Chapter Twelve of 'A Black Stone in a Glass Box'- The Scarlet Snake
Chapter Eleven.
Title: A Black Stone in a Glass Box (12/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Harry/Draco, Ron/Hermione, Blaise/Astoria
Rating: PG-13
Warnings: Weird magic, DH-compliant in most ways but ignores epilogue, some angst, OC character death.
Summary: Harry has made a sacrifice to protect the wizarding world. And Draco Malfoy is going to find a way to reverse it if it kills him. After all, if he doesn’t reverse it, then he’ll only die of boredom anyway.
Author’s Notes: This is based on the fairy tale of Koschei the Deathless, which is where the familiarity in the plot will probably come from. It’s going to be an action/adventure and humor story more than a romance, mostly in Draco’s POV, and although the first chapter is fairly dark, the rest are definitely lighter
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twelve--The Scarlet Snake
Draco gasped aloud as he came out into the middle of a dark tunnel, and spent a few seconds blinking around. For some reason, after fighting the horse and eagle in open spaces, he had assumed that the site of the next battle would also be open country, a magnificent landscape that he couldn't help admiring even as he worked to destroy the next component of Potter's chain ritual.
Instead, he was looking at what could have been a sewer. Draco wrinkled his nose as he studied the thin trickle of brown water making its way down the middle of the tunnel. It led through sculptured stone, and that made him wonder if someone human had made this place.
Then again, who knew where the silver horse's desert and the blue eagle's mountains had been? Potter's magic, or the powerful chain ritual, could have created them the way it did the dog's palace.
Draco rose to his feet and reached his hands out before and behind him, the Lumos Charm on his wand illuminating rough stone on the walls. Those walls curved inwards, but seemed fairly sturdy, thank Merlin. Draco peered closely at them. No colors, and no threads of ore, either. This wasn't a mine.
A long, low sound, curiously soft, came to his ears as he stood there trying to decide if he wanted to walk ahead or wait for Potter to arrive and then decide what to do next based on his reactions to the place.
Draco whipped around, leveling his wand at the floor. His instincts had picked up on what the sound meant before they let his conscious mind know, it seemed. And a moment later, he was rewarded when he saw the flat, triangular head and the long body that followed behind, scarlet banded with black.
Draco had rarely seen such a magnificent snake, and certainly not this close. Nagini didn't count, not when she was partly a magical creature and the Dark Lord's pet. This snake had golden eyes and a long, tapered tail that tapped the ground now and then as it considered Draco.
"Hello," Draco said. "I don't know if it'll matter much, but I was Sorted into the House of the Snake when I was at school."
The serpent coiled a little closer to him. The intense colors glowed like a tongue of flame, and Draco found himself wondering which object Potter had used to make it. Then he shook his head. Not that it mattered, and he was being silly, letting himself get distracted like this.
The snake apparently didn't like his headshake. Its neck rose, and its tongue flickered out as though it was testing the air for his scent. Draco took another step forwards, starting to draw the bit of eagle beak out of his pocket. He had no idea how it was supposed to help him with this particular challenge, but he would never know if he just stood there with it hidden from sight like an idiot.
The snake struck, fast as Potter on a broom, before Draco could get his hand all the way out of his pocket. But Draco had annoyed one of his lovers, Bruno, several times, and he could move like that when he was annoyed, too. Draco's Bruno-trained reflexes came into play before he could even think about it, and he leaped into the air and off to the side, grimacing as he heard his boots come down with a splash into the middle of that brown water.
But better dirty boots than a bite on the leg from those wicked-looking fangs the snake now turned its head to display.
Well. Draco thought so, at least. There was a small chance that the poison would make him feel delicious and tingly and then not do him any harm, like the venom of a fairy garter snake he'd tried a few years ago. But he didn't want to risk it.
The serpent pulled its head back and stared at Draco from those golden eyes, so bright that Draco found himself grinning in spite of his anger. He darted out his hand and stroked it across the snake's head. It hissed and snapped wildly at him, but Draco was out of reach again. He bowed a little to the snake.
"Shall we find out what this does?" he asked, and held the bit of eagle's beak up.
It seemed that it was a weapon to conquer the snake, rather than a key, because it promptly lowered its head and looked for a moment as though it might slink away. Then it edged closer, head turned to the side. As if, Draco thought, it wanted to protect its throat, or something else...
Something that might well be its head right below the point where the head melted into the neck--what would have been the chin on a different kind of animal.
