Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Eight of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- One Night in Gringotts
Chapter One Hundred and Forty-Seven.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (148/?)
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-Eight-One Night in Gringotts
“Promise me that you’ll take as many precautions as you can.”
I don’t even know what precautions I would take. I’m going to enter the bank and bypass magic that can’t stop me. What would you like me to do?
Harry huffed and stepped forwards to hug Dash’s nose when he bent it down to brush gently against Harry’s chest. “Prat of a snake. You know that the goblins might still have come up with something that could hurt you.”
Unlikely. Am I not Salazar Slytherin? Am I not a mature basilisk, the only one of my kind on Britain’s soil? Am I not the mightiest of magical creatures? Am I not-
“A braggart,” Harry replied in Parseltongue as he stepped back from Dash and turned his head to look at Severus, who was standing by to Apparate the basilisk.
Dash hissed wordlessly at him and turned his head away to admire his scales and the sleek shine of them. Harry gave a single, deep breath and met Severus’s eyes. Severus inclined his head and touched, for a second, the pouch at his side that contained a potion Harry didn’t know much about. Severus had said that it would “distract the goblins,” whatever that meant.
Harry had asked if Severus really wanted to do that, when it would mean that he probably wouldn’t be able to bank in Gringotts again. Severus had laughed and asked if Harry really thought he was keeping money there anymore, what with the outbreak of true war.
And that was as much as he would say about it. Harry would have to trust that he could handle himself, just as he would have to trust that Dash could. Both of them had given him such incredulous looks when Harry had asked about going with them that he hadn’t tried again.
“I-I wish there was something I could do,” Harry said hoarsely, now, and Severus nodded and reached out to hug him instead of scolding him for saying the same thing again. Dash dipped his head and flicked his tongue gently over Harry’s cheek. Harry reached up and curled his arm firmly around the basilisk’s neck, while still hugging Severus, then stepped back. “And I suppose that it’s no good asking you to turn back the instant you’re in danger.”
Being in the bank with a Horcrux is inherently dangerous. But I’ve already told you why I’m not worried. This time, Dash’s voice down the bond was gentle.
“No, of course,” Severus said at the same time, so that Harry spent a moment trying to sort out the different voices. “Even if I leave the Apparition point, I would need to return to it to Apparate Dash out again when he has the cup.”
Harry nodded and bit his lip. “Then-my good wishes go with you.”
Severus hugged him one more time, fiercely, and then turned and laid his hand on Dash’s scales, closing his eyes. Harry hadn’t asked exactly where in Diagon Alley they were going to Apparate, what place was big enough to hold a basilisk but clear enough of people that Severus could be relatively sure of no one occupying the same space. He simply looked at Dash’s closed eyes and savored the slight flick of his tongue until Severus mustered up the necessary power and concentration.
Then they were gone.
Harry shivered a little from the stretched nature of his bond with Dash, and then walked slowly back towards the school, down the path from Hogsmeade. The evening was coming on.
*
Severus appeared in the corner of Knockturn Alley that he’d remembered from long years of coming here to search for less legal ingredients. This was practically a courtyard between buildings, a place where some shop had stood until it had been torn down and the ground where it stood cursed.
Dash coiled on the stone, turning his head slowly back and forth. Severus cast the necessary illusions that would make Dash look as if he were smaller and partially made of shadows. Not that many people would question the appearance of a giant snake in Knockturn Alley, but there currently was only one basilisk in Britain and Severus didn’t want to give advance warning of what they had come to do.
“Ready?” he asked softly when he was done, and Dash bobbed his head and slithered out through the narrow gap, not quite a doorway, framed by the dilapidated boarding houses on either side of them. Severus tilted his hood back over his face and followed.
They proceeded up Knockturn Alley quickly enough that few people had the chance to even get a look at them. It was close to sunset, and the Alley would be changing its shift from the hags and warlocks to the Darker creatures who drew some of their strength from the night. Severus kept one hand on his wand and the other on the pouch that contained the wrapped Enmity Potion. If he broke the glass on that before it was time, it would be months before he could brew it again.
They entered Diagon Alley, and a few people gave them nervous looks and intensified their scurry in a different direction. Severus kept his gaze fixed forwards, and waited until he saw the white front of the bank loom up, gleaming, in the distance.
He wrinkled his nose, the only sign he would allow of the unease brewing in him. His mother hadn’t been that free with stories about the wizarding world-probably, Severus thought now, because she had few that would make her look good-but she had often told him the ghastly ones. What goblins did to thieves had been her favorite.
