Chapter Twenty-Six of 'Wondrous Lands and Oceans'- The Inevitable
Chapter Twenty-Five.
Title: Wondrous Lands and Oceans (26/about 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 Twenty-Six-The Inevitable
“What if she doesn’t come out of the house again?”
That was Hermione’s voice, and while Harry could understand her concern, because she had been one of the people who tried to help Andromeda out of her grief when they were still living in the wizarding world, now he rolled his eyes and bent over to pick up the ball Teddy had tossed at him. “She will. She can’t stand to be without other people. If she could, I would be less concerned for her. And she’ll want to come out and complain about the wild magic, in the end.”
“I suppose that’s true,” said Hermione, in the tone that meant she didn’t think it at all.
Harry sat up, stretched, and then looked back at Hermione as Teddy shrieked with laughter at the ball almost hitting him. “What else can we do? She went into the house and won’t come out, and her magic protects her by walling up all the entrances whenever we try. She said that she didn’t want the magic, that she wouldn’t use it, but she’s using it right now. I don’t want to destroy her confidence, or the chance that she might actually come to be okay with the magic in the future, and we will if we force her.”
Hermione nibbled her lip a few times, then nodded. “But isn’t Teddy going to ask where she is?”
Harry had to smile. “I just told him she was in the bathroom. That made him stop asking. You know how much he hates baths.”
“I thought children would forget things like that if they didn’t have constant reminders.” Hermione blinked and looked around as though there would be an unknown bathroom over to the side.
“Teddy doesn’t forget something that he hates as much as he hates baths,” Harry said fervently. He was lucky Teddy liked the water that ran down from the hills so much that he didn’t associate it with a bath when Harry collected some and dunked him in it. “No, Hermione, he’ll be all right. And I think she’ll come out if he asks for her. She was willing to go back to the wizarding world to raise him when she thought that Hurricane wasn’t safe for him.”
“That sounds selfish to me, not brave.” Hermione folded her arms and tapped her foot against the grass, which was getting flattened down between the little hills with as many people as walked over it in a day.
“It was,” Harry said. “But also brave, the way she thought about it. Can you imagine setting out into the plains, with no idea of where to go at first, and just wandering, looking for it? I think her wild magic guided her. It seems focused on safety, and she would have focused on the gate as an idea of safety. But it was still brave, and she did do it for Teddy’s sake. If she hadn’t, she would have just left him here when she ran.”
“Your attempts to excuse her aren’t going to do her any good.”
Draco, Harry acknowledged with a little pulse of his mind. He had known Draco was coming up on his left side, just as he knew that Draco had spoken those words aloud because he wanted Hermione to hear them.
“That’s right,” Hermione said, smiling at Draco without seeming to consider the implications of having him as an ally. “Harry already spoiled her and didn’t make her work enough when we were back on Earth. What is he going to do here if she won’t do anything because Harry does it all for her?”
“That’s not how it was,” Harry said, and he thought it wasn’t his voice that made them stare as much as the fact that a wind was whipping past his head and making his hair lash his cheeks. With an effort, Harry forced his voice back under control and smiled pleasantly. “That’s not at all how it was,” he repeated. “I wished she would help me more with Teddy, and sometimes I made her do that. But I knew about her grief, and I was the one who chose to take care of Teddy with her despite that. The Ministry would have granted me sole custody if I’d fought for it. I didn’t want it.”
“Uncle Harry!”
Teddy, bored of playing with the ball by himself, rushed back into the center of the conversation, dancing around Harry and lifting his arms to be picked up. Harry scooped him close and stood up, holding him while he glared at Draco and Hermione over Teddy’s head.
“We’ll go play,” Teddy said, something Harry said a lot, and then tugged on Harry’s arm and pointed towards the stream that came down from the hills.
“In a minute,” Harry said, and bounced him while he said quietly, “I know Andromeda’s caused a lot of trouble, and I don’t know if she’ll stop causing trouble. But we need to give her a chance. Hauling her out of her house early is asking for more trouble. Either we let her fit in on Hurricane, or we watch her deteriorate and probably do something else that might hurt her or other people.”
Harry, Draco said, in a link that had a dancing rainbow of uncertain colors around it.
