Chapter Two of 'Wondrous Lands and Oceans'- Like Rabbits
Chapter One.
Title: Wondrous Lands and Oceans (2/about 20 to 30)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, George/Angelina, Bill/Fleur, others possible.
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, angst, bloody animal death, bonding.
Summary: The emigration to the wild magic world of Hurricane is complete, but not the settling-in process. Harry and Draco struggle to solidify both their own bond and their bonds with their family and allies-while setting out on journeys of exploration that prove there is more to Hurricane than storms.
Author’s Notes: This is a sequel to Reap the Hurricane; that one should be read first. This story will probably be somewhere between twenty and thirty chapters long.
Thank you for all the reviews!
Chapter Two-Like Rabbits
Harry hunched forwards and waited there for a moment with his hands on his knees. He could smell the rabbits that waited ahead of them (Harry was just going to call them “rabbits” until someone else came up with a name that stuck), because the wind was carrying their scents to him. And it was a strong, gamy scent, as though they pissed meat as well as being made of it.
Let’s not tell Bill, or he’ll want to eat the piss, too.
Draco’s laughter scraped up and down his brain like someone inexpertly playing piano keys. Harry shook his head a little, and Draco’s laughter calmed at once, as if he assumed that the headshake expressed deeper irritation than it did.
I don’t think that, Draco snarled back. I know what you’re thinking, I can tell.
Harry rolled his eyes. This could turn into one of their endless and needless looping conversations if they weren’t careful, with Draco insisting that he knew what all of Harry’s emotions were and Harry pointing out that he didn’t act as if he did. They were here for something else. Ready?
Draco sent back wordless waiting, the cramp of his legs and the way the grasses waved around him. His claws gleamed at the ends of his fingers, and he had arrows waiting to be strung in his mind.
Harry nodded, and then stood up and spread his arms.
The winds whistled forth from behind him, far lower than they would normally be on Hurricane, and swept the grasses thick with bristling seeds aside. Harry felt his hair stick to his cheeks and his eyes tear, but he had prepared for that and kept his gaze fixed ahead, watching the space between the ground and the middle of the grass stalks.
And out of them came the rabbits, springing and thinning as they flew, running from the disturbed grasses back home.
Now, Harry chanted, and blew six rabbits off-course with a breeze, just as they started to solidify back into a cloud-like shape. The rabbits made a single, shrill noise that went into Harry’s ear like a needle, and Harry winced. Primrose hadn’t mentioned that, maybe because she had killed them before they could do it.
Draco’s arrow flew overhead; Harry felt the catch and pull of his muscles as he released, and, more than that, the catch and pull of his magic. The tumbling rabbits rose and fell as Harry’s wind positioned them. Their magic never seemed to change them again; maybe they had to be moving before they could use it. Harry caught his breath.
The arrow slammed home, and the rabbits sagged, each one dropping to the ground with an entrance wound on the left flank and an exit wound on the right.
Harry whistled softly and knelt down, examining the blood clotting on the ground for a moment. Then he looked up and nodded. “Dead,” he said aloud. No need to preserve silence now, when the other rabbits would have fled.
Draco loped through the grass to find him, casually cutting off the tops of the blades that might have interfered with his progress. Harry raised his eyebrows at him. They didn’t want to denude the place, or the rabbits might abandon the warren and move elsewhere.
Draco ignored that, though his shoulder did knock Harry’s heavily as he knelt down beside him and looked at their first kill. “They are as fat as Primrose said,” he murmured eventually. “As fat as pigeons. We can only hope that the flesh is as rich, I suppose.” He stirred and glanced at Harry. “You know that some of them are going to want to eat it cooked, instead of drying it in the sun the way Primrose showed us.”
Harry nodded back. He almost felt as though he wanted to eat it that way himself. He had never cared that much about different kinds of food, except sweets, which he got so rarely on Privet Drive; food was food, and he either starved or drowned in all sorts of good things, no room in between. But this way…
He floated the small corpses into the air, and turned them over so that Draco could see the wounds for himself. Draco fanned out his fingers, and mimed dipping claws into the holes, so that more blood began to flow.
