The Way It Grows
Springfall
Summary: When a detention-sprung mishap strands Draco and Harry on a remote Indonesian island, the two opposites must put aside their differences to survive. And something else grows from the cooperation that neither dares to name...
A/N: This will, most likely, be a slash story. Who knows? But if you don't deal well with slash, I suggest you bail if I do decide something more than friendship grows. Thanks for reading! Reviews are always loved & cherished ^_^.
~*~ Part One
The Allotted Time ~*~
~*~
Day 1
~*~
"This is your entire fault, Potter," Draco growled, leaning his head back against a palm tree. It was hot, sticky and unpleasant. A mosquito whined around Draco's sun-bleached hair. He could not believe his luck. Here he was, stuck on this godforsaken little drop of land in the middle of a furious ocean, with Potter. Potter, of all people.
"It is not my fault," Harry snapped back. He, too, was looking worse for wear and his shaggy black hair was bleaching out into an almost dun- like brown. It was getting so wild it was starting to curl at the nape of his neck and his ears. Draco noticed this disdainfully, thinking him looking more feminine than usual. Harry closed his eyes and took off his glasses. "I believe it was you who kicked the Portkey into the ocean."
"I believe it was YOU who got us into these stupid, servitude-esque detentions in the first place!" Draco shouted back, his gray eyes slit against the brazen sunlight. His tone was severe. "If you and Weasley hadn't found it funny to put my book into my cauldron-"
"You deserved it," Harry returned in a savage voice. "You deserved it, if I ever hear you call Hermione a Mudblood again, I swear that I'll kill you." He was glaring at Draco.
"Why should that scare me? I outweigh you as it is," Draco said, examining a hangnail.
"By about ten pounds, Malfoy," Harry said. It was true; Harry had been growing and getting stronger from Quidditch. Draco was still lithe and thin, though taller and with a deeper voice. Draco noticed that, although his hair was rough and wavy and almost mane-like, he was indeed larger than the little eleven-year old Draco had sneered at so long ago in Madam Malkin's. He blinked, the white-hot sun burning his retinas. 'I'll probably go blind out in this hellhole,' Draco thought savagely. "You, on the other hand, still haven't hit puberty yet, I see." Harry continued onward, tired by the heat and angry with Draco's attitude.
"Go to hell, Potter," Draco growled back, opening one gunmetal-gray eye. "Your hair's beginning to look like Granger's, as it is. Your mum was Muggle-born, right? Must be a Mudblood thing, bushy, ugly hair," Draco said in vicious satisfaction.
Harry turned around and dropped to his knees in front of Draco, grabbed his shoulders with calloused hands, and banged Draco's head brutally against the palm tree. Draco saw stars, as Harry continually pounded his head on the tree's solid, spiky trunk.
"I. Warned. You. About. Calling. Her. A. Mudblood!" Harry punctuated each word with a solid smacking of Draco's head against the tree. "You. Do. It. Again. And. I'll. Kill. You. Malfoy." Draco slumped forward, his head brushing Harry's chest, a large blood smear on the sandy-colored trunk behind him. Harry's eyes widened, looking down at Draco's white, baby-fine hair, his anger leaving him in a flood. The back of Draco's fair head was stained maroon with his blood. Harry released his shoulders, his hands trembling, and Draco sagged forward more, his forehead pressing gently against Harry's breastbone. A trickle of blood ran down the centre of his head, down his part, and over his forehead. It ran off his nose onto Harry's yellow tee-shirt and spread there in a little red star. Harry scooted back violently, and Draco fell forward against the ground, the dusty grass rising about him, all the colors about him washed out, the sky a painful blue around his blood-reddened hair.
"Shit," Harry said faintly. He tugged his shirt off over his head, ripped off one of the canary-colored sleeves, and sprinted as fast as his tired legs could carry him to the beach. He tripped and almost fell on his face into the salt water, where he skinned his knees against the rough, rocky sand as he soaked his sleeve in the salt water. He turned and stumbled back to where Draco lay, face-down, on the parched earth. He pulled Draco up, and pressed the sleeve against the smaller boy's injury. Draco didn't move. Harry grew even more alarmed. He struggled again to his feet, his clothing already beginning to dry in the scorching temperature of the mid-day sunlight. He remembered where there was a grove of fruit trees, not too far from where they were now, with a fresh-water pond. He stared down at Draco, no idea what to do with him. He picked his shirt up off the ground, and tucked it into the waistband of his shorts. He heaved Draco to his feet, leaning him against the palm tree for balance, and then he hoisted the limp form of his classmate onto his back, looping Draco's frail arms around his neck, holding the boy's bare knees steady around his own waist. He sighed against the heat and set off; hoping Draco wouldn't die before they figured out a way to get home.
