Chapter One Hundred and Sixteen of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- The Loyalty Ceremony
Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (116/?)
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 One Hundred and Sixteen-The Loyalty Ceremony
Harry had expected to go to the Slytherin common room or maybe somewhere else in the dungeons, but instead, Draco led him to the top of the North Tower. The wind was blowing hard enough that Harry wrapped his Gryffindor scarf harder around his neck. He was watching Draco in concern. Draco was breathing so fast that Harry was afraid he was about to collapse.
“Are you all right? We can put this off, if that’s what you need to do.” Harry still had no idea about the content of the ceremony, but he did know that Draco looked ridiculously afraid for a simple thing, so it probably wasn’t.
“No, no.” Draco took one more breath, deeper than the others, and seemed to relax. He turned around and laid out a white cloth roll on the stone of the Tower, opening it and showing silver tools and a necklace of what looked like raw stones barely carved.
Harry blinked. Absurdly, his first thought was about how Narcissa Malfoy would probably object to her son wearing a necklace like that.
But Draco picked it up and draped it around his neck. Then he turned and stepped up to Harry. Harry’s breathing stopped altogether at the stubborn shine and burn in Draco’s eyes. It was fiercer than the one he’d seen this morning.
“I know that you don’t feel the same way about me that I do about you. You haven’t been able to read words on that scroll yet.”
Harry swallowed and glanced down. “Draco-”
“I didn’t come to blame you for that,” Draco said, although he sounded shaky. “I just wanted to tell you that. But after today, at least you’ll be able to feel what I’m feeling. I don’t know. If that doesn’t convince you, then probably nothing will.”
Harry looked back up in time to see Draco pick up one of the delicate silver instruments. For an instant, it just looked like a pick to him, the kind of tooth-cleaning pick he’d seen on the one occasion Aunt Petunia had been forced to take him along to the dentist with Dudley. Then Draco flicked it, and a tiny blade opened from the end.
Harry immediately stood up. “Draco-”
“This is just the cleanest way to get the blood I need for the convincing.” Draco smiled at him, looking giddy and slightly pink. “It’s not dangerous, Harry.”
He’s glad that I was concerned about him? Harry stepped back slowly and watched as Draco laid the edge of the blade against his cheek. I didn’t realize that he valued even little signs from me that much.
That’s because you spend so much time excusing flattering things people think about you as something else that you don’t recognize the truth when you see it. Dash was coiled on the stairs, able to fit only his head through the arched doorway without taking up more room than Draco could let him have. He yawned when Harry glanced at him. You don’t think they want to follow you, you think they’re willing to use you or you tricked them somehow. And you don’t think Draco’s in love with you, you think it’s a crush.
I never-
Hush. Yes, you did. Because I’m in your head, and I know. Now, look back at Draco as he gets the blood. I think he’d be rather cross if you missed it.
Harry did suck in a deep breath and turn around, in time to watch as Draco sliced deeply down his cheek. The blood began to flow, and Harry wanted to step forwards and catch it. But Draco was already doing that, sliding one of the rough stones of his necklace underneath the cut.
The blood stained it, and the three next to it, and then Draco drew his wand and sealed the cut with a smooth motion. He nodded to Harry. “This is a ritual that I ran into when I was reading books on blood magic. I didn’t know I would have a chance to use it so immediately, but I’m glad I do.”
“What does it do?” Harry watched the bloodstained necklace as Draco moved it so that he was gripping those stones in both hands and put the silver knife back on the blanket, picking up something else that Harry didn’t know.
“It’ll let you feel what I feel for you,” said Draco, and again touched something on the handle of the instrument so that it flicked out. This one looked like a chisel, though. Draco began to carve the bloodstained stones.
Harry expected it to take a long time-what very little he knew of sculpting and carving always did-but instead, flakes of rock began to peel off immediately. Draco carved around and around the blood for a few minutes. Then he dropped the chisel on the blanket, too, and picked up something else, the last thing.
Harry caught his breath. It had only looked like a silver curl of wire when it was lying down, but now he could see that it was a band with a break at the top. A ring waiting for its stone.
“Draco-”
“Hush, Harry. This is what I want to do.” Draco’s eyes were incredibly direct, and he looked calmer than Harry had seen him since the attack in Hogsmeade. “Are you going to accept my gift or not?”
Harry felt as if he was wavering on the edge of a fence for a moment. And then he nodded and moved forwards, not looking at Dash or asking his advice. Dash was right. He had to stop overthinking everything and being sure that any gift someone offered him was tainted because they were offering it to him.
“I will.”
