?” Harry raised his eyebrows at her. “Or how the wild magic produced him?”

            Hermione’s face turned red, and Draco laughed in the back of Harry’s mind. Of course that’s it. Everything has to be sorted out in exactly the right ways in Granger’s head, and nothing can ever change categories unless she knows the reason why.

            You were pretty upset about Nuisance yourself at first, Harry reminded him.

            Draco sniffed. Because he could read my thoughts in a way, not because I didn’t know whether he was born of wild magic or a portion of Bodiless or always existing but only took this form because the wild magic was in the world enough for him to do it now. Those were all theories Hermione had suggested in the last day.

            “We don’t know exactly where he came from,” Hermione said. “And someday, there could be other creatures—people—coming from the same place. Creatures or people who wouldn’t be as friendly to us as Nuisance is. We have to know about it so that we can have defenses in place when they come down from the mountains.”

            Harry opened his mouth, but Draco, who’d been lingering in the background and watching the ride along with everyone else, stepped up and touched his arm. Let me? I think it’s possible that she’ll listen to me.

            Harry nodded and moved out of the way. He was more than willing to let Draco try to make an impression on Hermione, since nothing Harry said did.

            And he hadn’t missed the quick, darting little glances that Nuisance kept giving Hermione, although he thought she had. If she kept thinking like that, Nuisance would pick up on it, and he would feel less welcome here than he already did with Draco’s mixed opinions and being the only one of his kind.

            I can do this, Draco said positively, and gave Harry a little shove in the middle of his back. Go on and leave me to handle this.

            Harry gave Draco a small smile and turned back to pick up Teddy. “Why are you looking at Victoire like that?” he muttered into Teddy’s hair, rubbing his chin against Teddy’s forehead. “You got your turn. You’ll have another one when she’s done riding.”

            “She takes too long,” Teddy said, in the tragic accents that Harry thought only a child could muster.

            It had probably been three minutes since Victoire got on Nuisance. Harry rolled his eyes, and briefly caught a glimpse of Nuisance’s eyes as he turned around, prancing more than ever, throwing up his legs so that his knees almost touched his chin. His eyes flashed bright green, and he winked once and twisted his ears before he began to trot, jogging Victoire up and down. Fleur leaned a little closer, Bill stiffened, but neither of them tried to take her off.

            “You’ll get your turn,” Harry said again, as Teddy leaned forwards from his arms, and tried not to look at or listen to Hermione and Draco.

*

            “Why does it matter so much to you to know the precise origins of everything?” Draco asked Granger, and although he was trying to be nice, he couldn’t help the way his sneer curled his lips or the way she glared at him. “Nuisance wasn’t here. Now he’s here. The way he describes it, an origin made out of wild magic blowing around the mountains is as likely as anything else.”

            “But what wild magic? And why did new species never form before? And are there others coming who might threaten us?” Granger stared at the place where Nuisance danced up and down, jogging Victoire, and then slid to his knees and gracefully let Victoire drop into her parents’ waiting arms. Harry put Teddy on Nuisance’s back, just at the place where his shoulders hunched up from the spine, and stepped back. Teddy squealed and clutched at the dark fur. Nuisance shook his head once, and his antlers glittered and sparkled, but never came close to hitting Teddy.

            “You can’t tell me that you didn’t have some doubts about him,” Granger went on, turning around and scowling at Draco. “I know you did. You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have doubts.”

            “Not human,” Draco said mildly. “That’s an interesting way to look at it, don’t you think? Not human, but you’re acting as though it’s more human to think the way you do than to accept him, the way Harry did. Harry never had serious doubts about him once he realized that Nuisance wasn’t trying to attack us. Not once.”

            “That’s Harry.” Granger put her hands on her hips hard enough that Draco thought she would probably leave marks and turned around to scowl at the happy little scene again.

            “Who’s less human than you are,” Draco said, after a precise little pause and injecting his voice with a gentler sarcasm than he had been about to use.

            Granger whipped back to him, her eyes so wide that she looked as if she’d hurt something. “I never—I never said that,” he whispered. “Of course he’s not less human than I am! I know how he grew up. He would hate it—he would be so hurt if he thought I was thinking that.”

            “But if it’s human to have doubts, and Harry doesn’t, then doesn’t that imply that he’s not human?” Draco stretched his arms over his head and smiled at her.

            Granger scowled and clapped her elbows close to her sides, her eyes straying back to Nuisance. “I would never say something like that,” she whispered. “Never.”

