Chapter One Hundred and Forty-One of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- Declaring Loyalties
Chapter One Hundred and Forty.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (141/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Eventual Harry/Draco and Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Angst, violence, some gore, AU from Prisoner of Azkaban onwards
Rating: R
Summary: AU of PoA. Harry wakes in the night to a voice calling him from somewhere in the castle-and when he follows it, everything changes. Updated every Friday.
Author’s Notes: This is a canon-divergent AU that starts after Chapter 7 of Prisoner of Azkaban. It will probably run to at least the mid-point of The Half-Blood Prince. It will also be long.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-One-Declaring Loyalties
Harry leaned back against Dash’s flank. They were on the shore of the lake, and Dash didn’t object to being a couch right now, but Harry wanted to sit on the ground. He thought it might make him feel less like he was going to float away after that grueling session with Leila Greengrass.
How can someone even be that selfish? Harry complained to Dash down the bond. It was like I saw into her mind while she was making the Vow, and she doesn’t care about anyone in the entire world except four people! Herself and her husband and her daughters. How can you not think about more than that?
Dash lowered his head and touched his tongue gently to the scar on Harry’s forehead. There are people like that, who think they’re being clever and playing a game that the entire world plays. They’re actually not clever enough to realize that their games are going to blow back on them, because they never pay enough attention to other people to see that they’re getting annoyed.
Harry sighed and looped his arm around Dash’s neck, a motion Dash was more than happy to encourage. “We had to do the Vow because we can never trust her,” he said aloud. “The most we can do is bribe her.”
“I’m afraid my father is in the same category.”
Harry started and looked over his shoulder, then relaxed and smiled a little when he saw Draco. He held out his hand. Draco came over and sat down next to him without a word. He did take Harry’s hand, but there was a piercing quality to his gaze that made Harry a little uneasy.
“Did, um,” Harry started. “Did your father say something about that? Because I thought he did think about people outside his family. That’s why he realized Voldemort was a danger to you in the first place.”
“I was referring to my father as someone you had to bribe.” Draco leaned against Dash’s flank, too. “Do you know why I didn’t say anything in that session where you bound Mrs. Greengrass?”
“No.” Harry had tried to talk to Draco afterwards, but Draco had just shaken his head and said there was something he had to do, then slipped off. Harry hadn’t seen him for the rest of the day.
“Because my father was behaving strangely during it.” Draco squinted at the sun as if trying to make it set, his shoulders so tense Harry rubbed one automatically. “I went to go talk to him. He told me he wasn’t pleased that I stood back and let others take the lead.”
Harry stared. “What? I mean, there was nothing your blood magic or your other expertise could have done during that Vow! I would have asked you if there was.”
“I know, Harry. But I think my father’s ambition has turned in a different direction now. For a long time he wanted to be the most valued Death Eater. Then he wanted to stand high in Ministry politics. For a little while he was completely focused on keeping me and Mother safe. Now-”
“He wants to be my most valued follower,” Harry whispered, the pieces clicking together in his mind.
Draco nodded. “He wasn’t happy that I stood there and said nothing because he thinks his value to you depends mostly on me. You have to show that you prize me every moment or he thinks you don’t.” He hesitated. “And I think, from some hints he dropped, that he wants to replace Severus.”
“As my guardian?”
“No, no, I don’t think so,” Draco said hastily. Harry knew he was very against anything that would make them seem like brothers to other people. “Just as someone you trust. He told me that there were moments you and Severus seemed to be communicating silently, almost the way that Voldemort used to do through the Mark with his Death Eaters. I think he envies that.”
Harry shook his head, fighting to keep a smile from breaking out on his face. “To think I would hear about the day Lucius Malfoy envies Severus Snape,” he muttered when Draco raised an eyebrow at him.
Draco snorted. “At least I don’t think we need to worry about some stupid stunt from him. He’s past that stage, and anyway he saw where it got Mrs. Greengrass.”
Harry nodded, but absently, his mind going back to Lucius’s behavior in that meeting. Yes, he’d spent a lot of time staring at Severus and Harry instead of watching Leila, which was kind of strange when Harry thought about it.
But it also made him tired. He was so tired of people thinking that they should get close to him so that he could give them what they wanted, when most of the time Harry wouldn’t give it to them even if he could.
Dash turned so that he could touch Harry’s scar with his tongue again. I think things are coming to an end very soon.
Harry turned so that his face was resting more fully on Dash’s flank. Why do you say that?
