Harry Potter 1. Walking Nightmares

**Title: **Here to Live and Die

**Disclaimer: **J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.

**Pairings: **Harry/Draco, canon het pairings

**Warnings: **Violence, angst

**Rating: **R

**Summary: **Now on the magical planet of Hurricane for the rest of their lives, Harry, Draco, and the Weasleys struggle to coexist with the other sentient species around them, their own wild magic, and the storms of Hurricane's long summer.

**Author's Note: **This is the third story in the Hurricane trilogy, following _Reap the Hurricane _and _Wondrous Lands and Oceans._ Read both of those before attempting this one. I don't yet know how long this will be.

**Here to Live and Die**

_Chapter One—Walking Nightmares_

Harry woke snorting and blinking from a sound sleep. Well, he would have said it was sound, anyway, before the nightmare came leaping down the bond and woke him up.

He reached over and shook Draco's shoulder. For a moment, Draco convulsed, kicking and shaking, by his side. Harry gave momentary thanks that the beds of moss and grass the riders had taught them to make were so soft and broad. He would have fallen off the far side if they weren't.

"Draco," Harry said. He kept his voice as calm and deep as he could. If he shouted, Draco would probably take it amiss, as confirmation of his dreams instead of rejection of them. "Wake up. I'm here, and you're here, and you're not being eaten."

Draco opened his eyes. They still looked at Harry without recognition for long seconds. Harry rubbed his shoulder hard, envisioning his claws as talons of the kind the riders had instead of fingers.

The "wrong" picture made Draco sit up and nod at Harry, tapping his temple with one closed fist as if to shake some of the residue of the nightmare out of his ears. Harry waited for him, knees drawn up on the far side of the bed, and watched Draco as he lowered his head and forced his breathing into a calm rhythm.

"Better?" Harry asked quietly, and then switched to the silent speech they shared inside the bond as soon as he was sure that Draco's brain was stable enough for it. _What were you dreaming about? _

Draco turned towards him as if Harry had told him to get out. _You couldn't sense it? _

Harry shook his head. _I sensed the emotion, how much it terrified you, and that was all. _He waited some more, but Draco knelt there breathing and looking ill. There was nothing to shake him so much, as far as Harry knew.

Well, some of his memories of Bodiless could have done it, and some of his fears for Harry, and some of the desires he held so deeply that they seemed to exist outside his head and press down on him with tangible weight. But Harry really didn't know anything about which one it had been. He had to wait, and Draco had to lick his lips and find the words to answer, his voice slow and croaking, even in the bond.

_I was falling through a dark space. And then I knew that we hadn't really defeated Bodiless after all, and there was never going to be anything but the nothingness and the fall for the rest of the time that I—that I _existed. _It wasn't even like life, it was lack of light and heat and touch and sound, and I knew that I would never feel you again—_

Harry caught him up and held him close, saying nothing when Draco struggled against it. He could have felt it through the bond if Draco had really wanted Harry to leave him alone. Harry just held him instead, and gradually Draco's gasps died into silence and he sagged a little against Harry.

_Better? _Harry asked, rubbing circles on his back.

"Much," Draco said, aloud this time, and raised his arms to clutch Harry inside his own wiry circle. "You don't mind?"

"Being woken up? Of course not. If you have a dream that strong, I want you to wake me up and tell me about it." Harry stopped holding him as hard when Draco made a little shift to move away, but then Draco seemed to change his mind and cuddled back closer instead. Harry stroked his hair. "Would it help to talk more about it?"

Draco stared over his shoulder into the darkness of the plains, and Harry waited. Draco was the one who had to make the decision as to whether he _wanted _to talk more about it, honestly. Harry could offer him the choice, the chance, but he had come to learn the hard way that Draco didn't always take well to an offer like that.

Draco finally exhaled, hard, and looked at him. "Yes, it would," he said. "But let's go for a walk. I want to feel the wind blowing in my face, and see the stars." He mopped at his face, and Harry leaned forwards, startled, wondering if he was wiping away tears. If he was, that might be the first time he had _ever _seen Draco do so.

Draco glared at him fiercely when he opened his mouth to question him, though, and Harry raised his hands and retreated with a little nod. Draco slipped out of the flap of their tent, and Harry followed him, watching his back thoughtfully.

* * *

Draco walked perhaps a mile before he gathered up the courage to speak. He could feel Harry's silent, waiting presence in the back of his mind.

Draco scowled. Sometimes he wished that Harry wasn't so bloody _considerate_. He could reach out and scoop what he wanted to read out of Draco's mind, of course, and Draco wished that he would. Then he wouldn't have to try and frame the nightmare with words, including the parts he hadn't told Harry yet.

But he was the one who had said that he wanted to talk about it. That meant he had to keep walking, until he was sure they were far enough away from the tents and silver houses that no one would overhear them. Then he turned around and waited until Harry came up beside him, his winds dancing and wheeling around him. Harry put an arm across Draco's shoulders and kept them walking, moving forwards.

Draco tilted his head back. Two of Hurricane's moons were tiny slivers near the horizon, like the prints of thumbnails on the sky. The rest of the sky around them was black and great with stars, and Draco let his eyes trace a few patterns that were becoming familiar: a set of four stars that resembled the Orion's Belt they had left on Earth, a complicated tangle of bright white lights that Teddy, with his sharp eyes, called the Kitten. And it _did _look a little like a kitten chasing a ball of string.

"All right?"

Harry's voice came directly into his ears, and Draco started before he could stop himself. Then he smiled wanly at Harry. "Yeah. I mean, yes. I will be."

Harry nodded. "Do you want to tell me what you haven't told me yet?" He looked around and indicated a little hillock in the grass ahead of them. "We could sit there and you could tell me. I'll talk or not as you want me to."

Draco flopped down on the hillock, waited until Harry had sat beside him, and then leaned his head back until it rested on Harry's shoulder. "Oh, _God_," he whispered. "Why are you so considerate now?"

Harry stroked his hair. "What do you mean? Did I change the way I was acting sometime in the last week?"

Draco shook his head. "Not what I meant. It's just…when we first bonded you weren't like that."

Harry snorted at him. "You just wanted to fuck. You get from the bond what you put into it, Draco."

"That sounds like one of those senseless Gryffindor platitudes," Draco complained, opening his eyes and scowling up at the sky.

"And you sound like someone trying to put off what we came out here to talk about," Harry said back, his voice abruptly like steel. "Come _on_ and tell me. It can't be that bad."

Draco smiled thinly and leaned back on the hillock, until he was pressed into Harry from shoulders to arse. _Be careful what you wish for. _He didn't exactly mean for Harry to pick up that thought, but he wasn't really trying to keep it from him, either, and he felt it in the way Harry straightened his shoulders and then relaxed them with a little snort.

"Tell me, Draco," Harry repeated.

Draco half-nodded. He hadn't thought he would frighten Harry off at this late date, but part of him insisted on pressing his luck, asking questions that Harry wouldn't find it easy to answer. "Fine. I dreamed that I was falling through the nothingness, and then I woke up in a green forest. Not the kind of place I ever visited on Earth, but not the kind of place I could easily imagine on Hurricane, either."

Harry reached out and looped his hand through Draco's. "Green because it was pine trees?" he asked quietly. "Because it was spring? Something else?"

"Because it was spring," Draco said, closing his eyes. Now he wanted the images to return to him, and of course, the minute he did, they began to fray and tear in his memory, and he couldn't show them to Harry the way he wanted. Draco made a little noise of frustration. "An open forest, with branches that didn't shut the sunlight out, so it was slanting down and filling the undergrowth with golden light, but the gold was touched with green at the same time because it was shining through the leaves, see."

"I saw something like that once."

Draco opened his eyes and turned his head. "Where?" Perhaps he had picked up on a memory of Harry's, and that had become his dream.

Harry took his hand more firmly, smoothing his thumb up and down across the back of Draco's knuckles. "When I was walking through the Forbidden Forest, on my way to confront Voldemort," he said quietly. "When I knew that Dumbledore's plan had depended on sacrificing my life to defeat him."

Draco caught his breath, and then swallowed. "Maybe that explains it, then," he whispered. "Because it wasn't the forest that made the dream horrifying."

Harry only nodded as if to say that he would have been surprised if it had been. He was looking firmly into Draco's eyes all the while, and that made Draco doubly glad that they had decided to talk about this aloud. "What was it?"

"You were walking away from me," Draco whispered, and shuddered a little. "You had your back turned to me, and you just kept _moving. _You didn't turn around, even when I called to you. It wasn't like you were ignoring me. You just didn't seem to hear me."

"I _wouldn't _have been inclined to turn around if you had called to me when I was walking through the Forbidden Forest, of course," Harry said consideringly, after a long moment. "Because I would know that it was a trick of some sort. I didn't have any reason to feel about you as I do now."

"But it seemed as if you did, in the dream, and walked away from me anyway," Draco whispered. There. It was out.

Harry sat with him in silence for a little while, his arms wrapped around Draco and his chin resting on top of his head. Draco didn't think he would ever be able to admit how comforting he found that. He leaned his chin on Harry's shoulder in return and watched the flashes of dark blue become muted at the horizon, showing the return of daylight.

"I wouldn't do that now," Harry whispered to him, and kissed the back of Draco's neck. Draco raised his head and turned his face into the kiss, and Harry's lips were there, moving over his cheeks, making Draco whimper and stretch his neck. Harry bore him down on the hillock, kissing his face and repeating the words over and over, aloud when his mouth wasn't occupied, in his head down the bond when it was.

_I wouldn't do that…I would never leave you…I wouldn't do that…_

Draco at last grabbed Harry's head and pulled him back up. Harry came willingly enough, although with his eyes glazed and fixed on Draco in a way that made Draco bite his lips. Harry leaned his head on Draco's chest when Draco motioned him to, though, and kept his gaze on Draco's face.

"It's about the gate," Draco whispered. Harry's reassurance had made him able to face what he would otherwise never have been able to say, he knew. "The way that you're the gate now through which Hurricane's power flows. What happens if you have some kind of responsibilities connected to that? What happens if you have to walk away from me because you're becoming like Bodiless?"

Harry shook his head a little. "We know that whatever the gate is, the responsibility to be it can be passed on," he whispered. "That's what happened to me when we killed Bodiless."

Draco nodded shortly. "So you would have someone else take your place?" He would never have thought that Harry was willing to do that, when he had been so intent on sparing other people from even making hard decisions.

Harry must have picked up on the uncertainty in his mind, because he reached out and gripped Draco's hand hard enough to make Draco wince a little. "Yes, I would," Harry whispered to him, and rested his chin on Draco's shoulder this time. "I told you I was done saving the world. I _want _to be done with it. I won't let this gate, being the gate, whatever it really means or is, take away from the time I want to spend with you. I'll be with you all along."

Draco bit his lip. That was what he had needed, but he wouldn't have been able to ask for it. It would make him sound like a puling, whining baby.

Harry leaned up and kissed him again. "I promise that you come first, now. Along with Teddy."

Draco nodded. He knew that he couldn't ask for a privileged position all by himself in Harry's concerns. Harry still had Teddy to raise. He had come to Hurricane for Teddy.

But being as dear to Harry as his adopted son was—that was more than he had ever thought he would have when this bond began. He lay back and drew Harry's hands into place on his shoulders and hips, smiling up at him. "Why not show me how much I mean to you right now?" he whispered.

Harry's response was wordless, but suggestive.

* * *

Harry could feel the winds stirring around him that morning the minute he stepped out of the tent. He tilted his head to the south, and swallowed. There were people coming from that way, then. The winds gave him the feeling of blowing through human hair and against naked human skin, but also against the weight that had borne down heavily on the winds a few weeks ago, when he first woke up with the ability to be the gate for magic on Hurricane.

_Or whatever Bodiless was. _Sometimes it seemed that it had been the source of the wild magic on Hurricane, other times just a gate for the magic to come through from somewhere else. Harry would be glad if it was the latter. That suggested that he didn't have as much responsibility to the people around him as the first option would give him.

"What is it?"

Draco had felt the agitation in the normally calm waters of their bond, then, although not what he was thinking about specifically. Harry leaned back into his hold and kept his eyes on the southern horizon. The mummidade were out grazing in force this morning, their white coats darkened now and then by the shadows of the riders as they swept over them.

"Harry?"

Harry sighed and turned around. He had encouraged Draco to share the knowledge of his nightmares with him; that meant he couldn't hold back now and expect Draco to continue being that open with him. "Yes. I think that some of the people I felt earlier, like Primrose, are moving north."

Draco was silent, his arm curving around Harry's waist while he said nothing. Then he ducked his head down to murmur into Harry's ear, as though it were their personal secret, and murmured, "How close?"

"They'll probably be here by tomorrow." Harry grimaced as he spoke, because normally his winds couldn't estimate distance like that. It was a new ability, one that he had gained since he became the "gate" that Hermione talked about. How he wished that he could go back to being normal, without the winds and the gate nonsense and everything else.

_If you were that normal, I wouldn't ever have fallen in love with you. _Draco's arm tightened around his waist for a moment, and then he stepped back and nodded. "You want me to go and tell the others?"

"Please," Harry said gratefully, sitting down in the grass. He would have to lean on the winds and try to find out more about their visitors, and the thought of doing that plus facing the anger and disbelief that would spring up among the humans when they heard that their new home was threatened exhausted him.

Draco kissed the top of his head, murmured into his ear, "You know that you always have us to count on," and turned his back to trot across the ground. Harry absently watched him go, pressing his hands against his neck and ears to cool them.

Then he turned back to the south, and reached out through the winds, weaving as much of his own normal magic into them as he could, and not relying on the passive knowledge that he seemed to have by virtue of inheriting Bodiless's position.

Yes, they were coming. Six of the heavy creatures, the winds told him, although they still couldn't tell him their exact nature, maybe because Harry had never seen them before and so couldn't grasp the right information. And twelve humans.

Harry sighed and rested his head on his arms. One of the humans was Primrose, which might be a good or bad thing. At least they had dealt with her before.

But on the other hand, she had left them because she couldn't cope with the fact that they had a tame bird, Ginny's bird, when one of the great birds had destroyed her own encampment and all the people she had come to Hurricane with. And she might have met up with Rasatis, the former Death Eater Harry had tortured.

_Why does politics have to be so complicated? _

Harry grimaced and pushed himself to his feet. If there was more than a day left before they got here, then he _did _have to go and make sure that the others were listening to Draco and taking in what he said.

_I just don't look forward to what Bill's going to say when he finds out._

* * *

"I thought you were bringing us to a place where we would be _safer_."

Draco felt the weariness gleaming from Harry's head the way he would see a sheen of sweat. Honestly, he might have felt it even without the bond. Harry was standing with his arms folded and his weary gaze on the werewolf long before he opened his mouth to protest Harry's handling of the situation.

"No matter what creatures they're flying with," Harry said quietly, "I doubt they'll be a match for the riders and their beasts, or even Ginny's bird. And certainly not all of them together, along with us and the mummidade to weave us into bonds. Are you _really _going to claim that I tricked you into coming to a place where you didn't want to be, Bill?"

The Veela placed her hand on the werewolf's arm to calm him down. Draco rolled his eyes. When a grown man couldn't control his own behavior, but had to rely constantly on the presence of his wife and daughter to hold himself back, Draco wasn't inclined to give much credence to his supposed maturity.

"Fine, fine," the werewolf muttered, collapsing back into the grass and folding his arms over his chest. "_Fine_. Then what do you think we ought to do now?" His eyes moved unwillingly from Harry's face to Draco's.

"We should be prepared to beat them back, if we need to," said Harry, and ground his teeth. Draco knew why. He had hoped that he could give up this leadership role once they were in the meadow. Why not? There would be mummidade and riders around who would have their own leaders, and not want to listen to someone like Harry. And the humans would probably have to cooperate most with the other species, and forget about beating up on each other.

"How are we going to do that?" repeated the werewolf obstinately, leaning forwards as if he would like to fall on top of Harry and crush him beneath him. "You can't _seriously _think that we can fight other humans."

Harry closed his eyes. "Then tell me how."

"I don't know how. That's why I'm asking you."

Draco put a hand on Harry's arm before he could blow up, the way the Veela was again doing with her husband. Harry rolled his eyes at him. _And what do you think about me? Should I also think I'm immature, because I require someone to hold you back?_

_I think of you as someone who needs more help than he permits other people to give him most of the time, _Draco pointed out, and turned back to the werewolf. "Listen, werewolf—"

"_What _did you call me? The werewolf had pounced to his feet and looked ready to charge.

_I told you that not calling the Weasleys by their names would get you in trouble someday, _Harry chuckled into his head.

_You should have let me do it a long time ago, _Draco retorted. _Then maybe they would know something about the way I think of them. _He faced Bill again. "Bill, then," he said. "But you can't expect Harry to come up with a defense plan all on his own again, especially when he doesn't know anything about the creatures that these people will be coming north with."

The werewolf sat down again and closed his eyes, shaking his head. This time, he didn't appear to pay as much attention to his wife's soothing rubbing on his arm as he did to Draco's words. "He promised we would be safe," he whispered. "If we came north and stayed in this meadow. He _promised _it."

"I was wrong, then." Harry's voice was strong and calm, and although his arm muscles bunched beneath Draco's touch, Draco didn't think it was wrong to let him go on speaking. "We didn't know then about these enemies and how they might threaten us." He turned his head to look around the circle. "Now I know, and I'm asking for your help."

The werewolf might have had something to say about that, but other people were volunteering ideas, including Granger and Weasley, and including mixed patrols of mummidade and riders and humans, so that no one species would have to carry the whole weight of what was coming down on them on their shoulders.

Through it all, the werewolf sat back with his arms folded and scowled. But he didn't object.

_Thank Merlin for that, _Harry confessed when Draco pointed it out to him. _I'm not sure how much longer I could have kept from slapping him._

Draco snickered, and then pushed that thought aside so he could focus on the _real _suggestions around them, and not the left-over remnants of the werewolf's childishness.


	2. Meeting

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Two—Meeting_

"There they are."

Harry had thought that the winds would bring him the first news of their enemies' arrival, or perhaps a guard running from the borders of the meadow would, but he happened to be on guard himself, with Draco and Open Wings, when they saw them for the first time. The winds had been able to tell him weight and speed and direction of flight before this, but the information remained muted and hard to understand as long as Harry didn't really understand what he was _supposed _to be looking for.

Now he understood. The closest of all the creatures he had met on Hurricane to the animals soaring towards them now had been the fin-winged shark he and Draco had seen in the ocean, and that hadn't been sentient.

These were like great rays, the manta rays that Harry had seen during a trip to the aquarium with his Muggle primary school. They floated and rippled on the wind, great spreading blankets of color. Harry blinked and lifted his hand to shade his eyes. He hadn't seen such brilliant shades anywhere on Hurricane, even near the ocean, or the silver flowers that he and Draco had discovered during their flight over the deep plains. Scarlet and pink and glorious, thrumming blue even deeper than the color the skies turned at twilight here. And some that glimmered from within like diamonds, and some with the startling white of fresh parchment.

On their backs, about the middle where those backs mounded up, sat humans. Harry thought he recognized Primrose's erect carriage and lifted head from here, but it was probably silly to think that. He really had no idea where she was riding, or what she might feel about having mounts to ride.

_She probably likes it, _Draco whispered, leaning towards him. _Since being in the air that way would give her a way to combat the birds._

Harry nodded, and turned to Open Wings. The rider who had first had the courage to approach them and the mummidade, he was standing beside them on the ground now, his talon-hand on the neck of his beast, Swoop in the mummidade's translation of the riders' language. Harry was doing his best to learn that language and cut out the part that the mummidade otherwise played in their bond, but it was difficult. The two-toned screeches that made up most words weren't anything he felt capable of producing.

He licked his lips and tried. "Scout?" he asked, with the rising, whistling inflection that, luckily, both English and the riders' language used to indicate questions.

Open Wings looked at him for a single, critical second that was as much an evaluation of Harry's skills with the language as a sign of doubt. Then he nodded, and turned towards Swoop, gesturing with two fingers. Swoop bowed his neck, and Open Wings ran up it and into the saddle. A moment later, they were aloft, and spinning towards the great rays. Harry had to admit it was probably his bias, but Swoop looked more graceful in the air to him.

"Do you think it'll go well?" Draco whispered into his ear, aloud, as he usually did for questions that mattered to him.

Harry put his arm around Draco and silently shrugged. He didn't know what a good meeting between people who were probably enemies would look like. If the humans with Primrose wanted to live in the meadow, then they were probably going to have a bad one. The riders were already uneasy about the potential human growth that might follow as more people had children.

And that wasn't even counting the ritual dance that Draco hoped the mummidade would teach them, Harry thought, that would give the two of them the chance to have their own children.

The thought made his cheeks grow red, and was about the only one that could have distracted him from the meeting in the air. Draco caught it and gave him a secretive glance, a bright smile darting across his mouth and vanishing.

"You think of it, too, then," he said, and focused on Open Wings and the rays again. "That was all I wanted to know."

Harry would have retorted, but it really was more important right now to pay attention to the various kinds of riders slowly skirmishing around each other over the mountains that surrounded the meadow. It didn't seem as though the riders knew about the rays, either. Even with the mummidade translating, they'd said they didn't know what, besides birds, the other humans might have been riding.

Well, that was understandable, Harry thought, shielding his eyes with his hand again to see better. The riders had stayed in the north for years, or so it seemed, and had little reason to venture beyond their borders before.

_Send your winds, _Draco whispered. _I want to hear what Primrose is saying._

A good idea, and one that Harry had to chide himself for not thinking of before now. He nodded, and the winds fled away from him and towards the distant meeting.

It seemed that no one was speaking when they arrived. Instead, Primrose was leaning forwards on her ray's hump—which Harry could see from this distance, too—and tapping her fingers on the leathery skin that made up its back. She was frowning at Open Wings, who continued to hang in front of her. Maybe she had expected to have someone she could understand here, Harry thought.

Maybe he should have joined Open Wings on Swoop's back, or maybe he should have flown out on the winds—

_This isn't always your burden, _Draco said into his mind, and tightened his hold on Harry's shoulder. _And you have to remember, there's no reason for Primrose to welcome you. She might think of us as enemies, more so than the other humans she could meet on Hurricane._

Harry hesitated, then shrugged agreement to that. It wasn't something he _liked _to admit, but yes, Primrose hadn't left them on the best of terms. There was little that they could offer her, but she knew how to survive on her own. She was the one who had shown them how to catch the small, rabbit-like creatures who haunted the grass on the southern plains.

Open Wings held up his taloned hands wide, in front of Primose, and then brought them gently down. It was a gesture Harry had taught him, to show that he had no weapons. Primrose leaned further forwards at it, and then turned and seemed to stare at the green meadow, what she could see of it, beyond Swoop's back.

_Can she see us? _Draco murmured, as though he didn't want to speak aloud and possibly alert Primrose that they were there.

_I don't think so, _Harry said. _Or she would have started towards us before now._

But perhaps Primrose had caught a glimpse of them after all, because she suddenly started, sat back, and clenched her hand on the reins or whatever else might control her ray, jerking her head a little. The ray flew straight up like it was swimming and arched over Swoop's head, towards the meadow.

Swoop rose at once, his wings beating sideways. Harry had seen the riders perform several such maneuvers during their first visit to the meadow, when the riders had no way of knowing that they weren't enemies, but he had to admit that he hadn't ever seen something this graceful. Swoop caught up with Primrose's ray and hovered in front of it again, politely, Harry thought, as though Primrose hadn't just tried to get past him.

Others were pouring around Swoop, though, and towards the meadow. And Harry had to admit that sending one scout out by himself, no matter how experienced, probably wasn't a good idea.

"All right, let's go," he told Draco, and used winds to scoop Draco and himself off their feet and into the air before Draco could object. Not that Draco planned to, as he told Harry in a lofty tone in the back of his mind as they flew towards the meeting in midair. He would have been upset if Harry had tried to leave him behind to "protect" him or something else equally stupid.

Harry smiled at him. _Well, good. Then you can help me think of some things that we can say to Primrose when we get there. _

_That I'm glad she found her own version of the bird? _

Harry rolled his eyes, and touched the bond with Draco in a way that made Draco quiver with laughter. They soared on.

* * *

Primrose had done well for herself, Draco saw as they got closer, and not just because she had a creature of her own to ride on now. She looked taller than since the last time they had seen her, more tanned and far more confident. She held small leashes of white and grey cloth that seemed to run around the manta's lumpish head to the mouth underneath it.

She did stare in a gratifying way when she saw who was coming towards her, Draco admitted. He glanced at the other humans riding the mantas behind her, but didn't see anyone he recognized. Considering some of the former Death Eaters they knew were on Hurricane, that was a relief rather than otherwise.

"Harry Potter, at the center of everything strange that happens, whether or not this is our world," Primrose muttered, and shook her head. "I should have known."

"We came north and made our home here," Harry said, and gestured towards Open Wings, who bowed over Swoop's neck. The choice of him as the one to negotiate with the humans and mummidade had been coincidence as much as anything else, Draco knew; he had been the one with the courage to approach them when they appeared on the borders of the meadow. But he had worked out well as a diplomatist. "We were in a vulnerable location in the south, and the country here is more sheltered and more earth-like. We made an alliance with the riders and used that to defeat the creature that threatened them."

"The creature whose presence the thunderrin have felt," Primrose said, and laid her hand on the back of the manta's neck, leaving no doubt the thunderrin were the mantas. "They knew that something immensely powerful was in the north, and then it wasn't anywhere. We came to investigate what had done that, and whether it was likely to be a threat to us."

Harry held her eyes. "Not unless you attack us first."

Primrose stared at him, and then at Draco, and then back and forth between them and Open Wings, as if in doing that, she might find the answer to the problem Harry had apparently just handed her.

_Well, she's not wrong, since we all defeated Bodiless together, _Harry murmured.

Draco rolled his eyes a little. Yes, they had all done it together, but Harry had been the focal point, and their bond the thing that had drawn the other humans into the battle. He wished that Harry would remember that sometimes. He didn't want to be the leader anymore, but at least he could claim the glory that was due to him.

_It's all yours, _Harry said, and went on speaking. "Yes, we defeated Bodiless. It took us, and the mummidade, and the riders, all of us, to do it. And after that, they were glad enough to let us share their territory. It's safer here."

"You already said that," Primrose murmured. She was still staring as though her eyes would fall out of her head. She glanced back as though to make sure that the other humans who rode the thunderrin couldn't hear, and then leaned nearer. "You—you know what this means?"

"I know it means that we can have peace between us," Harry said, holding her gaze. His calm voice made him all the more impressive, Draco thought. Here was someone who didn't have to storm and shout and bluster to express his power. He hoped that Primrose was thinking the same thing. It would be tiresome to start another battle just when they had won the first one. "Because you probably have your own settlements and your own safety under the protection of the thunderrin, and that means you don't need _our _land or our allies."

"I would have said it was impossible," Primrose said, and shook her head a little. "We thought you might be something that could threaten us. That's true."

"But ridiculous," Draco said. He had been willing to keep quiet and let Harry handle this, but Harry hadn't been blunt enough for her. "Don't you see? You have everything you need, or you should, and nothing else that you need to attack us for. And if you _do _decide to attack, then we can obliterate you."

"The thunderrin have magic you know nothing about." Primrose's hands both rested on the ugly creature's head now.

"No doubt," Harry said. "But why should we go to war? We have no quarrel with you. We let you walk away when you wanted to, and we didn't persecute you. You seem determined to continue an argument of some sort. Why?"

Primrose gritted her teeth. "You don't find it threatening to know that you _exist_, and could turn that magic on us?"

"Do you have people that stupid with you?" Draco asked. "That they want a war, or they want to control the whole of Hurricane? It can't be done, anyway. It's way too vast. We don't have any reason to hurt you unless you hurt us. That's what we're trying to say."

Primrose eyed him. "It didn't sound like what you were saying."

"That's it, then," Harry cut in. "We have bonds with the mummidade and the riders." He nodded to Open Wings again, who bowed over Swoop's neck again, and sat there as though he had no intention of glancing away from Primrose for a moment. Draco wondered if that was because she was speaking, or because he'd identified her as the leader, or because she seemed the best-suited to fighting on her creature. "We're content to stay here and make a home. You don't need our space, our land, or our allies. Why attack?"

Primrose half-closed her eyes. "There were some of us who hoped we were the most powerful people on Hurricane, now that we've found the thunderrin."

"Get used to disappointment," Draco told her cheerfully.

Harry threw him a filthy look—though not as filthy as some of the ones they'd used on each other last night, and which Draco thoughtfully remembered for him, and which made Harry flush—and turned back to Primrose. "What can the thunderrin do that's so special?" he asked. "And remember that attacking is going to bring a lot more riders down on you than you have riders and thunderrin."

Primrose nodded and guided her creature backwards with a few taps of her fingers. Then she shut her eyes, bowed her head, and held up her hands.

She vanished in a gleaming cocoon of light, illusion. Draco knew that, but it was still unnerving to see a Hungarian Horntail dragon turn its head towards him and hiss menacingly.

"The thunderrin can create glamours and illusions based on anything that's in someone else's mind," Primrose's voice said, and the dragon vanished. She was looking at them with a light that seemed to shine through her skin as well as her eyes. Draco nodded a little. He was _sure _that he had never seen her look this confident when she was still part of their camp. That meant that venturing away from them and into the wild had been the best thing she could do for herself. "We thought—well, we thought that any enemies we met could be defeated because the thunderrin would know what they feared most and be able to create that image."

"A simplistic way to do it," Draco murmured, and smiled sweetly back at Primrose when she scowled at him. Harry dug his elbow into Draco's ribs and his mind into the bond, and that was harder to ignore.

"It would have protected us," Primrose said, and then turned back and eyed Harry. "Although maybe not from someone like you."

Harry shook his head. "We've told you the conditions of staying on good terms with us already. Are you _really _going to throw that away because you want some mythical greatest power?"

Primrose sniffed a little and touched the sides of her robes as though she was going to hold them up and keep them from trailing through dirt. "Not now. But as long as you're sure that the creature we felt die can't come back…"

"It can't," Harry said, and then looked behind her at the other humans riding on the thunderrin. "And frankly, I want to hear the story of how you met them, but I'm getting tired of hanging up in the air here. Come down?"

Draco concealed a snort. Harry's magic supported and sustained their presence in the air, and was less likely to get tired than Swoop's wings. He wanted to make a point to Primrose, one that would work better if she saw how many allies they had and the kind of home they were building in the meadow.

_Yes, I am, _Harry told him. _But she might guess what I'm doing if you make too many loud noises. Shut up, please._

_Yes, master, _Draco shot back, and rolled his eyes. Harry's rolled an instant behind his, and then he turned and smiled at Primrose, who was watching them both intently.

"Do you have the authority to extend an invitation like that to me?" she demanded. "I don't know if the rest of the people that follow you would like it…"

"I notice that no one else has tried to interrupt you," Harry said, and nodded at the humans on the thunderrin again. "I have as much power to extend the favor as you do to accept it."

Primrose smiled at that. "It's _thrilling _being an authority," she murmured, which could have been agreement with Harry or just something she wanted them to know about her. "All right. Let's go down."

Harry made a little noise of agreement and dived right behind her, as the thunderrin flapped lazily towards the meadow. Draco followed in Harry's wake, of course, and the other thunderrin came behind them, and Swoop soared in front of everyone, with Open Wings sitting upright and proud on him.

Open Wings did glance back, once, over his shoulder, with his head twisted to the side in the bird-like gesture that Draco had come to think of as watching a worm to see how much it thrashed. "Best?" he asked, another of the rider words that Draco had come to recognize.

Harry, his gaze focused ahead, didn't appear to notice, but Draco caught Open Wings's eyes and nodded reassuringly. Open Wings faced forwards again, his talons curling down and hard into the feathers of Swoop's neck.

So, with the whole cavalcade trailing behind them and another war averted, they came home.

* * *

Harry could feel the stares when the thunderrin began to land in the meadow. They came down weirdly, for one thing, their flap-wings spread out, and then bounced on their bellies a little, before settling back on their tails and extending their wings down to the grass. Harry wasn't sure if they could really move on the ground, but it was disturbing to watch them mimic the postures of four-legged animals when they didn't _have _legs.

But more than that, these were strangers, and most of the Weasleys had good reason to fear strangers now. The bonding that had happened between them when they fought Bodiless, Harry had learned, had connected them more closely than ever. There were fewer arguments—even Bill was less abrasive than he had been—and people spent more time, willingly, with the mummidade and the riders. Harry had thought it was a good thing. Now they could face the dangers of a world like Hurricane without being torn apart by their internal divisions.

It _had _been a good thing. Maybe. Now Andromeda huddled next to Arthur, and Molly, who usually opened her arms to everyone, didn't look disposed to welcome the strangers. Harry bit his lip, wondering if his invitation to Primrose to land had indeed been a bit too hasty.

Then Teddy broke away from Andromeda and raced towards Harry, his arms uplifted and his face shining. He had eyes only for Harry, it seemed, although Harry did catch him glancing curiously at the thunderrin once or twice.

"Harry!"

Harry knelt down and picked Teddy up, cradling him, and grunting a little when Teddy's feet wrapped around his ribs. Draco placed his hand on Harry's shoulder, his eyes steady as they turned to Primrose. Harry turned to face her, too, wondering if he would look like a weaker target while he was holding his godson.

If anything, Primrose was regarding him with a faint smile. There were no children with her, Harry noticed. Of course, it was possible that the human group she'd joined had some and just didn't see the need to bring them on what they had thought might be a battle mission.

"Nice to see you again," Primrose told Teddy, and faced Harry. "Is there any chance that we could get some food?"

"Sure," Harry said, and glanced over his shoulder at the others, daring them to disagree. Molly sighed, and Ron and Hermione pushed forwards with some of the cooked flesh that the riders fed on, from the antelope-like animals that ran the meadow. Harry smiled and faced Primrose. "Unless the thunderrin can't eat meat?" he added.

"They're predators," Primrose said, and stretched out her hand for the nearest plate. "Thanks, Granger. Good to see you again."

"You, too," Hermione said, while she looked at the thunderrin with a devouring gaze. Harry had to hide a smile. Hermione probably wished she had made a discovery as grand as the one that Primrose had.

_She was part of our expeditions to the north. I think she can be bloody grateful that she got to see as much as she did._

Harry rolled his eyes a little as Draco spoke, and watched to see how the thunderrin ate. Apparently they caught the strips of meat that Primrose and the others tossed them on the edges of their wings, forming a shape like a diamond, and then brought it to those mouths in the underside of their faces, sucking it in.

"It's a long story, how we met them," Primrose said, meeting his eyes. She was leaning a little forwards on the balls of her feet, but Harry didn't think she was about to attack. He nodded grudgingly, and she smiled at him and moved back a little, pushing her hair behind her ears. "Do you want to hear it?"

"What else did he bring you here for?" Draco muttered, and added to Harry in the bond, _Doesn't anyone else who's with her ever talk?_

"_Want _some lunch," Teddy said clearly. He tried to reach for the plate as it was handed past him.

Harry gave him a piece of the meat and sat down in the grass with him while he slobbered it up. Teddy always liked messier food, and the messier the better. "All right. Why don't you tell us?"

Primrose sat down with him, and smiled, and began.


	3. The Thunderrin

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_Chapter Three—The Thunderrin_

"I went a long way south when I left you," Primrose said, hunching over a little as one of the thunderrin nearly dripped juice on her from the slice of meat it was holding. Draco smiled in spite of himself at that—well, all right, not really in spite of _himself_, but in spite of the quelling look that Harry directed at his back. "I didn't want to go anywhere near the places where the birds hunted, and I had noticed they often flew north when they turned away from human camps."

Harry blinked behind him, Draco could tell. _Nice of her to tell us that, _Draco remarked down the bond.

_Hush, Draco, _Harry said, but Draco knew that he was reconsidering some of the things he had believed about Primrose. That was all to the good, Draco thought. If she thought she could show up to face an unknown enemy and find someone _weak _there, something that would allow her to remain the ultimate power on Hurricane, then she deserved to be discomfited and made to think again.

_It won't do us any good to quarrel with her._

_I think we should merely remind her that we deserve to be considered as real, too, and a challenge to her power, _Draco said innocently. He saw Harry roll his eyes before he turned away, but Draco was confident that he had made his point.

"I saw a thunderrin a few days out from your camp." Primrose's voice hushed, and she reached back to put one hand on the wing-flap of the one she'd ridden. "I didn't know what it was at first. It looked like a cloud, and I thought there must be a light behind it to make it shine that way. But then it turned towards me, moving across the wind, and—" She straightened her shoulders. "I'm not ashamed to admit I ran."

_Really? _Draco asked Harry. _She looks ashamed to admit it._

"The thunderrin followed me," Primrose said, and her tone had become so dreamy, her eyes so unfixed, that Draco didn't think she noticed the way Harry poked him in the back. Draco rubbed the small of his back and sniffed. If Harry wanted to be that violent in front of their new allies, then Draco reckoned it was his prerogative. "That terrified me more. Now I know that it could sense my mind and wanted to know what it was. I was the first thinking creature it had seen—the first one that wasn't a thunderrin, I mean."

"They can sense your thoughts?" Harry asked, raising his eyebrows. "For something more than creating illusions to match your fears, I mean? I wasn't sure, they seemed so silent."

Primrose smiled thinly. "It's true that they can't make sounds aloud, the way that your riders can," she said, gaze passing briefly over Open Wings. Draco wondered if she knew how unpleasant she sounded when she talked about "your riders," as if the beasts they rode were in fact Harry and the other humans in the camp. "But they know, yes. If you haven't felt the touch of their minds yet, it's probably because they don't recognize you as thinking beings."

"But they recognized you right away?" Draco muttered. He could not have helped himself if Harry was standing ready with a spear to poke into his back. It was an inconsistency in Primrose's story, anyway, that the thunderrin had felt her thoughts but couldn't sense the thoughts of any other human.

Somehow, although her nose wasn't very long or prominent, Primrose looked down it at him. "They recognized someone who was paying attention to them," she said coolly. "And someone who could bond with them. It's possible that your own bond shuts your mind to the touch of their thoughts."

Draco grinned at her. "Well, let's see." He turned to the great, billowing creature "seated" beside Primrose. "Can it reach out and touch my mind now, if I'm trying to leave my thoughts open to it?"

Primrose glared a little, but Draco didn't care. They were the ones who had come north as invaders, expecting to find someone else here, since they had felt the destruction of Bodiless. They were the ones who had been arrogant enough to think they would always have the advantage in every situation. They deserved to be punished a little for that arrogance.

And Draco still found it creepy that they hadn't heard a sound out of either the thunderrin _or _the humans who had ridden this far on their backs. Surely the bonding hadn't taken away the humans' tongues. What kind of people were they, the ones who would trust Primrose to lead them and not even try to contribute their own stories of how they had bonded with the thunderrin?

"I suppose it would be a worthwhile experiment," Primrose finally said, when it became clear that Harry wasn't going to stop Draco and no one else was moving forwards to interfere in either capacity. She laid her hand on the thunderrin's wing and glanced up with the first expression of trust and hope and love Draco had ever seen on her face, presumably asking it to try and speak to Draco. Draco thought her sickening.

Harry poked Draco in the back again at the same time as Draco felt something creeping along the outside of their bond, something thick and slimy, like mold dripping down the wall of a bathroom. He flinched once, then tried to hold himself still and receptive.

_It must feel different to Primrose, _he told Harry. _No one could endure this sensation all the time if they felt it the way it really is._

He used the knowledge that Harry had rolled his eyes to strengthen himself as he tried to crack his instinctive defenses and open them to the thunderrin. One long, slimy tendril dipped inside and brushed against his thoughts.

What Draco encountered was _speed, _thoughts like ripping winds, brief access to a mental sky full of racing clouds and strange colors that had no names. He gasped aloud, and felt the brief exhilaration that he sometimes did when Harry's winds were first lifting him off the ground, the shudder in the middle of his thoughts that combined the fear of falling and the sure knowledge that Harry wouldn't let him fall.

Then the sensation vanished. Draco opened his eyes slowly, luxuriously, taking his time. Primrose still sat with one hand on the wing of her thunderrin, staring at him.

"I felt you," she whispered. "He was the one who touched you, but I felt you in the middle of our bond." She shivered and huddled a little closer to her thunderrin.

"Maybe that will remind you that you're not the ultimate power here," Draco said. He would have said it silently most of the time, but he saw no reason to let Primrose rest on her confidence, and the best way to address that was now, when a crack had already appeared in it.

Primrose tilted her head back, biting her lip ferociously. "I didn't think it would be like that," she said. "And…I think I felt some of your bond at the same time."

"Oh?" Harry asked mildly, clasping the middle of Draco's neck. Draco became aware that he had started to rise to his feet. He didn't even know what he would have done. His impulse was to punch Primrose, but he couldn't, not in front of her people and not with that giant, rippling thunderrin there. But he sat back down and growled at her only a little.

"Yes," Primrose said. "How can you _stand _that? The feeling of being bound to someone with cords that tight? Every emotion, every thought sensed and shared. You might even pick up on things the other person didn't intend you to feel."

