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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
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Twenty-Five—The Gate

            Harry slammed his winds down without thinking. The time had come to stop that, maybe. He had given Andromeda all the chances in the world to return of her own free will, and she’d taken none of them. He would have to show her that he meant what he said about not allowing her to take Teddy.

            His winds curled precisely around Teddy and lifted him out of her grasp. Teddy screamed for a moment, but Draco stepped forwards with his arms out, and Harry dropped him into them. Draco cradled him close, and Teddy sniffled and clung as though Draco was his one familiar figure in a changing world.

            Hell, maybe he was.

            Andromeda continued to run. Harry shook his head and stepped back. If she made her own decision, he would have to let her go. She was an adult, and although he thought returning to the wizarding world would be bad for her, it was her wishes that mattered.

            As long as we’re only talking about her.

            But Andromeda only made it a few steps into the white light beaming from the gate before she cried out and stumbled back, her hand over her eyes. The light glowing from the gate became bright enough that Harry raised his winds. Did the Ministry have Unspeakables or Aurors waiting on the other side? Harry intended to hit them hard with his power before they could establish a foothold on Hurricane, if so.

            But no one came through the gate, and as the breathless moments passed with no other sound than Draco murmuring to Teddy, the light faded again. Harry lowered his hands and the winds at the same time, and frowned at Andromeda, who had one hand clasped to her mouth, eyes fixed on the gate.

            “What happened?” Harry asked.

            “I don’t know,” Andromeda whispered. “It felt as though the air thickened around me, and then some enormous hand was forcing me back.” She didn’t take her eyes from the gate, though Harry didn’t know how she could see anything through the intense light. “I don’t know,” she repeated.

            I think I do, Draco said, and he laughed in Harry’s mind.

            He was the one who could laugh; Harry was the one who needed to comfort Andromeda, because he remembered the woman who had helped him raise Teddy and the woman who had struggled so hard to overcome her grief, before she gave into it and her fear. He put a hand on her arm. Andromeda turned blank eyes on him, ready to accept an answer as long as it was solid.

            “I think Hurricane kept you here,” Harry said. “We wondered whether Teddy would be able to go back through the gate with his wild magic, and what would happen if he did. Draco thought he might lose his magic on Earth. It seems that you won’t have to worry about that,” he added over Andromeda’s shoulder to Draco. “The gate simply won’t let us through once we’ve adapted to Hurricane.”

            “But I don’t have the wild magic,” Andromeda said, soft and dreary.

            “You must have,” Harry said. “Maybe an unrecognized talent, like the way that Teddy’s barely manifests if you don’t know what to look for. Or maybe only the potential for it. Maybe it waits until you want something really badly.” He thought of Ron and his intense desire to escape Bodiless and live free.

            Andromeda bowed her head. She said nothing, made no other sound, but Harry saw the gleam of tears sliding down her cheeks.

            “It’s not that bad,” Draco said. “Don’t you feel better, having the decision made for you? This way, you don’t have to challenge Harry, and lose.”

            Harry held Draco’s eyes for a moment, and said nothing down the bond. Draco turned away with Teddy, put him on the grass, and answered his questions about breakfast so that Harry didn’t have to. Harry turned back to Andromeda.

            The last two years rang in his memory. He had been impatient with her often, had considered her weak when she made so little effort to emerge from her grief and realize that she was alive even if Tonks and Ted and Remus weren’t. But then, she had only done what he had permitted her to. If he hadn’t taken over so thoroughly, convinced he was the only one who could care for Teddy, then maybe she would have had to step up instead of drift along half-immersed in grief and half in dreams.

            “I can forgive you,” Harry told her quietly. “Because Teddy needs his grandmother, and you’re still that. But if you want to go back home, if you’re going to try to do something stupid again, something that might hurt him, then I won’t.”

            Andromeda raised her head. The tears had gone, and she looked shakier than Harry had ever seen her before, but the emotion in her eyes wasn’t fear.

            “I wanted to go back home,” she said. “I still think it would be safer for Teddy in the wizarding world than here. No giant birds trying to kill him, no wild magic eating him alive.”

            “It might be safer for him if anyone else loved him,” Harry corrected her. “But as long as I do, then there are people who will see him as the Chosen One’s adopted son, and try to gain some sort of political advantage by killing him.”

            Andromeda bowed her head again and took a deep breath. Harry hoped it was cleansing. He ached all over, and not from physical weariness. He wanted this to work out between them, he did, he just wasn’t sure it could.

            “Fine,” Andromeda whispered. “Since we can’t go through the gate, and you and my nephew have taken over the task of guarding us, then I’ll help. But I don’t like it, and don’t expect me to embrace the wild magic that you claim kept me here. When it comes, I won’t use it. I’ll ignore it. And I’m only doing this for Teddy.”