We have no choice. We have to get that Horcrux.
They were fifty meters from the bank soon, then thirty, then ten, then one. Severus stopped Dash with a light touch to his side. Dash pulled in his tail so that he fit more comfortably within the confines of the illusion and turned his gleaming, shielded eyes to Severus.
“From this point forwards, I will remain as long as I can safely distract the goblins,” Severus told him in a low form. “I will return to the place where we Apparated in thirty minutes no matter what, then an hour from that point, then two hours.”
Dash only bobbed his head. He and Severus had a private agreement between them, which would only have upset Harry if he had learned of it, that Dash would make his way back home if he didn’t appear at the Apparition point in two hours. A basilisk, even one who was alone and carrying a Horcrux, had far more ability to defend himself against enraged goblins or the creatures they might summon than Severus did.
Severus took a deep breath and drew out the Enmity Potion from its pouch. He knew it wasn’t his imagination that the glass against his hand chilled as the potion reached out to him, seeking to ensnare his mind.
Severus allowed it no chance. He whirled and tossed the flask against the wall of the bank.
It shattered, and the potion sighed out, manifesting to Severus’s eyes as stretching shadow-snakes that raced up the walls and disappeared the minute they made contact with the roof. Others arched around to the doors. Dash flicked Severus’s cheek with his tongue once, the way he had Harry, and then sped towards the doors in turn, his neck arched and his form shedding part of the illusion as Severus watched.
A second later, the sound of enraged screams came from inside the bank.
Severus stepped back and closed his eyes, his hands lowered at his sides and his mind reaching out. This part of the procedure should work fine, since he had brewed the potion perfectly. But even for someone with as much skill as he had, to reach out and connect with a spilled draught without allowing it to affect him was difficult.
In this, he succeeded. He let his thoughts dance lightly along the top of the Enmity Potion, riding them, and the potion welcomed him in and let him see what the goblins saw.
The Enmity Potion was designed to conjure both the illusions and the hatred of one’s mortal enemy. Severus had never seen the creatures who were apparently attacking the bank now. They resembled walking trees, but only below the waist, and split into waving stalks above them, each one having a single eye or mouth at the end. Great champing teeth opened in the middle of their “trunks,” and they lunged towards the goblins-in the goblins’ minds-laughing and speaking some incoherent babble of words.
Severus nodded. He didn’t need to know what they were, perhaps creatures from the time before the goblins had ever seen sunlight. It didn’t matter. He just needed to create a distraction that would seem to fit in with the beasts’ attacks.
He opened his eyes and sketched a runic pattern in the air with his wand. In seconds, shadowy trees “sprouted” in the cobblestones next to the bank, their enormous branches cutting off any trace of light from the doors and windows, and their roots appeared to reach under the steps. Severus added a pattern that would seem to create a chant that the goblins would hear as a threat to their gold.
Goblins came racing out the front doors, chopping wildly with axes at the trees. They faded back from the chops and then apparently renewed themselves, still chanting threats to Galleons. Severus Disillusioned himself and moved around to the other side of the bank. There was every chance that he could get caught by a half-crazed goblin who didn’t know what he was doing if he stayed still.
In the meantime, he wove more illusions, although ones that weren’t dictated by the Enmity Potion. Instead, he filled the air with fire and apparently poured it down on the bank. That should confuse the goblins who might not have been caught by the potion, and keep wizards who might interfere away from Gringotts.
Screams and the sound of battle continued to erupt from the bank. Severus worked his way around all the sides, using illusions and now and then a Repelling spell when a goblin warrior came too close to him. He stood back when half an hour had passed and Apparated to the place in Knockturn Alley where he and Dash had arrived with a bit of regret.
He hadn’t been able to act this directly in Harry’s defense in what felt like months.
*
Harry closed his eyes as Dash reached out to him through the bond. This wasn’t something he had told Severus about. He had practically demanded that his basilisk reach out for him at some point as he made his way through the bank. Even if he could do nothing physically, he had to be there, had to participate in some of the dangers that he was saying Dash should risk.
You know very well that I am the one who volunteered for this.
Harry sent nothing through the bond but an acknowledging thrum, still watching via Dash’s eyes as the basilisk slid deeper and deeper into the bank. So far, it was going better than Harry had thought it would. Severus’s potion was keeping the goblins so occupied that even the ones who bumped into Dash thought he was something else. Half the time they cowered away instead of attacking.
Do you know what they’re seeing? Harry asked, at the same time as he thought he might not want to know.
