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.

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Chapter Fifteen—The Flight North

            Harry twisted his body and caught Hermione as she almost dropped from the clouds for the fifth time. She was gasping, her hair flying around her, and her cheeks so red from the wind that for a moment Harry thought he knew what she would look like if she ever wore makeup.

            “Okay?” he asked her gently, as he set her in the grass, and his winds withdrew from Hermione to gambol around him. They didn’t move slowly, or do anything that showed they knew what had happened. Harry shook his head at himself a moment later. The winds only changed their speed in response to how much magic and will he put into them, or in response to the mysterious magical laws of the planet. There was no reason to think that they would recognize human tragedy, when they had caused quite a bit of it.

            “Yes.” Hermione shook her head, swallowed, and then straightened up. “That chair idea sounds like a good one after all,” she said. “I thought I could just stretch out and fly on the wind the way you and Malfoy do.”

            She looked so grey that Harry squeezed her shoulder. “Because you can’t do one thing doesn’t mean you can’t do others,” he pointed out gently. “I know that I could never have handled the politics in the camp the way you do.”

            She blinked at him. “But you were the leader.”

            “And what did I do when things got uncomfortable?” Harry snorted, and ignored the glee of Draco dancing up and down in the back of the bond. He could have been gleeful about the way Hermione had practically fallen from the winds, or he could be gleeful about what Harry was admitting, but Harry didn’t really want to listen to either one right now. “I went away. ‘Leading,’ sure, I wasn’t idle, but I also didn’t want to deal with some of the demands that the others made on me.”

            Hermione looked at him closely, and Harry could see her reevaluating some of his past behavior. Then she nodded. “As long as you don’t mind putting the winds into the chair-shape? Do you think—you can convince them to stay like that, can’t you?”

            Harry laughed and wrapped his hands around each other, visualizing a chair like the ones Hermione had used in her own dining room before they left the wizarding world. “Yes, I can,” he said. “You have to be afraid of me getting distracted by something before I would drop you.” He gestured behind her.

            Hermione raised her eyebrows, but arranged her robes around her to try and sit comfortably. “You didn’t have to tell me that.”

            “I’d prefer not to have secrets from you, or Ron, either,” Harry said quietly, meeting her eyes. He was uncomfortably aware that he and Draco still hadn’t mentioned Rasatis or anything to do with her, but he was shivering with the intensity of what he wanted to say. At least he would be able to tell them the truth once they were away from camp and all the people who might hear what he was saying and react without giving him the chance to explain. “I want to tell the truth.”

            Hermione watched him with a small smile for a minute, and then patted his hand. “I knew you didn’t want to abandon us,” she said. “And Ron was mostly afraid that you would become so caught up in the bond with Malfoy your emotions towards us would change.”

            Harry shook his head. “They have changed, but they wouldn’t lessen.” No way he could conceal the first part of that, when even the way he interacted with Ron and Hermione in the wizarding world had changed in the past few years.

            Hermione touched his shoulder this time. “Good. Now.” She shifted her bottom a little, and Harry added some firmness to the winds. “How does this bloody chair work?”

*

            Draco could get along with Weasley and Granger. That was not the problem. Especially since Harry was sweeping both Weasley and Granger in specially-constructed chairs of wind, and he and Harry, the experienced flyers, were a good distance ahead. The roaring wind around them would probably prevent Weasley and Granger from eavesdropping even if they wanted to.

            But getting rid of the persistent feeling that they slowed him and Harry down, that they clung and dragged on them…that was another matter.

            Do you still dislike them for the same reasons that you did when we were children?

            Draco turned over on his back. So far this morning, Harry had flown with his face straight ahead, only turning back for quick looks at his friends and smiles at Draco. Draco had wondered when he would challenge the cloud of emotions that he could feel brewing in the back of Draco’s head.

            Dislike has little to do with it, he answered. They’re like Teddy, except not small enough to accept me in the thoughtless way Teddy does.

            Harry snorted and turned over to match him. Draco was almost sure Granger’s face turned green as she watched them handling the winds so casually, and he wanted to smirk. So you’ll have to work to get along with them, the way you did with Andromeda. Is that so horrible?

            Draco rolled his eyes. You’re missing the point, as usual.

            Sorry. I know I do that a lot.

            Draco scowled at the clouds racing by ahead of them, the only things to stain the elaborate dark blue shell of the sky. He couldn’t have asked for a better partner than Harry in most ways, but would giving him someone with just a little more pride have been impossible?

            I mean, they’re more people that I have to share you with, that you pay attention to when you could be paying attention to me.

