Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Four of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- Renewal
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Three.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (154/155)
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 Fifty-Four-Renewal
“They said that it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to come into the house and see you there.”
Harry took a deep breath as he gazed up into Dash’s shielded eyes. Dash was swaying gently back and forth, his tongue tasting and testing the air, and then sliding back into his mouth. He looked uninjured by the battle, but then, it hadn’t been a physical one.
Harry sighed and leaned for a second against the trunk of the immense black oak that served as the center of the Malfoy gardens. He didn’t have any physical injuries, either, but he felt like a wet rag just from walking the distance from Draco’s bedroom to the gardens. He braced himself and turned to face Dash.
“Would you ever have given up our bond if you had a choice?” he asked, because he needed to know the answer to that question.
“Only if it was a choice between saving your life and retaining the bond.” Dash was focused on him utterly now. Even the swaying had stopped. “I told you that before, Harry. Your life matters to me in ways that you cannot imagine. If you died, I would take revenge, and then I would die. And if preserving your life meant sacrificing the bond, that is a choice I would make again.”
Harry swallowed. “And you can-renew the bond? We can renew it?”
Dash hesitated. Harry closed his eyes against a surge of dizziness and despair. This was the answer he had feared, which was why he hadn’t asked the question before. He made himself sit up a little more. “What do we have to do?”
“It would require you to survive a bite. And without the bond protecting you from my venom, I do not know how you can.”
Harry blinked open his eyes. “That’s all?”
“You have a strange definition of all.”
Harry shook his head, ignoring the fact that Dash’s tail had begun to scrape along the ground in an agitated way. Once, he would have known for sure that it was agitation and not some other emotion, but he still tried to ignore his sense of loss. “No, I mean-I already survived a basilisk bite once, in my second year, before I knew you. I did it with the help of Fawkes’s tears. We need to find some phoenix tears, and then we can do this!”
Dash’s eyelids quivered, and then he lowered his head to the ground. “Would you let me smell your blood? Taste it?”
“Of course I would,” Harry said, and felt his own face soften, heard his voice do it. Then again, Dash wouldn’t know the automatic answer to that question anymore, when he couldn’t feel Harry’s emotions through the bond.
Harry drew the Elder Wand-it was always with him now, since he had faced Voldemort in the mindscape-and cut himself carefully on his left arm. There was a long well of blood in the moments before Dash’s tongue fluttered out of his snout, and he drew back, his tail scraping across the ground again.
“What is it?” Harry asked quietly, trying to keep his voice as gentle as he could. He wouldn’t upset Dash more than he was already upset, he told himself firmly. He wouldn’t act as though this was a betrayal. No one had betrayed anyone. Voldemort was the one to blame for severing their bond.
“The smell of venom in your blood is so strong. I don’t know why I never noticed it before.”
“Why would you have looked for that?” Harry shook his head, and found himself smiling. He didn’t want Dash to always be this uncertain and self-conscious, but right now, it was kind of charming. “You probably thought it was just your smell if you did sense it. Can you smell the phoenix tears, too?”
“No. I don’t think that Fawkes ever wept into your blood, while the venom would have been injected.”
Harry nodded. “That’s true.” He used the Elder Wand to scrape up some of the blood, and the Wand glowed and sparked in his hand, as if it approved of being bathed like that. Harry rolled his eyes and tried to ignore the stupid thing. It got on his nerves all the time. At least the Stone and the Cloak behaved better. “You need to taste it, too, right?”
“Yes.”
Dash came closer slowly, his body seeming to slink along the earth as if he were an ordinary snake. Harry waited a moment for the indignant retort that should have thrummed along his veins about that, and then remembered, again, that Dash couldn’t hear his thoughts or share internal jokes. He swallowed.
They really had to get the bond back as soon as possible.
Dash lowered his head, and his tongue wrapped around the Elder Wand. Harry wondered for a second if he was going to swallow the damn thing and end at least one of Harry’s problems. But Dash could be delicate when he wanted to, no matter how big he was, and he lifted his head thoughtfully and flickered his tongue out again, clearly and carefully tasting.
“Well?” Harry asked. “Does it taste like chicken?”
Dash hissed at him, but it wasn’t Parseltongue words, just unintelligible sounds. He seemed so involved in the taste that he didn’t have time for words. Then he coiled back and tilted his head towards Harry, for a moment his eyelids trembling as if they would lift after all.
“It tastes like you. And I think I know the best way to restore the bond now.”
“I thought you already knew that?”
Dash didn’t answer, but slid a little further forwards, and Harry gently pulled the Elder Wand back, more sensing that he should do it than knowing for sure. Dash lowered his head to the ground and opened his mouth. Harry blinked at the sight of the fangs.
