Chapter Eighty-Five of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- The Resonance of Silence
Chapter Eighty-Four.
Title: A Brother to Basilisks (85/?)
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 Eighty-Five-The Resonance of Silence
Harry thought he saw the moment when Dash’s gaze struck Dumbledore. He certainly felt it throughout his being, a ringing like Harry had heard once when he was little and dropped the lid of a pot on the Dursleys’ kitchen floor.
It circled around and around and made more noise than Harry would have thought it capable of. There was a metallic edge to every circle, and it made him shudder and want to hide his head and his ears. His tongue ached, and he was horribly aware of the attention it would draw.
That was like this, down to the attention.
And then Dumbledore fell.
Harry found himself lunging forwards, even though Ron and Hermione and Draco promptly grabbed him and pulled him back. Harry struggled madly, wondering for a moment what they thought they were doing. It wasn’t like Dash would ever harm him, and Flamel was just standing there uselessly right now-
But Draco forced him down on the floor, and knelt beside him, and whispered over and over into his ear, “Don’t look.”
Harry tried to stand up and say something, but Draco’s hands were firmer than he’d expected. He couldn’t stand, and he gasped out his indignation against the stone floor of the cavern, while Hermione rubbed his shoulders and Ron swore and Draco’s hand rubbed small, smooth, firm circles in the middle of his back.
Dash? Harry finally thought to ask. The bond was heavy and still had a metallic edge. This time, though, Harry thought it was less like a dropped pot lid and more like a sword that someone hadn’t put away.
Harry.
Harry heard the rasp of scales and Hermione’s small half-scream. But Dash didn’t back away for all of that, and Harry found himself indescribably glad when he was wrapped up again in thick green scales, cradled against a body that looped and scrawled back on itself.
He is dead.
Harry stilled. He thought, for a minute, that his friends must have known right away, and that was why they hadn’t wanted him to stand and go over there. Not that they thought Dash would hurt him.
Are you sure? was the only thing that Harry could come up with. It sounded incredibly lame in his ears, and he winced a second later. But he honestly didn’t know what else he should say. It was…it was strange to think of Dumbledore being dead.
It was strange to think that Dash had killed for the first time using his eyes.
No. I’ve killed animals before. Dash curled up so that his head was right next to Harry’s, and Harry could feel the little tremor that ran through his neck. I thought it wouldn’t feel any different, killing a human. But it was. I blame you for that.
“But you’ve killed him now,” said Harry, not reacting to the attempt at blame. He heard Hermione gasp and start to cry. Harry couldn’t turn to face her. He couldn’t look away from the closed eyelids that covered Dash’s deadly gaze.
Yes, I did. What I mean is that you’ve changed me. I wouldn’t have cared about killing him a short time ago. He would have been more prey, or an enemy, the one who hurt you. But now, I’m upset because you’re upset.
Harry touched Dash’s plume, and ignored the way that Hermione and Ron were herding Flamel into a corner and casting restraining spells around him. Flamel’s wand was gone anyway. He wasn’t a threat. Why did you kill him?
It was enough.
Harry paused, and felt Draco grip his arm and tug. Right now, though, he couldn’t look away from Dash, and he thought the conversation they were having was too important to turn his attention elsewhere. What do you mean?
He has hurt you enough. He has hunted you enough. I know that that pool of light over there was meant to do something to damage our bond. Dash pointed with his tail at the alchemical pool, never moving his head. There comes a time when dead is the only way to leave an enemy.
“Dash…” Harry leaned back and closed his eyes. He felt pain, and Dash was feeling it with him, from the soft way he nuzzled Harry’s cheek. But there were other things that Harry could barely put into words.
Lots of people are going to hate me for being the reason Dumbledore died, he finally said.
But I am the one who killed him. Not you.
But they’ll say that I should have kept you under control. Now all the rumors are going to start again about if I’m going to set you on people at Hogwarts who bump into me or professors who don’t give me good marks. Harry had to admit there were other things, worse things, too, that were going to happen because of this, but he chose the one he thought Dash would understand best.
Maybe he had been wrong about Dash understanding, though, because all Harry got from him was a steady burst of incomprehension, fast and paced out as though Dash was a trotting horse. Harry sighed and searched for some more words to explain it.
Then rage.
Harry gasped and opened his eyes. He heard Draco say something else, warm and sharp, but he couldn’t look away from Dash again. He was swaying his head back and forth as if he had suddenly become part cobra.
