Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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 Eight—Desire of the Mind

            “Are you mad? We can’t take her back to the camp.”

            Harry glanced in Rasatis’s direction, and then relaxed as he remembered the Deafening Charm that Draco had cast on her. She wouldn’t hear anything outside that humming net of air Harry had around her; she might not be able to hear that much inside it. She stood with her hands braced out in front of her as though her nails, if not her palms, would tell her the way through. She wore the tender, puzzled expression Harry had sometimes seen Hermione wear when a problem proved harder than she’d anticipated.

            In this case, of course, what she wanted to figure out was the solution to the problem of escaping the net of air and killing him.

            “I don’t see what else we can do with her,” Harry said. “We can’t kill her.”

            Draco was still. Well, his body was. From his direction came hazy purple clouds, and black lightning, and wheeling patterns like his own winds, all of which, Harry knew, centered on the idea of being able to kill Rasatis, and not feeling remorse for it.

            “You don’t deal well with death,” Harry said, and filled his mind with an image of the severed hand, keen enough to make Draco flinch. “Do you really want to kill her? I mean, for yourself? Can you cut her throat, or even use the Killing Curse on her? It would be quick, and painless, and she wouldn’t be able to block it.”

            Draco closed his eyes and turned his head away. “Damn you,” he said, voice so toneless that Harry felt more than a little sorry for him.

            “Yes, I know,” Harry told him quietly. “Sorry. But still, you want to kill her because she tried to kill me. You could do that in the middle of battle, I know. I’ve seen you shred the bird and chop the snake-shark apart. But a human is different, and I think you would regret it later.”

            Draco shuddered, hands clasped in front of him and twisted until Harry thought he would break his fingers. Then he said, “But we can’t take her back to the camp. There would be a riot. We don’t have the resources or the time or the space to devote to keeping a prisoner.”

            Harry sighed and bowed his head. They sat like that, him slumped over his knees, Draco with his back turned to Rasatis and his eyes fixed on the ocean. Draco’s hands worked open, shut, open, shut. Harry shuddered and licked his lips. The emotions burning through their bond were the kind that would probably make it impossible for him to sleep at night.

            Because Draco was right.

            They couldn’t keep Rasatis prisoner. They had enough trouble keeping everyone working together, and they would strain the working atmosphere by being away for this long. Perhaps, if they moved to the ocean, everyone would cooperate for long enough, caught up in the new adventure, but a Death Eater would mean whispering and pointed looks at Draco and too much time spent in watching everyone else’s back.

            If Rasatis escaped, which she might, then they would be in worse trouble, particularly if she had come to Hurricane with other Death Eaters. Harry didn’t think that was likely; most of them were in Azkaban, like Lucius, or had wanted to stay in the wizarding world and claw some respectability back for themselves instead of starting all over. But one or two in the group sympathetic to her and set against Harry would give them more enemies.

            Killing her would give Draco nightmares. Harry had already caused enough of those.

            And he—he could live with killing. That wasn’t the same as saying that he liked it, or rejoiced in it.

            He climbed abruptly to his feet. He could feel Draco’s stare freezing him between the shoulder blades as he approached Rasatis’s bubble of wind. The air around him turned sharp as he called in more winds, binding them to rotate around his body, lift his hair, make his robes flap.

            Do you know what you’re doing? Draco’s voice cut through his head, hard and curious. I know you’ve never tried to do something like this before.

            I didn’t know that I could fly, either, or support someone else, until I tried it, Harry replied. At least I’m on the ground for this.

            Draco was silent, in the bond and aloud. Harry listened to the mingled sand and pebbles crunching beneath his feet as he approached Rasatis, but he did pause before he lowered the curtain of wind that surrounded her. Would you mind taking off the Deafening Charm? She needs to hear the threats I’m going to make to her if they’re going to do any good.

            Silence, again, but Rasatis abruptly turned towards him and said an audible curse, moving her hand as though she could command the magic without a wand. Harry smiled and nodded to Draco, and then settled his shoulders back into place. He could feel his own mind changing, a burning cold settling into place. He had felt this once before, when a more determined reporter than usual had broken into his home and threatened to hurt Teddy if Harry didn’t give him “just five minutes of his time.”

            You never said you did that.

            You never asked, Harry replied. Content yourself with searching through my memories for more instances of me threatening people, if you want to.

            He waited until Rasatis was focused on him, and lowered the wind around her.

*

            Harry had held the reporter at bay with a wand against his throat, and described, in soft and loving detail, all the things he would do to the reporter’s children if the man didn’t leave Teddy alone, Draco discovered as he searched through more of Harry’s mind and new memories bobbed to the surface like twigs revolving in the current.

            Harry had gone to war for the wizarding world. Then he did it for Teddy. He was capable of dragging his entire chosen family along to a new world for Teddy’s sake.

