lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2018-11-25 06:54 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2018-11-25 06:54 pm
Entry tags:
[From Samhain to the Solstice]: The Bells of Londinium, Harry/Draco, R, sequel
Title: The Bells of Londinium
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Content Notes: Massive AU, odd magic
Wordcount: 4500
Rating: R
Summary: Harry and Draco were the participants in a ritual that removed the magical world from the Muggle one entirely, and created a new version of London called Londinium. Their life as they explore their new world and fall in love, days, months, and decades after the transition. Companion fic to “Bells to the Wild Sky.”
Author’s Notes: Another one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics, for vaysh, who asked for a sequel to the fic I wrote her, “Bells to the Wild Sky.” This fic functions as both a prequel and sequel.
The Bells of Londinium
Ten Days Later:
“We have no idea what’s in there, Potter.”
“Well, we can’t spend the rest of our lives being afraid of the city we brought here,” Harry answered, and used his wand to open the heavy stone door. Draco hesitated behind him for long seconds, then followed.
The room inside was empty of people, as all the other rooms in the city had been until they started to populate them. But it did have something on the far wall that made Harry freeze in place. Draco came to a halt behind him, gaping as well.
At least that reassured Harry that he wasn’t the only one who could see the thing.
In the center of the room was a great stone stand, so delicately sculptured and curling that it looked as if it had grown out of the floor instead of being made. Which it had, for all Harry could be sure, just like the other sights of the city. In the center was a shining blue globe that made Harry think for a second of some of the decorations that some of the Muggles on Privet Drive had in their front gardens. But this wasn’t Privet Drive, and as they moved closer, their cloudy reflections in the shining blue stone morphed into something else.
The globe began to turn, its whole stand revolving with it, and as it did, it sang, a sharp, short, piercing sound. Harry found himself staring at the shapes of unfamiliar continents, many of them bigger than the ones on the Earth they had left behind, some smaller. The globe turned and turned, and finally came back to the beginning, to the curve of an island that looked only a little like Britain.
This world was much bigger than Earth.
Draco’s shaky hand came to rest on his shoulder. “What do you think it means?” he whispered.
“It means that we’re in a world made for magical beings, just as we wished,” Harry breathed back. He no longer tried to move away from Draco’s touch. They had been the ones to conduct the ritual that brought them here, ten days ago, moving from the cold panic of a Hogwarts about to be discovered by Muggles to one in its own place.
Everything here was a reflection of their desires. Using the Mirror of Erised as an anchorstone of their ritual had made it so.
Draco’s hand tightened on his shoulder, and then he moved away and examined the globe as it slowed and stopped. “A map. That will be valuable, although it doesn’t tell us a lot about what the city itself looks like.’
Harry nodded and started to say something else, but his heart nearly stopped as bells suddenly pealed across the city. Both he and Draco rushed as one to the nearest window, an embayed one set deep in the stone wall, convinced without speaking that some people besides wizards lived here after all and were ringing some kind of alarm.
But Harry’s heart calmed down as he saw Colin standing near the top of a slender spire of stone, one of those other buildings that looked as if they had grown, and moving his wand back and forth. A clanging sound tolled from midair, and turned from the deep call that had distressed Harry back to a soft song.
“Imagine how it’s going to sound when we have bells everywhere!” Colin called to them cheerfully.
“I am going to kill you, Creevey,” Draco said conversationally, although from the way Colin grinned, he hadn’t heard. Draco turned around and leaned against the wall, taking in a deep breath. “So. Do you think the city is dangerous, then? The magical artifacts like this globe are powerful enough.”
“I really don’t think so,” Harry said, the position he had maintained since they had started to explore this empty version of London. “I think this was the place we made for us to live in. Everyone’s desires played a part in it somehow. There’s probably someone who wanted a map and someone who likes those horrible Muggle garden decorations.”
“Muggle garden decorations?”
“I’ll tell you someday.”
Draco finally nodded slowly, his eyes on Harry. “Yes, Harry, I think you will.”
Harry grinned and moved down the stairs they had come up, aware of the eyes on his back, and also aware that he could wait to explore what Draco meant by that.
*
Ten Months Later
“Come here.”
Harry paused in taking his cloak off. He had been living in the “flat” in the stone building nearest the edge of the town they’d taken to calling Londinium, after the old Roman name of Muggle London. Ron and Hermione lived two floors beneath him, and Molly and Arthur and George on the one right below. But no one else should be in his rooms right now. He was back from a long scouting expedition across the moors that flowed to the edge of sight, and tired.
Harry turned slowly. His rooms had windows everywhere, openings in the stone that Harry had fitted with glass and shutters. He’d left the delicate, decorative holes that pierced the stone alone, and only covered the polished floors with a few carpets that he’d Transfigured from moor grass. Hermione complained constantly about the lack of chairs, but Harry had only Transfigured a few of those and left the rest as benches.
Draco was leaning against the wall beside the largest window, the soft light of the stars through the still-open shutters gleaming on his bright hair.
Harry lifted his chin. “I’m tired and I’d like to go to sleep.”
“That conversation we had just before you took off on the scouting expedition still needs to be finished.”
“It can wait,” Harry snapped. He hung his cloak on the rough protrusion that he’d made into a peg and sank down on a bench. “I’m tired and aching and ran into a thing that was like a cross between a wild pig and a unicorn, Draco. I need to rest.”
“You can sit all you like. But we’re going to talk.”
“You know as well as I do that most of what we’re feeling is the result of residue from the ritual.”
