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Here to Live and Die	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 5833 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Nine—Learning to Dance

“I never knew it would be so hard.”

            Harry smiled down at Draco’s bowed head. Draco had collapsed in the middle of the next dance step that the mummidade were trying to show them, panting, with his elbows resting on his knees. Harry knelt down beside him and kissed his face under his ear. “Do you think we should give up trying to learn?” he murmured.

            Draco immediately jerked himself up and shook his head. “No,” he said, so flatly that Harry bit his lip so he wouldn’t laugh. “I’m not letting goats get the better of me.” He forced himself back to his feet again, although Harry could both see and feel through the bond how much the muscles in his legs trembled. “Go on.”

            Harry turned back to the mummidade instead of answering. Sometimes he thought Draco forgot that Harry wasn’t actually the one teaching him to dance and challenging him this way; that was up to the mummidade themselves. Bluecloud waited for them now, five bodies arranged so that three of its heads pointed in different directions. The two who were demonstrating the dance steps waited with their legs solidly beneath them, their heads a little bowed.

            “We face each other,” Harry said, as the image bloomed to life in their minds again.

            Draco grimaced, but turned around and half-bowed his head, a movement Harry copied. “Like the beginning to a duel,” Draco muttered.

            Harry smiled, but said nothing. He had decided that increasing the distance between them by speaking aloud wasn’t a good idea. Draco caught the edge of that intention a minute later, and flashed him a hard glance.

            You could have told me when you decided that, in your genius.

Harry just shook his head a little, and murmured down the bond, But contradicting you and making you do something you don’t want to do would also increase the distance between us.

            Draco’s snort said what he thought of that. Harry lifted his arms above his head, or around his head, curving them like an ox’s horns, in response to the next image that the mummidade sent them.

            Draco raised his arms, too, although he hadn’t stopped glaring at Harry, and Harry winced a little when he thought of how this was going to look.

            It’s all right, he said down the bond, wheeling around in the next step the mummidade insisted was correct, so that they turned their backs on each other, but still had to move around perfectly in time. With the bond, that shouldn’t be as much of a problem for them as it would be for any other human pair who was trying to do this dance. You’re doing fine.

I’ll only think I’m doing fine when I’m holding our child.

There was nothing Harry could say to that, either. They did manage to turn around and face each other at the same time, and Harry smiled to encourage Draco. Bluecloud promptly got in between them, and Harry dropped his arms and frowned at them. They wouldn’t have interfered if the unity of the dance hadn’t been lost, but he couldn’t understand what he had done.

            The five mummidade came back together and flashed him an image of his smile. He hadn’t smiled at exactly the same time as Draco, who had produced his an instant later and showed a rather demented version of it now, not at all the calm expression Harry had had. Every movement had to be in union and unity, or nothing would work out.

            “I can’t believe we have to do this,” Draco muttered. “That we’re dependent for guidance on mummidade.”

            We’ve been dependent on them for plenty so far, Harry told him. Including finding a new place to live, a place that’s safe from the storms. I don’t know why you thought that our dependence would somehow end now.

Draco scraped up some dust with one foot and frowned mulishly at him. Harry frowned back and then stepped away, shaking his head. The mummidade knew well enough what that meant, and trotted back towards their herd.

            “You think we should quit for now?” Draco dropped his arms to his sides so that they swung like loose paddles and glared at him. “Why?”

            “The others don’t really understand what we’re doing,” Harry pointed out. It was true; Ron and Hermione had both raised their eyebrows when Harry said that they would be talking to the mummidade this morning, but hadn’t objected. “We should at least share the knowledge. And we aren’t going to accomplish anything right now anyway, the way we’re fretting at each other. I think we need to take some time off to relax.”

            Draco closed his eyes and sucked in so much air that Harry felt some of the winds near him diminish. “I agree,” Draco said, opening his eyes at last. “I never thought it would be this hard.”

