Chapter Five of 'Reap the Hurricane'- Breath of Life
Chapter Four.
Title: Reap the Hurricane (5/19)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters; I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, other canon pairings
Warnings: Angst, violence, sex
Rating: R
Summary: After the war, a number of people who despair of fixing the wizarding world seek to emigrate to new, magical, but uninhabited worlds where they can live in peace. On the eve of his journey to a world called Hurricane, accompanied by his friends and godson, Harry discovers that Draco Malfoy’s name is also on the list of immigrants.
Author’s Notes: This is planned as a fairly short novel of 19 chapters, focusing on angst and drama. The title is, as is probably obvious, a variant of the saying, “Sow the wind, reap the whirlwind.”
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Five-Breath of Life
“I’m your responsibility now?” Draco could hear the incredulous crack in the middle of his voice, but Potter, bent over and measuring the distance between bricks in a newly-assembled sod house, didn’t seem to take much notice of it.
“Looks like it.” Potter’s voice was distracted. He stepped back, studied the bricks again, and then shook his head. “I wish I knew more about building houses,” he muttered.
“You didn’t study before you came here?” Draco stepped up beside Potter. If he was not the most convivial of company, neither had he proven himself intolerable since they came here, unlike most of the Weasleys still were to Draco. And there was a quiet, cool competence about Potter that Draco was learning to like. Even if he fumbled sometimes, as he was doing now with this house, it never seemed to stop him.
Potter turned his head and smiled at him. “I studied what I could. But there were other things to think about, and no matter how long you look at a book, I don’t think you can become an expert at this kind of thing without experience.”
Draco looked at the house in silence, and felt something sharp and foreign travel through him as he noticed the neat edges of the sod bricks. His wandless magic had cut those, chopping them free of the soil and leveling them into place. Potter had praised him with sparse words, which was more than the others had offered, but most of all, Draco liked the feeling that he was exercising power, and that for once it would have a solid result.
The airy things his father talked about, the connections in the Ministry and the power of buried artifacts and secrets that he had traded back and forth for years, were nothing next to this, Draco thought. It was another reason he had chosen to come to Hurricane. In the wizarding world, he would have had few chances at real strength. The Malfoy name was too tainted, and he would forever be in the shadow of his father.
But here…
He might have had to fear being in the shadow of Potter, if he was still the boy Draco had known at school. But that wasn’t true anymore. Perhaps it never had been. And in this world, there was enough wild magic, and space, and freedom, for them all.
“There!” Potter stepped back from the house and waved his hand. The bricks bounced a bit, then settled more firmly on top of each other. “There,” he repeated more gently. “I think that should take care of things.”
Draco walked over to the house and ducked his head to peer inside.
Of course it would never rival the grandeur of Malfoy Manor, but he had to admit it was more practical for a world swept by so much roaring wind. The interior was a neat half-oval in the ground, dug where Draco had chopped the earth up, and here and there were pierced holes for windows that Potter’s magic had dug away. The half-oval had been rounded at the bottom, and the Weasleys had contributed shelves of carved stone-it turned out that Fleur Delacour-Weasley had some skill in that, or at least knew the right spells for it-and chairs and tables sat in the near-darkness. Sticking Charms, Draco knew, would fasten them to the floor in more permanent positions once the walls were also stuck.
“A bit dark,” he said.
Potter flashed him an exhilarating grin and moved forwards to fiddle with some of the falling, crumbling dirt near the entrance. “We won’t spend much time inside it,” he said. “Hurricane is going to demand more and more and more of all of us, and most of that will be outside.”
Draco pulled his head back and stared at him. “You’re looking forward to that, aren’t you,” he said at last, because he couldn’t think of another way to phrase it that wouldn’t sound mad. “You’re actually looking forward to fighting wild magic for the rest of your life.”
“And taking care of Teddy,” Potter said, nodding, as though Draco had said a sane thing.
Draco cocked is head again, thought, and then said, “But haven’t you thought about whether you might like to relax and rest? I know that you’re handling some of the heavy work that the Weasleys can’t, because of your magic.” He was proud of himself for remembering in time not to call them by the name that always echoed in his mind. “But later?”
