Chapter Four of 'Deconversion'- A Cloud of Snakes
Chapter Three.
Title: Deconversion (4/about 25)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Draco, mentions of others
Rating: R
Warnings: Violence, sex, angst, suicidal thoughts, issues of mental illness, Dark versions of both Draco and Harry. Ignores the epilogue.
Summary: They were right, those old wizards who thought Parseltongue was a Dark gift. As Harry begins his slide down, fighting desperately all the way, Draco is more than happy to take advantage of the Hero’s fall from the Light.
Author’s Note: I’m not yet sure how long this story will be, although between 20 and 25 chapters seems likely. Angst is likely to be heavy at times, and there will be lots of both Parseltongue and manipulation.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Four-A Cloud of Snakes
“Malfoy.”
Draco turned around and smiled over his shoulder. He had come to the Ministry for one of his frequent meetings with the Head Auror, but the lift was slow, and he could appreciate the benefits of a distraction. “Weasley,” he said, inclining his head. “Was there something you wanted to speak to me about?” From the way Weasley was bearing down on him, his cheeks stretched and red, Draco knew what the answer was, but it always paid to pretend to be a bit stupid.
“Yes,” Weasley said, clipped, and reached out towards Draco’s arm.
Draco watched, and waited. When Weasley’s fingers actually touched Draco’s skin, there was a slight pop, softer than the one that a firework would have made but otherwise similar, and a faint flash of green. Weasley stared, cradling his numb hand, and then turned his head and stared at Draco.
Draco shrugged a little. “Since the war, people have tried to kill me, you know. On both sides.” He made no mention of how the spell was there in case anyone he didn’t like tried to touch him. Weasley would figure that out or not. Draco had the advantage in any contest between them that didn’t involve pure Gryffindor bravery-which meant any contest. “You don’t have to pull me along. I’m perfectly willing to accompany you.”
Weasley did some more staring, of the kind that probably impressed the stupid criminals he dealt with. Draco was a different species from them, and only looked back, mild and condescending, until Weasley tossed a curt gesture over his shoulder and stormed away. Draco followed.
The Ministry had hundreds of tiny rooms tucked away in it, meeting rooms and interrogation rooms and temporary cells and offices that had fallen out of use when their occupants died or moved on. Draco had mapped all of them and knew the one that Weasley led him to, off the Atrium. It had a door that didn’t lock properly and a secret door in the corner that led straight into a tunnel. It also had a single chair, and Draco took it before Weasley could command him to do so, arranging his robes around his legs.
Weasley’s muscles bulged at the back of his neck, but he said nothing. He leaned forwards, braced his hands on the single table that the room also boasted, and stared at Draco.
“You’ll probably want better light,” Draco murmured.
Weasley said, “What?” He clamped his lips a moment later and blew air out through his nostrils as though disappointed that Draco had managed to hook the word out of him.
“For when you paint my portrait, I mean,” Draco said, and swept his head in a half-bow. “Because, somehow, I think that there are only two reasons you would be looking at me that intently. And I have too much respect for your lovely wife to ever indulge the other.”
Weasley’s neck muscles bulged again. Then he said, “I want to know why you’re visiting Harry, Malfoy.”
So someone had noticed, then. Well, Draco wasn’t surprised. If he had spies in hospital, there was no reason that someone else couldn’t have them, too.
He arranged his robes again, and then said, “The case interests me. The last Parselmouth I’m aware of was the Dark Lord, and I think you’ll agree that his conduct was not exactly conducive to much study.”
Weasley’s lip curled slightly down, exposing his teeth. It would have been more impressive if Draco had been afraid of charging Gryffindors. “You want to research him.”
Draco nodded. “Before the inevitable collapse into insanity. That’s why our ancestors thought all Parselmouths were Dark, you know. Because the gift would bring the serpents, and that would bring the madness.” He kept his eyes steady on Weasley’s face as he lied, because that would help give the impression of honesty, and because he was fascinated by the way that small things were beginning to tic in Weasley’s face. “Slytherin and his preoccupation with letting a giant snake loose in the school. The Dark Lord and his plans to rule the Muggle world. And Potter and his…well, I don’t know yet what form his insanity would take, but it’s interesting to contemplate.”
He stopped, because Weasley had a wand pointing at his face. Draco very carefully did not blink, and reminded himself that the perils of manipulating a Gryffindor with emotions came from it leading to situations like this.
“You don’t say that,” Weasley whispered. “You don’t talk about him. You don’t visit him again.”
Draco nodded. He would have to find some more secure entrance to hospital.
