Chapter Twelve of 'Wondrous Lands and Oceans'- Cousins and Aunts
Chapter Eleven.
Title: Wondrous Lands and Oceans (12/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.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve--Cousins and Aunts
"Look what I can do!"
Draco laughed as Teddy splashed into the bottom of the pool and came out with both hands full of squirming, transparent creatures. They looked like worms, but only until he peered at them closely, and then their delicate jaws and the fins waving around their heads came into view. Draco let one run through his fingers, and shook his head. It felt like nothing more than water to him. Well, perhaps the scales were solid enough when he let his hand rest on them, but no more so than some of the particles that one found drifting in even the purest of water.
"I'm special," Teddy said, stepping up on the bank of the pond and whipping around with his hands extended in front of him. A few of the smaller creatures he clutched fell to the ground, and Draco prudently waved his wand to float them back to the pond. Teddy seemed like the kind of child who would shriek and mourn later if he didn't, even if he was just exulting in his power to see them right now. "I can see them."
Draco paused and leaned forwards. "Has anyone talked to you about that?"
Teddy blinked at him, then said, "Grandma asks why I can see them." He splashed back into the water again, and came with his hands spread flat, so that Draco could see the fat animal in them. It was touched with swirling streams of gold and silver, like some painted goldfish. It gasped as Draco watched, the fluttering gills spreading out in flat fans that seemed to reject the air instead of soaking it up. "Look at this one!"
"He's pretty," Draco said. "But I think we should put him back now. He's struggling to breathe, see?"
Teddy blinked and peered more closely at the fish. "He is?"
Draco nodded solemnly. "You wouldn't want to struggle to breathe, would you? You know the feeling you have when you climb up stairs or a high hill? That's the feeling the fish has right now."
Teddy immediately turned around and cradled the fish to the edge of the pond, letting it slip in. Draco watched him kneeling there, and swallowed. Teddy could really only change the color of his eyes and hair right now, not his features, though from what Draco knew of Metamorphmagi, that would come in time. With his back turned and his head bowed, blond hair rippling in the wind like the gills of the fish he had showed Draco, Teddy looked incredibly like the children Draco had pictured having with Harry.
But he's not them. And I don't know if Harry will ever yield if he thinks that Teddy would be jealous of another child.
Draco shook his head as Teddy turned around with a snake so thin-blue and fine-boned that he could hardly see it. He had to dismiss the thought for now. Teddy would grow, and there was no reason to think they would live shorter lives on Hurricane that they had on Earth, unless the wild magic or one of Hurricane's animals killed them. They had decades, perhaps a century, to make and rear more children.
And what inheritance will I give them, now that Malfoy Manor is gone?
The question occupied him to the point that Teddy was the one who squealed and darted out of the pool towards Harry and Andromeda, rather than Draco sensing Harry's approach through the bond. Draco turned around and stayed resting with one arm on his knees, watching them.
Harry swung Teddy up and settled him naturally on his hip. Draco noticed the way that Andromeda watched that, and blinked.
Yes, she does get jealous of me sometimes, Harry murmured through the bond. But she's more than jealous of you. She actually proposed going back to the wizarding world with Teddy, and leaving us here.
Draco felt the sharp negative move through him, like a black bird, before he could control it. He didn't want to lose Teddy.
Harry nodded slowly, gaze fixed on him. Exactly. I know that you can put up with him, and do more than that, when you're around him. It's only when you're distant that you start thinking of him as an obstacle.
Draco nodded and leaned back on the slope, letting his hands fold behind his head so he could mostly close his eyes and look lazy. Harry's emotions told him how he looked and the way that Andromeda crept along at Harry's side, glaring at Draco as if she could change the way he existed, the way he was, merely with that.
If any wizard could, then someone would have done it before now, Draco thought idly. The Weasleys would have changed me, or my parents would have when I disappointed them.
I hate that so many people want to change you.
Draco jumped a little. You would have wanted to do it, too, when we first began feeling bonded, he retorted, when he could catch his breath from the shock of Harry suddenly being in the most intimate center of his mind with him.
