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 Seventeen—A Mighty Blow

            “We have to make preparations.”

            Harry was the one who said that, and Draco was the one who nodded, rising to his feet. “I can cut some of the stones apart,” he said, his voice gentle and his attention so focused on Harry that Harry felt it strengthen and calm him even more than the bond was already doing. “Would it help us to shelter under them?”

            Harry half-turned, considering. Then he shook his head. “Can you cut larger slabs? Ones that would be difficult for even me to lift?” He widened the bond and sent more emotions down it—there were no other words for the process—to give Draco a notion of how much weight his winds would be able to take.

            Draco cocked his head and thought about that, then said, “I can. Do you think that will be enough to keep the wild magic from lifting them?”

            Harry smiled grimly. “I hope so. I want to say that I know so, but I can only feel the distant strength of these winds, not the way they’ll be when they get here.” Then he groaned and bowed his head into his hands.

            “Harry.” Draco was there, although Harry hadn’t felt him cross the distance between them, laying his hands on Harry’s shoulders. His claws drifted above them, as harmless as blades of grass until Draco told them to cut. “What is it? Is the wind hurting you? Do you need to cut the connection in order to survive?”

            “I’m not sure that I could cut the connection, now,” Harry admitted, lifting his head and shaking it. “No, I was groaning at my own stupidity. Why are we talking about piling up slabs of stone? We’re in the mountains, and they’re less likely to be vulnerable to the strokes of the wind than any pile of cut rocks could be.” He found himself smiling, and Draco smiled back, stroking down his shoulders as though admiring the shape of the bones. “Draco, can you make us a cave?”

            Draco bowed. “Not only can, but will.” He turned around, and his fingers spread out, flaring. The claws hissed and sliced; Harry thought he could hear the air whining, too, as it was cut. Harry wondered for a moment whether the rock in the mountains would prove to be too tough for Draco. He didn’t think that was an unreasonable fear when, after all, the mountains hadn’t been worn down by all the winds that cut across them no matter how hard.

            But it was unreasonable, after all. A chunk of stone fell out, arched and curved like a door, and then Draco began hammering into the rock behind that, making a tunnel.

            Harry nodded and turned to Ron and Hermione, only to pause when he saw their open mouths. “What?” he asked, turning his head. If the winds had already risen somehow, then that would mean that he’d lost some of his connection to the wild magic, since he hadn’t felt them coming closer.

            “You just work together so well,” Ron whispered.

            Hermione nodded. “Why isn’t Malfoy like that when it comes to defending the camp?”

            “Malfoy can still hear you,” Draco said, stepping back as if to examine his work, shaking his head a moment later, and lashing out with both fists at once. The rock fell from the sides of the cave, crumbled into pieces as Draco flashed and sliced, and became dust with a few more slices. Harry sprang to life and sent winds to blowing out the pebbles so that Draco didn’t have to waste more time cutting them up.

            “Because he’s with people who appreciate him, here, and he has me to protect, too,” Harry said quietly, and turned away to watch Draco again. He wanted to be sure that Draco knew his friends hadn’t meant to sound disrespectful.

            They can’t help it, Draco said. It’s implicit in the nature of their relationship with me.

            I thought they didn’t have any relationship with you.

            Exactly. Draco stepped back, held his hands out in front of him one more time, and launched a shudder of wild magic that Harry could feel in his veins. His own fingers ached with it, but he heard the final roar and tumble of some boulder back in the newly-created cavern, and a moment later his winds were floating things out. Harry touched Draco’s arm, not needing the bond to feel the fact that the cave was ready.

            “Come on,” Harry told his friends. “We can discuss this, and worry about it, later. For now, we have a storm to get out of.” And he ducked into the cave with Ron and Hermione right behind him, and Draco acting as rearguard, whispering into his mind.

            You’re more of a hero after all than I knew. You love the big dramatic exit line.

            And you love the fact that you can do something to help, Harry retorted, waiting until Draco had stepped in, and then floating a boulder towards the entrance. He left enough space for a small breeze to travel in and out, to link them with the outside world and give him news of the storm. You’re more of a hero than anyone knew.

            Draco sniffed, but didn’t disagree. Perhaps he might have, though, if Ron hadn’t interrupted. “Mate,” he whispered, his face a little green in the Lumos that he’d conjured on the end of his wand. “What happens if the winds sling a lot of boulders across the cave mouth and we get trapped in here?”

            Harry shook his head. “Boulders heavy enough that I can’t lift them? Then Draco will be the one to cut through the rocks and save us.” He stepped sideways enough that his shoulder bumped Draco’s. “The winds might be able to affect my magic, but they can’t affect his.”