“You make me sick,” Weasley said, backing away as though that wasn’t the only thing Draco did, and then folding his arms and staring at him. “That’s a human being you’re talking about. But you don’t see him that way, do you?” He began to pace back and forth. Draco followed every stride with interest, watching for indications of the Auror training Weasley had gone through. That would be important if he turned into one of their pursuers after Draco stole Potter from under his nose. “You just see him as a source of information.”
“What else should he be to me?”
Weasley spun around and, this time, vaulted the table and laid his wand directly against Draco’s throat. Draco knew, then, that he had managed just the right combination of gentleness and indifference in his words. He sat there, not swallowing, and not blinking, and with his hand, in his lap, on his wand that was under his robes. With it, he cast a nonverbal charm that made the blood flee his cheeks, presenting Weasley with the white and waxy mask that he would want to find on the face of a terrified Slytherin.
“Maybe when you can dream of answering that question with something approaching the reality,” Weasley whispered, “then you’ll deserve what he did for you.”
Draco shut his eyes, and reflected to himself that he would probably have to teach Potter how to lie. It wouldn’t do them any good, as wizards who needed to practice the Dark Arts and wanted to practice them openly, to tell the truth all the time. But it was easier to conceal your emotions with your eyes closed, and at the same time have the one confronting you think that you were simply afraid or overpowered.
Weasley stood in front of him for a long time, and Draco wondered if he would have to make a verbal submission. It was tiresome, but he had done more tiresome things in his time, and for worse reasons.
But at last Weasley pulled back, and he heard the soft sound of Weasley’s wand falling into his robe pocket. “You’re pathetic,” Weasley said, and stormed out of the room. The door rebounded from the wall.
Draco opened his eyes and considered the path where he had walked. Then he shrugged, and smiled, and stood, and made his way towards the lifts and his delayed appointment with the Head Auror.
*
“You can do this if you concentrate.”
“That’s all anyone’s told me since I arrived here,” Harry snapped, keeping his eyes closed because the snakes were particularly bad this morning. He was seeing adders with cobras’ heads and rattlesnakes’ tails now, and hallucinations floated through the air and piled on top of one another in scudding drifts of color. “But what no one will tell me is how to do it.”
There was a moment of silence, and he listened to Healer Chance’s quill rapping her parchment. Then she said, “I don’t see what else we can tell you, Mr. Potter. To concentrate is to concentrate, and you must know how to do it if you got through the Auror training program, which, I am given to understand, is rigorous.”
It sounded as if she might be reconsidering that opinion. Harry ground his teeth and reminded himself that he wanted to talk about Parseltongue, not individual Healers’ opinions of Aurors. “How likely do you think it is that I’ll manage to concentrate them all away and have a normal life? The Parseltongue will still be there, won’t it, even if I never use it again? It could still leak out and influence my actions.”
Silence that Harry couldn’t read, because it promptly filled up with the soft lisping voices he wanted to ignore in any case. Then Chance murmured, “If you plug a well, then the water cannot leak out, as long as the seal is tight.”
“But I thought I had it sealed,” Harry said, and drove his hands into the bed beside him, for a moment before he calmed and felt able to keep on talking. “Why did it suddenly show up now? I hadn’t used it for a long time, except when the criminals we chased had guard snakes that needed to be talked down, and now it suddenly decides to do this?”
“It is a mistake to talk of the Parseltongue as ‘deciding’ anything,” Chance said, her voice rattling the approved terms into place like someone talking through a mouthful of rocks. “That is to give it credit for an independent will that it does not possess, and to see it as the enemy and not part of you. You should not think-”
“Fuck what you think I should think!” Harry spat, and opened his eyes. “I want answers!”
The world in front of him swam in snakes, and parts of snakes: stretched jaws, looping bodies, soaring scale-shaped patterns of light and color. Chance resembled a giant snake, the way that Lyons had yesterday, but without the human eyes this time. Harry had to admit that she made a handsome bushmaster.
“This is not the way forwards, Mr. Potter,” the snake said, its lidless mouth and hissing voice prim like the Healer’s.
“I want to know why my Parseltongue suddenly showed up and started doing this to me,” Harry snarled at her, and knew that he didn’t sound sane. Well, that was fucking fine, he didn’t feel that way, either, and they treated him as dangerous either way, so he might as well talk the way he wanted to. “You haven’t mentioned that. You’ve very carefully not mentioned that. And you haven’t talked to me about what I should do to get rid of it except concentrate, and not desire. No one could want this less than I do! You think I want to be crazy, and corrupted? And I won’t be, if you would fucking tell me what is going on!”
Chance stared at him, and Harry thought he could see a widening in her serpentine eyes even though the human ones were hidden. Then she said, “Mr. Potter, do you understand that that was entirely in Parseltongue? You are falling further into the grip of the Dark. I could not answer you even if I wished to.”
Liar, sighed the half-boa hanging from the ceiling above Harry’s head, and sang the kraits on his pillow. She is lying.
