Rating: Mature
Languages: English, Na'vi
Genre: Hurt/Comfort
2nd Genre: Romance
Character A: Harry J. Potter
Character B: Tsu'tey
Summary: When they went to sleep, they hoped of a better future. But with Gaia insane and Magic as dead as his friends, Harry has no reason to stay. Escape and exist was all he had in mind when he stowed away on a ship to Pandora. Not another war. Slash.
WARNING: Slash, Character Death, AU, OCs, Dark Themes.
Last time:
"Tsu'tey, I was barely living before. I was running away from the truth of what happened. True, you caused me pain by bringing it up, by ripping the wounds open." The Warrior cringed, his ears folding back as he recoiled away from the Wizard who leaned over and grabbed his hand, pulling him back. "But you helped me. It hurts, yes, I don't think it will ever stop hurting, but I can face it now," he explained soothingly as he tied the armour to the Na'vi, "I can think of my Brothers, of my Sisters, I can remember the green of our home, I can look back on the good times without drowning in the bad. There's still a long way to go yet but...
"I can live now."
And now:
In the time that Harry had been spending with the Na'vi, Hera's clutch had hatched, birthing three beautiful, healthy little Whelps about the size of your average Tiger back on Earth in varying shades of metallics. Like some of the birds back on Gaia, the majority of the eggs that Hera had laid were unfertilized, false, to better the chances of the real hatchlings surviving if a predator came across the nest.
Harry had been overjoyed with their arrival when he finally returned to his old home – having finally been convinced by Mo'at, Eytukan and Sylwanin, at the insistence of Tsu'tey, to move into Hometree as a permanent resident of the large majestic tree. He was just there to pick up his belongings and see both Hera and Zeus, the latter of which had been none too happy about his arriving on the back of Tsu'tey's mount, clinging to his back beneath the crouched form of the Na'vi Hunter. Evidentially, Tsu'tey was under the impression that Harry wouldn't return to Hometree without sufficiently insistent reminders. Mostly consisting of being picked up and carried off by the much larger male. Harry was not amused. Tsu'tey, who was really only in his mid-teens if Harry was calculating this right, had finally relaxed enough to behave his age when he wasn't seeing to his duties as a Warrior, Olo'ekan in Training and a Hunter. This had translated to Harry occasionally being scooped up and carted off to go swimming or running, the Warrior took great delight in teasing him for his child-like proportions and lack of skill with a bow, Mother Eywa, how he hated that thing. And Tsu'tey knew it, the bastard.
However, despite his time living with the Na'vi, he still didn't know all of their ways.
Attempting to name the Hatchlings had made that rather obvious.
"One does not name an Ikran until you have Bonded with them," Tsu'tey explained, crouching beside Hera's nest, the white female curled around her Mate's Rider, thoroughly enjoying the small pink fingers as they gently scratched those hard to reach places that made her close her eyes and relax in a boneless sprawl. "When one Bonds, it is... For life, they become yours, you become theirs. The name you give your Partner, is the name of your Bond. Once named, Ikran will not answer to any but the giver of their name," he explained, Harry looking at the three creatures clamouring within the nest, falling over one another as they wrestled and trilled, clambering over their mother's wings and back only to tumble off – like kittens really.
The Wizard nodded, "I understand." And Tsu'tey merely nodded his head, making a mental note to asking Mo'at or Neytiri to focus on the more obvious things that the younglings were taught, not just their language.
Due to the nature of how he was treated by the Sky People, for the period of his depression and healing with the Omaticaya both Mo'at and Eytukan had requested that the Dream Walkers not enter into Hometree or the territories closest to their settlement. Grace was still holding her English lessons with Neytiri and Tsu'tey and the other children but she did not attempt to follow them back to Hometree for the midday meal as she would have before, politely respecting the wishes of the Clan leaders and keeping her distance.
Which was why it was so startling, so jarring, for Harry when he ended up coming face to face with the woman in the middle of the base-commons. The two ended up almost walking into each other was she was being pulled along by her students and Harry was trotting through to find Zuleika – he had been feeling rather like a third wheel, like he wasn't pulling his weight, so he was intending to ask to be apprenticed to the proud woman, help her forge weapons and tools for the Clan as there was only one of her, and many of them.
