My H/D fic: Beekeeping (a Career Fair, H/D in Africa fic), part 2 of 2
Title: Beekeeping
Author: khalulu
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): H/D
Summary: A few years after the war, Harry needs distance from the British wizarding world and volunteers abroad as a teacher in a poor rural school. Draco is a low-budget traveler, wandering wherever his curiosity leads him. Their paths cross in Malawi, “the warm heart of Africa.”
Warnings/Content Notes: No real warnings. Contains: sex, mostly not very graphic. Insects, ditto. Snide comment which does not reflect author’s real views on Snarry stories. Mention of previous feline violence against lizards.
Word Count: about 13,600 total; part 2 is about 6,600
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: EWE. Harry and Draco are still wizards and retain all their powers, but magic is not used during the events in this story. This fic may not be seasonally accurate - that is, the relative timing of rainy season/ mango season/ school terms/ constellation visibility probably doesn’t line up properly. There’s a paraphrase of Walt Whitman’s line, “I sing the body electric.” The bee in the apple orchard art at the end is by Deborah Koch. Go here to see a picture of a Dragon Blood Peacock cichlid.
And here is a lovely illustration of Harry's dream, with gorgeous fish art and happy naked boys, by kalime80 - I am so happy that she did this! It's called I dreamt of a thousand scales, and it was you, and it's like a scene of an underwater Eden.
Written for and first posted here in the 2012 H/D Career Fair hosted by hd_fan_fair; a couple of very minor corrections have been made, and some new images added, to this post. Many many thanks to the mods and to my gracious, skillful and encouraging betas, thisgirl_is and altri_uccelli, without whom this fic would have languished unbalanced, unpolished and unseen. Remaining flaws are all mine.
If you'd prefer to read this in German translation, you may, thanks to the lovely phonixfeder!
This fic is brought to you by the letter Z.
Beekeeping
by khalulu
Part 2 of 2 (part 1 is here)
Next morning Draco again slid out of bed as soon as he awoke, sparing Harry the need to analyze anything. They went separate ways in the morning, agreeing to meet up after lunch. When they did, Draco was fretting about his language skills.
“I’m trying to be polite, but why won’t anyone say ‘zikomo’ back to me? Is my pronunciation off?”
“This is the north, and the lakeshore. Maybe the people you’re meeting aren’t Chichewa speakers. Maybe they speak Chitumbuka, or Chitonga or something.”
“What should I say instead?”
“I’m not sure - Yewo, maybe?”
“Zikomo is better,” Draco said definitively.
“Isn’t the one people understand better?”
“Yes, but zikomo starts with a Z.”
“And?”
“The letter has panache. How many English words do you get to say that start with a Z?”
“Zipper,” Harry said, his eyes unaccountably drawn toward Malfoy’s … waistband. “Um, Zabini.”
“Interesting train of thought, Potter. Yes, Blaise did have panache.”
“Where is he now?”
“Italy, last I heard, but that was some time ago. He didn’t … keep in touch. That wasn’t an English word, though, Potter. Focus.”
“Zacharias,” said Harry, apparently stuck back at Hogwarts.
“Smith? Ew. Bad example. Unworthy of the letter. You can do better than that.”
“Zebra.”
“Yes! Do you have any?”
“Do I, personally, have zebras? You mean, wandering around my yard? No, Malfoy. Most of Africa is not a safari lodge.”
“Pity. That is an animal with definite panache. So what do you have wandering around your yard?”
“My neighbor’s chickens, mostly, and the occasional goat. And the neighbor’s kids, when the mangoes on my tree are ripe.”
“That sounds awfully domestic.”
“Well, it is my home we’re talking about. Let’s see. Monkeys turn up sometimes, to tease my cat. I have a brilliant cat. I don’t have enough of a garden to have been raided by baboons, luckily - they’re nasty customers. Once or twice I’ve heard a hyena whooping at night, off in the distance. That’s about it for big animals, unless you count the neighbors’ dogs. Then there are birds, bats, snakes, lizards, geckos. The toad that took up residence in the cat’s water bowl. Oh, and the millipedes.”
“Millipedes? You’re trying to lure me to your home with promises of millipedes?”
Am I? Harry wondered, as they reached Malfoy’s cabin and settled into the chairs outside. But he had to defend the millipedes. “They’re quite striking, actually. And harmless. They get to be about 6 inches long at the beginning of the rainy season, and they’re shiny black with all these feathery orange feet, and they glide along like some sleek modern train, with their legs rippling in and out in waves.”
“You’re turned on by undulating millipede feet? You are perverse, Potter.”
“They’re called pongololos.”
“You made that up.”
“I didn’t.”
“Lovely language they speak here,” Draco mused. “Still, when it comes to seduction, Potter, you could use some lessons.”
“Supposing I wanted them,” Harry said, clearing his throat, “are you offering to teach?”
Getting no immediate answer other than a long look, he leaned back, slid his foot out of his flip-flop, stretched out a bare toe and nudged Malfoy’s knee.
“I learn well by example,” Harry added. “Hands-on experience, that sort of thing.” He wiggled his foot a bit higher up the inside of Malfoy’s thigh.
“I think some private - tutorials - might be possible.” Malfoy’s breathing had an odd little hitch in it. “Fees to be arranged.”
“Payment in kind.” His toe pressed onwards. Draco was starting to slump back in his chair, but with an effort struggled to his feet and pulled Harry with him into the cabin.
“Come here.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Stop that or I’ll think you pulled this on Snape, back in the day.”
“Now who’s perverse?”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
“Oh, smooth line.” Harry was still laughing, which broke up the kiss a bit at first, and their noses bumped. First sober kiss in the full light of day. But he felt a giddy confidence, backing toward the bed, tugging Draco along.
“Just - take these things off,” Draco muttered, trying to unhook Harry’s glasses.
“These things?” said Harry, reaching for the button on Draco’s trousers.
Draco nearly tripped as he tried to step out of them, and landed sprawled on the bed. He leaned over to put Harry’s glasses safely on the nightstand. “Wanton, that’s what you are. Ever hear of finesse, Potter?”
“Unh-unh,” said Harry, joining him on the bed. “You’ll have to show me sometime.”
They’d fallen asleep after sex, and when Harry awoke in late afternoon, his head pillowed on Draco’s chest, he felt Draco gently stroking his hair. Harry opened his eyes and smiled. Draco moved to get up, but Harry reached out and pulled him back. Draco shut his eyes and let his head rest against Harry’s shoulder. Harry leaned his cheek against that fine silky hair and wondered at how they had come to this - whatever it was - and how Draco Malfoy had become this person.
He didn’t expect an answer to questions he didn’t even know how to ask aloud. But later, when they went for a walk at dusk, Draco spoke about his changes since the war.
“It seemed clear that I had to rethink everything. Father had made it sound like there would be a glorious reign of the Dark Lord, protecting the wizarding traditions, but what I saw up close - it was hellish. And if he was wrong about that - what about all the other things I’d accepted? I started to think that the things we’d insisted on the hardest were the ones that had no support but prejudice, the ideas that wouldn’t stand up to close examination. Pure-bloods were supposed to be superior, but Granger was clearly the best student in the school, regardless of how clueless her parents must have been about anything magical. You wouldn’t know a pure-blood tradition if it bit you, but your raw magic was ridiculously powerful. Never mind what you could do on a broom. I was supposed to be the best because I was a Malfoy, but best at what? At annoying you, maybe, but I couldn’t even be truly effective at that. Sic a snake on you, and you start a conversation with it. Do you have any idea what a frustrating person you are, Potter?
“So when I went to France to see Pansy, and to Italy to see Blaise, and they seemed to be just trying to transfer the same pure-blood social world there - I didn’t really want to be part of it. I didn’t know what I did want to do - I didn’t have a career prepared. My parents had some money in European banks, so I could get by if I was careful. One day in Italy I thought, I’d like to see the Sphinx. And then I thought, why not? So I went to Egypt. And from there, I thought I’d like to see dragons in China - they’re creatures of water there, not fire, you know. So I went to China. And it turns out that I’m actually a pretty good traveler - I like languages, so that helps. And each place I went, I’d hear about something else, somewhere else that I was curious to see. It kept me going.”
“But here - you’re not using magic. Wasn’t it hard for you to learn to do things the Muggle way?”
“Yes - but really people - Muggles - were often quite kind when I was lost or confused. I guess they sort of expect it of travelers. Actually, people were far kinder in places where I was a stranger than back in Britain where I was known. It was - humbling. But compared to horrifying, humiliating or heartbreaking, humbling isn’t so bad.”
Next morning over breakfast, Harry said, “I have to get back to start teaching the next term soon. Where are you planning to travel next?”
“Madagascar, I think. I’ve been wanting to go there for awhile.”
