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Here to Live and Die	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 5833 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Seventeen—Comes the Storm
            Harry woke to the sound of the mummidade drumming.
            It made him roll over and hurry out of bed, because the one thing he could think of was that they had sensed the approach of more thunderrin or other enemies. The drumming sounded far too much like the hoofbeats they had sent booming across the meadow when Primrose was swooping in with her people.
            But by the point that he got outside, he realized it must be something different. These sounds weren’t as loud or long-lasting as the ones that the mummidade had used as warnings, and the riders he could see were standing on the ground, staring to the north, the same direction the mummidade faced. If there had been enemies, they would have taken off by now and be sailing towards them, Harry knew.
            “What’s going on?” Harry asked as Nuisance trotted up beside him.
            “This one is hard to translate.” Harry faced Nuisance and found him sitting on his haunches, a new gesture, and one that made Harry blink. He hadn’t thought Nuisance’s legs were long enough to do that. “There’s something coming they don’t want to come, but at the same time, they accept it and rejoice in it as something necessary and inevitable. Because they might as well celebrate the inevitable?”
            There was an undertone of uncertainty in Nuisance’s voice that made Harry’s lips quiver. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
            “Telling you.” Strength flooded Nuisance’s legs, and he stood up straight on all fours again, looking disdainfully at Harry. “It’s not as easy as you think, keeping track of all the different thoughts flying around here.”
            Harry nodded and reached back to touch Draco’s mind. Draco was awake, but staying in the tent with Jeremy until he knew whether it was safe to venture out. It’s okay. No danger here yet. “Can you tell whether they’re waiting for enemies like Primrose or something else?” If this was a natural event of the season, that might explain why the riders were alert but not frightened, and why the antelope, now that Harry could see them, were going on with their grazing as if nothing was wrong.
            “Let me see.” Nusiance bowed his head and reached his ears and his nostrils and even his antlers, it seemed, out to the corners of the sky. Harry stood patiently beside him. He wouldn’t have wanted the job of universal translator.
            Draco stepped out of the tent with Jeremy cradled close against his shoulder, his eyes narrowed at Harry. Harry smiled and lifted his shoulders in a little shrug. He had only said that it was safe, not that Draco should absolutely bring Jeremy out, and he wouldn’t stand in Draco’s way if he wanted to take Jeremy back inside. Draco sniffed at him and made his way over to Harry’s side.
            You take him for a little while.
            Harry accepted their son, laughing a little as Jeremy made a face at him, and then yawned. All babies seemed able to yawn as soon as they were born, Harry thought idly, and played with Jeremy’s toes. Not that he’d been around many babies before this except Teddy and Victoire, and he wasn’t sure that was enough to teach him about all their rules of behavior.
            “It’s a natural enemy,” Nuisance said suddenly.
            Harry turned to him, nodding. “Another sign of the season’s change?”
            Nuisance faced him, his expression as solemn as he could make it, which wasn’t very. Harry had always thought that it would be hard to control a face shaped like a stag’s, anyway. “It’s a storm,” he said. “One greater than I ever thought they could be, moving slowly down from the north. It might be the storm that the Tsissid came down south to get away from.”
            Harry took a deep breath. “Do you think the riders know about it?” he asked, and gestured to the way they stood there, silent and staring.
            “Yes, I would say they know about it,” Nuisance muttered, so dryly that it was hard for Harry to even be embarrassed. He deserved that, and he knew it. “But I don’t know what they usually do, stay here or go somewhere else. Maybe they won’t need to move, now that they have the houses Andromeda built to shelter in.” He turned around and began to bleat and sing to the riders.
            Harry closed his eyes, laid his hand on Draco’s shoulder to serve as a partial anchor for himself, and reached out. A storm that big might announce itself more naturally to the mummidade and the riders, who had lived here longer, but since Harry had power over winds and had inherited the magic of the gateway, he ought to be able to sense it, too.
            There it was. A tangle of darkness and power, rather like the emotions that he sometimes sensed in the back of his own mind or Draco’s, hung over the northern mountains. Harry raked his magic through it, and felt a vicious, stinging response. There was more wild magic gathered in one place than he’d ever seen.
            Can you do something about it, or not? That was Draco’s voice, quiet and more subdued than usual. Harry knew why. Draco had caught Harry’s uncertainty and knew this storm was stronger than any other he’d commanded.
            Harry sighed and opened his eyes. I think I can. But I’m going to need more preparation, and I hope the storm doesn’t change direction or speed suddenly, the way that a few of them in the past month did.
            “Cousin Draco!”
            Harry laughed and turned around, stepping back from Draco so that Draco could open his arms to Teddy. Teddy raced across the grass and jumped into them, his hair changing so rapidly from blue to black that Harry couldn’t read his mood. Teddy buried his face into Draco’s chest and clung to him.