Draco snorted rudely and moved towards him, not stopping until Harry lifted his hand and flipped him off. “Granger can think whatever she likes. But I know the truth as well as you do. We’re drawn to each other. We can’t be with anyone else anyway, with this kind of tension hanging between us.”
“And we both like women.”
“You have a limited imagination, Harry, if you believe that just liking women keeps one from liking men.”
Harry looked up at Draco, wordless, as Draco paused in front of him and reached out to cup his chin. Truth be told, he could admit the truth of what Draco was saying. Harry was drawn to him. He woke from dreams of him. He’d missed him violently while he was out on the moors, enough to consider Apparating back to Londinium before the allotted number of days for the scouting expedition was up.
But on the other hand, what Hermione had said about lingering residue from the ritual they’d performed together to bring the magical world to this new place made sense. And that made Harry hold back. He’d had enough in his life that was lies, illusions, or gossip. He wanted something real.
As Draco stood there cupping his chin and Harry stared up at him from his position on the bench, the soft shimmer of bells rang out. Other wizards had adopted Colin’s spell enthusiastically. This particular sound, like musical raindrops falling into a pool, meant that it was midnight, or the locally-agreed-upon equivalent.
Draco moved a step closer.
Harry took a deep breath, decided that it was real if it felt as real as this, and turned his head to kiss Draco’s cupped fingers.
Draco hissed in what sounded like Parseltongue triumph, and pulled Harry to his feet to kiss him. Harry wound his fingers in the collar of Draco’s cloak, decorated with rippling silver fur from a beast he’d hunted on the moors, and pulled him towards another room off the kitchen.
Harry had gone all out with the furniture here. He’d learned the spells to shape the stone into a bedframe, and then filled the whole thing with moss and grass and soft feathers shed from geese and down from the same birds. And he’d Transfigured blankets and sewn them from fur that even Hermione admitted were warm and comfortable.
Now Harry pulled Draco down on top of them, and began impatiently to undress himself.
Draco raised himself on his elbow and made no attempt to help, but watched in burning silence. When Harry began to glare at him, he did gesture, lazily, with his wand, and his own clothes fell off as if slit off.
“Show-off,” Harry said, and conjured lube and immediately spread his legs. No point holding back now that he’d given in, no point trying to delay the inevitable.
Draco’s eyes widened at once, and this time his silence was stunned. He remained that way until Harry decided enough was enough and climbed onto the bed. Then he reached out and grabbed Harry by his hips and lubed arse, lifting him until he straddled Draco’s hips.
“You’re stronger than I thought you were,” Harry said, his eyes falling shut as Draco’s cock began to slide slowly into him.
“Wandless L-Lightening Charm on y-you—oh.” Draco’s head fell back, and Harry sank down as slowly as Draco was rising up into him, moving his hips in circles. His thoughts were still thick with tiredness, but he wanted this. He wanted it with a fierceness of desire that made him wonder if they would have found their way here even without the ritual to connect them to each other.
Draco lifted his head for a kiss, his eyes heavy-lidded. Harry began to rock up and down. God, this felt good. Draco barely had to thrust. Harry’s own body was doing all the work, clenching at him, rising, falling, pulling.
They tilted back and forth, eyes on each other, until Draco abruptly stiffened and seized Harry with hands that clawed red scores down his sides. Harry turned his head to the side and shivered as he felt Draco release into him.
“You, too.”
The words were as undeniable as the hands on his cock. Harry gave in and soaked Draco’s stomach.
Draco tilted like a slowly collapsing tower to the side, and Harry went with him. Draco’s hands were heavy and claiming on his shoulders, the nape of his neck, the sides of his hips.
“Mine, you know,” Draco said conversationally, and yawned.
“It’s mutual,” Harry said, and finally gave in to the tiredness he had been battling since his Apparition back from the moors. But at least this time he had someone with him as he succumbed to sleep, amid the fluid, shining tones of the bells striking one from beyond his window.
Ten Years Later
Harry leaned his head on Draco’s shoulder, and they watched together as a small herd of unicorns cantered through the twilight.
It had taken time to convince the unicorns that they could come to Londinium and no one would harm them. Since the Shift to this world where only shells of Muggle works existed, the unicorns had, for the most part, kept to their own enchanted areas that they could venture beyond but no wizard could enter. And many of the brains on their side, including Hermione, had seemed sure things would continue that way. Why should unicorns trust them?
But Luna, who had married Rolf Scamander, had been yearning for the company of unicorns since the Shift. She had gone to their meadows many times. While the unicorns trusted her, they evidently wanted to see other humans and learn that Luna was not unique.
So Harry had come, and because Draco wanted to come with him since that unfortunate time last year when he didn’t and Harry had found himself battling a volcano-monster, both of them were at the edge of the shimmering meadow that wavered in and out of existence in bursts of silver stars. Twin full moons rose overhead, a constellation blazed that never shone over Londinium, and a spark trailed through the night that Harry thought was a shooting star.
Then he realized that the “star” was really a unicorn foal who had broken away from the herd, and he tightened his hold on Draco’s hand.
Draco watched with him. The colt pulled up in front of them and stared. He was perfect. His coat was gold, and his hooves were silver, and his horn shone like an arm dipped in starlight. And he walked as though every moment his knees were going to slam into his chin.
Harry found himself smiling helplessly. He had teased Draco about his lack of opportunity to fight a volcano-monster when they came to the unicorn meadows, but now he was glad his lover was with him. To see this. He leaned back against Draco.