“What do I have to do now?”
“Since you already survived a basilisk bite, I can’t simply bite you and inject my venom to bind us that way. We don’t need the phoenix tears. You’ll need to walk into my mouth to prove you trust me.”
Harry swallowed. “And are you going to eat me?”
“You have to prove you trust me.”
Harry closed his eyes, but he did trust Dash, and he thought going into his own basilisk’s mouth couldn’t be worse than half-letting the dragon in the Tournament eat him, the way he had in the First Task. He moved forwards, his eyes still closed, and felt the cool tongue shifting beneath him. He had to duck, but otherwise Dash’s mouth was large enough to hold him completely.
The darkness inside seemed complete when he looked around, even though there was the obvious gleam of light from behind him. Ahead, he could see the long tunnel of Dash’s gullet, and above him, the fangs shone with the edge of venom.
Harry reached up without thinking about it, and gashed his arm on the rightmost fang.
Dash reared up in what seemed to be shock, and spat him out. Harry rolled to his feet and stared down at his arm. He could see the long black line of the venom gushing up it. He wondered for a second why it hadn’t reacted that fast when he was in the Chamber of Secrets, but maybe it had and he just didn’t remember it. Some of his memories of that time were a little blurred, honestly.
“Harry! What are you-”
“It felt right, so I did it.” Harry lifted his arm, and saw the black line hesitating at his elbow, instead of continuing further up his arm. “I think you know what you have to do, Dash.” His voice thrummed with certainty, even though he couldn’t have predicted the next steps.
Dash lowered his head until his eyes were right in front of Harry. Harry tried to calm his quick breathing and stared back, and didn’t move when he saw those eyelids lifting. He only hoped that no one was looking out the windows of the Manor right now, or he might spend the next month Stunned and chained to a bed somewhere.
Draco might like that part.
Harry focused and took a deep breath as Dash’s eyes opened.
The gaze struck all through him, and seemed to turn all the blood in his body to radiance. Harry found himself blinking, dazed, in the light that poured from him. Or didn’t pour from him. He could no longer decide if he was seeing through his own eyes or floating somewhere above his body, and his lungs were full of soft clouds.
He didn’t die, he realized as he came back to himself. And when he lifted an arm, he knew he wasn’t Petrified, either.
“That was the next step in restoring the bond?” he asked.
Yes,
Harry cried out and flung his arms around Dash’s neck as the word echoed through his head. He buried his face in Dash’s scales, and honestly, he didn’t care if he was crying. No one would be able to see it, anyway, even if they were looking out the windows.
I needed to be fully inside your mind, Draco said, and his long tongue slid up the side of Harry’s neck. I didn’t know how to accomplish that because I didn’t know how you would survive the venom and my gaze if you weren’t already bonded to me. But I forgot about the basilisk venom you had in your blood. It defended you long enough for my venom to integrate, and then, because my gaze usually freezes someone’s blood to kill them and then turns it back to ordinary liquid, you weren’t vulnerable anymore. Gazing at your blood was like gazing at my own venom.
Harry nodded, not understanding all of that, but not needing to. The reverberation of the bond in his mind was the best thing he’d ever felt. He leaned down next to Dash, and slid down until he was actually sitting on the ground.
You might want to get that arm looked at.
Why? Harry sent back down the bond, utterly thrilled at their ability to do so, and then glanced at his arm. There was a long slash down it, and there was a line of black skin along the sides where the venom had bubbled. He blinked.
It isn’t hurting me.
And do you think either Severus or Draco will accept that excuse?
Harry sighed. “No,” he said aloud, and wrapped his arms around as much of Dash’s neck as he could. But I don’t want to go in right now. You still can’t fit in Malfoy Manor, and I still want to be with you.
Dash hissed softly and curled his huge warm body around Harry. I cannot say that I want you to leave. Very well. We can have a few hours.
*
“It looks worse than it is.”
“And it looks horrible.”
Lucius paused. He had come to give a report to Harry about the few Death Eaters who had survived the battle, and had thought he might have to wake him from sleep, but hadn’t anticipated his son being there. He peered slowly around the corner.
Draco was standing in front of Harry, staring at a long wound on his arm. Lucius stared at it, too. He hadn’t heard that Harry had been hurt like that in the battle, but then again, mostly Draco and Severus and Granger and Weasley had surrounded Harry like a wall since then, keeping all others away. And Draco and Severus wouldn’t have mentioned that kind of thing in their relief at having Harry alive.
The wound was ugly, a slash from either a very strange Cutting Curse or a blade. Skin had died in black lines along the edges. Lucius frowned harder. No, this had to have happened after the battle, then. Severus ranted on a consistent basis about Harry’s foolish actions. There was no way he wouldn’t have mentioned this.
