Chapter Eighteen of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- A Winding Trail of Fire
Chapter Seventeen.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (18/?)
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 Eighteen-A Winding Trail of Fire
The term after Christmas holidays was at least quiet. Severus was grateful for that. He did not know what he would have done had a new disaster brewed around Potter, the way it could have if he had told Black about the cloak, or if his basilisk had got out of hand, or if Draco had continued along the path he had been taking towards…
At that, Severus had to pull his mind back into order. He did not know what path Draco had been taking, and he resented not knowing. If only because Lucius and Narcissa would expect him to do something about it if Draco got into trouble.
But Draco, if not openly friendly with Potter, at least did not sabotage him in Potions, did not sneer when his name was mentioned, and tended to turn the conversation when his friends started laughing about Potter’s lack of skill in classes. And a few times, Severus had come upon the two boys standing close in a dungeon corridor or an alcove on the upper floors, arguing quietly about something. But quietly, that was the point, not loudly.
Severus was grateful to be able to turn his attention back to teaching and care of his House, and a different, growing problem that had nothing to do with Potter. Or only something indirectly to do with him, at any rate.
Severus had begun to clear the willful blindness from his eyes. He had owed Albus a great deal, for taking him in and defending him against the charges and the Azkaban stay that otherwise would have inevitably followed him after the first war. He had allowed that debt to make him look away from several things Albus had done since that war.
More than one thing. If he was honest, and he was trying to be. But it had seemed the best thing to do, and he had been content to make sure that Albus’s prejudices didn’t impinge too much on his Slytherins. Students in other Houses had their own Heads to fight for them. Let them do so.
Now, though, Severus had an idea burning in the back of his mind like an ember, and it would not go out even when he tried to smother it with new Potions research. He must know, and that meant he would have to look around, peer into the dark places of his own mind, think about subjects he had carefully avoided thinking about.
What he would do when he found the truth, he did not let himself think of yet. This task must be done first.
And perhaps it was time to accept that if he had owed Albus something, it was a debt he had more than fulfilled by teaching at the school for thirteen years. Perhaps it was time to think of someone who was neither Albus nor himself nor Lily for once.
Severus was not entirely proud of the person it seemed contact with Potter had transformed him into, but while he had often been good at starting a Transfiguration, he had never been good at reversing it. He would have to live with the same debility when it came to the transformation of his soul, it seemed.
And pursue it, no matter where it led.
*
“It’s weird that you’re around Malfoy all the time, mate,” Ron said, sitting down beside Harry and giving him a hard look.
Harry rolled his eyes back and turned his head to look at Hermione. “Do you understand what Professor Lupin was talking about this morning?”
Hermione froze as though she was a rabbit, which was weird. “What thing?” she squeaked, and then she reached out and grabbed a handful of bread, stuffing it into her mouth. Harry stared. Hermione didn’t do that. She was always scolding them for eating with their mouths full.
She smells frightened, said Dash, and wound himself into a neat knot around Harry’s shoulders so he could examine the food plates with a critical eye.
“I just meant,” said Harry slowly, wondering if he had missed something and Lupin had given Hermione a secret homework assignment or something, “I didn’t know what he meant when he said that there were no good giants. Hagrid’s part giant, and his mum must have been at least a little good or she wouldn’t have been his mum, right? She would have killed his dad.”
“Oh!” said Hermione, and relaxed so much that Harry almost thought she would fall out of her seat. “That’s all right. He meant that giants aren’t good in the way we usually think of it, you know. They don’t have moral debates or philosophers. Sometimes they do things that benefit humans, but they always benefit themselves, too. Hagrid’s mum probably just wanted to be with his father, and…”
And off she went, explaining, and indeed clarifying what Harry had wondered about when it came to giants. But it was hard to still the nagging idea that she thought he had meant something else, and was relieved he didn’t.
The key is scent, said Dash, and used his tongue to tickle Harry’s ear for a moment. You wouldn’t have so many questions if you could smell her emotions.
Yes, but I like some mystery in my life, Harry retorted, and picked up a scone he could share half of with Dash. Dash liked it best with butter, which luckily there was plenty of. Why do you like melted butter but you don’t like cooked meat?
You must also pay more attention to the sensation of taste, said Dash, and curled his jaws around the piece of scone Harry had offered him.
Harry ate some of his own half, and watched Hermione’s face, and wondered a little.
*
Draco looked around suspiciously. It was unusual enough that Potter had told Draco to meet him in the library near curfew, instead of the more hidden places and better times they usually used. Draco had to wonder if Potter was planning to betray him, and if perhaps a prefect would pop around the corner in a moment and haul Draco away to his Head of House.
“Malfoy! Hey.”
