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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 Eighteen—Moving Like Water

            “So this is one with a soul.”

            The voice was low, and strange. Draco was convinced he heard it, and that it emerged from the unicorn’s throat sounding like he was a Muggle who had smoked too many of their dangerous cigarettes. But at the same time, he knew that the words hadn’t left the unicorn’s mouth. They had simply appeared in the air.

            Two unicorns came forwards. They resembled the unicorns Draco was familiar with only in the way hawks resembled butterflies. They did have the same kind of horn, a delicate white spiral that made ivory look dirty.

            They had huge grey eyes, though, and shifting grey coats with shadows crawling over them. Now and then Draco thought he saw a dapple, now and then a spiderweb-like marking, or one like a snowflake.

            But before he could be sure, Potter gripped his arm and leaned over to hiss in his ear. “Be careful when you look at them. They’ll draw you in and down, and then you’ll just stand there while they take your soul.”

            Draco still doubted that rain unicorns could take anyone’s soul, even if Dementors could, but he wasn’t about to disregard Potter’s warning. He averted his eyes and nodded shortly, to let Potter know he took him seriously. Potter seemed satisfied, since he released Draco’s arm.

            But Draco could still look from the corner of his eye, and he did.

            They had hooves that curved upwards, as ivory in color as the horns, and so sharp that they made Draco’s skin prickle just looking at them. Even worse, he didn’t doubt that they were sharp enough not to hurt as they slid in. He might bleed to death before he knew that a unicorn had kicked him.

            Their feet and legs had smaller stipples of the shadows that marked their coats, but these looked different, as they overlapped and seemed to leap into and around each other. Draco blinked and steadied himself by a glance at Potter, so he knew he wasn’t getting lost in them. Then he looked back again.

            Yes, he wasn’t mistaking it. He had looked at portraits of snakes for long enough, after all. The rain unicorns had scales on their legs.

            “There is a new one of us,” said the same hollow voice that seemed to proceed by rearranging time, “who has decided to take on the name of Center-of-the-Gust. He wishes to consume a soul. Since you brought us the one that he wants to take, you will be rewarded. I am glad that you and I can speak on such terms when we parted on bad ones last time, Harry.” A horn dipped down, as if the unicorn called Hail was bowing to Potter.

            “Except that the human with a soul doesn’t want to be eaten today,” said Draco brightly, and drew his wand. “So you can tell Center-of-the-Gust to find his soul somewhere else.” If the unicorns themselves were talking about eating souls, then Draco supposed he had to admit, provisionally, that he believed it.

            There was an astonished silence, and one of the shadows towards the back of the herd shifted. The unicorn who had been speaking turned and trotted back in its direction, and came back a moment later.

            “I do not understand,” said the voice both in and out of Draco’s head. “Have you brought him for us to consume, or have you not?”

            “I have to admit that I didn’t, Hail.” Potter sounded oddly calm and relaxed, but with a soft taunt in his voice that reminded Draco of Oatten talking about the Dementor. “I brought him here because he doesn’t believe that people like me are born soulless. I thought seeing you and the others might convince him.”

            “Of course you were born soulless,” said Hail, in the voice of someone discussing the simplest thing in the world. Draco could only compare it to his father ordering one of the house-elves to hurt itself. “Otherwise, we would have eaten your soul when we first met.”

            “Well,” said Potter, and then touched Draco’s arm and tugged him a little forwards. “Keep your horns and hooves where I can see them, and then you can take a closer look. It’s too bad we don’t have another human with a soul, who you could eat to be the demonstration to convince him.”

            Draco turned and stared at Potter, being careful to keep the unicorns out of his field of vision. Did Potter have the least idea what he sounded like?

            But he must, Draco thought when he saw the calm expression on Potter’s face. Calm and absolutely set. He was switching back and forth between being the compassionate man Draco had met, who didn’t want to force anybody to acknowledge him, and the tough one that Oatten and Hail and the others seemed to expect.

            Although he had thought him weak at the time, Draco decided now that he preferred the more compassionate Potter.

            “He is very pale.”

            Draco bit down on his tongue to avoid giving his all-purpose retort to that, and avoided looking too much at the unicorns’ hides and horns and eyes, staring over their heads as a forest of horns moved around him. Once one of them turned a little to the side and cocked a back hoof, and Draco opened his mouth then.

            “I see that, Hurricane.” Potter’s hands flicked, and a series of pebbles soared up from the ground and rasped across the unicorn’s muzzle with a sound so unpleasant that Draco flinched in spite of himself. “You’re to keep your hooves to yourselves, I said. If you want me to stop talking to you, Hail, I’ll be just as happy to do that.”

