Chapter Seventy-Seven of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- The Rising
Chapter Seventy-Six.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (77/?)
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 Seventy-Seven-The Rising
Professor Snape had set up comfortable chairs in the back of his office. Harry sat down on a living cushion made of Dash instead of just the chair, though, and started to stand up again.
No. I want to surround you completely.
Dash was as good as his word, draping himself around Harry like a clingy vine, and ending up with his body under him, over him, next to him, and flowing onto the floor. His head rested on Harry’s collarbone by the time he was finally done, and he flicked out his tongue with a sharp hiss that made Harry glad Snape didn’t know any Parseltongue.
Snape did know how to raise his eyebrows, though, and at the moment he was doing it to Dash and Harry. Then he smiled. “If you could keep him that safe always,” he said, “what a fine thing it would be.”
Dash bobbed his head in agreement, rustling his softer scales against Harry’s neck. Then he lowered his head and yawned, and waited. Harry stroked his neck and waited, too.
“I spoke with Black,” Snape said, glancing slightly aside as he turned and began to heat small silver cups of something over the fire, “and I insisted that he tell me the truth this time. Lughborn was there to make sure things didn’t get out of hand.”
Harry swallowed. Sirius. “Did he seem saner to you, sir?”
“Perhaps a bit. The way he laughed would still make me reluctant to leave you alone with him.” Snape turned around with the silver cups in his hands, and Harry stared at the bubbling, ruby-colored liquid in them. Dash flicked out his tongue and told him it smelled safe, but Harry was more interested in the flush that had covered Snape’s face.
“It’s perhaps too strong for a child,” Snape muttered, looking away. “But I do think you need it.”
Harry picked up the cup, held it for a second, and then swallowed most of it. The liquid seemed to warm his throat and explode inside his chest, but only for a second. What spread away from it was sweetness instead of heat.
Harry looked up at Snape, still standing with his head averted, and he did feel a little calmer. “All right, sir. What is it?”
Snape looked at him again and said, “Black says that Dumbledore told him you have a bit of the Dark Lord’s soul inside you.”
Harry tried to set the silver cup down on air. One of Dash’s coils slid out and caught it, while the rest of them wrapped around Harry tight enough to make him glad Dash wasn’t a constrictor by nature.
“I-really?” Harry bent over and coughed. Dash loosened his hold enough to run another coil up and down Harry’s spine, soothingly. “I didn’t even know that was possible,” Harry whispered, when he’d started to recover.
“Most of the time, it would not be,” said Snape. He was still standing and clutching his own little silver cup, Harry saw, staring at Harry as if he thought Harry would start shouting any second. “But the Dark Lord had begun to experiment with soul magic-most likely years before. That would have made his soul unstable. There is a creation called a Horcrux that attaches a bit of one’s soul to an object.”
Harry felt as though someone had stabbed him in the spine, straight through Dash. He sat up as quickly as he could. Dash came along with him and squeezed him back into something like relaxation. “But that’s sick,” Harry whispered. “Why would anyone want to do that in the first place?”
“Because a Horcrux, assuming that it can be properly hidden and not destroyed, makes one immortal.” Snape seemed to have decided that keeping his voice absolutely neutral and calm was the best way to handle this. “Most who make them hide them away, and although their physical body may seem to die if someone tries to kill them, they can still come back to life as long as they have the Horcrux.”
The blood seemed to pound and leap in Harry’s temples, even as his mind leaped towards another conclusion.
Horcruxes-how many did he make?-he might not have meant to make me into one, but-
“I’m part of what’s making Voldemort immortal,” he whispered.
Snape’s hand jerked, and a bunch of the red liquid splashed to the ground. Then he lowered the cup. “We do not know what makes him immortal,” he said harshly. “We do not know if he made other Horcruxes, where they are, what they do-”
“The diary was one,” Harry went on. He knew Snape was speaking, and part of him was listening, but the rest was spinning away into a darkness where not even Dash could follow him. “Of course it was. Tom Riddle from the diary said he was a memory, but no memory could do what he did. Possess people. He had to have been a bit of soul. And a basilisk fang destroyed him-”
He was dizzy from pain, or he wouldn’t have said what he said next. “Maybe you should have just bitten me and sent the poison home after all, Dash.”
Dash turned and looked directly into his eyes. His gaze snapped Harry out of what felt like a descending spiral. He closed his eyes, hard, and blinked. Dash curled his tail harder around Harry’s ribs and squeezed.