They had both stopped dead at the sight of the other with barely a foot separating them.
Grace's lemur-like golden eyes were wide with surprise and a touch of fascination as she recognised the Wizard in front of her, so close that she could see the pin-points of bioluminescence and a very faint, delicate dusting of freckles on his face. How his green eyes weren't a mix of blue and brown and green but pure green, such an improbable colour that resembled the forests of Pre-Purge Earth. Or rather, more accurately, of the illegal Magical curse of Avada Kedavra.
Her mouth opened a touch in shocked realisation.
The only known survivor of the Avada Kedavra curse was a dark haired man with startling green eyes called Harry. Harry Potter, the strongest of the Wizards, their Commander, their Saviour. Their greatest Weapon in the Purges and the most well known face of Magical History outside of Tom Marvolo Riddle and Hermione Granger.
Before she could even speak though the Wizard recoiled almost as if struck before shooting off past her, vanishing into the jungle without a trace.
She wanted to follow after him but the slight frowns and the disapproving gazes of the Na'vi around her made Grace uncomfortable, it wouldn't have been a good idea when Harry was so terrified of her, of Muggles in a whole. She sighed sadly before her students began to cry for her attention, making her smile and allow herself to be pulled up into the eating halls.
There was time. She could wait until he came to her.
Personal grooming was very much a communal thing amidst the Na'vi, a way of improving social bonds with their Brothers and Sisters in the Clan. Harry, who had never been entirely one hundred-percent with physical contact, having been denied it for so long that it became something foreign and uncertain, even while being so desperately craved.
Even so, he was accepted without hesitation, the children pulling him into the games they played within the water, some of the younger females giggling over his obvious anatomy differences as he found himself unbraiding Eytukan's Queue in the river, gently washing the black strands of his hair with great care while Mo'at and her daughters did the same with each other. It was nice to be part of a family again. Now, if only they would stop laughing at his junk he would feel less inadequate and thoroughly uncomfortable.
The children didn't seem to understand how afraid of Grace Harry was, they kept pulling him into the school to meet her and it took everything inside of him to just smile awkwardly and make his excuses having stood silently and skittishly in the doorway for as long as he humanly could before fleeing.
If Neytiri or Tsu'tey noticed that the length of time he was capable of spending within Grace's presence had grown in any way, they hadn't commented on it and in the case of Neytiri, begun to aid the children in bringing the last Wizard into contact with the School Teacher/Scientist. The Warrior however, watched with faintly disapproving eyes whenever his Intended and the children did so, scowling and folding his arms as Harry skittered nervously like a Horse being urged into Thanator territory.
It would have seemed a little like torture if he had not known that forcing the green eyed male into contact with his greatest fear, allowed him to slowly learn to control it. It didn't hurt that Grace would always be happy whenever she saw the other male, hesitantly asking him questions while he was in a state of semi-anxiousness, semi-comfort. He would eye her warily for a moment, as if wondering what she had to gain by asking such things, but he would answer anyway, remembering that there was no one left to use the knowledge against, and nothing to gain from creature's long extinct.
The opportunity to learn about the world Harry grew up in before the Sky People ravaged it was something that Neytiri and Tsu'tey would not give up unless their friend was truly unwilling to be within the Dream Walker's company.
"My great grandfather had an Aunt who was a Witch," Grace explained, shrugging a shoulder, to Harry's question about why she wasn't afraid of him like every other Muggle would be. "He never met her, she died when he was very young, but her son came to live with them."
Harry stared at her contemplatively, "He had to go through the checks, didn't he? Your Great Grandfather."
Grace nodded, "Yes, everyone related to Magic Folk did." She smiled humourlessly, "Still do. Hospitals have figured out a way of checking for an Active Magic gene, they don't check the general populace because its so expensive to do but if anyone is born to a known family with Magic roots, they're checked." She quite noticeably didn't say what happened if they did have magic. "But the scary thing is, a few years after the Purges, there was no one born with an Active Gene." Or she just had no reason to.
