Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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 Eighteen—End of a Rainbow
            “Oh, it’s moving slowly. But it’s coming.”
            Harry saw Hermione nod out of the corner of his eye, but he kept his gaze on the sky. Today, it was a brilliant blue, with only a few high clouds that turned a radiant gold with the sun behind them, even though it was long hours from setting. But Harry could feel the power that crawled behind the blue, a web of lightning connecting up with other webs, and the thunder growled in his ears as if he could hear it across the miles.
            “Do you think you’ll be able to turn it aside?” Hermione took a step forwards, apparently wanting to make sure that Harry actually looked at her instead of getting wrapped up in the storm that he couldn’t see yet.
            Harry glanced at her and gently shook his head. “There’s certain things I can do to make sure that it doesn’t destroy us. I can fight it directly if I have to, even. But it has to come. There’s too much wild magic behind it, pushing it this way.”
            Hermione bit her lip and closed her eyes. “Are we going to lose the gardens?”
            Harry put his hand on her arm. Distracted by the storm or not, he knew that she valued the greenhouses, sure that they would manage to grow Potions ingredients as well as Earth food plants someday, and grasses that would be more delicious than the ones that were native to Hurricane. The problem was how fragile they were; winds could shatter glass, scatter pots, tear up roots, carry the plants themselves far away.
            Now that he was one in his thoughts with the storm, sometimes, Harry thought more about the damage than he had ever done. He knew exactly what he would be capable of with that much wind to throw around, and the storm was more, since it didn’t have his moral scruples.
            “I think you can keep them,” Harry said. “But it’s going to take a lot of Preservation Charms, the kind that Hogwarts had on it to keep the towers from swaying when the storms got bad.”
            Hermione nodded, her chin thrusting out, and strode away from him, calling out to Ron. Ron whined in response. Harry smiled and tilted his head back once more to the sky, shutting his eyes so that he would be fooled less by the placid blue field above him.
            He could feel the storm. The inherited magic of the gateway, or the sensitivity he had to storms, or something, filled the air around him with pulsing shadows.
            It was coming. He knew that. And he knew it had to rage, in some way, that the summer on Hurricane was more than the safety of one community of different species. If he turned it aside, even assuming he could, it would do more damage to the ocean or the plains or wherever he put it than it could do to the mountains. The riders had lived in this meadow for years, as much as Harry could make them understand the concept of years when they counted the return of certain events like the Tssisid migration more than they did specific days, and they had survived.
            But they also have wings available to them, and they could fly away if it got too bad. Even their herds could do that.
            Well. If not everyone in his group could fly—and Harry wouldn’t want to try lending them the wind at the same time as the storm was going on—and they were bound to the possessions that they couldn’t take with them even if they had wings, then Harry was just going to protect them, that was all.
            Harry cracked his knuckles in front of him, his gaze fastened on the northern horizon. The winds that traveled past his ears, the ones that he caught only for a few seconds to interrogate them before letting them go, were talking about the storm, if you listened to them. They whispered of the power that would be theirs, they shivered in envy of their big cousins.
            Well, Harry thought, and looked long and sternly at the mountains facing him before he turned to go back to Draco and Jeremy. Come on, then.
*
            “Where’s Harry?”
            Draco started and looked up. He’d been trying to write down some of the circling, blithering thoughts in his head, now that he had finally decided to make use of the one journal he’d brought with him. Real paper, real parchment even, was precious, and Draco didn’t know how long it might be before they were able to do something other than Transfigure grass into more.
            Nuisance had his head thrust through the tent flap, and he was staring at Draco as if Draco was the one at fault for not giving him the information right now. Draco rolled his eyes and reached out to touch the bond in the back of his mind.
            Harry had taken Jeremy and Teddy and Victoire out to explore the hills near the southern edge of the meadow. The slopes were gentler there, suitable for Teddy’s legs and even Victoire’s tumbling ones, and since Harry had the magic to use winds to lift the children, he didn’t need someone else to go with him.
            Draco shrugged. “In the southern hills. Specifically, on that one that’s a few hills south of where we found you,” he added. “Go find him if you want him.”
            Nuisance shook his head and crowded into the tent, folding his legs beneath him so he could lie down like a deer to fit. Draco still eyed the antlers that stood up from his head and almost poked through the cloth of the ceiling, but Nuisance didn’t seem to notice. “You’re the one I want to talk to.”
            That made Draco put the journal aside—he wasn’t having much luck organizing his thoughts about Harry and the summer anyway—and give the kires his full attention. “What?” he demanded.
            “Harry thinks he’s knows what he’s doing with the summer and the storm,” Nuisance said seriously. “But what do you think?”
            Draco rolled his eyes. “Not this again. Is it the riders who’ve decided to retroactively distrust him for killing Primrose? Or you? Or someone else?”