~*~
Day 2
~*~
Draco woke up with a burning headache. He looked down. His neck was red above his grubby white shirt. Draco looked at it in disdain. Why was it so dirty? It looked as though Draco had been rolling about in the dirt. He also wondered why his vision seemed to be opaque and yellow in one eye, and why his head felt as though he had been swimming in a wet cap. He reached up and tugged free Harry's sleeve, studying it. It was yellow only in the front. It was a strange, rusty-sort of color in back, where it had been against his hair. 'It looks like blood,' he puzzled, bemused, trying to figure out why on Earth he had a shirt sleeve on his head, covered in what looked like blood. He sat up against the smooth bark of an orange tree, marveling at the fact the palm tree had grown oranges so randomly and quickly. Draco looked around him. 'Well, this is odd. It's as though I've moved'. His brow furrowed. Moved from where? Where was he, anyway? Why was there a shirt sleeve in his hands? Was he by himself? Wasn't he supposed to be in...here, Draco scrutinized his wrist-watch. 3.30 pm. Shouldn't he be in Charms? Was this even a weekday? Was it Friday? If it was Friday, he should be in Charms. Flitwick would give him detention. He tried to stand up, but his knees buckled.
Well, that was weird. Draco tried again to stand. He fell a second time. Again, he stood and fell. This was repeated twice more before he sat down, shoulders hunched. Well, his legs didn't seem to be working. Perhaps he was drunk? Hung-over? That would explain the splitting headache and lack of limb control. Though it had never seemed so pronounced, the few times he had been drunk before. 'Think, Malfoy, think. Where the hell are you? Are you alone?' In concentration, Draco brought his head back rather sharply and pressed it to the tree trunk.
"SON OF A BITCH!" he shouted, feeling a very, very tender part of his head hit the tree at a force much harder than he would have liked. A noise stopped somewhere ahead of him, but Draco didn't notice. He was rubbing his head, and something sticky came away in his hand. 'What?' Draco thought, puzzled. Someone stopped in front of him, in dirty white trainers with red stripes on their sides.
"Malfoy?" someone asked in a voice coming from far away, as Draco looked at his hand, the same sort of rusty color on his pale palm as that on the shirt sleeve in his other.
"Blood?" he asked no one in particular, before slipping sideways and hitting the wet grass.
"Shit," Harry remarked softly, for about the fifth time that hour. He propped Draco up again, and went back to work. He had managed to chop down quite a few trees (Thank Merlin he had his wand on him) and transfigure the wood into a shack. Not the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on, but it would do. Harry pondered the use of having this on the ground, where he had spent a miserable night worrying about animals and Draco and Lethifolds* and any number of things, including Cho and his Potions assignment due Monday. He knew that Prongs, the name that he so affectionally called his Patronus, would take care of him if he could manage to remember that spell while being suffocated. Harry had slept little, safe to say. With a swish and a flick, he had levitated the shack up into a strong-looking orange tree, the biggest in this little orchard. It was not far from the pond. He had heard Draco stir and come to investigate. Now that Malfoy had successfully knocked himself out again, Harry finished levitating fruit and the rest of their lunches from the other day up into their treehouse. He had stored water in the canteen Snape had given him, and this, too, he set Wingardium Leviosa upon and set it down in the house. He turned, hearing Draco moan faintly. He walked over to the tree where he had left the Slytherin, and looked down at the boy, faintly amused but more worried.
"How are you, Malfoy?"
"What?" Draco was groggy and his eyes unfocused. Harry frowned, and mumbled 'Mobilcorpus' at Draco, and floated the faintly protesting Draco over to his newly-treed shack. Draco landed with a soft thump on the wood floor, looking about him, as Harry scrambled up a makeshift ladder and joined Draco in the dark, fragrant shelter of the treehouse. Harry felt a bit like a Muggle again, remembering a time at age eight when he had spent the night in Dudley's treehouse during a thunderstorm, as punishment. He had loved every moment of it, and had cried the next morning when Uncle Vernon tried to pry him down from the large elm in the diminutive backyard.