We have caused so much damage to Voldemort that he must fear what he’s going to lose in the eyes of his followers. We’ve damaged his brain, his hand, and his Horcruxes. What will he lose next? He’ll want to finish us so that he doesn’t look dangerously weak for losing to a child-for that is how he will try to portray you, no matter how many people you have following you or that you’re bonded to a basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin.
Harry smiled a little. But we don’t know how many of his followers know about the brain damage and the Horcruxes. Probably not very many.
The hand would be harder to hide. Dash’s tongue slid over his forehead one more time. And it might be that, after all of this is over, people will look at you to lead them less, and you can have a more peaceful life. But right now, I think we ought to start to make battle plans.
Harry swallowed and sat up. “You think that we have enough allies and power on our side now to cause that much damage to Voldemort?” he asked. Draco looked back and forth between them without taking his arm from around Harry’s waist.
Yes. It will be hardest to neutralize Voldemort, and that’s why we have to continue to weaken him. Dash paused, his tail drawing slow, random patterns on the ground. And I think that you shouldn’t fight in the battle.
Harry narrowed his eyes. “Fuck that! I’m not going to abandon my people when they need me.”
“What is Dash saying?” Draco interjected, looking fairly narrow-eyed himself.
“That I should abandon people.”
That’s because you never listen to me when I want you to, Dash said, his tone as exasperated as a mother smacking a child on the back of the head. Listen to me, will you? The battle, when Voldemort is at least partially distracted, is the time that I was thinking we’d attack the Horcrux bond between the two of you.
Harry swallowed, his throat dry and stinging. “But won’t you have to be patrolling and protecting the place we choose to have the battle? Not sitting with me?”
What does the fate of anyone else matter to me compared to your own? No, of course I will be protecting you and helping to get rid of that Horcrux.
“I know that we’ve discussed ways, but between how unpredictable the Elder Wand is and the fact that we have to use battle Legilimency…”
The Elder Wand rattled in his pocket, as if to say that it had its own version of unpredictability. Harry ignored it, watching the way that Dash’s eyelids fluttered as if he was thinking about lifting them off his eyes.
I know there are ways to do it. I think that we shouldn’t try them until we’re absolutely ready and Voldemort is distracted by the rest of the battle.
Harry clenched his hands into fists. “So the rest of the battle-where people will be fighting for their lives-is just a distraction?”
Of course not. It’s a distraction for Voldemort, not other people. I fully expect your friends to fight and your allies to kill some Death Eaters. And we should make sure that no one simply picks up the mantle of blood prejudice when Voldemort is defeated and continues on as if nothing has happened. But it’ll be less important than the battle happening with your mind for a staging ground.
“You know that Severus is going to want to help.”
He can help by making sure that no one breaks in and disturbs us, and by making sure that he’s taught you as much as he can about battle Legilimency before we begin. And we do have a few other things to take care of, like the Horcrux in Gringotts. But this stalemate can’t continue forever. Voldemort would snap and do something like poisoning the werewolves of Josephine’s pack again. We can’t drive him to that extreme. Or, at least, I could, but I know that you don’t like it.
Harry said nothing and simply looked across the water into the Forbidden Forest. Draco continued sitting beside him, warm and comforting, his arm around Harry’s waist. Harry closed his eyes and wished for a moment that he was just a normal boy, no Boy-Who-Lived, no dead parents, nothing but his boyfriend with him.
You wouldn’t have met me, then.
Harry gentled his touch on Dash’s scales. Sorry for thinking that. But you know our bond might end anyway?
Harry didn’t think anyone else would have noticed the ominous stillness that took over Dash at that, no matter how much attention they paid to him. What are you talking about?
The Horcrux is what gives me my Parseltongue abilities. When it’s gone, then I won’t be able to speak with you or other snakes anymore-
Dash swung around, hissing. Harry lost his hold on him, and Draco had to tighten his own grip on Harry’s waist as Dash swung to face them. “What the fuck is going on?” Draco muttered, but he did it into Harry’s back between his shoulder blades.
“We’re dealing with a bloody temperamental basilisk, is what!” Harry said, and kept his stare on Dash, whose eyelids were again trembling as if he was going to raise them.
You are deliberately trying to provoke me. Dash quieted, and left only the ripples of his anger to run through his body, making the dirt rustle around him. You don’t really think that you would lose our bond because you lost the Horcrux.
“I told him that my Parseltongue might vanish when we destroy the Horcrux,” Harry told Draco. He turned away from the expression on Draco’s face to look at Dash again. I don’t want it to! I just said that it might.
You think that I am bonded to the remnant of Voldemort inside you instead of you?
Harry hesitated. He knew the wrong answer, but he also thought there was a trap here for the right one. Er-no?
