Chapter Forty-Six of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- A Variety of Truths
Chapter Forty-Five.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (46/?)
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 Forty-Six-A Variety of Truths
Severus leaned slowly back in his seat. Draco had left dinner and had not come back.
And while that might not be much of a concern in ordinary days, these were not ordinary days. Not when an imposter walked around in the guise of Alastor Moody and Harry disdained his bond with Dash and various Slytherin families believed Harry was the reincarnation of their House’s founder.
Minerva had been speaking to him about Transfiguring potential Potions ingredients from bits of wood and wool, but Pomona had distracted her. Severus eased his chair away from the table and rose. If he was lucky, he could slip out of the Great Hall without turning any eyes to him.
He wasn’t lucky. Moody had turned to observe him in a second. Severus had thought he was safe, that Moody was too involved in his conversation with Albus.
“Going somewhere, Snape?” Moody had a jagged grin when he wanted to use it.
“To check up on one of my Slytherins,” Severus said. It was pure truth, and there was always the chance that Moody would find rescuing a member of a House he despised too boring to go along with.
He didn’t. Moody pushed back his chair, too, and rose with a grunt. “Yes, we can’t be too careful with agents of You-Know-Who about,” he said, and his magical eye fastened on Severus’s left arm even as his normal one ranged out across the Great Hall.
Severus would have liked to say something. He really would have. But Draco should have come back by now, and as long as Moody didn’t actively interfere with the search, conducting that search was more important than sitting here and bandying words with him.
If he does actively interfere…
Severus moved his arm so that his sleeve brushed against the weight of vials slung in his robe pockets, and nodded once. “We can’t,” he said, and strode towards the entrance to the Great Hall with Moody behind him.
Halfway there, he noticed that Dash was missing as well, and waited only until he was out of sight of the students before breaking into a run. Moody’s shouts and oaths, and the stumping of his wooden leg, were left far behind.
*
Dash’s shadow-snakes curled backwards, away from the shield. That was more encouraging than Draco had thought it would be. He swallowed and looked up at Dash, wondering if he could take any other signs of encouragement from the way he behaved.
Dash’s tongue came out and flickered in an arc that made it look like he was smelling Draco’s magic. Then he lowered his head and struck directly at the center of the shield.
Wild cracks raced through it. Draco cried out and flung his arm over his eyes as the magic suddenly flared and brightened and then broke. Dash went through the shield like a Finite Incantatem, and on towards the school.
Draco tried to turn and run after him, but in the meantime, small snakes had curled around his feet and stuck him to the ground.
“Dash!” he screamed as hard as he could. “Think of Harry!”
Dash glanced back at him once, clear eyelids trembling as if they would lift. “I am,” he said in that guttural, just-there voice. “I am thinking of all the trouble I’ll spare him in the future, not right now.” And he slid into the school and was gone, while Draco fired little hexes and charms at the snakes around his feet and found that every spell went straight through them. They were made of shadow, after all.
Draco cursed and wept and pleaded with the snakes. They paid no attention.
*
If Severus hadn’t been looking in the exact right direction-and he almost wasn’t; he had turned towards the dungeons-he would never have seen it. A long ribbon of darkness and magic seemed to unfold through the entrance hall like guided smoke, moving from the door to the stairs that led upwards.
And it took Severus a moment too long after that to realize that he was looking at Dash. Dash as he really was, pouring in a proud, splendid line of scales and strength, not coiled tamely around Harry’s legs and shoulders.
Pretending, Severus thought, around the almost mechanical shock of his heart restarting. He was only ever pretending to be tame.
“The basilisk,” said Moody, and his voice was almost a hiss itself, of pleasure and enlightenment. “I knew he would cause trouble someday.”
Severus turned as if in a dream. He saw Moody raising his wand. He recognized the curse of orange light that formed at the end of it. And again, he hesitated a moment too long, wondering if he should interpose the countercurse to that spell and reveal his true allegiance to both Moody and Dumbledore.
“Mors,” said Moody, calm and casual as a stone tossed into a pool.