“Let’s get them back, then, instead of drooling over them,” Draco said into the great golden silence.
Harry nodded, draped the corpses over his shoulders, and took a step forwards.
“Why walk when you can fly?” Draco asked from behind him.
Harry blinked back at him. “You mean fly in on the winds,” he said, when Draco carried on staring at him.
This is the kind of thing that means you should practice reading my mind, instead of pretending that you can’t, Draco said, and rolled his eyes. “Yes, I mean that,” he said aloud. “We’ve kept secrets from them for no good reason, it seems to me now. They can’t join us without brooms in the sky unless they develop the wild magic themselves. Why hide it?”
Harry hesitated. Then he nodded. He and Draco had kept to themselves more than they should, and that had probably given the Weasleys more reason to distrust them. He shouldn’t discourage any attempts that Draco made to give them more in common with other people who, after all, they would depend on for survival.
Draco rolled his eyes again. “You don’t need to think about me in that condescending fashion, either. I can hear you. You can hear me. We ought to be functioning even better as a team than we do.”
Harry heaved the rabbit in silent answer. Draco snorted. “And? That’s something we’ve practiced in the past, when we fought the bird. Why don’t we try something new? Fly into camp, and do it together. And then you concentrate on reading my mind for the rest of the day, trying to anticipate what I’ll do. Instead of the other way around, for once,” he added, and his voice had turned as savage as iron.
Harry winced, and nodded. It wasn’t fair to make him do all the work.
Still condescending. But better.
Harry gritted his teeth, and silently summoned the wind. It blew his hair back and made his shoulders quiver as if they bore wings. Harry smiled in spite of himself. The wind made him happier than anything.
A prominence I may hope to challenge, one day.
Harry reached back, instinctively caught the hand that Draco didn’t have claws on at the moment, and then let his feet lift from the ground. He was glad that Draco had insisted they both rest yesterday, instead of going out to hunt at once. He wouldn’t have had the magic to fly like this otherwise.
And that would be a pity, he thought, as he lifted into the air, and Draco flew behind him. He could use wind to cradle them both. Draco did insist on taking control in his own way, by slicing some of the winds into breezes and letting the currents catch him in a timed fall, but that was the way he was. Harry wouldn’t change him.
You are much more agreeable when you fly. I must remember that.
Harry held his arms out in front of him and used his wrists to spin himself, while behind him Draco flew, too, but lower. Yes, Draco was right. From the beginning of his time in the wizarding world, flying had been the thing that could never harm him. He was safer on a broom-and now, in the arms of his winds-than he was on the ground, or in the Ministry, or among other people.
Especially in the Ministry.
And, for at least the short space of time it took the wind to cross the land between the warren and the camp, he gave himself up to the sky.
*
Draco watched Harry in silence. His head was held between his arms, which sleeked the way. His body dived and rose and dipped, falcon-like. His eyes would be bright and on fire, although Draco couldn’t see them from this angle.
Perhaps he should encourage Harry to fly every day.
And perhaps he should encourage Harry to use the wind so that he could fly every day.
It was exhilarating, in the same way that hunting the rabbits was, to shift and balance between one choice and another, one wind and another, falling and then being snatched up a new gale that he would cut, to feel the currents in his hair and on his skin and brushing past his ears, to breathe deeply and fill his lungs with the coolness. Harry wouldn’t let him fall, that was the working in partnership, and in the meantime Draco could use his weapons and exercise his own independence.
Too bad that that doesn’t work the rest of the time.
Formless annoyance roiled at him from Harry’s direction, but faded in the next rush of the wind. Draco smiled thinly at Harry’s back, and then braced his legs despite himself as the wild magic snatched him up to Harry’s level. He had grown so used to controlling his own weapons that he forgot, sometimes, how disorienting it was to be subjected to someone else’s.