Not right now, Harry said, and walked towards the stream as Teddy tugged on his arm again. Right now, he thought, he could do with giving Teddy a not-bath and watching him catch the little transparent creatures that only his eyes could see. He understood Draco and Hermione, but he also understood Andromeda, and things were so messy.
But they wouldn’t become less complicated if people harassed Andromeda and denied her the chance to fit in with the rest of the camp.
“Uncle Harry, down!” Teddy said, and wriggled. Harry put him down, and he raced ahead, falling now and then. Unless he fell on a hard floor, though, he never seemed to hurt himself, and there were no hard floors in Hurricane.
Harry felt Draco’s mind brush against his again, but while they could never be truly separate now, Harry could refuse to speak to him. He kept walking, giving himself time to come down from his anger, and Draco time to think.
No one’s wrong in this, and we’re all wrong, and everyone has a point, and I just don’t want to think about it now.
*
Draco turned back to Granger when he was done with his second attempt to reach Harry, and saw her frowning at Andromeda’s little silver house. It hadn’t changed since she went into it, after perhaps an hour of blankly staring at what her magic had wrought. Draco knew already that his claws couldn’t cut it, Harry’s winds couldn’t budge it-not that Harry had tried to do that, but it didn’t tremble when the winds blew near it-and that Weasley’s magic-reducing ability had no effect.
Among the most disturbing things about this was that Draco didn’t like the idea of Andromeda being stronger than any of the rest of them. He had accepted that he might not match Harry’s strength, and that was all right; he was still bonded to the most powerful defender of the camp. But for Andromeda to have a place where she could retreat from consequences…
“I wish she would come out.”
Draco nodded to Granger. “I don’t know if anyone’s tried calling to her through the places the windows used to be.” The windows had sealed themselves along with every other opening when Andromeda had entered the house. “Could she hear us, do you think?”
Granger studied the featureless silver dome for long minutes, then sighed and shook her head. “Probably not. And it would only make Harry angry if we pounded on it or shook it. Not that that does any good.”
“You’ve tried?” Draco blinked. He wouldn’t have wanted to cross Harry and try it, so it seemed incredible that Granger had.
Granger tilted her head at him. “Of course. I wanted to make sure she wasn’t going to suffocate or starve inside a dome without any windows. It doesn’t budge, and I think it would dissipate if she died, so I have to accept that she’s all right for now.”
Draco nodded. “Why is Harry so intent on defending her? He’s suffered more from the way she behaves than anyone has.”
Granger sighed and touched her hair, but lowered her hand instead of running it through the thick frizz. Talking of things that wouldn’t do any good, Draco thought. “Why does Harry forgive anyone? Why did he go to die when he could have done something else? Why was he able to forgive Dumbledore for manipulating him? It’s just the way he is, and while some of it has to do with his life, I don’t know where the rest comes from.”
“His life?” Draco said.
Granger looked at him so sharply that Draco made wide and innocent eyes at her without even thinking about it. Granger turned away and went back to studying Andromeda’s house. “I mean, the way he was constantly at war, and the way he bounced back from that.”
Draco laughed, a little harshly, thinking about the turmoil that still sometimes appeared in Harry’s mind, and how he had tortured Rasatis-not that these good people knew anything about that, but still. “He isn’t as good as you think. He’s not completely recovered from the war.”
“He still did it faster than anyone else I know.”
“Including you?”
Granger glanced at Draco, her face neutral. “You’re not going to make any friends by overvaluing Harry and putting his friends down, you know. Not even Harry. He’s made it clear that we’re going to be a part of his life for the rest of his life.”
Draco raised gently protesting hands, even as he thought that Granger had no idea about some of the thoughts streaming through Harry’s head regarding her and Weasley. “I know. I simply wondered. You and Weasley seem to have recovered well from the end of the war. Maybe not the werewolf, but the others, too. My aunt is the only one who seems to have that much trauma. Why do you think Harry did better than you?”
Granger stared unseeing at the side of the silver dome, and the lace-edged shape of one of the closed windows. Draco waited. He knew the signs when someone was thinking, and despite what Harry and Granger both seemed to think, he knew how to wait for what he wanted.
