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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Sixteen—Riding the Lightning
            Primrose dodged.
            Harry wheeled after her, the storm pouring along with him. The thunderrin and Primrose were undulating up and down like a unit, he saw, Primrose not just riding the sweep of the thunderrin’s wings but moving with it. Every ripple that traveled through its body was shared with hers, and some of them might have begun there.
            And the thunderrin’s magic would include knowing what to do in storms.
            Harry snarled and clasped his hands together. He had no choice now, he thought. Primrose had intended every one of them to be fodder for her thunderrin. He had to kill her.
            He retreated up and into the clouds. He could feel where Ron was, the place where his winds began to die. Hermione would be with him. By now, he thought all the riders were off the plains and back inside the protection of the meadow.
            Which would mean that the thunderrin would think they had an open pathway to attack, unless they could feel the portion of the storm that Harry had dedicated to holding the meadow and its houses and tents safe.
            He would probably never have a better chance.
            Harry clasped his hands together again and began to draw once more on the winds he had personally breathed in and changed. They whirled in the confined space of his hands, buzzing and hissing in his lungs, slicing past his ears so fast that he would have bled if he was less connected to them. Harry focused and made them realize what he wanted. He could visualize it in his mind, but more to the point, he could feel it. He knew the way the air patterns would move, how the clouds would split, and what would fall out of them.
            When he was sure that he had imprinted the bloody vision on his mind’s eye, he opened his hands and let the storm surge out of them. He fell with it, but hid in a cocoon of clouds that ought to make him invisible to anyone beneath him.
            The thunderrin had got back into their V formation, moving faster now. Primrose was a good distance in front of the next pair, leaning forwards. Harry could see the way her eyes focused, past the rain, and was sure that she had some way to clear it from her vision or ignore it. The thunderrin had survived the storms, too, and Harry ought to remember that. What really mattered was that they couldn’t survive the storms he could deal out, the unnatural ones that didn’t come from the usual wild magic of Hurricane.
            Harry set about showing them what he could do.
            A net of lightning sprang into being, writhing around his fingers and spreading out faster than he had thought it could go, aglow with fury. It leaped at the thunderrin, and although it was hard to contain, since it wanted simply to fry them and dissipate, Harry managed. The V formation began to split, some thunderrin undulating towards the ground, others rising, and Primrose turning her mount around again to face in his direction.
            Around the lightning, Harry closed the net of wind.
            He had envisioned it shaped like a huge clam shell, coming into being with its back next to the thunderrin and its hinge facing them. As he wove, the wind sprang up and away from their wings. They could flap them, but they had nothing to flap them against. They fell.
            Then the wind dashed beneath them, and flung them towards the back of the imaginary clam shell, which was the net of lightning.
            Harry smiled as he watched them die, smelled the burning skin and something worse than that, and felt the useless slap of something heavy and wet and mossy against the back of his mind. He suspected his bond with Draco protected him from having his thoughts invaded by a thunderrin.
            He noticed they also died without a sound, including a scream from any of the humans. Whatever happened when a human bonded with a thunderrin, it didn’t seem to be the same kind of equal and responsive partnership that happened between a rider and its beast. Except for Primrose.
            Primrose was looking up towards him now, her hand still resting on her thunderrin’s neck, and then she darted to the side and up and away, out of the nets that Harry was tightening around her companions. She aimed straight for him. Her thunderrin climbed faster than he’d seen any of them do before, its wings almost stiff instead of rippling.
            Harry held up a hand. He called the lightning again, and he kept it swirling around his wrist and his arm, building and building on itself, until the sparks spat in his face and he could feel it yanking at and testing his control.
            Then he let it go.
            The lightning sped straight down towards Primrose, so true and fast that Harry didn’t see how she could dodge it. The thunderrin didn’t try, either. It came to a stop in midair, or as much of a stop as you could do when you were floating, and stretched its wings wide, its mouth gaping open and its tail curving up.
            The lightning struck the tail and flared wildly away along it. Harry watched the arrow of brillance that hit the ground and left a smoking hole in the grasses.
            He supposed it was silly to think that the thunderrin would have lived on Hurricane for all their lives and not found a way to resist the storms.
            “You might as well give up.”
            Primrose was still a long distance below him and away from him, but Harry could hear her voice as clearly as though she was standing beside him. He looked down again, and saw her holding a rope that looked like it was made of gleaming silver. She stroked it and smiled up at him, then began to toss it around her head.
