Chapter Six of 'The Parselmouth Promise'- Parselmouth Solutions
Chapter Five.
Chapter One.
Title: The Parselmouth Promise (6/25)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, past Harry/Ginny and Draco/Astoria, other canon pairings mentioned
Content Notes: Angst, divorce, Parseltongue, brief violence, ritual magic, not epilogue-compliant
Rating: R
Summary: Voldemort’s influence lingers after his death in the form of Parseltongue passed on to the children of everyone with a Dark Mark-or, in Harry’s case, someone who once hosted a Horcrux. As Harry struggles to be a good single father to his son, James, he inevitably runs up against Draco Malfoy, who’s not only a Parselmouth now but attempting to create a whole ritual and school system to benefit himself, his friends, and his son, Scorpius. No matter how much some people don’t like that.
Author’s Notes: This is probably going to be a medium-length fic of around 10-20 chapters. Note that it’s fairly angsty.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Six-Parselmouth Solutions
Harry twisted, caught in another nightmare. In this one, he had walked into the Forbidden Forest, only to find that Voldemort wasn’t there waiting for him to surrender. Instead, he was there with Ginny tied at his feet in so many snakes that only her desperate eyes and the top of her nose showed.
Harry clenched his hands and said as calmly as he could, “I’m here now. You can let her go.”
“Why would I wish to?” Voldemort hissed back, his eyes bright with glee as he held out his wand towards the snakes. “Lucius has confessed to me that she was involved in the destruction of my Horcrux. She deserves some punishment for that, don’t you think?”
Harry tried to get in the way of the spell, but it wasn’t a spell after all. It was simply a command, in Parseltongue, to the snakes to bite.
Ginny screamed as the fangs stabbed into her, and Harry could see her convulsing under the weight of all those bodies, as much as she could. He imagined the venom heating the blood in her veins, tearing apart her muscles, making her limbs swell up-
“Speaker, you are dreaming.”
Harry gasped and sat up with a sheet half-strangling him. He closed his eyes and massaged his forehead with one hand. His skin was cold and wet enough from sweat to make him feel as if he’d just climbed out of the bath, and he groped for his glasses, surprised that he had fallen asleep at all. Most of the time, on nights when he couldn’t take the Diluted Dreamless Sleep potion because it would otherwise build up too much in his system, he simply lay staring at the ceiling until the sun rose.
Sela lifted her head from the side of his pillow. “You often have such dreams?”
Harry shrugged and clawed the sheet away from him as he settled the glasses on his face. The dimness of his bedroom only lightened when he cast a Lumos Charm. He settled back against the pillows and listened for the sound of James stirring, but everything was quiet. Apparently he hadn’t been screaming aloud.
“Harry. You have such violent dreams. I think they are a large part of the pain you smell of.”
Harry just shrugged and glanced down at the snake. “Probably so,” he said, only speaking Parseltongue because if he spoke in English she would just pretend not to understand, and he would have to spend more time talking to her. “But I don’t know what to do about them other than sometimes take a portion of Dreamless Sleep.”
“Why not take it more often?”
“It builds up in the body and can become poisonous.” Harry shifted to the side, intending to get up and walk to the bathroom, and received a nudge in the ribs from her head. Growling under his breath, he turned so that she could climb up and coil around his arm near his shoulder.
“A Parselmouth is immune to most venoms. Didn’t you know that?”
“This is the same kind of thing. A Parselmouth might be immune to injected poison, but this is-it’s more like eating spoiled food.”
“You would be guarded even against that.”
Harry rolled his eyes and didn’t answer, just going to the bathroom and putting Sela down on the counter while he used the loo. She coiled and stared at herself in the mirror, head swaying back and forth a little. Harry glanced in the mirror himself, and then turned away sharply. He missed the days when it wouldn’t make him flinch to look at his own reflection.
“There must be a way to help you. There is a way. Let me into your dreams.”
Harry clenched the side of the doorway a moment, before walking back to pick her up. “I am hosting you under protest. I am unwilling to host you in my brain.”
Sela twisted her neck to the side so that they could make eye contact. Her eyes were a startling green, even after he’d been around her long enough that Harry would have thought he’d get used to it. “Wouldn’t it be worth it? To sleep without those kinds of nightmares?”
Harry shook his head, his mind turning back to the image of Ginny buried under snakes. That had happened, hadn’t it? But only indirectly because of Voldemort. “If I don’t want you in my house, why would you think I want you in my head?”
Sela said nothing else, and Harry returned to bed and lay looking at the ceiling, his hand smoothing restlessly over the blankets, until morning arrived.
*
“I’m glad to see that you accepted your Gryffindor snake, Potter.”
Potter just gave Draco a blank look and then turned and scanned the playroom. “Where is James?”
Draco stepped closer to Potter and stared at him, disturbed by how blank he was-how blank he felt. It was as if even his body warmth had been shut away behind some door Draco didn’t know how to unlock. Draco couldn’t sense his magic, either, which had been so resonant around him the last time he’d visited the school. Draco bit his lip and said softly, “Are you all right, Potter?”
