Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

Reap the Hurricane	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 11499 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

Chapter List
- 14
- 15
- 16
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Fifteen—Having It Out

            “The goats call themselves mummidade, and they’re sentient.”

            Harry had thought he was prepared, after all. He and Malfoy had discussed which ideas about the mummidade were the most important to tell the others immediately, and they had waited half a day to see if Andromeda would mention them to anyone else. But although the Weasleys looked rather coldly at Harry and Malfoy from time to time—always excepting Ron, who was too much Harry’s friend, and Ginny, whose life they’d saved, and Charlie, who was too enchanted with the egg—they didn’t say anything about the goats. So Malfoy had suggested they speak just before the evening meal, when people tended to drift together around one central fire.

            And they did listen to the first line. But that was when Charlie jumped up and said, “I knew it,” in such a simply gloating tone that Malfoy snorted and Harry smiled before he could help himself.

            Maybe it was the snort and not Charlie’s words that set Bill off, but he sprang to his feet and addressed his brother. “You would be,” he hissed. “You would be happy that there’s another species of creature out there that we can’t hunt.”

            “Shouldn’t hunt,” Malfoy said. “Unless you’re advocating murder as well as loss of self-control.”

            Bill spun to face him. Harry sat up, staring. Perhaps it was because he had concentrated on Bill’s actions instead of his face so far, but he knew that the scars hadn’t looked that bad the other day. Now they stretched further than ever across Bill’s face, from his ear around his jaw and up the other side, and they glowed a ferocious white that made them look like hot iron. Harry reached out and grabbed Malfoy’s arm.

            Maybe we shouldn’t antagonize him, Harry thought, and knew the thought would be heard.

            He hasn’t learned, Malfoy said back, his voice flavored with a snarl that Harry thought Bill only wished he could make. Nothing will make him learn, not even public humiliation, until we make him talk it out and the others realize how stupid he is.

            “You’d know a lot about murder, wouldn’t you, Malfoy?” Bill asked softly, treading a few steps closer. His feet were bare, and Harry didn’t think it was for the same reason that Teddy kept running off that way. “When you turned on the school that sheltered you and let the Death Eaters in, that was murder. What one person commits, he really shouldn’t advocate against others doing.”

            “I don’t know about that.” Malfoy sat back instead of rising, eyes locked on Bill’s face. “Since you seem convinced that we’re going to betray you but you’re intent on doing it to us.”

            Bill said nothing, but Harry could feel the anger that shook him, tearing through him like the waves of wild wind tearing above the waves of wild grass. He took a long, slow step forwards, as if stalking Malfoy. Harry started to rise.

            Malfoy reached out and gripped his arm. Harry subsided. The magic was soaring around him, making the grass ruffle, and he could feel Malfoy’s extending from his left hand, but so far, no one had actually touched anyone else. Malfoy was probably right that they shouldn’t be the first to take it to a physical level.

            “How dare you,” Bill whispered in a rich, guttural voice. “As if I would want to betray my daughter. My wife. My family.”

            Malfoy smiled at him. “But I’m not one of those, and neither is Potter, and now I see that bringing you meat doesn’t make you think well of someone, either.” Abruptly, he rose, and Harry stood up with him before he knew that was what he’d planned. Maybe he hadn’t, and the bond had planned it for him.

            “The wild magic is changing you,” Malfoy said, leaning forwards. “But it’s changing you into something else, not the same kind of creature it’s making us, and you won’t control your excesses! You want someone else to do something instead. What, you don’t know. First the whole problem was lack of meat, and now you claim it’s lack of shared blood, but if that was the case, you’d be attacking Potter, too. But no, it’s really that you see us in control of our magic and you aren’t, and that infuriates you. But no one else can control this for you, you idiot. Do it yourself, or you’ll die, and probably other people with you.”

            Bill showed his teeth. Harry felt the stirring and pulling back of the other Weasleys for the first time. They had watched in shock as Bill went after him and Malfoy the other day, but they hadn’t thought that it was as bad as this. Maybe, now that Bill looked like an animal and Malfoy had provided them with the explanation, they were seeing the world the way it really was.

            “Bill.”

