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A Brother to Basilisks

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.

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.

The title is based on a quote from the Book of Job: “I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.”

Chapter 1: Hurried Images

Chapter Text


Harry turned over in his bed and once again kicked his covers off sullenly. It was too hot, he thought. He was too tired. He wanted to sleep, and he couldn’t. His brain was charging along like the Hogwarts Express.

Why did Lupin not let him fight the boggart?

No matter how much Harry tried to think of other things, it kept coming back to that. Lupin thought he was weak because Harry had fainted on the train. Or he had listened to that git Snape and what he was always saying about Harry even though he hadn’t listened to what Snape said about Neville. Or he just thought Harry might be disastrous at it because he’d listened to stories Professor McGonagall told him.

It’s not like I mean to run into trouble. It’s not like I have a choice!

But something hard struck Harry’s ears before he could start another round of questioning himself and trying to remember every part of Lupin’s expression for an answer. He heard someone calling him. It sounded like Help, help, help, a steady sound that was far away but near enough that Harry sat up and stared wildly around. He wondered why no one else had heard it.

They hadn’t, though. They were all asleep. Ron was snoring, and so was Neville, who didn’t sleep well all that often.

For once, Harry hesitated, the image of Lupin and the way he’d stood in front of the boggart so Harry couldn’t fight in his mind. They all think that I’m some sort of troublemaker. I’d probably be proving them right if I went and got involved in this, right? I should just stay in bed and pull the curtains around me and pretend that none of this is happening.

But the voice went on calling, and it was so strange, not saying his name, but just repeating the call for help again and again. Harry argued with himself as he slid out of bed and put on his glasses and made sure he had his wand. If it was a trap for him, specifically for him, then it would be saying his name, right? It would be trying to lure him to it. Instead, it was just sitting there and calling, and anyone could have heard it.

He had the feeling that Lupin wouldn’t be impressed with that argument if he heard it, but Harry wasn’t very impressed with him right now.

He did take his Invisibility Cloak and drape it over himself. There, that would keep Sirius Black away.

*

Following the call was frustrating.

No matter how many steps or corridors or corners Harry walked, it was always ahead of him, and then to the side, and it never sounded like it was louder or further away. It just called, the same word over and over. Harry was starting to wonder if one of the ghosts needed help. It didn’t sound like a human voice.

Or maybe Sirius Black fell into a trap that Dumbledore set, and now he’s calling me, and I’m the only one who can hear him.

Harry clutched his wand. He didn’t know exactly how that could happen, but there were lots of things he didn’t understand in the wizarding world that people kept telling him were possible. Like Tom Riddle’s diary existing, or Dementors being on the side of good, or Snape being a good teacher.

He finally came to a halt in the middle of a corridor and closed his eyes. He would just walk along until he found the voice, he decided. Maybe it would work better if he wasn’t looking and just let his ears guide him. He didn’t think he would run into Mrs. Norris or Filch. It was too late.

Help, help, help, help, help, help…

Harry finally walked into something square and waist-height, and opened his eyes with a little yelp. He was standing in a bathroom. He’d really fallen into a trance listening to the voice, he marveled; he would have noticed the cold tile under his feet and the sound of gurgling water otherwise. He’d walked into a sink.

Then he really realized where he was, and he didn’t bother to hold back a groan. This was Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

He looked around suspiciously. Maybe Myrtle was in trouble, but it was just as likely she was playing a prank. And now she would probably report him to a professor or something.

But then he realized the voice, which he could hear a lot better now and which seemed like a hot voice for some reason, was coming from in front of him. He turned around and peered at the sink. 

He recognized the snake carving on the top of the sink a moment later.

“Oh, no,” Harry said aloud. And he probably said it in Parseltongue, since he was looking directly at the snake.

But the voice went on calling, and there was no doubt now. It was coming from the Chamber of Secrets.

Harry backed away from the sink while he thought furiously. How could someone get down there? Wouldn’t Dumbledore have told him if he hadn’t destroyed Tom Riddle’s diary completely? Or he would have gone around possessing someone else, and Harry thought he knew how to look for the signs of possession now. There didn’t seem to be any way that someone could get into the Chamber unless they were a Parselmouth or possessed by the ghost of Voldemort.

But that made Harry wonder who was down there, helpless, just like Ginny. Maybe someone had managed to get free of the possession and call for help. Either way, Harry didn’t think it was a trick. He thought he knew why he was the only one hearing the call, now. It was in Parseltongue.

His mind made up, he leaned forwards and hissed at the snake carving on the sink. “Open.”

For long moments, the sink remained still, and Harry wondered if he had somehow lost the talent—although the voice he heard calling in the distance would suggest otherwise. Then he saw the sink fall down into the floor, and the tunnel that he had slid down once before was in front of him. 

Harry bit his lip. This time, he had no phoenix to fly him out, and while he wanted to go and help the person calling him, he really didn’t want to get trapped down there and have to wait until the adults came looking for him. Once again, they would scold him and say that he was taking risks.

Show me a way to get down,” he hissed at the sink, not sure that it would actually do anything.

The tunnel itself was what responded, flowing and humping up like a snake’s back. Harry stared at the gleaming things, as slick as the scales of the basilisk. They were purple-black and looked difficult to walk on, but he also knew that he was probably luck to get this much. 

“Okay,” he said, not sure it was in Parseltongue, and then stepped forwards and onto the first stair.

It wasn’t bad, he found, as long as he kept his wand lit with the brightest Lumos Charm he could muster and didn’t look down. Well, it was hard to look down, anyway. The darkness was too deep next to the steps. He could mostly only see the one he was standing on, the one in front of him, and a little bit of the spiral of the tunnel.

He finally halted at what seemed to be the bottom, teetering a little. He could smell something powerful and dark, and he coughed, then froze. He hoped that there wasn’t anyone down here, like another Tom Riddle, who would be warned that he was coming.

Silence, though. The darkness did nothing but wait. Harry swallowed and edged cautiously forwards, in the direction of the call.

*

He didn’t actually get as far as the Chamber of Secrets. He got around one corner, not far from the doors, and suddenly the call was so clear that Harry gasped and turned around to point his wand at the wall.

He couldn’t see anything at first, and then he made something else out, a tiny round carving that was maybe supposed to be a snake coiled up, although it didn’t have a head or eyes. “Open?” Harry asked it.

The snake lifted and rippled along the stone; it was like watching a part of the wall animating itself, or a bug crawling. It was kind of creepy to watch, really. Harry moved back uneasily, clutching his wand and never taking his eyes from the small carved snake as it crept downwards to a thin line on the wall.

When the carving touched the line, it flowed into it, and suddenly the line was big and a crack. The edge of a door! Harry thought, with a little flare of excitement that he felt a bit guilty about—because Hermione, if not Ron, would disapprove of him being here—and he reached out and caught the edge, lifting it open.

The grating noise it made was impossibly loud, stone dragging across stone, and made Harry flinch again. But in seconds it was still, and Harry was peering down a sloping chute that looked as if he could sort of crawl along it instead of fall, the way he had fallen down the winding one last year.

The voice was much clearer now, calling Help, help, help, so steadily that Harry shook his head. He really was surprised that no one had heard it, even if they only heard hissing and not the voice that was so clear to Harry’s senses.

His wand still lit and lifted high, he inched his way along the chute. Unlike the tunnel that he’d been walking, this one was free of rat bones or slime or anything else that Harry tended to associate with the Chamber of Secrets. It was dusty, in fact, as though no one had been here for a long time, and Harry sneezed several times as he made his way towards the voice.

That voice that never altered. Harry was beginning to wonder who could call so steadily even if they could speak Parseltongue because of Tom Riddle. You’d think they’d still have to take a breath at some point.

The chute ended abruptly, on a broad lip that made Harry have to hop down onto the floor. He grimaced. He was still one of the shortest kids in his year, and he hated being reminded of it.

He turned around slowly, considering the bare room the chute had brought him to. It wasn’t even dusty. It was simply dry. There was nothing here. No water. No pipes that he could see leading out. Harry shook his head, bewildered. Where were the cries coming from? They actually sounded more muffled now that he was closer to the source.

Unless this was just a trap from Voldemort in the first place, and I was stupid to come here.

Well, Hermione would probably think he was stupid, anyway. That made Harry more perversely determined to prove her wrong. He lifted his wand until it really did fill the room with a fierce glow of concentrated light, and edged towards the far wall, where the voice still sounded relatively clear.

There was another carved snake there, this one rearing up and more recognizable, and a small projection sticking out of the wall where the mouth was. Harry was pretty sure it represented fangs. He hesitated, listening to the voice. 

Open?” he suggested again in Parseltongue.

This time, the wall did nothing. But the pace of the cries increased, as though whoever it was had heard someone there and realized that there might be a way to get out.

Harry said something that Aunt Petunia would have washed his mouth out with soap for, and then leaned forwards and did what seemed like the obvious thing at the time (although when he was trying to explain it later, somehow both the obviousness and why it was reasonable had gone away). He lifted a finger and gashed it against the fang.

The snake flushed red with his blood, and opened its carved eyes to look at him. Harry expected to see that the eyes were little jewels or something, but they were only blank holes in the stone. For a second, the snake’s tail wavered back and forth, agitating the stone of the wall, and Harry warily stepped backwards and lifted his wand. The last thing he needed was an attack from something he had fed his blood to.

But instead of attacking him, the snake turned and slithered into the wall. The wall promptly collapsed, the stone tunneling, and Harry skipped back out of the way of the dust and the falling chunks of rock. They just dropped to the ground, though, instead of flying at him.

Harry thought that was the first thing that had really gone his way since he came here. Well, maybe that and the stairs that had made it so he didn’t have to fall into the Chamber of Secrets.

“Hello?” he called, into the dark tunnel.

Help! Please help!

The word “please” galvanized him. Harry scrambled into the tunnel, brightening his Lumos when he needed to so he wouldn’t keep stumbling along the floor. Then he rounded a corner, and there was the light he had been missing: the light of a great fire, floating above the floor in a ball that was two times bigger than Harry. Harry gaped at it, tilting his head back so he could make out the source. Was it a chandelier? 

But it didn’t seem to have any source. It was just fire, hovering in the air and making the room so warm that Harry already wanted to pull his robes off. But he couldn’t do that until he knew there was nothing dangerous, so he looked cautiously around instead.

A short distance away from him lay what looked like several large stones at first. They were red and grey. Then one of them moved, and the Help! call came from it, and Harry thought he understood.

They were eggs.

Harry stared for a second, then shook his head and crept closer. It seemed that the one who had been calling him for help was a snake.

That was so strange that he didn’t really know what to feel. He stopped in front of the egg and stood staring down at it, even when it rocked and called Help! again.

What kind of snake was it? It would probably be something dangerous if Slytherin had left it down here. Harry took another glance up at the huge fire. Maybe that thing hadn’t been here since Slytherin’s time, but he sort of doubted it.

Now was when he really wished he’d had Hermione come along. She at least would have been able to tell him whether this was in Hogwarts, A History.

And if it isn’t, genius? What would you do then?

The egg rocked yet again. Harry knelt down in front of it and stared at it. This close, he could make out what looked like a shadow curled up inside it, dark against the translucent shell. It looked a lot like the carved snake he had found in the original tunnel that led towards the Chamber, and now he thought he knew why. That had been an illustration of a snake getting ready to hatch, although for some reason whoever made it hadn’t carved the egg.

What kind of snake? Harry would have guessed Ashwinders, but he knew they didn’t live very long, and--well, that was all he knew about them, really. He shifted his weight and did some more staring.

But all along, he knew what he was going to do. It was stupid to come this far and then be too scared to do anything else.

In the end, he reached out and laid his wand against the egg and whispered, “Diffindo.”

The egg shimmered for a second, as though lit from the inside. Then the shell cracked with his Severing Charm, and a whole bunch of stuff came pouring out of it. Harry leaped back, his nose wrinkling. He supposed it was egg yolk, but it was even worse than the slime in the tunnel leading to the Chamber his first year. It got on his boots and on his sleeve, and it was a reddish-yellow sort of like the fire, and it smelled. It smelled like rotten eggs.

That makes sense. But it didn’t make it any less disgusting.

Harry stared at the crack in the egg when he was done, aware that the calls for help in Parseltongue had stopped. There was silence for a long, long second. Harry bit his lip. He hoped he hadn’t cut the side of the snake that was trying to call for help with his Severing Charm.

But then there was movement, and the snake came slithering out of the egg and slowly unfolded itself, with a long, shuddering stretch that reminded Harry of how he himself would wake up after a nap.

Harry stared at its dark green scales and caught a glimpse of its yellow eyes and immediately rolled back, yelping. 

About sixteen things went through his head in one second--that’s a baby basilisk!, I thought you didn’t get basilisk eggs and they just hatched under a toad, why aren’t I dead right now?, what’s it doing down here?, why am I still alive?

The thoughts stormed through his head until the last one became the most important one. Harry stood up and stared at the floor, trying to watch the basilisk out of the corner of his eye.

But something else was happening. Something was sort of popping up at the corner of his mind, rippling along with his thoughts, almost tickling him.

Harry shook his head, and then shook his head again. He had to keep an eye on the basilisk, and he had to get out of there, and he had to figure out what was going on in his head, and he didn’t know how to do all of those at once.

But then the basilisk stirred again, while keeping its head aimed carefully away from him, and Harry heard a delighted voice in his head. 

Mine? Mine!

Harry stared with his mouth open. The basilisk turned its head slowly towards him, thick clear eyelids pressed into place over the eyes. Harry realized that he could still see a dim yellow glow from beneath those eyelids, but not the actual killing stare, and the basilisk could apparently see him, too.

My bond, said the basilisk. It was about five feet long. No, he was five feet long, Harry understood abruptly. There was a slick red line down the center of the basilisk’s head that might have been a crushed plume still held flat by the yolk slime. The basilisk wriggled energetically towards Harry and twined around his legs. Mine! You helped me. So you’re mine.

Harry just stared some more, and then said helplessly, “You just hatched. How can you know anything about that? What’s your name?”

Your name’s Harry! This is mine.

For a second, Harry thought he was once again talking about whatever mysterious thing he had already mentioned, but then images began to pour through his head, and he understood them in the same way that he had understood the basilisk was male. The images featured running four-legged things, and flying things, and scurrying spiders, and running humans, and a basilisk following behind them all as fast as this young one. Dignity was for older snakes. Other snakes, maybe.

Your name is—Run? Harry hazarded slowly. But that didn’t seem right. The basilisk sent another image of himself curling around and flowing back like living water over himself, and Harry caught it better this time.

Your name is Dash?

The basilisk sounded as delighted as before. That is the right human word! I like your name. And your language. I wish I could speak it. But at least you can speak to me aloud, too, in my language. And we can think to each other!

That had to be what the tickle and the voice in Harry’s head was, this thinking to each other. But Harry still shook his head and didn’t understand. I’m not the Heir of Slytherin. How can I command you?

No one commands anybody! Dash sent through the bond like a flick of his tail against Harry’s back. He was twining slowly up Harry’s body now, incredibly heavy, although he kept shifting his coils so that he could balance better and Harry could bear the weight better. Maybe being in Harry’s head let him know how he should do that. You’re my human. I’m your basilisk. We are bonded. That’s how it is.

Harry still didn’t know what was going on, how he had landed here, or how there could be a basilisk egg here—or a row of them—without someone to hatch a chicken egg beneath a toad and bring the basilisk to life. But he did understand one thing.

I am in so much fucking trouble.

Then just bring me to them, and I’ll bite them, Dash offered at once. Then I can eat them. I’m hungry. Where’s breakfast?


Chapter 2: The Basilisk Rises

Chapter Text

“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 3: Confrontation in the Headmaster's Office

Chapter Text

Harry thought he heard Snape close the office door behind him. He didn’t really care, though. His attention was on Dumbledore, and the hard way he looked at Dash, and then the way he looked up at Harry again.

He was calm, and he was grave. Harry had seen him like that before, of course, but he thought this was the most serious Dumbledore had ever been with him. “I suppose you know what you have there, Harry?” he asked gently.

The gentleness made it worse. Harry’s heart was pounding, and he jumped when Dash stuck his tongue out again and glided it slowly over Harry’s earlobe and down the side of his neck. You don’t need to run. I’m here.

Harry steadied himself with thinking about that, and with the hand he put on the back of Dash’s head, and went on. “I know he’s a basilisk, sir. He told me that himself.” Harry touched Dash’s face, and after an irritated snapping of his tongue, Dash let him. “He even covers his eyes so that he can’t kill someone with his eyes. I suggested that. He does it. He’s safe to be around.”

“Safe for you to be around, perhaps,” said Dumbledore, with slow and stern emphasis. “But safe for the other students in the school? Safe for people who walk past him in the street?” He shook his head. “I’m afraid you will have to give him up.”

Harry said nothing, but wrapped himself around Dash in return, grasping Dash’s middle coils with his arms. Dash leaned harder against Harry, and hissed softly. Harry wasn’t sure if he understood every English word that someone else spoke, but he definitely understood the thoughts that were racing through Harry’s head.

If he tries to take you away from me, I’ll bite him. He deserves an agonizing death.

That was another time Harry was desperately glad that there was no chance of someone eavesdropping on what Dash said to him. “I’m not just—I can’t control him because I’m the Heir of Slytherin or anything like that, sir,” he told Dumbledore. “Or because I’m a Parselmouth.” Dumbledore had started to speak, but now he waited and eyed Harry meditatively. “He’s bonded to me.”

“What?” Dumbledore opened one hand as though to cup Dash’s egg in it, but Harry thought that was shock, not important. He was staring at Harry, and glanced back to Snape as though Snape would somehow have the answer.

Harry looked at Snape, but his face was bland and empty. Well, good. Harry had to be the one to tell this part, anyway. “He hatched from an egg in the Chamber of Secrets. I heard his voice calling to me, and he came out of the egg when I slit the side to help him.” He paused, painfully certain that Snape would pounce on him and yell at him for breaking curfew, but nothing happened except silence. So Harry went on. “And then he looked away with his eyes covered, and he started speaking into my head, and he told me what his name was, and he knew mine. And he doesn’t want to go anywhere, sir.”

“Slytherin,” Snape murmured.

Harry wanted to ask him what he meant, but Dumbledore gave Snape a pretty sharp glance, and he shut up. “I’m sorry, Harry, but the matter of safety still remains,” Dumbledore continued, turning back to Harry. “What would happen if your basilisk murdered someone accidentally? You might be very sorry for it afterwards, but it would still have happened.”

Dash seemed to take a moment to translate Harry’s worry from his thoughts this time, but he gave another agitated hiss. Tell him that it won’t happen unless you tell me to. I want to kill small warm things. Humans are no fun unless they hurt you. I’d have to stretch my jaw too wide to swallow them.

“He says that he’ll be careful, sir,” said Harry, and his hand trembled on Dash’s scales. He had been upset and afraid at first when he found out he was bonded with a basilisk, but now all he could think of was the way that Dudley got all the presents when he was a kid and Harry got none. He didn’t want someone to take Dash away, too.

I’ll bite them if they try.

“You cannot keep him,” said Dumbledore. “Perhaps if you were out of school and not going back to live in the Muggle world every summer…but even then it would be dangerous. You will have to be separated.”

“Headmaster?” Snape murmured. “Should you or I take a look and estimate the strength of this bond?”

Take a look? How can they do that? 

I suppose they would look into your mind and see our bond that way. Dash had already calmed down again. He sounded interested instead of angry. And you can stop thinking that I’ll allow them to separate us. I won’t. I know that you’re worried about it, but I just won’t, that’s all. His tail shot out and gave Harry a swift tap on the side of the head opposite from where Dash’s neck was hovering. You need to relax and trust me.

Harry wasn’t much more comfortable with the notion that somebody could read his mind. Especially if Snape and Dumbledore had been doing it all along. He looked nervously back and forth between the two men, and saw Dumbledore raise a hand as though he was going to press something heavy to the desk.

“An opportune suggestion, Severus,” he said, and then turned to Harry. “Will you allow me to see into your mind, Harry, and look at your bond with Dash? It may be weak. In that case, I cannot allow you to keep the basilisk. You could lose control of him and he could go on a rampage at any time.”

I wish people would learn that basilisks have more important things to do than rampage through schools, Dash complained. I can already see that looking after you and punishing all the people who hurt you is going to be a full-time job.

Harry just gulped and blinked. He wasn’t sure what was going on, only that it was bad, and he waited a long time before he realized that Dumbledore was waiting for permission. Well, it was probably going to happen, and better Dumbledore than Snape.

“Yes, sir. You can look.” Some instinct of caution, or maybe Dash’s tail thumping into the side of his head again, made Harry add, “As long as you just look at the bond and nothing else.”

Dumbledore paused in drawing his wand, and gave Harry a look of deep sadness. “Of course, my boy. I would never violate your mental privacy by looking at anything else.”

Harry thought he heard Snape snort at that, but he couldn’t be sure, and he was already nervous enough. He wondered if having his mind read would hurt. It probably wouldn’t, if they’d been doing it all along and he hadn’t noticed it, but then, there were things in his life that caused him unexpected pain all the time.

“What do I have to do?” he asked.

Dumbledore gave him a kinder smile at that, and Harry found himself relaxing. He wanted to trust Dumbledore. He didn’t want to be some paranoid idiot or act like he was doing something Dark and wrong, because he wasn’t. “Just hold still and meet my eyes. I’ll cast the spell aloud, so you can hear it, and you’ll know when it begins. All right?”

Harry nodded, a little more reassured. Dumbledore whispered something that sounded like, “Legilimens,” and Harry felt a strange sensation, as though his mind was a pool of water someone had dived into. Harry wriggled. It felt uncomfortable, but not painful, and that was better than a lot of things.

*

Severus watched with emotions and thoughts kept strictly to himself as Dumbledore ransacked Potter’s mind. Or trod through it gently and looked around in hopes that the obvious truth wasn’t the truth, whatever interpretation one preferred.

He knew the Headmaster, better perhaps when he acted in extreme circumstances than at other times. And he knew what Albus’s keen glances and little sighs and the way he gripped his wand meant. He was hoping desperately that something was not true that he knew was perfectly true. 

In this case, the boy’s bond to his serpent.

Severus contained his derisive smile without effort. He had smiled more often like that inwardly than outwardly.

No, this was a bond that had nothing to do with Parseltongue—and Albus had once hinted to Severus that he knew the boy’s Parseltongue came from the Dark Lord and not from some throwback to a Potter who could speak it—or with the snake having possessed Potter. This was a true bond, and while not all the stories of Slytherin spoke of it in those terms, Severus had heard the ones that did. Slytherin had been bonded to snakes, not merely commanded them.

There were no tales that spoke of his being bonded to a basilisk, true, although Severus was starting to wonder if he should ask some of the chatty portraits about the possible truths there. But that could be attributed to no one having known that Slytherin’s monster was a basilisk. If more information had survived, this might not have come as such a surprise.

Such a nasty surprise, Severus was certain, based on the Headmaster’s reaction. And it was one that could not be turned aside, not if it was a true bond. The serpent would not leave Potter, and from the way Potter was holding the basilisk protectively close to him, he would also go to war to protect it. 

Severus owed Albus a good deal. He was the one who had extended his protection over Severus after the war and spared him Azkaban. He was the one who had given Severus a chance to redeem himself. He was the one who had listened and believed when Severus told him that he wanted to repudiate his Death Eater past, and not questioned his motives too deeply.

On the other hand, Severus had not forgotten Albus’s favoritism of the Marauders when he was a student. He had not forgiven Albus for hiring Remus Lupin, of all werewolves, for the position that should have been Severus’s. And there were other suspicions, not certainties, buried deep, that Severus did not allow himself to think of on a day-to-day basis, but which were there all the same.

Those things together made it a positive pleasure, on several levels, for Severus to see Albus’s world shaken in a way that had nothing to do with Severus’s own actions.

And if he could take some small, unnoticed action that would further those ripples, those tremors, he would take it without hesitation.

*

The Headmaster pulled back at last, with a shake of his head. Harry leaned his head against Dash’s, and sighed. It felt nice to be alone in his mind again.

You aren’t alone in your mind. I’m here.

I know, but you’re different, Harry thought to him, and he thought Dash was delighted at that, in the few seconds he had to think about it before Dumbledore softly cleared his throat.

“You have a true bond to your snake, Harry.” Dumbledore shook his head again, and stepped back behind his desk. He had a small silver, spinning instrument on it which he started to make spin faster with a tap of his finger. Harry watched it cautiously, but since it didn’t appear to be affecting Dash, he looked back at Dumbledore’s face. “It will be very hard to get rid of him or separate you.”

“That’s what I was saying, sir,” said Harry. Snape was probably rolling his eyes right now at Harry’s disrespect for the Headmaster. Well, all the more reason not to look at Snape. “That I don’t want to separate from him.”

“You understand my concerns, Harry?” Dumbledore asked it like it was the most important question he’d ever asked.

Harry looked at him slowly. “I do, sir,” he said. “But I don’t know if you understand that I can ask Dash not to bite people or kill him, and he won’t. That’s a choice, sir,” he added, because he knew that Dumbledore believed that. “And it’s our choices that makes us who we really are. Right?”

Dumbledore leaned slowly back in his chair. “But I wondered if you were recalling another choice and making it anew, differently this time,” he said.

Harry didn’t understand what he meant until Dumbledore caught his eye and led his gaze to the Sorting Hat, high on its shelf. Harry immediately shook his head. “No, sir. Just because I have a basilisk doesn’t mean I want to be in Slytherin.”

There was a little hiss, like a kettle. Harry was about to tell Dash off for scaring Dumbledore with his hissing, but a second later he realized it wasn’t Dash. It was Snape making that noise behind him. Harry turned around and stared.

“What do you mean by that?” Snape’s eyes were bulging a little, and he looked pale and sick to his stomach. Harry was kind of sorry that he didn’t even know what he had done to make him look that way. At least if he was going to upset Snape, it should be on purpose.

“The Hat first considered Harry for your House, Severus,” said Dumbledore, and he sounded more cheerful. Harry silently wondered if Dumbledore liked to upset Snape, too.

I like upsetting everyone, Dash contributed, not that helpfully. Harry rubbed his head to keep him quiet, and looked back and forth again between Snape and Dumbledore, entertained in spite of himself. 

“But Harry chose Gryffindor, and you’re right, Harry, it is our choices…” said Dumbledore, letting the sentence trail off as he looked at the way Harry was petting Dash. He sighed, and he sounded sad and old to Harry. “Perhaps if you spend some time with your snake, you will realize that you need to reconsider? At least before you go back to stay with your relatives again?”

Harry was extra sure that he would never consider facing the Dursleys without Dash when he could have his protection, but he knew that sometimes you had to lie to adults for their own good. “I’ll consider it, sir.”

“Excellent!” said Dumbledore, and rubbed his hands together. “Then the only thing that remains is for us to enact a few rudimentary protections for the safety of your fellow schoolmates.” He waved his wand and said something quiet, and a few of the silver instruments flew up from the shelves and orbited Harry’s head.

I don’t like them, said Dash, turning his head back and forth, and giving Harry a subdued glimpse of the yellow light of his eyes under his eyelids again. Make them go away.

Harry had his wand in his hand, ready to do that if he had to, but he did ask, “Sir? What are they supposed to do?”

“I’m glad you asked that, my boy,” Dumbledore said, and beamed as if he really was. “They’ll act as mirrors if your Dash opens his eyes, and allow his gaze to bounce back harmlessly. They’re gifted with enough intelligence to know when they’re needed, and they’ll dart in between your friend and the other students.” He reached into his drawer and drew out a big red vial Harry had never seen before. “And this will dilute his poison enough that it should be painful but harmless to anyone he bites. It wouldn’t work with a bigger basilisk, but fortunately, this is one of the uses of dragon’s blood.”

Harry looked at Dash, who coiled closer to him and whined, I’m not taking that. What happens if it dilutes my poison forever? What if I can’t kill the rabbits I need to eat? He touched his tongue to Harry’s neck again. What if I can’t bite someone to defend you?

“He’s worried about not being able to defend me if he takes that, sir,” said Harry, facing Dumbledore again and feeling a brief moment of incredulity that he was translating a basilisk’s words for the Headmaster.

This is the way life is, said Dash, and his tail moved slowly around Harry’s waist, shifting as if he wanted to learn its shape. Surprises, and food.

“I am afraid I must insist,” said Dumbledore.

Harry considered him one more time, and then reached out and took the vial. He held it up to Dash’s mouth. “Can you take this for me?” he asked aloud in Parseltongue, and he thought Snape probably jumped, although Dumbledore just continued to watch him calmly. “Please?”

Dash finally opened his jaws, ungraciously, and hissed at Dumbledore. Harry carefully poured the potion down his throat. Dash worked his jaw back and forth for a moment, making his fangs flash, and then said, It doesn’t taste too bad. More like blood than I expected.

Harry faced Dumbledore. “Can I go now, sir?” He wanted to get some sleep, and preferably before everyone else woke up and he would have to explain Dash to them.

“Just a moment, Harry.” Dumbledore leaned forwards with his hands on the desk and surveyed him gravely once more. “Do you think this is likely to happen again?”

“Bonding with a basilisk, sir?” Harry shook his head vigorously. “I really hope not.” 

It won’t, said Dash firmly into his head. You’re mine, and I refuse to let another basilisk anywhere near you. 

Harry smiled and reached up to touch the back of Dash’s neck. He noticed Dumbledore observing him gravely, and bristled a little. “You’ve made all the preparations you need to to keep other people safe, sir. Are you going to trust me or not?”

“That’s not what I meant, Harry,” said Dumbledore, and then said, “I meant, do you think that you’ll make another decision that’s as reckless as this, and disregards other people’s safety to such a persistent extent?”

Harry paused. He was waiting for something, he thought, but he wasn’t sure what.

Then, when he thought about it, he knew. He was waiting for his stomach to drop with guilt and the horrible feeling of disappointing Dumbledore to creep over him. Dumbledore was the first adult he’d ever really wanted to impress. It was horrible to think he was doing something that upset him.

But he didn’t have that feeling. He eyed Dash suspiciously, sideways, and Dash promptly curled his tail up and tapped him in the side of the neck. I can tell you things and pick up on your thoughts. I can’t suppress your emotions.

“I don’t know, sir,” Harry said, and turned back to Dumbledore. “I don’t want to put people in danger, but I couldn’t leave someone who was calling me for help alone. Don’t you see that?” he added, because he thought if anyone knew why he would have to get out of bed in the middle of the night to save someone, it would be Dumbledore. “If I can do something to save them, then I have to.”

Dumbledore nodded, and the twinkle was back in his eyes. “I do understand, m’boy. Good night to you.”

Harry glanced instinctively at Snape, but he was staring at Dumbledore and didn’t seem inclined to escort Harry back to Gryffindor “to make sure he went to bed,” the way Harry had been certain he would do. He shrugged, said, “Good night, sir,” and walked out, adjusting Dash around his waist.

I’m starting to get sleepy from all the food I ate, said Dash, and his neck writhed around Harry’s and then he rested his chin on Harry’s nape, his heavy satisfaction leaning against Harry’s mind like a purring cat. Can we wait until tomorrow to meet your roommates? 

I think we have to, said Harry, and stroked his scales and the little plume that stood up on the top of his head, and made his way to Gryffindor Tower.

Each step was heavier than it had ever been, since before he hadn’t been carrying a giant snake. But each step was also more joyful. He knew there would be trouble, and the mirrors orbiting him made that plain, but there was another thing he knew.

He wasn’t going to be alone, ever again.

*

“I know what you’re going to say, Severus, and you can save your breath. I knew all about where the Sorting Hat wanted to place Harry, and he and I have already discussed it.”

Severus shook his head. There was a mixture of thoughts and emotions in his brain and chest that was making it very difficult for him to choose what to say. But at least the one Albus voiced hadn’t been in his top five.

“That is not the issue,” he finally chose. “I wish to know why you were so intent on depriving the boy of his snake, and then you relented and let him keep it.”

Depriving him?” Albus chuckled. “You may become a fan of Harry Potter yet, Severus, if you keep speaking like that.”

Severus forced himself to ignore the words that made him want to snap. He had more control of himself than that, and this was important. “What made you change your mind?”

“Because I looked and saw the true bond, as you rightly assumed that I would.” Albus still looked too amused. “And because I saw that Harry did want to protect Dash and himself, and that…certain things are not as I had thought.” Albus’s smile vanished this time. “Harry stands at a crossroads, and he could lose himself, Severus. I must admit that I am concerned about him.”

Severus nodded and said a few empty platitudes, mixed in with the sneers that Albus would expect. At the very least, when Albus waved farewell to him for the night, Severus thought he suspected nothing.

But Severus’s mind was racing, and he had come up with a few truths that he thought Albus would find unpalatable, at the very least. Or perhaps he would find it unpalatable that Severus was contemplating them.

Slytherin in fact had been a Parselmouth. Slytherin, at least in legend, had been bonded to several snakes. And while Severus would never be so rash as to believe in the reincarnation of his House’s founder in the form of a rather foolish Gryffindor, he did have to wonder about Albus’s contention that Potter had Parseltongue only from the Dark Lord.

Did he have his Slytherin nature and bond to a basilisk from the Dark Lord, too? Or was it more likely, as Severus was coming to believe, that the Dark Lord had nothing to do with it?

Because if so, that pointed to his misinterpretation of a few things Potter had done, and a dimension that he had been ignorant of to others.

He did want to think about this, but he intended to betray neither his curiosity nor his conclusions to Albus any time soon.

Based on Albus’s reaction to the mere thought of Harry Potter acting Slytherin, he imagined it as the worst fate that could befall the boy. And Severus did not think so.

Chapter 4: At the Turn of the Tide

Chapter Text

“Mate, don’t move.”

Ron’s voice was soft and hoarse. Harry blinked his eyes open, and blinked again when he saw Ron’s wand pointed straight at him. It took him a long, long second to realize why it was probably happening.

Then he rolled his eyes and deliberately moved an arm so he was stroking his hand along Dash’s shimmering scales. “Ron, it’s okay.”

Ron twitched, and said in a voice so quiet that Harry was surprised his stroking Dash didn’t cover it up, “Mate, you’ve got a bloody great snake on you. It’s going to kill you and eat you, I think. Unless I can curse it first.” He licked his lips. “I’ve never tried the Blasting Curse before, but I will, okay? Just hold still.”

“You are not using the Blasting Curse on me,” Harry said, and grabbed Dash’s head just in time as he started to whip towards Ron with his mouth open. “And you’re not cursing Dash. He’s my friend.”

Ron stared at him. “Are you mental?”

Perhaps you are, for having such friends. Dash moved so that more of his body emerged from under the covers, making Ron gasp. Harry doubted that Ron had realized how big Dash was until then. Let me bite him.

You know that that potion Dumbledore gave you will just dilute the venom, anyway, Harry pointed out, and tugged a little at the plume on top of Dash’s head.

From Dash’s agitated hiss, he really didn’t like that. Before Harry had a chance to stop him, he said, That is why I should bite him, and lashed towards Ron across the bed like an unfolding ball of string.

Harry snatched his tail just in time to hold him back. Ron had leaped back, too, and was yelling so loudly that Harry heard the others stirring and muttering and waking up.

Just the way I wanted them to meet Dash, Harry thought in disgust, and glared at Ron, shaking his head. “He’s the basilisk I’m bonded to,” he said. “I know that you think it’s a good idea to curse him, but it’s really, really not.”

By now, the others were up, and they focused on one word each.

Basilisk,” said Neville, and dived back into his bed, tugging the curtains shut behind him. Harry thought he heard the whisper of a terrified spell that was probably meant to continue holding them shut, too.

“Bonded?” Dean was staring around as if this was one of those strange wizarding world things and he wanted to know where Hermione was when he needed her.

“No, it’s a really good idea,” said Seamus, and started to lift his wand so that it was level with Ron’s—or level with where Ron’s would have been, Harry thought, if he could have got his hand to stop shaking.

“Stop it!” said Harry. He put a lot of force into the word, but didn’t yell. He thought he would get their attention better if he didn’t yell. And it made Dash turn around and consider him, too, then ripple back across the bed and wrap around his waist, levering most of his weight onto Harry’s shoulder. 

That is the way, he said, and rested his chin on top of Harry’s head. I knew you had it in you to do things like that.

Harry didn’t have the chance to ask what he meant, because Ron was demanding, “Where the hell did you get that thing, mate?”

I am not a thing, said Dash haughtily. That stick of wood in his hand is a thing. How would he like it if I broke that stick of wood? 

Harry had the feeling that he was going to be thanking his lucky stars a lot that no one else could overhear what Dash said to him down the privacy of the bond. “I heard him calling me in the night,” he said, and shifted Dash so that he was more comfortably settled around Harry. “He was in the Chamber of Secrets.”

Dean shook his head with a tragic expression on his face. “I can’t believe you went down there, Harry. It’s no place for a Gryffindor.”

“Why was he there?” Seamus was holding his fire for now, but he kept looking back and forth nervously between Dash and Harry. At least he seemed to have realized that Dash was doing something to dim his gaze, because he wasn’t yelling about falling over dead. “I thought you killed the basilisk in the Chamber!”

“These were eggs.” Harry said that bit reluctantly, because he thought he could predict what they would say next.

Sure enough. 

“Let’s smash them!” said Seamus. “And maybe we can put him back in the egg and smash him too, or something. Does Hagrid have new roosters? We can bring one in here and have it crow, and bang, there’s one dead basilisk and one free Harry!”

Harry felt the way he had that time Dudley had caught him at school and told Piers to hold a match to his feet. He shot out of the bed so fast it was like he had wings, and rushed at Seamus. Seamus barely had time for a startled yelp before he was staggering backwards, one hand on his cheek, staring at Harry like he was a stranger.

Harry didn’t even know why he had used his hands instead of his wand. He should have. He was that angry.

You’re so angry that you couldn’t think of a spell that would hurt him enough, said Dash. He sounded calm, even though he’d been left sprawled across Harry’s bed by the force of Harry’s leap. He crawled towards him now and entwined himself around Harry’s legs, lifting his head so that it was nudging at Harry’s dangling hand. You don’t know enough spells yet. We’ll fix that soon.

Harry shut his eyes and turned away, but he spoke in a low, vicious voice that he hoped they could all understand. Maybe he’d made a mistake by not yelling earlier after all. “I never want to hear you say that again. Dash is mine.”

And I’m yours, said Dash. Just in case anyone gets it into their head that they can have you.

Harry was glad that he didn’t have to translate that. It would come out the wrong way in English, the way it wouldn’t in mental-speak or even Parseltongue. Now that he thought about it, with Dash’s perspective pulsing in the back of his head, he knew that Parseltongue possessiveness could be about a nest and include a lot of defensiveness.

“Harry,” said Seamus. “You know what those things can do. You fought one last year.”

“That one belonged to Slytherin,” said Harry, his head still turned away. He’d torn himself away from Dudley and Piers when they’d tried to use the match. He’d run and run and run, and felt as if he had the strength and energy to run to the end of the world to get away from them. He could have spent a lot more time punching Seamus and hurting him, too. He was only glad that he hadn’t needed to. “It was going around petrifying people. There’s no way I could have talked to it and made it stop hurting people, because it belonged to Slytherin. But Dash is mine. He won’t hurt anyone.”

You have to start adding “and I’m his” to the end of your statements, said Dash resentfully. And remember that I’m not hurting people right now. It’s different when you tell me to.

Harry hunched his shoulders a little. He knew what Dash was suggesting, but he didn’t want Dash to bite Seamus. He didn’t want Seamus to hurt Dash, either. He was just—he just wanted to have the world be like it was before, but better, because Dash was with him.

Of course it will be. I make everything better.

“What are those, Harry?”

Neville was peering out of his curtains again, maybe because he knew now that no one was falling dead from Dash’s gaze or poison. Harry dully followed Neville’s pointing finger, and blinked. The silver objects that Dumbledore had enchanted were whizzing around his bed, dancing around each other as they circled towards Dash. Dash watched them tolerantly.

“Dumbledore put them there as mirrors in case Dash tried to look at someone,” Harry mumbled. “He gave him a potion that diluted his venom, too.”

Neville took a breath so deep that his face puffed up with the effort. “Then—does that mean that he can’t hurt people?”

Harry shrugged. “It would still hurt if he bit you.” He reached down and picked up Dash, settling him around his shoulders and waist, ignoring how heavy Dash was. “But it wouldn’t kill you.”

“Th-then I think we ought to accept Dash,” said Neville, and he glanced around as though he wanted to look the others in the eye, although he looked away again when Dean and Ron stared at him. “We know Harry isn’t evil. He just has a b-basilisk.”

“But people are going to say that you’re the Heir of Slytherin again, mate,” Ron tried, with the sound of desperation in his voice.

“I don’t care,” Harry said stubbornly. “Dash matters more.”

You matter more. That’s also something you should start thinking.

Harry rolled his eyes a little and would have retorted, but Ron said, “What if other people try to hurt him?”

“Then he can defend himself,” Harry said, and looked Ron dead in the eye. “Unless you don’t think he can because Dumbledore tried to restrain him a little.”

“No,” said Ron, and gave Dash another sidelong look. “But you have to admit this is pretty bloody strange, mate. I don’t know what Hermione’s going to say when she finds out.”

Dean and Seamus were going into the bathroom, giving Harry and Dash dark looks all the while. Neville scuttled around Harry with a handful of towels and a timid smile, but stopped when Harry smiled at him and said, “Thanks. I think I owe you one.”

“I know that y-you aren’t evil,” said Neville, and nodded at him. “And you wouldn’t let him bite me.”

Harry had to admit that was true. Even if Dash needed to defend himself, it wouldn’t be from Neville. “Thanks anyway,” he said. He thought that Neville’s acceptance was one reason Seamus and Dean had left instead of trying to press the issue.

Neville nodded again and ran off. Ron shook his head, long and slow. “You should go ahead and get ready for breakfast, mate. It’s probably going to take forever to get out of the common room once Hermione sees that.”

“Can you please stop talking about him like he’s a thing?” Harry snapped, and put a hand on the back of Dash’s neck when he tried to raise his head. “He doesn’t like it, and neither do I, and it’s hard listening to all the comments he can make to me every time you do it.”

Ron gaped at him for a second. “I didn’t hear him hissing. How is he talking to you?”

“In my mind,” Harry said. “I told you we were bonded. This is what it means. He can talk to me, and no one else can hear, but he understands what I hear, too. So he knows when someone is saying something uncomplimentary things about him in English.”

He expected Ron to either question his sanity or break and run, but instead, Ron’s face lit up like sunrise. “Brilliant. Do you think he could tell you all the answers during a Potions exam? And could you get me into the bond so I could hear?”

I will wither away of boredom if I have to listen to his thoughts, Dash announced, curling himself on Harry’s shoulder with solemn dignity, and flowing around his neck.

It’s impossible anyway, Harry reassured him. At least, he didn’t know any way to let Ron into the bond, and he didn’t think he would have wanted to even if he did know, whether Ron was his best friend or not. Dash was just his. He didn’t want someone to come in and share.

You have someone who can share everything, now, said Dash. And Harry hugged the warmth that produced to himself while he smiled and told Ron that Dash didn’t care about Potions exams and would probably spend all the time considering the Potions ingredients for things he could eat anyway.

*

“Harry!”

Hermione had come bounding across the room to hug him and had been saying something about Lupin, but she stopped in her tracks when she saw Dash. Harry petted Dash’s smooth scales on the back of his head and gave Hermione a sheepish smile.

“Where did you get a basilisk?” asked Hermione, and then began to shake a little. Harry remembered abruptly that she was one of the people who had been petrified and put in the hospital wing. “That’s a basilisk. Where did you get it? What happened?”

One of your friends cares about exams, and one is repetitive, said Dash. I knew that. But they seem to have mixed themselves up with each other.

Harry turned a snort into a cough, and gave Hermione a quick outline of the story, the cry for help he’d heard, and the Chamber of Secrets. By the time he did, Hermione had recovered some of her calm and asked something no one else had been brave enough to do. “Can I pet him?”

Why not? Dash turned his head slowly back and forth. I suppose I should learn all about this world that I’m living in, and your hands and clothes and bedsheets and the animals I eat are not enough textures. 

Harry rolled his eyes a little, and nodded. Hermione came up close to him, ignoring the way that Ron muttered and held back, and stroked the warm scales on Dash’s body where it wound around Harry’s waist. “He’s so soft,” she whispered.

Tell her to pet me when I am full of the bodies of animals, said Dash, and then flicked his tongue out and towards the staircases that led up to the girls’ rooms. What is up there? It smells good.

You are not eating Hermione’s Kneazle, Harry told him sternly, and smiled again at Hermione. “He is, kind of. And he says that you’re nice.”

I do not. 

Well, what are you going to do? Stare at me?

Harry thought Dash would have responded to that, but he always wanted Harry’s full attention when he did, and Hermione was talking and distracting Harry. “You know that everyone is going to stare at you and make fun of you, Harry?” she asked gravely, as if it was a fate worse than death.

Harry held himself back from snapping. He hadn’t ever told his friends many details about Dudley and other people bullying him in primary school, and he knew that Hermione had been outcast and bullied herself. So she probably couldn’t think of many worse fates that didn’t involve death. “I know. But I have Dash now. I can ignore them.”

And I can tell you many nasty things about them. Even if you are going to lie and say that I’m complimenting them.

Harry smiled. That was another side-effect to the bond that he didn’t mind.

“He’s bonded? He talks to you in your head? Does it feel like someone talking to you through a television, or can you feel it right in your head? Do you think that I could bond with a basilisk and do that?’

Yes, same old Hermione, Harry thought with a shake of his head, but it was a fond shake, and he did his best to answer Hermione’s questions as they walked down to breakfast.

*

Draco looked up only when people began shrieking. He was trying not to pay Potter too much attention until he came up with some new taunts about Sirius Black. Besides, his arm was aching again where that awful beast had mauled him, and he was trying to convince Blaise, who didn’t believe him, to pass the marmalade to Vince, who was sitting between Draco and Blaise and would put the marmalade on Draco’s toast if Blaise would only pass it.

But shrieks were something new.

And so was the enormous bloody snake around Potter’s waist. And the shiny silver objects that circled around him.

Barely breathing, Draco watched as even some of the Slytherins leaped to their feet and shouted, and the Professors frowned from the High Table. They didn’t look so surprised, Draco thought. Someone must already have told them.

A thought of complaining to his father if he knew about it and hadn’t told Draco flowed through his head, but then it flowed away again as he concentrated on Potter and trying to identify what kind of snake he had. Draco knew that most snakes didn’t grow that big, which limited the number of candidates. It also meant Potter had probably raised it for a while in secret before bringing it into the school, and Draco wondered, mildly impressed, where he had got the time and effort to do it.

And why couldn’t he have a snake, if Potter had one?

Then Potter touched the snake’s head and leaned down as if as he was speaking to it, and the snake reared up. Draco leaned along the side. He would see the hood flaring now, if it was a cobra and had a hood.

But it didn’t.

It had a plume, instead, and something like dread and wonder mingled slammed into Draco’s heart and made him feel the way he did when he was in the middle of a Quidditch game, when Potter hadn’t spotted the Snitch yet and Draco thought he still had a chance.

He has a basilisk. 

The words didn’t even leave room for any other thoughts to come after them, for a long moment. Draco just sat there and felt and felt, and Potter moved over and sat down in the middle of the Gryffindor table as though everything was normal, as though he carried in a basilisk on his arm—and around his neck—and around his waist—to breakfast every day.

The seats near him emptied fast, except for the inevitable Granger and Weasley and, to Draco’s surprise, Longbottom. Well, Longbottom was probably too dim to realize what the thing was, and Weasley too invested in the fame and fortune he hoped to pick up from associating with Potter, and Granger too interested in studying the basilisk. She was asking Potter incessant questions even as he sat, Draco saw.

“Headmaster!”

It was Zacharias Smith, someone Draco had never liked. His family drifted back and forth between being blood traitors and being nice and respectable, and Draco thought it was wherever the political winds took them at the moment. His father said they had no conviction.

“Why is a student allowed to bring a dangerous beast into this school?” Smith stood and pointed a finger at Potter as if he imagined that he was an avenging Fury or something. “We know that he is a Parselmouth, but we did not think he was evil!

“Really?” That was Potter’s voice, and Draco had never heard him sound so flat and unimpressed. Well, Smith just doesn’t have my talent for riling him up, Draco congratulated himself. “You thought I was evil last year.”

Smith stared at him for a second, and then swiveled back to Dumbledore. “Well, Headmaster?”

There was a loud muttering of agreement, and some more shouting. Dumbledore rose to his feet and studied them all with that mild stare until they fell silent again. Draco nodded a little. His father had been right. Dumbledore had some tricks that were worth copying, even though he was stupid and the worst of blood traitors.

“I have examined the bond that Mr. Potter has with his snake,” Dumbledore began. “I have looked into his mind myself, using Legilimency, with Mr. Potter’s permission.’

Draco stared. He was trying to understand what was most remarkable about Dumbledore’s statement: the admission he was a Legilimens, which was something his father suspected but Dumbledore would never confirm in public, or the idea that Potter was bonded with the basilisk.

Of course Parselmouths could command snakes. That was in all the lore Draco had ever heard about them, and he accepted it without thought. It was one reason he had always envied them and hissed at everything snake-shaped in the Manor for six months before he had to accept that he wasn’t one.

But a bond? Draco was only aware of bonds from fairy stories, from stories of people riding on dragons they’d impossibly tamed and sea serpents they’d raised from the egg. Bonded animals could speak to people in their minds and were always loyal to them.

For a second, Draco had to close his eyes. Not only was Potter a Parselmouth, with the gift that Draco would have given anything to possess, but he also had a powerful and dangerous creature who would follow him around and attack anyone he commanded it to.

It wasn’t fair.

Lost in glaring at Potter, Draco barely listened to the statements that Dumbledore made, about the mirrors that orbited Potter being able to turn the snake’s gaze back on itself and the potion that he’d fed the snake to dilute its venom. And he only snorted with amused contempt when Dumbledore also announced about the snake’s name being Dash. Of course Potter would name the most dangerous snake in the world something so common.

Potter seemed to be ignoring Dumbledore, too, and certainly ignoring Draco, and the way that the other Houses stared at him, and even the reassurance that slowly spread across the room in the wake of Dumbledore’s statements. He petted his snake on the head, and listened to it with his head cocked, and a few times hissed aloud and offered it bacon. It refused everything he tried to give it. 

Basilisks prefer live prey, Draco thought. He could have told Potter that.

Potter finally looked up and caught Draco’s eye. He gave him, not the glare that Draco thought he would receive, but a nasty grin.

For a moment, Draco thought that Potter had somehow decided that Draco would like a basilisk, too, and was taunting him. But then Draco remembered. He’d never told anyone about wanting a basilisk. He was afraid it would seem too childish.

Why is he grinning like that? 

The answer was obvious as soon as Draco thought about it, especially when he saw Potter glance at his bandaged arm.

He knows he could have the basilisk attack me if I really tried to hurt him.

And that intrigued Draco. Not enough to make him forget his resentment and jealousy, but, well, he’d had to ignore other emotions down the years. Swallow his boredom and make nice with Pansy, for example, during the brief time when the Parkinsons had been politically influential. Since he’d been getting older, his father had been explaining why he asked Draco to do things like that more and more.

He knew what his father would say now.

Get close to Potter. You have to. He’s going to be powerful. He already is, if he can force Dumbledore to make compromises like this.

Because Draco had noticed something else: Dumbledore really only seemed to smile for the other students’ benefit. When he sat down in his place and studied Potter, his eyes were as hard as rubies.

So. He had a task, an important one. One that he could write to his father and report he’d thought of himself, and already had well in hand.

And maybe, just maybe…

Maybe Potter can get me a basilisk too.

Chapter 5: First Potions Class

Chapter Text

“You realize that everyone is staring at you?”

Harry shrugged and settled into his seat in Potions, then sat up and readjusted again. Dash was complaining that Harry had sat on his tail.

Well, don’t put your tail on my arse, and it’ll be even, Harry told him, which made Dash hiss and tuck his head under Harry’s robe collar. Harry had already noticed that he did that when he was sulky.

I am not sulky. Not ever sulky.

Only someone sulky talks like that, Harry retorted, and Dash clamped his jaws shut and laid his head along the back of Harry’s neck. Harry sighed and stroked Dash’s throat. He was still getting used to having a snake, and someone who could talk back to him and seemed to want to protect him at that.

Do you have such a lack of people who want to protect you? Dash let his head dangle down the opposite side of Harry’s neck while Harry got his cauldron and books out. Harry paused to move him a little yet again. The scrape of scales against his earlobe was a tickling distraction.

I don’t think that’s it, said Harry. He could think of Dumbledore and the Weasleys and Hermione and McGonagall off the top of his head.

But you don’t think about your Muggles when you do that. Dash flexed a little, eagerly, around Harry’s ears and the crown of his head. I shall have to think about this some more and see what I can do.

Any dread that Harry had about Dash’s suggestion vanished when Snape swept into the room and up to the front. Then Harry had to worry about the dread he always had when Snape was around. Granted, Snape had been decent about Dash last night, but Harry thought that was because it was a snake and he was surprised. He was upset again about fifteen minutes later, after all.

“One would think that no one had ever seen a snake before.” Snape made the remark to the air above his students’ heads.

Immediately, some people snapped around so that they were facing forwards. Harry bit his lip desperately, and managed to hold onto his laughter. Laughing would get him in detention. Only Malfoy could get away with that in Potions, and according to Snape, that was because Malfoy was a Potions genius.


But he was secretly a little grateful that Snape was helping him, or at least making people stop staring at him. Dash was worth any amount of stares, but Harry thought it would get to him in a while, the way it had last year.

They seem to distrust snakes and Parseltongue and all sorts of things that are reptilian. Why is that?

Harry sent back a strong image of Voldemort as he had seen him on the back of Quirrell’s head, but he didn’t dare have a silent conversation with Dash, because Snape was glaring straight at him. “And you, Mr. Potter, should not allow the snake to distract you from your brewing, or cause any mishaps with ingredients.”

It was a mild reprimand, at least when compared to some of the ones Snape tended to give him. Harry just nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

Snape raised his eyebrows and turned, waving his wand so fast that the words seemed to spring out of it and cover the board. Harry used his left hand to brush Dash’s tail out of the way and began to write them down.

“The instructions will vanish in ten minutes,” Snape said smoothly, and Harry thought he saw a smile on his face as the banging of cauldrons turned into the frantic scribbling of quotes.

Harry began to write faster, and ignored the way that he could feel Ron shaking with suppressed indignation next to him. They could work together, the way they usually did, and as long as one of them had a good copy of the notes, then they could brew the potion.

Or you could ask me, Dash offered. I could remember the notes, and then you could reach out and touch my memories the way I’m touching yours, and you would see the notes right in front of your eyes.

Harry had been about to ask how Dash could read any English writing—he’d thought Dash could only understand English because Harry did, and that meant he wouldn’t be able to read something Harry wasn’t reading with him—but now he paused. That was actually a good idea.

But Snape’s eyes were on him, and Harry went back to writing, telling Dash, I’ll still need to write it down or else he’ll think you’re distracting me. But I’ll let you know if I can’t read something I’m writing and you can show me the notes.

Dash gave a soft, pleased hiss, and several of the Gryffindor girls who weren’t Hermione flinched. Hermione’s shoulders tightened. Harry could almost hear her saying, “Honestly,” but of course she wasn’t about to speak up in the middle of Potions class.

But there was silence only until the mad scribbling of notes had finished—Harry thought Snape looked mildly disappointed that most of his students finished writing the whole recipe down—and then people started to get up and fetch the ingredients. Harry stood up, and Lavender Brown moved so she was blocking his way out of the aisle. Harry folded his arms and made sure his look was unimpressed.

“Harry, you have to think about this,” Lavender whispered, and it sounded as if she were pleading. “You haven’t thought about it, or you never would have brought a snake to class. Snakes are dangerous. And they’re the symbol of Slytherin, and that means a Gryffindor shouldn’t have one—”

“Miss Brown. I expected to see that you had begun the potion already. You’ve wasted five minutes wringing your wrist instead of writing it down already.”

Harry didn’t think his mouth fell open when Snape loomed behind Lavender and told her that, but only because Dash’s head was tucked nicely beneath his jaw and it couldn’t move. What the hell was going on? Was Snape defending him?

You seem horrified that he would, said Dash in the back of his head, darting out his tongue so that it scraped Harry’s neck this time. Harry didn’t jump, but only because Snape was there, and Snape had already told him off for letting Dash distract him. You could use more people to help and defend you. 

Yeah, but only if they actually mean it, not if they’re just doing it to beat up on someone else and then turn around and hurt me again later, Harry thought bitterly, remembering some of his primary school teachers. They had defended him against Dudley, but that was only because they didn’t like Dudley. A few days later they’d forgotten all about him.

I must find out where your Muggles live.

Lavender had scurried away by now, and Snape turned sharp eyes on Harry and shook his head. “You are to go to the storage cupboard, Mr. Potter, not stand here acting as though you have never seen a cauldron before,” he said, and Harry bowed his head and scurried away, wringing his own wrist as if it hurt, too. It was better than doing something that would give away what he was really considering.

Which was that Snape wasn’t all that bad, sometimes, but Harry still couldn’t afford to trust him because it was “sometimes.”

*

Draco sighed and shook his head, stepping back from his table as Vince came up with the wrong ingredients. “We aren’t using Amanita mushroom caps today,” he explained, as kindly as he could. “Didn’t you see where it said that in the instructions?”

Vince shook his head and put the handful of ingredients down on the table, pushing on them with his palm so that most of them turned into green mush. Draco knew that Professor Snape wouldn’t say anything, because Vince was a Slytherin and Professor Snape stuck by his Slytherins, but he grimaced a little himself at seeing the waste of valuable plants.

“Then I’ll go get it myself,” said Draco, and was proud of his wisdom. Potter hadn’t come back with his own armful of necessary ingredients yet. This was the perfect chance to slip up on him and observe him with the basilisk, and maybe talk a little to Potter in a way that would get him his own basilisk eventually.

Vince nodded, but said nothing. Draco sighed. Sometimes he did envy people in other Houses who could have conversations with the people closest to them. But Vince and Greg had other virtues that made up for the lack of talking.

He stepped into the supply cupboard and saw Potter just plucking the last jar of diamond dust from the shelf. He immediately stared at Draco, rolled his eyes, and then started to walk around him towards the door.

“Potter, wait,” said Draco. He tried to keep his voice calm and smooth, the voice his father used when he was going to tell Draco that he couldn’t have something special he wanted. He thought he did a good job, but Potter still glanced back at him over his shoulder with an expression of disbelief.

“For what?” Potter asked. “You’re going to insult me over something, and I don’t see why I should stick around for that.”

The basilisk hissed. Draco hoped he didn’t look too envious. The basilisk was mostly draped over Potter’s shoulders, but there was a ripple under Potter’s robes that showed he ran further down, too. And Potter just stood there wearing him so casually, and comfortably, like he really didn’t have anything to worry about.

Draco wanted that ease. He wanted a basilisk. He wanted to be a Parselmouth, to prove that he was the best Slytherin, and those older students could stop giving him those condescending looks, and others could stop muttering about how Draco didn’t have any of the glories of the old Black blood.

He wanted so strongly that it gave him the ability to not insult Potter. He just shook his head and asked, “Do you think we could—we could be a little different?” He’d already asked Potter for friendship once. He wouldn’t do it now. This was just a first step, and his father would say that you couldn’t sacrifice all your pride for something small.

Potter blinked at Draco for a second, and then he snorted. Snorted. Draco could feel himself turning pink, and he bit his tongue so he wouldn’t say something like, “I’ll tell my father!” Potter would expect him to say that. Draco had to do the unexpected.

“This is the part where you tell me that I was wrong to choose Gryffindor and Ron and Hermione and all the rest of it?” Potter shook his head like it was a new fashion. “No. I love Dash and I’m glad I have him, but it’s not going to make my friends reject me just because I have a basilisk. And I’m not a different person because I have him.” The basilisk hissed again, and Potter reached up with an elbow and absently scratched the coil that flowed out of the top of his shirt. “So you’re not right, Malfoy. There’s no reason for me to say you were right.”

“I wasn’t going to say that!” Draco snapped, flustered. This was going all wrong. “I was going to say that you—that you don’t choose your House, and I—I maybe was wrong to say that all worthwhile wizards end up in Slytherin.”

There. That was a concession, and even someone like Potter ought to be able to see it and admire Draco for making it.

But for some reason, Potter was grinning at Draco again. “You can’t choose your House, but I chose mine,” he said. “Maybe I should thank you for it. Without you, the Hat would have put me in Slytherin. But I knew you were there, and I didn’t want to go into the same house as a slimy git. So I told it to put me somewhere else. I chose Gryffindor.” He bent towards Draco and whispered with a wink, “So you’re still wrong, Malfoy.”

Draco stared at him. He wanted to open his mouth and say something else, but his jaw felt as though someone had pasted it shut. Potter shrugged at him and started to walk away again.

“You didn’t tell the Hat that,” Draco said, suddenly angry. It was another lie, he thought, a lie that Potter was making up to make himself look special! It had to be! Why was Potter doing it? He must hate Draco a lot more than Draco had thought. “You didn’t tell the Hat anything like that. You’re in Gryffindor because your parents were.”

“Keep telling yourself that.” The basilisk flicked his tongue at Draco, and Draco thought maybe even he was laughing at him.

“You weren’t supposed to be in Slytherin!” Draco took a long step forwards, and the day before, he would have grabbed Potter’s shoulder and turned him around. But the basilisk was watching him, in a way that made Draco suddenly wary of the yellow glow beneath those clear eyelids. It would be so easy for the basilisk to open those eyelids…

“You don’t have to believe me, Malfoy. You can go on acting the same stupid way you always did.” Potter stopped and turned neatly on one heel to look back at him. “But I’ll know the truth.”

Draco started to say something. He didn’t think it would really matter what it was. One way or another, he had to say something that would get him out of this situation and prove that Potter was wrong.

“Potter. Malfoy.”

Professor Snape’s voice came from the entrance to the supply cupboard, and Draco jumped and turned to gather ingredients. But Professor Snape’s voice flicked again, and he said, “You will stop.”

Draco turned slowly around, his hands in the air. It was an automatic reaction to hearing Professor Snape speak that way. Potter had his hand on the basilisk’s head and was staring hard at those closed eyes. Draco swallowed. He wondered if the snake had been about to stare at him. But Potter didn’t look at him, and the basilisk put his head down on the other side of Potter’s neck a moment later, so it was hard to tell.

“Yes, Professor?” said Potter, and Draco wasn’t the only one, he was certain, who could hear a question in the back of that tone.

Draco looked at his Head of House. Snape’s eyes were locked on Potter, and there was an expression on his face that Draco had never seen before and couldn’t identify. A second later, Professor Snape looked at him, and Draco lowered his gaze and swallowed. He was feeling extremely uncomfortable.

“You should have gathered up the ingredients and returned to the classroom several minutes ago,” said Professor Snape at last, and his voice was that dreadful whip-flick again. “Mr. Malfoy, you will do so. And you will stay away from Potter.”

Draco blinked, but said nothing as he snatched up the appropriate vials and twigs and mosses. He knew that Professor Snape would refuse to answer him, and that was Professor Snape’s right.

But it was still hard, to walk out of there and wonder if he had blown his best chance to have a basilisk of his own.

*

“Was your snake going to stare at Mr. Malfoy? Tell me the truth.”

Severus spoke the words because he had to, but his real project at the moment was his intense study of Potter. Potter stood there with his hand on the basilisk’s neck, and his gaze appeared to be fixed on his own robe hem. He looked up when Severus completed the question, though, and shook his head.

“I won’t let him look at anyone,” he said. “I was just irritated, and Dash was moving up to the side of my head because he was irritated, too.”

Severus grimaced. It was hard to tell how much of that was the truth. On the one hand, he knew that Potter lied to him on a regular basis, and that he disliked Draco.

On the other hand, it was also true that Draco sometimes antagonized Potter, and Severus had no proof that the basilisk would have looked at Draco. The mirrors that Dumbledore had enchanted were still hovering quietly in the air, for one thing, and Severus trusted Dumbledore’s spells enough to know that they would be more agitated, at least vibrating, if Draco had been in serious danger.

“There is something you should know, Potter,” said Severus.

“Yes, sir?” Potter was looking at the basilisk’s scales now, running one finger along the delicate separations. He might be talking to the snake, too. Since he didn’t have to speak Parseltongue aloud, Severus had no idea if he was. He only knew what he could go on, and his impression was that Potter hadn’t meant to hurt Draco.

“This does not change your status with me,” said Severus. “I am not going to suddenly treat you as someone special because you have a pet that may kill us all. Your actions could still kill us all.”

Potter’s head jerked up, and he focused on Severus this time instead of his snake, Severus was glad to see. His eyes were wide. “What do you mean? Sir,” he added a moment later, although Severus hadn’t changed the expression on his face.

“If you get yourself killed before you could face the Dark Lord.”

Potter’s face closed off in an instant. “Yeah, yeah, I get it,” he said. “I know that I have to face him, sir. And Sirius Black. If Sirius Black kills me, there’ll be no one left to kill Voldemort.” He waved one hand at Severus and started to move past him, back into the classroom. His arms were still full of the ingredients.

Severus stepped in front of him as he went past. Potter glared at him as if he wanted to have a basilisk’s gaze.

“Look,” he hissed, and he sounded as though he spoke Parseltongue on a daily basis, “I know that my defeating him is important, all right? I’m sure that it is. I know that people count on me. I know that I can’t just go out and hunt Sirius Black down. But I have someone who’ll protect me now. So you can stop being afraid that I’ll die before I have to save your arses.”

“Language,” said Severus, but he hesitated. He hadn’t expected Potter to react the way he did to Severus’s suggestion—rather, to smugly agree with the special status as the Boy-Who-Lived that it promised him, and strut out of the room. 

And Severus had to decide what he was going to do with this unexpected information and actions now, before other students started to come into the cupboard looking for their ingredients.

“Knowing that you are bonded with a basilisk and might have been a Slytherin changes things,” said Severus, before he could decide against it. “Not the mere presence of a basilisk itself.”

Potter stared at him again, and Severus relished in the look in his eyes. He should look as confused as any thirteen-year-old in Severus’s class, not adult and cynical.

“You will think about that,” Severus ordered, and then swept out into the main classroom before Longbottom could cause another disaster.

Potter followed him, slowly. Severus felt the boy’s eyes on him several times as he began to brew, even with Weasley’s and Granger’s whispered attempts to distract him. 

Let him think, Severus thought. Even he was not sure what he might have put in play today, any more than he was sure how the boy’s basilisk would ultimately change the shape of the war.

He only knew that it would happen, and he would make himself a player in that change now. Not a pawn.

Not if I can help it.

Chapter 6: Slytherin and Gryffindor

Chapter Text

“There is no way that you would be willing to leave the snake outside?” 

It took Harry a moment to realize McGonagall was talking to him. He had been arguing with Dash about what Snape might have meant when he spoke to him earlier, and whose fault it really was that Dash had been close enough to the cauldron in Potions to get a drop of his saliva in the liquid, which of course wrecked everything.

“No, Professor,” said Harry, when he could concentrate. He reached up and stroked Dash’s scales, soothing down the hiss before it could begin. “Professor Dumbledore said I had to keep him with me at all times, just in case he tried to do something to somebody.”

In truth, Harry thought the mirrors that Dumbledore had enchanted to whirl around him would probably follow Dash if they had to separate, but, well. There were some things McGonagall didn’t need to know.

Like how much you blame her for not believing you and going with you to find the Stone in your first year? Dash asked thoughtfully.

Harry had already learned Dash was a genius. For example, he had a talent for asking questions like that right before a professor spoke. Harry was going to snap at him, but McGonagall said, “Then he will need to stay around your neck, and stay absolutely quiet. I won’t have him disrupting my class. Transfiguration is a delicate subject.”

Harry stared at McGonagall. Sure, he had heard her be harsh before, but not to people who hadn’t done anything. And this time, he thought he saw a spark of disappointment in her eyes before she looked hastily away from him.

Was she disappointed in him for having a snake? For bonding with a basilisk? For speaking Parseltongue?

I don’t think it matters,” said Dash, and of course he hissed aloud, instead of speaking mentally into Harry’s mind the way he’d been doing all morning. People jumped in their seats and turned around to flinch. Harry lowered his head and stroked Dash’s neck. Dash continued relentlessly, his head weaving back and forth in a series of loops that immediately melted into one another. “They would find some reason to dislike you.

But she never did it before, Harry told Dash, as he pulled out his wand and got ready to pay attention to the lesson. This time, McGonagall was having them Transfigure small booklets into butterflies. Her voice was high and stiff as she recounted the lesson, and Harry was sure it had to do with him.

Did she support you?

Harry hesitated. It was true that he couldn’t remember McGonagall intervening last year when people were telling him that he was the Heir of Slytherin. But she hadn’t been upset with him. She had done what she could to treat him absolutely normally.

Sometimes, that isn’t what you need to do. Dash’s head nudged his cheek. Sometimes, you need someone who’s going to do more than that. 

Harry would have answered, but McGonagall said, “Mr. Potter, I must insist on you leaving the snake outside if he’s going to be a distraction from your schoolwork.”

Harry lowered his gaze to the booklet and managed a passable imitation of the wand movement, he thought. The pages of the booklet in front of him fluttered, but didn’t Transfigure. Harry grimaced and tried it again. Still nothing happened, and he could feel the angry frustration at the back of his eyes that made them grow hot.

You can’t focus your magic that way, said Dash. You have to be calm and think about things that will make you even calmer.

How can I do that when everyone’s being stupid about you? Harry slashed his wand down again. This time, the pages didn’t even move. He thought he could see other people with wings beating on their desks, but he refused to look.

You have to learn to focus through the anger. With one wary eye on McGonagall, Dash edged his head down beside Harry’s. Look at me. My eyelids, not my eyes.

Harry did that. He didn’t find the yellow glow behind them soothing, but Dash said softly, Can you imagine the way that I would look if I had them open? I know that you haven’t seen a basilisk’s eyes, but—

I almost saw them last year in the Chamber of Secrets. That’s as close as I want to come. Harry could feel sweat prickling beneath his hair as those memories woke up again.

Then they aren’t the best thing for you to focus on, no matter how yellow and deep they are. Dash sounded a little amused. What calms you down the most?

Harry had to think about it, and practice the wand movement a little more, since McGonagall was walking past and giving him a stern look. But he finally said, Flying. 

Dash brushed his neck coil against Harry’s ear. It would probably look like nothing much to anyone else, but he and Harry could feel the difference. That did make Harry calm down a little, thinking about secrets that only he and Dash could share.

Then think about the way you are when you’re flying, Dash murmured. Think about the way your muscles relax. You’re getting ready to leap onto the broom, and I know you’re alert and ready

Harry thought it would take him a while to get used to someone who could hear his thoughts before he had them.

But you also have to be calm and focused, because you’re going to lose the game if you aren’t. Can you think that way through your muscles? Can you think that way about your wand movement, and do the same thing?

Harry thought. His arm relaxed, and he wondered if that had been Dash’s doing. Wondering made him start to tense up again.

You should still be thinking about getting ready to fly, Dash scolded him. Remember, I can feel it if you aren’t.

Maybe there was an advantage to having a monitor who could see everything in his head, Harry considered. He did his best to think about flying and the rush of wind past him and the relaxation that he always felt when he’d been up there a while. He felt it even when he was struggling to beat Malfoy. He always knew he would win if he just concentrated.

Dash murmured to him, but Harry wasn’t thinking much about the words anymore. He lifted his wand and brought it down in the movement McGonagall had showed them, instead, muttering the incantation the way he would mutter insults against Malfoy.

“Impressive, Mr. Potter.”

Harry blinked his eyes and came slowly out of his trance. When he looked down, he could see that he had mostly managed the Transfiguration. The pages of his booklet were butterfly-shaped, black with blue stripes around the edges; there was a head at one end; and the body mostly followed the book’s spine. The only thing that was wrong was the papery antennae hanging off the head.

“Did you do that following your familiar’s advice?” McGonagall asked, and there was a slight edge to her voice now.

Harry looked up and shook his head. “Dash only hatched yesterday, Professor. He doesn’t know anything about Transfiguration. And I’m not sure he’s my familiar,” he added, turning his head and staring at Dash. Are you?

It would depend on what you mean by that statement, Dash replied, and took a moment to lick through his memories in the way that Harry had almost become accustomed to him doing. No, I do not think I am. I can’t link with you and ground you in the way that familiars are supposed to do. And the bond they share is different than the one we have.

“He says he isn’t,” Harry said to McGonagall, and endured a few moments of her sharp stare before she nodded.

“Then continue doing what you were doing,” she ordered him, and marched over to Neville, who had somehow managed to create a one-winged butterfly flapping slowly and sadly in a circle on the table.

Harry Transfigured the booklet back into a butterfly; that was a lot easier than the other way around. Then he went back to work, imagining a different kind of butterfly in his mind as hard as he could. Maybe if he created one that was Gryffindor red and gold, then McGonagall would be a little less suspicious of him.

*

“That child will turn my hair white before the end.”

Severus paused, then eased back behind the door of the infirmary. He had come to ask Poppy for burn paste, so as to have some on hand the next time he encountered Longbottom, but it seemed someone was before him in visiting the mediwitch. And that person was Minerva McGonagall.

She had mentioned no names yet, but Severus could well imagine what child was driving her to distraction.

“You shouldn’t let Harry upset you so much that you need a Headache Draught,” Poppy said, practical as always, and confirming Severus’s suspicion at the same time. “I think it’s wonderful that he made friends with a snake. The child has almost none.”

“So Mr. Weasley and Miss Granger are nothing, then?” Minerva’s voice fired up, muted for only a moment by the clink of a vial against her teeth. “I’ll have you know, Pomona was complaining the other day that they have no talent in Herbology, that Mr. Weasley doesn’t pay enough attention to the plants he’s potting and Miss Granger is all theory, but I’ve seen both of them do remarkable things—”

“And they can’t be with him all the time,” Poppy retorted. Severus heard her shifting vials about. She kept them organized neatly, he had to admit, but in a way so different from his own that it was simpler to ask her for the burn paste than try and find it himself. “I hope that snake will do something to discourage people from hurting Harry outside school.”

Severus settled against the wall. He had no idea what Poppy was talking about, but he knew a bit of juicy gossip when he heard one.

“Who are you talking about, Poppy?” Minerva demanded. Severus heard her pacing back and forth, and imagined a tail switching from under her robes. He had seen her once in the middle of her Animagus transformation, when she was still shedding her clothes; it was not a sight one forgot easily. “I know that none of the Death Eaters has the slightest idea where the boy lives, or he would have been in trouble this past summer, after what he did to Lucius Malfoy at the end of last year.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. He had heard rumors of the trouble between Potter and Lucius, but they had not spread far before Lucius squashed them, and Severus was unsure what had happened. Something humiliating for Lucius, at least.

“I’m not talking about Death Eaters,” said Poppy.

“Then tell me who you’re talking about,” said Minerva, but her voice had dipped, as if she had taken up Poppy’s fears of eavesdroppers.

Long years as a spy and long experience of Poppy Pomfrey told Severus what she would do next. He immediately Disillusioned himself and crept into the hospital wing, moments before Poppy cast a shimmering curtain of magic that would cover the entrance and block out sound. She always did that when discussing controversial medical information about students.

Minerva was standing in front of Poppy, her face strained. Severus arranged himself in a corner to watch. Of course, perhaps she was only strained for the same reason she had come asking for a headache draught: precious Potter had picked up a snake and ruined her image of him as the perfect Gryffindor.

But there was something else there, Severus was certain, after studying her for a bit. Something that implied she knew what Poppy was about to say, and dreaded it.

“You know very well who I’m talking about, Minerva.” Poppy leaned a hand on her arm and then leaned near, as well, making Severus glad that he was in the hospital wing. Even without the spell that prevented eavesdropping, Poppy spoke quietly enough he wouldn’t have heard her from the corridor. “Those Dursleys.”

Severus cocked his head. Yes, he knew the name. Potter’s Muggle relatives.

So?

But he could not pretend that it did not matter, not in the privacy of his own head, which was the only place Lily still lived. He would admit secrets to himself that he would never admit aloud. 

“I knew they were the worst sort of Muggles,” Minerva answered, quietly, voice as soft as though she was struggling against passion. “But I never thought—Petunia was Lily’s sister! I heard Lily talk about her often enough! How could she hurt her own nephew? And someone who lost his parents, like Harry did!”

Severus closed his eyes. Sometimes Minerva’s blind Gryffindor faith in human nature irritated him. She had been through a war, and she dealt with the petty intrigues and silly lies of students every day. She should know better than this.

“You’d think not,” said Poppy, in the same sort of voice Severus had heard her use with a Slytherin last year who wouldn’t stop hexing her Housemates. “But that’s the way it is. And the way that boy looks, as though no one has ever asked him how he’s feeling, when I do it…it’s true, Minerva. It must be true. And that’s something that snake might be able to keep him safe from, at least.”

“You never told anyone?” Minerva looked hunched and sad when Severus opened his eyes. At least her faith wasn’t making her blind anymore.

“I told myself it was for the best if I didn’t.” Poppy sighed. “Harry never admitted anything. I did think about telling Dumbledore, but then that incident happened this summer when Harry went to stay in Diagon Alley, and you would think that the papers never had anything elseto talk about, the fuss they raised over it. What if I complained, and Harry ended up in the custody of someone even worse for him? A Death Eater like Lucius Malfoy?” She sighed again and pressed her hand against her forehead. “Fudge is certainly close enough with Malfoy for that to happen.”

Severus listened and said nothing—of course, there was no one to say it to, but this was more than that. There was a gap behind Poppy’s words, a fear she must have. Adverse publicity alone would never have kept her quiet; nor would a child’s wishes, considering how many children she bundled potions into and bedsheets across every day. And the incident with Potter’s aunt that she was crediting had happened only a few months ago.

No, there was someone else keeping her quiet, someone she didn’t want to name, maybe out of fear, maybe because the loss of that faith for her was more than she could stand.

Severus knew who it was.

“I suppose that the snake might be a good thing, then,” said Minerva grudgingly. “But only if it does not help him cheat in classes! He cast a Transfiguration spell today that I’ve never seen a third-year do as well, except Miss Granger.”

“Is merely doing a spell well a cause of cheating?” Poppy smiled a little. “Perhaps you might leave his snake with him and only separate them during exams. That might be the most he would allow you to do, anyway.”

Allow me to do,” said Minerva frigidly.

Severus recognized the turn the conversation had taken, and determined that he had no reason to stay and listen further. He had his own methods of dealing with Potter should he try to use the basilisk to cheat during an exam or a brewing session when the students were supposed to work alone. He turned and slipped across the infirmary to the spell Poppy had cast, which was much easier to make a hole in from the inside than the outside.

Once back in the corridor, Severus adjusted his robes around himself and made his way slowly back towards the dungeons, mind on his classes and his marking.

And only an undercurrent of thought running, carrying the powerful images and information that Poppy had told him about, all unwitting.

*

The instant Harry walked into Defense Against the Dark Arts, Professor Lupin caught his eye and beckoned him aside. “I need to talk to you, Harry,” he said, quietly but insistently.

Harry walked over to Lupin, wondering if the man was finally going to give him an answer about why he hadn’t let him face the Boggart. Dash was silent on his neck, shifting around so that Harry could bear his weight more comfortably and take some of the pressure off the middle of his back. Maybe he could smell the magical creatures Lupin worked with. Maybe he didn’t know what to make of Lupin.

Maybe you could ask me if you wanted to know what I was thinking, Dash sniped back, and sent a flood of images that he had picked up on from Harry’s mind, including the one of Lupin shoving him away from the Boggart. I don’t like him.

Harry rolled his eyes a little, making sure that he was done before Lupin faced him again. Well, I do. So we’ll just disagree.

Dash made a soft annoyed sound, and Lupin jumped as though someone had pricked him with a pin and then looked at Dash with concern. “You know I’ve made my living studying Dark creatures, Harry,” he began.

Harry nodded and raised a hand to pet Dash’s neck. “Does this have something to do with why I couldn’t face the Boggart, sir?”

Professor Lupin looked at him with a blank face for a second. Harry thought he wouldn’t get an answer, but then Lupin waved a hand and said, “Oh, that. No, I thought your boggart would be You-Know-Who and would frighten everyone else.”

Harry frowned. It sounded dismissive. “It would have been a Dementor, sir. If—”

Lupin interrupted before he could get that far. “You know you have one of the Darkest of Dark creatures around your neck, Harry? The Ministry rates them as extremely dangerous. No one except an expert should handle them.”

Harry opened his mouth to say No shit? But he ended up swallowing back the words. He’d already argued with enough people about Dash, who was hissing angrily enough that Harry couldn’t even pick up the words. A torrent of images rushed through his head, a lot of them showing Dash chasing Lupin.

You are not chasing Lupin, Harry scolded him. He just doesn’t understand. That’s true of lots of other people, too.

But not many who make a living studying Dark creatures, Dash reminded him. Still, he calmed down and only let one heavy loop of his body dangle down Harry’s chest so that it interfered with Harry’s arms and was generally inconvenient. Harry patiently moved it out of the way again.

“Yes, I know,” said Harry, when he realized Professor Lupin was still waiting for an answer to his question, and some of the other students were turning around in their desks and looking at them. He didn’t want to be accused of being special or the Professor’s favorite or anything like that. “I fought one last year.”

Lupin blinked slowly. “Then why are you walking around with one around your neck?”

Because you’re not stupid and know that your life is better with me in it.

“Because he needed help,” Harry said simply.

“Yes, the Headmaster told us the story.” Still Lupin didn’t move, and Harry was beginning to wonder what he wanted. “Would you have gone down and tried to help him if you realized that he was crying out in Parseltongue?”

“Yes, probably,” said Harry. He honestly hadn’t considered it, but the more he thought about it, the more sense it made to go if he did know it was Parseltongue. Who else in the whole school was going to hear and help?

“You know that you’re in a lot of danger from Sirius Black, Harry—”

Dash lifted his head and twisted it, and Harry smiled. “Not anymore.”

Lupin looked at him with a grave face that made Harry want to look down. But he put his hand on Dash’s neck and didn’t. If Lupin wanted Harry to care about Sirius Black, then he shouldn’t have told Harry all about the danger he could get into wandering around. Harry was taking the danger seriously. He had a snake to defend him, now.

And I will always defend you, Dash told him, and this time the rasp of his scales along the back of Harry’s hand was like a caress.

“See,” Harry said, and then remembered that Lupin couldn’t hear the words Dash was speaking, and wouldn’t have a reason to feel reassured. He shook his head a little and continued. “I mean, now that I have a dangerous snake, Sirius Black will stay away, right? Maybe he’ll decide that I’m evil and he doesn’t have to hurt me. So he can go away, and no one has to get hurt.”

“I hope that you would know better than to let your snake hurt anyone, Harry,” said Lupin. “Even someone like Black. People deserve to have a trial.”

“He wasn’t going to give me one, was he?” Harry asked, and suddenly felt a clogging rush in his throat that could have become a shout or tears yesterday. He coughed, while Dash touched his cheek with a blunt nose, and it went away. “He wants me dead for a stupid reason, because I somehow defeated Voldemort when I was one. I don’t know what he thinks killing me is going to do! It’s not going to bring him back!”

The other students were definitely staring and whispering now, and Lupin reached out and settled a heavy, cautious hand on Harry’s shoulder. 

“Don’t let your snake hurt Black,” he said. “Don’t let him hurt anyone, Harry. Or he could get taken away.”

He is very strange, said Dash, with a lash inside Harry’s head that was shorter than any lash of his tongue he had made. Does he want to warn or threaten you?

Harry shrugged and looked at the ground. He still liked Professor Lupin, but he didn’t know what else Lupin expected him to do. All anyone had done was tell him that Black was dangerous and he had to stay inside the school and he should be careful in case Black tried to kill him, and now they were unhappy because Harry had someone who would stay with him all the time and protect him? 

It’s like they care more about my reputation or the other students or even Black instead of me. I want someone who puts me first.

Dash leaned his head sideways and rubbed his cheek against Harry’s. Lupin stared. Harry reckoned it was something he hadn’t thought a basilisk would do.

“Well,” said Lupin, after clearing his throat for a moment. “Maybe you should come and sit down, and—we’ll think about what you should do with the basilisk later. I don’t mind you having him in class as long as he doesn’t hurt anyone.”

Harry nodded, because he knew Dash wouldn’t, and then walked over to his seat. Ron patted his shoulder awkwardly, carefully avoiding Dash’s tail. “Are you okay, mate?” he asked.

Harry sniffled, then said, “Yeah. It’s just—it’s just hard, when I don’t know where Black is or what he’s doing. It’s hard being hunted all the time, you know?” It was as close as he could come to saying what was wrong, which wouldn’t have been as easy to put into words.

Ron nodded sympathetically, and then Professor Lupin started the lesson. Dash gently tightened a coil of his body around Harry’s throat.

I’m going to be here. I’m going to guard you. I’m going to put you first.

Harry already didn’t think he could have turned away from Dash, after rescuing him form the egg and hearing Dash talk to him in his head, but he knew he couldn’t turn away now. He hugged Dash’s tail, and he didn’t care who saw him. They would stare at him and whisper anyway, no matter what he did, so Harry would take comfort where he could find it.

Chapter 7: Charge the Enemy

Chapter Text

Harry wouldn’t say that life stayed exactly the same as it had before he had Dash—for one thing, the amount of people staring at him was greater than it had ever been—but it did come to have its own routine.

Professor Lupin was teaching all sorts of lessons that Harry liked. They learned about all sorts of dangerous, Dark magical creatures, and the ways to counter their powers and make sure that they didn’t hurt anybody if they had to face them. Harry sometimes had to filter his way through Dash’s many comments when he did his homework, but in class, Dash was as silent and attentive as any of them.

It was only when he was hanging from Harry’s neck and reading the homework that he became dismissive. Something like a simple Tripping Jinx wouldn’t stop me.

Of course it wouldn’t, Harry retorted, and began to correct the spelling of the last sentence he’d written. He had a hard time with certain words. Hermione didn’t, but Hermione didn’t have a hard time with anything when it came to homework. And Hermione wasn’t here, as she usually wasn’t lately. You don’t have feet.

Not only for that reason. Dash coiled slowly around his throat, and let his tail drop on the paper. When are you going to learn something about basilisks? About how beautiful and violent we are, for starters.

Harry laughed, which made Ron, who was working on his essay beside him, jump. But a second later, Ron rolled his eyes and went back to writing. He and the other Gryffindors had adapted pretty easily to Harry having conversations in his own head, and sometimes laughing or snorting or reacting oddly aloud.

Most people wouldn’t consider that those two words go together, you know, Harry said, and reached up to rub his knuckles over Dash’s head. Dash liked it when he would rub gently up to the base of the plume, and then even more gently up it. He said the plume couldn’t stand rough handling. Or they wouldn’t think it was a good thing if they did.

Dash lashed out with his tongue, turning his head back and forth as if he wanted to catch subtle scents fleeing through the Gryffindor dorm. He seemed particularly focused on Ron’s bed, for some reason. That is because most people do not understand how wonderful basilisks are, he said, distracted. Your professor promised to teach you more about my kind. Why hasn’t he done so?

Harry waved his hand at the essay. He’s been teaching us other things.

I’m hungry, Dash whined, not paying attention to Harry’s words, which was a sure sign that he really was.

Harry grimaced a little. The last time Dash had been hungry, a week ago, he’d taken him out into the Forbidden Forest and fed him again, but McGonagall had caught him this time. Quiet and forceful, she’d made it clear that sneaking outside the school after curfew wouldn’t be tolerated anymore. She’d assigned Harry a detention where he had to write lines about responsibility and dangerous pets until his fingers almost fell off.

Dash had spent that detention peacefully sleeping off his full stomach in the corner of the classroom, one of the few times he’d been inside and not attached to Harry. He didn’t understand why Harry’s hands were sore afterwards and Harry couldn’t pet Dash to his demanding satisfaction.

Now, Harry wasn’t sure what to do. McGonagall had told Harry that house-elves could bring Dash food, but Harry thought even the elves would draw the line at dead rabbits. Or living rabbits, rather, since Dash liked to kill them himself.

Harry, are you listening to me? 

Yes, Harry said, and shook his head. Well, he had Quidditch practice in half an hour, since Oliver wanted nothing more than the Quidditch Cup. He could take Dash with him and feed him then, since at least they would be outside.

I’m hungry now, Dash insisted, and then slithered down from Harry’s shoulders to the floor, an unfolding motion so smooth that it took Harry a moment to realize what was happening. If there’s food in the room and you’re not giving it to me, that’s basilisk abuse.

Harry opened his mouth to retort, then paused and blinked. Ron had gone very still, the way he did whenever Dash climbed off Harry. What are you talking about, food in the room? I don’t think any Forbidden Forest creatures have got in here. There were also no more spiders left in the entire Gryffindor Tower, much to Ron’s joy.

Basilisk abuse, Dash repeated firmly, and slithered towards Ron’s bed.

Harry leaped to his feet. He had just thought about what Dash probably meant, and Ron would never forgive him if Dash got that far. “Dash—”

There was a terrified squeaking noise. Dash lunged, and Scabbers scuttled out from beneath Ron’s bed and ran madly for the door.

Dash coiled the top half of his body around—he didn’t need to cover the full distance when his size did most of the covering for him, Harry thought, distracted—and there was a telltale quiver in the clear lids that covered his eyes. 

Do not,” Harry said. He didn’t even know he could sound that commanding in Parseltongue. Of course, the only time he had really tried before this was when he was telling Malfoy’s conjured snake to get away from Justin.

Dash turned his head slowly back towards Harry, who found himself standing up. He crossed his arms and frowned at Dash. I’m not afraid of you, he said down the bond. I know you could kill me with a look, but you wouldn’t do that, because it would mean that you wouldn’t have someone to tease anymore.

Dash moved with terrifying speed, and wrapped himself around Harry from the floor up, so his head was hovering at Harry’s eye level. That’s not the only reason I wouldn’t kill you. I would never hurt you. I wouldn’t want to hurt you.

Harry maintained his stern look for a few moments, and then smiled and reached out and rubbed behind Dash’s plume. Fine. But you would hurt me if you hurt Ron or my friendship with Ron.

Dash did an intricate little dance of disgust with his head. Would he put that ugly creature whose only value is in being a mouthful for me above your friendship?

He’s attached to it. The way I’m attached to you.

Dash sent image after image of disgust and dirt and dung and filth at Harry for comparing him to Scabbers. Harry ignored him and turned around to see Ron cradling Scabbers protectively against his chest.

“Is he all right?” Harry asked, feeling a little guilty. He should have known what Dash was up to before now and stopped him. Scabbers had probably only survived this long in Gryffindor Tower with a snake because he usually hid, and Dash followed Harry’s routine and didn’t interact much with Scabbers.

“Yeah, I think so.” Ron looked up, and his eyes were as menacing as Harry had ever seen them. “No thanks to that thing.”

Harry breathed through his own anger. Dash could have killed Scabbers. It was extremely unlikely that it would work the other way around, or that Ron would dare to attack Dash, so Dash wasn’t in danger. “Sorry, then,” he said.

Ron replied, but Harry didn’t hear him, filled as his mind was with the buzz of Dash’s voice. Why does the rat smell human?

Harry stared blankly at Dash for a moment. Because Ron is holding him? he finally offered. It wasn’t like Dash to ask for Harry’s assistance in a matter that concerned scents. Harry certainly couldn’t compete with him in scenting things, and Dash was usually the one who told Harry when something smelled off.

No, it is more than that. Dash coiled himself up and up until a good chunk of his heavy body was resting on top of Harry’s head. Harry grunted and bore it. It wasn’t the most awkward position Dash had put him in. He smells human, himself. What is the name for humans who can turn into rats? And do they taste good?

Harry stared up at Dash. Dash looked back down at him, draping his head sideways until almost all of his body was slipping off Harry’s forehead like a crown. What? Did I discover something new? Didn’t you know there were humans who could turn into rats? 

Harry turned shakily away from Dash, although he put one hand on the bend of Dash’s body to show that he hadn’t been forgotten, and whispered, “Ron? Can I talk to you downstairs, please?”

Ron nodded, looking confused. He started to leave the room carrying Scabbers.

“No!” Harry yelped, and he decided that he must have sounded too panicked, because Scabbers abruptly leaped up, bit Ron’s finger, and dropped to the floor as Ron yelped. He was running straight for the door, and Harry reached out a desperate hand, even though he knew that once the rat got out the door, they would probably never find him.

Dash launched himself smoothly from the top of Harry’s head, as if he had wings. He landed between Scabbers and the door, and swayed back and forth like a cobra, hissing what Harry knew weren’t Parseltongue words, just random threatening sounds. Scabbers froze, his legs locked beneath him, squeaking frantically.

“What the bloody hell is going on?” Ron bellowed, wringing his finger and sending blood in all directions. “Scabbers, come back here right now!” He ran towards the rat, who dodged and ran towards Ron’s bed.

Harry finally cast the Tripping Jinx that he’d been writing about for Lupin’s essay. He didn’t have any other spell in his head, and this one worked well enough, mostly missing Scabbers but still sending him somersaulting tail over head.

Dash was flooding forwards, murmuring, We need to do something about the variety of spells you know, especially the curses, when Ron leaped in between him and Scabbers and snatched the rat up. Dash paused, watching Ron through his eyelids. Harry could almost feel the way Ron shook from here, but he didn’t move.

He is brave, Dash said admiringly. And maybe he loves that human who’s also a rat. Does he know who it is? Ask him if he does. This is interesting.

Harry closed his eyes. He would have to do this, even though he would rather go get a professor and bring them here. But he thought by the time he did that, Ron would have let Scabbers go, and he would run away somewhere, and trying to find a rat in a castle this size wasn’t something Harry wanted to think about.

“Ron,” he said, and waited until his friend was paying attention to him instead of Dash, even though that took a while. “Dash says that Scabbers isn’t a rat.”

“What else is he, then?” Ron said, and clutched Scabbers still closer. The rat seemed to be awake again, but he was huddling frozen. Harry hoped that had something to do with Dash’s stare, even muffled. He had read somewhere that some snakes could hypnotize their prey with their eyes.

That seems like a foolish thing to do. You stalk it and then you kill it with your poison or your body. Hypnotism.

Harry, steadied by the solid force of Dash’s contempt, took a deep breath and said, “Dash says that he smells human. I think—is it possible that he’s an Animagus?”

Ron stared at him as if he had gone mad. But Scabbers proved Harry’s contention, as far as Harry was concerned, by leaping up to Ron’s shoulder and flying desperately into the air, aiming for Harry. 

Harry had no idea what Scabbers was going to do, if he was trying to bite him or just get beyond him and run away. But Harry’s hand flashed out instinctively. After all, Scabbers wasn’t that much bigger than a Snitch. In a second, he had a palmful of squirming fur, and Scabbers was trying to bite him, and then Dash slithered up beside him and Scabbers went very still again.

Panting, Harry told Dash, Admit it. You can hypnotize someone by looking at them through your eyelids. One of the lesser known powers of the basilisk.

You sound like that book you were reading for Lupin’s class this afternoon. Dash tilted his head to the side and unhinged his jaw in a yawn. Harry became aware that something wet and stinky was dribbling over his fingers, and wrinkled his nose. And I haven’t hypnotized him. He’s just so cowardly that he can’t stand being in the same room with me.

Harry opened his mouth to retort, then paused. It was true that he had seen very little of Scabbers since Dash had come to live with him. He had just thought that was for the same reason that he’d seen little of Scabbers at any time lately, though. Crookshanks kept trying to attack him.

That cat is smarter than it looks.

Harry shook his head and turned to Ron, who was marching towards him and asking, “What are you doing with my rat?”

“Listen,” said Harry. Ron stopped and folded his arms, but reluctantly listened. “Why would an ordinary rat panic when I talked about going downstairs without him? Why would he make a flying leap when I asked if he was an Animagus?” Scabbers squealed miserably and paddled at the air with his paws, but went still again when Dash glanced at him, and Harry nodded. He had to reach up past his own head to pet Dash on the nose, but this once, he didn’t mind someone being taller than he was. “See?” Harry added. “Rats don’t understand human speech. Unless they’re not rats.”

“Your bloody snake understands English,” Ron said, with a look at Dash that was anything but friendly.

Harry shrugged that impatiently aside. “That’s because he’s bonded with me and understanding the words when I do. He wouldn’t be able to read or understand what someone was saying if I wasn’t there.” Dash hissed in agreement, making Ron jump. “But Scabbers can’t understand you or me. Right? Unless you’re secretly a Rodentmouth and you never told me.”

That won a brief, reluctant smile from Ron, but he still shook his head. “All right, it’s weird. But I always thought Scabbers was a magical rat. He’s already lived a long time. A lot longer than most rats should.”

Harry looked at him in silence, and Ron turned red. “He could still be magical!” he insisted.

“Or he could be an Animagus,” Harry said.

“Fine. You don’t need to sound like you think it’s obvious and I’m stupid. Your snake didn’t even smell him at first.” Ron gave a glance at Dash.

I could never smell the bloody creature separately until today. He was always on the blankets or in the hands that also smelt of human.

Harry decided that he didn’t need to speak that bit aloud. “Sorry if I sound like I think you’re stupid. I don’t. But I do think he’s an Animagus. And we need someone who can tell us. Someone who knows a spell that can force an Animagus to turn back or something.”

For the first time since Harry had got Dash, he and Ron had an idea at the same time. “McGonagall,” they said simultaneously, and ran for the staircase.

Dash slithered after them, accompanied by Dumbledore’s mirrors. You’re going to trip on the staircase when you’re holding something in one hand, Harry, he offered innocently. I could carry Scabbers for you. Perhaps in my mouth.

Harry rolled his eyes and kept running. Ron was pounding along beside him, and casting glances at Scabbers that made Harry understand why. It couldn’t be comfortable knowing that maybe an Animagus had slept in the same bed as you for years, and you hadn’t known.

Maybe McGonagall can transform and hunt him down if he does manage to escape, Harry thought hopefully. He was really hoping that she would make everything make sense and go away.

She shouldn’t get to eat him, said Dash sulkily behind him. I was hungry first.

*

Professor McGonagall looked at them when she opened her office door in a way that made Harry shrink. He wondered if he was wrong, if they should have tried to handle this themselves instead of going to a teacher.

But then Professor McGonagall looked at the rat in Harry’s hands, and her eyebrows went up. “Have you brought me Mr. Weasley’s pet to doctor, Mr. Potter?” she asked. “I’m afraid that I don’t know as much about animals as I should. Professor Hagrid would be a better choice.”

“No,” said Ron, sounding breathless. Harry was just as glad to let him explain. “We think my rat might be an Animagus, and Harry said—there’s spells—you could use a spell that would show if he was?”

McGonagall snapped upright. “There are indeed spells like that. But why do you think your rat is an Animagus, Mr. Weasley?”

Her eyes went to Dash. Harry nodded and touched his neck. “He said that Scabbers smelled human. And then Scabbers started acting strange, like he understood English, when we were talking about it. And he’s lived a long time for a rat.”

McGonagall’s eyebrows came down. “Well,” she said softly, and reached for Scabbers with her left hand, lifting her wand with the right.

Scabbers made one more desperate leap, towards the door. Dash snapped around, but the door had already flown shut. That must be some nonverbal magic, Harry decided, awed. Professor Lupin had mentioned it, but also said they wouldn’t learn it until sixth year.

Homorpho!” said McGonagall with what Harry thought was an impressive amount of calm, and the air around Scabbers boiled. He was squealing in what sounded like shrill despair as the magic forced him towards the floor, and then he spun around and began to grow.

Ron stepped back, looking sick. Harry caught his shoulder and squeezed tight. It was as much comfort as he could think about giving right now, when their fascinated gazes were still locked on the rat that had been Scabbers.

The man that had been Scabbers. Harry could see that he was a man now. He was naked and manky and smelled bad, and he had hair that hung around his face. He kept his head down and gnawed on his nails. McGonagall waved her wand and probably used some nonverbal magic again, and suddenly the man was dressed in a brown coat that covered him from his chest down to the floor. He looked up in shock.

McGonagall breathed in sharply enough that Harry thought she sounded as if she’d hurt herself. “Peter Pettigrew?”

Harry stared with his heart pounding. Ron made a disbelieving noise. “Not—not—”

“As in the wizard who was supposedly killed by Sirius Black when he went mad and killed those Muggles.” McGonagall cast another spell, her eyes so wide that Harry blinked. He had never thought anything would surprise McGonagall like that. “I don’t understand—no. Now that I know he is a rat Animagus, I do.” She advanced one step and cast another spell, and ropes appeared around Pettigrew, binding him. “Speak, Peter.”

Pettigrew, if it was him, whimpered and tried to rub his hands together, but the ropes around his limbs held them in place, and he couldn’t. “I—I escaped. It was a miracle. But I was t-too afraid to come back when Black was at large, and—”

“Black was in prison for twelve years,” said McGonagall. Her voice was level, and Harry decided they had made the right choice after all, getting a professor to handle it. “You were too afraid even then to come back and tell the Ministry what had happened?”

Pettigrew said nothing, but crouched and squeaked. McGonagall’s eyes were distant, and she abruptly made a sharp movement with her wand. The sleeve on the left arm of Pettigrew’s coat writhed back.

Harry stared at the deep, coal-black marking on Pettigrew’s left arm, not understanding. It looked like a snake and a skull—

And the snake isn’t a basilisk, Dash said, writhing around so that his tail was knotted around Harry’s legs. What a waste. If you were going to design a symbol with a snake in it, why wouldn’t you use a basilisk?

Harry touched the top of Dash’s head, feeling lost. He didn’t understand what was going on. He looked at McGonagall, who was pale and gripping the side of her desk as if she needed the support to keep from falling down. That scared Harry more than anything had so far, even when he thought Scabbers was going to get away.

“A Death Eater,” McGonagall whispered.

This time, Ron was the one who squeaked. “A—a follower of You-Know-Who?” he asked, and McGonagall nodded.

Harry stared at the snake and skull and wondered what to say. He didn’t know if he could say anything. His mouth was dry and he wanted to sit down and he wanted to run away and he wanted to vomit.

“It seems,” said McGonagall, in almost a mumble, “that there were—there were two Death Eaters among your parents’ friends, Mr. Potter.” She looked at Harry with pity that he had to look away from. “Either that, or something has gone very wrong here, and we have imprisoned—”

Her jaw trembled. Her face was flushed now, and Harry was astonished to see the flash of what might have been tears at the edge of her eyelids. But then McGonagall turned away briskly, and Harry could pretend he hadn’t seen them at all, which was more comfortable.

“Professor Lupin’s office!” McGonagall called, casting Floo powder into the flames. “Yes, Remus. I’m sorry to disturb you when you’re marking, but we have an…extraordinary situation here. Can you come to my office? Yes, right away, please. Give me a moment to call the Headmaster.” She closed the Floo connection, and then called, “Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster!”

It seemed to take longer for the Headmaster to answer, and McGonagall turned back to Harry and Ron with a vague frown. “You should go, boys—”

Dash twisted around like a pillar of smoke and hissed, harsh and threatening, his fangs bared. McGonagall froze.

“It’s all right,” Harry said hastily, and yanked Dash back down. “It’s just, how in the world can we go? He was Ron’s rat! And if he has something to do with my parents, I really want to stay. Please, Professor McGonagall,” he added, when she opened her mouth. “I don’t know anything about them except that my dad was good at Quidditch and they died defending me, not really.”

McGonagall was going to say something else, but Dumbledore’s voice said from the fire, “Yes, Minerva, what is it?”

“Fine, you may stay,” said McGonagall, with the air of someone granting permission they would regret asking for, and turned around again. A careless wave of her wand Transfigured two small trunks into chairs.

Ron settled down in one of the chairs, never taking his gaze off Pettigrew. Harry sat down in the other one and tugged Dash up beside him. Don’t hiss at anyone else.

But because of me, you got to stay, Dash said, and curled his tail around Harry’s waist in what was almost a hug. Now. Can I eat him in human form?

Chapter 8: Communing With the Snake

Chapter Text

Is he ever going to give you an answer, or is he just going to sit there smoothing down his beard and smiling?

Harry tipped his head to the side so that his cheek brushed against Dash's scales. Not just that. See the way his eyes shifted to focus on me when I did that? He's disturbed about something.

Dash curled so that a stray coil was wrapped around Harry's neck and started squeezing lightly. Then he could say it, instead of sitting there and acting like he's going to say something any moment, but then not saying it.

Before Harry could answer, Dumbledore said, "So, Remus, you are sure this is the real Peter? And there's nothing else you want to tell me?"

Professor Lupin had been looking at Pettigrew with a fixed stare for at least as long as Dumbledore had sat behind the desk in McGonagall's office stroking his beard. Now he shivered and looked up. "It's the real Peter Pettigrew, all right," he said, and then turned around and stared at Pettigrew again.

"How did it happen?"

Harry was glad McGonagall was there. He wanted to say something, but he had no idea what to say, and he thought it was the same thing with Ron. Ron kept opening his mouth, then closing it again. He caught Harry's eye now and went a little red, and Harry tried to nod reassuringly.

"I don't know," Lupin said blankly. "I think--I thought that Sirius was the Secret-Keeper for Harry's parents. But even if Sirius is a Death Eater, too, it doesn't make any sense that he would have hunted Peter down then." He shivered again and abruptly turned to Dumbledore with an expression that Harry thought was a little pathetic. "Unless Peter was a spy? Like--like other people were said to be?"

Who are those other people? Dash asked, and stroked Harry's earlobe with his tongue again. But no one was really paying attention to them at the moment, so no one was disturbed.

"No," said Dumbledore, and at this voice, Pettigrew cowered and put his arms over his head. "Peter was not a spy." He leaned in. "Unless Peter explains it to us, then it seems I will just have to make my own guesses."

Harry waited--he thought they all waited--but the silence was full of the sound of Pettigrew breathing fast, and nothing else. Dumbledore finally straightened up and made a sighing sound.

"I think that Sirius Black was still the original Secret-Keeper," he whispered. "I was there during most of the discussions James and Lily held, when they were preparing to hide." He turned abruptly to Harry. "You were there, too, Harry. So young, with the way you reached out and tried to play with my wand."

Harry tried to smile back, but he knew it was shaky. Dash made a noise in his head that resembled his fangs scraping down bone--and Harry wasn't sure that he wanted to know more about why that noise seemed so familiar. He thinks he's going to win you over now? He ought to know that I'm on your shoulder, and he's not going to do anything so ridiculous.

Harry chose not to respond. It was a glimpse of his childhood he was getting from Dumbledore, and there was still a man huddled over there who was involved, somehow, in his parents' deaths.

"And James gave several good reasons for Sirius being the Secret-Keeper," Dumbledore continued. "He was James's best friend, and there was no way that he would turn to Voldemort--" Harry did have to admire how Dumbledore ignored the way Lupin shivered and McGonagall flinched and Pettigrew moaned and Ron jumped out of his chair "--because of his dislike of the Dark Arts. He had conflicts with his family, the Blacks, over being Dark, and ran away to live with James as soon as he could."

Harry felt as though he couldn't be more attentive. It was like his ears were growing, stretching towards Dumbledore. He knew his eyes were wide. He could sit here for the rest of his life and listen.

He just wanted to know.

Then you shall, said Dash, and nothing more. Harry decided that Dash must have accepted they had to listen to Dumbledore for right now, and decided to wait.

"But I suspect that Sirius, who was always making plans and coming up with pranks that James knew nothing about--" Lupin bent his head, although Dumbledore didn't look at him "--came up with another brilliant idea. He must have told James that too many people would suspect Sirius as his Secret-Keeper, because they were best friends. And there was a reason that they did not want to make Remus their Secret-Keeper." Dumbledore turned to Remus. "Was that the way it happened, Remus?"

"I never knew anything about how Peter came to be involved," Lupin whispered, and it sounded as though he were gasping for breath. "But yes, I knew Sirius and James distrusted me. They thought I was going to become Dark more easily because You-Know-Who was holding out incentives for people like me to join him. They didn't feel safe asking me about that. They just assumed." And Remus sealed his lips.

"People like him?" Ron whispered to Harry. "What does that mean? I'm getting sick of secrets."

Harry nodded, but didn't say anything. He was sick of secrets, too, but he didn't want to interrupt when Dumbledore or Lupin or someone was finally going to tell them what was really going on.

It is good that I can speak to you and not be heard, Dash said, abruptly enough to make Harry jump. You are too trusting. You think they'll tell you the truth now, when they haven't bothered to do that so far?

Harry covered one of Dash's scales with his hand and listened harder. Yes, all right, everyone from the Dursleys on up hadn't told him the truth about his parents, but he had to know what they said before he could work on separating the truth from the lies.

"So," said Dumbledore, and turned back to look at Pettigrew. His eyes were sad, but he had started stroking his beard again. "My guess is that Sirius urged James and Lily to take Peter as their Secret-Keeper instead. Peter had none of the fearsome reputation among the Death Eaters that Sirius and James already did as daring fighters. And he didn't have the closeness to James, either. Sirius probably thought no one would suspect he was the Secret-Keeper."

Pettigrew bowed his head further and further, until his nose was touching the floor. He was sniffling so hard that Harry was surprised the floor wasn't covered with bogies. But he still didn't look up.

"How can we tell for certain without Veritaserum, Albus?" McGonagall asked.

"We cannot legally use it, Minerva," said Dumbledore. Harry wondered why not, but he didn't get a chance to think about it for long. "But if I am not wrong in my suspicions, there is someone else who can tell us the truth--provided we have him here and calm enough that he can respond rationally."

Dumbledore looked at Lupin. Lupin looked at the floor.

"If there was one unknown Animagus among your friends," said Dumbledore, and Harry thought he was speaking gently, the way Aunt Marge spoke to Ripper, "then there may have been more. And Peter was the least in power. What were the others?"

Lupin sounded as if breathing was painful when he answered. "James was a stag. He always said that he needed to be fast to keep up with the rest of us."

My father was a Stag Animagus. Harry vowed to himself that he was always going to remember that. He was going to think of his father as a stag, probably a big black stag, with huge antlers. He was going to picture him galloping around his mum and baby Harry.

You could also ask Lupin about what color he was and what he looked like, since he seems to know, Dash said gently.

Harry ignored him for the moment. He could do that, but right now he just wanted to think about his father being big and swift and protective.

"And Sirius?" Dumbledore had reached out and put a hand on Lupin's shoulder, as if he thought that would help him speak somehow.

"Sirius--Sirius could turn into a big black dog," Lupin admitted, and then put his head down and gripped his face between his hands.

"Like the one I saw watching me!" Harry blurted. McGonagall turned to look at him first, and so he told her, "I've seen this dog watching me. I thought it was an ordinary dog, but now..." He looked at Lupin. "Is that why you told me to be careful?" he asked. "Because you didn't want Dash to kill the man who betrayed my parents?"

"He didn't betray them," said Lupin. His face was strained as he nodded at Pettigrew. "We know that now."

"Maybe," said Harry. He still thought it was strange that Sirius Black had broken away from Azkaban and tried to come to Hogwarts now, and he'd apparently been muttering about Hogwarts all the time. Why would he want to be here if he wasn't trying to kill Harry? "But you didn't know that, and you were still more concerned about him than me."

Lupin gave him a pale smile. "I wasn't, Harry. I didn't want you to become a murderer at such a young age."

I would be the murderer, not you, Dash said. And since basilisks can have no guilt for defending the person they are bonded to, there would be no guilt and no murder. You should tell him that.

Harry touched Dash on the neck, and just said, "All right." He didn't know if he actually believed Lupin, but it made things make a little more sense now.

He turned back to Pettigrew, to find the man watching him, peering at him through hands that looked like paws. Pettigrew immediately tried to duck back behind them, but Harry was pretty tired of that, so he said, "Is that true? Did you become a Death Eater and betray my parents?"

Pettigrew squeaked again, but he seemed to think it was harder to look away from Harry than it was from the other adults. "I--I n-never meant," he whispered. "I th-thought it was g-going to be all r-right. I th-thought..." He abruptly started moaning and sobbing at the same time. "The Dark Lord tortured me! I never would have done it if he hadn't tortured me!"

Lupin was giving Pettigrew a look full of dislike and something else Harry couldn't distinguish. McGonagall was the one who said crisply, "You would never have done it if you weren't a coward, you mean," and turned to Dumbledore. "I know a spell that will tell us the location of any Animagus on the grounds. I don't often use it because there's no need and I would be blinded by my own glow anyway, but will you watch and see whether the spell will lead us to Black? It should look like a trail of blue light on the floor."

"We will look," said Dumbledore seriously, and nodded to Lupin, who was looking up now. He still didn't look at Harry, though. Harry looked at him instead, and wondered about something else.

Did he know that Black could get in because he was roaming around disguised as a dog? Would the castle even keep him out if he was an animal? Probably not. It didn't keep Pettigrew out. And the Dementors couldn't find him.

Harry gazed down at his hands. He was sick and a little light-headed. Lupin was his parents' friend, but he had decided it was more important to keep secrets from Harry so he could help someone who he thought had betrayed Harry's parents. Maybe they could have caught Black right away if Lupin had told them about him being a dog Animagus.

And then we wouldn't have found out about this, Dash said, pointing his nose at Pettigrew. Pettigrew huddled back into the corner of the room, as far as he could get from McGonagall or Harry or Dash or anyone else. It worked out for the best.

Harry nodded, but he was feeling a little numb. It was all so many secrets and adults lying to him, he thought. When he came to the wizarding world, he'd thought that would change. Hagrid had told him the truth about his parents, and certainly lots of people had been honest with him about Voldemort and when he got in trouble. And they'd been honest about not wanting him to have Dash.

But they wanted to put his life in danger so they could protect the secrets of mass murderers.

He wasn't.

Lupin didn't know that, Harry snapped back, and Dash kept silent as blue light flared around McGonagall and then sped away from her. It surrounded Pettigrew, who stared at his hands in dread, and then under the door. McGonagall looked around, but Harry knew she was in the middle of the light and couldn't see it.

Dumbledore stood up and opened the door, keeping his wand casually trained on Pettigrew. Well, after another look, Harry didn't think it was casual. He stood up.

"Where are you going, Harry?" Lupin turned to him quickly.

"I want to go with the Headmaster and find Black," said Harry. He thought he'd done well. He'd even remembered the Headmaster's title, and he didn't always do that.

Lupin shook his head. "There's a chance that Sirius is crazy and doesn't remember that he's innocent. You have to stay here until we can figure out if you're in danger from him or not."

Harry just stared at him. Lupin looked away as though someone had stung him. Harry petted Dash. "I have someone with me who would die to protect me," he said, and walked out the door behind Dumbledore. He heard Ron call him, but he stayed where he was.

Dumbledore turned around when they were outside in the corridor and gave Harry a kindly look. "Wanting revenge for your parents is very natural, Harry," he said. "But you need to wait until we can bring Black in. We don't understand exactly what's going on here, and we don't want to strike without need."

"I'm coming along because I want the truth," Harry retorted, feeling stung himself.

After that, he and Dumbledore made the walk down the trail of blue light in silence.

*

It wasn't until the Slytherin first-year Severus had been tutoring in Potions so she wouldn't embarrass his House came flying back through his office door almost crying out that Severus realized something strange was going on.

He recognized the trail of blue light blazing above the stairs to the dungeon at once. It was a rarely-used spell that would lead someone straight to an Animagus. Useless in cases where the Animagus could fly or swim, of course, unless the one following the trail could do the same thing, and useless to the person who cast the spell if they were Animagi themselves, but possible to track other than that.

Severus arched his brows. He assumed Minerva had her reasons to cast the spell, and would have agents walking the trail--

Footsteps sounded above him. For reasons that he found hard to define, even to himself, Severus stepped back into the shadows and let the seekers pass him.

One was Albus, his wand held out over the trail and a soft whisper passing his lips. Severus recognized a spell that would keep the trail lit. Perhaps it had started to fade before they got this far.

And behind him came the damnable Potter boy, with the snake around his neck, as usual.

Severus took a moment to consider the situation. It was the middle of the evening, and he had no detentions to supervise. On the other hand, this surely had nothing to do with him. Perhaps Albus was giving the boy extra tutoring in Transfiguration. It would be like him to do that, when he sensed a student he favored was straying from him. If he enchanted them with knowledge, he might count them as loyal again.

But if it had nothing to do with him, that made it more fascinating to any true Slytherin.

Severus cast a Disillusionment Charm around himself before he crept after Albus and Potter. It wasn't good enough to fool Albus most of the time, but for the moment, he was intent on the trail, and didn't look behind him. Or perhaps he knew and wanted Severus there for his own reasons.

"He should be around here somewhere," Albus said, as he and the boy paused outside the entrance hall. "He wouldn't have gone far away from you."

Potter clenched a fist, but said nothing. He had his wand out, not raised. Severus would have said such things to a student of his who made the mistake that would have ensured he did not do it again. But Potter was only a student of Severus's in an Art that required no wand in the beginning stages.

And a beginner at Potions is all Potter will ever be. It irritated Severus to know that Lily's legacy of cleverness lay rotting in the boy's head, but there was no way to tap something that did not exist.

"Ah, there we are," said Albus, and cast a spell that made a light flare out from his wand in rings that concentrated themselves around each animal in the vicinity. Potter's vain basilisk seemed pleased with the effect, tilting his head as if to admire the dance of golden light on his scales.

But Severus was paying more attention to the creature he saw standing under the trees ahead of them, as if hoping that the light would fade away before they could notice it. It began to flee in the opposite direction from the castle when Albus's head turned towards it.

"Sirius Black, I presume," Albus said, and cast a spell that made a glass-like barrier spring up in front of the dog. It whipped around, growling, and Albus walked forwards with his hands held apart and his voice speaking calm words. "We know the truth now, Sirius. We've found Pettigrew, and he told us..."

Severus lost the sense of the next words under the mad pounding of the blood in his head.

Sirius Black. Sirius Black was a dog Animagus and apparently capable of sneaking onto the grounds despite Albus's reassurances that he had kept out anyone who could do that.

Sirius Black was once again receiving a fair chance from Albus, the kind of chance that he wouldn't have given to anyone else.

Sirius Black was right there, and capable of turning around and running at Potter faster than the inexperienced boy could defend himself. Albus wouldn't strike, of course, because he evidently nurtured some kind of absurd idea that Black could be redeemed, and they would have a dead Potter on their hands soon.

Severus stepped forwards, and wove his own spell. And as the great black dog turned around, Severus's cage coalesced around it, formed of steel and iron that no dog or wizard could break, no matter how much they might try. The dog's howl a second later, the way that he flung himself against the bars, said he was trying mightily.

Albus turned around and sighed at him. "Severus..."

Severus paid no attention. Either way, whether there was some story here or not, Sirius Black had to be captured. And there was a boy standing there whose eyes were darting back and forth between Black and Albus as though he couldn't decide who was the greater threat.

And there was a snake around Potter's neck who was watching Severus with something like fixed interest.

It could be no bad plan for Severus to endear himself both to the boy and his snake.

Severus moved forwards with a smile he knew was skull-like, but that didn't bother him. "Yes, Albus," he murmured, although Albus hadn't asked him. "By all means, let us see what Black has to say for himself."

Chapter 9: Pale With the Knowledge

Chapter Text

I think you need to calm down. Your heartbeat sounds like a rabbit’s.

There wasn’t much Harry could say to that. He knew he should calm down, and not because of his heartbeat reminding Dash of prey. He thought he should calm down because he would fall over and die of a heart attack if he didn’t, and then he would miss what was going to happen next. 

Who Sirius Black really was, what the big black dog curled obstinately in the bottom of the cage looked like when he was transformed back into a man, what was going to happen to Pettigrew, the truth, what Ron would say and whether anyone was going to reassure him that Pettigrew hadn’t spied on him pissing, whether Snape would manage to glare a hole through Dumbledore…

If you want to know what happens next, then watch Snape, Dash commanded. I think he’s the one who’s going to act next. Dumbledore is just the one talking, and as we all know, there are more important creatures in the world than someone who just happens to be speaking English at the moment.

That made Harry snort and relax. A few of the adults, not used to his private conversations with Dash yet, glanced at him, but then they went right back to looking at Dumbledore. Ron actually gave Harry a wan smile. Maybe the snort reminded him there were normal things in the world, too.

There’s not much less normal than waking up and finding out your pet rat is an Animagus, Harry thought, and punched Ron lightly on the shoulder. Ron relaxed even more.

The adults in McGonagall’s office—McGonagall, Lupin, Pettigrew still in bonds in a corner, Snape, Dumbledore, and Harry supposed he had to count Black, if only as an adult dog—were mostly tense. But Snape was opening his mouth, and Dash bobbed his head for a second, a human gesture he liked. His tongue flicked out again. He smells of anger. A good, clean scent. It usually means someone is going to kill something.

That’s not a good scent! Harry protested, a little horrified, but one of Dash’s eyes turned towards him under its lid, and he knew the answer to that objection before Dash spoke it. 

It is when you might get to eat the dead thing.

You prefer to kill your own prey anyway, Harry thought grumpily back to Dash at the same second as Snape said, “All of these platitudes about friendship and the rest of it are beside the point, Albus. Surely our mission here is to find out why Black managed to transform into a dog, and how. And what do with him now.”

“We must let him tell his story, of course, my dear boy,” said Dumbledore, beaming at Snape, and Harry thought Snape liked being called “my dear boy” about as much as Harry liked it when Vernon was trying to show off before a stranger and called him “nephew.” “But first, we must let Sirius know that it’s safe enough to transform back.”

“If he doesn’t know that, he’s mad, and can be of no help to us anyway,” said Snape, and turned around to sneer at Black.

“Or perhaps you could make your cage larger,” Dumbledore suggested, so gently that Harry glanced at him again. He didn’t think Dumbledore’s eyes were gentle, but it was hard to tell. He didn’t think he had ever heard Dumbledore when he wasn’t being gentle, for one thing, and for another, so what? What did it matter if he had to tell Snape that the cage was too small? That was the kind of error Harry would probably have made, if he was the one casting the cage.

That’s another spell you can learn, said Dash thoughtfully. Then you could trap some of my prey when it tried to escape.

Harry didn’t even have time to retort. Snape had turned around and enlarged the cage without a word. All the dog did was snarl at them.

McGonagall took a step forwards and studied him. “I could force Sirius to reveal himself the way I did with Pettigrew, of course,” she said, as though someone had demanded to know why she hadn’t already. Harry thought all the adults were sounding uncertain, except Dumbledore. Well, and Pettigrew, but that was because Pettigrew was sniveling. “But I would rather not.”

Harry stood up. Immediately everyone in the room was focused on him. It sort of made him dizzy. Why?

He walked up to the cage and stood there staring at the dog. It was definitely the same one he had seen watching him on Privet Drive.

“Listen,” Harry said, staring at him. “You’re Sirius Black, and an Animagus, and my godfather.” That was still strange to say. Dash shifted his weight, and Harry remembered and continued speaking, the way he had first wanted to, instead of getting overwhelmed by the strangeness. “And I don’t know if you really betrayed my parents or if you and Pettigrew did it together or if it was just him. I’ll never know if you don’t change back. Because he’ll never tell the truth.” He didn’t glance at Pettigrew, just sort of flickered his finger at him. “Are you going to change back or not?”

Black edged one paw forwards, then another. Then Dash moved his head so he could see around Harry’s neck, and Black froze and snarled at him.

“Don’t mind him,” Harry said. “He won’t kill anyone I don’t tell him to.”

Except people who are harming you, Dash said helpfully. Or currently in rat form.

The dog went on peering at Dash. Harry was a little lost. He didn’t know what Black had against Dash—how could he have anything, when Dash had just hatched a few weeks ago and Black had gone to prison years ago?—but he repeated, “He’s my basilisk, and he won’t kill you. Dumbledore has mirrors that will stop him. See?” He pointed at one of the silver objects hovering overhead.

Why did you tell him that? Dash curled sulkily like a huge garland, dangling himself in two roughly equal halves over Harry’s neck. You make me sound so much less impressive than I actually am.

Harry just petted Dash, and watched. Whatever Black’s mysterious problem was, they weren’t going to get any information on that until he changed back, either.

Finally, Black sort of shivered and transformed. He kept his head bowed, and McGonagall immediately conjured some clothes onto him, too. Black kept staring down as if he was examining his pale arms and stunned not to find fur. Then he took a deep breath and looked up.

Harry winced. The flash of his dark eyes was…sort of insane.

“It was Peter,” said Black, his voice a rasp. “It was all him.” He looked at Harry. “And I don’t like snakes.”

“Not you, too,” said Harry. “I tell everyone that he won’t hurt them, and they still want to take him away. And then they’re just getting used to him, and you’re someone else who’s not used to him and wants him to go away.” He touched Dash when he would have lifted his head. He wasn’t sure that was a good idea right now. Black was so mad he might think Dash was striking at him. “Can’t you just accept him?”

Black was staring intently at Harry, and didn’t respond for a minute. No one else spoke up, either. Harry was sort of surprised. He knew why Ron didn’t, and Pettigrew was crying into his hands by now, but he had thought Dumbledore would have some wise words, or Snape would insult Harry’s intelligence, or McGonagall would take over and tell him what to do next, or Lupin would do something that proved why he was a good professor.

Maybe they don’t know how to handle this any more than I do. They probably haven’t had someone turn out to be an Animagus and innocent of a mass murder before.

“You look so much like James,” Black said softly. “But James didn’t grow up in the Muggle world. James never had to run away from home. James wasn’t a Parselmouth.” He looked back at Dash, and there was that feral expression on his face that made it hard to understand him again. “James would never have tolerated a basilisk that near him.”

“I’m not my dad, point made,” Harry said. “But one reason I can’t act more like him is that I don’t know anything about him except the little bits and pieces other people have told me. Can you tell me more about him? I won’t give up Dash—” The soft flick of Dash’s tongue across his ear and the way he coiled his tail around Harry’s wrist made it clear that Dash wasn’t about to give him up, either. “But maybe if I knew more about my dad, I would understand more about the differences between us.”

Black closed his eyes. His eyelids were trembling. “I never thought I would get a chance to do more than kill Peter,” he whispered. “This way, I could be your godfather. If the Ministry accepts everything and I get my innocence established. Would you like that, Harry?”

“Of course I would,” Harry said, and wondered if that was another reason Black had been reluctant to change back into a human. Did he think Harry would reject him because of what he’d been suspected of doing?

“But you don’t really know me.” Black was staring at him again, greedy and longing.

“Anyone would be better than the Dursleys,” Harry said honestly. “But I still want to get to know you. Just like I want to get to know my dad. Can you tell me about him?”

*

That was the point where Severus decided to intervene, because soon this would turn into a festival of weeping and good memories of James Potter, who needed no one else to idolize him.

But he had to admit, so far he had been just as fascinated as the others, though not because of the sentimental memories of friendship that paralyzed Lupin, or the tears he could see gathering at the corners of Minerva’s eyes, or the presumably dotty plans that must have crossed Dumbledore’s mind. He was seeing another side to the boy, one that he hadn’t known about before.

Potter had manipulated Black into transforming. He was essentially manipulating him by promising to act more like his bloody father if Black would trade him some truth. Whether anyone else saw it in the same way, Severus honestly did not care. What interested him was that Potter was more than the shallow puddle of scarlet and gold obsession that Severus had taken him for.

Well, he had known that from the minute the basilisk had bonded to the boy. But being a Parselmouth was one thing, and having a talent for manipulation was another. He had never thought about it before. The boy got around the professors and broke the rules more than he should have, but Severus had thought that was simply coasting on the dazzling comet trail of his reputation.

How much of it was manipulation that he apparently knows how to exercise? And how long was I blinded, not looking at it, not acknowledging it, not recognizing it if I did see it? 

Severus shook his head. For someone who had his reputation as well as his experiences, that lapse was unforgivable.

Black had settled more comfortably on his haunches in the cage and opened his mouth. He seemed prone to reciting more tales of James the Sainted Potter, all because the boy had asked him to. And Potter went on gazing at Black, one hand resting on the scales of his snake. If that presented an incongruous picture, then perhaps Black no longer noticed, as long as he got the chance to talk about the man he’d worshipped.

It was up to Severus, of course, to interrupt.

“Surely the stories can wait until after the explanation?” he said coldly, and jerked his head at Pettigrew. “Has anyone summoned the Aurors? They can use the Veritaserum that you refuse to employ, Headmaster.”

Dumbledore gave him a mild, speaking look. Severus simply looked back, unimpressed. He didn’t know what the Headmaster was trying to prove, but he did know that he was not going to sit here and let Black play the martyr.

“I had hoped to have this handled and clarified before the arrival of the Aurors,” said Dumbledore. “It is highly likely they wouldn’t listen to us, or understand the complexities of the situation, and simply march Sirius off to be Kissed. Especially,” he added, with a small frown on his face, “given Cornelius’s involvement.”

The Minister did have an irrational terror of Black, but Severus thought more of Dumbledore’s reluctance came from his desire to hold onto control of the situation at all costs. He turned back to Black. “Perhaps you would explain, then, since Pettigrew seems unlikely to.”

Black snapped his teeth in a way that made Severus wonder why he had never seen the feral beast hiding inside the man before this. “I was going to explain what his parents are like to a little orphan kid who knows nothing about them,” he said coldly. “That’s more important.”

“No, Sirius, I’m afraid it isn’t,” said Minerva, and Severus was grateful to note that at least a few people were recovering from the trance that Potter seemed to have cast all of them into. “We do need to get this cleared up as soon as possible. For one thing, the Dementors might try to enter the school now that you’re here in human form.”

It was clear that Black hadn’t thought of that. He grew pale enough to look like a Dementor’s shadow himself, and then bowed his head.

“Fine.” He spoke as though someone had taken a meat hook and was yanking the words out of him like gobbets of flesh. Severus sighed, a little sad he couldn’t actually do that. “I was the Secret-Keeper. I suspected Remus. I knew no one would suspect Peter, and so I suggested that James make the switch. I said was the one who killed him because I really did. If I hadn’t suggested Peter, James would never have gone through with it.”

Then his head flew up, and his eyes fastened on Pettigrew in a way that made Severus understand the hatred Black was really capable of, against which everything that he had ever expressed for Severus was a pale and ineffectual shadow. Pettigrew cowered back into the corner. Severus was sure that he would have fallen down if he wasn’t already sitting.

“And he was already a bloody Death Eater,” Black whispered. His voice was on the edge of raving, and his hands had curled around the bars of Severus’s conjured cage. If he noticed how deeply they were cutting into his palms, making a slow slick of blood gather on the steel, he showed no sign of stopping because of that. “So he betrayed them to You-Know-Who, and when I figured it out and went to hunt him down, he shouted that accusation, and cast the spell that killed the Muggles, and cut off his finger, and escaped like the rat he is into the sewers.”

Lupin shifted. There was a tautness in his face that Severus had never seen before. A moment later, he sneered at himself. As though I regularly monitor the werewolf’s expressions.

“Then it happened that way?” Lupin whispered. “A way that makes sense of everything, and means you’re not a traitor?”

Interesting that he’s less worried about exchanging one traitor friend for another, Severus thought.

“It happened that way, I swear it.” Black shook his head back and forth. “And I kept myself sane in Azkaban because I could turn into a dog, and the Dementors ignore animals. It’s like they don’t see them.” He reached out and touched Potter’s face through the bars of the cage. Potter stood there and let him do it. His own expression was oddly blank, and he kept one hand on the scales of his basilisk as if that would give him all the truth he needed, without having to hear it from Black. 

“Then I saw a photograph of Wormtail in his rat form on that kid’s shoulder.” Black jerked his head at Weasley, who jumped as though he was far from grateful at this sudden notice from an adult in the room. “And I realized he was at Hogwarts, and he might still be able to do something to harm Harry. We’ve all heard that rumor about You-Know-Who coming back. Maybe it’s just a rumor. I couldn’t risk it.”

Once again, he turned melting eyes on Potter. Potter remained blank for the oddest, longest moment, and then handed Black a hesitant smile.

“You came because I was in danger?” Potter asked.

“Yes,” said Black at once. “It was my responsibility as a godfather.”

The basilisk hissed something. Potter hissed back. Black blinked and shifted around uneasily. Even Lupin looked as though he would rather that Potter hadn’t done that.

How are they going to handle a godson who’s much less Gryffindor than they supposed? Severus thought. He would think that, he would cling to the small spar of discomfort in what seemed an ocean of good fortune for two people he hated, again. He would not let himself despair, because he was not that sort of person. He would look at what he had not noticed, and what might surprise others as it had surprised him. How are they going to handle that bloody great basilisk, I wonder? 

*

I still want to know, said Dash in Harry’s head.

I know, said Harry, and stretched his arm out along Dash’s back so that Dash could get even more warmth than he could from just coiling up on Harry’s shoulders. But I think we need to give him a chance to prove himself.

Dash settled down with a sulky shake of his tail. Harry sighed. He had asked why Black had run after Pettigrew if he cared so much about his responsibilities as a godfather. He should have stayed with Harry and taken care of him, Dash had said. It was what Dash would do.

Harry said that Black wasn’t a basilisk, which was true, but Dash only took that to mean he was less equipped to be a proper godfather, either.

Harry didn’t know. His head ached. He wanted to know the truth, and he wanted to know the stories about his parents Black had promised, and he wanted the day to end. Really, too much had happened already.

“Shall we call the Aurors, Albus?” McGonagall had turned and looked at Headmaster Dumbledore. “We do have a story to offer them now, a story that might prevent the Minister from reaching for the Dementors at once.”

Dumbledore stood there still and quiet for a moment. Harry didn’t know why. But he was starting to think he didn’t know the reason behind a lot of what adults did. He had always thought it was just the Dursleys he didn’t understand; the professors had seemed pretty straightforward to him since he came to Hogwarts, except Snape with his weird grudge. But now Dumbledore was acting strange, too.

There’s a lot you don’t understand, said Dash, and he gently tapped Harry’s left hand with his tail. You need to learn more about politics. It seems that lots of people think you’re important or strange because of your name. So you should learn more so they can’t take advantage of you.

Harry nodded slowly. He supposed that was true. He hated the thought of spending too much time around the Minister or people like Lucius Malfoy, but on the other hand, he hated attention and Voldemort, too, and he had to put up with them.

At least he didn’t have to worry about someone trying to kill him right now.

He looked at Black, and found him once again looking at Harry the way no one had ever looked—well, no adult had ever looked. Ron and Hermione had done it sometimes. That look said Harry was interesting and he wanted to spend time with him.

I’ve looked at you that way, said Dash. And honestly, I’m the one that you should trust the most, because you can hear my mind and you know I’m not plotting against you.

Harry smiled up at Dash. But you’re not an adult, so I wasn’t including you in that group, either.

Dash considered this, then curled his tongue in a way he had told Harry was more elegant than a human sniff. Harry hadn’t bothered pointing out that a snake couldn’t imitate a human sniff anyway. All right. But you should think of me first, at the beginning of every list.

Harry grinned again. Dash could relax him, and make it sound as if everything would be all right.

And maybe it would be. Dumbledore was nodding decisively. “I trust that you won’t mind remaining in the cage for a while longer, Sirius?” he asked, with a faint smile in Black’s direction. “It might reassure the Minister if he seems to think you’re confined.”

“Yeah, I can do that,” said Black, and sprawled back on his elbows and heels. He was kind of like a dog even when he was in human form, Harry thought. He turned his head and fixed his eyes on Harry. “Can I come and see you when this is all over, kid? And you’ll still want to live with me?”

Harry nodded. His throat was thick. “And Dash can come and live with me, too?” He wanted to live with his godfather, but he wasn’t going to do it if he couldn’t have Dash.

Black paused, then smiled reluctantly. “Yeah. I suppose I’ll eventually get used to having a snake around.”

“In the meantime,” said McGonagall, sounding so much like a professor that Harry jumped and glanced at her, “Mr. Weasley and Mr. Potter have studying to return to.” She opened the door to her office with a flick of her wand. “They should leave now.”

“But nothing’s been resolved!” Ron protested. Harry silently agreed. On the other hand, he was sort of grateful for an excuse to leave and get away from all the silent emotions swirling in the room. He needed to think about this.

“You will learn the results later,” said McGonagall, and maybe something in Ron’s face made her soften a bit. “I promise that we would not keep them from you. You deserve to know.”

With that, even Ron could be contented, and Harry accompanied him down the steps. Dash dropped and slithered beside him instead of staying on his shoulder like usual. Harry thought it was because he felt exhausted and was stumbling a bit.

“Wow,” said Ron, when they had walked down one set of steps and were waiting for the next staircase they needed to swing around. “What a day, mate!”

Harry nodded. Dash reached up and gently touched his plume to Harry’s face, brushing it under his eyes.

It’ll all be better. You’ll see.

Chapter 10: From a Distance

Chapter Text

Draco didn’t know what the—the fuck was going on with Potter since he got the snake, but he was coming to suspect that he was about to be left out of it.

He was already sick of that.

There were whispers all through the school the next day when Professor Lupin didn’t show up for class, and the whispers said that he had been summoned to the Ministry to testify somehow in the trial of Sirius Black. Draco had closely questioned the fifth-year Slytherin who’d told him that, in an effort to understand why Sirius Black was getting a trial now when everyone knew what he’d done, but the fifth-year was regrettably a half-blood and from an independent family.

“Go do your own gossiping, Malfoy,” had been all the girl said when Draco tried to demand more accurate information, and turned back to her own conversation.

Draco scowled.

He scowled even more at the next announcement, from the Head Table as the students started to leave lunch, that Potions classes were canceled for the afternoon, as the Ministry had also requested Professor Snape’s presence.

“I suspect that you will enjoy the holiday,” said Dumbledore, twinkling at everyone as though he fooled any student in Slytherin, and then sat down and continued on with his meal. His robes were a particularly nauseating shade of orange-pink today, Draco saw indignantly.

No, we won’t, Draco thought, and stomped out of the Great Hall. Vince and Gregory were behind him as usual, but Theodore was also falling into line with him, and that was unusual.

“Do you know anything about this?” Draco asked, although he made sure to keep his tone more polite than it had been with the fifth-year. Theodore was one of Draco’s yearmates, not older, but his father trusted him with some secrets that Lucius Malfoy hadn’t seen the light about showing to Draco yet.

Theodore nodded, but paused as some Gryffindors went by before saying, under his breath, “Apparently they captured—well, Professor Snape captured—Sirius Black on the grounds yesterday. Only my father says that they don’t think he did it anymore. Something about Peter Pettigrew being alive, and the real criminal.”

Draco gaped before he could stop himself. Then, as Theodore glanced sideways at him in amusement, he tried to smooth his face out and look as cool and calm and knowing as possible. 

“Of course he’s the real criminal, if he’s alive,” Draco said, as calmly as he could. “He probably slaughtered all those Muggles.”

“That’s what my father’s spies in the Ministry told him,” Theodore murmured, and then moved ahead of Draco. Draco had meant to ask what Lupin had to do with all this, if Professor Snape was the one who had captured Black, but Theodore’s leaving put an end to that. On the other hand, Theodore tended to do that when he had no secrets left to share, so Draco wasn’t as put out as he might have been.

And why haven’t they summoned Potter? You’d think he would have been jumping up and down to go.

Cradling his wounded arm, Draco managed to draw near Potter. It was difficult, as they didn’t have a class right now due to the canceling of Potions and Potter and his friends were walking as fast as they could for Gryffindor Tower. Potter was stroking his basilisk and alternating between English words with his friends and Parseltongue words with Dash.

What an undignified name, Draco thought, not for the first time. But right now he had more than the hope of a basilisk of his own for wanting to get an in with Potter. He also had the hope of gossip.

“Potter!” he called, and hoped he sounded friendly. “Wait up!”

Potter turned to glance at him, but while his face wasn’t angry, Draco had the distinct impression that was because he was thinking of something else, not because he had deeply considered Draco’s merits and come to the obvious conclusion. “What is it, Malfoy? I’m busy.”

“I want to know about Sirius Black and all this business about him being captured and Professor Snape being called to testify,” said Draco, abandoning his attempt at friendliness. If Potter could be business-like, Draco could, too, even though it wasn’t the way he’d prefer to act towards Potter. “Why aren’t you with them?”

Potter shrugged. “They said they would tell me the results as soon as the Aurors get done trying Pettigrew.” And then he tried to turn around and leave again, as though he hadn’t just told Draco something even juicier than Theodore had. At least he knew Theodore’s sources. He couldn’t believe that Professor Snape would just confide in Potter like that!

He reached out one hand to grip Potter’s shoulder.

The basilisk hissed.

Draco found himself stopping all motion. And it wasn’t that the basilisk had paralyzed him—his lids were still over his eyes. It was just, one sound of that hiss and you just wanted to stand still for a little while, that was all. Draco thought even his father would have stood still, although that would be in respect and not fear.

“Don’t touch me,” said Potter, turning back around and sending Draco a little frown. “Dash doesn’t want you to.”

“Fine,” said Draco. He was proud of himself for shaking off the intense desire to keep standing still, and addressing Potter like an adult instead. “I won’t touch you. But how do you know so much? The whole school’s humming and no one knows, so how do you know?”

For some strange reason, Potter smiled. “One instant you think I ought to be at the center of it because Sirius is my godfather, and the next instant you’re wondering how I know?” The basilisk swayed against him, and Potter absently stroked its neck, the way that Draco had seen some children (not himself, of course) tap a lucky quill. “You’re not consistent, Malfoy. And consistency is a virtue, you know.”

Potter was imitating his father. He had to be. It was a lesson that Lucius tried to teach Draco all the time. Draco scowled. “Don’t make fun of me.”

Potter shrugged. “Well, I hope that the newspapers and the Aurors are going to tell the truth this time, so it’ll be out in a few days, anyway. Pettigrew was a rat Animagus. He was—hiding near me and spying on me.” For some reason, Potter turned red, but Draco didn’t know why he would be lying about this. Like he said, it would be all out in the papers if it was true, and right now, Draco was listening with breathless attention that had to gratify Potter. “Dash smelled him, and said he smelled human. So we caught Sirius, and it turned out that the reason he came here was to protect me from Pettigrew.”

Weasley pulled on Potter’s arm and whispered something. Potter nodded. “Right. See you, Malfoy.” 

And off they jogged. Draco stood there with his mouth open, wanting to ask more, but also not wanting to push his luck in case he destroyed the unusual good mood that had made Potter tell him that much in the first place.

Of course, that only sparked more thoughts. How had Black known about Pettigrew? Where had Pettigrew hidden all these years? If he had come here to spy on Potter on his own, did that mean the Dark Lord was coming back?

But eventually, Draco managed to shrug off his questions and trot back to the Slytherin common room, smug. He knew even more than Theodore did, now. He could sit on one of the couches and hint at people, and even the independent fifth-year would come to him to hear the gossip. He would be more popular than usual for a little while.

It was almost enough to make Draco thank Potter. Or would have been if it had been combined with reassurance about when Potter would give him a basilisk egg.

*

“Did you have to tell him even that much, mate?” Ron flopped back on his bed and stretched out his arms as if he wanted to embrace the ceiling. “He’s going to run around all smug and using it for gossip, and he’ll laugh his arse off when he finds out that Pettigrew was Scabbers.”

“Dash said it was okay,” Harry muttered, as neutrally as he could, rooting in his trunk for more of his school robes. He’d spilled a glass of pumpkin juice on the ones he was wearing when Dumbledore had said that Potions was canceled for the day. And he’d spilled it on Dash, too. Dash had complained about that vigorously as they walked from the Great Hall to the Tower.

“Dash said what?” Ron spun around onto his elbows with his feet dangling off the bed. Harry frowned a little. Dash was also long enough to reach the foot of the bed, but Harry wouldn’t be, even if he was lying closer to it than Ron was. He hoped he would be, too, someday, but it didn’t seem likely.

“He said that Malfoy didn’t smell aggressive.” Harry shook his head a little when Ron stared at him. “Don’t look at me like that. I was surprised, too. But that’s what he said.”

And I was right, Dash said, and looped his body around the pillow as he watched Harry take out the new robes. He didn’t attack you, did he?

Harry looked at him in surprise. Then why did you hiss at him when he tried to touch me?

Dash looped his head upside-down, which was something he often did when he had seen a contradiction in his own actions and didn’t want to admit it. I meant that he didn’t try to attack you after all.

Harry laughed and went to the bathroom to put on the new robes. Dash didn’t come with him. While he adored the warm water of the shower, he didn’t like the cold tile, and usually refused to join Harry there unless he was actually going to wash. Luckily, their bond didn’t seem to be affected by distance.

Why aren’t you angry about all the times that Malfoy harmed me in the past? Harry asked, and took off his robes and shook them out. No, he would have to use a harsh Cleaning Charm on them to wear them again. He would just have to use the new ones.

Because I wasn’t there to see it. Dash yawned, the sound audible to Harry at that distance. But when I see him getting ready to attack you, then I would be ready to bite him.

Harry rolled his eyes and pulled on the new robes, then walked over to the mirror to adjust his tie. I told you, you can’t bite anyone.

Now that the Headmaster has made my poison less deadly, I can. Some people need to be taught a lesson.

Harry paused in drawing his knot through. The way Dash had said those last words sounded…serious. Who are you talking about? 

Dash didn’t reply for a moment or two, which only concerned Harry more. Dash? he asked, and finished up with the tie. He wanted to be out there and with his basilisk as soon as possible.

You don’t need to sound as though I’m going to sneak out of your bed and bite anyone I encounter, Dash said sulkily. I’m saving my venom for when I need it.

I’m just worried that you’ll decide that’s during a time when I’m not around. Harry hurried out of the bathroom and lay on the bed next to Dash, accepting it as the basilisk carefully pushed the tip of his tongue into Harry’s neck, gathering up the scent. Or you might decide to use it on Sirius or something if he’s annoying.

Dash lashed his tail. I will if he changes his mind about you and I living together.

Harry stroked the soft, small scales on the back of Dash’s neck, where they came together neatly enough that there were almost chinks between them. Dash tossed his head back and flicked his tongue out in what looked like drunken bliss. From his bed, Ron rolled his eyes.

“You’re worse than Neville with Trevor, I swear,” he muttered, and turned away to gather up his chess set. “Fancy a game?”

Harry didn’t, actually, but he reckoned it would make Ron feel better. He was still tender about Scabbers, and no wonder. “Sure,” he said, and scrambled to the end of the bed, while Dash arranged himself so that his head was in Harry’s lap and most of his body was tucked under the covers for warmth.

You can’t always bite people, you know, Harry told Dash as he stroked behind his plume this time. He was such a terrible chess player anyway that having a conversation with his basilisk while he played Ron didn’t change things all that much. What would have happened if you’d just swallowed Scabbers the way you wanted to? Then we wouldn’t have the proof that Sirius was innocent, and I wouldn’t be going to live with him.

But then I could have bitten the Muggles. 

Harry snorted and leaned forwards to move his knight in what was probably the wrong direction. But it was worth it to watch Ron’s face light up.

*

Severus grimaced and swallowed the antidote to the Veritaserum. The eyes of the Wizengamot members who sat along the gallery railing were too speculative already. At least he had not been forced to confess every detail of his childhood interaction with the Marauders. There had been a few people interested in that, personal enemies or past parents of students, but Fudge had taken control of the questioning quickly and moved it in the right direction. Fudge was a competent politician when he had someone to tell him what to do.

Dumbledore, although he wasn’t here now, was the one who had set Fudge on this particular path. And Fudge was still nodding and rubbing his hands. Even his usual animosity for Dumbledore, Severus thought, had been driven aside by his relief at having a clear path to follow through a confusing situation, and the thought of the scandal that might attach to the Ministry otherwise. They never had given Sirius Black a proper trial, Dumbledore had told Fudge thoughtfully right before he departed…

Now, Fudge held up his hands as though appealing to someone, and murmured to the member of the Wizengamot beside him, “We’ve heard all the testimony?”

“Yes,” said that woman, a white-haired witch named Abigail Marcus, and leaned out as if she wanted to get a better look both at Pettigrew, in the prisoner’s chair, and at Sirius Black, who sat not far away with an Auror guard beside him. “And I must admit, it makes things easier, knowing that someone who doesn’t like Black is still prepared to testify that there was injustice done to him.”

Severus kept his sneer to himself. This wasn’t Hogwarts, where he would get away with it. And he wondered if any of those fools knew that he was here only because Albus had ordered him to be.

Well, yes, and there was the potential chance of courting Potter’s goodwill. But Severus was both unsure that this gesture was enough to win it and that Potter would really become as powerful as Severus thought he might. That was only a suspicion.

“The decision should be clear, then,” said Fudge, and glanced from side to side as though he was prepared to throw out anyone who disagreed. Again, Severus concealed a sneer. In reality, the man was as soft and yielding as the foodstuff he was named after. “Who agrees that, based on the testimony of those parties involved and our witnesses, that Peter Pettigrew was guilty of the treachery against James and Lily Potter?”

So many hands went up that someone could potentially hide amongst them with their hand down. Still, Severus doubted many would. The evidence was too clear, and any secretly loyal Death Eaters—like Lucius Malfoy—would vote to save their own skins no matter what their sympathy with Pettigrew.

“And who agrees that Sirius Black should go free?” asked Fudge, and once again turned around, while beside him, Marcus counted the hands and scribbled down the numbers with a quill that was enchanted to move fast.

Again, hands rose. Severus glanced at Black. He was looking from face to face as if a little dazed, one hand rising to touch the stubble on his chin. Possibly there were tears filling his eyes, although Severus was far enough away not to be able to see them easily.

So the mutt wins after all, Severus thought, and swallowed a draught of bitterness greater than many of his own potions.

But it would damage him more to let it out. For one thing, he had already testified that he believed Black was innocent; he had been convinced by Pettigrew’s stuttered words, by the fact that it was too great a coincidence for Pettigrew to survive and also to bear a Dark Mark, and even by what Black had said, Merlin help him. He would not turn his back on something he could not disown.

There was also still the fact of Potter.

Severus did not know that Potter would change the game between the Dark Lord and Dumbledore, between Dumbledore and the rest of the wizarding world, even between Severus and Black. He only thought it was possible.

He would retain that chance, the chance that he might be able to act freely someday, as long as he could.

*

“Hey, kiddo. I’m—they freed me.”

Harry flew over to Sirius and grabbed him around the waist. Dash followed at a more dignified pace, and because Harry was holding Sirius, he felt him stiffen. Harry sniffed and glanced back and forth between Sirius and his snake. “Both of you, play nice.”

All basilisk s know how to do that. Dash draped himself over Harry’s shoulders and around his waist. It’s the rest of the world that refuses to play nice with us.

“It’s not easy to get used to a bloody great snake twined around you,” Sirius muttered, but he shook his head and smiled helplessly at Harry in the next second, as if he was—charmed by him, the way that so many adults seemed to be by Dudley. It was a way that only Mrs. Weasley had ever smiled at Harry, so it was pretty easy to forgive Sirius. “And now it’s settled. You’re going to come and live with me.”

“Really?” Harry turned and glanced doubtfully at Dumbledore. They were in his office, and he had been standing behind his desk and watching Sirius and Harry’s reunion with a little smile. Now, he lifted his eyebrows.

“Yes, my boy. I think it is what your parents would have wished. Sirius is your godfather, after all! They had reasons for making him so.”

Harry breathed in deeply and spun around to look at Sirius. “And you’ll tell me stories of them? All the ones you promised?”

“All the ones I promised and all the ones Remus can remember.” Sirius reached down and shook Harry’s shoulder a little, smiling. “He’ll visit us a lot. And he’ll be here as a professor, of course. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

“Him as a professor or him visiting us?” Harry asked, and laughed at the look on Sirius’s face, and hugged him again. “Either. Both.” He was happy with a kind of happiness that he didn’t know what to do with; it kept bubbling up and flooding him, and he wanted to spin around in the middle of Dumbledore’s office with his arms out, laughing. “This is—Sirius, I don’t have any words for how great this is.”

Sirius’s face softened, and for the first time since he’d transformed, he really looked like an adult to Harry. His hands came to rest gently on Harry’s shoulders. “I’ll try to be worthy, then,” he whispered into Harry’s hair. “The way that I should have been in the first place. The godfather I always should have been.”

He was acting insane, and now he is not, Dash said, his tongue shooting out as if he wanted to test Sirius’s scent again, although Harry knew he had smelled it the minute they came into the room. I wonder why that is?

Harry hesitated. Sirius was acting normal now, but then again, Uncle Vernon could act normal in front of other people, too, like Mrs. Figg. “Are you—are you going to get counseling or something?” he asked. “You were kind of scary before.”

“I—suppose I could.” Sirius blinked and glanced at Dumbledore. “I’m hoping that the Headmaster here can recommend someone.”

“I’d be happy to,” said Dumbledore, and beamed kindly at both of them.

I don’t trust him. But Harry thought he could distrust Dumbledore and still live with Sirius. For one thing, then they wouldn’t have to go back to the Dursleys.

Someday, Dash said dreamily, I will visit them.

*

“Professor Snape?”

Severus turned around, staring. That was the last voice he had expected to hear, especially on the first day that Black was officially out of Ministry custody.

But Harry Potter stood in the doorway of his office, and he didn’t back away or flush or flinch when Severus scowled at him. Perhaps the enormous snake on his shoulders had something to do with that. Oddly, Severus hoped not. Artificial bravery would not be of much use in most of the situations Potter was likely to find himself in.

“Yes?” Severus asked, and tried to make his voice less harsh than the croak that wanted to overcome it.

“I wanted to thank you for testifying the way you did for Sirius,” said Potter, and his voice was precise, and perhaps the snake had been good for his diction, too, because he spoke the words clearly, not in the disgusting mumble that was one of Severus’s biggest objections to Gryffindors. “I know he won’t thank you for it. Maybe someday one of you will tell me why. But I wanted to say it.”

Severus blinked and stared, and Potter turned and slipped away. A Slytherin couldn’t have done it better.

Severus stood there for a second, and then nodded quietly to himself.

It still might be true that Potter wouldn’t change the game as much as Severus thought he would. But there was something there—kindness or humility or foresight—that could reach out to a man who had humiliated him often and had only recently changed his behavior.

Whatever it was, Severus wanted to be close to it, to ensure that the flame did not go out.

Chapter 11: Sparks That Will Settle

Chapter Text

"Just a moment of your time, Mr. Potter. That's all it's going to take."

Harry could still hear the wheedling tone in Minister Fudge's voice when he'd said that. Harry had agreed, like the idiot he was, and that Dash was always telling him he was, and they'd gone out in front of the school so that the photographers could take their pictures and the reporters could interview the Minister about what an astonishing turn-around this was, finding Sirius Black innocent. They didn't seem interested in talking to Sirius or Harry at all.

No one was interested in talking to Dash, either, but they all wanted to snap photographs of him, and Dash, curled around Harry's arms and neck and waist and legs as if he wanted as much of his body as he could get to be in contact with as much of Harry as he could get, had a lot of comments on them.

Who is that woman with the green glasses? Does she know that she looks like a beetle in them?

Harry glanced a little sideways at the woman Dash was talking about, hoping he could do it without giving himself away. She did look ridiculous, but no, he doubted she knew it. She was holding up a parchment with a quill scribbling quickly on it. I don't know her.

You know that you have to find out, right? Dash's tongue was on the back of his neck, perfectly placed to make Harry start and ruin a picture that the nearest photographer was just snapping, of Fudge beaming over Harry's shoulder.

Fudge looked down chidingly. "I know you're not used to this much attention, my boy, but you'll have to get used to it! You're the Boy-Who-Lived!" And he turned back to the camera with a smile. Harry thought he would have already put one hand on Harry's shoulder, but the presence of Dash vetoed that.

The more often you do that, the longer I have to stand here, he thought to Dash, and pasted another false smile on his face.

I know. But it's a brilliant chance to start your political education. Dash pointed towards another reporter with his tail, without making it look like he was pointing. Who's that?

Harry did look, squinting, but all he could really see was that the wizard was short and white-haired and wore absolutely brilliant yellow robes that made some of Dumbledore's look sane. I don't know. Why don't we find out?

He waited until the next photograph had been snapped and the Minister was opening his mouth to speak again, and then tugged gently on his sleeve. "Excuse me, sir, but who's that?" he asked, nodding at the yellow-robed wizard. He had good manners when he wanted, he thought. Aunt Petunia would have been proud of him. He even smiled meekly when Fudge peered down at him as if surprised that Harry could talk on his own.

At least Fudge indulged him, looking over towards the yellow-robed wizard. He then laughed aloud, nearly making Harry jump again. It sounded like genuine laughter, which he hadn't known Fudge was capable of.

"Oh, him," Fudge said, shaking his head. "You don't need to worry about him, Harry." Again his hand twitched as if he was going to pat Harry on the shoulder or ruffle his hair, and again had thought better of it. "His name's Xenophilius Lovegood, and he publishes a rubbish paper called the Quibbler that no one pays attention to. He might ask you questions about your basilisk, since he's interested in all manner of magical creatures. But he's harmless!"

Harry nodded slowly, and wondered if perhaps he might want to speak to Lovegood more than some of the other reporters. None of them had asked him, anything, and certainly not about Dash, whom they preferred to pretend didn't exist outside pictures.

There were more questions the Minister answered, mostly about things that seemed deeply boring to Harry, and then he got a chance to break away. The Minister waved his hand grandly, and Harry broke into a run towards Lovegood before he could change his mind, or the Minister could and pull him back for another session of false smiles. It wasn't as bad as posing with Lockhart, but that didn't represent a huge improvement, for Harry.

He halted in front of Lovegood, who looked down at him with an impressive frown. His eyebrows jutted out like ledges. Harry caught his breath and asked the first thing that came into his mind. "Do you want to interview me about my basilisk?"

Yes, he should, Dash said, and stretched his head out and turned it to the side so that Lovegood could admire the soft green gleams in his dark scales if he wanted to. Someone needs to publish a tribute so that when I come into my full, awesome dreafulness of being, the world is ready to deal with it.

Lovegood stared at him, then at Dash, and there was a longing in his eyes that Harry thought was different from the longing that Lupin or Sirius used to look at him, as if he was special but distant, or even the way Dumbledore looked at him sometimes, which Harry didn't understand at all. "I would love to talk to you about your basilisk," said Lovegood, and his eyes burned. "But I didn't think you liked being interviewed."

"I don't, when someone else is doing all the talking." Harry shifted so that Dash's tail, which was dragging on the ground between his feet, would fit around his leg again. "But you'd let me talk, right?"

Lovegood, still watching him with that intense gaze, nodded and took out his notebook. "You can say whatever you want. Although I can't promise I'll publish all of it. I have a responsibility to the public."

Harry grinned. That was more the sort of thing he'd hoped to hear. He didn't like being interviewed, but he also thought that someone should know about the sorts of things the Ministry didn't want to say.

Like Dash says, I know to learn some more about this, or I'm just going to have people talking over me all the time.

You are learning the first lesson of having a basilisk, said Dash. Which is that the basilisk is always right.

Harry ignored that, and nodded to Lovegood. "Can I tell you how I found him?" He was sort of hoping that if Lovegood published that story, maybe someone who knew about basilisk eggs would see it and contact him. Harry still had questions about Dash and the way he'd hatched that Dash was no help with.

"Yes," said Lovegood, and waited, expectantly.

He didn't even ask any questions, he just wanted Harry to talk! Harry's opinion of him was improving. Lovegood might be crazy, but at least he was polite. "All right. So I'm a Parselmouth, and I heard someone calling me one night..."

Once he started talking, Lovegood started writing. He did ask a few questions, like about the Chamber of Secrets and the basilisk that had been in there, but most of the time he just wrote. Harry watched it with satisfaction. There would be an article about Dash, who was the reason that Harry had Sirius at all, and there might be answers, and Harry approved of both.

Harry finally ran out of words, and Lovegood looked up and nodded. "This is very important," he said. "New stories about magical creatures always are. The next edition of the Quibbler will carry your words." He hesitated. "Have you met my daughter Luna? She's in the year below yours. She would love to meet Dash."

Harry searched his mind, but he couldn't remember any girl named Lovegood, although he'd thought he would have remembered her. On the other hand, maybe she didn't wear yellow robes this bright. "No. What House is she in?"

"Ravenclaw." Lovegood gave him a strained smile. "She probably wouldn't be around you all that much, anyway. Gryffindor has most of their classes with Slytherin, don't they?"

"Yes, sir," said Harry absently, but he was still searching his mind. He thought he had heard someone talk about a girl named Lovegood, but it was a year ago, and it hadn't stuck in his mind, the way almost nothing had at the time except the voice he was hearing in the walls. "I'll look for her."

"Thank you," said Lovegood, which was so strange that Harry blinked at him. Lovegood leaned heavily towards him for a second. "I think she would be glad to have a...friend."

That was strange, but Harry didn't think he needed to worry about it. "All right," he said. "Thank you, sir." He turned around, then hesitated. Dash was silent on his shoulder, which meant he didn't object to Lovegood the way he did to a lot of other people, and that meant Harry could offer a treat that he didn't to most people. "Did you want to pet Dash? He likes the way you look at him." That much he knew was true without Dash even saying it, because Harry could feel it like a hum of contentment from his basilisk's mind.

Dash flickered out his tongue to taste the air and inclined his head in a small, gracious nod that Harry thought even Lovegood, who wasn't very familiar with Dash's personality, could understand. Yes, by all means, let him touch me.

That sounded a little less promising, and Harry kept a sharp eye on Dash as Lovegood reached out with a trembling hand. But the tremor seemed to appease Dash, who said, Well, here is someone who is properly respectful. Tell him that he may scratch the small scales behind my head. I haven't yet trained you to attend to them properly. He turned his head to the side and almost lifted those scales up, something Harry hadn't known he could do.

"He'll let me touch him?" Lovegood choked out. "There?"

"Yes," said Harry, and watched as Lovegood scratched in between the scales, smiling and shaking his head a little. He didn't understand the fire that burned in Lovegood's eyes yet, but he thought he was beginning to. For whatever reason, Lovegood was someone who just wanted to look at animals, and think they were beautiful, and watch them. Harry supposed he was the same way with Quidditch players.

"Please tell him thank you," said Lovegood, and pulled his hand back. There were unshed tears in his eyes. "To be this close to a basilisk, a unique basilisk, born in such an unusual way..."

Yes, you may tell him that he is welcome any time he wants to pet me again. Dash curled his head around so his chin was almost upside-down. He is a proper acolyte.

*

The moment he stepped into the Potions classroom, Severus felt the change in the air. He held his wand close to his face as he swept down the aisle--a time when most of the students except a few Slytherins were too intimidated to look at him closely anyway--and cast a small spell that would tell him whether he was right.

Yes. Over to the right side of the classroom crouched a shadow, if one looked for it. Severus might not have, if not for those spy's instincts that had let him know right away that something was different.

Potter, at least, was not betraying any sign that it was there, but arguing with Granger in a heated whisper. He shut up the moment he saw Severus, and sat up. Severus kept a careful eye on him. He would see if the boy's respectful behavior the other day translated into more respectful learning in the classroom.

Potter was at least paying attention, which was more than Severus could say for some of the Gryffindors. He would never understand why they chose the most physically dangerous class in the school--with the possible exception of NEWT Transfiguration--to dislodge their attention. He cast a simple spell that made a sharp crack echo through the air, apparently originating in his cloak, and watched as arses left chairs.

"You are brewing the Enlarging Solution today," said Severus. "The opposite of the Shrinking Solution that so many of you ruined a month ago." He sneered at the cowering Longbottom. The boy's cowardice was infuriating. He inspired fear in his classmates, and that was unforgivable. "The ingredients list is on the board." He waved his wand again, and they appeared. "You are to work alone on this potion."

Granger's mouth opened. Severus looked at her. Granger's mouth closed.

"I will know if you cheat and help each other," Severus added darkly, and to himself, For example, if Longbottom creates a potion that is passable.

He began to pace slowly around the classroom, even though the students were scurrying for their ingredients and no one had actually begun to brew as yet. Draco was sneaking a glance at Potter, but that in and of itself was harmless. Severus would not interfere until the boy began to make enough of a nuisance of himself to disrupt the class.

No, his target was that shadow in the corner, the one that was cast by nothing, or at least was if you knew the contours of the walls and the door and the tables as well as Severus did.

It didn't move as he came closer to it, either, but Severus murmured the incantation for the Summer Breeze Charm, and something silken swayed atop it. Severus then cast the Body-Bind Charm, because he knew what it was now: Sirius Black hiding under Potter's Invisibility Cloak.

Black struggled for a moment, but he had collapsed with the Cloak over him, and Severus's glare intimidated the few children who glanced in his direction. Potter wasn't among them. He had gone to get his ingredients and was squinting at the instructions with commendable anxiety.

Severus cast another charm that would deflect light from Black's body and the Cloak and make them hard to see, and then floated them both into the air next to him. "I will be in my office for the moment," he said. "Try not to add bloodstains to the ones currently on the floor." He turned and stalked into his office with Black bobbing after him like a Muggle toy on the end of a string. Severus made no attempt to ease the journey for Black.

He had the answer to a question he had wandered about. Yes, Potter would thank Severus for his efforts on Black's behalf, but Black never would.

It wasn't worsening their rivalry to dump Black on the floor of his office and tear the Cloak off with a flick of his wand, sending it floating up to the ceiling. It wasn't even harming the delicate bond that Severus must hope to construct between himself and Potter. For one thing, he believed that Potter had not known Black was there.

For another, he thought part of the boy would disapprove of Black's antics. As long as Severus did not actually hurt Black, there was no reason that the boy would take Black's side over Severus's.

That was so unusual a thing to think about James Potter's son that Severus paused for a long moment before he cast a Silencing Charm on the door of the office, and then released Black from the Body-Bind.

Black leaped to his feet, his black hair swaying around his face. Severus watched him clinically. While the madness induced by Azkaban would not have not changed the man for the better in most people's eyes, it had a significant virtue from Severus's point-of-view. More viewers would now see the deranged maniac that had been there all along.

"You have no right to do this to me," Black snarled, and really, Severus ought to have known he was a dog Animagus, the same way he ought to have known Pettigrew for a rat the minute he saw the cringing, sniveling man as an adult. "I'm Harry's guardian and I have the right to check up on his education--"

"And were you planning to observe Lupin's classes in the same way?" Severus leaned an elbow on the table and watched Black. "Minerva's? Sinistra's?"

Black's baffled, angry silence was as good an answer as anything. Severus nodded and began prowling in a circle that would take him closer to Black at the endpoint. Black snarled and edged a hand towards his wand.

"You might want to take a care," Severus said softly.

"If you hurt me in this school, you're going to feel the wrath of Albus Dumbledore," said Black, with so much certainty that Severus had to stop an acid retort from escaping his lips.

I know that. He was sure that was why Albus had been so eager to give second chances to Black the minute he found out the man might be innocent, in fact: Albus had a level of affection for Black that he had showed no one else in Severus's experience. Not even Potter. Not even Lupin.

Not even the younger Potter.

"I am not telling you to take a care with me," said Severus. "I am telling you to take a care with your godson."

Black's eyes chilled, and he looked now more like Bellatrix than anyone sane had a right to do. On the other hand, Severus had already thought that Black was dangerously close to the edge of madness. "If you're suggesting that I'll reject him because he has that snake, I already told him he could keep it."

"But are you flexible enough to accept that he might be less the son of James Potter than he's currently perceived to be?" Severus smiled, and watched as Black twitched. It was like Severus's words were tiny poison darts, afflicting Black effortlessly, and Severus didn't even need to lie. "That he never knew his father, and therefore can't imitate him?"

Black laughed wildly. "That's rich, Snivellus! When the word around the school is that you can't see any difference between James and Harry!"

The urge to strike because of that despised nickname was very strong, but Severus held his hand. He had more words to give. "Can you accept that he is a Parselmouth? That he was almost Sorted into Slytherin?"

Black jerked against an invisible barrier this time, one that made him snap his teeth dangerously near Severus's head. "You're lying. Harry would never."

Severus laughed, enjoying this immensely. "You don't know nearly as much about your precious Harry as you think you do."

Black's hands closed into trembling fists. "I know that he would never trust you or do anything that you wanted him to."

Severus considered whether to tell Black about Potter's apology, and decided that he would not. That would create more trouble for Potter, and most of Severus's declarations so far were well-known facts, minus the one about the Sorting. And that was known to Albus, to whom Black would certainly speak.

Severus would seek to drive a slender wedge between Potter and his godfather if he could, because someone with Potter's potential should not be influenced solely by Sirius bloody Black. But a wedge that was made of truth and could not be traced back to him, Severus had no compunction about using.

"Perhaps you are right," said Severus, and managed to cant his head and shrug in such a way, he thought, that Black could not boast of the victory he had won by subduing Severus, because he had not subdued him, only made him acknowledge the truth. "But nor do I think he would like you spying on him beneath his Invisibility Cloak. Did you even ask before you borrowed it? Or did you take it without asking because you once again confused the son with the father, and didn't think he would mind?"

The pallor of Black's face told him the answer. Severus smiled in a way he knew was unpleasant and lifted his wand. Black snapped taut, but all Severus did was cast the Disillusionment Charm on him, send the Cloak floating back to him, and nod to the door of the classroom.

"Leave, Black. I won't tell Potter about this as long as you leave now and never return."

He could leave the threat unspoken, he thought, both of what he would do should Black return and the threat of blackmail that he could now hold over Black's head. He heard the low, rumbling snarl from the ripple of shadow that was Black's hidden form, and then he turned and strode out of the classroom.

Severus, well-satisfied, returned to the class, and found that no one had melted a table or a cauldron in the interim--although Longbottom did so less than five minutes later, creating a blast of green liquid and fumes that required trips to the hospital wing for three students.

Well. It was still a better day than many on which he had Potter's class to teach.

*

"And I know that Potter could get me a basilisk if he wanted to..."

It was nothing personal, really it wasn't, but if Draco kept going on in that obsessive, obnoxious way about Potter, Blaise was going to have to kill him and bury the body somewhere. And thanks to his mum, he knew a lot about discreet burial of bodies.

"He just wants to keep the basilisks all to himself. As though you needed to be a Parselmouth to be able to communicate with a snake that speaks in your mind!"

Should I point out that Potter could only create the bond in the first place because he's a Parselmouth? Blaise wondered, and shifted so that his head was almost hanging upside-down off the couch in the Slytherin common room, to see if Draco would notice. Verdict: negative.

"He thinks he's so special sometimes! I need him to notice me."

True, but still annoying, Blaise decided, and rolled over. Draco was pacing in front of him, waving his arms. Some of the older Slytherins were giving him amused looks, but that didn't penetrate Draco's cloud of Potter-focused obliviousness the way any mocking attention usually did.

This is bad, Blaise decided, and broke into the tirade. "If you want a basilisk, why not go steal one yourself?"

Draco broke off and looked at him. "What?" He noticed the amused glances his way, now, and glared back. Several of the upper-years didn't bother to hide their snickers as they went back to their homework or NEWT reading, Lucius Malfoy's power or not.

"Well, that's the way Potter got one in the first place, ready?" Blaise hadn't read the details of Potter's story about the basilisk in the Quibbler closely, because he honestly didn't care, but Draco had read him the article aloud anyway, so he knew this much. "He went down and found these eggs, and just took one. If you find your way into the Chamber of Secrets, then you could do the same thing."

"You have to be a Parselmouth to find the Chamber of Secrets," Draco drawled slowly, sounding more like himself again.

"Just like you have to be a Parselmouth to bond a basilisk?" Blaise asked with a pointed look.

That made Draco stand up as though Blaise had shoved a wand up his arse. "Right," he said. "I'll find it. And I'll show you."

He flounced up to their bedroom. Blaise chuckled. Draco was extremely unlikely to find his way into the Chamber of Secrets by himself, and in the meantime, Blaise could enjoy some peace and quiet.

If Draco did manage it?

Then Potter will have to rescue him, and Draco will resent him for it, and I'll have enjoyment of a different kind, Blaise decided cheerfully, and went back to carefully correcting his Potions homework.

Chapter 12: Glowing Embers

Chapter Text

"You really took my Invisibility Cloak and came into Potions to spy on Professor Snape?"

Harry had asked the question for the second time, and although he had only known Sirius for a short time, he already recognized the look on Sirius's face. He was impatient, and he didn't know why Harry kept questioning him. He gave his head a slight toss that made his black hair fly wildly, and said, "Yeah. The sort of thing your dad would have done all the time."

Harry nodded uncertainly, but he couldn't help but wonder about that. His dad had taken Quidditch seriously, he knew that, and he had died protecting Harry. He didn't know much about his dad. But neither of the things he did know suggested that James Potter would have sneaked into Snape's Potions class.

And most of the other adults Harry knew wouldn't have done things like that, either. Professor McGonagall and Headmaster Dumbledore and all the rest of them were too serious. The Dursleys wouldn't care.

He is a different kind of adult, said Dash, leaning his head on Harry's shoulder and watching Sirius with the yellow glow behind his eyelids. You should be careful around him.

Harry nodded again, this time in response to Dash, and asked Sirius, "But he caught you?"

"Yeah." For a second, Sirius looked away. They were in the temporary quarters in Hogwarts that Dumbledore had given Sirius until he could see about getting a house elsewhere. Harry didn't think Sirius was very eager to get a house, though. He seemed to think that Hogwarts was home.

Harry could understand that. It was his home, too.

"He told me a bunch of things," Sirius said, and turned back to Harry with a speculative gleam in his eyes that made Harry uneasy. "He said that you were almost Sorted into Slytherin. Is that true?"

Harry thought about lying, because Sirius had talked enough about Slytherin and Gryffindor to make it clear where he stood, but he didn't want to start out his relationship with his godfather by lying about it. He nodded instead, and while Sirius frowned, Dash draped himself over Harry's shoulder and murmured, It is nothing to be ashamed of.

But you don't really understand the Houses or care about them, Harry said. Dash had told him that the other day. He said that all humans looked the same to him, and he didn't understand why wearing different ties or robes was so important. The important thing was how they smelled.

No, but I know the differences are so shallow that they don't matter that much, said Dash candidly. And I won't have him making you miserable because you nearly went into one House instead of the other.

Dash gave a soft hiss, and Sirius started and looked back at him. Harry hastily put a hand on Dash's neck and tried to look innocent. Then he winced. Sirius was looking at Dash with new eyes.

"Is that why you almost got Sorted there?" Sirius asked quietly. "Because you're a Parselmouth?"

Harry shrugged. It had always been a gesture that the Dursleys hated, and even Sirius looked slightly impatient at it. But he didn't know what else to do. "I don't know. The Sorting Hat told me I had ambition and I could do well in Slytherin. But I said that I didn't want to go there, and it put me in Gryffindor."

In seconds, Sirius had taken a breath deep enough to inflate his chest and almost float him off the chair, like a cartoon on the telly that Harry had sneakily watched over Dudley's shoulder once. "That's the important thing, then. Not that you almost went into Slytherin, but that you made a choice for Gryffindor."

That's not really what I did, Harry thought in confusion. He had only asked the Sorting Hat to put him any place other than Slytherin, and it had obliged. That wasn't the same as choosing Gryffindor.

I don't think it matters, said Dash, and wound one coil around the back of Harry's neck, rubbing like someone giving him a massage. You owe him the truth, but not this part. It would only confuse him.

Harry blinked. But he's an adult. If I can understand it, then he should be able to understand it, too. Harry was used to adults being a lot smarter and knowing a lot more than he did, although sometimes he had to keep secrets from them because they wouldn't be happy with him if they knew the truth.

They don't always, said Dash. He licked the side of Harry's neck and added, If you get in trouble someday for not telling him this, then you can blame it on me. You can say I told you to keep it secret, which is true.

Harry relaxed. It wasn't like there was a lot he could do against Dash, or that Sirius could do to Dash to hurt him. So he turned to Sirius and muttered, "I'm glad that you can tell me all sorts of stories about my parents. But I want to know who they were. I don't want you to just do what they did. Can you tell me about Dad and not sneak into Snape's classroom anymore?"

Sirius looked at him earnestly. "I was just trying to see the way Snivellus treated you, Harry. I know it can't be right."

"You call him Snivellus?" Harry was a little horrified. He hadn't received that kind of nickname himself when he was in primary school, but that was mostly because Dudley was too stupid to think of one. And it irritated him enough to be called "Potty" by Malfoy and people like him. Snivellus sounded awful.

"Yeah," said Sirius, and gave Harry a conspiratorial grin. "He was always sniveling when he was a kid, whining when we pranked him. He'd fly into these rages. And he wore these tattered robes, and grey pants...Harry, what's wrong?"

Harry closed his eyes. Dash coiled close to him, not moving, but a tense and thrumming presence.

I wear Dudley's clothes. And if my pants aren't grey, it's only because I washed them more often than that. Maybe Snape couldn't afford to wash them. Or something.

In truth, Harry didn't know why he was so upset. He thought Snape could take care of himself, just like Dash could take care of himself. And in the meantime, Sirius would never make fun of Harry. He'd just be angry if he found out about the Dursleys, and that would feel good, to have someone angry on his behalf.

Someone other than me? Dash said stiffly.

You're wonderful, said Harry, and rested his cheek against Dash. But sometimes humans need other humans.

Dash considered that for a moment before he bobbed his head reluctantly. Sometimes you do. Although I don't know why. The world would be so much more sensible if you all relied on how you smelled and didn't travel around with feet. I think it was deciding to have feet than made most of you so stupid. How can you have common sense when you're above the ground as far as that?

"Harry?"

By now, Sirius's question was really anxious, and Harry opened his eyes and gave Sirius a weak smile. "I just want to hear about Dad," he said. "I don't know him at all. The Dursleys told me he was drunk and died in a car accident."

Sirius growled like the dog he could turn into, which was a chilling little sound, but when he was directing it towards the Dursleys, then Harry could approve of it. "Someday they'll get theirs, too," he said darkly, but then gave Harry a kind smile and said, "The first thing you should know that is how your dad became a stag Animagus. It took him forever. Much longer than it took me. First he saw the shadow of his antlers in a mirror, and he yelled and said that couldn't be him, that his head wasn't growing these horns. Then he wanted to be a predator like me and--like me, and he spent all this time trying to force himself to turn into one..."

Harry listened, and laughed. His Dad sounded like someone he could have told the truth to, he thought wistfully. He would have liked to meet him, even if it was just for a moment. He would have enjoyed talking to him about Snape and ragged clothes and all the things that he knew Sirius wouldn't really understand.

Even when he had an adult who was kind to him, there were too many things he wouldn't understand.

I will.

Harry had never been more grateful for Dash. He put one hand on his scales and stroked in a sliding downwards motion as he kept listening to Sirius's stories.

*

"But listen, you can't seriously believe all those creatures exist."

Draco had wandered through half the school that Saturday morning, it seemed, seeking Potter. He had finally tried the library only in desperation, but once he was there, it was a matter of following Granger's condescending voice. It sounded as if she had found a new victim to lecture, although Draco couldn't imagine who would have come near her willingly other than Weasley and Potter.

Potter sat in a chair leaning back from the table, his basilisk wound mostly in his lap, only his head dangling off Potter's shoulder like a picture Draco had once seen of himself on his mum's shoulder, his chin resting on her while he screamed. Draco frowned and put the thought aside. For one thing, he didn't like remembering that he had ever been that small and helpless and pouty. For another, the basilisk was tasting the air with his tongue, and Draco didn't want to smell like he was afraid.

He came marching up to the table and looked at the other two people there. Granger was sitting beside Potter, leaning across it while she waved one hand in the air. Facing her was a dreamy, smiling Ravenclaw girl. Draco struggled to recall her name. Looney? No, Luna.

"There's no such thing as Wrackspurts," said Granger, and brought one hand down on the table like Vince's father making a point. "I never read about them in any book."

Luna tilted her head to the side. She looked like a good pure-blood, Draco thought critically, but he couldn't immediately remember her last-name, which made it hard to be sure. She was pale and sort of pretty, although her silver eyes stood out too much. "And you never read about Hogwarts in a book before you came here," she said.

Granger stared at her, then puffed up. "That's different. Wizards deliberately keep themselves secret from Muggles. They say--"

"Potter," said Draco. He had wanted to cough quietly and not interrupt. But it didn't sound as though Granger would leave him a graceful opening to slide into the conversation, so it would have to be this way. "A moment of your time."

Potter turned around and looked at him without surprise. Then he nodded and stood. "All right, Malfoy," he said. He stood up and leaned across the table to shake Luna's hand while Dash readjusted himself with a grace that made Draco sick with envy. "It was nice to meet you, Luna. I'm glad you like Dash. Can I talk to you tomorrow?"

"Only in the afternoon," said the Ravenclaw, and looked around for a moment before she lowered her voice. "You see, in the morning, I'm going to be looking for my shoes."

"All right," said Potter, with no more than a blink, which irritated Draco for a moment. It made him suspect Potter was tolerating Draco's enquiry the way he tolerated Luna's eccentricities, rather than understanding it as something more important. "Maybe I could come and help you look for them, though?"

"That would be acceptable," said Luna, and gave him a serene smile that she extended to Draco. "You could do it, too. You have long fingers. That means you were born under a full moon, and you're good at finding things."

Draco blinked. He thought he remembered now why the name Looney had come to mind. "Of course," he said, and watched Luna turn back to Granger.

"You don't have long fingers," Luna continued seriously. "That means that you can't turn all the pages of the books well, and you were born under the half-moon. Did you know that people who were born under the half-moon can only see half the books that surround them? It's a dangerous affliction. For example..."

If he stayed listening to her for much longer, Draco thought his mind would start sliding gently away for him. He drew Potter away from the table and down a long aisle of books about Astronomy that didn't look as if they'd been disturbed much lately. The basilisk came with them, of course, and so did the whirring silver instruments that Dumbledore had enchanted to reflect the basilisk's gaze, but it was still a kind of privacy.

"I want to know how you found the Chamber of Secrets," said Draco, his gaze locked on Potter.

Potter had been watching him, one hand still on the basilisk as if looking at Draco needed all his concentration, but at those words, he snorted and began to stroke the snake again. Draco wondered if he should feel insulted.

"I told the Quibbler all about how I found Dash," said Potter tiredly. "You can go and read that article if you want to know more."

"I am above reading such rubbish," said Draco. "And besides, it has to have more to do with last year than this year. You only said that you heard Parseltongue this year and discovered it was coming from the Chamber of Secrets, but that implies a prior familiarity. How did you get down there in the first place?"

He thought his speech was impressive, but Potter was the one who stared at him. "Those are details from the Quibbler article," he said. "I thought you didn't read such rubbish?"

The basilisk hissed in amusement, or what Draco thought was amusement. Given that he wasn't a Parselmouth, he couldn't be sure. He glared at the basilisk in return. Why did Parseltongue have to come to someone like Potter, who was only a half-blood, and not a Slytherin at all, and couldn't appreciate a gift like it?

"I don't like people who lie to me," said Potter, as if he was continuing a conversation that Draco had started without realizing it. Or responding aloud to something his snake had said silently.

Draco hated the thought of people talking about him in a way he couldn't hear and answer back. He snapped, "I just want to know about the Chamber of Secrets. You can't mind discussing it that much, or you wouldn't have talked about it to the papers!"

"That was the only one that was interested in Dash for being Dash," said Potter, and his eyes had hardened. "Mr. Lovegood was kind. I don't like discussing what happened last year. Ginny almost died. Can you understand that?"

Lovegood must be the Luna girl's last name, Draco thought. A good pure-blood name, if somewhat debased by strange beliefs. "I need to find the way to the Chamber of Secrets," he said. "And I need to know if you can do it without being a Parselmouth."

"Why?" Potter shook his head as if baffled. "There's really nothing down there that you'd want to see. Full of bones and this ugly statue, and now the corpse of the basilisk that I killed there." He paused and tilted his head, and Draco was sure he was listening to something his snake had said. "Yes, well, that basilisk wasn't you," Potter muttered a second later, and Draco was even more sure of it.

Draco ignored the rudeness of that. Maybe if he was honest, then Potter would help him. Gryffindors liked honesty. "I want a basilisk of my own."

Potter blinked at him. "Why? Dash is neat, but you aren't a Parselmouth, and you couldn't bond with one of them. And he's a pain to feed, and just generally a pain sometimes."

The basilisk showed its fangs at Potter, who laughed. Draco shook his head. He would have a basilisk with a more dignified name than this one. He wondered why Potter had chosen it, and why the basilisk put up with it.

"I think the bonding would let me communicate with one even though I'm not a Parselmouth," said Draco. "And..."

He wondered how to explain his feeling about basilisks, about how he felt when he looked at the dangerous beast on Potter's shoulder, the utterly indifferent way that Potter ignored the glares he got for having it, the way he smiled at silent conversations. Draco wanted that crisp coolness of manner, he wanted that bravery, he wanted that spirit.

And he wanted someone who would care for him, just him.

"What I'm saying is that you couldn't bond with a basilisk in the first place, since you're not a Parselmouth," said Potter. He was looking at Draco in frustration, as though Draco was the one who was causing problems here instead of the one who was trying to solve them. "That's a requirement. And you have to be a Parselmouth to get into the Chamber, too."

"You could take me if you wanted," Draco said. "You could take me down there and show me the basilisk eggs, and we would see if one hatched and the basilisk that came out would take me as its master."

The snake on Potter's shoulder hissed sharply, and Potter looked a little shocked. But he started talking before Draco could wonder for long what had caused that. "You can't be a basilisk's master. That's what Dash says. You have to be its partner, bonded to it, and if you're still talking about being its master, then you probably aren't suited to have one at all. That's what Dash says," he repeated, maybe because he had seen the way Draco's face was closing up.

Draco, though, was thinking back to how he had bragged to Blaise that he would search for the Chamber of Secrets on his own, and not ask anyone where it was. He had got frustrated because he'd been trying for a few days and hadn't found anything, and so he had thought he would take a shortcut by asking Potter for help.

He should have listened to his own first instincts, the ones that said of course Potter would never want to help Draco, because he was a Slytherin.

I should have listened.

"You take my words and twist them," Draco said. His voice trembled, and then firmed. That was good. He knew his father wouldn't be proud of him for seeking out Potter and begging for his help in the first place, but he could make it okay by standing on his own two feet now. "I didn't mean I would enslave a basilisk."

"But you still think it would serve you," said Potter. "Like Dobby. You would still be the most important one in the relationship."

Draco looked at Potter without answering. Didn't he see how hypocritical he was being? He was the one who carried Dash around on his shoulder and called it a name like Dash and let the Headmaster use mirrors and poison to restrain it. He was the one who was hurting his basilisk if anyone was.

"I shouldn't have come to you," said Draco, and turned and walked out of the aisle.

Potter called behind him, trying to make him come back, but Draco didn't, and he was glad again and proud of himself as he walked away. He had been weak. Fine. But he had paid for it, and he would never be that weak again.

At least it had happened in private. He would forge ahead from here, and find the Chamber, and he would hatch his own basilisk egg in front of a fire. Or maybe he would find a toad and a chicken's egg, and he would hatch his basilisk in the traditional way. There had been basilisks bred by wizards who weren't Parselmouths. Draco would do research on that.

Either way, he would be free. He wouldn't be dependent on Potter or Potter's basilisk or Professor Snape or his father or anyone else. He would have the basilisk he wanted, servant or friend or whatever he wanted.

He would do it.

*

Severus took his seat at the High Table the next morning with much to think about.

For one thing, Black hadn't come back and confronted him about his revelations, or Severus's treatment of him when he discovered Black hiding under the Invisibility Cloak, or Severus's past conflicts with the Marauders, or anything else. Knowing Black's usual behavior when upset, humiliated, taunted, or even slightly thwarted, Severus suspected Albus's hand at work in restraining Black.

For another, Potter had continued to come and go through the corridors and to Lupin's class with no speculative glances at Lupin. That indicated to Severus that Black and Lupin had not told Potter the truth about Lupin's lycanthropy.

That was delicious, and Severus had laid the revelation up like a jewel that he could look at when he wanted to. He didn't know if he would ever use it, any more than he might ever sell a precious stone, had he been lucky enough to inherit or acquire one that he didn't need for potions. But he sometimes touched it in the back of his mind and watched it sparkle.

And finally, Potter had come into Potions class yesterday and given him a long look, but he hadn't said anything to Severus about Black. Black must have told him. Of course he had. Severus could not comprehend a world where he had not. Still, he seemed to have left the matter between adults.

Severus knew few children with that wisdom. Even Draco would have said something to Severus if there had been a similar conflict between Severus and Lucius.

Potter might be one of those who could partially teach himself, without even Severus's conniving.

And now Potter was leaning over to speak with his friends, but his gaze was on the Slytherin table, where Draco was digging hard into his food nearly hard enough to break his fork. Severus arched his eyebrows. Potter didn't look as though he was plotting against Draco. He looked worried about him, of all things.

"Severus? I want to see you in my office now, please."

And that was Albus. Severus stood up easily, his gaze passing back and forth from face to face, noting that Lupin and Black were both absent from the High Table where they usually sat although last night hadn't been a full moon, and that Potter continued to look up at Draco and not at Severus.

Life is more interesting now than it has been in years.

Chapter 13: Fanning the Flames

Chapter Text

"What is this about?" Severus asked, settling into the chair in front of Albus's desk that he kept for honored visitors, and alternating his bland gaze between Black and Lupin, who sat on either side of him.

Amazingly, he did feel as calm and bland as his voice suggested. He knew he had done nothing wrong, that he had even done something that would put Black in his debt by testifying at the Wizengamot trial. That meant he would not be compelled to put up with some of the nonsense that the so-called "Marauders" might get up to. Black might hate owing Severus the debt, but he would hesitate before attacking him in Albus's presence.

That I should have to think about my safety in front of Albus, among other adults...

But the thought of Black flailing around in this new world that he obviously didn't understand calmed him again. He turned back to Albus, who still hadn't spoken, but was sitting behind the desk and gazing at him with a spark deep in the back of his eyes.

"Well?" Severus asked, when some minutes had passed and still there was silence. He met Albus's gaze, and let a thought float near the surface of his mind that Albus could scoop off with Legilimency if he wanted to. You cannot intimidate me this way, when I have been in so many Death Eater meetings.

Maybe that thought did strike Albus's mind and make him take notice, because he sat up and shook his head. "I wanted to caution you, Severus."

"In what way?" Severus didn't fold his arms or cross his legs, and thought he heard a frustrated growl from Black.

"Against revealing Remus's lycanthropy to young Harry," said Albus.

Severus blinked. It was true that he had once thought he'd do that. A hint dropped in the right ears, and parents would be clamoring for Lupin's withdrawal from the school.

But Severus would have to remain here and teach in an environment that Albus's chiding could make unpleasant for him. And since the Wizengamot had declared Black innocent, Severus had dropped the plan entirely. It would turn Potter against him finally and for good. If a child, like the Granger girl, happened to figure it out, of course...

Severus shrugged. "I won't. I wasn't planning on it," he added, and smiled as Albus studied him closely. He would register the truth in that statement. Most skilled practitioners of Legilimency, although they couldn't infallibly detect lies, could detect truth when it was stated with enough conviction.

"I don't believe you!" Black was on his feet, his finger thrust out into Severus's face. Severus only regarded him. His wand was within reach if he needed it. "You already tried to turn Harry against me once before! You'd do it with Remus!"

"If you are talking about the conversation that you and I had when you sneaked into my Potions class," Severus drawled, letting Albus hear the truth in this statement as well, "I didn't mention that to Potter."

"You told him stories that prejudiced him," said Black, and his scowl was reminiscent of a snarl even though he hadn't opened his mouth.

"I would rather say that I told you stories that prejudiced you," Severus countered instantly. "You were rather shocked at the tale of his near-Sorting into Slytherin, weren't you?" Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Lupin startle in turn, and checked a smile. "You were disappointed to find out that he wasn't the father who died when he was one year old."

Black shook his head, and stubbornly stuck to the track. "You've been mistreating him because he's like James in all his classes so far! People told him that!"

Who was your informant? Lupin? Severus rather doubted the boy had complained of Severus himself. Or perhaps his Gryffindor friends had been chatty.

"It is true that I had misconceptions," said Severus, privately wondering why Albus was not stopping this charade. On the other hand, he had never figured out why Albus granted Black an indulgence and license that he did not offer to anyone else. "I have corrected those misconceptions, and I intend to treat him better now."

"You shouldn't have treated him badly at all!"

Severus had nothing to say to that, and simply watched Black. He wondered if Black would be this incensed if it was anyone other than Potter. Severus did not see him taking Neville Longbottom's side. Or if Black would have been more incensed if he hadn't had cause to doubt that Potter was exactly like his father.

"That is enough, Sirius," said Albus at last, cutting Black off as he opened his mouth to rant again. "In the meantime." He turned around and met Severus's eyes. "I must insist that you keep Remus's lycanthropy to yourself, Severus. And any other remarks that you may have been tempted to make about Sirius or James. It is not appropriate for you to be tormenting your students."

You never cared before. But Severus could easily give up "tormenting" Potter, since he had decided that being the boy's ally was more diplomatic. He only nodded, hiding his emotions. "Yes. I will do that. Can I go?"

"I don't trust him!"

"What would you suggest?" Severus asked, tired of this now, turning back to Black and letting his voice sharpen. "Albus asked me here to give him my word. If you doubt that--"

"I'm sure that we can trust Severus, Sirius." Lupin spoke for the first time, his amber eyes traveling back and forth from his friend's face to Severus's. Severus might have found them more reassuring if he didn't remember them glowing with madness in the darkness of a tunnel. "He promised, and he has to know what would happen if he broke that promise."

Most likely, nothing, Severus thought, and met Lupin's gaze solidly as well. Albus needs me more than he needs you, whom he only gave a job out of pity. I was his spy. I may well be again.

As if he had read Severus's thoughts at that precise moment, Albus cut in. "Yes, you can trust Severus, Remus. Sirius." He spoke the last word as a reprimand, and Black sat down and scowled at Severus. "I would ask, in fact, that you excuse me and Severus. I need to speak to him alone."

Black opened his mouth, but Lupin stood up and walked over to the door that led out of the office, nodding to Severus. Black seemed to realize that he would look silly if he did anything but follow. Still, Severus was vaguely surprised when he did. Looking foolish had never stopped Black before. Severus wasn't even entirely sure that he did know when he would look foolish.

"Well," said Albus, when a few minutes had passed since the departure of the other two and Severus reckoned that Black had given up listening at the door, "I confess myself curious as to the source of your better treatment of Harry, Severus. Is it only the snake? Or did knowing that he might have been Sorted into Slytherin and made the choice to go elsewhere change your opinion of him?"

Severus gently tightened his Occlumency shields and smiled at Albus. "I reconsidered what you had told me, about the son not being the father. I realized you were right."

Albus only watched him. Severus only watched him back. He owed Albus much, but not perfect insight into his private thoughts and motivations.

Albus finally sighed and said, "Keep your counsel if you will. But you should know the Ministry is looking over my shoulder. Some of the things that Harry said in his interview with the Quibbler have provoked them."

"What were they?" Severus had read the article himself, and except for a brief paragraph at the beginning which was typical Xenophilius Lovegood posturing about how wonderful magical creatures were and how more people should be paying them attention, it read like a children's story. Potter told things straightforwardly, Severus would give him that. Even his lies usually were direct.

"It was the existence of the interview itself that provoked them." Albus folded his hands on the desk. "Cornelius didn't like Harry speaking without his authorization."

"I see," said Severus. "And why are you telling me this?" It did seem like the kind of thing a godfather should deal with, more than a professor, particularly one who wasn't even Potter's Head of House.

"You have a few contacts in the Ministry that even I do not," Albus said neutrally. "I was hoping you could learn if Cornelius really does mean to do something to harm Harry, or whether this is political noise that will die down soon."

"You mean," said Severus, who did not know if he was enjoying himself or not, only that he was feeling a quicksilver mood rushing through him at the moment, "that I should be able to tell from the former Death Eaters like Lucius Malfoy exactly what Fudge is planning to do. Because Lucius has him under his thumb."

"Not as bad as that, surely," said Albus, with a falsely hearty smile. Severus had never seen it be so false. "Cornelius does listen to me. On occasion."

"Sometimes, yes," Severus agreed, and tried not to stare at Albus. It was odd of him to act this way, but he had been odd ever since Potter had adopted his basilisk. Perhaps that event's ripples of strangeness had not yet subsided, at least for Albus.

Perhaps not for any of us.

Severus stood, but he did ask one question, although he didn't think he would get an answer any more than he had the other times. "What makes you so forgiving of Black when you were not of others?" He would not mention his own name in connection with Black's, even for the length of a sentence.

Albus pushed his glasses up and looked at Severus with the distant gaze that Severus was well-accustomed to, as though Albus had temporarily forgotten what Severus's face looked like. "Hmmm? What was that, my boy?"

"You give him chances that you don't give other people," said Severus, and as he thought on it, he found a comparison that made more sense than the one with himself. "Even Potter. You wanted to read Potter's mind to look at his bond with the basilisk. You never did that with Black, even after he almost killed me." And there, there was the mention after all, so Severus might as well go the rest of the way and speak of what he had sworn to himself he not speak of. "Why did you never believe my side of the story, but you instantly believed Black's? Why were you so willing to think him innocent when you heard his story about Pettigrew, which must sound fantastic until it was confirmed under Veritaserum?"

Albus sighed a little. "My dear boy, I simply admired his courage."

"His courage," Severus repeated blankly. Yes, he had always known the headmaster favored Gryffindors, but that did not make sense of the sudden exclusion of Potter from Albus's good graces. After all, slaying a basilisk last year had required plenty of courage.

"His courage in running away from his family," said Albus, and his voice warmed in a way that assured Severus he was hearing the truth. Of course, he was a master Legilimens himself, although he rarely chose to make use of the talent against Albus. "And taking shelter with a family he could be sure would not send him back. He had the courage to stand up against his relatives when they violated his principles."

Severus was still for a moment.

That moment was the one when he could have walked out of Albus's office and not reacted. Instead, he lashed out and knocked the papers, silver instruments, and crystal globe on Albus's desk to the floor. Albus stared at him with genuine astonishment--genuine, Severus thought, for once--in his blue eyes.

"My boy," he whispered, "why? Why can compassion shown to one person trouble you so?"

"Because," said Severus, and leaned forwards with his teeth clenched, "you had no mercy on me when I almost died at the hands of your principled Gryffindor. I thought it was because it was a Slytherin. But now I begin to understand why. Because I never stood up against my father? Because I never ran away from my mother and left her behind to face my father alone? Do I need to remind you that Black left a younger brother behind?"

Albus stared at him out of an incomprehension so deep that Severus knew at once he had not made the impression he meant to, violence or not. It could have been down to the difference in Houses. It could have been that Albus hadn't known Regulus Black, and hadn't known that Regulus had become a Death Eater mostly to please his parents.

It could be, Severus thought, that Albus knew somewhere in his heart he was wrong, and he wouldn't change his mind, because that would confront him with all the consequences of his mistakes.

"My dear boy," Albus said, "surely the past--"

"And what is your excuse with Potter?" Severus whispered. Something was coiling darkly in his mind, something thick and horrible, something with fangs that would shame a basilisk's. "Was his courage not great enough? Or does he not have the sort of family that you would applaud him for running from?"

Albus blinked, and blinked some more. Then he chuckled. "Harry grew up with Muggles, Severus. I hardly doubt that they had impressions or insights into Dark or Light magic that they could have offered him."

Severus stared, and said nothing for long moments. Then he murmured, "You gave him to Petunia Evans?"

"Petunia Dursley, as she's been for some time now," Albus corrected him, and gave Severus a soft smile. "If you would take the time to get to know Harry for himself, Severus, I think you would come to see him as his own person, and not simply a method to take revenge on James."

Severus returned something, he never remembered what, and turned for the door. But he did remember what he said when he stood there with his hand on the door. "What is it about Potter's courage that you find deficient, Headmaster?" he asked, his back turned.

Albus sighed. "The time is not right yet to discuss that with you, Severus."

"If you expect me to treat the boy the way you treat Black, then you should tell me."

"My dear Severus! Did I say that?"

"I want to know. I deserve to know, by the vow that I gave you."

There was a pause, and then Albus answered, again in a voice of truth. Severus knew that Albus generally did when Severus invoked Lily's name. "He has the courage to face basilisks and Voldemort, and even to go seeking a voice in the darkness when he doesn't know who's calling him. But I am not sure that he will have the courage to face what I must ask of him, and because of that, I dare not love him too much."

Severus closed the door noiselessly behind him.

*

Harry stood up, even though Hermione was trying to keep him at the library table beside her. "Where are you going?" she hissed softly at him. "We need to work on this Transfiguration essay."

"Malfoy is just over there," Harry told her. "I need to talk to him." He felt Dash shift on his shoulder, and heard the humming in the back of his mind that meant Dash was ready to talk to Malfoy, the way Harry had asked him. Harry had promised that he would translate what Dash had to say, but he thought his basilisk could get through to Malfoy where he couldn't, that he might even be honored Dash was talking to him.

Mind you, it had taken a lot of bribery with mice that Harry promised to catch and set loose in an abandoned portion of the dungeons before Dash would agree to talk to Malfoy. But Harry thought it would be worth it, if he could keep Malfoy from doing something stupid. Sure, he'd killed that basilisk, but that didn't make the Chamber safe.

You must tell me more about how you killed it. I want to know, in case someone ever tries to kill me the same way when I'm trying to defend you, Dash muttered at him.

You can just look at my memories and get the story that way, Harry said in a distracted voice, dodging after Malfoy. It looked like he was going into the section of the library that had books on the Founders' time. That made sense, given what he was after.

I want to hear you tell it, said Dash in an ominous tone, and his tail curled around the upper part of Harry's arm, just in the place where he would be Marked if he was a Death Eater, and squeezed.

Okay, Harry said, and rubbed his knuckles right behind Dash's plume. As he had thought would happen, that made Dash go boneless on him. He really couldn't resist being scratched right there. Harry grinned. He needed some advantage when he was dealing with Dash's size and smelling capabilities and poison and deadly gaze and magic and all the rest of it.

I am pleased to note that you list a sharp sense of smell among my advantages.

Harry didn't have time to answer, because he came around a corner and nearly ran straight into Malfoy. Malfoy was kneeling over a thick book, frowning down at the dust that kept falling from the corners of its cover every time he turned a page. When he saw Harry, he stood up and turned around, clutching the book to him. Harry only had time to see a writhing illustration of a snake on the cover, but it was easy enough to guess what Founder Malfoy would be looking up if he intended to find the Chamber of Secrets.

"What are you doing here?" Malfoy asked, and sneered at him. "You don't want anyone else getting their own basilisk, do you? You think it might make you less special?"

"Dash has something he wants to say to you," Harry said firmly, ignoring the temptation to respond to the insults. For one thing, a response wouldn't actually shut Malfoy up; he knew that. He extended his arm, and Dash wound slowly and gracefully along it, only flicking his tongue out when he was actually near Malfoy. Harry tried to ignore the way that the basilisk's weight was making his arm sag, and hoped it still looked impressive.

Malfoy went as still as though he expected to hear English coming out of Dash's mouth. It was certainly the first time Dash had been this focused on someone other than Harry, and Harry had to bite his lip a little. He was not jealous. He was the one who had asked Dash to do this, so he couldn't be jealous of the way Dash was regarding Malfoy.

Remember this the next time you ask me to speak to someone else, said Dash smugly.

Harry focused on Malfoy, and asked Dash, What did you want to say to him?

That you only survived the way down to the Chamber because you speak Parseltongue, said Dash. There were all sorts of traps around us that I assumed you saw when we came back up through the tunnel, but then I realized you didn't. You were walking right past them, and they didn't affect you. They smelled like blood. This Slytherin of yours soaked them with his blood, and he must have thought that only someone who had his blood could speak properly and walk past them. He was wrong.

Harry shivered a little. But I did take two other people with me into the Chamber when I went down there the first time.

They didn't pass into the parts of the Chamber where the traps lurked, then. Or they were safe because they were with you.Dash cocked his head and flicked his tongue out. Malfoy didn't take his eyes from Dash's head. He was fascinated as Harry had seen no one else but Luna and her father be with a basilisk, although he also thought Malfoy was thinking about the advantages in power a basilisk would give him.

"Dash says that Slytherin left traps in the Chamber," Harry murmured. "I didn't even know about them. He left them covered with his blood, so that supposedly only someone of his blood could go down there."

Malfoy gave him a quick look. "But you aren't of the blood of Slytherin."

Harry wanted to retort that he must be more Slytherin than Malfoy was thinking, but he didn't see a reason to antagonize him like that. "The traps didn't work the way Slytherin thought they did. They would let anyone who was a Parselmouth pass." Harry shrugged. "I s'pose Slytherin thought that only someone who had his blood could be a Parselmouth. His loss. My gain." He put his hand on Dash's back.

Malfoy looked back and forth between him and Dash, and then said, "Then what's this nonsense about Weasleys being in the Chamber?"

"Ron came with me." Harry shrugged again. "Someone who came with me could pass through the traps, Dash said. Or at least that's the only explanation he can come up with." He did think telling Malfoy there might be safe parts of the Chamber wasn't a good idea.

There shall be a dead mouse on your pillow in the morning, said Dash, in tones of what might have been thunder if he was talking aloud.

"Then all you have to do is take me down to the Chamber and I would be--"

Malfoy abruptly stopped talking. Harry looked around for a second, thinking that someone had come up behind them and Malfoy didn't want to be seen talking to Potter of all people, but then he realized Malfoy was looking at him with big eyes and a clamped white mouth.

"No," Malfoy whispered. "I asked for help once. I'm not going to do it again."

He turned his back and walked away again, and he took the big book with the snake on it with him. Harry stretched out a hand and opened his mouth, but he had no time to delay Malfoy, much like the last time, before someone did come up behind him.

"Potter."

Snape's voice made Harry try to flinch on instinct, but Dash coiled around him in a way that prevented that movement. Harry was sure that Dash had studied how to do that.

Do not worry about the one Slytherin, Dash said. If you must insist on referring to them in that silly way and not by scent. He is young and stupid, and he will either not find the Chamber or he will find it and die.

Dash! That doesn't--

And the older one doesn't smell as though he wishes to harm you, Dash finished smugly, his tail snapping back and forth.

Snape? Not wish to harm him? Harry reckoned he could see that, but for Snape to come find him in the library, he still must have done something pretty bad. He turned around and looked up at Snape, waiting.

Snape stood looking down at him with such a blank expression that Harry began to wonder if it was something Sirius had done, instead. He'd almost opened his mouth to apologize when Snape said, "Potter. Come with me. I must speak with you."

And he put a hand on Harry's elbow and began to steer him towards the dungeons, like he thought Harry might get lost or something.

Harry went, blinking.

Chapter 14: Blowup

Chapter Text

Severus ushered Potter, and his snake, into his office, and then paused and checked the door. There was a Locking Charm on it already, but he strengthened it. He didn’t want to think of what would happen if they got interrupted, and someone took what Severus was saying the wrong way.

Potter just stood there stolidly and watched him. He usually stroked his snake when he was stressed or upset, Severus had already learned, but right now, his hand lay limply on the basilisk’s back. The basilisk itself had twisted his head in Severus’s direction, but showed no sign of lifting his eyelids or baring his fangs or any other unusual mark of aggression.

Perhaps this will work. Severus inclined his head to Potter. He knew what he wanted to say, but now how to say it. “Would you care for some tea?”

Potter’s eyes opened wide enough that he looked as if he was going to bolt. Severus was doubly glad of the Locking Charm on the door.

He was not so glad about the way the basilisk hissed, and raised his head. A second later, Potter shook his head and murmured, “No.” The basilisk was still, but Potter’s forehead furrowed, and he muttered, “No, really, I don’t think so. No, it’s solid. No, you cannot break it down.”

Severus hid his immediate reaction to this chattering to the basilisk, which was that it was rude and undignified, and said dryly, “I assume you are talking about my door? I, too, would prefer if you did not break it down.”

Potter flushed and shook his head. “Sorry, sir. I thought I was speaking in Parseltongue.” He hesitated, and the basilisk’s tail curved up and struck him in the back of the neck. Potter sighed, then said in the same put-upon voice Severus had heard children use when delivering a message from their parents, “Dash wants to know if you’re going to put potions in the tea.”

“No,” said Severus, and kept his face bland. It was less difficult than he had expected, even though he did not want Potter to challenge him any more than he had when the boy was an annoyance and nothing more. After what he had learned in Dumbledore’s office… “Only the charms that warm it.”

Potter glanced away from him, cheeks still bright red. “Thank you, sir.”

A second later, he was gazing at the basilisk, absorbed, in a way that made Severus assume he was speaking down the bond. Severus walked over to a cauldron that he kept for ordinary cooking when he was working late on a potion and could leave it for only a short time, and filled it with water. A second later, he lit the fire and reached for the leaves of the appropriate herbs that he kept on the shelves.

Potter was watching him again by the time he turned around. “Thanks for taking that so well, sir,” he muttered, as though he assumed his basilisk’s bad behavior required a second apology. He looked around, half-lost, and Severus drew his wand and conjured a chair. Potter dropped into it and poked the basilisk until it dropped and curled more on his lap than on his shoulders. “Not a lot of people would.”

“I assume that your basilisk is not used to people respecting his opinions?” Severus cast another spell that would make the water’s bubbles as it boiled increase in size, and began to sift in the right herbs.

“Well, I mean,” said Potter, and touched the snake’s neck. “My Housemates know to respect him now, or they’ll be getting a snap at least. Dash wouldn’t actually hurt them, but they don’t like it anyway.”

Nor would I, Severus thought, and simply nodded. He was still trying to feel out the steps of this conversation, but he did not think that making such a private confession to Potter right at the beginning was the way to do it.

Potter folded his arms a second later, as though he was hunching, and stared at Severus out of the corner of his eye. “It’s nice of you to make tea for me and everything, sir, but what is this really about?”

Fair enough. Severus nodded and said, “In a moment, Mr. Potter. I want to finish the tea first.”

Potter swallowed, but said nothing else. The basilisk lay down so that he was mostly arranged in Potter’s lap, although the tail dangled off the side of the chair. Severus thought the basilisk could have managed the trick of curling more tightly still if he had wanted. Most likely, he had done this to leave an escape route open, or simply to see Severus’s reaction.

Severus finished the tea at last, and handed a cup to Potter. Potter swallowed a scalding mouthful without pausing, then blinked and looked down at the cup. “I’ve never tasted herbs like this before,” he said.

“They are my own private supply,” said Severus. “I do occasionally brew something besides potions.” That won a weak smile. He sat down across from Potter and gazed at him for a moment, and then said, “Mr. Potter, what kind of home do you come from?”

Potter’s face closed in such hostility that Severus might have been rocked back had he not been partially expecting it. The basilisk stirred, but Severus paid no attention to him. He knew that the snake would not attack without Potter’s authorization. And Potter would not give it for a mere question.

At least, Severus thought so.

“One where my parents died,” said Potter, and then took another sip of his tea. Severus wondered if the boy knew that his hands were shaking on the cup. Probably not, or he would have done something to hide it. “You know that, sir. The first thing you said to me was a comment about the fame that I—that I got the night my parents died.”

“I have changed my mind about you. I no longer think of you as a mindless celebrity.”

The basilisk hissed. It was an unnerving sound, and all the more so when Severus knew that the creature was picking up not only on Potter’s emotions, but on the sense of Severus’s words as filtered through Potter’s mind. There were other ways Potter could have reacted that would have made a difference in the basilisk’s own reaction.

Then again, if Severus had not begun to believe there was something extraordinary about Potter and his reactions, he would not be here now talking to him. And the basilisk was occasionally useful as a guide to what was plunging through the inside of Potter’s too-hidden mind.

“That’s nice, sir,” said Potter. “Was that because I thanked you for testifying at Sirius’s trial?”

Severus started to answer, then paused. “Only partially,” he said, and then shook his head. “Leading the discussion away from your home will not work, Mr. Potter. I knew you grew up with Muggles.”

“Then you know all you need to.”

“No,” Severus said. “I do not.” He leaned back and wondered if perhaps bluntness would work better than gentle indirection. It seemed that Potter already sensed what Severus wanted to ask. “Did they abuse you?”

The basilisk dropped from Potter’s lap and slithered across the floor in a rustling pour of dark green scales. Severus moved his wand, and a shield sprang up in front of the snake. It was a shield he had specially tweaked himself, and the magic in it was strong enough to resist most Dark creatures. 

It was true that Severus had never tried to resist a basilisk, and as the snake twined up next to the shield and looked at him, more straight-necked and intelligent than any cobra, he didn’t know if it would be enough.

“I take it that question is not welcome,” Severus said blandly, eyes on the clear, thick lids closing away the creature’s dangerous gaze.

“You could say that. Sir.”

Potter’s face was nearly black with rage, and his hand positioned in his pocket as if curled around his wand, when Severus looked at him. Potter managed to loosen his grip with an effort, but he still shook his head. “You don’t need to know.”

“There are peculiar reasons that I do.”

Potter cast him a burning glance, and then held out his arm. It took a minute, and a hiss of Parseltongue that sounded like rattling dice to Severus, but the basilisk flowed back across the room and climbed onto Potter’s lap again.

“No,” Potter said. He sounded a little more recovered when he could stroke the overlapping small scales on the back of his basilisk’s neck and look down at the plume that was slowly flattening under his caresses. “You might have reasons, but I don’t have to bloody agree with them.”

“Language,” said Severus. He could feel his temper rising, and resolved not to explode. That would only increase the separation between him and the boy. It was already fragile enough, this truce between them. “Listen, Mr. Potter. I think that I might have the power to change your situation. I could—”

Potter gave him a glance, and shook his head. “I don’t need that,” he said. “I already have someone who’s going to make sure that things change.” Again his hand lingered on the basilisk’s neck.

“That would be a violent solution,” said Severus. In truth, the answer Potter had given him was a clarification, although far from a detailed one. “I’m sure the Headmaster would prefer that you avoid such things.”

Potter gave him a small, dark smile. “Do the reasons that you want to know more about my family have to do with Headmaster Dumbledore?”

“Yes,” said Severus. It wasn’t damaging to give away that much information, anyway.

Potter nodded. “Leave me out of it.”

“Excuse me?” Severus could usually anticipate the twists that his students’ minds made, the leaps and conclusions that they jumped to, but this one, he didn’t understand even in a basic outline.

“You’re angry with him, or something. Maybe because he never told you I was almost Sorted into Slytherin.” Potter started to stand up, swinging the basilisk around his shoulders. His gaze didn’t move from Severus’s, but for once, Severus wasn’t even tempted to reach for his Legilimency. “I don’t want to—I don’t want you to put me between you. I don’t want to trick him or lie to him or anything.”

“Even though he has not always treated you as well as he could have?” Severus was reaching for straws now, he knew, but he wanted to keep Potter from walking out of the room without actually testing Potter’s anger against his Locking Charm.

“What do you mean by that?” Potter snapped. “He had to dilute Dash’s poison to make sure other people were safe! I know that! I accepted that!”

“But first he looked into your mind,” said Severus. He eased back and put down his teacup on the desk. He would not prevent Potter from walking out the door if he had to, he decided. This situation was not utterly unsalvageable. “He has not always listened to you, either. And he was the one who placed you with the Muggles that you live with.”

Potter’s face was white. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to live with Sirius, now. And that’s something that the Headmaster promised. He said it was okay!”

“He probably did,” Severus agreed. Thinking about it, he wasn’t sure if he needed detailed confirmation of his relatives’ abusive tendencies from Potter. “Very well. If you wish to go, you can.” He waved his wand, and the door sprang open.

Typical Potter; now that he could leave, he acted as if he didn’t want to. He glanced back and forth suspiciously between the door and Severus, and then set his heels. “Why are you asking this?”

“I asked him why he had believed your godfather when he did not believe me about certain things I had told him when I was a student,” said Severus. He thought that neutral enough. “And it occurred to me that he did not believe you, either. And that—well. He hinted something about your family that disturbed me.”

The basilisk bowed its head and hissed softly into Potter’s ear. Potter either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “What could he have hinted? What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense!”

Neither are you, if nothing is truly wrong. But Severus knew how he would have reacted if someone had tried to confront him about his family when he was a student, and although he didn’t want to think of Potter and himself in the same thought any more than he had wanted to name Black and himself in the same breath, he could not ignore reality. 

“I don’t mean anything that we can discuss right now, Potter,” he said. “Do go away.”

The basilisk hissed again, but once again it was at Potter instead of at Severus. Potter stood white-faced and shaking for another long moment, and then wheeled and was gone into the darkness outside the door.

Severus sat down and looked at Potter’s unfinished cup of tea, shaking his head. That could have gone better.

Yes, it could have. But Severus at least had confirmation of several things:

Something was wrong with Potter’s family life.

Potter also suspected that the Headmaster wasn’t being honest with him, although whether he would do anything about it seemed unlikely. As the Headmaster was unable to face his mistakes, Severus feared that Potter would prove unable to confront the consequences of the Headmaster playing with his life. 

Potter would restrain the basilisk if he ever came after Severus, or the basilisk would manage to restrain himself.

And this was not the end. Potter had not fled cursing Severus’s name and vowing never to trust him again. That left the path open for another conversation at a later date, when Severus might have figured out the right questions to ask and the right vulnerabilities to reveal.

Severus sighed and sipped from his own tea. No, not a perfect conversation, but better by far than it could have been.

*

He was right, you know.

Harry gazed up and around. He hadn’t even looked where he was going when he ran away from Snape’s office. He’d just gone deeper into the dungeons, and that meant running until the walls seemed to blur around him. Now he was in a corner of the dungeons he didn’t recognize, a rough corridor that looked as though someone had hacked it through solid rock.

There is a lot wrong with those Muggles you grew up with, and the old man should not have left you there.

Harry shut his eyes. He wasn’t crying. That was good. There was some other strange choking sensation in his throat, though, and that wasn’t good.

Dash rested his head on top of Harry’s hair. Harry could feel the soft dart of his tongue, which was so light that it tickled. Harry made an absent swatting motion, and Dash dodged easily and came down to wind around his neck again. Why didn’t you tell him about that? I don’t think he would make fun of you, because I would bite him. He might take you away from there.

I don’t want anyone to know, Harry snapped. He could have spoken aloud, but he was in enemy territory, Slytherin territory, and noise would alert people. He turned to find his way back to the stairs out of the dungeons.

Why not? I know, and your friends must know at least a little, because they saw the bars on your windows. And the old man knows.

Sometimes Harry liked the way Dash could access his memories without him saying a word, and sometimes he really, really didn’t. Because what happens at the Dursleys’ is private. That’s why.

Why? You are not making sense. And my human should always make sense, because I do.

Harry shook his head restlessly and walked carefully around the corner, peering to make sure there were no Slytherins waiting to ambush him. Because I don’t want anyone to know it.

There was a long silence, as though Dash had decided to accept the argument. Harry was glad. It was hard enough to convince Dash to accept arguments most of the time, even ones that included instructions not to eat other people.

Then Dash said, Ah. I understand now what it is that Hermione means when she talks about circular reasoning.

Harry snorted in exasperation, and then yelped when someone reached out from behind a nearby corner and grabbed his arm. He spun around with his heart hammering, reaching for his wand, and wondering why Dash hadn’t warned him someone was there.

You didn’t say to warn you against this one. You wanted me to talk to him, in fact.

That at least told Harry who it was, and he relaxed and shook his head in irritation when he saw a pale face. “Malfoy. What do you want?”

“Were you spying on me?” Malfoy demanded.

Harry blinked. “How could I? Professor Snape just brought me down here for—” The truth wouldn’t make much sense, given that it didn’t make much sense even to Harry. “To discuss a detention. How could I know that you would be here, or even follow you? You’re not making sense.”

You’re learning to value sense, at least, even if you’re not learning to express it, said Dash approvingly.

Harry ignored him, squinting at Malfoy. Malfoy was a little pale, and he looked as though someone had dragged him facedown through dust, although that could just have come from the dusty part of the library where he’d been searching. He huddled over something Harry assumed was the big book about Slytherin he’d been holding earlier. “What’s the matter, Malfoy? You look ill.”

“I want to know if you were spying on me,” Malfoy insisted.

“No, for all the reasons that I just told you,” Harry snapped. Honestly, he was starting to wonder why he’d ever been concerned about Malfoy. He was just a git, all the way through. “I’ll leave now, and then you can ask the shadows if they were. They’d probably give you the exact same answer.” He turned away and tried not to stomp on his way up the corridor that he hoped would lead to the stairs.

You’re not stomping, said Dash, twining around his arm and looking up into his face with what Harry knew was affection, although at the moment it didn’t necessarily feel like that. But you are sulking.

Harry ignored that. He had tried and tried to be nice to Malfoy, and this was the only result he got. He didn’t know what Malfoy’s problem was, but he would try to ignore him from now on. At least until he apologized and made it clear that he regarded Harry as something more than just a means of procuring him a basilisk.

Good, said Dash. That means you can spend some more time making me understand why you wish to go back to your Muggles.

I don’t want to do that, Harry said. He was on the stairs leading up now. He wondered what he would say to Ron and Hermione if they asked him what Snape had wanted. Surely it must be all over the school by now that he had come up behind Harry in the library and hauled him off somewhere.

Then what not tell this Professor Snape about it? Or your smelly dog-man? Apparently, Dash objected to the canine scent that hung around Sirius, although he had said that was partially because he hadn’t tasted a dog yet. Either one of them would make sure that you didn’t have to go back.

It already doesn’t matter, because we’re going to live with Sirius, and I don’t have to go back.

Then it shouldn’t matter if you talk about them either, because the situation is over and mentioning it can’t hurt you.

Tell me, do basilisks have arseholes to vanish up?

*

Once Draco was sure Potter was gone, he let out a shaky little breath and leaned back against the wall. That had been close. He had been about to cast the spell that would start the darkfire burning, and although Potter had looked as though he was oblivious to anything except whatever anger consumed him, Draco knew he would have smelled that.

Or his basilisk would have.

When I command my own basilisk, Draco thought, as he turned back to the ritual preparations in front of him, I shall tell it to let me know right away when it smells anything unusual. And that includes Potter’s basilisk.

He examined the small firepit he had created on the floor, and then nodded. He thought this would work. The instructions in the book—and how clever Draco had been, to think of looking in the history section of the library, where someone might hide secrets that other people wouldn’t find!—were pretty clear.

Draco crouched down in front of the firepit and took a moment to breathe deeply and clear his mind, the way that Professor Snape said he must if he wanted to judge situations objectively. Then he touched his wand to the edge of the firepit and murmured, “Ignis inferiae.” 

There was a long moment when Draco thought the spell wouldn’t work, because it flickered on the edge of his wand as though reluctant to approach the rowan twigs and holly berries that Draco had ordered by owl from Hogsmeade. But then the spell caught, and Draco smiled as the small black flames danced up and down on the twigs and berries, eating them alive.

Alive, but they’re dead, Draco thought a second later, and shook his head. He was running on little sleep. He knew that wasn’t a good thing, but he wanted so badly to find the Chamber of Secrets.

When the fire had burned itself out, Draco reached out and carefully stirred through the ashes. He ignored how hot they still were, and cast them quickly on the floor in front of him. This worked like Divination magic, Salazar Slytherin’s book had said, but only if they were used right away after the fire.

“The way to the Chamber of Secrets,” Draco whispered as he threw them.

The ashes landed in what looked like a tangled, random cluster, and Draco drew in his breath sharply in disappointment. But the more he looked, the more he realized there was a pattern there. Letters. Not a map or a key, but a riddle.

Draco hastily got out the parchment he had kept in his pocket to draw something, and wrote it down instead. He didn’t take his gaze from the ashes until he had got every last letter.

Of course, it looked like a complicated riddle and he knew it would probably take him a long time to solve. But at least this was a beginning step.

And he didn’t care how long it would take him to find the Chamber, as long as he would finally have a basilisk at the end of it. 

Chapter 15: The Sullen Glow

Chapter Text

“What’s up with you, mate?” Ron demanded, out of the blue as far as Harry was concerned.

Harry blinked and looked at Ron. They were sitting at the Gryffindor table for breakfast, and so far, Ron had mostly been interested in filling his mouth with food. Harry shared that desire. He still hadn’t got used to being able to eat as much as he liked of eggs and buttered toast, which Dudley and Vernon usually consumed all of.

“What?” Harry asked, and tried Dash with an egg. As usual, Dash flicked out a tongue and touched the shell, then retreated at once.

I prefer raw eggs only. I like to kill my own prey.

You can’t kill an egg.

That only proves that you’ve never tried to smell the young chicken in the egg.

Harry cracked the boiled egg against the edge of his plate and ate it himself, shaking his head at Ron. “I still don’t know what you mean,” he added helpfully, when Ron went on staring at him.

Ron gave an explosive sigh. “You’ve acted as though someone took away your best friend for the past two days. And since I’m still sitting right here, that can’t be it.”

Harry managed a mechanical smile, but he knew Ron noticed the difference from the real thing, especially when Hermione leaned around Harry’s other side and chimed in. “Yes, and you didn’t seem to mind Potions so much, either, but now you’re back to scowling at Snape again. And he hasn’t gone back to his bad treatment of you. Honestly, Harry, there’s so much theory in Potions that can help you when you give it the chance…”

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Harry muttered, and extended a spoonful of his porridge to Dash. Sometimes Dash would consent to eat food made from plants in a way that he wouldn’t food made from animals unless he managed to kill it himself. 

This morning, Dash graciously sipped from his spoon, and then said, Your friends are right, you know. This anger that you have towards everything in general and Snape in particular is silly. You know full well that you only have to be angry at the old man, and perhaps the smelly dog-man.

Why can you call Snape by his name and not Sirius? Harry asked in irritation.

He smells better.

Ron interrupted again. “But I want you to talk about it, mate, since I never know whether you’re going to be surly or give me that fake smile that you try on me when you think no one can see through you.” He resisted the glare that Harry gave him, only smiling faintly as if he thought Harry’s anger was amusing. “Come on, then. If it doesn’t have to do with us, then you can tell us, right? And if it has to do with Snape, I want to hear.” He shoved himself close to Harry and cocked his head. 

Harry shot a quick glance at the Head Table before he could help himself. Snape gave him a bland look and went back to eating. Harry tensed in spite of himself, but Snape appeared utterly content to ignore him and only pay attention to his breakfast.

Harry sighed and turned back. “Fine. I—I had a conversation with Snape that didn’t go well.”

You can talk about things that displease you after all, Dash said, and curled his tail around Harry’s ear like a seashell.

Harry swatted it off, and continued. “It was weird. He wanted to know—things about the Dursleys.” It couldn’t hurt to tell Ron and Hermione that much. By now, he trusted them enough to know they wouldn’t betray him to an adult. “And he gave me tea, and he acted nice. But then he said things that made me think this is just some contest he’s having with Dumbledore.” Harry scowled, feeling the ache begin deep down in his chest. It would have been nice to have Snape put him first, the way Sirius did, but be interested in things other than pranks and Quidditch and telling stories about Harry’s dad. But he was stupid to expect it.

“What things?” Hermione sounded like she was a hound getting ready to track down a runaway criminal.

Harry shook his head at her. “It’s hard to explain.” He had to pause as he realized that Sirius and Snape knew about him almost being Sorted into Slytherin, but he hadn’t mentioned it to his friends. “Listen. When I got here, you remember that the Sorting Hat took a long time trying to decide where I belonged?”

“I remember that!” said Ron. “Percy said it was strange. Thought you were a Gryffindor for sure.”

Harry hoped he didn’t look like he was grimacing too obviously. He felt like everyone knew his parents better than he did, and the role they’d expected him to fit. Maybe he would have fit it if he’d known anything before he came to Hogwarts.

I think that you fill your most important role neatly, said Dash, and draped his tail more heavily along the back of Harry’s neck when Harry grunted a question. Companion to a basilisk.

Harry managed a smile, and then said, “It’s because the Hat was trying to decide where I would go. It said that I could do well in Slytherin. I held onto the stool and thought Not Slytherin, not Slytherin at it because Malfoy was in there and I couldn’t stand the git, and then it said that I should be Gryffindor instead.”

Ron stared at him with his mouth open. Dash reached over and nudged Ron’s jaw with his head. Ron didn’t even seem to notice that it was the first time Dash had touched him; he shut his mouth, and went on peering intently at Harry.

Blimey!” he finally whispered. “Why didn’t you tell us that before, mate?”

“Because I didn’t want it to be something that would get you upset,” Harry muttered, and turned to look at Hermione, who was as silent as though she had found an ancient book and hadn’t heard him at all.

Hermione had one hand held up to her mouth, though, and her eyes sparkled. “The Hat said the same thing to me,” she whispered.

“Am I the only one here who was supposed to be in Gryffindor?” Ron asked, sounding a little hurt.

“Oh, no,” said Hermione. “I mean, it told me that I could do well in Ravenclaw, not Slytherin. But it did tell me that.” She gave Harry a measuring look. “I thought Gryffindor was the best House, though, and I wanted to come here. Remember, I told you that on the train?”

Harry nodded, more relieved than he could say. At least he wasn’t alone, and this wasn’t about him really being “a snake at heart” or something. “That’s right. And you chose your House the way I chose mine.”

“Not even that,” Hermione said. She had paid rather more attention to the story than Harry had thought she had, and she leaned forwards, her eyes focused on him. “You didn’t say that you wanted to go to Gryffindor, right? You just told the Hat to put you in the best House, and after Slytherin it chose Gryffindor.”

Harry shrugged. “Right. I didn’t want to be where Malfoy was, but I didn’t know that much about the other Houses, so I couldn’t choose between them.”

“You could have been with me, mate,” Ron said indignantly.

“Oh, Ron, don’t be silly,” Hermione interrupted before Harry could say anything. “You hadn’t been Sorted when the Hat was having that discussion with Harry! How could he know where you were going to go? For all he knew, you’d be in Hufflepuff. And you should choose your House based on what you want, not what you think other people should want.”

“I told him I was sure to be in Gryffindor,” Ron muttered, a little sulky.

“It doesn’t matter that much,” said Harry. “But I think that Snape thinks it matters a lot. So he’s been trying to talk to me about it. But he’s mostly angry that Dumbledore never told him about it. I don’t want to be part of whatever revenge he wants on Dumbledore.” He ignored Dash’s low mutter that Snape might want other things more than he wanted revenge on Dumbledore. Maybe that was true, but Harry couldn’t trust Snape that far. 

“That makes sense,” said Hermione. “Professor Snape is a great teacher—” she ignored Ron’s snort a lot better than she would have done last year “—but he does have a lot of complicated relationships with other adults. Sometimes I think his relationship with Professor Dumbledore is the most complicated of all.” She stared thoughtfully at the Head Table. “And did you notice the way he glares at Professor Lupin?”

“He probably just doesn’t like him because he’s a friend of Sirius’s,” said Harry, and then jumped when Dash poked him abruptly in the side with his tail. “What?” he added, staring at Dash.

While you sat here talking, the professors and other students began to leave, said Dash calmly. I think you must hurry if you do not want to be late.

Harry jumped to his feet, swearing. And it was Potions first thing this morning, too. 

*

Blaise sighed and closed his eyes, rubbing his forehead. He wanted to know why it was up to him to solve these problems, he really did.

Of course, Draco was the source of the problems, and it was asking a little much for him to watch himself. Vince and Greg would only notice the problem if it involved food, and then they would just eat it. Theo never noticed anything he didn’t want to see.

As for the Slytherin girls, Blaise was a little wary of asking them for help. He liked to think he had a healthy respect for girls, having grown up with his mum the way she was, but that respect included a healthy amount of terror, too.

So that meant it was up to him to go up to Draco’s trunk when Draco was out somewhere in the dungeons, the way he often was these days, and break some of the ridiculously easy protection spells Draco had put on the trunk to defend it. Blaise didn’t reveal his talent a lot. Of course, lots of other people were talented in the Dark Arts or equally dangerous spells, and they tended to brag and swan around.

They might not like it if they knew that someone was in the House who could find his way past the heaviest protections due to intensive tutoring, though.

One ear cocked in case Draco came back, Blaise knelt next to the trunk and threw back the lid. A second later, he swore softly to himself. Right on top of everything else was a heavy book that looked as if it had come from a library. Well, the library. The Library of Hogwarts. And it had an S on the front that Blaise recognized, from the time his mother’s seventh husband had stolen an artifact he claimed belonged to Salazar Slytherin.

Isn’t this just wonderful, Blaise thought. He wasn’t entirely sure what Draco was doing, although he thought he could guess, but messing around with the Dark magic that protected Slytherin’s own possessions was asking for trouble.

He cast a few spells to make sure Draco hadn’t put individual protective enchantments on the book, and then nudged it. It fell open right away to a page that was marked with a streak of soot. Blaise nodded grimly. It was a Divination spell that was supposed to let someone find something of Slytherin’s. 

And Blaise could think of only one thing in the school that Draco would want to find that badly.

Footsteps were coming up the stairs. Blaise flipped the trunk lid shut again and recast the spells with a negligent flick of his wand, then moved over to his bed.

He had just flopped down and picked up a book when Draco ducked into the room. He looked suspiciously around, but that was nothing new; he always looked suspiciously around. Blaise met his look, because it would have been more suspicious not to, and then shrugged and turned back to his book.

But he was watching out of the corner of his eye as Draco sat down on his bed and took out a long scroll of parchment. Unlike the essays they wrote, this one was strung on a wooden spindle of the kind that someone would use to roll up a book in an older library. Once again, Blaise was grateful for his mother’s training; he wouldn’t have known what it was if she hadn’t insisted on teaching him so much history and even showing him images of things like the old books.

And now that Draco was holding paper and Blaise was holding paper…

Blaise found a blank section of the margin in his book and traced his wand over it as if he was practicing the gestures of a spell, moving his lips only in the spell. As his mother had taught him, nonverbal magic might take a long time to master, but there was no reason that you had to shout when you cast aloud.

The words on Draco’s scroll began to appear in the margin of Blaise’s book. The limited space meant they quickly appeared, rose up the page, and disappeared for more to appear beneath them, but Blaise could still read several.

so that the mighty gift of Parseltongue should not die out, Salazar Slytherin arranged a ritual by which one could gain knowledge of it. This ritual involves the bite of an asp at the full moon. When the one who would be master of snakes goes to the dark place on the night of the full moon and bears the asp to his breast…

“Something interesting, Blaise?”

Blaise decided he must have gasped aloud or something else to show that he wasn’t as involved in the book as he pretended. Or that he was involved in a way unusual for a textbook. He smiled slightly and glanced up at Draco, shaking his head. He mourned the words he would let get away, but at least he could throw off suspicion.

“Just learning the number of people who think that Herbology has a use in the world,” he said. “Instead of providing an occupation for Hufflepuffs.”

Not too long ago, Draco would have relaxed and agreed with him, or at least made teasing remarks about Blaise being surprised about anything when it came to Hufflepuffs. Now, he only stared with hard eyes for a few seconds before he turned back to his scroll.

Blaise looked down and read along again in the margin of his book. It was now onto what seemed to be the consequences of the ritual performed on the night of the full moon, which included such ominous phrases as when the one who has lain as dead.

He had established that Draco was mental. Anyone who ran around planning to let poisonous snakes bite him on the full moon was. Now, of course, the only task that remained was what to do about it.

*

“I really got it because of you, you know,” said Sirius, throwing open a door and coughing a little. Harry had noticed that his confident manner had faded more and more the closer they got to the house, and now he was watching Harry constantly as if he thought that Harry would wildly reject everything Sirius might try to give him. “I mean, I could have gone on living in those rooms at Hogwarts just fine. Happiest time of my life, Hogwarts. But I thought you’d like to have a home of your own.”

Harry walked into the house trying not to show how much those words meant to him. Of course, Dash touched his tongue to Harry’s ear and murmured, You should tell him.

You don’t have much say in that, do you? Since you dislike Sirius anyway, Harry retorted, and looked around the little entrance hall he’d stepped into.

It was a house on the outskirts of Hogsmeade, such a nice one that Harry had fleetingly wondered how much it had cost Sirius to buy it. But there were no mad thoughts about paying Sirius back. Harry didn’t have that much, and, well—

It was nice to know that someone had wanted to do something just for him. And Harry didn’t really want to pay them back or return the favor, even though that made him selfish.

It makes you practical, Dash told him, and then dropped down from Harry’s shoulder and began to slither through the house, pausing now and then to stick his tongue out and brush it against the walls, the banisters, the chairs, the tapestries that hung on the walls and were even more wonderful than the ones at Hogwarts.

Harry felt Sirius’s hand on his shoulder, and turned around to find Sirius nervously beaming at him. “I don’t know what sort of thing you like,” he explained. “I mean, I put some Quidditch posters in your room, but that’s just common sense, really. I don’t know what else…” He waved his hand at the house.

“It’s great,” Harry assured him, and Sirius broke into a smile.

“Let’s take the tour, then,” he said, and hauled Harry out of the entrance hall, which was patterned in dark wood and had a few tapestries of stags running through green forests, into the drawing room beyond.

It sprawled, and Harry thought it was probably the biggest room in the house. There was paneling on the walls here, too, and stone, but Sirius had already painted or enchanted them or something, so they were pale and the room felt light and airy. Harry noticed that the only windows were enchanted ones, both showing an ocean view, and Sirius waved a hand. “Just taking some precautions.”

Harry nodded, unconcerned. All the precautions Sirius had to take couldn’t possibly be as onerous to live with as the conditions to set up the blood wards at the Dursleys’ had been.

He wandered out of the drawing room, which had almost no furniture except for some empty bookshelves and an enormous blue couch, into the dining room that lay right next to it, with a shimmering curtain of cloth the only door in between them. There was a table in the middle of the room, and Harry’s eyes widened. “Brilliant,” he said.

The table was one like you might see in a pub, Harry thought, like the Leaky Cauldron, made of dark wood, with some scars on top of it. Sirius grinned and pointed to a mark with long lines like a star right in the center of the top. “See that? That’s where a fireball that an Auror hurled at a fleeing criminal landed, they told me. Right there. It would have burned through the whole table, except this is pretty tough wood. Black oak.”

Brilliant,” Harry said again. He knew he was repeating himself, but he couldn’t come up with another word, and Sirius laughed.

“Then there’s the kitchen, where a few elves from Hogwarts will work for us,” Sirius said, and nodded through a pair of swinging doors. Harry didn’t really feel any desire to explore the kitchen; he knew he wouldn’t be expected to cook there, and that was enough for him. “And a room I have outfitted as a potions lab.”

“You do?” Harry glanced sideways at Sirius.

Sirius snorted. “Hey, just because Sniv—Snape ruined it for you doesn’t mean we all had it ruined for us! I was lucky enough to have a professor who was easy.” He winked at Harry. “And this way, I can make my own potions that are useful in pranks.”

Harry didn’t feel like saying anything about Snape and his complicated relationship with the man at the moment, so he turned and ran back into the drawing room. There was a set of stairs there, running between banisters that had carved dragon heads on them. Harry stopped to study one of the dragon heads, and jumped back when it opened its mouth and breathed out a puff of smoke at him.

“One of the few enchantments I remember liking at home, when I was a kid,” Sirius said. “I thought I’d duplicate it here.”

“It makes me feel like I’m living in a real wizarding house,” Harry breathed out, and then flushed a little, wondering if he would sound stupid.

But Sirius only grabbed him and ruffled his hair. “The way you should have been all along. Do you want to see your room?”

Yes,” Harry said, and left Sirius laughing behind him as he ran up the stairs.

There were only four doors at the top of the stairs, and one was made of glass panes, so Harry could see it was a bathroom, and one had a heavy lock on the door, and one was ajar and had Sirius’s Room floating above it in yellow letters on a magical banner that made it seem as if they were pinned to the door. So Harry turned to the one room that was left, and flung open the door.

He stopped, paralyzed. Even though he hadn’t known before this exactly what he would put into a room of his own, he felt as though Sirius had reached into his head, and scooped out the answer, and put it down. Harry wandered further into the room, in a daze.

The glittering, turning images above him were constellations, the ones that Harry saw every time he went up on the Astronomy Tower and looked through a telescope for class. But there were lines drawn among the stars so that they made up a dog and a stag, and they ran and curved through the ceiling, endlessly chasing each other. Harry did see the Quidditch posters on the wall with moving figures, but for now, he found it hard to look away from those constellations.

When he managed, he saw the four-poster bed with red and gold sheets, a quilt that had a flying phoenix embroidered on it, heavy curtains, and a table right beside the bed that had three Galleons on it. Harry wandered over and picked up the Galleons, blinking. Three more images of them immediately appeared where they’d been, and Harry reached curiously for them, but his hand went through them.

“Money-controlling spell,” Sirius explained from behind him. “You have to spend those before you get more, and you only ever get three at a time.”

Harry shook a little. He had thought—he had thought that Sirius would house him and feed him, and all right, maybe buy him clothes, but he hadn’t known, he didn’t ¬think

He spun around and hugged Sirius around the waist. Sirius blinked, Harry saw that, in the moment before he closed his eyes. Then Sirius gently touched his hair.

“Hey,” Sirius said. “It’s okay.”