"Isn't your bond like that?" Draco asked. He couldn't say, from his brief glimpse of it, but most of the bonds they'd met on Hurricane, including the one between the riders and their beasts, and between Ginny and her bird, seemed to be connected closely enough that of course they felt and thought what their partner thought and felt. The mummidade were close enough to become one person when they joined new individuals to an already existing pair.

Primrose shook her head furiously. "They invite us into their sky," she said. "Into the place where we can understand them. We can go there or leave again any time we want. And it's the same with the rest of us," she added, finally jerking her head back at the other humans who had come with her as if she was just now deigning to notice them. "We don't need to speak aloud when we're with the thunderrin, because we can understand their silence, and it's comfortable for us."

Draco grunted a little. That was less creepy than some of the explanations he'd imagined for their silence, including that they were essentially puppets for the human who had bonded to the leader of the thunderrin. But although Primrose might have seized the lead, he thought, studying the calm faces staring at them now, perhaps that was less important than she thought.

"Do the thunderrin live in groups?" Granger asked. Draco became aware of her quill scratching for the first time, and rolled his eyes. Of course she was writing it all down. He wondered if she had been all this time and he hadn't noticed, or if she'd had to wait until quill and parchment could be brought to her.

"Yes," said Primrose. "And no. They come together when they sense that there's danger." She looked pointedly back at the thunderrin dotted all over the meadow like trapped clouds. "They also want to talk to each other sometimes and help each other, the way any humans would. But they usually eat apart, and now that they've bonded to us, they feel less loneliness than they used to, so there are fewer pure thunderrin gatherings."

"Why do they bond?" Granger asked, voice as crisp as though she was asking someone about a new Potions recipe. "Is that something they did before you found them, and did they bond to others of their own species? Do they want to bond, or did it happen naturally when they discovered a human mind they liked?"

"I don't know all the answers to those questions," Primrose said, and her small scowl had come back. "But I do know they bond because they like the feeling of our minds. I don't think they need it for safety, or they would have done it before now, when this creature that you destroyed was existing and could have destroyed _them_."

_Well, that's encouraging, isn't it? _Harry asked Draco. _She at least knows that bonding would have kept them safe against Bodiless, and no one had to tell her that. _

_Why are you so determined that she be good? _Draco asked, exasperated almost beyond his endurance. Even the glimpse of the thunderrin's mind that he'd shared with Harry wasn't worth Primrose's arrogance and the way she constantly tried to change things so that they were centered back on her. _We got along fine without her. We would get along fine without her and her new allies now, or we could fight them if we had to._

_I'm so tired of war._

The avalanche of emotions that came pouring along with that made Draco wince. Weariness like mud, and bleak despair like mountain tops crumbling, and anger like Bodiless itself. Draco swallowed, and wondered if perhaps Harry could have used more time to recover from the war against the Dark Lord before he went chasing off to Hurricane to face the challenges here.

_I don't want another war, _Harry said, and modified the pressure he was putting on the bond a little, so that now it was just like looking across a flat and pounded grey plain of mud. _That's all. Pandering to her pride for a little while is worth it if we can get her out of here without starting a conflict._

Draco shrugged. After what Harry had just handed him, he would be a fool, in a way, if he disagreed. But he did wish there was some way of preserving Harry's pride, along with Primrose's.

"I learned about others who had bonded with the thunderrin after I had bonded with mine," Primrose said. Her eyes were traveling back and forth between Harry and Draco's faces as if she sensed that they were upset, or at least that one of them was, but didn't yet know what to do about it. "I didn't know what to say to them at first. Should we band together? Would it be better to go on existing apart?

"But I needed other humans as companions, too, so in the end we started living together. It wasn't easy, but I found people who knew what plants of the plains were edible, along with me knowing how to catch those shadow-rabbits. We worked together, pooled our knowledge. In the end, we started to form a society that can eat well."

"Would you mind sharing that knowledge with us?" Harry asked. "We still don't have much in the way of plants that grow on Hurricane that we can eat. Most of our food comes from Earth plains, or the meat that the riders are good enough to harvest and share with us."

Primrose had a stiff little smile that Draco didn't remember seeing on her face when she was sheltering with them in their camp to the south. Of course, she had spent most of the time that she was with them terrified out of her wits, which Draco reckoned probably had something to do with that. "What will you give us in return?"

"I have no idea what you would need." Harry kept his stance relaxed, easy, open, and the way he leaned forwards to look at Primrose was confiding in the extreme. "Do you need more meat? The secrets of bonding with different species? An introduction to the mummidade, because they might help you in the south if you know more about them?"

"You said that we can't have what would be most valuable," Primrose said, raking a hand through her hair and leaning her arm on the wing of her thunderrin again. "The knowledge that we're the supreme power."

Harry half-closed his eyes. Draco thought he was praying for patience at first, but the thrum that came through the bond didn't resemble that.

And soon, he knew.

All around him and Harry, the whirling winds began to rise. They encircled Harry, singing in Draco's hair, too, until he thought the pressure would make his eardrums burst. He winced as he covered his ears.

"When Bodiless died," Harry said, without raising his voice or getting up from where he sat, "we discovered that he was the gateway through which the magic of Hurricane flows. It comes from somewhere else. He wasn't its _source, _just the door that it was using to get into the world and reach the other various species." He opened his eyes and turned his head, focusing so hard on Primrose that Draco flinched reflexively for her. "I inherited that position as the gateway, maybe because I was one of the people in the primary bond that played a part in defeating him."

Draco snorted a bit. It was at least comforting to see that Harry would claim credit for himself if it meant defeating Primrose's pretensions.

Harry kicked him a little down the bond, and continued, "I don't think there is anything on Hurricane more powerful than that. Than that position, I mean, not that something else couldn't be more powerful than me. If you wanted it, then you should have come up here earlier and defeated Bodiless." He smiled fiercely at Primrose. "As it was, you came north too late. Sorry."

Primrose stared at him in silence. Draco didn't think it was the silence of disbelief, especially with the way she leaned against her thunderrin and closed her eyes for a second. Then she snapped her eyes open again and shook her head a little. "You understand that I want some confirmation of this?" she asked.

Harry shrugged. "I don't know what confirmation I can give you that you'd believe or accept," he said, lounging back against Draco as though Draco was his own thunderrin. Draco considered that for a second, and decided that it wasn't as bad as it could have been. "You've already seen my wind magic, and I haven't increased in power. What would convince you?"

Primrose sat silent, staring down at the meat in her hand that she hadn't finished. Her thunderrin nudged her with one rippling part of its body that looked like a wing at some times and like a part of its back at others, and Primrose started and handed up what remained of the food. The thunderrin ate it with a gulp that was audible, the first noise that any of them had made except the booming and flapping of their wings on the wind. Draco concealed a snicker. At least _someone _in their partnership was concerned with something more valuable than keeping the ridiculous amount of prestige Primrose had apparently decided should be hers.

"You must know something about magic if you're the gateway," Primrose said, looking up. "But you were surprised when the thunderrin came here."

"I hadn't seen them before," Harry said calmly. "I have to interpret what I'm getting in terms of what I'm familiar with. It's like trying to describe a color that you've never seen before in terms of blue and green. You could _show _it to people once you knew it, but you can only give unsatisfactory descriptions of it until then."

Primrose nodded. "But now you know what the thunderrin look like, so you ought to be able to describe them."

"Maybe," Harry said. Draco could see the way his eyes narrowed, and sent back a pulse that he hoped warned Harry to be cautious. He didn't know what Primrose wanted any more than Harry did, but it was suspicious that she had suddenly thought of a test that would satisfy her.

"So tell me how many thunderrin cross the southern plains," Primrose said. "That would convince me that you can reach out and feel them, feel their magic."

Harry rolled his eyes. "And do _you_ know how many there are?" he asked. "You said that the thunderrin don't even stay together all that often. Yours might not be able to tell you the number. And what about the ones who've moved and are over the ocean or in the eastern plains? And south of what? The camp we were in? The place you came from?"

Primrose's lips pinched shut. "Why should I trust what you say, if you can't prove it?" she asked.

"Come up with a test that I could fail or pass, and I'll be happy to tell you anything you like," Harry said, although Draco heard the brittle breaking in the back of his voice. He didn't blame Harry at all. It seemed as though it was impossible to get Primrose to shut up and leave, and this would be another failure.

"I can't," Primrose admitted, after a few minutes of tapping her nails against the ground and apparently thinking, although Draco didn't think the activity in her head ran to any great purpose. "Every time I think of something, there's always a possible objection." She frowned and peered at Harry. "What convinced you that you were the gateway?"

"I can strengthen other people when I'm nearby," Harry said. "And change the way that the power flows, maybe." He would have said more, but Draco rested his hand on his arm. Harry paused, then said down the bond, _You're right. I do think that I could weaken people as well as give them new gifts if I altered the flow of the magic enough, but there's no need to give Primrose ideas._

_What you said might already be enough to do that, _Draco said, with a wary glance at Primrose, whose face shone.

"Can you?" Primrose asked. "That's _marvelous. _It means that you could give us weapons when the storm comes." She glanced into the meadow, her eyes lingering on what Draco thought for a second were Granger's greenhouses, but when he turned his head and tried to look as she was looking, he saw that she had focused on Andromeda's silver houses. "Or places to shelter. Or weapons against the birds." She cocked her head at Harry. "You're right, I didn't want to believe you at first. It means that we're less powerful, and I promised my people and the thunderrin that we would be the strongest so we didn't have to be frightened ever again. But if you can give us the means of being strong…"

"I don't know exactly how it works," Harry said. "When I was around Draco before, he cut holes in the wall of a tent, but that's—I didn't intend for him to, exactly. I still need to learn my way around this, and figure out what's possible and what's not."

"But that's the nature of the bargain you could make with us," Primrose insisted, and this time she leaned near enough to almost fall in Harry's lap. Draco bristled, but Harry reached out and ran his hand up and down Draco's arm from the shoulder, which Draco had to admit was soothing. "If you want us to leave. Promise that you'll help strengthen us the way that you're helping to strengthen the camp."

Harry stood up stiffly. Draco thought he was the only one who knew the turmoil in Harry's mind, much less its cause. Harry hadn't wanted to be the leader, had hated it when Granger told him he was the gateway to the wild magic because it might put him back in charge, and now here Primrose was forcing that view on him.

"Stop it," Draco told her harshly.

Primrose stared at him. "Stop what? What do you mean?"

"Stop acting as though you have the power to force us to do anything," Draco said. The bond between him and Harry was as tough as strung silver wire, but he didn't think that Harry would turn around and stop him. Good. Draco could say what everyone else was too cowardly to. "You're saying that Harry has to help you so you'll go away. Or what? You'll stay here? You'll fight us? What right do you have to do that?"

"I was part of your group, once," Primrose began, her voice soft in the way Draco had heard his Aunt Bellatrix's go when she was plotting murder.

"And now you're not," Draco said. "You walked away of your own free choice. We let you go. Why do you get to come in and tell us how we should live? Why do you get to threaten to bring war on us with your thunderrin? What's wrong with you going back south and living the way you want to live, while we stay here and do as we please?"

Primrose's face was changing in complicated ways. Draco wondered if she was in communication with her thunderrin, and wished he could listen in only because he wanted to know what mad thing she would do next. He really didn't care to feel that slime in his own mind again. "Because we are together, and armed," she said at last.

"With magic," Draco said, leaning forwards enough that Primrose reared back a little. "The same way we are. Are you really going to turn this into a war? Will you insist on that? Because we fought a war with Bodiless, and we're bloody tired of antics like yours."

And that was how they sat, with Primrose staring at them, and Draco knew the next moment could turn into a battle that would harm them. But he had said his words, spoken his mind, and through the bond came Harry's soft, tense whisper of gratitude.


	4. Defusing Tension

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_Chapter Four—Defusing Tension_

Harry turned around. Primrose had risen to her feet, her hand nearly crushing the edge of the rippling wing that her thunderrin extended towards her. She looked as though she was going to pull down towers with the force of her rage, or at least that she could. Harry started calling winds around him.

"I've said nothing outrageous," Draco said flatly.

Primrose turned on him. Harry got the winds to the point where they encircled both his and Draco's heads in whipping crowns, and caught Primrose's eye warningly. If she thought she would get away with hurting Draco, she should think again. The chances were excellent that Harry would simply snatch Draco into the air before her blow could land and blast her for daring to try, and she had to know that.

After a single, tense quiver of Primrose's nostrils, she turned her head away as though she had never contemplated hurting Draco. Harry held his hand out without taking his eyes from Primrose. Draco stood up, and started to say something.

Then Teddy, who had squirmed out of Harry's arms a while ago and wandered over to Andromeda, came back. "Pick me _up_," he said.

Harry did. He knew that he probably couldn't count on purely human reactions from Primrose and the people who had come with her, but holding a child ought to show he was no threat. And Hermione was clearing her throat now, stepping in. Harry kind of wished she had before, even though remaining silent through this stupid conversation had shown that she, at least, trusted Draco.

_And the Weasleys must, too. _Not even Bill had said anything.

"What he means," Hermione told Primrose, through what was supposedly a smile, "is that you don't have ultimate power here, and there's no reason to start a war over an idea. Why would you? So you won't have ultimate power. Does that matter? What is there on Hurricane that you need it to protect yourselves from?"

"The likes of you," Primrose said, and turned to Harry, as though she assumed that only one person could speak for his group, too, just the way she did for hers. "What happens if you tire of us and attack us someday?" The thunderrin rippled beside her, and small flecks of purple and green raced over its skin. Harry assumed that meant something, but so far, Primrose hadn't been the best one to explain what.

"So you need the power to protect you from a war that wouldn't have started if you hadn't come north," Hermione said. "Power to protect you from our irritation that will only be stirred up by you talking about having power. Yes, that makes sense. Of course."

Primrose kept stubbornly facing Harry. "You have enough and to spare," she said. "You could choose to share, but you choose not to."

Harry studied her. Primrose shuddered a little and lifted her head higher, while her hand closed hard enough on the wing of the thunderrin that Harry thought it would hurt. But the wing went on moving and melting and flowing and changing as though stirred by the wind. Maybe it didn't hurt with flesh that rubbery.

_Will you _say _something? _Draco snarled in the back of his head. _Not stand there and muse about thunderrin._

_I don't have to say anything, _Harry said simply. _Hermione is making the most sense, and sooner or later Primrose will either have to answer her or leave. I want to show that other people can defend us, and decide things, and that I'm not a leader anymore._

Teddy turned around and hugged him. "Uncle Harry come with me," he said.

"I will, Teddy," Harry said, and put him down on the ground. Draco's hand came to rest in the small of his back. Harry smiled over his shoulder at Primrose, said, "Listen to what she says. I'll only tear you apart if you hurt someone," and followed Teddy towards a bowl filled with water that one of the riders had set up for him. The bowl was delicate glass, Transfigured by Ron from an old bony carcass the riders had already harvested, but it had been the rider—called Brightheart—who had shown them how to take certain kinds of water, only near the shores of the pond it was scooped from, and include some water-weeds, too.

"Look!" Teddy said, crouching down beside Harry and pointing at the bowl.

Harry knelt beside him and put his hands on Teddy's shoulders. And maybe it was some property of Teddy's wild magic reaching out to him, or the bond of love and affection he shared with his godson, or just because he was concentrating on this instead of something else for the first time in a long time, but he could see what Teddy saw. Small, delicate fish writhed and danced through the water. Some were transparent streaks of gold with two heads. Harry saw others with legs that seemed purely ornamental, since angel-like wings guided them. And the largest one, which Harry couldn't see until his nose was pressed against the bowl because it was nearly the color of the water, was studded with silver and gleaming eyes like a necklace.

"It's pretty," Teddy said, leaning back to beam at him.

Harry leaned back, against Draco and so he could look into Teddy's face, and kissed Teddy on the forehead. "It is," he agreed. _We forget how pretty, sometimes._

Draco pressed again, to let Harry know that he was agreed with, or forgiven, or whatever the right word should be.

* * *

"They're gone."

Draco held his tongue. Of _course _they were gone, he and Harry weren't stupid and the sudden departure of twenty thunderrin from the meadow was hard to miss, but Granger had to say obvious things like this. It was prat of the contract with reality that allowed her to go on existing.

_Be nice, _Harry said down the bond, and Draco tilted his head in concession. It was easier because Teddy had gone to sleep in his lap, one hand still stretched out towards the bowl. Harder to get into arguments of all kinds when you would wake up the little boy, and Granger's face did soften as she looked at him.

_She's only going to be here a short time, and I haven't said anything yet, _Draco told Harry, watching the way little muscles twitched in Granger's cheeks. _Once she begins, it's going to be full flood._

Harry snorted his agreement, just as the words burst out of Granger. "And she really had no idea how politics works, _at all. _I think she's powerful because she bonded with a thunderrin who's stronger than the others, somehow. Maybe the leader of the groups the thunderrin live in. But either way, it's _impossible _to think that she can control all the others, and it would be stupid to try. She doesn't even know how many thunderrin are on the southern plains. How can she control all of them?"

Draco nodded enthusiastically, then paused to make sure he hadn't woken Teddy up. It was easy to agree with Granger when she was talking about how stupid Primrose was.

"She must have some way that she thinks makes sense to her," Harry said, shaking his head. "But it doesn't much matter. What did she say when she went away? Did she threaten to return?"

"She said there was nothing here she wanted, except power." Granger snorted and sat down next to them, reaching out to touch Teddy's back. Draco hissed warningly, and she rolled her eyes at him, but pulled her hand back. "You'd think that safety would be important. That's her real goal, behind all the longing for power."

"Do you think she faces some threat in the south that would make safety imperative?" Harry asked. "That's what I kept thinking, when she was nattering on about it."

"I don't know," Granger said, with a shake of her head. "I wish that I'd been the one who tried to feel the thunderrin getting into my head." She turned to Draco. "Was it evil, or did it just feel unpleasant?"

"Imagine being slapped in the face with an armful of wet moss," Draco told her. "It was like that."

Granger shuddered a little, but, being Granger, didn't have the sense most people were born with. "We have to be able to find out _something _about them," she said, and turned to Harry.

Harry shook his head before she could start in again. "This new power I have is a lot more limited than you think," he told Granger flatly. "I couldn't tell anything for sure about the thunderrin until I saw one. For that matter, Bodiless couldn't just learn the best way to defeat us when we appeared on Hurricane. The knowledge I have might be immense, but I had no idea thunderrin existed until today. I don't know where they come from, how they work together or if they are, why they want to bond."

"But you have the best chance of finding out." Granger was leaning forwards almost to toppling point, probably not even realizing she was doing it.

"Why?" Harry asked her. "Because I can fly? Well, I couldn't outmaneuver all the thunderrin in the air. And I have winds that can tell me things, but they can't know what conversations are important all by themselves. The best I could do was spread them over the southern plains and tell them to report every human conversation they heard to me. Then I'd be busy all day doing nothing but listen to those. It doesn't sound very productive to me."

Granger sat back with a little frown and her arms folded. "There must be _something _we can do," she muttered.

"There is," Draco told her gently. "Realize that we can't learn everything at once, and wait to see what Primrose and her people do next."

Granger turned her head to gape at him. "That's not a plan. It makes us passive! We're supposed to wait on her to do something?"

Harry was the one who snorted, sparing Draco the necessity. He leaned further back and wrapped his arms around Teddy, who muttered and snuggled his nose into Draco's neck. He watched as Harry smiled at Granger.

"You were the one who was proposing peace before, speaking reasonably," Harry murmured. "You wanted to negotiate. Now it sounds like you're the one who's going to bring war to us, or something."

"We can't let them get away with threatening us," Granger said, folding her arms. "I think Primrose is paranoid. If she thinks we're weak, then she'll attack us just to make sure that we can't become a threat later."

"That makes no sense," Draco said. "Because she also thinks that we're more powerful than she is, and that seemed to be the thing that was making her act so mental. It can't be both."

"For a paranoid person, it can," Granger told him, voice diamond-hard. "And if you can't see that, and you're going to sit around smugly talking about how this is acceptable—"

"No one's being smug about anything, except you." Harry didn't even touch the bond in warning; what made Draco lower his voice and speak with force instead of volume was the thought of waking Teddy up. "I wanted to get rid of her. You were the one who stayed to negotiate with her. And now you're acting just like her, saying we have to do a certain thing to help, or we're wrong."

Granger blinked and touched her throat as though surprised by the words that had emerged. "I reckon that I am acting a little like her," she muttered.

"A _lot _like her," Draco told her, but Teddy stirred, and this time, Harry reached out to touch his elbow, although not through the bond. So Draco sniffed and sat back, while Granger looked at Harry almost shyly.

"You really don't think you could use the winds or the power of the gateway to tell us how many thunderrin are on the plains?" she asked.

Harry shook his head. "Sorry, Hermione. I can't. I don't know the limits of this power yet, how it works, whether I really have it." Draco felt the thrum in the bond, and knew that Harry didn't want to have it at all, but if he was stuck with it, ignoring it would make things worse. "When that changes and I'm able to tell you something more about the thunderrin than we know right now, I won't keep it a secret."

Granger nodded and walked away, already shaking her head and muttering. The others had begun to disperse, as well, but someone paused near them and stared down at Draco. Draco looked up.

It was Andromeda, and although she flinched from his gaze as though he'd thrown a needle at her, she didn't look away. "I can take him," she whispered, extending her arms for Teddy.

"He's comfortable right here," Draco said, and held her eyes. She was no longer as frightened as she'd been, now that she had begun to accept her wild magic and use it to make strong shelters for herself. But he saw no reason to let her take Teddy when Teddy was sleeping soundly and Andromeda could be doing lots of other things.

After a few seconds in which Andromeda bit her lip but _didn't _start crying the way she might have, she turned away and walked towards the nearest silver house. Harry smiled at Draco and opened his mouth, but the dragon-keeper stepped forwards before he could say anything.

"Ginny wants to know if she should take her bird up and scout," Weasley said, studying Harry's face. "In case they come back."

"Remember that I don't make many decisions for us anymore, and that's the way it should be," Harry said mildly. "If she wants to scout and it won't take time away from anything else she's promised to do, then she should take the bird up."

The dragon-keeper frowned a little, but nodded and moved away. Draco settled back on the grass with Teddy and raised his eyebrows at Harry. Harry raised them back. "What?"

"You're taking the role of a leader a lot less seriously than you used to," Draco told him. "Before, you thought you had to make all the decisions or the world would end. And they thought the same thing."

"I did tell you that I was going to try and move away from making all the decisions all the time." Harry plucked the bond a little, so that it vibrated like a string and made Draco wince—not enough to wake Teddy up, luckily. "Did you not believe me?"

"I thought it might be harder for you than this," Draco muttered, ducking his head down so his jaw rested on his little cousin's hair. He could mutter things there, and not look at Harry, and Harry would still understand him. "But I shouldn't be surprised, not after the way you stood up to Primrose."

"For a certain variety of stood up, of course." Harry smiled at him, and Draco found himself relaxing despite all the reasons to stay keyed-up. "Yes, this is what I should have been doing all along. Teaching people to make their own decisions, supporting them, and only getting ready to spring into action if there's something no one else can do, like stop a war with wind."

"We might have a war on our hands anyway, if Primrose shows back up," Draco thought he had to point out.

Harry rolled his eyes. "Right. But until she does, I'm going to do my best to be a regular citizen." He nudged Draco with his elbow. "And right now, regular citizens have herding duty. We asked for it together, we might as well do it."

Draco grumbled, but carried Teddy over to the silver house Andromeda had vanished into. She stood up warily when she saw Draco, her hands still dripping with magic that she'd been adding to the house's walls to strengthen them.

"Shepherding calls," Draco said, and handed Teddy to her. He woke and yawned briefly at Draco, muttered something about "Cousin Draco" that got muffled against Andromeda's shoulder, and went to sleep again.

Andromeda nodded, her eyes measuring him. Draco gave her one stare, then turned away. He didn't know whether she considered herself in a truce with them or not, since Bodiless's attack and their journey north had taken the place of any talking to her about her _stupidity _in trying to run off to the gate.

But it didn't matter right now. Draco went to join Harry, and they walked across the green, rippling grass towards the herd of slender-legged creatures the riders got most of their food from. Draco knew there were other herds in the north and east of the meadow, watched by the riders' beasts, but this was the only one they were responsible for. Apparently the adults were used to the beasts, but the younger ones would still kick and run away if they saw the shadows reeling. The riders would herd them on the ground as necessary, but they weren't as fleet when running as humans were. The humans taking it over had been one of the things that made their truce work as more than words.

Draco knew all that, but he could still resent it, and watch the animals and chase them back with spells when they strayed and dream of the life he would have lived had he stayed on Earth, in his Manor house with elves. Harry rolled his eyes at him.

_You could have stayed, you know. It's not like we knew each other then. You have no idea what you would have been missing if you had stayed._

Draco shook his head as he saw one of the creatures—like winged antelope, but in the young ones the wings weren't fully-developed—trying to sneak away. He cast a spell barrier in front of it, and it stood there, staring at the magic, then bleated in terror and ran back to the herd. _You know why I wanted to come here._

_I know. _Harry leaned against him. _And no one said that you weren't allowed to grumble. But why regret house-elves specifically? _

Draco turned his head to eye him. _Really? Servants that do whatever you want?_

_The kind of servant I was to the Dursleys? _

Draco winced and scowled. Trust Harry to bring that up. He had told Draco enough about his childhood, although only in images pushed down the bond, that Draco reckoned he should have been able to predict it was coming. But they hadn't discussed it before this. It had been a short burst of intensity in the middle of everything else, their struggle with Bodiless and their hunt for Andromeda and their attempt to defend the camp and explore Hurricane without putting someone else in charge of the task.

Now they had the time. Now they had what Draco had been dreaming of since Harry had told him that, the privacy and silence to discuss it. But he didn't know how to begin.

After a few moments of sitting there and doing nothing but directing wind against one of the creatures who leaped up to try its wings, Harry sighed and started. _No, I can understand what you mean, and it's not the same. I served them, because it was that or have stupid things happen to me, but they weren't able to order me to punish myself. I didn't have the same compulsion that an elf like Dobby did._

Draco grunted. The comparison still troubled him, but once again, he had to fumble around with words. At least Harry knew why he stayed silent and didn't bother him, instead calming the winds in the area so that the grass wouldn't sway too much and bother the antelope. They were stupid creatures who would start even at shadows at this age, nothing like the calm and rational mummidade.

_I feel bad, _Draco said at last. _Knowing that happened to you, and no one else ever did anything about it._

Harry laughed soundlessly, his eyes so bright that Draco was able to relax a little and smile at him, too. _It's not like you knew. And before we came to Hurricane, why would you have given a fuck? _He rubbed Draco's back. _You're being too hard on yourself. Just don't say the part about house-elves around Hermione. You really don't want the lecture you'll get._

Draco shook his head a little. _I want to do something to help you get over what they did to you._

_I don't know that there's any way to do that. _Harry lounged on the grass now, his head tilted back and his hands folded beneath his head as he watched the sun dart in and out of patches of cloud. _I've lived with it this long, and you suspected something was wrong, but you didn't know what until I told you. So that should be a sign that I can live with it if I want to. It just doesn't always please me._

Draco sat up and stared at him. Harry met his eyes back, raising his brows a little, and switched to speaking aloud, the way he always seemed to when he didn't really understand the way Draco had reacted. "What? You're practically making the bond buzz with your disapproval, but that was what happened to me all those years. I didn't like it, but I lived with it. What makes you feel you have to do something about it now?"

"Because, you idiot," Draco said, coming close to shaking him and having done with it, "I didn't know about it and it _bothers me_."

Harry picked up his hand and kissed it. "That it bothers you is more of a tribute than anything you could do about it is," he murmured.

Draco snatched his hand back and ignored what he was feeling down the bond, because he knew it would probably make him dissolve if he listened to it. "So I'm supposed to be happy about what happened in my lover's abusive past?"

Harry winced, but kept meeting his gaze. "No. I'm just glad—that things are so different now. That you want to do something. It's the absolute proof of how much things have changed, when at one point you wouldn't have cared if you'd found out."

Draco had to nod, acknowledging that. "All right. Then do you _want _me to do something about it?"

"What could you, when it all happened far away and long ago, on Earth?" Harry leaned against him, letting Draco put his arm around Harry's shoulders. "Let it go. We faced down Primrose and made her leave without starting a war. We should rejoice in the peace and the sunlight while we have it."

Draco nodded again and did as Harry advised, though it took him long minutes before he relaxed, with anger pinging in him like the plucked string of a harp. But Harry ignored him, still breathing lightly and steadily, and in the end, Draco found his thoughts lulled with the breeze, Harry's breathing, the movement of the herd.

_Other things can wait._


	5. Dawning of Summer

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Five—Dawning of Summer_

"Harry. You have to come see this."

Harry came awake sharply. He couldn't decipher the tone in Hermione's voice, and for a moment, he wished he had the kind of bond with her that he did with Draco.

_Do you?_

Harry winced at the hooked and stinging drag of those words over his mind, and put out his arm to rest his hand on Draco's shoulder, but he had already rolled away, to the other side of their bed of packed moss, and was silently pulling on his boots. Harry sighed and sat up, using his nearest winds to carry his clothes over to him. One thing he _didn't _want was for Hermione to see him naked.

_At least you show _some _vestiges of good sense._

Harry didn't choose to respond to this one. Draco knew the confusion that boiled up in him, and its cause, and he could decide whether Harry was guilty enough or not for wishing to be bonded to someone else. Harry thought his business at the moment was to go out there and see what Hermione wanted him for, so he concentrated on clothes alone until his shirt was mostly buttoned and his trousers all the way there.

"Come _on_."

Harry rolled his eyes and walked towards the entrance of the tent. If Hermione wanted him to know that badly while he still wasn't out there and couldn't see whatever she was jumping up and down and pointing at, she could have explained it to him in words he could comprehend.

_I couldn't agree more._

By that, Harry knew he was forgiven. He reached out as Draco went by and trailed one hand down his shoulder. Draco bowed his head a little and stayed a second longer than necessary under Harry's touch before they both emerged into the open air.

And once they were there and had followed Hermione's pointing finger to the sky, Harry understood. Hermione's descriptions wouldn't have made any sense until they could see for themselves. It was beyond what Harry knew about Hurricane from their explorations or the winds, the same way the thunderrin had been until they saw them for the first time and learned a little bit about them that way.

Overhead traveled immense groups of what Harry took at first to be the riders' beasts, and then great birds of the kind that Ginny flew. Then he saw that they seemed to have no legs at all. They soared overhead, on wings that pulsed up and down as though something else, not their owners' wills, was flapping them. Their heads were narrow and pointed, and their bodies swelled out. They looked most like winged snakes, Harry thought as he stared at them. Snakes that had eaten a meal—although they did have horned crests on their heads, so perhaps what they most resembled was dragons.

A mass of golden dragons, passing so thickly across the sky that every hint of its normal dark blue was lost behind them. Harry could still feel the winds, although they were cramped and thinned out by passing through the narrow gaps that the dragons left between them. The world was almost silent, save for the weird pulsating beat of those wings and the occasional sound as the humans on the ground stared at them.

The mummidade, grazing, paid no attention. Neither did the riders and their beasts, for the most part, although Harry saw Open Wings standing on the slope of the meadow, his talons resting casually on Swoop's neck, as though he needed to keep him from rising. He caught Harry's eye and smiled a little.

Harry shook his head and loped up to him. By the time he got there, Draco had fallen into place at his shoulder, and four mummidade had detached themselves from the nearest herd and fallen into the familiar configuration of Westshadow, the mummid who had first let them connect and communicate with the riders.

_You realize you're thinking as though Westshadow is really one creature, not four? _

Harry shrugged. _That's the way they think of it, _he answered. _Best to let our allies define themselves, don't you agree? _

No response from Draco. Harry turned around and waited as Westshadow positioned itself, one body near him, one near Draco, one near Open Wings, one near Swoop. This time, Westshadow didn't have them touch it between various pairs of its horns, the way it had in the past. Harry thought it had become used enough to their minds that it didn't need the tactile contact any more to reach them.

As always, Draco whined between his teeth when the extra bond clicked into place, like a great steel ring that drove through the center of Harry's chest, down into the earth, and back up again and through the center of the chest of each of the other participants in the bond. Harry could see what he meant—it was irritating, especially because the effect went all through them and there was no way to escape it—but he was used to it by now, the same way Westshadow was used to him. He plunged ahead.

_What are those things? _He flickered his head and one hand up at the bodies of the creatures flying overhead, just so that there was no chance Open Wings could mistake him.

Open Wings tilted his head, while Draco did some more whining behind him and Westshadow stood rigid. _I know what you are talking about. Those are the creatures we call the Tssisid, and they are migrating._

Harry blinked for a moment. The first name had come through untranslated, and that made him wonder about the second. _Where are they going? I didn't think Hurricane had any creatures that—migrated._

He used the word cautiously, in case it wasn't the right one, but from the way Open Wings nodded (a human gesture he had picked up and seemed to find useful), it was right. _They go from the mountains in the further north to the waters in the far south. We think they hunt there and breed there, although we don't know because we have never followed them that far. Our beasts cannot keep up with them._

Harry tilted his head back, a response in his thoughts about how fast the beasts could fly, and then fell silent again. Well, maybe. The Tssisid skimmed overhead, and every time Harry blinked, a new one had taken the place of the creature he had been looking at. Or so it seemed, anyway. It was like trying to count individual ripples of water in a stream, they were so identical.

_Does their coming mean anything important? _Draco asked, what he obviously thought was the question that most mattered. Harry poked him through their private bond, but Draco said nothing, waiting with his eyes on Open Wings's face.

_Behind them come the storms, _said Open Wings. _They herald the summer._

_How is that different from the spring? _Harry had to ask. He had already encountered some storms, especially one he and Draco had met on the southern plains while going to look at the ocean, that made him understand why the Unspeakables who had made the initial exploration had named the planet Hurricane.

_Did you not notice that the storms had gone quiet lately? _Open Wings held one hand out flat, his talons spreading. _They are coming again with the summer._

Harry grimaced. It was true that he had only needed to ride out one storm lately, and that had been a minor one it was easy to turn away from the meadow. He hadn't noticed it, the same way he hadn't noticed the _lack _of persecution in the wizarding world for a few months after the war, when people still respected him.

_How bad will they be? _Draco interjected, applying an elbow to Harry's ribs.

_They are destroyers, _said Open Wings simply.

_Oh, wonderful, _Draco said, although with the way he clutched Harry's arm for a moment, it was hard for Harry to tell if the words were coming down their private bond or the common one that they shared with the mummidade and Open Wings. _Of course they would be. Of course we don't get done fighting one enemy on this bloody planet, and it throws something else at us._

From the way Open Wings tilted his head to the side and clattered his beak, he might not know exactly what "bloody" meant, but he knew it meant nothing good. Harry shot Draco a sharp look and turned back to Open Wings. _Do the Tssisid ever stop and eat anyone? Anything, I mean? _

Open Wings spread his hands again. _No, they do not. They are important only as heralds of the summer. We do not know for certain where they go, or what they eat, and we rarely see them migrate back. We think they pass over the ocean, and it holds their secrets._

Harry nodded, and then winced as Westshadow backed away and cut the bond between them. Apparently, it considered that they had heard all they needed to hear. Harry would have liked to stay in touch with Open Wings a bit longer, and find out exactly what he knew about the summer and the storms.

But then Westshadow stamped its hoofs on the ground and cried aloud from all four of its mouths, and six other mummidade broke from the nearby herd, trotting towards it. Harry watched them as they arranged their ten bodies, now and then bowing their heads to touch horns or stamping or scuffing with one back hoof.

He realized he was holding his breath and stopped himself with a scowl. That was a _silly _reaction. He wanted to see what the ten mummidade—he had never seen an individual with such a body count before—did, not faint.

Draco poked him in the ribs again. This time, Harry could concede that he had deserved it.

The mummidade began to wind around each other, stamping their hooves, bobbing their horns. It reminded Harry for a moment of the dance he and Draco had watched two of them do on the seashore, a dance that had resulted in a young mummid appearing, but in seconds, it became apparent that that dance and this be had nowhere near the same purpose. Where that dance had been perfectly mirrored, flowing, dipping graces and turns, this one broke apart into whirling chaos, mummidade tumbling on the ground and sometimes rolling on their backs, waving their hooves in the air.

Draco urged Harry backwards out of the way. Harry nodded his thanks as one of the new bodies skittered past his feet. He'd nearly crashed into it, and while he was unsure what effect interrupting their dance would have, he didn't think it would be good.

The bodies began leaping and bounding across each other, weaving a pattern in the middle. Harry saw the pattern as one of flying faces before he began to understand it in another way, as his hair blew backwards.

They were creating a pattern of winds.

Harry shivered. The mummidade had been in the bond, and must have understood from Westshadow that the humans didn't have any idea how severe the storms could get. Communicating in images was what the mummidade generally did, but it didn't always work, since their perspective was so different from a human's. Instead, they had decided to use winds, to speak to the human with wild magic who could speak to the winds.

Harry could feel the contained edges of that building storm. He flinched each time something struck him, a blow from a breeze that felt like a whip. The mummidade were balancing on each other's backs now, their hooves digging into the soft white wool of their companions.

Harry heard other people—other _humans_—saying things, but he couldn't draw his eyes away from the dance before him, or his attention away from the furiously snarling winds building up between the mummidade.

Then the mummidade's pattern broke apart in a splintering of bodies, as they cartwheeled into the air and touched down almost on their horns, and their created storm leaped out of its safe confinement and blew straight at Harry.

Harry didn't have time to do more than try and reach for his own winds. The ones the mummidade had conjured slammed into him and bore him off his feet, flipping so fast that at one point he felt his head hit his own back. Then he was on the ground and gasping, no air making it into his lungs.

Draco leaned down above him—Harry saw him more as a bright flash than anything recognizable—and slammed his fist into the center of Harry's chest.

Harry gasped and wheezed, and the air came back. He managed to roll over and come up on one arm, while he used the other one to grab Draco's shoulder as he turned to face the mummidade with his hands out and his invisible claws lengthening.

"They didn't mean to do that," Harry said, talking as fast as he could. Draco looked as if he wouldn't listen long before simply moving forwards and committing murder. "You _know _they didn't, Draco. They were creating a miniature storm to warn us about the dangers of the ones coming in the summer."

_They could have used a smaller one. _Draco's side of the bond was filled with a thick, vibrating emptiness that made Harry wince. He wouldn't have wanted to face it if they were alone. He would have wanted to go flying and hope Draco had calmed down by the time he got back. Draco couldn't follow him into the depths of the sky unless Harry lifted him with wind.

But instead, they had an audience, and Harry had to intervene for the sake of that audience. He forced himself to stand up, to move between Draco and the mummidade, and speak calmly and sanely.

"They didn't hurt me on purpose. And if they hadn't used a wind like that, would we have taken their warnings as seriously?"

Draco studied him without saying anything. Then he said, in a calm tone that increased Harry's dread all the more, "You're limping. And you should see the bruises on your face."

"It'll be more than bruises if the summer storms come and we don't take them seriously," Harry said. He faced the mummidade and nodded to them. "You were trying to warn us of that, right?" he asked.

The mummidade simply looked at him. Harry sighed. He had forgotten that they couldn't understand someone who wasn't standing in concert with their bond partner. Individual humans weren't _people _to the mummidade, not outside their bond.

And unfortunately, Harry thought asking Draco to stand with him now and let the mummidade into their minds might get him killed, and from a human direction. He turned back to Draco.

_You're being ridiculous, _he said, switching to the bond. _We had plenty of time to run if we really distrusted them._

Draco sneered at him. _You trusted them because you always trust everyone. And look where that's got us._

Harry pretended to consider that for a second, and then gave Draco a sharp smile. _You're right. In the middle of a meadow that's much more like Earth than most of the other places we saw on Hurricane, with allies who defend us and plenty to eat. It really is horrible, where we've ended up._

Draco eyed him warily for a second, and then abruptly turned away and stalked off over the grass. Harry sighed, but dared to relax, slowly. Draco hadn't got much sleep last night, and it _was _the middle of the night, still. Harry could understand the short temper that might follow on seeing him hurt.

Harry turned back to the mummidade and Open Wings. He gave the short whistle that was the riders' version of "Thank you," then bowed to the mummidade. They would understand that gesture, since they did a lot of it themselves in their dances and when two of them were touching horns before joining up into a new individual for the first time.

The mummidade turned and trotted away. Open Wings led Swoop down the far side of the hill. The other humans promptly crowded in around Harry.

"Do you think we can tame one?" Charlie demanded. He still had his head back and his eyes on the sky, though when Harry checked, the Tssisid migration had narrowed down to a few stray golden dragons soaring above. He smiled. _If I thought they looked like dragons, what must have Charlie thought? _

"We'd have to catch one first," Harry said, temperately. "And they're so fast that I don't know how we could."

"But you think it would be a good idea to try?" Charlie was turning now to follow the Tssisid as they finished their migration, or so Harry assumed.

"It doesn't really matter if I think it's a good idea," Harry said, because he felt prepared to say things like that now. "It matters if _you _do."

Charlie blinked at him as though he had no idea why Harry would say something like that. Harry turned to the others. "Do you have any ideas on how we can prepare to resist these storms?" he asked.