They think I’m a pet you should control. Like that dragon you told me Hagrid was raising your first year.
“Yes, they do,” Harry said aloud. It felt so dangerous to speak it down the bond or in Parseltongue right now, even though he knew, logically, that that wouldn’t make enough of a difference to Dash to bother about. But the thought was there anyway.
They don’t think of me as a being on my own, who can make conscious decisions.
Harry shook his head. “I think the absolute best way people could interpret it is to say that Dumbledore was trying to hurt me, so you killed him. And a lot of them don’t even believe that Dumbledore was doing anything all that bad by posing as Moody.”
“He wasn’t.”
That was from Flamel, and Dash raised his head with a little rustling of scales. Harry immediately grabbed his neck and said in a rushed voice, “I don’t want you to hurt him. I don’t want you to hurt anyone right now.”
At least you didn’t say “never again,” or I would have had to break my word immediately, Dash said, and dropped his head back so it was resting alongside Harry’s neck.
“He was so!” Hermione was flushed and standing up to Flamel with her arms waving around, as if he had been the Moody who bullied Draco. Maybe he had been sometimes, Harry thought wearily, rubbing his forehead. Dumbledore had seemed more like himself, more confident, sometimes. Maybe he’d had Flamel play Moody and he’d gone back to playing himself.
Harry didn’t know. He didn’t know if Dash had done the right thing. He knew his head ached, and that he couldn’t feel enough grief for Dumbledore. He should have felt something sad about seeing a man drop dead right in front of him, and knowing his own basilisk had caused it. But he didn’t.
“Harry?”
This time, what Draco was trying to say got through. Harry gave him a weary smile and dropped his hand from his face. “I’m sorry for ignoring you,” he whispered. “But Dash was telling me why he killed Dumbledore.”
“You had a question about it?”
Draco sounded so disbelieving that Harry had to grin. Sometimes he thought Draco would mesh better with Dash than he would.
He wasn’t my choice. You were.
Harry nodded in response to them both, and said, “Why he did it. It would have been better to-to leave Dumbledore alive, and tell everyone what he was doing. Yes, it would,” he added, when he saw the plainly disbelieving look Draco gave him. “This way, there will be all sorts of accusations.”
“Not while my father has a seat on the Board of Governors and contacts in the Wizengamot,” said Draco, and raised his chin. “What Dumbledore already did was wrong. He’d been accused. And we can take Veritaserum if we want, to prove that what we say is true.”
Harry swallowed. “But look at the way that everyone believed I put my name in the Goblet of Fire even though I didn’t. And this is going to look worse. People will say that I can’t control my basilisk, that I should go to prison for murder. It’s going to be so much worse, and Dash just sits there and feels smug about it.”
Not smug. I know you feel bad. And I wouldn’t have killed him if there was another choice. But sitting there and feeling bad doesn’t mean anything with the amount of things he’d done to you already.
“We’ll have a trial,” Draco repeated stubbornly. “With Veritaserum.”
Harry just shook his head, and said nothing. He could think of all the other things that would happen in a trial. Snape would be condemned for performing the ritual to create the shield and supposedly putting Harry in danger, and-
Snape!
Harry sat up as fast as he could, but Dash was already uncurling from around his shoulders and sliding towards the place where Snape had fallen, flicking and rasping his tail on the stone floor. I will check on him. But I would have smelled if he was dead.
Harry sat up, avoiding looking at Dumbledore’s body, and turned to Flamel instead. Hermione and Ron were keeping a guard on him. Hermione seemed to have stopped talking, maybe because she wasn’t getting anywhere or had realized she couldn’t convince Flamel. Her mouth was a hard, thin line.
“Why?” Harry asked.
Flamel closed his eyes. “You don’t know what kind of friendship Albus and I had,” he whispered. “We were alchemy partners, and-you have to trust someone absolutely for something like that. I could have been killed or burned or transmuted myself any time during the work we did on dragon’s blood. In fact, I almost was several times. Albus was always the one who saved me.”
“But that doesn’t explain why you would want to hurt someone else! Just because he told you to!”