“It is now,” Harry said.

Yes, said Dash, and crawled up his leg and wrapped himself around Harry’s waist like a knotted cloth. It’s okay now.

Chapter 16: Christmas Fire

Chapter Text

Harry relaxed as he lay back against the couch in the Gryffindor common room and kicked his feet up. Exams were finally over, and tomorrow, he would go home with Sirius for the Christmas holidays.

The very first time he had ever had Christmas in a house where he lived, with someone who cared about him. Not at Hogwarts, even though it was nice. A house that belonged just to him and Sirius.

And me, said Dash, who was draped over Harry’s legs to get nearer to the fire. He turned his head and let one eyelid flutter as if he was going to draw it back and let the deadly eye underneath it peer out.

And you, said Harry, reaching down and brushing a hand against Dash’s plume. As usual, Dash’s head sagged to the side, boneless, in the wake of Harry’s caress. The thing is, I don’t think it matters to you that we live in a house. We could live in a cave, and you would be happy as long as you were able to leave and hunt. Wouldn’t you? he added, because Dash was keeping silent, and Harry was pretty sure it was out of pure stubbornness and refusal to admit Harry was right.

It matters to me where we live. There would be more mice in a cave.

Harry had to laugh. He thought he could. Most of the Gryffindors were either gone already to their parents or other family members, or they were running around out in the snow screaming and throwing snowballs and rejoicing in the general lack of constraint. Harry could understand that, but he had begged for one more night at Hogwarts before he went home, and Sirius had consented. It wasn’t like Harry couldn’t just walk home, anyway.

Besides, Dash didn’t like the cold, and participating in a snowball fight would have meant Harry had to leave him behind. Which made some people in Gryffindor notice, and even Dumbledore had watched him with a narrowed eye the first time Harry had done it.

You should warm me up, said Dash, and wrapped around Harry’s legs until Harry thought he was going to have to go boneless himself to put up with it. Think warm thoughts. That will help. 

Harry tried to comply, but there was only so long he could think about fire without thinking about Potions class and the fires under cauldrons. He scowled a little, but then he had to sigh and shake his head. 

What had he expected? Of course Snape was going to go back to being a glaring git when he found out Sirius had bought a house. Harry had been explaining to Ron and Hermione about it when Snape swept by and slowed to listen.

Harry had glanced at him, unsure whether or not he should include Snape in the conversation. It wasn’t like they were in class. It had been Saturday, and he and Ron and Hermione were all sitting in the Great Hall after breakfast, with Dash happily winding around a little globe of hot light that Harry had learned how to conjure. 

But Harry had done his best not to think about Snape or Malfoy for the last few weeks, and the weeks had turned into months. And Malfoy didn’t ever think about him, Harry was sure. He just seemed to spend all his time in a corner of the library, researching, or going to class, or wandering around school like a ghost.

And Harry wasn’t worried. He wouldn’t be, not after Malfoy had been such a git.

Snape was the same way. He had listened to Harry talk about his room—because Harry wasn’t going to stop talking just because he had more of an audience—and the minute he’d heard about the stag and dog in stars on the ceiling, he’d turned and walked away, back perfectly straight.

So Harry might regret it, and he might especially regret it because he knew Sirius hadn’t ever thanked Snape for testifying at his trial, but there was nothing he could do about it. He was just going to try and be happy the way that he knew his parents would want him to be, and in the meantime, he was enjoying the thought of living with Sirius.

I only hope that he has not filled the rooms with mounds of biscuits, or decorations in the shape of brooms on every wall, or something equally ridiculous, Dash said, and rolled his head to the side, making Harry’s fingers move with it.

Why would you care about brooms? Harry asked, blinking. I like them, so you either ought to like them or ignore them.

Dash twitched his tail. I think he would do something ridiculous because the only thing he cares about is you. And now he is living in the house and only seeing you on weekends. He would do something that might make it difficult to climb the walls because he doesn’t have you there to concentrate on.

Harry frowned, and then he shook his head a little. He didn’t know if he could deny what Dash was saying, but he wanted to deny the conclusions. So that means I’m responsible for it if he does something stupid? No, thanks. I’ve already had enough of people blaming me for things that aren’t my fault.

Dash yawned, curling his tongue in a way that Harry knew wasn’t natural for him; he was just doing it because it made him look as if he was doing a more human gesture. Then he turned and curled around Harry’s torso, leaning his head right below Harry’s cheek. Harry stroked his neck and closed his eyes.

No one is making you responsible for him, Dash said softly, firmly. I am not, at least, and anyone who tries can cope with my bite. He didn’t even let Harry say that he hadn’t given Dash permission to bite anyone, simply going on. What matters is that you shouldn’t be surprised if he sometimes acts obsessive.

Harry stared at the floor. The only other obsessive people he knew, at least about him, were Voldemort and Snape.

Yes, but one of them wants to kill you, and the other one doesn’t know what he wants. Dash nudged him with his nose and slid to the floor. That makes the first one more dangerous. And now, we are going to stop discussing depressing things andgo to the kitchens. There should be food there.

Not food that you can kill, though, Harry said cautiously, standing up. Dash, who had sniffed out the kitchens a month ago, had once brought up the notion of hunting house-elves, and Harry still didn’t know if he had reacted too mildly, although he had yelled and stomped his feet and told Dash about Dobby.

Yes, but there might be ice cream.

Harry rolled his eyes and followed Dash down the stairs. Dash took them in an interesting way, flowing along the side like a stream of water. You complain about being cold, but then you want to go and eat cold food.

Then we can come back and warm up in front of the fire, and you can pet me. I see no drawbacks to this. 

Harry had to at least give a half-smile, and from there, it wasn’t a big step to a full one.

*

Draco checked his notes, and then bit his lip. They looked right, and he thought he had copied them right from Slytherin’s book. But he couldn’t copy them exactly with a Replication Charm. Slytherin’s book had other charms on the text that prevented that.

In the end, Draco shook his head and stood up, going over to retrieve Slytherin’s book from his trunk. Perhaps he was being an idiot, but at least he would be a live idiot with a basilisk if he looked one more time.

He glanced carefully around the third-year boys’ bedroom as he reached into his trunk. So far, he thought the only reason he hadn’t been caught was that this book had been sitting in the middle of an old and disused history section. Everyone assumed that everything important about the Founders was in Hogwarts, A History, except for researchers that mostly lived far away from Hogwarts.

His hand scrabbled among clothes and patted other books, papers, his broom that he’d had to promise to put away and not use until next year—

No book about Slytherin.

Draco froze for a second. Then he threw back the lid and began to look fully, fiercely, not bothering to keep an alert stare around the room. He thought he would hear footsteps on the stairs in a minute, anyway.

There was nothing there. Nothing that he wanted, anyway. Books that he had learned to disdain now he knew the secret of real power. Clothes that wouldn’t help him with the ritual. A broom that he wouldn’t need if he gained a basilisk and learned the secret of enchanting it to fly, as Slytherin’s book had promised him that he could.

Only the bloody book wasn’t there.

“Draco, what are you doing?”

Draco leaped up and spun around, his wand out. Blaise stood behind him, blinking. After a second, he shook his head and walked over to his bed, although with his head turned to the side, one eye on Draco, as though he thought Draco would try to copy his homework or something.

“Whatever it is, leave me out of it,” Blaise muttered, and sat down on his bed and pulled out a scroll and ink. No books, Draco thought, staring at him, thinking wildly. Blaise always claimed that he did his best work from memory, and he only needed his books to help him revise the essay.

“Did you take it?” Draco demanded.

“Your sanity?” Blaise murmured absently, dipping his quill into the ink and beginning to write a title at the top of the scroll with a flourish. “I think I saw Greg absconding with it. Be quick, before he figures out how to Transfigure it into a cake and eat it.”

Draco was abruptly sure that Blaise was the one who had taken it. None of his other roommates would have the intelligence, and no one else knew he had taken the book out of the library. He had spotted Blaise peering at him the day he came in with the book, and some of the times he was reading it, he was sure.

He stalked over and slammed his hands on Blaise’s bed. But Blaise had already caught his inkwell so it wouldn’t turn over and spill his ink everywhere. That confirmed to Draco that he was guilty, because how else would he have known Draco was angry and what he was going to do?

“It would help to know the crime before I face the execution for it,” Blaise remarked.

Draco became aware he was holding his wand in a tense, trembling hand, and that Blaise, for all his casual pretense, was watching him carefully. Draco sneered at him and brought down the wand to rap hard against his kneecap. “I want to know if you took the book I had,” he said. “My History book.”

Blaise curled his lip. “My dear Draco,” he said, and placed a hand over his heart with a gesture that Draco couldn’t see as either false or true, given how well he was acting it, “I have enough trouble writing relevant notes in my own History book. I assure you I wouldn’t want to take anyone else’s and spy on their adolescent scribblings.”

Draco stared for a blank moment before he realized that Blaise thought Draco was talking about his History of Magic book.

Or he was pretending to think that. Because of course he really didn’t, and of course he was only lying, and acting, and pretending he cared about Draco and what he was researching, but no one really did, not the way a basilisk would—

Draco uttered a short scream of pure frustration and launched himself at Blaise.

Blaise only fell back against his pillows and flicked his wand, and Draco went flying across the room as protection spells he had never known were there leaped into life around the bed. Draco found himself lying on the floor panting, and struggled back to his feet, his head aching fiercely.

“You’re not acting like yourself,” Blaise said, as if responding to the murderous rage that brewed behind Draco’s thoughts instead of the actual expression on his face. “You would know that if you thought about it. I don’t have your precious book. I’m telling the truth,” he added, when Draco started forwards with his mouth open.

Draco stared at him searchingly. Blaise looked back at him and radiated sincerity.

Acting, Draco thought, again. But this time, he didn’t think so. Which meant…someone else had taken the book. Maybe there was a charm on it that alerted the librarian if someone kept it out too long, and she could take it back. Madam Pince had started doing that with some of the Quidditch books, because otherwise, she complained, she never had them on the shelves at all.

Maybe Theodore had noticed and done something about it. It was true Theodore rarely deigned to pay attention to anything beyond the edge of his nose, except letters from his father, but once he did see something he wanted, he was ruthless about taking it.

Draco backed away from Blaise, panting, his eyes on the strange spells that guarded Blaise’s bed. He had never seen anything like them before, and he would have given a great deal to know how to raise them.

Yesterday. Last week. A few months ago. Right now, he needed that book, and he needed to get into the Chamber of Secrets, and most of all, he needed his basilisk.

“You’d better not be lying,” he whispered. “I’ll hurt you if you are.”

Blaise’s face changed. “Then you’ll be making a mistake,” he said, and his expression looked like the shadow of a not-smile that Draco had seen on some photographs of Mrs. Zabini in the newspapers. 

Draco stared hard at Blaise again, and then turned and slipped away. He didn’t think Blaise would really poison him, which was said to be Mrs. Zabini’s preferred way of making husbands into ex-husbands, but it would also be foolish to stay and take chances.

This was…

He had no idea what to do next. He could track Theodore down, but not soon enough to do the full moon ritual for this month. It had to be done tonight, and Draco had already wasted some of the preparation time he needed.

He fled from the dorms, and if there were eyes on his back, well, Blaise probably thought he had his reasons.

*

Blaise sighed and flopped back on his bed. He had taken a chance, he knew, especially when he told Draco that he didn’t have the book. Draco was so agitated he might have taken that truth as a lie, and then Blaise would have had to show off some of the skills his mother had taught him rather sooner than he wanted to. 

In the meantime, he knew the book was safe. Blaise had taken it and owled it to his mother, with questions about what was in it and hints she might find it interesting. She would know whether Blaise’s own suspicions about the book and the spells that guarded it were true. 

Why would a book like that be sitting all alone in the middle of the library? It had been his mother’s question before, but Blaise agreed with her. His mum saw only three fit places for it: in the Restricted Section, in a private collection, or with her.

Unless, of course, the book itself was responsible for its placement, and for the way it was preying on Draco’s mind.

Blaise only hoped he had removed it before its effect on Draco’s mind was ingrained.

*

Severus frowned and slowly leaned back from the Gryffindor portrait. The ridiculous Fat Lady had refused to let him in, of course. She had said first that he didn’t know the password, and next that he was the “traditional enemy” of Gryffindors, and third that there was no one in the common room anyway. Severus had argued back that he knew Potter was there and he had to speak to him, and that was when the Fat Lady had said the interesting thing, the thing that would have kept Severus from having an argument with a portrait if he hadknown it.

“Went down to the kitchens a few minutes ago, didn’t he?” the Fat Lady had said, smug and robust, folding her arms beneath her bosom as she laughed at him. “Not like he’s here. I told you, no one in the common room.” And she stared vigilantly past him, as if she was going to protect Gryffindor Tower against any more “traditional enemies” if one showed up. 

Severus had decided she was telling the truth. Of course, school portraits were not supposed to be able to lie anyway, or they would have joined the students in countless pranks and the Headmaster would have lost control, but they could be biased or mistaken.

Still, it would take no more of his time to seek Potter in the kitchens than it had taken to come up here. And Severus wanted a chance to speak to him before Black took him “home” for the holidays.

When Severus arrived at the pear that concealed the entrance to the kitchens, he heard the sound of voices. That was not unusual; Potter would be speaking to the house-elves. Not having grown up around them, he had not adopted the usual wizarding attitude towards the creatures.

Severus raised his hand to tickle the pear, and then paused. No, he recognized those voices, and one of them was Draco’s.

Severus at once cast a spell of his own invention, the Eavesdropping Charm, which brought him the muffled words clearly despite the wall in the way. Then he cast a Disillusionment Charm around himself and settled in to listen.

*

Harry had been more than surprised when Malfoy came flying through the door into the kitchens, but not as surprised as the elves, who had all frozen as solid as the mass of ice cream they’d just put in front of Dash, or Malfoy, who stared at Harry with desolate eyes and whirled to fly back out.

“Wait!” Harry blurted.

“No, why should I?” Malfoy asked, and he sounded as if he’d been crying, or as if he was trying to avoid crying, and not succeeding very well. “This is—everything’s wrong, maybe you took my book, now I’ll never have a basilisk.” He turned around and scowled at Harry and Dash again. Dash coiled up and watched him for a second, then flowed off the table.

Dash! Harry said.

I’m not going to bite him. I want to try something. 

Harry could only bite his lip and sit still and hope this would be okay as Dash slithered up until he was directly in front of Malfoy. Malfoy stared at him and said nothing. He was keeping very still, and Harry didn’t think it was out of fear. It was like Malfoy was so despairing that his despair was holding him there.

Harry had felt like that sometimes before, mostly when he was crouching in the cupboard at the Dursleys’. He found himself holding his breath.

Dash swayed before Malfoy like a cobra, and his tongue flickered out, tasting scents that he didn’t share with Harry, even though Harry asked. He only repeated, I want to try something, and flung a loop of his body around Malfoy’s legs.

Malfoy sat down hard. Harry got up. He was going to run to someone’s rescue, but he really didn’t know if it was Dash’s or Malfoy’s.

I told you to let me alone, said Dash, and the next second he had unbound Malfoy and was slithering back to Harry. There was something missing from his back, Harry saw as he picked him up, something glimmering on Malfoy’s leg. It looked like a small and silky scale, one of the ones Harry often stroked when he couldn’t get to sleep and Dash would let Harry pet him as a soothing method. 

It was as I thought, said Dash, and bobbed his head in what looked like self-congratulations. Harry rolled his eyes. Dash immediately told him that it was self-congratulations, and added, He smelled like the magic on the traps I scented around us when we left the Chamber.

You mean Slytherin’s magic? 

Yes.

Harry looked at Malfoy in wonder. He had wanted to find a way to the Chamber of Secrets, and it seemed like he might have found one. “You’re pretty brilliant for someone who’s not a Parselmouth,” he heard himself say.

Malfoy slowly picked himself up and shook his head. “What did your snake do?” he asked, and he sounded as though he had forgotten he was talking to a Gryffindor and an enemy. Or maybe those were the same thing, to him.

Harry smiled cautiously at him. “I think he healed you of some magic that was hurting you. He left you his scale.” He nodded at the glimmering green piece that still clung to Malfoy’s leg, as though it was molded there.

Malfoy bent down and pulled on it. It didn’t come off, and Malfoy said in a high, haughty voice that Harry could recognize the terror in, “It’s stuck there. Why is it stuck there?”

The magic haunting him was very powerful, said Dash, who was guzzling down the ice cream and flicking his tongue out as though he wanted to swallow the scent of the ice cream along with the taste. I had to leave part of myself behind to counter it. It will be bound to his body now. He turned his head and flicked his tongue out. Tell him not to smell so terrified. It’s putting me off my appetite.

“Dash had to give you one of his scales so he could get rid of Slytherin’s magic,” said Harry. “Slytherin was influencing your mind.”

Malfoy stopped tugging on the scale. “He was?”

Harry listened to Dash for a second, although his words sounded oddly muffled in Harry’s mind. He was tired, Harry realized. And hungry. Using that much magic had taken something out of him. “Yes. Through the book, I think. Dash said you smelled like the traps in the Chamber of Secrets. And he gave you a scale so you could be free of that magic.”

“It’s going to stay with me.” Malfoy stared dazedly down at his leg.

Harry nodded. “That’s right.” He didn’t actually need Dash to tell him that this time. He thought the scale looked stuck on there good and proper.

Malfoy visibly swallowed. Then he looked up at Harry and said, “I was looking for a basilisk of my own, not to become part one.”

Harry grinned and gestured him over. “Sit down and tell me what you were doing. And I’ll tell you why Dash is smarter than both of us.”

Always nice to have an audience for one’s greatness, Dash said, without looking up from the ice cream. He had already started to drape part of his tail in Harry’s lap, though, which meant he would curl up soon and start sleeping.

Malfoy came a few cautious steps forwards. Harry beamed at him and nodded as welcomingly as possible. Slowly, Malfoy sat down and started talking.

*

Smiling, Severus stepped back from the door and went on his way.

Chapter 17: Flameburst

Chapter Text

“This is the best Christmas ever,” said Harry, and flung himself down in the middle of the paper from the huge pile of presents and rolled in it.

Dash moved slowly out of the way, his tail tapping the floor in what looked like irritation, although his thoughts flowing through Harry’s head were almost too calm. If you wish to call gifts that smell odd and do nothing interesting the best.

Harry rolled over on his stomach and laughed. He was doing that a lot lately, and it made Sirius, who was currently in the kitchen fixing their Christmas dinner, laugh back when he heard it. He chuckled now, and Harry smiled. It was nice to be here with someone who wanted to spend time with him and wasn’t lecturing him about Slytherins or snakes or Gryffindors. Sure, Sirius had gone through that period, but he was over it now, Harry thought. “Sirius got you mice. You can’t complain about him after that.”

“What was that, pup?” Sirius called out from the kitchen. “I didn’t hear you.”

Harry closed his eyes as another glow of warmth and happiness traveled through him. He was with someone who not only wanted him, they gave him a nickname. Harry had always secretly envied Dudley that, although he hadn’t envied the nickname “Dudders” itself. He simply wanted to know what it was like to get called that way, to be so casual around an adult that they didn’t call you by your formal name all the time.

“Just talking to Dash,” he said, and picked up Dash, who was flowing in the direction of the stairs. After a moment, Dash ceased his attempt to struggle, which wasn’t spirited anyway, and tolerated Harry carrying him in the direction of the kitchen. “He said that the gifts you got me weren’t interesting, and I pointed out that you got him gifts that were more interesting to him.” He was trying to speak at least part of the conversations he had with Dash aloud to Sirius. He thought Sirius would get used to the fact that he had both Parseltongue and a mental bond more quickly that way.

I don’t see why you think that, said Dash, and wrapped his tail firmly around Harry’s shoulders and neck. Harry rolled his eyes. He knew why Dash was doing that. The first time Sirius had seen it happen, he’d yelled that the basilisk was trying to strangle his godson. He hates me.

“He does not,” Harry snapped aloud, and then he was in the kitchen with Sirius, who was covering the table with their dinner. Harry opened his mouth and discovered that no sound would come out.

He had assumed, without thinking about, that there would be some fruit and some meat and some of the dishes like the ones the Hogwarts house-elves made for the Christmas feast there. Instead, there was just—sweets. Piled mounds of chocolates from Honeydukes jostled against sweet iced cakes. There was a chocolate fountain in the center of the table, except it was a magical one, which meant that sugary dragons blew out a splattering cascade that flowed down and disappeared before it touched anything else. There was some fruit in the center of the table, but it was covered with a glaze of sugar. And there was a bowl of biscuits not far from that, so delicate and white and filled with folded bits of orange and dough that Harry was afraid to touch them.

“Happy Christmas, pup,” said Sirius.

Harry blinked at him, and then at the table again, and then said, “You aren’t going to make me eat anything healthy?”

Sirius relaxed and laughed. “Of course not! There’s tomorrow for that, and the other three hundred and sixty-three days of the year. But for today—” He reached out and snapped one corner of a biscuit loose, and then brought it up to turn to powder on his tongue. “There’s this.”

Harry thought about it a second, and then grinned. He didn’t really know why he was hesitating. He supposed that was the Hermione voice in the back of his head, the one that sometimes made him feel guilty when he didn’t pay enough attention to the rules. 

But if his adult guardian didn’t say he needed to pay attention to the rules, why did he? Harry reached out and picked up a spoon buried in ice cream.

That, you may give me, Dash said graciously, and unwound from about Harry’s neck and extended his tongue for it. 

Harry snorted. You don’t need to use your tongue to lap up ice cream, he said, and then began ladling ice cream over to Dash anyway. 

It’s something that is a human mannerism. Dash slurped loudly, getting some cream on his nose and having to lick it off. And sometimes, I wish to ape human mannerisms.

There was some kind of dark hint in the back of his voice, something that said maybe he didn’t approve of Sirius or this feast either, the way Hermione wouldn’t have, but Sirius broke in before Harry could ask Dash about it. “Why are you in Divination, pup?”

Harry turned around and stared in surprise. He had thought they would talk about nothing except fun over the whole holidays. That was what Sirius had promised. But from the determined set to Sirius’s face, he either had forgotten about this or he thought it would be fun for some reason.

And Harry wished he could stop distrusting Sirius and stop thinking about the way that Professor Snape would have talked to him, or Malfoy. Maybe Harry could wish that Sirius treated them better, and he would have to insist on it if he and Malfoy were going to be friends. But for right now, they weren’t here, and Sirius had just asked an innocent question, so why couldn’t Harry answer it?

“I wanted to choose a subject that was kind of easy,” said Harry, shrugging. “And I wanted to be with Ron.”

Sirius relaxed back until Harry thought he might melt off his chair. “So there was no other reason?” He began to grin. “I’ve met Trelawney, you know. She’s been predicting your death for months, hasn’t she?”

Harry thought about it, but he had to pause in the midst of his thinking to feed Dash again, who was impatient with him for being distracted. “Yeah, I reckon so. I just stopped paying much attention to it once I got Dash.”

Sirius’s eyes flickered over to Dash for a second, and he snorted. “Why?”

“Because if Voldemort came up and tried to hurt me, Dash would handle it,” said Harry.

It seemed simple to him, but Sirius sucked in his breath, and then reached out and put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. “You know that would help you too, right?” he almost whispered. “You wouldn’t be alone.”

“I wouldn’t be alone with Dash, either,” Harry had to point out, but when he saw the way Sirius was frowning, he gave in and nodded. “I know. It’s just…”

The point was somewhere out there, Harry thought, where he couldn’t reach it. It was strange. It was as though sometimes he felt so smart and wise and he could see all these undercurrents moving around him, like he’d been Sorted into Slytherin after all and he’d learned to see the “mysteries” he sometimes heard the Slytherins talking about, like who was allied with who. That was the main reason that he’d thought Snape was trying to use him in his feud against Dumbledore, and he’d told Snape sharply not to use him that way.

And then, sometimes he felt stupid and like he couldn’t understand anything. Like the way Sirius was staring at him. It was kind of like the way he’d looked at Harry when he was telling him stories about his dad, like he was expecting Harry to be his dad, sort of the way the Dursleys had. But Sirius would have been happy if he was, and the Dursleys would have been upset.

It wasn’t exactly like, though. Harry didn’t know how to describe it.

I’m probably being all Slytherin by looking for hidden plots and stuff, Harry thought. Maybe the Dursleys would have plotted against him, but this was Sirius. His godfather. He thought Sirius could be mean and impatient sometimes, but he wouldn’t keep secrets from Harry.

“I know you’d help me,” he said.

“More than just a snake,” said Sirius.

Harry had to laugh at that, because Dash was so far from just a snake that the way Sirius was reacting was funny in and of itself. “Yes, but he’s a basilisk,” he pointed out, when he saw the stiff way Sirius was looking at him. “He can defend himself and me a lot more than just a snake would be able to.”

“Hm.” For a moment, Sirius tapped his fingers against his arm and looked at Dash, who curled tighter around Harry and returned the gaze. For the moment, Dash seemed to have lost interest even in ice cream. Harry sighed and cuddled Dash against him, wishing he didn’t feel so torn between Gryffindor and Slytherin for reasons he didn’t even understand. He’d been fine until this year.

So the Sorting Hat didn’t tell you more than once that you would do well in Slytherin. And you didn’t pick up a snake that makes part of the school think you’re the reincarnation of Slytherin. And—

Stop that!

No, said Dash, and snapped his fangs off to the side of Harry’s cheek. Someone who can see your memories needs to convince you, because otherwise you’ll never listen.

Harry was about to respond when he realized Sirius’s wand was out. And then he realized why. He shook his head and jumped up with his hands extended. “No! It’s okay! Dash wasn’t going to attack me. He and I were just having an argument.”

“He could have bitten you,” said Sirius, voice low and ugly and eyes never moving from Dash’s face.

“Yes, but even then, his poison is diluted,” said Harry, desperate to make the savage expression on Sirius’s face go away. “He wouldn’t hurt me much.”

“I don’t want anyone to hurt you at all,” said Sirius, and jammed his wand back in the holster. He was growling a little, and Harry was afraid that he would transform into a dog and leap right across the table at Dash.

“I know,” said Harry, as soothingly as he could. “And that’s nice. But he’s not going to hurt me. He would never do it.” Sirius went on glaring, and Harry lost his temper. “If you don’t want anyone to hurt me, stop.”

Sirius blinked and glanced at him, worried. “Pup?”

“Just—stop staring at Dash as if you hate him.” Harry sank back in his chair with his arms around Dash, all his appetite gone. “That’s what hurts. Thinking the two of you will never get along.”

I will get along with him if he stops thinking that I’m going to corrupt you, or whatever it is that he is really afraid of. Dash only sounded that formal when he was upset, and Harry leaned his head to the side so that Dash was heated by both his chin and his shoulder, caught between them. Dash hung stiffly there for a second as if he was going to refuse the comfort, and then sighed and tapped Harry’s cheek with his tongue. All right. Let me up.

Harry did, and Dash wound about his neck like a collar, while Sirius sighed and said, “Fine, pup. I’ll do what I can. It’s just hard to go from thinking about snakes as the symbol of evil and thinking about basilisks as dangerous, and then finding one fawning all over my godson.”

“Are snakes the symbol of evil because of the reasons Muggles think they are?” Harry asked, and got a blank look. Right. Sirius hadn’t been raised in the Muggle world. “Or are they evil because they’re the symbol of Slytherin?”

“They’re not exactly evil,” said Sirius. “It’s just that I didn’t expect you to have one.”

“Well, I do,” said Harry, and looked down with his hand still on Dash’s neck. Dash moved his head back and forth a little as if to encourage Harry to pet him, but Harry was having trouble right now. It wasn’t even because Sirius was watching him. It was because Harry felt as though this all mattered, mattered tremendously, but—

But he didn’t know why. And he didn’t know whether he should do the right thing, or what the right thing was. He’d known it was right to go and thank Snape for the part he’d played in freeing Sirius. But beyond that?

It’s like there was a whole room of people having a conversation about me, and they all stopped when I walked into the room, and yet they expect me to know what they were saying.

I will be your conversation partner, said Dash, and his determination made Harry smile.

He took a deep breath and just said, “But you like me anyway? Right? And you can put up with Dash?” he added, because Sirius had his mouth open and Harry wanted to make sure that all his questions were answered.

Sirius swallowed like Dudley when he had a stomach-ache and looked for a moment at Dash. Then he nodded. “I reckon I can.”

“Then I don’t think there’s anything else I need to say,” Harry decided, and went back to eating his biscuits.

It was only later, when he was undressing for bed, that he realized he had never really got an answer about why Sirius wanted to know about Divination.

*

Harry stuck his head around Sirius’s bedroom door. “Sirius?”

Most of the time, Sirius was up before him, at least on this holiday. Harry was taking advantage of time off from classes to sleep in and not worry about chores or anything else. Sirius had his magic, and the ability to cast it without the Ministry fussing at him now. And sometimes a house-elf came from Hogwarts. All the chores were taken care of for Harry.

But this morning, Sirius was asleep, as his loud snores proved. Harry stood there and cast a longing look out the window beyond Sirius’s bed. The windows were mostly enchanted, but some of them were just guarded and would show you the real view, and this was one of them. The weather out there was cold but clear and blue, perfect flying weather. At least if Harry wore his warmest Quidditch gear, and he would. He wanted to go out there and test the new Firebolt Sirius had given him.

Surely it’s all right, said Dash, twining around his ankles. I will watch and tell you when he wakes up and you should come down.

Harry hesitated again. But he thought Sirius might actually like it if Harry broke the rules a little. He was always saying Harry was too prim and proper, and it was probably Hermione’s influence that had made him that way.

So Harry ran back to his bedroom to get his Firebolt.

He stopped when he saw the dark green package lying on his bed. He wondered for a second if it was a present from Dumbledore. That was just the way his Invisibility Cloak had shown up in first year, lying in plain sight with no sign of how it had got there.

But when he picked up the package and turned it around, there was no sign of a note. He looked down at Dash, who had come through the door after him.

“What do you think?” he whispered. “Is it safe?”

Dash’s tongue darted out, and a second later, he said, It smells like cloth. And also like Snape’s dungeons. I do not think it is dangerous.

You don’t think, Harry muttered, but he unwrapped the package.

It was a cloak, and for one blank moment, Harry wondered if someone had taken his Invisibility Cloak and turned it green. But it didn’t make his hands disappear as it tumbled over them, and a second later, he shook his head and told himself not to be so stupid. This was an ordinary cloak. It was nice, and it felt thick and warm, and Harry suspected it would guard him well from the wind when he flew on his broom, but it was ordinary, after all.

Which made him wonder why someone would go to such trouble to sneak the cloak into his room, and if he should be suspicious.

There is something else, Dash said, and he wound about a piece of paper that had fallen off the bottom of the package’s wrapping and onto the floor, and passed it up to Harry in a coil.

Harry took it cautiously, although he knew the handwriting on it, and he didn’t think Snape would try to put contact poison on a note.

The cloak is a Christmas gift. I have used a Draught of Invulnerability on it. It should reflect most spells that hit you with an intent to harm, as long as at least part of the cloak is touching you. Use it wisely.

And then there was Snape’s signature, although it was tiny and cramped, as if Snape had been writing fast.

Harry let out a wavery little breath and stared at the cloak. It was something to protect him. He didn’t think it had any strings attached. Snape had probably given him this just to give him something, without mocking Dumbledore or Sirius. Harry didn’t even think the note sounding like the note Dumbledore had given him with his Invisibility Cloak was a plot. Probably just a coincidence.

On the other hand…

The cloak was green. Sirius might not care that much if he saw Harry wearing it, as long as he didn’t know where it came from, but Harry knew the color was a message.

Once again, it was a message he was too stupid to understand.

He wants to protect you, and he wants to think of you as partially a Slytherin. Dash said it with a long, human-like yawn that indicated his extreme patience, as least from the hum of his thoughts in Harry’s mind. I don’t see why that’s so difficult.

“I could understand him wanting to protect me,” Harry whispered, stretching the cloak back and forth in his hands. It was weird, thinking of Snape that way after he’d thought of him as a villain in first year and not much better last year, but he could. “It’s…he’s known I could speak Parseltongue for a year. It didn’t bother him. It never…”

It never concerned him? He didn’t seem to care? Dash’s voice was gentle, and he laid his head on Harry’s foot, looking up at him with concealed yellow eyes.

“Yeah,” Harry whispered, and he bent down and touched Dash’s plume. Why now? he continued mentally, because the last thing he wanted was for Sirius to wake up and hear this conversation. It must just be because Sirius is back and he wants to compete with him, or something.

I thought you were hurt because he hadn’t cared before, said Dash, sounding surprised. I didn’t know you were thinking of it like that. Of course I’m what’s different. He didn’t know that you could bond to a basilisk before.

Harry frowned at him. But Dash looked back at him, and his self-importance was calm, not bragging the way it usually was.

I hope he doesn’t think I’m Slytherin reincarnated or anything. That rumor had begun to appear in some of the papers.

No. I doubt that. Dash’s tail crept back around his ankles, so that Harry would have tripped if he’d tried to take a step forwards. But he knew Dash wouldn’t let him fall. But I think he thinks of you as something rather special. Someone to be protected. The only way he can, since you’re not under his protection the way the Slytherins are.

Harry ended up shaking his head and draping the cloak slowly, hesitantly, around his shoulders. He wished he could feel sure of what was Snape’s game and what was reality. But then, he didn’t even know that with Sirius half the time. He felt like he should be suspicious of Sirius’s questions about Divination, and then he felt bad about feeling that way. And he’d wondered about the locked door not far from his bedroom, and then told himself that Sirius was perfectly in the right to keep secrets in his own house if he wanted to.

Except it’s my house, too.

Harry took a deep breath and snatched up his broom. If he was going to fly before Sirius woke up, he had to go now.

Dash not only came with him and watched him fly, he consented to go up on the broom with Harry, which he didn’t usually do. Harry delighted in flying with him. It meant he had to keep making adjustments, because Dash wasn’t only a slight extra weight added to the broom but prone to moving around to try and find a more comfortable position, which sent the broom in new directions. 

But it was worth it, to feel Dash’s head on his lap and against his heart. Worth it even to encounter Sirius’s scolding when he came down, although Sirius also seemed pleased that he hadn’t asked permission, which made Harry wonder about the scolding.

*

When Potter came back to the school after the Christmas holidays, he wore the cloak.

It was pure chance Severus saw him before he got into Gryffindor Tower and took it off. And his pleasure at the sight was almost chance, too. After all, he had regretted the gift the moment he sent it. He had thought it possible he would get a visit from an enraged Black within the day, roaring about Snivellus endangering his godson.

Instead, he got a long, slow look from Potter as he walked past Severus, and then a nod. Severus nodded back. Potter ducked into the castle, but paused once to turn and look at Severus where he stood by the gates, waiting to guide in students who might find themselves lingering or inexplicably delaying on the road to Hogsmeade.

Severus looked back. He could say nothing here, in front of so many hurrying other people, and perhaps Potter knew that, or sensed it. The boy did not have bad Slytherin instincts, when he chose to exercise them.

But if Potter knew subtlety was necessary, that wasn’t the same thing as being good at it. He whispered, “Thanks,” with a motion of his mouth big enough that Severus could have seen it from behind a tree, and then turned and ran towards his friends, who were shouting for him from inside the school.

Severus nodded at his back and stepped thoughtfully to the side to watch a developing interaction between two Gryffindors and a Slytherin.

Potter still lived with Black, it seemed, and must not have told him where the cloak came from, or Black would have made him take it off or give it up. And that meant…

Perhaps that Severus’s wish for the boy would come true, and he would find some way to balance between Gryffindor and Slytherin.

Severus did not know exactly what Potter would become, if he managed to do so. But he was sure it would be something infinitely greater than if the boy continued along the undivided Gryffindor path.

Chapter 18: A Winding Trail of Fire

Chapter Text

The term after Christmas holidays was at least quiet. Severus was grateful for that. He did not know what he would have done had a new disaster brewed around Potter, the way it could have if he had told Black about the cloak, or if his basilisk had got out of hand, or if Draco had continued along the path he had been taking towards…

At that, Severus had to pull his mind back into order. He did not know what path Draco had been taking, and he resented not knowing. If only because Lucius and Narcissa would expect him to do something about it if Draco got into trouble.

But Draco, if not openly friendly with Potter, at least did not sabotage him in Potions, did not sneer when his name was mentioned, and tended to turn the conversation when his friends started laughing about Potter’s lack of skill in classes. And a few times, Severus had come upon the two boys standing close in a dungeon corridor or an alcove on the upper floors, arguing quietly about something. But quietly, that was the point, not loudly.

Severus was grateful to be able to turn his attention back to teaching and care of his House, and a different, growing problem that had nothing to do with Potter. Or only something indirectly to do with him, at any rate.

Severus had begun to clear the willful blindness from his eyes. He had owed Albus a great deal, for taking him in and defending him against the charges and the Azkaban stay that otherwise would have inevitably followed him after the first war. He had allowed that debt to make him look away from several things Albus had done since that war.

More than one thing. If he was honest, and he was trying to be. But it had seemed the best thing to do, and he had been content to make sure that Albus’s prejudices didn’t impinge too much on his Slytherins. Students in other Houses had their own Heads to fight for them. Let them do so.

Now, though, Severus had an idea burning in the back of his mind like an ember, and it would not go out even when he tried to smother it with new Potions research. He must know, and that meant he would have to look around, peer into the dark places of his own mind, think about subjects he had carefully avoided thinking about.

What he would do when he found the truth, he did not let himself think of yet. This task must be done first.

And perhaps it was time to accept that if he had owed Albus something, it was a debt he had more than fulfilled by teaching at the school for thirteen years. Perhaps it was time to think of someone who was neither Albus nor himself nor Lily for once. 

Severus was not entirely proud of the person it seemed contact with Potter had transformed him into, but while he had often been good at starting a Transfiguration, he had never been good at reversing it. He would have to live with the same debility when it came to the transformation of his soul, it seemed.

And pursue it, no matter where it led.

*

“It’s weird that you’re around Malfoy all the time, mate,” Ron said, sitting down beside Harry and giving him a hard look.

Harry rolled his eyes back and turned his head to look at Hermione. “Do you understand what Professor Lupin was talking about this morning?”

Hermione froze as though she was a rabbit, which was weird. “What thing?” she squeaked, and then she reached out and grabbed a handful of bread, stuffing it into her mouth. Harry stared. Hermione didn’t do that. She was always scolding them for eating with their mouths full.

She smells frightened, said Dash, and wound himself into a neat knot around Harry’s shoulders so he could examine the food plates with a critical eye.

“I just meant,” said Harry slowly, wondering if he had missed something and Lupin had given Hermione a secret homework assignment or something, “I didn’t know what he meant when he said that there were no good giants. Hagrid’s part giant, and his mum must have been at least a little good or she wouldn’t have been his mum, right? She would have killed his dad.”

“Oh!” said Hermione, and relaxed so much that Harry almost thought she would fall out of her seat. “That’s all right. He meant that giants aren’t good in the way we usually think of it, you know. They don’t have moral debates or philosophers. Sometimes they do things that benefit humans, but they always benefit themselves, too. Hagrid’s mum probably just wanted to be with his father, and…”

And off she went, explaining, and indeed clarifying what Harry had wondered about when it came to giants. But it was hard to still the nagging idea that she thought he had meant something else, and was relieved he didn’t.

The key is scent, said Dash, and used his tongue to tickle Harry’s ear for a moment. You wouldn’t have so many questions if you could smell her emotions.

Yes, but I like some mystery in my life, Harry retorted, and picked up a scone he could share half of with Dash. Dash liked it best with butter, which luckily there was plenty of. Why do you like melted butter but you don’t like cooked meat?

You must also pay more attention to the sensation of taste, said Dash, and curled his jaws around the piece of scone Harry had offered him.

Harry ate some of his own half, and watched Hermione’s face, and wondered a little.

*

Draco looked around suspiciously. It was unusual enough that Potter had told Draco to meet him in the library near curfew, instead of the more hidden places and better times they usually used. Draco had to wonder if Potter was planning to betray him, and if perhaps a prefect would pop around the corner in a moment and haul Draco away to his Head of House.

“Malfoy! Hey.”

Draco turned around slowly, and then nodded and eased back into the shelves as Potter opened his mouth to babble something cheerful. “Over here,” he muttered. “Or Madam Pince is going to do something drastic.” He didn’t even want to imagine what would happen if she caught someone in the library after curfew. As far as Draco knew, no one had ever dared to linger.

“Right,” said Potter, and lowered his voice, and smiled at Draco. Draco looked back and breathed a little, reminding himself that Potter was a Gryffindor. It was acceptable for him to smile in ways that it wouldn’t be for Draco.

The scale on his leg—well, his ankle, really, clinging just below where his robes swished back and forth—made the little squirming motion against his skin that it sometimes did. Draco had decided that was a sign of reassurance. He’d take it.

“What did you want to talk about?” Draco whispered. “I can’t be out long. I can’t imagine what Professor Snape would tell my father.”

Potter looked at him thoughtfully. “Does he talk a lot to your parents? Snape, I mean. I don’t think McGonagall usually bothers contacting parents.”

Draco frowned. What kind of Head of House was McGonagall? He thought it was really weird if she didn’t at least speak to parents when someone got in major trouble. “Professor Snape and my father had—certain business interests in common.” He knew it was more than that, but he chose the phrase his father had used to explain it. “So he probably talks to them more often than he does some of the others. But I know my father would be upset if I got in trouble, for any reason.”

“Sorry, then,” Potter whispered. “But I do have something to ask you, and it’s not something I wanted Ron and Hermione to overhear.” 

Draco grimaced. Weasley and Granger had interrupted a few of their meetings, “accidentally” coming around the corner and acting fake-surprised when they found Potter and Draco together. Draco was enough of an expert in jealousy to recognize it when he saw it, although that didn’t make him any more disposed to admire it in others. He nodded once. “Then can you tell me what it is now, soon? And then we can have our conversation, and I can get back to bed.”

“Right,” said Potter. He sighed. “Is there something about Professor Lupin that’s secret? Hermione’s been acting strange lately. I ask a question about Defense Against the Dark Arts, and she freezes and squeaks like a mouse.”

Draco blinked. He would never have expected that question. “I know Professor Snape doesn’t like him,” he offered, because it was the only thing he could think of.

“No, I know that,” said Potter, and shifted the basilisk on his shoulder. Dash had been so quiet that Draco hadn’t paid much attention to him. Now he watched with his usual envy as Dash draped his tail down Potter’s chest and swayed it back and forth in pendulum patterns. “I heard about it when Professor Snape testified at Sirius’s trial. This is something else. Something strange about him?”

Draco rolled his eyes. “Are you asking me or telling me?”

“Asking you,” said Potter, and his eyes glinted at Draco, proud and dark green. Draco had to grin back. That was the kind of challenge Potter usually only offered him in Quidditch, and Draco would remember in the future that it could happen in other places, too.

“I don’t know anything,” said Draco, and Potter sagged a little. “Why did you think I would know?” Draco had to add. “You probably know Lupin better than I do.” He assumed so, anyway, since Lupin was a friend of Black and had spent a few weekends in Potter’s company, apparently teaching him to repel Dementors.

“Because you’re a Slytherin, and Slytherins know secrets,” Potter said matter-of-factly. “And it’s Professor Lupin.”

“Granger’s here in spirit,” Draco muttered, and Potter snorted and then gave him a blinding grin. He shrugged. “I’ll watch for them, but I don’t see anything different about him on a daily basis. Anyway, I don’t know the secret of Parseltongue and the Chamber of Secrets.”

Potter looked at the floor. “I would tell you where it was, if I thought you would just want to go down there and look around. If you wouldn’t try to find the tunnel Dash came out of and get an egg for your own.”

Draco was about to retort sharply when Dash pivoted to face the end of the bookshelf they were sheltered behind and hissed. Potter turned his head, and Parseltongue spilled out of his lips in a liquid flow. Draco shivered. Why can’t I speak like that? he asked himself. It was starting to seem unfair not that Potter had a basilisk and he didn’t, but that Potter had been born a Parselmouth and Draco hadn’t.

“Dash says someone is coming,” Potter said tensely, and he pulled out something that sparkled and glinted in the dark. Strangely so, without light, Draco thought. He blinked, and then Potter pulled the thing over both of them and Draco found himself crouched in starlit darkness next to Potter and his basilisk.

“An Invisibility Cloak,” Draco said, and he was afraid his voice was a slight wail. It was so unfair. “You have an Invisibility Cloak.”

“Shut up!” Potter whispered, poking Draco in the ribs. Draco drew his breath to complain about that, too, and then Dash hissed.

Draco told himself that, rationally, he had heard the basilisk hiss a few minutes ago, too, and if that hadn’t silenced him and almost made him wet his robes, then this shouldn’t. But there was no denying that it was impressive. He shut up.

There were footsteps outside the shelves, and then a slight hiss that made Draco jump, until he realized it wasn’t more Parseltongue. It was someone catching their breath and looking around warily, but that wasn’t the same thing as someone speaking in hisses.

Potter’s hand tightened on his wrist. The scale on his leg tingled. Draco felt a smooth slide of scales against his shoulders, and he nearly jumped, shrieking, out of his skin. But then he remembered Dash, and he clamped down on the impulse. He could just imagine the detention he would get if he reacted too much, and he wasn’t going to face it.

There were a few confused noises, and then yellow eyes shone through the edge of the shelves for a second. Again Draco thought it was a basilisk, and then he calmed down and saw them for the ordinary cat’s eyes they were. Mrs. Norris ran back and forth for a minute, but either she couldn’t get a good enough sniff of them or she couldn’t make Filch understand that someone was really there. She ran off, and Filch went with her.

Potter stood there for a while. Draco kept still, assuming Dash was telling Potter something about who he smelled or that Potter had more experience with sneaking around than he did and knew how long it would be before they were safe.

“All right, he’s gone,” said Potter at last, and turned to look at Draco under the Cloak. His face was distant and dimly lit, at least until he called a faint light from his wand. Draco blinked, impressed. He’d seen Potter’s Lumos, and it was so strong that Draco hadn’t thought he knew how to make it fainter. “Can you get back to the dungeons by yourself? Or do you want me to go with you under the Cloak?”

Draco opened his mouth to say that he was all right, of course he could.

But if Filch and Mrs. Norris were already searching for students, then it was later than Draco had remembered. And his father would have something to say if Draco got in trouble because of his pride.

He was always telling Draco that real pride came from understanding and manipulating situations to one’s advantage. He would hardly forgive Draco for failing to do that.

“Yes, I need your escort,” said Draco, even though he hated to admit that, and then had to add, in order to gain back a bit of dignity, “This is the reason you never got caught breaking the rules, right? Because you wander around under the Cloak?”

“Yes,” said Potter, and shrugged when Draco looked at him. “I didn’t do anything particularly wonderful to get it. It belonged to my dad, and Dumbledore gave it to me for a Christmas present in my first year.”

Draco shut his eyes and shook his head. If Potter couldn’t hear how out of the ordinary he was in just speaking those words—favored by the Headmaster, getting his Cloak that way instead of from his parents—then Draco knew he couldn’t enlighten him. “Let’s go.”

*

He doesn’t smell like anything in particular, said Dash, and draped himself so that his head was down near the table where Harry was studying the captive grindylow in its cage. I think he has spells on himself to disguise his smell. Most humans wouldn’t think of that. He’s very clever.

Harry sighed and shook his head. Really, he thought, he ought to give up trying to investigate Professor Lupin. So he didn’t have a mystery to solve this year the way they’d had the mystery of Nicholas Flamel during first year and the Heir of Slytherin last year. He couldn’talways have a mystery. He was probably making too big a deal of Hermione’s slip the other day.

Except that he looked at her then, and she was staring anxiously at Professor Lupin. Harry looked with her. It was true that Lupin looked rather pale and tired, but he seemed to look like that on a regular basis. Maybe he had some sort of disease, and Hermione had found out by accident and was concerned about him.

That made so much sense! Harry relaxed a little. Hermione would think it was wrong to tell anyone about that. Harry would probably think it was wrong, if he’d found out himself. And it made sense of the times that Lupin had gone to visit Sirius, and hadn’t wanted to tutor Harry on certain days. Sirius probably knew about it because he was such old friends with Lupin.

Harry nodded. Maybe they didn’t think he could handle the truth, or maybe they thought he would get upset because he was afraid of catching the disease himself. Well, he would have to tell them that he was okay with waiting until they decided he was old enough to know. He wasn’t disgusted, but they didn’t know that yet.

Why would you be okay with waiting until they tell you? Dash asked, abandoning the effort to terrify the grindylow to death and winding back around Harry’s neck. You’ve never been okay with anything like that before.

Harry blinked at him. That was true, but, well, he hadn’t thought about it until Dash pointed it out to him. Well, it’s all so fragile, he said, and bent over the grindylow again. Professor Lupin had told them there was a way to charm them without using magic, to make them be friends, but Harry couldn’t see it. The grindylow hissed at him and threw itself against the side of its cage. I mean, Sirius loves me, I know that, but sometimes he asks those weird questions, and he would have been so upset about the cloak Snape sent me. So if I force him to talk about Lupin’s secret too soon, it’ll just upset him more. I have to wait.

Dash was silent, both mentally and physically, for so long that Harry finally began to notice the grindylow wasn’t snarling at him when his face didn’t wear a smile. He had to bite back the grin that wanted to spread across his face at that. So, okay, maybe they thought humans were baring their teeth when they smiled or something? He began to write down notes.

I think that you need to worry less about Sirius, said Dash abruptly. If he cares for you, then he will continue to care for you even if you ask an awkward question.

Harry shrugged, which Dash hated because it always almost unseated him. Yeah, but there must be a reason they haven’t told me yet. So I’ll have to wait.

Then you won’t ask me to smell the truth out of Lupin again, said Dash.

Harry nodded.

And you’ll call Malfoy off as well? 

Harry started. It had been almost a week since he’d seen Malfoy in the library and asked him to spy on Lupin. And it really was spying. Harry felt ashamed of himself now. He had just forgotten all about it, because he wasn’t concentrated on the mystery every minute of the day. He hadn’t even thought of asking Dash what he smelled on Lupin in particular until today.

Yeah, I need to talk to him about it.

Dash leaned his chin on Harry’s shoulder for a long moment, not something he often did for long, unless he was trying to see something better. I don’t think you should need to accept anyone lying to you.

Harry shrugged a little again and said, It’s a human thing, and smiled at Professor Lupin when he came by the table and paused to look at Harry’s notes.

“Ah, good, Harry,” he said, and smiled at him. “You’re on the right track. Five points to Gryffindor.” He wandered away, and Harry relaxed. Professor Lupin really was his favorite teacher, even if he had secrets. Everyone had secrets. Harry was protecting his share now.

That is the good thing about me, said Dash simply. I refuse to be a secret.

*

Severus had had to use all his spy skills, but that had turned out to be less of a problem that he’d thought. After all, he had never truly integrated himself back into the school or normal society after the war. He had lived as a distrusted, suspected Death Eater, and then the hated Potions professor. While his colleagues were capable of getting along with him, working with him, they hadn’t extended the hand of friendship. There was no one close enough to Severus to realize he was acting differently, as long as he kept it subtle.

No one except Albus, Severus would have said once. But Albus appeared taken up with other things, since the reappearance of Black. Or perhaps, Severus should say, since Potter’s potential, partial, rebellion.

Even so, the labor hadn’t been easy. There were people who would notice if he asked too openly about Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw students. The only reason that his questions about Gryffindor students might be more easily accepted was the House rivalry, and Minerva in particular would bristle and rush to defend her charges if she thought Severus was trying to get them in trouble. His best tactic was to make vague sneering statements and see what happened. It worked, but it was slow.

Then he had to coordinate the visits of the students he suspected to the Headmaster’s office. In many cases, as with the Slytherins, there were none. In the case of the Gryffindor students Severus suspected, several. Severus wondered for a moment what had happened. Had the Gryffindors broken down, or had the Headmaster lectured them, kindly and severely, the way he’d tried with Potter?

Impossible to know. But Severus sifted the information, and he found the patterns.

The last step was using a most delicate truth-telling potion on Poppy Pomfrey, one that made her a little more likely to ramble when she was talking. If Severus got her focused on something else, like stacking a crate-load of potions he had delivered to her in the correct order, she would talk and talk in a sort of daydream. It was the safest way to gain access to the students’ medical information, since Severus could hardly raid the files openly, and he dared not be found charming the cabinets.

Not now. Perhaps in a while. 

But at last, the search was done, and Severus was sure. He sat before the fire in his rooms that night, and stared into his teacup, and wondered if he should feel more triumphant than—empty.

He knew what he knew. He had a list of names, all neatly written down and then tucked behind charms that Severus would not be able to undo unless he was in his right mind, not under Imperius or the like. In all the school, perhaps only Filius could have managed them, and Severus was sure he wouldn’t, not when there were several of Severus’s suspects in his own House.

Severus took a deep breath and closed his eyes. 

He knew, now, of other students who had been abused, and whom the Headmaster had ignored. Or never seen. Or called to his office, and talked to, and then sent back to their homes. 

He knew of twenty-two. There might be more, but in this case, he had selected the ones he was sure of. 

Twenty-three, if one adds Harry Potter’s name to the list.

Severus opened his eyes. Three courses were open to him. He might confront Albus, but he suspected that would be futile.

He might go to the papers, but that would surely entail revealing the names, and he would rather not.

Or he could find an ally powerful enough to force Albus into doing something about the situation, someone who had been a credible threat to Albus once before, although he had failed in that particular plan. 

Severus flexed his hand, took a final gulp of his Firewhisky, and chose. 

He Summoned ink and parchment, and set about writing a (very) carefully-worded letter to Lucius Malfoy.

Chapter 19: Set the Fire

Chapter Text

Harry stayed behind after Defense Against the Dark Arts one day near the beginning of Easter Term, and got a tired smile from Professor Lupin as he paused in putting his latest creatures away. “Yes, Harry? I must say that you don’t need to worry about your mark on this exam. Your practical work has been outstanding.”

Harry beamed. He had to admit, it was nice to have a teacher who praised him a lot. McGonagall would tell him when he did well, and Flitwick sometimes, but it seemed he just wasn’t good enough in those classes to get a lot of praise. And the others, he was pretty mediocre in.

You are not. You underrate your talents.

Harry ignored Dash’s interjection. That was nice of Dash to say, but he didn’t judge the talents of humans the way Harry knew his professors did. For Dash, it was mainly important that Harry was good at feeding and petting him.

What else is there?

Harry rolled his eyes at the baffled tone of Dash’s voice, and almost missed that Lupin was peering closely at him. “Oh, sorry,” he said. “Just a conversation with Dash. But I wanted to tell you something.”

“Yes?” said Lupin. He sounded surprised. Well, Harry supposed most kids who stayed after class wanted to ask questions, not answer them.

Not that Lupin and Sirius had asked him the question right out, but Harry was still confident he could give them the answer they were looking for. “I want you to know that whatever you’re sick with, I can wait for you to tell me,” he said. “I know that you might think I would be afraid of catching it, or upset because you’re sick. But I’m not. I can handle that kind of thing. I know what it’s like to keep secrets.”

Lupin was so pale by the time Harry had finished, Harry didn’t really need the information that came from Dash lifting his head, letting his tongue flicker out, and announcing, He smells like terror. But he appreciated it anyway.

“What’s the matter, Professor Lupin?” Harry asked. He wondered now if he was wrong, and it wasn’t a disease, but something else. But he couldn’t think of anything else that would really fit what he knew: Hermione’s silence and edginess around the topic, and Lupin acting nervous like this.

“Who—” Lupin sounded like he couldn’t get enough air. “It—who told you I was sick, Harry?”

Harry squirmed. He didn’t want to get Hermione in trouble. But she hadn’t really told him, anyway. Harry had just figured it out from watching her.

“I need to know who told you.” Lupin was leaning against his desk as though someone had taken away all his strength. He gave Harry a look that Harry had sometimes seen in the mirror in the bathroom, when he’d been let out of the cupboard after a long time there.

Harry took a deep breath. This was really important to Lupin, so Harry would have to tell the truth. “No one, really. I just noticed that you looked pale a lot, and I noticed it happened more than once. I mean, if you weren’t sick, it wouldn’t happen more than once, right?” He looked at Lupin uncertainly, but Lupin only stared back, looking just as unfriendly as Snape for a minute. Harry looked down at his feet. “I didn’t mean—I wasn’t going to tell anyone else. I just wanted to tell you that you could wait to tell me.”

His heart was bounding uncertainly in his chest. He had meant this to be a great moment, so he could show Lupin that he was an adult, and Sirius and Lupin didn’t need to worry about Harry. And somehow things had gone wrong.

There was a long moment before Lupin cleared his throat and straightened up from leaning against his desk. “I appreciate it, Harry.”

No, he doesn’t, Harry thought gloomily, sneaking a glance at Lupin and then turning away again. Harry was good at telling when someone was lying to him. And Lupin was lying now. He sounded strangled.

“But I’m not sick.” Lupin said it firmly, like he believed it. Maybe he did. Harry finally looked up again, because he thought Lupin wouldn’t go on until he did, and Lupin gave him a small, encouraging smile. “But you’re right, it’s a secret. It’s a dangerous one. I’ll ask that you wait until I tell you. Or Sirius does.”

“That’s all I wanted,” Harry muttered. “To tell you that I’d wait. I’m not a gossipy little kid, you know.” He was sick of all the gossip that always swirled around him and had last year, when everyone thought he was evil. Or at least a lot of people thought he was evil. He had to admit his friends hadn’t turned on him.

You are not a child at all, said Dash. He was holding still, scenting the air with his tongue, and Harry had the feeling he was concentrating as hard as he could, to understand the human concepts swirling around him. That is part of the problem. He turned his head and roughly nudged Harry’s cheek, and Harry gave a smile he didn’t feel and put his hand on Dash’s head.

“Of course you can wait,” said Lupin. “Of course you won’t gossip. Thank you, Harry.” He put his hand on Harry’s shoulder. But it was trembling and cold, and it didn’t feel like it had when Lupin was congratulating Harry on how well he’d done in their Patronus lessons. 

Harry nodded back and slipped out of the Defense classroom, upset and not understanding why. And he couldn’t even talk about it with Dash, because Ron and Hermione were waiting for him.

“Were you in trouble?” Ron asked, dropping into place beside Harry as they headed towards dinner.

“Harry was the one who went to see Professor Lupin, Ron,” Hermione snapped at once. “Why would he be in trouble? He was probably asking for extra tutoring, since what he’s already had has been successful. Right, Harry?” She glanced at Harry.

Harry didn’t want to lie to them either, but he couldn’t tell Lupin’s secret, and this made a convenient cover. He managed a small smile and nodded. “Yeah, he reckons that he can teach me other Defense spells that might help.”

“I didn’t know Harry would willingly go talk to a teacher,” said Ron in wonder.

“There are lots of people who could benefit from that,” said Hermione, with a significant glance at Ron.

That started the both of them bickering again, and in one way Harry was grateful for it. He could ask Dash, the only one whose judgment he really trusted right now, Do you think I should have pushed it? 

I do not think he would have told you the truth, if you had. Dash still seemed concentrated and thoughtful, even though the conversation he had to keep track of had passed. He’d also settled into his favorite spot around Harry, dangling with a good deal of a coil resting on Harry’s chest and the other big one on the back of his neck, while his head reared up to Harry’s chin height. He seemed so frightened of the truth. I wonder why?

Harry blinked. Do you think maybe he’s afraid of getting sick and doesn’t want to talk about it? There had been a teacher like that at the primary school once, who got thin and tired but snapped at all the people who mentioned it. Soon after that, she went away, and Harry had heard a rumor that she had cancer.

The second part is certainly true.

And with that, Harry had to be content, since even Dash didn’t want to talk about it anymore. There was just Ron and Hermione, and Hermione telling them they should eat a healthy dinner, and Ron joking about all the things that Harry could learn for them, like maybe stealing Lupin’s exams early if he could, and silence in Harry’s head, down the bond.

*

“The letter you wrote me was rather…cryptic, Severus.”

Severus hated the dramatic pauses that Lucius tended to insert into his sentences, and showed his displeasure with a curled lip that Lucius was welcome to take any way he wanted as he poured the tea. Lucius didn’t seem to take it at all, though. He sat in the chair Severus usually took, gazing around the room as if he wanted to see what had changed since he was last here.

“It had to be,” Severus said, and gave Lucius his cup before walking over to sit down on the other side of the room. “I did not think you would have come here if I had told the truth.”

Lucius paused again, but this time, it was with an arrested stare that Severus could perhaps have done with less of. “You need to explain that, my friend,” Lucius said then, and leaned back as if arranging himself comfortably.

Severus, who was well-aware that the repositioning in fact put his hand close to several weapons, snorted. “I know how much you don’t care about anyone outside the pure-blood circles.”

“I care about them a great deal,” said Lucius, and examined one of his hands for a moment as if making sure his fingernails were clean from scrapings of mud. “Them and their regrettable…interventions in our lives.”

The pause again, Severus thought, but called upon his own strength and dismissed the annoyance from his mind. He had done worse than bearing with Lucius’s quirks over the years, such as bearing torture in front of the Dark Lord. If he could do that, he could do this.

“This is an intervention in theirs,” Severus said, and watched as Lucius’s eyebrows twitched with interest he couldn’t control. “In some of them, at any rate. But if the consequences spread as far as I think they will, it will be an intervention in many.”

“Perhaps you could tell me what you found now,” Lucius said. “Rather than continuing with cryptic hints there is no need of to pique my interest.”

Severus nodded. It was time. “Give me one moment.”

Lucius only watched with growing interest and hunger as Severus raised the defenses around his rooms until they were locked behind shimmering wards. Severus had woven these spells into the stone of his rooms long ago, when he had still been paranoid that either Albus or one of the other professors at the school would come into his rooms looking for his secrets. This time, that might happen, so it was good to remind himself of the correct sequence of nonverbal spells and the images he had to focus on in his head to let the passwords, trapped in his memory, rise back into consciousness.

When he was done at last with a set of barriers that would make his chambers cease to exist where the rest of the school was concerned for the next few hours, he turned around to find that Lucius had a new expression on his face. He touched his fingertips together and inclined his head to Severus.

“More than impressive, old friend,” said Lucius softly. “You could make a good living as a security consultant, you know. If you wished to.”

His eyes and voice were guarded, his tone low and his gaze fixed on Severus. Severus gave him a sour smile in response. Now he wonders where I might have acquired some of my skills.

Of course, there was some gain in having Lucius Malfoy be a little concerned about him. Severus took his chair again and said, “I know I told you once in what respects Dumbledore had ignored my…former life.” His pause equaled any of Lucius’s, he thought.

A shadow moved across Lucius’s face, and he nodded. Severus knew he didn’t like talking about this, but for other reasons than mere discomfort; it reminded both of them of their younger Death Eater days, and Lucius didn’t like reminding Severus of his Muggle father. He considered it an embarrassing acquaintance best forgotten.

Severus didn’t like bringing it up, either, but since Lucius already knew about it, the revelation was not the unforgivable weakness it otherwise would have been. He inclined his head and murmured, “I am not the only one whose former life he has ignored.”

Lucius caught his breath and sat up for a moment, staring. Then he leaned back in the chair and said, “You would not make such an accusation about Draco.”

Severus carefully hid his amusement that Lucius would even venture in that direction, but shook his head. “No, of course not. Not when I know the way he was raised,” he had to add, and watched as Lucius’s eyes narrowed, his suspicious brain searching the words for any hint of a trap. “These are Muggleborn children, for the most part, although a few half-bloods raised in the Muggle world count as well. And one pure-blood child. Members of all Houses.” Severus tapped his fingers in turn and waited for Lucius to respond to that.

Lucius stared off into the distance for a moment, his expression rapt in that infuriating way Severus had so often seen. Sometimes it meant Lucius was considering deeply, but it was just as likely to mean he was contemplating the possibilities of a dazzling future littered with dead enemies. In this case, either consequence would benefit Severus, and he kept quiet about it.

Lucius then turned back to him and said, “You called on me with this because I am on the Hogwarts Board of Governors.”

Severus nodded slowly. Lucius had been reinstated to a position on the board shortly after the new year, although he had certain conditions on his power and was no longer the chairman. The sheer money Lucius had at his disposal was enough to overcome even grudges caused by threats, it seemed.

“You know I can’t do this alone.”

Severus raised his eyebrows. “Of course not. But if you go to the ones who can, and present to them your concern about how many unfortunate family affairs have gone ignored by the Headmaster…”

Lucius smiled, but there was an odd light in his eyes. “Why do this now, Severus? Your own unfortunate beginnings cannot be avenged, and there are children involved in this who are not Slytherins, or you would have chosen a different route.”

That much was true. As Head of Slytherin House, Severus would have had many different options. He was somewhat surprised at himself for not doing that.

But if he did not know the answer right away, any more than he had known immediately what he had wanted to say to Potter in their last disastrous conversation, he had some idea of what had to happen, the balance between the truth and what Lucius needed to hear.

He spent a moment searching his mind, and then nodded when he was sure he had his words in answer. “I cannot have revenge, you said.” Severus leveled a glance at Lucius. “Because my father is dead, I assume you mean.”

Lucius shifted again, his only sign of discomfort at forcing that idea into the open. “Yes.”

“But I went to Albus, and he ignored me,” said Severus. “He ignored me when others attempted to make me do something by force, as well, while giving priority to someone whose situation was no worse than my own.” He snarled a little. “And there is someone else he is ignoring, someone I recently discovered had a great deal in common with me.”

Lucius raised his eyebrows. “And do I get to know the name of this prodigy?”

Severus met his eyes. “If you give me your word that you will not attempt immediate revenge against him instead of pursuing our own more important goals.”

Lucius settled back. “Potter,” he said. His voice had gone distant again, like his gaze. It was impossible for Severus to tell what he was feeling.

“Yes,” said Severus. “Was it that obvious?”

“Only if you know about my recent history with the brat.” Lucius sighed and shook his head. “Will Potter even agree to testify about this, or support it in any way? I know he hates me. I know he doesn’t like you, either.”

“I intend to approach him about it soon,” said Severus. Now that he had a definite plan, he thought the next conversation would go better. “And he is becoming friends with Draco, you know. I think perhaps he can cooperate.”

Lucius shot him a disbelieving look. “He is a Gryffindor.”

“Who was ignored by Dumbledore,” Severus told him coolly. “And who was nearly Sorted Slytherin.” He enjoyed the effect of that tidbit on Lucius’s jaw for a moment, and then added, “Besides, while he does not relish the thought of someone prying into his past, he is Gryffindor enough to want to save others. I will give him the chance.”

“Will he want his name exposed, though?” Lucius turned his head to the side as though he was inviting Severus to look at his fascinating throat. “I’m told he avoids rather than courts the press.”

“It will take approaching him in just the right way,” Severus acknowledged. “I can do that more easily than you can, but not easily. It may take a few months for me to present it as a matter of justice, or bravery. But he did allow the Quibbler interview so the facts about his basilisk could spread. He is willing to do what is necessary to alleviate what he sees as ignorance about those he cares for.”

“But this time, it does not directly threaten his basilisk.” Lucius frowned and drummed his fingers on the arm of his chair. “I admit, I could use those months to talk to some of the more reluctant members of the Board and get them on my side. But will Potter be ready to talk even then?”

“I believe we may have more of an ally than we do right now, by then,” said Severus, and added, at the sideways glance Lucius tossed him, “The basilisk.”

Lucius blinked. “It is intelligent, then? And it communicates with Potter down a true bond?”

“Surely Draco would have told you that by now,” said Severus, puzzled. Draco spent all his free time with Potter, at least when he didn’t have homework or plans with his Slytherin friends, and he still chattered in an obsessed way about the basilisk and Parseltongue. 

“I know what Draco wants to believe,” said Lucius, and shook his head. “Would you believe that somehow I have managed to rear a son who is a romantic, Severus? It must be his mother’s influence. He wants to believe in true friendship bonds been wizards and animals, and so he does.”

Severus reached for his cup of tea, although he didn’t want it. It would make a useful shield for his smile. The day that Lucius managed to make him believe he was less than proud of Draco, Narcissa’s influence over the boy and all, was the day that Severus killed himself, because he would no longer survive in this world with his ability to detect lies so impaired.

“It is a true bond,” said Severus. “I have seen the basilisk obey commands not to strike, and it underwent, for Potter’s sake, having its venom diluted and the mirrors that Dumbledore enchanted to reflect its gaze continually rotating around it. And Potter laughs at comments it makes in his head.”

Lucius’s breath caught then. Severus supposed having the word of an adult observer made a difference to him. “Then—do you think Slytherin—and the body was almost Sorted into our House—”

“That is not the case,” said Severus coldly. Speaking of romantic folly, he thought that the notion only Salazar Slytherin had ever had a true bond with a basilisk was nonsense. Slytherin would not have left those eggs in the chamber where Potter had discovered them if he was the only one who could ever come back and bond with one of them.

Unless Potter is his reincarnation.

But Severus would pay no such mind to silly rumors. And he would not encourage them in Lucius, either, who in any case looked only remotely disappointed before he nodded.

“Does Potter want revenge on Dumbledore as well?” Lucius added, and then sighed and shook his head before Severus could say anything. “It would be almost too sweet if that was the case.”

“I am not sure,” Severus said slowly. He did think that Potter distrusted the Headmaster more, but on the other side, Albus had been the one who had arranged for Black’s trial to go through so quickly. It was possible that Potter gave Albus some credit for being the one to ensure he was removed from his abusive family and had a permanent home to go to.

If anything can be permanent with Black in charge of it. Severus had his doubts about the capability of Black to provide any kind of emotional guidance for a child, and more than doubts about the fact that Lupin passed his every wretched transformation now in Black’s home. Black had said that he had the room where that happened locked tight so Harry couldn’t get into it, but Severus wondered if he had paid attention to the fact of his godson getting into the Chamber of Secrets on his own.

“I think I need to sound him out on that,” Severus added, so that Lucius would not suspect him of daydreaming, or demand more truths than Severus wanted to give at the moment. “I will try.”

Lucius looked at him searchingly, and then nodded. “That’s all I can ask for.” He stood, and added, “I’m sure you understand that Potter won’t be pleased to work with us once he knows he’s working with me.”

Severus raised his eyebrows only. A few minutes ago, that would not have concerned Lucius; he would have seen Harry as a child and a pawn, important but able to be worked around and moved across the board, nothing more. Severus wondered if it was the revelation of Harry’s true bond with the basilisk that had made Lucius change his tune, or something else.

“I understand,” said Severus. “It remains to be seen whether I can persuade him to this at all, or whether we must try another tactic.”

“Like using one of the other children?”

Severus nodded. He was sure that one of the others would risk exposure in order to escape a horrible situation. But none of them would bring as much attention and start the needed investigation as readily as Harry.

And perhaps, now that Harry himself was safe from returning to the Muggles, he would feel a bit calmer about it, more ready to speak the things that he had kept to himself for years. Severus still thought that courting the basilisk’s favor would be the key. The snake had a power to talk to Harry and understand him as no one else did.

“Very well,” said Lucius. “Consider alternative plans.” He paused with his hand on the latch of the door. “And Severus? Thank you so much for bringing this to my attention.”

He departed, and Severus leaned back in his chair and sighed. He had the considerably more delicate task, he thought, no matter how Lucius had to dance around the other members of the Board of Governors.

Especially when he had started calling Potter Harry, if only in his head.

I refuse to refer to the basilisk by his ridiculous name, however, Severus thought sternly, and stood up to put the teacups away. 

Chapter 20: An Explosion of Sparks

Chapter Text

“Remus told me that you asked about his sickness, pup.”

Harry held his breath a little as he turned around. This was the confrontation he had been afraid would come up. He had come home for the weekend, and Sirius was standing behind the table, looking upset.

Dash was in the other room. Harry thought that was maybe one reason Sirius was bringing this up now. But even as Harry thought that, Dash slithered in through the door of the dining room and crawled up Harry’s leg like a stream of water in reverse. Harry wrapped his arm around Dash’s neck and held him there, grateful.

Sirius sighed a little. “Does he have to go everywhere you do?”

“Yes,” said Harry, and stared at Sirius for a minute. “You know that.” Sirius had complained about it often enough.

He does know that, said Dash, and he said it with a savage, slashing intensity, so that his tongue darted out even though he wasn’t speaking Parseltongue aloud. Something has changed, if he wants to speak to you in privacy.

“I would just tell him everything later anyway,” Harry told Sirius, which Sirius also surely knew. Dash curled up with his head on Harry’s hip, and waited. Harry waited, too, but Sirius acted as if he didn’t want to go on, clearing his throat and glancing away like Aunt Petunia did when she didn’t want to tell Uncle Vernon some bad news.

Harry grimaced. He didn’t ever want to think about the Dursleys and Sirius in the same breath. Something was badly wrong if he did.

“That’s true,” said Sirius grudgingly. “Well.” He faced Harry again. “You have to understand that this is serious, Harry.”

Harry gulped and nodded. It had to be, if Sirius wasn’t even going to take the chance to make his favorite pun on his name.

“Remus is sick,” said Sirius. “He’s been sick for a long time. It’s—a family illness. Not catching. But it does make him break out in horrid spots and look menacing sometimes.” Sirius was talking as though he wanted to impress every word on Harry’s mind, and Harry nodded to show he was listening. “He got teased for it in school. It’s one reason he stays away from everybody a few days a month. Well, just during the night, really. In daylight he’s weak and pale, but fine.”

“So he doesn’t want me talking about it because he got teased?” Harry asked hesitantly. He wanted to say that he wouldn’t tease Professor Lupin, but in the back of his mind was what Dudley had said to him in the past. He didn’t want to discuss it even if it meant that no one would tease him about it.

“Yes,” said Sirius, and he gave Harry the bright smile that made Harry feel he had done something right and deserved to be praised. “That’s exactly it. He doesn’t want to alienate you, but it’s still such a sensitive topic. There were people who thought it was catching even though it wasn’t, and that’s why he hasn’t told any of the students now that he has it. Their parents might complain, and Moony needs this job.”

When he thought about it, Harry thought he could see why Professor Lupin had got that nickname. He did always seem to be sick around the time of the full moon. 

You always deserve to be praised, said Dash, his voice oddly disjointed, as if he was listening to echoes of Sirius’s words instead of paying attention to Harry.

Harry touched Dash’s plume and said, I know. Then aloud, he said, “Well, okay. I’m sorry I asked about it. I just thought he should know that someone is there to support him. I wouldn’t care even if he looks really disgusting.” There were always people who had thought helooked disgusting, with his scar and his bad glasses and his oversize clothing.

“We just have to know one thing, Harry.” Sirius gave him a heavy look. “Did you ever tell anyone else about it?”

“It’s not like I could keep Dash from knowing,” Harry retorted, and his hand came down on the back of Dash’s neck again.

“Oh, of course not,” said Sirius, and smiled a little. “I’m not worried about him because he can’t gossip to anyone else.”

Dash was silent in Harry’s head and physically, which Harry knew was always a bad sign. But Sirius interrupted before he could ask. “But you didn’t tell anyone else? I know you’re close with Ron and Hermione, but this is a very private thing.”

“I think Hermione figured out something on her own,” said Harry, with a shrug. “She sometimes was staring at Professor Lupin and acting like she was concerned about him. But she didn’t tell me, and I didn’t tell her.”

“That girl is too clever for her own good,” Sirius muttered, which Harry didn’t understand. He supposed that Sirius was a little annoyed Hermione had recognized the symptoms of Lupin’s disease when no one else had. “Fine, I’ll talk to her. But I need you to keep it from Ron for right now, all right? Maybe over the summer, we can tell him.”

“Okay,” said Harry. And he had to ask something else, something that the comment about the summer holidays had brought up. “Can I have Ron and Hermione over here this summer? I know they’d really like to visit Hogsmeade and see me and see what Hogwarts looks like when there’s no one else around.”

Sirius’s eyes softened, and he reached out and ruffled Harry’s hair. “Of course you can. I never want to keep you away from your friends, Harry.”

Except Malfoy, said Dash, with a dart of his tongue. I don’t think that he would approve if you wanted to ask him over. And me.

Harry didn’t think it was a good idea to answer that one, either, and so he just smiled at Sirius and came around the table to hug him. “Thanks. And thanks for not being angry at me.”

He could feel Sirius sigh, deeply, where he held him. “I would never be angry at you just for asking a question,” he said firmly. That made him so different from the Dursleys Harry wanted to explode, but he held it in and looked up to see Sirius still beaming at him with that slightly silly smile. “I’m glad that you came and asked Remus, in fact. We probably would have explained this to you earlier, but…Remus is one of my oldest friends, and it was a long time before knew what was going on. He’s so embarrassed about it. I’m glad you know now, and maybe when Remus is ready, then he’ll let you see him.”

Harry nodded. He hoped that Professor Lupin would. He had to understand that Harry knew about these things, and maybe he could even tell Lupin something about the Dursleys so he would know why Harry wouldn’t make fun of him.

Sirius leaped back and clapped him on the shoulder. “I know! Why don’t we go play some Quidditch?”

Harry happily trotted outside with Sirius. It was just good that they both liked Quidditch, he thought. That cheered them both up even the way that Sirius telling him stories about his dad didn’t, and it could always break up any tension they were feeling.

Any tension? 

Harry had left Dash on the ground this time, but he watched every movement Harry made on the broom, not even trying to search the garden for mice, and of course he could speak into Harry’s head no matter how distant he was.

Yes, was all Harry could think of to say. He didn’t know why Dash was so upset about what Sirius had said, even though Harry could tell he was. After all, it was understandable why Lupin wanted to keep the illness to himself, and Sirius had said that he wasn’t angry.

I see, said Dash, which was a shock, because he didn’t use human phrases like that very often.

But he came over and twined around Harry’s shoulder and chest as usual when Harry landed on the grass again, and rode with him into the house, and made his usual fussy debate over lunch and whether he really wanted to eat the food Sirius had made. Harry petted his head, and watched Dash close his eyes in ecstasy, and decided that Dash had just had a mood change. Humans could do it, why not basilisks?

Because basilisks and humans are different, said Dash, and for a moment, his eyelid trembled the way it did when he was going through some strong emotion. And the duty of this basilisk is to make sure you don’t get hurt.

Harry would have asked him what he meant, but Sirius called out from the drawing room then, saying, “Mrs. Weasley just firecalled me, Harry. She said that Ron can come here instead of going to the Hogsmeade weekend, and she’s sure Hermione can tag along. Do you want Ron and Hermione over for the afternoon?”

Yes,” Harry said, and Dash let it go again.

*

Severus had not had a chance to speak to Harry before the Easter holidays. The rush of marking had been partially responsible for that, but Severus knew himself, as only someone who had had to do long, detailed, and painful analyses could. He knew that he was also putting it off.

Not having the right words to convince Harry to stand up for other abused children was only part of it, as well.

But the children came back from the last Hogsmeade weekend of the year, and Severus knew this was probably his best chance. Enough time had gone by since their last, uncomfortable conversation that the boy would be more likely to forgive him. And while Lucius was still debating and negotiating with the Board of Governors to get them to believe his sudden interest in abused Muggleborns, he would probably move before the summer.

So Severus said quietly when Harry was about to leave Potions class with his friends one day, “Mr. Potter, stay behind.”

Oddly enough, Draco paused along with Weasley and Granger, as if he thought Harry might need protection from his Head of House. Severus met his eyes and jerked his head the way he did when he was on the verge of taking points from Slytherin. Draco frowned at him, but left. Harry’s friends were whispering fiercely to him.

Severus was quick enough to hear Weasley say something about Severus being a vampire. Severus checked a sigh. Was that old rumor making the rounds?

And this in a school with an actual werewolf working in it.

“You know where Mr. Potter is,” he interrupted the useless conversation. It might make what he needed to say to Harry harder, but he also needed them to leave. “You can report his mysterious disappearance if he fails to come to his next class.”

Weasley turned red, although it was the red of edge-of-battle rage. Luckily, Granger chose that moment to drag him away, and Severus turned towards Harry and added, “I suppose I don’t need to tell you where we’re going?”

“Again?” was all Harry said. His face had gone carefully closed and neutral. Severus blinked. He couldn’t remember Harry being master of that expression the last time they had talked. Neither had the basilisk watched him that closely, head peeking like a deadly locket from just beneath Harry’s chin.

Perhaps the basilisk taught him to keep his emotions in check, Severus thought as he nodded and led Harry down the corridor. Hopefully it wasn’t simply being around Black and battered by the man’s relentless commitment to seeing the son in the father.

Not that he had not done that himself. But what he would do now was part of the process of making up for it.

*

This time, Snape didn’t offer him tea. Harry thought that maybe it was because the man knew he would take it badly.

A second later, he scowled. He knew he never used to think that way. Two months ago, or maybe six months ago, he would just have thought that Snape was an evil git, and let it go at that.

I may have taught you some things, said Dash, and his tongue flickered out hard enough for Harry to jump because it stung a little. And so has Draco, although his teaching was not conscious. Is that such a bad thing? 

Harry didn’t get the chance to answer, because Snape turned around and studied him with an intense expression that made Harry sure this chat wasn’t going to about classwork. And that left only one thing it could reasonably be about.

“No,” he said loudly, standing up.

Snape blinked at him. “I beg your pardon?”

Another thing Harry wasn’t particularly cheerful about was the idea that Snape would pretend he didn’t know what this was about. Harry took a long step towards him, ignoring Dash’s warning hiss. After all, Dash was the one who would protect him if Snape tried anything. “I know that you want to talk to me about getting Sirius in trouble. Or you want me to acknowledge that he never thanked you. Or you want to draw me into your war with Dumbledore. Either way, it isn’t going to work. All right?”

Snape smiled, and he looked—human. Harry blinked in shock. That was a real smile, that was, and not just a smirk at the thought of getting someone else in trouble or getting to punish a student. It was enough to make Harry back up and put a protective hand on Dash’s scales, wondering if he needed to run.

Stop being ridiculous, said Dash. And there’s something else this could be about, that you haven’t mentioned.

Harry was in the middle of asking what that could be when Snape sighed heavily and admitted, “I do indeed want you to help me in fighting Dumbledore, Harry. However, not in the way you think.”

“I don’t want to interfere in the results of a private quarrel,” said Harry stiffly. “I know Sirius can be—hard sometimes, but that’s just the way he is.” He had almost said that Sirius was stupid sometimes, but he couldn’t be so disloyal to Sirius, even if he would never know about it. He was the one who had saved Harry. “Adults should handle their problems by themselves.”

“Yes, I agree,” said Snape, forcefully enough that he caught Harry off-guard again. “However, in this case, it is other students who will suffer if the adults go on handling things by themselves.” He hesitated, then added, “Specifically, Dumbledore.”

It took Harry a moment to work that out. For a second, he thought Snape was saying Dumbledore was the student who would suffer if adults didn’t do something. He did feel stupid, a lot, trying to work out what Slytherins were saying.

No wonder your own thoughts confuse you so often, said Dash casually.

Harry opened his mouth to at least splutter about that, but Snape went on in an urgent but soft voice. “I have reason to believe that you are not the first abused student Dumbledore has ignored, and not the only one he will get away with ignoring, unless you can find it in you to do something. To help me. To help them.”

Harry clasped his hands behind his back. That would keep them from shaking. Dash thoughtfully wound a coil down that would bind them and stop the shaking. Harry mentally thanked him for that, and then looked Snape in the eye. “I wasn’t abused.”

“I do not know the full nature and extent of the abuse,” Snape said. “But I know you were.”

“I wasn’t.”

“Your Muggle relatives did not like you very much,” said Snape. “And you leaped at the chance to live with a godfather you barely knew over the chance of returning to them. And I know—knew—your aunt as a child. She would never have welcomed a wizard in her house. Or Lily’s wizard son.”

Snape spoke the last few words between his teeth. Harry stared at him in astonishment. He wondered why the mere mention of his aunt upset Snape. Of course, it upset Harry, but there was no way that Snape could feel the same way about her for the same reasons. And anyway, what Snape was saying was stupid.

Harry shook his head. “I wasn’t.”

Snape opened his mouth, but Dash abruptly reared up in front of Harry, swaying back and forth like a cobra. Harry felt Snape freeze, but Dash was facing him and not Snape, so Snape shouldn’t be afraid of Dash attacking him. Harry, though, also knew that Dash wouldn’t attack him, so he glared at him and spoke aloud in English, for Snape’s benefit. It wasn’t as if Dash wouldn’t get the gist of the words from his thoughts. “Your cobra act doesn’t work on me.”

Harry.

Harry faltered a little. He had only heard Dash sound like that one other time, when he was talking to Harry at Christmas. His tail curled harder around Harry’s wrist, and Dash leaned in and rested his nose on Harry’s nose.

Harry swallowed. He wasn’t scared of Dash, but he was scared of what Dash might say. This was the closest they’d ever been, the most intimate, and, well…Harry just wanted to know what was coming next.

You know you were, Dash whispered to him. It doesn’t matter how Snape found out. You know he won’t spread it further, not without your permission. Harry winced a little. That was the part he was most afraid of, he had to admit. Or, well, that Snape would somehow convince Harry to spread it himself. And you know you were. The cupboard and the food and the way that your cousin was encouraged to do whatever he wanted to you. How is that not abuse?

Harry stared at his feet. I just don’t want anyone to know. They already get to know everything else, about you and my Parseltongue and all the shitty details of my life as the Boy-Who-Lived. Why do they get to know this, too?

Dash touched him hard on the cheek with his own cheek, head turned so that his scales slid and gently rasped along Harry’s skin. I told you the good thing about me is that I cannot be a secret. I would have refused to be even if it was possible. And I will guard you from anyone who tries to take advantage of you once this knowledge is out. His tail flipped up and pointed in Snape’s direction. Harry was vaguely aware that Snape was standing as still as a suit of armor and watching him. But it wasn’t his real concern right now. Even him. You will always have me at your side.

Harry reached up and wiped at his eyes. He would start crying in a minute, and he didn’t want that. But you can’t prevent them from saying bad things about me. Or pitying me. 

I do not think that pity counts as a bad thing. You could have done with more of it as a child. Dash’s tail wound a little harder around Harry’s wrist. And as for the saying bad things, I can.

“How?” Harry said, aloud, and Snape shifted a little. But he didn’t move or say anything otherwise, and Harry was glad. He knew that Snape would just be too much for what he could take, now.

Have you forgotten that I still have poison, however diluted, and that I can scare the shit out of someone by threatening to gaze at them? Dash lowered his head and let his eyelids flutter mockingly. Harry heard Snape catch his breath. I can cause them pain. Fear. Embarrassment. That is not the same thing as death, but for some people, it is worse.

Harry just shook his head and whispered, “They would take you away if you did that.”

Harry. Dash stretched out his full, glimmering length along Harry’s arm and then down his side and to the floor. Sometimes Harry forgot how long he was. And Dash was longer than he had been when he first hatched, Harry realized now—closer to seven feet than five. I am a basilisk. There are things about me that wizards have forgotten. Maybe never knew. Many Parselmouths hardly wrote down their conversations with my kind.

Harry narrowed his eyes. “You said you didn’t know a lot about Slytherin and Parselmouths and your kind.”

When I hatched, I didn’t. I’ve found that knowledge is starting to come to me. Though not about Slytherin and the eggs and the hatching chamber, I’m sorry. Dash lifted his head. It’s like another language that I had to learn how to speak, and now I can feel the memories filtering into my head. There is no way they can remove me from you if I say that I will not be removed.

“They could try to kill you,” Harry whispered. “They could use the Sword of Gryffindor like I did on your…your brother.” That was the only term Harry could come up with for the basilisk in the Chamber.

Now that we know about that way, we will guard against it, Dash said calmly. Is now a good time to mention that they call me the King of Serpents for a reason? I can call on other snakes, and they’ll rise to help me. I could have a court if I wanted. Although I think thrones are silly.

“When were you going to mention this?”

At a suitably dramatic moment. Is it working? 

Harry had to laugh in spite of himself, but he knew the sound came out tinged with terror. He shut his eyes and shook his head. I just found you so recently. I can’t lose you now. He would rather lose Sirius than Dash, he thought. It hurt, but it was true.

I won’t let myself be taken, said Dash quietly. If worst came to worst, Harry, we would leave Britain. They know you here. They know what I am. We would go where they wouldn’t know us at all. The secret places serpents know.

Harry wanted to trust that, he did, he wanted to trust that no one would separate him and Dash, but…

They could try to do that tomorrow. Dash pointed it out gently, and his tongue reached out and gently took some of the tears from Harry’s face. For any reason. Because I make them nervous the way I am. But we have to face it. And it’s the right thing to do, to get justice for your abuse. You know that. The right thing for you, whether or not Snape wants you to do for it anyone else.

Harry sniffled. Then he felt horrible for that doing that in front of Snape, who would humiliate him—

Give the man some credit for intelligence, Harry. He knows he would find my fangs in his leg if he did.

Harry nodded, and waited a moment for Dash to finish taking his tears away. Then, with his basilisk one huge knot of comfort around his shoulders, Harry turned and faced Snape, and nodded. “I’ll do it.”

*

Severus swallowed. He had been ready with many arguments that should change things, and the basilisk had done it for him.

Severus doubted he would ever know the exact terms of that conversation. But from the quiet, motionless gaze of dimmed yellow eyes, he did know two things.

A basilisk had a chance of turning into an unstoppable force.

And he might well turn Harry into one, as well.

I hope I will have a chance to help in that goal.

Chapter 21: Degradation of Trust

Chapter Text

“I don’t know how we’re going to do this.” Harry had his arms crossed and his eyes firmly fastened on the floor. 

It didn’t bother Severus. He had dealt with far worse than a little understandable teenage sulkiness, and for worse causes. He nodded now and placed his pile of paper on the floor. Harry glanced at it, then away. The basilisk around his neck uttered a hiss that Severus could nearly take as amused, although he didn’t know Parseltongue.

Harry hissed something back. Severus was able to listen with an impassive face. After the first few times he had heard Harry do that, it lost its ability to shock. “These are the reports I have prepared on abused students,” he said. “I will ask that you do not use any of the information you read in any way.”

Harry jerked around and gave him a glance that stood out as wounded, despite Harry’s absurd attempt to look noble and aloof. “Of course I wouldn’t! I mean, what am I going to do, go up and taunt them because they’re just like me?”

“I did not mean that,” said Severus, although he privately wondered how true that was. He knew he would find out when they began their announcements, but he still did not know how bad the abuse in Harry’s household had been. “I mean that you might suddenly show concern for people you have never shown concern for, and that might make someone suspicious.”

“Oh.” Harry lowered his head until his chin rested on the basilisk’s scales, an unconscious gesture of comfort that Severus had noticed he practiced often. “Are any of them in Gryffindor?”

“A few, yes,” said Severus. He had the temptation to ask if Harry cared about the ones in Slytherin, but halted his tongue. For one thing, he thought that Harry was doing this for all of them; for another, reminding the boy obsessively of the House he’d chosen and the one he’d rejected would lose him Harry’s trust. “None in your year.”

“I probably won’t know them, then.”

Severus paused. Despite his own private warnings to himself about indulging curiosity too much where Harry was concerned, his desire to ask this question would only plague him until he eased it. “Why have you made so few friends in your House?”

Harry lifted his head. “What do you mean? I have Ron and Hermione. And Neville, sort of. And I mean, I don’t get on bad with Dean and Seamus or anything. And Lavender and Parvati are all right.”

Severus half-sighed. “I mean that many people have more friends than you do. More casual ones,” he added, when he saw Harry’s expression, which seemed to suggest that he thought of Severus’s words as a taunt. “I know you have no trouble making friends. Your closeness to Weasley—”

Harry snorted at the same time as the basilisk hissed. Severus refused to be intimidated by the hidden eyes of the thing. They were still hidden. 

“I don’t have an easy time making friends,” Harry said. “Ron started talking to me about everything first, and then he stayed friends with me even when he found out who I was. And I got to be friends with Hermione because of the troll.” He folded his arms tighter and glared a little at Severus. “All these other people only want to gape at my scar or accuse me of being the Heir of Slytherin or something.”

Severus paused for a long moment before slowly nodding. In truth, he had thought the way Harry had acted last year when his Parseltongue was revealed partially a show. There was no way he could not have known about it, after all. And this year, he had seemed positively to revel in frightening people.

Then again, he had already had to admit that he didn’t know the boy before him at all.

“So it has nothing to do with your House placement, or wanting to keep your abuse away from people,” said Severus, just to make sure. Those were both things that could easily affect the plans he was brewing with Lucius, and hoped to brew with Harry.

“Of course not,” said Harry. “I mean, I would have been even more out of place in Slytherin, don’t you think? Especially last year.” The basilisk curled one loop of his body around Harry’s shoulders, and Harry massaged his scales for a second without taking his eyes off Severus. “And no one knows about my abuse. So they can’t think I’m hiding it.”

Severus would have liked to say that was not what he meant, but Harry’s expression was already closing down, and he knew he would have to get Harry used to talking about his abusive Muggle family only a little bit at a time. “Very well,” he said. “Then let us begin going through the information, and discussing strategy.”

Harry’s eyes were big as he sat down. Severus supposed he wasn’t used to adults talking to him in that way.

He should be. How Albus can insist that he’s a huge part of the war but never invite him in for so much as a cup of tea—

Severus subdued his anger. If anything, he should be glad of Harry’s lack of closeness to Albus. If he had been accustomed to relying on the Headmaster for more than a chat now and then, Severus’s task would have been much harder.

“Okay,” said Harry, and leaned forwards to pick up the first file, the basilisk looking as intently as he was at the paper. Where Severus would have found that unnerving only last week, now he rejoiced in it. Harry was more likely to do something with the basilisk close behind him, prodding him on.

*

Draco closed the book and leaned back in his seat, staring up at the ceiling of the library. Was that really it?

When Harry had asked him to try and figure out what was going on with Lupin, and Draco had figured out the pattern of Lupin’s pallor and weakness at the full moons, he had leaped to the obvious conclusion. But then Harry had said something about an illness, and Draco had recalled that the Board of Governors, bereft of his father’s wisdom or not, would hardly allow a werewolf to teach in the school.

Now he thought he had found the solution. He was just a little wary, because he hadn’t had to work that hard and he hadn’t thought it would be this easy.

Slowly, Draco opened the book and began to read again.

The Shaking Pustules is a rare disease often thought to be a side-effect of lycanthropy. However, recent studies have proved that the only side-effect of being bitten by a werewolf is turning into one. We must therefore look elsewhere for the origin of the Shaking Pustules.

The pustules first appear around the time of one’s adolescence, and do not often lessen thereafter. But they break out with especial violence around the time of the full moon, and oblige the sufferer to hide from others as his limbs convulse. The skin that breaks out into the Pustules runs with green and yellow pus, and covers the skin with streaks of them that may not be magically banished until the moon sets. Most of those who have the disease are obliged to retreat from society, and remain rather pale and worn for days afterwards.

It fit everything, Draco thought—not only the way that Lupin acted pale and worn around the full moon. It would fit the way that he didn’t seem to have a lot of friends, because he wouldn’t want to make them from people who were embarrassed or disgusted by his disease. And of course he had to stay hidden all night, wherever he hid. Otherwise, he would be covered with pus.

Draco smiled. Gross or not, he had made a striking discovery, one he thought Harry would be pleased with.

And if Draco couldn’t have a basilisk who would bond with him and tell him how wonderful he was (not that Draco didn’t know that, it was just nice to be reminded sometimes), then he had decided having Harry Potter turn to him with that one particular smile and tell him would do just as well.

*

“Harry, I need to talk to you.”

Harry looked up from his breakfast, startled, and distracted from Dash’s musing over whether he would like to have a piece of buttered bread this morning, in case the taste was better than usual. Draco didn’t often walk up to him like this. They would usually meet in the corners of the library and staircases.

But he was so determined and his eyes were shining so much that Harry found himself smiling back. He nodded and stood up, and said to Ron and Hermione, “I’ll see you lot in Defense, right?”

“Where are you going?” Ron’s hand was suddenly clamped on his arm, in a way he hadn’t often dared to touch Harry since he got Dash, and he didn’t take his eyes off Malfoy.

“To discuss things with Draco,” Harry said. 

Ron leaned back and blinked at him. Harry smiled as reassuringly as he could. He knew Ron didn’t understand many of the things Harry had done this year, from openly flaunting his Parseltongue to bonding with a basilisk, but Ron had borne with them pretty well. Harry didn’t think a friendship with a Malfoy would be the end of things if his Parseltongue and Dash weren’t.

Ron finally nodded with his eyes locked on Harry. “All right, mate. Just remember that you can come and ask us for anything, right?”

Harry wasn’t even sure Ron would have said “us” instead of “me” except that Hermione was right there, watching them over the top of her book. He smiled at her, too, and said, “I do know that, Ron. Counting on it.” He squeezed his friend’s hand once, and Ron finally scowled and released him.

He smells excited.

Harry jumped, wondering if that meant Ron was about to attack Draco, until he realized that Dash’s head was pointed straight at Draco. He nodded. Well, I reckon he is, or he wouldn’t have come up to me in the Great Hall. Let’s go see what it is.

*

“I should have told you to stop looking.”

Draco snorted and folded his arms. He wasn’t hurt, he told himself. He should have known that Harry’s reaction wasn’t going to be exactly what Draco hoped it would be, any more than he could have a basilisk for the hoping. Everyone was always turning around and disappointing him slightly.

But he didn’t manage to keep the hurt tone out of his voice—even if it was false!—when he muttered, “Well, I found it anyway.”

For a second, Harry looked off into the corners of the corridor they’d chosen to talk in as though he was seeing a secret in the shadows. Not the kind of information he could share with Draco, of course, Draco thought, and his heart and throat ached. Any more than he could the path to the Chamber of Secrets, or Parseltongue.

But Dash nudged the side of Harry’s neck, and he started and came back to himself. And then he looked straight at Draco and said softly, “It’s not—it’s not anything you did.” He reached out and gripped Draco’s shoulder and shook it. “It’s that Sirius told me the truth already, and he asked me not to share it with anyone else. It could hurt Lupin. It has to do with whether Sirius trusts me or not. It must have been pretty hard to trust me with a secret like that. So I was going to ask you to stop searching, and I forgot.”

Draco sniffed, partially appeased, but still thinking that Harry could have avoided forgetting about him. Harry seemed to realize that, or perhaps Dash had told him, because his other hand came up and tightened on Draco’s other shoulder.

“I appreciate the work you’ve done,” he said, speaking slowly and precisely, in a somewhat annoying tone. Draco reckoned it was the best Harry could do right now. “I just think it would be better to leave this alone. You know? So Sirius and Lupin will see that they can trust me, and I can have a better relationship with them.”

Draco gave Harry a look that made Harry blink. Draco didn’t know why. To him, it was self-evident that Harry’s words sounded odd.

“Don’t they have to prove you can trust them, too?” Draco asked. “I mean, until recently you thought Black was a murderous monster, and you didn’t know Lupin at all.”

“They’re friends of my parents.”

Draco nodded. “Right, and you have the explanation for what happened with Black. But what about Lupin? Why didn’t he tell you right away that he knew your parents? It’s not like it would be some huge horrible secret, right?”

“He’s just used to being secretive with his disease,” said Harry, but his face was sharp in a way that meant Draco’s words had pierced him.

Draco paused. He had sometimes seen the same look on his mother’s face, and he knew that he couldn’t press further without hurting the person who had that look. But maybe this was important enough that he had to. “Right,” he drawled slowly. “You think that’s the only reason?”

“What other reason would there be?” Harry lifted one hand away from Draco as if he would tug on his hair, but Dash coiled casually around his arm, and halted it. “I mean, he did tell me in the end. Even after Sirius showed up, I still wouldn’t have known about Professor Lupin, except he did make an effort to tell me! And he’s a great teacher, and he’s nice—”

“I’m not saying that,” said Draco, although he personally didn’t think Lupin was as great a teacher as Harry did. The man was competent, compared to Lockhart and Quirrell, but Draco could read about lots of things in his family’s library at home that Lupin wasn’t teaching them. “I’m saying that he didn’t volunteer any information.”

Harry relaxed a little and shrugged. “Neither did anyone else.”

Draco eyed him speculatively. “No one wants to talk to you about your parents?” That seemed strange to him. His parents had talked about Lily and James Potter, although they’d had negative things to say, of course. It made Draco feel strange and sad to think that he knew more about the Potters than Harry did. “It’s strange.”

“Yeah,” said Harry, and tapped his fingers on the wall for a second. “It is.”

Dash hissed something. Harry hissed reassuringly back. At least, Draco thought it was reassuring. He would be the first to admit he could misinterpret Parseltongue.

Not because I want to. Because no one else will tell me what it means or let me learn it!

Draco did his best to suck in his breath and ignore that, though. Harry wasn’t keeping Parseltongue from him on purpose. “Ask Black and Lupin about them,” he said. “You said Black told you stories about your dad and pranks when he was in Hogwarts. He must know other things about him. And your mum. And Lupin should, too.”

“Yeah, he should,” Harry whispered, apparently to himself. He reached out and touched Draco’s shoulder again. “Thanks. Maybe—maybe they can also trust me, as well as having me trust them.”

Draco swallowed down his own feelings at the moment, and his disappointment that Harry had simply forgotten to tell him that he didn’t want Draco researching Lupin anymore. Harry just looked so desolate now, and as though he was perched on the edge of a really big decision. “Yeah. They should.”

Harry shook his head once, firmly, as though responding to an argument from someone who was invisible, and then said, “Look, Draco, I won’t forget this. You want to go out and ride my Firebolt this afternoon?”

Draco relaxed. It was a kind of bribe, but he knew it was, so that was okay, and he still would have given up a lot just to be able to ride such a spectacular broom. “Sure. About one?”

Harry nodded, squeezed his arm again, and then trotted off, his face still pale.

Draco watched him go. In a way, he thought, he still envied Harry, with his fame and his basilisk and his Parseltongue and the way that so many adults were interested in him for himself, not for his family name or things his father had done, the way Draco knew some people were interested in him.

But in other ways, Draco was more than glad to leave that life up to Harry. He was glad that he’d always grown up with his parents, and knew them, and loved them, and he didn’t have to think twice about trusting all these people who should have protected him.

*

I think you must speak to them. This is driving you mad, and making your head an uncomfortable place for a small basilisk to be.

Harry grunted. Yes. Small. Right.

But Harry was wandering through his bedroom right now, picking up and setting down games and books and small moving pictures that Sirius had got for him, and he knew what Dash meant. He hadn’t been able to stop thinking since the conversation with Draco, wondering if Sirius and Lupin really trusted him. What if they didn’t? It was the reason they had kept Lupin’s disease from him for so long. 

What if they were just watching him until he passed some sort of test? Harry could accept that. They didn’t really know each other, after all. Until this year, both Sirius and Lupin hadn’t seen him since he was a baby.

Dash had been the one to point out that Harry was the one who should be able to set up tests, not them. Sirius had had a reputation as a murderer, and Lupin had just come from nowhere and been really secretive about his disease. Sometimes Harry wondered if Lupin would have told him about his connection with Harry’s mum and dad at all if Dash hadn’t sniffed out Pettigrew.

That is another thing.

Harry turned around. Dash had dropped off his shoulder when Harry began to pace, and was arranged by the door, watching him with his reared and swaying head like a cobra. It seemed to be one of his favorite poses. Harry sighed. What do you mean?

Lupin continually casts spells to conceal his scent. If he has the Shaking Pustules, then perhaps that is to cover the scent of his pus. Dash slithered slowly back to Harry and curled up on his feet, gazing up at him with a flicker of yellow dancing like a flame behind his eyelids. He didn’t start using them until after I sniffed out the rat-man, though.

Harry swallowed. What did he smell like before then?

I was young, said Dash with dignity. I cannot remember, and I don’t think that I was yet able to sort out one scent from others so well.

Harry nodded. So you think it’s some sort of different secret? Something worse than the Shaking Pustules? He wouldn’t accept the possible alternate idea that Lupin was someone like Pettigrew had been. For one thing, Sirius seemed to totally accept him as the friend he had known when they were in Hogwarts.

I don’t think it’s a disease, said Dash. It’s something else. And I think you should go and ask them why they can’t admit you into the secret. What’s do dreadful about it that they have to hold it back from you?

Harry shut his eyes. Maybe all sorts of things.

But you won’t know unless you ask them, Dash pointed out, with the sort of sibilant snap to his mind-voice that meant he was losing patience. And it could also be that they’re just being stupid and it doesn’t have much to do with you at all.

Harry swallowed. Yes, well, he had thought of that, hadn’t he? And Lupin was here this weekend. And Sirius wasn’t home right now. He had said that the Ministry was making a fuss about some aspect of the Black fortune, some vault or property they wanted to keep, and he’d left after dinner.

Maybe Harry could use this privacy to talk to Lupin, just the two of them, without Sirius hovering between them like a barrier.

It is the best choice, said Dash, and it was his advice, more than anything else, that made Harry open his door and walk down the corridor towards Lupin’s bedroom, the one with the locked door. 

Harry didn’t think it was locked right now, though. Lupin usually went up to it right before the full moon—well, Harry got to see him do that on the times that the full moon was on weekends and he was home, anyway—and spent a little time meditating before he shut himself away. Now Harry knew why. It would be hard to endure that stupid disease breaking out all over your body no matter how prepared you were for it.

But he still wanted to see Lupin. To talk to him. To tell him that keeping a secret from Harry was kind of pointless, since Harry had a friend who’d told him anyway. And Lupin and Sirius ought to trust Harry more.

Harry knocked on the door. There was silence from behind it. Harry hesitated, wondering if Lupin was still downstairs after all, or perhaps he’d gone with Sirius and Harry simply hadn’t seen him leave. He would have thought they’d tell him, but—

They haven’t told you much else, said Dash, in the neutral tone he used when he was trying not to use a considerably different one.

Harry knocked again, wondering what the hell was going on here. Sirius had always been so paranoid about leaving him alone in the house, as if he thought Voldemort was going to pop up from around the corner and attack him. It didn’t seem likely that he would have taken Lupin with him. On the other hand, Lupin being here when Harry had no way to contact him was also strange.

The door swung open slowly. Harry heard a snuffling sound from beneath it, a slow, heavy breath that made him wonder if Lupin had been crying.

“Professor Lupin?” he called, as calmly as he could. “It’s Harry. I wanted to tell you—I know. It’s okay.”

The heavy noise came again, and Harry saw a blurred shape moving towards him. He blinked, trying to focus his eyes. It wasn’t easy, with the shadows in the room seeming thicker than they had any right to be. But it almost seemed that Lupin was moving on all fours. Could the disease be so painful it had knocked him there?

“Professor Lupin?” he asked again.

The four-legged shape made another noise and blurred towards him. Harry caught a glimpse of fur, of gleaming yellow eyes, of something that opened a terrifying mouth filled with equally terrifying teeth—

And then Dash was whipping, rearing up, between him and the beast, and he sank his fangs deep in Lupin’s leg.

The beast was Lupin, Harry thought, numb, as he watched the thing fall, and then looked up and saw a pair of shredded robes deep in the room. And it wasn’t Shaking Pustules he had after all. It couldn’t be.

Another disease, another option, based on the full moon came to him. And Dash flicked out his tongue and said, He smells like a wolf.

Harry sat down hard. He looked at the breathing wolf, then away again. He’s still alive?

My poison is diluted, remember, Dash said, with a sharp hiss, and slithered back to him. He’s unconscious, and will be for some hours, but he will live.

Harry just nodded, and stroked Dash’s plume, and said nothing. He didn’t feel like he could even get up and go back to his room. 

He just sat there, holding Dash, until Sirius came up the stairs and found them like that.

Chapter 22: Certain Things Broken

Chapter Text

"Harry? Are you all right?"

At least that was the first thing he said, Dash murmured, and uncoiled his tail from around Harry's throat. I will remember that.

Harry wished he could attach the significance to that question that Dash did. Or even really understand why Dash was attaching that significance. He sat there numbly as Sirius knelt down in front of him and looked into his face.

"Are you there, kid?" Sirius whispered.

Dash watched from the side. Harry understood that he had to drag himself together and respond, because even if Dash was going to be the one to talk to Sirius, he would have to do it through Harry.

Harry made his eyes blink and his head turn. It wasn't so hard after all, once he thought about it. He'd done harder things last year, when he'd had to stop Tom Riddle and save Ginny. He looked Sirius in the eye, and Sirius immediately looked down.

"You could have just told me," Harry whispered. "He almost bit me. What--" He couldn't find the words. There was a big ringing in his ears, and he couldn't find the words. He just sat there and stared and waited for what Sirius would say next.

"He should have taken his Wolfsbane," Sirius said, and he glanced over at Lupin. Then he stood up and said, "Why's he lying there like that? What happened?"

"Dash bit him," said Harry dully. He could force himself to answer questions, but he didn't know if he could do more than that. He reached out his hand, and Dash wrapped around his arm. He was cool, soothingly cool. Harry cradled Dash against him and watched as Sirius whipped back around and stared at him.

"Bit him," said Sirius, with a growl in his voice that reminded Harry of his dog form, and it did seem that dark hair was thickening around his ears and eyes. "I told you that snake was dangerous."

Dash reared slowly up until he was wrapped around Harry's shoulders and neck. He opened his mouth. Sirius stepped back, his eyes on him, fumbling for his wand. Harry sat there and felt nothing. It was like he didn't even have arms and legs. The needles that pierced them, needles of pain and doubt, had vanished. He watched, and it was as though it was all happening somewhere, in a different place, to someone else.

Dash hissed, a long, slow, complicated piece of hissing that didn't translate into Parseltongue for Harry. Harry wondered absently if he'd lost that ability too. He might as well have lost everything else that mattered. What was one more thing?

But instead of Dash undraping himself from Harry and crawling away, or biting him, he dropped and wrapped in furiously tight coils around his shoulders and arms. And from the shadows, trailing their shadows behind them as they moved, came snake after snake. They were all grey and gleaming and had black stripes on their sides and fangs that stuck, long and slender, out of their mouths, like Dash's. They slid and slithered around Harry and Dash and climbed towards Sirius.

Sirius cast a spell that split the corridor with light and fire and cut through one of the snakes. But it didn't even seem to have been affected. Harry blinked, coming out of it, mildly interested now.

They are snakes made of shadow, said Dash, and wrapped him tighter still. And I am the King of Serpents.

The snakes all clustered around Sirius's feet and hissed at him. Then Dash turned and placed his head underneath Harry's chin, and Harry felt his jaw open without him even willing it. Dash's voice flowed forth from his throat, turned into English.

"You are more concerned about your friend than about Harry."

It took Sirius a minute to tear his eyes away from the shadow-snakes and answer him. Harry felt as if more air was flooding into his lungs all the time, and things were starting to hurt. He thought they would hurt a lot more in a few minutes.

"Moony--Moony was bitten," Sirius mumbled, and then he blushed. Harry wondered why for a second. But then he thought he knew why, and he wanted to look away, but Dash's head held his in place. "What the hell are you doing to Harry, anyway?"

"You cared more for your werewolf friend than anyone else," Dash's merciless voice continued. Harry thought it sounded a lot different than his, rougher and darker, kind of like Snape's, but deeper. "You didn't make him take his Wolfsbane or lock his door. You left him alone in a house with a child who didn't know he was a werewolf."

"It was Moony's secret to tell," said Sirius.

"All you care about is his father's friends," said Dash. "Your friends. You don't see Harry at all except as a reflection of James, and you placed a secret that could have got Harry killed above his safety. You are a poor guardian."

Sirius was flushing more than ever now. Harry lay back against the wall and watched. He felt a little like an abandoned toy. Well, no, not abandoned, not with the tight hold Dash had on him. He just hoped that Dash was able to pick him up and play with him, after this.

"No one at the school knew, except Dumbledore," Sirius whispered. Then his face hardened. "And Snape, but that was because he nearly exposed Moony's secret to the world when we were students. And Moony thought you would react badly if you knew, because he always gets rejected as a monster." He looked at Harry and leaned forwards as if he would touch Harry's forehead. "Harry? Are you in there?"

All the snakes hissed as one, with a force that made Sirius flinch. Harry felt a distant emotion when he saw that. Was he glad? He supposed that part of him was. Not in a mean way, he thought. Not really. He didn't want Sirius to be bitten and suffer from poison, if the shadow-snakes could have poison--and he thought they did. He just wanted him to acknowledge that what he'd done was wrong.

The thought made him convulse. Fear rode him, and he lowered his head and had to close his eyes as hot tears forced their way out from underneath the lids.

He could have been killed. And Sirius didn't care.

Harry had thought he had.

"Oh, Harry, Harry, kid," said Sirius helplessly, but he didn't dare move nearer. The ring of snakes was tight around him. Harry reached up and put a hand on Dash's neck, but he couldn't move it further than that. Dash was still so tightly wound.

Dash? Can you pull back and let me have my voice again? I need to talk to Sirius.

Not right now, said Dash, cold, imperious. There are more things I need to say to him.

"How did it happen that he came to be in the house without this Wolfsbane drug and without a locked door?" Dash asked, coldly.

Sirius stood back up again and folded his arms. His gaze went back to Lupin. Harry looked into his eyes and saw all this caring.

He supposed it was for Lupin, and not him. He even supposed dully that that shouldn't be a surprise. Sirius had known Lupin all his life, or at least since he went to Hogwarts, and he'd known Harry for a few months.

That does not matter, Dash roared inside his head, and murmured aloud, "I am waiting for an answer to my question."

"Snape brought over the potion as usual," Sirius whispered, still looking at Lupin. "He does always go up to meditate before he takes it. He says it makes him more relaxed and less likely to make mistakes. I think he must have fallen asleep." He cast a spell that made Dash tighten and hiss and even Harry tense, but all it did was throw a shaft of light from his wand into Lupin's room, like a more powerful Lumos. Sirius stared, then sighed and said, "Yeah. I can see the goblet of Wolfsbane still sitting in the corner. I'll make sure he takes it before he comes back to consciousness, even if I have to force it down his throat." For once, he sounded appropriately grim.

"That does not give an answer to the riddle of the unlocked door," Dash said.

"I don't know what happened there any more than you do," said Sirius shortly. "We'll have to ask Moony when he wakes up."

Moony, Dash said. I should have known from that stupid nickname. I failed you as much as the rest of them, Harry. His hold loosened, and he took his head from beneath Harry's chin, rubbing against Harry's cheek instead. I am sorry.

It isn't your fault, Harry said down the bond. He was using glamours to hide his scent. Then he looked up at Sirius and whispered, "I could have kept the secret. If you'd just told me he was a werewolf. I'm good at keeping secrets. I would have known it was dangerous. But I just thought his disease made him look ugly, and I was going to see him and tell him that it didn't matter what he looked like."

"Harry," Sirius said, and hesitated and glanced down at his feet. The shadow-snakes had vanished. Harry hadn't even noticed them go. "That's you again, right?"

Harry nodded and stood up. His legs were shaky, and he leaned against the wall. Dash rubbed his head against Harry's cheek again. You need to get warm, and you need to have something to drink. Tell the useless dog-man to take you down to the kitchens and get you something warming, and then come up and make sure the creature has its Wolfsbane. If he comes after you again, I will open my eyes.

"I need to get warm, and I need something to drink," Harry recited obediently. He felt Dash coil and relax gently around his wrist, telling him that this was right, that he was going to feel better in a few minutes. Harry managed to calm down a little at that. "And then Dash thinks that you should come up and make sure--he takes his Wolfsbane." Harry didn't think he could call Lupin Professor right now, and he had never called him Remus or Moony.

It would be hard to think of him as Moony right now. Harry started to shiver again.

"Of course! You were probably in shock." Sirius jumped forwards and hugged him. Dash did nothing, but Harry could feel Sirius holding his breath when he realized that he'd just hugged Dash, too. "Come on, kid."

He led Harry down the stairs. Harry glanced back once at the sleeping werewolf, but Dash said, I can call the snakes and send them up the stairs again if I have to. I told you I was the King of Serpents. They can bite even when apart me from me.

Harry relaxed completely. Then he wondered if he should. He was relaxing because someone else was promising violence. It seemed...wrong.

You're relaxing because someone else promised to protect you. The way they always should have. The way they all should have. It shouldn't all be left up to one small basilisk.

I know, Harry whispered, and rested his chin on Dash's scales as Sirius led him down the stairs. It's not fair to you.

Or to you, and Dash sounded strangely intense when he was speaking the words, the way he had when he argued with Harry in Snape's office. You know that, right?

Yes, I do now, Harry thought. But it made him wonder, if Sirius wasn't doing his job of protecting Harry, what he could do next, and whether Harry should trust him.

Don't trust him. But trust me, and I'll protect you while you're here. And maybe someday, he can make it clear why he wanted to have you around if his best friend meant so much more to him. That's a question I'd like to ask.

Harry rubbed Dash's head and said nothing while Sirius bustled around the kitchen getting a cup of hot tea ready and filling it with sugar and lemon and cream until it seemed that it would probably mostly be sweet things. Maybe he would let Dash use his voice to ask the question someday, but not right now. Right now, he wanted to sit there and drink the tea and listen to Sirius creak back up the stairs to see about Lupin and the Wolfsbane.

And forget that he had almost died tonight. Again.

*

Severus would have to be blind not to notice the change in Harry when he came back from the mutt's house. His face was still white, and he responded to the jokes and gibes of his friends with only the ghost of a smile.

And one hand was always touching the basilisk, even in Potions when he had to use the other hand for stirring the cauldron or chopping ingredients or taking notes. He kept a death grip on the creature's tail if nothing else, and sometimes he leaned his head sideways and rested his cheek on the serpent's scales.

The signs of weakness made Severus nervous, but he had to admit there would be fewer consequences to it this year. Draco was no longer someone who tried to notice Harry's every weakness and point it out to the other Slytherins, and the rest of the school finally seemed to have decided that the fun of "gawking and whispering about Harry Potter" was less important than the pain of "having a giant serpent angry at you." So Severus thought it had passed unnoticed for most people other than him.

He held Harry after class, and Harry only gave him a weary glance from glazed eyes and nodded. Severus held back the impulse to immediately find Black and curse him, and shooed Harry's friends out before he turned to him. Harry still had a hand on the bloody basilisk, stroking down his neck as if the snake was the one who needed the soothing.

And he held still for a moment before he responded to Severus's obvious, unspoken question, as if he was asking the bloody basilisk whether it was a good idea for him to do so.

"Something happened over the weekend," he said. Still dully. He rubbed the basilisk with both hands this time and looked at the floor. "And I s'pose I can tell you about it because Sirius said you already know."

Severus held onto his patience with both hands. "Know what?" he asked.

"Know that Professor Lupin is a werewolf."

A chill calm settled over Severus. He thought, carefully, how much distance there was between him and the nearest vial of poison, and which one would cause the least disturbance to the Wolfsbane should he add that to the liquid. He had a plan in mind in seconds, if Lupin had hurt Harry.

"No, he didn't bite me," said Harry, who must have been watching him more closely than Severus had thought. He glanced at the basilisk, who opened his own mouth in what might have been a yawn, but Severus had watched him closely before this and knew better. "Dash bit him before he could."

"He should not have been without the Wolfsbane," said Severus, and put aside thoughts of the poison for now. At least, a fatal poison. One that rendered Lupin mildly uncomfortable the day afterwards and required to stay close to a loo was still possible. "Or in a place that you could reach him."

Harry shut his eyes. "They told me Lupin had a skin disease that he was embarrassed to discuss with anyone else. I wanted to show him that I was fine with it. Sirius said that he must have fallen asleep while he was meditating and forgotten to take the Wolfsbane."

"And to lock his door, of course," Severus muttered, thoroughly disgusted. He had told the Headmaster that a werewolf was not safe to be around children, but Dumbledore was more infatuated with the Marauders now than he had been during their school years. He had passed some evenings at the Head Table talking of the great injustices they had suffered, Black in prison and Lupin hounded from job to job.

And this is why.

"I don't know if wolves can lock doors," said Harry, his head still down, his hand constantly caressing the basilisk's scales. The basilisk nudged him in the ribs, and he looked up at Severus. "I mean, Dash says I shouldn't try to excuse him."

Severus nodded. "You should not." He experienced a brief spasm of regret that he and the basilisk could not communicate more directly. He was sure they would find even more to agree on than they did now.

"But...I don't understand it." Harry was huddled around Dash, and if no one else had seen this, they were even more moronic than Severus had thought them. "They could have just told me Lupin was a werewolf. Then I wouldn't have pried. But Sirius was still going on and on about how it was Lupin's secret and he just can't bear to have it exposed even a couple hours afterwards."

There was an anger in Severus that he was not ready to examine, which was more than his customary grudge against Black. He tried to bury it by asking, "And what did Lupin say?"

"I don't know." Harry's voice was tinier than Severus had ever heard it. "He was gone the next morning before I woke up."

Severus leaned forwards. "What has he said since you have been back at school?" Lupin could not easily have avoided Harry there. He would have to have spoken.

"He just calls on me to answer questions, in class." Harry was staring at Severus's boots as if they were the most interesting thing in the world. "He doesn't answer mine."

Severus reached out, slowly, the way he would if he was trying to creep up on a magical creature whose willingly donated hair or feathers he needed, and slowly cupped Harry's chin. Harry didn't immediately raise his head, but the basilisk lodged his head beneath Severus's hand, and Harry had to look up then.

His eyes were too big and glossy, not in tears yet, but in the state that could so easily become them.

"Why didn't they tell me?" Harry whispered. "Why is it so important for Lupin to keep his secrets and not talk to me?"

Severus had many answers for that, but...

Be too bitter, and you will lose him forever.

"They have been like that since they were young," he murmured instead, while wondering when his relationship with James Potter's son had become so important to preserve at all costs. "They had secrets when they were young, some of the same ones. And I do not think they have changed. Black went to Azkaban for twelve years. He has not grown up."

He paused, but Harry was listening to his words, absorbing them, while the basilisk was giving him one of those complicated looks that were hard to judge. Harry whispered, "What about Lupin? What excuse does he have?"

None.

That was what Severus wanted to say, but again he restrained himself. He said carefully, "I think that Lupin is obsessed with his own secret. He has been rejected from jobs and homes for it. He cannot comprehend that someone is willing to offer him a fair chance, even if they know what he is."

"So it didn't matter who it was? He wouldn't have trusted them?" For some reason, Harry's face was lightening.

After a moment's search of his own mind, Severus discovered the reason, one he should have thought about before now. Even when he was brave enough to do something like say he would speak about his abuse, Harry didn't want to stand out from others. He wanted to be treated the same as they were. Suggesting that Lupin might have refused his confidence to Harry because of who he was would devastate him.

But if he was only one of the many mistrusted ones, then Harry could accept that.

Even if he should not have to, Severus thought viciously, and responded to Harry, "That's right. I must admit, I had thought he would make an exception for the son of his best friend."

"It's all right that he didn't," said Harry, and stared at his feet again. But his breathing was calmer, and the glossy sheen had faded from his eyes.

Severus grimaced, now that Harry was no longer looking at him. He could see why this would soothe Harry, but the fact remained that he should not have had to accept such treatment, that he should be able to demand better, and Lupin and Black should have given him better.

"Do you think I should talk to Professor Lupin again, then?" Harry asked, and his voice was soft and anxious, hoping for one sort of advice. "If he doesn't mean to be angry at me."

He has no right to be angry.

Severus only inclined his head. "I cannot predict what he will say. But yes, I believe that would be productive."

Even if it would allow Lupin to get away with this bloody secrecy for a little while longer. Even if it would encourage him to believe he had been in the right. Harry would need support when the news of his abuse went public, and although Severus planned to be the majority of that support, it would help if Lupin and Black were solidly behind Harry.

And it was becoming too obvious that they would only be so if their image of Harry matched the reality. Severus could only hope that when Harry was more adult, he would find the courage to question that kind of conditional support and break away if he wished to. But for now, it was better that he manipulate them, unknowingly, with guilt if he could.

"Thanks, Professor Snape." Harry said it in a rush, and looked towards the door of the classroom. "Can I go? Defense is next."

Reluctant though he was to send Harry back to associate with those who would place their own needs above his, Severus nodded. He had to work within constraints himself, this time those of the school. He could take no responsibility for Harry. It would be too strange for too many, limit his effectiveness if the Dark Lord returned, and have no legal basis.

That he even wanted to was an astonishing revelation to him. But for now, he would simply live with that revelation instead of trying to pursue it.

"Thanks," said Harry, and flashed him a smile that made Severus go breathless before he ran out of the room, supporting the basilisk with an arm around its neck.

Severus leaned against the wall for a moment with his eyes closed. He could do nothing more for now. He had done something that would have--he hoped--impressed Lily with its generosity.

Well. Nothing more is a lie.

He straightened, and went to find certain potions that would be untraceable to him and easy to slip into Black and Lupin's food.

Chapter 23: Certain Things Explained

Chapter Text

“So, what the hell happened the last time you were home?”

Draco knew that using words like that, so different from his usual language, would at least get Harry to pay attention. And it had. Harry turned around and gaped at him a little, then raised his fists and rubbed at his eyes.

“I—something that really hurt,” Harry said, looking as startled as Draco that he was responding.

Draco leaned back against the library bookshelf and folded his arms. They were in the middle of a research project on basilisks. Or, rather, Draco was, and Harry had let himself be dragged along to the library, because Harry was letting himself be dragged everywhere these days. He barely seemed to notice when Draco grabbed his arm, though he would have protested violently before.

No, the one Draco kept his eye on for protests was Dash. But he had only given Draco a glance, and then returned to his slumber around Harry’s neck. 

“Then tell me about it,” Draco urged softly. “Or is that something that Gryffindor friends don’t do for each other, but Slytherin friends do?”

“Sympathize?” Harry was trying to hold onto his smile when his face was that pale and Dash was butting up against his hand. Draco counted the seconds, and hadn’t even reached three when, sure enough, the smile disappeared. “Of course they sympathize with me.”

“But they haven’t noticed the way you look, have they?” Draco lounged closer against the bookshelves. “Come on, Harry,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth to defend himself. “I know they haven’t, or we would have heard something about it before now.”

Harry shut his eyes. Dash was wound all down his arm now, and he seemed to be holding Harry back from doing something drastic. Draco winced. He still wanted to know, but he wondered if what had happened was even worse than he thought.

Probably. Everything about Harry sometimes seemed worse than he thought, from the way Harry had reacted to his initial attempts at friendship, to the fact that he couldn’t help Draco get a basilisk or teach him Parseltongue.

But Draco was trying to move past that. Harry looked really bad. And Draco felt a little smug that he had noticed but other people hadn’t. So he said as gently as he could, “Come on. Tell me?”

“All right,” said Harry dully. “But you can’t tell anyone else, all right? Because part of it isn’t my secret, and I shouldn’t have pried, and that means if someone starts spreading it around—”

He stopped. Draco looked up, then looked down at his hand, where Harry was also staring. Dash was wrapped about Harry’s wrist and gently squeezing. Or it looked gentle, anyway, but it must have hurt, because Harry winced and tried to yank his hand away, hissing—in English—“Dash, what are you doing?”

Dash looked up at Harry. Of course Draco couldn’t hear what he said, and he wouldn’t have been able to understand it if it was aloud, anyway, but he would wager he knew.

“It doesn’t matter whose secrets you found out,” he said. “Right? Dash still thinks that you don’t have anything to apologize for, and he wants you to stop.” Draco sniffed. “I can see why. You can’t have anything to apologize for when you look like that.” He leaned near, and Harry looked desperately up at him.

Merlin. Harry looked like—like he wanted to die.

“Listen,” said Harry, and he sounded as though he was whispering to a lot more people than just Draco. Maybe Dash, then, Draco thought, and told himself to stop being jealous. How could he be jealous of Dash? Of Harry for having Dash, maybe, but not a basilisk himself. “I found out that—that Professor Lupin is a werewolf.”

Draco felt his eyes widening, and widening. “Impossible. My father!”

“I don’t know what your father has to do with it.” Harry buried his head in his arms, and Draco sat down beside him so he could go on listening. “He’s always taken this Wolfsbane potion and locked himself away somewhere on the full moon, I reckon. But this time, he didn’t lock the room in Sirius’s house where he was, and he fell asleep and forgot to take his Wolfsbane potion.”

“Fuck,” Draco breathed, wincing a second later. His father would never forgive him if he could hear Draco using language that vulgar, but it was the first word that came to mind as Draco looked in sick fascination at Harry’s arms and legs, wondering where the bite was.

“He didn’t bite me,” said Harry, looking up and catching Draco’s gaze. “Dash bit him first, and his poison is diluted, so it put Lupin to sleep but didn’t kill him. And then Sirius came back, and he got upset because Dash is dangerous.”

“So he has a pet werewolf,” said Draco. “And he was upset because he cares more about the pet werewolf than you.”

It wasn’t until Harry went white that Draco wondered if he should have put it like that. But Dash gave a hiss that honestly sounded as if it agreed, and Harry swallowed a little and clenched a fist, staring down at it. Then he shook his head. 

“That’s what it seems like. But why would Sirius want me to live with him and give me a room and everything if he was just going to kick me out the minute Lupin was in danger?” Harry dragged in a painful breath. “I just wish he’d told me. And Dash wishes more than that, but I can’t let him hurt Sirius or Lupin.” He put a hand on Dash’s neck.

“I’ll help,” Draco told Dash, knowing perfectly well that Dash would at least understand him from hearing the words through Harry’s ears. “How dare they.”

“Draco.” Draco looked up. Harry was staring at him, shaking his head a little. “Listen. You don’t need to do anything. It’s—they explained, and Lupin forgot and fell asleep. It was horrible seeing him coming at me, but—it’s not like they did it on purpose.”

“That doesn’t matter.” Draco smiled at Harry, and Harry blinked. Draco supposed that Harry had never seen him smile when he was furious before. It was, to be fair, not the expression Draco usually wore when yelling insults at Harry. “They let a monster endanger you. They should never have done anything like have a werewolf in a house without letting people take proper precautions. And now I can do something to them.”

“What can you do?” Harry blinked at him. “No offense, but I think they both know more spells than you. They’re adults.”

“I can go to my father and get Lupin sacked,” said Draco smugly. “They might not like him very much right now, but the Board of Governors will have to listen if we prove there’s a werewolf at the school!”

“Don’t do that!”

Draco blinked and leaned back. He was having a hard time keeping up with Harry’s mood swings, he thought. Now Harry was on his feet and pointing one trembling finger at Draco. Dash had reared up and was mostly on the ground, his body wrapped around Harry’s leg but his head swaying back and forth between them. Draco was sure he understood what was at stake here. He just didn’t know why Dash was so hesitant. Didn’t he want to protect Harry?

“Why not?” Draco asked. “Lupin proved that he didn’t really care about you when he failed to take the bloody Wolfsbane!” Swearing was kind of fun. Maybe Draco would have to do it more often, although not in the hearing of his father. “You should lose him his job. He shouldn’t teach at a school if he’s going to be that careless!”

“He wasn’t at the school, though.” Harry’s arms were folded so tight that Draco thought he was hurting his shoulders. Then Harry shifted his stance a little and winced, and Draco was sure of it. “He was at Sirius’s house. I think he was going there every full moon since Sirius got freed. I just never knew what it was for.”

“I don’t care,” Draco snapped, irritated. “Unless you think that makes it better because he could only hurt you, or something.”

“Yes, of course that makes it better,” said Harry, staring at Draco. “It’s better to have one person in danger than a whole bunch of them.”

Draco jumped to his feet and waved his arms. Great, he thought in one corner of his brain, now Harry’s making me just as bad as he is. “But you wouldn’t feel that way if it was me, right? Or Weasley, or Granger?” He managed to keep from sneering when he talked about Harry’s friends. Really, he thought Harry ought to be proud of him.

“Of course I wouldn’t.” Harry looked a little stunned, his eyes wide, one hand lifted as if he was going to fend off what Draco was saying.

“Then get Dash to explain that don’t feel any differently when it’s you.” Draco tapped his foot on the floor.

There was a long, silent moment—silent for Draco, at least—when Draco hoped that Dash was doing just that. Then Harry sighed and said, “Listen, Draco. Don’t do that. Maybe—maybe it won’t ever matter. I don’t think Lupin will ever forget his Wolfsbane again. Sirius said he was shocked about what happened.”

He didn’t apologize?” Draco was going to accept, for the moment, that werewolves were something more than deadly dangerous beasts who should be put down at once and kept away from normal wizarding society, because Harry wouldn’t listen to him if he tried to talk about that. But he was horrified by the notion that Lupin wouldn’t apologize to someone who didn’t believe werewolves were deadly dangerous beasts who should be put down at once and kept away from normal wizarding society.

It would be like Mudbloods getting upset at somebody who defended them from pure-bloods. It was just wrong.

“No,” said Harry in a harsh croak, and then he faced Draco. “Look, drop it. This is why I didn’t tell anyone.”

“No, you didn’t tell anyone because you have no common sense,” Draco said, and his voice only rose a little on those last words. He was glad they were in an isolated corner of the library. Otherwise, Madam Pince probably already would have thrown them out for yelling. “You need to get Lupin sacked! Or out of the house!”

Harry closed his eyes. Then he said, “Look, Draco. Sirius didn’t tell me about it, and he must have had his reasons. I don’t think Lupin has anywhere else to go. I don’t—I don’t want anyone to lose their homes because of me. Okay?”

Draco opened his mouth to say something else, something scathing, and then paused. He suddenly knew, he was sure, what Harry was really afraid of, but he wouldn’t say that, either.

Harry was afraid that his godfather might choose Lupin over him, and kick Harry out.

Draco knew it as though someone had branded the words on his forehead. It wasn’t the kind of insight that he’d expected to have, but there it was. 

And he had to decide what to do with it.

He swallowed, and decided he would keep it secret. Harry hadn’t said it aloud. He would deny it if Draco tried to convince him of it. Or he would run away, and Draco hadn’t put all these weeks of effort into becoming Harry’s friend for nothing.

So. Even though, as far as Draco was concerned, Black had already chosen Lupin over Harry, Draco would have to stay quiet for now, because Harry needed time to come to terms with that.

Draco glanced at Dash and muttered, “Will you protect him from any more werewolf attacks?”

Dash slowly extended his neck flat, then bobbed his head once. Draco relaxed. It wasn’t an absolute guarantee that Harry wouldn’t get hurt, but it was a lot better than having no one living in the house who cared about Harry’s safety.

“I don’t want to cost anyone anything,” Harry whispered, his eyes down. “I don’t want Lupin to lose his job or his house. I don’t want Sirius to lose him.” He paused, and Draco thought he was about to add something else, but he didn’t.

Draco nodded and patted his shoulder—not the one that Dash had twined himself back up and around—and said nothing. He would wait until Harry could accept it, if he had to.

It was still bloody stupid, and Harry was being a pissant little martyr. But Draco supposed that was the sort of thing you had to put up with when you had friends who weren’t just with you because your father had ordered them to be.

*

“You know why I have called you here, I think.”

Dumbledore’s voice was as gentle as falling snow. Harry was glad of that as he sat down in the chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk, because Dash’s voice was in his head, and it was a long way from gentle.

He’s called you here to apologize for Lupin, so Lupin won’t have to do it for himself. He’s called you here so he can go on making you feel bad when you’ve done nothing wrong. I want to bite him. I want to call the serpents on him.

Harry laid one clenched fist on Dash’s neck and shook his head. You can’t do that, he thought back. I still want to have Sirius in my life, and you know Sirius would never let us back in the house if you bit the Headmaster. He didn’t understand the depth of the connection between Sirius and Dumbledore, honestly, but he knew it was there.

Dash twisted around and laid his neck along Harry’s chin. You want to stay with Sirius, but you would never abandon me, would you? 

Harry tilted his head down so his cheek was against what he had to call Dash’s cheek, for lack of a better word, and said nothing. Dash had to know, from the connection thrumming through Harry’s blood, what the link between them meant. No, Harry would hate to abandon anyone else, but he would do it before he left Dash.

“Harry?”

Harry sat back and looked up again. Dumbledore had his hands folded on his desk, but they were clasped tightly around each other, and Harry thought he had probably been waiting for a few minutes for Harry to pay attention. He swallowed and said, “You want to apologize for Professor Lupin.”

Dumbledore gave a long, soft sigh and looked down at his hands. “How much do you know what of what your godfather suffered when he was young, Harry?”

The topic caught Harry off-guard. “I know he was in Azkaban,” he said. “And I know—I mean, I think his family was terrible to him. But that’s all I really know.”

“I am glad to find that you can have compassion for him,” said Dumbledore gently. “Compassion is a rare trait in one so young. But then, you haven’t had a normal childhood.” He paused and looked at Harry.

I would never tell you. Never, never, never. Harry felt as if he could push enough rejection at Dumbledore to shove him out of his chair on the other side of his desk, but at least Dumbledore didn’t appear to feel it. He only sat there and finally spoke again when he seemed to realize that Harry didn’t want to answer.

“His family rejected him,” said Dumbledore quietly. “He was Sorted into Gryffindor, and his family had always been Slytherin.” He paused, but Harry had no idea what to say. Sirius hadn’t told him much about his family, and that remained true. “He had a younger brother, Regulus, whom his parents decided would take over and be made family heir in his stead. So, while Sirius had been raised thinking he would inherit everything, he found himself reduced to the status of a pensioner.”

Harry listened, and said nothing. He thought that it was sort of like the way Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had always reminded Harry that he was taking food out of Dudley’s mouth. But in that case, he didn’t know if he would be Regulus or Sirius.

“His parents tortured Sirius.” Dumbledore was looking at Harry over his glasses, so gravely that Harry wanted to choke. Dash wound a small portion of his neck along Harry’s throat and into his hair, but for the moment, Dumbledore didn’t appear to notice, even though most of the time he was jumpy and nervous around Dash, and he would have noticed right away. “They used Dark curses on him. They beat him. They tried to break his spirit through compulsion spells, but he managed to resist that. And they tried to take away his friends.”

Harry found it hard to speak. Of course that would horrify anyone, but he thought that most people wouldn’t be able to feel the horror the way he did. If the Dursleys had been wizards, or if they had known about Ron and Hermione and tried to take them away…

He’s manipulating you, said Dash, simply, coolly. He’s explaining the similarities between you and the cowardly dog-man so that you will forgive the dog-man anything. Can you not see?

Harry looked down, and nodded a little, and said nothing. He could see, but that didn’t diminish the fact that he was sorry for Sirius. It was still horrible for him to have to go through that. His parents still stounded like the Dursleys.

You are not responsible for his suffering. Or for compassionating it.

“In the end,” said Dumbledore, leaning back behind his desk and watching Harry while Harry thought of how he should respond to Dash, “Sirius gained the courage to run away. He went and stayed with a good friend of his. That friend’s family welcomed him warmly, and Sirius had a home he could never have imagined.”

“You mean my dad’s family, right?” Harry was sure, and he thought he’d heard something about this from Sirius, before, but he wanted to ask anyway, just to see what Dumbledore would say.

Dumbledore smiled, so warm and deep that Harry nearly smiled back before he remembered it wasn’t for him. It was for Sirius, and the way that Dumbledore said he’d had the courage to run away.

It’s never for me, Harry thought, and looked down and stroked Dash’s small scales behind his eye again.

“Yes,” said Dumbledore. “And he remained with James’s family, and managed to recover from his hurts. But then Azkaban, and the death of his best friend, wreaked damage again.” He hesitated, then added, “I want you to have a family and a chance to heal, too, Harry. But I ask that you be patient with Sirius. Lupin was one of the friends who comforted him when he was at Hogwarts, and although Sirius didn’t live with him, he was instrumental in giving Sirius the courage to survive. Sirius isn’t yet—experienced in dealing with you as a godson. He tried to have his godson and his old friend in the same house without considering the consequences. But truly, he didn’t mean what happened.”

Harry braced and looked up at Dumbledore. “And what about Professor Lupin?”

Dumbledore looked shocked. “Do you think he chose you as a deliberate victim, Harry? Of course not! If he had bitten you, I am sure he would have regretted it for the rest of his days.”

All about their pain and their regret, Dash said, his voice as scorching as a shot of venom. He cares nothing for what you suffered.

“No, I mean,” said Harry. “He hasn’t apologized. He hasn’t looked me in the eyes. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I think he cares more about what happened to him than what happened to me, though.”

Dumbledore shook his head at once. “He doesn’t understand how to deal with the crushing weight of his own guilt. And what happened is a shocking thing. I have made him swear to carry a ring that will blaze with light and an alarm to wake him up in case he ever falls asleep before taking his Wolfsbane again. You don’t have to worry about that carelessness harming you, Harry.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m afraid that Professor Lupin hasn’t been treated well by the wizarding world, either. You must have patience with him.”

I can translate that, said Dash, and his tail was a blur of motion in the corner of Harry’s eye. He wants you to remember that he could send you back to the Dursleys at any time. If you don’t have this home and be patient with the dolts that call themselves adults, then you’ll lose any home. Harry, if you listen to him and forgive them—

You don’t know what I’m about to do, Harry whispered, and he felt Dash pause. He looked up into Dumbledore’s eyes and sighed. “I’ll try to have patience, sir, but they haven’t acted like they’re sorry. Sirius yelled at me for letting Dash bite Lupin. They acted l-like they cared more about each other than me.”

And Harry’s fists curled, and he felt his voice tremble, because he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to, but he thought he was going to lose Sirius over this, but things couldn’t stay the same. Dash wouldn’t let them. And Harry had never really had Lupin to lose. Not if they could keep the secret from him.

“They could have told me Professor Lupin was a werewolf,” he told the Headmaster sullenly. “Then I wouldn’t have intruded.”

“They did several things wrong,” Dumbledore agreed softly. “I ask you again, have patience. All of you are new at this. Sirius at being a godfather, Professor Lupin at having people who will help him and love him, you at having a family. It will come more easily in time.”

Harry sat there and let it all wash over him. He was listening to what Dumbledore said, but he was listening to other things, too. He thought about what Dumbledore had said about Sirius having an awful family, and he thought of what Snape had said about other people herehaving awful families.

Well. Harry couldn’t change Professor Lupin being a bloody coward or what Sirius had suffered or what he had at the Dursleys’, but he was going to change some things for some people. He felt Dash lift his head and stare at him. Harry just mumbled a few more replies to Dumbledore, and then left the office and walked towards Snape’s office. Dumbledore seemed to think the conversation had gone well, and Harry had agreed to forgive Sirius and Lupin.

Harry thought maybe he could forgive people, but he would have to do it later and not because the Headmaster asked him to.

He knocked when he got to Snape’s office, and Snape opened the door and stared at him in utter silence. He had a bubbling flask of something in one hand, purple. Harry didn’t recognize it. 

He stared at Snape instead and said, “I want to know how we should tell people about my abuse. Because I’m sick of people suffering.”

Dash curled around his neck, but said nothing. Harry just felt a deep, warm thrum from his basilisk. It wasn’t exactly like contentment. It was more—

As though Dash admired him and didn’t know what to say next.

Harry petted Dash’s plume and looked at Snape and also said nothing, and finally Snape nodded and stepped back from his office door. Harry took a deep breath and walked in. 

He was doing this because he didn’t want anyone else to suffer, and because he wanted people to be proud of him, and—

Maybe because telling people about what the Dursleys had done to him, if he had to, wouldn’t hurt as much as the suffocating sensation that gripped him right now when he thought of Sirius and Lupin. 

Chapter 24: Truths Carefully Measured

Chapter Text

“Do you feel ready to talk about it?” Severus asked.

He had sometimes been told—though not in recent memory—that his voice was most soothing when it was at its deepest. He tried to keep that in mind, his eyes gently on Harry and the basilisk that had curled up in his lap the moment he sat down. The basilisk’s tail was long enough to dangle down the boy’s knee and to the floor. Of course, that was partially because the boy himself was not tall.

Will he be willing to talk about that as well, what made him that way? Severus wondered, but as yet, he didn’t know. He would have to wait and see.

Harry looked up. He had one hand on a particular thick, diamond-shaped scale behind the basilisk’s head, and was pressing down as if he wanted to keep the snake from striking at something. Severus judged the distance between their chairs and moved a little further back.

“I can,” said Harry. His voice was soft, but strong. “Dash was just trying to persuade me to talk about what Sirius and Lupin—did to me as a form of abuse, too. But I don’t want to do that. I’m only going to talk about the Dursleys.”

Severus suffered a fierce stab of disappointment, one which nearly made him want to compare it to a basilisk bite to test which one hurt more. But he had never expected Harry to turn on Black this soon. He nodded and said, “Then tell me what you would consider saying.”

Harry gnawed his lip for a second. The basilisk watched his face and didn’t move. Then Harry glanced up at Severus and muttered, “The cupboard and the—the way they didn’t feed me a lot.”

“The starvation?” Severus used the word deliberately. Merlin knew it would come up once they started talking about this, and the last thing they needed was the child flinching like a startled hare before someone else’s first mention of it.

Harry squeezed his eyes for a second. “I still ate.”

The basilisk looped one coil around his arm. “I did,” Harry insisted, opening his eyes and looking down at the snake. “Just not as often as Dudley did!”

“Dudley being your cousin,” Severus murmured, as if anxious to help Harry along. In reality, he was, but he did wonder how prepared Harry would be to face a ravenously curious wizarding world if he still reacted by throwing delays in the path of an ally.

“Yes,” Harry said, and turned towards Severus with the light flashing off his glasses. “I mean, that’s natural in a way, right, sir? That Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would care more about what Dudley ate than me? Because he’s their son and I’m just their—nephew.” He trailed off near the end, as if hearing what he was saying.

Or because he saw the expression on my face, Severus’s thoughts supplied to him. He said aloud, only, “Do not presume to defend them to me, Mr. Potter.”

“I’m not really trying to defend them.” Harry traced one hand over the part of his lap that the basilisk didn’t occupy. The snake promptly moved so that he was under Harry’s hand. Severus understood and approved, although he might not have been able to put the reason why into words. “I just—they said so many things about that during my childhood that I understand what they mean.”

Severus waited, and waited. It took longer than it should have for Harry’s gaze to rise and find his.

But when it did, Severus said, with a fixed smile that he thought Harry would probably take note of, “You may understand what they said. But let me ask you a question. Would you understand it if it was Mr. Weasley’s parents starving him? Or Miss Granger’s parents starving her?”

“They would never!” Harry snapped at once.

So quick to defend others, and never himself, Severus thought. It would have annoyed him as recently as a month ago. Now, he only felt profoundly tired. “Answer the question, Mr. Potter.” Among other things, if Harry really was ready to take an abusive adult’s side, then he would be useless in trying to help the other children with bad homes.

Harry curled into himself and closed his eyes. The basilisk laid his head on Harry’s shoulder and hissed into his ear, although of course they didn’t need to speak aloud with the mental bond connecting them. Severus watched them both and wondered what either of them was thinking.

*

Cease your thoughts immediately, or I will bite you.

Because that’s going to help, Harry snapped back. His breathing was rushing along. He was afraid he was about to start crying, and that was not going to happen in front of Snape. That would only just prove you don’t really care about me!

My bite would only send you to sleep. Perhaps you would wake up with a clearer head if you got some sleep right now.

Harry wrapped his arms around his knees, sheltering Dash within them mostly because he had no choice, and said nothing. It was—he didn’t think that he really deserved less than Ron or Hermione just because of who he was. That wasn’t it. They had great families, and he didn’t want to talk about them hurting his friends, and Snape was a bastard for making Harry even think of it, anyway.

That is not the reason. Dash’s voice sliced through his thoughts like Dash’s fangs slicing through the neck of a rabbit.

It was just—Harry was tougher, that was all. The way that he had pulled the basilisk fang out of his arm in the Chamber last year and got on with saving Ginny. His experience with the Dursleys had made him tougher. That was all he meant. It wasn’t that the things they did weren’t horrible. It was just that they hurt him less than they would have hurt someone like Hermione or Ron.

So you’re not different, except that you are, said Dash. Yes, you’re utterly logical and adult right now.

Harry dug his fingers into his hair for a second, at least until Dash’s tail tapped him on the cheek. No hurting yourself, I don’t care how upset you are.

Yeah, you don’t care, Harry said, mutinously, ignoring the way that he could feel Snape staring at him. Let the bastard wait. That’s pretty clear from the way you’re talking to me now.

And would I have defended you from the wolf if I didn’t care? Would I have translated the things that Dumbledore was actually saying, the excuses he was making?

Harry took a harsh, complicated breath and stared at his hands. Then he looked back up and said, “I would want to stop Hermione or Ron from being starved.” It was the only answer he could give, and it was the truth.

Snape nodded, looking at him in that quiet way he had that made Harry want to writhe and crawl into a corner. It wasn’t even that it was bad, like so many of the looks he used to give Harry in Potions. It was just that it made him feel looked at. And he had dreaded being that way ever since last year, at least, if not earlier.

Of course your relatives didn’t want anyone to look at you. They might have seen that you were abused.

Not everything about me goes back to the Dursleys, you know, Harry said, and took another deep breath. “I can talk about this,” he told Snape. “Otherwise I wouldn’t have come here and said that I was going to, you know?”

“You will need to talk about it in more detail,” said Snape quietly. “And not falter when someone asks you if it was abuse. Because there are those, I will tell you now, Harry, who will want to deny that you were abused, if only because it would disturb their comfortable world view. They want the Boy-Who-Lived to be one thing, and will not like you telling them that you are something else.”

“Yeah, I know that,” said Harry tiredly. “Like last year, when they didn’t want me to be a Parselmouth or the Heir to Slytherin, but there were a bunch of people who thought it anyway.” He dug his hands into the sides of the chair, and Dash reached down and carefully detached his wrists, presumably because he was also digging his nails into the wood, and not even that level of hurting himself was allowed. Harry sagged against the back of the chair. He wished this was less complex. “Or Dumbledore.”

It seemed to take Snape a second to react to that, but then he leaned forwards. “The Headmaster will deny that you were abused? Do you have proof of this, or do you only think it?”

Harry flinched. Of course he should have remembered the way that Snape had always corrected Harry if he said someone’s title without “Professor” in front of it. Adults stuck together like that. Snape wasn’t going to stick together with his relatives, or the people who would deny that he was abused if they were outside the school, but—

“Harry.”

It took Harry a moment to slow his breathing and focus his eyes on something other than the vision of Snape turning his back, just like everyone else who can’t slither, but then he saw. Snape had bent down in front of the chair and was eyeing him with something Harry couldn’t lie to himself about. It was concern, the same thing he felt from Dash in his thoughts.

Now you can admit it.

Harry didn’t acknowledge Dash’s words, feeling like he was in a dream as Snape took his hand.

“I am here,” said Snape. “I cannot promise to spare you from all pain, as I was the one who suggested you do this in the first place. And we do not have the best history. But I will do what I can to ease your worries if you tell me what they are.”

“It’s just,” said Harry, and he closed his eyes and sat there for a long second, because he wasn’t going to cry like a baby.

Do you want me to speak to him, the way I spoke to the dog-man? Dash was there, wrapped around most of his body, although Harry didn’t know how he had managed to move that much when Harry was still wrapped around him in turn. I will be happy to use your voice.

Harry choked a little, and got his sobs under control. No. Thank you. But I think I have to speak to him. I don’t think he really trusts you, or he would call you by your name.

There is that, said Dash, and eased back onto his lap again. All the time, Snape’s hand stayed absolutely still and firm on Harry’s.

Harry opened his eyes and said dully, “I was—I was in his office just now. He kept talking about how hard Sirius and Lupin have had it. Their hard lives. Dash said—Dash said he was making excuses. He was talking in my head all the time Dumbledore was talking. So I know that—that what he says isn’t all true. But it—Sirius grew up with a horrible family, too! Why doesn’t he apologize? That should just make him apologize more!”

Snape was silent and still for a long moment. Then he said, “Perhaps he will, when the details of your story come out.”

Harry couldn’t conceal a bitter snort, but he only shook his head when Snape looked at him narrowly. “I don’t think he will. He didn’t apologize right after it happened. He was just concerned about Lupin. And Lupin won’t apologize, and I think Dumbledore was trying to tell me that they never will. They’re just so bloody concerned about each other!”

His voice rose, and Snape looked at him again. Then he said, “They were concerned with each other when they were friends in school, as well. I do not think that has changed.” He turned and swished his wand, and something flew into his hand.

Harry immediately shook his head when he recognized the soft sheen of a Calming Draught in its vial. “No. I don’t want it.”

“It may help you get through the rest of a story I think you need to tell,” said Snape, and went on holding it out.

No.”

Harry stared at Snape for a minute as the man tensed, wondering if he would make him take it. Then Snape would be just like everyone else. That would be easier, in a way, Harry thought. He would like it if he could just yell at Snape and everything would be all right. If Snape was horrible again, it would be horrible, too, but at least that would be something Harry understood.

Then I will bite him, as well.

Harry laid his hand on Dash’s head, but didn’t really breathe until Snape made a small grimace and set the potion down on the floor. “Very well.” He stood up and stared at Harry, searchingly. Then he said, “Perhaps you should take one before you speak in public for the first time about your abuse, though.”

“Thanks, I will,” said Harry, because he thought being a little polite would be a good idea. Then he turned his head away and said, “I don’t want to talk about Sirius and Lupin right now. Can we just talk about the Dursleys?”

“It must be bad,” Snape murmured, “if you are willing to bring your relatives up before your godfather and his friend.”

Harry could have told Snape why it was painful. He didn’t even know if the thoughts had originally come from him or Dash, but he knew why it was so painful. Because the Dursleys had never acted like they cared about him, and Sirius had.

But he couldn’t say that. It would only lead them straight back into the conversation that Harry wanted to avoid. So he sat there and stared at Snape, and Snape nodded and said, “We were talking about what you would be willing to reveal to the press. The cupboard. The starvation.” He gave Harry a sharp look, but Harry didn’t object to the use of the word this time. It was kind of hard, when he’d thought about it.

Besides, Dash rapped him on the thigh with his tail when he thought about denying it.

“What else?” Snape asked.

Harry thought, then shrugged. “I mean, I don’t know what else there really is. The rest of it wasn’t abuse. It was just normal stuff.”

“You will explain your use of that phrase.”

Harry eyed Snape cautiously. He sounded angry again, and Harry didn’t know why. After all, he was telling the truth, and he was going to do what Snape wanted.

*

Has the boy never had anyone but his bloody basilisk express concern for him, that he takes mine the wrong way?

Probably so, Severus thought, forcing himself to ease back in his chair and adopt a posture and even expression of calm indifference again. Or at least, the boy wasn’t used to adults expressing that sort of thing for him. He had probably received support from his friends, perhaps some of Weasley’s older brothers, and not much of anyone else.

“I am not angry at you,” said Severus, because he would be explicit when there was need. He wanted to encourage much the same honesty in the boy, after all. “I am angry with your relatives. I do not—like to think about what has been done to you.” If only because it meant he had to think about his own complicity in depriving the boy of his parents and condemning him to the life he had undergone.

Harry finally eased back in the chair and nodded. “You’re being pretty good to think of it at all,” he muttered, and groped for his cold cup of tea.

Someone must. Severus only remained still, though, and Harry finally sighed and said, “My cousin—chased me. Bullied me. Beat me up. And my relatives locked me in the cupboard all the time when I did something magical. I didn’t know what it was then, but they did. So if I was somehow up on the roof of the school and they didn’t know how it happened and didn’t know how it happened, they would lock me up.”

Severus half-closed his eyes, because he was reliving a particular moment with James Potter, and although the boy had demonstrated no skill at Legilimency, he did not want it to show on his face. “Your aunt and uncle? Did they verbally abuse you?”

Harry relaxed a little. “So my cousin—it wasn’t so bad?”

“Did your aunt and uncle ever encourage him to stop?” Severus asked quietly. In truth, he was not sure what could be done to another child under wizarding law, particularly a Muggle child who had probably not known the truth about Harry’s magic, either.

But Petunia and her husband…

They were fair targets.

“No,” said Harry. He seemed eager to be honest now that he thought he would spare his disgusting relatives punishment, Severus thought, both saddened and revolted. “They told me off when I got better marks than him in school or said something back to him, though.”

Severus arched his eyebrows. Some behavior from Harry that he hadn’t been able to understand when it came to classes was now explained.

But he said only, “I see. Is that something you are also willing to talk about when the press asks you questions?”

“’Course.” Harry sat up and gave him a wise look, which was immeasurably added to by the basilisk that coiled softly around his arms and his throat. Others would have to take him seriously as a threat if he had a snake like that, Severus thought. That would provide a measure of protection for him that more resembled his reputation than a basilisk’s normal ability to strike with poison. That could only be a good thing. “I wouldn’t have brought it up if I wasn’t.”

Severus eased him with more questions about that, questions that did let them plot out a strategy and that did not distress Harry unduly. Indeed, as they spoke Harry seemed to forget about the disastrous meeting in the Headmaster’s office, enough to function anyway. He actually laughed at one point, and when Severus called a house-elf for food, he ate most of what Severus put in front of him.

He had gained enough of the boy’s confidence to be going on with, Severus thought, and let him go when it was time. He had pressed all he could. Hopefully he had at least made Harry think about who could be there for him beyond Black. 

And the basilisk.

Severus found himself watching the snake as Harry carried him out of the room. The basilisk watched Severus in turn over Harry’s shoulder, and then flicked out its tongue in what could have been a mocking salute or a simple attempt to catch his scent, before curling rapidly around Harry’s neck. No one would be able to strike at Harry there without encountering a wealth of thick scales and diving poisonous fangs, Severus knew.

That was some comfort to Severus as he shut his office door.

*

“Why are you staring so hard at Professor Lupin, Harry? You know it’s not polite!”

Hermione’s words as they came out of Defense were so scathing that Harry abruptly decided he’d had enough. Before, he had actually been grateful for his ability to fool his friends. It removed an additional source of stress if they didn’t know and didn’t press him about Sirius or Lupin or Dumbledore, and it was nice to talk to someone who didn’t look at him in the knowing way Snape and Draco did.

But Harry didn’t want to listen to someone defend Lupin, either. And his friends had mostly not noticed because they trusted him and thought he would have told them if something was wrong.

So now he would.

“Listen,” he said, bending close to Hermione and Ron. “It’s almost dinner. Meet me after dinner in the Owlery, okay?”

“Harry, what—”

But Harry just nodded to Ron as if he’d already agreed and broke away from them, jogging towards the Owlery. He wasn’t hungry, and he had no desire to go to dinner and see Dumbledore looking at him with a terrible kindness.

They would have noticed before now if you didn’t have the practice in concealing abuse which you learned at your relatives’ house, Dash murmured to him when they were up in the Owlery and Harry was stroking Hedwig. Hedwig eyed Dash and flexed her claws. Dash, meanwhile, ignored her as a tasty, feathery flying snack. He had told Harry that his taste didn’t run to raptors anyway. 

Harry thought that had a lot more to do with Hedwig’s talons and beak than Dash’s taste, but he was smart enough not to say so.

I can hear you thinking it. How is that an improvement? 

Harry was spared the necessity of answering because Ron and Hermione came up then. Hermione’s face was red, and Harry didn’t think it was from the climb up the stairs.

Sure enough, she began to scold him. “Harry, you should have been at dinner. You’re thin enough already!”

“Here,” Ron muttered, and held out a chicken leg and a big piece of bread covered with butter in a napkin. Harry smiled at him and ate the chicken on his own, sharing the bread with Dash. Hermione, abruptly deprived of something to fuss about, blinked and petted Hedwig for a while, then sat down on the floor near the wall and watched Harry. Ron stood next to her, looking at the owls longingly.

Harry sighed as he finished eating. “All right, it’s like this. I went home that day, and Sirius went to a meeting about the Black estates, and…”

It didn’t take long to tell—probably longer than it had to live through, though. When he’d finished, Hermione had her hand over her mouth and her eyes full of tears. Ron had a nasty scowl on his face.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Hermione said, and then she rushed forwards and gathered him in her arms, Dash and all. Harry closed his eyes and held her, and Dash, probably because he knew how much Harry needed the hug, slithered up to a perch on top of his head without comment and let his tail dangle down Harry’s back.

“Damn, mate,” said Ron, his voice empty and his face working in the grip of some strong emotion, and then he burst out, “Why didn’t you tell us?”

“Because I was so torn up,” said Harry. “I didn’t really want to tell anyone. But a few people noticed something was wrong, and…” He swallowed. It made a click in his throat. Hermione still hadn’t let go of him, and she shuffled a little closer when she heard that. “The Headmaster just kept talking to me about how hard it was for Lupin as a werewolf, and how hard Sirius’s life was, and I couldn’t take it anymore.”

“Yes, I can understand why.” Hermione stood back from him with tears on her face now, although she wiped at them angrily. “I’m sorry I got on your back about staring at Professor Lupin earlier.”

“And neither of them apologized?” Ron demanded.

Harry shook his head.

Ron came forwards then and awkwardly patted both Harry and Hermione on the shoulder, dividing his pats evenly between the two of them. “Well, who needs adults, anyway?” he said bracingly. “We can make it up to you every bit as well as they can, right, Hermione? And Harry, you can come and stay with us during the summer. You’re welcome, any time.”

Harry smiled weakly back. He was thinking that it would be nice if he had an adult who was concerned about him, someone who could live with him, too.

But he didn’t have that, and he would just have to make the best of it.

You shall have it someday, Dash said abruptly. Because you deserve it, and I shall get it for you. His tail came down and hugged Harry around the shoulders.

Harry, standing there in the embrace of his three best friends, decided that he would leave that thought until later. Right now, he had a lot. He had forgotten how much.

Chapter 25: Certain Things Burned

Chapter Text

Draco stood with his arms folded and a scowl on his face near the door of Professor Snape’s office. He knew, from Father’s single glance, that he disapproved of the scowl. Draco should smooth it out and wear a pleasant mask, like the kind he wore when Father had Ministry connections to the Manor for dinner.

But Draco knew what had happened at the end of last year between Harry and his father. And he hadn’t known until a few minutes ago that his father was going to come to Professor Snape’s office and speak to Harry for some reason. Harry had let it slip because he was arguing aloud with Dash in what he probably thought was Parseltongue, and then Draco had heard, and of course he wasn’t going to let Harry walk alone into a situation like that.

“It’s a pleasure to meet you under such different circumstances, Mr. Potter,” said Father, and bowed his head a little so he could hold Harry’s eyes. Harry had the worst habit of looking at the floor, Draco knew. He didn’t know how Harry intended to convince people to let him alone, like Sirius Black, if he just stared at the floor all the time. “You understand that we will be allies in this?”

What’s this? Draco hated not knowing. And he cleared his throat to remind the other people in the room of that.

“Yes, sir. Professor Snape told me.” Harry’s voice was a compressed little version of itself that Draco had never heard before. He even acted as if he hadn’t heard Draco clear his throat, either! Unbelievable.

Draco was about to say something else when Father’s eyes found him. Draco clamped his lips shut and looked off, at one of the jars on the shelves that held a floating, half-dissected heart in it. Draco had never understood that. Why not a whole heart? There weren’t any potions that used half.

“Good,” said Father, and sat back in his chair. Professor Snape was near the door, watching them both with his arms folded and his face as dark as it usually was only around Longbottom. Draco looked back and forth between the two of them in confusion. Which one of them had drawn Professor Snape’s wrath, Father or Harry? “How old were you when you first started being abused?”

Draco jolted. That didn’t sound like Black and Lupin. That sounded like something else, something a lot worse.

This time, it was Professor Snape’s eye on him when Draco started to open his mouth. Draco decided that since he was in class with Harry, he would get more of a chance to speak with him than the two adults did, and clamped his mouth shut again, but his throat was burning the way it had one time when he ate too many Fizzing Whizzbees at once.

What was going on? And how come Harry hadn’t told him before this? He’d told Draco a lot of other things, and if he was going to tell Father, of all people, about this, then he should have been able to tell Draco.

Draco decided he would listen. Then he would talk to Harry about it later. And he would do it with lots of details so he would know if Harry was keeping something from him or lying again. That was the best thing.

There was so much he had to learn about Harry, he thought, watching him as he lifted his head and started answering Father’s question. Dash was leaning up along Harry’s neck, watching his eyes, but Harry wasn’t looking down at him for once.

I suppose I can think of it as him telling me now…

But that didn’t mean there weren’t going to be questions later.

*

Harry had hesitated when he realized Draco would be in the room while he talked about his abuse, but then he had shrugged to himself. Eventually, Draco would know about it along with everyone else. Why not tell him now, instead of making him wait?

I could bite him, Dash offered.

You can’t simply offer to bite everyone who does something I don’t like, said Harry tiredly, and then concentrated on his conversation with Mr. Malfoy. There was nothing else he could do right now. Professor Snape had warned him that it was going to be this way, told him he could talk to someone else first, but in a strange way, Harry thought it was a good thing. If someone who was on the Board of Governors talked about Harry’s abuse, fewer people would think he was crazy or making things up.

If they say that, I will bite all of them.

You can’t. 

I can. It will only take a little longer.

“I think they abused me for a long time,” said Harry. “Since I was three, anyway. I was sleeping in the cupboard by then.”

“Your bedroom was a cupboard,” Mr. Malfoy repeated. He sounded odd. Harry couldn’t tell what he was thinking. “And no one warned them that this was inappropriate?”

Harry did have to sort of look at him then, because he would have thought the answer to that was obvious. “No one knew, Mr. Malfoy. None of the Muggles ever saw the inside of the house, and they told all the neighbors that I was a violent boy who was going to a school for criminals.” Mr. Malfoy’s cane tapped on the floor at that, and Harry found himself wondering if it was something he used to use to beat Dobby.

He breathed out slowly. Focus on what he’s helping you do. That will be better than focusing on how he hurt Dobby.

It was still pretty bloody weird, having Lucius Malfoy help him. But maybe Harry would have more than one chance to get used to it. Maybe he would see Mr. Malfoy again and he would say encouraging things.

Then Harry shook his head sharply. He had only just got used to having Sirius say them, and look how that had turned out.

“I see,” said Mr. Malfoy. “How long did you stay in the cupboard?”

“Until I got my Hogwarts letters.” Harry once again didn’t know what Mr. Malfoy was thinking, but that made it easier to talk. If he had been faced with pity or something like that, he didn’t know if he could have stood it.

“Letters?” Mr. Malfoy seemed to have decided that he was less interested in the things that had outraged Snape. Harry relaxed a little. Sure, he’d talk about them if he had to, but he didn’t particularly want to.

You should. Everyone should know, and then perhaps they would try to make up for how you were treated.

Harry didn’t see the point of answering that, because it wasn’t anyone here except Sirius and Lupin who had treated him badly, and sort of Dumbledore, and just answered the question instead. “When they sent one letter, my relatives took it away. So Hogwarts sent more. My uncle finally fled the house and took me along with him.” Harry snorted a little. “They sent Hagrid instead. He sort of made an impression.”

Mr. Malfoy gave a quick look over Harry’s head at someone, but Harry wasn’t sure who he was looking at, Snape or Draco. Harry gave Dash a quick little stroke on the back of his head and gathered his voice to go on when Mr. Malfoy nodded to him.

“They didn’t feed me well,” said Harry. “They let my cousin beat me up. They made me do most of their chores.” He thought about it, but he honestly couldn’t see what else he could bring up with Mr. Malfoy that would make a good story for the papers. He straightened up, though, as he remembered why he was doing this. He didn’t want that to get left out of the stories.

“I want other kids to be safe,” he said quietly, meeting Mr. Malfoy’s eyes. It was easier to do this time, loads easier. “I wouldn’t be speaking up otherwise. I didn’t really want anyone to know about this, but if I can make sure that someone else gets to spend some time away from their abusive families, then it’s worth it.”

Mr. Malfoy only watched him with more of that odd expression on his face. Harry supposed he was thinking about the political advantages of having the Boy-Who-Lived confess like this, and didn’t care that much about the other abused kids at Hogwarts. Well, Harry could understand that. Maybe it didn’t matter so much why someone did the right thing, as long as they did it.

“I will cooperate in making them safe,” said Mr. Malfoy. It really didn’t have much passion in it, but, well, Harry supposed he could live with it. “Now. What do you mean by they didn’t feed you well?”

Harry flicked his eyes over to the side. Snape was watching him, and he leveled Harry with a glare that was more impressive than some of the ones he had used in Potions class. Harry grimaced. That meant he wasn’t going to get away with denying that it was starvation.

“I meant that they starved me,” said Harry. It was easier the second time around, he thought. Maybe someday he wouldn’t flinch at all when he said it. “They would lock me up with no food in the cupboard, and sometimes they would only give me a little food because my cousin was supposed to eat healthy. And sometimes they wouldn’t give me food until I finished my chores.”

“How often would you say that happened?”

Harry relaxed a little. Mr. Malfoy sounded like a man who had come and talked to Harry’s primary school class one day about statistics, how he collected them and reported on them. He’d just cared about numbers.

Maybe Mr. Malfoy did, too. Maybe he wouldn’t care that much about what had happened to Harry as Harry, or the Boy-Who-Lived. Maybe he only cared about what he could make happen with the numbers that Harry would give him.

“A lot,” said Harry. “Sometimes once a week. Sometimes more. It usually happened if I’d done something freaky, but sometimes just when my uncle got upset with something else and took it out on me.”

“Freaky,” said Mr. Malfoy.

Snape was glaring at him again. Dash stretched his neck alongside Harry’s and said, That word caught his attention. If you wished to avoid that, you should not have used it.

Well, how was I to know he would pay that much attention to it? Harry snapped at Dash. I didn’t know he would. He was ignoring a lot of what I said before!

You do not want pity, but you need it.

That made less sense than when Dash was trying to tell Harry about the wonders of roasted mice—which he had never tasted—so Harry ignored his basilisk and turned back to Mr. Malfoy. “That’s what they called magic,” he said. “I never knew it was magic until I got the letters, though. I mean, I made my hair grow back and I ended up on the roof of the school once when my cousin was chasing me. Those seemed pretty freaky to me.”

Mr. Malfoy nodded. “And was this word a frequent term of abuse for you?”

Harry grimaced. He supposed he would have to do that, too. “Yes. They said I was a freak and the things I did was freaky. Or freakish,” he added. If he was going to be honest, he should talk about all the words, he supposed.

Mr. Malfoy nodded and spent a moment staring off into the distance, his fingers clasped around his cane. Then he turned back to Harry and said, “You wouldn’t object to explaining how big the cupboard is? Or what your cousin did to you when he beat you up? Although it’s perhaps best done in front of reporters.”

Harry winced, but then nodded and shrugged. He’d come this far. He could go farther. He would pin his mind on the other kids he could help. He was out of the Dursleys’ house now, so no one could really help him or change what had happened, but he could still change the future.

You distress me.

Harry touched Dash’s neck, but just like he hadn’t understood Dash’s last comment, he really didn’t understand what he’d done wrong this time. Sorry.

Dash flung multiple coils around Harry’s wrist and arms, his version of a hug. Harry hugged him back, arms around his neck, and looked up only when Mr. Malfoy cleared his throat softly.

“I understand there has been recent trouble between you and your Wizengamot-appointed guardian.”

Harry stood up and took a step forwards. “You’re not going to put that in the papers,” he said.

Mr. Malfoy looked at him with the same considering expression, but this time, it failed to reassure Harry. Harry took another aggressive step forwards. He was thinking about how he had tricked Mr. Malfoy into freeing Dobby the year before. He would do something like that again, if Mr. Malfoy didn’t cooperate. “You’re not,” he said, and his voice was like a snarl. He might have managed a better one if he’d been turned into a werewolf, he thought, but not by much.

“No,” said Mr. Malfoy, and his hands relaxed from the top of the cane. “No, I will not put that in the papers.”

Harry nodded. He was wondering who had let part of the secret out, Draco or Snape. He knew Mr. Malfoy wouldn’t have talked to Ron or Hermione. “Good. Because it has nothing to do with this. It doesn’t matter what Sirius does. He won’t lock me up in a cupboard or call me freak or lie to me about magic, so he’s loads better than the Dursleys.”

“That, at least, is true,” said Mr. Malfoy, and tapped his cane. “Now. We need to plan when and where you will appear and make this announcement.”

Harry nodded. That was actually the sort of thing he had thought he would come here to discuss with Mr. Malfoy. He settled down, and Dash released the tight coil, and he could participate in conversations about the Board of Governors and reporters without feeling that he was rather stupid.

*

Severus waited until the boys were out of the office to turn to Lucius. Lucius had one hand held to his chin in thought, and Severus knew he was far away, revising plans in his head and making new ones about who to contact first.

“So,” Severus said, when Lucius looked at him with eyes that acknowledged his presence again.

“Yes,” said Lucius. “He will do well to bring down Dumbledore. What happened to him is worse than I thought.”

Severus lifted his eyebrows. He had expected the first comment, but not the second. “Despite the lack of detail, and your lack of sympathy for the boy?” He had been sure that Lucius would overcome his distaste of Harry for the sake of the plan, but he had not foreseen sympathy of any sort.

“He was lying,” said Lucius dismissively. “Or at least carefully choosing his words in an attempt to downplay the truth.”

Severus hissed a little. “I have told him to be honest. If someone in the press traps him in a lie, or Dumbledore manages it…”

Lucius shook his head. “Not consciously, Severus. He has defended his secrets for so long that I think he is unable to let go of them. It is a skill probably bred into him by long residence in that house.” He paused, and Severus waited for the next question. Lucius’s mind ran in unpredictable directions sometimes.

Lucius finally asked an unexpected one. “Why is he not in Slytherin?”

Severus gave him a grim smile. “Because he talked the Hat out of putting him there.”

Lucius had known about Harry’s near-Sorting already, but not that tidbit. He shook his head as he rose to his feet. “His loss. Someone would have discovered this before now, and secured him in an environment where he would know better than to trust someone who spent twelve years in Azkaban Prison.” His glance at Severus said he had no doubt of who that person would have been.

“Someone has discovered it now,” Severus said, and paused. “I did not intend for you to expose my inferences about Black in front of Harry.”

Luicus’s eyes narrowed around the corners in the way that sometimes made him look as if he was a fox. One about to break a hen’s neck, Severus thought darkly. “I was, admittedly, reaching for more information. There is…a certain long-standing matter between Black and myself that I would like to see resolved.”

Severus stared at Lucius. He had known that Lucius had met Black several times before his stint in Azkaban, and perhaps he had attended Lucius’s wedding to Narcissa, but that was all. “What is it?”

“You do not share all your information, Severus. You did not even tell me what the boy’s godfather is supposed to have done.” Lucius’s mouth quirked a little. “Think about this, and resolve on whether you want to tell me something more.”

He left the room. Severus sighed soundlessly and spent a moment controlling the urge to pace in a circle. 

His potions that he needed for revenge on Black and Lupin were not finished brewing yet. He had invited Lucius into this explosion, and he would have to deal with the resulting burns. 

But there was one thing he could do, one thing that need not ever come to light as far as the reporters were concerned, but which he wanted to do for his own peace of mind, in case Dumbledore ever tried to send Harry back to the Dursleys.

He found parchment and ink easily enough, but it was still long minutes before he could order his mind to start composing the letter to the woman who had been Petunia Evans.

*

“Why didn’t you tell me? What they did to you was horrible!”

I like this boy, Dash said, mounding his body up so that his chin was crowning Harry’s head, and giving Draco a look of unexpected approval. He talks good sense.

Harry didn’t bother petting Dash this time. That was another one of those confusing remarks that he wouldn’t understand. And he was honestly surprised that Draco didn’t already know the answer to his own question. “Why would I?” he asked, staring at the floor. He had a hole in the toe of one of his trainers. He wondered if Sirius would buy him a new pair of trainers if he asked for them. Sirius had been so strange lately, it was something he had to wonder. “It’s embarrassing.”

“Stop staring at the floor,” Draco snapped abruptly. “Look the fuck up.”

Harry did, shocked. The swear word wasn’t the only reason why, but it was a big part of it.

Draco leaned against the library shelf next to them, and spent a long moment staring at Harry. “That’s better,” he said finally. “You should meet people’s eyes. You did before you started thinking about this abuse all the time and before Black and Lupin pulled their stupid idiocy.” His voice softened for a second. “Anyway, if my father is one of the people who advocates for you and exposes your abuse to the public, then you know we can be friends more easily, right?”

Harry nodded, a little blank, not sure what that had to do with anything.

“So you can tell me things.” Draco gave him what was probably supposed to be an eloquent glance, but Harry couldn’t see why that would make things less embarrassing. It was easier to talk to people who didn’t care, like Mr. Malfoy. “And anyway, you don’t have to be embarrassed. They’re the ones who should be.”

“They’re not in the wizarding world,” Harry pointed out, getting a little annoyed. “They’re not the ones who’ll have to deal with seeing their faces on the front page of the paper for months and months.”

“But if you could tell my father, you could tell me. My father isn’t your friend.”

“I know,” said Harry and sighed. “But I let you stay there while I was talking to him, so I did tell you, didn’t I?”

Draco studied him for a second. Harry wanted to squirm. It was sometimes harder to face Draco’s eyes than Hermione’s, even though there was no reason why that should be true. Hermione was the one he’d been friends with for years, and she was the one who tended to launch into lectures about things like not doing homework. Being with Draco should be easier, because he didn’t do things like that.

No, he just looked like this, and it was worse than his father’s kind of hard-to-read expression, because it had an undertone of disappointment that Harry didn’t understand. 

“You can tell me other things,” said Draco. “Besides that.” He let go of Harry’s shoulder and nodded to him and walked out of the aisle.

Dash watched him go. Harry had gone back to looking at the floor again. Dash said, He has good advice about keeping your eyes up.

“Not you, too,” Harry muttered, and went back to Gryffindor Tower. He was pretty drained, and he didn’t even bother going to dinner, despite Dash’s threat to ask the house-elves to bring him mice if he didn’t. He just needed to lie in one place and think about things for a while.

*

Blaise rolled his eyes at the way Draco kept looking up at the post-owls. Was he waiting for his mother to send him another box of sweets?

Blaise had to admit that sometimes he was jealous, because he rarely received post from his own mother, but he knew she was busy. And when she wrote to him, it was exciting. She would tell him about new magical theories she’d been investigating, or the holidays they were going to take in the summer, or that the rumors about his latest stepfather’s death had been greatly exaggerated.

He preferred that over more frequent but less exciting letters, he had to admit.

Anyway, Draco reached out and took the Prophet, in the end, not a letter or a wrapped box. Blaise shook his head sadly and picked up his fork to finish his breakfast. Poor Draco. His life had become much less exciting since Blaise had taken that possessed book away.

Harry!

The shout came from the Gryffindor table. Blaise looked up, and found that Weasley was staring at Potter, who went on steadfastly feeding tidbits to his basilisk as if nothing had happened. In between bites, the basilisk stared up wistfully at the soaring owls, or as much as it could with its deadly eyes shielded.

Weasley was holding a copy of the Prophet.

Blaise promptly used a spell that would allow him to look directly over Draco’s shoulder without moving from his seat. He had refused to read the Prophet on a regular basis since they’d reported false rumors about his mother, but he wanted to see this.

There was a photograph of Potter there, one they’d probably taken months ago when he first had a basilisk and they were interviewing him about that, because it didn’t look recent. Potter looked resigned but determined—appropriate for the headline.

BOY-WHO-LIVED ABUSED AT THE HANDS OF HIS MUGGLE RELATIVES!

Well, Blaise thought, as his heart gave an odd tremor and memories he had sworn to forget flooded the back of his mind, it seems Draco found some excitement after all.

Chapter 26: On Fire

Chapter Text

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Ron was saying, shaking his head as he stood in front of Harry. Hermione stood behind him. They were in a little side-alcove in one of the corridors that led to the Charms classroom, and Hermione had cast a spell that meant they wouldn’t be bothered. Harry reminded himself that he really had to learn that one.

For now, Dash was wrapped heavily around his arms and waist again. It was a hug, but it also meant that it would be awkward for him to run.

You knew this would come. You can’t run from it. Dash sounded almost smug about that, for reasons that, again, Harry couldn’t discern. He didn’t understand his own basilisk much lately.

“Because it’s embarrassing,” said Harry, the same answer he had given Draco, the true one. “I mean, what happened with Sirius and Remus was bad enough. There’s just no one in the world who wants me, is there?” His voice shocked him with its bitterness, and Ron and Hermione were both staring at him. Harry blinked hard, and managed to push down the tears. He was so stupid lately, he thought. He was hovering on the edge of tears all the time, and he never used to do that. 

“It’s embarrassing to say that,” he continued hastily, before his friends could interrupt. “And anyway, Ron, you and your brothers saw the bars on my window when you rescued me last summer. I didn’t—I didn’t want to say anything about it. Ever.”

“That’s not true, mate!” Ron glared at him. “If we’d known that you were being starved and all the rest of it, we would never have let you go back there.”

Harry closed his eyes and savored that idea for a minute. Maybe he could live with the Weasleys if Sirius didn’t work out.

But Harry still wanted it to work out. Sirius had given him his own room, and told him stories about his parents, and all the rest of it. But he still hadn’t apologized, and Harry had to admit that he didn’t know what would happen next.

“Okay,” he said, and opened his eyes. “But anyway.” He lowered his voice and glanced at the little shimmer in the air that Hermione said marked the spell she’d used. “Is that pretty secure, Hermione?”

“Of course it is.” Hermione looked as if she was on the verge of tears, too, but she battled them back and nodded fiercely to him. “I wouldn’t come up with something that wasn’t, Harry.”

Harry gave her a weary smile. “Okay. The reason I did this is that there are other abused children at Hogwarts. If people start investigating my abuse, then they’ll probably find out, and make sure that the other children don’t have to go back to their families, or whoever was abusing them.” Harry had to admit that he wasn’t always sure that it was their families. “I don’t know their names,” he added, as Ron started to open his mouth. “I only know about them at all because of what Snape said. I’m doing this for them, not for me. I mean, I don’t have to worry about the Dursleys again. I’m with Sirius now.”

“Because of what Snape said?” Ron looked ready to faint.

“Yeah.” Harry took a deep breath. Maybe this would be harder than just telling them about the abuse, which the article had sort of done. “He’s been—decent about it. Not the best in the world, but he was the one who told me that if we told other people about it, then maybe the rest of them can be safe.”

“What about you, Harry?” Hermione was there, right beside him, so close that Dash looked at her in interest. Of course, she was the only one who had never seemed nervous hugging Harry when Dash was wrapped around him. “Are you going to be safe if you keep doing this?” 

“Safe from what?” Harry asked, a little blankly. “I mean, I don’t think Voldemort is going to attack me any harder because I don’t live with the Dursleys anymore.”

“I meant Sirius. And Professor Lupin.” Hermione used the edge of her palm to get rid of the last of her tears, and stood for a moment gazing earnestly into Harry’s eyes. “Are you—have you talked to them about this?”

Harry clenched one hand on the wall and hurt his palm a little, until Dash wrapped his tail around Harry’s wrist and tugged hard enough to get his hand loose. But Dash didn’t remove his tail the way he usually did when he’d stopped Harry from hurting himself; instead, he tugged it over to him and put Harry’s hand firmly in place on his own head. A bit bewildered, Harry stroked him, and Dash put his head down and flicked his tongue in the equivalent of a sigh.

“No,” said Harry. “They haven’t talked to me since—what happened. I mean, Professor Lupin asks me questions in class sometimes, but not as much as he used to.”

“Which is unfair, because it’s your best subject,” Hermione said at once. “He shouldn’t take what happened out on you and ruin your marks!”

Harry had to smile. That would be one of the things Hermione most cared about, of course, when Harry honestly didn’t care if he passed Defense with a good mark or not. 

“You have to talk to them, mate.” It was Ron, and his voice was gentle, but he was looking at Harry the way he usually only looked at chess pieces who refused to move in the right way to win the game. “They really deserved to know.” He scowled a little. “Like we did.”

“But you only wanted to know because you wanted to help me,” said Harry. “I’m not sure what Sirius and Lupin are going to want to know for.”

“We’ll make sure they help you.” Ron drew his wand menacingly, and again Harry had to smile. But it was true that Sirius probably wouldn’t expect an attack from Ron the way he would from Snape or Draco.

“Thanks,” said Harry, and dried his eyes while Ron clapped him on the shoulder. “Like I said, I don’t—really know yet. But I’ll talk to them.”

Ron nodded, looking appeased, and they made their way towards Potions. Harry straightened his shoulders and leaned his chin on Dash’s neck for a moment. He knew his friends and Dash would make sure that no one hurt him about this, at least as much as they could, but he didn’t know what was going to happen, and that always made him a little nervous.

I prefer it when I have something straightforward to do, like preventing Voldemort from stealing the Philosopher’s Stone.

Anyone who hurts you, I will coil around their legs and trip them.

Harry blinked and looked down at Dash. What happened to offering to bite them?

You didn’t want me to. And my diluted poison is not painful enough, since it only put the wolf to sleep. If I can make someone fall in the right manner, I can break several bones.

Harry rolled his eyes. Ron and Hermione saw him do it, but they were used enough by now to his silent conversations with Dash that they didn’t comment.

At least one thing is normal, Harry thought, and that was the main thing that kept him walking down the corridor towards Potions instead of running madly away.

*

“The next person who asks Mr. Potter a question about the newspaper article will find themselves elbow-deep in newt guts for the rest of the year.”

That shut people up, Harry noticed. He didn’t manage to flash a grateful smile to Snape, because people would ask why and Snape’s part in it was something the article had left out, but he relaxed when mouths slammed shut and people leaned away from him.

Neville blew something up then, and Snape stormed towards the front of the classroom. At least this time, it didn’t appear to have splattered sixteen other people in the vicinity, Harry noted idly.

Harry.

The voice seemed to reach into Harry’s stomach and curl around something there, like it was going to pull an organ out. Once, Dudley had threatened to hang Harry on a meat hook, which was probably something he’d seen on the telly, since Harry didn’t think he’d be capable of coming up with a threat like that on his own. Now, Harry felt like it was actually happening.

He turned around in his seat and sort of gaped at Sirius, who stood in the door to the classroom with his cloak swirling around him the way that Snape’s seemed to billow whenever he was moving. He stared at Harry, and Harry could see anguish in his eyes that went on and on as if it was the beginning of a long, dark path.

Harry’s guts twisted miserably again. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Sirius, he thought. He hadn’t ever wanted to hurt Sirius. But this was what happened when something happened to part him from Sirius and then he didn’t go talk to him.

He started to stand up, because he knew that Sirius would just come get him if he didn’t. But then he found he couldn’t move. He blinked and looked down. Dash was curled around his waist and around the back of the chair at the same time, forming a chain that kept Harry effectively locked in.

This isn’t funny, Dash, Harry said, and he reached out to yank at Dash’s plume, the only vulnerable part of his body, really. Dash promptly twisted his head so the plume was wound in and protected by his coils. His covered eyes peeked guilelessly out at Harry.

It isn’t funny, I agree, said Dash. None of this was ever funny, from the moment the smelly dog-man decided that he would leave you alone in the house with a werewolf. But at least I’m sparing you further humiliation.

Harry opened his mouth, ready to yell in English if it would do any good, and then Snape arrived. 

His entrance was even more dramatic than Sirius’s, honestly, Harry thought, with a kind of numbed admiration. Snape’s robes not only billowed behind him, they snapped. He stood there looking down his nose with such a level of haughtiness that Harry felt as if he’d shrunk three inches. He wondered, miserably, if Snape was going to yell at him for Sirius being in the classroom.

Then Harry realized he wasn’t the one Snape was glaring at.

“You dare to disrupt my class,” said Snape. He might have sounded like he was able to speak Parseltongue if you didn’t know any better, Harry thought, staring in fascination. There were certainly enough hisses crowded around the edges of his words. “You dare to saunter in as if you own the world, and command a boy who has already missed enough class to miss again, that you might satisfy your own craven curiosity.”

Harry felt as if his heart would leap out of his chest. He had wondered how Snape was going to defend him without revealing that he was helping Harry with things, but of course this was the way. He hated Sirius anyway, and he mocked Harry’s academic performance on a regular basis. The two together would make a more than adequate disguise.

“You don’t have the least idea of what was in the paper this morning, do you?” Sirius asked, his voice low and ugly. Harry thought he might use the name Snivellus, but apparently Sirius would get to a point where he was so angry that he couldn’t. “Because you don’t read articles about Harry. The last thing he needs right now is more people who will abuse him.” He turned to Harry. “Come on, kiddo. We need to talk.”

Snape’s wand flicked negligently, and Sirius’s arm was stuck to the doorframe. “As you said,” Snape murmured, “the last thing he needs…”

The look of rage on Sirius’s face made Harry flinch back. He hadn’t thought Sirius could look like that. He hadn’t when he was asking Harry if Lupin was okay, if he was okay. Harry tried to stand once more, found himself locked in, and raised his voice.

“It’s okay, Professor Snape. I do have to talk to Sirius. Let me just leave.” He yanked on Dash’s coils as he spoke, but Dash seemed to have turned into steel, and Draco was staring at Harry from the other side of the classroom and shaking his head as if he wanted Harry to stay put and not go away with Sirius.

“He is disrupting my class,” said Snape, with another Parseltongue-sounding hiss, and his wand swished down again. This time, Sirius went staggering back from the door, and Snape shut it with a third swish. Harry thought for a second Sirius would come banging back in, but although he seized the door and rattled it, it didn’t open.

“Now,” said Snape, after another spell that abruptly sealed off any noise from beyond the door, “what are the rest of you standing around and gaping at me for? Longbottom, if you have managed to achieve another disaster, I will recommend that your grandmother place you in a special school for idiots.”

Harry gave Snape a weak glare as he went past. He didn’t have to keep picking on Neville. Snape only looked back with no emotion on his face at all, and went away to stare gloomily into Crabbe and Goyle’s cauldron.

“Why did he come in here like that?” Hermione whispered fiercely as Harry turned back to his potion with Ron. Dash had finally loosened his hold, probably because he knew that Harry wouldn’t be able to get through the spells on the door, either. “He should have waited until later and then asked you about it in privacy!”

“I don’t know,” Harry whispered back. “I haven’t talked to him, remember?”

Ron started to say something else, but Snape swept by, and Ron gulped and shut his mouth at the look from a mere corner of his eye. Harry sighed as Snape turned and walked in the other direction. He knew why Snape was trying to spare him from talking about this, but he would have to eventually.

But he could at least put it off for the duration of Potions class, which he supposed was the point. He turned back to his cauldron.

*

Severus had heard insistent chimes from his Floo during the class. A charm he’d cast years ago let him hear the Floo in his rooms or his office all the way across the school. It was the only way, Dumbledore had said, that he could be sure of reaching Severus when he had vanished into a haze of brewing.

This time, though, Severus casually ignored the sound until the end of Harry and Draco’s Potions class. Dumbledore ought to have known better than to contact him while it was still ongoing. Luckily, his next class was NEWT students, whom he could leave alone for ten minutes without them killing themselves.

“The instructions are on the board,” he said curtly as his older students sat down and took out their supplies. “I must be elsewhere for a short time. If you are so foolish as to try to do something that you know would displease me, you will be obliterated when you return.” Ordinarily, he would have made his threats more explicit, but with this class, he saw no need. They immediately hunched over their cauldrons in silence.

Severus swept out regally, and walked towards his office. The Floo chimed again as he stepped into the room. Severus nodded and opened it, arranging himself so that he looked bored.

Dumbledore’s face was grave and calm as he stared at Severus. “I suspect you know what I want to see you about,” he said.

“I can spare you ten minutes,” Severus said briefly. “I am, after all, teaching.”

Dumbledore paused. Severus knew that he hadn’t expected the opposition.

But you should have, Severus told him silently, while they both stared at each other and Severus strengthened his Occlumency barriers. While he was confident in their strength to keep out the Dark Lord, who was a stronger Legilimens than Dumbledore, the Headmaster was more subtle, and it was possible for someone like that to slip into an unwary mind. When you favor Black so outrageously, you should have expected an opposing side to form.

“Nine minutes,” said Severus, when enough time had passed that he felt justified.

Dumbledore nodded grimly. “Then please come through to my office, Severus.” He vanished from the fireplace, but left the flames blazing.

Severus cast a spell that would warn him when nine minutes had gone by, and stepped through the flames. When he came out of it, he was ready, which was the reason he was able to cast a spiderweb-like shield to catch the flying blow of Black’s fist.

Black yelped as his arm rebounded from the shield and nearly hit him in the face. Severus watched him coolly, and then turned back to Dumbledore, who sat behind his desk. “I do not enjoy being lured into ambushes, Headmaster,” he said, pitching his voice low. “If that is the only reason you brought me here, I will go.”

“No, no,” said Dumbledore. He shot a quick glance at Black, and sighed. “Do sit down, Sirius.”

No apology demanded, even for attacking a professor, Severus noticed, and moved to the chair he usually took when he was in Dumbledore’s office. This time, though, he stood in front of it, instead of sitting down, and kept his casual, neutral gaze fixed on Dumbledore.Yes, he should have realized long since that opposition would form. I suppose he didn’t care.

“Sirius says that you ignored his reasonable concerns about Harry,” Dumbledore began.

“He burst into my classroom during the time when Potter is supposed to be learning Potions,” said Severus. He would have to choose his words carefully, or expose too soon exactly how much he knew about Harry and how involved in the situation he was. “You have urged me in the past to treat Potter exactly like another student, Headmaster. Well, then I must be concerned about his academic record. He is in danger of getting a T in my class already, due to poor performance. I saw no reason to allow his godfather to come into the room to shout at him.”

“I wouldn’t have shouted!” shouted Black.

Severus turned his neutral gaze on him. “You called his name as you came in. You gave no sign that you were sympathetic. You sounded angry.”

“Did you, Sirius?”

Dumbledore sounds doting, Severus thought, and managed to keep his lip from curling by thinking of an offer Lucius had made to him more than once, that Severus could become his private Potions master. Severus had always refused because of what he owed Dumbledore—what he had thought he owed Dumbledore—for keeping him out of Azkaban, because of his vow to Lily, and because he had no desire to be in Lucius Malfoy’s grip.

But the thought was tempting at the moment. Were he in that position, he would never have to deal with Black.

“I was angry he hadn’t told me,” Black muttered. “But—” He spun around and snarled at Severus. “What do you have to do with it? You’ve never cared about Harry, so expecting me to believe that you do now is pretty rich!”

Four minutes. Severus inclined his head and said in a colorless voice, “I am attempting to treat the boy more like other students. That means no special favors, but no disdain, either. And I would cast out Lucius Malfoy if he interrupted my class demanding to speak to his son in such a way. Or Molly Weasley, or any other parent. Neither of you are being treated as special, Black.”

Unlike the treatment that you have received from Dumbledore. Severus hoped that the man would hear the unsaid words, although from the enraged way Black gaped at him, he had taken them the wrong way if he had. 

Three minutes, thought Severus, and turned back to Dumbledore. “Was there anything else that you wanted me for, Albus?”

Dumbledore looked at him over his glasses, but that gesture had ceased to endear him to Severus long ago. Severus simply looked back without expression, and Dumbledore seemed to realize he had wasted a minute, because he pressed his fingers together and murmured, “Did you know anything about the confession that appeared in the newspaper this morning, Severus?”

Confession?” Severus cocked his head. “What an interesting word. As if Mr. Potter was the criminal.”

Black made some noise that didn’t achieve the dignity of words, but Dumbledore held up his hand, and he subsided for a second, glaring at Severus with naked hatred. “Severus. I must ask you again. Did you know?”

“Why would I?” Severus whispered. “I am neither the man who was supposed to act in loco parentis when Potter was at school, nor his godfather, nor his guardian.”

Dumbledore peered at him again, but Severus had not only his Occlumency shields up, but his bored and long-suffering expression as well. Dumbledore would find that he had little to accuse him of, even if he persisted.

One minute.

“You might have taken his side in certain recent disputes,” said Dumbledore, and his eyes flickered to Black, “considering the unfortunate similarities between you. But that doesn’t mean that you should have concealed important information you learned about Harry, Severus.”

Black was staring too stupidly to have picked up on the insinuation of Severus’s own abuse, Severus decided quickly. He had once had to make such snap judgments all the time, and risk his life by them. He was risking his dignity now, and he still thought he was right.

“Would you have listened to him if he reported it?” he whispered. “Would you have understood why having his trust in his guardian butchered was more devastating to him than it might be to some other children?”

Half a minute.

“I would have listened to him!” Black yelped.

Dumbledore took on a gentle, almost indefinable aura of disappointment. Since Severus didn’t intend to pay him any attention because of that, he just stared icily, and Dumbledore finally looked away and made a small motion with his head. “I understand that you have classes to return to, Severus.”

“Yes,” said Severus, straightening up just as his charm buzzed at him. “My NEWT students. Fortunately, they can be left without supervision for a small period of time.” He bowed his head a little. “Excuse me, Albus. Black.”

He took one look back at Black as he exited via the Floo, and hoped that his eyes said it all for him.

Do not cross me. Harry has someone at his back now who won’t listen to your pathetic excuses and let you use your abuse as an explanation for abusing someone else.

Do not get in my way.

On the other hand, if Black did not grasp it, Severus thought with a thin smile as he whirled away, he would enjoy the consequences. Black would not, but that hardly mattered.

He will not hurt Harry again.

Chapter 27: Springing the Trap

Chapter Text

You don’t need to talk to them, said Dash with a certainty that stabbed Harry under the heart like a sharp, slim bone dagger.

What a keen imagination you have, Dash added, and his heavy head came to rest in the place that Harry had been thinking of, his tongue darting coolly out for a moment. His closed eyelids fluttered a little, and he turned his head to the side, apparently feeling Harry’s heartbeat. You don’t need to.

“I still need a place to live for the summer,” Harry reminded Dash quietly, running his fingers softly along the ridge above Dash’s closed eye. They were in the middle of Harry’s bed, sealed behind curtains that Harry had warded with several strong privacy charms. Harry spoke quietly as much to avoid waking Ron as because his throat was too choked with emotion to speak more strongly. “I can’t have that if I don’t talk to Sirius and Lupin.”

You could have a place with your Weasley friend. You could have a place with your professor.

It took Harry a moment to realize which professor Dash must be talking about, and when he knew, he snorted aloud and shook his head. “Come off it, Dash. I’ll admit, he’s been nice to me, a lot nicer than he used to be, but there’s a difference between that and wanting to adopt me.”

He would not need to adopt you to guarantee you a safe home.

Dash sounded more enchanted with the idea as he spoke. Harry shuddered a little as he realized that Dash had vowed to get him an adult who could look after him. Snape might be the adult he had in mind.

No, Harry snapped, switching to the silent voice of their bond as he heard someone shift in their bed. Dean, most likely. He said that he always had bad dreams right before exams. I forbid you to do anything about getting “someone” for me, Dash. You couldn’t talk to Snape without me being there, anyway.

Dash paused, his tail tapping the sheets. The stirring sound had stopped, but this one was loud enough. The only one louder was Harry’s heart. Harry held his eyes, as well as he could when Dash’s lids still blocked them, and glared.

I want to help you, Dash finally said, and laid his head in Harry’s lap. His emotions tumbled through Harry’s head like the images he had first hurled at Harry when he was explaining his name, and his voice was soft and sulky.

I know that, said Harry, and used his hand to gently smooth down Dash’s plume. But I still have a home that I can get back if I say the right words.

What about the words they should say to you?

Harry let out a long, slow breath and shrugged. That shifted Dash’s coils around his shoulders around in a way that usually made him grumble, but now he was silent, waiting, and Harry realized how seriously he took this. I don’t know. I’ll—we’ll see how this confrontation goes.

You realize I will be with you, and that I’ll bite them the moment they try to threaten you. 

I know that. Harry leaned back on his pillow, and didn’t speak what he was saying aloud in words: that if not for Dash’s presence there, he wouldn’t have been able to go to the confrontation with Remus and Sirius at all.

Dash’s head snuggled further into his lap. You don’t need to worry. I’ll never leave you.

Harry closed his eyes. He could have contested that, could have asked what happened if Dash chased after one of his enemies or wanted a mate, but he didn’t. For once, he thought, he could trust that a person who said something like that meant it.

No one else is bonded to me.

*

“Were they really awful, the Muggles?”

Draco paused and laid one hand flat on the wall. He’d been about to speak to Harry when he saw him stalking along one of the corridors away from the Great Hall, after dinner had finished, but it seemed someone else had had the same idea.

And that person was Pansy Parkinson, which stunned Draco.

Draco waited, only leaning forwards a little to see what he could see. He heard Harry huff before he saw him. He was standing in the center of the corridor, one hand so firmly on Dash’s head that Draco would have winced if he was Dash, away from the pressure. But Dash only looked as if he liked it, even touching his tongue to Harry’s hand before opening his mouth in a yawn.

Pansy didn’t leap and squeal at his fangs, which she had talked about being frightened of more than once at the Slytherin table. She only studied Harry, and Harry studied her back.

“They were exactly as awful as the paper said they were,” Harry finally muttered, after what looked like an encouraging squeeze around the waist from Dash’s tail. “The article didn’t exaggerate.” He shrugged and started to edge past Pansy. “You can read about it there. It tells the truth.”

“But—it’s different, with magical families, right?” Pansy demanded, turning to track Harry. “They wouldn’t hurt someone like that. You wouldn’t have been abused if you grew up with wizards instead of Muggles.”

Harry turned around with a grace that Draco had only seen once before, when they were dueling in that stupid club Lockhart had tried to set up last year. For a minute, Draco was afraid that Harry was going to attack Pansy for some reason, but he didn’t. He just walked up to her and looked her earnestly in the face, earnestly enough that Pansy blushed and started looking down at her hands and picking at her nails.

“That was hard for me to admit to myself,” Harry murmured, his voice tender. He reached out and took one of Pansy’s hands and held it still. “That it was abuse and awful, that I deserved better.”

Pansy was trembling. She lifted her head, and Draco saw a gleam of tears on her lashes. He stared. Pansy, who never cried?

“But what if it’s not like that?” Pansy whispered. “Why if they just—ignored your nightmares, and told you that you had to study more, and locked you in the library with books, and sometimes put potions in your food to see if you could recognize them? That’s not abuse. Not like what you went through. No one ever starved me. They were just trying to train me for the hard ways of the world.”

Draco closed his eyes. He had heard people use that phrase before. Specifically, Pansy would repeat it soon after her father sent her a letter.

“No. It’s abuse.”

Harry’s voice was firm, strong, sure. Draco opened his eyes again. He was standing right in front of Pansy and giving her the kind of earnest look Pansy would ordinarily have mocked. But she wasn’t in the right frame of mind to mock anyone right now, Draco thought. And come to think of it, he couldn’t have done it, either.

A thought did drift across Draco’s mind, even as he watched Harry do something admirable like comfort a Slytherin who wasn’t him, that it was strange Harry was so able to do this when he’d kicked and screamed about calling his own Muggle abuse by the name “abuse.” But that just seemed to be the way Harry was. Jump into the fire for someone else, not notice he was burning if it was him.

“You’re the only one who can make the decision to call it that,” Harry went on, still earnest. “And you’re the one who has to decide what to do.” He hesitated, and then Draco saw the moment when he flung caution to the winds. “But if you want someone who will help you and not question you, then you can go to Professor Snape.”

“P-Professor Snape?” Pansy stared up at Harry with eyes so wide and bright that it seemed as if the tears had transformed themselves into her pupils or something. “W-was he the one who helped you?”

“Yes.” Harry looked at her again and clenched her hands. “But you can’t tell anyone that unless he wants to come out and say it, okay? We decided that it would be best if no one knew that for right now.”

“I know,” said Pansy, and swallowed. “But I didn’t even know I could go to him about something like this.”

“Why?” Harry sounded puzzled. “You’re a Slytherin.”

Draco shook his head. This was the kind of thing that he would have understood better than Harry, although he also understood why Pansy had chosen to confide in Harry rather than him. She would be afraid of Draco making fun of her. Draco was trained to attack weakness. It was the lesson his father had drilled into him throughout his childhood.

But Professor Snape was also someone who, while he would accept and repair the weaknesses of his Slytherins, wouldn’t offer much comfort while doing so. Most of Draco’s Housemates assumed he only wanted to be bothered by either things that had to do with potions, his area of expertise, or things that a student really couldn’t get help with elsewhere, like being treated unfairly by another professor. None of them would have gone to him with something like this.

It made Draco wonder abruptly how Harry had known that it would be safe.

“No, really, you can go to him,” Harry was telling Pansy now, maybe because she had started to confide in him and he had realized she didn’t have the words to tell him the truth. “Come on, I know he’s in his office right now and he doesn’t have anyone to supervise in detention. I’ll take you there.”

Pansy hung back with a little murmur, but it was obvious to Draco that she really wanted to be convinced, and that was what Harry did. He smiled at her and pulled on her hand, and she let herself follow him.

Draco leaned back. He would talk to Harry later. Maybe tomorrow. They still had about a week before exams, and Draco could take some time away from revising furiously.

He thought he saw Dash glance back at him, snapping his tongue out to catch his scent, before Harry and Pansy disappeared around the corner. Draco looked back as hard as he could. He wanted Dash to take care of Harry. But he had the feeling that was probably going to happen anyway.

*

“Professor Snape? Pansy wants to talk to you.”

Severus had only a moment to wonder when Parkinson had given Harry permission to call her by her first name. From the appealing look that she gave him before she ducked her head, and the even more appealing one that Harry fastened on him, he knew what this was about.

Severus settled his face into the neutral, natural mask that seemed to reassure Harry the most, and nodded. “Please sit down, Miss Parkinson.” That was what he normally called her in class, and he thought changing the level of formality too quickly would only make her more uncomfortable.

Parkinson took her chair in front of his desk, and breathed out once her gaze was on her fists in her lap. Severus had expected more hesitation, but perhaps she had decided there was little use in hiding now that she was here. “It’s about my father, sir.”

Severus nodded once, and glanced up at Harry, who was standing by the door with his gaze fastened protectively on Parkinson. He caught Severus’s eye and nodded, and slid quietly out of the room, shutting the door behind him. Although Parkinson must have heard it, she showed no apprehension. She had probably accepted being alone with Severus, then.

Good. Parkinson was not one of the twenty-two children Severus had identified as current students who were abused. He would need to listen to her story in privacy and with keen attention, and Harry had handled the situation well.

As he prepared the tea that he could best mix with a Calming Draught, Severus decided, I must remember to tell him so.

*

Harry got to Lupin’s office feeling as if he was glowing from the inside. That had been the right thing to do, a good thing. He had helped Pansy, and that made him feel as if he could fly.

It prepared him for the conversation with Sirius and Lupin, he knew. Better than the Strengthening Potion Snape would have suggested. 

Well, he would have suggested it if he knew about this conversation, anyway. Harry thought he would probably want Harry to run the other direction.

But it had to be done. And Harry knew Sirius had come to the castle to visit Lupin tonight. He’d been at dinner.

You can fight for her, and not for yourself, said Dash, in a sad tone of voice, just as Harry put his hand on the door.

Harry looked down at him. I need you to support me right now, he said. Without faltering and without reservation. Can you do that? 

Dash reared exactly as much of his body off Harry’s shoulders and waist as he needed to meet Harry’s gaze. You know I will. But supporting you isn’t the same as approving of all your actions. Or not wanting to bite people.

Right now, I don’t need criticism, Harry told him quietly. Right now, I do need approval.

Dash slung a coil over one arm, held it tightly for a minute, and then let it go. Harry smiled down at him and knocked on the door.

“Yes, just a moment…” Harry heard Lupin making his way past the crates and cages that his office was always filled with. He wasn’t supervising a detention tonight, either. Harry had checked. Harry folded his arms tightly and took a deep breath.

Lupin opened the door, a pleasant, slightly dotty smile on his face that he usually wore when he thought people were coming to ask him questions. It fell away entirely when he saw Harry, and he leaned on the wall as though someone had hit him, wincing as he placed one hand to his chest.

“Yeah,” said Harry, looking at him and holding his eyes, “it’s me.”

Lupin licked his lips and looked over his shoulder for a second. Then he stepped quietly forwards and started to shut the door behind him, whispering, “Harry, what are you doing here? Do you need help with your homework?”

Dash was uncoiling himself with a slow, deliberate grace that Harry knew promised nothing good. He put a hand on Dash’s head to hold him still, and shook his head slowly. “You know what I came to talk about, Professor Lupin,” he said. “And I know Sirius is in there, and I have to speak to him too. Will you tell him to come out?”

For a moment, Professor Lupin dithered, and Harry thought he might turn away. But finally he nodded, with a kind of numb wonder on his face, as if he was stunned that he was doing this. Then he turned away and called to Sirius. Harry hugged Dash around the neck and said nothing.

Sirius came to the door walking as slowly as if he was going to a funeral. Harry didn’t know if he’d heard Harry’s voice or if he was just thinking about Harry in general, and that weighed him down. Harry sort of hoped it was the second one, honestly.

He held Sirius’s eyes in turn when he got there, and then nodded at the door. “Can we go inside your office, Professor Lupin?” he asked.

Both of them moved aside so Harry could go in, and both of them watched him in a sort of daze. Harry wondered why he had to be the adult here, and then sighed. Because neither of them would be. They would have come and talked to him before now if they were going to be adults about it.

This is why you should find someone else, someone who will treat you right.

Harry ignored that, and turned to face Sirius and Professor Lupin. They were standing shoulder to shoulder, huddled, as if Harry really was the adult and had the power to send them to their rooms.

Harry banished the painful thought about bedrooms and how much he wished Lupin had locked his door, and looked from face to face. “All right,” he said quietly. “I think you know what I’ve come about.”

“You’re going to tell us why you didn’t tell us the Dursleys abused you?” Sirius was looking into his face with an earnestness that really reminded Harry of a dog trying to understand someone.

“And you’re going to tell me why you didn’t apologize and come talk to me about what happened in your house,” Harry told Sirius.

Sirius gave a little flick of his head to get his hair out of his eyes. “It’s your house, too,” he said. “And Remus’s house.”

Dash was hissing, although not aloud. Harry thought he was the only one who would ever feel that throb of hissing through his mind, and honestly, the only one who ever needed to feel it. “I’ll consider it home when tell you me why you didn’t apologize,” he said.

Lupin held out his hands. His eyes were amber-colored, and when Dash gave an incoherent mutter about a threat, Harry told him to stop that. He thought Lupin’s eyes were that color all the time. It was just more noticeable right now. “What apologies are enough for what I did?” Lupin whispered. “I can’t make up for it. I can’t beg you to forgive me. I can only—quit my job at the end of the year and go somewhere else.”

Harry stared at him with his mouth open. He had never thought Lupin was going to quit being their Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. 

Guilt bubbled in him. Did I cause this?

Dash’s tail slapped him firmly on the side of the head.

It wasn’t a hard blow, but it did its job. Harry shook his head. No, he hadn’t. He couldn’t have, because he had opened the door not knowing where Lupin was and not knowing what he was, and that was because they had kept secrets from him. And he hadn’t even known that Lupin was thinking about quitting his job, because they hadn’t told him anything about that either.

I deserve to be told things.

Dash’s tongue flickered out and gently licked the side of his arm.

“I always said that snake was violent!” Sirius was pointing one finger at Harry, as if he might have missed the fact that Dash had slapped him. “How can you stand there and defend him, Harry?”

“Because he would apologize for it if he did something wrong,” Harry snapped. He didn’t mean to, but the words slipped out, and then they were out there and there was no taking them back.

Sirius slowly folded his arms. Lupin turned away and stared at his hands again. “No words can encompass how sorry I am,” he whispered. “But I am sorry.”

Harry turned and stared at Sirius. “What about you?” he whispered. “Are you sorry for not trusting me, and embarrassing when you burst into Potions class like that? Sirius?” he added, because he honestly thought his godfather might stand there until the end of time looking the other way if he didn’t.

Sirius waited so long that Harry’s hope was dying a smothered death in his chest. Then he drew in his own breath and spoke.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you. I thought you were like other kids. Couldn’t keep secrets.” He cleared his throat roughly. “And I thought—I thought that you—I mean, Albus tried to tell me—I knew you were different from other kids. I just didn’t know how different.” He looked at Harry, and his face was bleak and desolate. “I see now that you can keep secrets pretty well.”

“I wanted to tell you,” Harry said quietly. “But you weren’t talking to me.”

Sirius closed his eyes. His face was etched with torture. “I wish I’d never had that bloody talk with Albus,” he whispered.

Harry didn’t know which conversation he was talking about, and so he just stood there and waited. Dash squeezed and relaxed around his waist in a regular pattern. Sirius finally opened his eyes and said slowly, “I wanted you to come to me. I thought—I thought that what I did was awful, kind of like Remus.” He nodded to Lupin, who still had his head turned away. “But I wanted to talk to you in private. At home.” He gave Dash an eloquent glance. “And without a snake listening to every word we said.”

Before Harry could say anything about how Dash would be with him everywhere he went, always, Sirius met his eyes and added, “Whether the snake is a literal snake or a Slytherin.”

“Professor Snape was helping me,” Harry said. He would call the man “Snape” most of the time, but he wanted to add the title now. “He kept you out of the classroom because you were just making people more curious, and wanting to stare at me.” He folded his arms tighter. Dash flowed over them, and made Harry feel as if he was wearing armor. “And anyway, I don’t know if I would have trusted you to tell you about the abuse after Lupin attacked me and you didn’t apologize. It felt—it felt as if you cared more about each other than you did about me.”

Sirius seemed to crumble. “Oh, kid,” he whispered. He held out his arms.

Harry hesitated.

He has not solved anything, Dash told him, head still weaving back and forth. He still remains as prone to jealousy and shallowness as he ever was. Think about that.

Harry did think about that. But he also thought that Sirius looked sorry now, and weary, and tired, like Harry himself. They hadn’t apologized on time, but Harry hadn’t sought them out and talked to them, either.

And he was tired of things not working out. 

When he ran forwards and embraced Sirius, Sirius murmured into his ear, “So sorry. I’m so sorry. And if I’d known that the Dursleys were treating you like that, I would have broken out of Azkaban a long time ago. I just thought—I just thought that I’d missed my chance, and messed everything up by suggesting Peter as the Secret-Keeper, and I didn’t know how I could face the guilt.”

Harry closed his eyes. It sounded like Lupin and Sirius had a lot of the same guilt problems.

You are not going to let them get away with this? Dash asked. These pitiful apologies, too late?

Harry took a deep breath and told Dash, I’m not really going to trust them again. Not unless they show me they can be trusted. But I want to live with them—well, with Sirius, and have Lupin visit, or whatever’s going to happen there. It just means that I won’t be able to relax as much around them, and I’ll have to be careful.

Dash’s silence was as bitter as hatred. At last he said, It is unfair that you should have to be the adult.

I agree with that, Harry whispered. But Sirius was hugging him, and he wanted a home, and he had one, if he could get over his own pride and anger and accept it.

And he had Dash with him to make sure that things didn’t go wrong.

I still think Snape would be better.

Snape wanted to help me with the abuse, but that’s not the same thing as helping me permanently, Harry told him, and wrapped his arms all the harder about Sirius. I’ll do what I have to.

Dash was silent. And Sirius whispered apologies, over and over again, and Harry thought it was going to be all right.

Really. No matter how heavy and disapproving Dash made his body. Harry only had to think about Pansy, and his body fired with glowing determination. He could do things that helped people. And Sirius really did love him, Harry knew that when he thought about his room. Next to that, what was a little caution?

Chapter 28: Things That Trembled

Chapter Text

“Mr. Potter,” said McGonagall softly behind him, as Harry was finishing up his exam for Transfiguration. “If you could stay behind for a few minutes when you’re done?”

What did I do now? Harry wondered, out of habit, as he scribbled down the last line and shook his hand. It didn’t hurt as much as it used to when he was trying to write with a pencil in Muggle primary school, but a quill made things awkward in other ways. He had to concentrate really hard to make sure that he didn’t blot the ink, for one thing.

You shouldn’t think like that, said Dash, and his tail gently squeezed around Harry’s waist. You shouldn’t always think that you’re in trouble, that you’re the guilty one.

Harry didn’t respond, only stood up and hurried after McGonagall, who had withdrawn to the front of the room. Only a few people remained—Transfiguration wasn’t horrible for Harry, but it wasn’t his best subject—and they were all in the back. Harry smiled a little. He knew McGonagall was keeping one eye on them even as she talked with him, and she would make anyone who tried to cheat wish they hadn’t.

“I understood there was some confusion about your summer plans,” McGonagall told Harry, peering at him with concerned eyes. “About whether you were going to stay with Mr. Black or go somewhere else.”

Harry found himself a little relieved that she called Sirius by his last name, instead of his first, the way Dumbledore did. It made Sirius sound like he wasn’t an adult when Dumbledore called him that.

Well, he is not.

Dash’s opinion, Harry could also safely ignore. He shook his head. “No, I’m staying with Sirius, ma’am. There was—we had an argument, but everything’s okay now.” He saw the soft, relieved breath that escaped McGonagall.

For one second, he was sort of sad that Snape knew more about the “argument” than his Head of House did, but he shook that away. He did have people who cared for him now, and it wasn’t like he had ever wanted to talk about his abuse with the Dursleys before, much less what had happened with Sirius. And he hadn’t ever relied on McGonagall for much before.

“I also wanted to say, Mr. Potter,” and McGonagall also paused and took off her glasses and wiped them. “I am so sorry that I never noticed what was happening when you returned from the summer before.” Her accent was so thick on the last words, Harry had trouble understanding them. “If I had known…”

“I know,” said Harry, uncomfortable as always when someone started blubbing like this. At least Snape had never blubbed. And Sirius had, but not about this. “But I didn’t tell anyone. How were you supposed to know?”

She should have looked, said Dash, and for a moment, the hold of his tail became constricting. If she had paid attention instead of sinking into her own obliviousness, then you could have had better guardians last year. Or the year before.

Who would I have stayed with? Harry asked. I didn’t have Sirius then, and there’s no one else who could have taken me in.

Dash’s silence abounded in discontent. Harry thought he was doing his friend a favor by ignoring it. He said to McGonagall, “Is that all, ma’am? I mean, I’ve got a Herbology exam in ten minutes.”

McGonagall went on looking broodingly at him for what had to be another minute, though, before she nodded. “You realize that you can come to me if you have any more concerns or need help, Mr. Potter?”

Oh. Harry thought he knew what this was about, now. She was feeling guilty, and she wanted some reassurance. That was easy enough to give. Harry knew the right way to smile and the right words to speak, the way he had known how to soothe the Muggles who sometimes thought they could make the Dursleys stop the abuse.

“Yes, I do,” he said. “Thanks, Professor McGonagall.”

He left the classroom and ran towards the greenhouse. This part of the Herbology exam was entirely practical, and he would have to drag his gloves on after he got there. At least Dash had promised not to crawl through people’s plants and crush them the way he had one time in Professor Sprout’s class at the beginning of the year.

She could do more than that if she was feeling guilty. You shouldn’t have to lie to spare people’s feelings.

Harry shrugged as he wrestled his gloves out of his satchel and tugged them on, using his teeth when he had to, particularly when part of Dash’s body was in the way and he refused to move. I’m already lying to spare Sirius’s feelings. And Lupin’s. Sirius had told Harry that he could call Professor Lupin Remus outside of school, but Harry hadn’t felt comfortable enough to start that yet—especially because he hadn’t yet heard the permission from Professor Lupin himself.

You shouldn’t have to.

Harry nearly tripped from the thunder of Dash’s feelings through his mind. He took a moment to recover his breath, and glanced down at Dash, who stared back at him appealingly, his tail shaking back and forth as if he was a rattlesnake.

“I know that,” Harry told him quietly. “But it’s the way things are.” He made sure he was using English so Dash would pay more attention to the words. “At least things are a lot better now. I have you, and I’m away from the Dursleys.”

But your life should be happy, perfect, not full of these compromises.

Harry gently stroked Dash’s plume. “Nobody’s life is perfect.”

But I am perfect, because I am a basilisk, so I should be able to make my human’s life perfect.

At least that put Harry in a good mood to take the Herbology exam, even if Dash was petulantly insisting in the back of his mind that he didn’t really understand what Harry had found so funny.

*

Let’s see, Draco thought sarcastically to himself as he watched Harry rub his forehead the next morning in lunch, between what had probably been a morning of frantic revising, given that Granger was his friend, and the Potions exam. Harry looks pale and he’s constantly touching his scar. Do I think something’s wrong? Yes, I do.

Which made the way Harry had tried to fob him off earlier with a smile and a story about how he hadn’t slept well stupid. And Draco didn’t enjoy people assuming he was stupid.

He leaned towards Blaise, who had been quiet and moody in the last few days for reasons Draco didn’t understand, and muttered, “Blaise, did your mum say anything about the Ministry getting involved in Harry’s life lately?” It was the only thing he could think of, that Harry might have been distressed by the Ministry doing something stupid. If the stupid thing had happened at school, Draco would have heard about it, and Black and Lupin had stayed away from Harry since his last conversation with them. Draco didn’t think anything new was happening there.

Blaise jumped as though Draco had pricked him with a pin and turned around to stare at Draco with something unpleasantly close to hatred on his face. “Do you think I keep track of what’s going on with Potter all the time?” he whispered in an acid tone. “No, I don’t. It’s bad enough that his picture is on the front page of the paper every morning now, without discussing him with other Slytherins!”

And he turned away, leaving Draco to blink at him. He had no idea that Blaise hated Harry that much. Maybe he only hated the attention and the media circus. Draco probably would if he hadn’t known the truth about some of Harry’s secrets.

Draco did scan the Prophet when the owls delivered it that morning, but found nothing new, only rehashes of what they’d already reported on Harry’s abuse and some mention here and there of Draco’s father’s part in reporting it. So Draco decided he would need to ask.

And what better time to do that than after the Potions exam, when Harry would probably be stumbling with tiredness and vulnerable to someone who asked questions in the right tone?

*

That wasn’t a dream. It was real. You need to tell someone. 

Harry shut his eyes. He had his hand pressed to his scar, still, and his fingers flexed now and then. He thought if he applied some pressure, then the pain and the bleeding would go away. Or at least the bleeding would have to stop. Harry knew all about applying pressure to the kinds of little cuts he’d got from Dudley and his gang.

And this is not that! Dash was almost shouting at him, tail so tight around his waist that Harry’s ribs ached.

Right. That was abuse, everyone tells me now. This is nothing. Harry finally dropped his hand from his scar and turned towards the kitchens. He could distract Dash with some bread and butter, or maybe the elves would have some freshly killed chickens that he could have, or be willing to capture some mice.

Then Dash brought him to a stop by the simple expedient of dropping his tail to the ground so that it coiled around Harry’s legs and almost tripped him up, and someone called out behind him.

“Harry!”

Harry gave Dash a dirty look, and turned to face Draco. Draco immediately stopped jogging along the corridor and started strutting instead. Harry swallowed back a snort. Draco had told him once that Malfoys were on never less than perfect dignity. Harry reckoned he was getting to see that.

“I know something is wrong,” Draco said. “You looked like you were in pain at breakfast today. Tell me?”

He was probably trying to look charming, the way he sometimes did with professors, Harry thought. What was wrong with him that it was working?

You are a normal person and he’s your friend? Dash lashed his tail against the floor, once. Something has gone wrong when I understand human interactions better than you do.

Harry gave Dash a dirty look, and managed to smile politely at Draco. “I had a bad dream last night. I woke up, and my scar was bleeding. It’s bled off and on all day. And my head won’t stop hurting. So I’m going to get something to eat. The headache is probably getting worse because of not eating at breakfast this morning.”

Draco blinked once or twice. He seemed not to have expected that Harry would actually tell him what was wrong. Take that, Harry thought, although he didn’t really know who he was talking to, and turned towards the kitchens again.

Draco walked by his side. “Have you seen Professor Snape for a headache potion?” he asked abruptly.

Harry wanted to gape. He didn’t even know that you could go and ask Snape for that kind of thing, although now that he thought about it, it made perfect sense for Slytherins. And maybe it would have been helpful if this was a normal headache. But he didn’t want to think that much about the dream. 

“Uh, no, that’s okay,” he said. “I always get a headache when I’m hungry, and I didn’t eat much at dinner last night, either. Nerves over the exams, you know.”

“Harry,” said Draco, and stopped in the middle of the corridor, so that Harry had to stop, too, and look at him. “I saw you last night. You ate a lot. Even Dash had what must have been most of his meals for the week there.” He hesitated. “Why won’t you tell me? What’s wrong? And does your scar bleeding have something to do with the—the Dark Lord?”

Harry shivered. He hadn’t even realized, until this moment, that he was lying to Draco again, after telling him the truth about the dream and the headache and his bleeding scar. It seemed so natural, sometimes, so necessary. But he hadn’t really meant to do it. Draco was his friend, and he deserved the truth.

Fine. I’ll do this.

Dash rubbed the side of his neck against Harry’s fingers. Harry nodded a little. “I think so,” he said. “I was dreaming about a woman walking through this big dark forest somewhere. Not the Forbidden Forest, I think,” he added hastily, as Draco’s eyes widened. “But she was looking for something. I had the impression she was nervous. And then she stopped and screamed, and I saw this—this dark thing rising up from the floor of the forest, and circling around her. I don’t know her. But I think she died before the dream ended.”

Draco shivered convulsively. Harry tried to smile and pat him on the arm. “Hey. It was my nightmare, remember? Not yours. I’m the one who had the dream. I should be the one who gets scared by it!”

Draco shook his head, his eyes stubborn, his face mute. “I think it was real,” he whispered. “It sounds real to me. Awful.”

Harry snorted and rolled his eyes. “It was pretty awful, but I don’t know why you think it was real.”

You do,” Draco said, his eyes studying Harry intently. “Or part of you does. Or Dash does. Right?”

Harry closed his eyes. Yeah, that had been the part that he’d been trying desperately not to think about, both the part of the dream and the part of his brain. He nodded once.

“Then you need to tell someone,” Draco insisted. “I had to drag it out of you—and why do I keep having to do that?” There was a hint of resentment in his voice that made Harry frown and blink. “You should just tell me.”

“I’m not used to that,” Harry said, trying to sound like he was calm and not resentful himself. “And anyway, who would I tell? I don’t trust Dumbledore. Sirius—he’s just not—” Harry shook his head. Not even to Draco could he say that he was the adult because Sirius couldn’t be.

He would understand.

“Professor Snape.” Now Draco was looking at him as if he was mental instead of exasperating. “He’s helped you before. He would help you now.”

Harry silently clenched his hands. He wondered how he could tell Draco that he didn’t want to. He had gone to Snape for help, and he had encouraged other people to go to him for help, but that was about abuse. And Harry reckoned he could help if someone was failing Potions, too. But this was different.

Then he thought of something, and hesitated. “I could go talk to McGonagall,” he said. “See if she has anything useful to say.”

“Why her, and not Snape?”

“Because she’s my Head of House,” Harry said. And she wanted to do something to help. That line wouldn’t make sense to Draco, so he didn’t say it. He wasn’t sure that it made sense to him. But he knew that he would be more comfortable talking to McGonagall about this than he would to either Snape or Sirius. “And she’s supposed to help with things like this.”

You can go to her, and she can try to help, said Dash. But you’re going to eat something first. He pointed his head in the direction of the kitchens as though Harry would have forgotten the way.

“Not right now,” Harry snapped at him, and started to turn in the direction of McGonagall’s office. Then he tripped over Dash’s tail, and caromed into Draco, who caught him before he could smash his head open on the wall. Draco blinked at him, studied him for a second as though he thought Harry was drunk, and let him go.

“Are you arguing with the basilisk again?” he asked. “What does he want now?” He nodded at Dash as though he was in a conspiracy with him against Harry, which maybe he was, by this point, Harry thought, yanking a hand through his hair.

“He wants me to eat before I go and talk to McGonagall,” said Harry. “I can do that later. Can we go now?”

You’ve ignored it this long and ignored me when I told you to tell someone, said Dash, and laid his head along Harry’s arm. Why can’t you wait long enough to eat, and then see if she’s in her office or still at dinner, and wait for her if she is?

“All right,” said Harry grudgingly. “That makes sense.”

“Yes, it does,” said Draco, and he shot Harry a sideways glance as he walked towards the pear and tickled it. “And maybe after you’ve had something to eat, you’ll have reconsidered this ridiculous prejudice you have against telling Professor Snape anything.”

“He’s done enough to help me,” said Harry, and ducked into the kitchen, wishing that two pairs of eyes weren’t watching his every move. Even if one of them was covered by a thick pair of clear eyelids.

“And you think he’s come to the end of his store of compassion, and he can’t give you any more?” Draco demanded incredulously, following him. “Yes, because that makes sense.”

Harry rolled his eyes at him. “That’s not what I mean, and you know it.”

“Well, then, explain it better,” Draco ordered, sounding enough like both a Slytherin and a Malfoy that Harry was tempted to tell him he sounded like a Gryffindor, just to make him splutter. “And maybe I’ll agree with you.”

His tone said he wouldn’t. Harry glared at him, and turned around to tell the house-elves who were watching him with gaping mouths, “Can you get some fresh mice for Dash, please? Can you check the traps?”

“And some bread and cheese and soft fruit for us,” said Draco, sounding as though he ordered house-elves around every day, which he probably did at home. He dragged Harry towards a table and made him sit down, then sat down in front of him, too. “Listen, Harry. Did you think it would stop once your abuse was revealed? That Professor Snape wouldn’t want to do anything for you ever again?”

“No,” Harry admitted. “I know he would help me if I was in real trouble.” He was trying to remember to tell the truth and behave like an adult, because he would have to when it came to Sirius. He had to practice the rest of the time, or he would be out of practice there, where it mattered the most.

“Then you can tell him about this, and he can probably give you a potion to ease it. Dreamless Sleep, if nothing else.” Draco sat up and tugged insistently on Harry’s sleeve, reminding Harry of a puppy pulling on a shoestring. Dash was calmly eating the mice that the house-elves had brought him, for once not complaining about eating killed food, and he didn’t say anything when Harry glanced at him. “He knows a lot about the Dark Lord and curses. Maybe he’ll know what this means.” He pulled again when Harry just sat there. “What are you waiting for?”

“Well, for the food that you thought I should eat,” Harry pointed out.

“Oh.” Draco sat down and looked a little blankly around the kitchen for a moment, until one of the elves deposited a plate of the food he had asked for in front of them. Harry picked up a slice of apple and found that he must be a lot hungrier than he’d thought; he devoured most of that in a bite.

“Right,” Draco said, and picked up a piece of bread that he smeared cheese on. “So. We’re in agreement that you’ll go to see Professor Snape after this?”

Harry ate some more, and thought. When he finally knew he had the words, he shook his head. “No.” He held up a hand when Draco opened his mouth. “Can you listen to why? I know the reasons why now.”

“As long as you don’t think that he’d turn his back on you because he was helping Pansy, or something.”

Harry felt his eyes narrow of their own free will. “You know about that?”

Draco shrugged a little. “Yes. And believe me, I won’t spread it around. But I want to hear your reasons.”

“Okay,” said Harry, and looked down at Dash. Dash was quiet, though, with even the bond only a distant hum in the back of Harry’s mind. Harry sighed and looked up at Draco. “I want to be close to the Gryffindor side of me, too.”

“Going to McGonagall will make you feel that way?” Draco folded his arms. “I thought maybe spending time with your other friends instead of me would.”

“Stop trying to confuse me,” Harry told him. “I’m already confused enough as it is.”

Draco’s lips twitched at that. “Fine. But what do you mean?”

“I was almost Sorted into Slytherin,” Harry said, and he grew more confident as he talked. He knew Dash wasn’t saying anything right now, but he had the feeling Dash would if he got this really wrong or something. “But I was Sorted into Gryffindor. And I don’t feel like I understand most of the Gryffindors well except my friends. I don’t really get why Sirius didn’t apologize to me on his own. And I’ve spent a lot of time with you lately. And I went to the Slytherin Head of House for help instead of my own Head of House. So I want to go to her this time. She said that she wanted to help me. I’m giving her the chance.”

Draco squinted at him. “So you would rather go to Snape, but you’re going to her because she wanted to help? That sounds—kind of strange, Harry. She’s the one who should have noticed and done something to help you on her own, if she really wanted to do that.” He nodded heavily.

Harry winced, because it was so close to what McGonagall had said about his abuse. “Of course. But I want to do it anyway. Give her another chance, the Gryffindor side of me another chance, the way I gave Sirius and Lupin another chance.”

Draco squinted harder. “That makes a sort of sense, but I still think that Snape would probably be the better choice. He’s the one with the potions.”

Harry ended up shrugging and eating a little more of the fruit, then picking up a slice of the cheese. Dash had turned around so that he was leaning on Harry’s shoulder, all the mice making hard little bulges in his throat, and Harry sighed and rubbed at his scales. “You can think about it all you like. But I’m going to McGonagall’s office after this. Maybe she’ll tell me to go straight to Snape, I don’t know.”

He hoped she wouldn’t. He wanted—he wanted to rely on more people, he thought. To tell more people. He’d already told the whole bloody wizarding world, and before that Lucius Malfoy, about some pretty personal and important things. He should get to choose who he told something less important to.

Draco watched him, sighed, and then said, “All right. Don’t eat all the cheese!”

Harry relaxed, slowly, from having his muscles braced against something he hadn’t even realized he’d thought was coming. Draco wasn’t going to tell him that he was wrong and fight and argue. He was going to just go along with it, and probably follow Harry to McGonagall’s office. 

It was all right. Someone could still approve his decisions.

Yes. And it’s time that someone besides me did.

Harry touched Dash’s head, and said nothing, but kept a hand there all through the rest of his meal. 

Chapter 29: Certain Tests Failed

Chapter Text

“This is a very serious matter, Mr. Potter.” McGonagall’s voice was hushed, and Harry was reminded abruptly of his aunt when she didn’t want someone to overhear her gossiping. “Do you think that you can tell me again in detail about your dream?”

Harry did, with Dash supplying some details Harry had been on the verge of forgetting. Honestly, Harry wanted to forget them. It was a regular nightmare, and if it hadn’t been for the suspicion that the thing would stop being a nightmare and become real if he ignored it, he wouldn’t have told anyone.

I don’t understand this way of protecting yourself, or thinking that you protect yourself. Dash’s tail drummed out a little tattoo against Harry’s ribs, though he stopped at once when he seemed to realize, from the thoughts that darted through Harry’s head, that he was hurting him. Why would you need to hide things that aren’t your fault? They don’t even relate to the Dursleys! No one is going to hurt you for dreaming this dream!

The last words were almost shouted down their bond, and Harry lost track of his conversation with McGonagall. He swallowed, smiled apologetically at her, and then hissed at Dash, If you can’t understand when you’re in my bloody head, you can go outside for the rest of this conversation. I don’t need you acting as though what I’m doing is absolutely alien.

Dash was silent for a long moment, his head lying along Harry’s waist as if he was a mere decorative band. Then he whispered, I apologize.

And me just dreaming a dream could have people branding me as mad or evil, Harry reminded him relentlessly, and tossed all his memories of last year with people whispering about him or running away from him into the front of his mind. I was trying to save Justin, and people still thought I was evil, because I could talk to snakes. Sure, they changed their minds, but it took me killing your cousin or brother or whatever and saving Ginny to make them do that!

Dash was quiet. Harry waited, but the inside of his mind remained hollow and echoing like the Chamber of Secrets itself. He took a deep breath and turned back to talk to McGonagall.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I just—things are hard.”

“I know, Mr. Potter.” McGonagall’s eyes were so soft it was almost hard for Harry to meet them. “I know.”

Harry wanted to say that she didn’t know, that she couldn’t know, that things were horrible and only Dash knew, but that would destroy the whole point of his coming here, if he wasn’t going to tell her the truth. He swallowed down his protests the way that he had always swallowed down the ones he would have made against Dudley, and nodded, then resumed the story.

When he had finished, McGonagall was paler than before. She nodded once, tapped her fingers on the desk, and cleared her throat. “My immediate suggestion, Mr. Potter, is one that I think you will probably reject. But it is the most sensible one I can give.”

Vague dread coiled in Harry’s stomach; Dash squeezed around his waist as if to contain it. “What, ma’am?”

“There is no greater expert on You-Know-Who than Professor Dumbledore.” McGonagall gave him a look of vague pity. “He is also the one in the school who knows the most about curse scars. You should talk to him.”

“What about Madam Pomfrey?” Harry blurted out, the words tripping over his tongue before he knew he was going to say them.

“What about her?” McGonagall paused. It seemed she’d been in the middle of preparing to speak, and Harry had interrupted her.

Harry shivered, but he had been through harder things than this and summoned the courage to face them, so he was going to do it now. “Wouldn’t she know about curse scars and things like that? Wounds that bleed when you dream? I think we should at least talk to her and see what she can do.”

McGonagall smiled. Harry wondered why.

Because you used the word “we,” said Dash, which at least proved he was paying attention even if he wasn’t going to speak right now. 

“That may be true,” said McGonagall, and nodded. Her voice became a little more staccato. “I also understand the reason that you’re reluctant to talk to Professor Dumbledore. I would be myself, in your situation.”

I like her more than I thought I did, said Dash abruptly.

McGonagall continued before Harry could say anything else. “It is only that, as this may be a matter of important security, you’ll want to talk to the Headmaster eventually. You’ll have to explain things to him.”

“Because you think Voldemort might threaten Hogwarts?” Harry clenched his fingers into his palms. He ignored the way McGonagall flinched at the name. He thought it was a little silly, but there were more important things to think about right now. “I mean, does Professor Dumbledore think he’d have to attack him?”

He at least understood why Dumbledore would have been interested in his other two years. The Philosopher’s Stone had been right in the school, and then the Chamber of Secrets was, too, and the basilisk was attacking students who were in the school, too. So Harry had relied on the Headmaster to help him, because he had thought he was the only one who could. Or at least someone who would take an interest.

But now Harry didn’t trust Dumbledore as much as he used to, and his dream was about a forest far away. How could Dumbledore help Harry combat that?

McGonagall hesitated again. Then she said, half-whispering as if she thought someone was hiding behind the wall and would jump out on her if she spoke too loudly, “You should know that Professor Dumbledore was very active in the first war against…You-Know-Who. He will have an idea what the nightmare means, and the bleeding in your scar.”

Harry grimaced. On the one hand, he didn’t want that nightmare again, and he also wanted to do what he could to fight Voldemort. But he didn’t see how Professor Dumbledore could actually help him right now.

“Do we have to tell him?” he asked.

“Not right away,” said McGonagall, to his relief. “We can go and see Madam Pomfrey first, and see whether she has any potion or salve that can soothe your scar.” She stood up and pulled her cloak around her.

Harry gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Professor McGonagall.”

McGonagall hesitated at the threshold of the office. “Do you mind telling me what has gone wrong between you and the Headmaster, Mr. Potter? I feel I would be of more help in offering suggestions if I knew.”

She doesn’t smell simply curious, Dash said in a cold voice, after having extended his tongue. But curious enough.

It’s still my choice what I tell her, Harry reminded him, and turned back and gave McGonagall a smile he hoped was convincing. “He thinks that I need to forgive Sirius something that happened between us, and I don’t want to. And he…he acts like he cares more about Sirius than me.”

“Sirius was one of his favorite students,” McGonagall murmured, as if that excused it, and Harry knew the bitter taste of disappointment. At least she wasn’t marching him straight to Dumbledore, but it seemed as if he should also agree that Sirius was right and Dumbledore was right and everyone except Harry was right. 

“Good at Transfiguration?” Harry had to ask, because he didn’t know why that would have been the case otherwise.

“No, I was the Transfiguration professor even then.” McGonagall hesitated again, and then sighed and muttered, “He was Dumbledore’s favorite student in much the same way you are, Mr. Potter—because he got in trouble but benefited others when he did it, and he was clever and devil-may-care and chased trouble with his laughter flying.”

Harry’s teeth clicked together hard enough that his mouth hurt. How could he complain about Sirius to her, then? No matter what he said, she wouldn’t understand. And it sounded like it was still okay to think about Sirius as a child even though he should have been an adult by now.

But then, I always knew that I would have to be the adult when it came to Sirius.

Harry knew that, and the conviction, the reinforcement, of his knowledge should have left him unmoved or actually strengthened him. It was stupid that he couldn’t make his feet move after Professor McGonagall for long moments.

They walked through the mostly empty corridors towards the infirmary, and McGonagall murmured out of the side of her mouth, “I hope that you can work with Professor Dumbledore again. It might be essential to the course of fighting You-Know-Who. And…” She hesitated. “I hope he apologizes for what he did to you.”

He won’t, said Dash briefly. He’s too convinced that he’s right.

And Harry was afraid Dash was right, but he managed to nod and murmur politely enough, he thought, that McGonagall was content to take him to Madam Pomfrey instead of asking more awkward questions.

*

Severus did not turn his head as he walked before the Gryffindors that morning, but he could walk as if absorbed in the papers he held and listen to students who had no idea he was listening at the same time, and that was exactly what he did.

“I wish you’d let us know that you were going to visit Madam Pomfrey,” Weasley was hissing at Harry, who kept his head bowed as though it was vital he count the number of flagstones he was walking over. “We waited for you in the Tower, and I thought maybe some Slytherins had pranked you or something.”

“They’ve stopped that, mostly,” Harry muttered. “No. I went to her to see if she could make my scar stop bleeding.”