"I can build more houses."

Harry blinked and faced Andromeda. He hadn't even realized that she had come out of the silver house she usually spent time in, and was standing there with Teddy cradled in her arms. When she caught sight of his wide eyes and open jaw, she sniffed a little, probably because she didn't appreciate him looking like that when she had made a sincere offer of help.

Harry cleared his throat and did his best to nod in a way that didn't make him look like a bobbing idiot. "_Yes. _That would be extremely helpful, Andromeda. Thank you. If you could do it, and build enough of them without exhausting yourself—"

"What would enough be?" Andromeda demanded. George had come up behind her, and she handed Teddy to him, making George juggle him for a moment before he caught Harry's eye and realized it wouldn't be a good idea to drop him. "Give me some idea, a goal to aim for, and I could do it."

Harry refused to be the sole decision-maker, though. He turned to Hermione. "What do you think? Should we try and build enough that the mummidade could shelter in them? The riders?" Hermione had spent more time around the riders than any of them since they had moved to the meadow, and understood their language better.

Hermione blinked and frowned. "I'm not sure that the riders would agree to come into any sorts of shelters that would leave their companions outside," she said cautiously.

"As though I could not build large enough shelters to include their beasts," Andromeda said, tossing her head back and making herself look like the strong, assertive woman Harry remembered so briefly from the war. "But no one has asked me to do it so far. They've only wanted houses big enough for a few people—humans—at once."

Harry caught Hermione's eye as she was about to open her mouth, and Hermione nodded grudgingly and closed it. No one had asked Andromeda to contribute those shelters before this because she seemed so adamant against doing _anything _that would exercise her wild magic. But mentioning it would probably make the situation awkward again, and lead to Andromeda once more refusing to help them.

"Well, we'll ask you now," Hermione said. "I know that creating the houses is usually exhausting for you. Would creating a big one tire you out so much that it wouldn't be a practical solution?"

"I can build a single big one, rather than separate houses for all the riders and beasts," Andromeda said. "Would that not be better, especially since others might come to us once the storms begin and want shelter?"

Harry had to fight to keep from grinning. Andromeda was coming up with solutions on her own now, taking an active part in things. He had continued to watch her as though she would run off with Teddy again the minute his back was turned, but that had been pessimistic, and maybe not practical. Sooner or later he would have to trust her, and it might as well be about this.

He took a step back, and left Hermione and Andromeda talking about what would be most practical, with Charlie asking about what preparations the riders might have made in the past and Arthur suggesting they would also have to ask the mummidade. When he was sure no one had noticed his absence and no one else was going to try and ask him questions again that they could easily ask each other, he turned and jogged off in search of Draco.

He had things he wanted to say, and more he wanted to do.

* * *

Draco curled furiously into himself on a slight hill towards the edge of the meadow over which they had watched the thunderrin fly. He could feel his heartbeat shaking him, and it was a long time since that had happened. The war was the last time, maybe, when he could feel his terror over his parents' lives and his own blasting him. Since then, they had left him, and the last two years have been more about survival than terror.

And since they had come to Hurricane, Harry had been his partner in the bond, and that seemed to have helped to drain most of the fears off.

But not _all _of them, Draco thought, and tucked his head in tighter. Harry should have come after him when Draco had walked away. He should have understood where some of Draco's fear came from.

He had almost attacked the mummidade. They had hurt Harry, and it was a natural response, just like the mummidade's fear was when something attacked an individual mummid that was part of their bond.

But if he irritated the mummidade enough, then Draco thought they might never teach him and Harry the dance that would guarantee them children.

_Is _that _part of the reason that you were so upset? Oh, Draco. I'm sorry. I can't believe I didn't understand that._

Harry sat down beside him. Draco tucked against his side, because it was hard not to, although he was still stiff when Harry put a tentative arm around him.

_You could have felt it, if you weren't so busy thinking about other things, _Draco muttered.

Harry did roll his eyes, and Draco could feel it even though he didn't glance up, as of course he was meant to. _Excuse me for thinking that it's important to prevent you from attacking the allies that we're finally learning to get along with, instead of following you and comforting you._

Draco sat up and pushed back from him. Harry met his eyes, and sighed. "Look," he said aloud. "I am sorry that I didn't pick up on it. I'm not sorry I stopped you from attacking the mummidade. So there."

Draco had to smile despite himself, and he leaned over and kissed Harry. "Thank you," he murmured. "I do wonder if they'll ever teach us the dance, though."

"We might as well _ask _them."

Draco winced a little. "Tomorrow."

"Yes, probably a good idea," Harry agreed, and stood up to offer him a hand to help him and a shoulder to lean on back home, both of which Draco liked, even though he didn't need them.


	6. Teaching, Learning

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Six—Teaching, Learning_

"Andromeda's asleep."

Harry, his hand raised to knock on the lintel of the silver house that Andromeda had built for her and Teddy, turned around and blinked at George. He knew that George had been the last one to hold Teddy, but it was still odd to see him standing on duty like this, his arms folded. He bit his lip when Harry looked at him, and didn't back down.

"Okay," Harry said, and looked up at the sun, hanging in the bright blue glare of Hurricane's noon.

"Oh, shit, right," George said, suddenly relaxing and giving Harry a much more familiar smile. It made Harry smile back, despite the way his throat tightened with the remembrance that he wouldn't ever see the grin that matched it again. "You wouldn't have been able to see it, with the way you came out this morning. Well, here." He took Harry's arm and dragged him across the grass to a big flat patch of the meadow where the riders' antelope usually grazed and Harry and Draco had often gone to herd them.

Teddy was there, sitting with two silver bricks clutched in his hands, laughing. Harry felt his stomach tighten as he watched. Unless he was badly mistaken—and he didn't think the winds encircling his head could ever be _that _mistaken again—Teddy was holding two pieces of pure, solidified wild magic.

But he dropped them when he saw Harry and ran right over to him. "Uncle Harry!" he yelled, stretching out his arms.

Harry picked him up and swung him around, even though he wanted to stand still and gape at the sight on the grass beside him, because he had come to Hurricane for Teddy and he never, ever wanted to ignore him. Teddy laughed. Right now he had hair as white as a mummid's wool and golden eyes like theirs, too, but his eyes turned green as Harry watched.

"Andromeda started building it earlier this morning, after you'd gone back to bed," said George's voice from behind him. "I've never seen someone work so hard with the wild magic since we got here."

Harry turned back to the sight before him. "Don't let Draco hear you say that," he said mildly. "He doesn't think anyone works harder than I do."

Teddy interrupted him by pulling on his hair. Harry yelped and held him out. "What did I tell you about pulling on hair, Teddy?" he asked.

"Not do it," Teddy muttered, after a long silence in which he realized that squirming and sticking his thumb in his mouth wouldn't get him out of trouble. He didn't suck his thumb much anymore; Harry swore he did it now just to try to make himself look cuter and avoid the kind of yelling that might be headed his way.

"Right," Harry said. "Say sorry."

"Sorry." Teddy's voice got smaller and smaller when he was apologizing, but Harry could still hear it.

"Good enough," Harry said, and patted Teddy on the shoulder, and this time he got to look.

Andromeda had laid the foundation of a huge, circular building that looked like nothing so much as an Earth sports stadium, Harry thought. The silver blocks gleamed and shone like they were streaked with rainwater—which they probably would be by mid-afternoon, as the winds told him. They were enormous themselves, and exactly regular in size and shape. Harry didn't really know why, because he didn't know that much about Andromeda's magic. Maybe they were easier for her to shape that way.

_Well, she is a very regular person, _Harry had to admit. He thought maybe a lot of her depression in the past few years had come from her life turning out to be so much the opposite of normal: people dying, her grandson raised by Harry Potter, the Ministry turning on her. Coming to Hurricane wouldn't have helped.

The ground inside the building's foundation was stripped of grass, leaving dirt. Harry considered it thoughtfully. It wasn't stamped flat yet, but he thought it should be, since otherwise it would turn to mud every time it rained until the bloody thing was finished. Or maybe Andromeda would replace it with silver flagstones.

"It's going to be bloody brilliant," George breathed from behind him.

Harry turned around and grinned at him. "What? You're not thinking about putting spells that explode in the doors?"

George met his gaze with unexpectedly sober eyes, and shook his head. "I know what it means that she's doing this," he breathed, softly enough that Andromeda probably wouldn't have been able to hear them even if she had come out of her house and crept up behind George. "I don't want to do anything to jeopardize that."

Harry clapped George on the shoulder, unable to say a word. Luckily, Teddy filled in the silence for him. "I'm hungry now," he said loudly, and rubbed his stomach in case Harry had forgotten English.

Then he made a noise Harry had never heard him make before, sharp and twittering. Harry jumped and looked around, thinking for a second that one of the riders had managed the creeping trick. But there was nothing there except Teddy, who had clutched at Harry's shoulders to keep from falling and was scowling at him.

"_Hungry_," he said, and repeated part of the twitter.

"He's learning the riders' language?" Harry asked George, who shrugged and grinned.

"I reckon so. I don't think Andromeda was exactly happy about that, but she was busy strengthening one of the houses last week and gave him to Hermione to baby-sit for a while. Hermione was talking to the riders and making notes."

Harry smiled and shifted Teddy to his hip as he twittered again. "Well, I didn't think it would be easy for a human to pronounce, but Merlin knows there are sounds in other human languages I can't make. It would probably be easy for someone who grows up speaking it like any other language."

Teddy butted Harry's shoulder with his head. "_Hungry!_" he said.

Harry touched the back of Teddy's neck, and kept his hand there until Teddy looked up at him again. "Listen," Harry told him. "You can ask for food, but you have to be polite about it. Okay?"

Teddy scowled at him. George chuckled. Harry rolled his eyes back. "Thanks for the effort at maintaining discipline," he mouthed.

George shrugged. "He said he was hungry, and you kept ignoring him. I don't know that I wouldn't have resorted to the same thing, about now."

Harry turned around and walked away with what dignity he could muster. Teddy calmed down and beamed at him again as soon as he saw that they were heading away from the silver house. He probably hadn't expected to be served food there, Harry thought.

Draco's mind came fuzzily awake as Harry ducked into their tent, and Harry nodded to him and set Teddy down on the floor beside him. "What kind of food do you want?" he asked Teddy.

"Peanut butter!" Teddy was poking the moss bed, but he looked up and focused on Harry like a hunting dog the minute he said the words.

Harry grimaced a little. They had brought some peanut butter with them from Earth, but not much, and Teddy had already eaten most of it. Hopefully he would be satisfied with what Harry could scoop out from the last jar they had.

_He's a kid, _Draco's voice said tolerantly in the back of his head. _In six minutes he'll be wanting something else. You're making a bigger deal out of this than he will._

_You have more tolerance for him than you used to, _Harry said, watching Draco fall to his knees in front of Teddy and make a face at him. Teddy giggled and altered his own face back, to the point that he could easily return the grimace.

_I know you love him, _Draco said, turning his head briefly to look at Harry. _And I've at least started. I wouldn't have panicked so much when Andromeda was trying to take him back to Earth, otherwise._

Harry nodded and used his winds to float the last peanut butter jar over to him. Luckily, it was in the tent from last week, the last time Teddy had demanded it.

_Look at it this way, _Draco said. He was lying on his back now, holding Teddy above him and trying to wrinkle his face into some configuration Teddy couldn't imitate. _He's asking for it less often, so maybe he'll be reconciled by the time that we don't have any more of it. Or maybe we'll discover some native plant that can substitute for it. Or those experiments Granger's making in growing peanuts will actually work._

_You could call her by her name, _Harry told him as he successfully scraped some peanut butter out of the jar onto one of the plates that George had successfully Transfigured from a stone about the same size. _You know she's a lot friendlier to you now than she used to be._

_I am calling her by her name. One of her names. It's certainly no less her name than the other one._

Harry rolled his eyes and gave that up, instead setting the plate on the bed and scooping Teddy from Draco's arms to put him down beside it. "Come on, Teddy," he said. "Time to eat."

Teddy squealed and stuck his fingers in the peanut butter, then into his mouth. Harry snorted when he felt Draco's disapproving stare. It wasn't as though there was really a point in teaching Teddy proper table manners. They had no table, no formal silverware, and the moss that made up the bed was easy to clean. Plus, Teddy actually liked bathing in the pools and streams of the meadow, while he had shrieked every time Harry tried to clean him in the bathroom when they were still on Earth.

_It isn't about the specific manners, _Draco said, sniffing so hard their bond vibrated. _It's the principle of the thing._

_Anything you want to teach him, you can, _Harry said, shaking his head as he went to fetch himself and Draco some of the pressed grass-cakes that Fleur had experimented with making yesterday. They didn't taste as good as bread, but they had a light, crisp taste that Harry thought they could grow used to. Draco, of course, was determined not to. _But it's not going to be easy when we have none of the artifacts that are necessary to really practicing those skills._

_Listen to you. Artifacts. As if that word didn't mean a different thing. _Draco accepted another plate, a pitcher of water, and the grass-cakes from Harry, staring at him intently enough that Harry turned to glance at Teddy. But he was chattering, although it was hard to understand most of his words with the peanut butter sticking his mouth shut, and he didn't seem to have noticed Draco and Harry's silent argument.

"Have you considered that it might not?" Harry said aloud, because sometimes their conversations down the bond went so fast it was hard for him to _think _about what he said. "That someday we might have words in our language—or our children might—that don't mean the same thing as they do today? That someday they might not speak English anymore? That things will change?"

Draco blinked a little. Then he said, "Yes, I have thought of it. But we're still alive, and we still speak English, and _we _distinguish between silverware and something like the Sword of Gryffindor."

Harry smiled and held up his hand to acknowledge the hit, then applied himself to his lunch. As long as Draco didn't expect things to be utterly the same in the future as in the past, then Harry thought he could live with his attitude.

* * *

Draco picked up Teddy and tickled him while Harry washed the plate free of the last traces of peanut butter. Teddy giggled and squirmed against him, and Draco couldn't help frowning a little as he got traces of peanut butter and snot all over Draco's shirt. But that was what Cleaning Charms were for.

And if they were going to have their own children, then Draco knew he would have to get used to messes.

He felt the back of his neck warm, along with the inside of his head, and knew Harry was gazing at him approvingly. He grinned back at him over the top of Teddy's head and began to cast those Cleaning Charms.

"Your spells tickle," Teddy said, and tried to wriggle away from him, towards Harry. Draco held him still until he was sure that Teddy's face was only wet with a few traces of spit, and then let him go. Teddy ran into Harry's arms and stood there with his finger tucked into his mouth, studying Draco.

"I didn't mean to tickle you," Draco said gravely.

Teddy drew himself up and changed the color of his hair a little, to a deeper black. It was only when he said, "You're forgiven," in a deep, magisterial voice that Draco realized he was imitating Andromeda.

"Thank you," Draco said, and bowed to him, and then settled back on the bed to watch Harry play with Teddy. This involved wooden animals that Teddy had brought with him from Earth, a horse and a unicorn and a complicated game where the unicorn, it seemed, was trying to take over the world and the horse didn't want him to. Harry sprawled on the grass and sometimes made neighing noises when Teddy wanted him to, but for the most part, Teddy talked both voices and came up with the complex, half-incoherent plot that reminded Draco of dream logic.

_You're more patient with him than you used to be, too, _Harry's voice murmured down the bond. _Good. Because if there's one thing I've learned in the past few years, it's that children try your patience._

Draco rolled his eyes. _Why can you say some things aloud in front of Teddy and you keep other things quiet? _

_Because there are some things I don't care if he overhears, but talking directly about him in front of him is rude. _Harry galloped the horse up and down the stretch of ground that was now apparently a racecourse.

_So instead you do it silently so he can't hear. What a shining example of politeness._

Harry winced in the way that told Draco the blow had gone deeper than he meant it to, the dart transforming into a lance. Draco sighed and stared up at the ceiling of the tent as it billowed in the wind.

"I didn't mean to hurt you," he said aloud.

_I know, _Harry said, probably because he could flood the bond with rosy forgiveness that would have been difficult to express aloud. _It was just—you're right._

"Cousin Draco _sorry_," Teddy said, and smiled up at Harry with such a smug expression, as though to say he was happy _he _wasn't the only one who had to apologize, that Draco laughed aloud.

Harry cast him a tragic glance, murmured, "_Must _you encourage him?" and then turned and called up a smile for Teddy. "Yes, he is. So that means you must always apologize when you hurt someone, because adults have to do it, too, okay?"

This time, it was Teddy's intensely skeptical look that made Draco laugh, because Teddy was too obviously thinking of all the other things adults got to do that he didn't. But he nodded, and then he and Harry went back to their game.

_It wouldn't be so terrible, after all, having our own children, would it? _Draco asked, when several more minutes had passed and the loudest sound was Teddy's voice, constructing the unicorn's dialogue, mingled with Harry's neighs.

Silence, and then Harry said, in a voice like a caress down the back of Draco's mind, _Not so terrible._

Draco stretched out and fell asleep, smiling.

* * *

Harry jerked his head up. He had been working, as always, at the endless weeding in the greenhouses that Hermione had helped set up. Hermione, who'd been muttering and fiddling to herself on the other side of the bed, looked up at once. "Something wrong?" she asked.

It took Harry a minute to realize why she was clutching her wand. Most of the time, he only reacted like that if someone was in danger and his winds brought him word.

He managed to smile at her and rip up the next handful of weeds he had designated as invaders. "Not immediately," he said. "But a storm is coming from the north, and it's going to be a huge one. I want to make sure the others are prepared."

"I'll just raise the charms around the greenhouse, and then I'll follow you," Hermione said, with a quick nod.

Harry used a breeze to whisk the weeds away, raised a hand to her, and began trotting into the meadow. He could see the wings of the antelope flickering past overhead, while the riders' beasts herded them high. In big storms like this, they flew above the clouds, their own magic keeping them able to breathe the thin air, and returned to the earth only when the storm had mostly blown itself out.

Harry could feel a similar tugging in his own heart. To venture up, to confront the storm on its own ground, as it were, and see if he could ride it.

But he didn't have wings, which would have helped him bear some of the brunt, and he couldn't fly in a group of similarly-sized people, the way both the antelope and the riders could, which would have helped blunt some of the wind's force. Gather enough riders and beasts together, Harry knew, and they could even soar supported mostly by the bodies on either side of them, without using their wings as much.

If he flew, though, he would face it alone.

He shook his head impatiently and cupped his hands around his mouth, calling the winds at the same time to form a narrow tunnel that would channel his words. "A storm coming! From the north, approaching fast, a strong one. Shelter in the houses or in those caves that the riders showed us the other day!"

The humans were the only ones who really needed the warning, Harry thought, as he began running again, to weave bindings of wind around the tents and other, more fragile structures of the human camp. The mummidade were already trotting, forming together in a circle or pile of bodies that would let them stand up to the wind's force, their heads and horns turned in towards the center of the circle. The riders were out of sight, and the last shadows of the antelope following them. Left to itself except for gaping humans, the meadow grass began to bend.

Harry turned sharply as he felt the brooding stir in the north, and heard the sudden shriek of gathering air. The storm had felt as if it was at least half an hour away, and now it seemed that it would overcome the meadow in ten minutes at the most.

"_Run!_" he shouted, his tame winds broadcasting his voice all over the meadow.

That at least shook them out of their stupefied staring. Draco came out of their tent with Teddy in his arms, and passed him off to Andromeda, at the entrance of their silver house. Andromeda fixed them both with a single stern glance that could have meant anything before she turned and disappeared inside. George and Percy and Angelina followed her, with Bill and Fleur and Victoire and Molly and Arthur already safely inside their own houses. Harry glanced around, searching for Ron and Hermione and Charlie.

_You know that they should be smart enough to find shelter by now, _Draco said, placing one hand on Harry's left shoulder.

_Well, you should have been, too. _Harry gave him a strong push in the direction of Andromeda's house, which held the people most sympathetic to him right now. He sighed in relief as he saw Ron hauling Hermione away from the greenhouses, with Charlie hard on their heels.

_I want to know why you're waiting._

Harry hesitated. He hadn't really realized he _was_; if someone had asked him a second ago, he would have said that he was only trying to make sure everyone would make it to shelter in time. But now he stood there, and the winds billowed around him, and the north grew stern and dark, and he found his legs seemingly rooted in place.

"Maybe it has something to do with being the gateway?" he said aloud, confident Draco could hear him with the wind on his side. "I feel compelled to watch the wild magic and the way it manifests?"

"Maybe Bodiless could do that," Draco said grimly, pulling at his arm. "It couldn't exactly be hurt by the storms. But you have a human body, no matter how much power is in it, and you have to _come on_."

Harry followed the pull, but he couldn't help the reluctance in his legs, or the weight that seemed to have settled in his belly, trying to anchor him to the plains. He tilted his head back and squinted at the sky. The blue had darkened to a color he had never seen before, not merely purple but overcome with livid veins of purple. _Bruise-like, _Harry thought.

Draco followed his gaze, and snarled. _Yes, yes, it's different in summer, they told us so, _he said, and shoved Harry so hard towards Andromeda's house that Harry stumbled. _Will you come? _

A wind curled down from that purple-stained piece of sky, and Harry recognized the magic that powered it. Not Bodiless, not exactly, he told the first frightened leap of his heart, but something similar, something powerful and hostile and self-willed. It would hurt them if it touched them.

Draco yanked again.

Harry ran beside him, but he kept his head turned up towards that piece of sky. The wind reaching towards them had wavered as if it had lost track of them, and now it whisked up and down, waving like a ragged banner in the wind. Harry was starting to wonder. What if the storm wasn't one force, layer of power wrapped on top of layer of power, as he had thought before, but really _all _separate layers, and most of them didn't know what the rest were doing?

If that was true, he might be able to divide them, pull them apart, and lessen the power of the storm by draining its magical strength.

"Harry!"

Draco yelled it in his ear. Harry startled and shoved Draco ahead of him. He stumbled through the entrance of Andromeda's silver house and disappeared inside.

Harry stuck his fingers in his mouth and whistled. Two winds under his control dodged down and blocked the entrance of the house, forming a flexible, invisible, indestructible wall that at once prevented anything from entering and anyone from leaving.

"Harry!" Draco shouted again from inside.

_I'll be all right, _Harry said down the bond. _I'm the only one the storm can't really hurt. But I have to see whether it's possible to make it less strong. That would protect us in the future. _

And he turned around, reached up to the purple-stained air and the breezes he could sense wandering around it, and yanked.

There came a shriek, and winds reached down towards him.

Harry laughed and hurled himself up from the ground, into the heart of the storm.


	7. Heart of the Summer, Heart of the Storm

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seven—Heart of the Summer, Heart of the Storm_

Draco hammered against the bonds of wind that he knew Harry had bound across the entrance of Andromeda's house to keep him inside. Then he extended his claws and tried cutting the winds. Harry's mere presence had made him stronger before, ever since the death of Bodiless and Harry becoming the gateway. Perhaps it had made Draco strong enough to combat Harry's own wild magic, as well.

But nothing happened. His claws, usually enough to cut the winds if they were traveling together and drop him to a lower level in the sky, only made small dents now. The cut breezes reassembled in seconds and took over the place where they had been hovering, ensuring that no piece of the entrance was ever without its guardian.

"Where's Harry?"

That was the twin, from behind him. Draco answered without turning away from the door. He could see through it, a bit, but the wind created a curious blurring, as if the magic were wavering like heat. He couldn't tell where Harry had gone, especially since most of what he could see was a blur of rushing green and the downdrive of rain.

"He didn't come in," Draco said, and tossed his head back to get his hair out of his face. This was one of the first times he had wished for Harry's power over wind instead of his own wild magic. It would have been satisfying to clear all barriers obstructing his sight out of the way at once. "He thinks that he can face the storm by himself."

"Why would he think that?" That was Johnson, pressing up behind her boyfriend. Draco didn't turn to look at her. He liked her more than most of the Weasleys, but he was no more than neutral to her.

"Because he's _stupid_," Draco said, and decided to try what the direct effect of a charge at the barrier would do. He hit what felt like foam and bounced back into the house. He scrambled to his feet and hissed at the wind.

"He might be," Johnson said, putting a hand on Draco's shoulder as if she would try and restrain him. She stepped back with spread hands when Draco glared at her. "But he also hasn't failed to come back to us yet. Try to have a little faith in him."

That was so hypocritical of her that Draco turned his head back to the barrier and reached out to Harry in the way only he could, so no one could chatter at him about doing certain things and being stupid in response to Harry's stupidity. He shouted down the bond, _Where are you and what do you think you're doing? _

He received back an impression of silver static. Harry was concentrating so intently on what he was doing that he really might not have heard Draco. Draco spent a few seconds shaping a sharp emotional probe, one that would contain the extent of both his own disappointment and his fear, and then threw it back down the bond. _What the fuck are you doing? _

He heard a gasp, as clearly as if Harry was standing in the house with him, and had to close his eyes. He had also considered that the silver static might have been occurring because Harry was dead.

_I'm flying, _Harry said, his own voice nearly as pointed as Draco's. _And I'd like to live, if you please. So leave me alone. I need to concentrate._

He placed a barrier in the bond, something flexible and unyielding in the same way as the winds he had placed over the entrance to the house were. Draco tried to tear through it with emotion, then words, then simple and furious effort, but nothing happened.

He opened his eyes and said only, "He might die," to the faces watching him.

But if he didn't die, Draco thought, he would have to come down again. And he would find Draco waiting for him.

Probably not in the way he thought. But it didn't have to be in the way he might think.

* * *

Harry tucked his legs and arms in closer to his chest, and spiraled around in a wide, crazy circle. He could feel the nearest layer of the storm peeling off as he flew closer, both because some of the winds were flocking to him and falling under his control and because he was pulling on the power, investigating it.

He _would _find a way to calm these storms and make sure that the humans were safe during the summer, too. And he would find out why this storm, which he had thought was safely far away, had grown so quickly.

But for the moment, it was enough to fly.

The winds stiffened beneath him, the air stilled, and Harry began to fall. Harry laughed and caught himself with some of his new, tame winds, shaking his head. The layer of the storm he had been in had dissolved, and now he was in what someone from the outside would probably see as the eye of the storm.

It was mad, exhilarating.

There was a distant bark in the middle of his mind, behind the barrier he had established that kept Draco out. Harry winced a little as he thought about that. He hadn't wanted to. But neither had he wanted to fall in the middle of the most dangerous and intricate flying he had ever done.

Speaking of which, he thought, as the winds whirled him around completely and tried to plaster his hair to his skull with rain, maybe he should concentrate more on the flying, and less on his (probably extremely upset) bondmate.

He stretched his hands out in front of him and pulled them towards his body. They gathered air as they pulled, and by the time he got his arms back to his chest, Harry was clad in whirling air, in slicing air, and in breezes like blades.

With the air cutting away all the winds that reached for him, he was falling steadily, losing height as the main body of the storm swirled around him and above him. That didn't matter, though. Harry thought a view from this vantage could prove just as valuable as getting above the storm and looking down at it.

And he wasn't sure that he would be able to survive a journey up through the heart of the storm to the height where the riders and their beasts were flying, anyway.

The barrier in his head shuddered again, and Harry wondered if Draco had sensed that thought and thrown himself against the part of the bond that separated them. Harry winced. He didn't want to—

But he had already promised himself that he wouldn't think about that, and he most likely couldn't if he was going to do anything but fall. He stretched his hands out again, but this time, he commanded his tame winds to surround the strongest wild ones they could find and herd them towards him.

For a second, Harry hovered there, the sky turning bluer and bluer above him, more and more purple below, as though the storm had split into two halves that were healing back together.

And then the storm screamed.

It seemed the wild winds hadn't liked being cornered by the tame ones and told to obey a master, Harry thought dazedly, as he found himself tumbling through space and looped his arms together around his head to take the full brunt of his fall. If he landed before he could stop himself, at least he wouldn't slam his skull open.

Draco snarled and broke through the barrier with an ease that told Harry more than he liked about how "easy" it was to keep his bondmate out of things. _What did you think you were doing? _

Harry couldn't respond for long minutes, since the sky seemed to have turned into a trampoline and bounced him downwards. He didn't have any winds anymore, he thought suddenly, wildly. The storm was pulling them all away.

He was falling.

He could hear Draco's shrieks, deep, full-throated things that reminded him of the sounds a wild animal would make, on bounding up to a barrier and finding itself restrained by a leash. Harry shook his head. Of course. The barrier that remained in place over the entrance of the house was preventing Draco from coming to his rescue, even assuming that he could do anything once he emerged into the storm.

_Call its winds away, _Draco snarled. _Then you'll have something you can use to fly with, and I'll be out._

_And the people who are in there with you unprotected. _Harry turned himself over the way that he would if he was falling on a broom and stared up at the sky that had rejected him. The purple streaks were even deeper now, to the point that he thought they looked like torn wounds. And there was air reaching down for him, after all. Harry smiled grimly. There was a hostility around that current of wind less powerful but no less hateful than Bodiless's. _I can at least keep you safe if I'm going to die._

_And are you going to die? Because if you are, I'll never forgive you. _Draco's words were pointed and felt like nails flung against his forehead.

_Maybe not, _Harry said, and shot his hands out, raking the wind in towards him as it touched his shirt, at the same time as he effectively expanded his magical core.

He had lost his wand magic since they came to Hurricane, giving in entirely to the wild magic and the wind magic. But that meant he wasn't helpless, couldn't be. He could generate his own winds as well as rely on the strength of Hurricane's skies. He had done it before they came to this world, although here it was easier to ride the storm.

But he called out the winds now, and used them to fling reins over the neck of the hostile power reaching for him, skeins of his own magic wreathing the power's neck. Once again, the storm tried to snatch back control, but this time, it failed. These winds were part of him and couldn't be taken from him any more than his core could.

The storm decided to gallop instead.

Harry's body swung wildly back and forth as the storm tore across the sky, and his legs jerked and flew apart, and his hair whipped back hard enough to make it feel as his scalp was going to rip free. But the point, the _point, _Harry thought fiercely, forcing back the shrieks that Draco was once again trying to invade his mind with, was that he could hang on. He could fly, and he could survive.

It was hard, to the point of impossible, but he could do it.

_You would do it more easily if I was with you._

Harry said nothing. He didn't have to. His feelings beating down the bond, bright blue and purple as the storm's, said it for him. If Draco was with him, he would have to watch out for two bodies instead of one, and have to defend Draco instead of spending his time on mastery of the storm.

_You haven't mastered it yet._

_I haven't, have I? _Harry asked distantly, and flung himself sideways, his winds making a little space of clear air for him in the middle of the storm, his hands clenching down so hard that he thought he would break his fingers. Draco gasped and hissed in the back of his head, and that was in and of itself a distraction, though in many ways a welcome one.

But Harry did it. He turned the wind he had reined the way _he _wanted to go. Instead of heading for the edge of the meadow, and south, the wind was now heading north, back in the direction that the storm had come from in the first place.

_You're still trying to do something other than land._

Draco's voice was flat and heavy and resigned, and Harry shook his head and flung it off him the way he would fling off a plane of lead that Draco had tried to hand him to carry. _Yes, I am, _he said, when Draco clung and refused to be shaken off. _Because I want to find out why that storm rose so suddenly when I thought there was ample time for us to get under shelter. Maybe we didn't destroy Bodiless completely. Maybe we have another enemy out there._

Draco said something, but Harry couldn't concentrate on it because the wind was bucking beneath him, and all his attention had to go to it. He envisioned it as a flying horse, or a broom, and it was easier. The winds snarled around him, just beyond his control, but the ones _in _his control surrounded and shielded him the way that he had imagined the other beasts shielding a central one. Harry kept the currents he rode heading north, the way they should be, and the sky around him deepened to black.

_You won't survive, _Draco was saying again when Harry deigned to pay attention to him. _You're going to die, and that'll leave me to carry the burden of leading the rest of them and explaining your death._

Harry laughed breathlessly as the wind rose beneath him, stealing him into the realms of the sky where there was nothing beneath him, nothing above him, but height and magic and will. _If I can get out of the burden of leading them, somehow I imagine it'll be less than nothing for you._

Draco snarled at him, silently, and still the wind rose, and still Harry had to pay attention to it instead of to Draco, the way he knew Draco would have preferred. He was surprised that he could keep breathing the air at this altitude, but that probably had something to do with his magic.

_Of course it has to do with your magic, you gigantic moron, _Draco raged and snarled at him. _Do you think you would be acting this way if you were _sane?

Harry didn't see what the issues of magic and sanity had to do with each other, and said so. The wind beneath him curved down, and for a second a rippling mane of power appeared, and then it did some spirited kicking. Harry still rode it. The wind halted, eddying back and forth. Harry clasped his legs even closer, sitting as upright as he could, instead of trailing behind it like an unwanted saddle.

_Does it matter, the way you look when you ride it? _Draco's sarcasm was harsh enough that Harry winced, even though Draco wasn't up here to cut him with his claws. _Does it matter, the way that you ride it? _

_I think it does, _Harry said, tilting his head back and taking the chance to gulp down a few brisk lungfuls of air. He could still breathe, but any moment, the wind might take him somewhere he couldn't. _It gives me more confidence, and when I'm handling something that runs away like this, confidence is the important thing. _

He never knew what Draco would have said in response, because the wind took off again, and this time, it took him somewhere he had never been.

The sky around him blazed black, and then blue, the kind of pure, heartless blue that Harry had seen sometimes in Hurricane's dawn skies. It never stayed for more than a second, advancing in front of a tidal wave of other colors that always washed over it and killed it. But here, it lingered, and Harry wondered for a mad moment if this was the place it came from, if one could speak of colors coming from anywhere.

Through the blue threaded a hard crack. Harry blinked and stared at the darkness in that crack, and at the same moment, writhing tendrils reached out of it towards him. The tendrils had the form of lightning, he saw when he looked at them properly, and the whips that cracked around them had the form of rain.

Harry gasped aloud as the rain spun around him, stinging his skin and trying to force his eyes closed. The lightning hit around and beside him, never exactly at him, because Harry's winds kept him turning and wheeling just ahead of it. Harry had no idea how they were doing it, if they were sensing it somehow or he was, and his instincts operated so fast that he didn't feel them doing it. He only knew that he couldn't keep it up forever, that sooner or later the lightning would strike him.

_Harry! Harry, bring me up._

Harry cursed in startled shock, and then had to shut his mouth as he almost drowned under the tide of the rain. _Draco! _he snapped back. _Where are you? What are you doing? _

_Coming after you, _Draco said coolly. _You needed all your power to defend yourself, and you drew the barrier away from the door._

Harry cursed mentally this time. No matter how intent he was on surviving, he should have wanted to protect Draco even more. He should have left the barrier in place no matter what happened in his corner of the sky.

_What about the others? _

_They're huddling against the far wall. _Draco didn't sound concerned, even though _Teddy _was in there, and he had admitted caring more about Andromeda than he used to. _I don't think the storm is interested in them. It hasn't even touched me since I stepped outside. Not a breath of wind. It's focusing on you, the way you're focusing on it. You can spare some wind to bring me up so I can join you. Do it._

_I'm hardly surviving here, _Harry said, his head rocking back as water smacked him in the face. _What makes you think you can help me? _

_Because two is better than one._

Harry shook his head, although he didn't know whether it was all because of his own will or because the wind was urging him to do so, and he had no real way to resist. _Well, if you think that you can..._

_I know I can._

_And there's that famous Malfoy overconfidence. _But Harry didn't think that Draco would lie about the storm ignoring him and the others, and if the barrier he had used to protect them was gone, the best thing Harry could do was end this storm as soon as possible. He reached down, curving an immense arm of wind around Draco's waist, finding him without trouble due to the bond that hummed between them. He lifted him into the air.

For long seconds, the storm seemed to pause, as though reevaluating the threat that Harry had raised against it. Then it screamed.

And the biggest lash of power yet came down towards them.

But Harry wouldn't let it touch Draco. He would break it, defeat it, if it took him out of the sky. He batted back with his own wind, all the power in his core directed into that single blast, and the storm recoiled with a cry that sounded almost human. Harry reminded himself that it wasn't, though. The wild magic of Hurricane didn't have a conscience or mercy, and it would be foolish to ask for it.

Harry used the long moment of peace to pull Draco up to his side, and settle him on the back of one of Harry's winds. Draco sat easily, his legs on either side of the invisible mount, and only smiled at Harry's confused lift of an eyebrow. _All the Malfoys grew up riding both brooms and Abraxans._

_Of course, _Harry said, a second before he felt the power unwinding from another layer, reaching down towards them. That proved he had been right, that the storm was composed of successive fabrics of power, towering miles high but not all joined.

But the revelation didn't cheer him up. So it worked that way. So what? All it meant was that when one wind had been unraveled and exhausted, the storm had about two million others ready to back it up.

_Have you gone senile? _Draco snapped at him. _You use what you already thought about doing, of course. You find the heart of the storm and pull out the layer that joins them all. These winds have to have _something _to keep them together. They aren't naturally herd animals._

_They aren't animals at all._ Harry settled himself more firmly as the wind beneath him bucked again, more power flooding this portion of the sky as the storm turned its attention more fully on them.

_Precisely my point._

Harry shook his head. He wanted to do what Draco had suggested, but it seemed impossible, especially with the wildness brewing around them, blocking any way that he could reach up to the heart.

He gasped as Draco razored his mind up and down with contempt, fear, and the utter exasperation and near-hatred he'd felt when Harry had left him caged up behind wind and risen into the sky as though their bond meant nothing. Of course it didn't mean nothing, Harry tried to protest without words, and Draco roared back at him without them, too, flinging images of standing behind the barrier and the silver house shaking from the blows of the storm, the fear coiling inside him that he would know of Harry's death only with the sudden snapping of the bond-

It was the exasperation, and the realization that there was a whip of air right behind Draco, as much as any desire to be done with this, that made Harry surge up with a great cry of defiance, aiming at the heart of the storm as he hadn't since he first left the ground.

There _was _a knot there, a knot of gathered magic, so tied with raveling threads of wind that Harry didn't know how he would manage to untie it.

But Draco laughed in his head, not exasperated there but wild and real, and showed him the obvious solution. Harry gave a thin smile.

If he was the gateway, the point through which wild magic could flow into Hurricane, the way Bodiless had been...

He clenched his hands down into what felt suspiciously like fur, but was only the thickened wind of the strand beneath him, and for the first time, tried consciously to use the gateway, _reversing _the flow of the power through it.

The storm, or the fragment of the power inside his mind represented by the storm, struggled madly for a second. Then Harry found the center of that great knot, and focused on it, and the knot began to loosen and flow, moving towards him.

Harry seized and juggled the winds, braiding them through his tame ones, adding them to the breezes that he and Draco rode, spinning them out into the depths of the sky where they could blow unhindered. And when nothing would do but destruction, Draco was there, to swish his claws through them again and again, until they were tattered, tiny pieces that would never be able to come back together.

They floated, inside seconds, in the wild, calm blue of a late spring sky on Hurricane, with Harry's body and magic aching, and Draco laughing in his mind, and their bond and Harry's winds swarming around them with triumph.


	8. A Kind of Wild Forgiveness

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eight-A Kind of Wild Forgiveness_

"What you did was _stupid_."

Harry stood quietly in front of Draco. This was part of the price Draco had demanded, that Harry apologize publically to him in front of all the humans. The riders were still aloft, not wanting to come down until they were sure that another storm wouldn't howl up on the heels of the first one, and the mummidade didn't care. Besides, they wouldn't have been able to understand the significance of the apology in words anyway.

Harry nodded without looking up. Draco was hissing and roaring in the back of his head through the bond, telling him that Harry's action was more than stupid, it was almost criminally wasteful. Who would have protected them against future storms, if Harry had really died in battling that particular one? And what would have happened to them if the riders or the mummidade had been unable to understand them in the future? Harry wasn't the only one who could understand and work with the riders, now, thanks to Hermione spending so much time with them, but he was still part of the only bonded human couple, the only ones that could communicate with the mummidade.

Harry looked up at Draco's eyes and took a deep breath. He could feel the resentment of the Weasleys gathered around him like a cloak, but not everyone was resentful of the same things. Ron and George and Percy-and Hermione, and Angelina-thought Draco was right and that Harry had done something stupid in risking himself like that. Molly and Arthur and Charlie and Fleur resented the way Draco spoke to Harry and acted like he wanted to humiliate him. Harry had no idea what Bill felt, really.

But they had no idea about the private conversation that was taking place in the bond, either. Or the fact that Draco's anger was born out of fear.

"Sorry," Harry said quietly. "I won't do something like that again without asking you about it."

Draco stalked forwards across the grass between them and shoved his finger into Harry's chest. Harry rocked back a step with the push, he was so surprised, and Draco stalked around him, hissing into his ear. "You won't _ever _do anything like that again, permission or not, because it was _stupid_."

The bond hissed as though Draco knew Parseltongue. Harry reached out and put his hands on Draco's shoulders to balance himself.

Draco shook himself free and faced Harry with his eyes and his face bright with rage. "I want you to _remember _that. You don't need to do this, not when you have other people around to back you up. You shouldn't _have _to do that. But you always _think _you do, and it's fucking _annoying_."

"He's right, you know, Harry," Hermione spoke up. "There's no reason to think that the rest of us won't help you, or that you have to fight every battle on your own."