Draco’s smile was slowly dawning, but as pale and pure as sunrise, and that made Harry realize how much he’d missed it lately. Draco solemnly slid the empty ring onto his finger, and then leaned forwards until one of the bloodstained stones connected with the top.
There was a flare of quiet light, which seemed to well up from within the ring and the necklace and mostly from Draco’s body. Then Harry looked again, and saw that the top of the ring contained many small flakes of bloody rock. They fused together even as he watched, and a violent grey-and-red stone formed in the ring.
Harry had a moment to think about what it would look like to other people, and then he gasped as something surged to life in his hand and pounded up his arm to his heart. Harry staggered backwards. His heart was beating faster. His face was flushed. He was dizzy and despairing, both at once.
Or at least it felt like those things were happening.
“That’s what I feel when I look at you,” Draco said. “That’s the kind of thing I feel all the time.” His voice was low and rough. He kept his eyes on the floor near his roll of fabric, not looking up at Harry. “If you don’t think you can return that…then please give me back the ring now, Harry. And the scroll.”
Harry held up his ringed hand, unable to make any other gesture right now to signal that Draco should stop talking. Draco blinked and shut up. He was watching Harry intently, his brow furrowed. Harry was swaying in place and gasping a little.
The knowledge, the certainty, of love settled into his bones. Draco didn’t just have a crush on him the way Harry remembered Ginny doing in second year, and he didn’t feel the kind of passing emotion that would mean he could recover from it quickly. This was love.
I knew that already, said Dash helpfully. But I think you probably did need it showed to you, to tell you that Draco isn’t going to go away and be content with some lesser prize than the one he’s chosen.
Harry blinked and whistled a little, and then glanced at Draco. “Am I going to continue to feel this same way as long as I wear the ring?” he whispered. He didn’t know if he could cope with that pile of emotions every day.
Draco smiled thinly. “Of course not. Turn the ring’s stone to the side, and you can be alone in your head again.”
You are never that, as long as I am here.
Harry just shook his head a little and twisted the stone as Draco had said. Immediately the emotions ceased. Harry touched his face and found it was still flushed, but at least he no longer felt as if he was about to collapse from the heat.
Draco still wore that same thin smile, but it was full of pain. “Is it that intolerable to feel what I feel for you, Harry?”
“No, it was just-I can’t concentrate if I feel that all the time.” Harry still felt as if his face was flushed, which was probably why he said what he said next. “And maybe I’ll wind up getting hard.”
Draco’s mouth sagged open slightly. Harry covered his mouth, and gave a little groan.
Dash snickered so hard in his head that Harry thought he would fall down the Tower’s stairs.
“Um, I’m sorry,” Harry said, and then he clamped his mouth shut again, because he was sure that he was going to say something worse. He stared at the floor as hard as he could, and kept his feet away from Dash’s nose. For all he knew, Dash was going to nudge him and send him flying into Draco’s arms the way that he’d nudged Hermione into Ron’s.
Would I really do that?
You would do so many things I don’t want to know about-
“Harry.”
Harry jerked his head up, and then winced as that hurt his neck and nearly knocked him backwards into Dash anyway. Draco was walking slowly towards him. His face was flushed, too, and he moved as though he was a hunting cat, on his toes. Harry swallowed, but didn’t stop back. He knew without having to hear it that stepping back now would make Draco think Harry was rejecting him entirely.
Draco eyed him up and down, and nodded. “You’re finally starting to understand,” he said softly. “I didn’t expect it to be the loyalty ceremony that sealed it. Most of the time, you know, the emotions that that ceremony exposes are simply affection and willingness to follow someone.” He gave Harry a lazy smile that Harry was certain had never been on his face before, because Harry would have fainted if it had been. “But since mine weren’t, maybe it finally got through to you.”
“I-didn’t know you were trying to send that message.” Harry scrubbed at his eyes. “I mean, I knew you liked me, Draco. But being in love with me is something else altogether, you know.”
“I know.” Draco took another step towards him and reached out. This time, Harry remained still because he wanted Draco to touch him. His hand felt cool against Harry’s hot cheek. “Now. I want to know. Because I can wait, but not for the truth. Do you think you can love me back, Harry?”
Harry stared into his eyes. Part of him still wanted to know why Draco felt this way, why in the world he was so insistent on falling in love with someone who attracted trouble on the regular and was so high on Voldemort’s “get-rid-of-forever” list.
But he was finally learning better, too. Draco was in love with him because he was. If Harry started asking questions, he would hurt Draco’s feelings. Sometimes-
Sometimes it was better to go with things in the moment and not worry about whether he was hurting someone else.