Draco danced back a step, as though he was going to throw the bit of eagle's beak elsewhere, and then ran up to the snake. Again the snake hissed; Draco could almost see the bits of saliva flying away from its tongue. But he was past on the other side before any real flying poison could hit him, and he stabbed the beak vaguely down near its neck, hoping that would give him some hint of its purpose.
The beak writhed in his hand and became an abrupt long, curved blade, with a hook at the end. Draco blinked. It looked like the sticks with loops at the end that he had seen some of his friends in France use for handling snakes.
As if it had decided it had nothing to lose, the snake writhed around again and lunged at his leg. Draco leaped up, tangled himself in the pole because he wasn't used to handling its weight--and that was the only reason--and dropped onto the ground. He heard the splash of muddy water as his trousers trailed in it, and frowned at the thought of the cleaning he would have to do later.
The snake hissed in triumph and wrapped around his leg. It lowered its head teasingly, unblinking eyes fixed on him. It seemed to take pleasure in Draco's involuntary flinch as its fangs almost brushed the cloth of his trousers.
But because of its own sadism, it wasn't paying enough attention to the loop, which Draco got neatly around its neck in the next second.
The snake did go still for a moment, golden eyes fixed on Draco as though stunned that he had come this far. Draco twisted himself away while he still could. He thought the snake would probably do something to poison him in the next moment, and so he planted his feet and cast a few charms that could come in useful.
Then the snake began to fling itself about, and the Sticking Charms Draco had used to hold his feet in place and the Cushioning Charms he’d cast on the walls turned out not to be enough, after all. Draco felt his head collide with the nearest stone, and grunted in pain. The snake was hissing like a child screaming, filling Draco’s ears with shrill sound.
Don’t let it bite you. That was the most important thing, and while the pole with the loop was important in controlling the snake, Draco didn’t think it was important to dissolving the snake, the way the bridle had been important to dissolving the horse. He let the pole go and sprang up to clutch at a stone projecting out from the wall.
The snake’s blunt nose slammed into the wall just beneath his boots. Draco grimaced and shook his head. He didn’t like this, but since when did survival depend on whether he liked something or not?
He swung himself around, cast a Lightening Charm on his feet so he could more easily pull his body up the wall, and found some more projecting stones. Soon he was wavering on his stomach and shins over the frantically hissing snake, who had tried to climb after him but couldn’t seem to find enough dry rock to support its bulk.
Draco met its eyes, and shivered a little. He didn’t know how smart the magical creatures that the chain ritual had created really were, and he didn’t think it mattered. He was looking at a beast that would never forgive him.
“Not that I need you to forgive me,” he said aloud. “I know that you’re going to break apart into pieces soon.”
The snake’s tongue flickered out again, and it turned its neck back and forth as though a path up the wall would mysteriously appear right where it needed it. Draco waited a second to make sure it wouldn’t-stranger things had happened in the places Potter’s magic had built-and then he levered himself into a sitting position and arranged his wand in front of him.
He knew the spell he needed to cast, the only one that would save him, but he’d never been good at it. That might have had something to do with watching one of his former lovers miscast it and spend four nights and days bubbling in hospital.
Then he grinned. He was afraid of something like that? Since when?
The snake had located a patch of stone that seemed soft and crumbling. It edged forwards, digging its fangs in as a hold. Draco winced as he watched the stone begin to smoke and sizzle beneath the poison dripping from its open mouth.
“Right,” he said aloud, and touched his wand to his forehead. “Aconitum.”
The spell passed through him, leaving a strong, savage taste in his mouth and his tongue and even his bones. Draco grimaced and shook his head, resisting the temptation to spit. That would just waste time right now.
He crouched in place, waited until the snake was focused on him, and then dropped from his temporary perch right back onto the floor of the tunnel.
The snake immediately lunged for him, mouth open. Draco stood there and let it come. Its fangs sank into his calf, cutting through the cloth of his robes. He heard himself curse, he felt the burn as the venom began its climb-
And then he felt the almost equal burn as the venom halted and retreated down his leg, baffled by the spell that he’d cast to protect himself against poison. He met the snake’s eyes and smiled, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the snake part its jaws and lean back as though it was astonished.
Then Draco kicked the snake in the mouth.
It fell backwards, twitching and flailing with its tail as though he had cut its head off. Draco laughed aloud and picked up the stick with the loop on the end, dropping it around the snake’s neck as he had before. The snake tried to stir and strike at him, but the loop was too firmly fastened in place this time, and it couldn’t.