            “It’s not about him killing anything, or anyone distrusting him.” Nuisance moved his legs back and forth, his bent knees scuffing up the dirt of the floor more than Teddy had managed to do in all his visits. “I just have to worry about it, all right? I don’t know what’s going to happen to me when the storm comes. I can’t fly.”
            “Then shelter in the houses with us,” Draco said. “Isn’t that what you did last time, when Harry was using that storm to fight Primrose?”
            Nuisance ducked his head and stared at the ground. Draco watched him in frustration. Nuisance was usually direct enough that Draco had no idea of what was bothering him now, and thus no way to foist him off on Harry.
            You can deal with him, Harry said comfortably in the back of his head. I have that much faith in you, Draco. Just a minute, I have to catch Teddy. He thinks he can command the wind when he really can’t.
            “Just tell me what brought you here,” Draco said at last. Maybe directness of his own would make Nuisance spit out whatever it was where sympathy couldn’t.
            Nuisance finally raised his head, once again making Draco fear for the safety of their tent canvas, and stared at him. “What if there are other kires roaming the hills?” he whispered. “The northern ones, the ones where the storm is going to hit hardest, because Harry won’t turn it until it gets here? Or other creatures that aren’t kires but are still like me? They don’t have the security I do. They could all die.”
            “If they’re like you, then they could read the thoughts of the animals around them and know how to hide,” Draco said. “They ought to know storms were dangerous the same way you knew it before you ever met us.”
            Nuisance’s ears trembled as he roughly shook his head. “I don’t know how you can take this so calmly.”
            “Because you’re the only one who can do something about it,” Draco snapped back. Honestly, why did people get so upset with him when he suggested obvious solutions? It was like Granger fussing around her greenhouses and only accepting it when Harry suggested stronger Preservation Charms, even though Draco had told her the same thing a week ago. “If you don’t trust any other kires out there to have the good sense to hide from the storms, then why not go and find them and tell them so? They would probably learn from you faster than they would from anyone else. The riders don’t live that way, and most of the animals who can’t hide from the storms have probably migrated by now.”
            Nuisance lifted his head, his eyes wide and his ears fluffing out. “That is a good idea,” he whispered.
            Of course it is. I came up with it. But Draco didn’t need to hear Harry’s laughter in his head to know how well that would go over. Instead, he tried to pat Nuisance’s shoulder. “Go and investigate, then. You can take care of yourself, or you should be able to, after all the time you spent around us.”
            Nuisance gave him a lofty look as he scrambled to his hind feet. His front part was still bent down so that he wouldn’t tear anything. “I knew that much before I ever came here. Humans only made me part of what I am.”
            “Then you shouldn’t worry about other kires out there, either,” Draco began, but Harry shushed him, and Draco had to admit he was right after thinking about it. The last thing he really wanted was to get into an argument with Nuisance.
            Nuisance tossed him another lofty look and headed out of the tent. Draco peered through the flap and saw him tossing his antlers as he headed towards the center of the meadow and the mummidade, who would probably want word of his departure before he made it.
            I just don’t understand why more people can’t listen to me the first time.
            They might, if you were less condescending about it, Harry blasted back, from the hills where he was with the children and having a good time.
            Draco sniffed and stood up, putting the journal down. He had had enough of his own thoughts for today, and sharing his thoughts, when the people he handed them to didn’t appreciate them. He would join Harry and absorb some of the joy that rang through the bond from that direction for himself.
            Good. You’ll be just in time to change Jeremy’s nappy.
*
            Harry snapped his way into the air, spinning around and gathering wind in a cocoon about himself. It wasn’t as effective as breathing the wind into his lungs in order to make it his, but if worst came to worst, he could conjure winds out of the center of his magical core that would obey him absolutely. That ought to be enough to face one thunderrin, anyway.
            The reports had come from the scouts that morning, one of the other riders who called himself Scratch hurtling in so fast that Harry had thought his beast would crash. He had passed the word to Open Wings, and Westshadow had established the communication bond between Harry and Open Wings so that Harry could fully understand what the problem was.
            Of course, one thunderrin, flying slowly north a long and open way above the plains, was unlikely to be as much of a problem as Primrose and her people had been. But Harry still wasn’t enthusiastic about letting it get too close.
            He arced down towards where the winds told him the thunderrin would be, only slowing a little when he got in sight of it. For a thunderrin, it was behaving oddly. It had let him get above it, instead of striving for height, and it seemed more intent on being seen than on rising to see into the meadow.
            And it had a rider on its back, who tilted his head back and waved madly when he saw Harry.
            Harry stared, unsure. Then he descended a few hundred feet, until he was hovering on the same level as the thunderrin, but still a good distance away. It couldn’t do any harm to listen to what the rider had to say, if he would speak, Harry thought. It would make a change from always hearing from Primrose.
