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Wondrous Lands and Oceans	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 10108 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Twenty-Two--Understanding Hurricane

            Harry and Draco both landed on the grass not far from Ron and Hermione, at last, at long last. Harry was panting so hard that he could feel his lungs laboring to take in the air, and Draco was quiet beside him, only twisting his head back now and then to study the sky behind them as if he imagined that would let him see the now-distant mountain.

            "What the fuck happened?" Hermione stalked towards them, her hands on her hips.

            Harry held up one hand and took a few minutes to breathe and get the air used to moving in normal patterns in and out of his lungs again. Hermione waited, although she tapped her foot every now and then and shook her head at Ron. Ron waited with shadowed eyes.

            He knows some of what happened, Harry thought, straightening and meeting his best friend's eyes, and why I had to go after Draco.

            You would have gone after him, if Bodiless had torn him away.

            I would have gone to the rescue of anyone taken, Harry agreed calmly. But not with as much desperation as I flew after you.

            The emotions flowing down the bond turned cool and clear. Harry smiled and addressed Hermione. "Bodiless called Draco again, and this time it took possession of his mind. Sorry that I left you like that, but I was afraid of where it would take him if I hesitated."

            Hermione raised her eyebrows. "And you managed to get him away? I don't understand that." Harry could hear the temper boiling under her voice, which always showed up when she didn't understand something the first time around. "Bodiless is strong enough to send birds out of season against the mummidade. How did you get away?"

            "Because of the bond," Harry said. He had thought about it as they flew back, and it was the only explanation that made sense. "When we concentrated on that and focused everything on maintaining it instead of fighting Bodiless's magic, then we tore free."

            Hermione's mouth dropped open slightly. Draco muttered in the back of his head, I would have preferred if you had just said that we were so strong and awesome that we tore free on our own. Now she's going to think you're lying.

            Harry shook his head. I don't think so, he said, pointing at Hermione with his chin. Look at the way she's staring at us. She already has an idea. That's one reason I wanted to tell her. She might know what it means, where I don't.

            She's not that intelligent.

            "The mummidade are connected to each other," Hermione whispered. "They don't even exist as individuals apart from each other. And the riders that we saw--what if they're bonded to their beasts in the same way that you and Malfoy are bonded?"

            "Thank you for putting that disgusting image in the head of an invalid, Granger," Draco muttered behind her.

            Hermione shook her head at him. "I didn't mean that the bond would be exactly the same in all ways, of course. I mean that if minds are tied to each other, then there's more than one person doing the resisting. It would make sense for why the mummidade are bonded and why the riders are, if they are." She ignored Draco's muttering about how two sentient species was not a large sample size and turned to Harry and Ron, gesturing wildly. "Think about it! There's no real reason for a magical bond to form between you two, since it's not like you have the same magic or anything. Why would the bond form? What purpose does it serve? What if it's a kind of defense against Bodiless? I wondered why, if Bodiless was so powerful, it didn't just call the mummidade north and eat them. What if it can't? What if part of the reason they are the way they are is a defense against it?"

            "Well done," Ron murmured behind her. Hermione started and flushed, a shy smile on her lips.

            "If it's true," Draco reminded everyone.

            I think it is, Harry said to him. Remember that we couldn't really escape and I was ready to die, and then the bond snapped us free. There's no other reason for that. Why should we be able to have that sudden strength except that we were closer than we had been? Bodiless should never have let me come up to you like that.

            That means it won't make the same mistake again.

            Harry cocked his head in acknowledgment, but didn't take his eyes off Ron and Hermione's happy faces. But it also means that we're more likely to escape it, now that we know the secret.

            What's going to happen to Granger and Weasley, then? They're not bonded in the same way, and it might try calling Granger next.

            Harry shook his head. He didn't have an answer to that one yet, but he also didn't doubt that Hermione would come up with one. He tried his best to ignore Draco's snort, which was aloud instead of mental. Draco didn't have as much faith in his friends as Harry did. That was a given, and no reason to worry.

            They would come up with something.

*

            Draco saw no reason to linger in the north after their little adventure with Bodiless. They knew, now, what force could be powerful enough to drive the birds south out of season, and they even had a motivation for going back early. Bodiless was probably irritated that the mummidade could resist it, and wanted to hurt them if it couldn't conquer them. Draco didn't know how in the world they would change things, but they knew the truth, and that had been what the mummidade asked them to come north to find.