Then do me the favor of supposing that I know who I have bonded to. Dash lowered his head at last, and something smoked in the dirt near the line of his jaw. A drop of venom, Harry realized, which had slid free of his fangs and then down his face. The Horcrux’s destruction will only free you from the looming kind of despair that tries to take advantage of you at moments like this.
“He thinks that’s ridiculous, right?” Draco murmured into Harry’s neck, and then promptly distracted him by planning a kiss right there.
“Yeah.” Harry tilted his head, giving Draco more space to kiss. “He says that he’s bonded to me, not the part of Voldemort hiding behind my scar.”
“Of course he is.” Draco sound so scornful that Harry was grateful he hadn’t spent a lot of time talking about this with his boyfriend. “Harry.” He turned Harry around with his hands on his shoulders. Draco’s gaze was deep and searching and made Harry want to run away as he’d used to do when people tried to ask him about the Dursleys. “You don’t believe that all of your talents and gifts come from that Horcrux?”
“Of course not! But the Parseltongue is one that’s supposed to be hereditary and only coming out of Slytherin’s line, and-”
“It is more complicated than that,” Dash hissed aloud, turning his head so that he seemed to be looking back along the length of his body. “Even in the days of my original body, there were multiple families who possessed it. Just not very many in Britain, and fewer who flaunted it openly after my bad reputation started to grow.”
Harry blinked. Oh. Of course. There could have been multiple Parselmouths around who hid what they were once they found out what it would make other people think of them. “Well, now I feel stupid.”
“It’s a rather one-sided conversation, here.”
“Sorry, Draco. Dash was just saying that multiple people even in Britain had it, but they might not have announced it after his, I mean, Salazar Slytherin’s, reputation started to spread.”
“Hmm. That’s true. Wouldn’t it be something if people started thinking well of Parselmouths again because of all the good deeds you’ve done?”
Harry hadn’t even considered that, but it was certainly a more appealing thing to try and live up to than being known as the killer of Voldemort or the Boy-Who-Lived. He slung an arm around Draco’s shoulders. “Have I told you lately that you’re brilliant?”
“You might have,” Draco said, drawing Harry closer with his eyes shining. “But I’m always open to hearing it again.”
*
Draco read over the letter from Bellatrix, frowning. He didn’t think his control over his aunt was slipping-the blood magic link in his mind felt as firm as it ever had, and there was also Mrs. Zabini’s potion-but her description of the actions that Voldemort was taking was disturbing.
“What’s bothering you, Malfoy?”
Draco started and looked up to see Theodore Nott sitting across from him. Draco folded the letter slowly. It was true that he’d been sitting in the middle of the common room and anyone could have come up to him and asked about that letter, but he was still uncertain how much of Theo’s loyalties really lay with Harry. “Some bad news from home.” That would even be true, if Father kept up this collision course with Professor Snape Draco was foreseeing.
“You don’t have to put me up that way.” Theo leaned towards him, his voice soft and hoarse. “I think we’re on the same side.”
Draco froze his smile. There were older Slytherins watching them from the corners whose loyalties he wasn’t uncertain of. “Well, you could put it that way,” he returned, in an almost exact echo of Theo’s words, and stood. “I need to go to the Owlery.”
“I’ll come with you.”
Draco wanted to grind his teeth, but instead, he just asked for Ultio to come with him. Ultio rode his upper arm and watched Theo carefully the whole time. Draco kept his eyes focused straight ahead. It was true that Theo had already helped them, but he hadn’t done anything since then. Draco didn’t want to risk exposing their secrets to someone who was still looking to save his own skin.
But if he was, Theo behaved with unusual openness by tugging insistently on Draco’s sleeve and making him stop in the middle of the corridor. Draco turned around with an irritated huff. “What is it, Nott?”
“I only wanted to know what the letter said.”
Draco gave him a single slashing look and continued to walk. That look should have driven Theo from his side, but he continued to tag along. Draco sighed. He supposed he wasn’t as good at those looks as Professor Snape was. “Look, you must know I’m not going to tell you that. So why are you really here?”
Theo gave a single shiver, and then cast a charm that made the air around them turn dark and thick. Draco immediately seized his wand, but Theo shook his head. “It’s just a spell that will foil any attempt to eavesdrop on us. Even spells that someone has cast on clothes and bricks in the corridor won’t work. The portraits and ghosts can’t hear us, either.”
Draco raised his eyebrows, but used the modified spell his mother had taught him that would detect the nature of magic anyway. The numbers that came back to him weren’t ones he’d seen before. They did broadly reflect this to be a kind of protection charm against listeners, though.
