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Reap the Hurricane	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 11499 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Six—Calling the Wild

            “That’s a mental idea that can’t possibly work.”

            Harry smiled. “And now that you’ve told me it’s a mental idea that can’t possibly work, you’re going to help me with it.”

            Ginny pushed her hair out of her eyes and half-shook her head. “I probably am,” she said, aloud, as though silently speaking to someone else. “But I wish I knew why.”

            Harry touched her on the shoulder. Ginny needed more reassurance from him than most of the others did, he thought, probably because they had dated once, and she sometimes knew him better than the others. Then he would react in a way that surprised her and made her doubt herself. At the moment, he couldn’t have her doubting her instincts, and that was both a selfish need and a necessary one for the others. “Because you’re the best flyer we have,” he said. “And you know these brooms.”

            Ginny sighed again at him, and then conjured a grin. “You’re right about that,” she said. “You could have been the best flyer we have, you know, if you had kept up your skills as a Seeker.”

            Harry shrugged. He didn’t need to say that that had been less important than finding some way to take care of Teddy, and then Andromeda, and then his friends. Ginny knew it.

She watched him pensively for a moment as though she was going to dispute with those unspoken words, and then snorted and said, “All right. We’ll go up this afternoon, if the sky doesn’t turn dark blue.” That was the only reliable sign of a storm they had found so far, that all other colors would vanish in a deeper blue moments before the winds came.

            Harry nodded. “Thanks, Ginny.” And he managed to produce a smile for her, too, before he turned back to work.

*

            “Take me with you.”

            Draco didn’t think he needed to explain himself. There was only one unusual thing that Potter planned on doing today, and Draco was already helping him with the other work, securing the sod houses to the ground with Sticking Charms and wards. What else could he be referring to but the expedition that Potter and Weasley—the youngest one—planned on?

            But Potter pushed dirt out of his eyes with one hand and hair with the other and frowned at him as though Draco had asked to go to the moon. Or the moons. So far, it was hard to distinguish them from the stars that hung overhead, but most of them thought Hurricane had three moons. “What?”

            “Take me with you,” Draco said patiently. “When you fly. I’m a good flyer, too, and my wandless magic might be of some use.”

            He still hadn’t settled, to his own satisfaction, exactly what his power was. Yes, he could cut things, but surely he must be able to do something other than that? Because he could dig, and he could slice, and he could separate things into thirds.

            Now and then, the sensation of simply not knowing enough teased his mind. There must be a way to extend either his powers or his conception of his powers, but he didn’t yet know what it was.

            He returned to the present when he realized that Potter had never answered his question. He raised an eyebrow, and Potter raised one back and continued settling the wards into place. “You were a good flyer,” he agreed, with no personal emotion in his voice, which left Draco unable to interpret what was left. “But you don’t get along with Ginny, and you could never resist challenging me in the air.”

            He said no more. Draco took a step forwards, and another one. Potter still didn’t look up from the wards he was weaving, wards of air. He had become increasingly clumsy with his wand in the past few days, to the point that Draco hadn’t seen him carry it at all this morning.

            “Look at me,” he said.

            Potter jerked his head around, and their eyes met. Draco thought he could feel the other man’s magic rising, swirling around in his head in lazy but invisible patterns of aroused air. At the moment, however, Draco didn’t care whether Potter threatened him or not. Potter was the one who refused to make sense.

            “I can resist challenging you,” he said. “And I think that I’ve proven I can get along with people I used to hate.”

            “Not Ginny,” Potter said, flicking his head to the side to get his fringe out of his eyes again. Draco thought about suggesting that he cut it, but Potter would dismiss that as an irrelevant suggestion in a conversation like this, which indeed it was. Draco struggled to keep his attention on Potter’s face and the words they were actually exchanging. “And even with Ron and Hermione, you avoid them and don’t look at them when they talk to you. I don’t think that proves you can get along with them. Hold your tongue, yes.”