            But it seemed leadership of their little expedition had shifted to Granger when Draco wasn't looking, and she had a different plan.

            "We need to communicate with the riders somehow," she said as they sat around their fire that evening, Draco wrapped in thick blankets. He still had bruised bones and muscles from the way that Bodiless had slammed him around against the wind. "They live even closer to Bodiless than we do, and resist it. We need to figure out how."

            "They have their bonds to their beasts," Weasley said, stretching his toes out to the fire. "Which I don't think we can imitate."

            "You don't know that yet," Granger snapped back. "We don't even know how those bonds work, whether they're like the bond Harry and Draco share or something else." Draco noted silently that he was "Malfoy" when she was talking to him but "Draco" otherwise, which seemed odd. "Maybe we can have them if we capture some beasts of our own."

            "We haven't seen any wild ones yet," Harry pointed out, stretching flat beside Draco. Draco took his hand and gripped it in silence. Of course he had thanked Harry for coming to his rescue, but he wouldn't be able to say what he really wanted to until they were in private. "Maybe the tame ones are the only ones the riders associate with."

            Granger gave him a condescending look of the kind Draco had once hated her for. "That would make the most sense."

            "Then your plan of acquiring tame ones has a flaw," Draco murmured, closing his eyes to escape her glare. "Why would they give up bonded beasts, or ones that some of their own people could bond to?"

            There was a disconcerted pause. Draco smiled, ignoring the way that Harry scolded him in his head, like a flurry of snowflakes. It was a flaw worth pointing out, and not his fault if Granger hadn't thought far enough ahead.

            "Well," Granger said at last, "they probably wouldn't want to. But we could persuade them, somehow." She sounded more hopeful than Draco thought the matter merited.

            Draco snorted and opened his eyes. "The solution seems obvious to me. Encourage human-human bonds, like the one that Harry and I have. Then we could have people safe in camp, without needing to add another species that might get along with us or not." And without encountering the resistance in camp that we do whenever something changes, he added in private to Harry.

            You want to avoid dealing with the politics.

            Shut up, so do you.

            Harry snuggled a bit closer to him, and Draco wished he could have focused on that rather than Granger saying, "Well, I don't think that would work. There are an odd number of people in the camp even with two bonded, and we don't know that everyone will develop the wild magic to make it possible."

            "No, an even number now, with the youngest Weasley bonded to her bird," Draco pointed out, smiling at Granger, who looked as if she might be eternally miffed. He did so enjoy showing her that she wasn't the only one on Hurricane who had some intelligence. "And there's no reason that the bonds couldn't function between more than one pair of people. Look at the mummidade. Their whole culture is based on bonding in different-sized groups. Maybe we could all bond together." He squeezed Harry's hand at the same time, trying to convey that he didn't really want to bond with anyone except him, but was saying otherwise to placate Granger.

            Harry snorted and said, "I don't know if I would call what the mummidade have a culture, but your point is well-taken."

            "We just don't know," Granger said, putting her hands on her hips again even though she was sitting down, and frowning at them. "That's the point. We need to speak to people who can tell us, and that's the riders."

            "Not the mummidade?" Draco widened his eyes innocently. "I thought that Harry and I could speak to them through our bond. I must have imagined that part."

            Granger spent some more time glaring. Harry was the one who leaned forwards and said, with a quiver of laughter in his voice, "It's true that we have to struggle to understand what the mummidade say. But we'd have the same problem with the riders. And we have a channel of communication open with the mummidade."

            "I just hate leaving this place without knowing what we've accomplished, if anything," Granger said, turning her glare on the meadow.

            "We've accomplished plenty," Weasley said, slinging an arm around her shoulder and kissing her forehead. Draco had to look away. "Discovered a new species, learned about Bodiless, and learned about what it takes to resist Bodiless. I'd say that's a pretty good haul of treasure for an expedition as limited as this one is."

            "Who learned what it takes to resist Bodiless?" Draco asked the mountains.

            "Fine, some of us did," Weasley said, and he was the one who grinned this time, and Draco the one who found it disconcerting. "You'll have to get used to being spoken of as part of the group, Malfoy. You are."

            Draco lifted his head and sniffed, ignoring the deep, warm fluttering in his middle that didn't come from the bond.

*

            "I wanted to say thank you."