The colt stared some more. His eyes had a liquid darkness to them that made it seem as if they opened up on another universe. He danced some more, lowering his horn to defend against invisible intruders. Then he skirted the clump of grass that marked the line Harry and Draco couldn’t cross, and approached them.
One of the mares snorted. The colt ignored that. She took a step forwards and neighed, a noise like falling light. The colt twitched an ear, but kept right on, a rebelliousness that made Harry smile as if he was going to pieces.
They didn’t put out their hands. That would be too presumptuous. But the unicorn colt danced right up to them and reached out with his cup-shaped nose to touch Draco’s arm where it wound around Harry’s waist.
Harry closed his eyes. He could feel breath like sunlight and skin like rainwater, and he knew from Draco’s caught breath behind him that he felt the same. They stood there and said nothing, because anything would ruin it.
Then the colt tossed his heels in the air and frisked away back into the meadow, and one of the mares covered him with her arched neck like a span of marble and stared at them. Harry and Draco both remained still, charmed as they couldn’t have been by any spell.
One of the mares, not the one attending the colt or the one who had bugled for him to call back, lowered her horn slowly towards them.
It was a blessing, and the steps of the unicorns as they went back into the glimmering confusion of the meadow rang like the bells they were both too far away to hear. Harry and Draco stood there, silent.
Twenty Years Later
“Well, it can’t be blood prejudice. They would be smart enough not to start that shit up again.”
Harry yawned and rolled over in the bed so that his head rested on Draco’s shoulder. They’d recently covered the bed with moss gathered from the trees in which a particularly permissive centaur herd dwelled, and it was both soft and ensured sweet dreams full of running water. Harry was ready to wake up to make love with Draco, but not to discuss politics.
Draco shook him a little. “Harry? What are they arguing over if not blood purity?”
Harry sighed. “They say that they want to build houses in the enchanted meadows where the unicorns live.”
There was a short moment of silence, and then Draco spoke in a voice that trembled with what Harry knew was repressed hilarity. “But they can’t. Haven’t they noticed that they can’t Apparate in and that trying to walk in just bounces them right back out?”
“They said they could get around it using Portkeys.”
“Of course. As soon as they figure out how to get Portkeys to work in this world.”
“Look, I said it was stupid. They ignored me and kept arguing. Never mind that we have a whole world full of beautiful mountains and meadows and oceans to explore and build in, they still want the one kind of place they can’t have.”
“It will blow over.” Draco took Harry more firmly in his arms and rested his chin on top of his shoulder. “The unicorns’ magic has never faltered, and you know Luna will be a strong voice for them, and she’s respected as much as Rolf is nowadays. And then you can go back to brooding on something other than the Council’s idiotic ways.”
“You would be able to help better if you’d ever served on the Council.” Harry forced open one eye to consider his chosen suspiciously. “Given that it’s supposed to go by rotation and all…”
“Is it?”
“Fuck you, Draco. How do you manage to keep getting out of your term of service?”
Draco laughed huskily. “Mmm, yes, please,” he said, and rolled over. Harry found the familiar charms cast before he could say anything, and groaned a little as his legs were spread and he was lowered onto Draco’s cock. At least Draco’s charms now included one that eased the pain of creaking knees for a man in his forties.
“Ah,” Harry said, and flung back his head, and tried not to notice the way Draco’s nails were already sinking into his hips. He really wanted to ask about this, to make it clear. “What is going on whenever they draw your name to serve, you wanker?”
“Not with you around,” Draco said, and closed his eyes as he buried his face in Harry’s shoulder.
“Draco!”
But he didn’t get an answer as they rocked long and slow, and the familiar pleasure surged through him, all the better for the familiarity, and Draco’s fingernails dug deep and sure, and he brought Harry off with all the knowledge they had of each other’s bodies after twenty years together.
Harry collapsed, boneless, on the bed, and Draco rolled him over to nestle against his neck and whisper, “You know that you’re asking the wrong question?”
“What are you…mmm…talking about?”
“They don’t skip over my name when it’s drawn. They simply never draw it.”
Harry would have opened his eyes indignantly, but lazy sex and the moss in the bed coverlet were doing their work. He slid off to sleep, and vowed that he would find the solution and make Draco serve his term on the Council sooner or later.
In the distance, the bells rang to mark another year. At least the last one hadn’t been the one where wizards actually tried to invade the sacred territories of other creatures.
Thirty Years Later
“I didn’t think I’d find you here.”
Harry opened one eye and smiled a little at Draco from the ledge that he had practically draped himself over on the side of the huge, steaming warm spring. “Well, we made love on a hill last night. Where else did you think you’d find me?”
Draco stripped and slid easily into the spring. It was one of the ones further from Londinium, which meant it didn’t get occupied as much. Why Apparate twice, went the feeling, when you could just do it once?
But Harry preferred the privacy of this particular spring, with high sides, unoccupied country all around it, and steps in the stone that he had carved with his own magic. He watched Draco take them now, admiring everything about him: the old scars on his hips, the slowness he used to negotiate the steps that he wouldn’t have needed five years ago, the gleam of grey now and then in his pale hair.
(Silver, Draco called it).
Draco leaned back and let his head drift in the water. He sighed. “Do you know—I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier, but we’ve spent half again as long in this world as we did the one we were born in.”