“We will not let you die,” said Snape. His voice was as poised as though he had never spilled the little silver cup. He stepped up so that his head wasn’t far behind Dash’s in Harry’s field of vision. “And to give Black the scant credit he deserves, he didn’t want to let you die, either. He was trying to find a ritual that would sever the connection between you and the Dark Lord. The problem is that this is such a rare situation, and he didn’t want to tell anyone about it. I am not surprised that he had found nothing about it, even in the books his family had collected. This situation may not have happened before in wizarding history.”
You won’t die, said Dash, and his voice was vicious. If we have to slither away and leave the war behind-I told you that before.
But what if I’m one of the things holding Voldemort to life? What if I have to die so other people can live?
I told you that before. I don’t care about them. I care about you.
Harry swallowed and lifted a hand so that he could trace the outside of Dash’s eye. What would you do if I ordered you to let me die?
Ignore you, because you were obviously demented.
Dash-
I can feel affection towards other people, said Dash abruptly. I feel grateful to your Ron and Hermione for keeping you sane, to your Snape for rescuing you, and to your Draco for the way he feels towards you and me. But I don’t love them, Harry. You are the only one I love. The only one I’m bonded to. And that is the beginning and the end of it. If you choose to go to your death, then you’ll have to accept that I’m following right behind.
Harry opened his mouth, prepared to argue with Dash again, when Snape broke in. “Harry? Have you accepted that you need not die?”
Harry swallowed. The revelation had made sense of something else for him, something he thought neither Snape nor Dash was considering. “The way Dumbledore looked at me sometimes. He knew. He’s the one who told Sirius. And he thought I had to die. So if he thought that, and he knows so much, why do you think differently?”
“It does not matter what Albus thinks.” Snape sneered the words, his hands clenched into fists so hard at his side they looked as if they could punch through iron. “It matters what we think, and believe, and do.”
“I think I might have to die.”
This time, Dash’s tail-tip-although Harry had no idea how he’d dragged it out of so many coils-came up and whapped him on the back of the head. Harry stared at him.
You’re going to give up before the struggle even begins? Dash stuck his nose in the air, looking for an instant like Draco at the robe shop their first year. Then I will fight. And I will simply keep you tied up in my coils all the time, so that you can’t do something stupid like sneak off and try to stab another basilisk fang through your heart.
Dash-you can’t do that.
Watch me, said Dash, and the bond flexed in a way that Harry knew meant unshakable determination. As long as my head is free, I can still eat.
He turned and looked at Snape. “Dash doesn’t want me to die, sir. He says he’ll keep me constricted all the time if I try.”
“And I would be tempted to do much the same,” said Snape. His voice shook. “Harry-why did you spring straight to dying?”
“Because it was what I thought of,” Harry said. He didn’t like the way Snape and Dash were staring at him, but he’d already spoken the truth, even if it was a truth they thought was stupid. He would have to keep going and prove that he was brave enough to bear the honesty. “I thought it made sense. Dumbledore always acted sad around me. Now I know why.”
“If he wanted you to die, why enter you in the Triwizard Tournament and try to strengthen your magic?”
Harry had to snort a little. “Because he was afraid that he was losing control of me. That made sense. He didn’t want me dead right away, but he knew I would have to die someday. And what would happen if I died in a way that didn’t destroy the Horcrux? There’s probably only a few things that can do that.”
He actually was adapting pretty well to carrying a piece of the bastard’s soul around inside him, he thought with sturdy pride. It wasn’t a good thing, it was a horrible thing, but he had to think about it and bear it. And he was.
We’ll find some way to free you of it, Dash said. Without you dying.
As if he was reading Dash’s mind, Snape knelt in front of Harry and said, solemnly, at the same time, “I will not let you die or fade, Harry. Whether because you think you should or because Albus would have wanted it that way. I am far more interested in what you want. Do you want to survive?”
Harry felt as though someone had grabbed hold of his lungs and was squeezing them. “Of course I do,” he whispered. “Of course. But it’s about whether I can do that and doom everyone else.”
“No one is dooming everyone else,” said Snape harshly. “That responsibility isn’t yours to assume. Albus would have wanted to convince you it was, and he’s convinced Black that he had to labor alone to free you from the Horcrux. But there are people who will help.”
“Like you,” Harry said. He didn’t have to say anything about Dash. Of course he was going to help, even if he had to figure out a way to read English when he was separate from Harry.
I think I might know how to do that, actually…
Snape interrupted by grabbing hold of Harry’s hands and squeezing them enough that he felt as if his fingerbones were turning to pulp. “And the Headmistress. And Draco. And Draco’s father. Perhaps Draco’s mother, depending on how much her cousin has exasperated her. And your friends. I respect Miss Granger’s research skills, as much as I deplore her need to show off her knowledge in class.”