Watch out for fear in the others when they see us arrive this way. Watch their faces. We should show them what we can do, but be ready to soothe their reactions.
Harry was silent for a moment, while the grass rolled under them and the small stream that trickled down from the hills appeared. Then he said, That is a change. Yes, I’m going to watch.
Draco wanted to catch his breath, wanted to say something, but they looped and fell and soared, and before he had the chance to cut another wind and stand forth on his own, Harry dropped them both into the grass in front of Granger’s greenhouse.
For once, Granger wasn’t there, and neither were the Ministry lackey, or the Dragon Keeper, who was probably spending time with his younger sister and the bird. Instead, the Weasley patriarch and the original Weasel straightened up from weeding and stared at them with dangling jaws.
Harry bowed his head and turned to watch Draco. Then he smiled and said, “Surprise. We can fly.”
The patriarch choked and said nothing. Weasel smiled slowly back at Harry, didn’t look at Draco, and whispered, “That was the way that you faced the bird, then. Not so much on brooms as on the wind.”
Harry nodded. His eyes were bright as he laid the bloody rabbits in the middle of the grass, and the patriarch stepped forwards and said, “Did you see any more of them? The warren was where you thought it was? How long do you think we need to cook these before they’re ready?”
Harry smiled at him in turn, and Draco half-relaxed as he realized that Harry associated the stream of random and impertinent questions with the man’s interest in Muggle objects. Better to be interested in the animals associated with one’s survival than in Muggle objects, Draco had to admit, if one must let one’s thoughts leap about like that.
“We saw others, but these were the only ones we killed,” Harry said. “I blew them into the air from their grip on a stalk, and Draco stabbed them.” He invited Draco into the conversation with a little tip of his chin.
“We can try cooking them,” Draco said. “But I think we should dry at least half the meat in the way that Primrose showed us. We don’t know anything about roasting the meat or how safe it will be to eat that way. Primrose didn’t try it.” Probably because someone would have seen her fire and then she couldn’t keep her secret.
Harry nodded back, and didn’t set up his usual defense of Primrose and what she’d taught them. He might have realized by now that it didn’t matter, or that he wouldn’t persuade Draco any way he tried it. Draco relaxed a little.
The patriarch crouched down beside the rabbits and examined the wounds in the sides, exclaiming softly. Then he looked up. “Should we make-we should make this a celebration,” he said, as if he had just remembered that he didn’t have a reason to defer to Draco, or at least thought he didn’t. “We’ve had precious little to celebrate since we came here.”
Draco stifled the snort he wanted to give. They didn’t count a successful escape from the Ministry and surviving for a couple of months on a planet full of wild magic that wanted them dead as a triumph?
It’s hard to celebrate that, Harry’s mind murmured back. It takes a great event to serve as a symbol.
Draco twitched his head in return. He did understand that, but it would never stop being ridiculous to him nonetheless.
“I think we should,” Harry said, and smiled at the original Weasel. “Ron can do that trick with fire that he learned just before we left, can’t he, Ron?”
The Weasel’s face turned so red that Draco was surprised he didn’t faint, with all the blood in his body rushing to one place like that. “Harry,” he hissed. “You said you weren’t going to tell anyone about that.”
Harry smiled. “It would be hard to forget about it when Hermione saw it, and Andromeda, and George, and-”
“I knew I shouldn’t have let you invite everyone over for dinner that night,” the Weasel said darkly, and stamped off muttering. But from the lines of his back, or the way that Harry interpreted the lines of his back, he didn’t mind.
If I’d insulted one of my friends like that, there would be blood to pay, Draco told Harry.
Harry shrugged and picked up the rabbits again, while aloud he planned the celebration for that night with the patriarch. Your friends and mine are different. That’s not a revelation.
It wasn’t, and Draco was displeased with himself for thinking so. He continued frowning while he and Harry went to Transfigure grass into wood for the fire that night-or rather, they went so that Harry could blow the grass together and Draco could cast the spells that would complete the Transfiguration. Harry had all but abandoned his wand for his winds since they came to Hurricane.