            Harry looked up. Draco was pressing near to him in the darkness, his eyes so wide that Harry was afraid for a moment Bodiless had possessed him once more, and then just that he was still stunned from the way he'd been slung around the sky and then pulled back towards Harry. Harry was supposed to be on watch, and the bond had been so quiet for most of the evening that he'd thought Draco was asleep.

            You could have known otherwise if you wanted to, at any time.

            Harry had to admit that was true. Draco's mind was part of his now, sliding, fluid, one thought opening into another. He reached out his hand, and Draco clasped it and drew it towards him, his tongue flickering for a moment on the webs of skin between Harry's fingers, before he closed his lips and drew them into the warmth of his mouth.

            Oh. That kind of thanks.

            Draco laughed, soft and intimate and never going to carry to the place by the fire where Ron and Hermione slept, and drew Harry down onto a conjured blanket. "What made you think that I was going to thank you like a normal friend?"

            "Because you hadn't done this so far," Harry said, and closed his eyes as Draco's fingers pried open the buttons at his throat. He did pause a moment to send winds ranging outside the campsite, and investigating what they found there. If he was going to be distracted, he at least didn't want to make a poor job of the watch. This part of Hurricane had proven to be more dangerous than any other so far.

            Draco gave him an impatient whine, and Harry forgot about everything except for the emotions and sensations pulsing between them. He could feel the impatience between Draco's legs, especially, and fell on his back to pull his own up, assuming that Draco would want to be inside him as soon as possible.

            But Draco shook his head. His cheeks were bright and pink, his fingers nimble as he reached down to Harry's entrance, but he made no move to take himself out. Harry blinked at him. His emotions were so soft and diffuse that it was difficult to get a handle on what he wanted.

            Then Harry forgot about everything except those marvelous wet fingers sliding in and out of him, and moaned and spread his legs more. He did jump a little when Draco bent down to take him in his mouth, but not with fear. God, those ripples of pleasure spreading through his body, down to his belly and up to his chest...

            And he abruptly realized one reason why this felt even more intense than usual. Draco was feeding pleasure and feeling into the bond, down from the top of his head, up from the bottoms of his feet, and showing Harry what he felt as well.

            He shoved it into Harry, and Harry arched his back and moaned again. It felt like being fucked. It felt better than that. Then it felt like that again, from moment to moment never the same level. And Draco's mouth and fingers were there all the time, too, sucking and fucking him.

            It didn't take him long to come. He yawned a few seconds afterwards and rolled over, limp-limbed and trailing. It seemed like all the tension and terror of the last day had gone out of him with his orgasm.

            "Good," Draco whispered aloud, curling up around him. "You have no idea what it was like to see you come flying to my rescue, Harry."

            Harry smiled drowsily up at him and clasped his cheek. "Sure I do. I can feel what you're feeling, remember?"

            Draco kissed him, and wrapped Harry's thigh with his own legs, rubbing himself off. Harry watched his pale face flushing, his head tilting back no matter how hard he tried to maintain eye contact with Harry. He was magnificent, and they were bonded, and at the moment Harry felt like the luckiest lover on Earth.

            Or Hurricane.

            Of course Draco couldn't let something like that go, even when he was in the middle of gasping and coming.

            They curled up around each other when Draco was done, and closed their eyes. The guardian winds sped across the meadow beyond the camp, watching. The stars shone above them, different stars, in different patterns, but ones that Harry thought he was already learning to recognize. They slept.

*

            "That's the stupidest thing I've ever felt."

            Draco sighed and stopped a distance from the fire. He was sure that he didn't want to know why Weasley was clutching his ears with both hands and staring into the north, but also that he would learn anyway, because Weasley and Granger never seemed to have learned about keeping these things to themselves, or dealing with them on their own.

            "What is it?" Granger was sitting up on the other side of the fire, her face still soft with sleep, yawning as she combed her hair. Draco was glad to see that she didn't treat Weasley as her lord and master every moment he required her attention, but he couldn't help but wonder what Granger would be like, how she could develop, if she was paired with someone else.

            Weasley finally dropped his hands, rubbing his ears as if they hurt. "I don't know exactly," he said. "It's like someone calling me."

            Draco took a step forwards before he could stop himself. Granger had looked at him, he realized, her fingers twitching in what looked almost like a spasm. They nodded at the same time and Granger said gently, "That's the same thing we felt calling us the other day, Ron, the same call that made us want to leave. The same creature Harry and Draco felt yesterday. That's Bodiless."

