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The Rising of the Stones	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 13237 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Seventeen—Rain Unicorns

            “Step carefully.”

            Draco didn’t need to be told twice. The fog around them was as thick as marmalade. He had to hold his breath a time or two, as well, as they made their way across slimy earth and between holes brimming with water. The place, which Draco could hardly see anyway, seemed to be a cross between a swamp and a broken road.

            “This way.” Potter’s hand took his arm and turned him carefully what felt like a mound of rock when Draco’s hand brushed it. For the first time, Draco thought that Potter’s affinity with the earth might be helping him navigate.

            I thought all of it was just being here before and not having a soul.

            Draco bit his tongue the moment he had that thought. No. He was not going to surrender to the stupid superstition Potter seemed intent on believing in. Not even if they were going to meet a bunch of people who believed in it, too. Potter’s delusions didn’t need encouragement. There had to be at least one firm, sensible person in his life who—

            Draco’s left foot slipped, and kept on slipping. There was no ground beneath his leg, and Draco could all too clearly picture the endless grey water he would drown in. He opened his mouth to shriek.

            Potter seized him and turned to the side, and suddenly Draco was kneeling on the stony shore of a pond, shivering. Potter knelt down next to him and murmured, “Hold still for a minute.”

            Dust and what felt like tiny pebbles rose and skittered over him. Draco blinked and held still. It wasn’t actually difficult. The sensation wasn’t so much irritating or stinging as something he had never felt before.

            When the dust and stones fell to the ground, they took the wetness with them. Draco ran a hand down his leg and shook his head. “I suppose that’s your substitute for a Drying Charm?”

            “Yes. One of the spells that I’ve been able to mimic better than most.” Potter gave him a smile, or at least Draco thought he did from the tone in his voice. Even this close, it was hard to make out any expression on Potter’s face. “Now. Can you stand and follow me? I’ll lay out a path for you in the mist if you want, but I need to go in front of you to do it.”

            Draco’s indignant question about why Potter hadn’t done that earlier died on his lips. He licked them and murmured, “I think I can.”

            Potter nodded and stood up. When he moved in front of Draco, small stones leaped and stirred in eddies like leaves on the ground. “All right. Make sure that you keep your feet inside the stones. They’ll turn and wind sometimes, especially where there are pools.” He paused, and then, maybe because Draco hadn’t said anything (like the person raised not to interrupt that he was), he added, “Can you do that?”

            “Damn it, Potter. Yes.”

            “Good.” And Potter was gone in front of him, slipping away between what seemed like extremely tiny pasture walls, when Draco began to shuffle after him and press his anklebones against the sides of the path.

            The path led him for what felt like miles, although Potter would later tell him it had been only a few hundred meters. The mist suddenly disappeared, and Draco blinked and held up a hand in front of his eyes.

            “Why did you bring one of the marked ones to visit us, Harry? You know the unicorns are just going to want him when they come.”

            Draco jumped at the voice, and whirled around with his wand aimed in front of him. That might have been a mistake, he had to concede, as he saw the dark shapes of more and more people surround him. Potter was with them, he had to be, since his voice was close when he spoke, but the air was still heavy with gloom and miasma, and Draco couldn’t discern which of the shapes he was.

            “This marked one is helping me, Oatten. I promise he won’t stay long. But he didn’t believe me when I told him that some people were soulless.”

            “Oh.” The voice drew out the word in a way that convinced Draco he wasn’t going to like this Oatten, and then chuckled. “Well, we’ll tell him in smaller words than you probably used.”

            The miasma abruptly blew away, and Potter was revealed, standing near the front of the crowd of perhaps twenty people. They looked like normal wizards, except with longer hair and flowing robes that looked more like tents than clothes. Their faces were marked with swirls of mud, or what Draco hoped was mud.

            Draco didn’t know what he should do. Politeness seemed as out of place here as it would be in a den of wild beasts. He nodded instead of bowed, and looked to Potter to see what would happen.

            Potter looked unfairly casual and relaxed. Draco wanted to roll his eyes, but didn’t see the point of doing that as long as he could take revenge on Potter for his keeping certain information secret later.

            Like the way that the wizards guarded the way into their realm with magic Draco had never seen before. Or that they were obviously savages.

            Oatten was a tall man with brown hair piled on top of his head in a way that reminded Draco irresistibly of Rita Skeeter, or at least the way she’d used to look. “If you’ve agreed to help Harry against this Ministry, then that’s a good thing,” he said, nodding. “No one should be able to get away with killing Harry.”

            Or people like him. Draco waited for that addition, and blinked when it didn’t come. He looked at Potter.

            He thought Potter was a little flushed, although maybe he was only attributing his own, delicate, civilized feelings to a man who seemed to become half-wild around these wild wizards. Potter coughed and looked the other way, then waved his hand a little. “I learned about earth magic from Oatten, Draco.”