“But it was necessary to resume the bond with Dash.”
Lucius winced as the pieces fell into place, especially as he saw the subtle horror on his son’s face. The bite came from a basilisk fang. He stepped back around the corner so that he could sigh loudly and neither Draco nor Harry would hear him.
That didn’t prevent Lucius from hearing them, of course.
“Did he mention why it looked as though your flesh is dying around it?”
“Because it’s a basilisk bite.”
Harry sounded patient. Lucius sighed for the boy this time. He could have told him that being patient with Draco would have angered him further. Draco was far too much like his mother that way.
“You couldn’t know you would survive that when you let Dash bite you.”
“He said that he could smell the basilisk venom in my blood from the encounter in the Chamber of Secrets during our second year, so I did know. And anyway, you can’t blame him for biting me.”
“Why not?” Draco sounded hostile. Lucius pinched his nose.
“Because I reached up and gashed my arm on his fang.”
Lucius decided that this profound silence was the moment to turn the corner and pretend that he hadn’t been there all along. He coughed a little when he saw the frozen expression on Draco’s face. “Draco, if I might borrow Harry for a minute?”
“I’ll tell you what year I’m done being furious with him,” Draco said, staring at Harry and not moving.
Harry rolled his eyes at him and turned around. “You knew I was going to do something like that. The bond with Dash means too much to me. I was lonely without it,” he said over his shoulder to Draco. Then he faced Lucius and straightened his shoulders. “Yes, sir?”
Lucius really wanted to lecture, but he did manage to hold himself to a tight nod. “I wanted you to know that a few Death Eaters did survive the battle, although very few. I said I would ask if you wanted to decide what happens to them, or if you’d prefer to leave that task up to the Ministry.”
Harry blinked several times. “Why would it be my right to decide what to do with them?”
Lucius admired his son-in-law quite a bit, but he did think Harry’s modesty excessive sometimes. “Because right now, there are precious few people in wizarding Britain who would deny you anything, and I thought you might like a bit of revenge.”
“I’m tired of being the Boy-Who-Lived,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I know that I’ll have to do the occasional interview and the Ministry will probably make me accept an Order of Merlin or something, but frankly, I’m getting rid of as many of the responsibilities as I can. If I started adding to them now, people would expect me to do it forever.”
“Would it displease you if I took some revenge?”
“Are you going to torture them?”
Lucius fought back a shiver as those intense green eyes focused on him. He didn’t doubt that Harry was serious about trying to leave the mantle of the Boy-Who-Lived behind, but he wondered how successful the young man would really be. He would become extraordinary in a different way, most likely. He wouldn’t be able to help himself.
“Only with taunts,” Lucius heard himself saying. He hadn’t intended to be that honest.
Harry studied him, mouth twitching in a way that Lucius could have done without, and then snorted and stepped back. “All right. I think you have the right to that, at least.”
“We aren’t done discussing this basilisk wound on your arm, Harry Potter,” Draco said.
Harry sighed and lost the awe-inspiring aura that had hovered around him for a moment. He turned back to Draco. “Come on, Draco. I had to do this to get the bond back! If it helps, Dash was just as horrified as you at first.”
“Then he should have bloody well waited until someone else was around who could monitor the situation! And don’t think that I’m going to trust you if you say something different, given that you’d be translating for him…”
Lucius shook his head and walked away. He supposed that if he sometimes didn’t get exactly what he wanted from having the Boy-Who-Lived as his son-in-law, Harry also shouldn’t get his way all the time just for dating his son.
*
“I am beyond glad that you survived.”
Harry smiled up at Severus as he came into the room, and Severus felt a tight coil in the center of his stomach relax. He didn’t want to argue with Harry the way Harry had done, but that had left open the possibility that Harry would want to argue with him. Severus drew up his chair on the side of the bed and nodded to the new basilisk wound on Harry’s arm. “May I see?”
Harry bit his lip as if the request made him unhappy, but nodded. He extended his arm, and Severus bent over and studied the edges of the wound. Crisp and black, as if someone had traced them in ink.
“Do you feel any pain from the wound?” Severus asked, taking an anti-scarring paste in a small flask from his belt.
Harry shook his head. “I haven’t felt any since after the moment it happened, actually.” He propped his arm up on the bed and watched calmly as Severus gently smeared the paste along the sides of the cut. “I promise, any pain I felt was less than the pain of not having Dash with me.”
Severus paused. He was aware of that, but he honestly didn’t care. “And you won’t need to do something like that again?”
He thought he had controlled the tremor in his voice well enough, but Harry leaned towards him and gently put a hand on Severus’s arm, tracing the pain of an invisible basilisk bite of Severus’s own. “I promise.”
