Chapter Two of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- The Basilisk Rises

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter One.

Title: A Brother to Basilisks (2/?)
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.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Two--The Basilisk Rises

“You could stay here, and I could go get you something to eat,” Harry suggested, as he struggled to climb back through the tiny tunnel he’d used to get into the hatching room. Dash was wrapped around him, his head dangling next to Harry’s on the other side of his neck and his tail sweeping around his waist.

No. I don’t want to. What would happen if someone ambushed you on the way back down and I never got my breakfast? And then I would have to wander through the tunnels in search of vengeance, and that could take a long time.

Harry paused with one hand on the wall, even though Dash was whining at him to get moving. “How do you know about ambushes and vengeance? And weren’t your words a lot simpler a few minutes ago?” He was sure they had been, although he didn’t know exactly how to classify the difference.

I learn what you learn. I know what you know. You know about ambushes and vengeance, so I do, too. There was a pause, and Harry had the distinct sense that Dash was doing something to his memories. There was a sensation like a pack of cards flipping in his head. And Dark Lords. Why does he want to kill you so badly?

“You pick up on everything else, and you can’t pick up on that?” Harry muttered, starting to climb again. He tried to imagine the expressions on everyone’s faces when he came out of the tunnel with a basilisk. It didn’t look pretty in his head. He wondered if people would start calling him the Heir of Slytherin again. It would be for the best if Dash stayed down here.

No, it wouldn’t. How could I defend you if I was down here? And stupid people can’t get away with saying things like that if they’re insults. Harry had the distinct impression that Dash didn’t think being called something associated with snakes was an insult. And I can’t tell about the Dark Lord because it has to do with mammal things. I understand revenge. Revenge is a reptile thing. But war is a mammal thing.

Harry shook his head, and Dash nudged at his ear. Harry wondered if he would have nipped him like Hedwig did if not for those incredibly sharp and poisonous fangs in his mouth. “He wanted to kill my parents. I don’t really know why. They fought him, I reckon. But he tried to curse me with the same spell he used to kill my parents, and it bounced back and hit him.”

He is the Heir of Slytherin? Dash sounded thoughtful. Harry hoped he wasn’t about to decide that he would be better off helping Voldemort.

“Yeah.” Harry halted, puffing and blowing, at the entrance back into the main tunnel that ran up to the Chamber. “You’re heavy. You’re sure that you can’t climb down and slither on your own?”

You could talk to me in your head, and then you wouldn’t need to talk aloud and waste your breath like that. But Dash did slide to the floor, with immense dignity and tickling Harry all the way, and begin to move down the tunnel ahead of him. So you don’t really know why he tried to kill you.

Harry shrugged a little. "I know that he's trying to kill me now because he's tried and failed to kill me in the past."

Dash paused and swung his head back in Harry's direction, and Harry tensed instinctively. But the eyelids were still firmly clamped into place over Dash's eyes. The hiss he gave sounded delighted, and in was in Parseltongue, like the first calls for help he had given Harry, instead of mental. "You resisted him? Yes, you resisted him. And he's powerful, but you still managed to fight him."

"Of course I fought him," Harry snapped, a little irritated, brushing past Dash and taking up the lead. He was the one who had been down this tunnel before. He was the one who would know the way.

I told you, I know what you know, at least if I can understand it.

"Well, you were just born."

You think that I was only alive when I broke the shell? How like a mammal.

Harry sighed and gave up that portion of the conversation. He had the feeling that that was a skill he'd have to learn. "But I fought him because he wanted to kill me. It's not because I really wanted to be a hero or anything like that."

What is a hero?

"Someone who fights to save other people," Harry said, and then paused, unsure. He didn't really know. It wasn't a question he had ever asked himself. He only knew that he wasn't one, that he was a normal boy, or would be if Voldemort would leave him alone. "Someone who dies to save other people." He gave Dash an image of his parents as he imagined their deaths, although the only thing he had to base that on was his mum's voice screaming when Voldemort killed her.

Parents should fight for their young, said Dash, sounding approving. He wriggled up beside Harry and wrapped a coil of his body around Harry's legs in what felt oddly like a hug. So, a cat that fights for her kittens is a hero. I understand now.

Harry groaned a little. Then he decided that he shouldn't worry about it, because no one else could talk to Dash and learn his odd definition of a hero, anyway. Harry was the only one who would have to live with it. "Sort of. Anyway, I want to know more about the eggs. Did you have brothers and sisters?"