“I think you’re lying,” Harry said, and knew that he didn’t imagine the faint gasp from her direction. And to react that way to what he said, she would have to understand it. “And I want you to tell me why. What is so horrible about the answers to my questions? Do you want me to write a signed statement saying that what happens to me isn’t your fault before you take my magic or my sight and speech? Is that what you want?”
“What?” Chance whispered, her voice aching.
“What happened to other Parselmouths whose gifts appeared after lying dormant for a long time?” Harry snapped. “I think that you ought to be able to answer that question even if you can’t answer the others.”
Silence, and Harry could feel the balance of her mind shifting, could feel her deciding what to tell him and what not. He cocked his head, and the heads of the snakes around him-the ones who had heads-cocked, too. He paused, and wondered for a moment what would happen if he tried to deliberately control their motions. So far, the only time he had tried to do that was when the rattlesnake had gone after Healer Lyons.
You’ll hurt someone, is what will happen.
And you’ll hurt someone if you thrash around without control, said a voice that sounded like Malfoy’s and might have come from a snake or the inside of his own head. As if there was a difference at this point.
“Fine,” Chance said at last. “I was in favor of telling you this from the beginning, but Matthew thought it would inhibit your recovery.” Harry hissed at her attempt to buy her way free from blame, but listened. “Most Parselmouths whose gifts appeared suddenly like this were Light wizards. And none of them recovered.”
“With the concentration method, you mean?” Harry asked.
“With any method,” Chance said, and now her voice went rushing and doubling ahead like a stream flowing down a mountain, as though she had decided to cast aside all the blocks in her way. “We cursed them into Squibs, and the gift stayed, like their ability to move did. We took away their sight and their speech, and they could still hear.” She paused, and Harry listened to her breathing move her chest. “A few of them were put in the Janus Thickey ward. Most of them committed suicide.”
Harry shut his eyes. He could think about giving up his magic so that he would never hurt anyone again. The memory of Kipling’s screams when the snakes coiled back on him still remained in his ears.
But he didn’t want to die. He didn’t. He didn’t want to live this way, of course, but he had hoped there was an end to it. And it sounded like there never would be. He could give up his ability to see or speak back to the snakes, and he would still hear them whispering in the night. He could give up his magic, but apparently repressed Parseltongue was something deeper than that, something like the accidental magic that he had sometimes read happened even to save a Squib’s life.
He was caged. Confined. Death or the Dark Arts.
He turned his head and said, “Go away.”
“I should not have told you that,” Chance murmured. “It is true that no other Light wizard with Parseltongue has ever recovered, but still. You could be the first, as powerful as you are and as determined as you are. You have overcome worse odds than this, Mr. Potter. If you would do me the courtesy of telling me-”
Harry was breathing fast. He could feel the death sentence sitting on his shoulders, and he knew it would strike him harder when he took the time to really think about it. He knew he would do something worse than he had done so far if she stayed in the room.
He snapped his fingers and opened his eyes to focus on the kraits nearest him. “Drive her out,” he said in Parseltongue. “Don’t bite her.”
The snakes boiled off his pillow, yellow and black bands flashing as they surrounded Healer Chance, their tails whipping in multiple directions and their heads coiling around her legs, pushing against her robes. And Harry could see again, the partial hallucinations flowing away, and Chance was definitely human and not snake as she struggled to her feet, clutching her quill, her mouth stuck in a scream.
Acceptance, mastery, of the gift, brings relief, said Malfoy’s voice.
Harry let himself slump back and watch the kraits bear Chance towards the door on a sea of their writhing bodies, holding back their fangs not because it was their natural instinct but because he had asked them to. He had no idea what Chance saw or felt, didn’t see or didn’t feel, but she went, and there were silent tears slipping down her face.
That sight touched something somewhere near the bottom of his soul, something that sang in hard, dark tones.
They can go away. They can leave me alone.
The kraits flowed back to him when they were done with their herding task, and draped him in a happily wriggling pile of bodies. Harry closed his eyes and told himself that they weren’t real, that nothing here was.
But that meant that the “care” the Healers were offering him was the same way.
He slept with a krait tucked into either armpit, thinking about that.
*
Millicent paused when Draco’s face formed out of the fire on her hearth, and then shook her head. “Whatever you want me to help you with, I’m not doing it,” she said.
Draco fluttered his eyelashes. “But what about the time that I got you that Firewhisky when you’d just broken up with Theo and didn’t want anyone to know about it?” he asked. “That’s a debt I haven’t called on yet.”