Harry couldn’t let that pass. “Hermione doesn’t try to show off,” he began. “She just knows so much that-”
“There,” said Snape, and gave a vicious chuckle that made Harry blink. It sounded like the way Snape used to laugh right before he took thirty points away from Gryffindor in Potions. “Now I think you’re committed to life. If you would defend your friends, then you’re thinking more about living than dying.”
“I told you,” Harry said, feeling his cheeks flush as his heart pounded hard enough to make him gasp, “I don’t want to die. It’s just that I might have to, so everyone else can live.”
“You are a bag of contradictions,” said Snape, but in a musing voice, as if he was glad to have the contradictions to think about.
Of course he is, said Dash, and stuck out his tongue and wriggled it back and forth in the air. He would rather take any contradiction from you and think about it than think about you dead.
“I just,” Harry said. “It’s like if someone had a deadly disease, you know? You would feel sorry for them, but you would want to make sure they were isolated so they didn’t spread it to anyone else.”
“The cases are not at all comparable.” Snape’s voice was cold, and the hope Harry had cherished that he would understand and let Harry do what he needed to do vanished. “You have the ability to live and do something beyond simply dying, and you are not contagious to others.” He leaned back on his heels and studied Harry. Harry stared back, squirming a little. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Snape look this informal, even when he was bending down to look at someone’s cauldron. “Are you entertaining delusions of that? That the Horcrux might hurt someone else? I assure you, if it has remained dormant for this long, then it is likely to remain dormant for the foreseeable future. And I suspect your basilisk would act to cage it if it began to stir from its sleep.”
Now that I know it’s there, I can seek it out more, Dash announced. I had a hard time before because I didn‘t even know what I should be looking for. I was hunting rats when I should have been hunting a dragon. He nudged Harry’s cheek with the underside of his throat. Now I shall hunt the dragon.
“I don’t want you hurt,” Harry whispered aloud, because he had to say it so Snape could understand, even though Snape probably knew it already. “Not you, not Ron and Hermione and Draco, not-you,” he had to say, because Snape was stooping towards him with bright, concerned eyes, and he might not understood that Harry’s first “you” included both him and Dash. “I don’t want anyone to suffer because of me.”
“That will not be true if you walk to the sacrifice the way that Dumbledore wanted you to,” said Snape.
“We don’t know-”
“He would not have killed you himself. But he was willing to let you die. And enrolling you in the Tournament was hardly the way to keep you safe.”
Harry had to bow his head in agreement. “But you said that dying to kill the Horcrux would still make people suffer. Why?”
*
Severus sat further back, to the point that he almost fell off his own heels, and exchanged a helpless glance with Dash. How could Harry not know? Severus knew there was some blindness to be expected, given Harry’s background, but the way he was reacting now…
Severus didn’t want to make Harry feel more alone or rejected, though, so he kept his voice gentle as he replied. “The suffering of your friends. And me. And Dash, because we would have to watch you die.”
Harry said nothing for a second. Then his hand reached out, and closed on Severus’s.
The strength of his clasp-and the fact that Dash had let his arm go enough for Harry to reach out in the first place-dimmed some of Severus’s nervousness. At least he didn’t think Harry was actively suicidal. He held on and waited for Harry to struggle through some of his feelings until he could speak.
“It’s not that I want to die,” Harry whispered.
“Very well.” Severus was not going to disbelieve him, although he might wait long enough to be sure before he accepted it unhesitatingly.
“It’s just that-that living isn’t the first thought that comes to mind.” Harry looked at Severus, and then stared at the floor in fascination instead. “Just like I know that my friends would suffer. But it’s not the first thought that comes to mind. What comes to mind-is the problem. Like the problem of the Horcrux. And how I would solve it.”
Severus thought past that without shouting, and then slowly nodded. Yes, he could see what the boy meant, and at least it indicated what he’d thought: Harry wasn’t actively suicidal. He might have to think to understand the pain his death would cause other people, but he did understand when he thought about it. And he didn’t want to run off and kill himself, or make the task easier for the Dark Lord by exposing himself to peril.
Things could still work out as long as Severus could work with Harry on this, and not alienate him.
“All right,” said Severus calmly, and saw Harry’s head flip up, his eyes widening as he realized that he wasn’t going to be blamed. Severus carefully restrained his sigh. Harry had lived with such blame for so many years that it was also not fair to scold him for assuming it. “Then we’ll work on this together. With your friends. With Draco, and Mr. Malfoy. Perhaps even with Black, when he heals enough for me to let him near you again.”
He reached out and gripped Harry’s arms. Dash had once again loosened his coils so that, although they lapped Harry, they were a long way from imprisoning them. Harry sat still and met Severus’s eyes and nodded a little.