Harry leaned in and kissed Draco on the lips. Gently at first, and then harder. Draco gasped and reached up with trembling fingers to grip Harry’s chin and hold him in place. Harry still easily broke the hold, of course, and pulled back to give Draco a tentative smile.
“Yes. I absolutely believe it, Draco. I know I can love you. I don’t know if I can match what you feel for me yet. But I know I will.”
Draco gathered him into his arms and held him there. Harry wondered for a second if he wanted another kiss, but he seemed to be trembling too hard for that. Harry just held him back, and the moment whirled past them and dissolved into starry darkness, and Dash watched them and hummed happily down the bond.
*
Draco went around the next day in a happy haze. He knew people were starting to notice, like Theo, who kept frowning at him as if he thought that Draco should pay him more attention. But at the moment, Theo and his uncertain loyalties weren’t important.
What was important was Harry.
Draco tried not to shoot him smoldering looks all the time, because the last thing he wanted was to embarrass Harry in front of his friends or Professor Snape. But when their eyes did catch, Harry blushed, and Dash looked pleased, so it was probably a lost cause anyway.
Draco walked around with what remained of the blooded stone necklace tucked under his robes, clasping his neck, and wrote a letter to Mother telling her not to worry about him, that he had everything he wanted. He stroked Ultio and imagined whether he would want to play with Dash in the future, when he got bigger. He spent as much time with Harry as he could, whether that was in class or outside it or watching stars or practicing Quidditch.
It wouldn’t last forever. But for right now, it was the sweetest time of Draco’s life, and well worth preserving in memory.
*
Elena Zabini took a cautious step back from the cauldron. There was silvery fluid inside it, swirling with white patterns on the surface, and she honestly didn’t know what was going to happen next.
Her efforts to create the loyalty potion that Potter had asked her for had gone so well. She had tested a few theories she’d actually held for years, when she experimented with love potions and other means of gaining hold of the husbands she wanted permanently. And it had been an innovative idea to combine glacier water gathered by the light of the full moon, the tarred fur of a nundu, and a thestral’s heartstring-symbols of purity and corruption bound together by the artificially dirtied fur.
Now, though…
She had not anticipated the white swirls that would invade the potion. Or the way that it had gone suddenly silent instead of bubbling more, as it was meant to. Even if the reaction had worked the way she wanted and the glacier water and the thestral heartstring were bound and balanced, it should still have been a contained struggle, seething back and forth.
She gave the cauldron a steady look. Then she lifted a Shield Charm in front of herself, just in case.
But the cauldron remained quiescent. The white swirls passed across the silver surface and died. In fact, the liquid took on the sheen of pure silver, or quicksilver. Elena shook her head. Something had gone wrong, it must have, but she wasn’t experienced enough to say what.
She threw up another shield, this time around the cauldron, and then went to mark a stack of Transfiguration essays waiting for her. She got so involved in writing small comments that would look like praise at first that she forgot about the cauldron almost until it was time to go on patrol for errant Gryffindors. Then she turned and held a candle a careful distance from it.
To her shock, the potion was almost gone. It had boiled down to little more than a silver scrim on the bottom of the cauldron, so like a pure metal that it reflected the light of the candle and hurt her eyes. If anything had leaped out and splashed against her careful Shield Charm, Elena couldn’t see it.
I wonder if the glacier water purified the entire thing…
She had indeed added more glacier water than any other new ingredient, but that had been simply to balance the potency of the nundu fur and the thestral heartstring. Water by itself was most often a base, and even charged with the power of the full moon, it shouldn’t have made the potion react like this.
Elena pondered it, then shrugged. For now, the potion wasn’t going anywhere, and she would have no lack of time to investigate it and either find out what she had done wrong or find out if the potion had actually worked.
She smiled as she left her rooms, the candle floating behind her.
No lack of time or test subjects.
*
“I want to ask you something, Potter. And I want you to answer honestly.”
Harry blinked. He hadn’t expected to encounter Theodore Nott as he was coming back from his first practice session in blood magic with Draco. Then again, Draco had seemed to think the dungeons were the appropriate place for that, and Nott had a reason to hang out in the dungeons.
“Okay,” Harry said. He might have felt uneasy, but Dash was beside him, looking at Nott in the interested way he had when he was deciding whether someone was a pet human or a meal, and he doubted Nott would be so stupid as to try spells against a basilisk. “What is it?”
“Draco says that you’re setting yourself up against the-Dark Lord. And maybe the Ministry, too. The Ministry doesn’t act like they’re your friends.” Nott took a long, aggressive step forwards. Then Dash gently hissed at him, and he matched it with a hasty step backwards. Harry fought not to laugh. “You’re creating your own side.”