            Draco? But it was probably just meant to fit in with these people’s informal customs. They certainly showed none of the respect Draco would have thought a Dark Lord defeater like Potter merited.

            Telling himself that helped to dim the blush in his own cheeks that had no reason to be there. Draco cleared his throat roughly and said, “A pleasure to meet you.”

            “Wish I could say the same.” Oatten eyed him, and then shook his head. “There was a storm in the Americas the other day, Harry. Did you hear? One of the killing ones. There’ll be a new rain unicorn in the world, and eager for his first meal. If he comes here, you know who he’ll choose.”

            For an instant, unreasoning panic gripped Draco, the sort that had once afflicted him when he thought of facing Dementors. Then he shook his head. No, he still had a wand. And he didn’t really believe that losing your soul-mark meant losing your soul. Those were only superstitions.

            “I didn’t hear about the storm, no.” Potter’s face was immediately concerned, and Draco wanted to curse him when he saw that. It was the sort of deep involvement he had never given Draco, even when Draco was taking risks with him and for him and encouraging him to rebel against the Ministry. “Do you think you can hold off the unicorns for the duration of our visit?”

            “I don’t know. How stubborn is he and how long is it going to take him to be convinced?”

            Draco made a soft snarling noise under his breath, but neither Oatten nor Potter seemed inclined to take notice of it. Oatten only faced Potter, and Potter only said, “He doesn’t believe that you and I don’t have souls. He thinks we just don’t have soul-marks.”

            Oatten stared. Then he snorted, and faced Draco, who didn’t appreciate the look of amusement laced with contempt directed his way. “Listen, Malfoy. You should know that Dementors are so dangerous partially because they suck out souls.”

            “And drain happy memories, and make people who can’t cast Patronuses feel like shit in general,” Draco drawled. He’d had enough of being treated as though he was ignorant and didn’t understand things. “I told Potter, just telling me these tales about Dementors doesn’t convince me. I would have to see you actually interacting with a Dementor to--”

            “Oh, we have one. If that’s your only objection.”

            Draco’s voice dried up. He finally managed to whisper, “What?”

            “We have one,” Oatten repeated patiently. “Now and then the Dementors get ideas about how no one ought to escape their wrath, and they should be able to drain all wizards, and so on.” His voice was tolerant. “So some of them come seeking us. Usually the young and stupid ones. We capture them and keep them around as amusements. They always starve to death in the end, but we only caught this one a few weeks ago. Would you like to see it?”

No. But even if it hadn’t been for the light of challenge in Potter’s eyes, Draco would have known what he had to say. He’d asked for proof. Here was proof. He would look more than stupid if he forsook the chance now. He would look inconsistent.

And that might make Potter decide he was weak, and that he could just ally with his friends and Doge and Lovegood in his attempt to force the Ministry’s secrets into the open.

“Yes,” Draco said, and assumed the haughtiest expression he’d ever taken on.

*

            The Dementor enclosure--not words Draco had thought he would ever put together--was made of some kind of transparent, shimmering mesh. If someone had asked Draco, he would have said the creature would probably just ooze around it, but the mesh danced oddly on the edge of sight. As Draco walked towards it, the Dementor looked at one point as if it was in a cage, at another as if it was obscured in one of the mists like they’d walked through on the way in, and at another as though it was totally free.

            Draco halted, his heart so fast in his throat he choked. Oatten brushed past him and clucked his tongue. “The creature would have fled already if it was really free,” he said, with a contemptuous glance that made Draco grit his teeth.

            But Draco had to acknowledge the truth of the annoying prat’s words, as well. The Dementor flowed back and forth inside a cage that obviously contained it, never mind how. It put out long-fingered hands and jerked them back constantly, as if from knives that cut it.

            “What is the cage made of?” Draco asked, when they had halted perhaps a meter away from the constantly eddying mesh. The Dementor drifted towards the side of the cage nearest him. Draco didn’t think that was a coincidence, but neither did he intend to flinch away from it.

            Or think it was a sign that he was the only one who had a soul. Ridiculous.

            “Oh, a special material taken from Dementor nests,” said Oatten cheerfully. He walked right up to the mesh, and the Dementor showed no change except to shift a little away from him. That confirmed Draco’s belief that it couldn’t be that these wizards had no souls. It was only that they had some means of intimidating Dementors that other people hadn’t discovered yet. “You can come up and touch it if you like. The mesh will keep it from opening its mouth enough to Kiss you.”

            The gleam in Oatten’s eyes told Draco what was likely to happen instead; he would go pale with the reliving of his worst memory. And Potter confirmed it a second later, by intervening and saying chidingly, “Do you really want to do something like that, Oatten? Do you want to have to take care of him as well as the Dementor?”