Flamel looked at Hermione, and Harry thought he might almost have smiled. “You’re very young and righteous in your indignation, Miss Granger,” he said gently. “But-Albus knew so much. Not just about alchemy and dragon’s blood, I don’t mean that. He had seen many important historical moments pass and come around again, and he knew that what might look like plain cruelty sometimes isn’t, not if you really pay attention, really look, really try.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Hermione said, “but I know what’s cruel and what’s not. And I know what’s prejudice and what’s not.” Draco shifted at Harry’s side as if he disagreed, but he didn’t interrupt. “Dumbledore was prejudiced against Harry because he was a Parselmouth and close to Slytherins. That’s it. That’s all. How could you let him do something like that to Harry just because of his prejudice?”
Flamel closed his eyes. “There are other things about young Mr. Potter, things you do not know-”
“Like me being a Horcrux?” Harry cut in, because he was irritated at the way Flamel went on talking as though none of them could understand anything. “Yes, we know about that. And my friends know about that. And we’re researching ways to get me free of it.”
Flamel stared at him in shock.
“Yes, we are,” said Harry, and turned away to Dash and Snape, because he didn’t think anything else Flamel had to say would be interesting. Maybe Draco was right and they would need to await a trial that used Veritaserum for it, but the Veritaserum would have to be used on Flamel instead. “How are you, Professor Snape?”
“Well enough.” Snape stood with his hand on Dash’s head; Dash was coiled high enough to support him on purpose. Harry relaxed when he saw that. There was a burn on Snape’s shoulder and a long, bloody wound on his side that he seemed to have bandaged, but he was still pale. “Albus is dead?”
Harry wondered for a second if Dash hadn’t taken him past the body, but then Dash said, I thought it wouldn’t be kind. See? I can be kind to people other than you!
Harry gave him a strained smile and faced Snape again. “Yes, he is. I’m-sorry.” He hoped Snape didn’t think he was taking the blame for Dumbledore’s death on himself, because he wasn’t. Dash and Draco would both get so upset if he did that.
*
Severus had to close his eyes. He had already come close to fainting until the basilisk came to support him. Accepting Albus’s last curse instead of countering it had taken more out of him than he realized.
Then again, if you hadn’t moved, Dash’s gaze would have taken your life.
Severus turned to look at the basilisk who hovered beside him. He looked back, his body large and soft and peaceful, with his eyes carefully shuttered behind those clear lids.
Severus swallowed and shook his head. He had to accept that he would probably never understand Dash’s motivations fully, and he had to give a large predator who could kill humans with a mere blink the courtesy of caution. But on the other hand, speaking further about Albus’s death and what it had meant to him would only raise guilt in Harry that had no cause to be there.
“The shield kept you safe?” he asked, nodding to the chain around Harry’s neck. “I followed the link the ritual created between us to get here.”
“Yes, I think it did.” Harry finally looked away from him to smile softly down at the silver shield. “I saw a flash of light from it right before you came into the cave. I think it prevented some of the alchemy from taking hold.”
Severus felt as though someone had begun to pump air into his lungs after a long absence. He nodded slowly, and managed finally to pull his hand up from Dash’s head. The basilisk still coiled beside him for a moment, but at last slid away and curled up around Harry’s legs.
Where he can do the most good, anyway, Severus thought, and said, “We must decide how we are to handle what happened here.”
“What are you going to handle?” Flamel’s voice was dusty and cold. “Albus is dead. You can’t come back from that. Do you understand how the wizarding world is going to turn on you when they see what happened here?”
Severus studied him in silence. The man looked much like the photographs Severus had seen in older Potions books, ones from the days before Potions and alchemy became divided arts. He also looked haggard and worn. What Severus had heard him say about the loss of such an old friend and alchemical partner explained that.
Still, Severus would not let him get away with threatening Harry, even if it was indirectly. He asked with chilling politeness, “Are you worrying about what will happen to you? You should. Perhaps together, we can mitigate the consequences you’ll suffer.”
Flamel gasped. He actually staggered back a step or two, and then looked wildly around. But Granger had his wand, and Weasley had moved behind him. Severus spared a moment to admire his own cleverness in bringing the two Gryffindors along. They were proving quite useful.
“What do you mean? You’re the ones who will suffer!”
Dash stirred next to Harry, and Harry put out a hasty hand. So Harry would not have to deal with fears about Dash’s possible actions, Severus spoke quickly, to bring Flamel’s attention back to him. “And have you considered the political power of the Boy-Who-Lived?”
He knew, because he knew Harry rather than because he looked, how Harry would be grimacing and ducking his head in disgust. But Flamel was staring at Severus instead of Harry, so that little possible faux pas passed unnoticed.