            “We are too strong for you,” she said. “Even with most of my people dead just now, there are others back in my dwelling who are bonded to the thunderrin, and the thunderrin breed faster than your riders or mummidade—as you’ve seen. There is nothing disgraceful about losing to me, you know. It is simply the way that things must happen, when one species confronts a stronger one.” She crouched a little, and then swung the lasso straight at Harry. The way it came, uninfluenced by wind, Harry knew it was magical, and therefore it could reach him and hurt him even though it didn’t seem as though it should be able to.
            But he didn’t try to evade it, either. He was tired of running from Primrose and her stupidity.
            He called wind instead, and clasped it in his hands. The rope neared him, the loop growing bigger and bigger, getting ready to settle over his neck and clasp his arms to his sides.
            Harry flung out his hands, and called all the wind down that he could, including from the parts of the storm that he had divided earlier to guard the meadow and wait in the high sky for any thunderrin that tried to get away from his traps.
            The wind whirled and dived and scraped, and more power flew away from him than had done before. Harry felt himself weaken. He was falling, maybe, or he thought he was. He had let so much strength go with the wind that he had no idea where he was. He couldn’t take his eyes from the scene in front of him anyway.
            The rope’s loop tore apart into flying embers and sparks, and the silver shredded all the way back down the rope into Primrose’s hands. Primrose had a complicated expression on her face, staring at Harry as if she had no idea what was coming next, but already knew that she would prefer not to face it.
            Then the rope blew apart, and she blew with it, and her thunderrin went, too, in bloody gobbets so small that Harry lost sight of them after a few inches of falling.
            Harry closed his eyes and smiled. He had protected his meadow from an enemy. He had done what he had promised he would. He almost didn’t care if he fell to his death, because—
            But Draco. Jeremy.
            Harry tried to lift his head and gasp, but it was hard. There seemed to be too much air around him, and not enough in his lungs. He looked down, wondering why he hadn’t hit the ground yet. Had he just been too high? But still, it had been minutes, or it seemed like that, since he had watched his winds destroy Primrose and her thunderrin.
            Then he realized that winds were circling him, bearing him up, holding him a few feet above the ground. He hadn’t used all the wind here, it seemed, although the sky was clear above him and there was no sign of the attackers now.
            “Mate!”
            Ron was hurrying towards him. Harry waved an exhausted arm and slumped back on the bed of air that the winds had made for him. His friend came up and shook his hand, babbling about how all the thunderrin were gone and it was amazing and Ron had only had to destroy a few of them who came towards him and tried to pass into the meadow.
            But Harry couldn’t listen to it more than that. His eyelids fell shut, and he turned his head, and he felt the reassuring bubble at the back of the bond that told him Draco and Jeremy were still there, and safe. Then he was gone.
*
            Draco turned when the bond sparked to life in the back of his mind. He had spent almost the last full day caring for Jeremy by himself, and watching Harry, and waiting for either one of them to wake up. Jeremy was the only one who had. Draco swallowed. He didn’t know if he wanted to admit to Harry how lonely it had been, how worrying.
            Too late, said Harry’s tired voice. I can feel that, you know, you berk. And it’s good to know that you weren’t just missing me because you had to take care of Jeremy all by yourself.
            Draco said nothing, but stepped up to the bed. He held Jeremy in one arm and couldn’t use both hands to hug Harry, but he wrapped the other arm around his shoulders and held him simply, steadily, tightly. Harry hugged him back, sleepy, and then smiled as Draco put Jeremy on his chest and hurried off to bring some of the antelope meat and soup the riders had made to him.
            I’m fine, Harry said. I only exhausted myself. I’d called up all that storm wind, and then when it went and hit someone, it was like doing it myself, struggling with someone physically. I’d taken that wind into my lungs and breathed it, and it had part of me.
            Draco only shook his head and watched Jeremy kicking and squirming, so much that his feet almost hit Harry in the chin. Harry reached down and tickled him. His face was soft, the bond shimmering like aspen leaves, and Draco finally sighed and relented and said, “I knew you were still alive. I just didn’t know why you’d fainted.”
            “It was a hard thing,” Harry said, and tickled Jeremy, who squirmed and made a noise halfway between a giggle and a whine. “Like killing someone.” He frowned, then began talking in the bond again. Do you think I should mention killing Primrose in front of Jeremy? Maybe it would be a good thing to keep it in the bond for right now.
            Draco had to snort as he laid the bowl of soup on the tray that he was going to bring to the bed and cast a Warming Charm. He had got experienced in both using the trays and in Warming Charms lately, because it was hard to put Jeremy down and eat with both hands most of the time. “He’s going to hear a lot worse than that,” he said. “Like the things that happened in the war on Earth, and the people who die because of the storms. And I think Primrose’s death was entirely deserved.”