            “No need to be so hasty, Harry. You know how the young ones get.” And Draco heard the rasp of something that sounded like a solid kick to the ribs. He hoped it was. “The young ones” needed to be taught how to mind their manners, too, it sounded like.

            He also hoped it was at least as unnerving for them to be kicked as it was to stand there in a crowd of creatures who at least believed they could eat his soul.

            “Then teach them,” said Potter, and raised a curtain of stones in front of Draco. “You’ve had enough time to look him over, Hail. And you didn’t know I would be bringing him here, so I don’t believe the original reason you wanted to meet with me had anything to do with him. What was the reason?”

            Hail raised his head and made a sound that was like a trumpet deprived of air. Draco saw the other unicorns backing up, though most of them tossed their horns as if they contemplated rebellion. He caught a glimpse of the curved front teeth in Hail’s mouth, and shuddered a little. Perhaps he did eat souls and not flesh, but he had a mouth that looked as if he did.

            “I wanted to know if you had considered my offer,” said Hail at last, when they’d stood there for some time and Potter showed himself perfectly at ease in the rain unicorn’s presence.

            “I did.”

            There was more silence. Draco held his appreciative snicker to himself. At least he knew Potter frustrated unicorns and soulless people as much as he did the people who were trying to help him in the wizarding world.

            “And well?” Hail asked at last, and let his hoof bounce off a stone.

            “The answer is no.”

            Hail suddenly moved forwards. Draco started and almost stepped in front of Potter, but Oatten reached out and held his arm with a grip that was only casual until it started to ache down Draco’s bone. Draco tried to shake him off, but Oatten pulled him over and hissed in his ear.

            “Hail respects Harry almost as an equal. It’s the only time I’ve ever seen a rain unicorn do that. You’ll do more harm than good if you try to interfere now.”

            Draco bit his lip and said nothing. Hail was still flowing around Potter. That was what it looked like more than anything else, he thought, as if Hail had shed those scaled legs for pure scales and become a snake. But it was hard to focus on him without the shadows from his coat trying to overwhelm Draco again, so he tilted his head to the side and simply listened quietly for what Potter would say.

            “We’ve given you what you wanted,” said Hail. “We’ve tested you and tried you and explained your condition.”

            “You didn’t explain it,” said Potter. He didn’t turn to face Hail, which might have been impossible anyway. He kept his eyes focused forwards and his smile faint and fixed. “You told me something that might have happened, something that later turned out not to be true after all. You had some good ideas. But I don’t owe you for good ideas.”

            “What was the offer Hail made him?” Draco hissed at Oatten.

            Oatten only shook his head and continued to watch Potter and Hail raptly. Draco rolled his eyes. He was starting to think the problem with these people wasn’t their lack of souls, but their lack of any initiative whatsoever.

            “You owe us for more substantial aid than good ideas, though.”

            “And I paid the price.”

            “It is a price you could pay again. You could be a lesson for the young ones, if you would not be the means of feeding them.”

            “I will not.”

            Draco couldn’t help but crane his neck to try and see the expression on Potter’s face when he said that. Did he look like he had when he was speaking to their crowds, or to Doge? Was he being deceptive, or real?

            And why do I care so much? After a minute, Draco persuaded himself into settling back on his heels and looking as calm and contained as he possibly could. He might not be making an impression on anyone right now, since they were all watching the byplay between Hail and Potter, but it was the only way he could live with his own criticism.

            “You owe us, Harry Potter.” Hail was walking faster and faster around Potter now, his horn cocked to the side and his hooves leaving the ground in oddly high steps. Draco wondered for a moment if this was part of the way rain unicorns fed, and resolved to watch, but then the swarming shadows in Hail’s coat tried to drown him again, and he had to look away. “You owe us for saving you and showing you how to make something of your life.”

            “I don’t owe you anything. We made a bargain. You showed me one thing and I showed you another.”

            “But we saved you from the clutches of your wizarding world and the wand that wanted you and which you did not want. That is two things. You only gave us one.”

            Hail stopped suddenly, so hard that Draco felt his eyes rolling about in their sockets trying to keep up with the change. He turned his head firmly aside and closed his eyes so they would stay still. He was not going to succumb to the rain unicorns’ power after so many people had gone out of their way to warn him about it.

            “I said the bargain was fulfilled.” From the sounds, Potter was turning slowly and deliberately to look straight at Hail. “You agreed. You can’t bring it up now and decide, a year later, that it never was.”

            “I can do what I want, Harry Potter. Here, in this place, now. Or have you forgotten?”