Harry didn't bother responding, other than with a glare. But he sat down halfway between Draco and Andromeda, Teddy in his arms, and faced them.
"I want you to tell her that," he said aloud.
Draco rolled his head towards him, a sign of lazy attention. His aunt didn't need to know how intently his senses had started humming, reaching towards Harry. Excuse me? What do you mean?
"Tell her what you just told me," Harry said, still intent. "About the way that people wanted to change you, about all the arguments you've had about it and the effort you've gone to to prevent it from happening. I think it might make a difference to the way she thinks of you."
"It only makes me wonder why someone didn't succeed," Andromeda said harshly, grinding her knuckles against her knee, before Draco could come up with a response either silently or aloud.
"I would have to agree," Draco said. "Perhaps if I had changed, I wouldn't have taken your abuse this long without speaking out."
Andromeda paled. But she didn't focus on the accusation itself, as Draco had thought she would. "Abuse?" she whispered. "No one could characterize me that way. I was only saying what I thought."
"Listen," Harry said, glancing back and forth between them. "This is my idea. That you talk about your grief, Andromeda, because Draco might not understand it. That Draco explain why your opinion of him grieves him, because I don't think you understand the way he thinks of it."
It does not grieve me, Draco said, enjoying the emphasis he could put on silent words that he never could on spoken ones, and enjoying seeing the way Harry flinched as the words seemed to rip into him, through his ears.
It does something, Harry snapped back. Choose a different word, but I'm interested in that thing itself, not what you call it.
And what will you share?
The way that the war most warped me. Why I was so determined to save Teddy that I came to Hurricane for him.
Draco paused. He had to admit he was interested in that--he knew the emotions, but not all of them made sense to him. He was much better at picking up emotions from Harry than memories, and he knew Harry's love of Teddy was connected to memories that Harry kept private almost as easily as if he had had training in Occlumency. And he, unlike Harry, wanted the words, wanted to hear the way that Harry put words around those memories and spat them out.
The only problem was that he would have to share them with Andromeda.
He had barely thought that, though, before Harry firmly squashed his protest. She has to hear them, too, although I suspect she'll hear them with less eagerness than you. But this bargain doesn't work unless everyone gets to hear everything, and unless all sides are equally vulnerable.
Draco bared his teeth at Harry and said nothing. He was doing this for Harry, though, not Andromeda. He thought Andromeda had already explained her stance sufficiently for Draco's ears. His parents had done awful things, and that was enough for her. That it was more about his parents than him, he had no doubt. She hadn't even brought up his behavior much the last time they talked.
Harry simply rearranged Teddy in his lap and turned to Andromeda. "Do you agree to this? We'll talk about things that might make us understand each other better--and talk, not wring our hands and avoid the conversation because it might make some of us uncomfortable. Do you agree?" he repeated, when Andromeda simply stood there staring at him and didn't seem to know what to say.
Draco turned to his aunt. She was the one now who would have to say yes or no, and the responsibility seemed to paralyze her. He suspected he knew what she would "confess" if she chose to participate in the conversation. Anyone who couldn't make a choice shouldn't be left in charge of a child.
Congratulations. That sounds like a slogan Hermione would come up with.
Draco flashed back a picture of an extremely crude act, and felt the heat that Harry couldn't expose boiling up in the bond between them with satisfaction, before he focused on his aunt again.
*
Harry knew Andromeda's mannerisms, and he knew that he had never seen her so conflicted. Her eyes were darting, her hands were frozen halfway between open and shut as if she didn't know what to do with them now, and her mouth clutched the air, likewise halfway between open and shut.
She wanted to hear Draco's awfulness from his own lips, Harry knew that. More than that, she wanted to know about Harry himself. But telling her own secret would mean leaving the shell she had constructed for so long.
Finally, though, just when Harry was on the point of shoving her, she appeared to reach a decision, and slowly nodded, her grey-marked hair rippling around her. She sat down in the grass. "I can appreciate this," she said, though from the way her eyes didn't focus on anything, Harry didn't know what "this" it was she appreciated.