Harry nodded. “And plenty of our children have been born here.” He and Draco hadn’t chosen to have any of their own, but Rose and Hugo were citizens of this world, to whom stories about Muggles and wars and Dark Lords were only nursery tales, and Luna’s twins thought it was fully normal that magical creatures and wizards respected each other, never having known anything else.
“Then why does it feel like sometimes, we’ll never get to go home?”
Harry shifted over so that his shoulder touched Draco’s through the milky water. “I have an answer to that, but I’m not sure that it’s one you’ll enjoy.”
“Tell me.”
“You had a stronger place in that world than almost anyone else who came with us through the portal. Your ancestors had lived in Malfoy Manor for generations. You knew where they were buried. You had centuries of thinking of Muggles as a threat, but not one that could actually do much to affect wizards. Your whole family attended Hogwarts. You were attached to the earth. Not everyone else was.”
“Lovegood could claim the same thing I did…”
Harry smiled into the soft purple twilight creeping over the spring. “Luna is her own unique person. I think she would be happy to live anywhere that she could be close to creatures. And I know that Ron didn’t feel the same attachment to the institutions of the wizarding world or staying separate from Muggles. And Hermione is Muggleborn.”
“She—she never dreaded leaving her whole world behind?”
“She hasn’t said,” Harry said quietly. All he knew was that Hermione had gone to Australia to find her parents, two years before the Muggles had discovered them and they’d needed to bring everyone to this world, and she had returned alone. Some other Muggleborns’ Muggle families had come with them when Harry and Draco did that ritual in front of the Mirror of Erised, but not hers.
And she didn’t talk about it, now. Harry thought it best to leave her her privacy.
Draco stirred restlessly next to him. “I think I’m being silly. I mean, the Manor came with us…my mother is here…”
“But it’s not the same.”
“No. And at first I was grateful that it wasn’t and I could leave the memories behind me. But sometimes, I miss it.”
Harry leaned up and kissed him in silence. Draco gripped his shoulder. Harry leaned slowly away and said, “And sometimes I miss the exact classrooms where I performed spells for the first time, and even the clearing in the Forbidden Forest where I walked to my death. Longings don’t have to make sense.”
“But you’re glad that you’re here.”
“I’m more than glad.”
Draco smiled into his mouth, and Harry sighed back, hearing, in his head, the shimmering echoes of bells.
Forty Years Later
“You know that I’m going to be simply an Apparition away, Hermione.”
“It’s not the same, though,” Hermione huffed at him, and gave him another hug. Her hair, shining white now but as untamable as ever, got in Harry’s eyes as he returned the hug with fervor.
No, it’s not the same. And that was what made it exciting.
Harry stepped back so that Draco and Hermione could hug, gingerly. They were friends now as much as they would ever be, but Harry saw the way that Hermione’s eyes narrowed a little and Draco kept his arms a little off to the sides. He rolled his eyes and turned to Ron.
Ron shook Harry’s hand hard, then hugged him even though he had sworn he wouldn’t. “Come back when Rose’s youngest has her Leaving Feast for her seventh year at Hogwarts, huh?” he muttered. “We’re never going to be able to get Harriet to shut up if her Great-Uncle Harry misses it.”
Harry laughed. “Of course I will.” He stepped back from Ron and then went to hug Neville, Hannah, Luna, and Rolf, and their children, their closest associates here aside from the Weasleys. Everyone was gathered in the big square in Londinium that had become an official gathering place for announcements of new discoveries, the establishment of new towns, and presentations on new places that various people had explored.
For all that the population had exploded, there were fewer people in Londinium now than there had been in years. Harry stepped back and looked up at the shining stone buildings. People were expanding outside the city, finding new places unclaimed by other magical creatures to live, and using Apparition to hop from island to island. They weren’t limited anymore to the reflection of London that they’d brought with them from non-magical England.
And now Harry and Draco were going to join them. As far as the explorers had found, there were continents and islands out there that resembled the ones the globe had predicted, but they were misty places, not really solid or defined until wizards, or centaurs, or unicorns, or someone else went to them. Then they took on form and startling shapes—purple jungles, blazing red mountains, deep caves with art scratched on the rocks. Harry couldn’t wait to see what he and Draco would find.
They were tired of serving on the Council. They were tired of being involved in politics. And after Narcissa Malfoy’s death earlier this year, they were tired of staying in one place.
Harry gave his godson Lysander Scamander one more embrace, and then turned and stepped away. Draco was smiling at him. He extended his hand, and Harry took it. Draco alone had been to the island they were Apparating to first. And from there, they would go on and see what they could see.
“Good-bye, Harry!”
“Good-bye, mate!”
“Good-bye, Draco!”
Through the chorus of calls, Draco Apparated them. Harry stumbled a little as they landed on a rocky shore. He could hear the lapping of waves before he opened his eyes, but even as he looked, the sound receded. The shore was rising.
He looked down, and saw a broken black cliff sloping away to the water. The water itself had tints of lavender and rose, as though it was reflecting a sunrise Harry couldn’t see anywhere. He caught his breath and leaned against Draco’s side. Draco kissed the top of his head and sighed a little.
“You’re happy that we left, aren’t you?” Harry whispered to him.
“Of course. The spell that kept them from drawing my name to take part on the Council might have failed at any time.”
“Berk.”
“Yours.”
Harry caught his breath. Yes, Draco was, through all the silvering and lightening of his hair, and the lines around his mouth, and the creaking of his bones, and the dimming of his eyes that meant even Vision Correction Charms didn’t do much and he had to wear glasses most of the time now.