Draco turned his face towards her, and she blinked and shut up. That was another thing that was hard to understand unless you were privy to the bond, Harry thought. They probably thought Draco was striking out at everything in sight.

But even though Draco was willing to make Harry apologize in front of witnesses, he still reserved the excitement of scolding Harry for himself.

"Don't say that," Draco said. "That's the point _I'm _trying to make to him. He'll get confused if too many people try to make it to him at once."

Hermione pulled herself back together and sniffed at Draco. "Well, excuse me for trying to help, I'm sure."

"You're not helping," Draco began with dangerous fury in his voice.

"It's okay, Draco," Harry said insistently, reaching out and catching Draco's hands. "It really _is, _right? I came back in one piece, and Hermione's trying to ensure I stay that way." Draco's eyebrows both rose, and Harry sighed and pulled out the big guns.

He knelt in the grass in front of Draco, who gaped down at him and nearly lost his hold on Harry's hands, as if he thought that Harry didn't mean it. Then he seemed to realize what other people might think if he let Harry go, and he immediately tightened his grasp, leaning down to murmur through the bond, _This had better be good._

"I swear that I won't do something like that again without telling you," Harry said softly, holding Draco's eyes. "And I won't hold you back from helping me. I can't promise never to do _anything _like that again, because I might need to fight a storm or react with my wind before anyone else can use their wild magic. But I'll always ask you, and I'll always let you be at my side. All right?"

Draco licked his lips, looking at Harry without paying attention to the expressions on the faces of the rest of the group. Well, Harry wasn't, either, for that matter. He knew being held back and ignored had irritated and hurt Draco worse than all the rest of it, but Draco wouldn't have brought that private matter into the open. It was something that only belonged to the bond, just like Draco's fear.

Harry tightened his own hold and said, down the bond, backed with all the steel-colored certainty he could muster, _I promise._

Draco bent and kissed him harshly, so harshly that Harry felt some blood flowing from his bitten lip. Hermione said something, and Harry saw Ron put his hand on her arm out of the corner of his eye. Percy muttered, "Well done," and Bill turned his back and stalked away as if he couldn't bear to watch any more of it. Draco pulled Harry to his feet, still kissing him, and Andromeda turned away with Teddy in her arms.

The rest of them began to shuffle and cough as Draco pushed Harry towards their tent. Harry let him do it. He had wanted to make _certain _things public, but that was no reason to make _all _of them that way.

* * *

Draco wanted so much to be inside Harry's pants that his hands shook as he tugged the tent flap shut behind them. Harry obligingly tied it with a bond of wind that felt disgustingly similar to the ones that had kept Draco inside Andromeda's house.

But Draco refused to think about that right now. He wanted to think about Harry, apologetic and kneeling and already half-naked, in front of him, as the winds skimmed under his clothes and shook them off.

"You _know _that what you did was stupid," he muttered, watching as Harry pulled his shirt sleeve off his arm, where it had stuck. It comforted Draco to see that not even Harry's winds were always perfect.

Harry grinned at him. His eyes were bright, gleaming, and he seemed like he had never knelt in front of Draco before this or begged his pardon. He reached out and put his hands on Draco's hips, nodding agreeably. Draco would have been happier if he could have kept his hips from jutting forwards to meet Harry's pressure.

"I know that," Harry said, and bowed his head, rubbing his cheek against Draco's erection. "Will you let me make it up to you?"

Draco cleared his throat. Part of him wanted to refuse and walk away, not least because the other humans would be watching the tent flap and know exactly what was going on in here. But he had come here for this, and after a long hesitation that did make Harry's hands falter a little, he reached out and tugged Harry to his feet, kissing him hard enough to make Harry wince and reach a hand up to his lips.

"You can make it up to me," Draco said, and stepped back, and folded his arms, and let Harry do all the work.

He had the help of his winds, of course, which made it less fair than it would have been otherwise, as a way of making up for his error. But maybe it was better this way, Draco thought, shivering a little as the breezes slid beneath his trousers and floated them off in the direction of the bed. This way, he got Harry's mouth on him faster.

And Harry didn't try to do anything stupid like make Draco cold by using his winds. Instead, his mouth was there in seconds, wet and warm and-

Draco closed his eyes and tilted his head back, staggering around until he fell on the bed. If he leaned against a wall of the tent, there was every chance it would rip open, and he didn't want _that_. Speculation was bad enough.

Or so he thought. His mind got clouded pretty quickly, he had to admit, and he spread his legs some more to accommodate Harry between them and groaned.

Harry reached up, stroking Draco's knees, driving them further and spreading them. He moaned around Draco, and Draco bucked his hips up, forcing his way deeper into Harry's mouth, almost ashamed of how much he liked that. But he couldn't stop himself, and Harry shuffled closer on his knees, mouth widening.

Draco's own wild magic sprang out on his fingers, cutting small slits in the packed moss of the bed. Then Harry opened further, and seemed to relax some essential muscles that he'd never managed to relax before, and Draco made an incoherent noise as his hips and arse rose straight off the bed.

Harry pulled back when Draco was almost on the verge, licking his lips and staring up at him. "Your choice," he whispered. "I didn't ask you before, so I'm asking you now."

Draco clenched his teeth and reached impatiently for Harry's head. "I want you," he said.

Harry smiled at him, distant and bright as some of the stars that were coming out overhead, beyond the tent's walls. "I know you do," he said, and stood up, displaying all of himself, naked and brilliant, to Draco. "But that doesn't tell me very much about what you want me to _do_."

Draco snarled at him, and, from somewhere unexpected when his arms and legs were still shaky and his knees unwilling to support him after the assault of Harry's talented mouth, grabbed Harry around the waist and whirled to bear him to the bed. Harry's eyes went wide in a _most _satisfying way, and Draco kissed him and crawled on top of him, leaving him to reach the obvious conclusion.

Harry hummed and arched up against Draco, and Draco stifled a smile as he reached for his wand. If Harry hadn't _really _been as eager for this as Draco was, then their lovemaking would have lost half its pleasure for him.

_And that's another thing's that changed. _Before, he would have been just as pleased to take Harry to bed whether he was completely willing or not; in fact, that he couldn't keep himself away from Draco when he was less willing added some spice. But now, he wanted Harry here because he _wanted _to be here.

Harry ducked his chin down towards his chest when Draco tried to kiss him on the mouth, though, and looked up at him through his lashes. "Come on, put it in me," he said breathlessly, and Draco realized that he hadn't actually cast the spell for lube, he'd just been staring at Harry like an idiot.

Draco nodded and took his wand more firmly in hand, casting enough to coat his fingers with the clear and glistening liquid. Harry purred and spread his legs broadly enough that it looked painful. But Draco looked into his face as he reached into Harry with three wide-spread fingers, and Harry only shut his own eyes and made small, satisfied noises.

Draco slid his hand more firmly into Harry when he saw that. Harry grunted and rocked in response, his moans seeming to rise out of the center of his chest. Draco pulled his hand back and took himself in his palm, wincing and holding still for a moment. If he wasn't careful, he would complete what Harry's mouth hadn't.

Harry opened one eye. "Scared, Malfoy?"

Draco rammed in hard just for that, and took some delight in the way Harry's mouth and eyes both gaped as though he didn't understand what he'd been asking for. "Not at all," Draco said smoothly. "Savoring the moment. But since it seems you don't want to do that..." He took Harry's hips in his hands and set a particularly brutal pace that sent Harry sliding all around the bed before Harry took hold of the sides to steady himself.

They made love like that, Draco thrusting furiously and Harry thrusting back, snarling at him with his mouth open when Draco hissed again about how stupid he had been. Draco supposed it wasn't the most _romantic _thing to say, but damn it, he'd had enough of Harry's reckless stupidity. He hadn't done anything that foolish in a while, and then he did something that made up for all the weeks of quiet at once.

Harry did reach up and clutch his hand, and send a quick apology down the bond. _I'm sorry. I wouldn't have-_

Draco grunted and shut him up with a rough thrust. They hadn't been doing much communication through the bond until that point, and he was happy that way.

Harry writhed and gasped beneath him for the rest of their lovemaking, and only bright twinges and sparks came through the bond, pleasing Draco. He ended it all with a push that sent Harry sliding almost off the bed, and Draco shuddered and collapsed next to Harry, still writhing a little in pleasure.

Harry put Draco's hand on his own erection and gave him a pointed look. Draco idly stroked and squeezed, and smiled gently when Harry gasped.

"Oh, this?" Draco asked, and bent down, opening his mouth. He thought Harry was holding his breath; that was the only reason he would be able to be as still as he was. But Draco didn't suck Harry, just brought his tongue closer and closer, until he let the very tip brush Harry's cock.

Harry came just as nosily as if Draco had gone all the way. Draco laughed to himself and curled up next to Harry, leaving it to him to clean up the mess. Draco was feeling hollowed out by his earlier fear, his anger, his attempts to get out of the house where Harry had caged him, and the exhilaration of riding the wind and seeing Harry, finally, rise to his full potential to defeat the storm because of the need to protect Draco.

_That wasn't the only reason I managed to do it then._

_Of course it wasn't, _Draco said, and surrounded the whole response with stinging little prickers of doubt, which made Harry roll his eyes at Draco.

Harry did use his winds to clean up, and the last thing Draco saw before he shut his eyes and succumbed to sleep was a quick whirl of color near the bed, sifting out the moss and drying the mess.

* * *

"You're sure that you want to do this today?"

Draco's eyes were shadowed. Harry nodded, and, because he looked unconvinced, sent a quick caress down the bond, focusing on the back of Draco's neck. Draco jerked a little towards the invisible touch, but never took his eyes from Harry, nonetheless.

Harry had to sigh. "What, did you think that I would never agree to speak to the mummidade and learn about this dance? And I don't think they bear you any grudge for defending me the other day."

Draco looked across the meadow towards the nearest grazing herd, which included at least two of the four bodies that usually made up Westshadow. "They might also get angry at me because I spied on them," he said.

Harry wound his hand with Draco's and squeezed. "We both watched them dancing. They'll have to get angry at both of us." He didn't bother pointing out that, one or both of them, it was the same thing to a mummid, because to them, individuals didn't exist except as a pair, minimum.

Draco rolled his eyes. _It's useless trying to keep secrets from someone who can read your thoughts, you know._

_I wasn't really trying, _Harry snapped back, and left Draco to chew on that before they turned again to face the mummid herd that was nearest. Already white heads were lifting to regard them, and golden horns and golden eyes both seemed to fix on them. Harry thought their horns and eyes were actually near the same color, making them both bright and equally unnerving.

"Who should we ask?" Draco muttered.

Harry shook his head. If they'd had any idea of the name of the pair who performed the dance on the seashore, he would have suggested asking them, but they didn't. And surely more than one pair or group had done the dance and produced a child. So they remained, still, until a trio of mummidade formed and trotted out to look at them.

Harry didn't recognize any of these particular mummidade, and he thought he would have, since one of them had a distinctive curl of white fur hanging down in front of its eyes. He took a deep breath and linked his hand and thoughts with Draco's. The mummid who stood in the back of the triangle promptly reared up and placed one hoof on the back of each of the front ones, and Harry felt a mind reaching out to them.

Shaken grass, wind blowing up and down, whirling seeds and blossoms through the air..._Tempest _Harry told Draco, and Draco nodded a little.

Harry couldn't think of any better way of telling them the truth than showing them, especially when they didn't have the deeper bond that Westshadow was capable of to communicate in words. He showed them the image of the pair of mummidade dancing by the edge of the sea that he and Draco had witnessed, and how magic had filled the sand between the pair, a child woven from the dance.

There was a long silence, mental and physical, although one of Tempest's bodies shifted and stamped a hoof. Then the mummid who had had a hoof braced on each back dropped down and fell in between the other two, coming closer. Harry had thought that one must be younger and not as experienced in forming bonds, since it needed the physical contact to feel its partners, but seeing its slotted eyes this close, as they examined him carefully, he changed his mind.

Back came many images, a sleet of images, a tempest of images, appropriately, as they saw pairs dancing on the shore, and on the meadow, and on a flat, rocky plain Harry and Draco hadn't seen so far, conjuring the winds and the magic to bring them children. It was stained with a quiet, calm gladness that the _real _humans knew about this secret, and then the images faded out and Tempest waited.

_It doesn't know what we want, _Harry realized, startled. _It probably wasn't really a secret to them in the first place._

He exchanged a look with Draco, who had worried so much over almost injuring the mummidade, and got a glare in return. Draco shook his head, probably warning Harry to be quiet, and then faced Tempest and inclined his head. That was the closest either of them would get to an apology for his worry, Harry thought.

_Well, you didn't think that they wouldn't care, either._

Harry nodded in acknowledgment, squeezed Draco's hand back, and worked with him to send an image of Draco and Harry dancing on the same seashore, the magic coalescing with blue-green brilliance between them. He had no idea how to take it further than that, since neither of them had watched two humans dancing like this and they didn't know if the magic would actually work and form a child for them.

For some seconds, Tempest was silent, its goat-like tails twitching, and then the three bodies moved so that the mummidade were standing together with their necks entwined. Harry didn't know if that was a bad sign, and he sent a quelling thought when Draco started to worry it was. They really didn't _know _yet, of course. So he made Draco wait, and Draco finally stopped biting his lips and stood quietly beside him.

Two other mummidade broke away from their herd and rushed up to Tempest. When they joined it, Harry knew, Tempest ceased to exist, and another "individual" manifested. But perhaps they needed these extra bodies to answer Harry and Draco's question. Harry remained motionless for now.

The newcomers reared up and put their hooves on Tempest's backs the way the first triangle had done. A new image came to Harry, the sun rising, for a second before a complicated image formed. Like a huge painting, Harry had to pause and look at different parts of it before he could really understand it. He could feel Draco doing the same thing beside him, his breath rushing in excitement.

The nearest image was of that place on the seashore, or one that looked so similar Harry couldn't readily distinguish it, with a dip in the sand and Harry and Draco standing near it, their ankles in the water, a pair of mummidade between them on either side. The water came running in and splashed Draco's legs. A moment later, the same curling wave struck Harry.

The water joined with the wind in the second part of the painting, in some manner that Harry felt more than he saw, since the only visible sign of the wind was the water droplets dancing up and down in the middle of the circle they had formed. The wind rose, roaring, and then _did _become a visible whirl above their heads. The Harry and Draco in this section of the painting stood with their heads tilted back to watch the wild magic above them, but Harry couldn't see any sign that his pictured self was attempting to influence the wind.

The next section showed the mummidade dancing between them, and Harry and Draco reaching over the circle to hold hands. The power that descended on them was made of that wind and water, the droplets spinning so fast around their heads that Harry couldn't see their expressions now. He could feel the way Draco's emotions wrenched and jumped at the sight. He had wanted to learn the dance from the mummidade, but he had wanted to do it by themselves then, without help.

_I'm just glad that they don't see any problem with teaching it to us, _Harry reminded him.

Draco grunted and stood still next to him, as they considered the next section of the image.

This did show them dancing, or at least so Harry assumed. They were caught in the process of leaping into the air, their heads thrown back and their arms spread. Their legs arched in a way that Harry hadn't known human legs could bend. Beneath them kneeled the mummidade, their horns touching the sand and their forelegs folded beneath them as if they were horses bending down for someone to mount.

The last image was a wash of blue and clarity, the colors of the water and the wind. Harry studied it, then nodded. He didn't think even the mummidade knew what would happen if two humans tried the dance, not for certain, so they weren't able to show the child that might result from it.

"What was _that_?" Draco's voice was a murmured gasp.

Harry shook his head at him as he opened his own eyes. "Our future," he said. "If we choose to accept it."

He looked back at the five mummidade, and they repeated their image for him, the sun rising. This time, Harry noticed the mass of blue cloud beneath the sun, and nodded. Bluecloud would do for a name.

"If we accept their help," he added.

Draco's future family obviously mattered more to him than his pride, because less than a second later, he was nodding.


	9. Learning to Dance

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nine—Learning to Dance_

"I never knew it would be so _hard_."

Harry smiled down at Draco's bowed head. Draco had collapsed in the middle of the next dance step that the mummidade were trying to show them, panting, with his elbows resting on his knees. Harry knelt down beside him and kissed his face under his ear. "Do you think we should give up trying to learn?" he murmured.

Draco immediately jerked himself up and shook his head. "_No_," he said, so flatly that Harry bit his lip so he wouldn't laugh. "I'm not letting _goats _get the better of me." He forced himself back to his feet again, although Harry could both see and feel through the bond how much the muscles in his legs trembled. "Go on."

Harry turned back to the mummidade instead of answering. Sometimes he thought Draco forgot that Harry wasn't actually the one teaching him to dance and challenging him this way; that was up to the mummidade themselves. Bluecloud waited for them now, five bodies arranged so that three of its heads pointed in different directions. The two who were demonstrating the dance steps waited with their legs solidly beneath them, their heads a little bowed.

"We face each other," Harry said, as the image bloomed to life in their minds again.

Draco grimaced, but turned around and half-bowed his head, a movement Harry copied. "Like the beginning to a duel," Draco muttered.

Harry smiled, but said nothing. He had decided that increasing the distance between them by speaking aloud wasn't a good idea. Draco caught the edge of that intention a minute later, and flashed him a hard glance.

_You could have told me when you decided that, in your genius. _

Harry just shook his head a little, and murmured down the bond, _But contradicting you and making you do something you don't want to do would also increase the distance between us._

Draco's snort said what he thought of that. Harry lifted his arms above his head, or around his head, curving them like an ox's horns, in response to the next image that the mummidade sent them.

Draco raised his arms, too, although he hadn't stopped glaring at Harry, and Harry winced a little when he thought of how this was going to look.

_It's all right, _he said down the bond, wheeling around in the next step the mummidade insisted was correct, so that they turned their backs on each other, but still had to move around perfectly in time. With the bond, that shouldn't be as much of a problem for them as it would be for any other human pair who was trying to do this dance. _You're doing fine._

_I'll only think I'm doing fine when I'm holding our child._

There was nothing Harry could say to that, either. They did manage to turn around and face each other at the same time, and Harry smiled to encourage Draco. Bluecloud promptly got in between them, and Harry dropped his arms and frowned at them. They wouldn't have interfered if the unity of the dance hadn't been lost, but he couldn't understand what he had done.

The five mummidade came back together and flashed him an image of his smile. He hadn't smiled at exactly the same time as Draco, who had produced his an instant later and showed a rather demented version of it now, not at all the calm expression Harry had had. _Every movement _had to be in union and unity, or nothing would work out.

"I can't believe we have to do this," Draco muttered. "That we're dependent for guidance on mummidade."

_We've been dependent on them for plenty so far, _Harry told him. _Including finding a new place to live, a place that's safe from the storms. I don't know why you thought that our dependence would somehow end now._

Draco scraped up some dust with one foot and frowned mulishly at him. Harry frowned back and then stepped away, shaking his head. The mummidade knew well enough what that meant, and trotted back towards their herd.

"You think we should quit for now?" Draco dropped his arms to his sides so that they swung like loose paddles and glared at him. "Why?"

"The others don't really understand what we're doing," Harry pointed out. It was true; Ron and Hermione had both raised their eyebrows when Harry said that they would be talking to the mummidade this morning, but hadn't objected. "We should at least share the knowledge. And we aren't going to accomplish anything right now anyway, the way we're fretting at each other. I think we need to take some time off to relax."

Draco closed his eyes and sucked in so much air that Harry felt some of the winds near him diminish. "I agree," Draco said, opening his eyes at last. "I never thought it would be this hard."

"You didn't expect it to be easy," Harry said aloud, following his example of not speaking in the bond. He turned to accompany Draco back to the silver houses, watching the way the muscles in Draco's jaw trembled and then firmed—much the same sort of sensation as was running up the bond right now.

"Yes, no, I don't know," Draco said, running through all the responses so fast that Harry didn't have time to take in any one of them. "I didn't think it would be this hard. And I know I should have, and that the kind of wild magic you can call to create a child doesn't come easily, before you say anything," he added.

Harry silently held up his hand.

Draco nodded. "Thank you for not saying anything," he muttered, and then closed his eyes and shook his head. "I don't know. I don't _know_, Harry. I think that I should have done more than this already, that this dance is waiting for us to master it, that our child is waiting to be born. I have this sense of urgency I can't explain."

Harry hummed, but didn't say anything in return. He couldn't say that he shared the same sense of urgency. To him, the seasons on Hurricane stretched before them to the horizon of both space and time, without half the urgencies of politics on Earth. They had enemies here, no doubt of that, but not the same tangle of loyalties they'd had in the wizarding world.

_You don't feel it?_

Harry shook his head. _No. Sorry. But maybe part of it is that I already have Teddy, and you don't have any children of your own._

Draco nodded in an unconvinced way, but let it go. Harry walked on, calmly convinced, in and of himself, that they would solve the problem of the dance sooner or later.

The problem of the storms was proving rather harder.

* * *

The rider that landed beside Draco startled him badly enough to pull him out of the trance of cutting weeds with his wild magic that he'd fallen into. It was hypnotic. Reach out with his left hand, slice the top of the nearest weeds, slice them into smaller pieces with his right, and funnel the rest of the tiny scraps into the tame wind that Harry had lent them for the cleanup...

But not hypnotic enough to survive the rush of wings right beside him, the sudden death of his tame wind, and the scattering of all the cut pieces he hadn't yet picked up. The beast's annoyed whiffle was the least of it.

Draco turned around with the most bored expression he could muster on his face, especially once he saw that the rider wasn't Open Wings. He spread his hands, the helpless gesture any human who didn't speak enough of the riders' language to communicate would use.

The rider snapped and hissed at him, but Draco shook his head again. It really _wasn't _his fault if someone insisted on coming to him and speaking this way. They should have gone to Granger, who was doing better than anyone at the moment in translating the riders' language and getting them to understand each other.

The beast held out one wing. Draco watched as it settled to the ground, a gracefully arched ramp, and grimaced a little. He knew what _that _meant. The creature wanted him to ride it.

And offering a ride wasn't something that anyone except Open Wings did often. They had to go somewhere urgent, or a crisis had come up that the rider thought Draco needed to reach as soon as possible.

Harry could have flown on his own. But even with the tame wind dancing beside him in its eagerness to help, Draco wasn't Harry.

He did look around for him as he climbed up the wing and settled on the beast's bony back behind the rider, though. As far as he could tell, the meadow was still serene. The mummidade and the antelope that the riders ate—they weren't sentient—still grazed without looking up. The silver houses had no activity except for that of people casting spells and gathering grass and sleeping outside them. Nor could Draco see a lot of riders gathering over the meadow or patrolling, which would probably indicate Primrose and her group had come back.

But, apparently, nothing would do for the rider except that Draco accompany him.

Draco sighed in a long-suffering way and agreeably flung a leg over the beast's back and settled his hands on the rider's feathery shoulders. It felt like sinking his hands into clouds, but it was better than trying to hold on to their waist; most riders had no waist to speak of.

The beast snapped its beak, and the rider clucked to it. Draco thought he recognized the word for "fly"—no great deduction, as they rose from the ground and hurtled through the air a moment later.

Draco caught his breath. He had ridden the wind, of course, but that was nothing like this, the great wings beating on either side of them, the beast's whole being committed to motion _forwards. _Draco enjoyed the flights that Harry took him along for, but there, the important things were his trust in Harry and watching the landscape zoom past below. This was at once slower and more thrilling.

He realized quickly that they weren't aiming where he had thought they would, for the center of the meadow where the humans gathered in times of crisis. Instead, they rose and rose, and the air became higher, thinner, colder. Draco coughed. The rider cast him a narrow look of contempt and clucked and chirruped to his beast. Still they rose.

Finally, the shadow of wings crossed the sky above Draco, and he glanced up to see another beast circling there. This one was Swoop, as Open Wings named his partner. Draco stood up as best he could when his hands and heels both sank into feathers with every movement and waved one hand madly.

Open Wings dropped Swoop down to pace the beast and rider carrying Draco. Swoop glanced at Draco once, great beak clacking, and then turned his head haughtily away. Open Wings reached out a taloned hand and clutched Draco's tightly.

Draco stared at him, then looked around for either Granger or the mummidade. He couldn't communicate with the riders on his own. Even if he had devoted every effort to learning their language, he didn't think he could have done it as easily as Granger, who _wanted _to learn it more than she wanted anything else at the moment, or Teddy, who was young and still had a malleable tongue and throat.

Open Wings didn't seem to care about that. He retained his grip on Draco's hand and slowly tilted his head back, baring the long line of his throat.

Draco, having nothing else to do and sensing that he wouldn't reclaim his hand or be allowed to return to the ground soon, looked with him. Overhead flew three beasts. Draco thought he recognized them as a trio who spent a lot of time guarding the borders and waiting for threats like Primrose to show up.

"Yes?" he asked aloud, to ease his own nervousness as much as anything. "I can't understand anything you're saying, you do realize that?"

Open Wings uttered a long series of trills and chirps, ignoring Draco entirely. The beasts above Draco dipped their wings and spread their tails, and then abruptly pivoted away from each other, spiraling towards the ground. Draco caught his breath. He hadn't seen them fly as spectacularly as that since Harry had deployed some magic and swung them around like pendulums, and he doubted they would enjoy being reminded of that.

Then the beasts locked their tails together and began to spin at the very limit of their separate flights, and the motion carried them back together. Draco stared, dazed, as they posed, their heads tilted back, their talons and paws resting against each other, and the riders on their backs stretched out and carefully arched their bodies so they came to rest in very specific positions.

Draco looked back and forth between the pattern of their shadows on the ground and the shapes they were making in the sky, his breath drying out his throat and his hands clenching in front of him as though he could reach out and take apart the picture they were making.

Because it _was _a picture, although all done in tints of brown and grey and black and white because of the shadow-shapes and the colors on the beasts. It was Harry, Harry's face, his eyes half-closed and his hair rising stiff and spiky from his skull. And Draco didn't have to look at Open Wings's face to feel the talons on his shoulder go spiky themselves with worry.

Draco swallowed. He thought he knew what they meant. He wanted to reject that meaning, to pretend it was something else, that he didn't know what they wanted and he would go off and do something else himself, but he knew what it was.

They were _worried _about Harry. The way he had ridden the last storm that had come into the meadow by himself, most likely, and maybe also the way he had picked apart the knot of power in the center of it. Draco had heard Granger talk about how they also worried when one of their scouts wanted to go off by himself and do something drastic, either a hunt or an attack against their enemies. The riders were used to being a small group against the might of Hurricane. Heroic individual action would just doom other people, at least if they allowed it to get a root in their hearts and habits.

Draco sighed so deeply that he ruffled the feathers on Open Wings's shoulders, ahead of him. He nodded, and kept on nodding as Open Wings turned and glanced at him. It was a human gesture they understood. He hoped they would know it meant that he was worried, too, or at least accepted their worry, and that he would talk to Harry.

Open Wings clattered his beak, an approving noise, and gestured with one hand-talon. The rider whose beast Draco rode on took up the reins and ruffled his beast's neck-feathers in a complicated motion, and his beast dived back down, landing with hardly a riffle of the grass near Andromeda's house.

Andromeda came out, cradling Teddy, to stare at him. For the moment, Draco refused to pay attention to her. He hopped off and saluted the rider who had brought him here, another human gesture they'd learned, because it was easy for them to perform with their long arms.

The rider bowed his head back and took off. Andromeda watched him dwindle to a winged speck on the edge of the meadow before she turned and handed the crooning, reaching Teddy to Draco.

"What was all that about?" she asked quietly.

Draco met her eyes evenly. He knew that she didn't have much reason to be loyal to him, but on the other hand, he also hadn't done much to piss her off lately. "As far as I can tell," he said, just in case it turned out later that the riders had been trying to say something entirely different to him, "they're worried about Harry. They think that he's going to take off on his own or that he's taking too many risks in confronting the storm by himself."

Andromeda blew herself up like a hedgehog. "Don't they have enough to worry about, with their beasts and their herding?" she snapped. "Tell them to leave Harry alone."

Draco blinked at her. He had never seen her like that in defense of Harry, even though the Weasleys when they first came to Hurricane had given her plenty of chances to tell them off. She only ever seemed to get like that about Teddy, herself, or the memories of her dead.

For the first time, he thought he was seeing a glimpse of the woman Harry had been loyal to and hadn't wanted to see go back to Earth for her own sake, as well as because she was Teddy's grandmother.

"Why are you staring at me?" Andromeda added harshly, shaking her black hair out of her face and glaring at him. "Do you think _I'm _the mad one, when the riders act as though Harry's going to go mad any minute?"

"I don't know for sure that they're thinking that," Draco said slowly. "I'd have to ask Granger. I don't speak their language, remember. So I can't tell them to leave Harry alone. I need to speak to Granger, and I need to speak to Harry."

Andromeda studied him for a little moment more, then grunted and pushed Teddy towards him. "Here, watch him," she said. "He's been trying to break the wall all morning. Talking about seeing little cracks in it."

Draco raised his eyebrows, but said nothing. Maybe Teddy really could, considering that the wild magic seemed to concentrate on giving him clarity of vision.

"I think Hermione's away with the riders, and those expeditions of hers take hours," Andromeda continued. "But I saw Harry walk away to the north a little while ago, and he wouldn't have gone far on foot." Draco nodded, understanding the unspoken corollary of that; he wouldn't have used his winds to take him a greater distance away without telling anyone, either. "I have to work on this building."

She bustled out to the one that resembled an amphitheater again, and stood there with her eyes closed, her hands twined in a position that made it seem as if she was pulling on invisible threads. Draco turned and walked away, thoughtfully bouncing Teddy on his hip.

"Your grandmother is more than she seems," he told Teddy.

"Want Uncle Harry," said Teddy, and glanced up at Draco. "Are we going to find him?"

"We're going to find him," Draco confirmed, and began to walk.

He wondered as he went what he would say to Harry, whether the riders had really meant what he thought they did, whether he should have brought Granger to translate, and other things that irritated him enough that he was grinding his teeth by the time he arrived at the place where the bond had told him Harry was. Harry was watching for him, waiting for him, rising from the grass to look at Draco.

"What is it?" he asked quietly.

Draco swallowed. His throat felt tight and close, and normally he would have tried to speak into Harry's mind, but he didn't know that he could find the right words even with the bond. The winds were circling around Harry, looking as if they had polished his eyes into bright gemstones, and ruffling his hair.

"You're afraid of me," Harry said, reaching out to take Teddy. Teddy immediately began to chatter to him, and Harry chattered back, but kept turning his head so that he could watch Draco with one eye.

Draco blinked, caught flat-footed by Harry's announcement, and stuck his hands into his robe pockets. Then he saw the way Harry's smile was curdling and he was turning his back as if that would dismiss Draco from his sight, and he blurted out the words that did more good than silence. "I'm afraid _for _you."

"Why?" Harry interrupted Teddy for a moment, putting him down and then patting him on the shoulder. "Why don't you see if you can find a _pink _stone?" he asked Teddy, nodding to the small stones scattered over this part of the meadow. "That's the one color I haven't seen since we came to Hurricane."

Teddy squealed in glee and scrambled off. Harry faced Draco fully, his arms folded and his head bowed, and the winds traveled in circles around his hair again. Draco couldn't feel them fully except when they touched his skin, but he thought they were hugging and hanging onto and caressing Harry, making him feel less alone.

"Why?" Harry repeated in a low voice. "I've done stupid things like that before, and I'll probably do them again, but—but you've never acted as though I need a minder before."

"It's the riders," Draco said. "They showed me a picture of you they made with their shadows and the beasts' bodies, and they took me into the air to do it. They would have come to both of us together, and the mummidade, if they thought they could speak to you about it."

Harry closed his eyes. Draco could feel thoughts darting through the bond, silver and green, too fast to follow.

And then he thought, _But that was never the case before. I could always absorb it, even if it meant that I had to go through them later, like I did when Harry shoved those memories of his childhood at me._

And he reached out and caught hold of the thoughts, dragging them back towards him, inviting himself into the conversation Harry was having with himself.

Harry half-snarled and turned towards him, but what Draco caught was, _Dangerous, should have realized, need to leave, but how would they communicate without me, how could I take Teddy? _

"You idiot," Draco said, directly into Harry's ear, because he'd started walking across the space between them while he was catching the thoughts, and now stood holding Harry, in a tight enough grip that Harry had to close his eyes and swallow. "Of course you're not leaving. Just because the riders might be afraid of you or for you doesn't mean you need to _leave. _We'll talk about it, the way you were always encouraging the Weasleys to do instead of turning to you automatically for an answer, remember?" His hands tightened when Harry tried to shrug, holding his shoulders still. "Remember?"

Harry swallowed again. And then he leaned forwards and rested his chin on Draco's shoulder, sighing out hard enough to make the hair around Draco's ear riffle.

"Yeah," he said. "I mean—yes. Thanks, Draco." He pulled back enough to give Draco a misty-eyed smile. "I was forgetting about the other people who chose to walk this road with me."

Teddy came scrambling back then, holding his hands up and chattering about the rock he'd found. Draco took it away and looked. It was some kind of pink quartz, he thought, delicately ruddy more than anything else, but it was pink.

"I found a pink stone!" Teddy yelled as Harry held him up, and then repeated a few words in what was probably the riders' language, all chucking and chuckling and clucking.

Harry caught Draco's eye, and smiled at him. "You sure did," he said. He kissed Teddy's forehead and reached out to take Draco's hand. "Do you want to take it home and put it up over your bed?"

"_Yeah_," Teddy said, and grabbed the pink rock and scrambled down again so he could run ahead with it.

Draco took Harry's hand, and asked softly, _No running? Or flying away, either? _

Harry's hand trembled once, then firmed. _No running._


	10. Mediation

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Ten—Mediation_

"We got a bit more of it this time."

Draco nodded, trying to smooth disappointment away from his face, as they followed the mummidade towards the center of the meadow. As he watched, the herd broke into group-individuals, mostly quartets or trios, although a few pairs manifested. He recognized none of them except Westshadow, who galloped gravely in front and now and then glanced over one or two shoulders as if to keep track of them.

"We'll master the dance eventually," Harry continued, apparently irritated that Draco hadn't answered him already.

_Why say _apparently, _when you can read my thoughts?_

Harry rolled his eyes. _I thought you might not want me to right now. You seemed to be brooding about something._

Draco shook his head and glanced sideways at Harry as he saw the Weasleys waiting ahead, in the center of the meadow, and beasts and riders dropping from above, their wings wide-spread to counter the effects of the sharp winds blowing right now. _I do know that we'll get there eventually, and that we got further this morning. But I'm currently more concerned about this meeting than anything else. They seem to be gathering to judge you._

Harry's face went brilliant and remote, and even the bond thrummed at a lower note than usual. It took Draco perhaps five seconds to unravel Harry's emotions, which had a kind of coiled, patient waiting in them that was not anger.

_Why not? _Draco asked, sure that Harry could follow enough of his private conversation to know what Draco was talking about.

_Because they fear me, _Harry said. _But not mindlessly, not the way some people in the wizarding world did. They fear me because they think I might endanger their survival, but they're willing to give me the chance to talk about it. _He turned his head and gave Draco a faint smile, then faced forwards again. They were almost there, Draco saw, and the edges of the mummidade herd had already run into the riders, walking fearlessly between the talons and claws of their beasts.

_I want to know what I can do better, and see what ideas they have for fighting those storms._

Westshadow broke away from the rest of its herd and formed up the quartet of four bodies between the nearest rider and Harry, hooves braced, heads held back so that the horns formed an interlocking series of arcs. Draco closed his eyes and felt the bond curve through his chest and neck and brain with the usual wearisome shudder. Open Wings had come forwards to the edge of the gathering, as well, Draco saw when he opened his eyes, and the rider stood in the pose that he usually assumed for one of these bonds, his hand on the neck of his partner and his eyes steady and nearly sad.

_You fear me, _Harry told him, without waiting for Westshadow to turn his heads or Open Wings to acknowledge his presence. _Why? Is picking apart a storm something that has never happened before? _

Despite the communication bond operating more as words than images or emotions the way that his and Harry's bond did, Draco had the feeling that Open Wings paused and searched for long moments before he spoke. _We know the storms as powerful opponents, _he said. _We knew the Darkness in the North as a powerful opponent. We came to think that we could not defeat them, that we would have to live with them. We are barely over seeing the Darkness in the North defeated and knowing that one threat to our lives is ended forever. And now you stroll in and offer the chance to end the storms as well, or at least place them under your control. Call it—the feeling that you are changing the very foundations of our world, and we do not know how to adapt to it._

Draco pursed his lips. That was a more reasonable answer than he had thought they would receive. Of course, looked at another way, Open Wings was bound to be one of the most reasonable of the riders, as he was the most courageous; he was the one who had dared to speak to them first, and maintain his place in the negotiations with them.

Harry nodded, slowly, his arms folding tighter and tighter, as though he was going to burst out with them like wings and flap someone to death. Draco leaned against his shoulder, less being there and more lending Harry the kind of silent support that everyone needed.

Harry clenched his hand down on Draco's in silent appreciation and continued speaking to Open Wings. _All right. Is there a way I could take down these storms that would comfort you more? That would make—I don't know, that would make things all right, in the way that simply conquering them doesn't?_

Open Wings turned and looked at a few of the riders, who chattered and chirruped to him. Draco tried to listen, but the bond filled and flowed through his mind in a way that made it difficult. There were some words he might know, but the bond overcame them in its great silence.

Open Wings turned back. _You should explain to us what you did with the storm. And when another one comes, why will you not flee? _

Harry shook his head. _Because the storm might destroy the houses that we built, and the other places that we're trying to use to live. We can't flee before the storms the way you and the mummidade can. We don't have wings, and this is our home._

Open Wings puffed himself up like a bantam rooster Draco remembered seeing once. _No less is it ours._

Harry turned red, while Westshadow stamped all sixteen hooves in a drum-like rhythm that Draco thought was supposed to give congratulations to Open Wings for the clever shot. _I'm sorry, _Harry said a few seconds later. _But I mean—we establish more permanent places. We have places we don't want to abandon. And the gardens that feed us aren't like the herds that feed you, who can move of their own free will. We can't start all over again every time a storm blows past._

Open Wings stroked his talons slowly through the feathers on Swoop's neck. _I begin to wonder whether you should not have come to Hurricane, _he said soberly. _This is what summer on Hurricane is like. This is the way you will have to live._

Harry folded his arms and shivered as though he was standing in front of a strong, cold wind he could not tame. _Maybe, but then we'll starve to death. We're here now. We have to try and survive._

Open Wings was still. Harry took a step towards him, spreading his hands out, palms open, and ignoring the way that some of the riders' wings and the mummidade's hooves creaked and rustled around him. _Look. We did one thing that you thought was impossible already, taking down Bodiless. We can do another one, right? I can try picking storms apart, and in a way that doesn't frighten you? Let me try._

Open Wings glanced at him with, Draco thought, eyes bright and pitiless as a hawk's. _How can you practice that? You must wait until another storm comes, and that may be too late. It may be more powerful than the one you destroyed._

Harry gave a thin smile. _I could raise a storm._

Open Wings shuddered back, and two of the mummidade turned to look at them. Not ones who were part of Westshadow, Draco thought, but others. Westshadow was busy feeding the news to the rest of the listening group. The humans loosed various murmurs of shock and horror. The mummidade clicked their horns together, which could really have meant anything. The riders sat still, their long arms folded. Draco had no idea what they felt, if anything.

_How could you do that? _Open Wings demanded.

Harry raised his eyebrows and turned his hands out. Winds began to whirl around them. Within seconds, Draco saw, the winds had visible presence, turning cold and grey, the color of tornadoes. Harry lifted his hands and held them close to his face, and the separate whirlwinds joined. The air in front of him had turned into stormclouds, and Draco could feel the temperature plunging in the immediate area, the cold rising.

Open Wings reared back. _We believe you!_ he roared down the bond. _Your control over the winds of Hurricane is good enough for that? _At least his last words didn't sound as if he was frightened out of his mind, the way Draco had thought they might.

Harry lowered his hands and shook his head, keeping his gaze fixed on the riders. _Not my control over the winds of Hurricane. If it was that good, then I would have kept the storms from rising in the first place. Instead, I can control my own winds, and they will raise a storm that exactly mimics the one I destroyed. That would be under my control, and I could unweave it in a moment if it got dangerous._

One of the other riders nudged his beast forwards, standing a little to the right and behind Open Wings. _Then it would not be exactly the same as the one you destroyed. That one, you admitted was beyond your control._

Harry turned towards that rider and inclined his head. _At first, it was. But eventually, I learned it. Now I can weave it forwards, backwards, all concentrated in a moment, or spread out. I only meant that I could keep the project from being actually dangerous to anyone who was in the meadow or elsewhere, watching me do it._

Draco could see how attractive that prospect was to the riders, the way their beasts shifted and glanced at each other along with the riders themselves. Then Open Wings leaned towards them again, one hand busily scratching in the feathers at Swoop's neck. _You are utterly certain that you could do this?_

Harry stood tall, his hair stirring in the winds that pushed past him, his gaze bright as it slipped from face to face. _I could do it right now, if you wanted me to._

Open Wings turned his head in a long, angled sweep, more directions than Draco had known a rider's head could turn. He came back to Harry with an inclination. _We are agreed that it would be a good idea for you to practice, or at least, there are none who want to make their opposition known. The mummidade do not distrust you as some of us do. But what about your humans? Would they want you to wait?_

Draco turned from face to face. Westshadow had only thrown open the bond to a few people most of the time, but this time, others could hear and participate, as the second rider's interaction showed. What _did_ the others think of what Harry proposed to do?