            Now he went to war for Draco’s sake, so that he wouldn’t have to kill Rasatis or live with the knowledge that Harry had killed her.

            Rasatis rocked in place as the wind dropped, and stood for a moment with her hands over her ears as though she expected the deafness to come back. Draco watched as she stretched her limbs carefully against any chance of a restraint, and focused on Harry’s pocket, where he was keeping her wand.

            She didn’t look at Harry’s face, and she should have, Draco thought. What burned in those intense green eyes made him want to flinch, and he could feel the mental bond flowing patience and gentleness along to him, reassuring him that Harry would never do something like this to Draco, giving him all the help he needed to believe it.

            Rasatis charged, the sand springing up around her feet. Harry let her get within a meter before he lifted his hands and clenched them on either side of his face.

            Rasatis went to her knees, screaming. Draco didn’t think he could have told what had happened without access to Harry’s mind along the bond, although he did see her hair whipping back and forth. Harry had created drills of wind and pressed them into her ears from either side.

            Harry held them there until Draco thought his own eardrums would be abraded by the way she was screaming. Then Harry clenched his hand down, and the winds dropped away. It took longer for Rasatis to quiet. She turned her head around and stared at Harry with eyes so wounded that Draco couldn’t resist snickering. She had expected a hero, and got someone who had been through the wars instead.

            Harry lounged against air, his arms folded and his eyes never moving from Rasatis. Draco had to admit he was (reluctantly) impressed. Harry looked surprisingly natural like this, in the pose of torturer and Dark wizard.

            He wondered if that was another reason Harry had left the wizarding world, because he was afraid of what he might become if he didn’t.

            Too perceptive by half, Harry said, in his head, dry and precise, in deep contrast to the soft, damp tone he was using with Rasatis as he said, “Do you know what will keep me from doing that again?”

            Rasatis stared at him and shook her head. Draco didn’t have a bond with her, to knew what she was feeling, but he could imagine it from the way that the emotions trembled in his own head. Indignation, fury, and pain, all purple-red.

            And dread, in tones of pale blue that infected the limbs until she couldn’t stand. Draco didn’t blame her. He wouldn’t have been able to, either, in her position.

            “If you answer every question we have,” Harry whispered, and leaned towards her. Rasatis flinched back, but it was wind that Harry used to touch her, sliding around her neck and up to her lips. Rasatis flinched again, and licked her lips as though that could get rid of the taste. “About who’s with you, about why you came in this direction, and about who the hand belongs to.”

            “The hand?” Rasatis’s voice was bleak and soft, but at least Draco couldn’t read any tension in her muscles that might indicate she was about to launch herself at Harry. Now, anyway. If he didn’t keep impressing her, she would probably move, and might get herself killed for her troubles.

            Draco wanted to shake her for that. The Dark Lord is dead. What are you going to do to Harry that will be worth the price?

            He felt a flicker of acknowledgment from Harry’s direction, but Harry never took his eyes off Rasatis as he floated up the hand on a current beside him. Rasatis clenched her own hands in front of her when she saw it, as though she assumed Harry was in the habit of chopping off the limbs of those who displeased him. “This one,” Harry said. “We found it drifting in the water off the shore of the island. Where did it come from?”

            Rasatis coughed as though someone had tried to drown her. “You expect me to know someone from a mangled piece of flesh alone?” she asked. “Sad to say, I don’t study the people around me that closely.”

            The bond had shut down, Draco thought for a moment. Then he realized that there were emotions coming through them, but they were all cold and smooth and pearly, not the sort of thing he normally associated with Harry at all. Draco moved a careful, shuffling step backwards, although Rasatis was focused so hard on Harry by now that he doubted she noticed.

            “Yes, perhaps you might have recognized it better if it included a bit of the left forearm,” Harry said, and Draco would never know how Rasatis didn’t wince from the bite of those words digging into her. “But you came in our direction for a reason. Were you fleeing from your people? Chasing the one who left this hand behind? What was it?”

            “A free woman owes no explanation for her movements,” Rasatis said, in a way that proved she had forgotten the pain Harry had caused with his wind against her eardrums. “And you aren’t the Ministry, and this isn’t the wizarding world, for you to demand an account of my movements.”

            Harry made the smallest of gestures. Draco locked his hands and his teeth, waiting for the moment when Rasatis would writhe on the sand in agony again.

            But this time, Rasatis’s hands went to her throat and chest, although no winds appeared there that Draco could see, and he hadn’t felt any winds brush past his ears, either. Instead, Rasatis simply looked puzzled, and then began to claw. Her mouth was open, but Draco could hear no sound coming from it.

            “Yes, you see now,” Harry said. His eyes were narrowed, and Draco could feel nothing from him. He thought of the way that the Dark Lord had rejoiced when he’d angered Harry, and shuddered. Yes, perhaps it made sense for the Dark Lord to rejoice. Hot rage was nothing compared to this cold shutting-down of emotions. “I have wild magic that rides the wind. That rides the air. And any air is mine to command. Including the air that fills your lungs right now. If I say that it won’t move, it won’t.”