“There won’t be much relaxation,” Potter said, with a relish that made Draco wrinkle his nose. “Harvesting and hunting and fighting back against creatures like the bird you defeated are going to take almost all of our time.”
Draco slouched against the house, trying to ignore the way that Potter’s words about the bird Draco had defeated made him glow. “But you still think that that’s the better way to live, instead of being able to relax,” he said.
“It’s all right for some, I suppose,” Potter said, in the polite tones of someone talking about a new fad in fashion. “But I never lived that way, and now I don’t think I know how to live another way. Yes, I want another battle to fight. But one that actually leads to people living instead of scrambling over the broken pieces. This is the way.”
Draco bit the inside of his cheek. Then he said, “I hope that you won’t look down on me if I do relax sometimes.”
“It’s all right for some,” Potter repeated, in the same blank, polite way, and then turned to casting the Sticking Charms on the house. His wand moved slowly and awkwardly, Draco noted, compared to the graceful passes of his hands through the air. Draco knew he had already grown used to the freedom and willfulness of wild magic.
Well, so had Draco. And he was determined to expand the boundaries of his power, to learn what else he could do besides simply cutting things up. Perhaps he would ask Potter for advice. Potter had to have started out thinking he could merely push air around; his mastery over wind would have come later.
But Draco never intended to lose control of the small, focused spells that he could perform via his wand, and he knew that he would never want his fascination with the wandless power to push him there, either.
Perhaps that’s a way to repay the debt I still owe Potter. To make sure that he doesn’t lose control of his wand and isn’t restricted to just waving his hands and hoping whenever he wants something delicate done.
*
“Harry!”
Harry whipped around from studying the great clawed tracks in the ground. He had gone out to try and find some trace of the bird that Malfoy had defeated several days ago, and was wondering if this might be the same one, because one of the footprints was missing a claw. But that tone in Ron’s voice jerked him back immediately to the needs of the settlement, and he ran towards Ron across the rippling grass.
High overhead, the sky had turned jewel-blue again, but with a darker blue edging along the sides, like china, that Harry didn’t like. He had read the Unspeakables’ reports. A storm of more than wind was coming, and they would have to take some thought to that when it arrived.
“What is it?” he asked, when he came closer and could see the whites standing out around Ron’s eyes. Subtly, he called the wind up against him. It came, vibrating in his bones like a cat that had crept inside his body.
“Charlie managed to capture one of the animals we saw bounding through the grass,” Ron said, gulping down air. “But we don’t know if it’s safe to eat, and Hermione’s out hunting a spot for a garden…please?”
Harry smiled a little and nodded. “Sure,” he said, and fell into step beside Ron. It was true that he didn’t have much expertise in telling whether an animal was poisonous or not, but the others were used to turning to him in times of trouble. Once Harry had realized the wizarding world would never be safe for Teddy, he had organized this journey. He couldn’t fault his friends for continuing to depend on him when they got here.
He saw pale hair moving up from the side. Malfoy had been sitting with Andromeda and Teddy, renewing his acquaintance with them-or beginning it, with Andromeda, who Harry thought he’d never properly seen. He relaxed and gave Malfoy a smile as he passed. It was good to know that he could leave them, now, in the care of someone he trusted.
And good to know that that person would follow along when problems came up, if only out of curiosity. Malfoy’s eyes narrowed, and he fell in at Harry’s heels without a word exchanged. Harry considered that, then mentally shrugged. If Malfoy wanted to come, he certainly could. Perhaps it would even be beneficial. Harry didn’t know what expertise Malfoy might have, beyond the obvious.
A cage of conjured wooden stakes surrounded a small patch of the shorter grass; to Harry’s relief, Hermione’s spells for turning grass into wood were working. Inside the pen leaped and bleated something so fast-moving that Harry’s eyes blurred before it. He went down on one knee, wondering how in the world Charlie had caught it.
The creature finally slowed down and turned to face him, panting. Harry made out shaggy pale wool, hooves that clicked nervously where they touched the earth despite the lack of anything hard for them to click off of, and a long neck looping and stretching back and forth like a snake’s. The horns on the creature’s head bent backwards, the yellow eyes pointed out to the side, and except for the long neck it really did look like a sheep or a goat. Harry wondered for a moment whether they could be tamed.