            That was Fleur, standing up with Victoire on her hip. She got between Bill and Malfoy and Harry. Harry saw Charlie stand up from the corner of his eye, and knew that was another thing that had changed. Before, none of the Weasleys had shown any anxiety about leaving Bill alone with his wife and daughter.

            “You are changing,” Fleur whispered to him, her accent thickening. “Theez eez not you. You are giving up. I will not give up.”

            Bill looked at her with distant, savage eyes. Fleur only moved closer to him. Harry had his doubts about the wisdom of that, but on the other hand, he was certain he could snatch Fleur to safety before Bill hurt her or Victoire, if he tried. So he remained ready with his wind, and watched, and waited.

            “You know that Greyback changed me,” Bill said, with a snap of his jaws that let Harry see how the top one had moved out of alignment with the bottom one, as if extending into a muzzle. “You know what I am.”

            “What you were,” Fleur corrected him, as shining and unafraid as a phoenix. “Not what you are. Theez eeez not you.” And she reached out and laid a hand on Bill’s arm as though willing him to feel her, instead of whatever paranoid fantasies he had concocted in his head.

            Bill started, and struggled, and closed his eyes, and seemed for a moment as though he would resist, as though he would explode. Harry watched. He still didn’t know if it would work, when Bill had kept attacking and fussing and whining through every attempt made to placate him.

            Perhaps, though, if they’d had Fleur with them in the audience yesterday, their confrontation with Bill would have gone differently.

            “I’m changing,” Bill whispered.

            “But you can control eet,” Fleur said. She shifted closer, and Victoire leaned over from her shoulder and watched her father with wide, round eyes. “I believe that. I believe what ‘e says, this Draco Malfoy. If ‘e can ‘ave wild magic and can control eet, then you can control the changes eet makes to you. You are strong.”

            Malfoy stirred at Harry’s side, and Harry knew that he disliked the implicit comparison Fleur was making. Harry leaned close enough to let his breath touch Malfoy’s cheek, and thought back, It’s only what you said yourself, in slightly different words.

            Malfoy remained poised on the edge of trouble for a minute more, then relaxed. His chin came down to rest on Harry’s head. His arm curved around Harry’s shoulders and dragged him roughly in. Harry tensed, then told himself it wasn’t really because any potential movement would set Bill off and he should stop acting as if that was it. He managed to relax and lean his head on Malfoy’s shoulder, as seemed to be required at the moment.

            Bill looked at his wife as though he had forgotten the rest of them existed. That was the best thing that could have happened, in Harry’s eyes. “But if I’m changing because of the bite, then I can’t,” he said.

            “You were not beeten,” Fleur said, and seemed to have grown taller, the way Harry had sometimes seen Dumbledore look when he was angry. “You were scratched. That eez not the same! That eez the wild magic! You will not give up!” Now she shook Bill, hard enough that he started to open his mouth and snarl at her. “The magic eez controlling your mind! Stop eet!”

            Bill flinched and cringed away from Fleur. He reminded Harry of a whipped dog.

            But whipped dogs could still bite. Harry leaned forwards, and knew Malfoy was doing the same thing on his left. He could also see Charlie edging around from the other side, but the knowledge that Malfoy was there was stronger, and quieted his breathing, turned his blood to a gentle flowing, made him less apt to leap or explode.

            After a long struggle, Bill said helplessly, “But can you help me learn to control it? Because I don’t think I can on my own.”

            Fleur smiled and brushed his shaggy hair out of his eyes. Harry wondered how long it was since he had brushed or cut it. “Of course I will,” she said, and held Victoire up so that she could kiss her father. “And Victoire, too.”

            Bill shut his eyes. For a moment, he stood there like a pillar of salt, and then he turned away, walking towards the greenhouses. Fleur kept up with him, and Victoire crawled into his arms, beginning some of the babbling chatter that she used in place of regular words right now.

            Malfoy stirred. Harry silently laughed at him. What, you really expected an apology?

            Malfoy shook his head. Not that. But I did expect some kind of acknowledgment that we were the ones who had helped him to this realization.

            They aren’t going to be grateful to you.

            Malfoy paused, then swung around to face Harry and offered him a dangerous, glittering mouthful of teeth. No, they aren’t, are they? Perhaps that makes it all the better that I have someone with me who will be.