And she used the conditional tense, too, Harry thought. That was something he had become very familiar with in the harsh half-year after the war, when he had still thought it was his duty to interact with more of the wizarding world than the people outside his immediate circle.
He felt the stirring of Draco's interest, like a whirlwind picking up dust, but simply tilted his head at him. That's part of what I'll tell you, if we ever manage to get through this conversation. Do you mind going first?
Draco hesitated, then shook his head. He reached out his arms as Teddy finally got bored of playing in Harry's lap and looked around for something else to do, and Teddy ran to him at once. Draco conjured some colored bubbles that bounced off Teddy's hands, the grass, and the air itself when he reached for them. Teddy ran in a circle, laughing in delight, and spinning around to show the especially bright blue or red bubbles, his favorite colors, to Harry.
Andromeda's eyes dimmed as she watched them. Harry shook his head. If it was to the point that she couldn't even watch someone else play with Teddy, then he would come in for his share of scrutiny in the end. Andromeda couldn't take care of Teddy herself, but she resented sharing the role with someone else equally. That couldn't continue.
For her sake? Draco asked, simple and direct as a knife throw.
For all of ours.
Draco nodded, and began.
"I resent the way you think of me because I was stupid during the war, and it reminds me of that stupidity," he told Andromeda. "The way you look at me, and the way the were--Bill Weasley looks at me, it doesn't seem as though I should bother making up for what I did, because no apology would be enough. And what do I have to give other than an apology? All my money is gone, and money doesn't mean much on Hurricane, anyway. I've worked and defended the camp and showed that I loved Teddy, and it isn't enough. What would be?"
Harry wanted to reach out to Draco, hearing the bitter ring in his words, but he sat far enough away, deliberately, that he couldn't touch him. He settled for a gentle caress along the bond instead, like a breeze blowing the silver flowers, and felt Draco nod back to him, although in the physical world he never removed his eyes from Andromeda.
"You haven't apologized yet," Andromeda said, in a voice no bigger than a mouse.
A fair point, Harry thought, or Draco thought, or they both thought at the same time. When they were this close and their minds were working in tandem, Harry had to admit that he found it hard to tell the way those minds worked apart.
Draco gave a small shrug and said, "I can. I won't do it now, because then you might think it's not sincere, but I will." He leaned forwards as if that would help him with peering into her eyes and learning what she wanted. "Do you think the apology will be enough for Weasley?"
"I could not possibly guess," Andromeda said. She still had dignity left when she drew herself up like that, Harry saw. "I know that you must mean it sincerely, and we must have assurances that you wouldn't do something like that again."
Draco snorted and shook his head, tossing another bubble to Teddy, this one a yellow a few shades brighter than his hair. "What do I have to betray here? There's no Dark Lord anymore, and my parents are lost to me. Someone can't hold them hostage to force me to do as they say."
Harry didn't know if Draco would miss the slight glance that Andromeda gave at Teddy and Harry, but even if he had, then he would feel the thought resonating in Harry's mind and know about it. He tipped his head and snorted. "You would fight to protect Teddy yourself, Aunt Andromeda. And Harry has the most powerful magic of anyone in the camp. I'm not worried about his ability to break free of someone taking him hostage."
"You would not fight for me," Andromeda said, and lowered her eyelids as though to keep him from seeing tears.
Harry thought Draco would break out laughing, but he only said, "You're not someone I care about, until you start caring about me. But I would fight for you because you matter to Harry. That's the reason that I would fight for most of the people here, Granger and the Weasleys included."
"But not simply because they're good people, and human lives matter," Andromeda said, as if it were the clinching argument in a philosophical debate, stabbing her finger at Draco. Harry flinched a little. It was the first time that Andromeda had reminded him of someone he hated, in this case Aunt Petunia.