*
The fire was large, and the laughter was loud, and if they didn’t have all that much to celebrate, someone watching from outside wouldn’t think of it that way, Harry thought, shading his eyes so that he could see some of the faces looming as shadows past the flames.
The rabbits had roasted above the fire while Hermione cast every spell she could think of on them. She ended by stepping away, shaking her head, and admitting that she should have studied more spells like that before they left.
Harry could feel Draco agreeing with her in the back of his head, but he ignored that. The Ministry had discovered the worlds quickly; they had hustled the emigrants through the gates into them just as quickly. They hadn’t left much time for packing, or saying farewell, or making up their minds for more than the most essential survival skills. None of them had done everything they should have, because they hadn’t had time.
Hermione looked a little better after he said that, and they broke the rabbits up into small pieces and served them slowly, the largest pieces to Bill and Draco, seasoning the meal with sweet grass seeds, a few of the tougher and weedier plants from Hermione’s greenhouses, a sort of bread that Molly had begun to bake and press from the grasses, and a bowl of-
Harry stared at the white liquid in the bowl in front of him, then stared at Hermione. “This isn’t milk, is it?” he asked. “I didn’t think we had cows yet.”
Hermione grinned. “Not cows,” she said, and turned and gestured with her hand at Ginny.
Ginny stood up, her face almost the same color as her hair. Draco muttered something uncomplimentary, but everything Draco said about Ginny was uncomplimentary, and Harry had figured out that he would have to live with it. He couldn’t force Draco to change everything about himself, only what would get them in trouble or make a difference in how easily they could live with his family.
They’re still my family. I was in danger of forgetting that at first, I was so obsessed with Draco.
Draco shot spikes of disgust and resentment at him. Harry reached out and silently stroked his thoughts in apology. The obsession had been mutual, and maybe because he’d been a virgin until Draco had fucked him, he’d reacted like a virgin. Thinking about it all the time, attributing everything to it, convinced that it had changed him as a person. When, really, it could only change him as far as he let it.
Draco subsided in something like confusion, and Ginny coughed. “The bird is too small to fly yet,” she said. “But I took a broom and went east, beyond the gate.”
Harry smiled at her. West lay the camp that Primrose and her people had lived in, but which the bird had destroyed; Primrose had been the sole survivor. North was the direction the heaviest storms seemed to come from. South was the direction the mummidade seemed to favor, and so far they hadn’t yet dared to travel far there.
But east beyond the gate was a good idea. The gate had opened in the middle of nowhere; there was no reason not to look beyond it, behind it, and see what lay there.
You can stop admiring her at any time.
I would admire you in the same way if you’d had the same idea, Harry said, without turning to look at Draco. It’s the cleverness of the idea that catches at me, not the person who came up with it.
Draco caught his breath, and hushed. Ginny was continuing, and Harry listened to the trembles and breaks in the back of her voice. She had never sounded like this back in the wizarding world. Was Hurricane getting to her more than he had realized, giving her chances to doubt herself? Being rescued by Draco and Harry the first time she did some serious flying couldn’t have helped.
Perhaps a reason that she took the broom out this time, Draco said, and he hammered the words into Harry’s skull so hard that Harry couldn’t help but hear them.
He needed to hear them, he realized a moment later, flushing. Yes, Ginny would want to make up for what she had seen as a failure, especially since she had confessed to him once that she really had nothing to contribute to the camp other than flying. If she lost out once, if she couldn’t help hunt the bird that Harry and Draco had killed and couldn’t ride the one she was rearing yet, she would do this.
Sometimes, you are more than oblivious, Draco hissed. I begin to wonder how they survived for so long with you as a leader, when you don’t think about the psychology of the people who follow you. Harry hunched his shoulders and said nothing.