“Because he had more to overcome than we did,” Granger said at last. “Almost dying. Realizing that Dumbledore had set him up to die, and that he would have been satisfied with Harry’s death if it meant that Voldemort died, too.” She seemed to ignore Draco’s flinch, or at least not notice it. There was little active malice in Granger, Draco thought, compared to other people he’d met. She was more likely to open a wound through thoughtlessness. “All those fights, against the basilisk and Quirrell and the past. His relatives.”
“Tell me more about them,” Draco said, settling down on the grass and putting his hands on his knees. It wasn’t like they had much else to do right now, when Andromeda still wouldn’t come out of her house.
But perhaps because he’d sat down, he got a sharp glance from Granger instead of the rambling monologue he’d wanted. “I don’t think it’s my place to say anything about that if Harry hasn’t,” she said at last.
“I can find out most of what I want by reaching through the bond,” Draco pointed out. “I only wanted to know how you saw it, and what happened to him that he might not have noticed. You’d be more likely to notice things from the outside.”
“So you want even more things that he would prefer we not reveal,” Granger said dryly. “No, thanks.” She studied Andromeda’s house one more time, and then sighed. “I don’t think there’s anything we can do here. We might as well get back to weeding the greenhouses, and I think Ginny was hoping to take her bird up this afternoon for a hunt. It’s growing fast enough that it should be able to kill one of the rabbits at least…”
Draco let her chatter wash over him, and didn’t move when she left to go to the greenhouses. He remained still instead, and reached out through the bond to Harry, still at the stream with Teddy.
Do you want to tell me more about why we should forgive Andromeda when she comes out?
Not really, Harry answered, calm and cheerful. Do you want to come and help me some more with The Bath That Must Not Speak Its Name?
Draco made the bond between them pink and pearly and soft. You know that you can tell me anything you want, including more information about my Cousin Dora.
I might enjoy that.
And wouldn’t enjoy talking about himself, was the clear implication. Well, Draco had always known that he was bonded to someone who wasn’t perfectly forthcoming. He stood up and went to join Harry and Teddy at the pool, just as Teddy splashed water into Harry’s eyes. Harry blinked and spluttered and took off his glasses to clean them. Draco rested a hand on his shoulder and leaned over to cast a Cleaning Charm on Teddy’s hair. He laughed and said, “Tickles!”
“That’s one reaction that some people have to that charm,” Draco said, wiser than to call the charm by its proper name with Harry looking at him from the corner of his eye. “Do you want to use a wand when you’re grown up?”
Teddy considered him, and then Harry, hooking a finger into the corner of his mouth. “Uncle Harry no wand,” he said, and frowned over the sentence as though he knew what was missing but not how to say it better.
“You may need one,” Draco said, and kissed his cousin’s forehead. Then he sat down beside the stream to enjoy the rest of the not-a-bath and wait for the moment when Andromeda would come out of her house.
*
As it happened, they met the mummidade coming into the camp and had to speak with them before Andromeda came out.
Harry looked up from the pool and found a new trio awaiting them beside the water. They had come close so quietly that he hadn’t noticed them, and neither had the guards on the hills, Charlie and Arthur, who turned around with red faces. Harry waved his hand to hold them back, and reached out to clasp Draco’s hand. The bond flowed over them, through them, sealing them together.
The trio reached out to them with a vision of grass-blades heavy with golden seed, a wild wind stirring them. Goldensway, Harry decided was the best equivalent, and heard Draco echo it a moment later.
The mummidade filled their heads with images of birds so thick that Harry flinched despite himself and looked upwards. It didn’t help to see the wings of Ginny’s bird wheeling there, although it was still small enough not to cast the kind of shadow that Goldensway insisted was true in their memories.
The images of birds slaughtering the mummid one by one appeared again and again. Harry understood that message well enough. They wanted to know what had happened when Harry and Draco went north.
Draco grinned down the bond. Harry grunted. Yes, he supposed Draco would find it fun to spin out the story like this, and stun the mummidade with images of what they had undergone for once. Harry only found it tiring.