            “So do I.” But the bond had darkened, even as Harry held Jeremy close, and that usually lightened his mood as nothing else could do.
            “You do,” Draco said, listening to the bond. He put the tray down on the bed beside Harry and picked up Jeremy again, who wailed because he’d been warm and then it had gone away again. Draco cast a Warming Charm on him, too, and then wrinkled his nose. Jeremy needed a new nappy. Then again, he always did. “But you still wish that you hadn’t had to kill her. Explain that to me, if you can.”
            “I was glad that I did it, that I accomplished it,” Harry said, and looked him in the eyes for a few seconds before Draco had to turn to the bank of moss they’d made into a changing table. Jeremy kicked and squirmed even more as Draco laid him down and reached for his nappy, but Draco didn’t feel those minor kicks as hard as he felt Harry’s eyes on his back. “But I’m sorry that it had to be done. That Primrose couldn’t have bonded with her thunderrin in a different way, or listened to us. Yes, I could regret the necessity even though I also regretted that she’d come after us.”
            Draco frowned in silence as he cleaned Jeremy, draping a small square of cloth over him so that he wouldn’t piss in Draco’s face while he did it. It had only taken one time of that happening for Draco to decide that the piece of cloth would always be in place.
            “I reckon that I don’t see things the same way,” he finally admitted, while the bond pulsed in the back of his head with Harry’s patience. “If someone turned against me, I wouldn’t have any regrets about killing them.”
            “Even if that person was me?” Harry asked quietly.
            “Don’t be ridiculous.” Draco had to pause before he conjured the water that cleaned up Jeremy’s mess, because if he was angry, it would come out too hard and make Jeremy cry again. And Jeremy was content right now, staring at one hand with eyes that still had a hard time focusing. “You would never turn against me.”
            “I was just speaking about a world where I could,” Harry said.
            “That world isn’t Hurricane.” Draco finally tucked the new nappy into place, dried up the mess he’d washed away, and then dried Jeremy’s arse with the gentlest Cleaning Charm he knew. Then he picked Jeremy up, holding him on his shoulder, and turned around to face Harry.
            Harry was opening his mouth for yet another philosophical argument, but Draco cut him off and continued speaking. “I can’t imagine you turning against me any more than I can imagine Jeremy doing it. I love you both so much it hurts. That’s enough for me.”
            Harry paused and looked at him thoughtfully. Draco stood his ground. Maybe Harry thought Draco should be open to the possibility for some weird reason. Maybe he thought Draco should learn to love the Weasleys and hate his family if he had to. That was the way Harry thought, and knowing so much more about him now than he had on Earth, Draco could see why. Harry had grown up hearing that the Dursleys were “family,” but they were perfectly awful to him. And he had had arguments with his friends, but they had always come back together again. He could see the good even in people who opposed him.
            Draco couldn’t. He didn’t want to. Harry could be the flexible and moral one out of the pair of them, but it was beyond him. Besides, one mind so open that all sorts of rubbish could fall into it was enough in one pair of anything, Draco thought.
            “Fine,” Harry said, so softly that Draco honestly wasn’t sure that he’d heard him at first. He reached out and slid a gentle hand down Draco’s cheek, following it by brushing his knuckles against his chin. “You win. Now, can I hold Jeremy while I’m eating?”
            “You eat first,” Draco said. “I’ve changed him, which means I get to hold him right now. And you need some food in you. You haven’t had anything for more than twenty-four hours.”
            “We never have found out whether Hurricane’s day actually is the same length as ours down to the second,” Harry muttered, but he turned to his food, picking up a strip of antelope meat and biting it in half with a snap of his teeth.
            Draco hesitated once, then sat down beside Harry and leaned his head on Harry’s shoulder. “I love you,” he whispered. “And I thought I’d lost you for good. So I’m entitled to be a little fussy.”
            Harry leaned his face against Draco’s. “I thought I might not come back to you,” he whispered. “I almost died knowing I’d defeated Primrose and thinking that was enough. But then I remembered you and Jeremy, and I wanted to come back.”
            Draco stroked a hand down Harry’s back, and watched him as he ate, and felt Jeremy’s weight settling harder into his arm as Jeremy went to sleep. Everything else could wait. For now, this was enough.
*
            “The riders want to talk about what you did.”
            Harry grimaced and nodded at Nuisance’s words. He knew the riders had no great love for the thunderrin, especially since Open Wings had told them the story of what had happened to him and Swoop in the south directly, but they seemed to object to killing just about anything, except animals for food. It didn’t surprise him that they wanted to talk about his murder of Primrose and ensure that it wouldn’t be repeated.