Severus nearly lost his grip on the papers, but if he dropped them or turned around, the Gryffindors would glance up and notice he was paying attention to them, not simply walking down the corridor. Or perhaps they would notice him for the first time. With Granger and Weasley’s tight focus on Harry, Severus would have put good money on them not noticing him at all.

“Could she?” Granger.

“A little bit,” said Harry. “See, the puffiness is gone, look.”

Severus immediately touched his wand to the paper on top of the pile—a pitiful exam from a boy who would earn a Troll mark in any case—and Transfigured it into a mirror. He could see well by angling it only a little in front of his face and continuing to walk slowly. Harry had stopped in the middle of the corridor and was letting Granger lift his fringe. The basilisk had his head on the boy’s shoulder, appearing to look up intently despite his covered eyes.

Severus could see the scar, which he only now realized he hadn’t consciously noticed in some time. He supposed he could put that down to his relationship with Harry improving, but it was also testimony to how hard Harry tried to hide the thing.

And it was red now, standing up and out from Harry’s flesh, and there was a bloody lining all along the edges of it that Severus did not think was there normally. As he watched, one drop of blood welled out.

Severus had had enough.

He lowered his pile of papers and turned around. Weasley had just leaned forwards to examine Harry’s scar, and he froze as though Severus had caught him doing something wrong. In Severus’s mind, he had. He could understand why Harry would have kept quiet about the scar, because he was a martyr and that was the way he worked, but Granger and Weasley should have known better.

“How long has this been happening?” he demanded, striding up to them.

“Since I had a dream a few nights ago.” Harry’s voice was calm and quiet, and he looked at Severus as if he knew Severus would not hurt him. Which was exactly right and what he should think, and Severus knew it, but his veins still heated with the implication that he didn’t have the right to scold Harry. 

You don’t. You aren’t his legal guardian, and you know the stink Black would raise if he thought you were interfering with his right to be a confidant to his precious godson.

Since Black likely thought of Harry as no more than a playing piece on the board of a game between the two of them, however, Severus saw no reason why he had to pay attention to that stink. He bent down towards Harry. “Let me see.”

“You already saw,” Harry muttered, truculent, but he let Severus brush his hair away and look again. Severus hissed under his breath. Harry folded his arms and waited until Severus dropped his fringe, then looked away.

“You’ve gone to Madam Pomfrey,” Severus diagnosed, his mind coiling around at sharp speed. “Who else?”

“Professor McGonagall. She was the one who took me to Madam Pomfrey.”

Severus stared at him, but Harry blinked stubbornly back at him, and now Granger and Weasley were leaning in from the sides, eager to confirm his story. “That’s right, sir,” Granger said, with the pursed mouth that always made Severus try to avoid calling on her in class. “Harry was telling us just that now. He went to Professor McGonagall about it last night, and she took him to Madam Pomfrey.”

“What did the mediwitch tell you?” Severus asked, still directing his question at Harry. He saw no value in talking to Granger when she would only repeat information that he could get less circuitously from Harry.

There was a long moment when he thought Harry would turn his back and stomp away like the boy he had stopped being. But then he blinked and glanced aside, incidentally stealing Severus’s chance to skim his surface thoughts. 

“That it looked like I’d been picking at it,” Harry muttered. “She did give me a cream to put on it.”

“What is the real cause?” Severus pitched his voice low. That seemed to be one of the ways to get Harry to trust him. He suspected that Harry had had enough of raised voices, and might welcome, or at least pay attention to, one voice that was the opposite.

Harry shivered, once, and then nodded. Severus knew the nod wasn’t an answer to his question. It seemed to be Harry deciding that he could trust him, after all.

“The dream was about a woman walking in a dark forest, and getting eaten by something that rose up from the forest floor and wrapped around her.” Harry’s voice was also low, and precise. “Professor McGonagall thought it had something to do with Voldemort. She said I should talk to Dumbledore, but I don’t really want to.”

Professor Dumbledore, Harry!” Granger seemed unable to resist the impulse to correct Harry even when she should resist it, Severus thought, icily annoyed. “And you didn’t tell us about that!”

Harry twitched one thin shoulder blade and then reached down. The basilisk was wrapping around his leg as if he wanted to rest his head on the floor. Severus was as glad that Harry was restraining the snake. It made Weasley and Granger look at him, and gave Severus the chance to unclench his hand from the fist it had made.

“Did you avail yourself of her advice?” he asked, at his most arctic.

Harry was staring at the floor in that way he had which Severus most intensely despised. Once, he had despised it because it meant he couldn’t read the brat’s mind and he was probably plotting mischief or hiding a smirk while Severus tried to tell him something for his own good. Now, he despised it because it meant Harry was shrinking back into himself and recoiling from advances he had already made. Severus repeated the words in a less cold tone, and Harry glanced up at him.

Severus held his eyes without trying to read his mind, this time. That would only put the boy off further, particularly if he sensed Severus doing it. And perhaps it was time Severus showed a measure of trust in Harry, in turn.

He waited, and Harry said, “No. I didn’t want to talk to him, about this or anything else. Not since—” He shook his head and fell silent, and Severus knew from that that Harry hadn’t filled his friends in about everything.

Or perhaps simply doesn’t want to refer to it aloud, Severus considered while Granger protested, “But this isn’t about Sirius, Harry! I’m sure that Professor Dumbledore would be able to discuss this with you without saying anything about Sirius. Right?” She squeezed Potter’s shoulder and glanced up at Severus as if she expected him to agree.

“I would not take that wager,” said Severus, and Granger looked as if a saint had climbed down off his pedestal and declared that he didn’t like his halo. 

“But he’s the Headmaster of this school,” Granger started to argue. In her eyes, Severus supposed, that would make him a saint, or the near equivalent. As a guardian of academic knowledge and an authority figure wrapped into one, it was hard to imagine someone Granger would respect more.

“Which means that he knows what about this?” Harry suddenly demanded. He looked as surprised as any of them that he had spoken up, and Severus thought the only one not surprised was his basilisk, who reached back up and wound about Harry’s leg again. “I mean, yeah, he’s knowledgeable and all, but what would he know about curse scars?”

Severus made out the sound of students nearing them down the corridors. He grimaced. This was not the ideal place to have such a conversation in any event, but having it in front of students was worse than simply having it in public. “Continue walking,” he directed. “Should someone ask a question, say that I have decided to make you serve one last detention.”

“But that’s lying,” said Granger.

Weasley spoke up for the first time. Severus did not think the boy stupid, as he once had, but he did seem to let Granger and Harry take the lead more often, unless he was angry. “We know it is, Hermione. But remember what happened last year when people kept finding out Harry’s secrets? It was horrible. Let’s keep walking.”

Granger’s mouth firmed down to a thin little line, and she did start walking. She thought she could fight all battles with the power of honor and truth, Severus thought, weary. And with the power of the Headmaster.

He wondered how soon she would become disillusioned. He knew that Harry was reluctant to enter conflict with the Headmaster, for a number of excellent reasons, so it might be a long time.

“Harry?” Severus murmured, keeping his voice low enough that it would be hard enough for the boy’s friends to overhear what he said, let alone students who were more focused on the upcoming summer holiday and Leaving Feast.

Harry walked without speaking for a bit, then whispered, “McGonagall was hinting some things about Dumbledore fighting Voldemort in the first war, but she wouldn’t tell me outright. What good is that? No one can tell me what they think ought to reassure me, because I’m not old enough for it or something?”

Severus sighed noiselessly. Minerva had not handled things as badly as she could have, but she had clearly underestimated the level of Harry’s distrust of the Headmaster. Not a hard thing to do, when Harry was so careful to let few people know about it.

“Dumbledore was active in the first war, yes,” he said, and Harry’s eyes shot to him. “He led a group called the Order of the Phoenix, which frequently opposed the Dark Lord. Several of the Order’s members were killed, in fact. Your parents among them. So it is likely that he would know more about the Dark Lord’s manifestations than many other people would.”

Harry closed his mouth a little, and then muttered, “If anyone would ever tell me about that, instead of just hinting around that it’s a dark secret I’m not meant to know, I wouldn’t mind it so much.”

“The Headmaster probably does not think you old enough to know,” said Severus, and shrugged when Harry looked at him. “But you are old enough to know the story behind your godfather’s supposed betrayal of your parents, and to reveal your abuse, and to know about Lupin. I believe that you will not dash away and use this knowledge in ways detrimental to your health.”

Harry’s friends had gone silent, watching Harry more than they did Severus. Harry walked in silence too for long moments, then let out a noiseless sigh of his own and muttered, “I really don’t think I can. I mean, I don’t even know where that forest is. It’s not like I could try to help the woman.”

Severus hadn’t even thought of that particular reason Harry might put himself in danger. He had thought more in terms of trying to conquer the Dark Lord.

But, of course, this was Harry, who considered himself duty-bound to act like an adult to his ridiculous godfather and save a basilisk from eternity alone in the depths of the castle.

“No, you could not,” Severus agreed, and glanced sternly at Harry. “Now, come to my office so that we may maintain the detention pretense, and I will give you a potion for the scar that will work better than the salve Pomfrey used.”

“Will it actually stop the bleeding if it has something to do with Voldemort?” Harry glanced from Severus to the basilisk, and Severus wondered what kind of silent conversation they were holding now. It was unlikely that the snake would know anything about bleeding curse scars if Harry didn’t; most of his knowledge seemed to come from what he saw or heard inside Harry’s head. 

“It should,” Severus agreed. “It was made to stop bleeding, whether or not it comes from a curse scar.”

They had turned towards the dungeons, and Granger had stepped up to Severus’s side and opened her mouth as if to ask another question, when a voice like a bark rang out, and Severus closed his eyes in silent exasperation. 

What are you doing with my godson, Snivellus?”

Chapter 30: Certain Things Averted

Chapter Text

Professor Snape and Sirius were glaring at each other, and Harry knew without asking that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better if someone didn't do something. He moved forwards, ignoring the uneasy way Dash was shifting on his waist and shoulders. Dash couldn't do this much better than he could. He would have to take over Harry's body to speak himself, and Harry thought there were people here who would pay more attention to that than to the words Dash said.

"Stop it," he said, and got between Sirius and Professor Snape.

"What do you mean?" Sirius stared down at him anxiously. He looked almost as wild as Lupin had when he was charging at Harry as a wolf, Harry thought. He reached out and smoothed his hand along Harry's forehead as if he was checking for a fever. "You can't mean that you want to protect him, Harry? Not really? Right?"

"I don't know what you mean about protecting anyone." Harry folded his arms and tried to actually remember Uncle Vernon's stern expression when he was scolding Harry for something. "Unless you were going to attack Professor Snape."

"He was leading you towards the dungeons." Sirius's voice dropped frighteningly low, and he turned towards Snape. This time, Harry thought he saw the edges of Sirius's face tremble, as though he was going to transform into a dog and spring. "What was he going to do with you? Did you ask him that?"

"He was going to give me something to make my scar stop bleeding."

That at least made Sirius pay attention, although Harry didn't think it was in a very good way. Sirius choked and reared back. "Why didn't you tell me that your scar wouldn't stop bleeding? I could have taken care of it for you!"

"Are you a Potions master?" Snape asked without lifting his voice or sounding very interested in the answer. "I didn't know that, Black. How much time we might have spent together debating something other than our mutual hatred, if I had." He reached out, and Harry saw Snape's hand from the corner of his eye, hovering over his shoulder. 

Don't touch me, he thought sharply, and hoped that Snape could hear him somehow. You'll only make things worse if you touch me in front of him.

Why should he care about that? Dash asked into his head, but Harry didn't answer. He kept standing where he was, while Sirius's face seemed to swell and darken. He opened his mouth, but couldn't answer because he was shaking too badly. 

"Listen," Harry cut in before anyone could say anything. "Yes, I think that he could help me. I was going to come and tell you, Sirius. But later. Right now, I just want it to stop bleeding. And I trust Professor Snape to help me." He could feel Hermione opening her mouth, but he didn't think she could speak before Sirius did. He was right.

"Why?" Sirius demanded. He glared at Snape. "All he does is tell you lies about your father and not treat you right in class!"

"He's treating me better now." Harry found that he was having to rest his elbow on Dash's head, so Dash wouldn't be able to rear up and bite Sirius. It was hard when Dash was so much longer than he was. "You heard what he said the other day. He hasn't treated me harshly since the newspaper article came out." He felt sweat sliding down the back of his neck. It was a struggle to keep calm, but at least his head didn't hurt so much right now. If his scar burst out bleeding again in front of Sirius, he knew Sirius would find a way to blame it on Snape somehow. "It's all right, really. You can let this go and I'll come talk to you later."

"I don't think so." Sirius was taking out his wand, with slow, deliberate motions. Harry wondered if he was trying to frighten Snape. Harry was frightened, anyway. He could feel his hands shaking and his heart beating wildly the way it used to do when Dudley and his friends chased him. "I need to show Snivellus that he can't simply interfere between me and you."

Harry felt something swelling up in his chest. It had to do with his shaking hands and his beating heart, but he didn't know what until it got to his mouth.

"He's not the one interfering! You're the one interfering!"

At least Sirius was looking at him now, and didn't act like he was trying to frighten Snape by clutching his wand. He did seem stunned, though. "Harry? What are you talking about?"

"You took Lupin's side!" Harry yelled wildly. He could feel Dash squeezing him around the waist, but if Dash was telling him to calm down, Harry didn't care. "You didn't apologize to me! You act like everyone is horrible to me except you, and then you're horrible to me! If you hurt Snape now, then I'm going to run away!"

Hermione was hanging onto one of his arms and saying something in his ear, but Harry couldn't hear what it was. Everything was happening, too much, the squeezing was there around his heart and his throat and his ribs and Harry wanted to throw up. Except he couldn't do that, either, and the world was beating and swaying back and forth like a pendulum and--

It's all right. I'm here.

Dash was there, he was always there, and Harry turned and grabbed him around the neck, holding him close. The pendulum stopped swaying, and Harry knew he could breathe again. He stood upright, his hands so close around Dash's neck that Harry would have been worried about choking him if he was human.

“I didn’t think you were ready to hear Remus’s secret.” Sirius was crouching in front of him, face pale and shocked, and he had one hand reaching out as though he assumed Harry would take it and let Sirius walk him away from the situation. “I was wrong about that. But I’m not on anyone’s side except yours now, Harry.”

“Then prove it,” Harry said. “Walk away and let me have the potion that Snape said he could give me, and I’ll talk to you later.”

Sirius reared back as if from a striking cobra, and spent some moments glaring at Snape. Then he whispered, “I don’t know what you did to him, Snape, but I’m going to find out. His father could resist the Imperius Curse, so I thought Harry could, too, but maybe he can’t, and—”

Harry’s head was very clear, suddenly. The swaying pendulum was gone as though it had never been, and Harry knew exactly what he needed to say and how he would say it.

“Get out,” he said. “Go away.”

Sirius stared at him. “What?” he whispered, and reached out with one hand that Harry batted aside.

“You said you wanted to be there for me,” Harry muttered. He was tired, but that clear, cold sensation remained. “Well, you haven’t proved it. You keep trying to take me away from Snape for some old grudge. You cared about Lupin more than me. You didn’t apologize. Right now, you still want me to be in pain because all you care about is my dad.” Harry sighed and shivered a little. He had never thought he would say that caring about his dad wasn’t a good thing. “You can’t think Snape is good.”

“He’s not!” Sirius sounded hysterical. He made a lunge at Snape that probably only failed because Harry was in the way and he stumbled to a stop. “You can’t possibly think that! Do you know how much he tortured us when we were in school? And he was best friends with your mum for a while, but then he called her a Mudblood—”

Harry’s shoulders were so tight they hurt. He didn’t know what happened. He only knew that he wanted Sirius to stop talking, and he felt as though something had shaken the corridor around him, a silent thunderclap of power, a flash of white light that wasn’t a flash. 

He blinked in the wake of it, and turned around to look at the others. Snape remained where he had been, although with his head ducked into his robe as if sheltering from something. Ron and Hermione were both gaping, Hermione with her hand over her mouth.

Dash said, That was accidental magic.

Harry stared down the corridor. Sirius was gone. The coldness had come back, but now it seemed to have drained down into his bones, and swallowed. I didn’t—I couldn’t have—

Killed him? Never. Dash sounded dismissive, as though the thought wasn’t worth a moment’s consideration. He stuck out his tongue and lapped it through the air, and then pulled back and draped himself over Harry’s shoulders with a satisfied sigh. He’s back in his quarters, from the smell of the shadows. Utterly stunned, and I hope that he’ll stay that way for a while.

What was the accidental magic, then? Harry whispered. He hoped it hadn’t been controlling Sirius’s mind somehow. That had been what the Dementors had done to him, and that meant Sirius would never forgive him.

Why do you want his forgiveness? Dash asked curiously, but continued before Harry could try to explain things that probably wouldn’t matter to a basilisk anyway. You told him to go away. So he went.

Harry swallowed. A second later, there was a pressing hand on his shoulder, and Snape turned him around and gazed at him searchingly.

Harry stared back at him, and Snape said, so softly that Harry knew even someone walking down the corridor couldn’t hear them, “Mr. Weasley. Miss Granger. That was accidental, wandless, forced Apparition. I trust you won’t speak to anyone else of what you saw today? Mr. Potter needs some privacy to recover.”

Hermione reached out and grabbed Harry in a tight hug. Then she took a step back and looked Snape in the eye. “You’d better take care of him, sir,” she murmured, before she grabbed Ron’s hand in turn and tugged him down the corridor.

Ron turned his head once, and gave Harry a single glance that was probably the most like a hug Harry had ever got from him. Harry took a single, long breath and managed to relax. Dash’s coiling around him loosened at the same time.

“Come to my quarters, Harry,” Snape told him. “We still need to get a salve for your scar, and a potion for the pain.”

Harry shrugged and followed. He felt more than a little drained, as if it was magic and not emotion that had bubbled up in him and then been shoved abruptly out an opening too small for it.

In a way, that is what happened, Dash said thoughtfully as he rested his chin on top of Harry’s head. The emotion was building up and it had to go somewhere, and so did the magic. It just all focused on the same goal: sending Black to his room.

Harry smiled wanly. He couldn’t really see it as humorous the way that Dash did. He knew he would have to face Sirius sooner or later, and he wondered what would happen when he did.

He will treat you respectfully.

Harry paused, then reached up and stroked Dash’s scales once. He knew who would be there to reinforce the respectful treatment.

*

Severus was not proud of the way his hands shook as he reached for the small pot that contained the salve for irritated skin and the vial that contained the pain potion. He was even less proud of the knowledge that plucked and prickled in the back of his mind, the knowledge that Harry had done that partially to protect him.

No. It was his anger at Black, nothing more. I cannot have mattered in that decision, or he would have said so. He said that he wanted Black to stop pretending to be on his side.

But Harry had stood between the two of them, and he had reacted with fury when Black had started implying that Severus was somehow controlling Harry with the Imperius Curse—

Does he even know what the Imperius Curse is? He may not have known and simply grown angry over the constant comparison to his father.

Of course, the Harry Potter Severus had thought he’d known before this last year would have been thrilled at being compared to his father. He would have followed Black around and clung to his stories of life before the war as talismans.

Severus rubbed his forehead with one hand and turned around with the salve and potion. It didn’t matter what he thought, honestly, or whether it was the reference to his father or the Imperius Curse or Severus or something else that had made Harry angry enough at Black to take action. What mattered was that it had happened.

And it was a drained, shaken, thoughtful boy who reached out to take the salve and the potion from Severus, swallowing the potion with a murmur of thanks and breaking open the seal on the pot to dip his fingers into the salve.

“One thing I don’t understand,” he whispered without looking at Severus. “Would I have hurt him when I did that?”

“I cannot be sure without checking on Black,” Severus said. He did not dare to be less than absolutely honest with the boy, not now. “But I doubt it. You didn’t want to hurt him, did you? You only wanted to send him away and stop him from speaking.”

“Yeah,” Harry breathed as he finished smearing the salve on the scar and handed the little pot back to Severus. “I wanted him to—to go away and stop.” He stared at the floor, then up at Severus. Severus braced himself for what came next.

“You were really close friends with my mum, then?”

“We were, at one point.” Severus told himself that the sensation of whips striking his soul was not so very painful, and at any rate, were perhaps what he deserved for being part of the reason this boy had no parents. He put the salve and the empty vial on the table and sat down, regarding Harry as directly as he could. “She saved me one day when your father and his friends were pranking me, and I was humiliated—she had seen me in a—a horrible position. I lashed out at her, which I should not have, and lost my only friend.”

“You called her what—Sirius said you did.” Harry’s voice was small.

“Yes,” Severus said.

Harry stared in the other direction. Severus was glad for the chance to recover from the living, breathing, twisting tension in the room, but then Harry’s eyes came back to him, and he found the tension had become like a basilisk of his own pressing him down.

Harry’s basilisk was watching him without moving, other than the faint flicker of his tongue in and out of those dangerous jaws. Severus wondered if he should feel threatened by those hidden eyes. On the other hand, the basilisk had shown no desire to move towards him so far, while Severus had not missed the way it had wanted to rear at Black.

Harry prevented it. 

Harry doesn’t always have a good sense of when he should forgive someone or let something go as useless.

But because Harry and not the basilisk was the one making the decisions here, Harry swallowed and said, “All right. I wish—I wish you hadn’t done that. But I want to hear more about my mum. Sirius doesn’t talk about her much. Do you think he didn’t know her as well as he did Dad?”

I think Black was so enchanted by James Potter that he could never see anyone else with an unbiased gaze. But Severus did something he had never thought himself capable of doing, and didn’t try to make someone else think badly of Black.

“I think that was the case,” said Severus. “Remember that he was friends with your father from first year, while—your parents only became well-acquainted in their last two years here.”

“Oh.” Harry looked down at his hands for a second, then looked back up at Severus. His face had hardened in an expression of determination Severus didn’t understand until he leaned forwards.

“I don’t like what he did,” Harry said. “I don’t like what did. I said I was going to have to be the adult with Sirius, and then I got angry like a child.”

The basilisk twined so tightly around Harry’s chest that Severus was surprised he could still breathe, but it didn’t make him move or take his eyes away from Severus’s face, which meant it was less tight than it should be. Severus simply shook his head and murmured, “No. What you did was a reaction borne of listening to an intolerable string of words in an intolerable situation. No one will blame you for striking back and doing something that might have saved your relationship with Black at all.”

“Is Sirius going to see it that way?” Harry hesitated for a moment. “Is Dumbledore?”

“I do not know.” Severus sighed. Even when he wanted to speak truth to Harry, it seemed impossible. Severus could only tell Harry what he thought any reasonable person would believe, but reasonable did not always include Black and Dumbledore. “You can only speak to them from a position of strength.”

“What do you mean?”

“Do not go into this apologizing and determining that everything is your fault,” Severus told him. “Otherwise, they will decide that they can take advantage of you, of your guilt, and they’ll make sure that you promise never to do anything like that again.” He paused. “Do you think you will never do anything like that again?”

“No.”

Harry’s voice was small. Severus ached in a way he had only ever felt when Lily died. He wanted to tell Harry that it was all right, that he could stay at the school during the summer, that he didn’t need to worry about Black being his guardian or Dumbledore doing anything to him, and he wanted to make it true.

But anything he might try would only end up backfiring if Albus and Black brought the legal might of their positions down on him, and Severus would rather do less than he could and remain near Harry than get sacked and sent away now. He no longer thought Albus might refrain from doing that. Yes, Severus had been useful as a spy, but he had two of his beloved Marauders back now, and Severus’s usefulness hadn’t prevented Albus from bringing Remus Lupin in to teach Defense even before he knew Black was innocent.

“Then listen and accept their apologies, if they offer them,” Severus told him. “Do not back down. Don’t become too visibly upset. Don’t let them play on your guilt. Use the excuse of accidental magic or needing to leave because you must control your basilisk if they won’t listen. Then come back and fight again.”

“In other words,” Harry said, his face harder than ever, “lie to them.”

“That is my advice, yes.” Severus wondered if Harry would reject it because of that. It wasn’t unheard of for his own Slytherins to reject advice that McGonagall or another professor had tried to give them.

Harry sat there, thinking. When he had finally opened his mouth to say something, Severus held a hand up. He could hear footsteps approaching his door, and the single firm knock a second later could have been heard by anyone. The basilisk had certainly turned his head in its direction, though in his case he was probably alerted by Harry.

“I want to see who that is,” said Harry, but then, instead of moving, he stared at Severus.

Severus rose to his feet, both impressed and amused. Either Harry was thinking ahead and had decided that it would make the most sense for Severus to answer his own door because the adult who had come would expect him to, or he simply wouldn’t presume to do anything in Severus’s own rooms.

Either way, when Severus opened the door and found Remus Lupin, most of his other emotions fled. He turned to the side so that Lupin could see his hand on his wand, and asked calmly, “Have you come to complain?” He knew exactly what hex he would use if the response was “yes.”

*

“My business isn’t with you, Severus. But thank you for helping Harry.”

Harry relaxed a little. Yes, Lupin wasn’t someone he especially wanted to see right now, but at least he could try to get along with Snape, and that was better than Sirius.

He was also a wolf who tried to kill you.

But you stopped him.

The fact that I had to stop him instead of him taking precautions to prevent the attack at all is the problem.

Harry saw Snape tense, and shift as if he would block Lupin’s entrance into the room. Harry shook his head and stood up. “I think it’s okay, sir,” he said. “As long as he’s going to apologize or do something other than scold me for using accidental magic on Sirius.”

“That was accidental?” Lupin did look stunned, his eyes flicking around the room for a second as if he thought a powerful wizard was hiding in a corner.

“Yes. I wanted him to go away, and he did.” Harry paused as Dash moved a portion of his tail down Harry’s legs. He wanted to be free to slither at Lupin if he attacked, he told Harry primly. Harry rolled his eyes in silence and added, “Did you need something, sir?”

“I’ve come to do something I should have done long since.” Lupin seemed to brace himself against air, and he nodded to Harry. “I should have realized how profoundly the attack and the lack of explanation afterwards would hurt you. I’m sorry.”

Not good enough, said Dash, almost vibrating his tail against Harry’s legs.

But I’m the one who has to decide whether I accept it, Harry reminded him, and faced Lupin again. “Why are you the one apologizing and not Sirius?” he asked quietly. “I mean, I know you could have told me about being a werewolf and made sure that your door was locked in the first place, but he also could have made sure that he told me and didn’t leave me alone in the house with you.”

Lupin sighed and touched one hand to his shaggy grey hair as if he could somehow lighten the color. Then he said, “How much did Sirius tell you about his family?”

“Not much,” said Harry, blinking. What did that have to do with anything? “They were Dark and they were pretty awful to him. And they were upset when he was Sorted into Gryffindor, he told me that.” It was one reason he could understand why Sirius was upset that Harryhad almost been Sorted into Slytherin.

Lupin,” Snape snarled softly. “You shall not make the Headmaster’s excuse.”

“This is an explanation, not an excuse,” Lupin said quietly, and turned to face Harry again. “Sirius was still a child when he escaped his family by running away to your father’s parents. But I don’t think he ever let go of the vast majority of what his family had done to him. He never escaped them mentally. He—he still suffers from wanting to defy them at every turn, and that includes irrationally hating Slytherins and what he sees as anything Dark.” He glanced at Dash. “He thinks of Parselmouths as Dark wizards. He doesn’t want to think of James’s son as Dark.”

“You are making the Headmaster’s excuse,” Snape said.

“I said it was irrational,” said Lupin, still sounding gentle and defeated. “And, Harry, I don’t ask you to forgive him. Some of what he’s done is going to take a lot of apologizing and atoning if he ever wants to make it better. But I do ask you to be patient with him, as patient as you can. He isn’t angry at you right now. He was startled and frightened by what you did, but after he told me what had happened, I told him he should have known better.”

“How comforting that it is still Black’s defenders coming instead of Black in person,” Snape remarked, and Harry saw Snape spinning his wand between his fingers out of the corner of his eye.

“Let me speak to him, please, Severus,” Lupin said. “I know that a lot of what Sirius did was inexcusable, but this time, it wasn’t to you.”

Snape’s wand stopped spinning. Lupin turned back to Harry. “Give him what chances you can,” he said. “I don’t want you to make excuses for him. Lots of people did that, and that’s how he turned into the person he is now. What I want you to do is listen to him, and talk to him about what you’re really feeling, and use magic to defend yourself again if you need to. That should knock some sense into him. What you did today already has.”

I shall defend you, as well, Dash announced, and flicked his tongue out.

Lupin looked down at Dash. Harry, whose emotions were churning so much that he didn’t really know what he was feeling, shook his head and stood upright when he did. “No,” he said. “I’m not going to leave Dash behind to make peace with Sirius. He’s going to come with me, no matter where I live this summer.”

Lupin gave a deep groan. “I didn’t know Sirius was on the verge of driving you away from your home.”

“Yes,” said Harry. “I really, really don’t want to go.” He was relaxing now. At least Lupin hadn’t immediately promised to punch Snape or something like that, and so Harry was going to make sure that Lupin listened. “But I can’t live with Sirius if he’s always going to be attacking people who helped me and never apologizing and only trying to make me into what he wants me to be.”

“The more you show him that you’re different, I think the more that he’ll accept that you are different.”

Harry snorted. “Because that worked so well with the Dursleys.” Of course, he hadn’t known that his accidental magic was in operation at all times, differentiating him from the Dursleys in ways he hadn’t recognized, and he hadn’t realized that Vernon and Petunia knew about magic, but it still meant Lupin’s plan didn’t make sense.

“Sirius can listen,” Lupin said. “He’s not like your relatives.”

“It occurs to me, Lupin,” Snape was saying, his voice low and intent, “that you persist in saying what Black will do, but you do not prove your point in what would be the best way. Drop in on the boy and Black at certain times—not the night of your transformation—and perhaps you will be able to see whether or not Black does treat him better.”

I thought Snape was a smart man, Dash murmured into Harry’s mind.

I think he still is, Harry said, but Lupin replied before he could engage in a full conversation with Dash.

“I won’t be able to do that, unfortunately.” Lupin shook his head, his eyes going once to Harry before they darted away. “I—I’m leaving. I don’t—I can’t trust myself around children, Harry, not after what happened with you.”

Harry was sure his mouth was open. The next second, he hoped that his eyes still looked stoic and strong, the way he wanted to look in front of Lupin, instead of flooded with guilt.

You have nothing to do with this, said Dash sharply in the same moment as Snape drawled, “Fleeing like the coward you are, Lupin?”

“Realizing that you’re right,” Lupin said, and glanced at Snape once before focusing on Harry again. “Even with Wolfsbane, which can protect my mind when I transform into a werewolf, I can’t protect others against my own forgetfulness and stupidity.” He hesitated, then knelt down in front of Harry. “Please be as strong as you can, Harry,” he whispered, embracing him. Dash hissed, but Harry simply stood stiffly for a moment, then hugged Lupin back. “Know that I think you’ll grow into a fine young man. And be as patient with Sirius as I know you can be.”

Be the adult again, said Dash, with a bitterness that would have made Harry flinch if he wasn’t thinking about other things. Just like he knows you can be. Just like you’ve had to be for the last few months because they can’t bear to be.

Harry drew in all his breath and asked, “Is that the only reason you’re leaving, Professor Lupin? Really?”

Lupin paused with his eyes widening until Harry thought he could see a touch of gold in the corners of them. Then he shook his head once and murmured, “You’re even sharper than I thought, Harry. No. The Headmaster has a task among the werewolves that he wants me to complete. He thinks that You-Know-Who might be hiding among them, or there might be some werewolves who know where he is right now. During the last war, he was in contact with them, especially near the end.”

“Did Dumbledore make you leave, then?” Harry wasn’t sure what to make of that. It wasn’t like he’d been very close to Lupin, but…

“No,” said Lupin, and his smile was sad. “I told you the truth, Harry. I don’t trust myself, and I do think that I shouldn’t be around children. Headmaster Dumbledore just thought of something I could do other than going away and moping.” He stood up and looked down at Harry for a long minute. “I’m sorry for a lot of things, Harry, but most of all for making you feel that you can’t trust anyone.”

Harry rolled a shoulder and thought about mentioning his friends and Dash and Snape, but in the end, he just nodded.

“I’ll try to keep in touch by owl,” Lupin went on, more cheerfully. “And you can always owl me if Sirius does something especially stupid.”

Harry managed to smile. “As opposed to ordinarily stupid? Right, Professor Lupin, I will.”

Lupin ruffled his hiar and turned away. For a second, he glanced at Snape, but Snape’s expression must have been upset, because Lupin sighed and left his rooms without another word.

I don’t like him, said Dash then, in the same instant that Snape came around and studied Harry’s eyes.

“You are not to blame yourself for what happened with him,” Snape all but demanded. “You are not to think that things would have been better if you had been the adult at all times. You should have been safe in your godfather’s company. Lupin should have known better than to forget to lock the door.”

Harry reached for the still center of himself where he had sometimes gone when he didn’t want to hear what the Dursleys were saying about his parents, and he nodded. “I know.”

Snape stared at him harder. Then he finally murmured, “But you intend to continue living with your godfather nonetheless?”

“He’s still better than the Dursleys.”

Snape closed his eyes for a fleeting second, then nodded. “True. But you are to come to me if you need help. If you have another dream. If you think that Black is doing something that might jeopardize your safety.” He looked for a second as though he’d bitten into a sour apple. “Perhaps I should say, seriously jeopardizing your safety.”

“The professors spend their holidays away from the castle, don’t they?” Harry asked carefully.

“Not all the weeks of summer.” Snape straightened as if he was a soldier going into battle. “And an owl can always find me.”

Especially one as smart as Hedwig, Harry finished the sentence for him. He nodded and smiled at Snape. “Thanks, sir.” 

I will be the one to tell you when I think you need to write to him, Dash murmured. I trust my own judgment more than I trust yours.

Harry hesitated once, then decided Snape might as well know. “Dash is the one who will tell me when I need to write to you, he says.”

Snape’s face relaxed in the first real smile Harry had seen from him probably since the article about his abuse came out. He nodded. “Good. The basilisk is a good judge of character.”

“He has a name,” Harry said, finding the ability to tease from Merlin knew where.

“Until there is another basilisk in the room, I see no need to use it. He will know who I mean.”

Professor Snape hesitated, then reached out and touched Harry’s shoulder once. The next instant, he was sweeping to the other side of the room.

Harry patted Dash’s scales as he let himself out. Even if I’m treated bad a lot of the time, there are a lot of people who care about me, too. I’m always going to remember that.

Chapter 31: Conversations On the Brink of Summer

Chapter Text

“You have to write to me every day so I know you’re going to be all right,” said Hermione, and leaned forwards and hugged Harry again. Apparently she thought the seventy times she’d already done it weren’t enough.

Harry smiled tiredly at her. He was feeling exhausted from his meeting with Lupin and Snape yesterday, and even more from what had happened with Sirius. He wanted to collapse on his bed and sleep for a week.

But they never allow you to do what you want, do they? Dash coiled himself thoughtfully around Harry’s neck. Sometimes I wonder if I should not threaten to bite them as well. It might be the only way to make them see reason.

Shut up, you’re only saying that because I didn’t let you bite Lupin or Sirius, Harry snapped back at him, and nodded to Hermione. “I’ll do that. Do you want an owl every day, too, Ron?” he added, because Ron was standing behind Hermione and rolling his eyes a little.

Caught out, Ron flushed and said, “Just one every week will be enough, mate.” He lowered his voice a little, although no one else was in the common room right now. They were upstairs, frantically packing for the Hogwarts Express. “That way, you get to write me longer letters with more details about what Sirius is doing.”

“You have to write me long letters, too!” Hermione immediately objected, her face turning a little red.

Harry smiled at her, amused. “Every day?”

That made Hermione fumble a little, and Dash and Ron both chuckled, although Hermione could luckily only hear one. She glared at Ron, then said, “Do whatever you want to do, Harry. But write to me, and be safe.”

Harry put one hand on Dash’s coil. “He won’t let me be anything but that.”

Hermione hesitated, nodded, then hugged him one more time. Ron settled for clapping him on the shoulder and muttering something about best friends and how Harry could always tell him everything that was bothering him. Harry nodded and sat down again in a chair near the common room fire while Ron and Hermione both disappeared up the stairs, Ron to pack and Hermione to make sure she had all the books she wanted to take with her.

Harry felt…almost empty. It was going to be a better summer than he’d ever had before, within reach of the castle and without Dursleys, but it was also going to be strange and not the one he’d hoped he could have had when he first got to know Sirius. Perhaps he’d been silly to wish for anything that good, though.

You deserve anything good the world can offer. Dash sounded as angry as a hornet. I wish you would stop feeling otherwise. He twined himself firmly around Harry’s neck and tightened there like a noose until Harry tapped him on the nose to get him to stop. I wish you would start feeling like I do, that nothing anyone can do is enough for you.

Harry snorted. That sounds like a good way to end up permanently dissatisfied.

Dash probably would have answered, but someone tapped on the portrait of the common room then. The Fat Lady immediately began to speak. “Just because you don’t know the password is no reason to knock on me, young man!”

Harry stood up and went to open the portrait from the inside, curious. The Fat Lady swung open, but she was still talking about disrespect and all the rest of it.

Draco stood there, his arms folded and his nose in the air, probably because of the Fat Lady’s rant. It took a long moment for him to put it down and consider Harry. “Is she always this rude?” he asked, gesturing at the Fat Lady.

That set her off again. Harry didn’t think it worthwhile to listen to her, so he didn’t. “Draco, what are you doing here?” he asked.

“I came to say good-bye, of course.” Draco leaned forwards and stared him in the eye. “I heard something about what happened earlier. Apparently a portrait saw you banish Black back to his rooms. It was all they could talk about.”

Harry flushed. “And so now everyone in the school is going to be talking about it?” he muttered.

Draco shrugged. “I doubt it. There are portraits that gossip to students and ones that don’t. This one only told me as much as it did because they owed a debt to the Malfoy family when they were alive.”

Harry narrowed his eyes. “You have your own private portrait spy? Who is it?”

Draco looked smug, and didn’t answer.

Harry rolled his eyes, because that was exactly like Draco, but before he could say anything else, Draco was focusing on him as if he was the guilty one. “You were going to leave without telling me about this?”

“I would have written to you about it.” Harry felt Dash loop down his leg, and ignored him for the moment. He could be exploring or doing something else, but he wasn’t talking about attacking people, which made it an improvement over the rest of today. “I just—I needed time to think about it. It was overwhelming.”

“Why did you do it?” Draco seemed perfectly willing to stop scolding Harry as long as he got to discuss it with him.

“Because he was threatening Snape,” said Harry. “Snape was just trying to help me with my scar, and Sirius decided he was taking me down to the dungeons to hurt me.” Harry sighed. He seemed to still feel the burst of power and magic that had built up inside him, and how it had lashed out at Sirius. “It’s not something I want to do again.”

“You did it in a place where it’s supposed to be impossible,” Draco said. “Sending someone Apparating, I mean. Not that forced Apparition is very common in the first place. Most people hold someone by their arm and pull them along if they want them to come on the journey.” He folded his arms and looked Harry thoughtfully up and down. “I know you want to say you’re not all that powerful, that you’re a Parselmouth and bonded to Dash by accident…”

“Well, I didn’t know what was going to happen!”

I resent the implication that you would not have come into the Chamber of Secrets if you had known.

Harry rolled his eyes. You’re wonderful, Dash, and you know I think you are, because you’re inside my head. Stop fishing for compliments.

Dash apparently had to fall silent to think about that one for a moment, while Draco continued. “But you have to be more powerful than you thought, if you did that.”

Harry rubbed his forehead. His scar wasn’t itching or bleeding or hurting right now, but it was still more prominent than usual, and different than touching bare skin. He dropped his hand when he noticed Draco staring at him with a bit of awe. “What does it matter? If I have some more magical power than I thought, I mean?”

“You don’t know?”

“Know what?”

Draco lowered his voice and glanced around ostentatiously again. “There are some people who already think you might be the reincarnation of Salazar Slytherin. This is going to add fuel to the fire.”

Harry waved one hand hard. He wondered if he could properly show his disgust of the whole idea if he didn’t. Draco was laughing at him, and so was Dash. Harry knew how Ron must have felt, now. “Draco. Don’t.”

Draco paused and looked at him. “What?”

“You said one portrait told you this and I didn’t have to worry about it spreading gossip around.” Harry found his eyes and cheeks were stinging, and he didn’t know how much longer he could hang onto his calmness. “But you’re talking like the news is going to get around. Who are you going to tell?”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Draco said softly, and Harry felt a hand on his arm, shaking it roughly. He opened his eyes, hastily blinking away the tears so that he wouldn’t look even more ridiculous, and found Draco frowning at him. “I only intended to tell my father, who already knows things about you that he isn’t going to tell anyone else. And he can change the story or disguise it when he tells other people, so that no one has to know exactly what Black did.”

“Or what I did,” Harry said firmly.

Draco blinked. “Why would you want to disguise that?”

Harry looked straight at Draco, but Draco only went on looking back, now and then blinking. He really doesn’t understand, Harry realized, a little numbly. He would tell everyone if it was him, probably just so that he could get some notice for being strong and famous. 

I don’t understand, either, Dash said peacefully. Being known as powerful might reduce the number of people who try to attack you in the future. But we have already established that I am only an ignorant basilisk, since you insist on returning to the house of the smelly dog-man.

Harry didn’t bother responding. He only shook his head at Draco and said, “I don’t want people to be afraid of me. Some people are always going to be afraid of me because I’m a Parselmouth and I have Dash,” he added, when he saw Draco’s mouth opening, because he knew exactly what Draco was going to say. “But I don’t want other things to get around. I don’t want them to be afraid of my accidental magic.”

Draco looked at him long and hard enough that Harry really didn’t have any idea of what he would decide. He found himself holding his breath in anticipation.

*

It doesn’t make any sense. He could have allies who aren’t Black or even Professor Snape. He could get well-known for something that isn’t being the Boy-Who-Lived. He might get some respect from people who would otherwise oppose him on principle. Why does he want to hide this?

From the steely gleam in Harry’s eyes, though, he wasn’t going to back down, and he really didn’t want Draco to tell his father. It was probably one of those Gryffindor-Slytherin differences that Draco wouldn’t ever understand. 

Draco squinted a little and said slowly, “I can keep it secret from my father, at least for a while. But that doesn’t mean I can keep the portrait or Professor Snape from telling him, if they decide to.”

“I know,” said Harry, and looked enormously relieved, his eyes shining in a way that made Draco’s stomach squeeze. “But if you can keep it secret for a while, that’s fine.”

“So you’ll let me tell him eventually?” Draco pounced on that. He would get in trouble if his father found out that Draco had known and didn’t tell him, but this might be a way that would let him get out of trouble again.

“Yes,” said Harry. “If you have to, if he asks you, you can.”

Draco nodded. “Good,” he drawled. “Then I can ask for something in return.”

“What?”

Draco smirked at the outraged expression on Harry’s face. But it was only slightly outraged. Harry had to have known this was coming. Dash also hadn’t lunged and tried to bite his face off the way he probably would if he thought Draco was a true threat to Harry, so that was something. “I want you to practice for me.”

“Practice what? It’s not like I can stop using Parseltongue anyway, not with Dash around.” Harry stroked the back of Dash’s neck and avoided Draco’s eyes for a second, seeming embarrassed. 

“Not that,” said Draco. “Practice focusing your accidental magic on objects. I wouldn’t ask you to hurt a person,” he added, when Harry turned accusing eyes on him. “I’m not a monster, remember?”

Harry flushed and looked at the floor. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right.” Draco waved his hand. They were both struggling to figure out the limits of friendship between a Gryffindor and a Slytherin. “But I want to know what you can do when you’re not angry at a person. Can you use your anger and your frustration at other times? How strong are you, really? That’s the sort of thing I want to know. If we’re going to share it as a secret, I’d like to know exactly what magnitude of secret I’m helping you hide.”

“My friends know, too.”

“And so do Professor Snape, and the portrait, and Black,” said Draco, with a nod. “But do you really think that any of them are going to encourage you to practice this the way I am? The way you might need to?”

Harry shut his eyes. Dash was watching him now, and Draco had the impression of another intense, silent conversation from which he was closed out. He had almost ceased to resent it. He stood and waited, knowing he would learn certain things from what Harry said after the conversation, and how he reacted.

Finally Harry opened his eyes and said with extreme reluctance, “Dash thinks it’s a good idea.”

“You have approval from me and your friendly neighborhood basilisk,” said Draco, winning another small smile from Harry. “What more do you need?”

Harry traced one small scale in the rippling wash of paler green to darker green on Dash’s neck, his head bowed and his eyes locked on the scale. “I just don’t want to use it on people,” he whispered. “Dash thinks I might need it to defend myself. I don’t want to fling people into walls, or even blow them up the way I did my aunt.”

Draco stared at him. It seemed to him that it was a little too late to worry if Harry had already made someone explode. But there were a few other things that phrase could mean.

And he wouldn’t get anywhere right now if he tried to make Harry talk about it. “Well, ease your mind, then. I don’t want you to practice it on people, because that would make it too obvious what you were doing. I want you to do it so you’ll know how strong you are.”

“Lots of things matter more than magical strength,” said Harry.

Draco met him stare for unimpressed stare, and Harry was the one who half-nodded and muttered, “But I suppose it would be good to know.”

“It would,” said Draco. “It would be excellent to know.” He softened a second later, reaching out and putting one hand on Harry’s arm. He didn’t really want to, because it was hard for him to understand some of Harry’s objections, but at least he knew that he wouldn’t get much further trying to push Harry, either. “Think about it this way. Maybe you can defend yourself against the Dark Lord if you learn enough about it.”

Harry nodded. Then he hesitated, muttered, “You can visit me sometime this summer, right?” and gave Draco a quick hug that Draco could have closed his eyes and missed. He had barely even felt the touch of Harry’s arms around him.

Draco nodded. “Of course I can.” He smiled at Harry, touched his shoulder once, and turned away from the Gryffindor common room. He had some packing to finish himself, and he would never hear the end of it from his parents if he arrived at the train station looking flustered. There was always someone in Slytherin who would be happy to offer that information to Mother and Father even if he had managed to smooth all traces away.

“Have a good summer,” Harry called after him.

Draco turned around, gave Harry a serious nod, and said, “You had better. And practice.”

It wasn’t Harry’s mumbled reassurance that really convinced Draco he would. Dash was meeting Draco’s eyes, arching his neck a little to do it. And he bobbed his head in a discreet nod as Draco watched.

Good, Draco thought, and went his way happier and more confident than he had before.

*

“Can I talk to you, Harry?”

Tell him no and that you’ll be upstairs checking under the bed for werewolves.

It was too bad Dash didn’t care about hurting Sirius’s feelings, because Harry would sometimes have used his suggested replies if he did. He turned around instead and nodded to Sirius. “I think we have to, don’t we?”

Sirius sagged for a second, as if he had hoped that Harry would just want to talk to him because he liked him. But then he nodded determinedly, and turned around and walked into the drawing room. Harry did the same thing, trying to ignore the increased hum of protective enchantments on the windows. He thought Dumbledore had put them up, and he would probably say that he was worried about Voldemort if Harry asked. Sirius must have told him about Harry’s scar bleeding, at the very least.

But Harry wondered whether those enchantments might also respond to accidental magic. He didn’t know if he would be able to keep his promise to Draco.

I can help with that.

Sirius sat down on the big black couch against one wall and started speaking before Harry could ask how. “You—I haven’t treated you fairly, Harry. I apologize. And this is something I ought to have told you before, but I didn’t know how to say it.”

Harry took a cautious breath. It felt as though his lungs had been crushed flat and now he was breathing normally again. Of course, he didn’t know if Sirius was going to keep that promise to tell him the truth or not.

And you don’t know if he means the apology.

For right now, though, Harry didn’t find anything wrong with smiling cautiously at Sirius and asking, “What should you have told me before?”

Sirius stared at the wall behind him with hollow eyes. Then he faced Harry, and Harry felt his smile slip. Sirius looked absolutely devastated, as though he thought Harry was going to march out of the house any second.

Maybe he hates me so much for making Lupin leave that he wants me to move out.

You had nothing to do with making Lupin leave—

Sirius interrupted Dash, although of course he couldn’t know that. “Do you remember the question I asked you a while ago, Harry? About Divination?”

Harry stared at him, blinking. He wanted to flinch a moment later, because he was sure it made him look stupid, but it still took a reminder from Dash for him to bring the memory back. “Oh. When you asked me why I was in Divination?”

“Yes.” Sirius seemed to be bracing himself. He smoothed one hand down the arm of the couch, but snatched it back when he saw Harry looking at him. Or maybe it was when he saw Dash looking at him. Harry didn’t actually know.

You should trust your instincts when it comes to the smelly dog-man. He is too dangerous to be handled any other way.

“What about it?” Harry still couldn’t think why Sirius would be interested in his reasons for choosing Divination as a class.

Sirius spent a minute contemplating his hands. Then he looked up. “Dumbledore told me something about you. About—prophecies.”

Harry could barely understand the last word, because all the spit seemed to have drained out of Sirius’s throat, but Dash was already hissing. Harry grabbed him around the middle so he wouldn’t go slithering at Sirius, and asked, “What? Is there a prophecy about me?” Then a realization hit him, about how stupid he would be to think it was only about him, and he added, “About me and Voldemort?”

Sirius forgot to flinch at the name, still staring broodingly at him. Then he nodded and closed his eyes.

“Dumbledore told me,” Sirius whispered, “that You-Know-Who came after you because he heard you were destined to kill him. And you’d have to face him again before it was all said and done.”

He opened his eyes, and they were shining with tears. “Harry, I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I just got so focused on protecting you and giving you a childhood that I didn’t want to tell you about Remus because I thought you were already burdened with enough. And then I thought—I wondered if it was better for you to find someone else other than me to raise you. Someone who would be better at teaching you how to survive. Because I don’t know how to help you survive dueling him, and I’m scared.”

Harry sat there. He knew he should say something. He just didn’t know what to say.

He’s lying.

Harry blinked and looked down. Dash was wrapped around his waist, his head sticking out and projecting towards Sirius. Harry stroked his plume without thinking about it. About what? The prophecy? He was calm, he thought. He was, and it was sort of absurd, when he had just been told he really had to kill Voldemort once and for all. But maybe Sirius’s words had cleaned him out of emotion and so he had to wait until it came back.

I cannot tell. Dash swayed in agitation and flicked his tongue out again. I only know that he is lying about something.

Harry took a deep breath and looked up. “Dash says you’re lying about something. What is it?”

Sirius froze, and looked from Harry to Dash. Dash’s eyelids were quivering. Harry grabbed him around the neck. Keep your gaze for someone who’s done something worse.

At the moment, I know of no one who has.

Harry shook his head. I don’t want you to.

Dash’s eyelids calmed down. Harry turned back to Sirius. “You want me to trust you again, after all you’ve done to me?” he asked. “Trust me now. Tell me what it was.”

I still sound like the adult. But if being an adult was so repulsive to him, then Harry knew he would have stopped giving Sirius any more chances.

Sirius shook his head. “I don’t know what he means. There was a prophecy. That was another reason I kept Remus’s secret from you. I am scared.” He reached out a tentative hand, and ruffled Harry’s hair when Harry sat there and didn’t try to stop you. “I don’t know what you want me to tell the truth about.”

He ended on such a helpless note that Harry was convinced. Dash flicked his tongue sulkily and announced, Now he doesn’t smell as if he was lying. But I know what I smelled.

Could you have mistaken it for something else? It’s not something you would smell most of the time, is it? Harry couldn’t really picture an animal lying.

I know what I smelled.

Dash said nothing after that, and Harry sighed and turned back to Sirius. “I want—I just want you to tell the truth,” he said, and his chest ached in a way that he thought might be a sign of his emotions returning. “I want to trust you. I want to live with you. I just—I can’t do that if you lie to me.”

“No,” said Sirius. “No, I won’t, Harry, not ever again.” He looked as though he had rescued Harry from walking off a cliff or something, the way he was smiling and sitting straight in his chair.

Harry blinked at him. It’s like…the opposite of what it was like living with the Dursleys. Sirius really does want to help me and know me better. I’m the one who’s in control here, if I want to be. Not the way it was at the Dursleys, where I was just the victim.

Harry sighed. He had told Draco the truth. Power wasn’t really interesting to him, and he wasn’t interested in exercising it over Sirius, either.

But he would do it if he had to. He straightened in his chair, too. “All right,” he said. “Tell me about the prophecy again. Did Dumbledore tell you exactly what it said?”

As Sirius started to answer, Harry felt Dash hug him especially close, one loop of his body around Harry’s waist that was nearer than the others, his scales picking up Harry’s heat. I want you to practice magic the way you promised Draco you would.

I already said I will. But why do you care?

So you can defend yourself when the smelly dog-man turns on you.

Harry had no answer for that, and something interesting to listen to. So he stroked Dash, and was still. 

Chapter 32: Practice Makes Perfect

Chapter Text

Hello, Harry. You would tell me if something was wrong, wouldn’t you? was the first line of Hermione’s letter, and it made Harry sigh and lean back on his pillow. He wanted to have a happy summer. How could he when people were constantly asking him if something was wrong?

Perhaps you should have put the smelly dog-man in his place. Then people would ask you that less often.

Harry reached out a hand to idly stroke Dash, who was beside him and occupying more than half the bed, although he’d said that was okay because part of the space he was occupying was on top of Harry. I have no idea if it’s just about Sirius. Sirius being fairer to me wouldn’t make the abuse go away, or the Dursleys. Or the people who think I’m wrong for being abused.

All you have to do is shrink me and let me ride the owls back. I’m certain I could manage the magic to grow again on my own.

Harry snorted. No. But he knew it was no good denying that the option was an attractive one, because Dash was in his head and could hear him.

And it was exasperating to get Howlers from people who were mainly concerned that he wasn’t “strong” enough and that meant he might not be able to defend them from Voldemort. Especially because Harry was starting to get worried they might be right.

Shrink me. Dash lifted his head and parted his jaws, sagging them sideways, in a yawn that he deliberately exaggerated whenever Sirius was around. Put me in the Headmaster’s food if you are not going to send me to the distant people who bother you.

I’m not going to do that to anybody. Harry sat up, a thought coming together that had been bothering him for a little while. But I can make sure that I’m strong and ready to take on Voldemort.

That should not be the only thing you do with your life.

Harry looked down at the heavy coil lying on his hand, as if Dash was trying to prevent him from reaching for a fire. Even if there’s a prophecy that says I’m the only one who can defeat him?

Dash turned and stared at him, wreathing his head sideways. Harry snorted again. Of course, he already knew what Dash thought about the prophecy. He had made it abundantly clear. 

“I want to get stronger,” Harry said aloud. That felt less intimate and more what he needed at the moment. “And I don’t want to reply to Hermione’s letter right now.” Ron’s he would reply to today, maybe. Ron was talking about how Bill had been promoted by the goblins and was going to be able to pay for a second trip to Egypt for the whole family, and they might also be able to visit his other older brother, Charlie, in Romania. Nice things, fun things. “So I’m going to start training my wandless magic.”

Dash waved his tongue around as though scenting delicious prey. I can help you with that!

How? Harry stood up and looked at Dash in interest. He had thought Dash might agree to sometimes be Apparated or a target of his wandless spells, but other than that, he didn’t know what Dash could do to help him.

By giving you some of my magic. Dash curved his neck around in a way that was definitely meant to be cute. I am just learning to do that.

When were you going to tell me? Harry grumbled, but he couldn’t feel too bad about it. Dash hadn’t told him about being able to speak with Harry’s voice or summon snakes out of shadows, either, but those had been useful at the time.

Just now, said Dash, unhelpfully, and poured himself off the bed. Let us go up to Hogwarts and find Professor Snape.

Harry hesitated. He hadn’t asked permission to go to Hogwarts so far, because Sirius was so touchy about Snape and it was only a couple of days into the summer.

Dash turned his head around patiently. Do you want the smelly dog-man to find out that you are practicing banishing things? And there is little private space in this house. There are plenty of private and protected spaces in Hogwarts.

That was true, at least. And Harry had to admit that Snape would probably know where all of them were, at least if they were in the dungeons. Fine. But he was going to tell Sirius where they were going before they left.

If you think he will not try to stop you.

Harry rolled his eyes, because he didn’t actually need Dash’s permission, and bolted down the stairs. Sirius was in the drawing room reading a book, and now and then chuckling at something one of the moving pictures apparently did. He looked up at Harry, and his face became a little more drawn and white. 

That is not your fault. Dash had a little singsong intonation to the thought that he’d perfected, although Harry had never worked out who he thought he was imitating.

Harry ignored him and asked, “Do you think I can go to Hogwarts and visit Snape for a while?” That he wasn’t going to talk about the wandless magic was a given, as far as he was concerned. Sirius would probably want to be his teacher, and Harry didn’t trust him enough for that. 

That is the smartest thing you have said today.

Harry waited, petting Dash a little while he coiled most of himself around Harry’s chest and shoulders, and Sirius finally said, “Oh, all right. But make sure that you’re back by dinner. And if Snape tries to give you any potions, refuse them. You don’t know what kind of revenge he’d try to take on you.”

Harry blinked. “Why would he want to take revenge on me?” If anyone, he had thought Snape would be aiming for Sirius.

“Because you’re so much like your dad.” Sirius’s face softened, and he looked Harry up and down as if even his feet reminded Sirius of his dad. “Snape and your dad didn’t get along, you know that. I think James would be rolling in his grave to know you’re spending this much time around him.”

Harry had found that the best response was silence. So he waited again, and Sirius nodded and sighed and muttered, “I just wish I knew how to help you more.”

“You help me a lot,” Harry said, and escaped out the back door while Sirius was still grinning at him. It always helped to leave on a good note if he could.

You are learning how to manipulate him, Dash said, as he dropped down from Harry’s shoulder to investigate an interesting squeak in the grass. Harry was also learning how to compensate for the intense flood of hunting interest and vertigo in his mind, and he only shook his head and kept walking. Snape will approve.

I don’t intend to tell Snape about it.

What a shame, said Dash, but in that absent voice that meant he had spotted an actual mouse, and Harry wasn’t surprised when his head jolted forwards and he snatched something up, swallowing it whole. He doubted Dash would remember this or push him to tell Snape. 

Dash flowed on both sides of him as he went up to Hogwarts, finding several other mice and one small frog, and Harry only urged him onto his shoulders again when they got into the vicinity of the school, where Dumbledore might see.

*

Severus was deep enough in brewing that he might not have heard the knock he was sure Harry gave at his door. But there was an alarm set up on the edge of his cauldron that would flash when Harry came into the school, and he managed to add the last few ingredients in a hurry, levering the Skin-Growing Potion out of the cauldron with a ladle and looking critically at it. The color would win no awards, but he knew the slight difference in shade wouldn’t affect the use.

He corked the vial, put it aside, and stepped from the lab into the drawing room where he usually entertained his few visitors. It felt as though he had put on dress robes over his old and shabby ones. The lab was where he both lived and worked, the heart of his existence. The drawing room was there for those who thought one should live in different places.

He opened the door as Harry was raising his hand, probably for the second knock. The basilisk was entwined around his ankles and legs. Severus nodded to him and looked up to meet Harry’s eyes. “Are you well?”

Harry blinked, interrupted in his first words as he had been in his knock. Then he smiled. “Yeah,” he said. “And you sound like Hermione.”

Severus wanted to say that he had never waved his hand around in class until the professors grew tired of looking at it, but he only stepped back and waved Harry into his quarters. “What have you come to ask me?”

Harry didn’t protest, the way that, say, Albus, would have, and pretend he had come for a purely social visit. He turned around and locked his elbows against his sides as if pushing off against his ribs. Severus raised his eyebrows and waited.

Harry finally blurted, “I need a place where I can practice wandless magic. Draco thought it might be a good way to get ready to use it as a weapon against people who would try to hurt me.”

Why can you not practice it in a secure room in Black’s house? were the first words that sprang to Severus’s mind. But he would not be so stupid as to speak them when he knew the answer. He considered for a moment, then nodded. “Very well. There are a few dungeon classrooms that might serve. They were once used for Potions, but they were ruined by explosions.”

Harry’s mouth opened a little. “Doesn’t that mean they’re dangerous, sir?” The basilisk lifted his head a little higher and flicked his tongue out, as if scenting for threats or dangers to his ward.

“No,” said Severus. “They have stains on the floor and walls and cracks in the floor, but those are easy to dodge if you know what you’re doing.”

Harry was looking oddly thoughtful. Severus glared at him. “Do not pull these classrooms into your usual list of places to go to take risks.”

“I don’t take risks,” Harry muttered as he followed Severus down the corridor towards the first of the classrooms he had mentioned. “Risks find me.”

Severus didn’t answer. He was thinking. While wandless magic was not part of the usual course offerings in Defense the Dark Arts, it might be the only chance he would ever get to teach his favorite subject.

And if it was to Harry, and Harry was learning things that Black would disapprove of…

Severus smiled contentedly. It would serve Black right for caring more about the ghosts of his past than about the living boy who had needed his help.

*

Harry looked around the classroom in wonder. Snape was right, it didn’t look that dangerous. Yes, there was a crack in one wall, but it had magic glowing around it like Floo powder, and Harry didn’t think it would suddenly collapse. And there were splinters that might have come from exploded tables, but Harry wouldn’t get hurt unless he stepped on those. He wouldn’t be so stupid.

The really impressive thing was the stains, though.

There were green ones like stars all around the crack in the wall. And there were some hanging like the strokes of giant white claws down from the ceiling all the way to the floor. And there was a gigantic hand-shaped purple bruise in the center of the floor, the most impressive one, which pattered away into smaller handprints near the ends of the splotch.

“What happened with that?” Harry asked, pointing at the purple stain. “Why don’t you ever teach us to make potions that do that?”

Dash looked up at him through his closed eyelids, but Harry couldn’t really tell what he was thinking. For a second, his tail swished, and then he slid away from Harry and seemed content to explore the outside of the purple stain, his tongue lashing as though he could pick up the scents of the ancient explosion.

Snape turned around, and for a second, he was stiff and stern as if Harry asking questions was the bad thing Uncle Vernon had always told him it was. Harry was about to shrink back and apologize, when Snape sighed and muttered, “That was an intense accident. An almost perfectly brewed Draught of Living Death was emptied into the cauldron of an early version of Wolfsbane. This was the result.” He swept out one hand that included most of the classroom, to Harry’s way of thinking. “There is no way you would cause a stain this large unless you were working with those potions both at once, which you won’t. Not even if you take NEWT Potions.”

Harry cocked his head. “Then why were students working with them in here? Sir,” he added swiftly, when he saw the way Snape was looking at him.

But Snape only shook his head a little, as though it actually irritated him to be called by a title, and said, “It was not students. Shall we begin?” He waved his wand, and several of the splinters flew together. When he snapped his wand down again, there was an actual chair there, more impressive than most things Harry had seen people do with Transfiguration. “Do you want to learn to banish things and people, or do something else with your magic?”

“Was it you, sir?” Harry found that he couldn’t let the idea of the stain go. And hadn’t someone said something about Snape working to improve Wolfsbane? Although Harry couldn’t remember if it was something someone had said around the school or an article he’d read in the paper.

Snape took a sharp breath and answered, “Yes, it was. It taught me not to mix those two potions in the same vicinity. Shall we begin?”

He isn’t angry, said Dash, who was investigating a corner in which, he told Harry, there was a high possibility a rat was living. Just irritated with himself for past mistakes.

“Angry” and “irritated” sounded like the same thing to Harry, but he only nodded and said, “Yes, sir. I want to learn how to banish things. I think that would be the best defense.”

“Good,” said Snape, and paused. “How are your marks in Defense, Harry?”

It’s not strange when he calls you Harry, Dash said, and wriggled most of his blunt nose into the corner. Don’t think it is.

I can think it is all I want, as long as I don’t actually say that to his face, Harry argued back, while knowing he sounded petulant, and then faced Snape and said, “As good as they can be when only one of the teachers was decent, sir.”

Snape nodded as if he’d expected that. “Very well. Then I will assume you have not learned some of the basic theory. When you banished Black to his rooms,” and there was a twitch of Snape’s lips as though he was holding back a smile, “what emotion were you primarily feeling?”

“Anger. Desperation.” Harry shuddered a little, and finally mentioned the fear he had that had bubbled in the back of his mind like a cauldron since he’d talked to Draco. “What am I going to do if anger is the only emotion I can use for wandless magic? I can’t get angry at a chair or a desk the way I could at a person. And I don’t want to be angry all the time, either.”

“There are other emotions you can use,” Snape said, and his voice slid into a tone Harry had never heard him use before. Maybe this is how he lectures when he thinks all his students aren’t dunderheads. “What is important is feeling them and thinking them at the same time.”

Harry blinked. That was probably a part of the Defense theory Snape had said he didn’t know, which made him feel a little stupid. “I don’t know what that means, sir.”

“You feel them, but you allow the passion to pour through you and over you,” Snape explained. “Like swimming. The emotions are the water, but you are not. You are within the water, and you keep your thinking mind free of their influence. Most magic is powered by emotions, in one way or another, if only the desire to see the spell completed. You felt the sharpest edge of that desire when you banished Black.”

Harry nodded, still unsure where this was going. He understood what Snape was saying, but he had no idea how to just let the emotions pour over him in a torrent.

“You feel them, and you think about them,” Snape said, and raised his wand. A small pattern of green lights began to rotate around his head. Harry blinked and tried to focus on them. He wondered if it was only coincidence that Dash turned around and lifted his neck at the same time. “You concentrate on something else first,” Snape continued, his voice soft and lulling. “Your trick your mind into focusing on that thing. Then you summon the emotion, and pour it like thick water all around the thing you are already concentrating on.”

“But if you know what you’re doing, how can you trick your mind?” Harry strained his eyes to look at the little green things. They looked like stars sometimes, and flowers others, but then the points would vanish back into the dots of light, and he wasn’t sure. “I would keep thinking about tricking my mind instead.”

“I did not say it was easy.” Snape’s voice was gentle now, not lulling. “But I believe it is a trick that will allow you to practice better wandless magic than not using it would.”

Harry swallowed, nodded, and said, “You want me to focus on the green things?”

“The Lullaby Dots. They are a spell sometimes used by mothers to soothe their children to sleep,” Snape said. “Yes. I think they are a good choice. They are what I learned to focus on when I was teaching myself a different branch of magic.”

Harry blinked. What branch of magic is that? It seemed strange Snape was trying to teach him this way if he didn’t know about wandless magic himself.

But his tactics, or theory, or whatever they were, still sounded good, so Harry focused on the dots and tried to think about how green they were, how bright they were, how strange they looked spinning around Snape’s head.

That is not the way to do it, said Dash in a bossy voice. You’ll only fall asleep like the children Snape mentions if you do it that way. Here, let me.

Harry thought he was going to create some sort of other distraction for Harry to focus on, but instead he reached into Harry’s mind and touched something there. It felt like a spring that had been holding thoughts back. Harry winced and touched his forehead, which was aching and hot, as if he had a fever. 

What did you do? Harry asked Dash at the same moment as Snape said, “Harry?” in a rapid voice.

I gave you the ability to focus on something like the Lullaby Dots without falling asleep, said Dash, and wriggled more of his body into the crack in the corner. Thank me later. This smell is really fascinating and strong down here.

“I’m all right, sir,” said Harry, when he realized Snape was still scowling at him in concern. And it was strange to know that he could distinguish the concerned scowl from the merely annoyed one. “Dash improved things somehow. He said I would just fall asleep before, but now I should be able to concentrate on the Lullaby Dots.”

Snape’s eyebrows went up, and stayed there. “Then he can exercise a familiar bond to interfere with your thoughts?” he asked. “I would not have thought that a bond with a basilisk would have that ability.”

Harry shrugged, unable to say what he really thought. But Snape was still waiting for an answer, so Harry finally said, “I don’t think anyone knows what a bond with a basilisk is supposed to be like, do they? They’re making up their own theories and hoping they work.”

Snape gave him an actual smile. “I suspect you are right. Now, concentrate. What I am teaching you can be the basis of dueling as well as wandless magic.”

Dueling sounded interesting, despite Harry’s disappointing experience of it against Draco. He concentrated.

*

It can also be the basis of Occlumency.

But Severus would not tell Harry that, not yet. It could be that he would show no talent in the mind arts, or have no intention of learning them. It could be that he would never be good enough at them to hide secrets from Dumbledore, and that would mean the Headmaster would only grow more suspicious and determined to pry into Harry’s mind. It could be that Harry would not have the discretion—he was only thirteen—to use them wisely, and would cause legal problems for himself.

He is only thirteen, and threatened by so many enemies.

Severus breathed a little. Yes, he was. And he could deal with the darkness that stirred up in the back of his mind.

Deal with it, and move on.

Then give him the weapons to defend himself.

Chapter 33: Pushing Makes Power

Chapter Text

“Not that way.” It was all Snape said, but from it, Harry knew the depths of his failure.

Harry raised his head and stared silently at the far wall of the classroom, the one with the glowing green crack. He listened to Dash, who had chased a rat out into the corridor. He counted to ten. Then he finally turned back to Snape and said, “Why? I pushed the chair into the wall. That’s what I was trying to do.”

Snape shook his head and moved towards him, wand flicking once. The chair slid back to the center of the room. “Didn’t you feel how your magic spilled out around the chair, and the others started rattling?”

Harry blinked. “No. I was busy.”

“Well, it did.” Snape gestured with one hand towards the other chairs he had assembled out of splinters and dust, his intent gaze on Harry. “Wandless magic isn’t practiced much because most wizards do receive adequate help from their wands. But there’s another reason. When you cast a spell with a wand, it’s focused, tight as a knot, except perhaps in the case of first-years.” 

“Is that why you don’t let people use their wands in Potions?” Harry interrupted, because suddenly it made sense to him.

He wondered if he should have done that a second later, but aside from tightening and hunching up like a vulture for a minute, Snape didn’t do anything bad. In fact, he nodded and muttered, “One of the reasons. Now.

“Wandless magic is not focused, at least not without practice. It spills and sloshes. It can alert anyone in the immediate area to the presence of a wizard, and does not make a good surprise technique. More, it cannot achieve the precise results of a spell. Try to clean a pot with a spell, and the dirt and grease vanishes. Try to clean it using wandless magic, and the pot might explode.” He tilted his head and fixed a glittering eye on Harry. “You understand? That is why I wanted you to practice concentration first.”

“But I was doing well on that,” Harry complained. “You said I had it down right last time, and since this is the third time I’m here, I could practice the magic.”

“You should hold the state of concentration you perfected in your mind at the same time as you are pushing with your magic.”

Harry shook his head. “But I can’t do both.”

“Yes, you can.” Snape moved a step away from him and considered him with one finger on his lip, as though Harry had disappointed him in some intangible way. Harry straightened his back and tried not to feel offended. “That is why I taught you the theory of holding yourself back from your emotions first. Summon and control the emotions while you float.”

“You said that was emotions, not magic.”

“It applies to both.”

Harry glared at Snape. It seemed that professors were always telling him things that they should have explained first later, like they were obvious. It wasn’t obvious, and they should have been able to tell that.

But he supposed Snape had talked about floating in the midst of his emotions and using the emotions to power his magic. Grumbling, Harry focused on the chair again, and thought about how he wanted it to go away. Then he flung his magic at it again.

This time, while the chair skidded to the side, it didn’t fly all the way to the wall, and Snape shook his head. “You’re still slopping your power around.”

“I know that!” Harry kicked at the floor, and felt Dash pause outside the door. It’s okay, you don’t need to come in, he told Dash, and focused all his attention on Snape again. “I just don’t know how to float in the middle of the emotions and use the power at the same time!”

“The way we discussed the day before yesterday.” At least Snape had a calming voice, when he wanted to use it, Harry thought grudgingly. “You focus the emotions the way you did when you used anger to banish Black. Then you concentrate on floating in them. And you push the emotions and the magic in the same direction.”

“Well, you didn’t say that before,” Harry muttered. “That makes more sense.” He glared at the chair and thought of how much he’d like to see it fly into the opposite wall. Then he focused on the image of the green Lullaby Dots orbiting Snape’s head. Snape didn’t conjure them anymore, but they were still the image that Harry liked the most.

He slipped into the calm, and felt the anger at the chair rushing past him. And then he gathered up the magic and pushed it along the same “current” as the anger, as if it was all a river where he could pour his power.

The chair skidded backwards and into the wall. And then it vanished. Harry staggered, gasping, to his knees. He had thought of the chair Apparating, but he hadn’t known that it would actually do it!

“Very well done.”

Harry stopped panting and gasping and wondering what had happened for a whole thirty seconds. There was a note in Snape’s voice that he had never heard before. It was like—pride. Harry looked up at Snape, and Snape knelt down in front of him and gave him a tiny smile that Harry would have traded the whole world for.

Even me?

Well, not you, Harry told Dash, and Dash went back to hunting in the corridor, reassured.

“There,” said Snape, with a slight nod, and hauled Harry to his feet. “It is always easier to do something with wandless magic that you have already done once before.” He continued as Harry opened his mouth, “With controlled wandless magic that you have already done once before with uncontrolled power.”

Harry relaxed. At least that answered his question about why he hadn’t been able to banish the chair right away when he’d been able to banish Sirius.

“We will try something different now,” said Snape. His eyes were intense, and Harry found it hard to breathe as he watched Snape assemble yet another chair out of wood and splinters from the floor. It was made of silvery wood, though, which Harry supposed was a spell Snape had cast to make the chair easier to distinguish from the others. He set it up in a row with two other chairs and cocked his head. “Can you make three different things happen to them?”

Harry hesitated. “What else would I want to happen to them?”

“You might banish one,” said Snape, and his eyebrows rose for a moment. “To an agreed-upon destination. I expect to find the chair that you Apparated in my office, as we agreed.”

Harry nodded. Snape looked from him to the chairs, and kept his eyes on them as he spoke again. “As for another, you might topple it over. And the third, you might send skidding into the wall as you already did.” He smiled once, and his eyes darted over to Harry as if he was daring him to report the smile to someone. “But on purpose, this time.”

“I don’t know if I can do that.”

“That is why you will practice.” Snape stepped back and leaned on the wall with a patient expression that Harry almost hated. It meant he would be here until he’d done it. “Well? I’m waiting.”

Harry licked his lips and focused on the chairs. “Does it—does it matter which one I do which to?” he asked.

“Banish the silvery chair. The others, I don’t care.” Snape’s voice lowered. “And you’re stalling.”

It’s not very polite of him to notice that, is it? Dash asked from the other side of the wall.

Harry closed his eyes and plunged himself into the vision of the green Lullaby Dots again, concentrating until he felt a headache growing between his eyes. Then he summoned the magic and the emotion again, and pushed it at the chairs, trying to imagine all the things that Snape had talked about happening at once.

The silvery chair vanished. The chair in the middle spun in a circle and then fell over. And the one on the end…

The one on the end burst into flames.

Harry gasped in shock, and then drew his wand. But Snape had already waved his lazily, once, with a murmur that sounded like “Aguamenti,” and a cascade of water descended on the flames and put them out. Harry sat down and shook a little.

“What are you thinking of?” Snape asked softly. He hadn’t come over to Harry the way he had the last time Harry managed the magic.

Well, Harry supposed he hadn’t really managed it this time. He put his hands over his face. “What would happen if I lit someone on fire?” he asked. He supposed, sometimes, that he wanted to light Voldemort on fire, and he had wanted to do that with Pettigrew for a few minutes, but now that he’d seen it happen, it was horrible. He would never wish for it again.

“That is another reason to practice and gain control of your magic,” said Snape. He walked over to Harry now, picked up the fallen chair, and sat down on it. His gaze had never wavered from Harry’s, at least. “To make sure that you don’t hurt someone when you don’t mean to.”

Harry stared at him. “But what if you mean to? Have you meant to?”

“I have,” said Snape. He leaned forwards and studied Harry. “And I fear that you may have to as well, if you intend to fight the Dark Lord.”

Harry looked off into the distance. He spent a moment debating with himself. He wanted to tell someone, but he didn’t know if Snape was the best person.

There is no best person, said Dash impatiently from the corridor. If you are waiting for another adult to help you, I fear you will wait. There was a lash in his mental voice on those last words as though he had snapped and coiled his tail. And as much as your friends have proven their worth, they cannot help you with this.

Harry turned back to Snape. “Sirius said something about a prophecy that says I have to defeat Voldemort.”

Snape closed his eyes. Harry shifted around for a second, and then said the only thing that made sense to him. “You knew about it, too.”

He wasn’t sure why his voice was more hollow, or he felt more upset, than he had felt when he was speaking with Sirius. He just knew that he was standing there and there was a ringing inside him, like a coin that Dudley used to like to drop in front of Harry to see if he would snatch at it.

The ringing would stop in a little while. He was sure of it.

But maybe it would take longer than he thought.

*

I am going to have to do something about this.

Severus grimaced. He had thought this part of the truth would wait, or perhaps Harry would learn the truth from some other source and then confront him with it. But he had not thought of it as Harry learning the partial truth, or the prophecy. It seemed to him that Dumbledore had gone out of his way to keep the prophecy from Harry. 

Now, though, when it was tell him the truth or lose him? This was the only way he could do it.

“I was a servant of the Dark Lord during the first war,” Severus began, opening his eyes. He looked at Harry, and that was surprisingly easier than looking off into the distance or at the stained and scarred walls of the classroom would have been. “I was the one who had the task of following and spying on several people, and one of them was, at times, Dumbledore. I overheard part of the prophecy, and I was the one who took it back to him.”

Harry’s hands became white. That was the only word for it, as though all the blood had fled. And he looked like a ghost, and the basilisk, who had apparently trusted Severus enough to leave him alone with Harry all the morning, came boiling into the room and wrapped around Harry’s legs and one of his arms, rearing up as though he would form a barrier between Harry and Severus’s words.

But Severus was determined to finish this, and he still took it as an excellent sign that the basilisk hadn’t attacked him yet. “I overheard only part of the prophecy. It said that a child born as the seventh month dies, born to parents who had thrice defied him, would have the power to defeat the Dark Lord.”

Harry licked his lips. They looked as if they needed it. “Then you…”

It was a question with many answers. Severus gave the ones he thought Harry required. “I went to the Dark Lord and begged for Lily’s life, after I was caught and thrown out. But he didn’t spare her, in the end. He killed her and your father, and he turned to you.”

Why did I survive?”

Severus closed his eyes. Harry didn’t think he would be able to provide the answer, from the way he’d cried out. It was a simply a cry it was impossible not to give.

“I don’t know,” he said quietly. “Dumbledore thinks that your mother’s love for you had something to do with it. It may be that the Dark Lord made some sort of magical mistake that day, and that combined with your mother’s love is the answer. I would give you the real reason if I had it. Harry, I do not know.”

There was a long, strained silence. Severus heard the soft and steady hissing that he thought marked the basilisk talking in Parseltongue to Harry. When he could look again, Harry was standing with his free arm wrapped around himself and the basilisk wrapped around the rest of him.

“That’s not what Sirius said,” Harry whispered at last.

Severus did not freeze, because he did not allow himself to do so. “What do you mean?”

“Sirius told me the rest of the prophecy,” said Harry, and stared at him. “The part about the power that the Dark Lord knows not—”

Severus moved his hand a little. Harry fell silent, but didn’t move his stare away, or ask a question. Severus ducked his head and massaged his temples with his fingers.

He was not unwilling to hear the rest of the prophecy. He knew that Albus had repeated it to him once, or offered to, but at the time, Severus had been in such a haze of grief over Lily that he honestly didn’t remember if he had heard the whole thing or not. But that Albus would have told Black, who possessed no Oclcumency to defend his mind from the Dark Lord and the tendency to charge recklessly into danger which could certainly see him captured…

Severus did not understand many of the Headmaster’s decisions of late. This was only the hardest one, he reminded himself, and focused on Harry again. Harry was the one who needed reassurance here.

“Then you know it,” he said, and added, “You may share it with me.”

Harry sounded a little confused as he repeated it, which Severus didn’t blame him for. Then again, no one had ever said prophecies were supposed to be easy to interpret, or easy to make come true.

And is Albus trying to make this one come true? 

The only answer that came to Severus as he stared at Harry’s dazed and blinking eyes was, Most definitely. But that didn’t tell Severus how or why Albus had decided to use Black to do it.

“So you know all of it, now.” Harry seemed to make a little shoving gesture with one hand, the same one he made when he was concentrating on his magic to forcibly Apparate a thing or person. Severus thought idly that he would have to break him of that habit; the whole point of wandless magic was that it was supposed to be a surprise and hard to counter, and that gesture would tell the enemy too much of Harry’s intentions. “What are you going to do about it? What do you think of it?”

Severus met his eyes. “I think that you do have to kill him. And that you will not be able to without more practice.”

Harry blinked once. “I don’t think I could ever be a soldier. I mean, I could fight to save my friends, but to just go out and kill someone would be—hard.”

“I think you will have the chance to protect your friends,” said Severus, as gently as he could, and despite his vast reluctance to do anything that might serve to shove Harry along the path that Albus wanted him to follow. “And that might give you the anger even as—as Black gave you the anger to banish him once before.”

“Then why teach me about all this concentration and things other than anger?” Harry used his hand to make a wide circle around the room. The basilisk had relaxed and was no longer clutching him as hard as he had before.

“Because I want you to survive past the initial strike,” said Severus simply, and watched as Harry shuddered under that hard truth, and bowed his head under it for a minute.

And then accepted it. He nodded and looked up. “What do you think I can do to keep things from catching randomly on fire?”

*

“I believe it would be best, considering how volatile the situation is, to wait for an invitation from Mr. Black himself, Draco.”

Draco leaned back in his seat and folded his hands in his lap. He wouldn’t fold them on the table. Such a mistake would just make his father bored and irritated with Draco, and bad things happened when his father was irritated.

“I don’t think that Mr. Black will ever invite me to visit Harry, Father,” said Draco, as calmly as he could. “He’s convinced that Slytherins are evil.”

Father raised one eyebrow. He was reading a letter that he had read several times before, Draco thought. All he knew was that it had a silver and green seal, and plenty of former Slytherins sent letters like that. “Why would he think that?”

“He and Professor Snape were enemies in school,” said Draco promptly. Father lowered the letter and stared at him, and Draco nodded solemnly. “And I know he was uneasy about Harry being a Parselmouth. I don’t think that he would ever invite a Slytherin friend of Harry’s to visit no matter how close we were.”

And I have other reasons for wanting to visit. To see Harry’s wandless magic practice and to make sure that Harry wasn’t suffering from living with Black were only two of them.

Father looked off into the distance for a moment, eyes so cold that Draco thought he was thinking about the letter. Then he nodded and glanced at Draco. “You may write to Mr. Potter and ask about a visit. But if Black disapproves, then you may only invite Mr. Potter to meet us in Diagon Alley.”

“Yes, Father,” said Draco, and slipped out of the dining room. But he didn’t go upstairs right away, even though he kept his ink and parchment in his rooms. He lingered, because his mother had glanced at him across the table.

His mother was with him in moments, her gown whispering around her. Draco followed her into the library. She didn’t look back at him the entire time. Draco swallowed and started frantically thinking about all the things he had done and not done in the last fortnight. 

When they were in the library, his mother went over to the window and stood with her back to him, looking down into the gardens where Father’s peacocks roamed. “You are sure that Black hates Slytherins?”

Draco frowned, not understanding the tone of his mother’s voice. “Yes, Mother. He certainly seems to.”

“Well.” Mother turned around and laid one of her hands on the windowsill. She was wearing a necklace of pale sapphires that went well with her blue gown. Draco thought she looked particularly lovely this morning. “Then you shall carry a letter with you, either to Mr. Potter’s house or when you meet him in Diagon Alley.”

You want to write to Harry, Mother?” Other than a few questions when the abuse story first broke, his mother hadn’t seemed interested in Harry.

“I have some questions for his guardian,” said his mother, and there was a strange smile on her face. “From one Black to another.”

“Er,” said Draco. He knew that his mother was a Black, of course he knew that. He had to know all the genealogies of most of the wizarding families before his father would be satisfied. But it had never occurred to him that his mother would want to talk to Sirius Black. “Even though I can’t know if Mr. Black will take it.”

“You don’t have to call him Mr. Black in front of me, Draco,” said his mother calmly. “You can call him whatever Mr. Potter calls him. After all, you are related.”

“Er,” Draco said again. He was puzzled. His father wanted him to keep away from Black and not annoy him, but his mother was doing something that seemed like it would annoy him. Draco’s parents had never contradicted each other before.

His mother’s face softened, and she reached out to smooth one hand over his hair in the special way she had that made Draco feel as if they were the only two people that existed. “It won’t cause harm to you, my precious son. I’m sure of that, or I would never do it.”

Draco nodded, reassured. He knew his mother loved him. It had been the first thing he was ever sure of, even before he was sure about his father.

“And it won’t make sense to anyone but another Black,” his mother continued. “So you don’t have to worry about Mr. Potter reading the letter and being offended on behalf of his guardian, either.” The strange smile came back, and she looked out the window again. She usually couldn’t stand looking at Father’s peacocks for that long; she said they were ridiculous, puffed-up things. “I only need to talk to my dear cousin about something that we argued over long ago.”

Draco hesitated one more time, but after all, what was the worst that could happen? Sirius Black would probably just rip up the letter without reading it. “All right, Mother.”

“Excellent,” his mother said softly, and continued looking out the window, even after Draco went upstairs to write the letter to Harry.

Draco managed to shrug it off while he was writing. Parents are weird.

Chapter 34: Passing of Letters

Chapter Text

Sirius sat there looking at the letter from Draco. Harry took a few bites of breakfast and glanced up again. No, he was still sitting there staring at the letter from Draco.

Eat your breakfast and attend to your private thoughts, Dash told him, winding gracefully around his neck and leaning down to eat part of Harry’s buttered toast that Harry had rejected as being too crusty. It was still a luxury to be able to do things like that instead of eating everything in desperation, and Harry was glad Dash ate his leftovers. I’ll let you know when he moves.

Harry managed a wavery smile and went on eating. Sirius finally spoke. “He wants to come here?”

Harry swallowed and looked up. “That’s what he says.” He would keep to the simple things, the true things, for right now.

“Why would he ask for that, rather than for you to come over to Malfoy Manor?” Sirius’s fingers were rapping the edge of the table.

Uh-oh, Harry thought, and would have sat back, but Dash coiled around him, forcing him to at least partially relax. Nothing for it. Harry licked his lips and spoke what he thought was the truth. “He probably thought you’d never let me go over there.”

Sirius looked at him in silence for a second. Then he nodded. “I’m glad that someone still realizes I’m your guardian.”

Dash shared a fantasy of snapping forwards and shearing one of Sirius’s fingers off. Harry gripped his neck and said, No. I don’t want to deal with the fuss, which made Dash sulk, but reduced the threat. Aloud, he said, “Well, can he come over here?”

Sirius again looked at the letter. Maybe he’s looking for the secret plot to have Death Eaters come kidnap me, Harry thought snidely, unable not to.

“No,” said Sirius at last. “I’m just not comfortable having the son of someone I fought in the war swaggering around the house.”

Harry closed his eyes for a second. Then he said, “What about meeting up in Diagon Alley? He suggested that, too. He could bring his parents. Or his father, anyway.” He knew that Lucius Malfoy probably didn’t want to meet up with him just because he was Draco’s friend, but that was something he could deal with, too, in its place.

“I suppose we could do that,” Sirius said slowly, as if the nonexistent plot to kidnap Harry couldn’t be foiled in public. “But I want to go with you, and I want to make sure that you and Draco don’t go away from me.” He leaned forwards and stared at Harry anxiously. “I know it might not seem like it, but I do love you, kiddo.”

“I know,” said Harry, and if he worked at it, he could make his lips move into a smile. “I love you, too.”

That’s amazing, said Dash, snapping his tail down once against Harry’s shoulders as he crawled most of the way to the floor.

What’s amazing? Sirius was talking now about what shops he wanted to show Harry when they were in Diagon Alley and how much things had probably changed, but all of Harry’s attention had switched to the internal conversation with Dash.

Not even you know if you’re telling the truth or not when you talk about how much you love him.

Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, and Sirius promptly broke off his chatter to ask anxiously, “Does your head hurt?”

“Just sometimes,” said Harry, and opened his eyes. It suddenly occurred to him he’d been rubbing his scar, and Sirius was leaning away from him as though he thought Voldemort was going to come bursting out of his forehead. The look on his face made Harry look away and repeat firmly, “Just sometimes. So when should I tell Draco that we’re meeting him and his father in Diagon Alley?”

*

Lucius watched in silence as Draco broke away ahead of him, shouting. He’d apparently already spotted Mr. Potter standing next to Quality Quidditch Supplies, looking at something in the window, his basilisk wrapped around his neck and shoulders. And behind Potter lurked Black.

Lucius sighed. Then, firmly, he pushed away thoughts of the letter he’d finally answered that morning. It was done. He had told the writer no. He wouldn’t second-guess himself now.

He had more interesting things to study, like the way that Black bristled and seemed about to draw his wand when Draco hugged Mr. Potter. Then he eyed Lucius, and snorted, and let his hand just rest openly on his wand as if it was the hilt of a sword, while he sneered at Lucius.

Well, sneering must take all his mental concentration, Lucius thought, as he made a shallow bow and observed his wife’s cousin. His own distant cousin, too, if it came to that. Malfoys had intermarried with Blacks before.

A pity that we didn’t do more about the madness that lurks there. Lucius was still startled at how thoroughly Narcissa had escaped all traces of it. It was there in this Black, though, in the way he jumped at the slightest sound and leaned forwards to scowl when Draco handed Potter a letter. Potter turned it over with a mystified expression, then shrugged and put it in his pocket when Draco gestured emphatically.

Lucius eased a little closer. It would do no harm to make sure that Draco couldn’t pull something over on him. Especially since Lucius had no intention of losing his son, either in body or in spirit.

“What’s the matter, Malfoy? Haven’t found enough innocent victims to make it worth casting the Dark Mark yet?”

Black at least kept his voice low enough that none of the passerby, gaping at the Boy-Who-Lived, appeared to have heard him. Lucius smiled back pleasantly. “I see that you haven’t learned any manners, Black. What an example to set for your ward.”

Black snarled at him, an actual, honest snarl, baring his teeth the way he must when he turned into a dog. Lucius made sure to laugh lightly and shrug, as if he had anticipated that, ignoring the way Potter glanced back at them.

“We’re here to make sure the boys have a good time,” said Lucius. “Not to argue. Not to fight. Not to act like boys ourselves.”

“I heard you did that last year. With Arthur Weasley.” Black’s eyes were gleaming in what he must assume was wit. “And Harry.”

“I’ve got over that,” said Lucius blandly. “Enough to let my son be friends with someone I would have violently disapproved of last year. It’s a pity that, for some people, twenty years isn’t enough to overcome House prejudice.”

Another snarl, but this time, it was futile. Black seemed to have glanced ahead and realized that Draco and Potter were getting farther away from them, not next to Quality Quidditch Supplies now but in front of the Magical Menagerie. The basilisk had its head raised to consider some of the animals in the window.

“Harry!” Black called anxiously, and trotted after him. Potter glanced over his shoulder with an annoyed look.

Lucius chuckled under his breath as he strolled after Black. He would never say that he would have a close or cordial relationship with Potter, but he knew the advantages that could come from it. And he had chosen those advantages over long-term but nebulous ones already, hadn’t he? Or he wouldn’t have said “no.”

Wouldn’t it be delicious if Black lost his ward’s trust and I gained some of it, all because he can’t stop hovering over him when there are “evil Slytherins” around?

*

“You’ll give the letter to him, then?”

Draco knew he was probably risking discovery by talking about this so much, but he had to make absolutely sure. His mother had trusted him with that letter. And while Harry taken it, Dash had looked at it, and then at Draco, in a way that said he didn’t like it being a secret. Draco knew he could argue with Harry and still be his friend.

But if Dash started disliking him, then he would probably never get close to Harry again. And surprisingly, Draco was finding that that didn’t only bother him because it meant that he wouldn’t get the chance to pet Dash. Harry was part of the equation, too.

“Yes, I will,” said Harry, his jaw firming, and then went back to arguing with Dash. Draco looked back into the window of the Magical Menagerie, and noticed a snake towards the back of the shop, a glittering green snake in a low wire cage.

“Does Dash not like to see other snakes caged up?” Draco asked.

“What do you mean?” Harry blinked at him, and then only looked in the right direction when Draco pointed his finger at the cage. “Oh, no, he wasn’t thinking about that at all. He was trying to persuade me to buy him birds from the shop. He wants to practice on them.”

He tapped Dash on the head and hissed something at him that was probably “practice on your own,” not that Draco could really understand Parseltongue. But he was learning to read the way Dash and Harry interacted with each other, and that was its own sort of language. He snickered a little, but shook his head when Harry stared at him.

“What does he want to practice on them? Hunting?”

“Some kind of magic,” said Harry, rolling his eyes. “More than the sort of magic he gets just by existing, I mean.” He tapped Dash on the nose this time when Dash started to unwind from around his body. “No, hunt wild birds if you want to do that.”

Draco grinned, an idea coming to him. “You know, if you went in there and announced that you were Harry Potter and your basilisk wanted those birds, they would probably give them to you for free.”

Harry turned around and stared at him. “What?”

“I mean, I don’t know for sure,” said Draco, and shrugged stiffly. There was something rather uncomfortable about the way Harry was looking at him. “It was a thought I had, which might or might not be true.”

“I don’t want to get the birds for free,” said Harry. “They’re pets. They’re not meant to be snake food.”

Draco thought of telling Harry about the fate of some animals kept in apothecaries, but he didn’t have the heart.

“And I don’t really need any more pets,” said Harry, and smiled down at Dash. He seemed to be listening intently to a one-sided conversation, but Draco had got used to that. He looked into the shop again, at the cage with the snake in it.

The snake was watching them through the wire and the window. It was probably only attracted to Dash, Draco thought, but he did think it was a beautiful snake, green in all its scales in a way that Draco had only previously seen on jade figurines. When it spread its hood—it was a cobra—he could make out a delicate blue design on either side of it. It looked like a flame, though, not the curved sign Draco was familiar with.

He sighed and looked back to find Harry hesitating in front of him. 

“What?” Draco asked. They were going to go to Flourish and Blott’s, he had thought, and start buying a library on wandless magic and history for Harry. He ought to know why people would think he was the reincarnation of Slytherin because he had Dash.

Harry’s jaw firmed for a second. Then he said, “You really want a basilisk, right?”

“Don’t joke about that,” Draco snapped. He shut his eyes a second later and rubbed his temple, because Dash had got interested in him when he spoke sharply to Harry. “I just—I want it too much to joke about it. And I know that I can’t ever have a basilisk, not the way you can, because you’re a Parselmouth and I’m not. I know that. I’m trying to get used to it.”

“What if,” said Harry, and his voice wavered a little, “I went in there and bought that green snake and commanded it to obey you? You know, the way I could because I’m a Parselmouth? I don’t think I could command it to bond to you, but I could make sure that it would protect you and never attack you.”

Draco opened his eyes again. He didn’t know what to say, what to do. He wanted—he didn’t want—he wanted lots of things. He looked at Harry in helpless silence instead, and hoped that Harry would understand.

It seemed he did, because Harry smiled. “I was a little too busy to get you a birthday gift when it was your birthday,” he said. “Call this a late one.” And he opened the door of the Magical Menagerie and walked in.

Draco trailed behind him, a little dazed.

*

I can enforce your commands, and that will make sure the snake never bites him, or anyone else who smells the same as him. Dash’s head was swaying back and forth, probably in interest, although the frozen shopkeeper seemed to think it was something different. Harry tried smiling at the man, but he didn’t even look at Harry. I can’t promise anything about the other people in the house, however. Or the house-elves.

Then I’ll ask the snake not to bite the house-elves, and hope he listens, said Harry. He looked at the shopkeeper. At least the man was looking at him now, although he was using the counter to hide from Dash. He nodded to Harry only once before he stared at Dash again.

“Um,” said Harry. “Excuse me. I’d like to buy that snake.” He pointed confidently in the right direction without taking his stare from the man. He knew it was the right direction because Dash told him so.

The man coughed and slowly straightened, eyes darting around as though he assumed someone else would come in and save him from the agony of being afraid of Harry Potter’s basilisk. Or maybe from serving Harry Potter. Harry didn’t really know, and he was starting to think Draco was wrong. Trying to use his fame to buy things wasn’t a help. It just made people stand there and stammer.

Tell him again, Dash suggested, wrapping his head around Harry’s neck. The man gave a little moan of fear. Dash flicked his tongue in what looked simply like tasting the air, and which no one other than Harry would know was amusement. Try a touch more arrogance this time. Sounding apologetic doesn’t work.

Harry didn’t really like doing it this way, either, but stammering when he asked was a problem. He stood taller and tried to think about the way Sirius sounded when he was dealing with Slytherins. 

“I want to buy that snake,” he said, and pointed to the cage again. “For a gift.” He stared at the shopkeeper, and the man snuffled, but came out from behind the counter. He reminded Harry a lot of Pettigrew, except his hair was blond.

“Sir is sure?” he whispered. “That’s a flame cobra. Highly poisonous. Prone to burn when angered.”

Draco gasped behind Harry. Harry snorted a little. He knew Draco wasn’t afraid. That probably just made the snake sound even more special to him. 

“I’m sure,” said Harry, and he would have said something else, on Dash’s advice, but Sirius spoke from behind him.

“You’re getting another snake? What for? You already have the most dangerous one anyone could possibly want!”

Harry turned around and swallowed. Sirius was looming over him. Harry had a complicated emotion when he did things like that. He wasn’t afraid of Sirius, not really. For one thing, he had Dash. For another thing, Sirius wasn’t Uncle Vernon or Voldemort.

But it made him want to flinch and back off. And he knew he couldn’t do that if Draco was going to get his snake.

“This one is a gift for Draco, not one I’m bringing home,” Harry said, and tried a smile. “Dash wouldn’t want me to have another snake anyway.”

The shadow ones I make would not be so bad, Dash disagreed. At least, that way, I could be certain they were fairly under my control.

Sirius was still red in the face, but he seemed to have calmed down a little. “But you can get another gift for—my little cousin,” he said, and his eyes darted to Draco, and then away. “One that he could take to school. I don’t think snakes are allowed, are they?”

“They might be,” said Draco, and he was smiling at Sirius. Maybe he understood why Sirius was calling him his cousin, because Harry sure didn’t. That was, he knew Draco’s mum was Sirius’s cousin, but Sirius had never called him that before. “They changed the rules so Harry could have Dash. They might do the same for me.”

“It would be less a matter of expanding rules than reviving an old one,” said Mr. Malfoy. He had come into the shop and was near the door, leaning on his cane. Harry didn’t think he needed it, but he still didn’t know that much about Mr. Malfoy, so he steadfastly watched the shopkeeper taking the flame cobra from its cage instead. “Students used to be permitted to have the animals that embodied their Houses.”

“Gryffindors had lions?” Sirius was still facing Harry, but Harry could see how much his eyes shone.

“Cats, rather,” said Mr. Malfoy, his voice cool now. “And Hufflepuffs could have badgers, Slytherins snakes. Ravenclaws flew eagles. With the changing of traditions, eagles became owls and badgers were replaced by toads.” He gave a little sigh and shrugged. “As with so many changing of traditions in the last few centuries, only Slytherins were forgotten in the changes. They simply were not allowed to bring snakes anymore.”

“A good thing, too,” Sirius muttered. “Snakes are dangerous.”

Mr. Malfoy smiled. Harry watched the flame cobra wrapping around the shopkeeper’s arm, but he could still hear the smile in Mr. Malfoy’s voice. “Have you ever faced a cornered badger? Oh, my mistake. You can’t have, or you wouldn’t be talking as much about the reputed dangers of snakes.”

Harry decided to ignore the expression on Sirius’s face, and turned back to the shopkeeper. “What does the snake eat?” he asked.

I could just ask it, Dash offered, and opened his mouth, probably to talk in Parseltongue to the flame cobra. Harry pinched his side, and Dash shut up, although he looked extremely sulky about it. He gave Harry a single look before dropping his head to rest along Harry’s shoulder.

“Um, mice and crickets mostly.” The shopkeeper blinked and then straightened a little, as if he thought he had to answer Harry’s questions. Probably because of who I am, Harry thought wearily. “But he does need hot coals and ashes, regular. That’s how he maintains his scale gloss.”

“That’s fine,” said Harry, and reached into his pocket for the Galleons he’d bought along today. He’d vaguely thought he would buy lots of sweets and nice clothes, but the flame cobra would probably take most of his money.

It was completely worth it, though, to see Draco standing beside him with his mouth slightly open and his face disbelieving.

“Ten Galleons.” The shopkeeper was glancing back and forth between Harry, Sirius, Draco, and Mr. Malfoy as though he didn’t know whether Harry would actually buy the flame cobra. And of course every few seconds he stared at Dash.

“I forbid you to spend your money on that thing, Harry.”

Harry swallowed. He had been afraid that would happen someday, Sirius doing this in front of someone else. Harry didn’t want to challenge him, didn’t want to make Sirius feel like less than his godfather.

But he also didn’t want to go back on his word and not buy Draco the birthday gift he had promised.

“I just want to get this for Draco, Sirius,” he said, and he didn’t know how his voice would sound until he heard it. Mostly tired, he thought. “Besides, it’s not going to come into our house. Draco will take it home.”

If Malfoy allows him to,” said Sirius suddenly, sounding triumphant. “And you know that he won’t!”

“On the contrary, I can see no reason why my son should not be allowed to have a snake as a pet,” Mr. Malfoy murmured. “For the reasons that I told you. Hogwarts rules can be returned to traditional standards.”

“I was talking about at home,” said Sirius, while the shopkeeper looked at Harry’s Galleons as if he wanted to snatch them off his hand but didn’t dare. “And I’m still Harry’s guardian. I don’t want him to spend his money that way!”

Fine. Harry didn’t want to do this, but he didn’t want to disappoint Draco after he’d made him a promise even more.

He turned around and looked at Sirius as calmly as he could. “But this was money I got out of my vault before I met you,” he said. “I should be able to spend it the way I want.”

Sirius blinked at him, and blinked again. He was looking at something distant, Harry thought. Something that had nothing to do with him.

The thought made him sad, but it was the truth. He thought most of the things that Sirius saw had nothing to do with Harry, but they might have something to do with his dad. Or the Marauders. 

Then Sirius turned back to Harry and said, “All right. But we are going to have a talk when we get home about appropriate spending of money.”

“That’s fine,” Harry said, feeling more than a little relieved. At least Sirius wasn’t going to yell in public. And it might mean, it might mean, that Sirius was going to start taking care of him the way Professor Snape was always saying a good godfather should.

Fine, Dash agreed. Especially since I can always give you my shed skin to make money on your own if he unreasonably restricts access to your vaults.

Harry petted Dash in silence. Dash wasn’t threatening people or trying to bite them, either. That made the day look up.

“Fine,” Sirius echoed. He looked a little uneasy, but not much. “Then why don’t you give your…friend his gift, and we can go get something to eat?”

Harry turned to Draco and motioned the shopkeeper to hand the flame cobra over to him. At the same time, he said in Parseltongue, “You know that I don’t want you to attack your new owner or anyone who smells like him? Or anyone at all, unless he’s in great danger. Dash, can you add to that?”

Dash held out his head and hissed Harry’s instructions softly in Parseltongue, then opened his mouth. The flame cobra looked down Dash’s gullet, between the enormous fangs, and laid its hood down against both sides of its head.

“That’s right,” said Harry, content, and turned back to Draco, who was staring at him with more than a bit of awe. “Choose a name for him, and choose a word to tell him when you’re in real danger. Then I’ll teach him what those words mean by giving him the Parseltongue equivalents, and—well, that should work.”

Draco looked at him as if dazed. Concerned, Harry started to ask if he was okay, but then Draco shook his head and whispered, “This is the best gift I’ve ever got. Ever.”

Harry smiled. “Happy birthday, then. But I need his name.”

Draco looked in silence at the flame cobra for long moments, stroking the green scales. The shopkeeper took the chance to get Harry’s Galleons and come back with a cage and some frozen mice. 

“His name is Conflagration,” said Draco at last. “And I think that he—he can burn people, right, as well as bite them? You should add some instructions for him not to do that. I’ll tell him ‘Attack’ if I want him to attack.”

Amused by Draco’s choice of name, Harry hissed the instructions to Conflagration, and Dash repeated them and showed off his throat to Conflagration again. The flame cobra cuddled closer to Draco in response. Harry smiled. He thought having Dash around would make sure Conflagration didn’t get out of hand.

“We will see how you handle the snake this summer, Draco,” Mr. Malfoy said abruptly. “Such a trial will tell me whether you should be allowed to take him with you to school.”

Harry jumped, then relaxed as he saw the look of determination on Draco’s face. Draco would make sure Conflagration behaved, he thought, because he really wanted to show the snake off at Hogwarts.

And then, abruptly, Draco turned around and grabbed Harry himself in a hug. Harry froze before he could stop it, but Draco just whispered fiercely, “Don’t forget about the letter you need to give Black. And thank you.”

Harry gently patted his back, the only thing he could think of to do. “You’re welcome.”

Draco stepped back to gaze adoringly at Conflagration, while Dash hissed gently beside Harry, Someone who hugs you that hard is someone to hang onto.

Harry would have asked if Dash was making a pun, but Sirius clapped his hands, announced, “I’m starving, and I’m tired of talking about snakes!”, and steered them all out of the Magical Menagerie. He seemed determined to talk only to Harry, but at least it meant he would get to have lunch with Draco.

If Draco eats anything, he’s so fascinated.

Draco was rubbing his hand along Conflagration’s neck. Harry smiled. He really liked that, he thought. The ability to give people gifts and make them happy.

It just made him feel sadder that he would apparently never be able to make Sirius happy, no matter what he did.

He shook the thought away. Making one person a day happy was enough.

Two, said Dash. You make me happy all the time. He trailed his tail down Harry’s leg. I want you to know that

Chapter 35: Movement In One Direction

Chapter Text

Harry relaxed, keeping his gaze fixed on the chair. He could feel the strong desire to drive the chair through the wall into the next room, and at the same time, he floated in the middle of the soft concentration that Snape had taught him.

He twitched, once, as he felt Dash wind around his ankle. But Dash was part of him. He couldn’t disrupt the spell, the magic that was building in Harry’s chest.

It was wonderful. It was like the moment when Hagrid had told him magic was real and his parents could do it. Harry just gestured, and the power flew out of him and collided with the chair.

And the chair vanished. 

Harry glanced at the chairs that Snape had conjured nearer the front of the room. For long seconds, he didn’t think it was going to work. They were vibrating, but they weren’t vanishing, and Harry wanted them to. He narrowed his eyes and glared.

The chairs vanished. Harry sagged to the floor with his arms spread. He could feel Dash winding around them, too, as if he was checking for bruises. Dash snapped his tongue at him when he had that thought, though.

How stupid. I am making sure that you don’t try to exercise those muscles too soon. They’ve been through a lot, and they deserve a rest. Dash sounded like he was bonded to Harry’s muscles and not Harry.

You want to keep them safe? Harry tilted his head back and sighed. Dash curled up around more of his body, this time keeping him pinned to the floor the way he’d kept Harry pinned to his chair in Potions that one day.

Yes. I want to keep all of you safe. But right now, they’re the ones that hurt the most and deserve to have someone stand up for them. Poor muscles.

Harry snorted. He pulled himself upright then, and turned towards Snape. He’d avoided looking at him until now. “What do you think, sir?”

*

I think you have achieved remarkable results with a month of instruction only, and I am worried about what it would mean if you had to collapse in the middle of a battle, immediately after using wandless magic.

But Severus would not voice the second thought. It was years yet—let it be—before Harry would have to engage in open battle. He inclined his head and murmured, “You did it well, with little waste of energy this time. I could barely feel the magic spilling around you. However, I did not understand the pause between vanishing the first chair and Apparating the other two.”

Harry’s face was practically glowing, and it seemed to take him a long time to acknowledge the existence of Severus’s question. Severus wondered how long it was since he had heard praise from anyone but Severus—sincere praise, at least. The papers lavished it on him as long as he did what they wanted, and Dumbledore would distribute it to keep the boy moving along the right path. 

And Black?

Severus shook his head. Black was one of the subjects he and Harry did not discuss unless Harry brought it up. Severus could feel it burning in him, often, the desire to speak, but he had an imagination as vivid as his desire for vengeance, lately. That imagination let him picture Harry turning his back on Severus if he pursued the subject.

“Oh.” Harry frowned and scratched at one ear, sitting up. The basilisk twined around him and laid his head in Harry’s lap. “I think I was concentrating too much on the first chair. I only thought of vanishing that one. And then I realized the other two were still there and hadn’t gone with the first one.” He gave Severus an anxious glance. “Is that bad?”

“Only in the sense that you may not have the chance to react with a delay in battle,” said Severus. He flicked his wand, and more chairs appeared against the wall, all in a row this time. Perhaps having them all in his line of sight at once would improve Harry’s concentration. “Now you know what you have to practice on next.”

Harry looked discouraged for the briefest moment. Severus had found that silence and dry practicality were effective counters to that dejection, and a second later, Harry nodded. The basilisk altered position so he could rise to his feet. “Yes, sir,” Harry said.

He is intense when he gives loyalty, Severus thought, stepping back so that Harry could concentrate only on the chairs. And anxious to give it, even after the life he has had. Perhaps because of the life he has had, Severus decided a second later.

How has Black missed out on earning it?

*

Sirius was sitting in the middle of the kitchen when Harry got home, sipping tea. That wasn’t unusual, not after the last few weeks. He had been quiet since that argument about Harry’s money in Diagon Alley. Harry had thought he might try to take charge because he was committed to showing he could be a good guardian.

But he hadn’t.

Just like every other time he has done something that seems as if it will be to your benefit, and then reneged on it, said Dash with disdain, sticking his head around Harry’s neck and flicking his tongue out for a second. And he smells like self-pity.

How would you know what that smells like? Mice and rabbits probably don’t have it. Harry began casually putting together his own tea from the kettle and scones and butter that Sirius had left on the table. Sirius nodded to him, but didn’t seem ready to turn around and have a conversation.

I’ve had a lot of practice smelling Black and Lupin. Dash unwound himself from Harry’s neck and dropped to the floor, curling his tail beckoningly towards Harry’s room. And eventually, I was able to name the scent.

“Harry?”

Harry turned around reluctantly. He’d been almost ready to carry his plate out of the kitchen and up to his bedroom, and even if he was ready to argue with Dash about what Sirius smelled like, he really didn’t want to talk to him. 

Sirius was fiddling with the handle of his teacup, turning it back and forth as if it had broken and he’d put it back together wrong. “How would you feel about taking a letter to Draco’s mum?” he asked. He grimaced as he said it.

Harry blinked. “Why don’t you just send a letter to her?” He knew Sirius had turned pale when Harry handed him Mrs. Malfoy’s letter. That made Harry sure that Sirius wouldn’t want Harry to visit with Draco again, even in Diagon Alley. “An owl won’t mean you have to see her.”

Sirius shook his head wildly enough to send his hair cascading down his neck. “I don’t dare,” he whispered, and swallowed through a throat that sounded dry. “What I have to say—it should be said in person, or not at all.”

Then that is not in a letter. Dash slithered back into the kitchen and watched Sirius with hostility from the floor. He could try not saying it at all. I don’t think he has much practice with that, and getting some would do him good.

Harry kept silent. He wanted to agree, but what he really wanted to do was repeat Dash’s words aloud. Maybe then Sirius would see how ridiculous he was being.

Sirius turned the teacup around and stared at something on the side that was invisible to Harry. Harry fidgeted. He wanted to get along with Sirius, like Sirius, love Sirius, respect him. He wanted to be a good godson and help Sirius figure out how to be a good godfather.

But half the time, he didn’t know how to do that, and he didn’t think Sirius did, either. He sat there and was silent and then said things that were nonsensical, like this. Maybe things would change someday, but until they did, Harry didn’t see the point of trying to change them.

Finally Sirius cleared his throat and said, “Then I’ll send an owl to her. I think she’d like to hear from me.”

“Oh.” Harry hesitated. He wondered if he could ask a question and get it answered. “Would you like to see her again? You could ask her over here, and Draco could come with her.” It was the only way he knew of to make sure that he would get to see Draco but not have Sirius hovering over his shoulder the whole time. Sirius and Draco’s mum would probably go into another room and talk. Then Harry and Draco could do whatever they wanted.

“No,” said Sirius, and then swallowed. “Don’t you want to go over to the Burrow? Visit Ron?”

“Well, they were going to see if they could visit his brother in Egypt again,” said Harry. “But when they’re back home, yeah, I’d like to go. If you let me,” he couldn’t help adding, because he thought Sirius might want to come with him the way he had come to Diagon Alley.

“Of course,” said Sirius, and beamed at him. “I like Ron Weasley. He reminds me a lot of his dad. Did I tell you that Arthur was the one who decided to induct your dad and me into the Order of the Phoenix?”

“No,” Harry said. He was sometimes a little tired of the stories about his father, but at least this was one he hadn’t heard before.

He sat down in the chair across from Sirius, while Dash slithered up his leg and hissed softly in his ear, Share the scones, since we won’t be going to a place where we can share them in privacy.

Harry began to slip the buttered scones to him under the protection of the table, and sighed a little.

*

“You must understand that I will not tolerate the snake in my library.”

Draco bowed his head. He had brought Conflagration to his father’s library because it was the only room early in the morning with an active fire, and he had thought Conflagration could feed on the coals he needed there. Sure, Draco could have asked a house-elf to build up a fire in his own room, but the elves were terrified of Conflagration and would barely come near him.

It had seemed like a good plan, until Conflagration got distracted by something on the top shelf and slithered out of Draco’s arms.

“If you cannot control the snake, it will be removed.” His father sat back in the chair and gave Draco an utterly remote glance. “I know you are not a Parselmouth, and therefore may have more trouble communicating with the snake and training it. That is the only reason why it is still outside a cage.”

Conflagration hissed. He had given no sign he could understand English, though, so Draco thought he was just reacting to his father’s tone. Draco quickly caught him back, flushing when his father gave him a long, slow, judging glance.

“But you may not bring him into my library again,” Father continued. “You also cannot take him to Hogwarts if he continues to misbehave.”

Draco opened his mouth to protest.

Father pointed again to the small mound of burned books that had happened when Conflagration climbed the shelves.

Draco bowed his head and murmured something he hoped sounded sorry. He was sorry, but his heart had started pounding when his father said he couldn’t take Conflagration to school. Of course Conflagration was coming to school with him! That was the whole point!

Everyone had to see how Draco had a snake of his own, and a snake that Harry Potter had given him, no less. Conflagration was special and important even if he wasn’t a basilisk. He made Draco feel more special and important, too.

Draco wanted to walk down to breakfast with a flame cobra coiled around his shoulders. His father had said that there was no reason the rules couldn’t be changed to accommodate that. That meant Draco had to take Conflagration with him.

“Good,” said Father at last, after a long time when Conflagration shifted slowly along Draco’s neck and Draco thought that he would probably have to take him out of the room before Father said anything approving. “Now, go work on your snake control.”

And he turned away in a way that blatantly dismissed Draco.

Draco opened his mouth to say something, but thought better of it. He turned and managed to march with appropriate speed out of the library. Then he put Conflagration down on the stones in front of him and stared at him. Conflagration raised his head and looked back, spreading his hood out.

“You haven’t eaten anybody yet, or bitten any of the elves, or burned anything you weren’t supposed to until this morning,” Draco mumbled. “Why can’t they see how good that makes you?”

Conflagration flicked his tongue idly out, and a tiny spark of flame jumped off it. He moved slowly down the corridor in response, and Draco sighed a little and followed. At least here it was stone, and Conflagration couldn’t scar that any worse than Draco’s ancestors had themselves.

He would have to write to Harry. Maybe Harry could teach him the Parseltongue commands to make Conflagration come back and stop burning something. “Stop burning!” ought to be simple in Parseltongue, right?

Draco straightened his back with a snap. He didn’t care if it was simple or not. He was going to learn it. And then he would practice and practice until he really could go back to Hogwarts with Conflagration riding tamely on his shoulders.

There was just no reason to give up on that.

*

Lucius stared again at the letter that had come right before he smelled the scent of burning from his library, and laid his hand across his lips. He had to admit, he would not have suspected this particular person of asking again when they were once refused. He had anticipated opening the letter to threats of what would happen to him when the Dark Lord again rose to power.

Not entreaties.

Which might mean that the writer was less powerful than he thought himself.

Eyes narrow in thought, Lucius studied the letter, this time looking as much at the ink blots and the straggling nature of some of the handwriting as the words themselves.

Lucius,

You gave no reasons for your refusal. We have a plan, a very powerful plan. The Dark Lord is coming! He has put together a temporary body for himself from an unlikely source. He has a wand again. He has a snake familiar. He will destroy the Potter boy.

We have a way in to Hogwarts. We plan to use something that will be announced this year as the tool to finally conquer Potter. You need do nothing but influence a few members of the Board of Governors to allow snakes on the grounds. I know you can do that. The Dark Lord also knows that your son acquired a snake familiar himself, so you’ll have a natural excuse for asking.

You know that you can do it. Why would you still hold back? The Dark Lord will reward you handsomely when he rises.

No signature, of course. That would have been beyond foolish, to hand Lucius the power that must come from knowing who this current, single, active Death Eater was.

Lucius leaned back with a small sigh. He had promised Draco that he would ask about him having a snake at school, and the sudden revoking of permission now would make Lucius’s life unpleasant for the rest of the summer.

But he was also not sure that he could grant it knowing how this Death Eater would exploit it. Potter by himself might be nothing to him. If the Dark Lord arose again, however, and learned how Lucius had aided Potter, even if it was merely for a political strike at Dumbledore…

He could not change the past. Perhaps he would have if he had had access to a Time-Turner. But in the meantime, he would live with his choices and turn into a different path, one only accessible to him because of that very alliance with Potter.

Lucius smiled a little as he reached for a piece of parchment. And accessible to me because I do not want to listen to my son’s whining.

*

“You can do it, Harry!”

Harry certainly hoped so. He and Ron had switched roles for this latest Quidditch game. He’d started out as Seeker, of course, and Ron was Keeper, but now Ron wanted to see how well Harry would handle the Quaffle.

Harry was gripping his broom with sweaty hands as Fred and George soared towards him, tossing the Quaffle back and forth fast between them. They were also hitting the Bludgers every now and then with their paddles, apparently counting as combination Chaser-Beaters. They were going to try to split apart and one would distract him while the other got the Quaffle in underneath him, he just knew it.

Then George lifted his broom a little and flew straight towards Harry, and Fred spun up above him, with the Quaffle flickering between his hands.

Above, not below, Harry thought, and flew straight at George in turn.

It surprised George, and he turned aside from Harry with a shout. Then Harry was right up in Fred’s face, and Fred lost his grip on the Quaffle because he was trying to catch it and reach for his Bludger bat at the same time.

Harry dived after the Quaffle.

It was almost too easy, because it was so big compared to the Snitch. Harry stretched out his hand and caught the ball around the side, and then soared up and hovered in front of the hoop again, grinning.

Fred and George had reunited in the middle of the pitch and were having a little whispered conversation. Ron had the Snitch—a Quaffle that Mrs. Weasley had kindly shrunk and colored gold for them—in one hand and was waving it around in ecstasy.

“Oh,” he said, when he saw Harry with the Quaffle. “I think both of us are good at being Seeker and Keeper.” He flew back towards Harry, his eyes shining. “Think I should try out for Keeper this year?”

Harry was about to answer, but an owl flew towards him and sat self-importantly on his broom. Harry blinked. It was a huge black owl with glaring golden eyes, and now that he thought about it, he had sometimes seen that owl bringing letters to Draco.

“I have an owl here,” he told Ron, and tossed the Quaffle back to him as he started flying slowly towards the ground. Halfway there, the owl took off and flew alongside him. Harry sighed in a little bit of relief as he landed. The last thing he wanted to do was hurt an owl that belonged to Draco.

Or Draco’s father, as he found out when he opened the letter.

Mr. Potter, 

I have to ask you a very particular question. Would you be able to control any snakes that might come onto the grounds during the school year? Such as Draco’s flame cobra? Or would your basilisk be able to do so?

Lucius Malfoy.

Even the ink he had used looked expensive. Harry blinked and turned the letter over, but that was all of it.

Maybe the ink is so expensive that he can’t use a lot of it to write the letters, Harry thought, and glanced over at Dash, who had been asleep in the sun on the pitch. He was already awake, though, probably because Harry was thinking about him, and he slithered over and flicked his tongue out inquiringly.

Could you control any snakes that might come onto Hogwarts grounds? Harry asked him. Even if they were somebody else’s familiar?

Dash curled his head around as he obviously thought about that. Harry reached out and petted him absently. That made George and Fred fly down and start suggesting all the horrible and evil things he could do with Dash if he had a mind to. Harry ignored them.

It would depend on what the familiar had been ordered to do, Dash said at last. If I was going to demand that someone go back to their master or leave Hogwarts, I could do that. But if they had been ordered to fight to the death, probably not. He lifted his head and locked his muffled eyes with Harry’s. Especially if their master was another Parselmouth.

Harry drew in a sharp breath. You’re talking about Voldemort, aren’t you?

You know as well as I do that he is the dark figure in your dreams.

Harry didn’t respond. He had talked to Snape about the continuing dreams, most of which seemed to involve a masked man and a big snake and a high-pitched voice that he never saw much of, and which spoke half the time in Parseltongue rather than English. Snape had promised to teach him something called Occlumency, which he said would help protect Harry’s dreams.

I can do something other than simply command or control snakes, however.

Harry blinked and looked back at Dash. What?

Fight them. Dash lifted his head and lashed his tail, and for a second, Harry thought he saw little snakes peering from his shadow. I am still the King of Serpents, and there is no venom more deadly than mine.

Harry probably shouldn’t have felt a little shiver of excitement and pride at that. He knew what Sirius would say, Lupin, Dumbledore, maybe even his parents if they were alive. Killing people, or their snakes, was wrong. Dash should be planning about how he would turn Voldemort’s snake in to the Aurors, or capture it alive, if it came to Hogwarts.

But Harry had learned a lot of things over the summer, even though his only “classes” were in wandless magic and concentration with Snape. He had learned that he wasn’t a Slytherin in the way people told him he was. He still didn’t want to manipulate people, and he didn’t think he was the reincarnation of Slytherin even after he had read that book of fairy tales Draco had made him buy. In fact, he thought people who believed he was were utterly mental.

He wasn’t Gryffindor either, though. He didn’t tell the truth about everything and feel good things all the time. Sometimes, he thought about how good it would be if other people were gone, and although he didn’t want to kill them, he still wanted them gone.

I think you’re you, said Dash, and coiled around his feet.

Harry took a deep breath, and nodded. Then I’m going to write back to Mr. Malfoy, and tell him that you can control Voldemort’s familiar if it shows up, and in the meantime, Draco can bring Conflagration.

Of course he must be able to do that, Dash murmured, and then raised both his head and tail to the sun. I am going to enjoy this year.

Chapter 36: The Opposite of Clamor

Chapter Text

Lucius gave a small, pleased smile at the letter he had received back from Potter. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said that an adult had dictated it, but since the boy had so few adults he could trust, it was much likelier to have been the boy’s native intelligence flavored with some promptings from his basilisk.

Mr. Malfoy,

Thank you for the word of warning about snakes. Yes, Dash can fight and control any snake that comes onto Hogwarts grounds. If Draco doesn’t know how to control Conflagration and needs my help, then I can do that. I’m sending him a letter with some Parseltongue words written down the best I can, so he should be able to communicate with Conflagration soon.

Yours respectfully, 
Harry Potter.

Indeed, Lucius thought as he cast the letter into the fire, the only thing he would have changed in the whole of it was the basilisk’s unfortunate name.

*

Harry gave a gasp as he woke with his scar burning. This time, when he reached up to it, there was blood from it inching down his face.

Let me see.

Harry gratefully removed his hand so Dash could make his way up to the scar. Dash studied it with a silent intensity that Harry didn’t think was criticism of him, but the only way he knew for sure was the reassurance he got from Dash wrapping his tail gently around his waist. 

No, said Dash abruptly. There is no broken skin there, no fear that some level of contamination might have come through. But I can taste the scent of a snake.

Harry froze in surprise. His dream had had a snake in it, as usual, and sometimes two snakes. He didn’t know if Voldemort was trying to summon and control an army of them, or if Harry just dreamed a lot about his snake familiar, or what. Why would you be able to do that?

That is what I am trying to figure out, said Dash, with a chiding tone in his voice that reminded Harry of the way Snape sometimes talked, and he held obediently still while Dash seemed to run through a bunch of facts in his head. Then Dash spoke again, and his voice was startlingly cold. I think Voldemort is trying to control you the way he would a snake.

Harry shivered. Can he do that? The things he dreamed about Voldemort commanding his crazy-eyed follower to do, and his snake familiar, were horrible. Sometimes they ate people, sometimes they cast Dark magic, sometimes they collected ingredients for potions that left people bleeding on the ground or plants torn and shredded.

I don’t know, said Dash, and his voice was low and still cold. He should not be able to. We have our bond. His tail tightened on Harry’s waist again, and Harry grabbed it and hugged it. But the bond that you and Voldemort have is like no other I have studied or seen or heard of.

Harry would have asked, most of the time, what Dash meant about studying, and when he’d had the time to read a book. But now, he only swallowed and said, I don’t want to be bonded to Voldemort.

I know, said Dash soothingly, and for a moment, his tail rose and brushed the last of the blood away from Harry’s scar. It’s nothing that you did, though, and it’s not something you can help. I think we need to look at this more closely. Will you let me into your mind? 

You’re already there, said Harry, confused.

No, the way you did when I adjusted things in your mind when you were trying to use wandless magic.

Harry hesitated once, because he hadn’t given Dash permission for that and he had wondered ever since exactly what had happened, what he had given Dash permission for. But it probably had to do with Dash being his familiar. Professor Snape had said that familiars could do things like that for their wizards. You can.

Dash eased closer to him and stared into his eyes. Harry started to ask why he needed to do that, when he had done it last time without the stare.

Then he gasped as he felt something heavy and smooth sliding through his mind. It wasn’t like the other times he had felt Dash there. This time, he felt as if he had scales himself, as if he had a tail, as if he knew what it was like to move without legs.

He didn’t know why Dash felt like he had to tell Harry that to help him with his dreams and the bond with Voldemort. But he was glad to know, because he didn’t think he would ever have known otherwise.

It isn’t a bond.

Harry sighed. He hadn’t known how much he needed to hear the words until Dash spoke them. But that meant he had a question. What is it?

There were more sensations that made Harry know what it would be like to carry poison in his mouth. He licked his lips. It would be strange to walk through Hogwarts and know what would happen if he bit someone.

It’s a connection, said Dash at last.

Harry felt good enough now to roll his eyes. Because that’s informative.

I’m still a young basilisk. Dash pulled his mind free of the deep link with Harry’s, and Harry gasped a little. That felt like someone had slid a fang out of his throat instead of into it. But I know it isn’t anything like the one we have. It isn’t your mind that’s connected to his.

Harry frowned and rubbed his throat. Then what could it be? Why are we sharing dreams?

Dash curled up with his head on Harry’s knee, his shielded eyes intent on Harry’s face. I don’t know exactly what this is. But I want you to promise me that you’ll get someone to watch over it and monitor it if it starts changing. Professor Snape would be my choice.

Harry sighed. I hate to put any more burdens on him. He knew that Professor Snape had time to teach him during the summer because he didn’t have any classes, but that would change once people came back in September.

It would not be a burden. Dash reached out and curled the end of his tail around Harry’s ankle. Or, at least, not as much of a burden as my constant nagging if you don’t do it would be.

Harry shuddered a little. At least he had been able to escape nagging from the Dursleys when he was in the cupboard, and nagging from Sirius by not spending much time in the house. There would be no escape from someone who was in his head. All right, all right. I’ll ask him when I see him tomorrow.

Good. Remember that I will know if you don’t.

Harry laughed and reached down to loop his arms around Dash, gathering him into his embrace. That should sound like a threat, but all it reminds me is of how much I love you.

Dash didn’t even respond to that, maybe because it didn’t need words. Harry was still learning about things like that. Dash just rested all his weight in Harry’s arms and flicked his tongue out to taste Harry’s scent at the crook of his wrist, where he had said that it was strong.

*

Draco studied the Parseltongue words on the letter uncertainly. Then he looked at Conflagration.

The problem was, even though Harry had sent along instructions about how to pronounce the words, Draco still wasn’t sure that he was going to get it right. Would he really get the right number of S’s in his voice? Or what about the one that Harry had written with a T in the middle of all the S’s? How was he supposed to say that?

Harry did also say that he would have to practice. But he didn’t seem to understand it would be easier for Draco to practice with him.

Time to see what happens. Draco took one more look at the letter, then looked at Conflagration and tried the one with the T in the middle. It was a complicated series of hisses, sh and s sounds, with here and there a vowel thrown in like someone had forgotten it. According to Harry—who had had to write the word with Dash’s help, because he told Draco Parseltongue sounded like English to him—that was the one that was supposed to mean “Stop.”

Conflagration snapped his head up and hissed something that Draco, of course, didn’t understand. Then he turned as if he was going to crawl into the hearth, and Draco repeated the word.

This time, Conflagration curved his head back and glared again.

But he did stop. Did that mean it had worked?

Draco snatched another look at the letter. There was a word that was supposed to mean “Come here,” complete with f and v sounds. Draco licked his lips and pronounced it as best he could. “Shessshefevess.”

Conflagration moved towards him slowly, checking with his eyes and tongue as if he thought Draco was going to change his mind any minute. Draco smiled at him and then wondered if snakes would think about smiles in the same way, at least if they weren’t as intelligent as Dash. “Shessshefevess,” he repeated, and held out his hand and wriggled it back and forth encouragingly.

Conflagration climbed up his arm and twined himself around Draco’s shoulder. Draco wanted to burst with pride.

Then Conflagration poked him in the cheek with his nose, and kept on poking. Draco pulled back to glare at him, but Conflagration kept poking. Draco tried the word that was supposed to mean “Stop” again.

Conflagration kept poking.

Draco gave an aggrieved sigh. He must have more practicing to do.

*

“I can teach you the basics of an art called Occlumency, which you have already learned part of through learning to concentrate. But it is hard, and would involve me looking into your mind. I am not sure that you wish me to do that.”

The speech Severus had spent so much time preparing slid out of his lips with an odd naturalness when it came to the moment when he had to utter it. And Harry sat there listening in their practicing room, tracing the outline of the splash Severus had caused on the floor with one nail, but not ignoring him. Severus knew that much, however hard Harry was to read at other times.

The basilisk had curled up with his head on Harry’s knee and was regarding Severus with unblinking eyes. Well, of course they were unblinking, behind those eyelids that had to stay shut. Severus looked away from them with an effort and back at Harry, who had lifted his head.

“You wouldn’t ever tell anyone about what you saw in my thoughts?” Harry’s voice was quiet.

Severus shook his head. “No. I would not.”

Harry nodded. “I had to ask, because Dash wanted me to ask,” he said, and rested his hand on the basilisk’s back. Harry spent a moment listening with his head tilted to the side, and then smiled a little. “He also wanted to let you know that even though his poison is diluted, it would still be painful if he bit you.”

“Understood,” said Severus, and managed to keep his voice so calm that he himself was impressed by it. “But in practice, Occlumency works only if student and teacher trust each other. I do not think I can teach Dash. Can I teach you?”

It was a question he had never asked of Harry in so forthright a fashion before. He supposed he was afraid of what the answer would have been, at least some of the time before now.

Harry swept him with a quick glance. Then he nodded and stood up, stretching out one hand. Severus didn’t catch on for an embarrassingly long time, but at least he took hold of the hand and shook it once before Harry got upset and pulled it back.

“You can,” said Harry. “I know that you aren’t going to betray anything you see to anyone. And—and not only because of Dash’s threats.” His voice broke for a second. 

Severus nodded once, not looking away from Harry. The moment was one of those fragile ones that they seemed to have distressingly often, when Severus was providing something to Harry that not enough people had provided to him before, in the place of those others who should have been pleased and proud to do it.

“Good,” Severus said, when he thought enough time had passed that he could say it. “And the first thing you have to remember is that you can use the concentration trick, but that is not all Occlumency is. Occlumency is also about protecting your mind so that someone else, a Legilimens—”

“The one who can read minds?”

Severus nodded. If nothing else, he thought, the interruption was good training for further moments he would share with Harry, when he would need to be braced for far more frequent interruptions. “It is about trapping them and slowing them down. It is a far more defensive art than wandless magic…”

*

Harry was sitting at breakfast with his head whirling, trying to remember all the things that he’d have to buy for his fourth year at Hogwarts. That included rats and mice for Dash, cages to keep them in, books on Occlumency—well, Professor Snape had said Harry could borrow his, but Harry wanted a few of his own—parchment, ink, quills, the books in the Hogwarts letter, a new cauldron, owl treats for Hedwig, new bristles for his Firebolt, a new bag for his books that seemed like they were going to be heavier this year, and—

“Harry, when did you plan to meet up with Hermione in Diagon Alley?”

Harry blinked and looked up. Sirius was sitting hunched forwards in his chair, staring at yet another letter he had received the other day. Harry gave a mental shrug. He hadn’t paid that much attention to what Sirius was doing with letters lately. He assumed Sirius was still getting some from Draco’s mum, though.

“About eleven. Why?”

Sirius licked his lips. “Do you think you could go a little early? I mean, I could Apparate you there, and you could—wander around until you found Hermione and her parents? You wouldn’t get in trouble if you went early, right?”

Does he forget who you have with you? Dash asked, and lifted his head above the level of the table to flicker his tongue at Sirius.

“Not while Dash is with me,” Harry said. “If anyone tried to attack me, they’d regret it.”

Sirius smiled, but he looked a little desperate. “I mean, you wouldn’t get into trouble because you went looking for something that you shouldn’t. Like you did when you heard Dash calling you.”

Now that I have you, you aren’t going to do that anymore, said Dash promptly. I’ll be the only basilisk bonded to you.

Harry rolled his eyes, because he had to, but he reassured Sirius, “Dash doesn’t want me doing that any more than you do.”

Sirius gave Dash that bug-eyed look he got whenever he and Dash turned out to have anything in common, and then mumbled, “Right. Right. So we can go now?” He stuffed the letter into his pocket and stood, offering a hand to Harry.

Harry nodded. “Of course we can.” He reached down to pick up Dash, only to find that Dash had already looped himself around Harry’s shoulders and waist enough that Harry didn’t really have to pick him up. Harry gave him a grateful smile and stood up, only to encounter Sirius’s shaking head and raised eyebrow. “What?” Harry added.

“You don’t have to carry him everywhere. I’m sure he has leg—I mean, scales that will get him from place to place.”

It just really upsets him that Dash is a snake, Harry thought in wonder. He still can’t get used to it even though he and Dash have both been with me for almost a year. 

“Well, Dumbledore told me that he needed to be close to me at all times when we were in school, and I’ve done the same thing when I took him up to Hogwarts,” Harry said, shrugging. “So it makes sense to carry him. And he likes being carried.”

And what I like and do not like are no concern of yours, smelly dog-man.

Harry tapped Dash on the nose for that. Dash clung to him and looked as unrepentant as only a basilisk could.

“What did he say?” Sirius was eyeing Dash with more intense interest than any he’d shown during the summer.

“Oh, an insult,” said Harry, and didn’t translate it.

Although Sirius still looked as if he would have liked to know, he went to get his cloak and boots. Harry shook his head at Dash and went to collect his vault key from his rooms; there would be no getting money out of Gringotts without that.

Why do you insult him? He matters to me.

Frankly, I don’t know why.

Harry chose to keep silent on that, as well. 

*

There were some people who might say she was stupid because she was “only” a Muggleborn and didn’t know everything they did about the wizarding world. There were even some people who probably thought she was stupid because she was a girl. When she was in Muggle school, she’d certainly encountered people who thought that, and who didn’t like it that she knew all the answers, because boys were supposed to.

But Hermione Granger was not stupid. And she knew that Harry had had a good summer and a bad summer both the instant she saw him.

Harry walked up to her parents and greeted them quietly. They’d agreed to meet at Flourish and Blotts. Hermione knew her parents were a bit overwhelmed with all the wizards and magic around them, but they both calmed down when they were in a bookshop. You couldn’t do much to make books different from themselves.

(Hermione had never told them about the Monster Book of Monsters).

Harry looked better than he did after a summer at the Dursleys’! He wasn’t all pale, and he had a confidence to his walk that Hermione usually only saw when he won a Quidditch game. But he also had a sad look in his eyes as he stared at Dash, and Hermione thought they were probably having an upsetting conversation.

Then he saw Hermione, and maybe especially Mum and Dad and how frightened they were because he had a giant snake draped all over him, and gave an apologetic smile and held out his hand. “I’m sorry if Dash upset you,” he said. “And I know that we met before, but we didn’t get to talk that much. Harry Potter.”

Dad gave a weak little smile as he shook Harry’s hand, even as he looked hard at Hermione. Hermione nodded in reassurance. She had explained about Dash to her parents, and if she hadn’t managed to convey his sheer size and the way he considered the world as if he was looking for threats to Harry, well, it was probably because she hadn’t read enough descriptions of basilisks.

Or because Dash had grown. She knew that last year he had fit around Harry’s shoulders and waist with maybe some of his tail trailing down Harry’s leg. Now he looked as though he could sheathe Harry in his coils and not notice.

“Well, Harry,” said Mum, and Hermione smiled a little. Her mum was always the one who would cover up some mistake that people made in front of her father, or mistakes that Dad made. “Hermione tells us that you have a lot of books to buy for next year. Can you recommend some books about wizards for Muggles? There are so many!”

“Oh, Mum, I told you I’d recommend them,” said Hermione, because she didn’t think it was a subject Harry had actually studied much.

“I can, actually,” said Harry, and Hermione blinked at him in surprise. He gave her that little shrug and smile that sometimes infuriated her. He’d done exactly the same thing when he’d disappeared during the night and came back with Dash. “Sirius had some to help introduce me to the wizarding world. I was raised by my aunt and uncle,” he added, presumably for Mum and Dad. “They’re Muggles, too.”

Dad relaxed a little. Hermione smiled at him. She had known how uncomfortable he was around all the wizards and witches who thought you had to have grown up in their world to really matter. She was proud of him for coming along anyway.

“This is a good book,” said Harry, pulling one off the shelf. “A Basic Muggle’s Introduction to Non-Muggleness.” He handed it to Dad, ignoring the way Hermione tried to grab it. Well, that meant Hermione would have to get her own copy.

She did that with most of the books Harry pulled off the shelves, which made Harry snicker at her, although some of them were their schoolbooks and that just made sense. Then she held up the copy of a book he had just bought, and blinked. She had memorized the letter Hogwarts had sent, and it wasn’t on there.

“Harry?” she asked, pointing to the title of Concentration Like Glass.

Harry flushed and looked around for her parents. But Mum and Dad were at the end of the aisle, examining the Galleons and Sickles they had exchanged for Muggle money earlier that day; they looked dubious. Harry explained in a low voice, “Professor Snape has been teaching me Occlumency. It’s this mind art that involves defending your thoughts from people. He thinks it might help me shield my thoughts from—Voldemort.”

Hermione flinched despite herself at the name, and then felt silly. Words were only words. It wasn’t rational to be afraid of them all the time.

“You think that you’ll be able to master it?” she asked, looking at the book in fascination.

“I think so,” said Harry, and he grimaced a little. “Professor Snape has been working with me on wandless magic. If I can do that, I think I can do this. He said some of the techniques are the same.”

Hermione nodded in determination. “Do you think you’ll still be working with Professor Snape after school starts?”

Harry turned red and looked aside to pet the back of Dash’s neck. “I don’t know. He’ll be busy, you know?”

And probably still willing to help you. But Hermione knew that Harry needed this, and that he didn’t want to stay too close to Snape for some reason, so she reached out and took his hand instead. “Then I’ll work with you. We can have our own Occlumency study group.”

Harry beamed at her, and Hermione added Concentration Like Glass to her own bag. Then they turned around and walked towards the front of the shop with her parents, Harry talking about how Ron would probably be so full of his trip to Romania to visit his brother Charlie that they would get tired of hearing about dragons.

Mum casually slung an arm around Hermione’s shoulders as they went towards the front of the shop. Hermione leaned against her and watched as Dash gently squeezed Harry’s waist.

She was glad that Harry, who didn’t have parents and didn’t sound like he got along well with Sirius, had someone. Even if it was the most dangerous snake in the world. 

Chapter 37: Announcements

Chapter Text

Harry heard a wave of shrieks follow him as he walked into Hogwarts, and looked around, blinking. Yesterday, he had thought all the students at Hogwarts had got used to Dash, and over the summer, most of the people in Hogsmeade had, too. Were they frightened because they saw how big he’d grown?

Then he realized that it was a line of trembling first-years backing away from him, and sighed. Of course they would have had no chance to get used to Dash, any way he appeared.

Promise me you won’t frighten them, Harry told Dash sternly as he took his place at the Gryffindor table and watched the ceiling of the Great Hall swirl with stormclouds.

Not even the one that looks like a mouse? Dash filled Harry’s mind with the memory of a small straw-haired boy whose nose had twitched as he backed up. I might need to practice with him when I don’t have real mice. You know how easily I run out of them.

Harry snorted and sat back against his chair to watch the Sorting, knowing Dash was in one of those moods where arguing with him would be useless. I’ll make sure the house-elves have enough mice even for you.

Unless I get hungry for elves, too.

Harry had had enough. Even if no one else could hear what was running through Dash’s mind, he could. He tapped Dash sharply on the tail, just at the point where the most delicate scales overlapped each other and there was a weak point. Dash went back to sulking, which was fine with Harry.

He glanced up at the High Table and noticed Snape nodding to him. Harry nodded back. He knew Snape would probably still have to be hard on him in class, but everyone else was free to think that the nod was a silent promise of revenge for something. Harry knew a lot of things other people didn’t.

Sometimes that was lonely. But when it could protect him, Harry didn’t mind keeping the secrets.

The Sorting seemed to go more quickly than usual; either there were fewer Gryffindors or there were less kids in general, but Harry hadn’t been paying attention to either number, and when he asked Dash for help in remembering them, Dash wasn’t inclined to help. Harry did notice when Dumbledore stood up near his seat, though. He had a grave expression on his face that Harry didn’t understand.

Ron seemed to have been paying more attention to the number of professors than Harry did. “Blimey,” he whispered. “We don’t have a Defense Against the Dark Arts professor again?”

“Maybe Dumbledore will teach us himself,” said Hermione, although she didn’t sound very hopeful. “I heard that he used to be wonderful at that, even though his specialty was Transfiguration. After all, he defeated Grindelwald.”

“Dumbledore doesn’t have the time,” Ron started to object, and Harry poked him in the side. After all, Dumbledore was just about to talk, and he was probably going to answer that question if Ron would only listen.

Strange that you’re in the mood to listen to Dumbledore, and not to me.

Harry didn’t bother poking Dash. He could think back to him that that was silly and he would always want to listen to his basilisk, and listen to Dumbledore, at the same time.

“I have several announcements to make, each of them a pleasure to make known,” said Dumbledore, and then his face fell a little. “Except the first one. I am sad to announce that there will be, this year, no Quidditch at Hogwarts.”

What?” Harry thought Ron’s voice was the loudest, but it was pretty much a massed shout from all the Gryffindors, except Hermione. She looked a little pleased. Harry noticed Slytherins and Ravenclaws and even Hufflepuffs fuming, too, leaning over to talk to each other or casting looks of loathing at Dumbledore.

One dangerous thing ends, then. Dash had grown resigned to staying behind on the ground when Harry flew, because his weight was too much for a broom and he could see Harry at all times, but he didn’t like it.

And I don’t have to like it.

Harry stroked his neck and said, I don’t think you need to, either, while the murmurs of disappointment faded enough for Dumbledore to add, “But the Quidditch games would not have been canceled without a good reason. Would you like to hear that reason?”

Yes!” Fred and George yelled, making several people around them laugh. Dash wound about Harry a bit tighter, as if to say that he didn’t care about what the reason would be because it wouldn’t benefit him.

“The Tri-Wizard Tournament is being held at Hogwarts,” Dumbledore announced, and yes, his eyes were bright. “This is an ancient competition between three schools, hence the name. The other schools are Beauxbatons, located in France, and Durmstrang, located in Bulgaria.”

Harry caught Draco’s eye even across the space between the Gryffindor and Slytherin tables, and barely managed to hide a snicker. He knew Draco would be thinking that anyone who didn’t already know where those schools were didn’t deserve the benefits of an announcement telling them so, either.

“The competition involves three tasks of increasing complexity, each task leading on to the next,” Dumbledore was continuing, in a grand, sonorous voice that seemed to reach the furthest corners of the room. Harry thought he could still hear some students whispering angrily about Quidditch, though. “Three champions are chosen, one from each school, to compete in the tasks.” He paused, then added, “Because of the danger—each task could well be fatal—only students who are of age will be allowed to compete. I encourage students who are seventeen already, and only them, to volunteer for the prestigious position of Hogwarts’s champion.” His eyes shot towards Fred and George, and then he turned his head a little, so that he was looking at Harry.

How strange, said Dash, arching his neck so that he could look at Dumbledore, or at least aim the yellow glow of his covered eyes more in his direction.

What is it? Harry asked, wrapping one hand around Dash’s neck and avoiding Dumbledore’s gaze. It made him ache to think Dumbledore would distrust him so badly that he thought Harry would actually try and enter the Tournament.

Dumbledore has these strange ideas about you despite knowing you for years, and probably knowing more about than you realize, because he was probably spying on you from a distance. Dash leaned his head against Harry’s cheek. He doesn’t know you at all despite all the opportunities that he had to learn who you were.

Harry had no chance to answer, because the door of the Great Hall opened then.

“Ah, yes,” said Dumbledore, without changing the smoothness or the cheery tone of his voice. “And I am pleased to introduce this year’s Defense Against the Dark Arts professor, Auror Alastor Moody.”

Harry craned his neck, interested in spite of himself. He hadn’t ever seen a real Auror except from a distance, and the man who came limping through the door on a wooden leg looked intimidating. At least an Auror would probably know more about Dark Arts and how to defend against them than Lockhart had, he thought.

Dash hissed against his throat, strong and threatening.

What is it? Harry asked, looking at the man. He wondered for a second if this man was Voldemort’s familiar that Mr. Malfoy had warned him about, but the more he considered it, the more he decided against it. Voldemort’s familiar had to be a snake, and he doubted the snake could transform into a human, even with Voldemort’s help.

On the other hand, there was a small chance that Moody was the servant of Voldemort’s that Harry had only seen as a kind of crazed, laughing figure in the dreams. Harry knew from bitter experience that people you thought were good could still help Voldemort. He slipped his hand into his pocket and closed his fingers around his wand.

Dash hissed, He smells of slaughtered snakes.

Harry blinked and sat back, looking at Moody again. He was saying something to Dumbledore about the weather and the trek he’d had to get here and “constant vigilance,” but Harry didn’t pay much attention to his words. He would probably hear them later in class, and Dash could repeat them to him in memory if they mattered.

Finally, Harry noticed the flask that Moody kept pulling out and drinking from. The flask had a diamond pattern on it that could have come from snakeskin. Harry nudged Dash and pointed. Is that what you’re sensing? The dead snake smell is coming from that?

I must get close enough to judge.

Before Harry could pick up through their bond what he intended, Dash dropped off Harry’s shoulders and neck and to the floor, and flowed towards Moody. Harry heard shrieks. This time, he couldn’t really blame people. He lived close to Dash all the time, and sort of forgot how big he was. But Dash was almost nine feet long now, and it looked like a lot of snake.

Moody didn’t try to run. He had a magical blue eye that swiveled to focus on Dash, but he didn’t even draw his wand. He just stood there. Harry had to admit that that didn’t seem much like a servant of Voldemort’s.

Dash slithered straight up to Moody’s flask and stuck out his tongue to sniff it. Dumbledore was shouting something about order and how people had to be more careful, but Harry ignored him and followed Dash. He would probably get a scolding later, but right now, he didn’t care.

Moody’s magical eye swiveled to focus on him instead as Harry put his hand on Dash’s head, and Moody grunted. “Heard about this snake of yours,” he said. “Friendly, is he? For a basilisk?”

“Yes, sir,” Harry said, meeting Moody’s gaze and trying to figure out from the way he took Harry’s answer if he was angry or not. “I never have much trouble with him, sir. Except when people try to hurt me.”

Moody’s craggy face got a twitch that could have been a smile. “Well, don’t bring him to my class, then,” he said. “I believe in teaching students real spells, Potter. Spells they have to dodge, or catch, or resist. Constant vigilance!” He looked down at Dash, who now had his head so close to the flask that his tongue was stroking the skin. “Is he done?”

Is it snakeskin? Harry asked Dash. Or is there a chance that he might be Voldemort’s human servant? Dash ought to be able to make out spells that were trying to mask scents, or magic that had to do with snakes.

It’s snakeskin. Dash still sounded upset. He reared up so that he was rising above Harry’s head and lashed his tongue again, to the screams of several students. I can’t smell any other magic that has to do with snakes. I can’t smell anything but human. Dash curled his head to the side, and his eyelids quivered. I still don’t like him. He’s too powerful. I can smell the kind of practice that you’ve done hovering around him like a scent of smoke.

Wandless magic? Harry asked in surprise. Maybe if Snape was too busy, he could get Moody to teach him. He eyed Moody once, and found Moody looking calmly back at him. Harry had to admit he was impressed by someone who was so calm in the face of a basilisk.Then I suppose I’ll have to make sure that I practice even more, in case he is hostile and tries to throw something at me.

Yes. Be careful of him.

Harry opened his mouth to say something else to Moody, but he hadn’t figured out what it was going to be yet, an apology or a question that might make him reveal if he had a connection to Voldemort, before Dumbledore arrived.

“Harry.” Dumbledore still sounded impressive when he put his mind to it, Harry found. Harry wanted to hide by force of habit. He stood still, though, helped by the way Dash had wound about him again. “I think you owe Auror Moody an apology.”

“I’m sorry, sir,” said Harry. It was easy enough to say. Dash was teaching him how to talk, and Mr. Malfoy had taught him some, and Sirius had taught him some. Professor Snape had maybe taught him the most of all, when he had told Harry that their Occlumency lessons would have to remain more secret than the wandless magic lessons had. “I wanted to make sure that Dash didn’t hurt you, but I know it must have been awfully scary to have him coming towards you.” He gave Moody his best smile, one he’d picked up from seeing the way Draco smiled at shopkeepers in Diagon Alley.

“Why did you let Dash get out of your control in the first place?” Dumbledore’s voice had a cool tone that would have made Harry cower last year, before the lessons with Snape and the things Sirius had told him and Dash and—everything, really.

Everything that makes up my real life.

“I didn’t mean to do that, sir.” Harry ducked his head and peered up from under his eyelashes at Professor Moody. Snape had taught him that was effective. “But he smelled slaughtered snakes. You know he had to investigate.”

There was a long, startled pause, and then Moody chuckled. “The skin of my flask?” He slapped the side of it, making it bulge. “Well, he would, wouldn’t he? Took it out of the hide of a Runespoor that decided I’d make fine fodder for its argument with itself.”

Dash flicked his tongue out again, but didn’t say anything. Harry just said, “Sorry, then,” and looked at Dumbledore. “Can I talk to you later, sir?”

Dumbledore gave him a long, slow look, one that might have been angry or pleased. It was hard for Harry to tell, because he wasn’t looking Dumbledore directly in the eyes. That had been the second thing Snape had ever warned him about when they stared practicing Occlumency, that Dumbledore was a Legilimens.

“Yes, you may,” said Dumbledore. “Come to my office tomorrow evening, after dinner.”

Once, it would have been right away. Dash sounded soothed and thoughtful now. Is he sensing your change of heart?

Harry didn’t care to explore that in the middle of the Great Hall. Besides, he hadn’t actually been to Dumbledore’s office all that many times during his years at Hogwarts. He didn’t know if it would have been right away. “Yes, sir,” he said, and turned and slipped back to his seat at the Gryffindor table, while Moody stumped up to the Head one, talking to Dumbledore.

Ron pounced on him the minute he came back. “Is Moody an Animagus like Pettigrew was?” he demanded in a loud whisper, his face white enough to make the freckles stand out.

“No,” said Harry, amused at what Ron was thinking. But he could see why. The last time Dash moved that fast, it probably had been when he was chasing Pettigrew. “Dash could smell dead snakes. He wanted to make sure that it was really just the skin of Moody’s flask, and not something else.”

Ron leaned even nearer. Luckily, most of the Gryffindor table was talking about either the Tri-Wizard Tournament, Moody, or the lack of Quidditch. “You thought maybe it had something to do with You-Know-Who?”

“You ought to call him by his right name, Ron,” Hermione scolded in a whisper, moving in on the other side. “Headmaster Dumbledore says it only makes people more afraid of him if you don’t.”

“Then let’s see you do it,” Ron promptly told her, scowling.

Hermione puckered up her mouth and shook her head. “Not right now,” she said. “It could cause a panic if someone heard me. I’ll say it later in the common room, when not so many people will hear me.”

Ron snorted. “She’s afraid,” he whispered to Harry, and didn’t even try to keep his voice down so Hermione couldn’t hear them, although Harry supposed that wouldn’t have been possible anyway. “She just doesn’t want to admit it.”

“I am not,” Hermione began.

Bickering broke out, and Harry sighed and looked out at the Great Hall again. This time, it wasn’t hard to meet Draco’s eyes, because Draco was leaning forwards as if he was looking specifically for Harry. He promptly flicked his head at the doorway of the Great Hall and mouthed, Meet me out there?

Harry nodded. He’d noticed that Draco hadn’t come into dinner with Conflagration. He probably needed more help with the Parseltongue words before he could completely control the flame cobra. Harry turned around to his friends, adjusting Dash as he hung around his shoulders, and said, “Uh, I’m going up to the common room. I’ll see you later.”

Most of the time, Hermione would have tried to make him eat more, but this time, she only waved him off and continued arguing with Ron. Harry wasn’t sure whether she would say Voldemort’s name later on or not. He grinned as he slipped out into the corridor. It might be funny if she did, if only because more Gryffindors than Ron would leap in the air.

*

Draco leaned against the wall and watched Harry walk towards him, arguing with Dash as he did.

At least, Draco assumed it was arguing. Harry was peering intently into Dash’s eyes with his mouth a little open. He was also shaking his head, and he would probably start frowning in an instant.

Draco, though, couldn’t know what the argument was about, and he would never know unless Harry chose to tell him. He pressed on to something more urgent. “Those Parseltongue words aren’t enough,” he announced.

It took a moment for Harry to blink and focus on Draco, to Draco’s annoyance. However, at least he did take it seriously when he was looking at him. He promptly said, “Why not? Didn’t I write them clearly enough?”

Dash’s head swayed back and forth. Knowing he had helped Harry write them down, Draco could only imagine what he was saying.

Keeping his eye on Dash, Draco said, “Uh, they were fine. But Conflagration won’t always stop when I want him to, and sometimes he acts like there’s more than one thing he could stop.” He grimaced, remembering the moment on the train when he’d told Conflagration to stop hissing at Greg and Conflagration had started biting at the inside of his cage instead. Then, when Draco had told him to stop that, he’d started hissing at Greg again.

“Well, I can’t teach you how to control him completely,” said Harry, and for some reason, smiled down at Dash. “I don’t control Dash completely even though I’m bonded to him and a Parselmouth.”

“Oh.” Draco was obscurely disappointed. The next best thing to a bonded snake would have been a snake he could control. But he shook his head. “Can you teach me other words?”

“Yes,” said Harry. “But keep in mind, Conflagration did get threats from Dash and me about what would happen if he didn’t behave himself. Some of what he does is probably only play, not really threatening people.”

Draco sighed a little. “I know that, but there’s no way I can really convince my roommates and other people in Slytherin of it.”

Harry scratched his chin. “All right. Then I think what we need to focus on is the word ‘stop’ in combination with other words. Stop hissing, stop burning, and other things like that. What are other things that he does?” He looked at Draco.

“Stop poking,” Draco muttered. He saw Harry blinking at him, and managed to avoid blushing, he thought, as he explained, “He likes to poke me in the cheek, and like I said, when I tell him to stop he acts like he was supposed to stop something else.”

Harry put his hand across his mouth, and even Dash hissed in a way that didn’t need any translation. Draco glared at both of them. Dash might be annoying sometimes, but at least Harry could always explain to him why he was annoying, and that might make him stop.

“All right,” Harry finally said, lowering his hand and grinning at Draco again. “Then that will be one of the things I work with Dash on. It’ll probably take a few days. Keep Conflagration in his cage until then, or at least out and under your control, or only have him out when I have Dash nearby. Then—”

“Um. Excuse me, Mr. Potter. I want—my mum said I was to give this to you.”

Harry turned around with an utterly blank face. Draco blinked. He knew the second-year Slytherin who was offering a wrapped present to Harry, vaguely. His name was Jackson Selwyn, although there was a lot of debate about whether his family was actually related to theSelwyns. Draco had never had to have an opinion either way.

Now he wished he had, because then he might have known why in the world Selwyn was offering Harry a present.

“Thank you,” Harry said cautiously. He shot a glance at Draco, who shrugged.

“You’re welcome,” said Selwyn, and he bowed several times, backing away. “Please let my mother know if you liked it—I mean, if it’s acceptable. I’ll owl her that you took it from me.” He gave Harry a dazzling smile and ran towards the dungeons.

“So who was that?” Harry asked Draco, opening the package. Draco reached over and put his hand on the paper.

“I wouldn’t open that here,” he said. “Just in case.”

“In case it explodes on me or gives me boils, you mean?” Harry hastily pulled his hand back from the paper.

Draco shook his head. “In case it’s something Dark.” The legendary Selwyns might or might not have been in favor of the Dark Arts, but the modern ones definitely were.

“Well, he would be an idiot, wouldn’t he, to bring something like that into the school?” Harry retorted. He paused, then added, “Anyway, Dash says that it doesn’t smell like Dark magic.”

Draco opened his mouth to ask exactly how much Dark magic Dash had ever experienced, and then Harry tugged the paper in the right place, and it fell off.

Inside was a small box that looked like the sort Honeydukes chocolates came in. Harry seemed to assume that was what would be inside, because he lifted the lid with a pleased expression.

Draco felt himself sway a little at what was inside, but Harry only looked at it with a blank expression. He looked up at Draco. “What would they give me a ring for?” he asked, turning it around.

Draco found his tongue, after long seconds. The ring was heavy gold, and had a black stone set in the middle of it, incised with a triangular image that Draco only recognized because he’d seen it before. Even Dash had reached out curiously to touch it with his tongue, in a way he probably wouldn’t have if he’d known what it was.

“An allegiance ring,” Draco whispered. “This is a sign that the Selwyn family pledge to follow you and assert their loyalty to you.” He turned the ring around, and both Harry and Dash seemed to see at the same time that the triangle could be a snake’s head.

Dash hissed something. Harry hissed back, making the hair on the back of Draco’s neck rise deliciously, and then asked, “They—follow anyone who has a basilisk?”

“No,” Draco said quietly. “They’re willing to follow you because they think you’re the reincarnation of Salazar Slytherin.”

Chapter 38: Questions About Allegiance Rings

Chapter Text

You will have to do something about it sooner or later, Dash said, twining out of Harry’s bed and poking the box on the table with his nose. The allegiance ring that Selwyn had given him rattled inside.

Then it can be later, Harry grouched, and dragged himself out of bed. His muscles throbbed. Even though he had had worse aches before, especially when flying or when he’d received a pounding from Dudley, there was a special ache about the first day of being back to school that made him want to sleep in.

Not that he would get to, of course. Dash had woken him up early so he could shower and get to breakfast on time, but also so that he could go to the library and look up allegiance rings.

Draco should have told me enough about the bloody things already when I asked, Harry thought, as he stepped into the shower and deliberately turned on the cold water. Not only did it wake him up with a leap and a shout, but it meant Dash had to stay outside the shower stall until it got warmer.

You are so anxious to be parted from me, then? Dash was now tall enough to rear up and look over the wall of the shower, at least if he slung a coil of his body around one of the sinks outside.

Harry bowed his head and scrubbed his fingers through his hair, not saying anything. He had thought—well, he had just hoped that he could stay out of it all this year. He probably couldn’t get away from Voldemort completely, since there were reports of Dark Marks at the Quidditch World Cup. And, well, Professor Snape and Mr. Malfoy were Death Eaters, or had been. Still were, if you listened to Sirius, which Harry didn’t make a habit of doing.

But he could stay out of politics. People were getting used to Dash now. The excitement around Pettigrew’s trial and Sirius’s release had already died down. Harry hadn’t done anything remarkable at the end of last year, nothing to compare to saving the Stone or entering the Chamber of Secrets and rescuing Ginny.

He’d just thought, hoped, that people were forgetting about him.

Did you forget that you announced your abuse to the papers, and some other people started coming forward? I know you didn’t look at the papers much of the rest of summer, but I did, and the public paid attention to that.

Harry paused and squinted up through the soap and shampoo at Dash. You read the papers? Really? 

Yes. I didn’t inflict it on you because I thought you needed some freedom from them. Dash’s tail lashed once, and he ended up falling down from his high perch. But he just flowed over the wall again and into the water, since it was warm now. But I wanted to make sure that no new threats to you were brewing there.

Harry swallowed, and then reached down and swept a hand across Dash’s flat head, because it replaced a lot of things he could have said and didn’t have the words for.

You’re welcome. Dash stuck out a tongue and licked at a bit of shampoo, then shuddered and scrubbed his tongue on the stones. He always said that shampoo looked like something that should taste good, since it was thick and glistened the way blood did, but he was always disappointed. In the meantime, you need to pursue the matter of the allegiance ring.

Harry sighed. Yes, he might prefer to forget about politics if he could, but it seemed politics weren’t going to forget about him.

Fine, but I think it’s just going to be a disappointment to them, he said, ducking his head through a final scrub of his hair and then stumbling out and reaching for the towel.After all, I’m not Slytherin reincarnated or whatever. What are they going to do when they find that out? 

You’re not, Dash agreed. But that doesn’t mean you can’t lie and claim to be.

It was Harry’s turn to fall, as he whirled around to stare at Dash in shock and tripped over a slight irregularity in the floor. He choked and got up again, while Dash slid towards the door and said, Clumsy, clumsy. You should practice walking like a pure-blood.

Harry glared at him. Pure-bloods don’t walk any better than Muggleborns or other wizards.

But they receive some training in grace, because of how embarrassing it would be to stumble in front of a political opponent. You should try it.

Harry gave up in disgust. You can’t seriously mean what you said. About pretending to be Slytherin. I’m not a good liar!

But there are things you can conceal, the way you concealed your abuse for years and years. Dash shot out his tongue and flicked it once as though he was gathering in a scent he had been searching for. I think Snape would help you. Draco would help you. Even Mr. Malfoy would help you, if he thought it was to his advantage. Dash turned and flicked his tongue out along the same path as his back, and Harry received a clear vision of him polishing his scales.

Maybe. But not something like that.

How do you know until you try?

Harry said nothing. He could see some sense in what Dash was saying, and a lot more trouble. 

Then he said, as he rubbed his hair furiously dry and ignored the way it stuck up, because it was always doing that, What would be the goal, anyway? If it’s so important to lie, then what would I gain?

Dash flung a casual coil around his hip and leg. Except that it bound Harry and stopped him from walking, it felt a lot like a hug from Ron or Hermione. Harry looked down at him.

You gain people who would follow you, said Dash, leaning his jaw on Harry’s leg. Fight for you. Protect you. People who would help me, and make my life easier.

And that was what it was really about for him, Harry was certain, feeling the throb in his brain, down their bond. Dash didn’t care much about the human politics of Gryffindor and Slytherin Houses, except if it meant that some other student would try to attack Harry because of it. He didn’t care whether the human families like the Selwyns got told the truth.

He wanted Harry safe. And that was all there was to it.

Harry stroked his scales until he heard people waking up in the bedroom, because he didn’t know any other way to convey how grateful he was that someone cared about him like that. Just him. Just Harry.

Then he said, All right. We’ll try it.

Dash immediately squeezed him tighter for a second, then let him go and glided in front of him, saying, Yes, Lord Slytherin. We should get ready for your first public debut.

Harry rolled his eyes. 

*

Severus was ready when he saw Harry walk into the Great Hall and detour over to the Slytherin table. He was far from deaf, and the excited gossip in Slytherin last night had alerted him to Selwyn’s giving the allegiance ring to Harry.

Harry stopped in front of Draco to exchange nods, and then turned to Jackson Selwyn. Severus immediately and shamelessly cast the charm that would allow him to hear clearly from this distance.

“Jackson Selwyn, right?” Harry asked, with that stare which broke out in a smile a moment later. It was much more charming than he had ever realized, but this time, Severus thought he was doing it on purpose.

Selwyn stared, seemingly star-struck. Severus concealed a sigh. He thought only family tradition and the boy’s own pleas with the Hat had landed him in Slytherin. He had as much guile as a Crup.

“Y-yeah,” Selwyn said, and then he seemed to make an effort to smooth down his hair and sit up more, probably in imitation of his parents at dinner parties or negotiation efforts. “Yes, of course. I mean, I am.” He glanced slyly at Harry, and then added, “I’m honored you know my name, sir.”

Sir? Severus narrowed his eyes. Of course he knew what the giving of the allegiance ring meant and why it had happened, but he was surprised at the respect that flowed so freely from Selwyn. 

Other than the way Harry reached down to touch the basilisk’s neck in the way that always meant he wanted reassurance, there was nothing to show how rattled he was. “Yes. Well, I wanted you to know that I’ve decided to—” A brief hesitation. The basilisk would be feeding him the right words, Severus thought. “Acknowledge and honor your family’s allegiance. Keep faith with me, and I’ll keep faith with you.”

Severus raised his eyebrows. Those were not the words of the most ancient of allegiance vows, but they were close enough to it that he doubted they were coincidence. Yes, the basilisk would have learned them. Or perhaps Harry had got them from Draco.

Selwyn looked ready to die of the honor. “Of course, sir,” he burbled, and held out his hand to tap his fist against Harry’s. “An honor to serve you, sir.” He hesitated, then added, “What should I tell my parents?”

“That I’d like to meet them.”

Severus sat back, thrown. He had thought Harry would come up with some appropriate words about waiting for now. This was an unusually proactive step.

“Yes, sir,” and Selwyn looked almost ready to float off the floor. “When would you like to meet them?”

Harry pretended to ponder. Only because he had been so close to him during the summer, however, could Severus tell that it was pretending. Harry was standing a little stiffer than he did when he was simply thinking, and his hand kept up that self-comforting stroking of the basilisk’s scales.

“One must not be hasty,” Harry said, and it had probably been the basilisk’s advice that he use the pronoun One as well. “Perhaps in a week? That gives me some time to see who else will declare allegiance, and perhaps like to come to the meeting as well. And it should be at Sirius Black’s house in Hogsmeade.”

Severus frowned, baffled. Why would Harry wish to meet there, in front of Black, who would probably go mad when he found out that several Slytherin families thought Harry was Salazar Slytherin reincarnated?

“Yes, sir! Thank you, sir! I’ll owl them right away!” And Selwyn actually leaped up from the table and ran through the arched doorway of the Great Hall, at least in the direction of the Owlery.

Harry was frowning or smiling at Draco—one of the two—and rubbing the back of his neck as if it hurt him. That soothed some of Severus’s fears, a little. He had thought Harry might grow as arrogant as his father if he took the treatment of those Slytherin families to heart. Not that Severus thought Harry naturally arrogant any longer, but it was hard to resist the entreaties of those who seemed ready to worship you.

But no, Harry was still himself, uneasy with attention and almost unreasonably modest. He would be able to put up with the attention if he was working towards a larger goal, the way he had when revealing the truth about his abusive relatives. But he wouldn’t do something that was merely meant as a way to gain adoration for himself.

Severus still wished Harry had come to him before he made this appointment with the Selwyns, however. He might or might not know how to behave around them.

Harry looked up and caught his eye. Severus nodded once. He would like to speak with Harry, and soon. Luckily, from the nod Harry gave him back, he knew that, and he was able to go over and eat his breakfast without fuss.

“Planning something with Harry, Severus?”

Severus turned to Albus. Albus hadn’t spoken to him all summer about the extra lessons he was giving Harry, although Severus was sure he knew about the ones in wandless magic. Severus and Harry had more than once mentioned that before portraits. It was only Occlumency that it might be dangerous for the Headmaster to know about.

“Yes,” said Severus. “I want to let him know that some people are more dangerous than they appear.”

“Ah.” Albus’s glance traced the path that Jackson Selwyn had taken out of the Great Hall, and he gave Severus a smile of cordial approval. “I think you are very wise to want Harry to know about his future enemies, Severus.”

He thinks that Harry is converting me to the Gryffindor side, Severus decided, in carefully hidden amazement. Albus was capable of changing the direction of his plans based on a single unexpected expression on someone’s face. Severus had seen evidence of that before. Or at least to the side that thinks of Slytherins as evil.

Severus could use this, which was the reason he allowed himself no more than a thin smile before he turned to his own breakfast. And then he was allowed no more than a few bites of his poached eggs before a hand nearly slapped down in the middle of his plate.

Unluckily for the source of the disturbance, Severus still had instincts honed by years of conflict with the Marauders and then handling himself among Death Eaters. He had his wand out in less than a second, and had cast a spell that restrained the hand in midair, on a flexible, invisible shield. That spell, created in his fifth year, was one of the few reasons that he had achieved an Outstanding in Potions. Otherwise, James Potter and his friends would have ruined more than one draught.

“You were saying?” Severus murmured, turning his head and giving Moody a dazzling scowl.

Moody settled back and stared at him. Severus endured the gaze of that magical eye, though not easily. It was productive of unease, and Moody was a formidable Auror, one of the few who had interrogated Severus during the brief time he’d spent in Ministry custody after the war. But Severus knew the touch of another Legilimens too well to fear that Moody could actually see his thoughts.

“I was saying,” Moody finally grunted, “that you seem to be far too interested in Harry Potter for one of your…persuasion.” His eyes flickered to Severus’s left arm.

Once a suspicious bastard, always a suspicious bastard, Severus thought, but he inclined his head. “You will know that I intend him no harm by watching my behavior,” he said, and took a final bite of his eggs before he stood up.

Moody rose too, squinting his real eye at him. “You’ll be telling him the truth about your past?”

“I already have,” Severus said. It was the first time he had ever thought of revealing that awkward conversation with Harry to anyone else, but worth it for the way that both of Moody’s eyes widened. “And he still comes to my class and trusts me to treat him fairly.”

Fairly.” Moody almost barked, and actually managed to draw Sybil’s attention away from her morning glass of sherry. Severus glared at her, and she returned to it fast enough. “Heard all about the way you base your treatment of the boy on his father. A fine man, James Potter. Good fighter. You don’t care about the boy compared to the father.”

“I am certain that his father felt more affection for him, yes,” Severus said. “I understand that is in the nature of fathers.”

Not that I would know. But Severus had kept Tobias Snape a secret too long to reveal his existence now, even in the face of provocation. He received provocation more extreme from Albus and Minerva on a regular basis.

“You’re a deep one, Snape.” Moody moved up towards Severus, until Severus could smell a complex of ingredients on his breath. Severus frowned a little. There were several strange ones there, rare ones. Rosehips, which were not usual in most liquors or meads, and—

“But I’m watching you. Wanted to let you know.” Moody jabbed Severus in the chest with one finger, gave him a nasty chuckle that he seemed to assume would frighten him, and walked away.

Severus watched him go, then turned back and gave a look of indifference at Albus, who was also watching him. “And it is necessary that he teach here, Albus?”

“He has Auror experience, which will prove invaluable when he teaches these youngsters to face up to curses,” said Albus, and beamed at him. “And he is absolutely loyal to our cause.”

Severus knew what that meant. The cause of the Order of the Phoenix, rather than the Ministry. Not that Albus was about to name the Order in front of most of the professors.

“Very well,” said Severus, and audibly sniffed and moved away in the direction of his classroom. He could hope that he would find Harry lingering along the way, and could give him his opinion of a too-hasty meeting with Selwyn.

But he did not, and in fact, Harry nearly came in late to Potions. He panted into his seat a moment before Severus would have shut the classroom door on principle. Severus raised his eyebrows. Harry ducked his head and muttered something that sounded like a, “Sorry, sir.”

Severus then hoped he would be able to catch the boy after classes, but Harry scooted out the door the instant he gave Severus his vial. He had done nothing horrible during the class, though nothing remarkable, either, apparently making his potion his reason for existence.

Severus sighed. He hated to resort to owls or giving Harry detention, but he would do it rather than see Harry march into a meeting with the Selwyns unprepared. Harryneeded some advice.

That does not come from Black or Albus.

*

Blaise blinked as an owl dipped towards him at the lunch table. His mother wrote to him once a week on Thursdays, and had never varied her habit in the last three years unless he wrote to her first. And post usually arrived at breakfast, anyway.

Automatically casting the spell that would blur the letters of the words in the eyes of anyone trying to peer over his shoulder, Blaise slit the envelope. 

The writing inside was familiar. So familiar that Blaise almost tore up the letter before he remembered that no one else could read it, and so his secrets were safe. His breathing was still shallow as he did read, and he knew he was getting more than one curious glance.

Brat,

I was reading in the Prophet about that initiative to reveal the abuse among pure-bloods. The paper takes a distance to come, here. You’re not to say anything to anyone.

Otherwise, I might have to take a little jaunt back to Britain.

There was no signature. Of course, there didn’t have to be.

Blaise shook his head and gave a slight, contemptuous smile, as if the letter held news not worth discussing, then ripped it up. He hid his shaking hands underneath the table.

It had come. What Blaise was afraid might happen when he saw that reckless story of Potter’s in the papers, and more when he heard that Pansy had actually gone to Professor Snape and told stories about her father abusing her. The story had vanished into quietness after that, the way it should, but Blaise had still managed to hear that Pansy’s mother had taken Pansy and moved out of the house.

Blaise had no such recourse. Couldn’t Potter have left things alone instead of stirring them up? The families handled such things in their own way.

Or didn’t handle them.

Blaise swallowed. Potter’s thinking had infected him. It was no wonder that the one other person in the world who held a portion of Blaise’s secret might think there was a chance of Blaise agreeing with Potter and deciding to expose him.

Did he need to reply? After a moment, Blaise decided he did. There was too much chance that silence would be seen as defiance.

Blaise slipped away from lunch, an easy task when everyone else was listening enthralled to Draco bragging about his flame cobra. Blaise snorted a little. Draco hadn’t brought the snake to the Great Hall yet, the way he kept promising. Blaise thought this was little more than posturing on Draco’s part.

As he made for the Slytherin common room, Blaise’s thoughts were far away, and he didn’t notice the sound of light footsteps coming towards him until he slammed into the person making them. She gave a little “oof” and scrambled away from him, then stood up and bowed her head. “S-sorry,” she whispered.

Blaise glanced at her casually. Pale hair, sallow skin, an upturned nose: she was a Paxton. There was a first-year in Slytherin with that name, so it made sense for her to be down here. “Watch where you’re going,” he said coolly, not seeing the need to take more from a first-year than an apology.

“Y-yes, I will.” The first-year gave him a nervous little curtsey and turned away. She had a box in one hand that gleamed with the Paxton coat-of-arms on top of it, and Blaise was abruptly sure he knew what she was doing.

“Wait.”

Paxton stopped and glanced nervously back at him, and Blaise took a long step towards her. “Is that a family allegiance ring you’re giving to Potter?”

Paxton clutched the box closer. Did she think he would try to steal the ring? Well, Blaise could make allowance for the absurdities of first-years.

He wanted to take the information and not the ring, anyway.

“Y-yes.” Paxton’s head went up a little, probably because she thought she had the honor of her family to fight for this time. “My mother says that Salazar Slytherin’s prestige can protect us against the war to come.”

Blaise laughed harshly. He had thought that was the reason Selwyn had given Potter his family’s allegiance ring, but he hadn’t believed the delusion would spread to other families. Everyone knew the Selwyns had a bit of an inbreeding problem, like the Gaunts back in their day. “You’re a fool if you think that Harry Potter is Salazar Slytherin reincarnated.”

“But he has a basilisk,” Paxton began earnestly.

“That’s because he has a Parselmouth. Anyone who was could command one.” Blaise took another step towards her. “And, in fact, anyone could learn enough Parseltongue to control a snake. Did you know that Draco Malfoy has a flame cobra? He hasn’t learned enough Parseltongue to make it obey him all the time, but some of the time works. You could do the same thing. Anyone could. Harry Potter is not Slytherin.”

Paxton opened her mouth, then closed it again. Her hold on the box grew tighter.

“But then who’s going to protect us?” she whispered. “My mum says someone needs to protect us in the war.”

She also wouldn’t want you telling me that. But fuck if Blaise was going to reveal a secret so beneficial. He drew himself up. “My mother could.”

Paxton blinked at him. Blaise thought he would need to give an explanation of who his mother was, but then she gasped and said, “You’re Blaise Zabini.”

“Yes, I am,” said Blaise, and gave her a cold smile. “And you can think about what she’s done, including that duel with Scrimgeour a few years back.” 

Paxton stood there, trembling. Blaise added, as if generously, because he didn’t think he could prod her to go against her family’s decision right now, “Look, just hang onto the allegiance ring for a while, all right? Owl your mother back and ask her what she thinks you should do. Tell her what I told you about Parselmouths. Just try to make sure that you’re giving your allegiance to someone who can really protect you, not a fake.”

The reasons Paxton must have been placed in Slytherin came to the fore then. She nodded, her face tightening in suspicion. “Yes, I have to ask.” And she turned back to the common room.

Blaise closed his eyes in relief. That was one family who might never give their allegiance ring to Harry Potter, then.

And the less powerful Harry Potter was, the better it could be for Blaise.

Which didn’t get rid of the letter he still had to write. But every wave Blaise could prevent Potter from making was one more that wouldn’t splash on him.

Chapter 39: Confrontations Like Sparkling Scales

Chapter Text

Dash coiled in a large pile in the sunlight next to the lake, and pretended that he didn’t feel the racing hum of Harry’s thoughts.

Tell me again why pretending to be Slytherin was such a great idea, Harry thought in a daze, sorting through the pile of letters he’d received in the past week. Over to one side was a pile of boxes holding allegiance rings. There were more empty ones, which according to Draco meant that the families were considering allying with Harry but wanted to wait and see what would happen first.

Dash finally raised his head and showed his fangs off in a yawn. It’s bringing more people into the nest to protect you.

Harry paused and looked at him. Nest? What are you on about?

It’s the best term I could think of. You don’t have a house where you’re safe or that you own. A nest is the only way to think of it. Dash wriggled closer to him and leaned his head against Harry’s ankle, yawning again as if to emphasize that this was his bed now and Harry had better not move. So they’ll be your nest.

Harry only shook his head. “It’s getting hard to keep up with it,” he whispered. That was the main reason he had avoided Snape so far, even though Snape seemed to be on the verge of assigning Harry detention just so he could ask him what was going on. It was too overwhelming.

And he was wary about Snape being disappointed with him. Snape probably would be, because Harry had been pretending to be Slytherin.

You can tell him that it was my idea, and my fault. Dash leaned his head over Harry’s shoulder now, wrapping him in a half-coiled hug. I don’t think he trusts me as much as you do, anyway.

No one trusts you as much as I do. Harry scratched behind Dash’s plume and was rewarded by the snake’s head trailing down his arm, Dash gone nearly limp with pleasure. Even when they should.

A function of being unable to communicate with me, perhaps. Dash’s yellow eyes smoldered behind his eyelids for a second, and then he uncoiled from Harry and moved towards the lake. But even I don’t understand what you meant by telling the Selwyns that you’ll meet them in Black’s house.

Harry smiled a little and turned back to the pile of letters in front of him. You don’t?

Dash hesitated once, his tongue flicking out as though to catch an elusive scent. Harry supposed the scents of emotions might be elusive. You mean it to be…a test?Dash sounded as if he wasn’t sure he believed him, even though Harry was letting Dash pick up his thoughts now.

Exactly, said Harry, and ran a knuckle down Dash’s head, which made him turn over on his back like a dog. Harry laughed. He knew Dash had only picked that up from imitating Sirius, and it wasn’t something he would have done on his own. I want to see if Sirius can actually treat the Selwyns politely, and if it’s my home, too, and I can hold meetings there.

Dash rolled back over and flicked his tongue out so that it touched Harry’s elbow. What happens if he fails those tests?

Harry stopped sorting letters for a minute, because he couldn’t make himself continue. Then he took a deep breath and went on. Well, that proves some things about Sirius are true that you’ve been trying to…convince me to believe.

Dash said nothing for a moment, his tongue still resting comfortingly against Harry’s elbow. Then he said abruptly, There’s at least one confrontation you can’t put off any longer.

Harry looked up. Snape was heading towards him across the grounds, his strides so sharp that they looked like he was hurting his feet. Harry winced and sat back, reaching for Dash. Dash wrapped himself around Harry’s shoulders and spine, but he was chuckling in the back of Harry’s mind.

I don’t think it’s that funny. Harry ducked his head so that his chin was resting on Dash’s scales, and wondered bitterly why Dash thought it was hilarious.

I just think it’s that predictable. You avoid him, and he comes and finds you. This time, Dash’s tongue brushed against Harry’s ear. And you were wondering if he would have any time for you during the school year.

Harry felt a complicated mixture of warmth and squirming embarrassment in his stomach, which didn’t make it much easier to face Snape when he halted in front of Harry and asked coolly, “And what have you been doing with the allegiance rings these families have been sending you?”

*

“Waiting to see if Sirius is really the guardian I thought he was, sir.”

Severus paused. He had thought for a long while that Harry, while he could manipulate, wasn’t conscious of it most of the time. He would employ defensive strategies out of fear of pain, or to get someone to leave him alone, or because he thought it would content an adult who might be on the verge of anger. 

This, though…the way Harry was ducking his head and looking up at him through his eyelashes, the way that he had one hand resting on but not stroking the basilisk’s scales, and that his first words were about Black…

Severus cast a few unobtrusive charms that would keep people from looking casually in their direction, and then bent down towards Harry and said, “Tell me what you mean.”

Harry swallowed, and Severus thought the words that came out next were true, although that might not keep them from being manipulative. “I didn’t know Jackson Selwyn would give me a family allegiance ring. I didn’t even know what it was at first. Draco had to explain it to me. But then I thought I could get some allies by pretending I was the reincarnation of Slytherin, which is what they all want to think anyway.”

Severus did not slap a hand over his eyes. This matter had already gone beyond that. He crouched down in front of Harry instead and whispered, “Why did you think you could pull off a lie?”

Harry gulped and spent a moment touching the basilisk on the back as though the snake was feeding him ideas. Perhaps he was. Severus, with his demanding gaze on the boy’s face, didn’t particularly care what Harry thought he was doing, only what he would do.

“Because they want to believe it,” Harry finally said. “And Dash wants help in protecting me. If some families swear allegiance to me, then he might get it.” He sat up. “And I meant what I said. I told them they could meet me at Sirius’s house because I wanted to see how he’d react to it. If he supports me, then that means that it’s my house, too.”

“He might not support you because he might see how mad you are acting.” Severus spoke with an informality that he knew caught the boy off-guard, from the way Harry stopped moving altogether. “Has your basilisk realized his ruse might place you in more danger than you currently are?”

Harry shook his head a little as though he assumed he would be able to come up with an answer, but in the end, he could say nothing more than, “I’m already in an awful lot of danger, sir. At least this way, I have more of a support.”

Severus closed his eyes. “What happens when they find out the truth?”

“Should they?” Severus glared at Harry again, who seemed to have found his inner Slytherin and only looked back. “The books Draco gave me said there isn’t a prophecy that says Salazar Slytherin will look a certain way. Or act a certain way. There’s just the Parseltongue, and him being bonded to a powerful snake, that distinguish him. It actually sounds like it could apply to Voldemort, too.”

Severus flinched hard enough at the name that his hands tore up grass and the basilisk flicked his tongue at him. Severus stabbed the snake with a glance. He had been used to think he was sensible. Now he did not.

“No,” Severus conceded. “It is not lacking certain memories or failing to perform certain actions that would expose you as a fake. You are simply too inexperienced a liar to fend off the inevitable suspicions.”

“Dash can help me. And I have to go through with this, sir. I already told the Selwyns that I would meet them at Sirius’s house.”

Sirius’s house, not home. Severus could see the sort of gaping emotional wound that might have driven the boy to try this sort of test at all.

It did not please him, however. “Then meet with the Selwyns and tell them that you were trying to gain political allies and resign their allegiance ring back to them,” Severus told him. “They will not spread the story for fear of embarrassment. You are not to do anything like this ever again.”

Harry squinted hard at him. Severus half-expected the basilisk to unfold with a hiss and come for him, if it had really been his idea, but he was silent, although his cocked head showed his eyes focused wholly on Severus.

“Why?” Harry finally asked. “If I can get some protection this way, then why?”

Severus took a deep breath.

Because you aren’t good at politics. Because you aren’t good at lying. Because there are too many people who will try to use you for their own purposes and you haven’t the slightest idea what they are or what they’ll want. Because you didn’t spend the last three years in Slytherin House and don’t know the kind of people you’ll make enemies of for doing something that would seem innocent to you. Because the basilisk isn’t a good adviser. Because you didn’t grow up in our world and don’t know what the Selwyns see as manners.

So many answers, he couldn’t get through them all. He ended by saying, “Because a lie that was successful for a while would ultimately endanger you more than apologizing and portraying this as a joke or whim that got out of hand.”

Harry opened his mouth to respond, but the basilisk hissed something in Parseltongue. A courtesy, Severus realized, as he tensed his muscles against an unfortunate response. He could simply have spoken silently into Harry’s head, and Severus wouldn’t have known they were having a conversation.

“Dash says that if I’m really going to be in a political crossfire, then I should learn how to play the politics want to play.” Harry’s eyes were wide, and for a few seconds he was obviously simply repeating the basilisk’s words, but then his voice firmed. “I chose to act a certain way when I told you about—the Dursleys. We played it a certain way.” He swallowed. “Why can’t I play this the same way?”

“You have too few allies,” Severus told him flatly. “I will not support this, and I doubt the Malfoys will. And you haven’t told Black about this test, have you?”

Harry looked at his feet. His voice was small. “I couldn’t tell him, not if it was going to be a test.”

That was undoubtedly true, but it didn’t make Severus less worried about how Black would react. “Tell him,” he said, standing. “If he refuses to have the Selwyns in yourhome, arrange to meet them at the gates.” He thought having Harry off Hogwarts grounds was not a wise idea.

“Okay,” said Harry in an even smaller voice.

Severus looked down at him and sighed. Harry must feel beaten in something he had thought he would manage, by the way his head was bowed. Severus hadn’t seen such discouragement since their early days of practice at wandless magic. Harry seemed more willing to accept defeats in Occlumency, since Severus had told him it would be difficult.

“I am doing this for your own safety,” said Severus. He had been about to say “your own good,” but Harry would have excellent reasons for being cautious around someone who said something like that. “I don’t think it would be a good idea for you to meet with the Selwyns more than once.” He eyed the pile of boxes off to the side. “Or all those other people who sent you allegiance rings.”

Harry nodded. “Okay.”

Severus studied him for a moment, wondering if that simple word hid disobedience, the way it would have with Draco. But Harry saw him looking, and he smiled a bit before sighing and leaning his hand on the basilisk’s back.

“I have to admit that I never knew how I was going to lie my way through it,” he whispered. “I’m not good enough at lying. And now that Dash knows what you think, he agrees with you.”

From the basilisk’s calm, shadowed glance, Severus was not sure that was true, but he was also sure that the basilisk would at least consider the possibility before involving Harry in another such game. He nodded. “Then go and tell Black that you need to use his house. Conduct your test. That you might at least do.”

Harry studied him for a second, then smiled a little. “You’re only saying that much because you hate Sirius, right, sir?”

Severus shook his head. His feelings for Black had been considerably complicated by the addition of Harry. The frustration that the mutt continued to place dead men before the child he was supposed to protect…

And yet, it would not have mattered to Severus once. It hadn’t mattered enough for years, despite his vow to Lily, for him to report Potter to McGonagall or give up the pleasure of disciplining him so that someone else might take the boy in hand and properly train him in the ways of keeping himself alive. Perhaps his grudge at Black as much as desire to help Harry had guided his permission to Harry.

“That’s all right,” said Harry, and he abruptly stood up and put one hand on Severus’s arm, to Severus’s utter astonishment. “I’m starting to understand that. I think it’s just the way Slytherins work.” He smiled a little. “If something can benefit you and other people at the same time, it doesn’t really matter why you do it.”

He moved off, while Severus stared after him. As had happened many times before, the basilisk was the one who watched him over Harry’s shoulder, turning only when Harry seemed to request his help to manage the floating packets of letters and boxes.

At least he will not pretend to be Salazar Slytherin, Severus told himself as he returned to the school. And his secret is the less dangerous for not having been enacted before I caught him. He should be safer now.

The notion of danger remained glittering in his mind anyway, but he told himself to put it aside, and move on. Harry had promised. That would be enough.

*

“So that’s the reason I invited the Selwyns here, you see.” Harry paused and looked up to see how Sirius was taking it.

Sirius was sitting there so shocked and silent that Harry thought he was going to crumple over in a minute. Dash said, He’s playing. He wants to ignore the traits you have that align you with Slytherin, and that’s all there is to it. Leave him alone to endure his confrontation with reality.

He looks sick, though, Harry snapped back, and stepped towards Sirius. “If it shocks you that badly, then I’ll just meet with them at Hogwarts,” he said. “I’m sorry, but I thought you should know.” He glanced at the clock on the wall. He had got permission from McGonagall to go home long enough to talk to Sirius, since it was Saturday, but she had told him to be back by lunch.

“You never said that you wanted to meet with Slytherins at all,” Sirius whispered. He tried to smile. “If I thought you were setting up some kind of prank on them, Harry, of course I would help you.”

Harry swallowed. “So it would be all right if I was planning something that might hurt or frighten them? But not something that might make allies or friends?”

Sirius stood up and began pacing around the room. Harry hated when he did that. It always made him feel dizzy and small. He knew that was probably partially because Uncle Vernon had done it when he was talking about how much money Harry had cost them and how worthless he was.

But he only knew that because Dash had told him so, and he didn’t really want to think about it. Sirius wasn’t Uncle Vernon.

You should tell him that it makes you feel unsafe, Dash hissed gently into his ear. Tell him to stop it. Tell him that it makes you feel uncomfortable, and you want to make this your home instead of just his.

It sounded so good when Dash said it, Harry thought miserably. But he couldn’t say it like that. It would just hurt Sirius, and he would twist Harry’s words around.

I could take control of your voice and talk to him about it.

Harry considered it, but in the end, he had to shake his head. He had done this in the first place because he wanted to see how Sirius would respond to him, not Dash, and if Sirius wouldn’t let him hold any meetings in this house because of “Slytherins,” then Harry had already failed. He found himself holding his breath as Sirius turned around again.

He is the one who’s failed if all he can think of is “Slytherins” whenever other adults are mentioned. Adults old enough to have a twelve-year-old child at school, no less. This was your test to give and his to fail, remember?

Harry couldn’t remember being more frightened in his life as he stood there, waiting for Sirius to say something. And Sirius was staring at him with lost and haunted eyes. Harry knew that no matter what, he would end up feeling that something was his fault. 

“Harry,” Sirius finally whispered. “You know that what I want is your comfort and happiness.”

That means no, Harry thought, dully.

“And I really think you need to keep away from Slytherins if you’re going to be comfortable and happy.” Sirius folded his arms and smiled. Harry thought it was supposed to be a happy or amused smile. It was a horrible one, though. “That means that you don’t need to bring adult Slytherins here or entertain them, either. If someone was going to do that, it would be me. But I don’t need to talk to them. I don’t need to speak to them.”

Something itched fiercely along Harry’s eyes, something that felt like tears, except he wouldn’t let it be. He was just going to nod and turn away and leave the house, but he felt Dash uncoiling from around him.

He knew that, this time, words wouldn’t be enough. Dash was going to bite Sirius unless Harry did something else, something that wouldn’t send to Sirius to sleep like the poison but might hurt him as much.

“You’re talking to one Slytherin all the time, though,” Harry said. His throat felt rusty. He just wanted to be on his broom, high above the school, far away from everyone. He looked Sirius in the eye. “You’re talking to Draco’s mum all the time, aren’t you? Why can you talk to her but I can’t talk to people who might ally with me?”

Sirius froze. His throat seemed to stop moving, which meant he wasn’t about to speak. Harry stood there and waited.

There was nothing, though, except the growing belief that Sirius wasn’t going to answer. Which meant Harry had something else to do. He had to leave and send an owl to the Selwyns. He had to think. He had to think a lot about whether he even wanted to come back to Hogsmeade for the holidays.

Well, of course he did. Sirius had legal guardianship of him, and if it wasn’t him, it would be the Dursleys. Sirius might confuse the hell out of Harry sometimes, but that was a lot better than locking him in the cupboard.

“Harry! Wait!”

Harry turned around, ignoring the hiss that Dash gave for him to walk out the door. It seemed Sirius had something important to say, from the way he knelt down in front of Harry and hugged him around the waist.

“You can do this here, if it’s really important to you,” Sirius said, in a rushed voice. “And I’m talking to Draco’s mum about something important I can’t reveal to you—yet. I promise that you’ll be the first to know, the instant I can tell you. The instant.” He paused and stared pleadingly at Harry.

Don’t trust him. He was the one who didn’t have an answer when you asked him a plain question.

Harry wanted to nod in response to Dash’s words, and he wanted to laugh, and he wanted to throw up. He ended up just whispering, “Okay.”

At least that was a word Sirius couldn’t take and twist around. Instead, he beamed, and started talking about how he would make sure the house was in good order and the food was cooked and he would sit off to one side and not say a word to the Selwyns.

Harry took a steadying breath. It was still better than it could be. He would remember that.

It’s far from as good as you deserve.

But you think I deserve everything, Harry said, and let a caress trail through Dash’s mind since he couldn’t move his arms with Sirius still hugging him. You should remember that not everyone agrees with you.

And you should remember that a basilisk is always right.

For the moment, Harry didn’t have any response to that. He was too glad Sirius had agreed to notice much of anything else.

*

Severus started to his feet as Harry stepped into the old classroom where he had told Harry, when he’d hesitantly asked, that of course they were still going to practice Occlumency and wandless magic. Harry’s face was stricken, and he stopped near the door and stared at Severus as if he had forgotten who he was.

“What is the matter?” Severus flicked his wand as he spoke, searching for a Confundus Charm and several other common means of making Harry look like that. No magic answered his search, however. Severus ended up moving one of the conjured chairs for Harry to collapse into.

“Where is the basilisk?” Severus added, when he turned around and realized that he wasn’t with Harry or slithering into the room right behind him. Perhaps he was fighting whoever had made Harry look this way. Severus strode towards the door, intending to find him and bring him right away. If he poisoned someone or gazed on them, the restrictions Dumbledore would impose on Harry—

But the basilisk slithered in then, and his high-pitched hissing sounded the most like laughter of any sound that Severus had heard him make. He looked at Harry and flicked his tongue out in a series of short snaps. Harry let his face collapse into his hands.

“Explain what is going on.”

Severus had enough soft force to his voice to make even seventh-year Slytherin pure-bloods pay attention. Harry responded in much the same way, lifting his head. “It didn’t work,” he said, in a flat voice.

“What did not?” Severus glared at the basilisk as he twined himself around the legs of Harry’s chair, wishing, not for the first time, that he spoke Parseltongue himself.

“I told the Selwyns that I wasn’t Salazar Slytherin reincarnated.” Harry took a deep breath. “That I’d made a mistake and been too enthusiastic about accepting their allegiance ring. I was sorry, but I couldn’t protect them, and I’d have to return it to them.”

“And?” Severus could think of no reason why that wouldn’t work. The Selwyns were haughty, but not unreasonable. They would understand the logic of a fourteen-year-old boy and his desire to look more important, the most coherent explanation for why Harry had accepted the ring in the first place.

“They didn’t believe me,” Harry whispered, looking down at the basilisk. “They said that because I had a basilisk with me, I must be Slytherin. No one else could control such a dangerous snake. And they’d heard I found him in the Chamber of Secrets. Who else could enter it?” He looked hopelessly at Severus.

Severus stood there, admitting that he didn’t know what to do, while the room was silent except for the basilisk’s soft hisses. Severus understood them now, without knowing Parseltongue. They were snickers.

“So what am I supposed to do?” Harry leaned back.

“You move forwards from here,” said Severus. “You keep their allegiance ring and don’t accuse them of lying. You politely fend off the others who’ve only sent you empty boxes as tests, and you tell the ones who sent you rings that you can only provide them limited protection. And you train harder than ever, so that no one can accuse you of lying, either.”

Severus watched the fire return to Harry’s eyes. He saw the basilisk peer at him around the chair, darting his tongue out in what was probably approval.

Severus glared back, since this was really the ruddy snake’s fault, but it was hard for a basilisk to look repentant, and Dash didn’t try.

I might as well grant him the ridiculous name, since he has proven to be ridiculous. 

Chapter 40: The Flash

Chapter Text

“Potter, stay after class.”

Moody’s voice was gruff. Then again, thought Harry as he got up, adjusted Dash around his shoulders, and walked to the front of the room, it was always gruff.

Sometimes Moody seemed to like Harry and would praise him for his spells; sometimes he ignored him for an entire class except to mock him for not getting his dueling posture exactly right. Harry wondered what Moody had to say to him today. Harry didn’t think his work had been that unusual.

Except in comparison to the other students, none of whom could do it for more than a second? Dash tickled Harry’s ear in a way that always made him jump. I’m proud of you.

You weren’t in my mind, helping me, were you? Harry asked a little suspiciously. Despite the fact that he and Dash had what was essentially a familiar bond, it wasn’t always easy for him to tell when Dash was influencing his magic.

No. I wanted to see what would happen if you had to face it on your own.

Harry lifted his head a little at that, proudly. He thought he’d done well, and he knew Dash wouldn’t have been praising him if he didn’t think it, too.

He came to a halt in front of Moody’s desk, and the man folded his fingers and looked at him. Harry tried to keep his eyes away from the dead spider next to Moody’s hand. He wanted to go and ask about Neville, who had gone so pale when he’d seen the Cruciatus Curse used. But he had to do this first.

“Professor?” Harry finally asked, when a full minute had passed and he’d started to think he wasn’t going to get the chance to talk to Neville. Not only that, he might be late to Transfiguration, and McGonagall was back to treating Harry pretty much like any other Gryffindor.

“Who taught you to resist the Imperius Curse?” Moody fired the questions the way Dudley used to fire stones. Moody always did that. Harry wondered why he blamed thestudents in the class for missing the questions or getting upset at them, when he did it that way. “What did it feel like? How many tries did it take for you to resist it when you practiced?”

“I never even heard of the Imperius Curse until today,” Harry snapped back. Moody was acting like Snape when he used to be unfair in Potions and accuse Harry of cheating. “I didn’t practice with it, and nobody taught me! And it felt like somebody else’s voice telling me that I had to do something. But I didn’t want to listen. So I didn’t.”

Moody raised his eyebrows. “That’s not the way most people describe their experience of the Imperius Curse, Potter,” he said, and he was almost accusing. “Didn’t you feel a pleasant sensation? It may have been like floating,” he added, while both of his eyes rolled back in his head. The magical one was a little more disturbing, though.

Harry hesitated, then shrugged. “There was a feeling like that at the beginning, Professor.” It hadn’t lasted long, though. Harry was always aware of where he was and the nasty voice urging him to do something. 

And the solid rock of his bond with Dash was there at the back of his mind, too, giving him a place to stand on and push against. But he didn’t think he’d mention that. Moody was already upset that Dash was in the classroom and seemed to think Dash would attack if somebody cursed Harry in a duel. 

Even though that already happened and Dash didn’t do anything, Harry thought, rebellious.

“It’s impossible for you to resist it without trying,” said Moody, and he almost barked the words, more like a dog than anyone Harry knew except Sirius. He drew his wand, then paused. “Unless…”

“I did try to resist it,” Harry said, his cautious eyes on Moody’s wand. But he wasn’t very afraid. For one thing, he was close enough to Moody that Dash could uncoil in a snap and take the wand away if he had to. “Professor?”

“I mean, first try,” said Moody, and now he seemed calmer. He stepped around the desk and looked at Harry from so close that Harry had to tilt his head back. “Have you ever seen a Veela, boy?”

“No,” said Harry slowly. He thought Lupin had mentioned them last year in Defense Against the Dark Arts, though. “They’re—sort of like bird-women, aren’t they, sir? Or they can turn into birds.”

“Sort of.” Moody looked amused again. “They’re also very good at charming people, mostly boys, to fall in love with them. If you’d seen one and been able to resist her charm, then I could know for sure whether you’d also resist the Imperius Curse out of natural talent.”

Harry shrugged. “My friend Ron said there were some Veela at the Quidditch World Cup, but I didn’t go to that.” Neither had Ron, although he had read all the details in the papers and recited them over and over again until Dash had complained that he was dreaming about Quidditch. 

Moody tapped his wand against his arm. “There has to be some way to test you,” he muttered, staring into Harry’s eyes so hard hairs prickled up and down Harry’s arms. “Some way…”

“What does it matter, sir?” Harry shook his head. “It’s a good thing I can resist the Imperius Curse, right? And if I ever meet a Veela, it’s probably good that I won’t start drooling about her, either.” Ron had said some people at the World Cup had done that, and even tried to fling themselves out of their seats to meet the Veela. Harry cringed at the thought of making a fool of himself like that.

Oh, I would bite you and send you to sleep before I let you do that, said Dash cheerfully.

Harry shook his head and looked up at Moody again. And that was when he thought he felt it. There was a fast, sharp flicker at what felt like the inner corner of his eyes. Harry squirmed and lifted a hand to rub them.

That was Legilimency, said Dash, confirming Harry’s guess. He started to unwind himself deliberately from around Harry’s legs and arms.

Harry tried to clutch at him and rub his eyes at the same time, and ended up tripping and falling to the floor. He heard Moody exclaim something that could have been a curse, and then he reached out a heavy hand, as Harry saw when he managed to blink and get his eyes open all the way.

“Didn’t mean to make you fall, boy,” Moody said. “You all right?”

You can’t bite him, Harry said to Dash. Dash had paused in his unwinding, maybe because Harry wasn’t hurt or Moody hadn’t tried Legilimency again, and at least seemed to be listening. I won’t let you. I’ll—I’ll sever our bond if you do that.

Dash gave a hiss that only Harry probably knew was a hiss of agony, from the way Moody jumped back and stared warily at him. But he coiled close to Harry again, and rested his head right under Harry’s chin. Nothing is worth losing you, he whispered, his voice drumming down the corridors of Harry’s mind. Nothing.

I didn’t really mean what I said, about severing the bond, Harry told him, and stroked his head. Sorry. I just really didn’t want you to bite him.

Dash said nothing, but he also didn’t let go and retreat somewhere to sulk, which was how Harry knew he was probably forgiven.

He licked his lips and turned to Moody. “Sorry, professor,” he said, and he knew he sounded a little shaky. “Dash just didn’t—didn’t understand what was going on.”

“That’s the way we’re going to phrase it, is it?” Moody sounded as though he was being thoughtful, maybe about to launch another attack on Harry. But when Harry looked up, Moody, although he was watching Harry closely, didn’t look ready to draw his wand. “All right, boy. Go on your way. You’ll be late.”

I already thought that, Harry wanted to protest, but he knew there was little point in arguing with a professor like this. He turned and hurried out, winding his way through the corridors in search of Neville.

But it seemed everyone else had already gone on their way to Transfiguration, and Harry sneaked in just as the door was about to close. McGonagall gave him a stern frown, but didn’t start scolding. She never did unless someone had actually done something wrong. She went up to the front of the room and started showing them how they were going to change a wooden shoe into a leather one.

More useful than some of the strange things you have learned in this class.

Harry wanted to shout out loud with joy that Dash was talking to him again, but since they were in the middle of class, he didn’t. He just stroked Dash hard with one hand and muttered, Are you okay?

Yes. I am thinking about what you said.

Harry waited, but Dash didn’t elaborate on that, and Harry knew he probably wouldn’t get to hear more about it, not right now. He hid his sigh and turned to focus on the shoe in front of him. He thought about how nice it would be to have shoes of his own that he could make, that Sirius didn’t have to buy for him or have opinions about him spending money on, and then he waved his wand as fiercely as he could and spoke the incantation.

The shoe didn’t turn all the way from wood, but now the toe was leather and there was mottling on the side that looked sort of like the mottling on Dash’s scales. McGonagall, passing by, paused, then gave a nod and said, “Concentration does wonders for your skill, Potter.”

“Yes, professor,” Harry said, knowing it was as close to an open reference to his “crimes” as McGonagall was going to come, and sat respectfully still until she passed on to another student. Then he stroked Dash’s back.

A second later, Dash’s tongue tickled his hand.

Harry relaxed completely for what felt like the first time all morning, and wondered how soon he could get to Snape to tell him that Moody had tried to use Legilimency on him.

*

Draco had a secret. Or, at least, knowledge that he suspected Harry wouldn’t want him to have, and neither would Professor Moody. 

But he hesitated over what to do with the knowledge. He could confront Harry about it. He could try talking to Professor Snape, who he thought would at least be interested in news about Harry but might frown on the method by which he’d obtained it.

Or he could owl to his father.

Draco had nodded as he thought about it. He had gone to catch Harry as he was coming out of Defense, and then heard the low-voiced conversation between Harry and Professor Moody, and stood outside the door in helpless enthrallment while he listened. Harry would probably overlook that, but Draco didn’t think Moody would.

Moody was…Draco wouldn’t say he was unfriendly, but he did have the impression that Moody didn’t like Slytherins. He listened to them with this air that was uncomfortable to Draco, and never paid as much attention to their answers as he did to the other Houses’. And he took off points from Slytherin in a flash.

Maybe that wasn’t strange when Moody was an Auror, but Draco had received a letter from his father a fortnight ago saying that Moody didn’t tend to favor any one House. He’d made sure no one he worked with on a regular basis actually knew which House he belonged to. So it would have been out of character for him to attack Slytherin in case someone decided he’d belonged to Gryffindor.

Until now, Draco thought, his feet pounding up the steps to the Owlery, he’d held back from writing to his father. A stray impression here and there wasn’t worth a letter. But this was.

And his father would let him know what he should do. Talk to Professor Snape? Encourage Harry to stand up to Moody more? Moody hadn’t been able to make Harry get rid of Dash. So Harry might be able to get away with more than other people because of Dash and his fame.

Draco came out into the Owlery, looking around for a regular owl, since his own was with his parents. And then he stopped and stared when he saw Harry there, tying on something to Hedwig’s leg.

“Harry?”

Dash, coiled on the floor, had only lifted his head and examined Draco sleepily before curling up again, but he must not have told Harry Draco was there. Harry leaped and cursed in a way that made Draco’s eyes widen in respect. He wondered if Harry had learned that from Black.

“Oh, Draco. Hi.” Harry sighed a little, and finished tying on the parchment. “Take that to Professor Snape, girl,” he told Hedwig.

The snowy owl glanced at Draco, tweaked Harry’s hair, and sailed out the window. Draco shook his head and went to coax a regular barn owl down to his hand.

“Why do you have to write to him? You’ll see him tomorrow in class, and I know that he might want to meet privately with you before then.”

“No time for a private meeting today,” Harry said. He held out his arm, and Dash coiled up it and around his body. If Harry scolded him for not letting Harry know Draco was there, Draco certainly couldn’t hear it. “Hermione has a study session organized that would be difficult for me to slip away from. And I can’t wait until tomorrow.”

“Is it about Professor Moody, then?” Draco thought he made his voice very suave and uninterested as he sent the letter out the window.

But Harry turned around with a stricken look, and Draco winced. He’d never had a friend who he had to be so careful with. Blaise could give as good as he got, and Vince and Greg just didn’t understand if Draco was making fun of them most of the time.

“I was eavesdropping outside,” Draco said, hoping that the casual way he spoke would make Harry feel better. He certainly hadn’t meant to embarrass Harry or keep him from trusting Draco. It would be awful if he started feeling that way, and the mere thought made Draco tense up.

“How did you even know I was still there?” Harry’s cheeks were as bright as some of the owls’ eyes, but he sounded calmer. He started walking towards the door from the Owlery, and Draco followed him. “And why didn’t Dash tell me you were there?”

“Ask him that,” said Draco. He hadn’t thought to wonder about that, but now that he thought about it, maybe Dash had kept quite because he and Harry were having an argument. “Maybe he was too busy to start sniffing for intruders.”

Harry probably did ask Dash, from the way he turned his head, but probably didn’t end up getting a satisfactory answer, because he only sighed and turned back around. “Well. It—doesn’t matter. Better you than a lot of people who could have heard that.”

“What made you fall to the floor?” Draco had been able to hear Moody say that, but not able to see around the edge of the door.

Harry clenched his fists and kept walking without answering. Draco only waited. He wasn’t Harry’s friend for nothing, and he knew Harry didn’t really want to keep secrets or hide things most of the time. He only did it because he was embarrassed or wanted to keep people safe.

And he can’t be embarrassed if it’s because of something Moody did. Moody’s a lot older and more experienced than he is.

“I don’t know if I should tell you,” Harry finally muttered.

Draco rolled his eyes and started to say something about people who let embarrassment control their actions, but Harry went on, “Snape said I wasn’t to let anyone know, and there’s no way I could explain recognizing this otherwise.”

“Recognizing what?” Draco almost wanted to hop from foot to foot in frustration. He would have if he hadn’t been a Malfoy, he thought, and therefore skilled at recognizing what someone wanted him to do and doing the opposite. He made himself take a breath and release it slowly, and went on, “Come on, Harry. You can trust me. Right? I haven’t done anything to make you think that you can’t trust me.”

He stopped there, because his voice was beginning to sound whiny and he didn’t want it to. Harry turned to the side and surveyed him, then nodded.

“I believe you wouldn’t betray me,” he said. “On purpose. But you need to keep your eyes away from Dumbledore and Moody, okay? Because they can practice it, too. Don’t look directly at them.”

Draco stopped walking in shock this time. “Are you talking about Legilimency?”

“See there? You didn’t need me to tell you. You figured it out on your own.” Harry smiled, but he looked worried, the lines of skin around his eyes tighter than Draco had ever seen them. He looked off to the side and touched Dash’s neck again, shaking his head, maybe at something Dash had said.

“Professor Snape is teaching you Legilimency?” It made sense now that Harry had said he wasn’t supposed to be able to recognize it. But then something else caught up with Draco’s wonder, and made him even more indignant than the fact that Moody must have tried to read Harry’s mind. “You didn’t tell me!

Harry glanced at him. “Well, Snape said I wasn’t supposed to.”

Draco managed to calm down, mostly by telling himself they were passing through areas of the school where someone else might overhear him and get upset now. “Well, you should have. I want to learn it, too.”

Harry shrugged a little, which made Dash drop down to the floor and flow ahead of them. They probably had had an argument, Draco thought as he watched Dash go. He was a little surprised about how worried that made him.

“He isn’t really teaching me Legilimency, anyway,” said Harry. “He’s teaching me Occlumency. He’s more worried about someone reading my mind than he is about me being able to read other people’s.”

“You’re still lucky,” said Draco. And he thought Harry was, a lucky thing who hadn’t done enough to share his good fortune around. “You could have invited me to the lessons when they started.”

“Without asking Professor Snape?”

Harry sounded so scandalized that Draco had to smile. “Now you’re talking like he’s your Head of House,” he teased, turning backwards so he could see Harry clearly as he walked down the stairs.

“Well, he could have been.” Harry was looking off to the side in that uncomfortable way that meant he didn’t want to discuss it anymore. “Let it go, Draco,” he added, when Draco was opening his mouth to say something else. “Come on. We’ve got to get down before all of dinner was gone.” He paused and studied Draco. “What were you writing to your father about, anyway?”

“Overhearing the conversation and wondering what I should do about Moody.”

Harry blinked at him. “Why would you need to do anything about him? For that matter, why would your father?”

“If he’s mistreating someone we’ve allied with,” Draco explained patiently, wondering why Harry didn’t already understand this, “then we have to do something. And the same thing with the Selwyns. They would have to do something, too. Regular professor-student interaction is one thing, but it sounds like Moody was trying to go beyond that.”

Harry shook his head like something was stinging him. “But Professor Snape probably reads people’s minds a lot. I mean, I can’t imagine that he never does it. And he probably used it in the past when I didn’t know he was doing it to figure out I was lying.”

“That’s different,” said Draco.

“Why?”

Draco found himself adrift in a sea he’d never expected to have to cross. He said, “Because it is. I mean, Professor Snape has been a professor for a long time, and for the most despised House in the school. He had to use Legilimency sometimes to protect people.”

Harry snorted a little. “And to figure out where I was wandering during the night?”

“Until last year, you might have been trying to get Slytherins in trouble!”

Harry shook his head once. “I don’t want to tell anyone else about this, Draco. Professor Snape has to know, and I suppose your father has to, now that you’ve sent off the letter,” Harry added, with pretty bad grace. “But no one else does. Right?”

About to argue, Draco found himself on the other side of an unexpectedly powerful glare. He finally sighed and closed his mouth. “Yes,” he said, when he thought Harry would let him speak. “All right. I just worry about you, you know.”

Harry’s face softened. “And I value that, Draco. But I don’t think Moody is going to do anything else to hurt me. He has to know I’m on my guard.” He looked up the corridor, and frowned suddenly. “And I’d better make sure that I can find Dash before Dumbledore starts getting upset because he’s not with me.”

He hurried off before Draco could ask if he’d thought about why Moody had wanted to hurt him in the first place.

*

“What’s the matter, sir? You look upset.”

Severus glanced up. This would, of course, be the moment when Harry came in for their lesson. And he couldn’t even blame Harry for that, because it was the time he had told Harry to show up.

“I’m not upset with you,” said Severus. It was the thing he had to say most often, or Harry would make the inference himself and become sullen and withdrawn. “I am…disappointed as a result of the meeting I had with Dumbledore. I went to him and told him that I hadn’t known Moody was a Legilimens, and that I hoped he would have informed me.”

“Oh.” Harry sat down on the chair he usually took with Dash at his feet, although every few seconds the basilisk’s tongue darted out as if scenting for prey. “And what did he say?”

“That it wasn’t in the nature of my position to be informed about every new professor’s talents,” said Severus. “And that he was pleased to note I had been quick to see that Professor Moody might be competition for me, and what it said about my work ethic.”

“Oh.”

Severus thought back over the conversation he’d had with Albus again, frowning. Of course he had expected an unsatisfying conclusion, with him and Albus as divided on the issue of Harry and Black as they were, but this had been more than that. Albus had seemed concerned until Severus had divulged which professor was reading students’ minds. Then he’d laughed and said that yes, dear Alastor was a Legilimens, but he hadn’t known Severus would regret not being informed of that.

Then he’d made a few light-hearted remarks about Gryffindors and Slytherins of the type Severus believed he was always thinking, but which he rarely expressed aloud, and sent Severus on his way.

It didn’t satisfy Severus at all. But until he could name why, he would remain unsatisfied. And it wasn’t as though he had political allies, like Harry did, or even allies inside the school he could bounce conclusions off. McGonagall was rather too admiring of Alastor for being a “good” professor, and Severus was close to no one else on the staff.

It came as a sudden shock to realize that he might need to change that, and not for his sake. He looked at Harry.

“Professor?”

“We are going to have another sort of lesson than Occlumency today,” Severus said. “Or in addition.” If Moody could read minds and was unscrupulous enough to try, then Severus would strengthen and quicken Harry’s Occlumency training. “It’s time that you understood more about politics.”

Chapter 41: Running Lessons

Chapter Text

“One thing you must understand is that the Dark Lord offered the pure-blood families who followed him a promise of influence. That is what they will expect from you.”

Harry sat back and felt things shifting inside his head. He almost expected Dash to fool around the way he had when Harry was having trouble concentrating on wandless magic, but he didn’t. Dash was curled up at Harry’s feet, intently watching Snape. His tongue darted out now and then, but otherwise, he might have been a sculpture of a snake.

“I don’t see how I can, though,” Harry said, since Snape had paused like he expected Harry to answer. “I mean, yeah, I have people who will do what I say since I’m the Boy-Who-Lived, but these families aren’t among them, right? Or they would already feel they were allies to me.”

Snape smiled a little, thinly. “Exactly. They might feel compelled to go along with any demands made of them by powerful people who are already your—fans, but it would be compulsion, and you want them following you freely.”

Harry sighed and massaged his forehead. It seemed all too complicated and backwards to him. 

He thought of the things he had wanted. Food. Friends. Parents. Escape from the Dursleys. A school with teachers who didn’t think he was stupid. Magic, once he found out about it. Safety from Voldemort. Ginny to stay alive, in second year. For the school to stop rejecting him for being a Parselmouth. Dash to stay safe and with him in third year.

All of those were…things he had to either find or not find, or other people had to give him. Harry didn’t see how he could ever give “influence” to someone else. 

Oh, he would have been glad enough to trade his fame and power to someone else. Maybe someone else could put on the scar and look like the Boy-Who-Lived for long enough to give Harry some peace. But he didn’t know any spell that could do that, and he thought Snape or Dumbledore would have told him by now if there was one.

“What can I do?” Harry finally asked. Snape wouldn’t be telling him if there was no solution, he thought. He would probably have offered to negotiate with the Selwyns himself or something, and tell them that they would never get what they wanted out of Harry.

Snape bent forwards. “You remember that you’ve used your influence twice already. Once to familiarize the public with the concept of you having a basilisk and get them used to thinking of—Dash as something ordinary. Once to acquaint the public with the fact of your abuse.”

Harry still felt like someone was smearing poop in his face when he heard that word, but he nodded. “But that wasn’t to help pure-blood families. I don’t think they’ll be impressed with it.”

Snape put his chin on his fist. “The Selwyns own a business that imports wood. Much of it goes for magical purposes, such as wands or Ministry Potions ingredients. But they have competition. What would happen if you endorsed that business?”

Harry blinked. Then he blinked again. Then he said, “But I don’t even know if my wand is made of wood they imported.”

Snape sighed. Harry bore it better this time. It had taken him a while to realize that Snape wasn’t like Uncle Vernon every time he did that, or even Sirius.

“You don’t need to say that,” said Snape. “In fact, it’s better not to make direct statements, in case someone tries to sue you later or claim that you lied. But if you offered the Selwyns the promotion of their business in an article…”

“How, though?” Harry honestly couldn’t see any way he could do that. “If I just told the papers I wanted to talk them about magical wood the way I did about Dash, everyone would know something was up.”

“Ah,” said Snape, and he was breathing the words the way he did when he was particularly interested in something. Harry had only heard it before when he was talking about potions. “You allow it to be known that your shopping choices are important to you and link it to an ethical cause. For example, talking about illegal importation, or the use of banned ingredients such as unicorn blood.”

“People kill unicorns to use their blood in potions?” Harry whispered. His mind was filled with the motionless body of the unicorn in the Forbidden Forest that Voldemort had been drinking from as if it was yesterday. Dash hissed soothingly and leaned against him.

“They do.” Snape looked at him for a moment, and then nodded. “I think you’ve found the cause that you want to talk about.”

“Yes,” Harry muttered. He was thinking about the way the Quibbler had just wanted to ask him questions about magical creatures. That would probably be a good place to start.

Dash rose and wound around his legs, leaning his head into Harry’s lap. I think you’ll be much, much better at this than you think. 

*

Draco made sure that he’d cast all the necessary charms on his bed-curtains to seal them in place. The last thing he wanted was someone to spy through them while he was reading his father’s letter.

His father’s very important letter. The one in reply to the one Draco had sent him about the way Moody had made Harry fall on the floor.

Draco opened it carefully and began to read the letter through. He knew he’d probably need to read it more than once to catch all the nuances.

My son,

Alastor Moody has been an Auror of high reputation for some years. He was one of the most active in capturing and interrogating Death Eaters during the first war, and he would not have been hired to teach at the school if Dumbledore did not trust him.

The Board of Governors approved the hiring choice.

Moody is not a known Legilimens. On the other hand, there is not even a whisper that he is a follower of the Dark Lord.

It would make sense to draw certain conclusions from these facts. Some of them might be detrimental to Mr. Potter’s safety. Some of them might be things that you should look into.

Be assured that I will be making inquiries about Moody.

Your father.

Draco sat back and stared at the letter, shaking his head. He had hoped for more support from his father. Actually caring about Harry’s safety, for one thing. And telling Draco outright what suspicions he had about Moody, if he was suspicious.

Then Draco sighed. He might have hoped for more, but that didn’t mean he was going to get it. His father was as cautious as ever. He didn’t write or talk about his experiences during the first war, Draco knew, because of his arrest at the end of it and the way he had been under the Imperius Curse during it.

Or claimed to be under the Imperius Curse. Draco was getting a headache.

Likewise, his father wasn’t going to put certain things into a letter that someone else might read, even if it was by abducting the owl or breaking into Draco’s trunk or wherever he stored the letter. Draco couldn’t write anything he wanted, either. If Moody came to know about this, and he didn’t mean Harry any harm, and he made enough noise about it, old scandals about the Malfoy family might get dragged up again. Or the Board of Governors—which was hardly tolerating his father as it was, according to him—might decide that Mr. Malfoy no longer deserved a position on it.

Draco shook his head and concentrated on those aspects of the letter he could do something about. So Moody might not be a follower of the Dark Lord, but he wasn’t a Legilimens, either. What did those things suggest? Draco turned the conclusions around in his mind for a bit before he sat up.

Maybe someone else could be pretending to be him. Maybe he’s using an illusion, or Polyjuice Potion!

Draco wriggled with some excitement, and then studied the letter again. That had to be what his father suspected. But Draco didn’t understand why he hadn’t whispered in the right ears. They didn’t have to be the ears of the Board of Governors. Why didn’t his father tell Professor Snape?

Because Professor Snape was in the school and so was Draco, of course. Draco could tell him more easily. And it was a test for Draco, probably, to see if he could figure out the truth from the scant clues Father had offered in his letter.

So all he had to do was tell Professor Snape, and the danger to Harry would be over.

But Draco hesitated when he thought about that. He knew Professor Snape hadn’t had much luck in talking to Dumbledore about anything, including Sirius Black and the way he was treating Harry. So why should he listen if Professor Snape came up with a random accusation against someone he’d hired?

And the Board of Governors probably wouldn’t listen, either, for the same reason that his father hadn’t gone to them.

Someone would need some kind of proof to do something about this. Proof that Draco already thought he’d have to provide. 

He sat up. So he would. He had understood his father’s hidden message. He knew exactly what could be done about it. And he could reveal it in a public place where “Moody” wouldn’t be able to hide or deny who he really was.

That would get Draco some credit, too. There was a little envious ache in his heart when he thought about his father and Professor Snape helping Harry all last year and Draco not being able to help at all. If he exposed Professor Moody as a fake, then people would have to pay attention to him.

He would need a distraction, though.

Draco leaned over the side of the bed and called, “Come,” to Conflagration in Parseltongue, smiling as he unwound from under the bed. This was going to be rather fun. If he managed to disrupt the hold that the Polyjuice had over Moody, or the illusion, then everyone would need to pay attention to him.

And there might be an admiring stare from Harry, too. 

Draco didn’t want to really admit how much part that motivation played in his actions as he started making clear what he wanted Conflagration to do, but then, he was only admitting it in his head, anyway. No one else ever had to know.

*

Blaise didn’t like to think much about politics. It was the sort of thing that his mother would handle until he was in his sixth year and had some OWL marks to make a reputation for himself, anyway. But he didn’t ignore the political articles in the papers, and he had paid more attention since people had started to come to him for advice on sending allegiance rings to Potter.

It paid to be known as the voice of reason who had to be talked to and talked to before he would “reluctantly” give his opinion.

But it was difficult to ignore politics when they came to you, the way they did when screams broke out in the Great Hall during lunch. Blaise glanced up from his food and then froze, staring.

Draco’s flame cobra was slithering straight towards Professor Moody, hissing. The fire dancing up and down on his hood was hot enough that Blaise could feel a hint of singeing from here.

Draco ran after the cobra shouting, “Conflagration! Come back! Stop! What did Professor Moody ever do to you?”

Blaise narrowed his eyes. He’d heard Draco practicing Parseltongue words on the snake in the dead of night when he thought everyone else was asleep. That didn’t mean it would be good Parseltongue, but he ought to be able to command the cobra better than this.

Which meant something else was going on here.

The flame cobra coiled up at Moody’s feet and raised his head and hissed again. Moody stood there staring down the snake. Blaise would have expected some laughter by now, or a spell that threw Conflagration back into Draco. Instead, though, Moody seemed to be thinking of something else.

Not frightened. Not impressed. Only outside it and waiting for someone to prove why he should care about this. Blaise nodded slowly. Honestly, that was the way he wanted to be. Maybe he should spend more time studying Moody.

Draco bellowed out a spell Blaise didn’t recognize, except the last part of the incantation was “Fluctuatio!” It was probably supposed to snatch Conflagration up and send him flying back to Draco the way Blaise thought Moody should have done.

It didn’t do that, though. There was a small whirlwind of blue sparks from Draco’s wand, and they all blew straight at Moody’s face, the sound they were making even louder than the screams in the hall from a cobra being loose. They hit Moody’s face and robes and played over them like a tiny flickering storm. Blaise blinked and leaned forwards again. They looked like a spell his mother had showed him that could tear down some illusions.

Is Professor Moody under an illusion?

Moody finally lifted his wand and swatted it gently at the sparks, muttering under his breath. They dissipated, and Moody stood there, looking exactly as he had always done, but making a long stride forwards to face Draco.

Well, no, maybe not exactly the same. Blaise thought his magical eye was dulled a little. But he thought that was adequately explained by the next, slowly-building roar.

“So you’re the sort of Slytherin who goes around attacking professors, eh?” Moody circled to the side and examined Draco, who was standing in terrified silence, with both eyes at once. “Throwing sparks into their faces that could affect the sight in a magical eye, are you? One of my enemies who wants to blind me?”

Draco had gone pale, but he was standing still and not turning around even when Moody circled behind him. He had gathered up Conflagration again and draped him around his shoulders.

“No, professor,” he said. Blaise listened, but couldn’t hear any hint of a tremor in his voice. “I just—I just was trying to get Conflagration to come back to me, and I mixed it up with the sort of spell that would have produced sparks. They have similar last words, you know. Sorry.”

“You could have used a Summoning Charm.” Moody’s voice was low and rage-filled, and the screams had all died down. Blaise suspected that listening to Moody was more important to people at the moment than screaming their little hearts out over a snake. “I think you learned that recently in Charms, didn’t you?”

Draco widened his eyes. In a few years, he’s going to be really good at manipulating people, Blaise thought with the part of himself that always noticed things like that, after the early…education he’d had. “I didn’t think of that, professor. I’m really sorry.”

“I think you do need a lesson,” said Moody, and flicked his wand. Blaise sat up, staring. That flick was familiar. But he didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he knew the spell that Moody was using.

The spell that turned Draco, a second later, into a small, squeaking, flailing mouse, and set him down on the floor in front of his snake.

Conflagration turned his head. His flames had died, but Blaise could see in his tense, quivering body how ready he was to pounce on the mouse and eat it. He slithered what would have been a human step forwards. His head was pointed straight at Draco.

A-Alastor! What are you doing?”

That was McGonagall, and she was running down the middle of the Great Hall with her wand waving. From the way Conflagration was coiling up, though, Blaise didn’t think she was going to get there before the snake ate Draco.

Someone should use a Summoning Charm. But that person wasn’t Blaise, who hadn’t got it right yet.

Ssshanfaffa!

Blaise snapped his head around at the Parseltongue, and saw the flame cobra stop dead at the same moment. Potter was walking into the room, the basilisk dropping to the floor and unfolding like a long wave.

Blaise cursed under his breath. He had forgotten how bloody big that basilisk was. At least ten feet now, his head snapping down and his tail covering the distance to curl around the cobra and hold him motionless. 

Any actions Blaise took against Potter would have to take the bloody basilisk into consideration.

McGonagall had reached Moody by then, and she was speaking breathlessly but so fast that Potter couldn’t get a word in edgewise, though from his face he would have liked to. “Alastor! You cannot go around Transfiguring students and nearly getting them eaten by their pets!” She waved her wand, and the mouse flew into the air and began changing back into Draco. McGonagall took a step up to him the minute he was human again, and put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Mr. Malfoy?”

Blaise stirred restlessly. Sometimes he wished that McGonagall could be the Slytherin Head of House. She didn’t give people that cool judging gaze the way Snape did, and she treated everyone pretty impartially except when it came to Quidditch.

“I feel like I’m going to vomit,” Draco whispered.

“Yes, that’s standard after violent human Transfiguration,” said McGonagall, and gave Moody a glare that promised him no good. “Mr. Potter, if you would escort Mr. Malfoy to the hospital wing?”

Potter twitched. The basilisk did the same thing, at the same time. He had probably wanted to set the basilisk on Professor Moody, Blaise thought, and shuddered a little. He hoped that he never accidentally pissed Potter off. It was a horror waiting to happen.

Now, Mr. Potter? And do take his snake with you.”

Potter gave a choppy nod and then turned to Draco and said something. Draco nodded back. The two of them walked to the door with Potter yapping something at Draco and the basilisk and the cobra following them.

Blaise turned back to Moody. His magical eye looked normal again, although he was grimacing as he wiped at his mouth. He’d apparently taken a drink from his flask. Blaise wondered why someone would carry a healing draught around that tasted so awful, and then snorted a little. It was probably so he couldn’t be easily poisoned, or something like that.

“I have never seen such outrageous behavior from a professor,” McGonagall began, and then seemed to realize how many people were watching her raptly. She flushed and led Moody out of the Great Hall. Blaise slumped back in disappointment. He did see the Weasley twins nod to each other and then stroll casually in the direction of the door. Idly, he thought about sitting near some Gryffindors in the library the next day to see if he could overhear their gossip.

“Oh, poor Draco!”

That was Astoria Greengrass, tears standing in her eyes. She’d always had a bit of a crush on Draco, Blaise thought. Her remark was setting the tone of conversation around the table, too. 

Blaise didn’t want to listen to yet more bitter remarks about how unfair the professors (other than Snape and McGonagall) were to Slytherins. He knew that already. He wanted to think about the whole attack, about what Draco had thought he was doing, and how Moody’s magical eye had looked after the sparks had flown into it. 

And he wanted to think, too, about how bloody terrifying that sodding basilisk was. 

And wonder if there wasn’t something he could do about it.

*

“You are going to keep him on.” 

Severus made the words flat. That disguised how much he wanted to explode.

“Of course I am.” Albus folded his hands in front of himself and gave Severus a patient smile. “The Board of Governors has already discussed this incident and agreed that Professor Moody was provoked. Given his history of trauma related to battle violence, his reaction was understandable. And young Mr. Malfoy wasn’t hurt.”

Severus started to open his mouth, and then closed it again. The Board of Governors wasn’t objecting? After the hell that Lucius must have raised among them?

That argued that either the Board of Governors didn’t care at all about Draco—which Severus did not believe given how Lucius had managed to influence them into bending the rules for Draco’s snake—or something else was going on. Perhaps Lucius husbanding his advantage for the moment, to raise the outrage later, when it would be connected to another cause and could do him more good.

No, certainly Lucius waiting to spend that advantage until later. And Draco will be avenged.

Given that, Severus suspected that pursuing the Board of Governors route would do no good. But he had to put up at least enough of a show that Albus didn’t suspect what Lucius was doing.

“If he had Transfigured a Gryffindor student, would you be saying that?” Severus asked smoothly. “For example, if it was Mr. Potter? Or would it take a complaint from Black before you took it seriously?”

Albus just frowned at him. “I sincerely doubt that Mr. Potter would do anything like that in the first place, Severus.”

There it is. Albus had called Harry “Mr. Potter” in the last few conversations Severus had had with him. The habit had never been frequent with him before, since he had always used Harry’s first name in the apparent attempt to push them together. 

Something was different about Albus. Changed.

And Severus was going to find out what.

“Severus? What’s wrong, m’dear boy?”

It would never do to reveal his suspicions too early, either. Severus shook his head roughly and stood. “I’m sorry, Albus. But it does suggest to me that you don’t care as much about Slytherin students as about others.”

That led into a more familiar series of comforting, empty noises about how of course Albus didn’t mean that, and he valued Slytherin students as much as any others, and so on. Severus heard him out, nodding, and escaped the office as soon as he could.

He had his own research to do, and one potion in particular that he wished to prepare.

And Harry’s lessons to step up.

*

That was enough. There were lots of things that made Malfoy wrong, but this was more wrong. A professor should never have done that to a student.

Hermione raised her chin and marched into the hospital wing. Harry was sitting next to Malfoy’s bed, talking to him quietly. Dash was looped around Harry’s shoulders, but Hermione didn’t see Malfoy’s snake. Harry stopped talking and blinked at her, and Malfoy glared as if Hermione had thrown a mud pie in his face.

Hermione ignored that and said, “They’re letting Professor Moody stay. He’s not even being punished or reprimanded by the Board of Governors.” She moved a step forwards. “That’s wrong. There are all sorts of laws about what you can Transfigure other human beings into, so why aren’t they being applied in the school? I know about the laws because I looked them up,” she added, since Malfoy’s mouth was opening and he was probably going to ask how she knew. “And I found out that the Ministry hasn’t given permission for anyone to cast Unforgivable Curses at the school since it was founded, even for professors.”

“Well, Moody said something about special dispensation on the first day,” Harry protested. Malfoy was just silent. He was the one blinking this time.

“We’re going to find out,” said Hermione, feeling the rightness of the cause race through her like a flame. “And we’re going to show him that he can’t do that. Professors should never mistreat their students.”

Harry and Malfoy both seemed too shocked to say anything, but Dash reached out and gently tapped Hermione’s shoulder with his nose. Hermione smiled and touched him on the back of the neck, which made him tilt his plume happily back and forth.

“Well,” she said to Harry, “they shouldn’t.”

Malfoy apparently didn’t want to show her a genuine smile of any kind and wiped it off his face an instant after it appeared, but the important thing to Hermione was that Harry was nodding, and Dash hissed softly and contentedly, the way he did when he was lying in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room.

And the flame still leaped inside her. 

People shouldn’t get away with doing wrong things. Even if they’re professors.

Chapter 42: In Centuries

Chapter Text

“I don’t understand why you didn’t come to me at once if you suspected something off about Moody.”

Professor Snape’s voice was stiff, and he kept his back turned to Draco, his hands clasped behind him. Draco breathed slowly, calming himself down. At least they were in the hospital wing, where the professor had come to see Draco, and not in Snape’s office. It would be awful there.

“I wanted to prove myself, Professor,” Draco finally said. He glanced once at the door a short distance from his bed, then decided that Snape would have shielded it if he was worried about Moody lurking around and learning they were talking about him. “I wanted to be a hero for Harry.”

Professor Snape turned around and stared at him with a kind of steady astonishment that was worse than his surprise when Draco had tried to tackle Moody alone. Draco looked away with a dull flush making its way up his cheeks.

“Why?” Snape whispered. “You thought that you had to risk your life as foolishly as he did?”

Draco shook his head. “I thought Moody was under either a glamour or Polyjuice,” he said. “So I was going to pretend that Conflagration wouldn’t come back to me, and then that the spell I was planning to use to pull him back got mixed up with a revealing charm that’s supposed to cut through glamours and Polyjuice.”

“You would have looked weak in that case,” Professor Snape said sharply. “As though you couldn’t control your snake and had forgotten a spell.”

Draco shook his head. “No one would have paid attention to me if Professor Moody was exposed as a fake, though.”

“Then that defeats your intended purpose.” Professor Snape drew himself up more and more, so that he looked like a pillar. Draco would have found him intimidating only a few hours ago, but he wanted to explain now.

“I mean everyone would have forgotten about me for the moment because Moody was exposed,” Draco said. “But the people who really know me and knew what I had done would be appreciative.” He hesitated, because Professor Snape was opening his mouth and Draco just knew he was going to say that he wouldn’t have appreciated Draco’s sacrifice. “Mostly Harry.”

“This is about him, then.” Snape took the chair by the bed, but it was still like a pillar sitting down in a chair, and Draco had to swallow.

“Yes, professor.” Draco faced him down. This was the only time he would get to say this, probably. He had explained to Harry what he was trying to do with the spell and Conflagration, and Harry had found his hand and held onto it for a long time. But he couldn’t talk to Harry about his motivations. Harry was too committed to thinking of what he had with Dash as normal.

To thinking of his whole life as normal, really, Draco thought, and continued. “Harry is special. He has powerful friends, or he could have them, and he still acts humble. He has a basilisk, and there’s nothing more special than that. He still offers to teach me Parseltongue and be my friend. I want to show him that—that I’ll protect him, and help him, and that I’m special in my own way.”

Professor Snape considered him for a moment. Then he said, without a change of expression, “What is your father’s opinion on this?”

“He sent me a cryptic letter that I had to figure out for myself,” Draco said. “But he was giving me discretion to act.”

Snape paused, then gave a half-smile. “And considering what he can leverage against the Board of Governors in the cause of you being attacked and the attacker not being reprimanded for it, perhaps he wanted this to happen. Or something similar to it.”

Draco’s cheeks burned. He hadn’t thought about that, and he didn’t know whether his father would have expected him to. He coughed and hoped that he didn’t look stupid as he added, “And Hermione Granger says that it’s wrong for professors to mistreat students, and she’s going to start a campaign to make sure it doesn’t happen anymore.”

To his shock, that was what made Professor Snape look the most interested. He swung around on Draco and seemed about to say something, but a second later, he gave up and simply lifted a hand. There was movement outside the door of the hospital wing, Draco realized when he listened. Maybe Madam Pomfrey coming back.

“I am grateful that you took no hurt, Mr. Malfoy,” said Snape, in the stiff voice that most people outside the Slytherins expected him to use, sort of bowing to him. When his mouth was down near Draco’s ear, he hissed, “And I will make sure that you are avenged if your father does not move within three months.”

Draco didn’t have a chance to react before Snape was out of the hospital wing.

And it might not be wise to react, anyway. Draco lay back against the pillow and nodded to himself. Yes, Snape was still a good Head of House. Draco had sometimes thought that Snape was getting too involved with Harry and might only value Draco because he was Harry’s friend.

He should have known better. Professor Snape was capable of concentrating on more than one thing at a time. His father had told him always to remember that, if he was planning some mischief that might make Slytherin look bad if he was caught.

Draco smiled thinly and closed his eyes. His head had been pounding, but it calmed now, helped by the way that Madam Pomfrey came bustling over to him with a flask of golden potion and a scolding tone in her voice she used to address everyone.

For now, Draco didn’t want to think about his pain or his father or whether Professor Snape would have to avenge him. He wanted to think about the way Harry’s face had looked when Draco had told him what he was trying to do to the fake Professor Moody, and why.

It had only been a moment of staring with wide eyes and flaming cheeks, and then Harry had reached out and put his hand on Draco’s wrist. Dash had curled tightly around his hand a second later.

“You didn’t need to do that,” said Harry, and then frowned more sternly at him than ever and shook his head. “Dash doesn’t think you should have done it, either. You almost got eaten by Conflagration!”

Draco smiled as the potion started affecting him, slipping further and further away from the world. Harry had said that. Dash had supported him, flicking his tongue out at Draco in a way that made it seem as if he was scolding him without words.

But the way Harry had looked…

Nothing could change that. Nothing could corrupt that, and Draco would carry it with him as a precious jewel always.

*

Harry and Ron were waiting for her. Hermione knew that. But she also knew that it was only sporting to let the enemy know you were after him.

And give him a chance to change his ways, if he would. Somehow, Hermione didn’t really think that would apply to Professor Moody. But she still had to do it.

She marched straight up to Moody where he stood behind his desk. He looked at her with his magical eye, while his normal one seemed to focus on the papers he was sorting. But then he nodded and gave her a faint smile. “Miss Granger. Impressive performance today.”

“Thank you, Professor Moody.” Hermione wanted to smile, because Moody’s compliments were rare, but she knew she couldn’t let herself get distracted. “There’s something bothering me, though.”

“Of course.” Professor Moody nodded as though he had expected the question. “The morality behind knowing the Dark Arts? I did attempt to emphasize that we should understand them in a theoretical way only, not that we should practice them.”

“I understand that, professor,” Hermione said. “What’s bothering me is your treatment of Draco Malfoy the other day in the Great Hall.”

Moody stood further up and stared at her. Then he said, “I was given to understand that this—young man has bullied you on more than one occasion.”