Potter shrugged, ignoring the snake’s hiss of displeasure when the jolted her on his shoulder. “As fine as I can be when I was forced to accept a snake I didn’t want, sure.”
Draco caught his breath with irritation, then reminded himself that showing it was another way to confirm Potter in his belief that he was “right” and drive him further away. “Did something happen?”
“Besides Parkinson forcing the snake I didn’t want on me?”
Edwina twisted on Draco’s neck and stuck her head out of his shirt to hiss at Potter, “You are ungrateful for a gift that could have given you so much.”
Potter looked at her with those same blank eyes, and Draco had his answer as to what was wrong with Potter. He had locked away the anger he had shown Draco last time, the magic that made him who he was and lit his eyes from within, and now showed barely enough to go on walking around with. He seemed to have decided to respond to his own Parseltongue, and his snake, with passive rejection instead of active.
“Potter,” Draco said quietly, drawing Potter’s attention as he knew he wouldn’t have with a snap or command. “Will you please tell me what’s wrong?”
“Besides Parkinson forcing the snake I didn’t want on me?”
Draco swallowed against the impulse to roar at Potter. The blankness and repetition were designed to do that, he knew. Then Potter would have the satisfaction of knowing that he was in the “right.”
And there was one avenue of appeal open to him, as little as Draco liked to think about it. Potter should want this gift for himself, and should value the power and companionship it held out for himself. But if Draco could only reach him through concern for his son, he would take it.
“How did James react to the snake joining your household?” he asked.
“My name is Sela, Speaker. Be kind enough to refer to me by it.”
Draco blinked and inclined his head. Sela had her tongue darting in and out in agitation, and Draco wondered if she knew it was generally considered bad manners among Parselmouths, at least from what Draco had learned as he began to establish his own schooling system, for a snake to introduce herself. A Parselmouth should do that.
But it was clear that waiting on Potter to do it was useless, and so Draco simply nodded and said, “Thank you for your name, Sela.” He glanced at Potter, who was staring out the window with his jaw clenched hard enough that Draco winced to think of what he was doing to his teeth.
“Potter.”
“Yeah.”
The word was like a jab, and Draco swallowed down his irritation once again. It was clear that too many people had failed Potter over the years, including the Mind-Healer who had betrayed all his secrets and the wife who had walked away. Draco would not fall into their ranks.
“Edwina told me not long after we first met that you smelled of pain,” Draco said. “I’m sure your Sela has said the same thing. Is there anything I can do to ease that pain? I thought maybe giving James access to Parselmouth classes would help, but it doesn’t seem to have.”
Potter spent a long moment sitting with his fingers driving like knives into his knee. Finally, he glanced at Draco. The tightness had faded from his jaw, and the blankness from his eyes, but it had left a different kind of blankness behind, a polite kind that Draco knew must form the mask Potter used to shield himself from most people.
“No. You’ve been mostly polite, and it sounds like you’re a good, kind teacher to James and so are the other people who are educating them. That’s all I can ask for.”
“For James?”
“Of course.” For a second, Potter’s eyes flickered with what might have been wary confusion.
“And for yourself?” Draco sounded more urgent than was probably warranted, at least if he wanted Potter to be open to him, but Merlin, this was driving him mad. Potter radiated silent misery while trying not to radiate it, and Draco had seen too many Parselmouths like that in the past few years not to respond to it. “What can I do?”
“You could see if you could find someone else who wants to bond with my snake.” Potter ignored the long hiss from Sela. “As I said, I feel she was forced on me, and that’s hardly circumstances that would cause either of us to thrive.”
Draco closed his eyes. If this was what he had to do, he would do it, despite the fact that Potter could hardly participate in any ritual magic without a snake to steady him, and getting rid of Sela would probably hurt James. He had been full of tales about “Daddy’s snake” when he got to school today, although not enough to tell Draco her name.
But Draco couldn’t earn the trust of a man who had impaled himself on a thicket of blades, either.
“All right.”
“What are you doing, Speaker?” Sela demanded. Edwina spoke the same words at almost the same time, although she didn’t bother adding the title at the end.
“What?” Potter stared at him.
Draco blinked at the look on his face. It was the most open Potter had been since walking in today. He totally thought we were going to make him work with us, with Sela. When was the last time he had someone on his side?
“I’ll find someone else for Sela if you want me to,” Draco said calmly, and tried to avoid sounding like he was speaking to one of the children. Potter’s wide eyes had already narrowed in suspicion. He would strike out if he thought Draco was being condescending, or probably just refuse to listen. “I would prefer not to, of course. She’s established a bond with you, and that means there’s something in you that she finds valuable-”
“She just wants to work with someone who was in Gryffindor House,” Potter interrupted. Draco fumed, but held his peace. “There must be someone else who was. Or who would find the honor of working with a Gryffindor snake greater than they-who would find it an honor.”
“There are not many of you.” Sela’s tail vibrated like a rattlesnake’s for a moment. “I told you that before.”