            “You didn’t expect it to be easy,” Harry said aloud, following his example of not speaking in the bond. He turned to accompany Draco back to the silver houses, watching the way the muscles in Draco’s jaw trembled and then firmed—much the same sort of sensation as was running up the bond right now.

            “Yes, no, I don’t know,” Draco said, running through all the responses so fast that Harry didn’t have time to take in any one of them. “I didn’t think it would be this hard. And I know I should have, and that the kind of wild magic you can call to create a child doesn’t come easily, before you say anything,” he added.

            Harry silently held up his hand.

            Draco nodded. “Thank you for not saying anything,” he muttered, and then closed his eyes and shook his head. “I don’t know. I don’t know, Harry. I think that I should have done more than this already, that this dance is waiting for us to master it, that our child is waiting to be born. I have this sense of urgency I can’t explain.”

            Harry hummed, but didn't say anything in return. He couldn't say that he shared the same sense of urgency. To him, the seasons on Hurricane stretched before them to the horizon of both space and time, without half the urgencies of politics on Earth. They had enemies here, no doubt of that, but not the same tangle of loyalties they'd had in the wizarding world.

             You don't feel it?

             Harry shook his head. No. Sorry. But maybe part of it is that I already have Teddy, and you don't have any children of your own.

              Draco nodded in an unconvinced way, but let it go. Harry walked on, calmly convinced, in and of himself, that they would solve the problem of the dance sooner or later.

               The problem of the storms was proving rather harder.

*

                The rider that landed beside Draco startled him badly enough to pull him out of the trance of cutting weeds with his wild magic that he'd fallen into. It was hypnotic. Reach out with his left hand, slice the top of the nearest weeds, slice them into smaller pieces with his right, and funnel the rest of the tiny scraps into the tame wind that Harry had lent them for the cleanup...

                 But not hypnotic enough to survive the rush of wings right beside him, the sudden death of his tame wind, and the scattering of all the cut pieces he hadn’t yet picked up. The beast’s annoyed whiffle was the least of it.

                  Draco turned around with the most bored expression he could muster on his face, especially once he saw that the rider wasn't Open Wings. He spread his hands, the helpless gesture any human who didn't speak enough of the riders' language to communicate would use.

                   The rider snapped and hissed at him, but Draco shook his head again. It really wasn’t his fault if someone insisted on coming to him and speaking this way. They should have gone to Granger, who was doing better than anyone at the moment in translating the riders’ language and getting them to understand each other.

            The beast held out one wing. Draco watched as it settled to the ground, a gracefully arched ramp, and grimaced a little. He knew what that meant. The creature wanted him to ride it.

            And offering a ride wasn’t something that anyone except Open Wings did often. They had to go somewhere urgent, or a crisis had come up that the rider thought Draco needed to reach as soon as possible.

            Harry could have flown on his own. But even with the tame wind dancing beside him in its eagerness to help, Draco wasn’t Harry.

            He did look around for him as he climbed up the wing and settled on the beast’s bony back behind the rider, though. As far as he could tell, the meadow was still serene. The mummidade and the antelope that the riders ate—they weren’t sentient—still grazed without looking up. The silver houses had no activity except for that of people casting spells and gathering grass and sleeping outside them. Nor could Draco see a lot of riders gathering over the meadow or patrolling, which would probably indicate Primrose and her group had come back.

            But, apparently, nothing would do for the rider except that Draco accompany him.

            Draco sighed in a long-suffering way and agreeably flung a leg over the beast’s back and settled his hands on the rider’s feathery shoulders. It felt like sinking his hands into clouds, but it was better than trying to hold on to their waist; most riders had no waist to speak of.

            The beast snapped its beak, and the rider clucked to it. Draco thought he recognized the word for “fly”—no great deduction, as they rose from the ground and hurtled through the air a moment later.

            Draco caught his breath. He had ridden the wind, of course, but that was nothing like this, the great wings beating on either side of them, the beast’s whole being committed to motion forwards. Draco enjoyed the flights that Harry took him along for, but there, the important things were his trust in Harry and watching the landscape zoom past below. This was at once slower and more thrilling.