            “Then don’t think it, either,” Draco snapped, stepping up to her. He hadn’t realized how much this pissed him off until he heard Granger nagging and whining on about it. Yes, Draco had his doubts about Nuisance, too, but they didn’t relate to what mountain, exactly, the winds that had blown Nuisance into being had come from. “He’ll be able to tell that you didn’t drop your resentment.”

            “Who? Harry or Nuisance?” Granger turned her scowl on Draco in turn.

            “Both of them,” Draco said calmly. “Nuisance can read your thoughts and focus on what’s important to you, and Harry’s a lot more sensitive to your moods than you think he is. I would leave it alone, Granger,” he added, when she opened her mouth again. “If Nuisance does something horrible, distrust him. If we run into other creatures born of the wild magic who aren’t as friendly, then defend us against them. But don’t insist on distrusting this one because you don’t know exactly where he came from.”

            Granger shut her eyes. “It would be so much simpler if we knew,” she whispered.

            Draco began to laugh, and found it hard to stop. Granger turned around to scowl, other people glanced up, and even Nuisance stopped dancing and stood there with one paw hanging in the air—until Teddy yanked on the fur around his neck and ordered him to dance again in a shrill little voice. Nuisance started doing it, but kept one ear twisted back towards them.

            Draco bent over, wiped his eyes, and straightened back, grinning at Granger. “You thought Hurricane was a simple world?” he asked. “Even after everything? Oh, dear.”

            “I just meant,” Granger said, and paused as though she expected Draco to contradict her. Draco stood there, watching her, and Granger shook her head and gave in. “I just meant that I’m able to map things because of my wild magic, and that includes wild magic itself.”

            “Well, yes,” Draco said. “But did you ever try that with the power Bodiless was giving off? I thought you just sensed a great threat to the north before it died, not all the individual currents and places of power.”

            Granger stood there and blinked at him. “I hadn’t thought of it like that,” she whispered.

            Draco waved a gracious hand. “Not a lot of people had,” he said. “I don’t know that Harry’s origin story for Nuisance is true, either, you know, just that it makes the most sense out of anything we can come up with.”

            Granger nodded absently, her eyes focused on the distance. “I want to know where his name comes from,” she said. “He said that he felt it blowing around the mountains. But who thought it? People we don’t know? Intelligent creatures like the Tssisid who won’t come down and join us?”

            “I don’t think the Tssisid are intelligent. Not in the way you mean.”

            Granger started, and Draco with her. Nuisance had come up to them, and although Teddy was still on his back, the little boy seemed to be mostly asleep and not upset that Nuisance was no longer trotting. Nuisance turned his antlers back and forth from Draco to Granger, and lifted his lips a little. Draco thought it was the closest his elk-like mouth would permit him to engaging in a human smile. “I could feel them. They were so focused. They didn’t think about different important things, the way you do, and they didn’t have the underlayer. They just thought about food.”

            “The underlayer?” Granger moved a step in, and then hesitated as if she thought it possible to scare Nuisance off. “What do you mean? What does that mean?”

            “Well, you think about things like whether someone’s a he or a she.” Nuisance scraped a paw through the grass. “But you don’t think about it all the time, and you don’t have to spend a long time deciding what someone is. You just make the decision, and that’s the end of the deciding.”

            “Some of us have a more complex concept,” Draco murmured.

            “You do,” said Nuisance, with a tip of his antlers at Draco. “And she does.” A tip of his antlers to Granger. “But I can tell when someone is what you call intelligent, and when they aren’t. The Tssisid aren’t. They don’t think enough. Not enough things are important to them, just whatever’s in front of them, or what was a long way off and what they wanted because they wanted the same thing every season. And they don’t have the underlayer.”

            Draco would have liked to talk more about that, but Teddy woke up then and drummed his small heels on Nuisance’s neck. At least Draco thought that it didn’t hurt Nuisance, because of his thick fur. In fact, Nuisance turned his head and flickered his ears indulgently in Teddy’s direction. “What do you want, small human?”

            “My name is Teddy,” Teddy said, although Draco thought “small human” must at least be different from the names that his grandmother and Harry called him.

            Nuisance bobbed his head. He had learned to nod, Draco thought, although he had to watch out for his antlers. “All right, Teddy. What do you want?”

            “More ride.” Teddy leaned forwards and looked as if he might butt his own head into Nuisance’s antlers at the announcement, and Nuisance turned away and began to prance again. Teddy settled back, grinning, and Draco caught Harry’s relaxation through the bond. He had been about to come forwards and scoop Teddy up in his arms.

            I don’t think you need to worry about him, Draco said. He’s going to be more comfortable on Hurricane than any of us, since he’s growing up here.

