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.