            “Even though they gave it to him in the first place?” Hermione looked at them thoughtfully. “I wish we knew more about how the wild magic of Hurricane worked. You had it before you even came here, Harry, and that means that you’re more akin to the winds. But they gave Draco magic, too. And maybe Ginny, if the way she can talk to the bird is any inclination. Why not the rest of us?”

            Maybe you don’t deserve it.

            Draco didn’t speak those words aloud, which Harry thought was a sign of how grown-up and mature he had become. He let his shoulder continue to rest against Draco’s, and said aloud, “Maybe the process is as random as the patterns of the winds are.”

            “There has to be a key somewhere,” Hermione said. “The way there is to those maps of the ovals.” She sat down and took out her quill and parchment again. Harry reckoned he had no need to ask what she was writing.

            “What—” Ron started to ask.

            And then the storm hit.

            Harry thought later it was like a thunderclap in the suddenness with which it arrived, but that was only true if thunder came from every direction and had no beginning and no ending. The scream of the wind and the rain was strong, but stronger still was the magic, pushing at the boulder over the doorway, pushing at the rock of the mountain, pushing at Harry’s mind until he thought his skull would burst outwards from the pressure. He bowed his head and crouched there, his hands over his ears, his panting so loud that he couldn’t hear anything over that, even the hum of the bond.

            But he could feel it, oh yes. This was the largest storm he had ever felt since they came to Hurricane, and the winds were whirled away from him and into the depths of the sky, where they screamed in ecstasy as the storm danced with them.

            The wild magic leaped in his veins, leaped and surged and soared, and Harry wondered if all his blood would come pouring out in a desperate attempt to join the storm. He reached down and covered his arms with his hands, but he knew that was futile if it really did want to come out. He laughed despairingly.

            Draco was beside him, though, his hand closing down on Harry’s as if he wanted to break the fingers. You are not the magic, he said in Harry’s head, and the shout was loud enough to cut through the pressure of the storm at last. You are you. You are not the wild magic, even if you do use it too much!

            From the sound of it, he had shouted that more than once. Harry took in a shaking breath, and nodded. He could feel the yell of the blood in his veins and the bursting in his chest more clearly than ever, but if he bit his lip and thought about it, he could still that. When it came down to his body, Draco was right. He was human, and contained in skin.

            “Now that you’re all right,” Draco said, and leaned back from him, “can you tell what direction the storm’s coming from?”

            Harry winced at the thought of letting his mind back out unprotected into all that wildness, but Draco’s eyes were implacable, and rationally, Harry knew he was right. There was no reason to sit here cowering when he might have to encounter other storms like this and let his mind venture out, too. Cautiously, he reached out now to see if he could sense the winds.

            The narrow tunnel he had left around the side of the boulder felt like a dangerous gulf, and he had to concentrate to avoid his own consciousness skittering after the winds into the vault of heaven, but he thought he could sense a tension stretched across the sky. He shook his head. “It covers the whole mountains.”

            Draco cursed, softly and steadily. Then he said, “Do you think the enemy we’re hunting sent this to stop us?”

            “That would depend on knowing the enemy’s power and location,” Harry said, and smiled at him. He was feeling along the outer edges of the skein that covered the mountains, to see if he could locate where it ended and if it was extending over the plains, in the direction of Teddy and the rest, but the power drove him down when he ventured too much. He had to stay near the ground and look up at it instead. “But I suppose it’s possible. If it can send birds, it could send this.”

            “I almost wish I could be out in it.”

            Harry started, and then realized that the words hadn’t come from Draco, the way he assumed. They came from Hermione instead, who leaned forwards and looked at the boulder that blocked the cave with a nameless yearning in her eyes.

            It was Ron who snorted and said the words Harry wouldn’t say and had been afraid Draco would. “You’re mad, Hermione. You know the storm would destroy you the minute you set foot in it.”

            Hermione rolled her head over to look at him. “But just think about the knowledge we could learn,” she whispered. “The way the magic could help us!”

            Ron knelt down in front of her and took her chin in his hand. “I know,” he said firmly. “But there’s really no reason to think that we would get immediate or useful magic. Harry’s took a while to get stronger, and Malfoy’s took a while to develop. Think about what’s in front of us, not what could be.”

            It took a second, but the glaze faded from Hermione’s eyes, and she nodded. Harry reached over, squeezing Ron’s shoulder, before he faced the boulder again and wove a barrier of wind behind it that should at least warn them if something tore it away. He had no hopes of being able to chain the boulder to the earth if the storm decided to make it fly.

            “Draco, can you help me make this place more comfortable?” he asked, and then glanced around and realized that Draco was kneeling and staring at the boulder with eyes glazed the same way Hermione’s had been. “Draco?”