            More comfortable than anyone except Victoire and the other children born on Hurricane, you mean, Harry said back, because Harry always had to have the last word, and then he came up and stood beside them. “Well, Hermione? Are you satisfied that Nuisance doesn’t mean us any harm?”

            “I still wonder why he named himself Nuisance,” Granger muttered. “Instead of something like, oh, Communication. If he focuses on concepts that are important to us, anyway.”

            “Because that was the way I thought of him, and he chose the name for his own,” Draco said. He ignored the way she looked at him. As long as he was more comfortable with Nuisance than Granger was, he refused to think of himself as a hypocrite. “And now, do you have any more questions about him, or can you accept him gratefully as someone who wants to join us?”

            Granger shook her head a little. “I don’t have much of a choice, do I?”

            “Not much,” Draco agreed, and ignored the mental jab in the ribs that Harry sent him. It wasn’t his fault that Granger’s thirst for knowledge was working in this case to exclude someone who should have been welcomed immediately.

            “All right,” Granger said, and turned to cast a dubious look at the northern mountains that loomed up behind the meadows. “I just hope that the next creature that comes to us out of the wild magic is as friendly as Nuisance.” She walked back towards the greenhouses where Draco could see Weasley waiting for her. He had kept out of this conversation, and Draco couldn’t help suspecting that his wisdom in that came from long experience of Granger.

            Harry was quiet beside him, a deep, still pool of calm in the bond, and Draco wondered why until he turned towards him, met his eyes, and felt for his thoughts.

I do wonder whether she’s right, and other creatures might come down from the mountains and never find us, Harry murmured back. Some of them might go to the south, and fall into the hands of Primrose and the thunderrin.

Draco sighed. He’d wanted to keep from thinking about Primrose again, unless she actually came back to the meadow. But we don’t know that. We can’t predict that. We don’t even know if the creatures might not be more powerful, and destroy Primrose and her people, or maybe try to destroy us.

            Harry shook himself a little. You’re right. I’ll fall into the trap Primrose did if I’m not careful, insisting that there has to be a way I can completely protect my people and that we have to be the greatest power in the world and be absolutely safe that way. It’s not possible to be that, and she wouldn’t understand it. I don’t want to be the same kind of foolish.

            Draco clapped him on the shoulder. “That’s the spirit,” he said aloud, and then looked over Harry’s shoulder and grinned. “Did you want Teddy doing that?”

            Harry spun around and cursed. Teddy was standing up on Nuisance’s back, heels dug into the fur of his spine and hands just releasing their grip on the thick shag around his neck. Harry sprinted forwards a second after Nuisance stopped walking and Teddy started to slide.

            “I would not have let him fall off,” Nuisance said, turning his head and flattening his ears the way Draco already knew he did when he was upset about something.

            “But it was easier to catch him this way, and he shouldn’t have been doing it in the first place,” Harry said, frowning down at Teddy. “Come on, Teddy. You’re going back to your grandmother.” He marched Teddy firmly across the grass towards Andromeda’s house.

            “Sometimes you are jealous of the attention he pays to the little human.”

            Draco blinked and turned to face Nuisance. “Well, yes, sometimes I am,” he said, wondering why Nuisance had decided to start this conversation. “I’m trying to get better about it and not mind so much, but sometimes I am.”

            Nuisance’s tail twisted as he ducked his head and considered Draco eye to eye. “And you wish that you were not, and sometimes you would give anything for him to turn away from his little human and stare at you that way,” he finished, sounding satisfied.

            Draco ended up shrugging. “Sometimes I would give a great deal for his attention, all the time, as intensely as I was pursuing him at the beginning of the bond,” he said. “That’s true. But I can’t think that I have a right to it. He would tell me that I was wrong, and he would be right.”

            Nuisance’s nostrils flared, and his antlers twisted as he bobbed his head. Draco took a hasty step back to avoid having his eyes scratched out, but Nuisance either didn’t notice or didn’t seem to mind. “Humans are confusing,” he announced at last. “I shall have to go away and think about this some more.”

            Draco nearly choked, because he had to wonder if the creature knew how closely he was imitating Granger’s voice. Nuisance only nickered at him, rolling his lips back from his teeth to do it, and then turned around and pranced towards the silver houses.

            “Jealous of Teddy?”

            Draco started and turned around. He wouldn’t have spoken so loud if he knew Harry was behind him, he thought.

            Harry rolled his eyes at him. Bonded, remember? I could feel the jealousy through that even if you’d never said a thing to Nuisance.

            Draco slipped a hand into Harry’s, and turned him forcibly towards their tent, making their hands swing between them as they walked. Then you can also feel that I really do want to be over that jealousy, and I’m trying.

