Chapter Thirteen of 'Reap the Hurricane'- Surviving
Chapter Twelve.
Title: Reap the Hurricane (13/19)
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 Thirteen-Surviving
“I don’t know if I can stay here.”
Harry stood up, blinking sweat out of his eyes, and stared at Primrose. She had come down to stand in front of him where he was laboring over the rows of sprouting crops in Hermione’s greenhouse. They had peas coming up, and potatoes, and large, bristling spines of maize that had a white tinge. Harry knew that it wouldn’t sate Bill’s cravings, but with the bird, and the pieces of it cut off and salted and preserved and roasted in the past few days, they had more than enough meat.
“What do you mean?” he asked Primrose.
She shifted from foot to foot like a pigeon and gave him a look that made him step over the rows of plants and lead her outside with an arm around her shoulders. Primrose shivered, and whispered, “The bird that you’re going to hatch from the egg. I’m afraid that I won’t be able to stand the memories the sight of it will bring back. I know that baby birds look different from their parents, I know that.” From the way her voice surged, Harry reckoned someone else had used that argument on her. “But we don’t know that this one will. And if it grows up, then it’ll probably look exactly the same.”
Harry gave her shoulder a little squeeze. He should have thought of this, he decided, but although it was late, he could still give her a little help. “Then stay on the far side of the camp,” he said. “Help with the houses and the water collecting tanks and the watch against enemies.” It had seemed good sense, after the bird and the white creatures, to have two people watching at all times, or doing it while their hands did some simple task. “You don’t have to come near the egg.”
Primrose stared at him. “But what happens when it hatches?”
“Do you have anywhere else to go?” Harry asked quietly. “Do you know that, if you tried to walk to one of the other camps, the birds won’t find you? Or other groups of wizards could have been destroyed by the birds already. We don’t know.”
Primrose grimaced a little, but nodded. “You’re right,” she whispered. “It’s just hard to think about.”
“It is,” Harry said. “Go find something, some work, that will get your mind off it.” He gave her a little shove.
Primrose looked back at him and laughed. “Is labor your cure for everything?”
Harry shrugged and grinned at her. “Not everything, but it works for most things. And it gives you objects or tasks that you can feel proud of at the end of the day. Feeling pride is a good distraction for most emotions, I find.”
Primrose nodded and walked away easily across the flattened earth that they’d packed down around the greenhouse. Harry watched her for a few seconds, until a pricking on the edge of his attention made him turn his head.
Malfoy stood there with his arms folded and his gaze so steady that Harry squirmed in spite of himself. But he turned around and went back into the greenhouse, because no good could come of indulging this link that he and Malfoy had somehow managed to acquire.
Malfoy came to the door of the greenhouse, and stood there. Harry kept his head bowed as he worked. He wasn’t afraid, but even now, seeds from Hurricane found their way into the greenhouses, and would overgrow their tender little plants unless carefully watched. Harry used his winds to dig around the roots, and then pulled them out with his hands.
“You know that the werewolf is spreading rumors about me?” Malfoy asked softly.
“Rumors that you have me under some sort of control, despite the spells Angelina performed to show we were clean?” Harry didn’t raise his head. “Oh, yes. I heard that one.”
Malfoy’s jaw dropped open, as Harry saw from the corner of his eye. He smiled, and went on working.
“You think that you should allow them to spread without counteracting them?” Malfoy said at last. “I’ll understand if you want to allow the Weasleys to reap the consequences of their own stupidity.”
“They made-I mean, most of them made-a promise to forgive that life-debt Ginny owes you in exchange for politeness,” Harry said, using a little breeze to cool his brow. “If Bill keeps on talking about it, then sooner or later his family is going to remind him of that promise, and tell him to stop.”
“He should have stopped already.”
“Talk to Molly.” Harry shook his sweaty hair out to either side of his face so the drying breeze could reach it more easily. “She’s usually better at quelling her children when they’re being idiots than anyone else. Or talk to Fleur. She won’t want Bill to ruin the truce that holds everyone together here.”