Granger, of course, nodded at once. _I think it's a wonderful idea, Harry. You need to show them, and us, what you can do, and nothing works as well as a demonstration._

Andromeda folded her arms and glanced back and forth between the riders, Draco, and Harry. _How do you know this storm will not get out of control and endanger Teddy?_

Harry approved of the question, as Draco could tell both by the bond and his eyes, how they shone. Of course, he had come to Hurricane in the first place to protect Teddy, and would be glad if Andromeda showed the same concern for him.

_I would stop in an instant if I thought that was happening, _Harry said, softly, warmly. _I promise you that._

Andromeda gave a small snort. _And would you be able to gain control of the storm in time, if it began to spiral _out _of control? _

_I do think so. _Harry once again spread his hands and called the whirlwinds, so quickly this time that Draco suspected he had held them ready and waiting. He tried to reach down the bond to make sure one way or the other, but it was difficult to read much of Harry's mind right now. Westshadow's communication bond still overlay it.

Andromeda sighed. _Then I have no objection._

Draco looked back and forth between the rest of the Weasleys. Most of them looked fascinated, and as if they wanted to see what would happen if Harry called the storm. The werewolf still sniffed and glanced away, but he no longer made overt objections to everything Harry wanted to do, and that was good enough for Draco.

The original Weasley—Ron, Draco supposed he could call him—caught Harry's eye and grinned. _Remember that I can dissipate magic, mate. If the storm tries to destroy something, then I can help you get it under control._

Harry nodded, and stepped back. Westshadow dropped the communication bond at the same time. Draco wondered if it was because Westshadow thought they didn't need it anymore, with the main purpose of the meeting accomplished, or because they had no interest in remaining connected to Harry's mind while he called the storm.

Draco, of course, had no choice. He stroked their bond as Harry began the magic, and found an underlying, steel-hard path of determination, which seemed to have replaced the usual soft and shifting nature of their connection. Down that path would run the power. Down that path would run Harry's emotions for the foreseeable future.

No, if worst came to worst, Draco thought they wouldn't have to fear, either.

He did see Ron standing nearby, keeping his watchful eye on Harry, as Harry began to turn and the winds began to turn with him, centering on his body. Draco nodded. Ron's presence pleased him. Harry would be in the eye of the storm, but the eye of the storm was traditionally next to the most destructive part. There was the small chance that Harry would fall so thoroughly into his own power that he would never realize that he needed to step out of it and end the winds before they ripped something apart.

_ Small chance_, Harry's voice whispered in Draco's head.

Draco nodded, and the next moment, his hair blew straight back behind him.

He didn't see the need to seek shelter, the way Andromeda immediately did with Teddy. Harry had _promised _that he could control this. That meant he wouldn't harm any of the humans or other people standing in the direct path of the storm, either.

The riders didn't flee, although Draco could see the ripple in their wings and knew they wanted to. The mummidade trotted a short distance away, but that could as easily have been because a few of them wanted to or because the grass was better there. Draco sometimes felt he would never understand the mummidade's serenity in the face of danger, and sometimes he was grateful for it.

This might have been both.

Harry gave a sigh that puffed his cheeks out for a moment, and when his breath emerged again, Draco was sure that it joined with the winds. The storm was dark above Harry's head, wispy grey where it spread out at the sides. Lightning was there, and rain that briefly shone and spat and faded.

Draco raised his eyebrows. _This, _he thought, was new. Harry hadn't been able to summon lightning and rain before, only wind.

Harry turned towards him, and for a second his eyes caught Draco's and a spinning force developed in the storm that Draco didn't know if he could control. _It's new? I didn't know—I didn't realize what I was doing—_

_And if you let this go now, then you'll just have confirmed everyone's fears and taught them not to trust your word, _Draco snapped back. _Come on, Harry, hang onto it and make sure that you can do this._

The words calmed and steadied Harry, as Draco had known they would; he often _did _know what would, he had found. The lightning flickered and faded, and the winds retreated into the eye of the storm and all turned the same direction again. Harry clenched his hands into fists and then delicately flicked his first two fingers. The air near him shimmered and turned hot. Draco took a step back.

"This is the difference, then," Harry said aloud, although he had to know that only the humans would understand him. "I can control winds, I've always been able to do that, but Bodiless's death and the gateway mean that I can control _storms_."

Draco had no time to think about the differences between those words before Harry's storm rose and spread over the entire meadow, outlining it. But there was only darkness and wind inside the borders, not outside it, and the clouds backed away from the points where the grass began to run into the foothills. Draco discovered himself grinning like an idiot.

_He _can _control it._

Harry wrapped his fingers around what looked to Draco like an invisible rope and yanked, and the storm bobbed down towards him, moving like a kite. Draco got ready to jump if he needed to. The situation didn't look very stable, and although he trusted Harry, Harry might still overestimate the strength of someone else when it came to how _they _could resist the storm.

But the storm danced far above Draco, and the lightning was leaping from cloud to cloud in an organized pattern that Draco had never seen with any other tempest on Hurricane. He was sure, now, that Harry was controlling it, and adding magic of his own to make it do exactly as he wanted.

None of the riders had fled. Now Open Wings held up his hand, talon-fingers spread as though to feel the wind blowing through them, and nodded to Harry, that human gesture he liked so much. Harry grinned back, wound his fingers around that invisible string again, and manipulated his hands up and down.

The storm clarified, white pouring through it. Draco didn't know whether the white was sunlight or just a different color of clouds, and he didn't know if he would be able to find out. The storm was breaking into wavering streamers, and through the bond flowed a formless excitement, so that Harry's thoughts weren't much guide to what he was doing at the moment, either.

Draco found a stone to lean against, and decided that he might as well enjoy the spectacle of the storm as long as it lasted.

* * *

It made _sense_, now.

Harry hadn't really understood how the gateway affected him, before. The magic had seemed to pour in exactly where he needed it, sometimes, and not at others. He could strengthen others' talents, but not his own. He could unpick a storm, but he couldn't sense exactly where one would come from.

Now he knew. The magic came from beyond the gateway, pouring and splashing down on Hurricane. Before, the storms had been part of it, but not the major part. Bodiless reserved so much power to itself that, instead, the wild magic had manifested mostly in its own strength, in its power to dominate Hurricane and enslave any sentient species who had too much magic and wasn't pair-bonded.

Now, because Harry's magic was the wind, the storms _were _the major manifestation of the wild magic on Hurricane.

And that included the lightning and rain they tended to bring as well as the wind.

Harry closed his eyes, and he was in the heart of the storm, part of it, riding the winds but with his consciousness also scattered among and amidst cloud and light and electricity and water. All of them primal forces, all of them charged with magic as they surged up from the plains and oceans of Hurricane, away from the mountains, all of them responsive to the turning of the planet as it headed towards summer.

Harry wouldn't change the turning of the seasons, although the power humming in the back of his blood said he _might_. But that would be silly and wasteful. He concentrated, instead, on the way that the storms linked to it, the immensely complex and altering pathways that they traced above the mountains and the meadow. Bodiless had liked the storms to rage there because it liked the idea of no one being powerful enough to keep a permanent settlement near it.

But this was home to Harry, and he wanted to be a sharer, not a ruler. With a tap, he reached out to those pathways, altering them as he had altered the model storm, and they bent a little bit, warping here, warping there, winds rising, air settling, moisture shifting to fall on the sea instead of in the meadow. There would still be rain, but not the kind where drops broke bones and hail rang and rode along with the water. Harry had heard all his life that spells that changed weather could bring about the most dreadful consequences, but not when you were connected to its patterns all over Hurricane and could see the bigger picture. The storms breathed when he breathed, exhaled when he did. There was power, and there was grace, and he brought it down and folded it within himself, so he would remember what it was like.

Only then did he open his eyes.

Draco stood near him, his face blazing with wonder and one hand held out. Harry took it and turned to face the riders. Open Wings might have bent a bit nearer, but otherwise, there seemed no change in his posture.

"I can do as I wish with the storms," Harry said aloud. He knew that Westshadow would need to link them into the bond again before he could transfer his words to the rest of the riders, but he wanted to hear them said now, to know that he had properly understood his power and the limitations on it, and to reassure the rest of the humans who understood English best. "I can command them to go away and come and make them a little less harsh. That's what I've done with the ones that go over the meadow, so that you don't need to fear me going up to face the ones that come again. Alone or otherwise."

The bond slammed back into place, Westshadow glancing in four different directions, and Open Wings said, slowly, _This is wondrous. In the meantime, will you hunt down the one you have unleashed now? _

Harry glanced up blankly. The storm overhead was turning in whorls of dark grey and white. Harry held out a hand and clucked, and the storm turned back into light alone, funneling into his hand.

Open Wings bowed. _I believe now that you can control the things. And having someone who can adjust the weather and bring gentler rain will be quite a boon. There are times in the past that our herds have nearly starved, after the storms have flattened the grass or drowned everything and made us unable to come back down for days._

Harry bowed back. _You will have what you need. We'll all have what we need, _he added, turning to look at the other humans and the mummidade, though their flat golden eyes were as serene as ever.

That was what he had to do. He had left some of the responsibilities of leadership behind, but this wasn't leadership. This was standing aside or standing in the way of the power flowing through him as necessary, so that others could have what they needed.

This was the sort of work he would have liked to do in the wizarding world, and hadn't ever been able to, except in the one case of killing Voldemort.

This was what he wanted to do.

_You're going to do it, _Draco said back, and Harry knew without asking that the others couldn't hear those words, that they came down the private bond the two of them shared, devoted to each other, and he smiled back at Draco.


	11. The Kires

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eleven—The Kires_

"Harry!"

Harry whipped around when Ron called his name in _that _voice. It had been the one he would use through fireplaces in the last few years when someone in the Ministry had been harassing a member of his family. Harry had no idea why he'd be using it here, but he wanted to find out.

He hurried away from the stretch of meadow that he'd been trying to turn into a garden without the use of a greenhouse, mostly for the native Hurricane grasses that they'd thought they could eat. Riders soared overhead as usual, keeping a guard on the herds and the mountains. Now and then one looked down at him and spread his or her arms in a way that Harry thought indicated the same thing as a headshake. They had no idea why someone would _want _to garden rather than live on meat all the time.

Ron was standing on the small hill between two of the silver houses. Harry hurried up to him and opened his mouth to ask what was wrong.

Ron's hand on his arm, and the other, pointing hand, silenced him. Harry stared at the dark shape that had loomed up against the sky on the nearest foothill leading up to the mountains. It looked like a stag, with its long, looping antlers, but the body was more squat, and it was probably black, and Harry hadn't seen anything on Hurricane that stood that still, even the riders' beasts when they were watching them suspiciously.

"Has anyone else noticed it yet?" Harry asked softly.

"Hermione," Ron said. "She came and told me. But I don't think anyone else has. It just looks like part of a mountain unless you're watching it from a height."

Harry nodded and reached out through the bond to Draco, who'd been sleeping in their tent. He came awake at once, and flickered back, _Wait for me to come up to it before you approach it._

Harry nodded again, since he had no intention of doing anything else, and said to Ron, "Did Hermione try to go near it?"

"A few steps." Ron's voice was low, his hands wrapped around his wand as though it was a comforting shield to him, more than his ability to dispel wild magic. Then again, Harry was a little unusual in how thoroughly he'd come to depend on his wild magic instead of his wand. "But Hermione said she got the most awful headache when she did, like she was staring into the sun. She had to come back and rest for a little while before she could tell me about it."

Harry nodded, resigned. It seemed likely that this was another creature that had been kept at bay when Bodiless held the gateway, or had perhaps been attracted when Harry picked apart the storm a week ago. That left it up to him to deal with.

_You, and me. _

Draco had arrived at the bottom of the hillock on which Harry and Ron stood, and was staring imperiously upwards. Harry reached out, took his hand, and let Draco escort him to the bottom of the hill. The squat figure did seem to disappear against the skyline when they were on the ground, but now that Harry knew where it was, he only had to move his head a little and it appeared again.

"What do we do?" Draco murmured to him.

Harry sighed and straightened his shoulders. "Approach it. There's nothing else _to _be done."

_Sometimes I wish that you weren't such a Gryffindor, _Draco told him, sharp and dry, but he nodded when Harry turned to him. "I can't come up with a course of action that makes more sense," he admitted.

Harry smiled back at him, and led the way towards the skyline. The figure didn't move as they came near it, and neither did Harry feel that headache-like sensation Hermione had said she did. That was some small comfort.

* * *

As they came closer and closer, Draco, straining his eyes to see, was sure of only one thing: this creature was nothing like any other they had encountered on Hurricane. He had thought it probably resembled the mummidade at first, but it didn't, and the way it turned to face them as they approached the bottom of its hill only confirmed that.

First, it had those long, crazily-branching antlers instead of horns. Draco thought he could see them bending back on themselves at some points, the bone folding neatly into points that then crossed like bridges. He shook his head. They looked immensely heavy, but also as if they wouldn't be much good as weapons unless someone was obliging enough to walk right up to the creature.

_What, like us? _Harry asked into his head.

Draco gave him a mechanical smile back, but didn't take his eyes off the new thing. He didn't know what kind of magical impressions it might be making on Harry, and what he would come up with to tell the others. Draco knew only that he would give as detailed an account as he could of the way it looked.

Its body was indeed squat, dressed in black fur quite as shaggy as the mummidade's. But it flowed loosely across its body instead of curling, and the overall effect was of something large and low-slung, a weasel rather than a goat. Draco edged to the side so that he could see the eyes better as Harry stopped in front of it and made a low bow.

_You think it'll respond to that? _Draco did ask, because it seemed a senseless gesture to him.

_We might as well try it and see. At least I don't think that it'll take it as threatening._

_Unless it thinks that you're showing it antlers or you intend to clash heads with it._

Harry threw Draco a subdued but irritated glance as he straightened back up and nodded to the creature. "My name is Harry Potter," he said aloud. Draco thought that was stupid, too, since there was no sign the creature could understand English, but Harry poked him in the side. "This is Draco Malfoy. We're the representatives of a new species on Hurricane. What are you?"

The creature came one slow step forwards. Its feet were odd, Draco saw, round, with claws branching out at equal distances on all sides. The tracks it left were similarly odd, resembling a five-pointed star in some ways. The creature shuddered to a stop not far from Draco and regarded them with huge, luminous dark eyes, too big for its face. And the fur didn't extend up to the edges of them, Draco noted, leaving a bare socket instead.

The creature had magic, Draco knew. It had to, living on Hurricane, but more than that, he could feel the power eddying around them, sharper blasts than Harry's winds, but smaller, perhaps as powerful as his breezes.

The creature finally curled its lips back from its teeth and spoke—in English. Draco knew he jumped, but he couldn't have concealed his shock even if his father was standing by with a disapproving frown. "I am kires. I am a representative."

Draco wanted to smash it in the face, because that was the only reasonable response to hearing English flow out of the mouth of a beast. It had to be a trap, an enemy. But Harry got there first, and held his fist back; Draco didn't actually look down to see it whether he did it with his hand, or with a wind. He couldn't take his eyes off the thing that had called itself a kires and spoken to them like a human.

"I think I know something about what you are," Harry said, his voice relaxed and casual. He was holding Draco back with wind, Draco saw when he glanced down. Harry's own hands were folded across his middle, the tendons flexed across the back, but his voice remained steady. "You are a reflection of us, aren't you? You pick up on and mirror back the responses of other creatures that you meet. That's how you can speak English."

The kires stared at them, eyes flickering. Then a shade of green invaded the right eye, and a shade of grey the left. Draco started. He didn't know how he could even properly see the colors, with the background of the eye being so dark and the angle he was standing at. But they were there nonetheless, as bright as though he and Harry had suddenly looked into a mirror.

"Yes," the kires said, and its five-pronged feet dug into the dirt as it bowed its antlered head to them. Draco had no doubt now that the bow meant the same thing to the kires as it did to them. "I am a representative of the magic. I can speak English. I could speak the language of the ones that you call riders, if I could look into their eyes."

"What about the mummidade?" Harry asked. Draco bit his lip, and wished that he knew what to think, what to ask. Harry appeared as calm and confident with the kires as he did with the mummidade now. Draco wasn't sure that he liked the idea of another being on Hurricane that could read their minds, as this creature would have to do in order to reflect them as much as it was.

_It doesn't interfere with our bond, _Harry told him. _I don't believe that even it could do that, since it reflects our actions rather than our thoughts. _

_How do you know that? _

_It's repeating our words, not our thoughts. _

_But it's still using English words that it hasn't heard us use. It hasn't heard us talk about the riders, for instance._

_Who knows how long it's spent observing us? _Harry said, shaking his head a little as he refocused on the kires, and its answer, which was coming more slowly than the near-instantaneous flash of their thought-responses through the bond.

"I cannot interfere in their groups, their pairings," said the kires. "They are too tight, and they shut me out. And I have no bond partner. They would reject me as a fully-formed individual." Already it was standing more easily, and watching them with wide and fascinated eyes. Now the right eye was fully green, and the left fully grey. Draco noted that, and bit his lip. "I have no bond partner."

"Yet you look something like them," Harry said, and gestured to its goat-like body. "I would have thought you were one of them, except for the antlers."

"I took the antlers from you," said the kires. "They're important to you, somehow. But everyone thinks a lot about the mummidade, and I took my appearance from those thoughts."

"Then you _can _read our minds," Draco blurted, realizing as he said it that the creature's voice had shifted. Now it sounded more like Harry than it had when it began speaking. "But you act as though you can't, at other times."

The kires glanced at him, the grey flickering stronger for a second before dwindling to a dot like a pupil that almost faded. "I do not know what you mean by that. I pick up on the things that are important to people. You spend a great deal of time conversing with the mummidade, and so it is not surprising that I would take on their appearance. You think in English and speak in English. Why would I not know how to speak it?"

"But some of those are things that we haven't voiced aloud," Draco pointed out, taking a step towards the kires. Harry's winds tried to restrain him again, but Draco formed his claws and cut through them. He was not going to have his mind read by some bloody Hurricane creature that probably didn't even have a concept of Legilimency. "They're private. I want to keep them from you and your kind."

The kires's five-pronged paws dug into the earth again, but it said only, "I don't think I have any other kind except me. I am the only one I've seen, and I've wandered through Hurricane since before the golden ones went past." It paused a second, ears cocking towards Harry, and then added, "The Tssisid? Is that what you call them? It's an awkward name."

"You only remember back to then?" For some reason, Harry's voice bubbled with excitement. Draco reached out to the bond, and once again encountered a racing torrent of golden thoughts that it was difficult to keep up with. "Do you think you might have been formed out of the storm of wild magic unleashed before then?"

"I feel some kinship to storms," said the kires, and ducked its antlers again. "Although I didn't know what kinship meant until I felt you thinking about the child you have, and some of the Weasleys thinking about their relations to each other."

Draco shivered. The thought that the kires could pick up on things that were important to him, without even _meaning _to, and use them…

The kires abruptly snorted and turned to face Draco, eyes wide and head flipping back. "That's what privacy means? I'm sorry. I wouldn't want someone taking mine either." It paused and its paws dug in further. "And that's what an apology is."

Draco wanted to back off. This time, it was Harry's arm that held him in place. Harry gave a handsome little nod to the creature, ignoring the fact that Draco wouldn't have wanted him to do that at all, and said to Draco, "I think that he probably happened, or started existing, or came into the world, or whatever word you want to use, because of the death of Bodiless and the release of all that wild magic. I'm surprised that he hasn't sought us out before now." He smiled at the kires. "Where did you find your name?"

"The air across the mountains was thinking it." The kires stood there with eyes tightly shut, head tilting slowly and wisely back and forth. Then it opened its eyes and leaped into the air with back paws pressed tightly together. "Yes, yes, it was Bodiless! I didn't know what that meant when you first said it, but now I do."

"Good," Harry said, still smiling. "I was concentrating on it." He nodded to the kires and turned back to Draco. "I think we should invite him into the camp."

"And that's what a _him_ is," said the kires, a little more doubtfully. "Well. If it's important, then I can be one."

"Are you mad?" Draco hissed back at Harry. "They've only now got used to a few of the changes that you made, and now you want to make another one?"

"The wild magic already made me," said the kires, in a voice of tragic dignity. Draco wondered despite himself how long it would be before the kires decided that he knew about the concepts of tragedy and dignity. "You don't need to explain me to the others as a change that _you _made." He looked in the direction of the meadow, and his eyes had changed from half-green and half-grey to a strange mixture of colors, split like the slices of a pie. Draco thought he could see the gold of a mummid's and the black of a rider's. "I want to know the others. I'm awfully lonely."

"He's becoming more human as we stand here," Harry muttered to Draco. "Or capable of understanding and taking from the people whose minds he can read, anyway."

"I don't want to think of it as taking," the kires interjected. "It's not like I _want _to do this, you know, and break your privacy. But it happens, and it seems to be what I am. And some of the things I can hear aren't interesting, but I can understand them. I'm not trying to be _you_. I'm just trying to be something."

Draco kept himself from clapping his hand over his eyes with an effort. This was the kind of change that Harry made without trying, and he had just barely reassured the others that he could control storms when something new came up.

"You are very frightened of new things," said the kires, turning towards Draco and tilting its head so that the heavy antlers fell to the side. "Is that common for your people? Did creatures that looked like me hurt you?" When Draco stayed silent, it tore up several clods of earth with its paw. "I don't want to read your thoughts, but how else am I supposed to communicate or know what the difference is, if you won't speak to me?"

Draco did what he hadn't wanted to do, and turned to Harry for help. It was true that Harry got asked to deal with so many more things than anyone else, but he had been the one that had released the kires, no matter how accidentally, and he might have more idea about how to deal with this than Draco did. Plus, he was more sympathetic to the creature, and that would help.

Harry put out his hand out and rested it on the flank of the kires. The kires turned and stared at him as though it was the strangest thing that anyone had ever done for it.

But, if what it—no, _he_—said was true, it was the first thing anyone had ever done for him. Other than teaching him information by filling the air around him with thoughts, most of which weren't even directed to him and might be teaching him unfathomable things, things that didn't matter and would increase his loneliness.

Thanks to the Dursleys, Harry knew all _about _the loneliness of people doing things around you but never for you, chattering and incidentally teaching you things, but not with the intention of helping you.

_Of course you would relate to him that way, _Draco's voice said in his head, heavy. _I should have guessed it, after what you told me about your childhood._

Harry ignored Draco. He was bewildered about how to deal with the kires, but Harry wasn't. That was enough reason for Harry to plunge ahead and do it his own way, at least until the kires told Harry he wanted to do something else.

"Look," Harry said. "There was a powerful force in the world before you were—born, a force called Bodiless. It took up a lot of magic." He paused. "You know what magic is?"

The kires gave him an expression that Harry could swear he'd last seen on Hermione's face. "I would hardly be here if I didn't know, would I?"

Harry smiled at him. "Well, Bodiless really didn't have much power in and of itself. Magic flows into the world from another source, like a stream flowing down a mountain." He paused, but the kires bobbed his head, evidently understanding what he meant by the words and the simile. "But Bodiless chose to keep a lot of the magic around itself and use it for its own purposes. We killed Bodiless. Now there's more magic flooding into the world, and I have some of it to use as the gateway, but I don't want to keep it all for myself. I want to let it flow down. I think some of that magic created you, because it's not been held in one place now."

The kires planted his hooves beneath him. "So I don't really have any parents," he said. "The magic created me."

Harry nodded. "But something gave you the antlers and the five-pointed paws and the name kires," he said. "Do you remember who?"

"The name," the kires whispered, and his eyes were full now, brightly green and grey and brown and black and gold, in alternating prisms that Harry had to admit were beautiful to look at. "I think it was blowing around the mountains. Something up there thought it, but when I tried to find those creatures, they always fled from me. I think they had wings, and I can't keep up with them when they have those." He reached a paw, flexing it and watching as the earth and grass fell away from the prongs. "What about you? Are you going to fly away from me?"

Harry shook his head. "You should be welcome in our meadow, especially if you can communicate with all different kinds of people. We need someone like that. The mummidade can join us in a communication bond, but it involves bringing a lot of people together, and only one of them—a group of four mummidade called Westshadow—wants to do it. If you can talk to people and learn and teach them about each other, then you'll be more than welcome."

The kires picked up his feet and put them down again, faster and faster. Harry watched, wondering if he had said the wrong thing and upset him, but then the kires spun away from him, and Harry realized what he was watching.

It was a dance, the first of its kind ever performed on Hurricane, the first one the kires had ever done, probably.

The kires sang as he danced, little huffs of air, and his fur grew sleeker and blacker and lay more smoothly along his shoulders. Then his antlers shrank a little, and he turned a more stag-like face towards Harry. But his eyes still shone in those beautiful colored prisms.

_Only you would find something this confusing beautiful, _Draco muttered in the back of Harry's head.

Harry tried to explain that it wasn't confusing, that the kires picked up concepts and words and ideas from the people around him as he had just explained he did, but Draco rolled his eyes and glanced away. Harry found Draco's hand and squeezed it. He knew Draco would probably need some special attention in their tent that night to make up for Harry neglecting him during the day, and Harry was prepared to give him that.

"You need to name me now."

_That _request, Harry hadn't anticipated, no matter how non-confusing he thought the kires's relationship with human beings and other species would be. He blinked and turned to the kires. "Why? I thought you were content with your species name."

"What's a species?"

Harry concentrated as hard as he could on the differences between mummidade and humans and riders, and the kires snapped his head down. "Yes, but you don't go around calling yourself human all day," he pointed out. "That's only a way to distinguish you by _groups. _If another kires ever shows up, then I might need that, but in the meantime, I need a name."

"We ought to name you Nuisance," Draco said.

The kires stared at him for an unnervingly long period of time, then snapped his antlers down and waggled his ears on either side of them. "I agree," he said. "That's what I am to you, and therefore, that's what you should call me."

"But he didn't _mean _that," Harry said, with a warning glare in Draco's direction. "The word isn't a nice one."

"But it's what he thinks of me, and I like the concept of annoying someone out of his complacency," said the kires. "Call me Nuisance."

Harry tried to argue with him, but Nuisance could apparently turn deaf when he wanted to, along with all the other human concepts he was absorbing, and Harry finally gave up with a sigh and turned to look at Draco. "Then you can explain to the others how he got that name."

"Why?" Nuisance asked, springing down the hill in the direction of the meadow. "I'll tell them myself."


	12. Introductions

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Twelve—Introductions_

"But you don't _know _that he was born from the magic that was released when you destroyed Bodiless."

Harry rolled his eyes. He had thought that Bill might be upset about Nuisance coming into the meadow, or maybe Andromeda, with the way that she seemed to think every new manifestation of the wild magic was a danger to Teddy. But instead, the one who had the greatest problem with it was Hermione. She stood with her hands on her hips, eyes following Nuisance's every movement as he pranced around the houses with Victoire on his back. Victoire was laughing, her arms wrapped around Nuisance's neck, and Teddy was waiting his turn to have a ride with his arms folded and a scowl on his face.

"Is what's making you upset that you don't know _exactly _where he came from?" Harry raised his eyebrows at her. "Or how the wild magic produced him?"

Hermione's face turned red, and Draco laughed in the back of Harry's mind. _Of course that's it. Everything has to be sorted out in exactly the right ways in Granger's head, and nothing can ever change categories unless she knows the reason why._

_You were pretty upset about Nuisance yourself at first, _Harry reminded him.

Draco sniffed. _Because he could read my thoughts in a way, not because I didn't know whether he was born of wild magic or a portion of Bodiless or always existing but only took this form because the wild magic was in the world enough for him to do it now. _Those were all theories Hermione had suggested in the last day.

"We _don't _know exactly where he came from," Hermione said. "And someday, there could be other creatures—people—coming from the same place. Creatures or people who wouldn't be as friendly to us as Nuisance is. We have to know about it so that we can have defenses in place when they come down from the mountains."

Harry opened his mouth, but Draco, who'd been lingering in the background and watching the ride along with everyone else, stepped up and touched his arm. _Let me? I think it's possible that she'll listen to me._

Harry nodded and moved out of the way. He was more than willing to let Draco try to make an impression on Hermione, since nothing Harry said did.

And he hadn't missed the quick, darting little glances that Nuisance kept giving Hermione, although he thought she had. If she kept thinking like that, Nuisance would pick up on it, and he would feel less welcome here than he already did with Draco's mixed opinions and being the only one of his kind.

_I can do this, _Draco said positively, and gave Harry a little shove in the middle of his back. _Go on and leave me to handle this._

Harry gave Draco a small smile and turned back to pick up Teddy. "Why are you looking at Victoire like that?" he muttered into Teddy's hair, rubbing his chin against Teddy's forehead. "You got your turn. You'll have another one when she's done riding."

"She _takes _too long," Teddy said, in the tragic accents that Harry thought only a child could muster.

It had probably been three minutes since Victoire got on Nuisance. Harry rolled his eyes, and briefly caught a glimpse of Nuisance's eyes as he turned around, prancing more than ever, throwing up his legs so that his knees almost touched his chin. His eyes flashed bright green, and he winked once and twisted his ears before he began to trot, jogging Victoire up and down. Fleur leaned a little closer, Bill stiffened, but neither of them tried to take her off.

"You'll get your turn," Harry said again, as Teddy leaned forwards from his arms, and tried not to look at or listen to Hermione and Draco.

* * *

"Why does it matter so much to you to know the precise origins of everything?" Draco asked Granger, and although he was trying to be nice, he couldn't help the way his sneer curled his lips or the way she glared at him. "Nuisance wasn't here. Now he's here. The way he describes it, an origin made out of wild magic blowing around the mountains is as likely as anything else."

"But what wild magic? And why did new species never form before? And are there others coming who might threaten us?" Granger stared at the place where Nuisance danced up and down, jogging Victoire, and then slid to his knees and gracefully let Victoire drop into her parents' waiting arms. Harry put Teddy on Nuisance's back, just at the place where his shoulders hunched up from the spine, and stepped back. Teddy squealed and clutched at the dark fur. Nuisance shook his head once, and his antlers glittered and sparkled, but never came close to hitting Teddy.

"You can't tell me that you didn't have some doubts about him," Granger went on, turning around and scowling at Draco. "I know you did. You wouldn't be human if you didn't have doubts."

"Not human," Draco said mildly. "That's an interesting way to look at it, don't you think? Not human, but you're acting as though it's more human to think the way you do than to accept him, the way Harry did. Harry never had serious doubts about him once he realized that Nuisance wasn't trying to attack us. Not once."

"That's Harry." Granger put her hands on her hips hard enough that Draco thought she would probably leave marks and turned around to scowl at the happy little scene again.

"Who's less human than you are," Draco said, after a precise little pause and injecting his voice with a gentler sarcasm than he had been about to use.

Granger whipped back to him, her eyes so wide that she looked as if she'd hurt something. "I never—I never said that," he whispered. "Of _course _he's not less human than I am! I know how he grew up. He would hate it—he would be _so hurt _if he thought I was thinking that."

"But if it's human to have doubts, and Harry doesn't, then doesn't that imply that he's not human?" Draco stretched his arms over his head and smiled at her.

Granger scowled and clapped her elbows close to her sides, her eyes straying back to Nuisance. "I would never say something like that," she whispered. "Never."

"Then don't think it, either," Draco snapped, stepping up to her. He hadn't realized how much this pissed him off until he heard Granger nagging and whining on about it. Yes, Draco had his doubts about Nuisance, too, but they didn't relate to what mountain, exactly, the winds that had blown Nuisance into being had come from. "He'll be able to tell that you didn't drop your resentment."

"Who? Harry or Nuisance?" Granger turned her scowl on Draco in turn.

"Both of them," Draco said calmly. "Nuisance can read your thoughts and focus on what's important to you, and Harry's a lot more sensitive to your moods than you think he is. I would leave it alone, Granger," he added, when she opened her mouth again. "If Nuisance does something horrible, distrust him. If we run into other creatures born of the wild magic who aren't as friendly, then defend us against them. But don't insist on distrusting this one because you don't know exactly where he came from."

Granger shut her eyes. "It would be so much _simpler _if we knew," she whispered.

Draco began to laugh, and found it hard to stop. Granger turned around to scowl, other people glanced up, and even Nuisance stopped dancing and stood there with one paw hanging in the air—until Teddy yanked on the fur around his neck and ordered him to dance again in a shrill little voice. Nuisance started doing it, but kept one ear twisted back towards them.

Draco bent over, wiped his eyes, and straightened back, grinning at Granger. "You thought Hurricane was a _simple _world?" he asked. "Even after everything? Oh, dear."

"I just meant," Granger said, and paused as though she expected Draco to contradict her. Draco stood there, watching her, and Granger shook her head and gave in. "I just meant that I'm able to map things because of my wild magic, and that includes wild magic itself."

"Well, yes," Draco said. "But did you ever try that with the power Bodiless was giving off? I thought you just sensed a great threat to the north before it died, not all the individual currents and places of power."

Granger stood there and blinked at him. "I hadn't thought of it like that," she whispered.

Draco waved a gracious hand. "Not a lot of people had," he said. "I don't know that Harry's origin story for Nuisance is true, either, you know, just that it makes the most sense out of anything we _can _come up with."

Granger nodded absently, her eyes focused on the distance. "I want to know where his name comes from," she said. "He said that he felt it blowing around the mountains. But who thought it? People we don't know? Intelligent creatures like the Tssisid who won't come down and join us?"

"I don't think the Tssisid are intelligent. Not in the way you mean."

Granger started, and Draco with her. Nuisance had come up to them, and although Teddy was still on his back, the little boy seemed to be mostly asleep and not upset that Nuisance was no longer trotting. Nuisance turned his antlers back and forth from Draco to Granger, and lifted his lips a little. Draco thought it was the closest his elk-like mouth would permit him to engaging in a human smile. "I could feel them. They were so _focused. _They didn't think about different important things, the way you do, and they didn't have the underlayer. They just thought about food."

"The underlayer?" Granger moved a step in, and then hesitated as if she thought it possible to scare Nuisance off. "What do you mean? What _does _that mean?"

"Well, you think about things like whether someone's a he or a she." Nuisance scraped a paw through the grass. "But you don't think about it all the time, and you don't have to spend a long time deciding what someone is. You just make the decision, and that's the end of the deciding."

"Some of us have a more complex concept," Draco murmured.

"You do," said Nuisance, with a tip of his antlers at Draco. "And she does." A tip of his antlers to Granger. "But I can tell when someone is what you call intelligent, and when they aren't. The Tssisid aren't. They don't _think _enough. Not enough things are important to them, just whatever's in front of them, or what was a long way off and what they wanted because they wanted the same thing every season. And they don't have the underlayer."

Draco would have liked to talk more about that, but Teddy woke up then and drummed his small heels on Nuisance's neck. At least Draco thought that it didn't hurt Nuisance, because of his thick fur. In fact, Nuisance turned his head and flickered his ears indulgently in Teddy's direction. "What do you want, small human?"

"My _name _is _Teddy_," Teddy said, although Draco thought "small human" must at least be different from the names that his grandmother and Harry called him.

Nuisance bobbed his head. He had learned to nod, Draco thought, although he had to watch out for his antlers. "All right, Teddy. What do you want?"

"More ride." Teddy leaned forwards and looked as if he might butt his own head into Nuisance's antlers at the announcement, and Nuisance turned away and began to prance again. Teddy settled back, grinning, and Draco caught Harry's relaxation through the bond. He had been about to come forwards and scoop Teddy up in his arms.

_ I don't think you need to worry about him,_ Draco said. _He's going to be more comfortable on Hurricane than any of us, since he's growing up here. _

_More comfortable than anyone except Victoire and the other children born on Hurricane, you mean, _Harry said back, because Harry always had to have the last word, and then he came up and stood beside them. "Well, Hermione? Are you satisfied that Nuisance doesn't mean us any harm?"

"I still wonder why he named himself Nuisance," Granger muttered. "Instead of something like, oh, Communication. If he focuses on concepts that are important to us, anyway."

"Because that was the way I thought of him, and he chose the name for his own," Draco said. He ignored the way she looked at him. As long as he was more comfortable with Nuisance than Granger was, he refused to think of himself as a hypocrite. "And now, do you have any more questions about him, or can you accept him gratefully as someone who wants to join us?"

Granger shook her head a little. "I don't have much of a choice, do I?"

"Not much," Draco agreed, and ignored the mental jab in the ribs that Harry sent him. It wasn't his fault that Granger's thirst for knowledge was working in this case to exclude someone who should have been welcomed immediately.

"All right," Granger said, and turned to cast a dubious look at the northern mountains that loomed up behind the meadows. "I just hope that the next creature that comes to us out of the wild magic is as friendly as Nuisance." She walked back towards the greenhouses where Draco could see Weasley waiting for her. He had kept out of this conversation, and Draco couldn't help suspecting that his wisdom in that came from long experience of Granger.

Harry was quiet beside him, a deep, still pool of calm in the bond, and Draco wondered why until he turned towards him, met his eyes, and felt for his thoughts.

_I do wonder whether she's right, and other creatures might come down from the mountains and never find us, _Harry murmured back. _Some of them might go to the south, and fall into the hands of Primrose and the thunderrin._

Draco sighed. He'd wanted to keep from thinking about Primrose again, unless she actually came back to the meadow. _But we don't know that. We can't predict that. We don't even know if the creatures might not be more powerful, and destroy Primrose and her people, or maybe try to destroy us._

Harry shook himself a little. _You're right. I'll fall into the trap Primrose did if I'm not careful, insisting that there has to be a way I can completely protect my people and that we have to be the greatest power in the world and be absolutely safe that way. It's not possible to be that, and she wouldn't understand it. I don't want to be the same kind of foolish._

Draco clapped him on the shoulder. "That's the spirit," he said aloud, and then looked over Harry's shoulder and grinned. "Did you want Teddy doing that?"

Harry spun around and cursed. Teddy was standing up on Nuisance's back, heels dug into the fur of his spine and hands just releasing their grip on the thick shag around his neck. Harry sprinted forwards a second after Nuisance stopped walking and Teddy started to slide.

"I would not have let him fall off," Nuisance said, turning his head and flattening his ears the way Draco already knew he did when he was upset about something.

"But it was easier to catch him this way, and he shouldn't have been doing it in the first place," Harry said, frowning down at Teddy. "Come on, Teddy. You're going back to your grandmother." He marched Teddy firmly across the grass towards Andromeda's house.

"Sometimes you are jealous of the attention he pays to the little human."

Draco blinked and turned to face Nuisance. "Well, yes, sometimes I am," he said, wondering why Nuisance had decided to start this conversation. "I'm trying to get better about it and not mind so much, but sometimes I am."

Nuisance's tail twisted as he ducked his head and considered Draco eye to eye. "And you wish that you were not, and sometimes you would give anything for him to turn away from his little human and stare at _you_ that way," he finished, sounding satisfied.

Draco ended up shrugging. "Sometimes I would give a great deal for his attention, all the time, as intensely as I was pursuing him at the beginning of the bond," he said. "That's true. But I can't think that I have a _right _to it. He would tell me that I was wrong, and he would be right."

Nuisance's nostrils flared, and his antlers twisted as he bobbed his head. Draco took a hasty step back to avoid having his eyes scratched out, but Nuisance either didn't notice or didn't seem to mind. "Humans are confusing," he announced at last. "I shall have to go away and think about this some more."

Draco nearly choked, because he had to wonder if the creature knew how closely he was imitating Granger's voice. Nuisance only nickered at him, rolling his lips back from his teeth to do it, and then turned around and pranced towards the silver houses.

"Jealous of Teddy?"

Draco started and turned around. He wouldn't have spoken so loud if he knew Harry was behind him, he thought.

Harry rolled his eyes at him. _Bonded, remember? I could feel the jealousy through that even if you'd never said a thing to Nuisance._

Draco slipped a hand into Harry's, and turned him forcibly towards their tent, making their hands swing between them as they walked. _Then you can also feel that I really do want to be over that jealousy, and I'm trying._

_Yes, of course. _Harry glanced back at him, searchingly. _But I thought you were. _

Draco bit his lip, and considered what the best thing to do in this situation was. He could shove all the emotions at Harry and hope he understood, but that would perhaps only worsen matters. Words were the best solution, even though it would take him a lot of time to explain it properly. This was only a beginning.

But no one else could hear them, as intimate as the words were, and he trusted Harry not to betray him. So there was that much.

_I always had to be the center of my parents' world when I was a child, _Draco said. _And I thought I was the center of other people's, like Greg and Vincent. I probably wasn't, but I was too selfish and spoiled to make that out._

Harry nodded. _I think that's perfectly understandable. I knew that I wasn't the center of the Dursleys' world, but I was jealous of Dudley because he was._

Draco smiled slightly at him. _So I grew up with the notion that my family's duty was to pay attention to me and only me. God knows what would have happened if my parents had had another child._

Harry's hand felt gently at his. _You would have adjusted to having another brother or sister, I think._

Draco sighed and let Harry comfort him, feeding the uncertainty that he would across the bond.