            Draco wanted to throw something, more because Potter spoke in an utterly cool and non-condemning voice than anything else. He took a few deep, panting breaths that he hoped wouldn’t sound that way to Potter, and then said, “Then I can hold my tongue when I fly. And you might have need of my magic. You never know.”

            Potter studied him some more. Then he shrugged with one shoulder. “No, you never know, with Hurricane,” he agreed. “Fine, then. You can come with us. Just make sure that you don’t antagonize Ginny.”

            “Nothing is simpler,” Draco said, with a faint smile. “If anything, you’d think I would have a harder time not antagonizing you.”

            “Our grudge isn’t as old as the blood feud between your family and the Weasleys,” Potter replied, and then threw himself into the work hard enough that Draco had to redouble his efforts to keep up with him, and make sure that Potter didn’t ward his side of the building and start to encroach on Draco’s side.

            Potter wasn’t afraid of hard work, and he didn’t say deliberately insulting things. Draco wondered why those last words didn’t sit well with him, then dismissed the thought. He would show Potter how well he could both fly and get along with the youngest Weasley. These were the people he would live among, and this was his home.

            And Potter isn’t going to deprive me of that, no matter how much he might want to.

*

            “Malfoy?”

            Weasley watched him with open bafflement on her face, and glanced at Potter as though she needed his help to understand Draco’s motivations. Draco held out a commanding hand, and the broom fell into his grasp without his needing to Summon it. Or chop it off at the handle.

            There were some things that his wandless magic would not help him with. Draco decided that he needed to remember that. Potter had called wind to tug the broom into his hand, and he was forgetting, Draco thought, what it was like to be without it. Potter said nothing, but watched Draco and Weasley’s contest with a faint smile.

            “I can be polite,” Draco said. “And I thought you might need the assistance of another good flyer to protect you, if that giant bird appeared again.”

            Weasley studied him as though he was a piece of flawed Quidditch gear under her care for polishing, and then grinned abruptly. “If you want to come, I reckon I can’t stop you,” she said, and swung her leg over the broom, and ascended in such a simple motion that Draco’s breath stuck in his throat as he watched.

            Well, she had been a professional Quidditch player. Draco shook back his astonishment and followed.

            Potter flew up beside him, and he was balancing on the wind, with the broom angled almost straight up, in a way that Draco knew was frankly impossible. His eyes were closed, a sweet, faint smile on his face that Draco had only seen when Potter was around Teddy.

            Then Potter opened his eyes, and perhaps because he had seen Draco watching him, his smile vanished. He inclined his head and said, “Which direction do you think we should go first, Ginny?”

            Weasley tossed her hair out of her eyes and spent a moment surveying the horizon. Draco suspected that she had decided on their direction long ago and this was only a way to show off to Potter.

            “South,” she said at last. “Or assuming that it’s south because the sun seems to rise in the east and set in the west like ours does.” She paused. “I don’t know if I should call the sun that rises in the wizarding world ‘ours’ anymore,” she added softly. “When your home changes so that it’s not your home, when you’re in not just a different town or house but a whole different world…”

            Potter wheeled close to her and stuck out a hand that glanced off her shoulder. Weasley seemed to lean into that gesture more than she really should if they weren’t together, Draco thought in scorn, and then straightened up. He would have liked more strength and comfort from other people, but he didn’t have it, and he had been forced to learn to survive on his own. Had none of the Weasleys ever learned it? Or wouldn’t Potter let them learn it?

            That was another thought that wasn’t new to Draco, but would probably be new to most of the Weasels, he thought, as he turned his broom to the south. They thought nothing of endlessly draining someone else’s strength to support themselves.

            They ought to face the trials that Draco had. Then perhaps they would achieve something of strength and grace, if they could come through those and comport themselves well.

            The thoughts kept him company as they flew.

*

            Harry kept his eyes on the grasses underneath them. He knew that Ginny thought he was mental for attempting this, and perhaps Malfoy would have as well if he had stopped to ask what the purpose of the journey was before he decided that he wanted to go along. But he was here now, and Harry reckoned they could use the extra help.