Draco lowered his wand. “Well? I’m listening.”
Theo clenched his fists in front of him. “The Dark Lord is planning some sort of huge initiation. I know it because I got an invitation. He wants everyone who he owled to come to him on the dark of the moon next month and receive the Dark Mark.”
Draco stared. “That makes no sense. My father said all the initiations he knows about were private and the Death Eater who went through them had to swear to tell no one else, either.”
Theo gave a quick shrug. “Maybe he’s changed his tactics because he needs new Death Eaters. Anyway, I thought I’d tell you.”
“And you want something for this, of course.” It wasn’t the sort of thing Harry would have guessed, but then, Theo could have gone to Harry with this information, too. There had to be a reason he’d approached Draco.
“Of course I do.” Theo’s smile was weak and wobbly in a way that would have terrified Draco if he had seen it before the war really started. As it was, he couldn’t think of anything else being terrifying compared to Voldemort. “I’m a Slytherin.”
“What do you want?”
“I think I need to leave the school.” Theo raised a hand, even though Draco hadn’t started objecting. “When I don’t show up to that initiation-and I have no intention of becoming a Death Eater-then my life is pretty much forfeit. If Voldemort didn’t kill me himself, he’d have someone he initiated who’s in Slytherin do it.”
Draco narrowed his eyes. “So you want sanctuary.”
“Yeah. With your family.”
“You really think my father will go for that?”
Theo shrugged. “Just because some people choose to be deaf doesn’t mean I do. Professor Snape is obviously against Voldemort, but on the other hand, he’s right here and he’s going into the thick of battle. He wouldn’t make a good protector for me. Your father, on the other hand…if the rumors are true and he’s found a way to get rid of the Dark Mark, he’s against Voldemort, but he wouldn’t be on the front lines.”
“My father knows plenty of spells!”
“And I’d imagine Potter still has him working behind the scenes, trying to find a way to make the battle less costly, because that’s the way your father likes to work.”
Draco huffed. He couldn’t really deny that characterization, as much as he’d like to. “You realize that it’s not just my father who would have to give his consent for you staying at the Manor? Mother would, too.”
“I can be charming when I need to be.”
Draco grimaced a little. He knew that Mother wouldn’t really say no. Theo and his father had visited the Manor when Draco and Theo were both younger, and as much as his father was a lost cause, Mother wouldn’t want to give up on someone Draco’s age. “Then I’ll owl them and ask them in code. You’ll probably have to talk to them through the Floo before you go, though.”
Theo nodded. “I would expect nothing less. Thank you, Draco.” He paused as though he was going to say something else, then shook his head, canceled the charm, and hurried away.
Draco looked at Ultio and discovered that he had his snout pointed straight at the wall. Draco squinted along the length of his snake’s nose and then felt his eyes widen. “Dash was right there and overheard everything, didn’t he?” he muttered.
Ultio bobbed his head thoughtfully. Draco gave the wall a grateful glance and kept walking. At least the only thing he would need to write now was to ask his parents if Theo could seek sanctuary. Dash would make sure that the news of the mass Death Eater initiation reached the right ears.
*
“A mass initiation at the dark of the moon.” Severus hadn’t stopped pacing since Dash brought the news to Harry and Harry brought the news to him. “He has never done something like that before.”
Harry absently petted Dash’s neck. He was mostly out in the corridor, his body draping along the stones. “Well, maybe it’s because he’s running low on Death Eaters. He wants to induct some impressionable people who’ll serve him instead of running away or taking their Marks off?”
“Perhaps.” Severus halted, staring straight ahead. “Unless…”
“Yes?” Harry asked when perhaps five minutes had passed in silence. He liked to give Severus the time he needed to say something, but this was a lot longer than usual.
“There is a ritual that could be performed at the dark of the moon, with innocent blood,” Severus said. “I hesitate to think that Voldemort would have had enough time to set it up, but-we need the letter that Mr. Nott was sent. It should contain enough clues to let us know if the initiation would happen in the kind of place the ritual would need.”
“What kind of ritual is it?”
“To bathe in innocent blood and temporarily absorb the victims’ magic.” Severus turned to face Harry, and his face had gone pale enough that Harry prepared to Conjure a chair to catch him if he fainted. “He would be able to win, then.”
No, Dash said down the bond into Harry’s mind. We are not going to let that happen.
Well, of course we aren’t, but we have to prevent him from conducting the ritual anyway, Harry sent back, irritably.
I think, Dash said, and Harry could feel the trickle of smugness in the back of his mind, that we can have our own countermeasure ready to go. Not just stopping the ritual, but bringing this insane war to an end.
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Two.
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