And Harry was his. He said it with a kiss, and then they set off to explore the new island that was sprouting trees and brush and butterflies around them, echoes like bells ringing in their ears.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco
Content Notes: Massive AU, odd magic
Wordcount: 4500
Rating: R
Summary: Harry and Draco were the participants in a ritual that removed the magical world from the Muggle one entirely, and created a new version of London called Londinium. Their life as they explore their new world and fall in love, days, months, and decades after the transition. Companion fic to “Bells to the Wild Sky.”
Author’s Notes: Another one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics, for vaysh, who asked for a sequel to the fic I wrote her, “Bells to the Wild Sky.” This fic functions as both a prequel and sequel.
The Bells of Londinium
Ten Days Later:
“We have no idea what’s in there, Potter.”
“Well, we can’t spend the rest of our lives being afraid of the city we brought here,” Harry answered, and used his wand to open the heavy stone door. Draco hesitated behind him for long seconds, then followed.
The room inside was empty of people, as all the other rooms in the city had been until they started to populate them. But it did have something on the far wall that made Harry freeze in place. Draco came to a halt behind him, gaping as well.
At least that reassured Harry that he wasn’t the only one who could see the thing.
In the center of the room was a great stone stand, so delicately sculptured and curling that it looked as if it had grown out of the floor instead of being made. Which it had, for all Harry could be sure, just like the other sights of the city. In the center was a shining blue globe that made Harry think for a second of some of the decorations that some of the Muggles on Privet Drive had in their front gardens. But this wasn’t Privet Drive, and as they moved closer, their cloudy reflections in the shining blue stone morphed into something else.
The globe began to turn, its whole stand revolving with it, and as it did, it sang, a sharp, short, piercing sound. Harry found himself staring at the shapes of unfamiliar continents, many of them bigger than the ones on the Earth they had left behind, some smaller. The globe turned and turned, and finally came back to the beginning, to the curve of an island that looked only a little like Britain.
This world was much bigger than Earth.
Draco’s shaky hand came to rest on his shoulder. “What do you think it means?” he whispered.
“It means that we’re in a world made for magical beings, just as we wished,” Harry breathed back. He no longer tried to move away from Draco’s touch. They had been the ones to conduct the ritual that brought them here, ten days ago, moving from the cold panic of a Hogwarts about to be discovered by Muggles to one in its own place.
Everything here was a reflection of their desires. Using the Mirror of Erised as an anchorstone of their ritual had made it so.
Draco’s hand tightened on his shoulder, and then he moved away and examined the globe as it slowed and stopped. “A map. That will be valuable, although it doesn’t tell us a lot about what the city itself looks like.’
Harry nodded and started to say something else, but his heart nearly stopped as bells suddenly pealed across the city. Both he and Draco rushed as one to the nearest window, an embayed one set deep in the stone wall, convinced without speaking that some people besides wizards lived here after all and were ringing some kind of alarm.
But Harry’s heart calmed down as he saw Colin standing near the top of a slender spire of stone, one of those other buildings that looked as if they had grown, and moving his wand back and forth. A clanging sound tolled from midair, and turned from the deep call that had distressed Harry back to a soft song.
“Imagine how it’s going to sound when we have bells everywhere!” Colin called to them cheerfully.
“I am going to kill you, Creevey,” Draco said conversationally, although from the way Colin grinned, he hadn’t heard. Draco turned around and leaned against the wall, taking in a deep breath. “So. Do you think the city is dangerous, then? The magical artifacts like this globe are powerful enough.”
“I really don’t think so,” Harry said, the position he had maintained since they had started to explore this empty version of London. “I think this was the place we made for us to live in. Everyone’s desires played a part in it somehow. There’s probably someone who wanted a map and someone who likes those horrible Muggle garden decorations.”
“Muggle garden decorations?”
“I’ll tell you someday.”
Draco finally nodded slowly, his eyes on Harry. “Yes, Harry, I think you will.”
Harry grinned and moved down the stairs they had come up, aware of the eyes on his back, and also aware that he could wait to explore what Draco meant by that.
*
Ten Months Later
“Come here.”
Harry paused in taking his cloak off. He had been living in the “flat” in the stone building nearest the edge of the town they’d taken to calling Londinium, after the old Roman name of Muggle London. Ron and Hermione lived two floors beneath him, and Molly and Arthur and George on the one right below. But no one else should be in his rooms right now. He was back from a long scouting expedition across the moors that flowed to the edge of sight, and tired.
Harry turned slowly. His rooms had windows everywhere, openings in the stone that Harry had fitted with glass and shutters. He’d left the delicate, decorative holes that pierced the stone alone, and only covered the polished floors with a few carpets that he’d Transfigured from moor grass. Hermione complained constantly about the lack of chairs, but Harry had only Transfigured a few of those and left the rest as benches.
Draco was leaning against the wall beside the largest window, the soft light of the stars through the still-open shutters gleaming on his bright hair.
Harry lifted his chin. “I’m tired and I’d like to go to sleep.”
“That conversation we had just before you took off on the scouting expedition still needs to be finished.”
“It can wait,” Harry snapped. He hung his cloak on the rough protrusion that he’d made into a peg and sank down on a bench. “I’m tired and aching and ran into a thing that was like a cross between a wild pig and a unicorn, Draco. I need to rest.”
“You can sit all you like. But we’re going to talk.”
“You know as well as I do that most of what we’re feeling is the result of residue from the ritual.”