            Harry would have answered, but Hermione turned around with a shake of her head and a sigh, and said, “All right, so you were telling us about these creatures that you call the mummidade. What do they want?”

            Harry found that he had more than enough of a challenge on his hands trying to explain to Ron and Hermione and the rest what the mummidade were and their unique concept of personal identity, without Malfoy cracking jokes in his head every few seconds.

*

            Draco stood quietly behind Potter’s shoulder. At Granger’s request, they had come out to the edge of the camp again and would try to contact Hornlock.

            Draco didn’t think she understood that simply summoning the mummidade wouldn’t work. What could they do, think of them and hope the wild magic would carry the image to them? Hornlock had come seeking him and Potter, not the other way around, and hadn’t left any contact information.

            But it was still good to be away from the humming center of the camp, where the Weasleys asked each other silent questions about Potter and Draco and commiserated with themselves about how difficult it would have been to confront their werewolf. It was good to be with Potter, who stood with his arms folded and his frown harsh and silent.

            Draco touched his shoulder. He didn’t need to, not with the bond flowering between them and making them aware of each other’s emotional state every time they blinked, but it was still a luxury, and something he wanted to do. Two years since the war, and still he wasn’t used to freedom to move around. The Ministry and their attempts to imprison him were partially responsible for that, of course.

            Potter started and turned his head. “We’re supposed to be concentrating on Hornlock, remember?” he asked, barely moving his lips. Granger wasn’t far from them, scanning the horizon with one hand over her eyes, and the original Weasley had taken the opposite direction to scout, so it would have made more sense to speak silently. Draco held Potter’s gaze and smiled. Potter rolled his eyes. “We’re already making ourselves different enough from the others by being the ones the mummidade contacted.”

            “We didn’t choose that,” Draco said, because he was in a tolerant mood. “And if the others had wild magic, then perhaps the mummidade would have done the same thing with them.”

            “It’s a matter of luck,” Potter said, and then caught his breath. Draco saw why at the same moment. A gleam of white had appeared in the distance, not-there and then there against the golden-green grass. Potter shook his head. “I think there’s three of them this time. So it’s not Hornlock.”

            Draco nodded. That was hard to remember, that Hornlock could only exist if the same two mummid came to them; three would mean not Hornlock-plus-one, but an entirely new person.

            The mummid came walking on all fours, instead of bounding, flying, the way Draco knew they could, and by then Granger had seen them too and was murmuring and shrieking. Weasley had drawn his wand and taken up a protective position behind Granger. Draco felt a pang of sympathy with him. He was the one who had to hang back and support the excitable person in a crisis, the way that Draco had to do with Potter.

            Draco sneered and turned to face the mummid directly. If he was feeling sympathy for Weasley, then he had gone far too long without thinking about all the reasons there were to despise the redheads.

            The mummid in the lead was the gold-horned part of Hornlock, but neither of the two mummid behind him were familiar to Draco. He thought one of them might be female, since her stomach bulged and swayed. They stopped when they saw Draco and Potter and turned their heads to the sides, two to the left, one to the right.

            “Do you realize how important this is?” Granger was bouncing up and down in place, clapping her hands and looking as if she would have given everything for a piece of parchment and a quill. “This is the first time that wizards have ever met non-humans who could speak to us! I have to—”

            “Except the centaurs,” Potter said, apparently without taking any of his attention from the new mummid, “and the merfolk, and the goblins.”

            Granger stopped bouncing and started blushing. Draco smiled in spite of himself. Sometimes it was nice to have a partner who had these intricacies of friendship among the Gryffindors, because he was the only one who could make them actually stop in their tracks.

            Weasley smiled, too, but he cut off the smile when he noticed Draco was watching. That pleased Draco, because it meant he was the one who could turn his head loftily away, and seem gracious instead of pissy.

            The three mummid arranged themselves in a triangle formation, the gold-horned one in front, the other two an equal distance behind him and from each other. Then the gold-horned one stamped his front hoof and extended his tongue. Potter went forwards to meet him, and Draco followed, wading through the grass. So much of it had been trimmed short around the camp now that he had forgotten what a chore it could be to walk in it.