            “Teddy!” Andromeda had stepped out of their house and was watching them with a faint frown on her face, which might have come from almost anything, Harry thought. Andromeda always had a reason to frown over one thing or another. “Don’t bother your cousins while they’re with Jeremy.”
            Teddy clung tighter, and his hair turned so black that he looked like Sirius. Harry thought he knew what the problem was, then.
            “It’s fine, Andromeda,” he called back, and turned around so that he was holding Jeremy near Teddy. “Teddy?”
            “You’re holding him,” Teddy said sullenly, without looking up.
            Harry sighed. So far, Teddy had treated Jeremy like a pet, sometimes playing with him and sometimes ignoring him; Harry had assumed it was because he was too small for Teddy to be jealous of. But now, probably because Draco and Jeremy had been with Harry for every moment of the day he was asleep and recovering and Teddy hadn’t been allowed to visit, his attitude had changed.
            Harry crouched down next to Draco, who said quietly down the bond, Be gentle with him. I can only imagine how jealous I would have been if my parents had had another baby.
            Harry nodded back, impressed despite himself. For Draco to be able to see Teddy’s side when he’d so recently resented Teddy for the part he played in Harry’s life, and when the one Teddy was jealous of was his own son…
            Draco sneered back at him. I’m not going soft-hearted. Don’t try me on any of the Weasleys.
            Harry snorted back and faced Teddy again. “Teddy? Look at me, please.”
            Teddy was now apparently attempting to make a burrow in Draco’s chest with his head. “I’m angry at you,” he muttered, and finally raised his head so that he could show Harry his red eyes and his trembling hands. “Angry, angry, angry.”
            Harry shifted Jeremy so that he could hold him against his chest with one arm and stroke Teddy’s hair with the other hand. Teddy sniffled, but allowed it, although he seemed to have decided that the half of Harry curled around Jeremy didn’t exist.
            “I’m sorry, Teddy,” Harry said quietly. “Jeremy’s here to stay, but I love you, too. I want you to be happy, too.”
            “Not too,” said Teddy.
            “You can both be happy,” Harry said firmly. He wasn’t about to yield and start treating Jeremy as less important to satisfy Teddy’s desires, but he didn’t want to treat Teddy as less important, either. He knelt down to a little more than Teddy’s height, and added, “Someday Jeremy will be big enough that you can play with him, the way you play with Victoire. And in the meantime, you can help me and Cousin Draco take care of him. Doesn’t that sound like fun?”
            For a second, Teddy’s face wavered as though he was trying to choose a set of features that would express everything he felt. Then he frowned mightily, and his eyes were a clear hazel that Harry didn’t see often, and his hair was black again. “Play with me,” he said. “Leave Jeremy at home.” He glanced up at Draco as if for help.
            “We can’t do that,” Draco said. “Jeremy needs our help.” He reached down and pinched the button nose that Teddy had now. “Just like you did when you were little. Did Harry ever tell you about that? Or Grandma Andromeda? When you were little, they had to take care of you.”
            Teddy stared at Jeremy, then shook his head. His hair became a lighter brown. “I wasn’t little.”
            “Yes, you were,” Draco said, nodding solemnly, and setting Teddy on the ground so that he could see better into Jeremy’s face. “You were that little, and someone had to take care of you and feed you and put you to bed and change your nappies.”
            Teddy clapped a protective hand to his bottom. He had toilet-trained early, because he hated nappies with a ferocity that Harry hadn’t even known was possible in a child. “Not me,” he said, and went on shaking his head.
            “You didn’t do that,” Teddy muttered, the next time he said something understandable.
            “He didn’t, but he’ll do it for Jeremy,” Harry said firmly, reaching out so that he could ruffle Teddy’s hair. “Because he’s Jeremy’s daddy, the way that I was your—uncle.” He didn’t want Teddy to start thinking that Remus wasn’t important, just because Harry hadn’t had the time to mention him much lately, or tell Teddy stories about him.
            Teddy studied Draco for a second, then he looked at Harry. “You will, too,” he said.
            Harry nodded, seeing no point in hiding that. Not that Draco would have let him hide it, even if he wanted to. The bond muttered, and Draco muttered with it, Someone needs to be changing nappies more often than he’s done.
            Teddy sighed and kicked his legs until Draco put him down, then leaned against Harry and looked intently at Jeremy. Harry, not sure what Teddy was doing at the moment, kept quiet and just let him look. Finally Teddy turned back, and his hair had darkened a little, but almost to the color that Jeremy had, not the color of black despair.