"No one? I knew Gaia was weak but surely she wouldn't have withered that quickly," Harry exclaimed, his features paling in shock.
Grace paused, frowning at him, "Gaia? I wasn't aware that the Wizards had a religion," she admitted, curiously.
"We don't. No one believed in Gaia, I didn't either, until I met her. Until she tried to eat the Magic out of my body." Grace blanched in shock, the Planet tried to eat his magic? Was that even physically possible? The Planet was capable of autonomous thought and action? Seeing the look on her face Harry sighed and began to explain, "Humanity, Muggles, aren't Native to Earth. I've told you this before, that's why Historians and Anthropologists and Archaeologists haven't been able to find that oh so important Missing Link. It doesn't exist. Back then, every Witch and Wizard was roughly six hundred times more powerful than the average Witch or Wizard from before the Purges." That piece of information had the Xenobotanist lean back in shock, to think that such powerful individuals were considered Weak compared to how they used to be?
Harry nodded seriously at her reaction, "Yeah, with all the resources that Muggles took from the Earth, the weaker Gaia became and the less Magic she was able to give us and the world around us. In the beginning, when you first arrived, everyone was curious about you, we'd never encountered anything like it, Mother Gaia was curious, she was only a teenager back then, a child really. We took care of you, Magi, we taught you how to think, how to survive, to awaken that extra percentage of your brain and actually plan for the future and use your hands for things other than killing things. As time progressed, your people grew, we taught you the balance and you understood, you accepted and we all lived happily, Gaia provided. But after a while... Muggles forgot about Gaia and her role, they began to grow and fight against the Balance, fearing death and pain. You began to take and take and take, hoarding away everything you could without care for what it may do to the Planet. For a while that was fine, Gaia was young and healthy, she could provide a little extra, it was no strain.
"We tried to regulate you and it worked for a while, Atlantis was a good example, as was Camelot and Avalon. There are other places but they were the shining examples of co-operation between our peoples. But, fear began to grow, along with Muggle numbers and determination to spread out and consume. Time passed and Muggles completely forgot the balance as Gaia tried to provide for them and stopped communicating with us, more and more years passed, generations upon generations and soon even we forgot and became unable to speak or hear her voice.
"Then Industry began to boom, crude oils, mining, farming. Destroying the surface to better provide for yourself, upsetting the balance by overbreeding certain creatures and exterminating others. More and more Muggles were being given the Gift of magic as the Earth began to weaken, Gaia hoped that if they were brought into the Magical World, they would realise the problem and attempt to help her by preventing the growing industry. But no one could hear her voice anymore and the Magic Folk had gone into hiding as Muggles turned against them and started to try and kill them.
"It was like that until the end. Right up until the end of the Purges, Gaia continued to feed more Magic into the Muggles, Magic that would have otherwise gone to a Pureblood Child in the hopes that they would prevent the growing problem. Crude Oil running out, poison in the atmosphere... Then myself, Hermione, Ron, Neville and Luna we fled to the Antarctic, we were going to sleep for a very long time until the Muggles forgot about Magic and then come back, try to live again, raise our families in peace without the fear of death biting our heels. But... Gaia was dying, with so many of us dead and the Muggles consuming until she was nothing but a withered husk she was insane with pain and hunger and loneliness. She ate the magic out of us in the hopes she could use it to survive longer."
Grace stared at him in open mouthed horror, "You're the only one who survived."
He nodded, "I fought her, for months. I hid my magic away so deeply within myself that she couldn't reach it without ripping me apart first." There was a moment of silence as he drew his knees up to his chest, picking at his filthy toes, "We... I... I beat her, we fought and I won. I won against the being that gave me my power, that gave my whole species life." He chewed his bottom lip, Grace blinking somewhat in detached fascination as his ears folded back, his slightly pointed human ears. "She's probably dead by now."
"Dead?" Grace echoed, her voice curiously horrified and hallow, almost like it was coming from someone else.
Harry nodded, "She's been dying for a millennia. Its not surprising."