            They knelt down in front of the mummid. The gold-horned one shut his eyes, and his tongue’s two forks split, one extending straight ahead to touch Potter’s hand, and one to the side to catch Draco.

            Draco blinked, wondering why the mummid hadn’t joined themselves together, but reasoned that they probably knew each other and had done the necessary linking before they showed up. He accepted the touch of the saliva on his hand, and used the other to brace himself against Potter’s shoulder as they knelt there.

            Potter shut his eyes and moaned aloud when the power flowed into them this time, like grounded lightning strikes. Draco licked his ear before he thought about what he was doing, and then the mummid’s communication swept him away in the same direction.

            He could feel the leaping, the grasses whispering past him, stroking his skin, touching his hooves, making his horns weigh less than they really did as sparks of magic danced out from the grass onto his head. He concentrated, and spoke the best translation of the name aloud before Potter could. “Grassgifted.”

            He leaned back, and Potter did the same thing beside him, giving him a look that briefly made Draco wish they were alone. But Granger seized the name and dropped to her knees in front of Grassgifted.

            “Will you speak to me?” she asked. “Please? I know that you don’t really think of me as intelligent, but I am.”

            Potter snorted. “They don’t understand English, Hermione. And your communication would be as limited and hard to understand as the first part of Hornlock’s was for us when Charlie captured him.”

            “What about if I joined with Ron?” Granger reached up and back to Weasley’s elbow. “If we cast a spell at the same time and they saw that we’re a pair, too? Then they might change their minds.”

            Grassgifted turned their heads in multiple directions, and Draco snickered a little at the puzzlement coming from them. Granger and Weasley now stood together like a pair to be acknowledged, but Grassgifted could still feel no magic from them. “It’s not going to work unless you can bond with the magic of Hurricane,” he told them, and gave in to the temptation to lean his chin on Potter’s shoulder after all.

            Granger frowned. Draco watched her as her brain ticked through a few different possibilities, and still came to none of the ones she wanted.

            “We’ll have time to speak to them, Hermione.” Weasley petted her hair and looked at the mummid. “For the moment, why don’t we leave Harry and Malfoy here and let them do what they said they would? I’d rather go work in the greenhouses.”

            Granger tilted her head up stubbornly. “I want to listen.”

            Weasley sighed, kissed her head, and walked down the hill. Draco managed to catch his eye as he went, and nodded to him. Weasley blinked; then suspicion flooded his face, and he renewed his grip on his wand.

            Draco concealed a sigh. He was beginning to doubt the truth of Potter’s proclamation that he would have no trouble getting along with the Weasleys, if he only gave them enough time to accept him. Let him try to extend a good-natured hand and he would only receive stares like this in return.

            “It’s going to be boring, Hermione, really,” Potter said, as he arranged himself into a more comfortable position on the earth in front of Grassgifted and Draco joined him, slinging an arm over Potter’s shoulders to stake his claim. “We’ll speak in our minds. They communicate by magic, the same way they do everything.”

            Granger sniffed. “They can’t do everything by magic,” she said, and pointed to the bulge in the female’s belly that Draco had noticed himself. “Which means they might make some sounds or gestures that I can interpret.”

            Don’t argue with her, Draco murmured to Potter, and took Potter’s chin in his hand, liking the way that it fit his palm. Look at the mummid with me. I think Grassgifted came to us for a specific reason, and not because we called.

            Potter sighed his agreement, and focused. All three of Grassgifted knelt down, apparently to make themselves more comfortable or perhaps imitating Draco and Potter, and the communication began to flow between them again.

            Draco saw a flock of the birds wheeling overhead as the mummidade fled through the grass, and the sight made his stomach heave. There were more birds than he had thought could exist on Hurricane, and they flew faster and had bigger claws than the weapons he could summon. He was starting to think that he and Potter had been lucky in their choice of bird to kill. It had been a small one, and not as aggressive as some of them could be.

            Two of the birds struck down and snatched out pieces of the mummidade. Every mummid they took destroyed people forever; the pairs and trios and larger groups they could form could not exist without the dead individuals. The birds circled away, already snatching off horned heads and digging their beaks down their necks to eat out the insides, but more took their place, and the air was full of the clash of wings and leaping magic and the fear. The mummidade milled and soared and turned in multiple directions, but the birds’ magic blew them back into each other, ruined their leaps, turned their neat jumps into tumbles.