Draco snorted rudely and moved towards him, not stopping until Harry lifted his hand and flipped him off. “Granger can think whatever she likes. But I know the truth as well as you do. We’re drawn to each other. We can’t be with anyone else anyway, with this kind of tension hanging between us.”
“And we both like women.”
“You have a limited imagination, Harry, if you believe that just liking women keeps one from liking men.”
Harry looked up at Draco, wordless, as Draco paused in front of him and reached out to cup his chin. Truth be told, he could admit the truth of what Draco was saying. Harry was drawn to him. He woke from dreams of him. He’d missed him violently while he was out on the moors, enough to consider Apparating back to Londinium before the allotted number of days for the scouting expedition was up.
But on the other hand, what Hermione had said about lingering residue from the ritual they’d performed together to bring the magical world to this new place made sense. And that made Harry hold back. He’d had enough in his life that was lies, illusions, or gossip. He wanted something real.
As Draco stood there cupping his chin and Harry stared up at him from his position on the bench, the soft shimmer of bells rang out. Other wizards had adopted Colin’s spell enthusiastically. This particular sound, like musical raindrops falling into a pool, meant that it was midnight, or the locally-agreed-upon equivalent.
Draco moved a step closer.
Harry took a deep breath, decided that it was real if it felt as real as this, and turned his head to kiss Draco’s cupped fingers.
Draco hissed in what sounded like Parseltongue triumph, and pulled Harry to his feet to kiss him. Harry wound his fingers in the collar of Draco’s cloak, decorated with rippling silver fur from a beast he’d hunted on the moors, and pulled him towards another room off the kitchen.
Harry had gone all out with the furniture here. He’d learned the spells to shape the stone into a bedframe, and then filled the whole thing with moss and grass and soft feathers shed from geese and down from the same birds. And he’d Transfigured blankets and sewn them from fur that even Hermione admitted were warm and comfortable.
Now Harry pulled Draco down on top of them, and began impatiently to undress himself.
Draco raised himself on his elbow and made no attempt to help, but watched in burning silence. When Harry began to glare at him, he did gesture, lazily, with his wand, and his own clothes fell off as if slit off.
“Show-off,” Harry said, and conjured lube and immediately spread his legs. No point holding back now that he’d given in, no point trying to delay the inevitable.
Draco’s eyes widened at once, and this time his silence was stunned. He remained that way until Harry decided enough was enough and climbed onto the bed. Then he reached out and grabbed Harry by his hips and lubed arse, lifting him until he straddled Draco’s hips.
“You’re stronger than I thought you were,” Harry said, his eyes falling shut as Draco’s cock began to slide slowly into him.
“Wandless L-Lightening Charm on y-you—oh.” Draco’s head fell back, and Harry sank down as slowly as Draco was rising up into him, moving his hips in circles. His thoughts were still thick with tiredness, but he wanted this. He wanted it with a fierceness of desire that made him wonder if they would have found their way here even without the ritual to connect them to each other.
Draco lifted his head for a kiss, his eyes heavy-lidded. Harry began to rock up and down. God, this felt good. Draco barely had to thrust. Harry’s own body was doing all the work, clenching at him, rising, falling, pulling.
They tilted back and forth, eyes on each other, until Draco abruptly stiffened and seized Harry with hands that clawed red scores down his sides. Harry turned his head to the side and shivered as he felt Draco release into him.
“You, too.”
The words were as undeniable as the hands on his cock. Harry gave in and soaked Draco’s stomach.
Draco tilted like a slowly collapsing tower to the side, and Harry went with him. Draco’s hands were heavy and claiming on his shoulders, the nape of his neck, the sides of his hips.
“Mine, you know,” Draco said conversationally, and yawned.
“It’s mutual,” Harry said, and finally gave in to the tiredness he had been battling since his Apparition back from the moors. But at least this time he had someone with him as he succumbed to sleep, amid the fluid, shining tones of the bells striking one from beyond his window.
Ten Years Later
Harry leaned his head on Draco’s shoulder, and they watched together as a small herd of unicorns cantered through the twilight.
It had taken time to convince the unicorns that they could come to Londinium and no one would harm them. Since the Shift to this world where only shells of Muggle works existed, the unicorns had, for the most part, kept to their own enchanted areas that they could venture beyond but no wizard could enter. And many of the brains on their side, including Hermione, had seemed sure things would continue that way. Why should unicorns trust them?
But Luna, who had married Rolf Scamander, had been yearning for the company of unicorns since the Shift. She had gone to their meadows many times. While the unicorns trusted her, they evidently wanted to see other humans and learn that Luna was not unique.
So Harry had come, and because Draco wanted to come with him since that unfortunate time last year when he didn’t and Harry had found himself battling a volcano-monster, both of them were at the edge of the shimmering meadow that wavered in and out of existence in bursts of silver stars. Twin full moons rose overhead, a constellation blazed that never shone over Londinium, and a spark trailed through the night that Harry thought was a shooting star.
Then he realized that the “star” was really a unicorn foal who had broken away from the herd, and he tightened his hold on Draco’s hand.
Draco watched with him. The colt pulled up in front of them and stared. He was perfect. His coat was gold, and his hooves were silver, and his horn shone like an arm dipped in starlight. And he walked as though every moment his knees were going to slam into his chin.
Harry found himself smiling helplessly. He had teased Draco about his lack of opportunity to fight a volcano-monster when they came to the unicorn meadows, but now he was glad his lover was with him. To see this. He leaned back against Draco.