“You think I haven’t done that?” Malfoy made a single, concerted move forwards, then stopped himself and hissed. “It doesn’t work. And you were the one who promised me that you would stand up for me if they tried to undermine me.”
Harry used a sharp shake of his head to get the sweat off, and straightened up from the rows. “I said that, didn’t I?” he asked. “Let’s go.” He strode towards the door of the greenhouse, expecting Malfoy to move out of the way.
Malfoy stood still instead, and met Harry eye-to-eye. Harry glared at him. Their thoughts shifted and clicked in wheeling patterns, and Harry knew what would happen before Malfoy reached out and gripped his arms.
“I shouldn’t have had to remind you of that promise,” Malfoy said softly. “You should do it simply because you need me, and more than the others.”
“I need you to hunt,” Harry said. His jaw felt like it was the wrong shape for those words. “And to rear the bird, probably. But that’s not the same thing as needing you for everything.”
Malfoy leaned closer to him. “Why did Primrose come to see you?” he asked.
“Because she’s terrified of those birds,” Harry said, knowing Malfoy would read the truth of that answer through his sweat and the ridges on the palms of his hands even more than through his words. “I should have thought. If this bird hatches and becomes an adult, then she was afraid she couldn’t stay.”
Malfoy gave a slow, contemptuous smile, and his hands dug in.
“What?” Harry demanded. “You know that you would be pants at reassuring someone like her, someone you don’t know and think is weak.”
“You have no idea what I like,” Malfoy said slowly, his fingers fanning up and down, and the claws spinning out of them, so precise a distance above Harry’s skin that they sliced some of the hairs on his arms in half. “You have no idea what I want, what I need, what I could thrive with.”
“I thought this connection was supposed to tell us all that?” Harry slid flat strips of air under Malfoy’s hands and levered them off his arms. “The one that would make it possible for us to survive on our own? A fucking lot of good that would do us, if we were by ourselves and couldn’t communicate.”
Malfoy straightened. His lips opened, but no air came out of them. Instead, he glared at Harry, and the thoughts in his head spun to the image of Harry choking as Malfoy’s claws curled around his throat.
“If you want to,” Harry said, and stood waiting for the moment when he would strike, his whirlwind waking beside him.
Malfoy drew his hands back with a little sniff. “Let’s go and make sure that the werewolf doesn’t cause the others to become even more unfriendly.”
Harry turned without a sound and brushed past Malfoy. All the attempts at saying something were going wrong this morning.
No. Not all of them. Only the ones with Malfoy.
That was right. He had managed to convince Primrose, hadn’t he? And he had spoken with Hermione that morning about weeding schedules, and he had told Teddy the rest of his story, and he had helped Andromeda search for the source of the small stream that came down the hills near their camp into the pool, and all of those had gone well.
The one I supposedly have the strongest connection with, the one I slept with, is the one that I can’t get along with, Harry thought, and shook his head. He wasn’t sure if he should think of that as his usual luck or the logical thing to happen when one insisted on sleeping with Draco Malfoy, of all people.
Malfoy walked beside him, and Harry received the conviction from him, strong as a burst of heat, that the answer was neither, that it was something else. Harry shrugged. They could stand there and think at each other, but that didn’t lead to understanding.
*
“I’m going to insist that you don’t speak to him like that any longer.”
Draco stood behind Potter’s shoulder, and wished he could be elsewhere, although small goads of impatience and desire had struck him all morning, driving him towards the greenhouse. And he’d had no choice but to go in once he saw Primrose enter. Soothing words and Potter’s full attention should come to him as a natural legacy of what he and Potter shared.
He knew Potter did not trust Primrose more than he trusted Draco, but he had spoken to her more willingly, and Draco didn’t intend to tolerate that.
But it had gone wrong again, nothing like the smooth, flowing bond between them when they had been in the air fighting the bird. Perhaps they had that bond only in a hunting context, Draco thought, or when fucking.