Draco turned around slowly, and then nodded and eased back into the shelves as Potter opened his mouth to babble something cheerful. “Over here,” he muttered. “Or Madam Pince is going to do something drastic.” He didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if she caught someone in the library after curfew. As far as Draco knew, no one had ever dared to linger.
“Right,” said Potter, and lowered his voice, and smiled at Draco. Draco looked back and breathed a little, reminding himself that Potter was a Gryffindor. It was acceptable for him to smile in ways that it wouldn’t be for Draco.
The scale on his leg-well, his ankle, really, clinging just below where his robes swished back and forth-made the little squirming motion against his skin that it sometimes did. Draco had decided that was a sign of reassurance. He’d take it.
“What did you want to talk about?” Draco whispered. “I can’t be out long. I can’t imagine what Professor Snape would tell my father.”
Potter looked at him thoughtfully. “Does he talk a lot to your parents? Snape, I mean. I don’t think McGonagall usually bothers contacting parents.”
Draco frowned. What kind of Head of House was McGonagall? He thought it was really weird if she didn’t at least speak to parents when someone got in major trouble. “Professor Snape and my father had-certain business interests in common.” He knew it was more than that, but he chose the phrase his father had used to explain it. “So he probably talks to them more often than he does some of the others. But I know my father would be upset if I got in trouble, for any reason.”
“Sorry, then,” Potter whispered. “But I do have something to ask you, and it’s not something I wanted Ron and Hermione to overhear.”
Draco grimaced. Weasley and Granger had interrupted a few of their meetings, “accidentally” coming around the corner and acting fake-surprised when they found Potter and Draco together. Draco was enough of an expert in jealousy to recognize it when he saw it, although that didn’t make him any more disposed to admire it in others. He nodded once. “Then can you tell me what it is now, soon? And then we can have our conversation, and I can get back to bed.”
“Right,” said Potter. He sighed. “Is there something about Professor Lupin that’s secret? Hermione’s been acting strange lately. I ask a question about Defense Against the Dark Arts, and she freezes and squeaks like a mouse.”
Draco blinked. He would never have expected that question. “I know Professor Snape doesn’t like him,” he offered, because it was the only thing he could think of.
“No, I know that,” said Potter, and shifted the basilisk on his shoulder. Dash had been so quiet that Draco hadn’t paid much attention to him. Now he watched with his usual envy as Dash draped his tail down Potter’s chest and swayed it back and forth in pendulum patterns. “I heard about it when Professor Snape testified at Sirius’s trial. This is something else. Something strange about him?”
Draco rolled his eyes. “Are you asking me or telling me?”
“Asking you,” said Potter, and his eyes glinted at Draco, proud and dark green. Draco had to grin back. That was the kind of challenge Potter usually only offered him in Quidditch, and Draco would remember in the future that it could happen in other places, too.
“I don’t know anything,” said Draco, and Potter sagged a little. “Why did you think I would know?” Draco had to add. “You probably know Lupin better than I do.” He assumed so, anyway, since Lupin was a friend of Black and had spent a few weekends in Potter’s company, apparently teaching him to repel Dementors.
“Because you’re a Slytherin, and Slytherins know secrets,” Potter said matter-of-factly. “And it’s Professor Lupin.”
“Granger’s here in spirit,” Draco muttered, and Potter snorted and then gave him a blinding grin. He shrugged. “I’ll watch for them, but I don’t see anything different about him on a daily basis. Anyway, I don’t know the secret of Parseltongue and the Chamber of Secrets.”
Potter looked at the floor. “I would tell you where it was, if I thought you would just want to go down there and look around. If you wouldn’t try to find the tunnel Dash came out of and get an egg for your own.”
Draco was about to retort sharply when Dash pivoted to face the end of the bookshelf they were sheltered behind and hissed. Potter turned his head, and Parseltongue spilled out of his lips in a liquid flow. Draco shivered. Why can’t I speak like that? he asked himself. It was starting to seem unfair not that Potter had a basilisk and he didn’t, but that Potter had been born a Parselmouth and Draco hadn’t.
“Dash says someone is coming,” Potter said tensely, and he pulled out something that sparkled and glinted in the dark. Strangely so, without light, Draco thought. He blinked, and then Potter pulled the thing over both of them and Draco found himself crouched in starlit darkness next to Potter and his basilisk.
“An Invisibility Cloak,” Draco said, and he was afraid his voice was a slight wail. It was so unfair. “You have an Invisibility Cloak.”
“Shut up!” Potter whispered, poking Draco in the ribs. Draco drew his breath to complain about that, too, and then Dash hissed.
Draco told himself that, rationally, he had heard the basilisk hiss a few minutes ago, too, and if that hadn’t silenced him and almost made him wet his robes, then this shouldn’t. But there was no denying that it was impressive. He shut up.