So he paid more attention to Teddy, and let Draco be the one to give the images of the beasts and their riders, of Bodiless-or as close to images as something like that could come, at least-and the wild magic that had manifested for Hermione and Ron, and the silver ovals, and the way their bond had saved them from Bodiless. Goldensway stood and listened, their heads turned so that their horns rested on each other’s.
When Draco reached the end of the stream of images, Goldensway turned and stared at Harry. Teddy squirmed in his arms, and Harry put him back in the water as he repeated some of the images Draco had sent in abbreviated form, his confirmation that what Draco had experienced in the north was real.
Not even the mummidade want to trust a Death Eater speaking on his own.
Harry rolled his eyes and said nothing. The bond exchanged their emotions faster than any words they could have said, down the bond or otherwise, and Draco laughed at him, and Harry pushed at him, and the past twined with the present, and was still fragmenting when Goldensway sent their own next picture.
This one showed a great dell, a small valley that Harry was surprised to think they’d never seen, because by the color of the grass it wasn’t very far from the camp. Then again, grass coated the sides and the hills around it, and they wouldn’t see it from the air. And how often did they venture onto the plains any other way?
In the dell, mummidade waited, scraping their hooves or touching their horns or conversing in groups that splintered into modest pairs and trios and quartets as Harry watched. He understood the invitation issued to them.
He still hesitated, wondering what would happen if they were out of the camp when Andromeda finally came out. But Draco flung back the scornful image of Hermione standing with her arms folded between Andromeda and the rest of the camp, and Harry had to smile as he acknowledged the reality of that.
“Then we should go and meet them,” Harry said aloud, just so they could have something between them that the mummidade didn’t share.
Draco nodded slightly. “We’ll have to have someone take care of Teddy.”
“Go with you,” Teddy said in an unexpectedly strong voice, and turned around to clutch at Harry’s legs. Harry sighed. There were advantages to talking silently after all, then.
“You can’t go with us this time, Teddy.” Draco knelt down and met his eyes. “It’s like the time that we went away before. We have to go and do something important, and you aren’t big enough yet.”
Harry held still. He didn’t have much hope that Draco would break through to Teddy that way, since Teddy had always rejected appeals to reason before, but he had at least thought to try, and maybe being treated like an adult by his cousin would make an impression on him.
Teddy stuck his thumb in between his lips and blinked at Draco. “Not big enough,” he said, and there was a question in there if you were listening for it. Harry opened his mouth to tell Draco so.
Draco was listening, though, and he smiled and nodded. “That’s right. When you’re big enough, then you can come with us.”
Teddy looked up at Harry and held up a hand as high as he could go, which was about the bottom of Harry’s chest. “When I’m this big,” he said, and Harry checked his laughter and nodded. You’re wonderful with him, he told Draco while he stooped down and picked up Teddy, swinging him around once.
That means I could be wonderful with other children, too.
Harry snorted, but didn’t disparage the idea the way he had before. It was too much work, and perhaps what Draco said was true. Harry just wasn’t prepared to think about it yet.
So they found Ron and asked him to watch Teddy, and explained they were about to go to the mummidade and detail the situation with the riders and Bodiless in the north. Ron blinked a few times along the way, but nodded and took Teddy’s hand when Teddy held it trustingly out to him.
“Too much for me, mate,” he told Harry. “I’m just getting used to having wild magic of my own.”
Harry punched him in the shoulder. “You were as valuable with us on that trip as anyone else, you know. I wish you wouldn’t put yourself down and act like you’re stupid when you understand things as well as anyone.”
Ron turned a little pink. “Well, I know how to keep Teddy entertained, you can say that,” he said, and scooped Teddy up in his arms. “Why don’t we go watch your Aunt Hermione pulling up some weeds?”
Teddy laughed, though it was probably more at the sound of the word “weeds” than anything else. Harry smiled as he watched them go, and then turned towards Draco and added, Someone else is wonderful with children, too.
Not as wonderful as me.
Harry was smiling as he called up the winds to lift him and Draco so they could follow Goldensway to this hidden dell. The mummidade were serious enough that this meeting might turn out to be a hard thing for all of them, but he had his bondmate at his side, and that made it hard to frown for long.
Chapter Twenty-Seven.
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