            During all the time he spoke those calm, measured words, Rasatis’s clawing had grown more desperate. By the time Harry finished, she was sprawled on the ground, beating on her chest with weak fists. Harry smiled at her.

            The smile made Draco close his eyes.

            You don’t need to torture her anymore, he told Harry over their bond. I think she gets it now. I think—I think everyone gets it now. And I don’t like the way that it makes you feel where you’re touching my mind.

            Harry cocked his head, and then said, But I need to make her so afraid of me that she won’t lie in response to any question I ask. And that’s not easy, not with someone as hardened as she is.

            Rasatis was trying to speak, or scream, or breathe, and she could do none of them, because all of them would have required breath in her lungs. Draco put his hands over his eyes and said, If you won’t do it for her sake, or for yours, then do it for mine. I can’t stand to watch what you’re becoming.

            He felt the sharp spasm from Harry’s emotions, his own lungs jumping, before he gave in and let Rasatis go. She ducked her head almost in the ocean in her desperation to breathe, rolling back and forth, sobbing and still clawing at the air.

            “Shall we try this again?” Harry asked at last, his voice deadened. “With you giving me the answers I want, instead of trying to pretend that you’re too big and bad to be scared of me?” Rasatis would never know from his voice that he had given in to Draco instead of simply letting her go before she died, Draco thought.

            Rasatis tried to speak, winced, and then said, “Yes. Yes. Ask me the questions. I’ll tell you what you want to know.” She closed her eyes. There was a faint, suspicious wetness rimming them.

            Draco thought that at Harry, who shrugged and replied, She’s probably also a competent actress. She would have to be, to get away with maintaining any kind of status among the Death Eaters.

            I think this is real, Draco said, just managing not to snap. He didn’t like what this was doing to Harry, and he wanted him to believe Rasatis and ask the bloody questions so that they could decide what to do with her and hurry up and leave already.

            Harry didn’t shrug, but Draco felt the mental motion from him that was the equivalent of it. He kept his attention all on Rasatis, and asked, “Why did you come to this island in the first place?”

            “I was looking for someone who did flee from me,” Rasatis whispered. “He’d been causing trouble all along. The group I’m with chose me as mayor of our little town—fairly. He kept insisting that I must have used the Imperius Curse on them, that no one would willingly elect a former Death Eater.”

            Draco moved his mind back in a shrug when Harry looked at him. I have to admit that I can understand his point-of-view.

            Harry gave back a flicker of laughter, and the bond between them turned warm and daffodil-yellow. Draco didn’t duck his head and close his eyes in gratitude, but only because he had better self-control than that. At least he thought he could make out a gentler tone when Harry asked Rasatis, “Did you try to kill him, then?”

            “No,” Rasatis said, and her voice chilled despite everything. Draco shook his head. He didn’t think she was a good actress, as much as unbelievably stubborn in sticking to her own opinions. “I merely drove him out. Then someone said that they’d seen him on a broom over the ocean. I didn’t believe it. We only have a few brooms.” She looked towards the one that she’d ridden, which Harry had set hovering in another bubble of wind near the edge of the shore. “But it was causing trouble in the camp, and so I came to investigate the rumor.”

            “Then how did he die?” Harry whispered. The sky boomed in answer to him, as winds rose and circled over them. Rasatis started and clapped her hand over her face as she squinted towards the sun. Draco was glad that she didn’t notice him doing almost the same thing. He hadn’t known Harry could cause that reaction.

            “I don’t know,” Rasatis snapped. “I came to find him, that was all. And yes, he was a colonist from our camp, and his name was Arnold Mothen.” Draco could feel Harry engraving the name in his mind. “But he was stupid to go off on his own, anyway. There are dozens of creatures here that can kill or eat humans, and we’ve found none that are good to eat.”

            Harry smiled at Draco, the wild lightning-smile that Draco couldn’t help but return, and said, “And why did you try to kill me, if you have put your past so far behind you that you find it outrageous for someone to accuse you of using the Imperius Curse on others?”

            Rasatis started hard, and her hands scattered the sand as they flopped around her. Then she shook her head and muttered, “Trying to kill someone outside my colony is one thing, but I want to protect and lead the people inside it.”

            “You could have died in the battle,” Harry said. His words pressed on Draco, at least, as hard as his drills of wind had pressed on Rasatis’s ears, and he winced and hoped that she would respond quickly, so they could move away from this and back into territory that was comfortable for both him and Harry. “When you saw us flying on the wind instead of using brooms, you had to know that we were in command of magic that you didn’t recognize, magic that could have hurt you. Why would you attack in that situation?”