            He wanted to see exactly how far the plains extended, something the Unspeakables had been unable to find out—but they hadn’t taken brooms with them, either. And it was occurring to Harry that the information they had put so much trust in was unhelpfully incomplete.

            As they soared, his mind returned to the problem of the houses. He was thinking about wizardspace. The main problem was that no one knew how to create it. But the tents they had brought had some minimal wizardspace inside them. Perhaps there was a way to adapt that to the houses. Or simply surround the tents with a protective layer of sod, and live that way?

            Harry scowled. They had more than halfway built the houses already, and he would hate to abandon them or rip them apart and try to build them in a more “efficient” way. And there was the fact that they simply wouldn’t have all the luxuries that they’d had in the wizarding world. People needed to accept that. It meant smaller homes, and it meant no bathtubs for at least a while—still a source of joy to Teddy—and it meant different kinds of furniture, and it meant much harder work and different kinds of food.

            Something rippled in the air above him.

            Harry went into defensive motion before he thought about it, spiraling the broom roughly towards the ground, and flinging a hand out so that whirlwinds covered Malfoy and Ginny in a protective bubble. Then he flew upside-down so that he could find the source of the ripple, turning his head to the west instinctively, since that was the direction he had first seen the giant bird flying from.

            Not that, he knew at once. The sky was deepening in color above them, turning blue in a way that made it look as though it was blushing. Harry could feel the wind building, the wind or the magic that drove it, and responding in a lazy way to his own magic.

            Harry parted his teeth and snarled. “Storm coming!” he shouted to the others, trusting they would hear him because of the still air inside the bubble, and then turned and dived for the ground. They could perhaps ride out the storm in his bubble, but that was a perhaps that Harry didn’t wish to test. Far better to take to the earth and use the same kind of anchoring wards that they were building onto the houses to spare themselves the necessity.

            The others followed. Harry heard a curse and glanced over his shoulder to find that Malfoy was butting up against the barrier of the bubble, which extended below as well as above them. When he gestured with one hand, Harry winced, and the next instant, Malfoy soared through the hole that he must have cut in the bubble and came up beside Harry.

            Harry grinned at him in spite of the pain that had splintered across his mind when Malfoy’s wandless magic clashed with his own. “Did you feel that? That means you can cut through air as well as solid things.”

            Malfoy stared at him, and then spoke slowly. “Only you, Potter, would worry about something like that rather than the implications for our immediate survival.” He swept his hand out and indicated the plains rippling beneath them. “Where are we going for shelter? There’s nothing here. We should go back to the camp.”

            “You and I are going to make one,” Harry said, and extended his hand across the air between their brooms.

            Malfoy stared at it, in turn, and spoke even more slowly. “Potter, you idiot—”

            “Come on,” Harry said, and stretched. Perhaps because it would keep him from falling off the broom more than anything else, Malfoy spun to face him, and their fingertips touched.

            Harry, not knowing what he was doing except that it was right and instinctive in the same way healing Malfoy’s internal bleeding had been, launched his wandless magic towards Malfoy. It met something in Malfoy that it recognized, the same way that Harry had recognized the windstorm stirring, and then together they turned. They were already above a small hollow in the earth, one of the kind that the plains formed at the base of the tiny hills that crossed them, and Harry knew Malfoy could dig it deeper and he could roof it with air. They could lie flat, if necessary, or sit. This wasn’t meant to be comfortable, it was meant to be survivable.

            “When I cut,” Malfoy murmured.

            “I’ll weave,” Harry replied, wondering for just a moment if this was the way that George had felt when Fred was alive.

            They struck at the same moment, and the ground beneath them trembled.

*

            For Draco, it was a more surreal experience than flying beside Potter and a Weasley without arguing had been.