“If you have time, want to stop off and see where I live first?”
“To meet your millipedes?”
“You can meet my cat.”
“Well, in that case. And the bees?”
“What bees?” Harry asked, baffled.
“You’re going to be a beekeeper, remember?”
“I was just making that up.”
“I could see it, though.”
“You could see me as a beekeeper?”
“Why not, it calls for a foolhardy constitution, fending off the stinging hordes and all.”
“Um, I don’t think it’s supposed to come to that point, Draco. I think you’re supposed to keep them calm. So they let you get to the honey.”
“I can still see it. I mean, you calm me down. After you annoy me, that is. And I am known for a stinging wit.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think I could handle hordes of you. One is plenty.”
“Just the right number, in fact,” Draco beamed.
They left early in the morning and managed to hitch rides from Nkhata Bay to Mzuzu, and then - luckily - from Mzuzu all the way into Lilongwe, the capital, where they bought cheese, chocolate, lube, and a few paperbacks from the Zimbabwean woman who ran the used book store. Then they squashed into a mini-bus for the last leg of the trip, back through the countryside to Harry’s home.
Draco, squeezed between Harry and a young woman nursing her baby, merely remarked that it was lucky neither of them was tall. There was little leg room, shoulder room, or any other kind of room, but they were better off than the conductor, who had no seat at all when the bus was full, and contorted his body into whatever limited space was available. Children sat on laps, packages lay underfoot, and a few chickens flapped their wings disconsolately under the seats, legs tied together to prevent escape.
The baby finished nursing and turned its attention to Draco, regarding him solemnly. Draco gazed back at it for awhile and finally, with a brief smile at the mother, offered an extended forefinger. The baby grasped his finger and drew it close to examine, eventually pulling the finger into its mouth and gumming it. “I hope my finger’s clean,” Draco said absently.
As the bus jolted to the side of the road to load and unload passengers at Nathenje, food vendors rushed up to the windows. “Hungry?” Harry asked, looking out the window to see what was offered.
“Are there any chips or samosas? Or groundnuts?” Draco asked, turning to him.
“No, around here it’s mostly ears of roasted maize. Oh, and there’s a kid with hard-boiled eggs.”
“Any fruit?”
“Bananas, the sort of angular ones. Want some? I’ve got it,” he added, as Draco started to shift on the seat in an attempt to reach his money. Harry passed a few crumpled bills out the window and bought a bunch of bananas and an ear of the hard, dry, chewy roasted maize, enjoying the smoky smell. Later he flung Draco’s banana peel and his maize cob out the open window. A goat would eat them.
It was late afternoon when they got off the bus and began to walk the last mile to Harry’s house, going steadily uphill. There were few people on this particular road, but as they got closer they ran into a couple of students from Harry’s school, Madalitso and Lonjezo, who insisted on carrying some packages for them, balancing them on their heads as they walked.
“Is this your brother, Mr Potter?” asked Madalitso.
Harry and Draco looked at each other. They were the same age and about the same height, both British and both white, but there the resemblance ended. “No, this is - Mr Malfoy,” said Harry, thinking it sounded very odd.
“My cousin is Mr Potter’s godson,” Draco added, to Harry’s surprise. It seemed to satisfy the students.
They reached the little front gate in the reed fence surrounding Harry’s small mud-brick house, and he thanked the students as he and Draco entered his bare dirt yard. By the time he’d gotten the old-fashioned key to turn in the lock, Kili had turned up, meowing loudly in welcome, and he had to scoop her up for a moment to give her a proper greeting. The sun was sinking. “You can see the sun set behind the peak from the back door,” he told Draco. “Oh - I’m low on drinking water - excuse me, I should run to the borehole before the light is gone. I’ll just be a few minutes.”
“I’ll come,” said Draco, taking one of the small plastic buckets from Harry. Kili trotted after them for a little way, anxious about Harry leaving again so soon. They crossed the dirt road in front of the house and entered the empty school grounds, going down the wide cement steps where students sat for assemblies, then on a steep winding dirt path between the dorms, finally crossing the open area where the boys played football, near the girls’ netball hoops, and down to the community borehole. No one else was there this late. It didn’t take long to pump enough water to fill the two pails, and then they headed back in the fading light. Kili was waiting.
Inside again, Harry hurried to find a candle and match while he could still see. “Sorry it’s a bit of a mess,” he said, entering the little living room. The wavering candle flame showed Draco sitting on one of the woven reed chairs with Kili purring on his lap, a small warm smile on his face. A sudden, unexpected happiness caught Harry by the throat.
In the morning they met Mr Kaliyapa, Harry’s neighbor, who also taught at the school. “Welcome back, Mr Potter! Did you have a good trip? Ah, and is this your brother visiting?”
“Uh, no, this is Mr Malfoy.”
“My cousin was Mr Potter’s godfather,” Draco supplied helpfully.
“Ah, welcome, welcome!”
Harry threaded his way through the crowd at the big weekly Saturday market, looking for Draco where he’d left him by the vegetable sellers sitting among their little heaps of produce. Draco was frowning at a woman selling fried termites. “Have you ever tried these, Harry?”
“No.” Another volunteer had described them as the basic snack food - greasy, crunchy, good with salt - but Harry couldn’t ignore the little dusting of insect legs left on the hand, no matter what a good protein source they were. “I would’ve thought Malfoys didn’t eat insects.”
“This Malfoy might, if the alternative is those dried packaged soya bits.”
“Oh - sorry about those.” Harry didn’t mind them, really, and they were convenient in the absence of refrigeration or cooling charms. But he could see that the orange color might be a little off-putting.
“Don’t tell me you actually bought those stinky little dried fish!” Draco exclaimed, noticing Harry’s little blue plastic bag.
“They’re for Kili.”
“Your cat eats lizards, Potter, in case you hadn’t noticed. She leaves the heads.”
“I like to give her options. And I think those lizard heads are for you.”
“And I thought she liked me,” Draco sighed.
“She adores you, she’s just misjudged your taste. Let’s get some eggs. You got tomatoes?”
“Yes, and something that looks like a cross between a cucumber and a sea urchin. And two heaps of peas.”
“Good, you don’t see peas very often.” They stopped for bread rolls at the little bakery stand, and candles from another little shop.
“Oh, and I can get a bar of laundry soap from Mr Kaliwa’s shop.”
At the tiny shop run by Harry’s teaching colleague, Mrs Kaliwa smiled warmly at him and exchanged greetings in Chichewa. Harry tried to buy something there each time he came to market, but the inventory was so small that it took some ingenuity. Meanwhile Draco admired her roly-poly baby son.
Finally they set off uphill toward Harry’s house, with Draco trying to balance the market basket on his head, to the amusement of several teenage girls who did the same with no effort at all. “How do you do that?” Harry asked. “Nothing ever stays up for me.” Draco smirked and Harry swatted him. “No rude comments, you know what I mean.”
“My mother was quite insistent on good posture. I don’t have the neck muscles to do this for long, though. Oh look, a chip stand - carry the basket and I’ll feed you chips.”
That didn’t seem quite fair, since Harry had his own bag to carry, but the hot chips were delicious, and so was the sparkle in Draco’s eyes and the feel of his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry pursed his lips to suck in the tips of Draco’s fingers as the next chip arrived. Draco’s eyes darkened.
“ Let’s get home.”
They somehow managed the last quarter mile, dropped the shopping on the verandah, stumbled inside and reached for each other.
Next morning Harry drifted up from sleep in a sweet languorous daze, too relaxed to open his eyes. He felt Draco’s head lift slightly from where it had lain on his chest. There was the faintest delicate fluttering tickle against his skin.
“Are those your eyelashes?”
“Those are bee feet, Potter. Someone must cure you of your obsession with feathery millipede legs.”
“Who’s the obsessed one here?”
“Mmm, good question. Let’s find out.”
Still half drugged with sleep, Harry found himself kissed and stroked and rubbed and grasped and licked and sucked into such arousal that he was moaning toward a climax when Draco, laughing, whispered, “Shhh. I hear your neighbors walking by just outside. Probably on their way to church.”
“You,” Harry panted, “are an evil, evil man.”
“Should I stop, then?”
“No! Oh - oh god - oh….”
To the pealing of church bells, Harry came.
Then the school term began again, and Harry had to be up early in the morning. He was busy with teaching, lesson planning, and marking. Draco helped with some of it, visiting class a few times and talking over ideas for lessons. One day they raided the small school library, hauled out various volumes of the encyclopedia, and passed them around, telling students to find a plant, an animal, and a country in each of their different volumes, read about it and tell the rest of the class something they learned. Another time they took the class on a field trip to a local printing press to see an old manual letterpress in action, printing hymnals for a church mission.