Millicent sighed and sat back, running a hand through her thick hair. She kept it to such a length that it seemed it should get in her way, but it didn’t, and it never grew an inch longer, either. Draco thought she used spells on it that terrified it into obedience. “So it is,” she said. “But from what Pansy says, what you’re after is Potter, and he’s under wards that I couldn’t get near even if I was a full Healer instead of an apprentice.”
Draco shook his head. “I’m asking you to create a distraction, not let me into Potter’s room. I can manage that by myself.”
Millicent cocked her head to the side and studied him. “You can?”
Draco smiled serenely back. It wasn’t for Millicent to know, any more than it was for Healer Chance, that Draco had made a copy of the key to the wards on Potter’s room the last time he was in hospital. And he had something on him that would take care of any surprises, too. What he really needed was a way to make sure that Weasley’s spies wouldn’t be watching him.
“Fine, don’t tell me,” Millicent said, and shook her head. “There’s a woman I’m tending right now who has a bit of a prejudice against Slytherins and makes a lot of noise if she doesn’t get one of her potions on time. Nasty bitch. That potion mixed with a little concoction I know about is going to make her a perfect distraction.”
Draco traded another smile with her. As someone studying to be a Healer, Millicent was technically supposed to be more compassionate than Draco would ever try to be, but she saw no reason to be polite to people who hated her and wouldn’t trust her anyway. She had tested several of Draco’s potions that needed a living subject on such unpleasant patients. None of them had ever died.
“I want to see him tomorrow morning,” Draco said. “Can you make it happen around ten in the morning?”
Millicent half-closed her eyes. “Closer to ten thirty,” she murmured. “Ms. Bitch gets her dose at nine, and it’ll need that long to build up sufficiently.”
Draco laughed. “Excellent. I trust that she’ll take a lesson from it.”
Millicent nodded and stood up. “Hopefully enough to insist on being treated at home for the duration. And I do expect a bit of payment for this later, Draco. Enough to know what you want with Potter and how he’s reacting to it.” She shut down the Floo connection as she always did, without giving Draco time to say goodbye or doing it herself.
Draco leaned back, tapped a finger against his teeth, and smiled. He had wanted Potter to have a day to himself to contemplate what Draco was offering, but he thought it a good idea not to wait too long. After Weasley’s words, Potter’s friends would probably drop a hint in the Healers’ ears, too, and attempt to have Draco blocked by the ones who didn’t owe anything to him the way Chance did.
I think I need only one more visit. Potter must be thinking about it himself.
*
Harry opened his eyes in the dark, under stars.
He didn’t recognize where he stood, except that it wasn’t in hospital, and for the moment, that was enough for him. He turned around with soft earth and grass crumbling under his feet, and studied the trees that whispered above him. The light from the stars and a rising full moon was too faint for him to make out what kind they were. Long, slender, flexible. He reached out and ran his fingers down the nearest leaf, and it felt more like a tentacle or a vine.
This is the first step.
The soft voice spoke from every direction. Harry turned around, and felt a heavy, shifting weight on his feet. Snakes. He didn’t look down at them, just enjoyed being able to peer ahead and see something besides them.
There was a path there, a thick, dark slash in the black earth. Harry blinked and tried to see whether it was paved. A Muggle road? He didn’t think so. Instead, it looked as though someone had simply trampled the earth flat with a huge, irresistible tread. Smooth, polished, but, when he reached down and felt it with one hand, softer than stone.
He turned his head and found another path of the same kind, stretching away next to the first one like different spokes radiating from a wheel. And there was another one beyond that, and a fourth when Harry began to walk in a circle, looking for them. He stood on the top of a hill, apparently, covered with trees and then dropping away to earth where the paths were. Altogether, he counted thirteen.
Of course there are. Harry came back to what had to be the first path by his own footprints in the dirt and stared at it for a long time.
Malfoy had said that Dark wizards were the ones who kept to the paths and the insane wizards were the ones who strayed off them. Harry hadn’t expected the paths metaphor to be that literal.
Or you could be mad and dreaming.
But the quiet wind hadn’t altered, and neither had the leaves that still sometimes dipped in the breeze and brushed his shoulders, and Harry didn’t think his bloody mind was capable of creating something this real, when so often since this all began it had created something hard to believe instead. He watched the smooth, tempting, above all downwards paths and wondered.
Did he dare take his first step without someone to guide him? Malfoy might. Or he could have been lying when he said that, just trying to get back at Harry. Or he might show him the wrong one.
Harry felt the snakes tugging at his ankles. He looked down, and the long, slender white thread of one that lived underground, far from the sunlight, lifted its head and hissed at him. Brother. Come, brother.
“Which one do you think I should take?” Harry asked.
The snake slid away down the first path he had noticed, the one right in front of him. And in truth, Harry thought, the one he had appeared facing was as good as any other.
He sighed out, counted to three under his breath, and took the first step.
Chapter Five.
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