            Is this some special sickness of the sky or something? Harry demanded, flipping over so that he hovered directly above Draco. Draco eyed the way their bodies matched and wondered what would happen if he moved his hips up and down—specifically, whether Granger and Weasley would probably fall out of their chairs trying to avert their eyes. The only time you react this way is when we’re distant from the camp, and then suddenly you’re all possessive. Wouldn’t it make more sense for you to do that when I’m surrounded by lots of other people who have a claim to my attention?

            Don’t tell me which of my emotions make sense, Draco said, but he did have to frown. Yes, what was it that made flying seem more something he wanted to do alone with Harry than something he wanted others to share in?

            Harry snorted at him and swirled away and back to his friends. Draco craned his neck, but he couldn’t see around Harry to the expression on their faces right now, and so couldn’t know how they had reacted to the sight of Harry above him. He sighed.

            Not that it would give them an accurate picture of what we’re like anyway, with you being on top.

            Harry’s half of the bond turned red. Draco flipped himself over, so that he could watch the plains wash by beneath them. They’d seen nothing for the two hours of their flight yet but golden grass, and sometimes small, rippling hills. Draco watched for a sight of the mummidade, and the rabbit-like creatures as well, though he really doubted he could see them from this height. They probably turned thin the minute a shadow passed over them, anyway.

            Gold, and gold, and blue. That was the description the first Unspeakables to explore the planet had made of Hurricane, and Draco could see why. Unless you had been to the sea or the field of silver flowers, you would think they were the only colors that existed here.

            But what else might be out there, strange and exciting, existing just beyond their range of sight?

            And he and Harry could go find more of it, faster, if they weren’t bound to the slow pace that Harry’s friends needed.

            Who knows whether we would make a good job of it? Harry murmured, diving past Draco, his outstretched fingers brushing Draco’s. Draco watched as Harry dived and looped beneath them, scanning the grass for any sign that an enemy was catching them up. Draco’s throat ached as he watched him. There was so much that he wanted to do and share with Harry, and wouldn’t be able to now that they had someone else with them. This way, we have more eyes, and someone might see something we don’t.

            Draco simply grunted, because he couldn’t disparage Granger’s reasoning skills, and he knew that Weasley had been trained as an Auror before they departed Earth, which meant he might have some observation ability if nothing else.

            So they flew on, and the hills of camp were long gone behind them when they first saw the thing that would change the rest of their lives on Hurricane.

*

            It was Hermione who saw it first, utterly to Harry’s unsurprise. He had to concentrate on the winds that held his friends up, and the winds that scouted ahead of them, and the fact that birds might come after them at any moment or they might feel a sign of the force to the north, and so he wasn’t paying as much attention to the ground as he otherwise would have.

            “Look.”

            The wind brought the words to his ear, or Harry wouldn’t have heard it. He turned his face downwards at once, though, and saw what had Hermione almost leaning out of her chair in rapt contemplation.

            The plains turned and unscrolled beneath them, and there, there, in the heart of them, on a small hill that barely rose above the rest of the ground, was a shining thing.

            Harry saw walls in those first startled moments, walls and squares that reminded him of houses. And then he shook his head, and the shining separated into two distinct groups of shapes. The first one was square and did look like houses huddled inside a wall, but the next thing was a long, oval shape that looked like water. It was the first lake Harry had seen on Hurricane, but no streams flowed into it. It simply lay there.

            Draco cut the winds that held him, dropping towards it. Harry adjusted the position of Ron and Hermione’s chairs, and they went down.

            Harry did watch as they dropped, because this was more than likely inhabited by someone, and the last thing they needed was a trap springing on them. But nothing moved in the houses as they landed, and nothing in the water.

            Which wasn’t water, now that Harry could see it more closely. It didn’t ripple, and it didn’t smell of water, and the edge of the oval was perfectly level with the edge of the ground, not dipping into even a slight bank. But he couldn’t tell what it was, only that it was smooth and silver and glinted and flashed in the sun.

            Hermione ran towards it. Harry threw up a barrier of wind in her way instinctively, and she turned around to glare at him, a glare that became sheepish a moment later. “Sorry,” she murmured. “I know I shouldn’t have done that. I just—got excited, that’s all.”

            Harry nodded his brisk acceptance of her apology, and moved forwards beside her to examine the oval. Ron was spreading out in rearguard, keeping an eye on what wasn’t houses, after all, only squares of raised stone, roofless and open to the elements. Draco had spread out to the left, and Harry could feel the bond thrumming as he stared at the silver thing.