Draco learned to ride Harry’s bicycle and rode out to some of the surrounding villages. He read, took walks up to the peak, and planted some fruit tree seedlings in Harry’s yard from a nursery he’d found near the market. Still, he had a lot of free time when Harry was at work, and after a while Harry could tell he was getting restless.
One day Draco came back from a ride unusually silent. “Where did you go today?” Harry asked.
“Out to the next school over. One of the teachers showed me around. I asked about the name of the school.”
“And?”
“He said it was named for the peak near there. Something like ‘fire mountain.’”
“Not a volcano, surely?”
“No. It was a place where they used to burn witches.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. Draco seemed a little paler than usual. “They don’t burn them now, though,” Harry said. “I told you people were hostile to magic here, but we’re not using magic.”
“It doesn’t unnerve you at all?”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
“You? Nothing, Harry, I don’t expect you to solve everything, you don’t even have local wizarding contacts, do you?”
“I guess I just don’t think of myself as a wizard here most of the time.”
Draco stared at him. “Some of us don’t have other options.” He turned to leave.
“Draco, where are you going?”
“I need to take a walk.”
Harry watched him leave, feeling uneasy. Was he supposed to apologize for something, and if so, what? But Draco didn’t mention it when he returned home. He didn’t shout, like Ginny had when she was angry. And he didn’t weep like Cho Chang, thank goodness. Maybe they were all right. Harry let it go.
They were making their way back from a trip to the Saturday market. Sometimes on walks they could hold hands - in Malawi public shows of affection between men and women were considered improper, but it was fine for men to hold hands or drape themselves over each other’s shoulders. (Not because homosexuality was acceptable, but perhaps because it was so stigmatized as to be unthinkable.) But today they had their hands full with purchases and besides it had turned to the hot dry season, which made them both a bit irritable. It wasn’t noon yet, and already Harry’s brain was starting to melt in the heat.
Someone hailed him. “Good morning, Mr Potter! And who is this?”
Harry answered before Draco could start in with his stories. “Just someone I knew from my school days.”
Draco froze.
“Well, I wasn’t going to feed him all that cousin/godparent stuff you keep coming up with,” Harry said after his acquaintance had passed by.
“It’s all true!” Draco answered in surprise. “Truer than saying we ‘just’ knew each other in school.”
“It’s a partial truth, and not the point. It’s misleading.”
“I’m just trying to give them a positive connection they can understand. They can see that we’re close.”
Close. Harry had a mental picture of Ron and Hermione. What would they think of Harry being - whatever he was being with Draco Malfoy? He pushed that thought away impatiently.
“What do you want from me, Malfoy?”
He got a startled look in reply.
“What?” Harry said. It was too hot for this.
“It’s been a while since you called me that.”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Right. And it always will be, so if you still have a problem with that, I guess it’s better to remember it now. You want to give people the whole truth about us, Harry? We can barely handle that ourselves. I’d like to get out of this country in one piece.”
“I’m the one who’s committed to stay here.”
“That’s true,” Draco said. He didn’t speak again until they reached the house, where he left the market bags by the door. “I’m going for a walk.”
“In this sun?” But he was gone.
“Madagascar? What’s in Madagascar?”
“Lemurs. Baobabs.”
“There are baobabs here.”
“One kind, but there are about six kinds there. French cuisine.”
No one came to Malawi for the cuisine.
“Tsingy. Rice terraces.”
“Rice terraces?”
“They follow the line of the hillsides. I hear they’re beautiful from above, all green and silver, sun glinting off the water.”
“Yeah. Well. Enjoy your rice terraces,” said Harry dully. He knew an excuse when he heard one.
“Come with me?”
“You know I have work to finish up here. I can’t leave for three months.”
“It’ll be cyclone season there by that time.”
“Right. Well then, I guess you’ll just have to go see your rice terraces and tell me about them later.”
“I will.”
“Sure. Next time you’re passing through Malawi.”
As Harry slogged through the next couple of months everything seemed grey - though actually most things were a dry dusty brown, waiting for the rainy season. The next few times he went to market, he bought too much, having forgotten what one person could carry and eat. He couldn’t use his bicycle without thinking of Draco’s first rides, his whoop of exhilaration the first time he sailed down the long slope of hill and his disgust at the slow and arduous trip back up.
In the yard, the seedlings Draco had planted were drooping. Harry was tempted to ignore them, until one of his students noticed them and shamed him by going to fetch buckets of water. In a country of subsistence farmers, one could not neglect a future source of food, even though he’d be gone long before the trees bore fruit.
The school year was almost over, and soon Harry’s term as a volunteer would be completed. And after that? He wished he knew.
Meanwhile it was hot and the students complained that they couldn’t concentrate. Harry flipped through the English textbook looking for something that might hold their interest. No one wanted to work on grammar, himself included. He found an excerpt from the novel Harvest of Thorns by Zimbabwean author Shimmer Chinodya. It described a school in a refugee encampment in the bush, run by guerilla fighters during their war for independence. Maybe that would make a good lesson.
His class bent over their shared books in groups of two or three. They took turns reading aloud, and together sorted out who the characters were and what happened.
“How was their school like your school?” Harry asked. “How was it different?”
They made lists on the blackboard. “Those students sat outside on the ground under a tree. Their school didn’t have a classroom or chairs or books, like we do,” his students said. “But they had teachers, they answered questions, they learned new words, like us.”
“What was good about their school? What wasn’t good? Do you think it was a good school, overall?” It wasn’t good, some students said, because it wasn’t safe. It was too close to the war, classes were interrupted, children got hurt. It was a good school, others argued. The teachers and soldiers and doctors cared about the students. They taught them. They tried to feed and help and protect them.
It was an unusually successful lesson, Harry thought afterwards. The students were involved, they were thinking, they were discussing ideas. He wanted to talk about it with someone.
How was their school like our school, Draco?
We learned new things. Teachers tried to protect us. Children got hurt. The war was too close.
But the war was over now.
They can see that we’re close.
Harry’s eyes stung. He wished….
Harry was more than ready for the rains to come. The atmosphere was so oppressive, the air so heavy. Something needed to change. Soon, surely, soon….
A breeze was pushing dark clouds across the sky as he opened the gate of his reed fence to see, sitting on the porch with the cat on his lap, a smiling Draco Malfoy. Harry’s jaw dropped.
A chill fell and the clouds seemed to boil up high and black in the sky.
He felt obscurely angry. “You came back.”
Draco’s smile faltered a little. “You said I could.”
The wind rose a little, pushing at them.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you actually would.”
“I said I would.” Draco looked puzzled and a little apprehensive, rising slowly to his feet as the cat, sensing trouble, jumped away. “I can go, if you’d rather….”
“I WANTED you to STAY THEN.”
“Oh,” said Draco softly. “You didn’t say.”
“You were SUPPOSED to KNOW.”
Draco was silent for a few moments, then looked away. “I don’t … assume I’m wanted.”
Harry’s words died in his throat. Having spent so much of his childhood locked in a cupboard, he couldn’t pretend not to understand. “No,” he said raggedly, “neither do I. Can you see where we might have a problem here?” He unlocked his door and pushed his way blindly inside, as twigs began to snap from the blue gum trees and whirl across the yard.
Draco paused on the threshold, studying him. “May I come in?” Getting no answer, he took a few cautious steps inside, closing the door behind him. Harry stood, arms clenched across his chest, refusing to look at him.
Draco took a long, uneven breath, then approached Harry slowly as one would a wounded animal, speaking in a low voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I was stupid.”
Harry couldn’t say anything.
Draco tried again. “I’m sorry, Harry. Staying here - I don’t have work, and it’s hard to keep hiding - not just being a wizard, but being with you. They think it’s a sin here for men to be lovers, you know that. All these kind people, but they’d think we were damned twice over if they really knew us. I couldn’t spend three months pretending, and I did want to see Madagascar. But I thought about you everywhere I went.” His voice cracked a little. “I didn’t know it would be so hard.”
By now Draco was standing an arm’s length away, a tentative hand outstretched. Finally he reached out to tuck a lock of hair behind Harry’s ear. “You can assume,” he added in a shaky voice, “that I want you.”
Harry had stood frozen, but now he began to tremble. He couldn’t get a word out. A dam of ice was giving way but he wasn’t sure what might come flooding forth.
There was a flash of lightning, a crack of thunder, and rain began to pour down outside in sudden fury. It drummed deafeningly on the metal roof. The sheer noise cracked something open in Harry and he pulled Draco to him. For a moment Harry just held tight and breathed him in, muttering, “Nobody smells like you do.”
Draco, shaking, turned his head to give Harry a desperate kiss. Then Harry was kissing him fiercely, nipping, pressing Draco back against a wall. Suddenly he couldn’t get close enough. Draco grabbed his arse and arched into his body, baring his neck to Harry’s mouth and gasping his name. “You in me or me in you,” Harry rasped, sinking to his knees and nuzzling Draco’s groin, pulling at his clothes.
