Chapter Eleven of 'Deconversion'- Cold-Blooded
Chapter Ten.
Title: Deconversion (11/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 Eleven-Cold-Blooded
Draco settled into a corner of Pansy’s favorite drawing room and considered the refreshments available on a sideboard. There was golden wine there, and plain pumpkin juice, and butterbeer, and Firewhisky, and milk, and a dozen other things, including Strength Potions, that Draco thought she had included as jokes. Well, he didn’t mind drinking a potion he hadn’t had to brew himself, as long as it came from someone he trusted. He tossed back one of the Strength Potions, grey and bubbling, and then picked up a glass of pumpkin juice. Drinking alcohol now wouldn’t be a good plan.
“You know that it’s a stupid idea for you to be here.”
Draco turned around and lifted his glass to Pansy. “That’s what I love best about you, Pansy, your never-failing sense of diplomacy and tact.”
Pansy shook her head and put her hands on her hips. “Why not leave Potter to confront his friends alone?” she suggested, less than gently. “You know that he’s going to stumble anyway. Your presence will make it worse.”
Draco smiled at her with a show of teeth. “Potter is my investment. And it’s fine if he stumbles. I just don’t want him falling off the paths. He said something yesterday that made me think he would,” he added, when Pansy blinked at him.
“Did he?” Pansy turned to look thoughtfully through the arched doorway into the corridor where Potter waited. Draco had finally asked him to go out there because Potter wanted to pace, and he was driving Draco to distraction in the shorter drawing room. “Well, I wouldn’t have expected that. Or perhaps I would have. It’s not easy for someone to go from thinking of himself as a Light wizard to embracing the Dark.”
Draco nodded and sipped again at his juice. It was perfect, of course, chilled just so and a bright shade of orange that reminded Draco of autumn foliage. People like Granger who thought wizards could simply dispense with the services of house-elves didn’t know what they were missing. “I think he understands, now, that this is a permanent commitment. But his friends have always had too much influence on him. If anyone could make him renounce that commitment…”
Pansy rolled her eyes. “I see. Well. Now that the article is out there, I can understand why you feel that investment.”
Draco smiled. The post had poured in that morning, and his house-elves had sorted it out into “obviously dangerous,” “worth amusement,” and “worth reading” piles for him. In the last were letters from Dark wizards who were glad that someone had finally come forwards to represent them as they should be represented, furious questions from important political figures, and letters from Potter’s personal friends. He had spent a long time listening to Howlers explode in warded rooms, rooms that would both prevent them from getting out to blow up in Draco’s face and record the information they spouted for later listening. If there was anything interesting in there, Draco would find it.
“You love being the center of attention,” Pansy said, and toasted him with her own glass of wine. “I have to accept that you can handle it and I can’t. This is as closely as I want to be involved in the Potter end of things.”
Draco smiled. “And if Granger and Weasley don’t keep their mouths shut about meeting Potter at your house?”
Pansy sighed. “Well, if I must go public, I will.”
Draco nodded. Pansy enjoyed the stares as much as he did, but she enjoyed her little show of modesty even more. Draco blamed her mother. “What time are the Terrible Twins scheduled to arrive?”
“At two,” Pansy said, nodding at the golden clock on the wall, which still showed ten minutes until the appointment. Then she smiled and looked towards the grumbling fireplace. “But I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s them,” she added, and stepped over to open the Floo, bending down in a long, graceful line.
Draco turned and softly called Potter, who was passing by the door just then. Potter spun around on one heel, his arms lifted and his hand braced as if he was about to fling magic.
“It’s all right,” Draco said. “Your friends aren’t here yet, but they’re coming. I thought you might want to come in and arrange yourself. Choose how they’re first going to see you,” he added, because Potter was staring at him as if he didn’t know what Draco meant.
*
Harry closed his eyes and felt the sweat drying on the back of his neck, touched a moment later by the white serpent’s tongue as it licked him clean. He nodded.
“I’ll come in,” he said.
Malfoy remained, studying him, where Ron or Hermione would have known him well enough to enact a discreet withdrawal. Another reminder that he wasn’t with his best friends, Harry thought, and never would be anymore. He drove his fingers into his palms and stood there, swaying and sweating.
He had bound Hermione. He had let Malfoy attack Ron. How was he ever going to face them again?
But the white serpent said softly, into his ear, Brother. That is what the cold one spoke of the other day. You know that you need not blame yourself for something so much that it paralyzes you. You cannot apologize if you remain out here. You cannot act. You cannot defend yourself. You cannot do anything but stand still. And that is the part of a bird or a rabbit, not a snake.
Sometimes I think it would be easier if I was commanding birds or rabbits, Harry told the white serpent in subvocal Parseltongue. Then no one would be so quick to accuse me of evil.
Rabbits do not have venom, said the serpent in some surprise.