_Of course, that was partially also your parents' fault for spoiling you, _Harry added, apparently in favor of spreading the blame wherever he could.

Draco choked a little. Then he shook his head and said, _I don't want to talk about that right now, though. I just want to talk about reasons that I might still be jealous of Teddy, even though I care for him, too._

Harry nodded in response, and walked with his head bowed while Draco stumbled his way through images of his childhood: the way he had whole boxes of sweets every morning because his mother couldn't bear the thought that he might go without something to cheer him up as soon as he opened his eyes; the whole separate garden his father had had planted so that Draco could have the freshest Potions ingredients; the brooms that his father had bought him far too young, when it was actually illegal to give those brooms to children. But his parents had done it because they loved him, and wanted him happy, and thought that was the way to make him happy.

_Did it? _Harry asked, when Draco had lingered for long enough—he supposed Harry judged—on the image of himself on a broom above the Manor's pitch.

Draco shook his head a little. _Not so much that as the constant feeling that they were watching and looking out for me, and I was the most important person in their lives. _He wrapped his arm around Harry's waist and drew him close. They were in the entrance of their tent now, and if someone else glanced up and saw them kissing so close to home, Draco really didn't give a shit. _And when this bond happened, I wanted the feeling that you were adding sex and intensity to worrying about my safety and happiness. And letting me in where you locked people out. And when you wanted to stop being everyone's leader, I wanted to know that you didn't want out of the role of my lover._

Harry smiled back at him. _You exasperate me sometimes, _he said, and although Draco could have felt those emotions or memories passing through the bond if Harry had wanted to do that, he seemed to agree, just like Draco did, that these particular ideas needed to be put into words. _You irritate me. I wish that you weren't so jealous of Teddy and so dismissive of Ron and Hermione and so desperate for children of our own. And some of the things that you did when we were first bonded made me wish that we'd never bonded._

Draco found himself flinching, although Harry had never hidden his dislike of the bond during those first weeks. But Harry reached out and put his hands on Draco's shoulders, quieting him, not letting him withdraw.

_But none of that could make up for the happiness I would lose if you vanished out of my life, or if we somehow broke the bond, _he said. _And I'm glad that you can at least hug Teddy and admit you care about him, and speak civilly to Ron and Hermione. Maybe the rest will come in time._

_Do I get to tell you all the things that exasperate _me _about _you_ now? _Draco said, and didn't care if he sounded as though he was whining. Harry had already made it clear how he would take that, and no one but Harry would hear him.

_Go ahead, _Harry said, lounging back against the flap of the tent. Draco tugged him away from it and laid him on the bed.

_You're reckless, and short-tempered, and short-sighted when it comes to accepting new people into the meadow, and too much focused on other people who aren't me, and stubborn, _Draco said, poking him in the chest, and then leaning down to kiss him. That was not the greatest advantage of the bond, that they could kiss and speak at the same time, but it helped. _But you're getting better._

Harry laughed into his mouth, and for a while, there was no more talking, not even through the bond.


	13. Hyaline

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Thirteen—Hyaline _

"They say that they expect more storms from the north. This _is _the season when they build up and start causing problems, after all."

Nuisance sounded grave as he relayed what the riders had said, but Harry glanced suspiciously at his madly flicking ears and considered that the riders' message might have started life as something else. Then he shook his head. If he went around distrusting Nuisance, then he might as well ask the mummidade to reestablish the communication bond through Westshadow.

"Then when the storms come, I'll be ready to turn them around," Harry said. "I'll protect the meadow from any threat. It doesn't matter whether there's one storm in a day or three."

Nuisance shuddered. "I _hope _there aren't three. I've only seen one storm from a distance, and I have no desire to experience them closer at hand." He turned his head back towards the three riders, including Open Wings, sitting on their beasts a short distance away, and chirped and squawked in response, trilling and whistling his way through the scale of their language.

Harry leaned back against the side of the great silver house Andromeda had built, the one big enough to shelter everyone in the meadow, and sighed. The riders didn't distrust him any longer, he thought; they had seen him conjure and control enough storms by now to accept the mastery of them as part of his wild magic. But they seemed to have enough bad experiences with summer that they couldn't keep from coming to ask questions, niggling little ones that nevertheless chipped at Harry's temper and certainty.

_Well. _In the end, it was only about five or ten minutes out of Harry's day, and now that Nuisance was here, it was much easier to answer them.

This time, Open Wings and the riders had no more questions after this last one. They clenched their hands near their chests and held them out to Harry, a gesture of thanks that he had learned and could return. He tilted his head back and watched them take to the skies on their beasts, wings sweeping down a hard enough wind to flatten the grass in the immediate vicinity.

When he looked back at Nuisance, he found him shifting from paw to paw. Harry raised an eyebrow and reached out to scratch Nuisance near the antlers. He thought it was probably dreams and memories of his Patronus that had given Nuisance that particular feature, and the kires leaned towards and into his touch willingly enough. "What is it?"

"I wonder sometimes," Nuisance said, and made a swift prancing motion, like one of the steps that he used when he carried Victoire and Teddy on his back. "Was I only formed by the wild magic to be a tool that other species could use to communicate?"

Harry blinked, not expecting the question. Nuisance seemed content to leave his origins a mystery, no matter how much Hermione wanted to know more. "Bodiless and the wild magic didn't mean you to do that," he said slowly. "And if you hadn't met us, you wouldn't be doing that. Maybe you would have gone south and found Primrose and the thunderrin, and they can communicate with each other just fine, so you would have done something else."

"Yes, but." Nuisance danced sideways, his shaggy fur swaying along with him. His eyes were completely green now, Harry's color, and wide. "It just seems like it's too great a coincidence that I can understand all of you and that I found my way here. Did the wild magic _make _me for this? Am I just a tool?"

His voice soared at the end, and Harry looked uneasily towards the part of the meadow where Victoire and Teddy were taking a nap, with Draco to watch them. He knew it was a great step forwards for Bill to let Draco watch his daughter, and Harry didn't want to do anything to wake the kids up, _or _to give Bill material to use against Draco.

"I don't think the wild magic made you for anything," Harry said, and nibbled his lip a little when Nuisance stared desolately at him. He didn't seem much comforted by Harry's statement, and Harry couldn't blame him. "I mean—you want to know what I think? Even though I have no way of proving it, of course, and both Draco and Hermione think other theories are more likely."

_Other theories are always more likely than what you think, _Draco's voice said down the bond.

_Arse, _Harry retorted cheerfully, and waited until Nuisance straightened up a little and said, "Yes, I'd like to know."

"I think your creation was purely accidental," Harry said softly. "Just like the wild magic that comes to most of the humans on Hurricane is purely accidental, and it comes from whatever is important to them at that moment in time. Draco wanted to defend me from a bird, and so he got the power to cut things off. It doesn't mean that he desired weapons more than anything else in the world for most of his life, just for that one second. It's been useful to him, but it was blind chance. I think that the wild magic created you in the same way, impulse and blind wonder, and what you become is always going to be dependent on the people you surround yourself with. If you're tired of being with us, you only have to leave, and then you can be something else. If you're with people who have new thoughts, you'll be new."

Nuisance blinked several times. Draco was murmuring savagely in the back of Harry's mind about undermining people's self-confidence and how he never wanted Harry advising their future children, but Harry ignored him. He thought this might be what Nuisance needed right now, at least if he was afraid of having some kind of destiny.

"Free," Nuisance said. "Just like anyone else."

Harry smiled at him. "Even more than anyone else. Other people carry parts of themselves around wherever they go. But if you don't like part of yourself, associate with people who have different ideas, and you'll be different."

Nuisance lifted his head to the wind and sniffed a little, nostrils wriggling open and ears flicking enthusiastically. Then he glanced at Harry and lifted his lips slightly above his teeth, a laugh and a smile at the same time. "Thank you," he said. "You've given me a lot to think about." And he bounced away over the grass.

_Maybe I'll think about you being an adviser to our future children after all, _Draco said.

Harry smiled at the sky and said, _Do you want to practice the mummidade dance again, after Teddy and Victoire wake up? _

Draco's response was wordless, but as crashingly enthusiastic as a sea-wave, and Harry continued to smile as he went back to herding duty.

* * *

Draco twisted in mid-air, and then swore as he came down and found that Harry had dodged to the right instead. He tugged on his hair and glared at Harry. "How can we make so many mistakes when we're bonded?" he whined.

Harry smiled tolerantly at him. Draco knew, and resented, that it was tolerant, and glared. Harry came a step towards him and took his hand.

"Because we're not one person, like the mummidade," he murmured. "We're not that deep into our bond. We can't anticipate the next move that we make before we make it, or all the little obstacles that might cause us to stumble."

"Then we have to go deeper into the bond, and you think we can do it?" Draco asked, seizing the trailing end of that idea.

Harry hesitated. Draco sneered. _You only said that to make me feel better. You never intended to do anything about it, did you? _

_I didn't say that, _Harry objected. _I just don't see how we can get deeper into our bond than we are now._

_Let me try something. _Draco stepped towards Harry, who blinked at him a few times and then nodded.

Draco knew that Harry would put up with anything that Draco wanted to do, and only ask him to stop if it was actively painful—maybe not even then, considering his tolerance for pain. But Draco wanted to do something that would be _wanted, _that would help Harry to achieve something they both desired.

He ran his fingers gently up and down Harry's cheeks, staring into his eyes. He could feel the connection that always bound them hammering away like a separate pulse in the air between them, and he could feel the progress of Harry's thoughts, whirling around with worry and frustration, slow. Soon Harry was breathing in tune with Draco, not looking away from him even when Draco reached up and took Harry's earlobe between two fingers.

_I want to try something, _Draco said, making his mental voice sound as much like his physical one as he could.

_I already agreed to let you do whatever you wanted. _Harry blinked again, and Draco could sense him starting to surface from the involuntary trance that Draco's staring had cast him into.

Draco shook his head, but slowly, as though he was underwater, so that he wouldn't appear hasty and ruin the effect he was trying to build. _Let me, _he said, and Harry relaxed a little, swallowing. His blinking ceased, and his gaze remained on Draco's face, where it belonged.

Draco didn't need to take a deep breath, but he did. There was no physical equivalent of the mental work he was about to do, not really. But it made him feel better, and his hands were steady as he moved them back down to Harry's shoulders.

Then he plunged beneath the surface of the bond.

He had never tried to go so deep before. He and Harry were linked in mind and heart and what felt like soul, but Draco had always maintained his own separate personality, and so had Harry. They didn't mingle to become one new person like the mummidade did, which was probably why their communication with the mummidade remained so imperfect until Nuisance came along.

But now, Draco tried to break down the barriers, striving and slipping through whatever confronted him. He ventured behind walls in Harry's mind that he would never have thought were still there, given everything they had shared. But new, private memories tumbled past him, and Draco could have learned, if he'd lingered, how frightened Harry had been during the war and the jealous thoughts he'd had about his friends when they got together and how intensely he had longed to kill every reporter who bothered Teddy.

Harry started and shied then. He was probably remembering—no, he _was _remembering, Draco could say that with certainty, feeling the memories scrape past him—how Draco had treated him after he watched Harry torture a former Death Eater who had also come to Hurricane.

Draco sent out tendrils of calm, and continued to swim deeper. He didn't feel the process in the same way, since he was used to his own feelings and memories, but he knew that he was inviting Harry into his own mind, too, freely flinging open the doors and giving up the secrets that he had retained until now. He could only hope that Harry would avail himself of that invitation rather than stay in his own body and panic.

It seemed Harry had. He clung shivering to the side of Draco's mind for so long that it hurt, and then he flung himself forwards and vanished into the new pool.

And Draco felt the last barriers between them blur and run like wet paint. He was Harry and Harry was him. Draco blinked open eyes that didn't see as well as his own, and turned a head that felt heavier than his, and at the same time _knew _it was his, because he had always worn this body like a cloak.

He had two bodies. He practiced for a few moments, walking up and down, learning the different sense of balance that his new body had, and learning the differences in his own at the same time. Because they were there, blended, both of them, the knowledge that both of them harbored running into their minds, flowing and lapping like water against the sides of a basin, and Draco could find what he wanted if he reached out—

They were they. They were he.

And he turned around and lifted two sets of hands, and two kinds of wild magic dazzled around him, the power to cut and the power to call winds.

He knew where the storms were, how they would come down from the north. He knew the lightning that rode with them, the rain, and how he would locate a pulse of power in the center of a storm and pull it apart.

He knew how to chop grasses off at the base and weed the gardens in a rhythm. He knew how to shred a living bird through his claws as if they were a meat grinder—he knew what a meat grinder was, that Muggle machine—and he had never done that before. He had done it before. Memory splashed and foamed, and became part of the larger sea without losing anything. He was no longer a series of separate rivers, and he never wanted to be.

He knew that he could complete the dance the mummidade had told him about. How could his two bodies move in anything other than absolute harmony?

He turned and faced his other body, commanded his eyes to see each other. He smiled at what he saw, with two pairs of lips. Grey eyes were fascinating from the outside, and so were green, that true and rare color of green that he had seen so rarely since they came to Hurricane, where most of the grass was gold.

But that color was in the meadow, and it was in the foam of the sea.

He held up his arms, and his bodies whirled around and faced each other. For a moment, the air between them quivered as if it was made of glass. He wondered if it would fall to shards if he reached out and touched it.

But it was so thick, it was so wonderful. He could move through that glass air, and he did, into a dance that glided as if skating on crystal.

When he had to bow his heads, he could. When he smiled, he could. When he felt the magic of the dance begin to move through him, echoing the image that the mummidade had given him, he only smiled wider.

Then the mummidade were dancing around him.

One with two bodies and one with three and one with four, they leaped and pranced, keeping the time. He turned to all three of them, looking into their eyes at different times, and felt pouring, gliding joy. They had thought for so long that no humans were capable of this, and that they would never learn the dance and have to go on having children in their way that involved blood and the tearing of flesh.

It was no effort to understand them, not like this, not when his minds glowed and twined together and he could remember his mother teaching him to read and Hermione giving him one of the first hugs of his life.

Then the magic began to play more seriously in the center of his bodies, and he had to turn his attention away from the mummidade, much as he longed to communicate with them. Creating his child would take all his attention for the next few moments.

Or the next few hours? Well, it did not matter. The time was the same as his movements, skating and sliding around him, twining the gentle patterns into the hyaline surface of the world.

He danced, and there was the stamp of grass beneath his feet and the arch of the sky overhead in his eyes and the taste of the wind in his magic. He understood, now, why the mummidade had despaired so much when his two bodies were not in concert.

What the mummidade wove in this dance was more than magic, and more than just coordination, which was what one of him had thought before. Just handle it well enough, had gone his unpaired thought, and the magic would have to come down, especially when both of him had powerful wild gifts already.

But that wasn't the way it worked. What they were weaving here between him, while the ground and the magic and the sky and the breezes from the sea sang steadily with him, was the world.

Hurricane was with him, in every word and gesture. There were the colors, yes, but also the _smells, _the faint and sweet smells of the grasses, the delicate perfumes of the meat that he had learned to eat since he came to the meadow, a dust that reminded him of his cupboard under the stairs, a cold grace from the sea that reminded him of Malfoy Manor. Memories dashed through him, funneled downstream and around in circles, and he swam through them, touching them and creating from them what he wanted and needed.

His child would have to have a mind. His memories were for that. But he would also need a body. He chose one, weaving flesh from imagination and dreams.

What color hair? What color eyes? Those were secondary considerations for a mummid child, which would always have white fur and golden eyes, but they were important to him, if only for a fleeting moment here and there, and he had fun choosing them.

Because that was what was important here. One should always have fun, always understand and delight and gather the delight and spin it out in new directions. Trying to be _serious _on Hurricane all the time was for people like the riders, who always thought about the future. He needed to think about the present.

The present was the dance.

The glassy air expanded around him and the dancing mummidade, who had come back, all whirling three of them, and then narrowed to a point in the center of the circle. He understood. The magic would come to fruit there, to a birth, in one way or another. He had only a rudimentary understanding of exactly how it happened; already his mind was contracting with the magic, concentrating on and into the birth of his child, not soaring with the sky and the breezes the way that it had when he was weaving the world.

He would have mourned that if he could, but he wasn't capable of it. Instead, he plunged into that concentration as he had plunged into the joy a few moments before. Or a few hours before. Time had faded to another tracery on the glass.

The air around him rippled and shone, and then rang so hard that he gasped. He knew that magic was coming for him, and that it would make conduits of his bones. He spread the arms of both bodies and tossed back his heads, so that the magic would stream out of his hair and connect him with the earth.

The dance was still alive around him, if only in the way that his bodies bowed towards the earth, but it had become all eddying, focused power now, like a beam of sunlight shooting through a prism, and not wild movement. The mummidade were the ones who danced, who leaped, who spun, and their movements were part of the celebration, not the creation.

Not this pool of magic that stretched and billowed in front of him, and which he could hear singing.

The song was faint at first, distant. But it rose as rapidly as a note of howling wind, and then came close and _slammed _into his ears. He found himself throwing his arms up defensively before he thought about it.

So the defensiveness entered the wind and danced with it, and wove a darker thread for the tapestry. His child would have a slight fear of wind, and would have some growing to do to be rid of it. He accepted that as the price of losing some concentration on the perfect vision of the child.

Perhaps nothing was meant to be perfect. Weaving Hurricane into his child might have guaranteed that. After all, Hurricane wasn't a perfect world. But it meant his child would be at home here, and that was what he had asked for. What he desired. What he desired more than anything in the world.

There was a slight tremble in his own mind, a question about what he really wanted and honored in forming his child. He didn't allow it to disturb his surface serenity, though. His child might fear the wind, but _he _was master of the wind. Had he not created a storm and banished it again? Had he not promised that he could protect the meadow against any storms that would come? This was the dance that formed his son, but he was a separate being from his son.

His son. His child.

The silence in the center of the dance, the rough circle defined by the wild magic and more loosely by the mummidade that had chosen to prance with him, abruptly broke apart. A great bubble arose. He shaded his eyes from the colors that wheeled in it, not because he feared them, but because of the great brightness.

That was another difference between his son and him. He had come from his mother's womb, and accepted that he was meant to be born that way. On Earth, there had been no other choice. But his son was born from magic, and he would have his own personality. So many of his father's dreams were danced into him, and those dreams had contradictions, along with some of his desires. He wanted his child to be fearless, but he had put in that defensiveness about the wind, for example.

That was all right. What he wanted was a living child, not a perfect one.

The mummidade sped up their dance, the blowing of wind in the grass and the golden light cracking around them, and he felt, from them, that that was the way it should be. Their children were born imperfect, not really people until they bonded with someone else. So his child would be born imperfect, but in a different way. Feeling him like this, moving with him, the mummidade understood more about humans than ever before. They could accept that it was different for humans, that even the process of bonding was different, and that that was all right.

He kicked his legs up one more time and dropped his bodies into a kneeling position in front of his bubble.

The bubble that dropped back to the meadow's grass and blazed green for one second, black for one second, and then became glassy. Then it vanished, and his son lay there, kicking his legs and wailing loudly enough to bring winds down from the sky, coiling over his skin, trying to protect him.

His winds. _Their _winds. Harry's winds.

The separation from each other was so painful that Draco wanted to tear his mind out of his head. But he had an instinct stronger than that, and that was to respond to the cries of their son. So he hurried across the grass and picked up the baby.

Wailing, the baby raised blue-grey eyes to him. Maybe they would change to pure grey in time. Draco had no way of knowing. Wispy dark hair clung to his head. Maybe it would fall out and change to some different color. Harry had no way of knowing.

Harry reached past him, and put his hand in the center of their baby's forehead.

_He'll never bear a scar, _Harry thought, and then the moment between them burst as other people rushed down the meadow to them, some riders afoot, Granger and Weasley rushing, and dancing mummidade.

Draco closed his eyes and nestled his cheek against the baby's forehead. He had no idea what they would name him yet.

He knew that their child was _here_, and that was enough.


	14. Wildborn

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Fourteen—Wildborn_

"I don't know how normal parents do it."

Harry just grunted and scooped Jeremy up, holding him close for a second while he murmured to him. He cried _all the time, _a quality that Draco had been quick to say Harry must have woven into him during their dance, because Draco had been a perfect baby who never gave his parents a moment's anxiety. And of course Draco woke up when Harry did, because of the bond pulling at both of them.

"We are normal parents, by the way," Harry muttered as he held Jeremy close enough that his winds could bring one of the bottles Fleur and Bill had used for Victoire. Lucky that some of them were here, Harry reckoned, and that the riders knew of grasses that, brewed and heated and broken down, made an acceptable substitute for milk when their antelope calves needed it. At least Jeremy seemed to be gaining weight and didn't cry when he drank the grass-milk, and that was the best they could hope for. "I don't want Jeremy growing up thinking he's not a normal child."

"He's not."

Harry jerked his head up, betrayed, but Draco was looking at him with the kind of clear steadiness that always made Harry want to calm down and listen, so he did. But he held Jeremy closer to him, more in the crook of his arm, and fed him with more milk as he did so.

"He's different," said Draco. "_Better. _Special. The first human child to be born on Hurricane in the way that Hurricane births children."

"Not all children," Harry had to say. "The riders hatch from eggs."

Draco leaned closer. "I'm trying to have a grand moment here," he said. "And tell you why I think the rest of them will never think Jeremy is normal, and why that's a good thing. Shut up, if you please."

Harry rolled his eyes, but despite himself, he was grinning. He obediently shut up while Draco drew himself up and stared into the distance with misty eyes.

"They won't let him forget where he came from," Draco said quietly. "So I don't think _we _should, either. Instead, let's acknowledge that we're strange, that this is strange, that the whole thing is full of aspects no human ever had to consider before. And let's make that our triumph and teach Jeremy to be _proud _of what he is, instead of ashamed and hiding it, and trying to pretend that he's exactly the same as Victoire or Teddy."

Harry wrinkled his nose, waited a bit, and then asked, "Is your grand moment over now?"

"More or less," Draco said, looking down at him and hopping from the bed to stand beside Harry. "Why?"

"Because the wonderful, special child that we both share needs a new nappy," Harry said, and handed Jeremy off to him.

* * *

For one of the few times in his life that he could remember, Draco was simply _happy_.

It wasn't that it was always easy. Jeremy was fussy, rarely slept more than forty minutes at a time, and tended to scream in a way that set Draco's teeth on edge. The grass-milk was, the way that Fleur and Andromeda talked about it, a poor substitute for the real thing. Most of the rest of the humans were either still puzzled out of their skulls—like Weasley—trying to quantify things—like Granger—or interested in Jeremy but wary of him at the same time—the rest of them.

He and Harry had even argued about names. Draco had assumed without thinking about it that his son, because he had been the one who wanted children more fiercely than Harry, should have a star name, or a Roman one. But Harry had wanted to call him James.

Draco refused on the grounds that this would give him a complex, and suggested Scorpius instead.

Harry had refused _that _on the grounds that it would sound stupid.

Draco was still stinging from that refusal when Harry said that it would be all right if the name began with the same letter as James, but that Draco wasn't to take that as permission to call him Julius.

Draco had eventually agreed on Jeremy. Eventually. It had taken a few days of him and Harry calling the child different names aloud and shouting even more back and forth at each other in the bond.

So rational experience argued that Draco should be steaming like he'd drunk Pepper-Up Potion by now. Harry was being unreasonable. Other people circled around them as if they had done something frightening instead of wondrous. They were both short on sleep.

Instead, Draco found a whole new thing to appreciate every time he held Jeremy. The clear color of his eyes, which were still blue but which Draco was certain edged closer to grey with every evening. The way he stretched his hands out towards the winds and laughed with a crazy edge of delight to the sound when they skittered around him; that might mean Draco hadn't done him harm after all, dancing his own fear of wind into the child. The way Jeremy had already learned to focus on faces and smile, although he did that so rarely it was a miracle each time it happened, and Harry and Draco kept exchanging memories of it.

And then there was the way the mummidade had taken to him.

Maybe because they had danced the dance that created Jeremy with Harry and Draco, or because this was the way their own children were born, or even because they were convinced that Jeremy couldn't be a whole person without _real _people, two or more, nearby, the mummidade wanted to be with Jeremy all the time. They grazed or lay nearby with their legs folded as Harry and Draco fed Jeremy. They let him lie on their flanks and nudged him with all two or three of their heads, depending on how many bodies made up that one individual. They danced around him at the slightest flick of wind, tossing their hooves and horns with what Nuisance said was pure joy.

Nuisance liked Jeremy, too. He said, when Draco questioned him about it, "I was born of wind or magic or something else I'm not even sure of. Compared to me, he isn't strange at all."

Draco had to admit that made sense, although he slightly resented hearing that his son was serving as a standard of comparison for someone else on Hurricane, even someone who was as harmless as Nuisance seemed. For now, anyway.

_Our son, _Harry's voice had said in his head then.

Draco also had to admit that he had some trouble with that. He thought of Jeremy as his son a lot of the time, tracing the shape of Black and Malfoy ancestors in his face, or trying to, since Jeremy's features often seemed to change day by day. And he didn't think of the equal part Harry had had in the dance and Jeremy's creation nearly as often as he should.

But he was getting better at that, he thought, the day he took Jeremy in his arms and he and Harry went out to show him to Open Wings for the first time.

* * *

Open Wings had gone south on a scouting mission, or so Nuisance had told Harry. What they had gone for, Nuisance pawed the earth and hummed over, but he wouldn't say.

It worried Harry, a little, but then, a lot of things seemed to worry him at the moment, most of them related to Jeremy. If Open Wings wanted to have secrets, there wasn't much he could do about it except wait, and trust that Open Wings would tell them in time.

The riders landed their beasts on the grass a few meters away from one of the antelope herds that Harry had been watching. Harry, who was walking in front of Draco and Jeremy, quickened his pace, and then stopped. He didn't see Swoop in the midst of them, which meant that Open Wings wasn't here yet.

Then a shadow swept across his face, across all of them, and he looked up in time to see the great wings dip down.

Swoop landed shaking his head slightly. Harry stared. The feathers around his face had grown in white and grey, a phenomenon Harry hadn't seen before. On the other hand, they'd barely been on Hurricane for one season yet. Maybe it was something that happened naturally for all the beasts in the summer.

When he looked at the others, though, there was no smattering of white or grey on any of _them_. Harry turned back in time to see Open Wings spring off Swoop and stand beside him, hand on his partner's neck, the way he had often stood before.

But Harry knew it wasn't his imagination that Open Wings leaned on Swoop more heavily than usual, or that a few of the claws from the ends of his talons were missing.

"What happened?" Harry demanded. Then he winced. Nuisance was further away, talking to the antelopes, whom he thought he should be able to communicate with even though they lacked the "underlayer" to their thoughts that Nuisance had described as only belonging to intelligent species. Open Wings still didn't understand more than a few English words, the way Harry didn't understand more than a few riders' whistles.

Open Wings spread his talons, a weary gesture, and then lifted his hand and called out in a piercing trill. Nuisance's head came up, and he crouched to the ground, then sprang over the antelopes and landed next to them, antlers cocked. His ears oriented on Open Wings and he stared for a second, then spun around and snorted at Harry in agitation.

"He says to tell you that it was the ones you call the thunderrin that did this to him and his partner. And the one called Primrose."

Harry hissed out. _Shit. _Just when he'd thought that he might be able to worry about the storms and their child and not much else, this had to happen.

But that had been the way it always was. When he had wanted to be left alone to raise Teddy, then the reporters had crowded in, and the Ministry's persecutions of his friends had started. Life was always there all around you, happening all the time, and it never asked if you wanted to be a part of it.

_Teddy. _Teddy hadn't been much interested in Jeremy yet, but then, he was tiny. Harry was not looking forward to the days when Teddy decided that he wanted more of Harry's attention.

_You'll have a heart big enough for both of them, _Draco said casually. Harry looked over his shoulder to watch him bouncing Jeremy. He hadn't needed either Fleur or Andromeda to show him how to do that, although they'd both offered. _If I do, as selfish as I am and without the reasons that you have to love Teddy, then you do._

Harry relaxed and smiled at him, then turned back to Nuisance and Open Wings. "How did it happen?" he asked Open Wings softly.

Open Wings chattered and whistled again, and Nuisance listened intently, then crooned back. It seemed to be a request for more information, because Open Wings fluttered the feathers around his beak with his sigh before he repeated himself.

"He says," Nuisance said, turning to face Harry and crouching as if he thought he might be required to jump over antelopes again, "that it happened because he was careless. The thunderrin showed no sign of noticing his people as they got close. So he tried to spy on one that went off alone to train with its rider. And that one was Primrose, and she seems to have a closer bond to her thunderrin than most of the rest. She sensed him and Swoop, and she unleashed magic at them."

"Wild magic?" Harry asked. If Primrose had that, in addition to her bond to her thunderrin, they needed to know what it was.

Nuisance shook his antlers. "It seemed to be magic composed of both her power and the thunderrin's. It burned them."

Harry stepped up and hesitated a little. "Could you ask him if it's okay for me to look closely at the burns?"

Nuisance turned and clicked and crooned at Open Wings again, hopping up and down and whirling his tail around. Harry wasn't sure how his tail helped him to communicate with the riders, but it seemed to work; Open Wings glanced at Harry, spread his talon-fingers, and pushed back a few of his feathers.

Harry stepped up and gently bent his head, letting his winds push back more feathers when Open Wings tilted his beak back. Harry narrowed his eyes as he examined them. He could see why Nuisance had called them burns. They had probably felt like that, and they'd left black marks that resembled them.

But one brush of his winds against the marks told Harry they weren't that. His winds had felt burns by now; more than once, someone had got careless near the fire, and Harry's airs could cool and soothe someone better than most of the limited potions Angelina had brought with them or could brew. This was painful, and _buried, _not leading down from the surface of the skin the way a severe burn would. Unless the riders were different from humans in that, as well, but Harry didn't think they were.

Harry stretched out a hand. A wind came and curled in his palm, stirring his hair and the feathers on Swoop's neck.

This time, Harry didn't need Nuisance to ask for permission. Open Wings met his eyes and gave a resigned flutter of his fingers.

Harry leaned in and exhaled, drawing the wind in his palm into his lungs, then let it out again, hard, on the black marks on Open Wings's face.

The wind swept down and around and _in. _Only the way Open Wings stiffened, his hands flaring open, showed how startled he was. Harry rode the wind, the way he did when asking it to seek out a conversation and report back to him. Its perceptions mingled with his, and he felt the sensation of something trapped beneath the surface of Open Wings's feathers. He extended a hand, unaware, really, if he was doing it physically or stretching out fingers that were made of air, and yanked.

Open Wings screeched; Swoop swung around with his beak open and poised to strike; Draco shouted in the back of his mind; and Harry leaped back with his hand full of something. Something fluffy and struggling and cracking.

_Drop it._

Draco's voice drove into his brain, and it wasn't an order Harry could resist. He opened his fingers. The struggling thing fell to the soil, and immediately tried to dig itself in.

Harry's winds wouldn't allow that, however. They scooped it up a mere second before Nuisance tried to stamp on it with one paw.

They crowded around it. Nuisance was sniffing, his ears tucked against the sides of his head and his eyes almost entirely green. Draco stood back with Jeremy's face held to the side of his neck, as though he assumed whatever they were witnessing would corrupt Jeremy if it got the chance. Harry couldn't really disagree with that.

The thing didn't make any more sense when they looked at it closely, though. It was as black as the dirt of the meadow or a stone from the mountains or Open Wings's feathers, which Harry thought was another reason that it had gone in unnoticed. The surface was soft and rippled, and things moved in and out of it. The only thing Harry could think to compare it to was some of the Muggle machines that he had seen in snatched glimpses of science fiction movies on the telly.

Then Draco said, _It's a seed. _And repeated it aloud, just in case anyone else needed that particular horrifying revelation.

Harry's winds jerked, but caught the thing before it could fall. Open Wings, though he took a moment to react because he needed Nuisance to say the same thing in his language, arched his shoulders and cawed with revulsion. Harry didn't know if there were any words in there, but he would remember the sound.

Nuisance crowded forwards, but kept his muzzle at the level of Harry's shoulder, above and behind the seed. "What is it a seed from, though?" he whispered, and then swung his head to look at Draco. "How did you know what it was?"

Harry turned to Draco. Draco's eyes were horrified, but his mind clear and his hands on Jeremy's head and neck gentle and strong. "Because I've seen a seed from one of my mother's gardens do the same thing, with magic cast on it to speed up its growth," he said quietly. "Those were tendrils spreading out, trying to root and find something to grow on." He turned to Open Wings. "But I think that, since it was in your flesh, it wasn't seeking to grow in the soil."

"He says you must be right," Nuisance said, when he had translated that and got Open Wings's reply. He turned back to the seed again, mouth slightly open, and Harry thought he knew why. This was an enemy, but it was also a new creation of the wild magic, like him, the only new one since Jeremy. "And he says he wants the other ones out _right now_."

Luckily, since there were those black and painful places above each seed, Harry didn't take long to find them and yank them out with his winds. He did the same thing to Swoop, once Open Wings had got his beast to lie down and keep still while Harry did the work. Swoop snapped at Harry more than once, but finally laid his head down and closed his eyes, and seemed to shake himself all over when the last seed was out.

Harry set the seeds to orbiting in midair, well away from each other, in case the tendrils could get a grip when joined and grow into something even more awful and strong. He watched them dancing, fuzzy, writhing black nests of destruction. Swoop hissed at them and then spread his wings and ran, leaping into the air. It was only the second or third time Harry had seen him fly without his rider.

Open Wings said, through Nuisance, "I do not know what they were meant to grow. Do you?"

Harry shook his head and turned to Draco. Draco seemed to have decided that he'd made enough horrifying revelations for the evening, though. He cradled Jeremy and hummed, and Jeremy chose that moment to wail.

Open Wings jerked once, then turned and glanced at Jeremy. He bowed and spread his fingers. "Congratulations," he said, one of the riders' words Harry had learned to recognize, before he turned and walked after Swoop.

"Doesn't he want to know?" Harry asked Nuisance.

"He's had enough for right now." Nuisance was all but dancing from foot to foot, his attention still locked on the seeds. "But I haven't! What do you think they are? What do you think they grow?"

"I think they grow new thunderrin," Harry said. "Either that, or some other kind of creature that disables their enemies. But thunderrin is the likely guess. It would be something that needed the flesh and blood of enemies, and I don't think the thunderrin would waste that on a lesser kind of creature."

"That might be right, but it's the most disgusting thing I've heard since we came to Hurricane," Draco said, plaintively. "Can we go back home now? Jeremy's hungry, and I probably will be once I have a chance to recover my appetite."

"We need to decide what to do with the—seeds first," Harry said, and turned to them. "I want to keep at least one so Hermione can study it, but I think we should destroy the others. And then find a way to keep this one safe."

"Do what you want," Draco said, and walked away. Harry could feel the steady glow of the bond between them, and that was the only thing that kept him from resenting Draco leaving so easily. On the other hand, he had Jeremy, and Harry could agree that their son needed to be far away from these things right now.

"I might have ideas." Nuisance had danced closer again, and his head was tilted to the side, antlers nearly brushing Harry's cheek.

"How?" Harry asked.

Nuisance flicked out an ear and said, "Hush. I'm listening."

Harry blinked and fell silent. Listening to the _seeds_? But maybe they were more like eggs, if they were meant to grow into young thunderrin, and Harry had to admit that Nuisance had always had a gift at picking up thoughts around him. Maybe even the thoughts of the unborn. It wasn't like he'd had a chance to practice; as far as Harry knew, he'd never been near a rider's nest, and the mummidade didn't produce children by pregnancy.

Then Nuisance started back and said, "Kill them. _Burn _them. That'll get rid of them. Fire will. Get rid of them. All of them." He was starting and shivering, his eyes standing out in his head. When he turned to Harry, the green had left them and they were all black, the color of the seeds. "You have to kill them."

"Why?" Harry asked, although he used his winds to move the seeds further apart from each other.

"Because they're hungry," Nuisance said. "All they are is hunger. They want something to dig into and feed on. That's all they are. _Desire. _It's even worse than the Tssisid's desire to fly to the south. At least that was something I could understand. This wants to destroy everything that's in the way."

Harry could no longer conjure fire in the normal way, but he told his winds to spin the seeds, faster and faster. They were going at such a speed, finally, that trying to follow them with his human perceptions made him dizzy, and then he gasped as the air friction set them afire.

The fire ate inwards and outwards, both; Harry hadn't realized that his winds had worked beneath the surface of the seeds. Tendrils fractured, and Harry did think he heard a faint scream. He dismissed that. He wouldn't think of it right now. He turned to Nuisance as fluffy dark ash drifted down around them, right before a passing breeze seized and scattered it. "Can you hear any more of their minds?" he asked.

Nuisance listened, his eyes closed in concentration, his four feet all stamping alternately. Then he opened his eyes again and shook his head. "No. I think you did it." And he turned around and bounced off in the direction of what Harry knew was the largest pool in the meadow. Harry wasn't surprised he needed a bath, after rolling his thoughts through that hunger.

Harry shuddered and headed back to the tent, himself. He might take a bath later. For now, what would cleanse him and comfort him and protect him from thoughts of the future was the presence of Draco and Jeremy.


	15. Seeds of Destruction

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_Chapter Fifteen—Seeds of Destruction_

"What are we here to talk about?"

Harry sighed and looked around the circle of humans—well, they were all humans except Nuisance and Open Wings, who stood beside Nuisance, his talons resting on his face so he could touch the places where Harry had pulled the seeds out. And Draco and Jeremy weren't here. Draco had wanted to stay in the tent and take care of Jeremy, and though Harry suspected that was at least partially because he didn't want to talk to the Weasleys, it was agreeable to him. This might go more smoothly if Draco wasn't here.

"Primrose used a new weapon when the riders went south to investigate the thunderrin," he said. "They thought it was fire at first, or some kind of wild magic. But I pulled these _seeds _from Open Wings's feathers, and from his beast." He nodded, and since that was a prearranged signal, Nuisance didn't need to translate. Open Wings stood forth, turning so that everyone could make out the faint white marks on his dark feathers. "We didn't know what they were at first. Then they started trying to grow, and Nuisance said that he could feel a hunger in them."

"They had the hunger," Nuisance said, and kicked with his back feet and bobbed his head down at the same time. Bill and Angelina, who were seated on either side of where he was standing, moved a bit further away. "I could feel it. They wanted to devour everything in the world that might aid them in growing." He shuddered. "And they needed living flesh. They couldn't just grow in the ground."

"What should we do about it?" That was Bill, leaning forwards to peer into Harry's face as if he would have the answer. At least it was a lot better than the reaction he would have had before this.

"I think we should get ready for an attack by Primrose and the thunderrin," Harry said. He grimaced at the expressions that appeared on some faces then, but if anyone had a better plan, he hadn't heard it yet. "I can call a storm at a minute's notice, but that doesn't help much if everyone else is out in the open when the thunderrin come wheeling up. What other ideas do you have that could help?"

Nuisance had been clucking and chirping to Open Wings, and now he turned around and said, "He suggests a scout relay. Riders stationed at different points all across the southern plains, ready to fly north if any thunderrin show up."

Harry nodded. He had discussed the idea a bit with Open Wings last night, but it was good to have it opened up here, for discussion in front of everyone.

"Does anyone else have suggestions?" he asked, turning around and catching people's eyes.

Ron cleared his throat. "I think—I think I can still Apparate. I just haven't wanted to try it because it's so easy to get lost on Hurricane, with so many things looking the same."

Harry nodded encouragingly to him. He thought he knew what Ron was saying, but he wanted it out in the open so everyone could take it in or argue about it.

"I think I could Apparate out to any place where the thunderrin are crossing over and try exerting that—talent I have." Ron still didn't want to refer to his ability to get rid of wild magic _as _wild magic. "If they're using magic to fly, maybe I can make them fall. And I can get rid of any weapons they're using that might rely on the wild magic."

Hermione nodded approvingly at him. "I can try Apparating south for a while and seeing if I can sense the concentrations of thunderrin magic," she offered.

Other people began to speak up then, some volunteering for guard duty and Angelina talking about making potions that would allow her to Heal anyone who did get the seeds in them, and Harry relaxed. This was a much better position than he had thought he would find himself in a month ago. He wasn't being forced to be a leader this time. The others _could _learn.

_I still didn't want to talk to them, _Draco's sleepy voice snarled down the back of the bond.

Harry grinned and lifted his head. The sun overhead blazed steadily, and no one would ever have thought Hurricane was a planet of violent storms at the moment. _I know you wanted to catch up on your sleep, _he said cheerfully. _That's not the sort of thing you can really hide from me._

Draco's response wasn't in words. Harry chuckled, and then settled down and went back to talking seriously about the problem with the thunderrin's seeds as everyone stared at him.

It was good to be reminded, at times, that not everything was about day-to-day survival.

* * *

Draco sat back on the grass and shook his head. Technically, he was keeping an eye on the new antelope just added to the herd, which the riders had brought back from a wild one and which needed to spend more time around all the sentient creatures in the meadow to tame them.