"You feeling okay, Malfoy?" Draco stared at Harry, trying to assess who exactly it was that was talking to him.
"Potter?" He threw this to the wind in a blind guess. Harry nodded.
"You got knocked around good, Malfoy," he replied fervently. Draco looked confused. He blinked, and shook his head, trying in vain to clear his thoughts. He winced instead.
"I, er..." Harry began. "I kind of...smacked you around a bit."
"You what?" Draco laughed shortly, as if it hurt him to. "I doubt that, Potter."
"I did," Harry was irritated, and his eyes narrowed. "I beat your head against a tree because you were being smart about Hermione."
"The Mudblood?" He asked in clarification, and scooted back as Harry lunged for him, missing by several inches as Draco evaded him. "Perhaps you did," he grudgingly complied, casting a dark look at Harry, who ran his fingers through his hair. "You bastard."
Harry laughed. "You sound normal, Malfoy," he said. "So, we're stuck here until Snape notices we're not back. We were supposed to stay the night yesterday, but tonight...someone's bound to notice we're missing."
"Don't hold your breath," Draco muttered, and Harry arched an eyebrow. "Snape's been apeshit lately over his stupid pre-N.E.W.T classes. You should know, that's the one we were in when you found it amusing to dump my book into my potion-"
"Oh, Malfoy, stuff it," Harry yawned, popping in a bit of mango, and offered Draco the rest of the fruit and a knife to peel it with. "I know you're just smarting because you got shown up. You're so skinny and skill- less, no wonder you get so hostile. Your brain's not too hot, as it is. What's it that you've got going for you, anyway? Being evil?"
Draco tackled Harry before Harry could swallow the bite of mango he had taken. His eyes flashed, though still looking a bit unfocused and the knife glinted the same color as those irises as he held it to Harry's throat.
"Shut up, Potter," he hissed. "Just shut up. You think you're so smart- you don't know a thing. You don't know a damn thing." He stood up and let the knife clatter to the floor. "I'm going out. I'm taking a walk. I have to get out before I kill you."
He had dropped from the treehouse and walked quickly into the forest before Harry could utter a word. He stared after him, wondering what to do next.
Springfall
Summary: When a detention-sprung mishap strands Draco and Harry on a remote Indonesian island, the two opposites must put aside their differences to survive. And something else grows from the cooperation that neither dares to name...
A/N: This will, most likely, be a slash story. Who knows? But if you don't deal well with slash, I suggest you bail if I do decide something more than friendship grows. Thanks for reading! Reviews are always loved & cherished ^_^.
~*~ Part One
The Allotted Time ~*~
~*~
Day 1
~*~
"This is your entire fault, Potter," Draco growled, leaning his head back against a palm tree. It was hot, sticky and unpleasant. A mosquito whined around Draco's sun-bleached hair. He could not believe his luck. Here he was, stuck on this godforsaken little drop of land in the middle of a furious ocean, with Potter. Potter, of all people.
"It is not my fault," Harry snapped back. He, too, was looking worse for wear and his shaggy black hair was bleaching out into an almost dun- like brown. It was getting so wild it was starting to curl at the nape of his neck and his ears. Draco noticed this disdainfully, thinking him looking more feminine than usual. Harry closed his eyes and took off his glasses. "I believe it was you who kicked the Portkey into the ocean."
"I believe it was YOU who got us into these stupid, servitude-esque detentions in the first place!" Draco shouted back, his gray eyes slit against the brazen sunlight. His tone was severe. "If you and Weasley hadn't found it funny to put my book into my cauldron-"
"You deserved it," Harry returned in a savage voice. "You deserved it, if I ever hear you call Hermione a Mudblood again, I swear that I'll kill you." He was glaring at Draco.
"Why should that scare me? I outweigh you as it is," Draco said, examining a hangnail.
"By about ten pounds, Malfoy," Harry said. It was true; Harry had been growing and getting stronger from Quidditch. Draco was still lithe and thin, though taller and with a deeper voice. Draco noticed that, although his hair was rough and wavy and almost mane-like, he was indeed larger than the little eleven-year old Draco had sneered at so long ago in Madam Malkin's. He blinked, the white-hot sun burning his retinas. 'I'll probably go blind out in this hellhole,' Draco thought savagely. "You, on the other hand, still haven't hit puberty yet, I see." Harry continued onward, tired by the heat and angry with Draco's attitude.