“He has, Professor,” said Hermione. Ron had said the same thing to her. But she had the answer. “That doesn’t make what you did to him right.” 

“I didn’t take revenge on him,” said Professor Moody. He seemed more confused than anything, which puzzled Hermione. But she shook that off. If he wasn’t agreeing that what he did was wrong, then he was still in the wrong.

“But you hurt him,” said Hermione. “When he hadn’t done anything that hurt you.”

“The sparks could have blinded my magical eye.

He sounded a lot more exasperated than he ever got during class. Hermione wondered how many people had ever dared to disagree with the renowned Auror Alastor Moody in the last few years, though, and pushed bravely ahead. “But they didn’t. And you could have killed him. Why did you turn him into a mouse, Professor?”

Moody had both eyes firmly fixed on her now, as if by glaring, he would get her to go away. He hadn’t paid much attention during the last few weeks, Hermione thought. People glared at her in class when she knew too many answers or told them they were wrong, but she still didn’t go away.

“He needs to learn not to attack professors,” Moody said.

Hermione just looked at him, because she knew that wasn’t an answer. “With respect, Professor Moody,” she said, “almost killing him isn’t a way to teach him that lesson.”

“Well, he won’t do it again, will he?”

Hermione thought of the way that Malfoy had looked at Harry when he was in the hospital wing, and a few cryptic references he’d made that it was “all for Harry.” Harry had turned red when Malfoy was talking about that.

“You don’t know that, though,” Hermione pointed out. “You don’t know unless you talk to him and find out what his motive was for the attack. Did you, professor?” She knew what Malfoy had said was his motive for the attack, but she was also nearly certain Professor Moody hadn’t gone and asked him.

“My dear Miss Granger,” said Moody, and abruptly leaned over her with his magical eye glaring as though he thought she was cheating and trying to hide it, “you forget yourself. There is not equality between professors and students.”

“No, but there should be respect,” Hermione began.

“Exactly!” Moody stepped away and smiled at her. His smiles were strange, Hermione thought. Sometimes he seemed to mean them, and other times it was as if he had a cupboard full of masks that he only arranged on his face when he remembered to. She thought this was a mask-like smile. “And Mr. Malfoy wasn’t showing me respect by attacking me, was he? Perhaps after this time, he’ll remember to do so.”

Hermione only ended up shaking her head again. “You weren’t showing him respect either, Professor Moody. But I think you should talk to him. Then maybe everyone could understand, and it could restore a calm equilibrium between professors and students.”

Moody’s face twitched in irritation. “The matter is over, Miss Granger. I appreciate your concern for your fellow students, and for doing the right thing. But sometimes, you need to trust that the right thing is best left up to the proper authorities.”

Hermione left the classroom without saying anything. Let him think he’d convinced her. Hermione still wanted to be as Gryffindor as she could in all things, because it wasthe best House, but subtlety was a weapon she would need in a contest like this, Malfoy had told her bluntly.

And it wasn’t like she was going to hide or sneak around when she committed her next action to ensure that Moody treated the students with more respect. She simply wasn’t going to sit back and wait for him to stop being stupid.

*

Harry blinked at the petition Hermione had slapped down in front of him. It had a long list of names and only a small sentence at the top that seemed to state what it was for.

Harry read it, and nearly spat out his pumpkin juice all over the petition. But that would probably have made Hermione upset.

A fair trade for plumping it down in the middle of dinner, said Dash, and raised his head. He already knew what the words had said, because they’d passed through Harry’s mind, and he nudged the platter of beef that Harry had been feeding him pointedly.

I thought you didn’t like cooked meat, Harry said, even as he took another slice and fed it to Dash. 

I am expanding my tastes, Dash said, and took the meat in his tail as if he needed to study it before he swallowed it. The way that you’ve always wished I would, since you’ve lamented more than once that I was hard to feed. 

I never meant—

“Harry? Are you going to sign it or not?”

Hermione was hovering in front of him now, clutching the quill in her hand and giving him an expectant look. Harry nodded and took it, but he did say, “I’m not sure a petition to stop professors from Transfiguring people will have much effect. I mean, not if Dumbledore wants to keep Moody on.”

“There are higher authorities than Professor Dumbledore,” said Hermione, looking mysterious, and swept away to bother the Hufflepuffs. Harry shook his head and turned back to his drink.

You’re lucky to have her as your friend.

I know that, Harry said irritably. And what happened to you being upset because she interrupted you in the middle of dinner?

Dumbledore stood up and gently cleared his throat before Dash could respond to that. Harry thought it was probably because Dash didn’t have an answer, though. He’d never let someone speaking stop their silent conversations before.

“The Tri-Wizard Tournament is fast approaching, as you know,” Dumbledore began. “The students from Durmstrang and Beauxbatons will be arriving tomorrow. They will each be housed in an appropriate student common room, with extra beds appearing as necessary. Currently, the plans involve accommodating the Durmstrang students with rooms in Slytherin, and the Beauxbatons students in Ravenclaw.”

There were some grumblings from the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables, Harry thought. Personally, though, he was relieved. The last thing he wanted to do was watch over his shoulder all the time for more strangers. 

And maybe Voldemort would have tried to slip allies in among them, too.

“I will remind you that these students are from other countries, and may be unfamiliar with the customs pertaining to Hogwarts.” Dumbledore held up a hand that Harry thought was supposed to be scolding. “If you want to make them welcome, don’t spend time teasing them or staring at them.”

Harry blinked. Well, that’s more decent than I thought Dumbledore would be.

Then he sighed a little. Just because Dumbledore was an arse to him didn’t mean that he couldn’t be nice to other people.

You want to give your enemies too much credit, said Dash, and his tongue tickled Harry’s hand until he started feeding Dash meat again.

“You planning to enter the Tournament, Harry?”

Harry blinked and turned his head. Ron was leaning towards him, nodding. Harry glanced at the Head Table, but Dumbledore seemed to have finished his speech and sat down again.

“Did he say something about who could enter?” Harry shook his head. “But I don’t want to. I’ll have enough to deal with this year.” Like Moody, if Draco’s right and he’s really not who he says he is.

“He said it was restricted to seventh-years and above,” said Hermione, and sat down beside Ron with a little frown at him. “Which means that you can’t enter.”

“I don’t want to,” Harry repeated, but Ron’s eyes were glowing.

do,” he said. “Imagine it. Everyone looking up to you, and then all those Galleons.” He sighed longingly. “Then maybe I could buy myself a pair of dress robes that don’t look as though someone fished them out of a ditch.”

Harry shrugged at Hermione when she began to scold, and fed another piece of meat to Dash. All he knew was that he didn’t want to, and no one was going to change his mind about that.

*

Severus had thought they might have problems with the arrival of the other schools, and it was one reason he had listened to Albus when he asked the professors to be on guard, instead of rolling his eyes and attributing it to Albus’s extreme caution. But admittedly, he had not thought the problems would come from this direction.

Currently, there was a shrieking file of part-Veela students standing in front of the school, refusing to look at Harry and almost on the verge of running. It was only the fact that Harry had Dash wrapped tightly around his body instead of slithering about that had kept things even this calm.

Severus had come to accept the basilisk almost as part of Harry. If a giant venomous snake could seem ordinary, then Dash was. He didn’t attack people, other than perhaps Moody that first night he had entered the castle. He wasn’t inconspicuous, but neither did he try to call attention to himself.

But to the students of a school that not only had no Dark Arts built into the teaching, as was the case at Durmstrang, but had a strong tradition of Veela blood, he was terrifying.

Because Veela, in many ways, were birds. And Dash was still a snake.

“You will remove the snake,” said Madame Maxime, her nose so far in the air that Severus could see how clean she kept her nostrils (extremely). Her accent had faded a little the minute she had stomped up to Albus to begin making demands. She turned now and looked at Harry, who had his hands full of Dash and his head turned as he argued with his friends. “My students, they are not accustomed to these…creatures.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible,” said, surprisingly, Karkaroff. He stood near Maxime, but kept his neck craned to the side so that he didn’t need to take his eyes off Harry. He looked at Maxime now, and his smile was faintly nasty. “Sorry for your girls and their ruffled feathers, Olympe, but the boy is bonded to the basilisk. And it goes deeper than a familiar bond. The bond of any snake to a Parselmouth does.”

Severus made a silent note to check whether that was true. He knew it obtained with basilisks, but he had not heard that the same thing was true for ordinary serpents. If it was, then they would have to be more careful when Harry confronted the Dark Lord.

And considering what Karkaroff had been, he might indeed have knowledge of the sort traditionally considered Dark that many others would not.

“This is intolerable.” Maxime went on talking to Albus as though she hadn’t heard Durmstrang’s Headmaster. “How can you permit the boy to have it?”

“I’m afraid there wasn’t much choice,” said Albus. His voice was still different than Severus was used to hearing it, although in this case it was hard to pinpoint the difference. Just—milder, perhaps. “Dash is bonded to young Mr. Potter. But I’ve placed mirrors about him that reflect the basilisk’s gaze, and diluted his poison.”

He gestured to the mirrors hovering above Harry’s shoulders and whizzing around his head, mirrors that were such a part of Harry’s environment Severus looked past them all the time now. Dash lifted his head as if he wanted to examine them, as if Albus’s gesture had also recalled them to his existence. Severus narrowed his eyes.

He was suddenly sure that Dash could escape the glare of the mirrors at any time he wanted, and that he had allowed them to orbit him only to make him seem harmless.

But Severus didn’t know if his impression was true, and he certainly didn’t have time to pursue it right now. Madame Maxime was pointing an accusing finger at her Veela students. “What do you say to my students who cannot even enter the competition they came for, if this wild beast is not removed?”

“He isn’t a wild beast.” Minerva, her back straight as she came to defend one of her lions. “He’s been obedient to Mr. Potter and hasn’t bitten anyone at the school since Mr. Potter hatched him. Your students will be fine, Olympe. Trust me.”

Severus raised one eyebrow. Interesting choice of weasel words, Minerva. Dash had of course bitten someone outside the school, but Minerva had created a situation in which she would have some plausible deniability.

She had also been the only one of the professors to openly accost Moody about the wrongness of what he had done to Draco. Severus decided that he would have to keep an eye on her. She might be a more useful ally than he’d realized.

Maxime started to say something else, but just then, one of her students turned and approached Harry. Severus waited, one hand casually next to his side in a way that would only indicate he was ready to draw his wand to someone extremely expert in reading him. And since Albus had begun acting in his strange way, there was really no one like that here.

The girl was tall and beautiful, even more than most of the students who had obvious Veela blood. Her silver hair swayed behind her as she gave a small bow to Harry. She was either gazing straight at Dash or averting her gaze from him a bit so as to be able to face the snake without bolting. Either way, Severus had to admit her tact.

“My name is Fleur Delacour,” she said, in a breathy, softly accented voice. “Will you put your snake away, please? He is frightening us.”

Harry blinked at Miss Delacour and seemed to think for a moment. Severus recognized that silence, though. Harry was getting input from Dash, which meant he would probably come out with something other than outright agreement.

“He won’t bite you. I can promise that. I can even make it a formal oath if you want?”

Don’t do that. Where did he learn about oaths? 

But Severus knew the answer. Draco, of course. He would have to have a chat with Draco about not giving Harry lessons in politics that Severus wasn’t there for.

Miss Delacour turned her head and looked at someone—perhaps Maxime, Severus thought. She nodded, and Delacour turned back to Harry and said, “Yes, please.”

“All right,” Harry said, and drew his wand, and laid it along the palm of his right hand. Dash flowed up beneath him and put his nose in the middle of Harry’s palm. Harry spoke softly. “I promise by my magic not to allow Dash to attack any student of Beauxbatons unless they’re attacking me and I need him in self-defense.”

There was a flash and a glimmer, and the gentle blue light of an oath shown for a moment around Harry’s wand. Then the blue light spread down onto Dash’s neck and made his scales glow as it slowly worked its way around them, like spreading water.

Severus felt the hair on the back of his neck stand up. And at the same moment, he found Karkaroff beside him, staring greedily at Harry.

“Is your Mr. Potter by any chance aware that no one’s sworn an oath like that in hundreds of years?” Karkaroff asked casually.

No. And you will not be the one to enlighten him.

Severus settled for nothing more than a cool glare before he turned to watch the students of the other schools parade into Hogwarts. Harry watched Dash until the blue glow faded, but he seemed to be concerned only that his basilisk might have been hurt. He went into the school with the others a few minutes later.

Leaving only Severus to be aware of the covetous and interested glances that followed him.

The boy causes a walking political disaster even when he doesn’t mean to.

But Severus did have to pause when he considered who might have been aware of what would happen—and wanted it to happen anyway.

That basilisk is a worse menace than he is.

Chapter 43: The Making of a Champion

Chapter Text

“I have wanted to introduce myself to you.”

The stiff voice wasn’t one Harry knew, and Dash hadn’t hissed, either, the way he would have if someone unknown had approached. Which meant he had probably known this person was coming and kept silent to see if Harry would notice in time.

Harry tossed an annoyed glance at his basilisk even as he turned around and smiled politely. The boy was one of the students from Durmstrang, one who was taller than most of them and looked vaguely familiar. “Why?” Harry asked. “I didn’t think the Boy-Who-Lived mattered so much in Bulgaria.”

The Durmstrang boy hesitated, as if he didn’t understand. Harry was just about to try it again, without the joke, when he abruptly grinned and said, “He does not. I have come to meet your basilisk.” He nodded to Dash and held out his hand. “My name is Viktor Krum.”

“Oh, you’re that great Seeker!” Harry hadn’t got to attend the Quidditch World Cup, but he’d heard all about it. He shook Krum’s hand and motioned him to a seat on the other side of the library table. “Dash says hello.”

I haven’t said it yet, Dash said in a thin voice as he began to unwind some of his body and point it in Krum’s direction. You shouldn’t speak for me when I haven’t told you what you should say.

Well, are you going to reject him and hurt his feelings? Harry supported some of Dash’s coils with his hands as he stretched across the table, because otherwise he would probably sag and look silly.

I never look silly. And of course I am not. He is the first one other than you to address me as an independent being right away. Dash darted out his tongue, and Harry caught his impression of Krum’s scent, thick and meaty, like a heavy predator. You have my permission to tell him he’s welcome.

“Dash likes it that you’re treating him like an independent being and not just part of me,” Harry told Krum, who was watching with big eyes as Dash reared up above him on the table. His scent didn’t smell of fear, though. “Most other people just treat him like my pet.”

When really it should be the other way around.

Harry ignored Dash in favor of listening to Krum, who gave him a confused look and said, “But of course he is an independent being. I have been reading the papers since I came here. He is not a normal basilisk, no?”

At last! Someone who recognizes greatness when he sees it. Dash bowed his head and held out his plume to Krum. Harry opened his mouth to explain that was an invitation to scratch it, but Krum was already doing so, and his fingers made Dash roll limply on the table and open his mouth in a yawn.

“Well, I don’t think most normal basilisks call someone down to the Chamber of Secrets and hatch there in front of them and bond with them,” Harry said, a little dryly. He was wondering wistfully what made Krum so different from the majority of people around him, and if maybe he would have been better off having Dash as a companion if he’d gone to Durmstrang.

Then again, he never would have met Dash if he’d gone to Durmstrang, so he couldn’t regret it too much.

“Oh, but that is bonding with a Parselmouth,” said Krum, and moved his free hand a little. He hadn’t taken his respectful eyes off Dash once. “I mean that he was hatching from an egg. Most basilisks must be hatched from beneath a toad, and the egg must be the egg of a chicken.” He cocked an eye at Harry. “But the papers, they did not mention chickens or toads.”

Harry shook his head a little, even as Dash came back to full alert and said, As if I would need a toad to hatch me. Delicious things shouldn’t sit on top of my egg.

“I didn’t see any,” said Harry. “But Salazar Slytherin was, um, well, he was a Parselmouth and I think he did all sorts of odd things. I thought maybe he’d created some kind of spell that would be like a toad but not exactly like it.”

Krum’s eyes glinted, and he moved a little so that he could see Harry over the rising coils of Dash’s back. “He created something that I believe is different. But the difference would lie in the egg, not the toad.” He hesitated, then continued. “Your basilisk, do you keep him away from roosters?”

Harry blinked. He honestly hadn’t ever thought about the question. He did remember Hagrid saying that he hadn’t replaced the roosters Ginny had killed yet, sometime near the start of last year, and that had been the last time anyone had brought it up.

Dash, did you kill all the chickens? 

I heard the proud things crowing last year, but they didn’t affect me, said Dash. I would like to try roasted rooster, though. Perhaps it would taste a bit different from roasted hen.

Harry just said, “No. I should have thought about it, because there was a basilisk in the school the year before Dash hatched, and the—the person who was letting it free made sure to kill all the roosters. But I never thought about it.”

Krum grinned. “I think some people have thought about it. I heard them discussing the roosters and how they had no impact on your Dash even when they used spells that imitated the rooster’s cry.”

Harry sat up indignantly. “Someone was trying to kill Dash? Who?”

“I do not know their names,” Krum said, sounding apologetic. He again touched Dash’s plume, and Dash, who had started to coil up like a cobra, relaxed back against the table again. “I am sorry. I only know that they were in the common room last night.”

The Slytherin common room, Harry thought. Which meant he had enemies in that House.

Well, of course he did. Not all the pure-blood families wanted to ally with him, and he knew some of them were the children of Death Eaters. Of course he knew that.

It still shook him, a little. He sat up and cleared his throat, ignoring Dash’s soothing hisses. There was only one set of questions he could ask right now, since Krum didn’t know the attackers’ names. “If you don’t think Dash is a normal basilisk, what is he?”

“That is a good question.”

Harry glared a bit. Krum was doing the same thing Professor Moody did when he didn’t know the answer and didn’t want to admit it.

Krum, though, only shrugged and continued, and Harry realized he hadn’t meant to tease or keep things from Harry. “It is. I assume that he was changed somehow in the egg. That same change probably made the eggs able to survive without having a toad sitting on top of them.” He glanced at Harry. “Have any of the other eggs in the Chamber ever hatched?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said, startled into simple truth. “I never went back to check.”

And you shouldn’t, Dash said, sliding away from Krum so that he could coil around Harry’s neck and shoulders once more. You don’t need another basilisk. I am the only one you will ever need. 

That isn’t the same thing, Harry said, and stroked his neck, rubbing at the small scales in a way that usually made Dash melt. Besides, don’t you want to know more about where you came from? 

I know that I’m better than ordinary basilisks and that’s enough. Dash butted Harry’s cheek restlessly with his nose. You don’t need to know anything else, and neither do I.

But I need to know more about you if someone is trying to murder you, Harry pointed out, and turned once more to Krum, who was speaking. “You should fetch other eggs from the Chamber. Test them.” Krum’s eyes were glowing like stars, and Harry wondered if he liked snakes, or Parselmouths, or Salazar Slytherin. Maybe even magical theory. “See what they would tell you about your own basilisk.”

“Well, there might be a few problems with that,” Harry said, and ignored the poking that told him Dash could be one of the problems. “If the others hatch, then I’m the only Parselmouth around who can control them. But Dash won’t let me bond with any others, and that means they’d go wild.”

Krum gave him a faint smile. “Not if you built a pen to contain them. My Headmaster, he is an expert in such things. Would you let him help?”

Harry hesitated. He would have to think about this. He had so much going on, including the oath that Snape had told him could be a problem and the allegiance rings and the way that some pure-blood families were sending him letters with cryptic references that Harry thought were tests to see if he was really the reincarnation of Salazar Slytherin. “Let’s leave it for right now, okay? Maybe later. But thanks for telling me about the roosters.”

Krum nodded and started to stand. Then he paused with one hand on the table and studied Harry from a short distance away. Harry looked at him silently.

“The people who wanted to kill your Dash,” said Krum, “they seem to have given up because they believed that you had protected him magically. That is something Salazar Slytherin could do.”

Harry sighed shakily. “There’s a bunch of people who believe I’m him reincarnated. But I’m not. I think all the similarities between us are just because we’re Parselmouths.”

Krum’s face was impassive now. “I see. Thank you for telling me the truth.”

He walked away, and Harry shook his head and buried it in his hands. He had so much to think about and plan for, and his dreams about Voldemort were getting more persistent even in spite of the Occlumency Snape was teaching him, and he had no idea what was going to happen next.

Except one thing.

Dash, you will stop poking me.

*

“The time has come for the choosing of the Triwizard Tournament Champions!”

Albus made the announcement with the shining smile and eyes that used to drive Severus so mad. Severus leaned back in his seat and watched with a gaze he kept unreadable as the students leaned forwards at their tables and the Headmasters exchanged significant glances. Madame Maxime seemed to be trying to keep up the unreadable façade, too, but Severus saw the curling of one hand in her lap.

Most of Severus’s attention was on Harry, who sat at the Gryffindor table with one hand on Dash’s neck. They had spent the past week in discussion of politics and Occlumency lessons during their free time, and he’d helped the boy compose a letter to the Selwyns that carefully asked about promoting one of their businesses. Harry had suggested most of the phrasing, and Severus hadn’t had to amend all of it. The boy might be coming along after all.

Severus expected the choosing process to present few surprises. It was evident whom Maxime and Karkaroff favored among their students, and while there might be several students picked among Hogwarts’s candidates, not that many had succeeded in putting their names in the cup. Severus had forbidden any of his seventh-year Slytherins from doing so. He doubted any of them had been so foolish as to disobey him.

When the fire sparked and Fleur Delacour’s name came out for Beauxbatons, the cheering was deafening. Severus noticed several of his own House following the Veela girl with their eyes, heartsick. He shook his head. He was already considering including Draco in Harry’s Occlumency lessons, although so far Lucius hadn’t agreed. Perhaps he should consider giving many of his Slytherins practice in strengthening the will.

The selection of Krum as Durmstrang’s Champion was likewise anticlimactic. Severus’s main interest in the boy was as the one who had approached Harry about Dash not being a true basilisk. But Krum didn’t look at Harry or display any interest in him as he marched into the small room reserved for the Champions.

The silence around the Great Hall grew more and more tense as everyone else waited for the appearance of the Hogwarts name. Severus managed to plant an expression of neutral interest on his face. Albus was watching him.

Then the name came flying out, and Albus grasped it and turned it around.

“Harry Potter,” he said, and his voice was bewildered. He blinked and turned to the Gryffindor table.

The Great Hall was already erupting in shouts of protest, excitement, suspicion, and rage. Severus immediately wove a charm beneath the table that would protect Harry from any “accidentally” flying spells, while his mind stuttered with shock.

Harry would not have put his own name in the Goblet. Severus knew that the way he knew his heartbeat and Lily’s name echoing in his head in the silence of the night.

Unfortunately, there were too many other possible suspects who might have done so. All that would have been needed was the submission of Harry’s name by someone who could cross the Age Line. Severus tried to lean back and get a good look at the faces of the seventh-years, wondering if some of the people who had tried rooster sounds on Dash might have tried this.

It was impossible. Too many students were on their feet, yelling, waving their arms and wands, and hopping up and down. And near at hand, Madame Maxime was hissing words in French at Albus that Severus wouldn’t admit to knowing, all about how a child couldn’t compete in a tournament like this. 

Karkaroff was conspicuously silent. Severus considered him for a moment, but in the end, he decided that the man would not have done it, not in furtherance of any plan of the Dark Lord’s. Karkaroff had turned his back on the Death Eaters in sincere terror, and unlike Severus, he couldn’t plead being a spy when he had actually betrayed his confederates.

You are avoiding thinking about what this means for Harry.

Severus acknowledged that. There were dozens of things in the tournament that might kill Harry, at least if he was remembering the accounts of past tournaments right.

But there was also something that made Harry different from most other Champions, and at the moment, it had twined itself into an enormous knot around Harry, preventing him from moving from his seat. Dash’s scales, turned outwards that way, would also provide an effective shield against many spells.

“Mr. Potter.” Albus sounded less forceful than he might have, Severus decided. Perhaps he was just in shock, or reeling from the thought of somehow making Harry do what he wanted after a blow like this. “You must join the other Champions.”

Harry tried to say something, but Dash was muffling his voice. So was someone else. Madame Maxime was yelling, in English finally and not French, and she stood up at the High Table. “Albus, I protest! I am not going to allow my most distinguished student to compete against a child who cheated—”

The hiss that arose from Dash at that had echoes. It clattered around the Great Hall and finally collapsed into silence when everyone was staring at the Gryffindor table. In the silence that followed, Dash curled himself tighter than ever around Harry.

And now it’s begun, Severus thought wearily. Dash quite possibly wouldn’t let Harry compete in the Tournament at all, and he was going to silence criticism of him by being dangerous.

It was up to Severus to do something before this got completely out of control. And quickly. He could see Moody rising to his feet, and Merlin knew what he would say.

“It seems to me that the situation we have on our hands is simple,” Severus drawled. He knew he would draw attention, even though he was sitting, simply by the calmness of his voice, and he did. He leaned his elbows on the table and studied the great knot of Dash and Harry. “Did Mr. Potter manage to cheat? How could he? We saw how the magic of the Age Line defeated even our most clever underage students who tried to get past it.” He nodded at the Weasley twins, who still had a few tufts of stubborn hair from their beards.

Undaunted, they grinned and waved cheerfully at him. Severus turned next to Madame Maxime and asked, “Did Miss Delacour enter of her own free will?”

“Of course she did!” A half-giant planting her hands on her hips was intimidating, but she had nothing on the Dark Lord, and Severus didn’t flinch. “If you are suggesting I would put anyone through this—”

“But if someone else had written her name on a piece of paper and tossed it into the Goblet,” Severus continued inexorably, “would the Goblet of Fire be able to tell the difference?”

Madame Maxime hesitated, briefly taken aback. “The person who did that would need to be a seventh-year, of course,” she murmured.

“Or older.” Severus looked around the table, as if he hadn’t noticed all the people paying attention to his conversation with the Beauxbatons Headmistress until now. Then he gave a small shrug. “I don’t know if we’ll be able to find out who did it. But I think it much more likely someone submitted Mr. Potter’s name than that Mr. Potter managed to fool the Age Line.”

“His basilisk, possibly?” Moody rumbled. He was looking at Severus with dislike, but he kept his head carefully turned as if the sight of Harry covered with Dash’s coils upset him even more.

Severus gave a light snort. “Why would the basilisk wish to place his name in the Goblet? You can see how he’s holding him now. He doesn’t want Mr. Potter to participate in the Tournament.”

“But the use of the Goblet of Fire creates a magically binding contract, unfortunately,” said Albus, giving a frown that reminded Severus of nothing so much as one of the portraits in his office. Headmaster Dippet, who sometimes whined in a high-pitched voice when Severus stayed too long on a visit, frowned like that. “That means Mr. Potter has to participate.” He cleared his throat. “Can someone move that basilisk off Mr. Potter?”

Funny, once you would have done it yourself, Severus thought, and saw the way Moody snapped up to his full height, normal eye gleaming, magical eye swiveling over to lock on Harry.

“I have a spell that might work.” Moody’s wand was already weaving an intricate pattern in the air, one that seemed to imitate the patterns of the coils that wrapped around Harry’s chair and shoulders.

Severus tried to cast the countercharm under the table, but he didn’t recognize the spell itself, and it flew before he could call it back. He hissed a little and tried not to wince as he turned to look at Dash and Harry again.

The spell bounced off Dash’s scales. 

Severus stared. But there could be no doubt what had happened. Dash’s scales had reflected the spell as thought they were a mirror, and a few students screamed as their chairs flew into the air and began to shake and spin them. Severus cast Cushioning Charms on the tables and floor and turned to shout at Moody.

McGonagall was already behind him doing that, though, so Severus turned back to check on Harry. He only hoped that Dash wouldn’t go mad and attack everything in sight. That was the last thing they needed, with the rumors that would surely spread about Harry having cheated his way into the Tournament.

Dash was reared up in the middle of the table, and his mouth was open. Either he had grown bigger again, or Severus had simply never realized how much length and space a basilisk would take up. He hissed in a way that echoed around the Great Hall again, and then dropped back and curled in Harry’s lap.

Harry cleared his own throat. “I think you need to find some way to get me out of the contract,” he said. “I—Dash didn’t help me cheat to get in, but I think he’ll cheat to help me win the Tasks if I’m supposed to do them.”

“Albus?” Severus asked, calmly turning towards the Headmaster.

But Albus was standing there with a lost expression on his face that made Severus narrow his eyes. He wondered if it was possible that someone had used a Confundus Charm on Albus and no one had noticed.

Considering how eccentric his behavior is most of the time, Severus had to admit as he cast a nonverbal Finite in Albus’s direction, we might not.

But the lost expression didn’t change. Albus shook his head and muttered, “The contract is binding. The boy needs to participate.”

“Of course he does!” Moody, looking utterly undismayed that he had hit students with his spell instead of Dash, strode towards the Gryffindor table. He halted a few meters away from Harry and surveyed him intently. Harry only looked back at him from the center of a coil. “You don’t want to be a coward, boy, do you?”

Harry’s face flushed and turned dark. Severus started to stand. Of course Alastor would find the one insult that might make Harry respond.

“I’m not a coward,” Harry argued strenuously. “I defeated a basilisk in my second year, and I’m not afraid to say the name Voldemort!”

Moody gave one of those grunting laughs that seemed to start down in his chest. “But that’s a different kind of courage than actually going through grueling Tasks that might make you drop where you stand,” he said, and gave Dash a condescending look. “Or relying on your basilisk to get you through them, which is probably what you’d do instead.”

“I wouldn’t rely on him!” Although from the way that Dash’s head was dropping on Harry’s shoulder, Severus doubted Harry would actually have much choice about that.

“Then prove it.” Moody leaned towards Harry and held his gaze with so much concentrated ferocity that Severus wanted to strike out. “Prove that you can hold your own and that you’re more than a scar and a reputation. Prove that you can take on the challenge of this tournament.” He paused, then added something softly Severus couldn’t make out.

Harry tossed his head and stood up. “Then I will,” he said, and glared up at Albus with eyes that seemed to dart more lightning than the scar on his forehead. “I didn’t want to be in this Tournament, I never did, but I’ll accept it. Because I’m not a coward, and I don’t want to win using Dash’s help!”

The basilisk gave an echoing hiss, but Harry turned and said something in fierce Parseltongue to him, ignoring the way people pulled back from him for it. Severus shut his eyes briefly. Dash stopped hissing and remained behind at the table as Harry stepped away from him and moved towards the small room where the other Champions were gathered.

Albus shrugged when Severus looked at him. “It is a magically binding contract,” he said. “And I don’t think it was made to be broken. Otherwise, the Goblet of Fire would have worried parents besieging it and wanting to make sure that their children could get out of it.”

Severus didn’t respond, but turned back to the Gryffindor table. He was in time to see Moody watching Harry’s back.

There was an expression on his face that made Severus absolutely sure that Moody was the one who had put Harry’s name in the Goblet. It was nothing that would stand up in front of the Wizengamot, which meant that Severus knew he would be wise to hold onto the accusation until he had some more certain proof.

But now that he knew it, he had a target for his vengeance.

Dash had moved after Harry, even if it was slowly. For now, he would count on Dash to protect Harry and watch over him as the Tournament began.

Severus had a different job.

Chapter 44: Disapproval

Chapter Text

It wasn’t until Dash slithered into the room without a word and curled up around his feet that Harry began to realize he might have made a mistake.

It was just…

His heart was still thrumming with the unfair thing Moody had told him. It wasn’t like Harry had ever gone out of his way to encourage Dumbledore to favor him. He hadn’t realized that Dumbledore would give him and his friends points for trying to protect the Philosopher’s Stone, and Dumbledore had helped him but not favored him when he sent the Sorting Hat and Fawkes to help with Slytherin’s basilisk. Maybe Dumbledore had been grimmer and quieter with Harry in the last year since he got Dash, but—

He didn’t expect special treatment from the Headmaster. And if Krum and Fleur had to risk their lives because of a magical contract, and they would suffer if it got broken for Harry, then Harry would prevent them from having to suffer through that.

Right now, they didn’t look especially grateful for any sacrifice Harry might make. Fleur looked at him once, and then away. Krum slowly raised his eyebrows and kept them up.

When the various Headmasters came into the little room, Krum asked Karkaroff, “The basilisk, he will help Harry, yes? Then the contest is hardly fair.”

Dash raised his head. Harry looked back at him and said, loudly enough that he hoped everyone could hear him, “I said that I wouldn’t cheat and let Dash help me. And I still won’t.”

Karkaroff coughed a little. “I do take your word for it, Mr. Potter, but I’m not sure that you’ll be able to enforce that prohibition. Everyone knows how protective basilisks are, for lack of a better word. Is your Dash going to let you keep him out of it?”

You will. “He will,” Harry said aloud. “I’ve always been able to control him when it’s really important. Like when he wanted to bite people who tried to hurt me for reasons that were mistakes. And he’s listened.”

Interesting that you describe it as controlling me. Dash twined his head around Harry’s left leg, up to the level of his hip, but didn’t attempt to rise any further. What a word.

“I have heard rumors, since we have been here,” Fleur began, her eyes narrowed as though she was probing for weaknesses and flaws in Harry’s story about Dash. “That he bit someone who was your professor last year.”

And how did that rumor get out? Harry kept his face as smooth as he could while his mind worked on that question. “Dash bit him only when he attacked me. It was a sudden thing, and he was out of his mind on a potion at the time. I wouldn’t have been able to convince either one of them to stop.”

Whatever rumors Fleur had heard, she seemed to accept that. “But will you manage to hold him back when it comes to the Tournament?”

Yes. “Yes, I will. He knows that I—that I still take human things seriously, even when he doesn’t want to. He knows that I won’t listen to suggestions that would mess up something in the Tournament for everyone else.”

Why should I be more worried about “messing up” the Tournament than seeing you dead?

“There is still the question of age.” That was the Headmistress of Beauxbatons, a woman so tall Harry was sure she had giant blood. She sniffed and looked at Dumbledore where he was standing on the other side of the fireplace. “Do you still intend to allow a fourth-year to compete with seventh-years? When you did not allow other students below the seventh year to submit their names?”

“This is an unprecedented situation,” Dumbledore said in a mild voice. Harry looked over at him and saw that he was smiling, but stroking his beard with one hand in a way that might indicate disapproval or something else. “We do have to have the consent of Mr. Potter’s guardian, though, since he is not capable of legally making the decision for himself.”

I thought I had to participate anyway, since it was a magical contract? 

But no one was saying anything about that, so Harry thought maybe he was mistaken. Anyway, Dumbledore had conjured a Patronus that fluttered silvery wings. “Sirius, will you come to Hogwarts, please? We need your opinion on a matter regarding Harry.” The silvery creature sped off.

Oh, yes, how wonderful, Dash said bitterly in the back of Harry’s head. And of course the smelly dog-man is going to concede to your participation. He’ll probably think that it’s a fabulous chance for you to show Gryffindor qualities and get yourself killed. And that will make it harder for me.

Harry laid his hand on Dash’s neck and stared down at his eyes. He could see the way Dash’s mouth kept opening slightly, to bare his fangs. He knew it was because Dash was angry, but he was afraid it would frighten people if Dash kept it up.

I have to do this. I have to prove I can stand on my own, and that I’m not going to get out of this because I’m favored by Dumbledore.

Dash stretched his neck back and back, until he was looking directly at Harry and Harry thought he might even catch a glimpse of yellow eye under his clear, gleaming lids. Who do you have to prove that to? The only important people—your friends and Snape and Draco—know already. What do you care what the students at other schools think of you? After this, they’ll be gone and never visit Hogwarts again. And what do you care what ordinary people say? You survived the story of your abuse getting out and having me. Why is this so important?

Harry hesitated. He knew that the burning need wasn’t as strong as it had been when he was sitting at the table and Moody had whispered to him. But Dash was in his head. He ought to know the truth from Harry’s thoughts.

I want you to think about this, Dash said, and lowered his head a little. It doesn’t seem the adults are willing to get you out of this no matter what, so you might be legally bound to compete. But I don’t consider myself bound by the same compulsion.

Harry swallowed. You won’t bite them?

I don’t know why you’re so concerned about them. Dash wrapped himself firmly around Harry’s leg and hid his snout against Harry’s calf muscle. You act as if you’re more concerned about them than you are about me. And if they hurt you, they should suffer.

Harry stroked Dash’s plume until Dash looked up at him again. He didn’t relax the way he usually did when Harry did that, though.

They’re legally in charge of you, too, Harry reminded him. They would do something to try and separate us if you bit someone else. You know that. I’m really surprised they didn’t make a more serious move to take you away from me after you bit Professor Lupin.

I know why, Dash snapped back at once. They couldn’t have done something to me without admitting that he was a werewolf. And you see a version of the story got out anyway. He made a small motion with his tail towards Fleur, who jumped, but at least nodded back to Harry when he nodded reassuringly to her. It’s always about other people. Never you and me. And now you seem as if you’re siding with them.

Dash… Harry felt a little helpless. I don’t know what else to do. I have to have somewhere to live and someone to take care of me. I can’t have that if you go around biting people all the time.

Dash wound himself into a tighter knot. Harry squinted. He didn’t think it was possible at first, but it seemed to be. Dash had grown another foot since he’d last really considered his size.

I could take care of you, Dash whispered. I want to leave with you and get away from all this, and only come back when you’re safe and Voldemort is dead. I think of it all the time.

Harry rested one hand on the back of Dash’s neck and let himself think of it, for that one moment. How calm and peaceful and restful that would be, to be somewhere the war could never come, and with a gigantic snake who listened to him instead of Sirius or Dumbledore or Lupin fumbling their words and looking past him.

But he sighed. It would mean leaving his friends behind. Snape and Draco wouldn’t understand any better than Ron and Hermione would. He shook his head. I have to stay among humans, Dash. And for the moment, this is part of that.

Dash tightened his knot, and said nothing. They waited for Sirius to arrive.

*

Blaise had never needed to know anything more in his life than he needed to know what was going on in that little room off the Great Hall. It would matter a lot to all his plans if he could hear. 

He concentrated and slowly removed his wand from his pocket. Then he realized he didn’t need to act that sly and sneaky. No one was paying attention to him at the moment. They were rumbling angrily about Potter and how he must have cheated his way into the Tournament, and the only thing they wanted to hear was the latest accusation.

Blaise nodded and cast the Eavesdropping Charm.

For a moment, the magic seemed to splutter and spark weakly, and Blaise didn’t think it was going to work. Of course, he’d never tried to overhear a conversation from this distance before. He turned his back on the rest of his Housemates and cast the spell again, whispering the words aloud with conviction. Once again, no one seemed to pay attention.

But sounds began to tease their way to Blaise’s ears from that small room, which Sirius Black had just strode roughly across and disappeared into. The sounds included Potter’s voice. Blaise closed his eyes and settled himself into the conversation.

“…came as soon as I could, Albus. What is this about a decision you need me to make concerning Harry?”

Blaise quivered, but kept his eyes closed and his face serene. Ah. They’d called Black to make a decision regarding Potter participating in the Tournament, had they? Blaise thought there must be something here he could use to his advantage, though perhaps he would have to listen longer than he’d thought he would to find it. 

“Harry’s name came out of the Goblet of Fire when it announced the Hogwarts Champion,” said Dumbledore’s frail voice. “Since he’s underage, unlike the other two Champions, we need your permission before he can qualify to enter, Sirius.”

There was a silence that Blaise smiled at. Even the other people with a right to complain seemed to become aware that they were in the same room with a man who had only been declared innocent of his crimes recently, and before that, had spent twelve years in Azkaban.

“What did you do, Harry?”

This was worth listening to, indeed, if only to hear someone punishing Potter in the way Blaise always thought he should have been. He settled down to listen, and ignored the times that someone tried to whisper innuendo or rumor about Potter to him. He had a more fertile source of both echoing in his ears right now.

*

Harry felt Dash vibrating under his hands, and knew it might be only a matter of time until Dash struck and tried to bite Sirius. That would be bad for everybody, Sirius and Dash and Harry himself and all the people who would start thinking that Dash was a dangerous beast Harry couldn’t control.

Harry pressed down on Dash’s neck and said, “I didn’t put my name in the Goblet. But Professor Dumbledore said there was a magical contract and I had to compete. Because I’m fourteen, though, you have to say I can.”

It had been put as bluntly as he could. He could see Moody smiling at him in the corner of the room, and it warmed him the way that Moody’s approval always did.

He wants you to die. Or at least he wants you to read the secrets from your mind. How do you know it wasn’t him who put your name in the Goblet?

Harry had to admit that he didn’t know. But right now, facing Sirius down, he was sure he was making the right decision. Sirius saw him as a child all the time, and sometimes Harry thought he only admired the “adult” parts of Harry that reminded him of Harry’s dad. This would at least make him think about other things. James Potter had never competed in the Tri-Wizard Tournament!

“There are objections to be considered, of course, Sirius,” Dumbledore said. Harry didn’t look at him. Maybe Dumbledore could influence Sirius, but he was more interested in the conflicting feelings that twisted at Sirius’s face. “Harry is three years younger than the other candidates, and says that he didn’t submit his name himself.”

“Did you?” Sirius dropped to one knee and looked Harry right in the eye. “Please be honest with me, Harry.”

“I didn’t.”

Dash had wound himself all the way around Harry’s chest now, climbing his body but with a lot of his tail dangling on the floor. For once, Sirius didn’t seem to notice, even to give the disgusted grimace that was probably his version of fear that Dash would swallow and digest Harry any second. 

“Then why do you want to compete in the Tournament?” Sirius asked, and held his breath.

He’s hoping that you’ll give the right answer, Dash said, his voice muted. Whatever that is to him. I can tell as much from his scent.

Harry said, “Because I want to show everyone that I’m not—special. I don’t need to be yanked out of danger. They’d let someone else who’s bound by the magical contract from the Goblet of Fire compete, wouldn’t they? They wouldn’t sit back and say, well, it depends on his guardian. They would assume they could do anything they wanted.” He heard his voice shake a little, and he swallowed. The last thing he wanted to do was present a weak impression of a crying child. “Well, I want to show that I can obey the rules, too.”

A small smile crept across Sirius’s lips. “Even though someone broke the rules to enter you?”

“It’s going to be bad either way,” Harry told him. “What people will say, I mean. If I’m yanked, they’ll talk about favoritism and how precious sheltered Harry Potter is toospecial to compete in the Tournament. If I compete, they’ll talk about how I got away with breaking the rules.” He would have turned his hands into fists, but Dash nosed at them and made him uncurl his fingers. “I would rather—show that I can at least take the risks along with everyone else.”

Sirius studied him gravely. Harry had no idea what he was looking for, and just studied him right back.

Abruptly Sirius grabbed him in a hug, the first time he’d ever done that when Dash was wrapped around him. Unfortunately, Harry didn’t think Sirius was hugging him like that because he’d lost his fear of Dash. Instead, it seemed to be because he had just forgotten Dash was there.

“I knew you were a real Gryffindor,” Sirius whispered. “You’re so courageous, and I’m so proud of you.” He pulled back and turned to Dumbledore. “He can compete, Albus.”

Dumbledore said some words that Harry supposed were the right ones. He couldn’t really hear them. His ears were buzzing too hard.

I finally did something right. Sirius loves me, after all.

Dash tightened until it felt like he was going to cut off all the blood circulating around Harry’s leg, but didn’t say anything. Harry gently touched his head and rubbed it, then concentrated on what Sirius and Dumbledore were talking about. Ways to reduce his risks, evidently, without letting Dash help him cheat.

I don’t care about you winning, Dash said suddenly. I care about you surviving this. That means I’m going to interfere if I see you in danger.

Harry said nothing. He suspected they were going to have arguments about that, and also that this wasn’t the place to have it. The Headmasters hadn’t even really explained things like how the Tasks would work to them yet. He would wait to talk to Dash until they knew more.

I don’t need to know more. 

Sometimes, Harry thought back to him, exasperated, you are such a basilisk.

Dash radiated smug agreement that made Harry struggle to bite the mental equivalent of his tongue, and they waited in silence until Dumbledore started speaking to the room at large.

*

“You promise me that you didn’t enter your name in that Goblet on purpose?”

Harry started and turned around. He evidently hadn’t heard Draco come up behind him in the library. Of course, that might have been because he was arguing with Dash. Draco had learned how to read that focused glare on Dash’s head and the way that Dash didn’t flick out his tongue and move his body from side to side, things he did constantly otherwise.

“Of course I didn’t,” Harry said. “How could I get past the Age Line? No one’s explained that much to me even when they have conspiracy theories for everything else.”

Draco sat down in the chair beside him and stared at him. Harry looked tired. “Some people were saying that since Dash is bonded to you, the Age Line might have counted his age along with yours.”

Harry rolled his eyes. “A whole year. He’s a whole year old.” He turned to glare at Dash again, and Draco grinned, certain that he had just turned that into ammunition against Dash. “That would only make the Age Line count me as fifteen even if it were true. How do they explain that one?”

Draco shrugged. He didn’t really want to admit that there were people running around who thought Harry had defeated and shrunken Slytherin’s basilisk instead of killing it, and that Dash was it. That would meant he’d also have to admit that he’d listened to them babble their insane theories in the first place.

“But then why do you want to stay in the Tournament?” Draco wanted to know the answer to that question, since Harry kept turning his head away when people asked it.

Harry’s mouth set in a stubborn line. “Moody told me that I would look like a coward if I backed out, and also if Dumbledore favored me. And those things are true.”

Draco leaned slowly closer, giving Harry time to become nervous and realize what was wrong with what he’d said. But Harry sat there stubbornly looking him in the eye, and in the end, Draco had to whisper his conclusion. “Harry, that’s what we call not bloody true.” At least Harry looked startled at the swear word. “And remember, you’re as much Slytherin as Gryffindor. Why do you need to prove yourself?”

Harry looked off to the side. “They would have to break the magical contract anyway, which I’m not sure can be done,” he whispered. “And it finally made—”

He closed his mouth. Draco went on staring at him. It was a tactic that he had sometimes seen his father use on their family’s enemies, the kind that could be invited to dinner but not given the best wine. He knew that not everyone succumbed to it.

Harry did, though. After a little more wriggling in his chair, he finally burst out, “Sirius told me he was proud of me, okay? That’s the first time he’s ever said that and really meant it. He loves me now. I’m sure of it.”

Draco shook his head. “It shouldn’t depend on you being in the Tournament or not being in the Tournament. He should just like you anyway.”

Harry gave him a fierce glare. “Well, he hasn’t. And I want to stay in it, Draco. I would disappoint too many people by backing away now.”

Dash gave an abrupt hiss and then fell silent. But Draco thought he knew what that was about. “Not Dash though, right?”

Harry seemed to intend to stay quiet this time. Draco sighed and said, “Listen, Harry. I believe you didn’t put your name in.” He’d been intensely jealous at first, and people had asked him whether he’d thought Harry did it because more of the Slytherins knew they were close now, but one look into Harry’s eyes had told him that wasn’t true. “But I think you should have tried to get out. Either go back and tell Black and Dumbledore that you changed your mind, or tell them you shouldn’t be in it because someone else submitted your name.”

Harry’s eyes were strangely empty. “I want to be in it, Draco.”

Draco slammed a hand down on top of a book Harry had lying there, and which he thought Harry was using for his Herbology essay. “Well, no one else wants you to be! Except Black, and who cares about him? We’re just trying to keep you safe!”

Harry stood up and stared at him. Then he said, in a voice so snake-like Draco almost thought he was speaking with a Parseltongue accent, “Why does everyone saythat and then act like it’s an acceptable excuse? I didn’t do anything wrong! I didn’t put my name in the Goblet! I didn’t want to be the Hogwarts Champion! I didn’t cheat!”

“I know you didn’t. I just said that.” Draco stood up to glare back. “But you’re getting angry when we’re just trying to make sure you don’t bloody die in this Tournament, and—”

Listen,” Harry snapped. “I’m kind of a Slytherin, but I’m a Gryffindor, too. And it’s been hell at home with Sirius not really accepting me. You want to lecture someone about this, go lecture him!”

“I know that,” Draco said, feeling a little sick. This wasn’t going the way he’d imagined at all. “But if they won’t let you use Dash—”

“Oh, I see,” Harry said, and he gave Draco a smile Draco didn’t like. “So it’s not really about thinking I cheated or thinking it’s dangerous. You just think I don’t have theskill to survive the Tournament.”

“Harry—you’re not a seventh-year—”

A moment later, Draco realized it was one of the worst things he possibly could have said. The shine vanished from Harry’s eyes, and he looked at Draco the way he would probably look at a stranger. Then he said, in a falsely bright voice, “Excuse me, I have to go now,” and walked away, not even waiting for Dash. Dash had to slither after him along the floor.

“Harry!” Draco rushed after him, but Harry didn’t turn around, and angrily shrugged off his hand when Draco tried to touch his shoulder. “I didn’t mean it in any bad way! I just think you’re being stupid.”

“I should be used to being called that, I suppose.” Harry still didn’t turn around. “It’s one of the things the Dursleys always used to call me.”

Harry!” Draco jerked to a stop, and then he shook his head and ran even harder, because damn it, Harry wasn’t going to make an important decision like this just because Draco had a little trouble getting his feet to move. “I think you’re acting stupid. That’s not the same thing as thinking you are stupid.”

“Really?” Harry looked at him once over his shoulder. “It seems like a pretty meaningless distinction to me.”

I’m losing him. And worse, Draco could feel his own anger rising now, because it seemed so obvious to him that Harry was doing exactly what the person who had put his name in the Goblet of Fire wanted him to do. No real Slytherin would have gone along with a plan like this. It would have been more important to them to stay safe and refuse to do what their enemy desired.

Ah, but he’s not a real Slytherin, is he? He begged the Hat to put him somewhere else, anywhere else.

Draco finally managed to dodge enough that he was standing in front of Harry instead of running along behind. “You’re going to bloody well listen to me,” he told those empty eyes. “I’m concerned about you. I want you to survive. I think that your reasons for staying in the Tournament are shallow and stupid. Who cares what Black thinks?”

I do.”

Draco felt as though the words had crept into his head and cut the careful hold on his temper. He reached out and shoved Harry hard enough to nearly make him fall over. He probably would have if Dash wasn’t behind him and providing a living wall of scales that held him up. Dash didn’t even attack Draco for pushing Harry, just watched him intently.

“Fine!” Draco yelled. Somewhere back in the library, Madam Pince was telling them to hush. Draco ignored her, feeling his chest throb and bound. He had to turn it into anger or it would turn into tears, he knew. “Go ahead and sacrifice yourself if you like! Die to make Black proud! Don’t say anything to me again, though, until you’re ready to apologize, because you’re acting like an idiot, and I hope you know it!”

He turned away and ran towards the Slytherin common room, and although he knew it was too much to hope for, he still listened, hoping he would hear Harry telling him to come back.

He didn’t hear anything.

By the time he reached his bed, the tears were flowing anyway, but they were tears of fury as much as fear, and Draco thought he managed to pull the curtains shut before anyone saw him whose seeing would be bad. Then he cast some Silencing Charms, buried his head in his pillow, and screamed as loudly as he could.

Why is he being such an idiot? 

Chapter 45: The Shadows Speak

Chapter Text

“You understand why I am concerned.”

Severus didn’t glance at Harry. He had brought along a cauldron that had caused problems with the potions brewed in it over the last several months, despite frequent scrubbing. The problem with testing for the magical residue in it was that the residue could have come from almost any potion, or any spell cast on the cauldron.

Severus cast another spell, now, as a test, and held his breath as the air above the cauldron brightened for a second. But in the end, he simply had to shake his head. The subsiding light showed that the problem hadn’t come from any potion involving bicorn horn, but in reality, he had known that already. He reached down and crossed another item off his list.

“And I hope you understand why I have to compete.”

It was the right time, Severus judged, to turn and study Harry. Direct approaches hadn’t worked; the boy had brushed off Severus’s concern with some natter about his need for Black’s love and approval. So Severus had let him come along to their study session as usual this week, and then had been largely ignoring him.

“Oh, yes, I understand it now,” Severus agreed blandly, and cast another spell on the cauldron. This only revealed that pure aconite hadn’t caused a problem. “Naturally you wish to please Black.”

“That’s right. He’s the only adult who’s ever cared for me.”

Severus concealed the unpleasant stab to the gut that those words caused him, and carefully wrote a few words down on his parchment. Let Harry think they were about the results of his spells, if they were. “It’s strange,” he mused. “I thought you had two parents, once, who were famous for dying to defend you.”

There was a long, awkward pause. In the pause, Severus heard the rustling of dry scales, and looked down to see Dash curling around the leg of the table.

Dash regarded him solemnly with the glow from his eyes behind the thick, almost glass-like lids. Severus nodded to him and faced the cauldron again.

“Of course I love my mum and dad,” Harry finally mumbled. “But I don’t remember them. I need to live with a person I remember. Dash,” he added suddenly. “What are you doing over there? Get away from Professor Snape. You’re disturbing him.”

Dash didn’t move, though perhaps he said something to Harry that Severus couldn’t hear. Severus shook his head and said, “He isn’t bothering me,” and nothing else. It also hadn’t escaped his notice that the bond between Harry and Dash was under strain, and had been since the release of Harry’s name from the Goblet of Fire.

Severus thought he knew exactly who to blame for that. Now he needed to conduct the research to prove his methods true, and keep from alienating Harry, and unravel exactly what spell had been cast on Harry to make him so sullen and dedicated to the Tournament.

Severus didn’t doubt it was a spell. But none of the effects of common mind-control spells were present, and his own Legilimency had revealed no tampering with the boy’s thoughts, either.

“No one understands.”

“Not strange, when you don’t explain it to them,” Severus said. He was aware of the troubles Harry was having with his Housemates, as well. Some of them were proud to have a Gryffindor in the Tournament and were smothering him with advice, some were envious and believed he’d cheated, and he and Weasley and Granger were at odds. Weasley thought Harry was in danger and envied him at the same time. Granger had decided, single-mindedly as was her way, that the danger came from one direction, and was attempting to have the Board of Governors oust Moody.

That will not cure things, Severus was tempted to tell her, but Granger was an explosive bomb, much less used to keeping secrets than Harry. Severus was too cautious to actually take her into his confidence.

“But I have tried to explain it to them!” There was the sound of Harry scrambling to his feet, and Severus felt it promising enough to look over at him with one eyebrow raised. Harry stood there with his hands on his hips and a steady glare at Severus’s face. “They won’t listen!”

“What did you say? That you didn’t cheat?”

“Yes!”

“That you’re doing this because of Black?”

“Yes!”

“Ah,” said Severus, and knew he did it just right, the combination of the judicious nod and the sad sigh, although part him of was burnt by his very success at manipulating this boy he cared for. “Then I’m afraid I’ve found the part that many people don’t understand.” He paused. “Including me.”

Harry stomped out of the room. Severus counted the seconds. It reached seven before Dash slithered after Harry.

Slowly, Severus wrote down the names of a few more books that he needed to check. A spell that could affect an implanted bond between a basilisk and a Parselmouth, and make someone bonded to any magical creature at all ignore that magical creature’s advice, was rare.

But Severus had already confirmed one thing he had researched, carefully piercing through the official lies and secret-keeping.

Alastor Moody was not, and never had been, a Legilimens.

*

“I want to show you some spells that will probably help you against magical creatures.”

Moody’s words made Harry’s heart skitter up into his throat. He looked down instinctively at Dash wrapped around his legs, and then opened his mouth to say that Dash would never bite him or try to look at him.

“No,” said Moody, and paced around in front of him, to stare down at Harry with those rolling, bulging eyes. “I mean that you’ll need them for the Tournament. Probably.” He closed his magical eye in a wink at Harry.

Harry blinked. “Professor? How do you know that?” He hesitated. “Should you be telling me that? Isn’t it cheating?”

Moody spent a moment casting anti-eavesdropping charms on the door of the classroom instead of replying. Harry opened his mouth to tell him he didn’t need to do that, and ended up closing it. His friends weren’t about to hang around and try to find out what Moody was telling him, now.

Ron was still shooting him strange glances and speaking to him stiffly. Hermione was occupied with her private crusade against professors bullying students. And Draco hadn’t spoken to him since that day in the library.

Harry shifted his weight. That didn’t make him very comfortable. But what he had told Snape was true. He didn’t feel as though anyone understood why it was so important he compete here.

But he couldn’t go through another summer like this one he’d had with Sirius. He just couldn’t. And if he had to get a few strange looks and arguments from his friends in order to live the way that he wanted? That was fine. He would put up with it.

It is no wonder that they do not understand, said a thoughtful voice.

You know as well as I do that there’s no spell cast on me, Harry snapped back. You would have felt it the instant it was cast. You told me you know all about that sort of thing and you would have sensed it. 

I said that, Dash agreed, with a slight lowering of his head. But I am a very young basilisk, and it is possible that I do not know everything, after all.

Harry opened his mouth to ask what that meant, and Moody interrupted. “You know that most magical creatures have certain special immunities to spells?” he asked, waving his wand back and forth. A barrier of orange light, like a cloth hanging from his wand, formed between them. “For example, if you were facing a basilisk, it would be stupid to try and poison it, since basilisks have strong poison themselves.”

He didn’t even glance at Dash as he spoke. Harry smoothed a hand down Dash’s neck, trying to calm him, and responded, “Yes, Professor. That only makes sense, when you think about it.”

“Of course it does.” Moody turned around with a faint smile. “Now, I want you to think about ways to get past those immunities.”

Harry looked at the orange spell for a minute. He thought that was probably part of what he was supposed to figure out how to get past, but he had no idea what magical creature or immunity it was supposed to represent, and… “How, Professor?” he asked, looking up.

Moody had been watching him with narrowed eyes. He nodded once, as though he had some private question Harry had answered. 

“What are the most dangerous magical creatures you can think of?” he asked.

Basilisks, Harry thought immediately, and felt Dash stir a little with pride next to him, the first time he’d done that in weeks. But then he thought again, and came up with Acromantulas. He wondered why the Tri-Wizard Tournament people would consider having them fight Acromantulas. Maybe it was just that they knew there was a colony of them in the Forbidden Forest and they wouldn’t have to go far to get hold of some.

“Acromantulas?” he asked, looking up.

Moody frowned, and Harry had the impression that wasn’t the right answer. He sought in his mind again, and hit on another one. “Dragons?”

Moody smiled this time and glanced at the orange spell. If you looked at it and sort of squinted your eyes, Harry thought, you could see it as fire. He shivered, trying to imagine how hot a dragon’s fire would be compared to the relatively innocent gleam of the little spell Moody had conjured. 

“There are several spells that Dragon-Keepers use to handle dragons,” Moody said quietly. “However, I don’t think I have time to teach all of them to you. Spells that resist fire, though, and keep you safe from a dragon’s many other dangerous weapons, are often in the grasp of a third-year student.” Harry wanted to say he was a fourth-year, but he understood what Moody meant. “It’s just that most people don’t think to use them to keep themselves safe from dragons.” Moody turned to Harry, eyes intense. “Would you like to learn them?”

“Of course I would!”

Dash stirred beside Harry, but said nothing. Harry reached out and smoothed a hand down Dash’s back, trying to calm him. He had to understand that this was probably Harry’s best chance of surviving the Tasks. Dash couldn’t be allowed to help, and Harry didn’t have as much knowledge or training as Fleur and Krum did.

“Good,” said Moody. “Watch my wand movements carefully. This one can be difficult to grasp.” He aimed his wand at the far wall, and for a second, his face became still and calm. Harry blinked as he watched him. There was something familiar about the way Moody looked, as though he was someone Harry had seen before.

But he forgot about it when Moody made a complicated motion with his wand that looked as if he was tying a bow on top of a present and roared, “Abstineo ignem!

The shield he’d conjured came into being with a red flash. It didn’t look at all like the Shield Charm that Harry had been learning. Instead, it was a counterclockwise whirl of red pendants in front of Moody, like he’d conjured a pinwheel. It floated back and forth, and spread out now and then, pulsing like a beating heart.

An interesting kind of magic, said Dash.

Harry started. He’d been so intently staring at the spell that he’d almost let his attention to Dash and their bond lapse for a moment, the first time he’d done so in—well, maybe ever. He stroked Dash’s neck again and asked, What makes it interesting?

It doesn’t quite exist.

Harry would have asked what that meant, but Moody was rounding on him, staring at him with fiercely gleaming eyes. “Can you do the same thing, boy? Imitate the exact wand movement and conjure the shield to get what you want?”

Harry swallowed. He wondered for a second if he really could imitate that wand movement. Already, he was forgetting exactly how it had looked, and instead, imagining the motions that someone would use to tie a bow—whether or not they were really the movements Moody had made!

But he didn’t want to back down or show fear in front of Moody. It would only confirm the man’s ideas that he was a coward. So Harry said, “I think so, professor,” and faced the far wall the way Moody had. He didn’t think he needed to cast at the wall, but he supposed it would raise the shield in front of him and direct his magic away from any people and furniture in case something went wrong.

As strongly as he could, Harry imitated the wand movement and called out the incantation. “Abstineo ignem!

The red that erupted from his wand was wrong; Harry could tell that immediately. Moody’s spell had been more orange, and it had obeyed him instead of shuddering and flying all over the place. Harry ducked instinctively, and felt Dash wind around him to encourage him to stay on the floor.

The red light flew overhead and slammed into the wall behind Harry. Harry smelled burning, and then Moody said something calm and cast a kind of water spell that put it out.

“That was unexpected,” said Moody. “Although it does tell me that you’re a more powerful wizard than I thought you were.” He stooped and brought his craggy face down towards Harry. “And that you didn’t pay as much attention to imitating my wand movement as you should have.”

“Sorry, professor,” Harry croaked, standing. He was swaying back and forth with exhaustion and tension. Using that spell had taken a lot out of him. Dash wound about his legs and supported him. “I’ll—be more careful next time.”

Moody studied him for a moment, then snorted and shook his head. “No use doing it right now. You’ll drop your wand before you do anything useful.” He waved one hand at Harry. “Go and rejoin your friends.”

“But professor, I do want to learn—”

“And you will.” Moody softened his words with a small smile. “But not today. Go and study and think about what you want to learn, and why.”

Harry nodded and staggered out of the classroom. To his surprise, Hermione was waiting for him, instead of going around collecting signatures for her petition. She straightened up the minute she saw him and put a hand to her mouth.

“Harry! You look awful. What—”

“Professor Moody was having me practice some spells that I had trouble with during class,” Harry interrupted. He wanted to tell Krum and Fleur about the dragons, because that would make things fair, but he wasn’t going to tell Hermione, especially not in the middle of a corridor with lots of people around. “I’m okay, though. I just need some lunch.”

No. You need some perspective.

Harry had had to ignore a lot of what Dash said lately, and this was no exception. He gave Hermione a single smile and wobbled off towards the Great Hall. At least Dash moved beside him instead of trying to knock him down, or wind around his legs and do the basilisk equivalent of sitting on him, or whatever he thought Harry needed to learn.

His mind went back to the owl he’d received last night when he went to the Owlery to talk to Hedwig. It had been from Sirius, and had only contained a few short lines, but Harry remembered the last one best.

I’m proud of you.

He was finally doing what he had to to make peace with Sirius. With that in mind, he wasn’t going to pay attention to anything else. The Tournament, and peace in the house for next summer. Then he could start thinking about other things.

*

Draco blinked and tore his gaze away from the Gryffindor table. He had to accept that no matter how soulfully he stared after Harry, Harry was probably never going to pay attention to him again. Hell, he was barely paying attention to Dash and his friends as it was.

But right now, there was something more immediate than eventual acceptance calling Draco’s eyes away. Conflagration had been curled up around his feet, but now he was rearing up, weaving his body back and forth. He seemed to be dancing to an unseen tune.

Draco wondered if someone had cast a spell that affected a snake, and looked around suspiciously. But Moody was talking to Dumbledore and didn’t seem to have an eye on Draco, even his magical one. All the Durmstrang students sat away from him, and not even the ones who sometimes seemed to be hostile to him in his own House looked up from their plates.

A few did when Conflagration shot towards the doors of the Great Hall, but they laughed when Draco chased after him. They probably assumed that Draco had “lost control” of his cobra again, the way that had supposedly happened when he confronted Moody.

This time, Draco had no idea what was going on, and he was huffing by the time he and Conflagration got into the corridor. “Stop!” he tried to command in Parseltongue, but Conflagration ignored him and kept slithering on. 

Come!” Draco tried, but that was also ineffective. Conflagration was heading straight for the doors that led out to the grounds. Draco growled and drew his wand. They were learning the Summoning Charm now. He thought he could Summon Conflagration back to him and have it really work.

Peace, Draco.”

Draco froze, and looked around. The whisper had sounded as if someone was right beside him and whispering into his ear, but nothing was.

Then Draco happened to look down and see his own shadow stretching away from his feet. There was a distinctly snake-shaped edge to the shadow. As Draco watched, it arched up and waved an imperious tongue at him, then slithered after Conflagration. Meanwhile, his flame cobra was jinking his neck sideways, as though to tell Draco, “See, stupid?”

Draco didn’t see, not at all. But he blinked and took off after the shadow, because he thought waiting, at this point, would be the stupidest thing of all.

He ended up just outside the doors, in a patch of shadow where his own disappeared. Draco clutched his wand. He didn’t know any spell that could make a voice sound in his ears and a snake appear in his shadow like that, but on the other hand, he also didn’t know any spell that could keep Moody concealed when Draco had cast a very powerful revealing charm on him.

Then a head moved towards him, and Draco started. All he could see was that it was something large and dangerous-looking. He had his wand drawn and a chant on his tongue before the head came into sight.

It was Dash.

Draco lowered his wand because he didn’t have any other way to convey his astonishment. He stared at Dash with his mouth open, and blinked, and said nothing. Then he whispered, “Why?”

Dash moved a little towards him. He looked much bigger than he usually did when he was wrapped around Harry’s shoulders and legs, but there was also a dullness about his scales that made Draco think he should have been bathing, and wasn’t. He turned his head almost upside-down to lay it in the dirt at Draco’s feet.

I can speak like this only through my shadow-serpents,” he said, and this time Draco saw the flicker of a snake-shape at the edge of the shadow thrown by the castle’s walls. “It is uncomfortable and exhausting, but easier with you because you know a little bit of Parseltongue.”

Draco lifted his head. “That answers how,” he said, utterly astonished at himself. A short time ago, he wouldn’t have dreamt of contradicting a basilisk. “It doesn’t answer why.”

That is true. It doesn’t.” Dash flicked his tongue out and turned his head for a second as though scenting for enemies, then turned back to Draco. “But I can speak to you in a way that I can’t to Snape or Granger, though I did try with them. And in a way I can’t speak to Harry.

Draco felt his eyes widen. “Did something damage your bond with Harry?”

Yes. I can find no evidence of the spell’s existence, but I know it must be a spell. There is nothing else that could come between the two parts of a bond such as ours.”

Draco thought about that, then nodded. “Yes, you’re right.” He didn’t actually know all that much more than Harry did about bonds between Parselmouths and snakes. Legends of Slytherin aside, there wasn’t that much out there.

But for the first time, he was glad that he’d read Slytherin’s cursed book last year, because there was one mention in there of this kind of thing that he remembered. “Did someone use a Gryffindor artifact on you?”

Dash’s head came up so fast that Draco jigged back automatically. “What?”

“It—was something I read last year,” Draco said. He looked at Dash’s shielded eyes, and then away. For the barest second, he had thought they were about to open. “That someone tried to damage the bond between Salazar Slytherin and a snake he had with the power of the Sorting Hat, because it was Gryffindor’s hat. But I don’t know if his snake was a basilisk, and I don’t know if anyone could have used the Sorting Hat like that on you.”

He shut up, because Dash was hissing, and the hiss was a tidal wave of fury that rose and went on rising, sweeping Draco up. He felt his legs weakening and a whimper rising up his throat, and he knew he wasn’t the target of the hiss.

Just the one who brought the news.

I knew and should have known.” Dash’s head unfolded and he towered above Draco. Draco hadn’t appreciated, before, because Dash kept mostly to the ground, what it meant for a snake to be ten feet long. It meant he was rearing to almost twice Draco’s height, for one thing. “An artifact of Gryffindor would belong by right, and could only be used by right, by the Headmaster of this school.”

Dash swirled around, facing the front of the castle again. His body snapped, aligning all the coils and tail behind his head. His mouth opened, and Draco caught sight of his fangs. He flinched and gasped.

Most spells like this end with the death of the caster,” said Dash casually.

“I—what?” 

Draco thought a second later he must sound stupid, because it was perfectly obvious what Dash wanted to do, but Dash only replied, “I shall go to the Headmaster’s office and wait for him there. Then I shall have a little look at him.

“No! You can’t!”

Dash turned slowly towards him. Draco found himself falling on the ground, and not because Dash had opened his eyes. It was just—having all that force concentrated on him was different from seeing it defending Harry.

Are you worried about me leaving a body? You need not be. My jaws unhinge for a reason.

“You—you can’t! Because it’ll get Harry in trouble!” Draco knew he was babbling. “And there are portraits in his office who watch everything! My father told me! And his phoenix! You can’t tangle with one of those! Harry told me that he killed the last one of you with a phoenix.”

Dash unrolled his tongue between his fangs. It lingered in the air, and Dash thought he was witnessing a gesture of contempt.

Harry is already in danger, and I have offered to take him out of the school and away from the war. I will do it now. As for the portraits, they are not immune against my poison or my serpents.” More small shadow-heads were popping into existence now, along the edges of Dash’s shadow, Draco noticed. “And as for his phoenix…it has not been near the Headmaster lately, have you noticed? Perhaps it has grown disgusted at its master’s actions and departed. Perhaps it is near the time of its burning. I care not.”

Dash swirled towards the school, moving in a cloud of shadows. Draco opened his mouth to scream for help.

And then he wondered what in the world someone would say, if they came out of the school and saw Dash like this. Dash might be destroyed as a dangerous creature. Harry would still get in trouble.

His father would say there were always other things he could do, and Professor Snape would probably say the same thing. But Draco could think of only one thing.

He jumped in front of Dash. Dash stopped moving and stared at him. Draco trembled a little, but raised his wand. 

“You’ll need to get past me first,” he said, and raised a Shield Charm.

Chapter 46: A Variety of Truths

Chapter Text

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 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 47: A Long-Overdue Conversation

Chapter Text

Harry collapsed into the chair in front of Snape’s fireplace and reached gratefully for the cup that Snape held out to him. He didn’t think he would find any alcohol in it, but he gasped a little at the warm liquid that seemed to pour heat through him. Butterbeer. He gratefully drank most of it.

Dash unclasped himself from Harry’s shoulders and coiled on the floor at his feet. Draco sat down nearer the fire, on a long couch that Harry didn’t remember seeing the last time he was here. Snape stood between the two of them, and slowly glanced back and forth.

Harry didn’t speak, although he thought Snape and Draco were waiting for him to start. He was simply too embarrassed. What was he going to say? Sorry for not talking to Dash and you enough? Sorry for disbelieving you?

Part of it was that Harry didn’t entirely understand what had happened. He didn’t know if Moody, or Dumbledore, or whoever it really was, had cast the spell on him the night his name came out of the Goblet of Fire, or before that. He’d been alone with Moody a couple of times. Maybe it was during then?

Well, I suppose I can start there. “What kind of spell is it that could dim my bond with Dash?” he asked aloud. “And how could someone cast it without me or Dash noticing it?”

Snape’s face relaxed a bit from its harsh lines, and he turned around and picked up another cup that Harry thought also held butterbeer. He handed it to Draco, who took one gulp and then put it down on the floor beside him. Snape hesitated a second, then picked up a saucer and poured water into it, putting it down for Dash.

“There are spells that simply do not receive attention because the circumstances that would be propitious for casting them are so rare,” Snape said quietly. “Or they do not occur in our country. For example, people who live next to dangerous merfolk would have to study spells for keeping them out. Because the merfolk in Hogwarts’s lake are peaceful—and too small a colony to threaten us, besides—such spells have never been part of the curriculum at Hogwarts.”

Harry started. He hadn’t known there were merfolk in the lake.

Yes, it’s interesting, said Dash. But we can think about it later.

Harry reached down and put his hand on Dash’s head. At the moment, he was simply grateful beyond words that there would be a “later,” that his stubbornness hadn’t driven Dash away from him forever.

Dash looked up at him, flicked his tongue, and lowered his head until it was lying on Harry’s left foot.

“So you’re saying no one would study those spells because basilisks are so rare,” Harry said.

Snape nodded. He was still tense and quiet, watching. Harry had no idea what he was watching for, though. Maybe he thought Dash was dangerous since he’d seen him in the entrance hall. “And Parselmouths are rarer. The combination of them…” He shrugged. “I think that you see the problem.”

“Okay,” Harry said. He could at least breathe and act a little more calmly now, not breathless, the way he’d mostly been feeling in the last fortnight. “But Dash said the spell wasn’t gone, just soothed for a while. How can we take it off?”

Snape hesitated once. Then he said, “I will have to look at your bond.”

“Is that difficult?” But Harry knew even as he asked that it must be, or Snape would have done it already. “How difficult is it?”

“It is a kind of Legilimency that demands absolute trust.”

“In you?” Harry reached down and hugged Dash’s neck. “Because I don’t know if Dash and I have absolute trust in each other right now, and I can’t blame him if he doesn’t.”

It will be repaired, Dash said, and his tone was soothing enough that Harry had to take a hasty swallow of butterbeer. At least the stinging warmth in his throat dried up some of the tears that would have collected in his eyes otherwise.

“Yes, in me.” Snape watched him for a moment, glanced quickly at Draco, and then asked, “Do you trust me after what I have said about Black in the past?”

We need to clear some things up.

Harry honestly wasn’t sure if it was Dash or him who had that thought, but either way, it was true. He nodded a little, in response to whoever, and put his mug down. “It was never about—Sirius,” he said, and his voice caught on the name. He hoped Snape wouldn’t judge him for that. It didn’t mean that Harry somehow trusted Sirius more than him, at least not now. It was just—the way things were.

Dash threw a loop of his body over Harry’s lap, and Harry stroked it softly before he continued. “It was just about the fact that I don’t have anywhere to live if Sirius doesn’t take me in. And he’ll only keep me there if he loves me. I know that for a fact. I don’t think he could ever have someone who he didn’t love living with him, even if I was his best friend’s son.”

Harry looked up. Snape’s face was hard. Harry wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe the spell had affected his ability to read Snape’s expressions, too.

Harry looked down, and hastily continued. “So part of it’s legal. If Sirius doesn’t keep me, I have to go back to the Dursleys. I know I do. There is no one else who has any sort of legal right to—parent me, or they would have done it by now.”

Draco said, “If you’d said something about that, then I could have told my father to fight for you. He can argue with the Board of Governors. He can argue with lots of people. He could argue that we should be the ones to have you. I think you’re related to my mother through the Black family tree, just like he is. She could adopt you, and we could have you.”

Harry shivered a little. He wondered how he could say what he needed to say without telling Draco that he would rather Lucius Malfoy—and the mysterious woman writing to Sirius—weren’t in control of him.

But luckily, there was something else he could say. “He could convince the Board of Governors, but they’re not the ones with the power over me,” Harry said, stirring a little. “Could he convince Dumbledore and the Ministry?”

“Why would he have to convince Dumbledore?” Draco asked.

Harry frowned at him, and Snape said, “He is correct. While Dumbledore may not have any more legal responsibility for Harry than for another student now that Black is in the picture, he was instrumental in moving Black’s adoption of Harry forwards as fast as it went. He would be a formidable foe should he think that we are trying to slip around too much of his precautions.”

“Precautions?”

Harry smiled faintly. It was a little funny to think that this was one thing he might know more about than Draco, especially since Draco was the one who had taught him so much about pure-blood politics and what it would mean for Harry to be accepting these rings from these families.

You need not lord it over him.

Harry nodded in response to Dash’s silent chiding and said, “I think he wanted Sirius to take me because he likes Sirius. And because Sirius was, well, he was a Gryffindor and on Dumbledore’s side during the war. Even if your dad hadn’t been a Slytherin, there was no way that he was on Dumbledore’s side, so…”

“Those rumors about him serving the Dark Lord are exaggerated.”

“Perhaps not the best topic that we could be pursuing right now,” Snape said smoothly. “This was about where you would live during the summers, Harry?”

“Yes.” Harry gave Snape a look. He had thought it was the spell making it hard for Snape to connect with him and teach him, but he did wonder if Snape was also just that blind. Surely he ought to have known that Harry was concerned about who would keep him all along?

Snape only blinked once and touched his chin as if a beard grew there. Harry was glad, right now, that it didn’t. It would have reminded him too much of Dumbledore.

“You see yourself as having no power against Black and Dumbledore,” Snape said. “No power to escape them, I mean.”

Harry shook his head. “Not now that they’ve agreed I should live with Sirius and be in the Tournament.” He swallowed and looked down at Dash. “Dash offered to take me away from everything and protect me in some other place, but I don’t want to leave my friends and everyone I love here, either.”

It might still be the best solution, Dash said, but his voice was peaceful, unlike the other times he’d made that offer. He at least seemed to have accepted that it wouldn’t happen because Harry didn’t want it.

“The only solution is to raise your power.”

“I don’t know what that means,” said Harry, and glanced over at Draco. Draco was frowning a little, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything before Snape started talking.

“It means that you need to take advantage of those who are ready to be your allies.” Snape actually knelt down on the floor, to Harry’s shock, and met his eyes with a sober look from only a short distance away. “You need to let them know that it will benefit them for you to be more powerful.”

“But other than the sorts of things you told me to offer the Selwyns, how can I do that?” Harry felt limp and helpless. “I can’t offer newspaper interviews to everyone, and what if I end up doing awful things to make them more powerful?”

“Black and Dumbledore have already done awful things, though!” Draco burst out. “And Moody, or whoever that really is.”

“But I can’t just be horrible because they are.” Harry winced a little at the look of incomprehension on Draco’s face, but kept pushing ahead. “I mean—I can’t take revenge on them, or do horrible things in the name of taking revenge on them. That would only make me as bad as they are. And it wouldn’t make people trust me, anyway. Who would trust me if I might turn on them?”

*

When he does think, he brings up good points.

Severus could admire those points without intending to honor them, however. He would not lose Harry to Gryffindor self-righteousness any more than he would to his love for Black or the spell that Dumbledore had cast.

“You can’t do horrible things, that is true,” Severus said, and inclined his head to Harry. Harry watched him with quiet eyes. This close, Severus could see the lines of strain and tension around them, and how Harry’s hand, which rested on Dash’s head, trembled more than a little. “But we aren’t asking you to do horrible things. We are asking you to defend yourself.”

Harry shut his eyes. “I don’t see what the difference is.”

“You don’t?” Draco interrupted, and Severus let him because he thought Draco might do more good than he could right now. “It isn’t horrible to defend yourself! I did that against Dash, and he doesn’t even bear me a grudge, does he?”

Dash lifted his head and shook it gently back and forth. Severus surprised himself with how much he relaxed. Having his basilisk and his human friend at odds might have been a horrible weakness for Harry.

“Yes, fine,” Harry said. “But how do I know when I’ve gone too far? What if I think that I’m protecting myself and I’m actually doing something to someone else that was as bad as what Sirius did to me?”

Severus snorted, and let Harry hear it. Harry glanced at him, frowning. Severus shook his head. “You cannot do something like that because you are not in power over anyone else, the way Black is over you.”

Harry glanced down at Dash. Dash tilted his head back and let his eyelids quiver in the way that always made sweat break out on Severus’s neck. But whatever message Harry had got from Dash seemed to reassure him, because he nodded and turned back to Severus.

“All right,” he said. “But still…I don’t have a lot of money to give these people, and not all of them believe that I’m the reincarnation of Slytherin, and I can’t do interviews promoting all of them. What do I have to offer?”

Now you’re thinking like a Slytherin,” Draco said in satisfaction.

Severus would not have put it so, but from Harry’s small smile and the equally small twitch of Dash’s tail, it seemed that that way was not objectionable to them. All the better, Severus thought, and launched into an explanation.

“What you offer them is an investment,” he said, and Harry’s interested gaze turned to him. Dash must have been able to absorb enough of what an investment was from Harry’s mind, because he only turned his head further towards Snape. “You are not yet powerful, and you might never be if you made certain decisions. But you could be. Show them that they have the chance to influence you as a rising power, that you’ll take their advice into consideration in exchange for their support. The future will pay for the present.”

Harry blinked several times. “But if I just take their advice into consideration—what would they think of that? I could do something they wouldn’t like at all. I might not take their advice. Is it enough of a payment?”

“Yes,” said Severus. He wanted to smile, but then Harry would more than likely think Severus was making fun of him, so he didn’t. “They understand that it’s not a guarantee, any more than most investments are. You make them, and you hope for the best. If you deliberately betrayed them, that would be one thing.”

“I wouldn’t want to do that.” Harry’s hand tightened for a second so that his fingers pressed as five separate points on one of Dash’s scales.

No, you are enough of a Gryffindor for that. Severus nodded once. “And you must give your allies incentive not to betray you, either. Don’t let them see you squeamish. Present yourself as someone calm and mature and thinking about things.”

“The way I wasn’t with the Tournament and Sirius.”

“Yes.” Severus wanted to lay a hand on Harry’s shoulder and tell him it was all right, but that wouldn’t eliminate the effects of his bad decisions in the last few weeks. “That might have done you some damage already. Think closely about your next moves.”

“You should ask my father.” Unable to be left out of the conversation for this long, Draco had bounced to his feet and come over to Harry’s side to look at him with hopeful eyes. “He’ll be happy to fight for you.”

“But will he be happy to—invest in me?”

The hesitation before his words was nothing too damaging for Harry, Severus judged. He was simply getting used to this new language and deciding what he would have to say and not say.

“Of course.” Draco’s nose made its usual journey up to point at the ceiling. “You’re my friend.”

Harry paused. Then he said, “No offense, Draco, but I think it might take more than that. He might think we’re good friends but I don’t have anything to offer your family.”

“Yes, you do!” Draco bristled all over. “You’re the Boy-Who-Lived and famous and capable of doing all the things for us that you’re going to do for the Selwyns and the others! That has to be worth something!”

Harry winced this time. Severus sat back and wondered what would come out of Harry’s mouth next. Perhaps his trust in Lucius had declined since the man had helped him with his abuse.

But the next thing Harry said was, “But what if Voldemort comes back and he chooses to follow him instead?”

He didn’t look at Severus, but Severus was nonetheless certain, for a moment, that the boy had wanted to. Presumably Harry had more trust in him than he did in Lucius Malfoy. Severus turned and waited to see what Draco would say. He had to admit, he was interested.

*

Why is everyone looking at me like that?

Draco shook his head irritably. He knew the answer to Harry’s question. The only strange thing was that Harry and Professor Snape didn’t already know it.

“I know that he wouldn’t be able to—choose,” he said, because that was the closest he would come to admitting his father was “evil,” the way that Harry seemed to want him to. “You’re my friend. What would the Dark Lord think about that, and about Father not bringing you to him right away if he was really a loyal servant? Father hasn’t done that. So he already made his choice.”

Professor Snape looked thoughtful in a way that Draco didn’t like. It suggested he didn’t believe Draco, and that made Draco want to bristle. But before he could, Professor Snape simply nodded and said, “Yes, Draco, thank you. That makes sense.” He glanced at Harry.

“It does.” Harry hesitated, then held out a hand.

Draco clasped it and shook it solemnly. He didn’t know if it was really enough to make up for the fight they’d had. He thought Harry should at least have hugged him to show how sorry he was for that. But he understood why Harry didn’t want to do it in front of Professor Snape, either.

“Now.” Professor Snape stood back up and divided his gaze between them. “You must go forward with the Tournament, I’m afraid. Revealing the truth would be too great a challenge to the Headmaster’s power, and would reveal our motivations before we have sufficient allies to back the challenge up. I would let Professor McGonagall and Granger take care of that aspect for now. But you can make the Tournament work for you as well, Harry.”

Draco grinned a little. Professor Snape might want to keep it secret that he was teaching Harry Occlumency and politics, but anyone who was in the same room with him and heard him call Harry by his first name would know the truth. Draco suspected there was a reason he mostly used “Mr. Potter” in class.

“How?” Harry leaned back and pulled most of Dash into his lap. The parts of Dash that remained on the floor were his tail, which he swept lazily back and forth, and his head. Draco watched the way that drooped and his tongue shot out, and thought it was the most relaxed he’d seen Dash in a while.

“There are various plans we should make depending on how the Selwyns respond to your article and what the Headmaster attempts to do in the future,” Professor Snape began.

As they talked, Draco felt a pleasant buzz traveling through his veins. At first he thought it was just because they were finally doing something, and he was happy, but a second later, he recognized it.

So that’s it. Father always said that I would know it when I felt it.

Draco smiled. It was good to know that being excited by intrigue was hereditary.

*

Draco walked beside Harry and Dash as they made their way out of the dungeons. Harry had known that he would, and had already braced himself. In some ways, this was going to be more difficult than apologizing to Dash.

He waited until they were in the entrance hall, and Dash had reassured him that no one lurked nearby. Then he turned around and held out his hand when Draco would have walked past him. Draco stopped at once, though, giving him a faint smile.

Harry swallowed. “I’m sorry.”

“You said that once already.”

“But I really, really mean it.” Harry sighed and looked at Dash. Dash only wound into a series of random patterns on the floor. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I should have. I should at least have thought about it.”

Draco obviously thought that one through for a while, from the way his brow wrinkled. Then he nodded. “Okay. But there’s one thing I want.”

“What?” Harry asked, a little warily. All the talk of Slytherins and plots and political allies in the dungeons had left him a little paranoid about what someone might ask for.

“This,” Draco said, and he took a step forwards, and before Harry could even think about what was happening—that habit he needed to cultivate—Draco was hugging him, more tightly than anyone ever had except Hermione and Mrs. Weasley.

Harry froze, and Dash hissed in the back of his head, Are you going to let someone get away with only doing that? He’ll step back in a second, and he’ll think you don’t like him!

I do, Harry argued, but he didn’t have a lot of friends who liked to hug. So he just put his arms around Draco, stiffly, and when Dash hissed at him again, he pressed his arms down against Draco’s back and shoulders. Draco gave a long, slow sigh. Harry hugged him again, more firmly this time.

“I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you,” Harry whispered to him. “I could have, and it would have been better all around. But now I hope we’re friends again.” He held Draco tighter. Draco had told him about the way he’d stood up to Dash and why, and it was—Harry couldn’t even comprehend what kind of courage that must have taken to stand up to a basilisk you weren’t bonded to, the way Harry was.

“It’s much better now.”

Draco sounded contented, almost sleepy. Harry didn’t laugh, though. He knew Draco’s feelings would be hurt if he laughed now. Maybe later he would, when they were good friends again and this was something they could joke about.

Draco finally stepped back from him, smiled, and said, “I’m going to write to my father tomorrow and tell him a little bit about what you’re doing in the next few days, so he’s not taken by surprise.” Then he turned towards the dungeons.

“Good night, Draco,” Harry called after him.

Draco blinked, turned towards him, smiled, and then replied, “Good night.”

Harry walked away, humming. Dash trailed behind him, and then gently curled a loop of his middle around Harry’s foot and kept him there when they were on the last flight of stairs before Gryffindor Tower. Harry blinked down at him.

Dash arched his neck up. Harry slowly scratched his neck and kept on scratching. Dash shut his eyes and whispered, Please trust me next time. I might not have been able to feel the spell or identify it right away, but I still knew there was something wrong.

Harry nodded. And did you really want to eat Dumbledore? And would you really have run away with me?

Yes. Dash twisted his neck. Because my loyalty is to you alone, and not the wizarding world, and not the war.

I want to stay here and keep Voldemort from taking over, though.

Dash just looked at him. Harry turned aside. Sometimes, anyway. Not all the time.

Just acknowledge those other times, and we’ll get along fine. Dash gently trailed his tail along Harry’s ankle, then began crawling up the stairs again. Now, I’ll stay awake tonight and guard your sleep, and touch your thoughts for signs of the spell that’s hurting our bond.

Harry could remember a time a few hours ago when that suggestion would have horrified him. Now he smiled and let a glancing hand touch Dash’s head.

And the sensation of a huge pile of snake curling vigilantly around him in his bed and lessening the headache that had started pounding again made him only sigh and snuggle closer, and remember what Dash had said.

Because my loyalty is to you alone.

Yes, it was good to have someone like that. If he could trust it and believe in it. And Harry really thought he could, now.

Chapter 48: Options

Chapter Text

Lucius leaned back and laughed when he finished reading Draco’s letter. He hadn’t known he was going to do that; when he was first reading it, he had felt small unexpected jolts of shock slam into him along with the words. He had thought he would have to discipline Draco, to retreat from any support of Potter, or at least contact Severus and warn him that he must try harder to keep Draco out of trouble.

But now…

There were many things Lucius could do. They would come about because of conditions and circumstances Draco hadn’t been specifically aware of, but that made little difference. What really mattered was that Lucius had options.

For long moments, Lucius sat in his chair in the study, while he considered what he could do. He had the complaint against Moody, or “Moody,” to investigate as well. For a second, he thought about using the leverage from the incident where Moody had Transfigured Draco together with this one, and getting the professor kicked out of the school.

He shook his head as other implications came to him, though. This might be enough to make “Moody” leave. It would not be enough to find out who he really was, or why Dumbledore had hired him in the first place. And it would not be enough to undermine Dumbledore’s popularity and power in the wizarding world at large.

That was what Lucius wanted most of all. Dumbledore gone, so that he would stop interfering “for the greater good” in the way the Board of Governors ran Hogwarts. They could choose someone more…tractable without Dumbledore there.

And of course these incidents would help him achieve that goal. But right now, they didn’t have enough power on their own.

Lucius smiled, and moved like a snake to the next plan that would, a plan that depended on slowly, carefully, revealing himself to be on Potter’s side. And the best thing was that, given Draco’s friendship with the Boy-Who-Lived, Lucius wouldn’t even need to pretend that he was doing this from the good of his heart, which no one was going to believe anyway. He could pretend that it was politically awkward if he turned against his son’s best friend.

The right people would know he was lying. But the right people wouldn’t care for the real motive so much as the politically plausible cover.

Lucius drew out his parchment and ink, chuckling with delight. Sometime when Potter was last vulnerable and sensitive than he would be now, Lucius would have to thank him for being the occasion of so much happiness. 

For more than one member of the Malfoy family, at that.

*

Severus stood when he saw the way Minerva strode down the Great Hall at him. It was Saturday now, a brief breathing period that Severus usually spent in his quarters marking essays. 

But this was the early morning, and at breakfast before most of the students got up. Severus, who usually enjoyed the time for its privacy from both little monsters and incompetent colleagues, didn’t think he had ever seen Minerva here.

He questioned her with his eyes, and Minerva nodded. She paused only to take a hearty plate of bread and butter from the table, then led the way towards the entrance hall. Severus blinked when they bypassed the stairs that led to her quarters, but understood her reasoning a second later, as Minerva briefly touched her temple.

They didn’t want to be anywhere inside an environment where nosy portraits and a Legilimens might overhear them. And Moody, at least, was a Legilimens where he should not be.

Minerva took him out right to the edge of the Forbidden Forest, beneath a particularly rearing oak that Severus had sometimes gathered leaves and bark from. Then she stabbed her wand into the ground and murmured a word Severus didn’t catch. 

He stepped back as a powerful, transparent Privacy Charm shimmered up around them, focused on her wand. Minerva gave him a stiff smile.

“Private place for Gryffindor Quidditch teams to plan for games,” she said, and swallowed. “There’s something wrong with Albus.”

I could have told you that years ago, about the time that he excused the Marauders for attempting to kill me. But Severus did not intend to derail the conversation. He only said, “What, specifically?”

“I know he’s affected,” said Minerva, and she paced in a small circle, her hands locked together behind her back. She turned to look at Severus. “But I don’t know whether it’s a spell or a potion or—senility.”

You need not look so frightened, Severus thought, but he knew a touch of fear himself. Albus had been one of the reasons he stayed out of prison. The Ministry would love a chance to swoop in and change things about the school if they thought Albus had finally started to decline.

Which is why we must go to the Board of Governors as soon as possible. “And it wasn’t just his hiring of Moody that made you determine this?”

Minerva shook her head. “I got nowhere speaking to Moody. That man…” For a moment, she looked as she did in the moments before she transformed, and Severus hoped she had tried to claw Moody. In the end, thought, she banished the expression and continued, “I’ve contacted a few people I know among the school’s Governors. They both made it clear that Moody had been hired on Albus’s express recommendation. They’d balked because Moody has the reputation of being erratic even among Aurors. But Albus said that he had an extremely important reason for hiring Moody.” She hesitated.

“That doesn’t sound like evidence of incompetence to me,” Severus had to point out. “It sounds like the way Albus always talks.”

Minerva shut her eyes. “They said that the reason was because his lemon drops had told him to.”

Severus couldn’t prevent his expression from changing. Since Minerva wasn’t looking at him, though, he didn’t think she’d noticed. “And they didn’t go immediately and alert some of their friends?”

“Albus had been able to persuade the rest of the Board that Moody was a good hire without being questioned.” Minerva sighed. “And I think they were convinced that no one would believe them.” She turned and stared helplessly at Severus. “Even Lucius Malfoy agreed without needing further persuasion. Why? He at least could have done something by now.”

“Lucius has to walk carefully among his fellow Board members after being dismissed once,” Severus reminded her. “He’s saving his power for a moment when he really needs it.”

“Slytherin power politics.”

Severus saw no need to correct her. It was. But it would also be more useful to them and their goals than a dozen Gryffindor things Minerva could have done.

“So now what do we do?”

Severus realized that Minerva wasn’t going to go on a rant about the differences between Houses only then. He blinked and replied, “What we’re doing. Support Harry, give Lucius time to move on his own, and support Miss Granger’s petition.”

“But Moody could be an immediate danger to the students!” Minerva stood tall. “And with an incompetent Headmaster at the helm of the school…”

“Do you think that anyone will believe accusations against Albus without extremely compelling evidence?” Severus asked softly. “Would your friends be willing to get up and testify about what they heard in front of others?”

Minerva grimaced. “No. They only spoke to me in the first place because of friendships that have literally survived wars.”

I wonder who your friends are. But it wasn’t Severus’s place to ask, so instead he only inclined his head and said, “I will be doing other things. For example, I discovered that Alastor Moody has never been a registered Legilimens, so he cannot be Moody. And I can add investigations into whether Albus is under the influence of a potion to my duties.”

Could you?” Minerva looked him straight in the face. “I’d be grateful.”

You do not promise it in the same way someone from my own House would. But Severus thought he was learning how to ally with Gryffindors, even without specific promises. He nodded. “Yes.”

In the meantime, he had another task, although that was one he did not think it wise to inform Minerva of. He would meet Harry and Dash this morning in his quarters to look at their bond with Legilimency.

*

Harry sighed as he watched Hedwig soar away with the letters he’d written. He hoped they were good enough. He’d hit on the idea of explaining to the Selwyns and the other families he’d allied with that he’d got overwhelmed with doing too much at once. It was hard being in the Tri-Wizard Tournament and having a basilisk bonded to him.

And if they wanted to read between the lines and decide that it was also hard being the reincarnation of Slytherin, they were welcome to do that.

Dash twined around his feet and said, I think you did fine. But I must admit that I’ll be happier once we’ve had Snape take a look at us.

Harry nodded and started down the stairs, Dash flowing along with him. He rarely climbed Harry’s shoulders now. Harry had thought that was because of the disruption of their bond, but Dash had pointed out how big he was getting and how inconvenient it would be for Harry.

Unfortunately for their plans, they met Hermione at the bottom of the stairs.

Harry jerked to a stop, and Dash reared up behind him, although thankfully not as threateningly as he would have done in some times and places before this. Harry reached out and put a hand on his head, watching Hermione. I don’t think we have to worry about her. But she does want to talk.

So long as she doesn’t make us late for our meeting with Snape.

Harry nodded and said, “What is it, Hermione?”

“You’ve been so distant,” said Hermione bluntly. “You didn’t even seem to care that much about my petition to make professors stop bullying students. And you haven’t tried to make it up with Ron. Why?”

Harry folded his arms. He was going to tell her the truth, but he wasn’t going to listen to her scold him about that truth. “I’m only going to tell you if you promise not to tell Ron or Professor McGonagall or anyone else without my permission. I don’t trust you not to run off and report it otherwise.”

Hermione’s eyes got big and hurt, but Harry found he was learning to ignore that. He had to ignore it, or he would give in the second he saw Sirius again. Sirius liked to use that tactic a lot. 

“What are you doing?” Hermione whispered. “Is it dangerous?’

“Yes, but Professor Snape is standing behind me.”

That wouldn’t have been a reassurance for Ron, but luckily, Hermione was different. She nodded at once. “That’s good. But then why can’t you tell Professor McGonagall or anyone else at the school?”

Harry stepped close and lowered his voice. “Because someone cast a spell on me that weakened my bond with Dash and made me only care about the Tournament and Sirius and my proper place as a Gryffindor. I think that person was either Moody or Dumbledore.”

Hermione froze. Then she said, “I can believe that Professor Moody would do something like that. But Dumbledore?”

Harry shrugged. “I need to find out who it really was. But I know that Professor Dumbledore was always for me getting closer to Sirius and against me bonding with Dash.”

“He let you keep Dash!”

“He also thought it was a good idea for me to participate in the Tournament, but not to have Dash help me,” Harry pointed out. “Is that really a good idea? Do you think I can really handle all these traps and tasks by myself?”

Hermione’s hand flew to her mouth. “It could be true,” she whispered.

“It could,” Harry said, and managed to keep his voice calm and patient—he thought. If Hermione started and looked at him a little, well, that was all right. “It probably is. But right now, I need to go and have Snape look at the bond between me and Dash to see if the spell really managed to damage it.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Dash had been lying at the bottom of the steps—well, mostly the bottom of the steps, since he was trailing up them, too—but at that, he raised his head and gave a slow, thoughtful hiss. Hermione frowned at him instead of backing up. Harry was glad that she didn’t immediately run screaming the way most students would, but it was inconvenient right now.

“No,” Harry said. “I don’t want you to come.”

He could have said other things, he knew. That Snape would be upset to see Hermione there, or that Dash, with his refusal ringing in the back of Harry’s head, would strongly prefer that she stayed here. But Snape wasn’t here and Hermione didn’t have any way to communicate directly with Dash. It would be nice if she simply listened to him.

Hermione turned to him, looking stricken. “I just want to see you get better, Harry. I’ve been worried about you these past few weeks.”

“I know that,” Harry said. “Thank you. But you’ll see me get better this afternoon, or after a few weeks. That’s the most I can promise, Hermione.”

“You don’t want me there?”

Harry looked steadily at her. Again, he could have said lots of things, including that her presence would cramp what he and Snape wanted to talk about. But then he would have had to explain why, and he was short of time. 

And he wanted some privacy, sometimes. 

“No,” he said quietly. “I’m sorry, Hermione. Not for this. It’s too private, and it involves my mind.”

Hermione didn’t break down in tears, either, although for a second her quivering chin made Harry think she was about to. She nodded instead, and raised her head a little. “I can understand why, Harry,” she said. “I do understand. It’s all right. I’ll find Ron, and see if I can get him to pay more attention to what’s going on around him.”

“Tell him to believe me, too, like you did,” said Harry, and smiled at her. “I know that he believes me sometimes and not others. But he really needs to. I wouldn’t have put my name in the Goblet willingly. Dash would never have let me.”

“That’s something I never thought of.” Hermione looked at Dash with respect, then flicked her eyes back towards Harry. “And he’s serious about it when he decides to menace someone, isn’t he?”

She is a witch with good sense, Dash said approvingly, winding one coil around Harry’s leg. Which is rarer than intelligence.

“Yes, he is,” Harry said. “He menaced Draco last night, and he would have done the same thing to me if I hadn’t started realizing there was a spell clouding the bond between us.” He reached out a hand, and Dash entwined part of his neck around it, with his head winding up on the back of Harry’s wrist. “He’s a serious snake.”

“With a name like Dash.”

Tell her, Dash said haughtily, that she does not understand irony. I have found few people that do.

Am I one of them? Harry asked, as he accepted a hug from Hermione and a smile before she went her way.

No.

*

Harry was a few minutes late, just long enough to make Severus wonder if perhaps Moody or Albus had succeeded in kidnapping the boy. But he only shook his head when he caught Severus’s eye and shut the door behind him. “Sorry. Hermione.”

“Miss Granger thinks it is yet again her place to interfere?”

“No, she was just worried about me and it was great,” Harry said in distraction, unwinding part of Dash from his hand and setting him on the floor.

Severus blinked. He wondered if Harry realized how much he had revealed about himself by means of that simple statement.

Dash cocked his head to the side as though he knew exactly what Severus was thinking and even approved of it, but Severus could never be sure how much the basilisk understood, or how much he might pass on to Harry. For the moment, he concentrated on reaching out and picking up the glass of water he had already prepared.

Harry took it and sniffed it a little.

“Looking for a Calming Draught?” Severus spoke softly, but he managed to make his voice sting enough that Harry whipped his head up and looked at him, flushing. “This is not going to work if you don’t trust me, Harry.”

“I do—I mean—”

“If you wanted to know if I put a potion in the water,” Severus pointed out, controlling himself carefully so that his sarcasm wouldn’t drive Harry away, “you could just ask.”

“Did you put a potion in the water?”

“No.” Severus folded his arms and surveyed Harry’s face carefully. “One of the biggest problems we’ve had is you not trusting me enough to come to me, to ask questions, to listen to my warnings. I wouldn’t emphasize this so much now, but I told you about the absolute trust that we need if I’m going to examine your bond.”

Harry’s hand trembled for a minute. Then he put down the glass of water and faced Severus straight on. “Why did you give me the water if you didn’t put something in it? And why do I need to trust you absolutely? Dumbledore looked at our bond the night Dash hatched, and I didn’t trust him absolutely at the time.”

“Thank you,” Severus said softly. Harry looked briefly startled for all the adulthood he was trying to assume, and Severus smiled. “For asking. I gave you the water because I think your throat should be as moist and you should be as comfortable as possible before we start. For the same reason, I was going to ask if you needed to eat or use the loo.”

“I’m fine,” Harry muttered, his ears turning a shade of red that wouldn’t have shamed a Weasley.

“And as for why the Headmaster could look at you,” Severus added, “he was looking only to confirm the bond’s existence. I will be looking for damage in it. It’s the difference between looking for a stone wall and looking for a secret door.”

From the arrested way Harry’s head turned, he had thought of something that he wanted to ask, or something about Severus’s metaphor had caught him. Severus had learned not to pass up chances and fragile, small things—or things that looked fragile and small—with Harry, and he nodded now. “What is it?”

“Just—you seem so clear when you speak to me like this, or when you’re teaching me about Occlumency and politics.” Harry stared him in the face. “Why don’t you teach Potions like that?”

“For many years, I had no care for doing so,” Severus said. It felt as if he was reaching into himself and scooping out a lot of internal organs, but he had promised he would be honest. “It didn’t matter much to me whether my students learned all the finer points of Potions or not, as long as they did well enough on the OWLS and didn’t kill themselves.”

“But if they did better in class, then you might like teaching them better. And some of them wouldn’t need as much watching. So you could spend more time doing other things.”

Severus huffed out a breath. “It is something to consider,” he said, because if he didn’t, then he knew Harry would feel his contribution ignored. “Not right now, however,” he added, as Harry opened his mouth. “You have given me something new to think about, and I am grateful. For now, I need to see your bond.”

Harry nodded and settled back in the chair. “Do you need me and Dash to be touching or something?”

“That would likely help,” Severus allowed. He knew all about looking at regular minds and mind-bonds with Legilimency, but he had to admit that a bond between a basilisk and a Parselmouth would be unique in his experience.

Dash immediately settled his head in Harry’s lap, and Harry reached down and stroked his neck. He kept up the stroking even when Severus would have thought he’d ask to stop, biting his lip with his bright eyes fixed on Severus.

Severus held out his wand and sat down on the floor in front of Harry, although he conjured a few cushions before he did that. He didn’t want discomfort to make him lose the thread of the bond before he was through. “Legilimens,” he whispered.

Entering the mind of someone who welcomed him and didn’t want to keep him out was different from battering through Occlumency shields. Severus was glad. He didn’t want to leave Harry with a headache. That would probably prevent him from ever letting Severus help him with the Mind Arts again.

The corridors of Harry’s mind were full of a drifting mist. It took Severus a long moment to notice it, but when he did, he half-smiled. Yes, this was the kind of spell he had thought Dumbledore—or Moody—had used. He reached out and began to use his magic to herd the mist to one specific corner of Harry’s mind.

As he did that, the mist retreated from the bond, which was visible to Severus as a sort of light illuminating Harry’s memories and perceptions. Severus shook his head a little. The mist and the light together told him both how powerful and pervasive Harry’s bond with Dash was, and how strong the spell must be that could block or hinder it.

The mist finally collected, seething, in one corner. Severus approached it and then cast the spell that would draw it to him, a Legilimens variant on the Summoning Charm.

The spell attacked him with a blinding blast of pain—and then faded. Severus had no bond to another creature that it could focus on. 

But in the moment when it surrounded him like a blinding windstorm, whipping his head back and forth and filling his mind with agony, Severus got a good “look” at it. He could feel the strength of the magic behind it, and more to the point, he could feel the particular edge of that strength. He knew that magical signature.

He ought to, when he had spent so much time around the person who had it.

Severus opened his eyes and found Harry hovering anxiously over him. “Professor Snape? Are you okay?” Harry asked, and helped Severus sit up slowly. It seemed he had fallen over backwards into the nest of cushions he’d built.

“Yes, I am.” Severus debated telling Harry the truth, but in the end, he decided that Harry needed to know more than he needed to be spared from further sources of worry. And he already suspected. “It was Dumbledore who cast the spell on you.”

Harry went pale for a second. Then he flushed, deeply, and glanced over at Dash, communing on some level that Severus couldn’t hear but could appreciate, now that he had been so deeply in Harry’s bond.

“I want to know why,” Harry said dully. When he faced Severus again, his eyes glittered with a deadly, leashed rage that reminded Severus of the way Dash had moved across the entrance hall. “But I’ll wait until a time when I can learn more about it, instead of confronting him right away.”

Severus nodded in appreciation. If he can learn to blend Slytherin and Gryffindor traits like this all the time, then he’ll be truly formidable. 

And in the meantime, Severus thought he needed to make some plans of his own, to counter Albus’s, inevitable, next move.

Chapter 49: The First Task

Chapter Text

“I wish I knew whether I could trust him,” Harry muttered, opening yet another book on dragons. He also wished he knew whether there were enough books in Hogwarts library with useful advice to make searching this way worthwhile, but that wasn’t a question he could expect Dash to answer.

Of course not, Dash replied, raising his head and flickering out his tongue to touch Harry’s side. Why would you even bother asking?

“I mean, he told me the First Task was dragons.” Harry leaned back and stared up at the ceiling of the library. For a minute, he thought a dragon flickered and danced there, but then, he was seeing them everywhere these days. “I mean, can we trust that? Or should we just assume that everything he said was—”

Mister Potter.”

Blinking, Harry lowered his head again. Madam Pince stood in front of him, squinting as though he had his Invisibility Cloak on. Harry ducked his chin. He suspected he knew what she was going to say.

Sure enough, she did. “This is a library,” she told him, stressing the words so lightly that Harry knew she was pissed. Aunt Petunia had done the same thing when she was angry. “And I know you can speak to that beast of yours quietly. If you can’t, you will have to leave. That is the truth. Do you understand me?”

Harry nodded, feeling oddly overwhelmed with guilt. He had let down so many people lately and hadn’t kept their good opinion; he supposed that was the cause. “Yes, Madam Pince. Sorry.”

The librarian sniffed and turned away, while Dash climbed up Harry’s arm and stuck his tongue into Harry’s ear. Even as Harry jumped and sent a few books flying, Dash added, Don’t look now, but here comes one of those students you disturbed.

Harry turned around, resigned to being scolded by some studious seventh-year Ravenclaw. It wasn’t, though. Instead, Viktor Krum sat down at his table and studied him with a close enough gaze that Harry flushed again.

“So,” Krum whispered, with a wary glance at Madam Pince’s disappearing back. “You said something about the First Task?”

I never did tell Krum. Harry had meant to, but then again, nothing had seemed of much concern since “Moody” had told him about the Task but frantically preparing for the Tournament and trying to make Sirius proud.

“Yes,” said Harry. “It’s going to be dragons.” He wondered how he could get a message to Fleur. He didn’t particularly want to approach her when Dash would probably ruffle all her feathers again.

Krum did some kind of complicated hiss-whistle between his teeth. “And you did not want to keep the advantage for yourself?” He stared at Harry as if he would see some kind of truth written beneath his skin.

“I don’t really trust the person who told me about it,” Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck. “So I didn’t know if it was real or not at first. And then I had other problems to worry about, also caused by that person.” He shrugged awkwardly as Krum stared at him. He supposed he could see why it wouldn’t sound very convincing if all you knew was Harry’s scattered words. “So it slipped my mind and I thought it might not be real.”

“It sounds real.” Krum contemplated his hands for a second, then raised his eyes. “We would owe you a favor.”

“We?” Harry asked in distraction, wondering if Krum was planning to share the information with Fleur after all, and would save Harry a trip.

“Headmaster Karkaroff and I,” Krum clarified. He hesitated. “Unless you would like to listen to what he knows about basilisks and be paid back that way, no?”

Harry looked at Krum. He might not be a Slytherin, as Draco and Professor Snape were so quick to point out all the time, but he knew a deal that was too convenient to be true when he heard one. “You already planned to offer that to me, didn’t you? Why do you want to help me? Or why do you want me in your debt?” Harry didn’t know if trading information about dragons and basilisks would make them equal in Krum’s eyes or not.

Krum flushed and cleared his throat. “We are fascinated by the basilisk. We are looking for—safety.”

“Safety,” Harry repeated, mystified. Dash had lifted his head and was watching Krum carefully.

“Safety from the Darkness that some wizards would bring into our lands.” Krum moved his hands back and forth restlessly for a second, and then suddenly glared at Harry the way Harry thought he would probably look at the Snitch. “Safety from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”

Harry winced. “Look,” he said. “I can probably try to—I am going to fight him when he turns up. But how could I get to your school or wherever else you live if he came there? If he’s anywhere,” Harry added. He didn’t have any idea where Voldemort had gone after he fled Hogwarts in first year. He ignored Dash’s mutter about his dreams. They only showed forests, nothing definite. “I can’t even Apparate yet. I’m just fourteen! There’s nothing all that special about me!”

Krum gave an eloquent glance at Dash.

Harry shook his head. Sometimes he hated that he’d let other people think he was the reincarnation of Slytherin. For all he knew, Krum might not believe that or care about that—for one thing, Harry had no idea if Salazar Slytherin was important in other countries the way he was in Britain—but it had still started all of this nonsense.

Never think that, said Dash, with a snap in his voice that was unusual for him. It was Voldemort who started this. Or if you want to think about what happened in the last few years, it was the diary and Voldemort’s spirit and Dumbledore. You did nothing wrong.

I still probably let them think that I could do more than I can, Harry thought miserably, but he had to say something. Krum was starting to look concerned. “I just—I can’t make an alliance with you because I would have nothing to offer you that would interest you,” he said. “You’re a seventh-year! You can probably defend yourself loads better than I can.”

Krum’s face relaxed. “That is the only thing worrying you, yes?” He gestured in a way that was as eloquent as the way he’d glanced at Dash, but this time, Harry was less sure of what he was saying. “It is the future that we have concern for, not the present. You will grow. You will become stronger. And in the meantime, we will be safer as your allies than standing alone.”

There it was again, that bit about futures and investments that Professor Snape had said would happen. Harry restrained the urge to giggle hysterically. You should be dignified when accepting their alliance, Dash told him, and he was probably right.

“Then I accept your alliance,” Harry said. “And any information about Dash you can give me. And—well, we can discuss other things after the First Task.” He paused. “Can you tell Fleur about the dragons for me? I would, only.” He gestured at Dash.

Krum laughed and stood up. “Yes, I will. You are a good one, Harry Potter.” He nodded at him and added, “We will have a meeting with my Headmaster after the First Task.”

“We will,” Harry said, although he had no idea what he would say to Karkaroff and suspected that Dash didn’t know either. Then he sat there, feeling like a prat, as Krum gave him what was practically a bow and turned away in a leisurely manner.

We still have dragons to prepare for, Dash said a second later, a second that Harry had spent staring after Krum. Although I have an idea that may work.

Harry turned hastily to him. “What do you mean?” he asked, managing to keep it to a whisper at the last instant as Madam Pince glanced in their direction.

Dash tapped his nose on the page in front of Harry. Turn back. There was something about dragons’ bodies that I want to read.

Harry hopefully flipped the pages. He just wanted to face the dragon and get it over with. He wanted to live. But he wanted to do well if he could. He was in the stupid Tournament, he might as well do it.

There was a little creeping hope, too. If he could show that he was brave in the Tournament, then it might show other people in his House that he was still a Gryffindor. He’d been getting some suspicious looks about spending so much time with Draco and Snape.

Those who will despise you for that are not worth getting upset over.

Sometimes you sound so much like a human adult it’s creepy, Harry complained, and flipped more pages.

*

Hermione leaned forwards from the stands set up around the arena where Harry and the other Champions would compete for the First Task. Her lip felt raw with how much she’d been biting it, and her hands flew raw with how hard she had to clench them so she wouldn’t hurt Ron.

“I don’t think he put his name in the Goblet,” Ron said for the fiftieth time. “I just think he was stupid to take risks like this. Why didn’t he leave the Tournament when he found out that he hadn’t actually been chosen to compete? That’s all I want to know.”

Hermione twitched in annoyance. She was going to hit Ron with a copy of Hogwarts, A History, really she was, if he didn’t shut up soon.

Unfortunately, she hadn’t brought one to the arena, and Ron had a habit of not shutting up until someone answered his questions. So Hermione made her voice as nice as she could, and asked, “Would you have backed out if your Mum and Dad had told you they were proud of you and you were finally acting like a proper Gryffindor?”

Ron choked a little. “Sirius told him that?”

“That’s what he said.” He said it to you, too. But in some moods, Ron was just impossible to get through to. Hermione had tried to tell him that when he got upset about Viktor Krum sitting at a table in the library and staring at her. He didn’t understand that Viktor was just shy and wanted some help with his homework for Defense.

“I would have liked to be in the Tournament, though,” Ron persisted in a low voice as the first Champion strode out of the tent they’d gone into. It was Fleur Delacour. “I mean, Mum and Dad would finally notice me then…” 

His voice trailed off. Hermione followed his gaze, saw the way his glazed eyes were fixed on Fleur, and rolled her own eyes. Fine. If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is.

The wavering Disillusionment Charm that they’d had up to conceal the dragons dropped then. The crowd gasped. Hermione’s heart gave one enormous thump before it sank. There were three dragons there, and she recognized one as a Chinese Fireball and one as a Hungarian Horntail. Delacour was heading straight for the third one, the Common Welsh Green, crouched above its nest of eggs and snarling at her.

If she has that one, then Harry has a more dangerous one. Hermione darted a glance at the Hungarian Horntail, and then wrapped her hands around each other. It might be the Chinese Fireball. It might.

But with Harry’s luck, she didn’t think it would be.

The day seemed to soar and blur around Hermione. Delacour sang, a song that seemed to charm half the audience as well as the dragon; it curled its head slowly down in front of its eggs, its eyes half-lidded in the way that Hermione knew meant Dash was sleepy. Delacour darted forwards and tried to Summon the golden egg.

It bounced and rolled and hit the blinking dragon’s nose. In a second, the Welsh Green raised its head and breathed hard.

Delacour squealed and tried to dodge out of the way of the rush of fire. She didn’t manage, and for a second Hermione gasped along with everyone else. She didn’t like Delacour and the way she enchanted Ron, but Hermione didn’t want her to die, either.

When the fire cleared away, they saw Delacour whirling around and putting out her flaming skirt with an expert blast of water. At the same time, she held out her wand and uttered a short, commanding incantation. The golden egg rolled the rest of the way and slammed into her waiting hand. Then she fled back towards the tent.

Madame Maxime awarded Delacour the maximum points possible, of course. Karkaroff gave her a three. Hermione sniffed. He’s probably going to do the same for everyone but Viktor.

She blushed a little as she thought about that. Viktor was kind and talented, and he was—interesting to talk to. But Hermione didn’t want him to get a good score only because his Headmaster was biased towards him.

Luckily, it didn’t look as if that would happen. Dumbledore gave Delacour nine points, and the other two judges, men Hermione hadn’t met but thought were named Bagman and Crouch, gave her a ten and a seven respectively. At least she would have a decent number of points when she went to compete against Viktor.

And it was Viktor who came out of the tent next, looking as calm and solid as he did when he was listening to Hermione explain Defense to him. 

He headed straight for the Chinese Fireball, and Hermione sighed a little. Yes, that meant Harry was going to have the Hungarian Horntail. She tried to hope that he had a strategy in mind. He had told her he did, but he also didn’t want to discuss it because it relied on practicing something with Dash. 

He’d smiled at her when Hermione demanded that he tell her what it was anyway. And then Hermione had gone quiet because she thought maybe it was something Harry was also going to practice with Professor Snape, and she hadn’t wanted to press. 

She wondered if Harry was so blind that he couldn’t see the glances Professor Snape gave him in class, much softer ones than he gave anyone else. Maybe he was. Maybe Hermione was the only one who could see them. Ron hadn’t given any sign that he’d noticed them.

Then again, Ron is oblivious to an awful lot, Hermione thought, noticing that he was cheering for Viktor and chattering about his Quidditch skills at the same time. He only thought of Viktor as a Quidditch player, not anything else.

You might not get to think of him as anything else, either, Hermione scolded herself, and leaned forwards to see how Viktor dealt with his dragon.

*

Draco was watching the tent instead of the dragons. He heard the roars as Krum cast some sort of curse—from the syllables, something that would at least partially blind the dragon—but he couldn’t look. He felt as if there was a string tethering his head to the tent, and it would hurt if he turned away from it, if he moved too far.

Then again, it also hurt to look. He swallowed again and again, but that didn’t ease the pain in his chest and throat, a pain that made him feel as if he was getting a cold.

I just want Harry to be all right.

Harry had told him that he was training with Dash to get his strategy just right, but the judges wouldn’t actually let him use Dash in the Tasks themselves. When Draco had pointed that out, Harry nodded and said he knew, but there was still something he could practice with him.

Draco didn’t see why Harry couldn’t practice with his friends instead. Like Draco.

A series of snapping and cracking sounds did make Draco turn around briefly, but all he saw was the dragon roaring and stomping on its own eggs, while Krum ran back and forth trying to get the golden one. Draco knew that there were Dragon-Keepers standing by ready to restrain the dragons if they tried to come into the audience, so he didn’t care. He turned back to the tent again.

It seemed like forever until Krum finished and the Dragon-Keepers calmed the Chinese Fireball down or healed it or did whatever they did. Krum limped off the field with a few burns, and the scores began to show among the judges. Draco didn’t care. His hands were so damp that he soaked his robes when he rubbed them on his legs.

And then Harry came out and headed straight for the Hungarian Horntail, the most dangerous dragon there.

Draco almost wished he didn’t know that. 

Harry moved liked he was marching, and he didn’t look into the stands. Draco squinted, trying to see if maybe he had Dash with him under a Disillusionment Charm. Then he jumped as he felt something scaly and cool touch his foot.

When he looked down, there was Dash, winding up like a cobra beneath Draco’s bench, watching the contest as if he thought Harry could do just fine on his own.

Draco felt more of the sweat roll down his back, and thought it must be turning his robe transparent. He tried to lean down and whisper to Dash, even though he had no idea if Dash could understand English without Harry’s mind to translate the words. “You let him go alone?”

Dash pointed his head forwards at the field. Draco turned around, panting with his fear.

Harry didn’t appear to be doing anything. He was staring straight at the dragon, his wand down at his side in a relaxed clutch. Draco stared frantically. Why wasn’t the dragon attacking him? Or why wasn’t Harry raising a shield?

Then Draco realized that Harry was doing something. He was hissing.

The Horntail raised his head and arched its neck further and further, eyes fixed on Harry in a way that made it seem as if it was trying to figure out how many bones it could crack in a single bite. Then it opened its mouth and gave a rasping, gurgling noise that made Draco’s spine itch.

It was hissing back. Just at a much lower volume and in a much less defined way than Harry could hiss.

Dash leaned his head on Draco’s foot and flicked his tongue out in three precise touches against Draco’s calf. Draco was pretty sure he knew what that meant. Dash was chuckling.

And the stands were erupting with screams as Harry walked closer and closer to the Horntail, and the dragon curled its head down to meet him, mouth open. Harry stepped onto the monster’s tongue.

The Horntail’s jaws closed.

Draco was the one who screamed the loudest.

*

Standing on the dragon’s tongue, in the middle of the dragon’s mouth, Harry felt as if his courage was about to melt down his shoulders and end up in the middle of the tongue just like his feet were.

But he had practiced and practiced this with Dash, off by himself where his Parseltongue couldn’t get anyone upset, and he was confident in it. Dragons could speak Parseltongue with the aid of a Translation Charm, and that had been the spell Harry had used on himself before he came out of the tent. Even then, he’d had to practice the dragon dialect with Dash.

And the Hungarian Horntail had been intrigued with what he wanted and what he offered. He would get the golden egg and remove a false one from her clutch, and in return, she would get to taste the magic that blazed around him and to remind the humans around her that she wasn’t to be trifled with.

literal taste.

Harry shuddered as the saliva washed around him and the dragon’s tongue curled and flexed, making it hard to balance on. He had never known that dragons could taste magic and wanted almost to drink it. It was one reason that wizards would never tame them, Harry understood now. The wizards were the source of too much magic, magic that the dragons wanted to swallow and play with.

Only a minute or so, he’d warned the Horntail. Otherwise, the Dragon-Keepers would probably start firing spells. Harry tossed back his sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and counted down the seconds, then raised his wand and tapped on the inside of the Horntail’s upper jaw.

For a second, she didn’t move, and Harry felt as though someone had started his heart into overdrive. But then she grunted and lowered her head, and when her mouth opened, Harry stepped out calmly, bedraggled but alive.

Here is the egg you wanted, the Horntail hissed, moving the golden egg forwards with a delicate touch of her claw. Harry was a little surprised she could be so delicate, but then again, he supposed female dragons had to be if they wanted to move their clutches.

Harry bowed, trying not to hear the plop of dragon saliva to the ground around him and the screaming of the crowds, which didn’t sound all ecstatic. Thank you, Great One. 

Your magic tastes interesting. The Darkness of it is as strong as the Light.

Harry froze for a second, but the dragon was only making conversation, he thought. Thank you, he said again, and gathered up the golden egg, and turned to walk back to the tent.

The screaming crowds didn’t let him get that far. McGonagall came hurtling towards him, shaking her head, and grabbing him by the arm, and then not seeming to know what to do, until she hugged him. Ron and Hermione poured down with the rest of the Gryffindors, and the minute Harry caught Ron’s eye, he knew things would be all right again.

Draco came hurtling into the middle of the field to hug him.

Caught by surprise, Harry went down beneath him, borne off his feet. Draco sat back beside him and stared. Then he grabbed him again and whispered, “What in the name of Merlin were you doing?”

“Teaching people what they can expect from me,” Harry said, and nodded to the spectators who were asking him questions but talking too fast themselves to listen for the answers. He lowered his voice. “I wanted to show them that I have a Slytherin side but I can also be a Gryffindor.”

What?”

Harry winced a little. Apparently Draco didn’t consider that a good excuse for stepping into a dragon’s mouth. “Well. That was what I wanted.” He caught Ron’s eye again. Ron was hopping up and down with impatience, seemingly wanting to come up and hug him. “And I think it worked.”

“Why didn’t you tell anyone what you intended?”

Harry blinked and glanced over at Draco. “Because you would have tried to stop me.”

From the way Draco’s face darkened, that also wouldn’t be good enough. But Dash was flowing over to Harry, coiling around him and nudging the golden egg in a faintly interested way, and the judges were giving him their scores. Harry saw that they were perfect tens from everyone except Karkaroff and Madame Maxime, but their scores were still pretty high.

Well, fine. Harry wanted a shower to clean off the dragon saliva more than he wanted to know his scores right now.

He didn’t get off the field, though, before Dash said abruptly, Snape incoming, and a hand touched Harry’s shoulder for a second only—still strongly enough to leave bruises on his shoulder. 

“Mr. Potter,” Snape hissed. “We are going to have a talk about this.”

“Sure, sir,” Harry said automatically, adding in his head Right after the talks I’ll have with Draco and Ron and Hermione and Professor McGonagall and

But Ron and Hermione were with him then, hugging him in spite of his soaked condition, and Harry thought he could turn his attention to other things.

Chapter 50: Concerns

Chapter Text

“That was amazing, mate!”

Harry grinned at Ron, leaning back in his chair in the Gryffindor common room. Dash was lying over him like a giant round pillow, his head on one side of the chair and his tail draped around the other. Harry had the feeling that Dash never really wanted him to move again.

No, I simply wish you to rest before you encounter the more trying questions.

Harry grimaced. He knew Dash was talking about the fuss Draco and Professor Snape would make. He was sure there wouldn’t be any from Sirius, that he would be perfectly fine with it, but he hadn’t come yet, so Harry couldn’t shelter behind him from the Slytherins.

You’re thinking of how you can use the smelly dog-man now, not how you can please him. Dash turned and drew a line down Harry’s cheek with his tongue. That is a sign of how you have grown and matured.

Harry tightened his hold on Dash’s scales for a moment in surprise. Yes, he had thought like that, without even hesitating or asking himself if that was the sort of thing a Gryffindor ought to do.

“How did you plan that, Harry?”

Harry eyed Hermione sideways, a little. She was the only one he thought might scold him instead of noisily celebrating his victory, the way that most of his House was doing now (although like most Gryffindor parties, the celebration had drifted away from the original purpose and was now about how many pranks the twins could set off). “Dash told me that dragons were sometimes able to speak Parseltongue and sometimes not. But they could be affected by Translation Charms cast on a human.”

“That’s interesting!” And he had successfully distracted Hermione, Harry thought. She was sitting up and leaning in. “How did he know that?”

Because I am a basilisk, and I know everything.

Harry rolled his eyes a little. Even Dash wasn’t acting as if that was the case anymore—at least, not all the time. “He had seen something in the book I was reading about dragons’ sense of hearing and their tongues. They sort of speak Parseltongue, but their bodies are set up differently from a snake’s, and so they don’t do it exactly the same. But they react to Translation Charms on humans. For example, if a Dragon-Keeper from Romania came to Britain and used a Translation Charm to speak English, then the dragon would recognize the same command words and curse words in his voice. Even though he’d be technically speaking Romanian.”

Hermione nodded thoughtfully. “That’s very clever, Harry.”

“Thank you.” Harry braced himself a bit, because he could see the lecture coming after all.

“Clever? It’s bloody amazing!” Ron ran roughshod over Hermione’s lecture, and reached out to pull Harry out of his chair and swing him around. At least that was probably the plan, but he didn’t manage to do it with Dash draped over him. Harry flopped up halfway and then back against the chair, laughing. 

“Language, Ron!”

“Well, it is,” Ron snapped back at Hermione, and then turned around and met Harry’s eyes with a melting sincerity that made Harry swallow hard. “Can you forgive me, mate? I didn’t mean to—I shouldn’t have doubted you the way I did.”

“Yes, of course,” Harry said happily. He was grateful, when it came down to it, that the argument between him and Ron could be so easily patched up. The other Gryffindors who had acted suspicious of him had already clapped him on the back and toasted him and moved on, but Harry had known it couldn’t be that simple with Ron.

Hermione shook her head at both of them, but didn’t say anything more for now. Harry went back to stroking Dash and tried to ignore the soft murmur down the bond of, I doubt Draco and your Snape will be so easily satisfied.

He’s his own Snape.

Dash said nothing, but he said it in an extremely smug way.

*

“There’s my Harry!”

Severus sat slowly down again, his eyes focused on Black. He had not been looking at him before, even as he danced up and down the High Table insisting that all the professors toast Harry. They had avoided each other by mutual accord.

Even Black must know what I would do if he came towards me and insisted that I congratulate Harry on a tactic so dangerous.

But that was nothing compared to what Black did when Harry walked into the Great Hall with his friends on either side of him and Dash slithering along the floor behind. Black actually vaulted the high table, paused only to shout out those inane words to all the spectators—including the Headmasters of the other schools and their students—and then rushed over and picked Harry up.

Severus breathed slowly to calm himself. The spell that blocked Harry’s bond with Dash and made him consider Black before all things had been reduced to small wisps and would fray further over time, Severus knew. That meant this encomium from Black would not have the effect on Harry that it could have. He wouldn’t yield to Black’s entreaties and act like a pure Gryffindor.

But it was easy to tell himself that, not so easy to feel it.

“Put me down, Sirius, please,” Severus heard Harry mutter. He was amazed he could hear it through the banging of the goblets on the Gryffindor table and the shouts and cheers, but he did. Perhaps because his ears were so attuned to the nuances of Harry’s voice by now.

Black did so, but continued to ruffle Harry’s hair in a way that made him look more like James than he had in a year. “You did it, you did it, you did it!” Black kept saying, and then he paused and winked at Harry. “And I know you did it in the most courageous way you possibly could!” He shot a triumphant glance at the Slytherin table. “Not like some other people would have done it.”

Harry turned bright red. But he just said, “I did what I thought was best.”

He used Parseltongue, suggested to him by his snake, no doubt, Severus thought viciously in Black’s direction. What about that suggests to you that he belongs to you more than to us?

“That’s right, but that was the brave thing!” Black hugged Harry again, and then turned around and trotted back to the high table, saying over his shoulder, “I’m proud of you, Harry. I can’t tell you how proud.”

Harry’s gaze followed Black, and the way his eyes softened wasn’t subtle at all. Severus’s hands closed into claws beneath the tablecloth.

Then he met Albus’s gaze, and abruptly uncurled his hands and leaned back.

What does it matter, if they make fools of themselves and act like they’re the ones who hold Harry’s heart in their hands? I know it’s not true. And perhaps the most Slytherin thing of all will be to let them think Harry remains theirs, and spring the surprise of how much he has changed on them when they least expect it.

Harry and his friends went to the Gryffindor table, and Albus stood up and began to make a speech about the Tasks and the Tournament and the rest that Severus felt entirely capable of ignoring. Instead, he deftly cast a spell under the table that required concentration and focus, but no speech. 

A shimmer formed in the air, similar to the Patronus but neither as visible nor as recognizable. Severus leaned towards it and mumbled, “Harry, come to my office this evening. I will be at liberty.”

The shimmer vanished for a moment; then Severus saw the trailing edge of it, like the top of a question mark, as it moved over and towards Harry. From the intense expression of interest in his food Harry assumed perhaps ninety seconds after that, the instruction had popped in his ear and recited what it had to say. 

Severus nodded to himself. He did not think Harry enough of a fool to ignore that.

“What are you staring at, Severus?” Albus’s voice was close and comfortable. “Surely you cannot be pleased that Harry will stay at Hogwarts?”

“Was his staying at Hogwarts ever in question, Headmaster?” Severus picked up his fork and with it a clump of beans on the end of it, studying it in distaste. The house-elves had never been able to cook any kind of beans to his satisfaction. 

“I think that you hoped the dragon would eat him, my dear boy,” said Albus, and then chuckled. “You know, Severus, that I have never approved of the attitude you take towards the boy.”

“I thought you rather approved the one I had been showing for the past year, Headmaster,” said Severus. He didn’t yet know where this conversation was going, and he didn’t intend to show his hand until he did.

“You’ve been acting like he needs protection from something,” said Black, abruptly leaning his head over Albus’s shoulder. “And he doesn’t. Except maybe you, and the ideas you’ve been poisoning him with.” Black’s mouth contorted in an ugly sneer.

Severus decided promptly that his best tactic was simply to play bland. Black was incapable of following a strategy, so more than likely Albus didn’t have one; his “plan” was simply to throw things at Severus and see what happened.

“I have been helping him practice in calming his mind and unburdening it,” Severus agreed. “Perhaps he didn’t need that after all. It seems that he is one to grasp his worries by the horns and disarm them that way.”

Black didn’t seem to know what to do with that, given the way his mouth opened and shut foolishly. Albus, though, reached out and put his hand on Severus’s wrist. Severus leaned back and gave Albus a long, slow look in response.

“My boy,” Albus whispered, “could you act for one day as if Sirius is not your enemy?”

Not following the plan, is it? “Certainly. If Black extends me the same courtesy,” said Severus, and mustered the best smile he could in Black’s presence.

“Stop trying to turn Harry into a Slytherin,” said Black, putting his spoon down so hard that some of his soup splashed towards Minerva, who glared at him. Black didn’t notice, he was so focused on Severus. “Then I might consider it.”

“I was unaware that I was, or that I could,” said Severus simply, putting his fingers together this time. He didn’t look at Albus. Black was the one he concentrated on, because Black was the one more likely to give clues about Albus’s intentions away. “He was Sorted into Gryffindor. I think this latest stunt with the dragons proves his House in many ways.”

It proves that he needs to talk to people before he acts, and value someone else’s approval above Black’s.

But Severus had years of practice at not showing his thoughts on his face. It would take someone with more piercing eyes than Black’s, no matter how furiously he stared at Severus, to divine them. 

“You need to stop talking to him,” Black whispered fiercely. “Meeting with him. Acting like he’s yours.”

Severus came face-to-face with the absolutely unexpected revelation that talking to Harry could make Black jealous. He didn’t allow his expression to really alter, but he wanted to sneer and laugh at the same time. If Black had taken care of Harry the way he was supposed to, then…

But as it was, it was a side benefit of something Severus fully intended to keep going anyway. He shook his head slightly. “I am unaware how I was acting as if he was mine,” he said. “Given that he is James Potter’s son, and your godson. And if I am to teach him in Potions, I cannot cease talking to him.”

Black did some more glaring, but it was evident he had come to the end of his allowance of wits. Severus therefore turned patiently enough towards Albus when he said, “My boy. If we might work this out?”

Albus turned desperately twinkling eyes back and forth between him and Black. He seemed as if he was trying for something, to provoke some reaction, but Severus had no idea what it might be.

“It seems to me that it would be simple enough to compromise,” said Albus at last, “if Severus would perhaps acknowledge that he could cease interacting with Harry outside of class, and if Sirius accepted that.”

“Then I must have someone else supervise all his detentions?” Severus snorted. “I am a professor, Albus. I will do what I must. I am not going to hand the supervision of Potter over to someone else merely to satisfy a Marauder.” He sneered at Black, playing the role they would expect of him.

Of course, Black played as expected, too, plunging expertly into the heart of the problem. “You bastard!” he said, almost howled, and more than one person at the nearer student tables turned to look at them. “You’re only jealous that I had friends and you didn’t!”

Severus watched him, and felt no sting from those words as might have been expected. Once he would have, but now his—fairly successful—campaign to cultivate a relationship with Harry was insulating him from the full effects.

“Now, Sirius, let’s not be hasty,” said Albus, and glanced at Severus again. Severus looked calmly back. He had the feeling something was missing, but he didn’t know what it was. He supposed he would wait and find out. This whole conversation was odd, in that it was hard to discern the outlines of Albus’s plan. “It’s true that Severus needs to spend time with our dear boy when he assigns detentions and the like. Perhaps we can work something out?”

Predictably, nothing came from the conversation, and Severus left breakfast with a slight sneer. Black had blown up when Albus suggested that Severus could spend “limited amounts of time each week” with Harry, and so Severus had managed not to promise anything. 

But it was interesting, to note that their plan of attack seemed so scattered, and as if Black had not known what Albus was going to do.

Halfway down the dungeon stairs, Severus realized what was so different, and paused in mid-step.

Albus had not tried to read his mind.

*

Draco turned anxiously around when he heard the knock on Professor Snape’s door. The professor had invited Draco to be part of the conversation he’d have with Harry, and Draco had accepted, because Merlin knew when he would get to talk to Harry otherwise. Even some of the people who thought Harry had cheated to get his name in the Goblet seemed to think it was wonderful to have a Hogwarts Champion in the lead. Jostling crowds of students had surrounded Harry all day.

Dash came into Professor Snape’s office first, and sniffed around with darting tongue as if to make sure that nothing was waiting for them. Draco gave him a stern glance. He’d depended on Dash to talk Harry out of his absurd ideas, but it seemed that Dash encouraged him in them, instead.

He got a jauntily waving tongue before Dash slithered in further and stretched out near the base of the professor’s desk.

Harry followed behind, with a little strut to his step. For a second, Draco thought he was probably nervous about what Draco and Professor Snape were going to say, and this was his way of making up for it.

But that still didn’t give him the right to scare the—the shit out of people, Draco thought, taking satisfaction from the word.

“I suppose you know what I invited you to talk about?” Professor Snape asked as he stood. His voice was mild. Draco, who had been on the receiving end of that voice more than once before, winced.

Dash laid his head down and acted like he was going to sleep.

“You called me to talk about my own self-destructiveness, I assume,” said Harry, and for a moment he acted so poised that Draco actually thought he was going to fend them off. But then he shifted his feet and scowled, and the spell was broken.

“Why didn’t you tell us what you were going to do?” Professor Snape asked. His voice was low and controlled. Draco shivered a little, but he also moved to the side where he could see Harry better. He wanted to see if their arguments actually had any effect on him.

“Because you would have tried to stop me.”

Draco winced again. That was going to make Professor Snape angry.

And it did, although maybe Harry didn’t notice. Professor Snape narrowed his eyes and turned on one heel so that he could keep watching Harry as he moved around the office, touching the desk and the walls and the stack of cauldrons that Professor Snape kept piled up in the corner for detentions. “Did you think that I would have nointerest in stopping a student who was gambling with his life?’

“No matter what I did, it was going to be dangerous,” Harry snapped, turning around. He looked at Dash for a second. Dash went on pretending to be asleep, though. Draco wondered what he thought of all this. “So I might as well do what I wanted.”

“That wasn’t the only reason.”

“No, of course not,” Harry said, and then rolled his eyes at Professor Snape, which wasn’t something Draco would ever have thought of doing. “I wanted to show them I was both a Gryffindor and a Slytherin.”

Them. Who?”

“My friends and Sirius and the other people watching.” Harry folded his arms and tried to glare again, but he seemed a little more nervous this time. Good, Draco thought. Maybe he wouldn’t have to scold, if Professor Snape did the job for him, but he did want Harry to understand how much he had upset them. “I used Parseltongue, but then I did something brave like a Gryffindor.”

Foolhardy, like a Gryffindor.” Professor Snape moved a step forwards, prowling around Harry as he just stood there and glared. Draco would have put a hand over his eyes, but he didn’t want to mess anything that was going to happen. “Did it ever once occur to you that you might die doing that?”

Harry blinked. “Yes? Of course it did.”

Dash stirred a little, but smoothed himself back to stillness so quickly that Draco wasn’t sure he’d seen that. He knew from the way Professor Snape paused, though, that that answer had taken him by surprise.

“Then why did you do it?”

Harry let his arms and his glare drop at the same time. “Because I’ve almost died lots,” he said. “Voldemort could have killed me. I could have died when I was trying to protect the Stone in our first year. Or the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets could have killed me. Or I could have fallen off my broom during a Quidditch game and died. I don’t—this was only one more thing. What’s the matter?” he added suddenly, stepping forwards and reaching out to Professor Snape. “Are you—you’re really upset.”

Draco didn’t entirely understand the expression that crossed Professor Snape’s face, but he knew that he’d changed his tactics. The professor dropped his own arms and faced Harry with an open, honest frown. “Yes,” he said. “I am. More than simply being wrong or foolish, what you did made me fear that you might not survive.”

What’s he doing? Fascinated now, because both Professor Snape’s responses and Harry’s were so interesting, Draco held his breath and watched.

*

Harry felt like someone had opened a trapdoor beneath his feet.

He isn’t supposed to say that. Snape’s not like this.

Which meant, of course, that Snape was probably being like this just to manipulate him. But Harry didn’t know what to do about it. Because he didn’t think Snape was lying, either.

“But--I did,” said Harry. “I mean, if you think that I wasn’t going to that’s one thing. But I did. And through Parseltongue, something that should make most people think of me as more Slytherin.”

“I did not think it at the time. I did not know it at the time.” Snape was looking at Harry as though he thought he’d be able to compel his belief through eye contact alone. “Even if I had thought it likelier than I did when you were facing a large and dangerous beast capable of killing many adult wizards, there is no guarantee that you will live simply because you have lived through dangerous situations in the past. Do you understand that?”

No, I don’t. What Harry knew was that Snape was making him feel small and young in a way that he’d thought no adult would ever get to do to him anymore. He didn’t like it.

This is the way that it is, when you have adults who care about you instead of trying to use you to live out their fantasies of your parents. Dash gave a large and deliberate yawn that Snape didn’t seem to see, since he was still standing there with his eyes on Harry.

You don’t have to think that I don’t know what adults are like, Harry thought back at Dash in irritation. Dash only yawned again and burrowed his head into the leg of Snape’s desk, though, which gave Harry absolutely no help.

“Do you understand me?” Snape whispered, drawing Harry’s eyes back to him. “I was concerned about you. I will always be concerned about you.”

Harry felt as though a huge knot of stupid emotion was building up underneath his throat, and he lashed out the only way he could think of. “You were the one who said I needed to start acting like an adult to show the Selwyns and the other families allied with me that they could trust me! You can’t turn around a minute later and say I shouldn’t act like that.”

“Adults do not rush headlong into danger,” said Snape softly. His eyes had given a serious warning flash a second ago, but Harry judged he wasn’t going to say anything about it. Even Uncle Vernon could sometimes let things go on a good day. “They make careful, considered decisions about what they are encountering.”

“And I did the same thing!” Harry was so tired of everyone telling him that he didn’t. “I knew I couldn’t beat the dragon any other way, and you would just try and talk me out of it and not come up with any other solutions if I came and talked to you about it. So I did what I thought was best. It was even what Dash thought was best.”

Traitor, Harry added bitterly in his mind. Dash was the one who had helped him come up with that plan, and then he lay there and acted like it was just all right that Harry got yelled at.

You might have needed my help to survive like this in the short term, but in the long term, it’s better for you to have an adult who will care for you and let you trust them. 

Harry gave up in disgust and turned back to Snape. “You couldn’t help me.”

“There are spells that work on dragons.” Snape stood there and acted like he was trying really hard to keep from flying off the handle, which made less than no sense to Harry. “Such as the Conjunctivitis Curse that young Mr. Krum used. I could certainly have told you of those spells if your research didn’t uncover them.”

“But professors aren’t allowed to help students in the Tournament like that.”

Snape made a sound that Harry would have called a snort if he didn’t want to live much longer. “I am already helping you outside class much more than I would normally help a student. And you are a fool if you think the other Heads are standing back and not advising Mr. Krum and Miss Delacour.”

Harry sighed a little. He supposed he could say that, especially since Krum talked all the time about what Karkaroff had told him and what he knew.

But--he wished he could make Snape and Draco understand why this was the best option. The fact was still that they would have tried to stop him, and he couldn’t have that. He had to go ahead and do it.

You think that because you have never had loving guardians.

Shut up, Dash, Harry snapped back, hurt and furious, and spun to look at Snape again. “What was I supposed to do? Not survive?”

“No,” said Snape, and he didn’t look upset or angry anymore, the way Harry had thought he would. “Come to us.” He gestured, and Harry started. He had known Draco was there, of course, but he had thought he’d moved off somewhere, instead of actually standing as close as he was. “We would have helped you.”

“I--someone would have said that it was cheating, that it’s not allowed--”

“And since when do you care about breaking the rules?” Snape’s voice was soft, and he was bending down. “You who changed dozens of rules about what kinds of pets students could have at the school so that you could keep Dash with you? Is your life worth so much less?”

*

When Harry didn’t immediately have a retort, Severus breathed out slowly. Finally, he thought. He might be starting to understand.

“You care more about helping me than you do about the rules,” Harry said softly, with a glance to the side that was obviously meant to take in Draco as well.

Yes. He does understand. Severus nodded slowly. “Both of us do, Harry. Anyone who truly wants to help you does. I think your friends would have helped you if they were on better terms with you over the issue of your name going into the Goblet.” He would have said something about Black, and almost did, but he restrained himself. Splitting Harry’s loyalties for his own satisfaction would be petty, at least at the moment. “Next time, come to me. I do not want to see you in danger again.”

“Why?”

About to snap out a retort of his own, Severus stopped when he saw the eyes raised to his own. I think he understands. He just wants to hear me say it.

“Because I care more about your life than about the rules,” Severus said. “More about your life than I ever expected to, in truth. And so does Draco.” Draco nodded fervently, eyes huge where he locked them on Harry. It gave him an unfortunate resemblance to a house-elf, but Severus did not let that change the tone of his voice. “We both wish to help you more than we wish many other things.”

Harry looked almost overwhelmed. Severus eased back a little and added, “And part of that is a selfish wish of mine, also. I do not want to feel my heart leaping as it did when you entered that dragon’s mouth. I am more than twice your age. I can do without the sensation.”

Harry began to grin, slowly and then with more sincerity. He turned around and abruptly hugged Draco, who squawked but nonetheless radiated enough pleasure for Severus to feel it like heat on his skin. Then he turned to Severus.

Severus nodded and held out his arms.

Harry buried his face against his chest, hiding from Severus, and Draco, and possibly even his basilisk. But Severus did not mind. This was a huge step. The rest would come in time.

There was a very soft hiss, most decidedly coming from the snake that rested against his desk, not the boy in his arms.

But when Severus, thinking it a snicker, darted a thunderous glare at Dash, his eyes were closed and his head blamelessly turned away, and Severus could not be sure if that was what was meant, after all. 

Chapter 51: The Sought-After

Chapter Text

“And I think we should definitely pay more attention to the quality of rare woods that we import.” Harry hoped his voice was steady. It didn’t help that Dash was laughing in the back of his head, and had been since almost the start of the interview. “After all, rare magical creatures live in those trees the same way that unicorns live in those forests.”

Xenophilius Lovegood basically hadn’t stopped writing since Harry started speaking, but he leaned back now to flex his hand around his quill. He looked at Harry thoughtfully. “Those unicorns are important to you, aren’t they, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes.” At least Dash had stopped laughing now. Harry reached back to touch one coil that Dash had cast over his shoulder, and met Lovegood’s eyes as serenely as he could. He had tried to befriend the man’s daughter, Luna, but it had been a little difficult, she was so vague. “I saw Voldemort drinking blood from a unicorn my first year at Hogwarts, you know. It was awful.”

Lovegood stared until Harry thought his eyes were going to fall out. “Where was this?” he demanded in a faltering voice.

“In the Forbidden Forest. He’d possessed Professor Quirrell. He was making Professor Quirrel crawl around and drink the unicorn blood.”

The scratching of Lovegood’s quill immediately started up again. Harry picked up the glass of water on the table beside the chair. Professor Snape had said they could use his quarters for the interview.

“No one else knows about this,” Lovegood said, without looking up. “I’ve never heard you talk about it.”

Harry shrugged, not knowing what else to say. “I mean—I assumed that most people knew about it. Unicorns were dying in the Forest that year. Other students joined me on the detention. I thought someone talked.”

“No. I’ve never seen anyone talk about it.” Lovegood finally stopped writing and glanced at Harry with the sort of thin-lipped quietness that Harry knew meant danger when Aunt Petunia did it. “How can we let our children attend Hogwarts if Hogwarts cannot even keep its unicorns safe?”

Careful, Harry, said Dash, and touched his tongue to the back of Harry’s hand. This interview has drifted far from its original purpose to praise the Selwyns’ business and the wood they import.

“Er,” said Harry. “I mean, is it the school’s job to protect the unicorns? I didn’t know that. I thought barely anyone could get close to them. Except Hagrid, I mean,” he added hastily. Maybe it would look good for Hagrid if Lovegood wrote his name into the article. The last thing Harry knew, some people still thought Hagrid was guilty of opening the Chamber of Secrets because he had been thrown into Azkaban.

“It is,” said Lovegood, and he pulled himself up in the chair. Harry privately thought that he looked a little ridiculous compared to how Snape would have sat in that chair, but then, no one else was here to watch and make fun of him. “Thank you for giving me this information, young man. You’ve given me two articles today.” He nodded briskly at Harry. “One about the importance of looking carefully at the woods we import and one about the need to protect the creatures of the Forbidden Forest.”

“Oh,” Harry said weakly. “Good.”

It will be better this way, Dash whispered to him. That way, the Selwyns won’t worry about you potentially taking attention away from the discussion of their business in the article.

I didn’t think it was a bad idea, said Harry, stroking the small ridge of scales down the middle of Dash’s back. I’m just surprised at how fast things can change sometimes. 

You’ll be at the center of a lot of them in a little while. Get used to it.

You’re not comforting at all, Harry complained.

Dash made a great show of turning his head so that he could look back over his scales, as if he thought they might not be highly polished enough for his liking. Basilisks are not supposed to be comforting.

*

Blaise watched from the shadows, in silence. Few people paid attention to him on the surface. He wasn’t a Tri-Wizard Champion, and that was all most of the school could talk about now. 

At least while Potter was busy stealing the glory that should rightfully have belonged to a seventh-year Slytherin, he couldn’t be stirring up inquiries into people’s pasts that should go somewhere…else.

But there were a few people starting to pay attention to Blaise. People who might have allied with Potter, but who had been put off by his name coming out of the Goblet of Fire. Slytherins who resented the time their Head of House was spending with the idiot. Upper-years who knew that Potter might be friends with Malfoy, but would never sympathetic to their true interests, which usually included Dark Arts.

Blaise knew how long it took to build a power base. He had no delusions that he would wake up tomorrow and find the Potter problem taken care of. And it would be better to position himself at the center of a loose network of people allied by the same irritation than at the pinnacle of a tower that might too easily be toppled.

He did pause when he got an owl one day from someone who didn’t sign their name. Names were important. From them, Blaise was able to tell who might ally with Potter and who wouldn’t, who he had to worry about and who was only puffing and blowing hot air. And he didn’t want to waste time corresponding with a Muggleborn or someone else he would never be able to fully trust.

But he had to admit, the letter was intriguing.

I notice that you are trying to set limits to Harry Potter’s power in Slytherin. I wish for the same thing. I know some of your methods. Would you be interested in learning some of mine? If so, leave your response in the Owlery beneath the perch on which the rufous owl is sitting.

And so Blaise did. He thought there couldn’t be such harm in merely a request for information. 

If there was…

Blaise smiled a little. It was entirely possible that the harm would befall Potter instead of him, and in that case, he would be more than happy to watch it.

*

Harry paced up and down in front of the Floo. He had wondered where in the world he could speak with Sirius. He didn’t want to go home, because that would probably make Sirius think that Harry just wanted to keep things secret, and he couldn’t use the fireplace in the Gryffindor common room because someone would protest.

But then Professor Snape had said Harry could use his office. It would be okay as long as Sirius didn’t find out where they were.

Why do you care so much about what he wants?

Harry sighed and crouched down in front of Dash, who was lying along the floor like a huge—like a huge snake, Harry thought. Nothing else really worked as a comparison. “Because I do still love him. And he’ll just pull away and stop listening to me if I act like I don’t care at all.”

He has already done that.

Before Harry could answer, the Floo flared. Harry turned around at once. He knew Professor Snape had promised to be gone from the office, but he took another quick look around just in case.

“Harry? Are you okay?”

Sirius sounded concerned. Good. Harry tapped his foot on the ground and finally faced the fireplace. “No. Not really. I need to talk to you, Sirius. Can you come to Hogwarts?”

“Of course, kiddo.” Sirius sounded alarmed now. “We can meet in Dumbledore’s office—”

“No.” Sirius jumped a little. Harry tried to sound softer. “I want to meet where I am now. You can just say ‘Blue Floo’ and come here.”

“Of course.” Sirius still sounded as though he was trying to figure things out, but Harry stepped back and gestured him through the Floo before he could say anything. That was something he had decided on his own. He needed to talk to Sirius face-to-face. 

You decided it on your own, but I approved of it.

Harry gave Dash a strained smile and then stepped back further as Sirius scrambled out of the Floo. Sirius looked around and gave a startled growl that almost made Harry expect to see him transform into a dog. “Isn’t this—”

“Snape’s office. We can speak privately. He isn’t here.” Harry moved a step forwards so Sirius would look at him and stop growling at the walls. “Sirius, did you really not care that I had to risk my life to get that egg?”

Sirius gaped at him. “Of course I cared! What made you think I didn’t? Did Snivellus tell you I didn’t?”

I could bite him. It wouldn’t kill him.

“I thought you cared, but you seemed so excited that I would go up and risk my life.” Harry thought he sounded like a whining kid, but he would have to continue on. “Like I was my dad. Is that the only thing that matters to you? That I’m like my dad?”

“I would love you no matter what you looked like,” said Sirius fiercely. He came up and just grabbed Harry in a hug before he could think about it. “And I would love you no matter what you did. I’m just glad that you proved you’re still a Gryffindor and not a Slytherin.”

Harry didn’t need Dash to point out the contradiction to him this time. He said, “If you would love me no matter what I did, what does it matter if I act like a Gryffindor or a Slytherin?”

“That’s not what I meant, kiddo.” Sirius chuckled, a little nervously. He was still holding Harry. “I meant—I think that Snape and that friend of yours encourage you to act like a Slytherin. I’m just glad that you don’t listen to them all the time and you act like what you want to act like.” Before Harry could say anything, he added, “Unless they knew about you going up to challenge the dragon. Did they approve of it?”

“No. They were pretty upset, really.”

Sirius laughed. “Just like I thought! They don’t trust you. do.” He ruffled Harry’s hair. “See? I don’t think you’re like your dad. I always wanted to be with him when he played a prank or something. I know you’re your own person. I trust you to get your own things done in your own way.”

“What if I have to do something Slytherin for the Second Task?”

“Well, you don’t. That’s all.” Sirius was frowning, now. He let Harry go and shuffled his feet on the floor, then sniffed and grimaced. “Ugh, what kinds of potions does Snivellus brew in here?”

“Don’t call him that.” Once again, Sirius jumped. Harry tried to calm down and breathe the way that Snape had been teaching him when he taught him Occlumency. “I might have to. I need to know that you love me no matter what, and not just because you think I’m like my dad or a good little Gryffindor.”

“I already told you I did!” Sirius threw his hands up. “What can I do if you don’t believe me? Do you want me to take some Veritaserum?”

“No. I just want to know why you keep saying that you’ll love me no matter what and then get upset when I act like a Slytherin.”

“Because that’s not you. That’s Snape. And maybe Malfoy. I want you to do what you want. I don’t even understand how Snape and Malfoy got so close to you in the first place.”

Sirius looked at him appealingly, and Harry knew that he probably wasn’t going to get through this without hurting him. He tried to ignore the hurting feeling in his own throat and shook his head. “No. It’s all me.”

“It—”

Sirius fell silent. Harry waited. He had no idea what was coming next, and even Dash was silent in the back of his mind, with that tense, expectant sense of waiting that Harry usually felt when he was eating.

“I know the Hat wanted to put you in Slytherin.” Sirius spoke at last, and it was as if everything in the world had ceased to exist for him except Harry. “But that doesn’t mean you have to be Slytherin. Dumbledore told me once that our choices make us who we are. I didn’t choose to be evil like the rest of my family.” He shuddered a little.

Harry thought something he wouldn’t have thought a year ago: What is Draco’s mother saying to you?

“And you don’t have to choose to be Slytherin.” Sirius got down on his knees and looked straight into Harry’s eyes. “Malfoy and Snape might want you to, but you still have the ability to make your own decisions. Choose who you really are, Harry. If they—if they’re going to side with you no matter what, they won’t care whether you’re Gryffindor or Slytherin.”

“Then why do you care so much?”

Sirius bowed his head and knelt there in silence. Harry waited. The walls seemed to boom with the silence. 

“It’s different for me,” Sirius whispered at last. “Did Dumbledore tell you that I could only hang onto my sanity in Azkaban because I was innocent?”

You told me that,” Harry reminded him.

Sirius nodded slowly. “But another thing that helped was hanging onto the memories of my friends. Remus and James and—” He didn’t say anything else for a second, but Harry could see why he was reluctant to mention Pettigrew. “And the Gryffindor common room. It was so bright. Red and gold. Sometimes I could just pretend that I was on the couch in front of a roaring fire laughing with James about something.”

Harry thought of the way he had sometimes lain awake in his cupboard dreaming of people who would come and rescue him from the Dursleys. His heart ached.

You can’t use this empathy as an excuse to let him off the hook. He still has to act like an adult.

Just—be quiet for a while, Dash.

Amazingly, Dash was. Sirius went on being quiet, too, and Harry finally said, “But that just makes you more of a Gryffindor. You did what you had to do to survive. But Ineed to do that, too. So if I have to be a Slytherin, I’m going to be one.”

“Oh!” Sirius’s head flew up like someone had jerked on his strings. “If you’re just pretending, that’s different, Harry! Then I can get behind that.” He sat back and gave Harry a grin. “I’ll help you any way I can. Do you want to come up with the complicated evil plans, or should I?’

“No.” Harry’s throat still hurt. He hoped he was getting a cold. “I mean, really be one. So I can survive.”

“But not because you want to be one. Because you want to survive.”

“What’s the difference?” Harry reached out and grabbed Sirius’s shoulder, shaking him back and forth the way Draco did sometimes with him. “Between wanting to do it and wanting to survive? I don’t—I don’t understand you.” Now the burning in his throat and mouth was really bad and Harry was talking faster. “You’re fine if I run into a dragon’s mouth but not if I learn to protect my mind or watch what I say or make political allies? I don’t understand it, Sirius! Why can’t you just explain it to me?”

“You don’t know Snape the way I do, Harry.” Sirius reached out and tapped his knuckles lightly on Harry’s forehead. “I knew him when he was a kid. Trust me. I know better. I’m an adult.”

“You’re not acting like one!”

Sirius stood and backed up until his back hit the wall. He was breathing hoarsely. Harry closed his eyes. Dash moved up beside him until his head was resting on Harry’s foot. Their bond vibrated like he was breathing, too.

“I suppose you think that Snivellus is the way an adult ought to act?” Sirius whispered. “Harry, can’t you see that he’s conning you?”

“Conning me how?” Harry didn’t even know what kind of tone he had in his voice now. Whatever one it was, he didn’t think it was the one Sirius would hear.

I could never make Uncle Vernon see my side of the story. I could never make Aunt Petunia see my side of the story. I could never make my teachers at primary school upset enough to take my side…

“He wants something from you. Maybe he just wants to be famous himself, because you are. Or maybe it’s actually money. But it’s something. And that means he wants to take you away from me. Hell, maybe he’ll be telling you next that he should be legally responsible for you! That would mean he was responsible for most of the money you have in Gringotts, did you know that?”

Harry felt as though someone had tried to poison his heart. He shivered.

You know that isn’t true, and you shouldn’t even be dignifying his craziness with belief, Dash snapped, and lashed out so that his nose struck Harry’s foot.

I reckon I have to decide what’s true. Harry opened his eyes and said slowly, “Why did you want to have custody of me?”

“Because I love you!” Sirius pushed himself off the wall and glared some more. “If Snivellus told you that, he’d be lying!”

“But you don’t act like you love me. You act like you’ll love me as long as I’m a Gryffindor. Otherwise—what’s the problem? You act like I’m bad because I speak Parseltongue. Professor Snape has never lied about what he wanted to do to help me. But you keep coming up with these ideas that make no sense, and then you’re disappointed because I disagree with them. Do you really love me?”

Harry spoke the words slowly. Beside him, Dash was absolutely silent. Before him, Sirius was absolutely pale.

“I do,” said Sirius finally. “I know it doesn’t—it doesn’t sound like you believe me. But I do.” He shook his head and put one hand up as though he was going to grab the top of his hair. But it dropped back, and he stared at Harry with dull eyes. “How can I prove it to you?”

“You can tell me that it’s okay if I’m Slytherin or Gryffindor or both of them,” said Harry. “You can tell me that it doesn’t matter how much I’m like my dad. You can say that you—I don’t know. I mean, I don’t want you to say those things if you don’t believe them.”

He felt tired, and very, very old. And he felt Dash coiling around his foot, and he didn’t want to look down, because he thought he would probably succumb to the temptation to just leave the room and go back to the common room with Dash.

Harry didn’t want to. He wanted to give Sirius a chance. So he waited, and Sirius finally said, “Of course I love you no matter what.”

“Okay,” said Harry. He didn’t know if—

He didn’t know if he believed it. But he knew that he wanted to give Sirius the chance. He held onto the words and repeated them to himself until he thought that he could at least stand here and not walk away.

“Then please stop talking badly about Draco and Snape. And please don’t tell me that it’s wrong for me to act like a Slytherin.”

“I’ll try,” said Sirius earnestly. “I just distrust them. If you knew some of the things that they tried to do to me and your dad and Remus when we were in school…”

“I know some of the things they tried to do to me,” Harry said, and kept speaking, because he thought Sirius was about to start talking about his dad again, and Harry really didn’t want to hear it right now. “Before Draco became my friend, I mean. But even some of the Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs didn’t like me when they thought I put my name in the Goblet of Fire or when they thought I was the Heir of Slytherin. So I don’t think just one House has the monopoly on making my life miserable.”

“You’ve reconciled with Ron, though?” Sirius asked cautiously. “Right?”

Harry nodded. “Yes. Ron’s a real friend.”

“Unlike—”

“Some of the other people I told you about, who thought I was evil because they read it in the papers? Yeah. Unlike that.”

Sirius obviously wanted to talk about Draco and Snape and the Slytherins again, but Harry just wasn’t interested in listening. He’d done what he thought he should do, talked to Sirius and maybe got him to think about some things. He and Sirius chatted a little awkwardly about him coming home for winter holidays—which he could only do for a few days right at Christmas, because of the stupid Yule Ball—and then Sirius went home.

Harry went to Snape’s quarters.

*

Severus did not really know why he had kept up the pretense of reading when no one was there to see it. But he had never been so glad to put a book aside and tell Harry that he could enter.

Harry came in with Dash slithering along the floor behind him. Severus glanced at the basilisk, but either nothing bad had happened or he wasn’t good at reading Dash. The basilisk simply curled up with his nose against Harry’s calf when Harry slumped into a chair in front of Severus.

“What happened?” Severus asked.

Harry looked up, and Severus winced. It had not gone as badly as it could have, was what he saw there, but much worse than Severus had dared to hope.

Why did I hope anyway, since this is Black we’re talking about?

But Severus knew why. He had hoped for Harry’s sake. He would rather have a Black who was generous and loving to Harry than he would a Black who acted nicely to him. That was a revelation.

And one he would have to deal with later, because Harry was talking, and Severus didn’t want to miss a word. “I thought—I thought that it would be easier to talk to him, because he did say he loved me. But all he really wanted to do was talk about how Slytherins are evil and call you names. He did say that he loved me at the end, and he said that he would try to stop talking about how Slytherins are evil.”

Severus was about to note that that was more than he had expected, when Harry looked up, and Severus got another glimpse of those aggressively weary eyes.

“Why does he have to say things like that?” Harry whispered. “I would be fine with it if he was just hating Slytherins having anything to do with him, but it’s like he sometimes thinks I’m independent from him and sometimes thinks I’m the same.”

“He thinks that you should be the same as your father,” Severus said quietly. “And while your father had many…fine qualities,” he didn’t even have to battle as hard as normal to get the words out, “liking Slytherins wasn’t one of them.”

“Yeah.” Harry brushed a hand over his face. “And it isn’t even that I think it’s doomed. It might work out. At least he seemed really upset when I asked if he loved me. But why do have to be the adult?”

“You should not have to.” Severus stood up and reached for the Calming Draught he had kept sitting on the desk. “Do you need this?”

Harry hesitated, and Severus held his breath. Then Harry clamped his jaw and moved his head up and down.

At least Severus had the minor comfort of watching some of Harry’s tiredness ease when he had swallowed the potion, and Harry began to stroke Dash again. 

Severus only wished he could do more.

But the time for that had not come yet, if it ever would.

Chapter 52: Yule Ball Politics

Chapter Text

“I understand that I owe you a debt.”

Harry hesitated awkwardly. He’d been walking back to the Gryffindor common room from Charms, and he’d been arguing with Ron over whether the Banishing Charm was as useful as Professor Flitwick seemed to think it was. And he had Dash with him, flowing along with part of his body on the floor and part on the wall, and—

It was just the last place that Harry would have expected to meet up with Fleur Delacour.

“Er, hello,” Harry said, and spent a minute blinking at her. She had a few other Beauxbatons girls with her, but they all hung back as though they were more afraid of Dash than Fleur was. Maybe she trusted Harry’s vow more. “What—is there something I can help you with?”

Ron tried to say something that Harry thought was essentially the same, but he was gibbering, a bit. Fleur gave him a kind, condescending look and then focused on Harry. 

“I came to thank you,” she said. “You were the reason that I knew about the dragons, in the First Task.” Her French accent was getting a little stronger, and she peered at Harry through a sheer curtain of silvery hair. “And I must repay the favor.”

“You don’t need to,” said Harry. “I mean, I’m glad that we all lived.”

Fleur smiled, but her face had tightened. “That is not enough. Or too much. I do not wish to owe you a life-debt, Harry Potter,” she added, when Harry blinked some more. Even Dash was silent, as though he couldn’t figure out what Fleur wanted. Harry only hoped he wasn’t quiet because he was thinking of the best way to sneak up on the Veela girls.

“Will you come to the Yule Ball with me?” Fleur asked, and held out a long hand towards Harry.

I won’t try to eat her, said Dash at once. Although I think your friend may be jealous of you.

Harry didn’t dare look at Ron. His own face was on fire, and he didn’t know if he really wanted to look anywhere right now. He cleared his throat, and then he said, “That’s very nice of you. But I don’t know if two Champions can date each other. Professor McGonagall said something to me about how we all had to have our own dates.”

“Did she?” Fleur frowned, and Harry felt as though a barely noticeable pressure pushing on his mind had dropped away. He shook his head a little. That pressure resembled the Imperius Curse, when Professor Moody had cast it on him. “I did not know that. It is annoying, no? There was no one I wished to go with so much as you.”

Her voice was melting, and she was very pretty, but Harry couldn’t say the same. “Yes, I’m sorry. I hope you find someone else you want to go with. I mean, really go with, not just because you think he helped you during the First Task.”

Some of the girls behind Fleur giggled. Harry reckoned he’d said something stupid. He wished Hermione had asked him, or maybe—if they were allowed to bring adults to the Yule Ball—someone older like Professor Sprout. They were the only girls Harry really felt comfortable around.

“Ah, well,” said Fleur. “I will find someone.” She nodded to him, a little motion of her head that looked almost more like a bow and disturbed Harry, and turned away.

“Mate! Are you mental?”

Harry turned to Ron. “No, I don’t think so,” he said. “Why would I be?” He felt Dash’s tail tap his foot as Dash slid by, and he knew that Dash approved of what he was doing, or he would be over here agreeing with Ron.

“Because Fleur Delacour wanted to go to the Yule Ball with you.” Ron locked his eyes on Fleur’s back as if there was a rope tying them together. “She’s the most beautiful girl I’ve ever seen.”

“Then go ask her to the Ball.”

“Me?” The rope seemed to have snapped, because Ron turned around and stared at Harry. “Mate, I’m no one.”

“You are not.” Harry shook his arm hard. “You’re a great chess-player and a great brother and a great friend. If you just put yourself down all the time, then no one should listen to you. But maybe they’ll listen to me.”

Ron’s eyes were bright, but then they dimmed, and he sighed. “The only reason she would want to go out with me is because I’m your friend. And I don’t—I don’t want to ask you to do that.”

He would like it if you offered, Dash murmured in the back of Harry’s head. But not enough to ask you for it.

I’m not going to offer, Harry said sharply. He thought part of the reason Fleur had wanted to go to the Ball with him was because of who he was, as well as because he had helped her with the First Task, and he had no time for that. “Just go up and ask her, Ron. The worst she can say is no.”

“The worst, he says.”

Ron continued talking gloomily about why it wouldn’t work as they trailed down the corridor, and Harry was about ready to strangle him. But by the time they reached the Gryffindor Tower and rejoined Hermione, who had gone up to start on her homework already, Ron had changed his mind about something, or maybe just got tired of hearing himself complain. He sat back in the chair nearest the fireplace with his arms folded and studied Harry.

“If you’re not going to take Fleur, who are you going to invite to the Ball, mate?”

Harry shrugged and shifted the parchment that held the beginning of his Charms essay around. It just wasn’t comfortable, trying to write on the arm of his chair. “I don’t know. I suppose maybe someone else will ask me who I don’t mind.”

Hermione looked up quickly, and then turned back to her Transfiguration essay in the next second. Harry wondered if she wanted Ron to ask her. It seemed obvious to him, but on the other hand, Ron hadn’t said anything about it, and sometimes Harry was wrong.

I can smell her longing for him to ask, Dash agreed.

Harry thought about saying something, but he was glad he hadn’t when Hermione started talking. “You have to have a date, though, Harry. McGonagall said so. And the ball is in ten days!”

“So?” Harry asked, a little annoyed. “It’s just a ball. I think everyone’s going mad about it is a little much.”

“It’s the only dance that’s ever been held at Hogwarts, I think,” said Hermione. “Unless they did something like it the last time Hogwarts hosted the Tournament.” For an instant, she was distracted enough that Harry thought she would get up and look in Hogwarts, A History. But then she shook her head and glanced at Ron, then away. “It’s a big deal. And you’re one of the Champions. You have to do the first dance, Harry.”

Harry groaned. Yes, McGonagall had said that, too. And he would have to have dancing lessons tomorrow.

“You have to choose someone before then. It’s ten days!”

“You already said that, Hermione,” Ron protested. “Give Harry some time to think about it. I mean, he turned down Fleur Delacour. He’s going to have to think about who’s worthwhile after that.”

“You know what?” Hermione asked in an icy voice. “You’re right. I’m tired of talking about the ball. I’m going to go study by myself in my bedroom.” She gathered up all her books and parchments with one sweep of her wand, turned, and stormed up the staircase to the girls’ rooms.

Ron turned, gaping, to Harry. “What did I say?”

Harry thought about telling him, but Dash gave his ribs a comforting squeeze and the image of Harry trying to make two cats who were ignoring each other get along. Harry nodded. He understood what Dash was saying, and Ron and Hermione would probably both get upset if he said something. Harry had already had enough of listening to Ron fuss about who he’d take to the Ball.

“I don’t know, she’s probably just upset I don’t want to listen to her right now,” Harry said. “Come on. We still have to finish Charms and Divination.”

*

Blaise jumped as someone slammed the door, disturbing Blaise from where he’d been lying on his bed, deep in his Defense Against the Dark Arts book. Some of the readings Moody assigned were actually interesting. It only increased Blaise’s suspicion that Moody wasn’t who he seemed to be.

But now someone was slamming books into a trunk and out of a trunk and kicking his bed and swearing. Blaise peered cautiously through the bed-curtains.

It was Draco. Currently, he was glaring at the bed as if he thought it should have burst into flames on its own.

“What’s wrong?” Blaise asked.

Draco glared at him. Blaise recoiled a little. The last time he had seen that look was from one of his stepfathers when he had started to act erratic, a few weeks before his death. “Nothing. You hear me, Blaise? Nothing.”

And then he rammed himself and his book onto the bed and shut the curtains with a swish that told Blaise he’d cast a Closing Charm on them.

Blaise blinked and tried to get back into the mood of studying for Defense, but it was gone. He kept wondering what in the world could be upsetting Draco so much. There weren’t any new developments on the Potter front. Blaise would have heard about them.

Only at dinner did he hear the excited chatter, from a disgruntled Durmstrang student who’d wanted to take the Delacour girl to the dance, that Potter had apparently turned Delacour down, and how was he going to live up to that standard?

It seemed strange at first, for that to upset Draco. He hadn’t shown any interest in the Veela girls that Blaise could tell. But Blaise could come up with no other explanation. He leaned back and observed Draco as covertly as he could. 

He’d thought Draco would be glaring into space, or maybe looking over at the Ravenclaw table, where the Beauxbatons students usually sat, with a heartsick expression. Instead, though, he was alternating between stares at the Gryffindor table, glares at the Ravenclaw one, little mutters to himself, and snapping at everyone who dared to ask him to pass the salt.

Blaise blinked again. It seemed strange, the conclusion that he was coming to, or which was coming to him. It felt like a revelation being forced into his mind from outside. Blaise did cast a few whispered spells that would tell him if he was under the influence of Legilimency, but he had already guessed he wasn’t.

No. This was just—Draco was upset about Potter being asked, not that Delacour had been the one to ask him.

And Blaise became even more sure when Draco watched intently as two Hufflepuff girls and a Gryffindor one went up to Potter, asked something with flaming cheeks, and then turned away when Potter shook his head impatiently. Draco made loud remarks that only Vince and Greg really listened to about how disgusting Hufflepuffs were, and then about how much Gryffindors simpered.

Blaise tapped his wand against the underside of the table. Well. It seemed Draco would much prefer if he was the one who got to go to the Yule Ball with Potter.

Blaise didn’t know how he was going to use this yet. But he would find a way.

*

“Like this, Mr. Potter. This is what it means when someone leads.”

McGonagall was trying, Harry thought. But she was just so much taller than him, and more graceful. Harry couldn’t dance at all, and it didn’t help that Dash, curled up against the wall of the classroom where they were holding dancing lessons, snickered into the back of Harry’s mind every time he tripped over something. The air. His feet. Dust.

Harry finally stepped back and wiped his forehead. “Professor McGonagall, can I please not go to the Yule Ball?”

“Bringing a partner and leading the first dance is non-negotiable, Mr. Potter.”

“But I’m terrible at it.”

“I admit, I thought you would be better.” McGonagall stepped back and studied him for a moment. “At the very least, dancing is a very physical activity, and so is Quidditch. I thought skills from one would apply to the other.”

“Turn the Snitch loose in the ballroom, and I could catch it,” Harry said desperately. “But please don’t make me go.”

He thought McGonagall would have answered, but at that moment, a golden owl swooped into the classroom and straight at Harry. Harry sensed Dash’s uncoiling snap. He held out a hand to restrain him as the owl landed on his outstretched arm. It had taken a second, but Harry recognized the owl. It was one that the Selwyns sometimes used to make deliveries to him.

“Um, excuse me, Professor,” said Harry, and turned a little away from McGonagall so he could read the letter in private. The only thing he hoped was that she wouldn’t be able to see the blush on his face because he was already blushing.

The letter was more formal than last time; even when Harry had opened the sealed envelope, there was still a seal there, one Harry didn’t know. He thought it showed an arum lily, though, an ingredient he’d used a few times in Potions. He hesitated, then broke the seal.

The ink inside was green, and Harry had to blink a few times to focus his eyes on both it and the stilted writing.

Esteemed ally,

Our family has heard that you are expected to open the Yule Ball with the rest of the Champions. Since it seems you have no partner as yet and may suffer from an overabundance of people eager to partner you simply for the fame, we are writing to offer the services of our daughter Alisoun Selwyn, a Durmstrang student, to accompany you to the Ball. She is both a skilled and graceful dancer, and an excellent fighter with bodyguard training. She would serve to make you look good and protect you.

In return for this favor, we would ask nothing more than you have already provided us.

There were several signatures at the bottom, all of them Selwyns Harry had already met. He sighed in relief. Yes, this would solve the problem.

“Good news, Mr. Potter?”

That’s right. Professor McGonagall was still there, waiting to hear. Harry turned around, nodding. “Yes. I have some allies. The Selwyns. They told me that their daughter could be my partner at the Yule Ball.”

“She isn’t a student here at Hogwarts, though,” McGonagall said quietly, studying him. 

Harry could feel the few other students left in the practice classroom—most of them had already taken their lessons and gone back to their common rooms, since Harry was one of a few taking so long—staring at him. He flushed even harder and answered more harshly than he’d meant to. “I know, Professor. But neither are the other Champions. She’s from Durmstrang. I think it’s okay.”

“Yes, it should be,” said McGonagall. “At least it means you will be there, Mr. Potter.”

She’s probably just relieved about that, Harry thought. He nodded and said, “Well, then I’m going to write them back. If that’s okay?”

“Yes.” McGonagall gave him a small smile. “I hope she’s a good dancer, Mr. Potter, because frankly I don’t know what more I can do.”

Dash flowed away from the wall and towards Harry. Harry patted his head and said, “Well. Thank you for what you did, Professor.” He left with Dash coiling and lapping around his feet like water, and the minute they were out in the corridor, he asked, What do you think?

I think it’s a good sign that your allies are sending someone to guard you. Dash wreathed himself up in the coiling rear he’d been doing lately, so that his nose was floating in front of Harry’s face. But a bad one that they think there may be something to protect you from.

Well, there’s the fact that someone put my name in the Goblet of Fire in the first place, Harry admitted. Maybe that’s all.

Maybe. Maybe not. Dash dropped his head down again and pointed his nose down the corridor. Now, hurry, or you’ll be late for your meeting with Karkaroff and Krum.

Shit, I forgot! Harry hurried towards the library, while Dash mock-chided him for language.

*

“I think you have already realized that your basilisk is not a normal basilisk, yes?” Headmaster Karkaroff had a calm, slightly oily voice. He leaned forwards as if he wanted to count the scales on Dash’s face. 

Harry stroked Dash’s plume just in case he got upset about the staring and nodded. “Yes. I should have known it before. But I didn’t know about the attempts to kill Dash with rooster crows. I did know that he just hatched from an ordinary egg, though.”

“I would very much like to see these other basilisk eggs in the Chamber of Secrets. May we go there?”

Harry didn’t need the coil Dash looped around his wrist to know what his response to that should be. He smiled a little sweetly and said, “Well. Not right now. I haven’t been back there since I found Dash. It’s not a place to be entered lightly.”

“No,” said Viktor, with a slight glance at Karkaroff that seemed to warn him to calm down. Harry wondered how much of this was Viktor’s plan and how much was Karkaroff’s. “Of course not. But we will like to see it when you will like to show it to us.”

Karkaroff subsided. Harry slowly nodded. He was feeling—it was unfamiliar. Like he had a lot of power, and he had to be careful, because other people would try to bargain for it. Or with it. It was sort of the way he had felt when he was writing his letters to the Selwyns and other people he’d taken allegiance rings from.

I don’t want to start enjoying it, though.

Dash presented him with the thought that enjoying power was fine. It would be like not enjoying the taste of mice.

Well, I don’t, Harry said, and looked at Karkaroff. “Besides, Headmaster, I thought you already knew lots of things about basilisks. Or the extraordinary ones like Dash is. Why would you want to see the eggs?”

“There is a difference between reading about the eggs and seeing them.” Karkaroff gave him a gentle glance. “As great a difference as between reading about a basilisk and seeing one. Surely you were startled when you first glimpsed yours.”

“Dash?” Harry looked down at Dash. “Yes, but mostly how different he was from the one I fought a year before that.”

“What?”

“I fought a basilisk that belonged to Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber,” said Harry, looking up. He had thought Karkarof knew this. Or Viktor would have told him, surely. “He was trying to kill some of the students. I saved the life of one student who got taken down there, Ginny Weasley. There was a possessed diary that was trying to use her to come back to life. When the basilisk attacked, it stuck a fang through my arm. Only phoenix tears saved my life.”

Karkaroff looked ready to faint. Harry felt annoyed. They should have known this before. Maybe not all the details, but—

You have no idea how it sounds, all put together like that, said Dash, and laid his head along the back of Harry’s wrist like a jewel. I suspect there is also a difference between hearing scattered details and hearing the whole story.

“We had heard rumors that you had killed a basilisk,” said Viktor. “We—did not know—all the story.” He paused, then added, “There is one way that created basilisks are different than normal ones. I suspect the venom of created basilisks is much more potent.”

“It is,” said Karkaroff, seeming to recover. “I have charms on me that darken in the presence of strong venom.” He drew back his sleeve enough to let Harry see a chain of silver links around one wrist. Each link also had a small stone attached to it, or maybe a small crystal. They were all transparent. “Purple is their darkest color. In the presence of normal basilisk venom, they turned only indigo.”

“And this was purple,” said Harry, stroking Dash again. Sometimes, honestly, he almost forgot Dash had venom. He was so calm and confident without it, and he didn’t need to use it.

I would use it more often if you had sense.

“It was. So! That is one difference.” Karkaroff leaned forwards. “The legends of normal basilisks, they say that normal basilisks are almost always in a foul temper. Even when they have just fed, they hunt for more. Your snake seems to have a sense of humor, from what I have been told, and to be more intelligent.”

I like this man. He has sense.

Harry nodded. “He does. He makes jokes and he can almost roll his eyes at me when he realizes that something is going on that he doesn’t want. And he’s very protective. I don’t know if that’s another difference.”

“Perhaps.” Karkaroff narrowed his eyes. “Normal basilisks are usually not bonded. If they had masters more often, perhaps they would have the same strain of temperament.”

Not so sensible as to realize that you are my partner, my bondmate, instead of my master.

Harry said, “Well. Dash and I function equally together. He can’t order me around, and I would never try to do the same to him.”

Karkaroff gave him an anxious smile. “I meant the word master in a more neutral sense.”

What sense is that? Dash uncoiled with a heavy thump from Harry’s arm and began to slither towards the door of the library. Karkaroff looked after him.

“He doesn’t like the tone that you’re taking,” Harry said, standing. “And he doesn’t want to stay and listen to it. I’m sorry, but I don’t think it’s going to be much use talking more about it right now. I’ll owl you and set up another meeting, okay?” He nodded to Viktor. 

“That will be acceptable.” Viktor leaned in and said something soft in another language to Karkaroff when it looked like he would have protested. Karkaroff swallowed the protest and nodded.

Harry ran after Dash, thinking as he went, Well, that wasn’t so bad. And I have a partner for the Yule Ball. Actually, things are looking up all around.

And now he could finally tell his friends about the date, too, and they would stop nagging him.

Maybe Draco won’t be happy? But Draco hadn’t been happy about any of the dates that Harry had discussed, and Harry hadn’t been able to figure out why. It was like he didn’t think they were worthy of Harry. 

I don’t think much of his choices, either. He’ll probably end up taking Parkinson.

Harry shrugged his own building unhappiness away. It was probably just at the thought of the argument he was going to have with Draco.

I have a date. That’s the only thing that matters. The Yule Ball is boring, and I don’t want to think about it anymore.

Chapter 53: Dancing

Chapter Text

“Harry Potter,” said Alisoun Selwyn, sliding into a curtsey that she held so long Harry started to wonder if her knees were cramping. “It’s very pleasant to meet you.”

Harry couldn’t tell whether or not her voice held a slight hint of an accent, like most of the rest of the Durmstrang students’. It was too low to tell that. She was tall and slim, with brown hair that hung in soft waves over her shoulders. She wore blue dress robes that had lace at the cuffs. They didn’t look silly, the way Ron’s had.

In fact, looking at Alisoun, the first thing Harry felt was safe. He didn’t think it was his imagination that his dance partner for the evening was looking into corners and shadows, and probably not seeing Dementors everywhere, the way Sirius did when he did it. She had a long collar of pearls that hung down underneath her dress. It swirled with her when she turned, and Harry saw a knife hanging at the end of it.

If she could guard him from Professor Moody or whoever he really was, then Harry would be glad.

“Thanks. You too.” Harry finally realized that Alisoun had stood back up and was looking at him with a faint smile. “I hope you don’t mind dancing with someone shorter than you.”

“The challenge will be the dancing itself, from what I understand.” Alisoun held out a languid arm, and Dash said in the back of Harry’s head when he stared at it, You’re supposed to put your arm under it. Don’t you remember what McGonagall said in the lesson last week?

I thought that was only when you were dancing! Harry protested, and extended his arm, knowing he was blushing. “Yes. Well. Um. I’m not a good dancer.”

“I know the right steps, and the right illusion spells. It won’t be a problem for you to follow me and for me to make you look good.”

“I—you can do that?” It was a solution that had never occurred to Harry. He’d thought Alisoun would definitely be a good dancer or the Selwyns wouldn’t have said she should come, but this was far beyond what he’d expected.

Alisoun smiled at him as they made their way into Hogwarts. Harry had had to go outside to meet her since she couldn’t Apparate into the castle. “Yes. My parents taught me many arts.”

“Not Durmstrang?”

“Durmstrang is a very good school. But there are some things your parents should teach you.”

“I wouldn’t know,” Harry whispered, and shook his head when he saw Alisoun looking at him. “Ignore me. Sorry. It’s something I get maudlin about sometimes.”

“With good reason,” said Alisoun. They walked through the entrance hall, and she abruptly halted and turned towards the corner where Harry knew Dash was. “A spell to show me what is the most dangerous thing in a room,” she explained, before Harry could ask her how she’d noticed him.

I am not a thing, Dash said, but he flowed out and stretched himself in a way that made Harry know he appreciated the compliment anyway.

“He is magnificent,” said Alisoun, with a little sigh in her voice, as if she’d always hoped to see a basilisk. “Just what my father was telling me.” She turned her head and nodded to Harry, eyes like a hawk’s. “I hope he makes up for your lack of a family. It seems that even those who should do not treat you like family.”

Harry felt as though his blush was going to eat his face now. “I have plenty of friends! And Dash. And I had family that raised me.”

“I was referring to your godfather. I understand that Father and Maman were originally supposed to meet you at his house, and then he changed his mind. That speaks volumes to the person who can open the book.”

“You’re a lot—blunter than I thought you’d be.”

“Why should I not be? My parents have told me you do not appreciate deception. And this is a dance and a date where we know each other’s purposes for coming. I am merely making you understand what we understand. That way, you cannot be taken by surprise later.”

Harry grimaced a bit in return, but nodded. He didn’t think Alisoun was the one who would take him by surprise, though. Professor Snape and Draco had reacted to the mention of his date in strange ways that he was also having trouble understanding, and he was still reeling with some of what they’d said.

*

“If I’d known that you just wanted to date an ally, I would have introduced you to any of the others in Slytherin.”

Harry stared at Draco. Draco had been the one who’d come to the library and asked Harry about his date for the Yule Ball, when Harry had been sitting by himself peacefully looking for anything that would make the golden egg make sense. But Draco was also the one who stood there now with his arms folded and such a glistening frown on his face that Harry thought he would have started wailing like Dudley in a second.

“I—it’s not so much that she’s an ally,” Harry explained. “It’s that the Selwyns offered, and they said she was good at dancing. I hate dancing, Draco. I hate the fact that I have to open the stupid Yule Ball at all. I didn’t want to go around asking people to be my date. Now the problem is solved.”

“But someone might want to be your date.”

“Yes, I know that. I mean, Fleur did,” Harry said, trying to backtrack and make himself sound a little less arrogant. “But I don’t really trust them to want to be my date for real reasons and not just because I’m the Boy-Who-Lived or in the Tri-Wizard Tournament or something. This way, I have someone whose reasons I know.”

Draco was quivering. He opened his mouth for a second, then locked his teeth together again. Harry watched him, helpless.

He made the only guess he could think of, the only stab in the darkness. “Did someone you want turn you down for the Ball? Or did you find out that someone only wanted to date you because you were a Malfoy?” He made his voice as soft as he could, as gentle, even though the thought of someone treating Draco like that made him want to duel them. “That’s awful. Can you find someone else?”

“The person I really want is already going with someone else.”

“I’m sorry,” said Harry. He didn’t care that much himself, because, as he’d told Draco, he would have been just as happy to hide in a corner and ignore the entire Ball. But he could appreciate that it was a lot harder for other people. “What did they say when you asked them?”

Draco growled and stomped off. Harry just shook his head, and then heard a breathless little noise and looked around curiously.

It was Dash, under the table, who was lying on his back and baring his belly to Harry in a way he rarely did. His hisses were almost silent. Harry bent towards him. “What’s the matter? Are you sick?”

Dash rolled back upright, and Harry understood the noises in the back of his mind better. He was laughing.

What?

You are so much fun, said Dash. And now, I must go and ask my date to the Yule Ball. He crawled off with dignity when Harry was still trying to ask why a basilisk needed a date and what in the world was so funny.

Draco hadn’t thought it was funny. Neither did Harry, but only because he wanted to know who in their right mind would reject Draco.

*

Harry grimaced a little as he and Alisoun came to a stop next to Fleur and her date, who Harry thought was the Captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team. Krum and his date weren’t there yet.

Professor Snape’s reaction had been even stranger.

*

“Do you know what you are doing?” was the first thing Snape had asked when Harry stepped into his office for his next Occlumency lesson.

Harry stopped and stared at him. He could feel Dash unwind from his shoulders and go over to nose into a random corner for mice, although he had never found any of them in Snape’s clean office. Harry didn’t know what Dash was doing, but he seemed strangely cheerful and prone to leaving Harry alone whenever someone spoke sharply to him in the past few days.

“I think so.” Harry straightened his shoulders and tried to think over his actions in the last week, wondering what might have offended Snape. “I mean, of course I’m not as good at Occlumency as you are, but I think I’m getting—”

No. I was speaking of your agreeing to go to the Yule Ball with the Selwyn girl.”

“I don’t understand,” Harry snapped, although he felt a little relief because at least now he knew what Snape was talking about. “I thought you were the one who encouraged me to make allies in the first place! All that—that stuff about them potentially being important and the way that they would make investments in the future. Was I only supposed to think about that when it didn’t come to dates to the Yule Ball?”

There was a sharp movement from the corner of Harry’s eye, and he leaped in the air and whirled around, not yet trusting strange things like that after all his years at the Dursleys. But it was only Dash’s tail snapping through the air, as he rolled himself over and over. He was laughing again.

I don’t understand you, either, Harry told him.

Dash said nothing, except, You wouldn’t.

“That is not what I meant.” Snape was bending down towards him the way he had on the day that he’d told Harry he could count on him. “I only wonder if you have thought properly about the vulnerable position you are putting yourself in.”

“Do you think she’s going to kill me when we’re dancing or something? Does dancing leave you more open to that kind of thing?” Snape certainly hadn’t said anything about it when they were practicing curses and wandless magic.

Snape muttered something to himself that Harry was glad he couldn’t understand. If the price of understanding was going as mad as Snape and the rest of them, then he would stay sane and oblivious, thanks.

“That is not it. I am talking about—social vulnerability. Romantic vulnerability.”

“Did you know that your mouth looks like it’s trying to twist itself inside out when you say that?”

Snape grimaced and said, “Answer the question.”

“I’m not going with her because I’m in love with her. I’m only going to the Yule Ball because I’m one of the Champions.” Harry recited the familiar words in a monotone, gazing at the ceiling. He wished someone would believe him. Maybe he could make them believe him after the Ball. “I’m not going to fall in love with her, either. I’m grateful to the Selwyns for offering. And anyway, they’d probably be offended if I refused them.”

Snape seemed to be struggling to say something for a moment. Then he said, all in a rush, “And have you considered that marriages have been founded on less?”

“Less what?”

“Some might see you in the company of the Selwyn girl and assume that you will date her and marry someday.”

“Her name is Alisoun. Anyway, Rita Skeeter thinks that I’m dating Hermione and snogging the Ravenclaw Seeker on the side.”

Harry was just glad that the articles hadn’t had any serious consequences so far. And he’d been too busy, what with exams and dancing lessons and trying to understand why everyone had gone mad about the stupid Ball, to think of them.

“It could be worse if Skeeter had proof.” Snape knelt down as if he thought he could peer into Harry’s head and rearrange things there.

Well, Harry knew Snape could peer into his head, but he didn’t think Snape would rearrange anything there. He glared right back. “I think that the Selwyns probably have enough—investments, or whatever you would call them—”

“Social capital,” Snape said, sounding hypnotized.

“To carry them through any explosion of rumors. And Alisoun will go back to Durmstrang when the dance is over, so the owls are less likely to reach her there.” Harry shrugged, not really understanding why Snape continued to stare at him. “Besides, you know Skeeter doesn’t really want to come anywhere near me.” He glanced at Dash. A basilisk was very useful sometimes.

How dare you, said Dash haughtily. That is at all times. He curled his tail around in a sort of dance and looked down at his scales, apparently because he hadn’t got enough of his daily dose of admiration.

“I was thinking about the consequences to you.”

“I just told you why they don’t worry me.”

Snape closed his eyes for a second and massaged his face. Then he said, “What if the consequences came from other—people around you? Not Skeeter and her ilk.” Harry admired his sneer. He’d like to learn to do that. “From people in the school, or close to you?”

Harry half-closed his eyes. “You mean people like Sirius? Yeah, I thought about that. But he can’t help me with a partner for the dance, either.”

“I was also not thinking of him.”

Harry opened one eye. “Then stop hinting around and say what you mean, because I don’t understand. Dash is still going to frighten most people off who might be interested in dating me and then disappointed because they can’t. Is that what you’re talking about?”

Snape worked his jaw and glanced towards Dash. Dash coiled back and watched Snape in interest, too. Harry was glad Dash thought it was also strange that Snape wouldn’t simply state, outright, what he meant.

“It should not be anything frightening,” Snape said slowly. “But it might be annoying. If you don’t consider carefully who you’re going to the dance with.”

“I would go with a friend if a friend was interested. But everyone who comes up just wants to go to the dance with me because I’m a Champion or I’m famous or something. It has nothing to do with—enjoying my company.” Harry found it hard to say the last words. They weren’t really what he meant. But he had to say something.

“Have you asked your friends?”

“Hermione isn’t interested. And I don’t—I don’t want Ginny to get her hopes up. She already has a crush on me.”

Snape gave a long, slow sigh. “Then there is little left for me to say, if you have already considered the possible options and made your mind up.”

There was something odd about his voice on those words, and Harry might have asked more. But Snape straightened up in the next instant and said, voice still odd, “I must get some brewing done before the ball. There might be injuries caused by broken feet and trodden-on toes,” and ushered Harry out the door. Dash hardly had the chance to get out himself before Snape shut it.

Do you think he was upset because I’m taking a Selwyn? Harry asked Dash as they walked out of the dungeons and back towards Gryffindor Tower. I mean, what was I supposed to do? Keep my options open and wait to see if any other allies sent me a letter offering me someone to take? 

Dash was useless, though. He had already dropped back into that laughter again. Harry shook his head and kept walking. People were just mental about the stupid Yule Ball. He would be glad when it was over.

*

Harry finally heard footsteps behind them. It probably meant Krum and his date were here. He turned around with a smile—and blurted out, “Hermione?”

It was her. But she looked different than Harry had ever seen her. He hadn’t even known that she owned dress robes, or that she could smooth her hair down like that. And her face shone as she leaned on Krum’s arm. 

And God, Krum looked smug.

Harry shook his head. “Right, you just happened to be in the library to talk to me all the time,” he said.

Krum grinned some more, and didn’t answer. Alisoun made a little movement beside Harry, and Harry blushed and said, “Hermione, Viktor, this is Alisoun Selwyn. She goes to Durmstrang.”

Of course, a second later he remembered that Krum did, too, and so they probably already knew each other. But all they did was exchange a distant nod, and then McGonagall stepped out and gave them a faint frown, as if she thought they would have run off when she wasn’t watching them.

“The other students will be arriving soon,” she said. “Please go out into the Great Hall and stand ready to lead the first dance. It will be a waltz,” she added, with an especially stern glance at Harry.

Harry flushed. He didn’t know what was going to happen with that. But Alisoun squeezed his arm and nodded to McGonagall, and maybe that meant she was really good at dancing it.

They entered the Great Hall, and the other students started piling in a second later. Harry looked at them quickly. There was Ginny with Neville, and Harry was glad that she’d got to come. Ron was escorting Lavender Brown. Harry sighed in relief. The last week, Ron’s dithering around asking someone out had got so bad that Harry had stopped listening to him, so he hadn’t known whether Ron had ever asked Lavender or not.

There was Draco—alone. Harry stared at him and raised his eyebrows a little. He’d thought Draco would go and ask one of the Veela girls from Beauxbatons since the person he wanted apparently wasn’t available.

He got a glare hot enough to make his face scald. Harry flinched, and Alisoun murmured, “Is this someone I will need to protect you from?”

“No. He’s a friend. Just—annoyed about something.” Harry turned away from Draco. He would have enough to concentrate on with the dancing in a minute.

But when he heard people laughing and something about “the basilisk,” he turned to look. He had assumed Dash was following behind them. Of course, there was the nonsense he’d sometimes prattled about his “date,” but Harry expected to see him with a rat beside him that he was going to eat later or something.

He wasn’t. Instead, he was draped comfortably around Hagrid’s shoulders, and Hagrid was wearing a pair of dress robes big enough to make a sail for a boat. Hagrid was grinning, although Harry thought he saw him dart a wishful glance at Madame Maxime.

“A clever idea,” Alisoun murmured. “Was it yours?”

Harry wanted to say yes, but he had no idea what the Selwyns would say if they found out he’d been lying. It wasn’t his fault if they disbelieved him when he was telling the truth about something like not being the reincarnation of Slytherin, but he had to be honest. “No. Dash’s. He said he had a date. I didn’t know who it was.”

Or how Dash had talked to Hagrid, either. Then again, Dash had mentioned a fortnight ago that he was learning to write letters with his nose in the dirt, and Hagrid was patient and good with animals. 

I hear you there, thinking I’m an animal.

And I see you there, keeping a secret from me. Harry smiled at Dash again. You did this so you could come along to the Ball and no one would think you were too threatening to keep an eye on me, right? 

Do think about it that way. It’s good to see you exercising your brain, since you don’t seem prone to it when it comes to who you date.

There was that mysterious tone of superiority in his voice again. Harry turned away in irritation. He was almost glad to see that the dance was beginning; music was starting to play, and food had appeared on one of the plain tables, without benches, that had replaced the Gryffindor House table.

“Shall we?” Alisoun crooked her arm.

Harry took her arm in turn, trying to keep a close eye on the way she stood and moved. But then he realized he didn’t have to worry about that, because Alisoun’s wand flicked even as she bent down and whispered, “They’ll see your feet moving gracefully no matter what happens.”

Thank you.”

Alisoun smiled faintly, studying him with quizzical eyes. “You’re not at all what I expected.”

“I can’t be a stuck-up hero because I would have been dead by now.” Harry tried to follow the instructions of the music, and remember what McGonagall had said as much as possible. “And I can’t be a pure-blood because of my mum.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

Maddeningly, Alisoun refused to say what she did mean, and simply twirled around him when the music called for it and danced opposite him when they had to do that and did some other steps that Harry couldn’t remember from his lessons, but which she said were part of the waltz. Harry was panting by the time they were done. He supposed he could see why McGonagall had thought he would be a good dancer. This could be like Quidditch if you looked at it in the right way.

Knowing Dash was there also made him feel better, although he had to keep his eyes away from Draco. Whatever he had done, Draco hadn’t forgiven him yet.

*

She doesn’t deserve to be there. It should have been me, instead.

Draco chewed his cheek and ignored the feeling like acid churning in his stomach that made him want to spit. That wasn’t going to happen.

Neither was conversation. Although he could have gone to the Yule Ball with any of the dozen Slytherin girls who had offered, and probably with at least one of the Beauxbatons students if he’d wanted to make the effort, Draco was glad he’d come alone. No one expected him to talk and chatter and compliment. He could brood and glare and plot.

Not much chance he would actually get to harm Selwyn, who would go back to her school after the dance. And Jackson Selwyn, while in Slytherin, was so distantly related to her—to the point that Draco knew rumors had floated around about whether there was a connection at all—he would be no fun to insult.

Harry would be upset if he did that, too. And Draco didn’t want to upset Harry. He wanted Harry to apologize, but if Harry thought he was the offended one, he would cling to his stubbornness and refuse to apologize. So Draco had to come up with some other way to express what he really felt, and take revenge.

He was leaning back with his arms folded and a scowl on his face when there was a disturbance by the door. He looked over there. Then he looked twice and dropped his arms and stared.

He didn’t think Harry had seen them yet, because he was too involved in the current dance with Selwyn. But Draco knew things had changed, and he wanted to laugh and scream and ask questions at the same time.

In the door, dressed in almost identical formal silver robes and with their arms intertwined as if they were dates, stood his mother and Sirius Black.

Chapter 54: The Swirling Patterns Collide

Chapter Text

Harry nearly stumbled into Alisoun, and pulled back to stare at her. Wasn’t she supposed to prevent that from happening? 

But Alisoun jerked her head to the side, and murmured, “That man has similar magic to yours. Is it your godfather?”

It was on the tip of Harry’s tongue to scoff as he turned around, because he didn’t think Sirius would bother coming to the Yule Ball. He already had everything he wanted from Harry. Harry would go home tomorrow and they would exchange gifts, and then—

But no, it was Sirius, clad in dress robes that Harry supposed he had to own but he’d never seen Sirius wear, and with a woman who had to be Draco’s mum beside him. They were moving across the ballroom towards Harry and Alisoun. Mrs. Malfoy’s smile sparkled. Harry thought Sirius was trying to wear the same smile, but it only looked lost, like a pattern of broken glass, on his face.

“Are these people I need to protect you from?”

Harry realized Alisoun had taken her wand out and slightly crouched beside him, ready to spring forwards. He imagined what she could do to Sirius, and shook his head rapidly. “No! No. I mean, it’s my godfather and—the mum of one of my friends. They wouldn’t hurt me.”

“Your breathing says otherwise.”

“I’m just surprised to see them here, that’s all.”

Alisoun slowly slid her wand back into her sleeve, saying out of the corner of her mouth, “Strange that they wouldn’t warn you. And that your godfather, who I know not to be married, is escorting a married witch in the way that they would use if they were dates.”

Harry didn’t get the chance to respond, because Sirius was right beside him now and booming out, “Hey, kiddo! What a neat surprise, huh?” He reached out and ruffled up Harry’s hair.

It wasn’t like Harry minded that, because his hair had never behaved anyway, but he did scowl at Sirius and ask, “What are you doing here with Mrs. Malfoy?”

Mrs. Malfoy was the one who answered, her voice so soft and breathless that she sounded like she was choking. “I wanted to meet you, Harry. And Sirius and I are cousins. I’ve heard so much about you. This seemed like the perfect chance to see the boy who’s captivated my son.”

Harry stared at her, blinking. He probably looked stupid, but for one thing, he had no idea what she meant. 

For another, up close she looked as patient and still as the stereotype of a snake. Harry reached tentatively down the bond to Dash. She looks more like a basilisk than you do.

I’m on the other side of the Ravenclaw table with Hagrid if you need me.

Harry breathed out and said, “I don’t know what you mean, Mrs. Malfoy. But it was nice of you to come.” He tried to glance around and see Sirius, but he was talking in one of those “joking” ways with Alisoun that Harry already knew meant he didn’t like her. He would talk the same way with Draco. Harry scowled.

“I think we should spend a little time together, Harry,” said Mrs. Malfoy, pulling his unwilling attention back to her. “Do you not think so? That we owe each other consideration as future—relations?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said. “I don’t really consider myself related to the Black family. Sirius is my godfather, not my cousin.”

“All pure-bloods are related to each other in intricate ways that we might—discuss better with a tapestry in front of us.” Mrs. Malfoy stepped a little to the side, as though she wanted to see what Harry looked like from there. “But I was talking about the nearer relation that you might have with me soon.”

“Do you treat all Draco’s friends this way?” Harry demanded. He was a little nervous. Why wouldn’t Mrs. Malfoy have come and interviewed him to be Draco’s friend a year ago, if that was the way she wanted to do it?

For a moment, he thought he’d surprised her. Her eyebrows went up, and she paused with one hand reaching out as if to touch an invisible doorway. “Then you do not know of our interest?” she asked.

“I know Mr. Malfoy has helped me sometimes. I just didn’t think you were much interested in me.”

“Mother.”

Draco had arrived. Harry turned to him, and he was relieved to see that whatever Draco had against him lately, it was gone. He gave his mother a faint frown and then turned and nodded to Harry. 

“My mother is talking about—something I didn’t tell you about,” he said, and he glanced back and forth from Harry to Mrs. Malfoy so fast that Harry felt dizzy. “Something important to our family that we don’t discuss until later.”

“Draco. You haven’t told him? Why not? How can he be prepared for what you need if you don’t tell him?”

Mrs. Malfoy sounded definitely disapproving. Harry put up his hands. “You’re starting to sound like you need a human sacrifice to bury alive in the foundation of your house or something,” he said. “Can someone tell me what’s going on?”

“It will indeed be difficult to explain that if Draco hasn’t told you,” Mrs. Malfoy murmured, and gave Draco a piercing glance. He flinched. Harry shook his head.

“Do you need to talk to him or something? Because I could go outside if you have to talk to each other privately.”

“I do think a private talk would be best, yes,” said Mrs. Malfoy. She reached out and put a heavy hand on Draco’s shoulder.

Harry winced a little. He knew how awful that was when Aunt Petunia did it to him. But he wasn’t willing to step in and rescue Draco when he knew it would only get Mrs. Malfoy glaring at him, in turn. He tried to nod to Draco and smile sympathetically as he turned away.

Draco looked doomed.

Sirius was still interrogating Alisoun. Harry sighed and slipped between other people towards the gardens, which were all done up with fairies and colored lights and Christmas trees with moving decorations. This was probably a good time to get interrupted. He felt hot, and he could use the air.

*

Draco winced and turned back to his mother as Harry left. She was watching Harry, though, and didn’t immediately turn to consider him.

When she did, Black had moved back to her side. Draco clenched one fist down at his own side and breathed in and out through his impatience. He didn’t know what Black was doing here with his mother, but he did know it was keeping them from a conversation that he should probably go ahead and have before he expired of sheer tension.

“She seems nice enough.”

It took Draco a minute to realize they were talking about Selwyn. He shook his head. That wasn’t important right now.

Apparently Mother agreed, because she said, with no more than a slight motion of her head that made her delicate silver earrings sway, “Quiet, Sirius.”

Black opened his mouth, then glared at Mother and snapped it shut again. Draco didn’t know why. He wanted to ask why they’d come to the Ball together and if Father knew about it, but given what Mother had just learned…

“Why didn’t you tell young Mr. Potter of your interest?”

Draco stiffened his shoulders. “Because I wanted him to choose me because he wanted to,” he said. “Not because I was chasing him down and trying to invite him to the Yule Ball the way so many other people were.”

What?”

Mother raised her hand, and Black fell into silence again, though this time Draco thought it was a more fuming silence. I still want to know what the story is there, Draco decided, with a sideways glance. But I doubt I’ll get it until they’re apart from each other.

“You have a right to your pride. But not the right to so much of it at this particular time.”

Draco bowed his head. He understood what she meant. Draco would only have the right to so much pride when he was older and had done something to earn it. 

Father was the one who had taught Draco that he deserved much of the world for being a Malfoy. Mother was the one who had insisted that Draco had to have some skills and gifts of his own, if only a charming and persuasive personality, or people would assume that his name was all there was to him.

“I’m Harry’s best friend.”

“You are not! Ron and Hermione—”

Again Black fell silent at a tilted hand from his mother, although Draco supposed that wouldn’t last much longer. He wondered in silence exactly what his mother had paid Black to convince him to come here and act this way, because Draco could only think it was money.

“That is not enough, not in this context.” Mother looked down her nose at Draco, the way she usually only did at Ministry workers who decided that they would raid the Manor without proper warning. “Have you considered where he came from?”

Draco had no idea what he meant. “Gryffindor?” he offered. “But plenty of Gryffindors came with people they asked out.” He looked at where Granger was still dancing with Krum. He thought she had to have been the one to ask him out; there was no way that Krum would have been enamored enough of Granger on his own to ask her.

Of course, that left the question of why a famous and popular Quidditch player, who could have anyone, would accept a mousy little Muggleborn like Granger. But maybe Krum was like Harry and afraid of people only asking him for his popularity.

“Not that,” said Mother, with the kind of slight edge in her voice that meant Draco had disappointed her. “The Muggle world.”

“Harry’s a wizard!

“Who was raised by Muggles.” Mother caught his eye and held it. “Do you understand what I mean?”

“No.” Draco didn’t much want to think about it, either, although he knew from the way Mother was looking at him that he had to at least pretend. “I mean…he doesn’t understand some of the same books and history I do. But that doesn’t make him any different!

“I agree,” Black tried to interject. 

This time, Mother didn’t bother trying to restrain him, which was probably a good thing as far as keeping Black in line went, Draco thought. Her gaze rested on Draco, and she murmured, “Think about what else might have gone unaccepted in the Muggle world, Draco. Or simply not done. Or not guessed.”

“If you would tell him what you’re talking about, Cissy, then he might guess.”

Draco was the only one who saw the way his mother’s eyes flashed when Black spoke that nickname. Draco himself wanted to gag. Cissy? I know Father said that most of the Blacks were mad, but I didn’t believe him!

“It seems that he will not make the guess, and so I must.” Draco’s mother turned back to him, while Draco could feel his face heating up with a dull flush. He wanted to make her proud, but this time, he honestly didn’t know what she wanted. “Mr. Potter has no conception that he can ask a boy out, Draco. Or be asked by one,” she added a second later, head tilted, as if she was considering the worth of that possibility.

Draco felt as though someone had cast a Lightning Charm on him. His blood boiled with shock, and he turned around and looked for Harry even though he knew he wasn’t there.

Harry didn’t know? Professor Snape had said…and there was the way that Harry had looked at Draco in the library as if he had no idea why he was angry…but…

It was only children of some particularly Muggle-ish families who thought women should only date men. Draco knew that, and he’d never expected it to affect his life. After all, none of those families would want their children to be friends or allies or spouses with a Malfoy, anyway.

And he had never bothered to try and understand what they thought was wrong with it, either. Dark Arts? Some conviction that their children should only date people they could have bodily children with in the future? Draco didn’t care.

“Do you think he hates me for feeling that way, then?” he asked quietly.

“From meeting him here and what you’ve told me about him, I would suspect that he more than likely never noticed, Draco,” Mother said, with a slow shake of her head. “Not that you were looking for an invitation, not that he could have given one. Whether he has any emotions towards it at all, I cannot determine as of yet.”

“Enough of this load of bollocks, Cissy.” Black leaned into view again like a Kneazle demanding to be fed. “You promised that you’d give me your professional opinion of Harry if we came here.” Then he gave Draco a vicious grin. “Well, and make sure that your husband has an aneurysm.”

Draco ignored that. He knew without being told that his mother would never do anything like this without his father’s knowledge and consent, and it wasn’t his place to ask about it, anyway. He frowned at Mother.

She inclined her head. “He does not seem to have any emotions towards it, Draco. Including negative ones. You may still have a chance if you attempt to speak openly with him and he does not retreat.”

Draco straightened his back and nodded. Mother would never have told him something like that if she didn’t really believe it. Which meant he had her permission to go ahead and do his best to court Harry.

Whether he had Father’s…that was something he would wait to resolve.

He turned around to look for Harry, while Black and Mother walked away in the direction of the refreshments table. Draco blinked, a little surprised at how long it was taking to find Harry. He’d said he’d step outside, but he would have come back inside by now, surely?

Then Draco saw the Selwyn girl who had dared to come as Harry’s date. She was standing on her tiptoes, scanning the ballroom. A second later, she started moving rapidly towards the outer doors, sliding in between the dancing couples as though someone had trained her to do that.

But far worse, at least for Draco, was the fact that Dash had unwound from the ridiculous gamekeeper’s shoulders and was traveling like a whip along the far edge of the room.

Harry.

Draco was closer to the outer doors than either of them, and he didn’t have all the people in the way that Selwyn did. He also started to run.

*

“Hello, Harry.”

Harry turned around. He didn’t recognize the voice, and although he’d only danced with her a short time, he thought he would have known Alisoun’s. This had to be someone else, maybe from another House. Maybe Lovegood’s daughter, who tended to smile at Harry and drift away from him most of the time.

“Luna?” he asked, but then he saw that he was beneath one of the fairies caught in the colored lights. He moved closer. He hadn’t known they could talk. He thought it was a little cruel to hang them up like this if they could.

“No, my name is not Luna. You could say that I am…an emissary of someone who has wanted to meet you for a long time.”

Harry tensed, but then relaxed. He hardly thought Voldemort would be sending a fairy to talk to him. “Who?”

“Well, it would depend on whether you can keep a secret. You see, the rest of my family doesn’t approve of you. They think you represent a threat to certain established interests that have significant names.”

The fairy was giving him a wide-eyed look. Harry supposed that came from it being enchanted to speak. Of course he was really talking with a human, he decided, but one who’d decided to stay at a distance and cast through the fairy’s lips.

“Were your family Death Eaters?”

That made the fairy, or the person speaking through it, laugh. “You could say that. Well, you could only say that if you called all his people Death Eaters, I suppose. They never marched at his side. But they do serve him, and I knew I would have to speak with you in private to even get you to listen to me.”

“What is your name, then?” Harry was going over names in his head, trying to remember all that ones that Professor Snape had told him might want to ally with him once they heard about the Selwyns and the others who had sent Harry allegiance rings.

“One more step closer.” The fairy’s voice lowered. “I dare not speak that outside of some powerful Privacy Charms I’ve put up. You won’t believe what people would do to me if they realized that I was speaking to you.”

Obediently, Harry moved one step closer, until he was standing directly below the fairy’s lantern. Its eyes were so wide now that it looked demented, and it was pounding its fists on the globe that contained it. Harry shook his head with a frown. He thought Professor Flitwick had hung them up. He would need to talk to him. Maybe it wasn’t the best idea to decorate with fairies after all if they were intelligent, like Dobby.

The bush beneath the fairy’s globe rustled. Harry squinted into it, but it was hard to see after the dazzle of the glow from the lanterns.

“My name is Nagini.”

A shape lashed so fast out of the bush that Harry couldn’t avoid it even though he’d started leaping to the side. And then he felt the sharp scrape of something down his leg, something that sank deep and plunged into his blood and left something cold behind.

Poison. She’s a poisonous snake, and she was speaking Parseltongue, and she just bit me.

Harry thought all that as he tumbled and rolled on the grass. He heard the fairy squeaking alarm in what must have been its natural voice, and then he heard the clash and snap of fangs. He tipped his head to the side and blinked. For a minute, he thought someone had come out and conjured a ribbon to try and tie Nagini up.

But it wasn’t a ribbon. It was a snake, another snake, and he was black against her emerald-green, and of course it took Harry longer than it should have to recognize Dash. He pushed his hands against the grass and tried to rise.

Stay there, Harry!

Dash’s voice was too fast, the way it hadn’t been since the first night Harry had heard it, when Dash had showed him all those hurrying images to tell Harry his name. Harry kept trying to stand up, though. If Dash was speaking like that, it must mean that he did need Harry’s help. Harry swore at himself and tried again.

“Harry. You need to not move.”

Alisoun’s voice. This time, he knew it, too. Harry turned his head and whispered, “She bit me.”

“I am a bad guardian.” But Alisoun’s voice was a monotone, and she didn’t break down crying the way Harry had been afraid she would, the way that some girls would have, he thought. She drew a leaf from her pocket and chewed it for a second. Then she pulled out a green paste. Harry recoiled despite how much his head hurt from the pounding.

“Don’t be silly,” said Alisoun, and smeared the paste briskly over his wound while Harry was still trying to decide if he trusted her or not.

The bite immediately stopped burning, and Harry realized he could think. He gasped. “Does it heal the poison?”

“Neutralizes the worst effects of the poison near it, and the pain of the bite,” said Alisoun without any expression in her voice, the way she had talked at the start of the evening. “But we don’t know what kind of venom it is, and we need to get you out of here and to hospital as soon as possible.” She muttered another charm, and Harry felt as if he suddenly only weighed about a stone. Alisoun scooped him up.

“But Dash—”

Harry turned his head back. Dash was still fighting Nagini, and the way his tail lashed and his mouth roared let Harry see his fangs. But Dash’s poison was diluted, and even if he was faster than Nagini, he hadn’t trained for battle the way she had. Harry shivered, and didn’t know if it was the venom or the fear.

Then Draco arrived.

Harry didn’t know what he was doing at first, and he saw one minute when Draco froze, as if suspecting there was nothing he could do. Then he shook his head briskly and plunged forwards. His wand leaped out and gestured back and forth. Harry saw a flicker of fire near where the snakes were currently rolling in the dirt, entwined viciously around each other.

Draco set Nagini’s tail on fire.

Nagini shrieked and writhed, this time getting free from Dash and trying to roll her tail in the dirt. Dash reached after her and grabbed her, shaking her. This time, Harry saw the way his neck twisted, and knew what was going to happen even before he saw Dash’s eyelids quiver.

Shut your eyes, Draco!

Harry had never screamed so loudly. Alisoun almost dropped him. But Draco heard him and turned around, one hand rising as if he wanted to shield his face for extra protection.

Alisoun twisted away at the same time, so Harry didn’t get to see Dash look at Nagini so much as he saw the yellow glow from his eyes reflecting off the enchanted decorations. But he saw the moment when Nagini turned and flowed into the bushes, not dying the way she should have.

In a few seconds, there was a sharp pop that made the bush’s leaves leap and sway, and Harry knew that someone or something had Apparated Nagini out of the school. He swore and let his head droop on Alisoun’s shoulder.

“Where did she go?” Draco demanded.

“Whoever sent her has taken her back,” said Alisoun calmly. “Come. We must go. I do not know how to Apparate to the nearest hospital. Where is it?”

“Uh, I don’t know how to Apparate,” Draco said. “But it’s called St. Mungo’s. Harry?”

“She bit me,” Harry said, forcing his jaws to move. There was a haze over his eyes. “The snake.”

Harry.”

Draco was by his side then, grabbing his hands and rubbing them, staring frantically into his eyes. Dash followed him a second later, staring into Harry’s eyes with his own, shielded again. Harry smiled sleepily at him.

I cannot heal you of this. You do need someone else, Dash said. His tongue flickered out towards the wound on Harry’s leg. But it is blood poison. It will travel through your blood, sped by the beat of your heart.

“Harry!”

That was Sirius, and Harry heard Alisoun immediately ask about St. Mungo’s. Then Sirius’s face was in front of him, so pale that his eyes looked like two black tunnels.

“It’s all right, it’s all right,” Sirius whispered. “I’ll take you to St. Mungo’s. Everything will be all right.”

“Dash says it’s blood poison,” Harry whispered. He hoped Dash would tell them other things if he wasn’t awake to translate the Parseltongue.

I can borrow the voices of the shadow-snakes if I have to. Or talk to Draco, and he can talk to them. 

Draco’s coming? Harry thought as the darkness began to swirl lazily around him.

Try to part him from you.

Dash, damn him, sounded amused again. Harry dropped into the swirling darkness before he could understand what Dash thought was so damn funny about that.

Chapter 55: A Visit to St. Mungo's

Chapter Text

“How are you feeling, Harry?”

At least five voices seemed to ask that question. Harry frowned and squinted, hoping the poison—he could remember the poison—wasn’t interfering with his hearing somehow.

But it seemed five people really were sitting by the bed. Sirius, and Draco, and Snape, and Hermione, and Ron. That Sirius and Snape then glared at each other made Harry smile a little, but he was more occupied with trying to sit up.

“The poison damaged your muscle tone,” said Draco, immediately standing up and bustling over to touch Harry’s shoulders. “The Healers said so,” he added, and Harry shut his mouth; he’d been about to ask why in the world Draco was sounding so pompous. “You should just lie quietly for a little while until it comes back.”

“He can’t get it back if he just lies still!” Hermione’s hair was starting to bristle from the flat, sleek position Harry had seen her wearing at the ball with Krum. She came up on the other side of the bed and stared at him worriedly. “He has to get up and do some exercises. That’s what people in hospital do if they stay there for a long time.”

“He won’t be here for a long time. The Healers said—”

“Don’t be foolish, Black, he needs at least a few days of rest—”

“He can rest at home.”

Ron rolled his eyes at Harry. Harry nodded. He could guess what it had been like to sit there for a few hours, or however long he’d been out, with Sirius and Snape arguing at each other.

He chose to say instead, “I’m sorry for getting attacked and disrupting the ball.”

“Nothing to be sorry for, mate. I wasn’t enjoying myself anyway.”

Hermione set up her back and ignored Ron so hard Harry thought he could feel the wall springing up between them. “Don’t be silly, Harry. It wasn’t your fault you were attacked.” Then she frowned at him. “Although it was very silly of you to go out into the garden on your own.”

“It wasn’t silly of him! How was he to know there would be a gigantic snake there?”

Draco was hovering next to Harry, almost, his hand held out as if he was going to place it over Harry’s eyes and shield him from the sight of his friends. Or maybe from having to look at anything while he was still in a hospital bed, Harry thought, and grinned at Draco as he took his hand and moved it off to the side.

“There’s always a gigantic snake with me,” he said, and turned back to face Hermione. “But I really didn’t think there was any danger. It’s not like this was a Task in the Tournament. Or Moody was there.”

“I haven’t managed to get that petition to the Board of Governors yet. I wanted to tell you, Harry, but everything’s been so busy with this preparation for the Yule Ball in the past week, and—”

“Now it’s over,” Ron said. “And I wanted to make sure you know you’re invited for Christmas dinner, Harry. Both you and Sirius.”

“Mr. Black has already accepted an invitation from my mother for Christmas dinner,” Draco said, his head so far back that Harry thought he was going to find out what the interior of Draco’s nose looked like. “He and Harry will be coming over to our house.”

Ron was silent, maybe because Hermione had lunged over and grabbed his arm, but he was turning red. Harry coughed and tried to say the most diplomatic thing he could. “Sirius didn’t tell me.”

“That’s because he and my mother have been talking a lot by letter. But he couldn’t mention that, could he? Otherwise he would look hypocritical. Since he told you he didn’t want you to visit me all last summer.”

Harry sighed. “Please don’t have a fight about it here,” he said, aware that Ron’s mouth was opening again and Hermione looked concerned and Draco was in no mood to back down. “Tell me what happened instead. Where’s Dash? Did he get hurt in the fight at all? How did they heal me of the poison?”

“Once you got here, Black summoned me.” Snape stepped towards the bed. He was pale, which made Harry wonder what Sirius had been saying to him. But it would have been the wrong place to ask, anyway. “He should have done so the minute he realized what was wrong, but—”

“Shut up, Sinivellus! What would you have done? The Healers handled this perfectly competently on their own—”

“Once I advised them on what antivenin potion they should use, and what the properties of the poison were likely to be.” Snape’s eyes came back to Harry. “That warning Dash whispered to you, about the poison being one of the blood, likely saved your life. They might have wasted time on treating you for the wrong kind of venom at first.”

“Where is Dash?”

At Hogwarts, Dash said abruptly into Harry’s mind. Harry started. They had never tested how distance would affect their bond before, and he hadn’t realized this was going to be the way it did. The bond felt shadowy, as if Dash was holding himself back from Harry much more than he usually did. I’m looking around the defenses and trying to ascertain how Nagini slipped through.

You didn’t want to come with me?

The panic when I started to come through the fireplace was so great that I thought it prudent to remain here. And once they summoned Snape, I thought you safe enough. Besides…

Harry pursued that last little trailing thought like it was Nagini’s tail. What else aren’t you telling me?

She had to have help. There’s no way she could have got through the defenses on her own. I would have started sensing her the minute she got close to the school. The snakes I created out of shadow and sent patrolling would have seen her. And yet, I haven’t found any obvious holes in the defenses. It makes me wonder if someone else invited something else in, and Nagini only managed to slip through because she was watching for a chance.

But that would mean someone managed to subdue your shadow snakes too, right?

Or bypass them.

Harry nodded slowly. He knew Draco was trying to get his attention, but at the moment, his conversation with Dash was more important. All right. Then do whatever you need to. But remember I’ll be going to Sirius’s house tomorrow.

How could I forget? I will smell the stink again.

“Harry? Harry!”

“Don’t shake him like that, Weasley. You ought to recognize the way he looks when he’s talking with Dash, even if you don’t know anything else about Harry by now.”

Harry shook his head, stopping the argument before it could start. “I was just talking to Dash, yeah. He’s back at the school, and trying to figure out how Nagini got in.” That should leave out some of the details that Harry didn’t know if Dash would want him discussing yet, at least not in a room with Sirius in it. He thought of something else, and added, “Where’s Alisoun?”

“Here, Harry.”

Alisoun’s voice was low and rough. Harry turned around in concern. “Did you get bitten by Nagini, too?”

Alisoun was standing at the entrance of the room, with only a cloak thrown over her Yule Ball dress. She had her arms folded and her shoulders hunched and her eyes fixed on the floor. Even though Harry waited expectantly, she never looked up at him.

“No,” she whispered. “But I failed in my duty to protect you. I let you get away from me in my self-confidence that you could go nowhere in Hogwarts without me responding to the danger in time. And although I felt something was wrong when I saw your snake start to move, I was too late to prevent you from getting injured.”

“Alisoun?” Harry asked again. She still wouldn’t look up. Harry frowned. “Hey! Look at me when I’m talking to you!”

She jerked and did, but Harry thought it was only because of the order. “I will understand if my failure makes you repudiate the alliance with my parents,” she said in a low tone. “However, if I still have the right to ask anything of you, I would ask you not to send back the allegiance ring yet. Let me have one more chance to prove myself.”

“I’m not sending anything anywhere,” Harry said in exasperation. He could see the way Snape’s face had tightened, and he knew Snape probably didn’t like him discussing his alliance with the Selwyns in public. But, well, that would just have to wait. “You didn’t fail. I was supposed to be perfectly safe. So don’t worry about it.”

“But I still failed.”

“This would be a lot easier if you would look at me.” Alisoun’s eyes had slipped away from him again. Harry waited until they were back on him, and then added, “You didn’t fail.” Did she, Dash?

No. She was there right after you were injured, and she may well have saved your life by her prompt action. She was the one who made sure you were protected and not jostled all the way to St. Mungo’s.

“So there,” Harry finished triumphantly, but when she looked at him blankly, he remembered she couldn’t hear his private conversation with Dash. He sighed, cleared his throat, and continued, “Dash says you were right there at my side and made sure I didn’t get injured further and brought me here. So if you really think you need my forgiveness for something, you’re forgiven.”

Alisoun was twisting her fingers into her hair, into the cloth around her neck, into her robes. “You mean that?”

“Yes,” Harry said firmly. He could hear the grumbles that meant several other people had tried to say something at the same time, but they could just shut up and wait right now. “Go tell your parents they don’t have anything to worry about. You helped save me just like Dash did.”

Alisoun hesitated, then bowed to him. Her smile lit up her whole face when she lifted her head. Harry hadn’t known she could smile like that. He hoped she did it more often in the future. He preferred it when people looked as if they were enjoying themselves around him.

“I need to inform my parents, then. If you’re certain he’s safe?” Alisoun was looking more at Professor Snape and Sirius than him, but Harry supposed that made sense. They were the adults here.

“He is.” Snape was the one who answered, although he was peering at Harry as if looking for more aftereffects of the poison.

“Good.” Alisoun hesitated, curtsied once towards Harry—which made him blink a little—and then turned and left the room.

“Can we go now?” Draco sounded as though he was pouting. Harry had no idea why. “If everything’s done with and Harry’s fine, then we should go back to Malfoy Manor. It’s Christmas in a few days anyway, and we have huge bedrooms and all the house-elves we need to take care of Harry. He can recover there.”

No. I’m taking him home.”

“Mr. Potter needs rest. Not pranks.”

Harry held up his hand before Sirius and Snape could really get going. “We’re not leaving until I reunite with Dash. He would have to make his way to wherever I went, and I don’t think Dumbledore would be happy if I let a basilisk slither around Britain.” Dumbledore probably wouldn’t be happy anyway, but Harry had to admit that having Dash away from him, and breaking one of the “rules,” wasn’t avoidable at this point.

“Mr. Potter is correct,” said Snape smoothly. Harry had never figured out how he could make that transition from murderous anger to sounding as if he was calm and the fount of all wisdom, but somehow he did. “Therefore, he should go back to Hogwarts, pick up Dash, and then on to his godfather’s house.”

Harry eyed Snape. There was something wrong about the way Snape had changed his mind like that. Or else, he had a plan.

“I want him to come home with me.”

Snape’s glance passed over Harry’s head, and Harry almost felt Draco flinch when it landed. “Do not be whiny, Draco,” Snape murmured. “You will see him in a few days, as you phrased it yourself.”

“And I think he should sleep in Gryffindor Tower tonight.” That was Hermione, speaking up fearlessly for him. Harry smiled at her. “That way, he can get a good night’s sleep and be in familiar surroundings.”

“As often, Miss Granger is correct.” Hermione looked a little faint. Snape went on as if he praised her all the time. “He shall go back to Hogwarts tonight. Then to Black’s house. Then to Draco’s house in a few days.”

“I have something I have to tell Harry.” Draco looked around when no one moved. “Something private.

“There will be time to tell him back at Hogwarts,” said Snape, in a dismissive way that made Harry think Draco was about to explode the way Neville’s potions always seemed to.

Before he could do that, Harry reached out and put a hand on Draco’s shoulder. “I promise I’ll make time for you tonight,” he said. “Or in the morning, before we leave. Because I can tell what you want to say to me is important.”

Draco gave him a glance so intense Harry winced a little. He wondered if he had somehow humiliated Draco by getting hurt, the way he had Alisoun. Because that was the only thing he could compare it to, the glitter in Alisoun’s eyes when she thought her family had lost his trust.

In the end, though, Draco only nodded, and Harry could finally stand up and let Sirius—because he glared at everyone else who would have helped, and Snape, who Harry knew wasn’t affected by that, stood back—help him out of the room.

*

Severus said nothing because he knew he had no audience, at the moment. Harry was right. The most important thing now must be getting him back to Hogwarts and reunited with Dash. 

But he would not forget the moment when Narcissa Malfoy had come to him and told him what had happened. He would not forget that no one else, not even Black, who knew of his interest in Harry’s welfare, had come to inform him.

And he still did not, and would not, believe Black a fit guardian for Harry. Not with the way he had muttered more about Narcissa Malfoy and Slytherins and basilisks than Harry not being well in the past three hours.

He had one card he had not yet wished to play. He knew there was a chance it would alienate Harry as well as enrage Black.

But during the long three hours of watching Harry in his hospital bed, watching the antivenin battle back the ebony curl of poison writhing its way up Harry’s side, he had made the decision that getting Harry away from Black was more important than angering him. 

*

Draco stood silent while Dash came to Harry and twined around his legs in an embrace. He watched Harry caress his head and the plume that rose there, and the way Dash wrapped himself around Harry’s ankles and hissed in pleasure. He stood silent while Harry’s friends hugged him and talked about how the whole school had been concerned and how they got McGonagall’s permission for Black to take them to St. Mungo’s.

Mother had brought Draco to hospital, and then discreetly disappeared somewhere. Draco doubted he would see her again until he went home tomorrow.

But he stirred when Harry and his friends started up to Gryffindor Tower. “Sorry,” he said, mainly because he knew it would soothe Harry, not because he really believed it would matter to Weasley and Granger. “But I do need to borrow Harry for a minute so I can talk to him.”

Harry turned towards him, head cocked, smiling slightly. Draco felt his heartbeat get so loud Harry could probably hear it. But Harry didn’t give any sign he could, just nodded to Weasley and Granger and said, “I’ll see you in a few minutes.”

“Harry—you can’t feel well enough—”

You’d like it if that was true, Draco thought angrily, but all Harry did was shake his head and say calmly, “If they thought I was well enough to leave St. Mungo’s even though it was the middle of the night, then I’m well enough to do this. And I want to know what Draco has to say.”

Weasley and Granger hovered around a bit and said a few more things about Harry’s health that Draco didn’t bother to listen to. He knew well enough that if they thought they could get away with it, they would have dragged Harry off. Harry didn’t let them do it.

That was enough to give Draco courage and some hope that his mother was right, and Harry wasn’t going to run away or refuse him.

Finally Weasley and Granger went grumbling up the stairs to Gryffindor Tower, and Harry glanced around the entrance hall. “Is this private enough for whatever you want to tell me?”

Draco hesitated once, looking at Dash. Dash flickered out his tongue and gave that little hiss that usually meant he was snickering. And then he flopped his body more firmly on Harry’s foot.

No, he wasn’t about to leave Harry alone when that hadn’t been a great idea earlier in the evening. Harry nodded at the same time Draco was thinking that, as if to say Draco could say anything he wanted in front of Dash.

He probably could. Draco told himself that at least it would be difficult for Dash to talk about it to someone else, and drew in a deep breath, and said, “You probably wondered why I was so upset this evening.”

“I nearly died. I get that.”

“No. I mean—before. Did you see me scowling at you when you were dancing with Selwyn?”

“Yes.” Harry frowned a little. “She’s a friend, Draco, and she helped me when Voldemort’s snake hurt me. You don’t have to worry that’s she going to drag me off somewhere and hit me over the head.”

“No.” Draco had to take his courage in both hands now, but it was still a minute before he could. “Not that. I wanted—I was upset because she was dancing with you. I wanted to be the one doing that. I wanted to be the one you asked to the Yule Ball. I thought you knew that, so I didn’t say anything, but—my mother was the one who told me you probably didn’t even know, because you’d been raised by Muggles and they don’t have anything about two boys dating, and you thought I was just your friend, and—”

His words dried up. He knew he was babbling, and Harry was just standing there staring at him with his mouth open and his eyes so wide that Draco knew Mother had been right. Harry hadn’t ever thought of asking him or being asked.

But Draco knew he had gone on long enough. He had been the one who went to the effort of asking to talk to Harry in private, and then saying all this. It was time for Harry to react now.

*

Harry stood there with his hand on Dash’s head, feeling like all his limbs had gone numb. Draco felt that way about him?

Why?

Does he have to list all his reasons? Dash lashed out with his tongue, and encircled one of Harry’s fingers for a second before he deliberately withdrew it. Why should he, when they ought to be obvious? You know as well as he does that he likes you. And you know what that means, because you saw it with Ron and Hermione.

Harry swallowed. But Ron likes Hermione because she’s smart and she helps us and she’s his friend, and Hermione likes Ron because he’s her friend and he’s smart and he can play chess well and he’s brave. Why would Draco like me?

That’s so ridiculous I refuse to answer it.

But Harry really didn’t know why. He knew Draco couldn’t be after him for his fame, the way the other people who had asked him to the Ball were, because Draco was above that sort of nonsense. And it couldn’t have anything to do with money, because Draco was rich himself.

But it seemed the only way he would get an answer was to ask Draco, as embarrassing as that was. Harry braced himself and then looked straight at Draco and asked, “Why do you—want to date me?”

That was probably the least embarrassing way to put it. But Draco’s cheeks were so red, and Harry didn’t know what else to say. He locked his hands on Dash’s neck—much to Dash’s grumbling—and waited there.

“Because you’re you.”

Draco’s voice was soft, incredulous. He took a step forwards, and then paused. Harry didn’t know what he was waiting for, but he was frozen, himself. He couldn’t tell what would need to come next, if he should say something or stand there or run away.

Apparently standing still was actually the kind of encouragement Draco had been looking for, because he came up to Harry and laid a hand on his cheek. Harry hoped his own blush wasn’t searing Draco’s skin.

“You’re generous, and you like me,” Draco said. “I mean, as a friend. And you ought to see the way you move and you are and…” He was the one who looked helpless now. “I don’t know. I never thought about it. That’s all I can say. I just like you.”

Harry blinked a little. He supposed he could—see that. And maybe part of it was the same reason he had thought that he understood Ron and Hermione wanting to date. He and Draco were friends, weren’t they? And Draco had even said something about that just now.

He made his hands move away from his clutch on Dash. He reached up and touched Draco’s cheek. Draco braced himself, eyelashes fluttering.

There, said Dash.

“I—I don’t know what to say. I mean, I believe you, of course. It’s just so unexpected. I don’t think I’ve ever liked someone like that.”

Draco opened his eyes and looked at Harry so calmly Harry didn’t think he’d hurt him. But he didn’t know. Even if Dash could smell Draco’s emotions, he apparently wasn’t in the mood to say anything about them to Harry right now.

Harry found his breath somewhere and went on.

“But I didn’t go to the Ball with Alisoun because I thought she was pretty or anything. The Selwyns sent an owl to me that said she could protect me. And it would advance the alliance, which Professor Snape is always talking about, and it meant I could just tell people I had a date and they would stop asking me.”

“You didn’t want people to ask you to the Ball?”

“Well, no. I told you that. I just wanted to go with someone who wasn’t doing it for the fame or the prestige.”

Draco shook his head slowly. “You really can’t believe anyone would want to go with you just for the pleasure of—going with you.”

“Apparently not.” Harry hoped he looked brave as he shrugged. “I didn’t think there was anyone like that.”

“There is.”

“Oh. Um. Good.”

They stood there for a little while longer, long enough for Dash to start snickering again in the back of Harry’s mind. Then Harry cleared his throat and asked, “So what happens now?”

Draco obviously considered it before he asked, “You don’t mind if I do something I’ve wanted to do for a long time?”

“That depends on what it is.”

Dash snickered again.

Either Draco could hear Dash’s snicker and understood what it meant, or he was just deciding to do the thing he wanted most to do. He leaned forwards and kissed Harry.

Harry stood there frozen. He hadn’t thought about kisses, except in some vague terms that always seemed to come back to the way Aunt Petunia kissed Dudley or the way he wished his mum would have kissed him. But he felt Draco’s lips touch his, and then a sort of burning spread through him, and he wanted the kiss to go on.

Maybe Draco was too nervous, though, because he pulled away and cleared his throat. “Was that—okay?”

Harry smiled. “Yeah. That was fine.”

And Draco beamed as if he’d just received the best compliment in the world, and—things were going to be all right. Harry knew that. Not how they’d turn out, especially since the Ball was over now and it wasn’t like he had a Time-Turner to go back in time and take Draco to it. 

But at least Dash had stopped snickering and Draco looked happy and Harry felt happy, and those were all good things. 

Chapter 56: Christmas at Malfoy Manor

Chapter Text

“I’m glad you’re safe, pup.”

Harry nodded slowly. This was the first time he’d been alone with Sirius in months. Ron and Hermione had badgered him down the steps of Gryffindor Tower this morning, made sure that he ate a full meal—at least they’d let him snack on biscuits when he really couldn’t eat any more ordinary food—and then marched after him to the Floo. Hermione had practically threatened to come and check on him the last few days of the holiday. Ron had invited him over for Christmas, again.

And now Sirius was sitting there and staring at Harry, then away, then at Dash, then away.

Perhaps his own bad smell has finally entered his nostrils and confused his brain, it’s so strong, Dash offered helpfully from the kitchen floor, where he was doubled in a lazy knot around Harry’s legs.

You aren’t being helpful.

Why would I want to be helpful to the smelly dog-man?

Harry sighed a little, and then caught Sirius’s eye and shook his head with a small grimace. “Sorry. Dash is just being difficult.”

“I’m not surprised.” Sirius suddenly leaned forwards, and Harry thought his attention was focused on Harry for the first time since they’d arrived home. “He did almost see you die, and he fought off the snake that would have caused it. I know that was You-Know-Who’s snake. You almost died.” His hand found Harry’s and squeezed it.

“So you like Dash now?” Harry asked hopefully. At least that would be a good thing to come out of this, the only good thing other than the kiss with Draco.

We also learned other lessons.

Dash had been making remarks like that since his fight with Nagini. Harry had no real idea what he meant, and had decided he would ignore him until Dash decided to make sense. 

“I admit he likes you,” said Sirius, and he made a small grimace. “Harry…you don’t know why we’re going to the Manor for Christmas, do you?”

“No. Especially since you didn’t want me to visit Draco during the summer.”

“That was wrong of me. I should have let you. At least, if Narcissa was going to be there. She’s a lot different from Lucius.” Sirius hesitated and licked his lips. “You know she was my cousin. Her name was Black before she married.”

“Yeah.” Harry could have learned that from Draco even if Sirius hadn’t told him. Draco was always willing to talk about his family and his ancestors and his home at length if anyone wanted to listen to him. 

Harry felt a sharp flutter in the center of his chest at the thought of Draco, and he bit his lip to keep himself from smiling. Sirius would probably want to know why he was smiling, and Harry wasn’t able to explain yet.

You should never explain anything to the smelly dog-man.

Harry hid a sigh, too. Even if the fight had done something good for Sirius’s opinion of Dash, it definitely hadn’t for Dash’s opinion of Sirius. 

“Well, she’s been talking to me for the last few months about certain—things I hadn’t realized the Blacks still cared about.” Sirius turned back and forth restlessly on his chair. Harry just had to watch him, because he didn’t know what Sirius meant. “So many of our family are dead, and some are in prison. I just didn’t—I had a younger brother called Regulus. He died.” Sirius’s face changed, and he stared past Harry’s shoulder. “He was a Death Eater.”

“Oh.” At least Harry could see why Sirius didn’t like to talk about his family now.

“He was my parents’ heir after I ran away to live with your dad. I hadn’t thought things had changed. I mean, I thought my parents would have left everything to Narcissa, or maybe my cousin Bellatrix.” Sirius’s face changed again, and he shuddered. “She’s Narcissa’s older sister, and she was also a faithful Death Eater. She’s in Azkaban. But either because my parents didn’t change things fast enough, or because I’m the only male Black who’s still alive and free, or because of something else, I’m the heir again.”