Ancient enemies from the time before they lived in our world, Dash said softly, as he located a tunnel that didn’t look any different from the others to Harry, and squeezed down it. He could bend and mold his body in ways that Harry didn’t understand when he wasn’t riding inside it and feeling the sensations.
Goblins aren’t native to our world? Harry could feel his own eyes blinking hard.
Why act so surprised? It’s not as if wizards are native to Earth, either. Dash came across a set of tracks that Harry vaguely remembered riding down in a cart. He swayed his head back and forth for a second, and listened for a dim sound that Harry could only describe as the cry of the wild Horcrux. Then he headed downwards in a swift pouring of flesh and scale.
What? Harry demanded as his mind caught up with Dash’s words. That’s ridiculous. We’re humans. Muggleborns come from humans.
And you think that wizards wouldn’t be capable of forming themselves into a shape that was similar enough to a native Earth species to allow them to interbreed?
Harry stared at the curtains of his bed, which for a moment overwhelmed the vision of Gringotts, and then rapidly shook his head. You’re joking.
Magic can accomplish many things, Harry. Especially when the wizards who made such changes then didn’t tell their descendants much, and those descendants went right ahead and kept shaping the magic with their own will to survive. In periods when wizards are more concerned about inbreeding, more Muggleborns come to exist. In periods when they’re convinced that “pure” blood is better and they’re expanding and have plenty of people to marry, Muggleborns are only one in a thousand human births in any one country.
How do you know this, though? If no one else knows it?
Dash’s voice was very gentle as he slithered down a tunnel so dark that Harry could only sense it through Dash’s heightened sense of smell and the scrape of stone against his scales. You forget who I am. It wasn’t such ancient history when I was alive.
Harry was still trying to ponder that and decide for sure if he believed it or not when fire split the darkness in front of Dash. Dash reared back, and Harry’s angle of vision changed abruptly when a dragon came trotting and snorting out of the tunnel.
Harry stared, his mouth open a little in spite of himself. The dragon was ancient, its scales seamed with what looked like frost, and the fire flickered and went too quickly for him to be sure what species it was. There were horns around the face, though, and a thick chain around its neck, buried so deeply in the scales that it looked as if they had grown over it.
Great, how are you going to get past that? Harry asked Dash.
This time, I think you have forgotten what I am.
Before Harry could ask what Dash meant by that, he opened his eyes.
The dragon stiffened as it stared forwards, and then collapsed on its side. Dash slid past it and deeper into the bank. The edge of his tail tapped against the dragon’s chains with disapproval. I think I am going to speak to the goblins about the way they treat the reptiles they keep captive here, Dash said down the bond.
I didn’t know you could Petrify a dragon.
Why would my power depend on the size of the victim?
Harry didn’t want to say that there was no reason it should, and he just hadn’t paid attention to that part. Instead, he muttered, How close do you think you are to the vault with the Horcrux?
Close. It’s much easier to sense its darkness here than it was above the surface with all the bulk of the bank and the magic of the goblins in the way. Dash paused to lift his head and flick out his tongue. You should be able to smell it.
I’m not as experienced at using your senses to… But Harry let the words trail off as he did extend himself through Dash’s mouth and tongue and felt the thready reek of what smelled like unbelievably ancient and foul spoiled meat. If Voldemort has senses like this, how do you think he made any Horcruxes at all?
Dash flicked his tail in that motion that was his equivalent of a shrug as he slid down another cart track and then reached the lip of an immense, black stone cliff. Water sluiced past him and down in a seemingly endless fall. Dash stared down and murmured, He bonded with a viper but not a basilisk. That might mean he’s as stupid in this as everything else.
Dash. Tell me you’re not going down there.
There’s where the Lestrange vault is and the stink is coming from, Dash said, and drew himself back, coiling for a second. Then he launched himself forwards in a long slide down the cliff beside the waterfall.
Harry drew his breath in to shout at the stubborn, stupid snake, and then realized that Dash was climbing, gliding gracefully from stone to stone and looping his body around the smallest projections from the cliff like a sidewinder. He groaned and leaned back against the solid pillow behind him for a second. You’re an arsehole.
What? Did you think I was really going to leap the way you did down that chute to the Chamber of Secrets in your second year? You keep forgetting that you’re bonded to a smart basilisk, Harry. I think I’m going to have to order you some books on us. This is just disgraceful.
You weren’t even hatched when I went down into the Chamber the first time.
I know, or you wouldn’t have done that. Dash reached the bottom of the cliff and turned his head, flickering his tongue out again. The vault isn’t much further. That means they’re likely to have stronger protections than a dragon or an illusion-destroying waterfall around here.