The orange light turned black and raced towards the basilisk. Severus shouted, because that was something he could do and he blamed himself for having waited too long, and jumped for Moody’s wand. Moody let him take it, a small smile on his lips and his real eye far away. The magical eye was whirring excitedly around his skull.
Severus turned, again as if in a dream, to see what damage the Annihilation Curse had done to Dash.
He found none. It had gone over Dash’s head and marked the stones of the wall instead, turning them into drifts of dust. Dash curled himself out of a dribble of dust and continued towards the stairs.
“Halt!” Severus called, and hoped that Dash could still understand English without someone around to translate for him. It didn’t appear that he could, or else he wasn’t going to let it make any difference to him, because he was still slithering. Severus said a word he hadn’t in years and ran towards the basilisk.
Moody yelled something from behind him, probably demanding that Severus give his wand back. Severus didn’t hear him because he wasn’t sparing any of his concentration from Dash. He was going to stop the snake, even if he had to sacrifice a lot of his credibility with Albus in the process.
He cast the spell that he hoped would help wordlessly, and watched it whip and settle into the step in front of Dash. Dash turned to slither around it, but then paused. Severus knew why. From his perspective, the magic would have seemed to blend harmlessly into the stone, sinking out of sight.
In seconds, the net it created unfolded from the step in question and attached itself to the walls, curling around Dash and tossing him high. Dash began to writhe and twist, snapping several strands of the net as he struggled. Severus grimaced. That spell had never been meant to hold a creature of Dash’s size.
But it gave him time, and with Moody by his side, shouting in his ear, time was what he needed.
“Give me my wand this instant, we need to deal with it-”
Several key strands in the web snapped, and Dash fell to the steps. Severus created a barrier in his way this time, a wall of iron and granite that sealed off the stairs that led to the upper floors. Dash swayed back and forth for a moment, seemingly looking for a way through, but there was no gap large enough for him, and perhaps he couldn’t smash through physical materials in the way that Severus was beginning to be afraid he could smash through magic.
Dash wheeled to face them, hissing steadily. Severus elbowed Moody in the gut to make him shut up and gain some breathing room, and opened his mouth. He didn’t think Dash would open his eyes, but then again, a moment ago he hadn’t thought Dash would leave Harry’s side, either.
“Dash?”
The voice was small and fragile, and came from behind them. This time, Severus pushed Moody to the floor as he whirled around. Harry stood there, and his eyes were fixed on Dash in something that Severus thought was horror.
He couldn’t be terrified of his own basilisk. He couldn’t. Distrusting Severus would be the preferable option, if one had to choose. Too much work would be undone if Harry began to turn on the only creature Severus thought powerful enough and capable of fighting to remain at his side.
“Harry,” he started.
But Harry had moved forwards and begun to hiss in Parseltongue at Dash, and Severus no longer thought he had any part in this conversation. The only thing he could do was cast a Silencing Charm on Moody, to make sure that he wouldn’t interfere, and then hastily secure Moody’s wand against a Summoning attempt. It was up to Harry now.
*
“I don’t know what you think you’re doing,” Harry told Dash in agitation. He could feel everything, at the moment. His heartbeat. His sweat. His fingernails cutting into his palms, and the way that he wanted to bolt away from Dash as much as he wanted to run towards him. “Why did you slither away and start attacking people?”
“I did not. They attacked me. I was going to go to the Headmaster’s office and wait there for him.” Dash’s words were short and cut off, and Harry saw the flicker of small shadow-snakes around him like foam.
“And where you going to do when you got there?” Harry began, but then knowledge snapped into his mind, and he knew.
“You can’t do that! You’ll get sent away, and where am I going to get someone I can trust again?” Harry lunged towards the stairs, ignoring the arm that Moody put out to hold him back. Everything was pounding so hard and fast that Harry thought his heart was going to leap out of his chest and splat on the floor. “It’s-you’re going to ruin it all!”
Dash swung to face him. Harry went still and quiet before he could consciously think about it. It wasn’t the first time Dash had ever frightened him-he had sometimes done that when he talked about punishing people-but it was as if Harry had never really seen his snake before.