“Okay,” Harry said slowly. Sirius seemed to expect him to know all about this, or be excited by it, or something. “So what did you inherit? Is that what Narcissa was talking to you about?”

“Yes. It is.” Sirius glanced around the kitchen once. “I know you love living here, but I have a house that’s more secure. I just don’t want to move back into it because it’s gloomy and dismal.”

“I don’t want to leave,” Harry said at once. He and Sirius had their problems, but Harry still loved the room Sirius had given him, and how close the house was to Hogwarts, and the freedom it gave Dash to hunt in the garden. “You put up a lot of protective spells, and I still have Dash. We’ll be safe here.”

I would have taken you elsewhere already if I thought that you would not. I wonder if he knows that?

I don’t think he thinks you’re that smart.

Dash had a little hissing tantrum in the back of his head, but Harry couldn’t listen to it, because Sirius had started smiling. “Yes, that’s what I thought too. Plus, that’s the house where my parents lived. It has a lot of bad memories. There’s even probably still a portrait of my mother there. Yuck.” Sirius gave a shudder. “I don’t even want to imagine how nasty she must be now, when she’s been left alone for years.”

Harry nodded. He hadn’t heard a lot about the Blacks, but anyone who made someone run away and live with their best friend had to be pretty bad. Like the Dursleys.

“But Narcissa did make me realize I’d inherited other things, too. Old books. Artifacts that could protect you. Properties that aren’t that house where we could go and be safe, if we had to.” Sirius hesitated. He seemed to be working himself up to something. Harry sat up. It had to be big, whatever it was. Sirius was pale, and he had sweat covering his forehead. 

And then suddenly Sirius swerved away from it. “So I brought her to the Yule Ball because I wanted her to see you just dancing and having a good time, and I wanted her professional opinion about how safe you would be. Whether I really had to take you away from this house and put us somewhere else. But she told me she didn’t get to see you very well or watch you for very long. So we’ll go and have a Christmas at the Manor, and then she can watch you better.”

That is not the real reason. He stinks of lies. Then again, he always stinks. 

I know he’s lying, Harry said, and he tried to reach out and get hold of Sirius’s hand, even though he was gesturing so nervously that Harry knew he wouldn’t exactly let Harry touch him. “Sirius? Can you please just tell me?”

“Tell you what?” Sirius blinked in a way he probably thought would make him look innocent. “I’m telling you. I want Narcissa to tell me whether she thinks we have to go elsewhere. There’s—lots of things going on, Harry. Some of it is just boring adult stuff having to do with the Black inheritance. But Narcissa’s been a mum a lot longer than I’ve been a guardian.” He gave Harry a huge smile. “I thought she would know whether I have to take you somewhere else to protect you.”

I could give him the diluted bite, Dash offered, and eased his head closer to Sirius’s leg under the table. He could do it so subtly that Sirius would never notice it coming, Harry knew. Then he could go to sleep, and when he woke up, I would do it again until he told you the truth.

Harry sighed. He wished it wasn’t so tempting. He stood up, and Dash unwound from his legs so that he could move. Sirius leaned back in his chair and watched him anxiously.

“I wish you would just tell me the truth,” Harry told him sadly. “It wouldn’t even have to be the whole truth, if that’s a problem. Just some of it.”

“I’ve told you what I can, Harry!”

And he sounds like he believes it, too, Dash commented, darting his tongue out once. The problem is, without knowing what even the shadow of the whole truth is, we can’t know whether we should believe him.

“Then think about it,” Harry said. “And tell me why you can’t tell me.”

Sirius sat there with his face locked into a picture of misery. Harry shook his head and started to walk out of the kitchen, with Dash flowing after him.

“I’m trying to save you from it!” Sirius blurted suddenly. “I mean, he said there was no way to save you from it, and maybe he’s right, but I at least wanted to try. And I think he’s wrong about the basilisk being a sign. You killed a basilisk in your second year! That would be a sign in the opposite direction, right? And if I can just figure out enough of the Black magic—my ancestors did crazy things, but they did just what they wanted—if I can—”

Suddenly he swayed and shut his eyes. He looked ill. Harry took a step back towards him, feeling dizzy. This was the closest he had ever been to getting Sirius to tell the truth, he knew it.

“Sirius?” Harry finally whispered, when the silence had gone on so long that he thought Sirius wasn’t going to speak again at all.

“I’m sorry,” Sirius whispered, his head turned away. “If I can save you, then it doesn’t matter if you know or not, I’ll just tell you afterwards. And if I can’t…” Sirius shuddered and put his hands over his face.

Dash thoughtfully measured the distance between Sirius’s calf and his fangs. Harry reached down and knotted his fingers around Dash’s neck, holding him still.

You are no fun.

“I would tell you if you could know,” Sirius whispered. “If it meant that someone else wouldn’t know.”

Harry opened his mouth to demand again what Sirius was talking about, but Sirius turned, and stood, and fled from the kitchen.

He is supposed to be an adult, Dash said in scorn, roiling around the kitchen for a second. Harry watched him flow against the bottom of the cupboards, and realized how large he’d grown. Why does he do this? Why do you allow him to do this?

Harry simply shrugged. He felt tired, worn-out. There was some big secret Sirius was hiding, but Harry didn’t know what it was, and he also didn’t know why Sirius couldn’t just tell him. 

“Come on. Let’s go to bed.”

We should look for a gift for Draco instead, Dash disagreed, although he climbed the stairs after Harry. You know he will be impossible if he doesn’t have a gift.

Oh, I thought of one already. 

You didn’t tell me what it was!

I need you to help me make it.

Dash caught the edge of the thought from his mind, and lifted himself high enough that he could nudge under Harry’s chin with his nose. You are the best human. I’m so glad you’re mine.

*

Draco only really relaxed when Harry and Black came through the Floo into the drawing room, and he saw the way Harry was smiling at him. He reached out with one hand, and Harry took it, clasping it strongly enough that his knuckles turned white.

Dash slithered through the flames after Harry. Draco blinked at him, even as he felt Conflagration wrap around his ankle. There was something he hadn’t wondered before. Of course, he didn’t know if he’d seen Harry Floo with Dash. “How can Dash follow you? He can’t say the name for the destination.”

Dash flicked his tongue out, and Harry’s face got a little distant. Then he blinked and glanced at Draco. “Apparently he can follow me anywhere, and it doesn’t matter if he can’t actually say the words.”

That was when Draco remembered seeing Dash slithering towards the garden at the Yule Ball before anyone else knew Harry was in danger. Maybe this resembled that. He didn’t know what a Parselmouth bond was like, and he didn’t think anyone but Harry could know what it was like to be bonded with a basilisk. 

“It’s good he could come,” said Draco, and then stared into Harry’s face the way he’d wanted to since they left each other three days earlier. “Are you—still okay with this?”

“With you liking me? Yeah.”

Harry’s smile was slow and uncertain, but Draco could understand why. Harry had wanted to know why Draco liked him. Not as a bloke, but just because he wanted to know why anyone liked him. Draco would have to go a little more slowly than he’d thought and explain a few more things. Some of it would be embarrassing.

But it was still him who got to do it, not someone else. That delighted Draco enough that he took Harry’s hand and tugged him further into the house. 

“You need to see the presents before everyone starts opening them,” he said. His parents were greeting Black. It was boring. Black might be okay with Mother, but he was making stiff, uncomfortable conversation with Father. Draco thought adults were stupid for spending so much time around people they didn’t like. He would just make sure that he only spent time with his friends when he grew up.

“Okay,” Harry agreed, and he went with Draco into the main dining room, where the enormous tree stood.

Harry looked as though someone had cast the Confundus Charm on him when he saw the towering tree. He tilted his head further and further back, and his mouth dropped further and further open. Draco grinned at him and looked at the tree himself, content to watch the blaze and shimmer of the lights and decorations on it.

The decorations were all different. Even the multiple glass balls that flashed the Black and Malfoy crests were all different colors, or they sometimes showed the crest and sometimes another image, or they were transparent or transparent with shiny opaque patches or they just shimmered like jewels. And the fairy lights flashed in different patterns. And there were little moving unicorns and dragons breathing small curls of flame and miniature prancing hippogriffs that Draco knew his mum had spent hours enchanting. 

“The presents? I don’t even see the presents, with the tree,” Harry said in a dazed way.

Draco smiled and gestured a little, although he had to take Harry’s chin and turn his face away from the tree in the end. There were all sorts of presents under the tree, but his parents had arranged them by the color of their paper and used minor enchantments on them as well. So there was what looked like a gleaming pile of Galleons, and another pile that was silver like Sickles, and a tumbling set of bronze Knuts. 

Harry didn’t say anything. Draco glanced at him, and was a little disturbed by the expression on his face. “Harry?”

“I only got you one gift,” Harry said softly. “I think it’s a good one. But when you have all the others…”

“It’ll be important to me because it’s yours.”

Harry turned to Draco as if he couldn’t believe that. Draco reached out and took Harry’s hand again, then punched him in the shoulder when that didn’t stop Harry from looking at him doubtfully. “I should be able to make my own decisions about presents, right?” he demanded.

Harry nodded, uncertainly. 

“Then when I say it’ll be important to me because it’s yours, you should believe me.”

It took a while, but Harry finally smiled. Then he nodded and stepped aside so Draco could walk into the dining room ahead of him. “After you, Your Majesty.”

“You’re a prat,” Draco said, but he was too thrilled to have Harry with him to really pursue the argument. And if he tried to watch and see where Harry put his gift…that wasn’t cheating. Not really.

But Dash got in the way, chasing Conflagration so that Draco had to watch them, and by the time he turned around again, Harry was already stepping away from the tree with empty hands and a smug smile.

Draco sighed. He would get to open it later, he knew. But he had wanted to shake it and hold it and at least have some chance of guessing what it was.

Maybe it was for the best, though. Harry didn’t get to do that with the thing Draco had got him. And Draco was already anticipating the expression on Harry’s face after the feast. This way, they would both get to see each other’s surprise at the same time.

Dash curled around Draco’s feet as they all went over to the dining room for the Christmas feast. Draco looked down at him in surprise. He knew Dash liked him, but he didn’t know what this was for.

Dash flicked a calm tongue against his hand, and then in the air, before he slithered over to Harry and positioned himself at his feet with an open mouth. Draco blinked. Dash could smell something on him that he liked?

Well. It’s for the best, as Mother would say. It’s always good for the giant basilisk of the boy you like to like you, too.

*

Lucius enjoyed the feast, and not only because there were dishes served here that had been served at every Malfoy feast during his life. He could remember his father nodding judiciously over the roasted goose. He could remember his mother hiding her smile when the elves added a little more cream to the scalded-cream-and-fruit pudding because Lucius had told them to.

But now, he also had the addition of two more interesting people to watch.

Black was interesting in his own warped way. He was more Black than he knew, Lucius thought, watching idly as he leaned over to speak to his godson with sparkling eyes and tried to find some way to prank the meal (impossible, when it appeared directly from the kitchens). Those moments were nothing next to the long stretches when he sat there with a melancholy face or laughed with a crazed edge to his voice.

Narcissa was the one who had chosen to cultivate him. She hadn’t told Lucius all the details yet. Lucius trusted her, and would let it go, but he doubted it would prove worth the time she had invested, in the end. 

Mr. Potter was by far the more interesting. And not just for the way Draco’s face lit up when he looked at him.

Lucius could have wished that his son had chosen a less…perilous partner. On the other hand, some of the things Lucius had learned in the past few months, as he maneuvered slowly among the Board of Governors and pieced together facts from news stories that would have meant nothing to anyone else, had told him that peril would come to his family in any case.

The Dark Lord had returned. But in a shadowy form, one that would not allow him to reach out except through followers for the time being. And he sought to return more strongly.

Lucius was also sure, from one of the letters that had reached him, that the Dark Lord’s insanity had not retreated.

Lucius shook his head, and turned it into an obedient munching his way through a huge salad when Narcissa gave him a look. He was not to allow his musings to disrupt holidays, any more than he would Ministry commitments. That had been one of Narcissa’s rules from the earliest days of their marriage.

Lucius had believed in and supported many of the Dark Lord’s ideals. But he had wanted to see those ideals achieved in a different way. If they had been able to take over the Ministry and the hearts of ordinary witches and wizards in the first war, well and good. But they had not.

And now things had not changed. The Dark Lord would still do what he had done in the past to “win over” other people, instead of what Lucius thought should be done.

Lucius eyed Harry Potter, who was currently dropping a tidbit of roasted goose into his snake’s mouth. At least he did it with some grace, and kept himself turned a little away from others, so that no one needed to watch who didn’t want to.

There was someone else, though, who had achieved a small measure of political power and a larger measure of popular fame already. Someone who Lucius thought might do things Lucius wanted out of simple moral outrage, not because he had a family to benefit and lift into power as Lucius had himself.

It was perhaps premature to assume that Harry Potter would ally himself with any larger political goals than simply surviving the war. But Lucius had made his decision that Potter was more likely to do that than the Dark Lord was to return to sanity.

And so Lucius had another quest to fill his waking hours, besides finding the right way to take revenge on Moody, talking the Board of Governors around to his own opinion concerning Dumbledore, and finding out who would stand with him when it came to Potter and his possible political career. He must also find a way to remove the Dark Mark from his arm.

Lucius never intended to be vulnerable again when the Dark Lord finally arose.

*

Harry settled back in a daze amid the paper, shaking his head. Mrs. Malfoy had got him all sorts of handsome clothes even though she barely knew him. Mr. Malfoy had bought him several books on politics, and one on legends and myths about basilisks. Sirius had bought him everything he could need to take care of his broom, and a few things that Harry thought were Black heirlooms: heavy rings, a protective bracelet of sorts, a silver snake with its tail in its mouth that supposedly a Parselmouth could persuade to unclasp.

Harry had got Sirius multiple gifts—including some of the new products that the twins were starting to sell for kids to prank people—but it was nothing compared to how much Sirius had given him. And he hadn’t thought of gifts for Draco’s parents at all, since he’d only known they were coming here for a few days. He hoped they wouldn’t be offended.

But he hadn’t received anything from Draco, at least not yet. He hoped that meant Draco’s gift would be just one gift, and then Harry wouldn’t feel so bad about only getting him one thing, too.

“Thank you,” Harry said now, eyes locked on his twisting hands. “I don’t have anything for you. I’m sorry.”

“Commendable honesty,” said Mrs. Malfoy, leaning back a little on the thin, spindle-backed chair she’d conjured. Harry didn’t know why anyone wanted to sit in a thing like that, but then, he supposed all that mattered for some people was the way things looked, instead of how comfortable they actually were. “But you had not expected this, Harry. Try to make a gift of what you are, rather than what you could bring someone.”

Harry stared at her. He didn’t really understand her, but he did know it seemed like a weird thing for a Malfoy to say to him.

“What my wife means,” Mr. Malfoy added, also looking unconcerned over the lack of presents, “is that you have the potential to be a powerful leader, and your friendship for Draco is a gift for us, as well. You don’t have to worry about not returning equal measure for equal measure. Learn to think in terms other than Galleons.”

“Er,” Harry said, and felt Dash, who was curling up amid the paper as if he thought it made a delightful nest, wrap his tail around Harry’s boot.

I’ll explain it to you in more detail later. Say thank you graciously right now.

“Thank you again,” Harry repeated, and glanced around for Draco. He’d left the room at some point while Harry was talking with his parents. It was only now that Harry saw him stagger back in, carrying some huge, strange-looking package.

Harry started to stand up, but Draco glared at him, and he sat down again. Draco put the package proudly in the middle of the room, and said, “All right. This is unique.”

Harry walked over to it, trying to figure out what it would be. It looked as if it had a few hoops, or huge rings, but also as if it was on a pedestal. Then again, with the gold paper in the way, he really couldn’t tell.

Dash helped him open it, by slashing the paper near the bottom with his fangs. Harry finally cleared it away enough to lift out a huge metal—thing.

It did have metal hoops, curling around each other in a spiral, resting beneath a sort of small desk made of wood. Above the desk was a mirror in an oval frame. Harry glanced at Draco. “Thank you. But—what is it?”

A thing for basilisks! said Dash excitedly. He seemed to know something Harry didn’t. Watch!

He reached out and flung his head and body over onto the hoops. Harry blinked and watched as he slithered easily up the hoops and onto the desk. It didn’t seem he could coil most of his body onto the small wooden platform, but then it shot out from the mirror and lengthened.

“I had the people who made it cast Strengthening Charms, too,” Draco added. “So no matter how big Dash grows, he can always rest there and not chance falling off.”

“Thank you,” Harry said softly, blinking. He watched as Dash leaned forwards to examine himself in the mirror. “And what’s that about?” He’d hardly thought someone would want to get a basilisk a mirror.

“The mirror is its own kind of Foe-Glass,” Draco said. “Dash can watch enemies who are just his enemies in the mirror. It’s separate from you. He’ll always know who wants to harm him, at least when they’re close.” Draco hesitated, then added, “When you get close to it, though, it’ll show your enemies. And there’s a drawer underneath the desk where you can store valuable things, which will only open if you’re the one to touch the handle. So it’s for both of you.”

I like it! Tell him thank you!

Harry had to smile. “Thank you,” he said, and leaned forwards to hug Draco. Then he turned and picked up the package he’d brought for Draco. While it had been under the tree, it had picked up the illusion the Malfoys must have cast to make everything look like coins, and it had been silver. But on its own, it was wrapped in the paper with small flying Snitches that Harry had picked out himself. “And this is for you.”

Draco seized the package and immediately ripped the paper apart. He paused when he got it open, though, mouth widening with awe, and turned the silver ring with a small dark green “stone” back and forth.

“Is this what I think it is?”

“I don’t know,” Harry said, deciding he could play dumb. “What did you think it was?”

Draco glared at him, and Harry gave in and smiled a little. “It’s one of Dash’s scales, set into a ring. If you wear the ring, then you’ll be protected against all kinds of poisons. I found out about the enchantment a while ago, but I needed to wait until I could get Dash to help me with it. And some time to work on it privately,” he added. That hadn’t been easy with the way everyone wanted to watch one of the Tournament Champions.

“Does that include Dash’s poison?”

“Yes. Even if he bites you.”

Draco grabbed Harry and hugged him so hard that Harry felt his neck start hurting. “Thank you, Harry.”

It apparently meant a lot to him that Harry was willing to protect him even against Dash. Harry couldn’t really understand why, but he went with it. At least Draco was happy.

From the way they smiled at him, so were the Malfoys. But in the bustle that followed, with the house-elves gathering up paper and Draco and his father talking about other traditions and Sirius looking around as though he wanted to prank people, Dash said, Mrs. Malfoy is peering at you.

Harry looked back at Mrs. Malfoy. She smoothed down her robes at once, stood, and glided out of the room. Harry turned around. Draco was still getting distracted by Mr. Malfoy—deliberately, Harry realized now.

And Sirius was just as deliberately keeping his head turned away.

Harry swallowed and squared his shoulders. He had come here hoping to find out more about what Mrs. Malfoy wanted with Sirius. He could hardly blame her for taking the chance to speak to him.

He followed, Dash a flowing tide of comfort around his feet. 

Chapter 57: A Talk with Narcissa

Chapter Text

“Will you be comfortable here, Mr. Potter?”

“Yes, Mrs. Malfoy.” Harry sat down cautiously on a chair in the exact center of the room. It was so white that he could barely see the golden flowers on it. He worried his robes would get it dirty. He’d put on wizarding robes to come over here, but not dress robes or anything.

Mrs. Malfoy took a chair in front of him. There were only two chairs here, which Harry didn’t understand. The room was huge, with a white carpet on the floor that looked like fallen snow. There were no bookshelves, no tables, no pictures, no anything. What did you do with this sort of room?

But Harry didn’t have time to worry about that for very long, because Dash was grumbling in the back of his head about how uncomfortable it was to twine around the chair, and Mrs. Malfoy leaned forwards and said softly, “I have been talking with Cousin Sirius about ways to free you.”

“From what?”

Dash went still, and Harry heard and felt him dart his tongue out. She smells complicated.

“From the fate that hangs over you.” For a moment, Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes went to the scar on Harry’s forehead. “Cousin Sirius has kept the truth concealed from you because he believes that if you knew, the Dark Lord would know.”

Harry tried to breathe through the sick clog in his throat, but it was hard. “He thinks I want—he thinks I would just betray all of you?”

Mrs. Malfoy shook her head a little. “He thinks you have a connection to the Dark Lord through your scar. If you knew all the truth, then the Dark Lord might dream of it. Or perhaps simply pluck it from your head. The Dark Lord is an accomplished Legilimens.”

“I’m learning Occlumency.” Harry kept trying to breathe. Dash wrapped a coil around his foot and squeezed a little. Let the air flow wherever it can.

“Cousin Sirius thinks that will not be enough. He also does not trust Professor Snape to do right by you.”

“He will.”

“After watching the way the professor looked at you the night of the Yule Ball, when he heard you were in danger, I also trust that he will,” Mrs. Malfoy agreed calmly. “But Cousin Sirius’s enmity for Professor Snape is not rational.” She spent a moment to smooth down her pale robes. “In the meantime, I think we can tell you most of the truth. That ‘most’ is the only truth I know myself,” she added, as Harry opened his mouth. “I think Cousin Sirius is holding something back from me, but I have not been able to wring it from him so far. I think I might, if I keep at it a while longer.”

“Okay.”

Harry tried not to feel faint or weak. At least someone was offering to tell him part of the truth. That was more than he’d got from Sirius.

“I trust you know of the fate you have?”

“I don’t know. I mean, people think I can defeat Voldemort if he comes back again, but I don’t know how or why.”

“My son tells me that you have faced him twice already.”

“Sort of. I mean, once it was his spirit possessing Professor Quirrell. And once it was a piece of his spirit that had been trapped in a diary.” Harry had his breath back now. He looked at her. “That Mr. Malfoy gave Ginny.”

“Ginny?” Mrs. Malfoy asked for a moment, before she made a soft pass with one hand. “Oh. Weasley.” Harry scowled, because of the way she sounded, but Mrs. Malfoy was already talking again. “Those come close enough to ‘true’ defeats for me, Mr. Potter. But I was referring specifically to the prophecy.”

“Oh, yes. I know about that.” Harry felt a little annoyed. Sirius was acting like this because of something he’d already told Harry?

Something false he told you.

Harry stroked down Dash’s neck. Since Dash had divined that Sirius was lying about the prophecy when he’d first told Harry about it, he had decided he disbelieved in the whole thing. “I know about it,” he repeated, because Mrs. Malfoy was looking at him intently. “I don’t know why he would need you to help him with it. Isn’t it something I have to fulfill on my own if it’s real?”

“There used to be,” said Mrs. Malfoy calmly, “an art that was the opposite of Divination. It existed to make the future foggier, or if you will, restore free will to the world.”

Harry thought immediately of the book he used for Divination, Unfogging the Future. He supposed it made sense that an opposite to that could exist. “So people thought it was better not to know about prophecies?”

Mrs. Malfoy smiled a little. “Not to ignore them. To stop them from controlling us.”

“But—how?” The only thing Harry could think of off the top of his head was that Sirius wanted to face Voldemort and kill him instead, and he honestly didn’t think that would work. Sirius hadn’t been born at the end of July or had parents who had defied Voldemort three times. Probably the other way around, from the little Sirius had told Harry about his family.

Mrs. Malfoy leaned forwards. Harry blinked at her. He suddenly thought she looked like Dash when he was stalking prey.

That is part of her scent. She smells excited. Tense.

“To break them,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered. “The art was called Breaking when it needed a formal name. To shatter prophecies, snap them. To disrupt the patterns of fate that loomed over the world and thought they could control humans.”

Harry gaped at her a little. Then he found his voice and said something he maybe shouldn’t have said. “You really want to do this. You don’t like prophecies?”

Mrs. Malfoy’s hand fisted in her robes for a second. Now she smells angry, Dash added helpfully.

Mrs. Malfoy let go of her robes, though, and shook her head. “I fear the implications of this particular prophecy. I had hoped the Dark Lord defeated forever, but if he returns, then the world he would create is not one I want my son to live in.” Her voice was low, but her eyes burned. “My son would never achieve the position he desires and deserves in such a world. He would always be second best.”

Harry relaxed. He actually trusted that more than he did the things Mr. Malfoy had sometimes told him. At least he knew it wasn’t because Mrs. Malfoy really liked him or was trying to love him the way Sirius tried to do. “All right. So you want to help me defeat him.”

“No. I want the prophecy broken. I want the Dark Lord dead, but by someone else’s hand.” Mrs. Malfoy paused for a delicate moment. “If you will permit me the liberty, Mr. Potter, I will say that I do not think you able to carry the burden. You are an extraordinary young man, but from what Draco tells me, you survived in part by chance and luck.”

“Yes.”

“That is not good enough. A fully-trained adult wizard should face the Dark Lord, or an army of them. Not a teenager.”

Harry nodded and blinked. He had thought he would feel upset. Or maybe he would have if someone had just told him what Mrs. Malfoy thought, instead of her saying it herself.

But hearing it this way, he could see the sense. Honestly, he would rather not fight Voldemort. He would do it because Voldemort had killed his parents and was trying to kill him, and because he would probably try to kill Harry’s friends, too. If Voldemort won, then Hermione would die just because of who her parents were. Draco would probably live, but Harry didn’t think Ron and his family would. Professor Snape might live because he was a Death Eater, but he would never live the way he wanted to. 

Dash would die. Because he was bonded to Harry, and Voldemort would never let the basilisk who had battled and injured his snake live.

“Okay. I agree with you,” Harry said. “But why does Sirius think he has to keep this from me? Just because Voldemort would hear it through the scar?”

“The Dark Lord does not know the full prophecy, as far as we know. He might target you even harder if he did.”

“But Sirius already told me the full prophecy.”

Mrs. Malfoy paused. Then she murmured, “He did not tell me that.”

Harry just shrugged, not knowing what to say. Sometimes he thought Sirius mixed up what was really happening with his memories of Azkaban and dreams of the Dementors. On the other hand, maybe he shouldn’t be trusted by anyone else, if that was true.

“I will be having a small talk with Cousin Sirius.” Mrs. Malfoy was staring off into space and murmuring the words to herself, but Harry winced from the savage flash of her eyes. “He cannot expect help if he conceals priceless pieces of information.”

“I know.”

Mrs. Malfoy paused, then gave Harry a small smile. “It occurs to me that you do. And you speak from experience with Cousin Sirius.”

She sighed, and her gaze focused on the wall behind Harry, although when Dash turned and looked, he told Harry there was nothing there. “Some of the early Blacks were Breakers. I have been working my way through their books and artifacts with Cousin Sirius, trying to find ways to snap prophecies in general. It has been…difficult. Many of the Breakers died practicing their art, and so they did not leave records of whether their specific plans had worked.” She passed a hand briefly over her face. “Others talked in riddles because they feared what would happen if their work was found.”

“Some people want fate to succeed?”

Mrs. Malfoy took her hand away and looked at Harry in surprise. “Of course. The number of people targeted by prophecies is relatively small, and often those prophecies promise safety to many in exchange for suffering by a few. I would say that the prophecy concerning you and the Dark Lord falls into that category.”

Harry gave a little shiver. “I don’t think many people are really that cowardly or selfish, Mrs. Malfoy.”

That is something where you do not speak from experience. Do you remember the way that people turned on you in your second year, Mr. Potter, when they thought you might not be the perfect savior they fancied they had?”

“But, I mean—they didn’t know about the prophecy. They were doing that because people were being petrified. Because of Mr. Malfoy,” Harry thought he had to add.

A wave of Mrs. Malfoy’s hand acknowledged that. “But you cannot argue with me that many people are well-pleased if prophecies happen to work out, as long as they do not involve them.”

“I don’t know. I haven’t studied prophecies.”

“Even in Divination?”

Harry shrugged. “Mrs. Malfoy, Professor Trelawney doesn’t do that kind of thing. Draco probably told you.” He leaned forwards. “So you’re looking for some way to get me free of the prophecy, and you haven’t found anything else yet.”

“That is so.” Mrs. Malfoy frowned at him as if she thought he should be taking this more seriously.

“All right. But what did Sirius mean when he said that he brought you to the Yule Ball for your professional opinion?”

Mrs. Malfoy hesitated once. Harry sat there and waited. She would have to realize sooner or later that she couldn’t reveal this much to him and then expect him to trust her if she started lying. And Harry thought concealing the truth at this point was lying.

“He asked me to look at you and tell him whether I thought you had the strength to survive one of the rituals that we had found. Cousin Sirius is growing desperate. I think he thinks that we must break the prophecy before your next confrontation with the Dark Lord. But the ritual is scarcely survivable.”

“So he doesn’t care if I live or die?”

“Cousin Sirius loves you desperately,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered, as if imparting a great secret. “That is precisely the reason he might go off on his own with half-baked plans and do something equally desperate in the name of saving you. And—he told me once, and I think it is the closest he has come to divulging the secret he still carries—that death in the name of freedom was better than what might happen to you.”

Harry shook his head a little. Dash was already rearing up, hissing so hard that Harry thought Mrs. Malfoy might almost understand the Parseltongue. I knew I could not trust the smelly dog-man. And I’m not sure I trust her, either. She agreed to come along and do this looking.

“Why did he think you could tell him whether I would survive the ritual?”

“There are a number of spells traditionally passed down among the women in the Black family, rather than the men. Among them are ones that monitor the health of a child. A child in this case being anyone under seventeen years of age, Mr. Potter,” she added, when Harry opened his mouth to say something.

Harry closed his mouth and nodded grudgingly, although mostly because Dash had said in his head, I think we should hear what she has to say.

“A very small and specific subset of them tests a child’s health when it comes to magic. They can detect magical exhaustion, show whether a child has been taking too much of certain potions, detect allergies to common potions ingredients before they manifest, and so much.” Mrs. Malfoy exhaled slowly. “I detected extreme magical prowess in you, and also exhaustion, Mr. Potter. Would you like to reveal why to me?”

Harry blinked. “I don’t feel exhausted.”

Mrs. Malfoy looked through him in a way that made Harry blush. He wondered if she looked at Draco this way, and if it explained why Draco might sometimes be terrified of his mother.

“I don’t. I’d been dealing with the stupid politics of taking someone to the Yule Ball. And I’ve been preparing for the Tournament, and doing research for that. And I practice Occlumency and Legilimency with Professor Snape.” Harry racked his brain for some other way he might have got exhausted, and honestly couldn’t think of anything. “Other than that, it’s just ordinary class things.”

“Hmmm. Then it may be that you are putting too much power behind your spells, doing with two hands what you could accomplish with the equivalent of one.”

Harry squirmed. It seemed to him they were getting too far away from the topic of rituals and breaking and so on. “What did you tell Sirius?”

“There was no way you could survive a ritual of the type we had discovered. I daresay most children could not. It is the kind best used when someone is no longer spending so much time growing their body and one can know that the magic is mostly mature, as well.”

“What does the ritual involve?”

“Silver knives placed throughout the body.”

“Throughout…” Harry let his voice trail off as he tried to envision exactly what that would mean.

Something I would not let happen to you.

“When the silver knives are in place,” Mrs. Malfoy continued, her voice pitiless, “then the adults conducting the ritual hold the child still and collect the blood spilling from his wounds. They have to cast spells on the blood to keep it fresh all night, but also change it so that it is essentially another person’s. Then they feed it back into his body and draw the knives out. It is not a pleasant experience.”

“No shit,” Harry breathed, and then clapped his hand over his mouth.

Mrs. Malfoy only gave him a mild amused look, instead of scolding him for language the way Snape would have. “Please do not confuse the issue in your mind, Mr. Potter. Cousin Sirius was indeed willing to use this on you, but only to save your life. He would never have suggested it if we had any better candidate for a ritual that would work.”

Why would it work?”

“The most common way of cheating a prophecy is to change it so that one of the conditions no longer applies. By changing you into a different person, which transforming the blood and feeding it back into you would qualify as, then the prophecy might break.”

“Might. Might.”

“I did say that Breaking was a mysterious art.” Mrs. Malfoy spread her hands. “As I said, many children could not survive that ritual. Breaking was most often practiced on adults, anyway.” She cocked her head, suddenly as alert as a hawk. “One thing I often wonder is why Dumbledore did not take you somewhere else and rear you in secret, training you, until you became an adult and would have more chance of facing the Dark Lord on an equal footing.”

Harry didn’t wonder that. “I don’t know for sure, but Professor Dumbledore said something once about how our choices make us who we are. I chose not to go into Slytherin when I had the chance and the Hat said I would do well there. That was part of what made me a true Gryffindor.”

Mrs. Malfoy gave Dash a quiet little glance.

“That was before I had Dash. I mean, I killed the last basilisk I saw before him.” Harry reached down and petted Dash’s plume just to let him know he wouldn’t do it to him. The tickle of Dash’s tongue against his palm was amused. “Fawkes—Dumbledore’s phoenix—came and dropped the Sorting Hat on my head. Then I got the Sword of Gryffindor and used that to stab the basilisk.”

“Hmmm. And he must have assumed if you were hidden away and trained, rather than reared in the Muggle world and then expected to face the Dark Lord with no training, you would not make your own choices? The future would have been chosen for you?”

Harry felt like he was going to die from his blush. That sounded stupid and not as convincing as it had been when he’d come up with the answer. “I mean—I think so. I suppose I’m not sure.”

“No, I fear you are right.” Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes caught on fire again. “What Dumbledore fails to realize is that you can have no true choice when the prophecy forecloses every path of action for you, and you are turned again and again to face the Dark Lord.”

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it with a little click, and only spoke when he thought for sure he did understand about her. “You’re really serious about this.”

“Yes. If Breaking were still more widely-practiced, that is what I would be.” Mrs. Malfoy gave Harry a faint smile. “I will continue to help Cousin Sirius conduct research among the Black legacy, which I can only gain access to through him, as he is the legal heir. But I think it is time to turn my attention to the Department of Mysteries.”

“Department of Mysteries?”

“The Unspeakables, in the Ministry. They study spells, artifacts, and other—well, mysteries—they cannot tell the wider public about. It is known, however, that one of their most common subjects is prophecies.”

Harry nodded slowly. That made sense. “Are you going to tell Sirius about that?”

“In moderated form. On the one hand, there has been enough hiding of tactics that can only serve us if we know about them. On the other hand, he has not shared enough with me for me to trust him.”

Harry nodded again, sadly. He knew what that was like. And Dash would have reminded him if he didn’t.

He had one more question to ask, though, and he hoped like hell that Mrs. Malfoy would tell him the truth. “Why do you care so much? I mean, about me? You could care about breaking prophecies in general, but why do you want to break this one so badly?”

This time, Mrs. Malfoy sat still as if thinking about her answer. Then she nodded, stood, and crossed the small space that separated them, putting a hand on his shoulder. Harry leaned back so he could see her whole face.

“Because my son has chosen you. From the way he talked about you in his letters and last summer, I knew you were his dear friend before he decided that he liked you in a more intimate fashion. And I will see my son happy. Neither the possible world that might come about if you fail to defeat the Dark Lord nor the loss of his best friend is acceptable.”

Harry swallowed through what felt like a bunch of needles pressed against his throat. He managed to lift a hand and touch Mrs. Malfoy’s. She smiled back at him and looked down at Dash, who had slithered out from under the chair to gaze up at her.

“There is one favor I’d like to ask, Mr. Potter. I understand that the harm you came to on the night of the Yule Ball was no fault of yours. But do try to refrain from rushing into harm that you can avoid. I’ve invested enough research and time in you by now to feel annoyed about it being for nothing.”

Harry gave her a shy smile. “Of course. Dash wants me to stay out of trouble, anyway. Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy.”

She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. It was a fleeting kiss that made Harry close his eyes. He couldn’t remember if his mother had ever kissed him like that, but he liked to imagine she did.

“Thank you, Harry, for being a best friend to my son. And maybe more than that.”

Hearing the curious tone in her voice, Harry opened his eyes. He wondered if Draco hadn’t told her. It seemed strange he would keep something like that concealed, but on the other hand, Harry had seen Mrs. Malfoy’s scary side.

“Maybe more,” he echoed. It was the only safe thing he could say at the moment.

Mrs. Malfoy gave him a little smile, nodded, and swept out of the room. Harry followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight, and then sighed and glanced down at Dash.

You think she’s telling the truth.

I know she is. Unless she’s come up with some way to fool my sense of smell. Dash climbed slowly up Harry’s leg, taking pleasure, it seemed, in threading his coils one by one until he was fully in Harry’s lap and almost drowning Harry in scales on his skin and warmth in his mind. He leaned his head on Harry’s chest. Harry stroked his plume. And humans can’t really do that. They don’t know what they smell like, so they don’t know what to conceal.

Harry half-sighed and changed the subject. Do you think Professor Snape is going to like the Christmas gift I got him?

Unless he is a complete git—ah, no, that would be the smelly dog-man. Dash drew back from him and lifted his head solemnly until Harry could see his hidden eyes, glowing like lamps. And I like the one he promised to me.

Harry blinked. He had never thought Snape would get Dash a Christmas gift on his own, without going through Harry. How would he even know what Dash wanted? What do you mean?

He is brewing a potion that will give me back my poison.

Harry sat there and thought about it. He wanted to say that Dumbledore would scream at them if he found out about it, but of course that was true anyway, and Dash wouldn’t think it was important. 

Dumbledore is already angry at us, Harry finally pointed out. Is that the kind of thing you want to risk?

I never want to risk your death again. And for some reason, my gaze does not work on Voldemort’s snake. My venom might. I will not chance you dying.

Harry asked one question that had never occurred to him before, even though it was like pushing through poison of his own to ask. What would you do if I died, Dash? Would you leave and make sure that you were safe?

I would seek out the person who killed you and kill them. Then I would kill everyone who depended on them or looked up to them or who they cared about. And their animals. And I would set the shadow-snakes around their house or property to bite anyone who came in. And then I would follow you.

Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t know what he had to say to convince Dash not to do that, so he went for the next best thing. You know I wouldn’t want you to kill other people. Not even the one who killed me, if my death was an accident.

Dash’s tongue darted out and smoothed over the skin of his cheek, up and down, as though he was tracing a pattern only he knew. I know that. But I also think you are very unlikely to die as the result of an accident. And I will punish any deliberate murder that way.

Why, though? I mean, I’d be dead. It would be too late for me to feel better about it or use the deaths as a warning to other people.

Because that is what basilisks do. Dash paused a moment, and then said, in a gentle voice Harry had never heard from him, I’m not human, Harry. I know it can seem that way because I have a sense of humor and I can read and understand English because of my bond to your mind, but I’m not. Don’t die. Because I won’t have any connection to the human world then.

Harry simply held Dash, and said nothing. They stayed there until Draco bounced into the room looking for them, and talking about going out onto the Quidditch pitch. Then Dash flowed down, and Harry was happy to follow Draco and climb onto a broom.

Dash watched them from the ground, his neck turning back and forth. Harry looked down at him, and wondered whether he should feel worse than he did.

Because he did feel a little prickle of fear at the thought that his death could mean the deaths of so many other people. 

But he also felt—the only way he could describe it was warm—that someone would care that much about him to want to avenge him.

Chapter 58: Snape's Christmas Gift

Chapter Text

Severus spent a long moment standing on the far end of Privet Drive before he ventured down it. When he did, he moved with brisk steps, and resisted the temptation to hold his nose.

Number Four looked especially quiet in the weak winter sunshine. Severus looked at the trampled frost in the garden and shook his head. It was hard to imagine that Harry had labored here for most of his life.

He touched the letter in his pocket one more time and then walked up to the front door and knocked as briskly as he’d walked.

Petunia opened it and motioned him inside without speaking. Severus entered, not taking care of any noise he made. He had already arranged to meet with Petunia when her husband and son were out of the house. It had been one of many conditions Petunia had laid down for receiving him.

Another had been that they only talk about Harry and nothing else. Severus was more than willing to do that, actually. He didn’t think she could make him angry as long as he clung to his purpose, but stray off that subject and it was too easy to remember some of the spells he had rejoiced in casting as a Death Eater.

Petunia didn’t offer him tea, of course. She sat down at her kitchen table and stared at him with so much loathing that Severus checked in sitting across from her. Then he shook his head and did it anyway.

This was for Harry. And for Lily, more distantly. He would take risks for them that he would not have taken for the protection of his own interests.

“Petunia,” he said. “What description would you give of your nephew, if someone asked you to describe him?”

The woman stared at him. Severus had told her very little in his letter, other than that he had wanted her to verify what she had already told him when he wrote to her once before. She would have been unaware of the fuss that had broken out in the wizarding world when Harry had revealed his abuse.

Severus had wished at the time that there was some way they could make the Dursleys pay. But for now, their very distance from the wizarding world would serve.

Petunia sniffed and responded, “I would say that he’s a stubborn boy. Freakish. Ungrateful. We gave him a purpose in life, food, clothing, and a roof over his head. And all he ever did was be difficult.”

Severus didn’t lash out at her. He had been at Death Eater meetings that tried his patience more severely than this, he reminded himself. He had had to do things that disgusted him more than appear to agree with Petunia’s opinion of Harry.

Although those memories were years old, and he had not realized how thin his self-control had worn in the meantime.

“And what kind of person would you say he needs to take care of him?”

Again a sniff. Petunia appeared unable to speak of Harry without that little gesture. Severus told himself that the purpose of this visit was a memory he could show to the Wizengamot, and not personal vengeance. He held still.

“Someone who can be firm. The boy needs discipline. He needs to realize what people are giving up to spoil him, and show gratitude for what he has.”

“Someone,” said Severus, and hoped that his voice sounded neutral and not like he was fishing for an answer, “who is stable, correct? Not someone who has so many problems of his own that he can’t look after Harry because he’s still wrestling with mistakes from the past?”

Petunia did her part better than Severus could have believed she would, crossing her hands on the table and nodding emphatically. “Someone who’s normal. Someone who has all the time in the world for the boy, to tell him the truth and make disciplining Harry the center of his life. Not someone who even has other children, because he would want to spend too much time on them and not enough with Harry.”

Disregarding the part about other children, which would not serve his interests, Severus thought the conversation had gone well. He nodded. “That’s all I wanted to know, Petunia.” He stood.

“Why do you even care?” Petunia asked suddenly. “You know as well as I do that my sister never loved you the way you wanted.”

Severus studied her. This would not be part of the memory he would show the Wizengamot, of course, but cutting off a memory early was not unusual. “And that means I must hate her son.”

Petunia had a very peculiar expression. Severus thought she might be trying to smile. It was disturbing, especially as he thought her face better formed for sneers. “We both know it means you do. Harry mentioned a few things to me about his hated Potions professor in the summers before you took him away.” She folded her arms and tried to match Severus stare for stare, but ended up dropping her eyes back to the table after a few seconds. “You should have felt the same way towards him that we did. Why in the world are you trying to get him adopted? Arguing he should have a stable home?” She rolled her eyes and scoffed. “It isn’t like the boy you were, or the man you’ve become.”

“I was unfair to Harry,” Severus said. He kept all emotion out of his voice. “I gave him poor marks and assigned him detentions when he did not deserve them. I compared him to his father when he can’t remember the man. I assumed his fame had gone to his head when there was no sign it had.” He held back from saying anymore. There was no need for Petunia to know about the prophecy and the part Severus had played in Harry’s fate there.

Petunia nodded eagerly. “Then you know what he’s like. How hard it is not to see Lily in his face and—”

“But I never starved him,” Severus said, and his voice lowered a little. He couldn’t help it. He hadn’t come here intending to threaten Petunia. On the other hand, he had got what he wanted from her. “I never said I might beat him. I never locked him in a cupboard. I never made him wear ragged clothes. I never told him he was a waste of space, a freak, who had to be grateful for the way I treated him. My hatred was honest, not dressed up in a mockery of family love.”

The speed with which color left Petunia’s face might have been funny if Severus was in a different mood. She reached out with one faltering hand and groped towards the wall, as if she would get up and flee the room.

“And there lies the biggest difference between you and me, Petunia,” said Severus, and moved a step forwards. There were curses he wanted to use, but on the other hand, they wouldn’t be satisfying vengeance. They would just allow Petunia to go on feeling she had been mistreated by the wizarding world and she need never think anything else.

Let the words echo in her mind, instead. Let her think about them until they drive her mad.

“I apologized,” Severus whispered. His own voice sounded soft to him, barely audible above the drumming of his blood. “I learned to separate the boy from the parents and make arrangements for him that would go some way towards making up for what I had done. I did not allow my hatred for what his father did to me to twist me forever.”

“You don’t know what it’s like! What he is!” Petunia’s voice rose up in a gabbled shriek. “What he did to our Dudders, what—”

“What you said today is going to help him have a better home,” Severus interrupted her. He mustered his most pleasant smile, knowing this would probably torment Petunia more than anything else. “Harry is rich, by the way. He has an inheritance from his parents that makes him among the wealthiest of the people in our world. In hisworld. And now he’s going to be with someone stable, someone who can focus on him.” He bowed to her mockingly and turned to the door.

For a minute, hearing the wild rush of her footsteps behind him, Severus really did think she was going to attack him. But she didn’t. She halted in what was probably the kitchen doorway and screamed after him.

“You don’t know what you’re dealing with! You have no idea how horrible he is! You think—you think that you’re dealing with a normal boy, but he isn’t! Not even for a wizard!”

Severus laughed without looking back. “If he was a perfectly normal boy he would never have accepted my effort to make peace with him. Perhaps I should thank you for that much, Petunia. He is so grateful for any adult’s kindness that he gave me a second chance.”

“He’s a freak, and you’ll be sorry—”

Severus spun and lifted his wand. He had come to the limits of his endurance. 

Adoleo linguam ‘freak,’” he said clearly, and watched Petunia clutch at her mouth. She would have felt the first tingle of the spell, then.

Well, tingle. From what Severus could remember when he’d had that spell cast on him, it felt more like one’s whole tongue had just been dipped in boiling water.

“Whenever you say that word again,” Severus said softly, “your tongue is going to feel like that. Only worse. The spell is cumulative, you see, Tuney. This pain will pile on top of the next pain. Which piles on top of the next one. I wouldn’t be surprised, if you persist in saying that word, when you end up unable to talk at all. Your mouth is going to be irrevocably damaged.’

He smiled at her, and it was his Death Eater smile. Petunia stared at him, her eyes widening more and more, and then she turned and fled, weeping. 

Severus bowed to her back and left, pulling his cloak close around him. Minerva had worked and worked, and her allies on the Board of Governors had finally secured Severus an audience with the Wizengamot for that morning. 

Severus had Petunia’s original letter when he had first written to her to confirm her abuse. And now he had the memory of their conversation, making it seem as if even one of the people who had treated Harry most horribly agreed that he needed a secure home, a stable one.

With someone who had no other preoccupations. With someone who hadn’t spent twelve years in Azkaban.

You realize that Harry will be upset.

Severus nodded when his conscience spoke in Albus’s voice. He had realized that, and he had gone ahead and done this anyway. Black’s behavior when it came to treating Harry like a prize in a personal game he was playing with Severus, and whatever game he was playing with Narcissa Malfoy, and the way that he had encouraged Harry into the Tournament, was inexcusable.

Besides, Severus was sure he would have at least one ally in calming Harry down, one currently twelve feet long and scaled. 

Spinning on his heel, Severus Apparated.

*

“Harry, there’s someone here to see you.”

Sirius’s voice sounded strained. Curious, Harry put down the owl he’d received from Snape and went to see who it was.

He’d sent Snape a golden cauldron, which was probably kind of generic and stupid, but Hermione had said that brewers could always use more golden cauldrons, since there were some potions that not only needed them but could leave stains on them that would make them useless. And it was expensive, but Harry felt like he had to use his money for something.

The owl he had got in return said, Dear Harry, you almost shame me. Thank you for the gift. I hope the one I give you is as well-received.

But no package had come with the owl, and when Harry questioned Dash about whether Snape had told him where and what Harry’s gift was, Dash claimed ignorance. 

This time, he flowed after Harry as he charged down the stairs. I think this is Snape. The smelly dog-man would not sound so strained about anyone else.

Maybe that was the truth, Harry didn’t know. But he did know that when he came into the drawing room he could see the strain right away. Sirius sat bolt upright on the couch, staring at the wall. He gave a sob even as Harry watched and buried his face in his hands.

“Sirius?” Harry whispered, taking a hesitant step towards him. Since his conversation with Mrs. Malfoy on Christmas day, Harry had tried to be a little gentler around Sirius. He might not have the best ideas, but he loved Harry. Loved him desperately. That was what Harry wanted most.

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry jumped and turned. Yes, Snape’s face was in the fire. Harry blinked at him in turn. The only thing he couldn’t understand was why Sirius seemed even this calm, instead of on his feet and yelling at Snape.

“I hope,” said Snape, after a beat of silence, “that you can quickly pack most of your effects? I thought you might spend the rest of your holidays at Hogwarts. My home is small and in a Muggle area. Hardly the sort of thing you would want for a proper celebration of New Year’s.”

“Sir?” Harry whispered. He was swaying a little with dread, but Dash wrapped around his legs and propped his head on Harry’s hip.

“I have applied to the Wizengamot for custody of you, Harry.” Professor Snape looked as though nothing in the world mattered except holding Harry’s gaze. “They agreed that you should be with someone who is more stable than Black and has your best interests in mind.”

Harry grabbed hold of the couch arm. The first words that came to mind spilled from his lips. “But if they think Sirius is unsuitable, why did they give me to you?”

Snape didn’t look like he was hurt. He just kept watching Harry. “They saw certain memories I showed them,” he said. “Of the attack in the gardens on Yule, for example.”

“That wasn’t Sirius’s fault!”

“But the way he behaved while you were unconscious was.” Snape’s face was stone as he glanced at Sirius, then carefully away. “While we waited in hospital, he kept talking about going and finding who had done it, when he wasn’t accusing me of arranging it. He also told me that I had to let the Healers treat you and that he wouldn’t let me use my potions even if it turned out that the Healers’ stocks were insufficient to cope with the venom. At least that way, if you suffered, you would be ‘free of me.’”

Harry turned to look at Sirius, then back to Snape. He didn’t know what he wanted to say. He didn’t know what he could say, except that his head hurt and there was blackness crowding his vision and the only solid point in the whole swirling mess seemed to be Dash, whose head still rested against his hip.

Harry put his hand down heavily on Dash’s head. Dash watched him, patiently. Harry asked, Are you hurt? 

By the pressure you’re putting on my head? No. And I think this is for the best. You know that.

They still could have told me.

That, I agree with.

Harry raised his head and muttered, “You could have told me. You could have bloody told me.”

Snape didn’t scold him for language as Harry had thought he would. He only nodded and said, “Yes, I should have. I’m sorry. I thought you would be too resistant to listen, or I would have at least told you about having an audience with the Wizengamot.”

“I can’t believe—they gave Sirius custody because he was named my godfather before my parents died.” Harry thought he had a hold now on the swirling blackness and could fight it off enough to stay on his feet. “Someone must have opposed you taking charge of me, right? I mean, if only because you have the Dark Mark?”

“He does,” Sirius whispered, although his voice sounded crushed. “You won’t survive a fortnight with him.”

Harry reached back and held Sirius’s arm, ignoring the way it made Snape’s eyes flare. Snape could put up with it for a little while. “How? And didn’t Dumbledore oppose you—taking me?” He had no idea how he should refer to it. Adopting him? Stealing him?

“Dumbledore had other matters to take care of,” said Snape, and there was satisfaction in his voice that he didn’t bother concealing from Harry. “His behavior in the last month has been erratic in a deeply disturbing way. The Wizengamot did try to call him for the audience, but they could not find him.”

Harry blinked. It made him remember his suspicions about Dumbledore’s strange behavior in allowing him into the Tournament, and who exactly hid behind Professor Moody’s face.

But he couldn’t care about that right now. He had a different sort of battle to fight. “Mrs. Malfoy explained some things to me, Professor Snape. They mean Sirius’s behavior makes more sense. He does love me, and he’s fighting to help me.”

Sirius gave Harry a melting look. Dash gave him a rattling hiss of disapproval. Harry ignored that. Dash was always overly ready to take Snape’s side against Sirius.

“Narcissa has spoken to me as well, Mr. Potter. I am more horrified than reassured by Mr. Black’s insane attempt to find some ritual that might free you from some unknown evil, at the price only of your life.”

Harry turned around, his mouth gaping a little. “But she can’t have done.” Mrs. Malfoy had told Harry she was going along with Sirius because he was the only one who could access the Black inheritance. Why would she just change her mind about that in a few days?

“You don’t understand anything about it, Snape!” Those words had finally made Sirius lunge to his feet, and now he snarled like the dog he could turn into. “I was trying tosave Harry!”

“From what, Black?”

Sirius’s eyes immediately turned haunted, and he shook his head a little. “I can’t tell you that,” he whispered, his eyes going back to Harry. Actually, Harry wasn’t sure if he was looking at him or Dash. “For excellent reasons.”

“Perhaps you could tell me, then. I did give you the chance, before you told Harry he should come downstairs.”

Sirius sat down on the couch and closed his eyes again. Harry stood there, staring at him and trying to control the temptation to pant. He wanted to reach out, but Dash had twined the upper part of his body around Harry’s wrist, holding it still.

“As you can see,” Snape said in a voice so calm and reasonable that Harry turned to look at him despite himself, “I gave Black his chance. Professor McGonagall and several Wizengamot members spoke up for me, which is why I have custody. You will be safer in my quarters, Harry. I know a number of Monitoring Charms that will protect you no matter where you go in the school. And if I think you should not participate in a Tournament Task, I will remove you without apology.”

“I have to compete in the Tournament, though,” Harry pointed out. His lips were numb. His brain was scrambling. “If I drop out, that leaves Hogwarts without a Champion.”

Snape tilted his head a little, making Harry look more fully at him. His eyes blazed. “You are worth more than any Championship could be.”

Harry closed his eyes. They hurt. He knew why. Those were the kinds of words he had waited so long to hear from Sirius, and Sirius hadn’t said them.

He loves me. Mrs. Malfoy said so. He was willing to do something that could have killed me to free me from the prophecy.

But does he have the same commitment to keeping you safe? Dash asked insistently in the back of Harry’s mind. That’s what you have to ask yourself now. He would put you in danger. Would he save you?

Of course he would. He broke out of prison to save me.

He broke out of prison to do that, Dash said, and Harry could almost hear the faint vibration in the back of his voice that meant Dash was restraining his real opinion of Sirius. But he also only did it when he saw a chance to get revenge on Pettigrew. And he’s looking at Dark rituals now despite supposedly hating the Dark.

Harry swallowed loudly. He wondered for a second how he looked to Snape and Sirius—probably ridiculous—but he needed to have this conversation with Dash now. So is Mrs. Malfoy, though. I think Breaking prophecies is probably Dark.

In the same way that people would say Parseltongue and basilisks are inherently Dark, I’m sure. Dash’s tone this time said what he felt about those people. But a ritual that could kill you is something else again.

Harry stood there. He didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know what to do. He was angry at Snape for going to the Wizengamot without telling him, and trying to do something about Sirius’s custody without telling him, and just expecting it to be okay now.

But he was also so tired of waiting for Sirius to grow up. He was also angry at Sirius for not telling this last secret that Mrs. Malfoy had said he was coming, and sneaking around behind Harry’s back with the Black inheritance and Mrs. Malfoy instead of just telling him right out what he was doing.

They both kept secrets from me. I wonder if Mrs. Malfoy is the only adult that’s been honest with me.

Then Harry sighed. No, he couldn’t have even that. Mrs. Malfoy had gone behind his back to tell Snape what Sirius was doing.

Maybe the Dursleys were the most honest adults I could live with. 

Never think that. Dash nudged his fingers with a severe stab and also a severe tone to his voice in Harry’s mind. You deserve love and care, Harry. I think you also deserve honesty, but think about it now. If you sat down with any of these adults, who is most likely to tell you the truth? About something other than how much they hate you, he added hastily, because Harry was already thinking of Aunt Petunia.

Harry swallowed again. He knew the answer. Snape. He told me about the prophecy and how he was a Death Eater.

Yes. He did that even though he knew he might lose you over it.

Harry said nothing. Compared to what Snape could have hidden from him, this wasn’t that big a deal.

If it all comes down to lies and wanting the lies to stop, Dash said, gentle as spring rain, then you have to choose who you think is going to be honest with you in the future. And who you feel most comfortable with. You have to think about yourself for once. Not who’s going to be hurt.

“Harry?”

On cue, Dash said, disgusted.

Harry turned around and looked at Sirius. He was leaning forwards off the couch, his hand extended and his face so miserable that Harry’s heart melted. He started to open his mouth and say he would stay here. Snape would just have to wait until the end of the holidays to discuss the Wizengamot meeting with him.

But then Sirius spoke. “I do love you, Harry. I promise! I’m just doing something that I can’t explain to you right now, because You-Know-Who would find out from the connection you have with him in your dreams. I—I’m going to get rid of something so horrendous that I promise you would be sick thinking about it. Just trust me for a while. Trust me.”

“Who has done something to allow him to block that connection?” Snape asked, and his voice was both quiet and cold. “Who has taught him Occlumency?”

Sirius stood up to glare at Snape over Harry’s shoulder. “Who—”

“And who pressed him to enter the Triwizard Tournament because it proved that he was a true Gryffindor and had courage, instead of asking him to stay out, because he was so concerned about his life? Tell me, Black, do you have any concern for his life, or only his placement in Gryffindor House?”

“Harry is not a snake! He’s confused, that’s all. The connection with You-Know-Who is the only reason the Hat considered placing him in Slytherin! And the only reason he has that snake!” Harry curled around Dash instinctively as Sirius pointed at him. “And the only reason he’s a Parselmouth! And the only reason he gives you and Malfoy the time of day! It’s not him, not the real him he’ll be when the thing is gone! Just James’s son.”

Harry closed his eyes slowly. He could possibly forgive everything else Sirius was saying, he thought. Sirius had been in Azkaban for twelve years. And he had wanted to be “Just Harry” for a long time now. Someone who saw him as normal…

But he couldn’t forgive what Sirius was saying about Dash. And he had thought Sirius was getting more comfortable with him having a basilisk. Harry almost laughed in despair now. No, Sirius was only getting more comfortable because he thought he would get rid of the secret, whatever it was, and that would mean he could get rid of Dash, too.

And Snape and Draco.

Harry lifted his head. “You can’t say that when we were at the Malfoys’ house for Christmas three days ago,” he said calmly. “Maybe I’m only a Parselmouth because of my connection with Voldemort, but I don’t care. I love Dash. I like Draco. I like Professor Snape. I’m going to stay with them.” He finally looked at Sirius again. “I’m always going to be this person, Sirius. You can’t just get rid of me.”

Sirius stared at him. “I never wanted to get rid of you—”

“Part of me. An important part of me. Dash is bonded to me. And, what? Did you think I’d suddenly stop having Slytherin friends because my connection to Voldemort was gone?”

“You’re confused, that’s all,” Sirius said earnestly. “You’re a Gryffindor. That’s who you really are, Harry. You’ll see.”

“I’m a Gryffindor because I made the choice to go into Gryffindor,” Harry whispered. He had thought Sirius was getting better, really. Now he saw that Sirius had just been shoving away everything “Slytherin” about him, and thinking he could deal with it in the future, when it would disappear. “Dumbledore told me it was our choices that counted. It has to be my choice, or it doesn’t count. If Slytherin was never a real option, that means everything was false.”

“Harry…”

“I’m me,” said Harry. “Not someone you imagined. Not just James’s son.” He turned and cast a Summoning Charm. “Accio Harry Potter’s things.”

They all came streaming down the stairs, his trunk and photo album and broom and books and his Invisibility Cloak. Sirius hadn’t moved. He was just staring at Harry with a lowered jaw. 

“Good-bye for now, Sirius,” Harry whispered, and saw Snape’s head move out of the Floo. He tossed a handful of Floo powder in and called, “Professor Snape’s quarters, Hogwarts.”

He turned and rolled and disappeared, but he bumped to a stop with less bruises than usual, because Dash had wrapped himself securely around Harry and kept him from colliding with much. Harry climbed wearily out of the fireplace in Snape’s quarters, his arms full of all the things he didn’t know the incantation to shrink.

Then he started to shake. He started to shake as if he was cold, and even Dash wrapping harder around him didn’t help.

It wasn’t until Snape had embraced him and was holding him, basilisk and all—something Sirius had never done—that Harry allowed himself to cry.

Chapter 59: Shake It Out

Chapter Text

“You are a stronger person than I knew, if you still strive to forgive Black.”

Harry stiffened a little, then sighed. He couldn’t blame Dash for not warning him Snape was coming. Dash was on the other side of the Forbidden Forest, hunting. Harry had worried for a second when he announced his intention, but Dash had laughed and told him that the monsters in the Forbidden Forest weren’t stupid

“I’m not strong,” Harry said dully, looking at the lake. It had a thin rim of ice over it. Harry stuck one foot out and prodded it. It bent and then bounced back up. Harry shivered. “I’m just stubborn.”

Snape sat down beside him and cast a charm without speaking. Harry gasped as the warmth in his hands and boots suddenly spiked, and he felt almost hot. 

“That is something you should remember to do when you feel cold,” Snape said, putting away his wand and turning towards Harry. His voice was mild instead of condemning, but Harry flushed anyway. “Now. Tell me what you mean.”

“About what?” 

People shouldn’t have eyes that piercing, Harry thought. At least he could trust that Snape wouldn’t read his mind without permission. “About being stubborn instead of strong. Stubbornness can be a form of strength. What has changed for you, that you no longer think it is?”

Harry grimaced. “I don’t—I don’t think like that. I just say what I’m feeling. I can’t go back and tell you what I meant,” he protested.

“Think about it, then.” Snape looked up as small snowflakes began to tumble from the sky and cast another spell that arched a nearly-transparent roof over them. The snow slid slowly down the roof. “I’ll wait here until you come up with an answer you think represents what you are truly feeling.”

Harry gave him a slightly horrified glance, because he couldn’t help it. “Do I have to sit here until I come up with one?”

“No. If you get cold or need more time to think about it, then we can go back inside.”

Harry just shook his head, which made Snape reach out and grip his arm. “Listen to me,” Snape said, his voice pitched low, although there was no one around them that Harry could see. “There is no reason for you to feel that I am going to punish you without cause. If you run into danger on purpose, if you attack another student, if you misuse magic, then yes. But I will never do it without a reason.”

Harry sneered at him, and could see how much it took Snape aback. Well. Good. He deserves to have a surprise, too. “Adults say that all the time. But their reasons don’t make sense.”

“Then you can ask me why I did it, if you don’t understand.” Snape’s voice was steady enough to make Harry angry. “And I will do my best to explain. Not assume you know. Not tell you it’s obvious and walk away. Explain.”

Harry buried his head in his hands, breathing hard. He felt as though someone had lit a fire beneath his skin—no, as if someone had turned him into a wire. There were these things, this restlessness, running up and down his limbs, and they were twitching wildly every time he tried to concentrate on Snape for a minute.

“This is just—too much,” he said, and stood up. He could feel Dash turn his way in the darkness of the Forest, and rapidly shook his head at him. Dash should stay and hunt. Harry was the one who had to get inside and find some way to get away from Snape’s probing questions.

“Then we will go back inside Hogwarts,” Snape said, and stood up and followed Harry.

Harry walked with his head bowed and his arms clasped across the front of his chest. He wished he knew what he wanted, other than for Snape to go away and stay close, and leave him alone and make him talk, and tell the truth and lie.

All the impossible things. That’s not much for someone who’s an expert Potions master to manage, right?

*

Harry had begun to shiver again.

Since he was in front of the fire in Severus’s quarters and still under a Warming Charm, Severus doubted it had anything to do with the cold. He busied himself ordering a large lunch from the house-elves, with varied amounts of bread, cheese, fruit, drinks, and several different kinds of sandwich ingredients. He had already noticed that Harry had a tendency to pick at his food, but he would eat more if he had a selection to choose from rather than a single big dish.

When the food arrived, Severus then was busy setting it up on a conjured table in front of the fire, and arranging it just so. By the time he turned around, Harry had stopped shivering and was watching him suspiciously. Severus let his lips turn up a little in response.

“You can’t just trick answers out of me,” Harry said, but he sounded more relaxed.

“I’m not trying to trick them out of you.” Severus flicked his wand, and the chair Harry was sitting in moved closer to the table. Harry looked startled, but didn’t react. “I’m trying to make you more comfortable so you’ll give them to me of your own free will.”

Harry picked up a piece of bread and stared at it. Then he slathered some nutty-tasting cheese on it. Severus relaxed a little as he watched him bite into it, but he remained watchful even as he filled his own plate with grapes and slices of tomato.

“I don’t know what to say. What to answer. I want to forgive Sirius. I want to be here. I want things to have changed and not changed. I want Sirius to get what he wants.”

“Which is what?”

“My dad back.”

Severus made himself eat, instead of laying down the sandwich and showing his own outrage. This was about Harry’s feelings, not his. “Well, there is no magic that can resurrect the dead. Only magic that can prolong life, which you are already familiar with.”

Harry shivered again and picked up a cup of tea, swallowing most of it so fast that Severus was surprised he had not burned his tongue. “Yeah.” Then he stared at the bread and cheese again.

Severus subtly nudged one of the plates that was covered with dripping golden honeycomb a little nearer to Harry, and bit into a blue-black grape that flooded his tongue with sweetness. “Black knows that as well as you do. Why do you think he wants your father back, then?”

“Because—um.”

From the way Harry had just gone silent, it was a thought that he considered disloyal to Black. Severus didn’t react, because he had not to, or he would simply go mad and drive Harry further into his shell. He concentrated on finding the best grapes instead.

“I don’t think I should tell you,” Harry finally whispered.

What threats did Black make to keep his mouth shut? But Severus controlled his immediate, involuntary rage. He had already seen how cautious the Dursleys had made Harry. It was more likely to be something from his upbringing, rather than something Black had done, that made Harry silent.

“If you wish to tell me now, then do,” said Severus, and looked up. “If you wish to tell me later, then do.”

Harry hesitated, looking tormented. “But you’re not just going to let it go and not make me tell you at all,” he whispered.

“No, I’m afraid not,” said Severus. “Although I would prefer not to make you tell me. I’m not sure how I could do that, anyway.”

“You have magic.”

Severus gripped the edge of the tray. Luckily, it was the side of the tray that was out of Harry’s direct line of sight, and Harry was so busy staring miserably at his hands that Severus didn’t think he’d noticed. What Severus did instead was bend down and wait until Harry looked reluctantly up again.

“I will never use magic to make you tell me the truth. You will do it of your own free will or not at all. If you think that I might be acting not of my own free will, perhaps under the Imperius Curse, then you have my permission to do whatever you must to defend yourself. Do you understand?”

“Um. Yes.”

Harry’s face was white now. Severus leaned back and sighed. The damage done to Harry by the Dursleys, and by Black now, and perhaps by Dumbledore and himself in the past, ran deeper than he had known or guessed.

But Lily had depths to her soul that I only guessed at, too. 

“I won’t do that to you,” said Severus, and once again found the biggest and roundest grape to pop into his mouth. He chewed and swallowed, and made himself concentrate on the flavor of the flesh and juice before he continued. “But I do want you to tell me, more for your sake than mine. Keeping it to yourself for so long can only hurt you.”

“That’s what Dash said.”

This time, Severus was sure, the suspicious look he got was because Harry suspected Severus of collaborating with his basilisk. Severus gave him a faint smile, and attended to his meal once more. It seemed a long time before Harry went back to eating, but that was all right. What mattered was that he ate.

Severus had been forced, down the years when he was brewing and spying, to learn patience. To actually teach it to himself, to know that he couldn’t explode and scream and get frustrated the way he wanted to, or he was likely to make worse mistakes. 

He might have to remind himself many times of the possible reward, as well as what he had already achieved with his triumphs over Petunia and Black, before he could get Harry to speak freely. But he would be patient.

*

Harry lay back on his bed and picked up the first letter from Ron.

You got adopted by Snape? Really? Rotten luck, mate! What is this going to mean when we go back to school? Do you think he’ll still assign you as many detentions?

Harry grimaced. That was something Snape hadn’t really talked about. How could he be fair to Harry about points and class if he was Harry’s guardian? There was noway Sirius would have been, if he was a professor.

Hermione’s letter was much longer and gentler, but she seemed to think it was mostly a good thing that he was away from Sirius. Harry lay with his head on his arm as he read her letter and wondered if he was the only one who wanted to understand Sirius.

You are the only one who would try so much.

Harry dropped the letter and reached down to embrace Dash, who was slithering up the side of the bed. Dash licked his cheek, but absently, and turned to consider the letters.

You mean everyone else thought Sirius was a horrible guardian? But they didn’t say anything.

I think Ron probably thought Black was all right, Dash said. He had called Sirius “Black” since the day they’d come to Hogwarts, and not “the smelly dog-man.” Harry appreciated that he was trying, too. He gave you a wonderful room and cared about you. 

But Hermione—why didn’t she say anything? 

Because she has learned some tact. Dash turned and laid his body out, without coiling or kinking at all, all along the length of Harry’s. Harry could only marvel at how long he was, hanging off the bottom of Harry’s bed with probably a quarter of his length still on the floor. And Snape had given Harry a big bed, too. She knew saying something would only upset you, so she said nothing.

Harry nodded slowly. He supposed that made sense about why Snape had kept quiet for so long, too. He had a rivalry with Sirius, and he knew Harry would get upset. He didn’t want Harry upset.

Harry had come to accept that. It didn’t mean he liked the way Snape had sneaked around behind his back when he went to the Wizengamot, but he accepted it.

And Draco?

Harry stroked Dash’s probing nose and picked up Draco’s letter. It’s hard to read. He’s just so—happy, and keeps talking about how this makes me an honorary Slytherin, and how he wants to study Potions with me because—He stopped.

Dash could find the echoes of the words in his head, where they hadn’t stopped echoing ever since Harry had read Draco’s bloody letter for the first time. Because he thinks Snape’s adopted son should be good at Potions.

Yeah.

Harry buried his head in his pillow. Dash curled up on his neck and spine, and sighed. You are warm. Warmer than the fire. It might only be my bond that makes me think so, but you are warm.

I don’t know how I feel about being anyone’s adopted son, Harry whispered. About being anybody’s son. I mean, besides my parents’. Sirius was always careful to remember where I came from.

I wonder if perhaps I will stop feeling the knobs in your spine as you eat better food with Snape.

I eat well enough in the Great Hall! Harry tried to roll over, but it was hard when he had a basilisk on his back that was disinclined to move. Sirius wasn’t the Dursleys. He never tried to starve me!

No, but Snape pays more attention. Dash stretched and wriggled around, kind of like a cat, except that he was stretching in directions impossible for a cat. Black wasn’t the kind to starve you. He was the kind to think that cake for breakfast and then a whole morning of playing Quidditch without anything to eat was enough.

Dash…

Dash curled up with his head on Harry’s cheek. It was hard for Harry to see him clearly, so he didn’t try. He just petted and petted Dash’s plume and head, and lay there and listened to the words that he couldn’t get away from and probably wouldn’t want to try to get away from.

What you need is someone who takes care. Someone who puts you first, before your parents and before Dumbledore. Someone who might allow you cake for breakfast as a great treat once in a while, but would insist you eat a proper breakfast on other mornings. Someone who notices when you miss meals and sneak out at night and study your eyes out preparing for a Tournament Task. Someone who would never try to deny that you’re a Parselmouth and have a bond that’s going to endure until death.

Harry had to close his eyes and close them hard. His mind drifted in eddies of trying to avoid tears for a little while. Dash lay there with him.

Finally, Harry whispered, “You don’t think Snape would try to make me into some sort of Slytherin the way Sirius was trying to make me into a Gryffindor?”

He ought to know that would be useless. If he doesn’t, he at least knows one other thing.

“What?”

That I have my poison back.

“You can’t just threaten to bite everybody.”

Why not? Dash sounded interested. It would keep them quiet, and it does wonders in shutting them up even if you just translate the threat instead of me having to do it.

Harry laughed. He knew the sound was watery. Everything about him felt watery right now. His knees were shaking and his soul was shaking and he didn’t know what he wanted.

Dash nudged his cheek again. You’ll figure it out. At least now you know that someone who would protect you even from Dumbledore is looking out for you.

Harry silently wrapped his arms about Dash’s neck and held him there. He could think of one thing he did want, and he did finally ask it. “Do you think—if things change, and Sirius—I don’t know, acknowledges that I’m not going to turn into some Slytherin and—if he changes, do you think you could acknowledge that he’s a good guardian?”

When I see evidence of it.

Harry rolled over and sighed. “That’s a ‘no,’ then.”

You can do the magic-learning and the saving and half the fighting and the forgiving. I’m going to do the protecting.

Harry decided that was as much as he was going to get from Dash right now. Besides, he was so tired that his eyes hurt. He curled himself as much into Dash’s coils as he could and drifted off, hearing no sound except his own breathing and the bond’s breathing in the back of his mind.

*

“He just talked so much about my dad all the time. You know?”

Severus put down his Potions book as if he was trying not to startle a rat he had caught creeping around his lab and had to Stun before he could trap it. These were the answers he had wanted. And if he had to move slowly so as not to startle Harry, either, who was sitting in a chair in front of the fire with Dash asleep in his lap, then that was more than doable.

“He said I was James’s son,” Harry whispered. “He called him James. I don’t think I’ve heard anyone talk so much about my dad in my life. Even the Dursleys didn’t mention him that much. And he told us all these stories of pranks that my dad pulled. I thought it was pretty great at first.” He stopped.

This is not about you. This is about Harry. Severus simply nodded, to show he was listening. He thought speaking at this moment would be the wrong move.

“It was great. I mean, I wanted to know more about my parents. Sirius knew that. He was just giving me more of what I wanted.”

It sounded like excuses Severus had heard. Had made. The fury was there like a river in winter under the surface of the ice, but he breathed through it, and waited.

“But in the end,” Harry whispered to the fire, “I just wanted them to stop. To hear about something else. I know why Sirius doesn’t like talking about Pettigrew. But he didn’t even talk much about Professor Lupin, you know? Or my mum.” Harry’s voce was wistful. “I wanted to hear more about her. But I don’t even know how well Sirius knew her.”

Severus breathed again. He knew that, were he thirteen years younger, Black would already be dead. But vengeance was important to hold off, if only to make sure that he served it at the right moment.

“I will be happy to tell you all you want to know.”

“Thank you, sir.” Harry didn’t move, except to gather up one of Dash’s coils and hug it to himself. “In the meantime…I want to be my own person. I spent all this time when I was a kid wanting to be someone other than what the Dursleys thought I was, and then I thought I got to be that when I was in the wizarding world. And then I was the Boy-Who-Lived, and the Heir of Slytherin, and I didn’t want to be that, either. I thought I would be so happy if I met someone who knew my parents, because then I would get to be Harry Potter.

“But then I got that, and that wasn’t what I wanted, either.” Harry turned to face Severus, but not to look at him. His eyes remained on the floor. “Sir—do you think it’sungrateful of me, to want all these things and then—get unhappy when I have them? I mean.”

Severus recognized a Petunia word. He weighed for a moment whether he should tell Harry what he had done to his aunt, and then discarded that impulse. No, there was too much of a chance Harry would be upset. Somehow he had come out of Privet Drive shockingly moral. 

“No,” Severus said. “Only human. And adolescent,” he had to add. “Harry, you are fourteen years old. You are allowed to want these things. To grieve. To change your mind.”

Harry once again said nothing. There was still something else coming, Severus knew. Or perhaps he hadn’t entirely eased Harry’s fears about gratitude. It would take more than just one person he trusted telling him that.

Then Harry opened his mouth again, and Severus knew it was something else.

“I just—I was so happy when I saw how much money my parents had left me, because now I was rich instead of poor like the Dursleys were always telling me I was. And I was even happy when I learned I was famous at first, because it meant people wouldn’t just shake their heads at me and mutter about how I was a delinquent. But then Hagrid took me to Diagon Alley, and people swarmed all over me. And the newspapers now, with the Tournament. It’s horrible, and I hate it.”

Dash wrapped his tail around the back of the chair. Severus wondered if he was binding Harry in the chair, getting ready to keep him from running away. Dash would know better than Severus would, from the turmoil in Harry’s thoughts, if that was a danger.

But once Harry decided to purge the poison, it seemed it would come out all at once in a great flood. Severus listened, and remembered.

“I just think—if someone’s rich and famous, they ought to be able to get what they want, right? I mean, famous Muggles can get houses of their own far away from anyone else, and they can hire people to guard them, and they can get paid for appearing on the telly or doing interviews or films or whatever they do. I know it’s not perfect. But I want people to leave me alone. If I’m going to do all these things for them, I should at least get something in return.

“I don’t know if Sirius really understood that. I know he was horrified at the prophecy and the idea that I would have to face Voldemort, but he thought I should be this Gryffindor who was—I don’t know, modest? I think he would be horrified if he thought I was thinking about using the money to buy myself a nice house or something. Partially because he wanted to do it, but also because it’s not something my dad would do. Sirius showed me pictures of the house my parents had. It’s nice, but it’s small, not something grand.

“I want a place where I’ll never have to worry about being hungry again, and no one’s going to hunt me, and no one’s going to hurt me. And Dash is welcome, and all my friends.”

Severus stood and crossed the distance between their chairs, kneeling down so that Harry had to look at him if he opened his eyes. It took Harry a long moment to do that, and when he first did it, they were glazed and dull, but his gaze sharpened as he took Severus in.

“If that is what you want,” Severus swore quietly, “that is what you shall have.”

“Professor Snape?”

“I will make sure you have all that,” said Severus, and took the boy’s hand, and squeezed.

Maybe it was the iron grip he had on Harry’s hand, but Harry finally, slowly, nodded.

In time, he will believe me. I swear it.

Chapter 60: Strange Interviews

Chapter Text

“Isn’t life so much better now that you’re living with Professor Snape?” 

It was the question that Draco had been dying to ask Harry ever since he’d seen Harry’s face, pale and tired, on the other side of the fireplace. Professor Snape hadn’t let Draco come visit until the last day before school was due to begin again, insisting that Harry needed time to rest and adjust to his new situation. At least it meant Draco could get back to Hogwarts by leaping through Professor Snape’s Floo instead of riding the Hogwarts Express.

“What’s better?” Harry turned to look at him. They were in Professor Snape’s office right now. Harry had been working on extra homework, or something. But it was done and the completed potion was in a vial. Draco didn’t have the heart to point out that Harry had made a mistake. There was a blue swirl in the vial that wasn’t supposed to be there.

“Life. Everything!” Draco waved a hand and sat down in the chair next to Harry. The chair on the right side of him was full of Dash, and Draco wasn’t stupid enough to think anything would make Dash move away from Harry right now. “Being. Existing. Breathing.”

“Yes and no?” Harry reached out to pet Dash and gave a little shrug. “I mean, I was used to living with Sirius. It wasn’t bad.”

“Why not?”

Harry smiled at him suddenly. “Sirius didn’t go around proclaiming that he wanted to practice rituals on me every hour of the day,” he said. Draco nodded importantly. Mother had told him about that. Draco felt proud that she thought he was adult enough to trust him with the information. “He gave me my own room. He let me do a lot of what I wanted. He could tell me stories about my parents…” He trailed off and turned to stare into the hearth.

There wasn’t even a fire burning there, though. Professor Snape often didn’t keep the one burning in his office, so no one could simply pop in and interrupt him. Draco leaned over to drum a finger on Harry’s arm. “There should be more to living with people than that.”

“Like people poking you in the arm?”

“Not all the time,” Draco said, although he was gratified to see Harry’s smile. He had made Harry smile. No one else. “But I want to know why you didn’t write to me untilyesterday. Are you that unhappy here?”

“No. Because Snape would be unhappy if I was unhappy.”

That’s not an answer,” Draco snapped, and then wanted to cover his mouth and apologize. Mother had told him that if he was too loud and forward all the time, he might upset Harry. And Harry had enough to upset him, as she had said. When Draco had heard the story of what Black was looking for among the artifacts he’d inherited, he couldn’t agree more.

“Yes, it is.”

Harry’s eyes were bright and direct and disconcerting. Draco sighed and said, “All right. But I don’t think it’s a very good one. If you’re only not being unhappy because it would make Snape unhappy, then when are you going to start feeling something for yourself?”

He noticed Dash had lifted his head and appeared to be listening intently for the answer to that question. Good. Harry couldn’t simply neglect what he wanted.

Harry frowned at his fingers and arranged them in his lap as if he would find the answer to the puzzle through them. Draco waited. He could be patient when something was important. (His parents would have disagreed, but then, a lot of the time they disagreed with Draco about what was important).

Harry at last said, softly, “I respect Professor Snape for doing what he thinks is right. And he listened when I talked about some things I thought were wrong, things that Sirius would never have listened to.”

He paused. Draco, listening, couldn’t help asking, “But?”

Harry looked up, then back down. “But he went behind my back and he went to the Wizengamot without telling me about. And he’s not sorry for that. I mean—he’s sorry that he upset me. But he’s not sorry for doing it.”

“Of course he’s not,” Draco said. He winced when Harry glared at him, but to him, this seemed so obvious that he wondered why Harry needed someone to reason it through with him. Maybe Dash had tried and failed. “Who could be sorry for getting you out of a situation that was that bad?”

“He didn’t tell me!

“If he had told you, would you have come with him?”

“I don’t know. I would have wanted him to explain what was so bad about me living with Sirius.”

Draco nodded. “And he wouldn’t have been able to do that before Black found out and maybe got Dumbledore to come and support him, and then maybe the whole thing would have been stopped. I know you’re upset, but I think Professor Snape did the best he could when he really wanted to save you and you’re so stubborn.”

“I’m only stubborn about the important things!”

Draco smiled. “That’s me, too,” he agreed. “For example, my best friend and the boy I like getting a good home, and getting a good person to be his adopted father.” He stood up and walked over to Harry while he was still spluttering. 

“You can’t just—”

Draco kissed him, to show him what he could just, and Harry sat there stiffly and didn’t return it for a long moment, making Draco think he was really upset, before he sighed and leaned forwards and did it. Draco cradled the back of Harry’s head and stroked his hair. That was the kind of thing he liked someone to do for him when he was really upset.

It seemed Harry liked for someone to do it for him, too. He rested his head against Draco’s chest when the kiss was done and sighed.

“I’m sorry that Professor Snape couldn’t do it the way you wanted,” Draco whispered in his ear. “I am sorry for that. But I’m not sorry for having you here, and you being his adopted son.”

“I don’t—I can’t call him that, though.” Harry had tensed up. “I mean, no more than I could have called Sirius my adopted dad. I only ever had two parents. I’ll find something to call Professor Snape, but he’s my guardian.”

“You can call him whatever you want,” Draco said. He stepped back from Harry and looked him up and down thoughtfully. “As long as you remember that other people are going to think of you as Professor Snape’s adopted son, and he’d probably be happy for you to call him Father.”

Harry groaned and shook his head. Dash dropped down from the chair he’d been curled up on and came and coiled around Harry’s legs, giving Draco a clear look he could read over the top of Harry’s knee. Draco nodded. He should stop and not push further. Harry was getting more upset about this than he had been about the thought of Snape going behind his back.

“Whatever you want to call him will be fine,” Draco said as a peace offering. “I think Professor Snape did this so you could have what you wanted, too. Like someone who’ll let you call him what you want.”

“Sirius would have let me do that. And Professor Snape said he’s going to give me what I need instead of what I want.”

Draco ended up shrugging again, a little helplessly, and looking at Dash. He thought Dash probably approved of Professor Snape being Harry’s guardian. Well, he had to, or Professor Snape would have ended up with a bleeding gash in his leg at the very best.

But Dash had no guidance for Draco right now. He just put his head down on Harry’s leg and let his eyelids tremble a little.

“You can do what you want, too,” Draco said, and finally came down to the purpose of his visit. He wasn’t going to just sit here and listen to his best friend—his boyfriend, he thought, with a little shiver—just complain and moan about life. “Do you want to play Exploding Snap?”

“No,” Harry said snappishly, and Draco resigned himself to an afternoon of moaning after all, when Harry added, “What I want to do is fly.”

Draco beamed. “Let me run to Slytherin and get my broom.”

So they spent a happy afternoon flying through the roaring wind and the swirling flakes of snow it was stirring up. Draco dived for the Snitch more often, but Harry was the one who actually caught it most of the time, of course. And Draco was the one who saw Professor Snape first, standing on the edge of the pitch and watching Harry’s flight carefully.

He would be right there with a charm if Harry fell and he needed to catch him, Draco knew.

“What are you doing, Draco? You missed the Snitch when it flew right in front of you,” Harry started as he dived past Draco and grabbed the Snitch in midair. Then he turned and saw Professor Snape, and his voice fell into quiet. “Oh,” he said flatly a second later.

Then he turned and went on playing Quidditch. Draco thought he was careful never to look at that part of the pitch again.

Draco sighed. Harry would get used to it in time, he supposed. And Dash was curled up on the side of the pitch where Professor Snape stood, and watching Harry, too. He didn’t seem distressed, the way Draco had seen him on the night when Nagini attacked Harry.

In the end, Professor Snape lifted his wand, and something like a silver-and-red firework flew out of the end and up in front of Harry. Harry swerved his broom away from the explosion and turned to stare down at the professor with a peculiar frown on his face.

Professor Snape called, “The wind is getting severe,” and continued the message with a Sonorus Charm when Harry turned away as if he would go on flying. “Come down and get warm, Harry.”

Draco thought Harry would push it, for a second, and winced. He never liked watching his other friends fight with their parents.

In the end, though, Harry swept down and landed on the grass after what was at least a partial Wronski Feint. Draco followed him, but purposely slowed down a little, and saw Professor Snape tap Harry’s shoulder with his wand. It had to be a Warming Charm, since Harry stopped shivering a second later.

Professor Snape said something, too, something soft that just made Harry turn his head stubbornly to the side and clutch at his broom.

Draco deliberately lagged behind them as they went into the school and back to Professor Snape’s quarters. Professor Snape gave them both hot chocolate there and talked to them about the potions they would brew in the upcoming year. Dash lay down under Harry’s chair after eating bread soaked in chocolate and gave little obnoxious hisses that Draco thought were supposed to be snores.

All the time, Harry held his hot chocolate close, with a strange expression on his face.

He’ll get used to it, Draco thought complacently, and drank his own chocolate. It was very good.

*

“You haven’t told me how you’re going to handle taking points and giving me detentions yet.”

Severus laid down the book he’d been reading, a history of wizarding families formed from adoption rather than through blood links. Not all the stories were helpful to him, since most of them dealt with ancient wizards who had found children by chance rather than deliberately taking them from someone else, but at least it reassured him that his problems were not unique.

“Why would I handle it any differently?” Severus asked. He didn’t think Harry expected unfair treatment.

Harry lowered his eyes for a second. Then he nodded, and turned to leave the room. Dash stayed in place near the fire, though, which made Harry pause.

“Harry.”

“I don’t—listen,” said Harry, and he was speaking in a rush, gazing at either Dash or the fire, Severus couldn’t tell which. “I can’t just shake it off if you keep scolding me in class and insulting me, you know? I can’t come back here later and pretend like nothing has happened.” He turned to Severus and stared at him. “Otherwise, it’ll just end up like the Dursleys, where I tried to pretend for a while that I loved them and then I couldn’t pretend anymore.”

Severus’s voice dried up. He stood up and strode towards Harry, wrapping him a hug so quick that Harry didn’t have the chance to flinch and get away. He held him there.

Slowly, he felt Harry relax in his arms. Severus continued to hold him, though, even when Harry gave a little wriggle that suggested he wanted to get away. He murmured, “Did you think I expected that of you? And can you tell me something else?” He waited until he felt Harry nod against his chest—yes to both questions—before he asked, “When was the last time I insulted you in class the way I used to do?”

Harry hesitated again. Then he said, “I thought—now that things have changed a little, I thought you might need to start playing up that act again. You know, to convince Voldemort that you hadn’t changed if you need to go back and spy as a Death Eater.”

Severus had never even considered that Harry’s thoughts might tend in that direction. He knelt down in front of Harry now, and studied his eyes. Harry looked back, his face open and vulnerable in a way that made Severus wish he was further along in his Occlumency training.

“There is no way I can be a spy,” Severus told him quietly. “There is no excuse he would accept for gaining custody of you and then not immediately killing or weakening you, or going to find him. That was the end of one phase of my life, Harry.”

“Taking me in.”

“Taking you in,” Severus confirmed, and let his arms rest more heavily along Harry’s shoulders when he would have moved. “You were prepared to endure it.”

“What, having you scold me and then coming back and having to act like nothing had happened?” Harry shrugged. “Yeah, I was.”

“I am not like them,” Severus said. Harry looked up at him, and Severus touched his cheek. “Not like the Dursleys. Not like Dumbledore, who told you that your happiness must be a sacrifice to the greater good.”

“I mean, he never actually said that.” Harry’s face was pink. “He really did think I would be happy with Sirius.”

He was a fool. But Severus did not say that. From what little Harry had told him, part of that was tangled in Dumbledore’s mind with fantasies of making up his imprisonment to Black, and Black being a favorite student of his, the way that Draco had been to Severus in the past.

“But he did not ask you if you would be,” Severus said. “He assumed. I intend to ask, and ask again. I’m going to do it right now.” He stopped what he thought was an instinctive attempt to turn away, and moved Harry back so that he could look into his face again. “Harry, are you happy with me?”

Harry wriggled and looked away. Severus patiently moved his head back until Harry was looking him in the face again.

“I’m worried,” Harry whispered.

“About points and detentions? I will not expect you to serve any more detentions than the average student. I may have to make sure they are not with me, however, as I would be suspected of being too lenient with you.”

Harry wriggled again. “I’m worried about how you’ll punish me for getting detention in the first place.”

“Ah,” said Severus, and suddenly certain moments he had shared with Harry in the last day made more sense. He carefully moved so he could see Harry’s face again. Harry stood up straight and looked at him grimly, as if he assumed that he would lose Severus’s love in a moment, so he’d better memorize his face.

“I would never ask that you suffer more than the detention,” Severus said.

Harry stared at him.

“It is the punishment for whatever you were doing,” Severus told him. “Acting out in class, disrespect, wandering out of your bed wearing your Invisibility Cloak…” Severus let his teeth grind when he thought of that, but his fear wasn’t something Harry had to be responsible for. “I would prefer that you not do those things. But I would only punish you if you did something that another professor didn’t immediately correct with point loss or a detention.”

“And how would you punish me then?”

“By asking you to explain to me why you did it,” Severus said. “Then confinement to Gryffindor Tower, or a room here if you thought that time in Gryffindor Tower would prove too hard to resist escaping. In cases of especially severe infraction, taking your broom or perhaps forbidding you to spend time with your friends.”

Harry watched him again. Severus waited. “I will never take food from you,” he added at last. “Or insist that you suffer physical pain to please me.”

Harry closed his eyes.

That was what he was afraid of, Severus thought, and waited with his arms around Harry until Harry relaxed against him with a low noise. It wasn’t a sob, not really, but it was close to that, and Severus felt a soft ache stirring up in him. If only Harry could trust him more…

But then, the years that had made Harry who he was had already passed, and Severus could not keep mourning them. He would have to accept Harry as he was now, and continue working to ease his fears and give him a home.

*

“What did you want to see me about, sir?”

Harry kept his eyes on the wall over Dumbledore’s head. He’d been startled when Dumbledore decided to call him to his office, and Snape had been furious. Harry thought the only reason Snape had allowed him to go was because Dash had accompanied him, and still lay curled up around Harry’s feet like an enormous blanket.

Harry had wavered about whether he wanted to go. But in the end, he did want to hear what Dumbledore had to say to him.

And if any of it was about Sirius.

“I think you know, Harry.” Dumbledore put his hands together on the desk and regarded Harry with mild disapproval.

That’s probably a trick to make you look at him, Dash said knowingly in the back of his head. He had kept silent through a lot of the time Harry spent with Snape. Harry understood, at some level, that it was because Dash wanted him and Snape to talk. But it was comforting to hear his basilisk’s voice now. He wants you to feel guilty and trip yourself up.

But Harry wouldn’t. He wished, desperately, that things had worked out and he could have stayed with Sirius. Of course he did. But Sirius was sick and needed help, and Snape…

He’d already been helpful. He’d already made it clear that he didn’t think of Harry as his father anymore, and that he wouldn’t treat Harry unfairly. He was protective of his safety in a way Harry didn’t think Sirius would ever have thought of.

“I don’t really know, sir,” Harry said finally, when Dumbledore stayed silent and Harry thought they might sit here for the rest of the afternoon if he didn’t say something. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked.”

“That does sound like cheek, Harry. And I am only trying to help you.”

“Sorry,” Harry said, and nothing else. Dash was making some creative threats in the back of his head. Harry just hoped he wouldn’t laugh at any of them. Then Dumbledore would suspect Harry wasn’t taking this seriously.

And Harry thought he probably did have to show he was taking it seriously, if only because otherwise, Dumbledore would get upset and suspicious.

“Your going away hurt Sirius.”

Harry learned then that he could be ready and braced for something like this, and it would still hurt. He flinched, and Dumbledore nodded slowly, the way he had when Harry was trying to explain where Dash had come from.

“He only wanted to know that you were safe,” Dumbledore said. “He only wanted to make you happy.”

He is different, said Dash abruptly. Different from the way he was the last time you talked to him, I mean. He seems more like his normal self again. I wonder why that is?

Dash could think about that all he liked. Harry was only interested in answering these questions and getting out of Dumbledore’s office as fast as possible.

“I know that,” he said. “But he couldn’t make me happy, sir. He was always talking about making sure I wasn’t a Slytherin anymore, and he didn’t like my friends, and he compared me to my father, and he was talking about a ritual that he wanted to use to cure me. Do you know what he was talking about?”

Dumbledore looked old for a second. Harry sighed soundlessly. He knew that Dumbledore knew, but he didn’t think he was going to get a straight answer. Dumbledore would say something else about needing to protect Sirius.

“Do your choices not matter, Harry?” Dumbledore asked, and for an absurd moment Harry thought Dumbledore was going to say that Snape had taken Harry against his will. But instead, he continued, “Don’t you remember choosing to be a Gryffindor? Would you reverse that choice now?”

“I want to be both,” said Harry. “A Gryffindor Parselmouth. Why can’t I? I mean, Sirius can be uncomfortable with it all he likes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be it. Just because Sirius thinks so. Why?”

Dumbledore shook his head slowly back and forth. “Oh, my dear boy,” he whispered. “If you knew what the prophecy says in full, if you understood that you will probably need to die to save the world—”

“Sirius told me the full prophecy.”

Harry said out of habit, even though his stomach had turned cold and Dash had lifted his head with a threatening hiss. I’ll need to die?

You won’t. He means that he will send you to your death if necessary to fulfill the prophecy, and to make Black happy. He might let Black kill you for this ritual. But I will take you away before I let that happen.

When Harry could stop shaking and look at Dumbledore again, he saw that his face was grey. He was frightened by Dash’s hissing, Harry thought at first, but then he saw Dumbledore’s lips moving and actually listened to his voice.

“Sirius told you the full prophecy?”

“Yes.” Harry stood up. He wasn’t interested in staying longer. He didn’t see why he had to stay longer, because Dumbledore would only make these insane claims that no one could back up. “Is there anything else, sir?”

Dumbledore waved him off. Harry looked back once before they left the office. He could see that Dumbledore had turned to face the fire and had his hands folded in his lap and a very old look on his face.

Good. Let him be old. He might not get the chance later, when I kill him for threatening your life.

Harry answered as lightly as he could, and they moved on their way, while Harry’s mind buzzed.

I could understand him being upset if Sirius had told me whatever he thinks would get back to Voldemort. But why the prophecy? Why did he tell Sirius the prophecy in the first place, if not to tell to me?

Chapter 61: A Dance With Moody

Chapter Text

“Are you all right?”

Harry just nodded a little. Hermione had asked that constantly since school started again, but Harry didn’t think he could resent her for it. She had the right to ask, and she seemed willing to believe he was okay some of the time, instead of asking him again five minutes later, the way Snape did.

“Okay.” Hermione gave him a single worried smile before she faced the front of the room again.

Professor Moody was late. Harry couldn’t remember that ever happening before. On his lap, and wrapped around the base of his chair, Dash said simply, It’s interesting, isn’t it?

Not interesting unless you tell me what you mean by that.

Listen and learn.

Harry was about to reply when the door opened and Professor Moody strode in, his wooden leg clicking. He dropped a pile of rope and bricks onto his desk. Harry knew he wasn’t the only one staring in surprise and lack of comprehension.

It’s interesting, said Dash, and twined his way up the chair until his head was resting on Harry’s shoulder and he could clearly see what Moody was doing. I wonder if he’s going to fling them at people to test Shield Charms.

Moody turned his head slowly, as if he wanted to give his magical eye the chance to look at all of them. Harry flinched a little when it passed over him, but Moody didn’t stare harder at him or Dash than he did at anyone else. He just grunted and nodded, then sat down in his chair.

“You need to learn how to cast spells in different environments,” he said, and this time, his eye did swing back around and focus on Harry and Dash.

Do you know what he means by that? Harry asked, petting Dash but making it look like he was just straightening his elbow on the desk. Or at least, he hoped it looked that way. Dash kept telling him he was bad at lying about all the things that mattered and good at concealing the things that people should know.

No.

Harry could feel the shadow of a frown in Dash’s voice, and knew he wasn’t hiding the truth to tease, the way he had been when he knew about Draco fancying Harry. They just had to wait for now, though, since neither of them had any idea what Moody was talking about.

“We’ll begin with an environment that illusions can create,” Moody announced. He stood back and began passing his wand through the air, muttering to himself. Harry listened hard, but he couldn’t hear the words, and neither could Dash; he had to use their bond to hear sounds, anyway.

The air around them dimmed, and Harry could hear some of the other students muttering to themselves. Harry leaned back in his desk and stared up at the ceiling, and saw the stone darkening and turning green and black. When he looked to the sides, there were huge trees there, their roots tearing up the stone floor. Harry couldn’t see the walls. This was just a forest, and they seemed to be in the middle of a huge stretch of it with no houses for miles and miles.

Harry shivered a little. Aunt Petunia had once threatened to abandon him in a forest like this. She had said that he would starve to death before he could find his way back to anyone who would want him. Or get eaten by wolves.

Someday I must introduce your relatives to my poison.

Harry turned around and glared down at Dash. I told you not to bite anyone. Especially not now that your poison is back to full strength.

I still want to. And idle speculations aren’t the same as promising to do it. Dash’s tongue extended, longer than Harry remembered it being, and brushed across his cheek.And it got you to stop thinking about the Dursleys, didn’t it?

Harry frowned and nodded. But he still would have said something sharp to Dash if Moody hadn’t stepped back in front of them. His face had a strange expression on it. Like he was enjoying the way everyone was clumping together.

“A forest is not the same as a classroom. And from now on, we’re going to be practicing our spells in this kind of environment. It’s the only way you’ll ever learn about war,really learn about it. You’re not going to be running through Hogwarts performing the kinds of spells that would keep you safe from Death Eaters. CONSTANT VIGILANCE!

Harry jumped at the sound and clutched Dash without thinking about it. Dash gently tapped his tongue against Harry’s cheek again and murmured, He hasn’t changed it as much as you think. The only illusions are visual. Everything still smells the same. And if you reach down and touch what you’re sitting in, I think you’ll find that it feels like a desk.

Harry did, and then nodded. To his eyes, it was a stump, but he could still feel the back even though he couldn’t see it. He stood up slowly. Then what’s the real point of this? I mean, he said that we aren’t going to be in a classroom, but we still are. It’s just harder to see and keep from running into things.

Moody probably has no problem, with that magical eye of his. Dash slithered around Harry’s feet as he stood up. But maybe this is intended as a lesson in humility or something like that. Dash stretched most of his length along the forest floor in front of Harry. I find myself disinclined to listen to such a lesson.

Harry tensed despite himself. What are you going to do, Dash? Moody had turned to face the rest of the class and had his hand lifted, as though he was going to make a teaching gesture or show them a new spell. Harry looked up and found he still had no idea what was going on behind that magical eye.

Keep you from stumbling over things. Link with me.

We’re already linked, Harry began in confusion, but a second later, he found out what Dash meant. Things shifted in the back of his head, the same way they had when Dash was helping Harry with his wandless magic. Then Harry was drifting along somewhere deep and dark, with stars rushing past him.

Where is this, Dash?


A place that’s always existed for me, said Dash simply, and Harry felt the reassuring touch of his tongue. I didn’t realize until I was a little older that you didn’t perceive it the same way I did. This is the deep bond.

Harry breathed slowly in and out. At least he could still breathe. And he had an understanding that flowed into him through his bond with Dash, the way that Dash could pick up on the meaning of English words he read through his link with Harry: This is the place that some of your magic comes from.

Yes. Although I’m not sure that it’s a place. Or perhaps only one that exists in the same way a dream exists. It’s real while you’re there.

Harry started to ask something else, but strong pressure pushed him back up, and he found himself bobbing on the surface of his own mind with Dash next to him, entwined with him, part of him in ways that not even their bond had made him aware of before. When Harry looked around, he did it with Dash’s senses.

Most of the time, Dash was the one who made do with Harry’s senses, instead; otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to hear at all, or understand English. But there were some advantages of doing it the other way around, Harry thought. He could feel the vibrations pounding through Dash’s body as feet hit the ground and Moody stumped along (his wooden leg was particularly distinctive). He could smell—

Wood and stone and ink, the scents of a classroom. They hadn’t changed in any way. There were no leaves or dirt or wild things that Harry would have expected to smell in a real forest.

Do people just not change the smells because they don’t know about them? he asked Dash as he moved slowly around his desk to join one of the lines of students Moody was organizing. Dash was firm about the line facing Moody being the best option. Harry could understand why. He did it, although he shivered for a second as he stood with his back to the darkness between the trees.

Not know about them, and don’t perceive them well enough. If you cast a spell to hide something you can’t scent, how are you even going to tell it worked?

Harry nodded slowly. He could see that.

“You’re here, too, Harry?” Harry could still hear Ron’s voice, but it was muffled and distant, secondhand, the way it must be for Dash most of the time. He was standing in the line next to Harry, trying to look brave and failing. “I know what Moody means. We just need to learn in different environments. But did he have to make it so scary?”

Harry smiled at Ron. “It’s still the same classroom underneath. That’s what Dash says.” His voice echoed in his head in an odd way, like it was traveling down bones instead of through the air. “So we could still bump into desks, but there aren’t any bears or werewolves here.”

“Oh. Good.” Ron spoke weakly, staring at Harry. “Is something wrong, mate?”

“I’m—”

Harry meant to say something about “deeply bonded with Dash,” because he doubted that would give everything away to Moody, or even much of anything. But Moody called harshly, “You’re expected to defend yourselves from me! First person to bring me down gets fifteen points for their House and no homework! The rest of you will be writing twelve inches on why you didn’t defeat me.”

Then he began to cast curses at the line of students Harry was in. The fire caught on an illusion of a tree and began to burn. Harry heard Hermione say something desperate, and the fire smoldered to a sullen stop. The tree showed a long burn down the trunk in response.

Fake, right? Harry asked, as Dash told him to back up and around a desk that looked like a low stump. It was really much taller under the illusion, and would give him better camouflage from some of the curses that Moody was casting than it looked like.

Yes. His illusions are powerful and flexible enough to reflect damage. In reality, he’s burned part of the desk. Dash flowed with Harry, his head up and his head cocked in an interested way at Moody. He’s really much more skilled than he looks. I sort of wonder how he lost the duels that meant he needs to wear a wooden leg and a magical eye.

Maybe he wasn’t as good then.

Perhaps—

“Catch, Potter! Capio mentem!

Harry swayed. It felt like someone had punched him in the side of the head. Dudley had actually done that once, and so Harry’s first thought was that Moody had tossed a rock at him or something.

But no. There was something moving through his head, through his bond with Dash. Harry coughed and spluttered, reaching up to claw at his temples. It was horrible, like he could actually feel a fungus growing with him and over his thoughts, and—

He does not know what he has done, said Dash, in a strange, gleeful voice, and then he smashed through the spell on Harry’s mind.

Harry gasped and reeled for a second. He saw Hermione staring at him in shock, and she was reaching out a hand, but then he caught himself on something—

A chair.

--And opened his eyes. He was facing Moody, who had come forwards one step and was studying him carefully. Dash was coiled around Harry’s feet, his eyelids quivering in the way they did when he was considering opening them.

He tried to take over your mind. But it doesn’t work when your mind is joined with mine in the deep bond. It was like trying to grab a leaping dolphin. Dash laughed wildly in the back of his thoughts, in a way Harry had never heard before. He doesn’t know what’s going on. Let’s surprise him, shall we?

Before Harry could even guess what Dash would try, he was flowing forwards, and Harry found himself pulled after him. Dash was hissing steadily, a sound that poured over all the people there. Harry could see Ron’s eyes wide with shock, and Ron was as used to Dash as anybody.

This isn’t something anyone can get used to.

I still don’t know exactly what you’re planning on doing, Harry complained.

You wouldn’t. Draco sounded delighted, not contemptuous. Relax your mind for a moment, Harry, and let me access all your magic as well as my own.

Harry wondered for a second if he should. But he was getting more and more cautious around Moody, and he had no idea what the man had really meant to do when he’d grabbed hold of Harry’s mind like that. He’d thought Moody wouldn’t try anything like that after the Imperius Curse.

He settled back and gave control of his magic to Dash.

*

Hermione had already known something was unusual about the way Harry was reacting to the forest. He grabbed things that weren’t there and didn’t keep glancing over his shoulder into the shadows the way that most of the rest were. But she hadn’t expected him to charge Professor Moody.

There was a glassy flicker of blue light traveling all over him, and Dash. Hermione dazedly supposed that he was using some magic she hadn’t heard of before; around Dash, that seemed pretty common. But he hadn’t said anything or made a gesture with his wand, either.

The blue light was building into blue fire. And Professor Moody was backing away. He did it slowly. Hermione wondered if she was the only one who noticed, or who really knew what the expression on his face meant. He was afraid.

You’re probably the only one who does know.

Dash and Harry was pretty close to Professor Moody by now. The blue fire reached out and snapped towards him. Professor Moody countered with a shield that Hermione thought was perfect, and that was amazing. She had read about that charm in the advanced textbooks in the library, and all of them said how impossible it was to perform that charm right the first time—

Dash and Harry’s blue fire broke through the shield as though it was air.

The blue fire wrapped around Professor Moody and dragged him a little forwards. Hermione found herself squinting. She thought for a second it was just the brightness of the fire.

But then she realized it was more than that. The trees of the forest were melting! The illusions were fading, and the roots that had torn up the floor settled back into nothingness. Hermione could see the desks and chairs again. This time, she knew what Harry had caught himself on when he stumbled.

The fire did something different to Professor Moody.

He was fighting it. For a second, Hermione saw him standing there in what looked like a tent of magic. There was a big transparent shield over him, and part of him was melting like the trees had, and some of his fingers looked different lengths on the same hand. His face wavered back and forth. He had a long white tail growing out of his chin. He had two real eyes, not a magical one—

I thought he might be using Polyjuice, Hermione thought, in a part of her brain that always seemed to be calm and thinking, except for a few times when she’d been afraid for Ron and Harry’s lives. I never heard of this means of getting rid of it, though.

The struggle went on for a few more seconds. Then Professor Moody’s magical eye bounced across the floor towards the desks in the front row, and his wooden leg went spinning after it. Hermione heard shrieks of disgust.

That’s Parvati, Hermione thought. But part of her wanted to shriek herself, as she stood there and stared at the man who had been Polyjuiced as Professor Moody and wearing his eye and leg.

It was Professor Dumbledore.

*

Severus snapped his head up. There was wild magic in Hogwarts, alien magic battering at the school’s defenses. He could feel the ripple of it traveling across his being, plus the alarm spells that Albus had cast to link Severus to the school when he became Head of Slytherin.

Severus had felt nothing so strange since the concentrated mass of evil that had hovered over him the night he took the Dark Mark, and his first thought was that the Dark Lord had somehow won entrance into the school.

The next second, a portrait appeared in an empty frame Severus kept in his office for emergencies, and began to stammer. “S-sir! Disturbance in the Defense classroom, Professor Dumbledore is requesting your attendance immediately—”

Severus had made sure that he memorized Harry’s schedule without being obvious about it. He knew which class Moody would be teaching right now.

He kept his face calm as he nodded. The portrait, a young man with blond hair that made Severus almost sure he was related to the Malfoys somehow, nodded back, and then turned and vanished through the side of the frame, presumably to warn someone else.

Severus stood and gathered up the few battle potions he could use in Hogwarts’s environment. Most of them would make someone sleep if the bottle got dropped on the ground and they inhaled the fumes.

One, one only, would do something else.

Severus made sure that one was well-protected in its pocket, and then turned and walked towards the Defense classroom. His face was still calm, but he only walked because of the potions, and the one that could not be jostled.

*

Harry rose slowly out of the bond he shared with Dash. It had been so deep that it had been like a dream, the way Dash said that deep place was. Harry couldn’t really say what he had been doing the last few minutes, except moving and using magic.

He opened his eyes, and found that Dumbledore was in front of him and Hermione was yelling at him and half the students in the class were standing there with shocked expressions on their faces. Harry looked around instinctively for Moody. It was likely that he hadn’t been able to handle Harry and Dash’s magic and that meant he’d called for Dumbledore—

Except Moody wasn’t there. His leg and eye were on the floor, but he wasn’t there.

He came out of Moody. He was Moody.

Harry turned slowly back to Dumbledore. Realization was hitting him like cold water running down from his head. He had no idea what he was going to do when he realized fully, but right now, all he could do was stand still and stare.

Dash waved gently back and forth between him and Dumbledore. There was no notion in his head of moving further, Harry thought. That was good. It meant he wouldn’t attack Dumbledore, or anyone else—

But it also meant that he wasn’t going to move and let Harry talk to Dumbledore, either. And Harry knew he had to talk to Dumbledore.

Dash. Let me through.

No. What can he possibly say that would explain his actions? And you don’t need to listen to the excuses he’s going to offer instead of explanations.

Harry would have snapped something back, but he saw movement towards the door. He turned his head and saw Snape standing there, one hand on the doorframe. He was looking around the classroom with little snaps of his head, and Harry wondered how long he’d been there and how he’d got there.

He was fast, said Dash, sounding impressed. I would have sent a shadow-snake for him if he didn’t come, but he got here before I could.

“Headmaster?”

Snape had walked into the Defense classroom now. He was standing in between Harry and Dumbledore, or maybe in between Dash and Dumbledore; it was sort of hard to tell. Harry shivered. The realization was starting to hit him now.

Dumbledore sighed once and looked at Harry as if no one else was there. He whispered, “I’m sorry. I did what I thought was best, and tested you because I had to know how well you would fight against Voldemort.” A few of the other kids cried out in fear when they heard the name, but Harry couldn’t even look at them; he was busy looking at Dumbledore. “I thought the Tournament was a means of doing that. And of seeing how your bondmate had affected your magic.” He nodded at Dash.

Harry said nothing. He couldn’t find any words that wouldn’t make him scream. He stood there and stared at Dumbledore instead, and the moments when no one would say anything stretched, and stretched, and stretched. Dumbledore was the one who finally cleared his throat and said something else.

“Will you let me say that your magic was some of the most impressive I have ever seen in my life?”

Harry turned away without saying anything. Snape was there, and put a steadying hand on his shoulder. Dash was even steadier, curling around Harry’s feet the way he did.

“I will speak with you later, Headmaster,” Snape said over his shoulder, and led Harry out of the room among the babbling chatter of the other students, just starting.

Chapter 62: Tortured Explanations

Chapter Text

“We must talk about what happened.”

“I don’t understand why.”

Severus sighed a little. This was a repeat of the first days after he had taken Harry in, when Harry had simply wanted to sit in front of the fire and stare at it. But this time, they were not only in the middle of the school year, they had a more powerful enemy than Black.

At the moment, Severus knew, from long familiarity, Albus was off-balance. If someone tackled him now, he would be more likely to admit his wrongdoing and provide an explanation—if only because he thought it might justify what he had done and make the person he explained to more sympathetic to him. If they waited, Albus would build walls around his own memories and subtly alter his perceptions.

Harry would come to seem the one who was in the wrong. And while what Albus had done could not be concealed, he had got away with similarly outrageous decisions, such as hiding the Philosopher’s Stone in the school. They had to act now, or Albus would spared his version of the story and get away with it again.

This time, Severus had determined, that should not happen.

“Because Albus will probably try to excuse himself for hurting and cursing other children,” said Severus.

Harry sat up at once. Dash, curled in a great soft barrier around Harry’s legs and the chair, raised his head and gave Severus the slightest of human nods.

Yes, that is the only way to appeal to Harry, Severus could almost hear the basilisk saying. He will reject the effort, as stunned as he is, if you try to make him concentrate on the wrong done to him.

“Fine,” Harry said. He was grinding the words out, it seemed. A second later, he rubbed his jaw as if someone had punched him there. “But how are we going to do this? I mean, Dumbledore hasn’t said he wants to talk to me.”

“I have had the Floo closed and the protective spells tightened to keep owls out,” Severus said calmly. “Albus likes to use his Patronus as a messenger, but the spells can also bounce those.”

“Oh.” Harry stared at him in a way that made Severus take a step forwards, although he hadn’t planned on this, and sink down to one knee in front of Harry’s chair. Dash swayed a little out of the way.

“Do you truly think yourself so worthless?” Severus whispered. “Did you not think I would guard you?”

“I—didn’t think that.” Harry rubbed his chin along Dash’s scales. “But I reckon I did think that you would let Dumbledore through. I mean, why not? The last hour you’ve been telling me that we need to do something about him.”

Severus shook his head slowly. “I did that only because I think these measures necessary for your future safety. I will never, never sacrifice you for anything else.”

“Oh.”

Harry was blinking, and blinking again. Severus reached out a hesitant hand. Part of him thought the best course would be to back off and let Harry overcome his fears on his own. He might get upset if Severus touched him.

But Harry abruptly turned and flung himself across the chair, and hugged Severus hard enough that Severus froze. Luckily, the freezing wasn’t long enough for Harry to take it the wrong way, and then Severus closed his eyes and hugged Harry close.

Dash was mostly embracing the chair at this point; he must have moved at least a little so Harry could move. He put his head on Harry’s shoulder and flicked his tongue out at Severus in a way that Severus knew wasn’t meant for a hiss. It was more like a greeting.

Here we are, both taking care of him.

Severus had to admit, he could think of much worse allies in the task of taking care of Harry than a twelve-foot basilisk.

“All right,” said Harry. “I’ll talk to him. But I want you and Dash there.”

“I am surprised you were so foolish as to imagine that we would let you go alone,” Severus said, and felt Harry smile against his neck.

*

Harry hated the feeling that he was carrying around a collection of glass shards that would leap out of his arms and crash if he let them. He had felt like that sometimes when the Dursleys were done shouting at him, and it was a horrible feeling. He didn’t want to feel that way.

But on the other hand, Snape had said, Dumbledore needed to see how much he had hurt Harry. It was maybe the only thing that would get him to tell the truth.

Do I want to hear the truth? Harry thought, as he settled into the chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk with Dash on his lap and Snape standing behind him. Dumbledore sat with his hands folded and his eyes locked on them. Harry wondered if he was planning to tell the truth or come up with some other excuse that meant he wouldn’t have to. Harry didn’t know what he would do if Dumbledore started lying again.

You want to hear it, and we shall make him tell the truth if he tries to lie.

Harry started a little at the sound of Dash’s voice, then managed to smile. You always know just what to say.

One of the benefits of being a basilisk.

Harry started to ask whether that was really true, but Snape cleared his throat. Harry jumped a little. He’d thought they would be waiting here until Dumbledore decided to speak up, which could have taken a long time.

We can’t let Dumbledore control the conversation that way.

Harry gave up. He would just rely on Dash’s and Snape’s advice. How to be political here was beyond him.

“I am sorry, Harry,” said Dumbledore. Harry felt the shiver of surprise that went through Dash when he said that. “I thought what I was doing for the best, and now I see that it wasn’t.” He took a deep breath. “I thought to test you and prepare you for the coming battles with Voldemort, but I see now that I wasn’t.”

“I want to know what you were doing. Did you also enter my name in the Tournament?”

From the way Snape stiffened behind him and sucked in his breath, Harry knew that thought hadn’t occurred to him. Harry just watched Dumbledore, and saw him duck his head further and further.

“You did.” Harry sighed and took a minute to stroke Dash’s neck until he thought he wouldn’t shout. He didn’t think shouting was a way to be political. “Why?”

“I thought the Tournament would test your courage,” Dumbledore whispered. “That it would prepare you to face Voldemort. Eyebrows would raise if I gave you lessons with the goal of defeating Voldemort, especially with so few people believing he is still a danger. But if Professor Moody gave you private lessons, then it would not be remarked on. He was the Defense Against the Dark Arts Professor.”

“But…” Harry was at sea. “Did Moody agree to this?”

Dumbledore smiled grimly. “Alastor was poking around some supposedly innocuous shops that turned out to be owned by former Death Eaters. He needed to spend some time away from the world so they would give up on looking for him. To their knowledge, he took the Defense position; in reality, he’s in a coma under the Draught of Living Death. He gave me permission to take his hair so I could make the Polyjuice Potion.”

Harry supposed that made it a little better, that Dumbledore hadn’t imprisoned Moody or something. “But if the Death Eaters thought they knew where he was, how could you be sure they wouldn’t attack him—you?”

“It would not be a problem, because I would have skills even more formidable than Alastor’s to defeat them.”

Snape broke in, and he sounded like a crow. But Harry thought that was a good thing. Dash was muttering in the back of his head about sweet-voiced birds and the snakes that should eat them before they grew old enough to sing. “I know that you were here at the same time as your apparent self. Did you let Alastor out of hiding in those cases?”

Dumbledore flinched a little. He hoped no one would ask that question, Dash said, and settled his head more firmly on Harry’s lap. I’m sure of it. But he ought to have known they would. Of course Snape would want to know what was happening with two of them appearing at once.

“Someone else used Polyjuice to appear as me,” said Dumbledore at last. “I could hardly seem to go away and leave the school unattended for so long.” He sighed. “I’m afraid that he didn’t do as good a job as he should have. There were a few times that I had to step in and fill the position.” He nodded to Harry. “The last conversation we had when Professor Snape gained custody of you was one of those times.”

So that’s why sometimes he acted like himself and other times he acted strange, Harry thought. I wondered.

Ask him who it was who used Polyjuice.

That didn’t increase Harry’s confidence that Dumbledore would actually tell them, but on the other hand, Dumbledore was here and talking. That had to mean something. Harry cleared his throat. “Excuse me, sir, but who was taking your place when you were playing Professor Moody?”

“And why did you enter Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire?” Snape apparently wasn’t going to let that one go, although Harry thought Dumbledore had already answered it.

He didn’t answer it so much as deflect things so that he could get you interested in why he was playing Moody instead, Dash told him.

Harry swallowed. He was getting sick of the way that Dumbledore kept changing his mind and deflecting the conversation. What was wrong with him? Why did he think that Harry couldn’t defeat Voldemort if Dumbledore didn’t pull all these tricks on him and lie to him?

That’s a good question, isn’t it? Part of Dash’s neck hugged Harry’s shoulders. I’m so proud of you for finally asking it.

Harry would have opened his mouth to ask what that meant, but Dumbledore sighed and answered their questions. “The first part, unfortunately, I cannot tell you, Harry. The man who played me is a friend of mine who, much like Professor Moody, has had to go into hiding to prevent people who are after him from finding him. Even speaking his name here might alert certain Dark wizards who have a Taboo on his name.”

Harry saw Snape’s hand twitch a little where it gripped the back of Harry’s chair, but he didn’t ask why. He knew Snape would tell him later.

Even that has changed, that you are willing to wait and trust him. Or at least wait and see if you should trust someone else.

Harry didn’t answer that, either, because Dumbledore had continued. “I thought entering Harry’s name in the Goblet of Fire would give him experience of intense magical challenges in a safe environment—”

Safe.” Snape’s voice was still.

“There have not been many Champions who died in the last few Tournaments,” said Dumbledore in the calming voice that Harry had heard him use so often when he was talking to Sirius. “And Harry does need training, Severus.” He turned and looked at Harry with soft eyes. “I am glad that Sirius could give you something of a childhood, but I’m afraid the childhood may have extended too long. We will have to begin the training now, Harry.”

Snape might have wanted to ask the question, but Harry spoke first. “Then why didn’t you just train me, instead of pretending to be Professor Moody and all the rest of it?”

“Because of what others would have said about the unlikeliness of Voldemort’s return and favoritism,” Dumbledore began again.

“With all due respect, Headmaster,” said Snape, in the most disrespectful tone Harry had ever heard him use, “I do not think that you have ever worried about the opinions of your enemies. If you thought something needed to be done, you did it.”

“Indeed!” Dumbledore beamed. “The way I did this time. I am pleased to find us back on the road to mutual understanding again, Severus.”

Snape leaned slowly forwards. Harry heard a strange creaking noise. He wondered what it was.

The back of the chair under strain where your Snape is gripping it, Dash said. He sounded almost professionally interested. He is impressive.

“You would have done the training openly once, and not cared about what your enemies said,” Snape whispered. “That was what made you a good Headmaster. Because you cared for the good of the school and its students rather than what the Ministry and the Board of Governors would have thought of you.”

Dumbledore sat still, staring into Snape’s eyes. Harry blinked. He had the oddest feeling that he had just become unimportant, that everything had been leading up to this confrontation between Dumbledore and Snape.

Don’t start thinking that way, Dash told him, and thumped his neck down a little on Harry’s legs. Even if Dumbledore does think like that, you’ll never be unimportant to Snape.

“What changed?” Snape went on, still whispering to Dumbledore. “Did you feel that no one would listen to you about the return of the Dark Lord? There were no members of the Order of the Phoenix you could have chosen to train Harry? There was nothing but this Tournament that would prepare Harry as you wished?”

Dumbledore stared mildly back for a long moment, then turned to Harry. “Did you feel happy with Sirius?” he asked.

“Not all the time.” Harry didn’t even consider trying to lie. It wasn’t that he thought Dumbledore deserved the truth or something, it was just that came out, so he said it.

“Oh, Harry.” Dumbledore sighed and closed his eyes. “I wished to give you the feeling of safety and the happiness I know you were denied at the Dursleys, but it seemed I failed even at that.”

“Yes, you did,” said Snape. His voice had gone emotionless, although Harry could see the white knuckles on the man’s hand if he only turned his head a little. “I had to take him away from Black for his own safety. What did you tell Black that made him decide Harry was evil and going to be possessed by the Dark Lord?”

“That is a secret I cannot reveal,” said Dumbledore. “Harry’s training in Occlumency is impressive, but in its infancy. If he were to think about it in his dreams, where Voldemort could reach him—”

“And yet you told Black?”

Harry understood. Sirius couldn’t keep secrets well. Harry was kind of amazed that he had kept even this one from Harry, when he had told him about the prophecy. Maybe Dumbledore had told him it would kill Harry if it got out. That was the only motivation Harry could imagine persuading Sirius.

“You have not yet answered my other questions,” Snape pursued, his voice a soft rasp now. “Did you feel that no one would listen to you about the return of the Dark Lord?”

“I think it should rather be Harry’s questions that I answer, Severus,” said Dumbledore, mildly enough. “We have both hurt him in our own ways. I think we should try to be considerate of him now—”

Harry became aware he was standing up, although he hadn’t really known he would be rising to his feet. Dash was undulating around him, drawn back and ready to strike. Harry wasn’t sure what would happen if he told Dash to hurt Dumbledore. Would he do it?

Of course I would.

Harry swallowed. All right. Then he had to hold back that much. But his emotions were still roaring in his ears as he stared at Dumbledore and said, as slowly and coldly as he could, “You weren’t thinking of me. You were thinking of yourself, and maybe a little of Sirius. And I think I know the answer to the questions you won’t answer.”

Dumbledore looked at him with what Harry thought was real pain. But it was still his pain, and he didn’t care as much about what Harry felt as he did himself. “Harry, if you knew how much I have wished circumstances were different—”

“I don’t give a shit what you wanted,” Harry said mechanically. “What you wanted wasn’t what I got.” He closed his eyes. He wished he was the one who had poison fangs in his mouth.

Having them in mine is as good as having them in yours.

Harry wanted to bite Dumbledore. He wanted to order Dash to bite him. But he didn’t, and not just because he knew that wouldn’t solve anything in the long run.

It would prove Dumbledore had been right about him. And Sirius, too. And more than anything right now, Harry didn’t want to give them the satisfaction.

“You did this because you thought it would prove my courage,” he went on, his eyes shut. Things were just easier if he didn’t look at Dumbledore right now. “You did this because you thought—I don’t know, that it would make me more Gryffindor somehow. You thought you could intervene as Moody to make sure that I wouldn’t use Dash in the Tasks. That would take me further away from Dash and my ‘Slytherin side,’ the way you and Sirius keep calling it. And you never once thought Slytherin traits would be useful to me to win the Tournament. Right?”

Harry opened his eyes. Dumbledore looked as though Harry had dropped a mountain on him. He held out a hand.

“Harry,” he probably meant to whisper, but Harry didn’t hear any sound come from his lips.

“You said at the beginning of this conversation that you thought the Tournament would test my courage,” Harry told him tiredly. “I should have figured it out then, but I thought you were different from Sirius. That you didn’t think my almost being Sorted into Slytherin meant that much.”

He took a deep, painful breath. Dash squeezed him lightly, and that made Harry feel a little better. “Sirius spent twelve years in Azkaban thinking about how Slytherins made him feel horrible and never getting over what happened in school. What’s your excuse?”

Snape put his hand on Harry’s shoulder, pressing down gently, as if he wanted to ground him or thought Harry would break. Harry just stood there and let it happen. He honestly had no idea if he was going to break or not. What he did know was that he didn’t know what he felt right now.

Dumbledore sighed slowly out. “I don’t believe that you need a reminder of your own courage because of your almost Sorting Slytherin, Harry. I told you that your own choices were important, and I meant that and still mean it. It is everything else that has happened since then which convinced me that you need to be brought back into touch with Gryffindors.”

Harry closed his eyes again. “What do you mean? I’m tired of guessing.”

“Your Parseltongue. That you willingly bonded with a basilisk. After your second year, when you downplayed your ability to speak to snakes as much as possible andkilled a basilisk…”

“So, basically,” Harry said, speaking before he thought, “you’re upset that you failed to predict I’d bond with Dash, and you’re acting like this because it’s making me do things that are strange to you, and you don’t like it.”

Snape sucked in a harsh breath. Harry thought he was going to get a scolding—Snape had sounded like that before he scolded Harry—but instead Snape murmured, “There you have it, Harry. Yes. That is exactly what happened.”

And it is a stupid thing to fear, said Dash in the back of his head at the same time. He feared what? That you’d become like Voldemort because you had some of the same gifts of snake tongue and snake bonding that he did? How did this man rise to become the leader everyone looks up to?

Harry swallowed, spent a moment sorting out the overlapping conversations in his head, and then told Dash, I think he was better in the past. He looked Dumbledore in the eye and said, “I’m not going to turn into Voldemort. I promise that.”

“The basilisk,” Dumbledore whispered, as earnest as if he was telling Harry some highly guarded secret, “is a Dark creature. By inheritance, Harry. The magic that created them involves unnatural twisting of animals. It increases your own tendency towards Darkness and use of Dark Arts to associate with one for any length of time.”

“Well, then,” Harry said, out of the center of that feeling where he didn’t know what he was feeling, “then it’s a good thing I’m not bonded to an ordinary basilisk, isn’t it?”

Dumbledore frowned at him. “Do you want to explain what you mean by that?”

“An ordinary basilisk egg couldn’t just be hatched. But that’s what happened with Dash. I went down there, and he was an egg, and he hatched.” Harry found himself swaying a little, at least until Dash locked himself against the back of Harry’s legs and held him still. Harry looked down and rubbed his head. “An ordinary basilisk egg wouldn’t actually be a basilisk egg. It would need someone to tend it, and a chicken’s egg that you hold underneath a toad. I don’t know many toads, but I don’t think a whole lot of them would like to actually incubate a chicken’s egg.”

Dash touched the back of Harry’s hand with his tongue. I think you’ve told him enough. Let him be silent and think about it for a while.

Harry shut his mouth. He didn’t think he could actually say more, anyway. There was that swaying, and that strange feeling inside him where his emotions should have been. Maybe he was the egg, and just the empty shell. Dumbledore had scooped all the yolk out of him.

You need a rest.

“That…makes a great deal of sense, but it also makes things a great deal more worrying,” said Dumbledore slowly, and then suddenly leaned forwards and spoke urgently. “Harry, do you realize that you are entering unknown territory? With the link to Voldemort that you have, with a basilisk that might do anything wrapped around your arm! We cannot afford to lose this war, not if you are to have a peaceful life and others are to have theirs. But playing with Parseltongue and a basilisk might lead us in that direction.”

Harry shook his head. He was done with this conversation, but he didn’t think he had the ability to say so.

Snape was the one who did.

“You and I will talk more at a later date, Headmaster,” he said, with utter polite disdain in his voice. He turned Harry gently around and pushed him towards the entrance to the office. “You’ve revealed some things tonight that I think you should consider. You are so frightened of the future being unpredictable that you pulled a stunt which could cost you leadership of the school. You trusted too much to the prophecy that you told Black about, didn’t you? You thought you knew what you had to do, and now things have twisted, and the child who should have been a sacrificial lamb might live.”

“I never wanted Harry to die!” Dumbledore was standing up, and from the way his eyes flashed, Harry thought he was at least being honest now. “Severus, for you to imply that I did—”

“Oh, no,” Severus said softly. “This is about your crimes, not mine. You want to control the future. You want to be sure of things. You don’t always mean badly, but you don’t know how to work with someone; it always has to be manipulation, because they’re not as wise as you are and they might do something wrong. And you like to offer redemption. Well, Harry doesn’t need redemption. Not for being a Parselmouth, not for having a basilisk, and not for not falling at your feet. Good night, Headmaster.”

He turned his back on Dumbledore and shut the office door behind them with a thunderous sound. They rode down the staircase in silence, even from Dash, but Harry managed to speak when they got to the bottom.

“What do you think is going to happen?”

“Immediately? You are going to bed.”

Harry grimaced a little, but shook his head. “You know what I mean. With him.”

“I think he would never have done this if he still had the power base he once counted on.” Snape was steering Harry down the corridor towards his office. “It has eroded, and he is frightened.”

“Is that a good thing?” Harry asked, a little confused by what he heard in Snape’s voice. If Dumbledore was weak, then Voldemort was probably strong, and he hadn’t thought Snape wanted that to happen.

“Yes. Because he has less power to hurt you.”

Harry closed his eyes. He felt odd, muffled still, with his emotions wrapped in cotton.

You have someone who will put you first. It’s odd for you because you lived a totally unnatural childhood.

Harry sighed a little. It shouldn’t be that strange to me. I’ve had you.

Dash cuddled close to him and touched his tongue to Harry’s earlobe. But the more people who do it, the better. Sleep, Harry.

In the end, Harry wasn’t entirely sure that he was still awake when he reached the bedroom and Snape bundled him into bed, or if he had fallen asleep on the way there and Dash had simply guided his body to the right place to fall. But a small part of him had been awake, because he felt Snape’s hand on his forehead and heard him murmur, “Neither of them is going to hurt you again.”

And that made an emotion fill him at last. Fierce, devouring happiness, the kind he had felt when he first bonded with Dash.

It’s always nice to have help.

Chapter 63: Ripples of Effect

Chapter Text

Draco sat back and slowly uncramped his fingers, sighing. He would have gone and been with Harry instead of writing to his parents, but Professor Snape had Harry in his quarters and wasn’t letting anyone near him right now.

Draco looked over his letter to his father for the next few minutes. He couldn’t find any spelling mistakes, and he did draw his wand and dry the two ink blots he found. Father hated them. He said they disfigured a letter, and he got a look in his eyes when he talked about having to read disfigured letters that sometimes made Draco nervous.

Conflagration slithered up beside Draco and looked at the parchment with him. Draco petted his head.

Dear Father,

I thought you should know that Professor Moody revealed himself to be Headmaster Dumbledore today in Harry’s Defense Against the Dark Arts class. He attacked Harry, according to Weasley, and Harry and Dash struck back with a magic that looked like blue flame. It melted the illusions ‘Moody’ had cast over the classroom, and also melted the magic that Dumbledore had disguised himself with.

Also according to Weasley, Dumbledore said that the Tournament was a means of testing Harry, to make him strong in the fight against the Dark Lord. Professor Snape came and took Harry away then, so I don’t know what Harry thought of that because I haven’t seen him since. But Professor Snape is taking care of him.

Yours,
Draco.

Draco sighed. There were certain things about the letter that weren’t satisfactory, like using Weasley as a source and not being sure whether the magic Dumbledore had been using was Polyjuice or just glamours.

On the other hand, Weasley was Harry’s friend and thus a more reliable source in this case than he would be at other times, and Father would want to know the news immediately. Draco could send another letter later, when he’d talked to Harry and he knew the truth of certain details better.

The ink had finally dried. Draco folded the letter and left the dorm for the Owlery.

As he climbed, he thought back over the afternoon and had to admit it was decent of Weasley to come and find him so he could tell Draco the news right away. Draco would have to think of what he could do to punish Dumbledore for daring to do something like this to Harry, as well as doing something that would potentially deprive students like Draco of a real education in Defense.

Draco couldn’t help but wish he could have talked to Granger, though. She would probably have remembered Dumbledore’s exact words, because her memory was annoyingly exact for things like that.

*

Hermione’s hands were shaking. She forced herself to put down the quill for a second. Her hands were shaking so badly that she didn’t think she could have written with a pen, and it was a disaster with a quill.

Finally, though, she beat back the anger a little, and that let her go on.

Dear Governors of the Hogwarts Board,

This is to inform you that Albus Dumbledore, Headmaster of the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, was impersonating Auror Alastor Moody as our Defense Against the Dark Arts professor. His disguise melted when he attacked Harry Potter, a student, and Harry Potter’s bonded basilisk this morning in Defense.

I have been gathering signatures for a petition against the supposed Professor Moody for some time, thanks to a bullying incident against another student earlier in the year. I request that you look at once into this incident and determine whether the Headmaster has the right to continue in his office.

Yours sincerely,
Hermione Granger,
Student of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.

That sounded good, and everything was in place, according to the book of advice on approaching official bodies that Hermione had read. It was formal, and it was brief, and it got right to the point. Hermione nodded and stood up.

“I just can’t believe it,” said Ron, falling into step beside her as they headed up to the Owlery. “Dumbledore.”

Hermione sighed and said nothing. She had responded to those words herself for a while, but she couldn’t think of anything new to say, and Ron had nothing new to say, either. He just wanted to repeat those words.

Why?”

Hermione halted. That was the first time Ron had got over his shock to ask about reasons, she thought. She turned and looked him in the eye.

“I think he meant what he said when Harry asked him,” she said. “I think Professor Dumbledore was trying to train Harry to face—” She took a deep breath. She had to be able to do this, she thought, or she was a huge coward, and she would sound stupid if she had to testify in front of the Board of Governors or the Wizengamot. “Voldemort.”

Ron flinched so hard he almost fell off the steps. Hermione shot a hand out and grabbed his arm to rescue him.

“Wow,” Ron breathed, staring at her. “You said it. You’re so brave.”

Hermione could feel herself blushing so hard it was difficult to look Ron in the eye. She thought it best to just say, “Thanks,” and face up the stairs so she could walk again. She said over her shoulder, “But that doesn’t mean it was right.”

“What was right?” Ron hurried after her around a twist in the stairs. Then they both had to wait while staircases above them shifted and swung around. Hermione frowned. Of course the way that the paths through the castle changed was part of the charm of Hogwarts, but at the same time, one could wish for a properly regulated castle that would lead to a more academic environment.

“That Professor Dumbledore wanted to train Harry to face Voldemort.” The name was much easier to say this time, partially because Ron just watched her instead of saying anything. Hermione started up again as the way above them stabilized. “Why start now? Why do it as Moody? He could have done it a lot earlier and that would have been better.”

“But Harry was just a kid.”

“He’s just a kid now, really. And he still has to compete in the Tournament and fight duels with a professor who thinks that he has to destroy Voldemort all by himself, apparently.” Hermione sighed and turned to the right, finally emerging onto the top of the Owlery. “So I don’t think Professor Dumbledore did the right thing.”

“What a coincidence, Granger. I don’t think he did, either.”

Hermione still instinctively tensed when she heard Malfoy’s voice, waiting for him to start screeching “Mudblood” at her or something like that. But he didn’t, so she turned to him and nodded. “What are you doing here, Malfoy?”

“Sending an owl to my father.” Malfoy nodded to a bird that was already winging off into the distance. “He wouldn’t forgive me if I waited to tell him.”

“Do you think it’s going to do any good?” Hermione looked around. There was a brown owl sitting on a perch that shifted around when it saw her and spread its wings expectantly. Hermione nodded, and the owl glided over to her and took the letter in its beak, then swirled out one of the windows.

“Good for what?” Malfoy was looking away from her, and Hermione thought he might still be watching his owl instead of paying attention to the actual people sharing the Owlery with him. Hermione rolled her eyes, but kept still. “I think that my father will finally have the potential to hurt Dumbledore in the Board of Governors. That ought to be enough.”

“To do what, though? To change the way that Professor Dumbledore teaches the classes? To help Harry?”

“To help Harry, of course.” Malfoy sounded surprised when he turned around. Perhaps he thought of helping Harry as the most important thing, Hermione decided. She hoped so. “And maybe to get rid of Dumbledore altogether, if my father plays his game right.”

“But we don’t want to do that,” said Ron.

Hermione looked at him for a second. Ron shrugged and shook his head. “No, you don’t,” he said, and if he felt the way Malfoy had turned around and was glaring at him, too, he didn’t let it shake him. “Dumbledore’s kept the school free of interference by the Ministry. If we get rid of him, then the next Headmaster is going to be someone Fudge appoints. Do you really want to deal with that?”

“The school has a Board of Governors, too,” said Malfoy, and his jaw had clenched in a way that made Hermione thick it was going to start ticking in a minute. “They’ve been ignored too long. They’re supposed to have some input into the workings of the school. So is the Deputy Headmistress. And somehow I doubt McGonagall knew about this.”

“Professor McGonagall,” Hermione had to correct.

Malfoy didn’t respond, other than to say, “Well, do you think she did, Granger?”

Hermione had to shake her head, but she was also determined to make her point. “Dumbledore’s made his own position untenable. I don’t see any way that anyone could forgive him—this. It’s going to haunt him no matter what happens, and if the Ministry or his allies tried to keep him on, then it would taint their reputations, too.”

Malfoy nodded, a faint gleam in his eyes. “This is the kind of thing that my father has been waiting to happen for years. Dumbledore sometimes overextended himself, but never this badly.” He paused, and Hermione wondered what he was building himself up to. When Ron tried to say something else, Hermione pinched his arm.

“I don’t think it’s going to change as drastically as you think,” Malfoy finally said. “McGonagall—Professor, fine, Granger—is probably going to become Headmistress, which won’t involve someone else from the outside coming in.”

“That’s not what you were going to say,” said Hermione.

Malfoy sighed. “You’re right. I don’t know if you can understand how drastically things will change. When I said that my father had been waiting for this chance for years, I meant it. But so were other people. And they’re the ones who are going to make this difficult.”

“I thought you said things wouldn’t change.” Ron was moving forwards, his expression so challenging that Hermione was afraid of a duel.

“Not inside Hogwarts,” said Malfoy. “Outside it. Dumbledore kept things in balance, but it was a balance that favored him and his kind of politics.” He looked from one of them to the other, and Hermione had the strange impression that he would have liked even more people to look at, to bounce his glance off.

“Is that a bad thing, though?” Ron folded his arms. “That means Muggleborns get welcomed into our world instead of held outside.”

Malfoy rolled his eyes. “I’m not saying I want the Dark Lord to come back. Now that I’m on Harry’s side, that’s not something I can hope for anyway.”

Ron stared at him. Hermione nodded slowly. It was something she had considered over the last year, both that Malfoy had probably been on Voldemort’s side before—or his family had—and that he wasn’t anymore.

“I don’t think Muggleborns will get kicked out of the wizarding world.” Malfoy licked his lips, and Hermione could feel his excitement like a vise around her. “But things are going to change. It’s unusual for the Headmaster of Hogwarts to have that much power. It’s really only happened because people revere Dumbledore so much. He falls from that position of grace, what happens? The school becomes less important. The focus of the power probably shifts back to the Ministry, or to people whose location matters less than who they are and the kind of forces they can call on.”

He looked at Hermione again. She understood at once. “You’re saying that Harry is going to be one of those people.”

“I think he has to be,” said Malfoy, without a lot of emphasis in his voice.

“He doesn’t have to be if he doesn’t want to!” Ron surged forwards, and Hermione was the one who held him back. She and Malfoy exchanged a glance, which was odd. It was the first time Hermione could remember feeling in accord with someone who wasn’t a professor or one of her two best friends. “He can do whatever he wants!”

“The Dark Lord already limits what he can do with his life,” said Malfoy, in a flat tone. “And the people who think he’s the reincarnation of Slytherin will be more interested now. Especially when it comes out that Dumbledore planned some of this to focus on him personally. Someone who the Headmaster tries to manipulate must be important, they’ll think.”

“They’re wrong!”

Malfoy consulted the ceiling of the Owlery with a little sigh. “Have it your way, Weasley. But I think that helping Harry prepare for this sort of thing is a lot better than standing back and letting him suffer because of his own ignorance.” He glanced at Hermione. “You agree with me, Granger?”

Hermione twitched a little. She didn’t want to agree with him. She wanted to agree with whatever option would give Harry the most privacy and the best chance to resist, and that didn’t sound like it would be Malfoy’s.

But she thought Malfoy was also right that it would be better if Harry was prepared for these things, just like he would have to be for exams.

“Yes,” she said, and shook her head when she saw the betrayed look Ron gave her. “I want to help Harry, Ron. Not help others. I’ll do whatever I can so he can keep his privacy and act the way he wants to. But he’ll have to act.”

“Yes. You put it well, Granger.” Malfoy glanced once more into the sky, although Hermione knew both their owls had completely disappeared by this time. “I hope we can talk more about this in the future,” he added, and then went down the stairs.

“It’s one thing for him to be Harry’s friend, and another for him to think he can control Harry!”

“I don’t think he’s thinking that,” Hermione said.

“Well, it sure as hell sounded like it!”

Hermione spent the rest of the evening trying to soothe Ron, without much success. But that might have been because her mind was somewhere else. She hadn’t considered, until Malfoy spoke, how the people who thought Harry was the reincarnation of Slytherin were going to react to this revelation. She’d thought more about the other professors and what it would mean for Hogwarts.

But now…

Of course they’ll think they have to do something. Maybe they’ll think they have to protect Harry from Dumbledore. Maybe they’ll think that Harry should challenge him in court, or that Dumbledore should be taken off the Wizengamot.

And Hermione wasn’t sure how she felt about that. Punishing people who had done wrong was one thing. Rewarding people who thought that all Muggleborns should be kicked out of the wizarding world was another.

*

Lucius closed his eyes and spent a moment silently meditating, banishing the fierce joy that had bathed him since he received Draco’s letter to the back of his mind. Granted, he had acted quickly. He had written letters to several people on the Board of Governors, told Narcissa, and spent an hour deciding what he should do in the three hours since then.

But he was fairly sure that no one, however closely they were watching him, would have considered he’d do this.

When his joy was under control and he wouldn’t start laughing the woman’s face, he raised his fist and knocked on Minerva McGonagall’s door.

It opened at once, and she didn’t even look surprised to see him. Her face was craggy and distant, as though she’d just got word that she had a terminal illness she’d have to struggle against without the help of magic. “Yes, Mr. Malfoy?”

“May I come in?” Lucius kept his voice as calm and non-confrontational as he could. “I know you have a lot to deal with, but I suspect I may be able to ease your burden in some ways.”

For a moment, McGonagall looked at him as if she doubted that, but she also didn’t tell him to leave. She simply stepped back with a nod, and Lucius strolled in and spent a moment looking around her office.

It was worth looking at. The opposite of Dumbledore’s office, which Lucius admittedly had only seen a few times since the madman became Headmaster. McGonagall had her share of books, but they all stood neatly on a shelf, alphabetical by author. There was a tartan on one wall; even that looked tastefully restrained. A few photographs stood on the shelves, of no one Lucius knew, and there was a small silver stand on her desk for holding her eyeglasses.

“If you are done with your visual tour of my office, perhaps we can move on to what you came for, Mr. Malfoy.”

Lucius turned around, not allowing her words to hurry him, and inclined his head. “I was only thinking that this office would make a proper one for the Headmistress of Hogwarts.”

McGonagall made a single sharp motion with her elbows, before she pulled them back in to her sides. “Nothing is decided yet, Mr. Malfoy. It will need the official sanction of the Board of Governors as well as the other professors. And it will need the right procedures to be brought against Albus,” she added after a second.

“I can speak for the Board of Governors. They will support you unanimously. Indeed, there is no other serious candidate for the position. And I will be one of the ones bringing charges against Dumbledore, so you don’t need to worry about that, either.”

“Charges for what?”

“For hurting my son while in the guise of Professor Moody.”

For some reason, McGonagall looked sad for a moment. “I could have told him that would backfire on him,” she whispered. “If he had only trusted any of us, asked our approval of this mad plan…”

“The fact that he didn’t seek approval is one sign of how mad it was.” Lucius put his hands behind his back and waited a moment for McGonagall to stop staring into the distance, and look at him instead. When she did, he nodded and asked, “Would you object so much to taking up the position of Headmistress?”

“It’s not that I would object, as that I want to have the support behind me. If I don’t, then saying I would take the position would be useless.”

“Yes, I understand.” Lucius made a slow circuit of the office, this time studying the spines of her books more closely. They were almost all Transfiguration titles. “Even if I find it hard to think of a better candidate.”

“There are other people who might have their own ideas.”

“Yes. Well.” Lucius turned around. “If I said that I am prepared to negotiate with those who do and run circles around them until I get what I want, then what would you say?”

McGonagall’s eyes gave a slight gleam. “That you seem to want a tame Headmistress more than you want an ally, and your support might cost more than I could realistically give if I was going to be a good ally to the school.”

Lucius laughed a little. “I don’t want you tame, as you put it. I want you financially independent, in fact, so that you can stand up to a probe from the Ministry if one comes. But it wouldn’t hurt to have someone on your side on the Board of Governors?”

“Can I be sure that we’re on the same side, Mr. Malfoy?”

“We want Albus Dumbledore removed from power. We want the students to come first, not war or the games that Albus Dumbledore thinks necessary to play. And we want Harry Potter safe.”

Lucius knew he was taking a gamble on revealing his alliance with Potter, but on the other hand, he thought it reassured McGonagall as few other things could have. She frankly gaped at him. “You—you want Harry Potter safe?” In spite of herself, Lucius thought, she glanced at his left arm.

“He is my ally and my son’s best friend. I hate to think of how I would answer to Draco if I let Harry get hurt.”

McGonagall was silent, considering. Lucius knew that, and didn’t rush her. While he couldn’t occupy himself with another journey around the office—it would be absurd considering the room’s small size—he could gaze out the enchanted window that showed a view of the Quidditch pitch. He stood there, remembering past Slytherin victories, until McGonagall cleared her throat again.

When he turned, she had her hands braced on her desk. “I provisionally accept your alliance,” she said.

“Good.” Lucius knew not to smile too widely or otherwise act like he had expected this outcome. “Then may I have your permission to represent you before the Board of Governors as the best, the wisest, the only choice for Headmistress?”

“You may.” McGonagall paused, then added, “You know what I’ll do if I find out that you’ve misrepresented my position.”

“Of course.” Lucius gave a little bow, and then turned and left. He suspected it would be a formal challenge to a duel at the least, and that was something he wanted to avoid. McGonagall was a formidable witch in her own right.

But for now, the joy was so soaring…

Yes. This is one thing I’ve wanted, and now it’s mine.

*

Blaise leaned his head back on his pillow and closed his eyes. He couldn’t think if his head was whirling. He had to get his thoughts under control and decide what he was going to do if one set of rumors was true, yes, but he also had to decide about the other set.

If Moody was really Dumbledore trying to play some trick with Potter, then Blaise would have to be prepared to move. Not against Dumbledore, but against Potter. Potter would gain more power from this, more prestige, and if he took up the cause of abused children again, there was the chance that someone might pay more attention and find out about Blaise’s past.

If the rumors were exaggerated, or this was Dumbledore doing something that Potter had already known about, Blaise could relax for a little while.

But he didn’t have enough information to distinguish one scenario from the other, and honestly, he doubted he should relax. If he was too paranoid, then he could recover more easily than if he wasn’t paranoid enough and the trouble bit him on the arse later.

So he started a letter to the person who had written to him before, the one that Blaise had exchanged several letters with before now. Blaise didn’t think he had the same motives as this person; the letter-writer seemed, if Blaise was going to make a guess, more worried about what would happen if Potter gained specifically Slytherinfollowers, or allies who had been Slytherins when they were at Hogwarts. Blaise didn’t want Potter to get too powerful generally and too many investigations pursued into child abuse in pure-blood families because of what would turn up.

What has to be kept secret, if I want to live.

But that didn’t matter as long as they could work profitably together, and Blaise thought they could.

My friend,

You might be interested to know that Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter’s relationship is romantic devotion, at least on Draco’s side. Draco also wrote a letter in the Slytherin common room and left for the Owlery with it less than an hour after the dramatic revelation in today’s Defense class. I’m sure that letter was to his father…

Chapter 64: Temporary Measures

Chapter Text

The murmur spread around the Great Hall the minute he appeared in the doorway.

Harry walked with his eyes fixed on the Gryffindor table and nothing else. At least he knew he would have some peace there. Ron and Hermione had promised to hex anyone who even looked as if they were about to talk about Moody, or Dumbledore, or anyone else. Harry sat down in the chair nearest the door, and picked up a piece of bread he buttered for Dash.

I don’t know if I want bread and butter this morning.

Harry glanced down at Dash in annoyance. He was wrapped around Harry’s feet, the way he usually had been lately. Why did you wait to tell me that after I went to all the trouble of buttering the bread?

Dash gave him a little flutter of his clear eyelids, the closest equivalent he had to a blink. Why would the trouble matter? You can still eat it.

I’m really not hungry.

That doesn’t matter. You’re going to eat it.

Harry felt his spine snap straight. He dropped the bread deliberately so that it made a small smack next to his plate from landing on the table with the butter side down.

So you’ve recovered enough from numb trauma to go on to spiteful tantrums. Excellent. Dash raised his head over the edge of the table, quieting a few third-year girls who had started whispering together as if they would approach Harry, and grabbed the bread in his jaws. He turned it around and offered it to Harry again.

Harry glared off to the side, making a few Hufflepuffs, whose table happened to be in his line of sight, squeak and pale. Harry tried to change his scowl into something calm and accepting. I don’t want it, Dash.

Then you are going to eat lots of eggs instead. And orange juice. And pumpkin juice. And the sausages look pretty sustaining, I think.

Harry glared at Dash. Dash didn’t move, and even with his eyes covered, he had the better glare. Harry turned away with a sulky sigh and lifted some eggs onto his plate with the spoon, then prodded them around until they started to turn into a mess.

“Are you all right, Harry?” Hermione leaned over to whisper it into his ear. Harry had to smile. She could keep even his mundane business and his arguments with his basilisk from other people.

“Yes. Fine. It’s just that Dash wants me to eat more, and I’m not really hungry.” Harry looked at Dash again and poured some milk into his glass, just to spite the thoughts about juice.

From the way Dash’s mind hummed, it didn’t work. And then Dash flipped his neck and the piece of bread in his jaws around, and ate it after all. Harry couldn’t keep from nudging Dash’s body with his boot. Dash curled up around both Harry’s leg and the leg of the bench and was smug at him.

“Well, you should eat some more.” Hermione hesitated. “Did you want me to tell you what’s been happening with Dumbledore or not?”

“I can see that he’s not at the Head Table.” Harry took a bite of his eggs and chewed them especially loudly so Dash could hear him.

I can hear you even if you’re not chewing loudly. All I have to do is use your ears.

“Well, Professor McGonagall is taking over as Headmistress for now. She’s still teaching our Transfiguration classes, though.” Hermione took a smaller sip of her milk than Harry thought Dash would let him get away with, and then even dabbed at her lips with her napkin. “I think she’s going to talk to the Board of Governors today.”

“What are they going to do about Defense?” Harry didn’t even want to ask, but he felt he had to. Defense was the one class he might really need if he was ever going to face Voldemort again.

“They have an Auror from the Ministry,” Hermione replied, and gestured with her chin at the Head Table. Harry turned around and stared. The woman was so slender and small that he hadn’t even noticed her—although that was probably partially because she was sitting next to Hagrid.

“Oh.” Harry studied the woman skeptically. She had long black hair in a braid, and severe black robes, although maybe they were only the ones that all the Hogwarts professors wore and they just looked strange because they were bigger than her. “What’s her name?”

“Halcyon Regis, I think.” Hermione poked him gently in the side. “And you need to spend more time eating than that, Harry.”

Yes, you do, said Dash, popping his chin over the edge of the table again. This time, he didn’t look like he was going to help out by eating anything.

“Why do you need coaxing to take food?” Ron sounded baffled.

Harry smiled tightly and returned to eating while Hermione scolded Ron in a low voice. It wasn’t Ron’s fault that he didn’t know why his words slammed into Harry, and clung there, smarting and hurting.

You need to be coaxed to take food because so many people failed you. But now you have people who won’t fail you.

Harry ate some more without much tasting it. Now and then he looked at Auror Regis, and now and then he looked at Hagrid, who ate like he was stunned. He must have believed in Dumbledore a lot, Harry thought. He could still remember his first year, when Hagrid had sung Dumbledore’s praises while escorting him through Diagon Alley.

But more to the point, Harry thought it was a little strange that Professor McGonagall wasn’t at breakfast.

*

Minerva strode into the elaborate room, with busts of all the Founders on the walls, that the Hogwarts Board of Governors met in. Other than the busts—which had cheerful smiles, except, of course, for Slytherin’s—this was a somber room, all heavy dark wood and gilt that didn’t brighten the atmosphere.

It’s no different than the other times that you had to meet them because you were Deputy Headmistress.

But Minerva couldn’t reassure herself the way she would an anxious student. She knew it didn’t work that way. She sat down on one side of the table across from Lucius Malfoy and spent a moment studying the papers spread in front of her. They detailed Albus’s crimes and the changes the Board of Governors would be voting for today.

Many were mundane. They had to approve her as Deputy Headmistress, which was almost guaranteed, and Auror Regis as temporary Defense professor. They had to ask questions about Albus’s crimes, which Minerva thought Lucius would take delight in answering, and there would be the expected horrified murmuring.

But there were also questions about Harry and Severus that Minerva didn’t look forward to answering.

“Now then, now then.” That was the provisional Head of the Board for the moment, a heavyset man named Marvin Kingston. He stood up and coughed at everyone over his silver beard. They made less noise settling down than he did coughing, Minerva thought.

Kingston peered benevolently at people for a minute afterwards, and then turned and faced her. “Deputy Headmistress McGonagall, you know we’re here to vote on your ascending to the post of Headmistress.”

Minerva took a tense breath and nodded. Of course she hoped they chose her. It was the only thing to do right now. And Deputies had filled in for the Headmaster or Headmistress before when they were ill or away.

But at the same time, she would have given almost anything for a sane Albus and to be able to go back and teach her Transfiguration classes in peace.

“Now then,” said Kingston. He seemed fond of the words. “Is there anyone who can present evidence that the Deputy Headmistress is unsuited for the position of Headmistress of Hogwarts?” Lucius gave a little smile as though to say he would personally tear apart anyone who tried.

Minerva shook her head a little. Lucius Malfoy was an unnerving ally.

“You have something to say, Deputy Headmistress?”

“No,” said Minerva honestly. “I was only waiting to see whether anyone else would speak up.”

Kingston glanced around the table again, as if he assumed everyone else was dying for a chance, but no one said anything. Then Lucius stirred and murmured in a bored voice, “I suppose we can begin the vote, sir?”

“What?” Kingston jerked himself up from what Minerva thought was only absence of mind rather than deep contemplation, and then coughed. “Of course. Vote now on whether Minerva McGonagall should become Headmistress of Hogwarts.”

All the hands around the table went up. Minerva swallowed. She supposed that she shouldn’t have been surprised, especially with Lucius finding interesting things to smirk at, but it was still a far more visible show of support than she’d thought she’d garner.

“And who will your Deputy be, Headmistress?” Kingston asked. “Congratulations,” he added a beat later.

Minerva acknowledged him with a smile as bright as she could make it. “Professor Aurora Sinistra,” she said firmly. “She is a strong professor who wants the best for the students.” And she wasn’t a Head of House, which meant Minerva wouldn’t be adding unacceptably to her other duties.

Minerva would have chosen Severus if he didn’t have the Head of Slytherin position and Harry on his hands. She suspected he would need what little free time he would still get simply to keep himself sane.

“And does anyone object to Headmistress McGonagall’s choice of Professor Sinistra?” Kingston glanced around again, nodding when people shrugged or stayed silent or shook their heads. “All right. Good.” He hesitated, then said, “Changing the agenda of the meeting a bit, I would like to ask you whether it is really a good idea to allow a child to keep a tame basilisk in a school, Headmistress.”

“As you said,” Minerva murmured, inclining her head, “the basilisk is tame. It would be a different matter if he were wild. But he obeys the orders of Harry Potter, and the only time he has attacked anyone was when they threatened Mr. Potter’s safety. Given Mr. Potter’s likely upcoming role in the war, I suspect we should be grateful to the basilisk instead of upset with him.”

“Oh, but, er,” said Kingston a bit helplessly, and peered at his reports, “I was given to understand that the basilisk had lunged at Professor Moody long before his deception was revealed?”

Minerva’s lips twitched, but Lucius was the one who spoke up. “Considering who ‘Moody’ turned out to be,” he said, “I feel that we rather owe the basilisk a debt of gratitude.”

“Well, perhaps so,” said Kingston slowly. He turned to Minerva. “How confident are you in the boy’s ability to control the basilisk, Headmistress?”

Not at all. When it comes to any important matters, Dash will do exactly what he wants to.

But Minerva kept her face calm without any special effort, and only shook her head a little. “Confident enough to have agreed with the previous Headmaster’s decision to allow him in the school, Mr. Kingston. I don’t think trying to ban him now would have any beneficial effects. And there are students who favor him after seeing the way that he helped expose Albus Dumbledore’s serious indiscretions,” she added.

Kingston gave her a disturbed glance, but finally nodded. “Perhaps so, perhaps so,” he said. “Well, then. We might as well go on to other matters.”

Minerva hadn’t experienced the sensation of all her muscles relaxing at once since she was a schoolgirl passing a hard exam. Lucius caught her eye and gave her one reassuring glance. He turned casually away a second later, in response to a question from someone else.

Stop acting so nervous, Minerva ordered herself harshly as she managed to sit up. You are Headmistress now, after all.

*

“What are you going to do about the Second Task?”

Harry started and then relaxed. One of the nice things about Draco—and he’d never thought he would say this—was the way that he just sat down at Harry’s table in the library assuming he’d be welcome, without bothering to ask.

He is good at knowing what you need, said Dash, and propped his chin on Harry’s knee so Harry could reach his plume more easily. Otherwise, I would never have tolerated him approaching as closely as he has.

Harry wanted to frown at Dash, but that would get him questions that he didn’t really want to answer from Draco, who seemed to think Harry and Dash should never fight. Instead, Harry scratched his plume and said, “Well, I still need to figure out what the golden egg means.”

“That’s a clue to the Task? To where you need to be? To how you need to win it?”

“I don’t want to win it. I want to survive it. And I won’t know whether it’s a clue to any of those things until I figure out what it means.”

Draco leaned back in his chair. “Well, I notice you have it with you. Open it and let’s hear it, then.”

Harry shot a pointed glance towards the desk where Madam Pince sat, looking out over her domain like a less friendly version of the gargoyle in front of the steps to Dumbledore’s office. Draco promptly rolled his eyes. “Are you going to let her scare you away from something you need to do?”

“In the library, yeah,” Harry said. He looked at the books he’d been consulting and shook his head. He hadn’t found answers in any of them, either; they didn’t have any index entries for golden eggs, which was the only thing Harry could think to look up. “Come on and let’s go outside.” He lowered the books he’d got into the coils of Dash’s embrace, and he crawled with them back to the shelves.

Madam Pince nodded to Harry. Since she had got over her initial fears that Dash might crush the books, she seemed to approve of Harry giving them to Dash to transport. Harry supposed it was because he moved more silently than most of the students and didn’t have dirty hands that could smudge the books.

“You are the luckiest thing,” Draco said, his eyes on Dash.

“Are you still jealous that you don’t have a basilisk?” Harry asked quietly.

Draco snapped back to attention and smiled at him. “No, just that I don’t have someone who can take my books back to the shelves and do all sorts of things for me,” he said, and he sounded completely honest. “But let’s go outside before it decides to start snowing again.” He cast the windows of the library a dubious glance and then cast a Warming Charm on himself.

Harry followed him, ignoring the murmurs and glances of other students. There were still lots of rumors about him and Moody and Dumbledore, but even when Ron and Hermione weren’t around, Dash was pretty glad at fending them off.

The nice thing about going outside, Harry thought as he cast a few Warming Charms on Dash, who would complain otherwise, is that fewer people are going to follow us there.

I do not complain.

Charmingly, Harry told him soothingly as they turned towards the staircase that would take them to the entrance hall. You do it charmingly.

I do everything charmingly, but that is not the point.

*

Severus paused when he noticed that one of the small globes he had set up to monitor Harry, a glass one that resembled one of Sybill’s crystal balls more than Severus was comfortable with, had begun to glow red. It meant Harry had passed outside the safety of Hogwarts’s walls. He moved over to look into it at once.

Severus relaxed when he peered through the glass, though. He could see the great shape of Dash gliding behind Harry and Draco as they walked into the snow. Harry clutched the golden egg he’d earned in the First Task, and Draco was gesturing with one hand, laughing aloud. Harry’s face was turned towards him, and his eyes—

Harry’s expressions were still sometimes different from what Severus had thought they would be, or distorted by the treatment he had received at the hands of people heshould have been able to trust. Severus would not pretend to be an expert in reading them. But this one, Severus did not think he could mistake.

Harry’s face shone with soft trust, and something like adoration, as he looked at Draco.

Severus leaned slowly back and nodded. He would not say that he could see Harry on the road to recovery yet, but he was getting there far faster than Severus had supposed he might.

In a more cheerful frame of mind, Severus returned to his brewing.

*

“So what was this idea you had about my egg?”

Draco had to remind himself to blink and glance away a little from Harry’s eyes. They were so compelling when they shone like that, to the extent that Draco would have accused him of casting a Sparkling Glamour on them the way that Pansy sometimes did when she wanted to catch Draco’s attention.

Except Harry probably didn’t know the first incantation for a Sparkling Glamour, and he wouldn’t see any reason to cast one, either. Draco suspected, with a sinking sensation in his chest, that it was all Harry and all him.

“Draco?”

Right, don’t let yourself wander off into distraction, or Harry starts sounding concerned. Draco cleared his throat. “The shrieking sounded familiar the first time I heard it, but I only heard it once. Will you open the egg again?”

Harry grimaced, but pulled the golden egg out of his satchel, set it in the snow, and opened it. Draco flinched at the sounds that immediately rolled out of it, but he nodded. He was sure that he had been right after all.

“I think those are voices speaking Mermish,” he said. “Or mermaids’ voices, anyway. They only sound like they’re singing under the water,” he added to Harry’s raised eyebrows, and then drew his wand. “Aguamenti!

The charm poured water across the shell; Draco had practiced it for a few days, because he knew he’d have to use it to convince Harry. And sure enough, the shrieks began to turn into words for the few seconds that the water bathed the shell. Draco had to use the charm several times to get the whole thing.

Draco listened intently to the riddle, because that was what it sounded like, coming from the egg. Now and then his eyes went to Harry. Harry was frowning, but not in the way that would make it look like he was having an argument with Dash.

Come seek us where our voices sound,
We cannot sing above the ground,
And while you're searching ponder this;
We've taken what you'll sorely miss,
An hour long you'll have to look,
And to recover what we took,
But past an hour, the prospect's black,
Too late, it's gone, it won't come back.”


Dash twisted his neck when the riddle was done and hissed something softly. Harry hissed back, and his face had become bleaker.

“What is it?” Draco asked. He had his own ideas about the riddle, but he wanted to hear what Harry thought first.

“It seems pretty obvious that I’ll have to dive into water,” Harry said, and his eyes went to the lake. “But if the merfolk are going to steal something from me…it would probably be Dash. And he’s just informed me that he doesn’t intend to let himself be stolen.”

“Of course not,” said Draco, even as something twisted unpleasantly in his chest. “But why would you worry about that? I know you didn’t want to participate in the Tournament anyway, once you recovered from your little bout of contagious Gryffindorishness.”

Harry rolled his eyes at him, but continued frowning. “Because Dash might bite the merpeople if they try to kidnap him. I don’t want him to bite them. I don’t want anyone hurt as a result of me or anything I do in this Tournament.” His words were fervent as he reached down and petted Dash.

“You’re a better person than I am.”

Draco whispered it, and not because it was a disturbing realization. It was just a strong one, especially when Harry frowned at him as if he couldn’t understand what Draco was on about.

“But remember,” Draco said, “the merpeople aren’t human. In a lot of ways they’re more sensible than humans. Whatever they’ve been promised for helping the judges in the Tournament, they won’t be grabbing a twelve-foot basilisk.”

Harry relaxed for a minute, and then tensed up again. Draco shook his head a little. “What’s the matter?” Sometimes he thought Harry had more moods than a storm.

“If they can’t take Dash, what happens if they take you instead?”

Draco felt as though the inside of his chest had a balloon inside it, and the balloon was swelling up bigger and bigger. It crowded his lungs and made it hard to breathe, but he wouldn’t have given up that sensation for anything.

“I won’t let them,” he said. His throat ached, too. He reached out and caught hold of Harry’s hand. “I promise. No matter what incentive they offer me.” If the Tournament had been a real competition for Harry, something he wanted to excel at, Draco would have agreed to let the merfolk take him in a heartbeat, so Harry could win. But this was different.

“Thank you.”

Harry’s eyes had that special shine again, the one Draco knew was just for him. And then Harry pulled him forwards, and Draco barely shut his eyes in anticipation of bliss before that bliss was happening, Harry kissing him forcefully on the mouth.

God, it was hot and making his heart thump and his chest twitch with the excitement and he wanted to shout—

And then it was over, Harry pulling back a little to look at him uncertainly.

“Was that okay?”

Draco smiled. Words would ruin the moment. So would movements as strong as the ones he wanted to make.

Instead, he pulled Harry gently back, to show him exactly why it was wonderful.

Chapter 65: Putting Aside

Chapter Text

Severus sighed and pushed his hair out of his eyes. He supposed he should have expected the letter that had found him, but he had not.

The letters, honestly. There were two that he had not expected, and he sat back and looked between them now as if one would give him help with the other. The fire roared behind him, and the glass of wine in his hand grew cool. Severus sipped from it and turned to the letter on the right.

It was set on white parchment embossed with a faint design Severus hadn’t been able to read well, and the seal told him who it was from. A crossed M and B, linked with three rings. Narcissa Malfoy, born a Black, and using a ring for each member of her immediate family.

The other letter had a seal that Severus had had to look up. And when he had found the explanation, it only worried him more. This one showed a crouching lion, its left forepaw drawn back and claws raised. Severus had tried all evening to get rid of his fantasy that the lion was pointing straight at him.

In the end, Narcissa’s letter would present fewer problems to deal with. Severus broke the seal and drew it out.

It was short, but even fancier on the inside. Narcissa had written in calligraphy, apparently because she could, and the letters were in silver ink. Severus had to tilt it towards the light to read it properly. This time, the embossed design was visible as another linked M and B, with the three rings around them.

Dear Severus,

I am writing to offer formal apologies for Sirius Black’s lack of care with his godson, and his petition to make amends. In return, he asks for time alone with his godson.

Severus closed his eyes. He wanted to toss the letter in the fire, or even better, find expensive parchment and deep green ink, and write back, Not if I die tomorrow.

But although he wasn’t eager to give any consideration at all to Black, he also didn’t want to take the chance of angering Narcissa. Not when Draco was one of the few people who made Harry so happy.

Compromise, as usual, the political technique he had encouraged Harry to adopt. Severus enchanted a piece of parchment he had to hand to look shinier and newer, but used ordinary ink. It would send its own messages to Black and Narcissa, and Severus wanted a certain ambiguity that might hold them back from replying immediately.

I will accept formal apologies from you. Harry may not. Also, I refuse to allow Black to have time alone with Harry unless he makes an Unbreakable Vow not to say certain things. Otherwise, he will have supervised visits with Harry in my quarters.

At least one problem was dealt with now. Severus turned with some grimness towards the other, and broke the seal of the reaching lion. As he did, a small swirl of golden magic washed over his fingers, licking like a rough tongue. Severus froze. He knew what that spell did, but he hadn’t seen it in a long time.

The spell faded. It had been meant to make sure that only someone the letter was intended for would open it. If anyone else tried, they would find themselves blocked from the letter by an impenetrable barrier.

It was protective Light magic, rather like the Patronus. A Dark spell would have hurt the person tampering with the letter at the least, perhaps tried to burn their fingers off.

And how is this going to work with the fact that so many people also believe Harry is Dark and the reincarnation of Slytherin? Severus thought with some despair as he drew the letter out.

As he had suspected, the parchment was even finer than Narcissa’s, but this writer hadn’t bothered with embossed designs or colored ink, instead writing in a neat, firm hand that was its own claim.

To the esteemed Professor Severus Snape,

We have heard the rumors of Harry Potter as Salazar Slytherin’s reincarnation and bonding with a basilisk, but we dismissed them as of no importance to us. We don’t live in Britain, we can protect ourselves, and if he was Dark and became a threat, we would fight him.

However, we also hear now that Harry Potter was victimized by Albus Dumbledore, who was Headmaster of his school. Given our connection to Hogwarts, we feel bound to offer what aid and Healing we can to Harry Potter. We might not fight in his wars, but there are other kinds of help.

Let us know the truth of the situation as soon as possible, so that we may make our decision and send a Healer if necessary.

Sincerely yours,
Godric Lughborn.

Severus put his hand over his face and shook his head. On one hand, he had wished for a Mind-Healer for Black. Black would never accept an ordinary one, but one from a Light family that claimed indirect descent from Godric Gryffindor might be different.

On the other hand, Severus had no idea what Lughborn would do when he found out that Harry had fervent believers in the idea that he was Slytherin, and followers inSlytherin, and was using that as a political tool. Severus didn’t want to deal with House rivalries outside Hogwarts any more than he did in the middle of it.

In the end, he wrote a polite acceptance and explanation that he would need to discuss the letter at length with Harry, and then went to the Owlery to post them. He selected a strong owl for the trip to Greece, where the Lughborns lived, and watched it wing away hoping the sight would calm him.

It didn’t. And neither did what he saw when he turned around and started through the Owlery door.

A glitter of sliding scales and a lifted head that showed him a faintly glowing yellow pair of covered eyes. Dash bobbed his head in a nod and slithered out of sight, far more noiselessly than Severus was comfortable with such a large snake traveling.

Severus stood staring after him, not knowing what to think. Dash patrolled the school at night without Harry?

Should Severus hope that Harry didn’t know about this, or that he knew and had simply never seen fit to mention it?

*

“I am wishing to find you again for another trade.”

Harry started badly. He’d been looking up merfolk and the kinds of spells that would let him breathe underwater, and there was Viktor Krum suddenly in front of him, staring at Harry with a frown. Harry leaned back and touched Dash’s neck for a second.

He is so unthreatening that I don’t care, said Dash sleepily.

“Oh. Good,” Harry said, and shook his head again when Krum gave him a curious stare. “I mean—what did you want to trade?”

Krum sat down at the table and raised an anti-eavesdropping charm around them with a simple flick of his wrist. “I will give you more information on the Second Task,” he whispered. “And you will give my Headmaster one of these basilisk eggs that you mentioned.”

Harry sat back. He wanted to say something like Bloody hell, no, but that wouldn’t be political, at least not the way Draco and Snape wanted him to be. And he had felt Dash stir suddenly in his lap.

“I already know what the Second Task will be,” he muttered instead.

Krum’s eyes widened, and he said, “Impossible. Even Delacour did not know.”

“Then we should tell her. So it will be fair.”

“No!” Krum leaned towards him, his elbows tugging him up the table. The chair behind him fell over, and he didn’t seem to notice. “You will be telling me how you know instead.”

Harry frowned at him. What was Krum going on about? “The same way you did, I imagine. I used water on the egg and heard the merfolk singing about taking what I’ll sorely miss.”

Krum slumped back in his seat. Harry frowned some more, and then Dash lifted his head and said around his yawn, I think he was hoping that you were just making it up, and didn’t really know. That way, he would still have something to trade you. Dash turned his head to the side, and his eyelids quivered. I no longer like him.

“We need a basilisk egg,” Krum whispered then. “You do not understand. The things that are happening in Durmstrang—we need one. We need allies. If we had a basilisk protecting us, we would not have to take some of the…measures that Headmaster Karkaroff fears we will have to take.”

“But how could you even control your basilisk if you weren’t a Parselmouth?” Harry asked, shaking his head. In private, he added, Is there any way someone could bond with one of you if they weren’t a Parselmouth, Dash?

It’s touching that you think I have all the answers. But the answer to this one is, I don’t know. I suspect it would be impossible, however.

Harry nodded and turned back to Krum. “If I can help protect you from Voldemort, then I will. But that’s not the same thing as giving you a basilisk. Especially when you’re acting like it would be a status symbol or something, not a friend.”

Krum sat up and stared at him searchingly. Harry stared back. He had no idea what Krum had expected to see, and so no way to hide his emotions or project the right one.

“You are—friends with your basilisk? Not his master?” Krum looked at Dash then, and his eyes were still wide and strange. “That is not what the reports said, or what I thought was true.”

“You should have known that,” Harry snapped. At least this was something he could get angry about, and he didn’t think either Snape or Draco would scold him for it. “From the way you talked to him in the library and he approved of you. He doesn’t approve of you anymore,” he added, because he thought Krum should know that.

Immediately, Krum put some distance between himself and Dash. Dash spent a long moment snickering down the bond before he stretched luxuriously and crawled under the table.

“You haven’t told me anything that would make me think you should have a basilisk,” Harry reminded Krum. He was almost sitting with his feet totally tucked beneath him now, trying not to even look at Dash as he slithered underneath him. “And you haven’t told me what kind of danger you’re facing or what kind of allies you need.”

Harry heard his own voice a moment later and was astonished. A few months ago, he wouldn’t have thought he could ask a question like that. At the very least, Krum didn’t owe him an explanation.

But he’d got used to people giving him explanations. Snape always did, although they weren’t explanations Harry liked. And Draco did, and the Selwyns did, and even other people that Harry thought mostly wanted to use him as a political pawn did.

“We cannot tell you. We would be violating the privacy of our friends.” Krum spoke slowly, and Harry didn’t think it was because he was unsure of the English words. “That is a very serious thing to do when they are in conflict with Dark wizards.”

Harry shook his head. “And it’s a very serious thing for me, knowing that I might make an alliance with people who would try to use me or take away a basilisk and not treat it properly. Do you have any Parselmouths with these people you want to help?”

“That is also not something I can be telling you.”

Krum had his arms folded now, and an expression on his face that told Harry he wouldn’t get any more information. He nodded and said, “Then my answer is no.”

“This is a serious thing you are doing.” Krum’s eyes were enormous. “These people, they could be being your allies.”

“But you won’t tell me anything about them, or how you would treat the basilisk, and you want me to just give you one.” Harry was about to say that he didn’t even think the basilisks were his to give, but Dash’s tail curled around his ankle and squeezed once.

We don’t know what they want. That means they might go around you and start trying to get at the basilisks on their own if they thought you didn’t have anything to do with the eggs.

“That’s not something I can do,” Harry finished.

“Because you have the power, or you do not have the power?”

“Because I don’t want to see a basilisk treated the way you would treat it.”

Krum closed his eyes. “It is not being for me. It is not being for Karkaroff. It is for people you have never met, people who need your help if the—the Dark Lord is not to destroy them.” He opened his eyes, and his face was agonized. “He is not recruiting just in Britain, you understand? They need the power to resist, or they will simply fall before him, and they will be killed in his wars.”

Harry hesitated. Those sounded a lot like the Selwyns and some of his allies who believed he was the reincarnation of Slytherin. Alisoun had told him that her parents would probably have had to join Voldemort or at least support him if Harry hadn’t arisen as a possible alternative. Didn’t that make it his responsibility—

You are forgetting one thing. Those people came to you and asked to be included among your allies. They did not hide themselves and ask for help—great help, great trust—without offering you something in return.

Harry came up with at least one delaying strategy that would probably even seem like smart politics. He sat back and put as regal a look on his face as he could. “You need to offer me something better than information I already know.”

“What, then?” Krum almost spat the words, and he was leaning over precariously, hands balanced on the edge of the table.

Careful, Harry.

Harry nodded in acknowledgment of Dash’s words, and said only, “I need to know at least one face or name among these people. If they won’t tell me who they are, then they’ll hide behind me at my expense and I don’t even know who I’m supposed to be protecting. Would I suddenly get an owl in the middle of the night telling me I had to go to Romania or something because people I’ve never heard of are being attacked? How could I tell the difference between a legitimate grief I should address and a trap or a trick?”

Krum sat back and seemed to be considering it. Harry found himself holding his breath. He really didn’t want Krum or the people he was helping to get in trouble. And he didn’t want to leave someone alone to fight Voldemort when he was supposed to be doing the fighting.

We need to spend some time squeezing the poison Dumbledore leached into your blood out of you, Dash said, which didn’t make sense to Harry.

Krum sighed slowly and sat back with a shake of his head. “I cannot be telling you. I do not have their permission.” He stretched out a hand, and for a second Harry thought he wanted to shake. Then he realized it was more like the hand Draco had held out to him back on the Hogwarts Express on their first year. “You will not reconsider giving us a basilisk?”

“I’m sorry,” Harry whispered. The regal mood had fled, and now he didn’t feel distant or detached or anything but sick. “I want to help you, but I have to protect myself and the people who are already relying on me first.”

And you have to protect your basilisk, and listen to his wise advice. Dash popped his head over the edge of the library table again. I’d tell him to leave now, Harry. You’re not going to be any more good to each other.

Harry flinched once, but only because the thoughts were an echo of his. He turned to Krum and opened his mouth.

Krum already knew. He was getting to his feet with glazed eyes that stared past Harry. He said only, “I am hoping that you will not regret this. And even more that we do not.”

He left the library. Harry saw all the glances that trailed after him, and the way that students immediately looked at him and started whispering. They would think Harry had done something horrible if he’d disappointed Krum.

For once, they weren’t wrong. Harry swept up his books and went back to Snape’s quarters. He knew he wouldn’t get any more studying done this afternoon.

*

Blaise discovered his hands were shaking when he tried to open the letter and almost tore it. He sat back and waited, breathing carefully, thinking of the lessons his mother had taught him in always being cool and composed and the best, before he finally let himself read his friend’s carefully-written words.

My friend,

I thank you for the information. I think I shall find some way to use your information on the bond between Potter and young Malfoy soon.

In the meantime, I can give you little news that is good. Potter’s base among Slytherins, and those who were once members of Slytherin House, continues to grow. This seems to be almost solely due to the basilisk. They respect his Parseltongue, but his basilisk is what makes them think him some reincarnation of Salazar.

If we could remove the basilisk, we could remove the biggest base of his power. I was exploring another avenue that I hoped would provide an answer to the removal, but alas, it entered a dead end. I think that we cannot count on regular methods to curb this basilisk’s power when it does not resemble the traditional ones.

I have sent along the recipe for a potion that ought to prove easy to brew, but the administration of it would be difficult for me, at a distance from young Potter as I am. It is deadly only to snakes, not humans, and then only to magical ones. Could you make it and scatter the potion on young Malfoy’s sheets? It would be absorbed by his skin, and with the amount of time he spends touching the basilisk…

I am sure that I can leave you to envision the results for yourself.

With fond regards,
Your friend.

Blaise studied the recipe for the potion quickly. Yes, it looked easy. That didn’t mean it would prove to be so. And he didn’t know that he wanted to take the biggest risks in this association.

But on the other hand, at any moment the papers might turn their attention back to the abuse if they uncovered a new story. And Blaise might receive another letter from someone who was definitely not a friend.

Blaise closed his eyes and shuddered. This was risky, yes. But he would take that route rather than spend the rest of his life enslaved to his fear.

Slowly, he opened his eyes and set to writing his acceptance letter.

*

I like this spell.

But you would like any spell that had to do with snakes, Harry retorted, reaching out to stroke Dash’s scales. Dash was wound around Harry in a complicated knot, chair back and lap and waist and shoulders. Hermione sat across from Harry, plunged into one of her books about merfolk. Harry thought she’d started looking at them to help him, but now she seemed fascinated for her own sake. That’s not a recommendation.

Dash nudged Harry pointedly in the hip with his nose. McGonagall still won’t want you using my help to succeed in the Second Task. This is the next-best thing if you can’t have me with you.

Harry sat back and read the description of the spell again. Are you sure I can learn to cast this spell in time? It’s pretty complex, and it’s only a fortnight until the Task.

Dash flipped out his tail and hit the book so hard that he nearly knocked it off the table. Hermione looked at them from around the corner of her tome, rolled her eyes, and went back to it.

What were you trying to point at? Harry asked Dash sweetly as he steadied the book. I didn’t understand that.

Dash, unrepentant, reached out and used his tongue this time, touching a line that Harry could swear he’d read. You didn’t notice the most relevant feature of the spell, one that would keep most other people from even trying it.

If that’s for a good reason…Harry said, but Dash only laughed at his attempt to sound ominous. Harry leaned over and started reading. Dash’s smugness was like a blank page, and Harry knew he would never get anything from him.

There was a good reason most people didn’t use this spell, Harry saw after some reading. You needed to be a Parselmouth to speak the second half of the incantation, the “real” name of the species of magical serpent the spell created. Everyone could manage the Latin half, but not that one.

How did I miss that?

It’s a common mistake among Parselmouths who are also the Boy-Who-Lived participating in a magical Tournament, said Dash, coiling around Harry and draping his head over Harry’s shoulder so he could also look at the words. It’s called “failing to pay enough attention to your basilisk.”

Harry swatted him lightly on a patch of scales that might count as his bum at the moment, and went on reading. Dash was right. The incantation was the most complicated part. The spell was complex in its wand movements, but if the information here was also right, Harry wouldn’t need to cast it underwater. Just once, on the shore of the lake, and then he could wade in and start swimming.

Not that simple, Dash murmured, and arched his neck as he stretched. You’ll also want spells that counteract the cold of the lake water. Can you imagine the way it would feel wading in without them? He shuddered to the length of his tail. Of course, he was a lot more sensitive to cold than most people, Harry thought tolerantly.

I am sensitive in precisely the correct proportions.

Harry smiled at him and kept reading. The more he read, the more he thought he could do this. He would want to practice some of the other things he’d read about, like the Bubble-Head Charm, just in case it failed halfway through his swim. But he thought he could do it.

Only one question remained to him, one that haunted the back of his mind no matter how many times Dash told him it didn’t matter that much and he’d do better to forget it.

Who are the merfolk going to take for my hostage?

Chapter 66: The Second Task

Chapter Text

Harry sat still for a long time after Severus had explained about the letters to him. Then he looked up with a sigh. The expression on his face was still the best imitation of blankness he could muster.

But Severus had learned to watch Dash when Harry was being obscure, and Dash’s tail twitched wildly. He reached up and hurled himself abruptly over the chair Harry sat in, from side to side, across his lap, where he could bind Harry to the seat if he tried to move. Dash rarely did such things anymore, but Severus thought it was significant that he would act as if he wanted to.

“You need not answer Black positively,” Severus said. “He doesn’t yet know about the Mind-Healer option, but even so, he hasn’t made the Vow or contacted me again. Whatever you want to do. See him, not see him, speak to him, not speak to him, ignore his existence. It’s up to you.”

Harry focused on him, and raised his eyebrows in a look Severus thought he had taken straight from Draco. “It’s obvious what you want.”

“And equally obvious that I am trying to leave the choice open for your input?”

Harry’s hand squeezed Dash’s neck. Dash didn’t move. “I—want to see him. But I can’t face him if he’s going to say the same awful shit he said last time.”

“Language,” Severus said, mildly enough. Matters had advanced to the point that he thought he could correct Harry’s language now instead of avoiding it because it would seem too restrictive. “Then we’ll wait until he responds and makes the Vow of his own free will. And I’ll be there to supervise the visits.”

“Yes. I want you to.”

The tone in Harry’s voice left Severus speechless for a second. He finally reached forwards and clasped Harry’s hand. Harry squeezed back as hard as he was squeezing Dash’s neck.

“You shall have whatever you want,” Severus whispered. “Whatever I can secure for you.”

Harry gave him an exhausted smile. “Sometimes I think those are the same things.”

“There is nothing I would not do for you,” Severus said, and watched the light that transformed Harry’s face. It was precious to him, and so bright that he had to wonder why no one had ever made Harry that offer before.

Almost as good was the soft head-bob he got from Dash in the moment before Dash hauled all his considerable weight into Harry’s lap and succeeded in distracting him from his thoughts about Black.

Severus sat back, well-satisfied. Harry had already said that he wanted to write back to the Lughborns himself and ask for a Mind-Healer. For now, he wouldn’t say anything else. Severus did take the risk now of asking whether Harry wanted the Mind-Healer for himself or Black, and got a quick, furious glance that dissolved when Severus simply remained calm.

“For Sirius, of course. I don’t need one.”

Severus sat there, letting the silence that was one of his most effective methods stretch and linger and move through the room like a padding cat. Harry turned away from him and leaned his chin on his fist. Dash shifted a little as if he was going to rope Harry’s arm and tug it back to his side, but in the end he didn’t do it.

“People always spend too much time concentrating on me,” Harry whispered. “I want them to concentrate on Sirius sometimes.”

“He has his champion in Narcissa. You need not worry that he is being neglected because Dumbledore is gone.”

“Where is Dumbledore?”

“Gone.”

Severus was able to answer no more than that; in truth, he was surprised that Dumbledore had stayed even as long as he had, to apparently pack up some books and personal possessions. Then he had moved out. People who knew him well had gone to the house in Godric’s Hollow and returned without him. Others had questioned his brother Aberforth, who had made it plain that he didn’t care about Albus’s disappearance.

He had gone so he could not be charged, Severus was fairly sure. So that he would not have to see the results of his own disappointing actions—Harry free, Black reduced to non-importance, people outraged over the way he had acted while in the guise of Professor “Moody.”

But Severus was also sure he had gone so that he could continue to work on some of those plans in secret.

“I didn’t mean to be so disruptive,” Harry whispered.

Severus caught the echo of that whisper, and even though of course he couldn’t hear the silent speech Harry and Dash used between themselves, he thought he spoke even before Dash could. “That is ridiculous, Harry. You were only existing, leading the life that you are entitled to, with someone who cares for you and people who protect you. Albus would have probably tried to control the other candidate for the Boy-Who-Lived the same way, if the Dark Lord had chosen him.”

Harry turned around and stared. “What do you mean?”

“Did I not tell you that Neville Longbottom could also have fulfilled the prophecy? That his parents were tortured and driven insane but are not dead?” Severus shook his head when Harry blinked at him. “You may have forgotten, or else I did not tell you. Yes, it was one of the things that made the Dark Lord uncertain at the time when I last knew him. He believed in the prophecy, but he did not know which of two children born at the end of July would become his doom.”

Harry was silent in a familiar way, then said, “Dash thinks the prophecy is self-fulfilling. Whichever one Voldemort went after was the one who would become the Boy-Who-Lived. It could have been Neville just as easily.”

Severus shuddered, and Harry saw him do it and narrowed his eyes. “Neville is a good bloke,” he snapped.

“Yes, but if he was the Boy-Who-Lived, I could not have come to care for you as I do.”

Severus realized a moment later what it sounded like he was saying, that he would rather Harry had lost his parents because it left him open for Severus to love, and winced. But Harry didn’t seem to get that implication. He simply stared, then nodded and said, “Yes, I can see that. Thank you.”

They lapsed into silence that was comfortable, if a little wondering, on Severus’s part. Then he asked, “Do you have a technique in place to handle the Second Task?”

Harry smiled. He had closed his eyes at some point, maybe because the firelight was so bright, and he didn’t open them now. “Yes.”

“What is it?”

“You can watch and learn it with anyone else.”

“Then I must hope that it is not as heart-stopping as the one you used in the First Task,” said Severus sharply. “I was not your guardian at the time, but now I am, with full authority to inflict punishment on me if you try to kill me by making me quit breathing.”

“I was never in danger from the dragon while I was speaking Parseltongue and letting it taste my magic. If I was, then Dash would never have let me try it.”

About to retort, Severus found himself pausing. It was likely that Harry was right, although Severus would still have preferred to communicate with the basilisk about it himself. Dash had been ready to eliminate Dumbledore—or the man he had thought was Dumbledore at the time—before Harry had revealed him. He patrolled the school at night looking for threats to Harry. If he had suggested the tactic by which Harry had survived the First Task, he would not introduce Harry to a dangerous one now.

“I would still prefer to know.”

Harry pouted a bit, but opened his eyes. “All right. At least I can count on you not to spread it around or tell me that it’s evil because it involves Parseltongue.”

“Would your friends do so?”

“Probably not actually tell me it was evil. But Ron still flinches whenever he hears Parseltongue, and I think Hermione would think it was dangerous anyway and try to convince me to do something else.”

Severus could not fault Harry’s characterizations of his friends. So he listened as Harry leaned towards him and whispered, as if afraid that spies might overhear even here. And Severus did have to laugh when he heard what Harry was planning, even as he shook his head.

“I do think it’s dangerous. But if Dash was the one who suggested it…”

“He was.”

Harry had his chin uptilted in grim determination, and Severus looked back and forth between him and Dash. One of Dash’s eyelids seemed to flutter in the motion that Severus took for his equivalent of a wink.

“Very well,” said Severus. He had to acknowledge, even through his continued worry, that it would be something to know what was coming on the morning of the Second Task, and see the looks on everyone else’s faces.

*

“You have to go. Something about a summons to the Headmistress’s office.”

Draco, still blinking from being awoken at midnight, wanted to panic for a minute. What could be bad enough that Headmistress McGonagall would call him into her officenow? Had one of his parents died?

But then he remembered that the Second Task was tomorrow, and his churning stomach settled. He nodded. “Thanks, Montague. I’ll go.”

The heavy upper-year student nodded back to him and left his bedroom. Draco pulled on school robes and cast a charm that would remove the worst of the wrinkles. Then he stood straight and marched towards the door.

“Where are you going, Draco?” That was Greg, sticking his head out of the curtains and giving him a myopic look.

“For something the Headmistress needs me for.”

That was enough for Greg, and for Vince, too; they both went back to their beds and probably straight into dreamless sleep. Draco snorted a little and kept walking, trying to decide what action he should take.

“What does she need you for?”

Draco turned around and looked at Blaise. He hadn’t even known Blaise was awake. He was, though, and leaning on one elbow. He stared at Draco with opaque eyes, and looked away and shrugged when Draco stared back.

“She’ll make it clear what it is when I get there,” Draco said. Blaise had been acting strange in all sorts of ways lately. Draco didn’t want to betray something Blaise would use to hurt him or Harry.

Then he shook his head. Hurt him or Harry? Blaise might have lots of reasons to act strange. Draco knew that his mother was a strange person, and she didn’t have clear affiliations with either the Dark Lord or the other side—Draco supposed he would have to stop thinking of it as “Dumbledore’s side.” Blaise might be worried about where his allegiances were supposed to fall.

“But what do you think it is?”

“I don’t know yet,” Draco said shortly, and slipped out of the room.

The Slytherin common room was silent, and Draco had a lot of time to think about what he would do as he plodded out of it, and up from the dungeons, and up to the gargoyle outside the Headmistress’s office, which jumped out of the way the minute it saw him. He rode the stairs up, and bit hard enough that his mouth filled with the taste of copper.

But he finally thought, Harry is trying to make a political name for himself. He can do that with Dash and the idea that he’s the reincarnation of Slytherin, and the power he has from being the Boy-Who-Lived. But it would be even easier if he won the Tri-Wizard Tournament. And I can make sure he does.

Draco straightened his back. For a moment, he wondered if Harry would thank him for that decision. He would probably say that he’d rather have Draco safe.

But Draco wanted to be there. For the sake of helping Harry win the Tournament, and for the sake of being the dearest one Harry rescued from the lake.

For the sake, maybe, of the kiss that Harry might give him in front of everyone then.

When he stepped into the Headmistress’s office and saw an unfamiliar brown-haired boy and silver-haired girl waiting, and the way McGonagall turned towards him, he knew what was coming.

And he nodded and said yes, and he listened to the reassurances, and then he sank back, under the spell of sleep that washed him in darkening waves.

*

Harry stopped on the shore of the lake. He could feel the grim beat of his own heart, almost overpowering the cheers and chatters and shouts of the crowd.

Draco hadn’t shown up at breakfast to tease him and wish him luck. He hadn’t tagged after him to the shore and given him obnoxious advice. He wasn’t even sitting in the stands now, pretending not to be interested.

That almost certainly meant he was under the lake, waiting for Harry to rescue him.

Why did he do that? Harry grumbled to Dash as he stepped back and limbered up his wand arm, ignoring the cold around him. He could cast the Warming Charms once he had cast the other spell. He wanted the full force of his magic to go to it first.

You can ask him when you rescue him.

Dash had already slid around Harry’s ankles in one more embrace, and then into the shadows under the stands. Harry shook his head at him before he faced the lake.

You’d better be right about how well you think this is going to go, he whispered before he turned his head and saw the judges standing on the lakeshore. Well, not Dumbledore, of course, but it had never been Dumbledore judging the Tasks anyway. Professor McGonagall had taken his place. Her face was strained, but she gave Harry a faint smile.

I am always right, with certain exceptions when the world bends itself just to thwart me.

Harry smiled in spite of himself, and McGonagall nodded to him and then turned and cast a Sonorus Charm the way Bagman had at the last Task. Immediately people shut up, or at least the ones in the stands nearest her. By the time McGonagall began speaking, most of them were quiet.

“The Champions have one hour to retrieve the dear objects lost beneath the lake,” McGonagall announced. “Their scores will depend on the speed of their return as well as the innovative measures they take to deal with the dangers.” She turned and nodded to Harry and Krum, who was standing several meters away not looking at Harry. Fleur was beyond even that, her hands on her hips.

Krum immediately leaped for the lake. He had already Transfigured his head into a shark’s head, Harry saw. Well, good for him. Fleur was slower going into the water; she seemed to be eating some kind of plant. When gills suddenly sprouted from the sides of her neck, she gasped and leaped in, ducking her head beneath the surface.

It seemed the attention of everyone still there, even the Durmstrang and Beauxbatons students, turned immediately to Harry.

Harry smiled, drew his wand, and cast, “Accio—” followed by a long, shuddering hiss of Parseltongue that translated to “waterlungs snakes” in Harry’s ears.

He heard more than one person shout in shock as a snake coiled out from the tip of his wand, a long, slender whip of a thing that was blue with specks of white running in it. Harry knelt down and opened his mouth, and the waterlungs snake reared and parted its jaws. Another one was already sprouting from the tip of Harry’s wand, this one white with specks of blue.

Harry braced himself.

The blue waterlungs snake sucked hard, and suddenly the air was gone from his chest and nose and all the rest. Harry dug his hands into the dirt to keep calm, and the white waterlungs snake leaned forwards and breathed out a single long stream of water. It spurted down Harry’s throat, and coiled into his lungs.

Harry deliberately breathed.

For a second, he had the awful temptation to cough, and then the white snake sealed its mouth over his, while the blue one grabbed his throat in shimmering, transparent fangs and entwined its tail with the white snake’s. When Harry breathed, the water rose out of his lungs and hit the punctures the blue snake’s fangs made; then it traveled down the blue snake, into the white snake. While it traveled, it was made into enchanted airy water that Harry could breathe thanks to the transformation the snakes had worked on him. Then the white snake breathed it back into him, and Harry could inhale again.

It was a little uncomfortable, but after the first minute, the hardest thing to remember was to breathe gently and slowly so the waterlungs snakes could keep up. And they weren’t heavy, and if it was strange to have something there, Harry didn’t think it was any stranger than the equipment Muggles used to dive.

He rose to his feet unsteadily and saw everyone staring at him. Harry gave them a jaunty wave and sprinted towards the lake. He was aware of staring faces and Dash’s voice in the back of his head, wishing him a good journey.

Then he hit the surface, and plunged down.

The water pressed against his eyes for the briefest moment, but the book had said a side-effect of the spell would let Harry have better sight, and that was true. He could see shapes moving far beneath them, and he oriented himself and dived. The white and blue snakes coiled a little closer to him, so the flow of the water didn’t whip them away.

Stones and weeds flew past Harry, and he stretched his arms out in front of him and swam as strongly as he could. He knew he was going to be in plenty of time to rescue Draco if he went this fast all the way, but he also didn’t think the creatures waiting in the lake would let that happen.

Nor did they. Harry felt a hand suddenly grasp his ankle. He looked down and saw a merman beneath him. His tail was lashing like the tails of Harry’s snakes when they first started coming out of his wand, and he opened his mouth and showed sharp teeth as he hissed something incomprehensible through a string of bubbles.

Harry shook his head and pulled his foot back. The merman only shifted and reached out with his other hand. There was a spear strapped close to his side, which Harry could imagine stabbing him only too easily. He shuddered.

He is hostile to you because you are swimming with water snakes, said Dash’s voice calmly in the back of his head. The merfolk consider water snakes their enemies. The only thing you can do is threaten him.

I thought you weren’t supposed to help me in the Tournament?

Of course, if you want to go back to the surface and explain what I did and leave Draco below because you cheated, you can.

Harry grimaced and used his arms to try to form a flowing basilisk shape. Scaring them off with Dash was the only thing he could think of, because he couldn’t speak thanks to the snakes locked around his mouth and throat.

Either the merman didn’t understand or it just made him hate snakes more. He started to lift the spear, parallel to Harry’s body at the moment but ready to stab him any minute. And Harry could see other members of his people swimming in beneath him, their heads uplifted and their eyes gleaming.

Harry began to shiver. He wondered for a moment if it was from fear, and then remembered that he’d forgotten to cast the Warming Charms before he dived into the lake. It could just as easily be from cold.

I’ll think it’s from cold, Harry thought, and twisted to the side, breaking the merman’s grip again. He’d turned to watch his approaching people instead of looking at Harry. When he turned back, he was frowning heavily. This time, he thrust with the spear.

Harry might not be able to speak, but he would bet he could still hiss. Parseltongue was a magical language, anyway.

He hissed to his serpents, and the blue snake rippled and grew bigger, drawing more air and water into itself. Harry had to hold his breath for the seconds this would take, but when the water snake suddenly unwrapped itself from Harry’s throat and hissed loudly enough to make bubbles break all around it, the merfolk backed up and looked uncertain.

The blue snake cracked back into place, and Harry let go his breath and dived past them, swimming frantically towards the bottom of the lake, his mind on Draco.

There were still merfolk shadowing him, he thought, but none of them were going to come that close to his snakes. Harry paddled deeper, reminding himself to take slow breaths, and then he saw a smear of pale hair floating in the water.

Suddenly he had to hold still and remind himself about the breaths again.

There. There, there!

Yes, there was a large boulder or something—no, a merperson carved of rock, with a flaring tail. There were three people attached to it. Harry could see two heads of pale hair drifting in the waves, and he had to dive closer and aim to the left before he was sure that he could distinguish Draco from the small girl next to him, who was probably part-Veela.

Draco would be so upset if he knew that I almost mistook him for a girl, Harry thought, and would have laughed if not for the snakes.

The “ropes” that tied the defendants to the stone tail appeared to be seaweed. Harry dived again, held his breath, and directed the blue snake to let go of his throat again. The snake darted, wriggling, to the length of its tail.

It wasn’t close enough! Harry surged nearer, already feeling dizzy from the effort not to breathe, and the blue snake lunged and tried again.

This time, its fangs severed the seaweed. Harry saw a shape that was probably Viktor coming down on the other side, aiming for a brown-haired boy, while Harry snatched Draco’s hand. Draco appeared to be deeply asleep, Harry decided as the blue snake reattached to his throat. At least that meant Harry shouldn’t have to worry about how he was going to breathe until they reached the surface.

Harry darted up, to the side past a shape that he thought was another merman and then recognized as Fleur coming down, and began to rise as fast as he could. Draco was worryingly limp in his arms. Harry tried to hold back the fear that they’d drugged Draco or something when he refused to play along with them.

Even if they have, it’ll probably wear off when we reach the surface, right?

That would be my guess.

Harry started. Dash’s voice felt almost strange, the way it echoed around his head. He thought that was the longest time Dash had been silent since the beginning of their bond, at least if he didn’t count the times when Dash was deliberately ignoring him.

You’re almost there.

Harry had to roll his eyes at that, because Dash was ridiculous when Harry could see the surface of the water rippling right over his head. He ducked his head down against Draco’s, so his mouth was almost at Draco’s chin, and as they burst out of the water, he muttered, “Finite Incantatem” to get rid of the snakes.

Draco coughed and started spluttering a second later. Harry found himself closing his eyes in sheer relief. And when Draco began complaining about the cold of the lake water and the way it was throwing spray into his eyes, Harry swam cheerfully to the bank and handed him over to the waiting Healer who had charms ready.

“Did you win?”

Harry blinked at the question and looked around. He couldn’t see either Viktor or Fleur yet, and he supposed that meant they were still swimming back with their hostages or having trouble with the merpeople. “I think I did,” he said in surprise, and found Draco looking at him with an open stare. “What?” he added, and Draco reached out and touched the small trickle of blood running down his neck.

“What did you have to do to yourself?”

“Cast a Parseltongue spell,” Harry said lightly, and then stepped back so the Healer could work on Draco.

Draco gave him such a direct look that Harry thought he was starting to know why Draco had agreed to be the hostage. He sighed a little. He said and said he didn’t want to be in this Tournament, but it seemed some of the people who believed that still wanted him to win.

Footsteps pounded towards him. Harry turned to face them, then paused suddenly. He had assumed it was Snape because of the black robes he was seeing out of the corner of his eye, but Snape wouldn’t be moving that fast. He would want to retain some dignity, no matter how concerned he was for Harry.

Then Sirius was standing in front of Harry. He didn’t try to touch him, just stared. Harry still stiffened, and felt Dash curl around his feet in a less than subtle manner.

“What is it?” Harry asked. He thought it was stranger for Sirius to stand there and not say anything than it was for Sirius to approach him in the first place. Then Snape didcome up behind Harry and put his hands on Harry’s shoulders. Harry sighed a little in relief.

“I heard the explanation of the Task,” Sirius whispered. “It said—it said that the merfolk took something you would sorely miss.”

“Yes,” said Harry, still perplexed. Sirius ought to know by now why Harry would miss Draco.

“That dearest thing wasn’t me.”

It didn’t sound like an accusing question, but it was still something, something Harry didn’t feel up to dealing with right now. He turned his back and walked away. Snape moved with him, and so did Dash, and both of them murmured quiet reassurances into his ear. Harry just wanted to close his eyes and sleep for a week.

He didn’t think either of them would let him do that. And he couldn’t keep himself from looking back, just in time to see Krum and his hostage emerging from the water.

Sirius still stood there, and the devastation in his eyes was as bleak as craters.

It’s like, Harry thought, he really believes that I don’t want to run back to him now.

Chapter 67: Punching Through

Chapter Text

“You got the highest score in the Second Task. That means you have the highest score altogether.”

Harry banged his quill down on the library book in front of him, and winced a little when the ink spluttered out. He drew his wand to clean it, while Dash stirred sleepily in his lap, as if asking what was so wrong.

He didn’t actually speak the words, though. He seemed to think Harry and Draco should handle their own arguments.

“But that’s a stupid reason for you to put yourself at risk,” Harry whispered harshly, leaning forwards to shake his head at Draco, who looked utterly unrepentant. “I meanit, Draco. You said you wouldn’t let yourself be used as a hostage. What actually changed? And don’t tell me what you already told me,” he added, as Draco opened his mouth. “You know it’s a load of bollocks.”

“It’s not my fault if you won’t believe me.” Draco folded his arms and looked over into the shelves. “I already told you the truth. I wanted you to win.”

“But I didn’t want to be in this Tournament in the first place. That means I don’t want to win!”

Harry stopped when he saw the look of absolute incomprehension on Draco’s face. Draco wasn’t pretending not to understand, he realized slowly. Draco really didn’tunderstand, and he wasn’t playing some game with it.

“I know you didn’t get placed in this Tournament of your own free choice,” said Draco slowly. “I know that. And you didn’t go ahead with it because you really wanted to, but because you wanted to impress Black.” Harry nodded, one hand digging into Dash’s scales until he sleepily complained.

“But now you’re here,” Draco continued. “And it really doesn’t make sense for you to do badly as—what? Some sort of response to Dumbledore? That would be letting him control you. Take control of the Tournament, instead, and make it work for you. Make it into something other than the training session he thought it could be.”

“You think this would impress some of the political people like the Selwyns. That’s what you said.”

“Yes.”

“But if I lose it? And I still might. Krum and Delacour are both older and more skilled than I am.”

Draco rolled his eyes. “The only part of that sentence that’s true is when you say they’re older. You have a basilisk, Harry. And even though he hasn’t been with you in the actual Tasks, I know he’s been talking to you about the Parseltongue magic you used. It’s silly to pretend that doesn’t make a difference.”

Harry frowned at the books. “But that makes it worse. Because the Tournament is supposed to test your skill in magic. So I shouldn’t try to win at all, because it’s unfair of me to win when it’s not skill at magic.”

Silence. Harry actually looked up to see if Draco had left, because it wasn’t like him to be so quiet when Harry talked about fair play.

Instead, Draco was wobbling in place, clutching at the table, seemingly, to keep from falling to the floor. Then he whispered, “Harry, you—you don’t mean that? You don’t think Parseltongue and spells that use it are magic?”

Harry sighed. Once again, Draco had taken the exact wrong thing from his words. Sometimes he wondered how he and Draco could get along as friends—or boyfriends—at all, they were so different from each other.

Dash stirred, and laid his clear eyelids against Harry’s arm. You know, if someone keeps mistaking what you mean, then maybe you should start thinking about whether they’re thick, or whether you’re not speaking clearly.

Draco sat down hard, meanwhile. “You do think of Parseltongue and your connection with Dash as magic, right? Because it’s some of the best magic. You’re not going to ignore it and pretend it doesn’t exist?”

“Why does that matter so much?” Because it really did sound as if Draco might expire right then and there.

“Because—I can’t see—you can’t see—”

Draco broke off again. Harry waited, because he could see how important this was to Draco, but at the same time, he had no idea what he wanted to say.

*

How can I tell him? These are all sorts of things that he should know already, and he doesn’t know them!

But Draco also knew he couldn’t sit Harry down and make him read a history book, either. So he finally said, “Look. I want you to think of Parseltongue as magic because I think it’s wonderful. So I don’t want you to hold back and do things that undermine your credibility because of it. And you’re relying on it politically, so you need to think of it as something real and worth cultivating, or your allies would abandon you.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. “Not winning the Triwizard Tournament doesn’t magically make me not a Parselmouth, Draco. I’ll go on being one no matter how many Tasks I lose.”

“I know, but—” Draco shook his head again and blurted the first words that came into his head, because trying to think of the best ones didn’t work. “If you don’t treat your magic with respect, then other people are going to be able to tell, and they’ll turn against you. And I think it would be horrible, because you might treat Dash with less respect, too.”

Silence. Harry looked down at Dash and had one of those conversations Draco wished he could listen in on. Then he looked back up and asked simply, “Would I do that to Dash?”

“You might do it without meaning to.” Draco was feeling a little sorry that he’d started the subject now, but he didn’t like hearing Harry talk about himself as if he wasn’t as good a wizard as Delacour and Krum just because he was younger. “Look, Harry. I just want you to say that you’re skilled in magic.”

“I’m skilled in magic.”

“And believe it.”

“Not compared to Krum and Delacour, I’m not. They’ve got three years of training on me.”

“But it’s not just training that makes a great wizard,” Draco pointed out instantly. “It’s attitude. It’s respecting magic. It’s treating it like part of you. And sometimes you do that and sometimes you don’t. What you did with the dragon was brave and risky, and what you did with the Parseltongue spell in the lake was complicated and interesting. And I deserve to get some acknowledgment from you because I didn’t get what I wanted most!”

“What was that?”

Harry’s voice had gone a little lower, but Draco thought that was only because Madam Pince might be listening to them, not because he was thinking of the same thing as Draco. So Draco glared back and said, “A kiss. Since I took the risk after all to make sure that you would win.”

“I didn’t really want you to do that, Draco,” Harry complained. But Dash’s head appeared under his elbow and swayed back and forth in a happy way, so Draco knew he had at least one person’s approval.

“I know. But it’s done. And it put you ahead. And I deserve to get something of what I wanted, don’t I? Since you don’t appreciate the risk I took.”

Harry’s eyebrows went up, and stayed there. Draco felt as though his face was red for no reason. He’d taken another risk and Harry still didn’t want to kiss him, so why continue pursuing it?

Then Harry smiled. “That seems fair,” he said. “But I wouldn’t do it if I didn’t want to, too.” And he leaned across the table and kissed Draco.

Draco gasped aloud, feeling as though someone had suddenly submerged him chest-deep in warm champagne. There were so many bubbles, and they seemed to be all blowing up his nose. He leaned forwards and kissed Harry back, ignoring the gasp and thump off to the side as someone dropped a book.

Harry didn’t seem to care about the book-dropping person any more than Draco did. He pulled back first, but only because Madam Pince had come over to their table and stood there with her hands on her hips, looking at them.

Then Harry was the one who talked, because Draco’s head was still whirling too fast, and he had to take a minute to recover. “Sorry, Madam Pince. But we weren’t making any noise.”

“You’re the cause of disruption in others,” she said severely. “See that you don’t do it again in my library.”

“Yes, Madam,” said Harry, in a submissive voice Draco had never heard him use. He must keep it for special occasions.

The librarian sniffed and finally departed. Harry turned to Draco and smiled at him. Draco just looked back, his capacity to answer destroyed by that smile.

“You can always ask for a kiss if you want one,” Harry said. “You don’t have to do something risky and then wait for it.” He eyed Draco severely. “I believe that’s more my line than yours, anyway.”

“Neither of us should be mindlessly risking our lives,” Draco said, and saw Dash’s head bob firmly up and down out of the corner of his eye. It gave him the confidence to lean forwards with his arms crossed and frown at Harry. “You should ask for what you want as much as I do.”

“But what if I want is to save people?”

“Then you can come to me and Professor Snape, and we can help you work it out.”

Harry smiled in a way that looked forced. “I don’t think Professor Snape cares for some of the people I want to save.”

“Who?” Draco asked, baffled. He thought Professor Snape would do anything to make Harry happy.

Harry considered the shelves, the books on the table in front of them, Dash’s plume, before he looked back at Draco and murmured, “Sirius.”

“You can’t save him, that’s all. Not because Snape wouldn’t allow it, but because he just can’t be saved.”

“He could if he was healed.”

“And how are you going to heal him?”

Harry glanced around again, but seemed to notice only the scandalized looks of the people at the other tables who had seen him kiss Draco, because he leaned towards Draco and murmured, “Not here. Let’s go somewhere else.”

Draco was more than happy to do that, not least because everyone had just seen him kiss Harry Potter and now they were going somewhere more private. They were welcome to draw al the conclusions they liked, most correct. He slung the books and parchment he’d been working on into his arms and followed Harry out of the library.

One of the Hufflepuffs who’d been gaping at them from a nearby table did start to stand up and follow them. Dash slithered out from between Harry’s feet and crawled inquiringly back, tilting his head as if to ask the boy a question. The Hufflepuff wavered, then backed down and scampered to the safety of others’ company.

“You shouldn’t have done that, Dash,” Harry murmured reprovingly.

Draco couldn’t hear Dash’s response, of course, but he thought he knew what it would be, and the way Harry rolled his eyes a little later only made the point more firmly.Why would I do something else? Dash would have said. He was coming after you, and I was only going to help him out by asking what he wanted.

“Here,” Harry said, when they’d walked a little, and sat down in a deep alcove in front of a window, which had a bench in the stone. Harry plopped his books beside him and shook his head a little at Draco. “You’ll have to believe that I don’t want to turn my back on Sirius. I know I can’t go back to him the way he is now. And what he said after the Second Task proved it.”

“Okay,” Draco said, suspicious. This sounded like exactly what he wanted to hear, and yet it also seemed to be crawling towards an answer he didn’t want.

“He needs help,” Harry went on, staring towards the corridor. A second later, he drew his wand, but Draco already had his out, and he cast an Anti-Eavesdropping Charm that shielded them from being overheard. Harry smiled at him, but the smile faded a second later. “He’ll never get better if everyone just ignores him.”

“My mother is helping him. She’s a good person for doing that,” Draco said. “But that doesn’t mean you have to.”

“I suppose I didn’t tell you. A Light family from the Continent has written saying they’d offer me some help, in the form of a Mind-Healer. If they send a Healer for Sirius, and it helps him…”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because they think they’re descended from Godric Gryffindor, and they’re ashamed that someone who was in charge of Hogwarts the way Dumbledore was did what he did to me.”

Draco blinked. He could see the chain of reasoning there, he supposed, although it was one that only a Light family full of Gryffindors would make. And more responsible than he was used to Light families being. Draco had been taught all his life that people who explicitly called themselves Light liked to dust their hands of criminals and anyone who didn’t exactly obey all the neat little rules, and watch from a distance as they died.

“But they should hate you. Because of your Parseltongue.”

Harry snorted. “You were the one who was trying to convince me a little while ago that my Parseltongue was wonderful magic. Do you think I would use it if I thought it was inherently Dark?”

“Well.” Draco had to hesitate again. “I more meant that you’re in politics as a reincarnation of Salazar Slytherin. If they think of themselves as the children of Godric Gryffindor…”

“It’s just shaking your whole world, isn’t it?” Harry broke in, smiling up at him. “You didn’t think people who call themselves Light and on the side of Gryffindor would be this nice.”

Draco scowled a little. “And I think you ought to keep in mind that they might hold you to standards of behavior you can’t follow, or even demand that you abandon your allies like the Selwyns, if you listen to them too much.”

Harry only shrugged as if that didn’t matter. “So far they haven’t. And if the only help they offer is a Mind-Healer for Sirius anyway, they can’t demand I abandon my allies. They’ll be doing this one thing and then withdrawing. They might do that anyway, after they get here and meet me.”

“What does that mean?”

Draco knew his voice was aggressive. From the way Harry blinked at him, he found it so. But he said in a mild tone, “It means that they might come to meet me and decide I’m too Dark for them to help further. That’s one reason I’m asking for the Mind-Healer for Sirius. He’s someone who was a Gryffindor in a traditionally Dark family. They’re going to want to help him no matter what they think of me.”

“You’re not evil. You deserve to have someone help you.”

“I know.”

Dash lifted his head and nudged Harry’s hip so hard that he almost knocked him off the bench. Harry recovered his balance and scowled at Dash. Draco folded his arms. “What part of what I said do you disagree with?”

“I know I’m not evil!” Harry’s eyes flashed so passionately that Draco caught his breath for a different reason. “The Dursleys tried to convince me of that. And I’m never going to listen to anything they say, ever again.”

“Good.” Draco smiled. “But what about the other part? Do you think the—it must be the Lughborns, right?” His knowledge of Light families and Dark families and the alliances between them that his parents had insisted on was coming in useful after all. “Do you think they would turn around and leave again when they find out what you’re like?”

Harry grimaced. “Professor Snape thinks I need a Mind-Healer. I say that we’re only guaranteed one, and Sirius needs it more than I do.”

“You really do think they’re going to disapprove of you.”

“Well, it’s like you said. Even though I don’t think there’s anything Dark about Parseltongue, plenty of people do. You saw the way everyone reacted in second year when I used it in the dueling club.”

“I wish you could stop thinking that way. And if they do, so what?” Draco sat slowly down next to him. “You’re the one who has to make the decisions, but you’ll still have plenty of allies even if the Lughborns decide that you’re Dark.”

“And the ordinary students in the school?”

“They got used to Dash. They’ll get used to you, no matter what you do.”

Harry was silent for long moments, staring at the stone floor under his feet as if it would crack open and give him answers. Then he shook his head and looked up.

“I want Sirius to be healed more than I want to be healed,” he said. “Can you understand that? Can you tell Snape? Because no matter what I say, I don’t think he really understands. And it’s getting tiring.”

Draco’s chest ached as though his breath was caught there at the dead tone in Harry’s voice. He nodded and put a hand on Harry’s shoulder. Harry sighed and leaned against him in response. His eyes were slipping closed. Draco touched his hair and hoped no one happened by just now. This was a private moment he didn’t want to share.

“How hard has he been riding you about getting a Mind-Healer, then?” Draco whispered.

“Pretty hard. And worse with his silences than his words. I talk about Sirius being healed, and he just looks at me and shakes his head. And I talk about how I want other people healed before me, and he frowns in that way—well, you know.”

“Like he wants to say something bad about your potion but it’s so horrible that mere insults aren’t enough.”

Draco felt Harry smile wearily against his shoulder. “Exactly. That sort of smile.

“And I know he hates Sirius,” Harry added a few minutes later. “I know why. He probably hates him even more now than he used to, because he’s the one who hurt me, too, and Snape cares about me now.”

Draco agreed silently with him. Yes, it would be in-character for Professor Snape to hate anyone who had hurt what he cared for.

“But I don’t want to—to go through this again. I can’t. I want Sirius to be healed, and until then I don’t want to see him and I don’t want Snape to talk about him as though he’s a real dog who pissed on the carpet. I want everything to go away.”

“I’ll talk to Professor Snape,” Draco whispered back, and felt as though Harry had slumped close to sleep in his lap.

Thank you.”

Harry was quiet then, and Draco stroked his hair with gentle fingers. It bothered him, that Professor Snape had been so insistent about this issue with Harry, and Draco hadn’t noticed. Of course, there’d been the Second Task and his own beliefs about how important the missed kiss was, and he hadn’t known the Lughborns had sent a letter at all until today.

He finally felt eyes on him, and looked up. Dash nodded to him once, and then curled himself around Harry’s legs and went to sleep.

Maybe Dash wanted to say something about it earlier, but he can’t talk directly to Professor Snape, and Harry didn’t want to talk about his reasons, so this works out.

Draco did have to smile with wonder, though. At one time, he would have felt that Dash’s attention was an even better gift than Harry’s. Now he hadn’t felt it at all in contrast to how worried he was about Harry.

*

Blaise sprinkled in the last crushed cinders and took a step back, eyeing the cauldron dubiously. It needed to simmer for a week, although he would have to come back on a regular basis to check the potion and make sure no contaminating matter had got in it.

As he went about covering up the cauldron to prevent dust and other particles like that from drifting into it, Blaise shook his head. He hadn’t heard from his “friend” since before Potter’s performance in the Second Task.

And he didn’t like the way that Task had affected Slytherin.

Before, a lot of the people not allied with Potter had watched him with cynical eyes. Blaise knew most of them had suspected him of still putting his name in the Goblet even though a lot of the controversy had died down. They’d only raised their eyebrows when the news of Dumbledore doing it had come out. Potter could say that, and of course he would, but it was convenient, wasn’t it? Now that the Headmaster wasn’t here to defend himself anymore.

The First Task hadn’t changed things. Potter had taken an insane risk even if he was using Parseltongue. Just like a Gryffindor. Just like the kind of person who would decide he should be in the Tournament even though he was only fourteen in the first place.

But then came the Second Task. Potter had not only used Parseltongue and a carefully-researched spell; he’d cast a spell that most of the Slytherins Blaise knew would have loved to cast themselves. He was far from a hero, but he began to look more practical.

And reports were filtering in that seemed to confirm what Dumbledore had really done while he was disguised as Moody. Some Slytherins believed Potter now. More of them discussed, in coded, casual terms Blaise understood well enough, the possibility of an alliance with him.

There was the way Draco had gone to the Headmistress’s office in the middle of the night, too, only to end up beneath the lake. The Draco Malfoy Blaise had known wouldn’t have taken such a risk for anyone.

Potter changed people. He changed them so they weren’t really Slytherins anymore. Draco was like some bizarre cross between a Hufflepuff and a Gryffindor now. The Slytherins around Blaise might as well be Ravenclaws.

All the years when they’d joked about people just allying with Potter because of his name might never have existed. They were gone. And Blaise was left to deal with the aftermath, as the only sane Slytherin he knew, unless his “friend” was also one.

The potion gave a final blast of steam. Blaise backed carefully away from it and cast the spell that he’d found, just in case, to clear his lungs of fumes.

When he’d shut the door behind him and gone part of the way back to the common room, he heard whistling. Blaise at once backed into a corner and cast a Disillusionment Charm.

Draco moved past him. Blaise couldn’t say he was skipping, but he looked too close to it for Blaise’s peace of mind. And he was whistling. And he didn’t seem to be under a curse.

Draco never even glanced around to see if someone else was there, when the boy Blaise had once known was as cautious as a cat. He just kept walking, and whistling, on his way to the common room. Blaise waited long moments before he slid out of the corner where he’d ducked and went after him.

His chest was heavy. He shook his head to clear it, and then paused and breathed deeply, evenly, so he wouldn’t seem out of sorts when he arrived at the common room door.

Yes, he was mostly doing this for himself. Potter had too much power, and too much “compassion” for revealing cases of abuse like Parkinson’s. He might reveal Blaise’s any time, and there went his life.

But he was doing this for his friends, too. For the sake of Slytherins who might be too scared of the Dark Lord and too awed by the only other Parselmouth most of them knew of to remember common sense.

For the sake of the boy Blaise had rescued from Slytherin’s cursed book last year, he had to kill Potter’s basilisk. It was the only way.

Chapter 68: Artifacts of Understanding

Chapter Text

“You really kissed Malfoy in the middle of the library?”

“Yes.”

“You really—”

“We heard about it from four people before Harry even got back to Gryffindor Tower,” Hermione interrupted, rolling her eyes. “Why would you think that he didn’t do it, Ron?”

“I knew he liked Malfoy,” Ron said in a mournful sort of voice that Harry could feel Dash noting so he could torment Harry with it later. “I just didn’t know he liked him enough to kiss him in the middle of the library.”

“Well, I do.” Harry paused in his flicking through his Transfiguration book. Their assignments had got more routine since McGonagall had become Headmistress, but no shorter. “Is that going to be a problem?”

“No, like I said.” Ron didn’t get upset or offended. He just looked mournful. “I couldn’t believe it happened that way. I thought you’d kiss him after the Second Task. Or that you’d get up in the middle of the Great Hall someday and announce it. Or he’d announce it after he got irritated with the way girls stare at you sometimes. But not like this.”

Harry blinked at him. He wanted to say that Ron had sure spent a lot of time thinking about this, but he couldn’t think of a way to say it without causing him offense.

Say it anyway, Dash advised him around a long-fanged yawn. The way he reacts would be hilarious.

But Harry still tried to pay more attention to his own instincts when dealing with his friends rather than his basilisk, so he said, “Well. Um. We didn’t do it that way. But Draco did expect a kiss after the Second Task, and he was a little angry he didn’t get it. That’s one reason I kissed him when I did.”

Ron sat up and said, “Well. That makes sense, then.” And he turned back to his own Transfiguration homework with such a cheerful face that Harry looked to Hermione to make sense of things.

Hermione shook her head. She was watching Ron with the kind of amused fondness that Harry thought made it strange she hadn’t kissed him in the library. Of course, Ron and Hermione also had different kinds of arguments than Harry and Draco had, so maybe she was waiting for some reason best known to herself.

Okay, Harry thought firmly then. And I don’t need to spend as much time thinking about when Ron and Hermione are going to kiss as Ron spent thinking about when Draco and I were going to. He turned back to his essay, aware of Dash’s snicker in the back of his mind.

I thought things wouldn’t be as amusing around here once you figured out that Draco wanted you to ask him to the Ball and kiss him and date him. I should have known. Humans are always amusing.

*

“Thank you for agreeing to meet with me, Severus.”

Severus inclined his head without moving. Narcissa had come to Hogwarts, and it wasn’t to visit Draco. That was more than enough to make him immediately wary of her.

Narcissa, of course, didn’t act as though she was someone Severus should be wary of. She was delighted to take the seat by the fire. She was delighted to drink the tea he offered her. She was delighted to hear about Draco and how he had been doing in Potions, and delighted to hear about Harry doing better, and in general so pleasant and complaisant that by the time she opened the subject she had really come to talk about, Severus felt as though he was sitting on boar bristles.

“Sirius is reluctant to have you there when he speaks to Harry,” Narcissa said, and sipped from the tea while looking thoughtfully at the fire. “He’s also reluctant to see this Lughborn Mind-Healer. They’re stern people by reputation. They might not understand Sirius’s sense of fun.”

Severus didn’t blast out words in his rage that he would have cause to regret later, but it was a near thing. He only nodded as if he might even understand and agree, and then said, “Because his sense of fun includes things like researching rituals that might kill Harry, I’m afraid the indignity of having the wrong Mind-Healer is one he will have to get over.”

“He wasn’t researching those rituals for fun. He was researching them because they might be the only way to sever the connection between Harry and the Dark Lord.”

“And he didn’t tell me that. He sought no other way. He acted on the recommendation of Dumbledore, and if you still trust the man, Narcissa, then you’ve lost most of the brains you had when you were in Slytherin.”

Narcissa blinked, perhaps a bit startled by the blunt speaking. It was one reason Severus had done it. He didn’t want her thinking that this was all a joke to him, and that he would place Black’s whims above Harry’s safety. He waited.

Finally, Narcissa said, “You can understand why Sirius would be a bit reluctant to speak to Harry with your hostile presence next to him.”

“I understand that he is out of control. That he makes no effort at all to understand the way Harry sees the world. The way he approached him after the Second Task and what he said shows that—”

“What did he say after the Second Task?”

Severus stared at her. Narcissa stared back. Severus tried to overcome the feeling that a winged horse had first thrown him and then trampled on him, and said slowly, “I thought he would have written to you about it. Or perhaps that Draco would have. Since Black considered himself so ill-used that he was not the precious thing the merfolk took from Harry, I thought it would be at the forefront of his mind and you would learn about it in a day.”

“He said that?” Narcissa put down her cup and stared at the flames.

“He had a conversation with you after the Task and didn’t mention it?” Severus permitted himself a sneer—only one, as he would otherwise become addicted. “What a strange fact.”

“He didn’t say that,” Narcissa repeated slowly. “Although, now that I think of it, the conversation we had about his reluctance was the day before the Second Task. He hasn’t written or talked to me since.”

She stood in an abrupt swirl of robes. “Your pardon, Severus. I might have spent time talking to you about facts that don’t apply anymore. I will have to see Sirius and ask him what he says now.”

And she left. Severus watched the trail of brightness left behind in the air by her robes, and shook his head a little.

If anything changes and Black becomes willing to accept the efforts of a Mind-Healer, that would be a good thing.

But Severus still did not intend to compromise on the limitations he had laid out for Harry’s safety, no matter how strict they were. Black would speak with Harry only under Severus’s supervision, or he would not see him.

That was also a fact.

*

Lucius paused. He had come to Borgin and Burkes for other purposes, and had been looking at their collection of (mostly Dark) artifacts at all only because Borgin was with another client and Lucius was bored.

This one, though…

He knew he hadn’t seen it on his most recent visit. It was the sort of thing he would have remembered. Yet it had dust on it as though it had sat on the shelf for half an eternity.

Lucius was not so much a fool as to touch it. He leaned near to it and cast a small charm that would create an image of it, made of light, for him to touch. Then he stepped back from the shelf and wandered down an aisle full of dust and shadows, carrying the illusion with him.

He looked at it more closely only when he was deep in the shop and away from Borgin’s line of sight even if he turned a full circle.

The illusion showed a gleaming black block that might be ebony or marble. The image couldn’t mimic the artifact’s height or weight, unfortunately, but by turning it, Lucius thought it was marble. The bottom was completely smooth save for a single carved rune. On top a single silver ring was mounted, wide enough to resemble a bracelet. Around it were a few other rings, carrying small balls that might have made it made it resemble a model of the sun and planets.

But Lucius’s expert eye read the other rings and balls for the late additions they were, simple disguises for a harmful object. He slid his hand through the single silver ring in the center, careful not to disrupt the magic of the illusion.

It was wide enough to admit a hand, and most of his forearm before Lucius would have crumpled the delicate ring if he was holding the real artifact. He drew his arm back and touched the point where he could almost feel silver constricting his skin, despite this artifact only being an illusion.

Yes. The point on his forearm he touched was well above the Dark Mark.

Lucius smiled. He would not have thought to find one of these sitting in a shop for simple artifacts.

“Mr. Malfoy?”

Lucius dissipated the illusion with a single snap of his wand. Borgin couldn’t think that Lucius desired the object. He would raise the price unbearably otherwise, and laugh, and be coy—annoyances enough when Lucius was in his presence.

And after Lucius left the shop, he might spread rumors. Those wiser than Borgin would recognize the object for what it was.

If the rumors came to the Dark Lord’s ears, he would also draw the correct conclusions.

“Yes, Borgin.” Lucius came back to the front of the shop and looked around with a bored expression he didn’t have to feign. Other than the small one Lucius had found, there were no objects of interest here for him. “I think I will be looking in other shops for a gift for my son after all. If the most interesting thing you have is a broken model of the sun and planets that doesn’t even get the orbital distance right…”

“The distances on the model are accurate, Mr. Malfoy.” Borgin bristling in defense of something so absurd was a joy to watch, Lucius thought. He maintained the calm, bored expression while Borgin strode up to the artifact and jerked it off the shelf.

There, the disguise proves its worth, Lucius thought. The flimsy outer rings bounced, while the innermost one stayed still.

“I promise,” said Borgin. “And this artifact can do something else which your son should find interesting.”

He really does have the most lewd wink. “What is that?” Lucius let himself look over the artifact in a leisurely manner. “He is doing well enough in Astronomy that he doesn’t need a reminder of the order of the planets, which is the only use I can see this having. In fact, perhaps not even that. Are they even labeled?”

Borgin huffed at him and turned the artifact over. Lucius thought he tensed, but Borgin was tracing the rune on the bottom of the artifact with a finger. Once again, he had damaged nothing. “Of course they are! But the value, Mr. Malfoy,” and Borgin lowered his voice and sneaked closer, “is in the bottom and not the surface of the artifact.”

“Is it?” Lucius leaned closer and let himself assume a slightly less bored expression, that of a person who could be persuaded.

“It is.” Borgin nodded impressively and stroked the rune with a finger.

Even expecting it, Lucius still flinched from the sheer white light that exploded from the object. Well, if he hadn’t flinched, he might have shown Borgin that he knew what to expect, which would be worse than the slight weakness his reaction connoted.

And he would be none the worse off for letting Borgin use his “weakness” to underestimate him.

“That light can startle, as you saw,” said Borgin, and he was grinning openly now, to let Lucius know he had indeed interpreted the flinch the way Lucius had hoped he would, “but it can also erase.”

Lucius waited, enough to let Borgin’s grin fade a bit, and then said, “It seems to me that Memory Charms do that just as well.”

Borgin snorted. “Can a Memory Charm erase a defect? A scar? A wound that someone gave you in a duel? No.”

Lucius shook his head. “It seems to me that healing charms take care of those as well. Although…a defect, you say?”

Borgin nodded eagerly. “You need to place the affected body part in here,” he said, and gestured at the inner ring. “Then you activate the rune on the bottom. More powerfully than I just did now, of course,” he added with a coarse chuckle. “It takes more than a bit of blood.”

Lucius nodded without moving his eyes from Borgin’s face.

“You don’t believe me, do you?” Borgin sighed. “There’s nothing to be done for them that won’t, I s’pose.”

“I believe you. I simply do not understand what you mean by erasing defects. Perhaps you could give me an example.”

Borgin snorted. “Sure. An eye defect, for one thing. You want to correct eyes that are too narrow or crossed or squinting or don’t see well? You put your neck in there. And you could straighten a crooked finger, or a twisted toe. Anything that’s part of you and you don’t want anymore, then you can get rid of it.”

“With blood, and nothing else?”

Borgin laughed. “Most people find the blood’s more than enough to put them off!” He winked in a way Lucius wanted to slap off his face. “Should have known it wouldn’t be for you, Mr. Malfoy.”

Lucius spent a few more moments hesitating, as if dithering. Then he nodded sharply and reached for the Galleons that he always carried in a concealed, inner pocket of his robes. It took the tap of specifically his wand to open that pocket; all any thief would get was a wad of cloth and clinking coins.

“Thank you kindly,” said Borgin, and handed the artifact to Lucius as he bowed over the coins. Lucius spent one more moment glancing around the shop, then left to walk to the end of Knockturn Alley and Apparate home.

Of course he would spend more time studying the artifact before he used it. Those that relied on blood were not to be lightly tampered with.

But now he had a much more solid lead on how to get rid of the Dark Mark than he’d had for months.

*

“My name is Osric Lughborn. Thank you for inviting me to meet with you, Mr. Potter.”

Harry stood up to shake the hand of the heavyset wizard in front of him. He wasn’t as tall as Professor Snape, who stood behind him and watched Harry as if he thought Harry would faint away any second, but he almost looked like it. He was just so strong, Harry thought. Built like Dudley maybe would have been if Dudley ever exercised.

Lughborn had golden hair and intense eyes that were sort of amber and reminded Harry a little of Lupin’s. But he also thought Lughborn was the kind of person who would have told Harry immediately if he was a werewolf, so he wasn’t afraid.

More than that, I would have told you if I smelled wolf.

Harry smiled down at Dash as he took the seat opposite Lughborn, and noticed the man watching Dash carefully. Harry lifted his head. “Dash doesn’t attack anyone that I don’t tell him to attack, Mr. Lughborn. Unless that person is attacking me right then.”

Lughborn nodded. “He has already impressed me as different from an ordinary basilisk. I fought one a few years ago. It was obviously a wild animal, and although I had some artifacts that should have allowed me to understand a snake without speaking to it, I could make nothing of its mad hissing.”

Probably it had been left alone without someone to bond with, said Dash, and darted his tongue out. Or maybe it was the inferior kind of basilisk that people evidently ran around making until Slytherin decided to make me. He held out his head in a way that invited people to admire the gleam of light off his scales.

Harry rolled his eyes and looked at Lughborn. “So you know I want you to help my godfather?”

“Sirius Black. Yes.” Lughborn crossed his legs. “We keep up with the news from Britain, so we heard of it when he was released. What I did not hear of was any news that he had been under the care of a Mind-Healer.”

“Well, he wasn’t.”

“Not at all?” Lughborn stared at Harry, and then turned to stare at Snape. Harry hoped that wasn’t because he thought Harry was lying. Lughborn’s next words seemed to indicate it wasn’t, though. “Why would the Wizengamot not insist on that?”

“A combination of Harry’s celebrity and the control Albus Dumbledore had over the Wizengamot at the time,” Snape said dryly before Harry could think of what to say. “Plus, perhaps, some lingering prejudice in favor of the Black name and guilt over Black having been unjustly sent to Azkaban. The general idea was that he must be released at once in order for Mr. Potter to have a godfather and to make up for the years of harm done to him.”

He really does sound impressively neutral when he speaks of the smelly dog-man. On the other hand, he cannot smell him.

“That is simply outrageous.” Lughborn said it in such a deep tone that Harry believed him, even though the only person he had heard say anything like that in the past was Aunt Petunia, and he had never believed her when she did it. Lughborn turned to face Harry again. “I will do my best to help your godfather. I will charge nothing. My family vaults contain enough to support me, and goblin banks connect everywhere. But you should understand that it will take a long time. Particularly if Mr. Black does not want to cooperate.”

“I think he will. He really wants to get me back.”

“He is not getting you back,” Snape said, with a viciousness that startled Harry. He saw Lughborn reach for his wand, although Harry found it hard to look at him with Snape looming over his shoulder and scowling like that. “I have your custody, and I would not release it until long after he gets a few months of Mind-Healing.”

“How did the custody transfer happen?” Lughborn asked, turning to consider Snape.

“I went to the Wizengamot and requested it,” said Snape in satisfaction. “And I carried evidence with me that Black was an unfit guardian.”

“Then you should not be present when I discuss the results of the counseling sessions with Mr. Potter,” said Lughborn calmly. “You might prejudice him unnecessarily against signs that his godfather is actually getting better.”

Harry opened his mouth, and kept it there. He hadn’t thought anyone would dare to speak up like that against Snape, even if Harry privately agreed with them.

“I will not agree to that. Black has already almost destroyed Harry by his behavior around him when it was not monitored. I will be with him no matter what happens.”

Lughborn sighed and said, “I thought it might be like this. Do you want Harry to have his godfather back, or do you want to punish Black?”

“Both,” said Snape, making Harry blink. He also hadn’t thought Snape would ever say anything like that. Maybe he was responding differently because Lughborn was also a Mind-Healer. “But I do not intend to transfer custody, which seems to be what you are implying: that you will strive to make Black well enough to take custody back.”

“I had assumed that it was what Harry wanted.” Lughborn turned to Harry. “Why don’t you tell me what you feel, then? Do you want to stay with Professor Snape, or would you rather return to your godfather when he’s well enough?”

Harry blinked, and blinked again. He reached down to tap the scales on the back of Dash’s neck, but Dash only curled himself up tighter in response.

We have different ideas on this, as you know very well, he told Harry when Harry tried to talk to him. I would be prejudicing your ideas if I told you what I think.

Harry looked up and said slowly, “I didn’t like the way Professor Snape got custody. He didn’t tell me he was going in front of the Wizengamot. He asked me to forgive him, but he did take me without telling me he was going to do it.” He licked his dry lips. “I didn’t like that, and it took me a while to forgive him for it.”

Snape seemed to be holding his breath. Lughborn, who was focusing completely on Harry and ignoring Snape standing behind his chair, asked, “Have you now?”

Harry nodded. “Yes.” He tried to ignore the way Snape breathed out and just concentrate on Lughborn and what he had to tell him. “And I don’t—I wouldn’t want to go back to Sirius unless he apologized, and he was better, and he told me the truth about all these things that he said he couldn’t tell me.”

“Which would take a long time, probably, even if he does get better.” Lughborn cocked his head. “Has he told you why he won’t tell you the truth?”

Harry touched his scar. “He thinks I have a mental connection with Voldemort that would mean Voldemort would know those things if I knew them.”

Lughborn said softly, “That tells me more about my patient than I think you know.” He nodded and turned to Professor Snape. “I can see why you would want to keep custody. But I will still make my recommendation based on what I think is best.”

“I will do the same.”

Lughborn glanced between them and smiled a little. “Could you show me to appropriate lodgings in Hogsmeade? I could stay in the castle, but a more neutral setting might be appropriate to firecall Mr. Black from.”

*

As he walked back from Hogsmeade, Severus looked up at the stars and felt himself give a little shiver of reaction.

Harry had forgiven him. Harry didn’t want to return to Black’s custody unless a series of probably impossible circumstances was met.

And Harry had forgiven him.

Severus closed his eyes and continued tramping, feeling the cold wind whirl past him and break on the Warming Charms in his robes. He felt as if he’d had several Firewhiskys, down to the spinning head.

But unlike people who drank Firewhisky, he could go back to his quarters and see the reason for all his happiness smiling back at him.

Severus quickened his step.

Chapter 69: Poison on the Sheets

Chapter Text

The potion was ready.

Blaise could feel his hands shaking as he stood in front of the cauldron and stared into its depths. It was filled with a glinting, milky blue liquid. The letters from his “friend” had said the liquid would turn into grains that exactly matched the color of any cloth Blaise put them on. That meant he could put them in Draco’s bed and they would just look like bits of green fluff, if Draco saw them at all.

And the letters had also promised that the potion was only poison to magical snakes. Draco himself would go untouched by it.

It was the only reason Blaise had agreed to brew the potion at all.

To test things, he’d brought along one of his red shirts. He laid it on a dusty table and carefully scooped out a ladle full of the potion, then poured it on the shirt before he could start breathing harshly or change his mind.