            Harry smiled at her despite himself. “That’s fine. He was the main reason I came here.”

            Andromeda looked up so quickly that Harry thought she must have hurt her neck. “Not long ago, you would have said that he was the only reason you came here. What has changed?”

            Harry held her eyes and tried to be as honest as he could. “The bond with Draco, and the development of my wild magic. And seeing that Teddy has you and Draco, now, in ways he didn’t back in the wizarding world. I still love him and want to protect him, but he isn’t the only center of my life anymore.”

            Andromeda shook her head. “That means he’s not as well-protected. You should concentrate on him more.”

            Harry winced, because in a way she was right. He had been thinking a lot about the journeys to the ocean and north lately, about Ron and Hermione and the wild magic, and not about Teddy.

            You can’t think about someone every moment of his life. If you could, then I would require you to think about me instead, Draco’s voice said in the back of his mind, disagreeable in its calmness. It’s probably better that you’re thinking about general things. You’ll nourish the community in which Teddy grows, as Granger would put it.

            Harry smiled and reached out a hand to Andromeda. “I’ll protect him as much as I can, but that means protecting other people, too. Including you.”

            Andromeda briefly pressed her hand to her belly, then took it away again with a deep breath. “I don’t know how to live again.”

            “Then we’ll help you learn,” Harry said. “I don’t think I’m any sort of expert on grief, since I overcame it kind of accidentally. The bond with Draco helped the most, and I didn’t ask for that. But Draco can tell you more than I can. He gave up all his money and property to come here.”

            “And you didn’t?” Draco said, although his voice was so gently shaded that Andromeda might not notice.

            “I think it meant more to you than it did to me,” Harry said, and smiled at him. “At least, I’m pretty sure it did.”

            Draco grunted something about how Harry shouldn’t get so cocky just because he was right sometimes. Harry hid his snicker as best he could and turned back to Andromeda. “I told you before that Teddy needs all three of us,” he said. “It’s why I would have come after you if you’d managed to pass through the gate. You can make your own choices, but Teddy’s a child, and the only thing he would have known is that he’d suddenly left me and Draco behind, not why we didn’t follow. Do you understand now?”

            “He’s still my grandson,” Andromeda said, in a small, choked voice. “The Ministry granted custody to me.”

            Harry nodded. “But the Ministry’s decisions mean nothing here, and I told you what his life would have been like if we’d stayed there. Even if I never came back, the Ministry knew I was helping you take care of him. They might have taken him to use as a political pawn. The Chosen One’s godson. They would know how to use him.”

            Andromeda’s brow furrowed. “Why do you know how they think so well, if you despise them?”

            “Because it’s the sort of thing I had to know, to survive,” Harry said shortly. He could understand the tack she was taking, but it was still annoying. “Here, we don’t need to know that. Here, Teddy has the chance to grow up free of the Ministry’s politics. Not all politics, but at least that particular poisonous kind. Can you see why I was so willing to take the risk to free him?”

            Andromeda watched him with wide eyes. Then she nodded. “Now I do.”

            And she did, Harry thought, watching her. Or at least he thought she did. All the struggle to make her understand, all the suspicions, all the grief, and it seemed that what he’d needed was the right combination of mentioning how the politics would hurt Teddy and that things could be different here.

            She feared the Ministry more than she feared me. And she might even be more afraid of them than she is of the wild magic, although I think she’d deny that.

            Of course she would deny that, Draco said in his mind, as impatient as a wave. Why would you think otherwise? All she’s done since you started confronting her is throw up more and more denial. If you hadn’t guessed where she was going and got us here before her, then she’d probably still be running into the gate trying to get through, and not understanding why she couldn’t.

            I don’t think so. Maybe the gate being closed to her spared her from having to make some hard choices, but it forced her into others. And I think she needs our understanding now a lot more than she needs our scolding.

            Draco bent his head over Teddy and said nothing. He didn’t need to, when his conviction that Harry should be the one to deal with Andromeda and her shit was coming over loud and clear.

            “Stay here with us,” Harry urged Andromeda quietly. “Help us. You don’t have to use the wild magic if you don’t want to, but help us in other ways. Make this a fit world for Teddy to grow up in, if it isn’t now. We can’t do that without you.”

            Andromeda’s eyes had tears in them again, but for once, Harry didn’t fear that she would break into a wild outburst against him. She nodded. “I think I can do that,” she said. “If you help me.”

            Of course you’ll help her, you help everyone.

            Harry took Andromeda’s hand and smiled. “I can.” And you help people who are related to you by blood or bonded to you, so don’t be such a hypocrite.

*

            Draco would have liked to point out that that meant a much smaller pool of people for him to help than for Harry, but Harry was being a hypocrite and Draco didn’t want to say it. Therefore, he turned his head away with a small sniff and paid attention to Teddy, who had started tugging on his arm a few minutes ago.