There were worse contexts for it. But Draco didn’t intend to be satisfied with the paltry amount that Potter had given him, either.
“You’re deluded,” the werewolf said, standing up from the mass of Weasleys that Potter had assembled. Only Weasleys, Draco noted; his aunt was taking care of Teddy, Delacour-Weasley watched over her little girl and learned healing spells from Johnson on the other side of the camp, and Primrose and Granger maintained the watch on the ridges. Potter thought red hair marked out one as a potential traitor.
Draco’s only disappointment with that idea was that Potter had taken years to come to it.
“Why am I deluded?” Potter met the werewolf’s accusation with anger as hard as diamond plates.
“Because you slept with him.” The werewolf edged to the side. Draco turned the air in front of him into a whirling wheel of spikes, between him and Potter’s back. Potter stiffened, which marked him as the only one who could feel it, because the werewolf had continued, both his movements and his words. “That means you aren’t considering who he used to be, and what he’s done to us.”
“You mean,” Potter said, his voice lengthening and flattening, “the way that he created meat to feed your overgrown appetite, and killed a bird that could have threatened us, and saved Ginny’s life?”
The werewolf halted. Draco looked into those red eyes-yes, they had that shade to them-and smiled. He could kill Draco, but would afford him little advantage.
He felt, as well, the snares of wind that Potter had set among the grass in front of the werewolf’s feet. That would be more of an advantage, to make him look stupid and disarm his arguments that way.
Best of all would be to make him back off and shut up. But Draco did not think it possible, and in the wake of the impossible, he would take the best real answer.
“I mean what he did to us back on Earth,” the werewolf said, and his hand came up to touch the glowing scars on his face. “You know that he was the one who caused this, Harry.”
Potter started, as though his first name had grown less familiar to him. Draco smiled, and let his hand rest on the air, pushing his wheel of spikes closer to Potter’s back. That was true, wasn’t it? Draco thought of him as Potter, and Draco’s mind was the one closest to his own, in contact with it, working in concert.
This is who he is. Draco resisted the temptation to lean his chin on Potter’s shoulder, because he wasn’t eighteen anymore, and listened.
“I know that no one is responsible for those scars except the one who clawed you,” Potter said. “I know that you’ve lost nothing because of them. No one thought you were a werewolf except people who would have arrested you anyway for being a Weasley, and my friend. Your wife said that she didn’t care how many scars you had, that she was going to marry you anyway, and she did. Blame Greyback. Not Malfoy.”
Draco stood taller, and was glad that they had slept together last night. That eased the temptation that pressed against the barriers of his control, one that would have said he should take Potter away and fly with him.
“He let them into the school, mate,” the original Weasel said, with a small frown at Draco. “I’d think you could acknowledge that.”
“I do acknowledge that,” Potter said, with a motion of his chin that would have sliced things apart if he had the same kind of magic that Draco did. Since he didn’t, Draco saw no reason not to press closer and let the spikes slide under Potter’s shirt. Still Potter didn’t move, didn’t turn his head. “The same way I acknowledge that your families fought, and I beat Malfoy up on the Quidditch pitch in my fifth year, and he saved me from the Snatchers. They’re important, but the needs of the moment overpower them as history.”
“We won’t survive if we split apart,” the dragon-keeper said, looking between them all and probably wishing that he was back with his egg. Draco caught his eye. He received a smile in return that the werewolf saw.
“That’s true,” he said, in a voice with all of Greyback’s power in it, menace like an approaching storm. “That means that we need to cast out those who disrupt us.” And then he came for Draco, with a bound that cleared more earth than Draco had thought it would. Perhaps the red eyes and his voice weren’t the only lycanthropic traits that the wild magic had strengthened.
Draco lifted his weapons.