The second the potion touched it, the liquid vanished. Blaise had to bend close to see the tiny red grains there, and he sighed and stepped back, brushing his hair off his forehead.

It was so like the gesture Potter used when he wanted to hide his scar that he smiled at himself a second later, and shook his head. He would adopt a gesture like that, and it would be ridiculous, when Potter was the one he was working to oppose.

So the potion worked. Now all he had to do was sneak it into Draco’s sheets. And that would probably be easier than it sounded, since Draco tended to spend his time with Potter lately and waltz back into bed late and dazed and smiling.

Blaise turned to spoon some of the potion into one of the vials he’d brought along—

And then paused. There was a flicker of motion near the door, something dark and sliding that made Blaise’s wand spring into his hand. For a second, the back of his neck prickled as he remembered all those stories he’d heard as a first-year, about the ghosts of murdered Slytherins lurking in the dungeons.

“Hello?” he called, stepping towards the door. But no one responded, and the flicker of motion didn’t repeat. When Blaise thought about it later, he had to admit it could have been the dancing shadows of the torches he’d seen out of the corner of his eye, and they could have startled him.

For the moment, he didn’t care about it. He gathered up the potion, cleaned the cauldron so no one could tell what he’d been making if they stumbled on it, and then made his way back to the common room as quickly as he could. If he glanced over his shoulder every now and then, no one had to know why.

*

“Mr. Potter.”

Harry blinked and sat up. He’d come to Snape’s quarters last night to talk about a homework assignment and fallen asleep in front of the fire. That was embarrassing, but at least today was Saturday and that meant he wouldn’t have to go to classes.

Dash lifted his head and yawned deliberately. That didn’t do anything to frighten the man in front of them, though, who was Lughborn. He nodded to both Harry and Dash and sat down in the chair that faced Harry’s, the way he had when he was here last week.

“Is something wrong with Sirius?” It was the only reason Harry could think of as to why Lughborn would show up like this, without warning. On the other hand, he must have woken up Snape to let him in or something. He wouldn’t have been able to get in himself.

“I’ve spoken with him,” said Lughborn. “And I want you to know that I will have to spend a great deal of time with him. But he said one hopeful thing I wanted to tell you right away. I thought you might not have experienced much cause for hope when it came to your godfather.”

“All right,” said Harry, and hunched forwards a little. Dash was still beside him, not impatient or angry enough to deny Harry the right to hear this. Harry thought he heard Snape coming into the room, presumably so Harry wouldn’t be alone with Lughborn, but he focused on the Mind-Healer instead, and pushed Snape gently out of his mind.

Lughborn looked straight at him and said, “He was upset after the Second Task because he had thought you cared for him most of all. That you only went with Professor Snape and said that you didn’t want to be with Mr. Black because you were trying to keep up public appearances. That Professor Snape had overpowered your will somehow.”

Harry breathed out slowly. It was ridiculous, and from the way Snape grabbed the back of Harry’s chair, he thought the same thing. But Harry still wanted to hear more of what Lughborn had to say. Ridiculous or not, this was Sirius now. “And what made him change his mind?”

“The way you looked at Mr. Malfoy, apparently. That made Mr. Black realize he didn’t have the first place in your heart, and shouldn’t expect it.”

“Well, that’s good,” said Harry. “Right?”

“He would very much like to get back that first place in your heart.” Lughborn studied him. “One thing I must avoid with patients as intense as Mr. Black is doing what would merely gratify their wishes, rather than what is good for them. I told him I would come and speak with you to see if he would ever get back the first place. But I urge you to make your decisions on your own. Not to tell me what he thinks he wants to hear. Or what you think he does.”

Harry bit the corner of his lip. Then he said, “He’s the best person with a link to my parents that I know of, since Dumbledore did what he did.”

“That is not the same thing as offering the first place in your heart to him.”

“No.” Harry could feel Snape still shifting behind him. He finally said, “Tell Sirius I’d like to talk to him again when he’s better. Maybe that will be enough for him.”

“It sounds sensible,” said Lughborn. He stood up and cast Harry a considering glance. “Perhaps you will want to have some Healing of your own when I am done with Mr. Black?”

Harry gave him a tight smile. “That’s something I’d have to consider. Mostly I feel worse when I talk about things.”

“Potions taste bad, but they do heal you.”

You could let me bite him, and then he couldn’t say things like that, suggested Dash, who had apparently woken up enough to listen.

“I know that,” said Harry, and nothing else, pressing down a little on Dash just in case he did get any ideas about attacking Lughborn.

The Mind-Healer nodded once, and left. Harry closed his eyes and tried to decide what would mean Sirius had healed—at least enough for Harry to speak to him. If he knew Snape, the man was about to ask—

“What would mean healing, for you? What would mean he’s better?”

Yeah, right on time. Harry opened his eyes to look at Snape. “I don’t know for sure,” he said flatly. “Some promises not to talk badly about you and Draco, and the ability to see me as more than my dad. But I don’t know if I would trust him to make those promises and not break them, either.”

“Have him take an Unbreakable Vow.” Snape always looked horribly happy when he was talking about something that could kill Sirius. “That would slay him in an instant if it turned out that he didn’t keep his promises, and it would also keep him from making ones he didn’t mean in the first place.”

“He would probably refuse that, too. And he’d be right,” Harry added, when Snape tried to open his mouth and say something. “I mean, if he can’t resist the temptation to talk badly about you and Draco, why should he swear one? It would basically be a death sentence.”

Snape made a sharp motion, and then pulled his hand back. Harry wasn’t afraid. For one thing, he knew a lot better by now than to think Snape would hit him, no matter how frustrated he got.

For another, fourteen feet of basilisk wrapped around Harry and beneath his chair would have made Snape regret hitting him even if he did want to for some reason.

“I hate how much effort you put into defending him,” Snape whispered at last, when Harry had probably spent five minutes waiting for him to explain. He was staring at the fireplace, and he was brooding hard enough that Harry could feel the intensity from here, like another fire. “Even after he mistreated you and kept secrets from you and nearly got you bitten by a werewolf, you defend him.”

Harry swallowed. “It’s easier to forgive him when I know he was just careless and thoughtless, instead of hating me and wanting me to suffer the way the Dursleys did.”

“Really? That very thoughtlessness makes him more culpable, to me. How could—how could someone have you in his care and still remain self-involved enough to not pay more attention to you?”

Harry swallowed again, this time harder. There was something heavy to get down here, and he had no idea what words to say.

You don’t need to say anything, Dash murmured to him. Your Snape will probably get embarrassed that he said it in a minute and deny that he did if pressed. But you might make a gesture. That would be appreciated.

Harry slid down from the chair and crossed the small distance between them. Snape turned so he was meeting Harry’s eyes. His face was hopelessly haunted, and Harry wished he could make that go away.

But he couldn’t. He could only reach out, a little unsteadily, and put his hand on Snape’s shoulder.

Snape grabbed it and squeezed it hard enough that Harry gasped a little. Then Snape pulled Harry roughly against him, held him, and turned to look into the fire.

Harry stood there stiffly. This wasn’t something Snape did often enough that Harry had got used to it. And he only seemed to do it when Harry had just risked his life or he was afraid he might, most of the time.

Snape didn’t let go and react in an embarrassed way, though. He went on holding Harry, and gradually Harry leaned against Snape and relaxed, even resting on him a little.

That seemed to be what Snape needed. He closed his eyes, and although Harry had no illusions that he would go to sleep, at least this way he could think Snape was getting some more relaxation himself.

You are doing very well, said Dash softly into the back of his head. The both of you.

*

Draco stretched and stood up with a yawn. He’d been sleeping hard lately, probably because he’d spent the week before the Second Task lying awake and worrying about how Harry would survive, who would be his hostage for the Task if Draco didn’t volunteer, and so on. At least his body was letting him make up for it.

He bent over the bed and held out a hand. Usually, in the winter mornings, Conflagration would crawl out from under the bed and curl onto his wrist, and then Draco would go sit by the fire and warm him up for a while.

This time, Conflagration didn’t come out right away. Draco rolled his eyes and hissed the word “Come” in Parseltongue, so practiced by now that he didn’t even have to stop to think about how many s’s it had.

Conflagration still didn’t come out. Draco drew his wand and cast Lumos, frowning in concern. Sometimes Conflagration still escaped and went wandering, and there would be trouble if he had burned up someone’s books accidentally, or worse, their bedding.

He could see dusty darkness beneath his bed, and nothing else. Draco sat up slowly, wondering if he had spent the night somewhere else. Sometimes Conflagration went down to the fireplace on his own.

“Something wrong?”

That was Blaise, who had grown more distant from him lately, but did look concerned enough now. Draco said softly, “I’m not sure. Conflagration comes out of most of the time right away, but…” He bent down and considered the underside of the bed again, and this time, his light flashed off green scales.

“Conflagration!”

He didn’t move, not even when Draco gave another Parseltongue command. Draco gave in to concern and used a Summoning Charm—safer and faster than trying to stick his hand under there if Conflagration wasn’t in the mood to move. Still, Draco prepared himself for a bundle of writhing, snapping snake to land in his arms.

It didn’t. Conflagration sagged to the side when he got there, head dangling on his limp neck. Draco stared at him and then stroked his back, suddenly worried. Conflagration still didn’t move. His eyes were fixed and motionless, his mouth slightly parted as if he had started to bite something and stopped halfway through.

“I think he’s sick,” Draco said, when Blaise repeated his question. “I don’t—I didn’t even know magical snakes could get sick.” His mind leaped and turned in several different directions. Should he go to Professor Snape? But he didn’t know if Snbape had any potions that could help sick snakes. Should he go to the library and look for information on snake diseases? To Madam Pomfrey? To Professor Sprout, who seemed to know all about the kinds of plants animals ate when they were sick? To the half-giant, even?

But in the end, Draco couldn’t be sure that any of them would have answers. He had to reach Harry, and ask him to ask Dash to speak to Conflagration and find out.

Blaise tried to say something as Draco ran out of the bedroom, but Draco didn’t pay attention to him. Conflagration was more important. If Blaise was a real friend, he would know that and wouldn’t mind being brushed off.

*

Blaise gave a slow, shaky breath and sat back on his bed for a second. Seeing Draco’s flame cobra affected by the poison had affected him more than he had thought.

But why should it? It proved the poison worked. It affected magical snakes. That was what it was supposed to do. And Conflagration slept in Draco’s bed most nights.

Blaise shook his head. Of course it would be upsetting for Draco if his snake died, but soon the basilisk would be gone, too. And then things could get back on a more normal keel.

Without his basilisk, Draco wouldn’t find Potter half so fascinating. That meant he would start to act more like a normal Slytherin again, and pay some attention to his own future and the way he would have to act to survive the Dark Lord’s war. Blaise assumed his mother would support the Dark Lord at some point, the only sane thing to do. He would have had to fight on the opposite side from Draco if that happened and Draco was still with Potter.

He had brewed the potion correctly. Draco might be running to Potter even now, and he would probably touch the basilisk with the poison on his skin. That was all how Blaise had wanted it to happen, had even designed things to happen. This was the result of the most Slytherin and clever plot he had ever come up with. He should sit back and enjoy as it played out.

Which didn’t explain why he felt as breathless as if he was still on the edge, staring down from a cliff.

Blaise shook his head again. He just wasn’t used to the experience. He would get used to it, he was sure.

All he had to do now was wait. And be safe.

*

Harry nearly fell out of his seat at the Gryffindor table when Dash abruptly coiled up and around him, using his body as a trellis to climb higher, like one of Aunt Petunia’s roses. His tongue was lashing out and curling in the air, seeking something Harry couldn’t sense even when he fell more deeply into the bond and tried to smell with Dash’s power.

Dash, what—

Draco is coming. And he carries something with him that could be dangerous to me. Link to me.

Harry hardly had time to breathe, or even voice the thought that someone must have tricked Draco, before he found himself falling into that starry depth he had only seen once before, when he and Dash found the magic to expose Dumbledore. Blue-black whirled past him, like seeing through the inside of a night-colored sapphire. And then Harry was back in the Great Hall, but hovering above his body, hearing but unable to respond to his friends’ questions.

The scent was soft and subtle, a little like some of the potions that Dash had smelled when he was in Snape’s classroom with Harry. But this was worse. This was something that was meant to cause death to snakes.

How can you know that? Harry asked Dash, even as he fell on his belly and began to crawl towards the doors.

Because I can smell death, and not many things can cause death to me, Dash answered shortly, and then he twisted to the side. I cannot touch Draco when he comes in. It will be up to you to do that.

Harry only shook his head in bewilderment, but he was one being in two bodies now, and they would both do the same thing because they had to. He ran after Dash towards the doors, and smelled with Dash’s flickering tongue again.

Yes, the scent was thick and heavy and made him think of roses dreaming on their stems. But those roses would open and jab out with thorns that might pierce even Dash’s scales.

When Draco turned the corner and ran straight towards Harry, with a limp Conflagration in his arms, Harry did what he had to do. He drew his wand and cast a powerful Shield Charm between them. It was stronger now with all the practice that Snape had made him do, pushing Harry in the privacy of their quarters.

Draco slid to a stop and stared at him. His expression was so betrayed that Harry winced and pulled some of his attention away from Dash to explain.

“Sorry, Draco, but Conflagration was poisoned. The poison might hurt Dash, too. I have to make sure it doesn’t before I help you.”

Draco snapped his arm as if he would actually throw Conflagration at the Shield Charm, and Harry tensed. Maybe Draco was too upset to stay at a distance the way Harry needed him to.

But it was only Draco making an instinctive motion of protest. He came a step closer, but only so he could whisper, “Poison? You’re absolutely certain of that?”

“Dash can smell it, and right now I’m bonded pretty deeply to him. So, yeah.”

Draco studied him through the barrier of the Shield Charm one more time, then turned back to Conflagration. “I was counting on Dash to know how to heal him. I thought—he was sick. Does that mean he’s going to die?”

Harry started to answer, but Dash’s voice rode down the link and emerged from his mouth in a burst of hissing instead. Draco backed up a little, although he also seemed to be listening intently to the Parseltongue for a word he recognized.

The poison must not be able to harm a human, or Draco would be in pain by now, too. Take Conflagration from him and hold him down where I can see him. I won’t approach.

Harry nodded and said, carefully, in English, “You haven’t felt sick or had any symptoms this morning, Draco?”

Draco caught on quickly, his eyes widening a little. “No. You think that means—it’s harmless to humans?”

“Probably.” Harry dropped the Shield Charm, and Draco came running towards him, thrust Conflagration into Harry’s arms, and grabbed him around the waist. Harry winced a little as he held his friend. Draco’s hold was pretty tight.

Remembering what Dash had said, he turned and bent down, holding Conflagration carefully in his hands above the floor.

Dash slid towards and around them, but at a distance that meant (well, Harry hoped it did) that none of the poison could drift to him. Then he said, Wipe your hand across Conflagration’s scales.

Harry did it, feeling the movement of his hand the way he did the ripple of Dash’s muscles, nothing of it separate and distinct. Then he looked down and heard Dash hiss in triumph as some grains on his hand rolled and tumbled. They were black, the color of Draco’s robes.

That’s it. The poison is invisible and someone probably put it in Draco’s bed. We need to learn who did it, so we can tell what it is. Potion or spell or something else.

Harry looked up. “Someone who would have access to your bed and want to hurt me or Dash. The poison was on your sheets and could probably change color.” Now that he knew what he was looking for, and had two pairs of eyes to use, he saw a few more grains on Draco’s hair and robes. “Yes, there it is. Quickly, Draco!”

Draco shut his eyes and obviously tried to force his brain to stop running in circles around his fear of poisoning Conflagration and go in the direction he wanted it to, instead. Harry empathized.

“Neither Greg nor Vince would ever do something like this to me,” Draco said. “They’re loyal to you, now, because you’re loyal to me.”

Harry blinked. Not something he’d thought about, but he appreciated it all the same.

“And I suppose Theo—but no, he hasn’t seemed to care about anything but his books since we were Sorted. He’s never mentioned Dash, or acted afraid of him, or even acted interested in Conflagration. But now I have to wonder if he’s just a good actor and the indifference was all a—” Draco stopped abruptly. “Blaise.”

“What?”

“Blaise asked me twice this morning if something was wrong,” Draco whispered. “And he knew how obsessed I was with Parseltongue, and he acts—distant sometimes when your name comes up. I didn’t even think about him as a possible enemy, but—”

“Go find him,” Harry said, barely managing not to slip into Parseltongue. He was speaking now as both himself and Dash, their fury pounding and riding in his veins. “Bring him to Professor Snape’s office as soon as you can. I’m going there.”

“You think it’s a potion?”

“It might be,” Harry said with Dash’s knowledge. “And anyway, he’ll know better how to deal with this than anyone else.”

Draco galloped off towards the Slytherin dorms. Bearing Conflagration gently in his arms, Harry raced towards the Great Hall, where he’d last seen Snape. Dash flowed in front of him, and Harry asked, What are you doing? even as the answer came pounding into his head.

Clearing the way.

People did scream and rise from their tables as Dash arrowed across the floor of the Great Hall. But Snape was already down from the High Table, and he met Harry’s eyes.

“Poison,” Harry said, ignoring the way that made even more people flinch. They could resolve the rumors later. “Draco’s snake has been poisoned. Come on. We need to go to the dungeons.”

And Snape nodded and followed him, and Dash looped away from them. Harry tensed when he did that. What are you doing this time?

Helping Draco secure the troublemaker.

Even though he winced a little each time Dash was away from him, Harry nodded and let him go. The deep bond would inform them immediately if something happened to one of them, and he—

Well, he was nearly as secure with Snape striding at his side as with Dash, and he could acknowledge that now.

Instead of worrying about his safety, Harry bent his mind grimly to figuring out what the hell had happened.

Chapter 70: Tracked Down

Chapter Text

Blaise shook his head a little as he funneled the last of the poison off Draco’s bed and into a flask he had standing ready for it. It was possible that this trick wouldn’t kill Potter’s basilisk and he would have to try over again with a different one. If that was the case, then he would make sure he had enough left.

Everyone else had left the bedroom, but that only made it easier. Blaise capped the flask and slid it into his pocket.

He was most of the way across the common room when he heard the screams. Blaise paused and drew his wand. Maybe it was just that people had found Potter’s basilisk dead, but he wanted to be prepared in case—

The door burst open, and several students standing near it and talking to each other leaped out of the way. Draco burst through, staring around. He caught Blaise’s eye. His face twisted.

There he is!” he almost stammered, pointing his finger. “You have to do something, Dash, you have to—”

The basilisk slid into the common room too, and even the screams that told Blaise other people found it as frightening as he did didn’t comfort him. He found himself taking a step away and pressing his back against a chair.

As if that would do anything, he thought a second later, in his mother’s voice, and her face appeared in his head, shaking her head slowly. She would have told him to never do anything that admitted guilt.

The basilisk edged towards him. Blaise thought about casting a spell and running, but there were too many people in the way, and Draco was right there, bouncing his wand and looking as though he would burst out shouting. He might cry, too, but Blaise was afraid that too many of the shouts would be curses.

He only had one chance that would really work. Blaise tried to look more scared than he was and waited.

The basilisk reared up, and up. Blaise was in its shadow now as it swayed over him. He didn’t know if it was close enough, but this was probably the only chance he would get before it lunged.

He took the flask from his pocket and threw it as hard as he could. The glass would shatter, the poison would get on the basilisk’s scales and be visible but if it killed the snake that was the end of any political power Potter had, his power would shatter and his allies would desert him and Blaise would be safe, and his friend had promised through the letters that he would protect him—

Accio flask!”

The flask sped over to Draco’s reaching hand instead. And the poison was harmless to humans. Blaise found his head falling back and his eyes closing before he even considered what he should do next.

“Are you going to kill me?” he asked.

Draco said nothing, but walked up to him. Blaise opened his eyes in time to see Draco’s fist coming at him.

A dark green coil wrapped around Draco’s arm and tugged him back just before his punch would have hit Blaise. Then the basilisk, which had part of its body holding Draco, reared the rest, including its head, up to confront Blaise.

Blaise was so afraid he couldn’t scream or move. He just stood there. He thought any second the basilisk would lunge and bite him, or open its eyes. He hoped it was the eyes. That would be quicker and less painful than the death by poison. You just died, as far as he knew.

But the basilisk didn’t do either of those things. It turned and unleashed another great coil, letting Draco go. Blaise got wrapped up from his neck to his legs, and his wand arm was pinned at his side. He breathed shallowly, not so much because he had to as because he knew what was going to happen if he tried to break free. The basilisk motioned with its head to Draco, and Draco ran out of the common room.

Then the basilisk rearranged itself and began to move, rolling Blaise along over its back, like he was a yo-yo.

Blaise closed his eyes. Maybe they would kill him before too long and spare him further humiliation that way. He had a reputation that wouldn’t recover from so many Slytherins seeing him hauled like luggage.

Then again, when have Potter and his ilk been that kind?

*

Severus bent over Conflagration and studied the colors rising up from his mouth. There was a simple spell that made the fumes of any poison visible and forced them to assume certain colors revealing their ingredients, rarely used except by Potions brewers. This one, he thought he could unravel.

Though perhaps not fast enough to keep the snake from dying.

Severus put the supposition from his mind, ignoring the way Harry hovered beside him. Yes, it was possible that he would need to give Harry and Draco bad news in the end. But letting himself get distracted by that possibility was the best way to ensure that he wouldn’t save Conflagration.

In the end, he reached straight for the flask that contained a bezoar. The poison was indeed a complex one, with half the deadliness coming from the ingredients that forced it to change color on cloth, and Severus had no time to be sure he could reverse it.

“What’s that?”

“A bezoar,” Severus murmured, taking it out. He could not simply use it on an animal, either, given the different way animal bodies responded to most poisons. But he could do what he did then, which was to chip off a small piece of the bezoar and toss it into a cauldron already waiting, filled with water. When he cast the Warming Charm, the water began to boil, dancing and lifting a veil of shimmering heat above the cauldron. In a few seconds, the water turned the dark purple color Severus had known to expect.

“Will it save Conflagration?”

“Maybe,” said Severus, not taking his eyes from the boiling water. He wouldn’t lie to Harry, but neither was he going to deprive him completely of comfort. Besides, this was the truth. It might work. Severus had only once before done something like this, and that was for a private competition that had taken place between him and a brewer who had claimed to have greater skills than Severus’s.

And that had been using a bezoar on a goat, the animal it had come from in the first place. Whether it could save a snake…

A magical snake, a flame cobra, a personal pet—all and any of those factors might complicate the potion. But Severus set them from his mind, and concentrated on procedure. That was the best way to make sure he had a chance. He filled the boiling water with salt, for purity, and set the water to dancing even faster with fire. His mind flickered with ideas, part memory of the competition, part instinct.

When the water was boiling to the point that it nearly overflowed the lip of the cauldron, Severus Levitated the entire thing into the air and cast several straining charms. The cauldron, as it began to spill, passed the potion inside directly through Severus’s magic. What splashed down and into an iron pot standing ready on the floor was thick purple glop, not so much potion as mush, that glowed with an inner white heart.

“What’s that?” Harry whispered.

Again Severus had no time to reply. He gathered several scoops of the mush up in his hand and turned around, driving his fingers down Conflagration’s throat, between the fangs. He snatched his hand back at once, wary as the snake began to convulse. It would be the height of ridiculousness to get poisoned by the cobra now, when Severus might be on the verge of saving him.

The cobra continued thrashing, and Harry’s hand was pressed hard enough on Severus’s elbow that Severus was near losing feeling in the arm. He moved a little to dislodge it while still standing near enough that he could feel the tremors shaking Harry. He understood what it would mean to Harry if the pet cobra he had bought for Draco died.

And he could understand, too, what it would mean for something else to be killed by what had been meant for Harry and Dash.

Severus was the one who first saw signs of hope, in the way that Conflagration’s tail had begun to tap a pulsebeat independent from the rest of his body. Harry cried out and reached, hissing in Parseltongue, as if he thought the snake was dying finally and he could comfort him for it. Severus barred Harry’s hand with one arm and shook his head.

“He is moving that part on his own,” he said, when Harry still tried to break past the restraint despite what Severus had thought would be a reassuring touch.

Harry stood motionless then, his eyes so wide that Severus found it hard to look at them. He studied the flame cobra instead, and was rewarded when his head turned up and his jaws parted around the flickering tongue.

Harry again said something in the snake language. This time, the cobra answered, although even after overhearing several conversations between Harry and Dash, Severus was no nearer learning what they said.

“It’s strange,” Harry said a minute later. “He has something almost like an accent on his Parseltongue. He didn’t have that before.”

“It is possible the poison will have lingering side-effects,” Severus said. In fact, it was almost certain, but although he had again wanted to speak the truth, he winced and wished he had kept quiet when Harry turned around and stared at him.

“What kind? Will he ever get better? Will it make him bite Draco or other people or make it harder for him to control his flame?” Harry demanded in rapid-fire succession.

Severus held up his hand, and thankfully, Harry fell silent to listen to him. “I do not know,” Severus said. “I have not actually encountered this particular poison before, only ones that have some of the same ingredients. Yes, it is possible that Conflagration may have a malformation in his body or intelligence. It should not make him lose control of his magic, however, as that is one of the most prominent and immediate side-effects and it would have happened already. I do not think that he should bite people more often. That would be a side-effect of temperament, a different thing.”

Harry was nodding slowly. He started to say something else, but the door to Severus’s office burst open then, and Draco came in. He had kicked the door open so violently that Severus had thought he would be running, but he marched in a funeral way instead, his eyes focused straight ahead.

Behind him was Dash, and the prisoner in his coils made Severus want to close his eyes. Blaise Zabini. So Harry was right. He trusted Zabini to be the real culprit and not one Dash had simply seized in order to satisfy his own desire for a found enemy, if only because that would mean leaving the real enemy out there to strike again.

Harry began staring at Dash in the intense way that meant they were communicating down the bond. Draco immediately sidled up to Severus and stared down at Conflagration. Then he held out his hand.

“He will live,” Severus told him.

Conflagration crept up Draco’s arm to his shoulder and turned so he was resting with his head pointing towards Draco’s wrist. Draco closed his eyes and stood there. Except that he wasn’t a Parselmouth, Severus might have imagined them communicating in the same way as Harry and Dash.

“I did not recognize the exact poison, but I found the right antivenin by taking a chip off a bezoar,” Severus went on. He was a little unnerved by the expression on Draco’s face. Talking would help him deal with his own feelings, although he did not think Draco would ever want to know how to brew that particular poison. “I think he will be well soon, although Harry said that he had an accent in his Parseltongue speech now. If you should see any large changes in his activity or understanding—”

Draco turned around and hugged him.

Severus stood there, his hand frozen in the air. If this was Harry, he would have lowered his hand to pat his back, or even clutched him back in triumph. But Draco had parents, and Severus did not know how to act around him.

“Thank you,” Draco whispered. “Thank you for saving him. I hope—if there’s ever anything I can do for you, then let me know.” He stepped back, wiping his eyes.

Harry and Dash were still engaged in staring at each other, and Severus did not think Harry would notice when he spoke. “There is.”

“Already?” Draco stared at him.

Severus held his gaze. “Always act as promptly and vigilantly as you did today against Harry’s enemies in Slytherin. You know, now, that he has them, that not all the people who might think that he is Salazar Slytherin’s reincarnation will welcome the fact.”

Draco’s lips parted a little, and he glanced at Blaise. “Well, of course I knew the ones with Death Eater families wouldn’t. But—”

“Until recently, you were one of those yourself,” Severus finished in weary understanding. Draco had probably been holding back almost subconsciously from spying on his classmates because his own father had changed his position on Harry so dramatically. Draco would think it was possible for other people. “But Mr. Zabini’s mother has never supported the Dark Lord, has she?”

Draco shook his head. “Not that I know of. In fact, I always thought she would take Blaise and leave the country if the Dark Lord ever threatened her. That’s something he said to me one time.”

Severus nodded back. “Then you should be responsible for watching out for enemies like Blaise who might strike unexpectedly. I do not mean to make you solelyresponsible. I am your Head of House and perhaps more likely to notice oddities among your fellow Slytherins than you would. But when you get a chance, watch for them.”

Draco cast Harry a look that was at once tender and fierce, and older than his face. Severus relaxed a little. He thought that the poisoning of Conflagration had at least one good side, that Draco had taken a large step towards adulthood all at once. Sometimes, imminent loss grew someone up. “Yes, sir.”

“Good,” said Severus, and then turned to learn what he could from Zabini.

*

Someone so reckless as to throw a vial full of the poison at me is a danger that I do not want around.

You can’t kill him, Dash, Harry repeated for the fourth time.

Why not?

Harry dropped the moral arguments that didn’t work on a basilisk, and said, Because I don’t want you to.

Dash paused, his head weaving back and forth, and then replied, You could have said so from the first. He loosened his coils on Zabini, and turned his head away from him.

Harry sighed a little. Things were improved as long as Dash didn’t have his fangs and eyes aimed at Zabini. He glanced quickly over at Snape and Draco, even though he thought someone would have said something by now if Conflagration wasn’t going to live. Or Draco would have started to cry. Or something.

But Draco was smiling at him with a shining Conflagration entwined around his arm, and Snape was examining Zabini. “Have you questioned him?” he asked Harry.

“No,” Harry said. “But Dash did say that Zabini threw a flask of the poison at him when he and Draco came into the common room. He only survived because Draco used his magic to take it out of the air.”

“I see,” said Snape. He was looking solemn in a way Harry had never seen before. Then again, he supposed it was different to see him getting ready to question a Slytherin, instead of someone he hated like he did Sirius or Dumbledore.

Snape knelt down in front of Zabini and looked at him for a long moment. Dash’s coils kept him completely still. Zabini stared back, and Harry thought he looked tired. Maybe he would have gone to sleep if not for, well, everything else.

“Why did you do it, then?” Snape asked, his voice free of expression.

“You can’t think I’m going to tell you that. Not when I went to so much trouble to keep the poison secret and try to kill Potter’s basilisk in the first place.”

Harry closed his eyes and hugged Dash’s head to him. It was one thing knowing Zabini had tried, and another to hear him say it like that, like he really didn’t care whether Dash lived or died.

It did not happen. I am still here, Dash said, and nudged his head hard enough into Harry’s chest that Harry swayed on his feet. Harry nodded without opening his eyes and hugged Dash’s head harder.

“Are you able to bear my questioning of him, Harry?” That was Snape, his voice soft and nothing like the rugged way he usually talked when there was someone else he didn’t trust there to hear him. Then again, Harry was starting to think that Zabini probably wouldn’t have the memory of this conversation left if Snape distrusted him.

“Yes. It’s just hard to hear that he really wanted to murder Dash, and tried.” Harry opened his eyes again and said, “Why?”

Zabini looked away.

“I will give you one more chance to answer willingly,” said Snape. “Then I will simply enter your mind and take what I need. If you have heard rumors of me being a Legilimens, they are true and not fabricated. I will give you this chance because you have been a good student and a good Slytherin, and never tried to hurt someone before that I know of. You have also not succeeded in killing Mr. Malfoy’s snake. Will you yield?”

*

Blaise wanted to laugh. What did they expect him to say? None of them could protect him from vengeance if the person who had abused him found out he’d told them the truth. Blaise could mention no names and make things as vague as he liked, and he would still find out. He had his ways.

And although Blaise had heard about how painful Legilimency was and he didn’t want Snape ripping things out of his mind in a ruthless quest for answers, he was alsocertain that it would be less painful than what he would do if he knew Blaise had simply given up the answers when he was asked for them.

“I can only imagine a few things that would shut your mouth this way,” Snape said, and drew his wand. Blaise tensed in spite of himself, but Snape continued regarding him with a cool, careful gaze, not seeming to assume he knew what the secret was from this. Then he cast several spells Blaise hadn’t heard of before. Knowing what they were was hampered by the way Snape made them all non-verbal, the bastard.

Snape nodded slowly when he had made Blaise glow with silver light and scarlet, and caused a glove to feel as if it was tightening around his right hand. “It’s something different,” said Snape. “He has not been magically compelled to remain silent.”

From the way Snape’s voice sounded now, Blaise assumed it would have been better for him if he had. But he didn’t intend to plead. He bowed his head and tucked his chin against his chest, his last gesture of defiance.

To no avail, of course. Snape reached out and tilted his head back, and then Blaise was looking straight at his professor’s eyes, with no place to hide.

“You disappoint me,” was the only thing Snape said, before he said, “Legilimens.”

*

Draco watched the way that Blaise thrashed for a second before his eyes focused on Snape’s, and widened, and then he basically went limp in Dash’s grasp, staring straight ahead. Draco swallowed. He didn’t think he could have accepted the invasion of his mind like that. Maybe Blaise just didn’t care anymore, when he knew he’d been caught and he would be punished anyway.

“It must have been horrible.”

Draco smiled at Harry, glad that Harry could make time for him. “Yes, it was terrible to think Conflagration was dying.”

“Oh? What, oh, of course. Yes, I know.” Harry smiled at him and put his hand on Draco’s shoulder.

Not even his mother had ever thought Draco was easy to fool, and he would take sympathy, but not sympathy that Harry had originally given to someone else. He shook his head. “You weren’t thinking about me and Conflagration. What were you thinking about just now, when you said it must have been horrible?”

“Oh.” Harry looked almost flushed. But he didn’t turn away from either Draco’s eyes or Dash’s interested stare. “I just meant, I think Zabini is really afraid. It must have been something horrible that made him try to poison Dash at all. He would have been terrified.”

“Sometimes,” said Draco, with what he knew was a quivering voice but also a lot of dignity, “I don’t understand you at all.” And he turned and marched over to the other side of Snape’s office.

Harry followed him, although not Dash, since he was holding Blaise still for Professor Snape. Draco took up his seat on a stool, and turned his head away regally when Harry tried to stand in front of him and catch his eye. Conflagration was already asleep, cuddled on his arm, which Draco was thankful for. It meant Harry couldn’t question him in Parseltongue and try to make him talk.

“I don’t understand what you mean,” Harry told him.

“Of course you don’t,” Draco snapped. “Because you just acted like you cared more about someone who tried to kill Dash than you did about your boyfriend!”

Harry’s jaw drooped. Sometimes he can still be unattractive, then, Draco thought with righteous anger.

Harry shook his head a second later, though, and he said, “I don’t care more about Zabini than I do about you!”

“Then why did you talk about him instead of asking how I felt about Conflagration being saved?”

“Because of course you were happy! I could see that from the look on your face! I would have been happy, too!”

They glared at each other. Draco finally turned away and dropped his chin on his arm. His chest ached almost as much as he thought it would have if Conflagration had actually died, and he didn’t really want to talk to Harry right now.

Harry tried a few times to say something, but Draco didn’t look at him, and that kept Harry’s voice down. Still, Draco thought he was about to try again when the tall figure of Professor Snape loomed over them. Draco looked at him and saw the strain on his face.

“I need you to swear that you will keep to yourself what I am about to reveal,” he said.

Someone’s still more concerned with Blaise than with me, Draco thought grumpily, but at least he was being included instead of being sent away. He nodded fervently, and saw Harry nodding along with him. Harry tried to shoot Draco a smile, but Draco glanced away again.

“Good. Then come with me.”

And Professor Snape led them back towards Blaise. Draco went with him, hunching his shoulders. Snape sat down behind his desk and regarded Blaise piercingly.

“For how long has Headmaster Karkaroff been writing letters to you?”

Chapter 71: Rapid Movements

Chapter Text

“We must act immediately. We dare not waste time in case he already knows that we have taken Zabini captive.”

Snape’s face was like a wall. Harry glanced away from him and at Zabini, who was now tied tight with ropes of Snape’s conjuring and unconscious thanks to a Stunner. Dash curled at Harry’s feet, watching them all with his head motionless. Harry knew from long experience that that didn’t mean he was motionless; he would explode into the right direction, aimed at an enemy, as soon as Harry ordered him to.

Yet you don’t want me to kill anyone.

Harry flinched a little at the sulkiness—Dash really didn’t understand Harry’s desire to leave his enemies alive—and answered Professor Snape instead. “Does Karkaroff know you’re a Legilimens, sir?”

“He does.”

Harry blinked. “Do you have to tell each Headmaster of the schools that compete in the Triwizard Tournament about the teachers?” he asked. “I mean, at least the Headmasters of the schools that don’t have any professors here?” It seemed like an odd rule to him, but then, everything about the Triwizard Tournament was odd.

Snape answered in a voice so cold that Harry could feel it scraping against his skin. “No. He knows because we were once Death Eaters together.”

Harry started, and heard Draco gasp next to him. “Well, no wonder he wanted to get Blaise to poison Conflagration,” Draco said a second later. “He must have heard that Father was turning against the Dark Lord.”

“Where would he get that information?” Snape sounded tired. “Your father has hardly made a public announcement of it, and Karkaroff was one who turned against his fellow Death Eaters and condemned them after the war. He is still free because he was the Ministry’s informant. No, Draco, I cannot believe he has gone back to his old allegiance. The Dark Lord would destroy him if he did.”

“Huh,” said Draco, not sounding convinced.

Harry met Snape’s eyes. “You recognized his handwriting in the letters in Zabini’s memory?” he asked, and Snape nodded. “What was he asking Zabini to do?”

“Brew a magical poison that would kill your Dash,” said Snape brutally. “He wants to see your political power fall apart. He told Mr. Zabini that he was particularly concerned about the growth of your strength among Slytherins and former Slytherin students. I believe that was in part a ploy to make Mr. Zabini trust him. Other than to his family and his own life, Mr. Zabini’s greatest loyalty would be to Slytherin House.” He fell silent, brooding.

“In part?” Draco asked, while Harry just stared down at Dash in silent shock. He could hardly believe someone he’d only spoken to once or twice, and who had given him a pretty high score in the Tasks, could hate him this much.

If you kill them, then they stop hating you, because there’s nothing left to hate with, Dash pointed out helpfully.

Remind me to tell you about the human concept of an afterlife sometime, said Harry shakily. And anyway, you’ve met ghosts.

Dash sniffed with a snap of his tongue. Just because some humans are too stupid to know they’re dead does not mean we need pay attention to them. And ghosts cannot harm us. Karkaroff is welcome to become a ghost if he wants.

“I think he does fear the growth of Harry’s power among Slytherins and former Slytherins. He would be expected to support it, Headmaster of Durmstrang though he is, because most of our Slytherins have siblings or cousins or other relatives who attend Durmstrang. And note that Harry’s bodyguard for the Yule Ball came from Durmstrang. The Selwyns are people who Karkaroff thinks should naturally fall into his sphere of influence with one of their daughters in attendance at his school. Instead, they turn towards Harry.”

Harry ducked his head. I wish now that I hadn’t let people think what they wanted about me being Slytherin’s reincarnation. I wish I’d insisted more strongly that I wasn’t.

You tried, and the Selwyns didn’t believe you. You can’t keep people from thinking what they want to think.

Harry shrugged and asked, “Why does Karkaroff want to be so powerful, anyway? Does he want to be a Dark Lord?”

Severus snorted. “No. What he wants to be is politically powerful, respected, in charge of molding and influencing young lives, and with his webs of connection among them even when they are grown and leave Durmstrang.” He paused. “He wants to be what Albus became, in fact. He has never realized that the main reason Albus ascended to that position was his power and his defeat of Grindlewald, not simply because everyone loves the Headmaster of Hogwarts for no reason.”

“And they should love the Headmaster of Durmstrang,” Draco finished, with a little shake of his head. “When Dumbledore messed up and got revealed as Moody…”

“Yes, then Karkaroff’s paranoia would have risen,” Snape said softly. “He sees everything in terms of himself and reflections of himself. He would think that where Harry had destroyed one Headmaster, he could destroy another. I would suspect that that is when his letters to Mr. Zabini, perhaps before simply a contact in Slytherin House to understand what Harry was doing and how worried he needed to be, became more importunate and urged him to destroy Harry’s basilisk.”

“I wonder if it was something else, too,” Harry said. He didn’t really want to interrupt, not when they were spinning out all these political consequences he hadn’t thought to look for, but he did think he had something to say.

Snape at once turned towards him, and Harry relaxed a little. Yes, Snape still trusted him and wanted to hear what he said, even if it was off-base from what he or Draco thought.

“Yes?” Snape whispered.

“Krum came and talked to me in the library,” Harry said. “More than once. He wanted a basilisk egg, and so did Karkaroff. Or they wanted one between them. And the last time, Krum told me there were people on the Continent who wanted to be safe from Voldemort, but he wouldn’t tell me any of their names, because he said it would be too dangerous. I thought he was making it up, and then I wondered if it was some kind of strange way to try and get an edge in the Tournament. But now…”

“Karkaroff sees having a basilisk as another source of power,” Snape finished, his eyes narrowed in thought. “He wanted one. He wanted to take yours when you would not give him one. And now the possible return of the Dark Lord will be terrifying him. Branded as a traitor, he will not live if the Dark Lord rises.” Snape looked up, his eyes burning. “I would wager that at least one of the terrified people Krum couldn’t speak of is Igor himself. And fear can make a man do things he would otherwise avoid.”

Harry only nodded, and said nothing. He thought fear had made Sirius do strange things around him, and the Dursleys. But he could never have worked it all out the way Snape had just done, even if he’d already known Karkaroff personally.

Why did I ever want to enter politics? I can’t do it properly. I’m not that smart.

If you do not cease insulting yourself, then I might lose control of my fangs, Dash announced. Because I cannot bite you even if you are the one saying those words, so I must go back to the ones who made you think of yourself that way. And those are the Dursleys and Dumbledore and other people more distant. And that means I would be gone a long time. Stop insulting yourself so I can stay at your side.

Harry shook his head a little. Even Dash had dazzling thoughts that he couldn’t keep up with.

“Why did Blaise believe him, though?” Draco was asking, his face wrinkled with frown lines. Harry decided not to tell him about the lines. He would be horrified. “It’s not like he couldn’t have talked to me, or other people in Slytherin who decided to follow Harry. They would have told him that Harry was the stronger one, not Dumbledore or V-Voldemort or whoever he thought Karkaroff was.”

“He thought of Karkaroff as a friend.” Snape was quiet for a moment, and Harry focused on him. He was tracing a crease in the couch near him, and frowning at it. Then he looked up and at Harry.

“This is the part that I must ask you not to reveal,” he said, and he turned to take in Draco. “Either one of you. As dangerous as Mr. Zabini was when he was trying to destroy Dash, he would be far more dangerous if you let something of this slip.”

“Blaise was my friend. I won’t tell on him.”

Harry just said, “I don’t want him to ever hurt Dash again. But I don’t want him to really suffer.”

Draco stiffened and glared at him. Harry barely kept from rolling his eyes. He didn’t know what Draco wanted him to say. He had just got done saying that he wouldn’t tell on Zabini because he used to be a friend, and then he got upset about Harry forgiving him?

Draco is complex entertainment, Dash told him.

But Snape got their attention back by saying, “Mr. Zabini was abused. Apparently by someone close to his mother, although he would not name that person even in his memories, only as he. He was irrationally convinced that this person would find out everything he did and punish him for it.” He hesitated. “And most of his hatred of you, Harry, happened because you pushed for investigations into abused children’s families. Mr. Zabini’s abuser did actually write him and threaten him at one point, I understand, about what would happen if Mr. Zabini’s secrets came to light. So Zabini became convinced that the only way he could end the danger was by eliminating you.”

Harry winced, more compassion than he had thought he could ever feel for someone who’d tried to hurt Dash thundering through him. Of course. He had known that kind of desperation, himself, and it had taken a lot of different factors to persuade him that he could talk about his abuse to Snape and nothing horrible would happen.

Zabini had had no one.

“Don’t do that again,” Draco complained in a sharp whisper, but Harry couldn’t help it. He just touched Draco’s arm and spoke to Snape.

“You couldn’t get the name of his abuser from his mind?”

“He is so terrified that he has buried it deep.” Snape stared at Zabini again. Harry understood better why Zabini was asleep now. He’d assumed it was only because Snape had Stunned him, and maybe the majority still was, but after a Legilimency invasion, Harry usually had a headache and wanted to sleep himself. “So while I know his relation to Zabini and his mother, I do not know the name.”

“Does he matter so much?” Draco was wriggling around on the chair he’d taken. “He tried to hurt Conflagration. He has to suffer for that.”

“Technically, he was trying to hurt Dash, and his poison affected Conflagration,” Snape said. “If he had remembered the existence of your snake, he might have tried a different way of administration than the bedsheets.”

Draco sat up, and for a second, his cheeks glowed. Harry winced. That usually came right before an explosion.

“No one seems to remember it was my flame cobra who almost died today,” Draco said, clearly enunciating each word. “Not Dash, and not Zabini. If you want to sit around feeling sorry for him, that’s your right, but I won’t.” He clutched Conflagration around his arm and stood up.

“Wait, Draco,” Harry said, standing up, too. He did feel sorry for Zabini, but he felt sorrier for Conflagration, and he didn’t want Draco to go away like this. “I’m sorry. I’ll come with you—”

“Harry.”

That was Snape’s guardian voice, as Harry had privately decided to call it. As he hesitated, Draco glared at him, marched out of the office, and slammed the door.

Snape moved both his head and his hand in a weary gesture when Harry glanced at him. “Draco will recover eventually. His snake did nearly die. Don’t pressure him to have compassion for Mr. Zabini.”

“I won’t,” Harry said in a bewildered tone as he sat down again. “I mean, I was going to tell him that I understood and he could feel about Zabini any way he wanted to.”

“While I’m sure Draco would have responded well to your gracious permission,” Snape said, in a voice that stressed his belief in the exact opposite, “he should have some time alone to consider. And we need to consider what we are going to do about Mr. Zabini.”

“Help him,” said Harry, twisting around to stare at Snape. “I thought—I thought you would want to.” Shock made him a little breathless. “Since you helped me and the others, and he is one of your Slytherins.”

“Of course,” Snape said, and clasped his hands before him and frowned into the fire. “But we also must consider that dozens, perhaps hundreds, of people saw Dash slithering through the corridors today. Zabini’s memory also included people in the Slytherin common room who saw Dash and Draco take him away. We cannot simply expose his secrets, but we also cannot hide them behind a mask of silence. He will have to be seen to be publicly punished.” He paused, and his face darkened. “And there is Karkaroff, and perhaps Krum. I doubt you intend to let them get away with what they had planned for Dash.”

Harry shook his head. “No. Only…can we bring them in front of the Wizengamot? Or is that going to be a problem because Dumbledore was Head of the Wizengamot?” He only knew that because Dash had reminded him at the last minute. He just didn’t know enough about politics, he thought in despair. He would rather think about Quidditch, and basilisks, and Draco, and Snape, and surviving the stupid Tournament.

“Karkaroff does need to be tried. But if we move too openly, he will flee back to Durmstrang, and there he will be all but inviolate.” Snape closed his eyes. “Let me think for a time.”

Harry waited in silence. The fire filled the room with crackling music, accompanied only by Zabini’s soft breathing. Harry looked at him, then away.

Is it wrong for me to feel sorry for him? he asked Dash. He did try to kill Conflagration, and he wanted to kill you, but he was abused, like me. And Karkaroff manipulated him. Snape said he recognized Karkaroff’s handwriting on the letters in Zabini’s memory. I’m sure he didn’t have any idea who was really writing to him.

You should feel sorry for him for a while, Dash said, snuggling his head against Harry’s leg and darting his tongue out as if he wanted to taste Harry’s skin. But you shouldn’t feel so sorry for him that it clouds your judgment.

You think it has.

Draco thinks it has, and he’s angry enough to act before he thinks about other things. Speak nicely to him, so he doesn’t have a tantrum. I like it when he amuses me, but his tantrums don’t do it.

Snape began speaking again before Harry could argue or even tell Dash that he didn’t think Dash should be so amused by something Draco couldn’t help. “There is a way. It will require you to draw even more firmly on the faction that thinks you are Salazar Slytherin reborn. Can you do that?”

Harry shivered a little at the demanding way Snape stared into his eyes. He didn’t think Snape was reading his mind this time. He was looking for courage and—something else. Maybe being good at politics.

“If you guide me. I was just sitting here thinking about how I could never have figured out it was Karkaroff, and how to take him down…”

Surprisingly, Snape snorted. “You were not a Death Eater,” he said. “You had no idea of Karkaroff’s past, or how to use that against him. Even if you had read Mr. Zabini’s mind, you would not have recognized Karkaroff’s handwriting in the letters.”

Harry nodded, feeling a little better, as Snape looked straight at him and added, “I will not blame you for experience you do not have.” He hesitated. “But I will blame you if you tell me you have courage and then cannot bear these consequences.”

“What consequences?”

“So far, your part has been allowed to be largely passive. Other people have spread the rumors of your supposed reincarnation and prowess with the basilisk, and have offered their allegiance. Now you will have to court it. And the press,” Snape added, with a faint grimace, as if he was looking down into a cauldron with a potion a few shades off the color it should be. “You will need to spend more time shaking hands and smiling and perhaps speaking in Parseltongue for others. You and Dash will have to put on a show.”

That sounds like even more fun than killing people!

For you, maybe, Harry muttered back, and then stood there and thought about it. Really, he supposed, it was the same as when he had told the tale of his own abuse to the newspapers because he had thought other people could be rescued. This time, other people could be rescued, too. Zabini, and maybe whoever was afraid of the war in Durmstrang and needed to be reassured, if they existed.

It will be all right, said Dash. I’ll tell you who you should eat.

Harry smiled, and looked at Snape. “If you guide me, sir, then I think I could do it.”

Some tension appeared to rush out of Snape, and Harry started. He hadn’t thought Snape would have that much simply to ask him. Maybe Snape was worried about him the way Harry was worried about Draco and Zabini.

And me, and Snape, and the smelly dog-man, and Dumbledore, and your friends…you worry about people too much.

Harry chose to ignore that, and told Snape, “I’m just afraid of making mistakes. Maybe I made a mistake in sending Dash after Zabini before we knew what was going on with him. Or not listening to Krum. Except I couldn’t have given him a basilisk egg without a Parselmouth to raise the basilisk. But with you at my side, then I won’t make so many.”

*

He trusts me. I didn’t have any idea how much he trusted me.

Severus bit the inside of his cheek to calm down his own exaltation, and nodded slowly. “If you would care to discuss your moves with me, then I think I can keep you from making any of the mistakes you fear.”

Harry nodded once, before he and Dash both turned around and looked at Zabini. Dash was shadowing the boy’s movements even more than usual, but Severus couldn’t blame either one of them for that. Harry might have lost Dash if the poison had worked. Dash had just learned there were people out there who wished intense harm to his human for gathering the sort of allies they had hoped would protect him.

Let Harry not die.

Severus felt as if he wanted to throw up when he thought of it. And even beyond that, there was a cold, clear part of him that looked at Dash and knew what would happen if Harry died before the basilisk did, and as the result of enemy action.

The slaughter…

“What about Zabini?” Harry asked quietly. “Is he going to be expelled?”

“There is not a formal punishment on the books for this kind of offense,” Severus said. “For the most part, students have neither snakes nor magical creatures as pets. The closest school regulation I can think of covers the destruction of another student’s owl, and that recommends a month of supervised detentions and payment to the affected student.”

“Draco might want payment.”

“Then we will discuss that with him.” Severus looked at Zabini, and sighed. He wondered when the boy had been abused and how he could have missed him in his initial survey of abused children, but he thought he knew. It had happened long before Hogwarts, and Zabini was not only expert in hiding the signs but would have disdained to ask for help even had it been available.

Or feared it. Look what happened once he feared people would be looking more closely for it.

“Okay.” Harry sounded less constrained, brighter than before. Severus hadn’t sensed at all how nervous he was about this.

I will have to be a better guardian as well as a better Head of House. How long has he been carrying this fear inside him, worried about messing up no matter what he does?

Or worried that he did not have the right to ask, perhaps. Severus hardened his heart again against Sirius Black and the Dursleys. It would be a long time before he felt like letting Harry go back to Black, if it ever happened. He had taught Harry that everything was more important than Harry’s concerns and fears.

A knock on the door of his quarters sounded so suddenly that Severus had his wand out before he thought about it. He snarled a little, at both himself and his visitor, when he saw Harry staring at the wand. He put it away and said, “It is probably the Headmistress, wanting to know what has happened with Mr. Zabini and your basilisk.” He moved calmly in the direction of the door, a curse brewing in his head if it was someone else.

But Minerva’s voice came through the door, steady and full of concern. “What’s happened, Severus? I saw Mr. Malfoy storming along with a snake I assume is still alive, but I couldn’t get an explanation from him.”

Severus nodded. With the temper that Draco had departed in, that wasn’t a surprise. “We’ll lay the problem before you, Minerva,” he said, glancing back just once at Harry to make sure he wasn’t making a mistake.

But now Harry was standing tall, and not just because his basilisk was leaning against him and pushing his hip with his head. He nodded.

Severus smiled and opened the door. He could see why people followed Harry, and it wasn’t only the Parseltongue, the basilisk, and the names of Boy-Who-Lived and Salazar reincarnated.

That look makes me feel I can do anything.

Chapter 72: On the Backs of Flames

Chapter Text

Minerva sat stiffly in the chair that Albus—she couldn’t help thinking—had filled so much better, and regarded the three people in front of her, wondering what she had done to deserve this mess being dumped in her lap.

Severus sat closer to Harry, who had his basilisk coiled around him, than to Blaise Zabini, who stared at the stone cup of tea in his bound hands as if he wished it contained poison. Once, Minerva knew, that would have been unthinkable. Severus would have been hovering protectively over one of his Slytherins and glaring at anyone who dared to come in between them.

But now…

Minerva shook her head as the thoughts raced up like flames, threatening to consume her. Things had changed. Severus was Harry’s guardian, his first loyalty was obviously no longer with Slytherin House, Zabini had committed a crime they had to decide how to punish, and she was in Albus’s place.

“You’re anxious that no one find out exactly how Mr. Zabini was abused,” she addressed Severus.

Zabini flinched as if from a blow, but didn’t look up. Perhaps he hoped that if he denied the abuse long enough, it would stop being real. Minerva looked at him in pity, but turned away before he could decide that was a sign she wouldn’t be involved in his punishment. They had to do something, to keep Zabini from his abuser as well as to make it clear that what he had done to Mr. Malfoy’s familiar was not acceptable.

“Of course,” said Severus, his face blank and his bearing upright as Minerva hadn’t often seen it since the war. “And since Mr. Zabini says that his abuser has great power and the ability to find him anywhere, getting him away from here should be a priority. And we cannot tell everyone the truth. But some truth is essential, so that wild rumors do not spread.”

Minerva nodded, understanding. There would be some people who would think they had kidnapped or killed Mr. Zabini if he simply disappeared, and others who would decide that they could get away with attacks on fellow students’ animals. Dash would probably be the next likely target, but Minerva could imagine the chaos that would spread out from there.

“There’s nothing you can do that will get me away from him,” Zabini whispered then, gaze firmly on the floor. “He can follow me anywhere. He can find me anywhere. You can’t keep me in Britain and keep me safe from him.”

Minerva exchanged a disturbed glance with Severus. Well, at least she thought hers was disturbed. Severus continued to sit in his chair like he was made of iron, except for the arm draped over the back of Harry’s chair. He didn’t even flinch when Harry’s basilisk stirred and shifted his weight from mostly on the floor to mostly on Harry’s lap.

“We will do our best to protect you, Mr. Zabini,” Minerva said. “No child should have to suffer what you did. Even if no child should do what you did, either,” she had to add.

Zabini looked at her with blank, uninterested eyes, and went back to staring at his hands. Minerva faced Severus. She knew what had to be done, but didn’t have a plan to do it.

Severus did, though. Or she knew he would have insisted that they remain in his quarters and discuss the problem, instead of removing Mr. Zabini to the surroundings of her office.

Now, Severus spread his hands a little and said, “There need to be official charges. But not everyone need know what goes on behind the scenes.” He glanced at Harry, who looked up and nodded back. “And it might seem as though we’re the ones on the side of leniency if Harry pleads for mercy.”

“But Mr. Zabini’s actions affected Mr. Malfoy, not Mr. Potter,” said Minerva. She couldn’t see the broad outlines of Severus’s plan yet, which concerned her. Most of the time, she understood him better than that.

Although in that case, perhaps what I understand best are his schemes to ensure Slytherin wins the House Cup.

Severus wasn’t smiling, but he nodded to her a little. “I know that, Minerva. But Mr. Potter is the one that most of the people watching this—the students who have left our school, Mr. Potter’s allies, the Death Eaters—will understand the assault as being targeted at.”

Minerva sighed a little. She didn’t have nearly the number of political connections that Dumbledore had had. She felt the lack of them now. “So this is about manipulating perceptions.”

“Always.” Severus looked at her with a faint frown.

Minerva waved her hand. “I understand the necessity of it, Severus. It’s only that I mourn that necessity, as always.” She turned to Zabini. “Would you be willing to testify in front of the Wizengamot, or wherever else we take this case, that you were acting under orders and didn’t really intend to hurt Mr. Malfoy’s snake?”

Zabini shook his head, not looking at her. Minerva opened her mouth to press, but Severus said, “He would have to explain why he had undertaken something like this in the first place. And he is not willing to do that.”

Minerva sighed. “Then what should we do?” Severus had already explained to her Igor’s part in this, which baffled her. She could only assume that perhaps he had intended to win either a basilisk or some advantage for Durmstrang’s Champion in the Tournament.

“I would like you to make a formal petition to hand this case over to the Wizengamot while giving Mr. Zabini the option not to testify,” said Severus. “Both parts of it. And as quickly as possible. I want this handled before the Third Task.”

His protective glance cast at Harry said why. Minerva nodded. “I would be happy to do so.” One less thing on my plate as I cope with the intricacies of the Headmistress’s job. “But what will happen because of that?”

“We will present the case to the Wizengamot, of course,” Severus said, one eyebrow creeping up his forehead as though he couldn’t believe she was this slow. “And Harry will make a plea for clemency. A plea they will be more likely to grant, since they will believe that he was the real target of this plot—as indeed he was—and he has advantages that they cannot discount.” He looked pointedly at the basilisk coiled around Harry’s legs.

Minerva held back the temptation to say that she wished Harry could be a normal child, and not marked out by the Tournament and You-Know-Who and the basilisk and all the rest of it. But at least Severus and the basilisk had been more good than bad, so she held her peace. “What will that do to Igor?”

“He will need to appear, of course,” said Severus, and his lip curled even further. “But he will be given mercy, something he cannot underestimate, since he is here in a foreign country without most of his allies. And he will only need to agree to a little bargain we will make him, in return for saying the right phrases in front of the Wizengamot and accepting the right ones from Harry.”

The basilisk stirred restlessly for a moment. Minerva wondered whether it would have preferred a different end to the plan, but that wasn’t her place to ask, either. She murmured instead, “Are you sure Igor will come instead of fleeing back to Durmstrang?”

“I have already taken some precautions,” said Severus casually. “Or perhaps it should be said that Dash has taken some precautions.”

Minerva blinked and looked at Harry. “What does he mean, Mr. Potter?” Even though she had been very informal when talking about Harry to other people in his presence, she still thought it was right to use his last name with him.

Harry gave a faint smile. “Dash spoke to some of the water-snakes in the lake, Headmistress. They’re keeping a close watch on the Durmstrang boat. It won’t go anywhere.”

Zabini stirred again. Minerva would have said something, but Severus was keeping a close enough eye on him. She smiled, reluctantly. “Have you told Madame Maxime? This seems like something she should be aware of.”

“We have not even told Igor yet, or the Aurors who will probably need to bring him before the Wizengamot,” Severus replied, standing. “But that first one is a pleasure I would like to reserve for myself.” He looked almost demented, with his smile, but Minerva could meet it with a similar one of her own. Igor was no friend of hers, and she would be happy to see someone who had tried to harm one of her Gryffindors fail.

“Very well, then you can do that,” said Minerva, and sighed. “I suppose I’ll inform Maxime, then.” The thought made her feel a little ill, but as far as she knew, Madame Maxime had done nothing wrong, and she deserved to know why the Headmaster of Durmstrang would be up in front of a British court of law.

A low, hissing sound stopped them. Minerva turned automatically to Harry, thinking he was speaking Parseltongue, but he was only staring at Zabini.

Who was laughing. He bent over and laughed until his head had to ache, swaying back and forth and clutching his stomach until he looked as if he was going to vomit. Minerva cast a Calming Charm at him, and then a Cheering Charm, but other than changing the tone of his laughter a little, it had no effect.

“You think that you can keep me safe from him?” Zabini gasped. “You think he won’t know what happened the minute you start announcing this?” He looked up and spoke now as if he was breaking through a thick barrier in the center of himself. “He’s a member of the Wizengamot.”

*

Blaise felt as if he was falling off a tower. In a way, he was. He had admitted one of the things that might let them identify him, and that meant he was dead already.

If he was dead and free-falling, then he might as well enjoy it. He had read once that falling was an enjoyable death, if you didn’t let yourself think about what awaited you at the bottom.

Right now, Blaise was here and he wasn’t in the office, although he was probably thinking about Blaise right now. He would have fun with it.

“There is only one person the clue fits, then,” said Professor Snape, in a deep voice he probably meant Blaise to find reassuring. Blaise laughed again at the idea that he would think that. “Your mother has a great-uncle, doesn’t she? Jordan Damirini. Who sits in the Wizengamot.”

Blaise winced as the expected bloody slashes appeared on his arm, and held it out so Professor Snape could see. “Yes,” he said. “You might have spoken of him anyway, and this would have happened the instant you did, if I was in the room.”

They would have figured it out anyway. I didn’t confess it. I can tell him that, if…

But Blaise knew there was no mercy in his heart. He would probably laugh when he saw the list of names on the case, but only for a few minutes. Then he would seek out Blaise and kill him, before walking perfectly calmly back to his office and getting ready to hear Potter’s case.

“He cast this kind of curse on you?” Professor Snape’s voice was almost breathless as he turned Blaise’s arm back and forth, staring at the slashes on it.

“Of course.” Blaise leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. He was drifting now. It was all over. He would find out and execute him. It might not matter what Blaise told Potter or anyone else—although he did still wish that Potter had kept his mouth shut and not started telling everyone about his abuse, so Blaise would have had a chance of finishing his schooling and leaving Hogwarts. It could have been a nice life. “He didn’t want anyone to find out.”

Professor Snape cast a few spells. Blaise felt the slashes close. That was a little strange, and Blaise almost opened his mouth to comment on it. They had never healed so quickly.

Then again, Professor Snape probably knew Dark Arts that could conquer his Dark Arts. Blaise had never had a reason to find out.

“What did he do to you?”

Blaise sighed. They knew his name and the consequences that came with someone naming him in front of Blaise, but they didn’t know everything. And they had no reason to. “Why should I relive it for you? I’m going to die anyway. I’d rather not do it with the taste of bad memories in my mouth.”

Maybe he would spend his last few days reading the books he liked best and writing to his mother. Blaise wished he could see her, but he knew she couldn’t come to school without alerting him at once. Then Blaise wouldn’t even have that short time before he died.

“Mr. Zabini, we are going to protect you.”

Blaise opened his eyes and snorted at the way Professor Snape stared at him. He apparently expected Blaise to believe that piece of arrant nonsense. Blaise was pleased with himself for remembering the word “arrant,” and he gave Professor Snape a tolerant smile. “Right. You think you can? Of course you can’t. Not when he sits on the Wizengamot and is—who he is.”

“That doesn’t mean we are helpless.” Professor Snape’s face was glacial. “I understand now why you didn’t tell anyone before.”

“Yes, it would be hard for me to,” Blaise agreed, although part of him was shocked. Professor Snape was defending him?

But, of course, this was part of Snape’s plan. He would never allow his true concern, Harry Potter, to be upset or distressed by the things he wanted to do for Blaise.

Curious to see how Potter was taking this, Blaise twisted his neck.

Potter was gazing straight at him, and so was the basilisk—well, the yellow glow that marked his eyes under the clear lids was, anyway. Blaise felt his heart jump, and panted for a moment with his mouth open. This was—this was real? There wasn’t hatred in Potter’s face?

That’s probably because he sees you as a victim. Someone he doesn’t need to worry about. Someone he can just pity, and then he’ll get you out of the way while he goes and does something else.

It was still wondrous to think about, and Blaise was still staring at Potter when Professor Snape reached out and pulled his head back around.

“It will be difficult,” he said. “Especially as we must still present both cases to the Wizengamot. But we will make sure that your—uncle cannot harm you in the meantime.”

“Oh, well, then things haven’t changed,” said Blaise, shrugging. “Except that I feel a little bit better, so thank you. But he’ll still find out before you get in front of the Wizengamot, and he’ll execute me as soon as he finds out. He can come into Hogwarts any time he wants, you know. Because of who he is.”

“And I can bar anyone I want to,” said McGonagall, her voice as cold as when she was calling someone out in class for making a basic Transfiguration mistake. “Because I am Headmistress.”

Blaise glanced at her. That was something he tended to forget, he thought. Both that she had changed posts and that she was here in the room.

But he had to shake his head again. “If you barred him from coming in for no reason, then he would know something was up,” he pointed out. He knew what the logic was. It was precise and undefeatable. He knew. He’d gone over it in his mind often enough, imagining all the non-existent ways he could escape. “And then he would guess what it was, and he would kill me.”

“You seem to have decided that you’re going to die anyway,” said Potter suddenly. Blaise turned towards him. There was no reason not to. “So why won’t you let us act to save you? It’s doomed, but you don’t have to lift a finger to do anything.”

Blaise leaned his head back in his chair as he considered. He didn’t consider getting up and trying to attack Potter again, or something like that. He knew the basilisk would kill him in an instant before he could do that. But what Potter said made sense, and he didn’t seem to hate Blaise, so he wouldn’t suggest something that would get him killed faster.

“I suppose I might as well,” he said. “You won’t be able to change anything, but like you said, it won’t require any effort from me, either. But be careful, will you? I’d like to speak at least once more with my mother before I die.”

“Surely she would protect you if she knew?” whispered Professor Snape.

“But she doesn’t know. He said that he would make sure she was arrested for the crimes she’s escaped arrest for if I told her.”

Professor Snape set his jaw at that. “We will do something about that, too,” he said, and stood.

Blaise thought of telling him not to contact his mother, but that would be too much effort for something he shouldn’t have to do at all, as Potter had told him. Blaise closed his eyes and drifted instead.

“You are a lot like me. I didn’t want to tell anyone, either. And I was convinced they would find out the instant I did.” A pause. “But you have a lot more reason to imagine that he’d find out than I did.”

Blaise didn’t bother opening his eyes. “Right, Potter. And you couldn’t leave well enough alone, either, while I only acted to defend myself.”

But the adults were talking, and it was surprisingly easy to fall asleep and dream that he was safe and well, home with his mother, and nothing was wrong.

*

Draco sat in front of the fireplace in the Slytherin common room, beyond the shimmering of protections and shields that would keep anyone from eavesdropping on his conversation, and ignored the scowls directed his way in a lordly fashion. Conflagration was curled on his arm, asleep except when he had woken up to eat a small mouse Draco had Summoned for him.

He had almost died.

Draco had a perfect right to use the fireplace to Floo his father and ask him what was going to be done about this.

For long moments, he thought either the Floo call hadn’t gone through—which would be strange, since he knew other students had used this particular hearth to contact their parents before—or that a house-self was keeping him waiting for an absurdly long time. But at last the flames cleared away, and Father was there with an inquiring look on his face.

Draco didn’t even give him time to ask what was wrong. He held up Conflagration and said, “Blaise brewed a poison that nearly killed him today.”

Father’s face stiffened. It was visible most in the lines around his eyes, Draco thought, fascinated. And he knew a little pride that he was the only one in the world, other than Mother and maybe Professor Snape, who knew what it meant when Father looked like that. No one else would understand how angry he was right now.

“Why did he do that?”

“It was a poison that killed magical snakes. He was apparently hoping I would take it and put it on Dash and Harry.” Draco held up Conflagration again. “We caught Blaise—well, Dash and I did—and now they’re discussing how sad it was that he did it, because he was abused. No one cares that Conflagration almost died.”

Father’s nostrils flared, and he bent close as if he was going to smell the residue of the poison that Draco knew was probably left on Conflagration. Draco tried to look as pitiful as he could. He was sure Father would sympathize with him anyway, but right now, it was especially important.

“This is intolerable,” said Father at last. “That anyone should try this, and think they could get away with it…” He fell silent, thinking, and Draco was content to wait. There was a warm glow in his stomach. Finally someone was taking him seriously.

“Why did Mr. Zabini do this to you?” Father asked at last. “I thought you were friends.”

Draco rolled his eyes. He knew he looked a little dramatic, but he didn’t care. The most important part was that Father had agreed he was right. “He was being commanded to do it by someone who said they would keep him safe. Blaise was angry at Harry for trying to get justice for abused children.”

“Why?”

“Because he’s one and he thought somehow everyone would find out his secret,” said Draco, annoyed. His own father wasn’t going to get distracted by irrelevant things like this, was he? “It doesn’t matter. But Professor Snape found out it was Karkaroff who was telling him to do it. You’re not going to let them get away with it, are you? I mean, Blaise and Karkaroff? Everyone was talking about caution and so on, and we can’t just do that! They’ll think they could get away with hurting Conflagration.”

Father was unusually still for a moment, which Draco didn’t like much. That might mean he was thinking the same way as Professor Snape and Harry.

But finally, Father nodded. “I think it would be inappropriate to have a simple trial and have that be all that comes of this,” he said.

Draco sighed in relief. Father believed him. Well, of course he did, Draco scolded himself a second later. Father would never think he was a liar.

“I will come to the school soon, Draco,” Father said then. “You are to keep quiet until then. Don’t tell Mr. Potter that you want a different kind of trial for Mr. Zabini, or complain too much about your snake. This changes my own position in some ways. That means I must move carefully.”

Draco stroked Conflagration and said nothing. He wasn’t satisfied. He would have liked to make an announcement about how this wasn’t acceptable, and he knew it because his father said so. He would have liked to humiliate Blaise in front of the entire Slytherin common room.

On the other hand…

He had already done that, in some ways, by chasing him down right in the common room. And Dash had helped. At least Draco thought no one would bother Conflagration for a while after that. No one had even tried to get through the barriers he had up around the fireplace, although usually one of the upper-level students would have scowled at a fourth-year for taking this amount of time.

“Can you do this for me, Draco?”

Father was appealing to him. Draco felt pride spike up through him, and nodded. He could. And he understood what it meant that he could. Father would trust him with more and more in the future.

Father smiled. “Thank you, Draco. In the meantime, watch Conflagration well for me. And do not allow Professor Snape to simply return Mr. Zabini to your dorms,” he added. “Good-bye.” The fire flared and disappeared.

Draco dropped his shields and walked towards his bedroom, triumph in his step. He was right. He was going to get something done. And Conflagration was curled sleeping on his arm, still alive.

It was enough.

Chapter 73: Explosive Strategies

Chapter Text

“Thank you for contacting me before you did anything with the information Draco passed on to you.”

The words felt hollow in Severus’s mouth. Then again, he had been up for hours, and had just recently gone to bed when Lucius Flooed him with the news of what Draco had said. Now Severus sighed and leaned back in his chair, considering Summoning a vial of Pepper-Up Potion.

Of course, if he took it now, he wouldn’t sleep for hours again. But he would be able to concentrate more heavily on what Lucius was saying.

“I woke you?” Lucius gave him the light frown of anyone who didn’t spend all day trying to corral students into a cage of learning. “Of course I did. I’m sorry, Severus. You can go back to sleep. As long as you know the general outlines of my plan, and I know yours, then we don’t need to worry about immediate consequences.”

That reassurance only made Severus try harder to drag himself out of sleep. “If you think you need to punish Zabini—”

“I was thinking of moving him elsewhere until the actual trial,” Lucius said. “Somewhere it would be hard for even the Wizengamot to find him.”

Severus relaxed. Lucius was not so outraged over Draco’s anger that he had disbelieved Severus, then. Severus had shared as much of Mr. Zabini’s history as he could without feeling he had violated the boy’s privacy. “Where?”

“You said the Mind-Healer staying with Black has an extensive family on the Continent. Would some of them be willing to take the boy?”

Severus opened his mouth, and found he had no idea. But he did have one objection. “Mr. Zabini performed Dark Arts recently—such as the potion—and has had no objection to them in the past. I doubt they would agree.”

Lucius snorted. “You forget the default position of Light families, Severus, that every Dark wizard is anxious and eager to repent. They would have the power and the distance to keep him safe from even Britain’s Wizengamot.”

Severus touched a hand to his head, which was spinning. “That might be true. I still think Lughborn might refuse. He is hardened enough to resist the pleas of a man who wrongfully spent twelve years in prison.”

“Still.”

Severus nodded. “If you could contact Lughborn, then? At the very least, Narcissa should be in touch with Black.”

Lucius smiled at that, for some reason Severus did not recognize. “Oh, yes. Although Black might not want to listen to what she has to say lately. I have the impression he either lied to her or didn’t tell her about something important.”

“That would make sense of her last visit to me.” Black appeared not to have told her about his confrontation with Harry after the Second Task.

Lucius shrugged a little. “It honestly doesn’t matter much to me. But I’ll have her contact him.”

“Thank you—”

“Get some sleep, Severus.” A second later, Severus was talking to an empty fireplace.

After a long moment of internal struggle, Severus Summoned a Dreamless Sleep Potion. He would be useless in the next several days if he didn’t do as Lucius had suggest-commanded, and too many people needed him.

His last drowsy thought, after he had finished his dose of the potion and lain down in the sheets with his eyes closed, was what he was going to do about Draco.

Lock him in a room with Harry and Conflagration and Dash until they talk about it, and refuse to listen to any pleas to let them out?

He fell asleep before he could think of anything more complicated, but that last thought did lend a strange color to his dreams.

*

I suppose I can’t have a life without people staring at me, Harry thought, as he paused that morning to put a sandwich together in the Great Hall before he ran to Charms.

No. Not when you’re going to be political. Dash stretched himself out before the table and contemplated the lack of mice with a sigh. But you should explain to your friends what’s going on.

Harry rolled his eyes. He’d spent most of last night talking with Ron and Hermione about how Zabini had tried to poison Conflagration, and how Snape had stopped that, and what Zabini was guilty of, and what they were going to do next, while dancing around Zabini’s abuse. Hermione hadn’t been satisfied, and kept asking him questions. Ron seemed satisfied, but curious, and he darted little glances at Harry when he didn’t seem to think Harry was looking.

I can’t reveal something that dangerous to them. Harry paused to lick a bit of marmalade off his finger. Snape wouldn’t like it, not after the promise he made me and Draco make to keep things secret.

They wouldn’t spread it around. And then Dash uncoiled abruptly and streaked across the Great Hall, his tail trailing behind him. Harry turned to stare.

Dash?

But in a second, he saw what was wrong. There was a shape with muffled outlines moving slowly along the side of the Great Hall, not far from the High Table where Professor McGonagall sat. Probably a Disillusionment Charm, Harry thought, and opened up his connection to Dash’s superior senses. Now he could smell him, like sweat and fear and dust.

Dash raised his head and butted the figure under the charm square in the chest. He tumbled back on the floor with a cry, and came into view. Several of the Durmstrang students leaped up shouting as Dash wrapped himself around Karkaroff and then lay there looking as though he’d had a good snack.

No, they probably think he’s about to have a good snack now, Harry thought, and drew his wand with a sigh as Krum started to stride up to Dash. You couldn’t have warned me before you did that?

You would have gone for Professor Snape or something, said Dash, with an elaborate yawn from the center of his coils. And I don’t have time for that. We had to stop him before he managed to flee.

You have the water-snakes watching the boat—

But he might have decided to Apparate instead. Dash faced Harry and ended up with his head close to Karkaroff’s at the moment that McGonagall came striding down the center of the aisle between the House Tables and fetched up not far from them, breathing harshly.

“What are you doing, Mr. Potter?”

But she knows, Harry thought in confusion before he remembered that she would need to put on a good show for the people who didn’t. He forced down breathlessness and gave a careless shrug. “Only capturing the man who did me some harm, Headmistress.”

That made a lot of people start buzzing. Harry didn’t think they would guess the truth, though. After all, Karkaroff was one of the Tournament judges. They would probably decide that he had done something illegal to give Krum the advantage.

“You could have told me, and I would have called the Aurors.” But McGonagall wasn’t glaring at him disapprovingly. She did understand, then. She nodded once at Harry and gave the man in Dash’s coils a weary glance. “Very well. Igor, we’ll talk about this and get the matter settled in my office.”

“I will go nowhere like this!” Karkaroff kept from stammering, but Harry could see how violently he flinched when Dash put out a curious tongue to sniff his cheek, and then yawned. The yawn happened to put his fangs very near Karkaroff’s throat. “Tell your snake to release me!” He looked at Harry with wild eyes.

“I can’t do that,” Harry said evenly. “Not until I know that you’re not going to hurt anyone.”

“Of course he will not be hurting anyone.” Krum’s voice sounded thick as he paused behind Harry. “What are you doing, Potter?”

“I think you know,” said Harry, without turning to look at Krum. “And I think you know why.”

He saw the moment when Karkaroff’s jaw sagged, or almost. Dash’s coil around his neck was keeping it up. Then he actually started struggling harder than ever, and didn’t pause even when Dash gave a warning little hiss that ought to affect people who didn’t speak Parseltongue.

Harry?

Harry sighed and said to Karkaroff, “I know it was you who wrote those letters. We have the evidence. We’ll see later whether you can say any words that might make me forgive you.” He had to pause. “At the moment, I can’t think what they would be.”

Karkaroff just stared at him as if waiting for Harry to laugh and say it was a joke and let him go. Harry turned to Professor McGonagall. “Where did you want Dash to take him?”

McGonagall closed her eyes once, and then straightened up again. Harry thought he’d seen her do the same thing a lot since Dumbledore’s flight. “Up to my office for now, Mr. Potter,” she said. “I have some things that I should discuss with Madame Maxime and the others.”

Harry wasn’t sure who she meant, but he knew most people would think it was the other Triwizard Tournament judges. He nodded and looked at Dash, who immediately began to crawl with Karkaroff in his coils the way he’d carried Zabini.

I think carrying people this way is fun! Are we going to make it a common event? Perhaps, after we’re all done with the people who tried to poison Conflagration, we can practice on Black!

*

Lucius smiled a little as he sat down in the commanding chair of his study, the largest room on the ground floor of Malfoy Manor. “Thank you for seeing me so soon. It’s urgent, or I wouldn’t have summoned you.”

“I wish you wouldn’t use words like summoned. It’s offensive to our dignity,” complained Mark Reubens, one of the senior Wizengamot members who was short enough and had a big enough buildup of hair and moustache that it was like talking to an ambling hedge.

“Then I apologize,” said Lucius, and glanced at the other two men out of the corner of his eye. One of them was Pluto Flint, the great-uncle of the boy who had once commanded Draco on the Slytherin Quidditch team. He was hulking and unsmiling, had muscles like iron, and seemed disposed to forgive any sense of insult by gazing intently at Lucius.

The other was Jordan Damirini.

It had been easy enough to figure out who had to be abusing Zabini. And Lucius knew he was taking a risk, inviting the man here. But he wanted to set certain events in motion, and look later as if he had had official sanction for them, or he ran the risk of being reprimanded.

“Mr. Damirini,” said Lucius, speaking directly to him, “a…delicate situation has arisen. As you know, I have a son.”

Damirini folded his hands directly beneath his chin. He seemed to think it made him look erudite, or at least Lucius had assumed that was the effect he was going for in the private meetings of the Wizengamot. “In his fourth year at Hogwarts now?”

“He is,” said Lucius, with a nod. He didn’t intend to bring up Zabini at all, for fear of triggering wariness in Damirini, but he did intend to sound him out on this. “And he has done certain things that a parent must disapprove of. Not the sort of sins a man can shrug off later in life. Or even as a teenager. But the kind of problems a child must pay for.”

Damirini gave a private smile. “What do you think I can help you with, Lucius? As far as I know, you apply all your own discipline.”

“You have connections in Italy, I know.” Lucius adopted an earnest face. “What would happen if I were to send a child off to the Continent for a year? That is, what kind of guardians would he need? How far do you think he would have to go to chance fewer people in Britain being able to contact him?”

“Aaaah.” Damirini leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Flint watched, immobile, not protesting. He was the sort to wait in case any outcome didn’t immediately make sense to him, in the expectation that eventually it must.

Reubens, of course, did try to object. “Lucius, if you only wanted to talk to Jordan, why—”

Lucius raised a hand without looking away from Damirini, and Reubens fell silent. Once again he was muttering into his moustache, though. Lucius only hoped that the feast the house-elves would serve before he left would make up for what was admittedly a dirty trick.

“Well,” said Damirini, bringing his head down at last, “I would have to know a little more about what the boy did before I could make any recommendations.”

I’m sure you’d like to know, said Lucius, and gave him a fond, exasperated smile, the kind a father would use when thinking about his son. I’m sure that you enjoydispensing what you think is punishment.

“Nothing that can be mentioned in polite society.” Lucius gave a little shudder, and ignored Reubens’s much larger one. Reubens was too cowardly to gossip, the prime reason Lucius had chosen him as one of the witnesses for this meeting. Later, he would need people other than himself to recall Damirini’s words and trap him with them. Flint, as always, was immobile. “If you would prefer to use your imagination…”

Flint glanced at him curiously. Reubens missed the nuance, but looked ill.

And Damirini fell for the trap without noticing the ambiguity inherent in those last words. “Yes,” he said, and his smile brightened until Lucius wanted to hit him. He refrained, but it was difficult. “I think I can imagine. Well.” He tapped his fingers together. “I can look around Italy and roust up some connections who might contact you, Lucius. It’s been long enough since I visited that I’m afraid I’m no longer as qualified to offer advice as I once was.”

Lucius inclined his head. Damirini hadn’t condemned himself as much as Lucius had hoped. It was time to lead him a little deeper. “Then you would say the methods of punishment on the Continent are harsher?” He leaned minutely towards the other man, who was still handsome, with few scars marring his pale brown skin, his black hair still thick and shining. “You have personal experience of them?”

“Oh, yes.” Damirini smiled, and Lucius no longer needed to lead him. “I can say I have experience of them with children even younger than your son.”

Snared. Lucius sighed in what would look like relief—it was, but not for the cause Damirini thought—and nodded. “Then you should definitely give me the names of your contacts.” That might net him the names of other people who had abused Zabini, as well, he thought. “I’ll need them.”

“I’ll tell them,” Damirini promised, and Lucius let the conversation wander into other channels, Wizengamot business and gossip that would be useful in guiding the course of the Ministry.

Reubens left first, still muttering as loudly as he dared through the crumbs around his mouth about the waste of his time. Damirini saw himself out, giving Lucius a smile all the time as if he thought he and Lucius shared the same tastes. Lucius remained calm. It was to his advantage that the man should think that, no matter how repugnant the notion was. Damirini now thought he had blackmail material on Lucius, and would rest secure in the notion instead of investigating him. And since he had kept his own secret of abuse so well all this time that Lucius had never suspected it, he was unlikely to start blurting out Lucius’s “tastes” to anyone else.

Only Flint remained, telling Reubens that he had business to discuss with Lucius. And he did. Lucius had informed him ahead of time that he had important information.

“I’ll support that bill you wanted,” Lucius told him, after the house-elves had indicated the other two were safely out of the house. “The one about introducing Muggleborns to the world on their tenth birthdays. If you support me in a trial.”

“And the trial has something to do with Damirini?” Flint let his eyes flicker to the chair where the man had sat, then back to Lucius.

Lucius nodded solemnly. “And the questions I asked today.”

Flint smiled. “I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, Lucius, but that’s what always makes it interesting.” He flexed his fingers as if he was gripping the edge of a cliff like an eagle. “Let’s bargain.”

*

“Where are we going to find a judge for the Tournament?” Madame Maxime asked for the tenth time. She wasn’t naturally a shrill-voiced woman, but now her voice seemed to stab through Minerva’s head every time she spoke, adding to the pounding pain of her headache. “And does this mean that Durmstrang, they will not be competing?”

It was the tenth time that she had asked that question, too.

Minerva said, “We will send to Durmstrang for another professor, Olympe. Perhaps their Deputy Headmistress. I understand that she’s expressed interest in judging the competition.”

“And we are not to know her?” Maxime gestured around the office, then pulled her hand back to rest in her lap with a dancer’s grace. “Not until she arrives, and we are perhaps to see that she has interest like Karkaroff in cheating? No!”

Minerva closed her eyes. Things would be so much simpler if she could explain to Maxime what Karkaroff’s real interests had been, but she didn’t trust Maxime not to violate Zabini’s privacy, or Harry’s, for that matter. She was still more interested in the Tournament and Delacour having a fair chance to compete than she was anything else.

Which meant, for now, it was prudent to use the ready-made cover story of Igor’s position, that he had attempted to cheat to help Krum in the Tournament, and been caught at it by Harry’s basilisk.

“We’ll do what we can,” Minerva said, and was glad to turn towards a knock on the door, even if it was a new problem. “Yes?”

Viktor Krum came into the room. He glanced at Maxime and then away again, in a manner that appeared to infuriate her. But he said to Minerva, “You are able to talk about my Headmaster, Headmistress?”

“He’s being held by the Aurors for now,” Minerva said. They knew a little more, namely that he had encouraged another student to commit an act of sabotage on Mr. Malfoy’s snake. They didn’t need more than that, at the moment. Unlike Zabini, Igor was an adult, and they were more than happy to charge him with something.

“But there must be a way of getting him free.”

Maxime sniffed and said, “Of course you would be asking this. You. Now.”

Krum ignored her completely and continued to look at Minerva. Minerva wished she could walk away in response. Find a quiet spot, sit down, and rest. It was impossible with so many people depending on her, and she wished now that Albus hadn’t done what he’d done solely because of the work it piled on her.

Instead, she stiffened her shoulders and said in response to both Krum and Maxime, “He’s safe. He’s going to be charged. There will be another judge coming from Durmstrang so that the Tournament can go on. No blame attaches to you, Mr. Krum. You can’t talk to him yet, but you can tell your fellow students that no one else suspects them because of what Headmaster Karkaroff did.”

“What did he do?”

Minerva looked Krum in the eye. Harry had said something about Krum coming up to him in the library to talk about basilisks. “I think you know what he did,” she said.

Krum paled and glanced away. Meanwhile, Madame Maxime pounced on those words the way Minerva should, she supposed, have anticipated that she would. “What are you saying? The boy knew! Then he has cheated, too. Yes?”

“No,” said Minerva. “He did not know the means of the Headmaster’s crime, or what he would use to do it. And as for advantages in the competition, Olympe, I suspect that all the Headmasters at the time tried to do what they thought was best for their champions. Albus was teaching Harry advanced spells under the guise of Professor Moody—”

“I have never—”

“Miss Delacour seemed most unsurprised to see those dragons on the morning of the First Task,” said Minerva softly. She didn’t want to use threats like this, but she couldn’t have Maxime interfering, either. “More unsurprised than a lot of people would have assumed. Of all the dangerous creatures or obstacles that we could have selected for the First Task, who knew it would be dragons? Who would have assumed?”

Maxime narrowed her eyes for a moment, and then she looked away and gave a grudging nod, storming out of the office. Minerva didn’t care how angry she was. She couldn’t cause any personal trouble now, and the whole structure of the Tournament—the Ministry people invested in making sure it succeeded, the other judge coming from Durmstrang, the students themselves—would push back against her efforts to have the Tournament canceled or the points readjusted.

“You need to tell me what really happened,” Krum pleaded.

Minerva turned towards him. “Your Headmaster tried to poison Harry’s basilisk.”

“He cares for the basilisk!” Krum made a gesture as though he was in deep water and trying to catch a bar to hang onto. “He would not—”

“Does he care for the basilisk, or for the power it represents?” Minerva sighed when Krum stared at her. “I know a lot about your Headmaster’s history and why he might feel threatened. And Harry told me some of the things that you talked about when you conversed with him in the library.”

Krum winced and looked at the floor. “I did not—Harry does not think I am doing—”

“He doesn’t think you were part of the effort to poison his basilisk,” said Minerva, and then softened her voice a little when she saw the look of utter misery the young man cast at her. “But he does think that your Headmaster might have done it to try and make Harry give him a basilisk. Because of these people in Europe who need protection.”

Krum was silent for long enough that Minerva thought he would turn around again and walk out. But then he nodded and said, “I am going to write a letter,” and walked away.

Maybe he’ll try to persuade those people who need protection, if they really exist, to come forward, Minerva thought. It was certainly the best outcome she could imagine, at least for them. And it would undermine the sorts of justifications Igor would try to use.

*

Draco lingered behind in Potions, and when Harry stood up with Dash lapped around him like an affectionate blanket, Draco hurried towards him. He had Conflagration with him, wrapped around his wrist like a bracelet, and Professor Snape had kindly looked away from that even though Draco wasn’t supposed to bring the snake with him to class.

“We need to talk,” Draco said, planting himself in front of Harry.

Harry looked at him without surprise, and nodded. “Yes, I think we do. Let’s get lunch from the Great Hall and then go out by the lake.”

Surprised, because he’d thought Harry would argue, Draco followed. In the meantime, Dash looked back at him over Harry’s shoulder and gave a series of three sharp hisses Draco could identify. They weren’t in Parseltongue, though.

Dash was laughing.

Draco scowled. I don’t see what he has to snicker about.

Chapter 74: Beyond Reach

Chapter Text

“It hurt a lot that you seemed to care more about Blaise than me.”

He and Harry had walked on the lakeshore for ten minutes, and Draco still hadn’t managed to say anything. It was because he kept looking at Harry, Draco thought, and he seemed so calm, walking there with Dash shimmering around him.

He hadn’t almost lost his snake. He looked as though he wouldn’t really appreciate any of what Draco had to say to him.

So, finally, Draco looked away from Harry and spoke his words. He listened to the lake lapping, and Harry’s silence.

“I’d almost lost Conflagration. And you gave him to me as a gift. You were the one who taught me to speak Parseltongue. You even sent Dash with me to capture Blaise.” Draco swallowed. “I thought you really understood. But then it was like you turned away from me and focused on him.”

“Sorry,” Harry finally said. “But I thought it was going to be fine. Conflagration wasn’t dead, and Blaise was abused, like me. It was hard not to think about him.”

Now I can look at him, Draco thought, and turned around to stare indignantly at Harry. “Abused just like you? You never tried to kill anyone else’s snake because of it!”

“No.” Harry’s face was grim. “But I ran away from things, and kept silent when I shouldn’t have, and made bad decisions because of it.” He turned, walking backwards as if he wanted to keep an eye on Draco. Dash lifted his tail carefully out of the way. “Zabini made bad decisions, too.”

“He wanted to poison my snake—”

Dash cut him off with a sharp hiss, which made Draco glare in betrayal before he could stop himself. He had thought that if anyone understood, besides his father, thenDash would. He had always seemed to agree with Draco about protecting important people before, and not to care about how many of Harry’s enemies, like Black, he hurt.

Harry cocked his head, and then snorted. “Dash says you should remember that Zabini was aiming at him. Not Conflagration.”

“But Blaise didn’t care if he hurt Conflagration,” Draco corrected. He stared down at the flame cobra wrapped around his arm. Conflagration still slept most of the time. At least that morning he had woken up enough to eat five sausages, which was more than he’d eaten since Blaise had poisoned him. “I’m the only one who cares about Conflagration.”

Harry sighed and reached out to put a hand on his arm. Draco turned a blank stare on him. If he went on trying to excuse Blaise, then he and Draco were going to have some very sharp words.

“Listen,” Harry said in what he probably thought was a gentle voice. “I do care that Conflagration was poisoned. I’m glad he’s all right. But I can’t care just about him. Or you. It’s like asking me to stop caring about Sirius because he did some stupid things. I still want to see him helped. That’s different from wanting to live with him. And I care about Zabini getting some help and safety because he was abused. That’s different from only caring about him.”

Draco stared over Harry’s head at the Forbidden Forest. He knew what Harry was saying, but he didn’t want to listen. It was—well, more cool than he wanted to be.

Father would probably say that Harry was right. He would say that getting so upset about Conflagration and not listening to reason would just damage you more in people’s eyes.

But Draco had to get some kind of sympathy for Harry. He held up his arm. “Do you really care about Conflagration?”

For an answer, Harry bent down and hissed softly. Conflagration stirred, lifting his head. He hissed a few “words” back and then put his head down again, wrapping his tail around Draco’s wrist as if he didn’t want to be disturbed.

Even his hold feels stronger than it did yesterday, Draco thought in hope, and stroked Conflagration’s back. I really think he’s getting stronger, and Professor Snape really did cure him.

“Conflagration says he feels tired,” said Harry, lifting his head. “That some of his muscles ache, and especially around his jaws.” Draco immediately took his hand back. He’d been about to stroke along Conflagration’s mouth. “But he doesn’t hurt. He just wants to sleep and eat until he gets some strength back.”

“He sleeps and eats a lot of the time anyway.”

Harry nodded. “Snakes know how to cure themselves, if they don’t actually die. He’ll do that until he feels better.” He hesitated. “And he says that he’s glad you’re keeping him so warm.”

“Oh,” Draco whispered, cradling Conflagration close to him. He wanted to smile, although he bit it down in case Harry thought he was forgiven already. At least he was doing something right, though.

Harry grabbed his shoulder. Draco looked up, in time to receive such a large, smacking kiss on the lips that he jumped, taken aback.

“I do want to help you,” Harry whispered. “I do care about you. And about Conflagration. It’s just…it’s not simple, Draco. And it’s going to be even worse now, because I have to be political to save Zabini and prevent Karkaroff from doing something we don’t want him to.” He sighed. “Maybe if I’d never pretended to be the reincarnation of Salazar Slytherin, this would never have happened. I don’t know.”

Dash gave another sharp hiss. Harry turned and stared at him in surprise.

“What did he say?” Draco demanded, trying to keep from sounding delighted, since Harry was so upset. But it was a comfort to know that he wasn’t the only one who would get hissed at.

“He said that everyone was always going to think I was the reincarnation of Slytherin after I bonded with him.” Harry blinked a little. “And he’s not going to let me regret bonding with him. If I feel that, I’ll regret feeling it.”

“What would he do?” Draco stared in fascination at Dash, who had opened his mouth in a casual yawn that displayed his fangs.

“Do you know, I’m not sure I want to find out?”

Draco had to smile. “All right. I won’t make you.” He faced Harry and hesitated for a second. Then he said, “I don’t want to fight with you. It just made me really annoyed because you seemed to care more about Blaise than me or Conflagration or even Dash.”

Harry blinked slowly. “That was when I first heard about him being abused. I had to think that way. I had to wonder what it was like, and think that at least my relatives never threatened to kill me.” He shivered and wrapped his arms around himself, which made Dash make a huge loop of his body in response. “I know, Dash. I’m cold enough. Let’s go inside.”

Draco followed him back in, content. He knew he might have to contact Father and tell him it was all right, that he and Harry had made up, but at least he didn’t feel that dreadful sharp aching in his chest any more when he thought of Harry liking Blaise more than him.

*

“I would be delighted to take Mr. Zabini and make sure he is safe on the Continent.”

Lughborn had said that the instant Professor Snape contacted him, and then he had asked to come through to the school and visit Zabini. So now Harry was standing on one side of Snape’s office and watching Zabini, who was slumped on a chair, with Lughborn standing in front of him and considering him deeply.

“You are not so much a purely Dark wizard as one who has gone wrong, truly,” Lughborn murmured. “And been threatened if you strayed out of the one path that your feet were set on.”

Zabini abruptly lifted his head and looked more excited about something than Harry had ever seen him. “My mother never—”

“I was talking about the path of threats that your uncle placed you on, child,” said Lughborn. “That you couldn’t stray away from absolute silence about some of your experiences because it would make others suspect what had happened to you.”

Zabini slowly leaned back. He had an expression on his face that Harry thought was familiar.

It was the way you looked when someone first told you that they could find out about the abuse from the Dursleys and make them stop, Dash told him, trailing a long, slow tail down Harry’s chest as he climbed to the floor.

Harry blinked. “Oh,” he said aloud.

Lughborn only glanced at him once, and then faced Zabini again. “I understand you wish to see your mother one more time before you leave Britain. And if she does not wish us to take you, we will not. But it would be safer for you to be under heavy magical protections with no trace of your family’s shared blood.”

Zabini licked his lips. “No one told me that my mother was asking about me.”

Harry hadn’t known it, either. He looked at Snape, who looked down his nose a little and said, “I told you yesterday, Mr. Zabini. However, you were recovering from the effects of a Dreamless Sleep potion at the time. They sometimes induce a bit of memory loss when they have been taken to make someone sleep at all rather than to ward off dreams.”

“Oh,” Zabini said himself, slowly. Then he nodded. “I want to see my mother. Then I’ll do whatever she advises. But she has to come here without letting him know about it.”

“That should not be difficult,” Snape said. “I will contact her myself, and she will come to the Floo in my office. There is no one in this room who would betray her presence to anyone outside it.”

Zabini looked at Snape and nodded, but then he looked past Lughborn at Harry. “Does he have to be here? Can’t I see my mother in private?”

“You can see her with me here,” said Snape inflexibly. “Not in absolute privacy. I am not entirely certain what your mother will do once she knows that your uncle was responsible.”

“And I will be content to trust you to Professor Snape’s guardianship,” Lughborn said, with one of those majestic nods that made him look like a lion to Harry. “I will get to know you more by speaking with you than with your mother.”

Zabini was still glaring demandingly at Harry, and he lifted one hand, pushing Dash’s head down a little as he started to hiss. “I was only here because I was visiting with Professor Snape when Lughborn came,” he said. “I don’t want to take away your privacy, Zabini.”

“Good. Then I want you to leave, and I want Professor Snape to call my mother. Please,” he added, as if he thought that would make up for him sounding rude a little earlier.

Harry walked towards the door of the office. Part of him had wanted to stay. He’d wanted to talk to Zabini about what it was like not wanting to admit you’d been abused, and see if there was anything new he could say, and if there was any comfort Harry could offer.

But the answer was obviously no. And maybe it always would be. Zabini was probably uncomfortable facing the person whose basilisk he had tried to poison.

He gets one more chance.

What do you mean? Harry asked as they stepped out into the corridor. He thought for a minute about where Ron and Hermione would be, and then turned towards the library. His books were back in Gryffindor Tower, but that wouldn’t matter much. Hermione would be happy to let him borrow hers for an hour or so. She was probably already done with her Transfiguration essays anyway, since it was due tomorrow. It sounds like he gets a lot more than one chance, since he’ll go with Lughborn.

I mean that he gets one more chance to prove he is harmless to you and me. Dash stretched, dropped off his shoulders, and slithered alongside Harry. His scales made a quiet little rasping noise Harry hadn’t noticed before. Maybe they were changing as Dash got older. If he tries to harm me or you again, I’ll poison him.

Draco would be furious that you weren’t including him and Conflagration in there, Harry said as lightly as he could.

I can, of course. But since he isn’t hearing me right now, it’s up to you what you tell him.

Harry stopped in the middle of the corridor and turned to face Dash. Dash halted with his head held up and his body rippling behind him. This time, he was as silent as the light of the torches on the floor.

You can’t go around poisoning people and biting them just because they threaten us. I won’t allow it.

We’ve had this discussion before. Dash gently swayed his head back and forth, and yawned again. Harry thought of the way he’d yawned near Karkaroff’s face, and scowled at him. This time, he was just being deliberately annoying. You can’t stop me from defending you.

If you go around biting people and killing them, then they won’t let me have you here.

Good. Then I’ll be free to take you away from a place where only two professors seem to really care what happens to you. Your friends can come too, if they want. We’ll go find some place that’s fun and near the ocean and defensible, and we’ll build a house there. And Draco can come visit and Conflagration can burn driftwood.

Harry put a hand over his eyes. This was the problem with trying to have conversations with Dash. He would sound serious and then start talking in a way that made Harry unsure how far he would even try to go. Maybe he was joking about biting people, too.

I would never joke about defending you.

Harry opened his eyes and spoke aloud just so Dash would know he was being serious. “I know you’re not. But it doesn’t matter. I don’t want someone randomly biting people who are trying to kill me.”

It would never be random. It would only be people who tried to kill you. Or me. And once they’re dead, they can’t try again. It’s sound policy.

“I still don’t want you to do it.”

I don’t care what you want, if your life is in danger, said Dash, and slid past him towards the library. Come, or Hermione will be wondering where we are.

Harry stood with his eyes tightly shut, but there was a large problem with this method of punishing Dash for his actions: it didn’t work. Dash knew perfectly well what Harry felt, and he knew it was worry that drove Harry’s actions, not indifference.

Someday, Harry thought as he walked after Dash and watched how many people gave them nervous looks and got out of the way, we’re going to have a large fight about this.

He did wonder, though, whether it was a fight that he would be happier to win or lose.

*

“Mother.”

“Blaise,” said his mother, and held him so tight that Blaise actually tensed, feeling the anticipation of an ache around his ribs where he used to hit him.

Mother didn’t seem to notice, but after a moment, she shifted her hold and led him to the chair nearest Professor Snape’s fireplace. The professor might as well not have been in the room, for all the attention she paid him. “I want to know why you did not tell me,” Mother said, looking straight down into his eyes.

Blaise swallowed. His mother, Elena Zabini, was a beautiful woman, with skin as dark and clear as her eyes and hair, and gowns of red and blue and gold that she wore in place of robes. Blaise knew all the gowns cost a fortune, but then, she had seven fortunes to spend, so that was nothing.

He was far more worried about the way she had splayed her hand against his side. She had done that the last time one of his stepfathers had yelled at Blaise. And then she had sweetly told Blaise to make sure that he gave Niccolo a fond farewell, because he would be going to Hogwarts after the Easter holidays and away for so long.

It was indeed a fond farewell, and Blaise hadn’t been surprised at all to come home that summer and find that Niccolo was dead, the victim of a tragic Lethifold accident, and his mother was courting the man who would become his sixth stepfather.

Perhaps Mother remembered that time as well, because she said in a soft voice like melting honey, “You know I would do anything to protect you.”

“And that’s why I didn’t tell you,” whispered Blaise. “Because you would have done something. And he said he would make you suffer. He said he could make sure that you were up in Azkaban. You only hadn’t gone before for the—the deaths because of his influence, he said—”

Mother shook her head, her braided, shining hair trailing in loops down her shoulders. “No, Blaise. It was because there was no evidence against me, and because people are afraid of me.” She said those words with the kind of pure, simple confidence that Blaise wished he could have. “The cases never even came close going to the Wizengamot.”

“I didn’t know that,” Blaise whispered. He could have known, he thought, if he’d asked his mother, but he had been content to leave it alone. And except at the moments when he had threatened to bring his mother up on charges, it did seem that she led a charmed life, beyond the reach of the law. “I would have…”

“You would have done exactly as he said, most likely. That is because you are the child and I am the parent. You do not need to protect me.”

Mother reached down and pried Blaise’s head up until he had no choice but to look her in the eyes. Blaise swallowed and felt his skin burn. He didn’t want to look at her. Now that he was and listening to her words, his threats seemed no more than childish lies. Of course Mother would have defenses in place in case someone tried to do that to her. Of course Blaise should have known better than to think she was just waiting around to let herself be captured.

“You will not take that role again,” Mother whispered, while she held him to her. “That risk. You will leave Britain and only come back for the trial of Karkaroff, as needed, and you will be safe and know that I love you. I will handle your uncle.”

Blaise could only be grateful to her from refraining from the name. Then again, Professor Snape might have told her about the curse.

He said the first thing that came into his head. “They’ll probably want to try me, too. For poisoning Draco’s snake. I mean, it’s not going to sound good if I say that I was really trying to poison Potter’s basilisk and just got the flame cobra by mistake…”

Mother turned and studied Professor Snape for the first time. “They will dare to try him?”

“Not until your uncle is off the Wizengamot,” said Professor Snape calmly. “There would be no end to Mr. Zabini’s danger until then. But after that, yes, Lucius Malfoy will ask for a reckoning. And even if he did not, Draco Malfoy would.”

For a moment, Mother looked calculating. Well, more calculating than normal, that was. Blaise didn’t think he could say he had ever seen her face calm and open. “Not Potter?”

“Mr. Zabini’s assault did not succeed in poisoning the basilisk,” said Professor Snape. “Things would have been different if it had.” Blaise stirred a little, not liking the use of the poison called an “assault,” but Professor Snape pointedly didn’t notice. “And Mr. Potter, as you may have read last year, grew up in an abusive home himself. That gave him an empathy for Mr. Zabini that is not easily overcome.”

“Good,” said Mother softly. Then she paused. “If you have something else to say to my son, Professor Snape, say it.”

Professor Snape nodded distantly. Blaise met his eyes, and saw a weariness so old there that he gasped a little.

“I hope that you went along with Karkaroff’s plans out of fear of your own abuse being exposed,” said Professor Snape, “and not because of some deeper enmity. Harry understands you now. He forgives you. You will have to leave Hogwarts, but he will not press charges. And as long as you do nothing else against him, you will have nothing to fear from that direction.

“But I watch his basilisk closely, and I have seen a change in Dash over the last few days. I think, if you act against Harry again, you will find Dash waiting for you. And a basilisk’s eyes kill even faster than its fangs. Remember that, Mr. Zabini.”

It took Blaise a long moment to find his tongue, because he was shivering too hard to speak. Surprisingly, Mother didn’t say anything. She only stood there and looked, narrow-eyed, back and forth between him and Professor Snape as if they were two actors in a play and she hadn’t figured out which one of them had the lead role.

That means it’s up to me to come up with an answer.

“That was the only reason I feared Potter,” Blaise finally managed to rasp. “And I might not ever have acted against him e-except for the letter he sent me telling me that he’d better never become the target of an abuse investigation if I wanted to live. I d-don’t hate him, Professor Snape. But I am afraid of his basilisk.”

“As I said,” Professor Snape murmured, with a motion of his open hand, “leave Hogwarts, go to school on the Continent, testify against Karkaroff when the time comes, and you need never fear him. Harry is too forgiving for his own good.”

A shadow crossed the professor’s face, and Blaise had to close his eyes. He didn’t think Dash was the only one he’d have to fear if he had decided to keep Potter as his enemy.

“But do not take any side against him again,” Professor Snape said. “Can you promise me that much, Mr. Zabini?”

Blaise nodded. “And I’ll write an apology to Draco,” he said. “But I don’t think he wants to see me right now.”

A narrow smile compressed Professor Snape’s mouth. “No,” he said. “I don’t think he does. All right, Mr. Zabini. I have no objection to you leaving with Lughborn, and I promise you that your uncle will be dealt with.” He paused long enough to nod to Mother. “I will leave you here to visit with your son for the day, if you will promise to depart through my Floo and tell no one you were here.”

“Teach that basilisk to suck eggs, Severus,” said Mother, pleasantly enough.

Professor Snape nodded and departed. Mother turned back to Blaise and folded him in her arms. Blaise closed his eyes, shaking. He could hardly believe the moment of threats had passed and he was still alive.

“Now,” Mother said, with a kiss behind his ear, “we have a whole day to plot revenge. Let me hear your most creative ideas, darling. I’ll be the one to execute them, but I want my dear boy to have his share in it, too.”

Chapter 75: The Snake of Dreams

Chapter Text

Harry? Harry, you need to wake up.

The sensation of someone dragging at him, pulling at him, made Harry wave a hand irritably over his head. His first thought was that Ron was about to pull a prank on him, and Dash was waking him up before the bucket of cold water could fall or something—

But then he was sitting up in a meadow that definitely wasn’t his bed in Gryffindor Tower. There was only grey grass around him, swaying in a wind that Harry couldn’t feel even when he held his arm out.

Where am I? he whispered to Dash, looking around and seeing nothing but the grass stretching on and on for miles. When he looked up, there was a dark sky above him with stars peeking out of it. Their faint light was the only reason he could see the grass, Harry thought.

There was a sharp sound beside him, and Dash slithered up. Harry sighed in relief and reached down to gather him in. Dash climbed Harry’s body, which he didn’t often do since he’d got so long and heavy, and wrapped around his shoulders and arms like a blanket. He rested his head on top of Harry’s and darted his tongue out sharply, scenting for the danger.

You’re not awake, Dash said. You’re somewhere in the middle of your head—or your dreams. I can’t tell. It doesn’t affect our bond, but it’s somewhere outside it.

The slight worried tone in his voice made Harry feel dizzy with fear. He had to close his eyes and breathe a few times, touching Dash’s scales, before he could be calm.

I’ll be here when you’re ready to listen again, Dash said, and touched Harry’s neck with his tongue.

Harry said, Do you think we’re in any immediate danger? Do you think Voldemort brought us here?

That would make the most sense, Dash said, after being quiet for a second. Harry could feel the pulses of thought traveling through the back of the bond, and suspected Dash was analyzing things using those senses that Harry couldn’t feel unless he was deep-bonded with him. You had those dreams about Voldemort for a while, and then nothing. It makes sense that he might have tried to conceal himself from you so you wouldn’t know what he was doing.

Then why did he open the connection now? And what is this place?

At least one of those questions got an answer before Dash could give him one.

Something came slamming at them, moving so fast that Harry only got a glimpse of green before he flew off his feet. Then he was rolling over and over, with his face pressed into the grass, and something snarling threats in his ear. No, hissing them, Harry realized a second later. He could probably only understand them because he spoke Parseltongue.

You will be ripped apart, you will be boiled alive, you will be devoured…

About that point, Dash finally pulled himself away from Harry and attacked the snake on Harry’s back. Harry scrambled to stand up. He wanted to make sure he had his wand ready to fight the snake.

When he could see again, brushing off some dirt that had got encrusted on his forehead above his eyes, he could see Dash and the other snake crawling in circles around each other. Harry swallowed. It was the huge snake that had been in some of his visions of Voldemort, before those stopped and the link seemed to close.

This had to be Nagini, who had attacked him in the gardens at the Yule Ball.

She was smaller than Dash. Harry told himself that was a good thing. And she had to be less magical. Basilisks were the most magical snakes there were, and an unusual basilisk like Dash would have more power still.

That didn’t mean it was going to be an easy fight.

Even as Harry thought that, the snakes cracked together like whips. Now they were wrapped around each other, and Nagini was trying to stab her fangs into Dash’s neck while he tried to bite her. Last time, his eyes hadn’t worked on her, Harry thought as he ran towards the battle. That was probably why Dash hadn’t tried his eyes this time.

No! Harry, stay back! She cares more about killing you than me!

But Harry couldn’t stand back and watch his basilisk get slaughtered. He pointed his wand at Nagini’s tail, which had come untwined from Dash’s and was flopping around in the grass, and said the first spell that came to mind. “Diffindo!

His voice sounded echoing and strange in the mind-space, and the spell came forwards slowly from his wand, like he was casting underwater. But it did what it was supposed to do, even though the snakes were rolling over again and Harry was terrified for a second that he might cut Dash. The last bit of Nagini’s tail dropped to the grass and lay there twitching.

Nagini swung around and abruptly shook herself free of Dash. Then she coiled towards Harry, her mouth wide open and her hissing so violent that he didn’t understand any of the individual threats.

Harry knew he probably couldn’t use another spell before she reached him. But he had another option, and if his wand was here in this space and everything around him was part of a dream anyway, then the thing he imagined might as well be here.

Harry stuck his hand out and snatched at the air. A second later, he was holding his Firebolt. He climbed onto it and zoomed into the sky.

Stay up there, Harry! Dash had caught up with Nagini, Harry saw when he looked down, and was biting her comprehensively in the side of the neck, coiled so tightly around her now that Harry could barely tell them apart. And good on you for realizing that this is a dream and we can manipulate—

That was all he got out before Harry felt the bond close as though someone had slammed an iron gate over it. At the same moment, his scar began to burn.

Harry gritted his teeth and turned his broom back towards the ground. Yes, someone else had figured out that he could manipulate reality in this dream. And that person was Voldemort.

Well, Harry had had enough taken away from him. His parents and Sirius for twelve years and even Dumbledore, sort of, since he thought Harry was the key to the war. Harry wasn’t going to let Voldemort take Dash, too.

He held out his hand and thought of a rope stretching down from his wrist to Dash. It would be like their bond, and it would be unbreakable, and it would snatch Dash into the air and away from Nagini, and she couldn’t follow, and—

His broom abruptly sagged, and Harry realized why. Dash was hanging beneath him on the rope now, and coming closer, but he was bloody heavy. Nagini circled on the grass beneath them, hissing in fury. Harry reeled Dash closer and made him wrap around the broom when he got near enough, and then imagined the bond opening again as hard as he could.

I told you to fly away, Dash snapped, the last meter or so of his body flapping in the wind as he tried to get a secure grip.

And you thought I would? Harry turned and envisioned open sky ahead, with a little more light so he could see, and there it was. He thought some of the Legilimency training he’d had from Snape was helping, too. You’re not that stupid, are you?

I’m here to protect you.

Then it’s the same way, Harry snapped back, and tapped Dash so hard on the snout that he reared back in surprise and nearly unbalanced them again. We’re each as important as the other one. Human and basilisk. If you say we aren’t, then you’re just like those stupid people who would think that I’m more important only because I’m human.

Dash opened his mouth to respond, only to hiss loudly and jerk his head down. Harry found himself looking at the ground without planning to. It was like someone had a rope around his neck now, and was jerking on it.

Or a leash, Harry thought, steadying the broom and trying to lean back far enough that he could look up at the sky.

Voldemort was standing beneath them.

He looked like a Dementor. He had a long robe on that moved slowly around him, and huge clawed gloves on his hands, and when he looked up at them, Harry saw that he had a rotting face with his jaw hanging mostly off. But Harry never doubted it was him.

We have to get away from him, Dash said, and Harry agreed, because at least Dash was talking about “we” now. He envisioned the sky opening up above them and a great force yanking them up, opposite to the one Voldemort was using to pull them down.

But nothing happened. Instead, they kept falling lower and lower, towards the place where Voldemort stood with his mouth gaping open, and Harry realized that he couldn’t imagine the other force clearly enough. Voldemort was the one in control here.

And are you going to give in like that? Dash was lashing back and forth, rearing on the broomstick and hissing sometimes at Voldemort and sometimes at Nagini, who Harry saw curled up next to Voldemort’s feet. Are you going to let him get away with controlling you when it’s your own bloody mind that we’re fighting in?

No. Harry ignored his burning scar and hooked his arms around Dash’s middle, lifting him a little off the broomstick. You’re sure you want to do this?

I’m sure. Dash arched his neck and tried to look, probably, Harry thought, like a charging horse on parade. Throw me when ready.

Harry did just that, heaving fourteen feet of basilisk off the broom and straight down towards Voldemort and his snake.

Voldemort didn’t move for some reason, staring. Maybe his Dementor disguise made him blind. Nagini coiled up, but Dash avoided her and fell right on top of Voldemort, sinking his fangs deep in a single bite.

For a second, all Harry could feel through their bond was bliss, the flow of the cold poison as Dash pumped it into his fangs, and the fact that Voldemort was swaying back and forth now, his dream-body breaking apart, and Harry could probably get away if he could bring himself to speed up and leave Dash behind—

But a second later, Harry shrieked. He could feel that blinding cold flowing back into his own body, mingling with the pain from his scar. He swayed on the broom, and it dropped lower and lower.

Harry! Dash sounded panicked for the first time Harry could remember. What is it? What’s happening?

Somehow, Harry thought, forcing the clear words through the bond and between bursts of agony, when you bit him, you hurt me, too—

And then the cold burning wrapped all around him and he screamed, and never knew, when he began to fall, where he landed.

*

Severus woke with such urgency it was as though someone had wrapped a loop of rope around his sleeping mind and yanked it up. And he glanced automatically at his left arm, because the Dark Mark was the only force he knew that had the power to do that.

If the Dark Lord was already that much restored to power…

But a second later, the force lashed at him again, and Severus realized it came from outside the door of his bedroom. He couldn’t define it, even as he staggered to his feet and reached for a robe. It was mental and physical at the same time, like both a pull and a push.

The light in the room, from the smoky fire, abruptly dimmed. Severus found himself drawing his wand with battle-trained reflexes that being in the Death Eaters and around dangerous simmering cauldrons for the majority of his life had only honed.

I need you now.

The voice was alien and intense, striking into his mind like an iron lance. Severus cried out at the force of it, and was dragged several feet towards the door before he could stop his feet from moving. Even then, it was only because he grabbed at the wall and managed to latch his fingers through a crack between the stones.

I need you now. Harry needs you now. Bring every vial of phoenix’s tears and other powerful antivenin that you have with you.

And Severus knew who was speaking to him then, although that didn’t explain how he was speaking.

How can you do this? Severus thought, even as he cast the spell that would Summon the vials of antivenin. He only had one vial of phoenix’s tears, gathered from Fawkes during one evening several years ago when the bird had come into his office and cried on a wound on his arm caused by an exploding cauldron. He hoped it would be enough.

I can do this to anyone who cares for Harry, if I want to. I just don’t usually want to. But I bit Voldemort in a dream, and now my venom is hurting Harry somehow.

There were so many things to react to in that statement that Severus found himself largely feeling nothing. He simply grabbed and stacked and gathered, and wedged some vials into a pocket that had an Expansion Charm on it, and then ran for the stairs.

But as he went, a few thoughts shivered through him. Whatever the connection was between Harry and the Dark Lord, it could hit him with attacks Dash directed at the Dark Lord. When Severus had relaxed partially because he trusted Dash to guard Harry, that was…an uncomfortable revelation.

And Dash had more power than he had suspected, at a greater depth, with magic that was not part of the normal basilisk array.

If he ever had to defend against Harry’s basilisk, Severus now knew what the outcome would be.

*

Harry opened his eyes, choking and coughing. There was a thick liquid in his mouth, a disgusting one, and he didn’t know what it was. He twisted to the side and tried to throw it out, or up.

No, Harry, keep it down.

Dash was curled around him, and Harry knew he was lying in a bed. He gagged again as he tried to answer aloud instinctively, and then swallowed what he thought was probably a potion and reached through the bond instead. What happened?

Somehow my poison affected you when I bit Voldemort. Dash lifted his head. His neck seemed unusually short. A second later, Harry realized Dash was wrapped so firmly around him that most of his body was taken up in the hug. I summoned Snape so he could bring some antivenin. I’m so sorry, Harry.

Harry projected as much confused love as he could through the bond, given that he had no idea what the hell was going on. I don’t—you didn’t mean to. But I thought nothing except phoenix’s tears could fight basilisk venom.

He’s already poured that over your scar, since that seems to be the source of the poison for some reason. Even though Voldemort doesn’t have a scar like it, and I didn’t bite Voldemort there… Dash shifted his head restlessly back and forth, and then put it down on Harry’s neck when Snape said something in a sharp voice. In the meantime, I’m holding you like this, and I’m getting ready to push.

Push? Harry asked. He turned his head and blinked up at Snape, who was bending over him with an empty vial. Snape gave him a grim smile and tipped another vial of potion forwards. Harry opened his mouth to swallow it. I don’t understand what you’re going to do.

I’m going to push my venom out of you. It’s a thing I can do. Dash hesitated for such a long time that Harry turned his head to look at him as best he could. It isn’t pleasant. You’re going to vomit and…

I don’t care. I’ll know that you’re doing it to save my life. Harry closed his eyes and resigned himself. It wasn’t worse than lying in the cupboard at Privet Drive with his stomach empty and aching.

Dash wrapped himself more firmly around Harry. I can call my poison to come back to me. I could kill people and never let anyone know how I did it, if I remove all of it from the body.

Harry swallowed and said only, You know I don’t like it when you talk about killing people, Dash. No matter what they did.

This time, I was the one who almost killed you.

Harry didn’t have a lot of time to absorb the somber tone in Dash’s voice. He squeezed suddenly around Harry, as if he was a boa constrictor, and at the same time he reached out and into Harry’s body in some way, pulling or yanking on their bond. Harry heard it like he would hear discordant music in the distance.

Then he felt the poison beginning to rush out of him.

It was horrible. It was thick and worse in his mouth than the potions, and Harry turned his head to the side and began to vomit. Snape started casting spells at once. From the way they removed the vomit and made his mouth taste, Harry thought they were spells that would Vanish it and clean him up.

But Snape had to keep casting them, because Harry was vomiting again. And again. And listening to Dash whisper in the back of his head how sorry he was.

*

Severus stepped slowly back from Harry and then collapsed into the chair at the side of the bed. Dash had brought Harry to the hospital wing even before Severus had managed to leave his quarters with the phoenix’s tears and antivenin. Poppy had offered to help, but Dash had looked at her and hissed softly—perhaps scenting her fear, Severus thought—and she had backed away, then locked herself in her office.

It had been more than unpleasant for the last hour. Harry had expelled so much fluid from his body that Severus had charmed a few potions into his stomach simply to provide liquid. He’d also had to cast more Vanishing Charms and Mouth-Freshening Charms than he ever had in his life, and change the basins that held the overflow several times. Dash hadn’t been able to help him, so occupied with staring into Harry’s eyes and squeezing his body in the special way that seemed to drive the poison forth.

But now both of them were still, and Dash was swaying with a relaxed curve to his neck that Severus understood better than he did most of the communications he had with the basilisk. Harry must be safe, or Dash wouldn’t look like this.

Harry was asleep. No one else was in the hospital wing. That made it the perfect chance to address some of the questions Severus had.

He cleared his throat. Dash turned his head towards him, eyes a brilliant yellow glow under their lids, another sign that Harry was safe. Severus had watched them flicker and dim like fires in the last hour.

“The link between the Dark Lord and Harry,” he said. “I shudder to think of what it could be. We need to think about that.”

Dash bobbed his head in a slow nod, and then curled up around Harry in a way that said he didn’t intend to think of it now.

“We must,” Severus said, leaning forwards. “I know you can speak to me when you want to. Why won’t you do it now?”

Dash flicked out his tongue. At the same moment, the heavy, dark voice sounded in the back of Severus’s head.

You want me to command you? Like this?

Severus stumbled as he was yanked to his feet. He caught himself on the back of the chair and the side of the bed. Harry’s breathing changed for a second, and Severus looked at him in concern. Whatever game Dash was playing, Severus thought Harry should be allowed to rest.

Or this?

As though his arm belonged to someone else, Severus watched it extend, until his hand was right in front of Dash’s mouth. Dash opened his jaws, and his fangs glistened with the same poison they had spent so much of the night removing from Harry.

“You’ve made your point,” said Severus. If his voice shook, well, there was no point in pretending not to be afraid around a creature who could smell his fear.

Dash flickered his tongue out once, and then gave his head another of those human bobs. The control lifted from Severus. He worked his way back to the chair and took the seat without looking away from Dash.

I can only speak like that when I’m commanding you to do something, Dash said, and Severus’s arse hit the chair hard. And I would prefer not to do it. It’s hard. Exhausting. I’ll sleep for several days now. I would only do it when Harry was in danger, or both of us were.

Not even to save himself, then, Severus thought, hearing what wasn’t in those words. He shook his head a little. “Then I’ll speculate aloud, and you can give some indication when you think I’m on the right track.”

Dash put his head down again, but kept it turned towards Severus, which Severus assumed meant he had no objection.

“The connection runs through dreams,” Severus said quietly. “The mind. And the body. Otherwise, a bite felt in a dream would never have affected Harry physically.” He hesitated for a moment. Then he asked, “Was the landscape of the dream mostly grey? Seemingly located in between their two minds, affected by both?”

Dash gave a short, sharp hiss that seemed to indicate surprise, but gave another one of those bobbing nods, too.

Severus sighed and put his hand over his face, shaking his head. “That is a powerful Legilimency link,” he said. “It’s the kind the Dark Lord might be able to forge with me, because of the Dark Mark, if I were not as well-protected by Occlumency shields as I am. And it eliminates the possibilities for the connection they share down to a few extremely Dark ones.”

Dash only nodded, and Severus supposed the realization was no surprise to him.

Nor to Severus either, truly. He looked at the boy lying in the bed, and his heart ached.

What can I do? How can I protect him?

More research, he thought. And somehow, he must speak to Black and convince him to reveal the secret that had prevented him from telling Harry the truth and prompted him to research Dark rituals to free him from the connection, whatever it was.

For now, though, he had a more important charge. Severus remained in silent guardianship over Harry, shared with Dash, until morning came, Poppy emerged from her office, and Dash dropped into utterly exhausted sleep.

But Severus did have the comfort of seeing Harry open his eyes and smile at him before he took his leave.

Chapter 76: Broken Connections

Chapter Text

For a long moment, she studied the broken pieces of red glass lying on the table. Then she glanced at the parchment of the letter that had come yesterday.

And nodded, standing.

Elena Zabini walked over to the window in her tower and leaned her elbows for a moment on the sill. Outside was a softly pretty grey day, with clouds reflecting pale light back to the ground and slushy snow still lying in trampled ruts where she’d spent the day galloping on the back of one of her palomino horses. Elena watched it and waited for her breathing to slow. She couldn’t be agitated when she executed her revenge. Nothing could go wrong.

The poison she had chosen depended as much on intention and will as it did on the right combination of ingredients in the cauldron.

And she had made her decision. She went back to the letter and wrote a reply, not bothering to clean up when the quill spluttered a little and some ink got blotted onto the parchment. This was as much a symbol of her unshakeable determination as the decision she’d undertaken.

Professor Snape,

I accept your bargain. I will need an hour alone with Jordan Damirini before the trial to execute my revenge. In return, I will send you the broken shards of the artifact you requested and the book on Parseltongue that my son gave me last year.

Elena.

She turned, and the owl was already coming through the window, drawn by her indomitable will. She held out the letter and said softly, “Deliver it to Severus Snape.”

A snap. A flex of the owl’s beak, and it was gone, soaring straight out the window like an arrow shot at the heart of an enemy. Elena waited until that rush of energy had departed, and the next one was coming at her, curling at the top like an oncoming wave.

From now until the brewing of the poison was finished, she thought as she turned towards the small cabinet that housed her jewelry collection, she would be racked and bounced from wave to wave. It was the price for the poison she had chosen to brew. Nothing would be left to chance. She would ride the waves or she would die.

But she would have the revenge she had wanted.

Elena smiled slightly as she took out the sapphires she would need to crush and powder, and the silver chain that would bear her whispered curse for her great-uncle. It was a smile that no one but her son had ever seen.

Well, Elena decided as she held up the silver chain in the nearest mirror to study the fiddly clasp she would have to break, that’s not exactly true. He’s the only livingperson who’s ever seen it, though.

And with that, she went to work.

*

Severus waited in silence. Now and then, his hand went back to touch the parchment in his back pocket, the one that contained the answer Zabini’s mother had sent. He was grateful and relieved to know that they would not be working at cross-purposes.

Now, he had someone else he needed to convince.

At last Healer Lughborn came into the largest drawing room of Grimmauld Place and stood studying him. “He doesn’t want to see you,” he said.

“But that’s not the same as saying that he won’t,” Severus murmured. While Lughborn was Light and explained what he wanted and what he didn’t straightforwardly, Severus had learned in the last weeks that he possessed a subtlety as great as any Slytherin’s.

“Yes.” Lughborn hesitated once. “Speak exactly of what you came for and nothing else. Emphasize the danger to your ward. I think that’s the only way he’ll hear you.”

Severus nodded and looked up at the doorway just as Black came through it. He halted when he saw Severus, his fingers flexing up and down on the wall. Then he shook his head and charged through the last few steps, the ones that carried him up to Severus.

“I want to know what you have to say about Harry.” Black’s hair hung limp around his face, and his eyes were staring and mad in much the way they had been when he emerged from prison.

“The Dark Lord confronted him in his mind,” Severus said, heeding Lughborn’s advice and not glancing away from Black’s eyes, even though, standing like this, so close, their gaze was uncomfortably intimate. “When Dash defended him, the poison he sent into the Dark Lord’s dream-image somehow seeped back and affected Harry. We saved Harry. But I need to know what kind of connection there is between Harry and the Dark Lord. What would make the poison do that?”

Black staggered and sat down. Since there was no chair or couch nearby, he simply sat on the floor. Lughborn stirred, but didn’t move nearer when Black covered his mouth with one hand and began to choke out laughter.

This is him when he’s being Mind-Healed? Severus stood still and affected the slightly bored expression he had created long ago when he first had to sit through professors’ meetings at Hogwarts. Inwardly, he was appalled. I did the right thing in taking Harry away from him, however much capacity he has to heal or however much they missed each other.

When Black had ceased to laugh, he looked up and said conversationally, “I knew that basilisk was trouble. Of course the poison would affect him. Harry shouldn’t be bonded to a snake.”

“We must deal with the reality in front of us,” Severus said, in the same tone he had once used when Pomona made complaints about so few of her Hufflepuffs passing Severus’s Potions class. “The reality is that Dash and Harry have this bond and don’t wish to break it. What is the nature of the connection between Potter and the Dark Lord?”

“Their bond is horrible. Harry wouldn’t nearly have died if not for it!”

“He would still have the Dark Lord after his head. What is the nature of the connection?”

Black choked and looked away. Severus remained standing still. He caught the expression of approval on Lughborn’s face, even as he nodded slightly. Apparently he thought Severus was acting as he should with Lughborn’s crazy patient.

Finally, Black whispered, “I promised Dumbledore I wouldn’t tell. It’s horrible. And it would kill any hope Harry has to survive the war, once he knows about it.”

“Is it a connection that can only be severed by death?” That would at least eliminate some of the candidates Severus had been thinking of, although it might not give them a lead on which one of the remaining ones it was.

Black looked up, shading his eyes as if Severus shone with a light. “No. I don’t think so,” he added. “I’ve been trying to find rituals that would let me save Harry without death. But someone interfered in my research and the Black books that only Narcissa can show me.” He lowered his hands to his lap and gave Severus a freezing look this time.

Don’t respond to accusations, Lughborn had told Severus, and he didn’t. “Then what are the kinds of rituals that would sever it?”

Black hesitated. Perhaps he thought giving up that information wouldn’t reveal the secret. “The kind that would take something vital from someone else and substitute for the bit in Harry that’s tied to You-Know-Who,” he finally said.

Severus narrowed his eyes. The vague category covered a great many rituals, from blood rituals that might allow the Dark Lord to return to a body to ones that would heal a wizard dying of a mortal wound or poison. They were the kind of rituals Severus might have had to use on Harry if Dash had not been able to turn back his own poison.

But the connection between the Dark Lord and Harry couldn’t be as simple as Harry having sucked away the Dark Lord’s life force. Why would he do that? Harry had been a one-year-old baby at the time, and even if Lily had had something to do with the Dark Lord’s defeat, Severus had known her too well to think she would ever engage in a life-stealing ritual. Especially not when the participant in the ritual had to be a fully conscious, knowing being. To perform such magic on a child…no, Lily had not been so Dark.

“What is vital?” he asked Black.

Black only stared back at him with no comprehension for a moment, and then smiled and wagged his finger at Severus. “You won’t get me with that, Snape,” he said. “You won’t trick me into telling you the truth.”

“No,” said Severus, and ignored the warning motion he saw from Lughborn in the corner of his eye. “I would not stoop to that. I do want to know if you will simply tell me what is wrong with Harry, so we can heal him.”

Black sat upright. “You said that he was healed! Is he still dying of the poison? I’ll kill that basilisk myself!

The last words were almost a bark, and Severus thought he saw some of Black’s stubble becoming fur. He stood still instead of moving, and held the man’s eyes, and said very softly, “If you killed Dash, Harry would also die. No. Harry is well right now. But he cannot be permanently healed if we do not find out the nature of the connection between him and the Dark Lord, and destroy it.”

“That’s what I was trying to do.” Black sank back on the floor, human again.

“But you will not tell me what the connection is. You only wanted to ruin it.” Severus saw the way Lughborn frowned at him, and held back his hatred and the words he wanted to use to voice it. If Black was this bad after weeks of working constantly with Lughborn, then Severus could only imagine what he must have started out like.

On the other hand, perhaps he was only this bad because of the threat to Harry. Severus knew he had not been himself for several hours after Harry had nearly died of Dash’s poison.

Severus considered Black with that in mind, and chose a different path. “Have you found a safe ritual yet?”

Black flushed and glanced away.

Severus nodded. “Until you find one, or until you decide to trust the other people who care for Harry—and the snakes who do—then we can never be sure of destroying that connection. You’ve done months of research, without finding a ritual that would satisfy the requirements.” He turned and took the chair that stood nearest the door, studying Black across the slight distance he’d opened between them. “The answer might not be in the books your ancestors collected. I think, sooner or later, that you need to face that.”

Black gestured with one hand, snarled with one side of his mouth, but otherwise stayed silent and motionless. Lughborn hadn’t set a limit on the amount of time Severus could be here, so he remained still, eyes slit and watching.

“Dumbledore trusted me with it,” Black finally whispered. “And look what you did to him.”

Severus held back the gasp, too. He said only, when he thought he could make the words as flat and neutral as possible, “He was the one who chose to parade as Moody and ‘test’ Harry with his spells, as well as enter his name in the Tournament. I cannot be sorry that Harry and Dash exposed him. What he did after that was up to him.”

“That damn basilisk!” Black exploded fast enough that Severus had his wand in hand before he thought about it. But Black was on his feet, pacing and snarling again, and hadn’t paid attention to the way Severus reacted. “He messes everything up!”

“The fact that you don’t think Dumbledore’s plans were the problem…” Severus broke off. He couldn’t think of a word bad enough to describe Black.

Black turned and glared at him, reminded that Severus was here, evidently. “If you’d left Dumbledore to play them through, he might not have screwed them up! No onetrusted him enough. They just found out what he was doing and attacked him without giving him the chance to explain.”

“If you care more about Dumbledore than about Harry, I have nothing more to say to you.”

Black paused. He touched his hair for a second with a trembling hand, then faced Severus. “Snape, I didn’t mean it that way. It’s just—why does everyone trust a basilisk before they trust the man who saved them from Grindelwald?”

“Because of what we are being asked to trust him with,” Severus said. Again Lughborn caught his eye and frowned, but he didn’t actually interfere, and this question, Severus thought he had an answer for. “If it was the safety of the school, I know few people who would trust Dash. But it isn’t. It’s Harry’s safety. And Dash cares more about him than Dumbledore did. You know that.”

Black tilted his head, dog-like. But at least he was asking, so Severus didn’t feel the immediate, savage hatred that he would have otherwise. “But we can’t trust the basilisk either.”

“Why not?”

“Because no one except Harry can communicate with him.” Black swept back and forth like a tempest, pacing and waving his hands in the air. “How do we know what the bloody snake thinks or feels? Harry could misunderstand. The snake could feed him lies, and we would never know!”

“Dash can, in fact, speak when he thinks it counts,” said Severus dryly, and Black turned and looked at him in utter surprise.

“He can?”

“He took over my body the other night and made me bring phoenix’s tears and antivenin for Harry. I heard his voice in my head. It was a—disconcerting experience.” Severus chose his words carefully, trying to walk along the edge of truth and yet not put things in terms that would make Black back off. “So if you really needed to understand him, he could do the same thing to you.”

Black’s face contorted. “It sounds Dark. The same sort of power that drives the Imperius Curse.”

“What’s more important to you,” Severus said, and didn’t care that his voice had grown cold, “saving Harry’s life and severing the connection that binds him to the Dark Lord, or being left to hate snakes and Slytherins in peace?”

Black stood still for so long a moment that Severus thought he would not answer. That would be typical of him, Severus thought in disgust. He will not make a decision; he forces others into making them for him.

Surprisingly, it was Lughborn who forced the issue. "Choose, Sirius," he said. "I fear that you have come as far as you can under my guidance unless you intend to turn back and abandon my help. I cannot make the decision for you."

Black lowered his head, shivering. "Who knows what you'll do with this?" he whispered, so low that Severus would not have heard him if not for the absolute silence in the rest of the room. Even the fire seemed to flicker into quietude. "Who knows what the bloody basilisk will do with this?"

"I can give you no reassurance I have not already given," said Severus, and his voice was calm and cold. Calmer than he had thought it would be, hearing Black casting blame on Severus, and Dash, and everyone except himself. "You will have to decide if you trust me based on that information, not anything else."

"Given what Dumbledore did..." Black trailed off.

Severus glanced at Lughborn. He only raised a hand, and Severus thought he probably wanted to see what Black would do as much as Severus himself.

Finally, Black whispered, "James would probably say it was the most daring thing I could possibly do," and raised his head. There was a sort of desperate commitment in his eyes that told Severus of the leap into space he was about to make--according to him. Severus still could not understand what Black wanted to keep concealed so badly, but he respected the desperation.

"All right. All right." Black closed his eyes and sat down again slowly. "This is something Dumbledore told me started suspecting in Harry's second year. He destroyed a diary then, right? A diary that had a piece of You-Know-Who in it?"

Severus started. "I had heard something about that, yes," he said slowly.

"He did," said Black, with a snap to the words that indicated what Severus could do with his doubt. "The diary had some kind of magic to it, obviously. It took Dumbledore a long time to work out what it was. At first he thought it was a more complicated kind of Pensieve, since it had a memory from fifty years ago."

Get to the point, Severus thought but did not say. On the other hand, perhaps understanding the path of discovery as Black had experienced it would allow Severus some insights into the process that Black had missed.

"But a memory wouldn't have been able to suck out life from someone else." Again Black shivered, and this time, Severus felt an echo of the shiver touch his own spine, like a foreshadowing of ice. "He eventually realized it was soul magic. The diary was a Horcrux. You've heard of them?" he asked abruptly, turning his head like a hunting hound.

Severus realized he must have gasped. He inclined his head, not taking his eyes from Black. "I am more than aware of what a Horcrux signifies, yes," he said.

Black looked for a moment as if he would question how Severus knew, but then he shrugged and curled into himself. "So. Dumbledore started looking into You-Know-Who and the ways he'd messed around with soul magic. If he'd created a Horcrux, he could have done other things and left them lying around."

"Did he use a soul magic curse on Harry?" Severus asked quietly. The interaction of such powerful magic with Lily's love sacrifice could perhaps account for the Killing Curse bouncing, he thought. He hadn't considered it before because he had been unaware that the Dark Lord had walked the soul's path at all.

"No. Worse." Black hesitated, and then made the final plunge, one that seemed to drench Severus, too, with freezing water. "He made Harry into an accidental Horcrux."

Severus felt a curl of such intense disgust mount up inside his chest that he wanted to spit. And then he did, and could. He shook his head, closing one hand in front of him when Black started to open his mouth to speak. “No,” he whispered. “You misunderstood. You got something wrong. You are—you are wrong.”

“No. That’s what Dumbledore told me, and he’d done more research than anyone else.” Black’s eyes were utterly convinced, in a way that told Severus that while Black might be a victim of Albus’s lies, he at least believed what he was saying. “No one else even realized that Harry might be a Horcrux. Albus is the one who found out. It proves everything, Snape. Why there’s a connection between Harry and Voldemort, and why he has Parseltongue when he was born into a family that’s not known for that, and why he survived—”

That it does not,” Severus interrupted, seeing the flaw in the logic and pouncing on it. He had never been so glad to see one, even in a Gryffindor essay. “If the Dark Lord made Harry into a Horcrux without meaning to, he still must have done it after the attack. A piece of soul must have been injected into Harry. But how could the piece of soul come loose without the Killing Curse rebounding onto the Dark Lord? It wouldn’t simply break loose because he walked into the room and confronted Lily.”

Black paused, frowning, then gave a vague shake of his head. “You have me there, Snape.” His smile was twisted. “But there’s still no way that we can free him of it except by the Darkest of Dark rituals. And that’s what I’ve been looking up. And you’re free to hate me for it.” He glanced at Lughborn. “You, too. But Harry can’t live the way he is.”

Severus took a step back from him. He thought he had been prepared for anything, perhaps, but this. Even for Black to be making it up. He had spent twelve years in Azkaban. He might be mad.

It would be better if he had been mad.

“I have my answer,” Severus told Lughborn, turning to face him and trying to ignore the way that Black had started to wheeze laughter. He sounded like someone losing blood. “I will leave now.”

“Good. The Zabini boy will be safe among my kin.” Lughborn tilted his head towards Black for a moment and added in a tone that Severus thought was nicely judged to be too soft for Black to hear, “And it may be that the boy and his godfather will be reunited soon. Or not. For him to speak civilly to you is a bigger step than I thought him capable of taking.”

But there’s still that laughter, Severus thought as he departed through the fireplace. And the fact that he thinks potentially killing Harry is the way to save him.

I will not allow him near Harry again until I am sure that he is cured. And even then, I will come with Harry.

*

“I need to speak to you, Mr. Potter.”

Harry’s skin prickled. Snape had said that in a tone that dripped with heaviness at the edges. Even though he still called Harry “Mr. Potter” in public, so that part was normal, it wasn’t normal for him to sound anything but neutral when he did.

“All right,” Harry said, when he could convince his throat to move and swallow. Snape nodded and turned away to supervise Crabbe and Goyle’s potion. He sounded like he usually did when he snapped at them.

Harry looked down at Dash. What do you think it is? Some long-term consequence of the poison?

It might be, said Dash. Or he might have found out how Voldemort can come into your dreams.

Harry nodded slowly. His skin was prickling with dread and nervousness, and he paused to wipe sweat from his forehead more than once as he finished preparing the potion and then went to meet Snape.

Draco caught his eye on the way out and mouthed, What is it? Harry could only shake his head back.

If the news is as bad as we fear, Dash said gently, swaying along with his chin propped on Harry’s shoulder, then you should go to him soon, and take him up on his offer of comfort.

Harry said nothing. His skin shone with sweat, and he had to fight to keep from bowing his head and throwing up.

Dash wrapped him more firmly and fiercely, and said into the back of his mind, I’m here. Draco is here. Snape is here. Ron and Hermione are here. Even Draco’s father is here. You will be all right.

And that, and that alone, gave Harry the courage to turn in his potion and go face Snape and his news.

Chapter 77: The Rising

Chapter Text

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’tactively 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 78: A Private Garden

Chapter Text

Red dust was falling before her eyes. It took Elena long moments to pull her mind together enough to remember her own name, and longer than that before she could recognize the dust for what it was.

The remnants of the rubies she’d crushed when she entered the final stages of the potion. Although she didn’t trust her memory, she opened her hands and saw the evidence there: small cuts, where sharp edges had abraded before she brought her palms together and crushed the things scratching them out of existence.

When she was riding the waves of energy she’d summoned to brew the potion, she had no need of magic to powder rubies.

Elena drew herself slowly to her knees, then to her feet when she reached out and clutched a chair standing nearby. She refused to immediately attempt more. For one thing, the red dust would have caused some adverse reaction by now if it was going to, and for another, she knew herself. She would have to husband her time and patience until the scratches in her hands had healed. She couldn’t move that fast.

But on the other hand, she didn’t have to move that fast. The flask of the potion stood shimmering in the middle of its own ritual octagon, traced in glowing white light on the floor and anchored by carved black runestones.

Elena smiled a little as she looked at the runestones. The figures on them would probably look crude and jagged to other people.

They might have to her, too, if she hadn’t known that she’d scratched them with her own nails.

Magic is indeed remarkable, Elena thought, and rested until she was sure she could move forwards. When she did, she used the toe of one boot to nudge the nearest runestone out of true. The white light flared and vanished the minute the pattern was broken.

The light around the flask died, too. Elena stood considering it. If she had brewed the potion correctly, there would be an unmistakable reaction the minute she neared. But she needed to make sure she had the mental fortitude to face that reaction.

Eventually, she either did or the impatience became stronger than the fear. She took a step towards the flask.

Her mind began to spin and tumble. Her eyes locked on the side of the flask and the slow spiral dancing there, as the red liquid inside began to shine like one of the rubies she had crushed to make it. Elena felt her breathing calm. She felt remarkably comfortable, despite her exhaustion and the scratches on her palms. If she stood still a little longer, then she would understand what she could do to become even more comfortable—

Then her will rose up like shears, and snipped the controlling strand of magic. Elena shook her head and staggered a little backwards.

Even knowing what she had known, even being the one who had brewed the potion, she was almost caught. And she doubted that her great-uncle had the will or the urge to resist that she did—particularly when he had thought he could get away with abusing her son and calling her to heel if she ever found out.

Elena smiled and went to rest. Then she would consider the crafting of the letter that would bring her great-uncle to an audience with her. It would need to be as carefully brewed as the potion, considering that he might have begun to have suspicions.

But she would do it. What she set her mind to, she did.

*

A maze. I suppose they have the right to create a maze if they want to.

Dash’s voice was so low that Harry almost thought the words were his own mind. Then he shook his head and said, They do have the right to create a maze if they want to. And why not? What’s so threatening about a maze?

Did I say anything was threatening about it?

You’re thinking with the same tone that you used about Moody—well, what we thought was Moody—and Dumbledore and Sirius sometimes. And Voldemort and Nagini when they came through the—the Horcrux. Harry was still learning to call it by that name, and he still flinched a little when he did. I can tell.

Dash paused. Then he said, I’m more impressed than I can say that you’re learning to distinguish between tones of my mind-voice. That isn’t something I would normally expect you to do except when we’re mind-bonded at the deepest level.

Answer the question.

Dash unwound himself from the chair back and slithered onto Harry’s lap. Harry knew what he wanted, and scratched his plume. He was sitting in the Gryffindor common room, doing some of the homework he’d neglected as they worked on the Horcrux research. Hermione had finally pushed him in the direction of his essays and said they would handle the research on their own, no matter how long it took.

A maze separates you from me. And it means that I can’t see you at all times. Can’t reach you quickly, if something goes wrong.

They wouldn’t let you help me in the Tasks anyway. They would do more than just create a maze to separate us if you tried to slither after me.

Dash turned to look slowly at him, or rather to shine the yellow light of his eyes behind the clear lids in Harry’s direction. They would try.

Dash…

Dash said nothing, but only looped around himself in front of the fire and went to sleep. The firelight seemed to pick out new colors in his deep green scales, colors Harry hadn’t been aware that he had.

Harry stared at him. Then he sighed a little and picked up his quill again.

He knew they would have to have the argument out someday. Dash referred to it more and more now. About how he didn’t love anyone but Harry, how he would always choose Harry over every other human, how even people he approved of like Hermione and Professor Snape were only obstacles if he decided they weren’t helping Harry.

But this was the first time he had referred directly to thinking the Triwizard Tournament was one of those obstacles.

Harry nibbled the tip of his quill. Hermione would have made him stop if she’d seen, but she wasn’t here to see.

I don’t really want to be in this Tournament. I don’t even have the excuse of pleasing Dumbledore or Sirius by entering anymore. I wonder what Dash would do if I told him that I wanted out.

Then Harry stopped his thoughts, and turned in determination back to his Herbology essay. Because, although he might wonder it to himself, that was one question he couldn’t afford to find out the answer to yet.

*

Minerva stumbled out of sleep, swearing to herself because no one was around to hear. That was the one good thing about being Headmistress. Few students came and knocked directly on her door during the night, so she didn’t stand a chance of corrupting their innocent minds by exposing them to her language.

Of course, that benefit was more than outweighed by the fact that any owl tapping on her window during the night when she was Headmistress of Hogwarts was going to be a lot more serious than most owls tapping on her window during the night when she was just Head of Gryffindor.

This owl didn’t deign to land on her desk or even the perch that sat in the corner. Fawkes had gone with Albus, but Minerva had kept his perch to welcome other birds.

This one disdained it with a clatter of black wings. It simply flew over to her and swept past, holding out its leg in silent invitation for her to take it immediately or be scraped by razor claws. Minerva steeled herself and snatched the letter, which luckily only tore in one corner of the parchment before she had it safe in her hand, and the owl had wheeled back out the window.

Opening it, Minerva realized that it wasn’t addressed to her at all. Someone had sent to her a letter they had themselves received.

Frowning, Minerva looked at the official Wizengamot seal and the date and the writing before it made sense to her. The Wizengamot was calling Jordan Damirini to trial—of course for his abuse of Mr. Zabini, although the letter didn’t state that. It was the single small, scrawled line at the bottom that was important.

I must have time alone with my great-uncle before the trial. You will allow us to meet in your school. E. Z.

Minerva closed her eyes in irritation. Mrs. Zabini’s reputation was well-deserved, she had no doubt of that, and her cause was just (this time), but that didn’t lessen Minerva’s feelings at being ordered around by someone when she was supposed to be the Headmistress of this school.

Then she snorted. I suppose I’ve taken over Albus’s place indeed, if I’m being plagued by feelings like this!

She shook off the irritation and wondered for a moment how she was supposed to respond, since Mrs. Zabini’s owl hadn’t stayed. Then she shrugged. The woman had given her the date of the trial. She supposed it didn’t matter what day the meeting happened, or the excuse Minerva gave for inviting Damirini to the school. There were some essentials, and the other things, Mrs. Zabini would allow Minerva to arrange for herself.

“You’re welcome,” Minerva muttered to no one, and folded up the letter and set it aside. She had her mind full of where she could put two adults, strangers to the school, and who would have even less excuse to visit than others now that Mr. Zabini was no longer here. The challenge was intoxicating.

Only later did she wonder why Mrs. Zabini had wanted to hold the meeting here. Why not in her own home? Did she think Damirini would be less suspicious about an invitation to Hogwarts, as unusual as it was?

But Minerva shrugged when the thought occurred to her, and went back to writing the perfect letter. She would probably get no answers from Mrs. Zabini, unless they were a great gift later or sold for a great price, and honestly, she didn’t care enough to pay that much.

Knowing Mr. Zabini would have justice for what had happened to him was more than enough.

*

“Madam Pince said she didn’t know anything about Dumbledore removing books from the library.”

“Well, of course she would say that. Most of the people he didn’t do anything to are still Dumbledore partisans.”

“You can’t just dismiss everyone as a Dumbledore partisan when you don’t agree with them, Draco.”

Harry looked up from his library book, if only because it was the first time Hermione had called Draco that instead of by his last name. From the way he blinked and opened his mouth a little and then didn’t say anything, Draco had been taken by surprise for the same reasons Harry had.

Hermione flushed, but she didn’t directly address it, the way she sometimes tried to gloss over her mistakes in homework—on the rare occasions when she made them. “You can’t,” she repeated. “Especially if you want them to help us. Just repeating on and on that they’re Dumbledore partisans won’t make them think they should help us. Why should they? You’re practically calling them evil.”

“Then you admit that what he did was evil!”

“I never said it wasn’t. But we have to be careful the way we talk about it, or people will think we’re being hysterical or something…”

Aren’t you glad that they’re plaguing each other instead of us? Dash asked, sticking his head out from beneath Harry’s chair and draping his jaw across Harry’s knee. He yawned widely and then nudged the book Harry held. That smells like it was bound in snakeskin.

Harry rolled his eyes. It wasn’t a basilisk.

How do you know what basilisk skin smells like?

I can use your senses and identify it, Harry pointed out. And I should know what one smells like after all these months and months of you sharing my bed. He hesitated.What do you think Snape is going to want to do about the summer?

Protect you. Dash stretched his neck up until he was regarding the book from Harry’s eye height. I wonder how much they tortured the snake before they killed it.

That’s not what I meant. I mean—he said he had a home somewhere, but he didn’t say anything about where it was. Or whether he wants me there. Do you think we’re just going to stay at Hogwarts? Harry wouldn’t really mind that, but he thought the school might be lonely when he was used to it being filled with people.

I think that no matter what he chooses, it would be in the name of keeping you safe. Dash turned towards him and flicked his tongue out in that gentle reassuring gesture he had, the one that tickled the back of Harry’s hand and made him relax. And I’ll do what I can to add to that.

It doesn’t matter to you where we stay, does it?

Maybe I trust your Snape more than you do. I trust him to make sure that you’re going to have a place to go that’s not only safe, but that will make you happy. And I can live anywhere that gives me a supply of mice to hunt and safe walls to have around you when I’m not there.

Harry frowned. I trust Snape.

With some parts of your safety and your heart and your health. Dash sniffed the book bound in snakeskin one more time, and finally seemed to decide that it hadn’t been basilisk skin. He pulled his head back below the level of the table. Not all of it, not yet. But he’s patient, and he’ll wait for you to do that.

You think I already should be.

It’s not my place to tell you to overcome your wounds faster than you’ve been doing, Dash said, and Harry was so stunned to hear him say something about “not my place” that he didn’t object. I would like it if you healed faster, but only because that would be better for you. I’m never going to urge you to do something that you can’t do, Harry.

Harry put a hand on Dash’s head and said nothing. It didn’t escape him that Dash had said he would never tell Harry to do something uncomfortable. Because he would, and he had, and that included abandoning Sirius, abandoning the war, listening to Snape, and going out and talking to his friends when he would have liked to curl up in his bed and pretend the world didn’t exist.

But at least he knew he had someone who would be with him, other than Snape, wherever he had to stay that summer.

*

Elena spent a moment admiring the wall of sheer grey stone in front of her even when she heard someone come into the room behind her. This was the Room of Requirement, which she’d learned of when she was a student. It had been simple to ask the Headmistress for permission to hold a meeting within the grounds of Hogwarts and then not specify where she wanted it.

And to send Damirini another message telling him where she would be, and how to get in.

“What a wonderful place you’ve imagined, Elena.”

Jordan stood as tall as he ever had, without that many wrinkles around his eyes. He must really not know what this was about, Elena thought. Or else he believed he was strong enough to defend himself against her.

Or he thinks that the threat he made to Blaise will hold me back.

Elena smiled and paced slowly towards Jordan. Her feet crushed several small, soft plants along the way, releasing a delicious scent, and she inhaled several more, mostly from the blue flowers that pressed up against the stone wall she’d been studying. “Do you know why I created one so beautiful?”

“Because you wished to make a good impression on me.”

He was speculating, not sure, but he wasn’t afraid. Elena shook her head. “I suppose that you might make a good impression when you fall into the grass,” she said. “I’m not sure about otherwise.”

Jordan laid his hand on his wand. “You know that you cannot threaten me, Elena. Not when the Headmistress knows I’m here. And not when you have—shall we say, the family situation you do?”

He might have meant her numerous husbands or Blaise. Elena found that she no longer cared. She no longer had to care. Not now that she was within the garden and watching the small breezes she had conjured ruffling Jordan’s hair.

She wondered if he had yet noticed that the breezes were blowing from the flowers and only around him, bringing small red flecks to settle into his hair and beard and dot his temples. Probably not. The effects of the potion were only so disorienting if one experienced them with the full flask. Jordan wouldn’t notice them for a little while when it was separated into flecks like this.

“The Headmistress knows you’re here. Perhaps you should have asked yourself why she asked you to meet me. Why I didn’t do it myself. And why we didn’t do it at your—comfortable house in the country.”

It was the place he had abused Blaise. Blaise had confessed as much, but Elena had already decided the truth on her own. Jordan had a house miles away from everyone else, and he had high walls and protective spells that would have given even her pause, if she’d tried to Apparate in.

Elena hadn’t. She had never trusted Blaise with any of his stepfathers for as much as an hour together, but she had trusted Jordan. Because he was blood, and family, and Elena was loyal to family.

Now, Elena knew what she had to be loyal to. Her son, and her revenge, and her own cunning.

“You can’t threaten me, Elena,” Jordan repeated. He sounded weary at this point, as though he had spent hours trying to instruct her and she had turned on him, refusing to repeat the lesson the way he had wanted her to. “For all the reasons I already laid out.”

“Because my son is beyond your reach now,” Elena said, “and because I have taken measures to protect myself, I don’t care about that as a threat.” She paused, and added in wonder, “Did you think I wouldn’t take any steps to protect myself? That I couldn’t handle you as I handled the others who tired me?”

She saw the truth in his startled eyes. No, he had never thought of that, never really feared her. He’d probably only threatened Blaise into keeping silent because it would be most convenient if she didn’t know.

He had thought he was safe. Because he was blood, and older, and had never been blinded by her beauty, the way so many of her husbands were, to what might happen at her hands. But his caution hadn’t been extreme enough. And it couldn’t take the place of effective protection now that he was in this garden of her creation.

“There’s no need for anger, Elena,” Jordan said, and now he was finally watching her with the respect that she deserved. Of course, she knew it was too late, because if he truly respected her, he would never have entered this garden with her. “I daresay the boy told you some things, but he exaggerated them.”

“Why would you think that you had the right to discipline my son at all?”

Elena had no need to add a compulsion charm to her words. The potion had landed and worked its way into his skin, and would be affecting his mind by now. His eyes widened, focused on her, and he spoke the absolute truth.

“Because he’s a wretched boy. He questioned me and interrupted me when I wanted to do other things. And he wouldn’t shut up when I told him to shut up. I only wanted to teach him his place.”

Jordan stopped. Elena stared back, and watched as the red flecks worked themselves deeper and deeper into his hair, and then disappeared. The potion would unite itself with his bloodstream, and be impossible to detect within a few days. And since they would probably have him under Veritaserum at the trial anyway, they would assume any truths he spoke were as the result of that.

“You thought you had the right to abuse my son because he interrupted you,” Elena whispered.

“He’s a wretched boy,” Jordan repeated. “You didn’t raise him right. He thinks that he’s a little adult, as important as we are, and when I twisted his arm to tell him to shut up, he yelled. He wouldn’t be quiet even when I hit him on the jaw. Simply whined and cried like a child, and wouldn’t admit he was a child and should take a child’s place. That’s why I did it.”

Jordan clapped a hand to his mouth a second later. Elena smiled.

Oh, she wanted to kill him. But she didn’t do it because she, unlike Jordan, could control her impulses. Her hands and her wand remained at her sides, and she whispered, “What did you tell him to make him conceal it?”

“That I could get you arrested. The Wizengamot ignored the evidence of your crimes as a favor to me, but if I ever relaxed that protection, then you would go to Azkaban and I would be the one raising him.”

Elena shook her head a little. The threat had been amazing. It worked. In an abstract way, she admired Jordan for coming up with something that could subdue Blaise, and con him into believing that her power would work against him rather than for him.

The hatred was still there, as bright as the red flecks winking out all over Jordan’s body. Jordan leaned forward sand stared at her and demanded, “What did you do to me?”

“My revenge.” Elena wasn’t enough of a fool to tell him it was a potion. He could tell others that, and there were still a few days until her revenge would become undetectable. “It seems that now you have an irresistible desire to tell others the truth about what you did to my Blaise.”

“And what will happen when I tell them the truth about you?” Jordan snarled. He was almost grey around the eyes, but he had the stubbornness that ran in the family. Elena merely had more of it. “Your crimes?”

“Aside from the fact that you could go to Azkaban yourself, if you really did know about a murder and cover it up?” Elena named the crime calmly, and watched his entire face turn grey. “Well, you could try to tell them. I suppose you might.” She turned and walked towards the entrance of the Room of Requirement.

She expected the spell that came at her back. She already had a Shield Charm raised to deflect it. She put her wand back and down and pursued the same path of walking, ignoring the way he snarled at her.

“You can’t expect this to work out for you!”

Elena paused, with a hand on the door she’d conjured, and smiled back at him over her shoulder.

“Funny,” she said. “Because I would have expected you to come to the same conclusion about your abuse of my son.”

And she slipped away, using a Disillusionment Charm to ensure that no one stopped her as she walked out of the school. By the time she reached the Apparition point, her hatred and anger had become purring feline delight.

They wouldn’t die completely until she had exacted her revenge completely. But the transformation did make her smile.

You want to talk about me, Jordan? You can try.

Chapter 79: The Trial

Chapter Text

“Am I going to have to go to the trial?”

“You will be a reserve witness,” said Severus quietly, letting one heavy hand rest on Harry’s shoulder for a moment. The boy was over flinching from any touch that was not a light wisp. In fact, sometimes he seemed all the better for having someone’s touch to ground him. “Because Apparition or Flooing can bring you so quickly, you can stay here. You won’t have to come to the Ministry unless someone asks to speak to you.”

“And they probably won’t, because Blaise is the only one that knows about me knowing,” Harry said, his head bowing.

Technically, Severus and Elena Zabini and Minerva knew as well, but Severus saw no need to bring that up right now. “Yes,” he said. “I will be there because Mr. Zabini was a member of my House. But you can stay here.”

Harry hesitated a little. He hadn’t turned completely away, although Dash had crawled up to him as if he would leave. Severus raised his eyebrows, not knowing what to expect. He and Harry had spoken about the trial for ten minutes already. It was coming near to the time when Severus himself would have to Floo.

“I don’t think he would want you to feel guilty. Zabini, I mean.”

Severus knew what Harry meant without him having to explain, although he was stumbling over his tongue now, probably because Dash had prompted him. “I must,” he said. “I was committed to seeing abuse in children at last, and I missed one in my own House.”

“But Zabini isn’t like Parkinson. He wouldn’t have admitted it even if you started asking him. In fact, he might have attacked you.”

“Guilt is not rational,” said Severus, with a faint smile as he saw the small frown that made its way over Harry’s face. “I am well-aware of what Mr. Zabini would probably say, and thank you for attempting to mitigate my feelings. But I have learned how to use guilt as a weapon.”

“Against Damirini, I hope.”

Harry was standing straight, and his eyes looked even brighter than the omnipresent yellow glow behind Dash’s eyelids. Severus had to smile. How had Harry turned out this compassionate, to loathe the abuser of someone who had tried to kill his snake?

“Yes. Of course.” And if it would also act as a goad on himself, Severus saw no need to admit that right now. He reached out and pressed gently, heavily, on Harry’s shoulder once more, then turned to the fireplace. The trial awaited him, and what he would decide to say. Which would depend, incidentally, on the configurations of chance and personalities that awaited him in the trial itself, so perhaps it was useless trying to decide now.

“Then go get him,” said Harry, and nodded as though he was wishing Severus good luck from the middle of a fighting ring, and walked away. Dash waved his tail at Severus before the door closed.

Severus sighed and spent a moment massaging his eyelids. Yes, he would have to go to the Ministry and straight into the middle of a trial he had spent the past week dreading.

But he would have to go, and not only because they would call him as a witness, to speak for Mr. Zabini, who would only come if he was absolutely needed. Severus was also going for himself, and his future duty to students in Slytherin.

I need to be cleverer and more observant. But I also need to be stronger.

*

“The Wizengamot begins the trial of Jordan Damirini, sometime member of this body.”

Lucius resisted the urge to touch his fingers to his lips, since he knew he was under observation. That was an interesting way to put it: true, and yet also distancing the Wizengamot from Damirini if the accusations proved the truer. Lucius might have to start admiring Madam Olivia Amaront, the acting Head of the Wizengamot in Dumbledore’s absence.

Unfortunately, that was the last thing he found to admire about the trial proceedings for some time. Madam Amaront made a long speech about how unsettled things had been for the Wizengamot lately, with Dumbledore’s sudden disappearance and now the sudden trial of a member of “this august body,” and included irrelevant anecdotes about how much better things had been in her day. Then she turned the floor over to other Wizengamot members who said much the same thing.

The only interesting or relevant words in that flow of nostalgia came from Flint, whom Lucius had invited over with Damirini. Called on to speak, he stood up and said, “My childhood was quieter. But it only came from perception. I wasn’t a Wizengamot member then. I didn’t know what went on.”

He sat down, and a shocked little susurrus ran through the room. Lucius bit his lip to keep from laughing. That was as close to a scold as anyone would come.

Madam Amaront finally cleared her throat and murmured, “Yes. Well. We should begin.” This time, Lucius held back the snicker only by biting his tongue. Amaront turned to face the far door. “Bring in the accused.”

He was still the accused, not the prisoner, the way Lucius had heard the accused called at other Wizengamot trials. He watched with his emotion shut away behind cold, clear walls as Damirini came in, wearing only a light pair of ceremonial chains. They’d even let him keep his wand, and only one Auror walked with him, behind him instead of at his side.

Lucius started to sneer after all, and stopped.

There was something different about Damirini from the last time Lucius had seen him. He didn’t look terrified, but neither did he project the façade of effortless confidence Lucius had expected from him. His eyes were glazed and he swayed back and forth a little between steps. Now and then he took a deep breath and tried to stand upright further than the chains would allow him.

Puzzled, Lucius watched as Damirini plopped heavily into the chair in the center of the floor and his Auror escort circled to secure the chains to the arms of the chair. Had he been foolish enough to take a potion that would give him courage? But none of them Lucius knew had effects like that, and the Wizengamot had the right to order a blood test which would reveal such potions.

Like the one that some people use to try and resist Veritaserum, Lucius thought. That one didn’t work, and Damirini, from trying cases that had seen it used, ought to know it. But again, perhaps his desperation had overcome him.

“Do you understand the charges laid against you?” Madam Amaront began.

The litany of questions and responses would continue a while. Lucius chose to watch Damirini instead. There was certainly nothing slow or awkward about his responses. He could sit up and answer with, if not his usual grace, at least commendable speed. And he frowned now and then, and shook his head, as if he was shaking off the effects of whatever potion he’d consumed.

It was still interesting. And then Lucius saw the way Severus leaned forwards in his seat, watching Damirini with focused intensity, and had to smile.

Did you do something, my friend? I can only hope that any blood test they order the man to undergo does not reveal your handiwork.

*

Elena Zabini is an artist.

Severus had thought, when he first saw the way Damirini walked as he came into the room, that she had laid him under a Befuddlement Draught. But that would be easy to detect, and the Wizengamot had a policy of stopping a trial and beginning it over again if they found a potion like that.

No, instead Elena had done something far more difficult and delicate. She had used a ritual to create the potion, and used her own rage and some sacrifice of beloved objects to open the way for the ritual’s magic. The requirements of it were far too stringent for someone to meet if they merely acted out of normal emotion.

It was strength so deeply and wonderfully wielded that Severus had to smile, and bow his head in admiration. It only bothered him that, while she was here, he didn’t know exactly where she was sitting, so he didn’t know if she would see the gesture or not.

Then he saw a faint flash of red light from a corner of the gallery. It caught his eye because the finished potion would have been red. Severus turned to face her, and saw her calm expression relax a moment in acknowledgment before she, too, focused on Damirini.

Severus regarded him with interest again. While he knew the ritual and what the potion would have done if he had undertaken to create it—which he might have, if Harry would have permitted vengeance on the Dursleys—he had no idea what Elena Zabini would consider full enough revenge. The process he knew; but each result was unique.

When the Wizengamot members finally wrapped up the preliminaries and began to ask their questions, Severus understood.

*

“I will ask you what happened as simply as possible. Did you abuse your great-great-nephew, Blaise Zabini?”

Damirini sat up in his chair. If he had taken a confusing potion administered to him by one of his enemies, Lucius thought, it was wearing off at last. Damirini gave Madam Amaront the little smile Lucius had always detested and opened his mouth.

“Of course I did.”

Lucius felt as though a flying horse had kicked him in the chest. He stared with his mouth open, although luckily everyone else was distracted with their own stares and cries and wouldn’t notice his loss of dignity. At least he’d recovered quickly.

Madam Amaront looked as though she was one of those who wouldn’t recover quickly. She actually tottered, and someone else, too distant for Lucius to identify from his seat, caught her and gently eased her back into her chair. She was shaking her head, and put a hand to her long white hair for a moment before she continued.

“Do you mean to say that you reply positively to the accusations?”

Damirini only looked faintly annoyed. He nodded. “Of course I do.”

Lucius squinted. He couldn’t see anything different about Damirini from moments before, but perhaps more revealing was Severus’s behavior. Severus was sitting up in his seat with his eyebrows raised, but he didn’t look the least surprised. Lucius grimaced a little. They’ll order a search for potions any minute, and then you’re out of luck, my friend.

“Why did you abuse your great-great-nephew?” Madam Amaront asked instead, her voice faint.

“Because he wouldn’t shut up,” said Damirini, with a little sigh. “I wanted to spend time reading and working on important political documents, and he danced around me yelling and pestering me to play. I taught him the proper respect a child should have for an adult. If it damaged him later, why is that my fault? He should have shut up when told to.”

The Wizengamot was mostly silent, staring at Damirini. He didn’t appear to have picked up on the appalled nature of those stares yet. “Can we hurry this trial forwards?” he added. “I want to give a meal for my friends in a few days, and my cook needs to receive special instructions.”

Madam Amaront seemed to recover, if only because of her indignation. “Do you understand you are on trial for your freedom here, Mr. Damirini?”

“Of course I do. But I’m not going to be convicted. I’m hardly the only wizard alive who’s disciplined a child a few times.”

“What exactly did you do?” That was Flint, and he sounded as if he was the stone statue of an ancient god asking the question.

“Broke his bones and then healed them. Had him fall from a height a few times so that a bone poked out through the skin of his leg.” Damirini shrugged. “You would notbelieve the fuss he made over that. Cast spells that taught him the sensations of having his skin peeled off and what it would be like to have his ears removed. There were a few times I sealed over his mouth and let him think I would seal his nose. Of course, I didn’t. I didn’t want to have to deal with his corpse.”

Lucius felt a gurgle of acid in his throat, and shook his head. What had Severus been thinking? Such a potion—which he thought now probably removed Damirini’s caution and made him speak his thoughts without any attempt to hold them back—was incredibly obvious. They would—

“I formally request the spell that detects the presence of potions in the blood!”

That was a minor Wizengamot member, Thaddeus Vendredes, who usually voted the way Damirini told him to. But from the instant agreement, Lucius knew he wouldn’t be the only one ready to believe whatever the spell showed.

Lucius let his gaze stray back to Severus’s face as the Wizengamot called in the Healer who could perform the spell. Incredibly, Severus only sat there, and didn’t seem inclined to move, despite the fact that he would be immediately under suspicion. He was Zabini’s Head of House, and one of the major reasons this trial had happened at all.

Severus looked at Lucius with a faint smile, nonetheless, and Lucius snorted as he watched the green-robed Healer walk in. Well, if his friend wanted to spend months in Azkaban, there was nothing Lucius could really do to prevent him.

*

Elena sat with her hands resting lightly on her kneecap, her eyes closed and her mind bounding through Jordan’s body.

There was another reason that the potion she had created was almost never brewed, beyond the length of the ritual and the sacrifices. It required harsh control afterwards, as the brewer forced it to blend with the victim’s blood and then used it to puppet the body.

But Elena had chosen her vengeance. What she had chosen, she accomplished.

She felt the Healer coming nearer, and the way the small flecks of potion buried deep in Jordan’s blood tingled in response. They wouldn’t show themselves on most scans, but they could rise to the surface in response to an unconscious thought from the brewer.

But Elena was not one of those so weak-willed. She breathed, and the potions sank back into the blood, became blood, turned indistinguishable from it. She heard the Healer cast the spell, dimly, from ears that were hers or Jordan’s. With her in control of his body as if it was a glove, she didn’t bother to separate them right now.

The Healer stepped back, and Elena did open her own eyes, because she could see her better than Jordan could, at the angle he was sitting. “There’s no potion,” the Healer was saying in what sounded like shock. “He’s clean.”

“There has to be something you didn’t pick up on.” It was the ancient woman who led the Wizengamot now, swaying forwards as if she would leap over the railing in front of her and drag the truth out of the Healer with her own hands. “Did you test for Veritaserum?”

Any potion that affected him that powerfully would have appeared in the test—”

Except mine.

“—And this decisively shows that wasn’t the case.” The Healer motioned towards some glowing numbers that hung in the air. Elena looked at them politely. All of them said 0. “I know there isn’t any potion in his blood, Madam Amaront. I’m sorry to disappoint.”

Madam Amaront flushed, probably at the implication that she was on the side of a child abuser, and nodded regally. “Then you may leave.”

“Glad,” the Healer, a ginger-haired woman, muttered, and then almost ran from the room. Elena smiled at her as she went. She would have to find out who she was and send her an anonymous gift of thanks.

In the meantime, Jordan had been sitting there with a slightly bored expression on his face. That wasn’t hard to create. It was what he would have looked like during the trial if he was allowed to say what he’d planned to say. All Elena really had to do was tamp down some of his emotions and allow the words to the surface. “Can we go on now?” he asked, speaking directly to Amaront.

“It seems we must,” the woman agreed. But she had another man, the one who had looked like a statue earlier, speak for her instead of asking the questions. She sank back in the chair and fanned her face instead.

“Do you want Veritaserum?”

“I refuse. As is my legal right.” Jordan sounded disgusted.

Elena could smile without effort. She hadn’t had to make any effort to get him to say that.

“How long did your abuse of your great-great-nephew last?” intoned the stone-like man.

“Years,” said Jordan, with a negligent wave of his hand. “I hardly kept track of the dates. Why should I? They didn’t make an epoch in my life.”

Little hisses of disbelief caught fire all around the chamber, but Elena could feel the same reluctant belief coming right behind them. There was no reason for them to think Jordan was lying, not when the Healer had cleared him of potion influence. Perhaps some of them would think back, remember his arrogance from past Wizengamot sessions, and decide that this was only another manifestation of it.

Elena settled back to continue, and enjoy, her manipulations.

*

“And what happened when you began to think that your abuse of your great-great-nephew was wrong?”

Flint was doing a marvelous job, Lucius had to concede, somewhere behind the mist of his shock. He couldn’t believe that the Healer had found no trace of potions. Lucius had never known that test to fail, even with the much more subtle potions that were meant to confuse the perceptions of others instead of the drinker.

Yes, Flint was doing a marvelous job with a man who confessed the abuse without acting like he was confessing anything, only telling a boring story on a subject other people persisted in asking him questions about. Damirini was actually lounging back in his chair by now, opening his mouth in a contemptuous yawn. When Flint’s voice rose a little, Damirini shrugged.

“Who said it was wrong? I still challenge anyone here to tell me they never abused their children. Tell me.”

Damirini sat up and stared around the chamber. He didn’t seem to notice he was meeting only cold gazes. He nodded and chuckled and sat back. “As I thought,” he muttered, looking back at Flint. “They keep silent because they’re wondering what will happen next. Who else will get tried for only a bit of ordinary discipline?”

Flint’s questioning finally ended and one of Damirini’s erstwhile allies, Margaret Hiller, tried to save him. “You said once that you had information about the Zabini family you’d made sacrifices to keep out of the papers, Jordan. Is that related at all to your—treatment of Mr. Zabini?”

Damirini blinked at her. Then he shook his head. “Of course not,” he said. “I didn’t mean I had actual information I was keeping out of the papers, Margaret. You know me better than that. When have I ever refused to gossip?” He chuckled again, and how he kept from noticing the sick looks on the Wizengamot members’ faces was beyond Lucius. “I only said that to make myself look a little more mysterious. And to attract your attention, I have to admit.” He winked at her.

Hiller looked faintly nauseated. She tried to push on, but Lucius thought she knew the fight was lost. She wasn’t under the influence of an undetectable potion or titanic overconfidence. “Then you have no knowledge about the activities of Mrs. Elena Zabini? The many husbands she’s supposedly murdered?”

“None,” said Damirini, and laughed a little. “I told you, who could resist the gossip? Or adding to it, in this case, since my great-niece is the subject of enough gossip on her own.”

Lucius felt his eyes widen. He leaned back and shook his head, silently joining in the silent judgment, in case someone had been looking at him and noticed his revelation.

He had never heard that Elena Zabini was especially skilled in the brewing of potions, not like Severus. On the other hand, she wouldn’t need to be, not if she had enough rage for her son driving her. There were potions that depended more on strength of will than craft.

And yes, there she was, sitting in a distant corner of the gallery that Lucius hadn’t noticed before.

Lucius managed to catch her eye and incline his head in respect. She nodded back at him, distantly, and then focused on Damirini again.

She’s making him admit the truth when it comes to the abuse and conceal any knowledge he might have of her. But it was more than that, Lucius knew. More than words. It was attitude, and body language, and tone of voice. She’d probably even made Damirini sway and look a little drunk when he first came in on purpose, so that she could get him tested for potions all the sooner.

And with that spell cast, the people who questioned him had to admit that Damirini’s repulsive opinions were his own.

If Lucius knew them, many members of the Wizengamot were revolted by Damirini having the bad taste to say those things openly more than they were by his actions. But it was the result and not the source of their actions that was important. If they got him sent to Azkaban, few would question why he’d decided to confess.

Content, Lucius sat back to watch the rest of the drama play out.

*

In the end, they never even called Severus as a witness.

Damirini continued to condemn himself out of his own mouth—or rather, Elena Zabini’s—with boredom and incredulity lacing his tone the more they asked him questions. He answered everything with details that, as far as Severus could tell, were not made up, including confirming that he’d written letters to Zabini threatening him out of coming forwards when Harry made his own abuse known.

“Of course I did. Didn’t want anyone else poking into the family, did I? And we’ve always kept our secrets to ourselves.”

The Wizengamot members kept tossing the role of questioner back and forth among themselves as if it was a particularly disgusting potato. None of them could stand it for longer than a few minutes.

Severus had to swallow his amusement as he watched their faces twitch and their fingers stop just short of writhing. Would they have the same reaction to any announced case of child abuse? Or was it only the manner in which Damirini recited it that made them so upset?

The manner.

Severus breathed through his anger. He would see other abused Slytherins granted the same kind of trial, and even Harry, if he would permit it. He had only to wait.

In the end, Madam Amaront rose to her feet and called for a vote. And not one hand was down when the Wizengamot voted to condemn Jordan Damirini to Azkaban for the rest of his life. Amaront looked desperately glad to see it as she sat down again.

Then, and only then, did Elena release her control on Damirini, as Severus had thought it likely she would do.

His jaw sprang open as he stared from face to face, and then he tried to surge to his feet. The second Auror who had come unobtrusively into the courtroom some time ago immediately pressed him back into the chair, and the chains tightened with a clatter. Damirini was still shaking his head in denial.

“No—you can’t—you’re doing this on the word of a boy and nothing else—”

“We’re doing it on your own words, Damirini,” said Amaront tiredly. She waved her hand again, and the Aurors escorted Damirini away.

Elena Zabini watched them go with a hawk’s subtle satisfaction in her eyes. Then she nodded to Severus and someone else he couldn’t see in the crowd, and swept out of the room.

Severus rose slowly to his feet. That had gone so well that he remained motionless for some seconds, waiting for an explosion to rip through the room or a warning to go up that Damirini had managed to escape.

But nothing happened. That part of the ordeal for both Harry and Mr. Zabini, then, was truly over.

Chapter 80: Shadow of the Horcrux

Chapter Text

“Harry. I found one.”

Draco’s voice was so soft that Harry would have missed it if he wasn’t sitting right next to him. He blinked and looked up from the book in front of him, which had some interesting theories about Parselmouths but nothing on how they might pass powers to each other if one of them made someone else into a Horcrux.

Ron and Hermione weren’t with them, but revising for Potions. Thanks to Draco and, probably, Professor Snape, Harry had to admit he understood them a lot better now.

“A book on Horcruxes?” Harry whispered, leaning across to Draco. At least most people were used to seeing them sitting together and reading now. Dash, curled around the legs of his chair and Draco’s and hugely asleep in the middle of the library, was another good reason for people to keep their distance.

“No, a chapter. But it’s more than we had before.” Draco flicked to the table of contents so Harry could see it said “The Darkest Magic of Immortality.”

Harry nodded, his breathing so fast that Dash gave him an idle threat about curling around him and giving him something to be really breathless about. Harry made sure to close his eyes and meditate for a minute, the way he did when Snape was teaching him Occlumency, before he leaned down and started reading the chapter.

Immortality is not easy to attain, for any wizard who grows up in time or out of it. But the method of binding one’s soul to an object has advantages over other methods, assuming that object can be kept safe. Even death cannot steal the spirit from the world. The wizard’s spirit has a place to retreat to: inside the object. The shard of his soul that he binds to it will always be subordinate to him and unable to give him trouble. He may resurrect himself with the help of alchemy, blood magic, or Darker Arts still.

This object is called a HORCRUX.

Then the book went on to talk about a potion that seemed to be the first step in creating a Horcrux. Harry shuddered and skipped over that, Draco obligingly turning pages even though Harry could have turned them himself, looking for some information that would tell him about living ones.

But there was no information like that. The book talked about objects of metal, wood, bone—for a second Harry was hopeful, but it became obvious that the book meant skeletons that people had in their labs—leather, feathers, and fur, with a warning that feathers, fur, and leather were all vulnerable to natural decay unless treated.

And then Harry saw it, squeezed in towards the bottom of the page, and overlapping onto other pages, as if it was a note made by someone who had read the book, instead of whoever had written it.

Certain experimenters have suggested the potential of living Horcruxes, dreaming of objects that could defend themselves and take themselves out of danger. Living Horcruxes are not recommended. The spirit of the being, unless already enslaved to the creator, would battle back against the Horcrux and keep the shard from settling, and it would certainly battle if the creator died and his spirit came looking for its sanctuary. It might even win, as the body it has grown with is its “natural” home, not a vacant place for another spirit to find strength in. Living Horcruxes are also subject to the same processes of decay mentioned for Horcruxes made of once-living material. For this and other reasons, the creation of living Horcruxes remains a speculator’s dream.

Harry leaned back, a little shaken. He had to believe Voldemort knew that, and yet here Harry was anyway.

“Do you think he’s planning to enslave me?” he whispered. “So my spirit can’t battle back against him if he tries to take me over?”

“I think we don’t understand enough yet,” said Draco firmly. “We haven’t read the rest of the chapter. We need to do that first.”

“I don’t want to know how to make one.”

Draco paused, then nodded. “So I’ll read it, and that way, you don’t have to.”

Harry felt nerves fluttering in his stomach as he stared at Draco. Draco looked a little distracted, but calm, as if he didn’t realize how big this was, how important it was to Harry that he’d agreed to read the book.

“You don’t have to do that,” Harry whispered.

“Well, someone has to, and you don’t want to. So?” Draco paused and waited for a second as though he expected Harry to come up with another, miraculous solution, and then nodded. “So I will.”

Thank you,” Harry said, even as the center of his chest writhed with guilt. He was running away from the problem and letting Draco do something for him that he shouldn’t. It was horrible, right? He was a coward, wasn’t he?

No, you are finally letting someone else take a blow that they want to take for you. Dash yawned long and hard and coiled up around the side of his chair, resting his chin on Harry’s shoulder as he eyed the book on Horcruxes with interest. I think you’ve stopped everyone else who wanted to do that from doing it, even me. You probably would have prevented your mother from standing in front of you and sacrificing her life to save you if you were old enough when she died.

I just don’t like other people making sacrifices for me.

But when it comes to you being the one who makes the sacrifices, that is perfectly fine, of course. Dash couldn’t really roll his eyes, but Harry saw the tumble of the yellow glow behind the clear lids in a way that was similar.

Harry turned back to Draco, since he didn’t want to continue this argument, and repeated, “Thank you. If there’s anything I can do, then let me know.”

“There’s a little reward I’d like, if you’d give it to me.”

From the way Draco was blushing, Harry thought he knew what that reward would be, but he grinned anyway and played ignorant. “Oh? What is it?”

“A kiss,” Draco said, and then turned an even deeper red and looked around as though he thought someone would be spying on them to figure out what he was saying.

“That’s acceptable,” Harry replied, and then leaned towards him. Draco’s eyes were so bright with hope and happiness, though, that Harry had to pause and add, “You know you can ask me any time? I mean, I’m not doing this just because you’re looking up the Horcrux process for me. I’m doing it because you asked.”

The widening of Draco’s eyes and the way he breathed in as if he needed all the air in the room told Harry more than he’d known about Draco’s feelings for him. He leaned in and kissed Draco on the lips, with Draco’s hands suddenly gripping his cheeks hard enough that Harry’s jaw ached. But he was far more interested in the way Draco’s lips parted in front of him and Harry could gently push in his tongue and touch Draco’s.

Draco actually flinched as if he’d been burned for a second, but then he leaned in closer, and Harry wrapped his arms around him and ignored the chuckles and gasps he could hear from some of the other students. When they did what Draco was doing, then they’d deserve kisses in the library, too.

From someone other than me, though, Harry thought as he pulled back and carefully watched the dazed way Draco licked his lips, to commit it to memory. Because I’ve only got one person I ever want to kiss.

It’s just a good thing I like him, too, Dash said unexpectedly. Because he wouldn’t get far with you if I didn’t.

Harry rolled his eyes. You sound like Snape threatening not to let me visit Sirius.

Yes, but I can be a lot more annoying than your Snape ever dreamed of being.

*

Draco kept touching his lips in the next few hours, even after Harry had gone to class and Draco had finished reading about Horcruxes and put the book back. The information he’d learned sickened him. The process of brewing the potion was bad enough, but the murder, and the spell you needed to prepare beforehand, and the horrible state of mind you needed to induce in yourself…

But everything paled when he remembered Harry’s kiss, Harry’s smile.

Maybe he was ridiculous for caring so much about what he felt when Harry was with him. But on the other hand, Draco no longer thought he was going to suffer for it. Dash accepted him. Harry accepted him. What Harry wanted was what he wanted.

To keep Harry safe and alive and get the Horcrux out of him somehow were the first priorities.

But Draco was confused about something, and so he knocked on Professor Snape’s door during a time when he knew Harry would be at dinner. The professor opened it and looked at him without expression, then nodded and stepped back.

“You were expecting me?” Draco asked as he went in. That rattled him a little. He hadn’t felt Professor Snape making eye contact with him today, and Legilimency wassupposed to need that.

“Harry told me about what you found, but also that you agreed to spare him the trouble of reading it. I thought you would probably discuss it with me.” Snape’s eyes traveled up Draco and down again, with a level of scrutiny Draco didn’t think even Father could have equaled. “You look less disturbed than I’d thought you would.”

Draco grimaced. “It was foul stuff. But I did find one thing that made me think Harry might not be a Horcrux.”

A moment later, he winced again. Being the focus of that much of Professor Snape’s attention was almost more painful than unnerving. Draco didn’t know how Longbottom stood it every class.

“Tell me,” said Professor Snape, pulling a chair up immediately and hovering until Draco sat in it.

“It’s a pretty deliberate process. You have to choose a victim to kill to split your soul, and an object to bind the soul to, and you have to brew a potion, and you have to cast specific spells…” Draco shook his head. “I just don’t see how Harry could be an accidental Horcrux. I know the Dark Lord didn’t have all those rituals and potions and spells performed before he went after Harry, and they never found an object that he could have turned into one, did they?”

“No,” Professor Snape said absently, slowly pacing back and forth in front of the fireplace. “I was not part of the investigation into the Potters’ home—no one in their right mind would have let a known Death Eater be part of it—but I kept track of all the information that came out of it. Those newspaper articles I couldn’t read at the time, I tracked down and read later, and I interviewed many of the Aurors who had been part of the main investigation.” He seemed to catch Draco’s incredulous glance, because he gave him a thin smile. “Most of those Aurors do not remember talking to me, of course.”

“Of course,” Draco said, comforted again as he remembered how ruthless Professor Snape was. It meant Draco didn’t have to worry as much about Harry, if he had someone watching over him who would do more than kill to protect him. “But you didn’t hear about them finding any object there.”

“No. Nothing that was not identified in some way as belonging to the Potter family. The Dark Lord seems to have brought nothing with him but his wand.” Professor Snape was thinking deeply now. “But there also seems to be no explanation for the link between Harry and the Dark Lord unless a Horcrux exists.”

“Well, maybe it’s something like a Horcrux,” Draco said. The more he thought about it, the more he wondered why no one else had thought that.

Of course, Black had been getting his information from Dumbledore, and Draco didn’t think he was capable of asserting that the sky was blue, if Dumbledore told him it wasn’t. And Professor Snape and Harry and his friends had gone off that information, which they’d fought hard enough to get.

Draco even had to wonder if he was the one that was wrong, because his mouth was filled with the sticky, metallic taste of reading about what you had to do to create a Horcrux, and it was horrible enough to make him want to throw up. He could be desperate. He could be wrong.

“That might be possible.” Professor Snape had stopped pacing and looked at Draco with a frown on his face. “Of course, then we face the same problem of identification that plagued Black.”

“Is there any way you can question the Horcrux? I mean, there’s something in Harry that’s alive and can hurt him,” Draco went on quickly, because now Professor Snape’s frown was trained on him and everyone in Slytherin House knew that was one of the worst things that could happen to you. “So you might be able to talk to it.”

“I do not think it conscious. A rope that ties two people together certainly exists, but it cannot be questioned.”

“Well, ask Dash if he can talk to it. You know he wouldn’t do anything to hurt Harry.”

“I could interrogate the Horcrux with Legilimency, if such a thing were possible,” said Professor Snape harshly. “But all the books agree that the Horcrux is not sentient, even if it has defenses that make it seem as if it is. It would be a waste of time to try and question it.”

“Not if it’s not a Horcrux.”

Professor Snape looked at him with a slightly open mouth. Draco sat up and tried to pretend that was a good thing, the kind of thing he’d wanted all along. Maybe it was. An open mouth might be a sign that he’d impressed the professor.

And he didn’t get a scolding. Instead, Snape looked thoughtful. “I will at least speak to Dash on the matter,” he said.

“Good. Make sure you tell him who came up with the idea.”

“You care more about impressing the basilisk than you should,” said Professor Snape, though in the absent tone that proved his mind was elsewhere. Draco was used to that tone. He’d heard it too often from his parents. “You should tell Harry, if anything. He is the one you want to impress and the one whose mind Dash would be delving into.”

Draco just nodded meekly and left when Professor Snape said he could. But as he walked towards the common room, he snorted a little.

Does he listen to himself? Doesn’t he understand that Dash is the one who knows Harry’s mind better than Harry himself does sometimes? And I wouldn’t be Harry’s boyfriend if Dash didn’t approve of me.

*

Harry shivered as he opened his eyes. Before he could even reach out, though, Dash was there, gliding softly along his arm and shoulder and up to his hair. Dash stuck out his tongue when he got into position and tickled Harry’s ear. Harry rolled over and put his arm around Dash.

I know you had a nightmare, but I only got a few images from it.

Harry managed a weak snort. Professor Snape would have asked him if he wanted to talk. Dash just left the implication there and expected Harry to fill in the gaps. But it was a good way of getting what he wanted, Harry had to admit.

Harry propped himself up on one elbow and cast a Lumos. It reflected in the transparent mirrors of Dash’s eyelids, which looked at him patiently.

I dreamed I was in a house that had a chair in front of a fire, Harry began, after making sure he was remembering the dream right. The snake you fought—Nagini—was curled up in front of the fire. At first I thought she was alone, but then I realized there was something in the chair.

Something?

It was Voldemort, but he didn’t look the way he did in the other dream. He didn’t really have a body. He was—small, like a baby. Harry shuddered and buried his face against Dash’s scales. He was muttering something about the end of the year, and the necessity to feed the snake. I don’t know what that means.

Dash was quiet for long moments, bringing up more and more of his body to wrap against Harry. Harry leaned on him. He didn’t feel in danger from Voldemort right now, not with Dash protecting him, but on the other hand, the dream slithered across his mind and left a trail of slime.

More like a slug than a snake.

Harry realized a second later that the thought was Dash’s, not his, and smiled shakily. “Right,” he whispered aloud, keeping his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Ron and the others up. “Dash, what was that? I don’t know why he would try to trap me with an image like that. Unless he was trying to trap me into not waking up or something.”

I don’t think it was a trap. I think it was a true vision. The link between you must sometimes provide true information. Perhaps he was not keeping a guard on it.

“But there’s no way that I could have visions if I wasn’t linked to him. Why would he let me see into his mind?”

I told you, I don’t think he let you. I think this happened without him being aware of it. And if you are too agitated over it, then you might alert him to its having happened and invite him to slam the shields shut.

Harry closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead, trying to breathe himself calm again. You sound just like Professor Snape. He’s always saying that when I practice Occlumency, I can’t show too much emotion or feel too strongly or do all these other things that I just do on my own, without thinking of it.

Dash nudged him gently and then wound around Harry’s hand and pulled it down from his forehead. You’ve already improved at Occlumency and trusting people since you began the lessons with him. Trust us to guard you, Harry. I say that it was probably a glimpse without Voldemort being aware of it. Treat it that way for now, until you get some proof otherwise.

Harry nodded slowly and leaned back, closing his eyes. He could think of it that way, if he concentrated enough on it.

And when he called back the images of the dream and let them hover in his mind as images, instead of trying to describe them in words, then he could feel Dash winding among them, and picking out information that Harry wouldn’t have been able to see on his own.

I don’t think he has a real body. Not the kind his spirit is supposed to be able to form if it goes back to a Horcrux. He formed this body from a baby.

Harry shuddered and wrapped his arms even harder around Dash. You think he killed a baby?

Maybe. But look at his arms. Harry did, even though he didn’t particularly want to, and saw how short and stubby they were. He couldn’t have done that on his own. And he didn’t build that fire on his own, or open the doors into the house. He has someone with him, someone who has a normal body.

You think one of the Death Eaters is helping him?

It has to be. Who would stay with someone that ugly and foul unless they were blindly loyal?

Harry nodded slowly. And then Dash hissed in satisfaction, and showed him the footprints pressed into the carpet and filled in with ash. They were part of the vision, but Harry had missed them entirely when he first started seeing it.

There is an adult human with him. Harry had to grin at the way Dash spoke the word “human,” Most people wouldn’t have added it. Someone fairly thin, however. The footprints are not pressed that deeply into the carpet.

Oh, come on. You can tell that from a vision? And who taught you to read footprints?

Dash flicked his tongue out and licked Harry’s ear, which might have been a reward or a punishment. I learned all I need to learn from hunting my prey, which often leaves footprints. I know how to tell the difference between a light creature and a heavy one. Now. Think. Few adult humans would be that skinny unless they had no choice.

Well, yes, Harry said, trying to overcome the uncomfortable impression that Dash considered him some sort of expert on human starvation, but he can’t exactly go out and just buy food, can he? He’s probably a fugitive Death Eater on the run. And he has—that thing tagging along with him. Not to mention a snake.

That was what I wanted you to think about, Dash said approvingly. Yes, a fugitive Death Eater. Although someone who was that desperate might cast the Imperius Curse on someone else without paying attention to legalities. So. Perhaps someone who has been desperate for a long time? Someone who has been searching for Voldemort and not finding him?

Harry hesitated, unsure. Despite his lessons with Snape and the stories Sirius had told him, he didn’t know all that much about most Death Eaters. Snape had taught him battle tactics that would work against anyone, and Sirius had mostly talked about the ones he battled during the first war, who were mostly dead now or locked up in Azkaban—

Azkaban. That’s it. Think of how thin the smelly dog-man was when he first got out. This is likely an Azkaban escapee.

But then wouldn’t we have heard about it? They didn’t keep Sirius’s escape a secret.

Dash coiled himself around on the bed in a sort of curlicue. Maybe they’ve decided to keep it secret this time because there was so much bad publicity last time. Or maybe the escape wasn’t recent.

Harry had to shake his head after thinking a bit, though. He couldn’t put the clues together in the way he thought Dash wanted him to, or in combination with any of the stories that Sirius had told him. I don’t know who it could be.

That’s okay, Dash said suddenly, cheerfully. I didn’t expect you to divine who it was from those few clues.

Then why question me about it like that?

I wanted you to think, said Dash. And you did. Now we can go to sleep. And he curled himself up beside Harry with a happy little huff, the yellow glow behind his eyes rapidly dimming.

Harry stared at him in disbelief. Dash lay there. Nothing, not even a flicker, responded in his mind when Harry tentatively reached down the bond.

Harry ended up snorting and casting himself down on the bed. “Fine,” he said aloud. “As long as I think.”

Dash stuck his tongue out a bit. But there was still no one there when Harry reached for his thoughts.

A little huffy, Harry shut his eyes and lay stewing in his resentment for a shorter time than he’d expected before he fell asleep again.

Chapter 81: Looking Down the Link

Chapter Text


“It’s worth a try.”

Severus relaxed. He hadn’t been aware, until Harry thought through what Draco had proposed and agreed, how tense he was. He tried to cover it by moving to stir up the fire in his quarters, but he thought Dash, at least, knew, from the wise way he turned his head.

And what Dash knew, Harry knew.

For the moment, though, Harry seemed content to let Severus have his dignity. He turned to Draco and smiled at him, and Draco preened and puffed up at once. But Granger frowned a little.

“Is it going to be dangerous for Dash, looking down the link?” she asked, and turned to Severus in a way that he could only be glad of. At least some students would consult him before they consulted the bloody basilisk. “What happens if V-Voldemort senses him?”

Severus started before he could help it, and Draco did the same thing. Luckily, though, Severus spoke before Draco could. He could only imagine what ‘advice’ Draco would have for Granger. “The Dark Lord is already aware of Dash and at least some of what he can do from the previous time that Dash tried to poison him. And although the Dark Lord is at least aware of the link, I do not believe he can truly understand its nature.”

“Why not, Professor?” Granger asked with big eyes.

Because there is no way that he would have left Harry free of slavery or capture for this long if he thought Harry was actually a Horcrux.

But just as some students saw no reason to appeal to Dash first instead of him, Severus saw no reason to explain every nuance of his reasoning to Granger when it would only upset her. He said, “Because no link like this has ever existed before. And even if Draco is right, Dash simply peering down the link will not tell the Dark Lord what is wrong.”

“I wish you wouldn’t call him the Dark Lord,” Weasley muttered, in a voice he obviously intended to remain unheard. He called Severus at least “sir” when he intended to be heard.

Severus took great delight in turning slowly towards Weasley, like the basilisk himself sensing a rodent, and saying, “I didn’t hear the contribution you were so generous as to make, Mr. Weasley. What was that?”

Weasley turned as red as a ruined Calming Draught, but lifted his eyes to Severus’s face and said, “Well, I mean, the Dark Lord is the name Death Eaters use for him, isn’t it? You could at least call him You-Know-Who.”

I sometimes forget that he would have Gryffindor bravery. Of course, compared to the mad recklessness of his twin brothers and Harry alike, that would be an easy thing to forget, Severus thought. “Perhaps I could,” he said, “if I did not agree with Albus that such a name encourages people to dismiss him too easily.”

Weasley’s brow furrowed. “But it makes it sound like you respect him when you call him a Lord. Sir,” he added quickly, when Severus looked him, unblinking, in the eye.

“Forgiven,” Severus decided, after a moment in which Weasley seemed to be holding his breath. “But I do have respect for him—cautious respect for what his power can achieve. I would rather have the wrong kind of respect than dismiss him too easily,” he added, as Weasley seemed to be opening his mouth to argue again.

Weasley shut it. Draco was the one who spoke up this time. “So is Dash going to look at the link between Harry and the Dark Lord, or not?”

Harry and Dash spoke silently for a moment, or at least Severus had learned the stillness of their bodies meant that, and then Dash turned and wreathed himself carefully around Harry’s sitting form. Harry nodded as if he thought all of them needed reassurance, and Dash leaned his chin on Harry’s shoulder. The yellow light behind his clear eyelids seemed to grow thicker and stronger than before.

“Dash doesn’t know exactly what’s going to happen,” said Harry, in a voice that already seemed to echo eerily, perhaps from the wrong end of the bond. “So he wants you to have charms ready just in case I fall out of my chair or something.”

Severus felt his lip curl. Does the basilisk think I would be so remiss in protecting my ward? But he did draw his wand and conjure a large cushion on the floor around Harry’s chair even before Granger could do it.

“Thanks,” said Harry, while Dash moved his tail in a small acknowledgement that might have meant the same thing. Then he tilted his head back and closed his eyes. Dash moved even closer, and one loose coil of his body tightened around Harry’s arms and back.

Severus became aware that he was holding his own breath, and relaxed with a long sigh. He could not remain tense all through an investigation that was likely to take a long time. He leaned back against the wall and summoned a house-elf to prepare tea.

He noticed Granger watching him steadily when he did that. “Is something wrong, Miss Granger?” he asked, after the elf had the orders and had vanished from the Floo again.

“I just wondered if house-elves actually liked being slaves, Professor. Harry’s friend Dobby didn’t.”

“Dobby was just a weird elf, though.”

Draco would put it that way, Severus thought, and rolled his eyes a little as Draco and Granger settled into a spirited debate. Well, perhaps he should be grateful for that. In the end, the argument distracted even Weasley from watching Harry and wondering what was going to happen next. Weasley seemed torn between not wanting to agree with Draco and wanting to tell Granger why she was wrong.

Well, that is not something he would get the chance to do on a regular basis, Severus thought idly, and then turned and watched Harry as he sat back in his chair, his head lolling. Dash hadn’t moved in the minutes since this began, but Harry’s neck and hands had both relaxed. He might have been asleep.

But when all his muscles tightened and his mouth opened in a silent scream, Severus knew the difference.

*

This is dangerous.

In that one sentence, Harry had the explanation for why Dash had never done this before, even though he’d been in Harry’s mind for more than a year now and had done all sorts of other things like lend his own senses to Harry and bring him into the deep bond. Harry moved his hand a little on Dash’s neck.

If you don’t want to do it—

I want to do it, Dash said immediately. What’s going to be hard is making sure that you survive this with your sanity intact.

That kept Harry quiet for a few minutes while Dash did—something. It really felt like nothing other than slithering through Harry’s mind, the way he did when sifting his memories. But then it felt as if was going deeper.

Like there’s a tunnel in the back of my mind and he just plunged down it.

That’s a good comparison. This thing was buried under the surface layers of your mind. Otherwise, do you really think it could have hidden itself from me?

Harry smiled a little, but he couldn’t put much force into the expression. What he thought was that Dash had descended further and further and further, and now the sense of him was growing faint, the way it never had before except when Harry was asleep.

I’m venturing away from your mind into the part that links to Voldemort’s, said Dash, his voice holding a tinny echo.

Harry tensed, and knew Dash would realize it. Don’t get too far away. I want you to find your way back.

Dash responded, but not to Harry. He said, What are you that bars the way? Back off!

And then the pain came.

Harry had never felt anything like it, not even when Dash accidentally poisoned him or his scar burned when Voldemort was near him or he had the dreams. This was a sensation like someone ripping through muscles inside his mind. He screamed because he had to, but he couldn’t hear himself. He couldn’t sense Dash anymore.

There was nothing but the pain, violent and violating and overwhelming.

For a minute, Harry did think that he felt the end of a wand, and heard a voice chanting desperate words. But then other voices overrode them.

I am that which watches the ways.

You are hurting my bonded.

What unnatural kind of basilisk are you, that you need a bond in the first place? We are part of each other, my Dark Lord and I, and he has given me many gifts. But your bonded does not give you gifts. He only places you under a crippling burden. Protect him if you can—

Then the pain came again, and this time it resembled someone attempting to yank his brain out of his skull through his ears. Harry howled in misery, and again could hear no sound. He did sense movement, back and forth and coiling around each other, like two snakes he had once watched entwining necks.

Then Dash said, I’m sorry, Harry, but I can’t protect you this way. We’re going down.

For an instant, Harry felt a clutching, seizing sensation in his chest. He was afraid that meant he was going to die, and Dash with him. But then he felt the sensation of movement again, and the pain ceased. Dash had pulled him into the deep bond.

When Harry opened his eyes, though, what he saw didn’t resemble the other times he’d looked at something while he was deeply bonded to Dash. Instead, there was a drifting blue-purple murk. Harry looked around and shuddered. It was a little like the clouds he sometimes saw around the sunset—a little. But those clouds never looked evil and like they wanted to destroy the sun, and these looked like that.

I have to hide you here for just a while, said Dash quietly. Otherwise, the pain is going to distract both of us, it’s so bad.

So I’m a burden to you, just like that thing said—

That thing is a detached piece of Voldemort’s soul, watching the link between your mind and his, said Dash sharply. Of course it’s going to say whatever it can to make you feel bad. Don’t believe it, though.

How can it be a detached piece of Voldemort’s soul, though? Harry tried to rest against something, but he floated in the clouds with nothing to touch him, one way or the other. He shivered when some of the drifting tendrils of the mist reached out towards him. I thought that was what I had in me.

No—

That was all Dash had the chance to say, in a voice that dripped satisfaction the way Aunt Petunia’s used to when she could gossip about one of the neighbors, before something pulled his attention away from Harry. Harry squinted, trying to make out some kind of movement in the distance from Dash, but all he could feel and hear was thrashing around.

Then Dash broke free of the fight, or something, and came over to sound satisfied again. No. I looked at it. Draco was right. You’re not a Horcrux. They do have to be created deliberately, and there’s no reason for you to be one.

Harry released a shaky breath, but Dash continued in the next moment, I think you were like a Horcrux, once, because there was a splintered fragment of soul clinging to you. But the piece of soul detached from you and went back towards Voldemort, because he’s more similar to it. What it’s doing right now is guarding the link between you and Voldemort, so that you can’t see anything else in your dreams. That last dream you had probably alerted it.

It would let him through, though.

Of course. It’s really part of him.

What do you think detached it from me? Although Draco had kept the full facts from Harry, like he’d promised, Harry had got the impression that Horcruxes were usually permanent, not just something any old circumstance could change.

Not to brag, but I think it was your bond with me. Dash’s smugness was vast and the only thing that tinted the clouds different colors and made them draw back from Harry a little. The Horcrux can’t comprehend love like ours.

Harry was still for a long moment, soaking in the emotions behind those words. Then what do we do about it?

We have to build a wall from your side, too, so Voldemort can’t come into your dreams and influence you that way.

Can I do that with Occlumency?

No, because he has a piece of soul strengthening his walls. You have to get a piece of soul, too.

Harry flinched. But I don’t want to make a Horcrux, Dash. It was bad enough thinking I was one.

I wasn’t saying that you had to use part of your soul. I was saying use part of someone else’s.

But that would still be disgusting!

Why?

Harry had to pause. Dash radiated bafflement, and he knew it wasn’t an act, the way Dash’s playfulness or innocence sometimes was. He understood absolutely about not having Harry make a Horcrux, but he didn’t care if someone else died or had a piece of their soul torn loose. Other people simply didn’t matter to him the way Harry mattered.

I don’t want it to happen, was all Harry said at last, and then he waited to see if Dash would respect that.

If you don’t want it to happen, then it won’t happen. One of the things I’m in the world for is to make sure that you get what you want, instead of what you don’t want, which most of your life has been.

Harry smiled as politely as he could. In the meantime, what do we do about the thing in the link between my mind and Voldemort’s?

You shield with Occlumency, and then we go back and ask your Snape for a piece of his soul.

Dash, I said—

It doesn’t have to be soul-magic like the kind Voldemort used, said Dash, in the tone of a snake on the edge of his patience. What it needs to be is a kind of mask or shield made of love. It’s the one force that Voldemort and his Horcrux really don’t understand. If my love was enough to move your Horcrux out of your head, then Snape’s love combined with mine ought to make the link close for a little while.

Well, but that’s love, Harry said, feeling as though his heart was calming down from the tremendous speed it had started to beat at. That’s not a piece of his soul.

It amounts to the same thing. He wants to give up part of his soul for you. Or he would be willing to, anyway. I say we let him.

Harry just shook his head, and Dash said, If you’re going to be so stubborn about it, then we can at least have the discussion with your Snape outside your head. Not the way you imagine him in here.

Harry blinked a few times, then said, That’s fine, but how do I wake up?

I do have to do everything, Dash said, but not exactly as if he minded, and then he wound around Harry’s mind and yanked him out of the dark, dreaming state he’d fallen into.

*

Draco leaned forwards and watched intently as Harry’s chest slowed down and then started speeding up again, until he almost looked like he was breathing normally. Then he turned his head to the side and dreamily opened his eyes.

He jumped when he found Draco staring at him, though. “Tell me next time you’re that close when I wake up,” he muttered, and rubbed his face as Dash started unwinding from his body.

Draco couldn’t resist. “I don’t think I’ll need to warn you the next time I’m that close,” he whispered. “Since it should involve me being there the night before when you go to sleep, too.”

Harry stared for a long moment before his face turned so red that Draco was glad he wasn’t touching Harry’s cheek. But Harry cleared his throat roughly and looked away at Professor Snape, stealing Draco’s fun. “Dash says Draco is right, and the thing that was in me isn’t exactly a Horcrux,” he said.

Draco sat up. Even more important than embarrassing Harry and making him blush was being right. He got ready to send Granger and Professor Snape triumphant looks, but maddeningly, they weren’t even looking at him. They were both so focused on Harry that they had no time to spare for the genius who had figured it all out.

“Then what is it?” Granger demanded.

“How can we get rid of it?” Professor Snape asked what Draco thought was the most important question—of course—spinning his wand slowly between his fingers, his eyes so hooded and still that they looked as though someone had turned them to ashes.

“It’s a part of Voldemort’s soul that used to be a Horcrux,” Harry said, and Draco leaped as if stung by a pin. He hated it when Harry just casually used the name like that. Usually he was better about it when Draco and Professor Snape were in the room. But now, he went on without acting like he noticed Draco jumping or how pale Professor Snape had become. “But now it’s not. It’s been loosened from me and drifted into the bond between us. Right now it’s like a barrier protecting Voldemort’s mind from me. I had some visions, some dreams, and Dash thinks it’s there to prevent any others from coming through. I have to block the bond the other way, though.” Harry turned to Professor Snape and looked up with that kind of melting expression that made it really, really hard for Draco to understand how his relatives could have abused him. How could anyone faced with that not relent towards Harry? “Do you think I might be able to protect myself with Occlumency? Dash didn’t think so, he thinks I needs your help, but maybe you can do something with it.”

Professor Snape spent some time blinking. Then he knelt down in front of Harry and spoke as softly and kindly as he could. “I want you to tell me more about why you’re no longer a Horcrux. How could it have changed?”

“Dash takes the credit,” said Harry with a shrug, and put his hand on Dash’s neck. Draco scowled a little, not sure if he was jealous of Harry for having a basilisk to pet or of Dash for getting touched casually by Harry like that. “Our love for each other is so powerful that it probably made the Horcrux drift away from me.”

“Yes, that might be possible.” A second later, Professor Snape clucked his tongue and shook his head in exasperation. “There are simply too many unknowns in this situation. Almost nothing is known about either living Horcruxes or bonds between basilisks and Parselmouths.”

But there’s one thing that’s not unknown, Draco thought, with what he knew was pardonable pride. Harry’s not a Horcrux. I reasoned that out. Although everyone seems content to ignore that at the moment, of course.

“I will want to explore your mind in the company of Dash and make sure that his impressions are correct,” Professor Snape continued. He didn’t seem to notice the sudden violent twitching of Dash’s tail, or perhaps he was just going to ignore that. “A human Occlumens and a basilisk bonded to a budding Occlumens might see things differently.”

Dash’s tail twitched once more, then stilled. Draco breathed out a little, and wondered at his professor’s bravery. He wouldn’t have had the courage to pursue a conversation when Dash looked like that.

“All right. He agrees to that.” Harry sighed and let his head drop back. “It hurt a lot when Dash and the piece of soul were first battling, so can I have a pain potion?”

“How much does it hurt?” Draco demanded at once. But Professor Snape knew something, and it was all right, Draco thought as he watched the man hasten towards one of the cupboards in the back of his outer room. He had to know something was wrong if Harry was asking for a potion.

“It doesn’t hurt nearly as much as it did when it was happening.”

“Mate.” That was Weasley’s voice, low and patient, and as much as Draco wanted to jump up and demand that Harry answer his question, he held his tongue. Weasley might be more effective at getting Harry to speak. “How much does it hurt now?”

Harry hesitated, then said, “It feels like someone stomped on me and tried to break my bones.”

Draco’s chest ached. The sad thing was that he was pretty sure Harry had experienced exactly that, and that was why he could make the comparison.

“I have a pain draught here,” said Professor Snape quietly, and came out of the back of the office to hand the vial to Harry. Harry drank it right away without complaining, and Draco watched with a little shiver as his skin seemed to shiver and then settle into place. “Why did you not say something right away?”

“Because it already feels like it’s fading,” Harry answered, his eyes slipping shut. “Like a dream. I wanted to tell you everything before I forgot about it.”

“Dash could tell us.”

“Not until later, when I was awake and he could speak through me again…”

Harry’s head drooped, and Draco just managed to catch him before he slipped off the chair and fell to the floor. Of course, then Professor Snape came forwards and took Harry away from him, so Draco didn’t get the satisfaction of holding him for long.

But, as he watched Professor Snape bundle Harry away with a frown, Dash following them, Draco thought he understood one thing.

He loved that fierce courage and that exasperating heart, and he wanted to protect them both. And if that meant slicing through the Dark Lord and Harry’s relatives and a living Horcrux, then he was going to do it.

Chapter 82: Shields of the Soul

Chapter Text

Severus put yet another book down and rubbed his forehead again. Despite the idea that Dash and Harry and Draco and Harry’s friends supported, he had come across nothing that would indicate giving away a piece of one’s soul and using it as a shield to block a different piece of soul was possible.

It sounds as if it should be. It sounds as if it should be a matter of metaphor, not hard logic, and that is the kind of thinking that marks the greatest potions brewing and spell creation.

But even in the sort of metaphorical thinking that tended to power rituals and the like, there needed to be a procedure. If someone used fire in their ritual because they were fighting a creature made of water or someone they thought of as linked to water, then they would have to find a source of fire. They couldn’t walk out in front of their enemy with hope and nothing more.

Where do I begin?

Severus paused, then. There was the possibility that he could design something himself, wasn’t there? He had invented his own spells and his own potions, as well as making modifications to existing draughts. He could do this. The problem was how long it might take, to come up with the right symbolic manifestations and lay them together in the right order.

But is there any indication that Harry is going to die tomorrow of this problem with his link to the Dark Lord?

Slowly, thoughtfully, Severus closed the book. No, there was not. And he did have a possible excuse to gain the time he needed, one he had never used, although the other professors did so with some regularity.

So, although it was almost midnight, he nevertheless went up the stairs and knocked on the door of the Headmistress’s office.

*

“I’m sorry,” said Minerva blankly, after having stared at Severus for long enough that he should have revealed what kind of change was driving him. “You want me to announce to the rest of the school that you’re sick? What will Harry think?”

“Harry will know the truth. I’ll make sure he does.” Severus sipped from the cup of tea that Minerva had mainly offered him because she didn’t know what else to do. His feathers weren’t ruffled, she thought with some admiration. “What the others think does not matter.”

Minerva blinked. That sentiment wasn’t new, but who he was doing it in the service of certainly was. Before, he would have insisted on teaching his classes even if he was sick with a cold that made him lose his voice. He had, before, often. Then, the “others” who didn’t matter had been his students and the other professors.

“Why should I be the one that announces it?” Minerva asked, just to be contrary, and to see what he would say. Severus had certainly never asked her for a favor before. He had simply demanded them, or done something that forced her to respond a certain way and then classed it as a favor later.

“Because I’ll be in the dungeons doing some delicate and complicated ritual work.”

“And you don’t think it’s a good idea to let the others know that?” Minerva shook her head. “You knew neither Filius nor anyone else would disturb you, Severus.”

“But the students might.”

Minerva had to both pause, and then acknowledge he was right. In particular, the Weasley twins might find the idea of disrupting a ritual conducted by their most hated professor too fascinating to resist.

“Very well,” she said. “I hope that you’ll find some way to help Harry.” She leaned back and considered him. No, nothing in his face had changed, or the way he walked and stood, or the way he gripped his teacup. She shook her head. “Is all his influence on the soul?” she murmured, not sure if she intended for Severus to hear her or not.

He did, and he seemed to know exactly what she was talking about, although there was a wry, sharp upturn to his lips that she didn’t understand. “It may be,” he said. “And it may be that which saves the rest of us.” He put the cup down, inclined his head, and moved to the door. “Thank you for the tea, Minerva.”

She watched him go, wondering. Of course she hoped he could help Harry, and she was glad that Harry had someone to turn to besides her and Sirius.

She just wondered why she had never observed such an incredible transformation happening under her nose.

*

“But you can’t know everything that’s going to happen in the Third Task. That’s what bothers me about it.”

Harry rolled his eyes at Draco. “It was only luck and coincidence that I found out what was going to happen in the First Task before it did. The Second Task had that clue, but this one doesn’t. And I know. It’s a maze. It would be impossible not to know by now.” The Third Task was a week away, and the talk of the school.

“But you don’t know exactly what traps and tricks they’re going to put into it.” Draco’s face was taut. “And they said they changed it after Karkaroff was exposed, but how do they know what kind of input he might have had?”

Harry shook his head again. They were sitting in a tiny classroom deep in the dungeons, not far from the entrance to Slytherin. Harry thought this must have been used for a NEWT class, because there wasn’t room for more than five or six chairs, but the walls and floor were so thick with dust he knew the class must likewise have ended a long time ago. It at least made a better place than the library to talk and practice spells without being overheard.

“At some point, I have to trust something. If I start worrying about what they didn’t change after Karkaroff was exposed, then I have to start wondering about whether it’s really going to be a maze, and if half the judges are secretly on Delacour’s side, and whether someone might be planning to ambush me at the center just to prevent me from winning. I can’t go around distrusting everything.”

“I do. I distrust most people who get close to you.”

“That’s nice of you, but Dash already does it. You don’t need to.”

Draco folded his arms. “Do you want to practice for what you’re going to encounter in the maze or not?”

Harry sighed, but said nothing. Draco wanted to help him “prepare” for the Third Task, which was a lot harder than it looked since Harry didn’t actually know what kind of beasts or traps would be awaiting him. Harry thought they should practice general Defense, but Draco wanted something more specific.

“Here,” Harry said, struck with an inspiration as he looked over at Dash’s long, lanky bulk asleep in the corner. “Why don’t we practice with different kinds of guardian beasts? There might be some. Griffins and sphinxes and things like that. They’d want to protect the Cup, wouldn’t they? And if Dumbledore had any influence, well, we know he liked using beasts like that. The troll and Fluffy in first year.”

“Fluffy?”

Harry started. He and Draco talked about everything now, and often things from past years didn’t come up. He thought he’d told Draco everything about the Chamber of Secrets and the basilisk in it because he was so fascinated with Dash, but he’d forgotten to mention the Philosopher’s Stone.

“The three-headed dog that was guarding the Philosopher’s Stone in first year,” he said, as he cast the Clearing Charm Snape often used that moved all the chairs back against the wall. Then he thought about how he would conjure or Transfigure a griffin. It wasn’t a spell Professor McGonagall had had them practice, after all. “It was pretty fierce, but you could put it to sleep if you played music.”

He felt something boring into the side of his skull, and turned around to find Draco staring directly at him.

Harry snorted a little. “Is this the part where you tell me I shouldn’t even know about things like that, and I tell you that you sound like Professor Snape?”

At least he won’t sound like me, said Dash, sleepily. He’d hunted in the Forbidden Forest the night before, and come back so smug that Harry knew he’d brought down one of the deer that used to run faster than he could slither. I think you should know all about dangerous creatures to tell me where to bite.

Harry rolled his eyes a little and turned to Draco. “Well?”

“You shouldn’t know about things like that.”

“You sound like Professor Snape.”

Draco didn’t smile. He looked off to the side and gave a little blast of breath. Then he said, “It really isn’t funny, Harry. There could be absolutely anything in there.”

“I know,” Harry said, and tried to gentle his voice so he didn’t sound condescending when he saw the way Draco glared at him. “But I am trying, Draco. Really. The problem is, there could be absolutely anything in there. But doesn’t the fact that I’ve already survived things like three-headed dogs and giant chess games reassure you that I’ll probably come alive through this, too?”

“Giant ch—” Draco raised his hand as Harry opened his mouth to explain. “Never mind. You’re perfectly right that one of us doesn’t really need to know about them.”

Harry beamed at him.

“Okay. Dangerous magical creatures, then.” Draco paused. “But I don’t know how to conjure or Transfigure one. Do you?”

There is another solution. Dress me up with a glamour and pretend that I am the beast.

Harry rolled his eyes as Dash slid over to join them. It seemed he’d decided that what Harry and Draco were doing was more important than digesting his huge meal. “But you’re not really a griffin or whatever else they decide to put in the maze. You’re faster than they are and you have venom that they don’t.”

I have been rather slower than usual this morning, thanks to the size of the doe I took. You didn’t notice?

Now that Harry thought about it, he did remember Dash crawling rather sluggishly after him into the classroom where he and Draco had come to practice. He’d even asked about being carried, but with such huge bulges in his stomach, he would have weighed more than Harry could comfortably carry.

And honestly, he hadn’t been able to comfortably carry him for months now.

“Dash has volunteered to practice with us,” he told Draco, when he saw Draco regarding him with that patient, immobile stare he adopted whenever Harry was talking to Dash and he didn’t know what they were talking about.

“Well, it’s a better solution than the ones I can think of,” said Draco, after obviously standing there and contemplating it. There was a reluctant note in his voice that made Harry glance at him curiously as Dash slithered into the middle of the room and obligingly reared part of his body off the floor so that Harry could disguise him.

He thinks I might hurt you. He should know that I would never hurt my bonded. He paused a moment, then added, Intentionally.

Harry smiled at him. I know. “Worried, Draco?” Harry added aloud, as he managed to cast a glamour of a few feathers and a beak for Dash’s head. It was the best he could do, using a spell he’d seen Mrs. Weasley cast that charmed furniture to look nice. “I promise, Dash won’t play nice with you, but he won’t kill you, either.”

Draco glared at Dash. Dash snickered unhelpfully in the back of Harry’s head. Harry shivered a little. Trying to describe a basilisk’s snicker to anyone else was doomed to failure.

“Well, good, then,” said Draco, sticking his nose up in the way that meant he hated to be right there, but didn’t want to leave and go elsewhere, either.

Harry snorted, and let Draco have his try adding some feathers to Dash. They looked more solid than his, but they were plain brown, while Harry’s were red. He grinned at Draco.

Draco didn’t seem to notice. He backed up and eyed Dash critically. “Father would never accept it,” he said, or Harry thought he said, in an undertone. Then he caught Harry’s eye and flushed. “Not that we’ll show it to him.”

“It” is ready to play.

Dash uncoiled before Harry could even open his mouth to reply to Draco’s words. He struck with his nose at Draco, who tumbled back in front of him, shouting. Harry had no idea if that was because it looked like a sharp beak was going to peck Draco or if it was because he knew what a basilisk’s fangs could do.

Draco fell to the floor. Dash turned and flowed silently towards Harry. And it was silent. He’d somehow muted their bond so that Harry couldn’t feel him as well as he normally did.

Harry flicked his wand. A Shield Charm sprang up between them. But Dash reared back and looked at it for a moment, and then dashed his head against it. By pure strength, Harry thought, and not any magic, the shield broke into flying silver pieces of light that slammed past Harry and gouged holes in the walls.

Normal magical creatures can’t do that! Harry danced out of the way of the nose reaching for him.

But you keep saying there might be anything in there. Maybe another dragon. And you need to learn to watch out in more than one direction.

Harry tripped over the tail that Dash curled around his ankles, and fell to the ground with a curse. Dash laid himself down on top of Harry and looped his neck around Harry’s throat. I win. I demand a forfeit.

If there was another dragon, I could just talk Parseltongue to it, and I wouldn’t have to fight it at all.

Did you hear me? Forfeit!

Harry rolled his eyes. Yes, oh great and terrible basilisk. What do you claim for your forfeit? Honestly, he blamed Dean and Seamus for that one. They’d been practicing dueling last month and Dash had gone to watch.

Pet me. Right above my eye-ridge. Keep going until I tell you to stop. Dash let a little more of his weight rest on Harry and sighed, his tongue flicking as he tasted Harry’s scent. And tell your little friend that he can’t actually pierce my scales with those charms he’s trying to use.

Harry blinked and looked over. He hadn’t even realized that Dash had another coil wrapped around Draco. He was just so big, by now, that it was easy to lose track of him, especially when Dash’s head was looming right over Harry. Draco was wrapped from throat to ribs, and he was scowling. He did have his wand free, but trying to cast small Cutting Charms at Dash’s scales really didn’t work.

“Dash says you’re his prisoner,” Harry told Draco.

“A Malfoy never gives up!” Draco declared, and kept firing curses until Dash lazily turned his tail and snared Draco more firmly around the middle, holding his wand arm down. Then Dash decided that nothing outside Harry and his petting hand existed, and lay there soaking up the attention, ignoring Draco’s increasingly loud demands to be freed.

You’ll have to do it sooner or later.

You mammals need to remember how patient a snake can be. Dash opened his mouth in one of those long fanged yawns that Harry suspected he used to intimidate other animals in the Forbidden Forest. If I want to hold him for later, then I’ll do it. And I have decades to make up my mind on anything I’m thinking about. Probably centuries.

That made Harry pause, shaken. How long was Dash going to live? And what was he going to do if Harry didn’t live that long with him?

“Harry?”

It was unusual for Draco to notice something was wrong and call him on it before Dash did. Harry chose not to answer Draco for now, even though he knew it would make him more upset, and instead question Dash. Are you going to live that long? Like the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets? Slytherin, or whoever made you, made you different from him. Do you think you’ll live that long?

I’ve been feeling a kind of magic in my bones, Dash said. I know I can do more things, sometimes, although I don’t know everything I can do yet. But I can sense the potential waiting to unfold. And that means that I can sense the length of my life, too. I know it’ll run that long, Harry. His voice was gentle.

Harry took a deep breath and said, But you also told me that you’ll die if I do.

Both things are true. Just because one thing can happen doesn’t mean it will. I have the potential to live that long. But I might die in the war. Yes. Those things are true.

Harry.”

Draco sounded upset now, and like he was trying to breathe under Dash’s huge weight. Harry shivered a little and answered him. “I was just talking with Dash, Draco. He—he says that he could live centuries. That startled me.” He gave Draco a feeble smile. “Sorry if I upset you. I was just surprised.”

“Oh.” Draco was quiet, thinking, and then asked, “But could he come up with a way to make you live that long, as well?”

Sometimes that one thinks like a snake. Dash lifted his tail and uncoiled it from around Draco. He can have his freedom as a reward for his intelligence.

Harry tried to ignore that revelation, and the way Dash’s weight seemed to push down on him harder with no one to share it. “Yes, he wants to do that,” he said. “But I’m not sure I want to live forever.”

Draco stared at him. “How could you not want that?”

“I mean, people do horrible things in pursuit of immortality. Look at Voldemort and his Horcruxes. Would you be willing to have me do something like that, Dash?” Harry added, turning his head carefully to the side. He had to look at Dash sideways or he would start speaking in Parseltongue, the way he did automatically most of the time when he was looking at a snake.

No.

Harry nodded in relief, and then Dash added, I would not have you do something like that because it would drive you insane to split your soul. I see nothing wrong with having you do something like that if I was there and could control it and make sure it would work and not drive you mad.

Harry had nothing to say to that, especially since Dash finally slithered away from his chest and let him sit up. But he did keep his eye on the basilisk, wondering if this was the same Dash he knew who’d been sleeping peacefully in the corner of the classroom a few minutes ago.

Maybe not. But it’s the same one who keeps saying that he’ll take me away from the war, and threatened to die if I do.

I don’t threaten. I don’t need to. I promise.

Another conversation Harry didn’t feel like having right now. He looked away and managed a weak smile at Draco. “Do you think Professor Snape could help us practice next time? He might be more successful in telling us how a real beast behaves and showing us how to oppose one.”

I showed you how to do it! It’s not my fault if you did it badly.

*

The clue was metaphors, as Severus had decided on. But his conscious mind, most unreasonably, had decided that only a real object he could hang the metaphor on would do.

It was most often that way in potions, too, Severus thought with the most distant part of his mind as he stood in the ritual pentagon he had drawn. Usually, when he invented or modified a potion, he had to draw a picture of ingredients, or actually brew the original potion and study the way it bubbled. Perhaps it was weakness, but he couldn’t deal with a mental projection alone.

The object convinced him that he wasn’t going mad, that he could shape the metaphors around something unyielding and look at it in case it broke.

Or I do.

Right now, the pentagon was part of that physical object, a ritual creation that Severus could feel comfortable in. He knew that most of the time, he would simply have used a circle, but a pentagon “felt” more strongly magical to him, and his feelings were important at a moment like this.

In the center of the pentagon, he had inscribed a five-pointed star. He stood now on one point of the star. In the center of it, and thus also the center of the whole ritual design, hovered a small, shield-shaped piece of silver.

Severus drew his wand. The piece of silver had come from several Transfigurations and a few hours of brewing the potion that would melt and soften the metal for what he had in mind. Perhaps he could have worked it faster with fire, but the point now wasn’t speed.

The point was making the metaphor of shielding Harry’s mind with his soul come to life.

Severus moved to the next point of the star, clockwise from the one he’d been standing in. The shield spun to face him, imbued with the spells Severus had already forced into it. As he moved, it also began to glow softly. It was picking up the ritual energy that traversing the design gave it.

Severus hopped to the next point of the star, and then turned and focused on the shield as strongly as he could, drawing a memory forth from his head. It was the memory of how he had felt when he first took Harry from Black and resolved to try and be a good guardian from him.

He whipped his wand forwards, slinging the memory at the shield as he would at a Pensieve. The glow brightened.

Severus moved to the next point of the star, and now the memory was when he had first decided Dash would be good for Harry. Then the next, and now he was thinking of how brave Harry had been confessing his abuse at the hands of the Dursleys. The next, and it was the memory of how he had punished Petunia.

The memories built on each other, and so did Severus’s traverses of the design, and so did the sharp rings of energy building around the shield. By the time Severus brought forth the last memory, the shield was surrounded by separate, overlapping spheres of blue and white and silver, and Severus found it hard to look at.

Severus took a deep breath and cast the memory into the point where the spheres all crossed. The memory of how he had decided that he loved Harry and wanted to protect him and keep him safe from all harm.

There was an oddly soft “plop,” as though he had thrown a simple pebble into a pool. And then the explosion outwards, consuming the shield as the energy spread and was released again.

Severus felt himself thrown from his feet before he could plan for it. He twisted frantically even as he fell, because if he crossed the outside of the pentagon or the star he would be paying in pain—

And then he realized he had landed on blank stone, innocent of ritual designs, and gasped aloud in relief. His elbows throbbed, but he had achieved his goal. The ritual had consumed all its components, transformed them all into the energy of love and protection.

And it throbbed in his chest, a second heartbeat a note behind his own, a little warm glow of raised and borrowed magic that Severus could focus towards a specific purpose. Severus touched his chest with a shaking hand. The energy glowed back at him, warm against his fingers like a purring cat.

Severus stood. He would have to rest, because of course the energy he raised had been mostly his own.

But now he had the shield. Now he thought he could block the link between Harry and the Dark Lord, or at least give Dash long enough to battle the shard of soul that blocked the way right now, and perhaps even help Dash destroy it.

I am glad.

The words were as deep as his exhaustion, and Severus went to bed instead of trying to think of others.

Chapter 83: The Third Task

Chapter Text

“I have made you as safe as I can.”

Harry touched the silver shield that hung on a chain around his neck. Professor Snape had spelled the chain Unbreakable, and made sure that Harry understood the necessity of keeping it on him. The shield was a twin to the one that Professor Snape had made in his ritual, and absorbed.

Harry didn’t think he understood all the nuances of the ritual, but he understood Professor Snape had done it to protect him.

From the soft look Professor Snape gave him, he might not need to understand more than that.

“When the Third Task is done,” Professor Snape said briskly, “then you are going to move into my quarters, and stay there for the rest of the year.”

Harry blinked. Professor Snape hadn’t acted like anyone in Gryffindor Tower was untrustworthy before this. “Why? Do you think Voldemort will try something after the Task?”

“I think you may not win, and your Housemates might be disappointed about that.” Snape shook his head when Harry started to say something in defense of ordinary Gryffindors like Seamus and Dean, who believed by now that he hadn’t entered the Tournament of his own free will. “I want to protect you from any disappointment right now, any unhappiness. We’ll go straight from school to my own home. After you’ve had a free summer, then maybe I’ll feel all right seeing you walk into battle again. But not until then.”

Harry slowly nodded. He couldn’t wrap his brain around the idea of someone with that fanatical a desire to protect him, but, well, he also didn’t think Snape was lying.

You can’t wrap your mind around it? And here I thought I’d done my best to make sure you understood the concept. If my lessons failed, then I suppose I’ll have to increase the strength and frequency of them.

Dash had been dozing, wrapped around the legs of Harry’s chair while Snape talked to him, but now he unwound himself and started to flow into Harry’s lap. Harry put out a hasty hand to hold him back. “You don’t need to—I mean, I understand fine, Dash. You don’t need to worry about it.”

But I think I do. If you think it’s strange that someone would love you and want to defend you—

“What is wrong?” Snape asked, though with the kind of glint in his eyes that said he wouldn’t interfere if it was what he called “a private basilisk matter.” Having your guardian and your bondmate gang up on you both at once was something that Harry was coming to find painfully familiar.

“I just thought that you’re doing a lot for me, and Dash says I should be used to that, because he would do anything for me,” Harry said, and leaned down to push one sneaky rising coil off his lap. “I said no, Dash. If you really want to do anything for me, you’ll get back on the floor.”

It’s cold. I want to sit in your lap. And it’ll help me keep you in one place for another earnest explanation.

Harry pushed again, but Dash insisted, and Harry rolled his eyes at Snape as he ended up with more snake in his lap than on the floor. “You can see the way that he wants to handle this, sir.”

“It is true that I’m doing a lot for you,” said Snape, and Harry blinked a little. “But that doesn’t mean I don’t want to do it. The ritual I performed could not have been created without intense emotion, focused on you.” He reached out and slowly splayed a hand over the scar on Harry’s forehead, which made Harry jerk a little in surprise. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched it, other than maybe Dumbledore. “And you know what that emotion is.”

Harry glanced away. He knew, just like Snape did, but he didn’t want to risk the embarrassment of saying the name aloud, any more than Snape did.

Seemingly satisfied that they understood each other, Snape nodded and dropped his hand. “I have a Pepper-Up Potion to take,” he said. “If I am to be as recovered from the ritual as I should be by this evening, when the next Task begins, I need help. And in the meantime, you two can discuss the private basilisk matter.”

Harry sighed a little as he watched Snape walk away. He’d thought that conversation might spare him from the one he’d have to have with Dash, but it seemed not.

Why are you so reluctant to talk with me, Harry? I might think that you don’t love me anymore.

It’s not that, Harry said, and leaned his back on the chair, closing his eyes. It’s only that some of your ideas frighten me, Dash. I know you don’t want me fighting in the war, but I want to stay here and protect my friends. Not flee Britain and hide somewhere else. What would Ron and Hermione do?

Be protected by their own families. Or fight if they wanted to. I don’t think anyone could keep your Hermione out of the battles.

Harry shuddered a little. But they could be in danger just for knowing me.

And that’s going to happen whether you’re here or not. It’s not like Voldemort would miraculously forget about them because you fled.

Even you admit it would be fleeing.

Of course it would. Dash wound himself in an intricate knot that tied Harry to the chair, the way he sometimes did when Harry was in the bed in the hospital wing. But the difference between us is that you think it would be—dishonorable is probably the best word. Not one that translates well into Parseltongue.

Why?

Honor is for mammals.

You know that’s not what I’m asking.

Dash was silent for long moments, his thoughts stirring like currents of storms in Harry’s mind. Harry caressed his neck and waited. He couldn’t keep secrets from Dash for long, but he was learning the reverse was also true. Dash might lie sometimes, as much as he could, but he didn’t want to keep things hidden.

I want you safe, said Dash. And not because I will die when you do, or because I want to enjoy the centuries of life that might be left to me if you stay safe. I want to find a way for you to enjoy those centuries, too. Because you’re alive. You’re you. When you’re gone, there will never be another you. The war is trying to kill you. Voldemort is trying to kill you. I want you safe.

Harry let out a shaky breath and stroked Dash’s neck again. He was glad Snape had stepped away to take his potion. Private mind-bond or not, Harry knew he would never be able to keep the knowledge of what he was saying and feeling out of his face.

Thank you. I understand better now.

Dash stirred just enough to move his blunt nose up to Harry’s collarbone. But you still won’t do what I want you to do, and leave this stupid war behind.

There’s one thing that’s more important to me than even my life. My freedom of choice. Harry ducked his head so that he was looking at the pattern of scales under Dash’s chin instead of his quivering, closed eyelids. Dumbledore tried to take that away, and so did the Dursleys, and so did Voldemort. Even Sirius, sort of, when he kept the Horcrux secret from me. So please don’t take away that freedom, Dash. I want to make my own decisions. And if one of them is to stay here and fight in the war, then that’s what I want to do.

Dash was shivering and tense, thinking about it, for long minutes. Harry had no idea what he would decide. He felt he could only pet Dash’s neck and hold on.

Finally Dash said, I won’t make you leave against your will.

Harry sighed at the condition he could feel waiting behind those words, and replied, If I ever change my mind about leaving, then I’ll tell you.

Dash laughed softly down the bond even as he untangled himself from Harry’s chair and flowed towards the door. I’ll feel it when you do. You won’t have to tell me. We’ll be going to the Sahara as soon as you do.

Why the Sahara? Harry had to ask, thinking he was missing something.

Dash turned his head and flicked his tongue out. Because there are fewer people there who can get killed when I open my eyes. And I can sunbathe whenever I want. And see danger coming.

He left before Harry could say anything else. Of course, he could have reached along the bond whenever he wanted and asked Dash anything he wanted. But both of them respected things like the confines of doors and rooms, unless they were in danger.

Harry sighed and leaned against the back of the chair, closing his eyes. He had to compete in the Third Task. But then he’d be free of the Tournament, and maybe he and Dash could concentrate on facing his basilisk’s fears. And everyone could concentrate on keeping him safe and getting his connection to Voldemort closed down.

Just one more Task.

*

“They don’t want to make it fair, Hermione. That’s why they’re going to send the Champions in at different times. The one who earns the most points goes first, and then the one who earns the second most points…”

Draco ignored the explanation Weasley was giving Granger for the fourth time—she seemed to think that the Triwizard Tournament should suddenly start being equitable in the last moment—and stared at the maze. It was bigger than he’d thought it would be, and the hedges looked alive. When he squinted, Draco could make out what he was sure were shadows squirming slowly among their leaves.

He didn’t want Harry going in to face those alone.

But he would have to. The judges would just refuse to let him enter if he tried to take Dash with him, and Draco knew Harry wanted this farce of a Task over with as soon as possible.

Dash was up on the stands with them, coiled partially on the ground and partially around Draco’s feet as he watched the maze himself. It was a measure of how comfortable Weasley and Granger had become with Dash that they ignored him almost entirely. But Draco couldn’t. He bent down near Dash and watched his tongue flickering out again and again, and whispered, “You’ll tell me if he isn’t all right?”

Dash nodded. Draco leaned back, comforted that Dash had bothered to learn human gestures.

Once he’d thought basilisks were beyond that, so magnificent that they didn’t deign to notice anyone but their chosen human, or maybe a Parselmouth who could command them. Draco hadn’t been clear on the difference between humans bonded to basilisks and random Parselmouths then.

Now, he knew he couldn’t have bonded with a basilisk even if he got hold of Parseltongue somehow, unless the basilisk chose to accept him.

I still wish I could have one, Draco thought wistfully, as he scratched at the ridge behind Dash’s eye and tried to take his mind off the things Harry was probably facing in the maze. But this is the next best thing.

*

Harry shuddered as he limped past the Acromantula. Maybe it should have been obvious that he’d be facing one after the sphinx’s riddle, but he didn’t understand the way the judges’ minds worked when they put the maze together.

He looked around hopefully. He didn’t care about winning, but if he was close enough to the Cup, then he might as well grab it. He didn’t think Krum or Delacour had made it this far, or he would have heard wild cheering by now.

I just want this all to end!

A few more corners, and then Harry saw the Cup gleaming ahead of him. It was so bright a gold that it hurt his eyes. Harry hesitated in the last turning of the maze, glancing around suspiciously. There was probably one more vicious beast waiting to leap out at him here. Draco, Snape, and Hermione wouldn’t forgive him if he didn’t at least pause and look around.

But no matter how long he looked, he saw nothing. The Cup continued to shimmer. If it had a trap around it, Harry finally decided, he wouldn’t see what it was by looking.

He cast a few detection charms and moved closer. Still nothing. The ground did sometimes shine with the reflection of the light on the Cup, but Harry thought that was probably natural—or as natural as the reflection of magic could be.

Krum and Delacour didn’t come out, either. If they were hiding there, they had no reason not to at least cast spells at him.

Harry finally took a deep breath and trotted forwards, reaching out to grasp the handle of the Cup.

Then he heard footsteps behind him, and spun around in surprise. Delacour came tearing out of a maze corridor opposite the one Harry had come from, and sailed towards him, her silver hair swirling around her. Her eyes were fixed on the Cup. If not for her wand flicking up to cast a curse at him, Harry would almost have thought she hadn’t noticed him.

But Harry wasn’t going to stand still for the curse, and he didn’t care that much about the stupid Cup anyway. He rolled and dodged aside. Delacour reached out for the Cup.

Her hand slammed against something a few centimeters away from it. Delacour splayed out her hands and stared. She was panting, covered with shallow scratches and dripping guts that made Harry think she’d battled her own Acromantula. She banged her hands against the invisible wall, then turned around and stared at him.

“Did you put this here?” she demanded, her accent so thick Harry had to concentrate to understand her words. “It was you, yes?”

“No!” Harry looked warily at her wand. He knew a lot of spells, but without Dash here to defend him, he didn’t feel as brave as he should. And he knew, too, that all his friends would want him to avoid putting himself in danger if he didn’t have to.