“Yes - anything.” The cacophony of rain loosened Draco’s restraint and he cried aloud in passion as Harry’s hot mouth closed over his straining cock. He came quickly, slumping against the wall, eyes dark, face softened.
“I need to be in you, now,” Harry panted, rising and turning Draco against the wall, tugging at his own trousers.
“Wait, just -”
“Can’t wait.”
“Just get the lube -”
“Too far.” Harry put his fingers in his mouth to coat them and leaned forward, but Draco was turning and pushing back against his chest.
“Harry,” Draco said firmly. “It’s been two months, it’ll hurt.”
With difficulty Harry held himself back, then wrenched himself away and stumbled five steps to the pantry, grabbing the vegetable oil. When he returned Draco was shedding the last of his clothes.
“I’ll do it,” Draco said, rough voiced. “You strip. I need to feel your skin on mine.” He coated his fingers with oil and breached himself until he was moving against his own fingers, gazing at Harry with eyes heavy with desire.
Unbearably aroused, Harry tore off his own clothes and launched himself at Draco, kissing, biting and sucking at jaw, earlobes, neck, murmuring, “Now? Now?”
“Now,” gasped Draco, pulling his fingers out and turning to bend over the table.
“No - want to see you -” Harry swept a pile of papers to the floor, turned Draco around and hoisted him onto the table.
Draco lay back, grabbed his knees, and spread himself as wide as he could for Harry. Harry drank in his flushed cheeks, rosy swollen lips, nipples and cock, now rising again. The tip of his own cock pushed against his lover’s pink hole and he entered that sweet tight heat with a cry of pleasure. With effort he held back, watching Draco’s eyes, until he got a breathless nod and began to move. So good, so good.
Outside the rain slackened for a few moments and Draco’s moan came out startlingly loud. It was a sound of sexual gratification, not pain, and Harry, used to don’t-wake-the-neighbors lovemaking, found it unutterably hot. He grinned at Draco’s flushed face. Just then the rain returned with redoubled force, crashing against the metal roof, and they both laughed, eyes locked on each other. Harry spit into his hand - he couldn’t reach the oil - and stroked Draco’s cock until Draco arched his back, tossing his head with high-pitched cries of approaching orgasm. He spurted hot and wet over Harry’s hand and clenched around Harry’s cock, and Harry hauled him up into a kiss. He kept thrusting, face buried in Draco’s neck, Draco’s legs wrapped around his waist, until he came with his own shout of release.
Harry might have collapsed on the floor, but Draco wouldn’t let him. “Bed - much more comfortable - I’ll take you, not far.” Harry was too hoarse to protest.
Later, when they got up to eat, Draco told him, “I brought you a couple of things.”
There was a gorgeous polished stone called labradorite that shimmered midnight blue, crossed by a few black lines and white sparks, like a winter night sky seen through bare branches. And a handful of vanilla beans, smelling dark, rich and heady.
Draco had managed to return just in time for the graduation. The Form 4 students, exams over, were happily decorating the examination hall with paper garlands. Harry’s colleague, Mr Banda, came over to meet Draco. “Ah, is this your cousin, Mr Potter?”
“A distant one,” Draco smiled.
“We went to school together,” Harry said.
“Ah, an old friend from school! Talking over your happy memories? What was our Mr Potter like back then?”
“Nothing would have been the same without him,” Draco assured Mr Banda, who welcomed him and went off to check on the sound system.
“Now you’re my cousin?” Harry asked.
“Everyone is related if you’re willing to acknowledge it. There’s a Potter on my mother’s family tree somewhere, I’m sure of it. There’s even a Weasley, for that matter.”
The students were making their own mortarboard caps from taped together white paper. The caps rose high, like a chef’s hat, with long strips of accordion-pleated paper taped on for the tassels. Draco took a scrap of paper and folded an origami crane for Yamikani, the warm, earnest, capable Head Girl, who started a fad by attaching it to the end of her tassel. He was thereafter kept busy folding more and giving origami lessons to whichever laughing students had the patience to make their own.
The ceremony itself brought tears to Harry’s eyes. These students had persevered through years of long dusty or muddy walks to school, or sleeping on reed mats on cement floors if they were lucky enough to be boarders. Years of scraping together the fees for tuition and supplies and uniforms from their meager family resources, standing in line once a week for the privilege of briefly borrowing one of the few textbooks from the library, carrying their blue plastic chairs on their heads from one classroom to another as their overstretched teachers shifted the schedules and combined classes. Many teenagers had lost one or both parents, often to AIDS although no one would say so directly. Many of them would not pass the national exams they had just taken - exams that were designed for them not to pass. Jobs were few, though there were shortages of so many kinds of skilled workers, and subsistence farming was a chancy business. And yet the students came down the aisles singing and dancing, in the joy of music and movement, fellowship and accomplishment, hope and youth.
So Harry was a bit choked up when it came time to sing the national anthem, but Draco had picked up the words and tune from overhearing them at the school assemblies, the combined voices of several hundred students having carried easily across the road to Harry’s little house. Now Draco’s clear tenor blended into the seemingly effortless beauty that is Malawian choral singing:
“Oh God bless our land of Malawi,
Keep it a land of peace.
Put down each and every enemy,
Hunger, disease, envy.
Join together all our hearts as one,
That we be free from fear -
Bless our leader, each and every one,
And mother Malawi.”
“Think I could get one of those seduction lessons now - the ones where you demonstrate? I’ve been writing final reports all day and I’m ready for a change of pace.”
“I was lying, you know,” said Draco, pulling him into his arms. “You never needed any lessons in seduction. That day I went back to my cabin to find you coming in my bed was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.”
“God, that was humiliating. You did see it, then?”
“You were writhing. And then you just lay there in a daze of bliss.”
“I didn’t mean for you to see that.”
“That was painfully clear - you looked horrified when you cracked your eyes enough to see me. At least, you looked like you’d have been horrified if you could’ve summoned the energy. ”
“I wasn’t trying to, you know, wank in your bed. It was a dream, I didn’t have any control.”
“I’d have loved to see that dream.”
“Oh, you were that dream.”
“Oh!” said Draco, surprised and pleased.
“’Nuff talking,” said Harry. “I can see that if I want any seducing done here I’ll have to do it myself. I want to see you writhe.” He pulled Draco into the little bedroom.
Draco flopped back on the bed and flung his arms over his head, grinning. “Have at me, handsome.”
“So what else did they have in Madagascar?” Harry asked, lying in bed, all tangled up in sheets and Draco.
“Zebu.”
Harry just looked at him.
“They’re a kind of cattle, with humps and these gorgeous long curving horns,” Draco elaborated. “People practically worship them.”
“Zebu. They’re the real reason you went to Madagascar, aren’t they? You just have a thing for the letter Z.”
“And what if I do?” Draco reached up to trace lightly, so lightly, over the zigzag of Harry’s lightning-shaped scar. Harry sighed and bent to kiss the faint trail of scar on Draco’s chest.
“You know,” he added once his mouth wasn’t busy elsewhere, “Zambia’s not far from here, and they have zebras there.”
“Oh, we have to see them then! Your work’s almost over here, right?”
“Yeah,” Harry admitted, with a little pang for the things he loved about the life he’d be leaving here. But he understood a little better what Draco had once said about finding one thing to look forward to, to keep you going. “What do you suppose they have in Zanzibar?”
“I’d say we have to find out! It’s practically on the way home, anyway.”
“Home… where’s that,” Harry muttered to himself, uncertainty about the future washing back in.
“Home is where you make it, Harry,” Draco answered, serious now, a questioning look in his eyes for a long moment before he abruptly turned his head away. Chilled, Harry felt him withdrawing - hell, what just happened? He made himself take a deep breath. I don’t assume I’m wanted. Ask and ye shall receive, Potter. Ask, just ask.
He stroked Draco’s arm to get his attention. “Where we make it?” Like a logjam breaking, he thought, watching the light pour again out of his lover’s eyes, dazzling and warm.
Finally Draco said, “I think home will have to be somewhere with an orchard where my-cousin-your-godson can climb my apple trees.”
“Our apple trees?” said Harry, deciding to push it.
“Oh, now you want my apples, do you?”
“Always.”
“And your bees are going to be all up in my rosebushes. Zzzzzz,” Draco buzzed against the side of Harry’s neck.
“You’re the only bee I care about right now.”
“Better keep me then.”
“Oh, I will, I will.” Honey.
the end
Author: khalulu
Rating: NC-17
Pairing(s): H/D
Summary: A few years after the war, Harry needs distance from the British wizarding world and volunteers abroad as a teacher in a poor rural school. Draco is a low-budget traveler, wandering wherever his curiosity leads him. Their paths cross in Malawi, “the warm heart of Africa.”