“But you are not to take risks,” Severus whispered. “You’re not to try out rituals or potions or the like, even if you’re sure that they’d rid you of the Horcrux, without consulting me.” He hesitated once, then plunged into a promise that he couldn’t be easy without requesting. “You are not, Harry, to go anywhere without Dash.”
“Like he’d let me anyway,” Harry muttered, looking down at the basilisk, who punctuated his words with a sharp hiss. Despite not understanding Parseltongue and not wanting the experience of Dash taking over his body again in order to communicate with him, Severus knew what he was saying.
As if I would.
“But you promise?”
“Yes.” Harry looked up, and hesitated again, and then abruptly flung himself forwards and into Severus’s arms. Severus stumbled under the weight of both boy and basilisk, and fell over, almost banging his head into the fireplace hearth. Luckily, there was a heavy scaled coil in between him and the stones, protecting him.
When I think how my mind has changed about that basilisk…
Dash actually nuzzled him before he unwound and slithered into a corner, where he did the polite mime of watching the stones in the walls as Harry clung silently to Severus. Now and then Harry shook, as though he was quelling his own demons. Severus bit his tongue against the temptation to offer comfort. If Harry wanted to deal with this alone, then he should. He was enough of a mental adult.
But not yet a chronological one. Not yet.
And never beyond the need for protection. Not while I am still alive.
*
Draco had worked for a while in the library beside Harry and his friends before he realized something.
He raised his head and blinked. Dash was curled up under Harry’s chair, dozing. Harry was currently bent over a book that Granger held out to him, nodding now and then and muttering words that made Granger speak up in sharp excitement to answer, although still low enough that Draco couldn’t hear. Weasley was flipping through another book, a deep frown on his face.
They’d been studying all day and looking for a way to eliminate the Horcrux in Harry without killing him. They’d probably spend the better part of their weekend in the library-something that would have been unthinkable for Draco once.
And they’d been studying all day and doing research without snapping at each other.
Draco sat there in the wonder of that, and then reached out and shook Weasley’s arm. He saw the book Weasley held, something about powerful rituals, and was a little impressed. He didn’t think Weasley understood the whole thing, the way he was flipping through the pages, but at least he was looking for the word “Horcrux.” The rest probably wasn’t important to read anyway.
“What is it, Malfoy?” Weasley grumbled when he spoke, but at least he didn’t sound irritated by Draco’s mere existence.
“Your parents were part of the Order of the Phoenix, right?” Draco whispered. “The Order that fought You-Know-Who in the first war?”
Weasley blinked hard. “They said something about it exactly once,” he said. “They don’t-go around talking about it. Anyway, I think that was mostly Mum’s brothers. I don’t think Mum fought. She had a few of us by then.”
Draco gave a brisk nod. “All I was thinking was that they might know something about other books. Dumbledore’s private library, if he had one.”
“That would have been in the Headmaster’s office.”
“Well, that’s another thing we could do,” Draco said, inspired. “I didn’t think of it before. Ask the Headmistress.”
“Why do you want to find Dumbledore’s private books, anyway?”
“To see what he had to say about Horcruxes, of course.” Draco lowered his voice the way all of them did when talking about it outside Professor Snape’s quarters. That was where they’d been when Harry actually told them. “He must have done some research to be that sure Harry is one. Like Professor Snape said, they’re not exactly common. Or maybe he took some books out of this library that talked about it. He wouldn’t want someone else making more of their own.”
Weasley looked thoughtful. An unusual look on him, Draco thought. But a good one. “That’s a good point,” said Weasley. “But I don’t think my parents were that close to him.”
Draco had to admit that the only reason he had for thinking otherwise was his father’s frequent mumbles about how close the Weasleys were to Dumbledore, and how the Headmaster has interfered at least once to prevent Minister Fudge from sacking Weasley’s father. But he wouldn’t mention that now. He could too be diplomatic.
“Well, ask them, all right? And maybe the Headmistress. I’m going to owl my father and ask him what’s in my library.”
Weasley nodded slowly. “You know, Malfoy,” he said, after a long pause as if he wanted to think about the best way to phrase it, “when you’re trying to think about how to protect Harry, you’re not half-bad.”
“I’ll return the compliment, Weasley,” Draco said, barely managing not to make it a nickname, and then turned back to his book.
Weasley jumped a second later, and Draco looked up, thinking he might have found something. But then he felt what Weasley probably had: a small tail-tip curling around his ankle.
Dash approves. Draco smiled a little, and went back to reading.
Chapter Seventy-Eight.
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