“It must have been you.” Delacour shifted to the side, but she didn’t lift her wand at him, maybe because of the vow he’d sworn to keep her and the other Veela safe from Dash. She looked crazy, though, with her hair whipping around her head. “There is no one else who would want you to win that much.”

“Maybe Sirius,” Harry muttered, but he didn’t think Sirius would have had a chance to enchant the Triwizard Cup. He moved hesitantly forwards and stretched his hand out. He didn’t feel the barrier Delacour had been talking about.

Don’t touch it!

Of course she wouldn’t want him to touch it, not if she wanted to win, but Harry’s fingers had already brushed the handle. He turned around to tell her he didn’t care, and she could have the damn thing if she wanted—

And then the world coiled all around him, turned different colors, and yanked him away.

*

Dash reared suddenly above the stands, so far and fast that Draco flinched and cried out, ducking his head.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” Draco shouted at him, trying to attract his attention and make him stop frightening people. Not that Draco thought Dash would listen to him if Harry was really in danger—which it certainly sounded like.

Dash shot out of the stands and towards the maze, a long, uncoiling ribbon of darkness. Not knowing what else to do, Draco ran after him.

He could hear someone calling him to stop, too, but it sounded like Professor Snape. Deciding he would understand even if Draco got injured, and probably run after them himself, Draco kept sprinting.

Dash led him around a corner and then down a corridor blocked by a half-destroyed skrewt. Draco stared at it in disgust. Dash looped over the body and kept going. Draco had to add a Lightening Charm to his own body so he could leap.

An Acromantula abruptly scurried out of the maze’s walls and confronted them.

Draco stopped, dread pounding through him. And then he saw Dash lift his head, and the yellow glow around his eyes grew brighter.

He’s opening them!

Draco immediately turned his head to the side and squeezed his own eyes shut as tightly as he could. He heard a strange, wobbly cry that might have been a spider’s scream, and then by the time he looked again, Dash was flowing on and the Acromantula’s body lay absolutely still to the side of the path. It no longer looked as big.

Draco still crept past it, shuddering, and with the stray thought that he hoped Weasley didn’t waste too much time gawking if he was following them. Then he kept running.

Dash was entering a wide space, past yet another Acromantula’s body, that had some kind of pedestal in the middle of it. Draco blinked. That was a place to keep a Cup, he thought, and looked around, expecting to see someone else there already.

Delacour stood with her back against a tunnel on the far edge of the clearing, her eyes so wide that it looked like they would fly out of her head. Her shaking hand clutched the wand she pointed at Dash.

Draco rolled his eyes at her and marched over. “Honestly, Delacour,” he snapped at her in a low voice. Dash was wreathing himself around the pedestal, and lifting his head to let his tongue snap out. “Does it look as though Dash is interested in you right now? He only wants to find his bondmate. Did you see what happened?”

Delacour turned stunning eyes on him. Draco flinched as he felt the urge to bow down and worship her. Her magic was on high alert, trying to diminish threats by making sure everyone in sight adored her.

But Draco shook his head, because he was sure Harry wouldn’t be happy if he did that, and asked more insistently, “Did you see what happened to Harry?”

Delacour sucked in breath and spoke with a softness that Draco had never heard from her. “He touched the Cup. I tried to touch it first. There was a—a barrier, I could not pierce it. And when he touched it, he vanished.”

Draco spun around. His mouth was sour with fear, and he ran straight over to the pedestal, ignoring the way Delacour tried to warn him about Dash. Draco was more sure than he was of his own name that Dash wouldn’t hurt him.

Dash had leaned his head on top of the pedestal. Draco said to him, “Delacour said something that makes me sure the Cup was a Portkey.”

Dash turned his head, and Draco shivered. Despite being sure that Dash wouldn’t hurt him, it was still unnerving to be so close to those immense eyes. And he wasn’t entirely sure that Dash could understand English without Harry around to translate for him.

“She described not being able to touch it,” Draco said hastily, trying all the while to come up with gestures that could somehow translate the concept for Dash, “and then when Harry could, he vanished.”

Dash lowered his head and crawled again around the pedestal. From the way his tongue flickered, Draco was sure that Dash was trying and failing to pick up any trace of a scent that would have told him where Harry went.

At last, Dash turned and slid out of the maze again. Draco followed him, ignoring the sounds that he thought meant Delacour was following as well. He just hoped that Dash had closed his eyes again. That was one thing that they really didn’t need right now.

Once they were outside the maze, Dash didn’t turn towards the stands again, the way Draco had thought he would. Instead, he promptly slid off towards the right, his tongue still lashing. Then he began to move faster and still faster, to the point that Draco knew he couldn’t catch up.

“What are you doing?” Draco yelled after him, adding his voice to the chorus of shouts that was still coming from people afraid of an enraged basilisk.

“He is seeking out the bond to find Harry.”

Draco started and turned to face Professor Snape. His face was as pale as birch wood, and he was using his wand to cast a spell in front of himself that left tingling purple traces in the air. Draco was sure that Professor Snape couldn’t find a trace of Harry, either.

“But Harry got taken by a Portkey. The Cup was a Portkey. That means he could be anywhere by now.”

“Nonetheless. A Parselmouth’s bond could feel strained by distance, but would still be present.” Professor Snape reached out and grasped Draco’s arm with fingers he flinched from, then turned and nodded to Weasley and Granger, who had run up on his opposite side. “There is a way I can follow Harry, but we will need access to the ritual space I prepared to do it. Come.”

At least Granger didn’t have any arguments to make as they ran after Professor Snape towards Hogwarts, Draco thought. It was the only upside he could see to the whole situation.

And the whole time, his gut churned in a way that kept him from enjoying that upside. He didn’t know if he was more worried for Dash, Harry…or the people who might have kidnapped Harry, when Dash found them.

*

Harry landed with such a large bump that it stunned the breath out of his lungs. He rolled over and stood up, shaking his head a little. He appeared to be in an open space, and he drew his wand immediately. The Cup was rolling on the ground next to him. Harry backed up until his leg touched it, hoping that it might be enchanted to take him back, but it remained still and silent.

A Portkey, then. But where did it bring me?

Harry stared around. He was standing in the middle of a huge cavern, or at least he thought it was one; the walls were dark stone and arched in a way that reminded him of Hogwarts’s Great Hall. But there was no sign of carvings here, or anything tame. Instead, the rock jutted out, and there were sharp edges that Harry flinched just from looking at.

“Hello, Harry.”

Harry whipped around, ready to see Voldemort or any of the Death Eaters that he and Draco and Ron and Hermione had found pictures of as they searched through old books and papers looking for information about Horcruxes. He was even ready to see Voldemort’s snake, or a manifestation like the grey-cloaked one that Voldemort had sent him through dreams.

But he wasn’t ready to see the man who stepped forwards, clad in shimmering silver robes that almost matched the color of his beard, and gave him a regretful smile.

“Hello, Harry,” Dumbledore repeated.

Chapter 84: Breaking the Bonds

Chapter Text

“Hello, Harry.”

Dumbledore’s face had that kind of empty smile on it that Harry had learned not to trust. Of course, he had no idea if this was actually Dumbledore. Maybe someone posing as him again. They’d never learned who that person had been.

“Professor,” said Harry, mostly to buy time. He flicked one more glance around the cavern. No, it was barren on the walls. He didn’t see any stones he could pick up and throw, or corners to hide behind.

“I do apologize for bringing you here, dear boy.” Dumbledore gestured at the walls himself. “But it was necessary to free you of your preoccupations.”

“You mean Dash, I suppose.”

Dumbledore frowned a little. Harry supposed he would have preferred it if Harry had played around and joked and pretended not to know what he was talking about. Professor Snape had told him that Dumbledore always wanted to be a good person. Harry probably made that harder by not letting him hide from the truth.

But Harry was feeling so sick at the moment that he had no room to care about whether Dumbledore would be upset.

“Yes, I do mean that, my boy.” Dumbledore bent down and looked into his eyes. Harry promptly slammed down his Occlumency as tight as he could and then looked away. “Do you remember Voldemort, Harry?”

“Of course I do.” Harry was starting to wonder if this was the real Dumbledore, but senile. “How am I going to forget him?” He almost glared forwards again in outrage, but remembered himself in time, and kept his head turned away.

“I haven’t heard you mention him in some time,” Dumbledore continued gravely. “I know that you had dreams about him once, and you often talked about him as though you were preparing to fight him. But you had not in a long while by the time I was forced to leave.”

“Why would I?” Harry demanded. “He wasn’t threatening me right then! You were the one threatening me right then!”

“But he is always waiting for you to acknowledge him, Harry,” said Dumbledore quietly. “Ready to demand his due and try to kill you.” He sighed. “The reason you have not concentrated on him, or the war that we all know is coming, is because of the basilisk. I believe now that he will not harm you, although he will harm others whether or not you command him to. But he does distract you. He does keep you from acknowledging the enemy you have, the enemy who will not rest until you are dead.”

“Dash is the reason I’m still bloody alive! Voldemort tried to kill me in my dreams, and Dash was the one who defended me, and he fought Voldemort’s snake at the Yule Ball—”

“But those are the most minor of attacks compared to what Tom is capable of,” Dumbledore interrupted, regarding Harry sternly. “We need to unbind you from the basilisk. I think we can put the bond back after the war—if you still want it by that point. I think you’ll find that your mind is clearer when it isn’t consumed as much by the thoughts of a gigantic predator.”

Harry flinched all over his body and reached as hard as he could along the bond. Dash! Dash, help!

He felt nothing but determination from him, though. He realized drearily that Dash couldn’t Apparate to him, or he would have done it by now. But maybe the bond was a little less stretched than before.

“I am confident we can remove the bond and restore it,” Dumbledore said quietly, in response to the question that Harry hadn’t asked. “So. I will ask you to gift me with some of your blood. I will have to take it if you don’t want to, but it pains me to cause you any pain.”

Harry stared at him wide-eyed, and then gave a little laugh he knew he was choked. “What’s this we stuff? I’m not giving you any blood!”

“I am helping Albus.”

The voice sounded unhappy and quavering, old. Harry snapped his head to the side. A man with a white beard and deep-sunken eyes stood in the corner of the cavern, staring at him. He looked away when Harry met his gaze, though.

“Who are you?” Harry whispered.

“Nicholas Flamel.”

“The designer of the alchemy that can remove a bond between a dangerous snake and its master, and restore it later, good as new,” said Dumbledore soothingly. “Most potions and rituals would be useless, and most alchemists aren’t able to practice at such a high level. But my friend is.”

“You told me Nicholas Flamel was dead,” Harry said, and his voice was choked and his senses reeling. “You said the Stone had been destroyed, and he couldn’t live without the Stone!”

“It was hardly my right to destroy a Stone that my friend depended on,” said Dumbledore. He sounded even calmer than he had when he was explaining about taking Harry’s bond with Dash away. “I gave it back to him, and Nicholas and Perenelle pretended they had died and kept out of sight. They rarely went out anyway, and they ceased to publish on alchemical discoveries some time ago. No one missed them. And Nicholas remained ready to help me when I needed him.”

“Then why tell me it was destroyed?”

“So you would stop worrying,” said Dumbledore, peering at Harry over his glasses, as if he thought Harry was a little dim. “And so that you would not become a conduit to anyone else, including perhaps professors who might take the Defense Against the Dark Arts position in the future, of secrets it was not their right to know.”

Harry, fury and shock impaling him like a lance, still managed to say something. “He was the one impersonating you, wasn’t he? When you were impersonating Moody.” He had thought that something was off with that Dumbledore even before he realized the real one was playing Moody. He was hesitant about making decisions that the real Headmaster would have made without anyone else’s help.

“He was,” said Dumbledore, with a serious nod. “But that does not mean that he has any bad motives, Harry. Again, I asked Nicholas to help me, and he obliged, much as he had earlier obliged me when I asked him to let me hide the Stone in the school.”

Harry finally did what he probably should have done from the first, but his shock had been too great. He fired a Stunner at Dumbledore and ran wildly towards the entrance of the cavern, or what he thought was the entrance. He couldn’t actually see it, but the cave was a little lighter in that direction.

Ropes shot out of the stone and coiled around him, hair and shoulders and arms and legs. Harry fought, twisting and shouting, and lost. He lay on the stone at last, shivering, and not just because Dumbledore had come up and taken his wand away. It felt wrong for something to be wrapped around him like that when the thing that was stood no chance of being Dash.

Dumbledore crouched down beside him and gave him a look rich with concern. “I’m sorry, my boy,” he whispered. “It was never my intention to hurt you.”

“Sod off,” said Harry, and tried to roll over and find a sharp stone to rub the ropes against. But Dumbledore raised him in the air with an easy motion of his wand, and guided Harry, floating, towards what looked like a pool of bright green or blue water on the floor of the cave, its surface surging with electricity.

“I never wanted to hurt you,” Dumbledore repeated. “It’s why I never made a motion to sever your bond with the basilisk before now. I didn’t know a safe way to do it, or one that could be restored later. But now that I know of an alchemical means to do it…”

Harry began to shake his head. Or maybe just shake. He couldn’t stop. His hands reached up and tore at the bonds Dumbledore had tied around him. Or they came up as much as they could. It wasn’t long before the rope creaked warningly, and then he was more tangled up than before. Flamel came over and arranged his arms to rest more comfortably with hands that trembled.

Dumbledore was doing something on the other side of the room. Flamel shot him a wary look, then leaned over and whispered to Harry. “I’m sorry about this. I didn’t want to do things this way. But I played Albus, and he—I saw how dangerous the basilisk was.”

“I’ll die without him,” Harry whispered back. He had no idea if it was true, but it felt true. “Do you understand that? Dash and I are bonded so deeply that we can use each other’s senses. What do you think will happen without him? I’ll die! Or go mad.”

Flamel hesitated, frowning, but Dumbledore looked up, and the frown changed into a trembling smile. “I made the calculations myself,” Flamel told Harry, bending over him as if he thought hearing the bad news from closer to would make a difference. “Designed the ritual myself. You have nothing to worry about. Even as the pool transmutes you and makes you into something new, someone without the bond to your basilisk, it will protect your mind.”

Harry tried to thrash even harder. He hadn’t really studied alchemy, but transmute sounded similar to transfigure, and he had listened to enough of Professor McGonagall’s lectures about human Transfiguration and what happened to people stuck in their Animagus forms. He was going to end up a different person.

The person Dumbledore wants me to be, or thinks I should be, instead of the person I’m growing up to be.

“This won’t hurt, Harry.” Dumbledore this time, coming over and looking down at Harry with the gentle gaze he remembered from second year, after the Chamber of Secrets. Why can he only do that when he thinks I’ve been wounded by a basilisk? Harry wondered in a daze, staring back. “I would never do that. It’s the main reason I waited so long. I really, really didn’t want to hurt you.” He sighed. “If there was more time—I still think I could have found a way to persuade you to sever the bond on your own. But we don’t have time. Not now. Not with what I’ve learned about Voldemort.”

Harry knew, somewhere outside the pounding haze of his terror, that those words were meant as a hook to make him ask what Dumbledore had learned about Voldemort. But he frankly didn’t care. His throat hurt, and he tried to scream. Dumbledore leaned over and gently pinched his lips shut.

“It won’t hurt,” he said. “I promise that.”

He thinks he’s doing the right thing. I won’t be able to persuade him, either. He thinks he’s really doing the right thing. He’s not torturing me, the way he thinks. He’s not trying to hurt me.

Dumbledore raised his wand slowly, and Harry rose from the floor of the cavern, ropes and all, on a pillar of warm air. He twisted around and then floated towards the pool of gleaming blue water, or whatever it was. Small droplets leaped from the side, and then larger sprays rose, and turned into frozen, gleaming shapes like stalagmites. Harry twisted his head to the side and screamed as loudly as he could.

Dash!

But there was no one there to hear him, and he continued his descent towards the pool of blue.

At least, he did until something flashed blindingly through the cavern, silver, bouncing from the walls and, oddly, from his chest. Harry thought he heard voices, and the sound of spells.

At the same time, something inside him was twisting, tearing loose. A bolt of agony shot up his chest towards his mouth, and Harry opened it to scream again, thinking Dumbledore had managed to start the alchemical ritual after all.

But when he shaped his lips around his teeth, he felt something new there. Something that was quickly turning non-painful, natural, and he realized he’d grown fangs.

*

Severus had ignored the children once he got them into the ritual space, other than telling them to stay close but out of the way so that he could conduct the ritual without worrying about bumping into them. He chanted quickly and quietly, one hand resting above his heart. The words of the chant themselves weren’t important; what was important was that they focused his mind on Harry and got him into the right mood.

He had chosen the Latin words for “shield,” “heart,” and “war,” over and over, because those were the most prominent things he was thinking about right now.

The shield Harry wore should protect him. It must.

But that did not mean it would hold up against whatever evil the Dark Lord had dreamed up, or Dark magic as strong and vile as he was likely to use…

Severus shook his worries out of his head, where they were clouding his concentration, and renewed the chant. He knew without looking that Granger had started to ask a question and Draco had hushed her violently enough to make her frown.

In fact, his perspective was starting to spread outside his own head, widening around the room like a flowing puddle of water. His fast breathing made him light-headed. So did his own heartbeat, which staggered and leaped in a way that corresponded to something else.

Something that reached into his chest and squeezed.

That is the rhythm of Harry’s heart.

For it to beat so fast could suggest a number of things, including fear or excitement, but being a Potions master, Severus’s mind leaped straight to poison. He sped the chant, and felt the skin on his chest stir.

It would be any moment now, at least if the ritual and the spell worked as designed. Severus motioned the children towards him with the hand that didn’t form the small fist above his heart. They came stumbling in their eagerness, Draco standing on his left and Granger and Weasley on his right.

Severus tilted his head back. The ceiling above him was starting to grow transparent, and a long tunnel of light reached down towards him out of it, rippling and glinting. Severus held out his hand, and felt the children clutch his robes. Draco must have told the Gryffindors what they needed to do.

The chant was building to a height now, and Severus couldn’t have stopped himself for a vault full of Galleons. His will was yearning outside his body; it seemed someone else’s that worked his lips and tongue and spoke the words.

The clutch on his robes was tighter and tighter, but far more potent was the clutch of Harry’s heartbeat, pulling him along to where he needed to go. Severus bowed his head and felt his tongue work once more on his teeth.

Then he was gone, and where he flashed through space, he pulled the children with him. When he landed, it was on stone, and he felt them rolling away from him. Severus grimaced. He had had no time to cushion the landing, but he was still sorry for the hurt he might have caused them.

He rose and drew his wand barely in time. Albus had a spell streaking towards him that was churning orange and green, and which Severus knew promised nothing good to anyone except the caster.

Albus.

Only Severus’s battle training, which he had acquired in part because he had been a Death Eater, enabled him to keep functioning through his shock. He took in the pool of blue alchemical light—Flamel was here—Harry was bound above it and screaming, but the shield on his chest seemed to have prevented anything permanent from happening—

And then Harry was sawing through the ropes, somehow, and the children scrambled past Severus towards him, and Severus and Albus were left to the fight.

*

Harry bit through the ropes with his fangs.

He knew even as he did it that that wasn’t what they were meant for, and his stomach squirmed and he wanted to vomit, but when he tried, he found venom in his mouth. His ordinary teeth ached.

He knew he had drawn the fangs from Dash somehow. Dash was lending them to him. He was supposed to use them to destroy his enemies.

But all Harry could think was that he had to get away, and even if Dumbledore was occupied right now with Snape and the others, Flamel was still there and might try to dunk him in the alchemical pool.

“What are you doing?”

In fact, Flamel was speaking right into his ear. The only thing on Harry’s mind now was defense. He slashed at Flamel with his fangs, and Flamel cried out and leaped backwards. Harry tried to crawl, his hands slapping into the ground, one foot trailing for a moment in the puddle of blue flame.

It was nothingness. It felt like nothingness. But Harry could also feel something else pulling and tugging at his muscles and veins in that leg, and he rolled further and further away, curling up like a wounded beast for a moment.

Or a snake.

It helped if he could think of himself as a snake. It made him feel less powerless. He raised his head and then got to his feet, bracing himself as he swayed drunkenly against the wall. When he lifted his head, he saw the duel.

Ron and Hermione, led by a Draco whose face was so pale it reflected the spells like a mirror, were trying to get to him. But they had to get around the periphery of the fight between Snape and Dumbledore, and that was incredibly hard. Harry saw the way they edged along, now and then staring nervously at him or Flamel or the blue pool, but mostly staring at the spells.

Spells Harry had never seen before crackled across the walls and the floor. There were ones that seemed to send small figurines or fleeting shadows hurtling through the air, although those always dissipated before they could pierce through the shields that Dumbledore or Snape had up in front of them. There were others that looked as though they were made of lightning, of storms, of wings, of ice, of acid. They filled the cavern with light so brilliant that Harry ducked his head and closed his eyes.

But he heard footsteps, and he whirled to his feet. No matter what it took, even if he had to bite someone, he wasn’t going to let Flamel or Dumbledore take him back and put him into the alchemical pool.

“Harry.”

That was a voice he could trust, though, and he would probably trust it even if he thought someone had Draco under the Imperius Curse. Harry gave a low sob and leaped into Draco’s arms. Draco hugged him and stroked his back, holding him a little awkwardly to the side so that there was no chance Harry’s fangs would pierce his skin.

“Draco,” Harry whispered, and then held out his hands so he could touch Ron and Hermione at the same time. They were coming up on either side of Draco. They stared at his mouth in fascinated horror, and then looked away. Hermione was already talking briskly about the bonds between Parselmouths and basilisks, and how she should have suspected this could happen.

“How are we going to get out of here?” Ron whispered.

“We should leave now,” Draco said. “No one’s guarding the entrance.” He nodded towards the part of the cave that sloped upwards and had some light coming through it.

“You shouldn’t leave. You should—you should understand that Albus only wants the best for you, Harry.”

At once Draco and Ron and Hermione stood in a triangle, so Harry was in the center of them. Harry, his jaw still aching from the transformation, blinked once and then again as he watched Flamel stand in front of them, his wand aimed uncertainly at them.

“I know he only wants the best,” said Flamel, although his eyes were wide and he looked back and forth between the side of the cave and Harry as if he assumed that he would be able to hold him there somehow. “He explained it to me. It might not seem that way. But he does.”

“And will you believe him all the time?” Hermione was the one who moved forwards fearlessly to confront Flamel, which Harry had to admit he hadn’t expected. She had her arms folded so tightly that she looked cold, or hurt. She glared at Flamel, though, and he actually lowered his wand to stare at her. “Are you just incapable of admitting that Professor Dumbledore doesn’t know what’s best?”

“Albus has been my friend for a long time,” said Flamel, and gave the duel a glance before he turned back to them. “He’s guided the Ministry and the wizarding world through some of the worst crises they’ve ever seen. I promise you, he has a reason for this, no matter how well-hidden it is.”

“But it’s not hidden,” Harry said, and coughed. He could feel the venom pooling in his throat, and he wanted to spit it out, even though he knew it must not be able to harm him, since Dash had given Harry his fangs. “He told me. He just said that he doesn’t think someone who is destined to defeat the Dark Lord should be a Parselmouth and bonded to a basilisk. He thinks I act too much like a Slytherin.”

“If you understand, then…” Flamel looked at him hopefully. “You know that’s true! We can’t have someone who’s a Parselmouth trying to bring Voldemort back instead of fighting him.”

“Why would I want to bring him back?” Harry shouted, and coughed again. The fangs were cutting into his lips when he tried to talk. He wanted to be out of here and have this over with. He wished that stupid Flamel would back down like he so obviously wanted to do and let them go. “He killed my parents! I hate him!”

“You called him the Dark Lord a minute ago.”

“Habit from being around my guardian,” Harry snapped. Snape didn’t like him calling Voldemort by name. But it didn’t really matter, did it? Harry thought viciously, as he watched Flamel’s eyes cloud with doubt. Some people would always assume that the smallest things were a sign of evil, because it made them more comfortable to be able to judge Harry.

“I think you should stay and listen to Albus. If he explains it one more time and you still disagree, then I’ll ask him to let you go.”

Flamel was raising spells Harry didn’t recognize with a flash of his wand. Draco and Hermione were yelling at him to stop, and Ron was actually trying to cast something, his face a picture of concentration, but it didn’t matter. Flamel was going to trap them here, and nothing they could do would stop it, Harry thought with a surge of despair.

He turned around, watching the duel, and saw the way Snape was falling back. He was trying, of course he was, but Dumbledore simply had too much power. He was going to win, and there was nothing anyone could do about any of it.

And then a dark shape stirred at the edge of Harry’s awareness, and the bond he’d almost been ignoring, because Dash was too far away, snapped into life. Harry shouted as he watched Dash slice through the spells Flamel had been trying to raise. Flamel started and dropped his wand.

Harry watched Dash’s neck twist. His fangs were missing, because he’d grown them from Harry’s mouth, and for a second Harry had a flashing understanding of how deeply he and Dash must be connected, if Dash could do that—

But the flash led to something deeper and more important, something else Harry understood, and he screamed, “Professor Snape! Down!”

Even though it meant that he took a long burn on his shoulder from Dumbledore’s latest spell, Snape obeyed him. He turned and dived straight down to the floor, rolling back into a corner of the cavern. That meant Dumbledore turned immediately to face Dash, another curse boiling on his wand.

At the same moment, Dash opened his eyes, gazing straight at Dumbledore.

Chapter 85: The Resonance of Silence

Chapter Text

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 feltsomething 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 youlet 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 86: The Spun Story

Chapter Text

Severus stood a few moments before he entered Hogwarts’s grounds. He wanted to compose himself as well as check Harry over and make sure, for the seventh time, that he bore no wounds.

He wished he could take Harry to a Healer right at the moment, but it would ruin their pretensions to realism, and that was the last thing Severus wanted when they’d worked so hard to come up with this story.

“I’m fine,” Harry whined. He had disheveled hair and a torn shirt, so Severus didn’t think he was. But he also understood the different levels that Harry might be speaking about, so he let him go with a final nod, and summoned up all the strength of will that had kept him sane during the war, and Lily’s death, and the years of self-loathing.

“Ready?” he mouthed.

Harry nodded at once, but Severus had to admit he was mostly keeping an eye on Dash. Only when the basilisk’s head moved did Severus stride through the gates.

Behind him came Harry, stumbling as if dazed, with Weasley and Granger supporting him. Most people knew—if only from the articles that Skeeter had written—that those two were his best friends, so they were the ones who had to publicly support Harry right now. Draco trailed behind, looking more forlorn at his minor part in the action than Severus thought appropriate. Then again, when the people waiting for them heard their tale, he would seem to have other things to be forlorn about.

And behind Draco, floating in a cage made of lightning for bars and a solid sheet of blue light for a floor, came Flamel.

Severus found it particularly appropriate that he had learned that particular imprisonment spell while conducting alchemical research on the Dark Lord’s behalf.

The crowd that had been pouring towards them immediately stopped running and shrieking and stared instead. Severus made sure that he was between the nearest members and Harry, anyway. That was partially for their protection, too. Dash might not be in the most reasonable of moods, right now.

“What happened, Professor Snape? What happened?”

That was Minister Fudge, hurrying up towards them and puffing so hard that his moustaches twitched as if they would fly. Severus inwardly thanked whatever twist of fate had brought him here. He was the best one to start telling their story to; he wouldn’t only believe it, he would lead most of the wizarding world along with him and spread it to as many people as possible.

“I used an ancient protection ritual to track my ward down,” Severus said. He had cast Sonorus before even approaching the gates, and he hoped no one else would notice how convenient that was. For now, they were simply hanging on his every word. “Imagine what I felt on finding that he had been kidnapped not by the Dark Lord, but by Albus Dumbledore.”

There was a surging hiss like a grass fire. Then people started shouting questions, but Fudge was still the closest one to Severus, and thus Severus heard his words.

“What happened?” Fudge whispered, face ashen, and looked over Severus’s shoulder as if he thought Dumbledore would come marching up the path from Hogsmeade to take all their heads off.

“Dumbledore tried to attack Harry and his basilisk at the same time.” Severus made his voice low and level. He couldn’t feign grief well enough, so it was best to sound as if he was suppressing strong emotion—which he was, if not the ones that everyone would be expecting from him. “The basilisk gazed at him. He is dead.”

Fudge leaped back from Dash, and so did half the crowd, even the ones who were behind other people and so would have had his gaze blocked from them. The world swung in the balance for a moment. Severus knew what would happen if someone blurted out the basilisk was dangerous, and managed to start a movement to take Dash away from Harry.

There would be more dead then.

“He saved me. They both saved me.”

Harry said the words in a dazed voice, and moved slowly in front of Severus, with Weasley and Granger still supporting him. Severus tensed, and noticed that Draco was doing much the same thing. They had agreed to this plan, they had helped Harry and Dash refine it, and still neither of them liked Harry being out in front of so many others without their protection.

“What do you mean, Mr. Potter?” Fudge was hovering anxiously, looking around as if trying to see what the reporters wanted him to do.

“Just what I said.” Harry raised his head and blinked dazedly, and for all that Severus didn’t much like his glasses most of the time, he had to admit they were helping to get the job done now. They made him look even younger and more innocent than otherwise, as if he had barely escaped death.

In the most important ways, he did.

“Dumbledore was going to change me,” Harry whispered. He turned to look at Flamel, and trembled a little, and turned away again, so fast that Weasley and Granger scrambled to adjust. He gave the Minister a single appealing glance that Severus was not sure he would have been able to withstand even when he still hated Harry. “He wanted me not to be a Parselmouth or someone with friends in all the Houses or bonded to Dash or capable of making my own decisions. He was going to use an alchemical ritual to change me.”

“Alchemical!” Fudge was the one to draw the correct conclusion, as they had all hoped he would be when they came up with this plan, staring at the cage. “Then this must be Nicholas Flamel!”

Another rush of whispers and hisses from the crowd. Harry closed his eyes and almost swayed forwards. “Yes, sir,” he said.

“But how could they—”

“It was an untested alchemical ritual, sir.” Harry raised his head, and his eyes were wide and desperate, and Merlin, Severus thought, if the boy could ever be persuaded to act like this in any other cause than trying to save people, the wizarding world would be in trouble in a few years. “They didn’t know what it would do! It was just this huge pool of blue fire, and they were going to put me in it, and—” He worried his lip with his teeth. “How could they know what it would do if they never used it before?”

“Indeed,” said Fudge, and did some more staring at Flamel. Some people were shouting now, but they were all in the back of the crowd. The nearer ones were still more interested in listening to what Fudge would say. “Of course we will need to launch our own investigation.”

“Of course,” said Harry, and bowed his head, and started to shiver. It was real, Severus thought as he reached for the clasp of the cloak around his throat, and yet the perfect touch.

Am I even going to be able to tell the difference between reality and pretense in a few years? Perhaps it is a good thing that Harry is so honest.

“Take my cloak, Mr. Potter,” said Fudge at once, and then swept it off his shoulders and around Harry’s. Granger had been raising her wand, doubtless to cast a Warming Charm, but she pulled back her hand and gave Severus a tiny grim smile. No one else seemed to pick up on that, least of all the Minister, who was now kneeling down in front of Harry and staring at him with earnest eyes. “You have nothing to worry about, Mr. Potter. A lot of precedent exists in the form of self-defense, and magical bondmates and familiars of course have the right to defend their masters.”

Severus suspected he was one of only four people there who saw Harry flinch when Fudge described him as Dash’s “master.” He met Harry’s eye and held it. They couldn’t afford an outburst over terminology right now.

Harry nodded at once and focused back on Fudge. “Do they, sir?” he asked in a faint voice, and shivered dramatically, and pulled the cloak even closer. “I wasn’t sure. All I could think about the whole way back here was if Dash was going to get in trouble.” He choked and buried his head against Fudge’s shoulder, shaking a little. Severus could hear some of the murmuring crowd start to sound sympathetic.

He relaxed a bit. That was imperative, for them to gain the crowd’s protection if they were going to pull this off. Too many people who thought Dash was dangerous or who simply disbelieved their story, and they would be charged with murder.

Fudge patted Harry’s shoulders and head, and spoke loud words of inspiration and comfort. By now, there were some reporters crowding up around them, since they’d been there to cover the Champions’ victory. They snapped photographs of Harry and Fudge standing together, and nodded as Fudge spoke about how tragic it was that someone as respected as Professor Dumbledore had become this figure, he must have been losing his wits for years and no one had noticed, really tragic. One of Fudge’s flunkies came up to Severus to get Apparition coordinates from him and send Aurors to retrieve Dumbledore’s body.

Severus relaxed some of his tense stance and nodded to Draco as he caught his eye. This was the best they could hope for, right now.

And he let his gaze pass over Flamel, who was standing with his head hanging inside the cage.

Remember our bargain, old man.

*

Minerva stepped quietly out of the hospital wing. In the end, Minister Fudge had agreed that Harry could remain at Hogwarts instead of going to St. Mungo’s. Harry had looked pathetic and small as he said that he trusted Madam Pomfrey more than any other Healer, and he didn’t want people sneaking in to take looks at him the way they would at St. Mungo’s.

Minerva wondered with part of her thoughts how much of that was an act. If this was a plan, neither Severus nor Harry had yet had time to tell her so.

But it was not the primary concern occupying her mind at the moment.

Minerva paced slowly along the corridor, and paused at the top of the stairs, wondering for a moment which direction she wanted to go. Then she nodded and turned towards the long, winding set of steps that would ultimately bear her to the Astronomy Tower.

She felt the need of cold heights and clear air, at the moment.

The bonfire that someone had lit to let photographers and Aurors see what they were doing blazed beneath her, but although she leaned her arms on the parapet, Minerva turned her gaze to the stars instead. Old knowledge rose in her mind, present from her own Astronomy lessons at Hogwarts, telling her which constellations presaged good fortune and which ones the turn of the seasons. She sighed a second later.

It was the beginning of summer, and her head and heart ached.

Albus was dead.

In reality, she could argue with herself, could tell herself that he had died long before, when his fear had so overpowered him that he thought manipulating most of his staff and students to pose as Moody was a good idea. She could lay out all the horrible things he had done in her mind, see them gleaming there like unsheathed blades. She could think about what Harry had already said, the alchemical pool and the ritual that was meant to sever his bond with Dash, and shudder in unfeigned horror.

But Minerva could also remember the professor who had first shown her the wonders of Transfiguration, by transforming his desk into a white stallion that had galloped around the room and then come to lean its nose on Albus’s shoulder and snort into his hair. She could remember the confident war leader who had inspired the Order of the Phoenix so much during the battles of the first war. She could remember the man who had cheered her up after a particularly hard day of teaching with nothing more than a cup of tea and an odd remark.

On the top of the Astronomy Tower, Minerva bowed her head and let herself weep for a man who was now dead, in all senses of the word.

*

“I would like to know what you think you’ve been involving my son in.”

Draco clenched his hands into fists. When Father had Flooed Professor Snape, the professor had turned around and looked once at him. Draco understood the meaning of that glance without needing the words. He was welcome to listen in, as long as he stood out of sight and didn’t make any noise that would let Lucius know he was there.

“He was present when Dash came bolting out of the maze.” Professor Snape let his hands fall into casual positions on the chair, but Draco understood that they were only casual to someone who wasn’t looking closely. Father would be, of course. For a moment, Draco wondered what the point of the game was when everyone involved knew it was a game, but then he shook that away and went on listening. “I could hardly put him off when he knew Harry was in danger from that.”

“The closeness between my son and Potter bothers me.”

Draco bit the side of his lip, but Professor Snape gave a harsh chuckle. “How can you complain about it when you’ve supported the boy politically and invited him into your home for Christmas, Lucius?”

“I did that because he was your ward, and Draco wanted him there.”

“I do not believe that, Lucius.”

There was a long, tense silence. Draco knew he didn’t understand all the reasons that the silence was tense. He ignored the temptation to think about it right now. He had to remember the words and the nuances, so he could reason it out on his own later.

“The boy is interesting to support politically,” Father finally said, in the tone that always made Draco shiver when he heard Father use it. “But that does not mean that you have the right to endanger my son.”

“You will need to speak to Draco about that. It was his decision.”

“He isn’t legally of age—”

“Lucius.” Professor Snape leaned forwards, and Draco heard the fabric of his chair creak a little under him. “You were not available to consult, and Draco would have held me back if I tried to dismiss him, particularly because I would have had to spare time and energy I did not have to contain him. I cared more about finding Harry than containing Draco.”

Silence. Draco shifted from foot to foot, and wondered what Father was thinking.

If he tried to guess it, then maybe he could. Father was ready to be outraged that Professor Snape had thought more about Harry’s life than Draco’s—but on the other hand, he would have done the same thing if Draco was the one in danger and Harry was the one begging Father to let him go. So Father would recognize the futility of getting angry, even if he’d like to.

At least, Draco hoped that would be the case. He had to admit that he didn’t know how he would react if Father reached a different decision.

Father finally sighed. “Is what you told the papers about Dumbledore and Flamel really true?”

“In essentials,” said Professor Snape, even as Draco relaxed. Father had accepted what the professor said enough not to make a fuss. That was the best thing Draco could hope for right now. “Dumbledore enchanted the Triwizard Cup into a Portkey, and set barriers around it so that no one but Harry could approach it. When it had whisked him to a cave, he took away Harry’s wand and intended to subject him to an alchemical experiment Flamel had set up that was supposed to sever Dash and Harry’s bond and take away Harry’s ability to speak Parseltongue—temporarily, he claimed.” Professor Snape made a harsh sound, and then went on. “Flamel was the one impersonating Dumbledore when Dumbledore impersonated Moody.”

“What was the purpose of such an intricate deception?”

“So that Dumbledore could have more time to assess the threat that he believed Harry posed and test him on an intimate level, I assume.”

Professor Snape glanced aside again, and Draco knew he was supposed to leave the room now. He stayed where he was, not bothering to fold his arms or squint. He wanted to hear this, and there was no way that he was simply going to let Professor Snape dismiss him when he was ready.

The professor’s eyebrows tightened, but he couldn’t order Draco out without betraying is presence to Father. Still, Draco held his breath until Professor Snape turned back to the conversation as Father asked another question.

He knew he would pay for defying Snape’s will later. But right now, the opportunity to be here was too important to pass up.

*

“It’s true that Dumbledore died, Severus?”

Severus resisted the temptation to rub his forehead, where a headache was forming. It was only partially a result of this entire situation. Part of it also came from Draco standing there like someone had applied a Sticking Charm to his feet.

But he also understood why Draco was still there, and could not entirely deprecate the impulses that had made him remain.

“It is,” he said, and watched the expressions on Lucius’s face change. It was no bad microcosm of the changes that Severus knew would be taking place in the wizarding world now. There would be so many people trying to figure out how to assess the death, take advantage of it, or be outraged by it in the best way.

Albus never had that many people who loved him.

It was more like the celebrity-worship accorded Harry than Severus had supposed. There were people fascinated by the details as they had been by the details of Harry’s abuse, many fewer who had any personal feeling or sympathy to invest. Ironically, it would help them now, as Severus no longer thought they would be brought up on charges of murder.

But it pressed oddly on his heart, too.

Severus shook the mood off. It was natural to feel disconcerted that someone with such influence on his life had disappeared so suddenly.

He had no more emotion than that to waste on Dumbledore.

“You do know that the rumors of the basilisk being behind it will spread even faster than news of the death itself?”

Severus held back his own impatience at the way Lucius tended to talk. The rumor of Dumbledore being dead would hardly be separate from its cause in the first place, since he hadn’t been in poor health and most people would be startled to hear of his death. “I know that. And it is no rumor. Dash gazed at him.”

“Why? I mean, why now when he hadn’t before?”

“I have the impression that Dash decided against leaving that particular enemy alive any longer.”

Lucius was silent in what looked like pure surprise. And then he smiled and gave a faint nod. “I see. Will you give my very best regards to Mr. Potter?”

Now Lucius would try even harder to ingratiate himself with Harry, Severus thought. Still, he would hardly be alone in that; the Minister had already started, and Pomfrey had had to place protective spells around the hospital wing to keep out the sheer number of owls that were trying to get in. Not to mention the Dark families already allied with him who thought he was the reincarnation of Slytherin.

“It’ll be the end of term shortly. You can do that yourself,” he said, and he and Lucius exchanged only a few more pleasantries before Severus felt ready to end the conversation. When he’d closed the Floo, he turned to survey Draco.

“Was that worth staying to listen to?”

“Yes,” said Draco. He was quiet, and a little pale, but he looked up at Severus as if he was contemplating some of the mysteries of life. “To know what Father wants, and that he was worried about me. Thank you.” He gave Severus a smile as reserved as some of Lucius’s and slipped out of the room.

Severus rolled his eyes and resisted the temptation to go up to the hospital wing to check on Harry. He’d already been twice.

And Harry was probably asleep by now, and Dash would be with him. Severus could not imagine what danger Harry would be in as long as Dash was present.

*

Harry lay awake in the hospital wing, touching Dash’s back with one hand. Dash was wrapped around him and had last said something about being very glad that his fangs were back in his mouth. Harry thought it had exhausted him, sending them ahead like that when Harry had needed them. It was probably why Harry could barely touch the bond right now; Dash had gone deep into slumber to recover.

So far, everything seemed to be working out. Harry didn’t think Minister Fudge really believed them, but he’d accepted their story, so that was good. And Flamel had agreed to confess all the secrets of the alchemical pool, because it would save his life.

“They won’t want to give the Dementor’s Kiss to someone who can tell the Unspeakables things they never knew about alchemy.”

Harry shivered and wished he could cast a Warming Charm. But even though they’d recovered his wand from Dumbledore’s—body, Madam Pomfrey didn’t want him casting any magic right now. She said he was as exhausted as Dash and had to rest until his body recovered.

If I’m so exhausted, then why is it so bloody hard to fall asleep? Harry thought, and rolled over a little, as much as he could with Dash’s body mostly pinning him down, and kicked at the covers.

That made him feel a little better, although it didn’t make him feel any more sleepy. Harry decided to try something that had worked a few times at the Dursleys’ house. He made a commitment to not moving. No matter how much something itched or felt cramped, he lay there and imagined his legs and arms just refusing to move.

Of course, then his hair and the back of his neck and his cheek and his nose all itched fiercely. But Harry lay as still as he could, and the itches did ease.

It was even working better than normal, with his limbs feeling so heavy that Harry was no longer sure he could move them if he wanted to. He yawned and nestled against Dash, watching the room with sleepy eyes. If he blinked or looked around, it was like there was a swirling dark grey vortex in front of him.

No, there was a swirling dark grey vortex in front of him.

Harry gasped and tried to call out, but his voice had gone, too. And when he reached out instinctively for Dash, there was no answer. Exhaustion too deep, the bond buried far enough that Harry couldn’t touch it…

He fell down a tunnel. He fell asleep, and opened his eyes to find himself in a flickering, dark red mist.

And a voice he knew well said, in Parseltongue, “Welcome, Harry Potter, to my resurrection.”

Chapter 87: Resurrection

Chapter Text

Harry fought, twisting as hard as he could in the grip of the Dark magic. He kept reaching for Snape’s shield charm, thinking it must be around here somewhere, knowing that he would succeed if he could only find it—

But the laughter kept echoing around him, and there were dark red shadows on either side of him, breaking and twisting apart, winding like serpents to escort him down.

“Looking for this?”

Harry thought he saw the chain with Snape’s charm dangling ahead of him. He lunged for it, and the image broke apart in his fingers. Harry stared at it in silent shock, not sure what he was supposed to do or say.

“It is weakened, after how much it had to stand up to earlier. It defended you from Dumbledore and alchemy.” The laughter echoed again, mingling with the hisses from the serpents at Harry’s sides, which were only nonsense to him, not Parseltongue. “I suppose I should thank you. One of your greatest defenses down, and one of my greatest enemies dead…only to leave you vulnerable to Lord Voldemort.”

Harry lifted his head. He had stopped drifting, or falling. There was something solid beneath his feet now. He could stare into the darkness and see that it was tinged red, as if from the light of a fire. He began to shiver, and couldn’t stop.

There was a chair in front of the fire. It sat with its back to him, but Harry thought he knew what he would see when it turned around.

He wasn’t sure that his mind would survive the sight.

“You should have known better than to oppose me, Harry Potter.” The voice was so low and the words so throbbing that Harry honestly wasn’t sure whether they were in Parseltongue or English. “You should have known better than to think you would get away with it…”

Harry straightened his spine, his breathing painfully fast. “Big words for a man who hasn’t even showed himself yet,” he said, even though he knew he probably would regret that in a minute.

The chair turned around. Harry felt a scream bubbling up in his throat, and did his best to control it. He had to control it. He had to do what he could to win this battle, or he was going to die.

Something small floated out of the chair. It was a malformed baby, or that was what it looked like, with small, bulbous arms and a head that dangled on its neck. It was surrounded by a mixture of red and black. Firelight, Harry thought, trying to bolt backwards instinctively, and foiled when the serpents around him tightened their grip. And blood. And something else he thought might be poison.

It was disgusting. Especially when the baby’s red eyes fixed on him and he showed sharp little teeth, like a rat’s.

“It was so perfect. I only had to wait until you exhausted yourself and your basilisk so greatly that he could not come to your defense. And there is no way, now, that I need to wait for a risky ritual and someone to actually kidnap you. My loyal servants. No, Harry Potter, why should I do that, when I can simply…”

There was a flickering motion Harry didn’t understand, but then he did, and he recoiled. The baby had a long, forked tongue, black and yellow-spotted like some dying fungus, and he lashed it out and into Harry.

“…take a bit of your soul.”

Harry screamed the next second as pain danced through him. It hurt, it hurt so much. There was pain in his belly and his kneecaps were shattering and his arms were breaking and someone was slamming an iron rod into his elbows over and over. He fell to his knees, retching, or he did in some world.

But he was also still upright between the serpents, and Voldemort was carefully biting away a piece of something inside him.

The chewing went on, and on. Harry screamed, and screamed, and tried his best to reach for Dash. They were bonded. They should still be bonded at the deepest level, and if he could only reach that level and make Dash understand what was happening to him—

He will not come, Harry Potter. He is exhausted. Shut away from you.

The voice was inside his inner mind, the place that only Dash had ever touched. Harry screamed again, and bent forwards with his arms around his stomach, and stood motionless in the grip of the serpents.

He remembered hearing that the Cruciatus Curse could make people go mad. He thought he could feel that happening to him. Something was slipping away, anyway, and it was probably his sanity, in the face of all this pain.

Sanity? Oh, no. That’s only your innocence, boy.

The chewing closed in on him. Harry felt for a moment as if it had stopped, and even though he knew it was stupid, he lunged against the bonds that held him, trying to run away, trying to get away.

Then the mouth jerked, and Harry screamed again.

Voldemort had chewed a bit of his soul free, and he was yanking on it, tearing and rotating his head, or his tongue, or his jaws, or whatever he was really using to do this, and Harry screamed again, and his throat vibrated with the sound, and Voldemort laughed and laughed in his head until Harry did want to go mad, because that would mean he wouldn’t have to hear the laughter anymore.

The sound stopped.

Harry opened his eyes, honestly not sure what he would see. Maybe he was mad, and then he would be upset because he wouldn’t ever see Dash again, but that might be a price worth paying if the pain was stopped.

Of course, there were still ripples of pain running around him, like a river. Just not the sound of the laughter anymore. Harry stared down at the river that was visible here, dark and covered with stars, and then looked up.

In front of him stood Voldemort.

He was worse than the images Harry had seen of him in the photographs of the past, worse than the deformed baby. His skin was pale and his fingers were long and looked as if they had claws at the end. He was tall and slender and he had no hair. His mouth had the same pointed teeth when he laughed.

But that wasn’t the worst. What made it the worst was that he didn’t have red eyes, like the baby, or dark ones like the Tom Riddle Harry had confronted in second year. His eyes were the same brilliant green as Harry’s.

“So strange that you forgot about me,” Voldemort murmured, and began to pace in circles around him. Harry floated, and turned to face him, not because he wanted to but because the serpents, or whatever was really holding him, turned him at Voldemort’s will. Voldemort leaned forwards and peered at him with a pensive frown. “When I am your worst enemy, when I alone had the power to inflict a soul-wound on you the likes of which you have never seen. Harry Potter…”

He lifted his hand, and laid his long fingers on Harry’s scar. There was a flash of light and searing blood in Harry’s sight, and he began to cough desperately. Such pain, it was like his nose and his cheek and his glasses all being broken at once.

“I do not think you can ignore me now,” said Voldemort, and dropped his hand back to his side. “Not when I know that you have a piece of my soul, and I carry a piece of yours.”

Harry stared at him through eyes blurred with agony, and Voldemort laughed again, the sound of something dark sneaking out of the cupboard under the stairs. “I would not long remain ignorant of that, Harry,” he said, and caressed the left side of Harry’s face, leading to another blaze. “Not when we forged this connection in dreams without effort, and not when I knew your basilisk had tried to bite my dream-form and poisoned you instead. It is the only logical explanation.”

Harry managed to find his voice, down somewhere under all the layers of hatred and fear and despair. “Then—what are you going to do? Kill me now?”

The laughter again, echoing around him, and Harry screamed without regard for his throat or who was hearing him. Voldemort finally stopped, and leaned forwards, his forehead resting against Harry’s scar. The pain had ebbed enough that Harry finally began to understand how much Voldemort controlled here, and he shuddered and sobbed.

He would hurt because Voldemort wanted him to. He would recover because Voldemort wanted him to. He had no power here.

“I would have some trouble killing you now, Harry, when I carry a piece of your soul. When I am your Horcrux as much as you are mine.”

No.

The denial echoed in Harry’s head and through the dark-lit space around him, but it had no effect on Voldemort or the noises he was making, which were too choked by amusement to get out of his throat. Harry twisted and fought, and then hung there, because Voldemort willed it so, hating and hurting and hopeless.

“I wonder if you fully comprehend all I can do, now,” said Voldemort in a murmur, stepping away and raising his hand. The white skin that sheathed it flickered, and for an instant, Harry saw tanned, lightly freckled skin that he was sure was his. He had to look away, nausea eating into his belly. “Look like you. Touch your mind. Understand you from the inside out. Take advantage of soul-bonds.”

Harry stiffened. No

But yes, Harry,” said Voldemort, dropping into Parseltongue. “Take advantage of soul-bonds. Command your basilisk, with whom you have a soul-bond. Let us try it, shall we? Dash, come to me! Lord Voldemort commands it!

*

Draco shot upright in his chair. There was something happening in front of him, and he didn’t immediately know what it was. Nor did he remember where he was until he got his hands screwed into his eyes and some of the sleep out of them, and saw the bed in front of him, with Harry thrashing and whimpering.

Hospital wing, Draco thought dazedly, and then Potions reaction? And then Nightmare!

“Harry!” Draco hissed under his breath, leaning forwards to shake him. “It’s all right! You’re here, it’s all right, Dumbledore and Flamel didn’t manage to transform you! And Dash is all right, and Professor Snape and I and your friends are all right!”

Harry didn’t wake up. He continued screaming. But now he was making no sound, and there was ugly, bloody sweat breaking out all over his skin. Draco felt fear grip and shake him as it hadn’t since the night of the Yule Ball.

“Harry!”

Dash was a motionless, sleeping lump when Draco tried to poke him. Draco even tried to cast the Awakening Charm, but either it didn’t work on basilisks or Dash was that exhausted. He remained motionless.

“Madam Pomfrey!” Draco shouted, but she didn’t come. He didn’t have any idea where she was, and no time to get her.

Draco took off running straight towards the dungeons, towards the one person he could be sure was going to be there, if only because he would be too tired to go somewhere else after the battle with Dumbledore. Professor Snape would know what to do, how to rescue Harry. It was an article of faith that Draco wouldn’t allow himself to doubt.

Behind him, he heard something harsh and heavy stir, and hoped that meant Dash was awakening at last. It had sounded like his tail falling to the floor.

But for the moment, Draco didn’t turn back. He hurled himself down stairs, and through corridors, and around corners, ignoring all the tricks that Hogwarts usually used to trip people up or slow them down. Harry needed Professor Snape, and he needed him now.

*

Harry felt as though he hadn’t yet tasted the depths of despair when he saw Dash appear on the floor at his feet. The room had been taking on more definition as Voldemort called out in Parseltongue, again and again. Now it looked like the Chamber of Secrets, although without the water and with more furniture.

Dash lifted his head and twisted it slowly back and forth. He said nothing. But he went still when he saw Voldemort, except for his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth.

Yes, that’s right,” said Voldemort, and his voice was sweet and coaxing. “Come to me, my beautiful basilisk.”

Dash slithered slowly forwards. Harry began to shudder, and couldn’t stop, shaking with what felt like shock. Dash was never this silent. It meant—it might mean that he was under Voldemort’s control…

Of course it does, Harry.

That was a silent voice again, echoing inside Harry’s head the way no one but Dash had ever been able to do, and Harry watched in silence himself as Voldemort bent down and slid his spindly arms underneath Dash’s bulk. Of course, with him controlling everything in this place between souls where their minds met, he could give himself the strength.

Part of Harry was amazed he could still think that clearly, despite everything, but the rest of him was occupied with watching as Voldemort broke into breathless laughter and turned around. Dash lay coiled in his arms like a statue, or a piece of snake jewelry Harry had glimpsed once in Knockturn Alley, his head lifted and held motionless in the air.

“What a sensation! Now I can see why you enjoy having a basilisk so much, Potter. I understand—”

Dash moved.

Harry had never seen speed like that. From motionless statue to sudden, whipping blur, Dash simply went. He was coiled around Voldemort in seconds, and squeezing, and squeezing, and squeezing.

Harry kept staring, kept waiting for him to use his fangs or his gaze. But Dash didn’t. He squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed. He lifted another coil and flung it around Voldemort’s face when Voldemort tried to incant a spell.

Suddenly the bonds holding Harry were gone. Harry fell forwards, tumbling onto his knees and gasping harshly at the impact. He tried to stand, but the room was weaving around him and he couldn’t tell the right direction to run in.

Dash?

Dash spoke, but not to him. I am not an ordinary basilisk, he spat, his tongue flicking out to brush Voldemort’s lipless mouth. Maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to control me.

And then he opened his mouth, his jaws dislocating, and rammed straight at Voldemort’s face. Voldemort screamed. Harry stared as he watched Voldemort’s jaws get forced wider and wider in turn, and Dash dive down his throat, wrapping him from both inside and out, moving in search of something.

You cannot take the boy’s soul-piece from me! It is buried too deeply! A condition of my existence!

Harry’s eyes shut of their own accord in pain as he felt something tugging on him. I think he’s right, Dash, he whispered, having no idea if Voldemort would manage to hear him along their bond or not. I don’t think you can just patch a piece of broken soul back in.

Dash didn’t answer him, but kept diving. Harry could feel himself start vibrating in pain. His eyes teared and he whined, ducking his head and wrapping his arms around his chest. It wasn’t nearly as bad as what Voldemort had put him through when he was making the new Horcrux, but it was bad enough.

We have to go, Dash. We have to leave it with him and go. I don’t even know what he did to create this, not really. Let him go!

It was only the last, shouted words that made Dash uncoil from Voldemort and slither over to Harry. He wrapped himself around Harry and looked deep into his eyes. I can get you out of here. And I can’t kill him, not yet, but I can do something else. Will you trust me?

Harry nodded without thought. Dash probably didn’t even need the motion to sense how much Harry trusted him. He reached out with a soft tongue and nuzzled it against Harry’s cheek, then reared and dived straight at the floor.

It parted in front of them, as soft as some dreams Harry remembered having in the past, when they were normal dreams instead of visions or previews of torture. He was falling, he thought, but it wasn’t a horrible fall. And Dash was wrapped around him and wrapping tighter, as if he wanted to choke Harry the way he’d choked Voldemort.

Why did you constrict him like that?

As joined as they were, Harry didn’t need to ask the question. The thought wandered across his mind, and Dash’s answer wandered up to it in return. He’s immune to my gaze and my fangs as long as he has part of your soul. But he’s vulnerable that way. And I was hoping I could make him cough up the piece he took.

Harry shivered. Now that he was getting beyond the pain and the immediate reach of Voldemort, he could feel something else. And that something was Dash’s rage, so immense and thick and sliding that it was like he stood on the back of another basilisk.

Here. Here we are.

They were at the deep level again, Harry decided, staring around and trying not to breathe too hard. Stars slid past them, bright smears of light against darkness that pressed on Harry’s skin. Harry could still feel Dash’s coils more strongly, though. He shivered again. Are you going to do something that can reverse the Horcrux process?

Dash said nothing for a moment. Then he said, I am going to do something that will repair the gaping place in your soul and make it less vulnerable. I think you’re right about not being able to get the piece of soul back from Voldemort for you.

He sounded so forlorn that part of Harry melted, and it was like a soothing balm to the pain that Voldemort’s curses had left. He reached out and stroked Dash’s neck, making him sigh and stretch. I don’t mind if you can’t do that. We’ll figure something out. It didn’t happen the way anyone thought it would, but that wasn’t your fault.

Dash was silent for long moments, his tongue darting. Then he said, Harry, look at me.

Harry lifted his head fearlessly, even when he saw the clear lids over Dash’s eyes trembling. He knew what he was going to see. He didn’t care. Dash had said he couldn’t kill Voldemort with his gaze while he carried part of Harry’s soul. That must mean he couldn’t kill Harry, either.

Harry fell into golden depths.

They were like layered suns, fire that was brighter and clearer than Fawkes’s. Harry heard himself catch his breath, and thought he could have gone on staring for years, eons, ages. He reached out and laid his hand on Dash’s neck.

Now.

Harry felt as though something had wrapped him up, probably the fire from the suns. But this wasn’t painful. Harry would have screamed, even though it was Dash, if it had caused him more pain. Instead, there was simply flame, heat, trickling warmth, and Harry laughed and reached out to the small ball of golden light floating towards him. He felt like a child again.

There is one thing I must tell you before you accept it, Dash whispered, and the ball of flame halted just beyond his reach.

I’ll be sharing your soul with you if I take that, won’t I? Harry discovered that he felt amazingly calm. He reached out again, and the ball bobbed up and down as if it was Dash’s head nodding in surprise.

Yes. But more than that, Harry…we already partially shared a soul, which is why Voldemort thought he could command me. Again, somewhere outside and beneath the fire, Harry felt Dash’s rage shifting. This is going to change you a bit. You can summon my fangs more quickly, now. You’ll have a shadow of scales beneath your skin. You might acquire some shapeshifting abilities. And some of the beliefs that people have about you are going to come true.

As long as I don’t turn evil or something like that, I don’t care.

Dash sighed as though Harry had relieved him greatly, and then he said, No. Nothing like that. We’ll still disagree as much as we always did on you participating in this war and risking everything in order to rescue your friends.

Harry laughed happily and continued to hold his hands out, fingers stroking the side of the ball of fire. Well, come on, Dash. Let me have it.

The ball of fire blazed towards him, until it was all he could see.

And then it was him. Harry gasped with his mouth open, then vomited flames like a dragon. He watched in a daze as they raced away from him and made the emblem of a bridge before him. Harry stood on one side of it.

On the other side was a rearing, glorious basilisk, as big as the one Harry had battled in the Chamber of Secrets, a scarlet plume as long as Harry’s arm streaming from his head. His fangs dripped poison on the floor that made holes in the imagined stone. Power surged and sang around him, and now and then Harry caught a glimpse of a robed human figure inside his body, a figure that looked familiar.

That’s the way you’re going to look when your power is full-grown, isn’t it? Harry asked, awed. How many years will that be?

I don’t know.

Dash’s voice was ringing, gentle, and Harry found himself leaning back in shock as their souls collided. He had no idea what Dash saw, but he thought he could guess, because the human figure within the basilisk was spinning, and Harry thought, when he could see the face fully, he would see his face—

But he didn’t, unless it was the way Harry himself was going to look when he was a lot older. This man was stooped, and wore thick, old-fashioned robes, and a long beard. Harry caught his breath. Is that Dumbledore?

Of course not. Dash’s voice was reassuring, and Harry had another sensation of giant coils wrapping him, supporting him and cradling him. But when I told you that some people’s beliefs about you would come true, Harry—

There was a soundless clash of thunder, the opposite of the kind of dazzling flash that Harry had had when Voldemort touched his scar, and then he was floating inside shadows made of light and acid and darkness and power, and he knew why the human figure looked so familiar.

It wore the face of the statue that he had once seen in the Chamber of Secrets.

That’s what he meant by people’s beliefs about me coming true, Harry thought, and the last revelation split his consciousness and flung him headlong into sleep, and safety.

Dash had the soul of Salazar Slytherin.

Chapter 88: Stories Told in Mourning

Chapter Text

Severus hurtled to a stop at the side of Harry’s bed and stared down at him. He was no longer thrashing and moaning as Draco had described when he came to find Severus. He no longer bled. He simply lay still with a face as pale as a pearl.

Severus cast the spell that would tell him if Harry was still breathing, and nearly collapsed when the reassuring numbers formed above his chest. He reached out and touched Dash, and found him as heavy and cold and unresponsive. He shook his head, unsure whether that was only exhaustion or if Dash had gone to protect Harry in his nightmares, wherever they were.

“What is it? Can you save him?”

Severus opened his mouth to answer Draco, and just at that moment, Harry gave a huge cough. It did make drops of blood fly out of his mouth, and Severus’s wand fly through the pattern of yet another diagnostic spell. But he found nothing wrong. Harry was coughing, but now the only blood was coming from the scar on his forehead.

And Severus had always been aware that that scar was anything but normal.

“Dash!” Harry opened his eyes, saw Severus and Draco standing there, and abruptly sat up and threw his arms around them.

Severus bowed his head and held tight, feeling his own exhaustion drumming through his veins. There was something warm next to his chest that shouldn’t be there, though, that was far more than the warmth of his own feelings. He reached out and drew the chain that held the shield charm he had made for Harry out of his robes. He winced when he saw the blackened and charred state of the shield.

Harry winced, too. “Voldemort said—he said the charm and Dash were exhausted protecting me from Dumbledore.”

“Is Dash all right?”

Harry nodded to Draco, and then broke free of Severus to lean over and stroke Dash’s neck. Severus tried not to be resentful, and mostly succeeded.

“Voldemort pulled me into his mind,” Harry whispered. A slow trail of blood crept down his cheek from his scar, winding around the side of his mouth. “It was horrible. He took—he took part of my soul, and said that made him my Horcrux.”

Severus closed his eyes, but he also changed the sharp motion of his wand, that had been about to start a healing charm, into one that raised walls of privacy around them. The last thing they needed was Pomfrey or, far worse, a curious Auror intruding on them and carrying the name of Horcruxes out into the wider world.

“What does that mean? Do you think that’s true?”

“I don’t—know. I don’t know how much I was dreaming and how much he was really doing because of the connection between us. But I know—after he ate part of my soul, and I felt him doing ¬that—he had my eyes.”

Severus felt sick with horror, but he forced his voice into action and his eyes open. “Then the Dark Lord no longer wants to kill you?”

“I don’t know.” Harry shivered. “I don’t know. I think he’s mad. It was the most horrible thing I’ve ever seen in my life.”

Even with the many horrible things Harry had lived through, that Severus could well believe.

Then Harry looked at Dash, and his face changed with a mixture of tenderness and awe that Severus would have given a quarter of his brewing skill to have inspired himself. “But even though Voldemort did that and told me he could just keep doing whatever he wanted, Dash saved me. Voldemort thought he could control Dash because he had part of my soul. And because he’s a Parselmouth on his own, I reckon,” Harry added, as if that wasn’t of much importance. “But Dash fooled him. He pretended to obey, and then he tore us free. And he said—Dash said I could share his soul.”

“That’s impossible.”

Severus was sorry for the way his words made Harry start, but only for that. He sank down in front of him and took his hands. For the first time since he and Dash had come back, Harry seemed to be really looking at him, a deep crease between his brows as he stared at Severus.

“Why?” His voice was the softest breath.

“Because that would mean you are essentially the same being,” said Severus. “And if he died, you would, too.”

That didn’t have the effect on Harry that he’d hoped. Harry only set his jaw in a way that honestly owed nothing to either of his parents, even though Severus had seen both James and Lily being stubborn times between counting. Neither had ever looked so braced to endure blows, though. “Dash already told me that he’s going to die when I do. It wouldn’t really matter if we died because Voldemort killed him, because the same thing would happen if Voldemort killed me.” He hesitated, then added, “Except that he told me he would kill lots of people if someone killed me.”

Severus glanced at the basilisk, then away. He wished he didn’t know that, because he would never be able to look at Dash in the same way again.

Then again, the important thing right now was helping Harry. Severus spoke with as much calm as he could muster. “There are no studies, as far as I know, on the long-term effects of sharing an animal’s soul. I have heard it as something momentary, something that a wizard might do to bond with his familiar and escape a dire situation involving soul magic, but they would separate immediately afterwards. And it sounds like Dash intends that this should be long-term?”

He wondered at the odd smile Harry was giving him. An odd expression itself he could have understood, but a smile?

“Let me guess,” Draco whispered, and there was the same kind of smile on his face, which made Severus wonder irritably what he had missed that two teenage wizards could understand. “Dash’s soul isn’t exactly animal, is it?”

Harry shook his head and turned to stare at Dash again. Severus wrestled with various answers in the moments before Harry opened his mouth: Dash was more like a construct because of the way he had been created; he was different from a normal basilisk, or Harry was a Parselmouth, which made it all right; Harry had gone delusional with pain and fear.

“No. He has Salazar Slytherin’s soul.”

If someone had slammed an axe into Severus’s forehead that moment, he could not have been more surprised.

*

Draco felt the laughter bubbling up in his throat, and didn’t try to stop it. He flung his arms around Harry, who jumped, but then turned and hugged him back.

“You’re going to be so great,” Draco whispered, his throat humming with the words and his mind with possibilities. All he could see was Harry stepping forwards confidently in his mind, his hands spread while magic gathered between them, his extraordinary basilisk at his feet. “Once you tell the other Slytherins that, they’ll follow you, of course. And that’s not to mention the families that think you’re already the reincarnation of Slytherin! They’re right, now. You share his soul.”

Harry stirred uneasily in his arms. Draco stepped back and smoothed a hand down his forehead, wiping away the little drops of blood that still gathered from his scar. “What’s the matter? Don’t you think they’ll accept you? I promise they will.”

“No. Just—why would I tell anyone but you and Professor Snape and Ron and Hermione? I want you to know because you’re my friends. And my guardian. But I don’t want to tell anyone else.”

Draco stared at him. Then he said, “Why wouldn’t you tell anyone else?” He felt so bewildered it was hard to put his tongue and teeth together to say the words.

“Because it just makes things worse!” Harry said in a heated whisper. “I’m already dreading telling people that Voldemort is back, even though I know I have to do that. People are going to make fun of me and think I’m lying. And the same thing would happen if I told them—that.”

“But this would help mitigate that.” Draco was glad Professor Snape was there, and talking in such calm tones. “It would bring some allies to your side and reassure them that they were not wrong to believe in you. If you are going to spread the bad news, spreading the good at the same time is only—sense.”

I wonder what other word he was about to use there?

“But it would make me seem like even more of a freak than having Parseltongue and a basilisk already do.” Harry shook his head. “I won’t do it.”

Professor Snape leaned over Harry’s bed. “I do not want you to use that word again to describe yourself.”

“What? Just because the Dursleys used it?’

“Yes. That is enough reason.”

“But sometimes it’s true.”

Professor Snape straightened back up, and his face was dark. “Draco, if you would mind leaving the room?”

Draco wouldn’t have done it even if Harry hadn’t cast him the appealing look he did then. “Sorry, Professor,” he said lightly, wincing a little as he got a glare from his Head of House. “I do mind.”

“Harry and I are only going to have a talk about matters that we don’t need a third party here to discuss.”

“It’s not as if I’m Black,” said Draco, rolling his eyes. “I think this is more complicated than you think. Harry didn’t just use that word because he’s upset or frightened or—regressing.” It took some effort to think of it the way Professor Snape might. “No, I’m going to stay here. Because I’m with Harry.”

It was the first time he’d ever used those words aloud, but it sounded right, and Harry’s dawning smile made it right in other ways. Draco smiled back at him and arranged himself coolly next to Harry’s bed, letting one hand rest on his partner’s arm and one on Dash’s neck. It felt like the right posture to take, too.

And if Professor Snape was glaring at them…

Well, it made Draco feel for the Gryffindors who had attracted his glare in Potions class in the past. And that meant he could understand Harry better, since Harry was a Gryffindor who had done that. Which made this all to the good.

At least, that was the way Draco was going to explain it to his father if Father wanted to know why he had defied Professor Snape.

*

Harry was so tired.

His head ached. His scar stung. He could still feel the ragged, patched edges in himself where Voldemort had taken part of his soul and then Dash had stitched what was left into his soul. His body still shivered with the aftermath of the torture curses that he knew Voldemort had used on him, somehow, even if it wasn’t physically.

But he had to do this first. Because Snape had been good to him, and he had to make him understand.

“I am a freak,” he said, and Snape’s eyes found his so fast that Harry shivered a little. Only his absolute trust that Snape wouldn’t read his mind unless he thought Harry was a danger to himself let him kept going. “In the special way that means I’m unusual, and there’s really no way to get past that. No one else can forget how unusual I am because something always happens to remind them. I just don’t want to remind them when I don’t have to.

“No one can see my soul, or Dash’s. They’re not going to know who he was or how we’re joined unless I tell them. Why do I have to tell them?”

That strangeness weighed on his tongue, made him want to spit. He was already unusual enough, what with the scar on his forehead and the basilisk draped around his shoulders and the Tri-Wizard Tournament that he hadn’t even wanted to participate in. He could keep this to himself, and it would be okay. Why did he have to tell anyone?

Snape was silent so long that Harry thought he didn’t have an answer, and started to cheer up a little. It was special when not even Snape could come up with a reason why he ought to do something. Harry leaned back against his pillow and kept stroking Dash.

“Because it might help you and others survive.”

That wasn’t what Harry had expected. He swallowed. “But how? Sure, there’s some people who already think I’m the reincarnation of Slytherin, but they’re going to believe that whether or not I tell them about this. Why do I have to tell them again? Besides, it would probably just confuse them.” If Dash was the reincarnation of Slytherin, and not him, then Harry could see families like the Selwyns deciding to support Dash instead of him.

“There are others,” said Snape, his voice low and resonant. He sounded almost the way he had during Harry’s first year, when he was talking about the glories of potions and the way that he could teach students about them. “Those who did not believe that you were Slytherin’s reincarnation, but will believe it about Dash.”

Harry made a little movement he couldn’t stop. Draco grabbed his hand and held it. Harry was grateful for that, but it also irritated him. Why couldn’t people just leave him alone? “Why? What will convince them? How am I going to go and talk to them? It’s not even like I have any evidence. It was Dash that convinced people like the Selwyns. I could take Veritaserum and prove that I saw Slytherin in Dash, but that only proves I believe it. They could still think I’m just mistaken.”

Snape only watched him with eyes that were so deep and dark they didn’t even look patient. They didn’t look like he was feeling anything. Harry shivered, and Draco pressed close against him again.

“You have your truth,” Snape said. “There are people who would listen to the ring of your voice and believe it, as I do. And there is the test of Veritaserum. And there are many who would find it easy to believe that Salazar Slytherin had returned as an extraordinary basilisk than simply as someone who spoke Parseltongue.”

“Yeah, okay,” Harry said. “But so far—I mean, the people who think I’m the reincarnation haven’t done anything much. Just sent me letters and questions, and Alisoun to guard me at the Yule Ball. There isn’t much point in doing anything when nothing’s going to change.”

Nothing’s going to change,” Draco repeated. He sounded slightly hysterical.

“Mr. Malfoy is correct,” Snape said calmly. “Within the school, Salazar Slytherin is revered as a Founder. Outside the school, he is called a magical genius, one of the last true generalist wizards who were good in all branches of magic known at the time, the discoverer of several important potions, the creator and defender of laws that he did not pass himself but persuaded other people to pass. The knowledge that he has returned is going to shake certain worlds, Mr. Potter.”

Harry wanted to hide his head. “So they’ll want to come and ask Dash what he knows? Knew?” It was hard to tell how much of Dash was still Slytherin, right now.

Snape nodded slowly. “And about the mysteries of soul magic, which Dash must know if he was able to share his soul with you.” He paused. “If you think about it, now that you share his soul, you are, in many ways, the reincarnation of Slytherin yourself.”

“But I don’t have a head full of knowledge! All I feel is tired!”

Snape leaned slightly nearer. “We are going to make sure that you survive, Harry. Physically, yes, of course that is important, but politically might be the more important way right now. The Ministry might try to destroy you with the news of Dumbledore’s death. They won’t want to believe that the Dark Lord has returned, either. If you are going to raise an effective opposition to him, and take some of his support away, this is the best path.”

Draco nodded, making Harry look at him. “My father is going to be so impressed,” he said. “You have to tell him as soon as possible, Harry. He’ll want to hear it from you personally.” He hesitated, and looked at Professor Snape. “Only maybe not tonight. Harry does look awfully tired.”

“I was not going to suggest tonight was the proper time to make a new regime,” said Snape dryly. “The morning will be soon enough. As long as the news remains known to us, only,” he added, and looked hard at Harry. “I do not trust Miss Granger’s or Mr. Weasley’s discretion.”

Harry just stared at his legs. He didn’t know what to say. He could see the points of all the arguments that Snape and Draco made, and of course he wanted to keep his friends and Dash safe, and he knew that a lot of people wouldn’t want to kill Dash.

But…

It was just another thing that made him different. And he was so tired of being different. Once, he had thought it would be terrible to be normal, because the Dursleys talked about that word all the time, and he automatically hated anything the Dursleys liked so much. But just being a wizard would have been enough for him.

“Are you sure that more people won’t hate me than like this?” he asked, thinking about the way Ron might react when he heard Harry was really Slytherin—sort of.

“There are always people who will hate you,” Draco said, sounding like he spoke from experience. “But that’s never a good reason not to do something.” He squeezed Harry’s hand and turned to say something quietly to Professor Snape.

Harry lay back down on the bed. He didn’t expect to sleep. His head was whirling so fast that he didn’t have even have room for all the thoughts. Voldemort was back, and his Horcrux, and Dash was Slytherin, and he was Slytherin, and Dumbledore was dead, and part of his soul was gone, and he didn’t know how he was going to tell people, and who knew what the Ministry would do, and what Flamel would say—

“Drink this.”

It was just a Calming Draught in a vial that Snape held out to him, and Harry had got used to drinking things from his hand without hesitating. But the minute the potion slid down his throat, he knew something was off about the taste, and he began to struggle even as his eyes drooped and he rolled limply to the side.

“You must rest,” said Snape, in an iron voice.

“I don’t—I don’t want you to have to do everything—I don’t want to leave you alone to do anything—” Harry mumbled. He knew his words didn’t make much sense, but he knew he wanted his eyes open, and he knew he didn’t want Snape to make him rest.

For a moment, he felt something on his forehead, covering his scar. He thought it was Snape’s fingertip, but it could have been his hand, as fast as Harry was sinking.

“You must rest. I will protect you.”

And those words, more the potion, were what finally convinced Harry to let go and stop clinging so hard to consciousness. He fell down, and down, and ended up in the velvet halls of the deep bond, watching images of stars and clouds skidding along above him, reuniting with Dash.

*

Severus closed his eyes as he saw the lines of tension finally relax from Harry’s face. It had been intolerable, seeing them like that. After a day when he had witnessed murder and been tortured—twice—and had a new kind of bond with his basilisk forced on him, he had still been trying to take thought for others, and care for them, and protect them.

And himself. He knew Harry was sincere, the way Severus would never have thought his father, when he said that he didn’t want any more attention or to stand out anymore among wizards. But he had no choice. He had already been marked, by his lightning bolt scar and his possession of a basilisk if nothing else.

It was Severus’s task to make sure that he was marked for life, not death.

“Professor Snape, what should I do?”

Severus wasn’t surprised Draco wanted to do something. He was almost swaying on his feet with exhaustion, but looking at Harry and Dash in a way that quietly pleased Severus.

He will not serve the same masters or goals that his parents have.

“I want you to go and contact your father,” he said. “Make sure that he receives some of the news. Not the part about Slytherin’s soul being in Dash,” he added, as Draco started to open his mouth to protest. “I agree that Harry should be the one to tell him that. But he would like to know about Dumbledore’s death and Flamel before the news starts to spread too much, I assume.” Certainly before the Daily Prophet came out the next morning. Luckily, for a certain definition of luck, the Third Task had been too late for the Evening Prophet to report on it.

Draco nodded. “You want me to tell him everything except that?”

“Tell him—tell him the Dark Lord has returned.” The Mark on Severus’s arm was tingling. He didn’t bother pulling up his sleeve to look at it. It didn’t matter. He already knew what had happened from Harry’s account. “Though he may know that already. But prepare him for great news from all quarters.”

“Great news from all quarters,” Draco repeated, half-closing his eyes. He nodded. “I’ll go right now, Professor. Father’s probably awake, anyway.” He cast a glance at Severus’s covered Mark and left.

That boy has sharp eyes. At least they will be in service of the right side. Even if Lucius made a different decision, for some incomprehensible reason, Draco would stand beside Harry.

Severus turned back to face the bed. Harry was pale, which wasn’t a surprise. More important to Severus, his face was utterly relaxed now, looking as young as it might have in first year, and his scar had stopped bleeding.

It had been years since Severus had made a vow. The last one he had made, to protect Lily’s son, had been too much of a binding chain on him. It had both kept him from making others and protected him from some of the consequences that would have followed them; he could always draw back and refuse to do something dangerous Albus had wanted him to do, citing the vow that said he had to stay alive to protect Harry.

But now, Albus was dead, and only the chains of his choosing would constrain Severus.

“You will come out of this alive,” Severus said, looking at Harry. “And bonded to your basilisk. And safe. And happy.”

He smiled a little as he thought about what Harry would probably snap back. If you want me to be happy, then the least you can do is survive.

And Severus had no intentions of dying. This vow encompassed more than merely protection. It meant living. It meant guardianship. It meant striving.

I can do this.

As he turned towards the door of the hospital wing, Severus paused. He had thought he saw a sudden gleam from under Dash’s thick eyelids. But if the basilisk had really winked at him, he could not be sure, and he left with purpose in his steps.

Harry was the one who had put that purpose there. Not his basilisk, however wonderful.

Chapter 89: The Race Begins

Chapter Text

Draco tried his best not to look tired and bedraggled as he stood in front of the Floo in Professor Snape's quarters. The door had been left a little unlocked when Snape had sprinted out of it, and Draco thought it better than trying the common room fire this time of night, with news this sensitive.

It took longer than Draco had thought for one of the house-elves to fetch Father, and Draco used the time to smooth down his hair and try to breathe normally. Not that his breathing didn't speed up again when Father's face, pale and smooth, appeared in the fire.

"What is it, Draco?"

"After Professor Snape contacted you earlier, the Dark Lord took Harry into his mind," Draco said relentlessly. Even though he felt awful about everything that had happened, he did have to admit a little surge of pleasure as he watched Father's lips part. "He came back. I know that. He took part of Harry's soul to do it." Father shivered. "But then he made a mistake. He tried to command Dash. He thought he could have part of the bond because he had part of Harry's soul. But Dash got himself free, and he freed Harry."

"Then we have chosen the right side--"

"There's one thing more."

The way Father looked at him now made a low thrill come to life in Draco's belly. Yes, yes, he could do this. He might want to follow the path of politics after all, which he hadn't always been sure of when he watched Father slave away.

He drew a deep breath and said, "Dash gave Harry part of his soul to repair the damage the Dark Lord caused. Harry saw into his soul somehow--I'm still not clear on that. And he saw who Dash used to be."

Father looked poised on the edge of a cliff. Draco smiled at him and said, "Salazar Slytherin."

"Of course," Father said, in a low, dreamy voice. "The basilisk, the extraordinary basilisk, and not the child who waited until thirteen to show that anything remarkable would happen around him. Of course."

"I think Harry is plenty remarkable."

Father seemed to be hiding a smile as he looked back at Draco, but at least Draco thought it was a smile of pleasure and not a condescending one. "I tend to agree. Did Harry say how he recognized Slytherin?"

He hadn't, but now that Draco thought about it, it was easy enough to figure out. Rumors about the Chamber of Secrets had trickled outwards from conversations people had overheard between Harry and his friends, before Dash or Draco were there. "I think there's probably a statue of Salazar Slytherin in the Chamber of Secrets. And Harry could have seen its face, and then the face in Dash's soul."

Father gave another long sigh. "You are probably right, Draco. You are thinking, not yet concluding, but you are probably right."

That made Draco feel as though he might burst from happiness. He opened his mouth to continue, but Father abruptly lifted his head. "Where are you now?"

"Professor Snape's quarters. He's still with Harry in the hospital wing."

"Tell no one else of this, Draco. Leave it up to me to spread the news. I am the one who will be the best conduit."

"But Professor Snape thinks we ought to tell lots of people. And at least Harry's allies like the Selwyns are going to want to know, because they already think he is Slytherin."

“And we will tell lots of people.” Draco had never seen Father’s eyes like that, heavy and glowing. He remembered Mother telling him once that Father was like a cat. Draco had never agreed, because he thought Father was most like a snake, but now he could see it. “But I am the conduit. I am the one who will do it.”

“I know what you mean,” Draco muttered. He hesitated, and then decided he might as well tell Father his worries. “But I’m not the only one who knows. And Professor Snape might start contacting people in the morning.”

“It will not be now?”

“No. Harry’s exhausted. I’m sure Professor Snape is going to stay in the hospital wing the rest of the night and make sure nothing else attacks him.”

“Then I will be fast enough.” Father chuckled, and there was a spark of pure excitement in his face that Draco remembered seeing in the mirror when he was still working on trying to get Parseltongue. “I will tell them.”

“Professor Snape said we had to be careful, because people are going to hate Harry when they hear about the way Dumbledore died—”

“Do I strike you as a careless politician or even a careless mouthpiece, Draco? Tell me the truth.”

Draco flinched. He hated when Father asked questions like that. Telling the truth made him sound stupid; lying made him sound childish. He sighed and gave in. “No, Father.”

“Then trust me to spread the truth in a way that will ensure a hero’s welcome of Mr. Potter.” Father had that cat-look again. “I will go and begin now. Sleep well, Draco. The world is going to be a very different place in the morning.”

Or that’s what we hope, anyway, Draco thought, and said good night, and closed the Floo. Then he began the long task of dragging himself back to the Slytherin common room.

He didn’t want to, honestly. He wanted to go back to the hospital wing and be there first thing in the morning when Harry and Dash woke up. But on the other hand, Dash might sleep for a day, and Harry wouldn’t wake up before morning with that potion Professor Snape had given him. Draco might as well do what he could so someone would have a clear head for their next conversation.

*

Lucius felt as though someone had filled his head with clear sunlight that had burned off the fog. He stood before the fireplace for a long moment, the sole still place in a turning universe, and then he laughed.

Then he went and began to make a list of the things he would need to do, the people he would need to contact, in order to change the world.

There was the device he had found that could free someone from the dominion of the Dark Marks. He had worked carefully on it so far, fitting in odd half-hours around his other business. He hardly wanted to experiment recklessly with something that might give him his freedom, but also needed to be tuned carefully with blood and runes.

That project must go to the top of the list now. With the Dark Lord back, he and Severus could not risk being called and turned against their families.

Rather odd to think of Severus having a family, Lucius thought, shaking his head as he began to write the list of names in the order he would Floo them. I know his parents are dead and he never had a desire for children. But I am not sure what else one would call the Potter boy.

And as both Potter’s legal guardian and the adult with the most direct access to him, Severus would have to be petted and soothed and courted. Lucius could not set the matter aside and hope it would take care of itself. He would be free of the Dark Mark, and he would, perhaps, be inclined to listen to someone who had done him so handsome a favor.

Lucius had a half-smile on his face as he finished working his way through the list and stepped back a moment to study it. Then he nodded. Of course, he knew the person who would have to be informed the soonest was the one who shared a house with him.

He left the firelit room the house-elves had summoned him to and returned to the bedchamber he shared with Narcissa. They had their own suites when they wished to be alone, but they’d felt like being together tonight.

Lucius opened the door and spent a moment watching the firelight fall on his wife’s still face. She had porcelain features, and even in sleep, they never seemed to relax completely, and her blonde hair never seemed tumbled the way some other women’s would become.

Once, when they were first married, she had made Lucius uneasy. He hadn’t known if he could share his life with someone who was always poised and perfect. He was so only in public.

But that was before Narcissa had learned to trust him enough to let her guard down and show him her true self. Once she had, then Lucius had let such fears drift away to the misty land they deserved to be banished to.

“What is it, Lucius?”

And that was another reason he had to love her. She had probably been awake from the moment he opened the door, but she hadn’t moved until now, until she had decided that he wasn’t coming back to the bed and her. She rolled over now and regarded him with soft slitted eyes, her hands drawn up to her chest like a cat’s forepaws.

“Remarkable news,” Lucius said softly, and went to sit beside her. For a moment, one of Narcissa’s hands curved as if she wanted her wand, and then Lucius took it and gently uncurled her fingers, smoothing his hands up and down her palm.

“What is it?” she asked again, and tilted her head back so that the fire flickered on the unbound glory of her hair.

Lucius leaned over and gently kissed her, trailing his tongue over her lips. Narcissa gasped once, then made him gasp with a turn of her chin and broke free, shaking her head. “I doubt it’s that, as enjoyable as it is.”

“No,” Lucius had to admit. He stroked her throat with one hand and told her, in a soft voice, about the return of the Dark Lord, and the way that Salazar Slytherin had returned after all, though not in a human guise.

Narcissa’s grip on his fingers grew crushing as she listened, but she showed no sign of her emotions on her face. Lucius honestly hadn’t expected any. Narcissa dealt with unexpected news like this by locking it away and processing it in silence for a while. When she spoke, her words were always well-chosen, and the only impatience Lucius felt in waiting for them was anticipation. He returned to stroking her hair while she meditated.

“I think that we have a right to move fast,” she said, which Lucius nodded to. “To be the main channel through which people learn of this information.”

“Yes,” said Lucius, content. He had known that her desires would echo his almost perfectly.

“And we should send the silver necklace I brought with me as part of my dowry to Harry.”

“What?” That made Lucius blink, and it was not often that Narcissa startled him anymore. They had been married too long for that. “Why would you think…”

“He will need protection,” Narcissa said, as calmly as if she was discussing sending Harry a box of sweets. “Severus will do his best, I am sure, and there is his basilisk. But he will need more than that. Don’t you agree, Lucius?”

Lucius faltered and blinked and wasn’t sure that he did agree. There were other people who would sign up to protect Harry now that they knew who he was bonded to, and arguably who he was (Lucius had not yet decided how much he should emphasize the sharing of souls, rather than the basilisk’s identity). And a basilisk was a great protection in and of itself.

“You can think of it, if you will,” said Narcissa, after a moment, in a calm and sweet voice, “as a way to protect a valuable political asset. I am thinking of it as protecting someone our son values.”

Lucius nodded slowly. Yes, one could see it if they looked at it that way. “Very well. But that necklace would have gone to Draco in time. You know how possessive he gets about magical objects…”

Narcissa let loose the rich chuckle that always made Lucius want to join her, although in this case, he was afraid that he didn’t quite understand the joke. Then she sat up and kissed his ear and whispered into it, and Lucius could only sit there and stare in admiration of her brilliance as Narcissa got out of bed and swept up to the attic.

“Our son is far more possessive of people.”

That was true, Lucius thought. And a sign that Draco was a true Malfoy, something Lucius didn’t always see when he looked at him; Draco was still young and unformed, more so than Lucius had been at his age.

But Narcissa could see it. Narcissa was going to encourage Draco’s friendship with someone who could become one of the most important wizards in their world. And Harry would probably take the gesture better coming from her, Lucius had to admit. Not that they were not allies, now, but Harry had reason to hold the past against him. He’d never had any bad interactions with Narcissa.

Until he was sure that he had the young man’s whole-hearted forgiveness, Lucius would let Narcissa take the lead in handling him.

He tapped his left forearm thoughtfully as he left the bedroom. Figuring out the artifact had to be his most important priority, but there was no reason he couldn’t Floo other former Death Eaters and write to the papers while he prepared for the intense period of study and concentration that the artifact would require for its conquering.

In the meantime, Narcissa would handle the other half of the work, an agreeable division of labor. Lucius smiled, glad, and not for the first time, that he had married his wife.

*

Harry shuddered a little as he watched the yellow glow come to life behind Dash’s eyelids. He had been awake for a few hours, lying there and dreading what would happen when he could speak to Dash again. He didn’t know what would have changed.

I'm so hungry I could kill a centaur, Dash said. Can you ask the house-elves to bring me food? I don’t want to leave here. I don’t know if I could control myself if I was slithering along the corridors and saw a particularly delicious-looking Hufflepuff.

Harry made a scoffing sound without meaning to. "And are you considering what could happen to you if you ate a Hufflepuff?"

Yes. Probably indigestion. Which is an excellent reason not to do it.

Considering he probably wouldn't get anything else done until Dash's appetite was satisfied, Harry rolled his eyes and summoned a house-elf. She eyed Dash with a gulp and promised to bring a huge haunch of beef. Dash sighed a little as she popped away. Not as good as having the prey live and wriggling, but. House-elves.

Harry found that he had something to say after all. It wasn't the way he had planned to begin this conversation, but. Well. Why didn't you ever tell me?

You think I knew from the first moment I was hatched? Of course not. Some of my knowledge is instinctive, but not that. It wasn't until the beginning of this year that I started to gain back some of my memories.

"Okay." Harry shifted a little, but there was no one else in the hospital wing right now. Madam Pomfrey was probably at lunch, and Professor Snape must have gone to bed. "The beginning of the school year, or this year in the winter?"

This year in the winter. Or the midwinter solstice, more precisely. Did you know that that was the day I died?

Harry switched back to talking down the mental bond as the house-elf Apparated in with the beef and Apparated out again before Dash could even slither off the bed. But this is the second one of those you've seen. Why do you think it happened on the second and not the first?

I shared a very rare tidbit about Salazar Slytherin with you, and you didn't think to thank me. Dash's tail lashed the floor once as he unhinged his jaws and brought them down like a blade, severing and then surrounding half the huge hunk of beef. Most people don't know that, I'll have you know. There are people researching me who would go crazy if they knew I had a death date.

I'm not a Slytherin.

Dash turned his head very, very slowly towards him. Harry groaned and buried his head in his hands as he remembered the deeply special way he was a Slytherin now.

Apparently satisfied that he was listening, Dash went back to working the beef down his throat. As for why I knew then and not the first solstice, I don't know. Maybe my brain and magic weren't ready for the knowledge yet.

Why didn't you tell me as soon as you knew?

I didn't know how you would react. Dash's throat was still swollen from the food, but he eyed the rest of the beef as if he intended to climb on top of it and then chew down through the center. As is shown by the fact that you just said you're not a Slytherin, as if you have to be a Slytherin to be a Parselmouth or interested in me.

Harry took a deep breath and asked the question that those other questions had been masking. Why me? I mean, why in the world would you come back to life just to bond with me? Someone who's not a Slytherin and even killed the last basilisk!

Dash climbed up on top of the beef and started eating down through the middle exactly as Harry had thought he might do when he saw him eyeing the food that way. What makes you think I came back to life to bond with you? For just that reason?

Harry hesitated. Then he said, Well, I don’t know. That’s what everyone else seems to think, at least.

And they are so unbiased. They never make a mistake. They never, for example, thought you were evil because you were a Parselmouth, or letting loose the basilisk in the Chamber on people because—well, because. Dash was almost invisible in the middle of the huge lump of beef now, his tail twitching in enjoyment. Harry thought he felt a touch of smugness from Dash that he could eat and yet speak at the same time. They never would have thought of something wrong, certainly.

Harry leaned back against his pillow and thought about it. Then he asked, Why did you come back to life?

Dash popped his head through the side of the beef, making Harry start a little. There was another huge lump in his throat, and he struggled for a moment as though it really was preventing him from speaking. A good question. And I think I know what people like your Snape would say. They would say it was to do good for Slytherins in the wider world. Or ease Muggleborn prejudice.

Snape wouldn’t say that.

True. But they would have all sorts of ideas. Grand ideas. Wonderful ones. Adventures that a basilisk with Salazar Slytherin’s soul could lead them on. Dash turned back to his meal.

Harry tapped his fingers on the pillow, and had to hide a smile. He was remembering how Dash had insisted that he was named Dash, not, oh, King of Serpents. Or whatever that would be in Latin. Or some grand old name that came out of Roman times like so many wizard names did.

It was a mistake, wasn’t it? he asked finally, when Dash had turned most of the beef into interestingly-sized lumps in his neck and flanks.

Not a mistake, as such. But unintended. Dash turned and curled himself around Harry’s leg, staring up at him with his covered eyes. Honestly? One of the reasons that I didn’t tell you the truth even when I knew it is because I knew people would expect me to start living up to Salazar’s reputation. And I was enjoying being me. Dash. Not Salazar.

“I wouldn’t try to make you change,” Harry whispered, feeling that was important enough to say in English. “Not if you didn’t want to. But Professor Snape and Draco were saying everything was going to change now, and…”

There are certain things that no one could expect me to do. Dash sounded more cheerful now as he yawned and his fangs flashed, and he curled himself more firmly onto the bed. For example, speak to people and be an inspiring leader, because so many of them can’t understand Parseltongue.

But then they’ll probably expect me to speak and translate what you’re saying, Harry said in horror, switching back to mental speech as Madam Pomfrey came into the room and glanced at him, half in suspicion. Harry gave her a faint smile and focused on Dash again. What do you think of that?

I think you’ll have a hard time, because even if they ask you that, you won’t be able to translate all my jokes and my remarks about what twits they are.

Dash, I—

We have so many weapons on our side, Harry. I wish you wouldn’t focus on this one idea that there’s a certain way this has to go, and that everyone will be disappointed not to hear from me. We can tell them that I’m primal and animal now, and that my soul is mixed up with a basilisk’s soul.

Do basilisks have souls? Harry asked uncertainly. It was something he’d never thought about, and now he wondered more than ever if the one he’d killed in the Chamber had had the right to live.

Of course we bloody do. And of course killing that basilisk was the bloody right thing to do. You had to survive long enough to bond with me, after all.

Harry tilted his head back and narrowed his eyes a little at Dash. Were you this selfish when you were alive—

I’m alive now.

I mean, when you were human?

It’s not as though I have all my memories back unblurred, you know. Dash yawned again, and then lapped all his coils around Harry until Harry would have a hard time moving. I know a lot. I know some of the specific secrets that people have wondered about, like how and when I died, and I have access to powers I didn’t have before. None of that means that I’m suddenly Salazar again. I’m a snake, Harry. I’m changed by that. I’m changed by the way I sent my spirit into the egg.

Harry paused. There were a lot of things he wanted to ask about, but he could hear Ron and Hermione’s voices in the corridor outside, and he didn’t think they were far away. What else are you changed by?

Dash turned and rubbed his head back and forth against Harry’s motionless fingers. I’m changed by the fact that my first loyalty is to you, and always will be. So stop acting as though I’m Slytherin. I mean, I am, anyone with any sense is, and you should have let the Hat Sort you there. But not the person. I’m a basilisk, which is the masterwork of creation, and much better than any human except you.

Harry was finally able to let his breath go in a rush, and turn to smile at his best friends as they burst into the hospital wing, and hug them while Hermione flung her arms around him, talking in a rapid but hushed voice about some of the things the Prophet was starting to say.

A lot of things had changed, not the least the fact that Voldemort was back and he had those ragged edges to his soul.

But the most important thing was asleep with a fully belly on the bed beside him, and hadn’t changed at all.

Chapter 90: Steadfast

Chapter Text

“I will destroy you, Lucius.”

“Is that any way to greet an old friend, Severus? Especially so early in the morning? Nothing I’ve done has changed the game that much. Not as much as having a child as your ward who shares his soul with Salazar Slytherin.”

Severus dragged his hand down his face and spread out the letter in front of him. It was from Clarence Greengrass, asking whether Harry’s basilisk really had the soul of Salazar Slytherin, and naming Lucius as the source of his information. “Do you understand how this will make him become a target?”

Lucius, face framed in the fire, gave him a thin, condescending smile. “He already is, Severus. For everything from defeating the Dark Lord as a child to being a Parselmouth. This will also bring much-needed protection to his side.”

Severus rattled Greengrass’s letter. “You think families like the Greengrasses will join with Harry simply because he has the soul of their House’s founder in his snake? They did not see fit to do so before, when the rumors of Harry having the soul of Slytherin circulated! And just because their children are currently Slytherins does not mean Clarence and Branwen still consider that the most important thing about themselves.”

Lucius’s smile changed, and he leaned forwards. “My son did right to inform me, Severus.”

“He did not. And he will have detention for the rest of the week.”

“Take what vengeance you must, of course. But I would suggest that it not be unjustified or outrageous. I have spread the news carefully, Severus, which means that Harry will have more allies than he can count soon enough. And you know the difference between rumors and confirmation. Besides, I can make the deal sweet for you, too.”

Severus breathed carefully through his rage. Some of it was the same reassurance he had offered Harry last night, but then, he hadn’t thought in terms of informing people like the Greengrass family. They made a habit of political bed-hopping, and Severus wanted more solid allies for Harry.

“Explain the difference between rumors and this kind of confirmation for me, then, Lucius. Especially since they haven’t heard the confirmation from Harry himself.”

“They know I would not lie, Severus, or speak this truth unless I was sure. It would mean too many consequences for me. And you haven’t even asked about the sweets I mentioned, Lucius.”

“Pardon me for being allergic to sweets after so many years of the Headmaster offering them to me.”

That got him a bigger version of the condescending smile, and Lucius leaned slowly back in his chair as if he wanted to emphasize how much time he had. Severus ground his teeth. If he hadn’t woken up to this letter, if he’d had time for more than one visit with Harry in the hospital wing this morning just to make sure that he and Dash hadn’t disintegrated during the night, then maybe he would have had more patience with Lucius’s games.

But maybe not.

“I’ve found a way to get rid of the Dark Mark. I think that’s going to be important, don’t you, now that the Dark Lord is back?”

Severus leaned forwards, aware that he might be about to fall over, but he had to say this. Had to. “I’ve studied methods for years, Lucius. It can’t be done. It won’t be done. If you tell me that you’re jesting…”

“Why would I do that? There would be no point in holding out such a tempting sweet and then snatching it back.” Lucius put his fist beneath his chin, a pose that he seemed to think made him look imperious. Severus regretted now that he had never thought to tell him it didn’t. “No, Severus, this is real. There will be some cost in blood. It’s an artifact I found in Knockturn Alley. But I promise that it’s real.”

“Oh, you found it in Knockturn Alley. Then I have the utmost confidence in you.”

“It was some weeks back,” said Lucius dismissively. “I’ve been working with it slowly, studying it, making sure that there’s no curse on it that would activate the moment someone tried to use it. But I haven’t found anything so far.”

“After a few weeks of study.” Severus shook his head, still feeling dazed. Lucius was moving fast—had already done so, if he’d been owling people overnight, and Greengrass had managed to get his own letter to Severus that morning. “Lucius, are you mad? You can’t simply proclaim that you’ve found a way to evade the Dark Mark when we’ve all tried for years and not found one.”

“Would you have preferred me to announce it earlier, when I wasn’t sure how the artifact worked or if it would do what I say it can?”

“I would prefer that you stayed out of my ward’s life, except as far as monitoring his friendship with Draco.”

Lucius snorted. “Then you should have thought better of asking me to act as a school governor where Mr. Potter is concerned, and supporting his claims of being abused, and all the other publicity that I’ve given him. Your ward is a political actor, Severus. I think you knew he would be the minute you heard the news of him having a basilisk, if not before. You would just prefer that you be the one controlling the spread of the information.”

That contained enough stinging truth to make Severus wince, but he kept his glare steady on Lucius, and his voice soft and venomous as Dash’s fangs. “If anything you do endangers him, then I’m going to destroy you. I meant what I said before.”

“I know that you might try.” Lucius waved a languid hand. “But you need me to make sure that you can have protection and political power for your ward, Severus. Besides, Draco wouldn’t like it.”

Severus said nothing. Something had occurred to him that he was not sure Lucius knew. Draco would do a great deal for Harry, and the other way around as well. Even Dash might do a great deal for Draco, because Harry would sicken with sorrow otherwise.

Did Lucius know that Draco might stand with Harry against his own father, if his father came up with ideas that hurt Harry?

Severus was not sure, and he intended to say nothing yet. For all he knew, the situation might not ever arise, as long as Lucius acted in Harry’s interests and Harry retained his hatred of causing problems for other people.

But it was also a weapon to be held in reserve, against people such as Lucius had revealed himself to be this morning.

“Severus? Do you want the opportunity to get rid of your Dark Mark or not?”

“I want you to use the artifact first. To make sure that it works, and it doesn’t cost more than I can bear to give.”

Lucius gave him a baffled, wary frown. “I was going to give you the first try at it. As a reward—”

“A bribe,” Severus interrupted, too impatient not to use the right words. “And no, Lucius. Unlike you, I want to remain alive to be with my ward more than I want to be free of the Dark Mark.”

“You won’t think that way if the Dark Lord calls you soon,” Lucius muttered, but he tilted his head in acceptance. “I will use it tonight, then. And I will show you a Pensieve memory of the process, as well as my unmarked arm.”

Severus nodded. He had nothing else to say. There were many things to do now that Lucius had broken the news early, not the least considering the kind of wording he would put in his letter to Greengrass.

“And Severus? The next time I try to do you a favor, I expect you to accept it.”

Severus watched without expression as Lucius’s face dissolved into the flames. Then he shook his head, snorted, and stood to begin writing the letter.

He would give Harry some input into it before he sent it out. At least that might solve the inevitable problem that Lucius was creating here: allies who expected to hear from them when there was little proof except Harry’s word.

*

“That’s really the only thing I can think of to say, Professor McGonagall.”

For a long moment, McGonagall squeezed Harry’s hand. She looked worn-down. Harry wondered if it was because everything was happening so fast, or because she was still in mourning over Dumbledore. Harry would have been like that himself if things were a little different.

Then I would have to squeeze you until such thoughts left your head. What nonsense.

Harry let his hand fall on Dash’s back, one of the few ways he felt comfortable reaching out to him in front of McGonagall. I thought you would say you’d leave me.

I would never say that. Even as a joke.

Harry opened his mouth to comment on that, and then Professor McGonagall continued, “I’ll tell the Aurors and other people who want to interview you that they aren’t to do so without Professor Snape here. He’s your legal guardian, and he can send them away if you need him to.” She squeezed his hand again, studying him with worried eyes. “I expect you to tell him if you want him to.”

“I’ll want him to.”

McGonagall smiled, maybe at the fierce tone in his voice, and nodded and stood up. “Good. Then I’ll go and start contacting the reporters and the Aurors who will want an interview with me.” She sighed and slipped out of the room.

As if he had only been waiting for her to leave, Draco immediately came into the hospital wing. He gave Harry a smug smile that made Harry instantly cautious. Draco was wonderful in so many ways, but sometimes he thought certain things were fun that turned out not to be for Harry.

Madam Pomfrey came out with a potion that helped ease magical exhaustion before he could say anything, though. Draco folded his arms and pouted.

“Drink it slowly, dear,” said Madam Pomfrey, and tilted the vial to Harry’s lips, as if he was too weak to hold it himself.

Harry actually did appreciate the help, though, because he choked as soon as he tasted the thick, sludgy potion, the way he had the other times, and shook his head to settle the desperate need to gag. Then he nodded at Madam Pomfrey, and she took the vial away, made a little mark on a chart she held, and waved her wand. A house-elf popped in with a tray full of porridge and chopped, dried fruit.

“This is a good beginning,” Madam Pomfrey said. “But before I release you, Harry, I want you to drink all of the potion without gagging and also eat more than this. Twice as much as this, even. Do you understand?”

Harry sighed and nodded, but she only waited expectantly, and he remembered what she had said about verbal answers, even though he still didn’t understand why she required them. “Yes, Madam Pomfrey.”

She beamed at him, then left. Harry dumped some of the fruit into the porridge and began to eat, ignoring Dash’s dreams of live, squirming mice, while he looked at Draco expectantly.

“I told my father about Dash having Salazar Slytherin’s soul,” said Draco, his eyes sparkling hard. He glanced only once at the door of Madam Pomfrey’s office to make sure that she’d gone back inside. “He’ll know who to tell.”

Harry choked on the porridge, and not for the same reasons as the potion. “Snape wanted it to spread carefully!”

“There are certain things a Malfoy has to do, Harry. And I don’t think Professor Snape has as much political experience as my father.”

Well, no, that’s because he doesn’t have money to throw around the Ministry, Harry wanted to say, but both the porridge sticking in his throat and the way Dash squeezed his wrist made him think better of saying it. He swallowed and repeated, “Snape told you not to do that.”

Draco shrugged. He looked stubborn; he always did when he took on that particular tilt of his chin. “I thought you’d be pleased.”

That seemed a little mad. “Why?”

“Because I’m looking out for you in a way that not even Professor Snape can. Politically and legally, you’ll be protected.”

“I’ll be protected as long as I tell them the truth about Dumbledore and Flamel, too.” Harry really meant their story about Flamel, but he wasn’t going to make the distinction when Madam Pomfrey might be listening.

“But are they going to believe you when you tell them the Dark Lord is back? I mean, in the same way? Are they going to believe that you’re telling the truth, or will they turn around and hide their heads in the sand the way the Minister always does when something unpleasant comes up? This way, your allies will believe you because that’s the only way they can believe who Dash is. And they’ll make the Minister see reason.”

“But it’s going to make Professor Snape angry,” said Harry, and rubbed his forehead with the palm of one hand. He knew Draco had only been trying to help, but seriously, more problems than good things were going to come of this.

Do you want me to talk with him? Dash asked, twining up Harry’s arm and letting his tongue flicker out in Draco’s direction—snidely, although Harry doubted Draco could tell the difference between that and any other tongue-flicker.

Please. I’ll translate.

Dash nodded and began to hiss. Draco went still and wide-eyed immediately, the way he did every time he heard Parseltongue. Harry translated about a sentence behind, so that he could make sure he understood the full meaning of every sentence—and give Draco time to understand it, too.

“We appreciate what you tried to do. But by giving the news to Lucius, you caused it to be distributed along too many channels. If it was all coming from Professor Snape, then we would be able to track it easily.”

“But some people already knew part of the news.” Draco’s eyes were wide and he looked uncomfortable, but he also looked as if he would argue until his heart fell out of his chest. “I mean, about Dumbledore and Flamel. We announced that already. And we can’t track everyone who heard that, either.”

“Yes, but not about what happened last night,” Harry said, speaking for himself now. He cast a little resentful glance at Madam Pomfrey’s office door. He knew she was only trying to help, too, but it was bloody inconvenient not to be able to speak what they meant aloud. “We wanted to keep that private.”

“Not that private. I thought you agreed to that. Because that was what you wanted to do at first, and—”

“Not—Merlin, Draco. Just private enough that no one else could creep up and ambush us. And Professor Snape was going to take care of it. You realize that you’re going to be in trouble with him?”

“He is already in trouble.”

Harry couldn’t help the little leap his heart gave when Snape came through the door of the hospital wing—and there was something he had thought would never be true six months ago. Snape cast Draco a withering glance that finally made him flinch, and then strode over to Harry’s bed and cast what was probably a diagnostic spell on him.

“You are recovering well,” said Professor Snape, crouching down in front of Harry. For a moment, his eyes were wide and dark and revealed a lot more than they usually did, and Harry found himself staring.

He wondered if he was the only person who got to see Professor Snape like this. Probably, he decided. He hadn’t even known that this side of Professor Snape existed.

“As well as one can, given what happened to you,” Professor Snape added, and then he turned and looked at Draco. Harry couldn’t see the stare he gave him, since he was now standing with his back to Harry, but Dash could, and he chuckled and let Harry use his eyes.

Harry wanted to recoil even though he was safely on the bed and he wasn’t the one Snape was angry at anyway. Draco actually stood there under it, which argued for a lot more Gryffindor courage than Harry had thought he had.

“My father was doing what he thought was best.”

“I blame your father less than I blame you. You were the one who knew the need for privacy and blurted the secret out to him anyway.”

And Snape turned away from Draco as if he had ceased to exist, and sat down on the bed in front of Harry with a letter in his hand. “Clarence Greengrass has contacted me. I assume that you don’t know his daughters?”

Harry blinked. He had a vague memory of someone named Astoria Greengrass, and thought he’d probably only noticed her name because he thought it was unusual. And there was a girl called Daphne Greengrass in their year, wasn’t there? He’d never even heard her speak. Whenever they fought with Slytherins, Millicent Bulstrode and Pansy Parkinson were the ones who had taken the lead.

“I will take that as a no,” said Snape, so gently that Harry blushed. “Well. He will want to know if your basilisk is the reincarnation of Slytherin. I want your input on what to tell him.”

“Don’t tell him he isn’t. That would be a stupid thing to do, Har—”

“I believe I told you your presence was unwelcome, Draco.”

Draco wilted, and then he marched out of the hospital wing with his head hanging. Harry stirred uneasily. If that had been Ron or Hermione, he would have been running after them right now, and he thought he owed Draco more than just lying here and watching him leave.

You could go after him if I would let you out of bed, Dash said, and then locked a band of his body casually around Harry’s ankles. So you can tell him that later, and it’s even true.

Harry sighed and let the thought go. Both Dash and Snape would get angry at him if he insisted on going after Draco now—

Damn right I would.

And part of this, although not all of it, had been Draco’s fault. Harry frowned at the thought of Lucius bloody Malfoy and faced Professor Snape again.

“What do you know about the Greengrass family, Professor?”

*

Severus watched Harry closely. He looked less angry than Severus thought he had the right to, but then, the boy had always been ridiculously forgiving. And it was an honest question, committed to moving ahead rather than brooding over Draco.

Even if part of it rather bothered Severus.

“You’ve known me for longer than you have Black,” he said. “You could even say that you’ve been on good terms with me for longer than you have with Black, since that soured right away. Why won’t you call me Severus?”

Harry froze and stared at him. Then he said, “Sirius just always wanted me to call him by his first name. And it seemed—I don’t know, he didn’t seem like an adult sometimes, you know?”

“He still does not,” said Severus, tartly enough that he won a smile from Harry.

“But I’ll call you Severus if you want,” Harry said, and squinted at him. “I suppose it would be kind of silly to spend a summer around you calling you professor all the time, when we’re not in classes.”

Severus sighed softly. Ridiculously forgiving, and ridiculously resilient, if he can already be thinking of the summer holidays at a time like this. He nodded and continued, “The Greengrasses are rather known for staying out of the way sometimes and changing sides as it pleases them. They make their income from sales of a number of potions that only they control the ingredients for, plants that only flourish in the Greengrass gardens. They dwell behind powerful protective magic, or someone would have stolen their secrets long before now. They have almost always Sorted Slytherin.”

“Oh.” Harry huddled on the bed and then uncurled when Dash poked him with his tail. Severus had the private opinion that Harry would have been far worse than he was without the basilisk urging him to face life. “Well. I’d like him to know that it’s real. And that I’m willing to meet with him. And, um, that I don’t expect to take over the world or something like that. Can you change the wording so it’s more diplomatic?”

Severus rolled his eyes a little. “More diplomatic than that will not be hard to manage, Harry.”

“I’m sorry, sir.”

And this is the reason that he has so much trouble calling me by my first name. Severus doubted Harry would be this meek with the Muggles, but then again, Harry had come not to care what they thought of him. He did with Black and Severus, though.

“You don’t need to be sorry,” Severus said. “You are new at this. You’ll learn politics in time, and with competent teachers, and from a human perspective.” He cast a hard glance at Dash, who only looked with mild interest back at him. “I will teach you.”

Harry watched him for a second, and then smiled. “Thank you, Severus.”

One hurdle overcome, Severus thought, and picked up Greengrass’s letter again.

*

Draco shut his eyes and held his breath as long as he could. At least he was alone in the dorm room. Theo was in the library, and Vince and Greg had gone elsewhere the minute he told them to.

He wanted to go tell his father the disrespectful way Professor Snape had spoken to him. He wanted to complain. He wanted to do lots of things, including marching back to the hospital wing and demanding to be included in the political discussion he suspected Harry and Professor Snape were having. How could Harry learn if Draco wasn’t there to help?

But that was the kind of behavior that had got him in trouble in the first place. Professor Snape was already angry at him, and there wasn’t any point in pushing any further, the same way there wasn’t when he got a detention or lost points for Slytherin.

Draco flopped down on his bed and scowled at the ceiling. Then he scowled at the wall. Then he scowled at Blaise’s bed, which for some reason had stayed in the room even though Blaise had gone to the Continent.

I’m going to show them I can be an adult about this. And that means having my own ideas and reaching out to other people and not complaining all the time.

Draco reached for parchment and ink, and started writing a letter to Weasley. Harry wasn’t the only one who would need political education.

Chapter 91: Walking Tall

Chapter Text

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Ninety-One—Walking Tall

Look at all these letters, mate!”

Harry had to nod, and then duck as another owl attempted to drop a letter on his head. They were at breakfast in the Great Hall, and the owls had decided this was a perfect time to deliver all the post. There were a few Howlers mingled in with the letters on creamy parchment, and the anonymous threats, and the invitations to parties that made Harry feel expensive scratchy robe collars around his throat just looking at them.

Luckily, thanks to Hermione, they had a system for handling them. Hermione waved her wand back and forth, tirelessly, and a net rose from the table and caught all the Howlers. Then it dragged them out and drowned them in the lake, where they could scream and Harry wouldn’t hear them.

The rest of the letters went into a net, too, which Hermione had attached to the back of Harry’s chair. Harry really wasn’t looking forward to dragging them back into Gryffindor Tower with them.

“What’s—what?”

Harry blinked and turned his head. There were so many letters that it was no surprise they’d missed the one in the mess that was addressed to Ron. Ron spent some time blinking at it like the eagle-owl that had settled on the back of his chair, and then shook his head and tore it open.

Harry just managed to cock his head to see Draco’s handwriting before Ron burst out laughing and tossed the letter into the air, setting it afire with an Incendio.

“Being Harry’s best mate is a better political education than you could ever offer me, Malfoy!” Ron called across the Hall to the Slytherin table. “But I appreciate the offer,” he added.

Harry sighed as he watched Draco’s face heat up. He didn’t think Draco had heard Ron’s last words; most of the laughing students hadn’t. He would have to soothe Draco when he saw him in the library later that day.

He glanced up as another five letters came pouring in, and stifled a second sigh. Not everyone knew about Dash having Salazar Slytherin’s soul, of course. But their letters combined with the ones who were horrified at his part in Dumbledore’s death, and the ones who wanted to congratulate him for “winning” the Tournament, and the ones who wanted to demand that he be arrested, and the people who wanted to threaten him, and the people who proposed marriage for no reason…

I’m drowning, he told Dash, who was curled up under his chair and under most of Ron and Hermione’s, too.

You’ll get used to it, said Dash unsympathetically, and yawned with a parting of his jaws, one that Harry was glad most people didn’t watch, or couldn’t see because of the way Dash was under the table. They might start thinking about how wide Dash could open his mouth, and about what he could fit in there. When one has such an extraordinary basilisk for a companion, one has to get used to notoriety.

I was doing fine in that department before you came along.

Obviously not, or you would be better-equipped to handle this much post, said Dash, and dropped down into sleep. He’d spent a long night hunting in the Forbidden Forest, apparently. Harry didn’t know how he could when he’d had that enormous meal of beef yesterday, but there were lots of things he had to come to terms with not really knowing about Dash.

“We have to come up with a plan,” said Hermione, and frowned as she snared another Howler and corralled it with a second one that had showed up right behind it. “You can’t possibly answer all these letters, Harry.”

“I think we should report the threats to the Aurors,” said Ron, leaning around Hermione and pointing his fork in the direction of one squirming, wriggling letter on top of the pile behind Harry’s chair. “Like that one.”

“But they’re already investigating Dumbledore’s death. Would they really want to take up this case?”

Harry sighed. Even though they’d arrested Blaise’s uncle and let him keep his basilisk, he didn’t have any great confidence in the Ministry. “I think we should—”

“Might I be of some assistance?”

Harry looked up and blinked. He knew that the student standing across from him was a Slytherin, since it was obvious from his tie, but it took him a long moment to remember his name. “Montague?” he asked slowly. Yes, he was on the Slytherin Quidditch team, but Harry usually only saw him shooting past in a blur of green robes or trying to upset something Katie Bell and the others were doing.

“Yes, Graham Montague,” said the boy, nodding. Harry thought only he, Ron, and Hermione were close enough to see that it almost turned into a bow, and that when he straightened up and looked at Harry, there was badly-hidden awe in his eyes.

Harry hid his own groan. So he knows about Dash. Who knows how many people know? “Have you dealt with letters like this one before?” he asked, and nodded to the squirming one in the net behind his chair. Hermione was handily banishing another chorus of Howlers.

“Yes,” said Montague. “And there’s a spell that renders any contents inert and harmless. Unless they were harmless in the beginning, of course.” He cocked his head at the moving letter. “There are some rather valuable plants that could be sent by post, and might struggle like that inside their confinement.”

“Oh,” said Harry. He turned his head. “Well, if the spell won’t harm that if it’s harmless, will you teach me how to use it?”

Montague nodded and carefully swept his wand in front of him at chest height, then back the other way, on what looked like the same exact track to Harry. “You have to keep your wand almost in the identical path,” he explained. “Then you focus your will on the letter and say Immeritus.”

Harry nodded and copied the motion with his wand. Montague beamed at him like a proud parent. Harry smiled back weakly. With the exception of Draco, he'd never really expected a member of the Slytherin Quidditch team to look happy about him doing something like this.

The squirming of the thing, letter, whatever it was, was really getting out of hand, so Harry turned around, carefully performed the wand movement, and said aloud, "Immeritus!"

The squirming stopped at once. Harry shivered a little. That meant the contents had been harmful. He decided he would throw them away without trying to open the letter.

"I would offer to eat them," Dash said aloud in Parseltongue, waking up, his voice curling through several conversations at different tables and silencing them at once. "But my stomach is too full."

Harry stroked Dash's neck. That's all right. They would probably poison you anyway. Is there a reason that you're speaking aloud right now?

There are people who are here to be impressed. Dash tilted his head back at Montague, who couldn't seem to decide whether he should be scared or thrilled. They will want to know that you speak with your snake, not simply stand and sit with him at your side.

Harry sighed. Politics. He was getting better at them, but he still thought he would never enjoy them the way Draco and Professor Snape seemed to. He just wanted everything to be straightforward and fair and for people to understand him.

"Mr. Potter."

Harry blinked and turned around. He hadn't heard anyone approach, but then, with the shrieking from the Howlers and the chatter in the Great Hall, maybe that wasn't a surprise. There were two Aurors standing behind him, both grim gloomy men with thick beards and mustaches.

"You are summoned for questioning in the death of Albus Dumbledore," said the one on the left.

"And to confirm Nicholas Flamel's testimony," added the other, his arms folded and his voice like the steam whistle on the Hogwarts Express.

Harry swallowed and fought panic. For an instant he wondered if they would have someone with Legilimency try to use it on him, or if they would use Veritaserum, or if they would just haul him out of school and--

Nobody is hauling you anywhere as long as you have a basilisk with you.

Dash unwound from under the table, and curled part of himself up Harry's leg so his head was resting on Harry's waist. His tongue darted out, and he gave the Aurors what was clearly an inquiring glance even though his eyelids still covered his eyes. The Aurors took a step back.

At the same time, Ron and Hermione stood up on either side of Harry, and Hermione said in a smug voice, "You can't take Harry anywhere without his legal guardian's consent, because he's underage. I looked it up."

"That's so," said Montague, and shifted a little. Harry could see from the corner of his eye that he had his wand narrowed along his sleeve, aimed at the Aurors.

The Aurors didn't seem to quite know what to do. They stared back and forth between Montague, Ron, Hermione, and Dash, although it was Dash their eyes kept going back to. Harry hid a smirk.

"What seems to be the problem, gentlemen?"

And there was Professor Snape's voice, smooth and dark and so unlike what Harry had once thought about it--that it was the voice of someone who would take delight in torturing him. Right now, he swept up on the other side of the Gryffindor table, beside Montague, and folded his arms. Harry felt as reassured as though he'd already sent the Aurors away.

The Aurors shifted a little, and exchanged glances that were like shoves. The one with the voice like the train whistle finally said, "We need to bring in your ward for questioning in the death of Albus Dumbledore, Professor Snape."

"And to confirm Nicholas Flamel's testimony." Apparently they'd been told to repeat the same thing over and over until people went along with it.

"You will bring him in only in my company." Professor Snape had already worked his way around the Gryffindor table and halfway down it, so that in a few more strides he was standing next to Harry. Ron and Hermione willingly backed out of the way, and Hermione hauled on the net of post so it wouldn't be in his way, either. "Isn't that right, Harry?" His hand descended on Harry's shoulder and squeezed.

"Yes, s-Severus." Harry thought it was probably a good thing to call him "Severus" in front of the Aurors, just in case someone in the Ministry tried to say they weren't comfortable enough with each other to be ward and guardian, or something.

And there was the way it made Severus's face go soft and happy when Harry said it. That was nice, too.

"Well, this is irregular," said Auror Train Whistle.

"No, it isn't!" Hermione looked as if she might explode, the way she did most of the time only when Harry or Ron broke a rule she thought was important. "It's legal! It's the way things are supposed to go! Just because you don't like it doesn't mean it's not an important rule!"

"It's still irregular--"

"Oh, so that means you've been doing illegal things all this time? I wonder how they would feel if they knew--"

"Miss Granger," said Severus warningly, and Hermione calmed down, but she was still fuming. Harry was sure that she would try to tell someone off for the slight soon. Ron leaned in from the side and gave Harry a very direct look.

"You'll probably see my Dad at the Ministry, Harry. Make sure you say hello, okay?"

The Aurors looked a bit nervous. They might not know where Mr. Weasley worked, Harry thought, but now he was coming around to Hermione's way of thinking. There had to be something irregular about this if they'd tried to take him without his guardian, even if they had come into the Great Hall in front of all Hogwarts to do it.

"So," said Montague suddenly, making Harry jump, because he'd forgotten all about him. "I'd imagine you'll visit the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. Perhaps no one told you, Potter, but my brother Lewis works there. You should say hello to him, too."

"Oh," said Harry politely. "Is he a trainee Auror?"

"One of the junior undersecretaries to the Minister, actually." Montague smirked at the Aurors, who seemed to know who his brother was even if they didn't know Mr. Weasley. "He's always interested in complicated cases. He'll come to watch the interrogation, I'm sure."

“There’s not going to be an interrogation!” That was the one who wasn’t Auror Train Whistle.

“It seemed like there was going to be,” said Montague, and continued grinning at the Aurors as if he could cost them their jobs. “My mistake.”

“If you are finished bantering with children,” said Severus. It was still strange for Harry to think of him that way, but he would try. “We should go to the Ministry and resolve the situation to everyone’s satisfaction.”

“I’m sure you can, Professor Snape. You might be the only one that can, as a matter of fact.” Montague bowed to Harry again. “I hope I’ll see you soon, Potter. There are things my father would be delighted to talk to you about.”

I just bet. Harry managed to smile and nod. “Thanks, Montague. And for your spell,” he added, before he turned towards the entrance from the Great Hall. He waved to Ron and Hermione once, and then to Draco, who was standing there with a pale face and very wide eyes, as if he didn’t know if he should interfere.

The two Aurors tried to fall into place on either side of him, but couldn’t. Severus was walking on Harry’s right, and his glare was enough to take them away.

And Dash was crawling on the left, and although he looked cheerful and bright and flickered his tongue out in a curious way, he made the Aurors back further away than Severus could.

Did you ever think about not trying to frighten people? Harry asked.

No. What’s it like?

Harry rolled his eyes, but caught Severus’s glance and managed to calm down. Probably not a good idea if too many people saw him rolling his eyes right now. Politics, again.

*

Severus kept his hand on Harry’s shoulder as they walked out of the Great Hall, holding in his vicious curses. He was lucky he had come in early to breakfast, or he might have missed the confrontation altogether, and Harry might have been snatched away.

Then he looked down at the mass of green scales on Harry’s other side, and changed his mind. He wasn’t used to trusting others to help him accomplish his goals, but in this case, he thought he probably could. Dash was just as determined as Severus that nothing would happen to Harry.

And he would be happy to use a lot less legal means to protect his bonded, too.

“We have to reach the point where we can Apparate,” said the Auror Severus knew as Augustus Howling. “And I don’t know how we’re going to Apparate the basilisk.”

“The same way you’ll Apparate me,” said Harry, his voice unexpectedly firm and confident. “Or I’m not going.”

The other Auror, whom Severus didn’t know, tried a simper that wouldn’t have worked on a first-year. “But, Mr. Potter, you have to see that the snake can’t come with you to the Ministry. You can only keep it at Hogwarts because of a special dispensation from the Minister. That dispensation doesn’t allow you to bring it to the Ministry.”

“Why not?”

The Auror paused. Severus suspected he hadn’t worked out the theory in his head; he just trusted in his reputation and the Minister’s to shut up people who would have tried to question him.

“It’s not done,” he said at last, while Howling and Severus and Harry and Dash had continued towards the Apparition point. He had to hurry to catch up with them. “It’s not—traditional. You could say that.”

“You know another thing that wasn’t done?”

“What?”

The Auror sounded relieved that Harry was agreeing with him. Severus concealed a smile. That was unwise of him.

“Giving me food, because I was a freak. That’s what my relatives told me every time I asked them for it. They said it was done to starve me because that’s what normal people did, they ate the food, and freaks shut up and were grateful for what they had.”

“Of course asking you to obey the laws is something we shouldn’t need to spell out, Mr. Potter, and it’s nothing like starving a child—”

“Then let’s just say that taking me away from Dash isn’t done, either.”

Howling was silent beside them, observing. Severus expected that. He had been one of the Aurors who had handled Severus’s case when he was arrested for being a Death Eater. He had been a Slytherin at Hogwarts, and might even have heard the news flying around by now.

Severus spared a moment to think, Bloody Lucius.

“We have to,” said the Auror who was rapidly becoming Severus’s new example of a disaster in the making, besting even Neville Longbottom. “It’s illegal for you to have a basilisk—”

Harry seemed to be listening harder than ever in that silent way he had when Dash was speaking to him, and now he nodded and spoke up. “I thought it was illegal to breed basilisks, right? But there’s no law that says just having them is illegal.”

The Auror gaped at him. Howling stepped in. “The Experimental Breeding Ban says that, Mr. Potter,” he agreed, in a voice that suggested he wasn’t placating a child, but a dangerous political opponent. Severus applauded his sense. “But there is also a law that says any magical creature of an XXXXX level of danger is illegal to keep on British soil.”

“I think you’ll find basilisks are an exception to that law.”

“Why would they be?” Howling seemed to look around as if he thought someone could pop up to explain the law to him.

Harry closed his eyes briefly again, and Severus had to shake his head. Of course Dash would be feeding him information—probably from the last time his soul had been in this world.

That will still take some time to get used to.

Severus had no time to do it right now, because Harry’s eyes popped open again and he said, “The loophole was written into the law to accommodate Salazar Slytherin’s descendants, because they were Parselmouths and a basilisk is the most-suited companion to a Parselmouth.” He cast a glance down at Dash that had so many complex emotions in it Severus didn’t even try to read them. “And a Parselmouth is the only one who can bond with such a dangerous magical creature and keep it from causing harm. No one can do that with a dragon or an Acromantula—” he smiled for some reason “—but I can with a basilisk.”

“You’re not wanted for questioning on the matter of you owning a basilisk, though,” the other Auror intervened. “You’re wanted for questioning on—”

“Yes, you told me,” said Harry, and he took a deep breath before he folded his arms across his chest. Severus wondered what in the past made that such a loaded gesture for him. “But I’m just saying, trying to take Dash away from me would be illegal as well as unwise.”

That phrasing, Severus was sure was the basilisk’s, but he had a great deal of sense, too, and right now, he kept his mouth shut. When the inferior Auror turned for orders to Howling, Howling only shook his head and muttered, “We’re already late. Let him keep the bloody thing until we meet the Minister or something.”

The other Auror nodded once, and then they began to move again. Severus kept close by Harry’s side, because he had to make sure that he was the one who Side-Along Apparated the boy.

And because he wanted to make sure that he was there to prevent any sudden political meltdowns. Harry was doing very well at the moment, but he was still young and untried.

Even if he has two people beside him who are not.

*

Hermione sighed in worry as she went back to scooping up Howlers with her wand and sending them out to the lake. She supposed they would probably follow Harry to the Ministry. She hoped they wouldn’t make him look too bad to anyone who was listening when he got dragged into the Department of Magical Law Enforcement.

“I’m going to send a message to my brother,” Montague announced abruptly. “I don’t think Potter will see him on the way into the Ministry, but he’ll probably see him when he leaves, if nothing else.”

Hermione turned and studied Montague. She had thought that he was just doing something political and Slytherin when he came up to Harry, the way that most people would who heard about Dash having Slytherin’s soul. But she hadn’t thought that he would keep up the pretense once Harry was gone.

He huffed and folded his arms when he saw her looking at him. “What’s the matter, Granger? You don’t believe that a Slytherin can be a sincere ally?”

“I’m surprised that most are,” Hermione told him. “Especially someone on the opposing Quidditch team.”

“But that applies to Malfoy, too,” Montague said, and glanced over at the Slytherin table. Draco was gone, though. Hermione supposed that wasn’t surprising. He had probably either gone to see if he could accompany Professor Snape and Harry to the Ministry or to contact his father, again. “Both of those things. And I know that you’re studying with him in the library and all the rest.”

Hermione wanted to tear her hair out. For all that she was worried about Harry and his stance in politics, she hadn’t thought it would involve her, too, other than people who got upset about Harry having a Muggleborn friend. “Yes, fine. Draco’s a friend. Because he’s Harry’s friend. You might want to be Harry’s ally, but you don’t want to be his friend.”

“I don’t know him yet,” said Montague, with a little roll of his eyes. “You would rightfully put me down if I claimed to.” He snorted. “Don’t look so surprised, Granger. You’re not the only one who can think through consequences.”

Hermione cocked her head. She supposed she wasn’t the one who would have to approve of Montague in the end, but she couldn’t see any harm in giving him some encouragement right now. Harry could always distance himself from Montague later. “Okay. You’re right. I’m sorry.”

Ron had his eyebrows raised, but he said nothing. Hermione beamed at him. He didn’t need as much education in strategy as Draco thought he did. He could keep quiet when it would benefit them.

“Good,” said Montague, and then abruptly turned and looked at the doorway of the Great Hall. He grinned. “Reckon I’m not the only one who heard the news about Potter. Later, Granger, Weasley.” He nodded to them and left.

Hermione turned. She didn’t recognize the tall couple clad in blue-green robes and heavy-looking torques of gold who stood in the doorway, but she knew the girl beside them. “Alisoun Selwyn?” she asked doubtfully as they approached. Yes, it was the same girl Harry had taken to the Yule Ball.

“Yes,” said Selwyn, and made a gesture behind her. “These are my parents, Ella and Matthias. Where is Harry?” She darted her head around as if that might reveal him and his basilisk hiding under a table.

“He just got taken to the Ministry. They want to talk to him about Dumbledore’s death.”

“Then that’s where we should be,” said Selwyn, and turned and led her parents out. Hermione thought they looked back over their shoulders to watch her and Ron, but Selwyn was focused forwards.

Ron snorted. “Ever have the feeling that our lives are going to get a lot busier, along with Harry’s?”

“They already are,” Hermione said, and banished some more Howlers, while her stomach churned. They’re busy…and we have to be so careful, so that we don’t do something that might damage Harry’s chances with his allies.

Then she straightened her shoulders.

But that’s no reason to back down.

Chapter 92: The Biting Flames

Chapter Text

Harry tried to be calm as he walked into the Ministry. His heart was still beating wildly, but Dash was crawling at his side, and Harry knew Professor Snape--Severus--would die to defend him. Or at least hurt other people to defend him. He had to, if he was going to force potions down Harry's throat and all the rest of it. If he was going to be that fierce with Harry, he had to be that fierce with--

Stop, Harry managed to think, and focused his attention ahead, down the corridor.

They'd taken a lift to the Department of Magical Law Enforcement. There were a lot more people around than Harry had expected, and for a second he froze. Then he flushed. Of course, the Aurors had come in the middle of breakfast, not late at night, even though it had kind of felt like late at night with how determined they were to sneak him away.

And they attracted attention, of course. In fact, Harry thought he could see where the words "screeching halt" came from, because people stopped in front of them and started screaming almost immediately.

"Is that a basilisk?"

"It is! Kill it, kill it! Before it kills us!"

"When they're young like that you can kill them with a spell more easily than anything--"

Dash uttered a long, low hiss that seemed to curl around the walls and floor and furniture and make more than one person freeze in place as if he'd used his petrifying gaze. Harry felt his pleasure thrum up the bond at the results, but he only turned his close-lidded eyes towards Harry as if inviting him to explain to them what was going on.

"I'm Harry Potter, and this is Dash, my basilisk," Harry said, and studiously ignored how stupid he felt. "That means he isn't going to hurt you. I'm a Parselmouth and I'm bonded to him, and it's legal for me to possess him."

In a way, what they said next didn't matter, because it was such a storm of yells and muttering and pointing fingers and people ducking out of the way every time Dash's head swung towards them, Harry couldn't understand them individually anyway. He looked at the Auror Severus had told him was called Howling, and waited.

Howling cleared his throat, which did exactly nothing, so he used a Sonorus Charm and his voice boomed out down the corridor. "What young Mr. Potter says is correct. It is legal for him to have a basilisk and we do have an appointment with Minister Fudge, so if you good people could please move out of the way..."

"And let the basilisk hunt us down?"

"The Minister must be out of his mind!"

"I never knew that the Minister cared more about what happened to poisonous magical snakes than the real citizens of Britain!"

Harry was going to roll his eyes and walk through it, but then he caught Severus's eye. Severus's mouth was pinched in, and he looked between the people as though he wanted to attack them. For that matter, Dash's tongue was starting to flicker in and out at a faster pace that Harry knew from experience was never good.

Harry cleared his throat loudly, and half the people arguing in the corridor turned to look at him. The rest didn't, but Harry thought that would probably change pretty fast.

"I'm the only one who can control the basilisk," Harry said pleasantly. "Because I'm the only Parselmouth in Britain." He wanted to cringe when he remembered that wasn't true, but no one needed to know about Voldemort being back and the ragged patch on Harry's soul right now. "And right now, you're annoying me, and making my temper short."

"So you're going to set the basilisk on us?" That was an annoying woman with a pink cardigan and a face that could have put Trevor, Neville's toad, to shame. She looked down her nose at Harry, and didn't even glance at Dash.

"No," said Harry, and shrugged a little. "But I'm only fourteen, you know. I don't have very good control. Not all the time. And Dash gets upset when he listens to people insult me, and sometimes he doesn't think I should just forgive them like I do. If he gets upset enough..."

“I do believe you are threatening us. You spiteful little toad.”

Harry thought the pink woman had some nerve calling anyone else a toad, but he didn’t have the same reaction Dash did. Dash shot forwards in silence, and weaved around the pink woman. She went as still as though someone had cast the Stone Curse on her, and stared with helpless eyes at Harry.

“Really, Mr. Potter, this is most improper,” said Auror Howling. But his voice was faint, and he didn’t move, either.

Harry waited for a moment, just long enough to give the impression that he was struggling in a silent argument with Dash, and then stepped up beside the pink woman and held out a commanding hand. “Let her go, Dash.”

She insulted you. And me. And she smells dangerous.

Harry thought about that, then shrugged. The point was, at the moment they had nothing they could justifiably attack her for, and he would get in more trouble for letting Dash kill her than anything else. “Let her go. I’m going to warn you one more time, and then I’ll take away all the mice that I was planning to feed you for dinner.”

He ignored the squeaks from some Ministry officials who were suddenly upset at the thought of being trapped inside the Ministry by a hungry basilisk. He bent his gaze on Dash for show, and Dash finally unwound himself from the pink woman and crawled back to Harry, keeping his head down in a fine imitation of human sullenness.

I’ve had enough models at that bloody school, haven’t I?

Harry kept his hand on Dash’s head for a moment as he drew him further away from the pink woman and towards the office that Auror Howling wanted them to aim for. Are you all right?

I don’t know why, but she smells dangerous.

Harry sighed a little. He couldn’t imagine why that would be, and Dash’s attempt to show him didn’t help much; Harry still didn’t understand half the subtle swirls and marks that made up Dash’s scent world, and when he was sharing his basilisk’s senses, he simply understood without needing it explained. Well, let’s go on and talk to the Minister. We need to spend some time doing that, and deciding what to tell him.

My vote would be nothing. Not that I have Salazar’s soul, not that Voldemort is now your Horcrux.

Harry shivered a little. What does that mean? Does that mean I wouldn’t die if someone cast the Killing Curse at me?

You wouldn’t die anyway, because I would be in front of you tugging you out of the curse’s path.

Harry hit Dash lately on the side with one hand. Be serious.

I am. Do you think I would allow you to go into battle without me?

Harry sighed again and said nothing. They were at the door of the Minister’s office anyway, and Fudge was looking like he wanted to either explode or start yelling as he stared at them.

“Minister Fudge,” said Harry, with a faint smile, and then took a chair in front of the desk while Dash curled around him, around the chair legs, and along about half the floor. Fudge hadn’t planned at all for Dash to come, Harry saw. Does that mean he thinks he would have stayed at the school? Interesting.

Fudge coughed and glanced at Auror Howling and the other one, who hadn’t ever introduced himself, as if hoping for some sort of answer. All Howling did was shake his head, resigned, while Snape took up his stance behind Harry, one hand light on his shoulder. Harry leaned back against him.

“I hadn’t, ah, realized that you would be accompanying Mr. Potter, Professor Snape,” Fudge finally said. “You’re not his Head of House, after all.”

“I am his legal guardian.”

It seemed that was all Snape intended to say, and from Dash’s lazy hiss, he approved. He put his head on Harry’s lap and watched Fudge with his lidded yellow eyes. Fudge stared in what seemed to be dreadful fascination despite himself, and then looked away and fiddled with his tie for a moment.

“You’re here to answer questions about the death of Albus Dumbledore, Mr. Potter,” he finally said.

“All right,” said Harry, and then didn’t speak anymore. He wouldn’t have anyway, but he had the squeeze of Severus’s hand on his shoulder and Dash’s coils around his legs to also warn him it wouldn’t be a good idea.

“Can you—er—”

Harry wanted to roll his eyes, but he said, “What’s the matter, Minister? If you’re going to ask my basilisk to leave, I’m afraid he can’t. He’s actually an essential witness to what happened at the cave Dumbledore brought me to.”

Fudge turned green and pressed his hands against his mouth. Harry shifted a little. He really hoped that Fudge wasn’t about to get sick all over the desk—and probably Harry, too, because that was the way his luck ran.

“I’ve heard that your basilisk was the one who, er, instigated the deed,” said Fudge, and his voice was so breathless that Harry had to concentrate to hear him.

“Yes. He was the one who killed Dumbledore, sir,” Harry said, and stroked Dash’s head again. Dash sent a pulse of approval down the bond. He believed it couldn’t hurt to remind Fudge of who was master of the basilisk in the room.

Or who looks like the master of the basilisk in the room.

Harry said nothing back. Their struggle over mastery of the bond, or who was primary or strong or what, couldn’t be allowed to interfere right now.

“Did you know that killing someone with basilisk poison is illegal in Britain?”

“Is it specially illegal?”

“Eh?” Fudge started as though someone had asked him to walk over and pet Dash. Well, maybe not, Harry had to concede. He wasn’t running out of the room screaming, which was what Harry thought would really happen if someone asked him to pet Dash. “What do you mean, Mr. Potter?”

“Well, it just seemed to me that all poisons would be illegal, unless they were brewed by someone who had permission from the Minister.” Harry put on his best earnest face. “So that means killing someone with any poison would be illegal. Not just basilisk venom.”

Fudge shook his head. “You aren’t allowed to kill people with a basilisk, Mr. Potter!”

“You also aren’t allowed to perform untested alchemical rituals on them, I thought,” said Harry, and let his anger enter his voice. He thought it was okay. At least, both Severus and Dash squeezed him, but just lightly, and not like they were about to lose their tempers. “That was what Dumbledore and Flamel would have done to me.”

Fudge looked around as though he thought Dumbledore would come back to life and step out of the walls to rescue him. “I can’t—of course you’re right, Mr. Potter. But I don’t think we can hold Flamel solely responsible for it. He had a brewing partner he trusted, and—”

“What about Dumbledore?”

Fudge jerked as though someone had poked him in the back this time. “Dumbledore isn’t alive to be tried,” he said in a shrill voice. “Thanks to your basilisk.”

“I know. But what I meant was that you can try me for murder, but I’m going to testify about what Dumbledore did to me. He made the Triwizard Cup into a trap. He put me in the Tournament in the first place.” Harry leaned forwards, putting his elbows on his knees as he watched Fudge carefully. He looked as though he was going to explode or something. Harry didn’t really want him to do that, but on the other hand, he had to make his stance clear.

“I’m not going to lie down and take the blame for Dumbledore’s death. He was going to sever my bond with Dash—”

“What?” Fudge yelped, and sat up and stared at him.

Harry blinked a little, surprised at that sudden reaction. “That’s what he said. He thought I was behaving strangely because of Dash and my Slytherin friends, and he said that the pool would sever the bond and make me ‘normal’ again.”

Fudge leaned forwards with the same dreadful fascination he’d used to look at Dash earlier. “You mean that Dumbledore would have severed the bond and left the basilisk free of your control?” he whispered.

Oh. That’s why he’s so frightened. But Harry could work with this, and he didn’t even need Severus or Dash to tell him how. He put on his earnest look again and nodded. “Yes, sir. Absolutely. Dash would have been free then, and he probably would have killed Dumbledore anyway when he got to the cave.”

“Because he’s a basilisk, and he has no sense of restraint,” said Auror Train Whistle, and Harry had the sense that he was glaring sideways at Dash.

“I’m the only one who can reassure him, and I was in danger,” said Harry, and turned reproachful eyes on the Auror. “Can you blame him for attacking when he realized what was happening?”

Fudge cleared his throat, probably feeling that not enough people were paying attention to him now. “You speak sometimes of the basilisk as though he was fully intelligent, Mr. Potter—”

Harry opened his mouth to say something, and Severus touched his shoulder with a light motion of his fingers. Harry closed his mouth.

“And at other times as if it is a skittish pet, who needs a Parselmouth just to function in day-to-day life.” Fudge tapped his fingers on the desk, his eyes glittering in what he probably thought was a bit of cunning. “Which is it? Can we punish your snake for committing murder or not?”

“I don’t know. Are you going to punish Flamel for trying to drown me in an alchemical pool?”

Fudge spluttered a bit. “We can’t—that is to say, you can’t—”

“I was just curious, sir,” Harry said, and heard Severus smother a cough at his performance. Dash was just looking innocently around, as though he thought Harry should be perfectly capable of handling himself at all times.

“We have to have you go in front of the Wizengamot,” said Fudge abruptly, and he sounded as though he was trying to regain control of the conversation. “To tell them what you saw, and have you under Veritaserum.”

It didn’t take Severus’s hand, this time, to tell Harry that that was a bad idea. He sighed and looked down. “I just don’t understand why no one trusts me, sir,” he whispered. “I’m the one who got kidnapped and my bond with my basilisk almost severed, but I’m the one who’s being treated like a criminal.”

“A death happened, Mr. Potter!” Fudge was trying to sound stern and jolly both at once, and it wasn’t working very well. “You understand that we have to investigate that, of course!”

“I suppose I do.” Harry nodded doubtfully. “But at the same time, I want to know whether Flamel is going to be treated like a criminal, too.”

“A most respected alchemist—you must understand—”

“Is that a ‘no,’ Minister?” Severus’s voice was so cold that Harry winced. He also decided it was time to shut up and let Severus take over, at least if he was going to sound like that. “Do you mean to say that it is only my ward’s fault? That he is somehow responsible for his own kidnapping, and that you will not press charges against Flamel?”

“He’s admitted—some things. Not others.” Fudge licked his lips. “We need to have a session in front of the Wizengamot to decide. You understand.”

“I understand that your Aurors approached my ward at the breakfast table and tried to make him come with them alone. I understand that you seem intent on questioning the youngest person in that cave while you would leave adults alone.”

Harry scowled for a second. He wasn’t the youngest person there. I mean, yeah, technically Ron and Hermione and Draco are all older than I am, but you’re younger, Dash.

Dash flicked out his tongue as if he was laughing at him, and didn’t deign to take any notice.

“That was a misunderstanding!” Fudge waved his hands frantically. “They never meant to take young Mr. Potter without someone with him! It was just—there was some paperwork filed that said you wouldn’t be taking charge of him any longer.”

Severus stood so stiffly upright that Harry winced even though he knew that anger wasn’t directed at him. He could almost feel sorry for Fudge. “What do you mean?” he asked, and everyone shivered in the wake of his voice. “Who filed the paperwork?”

“Well, er,” said Fudge, and pulled out a thick sheet of parchment from a drawer in his desk. Harry swallowed. It was thick, sure, but it didn’t look important enough to be something that could destroy his life.

No one is going to destroy your life. I would run away with you from someone who tried to adopt you the same way I would have run away with you from Black.

“Well, Albus Dumbledore, actually,” said Fudge, and his voice sank to the point where Harry could hardly hear it.

“Ah,” said Severus, and his voice vibrated a little, in a way Harry had never heard even when Neville destroyed a bunch of rare Potions ingredients. “And of course we should trust the word of a man who lied to save his own skin, dressed up as another man to confuse the teachers and students of the school, tried several times to remove my ward’s basilisk, and had Flamel impersonate him.”

Fudge made a confused sound. “Professor Snape, if you would—there was never a trial, we don’t know if all those accusations are true—”

“But you think the accusations against my ward are true, without a chance for him to prove or act against them.” Severus was suddenly snarling, and Harry watched as Fudge turned pale.

You see? He can be as good a guardian as you allow him to be. He will certainly not let you go alone into danger.

Harry said nothing, simply petting Dash and watching as Fudge frantically backtracked. “Answers! Answers are all I want! I mean, that we want! We never sanctioned kidnapping—we never said it would be a good thing—”

“I never thought you wanted me to be kidnapped, Minister Fudge,” Harry said, deciding he had to intervene or the man would probably splutter on and be annoying for a lot longer. “I just didn’t know why you sent Aurors to collect me and bring me here by myself, and one of them was saying that my basilisk couldn’t come with me, either.” He glared at Auror Train Whistle.

“It must be illegal! I mean, maybe not for Salazar Slytherin’s descendants, but there’s no evidence that Potter’s one of them!”

Auror Howling had his face in his hands. Fudge waved a finger at the Auror. “That means that you were the one spreading these vicious rumors about me trying to separate Potter from his basilisk! Eh? Eh? Then you might as well turn in your resignation letter, and make sure that—”

“No need,” Severus interrupted smoothly. “As long as you can make it clear with your own words, Minister Fudge, that you never meant anyone to take this as an endorsement of separating Harry from his basilisk.”

“Eh?” Fudge said one more time, and slumped back in his chair, shaking his head a little. “Well, I suppose—we’re short on Aurors, we need all the ones we can get…” He squinted at Train Whistle. “Just don’t let me hear you speaking for me again, got it?”

“Yes, sir,” said the Auror, and gave everyone except the Minister a glare. Auror Howling took his hand away with a sigh. Dash flicked out his tongue, and spoke into Harry’s head.

I don’t know if we should leave this one alive behind us, either. He smells as if he’s getting ready to lash out at us.

Harry didn’t put his hand over his eyes, but he wanted to. You can’t go around killing people all the time, Dash. I told you that.

Why not?

Because that I would find some way to break the bond myself.

Dash’s head slid off his lap in his shock, but aside from a squeak from the Minister, everyone pretended not to notice. Fudge pulled at his robe collar. “I’m afraid that you do have to appear in front of us, Mr. Potter. The Wizengamot has gathered from all over, and disrupted their routines for the sake of hearing your testimony in the Dumbledore case.”

At least it’s not the Potter case, said Dash, his voice a little subdued.

“I don’t know, Severus. Do you think I should testify?” Harry asked, tilting his head back so he could meet his guardian’s eyes. He knew what Dash would say without having to ask, but he didn’t have that kind of mental connection with Severus.

When he saw the way Severus was peering at him, though, Harry had to wonder if he was starting to develop that kind of instinctive tendency to know what Severus was thinking. The man’s mouth was tight.

“If you want to,” said Severus at last, giving the Minister and the Aurors both looks that dismissed them as dust that had got onto a stirring rod. “It’s your choice.”

Which probably means that he doesn’t know all of the political consequences that could come from it, Dash remarked.

Harry looked at Fudge. “Then I’ll testify, so they’re not inconvenienced. But I’m not doing it under Veritaserum.”

Auror Train Whistle might have said something, but Harry didn’t get to hear more than the start of words in his throat before Auror Howling had him clamped by the arm. Fudge, meanwhile, scrambled to his feet and practically bowed Harry out the door.

“Of course, of course! You’re so gracious, Mr. Potter, taking time out of your busy day to come here. And you, too, Professor Snape!”

Harry tuned out the rest of the Minister’s words, because Dash was clamoring for his attention down the bond. Maybe he thought it was a terrible idea, Harry testifying before the Wizengamot, but you’d think he could have said so before now, Harry thought grumpily.

Dash had another concern, though. Did you mean what you said about leaving if I killed people?

Of course I did. That’s not the way to do it. I see why you had to kill Dumbledore, but you can’t go around just doing it to anyone you think deserves it.

Dash crawled along beside him for a while, as they went through corridors and up lifts that Dash had to coil himself around Harry to fit inside. Just before they got to the thick door that barred the way into a courtroom, Harry thought he heard him mutter, That changes some of my plans.

But Harry had no time to ask what he meant. The door swung open in front of them with a tap of Fudge’s wand, and left them facing the Wizengamot.

Chapter 93: One of Them

Chapter Text

Harry had never seen so many people staring disapprovingly at him. He froze in the doorway of the courtroom, his hand falling and tightening for a minute on Dash’s scales.

You saw that many people doing this once before. When your name came out of the Goblet. Dash nuzzled insistently at Harry’s hip, which meant he nearly toppled from his feet. You can do this. They’re only ridiculous wizards who would run away screaming if I so much as showed a fang.

That’s because you’re a bloody big poisonous snake, Harry retorted as Severus curved an arm around his shoulders and led him to a chair that was right in the middle of the floor, in the middle of all those stares. Not because they’re afraid of me.

Remind them again that you control me, the way you did on the way in. That should make some people take notice.

Harry bit his lip, but nodded and sat in the chair. He saw the dreadful woman in the pink cardigan off to the side with a desk and notes in front of her, glaring at him, but he was more interested in the young wizard right beside her. He looked maybe twenty-four, and wore dark blue robes and a few splatters of ink. He looked a lot like Montague, who had spoken with Harry in the Great Hall before they came here.

Smells like him, too.

Ignoring the pink woman, Harry smiled at this other Montague brother. He got a slow nod back. At least it made him believe that whatever Graham had heard that made him so respectful, this one had heard, too.

“Mr. Harry James Potter,” said Fudge, in a rolling kind of voice that Harry thought had probably won him a lot of support, “we are here today to judge whether you had anything to do with the death of Albus Dumbledore.”

“Of course he did!” said someone in the crowd of glares and robes and hats all looking at Harry. “Dumbledore died by basilisk venom, and look! There’s one right beside him!”

“Actually,” said Severus, and Harry realized his voice was a lot calmer than the arm he had wrapped around Harry’s shoulders, “Dumbledore died by the basilisk’s gaze. A mistake must have crept into the reports somewhere, stating it was his venom.”

Fudge stared for a few seconds. Then he looked at the pink woman for one second. She looked like she was about to croak like a toad, but instead she pulled out a piece of parchment and scanned it.

“That is what Mr. Flamel said, Minister,” she said, in a simpering voice that made Dash stretch hungrily at Harry’s feet.

Behave!

I think I should eat her. She even squeaks like Pettigrew did.

Harry said nothing except to push a lot of revulsion at Dash, and turned back to Fudge as he frowned at Severus. “Were you actually there to see the death happen, Professor Snape?”

“Indeed. If I had not moved out of the way, I would have died of the basilisk’s gaze myself.”

People in the room murmured in what sounded like awe. Harry thought they sounded stupid. How could they be horribly afraid of Dash and then admire his gaze at the same time?

Humans are inconsistent. It is a great mammalian fault. Dash fell back behind Harry’s leg to yawn, which Harry appreciated. The last thing they needed was everyone seeing his fangs right now. But they may admire your Snape all they like. As long as they do not doubt the power of my eyes.

“Well, Flamel said it was the poison,” said Fudge, and then alternated looking back and forth between Harry and Severus as if he thought one of them would crack first. He had nothing on Uncle Vernon trying to make Harry do it, though, so Harry stared solidly back. Fudge finally coughed and only turned to Severus. “Can we view a Pensieve memory?”

“If you can promise me that all the members of the Wizengamot would look at it, not only you and your undersecretary, Minister.”

Fudge paused. Harry wondered why he’d only been intending to have the two of them look at it, and then wanted to smack his forehead. Of course. Because that way, it would be easier to make decisions and persuade everyone. “We don’t have a Pensieve that big, Professor Snape.”

“Then the answer is no.” Severus gave Harry a glance so quick that Harry would have missed it if he hadn’t been paying attention to absolutely everything around him now, making sure nothing was missed. “And as legal guardian to Harry Potter, I will not let you look at his memories, either.”

Harry blinked. That made him feel odd. Surely he ought to be the one to decide if the Ministry could look at his memories?

Not that he would let them, because it would probably make them think he needed to have Dash taken away from him. But it was still strange not to have the choice himself.

Dumbledore gave you too many choices, said Dash, sounding disgusted. I might think some of the rules young humans have to obey are stupid, but I know that he didn’t follow even the good ones. He let you choose whether you were going to go into danger and maybe even die.

Maybe it was just that. Harry put away the odd feeling for now, because Fudge was whining at Severus again.

“Pensieve memories are the standard in trials like this, Professor Snape! Of course we want to see them! It would help us judge whether or not the basilisk was dangerous!” From the way Fudge smiled a little and nodded his head, he seemed to think he’d come up with a coup.

“Then why not question Flamel the same way?” Severus asked in a bored tone. “You must not have looked at his memories, or you would have realized that Albus Dumbledore did not die by basilisk venom.”

“That does seem an oversight, Cornelius,” said a languid voice from the top row. “Wouldn’t you show us the memories from Flamel, too? Let this professor and this boy watch them so they can be sure they weren’t tampered with. Then we might actually get them to share their memories and this taken care of before three hours have passed.”

Fudge flushed and squinted up at the gallery. “Madam Selwyn, I promise you—”

Selwyn sounds nice, Dash volunteered, even as he pulled a few of his other coils around in preparation for going to sleep.

Of course she does. She’s a member of one of my allied families, Harry thought back. He craned his neck to try and see this Madam Selwyn, but she seemed to be seated near the ceiling, far enough back he couldn’t make her out.

“You’ve promised several things in the past. I can’t remember you delivering on most of them.” There was a tapping sound as if Madam Selwyn had found a ceramic pot to strike her nails against. “Now, are we proceeding with this farce of a trial?”

“It is far more than a farce,” said Fudge, but almost under his breath. He turned reluctantly back to Severus and Harry. “Since we didn’t request Pensieve memories from Mr. Flamel, I suppose we can’t request them from you. But you could volunteer them!”

“I think not.”

Harry had to hide a smile as Fudge visibly winced. He’d heard Severus sound like that plenty of times before when he was Snape, but it was only recently that he’d heard that tone in defense of him.

“All right then,” said Fudge, and turned to the pink woman. “Madam Umbridge, would you pull out the next piece of paperwork in this trial?”

Umbridge did it, all the while frowning at Harry and Severus with what seemed to be most of her lower face. Harry tried to keep a neutral expression. Even though he hadn’t shared Dash’s sense of smell when they met her, he thought he was beginning to understand what Dash meant by saying she was dangerous.

“The next charge you wanted to investigate, Minister,” she said, in a drawl that Harry thought was meant to make her sound important, “was the accusation that Harry Potter was involved in the murder of Professor Dumbledore, and may have fabricated some of the charges against him to get rid of a personal enemy.”

Harry opened his mouth in outrage, but Dash pressed down on his foot, and Severus against his side. Harry closed it again, and watched as Fudge turned around with a big smile and a firm nod. “Of course, of course. I hope you won’t object that what your basilisk did to Professor Dumbledore was murder, Mr. Potter?”

Harry swallowed a couple of times. It was better than rushing into the words, and it didn’t matter how expectant Fudge and the Wizengamot looked. They would wait for him, he could almost hear Draco saying. He was the Boy-Who-Lived, the important one. They were the peasants—Draco would use that word—who depended on him to make things clear to them.

“Of course not,” Harry finally said. He could feel Dash weaving up his side, and Severus opening his mouth, and ignored them both to keep his eyes fixed on Fudge’s face. When Fudge smiled, he added, “As long as you accept that what he did to me was kidnapping, and he and Flamel were going to try untested alchemy on me.”

Fudge frowned at him. Harry had no idea what it was about this time, and simply remained silent. Severus squeezed his shoulder to show he approved.

Dash was watching Umbridge, but his tail curled around Harry’s ankle and squeezed, once.

“Well, we can accept that,” said Fudge reluctantly after a moment. “If we bring Mr. Flamel in here, then we can talk to him?”

“That would be a good idea,” said Madam Selwyn’s cold voice from up near the ceiling again. “Anything to get this over with sooner.”

“Do you think she’s our ally or not?” Harry whispered, while Fudge went through the bustle of telling Aurors that he wanted them to escort Flamel into the courtroom.

“I think she is, and is using the mask of impatience and boredom to our great advantage,” said Severus softly in his ear before an Auror walked past them and he stepped back to stand staring coldly at the members of the Wizengamot.

Harry swallowed and turned back to see Umbridge smiling. She adjusted her pink cardigan and beckoned with one finger.

Harry stood up and went towards her, although Dash and Severus immediately came with him. He didn’t really know what else to do, not when she was doing that. If he resisted, then who knew what would happen? He thought Umbridge was probably more dangerous than Fudge, and not just because Dash had said so.

Umbridge looked ill when she stared down at Dash coiling near her feet, but then she took a deep breath and ignored him. She looked into Harry’s eyes and whispered, “You want to be a good boy, don’t you, Mr. Potter? Everything I’ve heard about you says you do.”

Severus made a sudden shift beside him. Harry knew why. What reports had she been listening to? He hadn’t ever cooperated with the rules even when he had trusted Dumbledore and tried to do what he said.

“I want to find out the truth, Madam Umbridge.”

Umbridge gave a slow nod. “But what if it turns out that the truth isn’t what you want to hear, Mr. Potter?”

Is she trying to threaten me?

Yes, into keeping quiet or admitting some kind of responsibility for what happened to Dumbledore.

Harry only shook his head in wonder, and went back to looking at Umbridge. “I think I want to hear this truth, Madam Umbridge. I mean, I want to know why Flamel lied about Dumbledore dying of basilisk venom. I can’t imagine not wanting to know that.”

Umbridge’s face had turned so dark red that Harry was kind of worried about her health. “Mr. Potter,” she spluttered, and then stopped as if she couldn’t think of anything bad enough to fill out her voice.

“Can I be of some assistance?”

Harry glanced up. It was Montague’s brother, the young man he’d nodded to when they came into the courtroom. He stood beside them and smiled around patiently as if there was nothing he would rather do than help. Harry thought he remembered Montague saying that his name was Lewis.

“The trial will begin again soon, Madam Umbridge,” said Lewis, giving Umbridge a faint smile. “I think we should let Mr. Potter get back to his seat.”

“Did you hear what he said to me?” Umbridge squealed. There was a bubble of foam forming at one corner of her mouth.

Aren’t you sorry now that you didn’t let me eat her?

“I know he said something about wanting to find out the truth. I don’t always agree with those kinds of ambitions, but that’s Gryffindors for you,” said Lewis, with a tiny shrug. “And at least he has ambitions. That’s more than some people in his position could say.” He smiled again at Harry, who returned it before he realized he would.

That’s good. I think we can trust him.

Harry stroked Dash’s head while he looked into Lewis’s eyes. “That’s all I want. The truth.”

Lewis nodded as if he was unsurprised, and then said, “Well, they’re bringing Flamel in. I’d sit down, if I were you, so that we can be finished on time. As Madam Selwyn says.” The slight way he tilted his head made it obvious that he was either allied to Harry like the Selwyns were or at least agreed with her.

“Oh, right,” said Harry, and went back to his seat with Severus close behind him. Severus hadn’t said anything about Lewis. Maybe he hadn’t been a Slytherin, or Severus was thinking about things.

He smells like he’s thinking.

Harry nodded and turned around to watch Flamel come in. It was almost strange to see him just walking with his hands chained together behind his back, not standing behind a glowing blue pool or floating in a cage. He looked at Harry and then jerked his eyes away. But he seemed to have a harder time looking at Dash.

“Why am I here?” he asked, staring at the floor.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Flamel,” said Fudge, trying to sound suave and failing. “There seems to be a small discrepancy in your testimony about Albus Dumbledore’s death and Mr. Potter’s testimony.”

To be fair, he could never sound suave, so we should applaud what attempts he can make.

“What discrepancy?” Flamel still barely moved his lips, and it was hard to hear his voice. He swayed his head back and forth as if he was looking into an abyss that had opened at his feet.

“You said that Dumbledore died of basilisk venom,” said Fudge, sounding a little anxious now. Perhaps he’d thought that Flamel would be more helpful, Harry thought, and prop up the side of the story Fudge had believed. “But Mr. Potter and his guardian say he died of a basilisk’s gaze. Which was it? Can we resolve it with Pensieve memories?”

Flamel was silent. Harry could see Umbridge leaning forwards to catch his words, her quill poised over the parchment. Lewis Montague had gone back to his seat, but looked as though he was waiting in much the same way. But Flamel still said nothing, until Madam Selwyn’s drawling voice called down from her seat near the ceiling.

“Are we going to sit here all night? I do have old bones, you know, and no fire is warm enough except my own hearth at home. No alchemist, no matter how respected, should be enough to keep an old woman out of her bed.”

Harry ducked his head to hide his grin. He thought he was getting a good look at how Madam Selwyn did politics, now.

Flamel started, and Fudge started, and both of them tried to say something at once. In the end, Fudge cleared his throat but fell silent, and Flamel was the one who spoke into the new silence.

“I—may have been mistaken. Things happened so fast. The things we’d planned on, and then other things.” He looked Harry in the eye for just a moment before dropping his gaze. “I might have said venom and meant gaze. I’m sorry. I was confused because—because the boy had fangs, for a while, and he killed Albus as surely as if he bit him.”

“What? The boy had fangs? What?” Fudge sounded as if he was scrambling to keep up. Umbridge’s quill was scratching away like she was a reporter.

“He did, for a little while.” Flamel nodded vaguely and looked around as if the courtroom was all back in that cave where Dumbledore had tried to sever their bond. “But he didn’t by the time we left. I don’t know why that happened.” He shrugged and fell silent again.

“You said that Mr. Potter killed Albus Dumbledore,” said Fudge, eagerly now. “What do you mean by that? How did he kill him, if his basilisk killed him?”

Harry felt all his muscles tighten in protest. Fudge would use this to show that Harry couldn’t control Dash, and that would mean he’d try to take him away again, and that would mean—

Severus bent down and said into his ear, “Fear not. I will not let anything happen because Flamel is vindictive,” at the same time as Dash nudged up under his hand and said, Didn’t I tell you I would take you away before I let them part us?

Harry gave a watery sigh and nodded. He wasn’t sure that he should feel reassured by Dash’s threat, but part of him did. He leaned back and watched as Flamel cleared his throat as if he was choking and spoke again.

“He was the one who formed the bond with the basilisk. He was the one who made it clear that—that he would choose this snake over the duties Albus needed him to perform.”

“Excuse me,” said Lewis Montague, his voice polite and helpful, and his own quill scratching. “I didn’t attend the questioning you did of Mr. Flamel earlier, Minister. Can you remind me of what Harry Potter’s duties were? I’d hate to get something wrong because I didn’t have the context.” His head turned back and forth between Harry and Flamel like he was an owl, and he didn’t really look at Fudge.

“The transcript of the trial notes—” began Fudge.

But either Flamel wanted to talk or he just didn’t see why he shouldn’t, Harry supposed. It wasn’t like Flamel would really have a reason to know who the Montagues were. “Albus agreed that Mr. Potter needed to save the wizarding world. To put his friends first. And he was concerned that Mr. Potter drifting off the path of duty and honor, and putting his basilisk first, would result in more deaths.”

“Ah,” said Lewis, nodding a little, and went back to feverishly scribbling. “But I had thought that Potter had made more friends in the last year. Isn’t that right? At least, he’s made alliances that have been reported in the Daily Prophet.”

Flamel hesitated as if he was getting a glimpse of the danger for the first time. “Not the right kind of friends.”

“The right kind?” Lewis was shaking his head. He could smile charmingly, sort of like Draco, Harry thought, and felt his stomach twist when he thought about Draco. He wished he was here. “I’m sorry, I still don’t understand. What kinds of friends would be the right ones?”

“The ones who would keep him on the path of duty and honor.” Flamel definitely looked wary now, his eyes darting around the room.

“Then I’ll be doomed just not to understand, I suppose,” said Lewis sadly, and wrote down something Harry would have given a lot to read.

“Are we still delaying?” Madam Selwyn called down. “Just get to the confession and then this trial will be done, won’t it? I have a fire to get to!”

Fudge turned around sweating, but with a smile. “Is Mr. Flamel right, Mr. Potter? Did you have basilisk fangs for a little while?”

“I don’t know. Can you trust him?”

Fudge’s smile slid off his face. “Mr. Potter, will you please answer the question?”

“I think that I should advise my ward not to answer that question,” said Severus pleasantly. “Now that we’ve established that the lead witness against him has, at best, a faulty memory. Is there anything you can truly try Harry for, now? Or would you have convicted him on the mistaken words of someone who couldn’t even remember events that happened last night and should have been burned on his memory?”

He shifted behind Harry’s chair as if he wanted to prowl around in front of it like a tiger. Dash chuckled down the bond. Your Snape has even more of the right kind of instincts than I knew he did.

“We need to try him for murder,” Fudge muttered, but he quieted down and winced when Severus sneered at him.

“When you can follow the proper procedures, you should do so,” he said. “When you have reliable witnesses, and you summon Mr. Potter to the Ministry and don’t try to leave his legal guardian behind—”

Lewis smiled and scribbled and Harry thought he heard Madam Selwyn cackle, but Umbridge was the one who interrupted in a little squeal. “What do you mean? Minister Fudge would never buck proper procedure!”

“Someone provided Aurors who accosted Mr. Potter at the breakfast table and intended to take him to the Ministry right then,” said Severus. He turned so that Harry could feel the warmth beating from him as he stood behind the chair, even though he was facing Umbridge and not touching Harry’s shoulder. “If I hadn’t been in the Great Hall, they might have managed it. And they wanted him to leave his basilisk behind, as well.”

“As they should! That thing’s dangerous!”

Someday, you’ll let me kill her for calling me a “thing,” said Dash dreamily.

Harry didn’t bother listening, because Severus had chuckled a little. “And it was so caring and kind and legal to try to deprive Mr. Potter of his protectors the day after he had been kidnapped and watched someone die, wasn’t it? I think that you can either let us go or continue this embarrassing farce, but that won’t go well for you.”

“Farce it is!” From the sound, Madam Selwyn was clashing a cane on the ground. “I’m going home and waiting for some better reason to get out of bed! Who’s with me?”

It looked like most of the Wizengamot members were, if the way they got up and headed for the door with disgusted glances at Fudge was any indication. Harry had to remind himself to breathe. It looked—it really looked—as if they had got through it.

For the moment, of course. Fudge and Umbridge were glaring, and Flamel was peeking at them from under his lowered eyelids, and Harry knew they would all try again.

But at least Lewis Montague was smiling, and Madam Selwyn cackled again as she left, and Severus was walking beside him, and Dash coiled against his leg as they left, almost warm.

Chapter 94: Bought With Blood

Chapter Text

The white light around the artifact was glimmering when Lucius locked the library door behind him and turned to face it.

It sensed intentions, Lucius had come to accept. It only glowed a little when Lucius spilled some blood near the rune, or sat near it with books open and studied every scrap of information he could find about boxes even slightly similar. But now that Lucius was preparing to accept it, the glow was constant, and it flashed as Lucius took a step nearer.

Lucius swallowed. He knew the artifact would indeed rid him of his Dark Mark. He had a vial of his own blood, slowly collected over several hours, sitting off to the side, to activate the rune on the bottom of the box.

But he had still needed to gather his courage, even after drinking a Blood-Replenishing Potion so he wouldn’t pass out in the middle of the process. He had found out what the other price was, besides spilled blood, the one that Borgin might not have known about.

Still, Lucius feared the Dark Lord and what would happen when he began to call his faithful back together more than he feared this box. And he wanted to be alive to help his family more than he wanted to avoid pain.

He walked towards the table.

The white light flashed from the box as it had in the shop, covering the room with intense radiance. Lucius narrowed his eyes and sat beside the table, laying his Marked arm beside the box.

He didn’t think it was his imagination that the box turned a little towards him, the real silver ring on top vibrating.

Lucius flicked locking spells at the door that no one but him knew how to dissolve—not even Narcissa—and took up the artifact, turning it over. The silver ring contracted, but nothing else moved. Lucius uncapped the vial of his blood and began to drip it slowly onto the rune on the bottom of the box, turning it in spirals so the whole rune was covered.

The more blood he poured, the more the light coming from the box changed. The white was dim now, with shadows of red and gold creeping up the outside, like charged flame. Lucius felt the magic pressing down on him at the same time, constricting his throat and pinning his tongue to the bottom of his mouth.

Restricting how I can call for help or cast spells.

Knowing it would happen didn’t lessen how hard his heart was pounding.

When the blood fully covered the rune, the light had fully changed to red and sunk down until it was glimmering around the floorboards like someone had lit a fire in the room below, and there was a sensation like the Scold’s Bridle Spell holding Lucius’s mouth shut. He grimaced and eased his left hand towards the silver ring in the top of the box. In some ways, it would help. Neither Narcissa nor the house-elves would be panicked by his screams.

You wouldn’t have to go through this in the first place if you’d been smart enough not to take the Dark Mark.

Lucius nodded in acknowledgment of his own thoughts, and thrust his Marked arm into the silver ring on the top of the box.

It went far deeper than the size of the box suggested it should. But Lucius had expected that, and the small bucking motions of the box, and he only closed his eyes and bowed his head until his brow touched the table.

The box shuffled a few more times. Something long and cool touched Lucius’s Mark inside the box.

Then it began to eat.

Lucius screamed, but no sound emerged from his mouth. His jaw didn’t even tremble. He simply sat there, and the vibrations leaped through his own cheekbones and ears.

The thing had teeth. It ripped the Dark magic and the corrupted flesh from Lucius’s arm, and it didn’t stop. It went on eating, crunching through the blood and muscle and bone. Lucius felt pain begin to take over his mind in large cloudbursts, and feared he might pass out long before the transformation finished.

Then he felt it stop.

That was not the end, though, and Lucius sat still and breathed hoarsely for long moments before the box made another movement. Claws rippled up and down his arm—well, it could have been fingers, but Lucius thought of any creature that had teeth like that as also having claws. Something cool again ran up the chewed, gnawed mess he was thinking of as his forearm.

And white light struck out from the box again, something deep and triumphant and diamond-colored, and there was a groan that made Lucius start despite himself, pushing one palm flat against the table. Well, the one palm he had that was free of the box.

Coolness and a feeling like his arm was being wrapped in bandages dropped around his arm, and Lucius sighed and rejoiced in the ending of the pain far more than he had rejoiced in kneeling Marked at his Lord’s feet, those long years ago when his initiation had happened. The coolness went on and on, and then Lucius could pull out his arm. He knew that from the way the silver ring and the restrictions on his mouth and jaw relaxed at the same time.

He let his forehead slump onto his hands for long moments before he even tried to look at his left forearm. He was still shaking, vibrating as much with fear as the aftereffects. But he hadn’t made it this far in life by refusing to look at something so simple.

Lucius finally raised his head.

His eyes lingered past a few patches where it looked as though he’d been severely sunburned, and he winced at the thought of what people would say. Well, he would simply have to wear long-sleeved robes for a time around those who were not Severus, Narcissa, or Draco.

Or Harry, I suppose.

But in the center of it all was a patch of skin that looked as though it had come from a newborn. Lucius stared at it, and stroked it. He was expecting, he realized as his fingers prickled along his new skin, to feel something there that remained of the Dark Mark. Ridged lines, raised ones, or a twined snake and skull. Something more than what he had, which was…nothing much.

But it was gone. It was really and truly gone.

And then Lucius slid out of his seat and to the floor of the library, his arms wrapped around himself and involuntary sobs choking his throat much like the spell had until now.

The mistake he had made in his youth, the one he had regretted long before the Dark Lord’s destruction at Potter’s hands, was gone.

He wept for nearly half an hour before Narcissa came and insisted, in a quiet voice that Lucius knew better than to disobey, that he take down the spells preventing the house-elves from coming to him, and then he had to concentrate hard so he could do the spell to let her in wordlessly. Narcissa crossed the threshold with a determined stride, and halted when she saw him.

Lucius turned his left forearm outwards so she could see it.

“My dear,” said Narcissa. And she covered the distance between them in what seemed like a single bound and provided him with her flank to lean against, while Lucius closed his eyes against the tears he couldn’t keep from coursing down his face.

*

It had been a long, long time since his mind had felt so clear, that thoughts of cold, grey water and bedraggled fur didn’t get mixed up with the present thoughts of Harry and how badly he had failed him.

“Mr. Black?”

Sirius opened his eyes reluctantly. He knew why Lughborn wanted him to pay attention, but he wanted to spend more time in the center of his mind. He knew he was getting better, clearing away old memories—like the swim from Azkaban to the mainland in his dog form—and sorting them into their proper places. And he was getting rid of the madness, too.

They were in the large, pleasant sitting room that Lughborn had taken to letting Sirius meditate in. Dull browns and subdued golds were everywhere, except for the glittering marble blocks that enclosed the fireplace. Sirius jolted his mind out of contemplating the flames and turned around to blink at Lughborn. “What?”

“I thought you should see this.”

He was holding out a copy of the Coeur de Lion, one of the newspapers the Lughborns took in on a daily basis. Sirius had to admit it seemed a lot more reliable and informative than the Prophet, not that that was a struggle.

But it wasn’t often that Lughborn wanted Sirius to read any of the articles in it. He said it would only set back Sirius’s recovery to be worrying too much about affairs outside the house and his sanity. Sometimes he let him read the Quidditch section, and sometimes the gossip pages, full of initials and nicknames Sirius knew nothing about.

From Lughborn’s drooping moustache, and the fact that he was touching the front page, Sirius doubted it was either Quidditch or gossip this time.

But when he flattened out the paper on the floor in front of him and stared down at it, he found he hadn’t been prepared at all for what it was.

There was a picture of Harry there, looking so thoroughly worn and terrified that Sirius immediately wanted to change into a dog and swim back to Britain again, as if that would help. There was a moving thing in the corner of the photograph that was probably the basilisk’s tail, but Sirius couldn’t look away from Harry’s eyes.

“What happened?” he whispered.

“You could start by reading the headline.”

Sirius jerked away from Harry’s face, flushing. It was true that Lughborn had told Sirius he tended to focus too much on just one thing, and should pay attention to his surroundings more, but Sirius hadn’t realized that applied in situations like this.

“It applies in all situations.”

“Quit reading my mind,” Sirius muttered, even though he knew it was more like his face, but he did look at the headline.

BOY-WHO-LIVED KILLS DUMBLEDORE?

Sirius choked, and read. Or tried to. There were details flying through his comprehension like sparks from a firework. Dumbledore was dead. He’d kidnapped Harry. The basilisk had killed him. Harry was going to be put on trial, or so the Coeur de Lion reporter thought. Nicholas Flamel had been involved somehow. Something about impersonating Moody.

“I have to go back,” Sirius said, and he couldn’t hold onto the paper anymore, it just crumbled through his hands like snow. “I have to help him.”

“Will you help him the way you are right now?” Lughborn’s voice arrested Sirius before he even got off the floor. “Or will you just prove another distraction when he needs to avoid distractions?”

Sirius hissed, feeling as though someone had set his fur on fire and wouldn’t put it out. “I could help him!”

“Not the way you are. He needs his godfather at his side, yes, but a godfather who is strong—both mentally and physically.”

Sirius lowered his head into his hands. He wanted to disagree and scream at Lughborn, but he knew that would only get him some more hours of meditation and light scoldings to “behave and think of your future.” The most infuriating thing of all about Lughborn was that he never seemed to get angry.

“If I can’t do anything,” he whispered, “why did you show me this article?”

“Two reasons. First, I know you worry about your godson, and I thought you deserved to know that all is not well with him.”

Sirius leaned back on his heels and looked up mutely. Lughborn gave him that look he usually used when he was teaching Sirius about Occlumency and the way he would be able to learn it someday, when his mind had healed more.

“Second, to give you a goal. Harry needs all the allies he can get. You need to heal and get home to him. Work harder.

Sirius started, and then nodded frantically. He knew he still had a lot of memories to work through: most of the time in Azkaban, and the terrible moment when he’d come running to Godric’s Hollow and realized that James and Lily were dead. Lughborn was having him sort backwards, from the most recent ones, and Sirius still had years to go.

“I’ll do it. I’ll make sure that I’m there when Harry needs me.”

“Good. It seems that his guardian has managed to avert a trial for the moment, based on the news that I have received through other channels, but Harry will still require his godfather for long months after this. I think he is only beginning to accept the trauma of seeing someone die in front of him.”

Poor Harry. Left all alone with a basilisk and Snivellus for guardians. Sirius closed his eyes. Lughborn kept telling him he had to sort through his hatred for Snape, too, but Harry was the clear and shining beacon in Sirius’s mind right now.

For Harry. I’ll do this and make sure that we can get back together and I can fight to protect Harry the way I couldn’t protect Lily and James.

I have to.

*

It seemed to take forever for the last spasms of pain to die away, and the shapes that floated and tumbled in front of his eyes to make sense. But in the end, they did, and Remus raised his head and stared panting through the window of the dim little hut where he’d taken shelter when the full moon hit.

He scrambled up on shaky legs, and coughed. Blood dripped on the floor. He’d put powerful enchantments on the door and caged himself in with two goats. The only thing left of them was some splashes of blood, dirty fur, and cracked bones.

But that was all right. Remus wasn’t going to think about the disgusting meals he had to survive on, or the way that he’d spent so long being Dumbledore’s dupe when it was obvious that man didn’t care about Harry at all.

He’d started to lament when he heard the news of how Dumbledore had died and what Harry was going through, but then he’d realized there was no point. He’d spent too much time blaming himself already. Thirteen years, really, if you took the starting point as the night Peter had betrayed his trust.

Remus spent half an hour resting, and then ten minutes washing his mouth out with water and casting spells that put his hair and robes into some kind of proper order. Then he walked out of the hut and Apparated to the next close point he remembered, a tiny magical village on the edge of the Black Forest.

He’d stayed away long enough, and shivered long enough. Now he was on his way home.

And he was going to help Harry. For once.

*

“I need to know if you’re angry with me.”

“Why would I be angry with you?”

It was the absent way Harry said it that worried Draco. After all, technically Harry had lots of things to be angry at him about, including the way Draco had talked to his father and volunteered political lessons for Weasley. But Harry was gazing intently into a book in front of him in the library, stroking Dash’s neck, and hadn’t looked up when Draco plopped down at the table next to him.

Look at me.”

“Mmm.”

Dash stuck his head up around the side of the table and gazed at him. Draco flinched even though he knew Dash would never kill him. At the moment, it seemed like a warning to leave Harry alone, a reminder of what could happen if one of them “looked” at him.

But Draco didn’t care. He had to know.

“Do you blame me for going and telling Father like that?” he asked, lowering his voice, even though the library was mostly deserted and he intended to stay vague so no one would know what he was talking about anyway.

Harry looked up with a sigh. His gaze was distant in ways that Draco disapproved of. “I don’t blame you.”

“Oh. Why? Professor Snape seems to.”

“I think Professor Snape is overprotective. I mean, yeah, I have a lot of enemies who want to kill me, but…” Harry hesitated. “I think Professor Snape blames people who are close at hand because he can’t blame every single enemy I have.”

“Like the Dark Lord,” Draco whispered.

That made Harry’s eyes sharpen, but not in a way he liked. “His name is ‘Voldemort,’ Draco. Three syllables. Can you say it?”

Draco turned his head away. He knew what Harry wanted, but that didn’t mean he felt like giving it to him.

Harry pressed his hand and kept on pressing it, a steady, warm strength that made Draco exhale. “I’m not going to blame you if you can’t say it,” he said, which was a lie that made Draco turn around to glare at him. “But I did want to know if you can.”

“Of course I can! I can form my lips and tongue around the syllables,” Draco said, and made sure it sounded haughty. “The same way that you can roll on your broom and do a Wronski Feint and pull up before you hit the ground. That doesn’t make it a good idea.”

“His name had a Taboo on it during the war, I know. It doesn’t now. Say it.”

“How do you know he didn’t put the Taboo back on it the minute he—did what he did?” Even indignant, Draco remembered their potential audience and lowered his voice. From the challenging way Harry stared at him, that wasn’t on the agenda.

“How do you know that he isn’t sneaking into Malfoy Manor right now to kill your parents?” As Draco spluttered, Harry’s eyes softened and he shook his head. “Sorry, Dash is right, that was too sharp. But we can’t live our lives in fear, Draco. That’s one thing I agree with Dumbledore about. We’re giving him too much respect if we side-eye the shadows every time we refer to him.”

Draco glared. Harry only looked back; Draco couldn’t even call it a glare. His eyes were too bright and direct for that, the pressure he had on Draco’s hand too steady. He squeezed again, and Draco stared down at his robes and sighed.

He wondered if Harry understood all the training he’d been through to respect powerful wizards, to give them a wide berth and find out how best to use the connections the Malfoys had forged to them. Even the way Draco referred to Dumbledore had undergone that change; he’d always used that title aloud in mixed company until Dumbledore had fled the school and betrayed Harry. He might think uncomplimentary things, but that wasn’t the same as saying them.

“Draco? I only wanted to know if you can. If you can’t, that’s fine.”

Draco swallowed and looked up. “What do you think Voldemort is doing?” he asked, lips barely shaping the word.

Harry’s face lit up brighter than his eyes. He leaned forwards and put one hand on the table, as if he was going to brace himself during a speech. Draco looked down at it automatically, which meant he missed the hand that rose to his face until it touched his cheek. Then he started and looked up.

Harry kissed him, long and slow, and Draco gasped. It felt like forever since they’d done this, even though it was only a few days. But a lot had happened since then, and a lot had continued to happen, and Draco threw his arms around Harry’s shoulders and gave himself fully over to it.

Harry actually licked both their lips, and Draco shuddered and slumped back in his chair, which broke the kiss. Harry pushed his crooked glasses up his face, looking pleased with himself. Dash swayed back and forth next to the table and looked the same way.

“See? You can do it.”

“You’re the only one I would do it for, though,” Draco muttered, his mouth burning with exhilaration and his head whirling. “I mean, you don’t have to think that I’m going to talk about him that way in front of your friends.” He pushed his fingers through his hair and tried to ignore the sensation of people staring. They’d ignored it so far. “And I asked you a question.”

Harry grinned back through his slightly swollen lips and nodded. “I think he’s going to gather as many followers as he can. That obviously means calling some of the—” he lowered his voice, too “—Death Eaters back together. But he’ll probably call on some of the contacts he has who were never arrested. All the Death Eaters who had suspicion thrown on them at one point would be a little too obvious.”

Draco eyed him. “Is that your reasoning or Dash’s?”

Harry had the grace to look embarrassed. “A little of both, with some of Professor Snape’s thrown in.”

Draco nodded. “Well, Father has already contacted some of the pure-bloods who would make strong allies for either him or you. He’s hoping to get them on your side, of course. And he’ll speak to them,” he added, seeing the way Harry’s eyes had widened. “You’ll have to meet them eventually, but not right away.”

Harry leaned back with a tiny, happy sigh, and let his hand stroke Dash’s back. “Good,” he muttered.

Draco leaned his head on his fist. “Why are you so nervous about it? You’ve had political power since you were eighteen months old.”

“And didn’t know about any of it until three years ago,” Harry disagreed. “I’ll get used to it because I have to, but I’m never going to be—I don’t know, comfortable with manipulating people. I know it needs to be done,” he added, probably because he saw Draco opening his mouth. “But I’m not comfortable with it.”

Draco considered that doubtfully. He knew Harry was telling the truth, but it was incredibly hard to imagine feeling that way himself.

Still…

“We’ll protect you,” he said. “Dash and Professor Snape and Father and me. And lots of other people you can probably barely imagine yet, people who will want to ally themselves with you. And some of them will be sincere.”

Harry gave a small smile and reached out. Draco took his hand and pressed a kiss into the center of the palm, ignoring the immediate rustle among the Ravenclaws to their left.

“Merlin, I’m happy you’re here,” Harry said, voice low and eyes intense.

And even though he looked over at Dash right after that and smiled, so maybe he meant him, too, Draco decided that that first compliment was only for himself.

Chapter 95: Prices Paid

Chapter Text

“The artifact I had worked, Severus.”

Severus paused. He had never seen Lucius like this before, his eyes alight with interest but not the cool mockery he would have used at most times to distance himself from it. His hands rested on the table in front of him as he leaned towards Severus through the Floo.

“Remind me what artifact that was.”

Lucius didn’t answer in words. Instead, he pulled back his left sleeve and turned his arm so that Severus could see the—

The lack of a Dark Mark. The lack of even a scar.

Severus stared in silence, his lungs laboring. Lucius seemed to know what Severus needed to see and kept his arm absolutely steady, only tucking it away again once Severus had to blink. He was still smiling.

Smugly.

“How?” Severus whispered.

“I cannot tell you how the artifact was made,” Lucius responded. “I can tell you what you have to do if you want to use it.” He cocked his head as if he thought Severus would step through the Floo that minute, his eyes challenging.

“Tell me.” Severus made no move, and had his reward in the faint spasm of disappointment that crossed Lucius’s face.

“There is a rune on the bottom. It must be coated with blood. I drew mine over a long period of time to keep from fainting while the artifact worked.” Again, Severus only nodded, with a slight sneer that Lucius had made so much of such an elementary precaution, and Lucius’s voice sharpened. “Then you place your Marked arm inside one of the silver rings on the top, the only real one. The others were probably placed there as distractions, to disguise what the artifact really was. And the being that lives inside the artifact chews your Mark off.”

Severus shuddered even though he knew Lucius had deliberately planned that last dramatic revelation. What Lucius had been through…well, Severus could imagine the pain, having been through curses at the Dark Lord’s hands, many of them while he worked beside Lucius in the first war. But he could hardly imagine the determination it would take, knowing what was coming.

“I trust that’s impressive enough?”

“Most impressive,” Severus drawled, and took revenge the only way he could. “The creator of this artifact must have been a genius.” And this time, he saw the deep annoyance, glinting as clear as snowflakes, in Lucius’s eyes before he masked it.

“I think you should use it as soon as possible,” Lucius went on, with barely a pause. “One would not want the guardian of Salazar Slytherin reborn in a vulnerable position before any other Dark Lord.”

“Harry is not going to become a Dark Lord.”

“Ah, but there are so many definitions of that term,” Lucius said at once, so fast that Severus realized it was what he’d been waiting for, and he cursed himself for being tricked into this debate. “There is the one the current Dark Lord has made, and that Grindelwald also obeyed. And there is the old idea of the Lord as strong, protective, caring for his followers, and Dark in the sense that he simply uses more than Light magic.” Lucius paused, then added, “Some of the legends say that Salazar Slytherin was that kind of Lord. He founded Hogwarts in the company of Light witches and wizards in part because he could sense how important it would become, and he knew this way, he was protecting future generations who might have been his followers.”

“Harry has shown no sign that he has Slytherin’s memories,” said Severus. He had to be harsh, and he had to be certain, or Lucius was likely to start spreading these ideas as fact among the pure-bloods he had already contacted. Sometimes, Severus did hate him. “You are not to think he would do any such thing.”

“But his basilisk has Slytherin’s memories.”

Severus glared back, and kept his face stony.

“You cannot keep your ward from the sense of what this means forever,” Lucius said, his eyes burning, and then suddenly smiled again and swept a little bow, as if Severus had bested him somehow in their struggle. “Tell me when you want to use the artifact. For you, I shall make it always available.”

And the Floo connection closed.

Severus shut his eyes and sat in silence. He knew some of what Lucius said had merit. He should use the artifact to remove his Mark as soon as possible, or he was vulnerable to harm created by the Dark Lord. And Harry could not afford to have his guardian incapacitated.

Lucius would not charge him a price in Galleons to use the artifact, Severus was sure of that. Or perhaps even much in time.

But he would use the coin of influence. He would position himself as close as he could to Harry, closer than Harry’s friendship with Draco would allow, and encourage Harry to see him as a mentor, a Dark wizard with his toe in politics who could open the door wider for him. Severus sighed and rubbed his forehead.

He had no political contacts of his own. He had sacrificed that with thirteen years of teaching that barely brought him out of the dungeons. He had no idea how to combat the possibly pernicious effect Lucius could have on Harry.

Then Severus heard a rasping noise, and looked up swiftly. He shivered. It was eerie how silent sixteen feet of basilisk could make himself in a room.

And more than terrifying.

Dash did not use the trick of speaking into Severus’s mind, perhaps because he didn’t need to. He looked deliberately at the empty hearth, for so long that Severus looked over himself to see if Lucius had perhaps called him back. But he looked at Dash again in time to see Dash yawn, jaws opening as wide as Severus’s armspan, his tongue flickering around his fangs.

Then he crawled out of the room, through the locked and warded door that he had somehow passed.

Severus shivered, but this time gratitude was mixed with his awe and fear.

Message received.

*

“Where are you going to live this summer, mate?”

Harry paused, his fork in midair. He honestly hadn’t thought about it, simply assuming it was going to be with Snape. He would have answered Ron, but saw Hermione glaring at him over Ron’s shoulder.

Harry obediently put the fork in his mouth and chewed and swallowed the bite of potatoes before he answered. “With Snape.”

“But, I mean, at Hogwarts? Or somewhere else? And do you think he’ll let you visit?”

“I think he might let me,” said Harry, feeling cheered. He hadn’t seen the Burrow and Ron’s family in a long time. “He’ll think I’m safe with Dash guarding me. But is your mum going to want me to bring Dash there?”

Ron had an unusually stubborn expression on his face. “She knows Dash goes where you do. That’s not going to change. So she’ll have to accept that you’re going to bring Dash with you.”

Harry had to look down at his plate because his eyes were stinging. He swallowed some more, because it was a good excuse, and said, “Thanks, Ron. Anyway. If you can convince her it’s okay for me to bring Dash, then sure. I’d love to visit.”

“And me, too,” said Hermione.

“Um,” said Harry, trying to imagine Dash crawling around a Muggle neighborhood.

They might have cats that are less intelligent than Kneazles. Yum.

Harry glared down between his knees at Dash. Did you try to eat Crookshanks?

I only nibbled his tail.

Before Harry could get into an argument with Dash about how he couldn’t eat everyone’s pets just because Scabbers had turned out to be evil, Hermione said, “No, I mean I want to visit the Burrow, of course.”

“As it turns out, both of you will be able to visit Harry,” said Severus, and Harry jumped, which made Dash snicker into his head for some reason. Harry turned around to see him standing behind the bench. “We will both be remaining here at Hogwarts.”

“But does that mean that Harry can’t come to the Burrow, sir?” Ron asked, more respectfully than Harry usually heard him address Snape. “That doesn’t seem very fair.”

Severus turned his head, and Ron flinched a little as his dark eyes pinned him. Harry couldn’t blame Ron. There was a difference between the Severus he dealt with and the one other people saw, he knew. “It is a matter of safety, Mr. Weasley. Not fairness.”

“But you can’t keep Harry inside Hogwarts all summer, either! He has to visit Diagon Alley to get his school supplies! And my mum was going to have a big birthday celebration for him at the Burrow.”

Harry couldn’t help but smile at Ron, touched, but Severus didn’t look as though he would have moved even if someone dumped a big boulder on his head. “I will accompany him to those places.”

“Then he can come to the Burrow after all.” Ron folded his arms and radiated smugness.

“With my approval and guidance, yes,” Severus said, and turned to Harry. “I need to borrow you for a time to talk about politics. Will you come with me?”

Harry nodded and automatically looked towards the Slytherin table as he stood up, but didn’t see Draco.

“Mr. Malfoy has gone ahead to my quarters,” said Severus, sweeping past him and giving Harry a mildly impatient glance. “This involves him, as the representative of someone who has appointed himself your representative.”

“He means Lucius?” Hermione whispered, so softly that Harry was pretty sure no one else at the Gryffindor table had caught it.

Harry nodded without speaking and followed Severus. He kept his back straight and his face unconcerned. Admittedly, that became easier when he heard the dragging, rasping sound that was Dash following them.

“Did you know that your basilisk can stay absolutely silent?” Severus asked, without looking back at them, although Harry thought he snapped his robes out to billow a little harder than necessary. “And get through locked doors?”

Harry blinked. “Well, he couldn’t make much noise when he’s hunting,” he said, inadequately, from the way Severus turned to look at him. “But I didn’t know about the doors.”

“He can get through them,” said Severus, and then turned around and started walking forwards again as if he had just said nothing disturbing.

Did he? Dash asked lazily, trailing along behind Harry in a stream of scales.

I didn’t know you could do that. Why didn’t you tell me that you could do that?

Dash ducked his head and reached out to touch the back of Harry’s ankle with his tongue, just where the robe rode up enough that it exposed bare skin. Harry jumped despite himself. I thought it would be a nice surprise to reveal in the future.

Harry gave up on getting sense out of Dash. He wasn’t in the mood for it. And how does Severus know this? Were you spying on him? He couldn’t understand why Dash would want to do that, but once again, no sense.

I spied on his conversation with Lucius Malfoy, where Malfoy offered to take away the Dark Mark on his arm. Dash remained quiet for long enough that Harry breathed out in wonder, and then added, And also to support you in the sense that he would guide you.

Dash left it like that. Harry frowned at the wall as they walked along. So is that a good thing or a bad thing?

It could be many things. I assume that’s part of what we’re going to discuss when we get to Snape’s quarters.

And even though Harry speculated and pleaded and even talked to him aloud at one point, making Severus’s shoulders twitch in front of them, Dash refused to say anything else until they’d reached Severus’s quarters.

*

Draco stopped swinging his legs and sat up as straight as he could when Harry walked in, still talking over his shoulder to Dash. He had to look serious and measured and adult. And he really did want to be. He wanted to stop making mistakes the way he had with his father.

Harry saw him and gave him a distracted smile before he moved to sit down on the couch next to him. Draco relaxed a little. Professor Snape had seemed implacably grim when he summoned Draco to this meeting. As long as he wasn’t the only one in the room, then Draco could be sure he had someone on his side.

There was Dash, of course, slithering up to the side of the couch and regarding Draco with interested, dimly glowing eyes. But Draco ended up nodding nervously to Dash and then looking away. He didn’t want to ask what Dash was thinking right now.

Professor Snape strode to the second of the Transfigured couches and sat down on it, placing his fingers beneath his chin. “Lucius Malfoy has contacted several other pure-bloods,” he said. “And soon he will be offering the Marked Death Eaters among them the chance to remove the Mark.”

Draco jumped a little. Of course he knew his father had removed the Mark; he’d got the owl from him yesterday. But Father hadn’t said that he would be offering to share that artifact with anyone except Professor Snape.

“For a price, of course.”

Draco relaxed again. That sounded more like the Father like he knew.

“This can be dangerous as well as beneficial for you,” Professor Snape went on, and turned to look at Harry. “You know that they will want to hear you speak.”

Harry took a deep breath that sounded as though he was trying to stifle a yawn, but Draco doubted it was anything so harmless. “I know,” he said, and stared down at the floor, stroking Dash’s head.

“Can you say the right things?”

Harry looked up quickly, flushing. “How can I know? I mean, how in the world can I know what the right things would be to them? They’re all older than me, and some of them will be former Death Eaters, and they’ll want me to offer them bargains or something. Well, I’m not going to let them torture people like Hermione! I’m not.”

Professor Snape’s eyebrows went up as if he was surprised by Harry’s words, but Draco nodded. He could understand. All Harry really knew about Death Eaters, except for Father and Professor Snape, was that they had tortured Muggleborns and Muggles during the war, and helped torture Longbottom’s parents. It didn’t surprise Draco that Harry thought they would want to do the same things given the chance.

“No one is going to ask you if they can do that,” Professor Snape said in a baffled voice.

“Then what are they going to want from me?”

“Some acknowledgment that you are Salazar Slytherin reborn.” Professor Snape was examining Harry with a frown now. “Or that part of you is. That you will translate the instructions of the basilisk who is Salazar Slytherin reborn, if you’re insistent on not being regarded that way.” He glanced at Dash, who was asleep on the floor next to the couch.

Or not so asleep, Draco realized, seeing a glint of yellow light from underneath Dash’s lids. They fluttered back down a minute later, though, and Dash gave a soft snap of his tongue that anyone could take for a snore.

Unless they know basilisks.

“Is that such a good idea? Dash has some ideas about politics that I don’t think anyone else should hear.”

Professor Snape’s gaze snapped to Harry’s face. “What do you mean?”

Harry braced himself as if he thought Dash would rear off the floor and bite him for telling the truth. “Well, he keeps threatening to take me away from the war if it gets too bad. That’s always an option for him. He doesn’t believe in fighting if it’s going to injure him or me. That’s one thing. If they’re looking for a glorious war-leader in him or me, they’re going to be disappointed.”

“I do not think they are looking for a glorious war-leader,” said Professor Snape, and blinked several times. “What they need are words that Lucius will know how to speak better than you can.”

Draco nodded. Father was good at political dialogues. Draco had heard him practicing sometimes in his study, before he went to a meeting with the Minister. They always sounded convincing.

“But they need to hear them coming from me, right?” Harry grimaced.

“Exactly. So. Do you want to meet with Lucius before each meeting with a pure-blood, or do you want him to send you letters that explain the right thing to say?”

“Neither,” Harry said, and before Draco could open his mouth to comment, or Professor Snape could bend his eyebrows down too much, he went on, “I want to consult with you and Draco and Dash instead.”

“Despite Dash’s…unfortunate political instincts?”

“But why would you want to talk to me? I don’t know as much about politics as Father does.”

Harry nodded at both of them, and maybe at something Dash had said, too. Draco resented being cut out of that particular loop of conversation, not for the first time, although he knew Harry would have found a way to share the conversation with him if it had been possible. “Yes. I think all of them together will balance each other out. And I trust you more than I do your father, Draco.”

“Despite his habit of blurting out confidences to his father?”

Draco felt his cheeks warm, but he didn’t look away from Harry. Harry had forgiven him, and that was the important thing. Not so much what Professor Snape thought.

“Draco understands why he shouldn’t do that anymore.”

Draco sat straight up and nodded firmly. “I wouldn’t do something like that again.”

“What about when your father finds out you have kept things from him?”

Draco could feel the tips of his ears flush. Of course Professor Snape would go straight to the most potentially embarrassing consequence he could. He cleared his throat. “Then I’ll deal with that, the way I did when he found out that I hadn’t succeeded in securing Harry’s friendship our first year.”

“What did he do to you?”

Draco started, because Harry was leaning towards him with his eyes gleaming harshly, and even Dash had parted his clear eyelids enough that Draco could make out a yellow light spilling out from under them. He swallowed and said, “Nothing but a scolding. But he knows how to use the right kind of words that can just strip flesh from bones.”

Harry kept staring at him, and staring. Draco didn’t back down, though. That was really all that had happened. He wasn’t going to say that Father was like Harry’s awful Muggles simply because Harry looked as if he might like that.

“All right,” Harry said finally, and turned to Professor Snape. “Then we can come up with a strategy that complements Lucius’s, right?”

“And decide on what you want him to say.” Professor Snape nodded. “That is crucial. With the best will in the world, and no will that involves working against you, Lucius might still try to take over the process of your political ally-making. And make you over into a Malfoy image.”

Draco had to nod. Father did think he knew best. And he had talked to Draco more than once about sculpting the Ministry into a Malfoy image.

“I want him to not promise things I can’t deliver,” said Harry, and his jaw firmed while a familiar stubborn light grew in his eyes. “I don’t even care if I can’t speak to them myself. I have to know that he’s not going to tell them I can win this war—”

“He has to say that!” Draco broke in.

Professor Snape turned and eyed him coldly, but Draco took heart from the interested sway of Dash’s neck. At least someone in the room didn’t completely disapprove of him. “Why not?” Harry asked, with only a quick look at Dash, so they must not be talking.

“Because you can’t promise to just fight and not win,” said Draco. That seemed so obvious to him that he kept glancing at Professor Snape, expecting his support any second. But it seemed that Professor Snape must have been really angry about the way Draco had blurted things out to his father, because he sat there with his arms folded and a stony scowl.

“You have to promise to fight the Dark Lord,” Draco went on, and turned back to Harry and Dash. “And you have to promise to protect them and win.”

“Then they’ll just blame me the minute someone dies.” Harry’s shoulders were hunching. “The way they did the minute another student got petrified second year. It wouldn’t have done any good for me to promise to protect people then, either.”

Dash must have said something, from the way he rammed his head against Harry’s knee, but Draco ignored that because it looked like Harry did. “But you tell them that you can’t do it alone.”

Harry blinked. “What?”

“You say that you need their help,” Draco said. “You offer to make coalitions. Set up warning spells. Cooperate with the Ministry to set up some classes in basic warning spells for people. Hell, you could contact your werewolf and ask him to come back and teach those if the Ministry won’t help. I hate to admit it, but he was the best Defense teacher we’ve had.”

“The wolf shall not be coming near Harry again.”

This time, Dash was watching Professor Snape. Draco had the funny feeling that Dash would get a lot more say in that matter than the professor would.

But then again, Draco didn’t know why Dash would want Lupin near Harry again, either, after the way he’d almost been bitten. He held out his hands. “Listen to me, and I’ll tell you why I think Lupin is the best one.”

Professor Snape watched him warily. Harry had almost no expression on his face. Draco knew he should probably encourage that—it would be better for Harry if fewer people could read him when he was talking with some of the old pure-bloods—but he nudged Harry until he broke out into a smile anyway. Just because it might be better didn’t mean that he should look like that around Draco.

“Because he’s a werewolf, and this will show that Harry can ally with the Dark and not mind it. Because he was an old Gryffindor, and that will reassure some of the more neutral ones, and the ones who might think that he can only make allies with people who were in his basilisk’s House. Because he knows Defense, and he can teach classes. We don’t have a lot of people who can do that except during the summers.”

Professor Snape opened his mouth, then closed it again as slowly as falling leaves. Harry was the one who spoke. “You’ve really thought about this a lot, Draco, haven’t you?”

Draco basked in the admiration in his face. “Most of it’s just common sense, you know. At least, about Lupin.”

“I do not think I could have thought of this common sense,” said Professor Snape, and he still had a heavy glance. Draco lifted his head and did his best not to care, to instead watch the way Harry reached out a hand and took Draco’s in his.

“I think we can find a way forwards,” Harry said. “And that’s what matters, isn’t it?”

Professor Snape turned and studied Harry for long enough that Draco was certain he was going to disagree. But in the end, he inclined his head in a long, slow nod that made Draco feel dizzy.

“Draco can stay.”

Harry exhaled. “Good.”

Draco could say nothing himself. He felt as if someone had invited him to help shape the future of the world.

And really, he thought as he watched Professor Snape and Harry start to talk again and Dash watching them, isn’t that true?

Chapter 96: Farewell, Hello

Chapter Text

“I wanted to speak to you before we left, Mr. Harry,” said a voice with a faint French accent behind him.

Harry turned slowly around. Dash hadn’t alerted him by saying this was an enemy, which he had decided meant he didn’t have to be afraid. But he was still a little surprised that Fleur would come so close to him when she was so wary of Dash.

Fleur looked up from Dash and gave him a faint smile. “I know that you are surprised,” she said, and moved one step closer, ignoring the way Dash lifted his head as if he was interested. “But I wanted to tell you thank you for the promise you made, and for the risks you ran so that I did not have to.”

Does she realize that you didn’t do it for her?

Harry wondered the same thing, but he stroked Dash’s plume to calm him down and smiled politely at Fleur. “You’re welcome. I didn’t know the Cup would take me somewhere else, though. I can’t say I’m that brave.”

“You are brave enough, no?” Fleur shrugged. She hesitated then, and Harry suspected she had come for some other reason than simply saying thanks, but he didn’t have any idea what it might be. He waited, and Fleur finally nodded to herself, as if justifying some course of action and pushed ahead.

“You made a promise to us that we would be safe from your basilisk.”

“Yes,” Harry said cautiously, wondering if Dash had gone and hunted one of the Beauxbatons girls without telling him.

I wouldn’t. Too many feathers when they try to transform.

“And you have kept your promise. And I know that you stand in need of allies right now.” Fleur swept a breathtaking curtsey that almost made Harry wish he was attracted to her like Ron and some of the other boys were. “If you need us in the war—the war with the Dark One—we will come.”

“I—thank you.” Harry was more than a little bewildered. He wondered if Beauxbatons students and their parents had been among the pure-bloods that Lucius had contacted, or if they had some other way of finding out the news. Certainly not many people would have reason to know or believe Voldemort was back yet.

“Do not look so frightened,” Fleur said suddenly, coming up and hugging him so quickly and skittering out of range so quickly again that Dash wouldn’t have had time to strike.

“But I am,” Harry whispered before he thought about it.

“I know. But you have allies who will stand behind you. Even our Headmistress.” Fleur gave him a deep smile and a wink before she turned away. “We will leave at noon. You should speak to her before then.”

Harry watched her go with a slight frown, then looked down at Dash, who had twined around his feet as if to say that no Veela girl would get to hug him again without permission from his basilisk. Do you think it’s worth a try?

A try.

Dash didn’t sound encouraging, Harry thought wryly as he started down the corridor towards the part of the castle where he knew Madame Maxime was staying. But then, he never did about things that weren’t his own ideas.

Sometimes I sound enthusiastic about yours!

*

Harry knocked on the emerald-green door of the rooms that Madame Maxime had been staying in for a little while. Harry wasn’t sure why she wasn’t staying in the carriage with her students, but he assumed there was some reason that probably made sense to her.

And not to me, said Dash, his tail vibrating as if he had forgotten he wasn’t a rattlesnake. If she wanted to stay near you to influence you in some scheme somehow…

Harry started to snap back, but then the door opened, and he found himself stepping back even though he didn’t mean to. He was used to Hagrid, but Madame Maxime at close quarters was still startling. She wore a dress the same color as the door of her rooms and had her hair pinned up in gleaming curls.

She studied Harry for a moment and nodded slowly. “You have come to talk to me. Fleur found you.” She stepped back and held open the door for Harry, and he moved in, trying not to be intimidated again by how large the rooms were. The doorways and the ceilings arched higher than any room he’d been in except the Great Hall, and there were chairs and couches that could have held Dash’s weight without complaining.

I’ll have you know that I prefer the floor.

Madame Maxime looked at Dash as he spoke, almost as if she could hear him, but then she shook her head and took a seat on the huge chair in front of the fireplace, motioning Harry to take the one opposite her. Harry sat gingerly on the edge, even though he didn’t think it would break beneath him or anything like that. He was just afraid that he wouldn’t get out easily if he sagged back into the comfort of the cushions.

“You know that Igor was working against you.” Madame Maxime seemed to have decided against offering him tea. She was watching him with cool eyes instead, and Harry nodded and tried to sit a little more upright.

“Yes. But I know that he might not get much of a trial, since he knows so many people all over Europe.”

“Yes. Former students of Durmstrang. And he betrayed some of his Death Eater friends in the last war. There are people who remember that and will protect him.” Madame Maxime gave him a tight frown. “We will give you what help we can.”

“Beauxbatons?” Harry had to ask, since he wasn’t sure if she meant that, or French people, or someone else.

Even half-giants. Although Hagrid had told him that Madame Maxime wouldn’t admit that she was a half-giantess. Harry suppressed the urge to glance around the rooms again. Even when it was obvious.

“Yes, Beauxbatons. It is obvious there was something wrong with this Tournament from the beginning, and the man I thought was Albus Dumbledore when I spoke with him was not Albus Dumbledore.” Madame Maxime glanced sharply at him when he shifted. “Is that not true?”

“It would depend when you spoke with him,” Harry admitted. “I think sometimes he was being himself again and the man who was playing him had left the school. But that couldn’t have been often.”

Madame Maxime sighed out slowly. “We do not like being made fools of,” she said, each word crystal-clear despite her accent. “We will help you. We know this Dark Lord of yours does not intend to stop with Britain.”

“He doesn’t?” Harry was startled. That wasn’t something he’d heard. Of course, he didn’t know that much about the first war except how it had ended, but he’d never heard that Voldemort had tried to take over France.

Madame Maxime gave him another doubtful glance. “He had Death Eaters in other countries. Like Igor. How can he stay contented with one island?”

Harry nodded. He hadn’t really thought about the implications of Karkaroff being a Death Eater. Maybe he’d just liked having a powerful Dark wizard to be “allies” with and brag about to his friends.

Dash nudged his hip. And this is one reason that you need to start being more observant and political. So you do not forget things like this.

I didn’t forget it! I never knew it!

You still need to start being more observant.

If he started arguing with Dash about this, it would never end. Harry turned to Madame Maxime and made his smile as polite as he could. “What would happen if one of you died after allying with me?”

She looked at him with her eyebrows creeping higher on her head. “We would look to see if you had anything to do with the death.”

“You wouldn’t blame me for failing to protect you?”

“That is what I meant by looking into your actions. If you could have prevented the death and did not, we would speak with you. Or stop being your allies. If you could not have prevented it, then we would maintain the alliance.”

Harry closed his eyes and swallowed. That was honestly what had troubled him the most about the demands that Viktor and Karkaroff wanted to make of him. Of course he could never protect all the Dark wizards in Europe that Voldemort might want to kill or recruit. And “alliance” suggested he could get some benefit from this, too.

Now at least you are thinking like a Slytherin.

“That is a common fear of yours?”

Harry opened his eyes and shrugged. “There’s a huge chamber beneath this school that used to belong to Salazar Slytherin. A basilisk lived there. Someone who was possessed by the real Heir of Slytherin let it out in my second year, and it was Petrifying people. Everyone assumed I was the Heir because I could speak to snakes, and everyone blamed me when someone new was found petrified.”

Madame Maxime made a small face. “And you found out the student who was possessed?”

“Yes.”

“You stopped them?”

“Rescued them, and got rid of the possessing spirit.” Harry was reluctant to mention it was Ginny unless he absolutely had to. She had enough to deal with in the aftermath of having Tom Riddle inside her head.

“Hmmm.” Madame Maxime nodded again. “And you have controlled your basilisk enough that he has not attacked any of my students, and in fact, some students have told me that they believe your basilisk is more powerfully protective than offensive.”

I wonder if I could swallow a half-giantess.

Harry put a hasty hand on Dash’s neck, and then tried to look as if he was only petting Dash and he had only reared up because he liked the praise. “Yes. He’s already defended me from many—enemies.”

“So the story about him rescuing you from Dumbledore and Flamel’s mad plan to separate you is true.”

Harry looked straight at her. He didn’t know if she had heard that from someone else or managed to put the pieces together from the newspaper reports and rumors, but he wasn’t about to deny it either way. “Yes.”

Madame Maxime leaned further back in her chair and closed her eyes as if she was going to sleep. Harry blinked. He supposed she was only thinking, but the expression was unfamiliar because, mostly, Hagrid didn’t do it.

“Very well,” said Madame Maxime at last. “Yes, we will stay allied to you, and one of the first things I will do is encourage some of my better students to remain here. Fleur has told me that she trusts you, that she suspects you saved her life—even if you didn’t mean to—and that she would be honored to train you.”

“Train me in what?” Harry asked, so surprised that Dash later told him, with a snicker, he had sounded rather unflattering.

“The uses of your magic, of course.”

Now Madame Maxime was the one who sounded surprised. Harry tried to swallow some of his first words, and managed to succeed. “All right. But—is it just spells that seventh-years know how to use at Beauxbatons? Because I think my guardian will teach me those if you ask him.”

There was a moment when Madame Maxime looked at him uncomprehendingly, and then she chuckled a little and shook her head. “Ah, forgive me. In French there is a word that would convey what I was saying. I meant the uses of our special kind of magic.”

“I’m not a Veela.”

“Neither am I,” said Madame Maxime, as if Harry would have been fooled about that for a moment. “But even I can master the uses of feather magic.”

Does it bring tasty birds with it to eat?

You think too much of your stomach, Harry told Dash, and answered Madame Maxime carefully. “Is it mostly defensive or mostly offensive?” Honestly, it could be useful if it was either, but what Harry mostly wanted to be sure of was how he would tell Severus to shape his education in response.

“Mostly defensive,” said Madame Maxime, with a little sigh, as if she assumed that meant Harry wouldn’t want to learn it. “It involves summoning birds to aid you, using feathers as a defensive shield against some spells, and perhaps, in time, growing your own wings.”

Harry blinked, and then blinked again. That sounded a lot more useful than he’d thought. “Can I teach other people?” he asked, thinking of how much Hermione might like to fly if it was on anything other than a broom.

“If you swear them to secrecy. We do not want knowledge to start spreading that Beauxbatons is—sharing its wealth.”

Harry nodded. “Then please tell Fleur thank you for me. Where’s she going to stay, though? They don’t let any students stay at Hogwarts over the holidays unless they’re related to a teacher.” Or the ward of one, he thought, but it sounded as though Madame Maxime knew perfectly well who his guardian was, so he didn’t need to spell that out.

“She will find sanctuary with a British Veela,” said Madame Maxime, and started at him as if she thought he might ask more questions. When Harry said nothing—because he didn’t need to ask something she obviously didn’t want him to ask—she nodded and stretched out her hand. Harry stood up and came over to shake it, since he didn’t know what else to do.

“I understand I must give you a small lesson in manners, then. You are to kiss my hand, Mr. Potter.”

Harry hesitated, but once again Dash was weaving in interest, not hostility, at his side, and he could see no reason that she would want to trick him or hurt him, so he bent over and kissed the back of his hand. Madame Maxime was watching him critically when he drew back. She nodded.

“That will do for a first attempt. Try to show more quickness and enthusiasm in the future. And thank you again for what you did to protect my girls against your snake and the Tournament.”

Harry nodded and left before he could make more of a fool of himself. Dash opened his jaws in a yawn the minute they were out of the room and told Harry, I’ll do my best not to eat you when you grow your wings, even if you do look like an owl.

*

Severus turned and sighed a little when he saw the door open and Harry enter. He had had only a few minutes before he would have felt compelled to go looking for Harry, as much as he didn’t want to hurry him into this.

But letting him enter it unprepared would have been worse.

“Lucius Malfoy has arranged a large meeting with the pure-bloods he contacted for later in July,” he said bluntly when he saw the way Harry was pausing with his hand on the door. Dash was coming in beside him, but paused halfway through and extended his tongue as if Severus’s scent would tell him all that words couldn’t. “But there is one pure-blood who insisted on meeting you right away.”

“Who?”

At least Harry’s voice was steady and he hadn’t turned pale yet, Severus noted with some respect. “Clarence Greengrass.”

Harry blinked. “He’s the one we sent the letter to the other day?”

“That’s right.” Severus stopped his pacing and sat down. Pacing wouldn’t make it any better.

“Why does he want to meet with us?”

“He did not say.”

Harry looked down at Dash, then back at Severus. “How much do you trust him?”

Severus relaxed. At least he and Dash could help Harry make up for his lack of political instincts until they finally began to develop on their own. “I do not know him that well. He was never a Death Eater, but he mouthed the right words when the Dark Lord was in power during the first war. He has two daughters in Slytherin. He might be interested in meeting with you mostly to protect them.”

“What kind of people are his daughters?”

“Quiet. Daphne—the older—more than the younger, Astoria.” Severus suspected that the Greengrass girls were using a strategy taught to them by their father, who had wanted to avoid notice in the first war, too.

“But not blood purists? Or bullies?”

“No,” said Severus. “They would have voiced such beliefs by now if they had them, I think.” He knew for a fact that some of the former Death Eater parents had cautioned their children to remain quiet about blood purity when they entered the school, but they hadn’t obeyed. In Severus’s experience, eleven-year-olds rarely did.

“All right. Where are we meeting with him?”

“He’s coming here, of course. I would never expose you to a potential threat in an area that we don’t know well, or that doesn’t have my personal protections woven over it.”

Harry’s eyelids drooped a little, and he had that look on his face that meant he was talking to Dash. A second later, he nodded, and they faced the fireplace. Severus let one of his hands brush Harry’s shoulder before he stepped away. An old-fashioned pure-blood like Clarence Greengrass would take any support from a guardian as a sign of weakness.

And what they wanted to impress him with was Harry’s strength.

The Floo opened, and Clarence Greengrass popped out. Like his daughters, he had golden hair and green eyes, although his hair and beard were now more straw than flaxen. He stared at Harry for a second, and then spent longer staring at Dash.

“Good morning, Lord Slytherin,” Greengrass finally said.

Severus hid a wince. He hadn’t gone over possible responses to this with Harry, because he hadn’t thought Greengrass would pick such a way to address Harry.

“I can’t claim that title,” Harry said quietly, his chin proudly lifted, and if Dash was feeding him words, no one could tell who wasn’t familiar with the way he usually communicated with his snake. “Dash is the one who has the soul of Salazar Slytherin.”

“Dash?”

“That was the name he wanted me to call him by when we first met.”

Severus could see Clarence making the determination that a sixteen-foot basilisk could be called whatever he wanted to be called. “Indeed. Should I greet him as Lord Slytherin?”

“If you want to,” said Harry. His lips were twitching uncontrollably, even though Severus subtly pinched the back of his arm. It must be something Dash had said. Not for the first time, Severus wished he was a part of that mental bond.

Clarence bent down in front of Dash, and bowed. If he felt ridiculous doing so to a snake, he didn’t show it. In fact, his eyes were wide. Severus had nearly forgotten the impact of Dash’s presence on people seeing him for the first time. “Greetings, Lord Slytherin. I hope I haven’t offended you by asking for this meeting.”

Dash opened his jaws and hissed aloud. Severus jumped along with Clarence. Harry only stood there, nodding soberly in response to whatever Dash was saying.

Which could have been conveyed perfectly well down the mental bond, Severus thought, with a roll of his eyes that he struggled hard to suppress. But of course, that way wouldn’t give them a chance to show off.

“He says that the meeting isn’t an inconvenience to him,” Harry translated, with another twitch of his lips that Severus sincerely hoped Clarence didn’t notice. “But he does say that it’s a bit of an inconvenience to his human allies. So he hopes that you’ll send advance notice before asking for another one.”

“Of course, of course.” Clarence sounded a little breathless. He took a moment to wipe at his beard, and then said, “What are your plans for the wizarding world, Lord Slytherin?”

Dash didn’t bother pretending that he couldn’t understand English. He hissed again, and that made Clarence look at him with fearful respect. Again Harry listened, and then provided a translation that Severus suspected was far from literal. “He says that he intends to keep me safe, since I’m the only Parselmouth who would translate for him. And he intends to protect anyone who allies with him. We want to form a side in the war that doesn’t owe allegiance to Dumbledore’s ideals or the Dark Lord who wants to destroy us.”

Severus blinked. Perhaps that was a more literal translation than he’d thought.

“How many people can we draw to a third side?”

Harry gave a long translation for a short series of hisses this time, but then, for all Severus knew, this was a subject Harry and Dash had discussed many times before. “Many Dark creatures, including werewolves. Wizards who are fearful and just looking for someone to protect them, no matter who. People in the Ministry who have tried reform and are sick and tired of not getting anywhere. Families who are already allied with us because I’m a Parselmouth. Some of the Hogwarts students and their families. Those who trusted Dumbledore and are feeling betrayed. Some of the Light wizards in Europe, even, who have standards that are more about battling Dark Lords than Dark spells.”

Severus did his best not to let his jaw fall. That might show that he hadn’t consulted enough with Harry, and make him look weak in front of Clarence.

On the other hand, Clarence wasn’t hiding his own astonishment well, either. He swallowed, and then considered for a moment. “You think that you could treat my daughters well even though they’re Slytherins?”

“I have Slytherin friends. Someone should have told you that I associated with Draco Malfoy and Severus here long before I found out that my basilisk has Salazar Slytherin’s soul.”

Severus nearly snorted. Associated, indeed. Curious, he noted that Harry said nothing of Lucius Malfoy. Maybe he wanted to deny Lucius any influence while he could—a wise idea—or assumed that Clarence didn’t need the reminder, since Lucius had been the one to contact him.

“You have a deal, as far as I’m concerned,” said Clarence, and held out his hand. Harry shook it. Then Clarence bowed to Dash again, who hissed in response, and turned and went back through the Floo without stopping. Severus shook his head. Well, he had always been an abrupt man.

“Do you think that went well?” Harry asked anxiously, turning to look at Severus again.

“Very well. Clarence was impressed, and there are people who will at least listen to him even if they won’t make their decision based on his. I think—”

Severus didn’t have the chance to finish, because Dash lifted his head and hissed again, and there was a tremendous knock on the door. Severus glanced narrow-eyed at Dash, but he didn’t move, and Harry nodded, trembling a little. Severus opened the door.

Remus Lupin stood there, his eyes almost glowing golden as he stared at Harry and only Harry, paying no attention to Severus or Dash. “Hello,” he whispered.

Wonderful, Severus thought.

Chapter 97: Moony's Intrusion

Chapter Text

“Why are you here?”

Lupin didn’t pay any attention to Severus. His every bit of being was obviously focused on Harry. Harry moved an uncertain step forwards, and batted Dash’s head aside impatiently when Dash tried to loom in front of him.

“Professor Lupin?”

“You can call me Moony. Or Remus. It’s the least I can do for you. I want to help, Harry. I don’t want—artificial barriers coming in between us.”

Harry swallowed. Severus only watched. If Lupin was going to ignore him, then Severus would wait to see what else he ignored. If it included signs of Harry’s discomfort, then Severus didn’t care how much his ward objected, he was going to get in front of him and make sure Lupin did nothing untoward.

“Why did you come back?” Harry whispered.

“To help you. I realized it was selfish of me to run away and act as if—as if I was condemned forever because I almost bit you.”

“That should have been enough to condemn you forever.” Severus hoped he made those words come out with the right tone. It was hard to tell over the frantic, furious pounding of his pulse in his ears.

Lupin ignored him again. So did Harry. “But you didn’t feel guilty about it?”

“I do. It was important for me to come back and face the guilt—and ask what I could do to make up for it.” Lupin held very still, and Severus thought he saw his nose working to catch Harry’s scent. That only made Severus’s impulse to snatch the boy away worse. “Maybe that’s nothing. But if it’s something, you only have to tell me.”

Harry did turn to Severus, finally. Severus held his face neutral. His hands trembled, and he thought Dash turned his head towards them, but it was too small a movement for him to be sure of.

Dash is here. He will not let Lupin harm Harry—and his protective instincts are even more finely-honed than mine.

That made Severus move a little backwards as Harry said, “What do you think he can do to make up for it?”

“You don’t know yourself?”

Harry’s smile was faint and thin. “I’m not used to having the chance to decide.”

“Send him away. There is nothing.”

“We can use him the way Draco said, though,” Harry said, speaking as if Lupin wasn’t in the room and he didn’t care if he overheard. Severus saw Lupin’s body start, but he was listening intently. “To show people that we like werewolves and can make a place for them. That will be the connection to the Dark we need, for some people.”

“What are you trying to achieve?” Lupin asked, his voice as calm as it used to be when he was there in third year.

“Setting up a third side in the war,” Harry said, and he turned back to Lupin. His faint smile had become something far more real. Severus had to remind himself of times he had received something even broader to keep from feeling jealous. “We need to show people that we aren’t going to roll over for the Ministry, but we’re also not Voldemort.”

“Rumors were circulating among some of the more sensitive Dark creatures I met that there was a Dark power rising in Britain,” said Lupin. He’d turned pale. “So that’s true, then?”

“It’s him, he’s back, and he resurrected himself through the mental link I have with him through my scar.” Harry, to Severus’s relief, did at least stop short of telling Lupin about the soul-connection and the Horcrux. “I want to unite some Dark and Light families. There are people who will want to follow us because Dash has the soul of Salazar Slytherin—”

“What?”

Dash turned his head back and forth as if acknowledging invisible cheering crowds. Severus swallowed a snort. It wouldn’t do to reward the bloody basilisk for the tricks he pulled.

“That’s true,” Harry said with a nod. “And he has some of Slytherin’s memories. And he can inspire people, but I need to be able to do that, too. There were people who thought I was Slytherin reincarnated for a while, but that wouldn’t be enough to bring everyone along even if they still thought it.”

“What about the Light?”

Do not expose all our political plans to him, Severus wanted to say. Only the thought that Lupin wouldn’t have much political power on his own if he betrayed them made him hold his tongue.

“There are people like Lughborn who already have a connection to me. And we’re going to say that we want to do Dumbledore’s real work, the work that he was doing before he started losing his head and relying too much on controlling me.”

“The work of the Light,” Lupin whispered.

“Yes,” said Harry. “Fighting in the way Dumbledore might have. Gathering people together and directing them against Voldemort.” He was so earnest, Severus thought, that he might have won the heart of a hardened werewolf like Greyback. “But we won’t get anywhere if some of the Dark people don’t trust us, too. And that’s where you could come in.”

Lupin hesitated. “I don’t know. I might hurt you more than I help you once people realize that you have a werewolf on your side, Harry.”

There. I knew that he did not mean his supposed resolve to aid us in whatever way he could.

“You won’t. Because you won’t be teaching in the school the way you were last time, and you’re not going to bite anyone this time, or even threaten to.” Harry glanced at Severus. “Severus will brew Wolfsbane for you, won’t you?”

“Severus.”

“I am his guardian.”

That was news Severus would have expected Lupin to know, but he still got an incredulous gaze as blank as sun on ice. Severus returned his gaze, and said nothing. He would indeed brew the Wolfsbane—he nodded when Harry looked at him again—but nothing would keep him from probing for Lupin’s weaknesses.

If he found one of them, and split it wide open, then Lupin would have to leave. And Severus would not be at fault.

“And if you even look like you’re going to try and bite someone because you didn’t take the Wolfsbane or didn’t shut yourself away properly, then Dash is going to kill you with his gaze, the way he wants to.”

Severus blinked. From the way Dash twisted around Harry’s arm, that had been a statement Harry had no choice about making. He was frowning at his basilisk. But his voice was strong as he said it.

Lupin winced a little. “I won’t forget again.” At least he was not going to protest that he deserved something more than this treatment.

“Good,” said Severus before Harry could speak. “In that case, I will brew the Wolfsbane.” He nodded to them both and walked towards his potions cupboard. He wanted to get started right away, even though the full moon was only a few days past. He would have a full supply, for several months, by the time it came around again.

And as much as it itched at the back of his mind like someone scratching his brain, he knew Harry and Lupin needed time alone to speak.

At least Dash will be there.

*

“How do you really feel to see me, Harry?”

Harry stared at Lupin’s golden eyes and listened to his voice and wished he could say something other than what he did. But he also knew that Lupin would probably want him to be honest. Sirius had. “Strange.”

Lupin relaxed and chuckled a little. Harry didn’t think he would do that if he could know what Dash was thinking about him right now. Then again, Dash could possess Harry’s voice and say it if he really wanted to. That he only remained alert at Harry’s side said a lot about Dash’s own tolerance.

“I never meant to do what I did.”

Harry tensed his shoulders. “That doesn’t make it right.”

“I know. And then I ran away, like a coward.” Lupin shivered as if the memory of that night still haunted him. “But I’m here now. If you need me to show other people how you’re sort of Dark and have werewolves on your side, that’s all right. I can do that.”

Harry eyed him cautiously. Lupin sounded sincere, and Dash would have let Harry know if he didn’t smell that way, but Harry had to admit he wasn’t sure about this. What if Lupin thought he was being truthful, and then he broke and ran when something else he didn’t like happened?

I will make him regret it.

Harry had to nod in response. “All right. I’m going to—I’d like to talk to you again and trust you, but it’s going to be a while. In the meantime, I think you ought to live in Sirius’s house in Hogsmeade. That will be close enough to let me talk to you if I want.”

Lupin smiled, but he appeared to be a little shocked. “You’re not living there? Even knowing that Severus had taken over your guardianship, I thought he would want to use…”

Harry had to snort. “Of course not. You know he hates Sirius. And I couldn’t stay there after knowing that Sirius knew something about me he only told Severus when he basically went and yelled at him until he did.”

“What was the thing?”

Harry didn’t need Dash’s furious hiss next to him to know how bad an idea it would be to tell Lupin about the Horcruxes. He eyed him, then shook his head. “Not right now. Maybe later, when I can trust you more.”

“Of course.” Lupin hesitated. “I would still have thought Severus would let you have your room in Sirius’s house, though. You know Sirius decorated it just for you.”

He is already trying to lure you away from your Snape. Dash curled his tail in a circle on the floor; no one besides Harry knew how bad a sign that was, though. I do not like him. I will eat him if he persists.

Harry shook his head and kept one hand fastened on the back of Dash’s neck so he couldn’t get away easily. “I didn’t want to stay there. Not without Sirius. And not when I knew Professor Snape would be unhappy.”

“I do understand.” Lupin’s voice was soft. He looked as if he might say something else about Professor Snape, but he decided against it. “What do you want me to do first?”

Here, Harry hesitated. He really needed Severus or Draco here to tell him, because he knew what he should do but not really how to accomplish it.

He must know some other werewolves. Think about the power they could bring if some of them united behind us. Or at least we could keep Voldemort from persuading them to join his side, and infect people.

“Who’s the strongest werewolf in Britain?” Harry asked.

“The one with the most political power is Fenrir Greyback,” said Lupin, although he had grown a shade paler. “He can call on most of the others for favors, and the Ministry fears him because he deliberately bites and turns children.” He hesitated, then added, “He was the one who turned me.”

I don’t think we can use him, said Dash. He sounds like someone I should eat as soon as possible.

Harry agreed. “Who’s the second most powerful werewolf?”

Lupin paused, apparently thinking about it, then nodded decisively. “The most powerful one outside of Greyback’s minions is called Josephine Whitepaw. She heads a small pack in Cornwall.”

“Small?” Harry asked, disappointed.

“Small, but well-disciplined. Supposedly they have a mental art they use to resist the urgings of their wolves to run wild at the full moon. They’re always in control, even if they can’t stop themselves from transforming. They don’t need Wolfsbane.”

Those sound like people we need on our side, said Dash at once, and his voice was so self-satisfied that Harry had to smile. Lupin blinked at him, but didn’t say anything. Harry nodded. “Do you think you could go to Whitepaw’s pack and learn the method of mental discipline from her?”

Lupin hesitated. “I don’t know if they would let me. I know they consider werewolves bitten by Greyback tainted. They think we’ll basically all go mad the minute we get a chance. And I’ve lived with humans and by myself and under Wolfsbane besides.”

“Would she kill you for asking?”

“Oh, no. She’s not that kind of werewolf.”

“Then would you be willing to go to Cornwall and ask anyway? And you could come back in a month if you really think you can’t persuade her. That’s what I think you can do to make up for almost biting me,” Harry added, at Dash’s silent prompting.

Lupin’s face changed, and now he looked oddly relaxed. He bowed in front of Harry, which made Harry wince. It was bad enough when people who thought Dash was Lord Slytherin did it. “Yes. Thank you. Thank you for thinking of something.” He held out his hand. It took a whole five seconds for Harry to realize that Lupin wanted him to shake it. He did, while Dash snickered in the back of his head.

“And Harry?”

Harry looked up. Lupin had already started towards the door, as if he intended to leave for Cornwall right away. Maybe he did. His eyes were glowing and his muscles rippled in a way that reminded Harry of Dash when he was hunting prey.

“Thank you again,” Lupin whispered. “I’ll let you know right away what Whitepaw says. No more hiding. No more silence.” He whisked out the door.

Harry blinked and went to tell Severus that he didn’t have to brew the Wolfsbane right now unless he felt like it. That was not the way he had expected his confrontation with Lupin to go.

Not so much a confrontation as reminding him where his place is, Dash said, and wreathed as much of himself as he could around Harry’s shoulders and neck. There is no problem with werewolves when they know their place.

You could say the same about anyone else, Harry argued as he opened the door to Severus’s potions lab.

And I will, too.

*

“Keep your attention focused on the feather. Think about the veins in it, and how they spread out. Note the perfect edge, so that you can think of it brushing through the air. I know that you know how to fly, but this is a different kind of flight…”

Draco covered his mouth hastily, before the yawn could break forth. He thought he saw Delacour’s eyes cut to him anyway.

He was beginning to regret asking to learn feather and flight magic with Harry. He had never thought it would take so much lecturing before they began. And meditation, and contemplating feathers, and performing charms they already knew how to do which Delacour said would contribute to their being able to do feather magic, too.

But she hadn’t explained the connections between those charms and the ones she was teaching them, or at least not well enough for Draco’s level of skill. So he watched Granger and Harry stare, fascinated, at the feather in front of them, which hovered above a table on a column of light, and held back a sigh.

They were in Professor Snape’s quarters, because that was the only place that Professor Snape felt was safe enough for Harry to practice unknown magic. And they had been learning about feathers for the last half-hour. Draco covered another vicious yawn and tried to pretend interest in the eagle feather in front of them.

“Mr. Malfoy.”

Delacour was losing her accent more and more the more time she spent in Britain. Draco tried to sit up and look interested and respectful. “Yes, Miss Delacour?”

“If you do not want to learn, you are free to leave, yes?”

But I want to learn everything Harry learns. Somehow, Draco doubted that would content her, and he nodded. “All right. But—I’m sorry, but I just want to learn how to do some magic. Not how to think about feathers.”

Granger murmured something about Draco’s level of thought in general. At least Harry kicked her under the table.

“Thinking about feathers is necessary to know what to do with them, and to conjure your own without an incantation,” said Delacour unconcernedly. “But I can show you what you will do with them soon, yes? If you master it.” And she turned and faced the far corner of the room, where an empty bookshelf stood. (Professor Snape wasn’t so comfortable about them practicing unknown magic here that he was going to leave priceless tomes around them).

Delacour stared at the bookshelf. Draco exchanged an uneasy glance with Harry. He knew Harry had been paying more attention to her, but even he didn’t look like he knew what she was doing.

Then Delacour reached out and made a plucking motion with one hand as if she was pulling a leaf off a tree, and a shimmering shield of feathers filled the air between her and the bookshelf. Draco actually staggered back a step and sat down, not on a chair. He would have hurt his arse on the floor if Dash hadn’t been there, and caught him in a coil.

“Tell him thanks,” Draco told Harry, standing up and dusting himself off, and trying to look as though he was utterly calm.

Harry smiled a little and cocked his head. “He says you’re welcome.”

“How did you do that?” Granger was demanding of Delacour, who had turned around with a smile and a pale, exhausted sheen to her face. “I never saw—you didn’t move your wand or your hand except at the end or anything!”

“This is magic without an incantation,” said Delacour, and it was Draco’s private opinion that she didn’t have to sound so smug. “I did mention that, no? Magic that depends on understanding the turning of the world and the thing you are trying to summon, so that you can make it from anything and everywhere.” She banished the shield with a slight crook of her finger and turned back to the eagle feather floating above the table. “When you understand this, then you can create a shield made of it.”

“But it looked like your shield was made of peacock feathers.” Granger was practically bouncing as she followed Delacour back across the stone floor. “Why are you starting us out with an eagle feather?”

“Because it has its own virtues,” said Delacour, in what was possibly the most pretentious way Draco had ever heard someone put it. “The peacock feathers are appropriate to delicate beauty and ferocity. Eagles are pure ferocity.”

Dash must have said something, because Harry snickered a little. Then again, he seemed to like to eat birds, Draco thought. It was probably about that.

“What would happen if we used chicken feathers?”

Draco checked Granger’s face quickly, but apparently this was not an as-yet-unsuspected ability to joke. She seemed like she really wanted to know.

“You could think of them as protection if you can think of…hens as protection,” Delacour said, after an obvious moment when she needed to think of the English word. “Or of roosters as fierce. But most English people cannot.”

“I don’t think most French people can, either,” said Draco, in his best French.

For a moment, Delacour turned and glared at him. Then she smiled a little and inclined her head. “You would know, of course, Mr. Malfoy.”

A subtle way to remind me of who’s the professor here, Draco thought, but he bit back his protest. The summer holidays hadn’t even officially begun, and still Harry had wanted to start Delacour teaching him feather magic, because it wasn’t like he had exams, as one of the Champions. Draco somewhat regretted joining in, now.

But there was Granger, scribbling away on her notes, and there was Dash, coiled around Harry, and even if Draco somewhat regretted having to juggle these studies and getting ready for his fourth-year exams at the same time, he didn’t want to be anywhere else.

Chapter 98: Scenes from a Rising Side

Chapter Text

“We know that you are here. Show yourself, stranger.”

Remus shivered a little as he stood against the immense pine tree looming over him. He could hear the steady beat of ocean waves a short distance away. The Muggles thought this was essentially a barren stretch of coastline. Whitepaw had been one of the witches and wizards who enchanted them into forgetting the dark forest here.

Even right after she became a werewolf, she had been strongly involved in trying to keep her pack safe.

“All right,” said Remus, and stepped out into plain sight. He hoped that no one would kill him before he could deliver his message. He had never been sure how Whitepaw’s pack could know how a stranger had been turned by Fenrir, but maybe there were messages in the scent that Remus didn’t have practice in interpreting.

There was a growl that sounded louder than either the waves or Remus’s heart, and the werewolf came stalking out of the shadows of the trees, her head bowed and her white hair rippling behind her. Remus jumped when he realized this was Whitepaw herself. No one else would fit the description he had.

“Why have you come here, tainted one?”

“Because I want to learn your mental discipline to control my wolf instead of taking Wolfsbane.” At least she’d let him speak a full sentence without trying to eviscerate him.

Whitepaw paused for a long moment, and sniffed again. “Could I have been mistaken?” she whispered, and Remus didn’t try to answer, since he was pretty sure she was talking to herself. “But I know the taint of Greyback’s kin…who have you killed?”

“No one.”

“What is your name?”

“Remus Lupin.” Remus paused, but Whitepaw went on staring at him and sniffing doubtfully, and didn’t seem inclined to worry about whether he was telling the truth. “I’m a friend and ally of Harry Potter. I came here because I want to learn your discipline so I can actually fight for him instead of being dangerous.” He wouldn’t say anything about recruiting Whitepaw’s pack. It might not be possible, anyway.

“I know your name. You left Britain last year.”

Remus nodded. “And I came back when I heard about what Harry had been through. He’s the son and godson of my dearest friends, and he’ll have enemies on all sides, with You-Know-Who after him and people who were allies of Dumbledore against him now. So I want to learn something that could help his cause.”

Whitepaw kept sniffing. Then she moved fully out of the trees, and let Remus get a good look at her. She looked older than Greyback, but also wilder, as if she had spent more time communing with her wolf than in its thrall. Her face didn’t have thick lines, and her eyes burned a steady gold.

“Harry Potter wants to fight with werewolves?”

“He wants to create his own side,” Remus said. He hated revealing even this much, but he thought he had Harry’s authorization to do so. “I know that some werewolves will become allies of You-Know-Who. Harry wants to show that his side does welcome Dark creatures, so perhaps he can gain more allies.”

Whitepaw prowled slowly to the side. Remus didn’t turn to face her, which might be seen as too challenging, but stared straight ahead. He could keep track of her now that the wind was blowing towards him, anyway.

“You speak of him familiarly.”

“I told you, he was the son of my best friends—”

“Yes. But do you know that he has Salazar Slytherin’s soul?”

“His basilisk does. That’s not the same thing.”

Whitepaw made a sound that had both laughter and snarl in it. “It is the same thing to us.”

Remus only remained still, not really sure what Whitepaw meant. In the end, she finished her prowling circle and ended up in front of him.