Warnings/Content Notes: No real warnings. Contains: sex, mostly not very graphic. Insects, ditto. Snide comment which does not reflect author’s real views on Snarry stories. Mention of previous feline violence against lizards.
Word Count: about 13,600 total; part 2 is about 6,600
Disclaimer: All Harry Potter characters herein are the property of J.K. Rowling and Bloomsbury/Scholastic. No copyright infringement is intended.
Author's Notes: EWE. Harry and Draco are still wizards and retain all their powers, but magic is not used during the events in this story. This fic may not be seasonally accurate - that is, the relative timing of rainy season/ mango season/ school terms/ constellation visibility probably doesn’t line up properly. There’s a paraphrase of Walt Whitman’s line, “I sing the body electric.” The bee in the apple orchard art at the end is by Deborah Koch. Go here to see a picture of a Dragon Blood Peacock cichlid.
And here is a lovely illustration of Harry's dream, with gorgeous fish art and happy naked boys, by kalime80 - I am so happy that she did this! It's called I dreamt of a thousand scales, and it was you, and it's like a scene of an underwater Eden.
Written for and first posted here in the 2012 H/D Career Fair hosted by hd_fan_fair; a couple of very minor corrections have been made, and some new images added, to this post. Many many thanks to the mods and to my gracious, skillful and encouraging betas, thisgirl_is and altri_uccelli, without whom this fic would have languished unbalanced, unpolished and unseen. Remaining flaws are all mine.
If you'd prefer to read this in German translation, you may, thanks to the lovely phonixfeder!
This fic is brought to you by the letter Z.
Beekeeping
by khalulu
Part 2 of 2 (part 1 is here)
Next morning Draco again slid out of bed as soon as he awoke, sparing Harry the need to analyze anything. They went separate ways in the morning, agreeing to meet up after lunch. When they did, Draco was fretting about his language skills.
“I’m trying to be polite, but why won’t anyone say ‘zikomo’ back to me? Is my pronunciation off?”
“This is the north, and the lakeshore. Maybe the people you’re meeting aren’t Chichewa speakers. Maybe they speak Chitumbuka, or Chitonga or something.”
“What should I say instead?”
“I’m not sure - Yewo, maybe?”
“Zikomo is better,” Draco said definitively.
“Isn’t the one people understand better?”
“Yes, but zikomo starts with a Z.”
“And?”
“The letter has panache. How many English words do you get to say that start with a Z?”
“Zipper,” Harry said, his eyes unaccountably drawn toward Malfoy’s … waistband. “Um, Zabini.”
“Interesting train of thought, Potter. Yes, Blaise did have panache.”
“Where is he now?”
“Italy, last I heard, but that was some time ago. He didn’t … keep in touch. That wasn’t an English word, though, Potter. Focus.”
“Zacharias,” said Harry, apparently stuck back at Hogwarts.
“Smith? Ew. Bad example. Unworthy of the letter. You can do better than that.”
“Zebra.”
“Yes! Do you have any?”
“Do I, personally, have zebras? You mean, wandering around my yard? No, Malfoy. Most of Africa is not a safari lodge.”
“Pity. That is an animal with definite panache. So what do you have wandering around your yard?”
“My neighbor’s chickens, mostly, and the occasional goat. And the neighbor’s kids, when the mangoes on my tree are ripe.”
“That sounds awfully domestic.”
“Well, it is my home we’re talking about. Let’s see. Monkeys turn up sometimes, to tease my cat. I have a brilliant cat. I don’t have enough of a garden to have been raided by baboons, luckily - they’re nasty customers. Once or twice I’ve heard a hyena whooping at night, off in the distance. That’s about it for big animals, unless you count the neighbors’ dogs. Then there are birds, bats, snakes, lizards, geckos. The toad that took up residence in the cat’s water bowl. Oh, and the millipedes.”
“Millipedes? You’re trying to lure me to your home with promises of millipedes?”
Am I? Harry wondered, as they reached Malfoy’s cabin and settled into the chairs outside. But he had to defend the millipedes. “They’re quite striking, actually. And harmless. They get to be about 6 inches long at the beginning of the rainy season, and they’re shiny black with all these feathery orange feet, and they glide along like some sleek modern train, with their legs rippling in and out in waves.”
“You’re turned on by undulating millipede feet? You are perverse, Potter.”
“They’re called pongololos.”
“You made that up.”
“I didn’t.”
“Lovely language they speak here,” Draco mused. “Still, when it comes to seduction, Potter, you could use some lessons.”
“Supposing I wanted them,” Harry said, clearing his throat, “are you offering to teach?”
Getting no immediate answer other than a long look, he leaned back, slid his foot out of his flip-flop, stretched out a bare toe and nudged Malfoy’s knee.
“I learn well by example,” Harry added. “Hands-on experience, that sort of thing.” He wiggled his foot a bit higher up the inside of Malfoy’s thigh.
“I think some private - tutorials - might be possible.” Malfoy’s breathing had an odd little hitch in it. “Fees to be arranged.”
“Payment in kind.” His toe pressed onwards. Draco was starting to slump back in his chair, but with an effort struggled to his feet and pulled Harry with him into the cabin.
“Come here.”
“Yes, Professor.”
“Stop that or I’ll think you pulled this on Snape, back in the day.”
“Now who’s perverse?”
“Shut up and kiss me.”
“Oh, smooth line.” Harry was still laughing, which broke up the kiss a bit at first, and their noses bumped. First sober kiss in the full light of day. But he felt a giddy confidence, backing toward the bed, tugging Draco along.
“Just - take these things off,” Draco muttered, trying to unhook Harry’s glasses.
“These things?” said Harry, reaching for the button on Draco’s trousers.
Draco nearly tripped as he tried to step out of them, and landed sprawled on the bed. He leaned over to put Harry’s glasses safely on the nightstand. “Wanton, that’s what you are. Ever hear of finesse, Potter?”
“Unh-unh,” said Harry, joining him on the bed. “You’ll have to show me sometime.”
They’d fallen asleep after sex, and when Harry awoke in late afternoon, his head pillowed on Draco’s chest, he felt Draco gently stroking his hair. Harry opened his eyes and smiled. Draco moved to get up, but Harry reached out and pulled him back. Draco shut his eyes and let his head rest against Harry’s shoulder. Harry leaned his cheek against that fine silky hair and wondered at how they had come to this - whatever it was - and how Draco Malfoy had become this person.
He didn’t expect an answer to questions he didn’t even know how to ask aloud. But later, when they went for a walk at dusk, Draco spoke about his changes since the war.
“It seemed clear that I had to rethink everything. Father had made it sound like there would be a glorious reign of the Dark Lord, protecting the wizarding traditions, but what I saw up close - it was hellish. And if he was wrong about that - what about all the other things I’d accepted? I started to think that the things we’d insisted on the hardest were the ones that had no support but prejudice, the ideas that wouldn’t stand up to close examination. Pure-bloods were supposed to be superior, but Granger was clearly the best student in the school, regardless of how clueless her parents must have been about anything magical. You wouldn’t know a pure-blood tradition if it bit you, but your raw magic was ridiculously powerful. Never mind what you could do on a broom. I was supposed to be the best because I was a Malfoy, but best at what? At annoying you, maybe, but I couldn’t even be truly effective at that. Sic a snake on you, and you start a conversation with it. Do you have any idea what a frustrating person you are, Potter?
“So when I went to France to see Pansy, and to Italy to see Blaise, and they seemed to be just trying to transfer the same pure-blood social world there - I didn’t really want to be part of it. I didn’t know what I did want to do - I didn’t have a career prepared. My parents had some money in European banks, so I could get by if I was careful. One day in Italy I thought, I’d like to see the Sphinx. And then I thought, why not? So I went to Egypt. And from there, I thought I’d like to see dragons in China - they’re creatures of water there, not fire, you know. So I went to China. And it turns out that I’m actually a pretty good traveler - I like languages, so that helps. And each place I went, I’d hear about something else, somewhere else that I was curious to see. It kept me going.”
“But here - you’re not using magic. Wasn’t it hard for you to learn to do things the Muggle way?”
“Yes - but really people - Muggles - were often quite kind when I was lost or confused. I guess they sort of expect it of travelers. Actually, people were far kinder in places where I was a stranger than back in Britain where I was known. It was - humbling. But compared to horrifying, humiliating or heartbreaking, humbling isn’t so bad.”
Next morning over breakfast, Harry said, “I have to get back to start teaching the next term soon. Where are you planning to travel next?”
“Madagascar, I think. I’ve been wanting to go there for awhile.”