            Yes, of course. Harry glanced back at him, searchingly. But I thought you were.

            Draco bit his lip, and considered what the best thing to do in this situation was. He could shove all the emotions at Harry and hope he understood, but that would perhaps only worsen matters. Words were the best solution, even though it would take him a lot of time to explain it properly. This was only a beginning.

            But no one else could hear them, as intimate as the words were, and he trusted Harry not to betray him. So there was that much.

            I always had to be the center of my parents’ world when I was a child, Draco said. And I thought I was the center of other people’s, like Greg and Vincent. I probably wasn’t, but I was too selfish and spoiled to make that out.

            Harry nodded. I think that’s perfectly understandable. I knew that I wasn’t the center of the Dursleys’ world, but I was jealous of Dudley because he was.

            Draco smiled slightly at him. So I grew up with the notion that my family’s duty was to pay attention to me and only me. God knows what would have happened if my parents had had another child.

            Harry’s hand felt gently at his. You would have adjusted to having another brother or sister, I think.

            Draco sighed and let Harry comfort him, feeding the uncertainty that he would across the bond.

            Of course, that was partially also your parents’ fault for spoiling you, Harry added, apparently in favor of spreading the blame wherever he could.

            Draco choked a little. Then he shook his head and said, I don’t want to talk about that right now, though. I just want to talk about reasons that I might still be jealous of Teddy, even though I care for him, too.

            Harry nodded in response, and walked with his head bowed while Draco stumbled his way through images of his childhood: the way he had whole boxes of sweets every morning because his mother couldn’t bear the thought that he might go without something to cheer him up as soon as he opened his eyes; the whole separate garden his father had had planted so that Draco could have the freshest Potions ingredients; the brooms that his father had bought him far too young, when it was actually illegal to give those brooms to children. But his parents had done it because they loved him, and wanted him happy, and thought that was the way to make him happy.

            Did it? Harry asked, when Draco had lingered for long enough—he supposed Harry judged—on the image of himself on a broom above the Manor’s pitch.

            Draco shook his head a little. Not so much that as the constant feeling that they were watching and looking out for me, and I was the most important person in their lives. He wrapped his arm around Harry’s waist and drew him close. They were in the entrance of their tent now, and if someone else glanced up and saw them kissing so close to home, Draco really didn’t give a shit. And when this bond happened, I wanted the feeling that you were adding sex and intensity to worrying about my safety and happiness. And letting me in where you locked people out. And when you wanted to stop being everyone’s leader, I wanted to know that you didn’t want out of the role of my lover.

            Harry smiled back at him. You exasperate me sometimes, he said, and although Draco could have felt those emotions or memories passing through the bond if Harry had wanted to do that, he seemed to agree, just like Draco did, that these particular ideas needed to be put into words. You irritate me. I wish that you weren’t so jealous of Teddy and so dismissive of Ron and Hermione and so desperate for children of our own. And some of the things that you did when we were first bonded made me wish that we’d never bonded.

            Draco found himself flinching, although Harry had never hidden his dislike of the bond during those first weeks. But Harry reached out and put his hands on Draco’s shoulders, quieting him, not letting him withdraw.

            But none of that could make up for the happiness I would lose if you vanished out of my life, or if we somehow broke the bond, he said. And I’m glad that you can at least hug Teddy and admit you care about him, and speak civilly to Ron and Hermione. Maybe the rest will come in time.

            Do I get to tell you all the things that exasperate me about you now? Draco said, and didn’t care if he sounded as though he was whining. Harry had already made it clear how he would take that, and no one but Harry would hear him.

            Go ahead, Harry said, lounging back against the flap of the tent. Draco tugged him away from it and laid him on the bed.

            You’re reckless, and short-tempered, and short-sighted when it comes to accepting new people into the meadow, and too much focused on other people who aren’t me, and stubborn, Draco said, poking him in the chest, and then leaning down to kiss him. That was not the greatest advantage of the bond, that they could kiss and speak at the same time, but it helped. But you’re getting better.

            Harry laughed into his mouth, and for a while, there was no more talking, not even through the bond.

*

            Sasunarufan13: This is one of the weirder consequences of the wild magic, yes. Hopefully Nuisance can fit in without too much trouble.

            SP777: I got the inspiration partially from the Patronus, yes.

            I know! It’s getting to the point that it does overwhelm me, sometimes.

            qwerty: Problem is, if he’s that powerful, he could cause trouble for them later, or just force his way into the meadow. They’re probably better off making sure he’s grateful to them, just from the cynical POV.
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Here to Live and Die