“Very well,” Severus said, when enough time had passed that he’d decided he should believe Harry. He sat back and studied him. “Lucius told me that you refused to take revenge on the Death Eaters who had survived.”
“Yes.”
He said it so calmly, Severus thought, so balanced, as if renewing the bond with Dash had given him back something he’d been lacking. Severus nodded. “I did wonder if you had some plan for the next few years, or a career that you wanted to assume, that you hadn’t shared with me.”
Harry smiled and leaned harder on him. Severus curled his arm around him and closed his eyes. Yes, Harry was alive. Part of him hadn’t believed it even when he saw him breathing under Draco’s hand.
“No,” Harry murmured. “I have a few ideas, but none of them involve chasing Dark wizards, or being a politician, or taking on any more importance in the wizarding world than I have to.”
Severus nodded more slowly. “And you still have two more years at Hogwarts.”
Harry smiled. “Yes. Two more years to be a schoolboy, and have a normal school year, which is something I haven’t ever had.” He leaned back on his pillows. “If someone tries to drag me into an international scandal or political intrigue because of the scar on my forehead, I’m not going to be patient with them.”
The sunlight coming in through the window darkened, and Severus glanced up to see Dash’s head poking in through the frame. Dash’s tongue darted out at him, and Severus thought he could feel something like a breath sweep past him-or a blessing.
“Nor is Dash, I imagine,” Severus murmured.
Harry’s smile blazed in a way that Severus couldn’t remember seeing before. Some of it was probably the renewed bond, but he could also imagine that some of it was because, finally, the greatest shadow Harry had borne had lifted.
“No.”
*
“We caught up with our mother.”
Harry blinked at Narcissa Malfoy and took a long moment to remember what she must be talking about. Severus frowned at him on the other side of the table, and Harry put the spoonful of soup into his mouth and swallowed, since he knew the glare would be more about that than about the delay he was making in answering Narcissa.
“Your mother who pretended to be Andromeda,” he said, and looked at Andromeda, who was sitting on the other side of the table. She nodded encouragingly at him. Harry looked back at Narcissa. “Is she dead?”
“In some ways, I’m sure she wishes she was.” Narcissa’s eyes had a slight shine to them that reminded Harry of a cat’s. “She has been confined by vow and spell to never pretend to be anyone but herself again. She cannot even lie with her signature on a letter.”
“And she can’t leave our parents’ house again,” Andromeda added. “Given that she’s alone there except for our father’s ghost, I can imagine that she’s going to have a miserable time. Which is exactly what she deserves.” She trailed off for a moment and stared into the distance. “If I had known she was alive…”
“You would have had to do exactly what you did,” Narcissa said firmly. “You know she was firm in her resolve to help the Dark Lord.”
Andromeda nodded and then went back to peeling an orange. She seemed to be calmer, which was a good thing, Harry supposed. He still didn’t know her very well or know how to take her. He turned back to Narcissa. “Do you think that you could help me with some of the political nonsense?”
“I thought you didn’t want to be involved with politics at all.”
“I’ll have to be, in that I’ll have to politely refuse interviews and invitations and things like that,” Harry said. “But I want to just tell them all to fuck off, I don’t really want to be polite. Can you teach me how to do that without offending them?”
Dash was laughing in his head, a wonderful thing. Andromeda appeared to have choked on the piece of her orange. Narcissa studied Harry with bright eyes that made him want to squirm, and then nodded. “I can do that, Harry, but you are going to have to be polite in your language as well.”
“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was rude to talk about being polite.”
Narcissa sighed, but Sirius’s voice interrupted. “It’s obvious that you’re going to need some help, Cissy. I think that’s where I come in.”
Harry popped up from his chair and charged around the table to hug his godfather. Sirius hugged him back with gentle hands that didn’t shake the way they had the last time Harry had seen him. “It’s all over,” Sirius whispered to him. “It’s all safe, kid.”
“Does that mean that your Mind-Healers have said that you can come back?”
“They haven’t said I’m cured, but I’ve come as close as I’m likely ever to.” Sirius hugged him a lot harder now. “And if your guardian says it’s okay, of course.”
Harry started and drew back to stare at Severus, who was standing in the other doorway of the dining room, opposite the one Sirius had entered by. “He can visit, right?” Harry asked, and then swallowed as he heard the harsh pleading note in his own voice. Severus might not care for that much.
“Yes, of course. With supervision.”
And Harry didn’t care much about the stern tone in Severus’s voice as he went over to hug him, or for anything except the soaring feeling of possibility and hope in himself.
And the equally soaring sound of Dash’s laughter.
Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Five.