“If you have time, want to stop off and see where I live first?”
“To meet your millipedes?”
“You can meet my cat.”
“Well, in that case. And the bees?”
“What bees?” Harry asked, baffled.
“You’re going to be a beekeeper, remember?”
“I was just making that up.”
“I could see it, though.”
“You could see me as a beekeeper?”
“Why not, it calls for a foolhardy constitution, fending off the stinging hordes and all.”
“Um, I don’t think it’s supposed to come to that point, Draco. I think you’re supposed to keep them calm. So they let you get to the honey.”
“I can still see it. I mean, you calm me down. After you annoy me, that is. And I am known for a stinging wit.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think I could handle hordes of you. One is plenty.”
“Just the right number, in fact,” Draco beamed.
They left early in the morning and managed to hitch rides from Nkhata Bay to Mzuzu, and then - luckily - from Mzuzu all the way into Lilongwe, the capital, where they bought cheese, chocolate, lube, and a few paperbacks from the Zimbabwean woman who ran the used book store. Then they squashed into a mini-bus for the last leg of the trip, back through the countryside to Harry’s home.
Draco, squeezed between Harry and a young woman nursing her baby, merely remarked that it was lucky neither of them was tall. There was little leg room, shoulder room, or any other kind of room, but they were better off than the conductor, who had no seat at all when the bus was full, and contorted his body into whatever limited space was available. Children sat on laps, packages lay underfoot, and a few chickens flapped their wings disconsolately under the seats, legs tied together to prevent escape.
The baby finished nursing and turned its attention to Draco, regarding him solemnly. Draco gazed back at it for awhile and finally, with a brief smile at the mother, offered an extended forefinger. The baby grasped his finger and drew it close to examine, eventually pulling the finger into its mouth and gumming it. “I hope my finger’s clean,” Draco said absently.
As the bus jolted to the side of the road to load and unload passengers at Nathenje, food vendors rushed up to the windows. “Hungry?” Harry asked, looking out the window to see what was offered.
“Are there any chips or samosas? Or groundnuts?” Draco asked, turning to him.
“No, around here it’s mostly ears of roasted maize. Oh, and there’s a kid with hard-boiled eggs.”
“Any fruit?”
“Bananas, the sort of angular ones. Want some? I’ve got it,” he added, as Draco started to shift on the seat in an attempt to reach his money. Harry passed a few crumpled bills out the window and bought a bunch of bananas and an ear of the hard, dry, chewy roasted maize, enjoying the smoky smell. Later he flung Draco’s banana peel and his maize cob out the open window. A goat would eat them.
It was late afternoon when they got off the bus and began to walk the last mile to Harry’s house, going steadily uphill. There were few people on this particular road, but as they got closer they ran into a couple of students from Harry’s school, Madalitso and Lonjezo, who insisted on carrying some packages for them, balancing them on their heads as they walked.
“Is this your brother, Mr Potter?” asked Madalitso.
Harry and Draco looked at each other. They were the same age and about the same height, both British and both white, but there the resemblance ended. “No, this is - Mr Malfoy,” said Harry, thinking it sounded very odd.
“My cousin is Mr Potter’s godson,” Draco added, to Harry’s surprise. It seemed to satisfy the students.
They reached the little front gate in the reed fence surrounding Harry’s small mud-brick house, and he thanked the students as he and Draco entered his bare dirt yard. By the time he’d gotten the old-fashioned key to turn in the lock, Kili had turned up, meowing loudly in welcome, and he had to scoop her up for a moment to give her a proper greeting. The sun was sinking. “You can see the sun set behind the peak from the back door,” he told Draco. “Oh - I’m low on drinking water - excuse me, I should run to the borehole before the light is gone. I’ll just be a few minutes.”
“I’ll come,” said Draco, taking one of the small plastic buckets from Harry. Kili trotted after them for a little way, anxious about Harry leaving again so soon. They crossed the dirt road in front of the house and entered the empty school grounds, going down the wide cement steps where students sat for assemblies, then on a steep winding dirt path between the dorms, finally crossing the open area where the boys played football, near the girls’ netball hoops, and down to the community borehole. No one else was there this late. It didn’t take long to pump enough water to fill the two pails, and then they headed back in the fading light. Kili was waiting.
Inside again, Harry hurried to find a candle and match while he could still see. “Sorry it’s a bit of a mess,” he said, entering the little living room. The wavering candle flame showed Draco sitting on one of the woven reed chairs with Kili purring on his lap, a small warm smile on his face. A sudden, unexpected happiness caught Harry by the throat.
In the morning they met Mr Kaliyapa, Harry’s neighbor, who also taught at the school. “Welcome back, Mr Potter! Did you have a good trip? Ah, and is this your brother visiting?”
“Uh, no, this is Mr Malfoy.”
“My cousin was Mr Potter’s godfather,” Draco supplied helpfully.
“Ah, welcome, welcome!”
Harry threaded his way through the crowd at the big weekly Saturday market, looking for Draco where he’d left him by the vegetable sellers sitting among their little heaps of produce. Draco was frowning at a woman selling fried termites. “Have you ever tried these, Harry?”
“No.” Another volunteer had described them as the basic snack food - greasy, crunchy, good with salt - but Harry couldn’t ignore the little dusting of insect legs left on the hand, no matter what a good protein source they were. “I would’ve thought Malfoys didn’t eat insects.”
“This Malfoy might, if the alternative is those dried packaged soya bits.”
“Oh - sorry about those.” Harry didn’t mind them, really, and they were convenient in the absence of refrigeration or cooling charms. But he could see that the orange color might be a little off-putting.
“Don’t tell me you actually bought those stinky little dried fish!” Draco exclaimed, noticing Harry’s little blue plastic bag.
“They’re for Kili.”
“Your cat eats lizards, Potter, in case you hadn’t noticed. She leaves the heads.”
“I like to give her options. And I think those lizard heads are for you.”
“And I thought she liked me,” Draco sighed.
“She adores you, she’s just misjudged your taste. Let’s get some eggs. You got tomatoes?”
“Yes, and something that looks like a cross between a cucumber and a sea urchin. And two heaps of peas.”
“Good, you don’t see peas very often.” They stopped for bread rolls at the little bakery stand, and candles from another little shop.
“Oh, and I can get a bar of laundry soap from Mr Kaliwa’s shop.”
At the tiny shop run by Harry’s teaching colleague, Mrs Kaliwa smiled warmly at him and exchanged greetings in Chichewa. Harry tried to buy something there each time he came to market, but the inventory was so small that it took some ingenuity. Meanwhile Draco admired her roly-poly baby son.
Finally they set off uphill toward Harry’s house, with Draco trying to balance the market basket on his head, to the amusement of several teenage girls who did the same with no effort at all. “How do you do that?” Harry asked. “Nothing ever stays up for me.” Draco smirked and Harry swatted him. “No rude comments, you know what I mean.”
“My mother was quite insistent on good posture. I don’t have the neck muscles to do this for long, though. Oh look, a chip stand - carry the basket and I’ll feed you chips.”
That didn’t seem quite fair, since Harry had his own bag to carry, but the hot chips were delicious, and so was the sparkle in Draco’s eyes and the feel of his hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry pursed his lips to suck in the tips of Draco’s fingers as the next chip arrived. Draco’s eyes darkened.
“ Let’s get home.”
They somehow managed the last quarter mile, dropped the shopping on the verandah, stumbled inside and reached for each other.
Next morning Harry drifted up from sleep in a sweet languorous daze, too relaxed to open his eyes. He felt Draco’s head lift slightly from where it had lain on his chest. There was the faintest delicate fluttering tickle against his skin.
“Are those your eyelashes?”
“Those are bee feet, Potter. Someone must cure you of your obsession with feathery millipede legs.”
“Who’s the obsessed one here?”
“Mmm, good question. Let’s find out.”
Still half drugged with sleep, Harry found himself kissed and stroked and rubbed and grasped and licked and sucked into such arousal that he was moaning toward a climax when Draco, laughing, whispered, “Shhh. I hear your neighbors walking by just outside. Probably on their way to church.”
“You,” Harry panted, “are an evil, evil man.”
“Should I stop, then?”
“No! Oh - oh god - oh….”
To the pealing of church bells, Harry came.
Then the school term began again, and Harry had to be up early in the morning. He was busy with teaching, lesson planning, and marking. Draco helped with some of it, visiting class a few times and talking over ideas for lessons. One day they raided the small school library, hauled out various volumes of the encyclopedia, and passed them around, telling students to find a plant, an animal, and a country in each of their different volumes, read about it and tell the rest of the class something they learned. Another time they took the class on a field trip to a local printing press to see an old manual letterpress in action, printing hymnals for a church mission.
