#shipwreck battlemap | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

the-starryknight · 3 years

Text

By Merlin's Hand, Save Him Rated: T | TW: Minor Character Injury | 1k

For the 2021 Summer Writin' Challenge: Week 2 Prompt: The Ocean, Trope: Time Travel, Craft: Reverse Chronology, Characters/Objects: A Forgotten God Summary: "We've got him," Draco says, as they land back at the hospital room with everything that they'll need to reverse the curse. Thanks to @hogwartsfirebolt for the speedy and stellar beta!

It's pouring down rain, thunderous and angry, but this time, the sea is raging too, splashing over the sides of the boat and sending each of them into bouts of sickness in turn. Draco is belowdecks with the other sailors because he's better at speaking Old English and the sailors' tongue, and at pretending that they're both from the seventeenth century too. So Harry's taking the latest turn at the watch, way up high in the nest where the boat’s rocking is worst, three ropes around his waist tied to the wooden mast. It’s not enough to stop his stomach from wanting to vault out of him.

He's got his wand still, at least, barely keeping a hold on it as the boat lurches and he stares into the night sky, and wonders if Merlin ever listens to prayers, because Harry's going to need some saving this time around. He's meant to be looking out for other ships or great waves, or anything that might set them to capsize but all he can see is rain and the black-blue bruise of the sea.

He hears Draco at the top of the bulkhead before he sees him, shouting into the wind, soaked through after only seconds on deck. They're both wearing thick wool and tar-coated jackets, and Harry had a hat at one point, though it's long gone, lost to the crashing, roiling waves but it doesn't matter, because he does feel a bit warmer now that Draco's there, doesn't he?

"I’ve got it,” Draco shouts, or Harry really fucking hopes that’s what he’s shouting, because he’s brandishing something gold and if it’s not the talisman they came for, they’re both going to die.

“Let me down,” Harry calls back, praying the wind would carry it down. “He’s going to be alright, we just have to get back now.”

The rain steals the words in his throat but Draco Apparates up to his side anyway and he does have it, and then they’re flying through time, the little gold Time-Turner around both their necks and all is going to be alright.

-----

“I’ve got it,” exclaims Draco, fingers spread across the surface of a massive leather manuscript, still perched on the rickety wooden ladder in a massive library in St Gallen.

The library is busy with scholars, nose-deep in their reading or caught in conversation, and no one notices Draco’s poorly draped robes, nor Harry’s badly-transfigured leather boots and the glint of the gold Time-Turner under the collar of his robe as he rushes to Draco’s side.

“Let me see it,” Harry breathes.

Draco slides the heavy tome into his hands and steps off the ladder so they can spread it out between them, one hand on either side. Harry leans closer, pressing his shoulder against Draco’s and breathing in the feeling.

“The spell takes an incantation, a golden talisman, and three stones marked in the name of Merlin,” Draco reads, scanning over the page quickly. “The incantation is here, it’s— well, it’s complex, but it’s manageable,” and he mutters some translation Harry can’t make out.

“A golden talisman?”

Draco points to the illustration, gilded and gleaming off the page. “The author of this book didn’t know where it was.”

“But you do.”

He’s already got the Time-Turner out and slung around both their necks, muttering about a seventeenth-century shipwreck — so much history lost to the seawater that day, Harry — and they’re moving, and Harry’s still got the book in hand.

-----

It’s raining outside the St. Mungo’s room, awful and unrelenting, and it’s been raining since Harry came home to drag Draco out of their bed and to Ron’s side, and Ron’s not waking up.

“I’ve got him,” murmurs Draco, pushing past Harry to sit by his bedside. “I can watch over him for you.”

He takes one of Ron’s pallid hands between his two and rubs the freckles on his knuckles like that’s going to help.

“You need to go get checked out,” Draco says, nodding towards the nurse’s station behind the door, which is bustling with mediwix and potions carts and noise. “Let me take care of him.”

Before he can go, a Healer in headache-inducing green robes walks into the room, clipboard in hand. She starts talking about a bitter, ancient curse and a healing spell lost from a centuries-old Swiss library.

Harry can’t leave after hearing that, so he stays and listens and worries and wonders if there’s any trace of Merlin himself left to protect them in their magic.

-----

Draco and Harry are playing chess together against Ron because it’s the only way that the game is fair, and Ron’s still winning. It’s an antique set that Draco dredged out of an estate sale and cleaned and repaired till it gleams like it was made fresh yesterday, even though the hands that carved each perfect marble piece are centuries buried.

Draco’s good at that sort of stuff, finding ridiculous magical objects in hoards most leave to rot and fixing them until they’re perfect again. There’s a time turner on their bedroom shelf and a prototype sneakoscope from the eighteenth century and a unicorn horn, hand-carved with protective runes and minute decorations across every surface.

Ron’s sprawled out on the couch and Draco is sitting — as he always does — too neatly, legs crossed, surveying the board like a battlemap. Harry is pacing, since he says he thinks better that way, towering over them and the board.

“I’ve got it,” Draco says, and reaches across, flicking his rook into position. Ron grins, like he does when he’s about to destroy them, and makes his move.

It’s when the knight has raised his tiny marble sword that the Patronus arrives with Robards’ panicked voice, shouting about some cache of specialized magic users with violent, rare spell books and three Aurors dead already.

Harry and Ron run, casting protective spells as they Accio their cloaks, leaving Draco amid the crushed chess pieces, smiling because he thinks they’re both coming back safe.

Read 'By Merlin's Hand' on Ao3

#drarry #drarry fic #hpdm #draco malfoy x harry potter #2021 summer writin

39 notes · View notes