            He still held the storm ready in his clenched fists, of course, because he wasn’t stupid.
            Draco nearly strangled himself laughing in the back of Harry’s mind, which meant Harry missed the first few hesitant words from the rider. He hissed a command to hush at Draco and called out, “What did you say?” At least he could pretend it was the wind that had taken the words away, and not Draco’s fit.
            The rider guided the thunderrin closer, hands locked on either side of the rippling body. He didn’t ride very well, Harry thought critically. Perhaps he was recently bonded.
            Or recently chosen as the leader, Draco murmured. With Primrose dead, they would need to send someone to make the next declaration of war.
            Harry said nothing in response to that, studying the rider instead. He looked to be a young man—a few years older than Harry and Draco, but less than Bill’s age. He was panting, as though being near Harry frightened him.
            Smart man, Draco said.
            Harry nodded. There was the possibility that this rider wouldn’t turn out to be a simple replacement for Primrose after all, at least in terms of intelligence.
            “Are you Harry Potter?” The voice was high and breathless, and this time, Harry heard it immediately, since he was concentrating and the winds had carried the words to him.
            “I am,” Harry said. He thought about pushing back his fringe to show his scar, but there didn’t seem to be any need; the young man was babbling on in what looked like relief from a deep nervousness.
            “Oh, good. Good.” The man swallowed and leaned back on his thunderrin, which changed color beneath him, from purple to green and then muddy brown. Harry kept an eye on it. He didn’t know how to read a thunderrin’s colors well enough to know when it was going to attack, but he wouldn’t look away from a human stranger just because he didn’t know them, either. “I was wondering if you might know what happened to our leader, Hetty Primrose.”
            Harry considered lying, but only for a moment. There was no reason to hide it, when he could defend himself from any attack the young man might make out of revenge or outrage. “I killed her.”
            The young man’s jaw fell open, and then he bowed his head. Harry expected some tears, maybe, or some mourning, or a mutter of anger in the moment before the rider drove his thunderrin at him.
            He had never expected the murmurs he made, which resolved themselves into, “Oh, good. Thank Merlin. Thank—everything.” Then he jerked his head up and shook it at Harry. “But I’m being rude. I haven’t even told you my name yet. John Norbelie. I can’t believe…we’re free.”
            Harry folded his arms. “Do you mind telling me what’s going on, and why that news strikes you as a good thing?” He couldn’t help the snap that came into his voice, but Norbelie didn’t seem to care. He grinned.
            “Yes,” Norbelie said. “I mean, of course I’ll tell you.” He gestured at his thunderrin, whose wings had started flapping slowly. “But we did fly a long way today, and Rainbow is tired. Do you mind if we go down to the ground?”
            Harry felt his lips twitch. Yes, the thunderrin changed color, but someone who would name their beast Rainbow…
            Could still be dangerous, Draco snapped at him. Tell me that you’ll hold your power ready to strike at him if you land.
            Harry nodded once, and cut downwards. Norbelie and Rainbow followed. Harry watched them out of the corner of his eye, noting the way that Rainbow arched his thick neck back towards his rider and made a little noise, a muffled boom, that faded almost immediately in the sound of his flapping wings. Perhaps Rainbow had even chosen the name himself, Harry thought. He and his rider seemed to be close.
            If you spend all your time thinking about things like that, then you’re not going to be ready to kill them when they turn on you.
            But I wasn’t thinking they would turn on me, Harry said mildly as he landed in the grass and turned around. Rainbow landed behind him, belly-down like most thunderrin. Norbelie stretched and climbed off his back. I want to hear what he has to say. If nothing else, we didn’t expect anyone to celebrate Primrose’s death.
            Draco had no retort for that one, or at least not right away, and in the meantime, Norbelie had turned around and started speaking.
            “I know you probably didn’t expect us,” he said, with an embarrassed grin that made him look about fourteen. “We debated for a long time about sending someone to find out what happened to Primrose, in fact. We were so happy to see the back of her that we almost didn’t want to ask about it. But people started saying that she might come back someday, and we couldn’t be easy until we checked.”
            “Why are you so happy that she’s dead?” Harry asked. “A lot of people came with her, and they seemed happy to follow her.”
            Norbelie grimaced. “Yes. This is—this is part of the cycle of the thunderrin, apparently. Rainbow could explain it better, but since you probably don’t want him touching your mind…?” He looked at Harry, who couldn’t contain his grimace back. Norbelie nodded. “Fine. I’ll try to explain it as well as I can.
            “The thunderrin have a powerful one in each generation. I don’t know what function it was originally supposed to have, but right now, it can silence all of them, and if it bonds with a member of another species and so do some other thunderrin, then its bondmate can control all the other bondmates, too. No one can speak up against them. Most people have to do what they want, thunderrin and other species. It’s a silence that you literally can’t break. All you can do is hope that someone is going to kill the powerful thunderrin. From what Rainbow tells me—” Norbelie laid a protective hand on his beast’s neck “—it’s usually a powerful bird, or two thunderrin who have bonded to one another, and so they have the strength to resist the leader’s mental pressure.