There were footsteps outside the shelves, and then a slight hiss that made Draco jump, until he realized it wasn’t more Parseltongue. It was someone catching their breath and looking around warily, but that wasn’t the same thing as someone speaking in hisses.
Potter’s hand tightened on his wrist. The scale on his leg tingled. Draco felt a smooth slide of scales against his shoulders, and he nearly jumped, shrieking, out of his skin. But then he remembered Dash, and he clamped down on the impulse. He could just imagine the detention he would get if he reacted too much, and he wasn’t going to face it.
There were a few confused noises, and then yellow eyes shone through the edge of the shelves for a second. Again Draco thought it was a basilisk, and then he calmed down and saw them for the ordinary cat’s eyes they were. Mrs. Norris ran back and forth for a minute, but either she couldn’t get a good enough sniff of them or she couldn’t make Filch understand that someone was really there. She ran off, and Filch went with her.
Potter stood there for a while. Draco kept still, assuming Dash was telling Potter something about who he smelled or that Potter had more experience with sneaking around than he did and knew how long it would be before they were safe.
“All right, he’s gone,” said Potter at last, and turned to look at Draco under the Cloak. His face was distant and dimly lit, at least until he called a faint light from his wand. Draco blinked, impressed. He’d seen Potter’s Lumos, and it was so strong that Draco hadn’t thought he knew how to make it fainter. “Can you get back to the dungeons by yourself? Or do you want me to go with you under the Cloak?”
Draco opened his mouth to say that he was all right, of course he could.
But if Filch and Mrs. Norris were already searching for students, then it was later than Draco had remembered. And his father would have something to say if Draco got in trouble because of his pride.
He was always telling Draco that real pride came from understanding and manipulating situations to one’s advantage. He would hardly forgive Draco for failing to do that.
“Yes, I need your escort,” said Draco, even though he hated to admit that, and then had to add, in order to gain back a bit of dignity, “This is the reason you never got caught breaking the rules, right? Because you wander around under the Cloak?”
“Yes,” said Potter, and shrugged when Draco looked at him. “I didn’t do anything particularly wonderful to get it. It belonged to my dad, and Dumbledore gave it to me for a Christmas present in my first year.”
Draco shut his eyes and shook his head. If Potter couldn’t hear how out of the ordinary he was in just speaking those words-favored by the Headmaster, getting his Cloak that way instead of from his parents-then Draco knew he couldn’t enlighten him. “Let’s go.”
*
He doesn’t smell like anything in particular, said Dash, and draped himself so that his head was down near the table where Harry was studying the captive grindylow in its cage. I think he has spells on himself to disguise his smell. Most humans wouldn’t think of that. He’s very clever.
Harry sighed and shook his head. Really, he thought, he ought to give up trying to investigate Professor Lupin. So he didn’t have a mystery to solve this year the way they’d had the mystery of Nicholas Flamel during first year and the Heir of Slytherin last year. He couldn’t always have a mystery. He was probably making too big a deal of Hermione’s slip the other day.
Except that he looked at her then, and she was staring anxiously at Professor Lupin. Harry looked with her. It was true that Lupin looked rather pale and tired, but he seemed to look like that on a regular basis. Maybe he had some sort of disease, and Hermione had found out by accident and was concerned about him.
That made so much sense! Harry relaxed a little. Hermione would think it was wrong to tell anyone about that. Harry would probably think it was wrong, if he’d found out himself. And it made sense of the times that Lupin had gone to visit Sirius, and hadn’t wanted to tutor Harry on certain days. Sirius probably knew about it because he was such old friends with Lupin.
Harry nodded. Maybe they didn’t think he could handle the truth, or maybe they thought he would get upset because he was afraid of catching the disease himself. Well, he would have to tell them that he was okay with waiting until they decided he was old enough to know. He wasn’t disgusted, but they didn’t know that yet.
Why would you be okay with waiting until they tell you? Dash asked, abandoning the effort to terrify the grindylow to death and winding back around Harry’s neck. You’ve never been okay with anything like that before.
Harry blinked at him. That was true, but, well, he hadn’t thought about it until Dash pointed it out to him. Well, it’s all so fragile, he said, and bent over the grindylow again. Professor Lupin had told them there was a way to charm them without using magic, to make them be friends, but Harry couldn’t see it. The grindylow hissed at him and threw itself against the side of its cage. I mean, Sirius loves me, I know that, but sometimes he asks those weird questions, and he would have been so upset about the cloak Snape sent me. So if I force him to talk about Lupin’s secret too soon, it’ll just upset him more. I have to wait.