            Weasley met both of their eyes in turn, and for some reason, looked longer at Draco than at Granger, as if he thought he would be able to tell better when Draco was lying. Then he turned to Granger, shaking his head. "But I don't have any wild magic!"

            "I wonder," Granger said, her voice low and precise. Gone into research mode, Draco knew, and was a little disgusted that he could tell. "Draco developed offensive wild magic when he really wanted to stop that bird from killing Harry. I got the ability to read maps when I concentrated on the mystery of the silver ovals. You don't like the magic much, Ron. That kind of desire could be enough to spur its development."

            Weasley shook his head again. "But I haven't done anything! I would have to do something if I had it, wouldn't I?"

            Draco had to bite his lip when he realized that Weasley was pleading with him. He spread his hands and shook his head. "I'm not the expert on the wild magic that Harry is," he said. "You should ask him."

            "He did develop it before the rest of us did," Weasley said, and turned abruptly to Harry, whom Draco had known was right behind him. "Mate! Do I feel like the wild magic to you? Only they say Bodiless is calling me, and I'm sure that can't be right."

            Harry paused for a moment, blinking, and Draco thought he saw a little twitch cross his lip. But he examined Weasley as gravely as though he was a Healer asked to take on a new patient, and shook his head at the end of it. "You don't feel any different to me than you did yesterday, mate."

            Weasley sagged in relief, but Harry raised his hand before he could say anything. "I could have a wind investigate you, though," he said. "They're more likely to tell me if something has changed about the wild magic in an area."

            "I'm not an area," Weasley muttered, but he stood there, stiff and frowning, while the wind darted around him. Draco could feel it through the bond, but see it only in the ruffle of Weasley's ginger mop and the blink of his eyelashes it passed around his face. It seemed to linger there for a long time.

            Harry drew in an abrupt breath. Draco blinked, wondering what the wind had told him, and then realized that the wind had vanished.

            "That's it," Harry whispered. "Ron, my wind stopped existing when you frowned at it."

            "What does that mean?" Weasley folded his arms. "It just went back to join its big brothers and sisters in the sky?"

            Draco snickered, and then was appalled at himself for finding a Weasley amusing. But Harry was focused too much on said Weasley to notice. "You have the wild magic to deny wild magic," he said. "Draco, extend your claws towards him."

            Weasley had his wand out in an instant. "No, thanks," he said. "I've heard about what he can do, and that's worth even more than seeing it."

            "I won't hurt you."

            Draco paused over the reassurance in his voice, and so did Weasley, though Draco thought it was for different reasons. The silence resonated between them, though, and Granger and Harry looked back and forth between them, obviously wondering. Draco finally nodded and said, "I won't."

            "Fine," Weasley said, and stepped back, arms folded and the same scowl on his face that he had worn when Harry was investigating him with the wind. Draco reckoned that was at least even chances for this experiment to work.

            He extended his claws, and they kept growing as they went towards Weasley. At the moment, it felt no different than any other time he had done this: the cold air, the rasp of skin near his weapons the way feathers had been near them when he killed the bird, the thick hum of gathering power near his fingers--

            And then it was gone. If Bodiless had shut him away from his magic again, Draco thought, there could have been no greater barrier between him and it. He shook his hands, but Weasley didn't explode in shreds.

            "Yeah," Harry said. His face was bright with the smile that didn't use his mouth, which Draco thought the most beautiful of his expressions and preferred to see directed at him only. "You've got it."

            Weasley, luckily, didn't explode in the dancing and howling that Draco thought he might have if he had still regarded the wild magic as a disease. He just sighed, shook his head, and said, "We should go back to the camp now. We have a lot of news to report, and at least I can be useful in the ways you can now." He was looking at Granger when he said "you," so Draco decided graciously not to react.

            "We do," Harry said, and there was joy in him, springing and soaring joy, of the kind that Draco had felt when he was battling the riders and their beasts. "We have the kind of news that will change all our lives."

            And once again he flung them into the wind before anyone could argue about it, and only barely remembered to grab the packs on the way.

*

            SP777: Thank you! You were very close on the reason that the mummidade go about in pairs at minimum, at least.

            Silverkitten: Thank you! Hermione is very curious about the riders, too, and that's at least part of the reason why she wanted to stay.
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Wondrous Lands and Oceans