Draco's thoughts turned sideways and swam through Harry's mind, telling him they would be talking about that memory later, but for right now, he only cocked his head and lifted his eyebrows. "Would you believe me if I made that statement? I'm the evil one, and you expect me to live by perverted principles. What would happen if I did say that I valued your lives? You would distrust me and claim that I was only saying that to get in good with you, or Harry, or some such thing. It's simpler to be honest."
Simpler, but not always more diplomatic, Harry told him.
You heard her.
Harry had to admit that he had. Andromeda's black-and-white morality was getting in the way of her understanding things, it seemed. She wanted Draco to be all evil, but also to hold the morals of someone she considered all good. And she seemed to realize that she had been unintentionally ridiculous, because she sat there with the struggle silent but visible on her face before saying, "You--is that all you have to say?"
"It is, for right now," Draco said, and folded his hands as though he was sitting at a desk. "If you want me to apologize, I will--later, when you're more likely to take it seriously. But for right now, I want to know what made it impossible for you to take care of Teddy. What will happen to you if you go back to the wizarding world?"
Andromeda closed her eyes and seemed to shrink. Draco's mind stirred impatiently within Harry's, but Harry petted his thoughts. When she gets like this, she will tell the truth. She needs some time to get up her courage first.
Courage? Of course. She's a moral coward.
Harry would have asked him to explain that, but at that moment, Andromeda opened her eyes and began to speak, and Harry got too interested in listening to her and watching Draco's reaction to her to ask.
*
Draco scooped Teddy up in his arms and held him close. He was getting tired of chasing the bubbles around, and his head was drooping as twilight began to come in. Harry held out his arms, but Draco shook his head and kept Teddy where he was for right now. He knew his bedtime as well as Harry did, and could enforce it if necessary. No need to move him until it was time.
"I lost my daughter to the war," Andromeda whispered. "And my husband. The husband I defied my family for, the source of my whole life. I would have had such a different life if I'd stayed a Black. I'd have valued different things, thought about different things, and considered myself a pure-blood. Yes, I would," she added, and Draco reckoned that she was paying more attention to his facial expressions than he'd thought. "I would have persuaded myself to think that way because I would have had to have something valuable for giving up Ted."
Draco hadn't made the connection until this moment that Teddy was named after her Mudblood husband. His arms tightened around Teddy anyway.
"My son-in-law..." Andromeda closed her eyes and swallowed. "He made my life richer for those few months I knew him. I can acknowledge that now. And Dora would have fought in the war anyway, since she was an Auror, and might still have died. I blamed Remus for a while, but that wasn't fair. I do love Teddy. I wouldn't give him up for anything.
"But I lost my daughter, my husband, my son-in-law. There were five people I was one of, and then there were only two, counting me. You expect me to stand up under that? I would have if I was the only one Teddy had. I could have. But Harry was there, and it was...simpler to resign caring for Teddy and interacting with those awful reporters and all the people who wanted me to do stories about Dora and Remus and Ted to him."
Harry was sitting very still, his eyes wider than Draco had known they could go. Draco nodded to him. You didn't expect her to say that, did you? You thought she was helpless.
I should have known, maybe, from the way that she could take care of Teddy if I asked her to and she had no other option, Harry said slowly. The words that limped into Draco's mind were slow and grey, like wounded deer. But I thought that only meant she had to be backed into a corner before she could make a decision or take any action. And she might not even mean--if things were totally different, she could have been different. It doesn't mean she can be now.
Draco turned a shoulder towards Harry in silence, and spoke to Andromeda. "You could have made the change, and now you'll need to. Harry has a life of his own now, more than he did when you were in the wizarding world, and Teddy needs his grandmother, too." He wrapped his arms more protectively around his little cousin, who was lightly snoring. "If you forbid me from seeing him, that cuts off another adult that he could rely on, so you'll have to take a bigger part."
Andromeda shook her head. "I said that I could have, not that I would now."
"And if you go back to the wizarding world on your own, with Teddy?" Draco tilted his head at his sleeping cousin again. "You were threatening to make that decision. You would have to take care of him by yourself. Could you do it?"