Ginny said, “The plains that lie in that direction start sloping downwards soon, although I don’t know why, there’s no mountains there. I rose higher, because I thought there might be a lake in that direction. And-there’s something else.” She shivered and held out her hands as though she was conjuring the sight up between them for others to admire. “I saw blue, and when I flew there, I saw the sea.”
Harry half-closed his eyes. For some reason, he’d thought of Teddy growing up without seeing oceans, and now here they were.
Draco was silent, other than a hand in the middle of Harry’s back.
Ginny nodded at the bowls of milk Hermione had given them. “I landed on the shore and walked along it. I wanted to fly over it, but edible plants are more important. I found trees that are about three times the size of any coconut trees back on Earth, but they have fruit that looked the same.”
“And she tried the milk with all the spells she could think of, and here it is,” Hermione broke in, gesturing at the bowls in turn.
Ginny raised an eyebrow. Harry grinned as Hermione blushed. She’d probably just wanted to reassure everyone that it was safe to drink it, but she had stolen a bit of Ginny’s thunder.
Draco picked up his bowl of milk and saluted Ginny with it. “To a true pioneer and explorer,” he said, and tilted his head back to sling the milk down his throat.
Harry stared at him some more. Draco acted as though nothing was less important to him in life than noticing Harry’s stare, instead working his throat around the milk and swallowing. Then he put the bowl down and bowed to Ginny. “A good addition to our diet,” he said. Harry checked his face, but could find nothing in his expression that suggested he was lying.
You can read my mind, Draco said, all subtly drawled words and slow pressure of the thoughts in his head that felt as though they would crush Harry with their weight. Why in the world are you looking at my face?
I like to, Harry said, with more truth than he wanted, and he felt himself blush as he picked up his bowl. But everyone was looking at Draco and Ginny and the empty bowl, as if waiting for him to fall down frothing, and no one paid attention to him. Harry was glad. Besides the blush, his hands were shaking.
Draco didn’t say anything, but then again, the emotions that came from his mind at the moment felt just as still and quiet as the ones in Harry’s. So Harry swallowed a portion of the milk, and found that Draco wasn’t joking. It could stand to be either colder or warmer; at the moment, it was tepid, and Harry had never enjoyed drinking any liquid like that. But it rolled and dripped in his mouth like real milk, and the taste was piercingly sweet. There were no lumps floating in it, either, the way he had been afraid there would be from the effort Draco seemed to need to swallow it.
When he put down the bowl, he joined in the applause. By now, Ginny was making ironic little bows in all directions, but the one she made to Harry was accompanied by a faint, sweet smile.
Draco’s hand immediately locked into place on his back. Harry rolled his eyes. I told you, she’s not interested in me. And even if she was, I’m not interested in her.
See that it stays that way. Draco’s fingers squeezed and withdrew.
Harry watched Draco’s profile for a moment, shining in the firelight and with his teeth biting firmly on his lip as though he were repressing all sorts of words. Then he turned back to the conversation about Ginny, and her flight, and the ocean.
Because, after all, wasn’t this what Andromeda was implicitly accusing him of? Paying too much attention to his own small corner of the world, which was the bond and the various parts of it, and not enough to the larger conversation and the world around him?
And this was exciting, something that might genuinely change the way they lived on Hurricane, instead of yet another argument about Bill being a werewolf or whether they should devote their slender resources to raising more Earth plants or trying to raise animals. And if they had water, they could purify it of salt; Angelina had said the charms to do that were relatively simple.
Harry breathed out weariness, and breathed in excitement, and laid his head on Draco’s shoulder. Draco, moving as gingerly as though Harry were something new and dangerous he would need to swallow, put his arm around his shoulders.
Conversation faltered for a moment, then continued. And the smile Ginny shot them was no less sweet than before.
I can reconcile my different worlds, Harry thought as he laid his head on Draco more firmly, his hair brushing Draco’s collarbone. I can.
We can, said Draco, tossing the words like a spear.
And Harry found his hand, and held it, while his mind poured back silent agreement.
Chapter Three.
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