            He realized quickly that they weren’t aiming where he had thought they would, for the center of the meadow where the humans gathered in times of crisis. Instead, they rose and rose, and the air became higher, thinner, colder. Draco coughed. The rider cast him a narrow look of contempt and clucked and chirruped to his beast. Still they rose.

            Finally, the shadow of wings crossed the sky above Draco, and he glanced up to see another beast circling there. This one was Swoop, as Open Wings named his partner. Draco stood up as best he could when his hands and heels both sank into feathers with every movement and waved one hand madly.

            Open Wings dropped Swoop down to pace the beast and rider carrying Draco. Swoop glanced at Draco once, great beak clacking, and then turned his head haughtily away. Open Wings reached out a taloned hand and clutched Draco’s tightly.

            Draco stared at him, then looked around for either Granger or the mummidade. He couldn’t communicate with the riders on his own. Even if he had devoted every effort to learning their language, he didn’t think he could have done it as easily as Granger, who wanted to learn it more than she wanted anything else at the moment, or Teddy, who was young and still had a malleable tongue and throat.

            Open Wings didn’t seem to care about that. He retained his grip on Draco’s hand and slowly tilted his head back, baring the long line of his throat.

            Draco, having nothing else to do and sensing that he wouldn’t reclaim his hand or be allowed to return to the ground soon, looked with him. Overhead flew three beasts. Draco thought he recognized them as a trio who spent a lot of time guarding the borders and waiting for threats like Primrose to show up.

            “Yes?” he asked aloud, to ease his own nervousness as much as anything. “I can’t understand anything you’re saying, you do realize that?”

            Open Wings uttered a long series of trills and chirps, ignoring Draco entirely. The beasts above Draco dipped their wings and spread their tails, and then abruptly pivoted away from each other, spiraling towards the ground. Draco caught his breath. He hadn’t seen them fly as spectacularly as that since Harry had deployed some magic and swung them around like pendulums, and he doubted they would enjoy being reminded of that.

            Then the beasts locked their tails together and began to spin at the very limit of their separate flights, and the motion carried them back together. Draco stared, dazed, as they posed, their heads tilted back, their talons and paws resting against each other, and the riders on their backs stretched out and carefully arched their bodies so they came to rest in very specific positions.

            Draco looked back and forth between the pattern of their shadows on the ground and the shapes they were making in the sky, his breath drying out his throat and his hands clenching in front of him as though he could reach out and take apart the picture they were making.

            Because it was a picture, although all done in tints of brown and grey and black and white because of the shadow-shapes and the colors on the beasts. It was Harry, Harry’s face, his eyes half-closed and his hair rising stiff and spiky from his skull. And Draco didn’t have to look at Open Wings’s face to feel the talons on his shoulder go spiky themselves with worry.

            Draco swallowed. He thought he knew what they meant. He wanted to reject that meaning, to pretend it was something else, that he didn’t know what they wanted and he would go off and do something else himself, but he knew what it was.

            They were worried about Harry. The way he had ridden the last storm that had come into the meadow by himself, most likely, and maybe also the way he had picked apart the knot of power in the center of it. Draco had heard Granger talk about how they also worried when one of their scouts wanted to go off by himself and do something drastic, either a hunt or an attack against their enemies. The riders were used to being a small group against the might of Hurricane. Heroic individual action would just doom other people, at least if they allowed it to get a root in their hearts and habits.

            Draco sighed so deeply that he ruffled the feathers on Open Wings’s shoulders, ahead of him. He nodded, and kept on nodding as Open Wings turned and glanced at him. It was a human gesture they understood. He hoped they would know it meant that he was worried, too, or at least accepted their worry, and that he would talk to Harry.