Really, he was watching Jeremy, who lay on his back in the middle of a little hollow of grass and waved his hands and gurgled at the mummidade dancing around them.

Draco didn't think it was his imagination that Jeremy had already learned to look at more than one mummid when they came up to him, to pick out whether it was two bodies that made up that individual, or three, or four. The mummidade seemed to have got over their fear that Jeremy wasn't a real person because he only had one body, too. They bowed their heads and brushed their horns against him, and kicked up their heels and spun, and all but stood on their horns in an attempt to entertain him.

Having a child on Hurricane had proven much easier than Draco had ever thought it could.

He looked up sharply as a disturbance moved through the herd of antelope, but apparently one of them had kicked another, and the second one had turned around and hit the first one hard in the side with its head. The first one bolted a little distance, squealed, and settled down. Draco felt able to turn back to Jeremy and the mummidade. Right now, Westshadow was standing close to him, two heads bowed until they almost touched his body and the other two turned towards the south.

Westshadow leaped into the air as Draco watched—well, two of its bodies did, the ones that were facing south. Draco scrambled to his feet, but they came down without touching Jeremy, even though they landed right beside him.

However, they landed solidly enough, and loudly enough, to make a ringing sound with their hooves that moved over the meadow like a buried bell.

_Boom._

A third body moved forwards to join them, while the remaining mummid huffed and hunched over Jeremy as if to guard him from something in the air. Draco looked around wildly, but could see nothing.

The bell-like sound was being taken up in other places, though, as other mummidade heard what was going on and added their own comments. The bell-sound seemed to be traveling south, the same direction that Westshadow was facing.

The direction that an attack was expected to come from, if it came.

Draco fought his way forwards, dodging Westshadow's bodies when they wouldn't move. He snatched up Jeremy, cradled him to his chest, and then turned around and ran for the tent. He would make sure that Jeremy was safe if he had to grow claws and stand in the tent entrance himself.

Other people were running, he saw. Andromeda was dragging Teddy towards the big silver house she'd built as protection against the storms, although Teddy whined and tried to lunge back towards a toy he'd left on the ground. Even as Draco watched, though, a gust of wind snatched up the toy and floated it after Teddy. Teddy embraced it just before his grandmother got him inside the house and slammed the door.

A second later, it opened again to admit Delacour and her little girl. She met Draco's eyes and nodded, once, before the door shut after her, too.

Draco gave a baffled little smile. It was _strange _to think that Delacour now recognized Draco as a fellow parent who wanted, more than anything, to make sure that his child was safe.

But Draco didn't slow down or spend much time thinking about it, and in a few minutes more, he and Jeremy had arrived at the tent. Draco put him gently down in the midst of his blankets, whirling around when he heard a wind sweep back the tent flap.

It was Harry, swooping down from above and coming in even before his feet had touched the ground. "Is he all right?" he demanded.

Draco relaxed all at once, so he almost fell over. Harry was glowing with power; Draco could feel the wild magic bouncing and bounding around the tent, winds encircling Jeremy and stiffening the tent walls and setting up guard around the door. He nodded. "Just a bit scared because the mummidade who sounded the alarm were right next to him," he added, because Jeremy was crying, and picked him up. He switched to the bond. He and Harry had got extremely happy about having the ability to talk without raising their voices once Jeremy started raising _his_. _What's happening? _

Harry dipped his head and turned to look over his shoulder. _They're not sure yet. None of the riders from Open Wings's scouts have come in, but Ron's Apparated south, and the mummidade are sure that something is coming. Riders are up and circling. They like attacking from on high when they can. I think everyone but Ron and Hermione are under shelter._

Draco nodded. Granger would have gone south with her Weasley even though her gifts were less immediately useful. It was where Draco would want to be if he didn't have a child to take care of. _What are you going to?_

Harry smiled at him, a smile with an edge, and Draco could feel the same edge in the winds that were picking up around him. In seconds, a miniature gale howled in Harry's hair. At the same time, Harry reached out, and clouds began to form inside his palms.

_Take the storm to them, _Harry said, and hurtled out of the tent flap and into the sky, rising so fast that Draco lost sight of him long before the tent flap fell shut.

Draco sat back on the bed and concentrated on soothing Jeremy. If he hadn't been here, he would have insisted that Harry take him along, or at least remain in regular contact with him down the bond. He could use Draco's help, as that first confrontation with a summer storm had already proven.

But now there were three of them, not two, and someone had to stay behind to take care of the baby. Draco didn't even need to pretend that he wasn't relieved; Harry felt the emotion down the bond, accepted and understood and forgave, and the gentleness between them lapped like a wave.

Draco closed his eyes, and waited.

* * *

_You want a storm, Primrose? You're going to have a storm._

Harry was humming steadily to the wind as he soared up, past the level of the riders who had decided to wait for the thunderrin, past the level of low-hanging clouds, higher and higher and higher and higher. The mountains blurred in the distance. Harry got through fog and air still heated by the sunlight, and hovered in front of the sun, in a place where the wind would have frozen on his eyelids if it hadn't been busy protecting him.

Then he began to call.

The call was high and wordless and so steady that Harry could only compare it to the drum of hoofbeats that the mummidade had sent echoing through the meadow a short time ago. It came from every part of him, from his magical core and his fingers and his heart and his hair. He swept back and forth through the freezing sky, wrapping warm air around himself when he started to shiver. Every direction he faced, he called.

The winds began to speed towards him. Long before he completed the ten sweeps back and forth he had decided on, as if he were dangling on the end of a long pendulum, he had a circling cocoon around him, moving so fast that he could hear the swish of it in his ears. He turned around and aimed towards the south again with a smile.

He had to be careful, of course. Ron and Hermione were out on the plains, and there would be riders hastening back as well. Harry didn't want to catch any of them up in the winds and tear them to pieces.

He touched his hands to his lips, and formed a narrow channel with his palms cupped together. Then he began to breathe.

The winds rushed into him, swirling around inside his lungs, being breathed, mixing with the air already in his body. Coldness changed to warmth. Harry made them his and wrapped and stamped them with his wild magic.

When he released them again, out through his skin and his ears and his eyelashes and any other place they cared to leave, they knew what he was like, and what he wanted. Any human associated with a thunderrin was to be attacked, and the thunderrin themselves; the wind carried the image and the knowledge of what thunderrin were. Any human that wasn't with the thunderrin, and any rider or beast, was to be ignored.

Harry continued breathing in the wind he had gathered while the already-breathed wind raced away from him, speeding to the four corners of the sky. He was still breathing when he heard thunder speaking across the northern mountains. Harry raised his head and smiled.

Grey clouds had blown in from nowhere, and lightning danced between them. Harry didn't know how precisely he could control that, but like the rain and the thunder and the clouds themselves, he knew that he could wrap them inside the winds. The winds would take them where he wanted them to go, and nowhere else.

He brought his hands down, clenched together, and spread wide. The last of the wind that was going to be the storm left him; the only breezes that stayed with him were the ones he needed to support him as he hovered above the earth.

The storm came together in front of him.

Harry watched, feeling as though he might never need to breathe again with all the oxygen he'd taken into his body, while the grey clouds turned black, the same perfect black he saw between the stars in Hurricane's night sky. Then the lightning flickered between them, mad as the gleam in a thestral's eyes. And the thunder spoke again, mighty words, words of doom, and the first forerunners of the rain stung Harry's ears.

And his eyes, too. Harry frowned and wrapped a stronger shield of wind around himself, spinning these winds out from inside his magical core, the way he had when he was still on Earth and had no wild magic to draw on. He was getting careless and weak with his own magic if he was using all of it on the storm, and he didn't want to fall because he was so enchanted with watching what was happening in front of him.

As he was borne up again, the storm began to turn. Harry could feel that more than he could see it, although watching the black clouds wheel around in front of him like whips was amazing. The leashed energy of the storm surged against the leash, and then leaped up and flew with him instead of against him, towards the thunderrin.

Harry laughed. He wished he could go with the storm, watch it attack, and watch the look on Primrose's face when she realized what was coming for her.

And then he thought, _Why not? _

He reached back down the bond to Draco, stroking his mind and pouring wordless concern for Jeremy into the link. Draco grunted and sent back his own wordless reassurances, plus some articulate thoughts. _I know that you won't be happy until you're sure the storm is doing what you promised it could do and defending the meadow. Go off and do what you need to._

Harry stroked Draco's mind once more, sent a hot bolt of desire that promised all the things they could do once he got back, and glided away, lifted and borne by the obedient air around him.

He actually couldn't wait.

* * *

Draco cradled Jeremy to his chest and watched the walls of the tent ripple slowly back and forth. In a few seconds, the ripples calmed down. Draco swallowed. He had trusted to Harry's guard-winds, which were stiffening the inside fabric of the tent the way that splints would support bones, to hold, but nevertheless, the immense magic of the storm moving overhead had made him worry they might tear loose and join it.

And it was hard not to want to go up, Draco had to admit. He could feel what Harry was doing through the bond, and it was like watching a beautiful wild animal run around in front of you and knowing you could tame it, ride it, and carry on with it. And Harry got the chance to accompany it, while Draco…

Was down here on the ground with a small, warm weight on his chest. Jeremy had finally given up on crying when nothing more exciting or frightening happened and had gone to sleep, his mouth open and a bit of drool sliding down.

Draco smiled, and tucked his hair away from his face. Harry was where he needed to be, and Draco was the same way.

* * *

Harry had never known a storm like this storm.

It was everywhere beneath him, above, below, a chaos of curling power, of sleek and shining strength. Harry reached out a hand, and lightning coiled around his wrist. He sat up, and there was rain in his eyes. He ducked down, poking his head out of clouds, and he could see the plain clearly instead of dimly.

He saw the thunderrin.

It turned out that he needn't have bothered warning the storm about the riders. They had cleared out of the way, probably the minute they saw the clouds rising. They would have been more concerned about the possibility of being caught out in the rain than about the possibility of thunderrin invading the meadow, Harry thought.

There was one figure far below him on the plains, gesturing with his hands and grabbing at the air. Ron, Harry knew, from the way that the storm abruptly weakened and spun out in little puffs near him. Harry turned his attention back to the thunderrin.

They advanced in a V formation, with the one that Primrose rode at the head. Harry could sense, with those stupid senses that were probably a gift of becoming the gateway, how the magic around her danced and sang and soared. She was the most powerful of them, and he remembered how everyone else who rode a thunderrin had been utterly silent when they came to the meadow, letting her speak for all of them. He snorted.

He didn't think she could face him.

He drew his head back inside the clouds and gestured, and the storm split into three parts. One retreated behind Harry's back, hovering to guard the meadow. Another soared into the sky, where it would block retreat by the thunderrin should they try to go up. Harry made sure that the rain was especially strong in that part, to soak their wings.

The third part made straight for the enemy, and Harry went with it.

Primrose looked up as Harry bore down on her, but not with fear. She had a boiling black chaos around her hands, as though she could summon a small storm, too. They were not clouds, though, Harry was certain, but seeds. She was going to plant them in the earth if she had to, to wait, because Harry was sure they needed living bodies to grow. And she would plant them in the humans and mummidade and riders and others that Harry was trying to protect.

She would try to plant them in Jeremy.

Harry screamed, and Primrose's thunderrin bucked as if the sound of a human voice calling out like that was strange. Then Harry hit her with the rain.

The thunderrin's rippling wings couldn't handle that wilder air. It was flying off-course, _rambling _off-course, flipped up and down by the contemptuous gales. Now and then Harry thought he heard the storm laugh.

He lashed the thunderrin floating in formation behind Primrose with rain, too, and had the satisfaction of seeing one crash to the ground. The others fought and rode better than it had, and Harry thought he felt something dripping and slimy crash against his mind, as they reached out and tried to form a bond or influence the person persecuting them.

And then he felt something else.

A blast of fiery pain stung his arm. Harry looked down and saw a seed there, green tendrils writhing as it tried to burrow into his flesh.

Harry held up his arm, and what had destroyed the seed once before came at his call, in a different form. Instead of winds that circled fast enough to burn them, lightning came down and struck him, running up his veins, lighting up his arm, making it glow from the inside. Harry choked, but his magic absorbed the pain, and the roasted seed fell away from him, dead and still.

Harry held his hands up and rotated in place, calling the lightning to him. It danced over his arms, and down his body, and Harry spun down with it, falling within it, following it, directing it to find and burn the seeds.

And it did.

Each moment when it struck one was full of hunger, full of wild magic, brewing and boiling in so small a space that Harry was surprised he hadn't been able to feel it with those first seeds that he pulled out of Open Wings. And then the fire would catch, and the hunger would stop as though someone had shut a door. Harry did it again and again, and still he couldn't get used to it, the change, the transformation, so sudden.

When he came out of the lightning and hovered on plain wind, he found himself in front of Primrose.

She gave him a grim smile, neither relieved nor surprised to see him there. Her thunderrin flapped its wings slowly up and down, green and purple playing over them.

"You should have stayed away," Harry told her softly. "Sending the seeds to try and raise new thunderrin was the last thing we intend to tolerate from you."

"Your scouts invaded my territory," Primrose said. "Was I supposed to ignore that?"

"You could have chased them away," Harry said, "without the seeds."

Primrose hadn't denied they were seeds, he realized now, or that they were meant to grow new thunderrin. Now she shrugged. "It seemed worthwhile to try and gain some new territory, if you were going to come into ours." She held up a hand filled with what looked like more seeds, although they were brown rather than black. "And now, you've forced me to distribute these, which are a much more violent version of what's come so far."

Harry held out an arm writhing with lightning. "I'll cast this if you use them."

Primrose smiled, and curled back her hand to fling them.

And Harry called all the force of the storm, and struck to kill.


	16. Riding the Lightning

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_Chapter Sixteen—Riding the Lightning_

Primrose dodged.

Harry wheeled after her, the storm pouring along with him. The thunderrin and Primrose were undulating up and down like a unit, he saw, Primrose not just riding the sweep of the thunderrin's wings but moving _with _it. Every ripple that traveled through its body was shared with hers, and some of them might have begun there.

And the thunderrin's magic would include knowing what to do in storms.

Harry snarled and clasped his hands together. He had no choice now, he thought. Primrose had intended every one of them to be fodder for her thunderrin. He had to kill her.

He retreated up and into the clouds. He could feel where Ron was, the place where his winds began to die. Hermione would be with him. By now, he thought all the riders were off the plains and back inside the protection of the meadow.

Which would mean that the thunderrin would think they had an open pathway to attack, unless they could feel the portion of the storm that Harry had dedicated to holding the meadow and its houses and tents safe.

He would probably never have a better chance.

Harry clasped his hands together again and began to draw once more on the winds he had personally breathed in and changed. They whirled in the confined space of his hands, buzzing and hissing in his lungs, slicing past his ears so fast that he would have bled if he was less connected to them. Harry focused and made them realize what he wanted. He could visualize it in his mind, but more to the point, he could _feel _it. He knew the way the air patterns would move, how the clouds would split, and what would fall out of them.

When he was sure that he had imprinted the bloody vision on his mind's eye, he opened his hands and let the storm surge out of them. He fell with it, but hid in a cocoon of clouds that ought to make him invisible to anyone beneath him.

The thunderrin had got back into their V formation, moving faster now. Primrose was a good distance in front of the next pair, leaning forwards. Harry could see the way her eyes focused, past the rain, and was sure that she had some way to clear it from her vision or ignore it. The thunderrin had survived the storms, too, and Harry ought to remember that. What really mattered was that they couldn't survive the storms _he _could deal out, the unnatural ones that didn't come from the usual wild magic of Hurricane.

Harry set about showing them what he could do.

A net of lightning sprang into being, writhing around his fingers and spreading out faster than he had thought it could go, aglow with fury. It leaped at the thunderrin, and although it was hard to contain, since it wanted simply to fry them and dissipate, Harry managed. The V formation began to split, some thunderrin undulating towards the ground, others rising, and Primrose turning her mount around again to face in his direction.

Around the lightning, Harry closed the net of wind.

He had envisioned it shaped like a huge clam shell, coming into being with its back next to the thunderrin and its hinge facing them. As he wove, the wind sprang up and away from their wings. They could flap them, but they had nothing to flap them against. They fell.

Then the wind dashed beneath them, and flung them towards the back of the imaginary clam shell, which was the net of lightning.

Harry smiled as he watched them die, smelled the burning skin and something worse than that, and felt the useless slap of something heavy and wet and mossy against the back of his mind. He suspected his bond with Draco protected him from having his thoughts invaded by a thunderrin.

He noticed they also died without a sound, including a scream from any of the humans. Whatever happened when a human bonded with a thunderrin, it didn't seem to be the same kind of equal and responsive partnership that happened between a rider and its beast. Except for Primrose.

Primrose was looking up towards him now, her hand still resting on her thunderrin's neck, and then she darted to the side and up and away, out of the nets that Harry was tightening around her companions. She aimed straight for him. Her thunderrin climbed faster than he'd seen any of them do before, its wings almost stiff instead of rippling.

Harry held up a hand. He called the lightning again, and he kept it swirling around his wrist and his arm, building and building on itself, until the sparks spat in his face and he could feel it yanking at and testing his control.

Then he let it go.

The lightning sped straight down towards Primrose, so true and fast that Harry didn't see how she could dodge it. The thunderrin didn't try, either. It came to a stop in midair, or as much of a stop as you could do when you were floating, and stretched its wings wide, its mouth gaping open and its tail curving up.

The lightning struck the tail and flared wildly away along it. Harry watched the arrow of brillance that hit the ground and left a smoking hole in the grasses.

He supposed it was silly to think that the thunderrin would have lived on Hurricane for all their lives and not found a way to resist the storms.

"You might as well give up."

Primrose was still a long distance below him and away from him, but Harry could hear her voice as clearly as though she was standing beside him. He looked down again, and saw her holding a rope that looked like it was made of gleaming silver. She stroked it and smiled up at him, then began to toss it around her head.

"We are too strong for you," she said. "Even with most of my people dead just now, there are others back in my dwelling who are bonded to the thunderrin, and the thunderrin breed faster than your riders or mummidade—as you've seen. There is nothing disgraceful about losing to me, you know. It is simply the way that things must happen, when one species confronts a stronger one." She crouched a little, and then swung the lasso straight at Harry. The way it came, uninfluenced by wind, Harry knew it was magical, and therefore it could reach him and hurt him even though it didn't seem as though it should be able to.

But he didn't try to evade it, either. He was tired of running from Primrose and her stupidity.

He called wind instead, and clasped it in his hands. The rope neared him, the loop growing bigger and bigger, getting ready to settle over his neck and clasp his arms to his sides.

Harry flung out his hands, and called all the wind down that he could, including from the parts of the storm that he had divided earlier to guard the meadow and wait in the high sky for any thunderrin that tried to get away from his traps.

The wind whirled and dived and scraped, and more power flew away from him than had done before. Harry felt himself weaken. He was falling, maybe, or he thought he was. He had let so much strength go with the wind that he had no idea where he was. He couldn't take his eyes from the scene in front of him anyway.

The rope's loop tore apart into flying embers and sparks, and the silver shredded all the way back down the rope into Primrose's hands. Primrose had a complicated expression on her face, staring at Harry as if she had no idea what was coming next, but already knew that she would prefer not to face it.

Then the rope blew apart, and she blew with it, and her thunderrin went, too, in bloody gobbets so small that Harry lost sight of them after a few inches of falling.

Harry closed his eyes and smiled. He had protected his meadow from an enemy. He had done what he had promised he would. He almost didn't care if he fell to his death, because—

_But Draco. Jeremy._

Harry tried to lift his head and gasp, but it was hard. There seemed to be too much air around him, and not enough in his lungs. He looked down, wondering why he hadn't hit the ground yet. Had he just been too high? But still, it had been minutes, or it seemed like that, since he had watched his winds destroy Primrose and her thunderrin.

Then he realized that winds were circling him, bearing him up, holding him a few feet above the ground. He hadn't used all the wind here, it seemed, although the sky was clear above him and there was no sign of the attackers now.

"Mate!"

Ron was hurrying towards him. Harry waved an exhausted arm and slumped back on the bed of air that the winds had made for him. His friend came up and shook his hand, babbling about how all the thunderrin were gone and it was amazing and Ron had only had to destroy a few of them who came towards him and tried to pass into the meadow.

But Harry couldn't listen to it more than that. His eyelids fell shut, and he turned his head, and he felt the reassuring bubble at the back of the bond that told him Draco and Jeremy were still there, and safe. Then he was gone.

* * *

Draco turned when the bond sparked to life in the back of his mind. He had spent almost the last full day caring for Jeremy by himself, and watching Harry, and waiting for either one of them to wake up. Jeremy was the only one who had. Draco swallowed. He didn't know if he wanted to admit to Harry how lonely it had been, how worrying.

_Too late, _said Harry's tired voice. _I can feel that, you know, you berk. And it's good to know that you weren't just missing me because you had to take care of Jeremy all by yourself._

Draco said nothing, but stepped up to the bed. He held Jeremy in one arm and couldn't use both hands to hug Harry, but he wrapped the other arm around his shoulders and held him simply, steadily, tightly. Harry hugged him back, sleepy, and then smiled as Draco put Jeremy on his chest and hurried off to bring some of the antelope meat and soup the riders had made to him.

_I'm fine, _Harry said. _I only exhausted myself. I'd called up all that storm wind, and then when it went and hit someone, it was like doing it myself, struggling with someone physically. I'd taken that wind into my lungs and breathed it, and it had part of me._

Draco only shook his head and watched Jeremy kicking and squirming, so much that his feet almost hit Harry in the chin. Harry reached down and tickled him. His face was soft, the bond shimmering like aspen leaves, and Draco finally sighed and relented and said, "I knew you were still alive. I just didn't know why you'd fainted."

"It was a hard thing," Harry said, and tickled Jeremy, who squirmed and made a noise halfway between a giggle and a whine. "Like killing someone." He frowned, then began talking in the bond again. _Do you think I should mention killing Primrose in front of Jeremy? Maybe it would be a good thing to keep it in the bond for right now._

Draco had to snort as he laid the bowl of soup on the tray that he was going to bring to the bed and cast a Warming Charm. He had got experienced in both using the trays and in Warming Charms lately, because it was hard to put Jeremy down and eat with both hands most of the time. "He's going to hear a lot worse than that," he said. "Like the things that happened in the war on Earth, and the people who die because of the storms. And I think Primrose's death was entirely deserved."

"So do I." But the bond had darkened, even as Harry held Jeremy close, and that usually lightened his mood as nothing else could do.

"You do," Draco said, listening to the bond. He put the tray down on the bed beside Harry and picked up Jeremy again, who wailed because he'd been warm and then it had gone away again. Draco cast a Warming Charm on him, too, and then wrinkled his nose. Jeremy needed a new nappy. Then again, he always did. "But you still wish that you hadn't had to kill her. Explain _that _to me, if you can."

"I was glad that I did it, that I _accomplished _it," Harry said, and looked him in the eyes for a few seconds before Draco had to turn to the bank of moss they'd made into a changing table. Jeremy kicked and squirmed even more as Draco laid him down and reached for his nappy, but Draco didn't feel those minor kicks as hard as he felt Harry's eyes on his back. "But I'm sorry that it had to be done. That Primrose couldn't have bonded with her thunderrin in a different way, or listened to us. Yes, I could regret the necessity even though I also regretted that she'd come after us."

Draco frowned in silence as he cleaned Jeremy, draping a small square of cloth over him so that he wouldn't piss in Draco's face while he did it. It had only taken one time of _that _happening for Draco to decide that the piece of cloth would always be in place.

"I reckon that I don't see things the same way," he finally admitted, while the bond pulsed in the back of his head with Harry's patience. "If someone turned against me, I wouldn't have any regrets about killing them."

"Even if that person was me?" Harry asked quietly.

"Don't be ridiculous." Draco had to pause before he conjured the water that cleaned up Jeremy's mess, because if he was angry, it would come out too hard and make Jeremy cry again. And Jeremy was content right now, staring at one hand with eyes that still had a hard time focusing. "You would never turn against me."

"I was just speaking about a world where I _could_," Harry said.

"That world isn't Hurricane." Draco finally tucked the new nappy into place, dried up the mess he'd washed away, and then dried Jeremy's arse with the gentlest Cleaning Charm he knew. Then he picked Jeremy up, holding him on his shoulder, and turned around to face Harry.

Harry was opening his mouth for yet another philosophical argument, but Draco cut him off and continued speaking. "I can't imagine you turning against me any more than I can imagine Jeremy doing it. I love you both so much it hurts. That's enough for me."

Harry paused and looked at him thoughtfully. Draco stood his ground. Maybe Harry thought Draco should be open to the possibility for some weird reason. Maybe he thought Draco should learn to love the Weasleys and hate his family if he had to. That was the way Harry thought, and knowing so much more about him now than he had on Earth, Draco could see why. Harry had grown up hearing that the Dursleys were "family," but they were perfectly awful to him. And he had had arguments with his friends, but they had always come back together again. He could see the good even in people who opposed him.

Draco couldn't. He didn't want to. Harry could be the flexible and moral one out of the pair of them, but it was beyond him. Besides, one mind so open that all sorts of rubbish could fall into it was enough in one pair of _anything, _Draco thought.

"Fine," Harry said, so softly that Draco honestly wasn't sure that he'd heard him at first. He reached out and slid a gentle hand down Draco's cheek, following it by brushing his knuckles against his chin. "You win. Now, can I hold Jeremy while I'm eating?"

"You eat first," Draco said. "I've changed him, which means _I _get to hold him right now. And you need some food in you. You haven't had anything for more than twenty-four hours."

"We never have found out whether Hurricane's day actually is the same length as ours down to the second," Harry muttered, but he turned to his food, picking up a strip of antelope meat and biting it in half with a snap of his teeth.

Draco hesitated once, then sat down beside Harry and leaned his head on Harry's shoulder. "I love you," he whispered. "And I thought I'd lost you for good. So I'm entitled to be a little fussy."

Harry leaned his face against Draco's. "I thought I might not come back to you," he whispered. "I almost died knowing I'd defeated Primrose and thinking that was enough. But then I remembered you and Jeremy, and I wanted to come back."

Draco stroked a hand down Harry's back, and watched him as he ate, and felt Jeremy's weight settling harder into his arm as Jeremy went to sleep. Everything else could wait. For now, this was enough.

* * *

"The riders want to talk about what you did."

Harry grimaced and nodded at Nuisance's words. He knew the riders had no great love for the thunderrin, especially since Open Wings had told them the story of what had happened to him and Swoop in the south directly, but they seemed to object to killing just about anything, except animals for food. It didn't surprise him that they wanted to talk about his murder of Primrose and ensure that it wouldn't be repeated.

But when Nuisance led him across the meadow and to one of the big rings of crushed grass where the riders regularly came down and had their beasts lie, Harry paused. He could feel eyes on him, but they didn't feel unfriendly, the way they had that time the riders were afraid of him getting too powerful. The beasts that had accompanied their riders lay on their backs, kicking up their legs, beaks open to the sky as if rejoicing in the summer. And there were riders dragging rough combs down their tails and picking through their feathers for pests. Open Wings nodded casually to him.

"Open Wings wants to know if you would do that to any of the meadow's enemies," said Nuisance, facing Harry and drumming one hind foot on the ground, so that he sounded like a rabbit kicking something.

Harry stared at the riders again, but they still didn't glare at him or talk to each other much in their own language, except a few clicks and trills now and again. He took a deep breath at last and spoke, deciding that he might as well let Nuisance translate both for him and for them. "What, kill them? If they were attacking the meadow, yes. I might not have to do it with all the lightning and rain I used. The thunderrin were a lot tougher than I thought they were."

Nuisance bounced in place and sang in the riders' language to Open Wings. Open Wings nodded back and spread his talons in Harry's direction.

"Then he is happy," said Nuisance, and turned back to Harry and smiled in that way he had, flipping his ears forwards and spreading his front legs as though they had suddenly grown too heavy to bear his weight. "He wanted to know that you would defend the meadow even from fellow humans. Until this point, he was only confident that you could protect it from storms."

Harry blinked. "Then—they aren't upset about the way Primrose died?" He had been sure that was what he was going to get, another moral lecture on how he came across as dangerous to the riders.

Nuisance stared at him, his tail flipping back and forth and one foot pawing again. Then it stilled, as he leaned in to examine Harry from so close that Harry nearly drowned in his breath. "Why would he be? You know that the meadow is the center of the riders' lives. Well, these riders' lives. I have the impression that there are more of them living somewhere else, but I don't know where, exactly."

"I thought—that death isn't acceptable," Harry said. "Fighting a storm was acceptable because it isn't alive."

Nuisance cocked his head. "The riders don't make the same distinctions you do," he said. "They don't want anyone who's _with _them killed, if they can think and talk—if they have that underlayer. But they attacked you when you first came here, didn't they? Strangers and outsiders are enemies, and they're fair game. But once you came up to them and started talking about living here and being part of their lives, then they changed their minds about you. Now it's Primrose and the other humans who live in the southern plains that they fear and dislike. They don't think of her death as regrettable because she already proved that she wanted to slaughter _them_. So they're happy to know that you don't let her past when you were with her weigh with you. Or that she's of your own species, either. They would expect to defend you against strange riders, so they want you to defend them against strange humans."

Harry stood there for a second, then smiled and nodded. "Then tell them thank you for me, and that I'm glad to protect the meadow for them. It's my home now, too, and the home of my bondmate and our child. I wouldn't want to feel like I was doing nothing for them."

Nuisance briefly touched a point of his antler to Harry's ear. "I don't think they would think of it as you doing _nothing_," he said, and then turned and began to bubble and chuckle to the riders.

Harry walked back towards the tent, glad that he wasn't bonded to a rider, so he could think, _Am I the only one who really regrets Primrose's death, and mourns her for what she could have been? _

There was a long stirring in the back of his mind, and then Draco said, _Yes, you are. Now, get in here. Jeremy's asleep, and I want to fuck your brains out for leaving me behind yesterday._

Harry half-smiled and began to walk faster. _I thought you agreed to be left behind? _

_I didn't agree to be frightened that way._

Harry nodded, but his mind was still on Primrose, and the way she'd looked exploding, along with her thunderrin, and the way he'd felt falling from the sky.

He would do it again if he had to, but that didn't mean he wouldn't regret it.

Maybe that was a way of holding onto his humanity. Or his conscience, since humanity seemed to mean less on Hurricane. As long as he regretted killing, he wouldn't do it indiscriminately.

_You don't do anything indiscriminately. Except tease me._

Harry sped up his steps again. He had his regret, and his conscience, but he also had a partner he could rely on to have different beliefs, and two children to bring up.

It was more than he had had a year ago.


	17. Comes the Storm

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Seventeen—Comes the Storm_

Harry woke to the sound of the mummidade drumming.

It made him roll over and hurry out of bed, because the one thing he could think of was that they had sensed the approach of more thunderrin or other enemies. The drumming sounded far too much like the hoofbeats they had sent booming across the meadow when Primrose was swooping in with her people.

But by the point that he got outside, he realized it must be something different. These sounds weren't as loud or long-lasting as the ones that the mummidade had used as warnings, and the riders he could see were standing on the ground, staring to the north, the same direction the mummidade faced. If there had been enemies, they would have taken off by now and be sailing towards them, Harry knew.

"What's going on?" Harry asked as Nuisance trotted up beside him.

"This one is hard to translate." Harry faced Nuisance and found him sitting on his haunches, a new gesture, and one that made Harry blink. He hadn't thought Nuisance's legs were long enough to do that. "There's something coming they don't want to come, but at the same time, they accept it and rejoice in it as something necessary and inevitable. Because they might as well celebrate the inevitable?"

There was an undertone of uncertainty in Nuisance's voice that made Harry's lips quiver. "Are you asking me or telling me?"

"Telling you." Strength flooded Nuisance's legs, and he stood up straight on all fours again, looking disdainfully at Harry. "It's not as easy as you think, keeping track of all the different thoughts flying around here."

Harry nodded and reached back to touch Draco's mind. Draco was awake, but staying in the tent with Jeremy until he knew whether it was safe to venture out. _It's okay. No danger here yet. _"Can you tell whether they're waiting for enemies like Primrose or something else?" If this was a natural event of the season, that might explain why the riders were alert but not frightened, and why the antelope, now that Harry could see them, were going on with their grazing as if nothing was wrong.

"Let me see." Nusiance bowed his head and reached his ears and his nostrils and even his antlers, it seemed, out to the corners of the sky. Harry stood patiently beside him. He wouldn't have wanted the job of universal translator.

Draco stepped out of the tent with Jeremy cradled close against his shoulder, his eyes narrowed at Harry. Harry smiled and lifted his shoulders in a little shrug. He had only said that it was safe, not that Draco should absolutely bring Jeremy out, and he wouldn't stand in Draco's way if he wanted to take Jeremy back inside. Draco sniffed at him and made his way over to Harry's side.

_You take him for a little while._

Harry accepted their son, laughing a little as Jeremy made a face at him, and then yawned. All babies seemed able to yawn as soon as they were born, Harry thought idly, and played with Jeremy's toes. Not that he'd been around many babies before this except Teddy and Victoire, and he wasn't sure that was enough to teach him about all their rules of behavior.

"It's a natural enemy," Nuisance said suddenly.

Harry turned to him, nodding. "Another sign of the season's change?"

Nuisance faced him, his expression as solemn as he could make it, which wasn't very. Harry had always thought that it would be hard to control a face shaped like a stag's, anyway. "It's a storm," he said. "One greater than I ever thought they could be, moving slowly down from the north. It might be the storm that the Tsissid came down south to get away from."

Harry took a deep breath. "Do you think the riders know about it?" he asked, and gestured to the way they stood there, silent and staring.

"Yes, I would say they know about it," Nuisance muttered, so dryly that it was hard for Harry to even be embarrassed. He deserved that, and he knew it. "But I don't know what they usually do, stay here or go somewhere else. Maybe they won't need to move, now that they have the houses Andromeda built to shelter in." He turned around and began to bleat and sing to the riders.

Harry closed his eyes, laid his hand on Draco's shoulder to serve as a partial anchor for himself, and reached out. A storm that big might announce itself more naturally to the mummidade and the riders, who had lived here longer, but since Harry had power over winds and had inherited the magic of the gateway, he ought to be able to sense it, too.

There it was. A tangle of darkness and power, rather like the emotions that he sometimes sensed in the back of his own mind or Draco's, hung over the northern mountains. Harry raked his magic through it, and felt a vicious, stinging response. There was more wild magic gathered in one place than he'd ever seen.

_Can you do something about it, or not? _That was Draco's voice, quiet and more subdued than usual. Harry knew why. Draco had caught Harry's uncertainty and knew this storm was stronger than any other he'd commanded.

Harry sighed and opened his eyes. _I think I can. But I'm going to need more preparation, and I hope the storm doesn't change direction or speed suddenly, the way that a few of them in the past month did._

"Cousin Draco!"

Harry laughed and turned around, stepping back from Draco so that Draco could open his arms to Teddy. Teddy raced across the grass and jumped into them, his hair changing so rapidly from blue to black that Harry couldn't read his mood. Teddy buried his face into Draco's chest and clung to him.

"Teddy!" Andromeda had stepped out of their house and was watching them with a faint frown on her face, which might have come from almost anything, Harry thought. Andromeda always had a reason to frown over one thing or another. "Don't bother your cousins while they're with Jeremy."

Teddy clung tighter, and his hair turned so black that he looked like Sirius. Harry thought he knew what the problem was, then.

"It's fine, Andromeda," he called back, and turned around so that he was holding Jeremy near Teddy. "Teddy?"

"You're holding _him_," Teddy said sullenly, without looking up.

Harry sighed. So far, Teddy had treated Jeremy like a pet, sometimes playing with him and sometimes ignoring him; Harry had assumed it was because he was too small for Teddy to be jealous of. But now, probably because Draco and Jeremy had been with Harry for every moment of the day he was asleep and recovering and Teddy hadn't been allowed to visit, his attitude had changed.

Harry crouched down next to Draco, who said quietly down the bond, _Be gentle with him. I can only imagine how jealous I would have been if my parents had had another baby._

Harry nodded back, impressed despite himself. For Draco to be able to see Teddy's side when he'd so recently resented Teddy for the part he played in Harry's life, and when the one Teddy was jealous of was his own son…

Draco sneered back at him. _I'm not going soft-hearted. Don't try me on any of the Weasleys._

Harry snorted back and faced Teddy again. "Teddy? Look at me, please."

Teddy was now apparently attempting to make a burrow in Draco's chest with his head. "I'm _angry _at you," he muttered, and finally raised his head so that he could show Harry his red eyes and his trembling hands. "Angry, angry, angry."

Harry shifted Jeremy so that he could hold him against his chest with one arm and stroke Teddy's hair with the other hand. Teddy sniffled, but allowed it, although he seemed to have decided that the half of Harry curled around Jeremy didn't exist.

"I'm sorry, Teddy," Harry said quietly. "Jeremy's here to stay, but I love you, too. I want you to be happy, too."

"Not _too_," said Teddy.

"You can both be happy," Harry said firmly. He wasn't about to yield and start treating Jeremy as less important to satisfy Teddy's desires, but he didn't want to treat Teddy as less important, either. He knelt down to a little more than Teddy's height, and added, "Someday Jeremy will be big enough that you can play with him, the way you play with Victoire. And in the meantime, you can help me and Cousin Draco take care of him. Doesn't that sound like fun?"

For a second, Teddy's face wavered as though he was trying to choose a set of features that would express everything he felt. Then he frowned mightily, and his eyes were a clear hazel that Harry didn't see often, and his hair was black again. "Play with _me_," he said. "Leave Jeremy at home." He glanced up at Draco as if for help.

"We can't do that," Draco said. "Jeremy needs our help." He reached down and pinched the button nose that Teddy had now. "Just like you did when you were little. Did Harry ever tell you about that? Or Grandma Andromeda? When you were little, they had to take care of you."

Teddy stared at Jeremy, then shook his head. His hair became a lighter brown. "I wasn't little."

"Yes, you were," Draco said, nodding solemnly, and setting Teddy on the ground so that he could see better into Jeremy's face. "You were that little, and someone had to take care of you and feed you and put you to bed and change your nappies."

Teddy clapped a protective hand to his bottom. He had toilet-trained early, because he hated nappies with a ferocity that Harry hadn't even known was possible in a child. "Not me," he said, and went on shaking his head.

"You didn't do that," Teddy muttered, the next time he said something understandable.

"He didn't, but he'll do it for Jeremy," Harry said firmly, reaching out so that he could ruffle Teddy's hair. "Because he's Jeremy's daddy, the way that I was your—uncle." He didn't want Teddy to start thinking that Remus wasn't important, just because Harry hadn't had the time to mention him much lately, or tell Teddy stories about him.

Teddy studied Draco for a second, then he looked at Harry. "You will, too," he said.

Harry nodded, seeing no point in hiding that. Not that Draco would have let him hide it, even if he wanted to. The bond muttered, and Draco muttered with it, Someone _needs to be changing nappies more often than he's done._

Teddy sighed and kicked his legs until Draco put him down, then leaned against Harry and looked intently at Jeremy. Harry, not sure what Teddy was doing at the moment, kept quiet and just let him look. Finally Teddy turned back, and his hair had darkened a little, but almost to the color that Jeremy had, not the color of black despair.

"There's two of you," Teddy said, and pointed one finger at himself, then turned around so it pointed at Jeremy. "Half for Jeremy. Half for me."

Harry grinned and threw his free arm around Teddy, kissing his cheek. "I didn't know you were so good at maths," he said.

Teddy leaned against Harry's chest. "Busy," he muttered.

Harry kissed his forehead this time. "Yes, I know," he said. "I'll try not to be so busy in the future." There had to be time both for defeating storms and raising his children, he thought. _Their _children, he had to acknowledge, as the bond rippled impatiently in the back of his mind. It was a delicate balancing act, maybe, not one that Harry was naturally inclined to, but he had to find some way. And he would.

_I'll help, _Draco said, touching his shoulder tentatively at first. And then his hand came down more firmly, and he leaned over Jeremy and Teddy and Harry as though he was going to shield all of them against something worse than the storm.

_Thank you, _Harry said, looking up at him in return, and only the awkward position of all those bodies and children kept him from kissing Draco.

* * *

"Harry? Can I talk to you a minute?"

Draco tensed, and went back to rocking Jeremy. Teddy was sleeping over tonight, and he was already fast asleep, tucked into the middle of the moss bed, his thumb in his mouth and his hair, now a chestnut color for no reason that Draco could tell, sprawled around him. Jeremy's eyes were shut, and Draco had swaddled his arms close so that he couldn't reach up and scratch his own face to keep himself awake, a common practice with him. Harry had said that Teddy did the same thing a lot of the time when he was a baby.

And after both children were asleep, Draco had hoped to spend some time alone with Harry. But that wouldn't happen with Johnson, the remaining twin's girlfriend, peering past the tent flap.

"Sure, Angelina," Harry answered, and stood up, coming to stand beside Draco. He rubbed Draco's shoulder blade, and Draco sniffed, relaxing. At least Harry knew how Draco felt, and would keep the conversation with Johnson short if he could—another advantage of the bond. "What's up?"