            “We didn’t know anyone could kill Primrose and hers, though. I thought a human partner would protect it forever, and in the meantime, she silenced us all so we couldn’t make plans.” Norbelie clenched his hands in front of him, staring at them as if he didn’t know why he couldn’t do it before. “It was—ridiculous, that’s the right word, really. We wanted to rebel, but we did what she told us, instead.”
            Harry thought of the silence of the people who had come north with Primrose, both in the more recent attack and before that, and nodded. I believe him, he told Draco.
            Of course you would, you’re always giving credence to foolish stories like that, Draco muttered sourly back at him. But he sounded more intrigued than Harry knew he was going to admit to.
            Harry turned back to Norbelie. “Didn’t you know when she died? If you could act freely and speak to each other…”
            Norbelie shook his head. “The further away she went, the freer we became. The last time she came north to threaten you, we managed to agree that we wanted her gone and started making plans. It didn’t last, though, because she came back. And this time, we didn’t know whether she was dead, or establishing herself in the meadow and was going to come back for us, or whether the distance and the time were just so great that we had the illusion of freedom. We had to find out.”
            Harry nodded a little. “That’s great courage.” It had taken courage, he thought, to venture into the unknown, and for Norbelie not to know whether people who had killed Primrose might not kill him.
            You admire bravery too much, Draco hissed back at him. I’m so glad there’s no Gryffindor House here for you to try and get Jeremy into.
            Harry held back the chuckle that wouldn’t have made sense to Norbelie and watched the other man basking in his praise instead.
            “So what happens now?” Harry asked finally. “Do you want to come north and continue what Primrose tried to do? Is there anyone among you who wants that? Because you should know that we would resist you as hard as we could.”
            Norbelie shook his head so violently this time that Rainbow turned its thick neck towards him and spread its wings as though to comfort him. Norbelie stopped with a faint smile. “No, thank you,” he said. Harry wasn’t sure whether he was addressing Rainbow or Harry, but supposed it didn’t really matter. “We have no desire to take the meadow from you. I think Primrose only wanted to do that because she knew you and was afraid of you. We like the southern plains. The thunderrin were born there, and they want to stay there. It’s only the powerful one that ever wants to go somewhere else.”
            “Yes, but they have human partners now,” Harry felt compelled to point out, a moment before Draco did it for him. “Those human partners might want more land for their children, if nothing else.”
            Norbelie smiled a little, and blushed a little, and let his hand come to rest on Rainbow’s neck. “The thunderrin can only breed when the powerful one is gone,” he murmured. “We’re going to be okay now, at least until the next powerful one grows to maturity—and we might be able to recognize it this time and do something about it. The thunderrin mature rather suddenly, so they never know who’s going to be the next powerful one until it happens, but we might be able to do something about it,” he repeated.
            Harry nodded. “So you think you’re going to stay on the plains for the foreseeable future.”
            “Yes.” Norbelie caught his eye. “That doesn’t mean we wouldn’t welcome—visitors. Perhaps some of your people might want to bond with thunderrin, someday. But we’re not going to move anywhere any time soon.”
            Harry had to smile. “Good. That news will relieve the people in the meadow, too.” He gave a little salute to Norbelie. “Good luck on the future.”
            “You, too.” Norbelie half-bowed to him. “You made allies more quickly than we did, and you didn’t suffer under them. I hope that we won’t, either. And it’s twenty years, as nearly as we can tell when they don’t measure time like we do, until the next generation of thunderrin grows up. That should be enough time to find a solution.”
            He swung back onto Rainbow, and Harry waved as the thunderrin flowed into the air, aiming south. Harry watched him go for long seconds before he lifted himself back into the winds.
            You trust him, then? Draco sounded dubious.
            Harry nodded absently, eyes fastened on the retreating figures. We’ll have to see, of course, but twenty years is a long time. Almost as long as we’ve lived, you notice?
            Draco sent back a flood of wordless warmth, but also wordless demand that he stop mooning about and come home, so Harry chuckled and turned towards the meadow again. Sunlight seemed to fly with him, sunlight and lack of worry.
            That’s one problem solved. I can only hope the storm will be as easily solved.
*
            Sasunarufan13: Not as peaceful, but the storm is next chapter, not this one.
            I’m assuming some more time has passed since Jeremy’s birth than just a few days.
            And it was more that Teddy’s hair was dark that alerted Harry to what he was feeling.
            SP777: Well, they are bonded…although I think the others would disagree about them being ‘more’ married!
            Thanks.
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Here to Live and Die