            “Cousin Draco,” Teddy said, and held up a pinch of grass-fluff that he must have taken from one of the smaller grass blades around them. “Look at this.” He waved the fluff back and forth, and small spikes of white stuck out from it and pointed here and there in the air.

            Harry laughed in his mind. Draco struggled to work his lips into the semblance of an interested smile, and not turn around to look at Andromeda and Harry again. “That’s fun, Teddy,” he said, and scooped his little cousin up. “But don’t you think that we should go back home and have breakfast?”

            “Eat,” Teddy said, nodding, and then paused and thought about it, before saying, loudly enough to make Draco jump a bit, “Eat!”

            Wonderful, Draco thought, and Harry smirked—it didn’t matter that Draco wasn’t facing him, he could still tell well enough when the bastard was smirking—and whipped a quick observation into the back of his mind.

            Are you still so eager for children of our own, when something like this is the result?

            Draco grimaced, and said nothing. He didn’t think Harry was being fair to the notion of children of their own, but pressing him on the subject would do no good. Draco held Teddy up and shook him back and forth, and Teddy abandoned his bit of fluff to hold onto Draco’s arms and giggle. “Do you want to go home?” Draco asked, keeping one eye on Andromeda as she stood watching them. “Back to the camp with the hills and the stream and the house where you live with your grandmother?”

            “Uncle Harry’s house,” Teddy said, and stuck a finger into the corner of his mouth.

            Andromeda said nothing, but Draco could see her mouth firm. Well, he had to admit that he had called the camp home partially to bother her and see what her reaction would be. If she reacted badly, that was only to be expected, and from the trickle of disapproval he was getting from Harry, Draco should only be glad that she wasn’t crying or saying something about her daughter and husband.

            I’m glad that I didn’t know Cousin Dora, Draco added to Harry in his head. It would mean that she would try to talk to me about her grief, too, and that would be tiresome.

            You missed something by not knowing Tonks, Harry responded, sharp enough to make Draco wince, and his winds almost ripped Draco from his feet as they began the flight back to the camp. Still, the pull gentled in a second, although that might have been more because of Teddy than Draco himself, and Draco trusted he had made his point.

            I’m not a nice person, he told Harry as gently as he could, while they soared back over the fields and streams in the direction of the camp. They were seeing much more water now, probably because they had learned how to look for it. It didn’t reflect the sky of Hurricane in the same way as the water on Earth reflected the sky there, because the colors were different. You must have seen that by now.

            There’s a difference between not being a nice person in general and being glad that you didn’t know Teddy’s mum. She was wonderful.

            Tell me how? Draco made his voice as gentle as he could, as soft, as wistful. Harry wouldn’t be fooled completely, but he could feel that Draco wished to propitiate him, and that was something, at least. I would ask Aunt Andromeda to tell me, but I know she would make her sound like a goddess, and I’m not interested in knowing goddesses.

            Harry said nothing, only gave him a single long look over his shoulder. Draco held Teddy close, watched the way that Andromeda shut her eyes and gripped her hands around the arms of the invisible chair of wind carrying her, and waited.

            Well, maybe I’ll tell you, if only so that you can also tell Teddy stories of his parents when he grows up, Harry said grudgingly.

            Yes, think of it like that, Draco said. And just think, all the practice I’ll get in storytelling, I’ll be a much better storyteller when we have our own children and they need someone to murmur to them just before they go to sleep.

            The image of you murmuring to anyone just before they go to sleep…

            Draco laughed at the emotions washing down the bond to him, spotted and glowing silvery-grey with all the things Harry felt, and Teddy looked up curiously at Draco from his position right next to Draco’s chest. Yes, it’s strange, isn’t it? But you’re the only one who can help me become a nicer person, Harry.

            Because I’m the only one who takes on so many hopeless causes?

            No, because you’re the only one I would be able to make any change like that for.

            Harry was silent. Draco waited, listening to Teddy’s chatter, and nodding when he couldn’t hear it because of the wind. Sometimes, thanks to the bond connecting him to Harry, he forgot how inconvenient the wind billowing all around them really was. He couldn’t talk to anyone but Harry.

            When we were traveling with Ron and Hermione, you probably would have put that among the advantages of the wind, and not the disadvantages.

            Draco tilted his head in recognition, but said, What do you think about what I said, Harry? Will you tell me about Cousin Dora? I’ll call her Tonks when I talk about her to Teddy, but I prefer to talk about her this way to you, he added, because he could feel the bond between them quivering with the onrushing question.

            This isn’t—some kind of bargain, Harry said, with more moments, and more momentum, and more wind passing them in the air and more ground streaming past beneath them. That I tell you about Tonks and you tell Teddy, and then I agree to have children with that ritual the mummidade used. You don’t even know that you’re going to want children with me in five years.