“Yes?”
“I’m trying to determine if you’re fit to lead that side. Or if you’re just fit to rescue crying little Ravenclaw girls in the Great Hall.”
Harry wanted to say that Luna hadn’t been crying even though Edgecombe had pushed her to the floor rather hard, but he knew that would carry the conversation away from where both he and Nott wanted it to go. He met Nott’s eyes instead and murmured, “You want to know if you’re going to be safe from Voldemort, following me.”
It was amusing to watch Nott jump at the name, but while Dash laughed and laughed, Harry couldn’t afford to do that. He stood still with his arms folded, and Nott finally said, “Yes, I do. You have no idea what my summer was like.”
“Not if you don’t tell me.”
Nott shot him a startled look, and then dropped his eyes and clenched his hands. “My father used to be a Death Eater,” he said, his voice empty. “He escaped by claiming he’d been under the Imperius Curse, like Draco’s father.”
Harry nodded. In fact, he’d known that already, but he knew he had to let Nott tell the story at his own pace, or he risked driving him away and never getting him back.
When you decide to become a good leader, than that is what you become, said Dash, with a hum in the middle of his mental voice strangely like a purr. You always had the potential in you to become this. I merely encouraged you to seize it.
Harry cocked his head in return, but didn’t smile. Nott would probably misinterpret that, too.
“He thinks that he knows what to do,” Nott continued, and his voice was low and bitter. “He thinks that he can be a kind of valued adviser to the Dark Lord without being a Death Eater again. I saw the way he looked when he came home from one of the meetings. He’s an idiot. That’s not going to happen. He’ll just have to bow to him again and the Dark Lord will use the Mark to control him, and I’m going to be next.”
Harry nodded slowly. He knew that some of the Slytherin students cared so strongly about their family that they would do whatever their families demanded of them, and some, like Draco, worried about friends from other Houses. But here was Nott, worried mostly about himself.
That was all right. Harry could work with that.
And even though the thought would have appalled him just a little while ago, when he was worrying about making his allies into followers, now he had no problem saying, “I can help you, Nott. But you have to stop worrying about my worthiness, and worry more about your own.”
“Huh?” Nott’s eyes jerked up to him.
“I have a Potions master, and one of the brightest witches in Hogwarts, and my loyal best friend on my side,” Harry said blandly. “And a Malfoy who’s learning all sorts of magic and is also loyal to me. What can you offer me?”
Nott’s eyes cleared, and he nodded. This is the kind of thing he understands, Harry thought, and he honestly couldn’t tell whether the thought was his own or Dash’s. A trade or a bargain is more comforting than just having to come and ask me for help.
“I can be a spy on my father,” Nott said quietly. “I have access to all the letters that he wrote to other Dark wizards since the first war. I’ve read them. He has some valuable information in there. I can tell you who to be suspicious of if they come to you and offer an alliance.” He hesitated, then added, “And my father insisted that I learn to speak at least three other languages. I know French, German, and Swedish. I could talk to allies for you.”
Harry smiled. That was more useful than he would have thought. But he had to ask something. “Are you going to be able to spy on your father without him knowing? If he’s a Dark wizard and a Death Eater-”
“He thinks he’s converting me,” Nott said, with a little curl of his lip. “He’s not going to think that I’m resourceful enough to strike out on my own until the absolute last moment.”
Harry nodded. He could have said something about worrying for Nott’s safety, but Nott wouldn’t have thought it was genuine anyway. He drew his wand. Nott drew back and eyed him warily.
“I do require an oath from you,” Harry explained. “My other allies have proved themselves by standing with me already. It’s not going to be the same if I just take your word that you’ll follow me and nothing else.”
Nott knelt down and drew his own wand immediately. Dash looked approvingly over Harry’s shoulder as he made Nott promise not to betray him, not to let his father or other Slytherins know what he was doing, and to talk to Harry’s other allies and let them know he was on their side now.
“Your side,” Nott said, sitting back when it was done. “Not the Gryffindor side.”
“There’s not a Gryffindor side,” Harry agreed, and stood up. He almost offered Nott a hand, but decided that would be going too far. He just watched him walk back to the Slytherin common room.
He turned around to find Dash coiled around his feet and rubbing his head softly against Harry’s shoulder.
Well done.
The darkness did seem to fill with light at moments like that. Harry smiled, and touched Dash’s head and then his ring, and went back to Gryffindor Tower.
Chapter One Hundred and Seventeen.
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