That’s what the waterfall did?
Books, Harry. Books and lessons.
Harry would have answered, but a fireball came blazing out of the darkness and hit Dash’s scales. Dash didn’t scream or even swear in Parseltongue, but his pain echoed through the bond and down the connection into Harry’s head and heart. He clutched his head and knew that pitch had been part of that fireball.
Use your eyes! Use your fangs! Harry screamed down the bond. You were just the one who was bragging that you’re a goddamn basilisk!
This is a machine, Harry! Not one that’s operated by goblins, either. Dash ducked his head and strained his eyes through the darkness, and wavering lines of light seemed to cut it. It looks like a catapult built on Muggle plans.
What can you do about it?
Accept a few more hits and use a different advantage that comes with being a basilisk as brilliant as I am.
Harry gave a choked-off cry as another fireball hit Dash, but he was already surging towards the catapult. Harry saw the device for a second, a throwing arm that was already cranking back and the flaming pitch in it, and then Dash tossed a coil of his body around it and squeezed so hard Harry thought he would squeeze his own ribs out through his scales.
Then Dash slumped to the floor, and Harry breathed with him as he unwound himself from the wreckage of the device.
It was clever of them to come up with something that would deter so many magical enemies just because they couldn’t figure out how it works, Dash said, nudging the wreckage on the floor with a curious nose for a moment before he turned and made his way up the tunnel. Of course, this isn’t the last defense we’ll face.
Another dragon? Harry asked. He thought it was a reasonable guess. The air down here was much warmer than it had been above the waterfall, although Harry mainly felt that not as heat but the incredible liveliness that shivered through Dash’s body.
No, I don’t think so. Dash came around the corner, and paused. Harry looked forwards and nearly flinched from the brightness of the fire that filled the corridor.
Blood-fire, Dash said, sounding curious more than anything. Flames that only someone of goblin blood or someone related to the family who owns the vaults could pass through. He darted his tongue out. It has its weaknesses, of course. If a goblin or a member of the family turns traitor, it’s not much of a protection.
Harry forced himself to speak slowly. And you don’t have a plan to get past it.
I have a plan. It’s simply going to hurt more than a little. Retreat from the close connection we have right now. I don’t want the bond to render you unconscious.
Harry sent a push of emotions down the bond even as he did as Dash had instructed. Do you know that you’re the most infuriating basilisk on the face of this earth?
It’s nice to have my accomplishments praised.
Before Harry could retort, Dash thrust forwards with his neck, and opened his eyes at the same time. Harry stared, ignoring the nauseating way that the curtains of his bed mingled with the vision of Dash attacking the fire. How could he think that was going to work? The fire wasn’t something he could kill or Petrify-
There was a nose like a thousand half-strangled birds trying to sing, and Harry screamed despite himself as pain rushed over his skin, glad that Severus wasn’t there at the moment. Dash slithered through the flames, and half-crushed them with his huge bulk. Trembling, Harry wondered if that had been the plan, and opened his mouth to yell at Dash for the stupidity of it.
Then he closed it again. Dash had turned his head so Harry could see back along the tunnel, and the flames were completely gone, far more so than they should have been if Dash had counted on simply smothering some of them with his body. Harry let out a hesitant, shaking breath, and Dash bobbed his head up and down.
They’re gone.
How did you do that, though? Harry demanded as he watched Dash swing towards the Lestrange vault. It wasn’t alive, you couldn’t kill it-
I see that you will need still more books and lessons, Dash murmured, halting in front of a door that Harry assumed was to the Lestrange vault and stretching his neck upwards. A basilisk is death, Harry. To almost everything. It’s true that most of us only kill living things because prey is all we need to use our gifts for, with an exception for self-defense. But we can kill whatever we want.
Harry sat there blinking while Dash coiled his neck into nearly a bow shape. All right. The way past the vault door is going to take more time than I thought.
Harry breathed out slowly, even though he knew that Dash and Severus had planned for a few hours. Why is that? Do you not have enough magic left to kill the door?
Dash sent a laugh at him. I could if it was only a door, but it’s a mixture of alive and unliving, which is almost impossible. There’s a living creature embedded in that door, and it’s full of hate and madness. Its only purpose is to kill anyone who tries to make an unauthorized entrance.
Dash, could you-leave and try again later?
Are you a Gryffindor or not? Dash chided him, and then reared back and struck, hard, at the door, at the same moment as ringing alarms filled the corridor with malice.
Oops, Dash added. I think the goblins noticed us.
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