            Open Wings clattered his beak, an approving noise, and gestured with one hand-talon. The rider whose beast Draco rode on took up the reins and ruffled his beast’s neck-feathers in a complicated motion, and his beast dived back down, landing with hardly a riffle of the grass near Andromeda’s house.

            Andromeda came out, cradling Teddy, to stare at him. For the moment, Draco refused to pay attention to her. He hopped off and saluted the rider who had brought him here, another human gesture they’d learned, because it was easy for them to perform with their long arms.

            The rider bowed his head back and took off. Andromeda watched him dwindle to a winged speck on the edge of the meadow before she turned and handed the crooning, reaching Teddy to Draco.

            “What was all that about?” she asked quietly.

            Draco met her eyes evenly. He knew that she didn’t have much reason to be loyal to him, but on the other hand, he also hadn’t done much to piss her off lately. “As far as I can tell,” he said, just in case it turned out later that the riders had been trying to say something entirely different to him, “they’re worried about Harry. They think that he’s going to take off on his own or that he’s taking too many risks in confronting the storm by himself.”

            Andromeda blew herself up like a hedgehog. “Don’t they have enough to worry about, with their beasts and their herding?” she snapped. “Tell them to leave Harry alone.”

            Draco blinked at her. He had never seen her like that in defense of Harry, even though the Weasleys when they first came to Hurricane had given her plenty of chances to tell them off. She only ever seemed to get like that about Teddy, herself, or the memories of her dead.

            For the first time, he thought he was seeing a glimpse of the woman Harry had been loyal to and hadn’t wanted to see go back to Earth for her own sake, as well as because she was Teddy’s grandmother.

            “Why are you staring at me?” Andromeda added harshly, shaking her black hair out of her face and glaring at him. “Do you think I’m the mad one, when the riders act as though Harry’s going to go mad any minute?”

            “I don’t know for sure that they’re thinking that,” Draco said slowly. “I’d have to ask Granger. I don’t speak their language, remember. So I can’t tell them to leave Harry alone. I need to speak to Granger, and I need to speak to Harry.”

            Andromeda studied him for a little moment more, then grunted and pushed Teddy towards him. “Here, watch him,” she said. “He’s been trying to break the wall all morning. Talking about seeing little cracks in it.”

            Draco raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Maybe Teddy really could, considering that the wild magic seemed to concentrate on giving him clarity of vision.

            “I think Hermione’s away with the riders, and those expeditions of hers take hours,” Andromeda continued. “But I saw Harry walk away to the north a little while ago, and he wouldn’t have gone far on foot.” Draco nodded, understanding the unspoken corollary of that; he wouldn’t have used his winds to take him a greater distance away without telling anyone, either. “I have to work on this building.”

            She bustled out to the one that resembled an amphitheater again, and stood there with her eyes closed, her hands twined in a position that made it seem as if she was pulling on invisible threads. Draco turned and walked away, thoughtfully bouncing Teddy on his hip.

            “Your grandmother is more than she seems,” he told Teddy.

            “Want Uncle Harry,” said Teddy, and glanced up at Draco. “Are we going to find him?”

            “We’re going to find him,” Draco confirmed, and began to walk.

            He wondered as he went what he would say to Harry, whether the riders had really meant what he thought they did, whether he should have brought Granger to translate, and other things that irritated him enough that he was grinding his teeth by the time he arrived at the place where the bond had told him Harry was. Harry was watching for him, waiting for him, rising from the grass to look at Draco.

            “What is it?” he asked quietly.

            Draco swallowed. His throat felt tight and close, and normally he would have tried to speak into Harry’s mind, but he didn’t know that he could find the right words even with the bond. The winds were circling around Harry, looking as if they had polished his eyes into bright gemstones, and ruffling his hair.

            “You’re afraid of me,” Harry said, reaching out to take Teddy. Teddy immediately began to chatter to him, and Harry chattered back, but kept turning his head so that he could watch Draco with one eye.