The colt stared some more. His eyes had a liquid darkness to them that made it seem as if they opened up on another universe. He danced some more, lowering his horn to defend against invisible intruders. Then he skirted the clump of grass that marked the line Harry and Draco couldn’t cross, and approached them.
One of the mares snorted. The colt ignored that. She took a step forwards and neighed, a noise like falling light. The colt twitched an ear, but kept right on, a rebelliousness that made Harry smile as if he was going to pieces.
They didn’t put out their hands. That would be too presumptuous. But the unicorn colt danced right up to them and reached out with his cup-shaped nose to touch Draco’s arm where it wound around Harry’s waist.
Harry closed his eyes. He could feel breath like sunlight and skin like rainwater, and he knew from Draco’s caught breath behind him that he felt the same. They stood there and said nothing, because anything would ruin it.
Then the colt tossed his heels in the air and frisked away back into the meadow, and one of the mares covered him with her arched neck like a span of marble and stared at them. Harry and Draco both remained still, charmed as they couldn’t have been by any spell.
One of the mares, not the one attending the colt or the one who had bugled for him to call back, lowered her horn slowly towards them.
It was a blessing, and the steps of the unicorns as they went back into the glimmering confusion of the meadow rang like the bells they were both too far away to hear. Harry and Draco stood there, silent.
Twenty Years Later
“Well, it can’t be blood prejudice. They would be smart enough not to start that shit up again.”
Harry yawned and rolled over in the bed so that his head rested on Draco’s shoulder. They’d recently covered the bed with moss gathered from the trees in which a particularly permissive centaur herd dwelled, and it was both soft and ensured sweet dreams full of running water. Harry was ready to wake up to make love with Draco, but not to discuss politics.
Draco shook him a little. “Harry? What are they arguing over if not blood purity?”
Harry sighed. “They say that they want to build houses in the enchanted meadows where the unicorns live.”
There was a short moment of silence, and then Draco spoke in a voice that trembled with what Harry knew was repressed hilarity. “But they can’t. Haven’t they noticed that they can’t Apparate in and that trying to walk in just bounces them right back out?”
“They said they could get around it using Portkeys.”
“Of course. As soon as they figure out how to get Portkeys to work in this world.”
“Look, I said it was stupid. They ignored me and kept arguing. Never mind that we have a whole world full of beautiful mountains and meadows and oceans to explore and build in, they still want the one kind of place they can’t have.”
“It will blow over.” Draco took Harry more firmly in his arms and rested his chin on top of his shoulder. “The unicorns’ magic has never faltered, and you know Luna will be a strong voice for them, and she’s respected as much as Rolf is nowadays. And then you can go back to brooding on something other than the Council’s idiotic ways.”
“You would be able to help better if you’d ever served on the Council.” Harry forced open one eye to consider his chosen suspiciously. “Given that it’s supposed to go by rotation and all…”
“Is it?”
“Fuck you, Draco. How do you manage to keep getting out of your term of service?”
Draco laughed huskily. “Mmm, yes, please,” he said, and rolled over. Harry found the familiar charms cast before he could say anything, and groaned a little as his legs were spread and he was lowered onto Draco’s cock. At least Draco’s charms now included one that eased the pain of creaking knees for a man in his forties.
“Ah,” Harry said, and flung back his head, and tried not to notice the way Draco’s nails were already sinking into his hips. He really wanted to ask about this, to make it clear. “What is going on whenever they draw your name to serve, you wanker?”
“Not with you around,” Draco said, and closed his eyes as he buried his face in Harry’s shoulder.
“Draco!”
But he didn’t get an answer as they rocked long and slow, and the familiar pleasure surged through him, all the better for the familiarity, and Draco’s fingernails dug deep and sure, and he brought Harry off with all the knowledge they had of each other’s bodies after twenty years together.
Harry collapsed, boneless, on the bed, and Draco rolled him over to nestle against his neck and whisper, “You know that you’re asking the wrong question?”
“What are you…mmm…talking about?”
“They don’t skip over my name when it’s drawn. They simply never draw it.”
Harry would have opened his eyes indignantly, but lazy sex and the moss in the bed coverlet were doing their work. He slid off to sleep, and vowed that he would find the solution and make Draco serve his term on the Council sooner or later.
In the distance, the bells rang to mark another year. At least the last one hadn’t been the one where wizards actually tried to invade the sacred territories of other creatures.
Thirty Years Later
“I didn’t think I’d find you here.”
Harry opened one eye and smiled a little at Draco from the ledge that he had practically draped himself over on the side of the huge, steaming warm spring. “Well, we made love on a hill last night. Where else did you think you’d find me?”
Draco stripped and slid easily into the spring. It was one of the ones further from Londinium, which meant it didn’t get occupied as much. Why Apparate twice, went the feeling, when you could just do it once?
But Harry preferred the privacy of this particular spring, with high sides, unoccupied country all around it, and steps in the stone that he had carved with his own magic. He watched Draco take them now, admiring everything about him: the old scars on his hips, the slowness he used to negotiate the steps that he wouldn’t have needed five years ago, the gleam of grey now and then in his pale hair.
(Silver, Draco called it).
Draco leaned back and let his head drift in the water. He sighed. “Do you know—I don’t know why I didn’t think of this earlier, but we’ve spent half again as long in this world as we did the one we were born in.”
Harry nodded. “And plenty of our children have been born here.” He and Draco hadn’t chosen to have any of their own, but Rose and Hugo were citizens of this world, to whom stories about Muggles and wars and Dark Lords were only nursery tales, and Luna’s twins thought it was fully normal that magical creatures and wizards respected each other, never having known anything else.