How should I know? Dash unwrapped from Harry's legs and slithered ahead of Harry, his shadow a long, graceful curve on the walls in the light of Harry's Lumos. I was the first to hatch. You didn't see any other egg bits, did you? I didn't have anyone come to me and tell me what to do. I only knew that I had to break the egg, and I had to have help. Then you came along and helped me.

Harry shifted uncomfortably when Dash's voice flicked into his mind this time. It was sort of adoring. It was sort of the way that Aunt Petunia spoke to Dudley, and Harry didn't know if that was a good thing.

But he also thought it was another thing he couldn't help, so he said aloud, "But you said that you were alive before you hatched from the egg. I thought you would know--all sorts of things. About the Chamber and the eggs and how you hatched as a basilisk when you must have hatched from a chicken egg under a toad."

I am not a chicken or a toad. For a moment, Harry felt that licking sensation again, but this time he knew Dash was licking away layers of memories, searching for images of a chicken or a toad. They are things I would eat.

"But that's the way basilisks hatch."

No, it isn't. I am the proof.

Harry shook his head, oddly disappointed. It wasn't like he cared all that much about the Chamber of Secrets and snakes and basilisks and how the basilisk eggs had come to be there, anyway, he told himself. He wasn't a bloody Slytherin.

But it would still have been nice to know why he'd suddenly found himself saddled with a huge snake that was going to be more trouble than it was worth, especially when it grew up.

You do not like me?

Harry stooped down quickly and rested his hands on Dash's head and back. He knew that voice. It was the sort of voice he used to use himself when he looked through the cracks in the cupboard door and watched the Dursleys playing with Dudley or spoiling him. Why didn't they like him? It didn't make sense.

And it didn't make sense to Dash, either, with the way he felt about Harry.

"It's not that I don't like you," Harry muttered, and ducked his head further so he could rub his forehead against Dash's back. His scales were oddly soft and smooth, shiny against Harry's skin as though someone had already been rubbing them for a long time. "It's just--I don't understand how this happened. I know there aren't a lot of other Parselmouths, but I never heard of any of them being bonded to a basilisk."

Of course not, said Dash, and his tail wrapped slyly around Harry's ankle, in a way that Harry knew could trip him if Dash tugged. Sharing a mind with a basilisk made it rather hard for that basilisk to play tricks on him, though. I'm special, and you're special. It makes sense that I would be the first one to choose a Parselmouth, and that I would choose the most special one.

Harry gave a restrained chuckle and stood up, guiding Dash forwards with a hand on the back of his neck. Are you hungry? he asked, giving in to the inevitable and speaking down the bond, in his head. He would have to do it anyway when they were around other people, unless he wanted to alarm them with Parseltongue or random blurts of information all the time.

Around other people? But yes, they would have to be. Harry didn't think Dash would agree to stay out of sight inside the Chamber of Secrets or his bedroom all the time, and given how nosy people were about him, it was only a matter of time before someone discovered Dash anyway.

I told you that already when I asked you where breakfast was. Dash stayed in contact with Harry's ankle and hand for a second, and then wriggled away from him, winding over the broken stone with a grace Harry admired. And I want something living, so I can kill it with my eyes.

Harry stopped still for a second, then began to breathe. At least he thought he might know how to get that. "All right. We'll have to go outside, though." He was a little worried about the Dementors, but not about Sirius Black. Not any longer, when he had a basilisk with him.

Come to that, he might not have to worry about the Dursleys, either...

A small, vicious grin on his face, Harry followed Dash back up the steps and out of the tunnels, back towards what was going to be his normal life.

*

Harry nudged Dash's side with his foot. Ever since they had come up into the darkness outside the castle, Dash wouldn't stop staring at the moon. He was weaving his neck back and forth, his rapt gaze pointing up. Come on. We don't have that much time before someone starts wondering where I am.

But it's a light. In the sky. Like the fire in my cavern, but so much prettier. Dash finally started crawling after Harry, but it was a good thing he was a snake and could writhe his body around things, because he still refused to look away from the moon. Who put it there?

Harry rolled his eyes. You don't know who put the fire there, I don't know who put the moon there. But come on. Just make sure you're looking away from me when you open your eyes to kill something.