That night, Grace sat in her office with an awful lot on her mind while Harry curled up with Neytiri and Tsu'tey, thinking back on the past, remembering Ron and Hermione... and the Dursleys.
Working with Zuleika in the forges was long, hot and sweaty work, she was a no-nonsense woman who knew her stuff, her hands were covered with scars from where she tested the sharpness of her blades before giving them to those who traded for them. Harry worked as her runner, delivering them once they had been completed and gathering materials for her, often spending many an hour swimming in the river looking for the nubs of shiny metal pyrite. Completely unaware of just how valuable the muggles held the metal he was fishing out.
Fairly soon he became the person to go to for anything out of the rivers, his smaller form meant he could swim into tight nooks and crannies, smaller fingers could reach into places no one else could and while unable to hold his breath for as long as others, his body was a lot more buoyant and flexible, capable of powering through the water at a much faster pace than anyone else. On top of the metal nubs Zuleika needed, he gathered algae and plant roots, the eggs of various water creatures, even something that could have passed for Pandora's version of a Pearl that all the Na'vi girls crowded around him for a better look at.
He gave it to Mo'at in thanks for her taking care of him, he saw her wearing it threaded into her hair at the next evening meal.
So it came as something of a surprise when Neytiri suddenly exclaimed over the shade of his skin, what Harry had been assuming was merely silt stains that refused to be budged until he took some soap-root to it – something he was a little too busy for but since he spent sixty percent of his time in the water his cleanliness wasn't really an issue – was in fact something else entirely and grew curious Na'vi and concerned Warriors to his side in an instant to gawk and run their three-fingered hands across his exposed skin.
Markings in patterns similar to their own, silty grey-blue with tracings of tan-brown and silvery scar-pink, striping his entire body and bringing out the pinpoints of white freckles. It was surprising but not worth the sensation that it caused in Harry's opinion, then Tsu'tey was at his side, hand on his head and frowning slightly.
"You are taller," he pointed out in what most definitely not a pout, but still disappointed that he wasn't as small and tease-able anymore. Harry frowned slightly and realised that, yes, he was actually taller. Where as when he first met the Hunter he had barely been level with the man's crotch, the past few months had him standing at eye-level with his belly-button and now he was glaring straight at his elbow.
One of the Senior Warriors roughly mussed his hair, laughing about how he still had a long way to go before he was as tall as one of their bows though. Everyone laughed while Harry flicked a metal nub between his eyes.
Along with his added height and skin colourations, Sylwanin discovered another change in her adoptive younger brother as everyone bathed in the river later. Her long fingers pausing in the tickly lathered tangle of his hair as she blinked down at the improbability in front of her.
"Mother, look," she called, beckoning the older woman over from where she had been helping Neytiri with her Queue, the two females clustering around the smallest of their family while he frowned and tried to look around in concern – Sylwanin's hand on his head preventing him from moving as she delicately traced a finger down the back of his neck, making his gasp and try to squirm away.
Mo'at stared at the soft pink tendrils at the back of the Magi's neck, they stood straight like plant spines when disturbed and ready to shoot needles at predators, they were not long but it was the pores they grew from, bumped and pocked she frowned in concern.
"What is it? What are you all looking at?" Harry asked, attempting to crane his head back and look.
Briefly, Mo'at entertained the thought of Tsaheylu just to see if it really was like her own before swiftly discarding it, disgusted with herself for even having the thought. But this did open up an avenue of consideration that she had never given thought to before. The fact that Hari was so young looking, small and obviously different, she had automatically dismissed the possibility of a Mating, it had not even crossed her mind. Tsaheylu would be impossible without a Tswin and no female would consider a Mating without Eywa's blessing or knowing her Mate's mind, but here, in front of her, was proof of Eywa's design to ensure Hari's acceptance and happiness. Though he was small, oddly coloured and different, he was still the same, he was one of them, capable of Tsaheylu, a member of the People and a member of the family.
"Eywa has given you another gift," Mo'at finally said, kissing his forehead, "The chance to have a family, a Mate and children, of your own."
Green eyes stared at her uncomprehendingly, "I – what?"
Chapter Fin...
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