            His magic woke in a way he hadn’t experienced yet. So far, he had simply pointed and it would cut. Or he had imagined and it would trim back what he wanted to trim, in the shape he desired. He pushed and he pulled and he tried to imagine it in several different ways, but the magic was just there, functional but not something he could imagine as graceful or able to work with others’.

            Now, with Potter, there was more than that. There was the spinning thrust of the power that he wanted to drive down into the earth, and he knew that it would do what he wanted because he wanted it to. And right behind it came Potter’s wind, protecting his magic from interference by the rising storm, and he could feel Potter’s intentions with it.

            That made sense, Draco thought, with the last part of him that was still standing desperately apart from this, trying to avoid giving his heart or his dependence to it. After all, wandless magic was pure will, without a tool to channel it. The tool was the wizard’s body, the wizard’s desire, and that he could feel that desire with his magic was only to be expected—

            Then the experience swept him up, and was all.

            He could feel himself diving on his broom, but the magic went faster. Down their twinned powers swept, and the earth exploded up in brown, puffy fragments. The wind spiraled around it and took care of it, sweeping it out of the way. At the same time, the hole deepened and deepened, and the sides shaped themselves in the best way, so that they wouldn’t fall in on the heads of those who took refuge in it.

            And the wind was there, weaving a dome above it except for a hole in the top that Draco could sense, and which they fell through. There was a confusing moment when Draco felt that he had a body and he had none, that he was pure will and that he wasn’t, and then he was back in his own mind and seeing with his eyes and hearing with his ears again. He shook his head and took a deep breath.

            “Weasley?” he asked, turning to Potter.

            Potter immediately looked up, seeking the sky. Draco made out a broom that swayed with the currents of the storm above them, and then Weasley fighting with it, trying desperately to join them.

            Potter thrust up a hand. Draco’s rose, too, because they were still connected. He had the impression that Potter had meant to break him free of the connection before he did something like this, but he hadn’t, and Draco’s mind perforce rode along, and so did his power.

            Potter was trying to turn the wind around Weasley’s broom, to force it to support her instead of damage her, to force it to obey him. And Draco could feel already that that wouldn’t work. The best way to work with Hurricane was to persuade it, to allow it to feel the kinship in its changed children and oblige them. It didn’t like being forced, and the storm bucked and slipped out of Potter’s grasp. He would win in the end, because the wind had no direction or intention that lasted for long, but by then, Weasley would probably be dead.

            Draco knew he narrowed his eyes, back in the distant fortress of his face. The thought annoyed him. Weasley had no special talents except flying, but with her gone, they were short one more person who could dig and build and cook and come up with ideas, and that made the work of survival harder for all of them.

            He thought, and to think was to do. His magic cut through the winds beneath Weasley’s broom, and provided a still, blank hole that the broom could fall into. It promptly did, and Draco went to work chopping a tunnel for her all the way down, cutting storm to leave quietude in its wake, and snapped at Potter to pay attention.

            Potter grasped it at once, probably because he was still linked to Draco than for any other reason, and had winds waiting at the bottom of the hole, below the violent level of the storm. He caught and cradled Weasley, and brought her to the ground inside the dome. Draco immediately gestured at him, and he filled the hole with whirling winds, then knelt down beside Weasley. But he was so tired it was more of a collapse than a kneel.

            Draco dropped beside him and laid his hand on Potter’s. He wasn’t as tired, he noted. He wondered if that was because his magic took less effort or was more limited than Potter’s, or perhaps because he didn’t turn to it as the first solution for every problem. He cleared his throat a few times before he could ask, “How is she?”

            “Fine,” Potter said, his voice blurred. His fingers were running over Weasley’s body, seeking broken bones. She was gasping and panting, somewhere, Draco thought, between unconsciousness and full awareness. Well, shock could do that, and the shock of falling off your broom to what you thought was death had to be up at the top of the list. Potter rocked back on his heels and stared up at the sky, then shook his head. “I don’t think I managed to fetch her broom down.”