He jumped a second later as something wet and smooth touched the back of his leg. Then he realized it was Dash's tongue, and snorted and brushed his hand down Dash's neck.

I would never hurt you. Not on purpose.

Harry rolled his eyes and stopped near the edge of the Forbidden Forest. Hagrid had said something last week about rabbits playing around here, and Harry was hoping that he would find some and Dash could kill them. Otherwise, he would have to take him over to the lake and hope they could catch a fish. Do you smell anything?

No--wait. Harry heard a faint, odd sound, and looked down to see Dash pulling his tongue in and out of his mouth in a rapid way that he reckoned helped him smell better. I can smell something small and warm. That's good to eat?

I suppose, Harry said. If it smells good. I don't know what's good to eat for snakes. Other than Muggleborns, the way that Slytherin's basilisk had done, and no matter how much Harry liked Dash, he wasn't about to set him loose on students at the school.

Even though it would have been kind of fun to set him loose on the Slytherins. Or Snape.

I told you, I can eat whoever you want me to eat, said Dash absently, but he had tensed, coiling up so that the first two-thirds of his body were off the ground, and Harry knew he wasn't really paying attention to the conversation. Something small and warm is coming this way!

Harry prudently stepped behind the basilisk. He wasn't about to get in the way of that gaze. Given how careful Dash was to keep his eyelids over his eyes, he thought the basilisk's gaze could probably still harm him, bonded Parselmouth or not.

Dash slide a short way forwards, and then abruptly his eyelids slid up; Harry could actually see that from where he was standing, like window shutters rising. A faint golden glow shone in the darkness of the night for a second.

There was a confused, small sound, and Harry saw a shadow he hadn't realized was there shift, falling over. It was a rabbit, he realized, when Dash shielded his eyes again and slithered forwards, and then wrapped the top part of his body around it.

Well done, said Harry, a little shakily, feeling he ought to say something.

Dash yawned in agreement. And went on yawning. As Harry stared, he completely flexed his jaw open until it hung like a broken door, and then he bent down and scooped the rabbit into his mouth, and then he swallowed. Harry could see the broken shape tumbling further and further down his throat.

It was kind of great, and kind of scary. Harry only had to think about that happening to Voldemort, and then it was kind of funny, too.

That was good, said Dash. But I'm still hungry. It's a lot of energy, you know, moving around and talking to you. And he crawled in front of Harry, aiming his gaze into the Forest.

Harry took a few cautious steps behind him, saying, Be careful. There are things--well, creatures, like centaurs--that live in the Forest, and I don't want you killing any of them.

What's a centaur? Dash asked, and once again licked away a few layers of Harry's mind until he found the answer. Oh. Well, I wouldn't want to eat one of them anyway. They're too big for me right now.

Harry swallowed. That "right now" was worrying him a bit.

*

But eventually they did find another rabbit and some mice, and Dash wrapped himself sleepily around Harry and allowed Harry to carry him back to Hogwarts. His body felt strange, lumpy. Harry knew it was from all the animals he'd killed, but he couldn't keep from rubbing the lumps sometimes where Dash wrapped around his stomach and shoulders, until Dash shifted and mumbled a protest.

Sorry, Harry said, and stopped. He wouldn't want someone else rubbing his stomach after a full meal, either. Especially since he so rarely got to eat a full meal with the Dursleys involved.

Who are they? You mentioned them before.

Harry was silent. But it wasn't like he needed to speak aloud, not when Dash could crawl through his head and find out who they were. And he understood what had happened to Harry in his own way.

They wouldn't let you eat, and they kept you in a tiny little cage. Dash flicked his tongue out so it brushed Harry's earlobe, and Harry jumped the way he had when Dash licked the back of his leg. It would take him a while to get used to that. They're going to die. The biggest one should feed me for a week.

Harry sighed. "I don't want you killing humans!" He spoke it aloud, in English, to make sure that Dash understood how serious he was.

What does that have to do with anything? Dash sounded baffled. I would be getting revenge for you. So that's the way it needs to work.

"You can't kill humans!"

"How emphatic you are, Mr. Potter. Unfortunate that you were not equally emphatic in avoiding danger when you know that Black is roaming around trying to kill you."

Harry halted and jerked his head up. Professor Snape was stalking towards him, his robes snapping behind him like a flag. Dash stirred beside him and started to lift his head, but Harry reached down and clamped a hand over his eyes. "No killing humans, I told you!"