            “Well,” Ron said, when they’d all spent minutes standing there and nothing had happened. “Isn’t someone going to touch it?”

            “You go right ahead, Weasley,” Draco said. “It would be amusing to watch it eat your hand.”

            Harry rolled his eyes at him, and Ron actually grinned. Maybe he’d expected something like that, when he decided to speak; Harry didn’t know. At least Hermione nodded and said, “We need it to test it with something. But no flesh. Accio stone.”

            A small stone rose from the nearest wall and whizzed towards her, landing with a plop in her hand. Ignoring Draco’s mutter about how she could have killed someone if her Summoning Charm had been misdirected, Hermione leaned across the silver oval and dropped the stone in the middle of it. Harry watched it fall, looking like a pebble heading towards a pond for all he could tell.

            The stone struck the silver thing in the middle and lay there for a moment—long enough, Harry thought, to prove that the surface was solid, whatever it may have looked like and whatever reflections moved in it towards the bottom. The air seemed to ripple and waver and bound above the stone and beneath it for an instant.

            Then the stone bent. It became what looked like a curve of grey, bending inwards and growing smaller and smaller as it swirled away into the depths of the oval. Harry knew the oval was solid by now, but the stone sank through it even so, going down and down, smaller and smaller as it traveled, until finally the grey color of it melted into the silver and he didn’t know if he was squinting after a shadow or the real thing.

            Harry came back to himself to realize that they had all taken a step away from the oval. Hermione shivered a little and wrapped her arms around herself. “Well,” she said. “I reckon that settles the question of whether it would be a good idea to touch it.”

            “Yeah,” Ron said. He turned away, holding a hand over his mouth. Harry wondered if he had seen something during Auror training that resembled that and made him want to be sick.

            “Someone must have lived here, once,” Draco said, his voice distant and his face looking much the same when Harry stole a glance at him. “Perhaps they used that thing for waste disposal. Hard to think what else it would be good for.”

            “Executing prisoners?” Harry suggested, and immediately wished he hadn’t, because it meant that he had to think of human bodies bending and warping in the same way the stone had, going down into the pool like that. Ron made a retching noise, and Hermione backed further away from the edge of the oval, and Draco’s emotions coming through the bond turned the same color as that depthless silver.

            Wonderful timing, genius, Harry said to himself, and felt Draco’s emphatic agreement drifting down the bond.

            “There must be something here,” Hermione said, turning her back on the oval and striding away into the small, square stone walls that lay behind them. “Something that will tell us who they were.”

*

            But there wasn’t. Or else, Draco thought, the things the unknown inhabitants had left behind were not signs they could read.

            There were small and incredibly realistic pictures etched into the stone of the walls: sunrises that differed from sunrises Draco had seen only in their lack of color, and mummidade that looked as if they might walk out of the rock in a moment, and what Draco thought was a map and struggled to make sense of long after the others had grown bored and moved on to more “rooms” elsewhere in the complex of walls. It was a picture of a large, flat square, surrounded by ovals, with lines linking them. Draco tried to glance back and forth between the silver oval in the ground and match its shape with one of the ones on the map, but there was simply too much variation for him to be sure which one of them it was, or even whether it was one of them at all.

            The houses were all open to the air, with the example of one small, square stone box that they found in the center of the ruin. Harry tried to lift the lid with wind, but it stayed where it was, molded and locked on. Draco knelt to peer through one small crack in the stone that he thought water had made. Inside, he caught a glimpse of the same silver flash as the oval. After that, he was glad to back away and leave it alone.

            In the center of one open “house,” full of drifted grass blades and broken seeds, was a spiral set into the earth. Like the pictures in the stone, whoever had made this apparently didn’t feel the medium of their art resisting them. They seemed to have taken exactly what was in their head and put it down in the dirt, with no faltering.

            Draco dared let his hand hover above the spiral, made of a thin line that thickened as it turned outwards from the center, for a long time before he let it come down. It touched nothing but soft, ordinary dirt that crumbled gently between his fingers. He broke the dirt up and looked in silence at the spiral, wondering what kind of feet could have trod that. Or perhaps they had walked on their hands.

            They came out of the place at last no wiser than they had gone into it. Granger was pale and kept brushing at her hair as if she thought some contamination worse than its own frizziness covered it. “At least we’ll know what those silver ovals are if we see any more of them,” she muttered, “and we won’t have to stop and investigate them.”

            “Unless we want to,” Draco said, since Granger need not feel as though she was taking over the world.