Harry laughed in spite of himself, and held out his hand so that the snake could touch the tips of his fingers with its tongue.
“Yes, just the thing to reassure Granger and Weasley,” Malfoy’s voice drawled from perhaps a meter away, closer than he had come yet. “Laughing in response to things no one else can hear, reaching out to touch things no one else can feel.”
Harry opened his eyes and glared. Malfoy looked back at him with his brows raised, then nodded towards the drawing room that had felt too confining to Harry earlier when Parkinson was trying to make him sit down on one of the fine sofas that seemed to be covered in deep blue or green brocade. On the other hand, what did he know about brocade?
“I’m giving you good advice,” Malfoy said, so softly that Harry knew no one in the room behind him would hear him. “You know that. You want to resist it, because it’s not the kind of thing that your friends would say. But if you’ll excuse me, your friends have the political awareness of a flea. A young flea.”
“Hermione’s worked in politics since the war,” Harry snapped, feeling his defensiveness fill his belly like swelling blood. “You have no right to say that she would always give me bad advice.”
“Because what she wanted you to do with the Parseltongue was so astute.”
Harry found that he had opened his mouth. He shut it again and swallowed. It always came back to that, to the snakes on his shoulder and the venom sacs under his cheeks and the band of scales that he had found it was more comfortable to simply let form under his hairline. His friends wouldn’t see him as the same person anymore. He wasn’t the same person anymore. He had walked the Dark paths. Seen the Hanging Tree.
Accepted help from Malfoy and Parkinson.
“Let’s go,” he said abruptly, and stepped past Malfoy. But on the way, he let his hand sway out and brush Malfoy’s.
Malfoy smiled at his back, he knew it. And if Harry didn’t want to think about when he had learned to read the git’s thoughts so well, no one was saying that he had to.
*
Draco followed Potter into the drawing room with a lighter step. Potter was struggling, but the struggles tended in other directions now. He didn’t want to defend his friends so much that he would drop his snakes for them.
He shouldn’t have to change what he is to keep a friendship. Perhaps to survive in a political world or conciliate his enemies, but his friends are supposed to be the ones who understand and encourage him.
That made Draco part his lips in soundless laughter. By that standard, he thought he was the best friend that Potter had at the moment-or the best one who walked on two legs.
Caught in that quicksilver amusement, he was able to nod amicably in response to Weasel’s glare of a greeting. Granger stood beside him, her arm around his waist and her hand on her wand. Draco raised his eyebrows at them. How wonderful a way to greet your best friend.
He wondered if he should talk about his definition of friendship, if it would amuse them. But he was supposed to be supporting Potter right now, and it would be stupid to undermine his own efforts. He stood back with his hands clasped in front of him and resolved to say nothing except in response to a direct question.
Or if they really seemed as if they would undermine Potter’s commitment. Draco had already seen enough Dark wizards who cringed back from the risks involved die in writhing pain, thanks.
Potter came to a stop in front of the pair. He swallowed and held his hands out to the sides as if he wanted to show that he didn’t have hold of a wand. Draco shook his head. They know you’re dangerous without that. They’ve absorbed that fact better than you have, I think. You’re cautious, you’re demonized, but you’re also powerful.
You never made proper use of your power. I’m going to be here to ensure that you can.
Potter said nothing. Weasel and Granger said nothing. Draco expected Pansy to shift and cough to break the silence, but she stood back along the wall and seemed to have decided that the scene required no words from her at all.
Finally, Potter said, “Ron. Hermione.” His voice was choked. The streamer of white light on his shoulder rose up and curled into his hair. Draco didn’t know if Weasel and Granger had tensed because they saw and understood the movement, or if it was just hearing the strangled hoarseness of Potter’s voice. “I-I missed you.” His voice cracked in the middle this time.
Probably the best thing he could say. Honest emotion usually works with Gryffindors.
But this time, Potter was up against that paralyzing fear of the Dark Arts that had risen to a new height since the war. Granger tightened her arm on Weasel. He was the one who finally answered, sounding more strangled than Potter, as if he had the right. Well, perhaps his wife was squeezing the air out of him, Draco thought charitably, and had a nice little fantasy where he replaced Granger’s arm with one of Potter’s boas.
“Why did you run, mate?” Weasel whispered. “You know that the Healers were only trying to do their best for you.”
Potter hesitated, then stood tall. “They told me, when I asked, that I would only end up mad or a suicide, because the Parseltongue started up so late in my life,” he said flatly. “I didn’t want that to happen. By becoming a Dark wizard, I can see again. Not to mention walk and eat and not have to worry about dying.”
“But you have to worry about what you’ll become.” Weasel’s eyes were on fire. “There are worse things in that line than dying.”
But Potter had said the right thing for Granger, anyway. “A Healer told you that?” she asked, sounding appalled. “But they’ve rescued some Parselmouths in the past, I know that! Why couldn’t they help you?”