Snape came to a halt. Harry stared at him. He seemed to have come closer under the impression that Harry was talking to himself or something, because he was looking at Dash in a way that made it clear he hadn't noticed him before.

Normally, Harry wouldn't think a lot about what Snape did or didn't notice. But this time, he did, and even Dash shoving at his hand, whining, All right, all right, I'll keep my eyelids down, let me go, didn't take his attention from Snape's pale face.

"What have you found?" Snape breathed it with the least hostile tone in his voice Harry had ever heard from him. Harry assumed it would come back in a minute, though. He was just shocked. So he didn't bother being calm or diplomatic when he answered.

"A baby basilisk. I heard a voice calling from the Chamber of Secrets, and it was him."

Tell him my name, and that we're bonded, said Dash, and his tail did a little drumbeat on Harry's ribs. I want everyone to know. I don't want any filthy cat or owl thinking that it can steal you from me.

"I have an owl. You have to get along with her," Harry hissed at Dash in agitation. He hadn't even considered that. It seemed he kept thinking of all the things about his life that Dash was going to change after Dash brought them up. He had to stop doing that.

I'll get along with something that belongs to you. But any random cat or owl had better watch out. Dash put his head on Harry's shoulder and touched Harry's earlobe with his tongue, making him jump again. And this one. This one had better not think he can lock you in a cage or not feed you.

"He's never done that," said Harry in weary Parseltongue, keeping an eye on Snape. The man hadn't moved and just stood there staring, as though that would make Dash dissolve or turn into something else that wasn't a basilisk, and thus wasn't as much of a problem. "He hates me, but he gives me detentions." He shared what those were with Dash in a quick, strobing flash when Dash stirred discontentedly beside him. "It's just, I don't know exactly why he hates me, and I've never wanted to find out."

You should always find out why someone hates you. It's the first step to defeating them.

Harry narrowed his eyes, because that didn't sound like a thought a young snake should have or one that had ever passed through his own head, but he didn't have the chance to follow it up, because Snape spoke again. "We are to proceed directly to the Headmaster's office."

I don't like him, said Dash. If you won't let me kill him with my gaze, let me bite him. My poison would inflict a slower death. You wouldn't have to watch it.

Stop being bloodthirsty, Harry said down the bond, glad that he'd decided to practice with that, and just followed Snape. He wanted to ask Snape if Dumbledore had sent him to find Harry, but he didn't think Snape would answer. And maybe Snape had just decided that they had to go see Dumbledore because now Harry had a dangerous pet that wasn't allowed in the school.

What am I going to do if they want to send Dash away?

Fight for me, said Dash, in utter surprise. Of course you'll fight for me. I would fight for you. And I can teach you how to be more dangerous.

Harry paused. That thought was actually kind of interesting.

"The Headmaster does not have all night, Potter."

Harry stiffened his back, looped his arm under Dash to keep his tail from dragging on the ground, and kept walking. He didn't want to let that statement go without a retort, but he also didn't want to encourage Dash to imitate his glare, and Dash was more important than Snape.

They could have a silent conversation Snape would never notice while they were walking, anyway.

*

Severus kept an eye on Potter, the habit of years now, but his attention was at least as much on the snake as on the boy. He could see the small red plume on the snake's head standing up, letting him know that the boy was right, that this was a basilisk, if a young one, and a male at that.

The portraits had woken Severus with their excited chatter about "Slytherin returned." Severus had expected to find one of the children of his House playing a prank. One of the younger ones, of course, because none of the older ones would be so stupid as to rouse Severus's wrath in the middle of the night.

But instead he had come out and found--this. A basilisk who was crowded close to the boy and seemed able to keep his eyes shut on the boy's command, at that.

Severus was not blind. While he could not understand the Parseltongue the boy hissed at the snake, he noticed the long pauses and the way the boy's attention stayed away from Severus and on the basilisk. This spoke of a bond closer than even the ones Severus had seen the Dark Lord share with some of his snakes.

As they stepped off the revolving staircase into the Headmaster's office, Severus deliberately fell back a step, so he could watch Albus's face, and the moment the twinkle disappeared from his eye.

Severus found a thin smile of his own materializing, but luckily, neither Albus nor Potter were looking at him at the moment.

Things had just grown substantially more interesting, it seemed.

Chapter Three.

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