And then the creature began to leap again, and this time, Harry thought he saw the leaps curving higher to get over the sides of the pen. That must be its magic, he thought, the speed and the height building up each time.
Harry extended his hand and conjured a small, moving circle of wind around the top of the stakes. If the creature got high enough, it should hit that and fall right back inside.
The minute he raised the wind, though, the creature stopped moving. It turned its head and fixed those yellow eyes on him. The yellow deepened, to gold, and the creature moved one delicate step forwards and then another. As if it was afraid of frightening him off, Harry thought, amused, and maintained eye contact.
The creature’s throat opened, and it shuddered a little as it made a sound. This was less a bleat as Harry might have expected and more a muffled roar. It went on for a few seconds, as though the creature was trying to turn itself inside out, and then stopped. The golden eyes locked hopefully on Harry.
“I think it’s trying to communicate,” Malfoy breathed.
Ron snorted. “When it’s only a kind of sheep or goat? Don’t be stupid, Malfoy.”
Malfoy’s face flamed, incandescent, and Harry knew Hurricane was about to see its first murder if he didn’t act swiftly. He shook his head at them and stood up between them, then nodded to the wooden stakes. “I’ll go in there with it.”
“You can’t, Harry.” Charlie pushed his way forwards, his face grim. “It nearly broke my arm when I tried to catch it. It doesn’t look that impressive, but it can kick like a dragon.” He grimaced and touched his arm, which Angelina must have fixed.
“I’m going to try,” Harry said, and smiled at Charlie. “And I have my magic to protect me, remember.”
Charlie sighed, but nodded and stepped back. Most of the people in their group didn’t offer lots of opposition to Harry when there was something he wanted to do. Harry moved closer to the stakes, though about pulling one of them out, and then decided that was stupid when he had his magic, and it was his magic that had made the goat respond to him in the first place.
He lifted his arms, and the wind swirled around him, snatched him under the arms the way that the great bird might have, and carried him up.
And over the stakes, and down into the middle of the pen, where the white creature promptly charged him.
*
It seemed to Draco that no one here had any common sense. Or, at least, all Potter had to do was mention his power, and people calmed down and smiled as though that should be the answer to all problems.
He stuck his hand out as he watched the white creature bounding towards Potter, its head lowered and the heavy horns on point, and the ground in front of the creature shuddered and broke away. Draco had become excellent at chopping it apart when cutting the sod bricks. That was what happened now, a hole suddenly appearing that even this creature’s speed couldn’t keep it from falling into. It tumbled down to its knees, making the sound as though it was trying to vomit again. Draco hoped it was the creature’s equivalent of Oh, shit!
Potter turned his head and studied Draco for a moment. Draco lifted his eyebrows. If Potter wanted to argue about it, then he could come out of the pen and do so. Draco was finished watching someone necessary to their little settlement risk his life. Perhaps he had saved Potter yet again, and that could count as the fulfillment of his second life-debt.
Instead, though, Potter simply nodded back to him, and then knelt down in front of the creature, which was fighting its way back to its feet with difficulty; earth kept tumbling down into the small hole and weakening its balance. His face wrinkled up, and then he made the same vomiting noise the creature had made. Perhaps his mastery of air allowed him to change his voice to imitate it, Draco thought, reluctantly impressed.
The creature jerked, head and horns bobbing, and then extended a long black thing from its mouth that could be a tongue, except it went on and on, and was forked at the end, like a snake’s tongue. Potter lifted a hand, and concentrated for a moment. Draco, squinting, could make out a faint movement around the fingers. He thought Potter had probably wrapped his fingers in a shield of air. A good precaution, when they had no idea whether the thing could be poisonous to the touch.
The tongue came to rest between Potter’s fingers, or rather on the wind between them. The creature made the sound again, more softly this time, closer to a bleat, never breaking eye contact with Potter. Potter leaned nearer, and the air between them fogged with hot breath. Snake-tongued the creature might be, Draco thought, but not cold-blooded.
He shifted his balance. The golden eyes turned to him, and the creature apparently tried to get rid of its liver again.