            He called along the bond before he got a response. Draco shook his head slowly and turned to him. “I can cut the stone so we can have little hollows to sleep in,” he said. “I can’t promise that we’re going to be comfortable. Maybe Weasley and Granger know better Cushioning Charms than I do.”

            Harry nodded, and reached out through the bond again. Are you all right?

            Perfectly. Just thinking.

            The heaviness of those thoughts seemed to show that that wasn’t true, but Harry didn’t know what more he could ask. He would know if Draco had been lying, after all. He smiled, and moved out of the way so that Draco could cut the stone floor of the cave into sleeping holes for the lot of them.

*

            As his hands moved, Draco’s mind was on the call he heard from the storm.

            Because he had no doubt that it was a call. Nothing like the way the magic had hammered Harry when it first began, but a single strong, steady sound, threading through all the other sounds that could have blocked it, reaching for Draco, telling him to come out.

            Now that Draco thought about it, he decided that he heard it before—when they were by the sea, and as they traveled north. Perhaps that was what had made him so unusually short and snappish with Harry.

            And with Harry’s friends?

            Yes. The call was definite about that. He was to come, and bring Harry, but leave everyone else behind. They wouldn’t be able to keep up with the wild flight that the voice, and the storm through it, demanded of them.

            Draco shivered, and shook his head. He had heard the call, but he would be stupid to obey. Why would he, in fact? What was there to be gained from following something so obviously timed to make him do something idiotic? He valued not being an idiot, and the bond he had with Harry, more than he valued the chance to obey something so stupid.

            But you find it compelling, nonetheless.

            Of course he did, Draco answered himself viciously, while he swept his hands back and forth and the hollows continued to appear in the stone, and then he swept them back the other way and the small slivers of stone that unpeeled from the sides of the hollows disintegrated. He wasn’t such an idiot not to recognize the likeness of the call to his dreams of flying with Harry and leaving everyone behind. The only thing the call had given him that was different than he’d had before was a direction.

            And what about all the other times that you had the same thought?

            Draco paused. Now that was disturbing, to think that whatever this creature was, it’d been influencing him before now, and that his dreams weren’t his own.

            “I think those are big enough now, Draco.”

            Draco looked up at the gentle tone in Harry’s voice, in time to see Weasley and Granger press back against the wall of the cave, staring at him. They were watching the hollows in the floor and the way his claws were moving back and forth—which they could see by the stripes appearing in the stone, Draco realized, even though his claws themselves were invisible. With difficulty, he pulled himself to a stop and shook his head. “I’m fine,” he said.

            Right, came down the bond, but on the outside, Harry nodded, accepting his excuse for what it sounded like. “Fine,” he echoed. “Then we’ll do what we can for fire, and then I think we ought to get some rest.”

            “Are you sure, Harry?” Weasley’s face was serious in the flickering light of the Lumos Charms. “What happens if we need to get up and move quickly? If we’re sound asleep, we might not hear the alarm.”

            Harry grinned with his lips pulled back from his teeth. “You’ll hear the alarm that I make, I promise,” he said. “In the meantime, I think it’s better for us to get what rest we can. We’ll react more quickly that way.”

            Neither Weasley nor Granger had much fault to find with that, it seemed, and there was a little discussion about whether they should burn anything in their packs or simply conjure a fire to burn on air, which would take more energy. In the end, Draco, tiring of the talk, conjured a fire himself, and they roasted the last of the rabbit-meat on it and then lay down in their hollows.

            Well, Weasley and Granger did. Draco stood up, and Harry followed him to the corner of the cave nearest the boulder that blocked the entrance. Draco listened to the wind singing outside, and wondered if it was his imagination or the truth that it had died down a bit.

            “What was happening earlier?” Harry leaned back against the wall and gave him an even stare.

            Draco swallowed. He had reckoned that Harry couldn’t hear the call through the storm that so plagued him, but he had grown so used to everything that passed through his mind being shared at once, the confirmation was still a little unnerving.

            I felt something calling to me, he said across the bond. He would take no chance on Weasley and Granger hearing this and deciding he was mad. A voice that urged me to take you and come to it.

            Harry half-shut his eyes. Which direction?

            North, but not pure north, Draco admitted. Perhaps a little to the west from here, towards that place where we saw the big silver flash earlier. The flash had caused debate in their little group about whether it was another silver oval, or perhaps a lake or ocean, but they hadn’t had time to investigate with twilight coming on.

            I see.

            Draco resisted the urge to fling up his hands, too. That would probably attract Granger and Weasley’s attention, which was the last thing he wanted. They would be curious enough about Draco and Harry speaking silently, Draco thought, and was grateful that they wouldn’t be able to tell what he and Harry were saying no matter how much they might want to. I didn’t go to it. I told you the truth.