Draco learned to ride Harry’s bicycle and rode out to some of the surrounding villages. He read, took walks up to the peak, and planted some fruit tree seedlings in Harry’s yard from a nursery he’d found near the market. Still, he had a lot of free time when Harry was at work, and after a while Harry could tell he was getting restless.
One day Draco came back from a ride unusually silent. “Where did you go today?” Harry asked.
“Out to the next school over. One of the teachers showed me around. I asked about the name of the school.”
“And?”
“He said it was named for the peak near there. Something like ‘fire mountain.’”
“Not a volcano, surely?”
“No. It was a place where they used to burn witches.”
Harry didn’t know what to say. Draco seemed a little paler than usual. “They don’t burn them now, though,” Harry said. “I told you people were hostile to magic here, but we’re not using magic.”
“It doesn’t unnerve you at all?”
“What do you expect me to do about it?”
“You? Nothing, Harry, I don’t expect you to solve everything, you don’t even have local wizarding contacts, do you?”
“I guess I just don’t think of myself as a wizard here most of the time.”
Draco stared at him. “Some of us don’t have other options.” He turned to leave.
“Draco, where are you going?”
“I need to take a walk.”
Harry watched him leave, feeling uneasy. Was he supposed to apologize for something, and if so, what? But Draco didn’t mention it when he returned home. He didn’t shout, like Ginny had when she was angry. And he didn’t weep like Cho Chang, thank goodness. Maybe they were all right. Harry let it go.
They were making their way back from a trip to the Saturday market. Sometimes on walks they could hold hands - in Malawi public shows of affection between men and women were considered improper, but it was fine for men to hold hands or drape themselves over each other’s shoulders. (Not because homosexuality was acceptable, but perhaps because it was so stigmatized as to be unthinkable.) But today they had their hands full with purchases and besides it had turned to the hot dry season, which made them both a bit irritable. It wasn’t noon yet, and already Harry’s brain was starting to melt in the heat.
Someone hailed him. “Good morning, Mr Potter! And who is this?”
Harry answered before Draco could start in with his stories. “Just someone I knew from my school days.”
Draco froze.
“Well, I wasn’t going to feed him all that cousin/godparent stuff you keep coming up with,” Harry said after his acquaintance had passed by.
“It’s all true!” Draco answered in surprise. “Truer than saying we ‘just’ knew each other in school.”
“It’s a partial truth, and not the point. It’s misleading.”
“I’m just trying to give them a positive connection they can understand. They can see that we’re close.”
Close. Harry had a mental picture of Ron and Hermione. What would they think of Harry being - whatever he was being with Draco Malfoy? He pushed that thought away impatiently.
“What do you want from me, Malfoy?”
He got a startled look in reply.
“What?” Harry said. It was too hot for this.
“It’s been a while since you called me that.”
“It’s your name, isn’t it?”
“Right. And it always will be, so if you still have a problem with that, I guess it’s better to remember it now. You want to give people the whole truth about us, Harry? We can barely handle that ourselves. I’d like to get out of this country in one piece.”
“I’m the one who’s committed to stay here.”
“That’s true,” Draco said. He didn’t speak again until they reached the house, where he left the market bags by the door. “I’m going for a walk.”
“In this sun?” But he was gone.
“Madagascar? What’s in Madagascar?”
“Lemurs. Baobabs.”
“There are baobabs here.”
“One kind, but there are about six kinds there. French cuisine.”
No one came to Malawi for the cuisine.
“Tsingy. Rice terraces.”
“Rice terraces?”
“They follow the line of the hillsides. I hear they’re beautiful from above, all green and silver, sun glinting off the water.”
“Yeah. Well. Enjoy your rice terraces,” said Harry dully. He knew an excuse when he heard one.
“Come with me?”
“You know I have work to finish up here. I can’t leave for three months.”
“It’ll be cyclone season there by that time.”
“Right. Well then, I guess you’ll just have to go see your rice terraces and tell me about them later.”
“I will.”
“Sure. Next time you’re passing through Malawi.”
As Harry slogged through the next couple of months everything seemed grey - though actually most things were a dry dusty brown, waiting for the rainy season. The next few times he went to market, he bought too much, having forgotten what one person could carry and eat. He couldn’t use his bicycle without thinking of Draco’s first rides, his whoop of exhilaration the first time he sailed down the long slope of hill and his disgust at the slow and arduous trip back up.
In the yard, the seedlings Draco had planted were drooping. Harry was tempted to ignore them, until one of his students noticed them and shamed him by going to fetch buckets of water. In a country of subsistence farmers, one could not neglect a future source of food, even though he’d be gone long before the trees bore fruit.
The school year was almost over, and soon Harry’s term as a volunteer would be completed. And after that? He wished he knew.
Meanwhile it was hot and the students complained that they couldn’t concentrate. Harry flipped through the English textbook looking for something that might hold their interest. No one wanted to work on grammar, himself included. He found an excerpt from the novel Harvest of Thorns by Zimbabwean author Shimmer Chinodya. It described a school in a refugee encampment in the bush, run by guerilla fighters during their war for independence. Maybe that would make a good lesson.
His class bent over their shared books in groups of two or three. They took turns reading aloud, and together sorted out who the characters were and what happened.
“How was their school like your school?” Harry asked. “How was it different?”
They made lists on the blackboard. “Those students sat outside on the ground under a tree. Their school didn’t have a classroom or chairs or books, like we do,” his students said. “But they had teachers, they answered questions, they learned new words, like us.”
“What was good about their school? What wasn’t good? Do you think it was a good school, overall?” It wasn’t good, some students said, because it wasn’t safe. It was too close to the war, classes were interrupted, children got hurt. It was a good school, others argued. The teachers and soldiers and doctors cared about the students. They taught them. They tried to feed and help and protect them.
It was an unusually successful lesson, Harry thought afterwards. The students were involved, they were thinking, they were discussing ideas. He wanted to talk about it with someone.
How was their school like our school, Draco?
We learned new things. Teachers tried to protect us. Children got hurt. The war was too close.
But the war was over now.
They can see that we’re close.
Harry’s eyes stung. He wished….
Harry was more than ready for the rains to come. The atmosphere was so oppressive, the air so heavy. Something needed to change. Soon, surely, soon….
A breeze was pushing dark clouds across the sky as he opened the gate of his reed fence to see, sitting on the porch with the cat on his lap, a smiling Draco Malfoy. Harry’s jaw dropped.
A chill fell and the clouds seemed to boil up high and black in the sky.
He felt obscurely angry. “You came back.”
Draco’s smile faltered a little. “You said I could.”
The wind rose a little, pushing at them.
“Yeah, but I didn’t think you actually would.”
“I said I would.” Draco looked puzzled and a little apprehensive, rising slowly to his feet as the cat, sensing trouble, jumped away. “I can go, if you’d rather….”
“I WANTED you to STAY THEN.”
“Oh,” said Draco softly. “You didn’t say.”
“You were SUPPOSED to KNOW.”
Draco was silent for a few moments, then looked away. “I don’t … assume I’m wanted.”
Harry’s words died in his throat. Having spent so much of his childhood locked in a cupboard, he couldn’t pretend not to understand. “No,” he said raggedly, “neither do I. Can you see where we might have a problem here?” He unlocked his door and pushed his way blindly inside, as twigs began to snap from the blue gum trees and whirl across the yard.
Draco paused on the threshold, studying him. “May I come in?” Getting no answer, he took a few cautious steps inside, closing the door behind him. Harry stood, arms clenched across his chest, refusing to look at him.
Draco took a long, uneven breath, then approached Harry slowly as one would a wounded animal, speaking in a low voice. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know, I was stupid.”
Harry couldn’t say anything.
Draco tried again. “I’m sorry, Harry. Staying here - I don’t have work, and it’s hard to keep hiding - not just being a wizard, but being with you. They think it’s a sin here for men to be lovers, you know that. All these kind people, but they’d think we were damned twice over if they really knew us. I couldn’t spend three months pretending, and I did want to see Madagascar. But I thought about you everywhere I went.” His voice cracked a little. “I didn’t know it would be so hard.”
By now Draco was standing an arm’s length away, a tentative hand outstretched. Finally he reached out to tuck a lock of hair behind Harry’s ear. “You can assume,” he added in a shaky voice, “that I want you.”
Harry had stood frozen, but now he began to tremble. He couldn’t get a word out. A dam of ice was giving way but he wasn’t sure what might come flooding forth.
There was a flash of lightning, a crack of thunder, and rain began to pour down outside in sudden fury. It drummed deafeningly on the metal roof. The sheer noise cracked something open in Harry and he pulled Draco to him. For a moment Harry just held tight and breathed him in, muttering, “Nobody smells like you do.”