Draco rode the twistings and thrashings, and laid his wand against a crack in the scales. This time, he reversed the spell that had protected him from the poison, light-headed with relief and joy. If he could cast the spell forwards in the right way, then there was nothing to keep him from reversing it and using the power backwards, too. “Finite aconitum.”
The crack between the snake’s scales glowed as though light was shining from inside it. Then the serpent began to hiss, so agonized that Draco stepped back and winced. He had mastered the spell backwards and forwards now, but it wasn’t the triumph he had expected. He was as reluctant to destroy the snake in the end as he had been to destroy the horse and the eagle. Like them, it was beautiful.
But then he thought of the passion in Potter’s eyes, and had to shake his head. If he had to choose which one was more glorious and which one he wanted to resurrect more, then there was really no contest.
The poison finished flowing into the serpent, and it lay still on the ground. Draco kept it pinned by the stick with the loop, though. He didn’t trust it to be dead until it turned back into the component object and whatever he would need to conquer the next animal in the ritual.
“Malfoy.”
Draco started, but still didn’t turn from the serpent. It could be more dangerous to him than Potter at the moment. It was closer.
And it probably didn’t have the scruples against killing people that Draco realized he was depending on Potter to have, either.
“Haven’t you interfered in my life enough?” Potter’s voice had gone deep, and although he was attempting to keep it level, Draco could hear cracks in it, as deadly in their way as the crack between the snake’s scales that Draco had filled with venom. “I tried to keep you out of it, and you made a promise to me that you betrayed.”
“I never intended to keep that promise,” Draco said, still watching the snake. The last shudders were running out. He thought now that it might be dead, and he might be able to press forwards and claim what he needed from it. But no reason to hurry if he didn’t have to. Potter wanted to talk for right now, not fight. “Your own prejudices should have told you never to trust a bargain made with a Slytherin. What did your friends say about the stupid bargain you made with the magic?”
Potter was silent for so long that Draco wanted to turn and look at him. But meanwhile, the snake had swirled and crumbled into a shallow drift of scarlet dust, in the center of which was a single autumn leaf and a long white fang. Draco picked up the fang and nodded at the weight and heft of it in his hand. He was careful not to nick his finger on the end.
“You can’t do this,” Potter said, in the voice of someone who had come to a decision. Draco turned to look at him. Potter stood with his head bowed, his hair blowing around him in a slight breeze coming through the tunnel entrance that Draco hadn’t noticed before. He lifted his face as Draco watched, and focused on him, shaking his head a little. “I worked too hard to do this.”
Draco sneered a little, because he thought he had the right. “How long did it take you to read the book that you got the ritual from? A single book, you implied to me, not extensive research. And you chose the objects and made them into animals, but that would have happened in the same moment that you sacrificed your heart for them. So don’t talk to me about effort. I think I’ve done more in attempting to free your heart than you did in protecting it.”
“You can’t do this,” Potter said, and took a single step towards him. Draco somehow felt that step should have cracked stone, made the water tremble. It didn’t, of course, but Draco did have to control the impulse to back up. “Yes, I talked about effort, but I was babbling. I should have remembered that I always had the power to stop you. I didn’t exercise it before.”
“Because your emotions weren’t free enough to see me as a threat,” Draco said, and nodded wisely. His heart was beating in a mad pattern, but so what? It wasn’t as though he intended to give in and let his fear dictate his actions.
“No,” Potter said. “Because I had some block in my mind about hurting you. But why should I? When you clearly don’t give a fuck-” he barked the word, and then dropped his voice back to a normal level for the next ones, which was scarier “-about what I want, or what I care about. So I might as well fight you with all the power at my disposal.”
Draco fell back a step against the wall, and lifted a hand in front of his eyes, cowering. Potter didn’t attack him, but Draco heard him take a deep breath. Peering between his spread fingers, Draco saw him standing with his eyes closed. Probably getting up the courage to attack a fearful enemy, Draco judged.
Draco cast a spell that weakened Potter’s legs beneath him and made him slide to the floor.
Potter roared in rage and lunged at Draco, but he didn’t get far, instead splashing down on his face in the muddy brown water. Draco wagged a finger at him.
“Let that be a lesson,” he said. “In thinking that you can bully and lecture your enemies instead of just attacking them. Bullying and lecturing is for villains, and you’ll never fill that role no matter how much you want to.”
Then he ran like hell down the tunnel.
Chapter Thirteen.
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