            “I’m not that weak, Potter,” Draco hissed at him. Potter only looked at him with his eyes shining some more, and Draco suffered from an impulse to kick him. “Here, watch.” He stepped towards the cage.

            There was a sensation of chill as the Dementor focused on him, but nothing more than that. Draco rolled his eyes when he saw how eagerly everyone was peering at him, waiting for him to crumple and provide them with some entertainment—at least, Draco thought so. Sometimes it was hard to tell what people who despised him wanted. Their thought process was already alien to Draco if they could actually despise him.

            “I suppose you aren’t,” said Oatten, in what could be grudging respect. Draco wasn’t going to spend his time sorting out all the different emotions of people who despised him, either. “Of course, that’s probably the mesh and not you.”

            Draco narrowed his eyes. “So the mesh also prevents the Dementor from feeding?”

            Oatten shrugged. “Of course. That’s why they always starve to death after a few weeks. We try to offer them bananas and the like, but they don’t want them.” He turned away. “Come on, Harry. We have a few things to discuss with you. And Hail would like to speak with you.”

            There was a tone of reverence in his voice that made Draco cock his head. He had assumed without thinking about it that Oatten must be the leader here, because the other wizards stayed under their mossy robes and kept silent. But maybe this Hail was. “Who’s Hail?”

            Oatten smiled at him. It wasn’t a friendly smile. “Someone you don’t want to meet.”

            Draco looked at Potter, and waited. He was a lot more susceptible to guilt than Oatten and the others seemed to be. Sure enough, he started squirming and flushing after a moment. Content, Draco leaned his elbow on the nearest tree and watched him.

            Potter finally sighed and said, “Fine,” in an aggrieved voice, as if he couldn’t believe how much Draco demanded of him. “He’s a rain unicorn. The one who usually speaks for them when they’re here, and negotiated the sale of their pelts and horns in the first place. And no, you don’t want to meet him. Not when he would consume your soul.”

            “I don’t believe that,” Draco told him roundly. “Just so you know.”

            “You’re free not to believe that, then.” Potter was standing straight, with a combative light in his eyes that Draco was more than familiar with. “But you’ll get in trouble with Hail anyway if you try something with him. Either he’ll touch you with his horn and your soul-mark will vanish, or he’ll touch you with his horn and you’ll fall into the kind of coma that someone Kissed by a Dementor does.”

            Draco turned to Oatten without answering. Switching between them seemed to keep them off-balance, and the more off-balance they were, the more actually true information they seemed to give him. “If you can make a deal with the rain unicorns when they do that, then why can’t you negotiate with the Dementors?”

            Oatten shook his head. “They don’t speak any language we can understand. And they show no desire to negotiate, either. The rain unicorns were the ones who first approached our ancestors. The day a Dementor does the same thing and we can understand them, then maybe we’ll try it.”

            Draco scowled. That answer made more sense than he wanted to admit. He started to turn back to Potter with his next question.

            But another of the hooded wizards had come up beside Potter and was saying something to him in a low voice that got lost within the rustling of the hood. Potter listened and began to smile; Draco thought it was almost reluctantly. He nodded and glanced at Draco. “We’re going to the camp. Do you want to come with us?”

            “Don’t you mean the village?” But of course Draco fell into step with Potter and the rest as they started moving. There was no telling what would happen to him if they left him here on his own. He’d probably stumble into another pool in the muck and drown.

            He hated to admit that he would be so helpless without someone else guiding him. But on the other hand, he could cover that under “recognizing realistic limitations on his abilities.” He just had to convince someone else that that was what it was, instead of cowardice.

            “It’s a sort of village-camp,” said Oatten, in the kind of tone that meant he wouldn’t explain anything else.

            Potter was more willing, luckily. “They move from place to place with the season and the presence of the rain unicorns and people who want to buy the unicorn horns.”

            “I know how expensive alicorn is. You’d think they could live better than vagrants in the wilderness.” Draco lowered his voice instinctively as the hooded figures moved to walk in front of them.

            Potter gave him a faint smile. “This is the kind of lifestyle that people value when they have no souls. Oatten’s explained it to me more than once.”

            Draco closed his mouth tight. It seemed that he couldn’t pierce Potter’s delusion on his own, the way he’d thought he might be able to if he just spent enough time chipping away at it. He would have to wait for an actual confrontation with a piece of evidence and then seize the moment.

            He shivered as they kept walking. Even though he would have expected wizards without wands to have discovered some substitute for basic Warming Charms, it didn’t feel like it. But why did no one else seem bothered by it?

            Then Oatten halted and murmured, “Well. It seems Hail’s impatient to see Harry.”

            The mists in front of them shifted, and Draco braced himself. He might get his confrontation with that piece of evidence sooner than he liked.

*
            SP777: Draco would say he’s just trying to bring Harry to his senses, and sometimes you have to make sacrifices for worthy goals. ;)
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The Rising of the Stones