“I don’t know what you mean. Albus always said-”
Severus rolled his eyes. “And we have already had to entertain the idea that Albus isn’t-wasn’t flawless, haven’t we?” He was perhaps being unnecessarily snide, but it would be best to establish control of the situation now, and intimidating Flamel would be the best way to do it. “Do you think Harry is powerless?”
“I never thought that.” Flamel’s eyes were darting uneasily around the cavern as if looking for someone to help him. Severus had already cast a few spells to make sure that all sounds coming out of the cave were muffled, however. He had no idea where they were in relation to the rest of the wizarding world, or the Muggle one, and he didn’t want someone getting curious and interfering. “I only thought he would be-guided by Albus.”
“If you had completed the ritual you thought up, I’m sure he would have,” Severus said, and sneered when Flamel looked at him as if he was hoping for help from a “reasonable” adult. Flamel recoiled, and Severus moderated the sneer. It also wouldn’t do to make the old man so desperate that he would do something reckless.
“Harry has allies in Europe already,” Severus said, “as well as Britain. The Selwyn family has declared allegiance. He is allies with the Lughborns. There are others.”
Flamel only looked as though someone had slapped him hard with the broad side of an axe. “I had no idea,” he whispered. “Albus never told me…”
“Albus might not have been aware,” Severus said, an admission that cost him nothing. “But the fact remains that Harry is strong enough to make a bid at charging you with attempted murder, if he wishes.”
Flamel only shook his head and shook it. He appeared on the verge of dazed, although not toppled over. “There are so many people in Britain who are prejudiced against Parselmouths,” he whispered. “Who are-were-for Albus. No, they still would be. You wouldn’t get away with charging me.”
“I don’t really want to charge you with anything, Mr. Flamel,” Harry said, and Severus gave him a narrow glare. He would have preferred it if Harry had stayed out of this and let Severus handle things.
But the determined smile on Harry’s face changed Severus’s mind. He knew now that Dash must have spoken to him, perhaps give him advice, because Harry continued to talk with the wide-eyed innocence that he never actually wore now, when communicating with people who had tried to hurt him.
“I have to do something, though,” Harry said. “Dash told me that he had to slither after me once he realized I’d been transported by Portkey. Lots of people will have seen that. And Professor Snape hurrying away,” he added, with a nod in Severus’s direction. “What am I going to tell them? What kind of story will it be?”
He paused. Severus pursed his lips in a silent whistle. Harry was offering to let Flamel have some choice in guiding that story.
It was a clever tactic, although not one Severus would have chosen. Still, he knew how sensitive Harry was to public perception, and perhaps he was wise to be so when his favored pet was a basilisk. Severus decided to downgrade his own status to “lurking background threat” for now, and see what happened.
*
Draco watched in silence as Flamel considered things. He knew what Harry was doing. It had been one of the possibilities he’d thought of himself: making Flamel an ally as they tried to control the story.
And it had probably been what Dash suggested to him. Draco could respect that. Harry was so anxious not to cause trouble, not to make people think worse of him than they already did. It had been so hard for him when people had thought he’d cheated to enter the Tournament. Draco could understand why he’d want to avoid that now.
But…
It wasn’t the kind of strategy Draco would have used. Or was going to use, from now on. Because there was shaping the story and making your enemy your ally, and there was allowing people near you who had done something unforgivable. Draco thought Flamel fit in the latter category.
As Flamel and Harry started tentatively negotiating what they were going to tell people, Draco turned and glanced at Dumbledore’s body. He saw something move from the corner of his eye, and turned his head in time to see Dash’s tongue flicker out. Dash gave Draco a tiny nod before he went back to focusing on Harry, sometimes hissing at Flamel for effect.
It was good to know that someone besides him had Harry’s best interests at thought, Draco decided. Harry could be the public face of their alliance, then-innocent and sweet, thinking the best of people and ready to forgive them. Dash and Draco would work behind the scenes to make sure Harry was always safe, no matter what the people he was speaking to really thought of him.
And maybe Professor Snape can help with that as well, Draco added mentally, seeing the way that Snape turned his head a little to catch first Dash’s hidden eyes and then Draco’s.
He settled down to make plans of his own. He would make sure that things had not changed as profoundly as they seemed to have, that Dumbledore’s death wouldn’t destroy Harry or Dash.
Because Draco couldn’t brew complex potions or bring lethal fangs to this bargain-yet-but he could use all his cunning. Which was not small.
Chapter Eighty-Six.
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