Draco swiveled to the side, his hand and his heart and his will and his magic all lifting at once to chop one of the pegs off short so that he could get into the pen, ducking under Potter’s mantle of wind. Someone behind him exclaimed, and someone else repaired the fence with a hasty incantation. Draco didn’t care. They could scold him for this later. All he knew was that, if the creature liked one person with wild magic, then the same thing might happen for Draco.
And he wouldn’t let Potter have all the fun, either of breaking the rules or of making first contact with an alien species.
The white creature continued kneeling as Draco came towards it, but extended a second tongue, or whatever it was, from the back of its throat. Draco glanced once at Potter. Potter nodded, accepting the silent request without the need for a question, and flicked his fingers once. In an instant, Draco could feel wind sealing his hands off from contact, in a way that felt like invisible gloves.
He indulged in a moment’s jealousy that Potter had such vivid control of his wild magic, and then dismissed the jealousy. He had all his life here to perfect what he could do.
If he could do anything besides cut things up. But he would think about that later, and approach the problem from different angles until he had solved it.
He dropped to one knee on the ground. The creature’s tongue swept the air around him, and either it got his scent or it didn’t mind not actually touching skin, because the creature left it there. It turned its head back to Potter and slowly inclined it, until the horns were at the same level as Potter’s chest.
Potter, the idiot, inclined his head back, although Draco did at least think a thin strip of circulating air would insulate his forehead from contact. Head-to-head, the creature and Potter sat there, and then the creature gave a softer and altogether more musical sound and snapped the tongue almost touching Potter back into its mouth.
Its head turned towards Draco, and it curled one hoof up and down beneath it, then snapped the second tongue back. It sang at him, too, and then turned away, yanked its forelegs out of the hole, and trotted towards the far side of the fence, where it paused before the wooden stakes and stood patiently waiting.
“I’ll let it go,” Potter said, when some moments had passed and no one had made a move.
One of the Weasleys started to his feet beyond the stakes. Draco turned his head and saw it was the dragon-tamer, who had started this in the first place by capturing the creature. “Are you mad?” he asked. “I was the one who caught it! It was hard to catch, and if we let it go without even attempting to eat it-”
“We’re not going to eat someone who’s making attempts to communicate with us,” Potter said quietly, and rose to his feet, turning to face Weasley.
Draco got unobtrusively to his own feet behind Potter, looking from face to face and waiting for someone to explode. No one did, but people flowed back and forth, and he could see more than one unhappy expression. Hilariously, they tried to cover those up when they saw him looking, as though they assumed Draco spotting them having a less than united front would be the worst thing possible. Draco moved a step backwards towards Potter, in response. They could choose how they stood. He knew who he stood with.
“We have to have food,” the Weasley said, his eyes locked on Potter’s.
“We always knew that,” Potter said, “and we planned different ways to get it, when we thought the animals the Unspeakables had reported were only rumors and perhaps sunstroke. We don’t need to eat them.”
The Weasley’s face writhed, but he looked away in the next moment. Yielding to Potter’s authority, Draco thought. They did that as if they were used to it.
He wondered how long it would be before the desperation of surviving on Hurricane would change those ingrained habits and the situation would explode. Sooner than Potter thought, he decided, and Potter would either be forced to go along and eat creatures that had seemed to recognize Draco and Potter as kin, or else use his magic against his precious Weasleys.
The thought didn’t excite Draco the way he had once assumed it would, if someone else had described the situation to him. He could feel a headache coming on, instead.
Weasley fell back one step, then another. Then he turned away and said, “Fine. I don’t care, anyway. Maybe we can find some wild plants that you won’t care if I eat, unless they sing or something.”
Potter said calmly, “You’re right. I don’t care if you eat plants, unless they’re sentient or poisonous.” He strode towards the creature, still motionless, and gestured once, his fingers curling as though he was ripping up grass. The stakes flew out of place, leaping and then settling back in a rain outside the pen.
The creature inclined its white neck to Potter, a process that seemed to take forever until all the sleek curves were on the ground, and glanced back once at Draco. Then it leaped, and flashed out of sight in the golden grass, a bounding shape that made Draco smile in spite of himself. He had always found it difficult to remain neutral in the face of beauty.
