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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 Eight—Height of Folly

            “We’re going to be running out of food soon.”

            Harry sat back from the edge of the water and eyed Hermione. He’d been down here again with Teddy, catching the fish and testing Teddy’s new magic. Yes, it seemed that Teddy’s eyes worked on some level that Harry could barely touch, and although Malfoy claimed that he could see the small creatures when Teddy reached down for them, Harry didn’t boast that way. When Andromeda had taken Teddy for his nap, Harry had remained, sometimes staring into the water and sometimes letting his mind work on solutions for their myriad problems.

            “I know,” he said. “Earth food, at least, and the grasses aren’t a very satisfactory substitute. What do you suggest?”

            Hermione took a deep breath and squatted down in front of him. “You know those first seeds I tried to plant never sprouted.”

            Harry nodded. Hermione had built a carefully-warded greenhouse near the edge of their encampment and then planted some of the seeds she had brought for ordinary food as well as the rarer Potions ingredients, adding spells that would force them to grow. Even though she was sure no wind had swept the dirt or seeds away, and the wards hadn’t broken, and they had found no sign of an animal getting inside the greenhouse, there were no tender young shoots. Harry knew Hermione had more seeds, but that was a large investment for no return.

            “I think that they’re too alien to the magic of the world, and they’ll never do that well.” Hermione was frowning, turning her wand around and around in her fingers. “Not without intervention, anyway. I wanted to ask if you could ride one of the brooms and take the seeds up into the air, then call the wind.”

            Harry smiled a little. “You thought I would mind doing that?”

            Hermione shook her head. “Not exactly, but it could still be dangerous. And you know as well as I do that your wind isn’t the same as the wind of Hurricane. The latter is what I think these seeds need. To be bathed in the wind until they develop wild magic, this kinship to the planet that you and Malfoy have.”

            And Teddy, Harry thought, but he and Malfoy hadn’t told the others about Teddy yet, and didn’t plan to right now. Harry feared it would encourage resentment, because he, Malfoy, and Teddy were the only ones with wild magic yet. Ginny had fallen straight through a storm that ought to have given it to her if anything could, but she said she still felt the same as always.

            “You could be right,” he said. “It’s worth a try, anyway.” He was already visualizing the way that he would have smaller winds obedient to him encircling the broom, so that they could catch any seeds that blew out of his hands. He rose to his feet. “You want me to go right now?”

            Hermione blinked at him carefully. “You want to? I’d thought—you looked as if you were having a rest.”

            Harry smiled at her. “Only in body. My mind never stops moving even when I’m asleep, you know that.” He’d come up with a few solutions for their problems on Hurricane in his sleep, before they left the wizarding world. He was often too tired to dream since they’d come here. “It would feel good to have something to do.”

            “You do a lot,” Hermione said softly, and reached out to pat his hair.

            Harry endured it. He never understood the tone in Hermione’s voice when she said things like that. Of course he knew he’d done a lot, both for the wizarding world and for his family. But it wasn’t as though they were ungrateful. And he did it so that he could survive, along with them. They weren’t as selfish as Malfoy thought they were.

            They just need to start making decisions on their own. The danger isn’t that they’re selfish, it’s that they might become weak.

            “I know that,” he said, when he realized that Hermione was waiting for some answer as well as sympathizing with him. “But I would rather do something than do nothing.”

            “Just be careful,” Hermione said, after sighing and pulling her hand back. She always did that when she realized that she couldn’t change his mind. “I don’t want you injuring yourself so that you can’t do anything.”

            Harry grinned at her and raised his hand. His winds shot out from him and towards the broom that he’d taken along on the failed expedition with Ginny and Malfoy. Ginny had told him that he could consider it his personal broom for as long as he wanted. And no one else was using it at the moment, being busy with digging, cooking, and practicing the Healing and Transfiguration spells that Angelina and Fleur had decided, wisely, they all ought to know. “Even if I was lying in bed, I’d find some way to make trouble.”

            Hermione finally smiled. “I don’t doubt that.”

*

            Draco closed his eyes and extended his hands. For long moments, he was still, letting his heartbeat and his breathing, both quick, subside from his awareness. Think too much about them and he might end up cutting himself.

            He began to move his fingers in slow circles, and felt the magic building up. He was more aware of it ever since the contretemps with Potter. It woke more quickly, it responded to his imagination better.

            And it would let him do things like this, at least if all his practice with the separate movements hadn’t been for nothing.

            It would not be.

            He let the confidence settle into him, deep as still water, and then he curved his hands and threw them forwards.