            Draco smiled, and said nothing. No, it wasn’t a bargain. But because of the way they were connected, Harry already knew that.

            Harry sighed, and then his voice warmed. She was a member of the Order of the Phoenix, you know, he said, and Draco stifled his temptation to make fun of dotty old men and what they chose to call their supposedly secret evil-fighting Orders. Harry’s voice became a little stiffer, but at least he didn’t say something stupid. She was a Metamorphmagus, like Teddy. And she was clumsy. She managed to pass all the tests and become an Auror despite that. Can you imagine how good she must have been at the things she was good at?

            At least as good as you are at circular statements.

            Harry didn’t answer for a few seconds, and Draco had time to regret what he had said—well, not saying it, but that Harry had taken it the wrong way—before Harry continued, She was in love with Remus. That really surprised me. I mean, I didn’t see why, and I don’t know exactly when or why it started.

            You were a teenager, Harry. You couldn’t be expected to pay attention to every pair of random adults that crossed your path.

            Harry twisted around to look at him, rocking himself backwards on the wind. Draco could just imagine the expression on Andromeda’s face when he did that. Maybe she preferred, at least at the moment, that Draco be the one to carry Teddy, after all. Why are you so inclined to make excuses for me?

            Was it an excuse? I wasn’t aware you needed one.

            Harry flipped himself upside down while he thought. Draco had to admit that even he found that unnerving to watch. He had to occupy himself with Teddy for a while instead, although Teddy had gone to sleep and wasn’t very interesting to watch at the moment.

            Then Harry said, Maybe I don’t. I feel like I should have paid more attention to Remus and Tonks and known more about them because they left Teddy to my care. They knew about me, they thought I was important enough to take care of their son, but I don’t know as much about them as I should.

            You take guilt on too easily, Draco said. But if you’re reconsidering now, that’s good. I’m all for seeing you forgive yourself.

            I know you are, Harry said, and passed on before Draco could ask him about the dry taste to his voice. Anyway. Tonks’s Patronus was a wolf. It changed to match Remus’s werewolf form. And she liked to turn her hair purple to tease people. That’s something I can tell Teddy, something simple he might like about her. She loved to make people laugh. She had a great sense of humor. I thought she would get upset because she was always tripping over things and people would laugh at her, but maybe that’s why she could accept it in the first place. After a while, I always laughed with her, never at her.

            Personally, Draco thought she sounded boring, but he listened quietly to Harry’s reminiscences about Tonks, which passed quickly into reminiscences of Remus, and from there to moments from Teddy’s life when he was younger. Draco listened to all of it. Except for the parts about Teddy, he wasn’t listening for the people actually involved, though, and he wondered if Harry knew that.

            I know that. But thanks.

*

            When they landed back in the camp, Harry set Andromeda down a little way apart, after everyone else had seen her but before they could come close enough to question her. He thought she might need some time to get herself together and decide on the best story to present.

            But Andromeda cried out in such a strange voice that Harry immediately turned back, landing in the grass beside her. He wondered if he’d hurt her with a rough landing, and opened his mouth to apologize.

            Andromeda, though, was staring at her hands, and not at her feet, the most logical part of her body to be injured in a fall. Harry backed around to the side.

            Her hands were glowing with a soft, silvery light, and as Harry watched, twining strands of light rose into the air and washed back and forth, as gently as seaweed growing underwater. The touch of the power, sweet on Harry’s face, told Harry what he’d guessed already: this was Andromeda’s manifestation of the wild magic.

            It seemed to do nothing for long moments, and Harry wondered if Andromeda didn’t know what she wanted most, or if she wanted several conflicting things. Then it arched down and into the earth, winding and burrowing.

            Andromeda yanked her hand back.

            The silver light slid over her wrist and remained locked in place, buried. Then it began to solidify, to twine, to grow, and a silver dome rose where the light had been. Harry reached out and found it warm and sturdy, at least as much so as the earth houses they’d been building.

            Then the dome rose higher, and dived deeper, and yes, that was what it was, a house with wider windows than the little house Harry and Andromeda and Teddy had been sharing, and a welcoming door hung with what looked like a silver curtain. Harry reached out to it with his winds, and they stopped dead at the door.

            He turned back to Andromeda. She was staring at him, and she whispered, “I wanted—I wanted a private place. I was thinking of that, a place where no one could follow me, where I could just escape.”

            And she sat down and put her face in her hands.

*

            Sasunarufan13: Thanks! Harry could have picked Teddy up at any time, but he did want to give Andromeda the chance to come with them of her own free will. And he didn’t want to start violence, the way he might have if he’d tried to pick Teddy up earlier.

            SP777: No cliffhanger here, at least?
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Wondrous Lands and Oceans