“You haven’t seen me for some time, no,” Dash said, and flicked out his tongue to taste the air. Harry didn’t know why. Dash wasn’t telling him, and the place where the bond should have been ached like a broken limb. “You haven’t paid attention. All you’ve been thinking about is Black, and the Tournament.” Dash curled his head down until his long nose, like a horse’s, faced down his chest. “Tell me, Harry, would you miss me if I left?”
Of course, Harry whispered softly down their bond. It was still there, although it felt as if he was pushing the words into a cloud that floated between him and Dash. Of course I would.
Dash swayed his head back and forth for a moment, as if saying that he would be the judge of that, and then snapped his body down the stairs. Harry flinched. Dash came to a stop.
That doesn’t argue that you would. How long did it take you to even notice I was missing, tonight?
Harry swallowed, unable to draw his gaze away from Dash and the way that he moved. Had he been carrying something that dangerous around with him all the time? It was no wonder that some people had been so upset at first.
Dash turned his head away.
Harry winced and touched his head. It hurt something awful. He wondered if it was from having Dash so far away. He moved a cautious step forwards. “I would miss you, Dash. I would.” It was easier to speak Parseltongue aloud.
Dash’s body quivered. You didn’t notice I was gone. You didn’t notice I was trying to speak to your friends and Snape, and trying to get you to wake up and pay attention. You didn’t notice that you’re listening to Moody, who is probably the reason you did this in the first place.
We don’t have any proof of that, Harry croaked. His head was pounding so badly that it felt as if it was about to fall off his shoulders. All we have is the-is the-
He stopped. He was swaying back and forth, and someone was holding him from behind so that he wouldn’t fall to the floor. But he couldn’t look to see who it was. He couldn’t take his eyes from the horribly disappointed basilisk in front of him.
It’s Snape. Dash’s tongue snapped out, and he slowly angled the front half of his body around so that he was facing Harry. Not that you seem to care much about who it is unless it’s Black.
Harry shook his head. He wasn’t saying no or doubting Dash’s word, but his head hurt so much that he just wanted the pain out of there. He held out a faltering hand, and felt someone clasp and hold it.
But the hand was undeniably human, and the one he wanted was Dash. He lifted his head and locked his eyes slowly on Dash. He had stayed where he was.
Don’t you want to be bonded to me anymore? Harry whispered.
I was under the impression that I wasn’t the one who had to make that decision.
Harry thought he should have known what that meant, or maybe he did, but the pain was searing trails across his brain. He moved towards Dash, but the arm around him closed and held him there. Harry began to struggle.
I do still want to be bonded to you. I do! But can you stop whatever this pain is? It’s making it so hard to think, and I don’t know what to do-Harry felt a sharp pain rising up through his chest, too, and bit his lips frantically. The last thing he wanted to do was cry in front of them.
Would you not mind crying in front of me?
Dash was curled around him suddenly, feet and chest, and the person who held him back stepped hastily away. Harry couldn’t find it in himself to care, even if it was Snape. He slumped into Dash, and he gave a single, dry sob as the pain drained away. Dash might have opened his head and simply bled it off. It felt like that.
The spell has not ended, Dash said, and his tongue was gliding back and forth. It was right there in front of Harry’s face when Harry opened his eyes, and even Harry starting and trying to pull away didn’t have much effect. Will you tell them to stop firing curses at me? We need peace if we’re going to do this right.
Harry gave a glad gasp and spoke in what he realized too late was Parseltongue and not English. The curses rebounded off Dash’s shining scales, and he saw it was Dumbledore and McGonagall who had come out of the Great Hall. “Stop!” Harry shouted, working his tongue around the English words. “He’s not hurting me.”
“But he may have hurt people who are not you, Mr. Potter.” McGonagall’s voice was steady, and her wand never wavered from aiming at Dash, much to Harry’s annoyance. “Mr. Malfoy went out of the Great Hall, and he is now missing.”
Dash? Harry asked, at the same moment as Draco’s annoyed voice said from the left, “I’m here. Dash froze me in one place for a while, but I’m here now.”