            You did. But it makes me wonder what was doing the calling. Harry turned and faced the far side of the cavern as though he could see through stone and air and to the source and heart of the mystery, which Draco doubted he would manage. I’ve never felt anything like it, but my bond with the wild magic is different from yours.

            Draco frowned. What do you mean by that?

            I mean that I had mine before coming here, as Hermione reminded me. It grew and changed on Hurricane, but it didn’t start here. Harry glanced thoughtfully at him. You and Ginny and Teddy are the ones who’ve adapted to Hurricane, and Teddy’s too young to really tell us what he feels. Ginny, maybe, but her magic isn’t as fully developed as yours.

            Draco nodded, mollified that he had added that qualifier to the list he planned to put Draco in.

            So perhaps it’s different. Perhaps you can hear a voice calling you that I can’t, or perhaps Ginny and Teddy would hear it if they were in the same point of the process as you are. Harry laid a hand on Draco’s shoulder, and Draco blinked, surprised at the image of a chain that came down the bond with it. Just remember that the rest of us are still here, all right? Don’t go without consulting me.

            As if I would, Draco said, and sawed his hand back and forth between them, not really tugging on the bond but making his point.

            Harry bit his lip. I think of those silver ovals. I think of the ruins, a civilization abandoned.

            And? Draco asked, because Harry stood there brooding and didn’t make any sense.

            I wonder if that’s what happened to the people, or beings, whatever you want to call them, who used to live around the silver ovals. I wonder if they felt the call and had to leave, because it wouldn’t let them stay where they were.

            Draco stood quite still for a moment, then shook his head impatiently. You’re thinking of too many ghost stories, Potter. They had time to build quite a respectable civilization here, or at least leave the remains of one. We haven’t been here more than a few months, and I feel the call? It’s too short a time period.

            Well, perhaps, Harry said, as though he hated the sound of anything pressing in and stealing his precious theory. But I still don’t like it. Think carefully about what the voice says, and report it to me if you can.

            You’ll know as soon as I hear it, as soon as I think about it.

            I couldn’t feel your thoughts before.

            Harry held his eyes for a little while, and then turned away. Draco followed him, more shaken than he wanted to admit. It was true that those thoughts about the call had somehow concealed themselves from Harry, when really they should have been as open and clear to him as any other thought that crossed Draco’s mind. Why?

            He didn’t know. But he would take Harry at his word, and be careful, and count on the bond between them to redeem his worst excesses.

*

            Harry jerked. His eyes were open without his remembering what had made him open them, and he was lifting his head and turning it, trying to focus on something beyond the darkness, without being able to tell why.

            What was there? What had awakened him?

            Then he realized that there was no more pulling and tugging of the blood in his veins, and relaxed a little. The storm had ended, it seemed, and they were still safe in the cave. He tried to press his face back into Draco’s side. Draco stirred and muttered something, and Harry reckoned that he wouldn’t mind being used as a pillow as long as the edges of Harry’s glasses didn’t cut into any tender skin.

            And then he heard it.

            It was a gentle whisper, a pulling, tugging thread of sound that was nevertheless difficult to ignore. It wound into his mind, and Harry could feel the mind behind it, or almost, dancing up and down and whining. It said his name, and it said something about the wide plains and broad oceans of Hurricane, not in words but in terms that made him feel as if he were overhearing a conversation from somewhere, summoning him, leading him on.

            Harry became aware that Draco still lay still beneath him, snoring, and that he hadn’t felt any surge from Draco’s mind, any hint that he could sense what was happening.

            A call that comes separately. Something that can interfere with the bond.

            Harry flexed his hands in the stone. It was true that he hadn’t got used to sharing his mind with Draco completely, but he was close enough to it that he hated the thought that there was something he could hear that Draco couldn’t, and vice versa.

            Our enemy, maybe. Bodiless.

            That thought did wake Draco, or at least his breathing changed. He lifted his head and stared at Harry. “What?” he whispered.

            “I felt the call, too,” Harry said quietly, laying his hand over Draco’s heart. “Go back to sleep. I’m not going to answer it.”

            Draco’s breath and lips sharpened. “And did it say anything about bringing me?” he asked.

            Harry listened again, then shook his head.

            Draco nodded grimly, and fell asleep hanging onto Harry’s hand as though he wanted to imprint the shapes of Harry’s fingers on his palm. It was some time, after he had watched Draco’s profile and hands for long minutes, before Harry fell asleep himself.

*

            SP777: Yes, but the plot I ended up evolving wouldn’t have allowed for skipping months and months in that way.

            Glad you like the story.

            unneeded: Hermione is looking forward to manifesting, too!

            Silverkitten: Thanks for reviewing!
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Wondrous Lands and Oceans