But Potter was there first, faster, his winds whirling out in front of him, unfolding in strings and threads and nets, catching the werewolf by his ankle and hanging him upside-down before anyone else could object. Then Potter raised him so he lay flat on the air, but his arms and legs could barely move. And Potter clapped his hands, with wind to carry the sound, so Granger and Primrose started on their distant heights and Draco heard a child’s cry.
“That’s enough,” Potter said, voice deeper, and prowled away from Draco to face the Weasleys. Draco considered going with him, the way that the pulling in his magic demanded, but thought it might seem weak, as if he was sheltering behind Potter. So he stayed still instead, and the Weasleys focused on Potter.
“For fuck’s sake,” Potter said. “Malfoy has been nothing but helpful to us from the moment we accepted him in. He’s one of the main defenses of the camp. He’s the one who came up with the plan to save Ginny, and he’s the one who shredded the bird. I was hitting it with wind, but I couldn’t have killed it without him. And Bill has barely done any kind of work because his desires for meat keep distracting him. Now that he has the meat, he’s letting his desire to be the most important predator in the camp overset him. Do any of you notice this? Do any of you care that he’s the one who’s the liability here, and not Malfoy?”
The dragon-keeper and Ginevra both winced several times throughout the speech, while the original Weasel stared at Potter as if he had never seen him before. The remaining twin and his father exchanged glances, while his mother rose to her feet. Draco aimed left. He could see the way her hand bulged around her wand, and if she struck, Potter was in the way of most of her spells. Draco would be the one to defend both their flanks.
But it was the pompous servant of the Ministry who cleared his throat and said, “Harry’s right.”
“What?” said the werewolf from his position in the air.
“He’s bloody well not,” said the twin, from which Draco deduced that he would disagree with the servant on principle, because his expression hadn’t said he thought that a moment before. “You aren’t considering everything, Percy. You know that your Ministry arrested Bill the most before we came here, and-”
“What does that have to do with anything?” The servant turned around and folded his arms, usually a gesture Draco disliked because it made someone look defensive and weak, but his voice didn’t waver. “I chose to come with you. And the Ministry didn’t treat Malfoy well, either. Remember? They took reparations from him, and they would have taken more except that they got caught up in other kinds of corruption.”
“Not corruption, to take from Malfoy what he should already have given after the war,” the werewolf said.
“You shut up,” the servant said in a forthright way that let Draco see why he might have been appointed Prefect by the notoriously fussy McGonagall. “You haven’t controlled your magic. Or the werewolf traits, or whatever is making you act this way. You keep talking about the danger that Malfoy poses and how he can cut us apart in our sleep, but you’re the one who growls and tries to attack people. And Harry?” he added, because original Weasel and the twin were opening their mouths. “He used his magic precisely just now, and it wasn’t to hurt Bill. It was to keep him restrained. He even did it in a way that would make sure he wasn’t hurt or looked ridiculous because of the blood rushing to his head. Harry’s right. They’re keeping us alive, and Bill does nothing but pick even when they give him his precious meat.”
He turned and faced the werewolf, and either everyone was still stunned senseless or, like Potter, they had figured out that it was better to keep quiet and let him speak, because he finished to a chorus of silence. “The wild magic is battering us, and we have to control ourselves, or it’ll win. And that’s-that’s it,” he finished, and trailed away towards the ridges, probably to relieve Granger on watch.
Potter let the werewolf go, slowly enough that he came down to lie on the ground instead of falling. He immediately sat up and glared at Potter. Potter raised his eyebrows back, said, “You might consider taking your brother’s advice,” and turned away.
Draco came behind him, and touched his shoulder. Potter jerked his head. “You know you don’t have to do that to get my attention,” he murmured.
Draco nodded. Their minds still cast spells in unison. “But I wanted to,” he said, and traced his hand down again, along thick shoulder muscle and endless hard bone beneath that, into flesh where he dug his fingers. Potter hissed, and walked faster. Draco kept behind him until the point where the Weasleys erupted in argument, when he came up and walked at Potter’s side.
“Why did the servant take my side?” Draco asked.