"Go to hell, Potter," Draco growled back, opening one gunmetal-gray eye. "Your hair's beginning to look like Granger's, as it is. Your mum was Muggle-born, right? Must be a Mudblood thing, bushy, ugly hair," Draco said in vicious satisfaction.
Harry turned around and dropped to his knees in front of Draco, grabbed his shoulders with calloused hands, and banged Draco's head brutally against the palm tree. Draco saw stars, as Harry continually pounded his head on the tree's solid, spiky trunk.
"I. Warned. You. About. Calling. Her. A. Mudblood!" Harry punctuated each word with a solid smacking of Draco's head against the tree. "You. Do. It. Again. And. I'll. Kill. You. Malfoy." Draco slumped forward, his head brushing Harry's chest, a large blood smear on the sandy-colored trunk behind him. Harry's eyes widened, looking down at Draco's white, baby-fine hair, his anger leaving him in a flood. The back of Draco's fair head was stained maroon with his blood. Harry released his shoulders, his hands trembling, and Draco sagged forward more, his forehead pressing gently against Harry's breastbone. A trickle of blood ran down the centre of his head, down his part, and over his forehead. It ran off his nose onto Harry's yellow tee-shirt and spread there in a little red star. Harry scooted back violently, and Draco fell forward against the ground, the dusty grass rising about him, all the colors about him washed out, the sky a painful blue around his blood-reddened hair.
"Shit," Harry said faintly. He tugged his shirt off over his head, ripped off one of the canary-colored sleeves, and sprinted as fast as his tired legs could carry him to the beach. He tripped and almost fell on his face into the salt water, where he skinned his knees against the rough, rocky sand as he soaked his sleeve in the salt water. He turned and stumbled back to where Draco lay, face-down, on the parched earth. He pulled Draco up, and pressed the sleeve against the smaller boy's injury. Draco didn't move. Harry grew even more alarmed. He struggled again to his feet, his clothing already beginning to dry in the scorching temperature of the mid-day sunlight. He remembered where there was a grove of fruit trees, not too far from where they were now, with a fresh-water pond. He stared down at Draco, no idea what to do with him. He picked his shirt up off the ground, and tucked it into the waistband of his shorts. He heaved Draco to his feet, leaning him against the palm tree for balance, and then he hoisted the limp form of his classmate onto his back, looping Draco's frail arms around his neck, holding the boy's bare knees steady around his own waist. He sighed against the heat and set off; hoping Draco wouldn't die before they figured out a way to get home.
~*~
Day 2
~*~
Draco woke up with a burning headache. He looked down. His neck was red above his grubby white shirt. Draco looked at it in disdain. Why was it so dirty? It looked as though Draco had been rolling about in the dirt. He also wondered why his vision seemed to be opaque and yellow in one eye, and why his head felt as though he had been swimming in a wet cap. He reached up and tugged free Harry's sleeve, studying it. It was yellow only in the front. It was a strange, rusty-sort of color in back, where it had been against his hair. 'It looks like blood,' he puzzled, bemused, trying to figure out why on Earth he had a shirt sleeve on his head, covered in what looked like blood. He sat up against the smooth bark of an orange tree, marveling at the fact the palm tree had grown oranges so randomly and quickly. Draco looked around him. 'Well, this is odd. It's as though I've moved'. His brow furrowed. Moved from where? Where was he, anyway? Why was there a shirt sleeve in his hands? Was he by himself? Wasn't he supposed to be in...here, Draco scrutinized his wrist-watch. 3.30 pm. Shouldn't he be in Charms? Was this even a weekday? Was it Friday? If it was Friday, he should be in Charms. Flitwick would give him detention. He tried to stand up, but his knees buckled.
Well, that was weird. Draco tried again to stand. He fell a second time. Again, he stood and fell. This was repeated twice more before he sat down, shoulders hunched. Well, his legs didn't seem to be working. Perhaps he was drunk? Hung-over? That would explain the splitting headache and lack of limb control. Though it had never seemed so pronounced, the few times he had been drunk before. 'Think, Malfoy, think. Where the hell are you? Are you alone?' In concentration, Draco brought his head back rather sharply and pressed it to the tree trunk.