“Then why does it feel like sometimes, we’ll never get to go home?”
Harry shifted over so that his shoulder touched Draco’s through the milky water. “I have an answer to that, but I’m not sure that it’s one you’ll enjoy.”
“Tell me.”
“You had a stronger place in that world than almost anyone else who came with us through the portal. Your ancestors had lived in Malfoy Manor for generations. You knew where they were buried. You had centuries of thinking of Muggles as a threat, but not one that could actually do much to affect wizards. Your whole family attended Hogwarts. You were attached to the earth. Not everyone else was.”
“Lovegood could claim the same thing I did…”
Harry smiled into the soft purple twilight creeping over the spring. “Luna is her own unique person. I think she would be happy to live anywhere that she could be close to creatures. And I know that Ron didn’t feel the same attachment to the institutions of the wizarding world or staying separate from Muggles. And Hermione is Muggleborn.”
“She—she never dreaded leaving her whole world behind?”
“She hasn’t said,” Harry said quietly. All he knew was that Hermione had gone to Australia to find her parents, two years before the Muggles had discovered them and they’d needed to bring everyone to this world, and she had returned alone. Some other Muggleborns’ Muggle families had come with them when Harry and Draco did that ritual in front of the Mirror of Erised, but not hers.
And she didn’t talk about it, now. Harry thought it best to leave her her privacy.
Draco stirred restlessly next to him. “I think I’m being silly. I mean, the Manor came with us…my mother is here…”
“But it’s not the same.”
“No. And at first I was grateful that it wasn’t and I could leave the memories behind me. But sometimes, I miss it.”
Harry leaned up and kissed him in silence. Draco gripped his shoulder. Harry leaned slowly away and said, “And sometimes I miss the exact classrooms where I performed spells for the first time, and even the clearing in the Forbidden Forest where I walked to my death. Longings don’t have to make sense.”
“But you’re glad that you’re here.”
“I’m more than glad.”
Draco smiled into his mouth, and Harry sighed back, hearing, in his head, the shimmering echoes of bells.
Forty Years Later
“You know that I’m going to be simply an Apparition away, Hermione.”
“It’s not the same, though,” Hermione huffed at him, and gave him another hug. Her hair, shining white now but as untamable as ever, got in Harry’s eyes as he returned the hug with fervor.
No, it’s not the same. And that was what made it exciting.
Harry stepped back so that Draco and Hermione could hug, gingerly. They were friends now as much as they would ever be, but Harry saw the way that Hermione’s eyes narrowed a little and Draco kept his arms a little off to the sides. He rolled his eyes and turned to Ron.
Ron shook Harry’s hand hard, then hugged him even though he had sworn he wouldn’t. “Come back when Rose’s youngest has her Leaving Feast for her seventh year at Hogwarts, huh?” he muttered. “We’re never going to be able to get Harriet to shut up if her Great-Uncle Harry misses it.”
Harry laughed. “Of course I will.” He stepped back from Ron and then went to hug Neville, Hannah, Luna, and Rolf, and their children, their closest associates here aside from the Weasleys. Everyone was gathered in the big square in Londinium that had become an official gathering place for announcements of new discoveries, the establishment of new towns, and presentations on new places that various people had explored.
For all that the population had exploded, there were fewer people in Londinium now than there had been in years. Harry stepped back and looked up at the shining stone buildings. People were expanding outside the city, finding new places unclaimed by other magical creatures to live, and using Apparition to hop from island to island. They weren’t limited anymore to the reflection of London that they’d brought with them from non-magical England.
And now Harry and Draco were going to join them. As far as the explorers had found, there were continents and islands out there that resembled the ones the globe had predicted, but they were misty places, not really solid or defined until wizards, or centaurs, or unicorns, or someone else went to them. Then they took on form and startling shapes—purple jungles, blazing red mountains, deep caves with art scratched on the rocks. Harry couldn’t wait to see what he and Draco would find.
They were tired of serving on the Council. They were tired of being involved in politics. And after Narcissa Malfoy’s death earlier this year, they were tired of staying in one place.
Harry gave his godson Lysander Scamander one more embrace, and then turned and stepped away. Draco was smiling at him. He extended his hand, and Harry took it. Draco alone had been to the island they were Apparating to first. And from there, they would go on and see what they could see.
“Good-bye, Harry!”
“Good-bye, mate!”
“Good-bye, Draco!”
Through the chorus of calls, Draco Apparated them. Harry stumbled a little as they landed on a rocky shore. He could hear the lapping of waves before he opened his eyes, but even as he looked, the sound receded. The shore was rising.
He looked down, and saw a broken black cliff sloping away to the water. The water itself had tints of lavender and rose, as though it was reflecting a sunrise Harry couldn’t see anywhere. He caught his breath and leaned against Draco’s side. Draco kissed the top of his head and sighed a little.
“You’re happy that we left, aren’t you?” Harry whispered to him.
“Of course. The spell that kept them from drawing my name to take part on the Council might have failed at any time.”
“Berk.”
“Yours.”
Harry caught his breath. Yes, Draco was, through all the silvering and lightening of his hair, and the lines around his mouth, and the creaking of his bones, and the dimming of his eyes that meant even Vision Correction Charms didn’t do much and he had to wear glasses most of the time now.
And Harry was his. He said it with a kiss, and then they set off to explore the new island that was sprouting trees and brush and butterflies around them, echoes like bells ringing in their ears.
The End.