Draco smiled. Excellent. She has shifted to thinking of it as the Healers’ fault, and not Potter’s. That will help.
“They said that sometimes that happened, but it was very rare,” Potter said. The white serpent on his shoulder flowed down and coiled around his arm. As long as it didn’t move much, Draco thought it might escape the Gryffindors’ observation. “Only about five percent of Parselmouths managed it.” Draco watched Granger’s jaw tighten in that expression she’d worn at school right before she began a speech about the rights of abused house-elves. “And I don’t like my chances for being in that five percent.”
“Mate.” Weasley was pacing back and forth now, maybe because Granger had withdrawn from him into the silent realm of moral championing. Then he flung himself back around and stared at Potter. “How could you bind her? How could you send Malfoy to fight me?” He gave Draco a look of active hatred. Draco smiled back, not having expected anything else since he had managed to escape. Weasley apparently looked at Potter again to keep from spilling blood on Pansy’s nice clean floor, which Draco appreciated. “How-how could you do that? That’s the thing I don’t understand. If you didn’t want to go to St. Mungo’s, fine, but what about us? That’s what really convinced us you were a Dark wizard, you know. Not the newspaper articles. That you fought us.”
Draco picked up his eyebrows. Well. Potter’s answer to those questions would determine what way the conversation would go. Since there was profit in it for Draco either way, he settled back and waited.
*
Harry waited for the hot sensation in his lungs that had happened whenever he thought of his friends over the last few days, and the blush of shame on his face.
It didn’t come. Instead, the white serpent said in a lazy, considering voice, You can keep silence, I suppose. But I would not advise it, brother.
The white serpent wasn’t upset, because Harry wasn’t upset. Not the way he thought he should be, by the way Ron had phrased the questions, and the way that Ron and Hermione were probably anticipating.
Without that shame to trip him up and make him defensive, Harry found himself speaking with a calm air that seemed to drain some of the color from Ron’s face. “I wanted out. And I did ask not to go to St. Mungo’s, but you told me it was time. If I’d kept protesting, would you have let me stay in the Ministry, Ron?”
Ron visibly flinched and touched his forehead. “No,” he said at last. “Not after the way that your snakes attacked Kipling. Sorry, but no.” He flicked a mute glance at Hermione, and Harry knew he was waiting for her to speak up, too. But she was involved in considerations that Harry couldn’t follow, from the way her lips moved. She wouldn’t take part in the conversation again until she had finished thinking it through.
“Well, then,” Harry said. “I wanted to do something, and I couldn’t trust you to think that I knew what was best for me. So I did what I had to, and ran. I’m sorry,” he added, when Ron squinted at him. “But it was impossible to stay. You weren’t listening to me, and the Healers had admitted they didn’t know what to do with me. Malfoy was the only one who seemed to offer a solution.”
“What made you listen to him?” Ron spun to face Malfoy this time, and clenched his fists. Harry was secretly impressed that he refrained from hitting him, though. That was another sign that made him think Ron really did care more about winning Harry back than pounding Malfoy for being evil. “When you didn’t trust the Healers and you didn’t trust us, it seemed like a great idea to trust someone you’d always hated?”
“Because he was the one who had answers,” Harry said simply. “The one who made me see something other than snakes and reversed some of the physical changes when he touched me.”
“Physical changes,” Hermione whispered, and leaned forwards. “What kind?”
Harry hesitated, because he had only hinted at them in the interview with Skeeter. He thought Malfoy was right that revealing them too soon would dim the public’s sympathy for him.
But these were his friends, and he wanted them back, and he thought he was doing a pretty good job so far. He let the fangs grow, and relaxed the concentration that he had found would keep the venom sacs from forming in his cheeks. When he drew in his breath, it came out in a hiss, though a meaningless one, or the snakes wrapped about him would have stirred.
Ron flinched and looked nauseated. Hermione’s eyes brimmed with tears. Harry tensed, and the white serpent lifted its head, but said nothing, only fixing unblinking ice-colored eyes on Ron. It thought him the greater danger, then.
Well. That was their first reaction. It doesn’t mean it’s their only one. Harry bore down with his mind in the way that he had found worked best, and the fangs shortened and thickened, becoming his front teeth once more. It was harder to squeeze the venom sacs down; Harry had found that any changes his body made under the surface of the skin were more difficult, in general. He had only managed to get all the shadows of scale patterns on his hands to go away after an hour of focus.
But this was the way he was, now, and if he could choose how he looked, he didn’t want to maintain a mask in front of his best friends. He looked them in the eye and asked, “Well? Are you going to accept me? Or are you going to walk away?”
*
A good question, Draco thought, and wrapped his hand around his wand. He could see Pansy doing the same thing from the corner of his eye. They would allow Weasley and Granger to leave, but it wouldn’t be with intact memories. An Auror and a political fighter had no need to remember the Floo address for a Slytherin’s house.