            Granger flashed him a look of irritation that Draco drank like sweet wine. “Yes, unless we want to,” she said, and shook her head. “I wish I knew what this meant. I wish I knew where these people had gone.”

            “Look at this.”

            It was Weasley’s voice, of all the voices, and Harry came up and away from the spiral, which he had been studying in turn, as though someone had jerked on a leash. Draco kept track of that, and the spinning emotions in the bond, as they all ran towards Weasley. It was all very well for Harry to leap like that in the middle of a potentially dangerous situation, but would he rally as fast to Draco’s tone if Draco was the one who spoke? Draco thought not.

            Weasley stood next to what looked like a large notch in the ground, as though a chunk of the hillside had simply been removed. Draco knelt so he could look more closely at the edges of the broken grass roots sticking out. They were withered and brown, but he didn’t think they were recently so. This notch had the feeling of something that had happened long ago, like the pictures in the walls.

            But like the pictures in the walls, like the edges of the silver oval, no weathering had marked them.

            “Don’t you see?” Weasley’s voice was low, and he gestured towards the center of the notch. “Don’t you see?”

            Harry shook his head. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, mate. There’s no silver in the center of it, is there?” He was glancing around constantly at all of them, Draco saw, turning his head from side to side as though it were hard to count to three. His eyes would linger on them and then move on, rapid as hawks.

            He thinks we might be in danger. This is the way he looks when he’s protecting someone.

            Draco tried to debate whether he was more honored to be included in that protection or more annoyed that Harry would decide he couldn’t take care of himself, but was distracted by the way Weasley practically snarled at him.

            “Most of the things that lived here could probably fly,” he said.

            “Yes, we know that,” Draco drawled, liking the way Weasley looked at him. Maybe it would lead to Weasley lunging and punching him, and Harry would see, all on his own and through no fault of Draco’s, that there was just no working with some people. “What makes you think the people who lived here could, though?”

            “Look at it from above,” Weasley said roughly, and then nodded to Harry, who was already aloft, using another tendril of wind to scoop Draco up. Draco scowled until he noticed that Weasley and Granger were staying on the ground. He could put up with them coming along if he still received special treatment.

            Harry came to a stop above the center of the notch, and Draco hung beside him, staring. From this height, it was obvious that it was something like an arrow, though not the shape Draco would have associated with one. And it was obvious that it aimed north.

            How did Weasley see that, when he was standing on the ground?

            A lucky guess, maybe, but Draco didn’t think so. Weasley had been able to think his way through the problem, coming up with a way to imagine it from above, and thus to know the best way to convince them.

            When they came back to the earth and Granger and Harry started chattering excitedly about what it might mean, Draco did something that was a private gesture, a private way of acknowledging what Weasley had shown them. It would prove to himself, to no one else, because no one else would understand it or credit him with doing something like this, that he was gracious and not blind to other people’s merit, even people who had been feuding with his family for generations.

            He waited until Weasley was studying the notch with his arms folded and didn’t seem set to notice anything else but the proof of his own genius. Then he bowed to him, a half-bow with his hands stretched out in front of him.

            Weasley caught it, damn him.

            He looked up at once, his hand flashing to his wand, and then just stood and stared at Draco. Draco stood there, staring back, not biting his lip only because he refused to look like a child. He was better than he had been, he repeated to himself, more mature, able to tolerate Harry’s friends. It would have been so much easier if he hadn’t had to, if perhaps he and Harry had come to Hurricane by themselves and not with his friends in tow. So much easier if they had gone on this journey by themselves.

            But then they might not have seen the significance of the notch. And it was information they needed to know.

            So, with Weasley looking at him and eyes so wide and questioning that Draco wanted to scratch himself, Draco did the bow again. With more purpose, this time, and a longer-lasting determination. They were allies, right? They had to be. So he had to ensure, for his own sake, that Weasley would not find him wanting as an ally.

            He straightened up from the bow and turned away, realizing that Harry and Granger had stopped their chatter to look at him. Weasley had a funny little smile on his face that Draco didn’t feel like facing right now.

            “Shall we go?” he asked.

*

            unneeded: Hurricane is far stranger than the Unspeakables who explored it realized. They basically characterized it as, “Boring but dangerous place.”

            And yes, they’re being shockingly mature, aren’t they?

            SP777: Yes, the mock flight was the first scene, so there you are.

            And thanks! I think the pacing is about right for the type of story that it’s turning out to be, even though it’s not the sort of story I envisioned.
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Wondrous Lands and Oceans