Dash was silent, both mentally and physically, for so long that Harry finally began to notice the grindylow wasn’t snarling at him when his face didn’t wear a smile. He had to bite back the grin that wanted to spread across his face at that. So, okay, maybe they thought humans were baring their teeth when they smiled or something? He began to write down notes.
I think that you need to worry less about Sirius, said Dash abruptly. If he cares for you, then he will continue to care for you even if you ask an awkward question.
Harry shrugged, which Dash hated because it always almost unseated him. Yeah, but there must be a reason they haven’t told me yet. So I’ll have to wait.
Then you won’t ask me to smell the truth out of Lupin again, said Dash.
Harry nodded.
And you’ll call Malfoy off as well?
Harry started. It had been almost a week since he’d seen Malfoy in the library and asked him to spy on Lupin. And it really was spying. Harry felt ashamed of himself now. He had just forgotten all about it, because he wasn’t concentrated on the mystery every minute of the day. He hadn’t even thought of asking Dash what he smelled on Lupin in particular until today.
Yeah, I need to talk to him about it.
Dash leaned his chin on Harry’s shoulder for a long moment, not something he often did for long, unless he was trying to see something better. I don’t think you should need to accept anyone lying to you.
Harry shrugged a little again and said, It’s a human thing, and smiled at Professor Lupin when he came by the table and paused to look at Harry’s notes.
“Ah, good, Harry,” he said, and smiled at him. “You’re on the right track. Five points to Gryffindor.” He wandered away, and Harry relaxed. Professor Lupin really was his favorite teacher, even if he had secrets. Everyone had secrets. Harry was protecting his share now.
That is the good thing about me, said Dash simply. I refuse to be a secret.
*
Severus had had to use all his spy skills, but that had turned out to be less of a problem that he’d thought. After all, he had never truly integrated himself back into the school or normal society after the war. He had lived as a distrusted, suspected Death Eater, and then the hated Potions professor. While his colleagues were capable of getting along with him, working with him, they hadn’t extended the hand of friendship. There was no one close enough to Severus to realize he was acting differently, as long as he kept it subtle.
No one except Albus, Severus would have said once. But Albus appeared taken up with other things, since the reappearance of Black. Or perhaps, Severus should say, since Potter’s potential, partial, rebellion.
Even so, the labor hadn’t been easy. There were people who would notice if he asked too openly about Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw students. The only reason that his questions about Gryffindor students might be more easily accepted was the House rivalry, and Minerva in particular would bristle and rush to defend her charges if she thought Severus was trying to get them in trouble. His best tactic was to make vague sneering statements and see what happened. It worked, but it was slow.
Then he had to coordinate the visits of the students he suspected to the Headmaster’s office. In many cases, as with the Slytherins, there were none. In the case of the Gryffindor students Severus suspected, several. Severus wondered for a moment what had happened. Had the Gryffindors broken down, or had the Headmaster lectured them, kindly and severely, the way he’d tried with Potter?
Impossible to know. But Severus sifted the information, and he found the patterns.
The last step was using a most delicate truth-telling potion on Poppy Pomfrey, one that made her a little more likely to ramble when she was talking. If Severus got her focused on something else, like stacking a crate-load of potions he had delivered to her in the correct order, she would talk and talk in a sort of daydream. It was the safest way to gain access to the students’ medical information, since Severus could hardly raid the files openly, and he dared not be found charming the cabinets.
Not now. Perhaps in a while.
But at last, the search was done, and Severus was sure. He sat before the fire in his rooms that night, and stared into his teacup, and wondered if he should feel more triumphant than-empty.
He knew what he knew. He had a list of names, all neatly written down and then tucked behind charms that Severus would not be able to undo unless he was in his right mind, not under Imperius or the like. In all the school, perhaps only Filius could have managed them, and Severus was sure he wouldn’t, not when there were several of Severus’s suspects in his own House.
Severus took a deep breath and closed his eyes.
He knew, now, of other students who had been abused, and whom the Headmaster had ignored. Or never seen. Or called to his office, and talked to, and then sent back to their homes.
He knew of twenty-two. There might be more, but in this case, he had selected the ones he was sure of.
Twenty-three, if one adds Harry Potter’s name to the list.
Severus opened his eyes. Three courses were open to him. He might confront Albus, but he suspected that would be futile.
He might go to the papers, but that would surely entail revealing the names, and he would rather not.
Or he could find an ally powerful enough to force Albus into doing something about the situation, someone who had been a credible threat to Albus once before, although he had failed in that particular plan.
Severus flexed his hand, took a final gulp of his Firewhisky, and chose.
He Summoned ink and parchment, and set about writing a (very) carefully-worded letter to Lucius Malfoy.
Chapter Nineteen.
This entry was originally posted at http://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/729107.html. Comment wherever you like.