            Draco blinked, caught flat-footed by Harry’s announcement, and stuck his hands into his robe pockets. Then he saw the way Harry’s smile was curdling and he was turning his back as if that would dismiss Draco from his sight, and he blurted out the words that did more good than silence. “I’m afraid for you.”

            “Why?” Harry interrupted Teddy for a moment, putting him down and then patting him on the shoulder. “Why don’t you see if you can find a pink stone?” he asked Teddy, nodding to the small stones scattered over this part of the meadow. “That’s the one color I haven’t seen since we came to Hurricane.”

            Teddy squealed in glee and scrambled off. Harry faced Draco fully, his arms folded and his head bowed, and the winds traveled in circles around his hair again. Draco couldn’t feel them fully except when they touched his skin, but he thought they were hugging and hanging onto and caressing Harry, making him feel less alone.

            “Why?” Harry repeated in a low voice. “I’ve done stupid things like that before, and I’ll probably do them again, but—but you’ve never acted as though I need a minder before.”

            “It’s the riders,” Draco said. “They showed me a picture of you they made with their shadows and the beasts’ bodies, and they took me into the air to do it. They would have come to both of us together, and the mummidade, if they thought they could speak to you about it.”

            Harry closed his eyes. Draco could feel thoughts darting through the bond, silver and green, too fast to follow.

            And then he thought, But that was never the case before. I could always absorb it, even if it meant that I had to go through them later, like I did when Harry shoved those memories of his childhood at me.

            And he reached out and caught hold of the thoughts, dragging them back towards him, inviting himself into the conversation Harry was having with himself.

            Harry half-snarled and turned towards him, but what Draco caught was, Dangerous, should have realized, need to leave, but how would they communicate without me, how could I take Teddy?

            “You idiot,” Draco said, directly into Harry’s ear, because he’d started walking across the space between them while he was catching the thoughts, and now stood holding Harry, in a tight enough grip that Harry had to close his eyes and swallow. “Of course you’re not leaving. Just because the riders might be afraid of you or for you doesn’t mean you need to leave. We’ll talk about it, the way you were always encouraging the Weasleys to do instead of turning to you automatically for an answer, remember?” His hands tightened when Harry tried to shrug, holding his shoulders still. “Remember?”

            Harry swallowed again. And then he leaned forwards and rested his chin on Draco’s shoulder, sighing out hard enough to make the hair around Draco’s ear riffle.

            “Yeah,” he said. “I mean—yes. Thanks, Draco.” He pulled back enough to give Draco a misty-eyed smile. “I was forgetting about the other people who chose to walk this road with me.”

            Teddy came scrambling back then, holding his hands up and chattering about the rock he’d found. Draco took it away and looked. It was some kind of pink quartz, he thought, delicately ruddy more than anything else, but it was pink.

            “I found a pink stone!” Teddy yelled as Harry held him up, and then repeated a few words in what was probably the riders’ language, all chucking and chuckling and clucking.

            Harry caught Draco’s eye, and smiled at him. “You sure did,” he said. He kissed Teddy’s forehead and reached out to take Draco’s hand. “Do you want to take it home and put it up over your bed?”

            “Yeah,” Teddy said, and grabbed the pink rock and scrambled down again so he could run ahead with it.

            Draco took Harry’s hand, and asked softly, No running? Or flying away, either?

            Harry’s hand trembled once, then firmed. No running.

*

            Sasunarufan13: I do have one mpreg story, but only one.

            And yes, I think this is the first time I’ve written about a world magical enough for this to work.

            SP777: I mean more that I suck at the dynamics that are found in most heterosexual pairings in fantasy. The focus on children, the woman always being the pursued, the importance placed on not having sex before marriage (even when the heroine turns out not to be a virgin, her past lovers always sucked), the love triangles, and so on. When I wrote original fantasy with het pairings in them, the woman was almost always the pursuer and children were almost never a concern. Plus the people I wrote about tended not to be human. That seems not to be preferred in most fantasy.

            Glad you liked this chapter!
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Here to Live and Die