            “There’s two of you,” Teddy said, and pointed one finger at himself, then turned around so it pointed at Jeremy. “Half for Jeremy. Half for me.”
            Harry grinned and threw his free arm around Teddy, kissing his cheek. “I didn’t know you were so good at maths,” he said.
            Teddy leaned against Harry’s chest. “Busy,” he muttered.
            Harry kissed his forehead this time. “Yes, I know,” he said. “I’ll try not to be so busy in the future.” There had to be time both for defeating storms and raising his children, he thought. Their children, he had to acknowledge, as the bond rippled impatiently in the back of his mind. It was a delicate balancing act, maybe, not one that Harry was naturally inclined to, but he had to find some way. And he would.
            I’ll help, Draco said, touching his shoulder tentatively at first. And then his hand came down more firmly, and he leaned over Jeremy and Teddy and Harry as though he was going to shield all of them against something worse than the storm.
            Thank you, Harry said, looking up at him in return, and only the awkward position of all those bodies and children kept him from kissing Draco.
*
            “Harry? Can I talk to you a minute?”
            Draco tensed, and went back to rocking Jeremy. Teddy was sleeping over tonight, and he was already fast asleep, tucked into the middle of the moss bed, his thumb in his mouth and his hair, now a chestnut color for no reason that Draco could tell, sprawled around him. Jeremy’s eyes were shut, and Draco had swaddled his arms close so that he couldn’t reach up and scratch his own face to keep himself awake, a common practice with him. Harry had said that Teddy did the same thing a lot of the time when he was a baby.
            And after both children were asleep, Draco had hoped to spend some time alone with Harry. But that wouldn’t happen with Johnson, the remaining twin’s girlfriend, peering past the tent flap.
            “Sure, Angelina,” Harry answered, and stood up, coming to stand beside Draco. He rubbed Draco’s shoulder blade, and Draco sniffed, relaxing. At least Harry knew how Draco felt, and would keep the conversation with Johnson short if he could—another advantage of the bond. “What’s up?”
            Johnson took a breath, then said, “Well. Look.” She held up her arm. There was a small scab there, Draco saw when he looked, as though she’d bled for a little bit and then it had sealed over. That wasn’t unusual enough for her to bother them in the middle of the evening. Draco twitched with the impulse to throw her out.
            Harry reached back so that he could caress Draco’s arm, and murmured down the bond, She wouldn’t have come to me if this wasn’t important, more important than a minor wound. “How did that happen?” he asked aloud.
            Johnson made an impatient gesture. “Oh, I got pricked on one of the thorns of those weeds we were pulling out of the greenhouses. But watch.” She held her arms out in front of her and concentrated on the scab, so intently that Draco was impressed in spite of himself. He hadn’t thought there was anyone in the meadow besides him and Harry who had that kind of focus.
            Harry shoved him in the middle of the back. Draco serenely ignored him. He watched Johnson’s face instead, and the way she seemed to shiver.
            And the way the scab rose off her arm and entwined itself in small, flowing red ribbons of blood, gleaming and spinning until it grew so bright Draco had to blink. Between that blink and opening his eyes again, the scab disappeared, and Johnson triumphantly turned her arm around, so that they could both see that the minor wound beneath it had vanished as well.
            Harry grinned and flung his arms around Johnson. Draco let him. It had been a long time since someone had demonstrated new wild magic, although Draco thought sometimes that Victoire or Jeremy might have it and just be too young to tell anyone about it.
            “That’s fantastic, Angelina,” Harry said, and danced her around in front of the tent. Johnson laughed and swung her hands back and forth. Draco sniffed again. He could feel pulses of reassurance traveling down the bond, and he knew that Johnson was in love with her Weasley twit, so he could permit this.
            “What happened when you discovered that you could do it?” Harry asked. “Did you want to heal something and it just happened?”
            Johnson nodded and released Harry’s hands so that she could adjust her hair, which had come down on her shoulders in waves while they danced. “Yeah. I got pricked by that thorn today, and it was the end of a long week of little frustrations. Having to run for shelter, and an argument I had with George, and Molly telling me that she hoped I was pregnant soon.” Johnson snorted. “I would just as soon as have children the way you lot did, but George and I aren’t bonded yet. Anyway, I was angry and that thorn-prick was just the last straw. I glared at it and told it to start healing itself.

            “It did.” She grinned at them again. “But I was so startled that I stopped focusing on it, and then I wasn’t sure it had actually happened. So I tried again, and the scab formed. And I came here to show you the rest of it.”
            “That’s going to be dead useful,” Harry told her, his eyes bright and his posture more relaxed than Draco had seen it since they’d got the warning of Primrose and her people coming from the south. “Even if you can only heal small wounds, it’ll keep them from getting infected, and it’ll keep us from having to rely so much on potions.”