Johnson took a breath, then said, "Well. Look." She held up her arm. There was a small scab there, Draco saw when he looked, as though she'd bled for a little bit and then it had sealed over. That wasn't unusual enough for her to bother them in the middle of the evening. Draco twitched with the impulse to throw her out.

Harry reached back so that he could caress Draco's arm, and murmured down the bond, _She wouldn't have come to me if this wasn't important, more important than a minor wound. _"How did that happen?" he asked aloud.

Johnson made an impatient gesture. "Oh, I got pricked on one of the thorns of those weeds we were pulling out of the greenhouses. But _watch_." She held her arms out in front of her and concentrated on the scab, so intently that Draco was impressed in spite of himself. He hadn't thought there was anyone in the meadow besides him and Harry who had that kind of focus.

Harry shoved him in the middle of the back. Draco serenely ignored him. He watched Johnson's face instead, and the way she seemed to shiver.

And the way the scab rose off her arm and entwined itself in small, flowing red ribbons of blood, gleaming and spinning until it grew so bright Draco had to blink. Between that blink and opening his eyes again, the scab disappeared, and Johnson triumphantly turned her arm around, so that they could both see that the minor wound beneath it had vanished as well.

Harry grinned and flung his arms around Johnson. Draco let him. It had been a long time since someone had demonstrated new wild magic, although Draco thought sometimes that Victoire or Jeremy might have it and just be too young to tell anyone about it.

"That's _fantastic, _Angelina," Harry said, and danced her around in front of the tent. Johnson laughed and swung her hands back and forth. Draco sniffed again. He could feel pulses of reassurance traveling down the bond, and he knew that Johnson was in love with her Weasley twit, so he could permit this.

"What happened when you discovered that you could do it?" Harry asked. "Did you want to heal something and it just happened?"

Johnson nodded and released Harry's hands so that she could adjust her hair, which had come down on her shoulders in waves while they danced. "Yeah. I got pricked by that thorn today, and it was the end of a long week of little frustrations. Having to run for shelter, and an argument I had with George, and Molly telling me that she hoped I was pregnant soon." Johnson snorted. "I would just as soon as have children the way you lot did, but George and I aren't bonded yet. Anyway, I was angry and that thorn-prick was just the last straw. I glared at it and told it to start healing itself.

"It did." She grinned at them again. "But I was so startled that I stopped focusing on it, and then I wasn't sure it had actually happened. So I tried again, and the scab formed. And I came here to show you the rest of it."

"That's going to be dead useful," Harry told her, his eyes bright and his posture more relaxed than Draco had seen it since they'd got the warning of Primrose and her people coming from the south. "Even if you can only heal small wounds, it'll keep them from getting infected, and it'll keep us from having to rely so much on potions."

Johnson nodded. "My ingredients stock for potions is running low, anyway," she said. "And growing Potions ingredients on Hurricane is a low priority next to growing the Earth food we need." She paused and looked at Draco as if she could sense his doubtful thoughts, then turned back to Harry with a sniff of her own. "I'll try to heal it the next time someone gets a big wound, of course, but I don't really want to create one just to experiment."

"Ask George," Harry said, closing his eye in a little wink. "He's done worse things in the name of experiments for jokes."

Johnson brightened. "That's true. And maybe I can tell him it's a way of him making up to me for the argument we had earlier." She waved at them and ran away across the grass, too excited to give a further farewell.

Harry watched her go, his contentment so soft and bright that Draco reached out to touch him and absorb some of the sunlight-like emotion. Harry turned around and kissed him, passionately enough that Draco gasped a little.

_Look_.

Draco looked down, matching the direction of Harry's glance, and saw Jeremy cuddled asleep in his arm. It was a fragile sleep, though; his arms were moving under the blanket, trying to get to his face so they could scratch, and his eyelids kept flickering.

_The minute I put him down, he'll probably wake up, _Draco sighed, and leaned against Harry for a kiss, since they couldn't do anything else right now.

_Then you'll just have to hold him while I do this, _Harry said, and wind came and danced around them, so many, moving so quickly, that they formed an opaque grey wall like a whirlwind. Draco held in a gasp, and held Jeremy even closer, as Harry reached up and took Draco's trousers gently by the seam, ruffling them down.

_What about Teddy? _Draco managed to ask, biting his lips ferociously to hold back the moan he wanted to give when Harry took his cock in hand.

_That's why the winds, _Harry said, his eyes gleaming up at Draco from where he knelt. _And if you don't think that you can stand without dropping Jeremy, then you can sit down. I wouldn't blame you, _he added generously. _I know that I'm good at this, and a successful blowjob _does _weaken the knees._

Draco huffed at him, then shushed himself when Jeremy stirred with the beginnings of what might have been a wail. Draco sank down on the edge of the chair where he had sat earlier to feed Jeremy, and put his free hand over his mouth as Harry leaned in and placed his mouth directly over Draco's cock.

The warmth and the wetness were so different from the coldness of the wind that Draco let his eyes close and his head fall back without thinking about it. It _was _a good thing that he was sitting down, not because of Harry's blowjob skills but because his arm might have weakened and dropped Jeremy otherwise.

Harry laughed into his mind, and kept licking and lapping and nipping so persuasively that Draco lifted his hips towards his mouth and had to bite the heel of his palm. All the while, Jeremy slept on in the crook of his arm, and Teddy slept on on the bed, beyond the whirling barrier of wind, and Draco's hesitations and uncertainties melted away in the face of the joy from Harry, and the pleasure from his mouth.

This was dirty, this was something that he wouldn't be doing in front of _children _most of the time—

_Both of them are asleep, and Teddy couldn't see us even if he woke up, and Jeremy is too young to understand._

The words might have been his, or might have been Harry's. But Draco was sure that the last thought to follow before he came was Harry's, because it was so sweet and piercing and strong that it toppled him over the edge, and Draco's mind was blurred. _And you needed this._

Draco came shuddering, and dropped back to earth with his arm still curved tight around Jeremy. His fingers hurt with how they'd dug into the chair. He sat up, swallowing. Harry swallowed a lot more audibly beneath him and sat up, too, reaching almost primly into his pants to bring himself off.

Draco found himself watching avidly. Harry tilted his head back and made no noise, either, although the line of his neck tightened in a _satisfying _way. When he was done and his winds were sweeping him dry and clean, he smiled at Draco and leaned his head against his knee so that Draco could stroke his hair.

_I find our life together better than I did before, _Harry whispered.

_Because of Jeremy? _It was the easy leap to make, but Draco felt a rolling ball of color from Harry in response, and barely had time to brace himself before it broke over him.

It was Jeremy, and it was more than Jeremy. It was being together, and knowing they could get beneath the surface of the bond and dance as an ultimately paired entity, the way the mummidade could, and the way he had defeated Primrose, and the fact that he could guard the meadow from anything with Draco beside him.

Draco leaned down until his cheek touched Harry's, and kissed him, whispering, _Yes, this is pretty bloody brilliant._


	18. End of a Rainbow

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Eighteen—End of a Rainbow_

"Oh, it's moving slowly. But it's coming."

Harry saw Hermione nod out of the corner of his eye, but he kept his gaze on the sky. Today, it was a brilliant blue, with only a few high clouds that turned a radiant gold with the sun behind them, even though it was long hours from setting. But Harry could feel the power that crawled behind the blue, a web of lightning connecting up with other webs, and the thunder growled in his ears as if he could hear it across the miles.

"Do you think you'll be able to turn it aside?" Hermione took a step forwards, apparently wanting to make sure that Harry actually looked at her instead of getting wrapped up in the storm that he couldn't see yet.

Harry glanced at her and gently shook his head. "There's certain things I can do to make sure that it doesn't destroy us. I can fight it directly if I have to, even. But it has to come. There's too much wild magic behind it, pushing it this way."

Hermione bit her lip and closed her eyes. "Are we going to lose the gardens?"

Harry put his hand on her arm. Distracted by the storm or not, he knew that she valued the greenhouses, sure that they would manage to grow Potions ingredients as well as Earth food plants someday, and grasses that would be more delicious than the ones that were native to Hurricane. The problem was how fragile they were; winds could shatter glass, scatter pots, tear up roots, carry the plants themselves far away.

Now that he was one in his thoughts with the storm, sometimes, Harry thought more about the damage than he had ever done. He knew exactly what he would be capable of with that much wind to throw around, and the storm was more, since it didn't have his moral scruples.

"I think you can keep them," Harry said. "But it's going to take a lot of Preservation Charms, the kind that Hogwarts had on it to keep the towers from swaying when the storms got bad."

Hermione nodded, her chin thrusting out, and strode away from him, calling out to Ron. Ron whined in response. Harry smiled and tilted his head back once more to the sky, shutting his eyes so that he would be fooled less by the placid blue field above him.

He could feel the storm. The inherited magic of the gateway, or the sensitivity he had to storms, or _something, _filled the air around him with pulsing shadows.

It was coming. He knew that. And he knew it had to rage, in some way, that the summer on Hurricane was more than the safety of one community of different species. If he turned it aside, even assuming he could, it would do more damage to the ocean or the plains or wherever he put it than it could do to the mountains. The riders had lived in this meadow for years, as much as Harry could make them understand the concept of years when they counted the return of certain events like the Tssisid migration more than they did specific days, and they had survived.

_But they also have wings available to them, and they could fly away if it got too bad. Even their herds could do that._

Well. If not everyone in his group could fly—and Harry wouldn't want to try lending them the wind at the same time as the storm was going on—and they were bound to the possessions that they couldn't take with them even if they had wings, then Harry was just going to protect them, that was all.

Harry cracked his knuckles in front of him, his gaze fastened on the northern horizon. The winds that traveled past his ears, the ones that he caught only for a few seconds to interrogate them before letting them go, were talking about the storm, if you listened to them. They whispered of the power that would be theirs, they shivered in envy of their big cousins.

_Well, _Harry thought, and looked long and sternly at the mountains facing him before he turned to go back to Draco and Jeremy. _Come on, then._

* * *

"Where's Harry?"

Draco started and looked up. He'd been trying to write down some of the circling, blithering thoughts in his head, now that he had finally decided to make use of the one journal he'd brought with him. Real paper, real parchment even, was precious, and Draco didn't know how long it might be before they were able to do something other than Transfigure grass into more.

Nuisance had his head thrust through the tent flap, and he was staring at Draco as if Draco was the one at fault for not giving him the information right now. Draco rolled his eyes and reached out to touch the bond in the back of his mind.

Harry had taken Jeremy and Teddy and Victoire out to explore the hills near the southern edge of the meadow. The slopes were gentler there, suitable for Teddy's legs and even Victoire's tumbling ones, and since Harry had the magic to use winds to lift the children, he didn't need someone else to go with him.

Draco shrugged. "In the southern hills. Specifically, on that one that's a few hills south of where we found you," he added. "Go find him if you want him."

Nuisance shook his head and crowded into the tent, folding his legs beneath him so he could lie down like a deer to fit. Draco still eyed the antlers that stood up from his head and almost poked through the cloth of the ceiling, but Nuisance didn't seem to notice. "You're the one I want to talk to."

That made Draco put the journal aside—he wasn't having much luck organizing his thoughts about Harry and the summer anyway—and give the kires his full attention. "What?" he demanded.

"Harry thinks he's knows what he's doing with the summer and the storm," Nuisance said seriously. "But what do you think?"

Draco rolled his eyes. "Not this again. Is it the riders who've decided to retroactively distrust him for killing Primrose? Or you? Or someone else?"

"It's not about him killing anything, or anyone distrusting him." Nuisance moved his legs back and forth, his bent knees scuffing up the dirt of the floor more than Teddy had managed to do in all his visits. "I just have to worry about it, all right? I don't know what's going to happen to me when the storm comes. I can't fly."

"Then shelter in the houses with us," Draco said. "Isn't that what you did last time, when Harry was using that storm to fight Primrose?"

Nuisance ducked his head and stared at the ground. Draco watched him in frustration. Nuisance was usually direct enough that Draco had no idea of what was bothering him now, and thus no way to foist him off on Harry.

_You can deal with him, _Harry said comfortably in the back of his head. _I have that much faith in you, Draco. Just a minute, I have to catch Teddy. He thinks he can command the wind when he really can't._

"Just tell me what brought you here," Draco said at last. Maybe directness of his own would make Nuisance spit out whatever it was where sympathy couldn't.

Nuisance finally raised his head, once again making Draco fear for the safety of their tent canvas, and stared at him. "What if there are other kires roaming the hills?" he whispered. "The northern ones, the ones where the storm is going to hit hardest, because Harry won't turn it until it gets here? Or other creatures that aren't kires but are still like me? They don't have the security I do. They could all die."

"If they're like you, then they could read the thoughts of the animals around them and know how to hide," Draco said. "They ought to know storms were dangerous the same way you knew it before you ever met us."

Nuisance's ears trembled as he roughly shook his head. "I don't know how you can take this so _calmly_."

"Because you're the only one who can do something about it," Draco snapped back. Honestly, why did people get so upset with him when he suggested obvious solutions? It was like Granger fussing around her greenhouses and only accepting it when Harry suggested stronger Preservation Charms, even though Draco had told her the same thing a week ago. "If you don't trust any other kires out there to have the good sense to hide from the storms, then why not go and find them and tell them so? They would probably learn from you faster than they would from anyone else. The riders don't live that way, and most of the animals who can't hide from the storms have probably migrated by now."

Nuisance lifted his head, his eyes wide and his ears fluffing out. "That _is _a good idea," he whispered.

_Of course it is. I came up with it. _But Draco didn't need to hear Harry's laughter in his head to know how well _that _would go over. Instead, he tried to pat Nuisance's shoulder. "Go and investigate, then. You can take care of yourself, or you should be able to, after all the time you spent around us."

Nuisance gave him a lofty look as he scrambled to his hind feet. His front part was still bent down so that he wouldn't tear anything. "I knew _that _much before I ever came here. Humans only made me part of what I am."

"Then you shouldn't worry about other kires out there, either," Draco began, but Harry shushed him, and Draco had to admit he was right after thinking about it. The last thing he really wanted was to get into an argument with Nuisance.

Nuisance tossed him another lofty look and headed out of the tent. Draco peered through the flap and saw him tossing his antlers as he headed towards the center of the meadow and the mummidade, who would probably want word of his departure before he made it.

_I just don't understand why more people can't listen to me the first time._

_They might, if you were less condescending about it, _Harry blasted back, from the hills where he was with the children and having a good time.

Draco sniffed and stood up, putting the journal down. He had had enough of his own thoughts for today, and sharing his thoughts, when the people he handed them to didn't appreciate them. He would join Harry and absorb some of the joy that rang through the bond from that direction for himself.

_Good. You'll be just in time to change Jeremy's nappy._

* * *

Harry snapped his way into the air, spinning around and gathering wind in a cocoon about himself. It wasn't as effective as breathing the wind into his lungs in order to make it his, but if worst came to worst, he could conjure winds out of the center of his magical core that would obey him absolutely. That ought to be enough to face one thunderrin, anyway.

The reports had come from the scouts that morning, one of the other riders who called himself Scratch hurtling in so fast that Harry had thought his beast would crash. He had passed the word to Open Wings, and Westshadow had established the communication bond between Harry and Open Wings so that Harry could fully understand what the problem was.

Of course, one thunderrin, flying slowly north a long and open way above the plains, was unlikely to be as much of a problem as Primrose and her people had been. But Harry still wasn't enthusiastic about letting it get too close.

He arced down towards where the winds told him the thunderrin would be, only slowing a little when he got in sight of it. For a thunderrin, it was behaving oddly. It had let him get above it, instead of striving for height, and it seemed more intent on being seen than on rising to see into the meadow.

And it had a rider on its back, who tilted his head back and waved madly when he saw Harry.

Harry stared, unsure. Then he descended a few hundred feet, until he was hovering on the same level as the thunderrin, but still a good distance away. It couldn't do any harm to listen to what the rider had to say, if he would speak, Harry thought. It would make a change from always hearing from Primrose.

He still held the storm ready in his clenched fists, of course, because he wasn't stupid.

Draco nearly strangled himself laughing in the back of Harry's mind, which meant Harry missed the first few hesitant words from the rider. He hissed a command to hush at Draco and called out, "What did you say?" At least he could pretend it was the wind that had taken the words away, and not Draco's fit.

The rider guided the thunderrin closer, hands locked on either side of the rippling body. He didn't ride very well, Harry thought critically. Perhaps he was recently bonded.

_Or recently chosen as the leader, _Draco murmured. _With Primrose dead, they would need to send _someone _to make the next declaration of war._

Harry said nothing in response to that, studying the rider instead. He looked to be a young man—a few years older than Harry and Draco, but less than Bill's age. He was panting, as though being near Harry frightened him.

_Smart man, _Draco said.

Harry nodded. There was the possibility that this rider wouldn't turn out to be a simple replacement for Primrose after all, at least in terms of intelligence.

"Are you Harry Potter?" The voice was high and breathless, and this time, Harry heard it immediately, since he was concentrating and the winds had carried the words to him.

"I am," Harry said. He thought about pushing back his fringe to show his scar, but there didn't seem to be any need; the young man was babbling on in what looked like relief from a deep nervousness.

"Oh, _good_. Good." The man swallowed and leaned back on his thunderrin, which changed color beneath him, from purple to green and then muddy brown. Harry kept an eye on it. He didn't know how to read a thunderrin's colors well enough to know when it was going to attack, but he wouldn't look away from a human stranger just because he didn't know them, either. "I was wondering if you might know what happened to our leader, Hetty Primrose."

Harry considered lying, but only for a moment. There was no reason to hide it, when he could defend himself from any attack the young man might make out of revenge or outrage. "I killed her."

The young man's jaw fell open, and then he bowed his head. Harry expected some tears, maybe, or some mourning, or a mutter of anger in the moment before the rider drove his thunderrin at him.

He had never expected the murmurs he made, which resolved themselves into, "Oh, good. Thank Merlin. Thank—everything." Then he jerked his head up and shook it at Harry. "But I'm being rude. I haven't even told you my name yet. John Norbelie. I can't believe…we're _free_."

Harry folded his arms. "Do you mind telling me what's going on, and why that news strikes you as a _good _thing?" He couldn't help the snap that came into his voice, but Norbelie didn't seem to care. He grinned.

"Yes," Norbelie said. "I mean, of course I'll tell you." He gestured at his thunderrin, whose wings had started flapping slowly. "But we did fly a long way today, and Rainbow is tired. Do you mind if we go down to the ground?"

Harry felt his lips twitch. Yes, the thunderrin changed color, but someone who would name their beast _Rainbow_…

_Could still be dangerous, _Draco snapped at him. _Tell me that you'll hold your power ready to strike at him if you land._

Harry nodded once, and cut downwards. Norbelie and Rainbow followed. Harry watched them out of the corner of his eye, noting the way that Rainbow arched his thick neck back towards his rider and made a little noise, a muffled boom, that faded almost immediately in the sound of his flapping wings. Perhaps Rainbow had even chosen the name himself, Harry thought. He and his rider seemed to be close.

_If you spend all your time thinking about things like that, then you're not going to be ready to kill them when they turn on you._

_But I wasn't thinking they would turn on me, _Harry said mildly as he landed in the grass and turned around. Rainbow landed behind him, belly-down like most thunderrin. Norbelie stretched and climbed off his back. _I want to hear what he has to say. If nothing else, we didn't expect anyone to celebrate Primrose's death._

Draco had no retort for that one, or at least not right away, and in the meantime, Norbelie had turned around and started speaking.

"I know you probably didn't expect us," he said, with an embarrassed grin that made him look about fourteen. "We debated for a long time about sending someone to find out what happened to Primrose, in fact. We were so happy to see the back of her that we almost didn't want to ask about it. But people started saying that she might come back someday, and we couldn't be easy until we checked."

"Why are you so happy that she's dead?" Harry asked. "A lot of people came with her, and they seemed happy to follow her."

Norbelie grimaced. "Yes. This is—this is part of the cycle of the thunderrin, apparently. Rainbow could explain it better, but since you probably don't want him touching your mind…?" He looked at Harry, who couldn't contain his grimace back. Norbelie nodded. "Fine. I'll try to explain it as well as I can.

"The thunderrin have a powerful one in each generation. I don't know what function it was originally supposed to have, but right now, it can silence all of them, and if it bonds with a member of another species and so do some other thunderrin, then its bondmate can control all the other bondmates, too. No one can speak up against them. Most people have to do what they want, thunderrin _and _other species. It's a silence that you literally can't break. All you can do is hope that someone is going to kill the powerful thunderrin. From what Rainbow tells me—" Norbelie laid a protective hand on his beast's neck "—it's usually a powerful bird, or two thunderrin who have bonded to one another, and so they have the strength to resist the leader's mental pressure.

"We didn't know anyone could kill Primrose and _hers, _though. I thought a human partner would protect it forever, and in the meantime, she silenced us all so we couldn't make plans." Norbelie clenched his hands in front of him, staring at them as if he didn't know why he couldn't do it before. "It was—ridiculous, that's the right word, really. We wanted to rebel, but we did what she told us, instead."

Harry thought of the silence of the people who had come north with Primrose, both in the more recent attack and before that, and nodded. _I believe him, _he told Draco.

_Of course you would, you're always giving credence to foolish stories like that, _Draco muttered sourly back at him. But he sounded more intrigued than Harry knew he was going to admit to.

Harry turned back to Norbelie. "Didn't you know when she died? If you could act freely and speak to each other…"

Norbelie shook his head. "The further away she went, the freer we became. The last time she came north to threaten you, we managed to agree that we wanted her gone and started making plans. It didn't last, though, because she came back. And this time, we didn't know whether she was dead, or establishing herself in the meadow and was going to come back for us, or whether the distance and the time were just so great that we had the illusion of freedom. We had to find out."

Harry nodded a little. "That's great courage." It had taken courage, he thought, to venture into the unknown, and for Norbelie not to know whether people who had killed Primrose might not kill him.

_You admire bravery too much, _Draco hissed back at him. _I'm so glad there's no Gryffindor House here for you to try and get Jeremy into._

Harry held back the chuckle that wouldn't have made sense to Norbelie and watched the other man basking in his praise instead.

"So what happens now?" Harry asked finally. "Do you want to come north and continue what Primrose tried to do? Is there anyone among you who wants that? Because you should know that we would resist you as hard as we could."

Norbelie shook his head so violently this time that Rainbow turned its thick neck towards him and spread its wings as though to comfort him. Norbelie stopped with a faint smile. "No, thank you," he said. Harry wasn't sure whether he was addressing Rainbow or Harry, but supposed it didn't really matter. "We have no desire to take the meadow from you. I think Primrose only wanted to do that because she knew you and was afraid of you. We _like _the southern plains. The thunderrin were born there, and they want to stay there. It's only the powerful one that ever wants to go somewhere else."

"Yes, but they have human partners now," Harry felt compelled to point out, a moment before Draco did it for him. "Those human partners might want more land for their children, if nothing else."

Norbelie smiled a little, and blushed a little, and let his hand come to rest on Rainbow's neck. "The thunderrin can only breed when the powerful one is gone," he murmured. "We're going to be okay now, at least until the next powerful one grows to maturity—and we might be able to recognize it this time and do something about it. The thunderrin mature rather suddenly, so they never know who's going to be the next powerful one until it happens, but we might be able to do something about it," he repeated.

Harry nodded. "So you think you're going to stay on the plains for the foreseeable future."

"Yes." Norbelie caught his eye. "That doesn't mean we wouldn't welcome—visitors. Perhaps some of your people might want to bond with thunderrin, someday. But we're not going to move anywhere any time soon."

Harry had to smile. "Good. That news will relieve the people in the meadow, too." He gave a little salute to Norbelie. "Good luck on the future."

"You, too." Norbelie half-bowed to him. "You made allies more quickly than we did, and you didn't suffer under them. I hope that we won't, either. And it's twenty years, as nearly as we can tell when they don't measure time like we do, until the next generation of thunderrin grows up. That should be enough time to find a solution."

He swung back onto Rainbow, and Harry waved as the thunderrin flowed into the air, aiming south. Harry watched him go for long seconds before he lifted himself back into the winds.

_You trust him, then? _Draco sounded dubious.

Harry nodded absently, eyes fastened on the retreating figures. _We'll have to see, of course, but twenty years is a long time. Almost as long as we've lived, you notice?_

Draco sent back a flood of wordless warmth, but also wordless demand that he stop mooning about and come home, so Harry chuckled and turned towards the meadow again. Sunlight seemed to fly with him, sunlight and lack of worry.

_That's one problem solved. I can only hope the storm will be as easily solved._


	19. Full Blown Power

Thank you again for all the reviews!

_Chapter Nineteen—Full-Blown Power_

_It is coming._

Harry winced a little as the words slammed into his brain. Westshadow had set up the communication bond between Harry and Draco and Open Wings again, since Nuisance was still gone. Open Wings spoke with a force that made Harry felt as if a punch had rocked his head back on his neck.

_I know, _he said back. _But I still find it hard to estimate how much time we have before it arrives. Is there any way that you can tell me? _

Swoop shifted and clawed the ground, as if he disliked the way Harry was speaking. Open Wings scratched behind his ears and glanced at Harry calmly. He was standing mostly on the earth, but leaning against his beast, as if he would mount him and spiral up into the sky at any second. Draco brushed Harry's shoulder with a hand, and Harry relaxed, reminded that he had a partner and the ability to fly himself, if he wanted them.

_The storms turn, _said Open Wings. _They go faster sometimes, retreat at others. There were a few summers years ago where the meadow received nothing but the mildest of rain. I do not think that will happen this time._

Harry grimaced and nodded. Whether it was the destruction of Bodiless and the release of the wild magic that had formed Nuisance along with so many other creatures or not, he could feel the pulse of power building in the distance. It was aimed straight at the center of the meadow, like a pointer on a sundial. But that didn't help him with knowing exactly when it would arrive, or what would happen once it did.

_We will send scouts north, _Open Wings said. Now his hand was a bit firmer on Swoop's neck, and Harry was sure that he intended to be one of those scouts, at least for a while. _I ask that you honor their reports and act the instant you receive them._

Harry nodded again. He would do nothing less. If he had any advance warning of the storm changing direction and power, then he would be able to save more people, and maybe also the greenhouses and plants that Hermione worried about.

Open Wings paused once more, gazing at him. He had clacked his beak open, and now he spread his talon-fingers in Harry's direction as though inviting someone else to look at him. No other rider was part of this particular conversation, though, and Westshadow and Draco already knew where Harry stood perfectly well, so Harry wasn't sure who the audience for that gesture was supposed to be.

_Do the best you can, _Open Wings said. _We could go elsewhere and start over if we had to, but I do not think your humans and the mummidade would like to leave._

Harry folded his arms. _I wouldn't want you to have to leave, either._

Open Wings clacked his beak once more, as close as he could probably come to a smile, Harry thought, and turned, leaping onto his beast. Swoop didn't even wait for the breaking of the bond, although he didn't have to be on the ground for the mummidade to break it. He leaped upwards, and his wings beat faster than Harry's winds, or so it seemed to Harry. He was a dot far away, a blur against cloud, by the time that Harry was no longer feeling the pressure of their minds.

All four of Westshadow's bodies turned to consider Harry, and Harry winced a little. Looking into their golden eyes was almost worse than being the focus of the riders' hope.

_We helped you to kill Bodiless, _said Westshadow. _But I do not think that we can help you turn the storm. The power over the winds and the gateway is yours, and we are not as intimately linked to them as you are._

Harry nodded again. He felt Draco press firmly, fiercely, against his back. He knew that Draco would come up into the storm with him if Harry asked, leaving Jeremy in Andromeda's care, the way he was now.

But Harry reached back and squeezed Draco's hand. He would have Draco come up with him only if things got really bad. He hoped that now he had some idea of how bad the storms could be, he would judge them better, instead of just flinging himself into this one as he had into the one that had come before and hoping for the best.

Draco snorted behind him, both of them wincing simultaneously as Westshadow released the bond that had tied them together with the mummidade and broke apart, its bodies trotting in different directions to rejoin the herd. _This storm is going to be more powerful than the one you faced, and not like one you called up, either. You really think that you're going to do better against it than the others?_

Harry twisted around to stare at him. _Of course, _he said. _You have to think the same thing, or at least that you cured me of taking stupid risks, or why would you be standing here and calmly discussing my going up against it? _

Draco's hand tightened on his elbow for a moment. _I've accepted that this is necessary. That doesn't mean I'm _happy _about it._

Harry kissed him, not sure what else he could say. Draco raised his hands and clenched them into place on either side of Harry's temples.

"Just don't disappoint me," Draco breathed into his mouth. "Don't—let me go, don't give up, don't act as though the storm is too powerful for you when you know it's not and you have to come back to me and Jeremy early when you could stay and fight."

Harry blinked at him, thinking that those were sort of silly things to worry about, and then smiled and nodded. Draco was talking about things that he didn't think would happen to distract himself from the possibilities of what _could_.

Draco snarled at him and leaned his head against Harry's chest. _Sometimes I wish that you weren't so smart._

_But you love me, really, _Harry said, and stroked his hand through the thickest part of Draco's hair.

_Do you think I would put up with this if I didn't? I might have tried going back through the gate to Earth myself if we hadn't bonded._

Harry kissed his cheek quietly, and said nothing. He knew that Draco would probably blow up if he did.

* * *

The storm came on a night when Harry had been up rocking Jeremy and Draco had been drifting in and out of sleep, sometimes soothed by the hushing he could hear Harry doing to calm Jeremy, sometimes distracted and awakened by the thoughts that he could feel pouring through the bond.

And then Harry's thoughts were harsh and cool, and Draco rolled over and opened his eyes. Harry smiled at him, silent and determined, and placed Jeremy into his arms.

"Stay alert," he whispered aloud, even though the words made Jeremy stir and he could just as easily have said them down the bond. "I don't know how long this will last or how hard it'll be, but you may have to move into one of the silver houses."

He hesitated one more time, and then spoke into Draco's mind just as Jeremy began to fuss. _And I think that I may have to draw on your strength to fight the storm, the way I did once before._

Draco took his hand and squeezed once, hard. Then Harry leaned in and they shared a kiss, a little shorter than it would have been without Jeremy's steadily building cries. Harry turned to the tent flap.

A few seconds later, he was gone, kicking himself into the wind and the sky as fast as a spider crawling up a wall.

Draco closed his eyes and sat there with Jeremy cradled to his chest, as soft and warm as he could wish for, if not as soothing. It would be for the best only if Harry was with them.

Then he stood up and began preparing to move to the largest house Andromeda had created, along with all the others. He didn't want to worry about it later, if the storm changed course and they had to run, and he didn't want Harry to worry about them. And it was a way to keep from feeling helpless, too. Collecting Jeremy's bottle and nappies and the few glittering toys that impressed him was something he could do.

Harry's thoughts slid down the bond, a fast caress.

_I love you._

* * *

Among the clouds, Harry could feel the power better.

It extended from the ground to the sky, this wild magic, this roaring and dancing strength that he had no idea how to fight. He felt that he could lose himself to the cyclones and the whirlwinds of it, let himself be swept away, and he might never regret it. There was still something in him that aspired to go to the wild, to venture away from the others, as Draco had once suggested doing, and flying away across Hurricane to see what they could find.

But they had Teddy, and now Jeremy. Harry thought their children should grow up with the rest of the humans, at least in their childhood. Maybe when they were older, Harry and Draco could answer some of that call's power in the distance.

The air in front of him turned grey and rippled, and Harry shook his head hard, reminding himself that he was in the middle of a storm right now, and could put aside ambitions for the future until he had survived it.

_You will._

Draco's assurance was strong and quiet in the back of his mind. Harry drew on that for strength as he knew he might have to draw on Draco's magical core while he spiraled, higher and higher, into the blueness, and the blackness that was closing in behind that.

The clouds were thicker here, and the air colder. Harry shivered as some winds wisped past his skin. They weren't the normal winds born of the wild magic, but exhalations of the power that had come to oppose him.

Yet it wasn't sentient. Harry was sure of that. Or at least, not in the same way Bodiless had been sentient, capable of looking ahead and realizing that Harry and Draco and the others might be able to harm it. This storm just wanted to move, and it wouldn't turn away or aside from its path either to harm people or to benefit them. It would just blow until it had blown itself out.

Or it would if Harry wasn't there to oppose it.

Harry spread his arms and began to whirl in place, shivering as he did so. He was sure that this wasn't the best way to go about it, and someone with more knowledge of the wild magic might criticize him for it. But at the moment, _he _was the one with the best knowledge of the wild magic. Even the riders, who had lived here for so much longer than the humans, had only been able to bow their heads and endure when it came to the storms.

The magic that he called came out of his core, the same power he would have used once to fuel spells through his wand. The winds that sped past him turned towards him instead now, and some of them trembled and veered aside from their true course. Harry drew them in and made them harmless. He wondered for a second if it was possible that he could weaken the storm this way, little by little. After all, every little wind that he removed from its course was one that wouldn't blow down the grass or the silver houses, or break the wings of the riders' beasts.

But the storm answered his stupid speculations in the next moment, and it did it with lightning.

Lightning like Harry had never seen, so fast and so bright that he found himself gaping as he watched it. Lightning that spiraled around Harry and broke away in glittering blue-yellow bursts of brilliance, dancing in front of Harry like splintered stars. Harry knew the impulse behind it. The storm was flaunting its power, telling him that he couldn't control it, that it was free and would do whatever it wanted.

The storm did not have consciousness, but it had something that was close enough to it for Harry to have to deal with. He realized that he was smiling as he held up his fists and channeled his answer through them.

The wind blew out and apart with a sharp crack, shredding the air where the lightning had been. Harry might not be able to turn the storm aside, but he could hope to mimic and impress it, give it a show that would make it think twice. He called the wind back to him and lifted his arms higher, pointing them ahead of him, to make himself more streamlined, like a dolphin cutting through the sea.

The winds caught him, and flung him.

Harry was pinwheeling through the sky faster than he had ever done, even during the conjured storm when he had fought Primrose. He was falling upwards, he was falling downwards, he was everywhere at once. He didn't know where he was in relation to the ground, except that thick grey clouds surrounded him, and he thought they were more likely to be high than near the earth. He gave himself over to the wind and let it do with him as it would.

It pranced around with him, jagged waves lapping against his body and billowing his clothes. Harry laughed aloud as it turned him over and over like someone examining a prize. It wanted to show him off to the storm the way Harry had wanted to show off his power. Who was doing it with whom, here?

Around and around and around, faster and faster and faster, he spun. Harry knew that he should have been dizzy by now, should have vomited. If he was spinning around on the earth, maybe he would be.

But here he was cocooned in his magic, and he trusted it. Even when it carried him in a direction he _knew_, knew with the pulse of his heart and the trembling of his bones, was higher, he relaxed and let it do so. He wouldn't die of the cold up here, or of the sheer height, or of any predatory beast they didn't know about that might haunt the skies of Hurricane. Hurricane was alien, or had been, but now it was home. How could he and Draco have danced Jeremy into being if it wasn't?

The winds dropped away beneath him briefly, letting him fall, but then made a flat, invisible carpet. Harry dropped down onto it and reclined. He looked around curiously, wondering where they had brought him that they had wanted to stop flying.

It seemed to be a clearing in the sky. Harry thought the "carpet" he was on stretched for a much greater length than he could see, but it seemed to be anchored on either side against great fluffy clouds that bulged and rippled like trees tossing on the ground. The light that spread around him was diffused, moons and stars shining somewhere, but beyond the grey. Given the colors around Harry, it filled that clear space of air with a faint blue-silver glow, as if Harry was standing in the middle of a silversmith's forge.

Something trembled behind him.

Still sprawled on his side, Harry rolled over to see what it was.

The storm came to him.

To his eyes, it seemed like nothing but another black cloud, softer and fluffier than the rest, maybe, moving against the wind, with here and there a spark of electricity in it, and maybe the fuzziness of rain and mist. But his eyes weren't the important things here. The storm had no eyes, but Harry knew without asking that it perceived him.

What he could _feel…_

Harry caught his breath, and found it difficult to _keep _breathing. He stayed with his eyes locked on the cloud until his lungs had enough and forced himself to breathe by moving of their own free will. He stretched out his hand to the black cloud, but it fell down beside him again, and he could do nothing but lie there and gaze.

What he could feel was like lightning to the nerves. Power that played with every molecule of his body. He knew the storm could take him apart, but it was threaded through and around him at the moment the way it was with the other clouds, with the knot of wild magic in the sky, and that didn't mean much. It was like saying the storm could blow over trees. Yes, it could, but that wasn't the most important manifestation of its power.

And the cloud-form wasn't, either. What was important was the fact that it hovered here in front of him, and focused on him, instead of running away somewhere. Harry knew that even its fringes were still at the moment, pouring rain down on the same mountain slopes or boulders or whatever else lay north of the meadow. It wouldn't advance until it decided what to do about him, got some answers.

Harry stretched out his hands again, ready to scoop the cloud from the air if it would come to him. He couldn't contain its vast magic, of course. It contained and scooped him and more than half the northern sky. But he could hold the visible manifestation it had chosen to send to him, if it wanted.

The storm paused, the magic stirring and singing in his blood, making waves and tides. Then it slipped forwards, the brightest and darkest thing Harry had ever beheld, and nestled inside his arms, close to his chest.

It felt like cold. It felt like height, and the sky that Harry knew waited all around him, outside these temporary walls of brightness and darkness.

It felt like life.

Shaking a little from the intense delight that filled him, Harry lounged back again on the wind carpet that supported him. It gave beneath him, sank, and he floated gently on a continuously flowing breeze of air that might have been the breath of the storm.

The magic was still all around him, and it was as wild as ever. Harry knew that the cloud coming to him like this didn't mean it had become _tame. _It was as wild as Nuisance, as the Tssisid, as the birds and the flying shark that he and Draco had met in the ocean.

But the difference was, now he held it, and it held him, and cradled him back, and he was showing the storm that it could _partner _with something, instead of destroying everything because it wasn't the storm. Now it had a companion, someone else who understood what it was like to fly without wings.

The storm had known nothing of _similarity _before now, Harry decided, the knowledge feeding into him like the power, only it and not-it, different and itself. Now it swept through Harry, sipping at the thoughts in his head, understanding them in the same way that Nuisance did, and making them part of itself.

It was not alone.

The cloud in Harry's arms dissolved, and it began to play with him.

Harry leaned back and let his arms flop open, laughing as the wind swept his head back and ruffled his hair and tossed him from one giant invisible hand to the other. He knew that showing fear or anger now would only upset the storm; possibly it would even drive it back into the intense sulkiness that came from knowing it was alone in the world, and Harry didn't want that.

It helped that he was genuinely _not _afraid. It was like being aloft on a broom. He knew he could fly, he knew he was good at it, and he knew that the lack of perfect control was part of the point. He would act to save himself if he had to. But until he had to, it was bliss, being flung about like this. It was joy.

He loved it.

The storm purred like a giant kitten and wrapped around him. Harry held out a hand, and a breeze blew through his fingers, rubbing against his palm. Harry turned his head, and the storm was there on lips and face like a kiss.

_What about me? _

Harry started violently. He had forgotten Draco, for longer than he ever had since they formed the bond, and certainly since they had had Jeremy. But now he could feel the bond, like an iron nail through his skull, binding him to the ground.

And the storm growled around him, displeased at the notion that Harry might drop away from it and back to the earth.

_But you are temporary, _Harry sang to the lightning that swirled around him a second later, and the rain that swooped from all corners of the sky to soak his face and hair. _I'll last longer than you will. You were made to blaze in glory and then disappear, and change. Your winds will go somewhere else, and your rain will be absorbed by the ground and the ocean, and your thunder will be heard, and your lightning will be seen. You weren't meant to last forever. I live longer._

He gasped a moment later as the storm swept through him again. This time, it was intense pleasure in the notion. It hadn't known what would happen to it, unable to think of not-existing any more than it had been able to understand that there might be something out there like it.

And Harry held the bond now, held the existence of Draco and Jeremy and showed them to the storm. They weren't a nail through his skull binding him to the earth; they were people like him that he wanted to spend time with.

It took the storm a bit to work through that, but then it understood. If Harry was like it, and Draco and Jeremy were like Harry, then they were like the storm, too.

And it didn't want to hurt them.

The storm turned. Harry felt it wheeling, all the immense leading edges of rain whirling like skirts, the clouds folding back, the lightning striking into the air. The storm would still fall on the meadow, but it would go and blow itself out over the ocean more quickly, so it could become all the things that Harry had told it that it would be.

It let Harry go.

Harry drifted back to earth, swirling back and forth like a leaf, exhausted. He saw a few riders flying beside him, and smiled. If he needed to be picked up, then they would do it.

But in the meantime…

In the meantime, he tossed his head back and watched the storm going, curling back gently, its bright whips of power fading from him, an experience never to be forgotten, but which had to pass.

It had left its own gift with him. Harry knew he would never fear a storm on Hurricane again.

Maybe he wouldn't be able to turn them aside exactly the same way, but he would go to them in glory and in beauty and in power and in confidence. That was the way to handle them—the way he had courted Draco, the way he and Draco had danced Jeremy into being.

In glory.


End file.