            Grassgifted hammered Draco with images of the dead and dying until Draco wanted to break free of the link to clear his head, and then stopped. Draco opened his eyes to the sunlight again, and looked at Potter. “Do you know what they were trying to prove with that?”

            “Not prove, not that so much,” Potter said, looking thoughtfully at Grassgifted, who stared steadily back with all three of their heads at the same level. “But to propose. They want us to be their allies, to fight against the birds.” He ignored Granger’s harsh squeal.

            “We barely destroyed one,” Draco said, and looked at the mummid. Their eyes looked somewhere exactly between him and Potter, and he was sure Grassgifted saw the expressions on their faces, although they probably didn’t understand them. “How are we going to do it again, on birds that are that numerous?”

            “I might have an idea,” Potter said, and took firm hold of Draco’s hand. Draco let him do it, because what else did he have to lose? They were already joined by the magic and in the eyes of the mummidade.

            Potter closed his eyes and let forth a warbling, spilling wind that twined around Grassgifted. Their eyes widened, and Draco knew what they were thinking about immediately, if only because it was what Potter was thinking about.

            “You can’t use the wind that way,” Draco said.

            “Why not?” Potter eyed him. “The birds’ magic is in the wind, and that’s one reason they can deter the mummidade, because it’s stronger than the magic in the grasses that they take advantage of. If I can manipulate the wind—”

            “Not that much,” Draco said. “Not by yourself.”

            Potter opened his mouth to argue, but Draco pressed a hand on his shoulder, and Potter fell silent, staring at him. Draco shook him a little. “Just listen, for once in your stubborn life,” he said. “The mummidade are offering us a long alliance. Not for one plan. Not for spending all our effort and time on one chance that might or might not work. This happens several times a year, I think.” He had no idea how he knew that, but it was true that the fragmented images that Grassgifted had given them had shown the grass in different colors than the gold and green that seemed to ornament Hurricane’s spring. “We can’t do it once and expect to take care of all the birds. More would come.”

            Granger opened her mouth to say something, but Draco looked at her, and she shut up. She still vibrated with the desire to speak, but Draco thought she would probably leave him and Potter alone for the present.

            Potter nodded, at last. Draco smiled at him. “But we can accept the alliance, and tell them that we’ll help defend them from the birds,” he continued.

            “Really?” Potter cocked his head. “The others might object to that. Or at least to us being the ones to accept it.”

            Draco flicked a claw lightly up and down the side of Potter’s neck, enough to dent the skin but not draw blood. “They’re already desperate, and they resent having to depend on us. But they have no choice, here, because we’re the only ones that the mummidade see as being like them. If they become our allies, then they might bring benefits to us, too.”

            Potter spent a long moment repeating the images that Grassgifted had given them, images that showed no way the mummidade could help humans, but Draco reminded him that these were not the only mummid they might negotiate with, and in the end, Potter sighed and turned back to Grassgifted.

            He and Draco used the same image, of warm, drowsy sleep in the morning, to signal their pleasure and acceptance in the offer.

            Grassgifted rose at once, in a trioed leap, and vanished into the grass. Potter blinked, then laughed. “On their way to tell the rest of the herd.”

            Draco nodded. “And now we should tell the rest of ours.”

            “Yes,” Granger said, and shot to her feet. “You should.” She was already marching towards the camp, hair flying behind her like a flag.

            Potter grimaced. “Because that’s gone so well so far,” he murmured, but let Draco pull him to his feet.

*

            SP777: Most of the Weasleys were facing pretty bad lives thanks to the Ministry—arrested several times over, like Bill was, or discriminated against because they didn’t have enough money to pay the bribes—and wanted to start over somewhere else.

            unneeded: Because the wild magic’s effects on the others are more subtle, there are probably things happening now that the rest of them don’t know about yet.

            moodysavage: Harry feels more embarrassed by it, and so is fighting it harder. But you’re right that he gets a lot of contact from Draco already.
- 14
- 15
- 16
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

Reap the Hurricane