            His voice was so heavy that Draco slapped him on the shoulder. “We saved her life,” he said. “You idiot. That’s more important than the loss of a single broom. And she’ll be grateful for it in a way that she wouldn’t have been if we’d rescued the broom and lost her.”

            Potter blinked at him for a moment, then gave the ghost of a laugh and nodded. “You’re right about that, Malfoy. Well.” He sat down next to Weasley, and a breeze ruffled her hair.

            “You need to stop that, too,” Draco said. “You fucker. Stop using your wind,” he clarified, when Potter stared at him as if he had no idea what Draco was talking about. “You can’t have enough strength left to heal her or whatever else it is you want to do. Stop poking at her and eat something. That’s what you should do.”

            Potter swallowed through a throat that sounded papery and said, “Right.” He dug into his pockets and pulled out what Draco thought was a piece of bread at first, but then made out was a tight bundle of stalks of the plains grass. Potter put the end of one in his mouth and was chewing it before Draco could shout a warning, and he leaned back and shook his head when Draco tried to slap it away.

            “The Unspeakables ate this, boiled,” he said. “It’s safe. Bland, but safe.” He chewed, his eyes on Weasley, his brow furrowed with, Draco was sure, the thoughts racing behind it. Potter was always thinking of the next thing to do.

            “Then give it here,” Draco said.

            Potter handed over some of the stalks, and Draco took a bite, grimacing. Bland wasn’t the word. He had expected an earthy taste, or something like celery, but instead it was dry and as papery as Potter’s throat sounded at the moment, and he had to struggle to swallow it. The seeds were better, smaller and with a faint sweet taste when Draco’s tongue stripped them from the stalk, but then, anything would be better than that.

            “We’ll have to find a better way to cook them,” Draco said, when he had finished all the seeds he could find and put the stalks on the ground. “No way am I eating that for the rest of my life.”

            Potter nodded to him. “Thanks for your help, Malfoy,” he said, and sprawled beside Weasley as she sat up and gasped. She shook out her hair, spent a moment with her head in her hands, and then looked up and held out her palm.

            “I’ll eat whatever you’re eating,” she said, and Potter laughed and poured some of the seeds he must have stripped and saved into her palm. He watched her eating with a deep expression that Draco had to glance away from.

            Except that, when he couldn’t resist and looked back, he found the same sort of look fixed on him.

            He understood it then. That was Potter’s “You’re important” look. It was his “You’re worthy of my attention” look.

            It was also his “I’m going to protect you” look.

            Draco straightened his spine and stared back. “Remember,” he said, barely moving his lips, “we did this together.”

            Potter blinked, and blinked again, and blinked a third time.

            And then he nodded, almost bowing, to Draco before he faced Weasley as she asked a question about the duration of the storm.

            Draco swallowed, his own throat dry and his heart throbbing. He hoped that Potter understood the full meaning of the words.

            I’m an equal partner. Not a weakling, and not a Weasley. I can do anything he can.

            Just in a different way.

*

            elementalwitch: Thank you! I think Harry will develop even further as he comes to accept the idea that someone like Draco can help him.

            TalisRuadar: Teddy let his pets go. They’re scared of eating animals until they know whether the meat is safe.

            And the goat species probably does eat grass.

            moodysavage: If someone like Draco or Hermione can explain why it’s a problem to always take the leadership role to him, he’ll change his behavior. Draco does try in the next chapter. But discontented vague rumbling won’t trouble him.

            polka dot: Thanks! I hope the depiction of the plains is at least somewhat realistic.

            unneeded: Thank you! Yes, the floor of the house is dirt, or more precisely packed dirt and grass.

            Other people may develop wild magic. It’ll depend on how long they’re in the world and what they need and the strength of their will; the wild magic won’t come to a weak-willed person, any more than strength comes to a person without a lot of muscle.

            SP777: The Weasleys aren’t really trying to dictate anything. But they didn’t know that Malfoy would be there, and they’re resentful of having to share space with him.
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Reap the Hurricane