“Percy?” Potter frowned into the middle distance. “Because he’s always been about rules. And I think it hurts him to the bottom of his soul that we’re making up rules for the wild magic as we go along, but still doing pretty well, while Bill’s acting as though rules don’t exist or are for other people.” He paused, then added, “It would help if you called them by their names, you know.”
“I know,” Draco said. “I intend to reserve them when necessary for effect.”
Potter nodded, and curved his path towards the greenhouses. Draco followed him, and ignored Potter’s stare when he picked up gloves. He gestured at the dirt, and it slid away. A few snips with imagined scissors, and he could pluck up the slimy weeds and fling them into the pile Potter had started. He needed the gloves so as not to sully his skin.
Working in the garden? Potter thought, his mind turning in fast circles that resembled the track of a captured mouse in some of Professor Snape’s potions ingredient tanks.
Draco slammed his shoulder into Potter’s gut, and went on working to the satisfactory sound of his wheezing.
*
“Aunt Hermione’s angry.”
At the reminder that they had an audience, Hermione stepped back, ran a hand through her hair, and sighed. “I’m just worried,” she said to Harry, in a lower voice, while Teddy ran his fingers through the water of a conjured bowl where a water-snake was apparently living, “that you’ve chosen the wrong person to align yourself with.”
“Align?” Harry shook his head at her. “Hermione, the point is to keep this from splitting into factions. Even Malfoy saving Ginny didn’t make a blind bit of difference to Bill. They needed to see that Bill was the problem, not Malfoy, and that he’s a problem in other ways, like how he kept demanding meat. I think Percy speaking up was the perfect solution, really. It brought them together and reminded them that someone who was of their family could see things differently. Malfoy needed a Weasley to speak for him.”
“Such a distasteful sentence.”
Malfoy stood in the doorway of the small house that Harry, Teddy, and Andromeda shared, his arms folded and his leg cocked. Harry scowled. He ought to have sensed him coming, but the bond between them was sometimes too subtle. All he had known for the last minute or so was that he had felt more comfortable than he usually would when he and Hermione argued.
“Malfoy,” Hermione said, and gave Harry a significant look. “You know that this might not stop things.”
“They can’t get worse than Bill would have made them,” Harry said, and stared her down when she opened her mouth to disagree.
Hermione finally nodded, yanked her hair back into the sort of complicated knot that she used when she would otherwise let the anger fly, and stalked away. Malfoy leaned back to let her past, leaned out to watch her go, and leaned in to say, “There goes a woman who will never learn that some people don’t need her.”
“It’s the same lesson I need to learn myself,” Harry said, and sat down on the dirt floor, watching Teddy play. He had turned from the bowls to his stuffed monkey, and was flinging its arms in different directions, making soft but high-pitched “eee, eee, eee” noises.
Malfoy sat down beside him. He murmured, “We need stone floors here. Or wooden. Something more comfortable than dirt.”
Harry didn’t intend to dispute about whether wood or stone would really be more comfortable. He gestured to the chair that sat in the corner nearest the half-window that showed aboveground. “Help yourself.”
“I don’t wish to,” Malfoy said. “Because you don’t.”
That made Harry feel as though Malfoy was touching him. To dispel the feeling, he said, “Did you talk to Percy after what he said?”
Malfoy nodded, his face in shadow. “Thanked him. I think he was still bewildered about what he said, about what made him say it. He’d gone to Johnson to ask her to clear his mind of spells.”
Harry snorted laughter in spite of himself. Malfoy leaned in and breathed on the back of his neck. Harry closed his eyes and murmured, “Not in front of Teddy.”
Malfoy nodded, but didn’t move back as he whispered, “There’s another of the white creatures, come back with the first. They’re waiting for us near the edge of camp. When they saw me, the first one stuck out its tongue again, but wouldn’t come near. I think they want both of us there at the same time.”
And suddenly Harry’s eyes were wide open.
Chapter Fourteen.
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