            But when Nuisance led him across the meadow and to one of the big rings of crushed grass where the riders regularly came down and had their beasts lie, Harry paused. He could feel eyes on him, but they didn’t feel unfriendly, the way they had that time the riders were afraid of him getting too powerful. The beasts that had accompanied their riders lay on their backs, kicking up their legs, beaks open to the sky as if rejoicing in the summer. And there were riders dragging rough combs down their tails and picking through their feathers for pests. Open Wings nodded casually to him.
            “Open Wings wants to know if you would do that to any of the meadow’s enemies,” said Nuisance, facing Harry and drumming one hind foot on the ground, so that he sounded like a rabbit kicking something.
            Harry stared at the riders again, but they still didn’t glare at him or talk to each other much in their own language, except a few clicks and trills now and again. He took a deep breath at last and spoke, deciding that he might as well let Nuisance translate both for him and for them. “What, kill them? If they were attacking the meadow, yes. I might not have to do it with all the lightning and rain I used. The thunderrin were a lot tougher than I thought they were.”
            Nuisance bounced in place and sang in the riders’ language to Open Wings. Open Wings nodded back and spread his talons in Harry’s direction.
            “Then he is happy,” said Nuisance, and turned back to Harry and smiled in that way he had, flipping his ears forwards and spreading his front legs as though they had suddenly grown too heavy to bear his weight. “He wanted to know that you would defend the meadow even from fellow humans. Until this point, he was only confident that you could protect it from storms.”
            Harry blinked. “Then—they aren’t upset about the way Primrose died?” He had been sure that was what he was going to get, another moral lecture on how he came across as dangerous to the riders.
            Nuisance stared at him, his tail flipping back and forth and one foot pawing again. Then it stilled, as he leaned in to examine Harry from so close that Harry nearly drowned in his breath. “Why would he be? You know that the meadow is the center of the riders’ lives. Well, these riders’ lives. I have the impression that there are more of them living somewhere else, but I don’t know where, exactly.”
            “I thought—that death isn’t acceptable,” Harry said. “Fighting a storm was acceptable because it isn’t alive.”
            Nuisance cocked his head. “The riders don’t make the same distinctions you do,” he said. “They don’t want anyone who’s with them killed, if they can think and talk—if they have that underlayer. But they attacked you when you first came here, didn’t they? Strangers and outsiders are enemies, and they’re fair game. But once you came up to them and started talking about living here and being part of their lives, then they changed their minds about you. Now it’s Primrose and the other humans who live in the southern plains that they fear and dislike. They don’t think of her death as regrettable because she already proved that she wanted to slaughter them. So they’re happy to know that you don’t let her past when you were with her weigh with you. Or that she’s of your own species, either. They would expect to defend you against strange riders, so they want you to defend them against strange humans.”
            Harry stood there for a second, then smiled and nodded. “Then tell them thank you for me, and that I’m glad to protect the meadow for them. It’s my home now, too, and the home of my bondmate and our child. I wouldn’t want to feel like I was doing nothing for them.”
            Nuisance briefly touched a point of his antler to Harry’s ear. “I don’t think they would think of it as you doing nothing,” he said, and then turned and began to bubble and chuckle to the riders.
            Harry walked back towards the tent, glad that he wasn’t bonded to a rider, so he could think, Am I the only one who really regrets Primrose’s death, and mourns her for what she could have been?
            There was a long stirring in the back of his mind, and then Draco said, Yes, you are. Now, get in here. Jeremy’s asleep, and I want to fuck your brains out for leaving me behind yesterday.
            Harry half-smiled and began to walk faster. I thought you agreed to be left behind?
            I didn’t agree to be frightened that way.
            Harry nodded, but his mind was still on Primrose, and the way she’d looked exploding, along with her thunderrin, and the way he’d felt falling from the sky.
            He would do it again if he had to, but that didn’t mean he wouldn’t regret it.
            Maybe that was a way of holding onto his humanity. Or his conscience, since humanity seemed to mean less on Hurricane. As long as he regretted killing, he wouldn’t do it indiscriminately.

            You don’t do anything indiscriminately. Except tease me.
            Harry sped up his steps again. He had his regret, and his conscience, but he also had a partner he could rely on to have different beliefs, and two children to bring up.
            It was more than he had had a year ago.
*
            Sasunarufan13: A lot of your questions will have to wait until the future to be answers, unfortunately, but yes, Nuisance went into the dome with the rest of them. And Draco had mixed feelings about letting Harry go off, but he would rather stay with Jeremy than have someone else do it.
            SP777: The island may or may not play a part in the future. I haven’t decided.
            And thanks. Draco won’t always stay in the role of nurturer, but this time, he wanted to be there.
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Here to Live and Die