“We will try to find one for you,” Draco hissed to soothe her, and then went back to considering Potter. His face had frozen in the kind of mask Draco had worn himself when he didn’t know what was happening and which way he should react. “In the meantime, Potter, I can take care of her.” He held out his arm.
*
Harry stared at the arm. He had no idea what to say. The last thing he would have expected was for Malfoy to make some kind of sacrifice for him, even if he clearly didn’t approve of Harry’s decision.
When was the last time someone had done something like this for him?
Memories of Ron and Hermione leaped to mind, but they were all from years ago. They hadn’t interfered in his divorce from Ginny, but they had accepted what Harry had said about it, and that he blamed himself. They had offered comfort and babysitting for James and to stay with him, but-
He had never let them. There was no other word for it. He had seen their outstretched hands and slapped them away.
Malfoy’s outstretched hand couldn’t be slapped away. He wasn’t doing this for James, or because Harry was his old friend, or because they were in-laws. In fact, Harry was pretty sure that Malfoy would argue it would be the best thing for James if Sela stayed with Harry and their family. He was doing it because he wanted to help Harry.
He wants his own power. He wants me to agree to be the face of Parselmouths and part of his ritual circle.
But then, would he have agreed to take the snake away instead of arguing to try and make Harry accept her?
“Are you all right, Potter? You look like you’re going to be sick.”
Harry held up his hand and swallowed, and Malfoy fell silent, watching him narrowly. He had pulled his arm back to his side, but from the way it was crooked, he obviously expected to reach out and accept Sela’s weight any moment.
“I want to stay with you,” Sela hissed, sounding petulant. “I want to help you with your nightmares and your Parseltongue and the way you smell of pain.”
Harry stared at her in turn. Sela stretched up to meet his eyes, although Harry suspected she got more information about him from her darting tongue.
Maybe her wanting to help him with Parseltongue wasn’t just because she was determined to have a Speaker of her own and participate in ritual circles. And helping him with nightmares and pain…
Has it been so long since I had someone who wanted to help me that I didn’t recognize it? Or was it like it was with Ron and Hermione, and people wanted to help me, but I turned them away because I was so focused on James?
“Potter?”
Malfoy definitely sounded wary now. Harry glanced at him and saw that his arm was still crooked at his side, but this time at an angle that looked more like he was about to draw his wand.
“I don’t want you to take Sela.” Harry said it with dry lips that he licked, hard. He wondered abstractly if he looked like a snake, too, darting his tongue out.
Malfoy smiled as if that pleased him, but kept watching Harry. “What changed your mind?”
“You should tell me, too. I would like hearing about it.”
Harry raised a hand to touch Sela’s back. He didn’t entirely trust her yet, but at least he might make her quiet down. And it seemed to work. She said nothing further, only darted her tongue out again to touch his hand.
“You were offering me something that really seemed to be for me,” Harry said. “Not for James or because it would gain you power. For me.”
Malfoy’s eyes widened a little. He sat there as if he didn’t know what to say. Then he murmured, “I’m surprised that you’re not accusing me of trying to manipulate you so that you would want to keep Sela and eventually join our ritual circles.”
Harry shrugged. “It didn’t sound that way. If only because you couldn’t be sure I’d do either of those things. And I still don’t really want to practice ritual magic with the rest of you.”
Malfoy nodded. His voice when he spoke next sounded as though he was trying to urge the words past a loose tooth. “Are you-it’s really been that long since someone did something specifically for you?”
Harry turned his head, hearing James’s voice coming down the corridor. If there was one conversation he didn’t want James to witness, it was this one.
“Potter.”
“That I allowed myself to notice,” Harry said quietly, and stood up. “See you later, Malfoy.”
Sela lashed her tail around his neck as Harry went to meet James. Harry ignored her. He had agreed to keep her because she did seem to want to help him. That wasn’t the same thing as giving in and doing everything she wanted. He thought of his dream of Ginny being poisoned by snakes.
How can I rejoice in Parseltongue if it might consume me later?
But if he held Sela to a working partnership, and pushed back, and worked with her on the nightmares-well, she couldn’t betray him to anyone except another Parselmouth, unlike that bloody Mind-Healer. And Harry would prefer it if he could stop feeling this way, always unmoored and exhausted and hurt.
“Daddy!”
Harry bent down and wrapped his arms around James as he burst out of the corridor into the schoolroom. He buried his face against his son’s hair and breathed in the soft sweetness of it.
And wasn’t that what really mattered? Being a good father for James? He would be a better one if he wasn’t in pain all the time.
*
Draco watched Potter and his son go, and tried not to show how shaken he was, although from the way Edwina coiled closer to him, she could sense it. Scorpius and Charlie were giving him thoughtful glances, too.
All it took was-offering to do something for him.
Draco didn’t know what was worse, the idea that offers had been so rare that Potter hadn’t recognized them, or that all it took was something so small to change Potter’s mind.
Shit. He must be-
Draco stroked Edwina’s scales with one soft fingertip as he turned to take Scorpius back home.
I didn’t even know how much pain he was in.
Chapter Seven.