            Rasatis was silent. Harry slid his finger across his lips, and she immediately gasped for air. “I can’t—can’t tell you what you want to know if you deprive me of air to speak,” she wheezed, head bent and back heaving.

            Harry sighed and reluctantly let his hand drop. “You said that you would answer my questions freely,” he murmured. “Why is this the one that you balk at?”

            Rasatis bent her head and stared at the sand for a moment. Harry stirred, but Draco caught his eye and shook his head. Harry raised an eyebrow, then nodded back in recognition. Draco thought Rasatis would answer the question if they gave her time, but she probably had to think about her own response.

            “I didn’t know you escaped,” Rasatis said at last. “I thought the Ministry had captured you at the gates when you caused the windstorm. And to know that you were here, on Hurricane, and that you probably wanted to eliminate all former Death Eaters…”

            “I have a former Death Eater’s son at my side,” Harry said. “I know you recognized him. I saw it in his face. What else made you attack?”

            Rasatis looked as if she wanted to beat on the sand with her fists, and only the decorum of an adult witch kept her from doing so. Then she leaned forwards and said, “It’s one thing to accept him, and another to accept adult Death Eaters who participated in the Dark Lord’s slaughters and massacres. Once you knew about us, I thought you would hunt us all down, and the life we had here would be no different than the one we’d tried to escape.”

            “So you decided to make sure that I would have a motive by attacking me first?” Harry laughed quietly, and this time Draco felt the breeze against his face, but he wasn’t sure it was an improvement, given the way Harry was looking at Rasatis. “That makes no sense. I believe you, but it still makes no sense. Unless you’re too paranoid to live.”

            “She is, in a way,” Draco said, because he didn’t want to witness Harry’s own paranoia making him torture the woman any further. “It would have been sensible for her to leave an enemy alone, and not alert you to what she was by attacking you. We could have passed each other by, and you would never have seen the Dark Mark on her arm.”

            Harry nodded. “That’s also true. Your defense looks more and more unlikely, Rasatis. What do you say to this?”

            Rasatis was silent, sitting bolt upright with her breath churning in and out of her lungs. Harry watched her, and said nothing. Draco would have liked to shake her shoulder and make her realize the danger she was in.

            But even more, he would have liked to shake Harry’s and make him admit that there was no reason for him to act this way, except that he wanted to.

            I want to make sure the camp is in no danger!

            A flickering sting from Harry’s mind. Draco winced under it, but accepted it. No, he answered. You want to make sure that she’s no danger to you, or me. We’re the only ones here at the moment, and there’s not much chance of her finding out where we came from. But you can’t stand it. She attacked you, and you can’t stand not knowing why.

            Harry paused a moment, and then, perhaps because he could see the reflection of what he looked like in Draco’s mind, he accepted the answer and turned back towards Rasatis as if he was going to tell her that.

            But Rasatis had already started speaking, and there was so much resentment crushed down to a powder in her words that Draco felt like holding a hand up in front of his face for his own protection.

            “You destroyed my life,” she said. “There was no sympathy and no tolerance for us after the war. You destroyed the Dark Lord, and the chance that my allegiance would win me power and wealth in the wizarding world. Every time we got a break, you were there, talking about your orphan godson and how much we’d cost you, and the mood would turn against us again.”

            Harry was silent, looking at her. Then he turned to Draco and said, “Draco, will you Obliviate her? Make her remember that there’s something across the ocean that is frightening and will destroy her if she comes here again. Maybe a snake-shark. If I’m near her for one more moment, I might forget myself and do something drastic.”

            “You’re just as good at violence as any of us, then,” Rasatis began.

            Harry turned around, and roared.

            The sound flattened Draco to the sand, and did the same thing to Rasatis, though from the way she squirmed and cried out, it was with a heavier hand. There was power in that sound, and more menace. It hurt. It was the cry of a great storm, and it had all come out of Harry’s body. Draco could just imagine the way it had been bottled up.

            When he could look again, Harry was gone, rising further down the beach, tossed into the sky and cradled by his winds. Rasatis was still pinned and whimpering, and Draco knew from touching the bond that Harry had left enough winds to ensure that she was no danger to Draco.

            He picked up his wand and turned around. He was sure he could perform the Memory Charm to satisfaction, with such motivation driving him.

            Just as he was sure that he and Harry needed to talk, and extensively.

*

            unneeded: Yes, Harry is nearer to death than he was. But he probably also needs to talk to Draco, the way Draco wants to talk to him. He’ll tell Draco about the eggshells then.

            And yes, they’re keeping her broom.

            SP777: Harry and Draco aren’t sure. They will be cautious, though.

            “To the Sea, To the Sea” is from a poem by Tolkien. “To the sea, to the sea! The white gulls are crying,/ The wind is blowing, and the white foam is flying…”
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Wondrous Lands and Oceans