            When he opened his eyes, he could turn his head along the path his invisible arrows had left. The grass was cleft, not the way that it was in ripples when the wild winds or Potter’s passed along it, but permanently. Draco had imagined himself holding a bow and shooting enormous arrows on strings, and they had furrowed the earth as he had wanted them to. And straight ahead of him lay clumps of grass hit by something so strong that they had been flung out of the ground, roots straggling into the air.

            Draco smiled savagely. If he could shoot a clump of grass, then he could shoot something else in front of him.

            And that meant he could hunt.

            He turned away restlessly. He would have liked to go out now, but they still didn’t know whether any of the planet’s native animals were safe to eat. And even if he went up on a broom, there was no guarantee that they would see anything. The immense bird hadn’t reappeared; only Teddy could see the fish-creatures in the small pool; teasing flickers of motion in the grass were all that remained of the white creatures like the one that had greeted him and Potter.

            But he could share his gift with the one person who would appreciate it. He went in search of Potter.

            A shadow skimmed over him, and Draco whirled, invisible claws bristling out of his fingers again, ready to cut at any talon descending towards him. When the shadow lifted, and he caught sight of the shape, he knew what he would see before he lifted his head.

            It was Potter, pressed flat along his broom, aimed up at the heart of the sky the way he had been when they flew the first time. Draco couldn’t see it, but he could feel the beating on his brow of the cocoon of wind that accompanied him. And the tilt of Potter’s head and the way he held the broom shaft told Draco, without asking, the immense joy that filled him.

            Draco hesitated. He would have to wait for a time to tell Potter, then.

            But why should he? There was still at least one more broom that no one in camp was using right now, and it was foolish of Potter to go out by himself. Draco went to find the broom, marking the small speck in the sky so he wouldn’t lose it.

*

            Harry closed his eyes, and lost himself.

            The boundaries were expanding. He could feel his skin thinning, his constant awareness of the world around him and the next task that needed to be done paring away until he had only slivers of it left. He was aware of the seeds that rode in the pouch on his belt, and the winds that surrounded him and had instructions to retrieve the seeds if they fell, but distantly, the way he would remember a dream.

            Meanwhile, there was the wind.

            The wind!

            Harry’s breath caught in his throat as a gust came dancing to meet him. Not one of his; it ran in too many directions, too fast, and he had to slow his broom to greet it. The wind coiled around the shaft of his broom and held it while others swirled and waltzed in his hair, in his eyes, down his throat.

            The wild winds of Hurricane, and Harry couldn’t believe that the Unspeakables had been so blind or without feeling as to miss the magic in them. To touch them was to be changed—if they wanted to. If one had the will to pull the magic into them and let their core be changed.

            Is it weakness of will, that I decided to use the air instead of my wand?

            Harry shrugged, and smiled. Gladness filled him, beautiful and golden as the endless grass of the plains below. He pulled out the pouch of seeds and held them up, and the winds he had brought with him rose up in answer.

            The winds of Hurricane were more insistent. They bent his earlobes back with their force. His broom bucked. Harry had the vision of falling from it and not stopping until he reached the earth below, the wild air blowing his own cocoon away from him.

            He laughed aloud, and the winds paused to listen to him.

            Harry opened the pouch, tipped the seeds onto his palm in that moment of stillness, and breathed on them. They rose and orbited around him, a cascade of black and white and brown and green like a juggler’s balls. Then Harry clapped his hands, and the orbit became wider, so that they were still oriented on him but stepping into the domain of the wild magic.

            And then he went to dance with Hurricane, instead of fighting it, and the sky snapped open, and then shut behind him.

*

            Draco stopped, poising his broom without difficulty. The power in the clouds had narrowed down to a funnel, but the focus of the funnel was ahead of him, on Potter.

            Draco had achieved a new level of control over his magic that morning, but he knew he had more steps to go. Among other things, what he envisioned himself holding or using affected the nature of his magic in ways he hadn’t anticipated. It would be a long time before he was able to hold the pictures of weapons firmly in his mind, never mind more delicate cutting tools.

            But Potter…

            Potter was dancing.

            He flipped end over end, and stopped in the middle of a spin. He held onto the broom only with his ankles as he dangled and swung free, then began to turn in a different circle, as if around the face of a clock, in a way that should have been impossible to achieve. He spread his arms wider and wider, and to Draco’s ears came his laughter, exultant as larksong.

            And then he let go the broom altogether, and flew.

            Draco lunged forwards with one hand out, but the winds curled around him and stopped him. He had no idea whether they were Potter’s winds or the winds of Hurricane, and it didn’t matter, because—

            To watch Potter was to lose his fear.