            Johnson nodded. “My ingredients stock for potions is running low, anyway,” she said. “And growing Potions ingredients on Hurricane is a low priority next to growing the Earth food we need.” She paused and looked at Draco as if she could sense his doubtful thoughts, then turned back to Harry with a sniff of her own. “I’ll try to heal it the next time someone gets a big wound, of course, but I don’t really want to create one just to experiment.”
            “Ask George,” Harry said, closing his eye in a little wink. “He’s done worse things in the name of experiments for jokes.”
            Johnson brightened. “That’s true. And maybe I can tell him it’s a way of him making up to me for the argument we had earlier.” She waved at them and ran away across the grass, too excited to give a further farewell.
            Harry watched her go, his contentment so soft and bright that Draco reached out to touch him and absorb some of the sunlight-like emotion. Harry turned around and kissed him, passionately enough that Draco gasped a little.
            Look.
            Draco looked down, matching the direction of Harry’s glance, and saw Jeremy cuddled asleep in his arm. It was a fragile sleep, though; his arms were moving under the blanket, trying to get to his face so they could scratch, and his eyelids kept flickering.
            The minute I put him down, he’ll probably wake up, Draco sighed, and leaned against Harry for a kiss, since they couldn’t do anything else right now.
            Then you’ll just have to hold him while I do this, Harry said, and wind came and danced around them, so many, moving so quickly, that they formed an opaque grey wall like a whirlwind. Draco held in a gasp, and held Jeremy even closer, as Harry reached up and took Draco’s trousers gently by the seam, ruffling them down.
            What about Teddy? Draco managed to ask, biting his lips ferociously to hold back the moan he wanted to give when Harry took his cock in hand.
            That’s why the winds, Harry said, his eyes gleaming up at Draco from where he knelt. And if you don’t think that you can stand without dropping Jeremy, then you can sit down. I wouldn’t blame you, he added generously. I know that I’m good at this, and a successful blowjob does weaken the knees.
            Draco huffed at him, then shushed himself when Jeremy stirred with the beginnings of what might have been a wail. Draco sank down on the edge of the chair where he had sat earlier to feed Jeremy, and put his free hand over his mouth as Harry leaned in and placed his mouth directly over Draco’s cock.
            The warmth and the wetness were so different from the coldness of the wind that Draco let his eyes close and his head fall back without thinking about it. It was a good thing that he was sitting down, not because of Harry’s blowjob skills but because his arm might have weakened and dropped Jeremy otherwise.
            Harry laughed into his mind, and kept licking and lapping and nipping so persuasively that Draco lifted his hips towards his mouth and had to bite the heel of his palm. All the while, Jeremy slept on in the crook of his arm, and Teddy slept on on the bed, beyond the whirling barrier of wind, and Draco’s hesitations and uncertainties melted away in the face of the joy from Harry, and the pleasure from his mouth.
            This was dirty, this was something that he wouldn’t be doing in front of children most of the time—
            Both of them are asleep, and Teddy couldn’t see us even if he woke up, and Jeremy is too young to understand.
            The words might have been his, or might have been Harry’s. But Draco was sure that the last thought to follow before he came was Harry’s, because it was so sweet and piercing and strong that it toppled him over the edge, and Draco’s mind was blurred. And you needed this.
            Draco came shuddering, and dropped back to earth with his arm still curved tight around Jeremy. His fingers hurt with how they’d dug into the chair. He sat up, swallowing. Harry swallowed a lot more audibly beneath him and sat up, too, reaching almost primly into his pants to bring himself off.
            Draco found himself watching avidly. Harry tilted his head back and made no noise, either, although the line of his neck tightened in a satisfying way. When he was done and his winds were sweeping him dry and clean, he smiled at Draco and leaned his head against his knee so that Draco could stroke his hair.
            I find our life together better than I did before, Harry whispered.
            Because of Jeremy? It was the easy leap to make, but Draco felt a rolling ball of color from Harry in response, and barely had time to brace himself before it broke over him.
            It was Jeremy, and it was more than Jeremy. It was being together, and knowing they could get beneath the surface of the bond and dance as an ultimately paired entity, the way the mummidade could, and the way he had defeated Primrose, and the fact that he could guard the meadow from anything with Draco beside him.
            Draco leaned down until his cheek touched Harry’s, and kissed him, whispering, Yes, this is pretty bloody brilliant.
*
            Sasunarufan13: Glad that you liked that chapter! I hope that Harry and Draco can have some more relaxation now that Primrose is gone.
            SP777: They probably will want to have more, but not until both Teddy and Jeremy are older.
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Here to Live and Die