Harry turned his head. Draco was brushing dirt and soot from his robes and frowning. He met Harry’s eyes and opened his mouth as if he would say something, then turned away.
Harry swallowed. He doubted that just having Dash imprison Draco with some magic was the cause of Draco not wanting to talk to him.
But he had other things to worry about at the moment. He turned to McGonagall and Dumbledore-and Moody, who was standing off to the side and staring as if he could break Dash in half with the sheer force of his gaze-and said in his calmest voice, “Please stop cursing him. Dash told me-”
I suspect Dumbledore of casting the spell.
“That he was lonely and paranoid, and he left the Great Hall partially to see if I would follow,” Harry said. He felt Dash softly squeeze around his waist, and he would have smiled if they’d been alone. As it was, he felt on high alert, the way he always had when he was trying to lie to the Dursleys and get away with it. He put a hand on Dash’s head, stroking his plume. “He’s sorry if he caused any trouble.”
Dumbledore cast a silent spell, and Harry tensed, but it seemed to be on Moody. A second later, Moody cleared his throat and spoke in a croaking way that made Harry tempted to try him with Parseltongue and see if he understood it. “He was on his way up the stairs. Why was he doing that if he didn’t plan to harm someone?”
Harry saw Draco’s face turn pale. He could probably say something interesting if he wanted to. But Harry knew, without asking, that Draco would never betray him like that.
He would have to apologize to Draco, but later. In the meantime, Harry looked Moody and McGonagall and Dumbledore in the eye, and did his best to strengthen his Occlumency shields, and lied. “He said that he was going back to Gryffindor Tower to get away from all the stares at him.”
The adults exchanged looks. Harry knew they didn’t believe him. On the other hand, they couldn’t question Dash in Parseltongue, and they would have to believe that Harry was telling the truth if they tried to make him question Dash.
They could still read the truth out of your mind.
That was true, at least for Dumbledore, and maybe for Moody. Harry kept his head down, and only glanced to the side when someone moved there.
It was Snape, who had that perfect bored expression on his face that he seemed to wear most of the time in Potions now. “Perhaps we can assign Potter a detention for failing to control his snake and have done with it?” he suggested. “I find this wearying. Potter has already been the center of too much attention for my taste.”
He gave Harry a sarcastic look, and Harry found himself bristling under it. He hadn’t done anything to Snape, not the way he’d argued with Draco-
Think about that, said Dash, winding sideways so his neck was curled around Harry’s. And get back to me when you’ve considered it more closely, as well as thought about who Snape is trying to fool.
“I think we should assign the boy detention with me,” said Moody, and his eyes glinted. The magical one was rotating around his head, but Harry didn’t think the normal one would ever look away from him. “You’re too easy on him, Snape.”
Harry hunched his shoulders a little. Was this the same professor who’d been showing him spells that could help him defeat dragons?
What did you mean, Dash, when you said that his fire shield wasn’t really there?
Only thought about asking me this now, did you? Dash jabbed Harry in the collarbone with his nose, but the way he had his head bowed, no one could see that anyway. You have to spend more time and thought on the way you act, Harry. If nothing else, there’s no way you can be a good political ally to other people when you’re just running around and reacting all the time.
No. I thought about asking you-before. But he hadn’t done it. Harry sighed a little and tried to focus on the conversation outside his head. The one he needed to have with Dash was painful and long and complicated, just like the one he needed to have with Draco.
And just like that one, he couldn’t have it right now. Dumbledore was nodding.
“I think a detention with Alastor would be just the thing, Severus,” Dumbledore said brightly to Snape. “After all, you have treated the boy differently since last year, and you may have spoiled him a little. Alastor’s well-known for being tougher even than you. And Harry’s going to need to know Defense Against the Dark Arts.”
Snape shifted a bit. Harry stared at him and saw that his face had gone frozen, the way it had when he was talking about the Dursleys. Harry shivered, wondering what there was in Dumbledore’s words to make him look that way.
“For what?” Snape whispered. “Do you truly think that that is going to be so important in the Tournament? Is he going to be facing Dark spells?”