            The unicorn seemed to ripple, and suddenly struck like a breaking wave. Draco put a hand over his eyes before he realized that he probably wanted to see this, and he dropped it hastily and moved forwards.

            Potter moved at the same time, dipping down and extending his arms. He melted into the earth at Hail’s hooves, and then he rose from it in a shower of dirt and moved behind him, clasping something in his hands. Draco squinted. It was hard to see what it was, other than something white and shining, and long and thin and fine.

            Potter knotted it around the unicorn’s throat, and then held it still. Hail froze in place with unnatural grace at the exact same moment. He was still reared, his hooves still poised above the earth, but he didn’t kick Potter or try to strike him with his horn. He simply stood.

            “Now,” said Potter, who wasn’t even breathing hard, “are we going to call the bargain unfulfilled? Really? When you know what it would mean for your people?”

            The white line in his hands cut the unicorn’s throat when Hail moved against it. Draco choked. He could only guess how sharp it was to cut through all that thick muscle and pelt protecting Hail’s arteries. And that didn’t tell him why it wasn’t cutting through Potter’s hands.

            “I know what it would mean,” said Hail. “But I tell you that the insult cannot stand.”

            “There was never any insult. There was only me, being beyond your power, and you being unable to accept it.”

            Draco tensed and flinched before he could stop himself. Merlin, Potter, do you want to die? But then again, this was Potter, so Draco wouldn’t be surprised if he did. He certainly seemed willing to do other insane things like isolate himself from the wizarding world.

            Hail surged again, and a long, thin stream of pale blood slid down the side of his neck. Draco was more than interested to note that where it moved, the shadows in Hail’s coat stilled and then began rotating backwards, in a slow, sick spiral.

            “I can kill you,” said Potter. “And then I can take your horn, and make sure that you won’t come back.”

            They can come back? Draco tightened his hand on his wand, not even caring if someone else saw the gesture and thought he was weak. The more he learned about rain unicorns, the more he thought he should be prepared to confront and kill them at all times.

            “A horn I have not shed would void our bargain.”

            “As trying to kill me would void it.”

            Hail remained in that unnatural posture for some time without visible strain. Draco decided he was thinking. Draco watched more blood run down his neck, and shook his head. No wonder Potter feels like he fits in here. He and the rain unicorns are each as crazy as each other.

            “Very well. I will not void the bargain, and you will not void it.”

            “Agreed,” Potter snapped, and then whipped the thin line from around Hail’s throat and dived back down into the earth. This time, he was close enough to the surface, or Draco was alert enough, to see the roil of disturbed dirt that Potter made, like the trail of a mole, as he moved underneath them, and he didn’t jump, the way Oatten did, when Potter leaped up beside them and nodded to them.

            “Hail won’t be a problem now,” said Potter briskly.

            “What was that line you used?” Draco asked into the stunned silence. The rain unicorns were standing together like one creature made of many legs and horns, and none of the soulless wizards seemed inclined to ask anything.

            Potter gave him a tired smile. “Spun diamond.”

            Draco gave him an assessing look. He seemed to be telling the truth. “And why didn’t it cut you?”

            “Because my hands are in resonance with the diamonds that it’s spun from.” Potter turned his hands over, and Draco stared at the runes now visible on the backs of them, in the shape of some of the small circles of flaked stones Draco had seen him make in the past week. “I’ll show you when we have a minute where we can really sit down and I can draw the runes. It’s complicated.”

            Then Potter nodded at Oatten and added, “Can we still go back and visit with your family? I’d like to see Mercy.”

            “Y-yes,” said Oatten. A second later, it seemed he’d got over his shock at hearing those words from Potter, or seeing his actions, and he straightened his shoulders. “This way, Harry.”

            He disappeared into the swirling mist. Potter looked at Draco as if asking whether he had more questions, but Draco was watching the rain unicorns. They turned and melted into the mist, though, without even the sound of hoofbeats.

            “They’re creepy,” Draco said, since no one was around to scoff at him. “And strong.”

            “I’m stronger,” said Potter without any sound of bragging, and moved ahead of Draco. “Stay close to me and follow in my path. Oatten is forgetting to be courteous to visitors again.”

            You’re not only strong, Draco thought as he obeyed. You’re much more dangerous than I thought. I’m going to find out what other secrets you’re hiding, Potter, and I’m going to make sure that the rebellion against the Ministry succeeds.

            Because we have no reason to lose, if you’re this strong. The only problem is getting you to display your talents.

*
            SP777: Now you have. ;)
            And I don’t mind. Just let me know when you have a more solid idea for the story.
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The Rising of the Stones