            Potter floated on the wind for a moment with his arms still spread, and then began to swoop and spin much the way he had when he was still on the broom. The broom hung still in the air, and at least Draco was reassured that they would not lose it as Weasley’s had been lost. He caught a flashing glimpse of something smaller dancing around Potter, and wondered what they were.

The wind was taking care of them, though, and he couldn’t go long without looking at Potter. He looked again.

            Potter floated on his back now, his hands paddling in the air around him, his hair still blowing and whisking at his face. He exhaled in long, smooth streams of breath that Draco could hear from here. And the expression on his face was utter, relaxed joy and bliss.

            Draco almost hated to interrupt.

            But the sight had sparked something in his mind, and he reached out a hand and imagined a giant pair of scissors cutting the air in front of him. He imagined them chopping the wind in half, and keeping the cut currents swirling in front of them, like scraps of paper they would slice into smaller and smaller shapes. And he leaned out and braced his weight on one half of that broken wind.

            The air sagged beneath him and trembled. Draco wouldn’t have dared try this back in the wizarding world, where the sky was only sky and not the home of violent, magical winds.

            Then again, if he had never come to Hurricane, he would never have developed his wild magic, so the question wouldn’t have arisen…

            Draco closed his eyes and did his best to lean forwards, to trust, to think that he could mimic Potter’s freedom and he wouldn’t fall to his death. He would have something else to catch him if that happened, he reminded himself. He wasn’t helpless, and he wouldn’t lose consciousness or control of his magical gift right away. If he fell, there would be something else he could do before he hit the earth.

            Even if he found it hard to picture, right now.

            He kept his eyes focused forwards, and leaned still further, and the air bulged and rippled dangerously around him. Draco found himself dangling by one hand without any notion of how that had happened. There wasn’t the same amount of pain and pressure on his arm that there would have been normally.

            He looked up. Potter had opened his eyes and turned his head back towards Draco, and he looked as still as a tree in winter.

            Draco nodded to him, and released the broom.

*

            Malfoy! You idiot!

            The thought flashed across Harry’s mind and shattered all his peace. He couldn’t believe that Malfoy had followed him up here, that he couldn’t leave him alone for one minute, that he always had to interrupt. Hermione wouldn’t have asked him to follow with more seeds; she wouldn’t have trusted Malfoy that much. Harry lifted one hand to do his duty, again, and rescue Malfoy from falling.

            Then he realized Malfoy was hovering.

            Tilting at the same time, and swaying back and forth. But as Harry stared, he felt the air thrumming under Malfoy, supporting him again and again like an ever-diminishing magical carpet. He cut it apart, but as he did, he found a new scrap to cling to, as the broken winds fell swirling around him.

            He was supporting himself. He was flying on his own.

            Harry swallowed, then breathed out deeply enough that he thought there was no air left in his lungs, and flew towards Malfoy. His magic helped him, spinning his body instinctively into the areas where he would give the least resistance and speeding him along. Malfoy’s eyes, fixed on him, left Harry no room to think about anything but the revelation that had just come to him.

            Malfoy didn’t need his help all the time. Some of the time, just like Harry had needed his to rescue Ginny, but not always, and Harry might be able to trust him instead of fearing for his life every time Malfoy wanted to do something on his own. And other than Teddy, he was the only one in camp that Harry knew of who had the wild magic.

            He had known that. But he had assumed that there were some situations that Malfoy just couldn’t handle himself in.

            He can save himself.

            Harry found his breath coming out calmer, and he drew up beside Malfoy without the urge to shout at him that he had felt only a short time since. Instead, he nodded to him and said, “Well?”

*

            Draco, still wobbling dangerously on a scrap of air that seemed broader than the rest, stared into Potter’s face. Then he shook his head and said, “I could say the same thing to you.”

            Potter smiled slightly and touched his face to pull the strands of wild hair away from his fringe. Draco bristled, assuming that Potter was condescending to him by showing him his scar, but instead Potter said, “I came up here because Hermione had the idea that bathing some of our seeds in the rush of the wind might give them enough magical strength to survive. I didn’t expect anyone to follow me. You don’t have more seeds, do you?”

            Draco would have given a great deal to be able to say “yes,” but instead he had to shake his head.

            “Oh.” Potters shrugged and looked over his shoulder, to where the seeds he had brought, black and white and other colors, formed a constellation of tiny stars behind him. “I thought you’d be good at it if you did.”

            “Why?”

            Potter smiled again. “Because of the way I saw you handle yourself.” He leaned nearer, and there wasn’t enough air in the bubble around them, the still air that was sheltered from the dancing storm, Draco thought. “You’re much better at—everything—than I thought you were.”