Draco, shaking, turned his head to give Harry a desperate kiss. Then Harry was kissing him fiercely, nipping, pressing Draco back against a wall. Suddenly he couldn’t get close enough. Draco grabbed his arse and arched into his body, baring his neck to Harry’s mouth and gasping his name. “You in me or me in you,” Harry rasped, sinking to his knees and nuzzling Draco’s groin, pulling at his clothes.
“Yes - anything.” The cacophony of rain loosened Draco’s restraint and he cried aloud in passion as Harry’s hot mouth closed over his straining cock. He came quickly, slumping against the wall, eyes dark, face softened.
“I need to be in you, now,” Harry panted, rising and turning Draco against the wall, tugging at his own trousers.
“Wait, just -”
“Can’t wait.”
“Just get the lube -”
“Too far.” Harry put his fingers in his mouth to coat them and leaned forward, but Draco was turning and pushing back against his chest.
“Harry,” Draco said firmly. “It’s been two months, it’ll hurt.”
With difficulty Harry held himself back, then wrenched himself away and stumbled five steps to the pantry, grabbing the vegetable oil. When he returned Draco was shedding the last of his clothes.
“I’ll do it,” Draco said, rough voiced. “You strip. I need to feel your skin on mine.” He coated his fingers with oil and breached himself until he was moving against his own fingers, gazing at Harry with eyes heavy with desire.
Unbearably aroused, Harry tore off his own clothes and launched himself at Draco, kissing, biting and sucking at jaw, earlobes, neck, murmuring, “Now? Now?”
“Now,” gasped Draco, pulling his fingers out and turning to bend over the table.
“No - want to see you -” Harry swept a pile of papers to the floor, turned Draco around and hoisted him onto the table.
Draco lay back, grabbed his knees, and spread himself as wide as he could for Harry. Harry drank in his flushed cheeks, rosy swollen lips, nipples and cock, now rising again. The tip of his own cock pushed against his lover’s pink hole and he entered that sweet tight heat with a cry of pleasure. With effort he held back, watching Draco’s eyes, until he got a breathless nod and began to move. So good, so good.
Outside the rain slackened for a few moments and Draco’s moan came out startlingly loud. It was a sound of sexual gratification, not pain, and Harry, used to don’t-wake-the-neighbors lovemaking, found it unutterably hot. He grinned at Draco’s flushed face. Just then the rain returned with redoubled force, crashing against the metal roof, and they both laughed, eyes locked on each other. Harry spit into his hand - he couldn’t reach the oil - and stroked Draco’s cock until Draco arched his back, tossing his head with high-pitched cries of approaching orgasm. He spurted hot and wet over Harry’s hand and clenched around Harry’s cock, and Harry hauled him up into a kiss. He kept thrusting, face buried in Draco’s neck, Draco’s legs wrapped around his waist, until he came with his own shout of release.
Harry might have collapsed on the floor, but Draco wouldn’t let him. “Bed - much more comfortable - I’ll take you, not far.” Harry was too hoarse to protest.
Later, when they got up to eat, Draco told him, “I brought you a couple of things.”
There was a gorgeous polished stone called labradorite that shimmered midnight blue, crossed by a few black lines and white sparks, like a winter night sky seen through bare branches. And a handful of vanilla beans, smelling dark, rich and heady.
Draco had managed to return just in time for the graduation. The Form 4 students, exams over, were happily decorating the examination hall with paper garlands. Harry’s colleague, Mr Banda, came over to meet Draco. “Ah, is this your cousin, Mr Potter?”
“A distant one,” Draco smiled.
“We went to school together,” Harry said.
“Ah, an old friend from school! Talking over your happy memories? What was our Mr Potter like back then?”
“Nothing would have been the same without him,” Draco assured Mr Banda, who welcomed him and went off to check on the sound system.
“Now you’re my cousin?” Harry asked.
“Everyone is related if you’re willing to acknowledge it. There’s a Potter on my mother’s family tree somewhere, I’m sure of it. There’s even a Weasley, for that matter.”
The students were making their own mortarboard caps from taped together white paper. The caps rose high, like a chef’s hat, with long strips of accordion-pleated paper taped on for the tassels. Draco took a scrap of paper and folded an origami crane for Yamikani, the warm, earnest, capable Head Girl, who started a fad by attaching it to the end of her tassel. He was thereafter kept busy folding more and giving origami lessons to whichever laughing students had the patience to make their own.
The ceremony itself brought tears to Harry’s eyes. These students had persevered through years of long dusty or muddy walks to school, or sleeping on reed mats on cement floors if they were lucky enough to be boarders. Years of scraping together the fees for tuition and supplies and uniforms from their meager family resources, standing in line once a week for the privilege of briefly borrowing one of the few textbooks from the library, carrying their blue plastic chairs on their heads from one classroom to another as their overstretched teachers shifted the schedules and combined classes. Many teenagers had lost one or both parents, often to AIDS although no one would say so directly. Many of them would not pass the national exams they had just taken - exams that were designed for them not to pass. Jobs were few, though there were shortages of so many kinds of skilled workers, and subsistence farming was a chancy business. And yet the students came down the aisles singing and dancing, in the joy of music and movement, fellowship and accomplishment, hope and youth.
So Harry was a bit choked up when it came time to sing the national anthem, but Draco had picked up the words and tune from overhearing them at the school assemblies, the combined voices of several hundred students having carried easily across the road to Harry’s little house. Now Draco’s clear tenor blended into the seemingly effortless beauty that is Malawian choral singing:
“Oh God bless our land of Malawi,
Keep it a land of peace.
Put down each and every enemy,
Hunger, disease, envy.
Join together all our hearts as one,
That we be free from fear -
Bless our leader, each and every one,
And mother Malawi.”
“Think I could get one of those seduction lessons now - the ones where you demonstrate? I’ve been writing final reports all day and I’m ready for a change of pace.”
“I was lying, you know,” said Draco, pulling him into his arms. “You never needed any lessons in seduction. That day I went back to my cabin to find you coming in my bed was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen.”
“God, that was humiliating. You did see it, then?”
“You were writhing. And then you just lay there in a daze of bliss.”
“I didn’t mean for you to see that.”
“That was painfully clear - you looked horrified when you cracked your eyes enough to see me. At least, you looked like you’d have been horrified if you could’ve summoned the energy. ”
“I wasn’t trying to, you know, wank in your bed. It was a dream, I didn’t have any control.”
“I’d have loved to see that dream.”
“Oh, you were that dream.”
“Oh!” said Draco, surprised and pleased.
“’Nuff talking,” said Harry. “I can see that if I want any seducing done here I’ll have to do it myself. I want to see you writhe.” He pulled Draco into the little bedroom.
Draco flopped back on the bed and flung his arms over his head, grinning. “Have at me, handsome.”
“So what else did they have in Madagascar?” Harry asked, lying in bed, all tangled up in sheets and Draco.
“Zebu.”
Harry just looked at him.
“They’re a kind of cattle, with humps and these gorgeous long curving horns,” Draco elaborated. “People practically worship them.”
“Zebu. They’re the real reason you went to Madagascar, aren’t they? You just have a thing for the letter Z.”
“And what if I do?” Draco reached up to trace lightly, so lightly, over the zigzag of Harry’s lightning-shaped scar. Harry sighed and bent to kiss the faint trail of scar on Draco’s chest.
“You know,” he added once his mouth wasn’t busy elsewhere, “Zambia’s not far from here, and they have zebras there.”
“Oh, we have to see them then! Your work’s almost over here, right?”
“Yeah,” Harry admitted, with a little pang for the things he loved about the life he’d be leaving here. But he understood a little better what Draco had once said about finding one thing to look forward to, to keep you going. “What do you suppose they have in Zanzibar?”
“I’d say we have to find out! It’s practically on the way home, anyway.”
“Home… where’s that,” Harry muttered to himself, uncertainty about the future washing back in.
“Home is where you make it, Harry,” Draco answered, serious now, a questioning look in his eyes for a long moment before he abruptly turned his head away. Chilled, Harry felt him withdrawing - hell, what just happened? He made himself take a deep breath. I don’t assume I’m wanted. Ask and ye shall receive, Potter. Ask, just ask.
He stroked Draco’s arm to get his attention. “Where we make it?” Like a logjam breaking, he thought, watching the light pour again out of his lover’s eyes, dazzling and warm.
Finally Draco said, “I think home will have to be somewhere with an orchard where my-cousin-your-godson can climb my apple trees.”
“Our apple trees?” said Harry, deciding to push it.
“Oh, now you want my apples, do you?”
“Always.”
“And your bees are going to be all up in my rosebushes. Zzzzzz,” Draco buzzed against the side of Harry’s neck.
“You’re the only bee I care about right now.”
“Better keep me then.”
“Oh, I will, I will.” Honey.
the end