When he turned back, he found the Weasleys milling, speaking in soft voices. The only ones who looked at Potter with faces of absolute faith and trust were the Weasel, Andromeda, and Teddy, who looked over to smile at Draco, too, before breaking into a run for Potter and hugging him around the legs as he stepped over the last of the stakes separating him from his friends.
“Pretty thing,” Teddy said, and stared into the grass as if he could see the white creature still running there.
“Very pretty,” Potter agreed, his voice so soft that Draco found it hard to hear. He would have thought Potter was finally realizing the enormity of the rift that he had set between himself and his friends, but he decided, on a second, critical look, that that wasn’t true. Potter was never going to admit that he was wrong-at least not on this score, Draco added with his new generosity. The softness of his voice was all for Teddy.
Draco stared at the corner of Potter’s face, the gentle smile and narrowed eyes, and wondered what else could cause that.
*
“They’re not happy, you know.”
Hermione’s voice was neutral. Harry continued working, his head tilted along the ground as he examined the sod house he, Teddy, and Andromeda would live in-and perhaps Malfoy, if he didn’t hold out for a house all his own. Harry knew for sure that none of the others would be willing to take him.
“I know,” he said, when long moments had passed and Hermione was obviously waiting for him to talk about it. “But what else can I do? I wasn’t going to eat something that was doing its best to speak to me.”
“Not so much about that. It’s about Malfoy.”
Harry sat up and blinked at her, keeping one hand resting on the ground so he would remember the angle of vision he’d taken. He hadn’t given up on the idea that they could perhaps have plumbing inside the house, if he could only work out a way to keep the water from turning the sod of the floor to mud. “Really? Why? He’s been using his wild magic to help us as no one else could.” Automatically, he turned his head. Malfoy was cutting sod bricks many meters away, but Hurricane was so flat that it was easy to see out to the horizon.
“That’s part of the problem,” Hermione said. She had her arms wrapped around herself, her head bowed. “That he developed wild magic before anyone else, and that he’s closest to you and to Teddy.”
Harry snorted. “Do you think I would let Malfoy anywhere near Teddy if I didn’t trust him not to hurt him?”
Hermione shook her head. “The others are remembering that for right now. But they don’t trust him, and I think that’s going to become a problem sooner rather than later.”
Harry wished, for one solid, bitter moment, that they would rely on someone else to solve their problems.
But he had taken up this leadership role willingly, unlike the role that the prophecy had handed to him, and he couldn’t simply yield it now, when that wouldn’t make things better, and might end up with everyone miserable. He cocked his head for a moment, letting the wind play through his hair, and then shrugged. “It doesn’t matter, really,” he said. “I’ll talk to the others, and encourage them to try and listen to the wind and develop their wild magic. If they want, they can go walking in it with me while my power protects them from it. Maybe that’s why Malfoy’s power came to him first, because he spent more time in it that night I found him.”
Hermione’s face cleared. “That’s a concrete action,” she said approvingly. Harry wanted to say of course, I’m not much good at abstract thought, but she had already turned and was hurrying away, calling over her shoulder, “Thanks, Harry!”
Harry rolled his eyes and knelt down next to the house again, only to realize that Malfoy had come up and was looking at him. “What?” he asked.
“You could make things a lot easier on yourself by sending me away,” Malfoy said.
“Then we wouldn’t have your help, and you would probably die,” Harry pointed out, wondering why everyone was missing the obvious today. “And Teddy and Andromeda would miss you.”
Malfoy gave him a weird half-smile. Harry had the feeling it wouldn’t have been a smile at all, but some unknown circumstance had twisted it into one. And then he didn’t know why he thought that, and felt irritated. But he didn’t let the irritation show on his face, because it wasn’t Malfoy’s fault.
“You want me around?” Malfoy asked.
Harry stared into his eyes. “Yes. Of course.”
Even though Harry didn’t sound that sincere to himself, Malfoy nodded, turned around, and went back to work. Harry watched him for a moment, then shrugged and went back to work himself, since that was the important thing.
Chapter Six.
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