"SON OF A BITCH!" he shouted, feeling a very, very tender part of his head hit the tree at a force much harder than he would have liked. A noise stopped somewhere ahead of him, but Draco didn't notice. He was rubbing his head, and something sticky came away in his hand. 'What?' Draco thought, puzzled. Someone stopped in front of him, in dirty white trainers with red stripes on their sides.
"Malfoy?" someone asked in a voice coming from far away, as Draco looked at his hand, the same sort of rusty color on his pale palm as that on the shirt sleeve in his other.
"Blood?" he asked no one in particular, before slipping sideways and hitting the wet grass.
"Shit," Harry remarked softly, for about the fifth time that hour. He propped Draco up again, and went back to work. He had managed to chop down quite a few trees (Thank Merlin he had his wand on him) and transfigure the wood into a shack. Not the most beautiful thing he'd ever laid eyes on, but it would do. Harry pondered the use of having this on the ground, where he had spent a miserable night worrying about animals and Draco and Lethifolds* and any number of things, including Cho and his Potions assignment due Monday. He knew that Prongs, the name that he so affectionally called his Patronus, would take care of him if he could manage to remember that spell while being suffocated. Harry had slept little, safe to say. With a swish and a flick, he had levitated the shack up into a strong-looking orange tree, the biggest in this little orchard. It was not far from the pond. He had heard Draco stir and come to investigate. Now that Malfoy had successfully knocked himself out again, Harry finished levitating fruit and the rest of their lunches from the other day up into their treehouse. He had stored water in the canteen Snape had given him, and this, too, he set Wingardium Leviosa upon and set it down in the house. He turned, hearing Draco moan faintly. He walked over to the tree where he had left the Slytherin, and looked down at the boy, faintly amused but more worried.
"How are you, Malfoy?"
"What?" Draco was groggy and his eyes unfocused. Harry frowned, and mumbled 'Mobilcorpus' at Draco, and floated the faintly protesting Draco over to his newly-treed shack. Draco landed with a soft thump on the wood floor, looking about him, as Harry scrambled up a makeshift ladder and joined Draco in the dark, fragrant shelter of the treehouse. Harry felt a bit like a Muggle again, remembering a time at age eight when he had spent the night in Dudley's treehouse during a thunderstorm, as punishment. He had loved every moment of it, and had cried the next morning when Uncle Vernon tried to pry him down from the large elm in the diminutive backyard.
"You feeling okay, Malfoy?" Draco stared at Harry, trying to assess who exactly it was that was talking to him.
"Potter?" He threw this to the wind in a blind guess. Harry nodded.
"You got knocked around good, Malfoy," he replied fervently. Draco looked confused. He blinked, and shook his head, trying in vain to clear his thoughts. He winced instead.
"I, er..." Harry began. "I kind of...smacked you around a bit."
"You what?" Draco laughed shortly, as if it hurt him to. "I doubt that, Potter."
"I did," Harry was irritated, and his eyes narrowed. "I beat your head against a tree because you were being smart about Hermione."
"The Mudblood?" He asked in clarification, and scooted back as Harry lunged for him, missing by several inches as Draco evaded him. "Perhaps you did," he grudgingly complied, casting a dark look at Harry, who ran his fingers through his hair. "You bastard."
Harry laughed. "You sound normal, Malfoy," he said. "So, we're stuck here until Snape notices we're not back. We were supposed to stay the night yesterday, but tonight...someone's bound to notice we're missing."
"Don't hold your breath," Draco muttered, and Harry arched an eyebrow. "Snape's been apeshit lately over his stupid pre-N.E.W.T classes. You should know, that's the one we were in when you found it amusing to dump my book into my potion-"
"Oh, Malfoy, stuff it," Harry yawned, popping in a bit of mango, and offered Draco the rest of the fruit and a knife to peel it with. "I know you're just smarting because you got shown up. You're so skinny and skill- less, no wonder you get so hostile. Your brain's not too hot, as it is. What's it that you've got going for you, anyway? Being evil?"
Draco tackled Harry before Harry could swallow the bite of mango he had taken. His eyes flashed, though still looking a bit unfocused and the knife glinted the same color as those irises as he held it to Harry's throat.
"Shut up, Potter," he hissed. "Just shut up. You think you're so smart- you don't know a thing. You don't know a damn thing." He stood up and let the knife clatter to the floor. "I'm going out. I'm taking a walk. I have to get out before I kill you."
He had dropped from the treehouse and walked quickly into the forest before Harry could utter a word. He stared after him, wondering what to do next.