Weasley did some fast breathing, the kind a bull did when about to charge. Draco had to admit that he couldn’t read the bloke well, though, not always, and if Potter and his snakes weren’t alarmed, Draco could simply remain alert and watchful.
“What kind of life are you going to have, as a Dark wizard?” Weasley burst out at last. “Hunted down, killed, maybe even tortured by other Dark wizards who want to learn your secrets? I don’t see why you want it, mate.”
Draco rolled his eyes, and didn’t care who saw. There was stubbornness and clinging to outmoded beliefs, and then there was ignoring what Potter had already told him several times.
“It’s this or die,” Potter said flatly. “Maybe even hurt more people than I would as a Dark wizard, since my power would be flailing around out of control, and I couldn’t hold back the snakes or stop from changing into one. You know, the way it started to happen before I accepted the gift and controlled it.”
“You’re capable of control now?” Granger whispered.
Potter turned to face her, and nodded. Draco cocked his head. Interesting. Their friendship is close, but he seems calmer with her than he does with Weasley. Perhaps it is not as emotional. “Yes. I can hold back the snakes from attacking or make them attack, conjure them or dismiss them. And watch this.” He shut his eyes, and Draco felt the faint tingle of Dark magic extending over his hands. The fingers shrank, and scales blossomed under the skin. Then his arms started to move back in towards the sides.
Weasley fell back from him, groping frantically for his wand in the way of someone not able to look away from a horrifying sight. Granger squeaked and pressed her fist to her mouth. Draco shifted and crossed his legs, wondering at their reaction.
So it doesn’t make Weasley hard. So that’s less competition.
Potter paused, and the scales retracted at the same moment as his arms began to move outwards. His fingers unfolded from his hands like claws coming unsheathed. He lifted his hand and stroked the white serpent on his shoulder as though to prove that he could, but his eyes never moved from his friends.
Weasley shut his mouth. Granger took her fist away from hers and said, “So the changes are making you into a magical creature?”
“No,” Potter said, impatient for the first time, where Draco would have been advising them to find their wands and depart long since. “I can control them. They don’t control me. I don’t have to look the same all the time. I’m a Parselmouth, Hermione, and that’s different from a magical creature and different from just a Dark wizard.” His eyes flicked to the side as though searching for reassurance in Draco’s face.
Draco remained silent, as he had promised he would, but he let his eyes light up and his head incline like one swinging on a rope. Potter promptly tipped up his chin and went back to studying his friends.
“You’re still trusting him,” Weasley said.
“You’re still in danger,” Granger whispered.
“But not for the same reasons that you thought I was,” Potter said, and moved a hand down in front of him as though wielding a guillotine between past and present. “That’s what you have to accept. That it’s not the same. It can’t be, after that article I did. So are you going to accept the way I am? Or not?”
Weasley and Granger exchanged agonized glances. Draco had seen that kind of agony before, and smiled. They were listening to the overturning and shattering of their precious prejudices. He had been through the same thing himself, numerous times, but he had fought his way through to reality on his own. They had Potter helping them, softening every step of the way for them, and still they couldn’t accept what was happening. They didn’t deserve even this much help.
“We’ll have to think,” Granger whispered. Draco suspected that she had started to relate to Potter as she would to some threatened species of magical creature, and now she had to stop and consider.
“We’ll have to,” Weasley said, hollowly. He looked directly at the white serpent on Potter’s shoulder, a darting, flickering glance, and then turned his head away.
Potter bit his lip, then nodded. “That’s all I ask you to do,” he said, and turned his back to cross the room to Draco.
“Harry!” That was Weasley, lunging forwards with his hand stretched out. “Aren’t you going to come with us? I mean-you’re not going to stay here, you can’t-”
His voice trailed off as Potter looked at him.
“Yes,” Potter said, while the world grew deep and silent except for the faint hiss of aroused snakes on the edge of Draco’s hearing, “I can.”
And he came back to Draco and Pansy, while Weasley and Granger departed through the Floo after a few more moments of appealing to his back.
Potter closed his eyes when he reached Draco and leaned his shoulder against the mantelpiece. He was shaking lightly. Draco touched his shoulder, and he crouched, fangs and venom sacs flashing into being so suddenly that Draco thought they must have hurt him.
“You did well,” Draco said. “And you need your friends.”
“You think that?” Potter stared at him.
Draco sighed. “I know my allies’ needs and strengths and weaknesses. Yes, I know you need them, and because of that, I won’t interfere.”
Potter continued to look at him, green-eyed and bright. Fanged. Dark.
Irresistible.
Draco leaned down and kissed him, cutting his lips on the fangs, turning his head from side to side in the hope that he might catch a drop of sweet, delicious venom.
Chapter Twelve.
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