“Oh, I didn’t mean that,” said Dumbledore, blinking and looking uncomfortable. It was one of the few times Harry had ever seen him look that way, and he felt Dash’s vicious chuckle up the bond. “Just-for the war. Of course.”
Moody spun on one heel and stared at Dumbledore. Dumbledore began to flush pink. Harry blinked. Maybe Moody is blackmailing Dumbledore or something.
“That is enough.”
Harry jumped. McGonagall had moved forwards and stood over him, glaring back and forth between Moody and Dumbledore.
“I am not going to allow any student to serve a detention with a professor who’s already proven that he can’t control his impulses around students who offend him,” said McGonagall crisply. “I am still Mr. Potter’s Head of House, and I will assign his detention.” She turned and nodded to Snape. “I trust you will make Mr. Potter well aware of the deficiencies in his behavior, Severus.”
“I will,” said Snape, and reached out and laid a hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry thought someone would have had to be in his body to know that it wasn’t really a sharp clamp the way it looked like. “In particular, I think Mr. Potter will enjoy spending his Sundays for a month with me. Won’t you, Mr. Potter?”
Harry closed his eyes in resignation. “Yes, professor,” he said. Nothing else for it, really.
And at least it would give him some private time to work on the-the spell, or whatever it was, interrupting the bond between him and Dash, and maybe to apologize to Draco in private. And Snape, too.
“And in particular,” said Snape, his voice descending a note, “I would not advise leaving Mr. Potter or his basilisk alone with someone who thought it appropriate to fire a death curse at said basilisk.”
“What.”
It was a small word to emerge from McGonagall’s mouth. Harry had heard her use much bigger ones. But it expressed her shock, and his, too. He could feel the shock reverberating around his body as he stared at Moody.
I really thought he was trying to help me.
“What curse, Severus?” McGonagall was looking at Moody like-well, the way that Dash would look at a rat. Dash snickered down the bond again and informed Harry that he should always be the standard of comparison for humans. The more a human behaved like him, the more that human could be trusted.
Harry just hugged Dash close, and said nothing. He knew Dash could resist and remain unaffected by a lot of magic, but he didn’t know if that was true of death curses.
“The incantation is simply Mors,” said Snape. From the way he stood, and the way his eyes flickered for a minute, Harry thought he was enjoying this.
McGonagall turned to Dumbledore. “And is this also part of the Dark magic you’ve given Moody permission to use in the school, Albus?” she whispered. “Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, after the Unforgivable Curses, but considering those were at least only used on conjured spiders…”
“He cast the Imperius Curse on us, too,” Harry spoke up, deciding that he had to say it before Snape did. Well, he wanted to say it before Snape did, if he was being honest. “He wanted to see how well we could resist it.”
McGonagall hissed. It wasn’t the sort of hiss Harry and Dash could produce, but that didn’t matter. A cat hissing was bad enough. And Dumbledore flinched, although Moody only looked back at McGonagall with his magic eye and shook his head.
“I had permission from the Headmaster of Hogwarts.” He was really emphasizing his words, Harry thought, the way Dudley sometimes did when he was bragging about how Harry had no friends. But Harry didn’t know what it meant in this case. “You cannot contest his authority, Deputy Headmistress.”
“Perhaps not.” McGonagall just nodded a little and then said, “But I can go to the Board of Governors.”
And she swept off. Moody stared after her, then began to follow. Harry could hear him trying to argue, but as far as he could tell, McGonagall wasn’t responding at all.
Harry glanced at Dumbledore. He only shook his head and turned to walk back into the Great Hall. Harry blinked. He hadn’t expected that.
Snape’s hand tightened on his shoulder. “I think we should make full use of the detention time, despite it being two days before Sunday,” he said.
Harry nodded, a little dazed, and turned around. Draco followed him and Snape to the dungeon stairs without being asked.
Dash poked Harry in the side of the neck. Harry winced and muttered to Draco out of the corner of his mouth, “Sorry.”
Draco hesitated, then nodded. “Acceptable.”
He was walking a little more arrogantly than he had for a week, already. Harry dared to smile and hope that everything was going to be all right.
Not right away, maybe. But in a while.
Chapter Forty-Seven.
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