            Draco licked dry lips and tried to remember what he had done with a compliment when he was still regularly receiving them. Of course, they had usually come from his parents, who more or less had an obligation.

            “Thank you,” he settled for saying.

            “Of course.” Potter turned to face the seeds and gestured with one hand. They split apart from whatever currents had contained them and swarmed back to him, ducking and dipping and rising. “I’m going down now. Are you going to come with me?”

            Draco felt his chest swell. “I think I will,” he said. He couldn’t say Thank you for phrasing it as a choice, because nine to ten Potter wouldn’t understand what he had done anyway. “Are you going to ride the broom down?”

            Potter was already swinging his leg around the shaft of it, which made Draco feel a bit stupid, but his voice had the same calm tone as he said, “I think so. It would make the others feel uncomfortable if I flew on my own.”

            Draco laughed as he cut the air supporting his broom and made it fall down to where he could grasp it and dangle from it. A bit of struggle, and he was riding seated upright again. “I should say so. Do you realize how much they fear you?”

            Potter shook his head. “They aren’t afraid,” he corrected, turning his broom around to face Draco and holding up one hand. The seeds came cascading down and fell into his palm; he tucked them carefully back into the pouch on his belt. “They’re uncomfortable. Hermione thinks I use too much magic, and I’m sure some of the others think the same. But they know how much we need it to survive here.”

            “They need you, but they’re uncomfortable around me,” Draco said.

            “Because they can’t let the past go.” Potter sneered, an expression so strange to his face that Draco took a moment to recognize it. “They’ll learn. This isn’t the wizarding world, and brooding on past grudges is worse than useless when we have a life to establish.”



            “You have more faith in the general intelligence of the human race than I do,” Draco said, and followed him. “There’s very little reason for hatred, and very little reason that they wouldn’t hold onto it.”

            “If they hurt you, then tell me.” Potter was withdrawing as he sat there, although his posture on the broom remained the perfect riding one and his voice was no colder than before. Draco could feel the withdrawal the same way he had been able to feel the pulse of Potter’s magic since their connection. “If they taunt you, tell me. If I find fault with them, then they’ll shut up.”

            “Where I can hear them,” Draco said. “But that doesn’t mean that they’ll change their feelings, Potter. Emotions don’t become friendliness just because you’d like to order them to do so.”

            Potter whirled around to face him. Draco found his hands gripping his broom hard enough to make the wood creak. Potter’s face was twisted, his teeth bared, his skin so red that Draco could see it glowing like an ember.

            “I know!” Potter yelled at him. “And I’m trying! I’m trying to make sure that everything’s all right and that I’m encouraging them to be more independent at the same time, and I can’t do it right all the time, and you’re not telling me anything that I don’t already fucking know, Malfoy! I told you what I can do. Or you can ignore it all and stand on your own, which I know you can do. But your sanctimonious little preaching about how I can’t change hatred and they’re horrible people to you sometimes isn’t anything fucking bloody new, okay? And it isn’t anything you don’t feel for them, either! But I came up here to get away from it, and you shove it in my face. Deal with it on your own or tell me, I don’t fucking care, but leave me alone for right now!”

            His broom dropped straight down. Draco knew he couldn’t follow, and didn’t try. He went down on the slant, blinking.

            He had thought Potter was more stoic than that. Or he had expected an apology immediately afterwards.

            But he got back to camp in time to see Potter toss the pouch of seeds at Granger and then stalk off, ignoring the way she called after him. She glared at Draco suspiciously as he touched his heels to the grass, but Draco stared back in a way that must have convinced her to not to pursue it, or Potter, because she walked away.

            Draco went back to practicing shooting grass. He hadn’t told Potter about that, he realized, which was his whole reason for taking to the sky in the first place.

            The next time I see him, I will.

            It seemed more interesting to talk to Potter about that than to talk about the Weasleys, really. That problem would resolve itself one way or another, Draco thought, and probably in a spectacular explosion that wouldn’t hurt Draco himself.

            In the meantime, it was nice to know that Potter would leave Draco the choice about whether to accept his help.

*

            Tatyana: Thank you! You may be interested to know there will be sequels to this, so that the characters and world will have more time to grow.

            unneeded: They would need a connection like the one Harry and Draco forged in saving Ginny to feel each other.

            And not everyone, even people born there, may be develop it. It will depend on a lot of things, and so far, Harry, Draco, and the others don’t know what those factors are. Not even the seeds Harry used in this chapter might absorb wild magic in the way Hermione hoped.

            SP777: Harry has offered one. Draco can handle it on his own, or report it to Harry. But Draco might not want to do the second.
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Reap the Hurricane