Andromeda opened her mouth, and then closed it again. She looked so utterly lost Draco might have taken pity on her, but he didn't have much when he looked at Harry. He was watching Andromeda in quiet, coiled closeness, his thoughts gone flat again the way they had when he tortured Rasatis.
She only used it as a threat, Draco told Harry. She never meant it, because she never thought you would choose me over them.
Over her, rather, Harry said, and Draco wasn't in the mood to contradict him. "Well," Harry said aloud. "If you can help me more, Andromeda, then that would be best. I know you've taken care of Teddy more while I'm away, but I think he needs you to do more than that. The camp needs you to do more than that. You know more about certain kinds of charms than anyone else, you told me, especially Preservation Charms. Or has Hermione already approached you about working with her?"
Andromeda did some more staring. Then she said, "What will you give me if I do this?"
"Of course," Harry said, before Draco could explode. "A three-way exchange. Draco gives you an apology. You help out more with the camp. And I tell you, honestly, about some things I was avoiding, and try to help you both."
He turned and looked Draco in the eye, and his expression made Draco's heart beat faster. Harry smiled at him, but sadly, and no teasing words came down the link of their bond.
*
Harry rubbed the back of his neck. It was easier than he would have expected because he had come up with these words to speak to Teddy months ago. Someday, Teddy would grow up and want to know about Harry's past, and Harry owed it to him to speak the truth.
"I grew up in an abusive family," Harry said, looking between Draco and Andromeda instead of at either of them. "My cousin kept me from having friends at school. My aunt and uncle told me I was a freak, and I had no other relatives. It got so that I only cared about people who were nice to me, which is why I bonded so fast to Ron and Hermione. The rest of Hogwarts would randomly turn on me, too, so it didn't exactly encourage me to trust other people."
He wanted to stop talking. He wanted to go away. But that was only an irrational conviction. He pushed through it, and kept going.
"So now I only care about the people who've been nice to me, people who want me for who I am and not what I could be to them. I did try, after the war, to be different than that for a while. So many people needed help, and if I could give it, then I thought I owed it to them.
"But no matter what I did, the Ministry suspected me, the Prophet printed stories about how I was violent or might be the next Dark Lord, and people kept asking for more help instead of accepting that I'd given all I could." For a moment, he looked at Andromeda, because he couldn't not, but he looked away before he cut her heart out. "I got badly bruised when a few people who had been at Hogwarts and watched me duel him turned on me, and said that they didn't really trust me, because I should have come back and ended the war earlier, to keep students from being tortured during the school year.
"I've decided I don't care anymore. I gave myself permission to only care about Teddy and my friends and my family. That's it. That's all. I can hurt other people if they come after me, or them. I can do what I want, use my magic for what I want." He tilted his head at Draco and smiled, a little wryly. "That was why I put up so much resistance when the wild magic started to push you into my life. I didn't want someone else to care for. My circle was as big as I liked it, and it could stop there for all I had to say about it."
Draco just looked at him, with something faint and misty in the back of his mind, and the link turning blue-green. Harry pushed through instead of listening. He had to finish this.
"But now that you're here, I have to care for you. I have to be with you. And someone who tries to force me to choose, I'll just abandon." He nodded to Andromeda. "That was why I would let you go back to the wizarding world if you insisted on forcing it."
Andromeda closed her eyes and said nothing. Harry was glad of the lack of a bond with her. If she helped him more in the future, that would be all he could ask for.
He turned and held out his arms. This time, Draco gave him Teddy without hesitating.
But he kept his hand on Harry's arm for a moment, and held his eyes, so Harry could be in no doubt about what he was feeling.
Approval.
Harry smiled wanly back at him. He wasn't sure that was the appropriate response to someone admitting he was broken, and probably beyond repair, but it was what he felt capable of sustaining now. He picked up Teddy and carried him towards Andromeda's house, with Draco and Andromeda both following him.
And they walked side-by-side without sniping, Harry noticed. That was a beginning.
Admitting what he had was a beginning, too. And eventually, he thought, the wound would feel purged, instead of torn open and bleeding.
Chapter Thirteen.
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