“Yes,” she said, her voice thoughtful. “I think I will try to train you in our mental discipline. Of course, if you do something to hurt one of us or prove that you carry Greyback’s taint more deeply than you smell of, the punishment shall not be pleasant. Come!” And she turned and led the way into the forest, moving as confidently as though she had four feet right now.

Remus didn’t really see that he had any other choice but to follow.

*

Lucius frowned a little at the head that had appeared in the fire. Severus looked not drawn and pale, as Lucius had thought he would with the decisions and pressures piling on him, but smug.

If he has come to use the artifact to remove his Dark Mark, he will soon learn better. Lucius tilted his head in response and stood. “Severus. Is there something I can do for you?”

“Yes. Harry wants to speak with you.”

Lucius couldn’t deny the way his heartbeat quickened. He hadn’t seen Harry Potter since the declaration that his basilisk had the soul of Salazar Slytherin. “Very well. Tell him that he is welcome to come through the fire.”

Severus chuckled, and Lucius paused. There was a nasty edge to that laughter that he hadn’t heard in many years. “Oh, he doesn’t intend to come into your house until he has more of a promise from you, Lucius.”

“I would never harm the boy.”

“The promise concerns you interfering politically between him and his allies.”

“You know I did the right thing by informing the pure-blood families, Severus. The news would hardly have been safe to announce through the Prophet. And it wasn’t as if the boy would do it of his own free will.”

Severus eyed him unblinkingly, then said, “That attitude is part of what will need to change.” But he went on before Lucius could ask what he meant. “Harry is behind me. Do you want to speak with him or not?”

“Of course I do.” Lucius resigned himself to a Floo conversation, and conjured a cushion for his knees.

The sight of the boy as he stepped forwards and thrust his head into the flames distracted Lucius from the thought of his knees. He stared. The boy had a pale, proud expression he had never seen before, and he stood with his arms folded as if he was judging Lucius for…something. Lucius found himself holding his breath, and shook his head out with a sharp motion. He would not surrender a jot of his dignity even for the boy he was relying on to save him and start a new side in the war. He had done that with the Dark Lord for too long.

“Greetings, Mr. Potter,” he said instead of surrendering. “I did what I thought best, because—”

“I know you did. I’m not so concerned about the past. I’m concerned about making sure that the past doesn’t extend into the future.”

Lucius paused and cocked his head. “I would not reveal any more secrets like that, of course, if you do not wish me to. But this is too politically important a secret to keep.”

“What would be examples of other secrets like that?”

Lucius hoped that Potter would provide those examples, but instead he simply waited, and forced Lucius to leap into the pause. “If, for example, I found out that you had changed sides and intended to cooperate with the Dark Lord. Or if you found a way to hatch other basilisks and distribute them to trusted allies.”

He thought that last was a pipe dream, given what Draco had told him about the bond between Potter and Dash. Even if Potter wanted the basilisks to obey his allies, it was impossible if they weren’t Parselmouths. But he would not say no if Potter wanted to try it and he had a vial of phoenix’s tears on hand.

“I see,” said Potter, and his voice was weary. “Then I need to keep you out of my most secret counsels until I don’t need to keep them secret anymore. Thank you for informing me of this, Lucius.”

“That is not what I meant!”

“You’ve basically said that you think you should be in charge of distributing secrets about me, and you don’t trust me when I say that I might have a reason for keeping them quiet. So I can’t tell you anything important now.” Potter leaned back in a way that might have meant he was looking up at Severus. “Did you have anything else to say to Lucius?”

“Potter, wait—”

“No. I think you made the point clear, Harry.” Severus dipped back into view, and the sight of the smirk on his face made Lucius want to claw it off. “I’ll be by soon to use the artifact, Lucius.”

“What makes you think I’ll let you take advantage of it if we aren’t allies?”

“Oh, we are allies, of course! I hope nothing today gave you the opposite impression. What needs to be judged carefully is what kind of allies we are. And it sounds like we’re the kind who can trust each other as long as vital secrets aren’t part of the occasion.”

Lucius stared at Severus, speechless with rage, and still more than half thinking about refusing to let him use the artifact when he inevitably showed up and asked for permission. Severus bent closer to the fire, and his voice took on a hollow, hissing sound that Lucius wondered distantly if he was letting Potter hear.

“You had your chance, Lucius. You showed that you cared more about your own political importance than you care for maintaining the trust of your allies. You sacrificed that trust for your gain. Well, a sacrifice wouldn’t hurt if there was no price.”

And Severus’s face disappeared from the fire.

Lucius sat for a moment with his eyes closed. He was surprised that both Severus and Potter could have misunderstood his intentions so badly. He had not meant to promote his own importance or take control of the enterprise, as Severus insinuated. He had only meant to put forth a secret that Potter would never consent to spread, and make things happen that should not be locked in the darkness.

Then Lucius grimaced. Very well, looked at like that, he could see what it would look like to Severus.

But he would not have thought Potter so set against him by the words of other allies. Draco should have spoken for Lucius. He should have been able to counteract Severus’s impression of the truth, unless Lucius had underestimated the strength of the bond between his son and the Boy-Who-Lived.

Lucius rose to his feet, grimacing. I had better not have. The bond is one of the best things to come out of this.

And Potter still must be more political than he has been, or we will lose this war before we begin it.

*

Harry closed his eyes. There were a bunch of pure-bloods in the next room, shifting around and muttering to each other. He didn’t know what they were saying, because he was hardly going to stand with his ear to the door, but knowing they were there was enough to make him sick to his stomach.

Imagine how they will feel when they see me.

Harry opened his eyes and frowned. “I told you not to threaten anyone at this party, Dash. Not unless they threaten me first. And an actual threat, not one you invented because you’re hungry.”

It is not a party. And I am not talking about threatening them. Dash lashed his tongue out and laughed all the way down to the deep bond, making Harry feel for a moment as if he was swimming in stars. I am talking about what will happen when they see me.

Harry blinked, coming back to a realization of how strangers looked at Dash that felt as if he had been forgetting it for months. “They’re going to see a sixteen-foot-basilisk sliding into the room, and they know what could happen if you forgot yourself and opened your eyes.”

Which is not going to happen, of course. Dash turned his head back and forth as if he wanted Harry and everyone else in the next room to see how the clear outer eyelids stayed shut. But part of your job is making sure that everyone thinks it could happen at any moment. That will create the atmosphere we desire.

“Um, no it won’t,” Harry said, lowering his voice as someone in the next room made a really loud noise, and then he gave up and switched to the mental talking. We want a non-threatening atmosphere. We want people to see me as a good potential ally, someone who can actually work with both Dark and Light.

No. We want people to see you as a dangerous person guarded by his basilisk.

Harry shook his head furiously, and would have said something else, but Severus opened the far door and looked at him calmly. “It’s time. I think this would be the perfect moment for a basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin to enter the room.”

Harry held his breath for a few seconds, something that had often calmed him down when he was imprisoned in his cupboard. Then he smiled at Severus and crossed the few steps in between them. His dress robes whispered over the stones. At least they were different than the ones he’d been forced to wear at the Yule Ball. “Thank you.”

“What is wrong?” Severus settled a hand on his shoulder under the guise of stroking a wrinkle out of his robe.

“Dash is being difficult.”

“Tell him that he will lose you substantial political advantages if he does not play up to your guests.”

I can hear him perfectly well myself. And I disagree on the political advantage.

Harry rolled his eyes, aware that some of their audience might be watching him, but not really able to do anything else. He had to translate for Dash and Severus. “He thinks I would be better off with people being afraid of me. Or the person they think I am, a Parselmouth who can control a giant basilisk.”

“That is true.”

“Fine, a Parselmouth who would unleash the basilisk on them.” Harry turned and stared gloomily at the door. Before, he had been bored by the notion of this party but not afraid of it. He’d thought he could handle the guests the way he’d handled Clarence Greengrass. And now Dash and Severus were making it all complicated again.

“You must walk a thin line,” Severus said, drawing Harry’s gaze back to him. “Someone who can unleash a giant basilisk, but who would? No, that is the line I do not want you to cross.” He crouched down in front of Harry, something he normally only did when he wanted his complete attention, and Harry looked at him in wonder. “That is the line you must make Dash understand he is not to cross, either.”

I understand it.

Harry sighed a little. “He understands it,” he explained to Severus. “That doesn’t mean that he’s going to stay on the right side of it.”

Severus reached out and tapped his fingers on Dash’s nose. The gesture was so unexpected that Harry just stood there, blinking, and Dash didn’t look as if he really knew what to do, either. “You know better than that,” Severus said softly, and he was speaking to Dash directly instead of through Harry, something he almost never did, either. “You would increase your own pleasure at the cost of Harry’s confidence and security? And political strength? I do not believe that.”

Dash tapped his tail on the floor hard enough that Harry thought he was going to spit words at Severus Harry would be required to translate. Instead, he let his head flop down and whined at Harry, I know. I know. I was only having a bit of fun. You’d think that you’d know when I was joking by now.

Your joking tone sounds just like your serious tone, you know?

Dash moved his head a little to the side, and said without words that Harry should know better. But he also said, with words, You can tell your Snape that I won’t spoil things for you. I will simply remain alert at your side and accept any presents or kind words addressed to Lord Slytherin. Then he added, plaintively, I bet Snape wouldn’t have tapped Salazar Slytherin on the nose and told him to behave himself.

The way he said it made Harry a little suspicious. Do you know someone who would have?

Only Rowena.

Harry wanted to ask more about that, but Severus, with a warning scowl that Harry knew was aimed at Dash more than him, had already stood up and flung the doors into the next room open.

Harry swallowed. They were borrowing a huge ballroom in Longbottom Manor for the occasion. Severus had said both Hogwarts and Malfoy Manor would have unfortunate political implications, and Harry and Severus didn’t have houses large enough themselves for it. Neville had said that he wanted to be beside Harry.

Neville didn’t even seem that surprised or fazed that Dash had Salazar Slytherin’s soul. He kept sneaking glances at Dash as if he wanted to ask questions, and he was doing it again from the other side of the ballroom door. His grandmother stood with one hand on a thick cane, and she hadn’t taken her eyes from Dash since they arrived, it seemed like.

Then again, you need a lot of watching, Harry thought to Dash as they moved forwards, and Severus nodded at people on one side, and Harry did the same for people on the other.

Dash didn’t bother to respond. He was checking people out himself, once rearing his entire bulk off the floor to look at a platter of thick cheese that a woman was eating. She looked as if she was going to faint for a minute, and then smiled bravely and held out a piece of cheese on a stick for him to smell. Dash stuck his tongue out, hissed in disappointment, and dropped back to the floor.

What was that all about?

I thought she might be using the cheese to attract mice. But not even mice would be stupid enough to eat something that smells like that.

Harry would have argued for the sake of having something to argue about, but Clarence Greengrass stepped forwards then, and Harry did feel compelled to pay attention to him.

“My dear Mr. Potter,” said Greengrass, and bowed to him, in a sweeping manner that at least reassured Harry the man was the same as he had been the last time they met. “You are most welcome. Let me introduce you to some of the people who have come out to support you and Lord Slytherin.” He gave Dash a mildly impressed glance as he turned, hand on Harry’s shoulder, and Dash reared up on the other side of him, twining in a great wave as he turned his head from side to side.

Harry gritted his teeth and nodded at the people waiting for him, some of whom he’d already nodded at. Applause broke in a wave around him, and Severus bore it with a half-smile. Dash kept bobbing his head with every appearance of enjoyment.

Harry wondered if he was the only one who felt like he was roasting in the fire of his embarrassment. Really, these people were here to see Dash, not him, and except for needing to be a translator, he could have skipped coming.

“Mr. Harry Potter,” said Greengrass, and steered Harry over to a woman with skin so pale Harry wondered if she was sick. “This is Juliet Parkinson.”

Harry couldn’t help but give her a little stare as he shook her hand, and the woman seemed to understand it. She gave a small, restrained laugh. “Not the mother of your dear classmate Pansy. She’s my brother’s daughter. I’m the head of the family, but I’ve never seen the use of marrying.”

And her magic is Dark and moving all around her, said Dash in interest. She must have great control of it.

Harry would have liked to spend a little more time chatting to Madam Parkinson, but Greengrass had other people for him to meet, and the names blended in a long litany in Harry’s head. Flint, Yeldson, Williams, Leobald, Shafiq, Dazzle-Gaunt, Tyrone…

But at last Harry did see someone else he recognized. He blinked and wondered if she should acknowledge Elena Zabini as she shook his hand firmly.

Madam Zabini took the choice out of his hands by inclining her head and murmuring, “My son is as well as can be expected. Thank you for your quick wits and your steady hand, Mr. Potter.” Her smile widened as some of the people around them murmured and Greengrass looked disgruntled.

For that matter, Harry wasn’t sure exactly what she was referring to, but he acted gracious, and he didn’t need Severus’s hard press on his shoulder to make him do it. “You’re welcome, Madam Zabini,” he said, and Dash twined around his ankles and moved him on to the next person.

You don’t like her? Harry asked Dash as he shook the hand of yet another nameless person. He knew Mrs. Longbottom had refused to have any actual Death Eaters in her home, but that still left an awful lot of stuffy pure-bloods.

She’s dangerous. She could poison you with a touch.

Harry thought about that as he smiled at Narcissa Malfoy. She was here without her husband, but that didn’t mean a lot when most people knew how firmly the Malfoys were allies of Harry’s. Literally?

Now you sound as if wish to court danger as much as I want you to stay away from it.

Harry shook his head as he held out his hand and watched another generically pure-blooded man shake it. He thought this one might be on the Light side of the fence, though, from the way he scowled at Narcissa and Mrs. Zabini and a few of the other Darker family representatives. No, I don’t want to court it. I just want to know if she could literally poison me or not.

Dash opened his mouth and lunged at the man in front of them.

Harry was twisting his body to prevent it even as it happened, and then he saw the gleam of the knife in the wizard’s hand and realized that maybe he was misplacing his sympathy. But the knife was too close, it was going to cut—

It bounced off Dash’s fangs as he opened his mouth and hissed. The sound filled the whole room and made almost everyone who had been turning towards them freeze. The exception was Severus, who leaned down and jerked Harry firmly backwards, then Body-Bound the man in front of him.

Harry, panting, realized that he’d been too involved in his conversation with Dash to realize who the man was.

“Cyan, how could you?” Greengrass was all but wringing his hands. “What is Harry going to think of us?”

Harry tilted his head back so that he could catch Severus’s eye. Severus grimaced a little, but understood the question without hearing it, and answered it. “Cyan Scrimgeour. Related to the current Head of the Aurors.”

“Oh,” said Harry weakly. “That’s…interesting.”

“Indeed. Now, restrain your basilisk, and let us continue the party if we can.”

Harry swallowed, and smiled, and turned back to shaking hands and kissing them. And people seemed to follow him, to fall in around him, as if this kind of thing happened every day in the circles they aspired to enter.

Maybe it did.

I want no part of them.

You have to have a part of them, Dash said gently. But don’t worry. I have the other part.

Chapter 99: At the Highest Levels

Chapter Text

"Is politics always going to be like that? Murder out of nowhere?"

"Of course not," Severus said shortly, keeping his eyes away from Harry as he Transfigured his dress robes back to ordinary ones. "You don't have to worry about that. Scrimgeour is being questioned by the Ministry right now. They'll hardly release him to wreak havoc again."

"But is he going to be questioned fairly when his cousin is the Head Auror?"

Severus paused, reluctantly impressed. That was one of the problems with encouraging Harry to be more astute in politics. He would realize he had more things to be worried about than he would have a few months ago.

"They'll insist that he be tried," he said, and turned around to face Harry, who sat on his bed in Severus's quarters, his head bowed. Dash was asleep at Harry's feet. Of course, the one time he would have been useful if he stayed awake, he decides not to be. "The members of the Wizengamot who are on your side. They have innumerable witnesses they can call upon. He won't get away with it."

"But if they say he was under the Imperius Curse, or not himself..."

"He could have been under the Imperius Curse," Severus acknowledged slowly. Indeed, it would make a certain amount of sense as to why a politically experienced man would attack a prominent child at a party, in front of his deadly snake. "But if they find that out, he won't be let near you again."

"Oh."

Severus sighed a little and knelt down in front of Harry, reaching out a hand. "Do you really think that we'll put you in danger, even if you have a basilisk or political renown? I never intend to do that, Harry."

Harry's eyes were haunted as he met Severus's. "But some people want to believe that I'm an ally of Voldemort," he whispered. "And there are so many people who are on Dumbledore's side even knowing that he impersonated Moody. So how can I be sure that there aren't people who will let a murderer back near me?"

This is the part where you have to be a good guardian. Where you have to reassure him, no matter how hard it is.

Severus swallowed a little and put on a smile. "There may be people. They aren't here. And they'll have to contend with me if they want to try."

"Oh?" Harry sat up, and his eyes glinted a little.

"Exactly. I take it that you haven't noticed the new wards I've set up around our quarters?"

Harry shook his head, and Dash stirred a little and opened his eyes as much as he usually opened them. He must have said something to Harry, because Harry said, a little awed, "Dash thinks he can feel them. Even through his scales! He says there aren't many wards that powerful."

"Correct." Severus took a step back and looked around, finally picking up an old book that he had several copies of and had only kept because there were notes in this one he didn't want to lose. A wave of his wand transferred the notes to a piece of parchment. He could match them up with another copy of the book at only slight inconvenience. "Come."

Harry trailed him out into the corridor, where Severus aimed his wand at the book and whispered the precise words of a Transfiguration spell. The book morphed into the form of a large, blank-eyed wooden doll. Severus extended one of its fingers into a wand and moved it down the corridor with another flick.

Then he engaged the wards. Dash raised his neck and wove back and forth as they filled the corridor with flickering green light the color of spring.

"Now, watch," Severus said, and cast the Animation Charm.

The doll began to march forwards, wand aimed in a credible parody of an attack. The wards began to hum, and the humming built to a fever pitch as the doll crossed an imaginary line in the middle of the corridor, until the sound reminded Severus of a hornets' nest.

"Should it stop?" Harry muttered.

"Not unless I decide to stop it," said Severus, and leaned back a little against the wall as he watched the doll's footsteps carry it closer and closer. "And I do not. Just as some enemies might not choose to stop despite the warning."

Severus saw Harry's eyes harden in determination, and smiled a little. Yes, this would work.

He faced the doll again just as the wards coiled around it in a surge of blue. The green light filling the corridor turned the shade of lightning, and the doll stopped for a moment simply from the physical pressure of the magic. The spiral of blue light hung downwards from the ceiling, and encircled it so completely Severus couldn't see it.

But the doll kept marching forwards, the way a determined enemy might try if they thought they could defeat the wards, and--

The surge of blue that followed made Harry cry out and cover his eyes. Severus merely blinked, knowing the intensity of the light would fade in a short time. But he did get to see the moment when the doll's body was outlined in a shimmering halo that abruptly contracted and sizzled, and the smell of burning wood briefly filled the corridor.

“There,” Severus said, into the shocked stillness afterwards. “You believe me now when I say that no one shall easily get near you again?”

*

I approve of this, Dash said. It would be a shame if it cooked the meat so much one could not eat it, but on the other hand, the doll is not made of meat, so it is not a waste.

Harry managed to swallow and answer shakily. You would.

Dash didn’t bother to respond. Harry turned to Severus and managed to smile. “Thank you. I feel—”

“Better?” Severus asked quietly. His eyes were sharp, and he had his wand still drawn by his side, as if he assumed that he would have to cast some other combination of spells to reassure Harry.

Honestly, it was shameful that Harry had needed the reassurance in the first place (and he ignored the hissed disagreement from Dash, because he had his own thoughts about this that Dash didn’t need to contradict). “Yes. Much.” He sighed and let go of some of the wariness that had hung like a cloud around his head and inside his chest ever since Scrimgeour had tried to murder him. “All right. What are we going to do next?”

“You think I had some specific plan?”

“I know you were going to go to the Malfoys’ house to try and get your Dark Mark healed up. Can you do that now that you’re having an argument with Lucius?”

Severus chuckled dryly. “We’ve given him enough to think about that it shouldn’t be a problem. Lucius won’t want to be left out of one of the most dramatic political changes of our century, no matter what he feels about me.” He cocked his head. “You realize that some of our plans will not come to fruition for a time? We have no idea how long it will take Lupin to earn the other werewolves’ trust, if it will ever happen. I can remove the Dark Mark, but we will not know whether the Dark Lord will feel it and strike. We do not even know if we can persuade other Death Eaters to come over to our side.”

“I know,” Harry repeated. He cast another glance at the charred “body” of the conjured doll and found himself shaking his head again. It was insane how much better the sight of those wards in action had made him feel.

Not insane. You know now you will be safe as long as you are here, and safer than you were in the smelly dog-man’s house last summer.

“I want to work against Voldemort,” Harry said. Severus was good about trying to hide the flinch, but Harry saw it anyway. Well, Harry could be good about ignoring that. “That means I want to do more than just deny him access to a few Death Eaters. I want to make him lose something he values.”

“What would that be?”

Yes, what would that be? Tell! Causing him pain would be so much fun.

“His reputation,” Harry said, and let his hand smooth over Dash’s neck when Dash rose and did a little dance like a cobra in the middle of the corridor. He needed to make sure Severus wouldn’t get too freaked out and think Dash was about to eat him. “Right now, not a lot of people know the truth about him, that he’s Tom Marvolo Riddle and an orphan and a half-blood. They think he’s, I don’t know, pure-blood or something. Right?”

“I certainly thought so, during my time serving as a Death Eater,” Severus acknowledged slowly, his eyes wide and startled.

“Then we take that way. We spread as much of the truth about him as we can. Maybe we can get the papers to carry it. But even if we can’t, that’s something we can tell Clarence Greengrass and the other people who were at that party. You know, the kind of people who will probably follow him otherwise.”

“They would not want to keep such a juicy rumor to themselves, no. But there will be the question of how you know this.”

Harry shrugged. “That’s actually the easiest part. I don’t mind talking about what happened in the Chamber of Secrets during second year.” Then he winced as he remembered the other person who had been there. “Well, after I talk to Ginny Weasley, first. She might not want to be known as the girl who got possessed by a diary and made to open the Chamber of Secrets.”

He’d thought for sure Severus knew that much already, but his eyes closed in a long, slow blink. “A diary.”

“A diary that used to belong to Tom Marvolo Riddle when he was a schoolkid here,” said Harry, and blinked at Severus as he shook his head and closed his eyes. “What? It was filled with his magic. Dark magic. His Horcrux. It makes sense that it would have to possess Ginny. She doesn’t know Parseltongue like I do. How else could she have opened the Chamber?”

“What happened to the diary after you—rescued Miss Weasley?”

“I don’t really know,” Harry decided, after thinking for a second. “I gave it to Dumbledore. For all I know, he took it with him. Or it might still be in the desk up in the Headmaster’s office.”

“I think I should very much like to take a look at that diary.”

“Sure. But I stabbed it with a basilisk fang. I’m pretty sure that I killed all the pieces of Riddle that were inside it.”

“A skilled Dark wizard can learn much about the magic an artifact once possessed from even the residue of that magic.”

Harry just shrugged, and told himself not to be upset that Severus had referred to himself as a Dark wizard. It was only true in a couple of ways, and Harry wouldn’t ever be affected by most of them. “You can ask the Headmistress if it’s still there. I don’t know.”

“I will.” Severus looked straight at him then, and there was a strange look in his eyes that Harry didn’t understand until he spoke again. “I am—most proud that you are overcoming your distaste for politics to do what you must do to keep yourself safe.”

“I did it before. I spoke about being abused to the papers.”

“But I know that you did that as much to protect others as for yourself. And before you tell me that you are fighting this war to defeat the Dark Lord so others will be safe,” Severus added, as Harry opened his mouth, “let me tell you that I know that, and it does not make one bit of difference to me. You are still also trying to protect yourself, and first.”

Harry nodded slowly. He supposed he could see why Snape was taking this that way, although he didn’t, personally, agree. “All right. Help me choose who we’re going to tell the truth about Voldemort to?”

Severus gave him a particularly vicious smile and opened the door to his quarters again. Dash slithered along in front of them as if this was all his own idea.

I want to see their faces when we tell them!

*

“Thank you for allowing me to visit, Lucius.”

Lucius inclined his head a little stiffly, not taking his eyes from Severus’s face as he stepped out of the Floo and brushed his robes off. He was looking for some sign, no matter how small, that that angry conversation through the Floo either hadn’t happened, or that Severus had forgiven him.

But the pleasant, empty look Severus faced him with said nothing had changed. “Where is the artifact?”

“This way.” Lucius turned to lead Severus to the room he had reserved for the artifact, adding over his shoulder, “You have the Blood-Replenishing Potion? And the blood that you will need to activate the rune on the bottom?”

“Of course. Would I come unprepared to one of the most important moments of my life?”

Lucius could find nothing to say. He opened the door of the sitting room and stood well back out of the path. If that was the way Severus wanted to play it, then Lucius could certainly answer with his own moves in the game.

Severus stopped, though, his hand on the door, and spoke without glancing away from Lucius. “You are lucky that Harry is forgiving.”

“What do you—”

“He is willing to give you another chance to spread rumors according to his specifications, and no others.” Severus took a sheet of parchment from his sleeve and held it out. “These are the people he has chosen to inform of the Dark Lord’s true name and blood status. He has chosen you to be his nexus from which they spread.” Severus smiled again, more pleasant even than the original empty look on his face when he’d entered. “A test, Lucius. Inform anyone else, and you will be of no more use to Harry and his side in the war. But if you do as you are told…”

And then Severus stepped into the other room and shut the door gently behind him.

Lucius stared down at the parchment. Clarence Greengrass. Elena Zabini. Juliet Parkinson. Other than Greengrass, not people he would have chosen to inform.

He could almost feel Severus’s mocking eyes through the door shut between them, even though by now, Severus should be deep in the trial of feeding blood and pain to the damn box. Of course they were people he would not have chosen to inform. That was part of the test, too.

Lucius narrowed his eyes and thought about Flooing Potter to ask where the sacrifice he had been supposed to make was. But then he shook his head, drew a deep breath, and went to do as he was told.

That, of course, was the sacrifice.

*

“Of course we’re going to come and visit you as soon as we can.”

 

Harry closed his eyes and hugged Hermione hard. Part of him was gloomily certain he might not see her again. With Voldemort coming back, he would probably start targeting Muggleborns and their families soon.

If you start thinking that way, then you won’t see me for a while.

Harry wished Dash was in the right place so he could kick him, but he made himself release Hermione and step away with a smile. “Severus said you could visit over the summer, as long as you let him know first. And of course you’ll be here for my birthday.”

“I know.” Hermione hesitated, glancing around as if judging the size of the crowd in the entrance hall, and then gave him another fierce hug. “I want you to be safe,” she whispered into his ear. “No wandering around at night or getting too far away from the castle, all right?”

You will be safe if I have to bind you to the bed.

Even though Hermione couldn’t hear anything from Dash, she seemed reassured because he was rearing up and resting his head against Harry’s chest. Harry patted him and nodded to Hermione. “He’ll keep me safe. And Severus. And everyone else who’ll be here,” he added, in a slight mutter. He knew the portraits and the ghosts were already taking more interest in him than they usually did.

Being the only student here at Hogwarts for the summer was going to be wonderful in some ways, but it would suck in others.

“Good.” Hermione stepped away, only for Ron to take her place. He punched Harry on the shoulder, stood still for a second, and then hugged him in turn. He didn’t linger as long as Hermione, though, pulling back with an embarrassed little cough.

“Don’t spend too much time snogging Malfoy.”

Harry could feel his face heat up so fast that he felt dizzy. He shoved Ron in return, and Ron chortled at his own wit and let him go, shaking his head. “What she said, mate. Stay safe, and we’ll see you later this summer.”

Harry nodded. “Tell your mum I’m looking forward to visiting.”

Ron rolled his eyes. “And are you looking forward to getting an owl every few days asking how you are and trying to give you sweets?”

“Even that.”

Ron nodded, muttered something about, “Wish she’d do that for me, I am her kid,” and grabbed his trunk. “We’ve got to go, or we’ll miss the carriages to the Express!” he shouted over his shoulder as he started sprinting out the door.

Hermione lingered, of course. “You’ll listen to Professor Snape, won’t you, Harry? And you won’t go exploring in any part of the castle that might be dangerous. And you’ll let us know if you get summoned to talk before the Wizengamot again. And you’ll let us know if Sirius comes back—”

Hermione, the carriages!”

“Go on, Hermione!” Harry said, and gave her a little shove, since she seemed to need it.

Hermione squealed, grabbed her trunk, and took off running, still waving madly to him with one hand. Harry turned around, and blinked when he saw a Slytherin standing in front of him. This Slytherin was most assuredly not Draco.

“Yes?” he asked, before he remembered. This was Graham Montague, the Slytherin who had come up to Harry at breakfast on the morning he got taken to the Ministry and told Harry about his brother. “Don’t you have to rush to get to the carriages?”

“No, my brother is going to Apparate into Hogsmeade and get me.” Montague gave Harry a careful nod. “I’m hearing a lot of rumors, Potter, but it seems that some people saw fit not to include my family in certain communications even though…”

“I know, but I didn’t make all the decisions the first time, and this time, there’s only information going out to a few people at first.”

“Well? Now that you’re making the decisions, can we be recognized?”

Harry considered Montague carefully. As far as he knew, his family hadn’t been among the prominent Death Eaters, but neither had they ever been of the cadre of pure-bloods, like the Greengrasses, who had kept at least the appearance of neutrality. “What do you think you can add to my side?”

“Your side.” Montague gave him the look of a cat licking its paws. “Even that’s more information than I had a minute ago.”

Harry shook his head briskly. “I didn’t mean to leave you out. But yes, I am making a third side.” He lowered his voice and moved over to the side of the wall. A few people glanced at them curiously, but all Dash had to do was weave his head back and forth, and most of them found reason to turn away. “I don’t want to go along with Dumbledore’s allies who accused me of murdering him. I also don’t want to be on Voldemort’s side.”

Montague only gave a tiny shudder when Harry said that. “All right. What does someone have to do to join you?”

“Say they are,” Harry said. “And be willing to work with Muggleborns and pure-bloods and Light wizards and Dark wizards and werewolves.”

This time, Montague’s shudder was bigger. “Are you sure you can trust those beasts at your back, Potter?”

“I have a more dangerous beast I trust with my safety every day,” Harry pointed out dryly, and stroked Dash’s back. “Anyway, yes, I can. I have an emissary who may be bringing the second-largest pack in Britain to my side soon, or at least learning how other werewolves who aren’t part of that pack can control their wolf sides. What you need to do is decide if you can work with them.”

“I can’t answer for my father or brother,” said Montague, his eyes wide enough that Harry could see how very dark blue they were. “But I think I can promise that I can.” He swallowed loudly. “As long as you can be sure that you won’t ever allow them near someone else in their wolf forms without Wolfsbane.”

“Or this mental discipline, if we can convince the werewolves that practice it to give it to ours.”

Montague paused, then said reluctantly, “Yes, fine. Honestly, I would have more of a problem with the Muggleborns and Light wizards and witches if I hadn’t seen the quality of the ones you surround yourself with.”

Harry grinned. That had to be a compliment about Ron and Hermione. “Go talk to your father and brother, then. See what they say, if they can go along with it, too.”

“At least some of it,” Montague muttered, and then gave Harry something that looked disturbingly like a salute and strode away.

“Harry!”

That voice made Harry turn around in surprise, because he would have thought Draco would already be on the train. Instead, Draco sauntered up to him, looking intensely smug, and kissed him on the tip of the nose.

“Is your father coming to get you?” Harry asked, trying to decide how he felt about seeing Lucius in person so soon after scolding him through the Floo.

“No. Guess again.” Draco practically vibrated as he stood in front of Harry, and Harry realized, to his astonishment, that Draco was trying to hold back laughter.

“He’s letting you stay here for the summer?”

“Well, part of the summer,” Draco said, looking a little disappointed that Harry had guessed so easily. “I think he wants me to come home at least a few days every week because Mother will want to see me. And he might want me to spy on you and tell him what I think you’re up to,” he added, as if that was no problem. He only shrugged when Harry gaped at him. “But the important thing is, we get to be together.”

Harry leaned forwards to kiss him back, ignoring the few scandalized glances they got, but he did mutter, as he pulled back, “Lucius never gives up, does he?”

“He doesn’t,” Draco conceded, tilting his head and letting the sunshine from outside flash on his hair. “But that doesn’t mean I have to dance to his tune. And that doesn’t mean I can’t learn from his mistakes.” He smiled, winningly.

Harry gave in to temptation and wrapped himself up in Draco’s arms. He thought he’d done enough serious political plotting today already, what with he’d said to Montague. He would enjoy the rest of the day with his boyfriend.

Chapter 100: Half a Day of Fun

Chapter Text

“I don’t want to move yet.”

Draco kept his eyes closed and his voice whiny. He could almost feel Harry rolling his own eyes. They’d been out by the lake for an hour, and even though it was the most beautiful day they’d had in June so far, Draco knew Harry wanted to do something else.

With Draco’s head in his lap, though, that wasn’t going to happen any time soon. And much to Draco’s pleasure, Dash seemed to share his longing for the day and didn’t want to move from his sunbathing next to the lake.

“Why just stay here all afternoon, though?” Harry’s voice was soft and rational, and he stroked Draco’s hair, and Draco bit his lip hard. “We could fly. Or we could walk down to Hogsmeade. Severus said we could.”

“I’d forgotten that he said we could go to Hogsmeade,” Draco muttered, tempted. He hadn’t really had the experience of strolling through the village in Harry’s company, and showing off for Harry in front of people who weren’t Hogwarts students.

But the melting warmth still bathed his limbs, and he honestly didn’t want to move far. If Harry could fly him into Hogsmeade, that would be perfect.

He’d opened his mouth to suggest that when he heard the slight hiss from Dash, followed by the slight laugh from Harry. Draco opened his eyes, cautiously. He appreciated Dash hissing like that so Draco would know he’d spoken, but the laughter suggested maybe a prank or something like it.

No, Dash had simply arranged himself on top of Draco, and thus on top of Harry. He’d moved so slowly that Draco had confused the warmth of his scales with the warmth of the sun itself. Draco shook his head, about the only part of him not covered with huge coils, and lay back again.

“You’re not upset?” Harry sounded astonished.

“I didn’t even feel him do it. He’s not crushing me. What do I care as long as I can lie here and be warm?”

He thought Harry probably rolled his eyes again. It didn’t matter. They were still beside the lake, they were in each other’s company, and Dash approved of Draco in a way that he thought no one else except Ron and Hermione got on a regular basis. And were either of them lying with their head in Harry’s lap right now? No. They were not.

Draco fell asleep, more than contented, even when Harry sighed and shifted loudly underneath him.

*

“That wasn’t fair.”

Harry made sure he spent a second composing his face before he looked at Draco, and that his eyes weren’t too large and innocent. “What wasn’t fair?”

“Coaxing that wave from the lake to rise up and soak me. With whatever wand movement you used. I was asleep! I couldn’t defend myself!”

“I never did anything to that wave. And don’t worry, I can protect you from rogue ones in the future. Now that I know you object to being woken up so we can go to Hogsmeade, I mean.”

Draco gave him a narrow glance. Harry, since he wasn’t obliged to admit anything, didn’t, and led Draco into the Three Broomsticks instead. He’d visited it several times before, but after the excitement and exhaustion of the Tournament, it felt further away than it had.

Some of the adults there, wizards and witches Harry didn’t know, stared to see him and Draco stroll in hand-in-hand. Harry felt a deep flush work its way over his face. Well, let them stare. Besides, most of them jumped far more when Dash crawled into the pub behind them a minute later, his tongue flickering out in interest to taste all the different scents.

*

Draco shook his head. If he tried really hard, he could remember the days when he had been nervous around Dash himself. But Harry had had him for years now, and he’d never hurt anybody—

Well, okay, Dumbledore. But Dumbledore wasn’t just anybody.

Draco shrugged away the hitch in his thoughts. The thing was, Dash had never hurt anyone except in defense of Harry. All people here had to do was stay away from any thought of hurting Harry, and they would be fine.

Dash curled himself at Harry’s feet under the table as Madam Rosmerta bustled over to them, obviously trying not to let her smile look strained. “What will you want, dears?”

“Butterbeer.”

“Butterbeer,” Draco said, and then paused. Now that he thought about it, the chilly wave Harry had struck him with had seemed to wash all the food out of his body. “And a meal. Bring me a hot sandwich and some chips.”

Draco,” Harry hissed. “Don’t treat her like a servant.” He was almost bouncing the tabletop with the way his knee was going underneath it, and frowning at Draco.

“I’ll treat her however I want,” Draco retorted, but he did lower his voice, since Madam Rosmerta was still in hearing distance. He sniffed when he saw the hard glance Harry was giving him. “Come on, Harry. It’s her job. Not even Dash is getting upset about the way I treat her, look.”

“Dash is asleep. And when he’s awake…well, he also thinks that eating a bunch of people would have been the solution to my problems.”

Draco couldn’t help smiling. “Yes, I have to admit that would have worked. Unorthodox, maybe, but you can’t deny its effectiveness.”

Harry let his head slump gently down until his fringe hid his scar. Draco chuckled and watched him. When Harry glanced up, he blinked, as if he had thought Draco would have glanced away by now. “What is it?”

“Sometimes,” Draco said, and then spent a moment searching for another word. In the end, though, only the first one he’d thought of seemed to fit. “You’re so cute.”

Harry narrowed his eyes and sat up, opening his mouth. Then he had to close it again because Madam Rosmerta had put their butterbeer down in front of them, along with Draco’s chips. She gave him an apology for the sandwich taking longer that Draco could wave off easily. He was far more interested in Harry.

“Why? Because I’m naïve?” Harry demanded in a harsh whisper as he took a big gulp of butterbeer that left foam around his mouth.

“No. Because you take lots of things seriously, and you don’t always see your own best interest.” Draco bit into his chips, and smiled a little, surprised. They were better than they’d been the last time he’d visited the Three Broomsticks. “I would never recommend that Dash eat people. But I can agree that it would make things easier. Whereas you get all offended and nervous about it.”

“You don’t know how seriously he makes the recommendation.”

Draco shot a glance at the basilisk, who turned his head a little to show he wasn’t asleep. “Well. I know he does. But I would never agree with him that much. Just on a level that it would make things simpler, it’s a shame we can’t do it. You see?”

“I think—I just think that everyone should be respected, that’s all.” Harry made a gesture with his mug that sent foam slopping over the side. But he also seemed to see, from Draco’s face, that Draco didn’t understand, because he leaned forwards earnestly. “Dash shouldn’t threaten to eat people just for disagreeing with me. And Severus shouldn’t threaten to hex them, either.”

Draco snorted into his own mug. “I think you’ll have better luck convincing Dash to hold off on eating your enemies than you will convincing Professor Snape not to curse them.”

“But he doesn’t need to! I mean, all right, yes, someone like Scrimgeour who tried to kill me should be arrested, but they don’t need to try to kill him in return! Or curse them.”

Draco opened his mouth, then shut it and sat there in thought. He had some of the same protective impulse for Harry; he just wasn’t as powerful as Dash and Professor Snape, so he couldn’t always exercise it. And he didn’t want to say that Harry wasn’t powerful, either. This whole means of getting him involved in politics had to do with his power.

“Draco?”

“It’s just not the way I grew up,” said Draco slowly, leaning back and watching Harry from beneath his eyelashes. He picked up the sandwich, which Madam Rosmerta had bustled over to them a few seconds before, and took a calm bite. “You take revenge on your enemies because otherwise they could hurt you.”

“Why isn’t being arrested and probably put in Azkaban enough? There were so many witnesses that Scrimgeour is never going to get away with claiming self-defense.”

“He has powerful enough relatives that he might get out of it anyway,” Draco muttered, and shrugged when Harry gave him a horrified glance. “Fine, I don’t think that’s likely, either, not with that case. But it probably won’t be a long Azkaban sentence.”

“It’s Azkaban, though. You saw what it did to Sirius. That’s awful enough to wish on someone, whether it’s six months or six years.”

“But they might be able to get out of it and come hurt you again if their sentence isn’t very long. Or if they aren’t dead.”

“You said it was the way you grew up? So your father is the one who taught you this kind of thing?”

“Yes,” Draco said cautiously. From the way Harry was squinting, he had found something else to disapprove of Father for.

“How often has it happened? That he had an enemy get out of Azkaban early and come and attack him, I mean?”

Draco ate some more of his chips, frowning, despite how satisfying the crisp crunch in his mouth was. “I can’t remember. He talked to Mother once about an enemy of his who went to prison and didn’t stay there. But I don’t know if he actually came and attacked Father. He changed the subject when I came into the room. I don’t know the end of the story.”

“It probably doesn’t happen often.”

“Well, say it doesn’t.” Draco crunched his way through more of his chips andw waved his hand. “Why would you want to take the risk? Doesn’t it make sense to do something permanent to your enemies so that they don’t try to hurt you?”

Harry sank back in his seat with his eyes closed and brows furrowed. Draco tried to interrupt, but Harry waved a hand at him and said, “I’m talking to Dash right now. Be quiet, please.”

Draco went silent, more because he knew it was useless trying to interrupt one of Harry and Dash’s conversations than because he agreed. Why couldn’t Harry see? It wasn’t that Draco wanted all of his own enemies put away forever. He was doing it for Harry. That was acceptable to Harry when it was Dash or Severus. Why was Draco so different?

On the other hand, he did sound pretty upset about Azkaban at all. Maybe it wouldn’t be acceptable to him at all if it was Dash or Severus suggesting it.

Draco went on eating, his eyes on Harry, and Harry finally lifted his head and said, “I have to do something.”

“Right now?” Draco asked, and he didn’t care if he was whining. “Right when we’re in the middle of a meal together? And private? We haven’t been private in so long.”

Harry actually stared around the Three Broomsticks in a way that made Draco think he was going to say the pub wasn’t private. But then his expression softened, and he reached across the table to put his hand on Draco’s.

“You’re right,” he said quietly. “We haven’t spent enough time together lately, and I thought—well, sometimes when I have a conversation with Dash it’s so intense that it feels like I’m somewhere else for a while. But there’s no reason that we can’t stay here and eat together.” He looked up and waved at Madam Rosmerta. “Can you bring me a sandwich and chips like Draco has, please?”

“Of course, dear,” said Madam Rosmerta, with a little satisfied nod. Draco knew it was because they were spending more time in her pub, and if other people came in, they might also decide to spend time there just because Draco and Harry were.

But Draco had far more to be satisfied about, and he had things he could tease Harry about, too. He leaned nearer and fluttered his eyelashes a little, which made Harry stare at him. “Where do you see us in ten years?” Draco asked in his softest voice.

“Er—not here?”

Draco began to laugh as Madam Rosmerta came back with Harry’s plate of chips. “There isn’t a right answer, Harry,” he said, when he could control his laughter. Harry made it harder than he would ever know by staring suspiciously at Draco the whole time. “I just wanted to see how you would react.”

Harry ate while keeping his glance on Draco. Then again, Draco couldn’t help but be flattered by that. He looked back with his feelings in his eyes, and Harry finally cleared his throat and glanced away.

“I hope—I hope that we’ll live in a safe place,” Harry muttered. “With Severus and Sirius and Remus visiting. I hope Sirius will be better by then. And your mother can come visit, too.”

“Not Father?”

“If he’s proven himself smarter by then.”

Draco snorted, unable to contain his laughter, and only shook his head when Harry looked at him. “I know he’s made mistakes, and they’re clumsy ones. They’re the kind of mistakes he used to tell me he never made, in fact. So I won’t beg you to change your mind before he proves himself.”

“Okay,” Harry whispered. “So I think it’ll be a large house, because it has to have doorways that Dash can slither through without trouble, and we’ll have a house-elf or two. I don’t really like doing chores anymore, not after—”

He didn’t have to say it. Draco caught hold of his hand so he didn’t have to say it, and nodded. “I know what you mean.”

“I want it to be in the country,” Harry muttered, staring at Draco’s hand as if he didn’t know what to do with it for a second. Then his other hand came up and closed down on top of Draco’s wrist almost hard enough to hurt. “Maybe here in Scotland. I want to wake up in the morning and hear birds and wind and nothing else. And I want—in my visions, the scar on my forehead is always faded.”

“Why wouldn’t it be?” Draco breathed, bowing his head so the kiss he placed on Harry’s knuckles wouldn’t be visible to everyone in the pub. “It’s your idea about where we’ll be in ten years, not the rest of the wizarding world’s.”

Harry nodded slowly. “And I can picture you beside me, still asleep. I lie there and look at you. I think you’d look a lot like the way you do now, but taller, of course. Maybe a little less pointy.” Draco made an outraged sound, but Harry kept right on, and Draco didn’t really want him to stop talking anyway. “And pale. You’d look as though you were happy with life.”

“As long as I’m with you, I’m sure that’ll be true.”

Harry leaned back as Madam Rosmerta came to put his sandwich in front of him, but didn’t move his hand or his gaze. Draco thought Madam Rosmerta just chuckled indulgently. She certainly left them alone without saying anything, which was the greatest kindness Draco could think of right now. He didn’t want to be forced to pay attention to anyone except Harry at the moment.

“Sometimes I think this won’t last.”

Draco snorted. “Why shouldn’t it? Tell me that,” he added, when Harry hesitated. “Not what Dash thinks, or what you think Severus would think but what you do.”

*

He has you now. Are you going to admit that you haven’t thought about it enough to give him an answer?

But as it turned out, Dash was wrong. Harry leaned a little forwards and said, “Because this is so fast. So bright. It feels like—well, Severus has been having me read these novels because he says I need some fiction in my life, and it feels like it’s going to burn out because it’s burning so fast.”

Harry could feel his face burning. He had once been unable to imagine saying something like that to anyone. Some of the things he had thought about the Dursleys were dark and despairing and sort of the same way. He could think them, but they would sound so stupid when said aloud.

Draco, though, only watched him with brilliant stars in his eyes, while Dash nuzzled his foot. I am proud of you for saying what you think.

“Then we’ll make every effort to keep it alive,” Draco said quietly. “You can, you know. Keep fires alive, I mean. If you tend them well enough and feed them the right kind of kindling. It’s a matter of not letting it die.”

“I know where I want to be in ten years,” Harry said, flinching a little inwardly as he spoke. Sometimes it still seemed as if he would open his eyes in the middle of the day and find himself back in the cupboard under the stairs, that nothing as wonderful as this could possibly last. But he went on with it. “That doesn’t mean I think—I mean, you don’t have to be there with me if you don’t want to.”

“And you hope, and you know that isn’t the same thing as knowing it’ll come true,” said Draco, his head cocked and his eyes intense.

Harry nodded. “Exactly.”

“We can both feed the fire, you know.”

“By days like this?” Harry was sure that somewhere, in another universe, there existed a much smoother and stronger version of himself, who would know all the right answers and be able to reassure Draco that he really did want to be with him, instead of stumbling through it the way Harry did.

But Draco only smiled slowly, as if he didn’t mind that he was saddled with this awkward version of Harry. “Yes, if you want. We could also spend time together on your birthday, and on the Quidditch Pitch, and at the Manor, and in Hogsmeade, and in Diagon Alley, and in Hogwarts, and playing Exploding Snap, and chess—I’ve never showed you how good I am at chess—”

“Not better than Ron,” Harry said automatically, and then flushed a little as Draco laughed. “I meant—”

“I know what you meant.” Draco lightly closed his fingers over Harry’s and pinched them shut like he was a candle Draco was trying to snuff. “It’s all right, Harry. It’s fine,” he added, as Harry tried to open his mouth again. “We’ll get better at this together, all right?”

“You already seem to be better at it than I am.”

“I don’t have all the burdens that you do on your shoulders, either.”

Draco went back to eating his food, and Harry did the same thing after another moment. Honestly, the sandwich was delicious, and the chips crispy, and he found himself relaxing more and more as he ate. And because there were fewer Hogwarts students in the village than during the school year, and Dash was mostly out of sight beneath the table, there were fewer people staring at him, either.

They were on the road heading back from Hogsmeade to the castle when Draco reached out and took his hand. Harry glanced at him and found the way he was smiling, his eyes half-closed and his head shaking a little, gave him ideas.

He stopped in the middle of the path, making Draco turn and look at him curiously. Before Draco could say anything—which Harry was afraid would make the whole thing awkward again—Harry reached out, pressed a hand behind Draco’s neck, and kissed him.

Draco gave the softest gasp, but leaned hard against Harry almost at once, and snaked his arms around Harry’s shoulders. Harry kept kissing him, and then his other hand was traveling down.

He hadn’t told it to do that. He had an idea, but he would have sworn that he didn’t know where his hand was going until it landed on Draco’s bum and gave it a squeeze. Draco jumped into the kiss, and their teeth banged together, and their tongues tangled around each other as their mouths opened briefly.

Harry laughed.

Draco pulled back looking all red-faced and furious for a second, and then he shook his head and grinned. “If that’s your way of becoming more intimate, all I can say is it took you long enough,” he said, eyes gleaming with challenge.

“If you don’t like it, then you’re free to teach me better.” Harry tilted his head haughtily in response, and felt a distant echo of surprise from down in his chest. What am I doing? He might find someone else, he might not take it like a joke—

But from the hungry noise Draco made and the way he suddenly pulled Harry back against his chest, he wasn’t taking it as a joke or anything but a challenge.

Somewhere in the back of his mind, Harry felt Dash bobbing his head in approval.

And then he lost everything but the feel of Draco’s tongue sliding against his, Draco’s hand in his hair, the warmth of their lips connecting, in the pouring warmth of the summer sunlight from above.

Chapter 101: Reinvigorated

Chapter Text

Severus didn’t understand what had happened—what could have happened—between Harry and Draco on the day they’d spent together, but he found himself grateful for it.

Harry had stridden back into Severus’s rooms with his eyes shining brighter than the scales of the basilisk that followed him. “I wondered what was going on with Scrimgeour,” he said, when Severus stood up and frankly stared at him. “Have they decided to try him yet? Do I need to testify in the trial?”

“There’s no reason for that,” said Severus slowly. “They have plenty of witnesses, most of whom would be glad to say that Scrimgeour attacked you for no reason. You should keep up with the progress of the trial, but—”

“That’s what I’m trying to do.”

“Then, as far as I’m aware, the Wizengamot hasn’t decided to try him yet.”

Harry nodded as if he’d actually expected that, and maybe he’d had some discussion with Dash or Draco that led him to. “All right. Do you think it would be a good idea to start telling more people that Dash has Slytherin’s soul, now?” He flopped back in a chair and looked at Severus as if this was something they did all the time.

“What has changed, that you want to spread that news?”

“Some good friends gave me advice. If I’m going to have a future, I have to do something about the present. Something about Voldemort—” Severus wondered if he was the only one who noticed the way Dash coiled back on himself when Harry said the name. “And something about the people who think I’m a horrible person because Dumbledore kidnapped me and tried to sever my bond with Dash. Would knowing Dash was Slytherin once make them look at me differently?”

“It would for some of them,” Severus said, forcing his brain to work and leave alone the spectacle of a politically-engaged Harry Potter for now. “Others will never be convinced no matter what you say.”

“But what about those some?”

“They are people who know that Dumbledore would not have wanted a basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin bonded to the Boy-Who-Lived. They would find both the reason he kidnapped you and the way you defended yourself to be more plausible.”

“Okay. We’ll do that, then.”

“Spread it to the public?’ Severus shuddered at the thought of the chaos that would cause.

“No. Just more of those pure-bloods that Lucius probably wanted to tell.” Harry paused and tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “Do you think he’s kept his promise this time only to tell the people I approved?”

“I haven’t received any more unexpected owls. So I would say yes.”

Harry nodded. “Then he can tell these people. You should make a list of names, and I’ll look at it, and have Draco look at it, too. He can tell me who some of these people are.”

“I should warn you,” said Severus, “that at least some of the families who would be natural candidates for this are those who were either Death Eaters themselves or have sympathies.”

Harry looked at his left arm and smiled a little. “I can’t trust Lucius that much, but it’s not because he had the Dark Mark,” he said. “And I trust you a lot.”

Severus took a moment to soak in how that made him feel before he said briskly, “But you will not be able to trust all these pure-bloods that much.”

“I know,” Harry said, with a small shrug. “But I need to take a chance at some point, and I can still trust what you and Draco tell me. Maybe even Lucius, at some point. Will you help me write the letters?”

There was only one thing he could say, and Severus was even thankful for it. There were him, and Dash, and Harry’s friends, to prevent Harry from leaping over a line that it would hurt him to cross. “Of course.”

*

“You are not concentrating!”

Harry sighed and let the shield of feathers he’d managed to raise collapse to the floor. “Sorry, Fleur,” he said. They were back in the classroom they’d been using for this, and Fleur stood in front of him, halfway between him and the bookcase that was charmed to throw books at him, scowling. “I have a headache.”

Fleur gave a faint frown. “You will need to concentrate in battle situations through a headache,” she said, but her voice was milder. She leaned forwards and rested a cool hand on his scar. “How long has it been happening?”

“All morning,” Harry admitted. He shot a sideways glance at Dash, sulking under one of the desks. Dash had tried to help him by taking him into the deep bond, and then taking him to Severus to get a potion. When neither had helped, he had gone off to brood, or maybe try to come up with another plan.

“I don’t know if the feather magic is making it worse,” Harry had to add, because of the way Fleur was looking at him. He didn’t want her thinking she was responsible for it when he really doubted she was. “But I wanted you to know that I still want to learn.”

“Do you?” Fleur studied him, then nodded. “All right. Try to conjure another shield of feathers for me.”

Harry raised his wand—

And the pain ripped through his forehead, overwhelming him, making him scream before he thought about the way other people would react. He slumped to the floor, his hands covering his forehead and turning slick with blood. He heard Fleur yell in shock, and then he felt the heavy scales slithering over him as Dash tried to tug him back into his own body.

It didn’t matter. Harry was somewhere else, the way he had been the night that Voldemort resurrected himself, and that was a place of darkness and heavy cold and mad laughter.

Look on what you have wrought, Harry Potter.

It took a second for Harry to recognize what he was seeing. It seemed to be mostly made of shadows. But then he realized it was Ottery St. Catchpole, and Voldemort was striding towards a house that he knew was the Burrow.

Some small defensive spells went off at his feet, and Voldemort kept walking through them even though his robes caught fire and burned fiercely. He raised his wand, and calmly spoke a curse Harry didn’t know, but which made the walls of the Burrow crackle with white light. Screams came from inside.

And they will not even be able to harm me. Because I have a Horcrux, do I not? And I am one.

The vision abruptly tore, and light leaked into the darkness. Harry gasped and surged, and found himself rising out of the vision into the deep bond. He knew the light of those stars. He turned and flung his arms around Dash’s neck, trembling.

He’s going to hurt the Weasleys, he’s gone to hurt them—

I am sending shadow snakes to defend them.

Harry opened his eyes in time to see all the shadows in the room coming to life, and Fleur backing away from the torches into the middle of the assembled desks, her eyes very wide. The snakes tangled together into a great, hissing ball, and then they began to move, slithering out the door in a cluster. Harry noticed that Dash was still wound about him, his tail raised like a rattlesnake’s.

Harry pushed at him. I want you to go to the Burrow, too. You have to go! You’re the only one who might be strong enough to stand up to Voldemort!

Dash lowered his chin. I am staying right here.

You can’t, you have to go—

Harry. I am here to protect you, my bondmate. I value the Weasleys because they are your friends, and I am sending the shadow snakes to defend them, but I’m not doing everything I would if you were in danger, because they aren’t you.

The last words were almost snapped into his head. Harry shivered, and then snapped back, Get off.

Dash wound himself slowly off, his head raised as if he thought Harry would change into a rabbit or something similarly delicious. Harry ignored the indignant protest that that hadn’t been what he was thinking, and turned to Fleur with a shallow bow.

“Sorry. I can’t stay for the rest of the lesson. I have to go.”

“Go where?” Fleur asked, her eyes bright with concern and one hand reaching out as if she wanted to stop him.

Go where?

You, at least, shouldn’t play dumb, Harry snapped at Dash, and said to Fleur, “Some of my friends are in danger,” and then he turned and ran out of the room. Fleur let out a loud cry as Dash slithered past her, but luckily, she didn’t try to get in the way and he didn’t hurt her.

Harry. Come back here.

The tone sounded like the one Aunt Petunia used to use to command him to weed the garden, although she hadn’t usually called him by his name. Harry felt Dash reel away from the comparison, and smiled a little, bitterly. Good. The closer he could get to the Burrow, the better. Then Dash would have to defend the Weasleys.

How are you going to get there? You don’t know how to Apparate. And I am faster than you are.

Harry had to stop as the corridor ahead of him suddenly filled with surging basilisk. Dash hissed at him, turning his head to the side so that Harry would almost have to run into his mouth to keep going. He stood there, panting, feeling as though desperation was carrying him further and further on.

“I have to go! I have to save them! You can’t stop me!”

Why not? I am stronger than you. I do not obey your commands. In this bond we are equals, Harry.

“Then you can’t hold me back either!”

“What is the matter, Harry?”

Severus had come up behind them, and Harry hadn’t even heard him. He whipped around, his hands clenched into fists, and spat, “Voldemort is attacking the Weasleys! He sent me a vision! And Dash sent shadow snakes to help, but he won’t let me go help, and he won’t go himself, and—”

“Of course not.”

Shocked out of his rage, Harry stared at Severus. “What?”

“Of course he would not leave you, and he would not let you go unprotected into battle.” Severus knelt down in front of him, something Harry always hated because it made him remember how tall he wasn’t. “Harry. Calm down. Think. What are the odds that you will be able to make any difference in the battle that we must fight against the Dark Lord?”

“I can’t leave them alone to die! He’s only targeting them because they’re my friends!” Harry tried to dart around Dash, but Dash twisted himself easily into the empty space. “And the longer we stand here and argue, the more he can hurt them!”

“You are absolutely right, and that is the reason I will go, and alert Minerva and some of the others who used to be part of the Order of the Phoenix,” said Severus calmly, standing. “But you are not a battle-trained wizard, Harry, and he can incapacitate you at any point he pleases with the pain in your scar. Dash, guard him, if you would. I go to rouse the others.” And he strode away, his robes flapping behind him.

Ron is going to be there! Ron is going to be part of the battle! Harry tried to lunge past Dash again, and Dash twisted him up in one enormous coil before Harry could make it. Harry tried to lift his arms; they were bound to his sides. He clenched his hands into fists and strained. He might as well have been trying to move a stone wall.

He sagged at last, but he whispered, You have to let me go.

Ron and the other Weasleys are only going to be part of the battle because they have no choice. I imagine they would trade with you if they could. Dash slithered firmly past any tempting corridors and ended up in the dungeons. I am going to summon Draco. I think he might be able to help you calm down.

You’re talking about me like I’m a little child, said Harry. His mouth was still full of bitterness and fear that he thought he could probably spit out like Dash’s poison.

You are acting like one. How do you know Voldemort is even attacking the Weasleys? What if the vision was a trap, intended to make you come running exactly as you were trying to do?

Harry paused, then shivered. He had to admit he hadn’t thought of that, but it had been hard, with the overwhelming fear crashing into his mind. He leaned his head back and whispered, “But it felt so real.”

Of course it did. It was meant to. Dash nuzzled Harry’s chin with his nose. Now. I am not going to leave you. In the end, you are the one I care about. But I can try to help you reach along the bond that you have with the Horcrux and see if you can locate him that way, and see through his eyes. Do you want to try?

Harry swallowed. If that vision was a trap, wouldn’t he just make me see what he wants me to see?

That is what I want to see. If he’s maintaining a false memory, I might be able to sense it.

“All right,” Harry whispered. “All right.” At least it made him feel like he was doing something, instead of sitting helplessly behind safe walls while the family that had taken him in fought and maybe died for him.

Everyone else would assume they were better off behind safe walls than dashing into battle and adding another casualty. Busy little mammal, Dash said, and nuzzled Harry’s chin again. Harry felt the love holding him as firmly as the coils. Concentrate on me. On my eyes. I won’t open them, of course, but I think it would be easier to reach beyond even the deep bond if you do.

Harry swallowed, and looked at the dim yellow glow under Dash’s lids, and reached out as far as he could.

*

Minerva staggered a little as they landed. Severus was ahead of her, and behind her was Filius, who wasn’t normally part of the Order of the Phoenix but who had been with her when Severus came barreling into her office and immediately insisted on coming along. Minerva had decided they were enough for the time being, and it was better to go now. If this was a real attack, then they would have to retreat anyway, no matter how many people they brought.

If it was only a Death Eater raid, or a trap, then three of them might be able to handle it.

Minerva looked around cautiously. It was a grey, misty day outside Ottery St. Catchpole, and utterly silent. Of course, that might only mean that You-Know-Who was inside the Weasleys’ house holding them hostage. Her spine prickled with anxiety as she turned to face the outside of their wards. She had not missed this part of the war.

“Filius?” she asked quietly, seeing the way he was already casting charms that caused a shimmer of purple and green to open along the edges of the village.

“Nothing yet.” He kept his voice low, not glancing at her. Minerva nodded in approval. Even though he hadn’t fought in a lot of battles in the last war, he had the right instincts. There were some duelists who never made the transition.

“Severus?” Minerva hated to ask it of him, but it was at least possible that he would recognize strains of Dark magic, or some strategy from his former comrades, that the rest of them wouldn’t.

“Nothing yet.”

Nothing for it, then. Minerva tightened her shoulders and began striding towards the Burrow. Behind her, Severus and Filius spread out in the points of a triangle. A glance showed her that Severus had Disillusioned himself. A good tactic, she admitted. Unless someone had heard them Apparate in and actually been able to count three distinct cracks—an ability she doubted—they could catch their enemies by surprise.

They moved carefully through the greyness, and now and then another spell sparkled ahead of them, courtesy of Filius, dissipating the mist or flaring to show that there were no traps or curses placed on the ground. Minerva paused when they came to a particularly stony area and murmured a few brief incantations. The stones promptly floated off the ground, Transfigured into smooth missiles, and darted ahead. They would wait for her command, in case there were innocent Muggles or wizards out, but then they would aim straight for skulls.

“Damn.”

The voice was Severus’s. Minerva halted in place immediately, even though it made her balance awkwardly on her heels, and tilted her head towards him. “What is it?” she asked, barely moving her lips.

“A what is exactly what it is.”

Minerva only had time to open her mouth again before an incredibly fast-moving shape came out of the mist, too low to the ground to be anything human. Minerva called the command word for the stones, and they came whirling back out of the mist, diving for the snake. One smashed into its tail, another into its neck.

But the snake, although it hissed in pain, did not slow down. It aimed straight for Minerva’s face, and she ducked out of the way only just in time. The snake slewed back around, mouth open, fangs dripping. Minerva conjured a shield—

Only to see the Dark Lord’s snake go straight through it and coil to lunge. Minerva called on the stones, coolly aware that they probably wouldn’t get there in time.

But something else did.

The ground at the snake’s belly was abruptly alive with crawling shadows. Little serpents popped out of the grass and dirt and grabbed hold of the snake. The more she shook her head and tried to throw them off, the more came, little threads made of purest shadow, and some of them climbed into her mouth when she opened it to hiss. The larger serpent reeled across the grass, tail lashing for a hold that wasn’t coming.

“Why would You-Know-Who stop his own snake like that?” Filius squeaked, prudently stepping back as the fight rolled near him.

“That wasn’t the Dark Lord.” Severus appeared from beneath his Disillusionment, his eyes gleaming. “Those are courtesy of Dash.”

“Mr. Potter’s basilisk?”

Minerva had to smile at the tone in Filius’s voice. Despite years of Dash coming to class with Harry and defending him, sometimes right in front of everybody, it appeared that Filius hadn’t realized the extent of a basilisk’s powers. “We should get on. Even if this was the only attacker, and I doubt she was—”

“You assume correctly.”

You-Know-Who stepped out of the mist. Minerva felt as though her bladder were trying to crawl back up inside her belly to hide. She swallowed. The monster didn’t look exactly the same as the glimpses she’d had of him during the first war; he was more human then, with his skin less pale and more of a face. And his eyes didn’t have the disconcerting habit of flashing back and forth between red and deep green.

Still, here he is. I have to make the best of it.

You-Know-Who aimed his wand. Minerva stood to meet him, and for a second, it seemed as if he might duel both her and Filius at once—

Until Severus hurled a potion from the side, a glass vial that broke and sprayed You-Know-Who with a thick liquid as green as his snake’s scales. You-Know-Who roared in response, and held out his robes to stare down at them. Then he lifted his head, and this time, the attention of those devastating eyes was fixed solely on Severus.

“I shall deal with the little traitor myself,” he whispered, and took a single step forwards.

Vines surged out of the ground, overgrowing You-Know-Who’s dark robes and snaring his arms as he tried to struggle out of them. His snarling was almost constant now, and he didn’t sound either human or serpentine. Minerva swallowed and went to the attack, calling her stones back around. They still didn’t stand much chance of taking him, she thought, but they had to try.

And there were more shadow snakes sliding out of the ground and the mist, too. At least they had some of Dash’s unique magic with them.

*

Severus grinned as he watched the Dark Lord struggle with his vines. He probably thought that was all the potion did, since it was a common variation of one that was used regularly to capture dangerous magical beasts, and the only difference between that potion and Severus’s was—to the eye—a deeper green color to these vines.

But the vines had touched the Dark Lord’s skin, not only his robes.

He should feel the difference soon enough, Severus thought, surprised at how casual, how amused, he was. Then again, Dash’s power was with them, removing Nagini from the battle, a deadly factor by herself. And…

He was not crumpled away from the burning pain the Dark Lord would, he knew, have been trying to channel through the Mark. Severus did not know if he would emerge alive from this battle, but everything around him was crystal-sharp, not smeared by despair. They at least had a chance.

The Dark Lord finally managed a hissed curse that blasted Severus’s vines, withering them on the ground. Then he turned to face Severus, and there was fear, impossible not to acknowledge, coiling around Severus’s skin.

“Now,” the Dark Lord whispered, batting away Minerva’s Transfigured stones as they stormed past his head without looking away from Severus. “I shall show you. Crucio!”

The curse left his wand, a thin stream of red light instead of the jet it should have been. It was simple for Severus to dodge. He laughed, a little—because he had to—at the utterly baffled look on the Dark Lord’s face.

The vines conjured by Severus’s potion needed access to skin, which they’d found. Then they began to feed on the target’s magical core. It wasn’t enough to take all the magic from someone as powerful as the Dark Lord, but it had weakened him considerably, and in the meantime, he did not know how much.

The Dark Lord lifted his head, and his eyes had gone a deep, startlingly familiar green. “Then I shall use his magic,” he whispered, and whipped his wand forwards. “Crucio!”

Severus leaped aside from the spell, which was back to full strength. His skin tingled, and he breathed in shallow gasps. Without being able to confirm it, he knew, from far away, that Harry would be writhing and screaming in torment as his magical core was pulled on.

A consequence of them being each other’s Horcruxes that we did not foresee.

But none of that made any difference to the coming battle, and Severus laid his hand on another potions vial in his robe pocket and whirled forwards into it as the shadow snakes climbed up the Dark Lord’s robes, as Minerva raised the dirt into fountains, as Filius used charms Severus had no idea of to create a shimmering cage of energy around them, probably to keep anyone else from intruding.

Let us see how much you know, Severus thought, and shouted, “Sectumsempra!”

Chapter 102: Spinning Battle

Chapter Text

Harry actually didn’t feel the pull on his magic at first. He was too busy concentrating on the battle, and his breathless hatred of Voldemort that sometimes he thought was actually Dash’s breathless hatred, and the need to watch his professors survive.

Severus has to survive.

But then Dash hissed, and Harry became aware of it in the same moment, the tugging on a piece of himself that was shallower than the soul but deeper than the deep bond. He reared back, not caring if he was doing it physically or not. At the moment, the inside of his head was all for him.

What is Voldemort doing?

Using your magic against Severus after that potion weakened Voldemort’s hold on his own magic.

Dash was trembling alongside, inside, Harry’s head, so alive with rage that Harry knew he would have liked to tear away and go to the battlefield after all, to destroy Voldemort rather than defend anyone. Harry reached out and put a firm hand on the back of Dash’s neck, in the real world or the one of memory and imagination, and said, Help me figure out how to stop it.

There is a way I knew as Slytherin. I will have to rely on your magic to cast it. I don’t have the same kind of magic anymore.

I don’t care. Do it.

Dash seemed to move through the deep bond for a second, because Harry’s eyes filled with deep blue sky and silver stars, overlaid on the vision of the continuing battle. Then Harry had the odd picture of Dash halting in front of a pair of ivory gates, and bowing his head to them.

The gates to your magical core, Dash said, when Harry sent a wave of silent questioning at him. You have to give me permission to access it. There is no way I could force it on my own.

I would never think you could, Harry said, touched even as he flung the gates open and invited Dash inside. He had been feeling, half an hour ago, that Dash was sometimes too much and he stood in his way when Harry wanted to do something. But now that fear was gone. Dash had responded with such a wave of coiling, striking love that Harry couldn’t even worry about what he would do with his magical core.

Sort of hard to stand in your way when I don’t have legs, Dash said, and flowed into his magical core, his power reaching out and threading through Harry’s in a way that felt like tickling. Harry laughed.

The point stands.

Oh, well, if we’re talking about the point.

Suddenly, the tugging feeling stopped. Harry turned to stare back at the battle, and immediately saw that Severus was still alive, although bleeding from a cut high on his left shoulder. And Voldemort, although he looked as evil as ever and he was still fighting, had the traces of a stunned expression on his face.

He really should learn not to mess with my bondmate, said Dash, in a dreamy voice. Harry supposed it was hard to handle a basilisk’s magic and his wizard’s magic at once. I will have to do something about that.

But they couldn’t do anything about it right now, other than cut off Voldemort’s access to Harry’s magic, so they just had to watch, Harry thought.

Oh? Is that right?

Harry blinked, and then Dash flowed in another new way, and suddenly Harry was touching a filthy, disgusting, slimy trail that made him flinch violently back, almost losing sight of the battle altogether.

The connection goes both ways, Dash said, in the happiest and most bloodthirsty voice Harry had ever heard from him, and yanked.

*

Sectumsempra!” Severus yelled again, as he ducked out of the way of a curse that would have made him succumb to an accelerated bubonic plague. The Dark Lord had barely dodged Severus’s created curse once before. He would find out now whether that was only the product of Harry’s magic or not.

The Dark Lord turned to the side with fluid, inhuman grace. His eyes had stopped glowing green, and he looked a bit slower than before. Severus was not sure how much difference it would make to the battle, but he was grateful that at least the Dark Lord didn’t seem to be hurting Harry anymore.

As the curse missed, again, Severus called up all his power and carefully aimed his wand. He was going to do this. He was. He hadn’t used this spell in battle in a long time because it was such a drain on his power, and besides, he hadn’t had a battle to use it in. But the encouragement to himself surged in his veins, and his wand moved in the right pattern.

Capitem frango!”

The Skull-Shattering Curse roared from his wand and straight towards the Dark Lord. He laughed, with a slight hitch in his voice, and started to turn sideways away from it.

Then he staggered. His voice was so loud that it sounded as if he was strangling. He reached out a hand and clawed at the air.

Severus stared. He had a moment to think this was some trick, that the Dark Lord should not have been able to fool him this way, and to wonder what the point of the trick was—

Then the Skull-Shattering Curse hit him. Severus saw a flash of grey and white from the back of the Dark Lord’s bald head, and heard Minerva and Filius cry out as if they had been hit themselves. He stepped back towards them without glancing away from the Dark Lord. Not even for suspicions that he had somehow hurt his allies could he look away now.

The Dark Lord tumbled slowly, gracelessly, to the ground. He lay there for a moment with a gleam of red coming from the hole Severus could see in his skull. Then he pulled himself up like a scuttling spider and turned his head enough to spit out what looked like a broken tooth, and some words.

You will rue this day, Severus.

The next instant, he vanished, and Nagini along with him. The shadow serpents that had been holding her at bay dropped to the ground and writhed about disconsolately, hissing.

“What just happened?” Minerva’s voice was soft and hoarse as she disenchanted her stones. They flopped to the earth, deadly weapons defanged in a moment. “How could you make him flee, Severus?” There was awe in her voice, which made Severus turn away from her again for a different reason.

“I didn’t kill him.”

“No, but you hurt him,” said Filius, and shook his head as though he was the one who had been hit with the curse on the back of the skull. “I just don’t know why. He was defending himself with his magic up until then, wasn’t he?”

“He was drawing on Harry’s magic, because of the—connection between them.” Not even to trusted colleagues did Severus actually want to divulge the existence of the Horcruxes. “I think Harry must have shut down the connection. That explains why his spells weren’t as strong after a few moments. And in the meantime, Harry might have managed to pull back on the Dark Lord’s magic.”

Filius frankly gaped, but Minerva was quicker. “You think he had Dash’s help?”

Severus nodded. “I’m certain. He might have come up with the concept on his own, but he wouldn’t have known how to do it.” He winced a little and hoped he didn’t sound as if he was disparaging his ward’s intelligence. It was only the truth.

“Well. Well, yes. I suppose.” Minerva shook her head as if she couldn’t believe it, and then shot a sharp look towards the village. “Do you suppose that he killed Molly and Arthur and the children, since none of them came out to help us?”

“We can only go and find out,” Severus replied, staring to walk. His private opinion was that it wasn’t true, since the Dark Lord would have bragged about that in order to demoralize them further, but he didn’t want to lay out for Minerva and Filius why he was so certain of that.

As it turned out, the Weasleys had sensibly remained inside their house when they saw the mist come up with shocking unnaturalness, and not come out even when they heard the battle. Only Molly, the twins, and the two younger ones were home, and none of them would be at their best in a battle.

Minerva was the one who told the story of it being the Dark Lord, and how they had known where to come, and she was the best one to deal with the Weasley boy’s loud inquiries about whether Harry was all right. In the meantime, Severus turned inwards and reached as hard as he could for the memory of the first time Harry had really relaxed around him.

The doe Patronus that leaped up in front of him took the message, “Tell Harry that we are safe, that the Dark Lord was here but left without killing anyone or injuring the Weasleys,” with a slight bob of her head, and disappeared through the wall. Severus leaned back with a long sigh, and began healing the cut on his shoulder that the Dark Lord had inflicted on him.

Minerva was trying to give him a sympathetic look, maybe because his Patronus had reminded her about his love for Lily. Severus ignored her almost effortlessly. He was already focusing on the future.

We will have to do something more proactive about the Dark Lord than we have so far.

*

“Harry? Are you all right?”

It seemed to Draco that he had asked that question at least seven times, far more than he should have to, but it was only now that Harry stirred and opened his eyes. He was lapped so far in Dash’s coils that only his head dangled out, and Draco couldn’t see if he was injured or not. He didn’t think so, though. Dash would probably already have been on his way to the hospital wing if anything had happened to Harry.

“Yes, thanks,” Harry whispered, and then smiled tiredly up at him. “Did Dash call you?”

Draco shook his head. “Remember, we were going to have dinner in Professor Snape’s quarters? I started on my way, and I found you here.” He nodded towards the dungeon stairs that went down behind them.

He wanted to ask all sorts of questions, to demand to know the answers, the way he would have been entitled if he was important to the war. Or one of Harry’s close friends. But he didn’t think he could. Both Dash and Harry were drooping. If he tried to ask them now, he would drive them away.

Then he saw the way Dash had turned his head towards him, and blinked. And stared. Dash was fluttering one eyelid in a way that made Draco wonder for a moment how he could have offended him.

He finally recognized the nearest thing Dash had to a wink, and grinned with relief before he thought about it.

“What?”

“I just wanted to ask you some questions,” Draco said, and ran a hand down Harry’s forehead. “If that’s all right?” Now that I know that Dash isn’t going to bite me for disturbing his bondmate.

“Um. Of course.”

Harry sounded puzzled as to why it would even be an issue, but then again, Harry didn’t always know his own best interests. Draco ignored the temptation to talk about that instead, and simply honed in on what he needed. “What happened?”

“Voldemort sent me a vision he was attacking the Weasleys, but Dash wouldn’t let me go and he wouldn’t go, and Severus went, and then Voldemort pulled on my magic, and Dash helped me fight back, so that we pulled on his magic, and Severus sent me a message by Patronus, and now I think everything’s all right, but I’m so tired I can’t even see what’s right in front of me, so I don’t know for sure.”

Draco blinked for a few seconds. Then he said, “Um, okay.”

“That didn’t make much sense, did it? I’m—sorry.” Harry broke off the sentence to yawn in the middle.

Dash turned his head slowly in Draco’s direction. Draco knew it wasn’t really a suggestion. Dash wanted him to leave, and preferably as soon as possible. He wanted to let Harry sleep.

But Draco stood his ground, because he really did need a few questions answered if only for his own peace of mind.

“How could Voldemort send you the vision? Did he show you what he was really doing right at the moment?” That was rather stupid of Voldemort, Draco had to think, and was especially glad that he’d never got into a position where he had to follow the Dark Lord.

Harry raised his hand and tiredly tapped the scar.

Oh. Of course. If Voldemort could attack Harry and use the Horcrux to resurrect himself in his dreams, there was no reason he couldn’t also send Harry visions when they were both awake.

“Do you think—” Draco stopped speaking as Dash’s tail sneaked into his vision. It really looked as if Dash was poised to swat him like an annoying bug.

“I think Dash would prefer it if you went away for right now,” Harry said, and his voice was so tired that his words were slurring. “Don’ want him to get upset. He’s feeling—pretty protective right now.”

The next instant, Harry’s chin tipped down on Dash’s scales, and he began to snore. Draco shook his head and turned to the basilisk.

“I want to know all about what happened to him,” he said. “You understand that, don’t you?”

He got a soft stare from under the closed eyelids. Then Dash bobbed his head and began slithering away towards Professor Snape’s quarters. Draco sighed and followed. He knew that meant he would get an explanation, but not nearly soon enough for him.

“Draco?”

And there was Professor Snape, back already. Draco stepped quickly up beside Harry. “Do you know what happened to him, sir?” he asked, nodding at Harry.

“I know that he saw a vision of the Dark Lord attacking the Burrow,” Professor Snape said. He looked as though he had taken a few curses to the shoulder, Draco realized, glancing at a smear of blood down the front of his robes. “And then the Dark Lord pulled on Harry’s magic and somewhat resisted a potion I had counted on to diminish his defenses. I think—I think Harry fought back.” Professor Snape shook his head and reached out to touch Harry’s chin with two soft fingers. “I don’t know if we’ll ever know how.”

“Harry said something about him and Dash pulling on the Dark Lord’s magic before he went to sleep.”

Professor Snape’s head snapped up. “I thought that might be it. That would explain some things, yes,” he said. “I had not realized the Horcrux connection between them was so powerful, or could be used for that kind of thing.” Then he sighed and nearly collapsed, catching himself with an outstretched hand against the wall at the last moment. “I should have realized it.”

“I don’t think Harry would be upset about it,” Draco said cautiously.

“I am quite capable of blaming myself, whether or not Harry does.”

“Um.” Draco paused, then offered, “Sorry, sir,” all the while not sure if this was something that needed an apology or not.

“Not your fault,” said Professor Snape, and sighed out. “And in truth, there is nothing to blame myself for. I did not know he could pull on Harry’s magic. Next time, I will be prepared for that. If there is a next time, of course,” he added softly, and looked down at Harry, cradled and sleeping, as Dash crawled beside them to the door of the professor’s quarters. “He may not use that tactic now that he knows Dash can fight back against it.”

Dash only gave them an enigmatic look and tapped his tail against Professor Snape’s door. The professor opened it, and Draco stood aside so Dash could slither inside first. He thought the basilisk wouldn’t be pleased if Draco got in the way while he was trying to lay Harry down in his bed.

“Draco.”

The hand on his shoulder was a surprise, and so was the professor’s solemn voice. Draco blinked up at him, and found the professor staring at him as if he wanted to use Legilimency on Draco for some reason.

“I want you to know that you have been important to Harry—more important, in different ways—” Professor Snape hesitated, perhaps because he thought Dash might come back in and object. But Dash had disappeared into Harry’s bedroom in the professor’s quarters, and after a moment Professor Snape shook his head and went on.

“In different ways than anyone else.” This time, the professor’s voice was lower still. “He will need me and his friends to help and support him through this, but he also needs you. If you feel left out of this battle, please remember that.”

“I always remember that,” said Draco, hoping the firelight would hide the way his cheeks flushed. “And I don’t feel left out of the battle. I feel left out of Harry telling me about it.” He glanced at the bedroom door again. “But I reckon he’s not going to, any time soon.”

“He will when he wakes. Magical exhaustion should heal quickly.” The professor hesitated again, and Draco watched him. Was he just concerned about Draco feeling left out? Or concerned about Draco running and reporting something like this to Father?

He needn’t be. I’ll never do something like that again.

“Would you like to stay with him?”

“Would Dash like me sitting by his bed?”

“I am asking what you would like, not what Dash would like.”

Draco bit his lip hard against the automatic retort about how Dash would be able to do any number of things to enforce his dislike. He could recognize what Professor Snape was doing, and it was more than welcome. He nodded sharply. “I’d like to stay, sir.”

“Then you may.” Professor Snape opened the door to Harry’s room, and Draco moved quickly inside, looking around. The décor all seemed to be blue and white, and Draco wondered if that was because any other colors would have looked too much like House colors one way or the other. The bed was huge, with blankets and pillows so thick that Harry looked as if he was drowning lying in them.

Dash lay draped across the bed. Draco thought he was asleep with exhaustion, too, at first, and then saw the way Dash lifted his head and flickered out his tongue. He nodded and sat in the chair next to the bed, which was a rocking chair, for some reason.

Harry’s face was pale, but he already looked better than he had when Draco saw him earlier. Little by little, muscle by muscle, Draco felt himself relaxing. He could even lean back in the embrace of the chair and think that he would wake up in the morning and Harry would be awake, too.

But he still wanted to do something the next time Voldemort tried to reach Harry through the Horcrux link, not just sit there helplessly. That meant he had to…

What? He wouldn’t be much help trying to go into Harry’s head and interfere with his and Dash’s bond, and Dash would never permit that, anyway. Which meant what?

Then Draco felt as though a lightning bolt scar of his own had opened in his brain. Yes, he knew. What he and Harry had been doing before the school year ended and the bloody Third Task happened, with Weasley and Granger’s help.

“Professor?” he called softly.

Professor Snape immediately appeared in the doorway and looked towards Harry before he seemed to realize nothing was wrong and turned to Draco again. “Yes, Draco?”

“Would you mind getting me a book on Horcruxes from the library so that I can read it? I want to find a way to sever the link.”

Professor Snape frowned. “Remember that Harry’s soul is also torn, and the Dark Lord is also his Horcrux. I do not think we can sever the connection between them now simply by removing the one in Harry.”

“But it would be helpful. And it’s not something Harry really has the time to research right now.” Draco leaned forwards and put as much pleading as he could in his tone. “I need something to do besides watch him.”

“You have the feeling that he’s not going anywhere, then?”

Draco noticed how tense Professor Snape was, and understood. He wasn’t sure that Harry would stay in one place and one piece for right now.

“Yes, I’m sure,” Draco said, and felt another little jab of strength in his spine that made him sit up straighter when he saw the way Professor Snape was looking at him. Maybe he could do something other than research Horcruxes. He could provide reassurance to Professor Snape, as strange as it seemed that he would actually need it.

There was a moment when Draco thought the professor wouldn’t leave. Then he nodded and did, probably to get the book Draco had requested.

Draco sighed softly and faced Harry again. Dash had dropped off to sleep this time, he was sure. Harry looked smaller than ever against the pillows and Dash’s bulk, not really like he was being protected.

But Draco would make sure he was. No matter how much he had to struggle through it, he would finally help to protect Harry as much as any of them.

I’m not going to be helpless again.

Draco took one more look at Harry’s pale face, his shallowly rising and falling chest.

Or let him be helpless, either.

Chapter 103: Fate of a Horcrux

Chapter Text

“I can’t believe you’re awake.”

Harry knew that, because Draco had told him it at least nineteen times. He put down the bowl of soup that Severus was forcing him to eat—and Dash had done nothing to stop him, the traitor—and smiled at Draco. “Well, I am.”

“No one else could have come back from something like that.”

“Most other people aren’t Parselmouths or bonded to a basilisk, either.” Harry tried to be patient. Draco had also explained, at length, what he’d felt when he saw Harry hanging in Dash’s coils in the dungeons. And he had demanded answers to questions for nearly an hour now, as Harry ate the soup that was all he was allowed to have, even though he was ragingly hungry. Every time Harry thought he must know everything, Draco came up with a new one.

“I don’t want you to do that again.”

“Well, I didn’t exactly choose to have Voldemort pulling on my magic,” Harry snapped, a little irritated. Both Draco and Severus had also said that over and over since he woke up. “If he does it again, then I’ll have to defend myself.”

“But you don’t go looking for trouble on your own. You don’t go running off because of a vision and nearly end up getting killed.”

“I wasn’t killed—”

“Not because of a spell, but magical exhaustion could have killed you. You heard Professor Snape. I’ve never heard him that angry.”

Harry bristled. That was another thing. Besides the soup and the blankets—seriously, he was sweating under here and Severus still insisted he bundle up—he had to rest and he couldn’t perform any spells for five days. Apparently that was standard treatment for magical exhaustion. Harry thought that was silly. He knew he’d exhausted himself before, like when he fought the other basilisk, and no one had told him anything like this.

I know they just want me to live, but this is going too far.

“I do appreciate you being concerned,” he said, and saw the way Draco stiffened. He probably suspected what was coming. Well, let him. “But I am okay. And I want to get out of this bed and eat more than soup and make some plans for the future.”

“We’re discussing everything with you still. The Ministry hasn’t tried Scrimgeour yet. The new pure-bloods who’ve heard about you having Slytherin’s soul have sent a few letters of welcome, but nothing Professor Snape can’t deal with. I’m conducting the Horcrux research. We don’t know where Voldemort went or how badly he was injured. There’s nothing you need to do.”

“There are things I want to do.”

“Tell me why it is so important to do them right now, Harry.”

Harry looked up, startled. He hadn’t heard Severus come back into the room, and for a moment, when he saw how haggard his face looked, his heart chimed with guilt.

But then he saw the way Severus was frowning and had his arms folded across his chest, and he gritted his teeth. “I’m bored. I’m hot from all the blankets. I want to eat. I know I almost died, I get it, but this isn’t the first time, and—”

“And that should not be true.”

“Yeah, but it is true,” Harry said, a little relieved now that he thought he’d figured out what was bothering them. “I know you want to protect me, but almost dying a lot…this is what I do.” He shrugged, glad that Dash wasn’t in the room and couldn’t restrict even that movement. “So we’ll just have to get used to it.”

Severus prowled forwards. “You should not have been treated the way you were the other times you almost died.”

“I know. I don’t want Voldemort trying to kill me, either! But just lying here in bed won’t stop him, and—”

I mean that someone should have made you rest because you had magical exhaustion.

Severus wasn’t yelling the words. He was speaking them in a soft voice that made Harry wonder whether his snapping and scolding in class wasn’t the less dangerous kind of anger. Severus loomed in front of him and leaned down until his nose almost touched Harry’s. Harry swallowed.

“If it weren’t for your power and the fact that you’re young and still growing, you could have exhausted yourself enough to burn out your magic,” Severus said. Every word felt as though he was etching it on Harry’s forehead. “It was criminal that you didn’t get blander food and more rest in the hospital wing. Some of that was undoubtedly the Headmaster’s fault, but I don’t know what Poppy was thinking. At some point, I intend to ask her. In the meantime, you will rest.”

Harry blinked hard. No one had ever suggested that he could be hurt by what had happened to him other than—well, the wounds he’d got. And certainly no one had ever said that he could have consequences after Fawkes had healed the wound from the basilisk’s fang, or other things.

“I slept for a few days each time,” he finally said.

“Excuse me if I do not consider unconsciousness the same thing as sleeping.”

Harry winced a little. Yes, the words were going to be branded on his forehead, not etched.

“The Headmaster did not take proper care of you,” Severus continued, folding his arms so that he almost looked like a statue of a monk Harry had seen once on the telly. “I do not know why Poppy did not. Perhaps she thought unconsciousness was resting, too.” His voice was like Antarctica. “But from now on, you will heal from the magical exhaustion that you regularly suffer. And you will stay in bed. And you will eat the less solid food to prevent you from vomiting it up in a few hours. And you will read quietly and you can help in the Horcrux hunt that way.”

Harry slid slowly back in the bed, his eyes fixed on Severus. He’d just told Harry all the things he wouldn’t be doing, but at the same time, it sounded like he would get to do a little.

“I don’t have to have all the hot blankets all the time.”

Severus studied him, frowning, as if he thought Harry would leap out of bed and go fight a dragon again if he relaxed so much as one of his prohibitions. Then he nodded. “They are to protect against the shivering that frequently comes with magical exhaustion. If you will swear to me that you do not need them—”

“I’ll swear an Unbreakable Vow if you want. They’re driving me mental.”

“Do not even joke about swearing such a Vow,” said Severus, but his lips had relaxed and his chin had dropped in the way that let Harry know it was going to be all right. “Very well, Harry. I will give you some scones this afternoon. With tea and soup, mind. And no butter until you prove you can handle the bread.”

Harry nodded. “Was I really at risk of vomiting those other times?” he asked, wondering why no one had ever told him.

“Perhaps not,” Severus said, although Draco nodded vigorously behind him. “You were young enough that your stomach may have absorbed the food that an older person’s magical core would reject. And you were not used to regular meals.” His eyes darkened the way they always did when something reminded him of the Dursleys. “But it is more likely to happen now, since you are older and in your second summer without their tender care.”

Harry stared at Severus for a minute. He remembered Ron telling him all about his mum scolding him once for participating in one of Fred and George’s pranks. It was a small one, and no one had got hurt, but Ron’s eyebrows had been singed.

“She went on and on about what could have happened,” Ron had said, and rolled his eyes. “I reckon it’s just something parents like to do.”

Severus was doing this because he really did care about Harry, and he didn’t want him getting hurt. Harry might disagree with the way he was going about it, but at least he would get rid of some of the itchy, warm blankets and get to eat some solid food.

“All right,” he said. “Fine. As long as you take some of the blankets off my bed right now. All right?”

Severus recoiled and actually stared at him in shock, making Harry wonder if he’d done something wrong after all. But then Severus smiled and said, softly, “Thank you,” even as he flicked his wand and some of the blankets unrolled from Harry.

Huh, Harry thought, and bit his lip so he wouldn’t gape. Gaping would probably just lead to another discussion about the Dursleys, which he knew neither of them wanted right then. I didn’t know it was as simple as asking.

He would ask in the future.

“Are you sure that he should be eating a big lunch all at once, sir?” Draco hovered behind Severus and stared in concern as all the blankets got piled in a corner. “Perhaps a nap before then?”

“I’ll take one if you join me,” Harry snapped at Draco. He knew that he’d woken up late last night and Draco had been crouching over one of those heavy books about Horcruxes, squinting in the low light of the fire.

Draco smirked at him. “All right.”

“What?”

“A nap sounds like a good idea, especially if you’ll sleep, too.”

Harry blinked some more. At least he understood what was behind Severus’s behavior now, and he could admit that Draco probably wanted him to rest and recover, too. But he didn’t understand the sharp challenge in Draco’s eyes, or how he was almost leaning forwards on his toes, as if he couldn’t wait for a returning challenge.

“You—want to sleep?”

Draco shrugged. “Everyone needs to sleep. And Professor Snape did say that it’s a big enough bed that we can both use it.” His grin was poleaxing.

Harry felt his face turn so red that he was sure he would set fire to the blankets still on the bed. He cleared his throat, but that didn’t make Draco go away or even Severus move from the doorway. That Draco felt able to have this conversation in front of Severus was—remarkable. “If you’re sure that you won’t kick me…”

Draco’s face was immediately soft. “I won’t. You won’t feel me through the pillows and sheets that are still on the bed, anyway.” He swept the book he’d been carrying up in his arms and leaped onto the bed beside Harry. “Better?” he asked softly into his ear.

Harry swallowed, and felt for a moment as though his heart was going to beat its way out of his throat. “Much,” he managed to croak.

“Good,” Draco said, and nestled down into the blankets, nodding almost regally to Severus. “You can go now, sir. I’ll make sure that he gets some sleep before you bring in that exciting lunch.”

Severus nodded a little and swept out of the room, holding the door open as Dash crawled in. Then he firmly shut it, and Draco laid his head on Harry’s shoulder with a sigh.

“I really thought I was going to lose you,” he whispered.

In a way, it was only what he had been saying for hours now, since Harry properly woke up, but now Harry could understand what he meant. He reached up to stroke Draco’s hair. Draco closed his eyes tightly and held still as if he’d already gone to sleep, but Harry knew that wasn’t so. He could feel the difference in his breathing.

Why didn’t you say something yourself? Harry added to Dash, who had draped only part of his body over the bed. The rest was under it.

Dash yawned at him. They were doing a perfectly good job of making sure that you stayed put and healed. Why would I want to put myself to the trouble? Then he let his third eyelids fall over the vivid glow of his yellow eyes, and their bond calmed as he went to sleep, too.

Harry rolled his eyes, but decided he might as well join the crowd.

*

Draco woke up long before he should have, he thought, if the weariness clogging his head was any indication. Then again, he’d been up a lot lately, watching over Harry.

He turned and looked at his boyfriend. Harry was asleep face-down in the pillow, on top of Draco’s arm, which Draco didn’t want to move yet anyway. He was breathing as though someone had stuffed a carrot in his nose. What little Draco could see of his face was still pale.

Draco shook his head. Sure, Harry might be hot and he might want to eat food other than soup—Draco couldn’t blame him for that—but if he could see his own face, then he might understand how close he had come to dying.

Well, we can bring a mirror in here, Draco thought, and turned down to the end of the bed, where Dash was draped over the blankets and their legs. The basilisk raised his head and flicked out his tongue when he saw Draco looking, as if he knew Draco had something to say to him.

Draco swallowed, and then murmured, “What I’ve learned about Horcruxes isn’t positive. The soul shard corrupts the nature of the object it’s placed into. Some Dark wizards liked to do it with Light artifacts or things intended for use in healing, so then they would poison anyone who tried to handle them. I don’t even—I can’t imagine what hosting a shard of Voldemort’s soul is doing to Harry.”

Dash was silent, listening.

“I also can’t find anything about actually removing them, except for destroying the object. The book assumes that either you want to destroy Horcruxes or you want to create them and leave them the way they are. I don’t think you can even transfer the soul-shard between one object and another.” Draco touched his face and sighed. “So how in the world can we get it out of him?”

Dash turned his head to the side. At first Draco thought Professor Snape had come in, but then he realized Dash was looking back along his own shiny scales.

“You think you can do something?” Draco had largely given up envy of Harry for being a Parselmouth, but at the moment, it would have been really useful.

Dash flicked his head down in that way that meant he was sure.

“But why? I mean, you haven’t been able to do something before now, and you didn’t even know he was a Horcrux before Black said something about it, right? So even if you have all of Slytherin’s knowledge, that doesn’t mean he knew how to get a Horcrux out of a living being.”

“I think he means he is working on it, Draco.”

Draco started and turned around. He hadn’t heard Professor Snape come in at all, even though he would have said he was alert to the possibility. Dash only bobbed his head in an exaggerated fashion at the professor and then lowered it again. As far as Draco could tell, he fell asleep immediately.

Then Harry yawned and sat up. Professor Snape gave Draco only a flick of an accusing glare, but it made Draco flush and caught Harry’s attention anyway.

“Don’t scowl at Draco like that,” said Harry sleepily, doubling his fists to wipe at his eyes like a child. “I was waking up anyway. Dash pulled on the bond and told me that I’d slept long enough.” He raised an eyebrow at his guardian in a way that made Draco want to laugh, because it was so perfectly his professor’s gesture. He had to struggle to keep his face straight. “And what about that solid lunch you promised?”

Professor Snape didn’t say a word, but waved his wand. The tray that floated into the room must have been out of sight behind him. Draco felt his mouth water. He didn’t know about Harry, but the tomato-basil soup on the tray smelled wonderful to him. He reached out and grabbed it, carefully steering it towards them.

Solid food,” said Harry.

Another tray followed with scones and some small red berries that Draco didn’t remember ever seeing for lunch in the Great Hall. He grabbed one and popped it into his mouth, then gasped and shivered from how tart it was.

“I think that is enough to begin with,” said Professor Snape, and sat down on the chair where Draco had read the book.

“You know some things are going to have to change,” Harry said as he took one of the berries himself, and then reached for the scones. Professor Snape looked back and forth between Harry’s face and the bowl of soup, but he might as well have looked at a wall.

“I know. You must stop running into danger, and you must accept that I know best, as your guardian, when it comes to how to handle magical exhaustion.”

Harry’s hands stopped. Then he looked up, and Draco caught his breath. This was a glimpse of a Harry he hadn’t seen very often, so strong and determined that it was impossible not to fall further in love with him.

“More than that,” Harry said. “You have to accept that we’re going to get this Horcrux out of me somehow.”

Professor Snape could still do the kind of intimidating scowl that Draco saw most often when Longbottom was messing a potion up. He buried his shiver in the soup. “I never intended to let you die.”

Harry carried on as if he hadn’t heard. “And that means that I need to look at the options and decide which one I want to pursue.”

“Dash said he had something,” Draco volunteered, looking at the scones instead of Harry’s face. “Something to do with Slytherin’s knowledge. Is that what you mean?”

“He might know how to do it,” Harry said. “I’m the one who has to make the choice how far I’m willing to go with it.”

Draco felt stupid, but he said, “I mean, wouldn’t you be willing to do anything to get that thing out of you?”

“Severus might not be.”

Draco blinked at the professor in astonishment, but his confusion cleared up when Professor Snape said clearly, “Any attempt or method that endangers your life will not be considered, any more than I would have considered any Dark rituals had Black actually located one.”

“That’s—”

No one paid attention to Draco’s contribution. Harry leaned forwards a little and said, “It’s die with the Horcrux in me or try a method to get it out of me that will probably be dangerous. I would rather die trying to get it out than have it just exist there.”

“There is another option,” said Professor Snape, in a way that made Draco shrink back against the pillow. “You can live.”

“Of course. That’s what I’m going to do while we work out how to destroy the Horcrux in me and after we get it out.”

“You misunderstand me.” Professor Snape lowered his voice into a disagreeable purr. “You can live and not go through something that will destroy you.”

“Dash won’t do anything he thought would kill me.”

“Considering some of the things he has done already, I question that assumption.”

Draco wondered if he was the only one who saw a clear eyelid quiver over Dash’s “sleeping” eyes.

“I don’t,” said Harry, and his voice was calmer than Draco would have expected. Then he paused and listened, and nodded a second later. “Dash is agreeing with me. He thinks it would be stupid to have me go through something that would definitely kill me. But he’s willing to do something he might cause me pain, the way he held me back from joining the attack on the Weasleys. Do you really distrust him?”

Draco reached down and nudged Dash a little with his foot, because he thought it was silly for him to lie there playing “asleep” when he was obviously awake and communicating with Harry. Dash raised his head and yawned in the professor’s face. Then he turned his head and hissed ostentatiously in Harry’s direction.

“Dash says that he still needs to go into a meditative trance to pull up a couple of the memories, but he does remember a lot,” Harry translated, sounding smug. “He knows a spell that might at least contain the Horcrux.”

“Contain? What does that mean?” Professor Snape was still poised as though he would need to move and snatch Harry out of the range of a furiously bubbling potion at any moment.

“Form a sort of shell around it.” Harry was listening with his head cocked to the side, and Draco bit his lip so that he wouldn’t tell Harry how cute he looked like that. “As if it was inside an egg. That’s Dash’s reasoning, not mine,” he added, maybe because he could see Professor Snape’s eyebrow popping up.

“You cannot do such a thing. The Horcrux is entwined with your soul. Perhaps what you describe would be possible if it was merely a part of your mind, although even then, I question whether—”

He can do such a thing,” Harry said softly, and tipped his head at Dash again. Draco gave in to an impulse and reached up to touch his cheek. Harry blinked at him in shock, then smiled and curled his arm around Draco, tugging him close against his side.

“You would have to have something to experiment on. He would never do it without practicing first.”

“But we do have something we can practice on,” Harry said, and blinked a little.

“What other living Horcrux?” Professor Snape was leaning so far over the bed that Draco actually thought he was going to try to stab their eyes out with his nose. “There is a severe shortage of them, as I’m sure you’ve noticed. If you’re going to tell me that you’ll try to kidnap Nagini—”

“Of course not. We’re going to practice on one of the unfertilized basilisk eggs that are still in the Chamber. What?” Harry added, to their stares. “Dash says there are some, and you have to admit, he would know.”

Chapter 104: Plumed Serpent

Chapter Text

“And as usual, you left us out of all the fun. Well, this time we’re going with you.”

Harry rolled his eyes a little. “Why do you think I owled you, Ron? This way, we can all go down into the Chamber together.” He led the way into the girls’ bathroom and glanced around quickly, but there was no sign of Myrtle.

“I still don’t really understand what basilisk eggs have to do with the Horcrux,” Hermione admitted, peering over his shoulder. Even though she’d seen the place before, Harry felt her shudder at the sign of the little carved serpent on the tap. “I didn’t know it would be like this,” she whispered.

“If you get out of the way, Miss Granger, then I will make it less ‘like this.’”

Severus swished his wand, and a subtle Cleaning Charm ran over the bathroom, making the smell fade away and drying up some of the dirt and water on the floor. Harry smiled at Severus and started to open his mouth to thank him, but a wail overpowered his voice.

“You’re making it different! I can’t even have a home after I’m dead!” Myrtle rocketed out of a loo and hung in front of Severus, her mouth stretched so wide open that Harry thought he could see down her throat. “Not one I like! Someone always comes along and changes it!”

Severus only stood there, his wand still poised, looking at Moaning Myrtle in a way that suddenly made Harry wonder if there were spells to banish ghosts. He didn’t think there could be, or someone would have used one on Peeves before now, but still… “We’re just going down into the Chamber.”

“Why would you want to? It’s a horrid place!” Myrtle switched her attention to Harry, and pointed an accusing finger. “And you never come visit like you said you would! You told me and you told me, and it turned out to be just another game to make fun of Moaning Myrtle, wasn’t it? Let’s tell Myrtle anything we want, it’s not like she has feelings—”

Dash slithered into the bathroom. Myrtle vanished into the loo so fast that some water splashed onto the floor again. Severus cleaned it up, expressionless. Dash turned his head towards the tap with the snake on it.

We should try this before Voldemort recovers and becomes aware of what we’re doing through the link between your mind and his.

Harry started. He hadn’t thought of that, or whether it would be possible, but it was true that his scar didn’t throb now the way it did when Voldemort was healthy. He took a hasty step towards the tap and hissed, “Open.”

Not the best accent, but it will do, said Dash down the bond, and flowed towards the opening in the floor.

“Wait a moment, Harry.”

Harry turned impatiently back, only for Severus to cast a charm on him, and on Draco, Ron, and Hermione. Harry paused and looked at his arm. “What does that do?”

“Keeps us clean on the ride down, and enables us to float,” said Severus, his lip curling a little. “Makes our robes impervious to water. It is a general spell for exploring dangerous places such as caves.”

“I’ve never heard of that!” Hermione said at once, bouncing on her toes a little and looking down at her own arm as if the incantation of the spell would be written there. “Professor Flitwick never mentioned anything like it! Do a lot of people not learn it because they don’t explore dangerous places? Or, no, wait, I bet it’s a folded charm of third level—”

“I will be more willing to discuss magical theory when we are done with this adventure, Miss Granger.”

Hermione turned redder than Ron’s ears. “Sorry, Professor,” she squeaked out, and then turned and focused on the pipe. Harry glanced at Dash, waiting for him to say there was some easier way down.

But Dash only turned his head a little and said into their bonded, Why should I worry about getting dirty? Then he slid into the pipe and flowed out of sight. Harry thought he heard a slight splash as Myrtle peered out of her loo.

“We must go down this way, then,” said Severus tightly.

“I hope the levitation charm works, is all,” Draco muttered, but he was pressed tightly against Harry’s side as they came up to the hole. Harry smiled at him and leaped, reminding himself this wasn’t two years ago and Ginny was safe and he wouldn’t have to worry about a basilisk waiting in the Chamber to poison him.

The tube spiraled around and around, but Severus’s charm held the slime and debris away, and Harry landed lightly on the stone at the bottom of the pipe. Then he nearly fainted as a shadow lunged across the wall in the light of the torches.

You should see your face! You should smell your scent!

Draco had shrieked, too, before he realized it was Dash, and Harry felt free to narrow his eyes at his basilisk. Very funny.

It is. It’s hysterical. But it could be a lot funnier if you only had noses worth mentioning.

Harry rolled his eyes and moved out of the way so Ron and Hermione could land safely. Severus came last, and looked around the tunnel with his nostrils and lips both compressed. Harry winced. He just knew that Severus was imagining the time when Harry had come down to rescue Ginny and saving up all his spite.

“Come on,” he said hastily, and began to move them along, keeping his wand loose and ready in his hand just in case. He had a chance to catch a glimpse of Severus’s arm, and wasn’t surprised to see his wand was being held a lot more tightly.

The tunnel bent around them, and Hermione murmured when they came up on the skeletons of the animals the old basilisk had eaten and the shreds of snakeskin. Dash didn’t slow or turn around for them, though, and Harry finally had to warn his friends that they had a long trek to the Chamber.

Hermione sped up after that, but kept casting a longing glance back over her shoulder. “I could help you come down here, if you want,” Harry finally said to her. “Later, I mean. After we’ve dealt with this egg Dash wants to use.”

Hermione’s face lit up so brightly that Harry smiled back before considering it. “Would you, Harry? Only it’s so interesting to see what the old basilisk ate, and it makes me wonder if we’ll find answers as to why Dash is so different from him—”

I am different because I am bred from an egg and I have the soul of Salazar Slytherin. That is all she needs to know.

Harry rolled his eyes. But no one even knew breeding basilisks from—other basilisks was even possible. It was only the chicken’s egg beneath a toad thing that everyone knew.

“We’ll talk later,” Harry told her firmly, and Hermione nodded and hummed under her breath as if she was already making notes on a mental slate in her mind. Harry had to smile. Thank Merlin Quirrell had let the troll in in their first year. Otherwise, he quite possibly never would have become friends with Hermione.

They rounded another corner, and then Dash lowered his head and flickered his tongue at the wall. Harry stared. There wasn’t anything there!

But even as he watched, the wall began to shimmer and mist, and a door formed. It was set far back into the wall and had a single straight piece of black wood surrounding it on every side. Harry could see a huge ring in the stone. He supposed you had to pull the door open.

But Dash’s hiss stopped him before he could reach out. Only basilisk venom and basilisk scales can open the door. Let me touch it.

What would happen to anyone who didn’t have those things? Harry asked as he watched Dash thread his tail through the ring and give an expert tug.

Not all these bones came from the old basilisk eating animals.

Harry shivered, and started to ask, But if no one knew you were down here, and there was no one who even realized that you could breed basilisks from an egg, then—

With a clang, the door swung open, and the sight of the chamber beyond made everyone else gasp and drowned the question from Harry’s mind.

This was a bigger, brighter place than the Chamber of Secrets, although Harry wasn’t exactly sure where the light was coming from. It wasn’t torches. It was brilliant and white, and seemed to bounce from the rocks that made up the walls in some way Harry couldn’t see. Harry squinted up at the ceiling, but there was no hole there for the sun to shine in. He hadn’t really expected there to be.

The walls themselves were smooth, and the floor looked slick from the radiance of the light. Harry hesitated before he put on a foot on it.

It’s safe. Look, I’m crawling on it with no trouble.

You’re a snake, you don’t have feet to slip, Harry snapped back, but he did follow, and found out that it was just the crisscrossing, shimmering reflections. It really wasn’t slippery at all. He relaxed before he could think about it, and Dash hissed in approval.

There were also lots of pillars in the Chamber, rising up from fluted bases and narrowing as they went. They were all made of stone, but also all different colors, blue and green and red and orange and a subtle rose that made Harry wonder if Slytherin had liked pink when he was alive. He decided to tease Dash about it later.

Do not make fun of me for my other self’s decorating choices. I would have done it now in cracked bones and spilled blood, but he had his own tastes.

In between the pillars were pedestals, also of different colors that blended the shades of the pillars they stood between. Some of them were empty, and their tops looked as slick and reflective as the floor. Others had busts, or clocks, or paintings that were too dirty and tarnished for Harry to see much in them.

And some of them held basilisk eggs.

They didn’t have the same warmth Harry remembered from Dash’s clutch of eggs when he touched one. They were oval-shaped and gleaming, and when Harry cocked his head and squinted with one eye, he could see the whiteness highlighting the shape of a coiled snake in each one. But they didn’t feel alive the way the other ones had.

I told you. These are the failed experiments. The ones like the one I hatched from could all produce a basilisk any time they find a Parselmouth to bond with. But these never will.

Harry nodded, and then realized the others were trying to talk to him and turned around. Draco was standing in front of the pedestal closest to them, his eyes wide. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse.

“Slytherin made all this?”

“Probably not by himself,” Harry said, and serenely ignored the way Dash tried to mutter something at him down the bond. “But yeah, Dash says he chose the colors and made the eggs and—stuff.”

Draco turned his head, making his hair almost dazzling in the light. Harry didn’t know what to make of the expression on his face, at least until he spoke.

“If he did that, could he create a basilisk for me that wouldn’t need me to be a Parselmouth to speak to it?” Draco whispered. “A basilisk that could speak to me in my mind the way he does with you?”

I thought he was over that desire.

He was until he thought it was possible.

Dash gave a sound that was so much like a snort Harry was glad it wasn’t aloud, and began to move between the pedestals, weaving his head up so he could look at the basilisk eggs. He had tried to explain what he was looking for and exactly what they were going to do, but it was in magical theory dense enough that Harry had lost track of it. Perhaps he could get Severus to translate it for him later.

“Will he do it?”

“I don’t think he will,” Harry said, and faced Draco. Draco’s eyes were a tunnel into yearning that dimmed suddenly, and Harry sighed and reached out a hand. “I’m sorry. I don’t even know if he’s capable of the experiments he made as Slytherin now that he’s in basilisk form. He doesn’t have hands. And I think he just doesn’t care as much as he did when he was human.”

“He cares about you. We have that in common. Do you think I could persuade him?”

“I don’t think so,” Harry said, after a moment of waiting for some kind of statement to come down the bond from Dash. It didn’t. He was swaying in front of an egg with a huge baby basilisk in it, and didn’t look around.

Draco sighed. “As long as I can be around you and him, then maybe it won’t matter.” He let go of Harry’s hand and moved away, folding his arms. “I’m still grateful that you got me Conflagration, but it really isn’t the same thing. He almost never wants to spend any time with me. He goes off on his own, hunting and sunbathing.”

I can do something about that.

Harry started. He’d honestly forgotten that Dash would be listening to their conversation. “Dash thinks he can do something about that. Maybe encourage Conflagration to want to spend more time around you.”

Draco’s face relaxed as he smiled. “That would be great.”

Harry nodded, and then turned to face Dash as he made an impatient beckoning motion with his tail. Maybe they were finally going to learn exactly how Dash intended to shield and cut the Horcrux off from the rest of Harry’s mind.

*

Sometimes he doesn’t understand how extraordinary his bond with Dash is.

Draco didn’t think he was exactly resentful as he watched Harry bent over with his head next to Dash’s, but he was the next thing to it. He had hoped, for a wild moment, that it was going to be possible to live out his dream after all, and that Dash would give him a glimpse into the mind of Salazar Slytherin.

Instead, he would have to be content with secondhand reports, as always.

Draco blew out his resentment with a sharp breath, and then turned to look at the others. Granger was studying one of the pillars and writing something down on a piece of parchment she must have brought in her pocket. Severus stood watching Harry and Dash with his arms folded. Weasley was gingerly poking one of the eggs.

Draco thought about enchanting the egg Weasley was next to to rock and scare him, but it didn’t seem worth it. He turned back as Harry said, “All right, I think I understand. The egg surrounds and protects the basilisk hatchling. But it also means that it can’t hatch until the right moment. And these eggs will never hatch at all. So…what we’re going to do is put the Horcrux in me into a shield that cradles it and cuts it off from me, and that will never let it hatch. Right?”

Dash bobbed his head up and down emphatically. As he lifted his neck to coil around one of the pillars, his size hit Draco, the way it didn’t always, and he shivered. Perhaps he should be glad that having a basilisk was impossible. He didn’t know what would happen when Dash attained his adult growth. He would flow after Harry like a waterfall, and might not even fit inside some of the smaller classrooms.

Dash flicked out his tongue at him as though he knew exactly what Draco was thinking and found it amusing, and then he climbed up the pillar until he was above the pedestal with the egg on it. He flicked his tongue again, and Harry came over and knelt underneath the pedestal. He was shivering.

“Can he really do it?” Draco asked no one in particular.

“I don’t know. I would have to know more about the theory.” Granger was biting her lip and her eyes were wide. “I don’t—I mean, I trust Dash, of course, I know he would never hurt Harry, but mind magic isn’t for just anyone.”

“A basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin is not just anyone.”

Draco thought he did an excellent job of making that sound good, but Granger wasn’t glancing at him, only watching Harry and Dash. “I hope so,” she said distractedly. “I hope—oh, I don’t know.” She clasped her hands.

“I would never let Harry do this if I did not think it was safe.”

Draco flung a quick glance at Professor Snape, who was hovering in the background like a crow. He nodded to him. “Even if you had to go up against Dash?”

“Even then.”

From how flat Professor Snape’s face and voice were, Draco knew he meant it. He also knew that Dash probably knew about Snape’s determination, and he might be prepared to fight back if Professor Snape seriously opposed him.

It wasn’t the sort of thing he wanted to think about, any more than never having a basilisk of his own. Draco shivered and looked forwards again, even as Harry ducked his head and Dash let a single shimmering coil twine down until it rested on Harry’s hair like a crown. Draco wondered for a minute why they were doing that in particular, until he realized that Dash’s scales were pressing directly against Harry’s scar.

He swallowed, and then a pulse of magic went through the room, and everything changed. The pillar seemed to dance. The colors swam. Draco stared at the eggs, and it was like he was seeing them through a heat haze. He turned his head sharply, hoping that he wouldn’t be blinded to what Dash and Harry were doing.

He was in time to see Dash flick out a fang and scrape it down Harry’s face.

Draco drew in his breath to shout, but when light and not blood began to shine from Harry’s wound, he lost it.

*

You weren’t wrong about the way they’d react.

Nonetheless, this has to be done.

Harry nodded and stayed where he was. Light trickled down his face like tears. Thick warmth moved slowly through his cheek, and he knew Dash had injected a bit of his venom, while at the same time transforming some of Harry’s blood into the light. He said that this used to be a common magic of Parselmouths, when they wanted to use snake venom for some kind of spell.

Harry just hoped it still was.

Dash was wrapped around him, and the pillar, and the egg on the pedestal, all the same time, with different lengths of his body. He was beautiful, shimmering, and he swayed back and forth. Harry felt as though he was being pressed back into thick pillows, and shivered a little as he watched the way Dash’s tongue traveled out and caught the air.

The deep bond swelled up around him.

Harry concentrated on the stars and the midnight-blue sky, and tried not think about what would happen to the baby basilisk in the egg. Dash had explained it pretty well, and it would never have been alive, anyway. Dash also seemed sure that if it could be alive, it would be happy to die to help a Parselmouth.

Do you know that because all basilisks would feel the same?

All basilisks ought to want to die for you.

Harry started to snap back that that wasn’t the same as saying the basilisks would all feel the same, only that Dash wished they felt the same, and then Dash launched his head forwards and ground his fang into the scratch on Harry’s cheek. There was a long, rich moment of stillness. Harry could feel the shape of something in his head, something detaching so he could feel it for the first time.

The Horcrux.

How did you get it to separate?

It doesn’t have the bond with me, and right now everything about you is consumed in the bond.

Harry sighed. It was true. He could no longer feel the scratch on his cheek or the stone floor beneath his knees. Instead, there was the Horcrux, floating within him, and the image of the never-to-be basilisk floating in its egg sac.

Now.

The word thundered through Harry’s head like a boulder falling, and the Horcrux abruptly got pushed further away from him, into a sac that opened in front of it. At the same time, the image of the floating baby basilisk died, suddenly and completely. And Harry felt as though someone had muffled a part of him.

I did. I muffled the Horcrux in the baby basilisk’s soul.

You said—you said they weren’t alive, that they would never be alive—

I know. But they still had a soul. I had to bind a soul into their bodies to animate the eggs in the first place.

Harry shivered in shock and disgust, and Dash sighed through his head like someone taking a breath of poisonous flame. I used the souls of animals. And most of them died a thousand years ago, when I was alive as Slytherin. If you have to mourn for them, then you might undo the soul magic.

Harry said nothing, because there seemed to be nothing to say. Dash slithered through his head and made some more folding motions that Harry could feel but didn’t want to analyze. Then he rolled something away from Harry, and Harry gasped and opened his eyes.

Hermione and Ron were staring at him. Draco stood a few feet further back, and Severus had his wand in his hand.

“Is that it, then?” Hermione asked in a hushed voice. “Is the Horcrux gone?”

“That’s not what Dash said he was going to do, Granger.” Draco could be superior at times, and Harry rolled his eyes at him, especially since he knew Draco called Hermione by her first name more often than not. “He said he would shield it. He can’t get rid of it yet.”

“I never knew it would take an egg crushed like that,” Ron said, and nodded past Harry at the pedestal he was kneeling in front of.

Harry turned around. The egg had been reduced to smears of yolk and shell on the pedestal. He blinked and reached out for Dash. You’re absolutely certain that that the basilisk had no chance of coming to life?

I’m certain.

Why did you have to smash the egg?

I moved the energy and magic that infused it into your head and used that to fuel the shield. You pictured it as an egg because it used to be and because that’s the simplest means of describing it, but that’s like describing the deep bond as a real starry sky. It’s not, quite. It just has enough similarities that one can use them.

Harry struggled with that for a second, then gave up. He stood up and turned around. “Dash says that it’s all right for now.”

He saw Severus relax in a way that looked like a long falling-off of tension. He finally put his wand away, for one thing, and nodded. “And how long does Dash think he can maintain the shield around the egg?”

For months.

“For months,” Harry repeated aloud, and Severus’s head bowed a little, his eyes closing in a slow blink.

“Then I propose that we go on researching Horcruxes,” Draco said. “It’s important. And thinking about how we’re going to do the best job with creating a basilisk egg that can bond to me. That’s important, too. What?” he added in a hurt tone when Dash glanced at him.

Well, Dash said in a dry voice as they made their way back out of the hidden chamber, there’s at least no doubt that Draco belongs in my House.

Chapter 105: Communication

Chapter Text

Draco looked up sharply as Dash slithered into the classroom where he’d gone to practice his feather magic. Harry didn’t walk in right behind him, and that was unusual. Draco put aside his parchment. “Is something wrong with Harry?”

Dash shook his head and lowered it. There was another piece of parchment rolled up into a scroll in his mouth. Draco took it, respectful of Dash’s fangs, and unrolled it.

Dear Draco,

Dash asked me to write this down for you because he has a lot to say and it would be awkward to relay the whole thing through me. I think he’s going to talk to you alone, too.

He really doesn’t want to give you a basilisk or try to create a basilisk that could speak to you without Parseltongue. He has different feelings about making basilisks than he did now when he was Salazar. He really doesn’t think that any human could bond with or even hope to influence someone like him without being a Parselmouth. He’ll be happy to talk to Conflagration about spending more time with you, or maybe even create another kind of magical snake. But he wants you to stop asking for a basilisk.

Harry had signed the letter in a rambling, messy scrawl that Draco knew meant he was feeling asleep. He swallowed and put down the parchment, staring hard at Dash. Dash only sprawled in place, his head raised and his attention focused on Draco. Draco knew that meant he was listening, or waiting, but Draco didn’t see what there was to say.

“Fine. You won’t do as I ask. Fine.” There was more disappointment in his voice than Draco had known would be there. He turned back to the sketch on the paper of feathers assembling into a triangular shield, something he still couldn’t do despite all Fleur’s instruction.

Dash came over and draped his chin onto Draco’s shoulder. Draco knew it was a friendly gesture, but he still staggered and glared sideways. “What do you think you’re doing?”

Dash kept moving forwards, stretching his neck over Draco’s chest, and locking Draco’s right arm against his side. Draco shouted wordlessly and tried to lift his wand, but it was no good. Dash’s body was a lot firmer than the arm of the chair or anything else Draco could have trapped himself against.

“What are you doing?”

Dash knocked him gently out of the chair to the floor, and then curled up on top of him, although Draco knew most of his body weight was on the floor because otherwise he would have had a lot more trouble breathing than he was. He scowled at Dash. Dash only lowered his head and wriggled a bit like a happy puppy getting comfortable.

“If you wanted to talk to me more than that letter let you do, why did you come without Harry?”

Dash gave him a patient look, and then started bobbing and shaking his head. Draco stared blankly. At first he thought this was some kind of magical ritual, and then that Dash was trying to shake loose a drop of poison or something. After it had continued for about two minutes, though, he finally got it.

“I can communicate with you if I ask questions that are yes or no?”

Dash bobbed his head enthusiastically and nudged Draco under the chin, which was sharp enough that Draco’s head went flying back and he grunted in pain. A second later, he felt Dash lick the skin over his pulse in apology.

“Okay,” Draco muttered, and lay there rubbing his throat with his free arm and thinking of ways to ask what he wanted while making it a yes or no question. Dash lay still, and tilted his head to the side in a friendly manner.

At least I know enough about him to know when it’s friendly, Draco thought in irritation, and then muttered, “You’ve absolutely decided that you’re not going to make me a basilisk?”

Nod, nod.

“But what about another kind of magical snake? You’d do that?”

Nod, nod.

Draco lay still and tried to think about what the difference was between a basilisk and another kind of magical snake. Honestly, it was hard to think of. Yes, basilisks were big and more deadly, but even a small bite could be deadly, and Draco knew some non-magical snakes attained huge sizes, too.

He finally asked, “Is it something to do with me? I mean, with the way I am, the kind of person I am?”

Gently, Dash nodded.

Draco sighed and closed his eyes. “I suppose you can’t tell me the exact word you mean, and I might not guess it anyway. But does it have something to do with—I don’t know, you don’t think I’m adult enough to handle that kind of responsibility yet?”

He opened his eyes in time to see Dash’s confirming nod. But then Dash abruptly slithered off him, which left Draco to sit up slowly, confused, his ribs aching, and wondering if he’d offended Dash somehow.

Dash reached out and gently tickled Draco’s cheek with his tongue. Draco held still, knowing as well as Dash did that he could “lick” with a fang, too.

Dash slid out of the room, and Draco stood up and turned slowly back to his feathers. His hands shook, and he finally put down the wand and sat with his head in his hands.

Dash didn’t think he was mature enough to be trusted with a basilisk, but—something else. He didn’t hate Draco for that. He evidently didn’t want Draco to ask that question again, but he also didn’t think that defined him.

The answer that came was so simple it made Draco’s eyes pop, but he was sure he was right.

Dash liked him.

And armed with that liking, Draco thought he might be able to stop wishing so hard that he was a Parselmouth, and concentrate on what he really was and could be.

*

Lucius turned sharply as the Floo flared. Supposedly, Severus and Potter had been going to contact him at exactly twenty minutes past the hour, and now it was almost twenty past that. Lucius was not accustomed to being kept waiting.

But he smoothed out any trace of impatience from his expression, because it was probably another sort of damned test, and settled on the cushion from which he could comfortably see the fire. He was glad he had when Potter’s face appeared in the flames, or he might actually have fallen over from the shock.

“Severus is sick?” he asked, the only reason he could think of that Severus would allow Potter to converse with him alone.

“Oh, no, he’s right here.”

Lucius gave as small and calm a smile as he could. “Very well. What did you want to talk with me about?”

“You’ve passed our test. We waited to see who you would communicate with and who might suddenly know something they shouldn’t, and no one popped up. That means that you can indeed hold your silence when you’re supposed to.” Potter gave him a smile of his own. “So I’m going to trust you with something else again.”

Thank Merlin. “You honor me.”

“Yeah, I do,” Potter agreed, and there was no question who had taught him that much insolence. Lucius held still, though, and Potter continued. “I want you to tell me who’s really against us in the Ministry. I don’t mean people who sort of feel sorry for Dumbledore or who’re working to get Scrimgeour cleared of charges for attacking me because that’s the way it’s always been done. I mean the people who really hate me and want to see me stopped in my tracks. Can you do that?”

“That—is a task you could have assigned me some time ago,” Lucius said slowly, because it was true and he wanted Potter to know it.

Potter gave him a faint smile. “I know. But I need it done now.”

“Then yes, I can find it out.”

“Good. Thank you, Lucius.” Potter paused and studied him musingly. “Both Draco and Severus assured me you could.”

“Did you doubt them? Or did you simply doubt that I still had the contacts and the power?”

“I thought you might have spent all this time fuming and getting angrier and angrier at me, until you would refuse to help at all because that’s what you do.”

So this was a test in more than one way, then. “I removed the Dark Mark, Mr. Potter. I am committed to staying on your side. The Dark Lord would never accept me back even if I was foolish enough to go crawling to him.”

Maybe that had been the assurance Potter was looking for, because he gave a single, sharp nod. “Good. Now, excuse me. Severus wants to talk to me about some of the other political alliances we’re spinning.” The Floo went dark.

Not a farewell, Lucius thought as he stood up and stretched. But I suppose that “excuse me” is a step in the right direction. And I am going to prove my usefulness now, so that Potter doesn’t feel the urge to dismiss me ever again.

*

“What do you think?”

“I think he’ll do as he’s told.” Harry met Severus’s gaze fearlessly, one hand reaching out to stroke Dash’s head as the great basilisk coiled up at his feet. “What, did you get some different impression from his words?”

Severus shook his head silently. In truth, he thought Lucius probably felt some anger that he hadn’t expressed, but that would be normal. In Lucius, anger was usually a spur to prove himself better than anyone who was doubting him, so it ought to work out for them even if he genuinely felt it.

“Good.” Harry sat up and waved his wand. A shield of feathers formed in front of him, and he cast Severus a triumphant sidelong glance.

Severus only nodded and let a faint smile pass over his mouth. Harry was showing him that he had fully recovered from the exhaustion incurred when he had battled Voldemort. Severus thought it appropriate to show some pride while he carefully examined Harry’s hands and arms for some sign of a tremor, the primary long-lasting effect of magical exhaustion.

Nothing. Harry’s hand was as steady as Dash’s neck when he lowered his wand back to his side.

It can begin, then. Severus took a deep breath and held out the letter he had received yesterday. “Elena Zabini sent you a letter.”

Harry’s eyebrows twitched. “And you didn’t open it? You know I don’t mind you reading my post from people like that.”

“I was rather wary of the seal.” Severus nodded to the small purple flower on the parchment, watched Harry stare at it with incomprehension, and sighed. “We should ask Pomona to step up your education in Herbology, as well. That seal is a living plant, Harry, but a rare one. Easy to mistake for a decorative flower, until it stings your finger and makes you swell up with the neurotoxin.”

“It’s a test, then?”

“No. The flower can be attuned by whispering a name to it—rather the same way that a post-owl can be by being told to deliver a letter to one specific person. I suspect Mrs. Zabini has attuned the letter to you to open at your touch.”

“You suspect.”

“Well, it was addressed to you. And it hasn’t reacted by coiling its tendrils when the letter gets close to you, the way it did when I brought my hand carelessly near.”

Harry sighed a little. “I’m going to have to have a talk with her about sending post like that,” he muttered, sounding like he already knew it would be a hopeless task, and then took the letter and gingerly let his finger hover in front of the purple flower. It melted into the parchment at once, becoming a regular violet wax seal. Harry shook his head and opened the paper.

He scanned it, then scanned it again. His eyes had widened and his hand was shaking a second later. Severus leaned forwards. He did not think these were the tremors of magical exhaustion come on suddenly. “What is it, Harry?”

“She, um.” Harry cleared his throat. “She wants me to marry Blaise.”

Severus stood there. He knew there was no spell to turn someone into a pillar of salt, but he wouldn’t be surprised if Elena Zabini had managed to invent one. “What?” he finally asked, his voice little more than a rasp.

“That’s what she says.” Harry turned the letter around, looking at it doubtfully, although it was only one page. “She says that we both have ‘unfortunately similar childhoods,’ and we could understand each other. And Blaise isn’t going to get back into society unless he has a powerful marriage, and, um. It could be with me.”

Severus shook his head. Marriages between men were rare, but did happen sometimes—usually among pure-bloods powerful enough that they could ignore whatever social conventions they wanted. “Do you think she’s serious?”

“I really don’t know her well enough for that.”

Severus had to admit that he did not, either. He cleared his throat. “I wouldn’t show that letter to Draco.”

“Do you think I look suicidal?” Harry held up a hand before Severus could open his throat. “And that isn’t an invitation to comment on whether you think I was trying to commit suicide by going after Voldemort during the battle, because I wasn’t.”

“I know that. I was not—I simply think that it would not be a good idea for Draco to think he might lose you. His father was jealous over Narcissa in his time. I think Draco might have inherited that.”

Harry nodded and started to roll the letter up, then paused. “Does the flower-thing become active when it’s sealed again?”

“The flower-thing is called a death’s violet, and no.”

“Really? I think flower-thing suits it better.”

Severus looked at Harry’s face, saw the glint of humor in his eyes, and relaxed. “No. You may put it away. And we will add vocabulary and elocution lessons to the ones in Defense that we are having.”

Harry rolled his eyes even as he handed the parchment to Severus. “You’re never going to change the way I talk, you know? Not enough. Everyone who talks to me is still going to know that I wasn’t raised in the wizarding world and that I’m not capable of talking in circles around people like Lucius can.”

“I thought you handled Lucius well today. Perhaps you must be honest, but you can do it skillfully. Powerfully.”

“You say honest like it’s the name of a disease,” Harry muttered, but he looked intrigued.

Severus held back his smirk and assumed a sober expression. “Now, one thing I want you to remember is that while the Killing Curse is the only spell that has no specific counter, there are many spells where the countercurse would consume more of your time than it is worth…”

*

Lucius paused when he heard the voice around the corner. It wasn’t one he’d expected in the Ministry, and that made it interesting enough to listen to. He cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself with a skillful flick of his wand, and waited.

“I can’t do as you ask.” That voice Lucius didn’t know, but the combination of tension and squeakiness made the name unimportant. It was someone being threatened and knowing she’d have to give into the threat.

“It’s not a large deal, Annabelle. A small one. A drop of this in the snake’s mouth. That’s all. People tell me Potter comes to the Ministry with his basilisk often enough.”

Lucius listened harder. Yes, he was sure of the identity of the other voice now, although still surprised this person was in the Ministry. And he was at the junction of corridors. He eased his head around it.

Annabelle, a woman in the robes of a high flunkey of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, stood with her arms folded and her head hunched down. The woman in front of her smiled and extended a hand, snapping her fingers gently. In one hand, she held a vial of glistening pink potion.

Severus might have recognized it on sight, but Lucius didn’t. Still, he was trained in ways to identify an unknown potion, and he carefully memorized the speed with which it sloshed against the sides of the vial as the unexpected woman turned it.

“I wouldn’t dare get close enough to the basilisk,” Annabelle whispered.

“But he’s a danger to the wizarding world. You know that, Annabelle.” The woman Lucius recognized tilted her head in a slight motion towards Annabelle’s left arm. “And so are some secrets that shouldn’t be revealed.”

“I think—I mean, Potter seems to keep the basilisk under control…”

Lucius was mildly impressed with Annabelle for resisting the implied threat, and for managing to have borne the Mark in secret and survived the purges of Death Eaters after the war. Of course, he was more impressed with the woman in front of her.

“We both know that can’t last forever. Nothing lasts forever. Especially people who pretend that they didn’t swear loyalty to our Lord.”

The moment when Annabelle crumpled was more visible in her shivering hand than her expression. She reached out and took the vial. The woman in front of her nodded and even reached out to touch Annabelle’s hair, although Annabelle cringed away from the touch.

“You’ve made my Lord very happy. And I’m sure that he’ll forget about the way you forsook your old allegiance for some years and welcome you back into the fold when the moment comes.”

Annabelle, looking sickened, didn’t reply. Lucius tensed himself to move if the other woman started down the corridor towards him, but in the end, she smiled one more time at Annabelle and walked the opposite direction.

Still, she had been in sight for long enough that Lucius got a glimpse of her dark hair and her profile and the swaying way she walked, and he was sure. He departed for his next meeting in the Ministry hierarchy, his mind busy.

He had known that someone was helping the Dark Lord. Someone who stayed in the background, someone who had written the letters to him insisting that he would be rewarded for aiding in the Dark Lord’s resurrection, someone who had to be cautious and skilled not to have been caught yet.

He had never expected it to be a Bellatrix Lestrange who looked as if she had never been in Azkaban.

*

It was the second startling letter in two days, but addressed to Severus this time. Severus read it several times to make sure there was no mistake, and then went in search of Draco and Harry.

They were together in one of the classrooms they had learned feather magic in, which was rapidly, with Granger’s help, becoming a miniature library. Books teetered on the tables and feathers floated overheard as Weasley coughed and sneezed and choked, and Harry whacked him on the back, and Granger shook her head, and Draco looked on with a raised eyebrow.

“You’re not supposed to conjure the feathers inside your mouth.”

“Yeah, next time I’ll remember that, Malfoy—” Weasley started, and then began to cough and choke again. Granger rolled her eyes and cast a charm that would probably expel most of the small pinfeathers and dust from his throat.

“Harry. Draco.”

Granger and Weasley turned around, alert, even though Severus hadn’t summoned them. “What is it, sir? Is it something about Horcruxes?” Granger was looking back and forth between the parchment in his hand and the pallor of his face.

The girl was too smart, Severus thought with a faint frown. He might have to keep some discussions for times when Harry’s friends weren’t visiting. “Not that. But some disturbing news has come that I need to speak to Harry about.”

Dash was coiled at Harry’s feet, and lifted his head lazily to study Severus. Then he planted his head in the middle of Harry’s backside and shoved him, stumbling, a few steps towards Severus.

But Harry, instead of following the implicit direction, turned around and stared hard at Dash. “No,” he said. “I’m not just—going off with him. Anything he has to say to me, he can say in front of Ron and Hermione and you. Not just Draco.”

Severus paused, thrown. He had planned to reveal the news to Draco because Bellatrix was his aunt and to Harry because she was going to be a dangerous opponent if she truly had never gone to Azkaban—or had somehow broken out without causing the fuss that Black had. But Granger and Weasley had no need to know immediately.

Dash hissed something. Harry laughed. “If I’m only going to tell them right away, why can’t he tell them now?”

Severus grimaced. That was true enough. Lucius already knew, and he would tell Narcissa, doubtless. And Harry would keep it to himself when it came to the general population of the school, but he had no reason to keep it from his friends.

Perhaps it would make sense to simply speak of it now.

So he did, while keeping an eye on Draco’s paling face and Granger and Weasley’s uncomprehending ones. He had to explain the story of the Lestranges, how faithfully they had served the Dark Lord, why Bellatrix was dangerous, and the family connection with the Blacks. And he had to watch as Dash watched Harry.

It had been a long time since Harry had resisted something Dash wanted him to do.

Severus couldn’t help but wonder what the consequences would be.

Chapter 106: The Hearts of Allies

Chapter Text

"You need not worry. I will take over finding out where Bellatrix came from."

Severus started unblinking at Lucius through the fire. Lucius looked back, solemn and earnest in a way Severus had never seen from him before and did not trust. "Why would you do that? What do you think you can learn?"

"My dear Severus." Lucius had a tall glass of what was probably some sparkling wine in his hand, but it was hard to recognize through the green color of the flames. "I still have more connections in the Ministry than you do, and more opportunity to question them, given that you have to stay in Hogwarts all the time. I can do it."

"It is dangerous, and you are not always discreet--"

"But I've proved myself, haven't I? To you, and to Harry, and to my son?"

There was a conversational path Severus did not want to go down, especially because he knew he retained more suspicions of Lucius than Draco and Harry did. He said only, "It was chance that you saw her in the first place. There may be more here than we understand. Someone might have been using Polyjuice."

That caused a snort to come out of Lucius, a more inelegant sound than Severus had ever heard from him. "Why would they Polyjuice themselves as an Azkaban prisoner, someone who's going to be pursued if they see her outside the prison? Yes, someone has to have taken Bellatrix's place or otherwise fooled the Dementors. But it would be stupid for someone free to take her hair and become her. It would expose visitors she's not supposed to have at the very least."

Severus had to acknowledge that, though reluctantly. "She could be going about in disguise on her own, though."

"Oh, I know that. It only makes finding her more challenging."

Severus decided to let it go for now. He couldn't compete with that hunter's gleam in Lucius's eyes. "Harry received a strange message from Elena Zabini, proposing a marriage with her son. What do you think of that?"

Lucius snorted again. Perhaps the wine had unusually relaxed him; it was the only explanation Severus could think of. "I think Elena's bored."

"What?"

"We haven't been moving very fast, have we? I have my concerns, and you have yours, but to some of our allies, we're simply waiting around on the result of the Ministry's investigation into Cyan Scimgeour. Elena in particular probably thinks that Harry is too passive, after the great events he was involved in. She's trying to prod him to move."

"Even if that would be into anger against her?"

"She can harness her enemies' anger, Severus, believe me. And use the fiercer emotions of allies against them."

Severus breathed in and out, raising some of the barriers that long Occlumency training had taught him to prominence in his mind. Elena Zabini had not known about the abuse of her son for a long time, but once she had, she had moved in a decisive way that stopped it. There was every possibility that she would move against Harry if she became bored enough.

“We have to do something.”

“Yes. And unlike finding and tracking Bellatrix, I think this is something that has to come from Harry. He is the only one who can reassure Elena that she’s not being forgotten or fobbed off with fewer political rewards than she deserves.”

Severus told himself he would need a Headache Draught later. “Very well, I will tell him. But if you are wrong about your insight into Elena…”

“I am not wrong,” Lucius said, as haughty as one of his peacocks. “It’s the only explanation that makes sense as to why Elena would seek a marriage that she has to know would be to neither of their liking. Other than wanting to redeem her son and get him some political connections in Britain, of course, but there are less expensive ways to do that.”

“Expensive?”

“In terms of the allies it could cost her. Harry, because she wants to force him into marriage against his will. You, for potentially interfering with Harry’s life. Draco, because I am not blind to what Harry means to him. And me.”

“You.”

“There are certain things I do not like about Draco’s choice, but I cannot deny that he chose well as far as political connections go.” Lucius shrugged.

And if he feels more than that, he will never allow anyone to see it, Severus thought. He remembered that well about Lucius from past dealings. Lucius had a reputation as being formidable and icy in politics, and his apparent stubbornness and stupidity came from the same thing. He guarded his true beliefs as treasures to be tarnished by too much handling.

They would have an easier time getting regret out of Dash than truth from Lucius.

“Very well, I will speak with Harry,” Severus said, and shut down the Floo connection. He wondered if he should also speak to Harry about Lucius’s apparent devotion to their side because he would be the father-in-law of the Boy-Who-Lived, if all went well.

Then he sighed. He never did any good by keeping things from Harry. Dumbledore had not managed it, and neither had any of the adults who had thought Harry and his friends had to be kept away from secrets in the school.

*

“So he just thinks it was a ploy.”

Harry could feel the relief burning in him. He had liked Elena, in a way. He didn’t want to lose her as an ally, as he had thought he would by refusing this marriage with Blaise. But he couldn’t agree to the marriage, either.

“A ploy to lessen her boredom and make things more interesting for herself, yes,” Severus agreed, curling his lip a little. “I suppose that I can excuse her…more interesting tastes if it is only a ploy and remains loyal.”

“But that means Lucius didn’t want to give me any advice on how to answer it.”

“More that he felt he couldn’t, because you have to be the one to respond to it, and Elena would be upset if she found out that you weren’t.”

Harry slumped back against the wall, and sighed. He supposed he couldn’t blame Elena for getting a little impatient, but…

No, he still totally blamed her.

What he needed was some way for Elena to see that she was still valuable, and he liked her, and he was sorry for the abuse Blaise had suffered, but he was never going to allow anyone to force him into a marriage against his will. And he had to do it in a way that wouldn’t insult her. He knew what would probably happen if he insulted her or Blaise.

Well, okay, she would try to poison him, and then Dash would kill her. But he didn’t want that any more than he wanted her to succeed with the poisoning.

“Harry?”

“I’m thinking,” Harry said absently, and twisted around in the chair, tucking his feet up underneath him and staring into the fire. The simplest thing would be to find something for Elena to do. But what? She would go through almost anything too fast, except maybe finding some way to kill Cyan Scrimgeour, and people didn’t want her to kill him when the Wizengamot was still trying him. He propped his fist on his chin and sighed.

Dash was being suspiciously quiet down the bond. Either he agreed with Severus that this was something Harry had to do himself, or he knew Harry wouldn’t welcome any of the suggestions that he could make.

Harry half-closed his eyes. Some investigation, or some way to hold back his enemies, or punish his enemies, or punish—

Harry jerked up. Severus spun to face him, wand ready in his hand. Harry chuckled a little and pointed at him. “It’s okay. An idea ambushed me, not another wizard.”

Severus narrowed his eyes and slowly released his hold on his wand, not looking enthusiastic. “You should learn to distinguish between them externally as well as internally. What idea have you had?”

Harry waved his hand. “You know that we don’t know exactly where Voldemort is hiding or what kind of support he has. Maybe it’s just Bellatrix, but he’s probably started to recruit the other Death Eaters that have Marks.”

Severus nodded without looking appeased. “And the ones we have approached to offer a way to escape their Marks may or may not take us up on that offer. If they do not, then we risk the chance that they’ll tell the Dark Lord about their knowledge.”

Harry nodded. “So what I want Elena to do is come up with some foolproof way to test for people’s loyalty. Not Veritaserum. Something else that’s not a potion they’d have to take,” he added, because Severus was opening his mouth and probably wanted to say that he could do that perfectly well. “Something that could be, oh, a wall hanging. Or a plant. I think I remember her saying something about all the nasty plants that grow in her garden. Or a spell. Either way, it’ll be something she can work on for a long time.”

“A long time, indeed,” said Severus, with a blank face. “It is not something that has ever been invented, as far as I know, any more than Veritaserum that can find the absolute, objective truth has. It would involve wrinkles in loyalty, what the person being tested considered a betrayal, the—”

“That’s why it’s a good task for her,” Harry interrupted. “Because she’ll have to come up with a way to bypass all those things.”

“And whose loyalty will it actually test?” Severus’s voice lowered. “If you put Elena in charge of it, then it might simply end up measuring loyalty to Elena.”

Harry snorted. “You think she would lie to Dash?”

Severus paused. “Dash can smell lies?”

“It took him a while to realize what he was smelling, but yeah. And he can smell it even when an answer hasn’t been given yet. If I ask her a simple question, and she’s intending to lie, then her heartbeat increases and the fear comes out in her sweat. I think that she’ll be able to figure that out for herself, but I’ll simply tell her in the letter that whatever she invents will be tested by things like Dash asking questions. She’ll get it. What?”

Severus was giving him the oddest look. A second later, he said slowly, “That will be useful, if she can achieve it.”

“Of course it will. I can’t give her anything absolutely useless to do. She would figure that out, too, and she would be insulted.”

Severus nodded, but the look on his face hadn’t changed. “It—you are growing up more brilliant than I thought, Harry.”

Harry could feel himself flush, but he managed to smile at Severus. “Well, I need to keep in mind that my opponents are brilliant, and have good ways to fight them.”

Severus inclined his head slowly. “In the meantime, I suggest sending a letter to Elena as soon as you can, and getting ready to make a public appearance. The public does not believe that the Dark Lord has returned, as you know.”

Harry grinned. “I just thought of something that might convince them.”

“What?”

“It’s going to be all dramatic.

What?”

“Show them that Dash can detect lies.”

*

Draco stood with his arms folded off to the side. Harry hadn’t wanted anyone to be right next to him as he stood in front of Hogwarts with Dash coiled lazily beside him. Underneath his feet and Dash’s coils was a star-shaped platform. It would float into the air when Harry nodded to Professor McGonagall and Professor Snape. They would levitate it for him.

The Headmistress seemed to be skeptical, at least, Draco noticed. But she had a faint smile on her face as well. Professor Snape’s face was as blank as always, although his eyes glittered in a way that made Draco think they weren’t any better pleased than he was.

“Why does he have to do this?” Draco muttered to Professor Snape.

“He wished to. And he thought it would convince some of the public that the Dark Lord is back.”

Draco sneered at the skeptical, devouring stares coming from the crowd. “He could appear right in front of some of them and they still wouldn’t be convinced. They would be screaming ‘Illusion!” or ‘Practical joke!” or something like that.”

“I have told him that. Harry seems intent on going ahead with it.”

Harry gave a little nod that must have been the signal they were waiting for. Draco stirred restlessly again as he watched the Headmistress and Professor Snape heave the platform into the air. That nod should have been a harder gesture, to impress the crowd that stirred and muttered and whispered behind their hands.

But Harry didn’t seem to notice. He said something else to Dash instead, and Dash twitched his tail excitedly and reared up and up and up. Draco heard the silence spread across the crowd as Dash loomed over Harry and they realized how large he really was when he wasn’t keeping part of his bulk spread out.

Draco smiled. That was impressive, at least.

“I know that you don’t believe me,” Harry said. He had cast a Sonorus on himself that Draco hadn’t noticed, from the way his voice boomed. “Don’t believe that I was innocent of Dumbledore’s death, or that Dumbledore really kidnapped me.” He paused. “And I’ve been explaining that Voldemort’s resurrected himself, and you don’t believe that, either.”

A few people in the back of the crowd shivered at the name, but some bolder wizard towards the front, a tall man clad in emerald-green robes that made Draco wrinkle his nose, called out, “You have no proof. Of any of it!”

“You’re about to have some proof,” Harry said, and gestured to Dash. “Did you know that basilisks can detect lies?”

That led to some more muttering, but a woman with flyaway grey hair, who looked about as old as Dumbledore, said loudly, “Truth! I read about it!”

Harry nodded. “My basilisk is dangerous. He can detect lies, and he’ll punish people for them.” He turned and held out his arm, and Dash opened his mouth, more than wide enough without even gaping his jaws to surround Harry’s arm. “If I tell a lie, he’ll punish me. Sink his fangs straight into my skin.”

Draco stiffened. “What is he doing?” he hissed to Professor Snape. “Even a Parselmouth can’t survive that much venom!”

Professor Snape’s hand stuttered back and forth on his wand. “We must trust him.”

“Not to do something so stupid—”

The shouting of the crowd overcame Draco’s words. “You could just command him to do anything you like!” said that tall wizard, his nose turned upwards. “You could say that he had to bite other people for lies, but he has to leave you alone! This proves nothing!”

“Really?” Harry turned back to the crowd and smiled. “My name is Albus Dumbledore.”

Dash’s mouth snapped shut with a snick so effective it sounded like a Double-Edged Ax Curse. Draco stared, his chest pounding with dread. Dash opened his mouth again, and Harry showed the glistening, poisoned wounds.

“There,” Harry said, panting a little, and raised his voice again as the crowd tried to shout him down. “Voldemort has returned!”

Dash paused like a stone statue of a serpent, his mouth open around Harry’s arm but not biting down. More than one person had already Apparated away, and one in Healer’s robes was pushing his way forwards. Draco shook his head, contempt cleansing his head. There was no cure for basilisk venom.

Which meant there was no way that Harry had had Dash really poison him.

“He resurrected himself with the help of loyal Death Eaters,” Harry said, his stare stopping even the importunate Healer in his tracks. “And he’s already attacked friends of mine in their home. And he’ll attack again as soon as he can find a way to recover from the wounds that we inflicted on him in the last fight.”

“What do you want us to do about it?” someone called from the back of the crowd.

“I want you to acknowledge it!” Harry’s voice was suddenly harsh, a snarl, and he waved his dripping, bleeding arm around. Drops of blood flew forwards and hit some of the crowd in the face. They flinched back. Draco felt a surge of satisfaction he couldn’t control. “I want you to do something about it instead of cringing and flinching and whimpering at each other. Can you do that?”

“How do you expect us to survive?”

“Who’s going to beat him?”

“What will we do if he takes our families hostage? He did that in the last war!”

Harry just shook his head, his eyes deep and weary and disgusted. He leaned back and stared into the sky. Draco wondered if he was the only one who noticed that his chest was heaving faster than normal. Maybe. He was probably the only one here other than Severus who knew how fast Harry usually breathed.

“We can try to do something about that. But screaming or denying that he’s back doesn’t solve anything.” He stared at them. “Does it?”

He had shamed them, Draco saw with some surprise. He had thought Harry was just trying to force them to see the truth and that he wasn’t lying, but now he saw the way that some people glanced off to the side. Harry looked pretty thin and small, standing there with his arm dripping and the wounds starting to swell.

“It doesn’t,” Harry finally said, and then he turned and nodded to the Headmistress and Professor Snape. They let the platform drop back to the earth. Dash slithered off as if he had known all along that things would play out like this.

Professor Snape snatched Harry off the platform and strode towards the door of Hogwarts that was closest to the hospital wing. His face was so intent that Draco thought he would have trampled even a basilisk at the moment with how fast he was marching. Fortunately, Dash was already out of the way.

“I don’t understand,” someone called to the Headmistress. “What are we going to do?”

“Headmistress McGonagall! Headmistress McGonagall!” A reporter was waving her hand from the side. “What can you tell us about what Mr. Potter said? Did you let him summon anyone he wanted to Hogwarts?”

“Is it true that he’s secretly the Heir of Gryffindor and in control of Hogwarts?” someone else called.

Draco turned to walk after Harry and Professor Snape. McGonagall was answering the questions as if she had been prepared for them, which maybe she was.

It was more than Draco was. He had a boyfriend to corner in the hospital wing and demand answers from.

*

“But Dash can control the virulence of his poison. Of course he can. Why would he use the kind that can disintegrate his prey all the time?”

Severus could only sit beside the bed in the hospital wing and breathe. Madam Pomfrey had already drained the venom from the wounds, and told him in a slightly stunned voice that it seemed to be nothing worse than a bite from a baby adder. It would hurt, and Harry would suffer some aches and fatigue and tingling into the next day, but then it would heal.

“I told you that I was going to show them that Dash could detect lies. I even said that he would bite—”

“You never mentioned he would be biting you,” Severus shouted back, almost rising from his seat. Then he forced himself to sit back down and turn his head in the other direction.

Harry was quiet for long enough that Severus had time to think about what would happen if the venom had been real. He shuddered again. Yes, perhaps he should have known that Dash would never hurt Harry, not really. But he hadn’t—he hadn’t been thinking. And then he had seen the glittering venom dripping down Harry’s skin, and he’d wanted to lunge, and only the long, far-gone thought of consequences had stopped him.

Harry had to appear strong, as strong as he could with his age against him. His guardian rescuing him from everything would only make people decide that the only strength involved was Severus’s own, perhaps his skill at Potions.

“I’m sorry.”

“I know you are,” Severus said brusquely, not looking at him, and felt Harry flinch.

“It’s just—I didn’t explain things well enough, I reckon.” Severus looked then, because he had to, and saw the way Harry flipped a lock of dark hair out of his eyes and stared at his arms. “But it worked. I think it worked. I don’t think any of them will doubt that Dash is capable of detecting lies.”

“It worked,” Severus muttered. Draco and Minerva had both told him about the sorts of things they’d heard people saying before they departed several hours earlier. Severus was a little surprised that he’d been able to restrain himself from speaking to Harry for long enough that everyone else was out of the hospital wing.

“Then it was worth it.”

“Not if you keep taking a risk!”

“But this wasn’t a risk. It really wasn’t. Not when Dash can control his venom. I’m sorry for startling you, though,” Harry said remorsefully, and reached out to pat his arm. “I thought you would understand everything, and you didn’t ask questions, so…”

“I thought you would have Dash bite someone else.”

“Who, though? There’s no one else I could ask to do that.”

Severus sighed. He had been thinking of Lupin or Black, but they…weren’t here. And if he had been thinking clearly, he would have realized that Harry wouldn’t have anyone take such a risk no matter how much they had angered or disappointed him.

“Anyway! Now we have at least some people convinced that Dash can detect lies, and I was at least willing to endure a lot of pain so I could tell the truth.” Harry clapped his hands together as if his right arm wasn’t still bruised and puffy. “And I can contact Elena and ask her to start creating that thing that will detect loyalty, whatever it’s going to be.”

Severus agreed quietly, and listened to Harry chattering, and left the hospital wing when he fell asleep. He leaned against the door for a moment and closed his eyes.

He had asked Harry to cut back on the risks to himself. And Harry had, really. There was no risk of him dying or being poisoned because of Dash’s bite. Only a little pain.

He probably never would convince Harry to not endure pain. He did that every day anyway, with part of his soul serving as Voldemort’s Horcrux.

Severus straightened and swallowed air. Then my duty is to lessen the pain of everything else as much as I can.

Chapter 107: Investigations into Allies

Chapter Text

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter One Hundred and Seven--Investigations

Lucius slipped into the small office at the end of the dusty Ministry corridor the minute the door opened. The occupant behind the desk immediately spelled the door shut and glared at him with narrowed eyes for a minute.

"You promised that you would never come here again."

"Circumstances changed with the escape of Bellatrix Lestrange from Azkaban," Lucius said, and did enjoy the way the small woman's eyes widened from their narrowing.

"I heard nothing about that."

"I heard nothing about it. But I saw her in the corridor. There's no way that it was anyone but her. Who would dare use a glamour of her or Polyjuice, when it would make the Aurors hunt any visitors to her cell down?"

For a long moment, he thought Susana would challenge him, but in the end, she nodded and spelled a quill into her hand with the same precision as she had closed the door. "What do you want me to find out?"

"Ideally, when she escaped and who occupies her cell now," Lucius said, and leaned back in the chair as he watched Susana began to write far more than what he'd told her. Then again, he would never have employed someone who couldn't manage to have some of her own ideas. "At the very least, a list of visitors she had in the last five years." He took, from his sleeve, the folded letter that he had received from the Death Eater who had been working with the Dark Lord, inviting him into the resurrection plot. "This also isn't her handwriting, but she may have disguised it with a charm. I want you to see if you can break the charm without destroying the letter altogether."

Susana nodded, her shorn brown hair bobbing around her ears as she examined the letter. "They've made some advances in those spells lately. I should have the answers about who wrote this to you as soon as possible."

"That will be acceptable." Lucius hesitated for a moment. "I am working with Harry Potter."

Susana glanced up, her face paling with shock. "That is news. What do you want me to do about it?"

"At the moment? Nothing. But you might consider talking to the rest of your people, and seeing if they would be interested in coming out of hiding to ally with the Boy-Who-Lived."

Susana snorted very softly, but only shook her head when Lucius glared at her. "You know what we're waiting for."

"A prophecy that may never come to fruition."

"We have longer lives than you do, Lucius. We can afford to wait." Most of the time since he'd discovered her secret and put her to work to pay for his silence, Susana seemed frustrated when she talked about this, but now she only smiled at him, teeth smaller and sharper than a human's. "We are patient."

"The war that will consume the wizarding world--"

"Could be as bad as the first one, yes, I know. And we will weather it as we weathered that first one."

"Would it not be easier with help?"

"If your people would help mine, instead of only make them labor without pay, or try to turn them into another kind of house-elf." Susana was writing as she talked, looking at her parchment instead of Lucius. It was only one of her many infuriating habits. "But I know that's not going to happen. Look at the way you treat all other creatures."

"You could make a difference in--"

"So could you, but you've never chosen to make that difference."

Lucius leaned back with a small frown. He knew he could score a coup with Potter by introducing Susana's people to his cause. It would equal the possible luring-in to his side of the werewolves that he knew Lupin had been sent to accomplish. But he had no way to force Susana to surrender.

"Here, then," said Susana, and turned the parchment so he could see it. "Tell me if this is what you want."

Lucius read it over slowly, more to irritate Susana than anything else. Given how calm she remained, it didn't work. But it did look like it could be a remarkably complete list of visitors to Bellatrix's cell.

The problem was, none of them immediately stood out as a Death Eater. Lucius had expected to see Walden Macnair on it, or perhaps someone else who had managed to survive the purges unsuspected and still worked in the Ministry. But it was only the Ministers on their annual inspections, and Aurors, and the so-called Dementor "expert" who also came once a year in order to make sure the creatures weren't breeding. Lucius sat back, baffled.

"How did you assemble this information so fast?" he asked Susana, although he already knew she wouldn't tell him.

She didn't. She bared small teeth at him, and didn't answer.

Lucius sighed and took the list with him. It wasn't a bad start for his investigation into Bellatrix, and perhaps one of the names would provide extra insight later that it didn't seem able to provide right now.

*

Elena smiled as she looked over the careful letter Harry had sent her. Perhaps the boy was getting advice from someone with more political experience than he had. But Elena was sure the core of the letter was all him.

Dear Mrs. Zabini,

I understand why you might think that it would be a good idea for me and Blaise to get married, but I don't think it would be a good idea for either of us. Blaise might still think of himself as my enemy sometimes, and resent that he had to leave Hogwarts. And I can't think about getting married so young.

But it would be a great idea if you could work on a magical means of testing loyalty for me. Professor Snape said it's never been done, because it's too variable. But we really need something like that! Otherwise, it's going to be impossible to tell if any of the ex-Death Eaters are actually reformed or not.

Would you be willing to do it? It could be a potion, or a mirror, or a bracelet, or any other kind of thing. But we really need to be able to test someone's motives.

Thank you,
Harry.

He divined what was behind my request easily enough. Elena stood and stretched her arms towards the ceiling. She had grown bored waiting for some more movement on the political front. She did want a challenge, and in the absence of any real one, stirring up Harry and his allies with her request would have done it for her.

But this was more than a request, more than a challenge. It would cure her boredom and tie her more closely to Harry all at once.

Not bad for a fourteen-year-old. Although his fifteenth birthday was soon, wasn't it? She would have to decide what to send him for a gift.

*

"Try it once again."

Harry lowered his head, feeling he was about to charge like a bull. Fleur stood to one side, her face calm and expectant. But considering she had looked like that all the way through his other failures, Harry couldn't take it as a sign that he might succeed this time.

He snapped his wand furiously at the air and barked the incantation for the feather magic they'd been working on all this time, trying to send as much willpower as possible into the spell.

To his shock, it worked. The air in front of him shimmered and became covered with what looked like a film of calm smoke. Then the smoke dissolved and turned sideways, and Harry was staring at a curtain of purple feathers with glittering edges that completely blocked his view of Fleur.

"Formidable!" breathed Fleur, and then laughed and stepped around the curtain of feathers, grinning at Harry. "Perhaps I should have realized this, non? These feathers, they are not bird feathers. They are Occamy."

Harry blinked for a minute, then grinned. "Yeah, we should have thought about that earlier. I suppose being a Parselmouth--"

"Affects the magic, yes." Fleur nodded to him and walked around the curtain of feathers again. "You will be able to do it better now? You will think of feathered serpents. That will help." She abruptly glanced around the classroom as if just now realizing that Dash wasn't here. "Where is your other serpent?"

"He said he had something to do." Harry hadn't been able to help his suspicions, but Dash had nudged him gently with his nose, and they were trying to give each other some more freedom. He couldn't do what Dash wanted all the time, and he couldn't make Dash do what he wanted.

Fleur shrugged it away and pointed at the Occamy feathers. "Make them move from side to side. That is the only way to be sure they can be useful to you in the middle of battle, and able to turn a charm..."

Harry gladly concentrated on the feathers, and ignored the little creeping prickle of worry up his spine that happened whenever Dash wasn't there. He was away doing something that he had said would help. He had sworn it.

*

Severus stepped back from his cupboard with his eyes narrowed. He knew he had had more quails' eggs than that. They were a good, neutral base material to practice his experimental potions on. They reacted in extremely predictable ways to even the most concentrated or lethal ingredients, and they would never explode.

On the other hand, they were also among the cheapest ingredients. It seemed bizarre that anyone would sink to stealing them from his supply cupboard.

He turned around abruptly when he heard a little scraping sound, only to stop as he saw Dash crawling towards him, his head lifted carefully above the stone. His mouth was full of small oval objects. Severus ignored the impulse to let his hand tighten on his wand as he realized that he had only heard that scrape of scales because Dash had been prepared to let him hear it.

"You make too little noise for a snake so large."

Dash crawled up to his feet without responding in any way, and then lowered his head. The small round objects spilled out. Quails' eggs. Far more than Severus was missing, which he understood at once. This was an apology for taking them in the first place.

He stared at Dash. "What would you want them for? You can't brew. You haven't any hands."

Dash only cocked his head in response, and again Severus understood. The body was a basilisk's, but the soul was that of one of the greatest brewers in existence, at least if Severus went by the traditions Slytherin House cherished. Of course he would find some use for eggs, and other Potions ingredients, when he had been Salazar Slytherin.

Shaking his head, Severus waved his wand so that the quails' eggs soared away and resumed the place of the taken ones on the shelf inside his supply cupboard. Meanwhile, Dash nudged him on the hip with a gentle head and flowed out of Severus's office as silently as he had come.

Snakes. With plans. And a need for an ingredient that could be used in so many potions, Severus had no means of figuring out what Dash planned to create without more help.

Severus loved Harry and was glad that he had taken him on as ward. But sometimes, he wished he could have done without the giant snake that invariably accompanied him.

*

Conflagration had had enough of being petted.

Draco let him go with a sigh. Dash had had a "talk" of some sort with him, and now he did spend more time around Draco, but he also disappeared into the wilderness of the dungeons almost the instant that he decided he'd had had enough interaction.

Draco stood up with a stretch. He had spent so much time at Hogwarts that his mother had demanded he come home. This was his last evening, his last meal for a while with Harry and Professor Snape. He hoped that his mother would at least let him come for Harry's birthday, though, and stay overnight. It was going to be magnificent, to hear Professor Snape tell it.

Well, to anyone who wasn't Harry. Harry had no idea of the extravagant birthday party being planned in his honor. According to Weasley and Granger, Harry had never had a great birthday party with his Muggle guardians. Professor Snape had immediately taken that as a challenge to plan one.

Draco had his doubts about whether Harry would actually want this, but everyone else was swept away by the grandeur of it, so he was letting his doubts go for now.

At least, if Harry acted like he was distressed, Draco had faith in Dash's ability to immediately take Harry out of there.

Draco jumped when he finally lowered his arms and saw Dash peeking silently through the doorway into his room. "Yes, what is it?" he asked, before remembering that they could only communicate if Harry was here.

But Dash eased his bulk inside as if he'd forgotten that, and came straight up to rub his head against Draco's chin. Draco calmed down as he petted him. Dash's scales were as sleek as water, and they ran more smoothly under his hand as Dash twined about him and ended up putting his head on Draco's shoulder.

Dash stayed there until he, too, seemed to have decided he'd had enough petting, and slid away. Draco blinked, though, when his tail stayed behind, and uncoiled to drop something on the floor with a small thump. Draco bent down towards it.

It was an egg, white but sparkling with patterns of green and blue.

Draco looked at Dash, his throat clogged with hope. Dash bobbed his head in deliberate exaggeration, and kept doing it while Draco picked the egg up. The green colors of the Slytherin dungeon seemed to make the egg greener, and Draco tilted it very carefully up to the light, waiting for Dash to disapprove. He stayed still, though.

And against the light, Draco made out the shape of a small baby snake curled in the shell. He couldn't see much, but certainly he saw the edge of a flared hood, like Conflagration's.

"You made this for me?" he whispered, not taking his eyes from the baby snake.

Dash thumped his tail.

"Why now?" Draco lowered the egg to cradle it against his chest and turned to stare at Dash. "Why did you make this for me now, when you didn't want to do it before?"

Dash answered by twining his neck around Draco's neck again. It was a slow slide, so slow that Draco had time to think, and by the time Dash let him go and dropped to the floor again, he was sure he knew.

Dash had done this because he liked Draco. Purely, for no more reason than that. It was the same way Harry would make these ridiculously lavish gestures. What mattered to him was making someone he liked happy, not what other people would think.

Draco swallowed. His mouth was wet, but not for the usual reason. "Thank you."

Dash turned his head a little more, and then reached back to a coil of his body Draco didn't think he'd used earlier and plucked out a piece of parchment. Draco took it and read it as he half-watched Dash slither out of the room.

Dash says you need to keep the egg as warm as possible and carry it with you whenever you can. If your parents make you leave it in your room sometimes, then make sure you put it back in your shirt when you return. That's important, as it will make the snake bond to you as well as keep it alive.

Draco sighed and closed his eyes. Harry hadn't said anything about when Dash would give him an egg, probably because he hadn't known exactly when it would be ready, but his words were there all the same, curling up along Draco's spine and reverberating in his head as if he'd spoken them.

This is what it's like to be loved.

*

Harry stared at Severus. "What?"

"You can't go in the lab right now," Severus said, and whisked him around so that Harry was facing down the corridor. "Why don't you go outside and fly? Or practice feather magic. Young Miss Delacour was telling me about your prowess with it last night at dinner."

Harry blinked and let himself be shoved. He did glance over his shoulder, wondering if there was some delicate potion brewing that Severus didn't want him interfering with, but all he saw was the shut door.

Okay then. He basically gave me permission to have fun. Which means I don't need to attend to my studies if I don't want to.

Harry paused, then grinned. There were some things he'd barely done this summer, even with Draco and Ron and Hermione in and out of Hogwarts. He ran out of the dungeons, out of the main door, and onto the grounds, where Dash joined him. There were several suspiciously large shapes in the middle of his body.

Have you been hunting in the Forbidden Forest again?

I no longer need to enter. I wait outside and the smell and fear of me stampedes them into the open.

Harry eyed the shapes again as he made his way towards Hagrid's house. One of the lumps looked like it was cat-shaped. Their fear makes them run towards you? How does that work?

Haven't you heard of the way snakes charm birds? Dash swayed his head from side to side. It has a lot to do with that.

Harry would have asked more questions, but they'd reached Hagrid's hut and Dash stabbed his head out to knock with his nose. Harry shrugged. He supposed he could get the truth out of Dash later. At least his hunger was satisfied, which meant he wouldn't make any suggestive remarks about Fang.

Dash ducked his head and looked at Harry with only one covered, glowing yellow eye. What kind of suggestive remarks did you want me to make? Do you need help planning all the things you and Draco can do together?

Harry had only managed to splutter out one denial when Hagrid banged the door open and announced in a booming voice, "Look who's here! Dash and Harry!"

Hagrid hadn't spent much time with Dash lately, which meant he was probably going to coo over him and ask about how big a boy he was growing up to be and lots of other questions that Harry would have no part in. Amused, Harry sat on a bench in the corner and petted Fang, who was cowering underneath the bench. Dash let Hagrid pet him and examine the lumps in his belly and say all sorts of things that Harry normally couldn't imagine his basilisk taking from anyone.

Most people who would say such things would only do it to ingratiate themselves with you or with me. Hagrid, though, has genuine interest in me for myself alone.

That's certainly true, Harry thought, as Hagrid demanded to see Dash's fangs and promptly cooed, "Who has the longest and most poisonous teeth in the world, then?" No one was ever going to suspect Hagrid of not caring about Dash for himself.

Dash ended up sprawled along the floor while Hagrid rubbed his stomach, keeping away from the lumps of animals once Harry told Hagrid that was a little sensitive. Harry watched them with a little smile. They both looked utterly content. He wished he could feel that way.

You look this way when your Draco is around.

Harry blinked. That surprised him. Of course, it wasn't like he'd ever hauled along a mirror and stared at his own face when he and Draco were together. I don't remember feeling content when we sat like this.

What did you feel like, then?

Harry's face burned. Lately, at least half of what Dash said to him turned into this kind of trap. You know! I mean...you're there! You know! You can feel it down the bond!

I want you to describe it for me. It'll make for good practice when you have to write something in an essay.

Harry buried his head in his hands and groaned. Hagrid glanced up at once, his eyes kind. "Coming down with a stomachache or something, Harry?"

"No, just a headache," Harry lied, and glared at Dash around his fingers. You like Draco! You like me! You're not supposed to want to embarrass us!

Friends can embarrass each other all the time. Or half of the ways you interact with Hermione would be illegal.

Harry sighed, and then spent ten minutes trying to fend off Hagrid's offers of headache remedies and suggestions that he ask Severus for a potion and demands to know what Madam Pomfrey had said the last time he visited the hospital wing. At least Hagrid spent the rest of the visit fussing over Dash, who apparently wasn't digesting things fast enough.

When they left, Harry ignored the way Dash poked him in the ribs with his nose like the way he'd knocked on Hagrid's door. I'll talk to you when you can think of something less embarrassing to say.

There's an owl coming towards you.

That's just strange, not less embarrassing--

Harry found himself forced to cut off as the owl braked to a stop in front of him, hooting, and hovered down onto his arm. Harry glared at Dash and then took the letter away. His breath sped up when he saw the official Ministry seal on it.

Dash wasn't staring dreamily at the owl with plots of eating it in the back of his mind, the way he usually did. His voice was sharp and thready with concern, in fact. Maybe you ought to let Severus advise you on opening that before you do.

Can you smell any poison or Dark magic that was used on it?

There was a noticeable pause and a lot of flickering of Dash's tongue before he said reluctantly, No. But that doesn't mean it's a good idea to just randomly open something with the Ministry seal.

Harry snorted and ripped the seal open. There was a soft puff of magic and air that had him tensing for a minute, but he remembered what Severus had said once; that was just a way for the Ministry to be sure their letter had been delivered to the right person. It would set off a ward of some sort back in an office to tell them.

Harry read the letter quickly, and then more slowly. He wasn't sure he understood it. The first paragraph was just Ministry puffery about how they were so glad to let him know the news, and the last one was about how they wished they could help him in the future, but the middle--

Does that really say what I think it says?

Dash draped his chin over Harry's shoulder to look. Keep in mind that I'm limited by your understanding of it.

Harry nodded curtly. But after a second, Dash said, As far as I can read the literal words, yes. They've found Cyan Scimgeour guilty of no wrongdoing, and when they went to tell him so, they found him vanished from his cell. I'm not sure what part of that is more concerning, that they thought he was innocent or that he disappeared.

Both could be, Harry said, and began to run towards Severus's quarters. He really hoped the man was done with whatever potion he was brewing. Harry needed help on how to react to this.

Chapter 108: Spinning Shadows

Chapter Text

“What do you think is worse, sir? The Wizengamot declaring Scrimgeour innocent, or someone helping him escape?”

Severus turned around from staring into the fireplace. “I thought I told you to call me Severus.”

Harry had to smile, in a way that not even Dash coiling around his leg had made him able to do. Severus would always be focused on things like that, even in the middle of a serious conversation. “Sorry. Severus.” He paused. “I still want to know which one you think is worse.”

“The Wizengamot,” Severus finally murmured. “We knew you had enemies, and it is not entirely surprising that someone kidnapped an attacker of yours out of the Ministry so that they might use him as an asset. It might not even have been Death Eaters.” He looked hard at Harry. “But that the Wizengamot declined to condemn the man who attacked you in front of so many witnesses is—concerning.”

Harry heard all the emotions underneath that statement, and nodded. “And we knew there are Death Eaters out there.”

“Yes.” Severus hesitated once. Then he said, “I have been considering whether you need more…extensive training in curses and defensive magic than you have received. We did well to strike Voldemort the way we did, and next time, he will be warier. We should use this time while he recovers from his wounds to train you.”

Harry blinked. “I thought you were going to say that I needed to learn Occlumency.”

“With Dash’s power shielding the Horcrux and your connection, I do not think it the requirement of most concern.” Severus looked at him evenly. “I do not wish to hide anything from you.”

Dash twined up Harry’s leg to his hip, tongue flicking out so that it touched Harry’s wrist. Harry didn’t need the comfort or the silent offering of reality, though. He swallowed. “You mean that you’d teach me Dark Arts.”

“Yes. I do.” Severus’s eyes and voice were both quiet.

Harry looked away and asked a question he’d wondered about, and hadn’t been able to find an answer to in any books. “Are Dark Arts actually a defense against Dark Arts? If you get addicted to them, and you get corrupted by them, it seems like I should just learn countercurses and the Light Arts. That way, I don’t turn into a copy of Voldemort.”

Dash sent a wordless wave of delight down the bond. Harry blinked. He’d thought Dash would be more enthusiastic about him learning the Dark Arts than that, especially since Slytherin must have practiced them during his lifetime.

I am glad that you’re thinking. You might have to learn them in the end, but you thought about it instead of rushing in!

Your approval is noted. Harry turned to face Severus. “Sir?” Sometimes calling him by a title would make Severus answer the question. Right now, he was just staring into the fire again.

Severus swallowed and turned to face him. “It’s a legitimate question. But you might consider the fact that three adults you have known have learned the Dark Arts and not been corrupted by them.”

Harry tilted his head. “Who? I mean, you, but who else?”

“Filius knows more than his fair share of them.” Severus smiled a little, probably at the expression on Harry’s face. “He could not be a dueling champion if he did not. Most of the competitions have a restriction only on fatal spells, not on whether those spells are Light or Dark. He had to know to them to survive.” Severus hesitated one more time, then added, “And Dumbledore knew many curses.”

“You’d say—”

“If anything, what corrupted him was too great a reliance on the ideals of the Light, the words instead of the substance. Declaring you serve the greater good does little to redeem your methods of doing so.”

Harry nodded uncertainly. “But what’s different about you and Professor Flitwick and—Dumbledore from the other Death Eaters? Or Voldemort?”

“Because we have more self-control. Or had.” Severus gave a slight shrug and turned to prowl around the room. “Voldemort never did. He sought power, and if that power came from corrupting and torturing others, he was probably more pleased. Filius had the competitions to restrict him in what he learned and what he did with the spells. Albus had the expectations of his public reputation.” He paused.

“All right,” said Harry. “What was your reason?”

“Your mother.”

Harry felt his cheeks flush, and looked the other way. They hadn’t spoken very often about the way Severus thought about his parents. He cleared his throat. “Even though—you weren’t close after she married my dad?”

“She was always in my memory. I only had to think about what she would say concerning a particular spell, and I would see her smiling or frowning. It didn’t always keep me from using curses, but it made me draw back when I had a risk of addiction.”

Harry just nodded a little. He didn’t think he knew the right thing to say yet. “All right. When do you want my tutoring to start?”

“It can be after your birthday. You have enough to think about with that coming up.”

Harry turned his head in Severus’s direction, blinking. “You don’t have to do anything huge for it, you know. It’ll just be nice celebrating it with someone who thinks I deserve presents for it.”

Severus’s face grew still, and Dash chuckled into his head. You’re not going to lessen his desire to celebrate it by talking about the Dursleys. The other way around, if anything.

Harry only shrugged helplessly, because the way he felt was the way he felt. Severus said, “We will do something pleasant. Now, come see if you can help me identify some of the messes left in these cauldrons. I’ve put off tackling them all summer to see if the mess would come to life and crawl out on its own.”

Harry smiled a little and followed Severus. It was wonderful how good chores could feel, when they were magical and he was doing them with someone else.

*

Severus sighed and flexed his hand. It was late, Harry was in bed, and a mild potion plus the wine he was drinking would soon heal the pain in his wrist from scrubbing cauldrons all afternoon.

He sipped his wine while thoughts cascaded through his head. The plans for Harry’s birthday party were in place. He didn’t have to think much about what Dark Arts he would teach Harry, because he still remembered with shimmering clarity what spells he had been taught, and in what order. The older Slytherins who had taught him had done so with the goal of avoiding addiction. Severus would trim the list of spells a little. That would be sufficient.

The left only one thing to think about, one thing he did not want to think about.

Bellatrix Lestrange was more than likely behind Cyan Scrimgeour’s escape. She had been in the Ministry, she had somehow escaped from Azkaban, and she had enough skills in casting the Imperius Curse to avoid any negative consequences from being a fugitive herself.

But they had no proof.

Severus clenched his hand into a fist. Not only did they have no proof, Harry had appointed Lucius to handle the investigation into Bellatrix. That meant Severus interfering would be seen as an intrusion, and that would probably mean an argument between him and Lucius that they wouldn’t recover from.

Severus abruptly stopped, staring at the far wall. There was a long moment when his heartbeat was louder than the fire’s crackling.

The last time he had had thoughts about interfering with someone else’s assigned task and irritating them permanently was when he had still been a Death Eater, struggling to prove himself and climb in the ranks.

Severus swallowed some more wine, and attempted to banish the image from his thoughts. No. No. That didn’t mean Harry was in line to become some kind of Dark Lord. It only meant that Severus had habits of mind he hadn’t wrenched into line to fit with the new status quo yet.

Fourteen years is a long time to not recognize a new status quo.

Grimly, Severus picked up a book. If this was the only thing he could think about, then he would just have to fill his mind with new thoughts.

*

“And then I told her that I would be happy to help her, but my cousin’s wedding was that weekend, and there was no way I could help her and still be on time for the wedding, and my cousin would never forgive me for being late, so that meant…”

Lucius sat back with a grimace of frustration and pretended interest in his victim’s babblings for the rest of the conversation. He had been seeking out Ministry workers who had a need for money or were known for having silent sympathy for the Dark Lord in the last war. There was more of a chance that they would help Bellatrix.

But so far, every lead had dissolved into conversations like this one. The “mysterious woman” his victims had helped hadn’t been Bellatrix at all, but only relatives or friends unknown to the majority of the Ministry whose identities they preferred to keep private.

Luckily, thanks to the little potion Lucius had been pouring into their drinks, they would prattle everything to him and have no memory of the conversation later. But it was boring to sit and listen to.

Lucius sighed and looked out the frosted glass door of the little café where he had brought his victim, a flunkey who worked in the Department for the Regulation and Control of Magical Creatures. A second later, he found himself sitting up and balling his fists on the table. His breathing came short. The man across from him didn’t notice.

“…And she said fine, I didn’t have to help her, but that meant I wouldn’t get an invitation to her party, and I told her the truth, that my wife doesn’t like her anyway and would prefer she never come around again, and she said….”

Hooded and cloaked wizards might be a more common sight in Knockturn Alley than Diagon, but they weren’t uncommon here, and Lucius would normally have ignored the one he’d seen moving beyond the door. The cloak was heavy, the hood so deeply shading the face that Lucius could only catch a glimpse of a grey beard. That was hardly conclusive.

But still he was sure, remembered that stride and that particular hunch of shoulders from too many Death Eater meetings. Fenrir Greyback was stalking Diagon Alley.

Lucius dropped a few coins on the table, enough to cover the cost of the tea and his victim’s twice over, and stepped outside against the barrage of words from behind him.

“…didn’t understand why I couldn’t take back what I said about her Uncle Eric, and I said…”

Lucius pulled his own hood over his head the minute he was outside, and took a moment to cast the only charm he knew that might partially conceal his scent. He didn’t think he had that much to worry about, anyway. Greyback had complained often, to all who would listen, about how difficult it was to track a single person in a crowd of this size.

He slowed down his breathing and followed Greyback into Knockturn.

The minute the werewolf passed into the shadow of the darker alley, he threw his head back—although still not removing the hood—and strode along more freely. Lucius made his own pace more meandering, and turned frequently to look into the dusty windows at the displays of poisons and weapons. No doubt it was Greyback now.

Lucius had no desire to be caught in his reconnaissance. It would be enough to study the establishment Greyback entered.

Greyback went much further down the alley than Lucius had thought he would; both the businesses that catered specifically to werewolves and the shops holding most Dark potions ingredients and the like were near the entrance. But he finally came to a stop and reached out to knock on the door of reinforced oak that guarded a small building with only one floor. He tapped in a quick rhythm Lucius didn’t bother to memorize. He could get it from his own Pensieve memories later.

The door opened, and a flood of cold air poured out; Lucius could feel it even from here. Greyback growled something and stepped inside. The door shut, and Lucius sighed and wandered into a bookshop to cover his shock.

When he was on his way back up the alley, a book of delicate sketches he thought Narcissa might enjoy tucked under his arm, he let himself think more about the building.

He didn’t know for certain, since it bore neither name nor address, but he had his suspicions. That was most likely a lodging house for those whose names might cause the Aurors to sit up and take notice.

And where Greyback had gone once, he might return.

*

Draco tucked the egg closely against his chest and smiled up at his mother. His mother gave him a small, calm smile back, and reached over to smooth his hair out of his eyes.

“I’m glad to have you back with me,” she murmured, “even though I understand that you must have enjoyed your stay at Hogwarts.”

Draco nodded and took a bite of the raspberries his mother had insisted he have for breakfast this morning. He didn’t think she really believed he had eaten well at Hogwarts, even though the elves had been thrilled to have another person to feed during the summer.

He glanced around the breakfast room. It was a soft blue color that made the sunlight falling through the window shimmer. It had a small table with room for only two chairs, both of them slim and made of delicate white wood. He had only seen his parents eat here when he was younger and they wanted some privacy.

“Why are we here, Mother?”

Narcissa put down her teacup and fixed her eyes on him. “I have the feeling that your father knows more about this than I do. But his thoughts and my thoughts on it are not necessarily the same.”

Draco stared at her, wary. “Thoughts about what?”

“Why have you chosen Harry Potter as the one to spend the rest of your life with?”

Draco could have cooked an egg on his cheeks. He cleared his throat. “Um—um. I mean, we’re dating. That d-doesn’t mean we’re going to spend the rest of our lives together.”

“I know Malfoys, and the look in your eyes is the same that your father wore when he looked at me as a young woman, before we married.”

“Mother, I really, really didn’t need to know that,” Draco whispered. He buried his head in his hands. He might have tried to flee the table, but, well, his mother would only come after him.

“I can think of several reasons you might have chosen him. But I wanted to talk with you and hear them from you first.”

“Motherrrrr.”

“What have I told you about whining, Draco Malfoy?”

“Not to do it,” Draco muttered, and lifted his head with a sigh. “I just—look, I’m not thinking about marrying him, Mother.”

“Does he know that?”

Draco shook his head roughly and scrubbed his hand over his face. “I don’t really know. I just—Mother, it was so hard not to want to date him. The way he was a Parselmouth and stood up to the whole school about it. And he likes me back. And he agreed to be my friend even though we’d been enemies for years. And he includes me when his friends are doing something. And he has Dash. And he looks at me with his eyes…” Draco trailed off.

He didn’t think he had the words for the way Harry’s eyes looked when he was staring at Draco, and if he did, he certainly wouldn’t share them with his mother.

“Well.” Narcissa picked up her cup again and sipped from it. “That explains some of the choices you’ve made, and soothes some of the fears I had.” She reached out and delicately trailed her fingers over Draco’s forehead and down his cheek. “And in the meantime, I will make every effort to support you and ensure that your Harry wins the war.”

Draco blinked. “I thought you were already doing that.”

“I was supporting his efforts because your father wanted to be free and I believe it would be better if the Dark Lord never returns. That, and my cousin Sirius cares for Harry. But I wasn’t convinced that it would be a good thing for you to date him.”

Draco opened his mouth to demand how the two things could possibly be different, then ended up closing it again, with a sigh. Hadn’t he just thought how difficult it would be to make Mother understand? He would give up on the words.

“I’ve finished breakfast. May I be excused?”

“Yes, of course. I know that you probably want to go back to your bedroom and warm the egg before the fire.”

Draco stood up and stared at her. Narcissa gave him a faint smile and reached out to touch his forehead again. “Remember that mothers notice more than you think, dear.”

If Draco didn’t have the words to explain how he felt about Harry to his mother, he especially didn’t have words to explain about the egg, when he didn’t know what sort of snake it was going to hatch into. He ended up smiling in a way that was probably shaky and going back to his room.

And he did warm the egg before the fire. But more because that was what Dash had said to do instead of it being because his mother had said so.

He thought so, anyway.

*

“Do you feel that you have anything more to learn from us?”

Sirius fixed his eyes on the carpet in front of him. It was a complex pattern of intertwining shells and flowers, and he had looked at it before when he was trying to work out a problem and needed to distract his mind.

This time, it wouldn’t be distracted. His thoughts only orbited the problem, and Sirius finally looked up and said, “No.”

“Why not?” Lughborn held out an etched glass of hot chocolate to Sirius, who took it and sipped at it.

“Because I’ve learned basic lessons so many times. And you never told me there were any more complex lessons. When I asked about other things I should be learning, you told me I would have to live them to learn them.”

Lughborn’s face remained uncomplicated and serene, but Sirius knew there could still be unpleasant surprises hiding under that expression. “Do you feel ready to learn and live them?”

Sirius licked his lips. He had thought he was before, and had had to come back here a few times, like when he looked an article that mentioned Severus Snape being Harry’s “adopted father” and exploded half the room with his magic. But now, he could feel those lessons and meditations he’d learned carefully enclosing some of his temper in chains.

The rest of his temper, he would just have to learn to live with.

“Yes,” he said, and looked up.

Lughborn put down his own glass on the low table between them. His face wore a slight smile now. “Good. I think you are right. There are no more complex lessons that you need to learn. Your problem was deep, but not wide-ranging, if that makes sense.”

“Yeah. And I know that it’s—going to take time. For me to make things up to Harry and for him to accept me.”

“As long as you know that, then I have few qualms with letting you return to England. You should keep in mind that you will continue to need Healers, if only to supply you with Calming Draughts. Unless you are going to learn to brew them yourself?”

“No. Um. Potions isn’t—fun for me.” Sirius had to leave unsaid that he despised Potions because it was Snape’s favorite subject.

“Then you will keep in regular contact with a Healer.” Lughborn turned and gathered up a clump of parchments from the floor beside his chair. With a sinking heart, Sirius watched him flip through them. “These are the other potions that will be good for you to have on hand when you feel as if your magic might escape from you.”

Sirius flipped through the parchments himself. Dreamless Sleep. Pepper-Up Potion. The Draught of Peace. Half of them he’d only heard of because Lughborn had made him take them in the past few months. He dropped the stack. “You’re saying I need to spend the rest of my life on potions?”

“I’m saying that you need to spend as much of your life as necessary, because they will help you avoid repeating your mistakes.”

Sirius only opened his mouth until he remembered the look in Harry’s eyes after Remus had almost bitten him. He winced and nodded. “All right. I’ll make sure that I’m in contact with—Healers and brewers.” He wasn’t going to ask Snape to brew for him any more than Snape would be willing to do so.

“When you think you are ready, then you can try living your life without the potions,” Lughborn murmured. “But until then, I would hold your mental calm more important than any hypothetical freedom you may have without these.”

Sirius thought about it, then resolutely tucked the parchments into his pocket and reached out to shake Lughborn’s hand. “Thank you. Do you think I could make it back to Britain in time for Harry’s birthday?”

“Yes. But you should consider telling him you’re coming, not simply walking into any celebration his friends may be holding and surprising him.”

Sirius nodded fervently. That would be tempting, if only to see Snape’s face, but…

The one he really wanted to see was Harry’s, smiling at him.

He would do anything to achieve that.

Chapter 109: Happy Birthday, Harry

Chapter Text

Lucius gave a bored sigh and looked down his nose at the Azkaban guard who had challenged him. “I don’t actually need to be here, as I’m sure you realize.”

“Then why are you?”

There is no helping some people. “Because I wish to check on the condition of my sister-in-law.” Lucius shifted the folds of his cloak from one side to the other, and let a brief glimpse of Galleons flash in his palm. About seventy-five percent of the Aurors were bribable, from what he knew. If this was one of the unfortunate twenty-five that weren’t, then Lucius was handy with a Memory Charm.

“Oh. Of course. We don’t get a lot of...family visitors here.” The Auror dipped his head in a little bow, and his hand at the same time. At least he’s adept at the important part, Lucius thought, sliding the money over. “What’s her name?”

“Bellatrix Lestrange.”

The Auror straightened and shivered. He tried to hide it with a smile, but Lucius only raised his eyebrow. The Auror shook his head and decided, as most of them did, that he owed Lucius a few answers as well as no questions. “No need to look up the way to her cell. I can hear her cackling every night from here.”

Then what has replaced Bellatrix cannot simply be someone under permanent Polyjuice, Lucius decided as he listened to the directions and began to stride down the corridor. That would not implement the correct behavior.

Of course, there was the possibility that enough exposure to Dementors would make anyone cackle with insanity, but from what Lucius saw, that was not the case. A lot of the prisoners he passed simply huddled in their cells, staring straight ahead. Others rocked with their hands on their heads. A few jumped and shrieked when they saw him, or stretched out pleading hands.

“I didn’t mean to kill him! The pot fell! It was accidental magic!”

“How was I supposed to know that curse was illegal on Muggles? They never told me!”

“I don’t—don’t remember, but it wasn’t that bad, surely it wasn’t this bad…”

Lucius ignored them all except for a slight wrinkling of his nose. The Auror walking in front of him acted as though he saw nothing but the expanse of slimy grey corridor that separated them from Bellatrix’s cell, and maybe the Galleons that still clinked in his pocket. He stopped around a corner and gestured ahead.

“There she is.”

“You will not be accompanying me?”

“It’s bad enough hearing her.”

The man mumbled that as he turned away, which Lucius had to admit piqued his curiosity. He walked around the corner expecting almost anything. Perhaps something that would only come to life when a human and not a Dementor was nearby. Or perhaps a sophisticated golem.

But he didn’t have his expectations extended far enough. He felt a sharp tingle on his shoulder, a tightening and flashing of senses that he hadn’t used in years. Lucius halted with a hand on his wand. The last time he had felt something like that was during the Dark Lord’s first war, when he had created defenses that would coil around one of their headquarters and ensnare the minds of any Aurors who came seeking them, rather like a place-bound Confundus.

This was on the cell. Lucius stood still, sorting through his impressions with care. When he moved forwards again, it was only because he was sure of what was in front of him.

The bars of Bellatrix’s cell gleamed. They were less grimy than the others. It didn’t look as though she—or whoever really crouched there in place of Bellatrix—had clutched them as much as the other prisoners. Lucius knelt down to stare at the bundle of grey and black robes in the cell.

“Bellatrix?” he asked, as an experiment.

The spells inside the cell at once engaged and slid around each other, triggered by the sound of her name. Lucius heard a wild cackle and saw a face lunging at him, with wide dark eyes and gibbering, foaming lips.

But that was only with one part of himself. When he concentrated hard enough, he saw and heard the truth, which was a cluster of shadows that remained motionless in the cell, boiling with illusion but wrapped around something that didn’t move.

It can’t be a corpse. That would have started to smell by now. Lucius knew from experience with the Dark Lord’s maze spells that unexpected, startling sensory input would cut through the enchantment. The smell of a corpse qualified, or blood in places that were supposed to look peaceful.

So Lucius remained still, not drawing back from the gibbering face, and in the end that glamour dissolved entirely and he saw beyond it. In the center of the cell was a black stone, carved with runes that shimmered and sputtered. Silver light, a mark of the same enchantment that had guarded the Dark Lord’s headquarters, yes.

But this one produced the illusion of Bellatrix Lestrange in the cell. Lucius thought that it hadn’t been discovered before because all other Death Eaters of the Inner Circle were in cells next to this one or had reasons for staying away and not visiting.

Lucius gave a faint smile and stood. This had been worth coming here to learn. But he wanted to make sure of something else before he left.

By the time he passed the Auror on guard duty again in order to depart, he was full with knowledge. The Auror shuddered at him. “Right bitch, isn’t she?” he muttered, not seeming to care that he was talking to a family member.

Then again, given how both the illusory and real Bellatrix behaved, Lucius could hardly blame him.

“An interesting experience,” Lucius agreed blandly, and strode from the prison to the point where the boat waited to take him back to the mainland.

He was smiling even as the foam and wind lashed into his face on the way back, which made the boatmen eye him uneasily. Lucius didn’t care. His head was also filled and humming with the knowledge.

Rodolphus and Rabastan Lestrange had illusion spells wrapped around rune-caved rocks in their cells, too.

*

Harry yawned and poked Dash when Dash poked him. Leave me alone. It’s my birthday. I don’t have to get up early if I don’t want to.

You have to when all your friends are going to be here to honor you.

Harry turned so that his face was buried in his pillow. None of them are going to be here until noon. I mean, except you and Severus, and you’re always around.

Light laughter came down the bond, and then Dash slapped Harry’s back with his tail. It stung like a whip. Harry yelped and jumped out of bed. “You didn’t have to do that! Even if I insulted you!”

I do not regard it as insulting. This whole interaction is amusing. Be grateful that my tail did not land on your arse.

Harry rubbed the stinging welt he now had and scowled at Dash’s back as he let himself fall off the bed and slither towards the far wall. Fine, fine. Let me take a shower and I’ll be out.

As he’d expected, Dash insisted on getting into the shower and splashing around in the warm water for a few minutes before he got out again. Harry watched him thoughtfully as he wrung the wetness out of his hair with a towel. “Would you like a large pool where you can swim around? One that’s heated, I mean, so you don’t get cold?”

It only took you this long to notice!

Well, you could have asked for it, Harry snapped, and pulled on his clothes while Dash sulkily looked at the wall. At any time. It’s not like you’re limited like an ordinary snake. You don’t even technically have to communicate with just a Parselmouth.

It’s tiring and irritating to try to talk to someone else.

Do you ever regret your decision to come back as a basilisk? Wouldn’t a human have been easier? Hands to carry things with, a voice that you could use to talk to anyone else you wanted…

Dash hesitated for long enough that Harry raised his eyebrows at him. Then Dash said, The way I came back isn’t that simple, and doesn’t involve that much choice. He immediately slithered over to the door and looped a smaller coil of his body through the handle, tugging it open. Harry thoughtfully watched him disappear up the corridor.

He knew that Dash was Slytherin, and he’d benefited from some of that knowledge, but that didn’t mean he knew everything or even all the implications of putting a human soul in a basilisk body. Harry followed Dash down to Severus’s office for breakfast. Apparently they would need a bit more room for the meal than usual this morning.

When he opened the door of the office, he found out why.

“Happy birthday, Harry!”

Harry jumped in surprise as Hermione flew at him and hugged him. Behind her were Ron, and Fred, and George, and Ginny, and Molly, and Arthur, and Draco, of course, giving him a faint smile until the moment when he could lean forwards and kiss Harry. Harry was more than surprised not to get a hug from him at first, until he registered the fragile shape of the egg Draco was cradling beneath his shirt.

“We thought there was no reason to wait until noon,” Severus said, coming forwards with a small wrapped present that must be a potions vial, from the shape. “Open them first. Miss Granger almost expired at the thought of waiting to see what you would think.” He rolled his eyes, and Hermione flushed.

“I just want you to see mine, Harry,” she said earnestly. “That’s all.”

Harry smiled at her and opened the vial Severus had handed him. It looked like liquid sunlight trapped in glass. Enthralled, he tilted it back and forth. “Is this really Felix Felicis?” he asked. It was the only potion he could think of that looked even vaguely like this one.

“It is.” Severus leaned forwards and pinned Harry with the kind of stare that Harry knew meant he was looking at his guardian right now, not the man who comforted him with hugs. “You are to use it only in dire need, not simply because you feel like it.”

Harry nodded to him and then rapped the glass of the vial with his fingernail. It chimed in a way that glass didn’t, most of the time. “Spelled to be unbreakable?”

“Yes. I mean for you to carry it everywhere with you.” Severus glanced to the side, at an oddly-shaped package in golden wrapping paper. “It works well with Miss Granger’s gift, I think.”

“Hermione?” Harry smiled at her and picked it up, shaking it back and forth.

“You can’t do that! You’re not supposed to do that! It’ll ruin the surprise!”

Harry laughed and tore open the paper. He blinked when he saw the thin silver chain, and then lifted out a pendant that was shaped like a snake folded back on itself. He didn’t think it was meant to be a basilisk, but then again, it was so tiny that he might be missing some of the detail on the scales.

“Hermione?”

“I heard all this gossip last year,” said Hermione, and her voice was dark. “About how you could resist the Imperius Curse, but you probably couldn’t resist a love potion. And now that you’re dating Draco, I think it would be even worse for you to be subjected to one. Who knows what Draco would do?”

“That’s a fair point, Granger.”

“You know you call her Hermione all the time, Draco.”

Draco only frowned, as if to say that didn’t matter, and pointed at the pendant. “How does it protect Harry from love potions?”

“It has the antidote on its fangs,” Hermione said promptly. “You need to wear it next to your skin, Harry. That way, it can sense when your blood is affected by the ingredients in the most common love potions—and Amortentia. The woman who sold it to me specifically enchanted it to find that one. The snake will bite you if you’re being affected by a love potion and release the antidote into your blood.”

“That’s…pretty brilliant,” Harry breathed, and leaned in to hug her again. He knew that even more had changed than just her accepting Dash and that Draco was his boyfriend. That she would get him something shaped like a snake at all, and something that had to bite him in order to work its magic, said that she accepted Dash as Slytherin and the Slytherin tendencies Harry himself had.

“I thought so.” Hermione’s cheeks were pink. “And it does something else, too. Look, touch the snake’s tail.”

When Harry concentrated, he could see a small notch there. He pressed it, and a tiny compartment opened. No, Harry realized as he tilted the pendant, only the door was tiny. The whole snake was hollow, except for something solid at the far end that was probably the antivenin for the love potions.

“A rather good storage for the potions vial,” Severus said. “And you are not to let it out of your sight any more than you are the pendant.” He was staring at Harry as if he could force him to make the promise with the sheer strength of his gaze.

“I do promise,” Harry whispered, and slid the vial of Felix Felicis into the compartment. He clasped the tail shut and dropped the silver chain around his neck, arranging the snake so that it rested under his robes. “Thank you, Hermione. And Severus.”

Hermione beamed and hugged him again, and then Ron stepped towards him with a small cluster of grey feathers fastened around a circle of leather. Harry took it curiously. The feathers looked familiar, but he couldn’t place them.

“Errol died this summer.”

Harry snapped his head up. “I didn’t know that! I’m sorry, Ron.”

“He was old. Mum and Dad did get another owl.” Ron hesitated for a second, then plunged ahead. “But I was thinking about the feather magic that you’re learning, and I learned a little of it, too. Fleur…she’s dating Bill now. Or spending an awful lot of time around him. It’s harder to learn how to use feathers to defend yourself, but it’s not as hard to bind them to an object. So I made this for you. If someone casts a jinx at you, then it’ll block it. And then it’ll crumble away.” Ron frowned. “I’m not very good at making them yet.”

“You still have great ideas,” Harry said firmly, and draped the bracelet around his wrist. He looked warily at Fred and George, who were grinning for some reason. “Thanks, Ron.”

“You’re welcome.” Ron patted Harry on the shoulder and sat back in his chair, looking relieved that that was over.

Fred and George stepped forwards. They held a flask of what Harry thought for a second was Polyjuice, but it was a lighter brown color.

“For your birthday, Harrikins—”

“We thought you might like—”

“To have some fun!” Fred finished brightly, and tossed the entire flask over Harry.

Well, he might have managed to do that if Dash hadn’t reared up between them just then, and hissed loudly. The flask froze in midair, the liquid slamming against a shield and trickling down. Harry blinked and stared. The shield was made of small shadow-snakes that spread out around Dash’s head like a medusa’s hair. He had never seen that before.

I did not need to show it before, Dash snapped, and then moved forwards briskly, rearing right into Fred’s face and hissing at him. Fred turned a little pale, but leaned towards Dash and hissed back.

“That doesn’t mean anything, you know,” Harry said, desperate to say something to relieve the tension.

“Oh, I know,” said Fred, and reached out as if he would touch one of the shadow-snakes around Dash’s head. Dash ducked and moved back, snapping in what only Harry could tell was disgust. “I only wanted to know why he stopped your birthday surprise.”

I should have known that I wouldn’t frighten him.

“He stopped you, Mr. Weasley, because that potion would have ruined the other Mr. Weasley’s feather-charm, and quite possibly the necklace Miss Granger bought.” Severus’s voice was low and cold. Harry hadn’t heard it like that since the night he and Professor McGonagall and the others had battled Voldemort. “What were you thinking, releasing an experimental potion against valuable magic?”

“That we didn’t know they would give him those presents, and—” George offered.

“We wanted to give Harry the gift of an afternoon in snake form,” Fred finished, nodding. He stepped back from Dash, but even though his motion was respectful, Harry didn’t think he was afraid. “That potion would have turned him into a serpent. Just for the afternoon. Think of all the fun he and Dash could have playing together!” By the end of the speech, he was once again grinning mildly.

No! Harry snapped in turn, stopping Dash’s lunge just before it would have become visible to anyone else. I don’t want you to bite him or look at him or anything else. Besides, you would have to kill both of them. You know they thought this up together.

Trying to transform you into a serpent is…

“It was rather foolhardy, to think that everyone else would find this amusing,” Severus said, and his voice had grown chillier.

“That’s Fred and George all over,” Ron muttered. Hermione put an arm around his shoulder. Draco, cradling the egg in his shirt, only looked back and forth as if this was a play and he didn’t know which side was the most entertaining.

“A transformation potion! Fred and George Weasley, what were you thinking?”

As Molly scolded her sons, Harry shook his head. “Thanks but no thanks,” he whispered behind his hand to George, who was standing nearer to him.

George nodded back amiably. “No harm done. Although any time you do want to try the potion—”

He will not.

“He will not.”

Harry rolled his eyes at George. “Not right now,” he said. Maybe some other day, when there wasn’t a surprise birthday party everyone wanted him to enjoy, he would take them up on that. George winked and went back to nodding sorrowfully along with Fred.

*

A serpent transformation potion. There are times it could be useful, but trust Weasleys to find the wrong moment to introduce it.

Severus held off on pinching his nose as he watched the Weasley matriarch give Harry a jumper with a few protective and cleaning spells woven into it, and Arthur give him a small model of a Ford Anglia that ran on its own and honked its horn. Harry’s face broadened into a grin, and he spent a moment talking happily about the car he and his friend had flown into Hogwarts their second year.

I will have Arthur’s head if that gift encourages him to go to the Forbidden Forest after the other one.

He stepped back and watched as the girl, Ginny, came forwards with a small wooden box in her hands. Her face was flushed. Draco made a sudden movement, but then stopped himself. Severus caught his eye and shook his head.

As far as he knew, Harry had only smiled at Ginny and regarded her as his best friend’s sister since his second year. There was no reason to think that he would suddenly start dating her. And that she had stars in her eyes for him was not enough to turn the head of someone like Harry.

“I know that sometimes you get stressed and tired,” said Ginny, and gave Harry a faint smile. “So I thought you could use this. When you open the box, you’ll smell whatever clears your head the most.”

Harry smiled again. “Did you make this all by yourself, Ginny? I’m impressed.”

“Fred and George helped,” Ginny said, and flushed. “It’s kind of the same smell trick that you get with love potions like Amortentia, where they smell like the person you fancy most—”

Draco hissed. Severus would have reached out and pinched his shoulder as unobtrusively as he could, but Dash took care of that for him, whipping his tail into the back of Draco’s ankle. Draco stumbled, snatched at his egg, and then stood still, scowling.

“But it works with stress instead.” Ginny looked on in interest as Harry opened the box and sniffed.

Severus was too far away from it to smell anything, but Harry obviously could. “Like fresh oranges and broomstick polish,” he said, laughing. “That’ll clear my head right up. Thanks, Ginny!”

“You’re welcome, Harry,” said the girl, and moved out of the way. Almost everyone then turned to look towards the back of Severus’s office where he had concealed the birthday breakfast.

But Draco cleared his throat quietly and started forwards. It hadn’t escaped Severus’s notice that he was the only one who hadn’t given a gift yet, but most of the others did look surprised.

“You still have a gift to come from me,” Draco said, and stared at Harry intently.

“I know. I was looking forward to it.”

He does say the right thing effortlessly sometimes, Severus thought, watching the way Draco’s face softened. Almost as much as he says the disastrously wrong thing.

“Then here you are,” Draco said, and held out a plain scroll to Harry that was tied with a silver ribbon. Harry opened it immediately, and stared at it. His eyebrows rose, and he glanced at Draco.

“This is blank.”

“When you’re ready, then you’ll see the words on it,” Draco said, and inclined his head a little, and moved out of the way.

Severus was more than suspicious about that, but everyone else was demanding the birthday breakfast now, and he certainly couldn’t give Harry’s other presents—the books on Dark Arts—to him in front of his friends. He led the way to the back of the office and the preparation the house-elves had gone out of their way to orchestrate.

*

He isn’t ready yet.

The words seared Draco in the middle of the chest, but honestly, he wasn’t that surprised. Harry just wasn’t at the same point in their—dating as Draco was, yet. When he was, then he would glance at the scroll and see the declaration of Draco’s feelings written out in full.

Mother had helped him with the enchantments on that scroll, although she had also asked him several times if he was sure if he wanted to do this, if maybe his feelings wouldn’t change. But Draco had been, and had insisted on it, and in the end she had taught him the magic and stood back while he used it.

This isn’t going to change, Draco thought, and fell into step beside Harry, who reached out and squeezed his hand, smiling at him. Then he leaned in and stole a quick kiss that left Draco breathless and made more than one other person in the room blush.

And maybe it won’t be as long as it feels like right now.

Chapter 110: Gifts for the Birthday Boy

Chapter Text

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter One Hundred and Ten—Gifts for the Birthday Boy

Sirius stepped onto the soil of Britain for the first time in six months, and took a huge, cleansing breath.

Then he closed his eyes and shut down some of the thoughts that were bubbling up in his mind as he remembered the timeline. Yes, it had been at Christmas that Snape had taken Harry from him. But Harry was apparently thriving in Snape’s care, from the news that Lughborn had given him. Sirius didn’t think the Mind-Healers would have lied about that. They had tried to be fair and honest, because they said otherwise Sirius wouldn’t heal.

Yes. All right. He couldn’t go storming in there and demand Harry back. He actually hadn’t meant to, but now he could feel old impulses shimmering through him like lightning.

Sirius shook his head and strode away from the hill where the Portkey had brought him. A few strides into a concealed copse of trees, and he could Apparate to Gringotts.

He had some arrangements to make, both to give Harry his birthday gift and to lessen the temptation to just charge in and take Harry away from Snape. He was not going to do that. Harry deserved some happiness and stability in his life.

The goblins of Gringotts were surprised to see him, but the arrangements Sirius wanted were easy enough to make, and after that, he only had to consider how to phrase his letter to Harry.

*

“These books are for your study of the Dark Arts. I want you to promise that you’ll never reveal them to Weasley or Granger.”

Harry slowly and reverently gathered up the books Severus had given him in a closed room of his quarters after the birthday breakfast was done. It was hard not to be reverent. Harry could smell dust and leather and all the scents that he used to think of as “secret places” smells. He had smelled them in the Chamber of Secrets, itself, as well as the rooms that held the basilisk eggs.

“Why did you decide to teach him Dark Arts, Professor Snape?” Draco asked from the side. Ron and Hermione had gone outside to explore what Gryffindor Tower looked like when there were no other students in it, but they would come back soon so they could all go to Hogsmeade.

“Because he needs to know how to protect himself,” said Severus harshly, eyes locked on Harry. “And the Dark Lord will hardly stick to using Light spells only.”

Harry looked up. “What are the ones you think I should learn first?”

“All of them.”

“You are not helpful, Draco,” Severus said, with a roll of his eyes. “I would like you to look through them, first. Come up with some thoughts about what patterns you sense, and what spells seem linked together by more than the book’s organization. Then we will talk again.”

Harry nodded and began to thumb through the books. There was no table of contents or index in the first one he looked at, which he thought was about as helpful as Draco’s comment. The black leather was cracked and rasped against his fingers as he looked at a spell to twist an enemy’s entrails, another to make someone vomit uncontrollably, a spell that—

Harry slammed the book, his face flaming, and stared at Severus. Had he known that there were sexual spells in that book?

Severus only looked at him implacably and then nodded as if they had reached some agreement and stood up. “I think you should rejoin your friends, Harry. They won’t be able to spend as much time here as Draco will.”

Harry was glad to go find Ron and Hermione, and listen to their chatter about how strange it was to see the Tower so silent and sit in the Gryffindor common room by themselves. He nodded, and listened, and made appreciative noises.

And tried not to think about the strange world he’d entered, the one that was deeper and more secret than he’d ever imagined when he was a simple Gryffindor without the basilisk that crawled beside him and lunged at shadows for his own entertainment.

*

Severus watched Harry go down the path to Hogsmeade, and shook his head. He could guess what spell had startled Harry so much, and there was no help for it. He might never cast such spells, but it was time that he came to terms with their existence.

As well as the rest of the Dark Arts.

Severus closed his eyes. He had been younger than Harry when he first knew of those spells and how he would wield them. He would not wish his childhood experiences to repeat with Harry. It was—not right, but necessary, that he guide Harry into a gentler version of them.

Harry would never come face-to-face with Voldemort if Severus could help it. Perhaps their every battle could be fought at a distance, as it had been when he, Minerva, and Filius had confronted Voldemort outside the Burrow. But he would assuredly face other Death Eaters. Perhaps even Bellatrix, if Lucius was right about the way she had managed to escape Azkaban.

That made Severus realize Lucius hadn’t contacted him to tell him what he had learned about Bellatrix, as he had planned. Perhaps he hadn’t made any progress yet.

Severus had just started to turn towards the Floo when a large black owl soared through the window. It checked, hooting, and started to circle for the opposite window, as though it hoped to find Harry there. But Severus had drawn his wand before it could, Stunned it, and taken the bird in one hand.

The black owls without a hint of white often came from Gringotts. Severus knew no reason for them to communicate with Harry, and as Harry’s guardian, official post should have come to him first.

The outside of the letter told him nothing, since it only had a large G on the seal, but when he cracked it open, he found handwriting he knew all too well near the bottom.

Dear Harry,

I wanted to tell you that I’m back in Britain. But don’t worry, I’m not going to bother you unless I’m invited. In fact, I’m writing to tell you that I’m bequeathing you the house in Hogsmeade that I bought. You can live there with whoever you like. I’ll live somewhere else. I have plenty of houses I can go to now that I’m not a fugitive anymore.

I never want you to feel pressured about anything from me again, pup. I want you to be safe, and happy, and loved. I think Snape probably actually does—I mean, he probably cares about you. Stay with him. See me when you’re ready.

Love,
Sirius.

Severus rubbed his forehead. But that didn’t seem strong enough a response to the news Black had sent, so he pinched the bridge of his nose. And then that didn’t seem strong enough, so he sat down on the floor and read the letter through again, shaking his head in disbelief.

What possessed him to give a fifteen-year-old a house?

Well, probably the same thing that had prompted him to come charging out of Azkaban in pursuit of Pettigrew instead of trying to find someone who would believe the truth, Severus had to admit. Even if Black was more stable right now than he had been when he left England—and it seemed likely, or the Lughborns wouldn’t have released him from their excellent care—there was no Mind-Healing that could cure idiocy.

Severus tucked the letter onto the mantel. He would wait until Harry came back to tell him about it. The boy deserved a birthday afternoon unmarred by bad news.

And he would make sure that when Harry wrote back to Black, which he would have to do, he would do it under Severus’s supervision. Just so there was no doubt at all about what communication Black was receiving.

*

“I can’t believe how much better Honeyduke’s is when everyone isn’t crowded into it,” said Ron in a deeply satisfied voice as they came out of the shop loaded down with sweets. Draco’s parents had given him enough money that Draco had acted a bit embarrassed about it, and then he’d spread it around. Harry thought he’d actually enjoyed watching Ron and Hermione buy sweets with it, and Hermione spend some on books.

Hopefully he’s not planning to claim that they’re his charity cases or anything later, Harry thought, rolling his eyes at Draco, who was looking down his shirt at the snake egg cradled against his chest. He looked back up, and ended by blushing when he caught Harry’s eye.

“Just making sure that my egg isn’t cracked,” he muttered, and let the shirt fall back against his side.

“I know,” Harry agreed, and caught Draco’s hand and dragged him towards the Three Broomsticks. He and Hermione and Ron had ended their jaunts to Hogsmeade this past year at the pub every single time. It didn’t seem right to break tradition now.

Harry.

The single word Dash sent thrumming down the bond to Harry made him stop, his mouth dry and his head spinning with awareness. He jerked his wand out, and Draco immediately drew his own. Ron and Hermione were a bit ahead of them and didn’t realize what was going on at first, but Dash hissed, and Hermione jumped and dropped her bag of books in the road.

“Harry, mate, what—”

We’re under attack, said Dash, his voice traveling into Harry’s mind in lashes as precise as the tongue he flicked out to sniff the air with. Two people with the same magic that hangs around Voldemort have Apparated in near the end of this street. They’re waiting behind that large house with the flowers around it. Two others on the opposite end of the street. They’re coming this way, pretending to be ordinary villagers.

Harry wanted to close his eyes and lean his head against something. Dash’s scales would do. Why did things like this always happen to him?

“We have Death Eaters coming,” he said in a low voice, and then continued in a fiercer once because Ron and Hermione and Draco all opened their mouths to make some kind of comment. “Dash can sense them. Two walking down the street this way. Two others hiding behind that house with the flowers around it. Ron, I need you to take Hermione and get inside Zonko’s.” He nodded at the shop that was the nearest. “Pretend you saw something in there that you want.”

“But, mate—”

“You don’t have enough training to survive,” Harry said. “Draco, get into the Hog’s Head.” That was near them on the other side.

“I thought you would let me stay with you.” Draco’s nostrils were flaring with outrage. “I thought you would—”

“You have your snake egg, and they’ll either think that your father’s turned on them and want to take you as a hostage, or think he’s still loyal and try to separate you from me anyway. Go, now!”

He didn’t know how he managed to sink so much convincing force into his voice, but it worked. Draco stepped back and stared at him for a second, eyes wide with betrayal, then ducked into the Hog’s Head. Hermione picked up her bag of books and dusted it off, then took Ron’s arm and dragged him towards Zonko’s, chattering determinedly.

Now what? Harry asked Dash softly. He could see the two people who were probably Death Eaters, a handsome woman in a set of dress robes and the tall man who had her arm looped through his, standing in front of a shop full of clothes and admiring whatever was in the window. How can we keep the other people in Hogsmeade from being hurt?

Dash dropped his head to the ground and gave a small, slight hiss. In instants, shadows came to life and crowded around Harry. They were made of the tiny snakes Dash could conjure. Harry blinked at them, just in time to see Dash rise to his full height and flow straight towards the Death Eaters.

Harry automatically tried to follow him, but the little shadow-snakes around his feet hissed, “No! No! You are to stay here!” Then they coiled around his legs and tripped him for good measure.

Harry fell over swearing, and was just in time to watch as a spell clanged against Dash’s scales and bounced off. The people in the street had already scattered in front of the basilisk. “Dash!” Harry called out, both aloud in Parseltongue and down the bond. “What the hell are you doing? I was supposed to go with you!

Funny, I never said anything about that.

Dash was already hurling the full weight of his body down onto the male Death Eater. The woman was casting with steady precision against Dash, cutting spells and curses that were probably designed to flay flesh from his body. None of them were making any impression. Harry saw Dash curl one coil around the man and sink his fangs into him at the same time.

You need to leave some of them alive! We need to question them!

Can you actually keep them from Apparating? Dash asked coolly as he struck behind him with his tail at the woman, who was screaming as if the sound might make Dash back off. He knocked her from her feet, and then he ripped free of what Harry knew was going to be a corpse any second and turned around.

Don’t open your eyes!

You’re in the way. Do you take me for an idiot?

The woman finally found a spell that worked, it seemed, and managed to score a long cut down Dash’s tail. Dash once again hit her with his tail, hard enough to make her ricochet off a building. Then he turned to face the other two Death Eaters who had given up hiding behind the flower-surrounded building and started running down the street instead.

Harry’s heart tightened as he watched. Dash was fierce, but he was also huge. It was hard for him to get his body maneuvering right in the tight street, and now that the enemies were on two sides of him, he would find it hard to face them.

Or tend to the wound on his tail.

Well, maybe Harry couldn’t run out there to join the battle, but the shadow-snakes were crouched on the ground around him, not on every side. He aimed his wand at the back of one charging Death Eater, who was past his circle and most of the way to Dash. “Stupefy!”

The man managed to spin around and raise a shield that counteracted the Stunner, but that meant he was standing with his back to Dash. Dash slashed him with a fang, down his arm. The man promptly fell on the ground, convulsing and screaming so loud it made Harry want to grab his ears.

The second Death Eater who’d been pelting down the street stopped running and raised his wand. He was a huge, heavy-set man, and he stood there like he wasn’t afraid of Dash, even though Harry was sure he was. He shouted an incantation Harry didn’t know, but which sounded like, “Exitium!”

A shimmering white cone spread out of his wand, getting bigger and bigger the further away it traveled. Where it hit the stone on the sides of the buildings, they simply dissolved, gone or vaporized or something. Harry was screaming even before the magic hit Dash, trying furiously to leap over the shadow-snakes, which just moved to surround him again.

Dash whirled, taking the blow on his side instead of his head. Harry saw his scales disappear, his skin and muscles suddenly gleaming and exposed to the air. The Death Eater shouted in triumph.

He ran closer and closer. Dash was lying on the ground with his head turning weakly towards the Death Eater, but he was losing so much blood so fast that he seemed unwilling to move. Harry yelled again, and called down the bond as hard as he could, Dash!

He felt an answering surge of viciousness in the moment before the man came close enough and Dash unhinged his jaw and swallowed him in one gulp.

Harry just stood there with his mouth open, the shout dying away. It was suddenly incredibly quiet in the streets of Hogsmeade. Harry saw Dash close his mouth, and the throbbing, kicking, struggling lump in his throat. It stopped struggling a moment later.

Harry stared, and blinked, and said stupidly, I didn’t know you could do that.

It’s not something I would exactly like to advertise, when I am living among humans. But I’ve been able to do that for a long time. My jaws open a lot wider than a normal snake’s.

How?

Magic.

Harry slapped the ground. That’s not what I meant, and you know it.

You will have to explain to me what you meant when we get back to the school. Dash lifted his head and stared dazedly at the blood flowing down his side. The lump in his throat was moving faster and faster, down his throat to his stomach. Harry found that he couldn’t watch it. In the meantime, I don’t think we can stay here. The woman who I slapped has already Apparated.

Harry took a quick look up the street. It was true. And now there was screaming coming out of windows. He assumed someone had probably already alerted the Aurors. It wouldn’t look good when they showed up and found the blood on the street and Dash panting with exhaustion. They might even try to kill him.

They might succeed, as weak as I feel right now.

Harry took a deep breath and stood up. “Ron! Hermione! Draco!”

They came out of the shop and the pub, their eyes so wide that it was painful to look at them. At the same time, Dash hissed wearily, and the circle of shadow-snakes around Harry turned back into grey light and ran towards him. Harry thought he looked a little stronger once they joined him, but he wasn’t sure.

“Please go back to the school and tell Severus what happened,” he said to Hermione. She had her hands clasped to her mouth, and looked as if she was about to throw up. This would get her out of the way and give her something useful to do. “Draco and Ron, please help me back to the school.”

He was staggering as he came out of the circle. He didn’t know why. He hadn’t used very much magic.

You can feel my pain through the bond, of course. That takes a toll on you as much as you being wounded, or fighting Voldemort in your head, takes a toll on me.

Harry nodded. Hermione had already started running down the path back to the school. She’d even left her bag of books with Ron. He lifted it onto his shoulder and hurried over to grab Harry’s right arm. Draco had hold of his left. Together, with Dash crawling slowly behind them, they managed to get beyond the houses of Hogsmeade.

Severus came to meet them then, his face shadowed and terrible. He conjured a floating stretcher for Harry even though Harry said he didn’t need one, and only looked at Dash and shook his head when Harry suggested a stretcher for him.

“I cannot make one that will hold his weight or avoid jostling his wounds. I am not an expert on snakes.”

“Then Madam Pomfrey won’t know what to do for him, either?” Harry could feel Dash’s pain more clearly now, and he was trying to give him some magic down the bond to make up for what he’d lost. Either that effort or just the pain was making his head whirl and his vision darken.

“Send him to Hagrid,” Draco said suddenly. “He knows how to take care of animals.”

I am an animal in body, Dash said, which Harry knew was his way of agreeing.

“That is a good solution. In the meantime, Harry, stop being stubborn. Edormisco.”

Severus’s spell sent Harry to sleep. He went, but given the last sight he’d seen was the blood trail Dash was leaving behind, it wasn’t exactly an easy rest.

*

Draco sat by Harry’s bed in the hospital wing. Even if he hadn’t done it exactly recently, it was still bad enough that he wanted to shout and break something.

Instead, he had to sit there and quietly cradle the serpent’s egg against his chest, and plot revenge.

He didn’t know who the Death Eaters who had attacked Hogsmeade were, not for certain. And for the dead ones, it probably wouldn’t matter. But he was irrationally convinced that the woman who had escaped was Bellatrix Lestrange. He knew she had left Azkaban. Father had told him so. Severus and Harry had both discussed it with him now, after thinking about it for a while.

That meant she was family. And he had to do something about that. People related to him shouldn’t go around hurting Harry. He would have felt worse if it was Mother or Father, but this was still an ache in him, like a broken bone.

He held his egg, and he thought about his aunt running around out there after she had hurt Dash, and it felt as if something boiled inside him, so intense that it had to go somewhere. But Draco didn’t go anywhere. He sat there and stared at Harry, and imagined various things he could do to stop Bellatrix, and his heartbeat and breathing increased until he had to do something. He stood.

That was when Draco noticed a tiny crack in the egg he held. He froze at once, his eyes locked on it. When had that happened? What the hell was he going to do now? Dash had trusted him with an egg. He’d broken it. He probably wouldn’t get another one.

Then the shell squirmed and writhed, and a small head poked up from beneath the egg. Draco stared at it. It didn’t look like any snake he had ever seen. It had alternating bands of brilliant green and silver, and a blunt nose that probably meant it couldn’t use venom. It crawled around on Draco’s hands and sniffed his skin with its tongue darting out.

Draco lifted a shaky hand to stroke its back. Of course, with both Dash and Harry asleep, he had no way to communicate with it, and no idea of what to feed it.

Hissing erupted from the bed. Draco jerked and almost dropped his snake, before he realized that Harry was awake and talking to it. His snake hissed back in a voice so soft Draco was amazed Harry could hear it.

Harry looked at him with a tired smile a few seconds later. “He’s going to bond to you. He’s a little constrictor, and you should feed him…” A yawn interrupted Harry’s words. “Mice and baby birds and things like that. The house-elves can…” Another yawn. “Catch them for you.”

“What kind of snake is he?” Draco asked as quickly as he could, because Harry looked like he was going to fall asleep again any second.

“Hmmm? Oh. I don’t know the name. He hatched just now because of your intense desire for—something,” Harry added. “Whatever you wanted to do just now, that’s what he’ll be able to do. That’s probably why he doesn’t have a hood the way I—thought he did when Dash showed me the egg. He’s changed from a cobra to something else because you needed him to be something else instead of a cobra.”

Draco blinked and softly tickled the back of the snake in his hands. Would the snake be able to help him hunt down Bellatrix and punish her?

“You’re probably going to name him Slytherin,” Harry said, and then rolled over and went to sleep again before Draco could retort.

Draco called a house-elf to bring a baby mouse for his snake, but softly. The snake was delighted and immediately twined around the mouse, then unhinged his jaw and swallowed it the way Dash had swallowed the human. Draco leaned back and watched.

No. He had the perfect name, for when Harry was able to pay attention to him again. But that could wait.

Ultio. Punishment. Revenge.

Chapter 111: Revenge in Motion

Chapter Text

So you’re going to live.

Dash turned his head languidly away from the heap of blood and feathers in front of him. To Harry’s amusement, it turned out that he’d plucked the birds Hagrid had fed him, because he said the feathers pricked his mouth. If I had not been, you would have been the first to know.

Harry reached out and stroked Dash’s side. He was sitting by him in the sunlight now. It had been three days since the attack, and Hagrid was busy doing something in the Forest. Now and then Fang barked. Harry knew Severus was waiting up the path. He didn’t let Harry go out unattended now.

Not that Harry could really blame him.

But he and Dash had something to discuss, and Harry had been putting it off long enough. He leaned back, took a deep breath, and plunged into it with his hand still on Dash’s side. You wouldn’t let me fight.

He’d thought Dash might apologize, but he supposed he’d forgotten what a basilisk was like. Of course not.

Why not? I could have done more good than the others! I know more spells than they do!

And are you one-quarter as deadly as I am?

Harry had to pause and think, not because he didn’t know the answer to that question, but because it was the wrong question. I didn’t want to kill them. I wanted to hold them off and make sure no one else got hurt. I wanted to capture one of them, if I could. I’m sure Severus would be able to use Veritaserum on them before the Ministry got hold of them.

That’s very mammalian of you. I killed them.

But you didn’t have to. I see you handle people you’re irritated with all the time, and you don’t kill them.

Because you care for those people, and they’re not actively attacking you. If, for some reason, your Severus turned against you and decided to poison you or torture you, see how gentle I would be then.

Harry swallowed back a bob of sickness. But there’s such a thing as the Imperius Curse. Wouldn’t you try to find out if he was under that, at least, before you did anything to him?

I would try to find out. Dash nudged him with his chin, almost making Harry fall over. But I would not excuse his attack on you. I would want to know how he could be so careless as to be taken off-guard, to let someone who was using the Imperius Curse get close to him.

Harry stared at Dash, then sighed a little and reached out to stroke the edge of his jaw. Dash let his outer eyelids slide all the way closed as pleasure thrummed down the bond.

Sometimes you frighten me, with how intense your devotion is to me. It could get you hurt. It could get other people hurt.

If you want me to show mercy, then study the Dark Arts books that Severus gave you. That way, you’ll be able to protect yourself better, and I won’t have as intense a reaction when I see you in danger.

You think it has to be Dark Arts? I mean, Severus told me he would start tutoring me in them, but I just thought that there would be some way…

I know what you thought. But a lot of the countercurses that would protect you are either considered Dark, are thought of as Dark even though they’re not actually illegal, or are so powerful that their use leaves you drained. They’re the kind of magic you should use when you have other people working with you, like Aurors do, so someone can cover your back and arrest the people fighting you.

How do you know this? Was this the kind of knowledge that was around in Slytherin’s time?

It just seems obvious to me, Dash said, and shrugged, a single massive ripple that ran all the way down his back and made his tail snap hard against the ground. Plus, some of it is current gossip among the teachers and seventh-year students.

Dash! You’re going around the school and listening to people’s conversations again?

Would it appease you if I rolled on my back and played dead so you could pretend I’m a dog feeling remorse? That’s about all I have the strength to do at the moment.

Harry just stared at him. A second later, he gave up and went back to scratching Dash under the jaw.

I do take your safety seriously, Dash continued after a moment when Harry knew he would have purred like a cat if he could. But again, the best way you can prevent me from needing to bite people or gaze at them or club them to death with my tail is to learn to defend yourself better.

Harry nodded slowly. As long as you can promise me that the Dark Arts won’t corrupt my soul the way that I—sometimes think they will.

I promise to hit you with my tail every time you seem as though you’re about to be soul-corrupted, Dash said instantly. It will be our secret signal.

Severus came halfway down the path when he heard Harry’s laughter, but at least even he relaxed and looked as though he was feeling some of the first humor he had since the attack, once Harry explained.

*

Minerva sighed and turned away from the portrait of Phineas Nigellus, who was poor comfort at a time like this. “Come in, Severus.”

Severus entered the classroom calmly, but with a twitch of his head to the stairs. “Is this going to take long, Minerva? Harry is practicing some spells that he shouldn’t be left alone with for long.”

I know how much you are devoted to protecting him, Severus. I only hope that devotion will last through this. Minerva clasped her hands together. “I found out who the Ministry intends to appoint as the next Defense professor, Severus.”

He turned back towards her, and she thought she might have his full attention for the first time since Albus’s death. “The Ministry cannot appoint a professor.”

“They can when they think they have sufficient cause for concern.” Minerva grimaced. “And since Albus died, and they’ve heard from ‘concerned citizens’ about what happened with his impersonation of Moody…”

“Yes. I see. Who will it be?”

“Her name is Dolores Umbridge. She’s an Undersecretary to the Minister, and apparently she has reason to resent Harry already?”

Severus blinked and shook his head. “He encountered her only briefly. But if she’s in Fudge’s hierarchy, then she probably defines any attempt to go against the status quo as worthy of punishment.” He let loose an agitated sigh. “I don’t see what I can do but encourage Harry to learn even more magic and make more contacts with political allies who might be able to protect his reputation.”

Minerva hesitated. The news had been hard enough to tell him; she was realizing the other request she wanted to make might be harder. “I was wondering if you would agree to tutor students who might ask you? Since the Defense class will likely be worthless.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “No.”

“Severus—”

“I said no. I have little enough time to mark and teach as it is, with so many students. And now, with my guardianship of Harry, I will have more of my free time taken up. Harry is worth it. Random students asking me questions? No.”

Minerva leaned back slowly behind her desk. She had thought he might refuse, but she was surprised to hear his reasons. She had thought it might come down to a simple dislike of the Houses other than Slytherin.

“All right. Then you will look the other way if students are outside their common rooms after curfew?”

“Why?”

“So that I may set up the group and teach it myself, of course. The Headmistress has no regular teaching duties, and I have reason to be everywhere.”

Severus’s eyes were distant as he studied her. “I was under the impression that you would continue teaching Transfiguration, that you had not found someone to replace you.”

“I have done that,” Minerva said, and couldn’t resist a roll of her eyes when she thought of the replacement. “The Ministry doesn’t seem interested in appointing someone to that position, probably because they see it as a mainly theoretical one. And I’m not as skilled in Defense as you are. But I can at least show them some of what I learned in the first war.”

“Very well, Minerva. I will help you conspire.” Severus stood up, but he was still looking at her. “Who is your replacement?”

Well, he would have found out sooner or later, and perhaps it was worthwhile for it not to come so late as the first day of school. “Elena Zabini.”

*

“But why do I have to have you here when I write back to Sirius?”

“Because you do.”

Harry glared at Severus for a moment, and then he sighed. “Look, I know that you don’t think it’s a good idea for him to give me a house, but I’m not going to run away and live in it tomorrow. And you said it yourself, the Lughborns wouldn’t have let him come back to Britain if he was still unstable.”

Severus looked at Harry calmly across the writing table. Harry was flushed as he argued with him, almost leaning off his chair, as if he expected to fall any second. He was waving his hand. He was an inch away, or so it seemed, from pounding his hand on the table.

He was alive to be that way because Dash had protected him. No other reason. Severus was going to make sure that he continued to live, whether or not Dash was next to him. And while he could have a supervised relationship of sorts with Black, an unsupervised one was out of the question.

“I know I can trust you, Harry. I will not trust Black until he apologizes far more thoroughly than he has done so far.”

“How can he apologize, when I haven’t been able to meet up with him, and—”

Enough,” Severus said, and wished he hadn’t had to raise his voice when Harry gave him a stunned, betrayed look. “I told you, I will be happy to arrange a meeting when you’ve exchanged a few letters. But you’ll do so under my supervision.” He sipped the cup of steaming tea next to him and turned to the lesson plans he was arranging for his NEWT classes.

“Just write it with you here?”

“I am going to assume there is nothing morbidly embarrassing that you need to discuss with Black which you would not want me to see,” Severus said smartly, not looking up. “And of course I will read it over before you send it.”

A furious silence from the other side of the table. Then Harry began to write, so hard that small blobs of ink flew all over the wood.

Severus only shook his head, as if sadly, without looking up. Quite honestly, he had expected Harry to make more of a fuss.

But the silence didn’t last as long as he had expected, which Severus had thought would be until the end of the letter. Harry suddenly lowered his quill with enough force to almost knock over his inkwell, and demanded, “Why? If the Lughborns said he could come back, why do you suddenly distrust Sirius so much?”

Severus looked up, then leaned forwards and spoke quietly. “This is a man who was seeking a dark ritual to murder the Horcrux within you and would have subjected you to one if he’d found it, despite his lack of knowledge of such things. This was a man whose knowledge of the Horcruxes had to be dragged out of him, against his will. This is a man who nearly exposed you to the bite of a werewolf. Yes, he may have changed. Until we have some evidence of that, there is no way that you will have any interaction with him alone, whether it’s by letter or not.” He paused, studying the hectic flush on Harry’s cheeks, and added, “I would have said that you agreed with me a short time ago. Why have you changed your mind?’

“It’s just—you and Dash!”

“Has your basilisk also told you—”

“You’re coddling me!” Harry shot to his feet and waved his arms at Severus. “I wasn’t in any more danger in Hogsmeade than anyone else! Ron and Hermione and Draco could have all died just as easily! I could have helped Dash! But he locked me in a circle of shadow-snakes, and he’s not sorry he did it! And now, you, and just—what are you thinking, that I’ll sneak off and meet Sirius? Because that’s not true!”

“I am thinking no such thing,” Severus said, and stood so that he could look Harry more equally in the eye. Or loom over him, but at the moment, he didn’t care if he was. “We are trying to keep you safe—“

“By caging me? By just keeping me in one place? By—”

“Have I told you that you cannot leave Hogwarts?”

That seemed to bring Harry up short. Severus stood there, and waited for his breathing to calm down, and Harry finally whispered, “No.”

“Have I said that I need to know where you are every second of the day?”

“No! But the way you stood on guard while I was with Dash and now what you’re talking about with Sirius—”

“I would want to see your letters to Black regardless of anything else,” Severus said. “I will not necessarily change them. But I want to know what is in them. And if I think that Black’s letters to you are persuading or enticing you to join him, I shall forbid you to communicate with him.”

“Sirius wouldn’t do that.”

Severus just looked at him. Harry paused, then added, “Well, I mean, the old Sirius would have. I don’t think the new one would…” He trailed off uncertainly.

“But you do not know for sure,” Severus finished smoothly. “So. You are to let me read your letters, and his. And I think you know as well as I do that the Death Eaters were in Hogsmeade for you, Harry. That does not mean that you could not have fought them. Perhaps. But it does mean that it is foolish to pretend that your friends were in as much danger as you.”

“Draco would be, if they know for sure about Lucius’s—”

“I think we must assume they do. But answer me this. If it was just a random attack, or even an attack on Draco, why did it happen on your birthday?”

Under his steady gaze, Harry’s gaze fell, and then he nodded. “Yeah, I’ve been thinking about that a lot,” he whispered.

Severus stepped around the table to rest a hand on Harry’s right shoulder. “It is not your fault,” he said, when Harry finally looked back up at him. “I am not trying to prevent you from living your life, Harry. But it would also be foolish to pretend that this is business as usual, or that you do not have greater risks to run than the others. I want to keep you safe. If you want to help the next time a fight happens, train with the books I got you. And be part of Minerva’s Defense club that I told you about. And get yourself to a place of safety and then cast spells.”

“That—I mean, not the first two things you said. But running away. That just seems cowardly.”

Well, there is a reason the Hat decided on Gryffindor and not Slytherin, Severus thought, with a faint, purely internal sigh. “It is not. It will keep you alive. And was it cowardly for your friends to hide in the shops?”

“No! I sent them there because I knew they couldn’t really help.”

“And Dash put you in a circle for the same reason. You want to help him more? Get stronger.”

For a moment, Harry stood there and opened his mouth as if he would continue arguing, or even shouting. Then he looked down and swallowed.

“Yes. All right. I just—I just don’t like anything very much. Dash got injured, and Sirius might or might not have really changed, and the Death Eaters attacked, and I have to study Dark Arts and not tell my friends, and Draco thinks this is all his fault somehow because he’s related to Bellatrix, and I saw people die…”

Harry’s voice trailed off, and he sat down. Severus stepped around the table to place his hand firmly on Harry’s shoulder again.

“The Dark Arts are only spells, in the end,” he said. “Powerful for battle. Some of them are genuinely horrible. You needn’t use the ones like that. I want you to use the ones that will let you end the battle the most quickly. And as for not being able to tell Weasley and Granger about them...what would happen if you did?”

“They would get upset and argue with me,” Harry said in a soft voice, staring at the letter.

“Correct. I am trying to spare you those arguments, Harry. When and if you feel ready to tell them, and perhaps be able to talk them around, then you may do so.”

Harry sighed softly, and started writing again. Severus didn’t know how much he had improved things, but at least Harry was calmer, and that was a good beginning.

“And I will speak to Draco,” Severus added. As far as he could tell, the boy hadn’t yet started his hunt for Bellatrix Lestrange, but it would be as well to arrest that nonsense before it got too far.

“You can’t. He went home this morning. Something about wanting to speak to his parents.”

Severus only blinked. “Then I will wait until he comes back. I would not give up on this when I know it is important to you, Harry.’

Harry stared at him once, then blinked, and smiled a genuine smile for what seemed to Severus like the first time since the Hogsmeade attack. “Thank you,” he breathed, and this time his quill didn’t scratch all the way through the paper when he resumed writing.

Severus sat in silence next to him, wishing there was something else he could say or do. But the future was still unknown. The best they could do was try and be prepared for its arrival.

*

“There is something you should consider before you try and kill a blood relative, darling.”

Draco looked calmly up at his mother. His parents knew what he was about, of course. They hadn’t taken long to notice Ultio’s name, and Draco had freely told them what he was going to do when they asked. Father had only looked at him, then nodded and stood back when he went into the immense library.

Mother hadn’t said anything at all. Which made the way she stood now, at the entrance of the library with her gaze fixed on him and her arms folded, all the stranger.

“What is that, Mother?” Ultio was crawling along the side of the book, sniffing with his tongue darting out every few seconds. Draco picked him up and dropped him into the cage he’d taken to carrying around with him, which had a mouse in it. Ultio immediately darted forwards and constricted it.

“She is still related to you.”

Draco blinked and looked up at his mother, wondering if she had somehow missed the whole point of this. “I know that, Mother. That’s the reason I want to bring her down in the first place. Because someone related to me tried to kill Harry.”

Mother sat down with a rustle of her robes and leaned forwards to take Draco’s hand. Draco let her, although his skin was prickling with irritation. He knew she’d understood. She should have brought up her objections then, if she had them, not waited until he was already doing research!

“Killing a blood relative…it’s like shedding your own blood, Draco. Family is important.” Mother spoke softly, looking at their joined hands instead of up at him. That almost made Draco wonder if she wasn’t convinced of this. “The Black family has been diminished enough. Cousin Sirius spent years in Azkaban. Andromeda—I’d welcome the chance to talk to her, but she’s returned all my owls with no reply. There’s no one from a generation older than mine left alive. Sirius’s little brother Regulus died in the last war. Let’s keep the Black family alive and give it a chance to be restored to its former glory.”

Draco really did have to roll his eyes at that. “Mother, do you think Aunt Bellatrix gives a shit about the Black family?”

Mother gave him a deeply offended look. “Language, Draco.”

“I used it because I want to make a point.” Draco held her eyes and wouldn’t let her look away again. “Do you think she’s going to come home someday and apologize? Or, if she does have a child, are we ever going to see them as a cousin? No.”

“Draco—”

“You said Aunt Andromeda returned all your owls,” Draco went on, ignoring her flinch of surprise at the title he gave Andromeda. He’d never spoken it before. Then again, he hadn’t for Bellatrix, either, and Mother hadn’t flinched at that. “But you think that’s the thing we can’t get over? Rather than Aunt Bellatrix being a Death Eater who tried to kill me and Harry? I think you have your priorities mixed up, Mother.”

Mother flushed and took her hand back from him. “You don’t understand the history that lies between me and Andromeda, Draco,” she said, with a little toss of her head that actually made Draco snicker before he thought about it.

“Obviously not,” Draco said, pleasantly. “That doesn’t mean that I’m going to stop myself from getting revenge on Aunt Bellatrix. And Cousin Sirius is back in the country now. Harry wrote an owl to me about it. Why don’t you try and reconnect with him, if Aunt Andromeda is really impossible? Maybe he’s sane now.”

Mother sat there for a moment more, then slowly stood up. “I never expected to find you this inflexible, Draco,” she murmured.

“Aunt Bellatrix attacked Harry. I want to spend the rest of my life with Harry. I don’t see how that’s difficult.”

For a moment, Mother hesitated. Then she bent over and kissed Draco on the forehead. “As long as you’re sure this is what you want.”

Draco nodded. Mother let her hand linger on his hair, then turned and walked out of the room.

Draco glanced down, saw that the mouse was only a bulge in Ultio’s stomach, and picked him up with an easy turn of his wrist. The little snake settled on his arm and looked up at him expectantly.

“I just need to study a little more about blood magic, and then we ought to be on our way to cast the first spell,” Draco told him, and turned back to the book.

He knew what he wanted to do would take a lot of study and more books than he’d ever read in his life. But he’d just stood up to his mother and put her concerns to rest. That meant he could do anything.

Chapter 112: The Challenge Direct

Chapter Text

“Oh, Harry!”

Harry hugged Hermione as she nearly tackled him to the floor. Dash, long since recovered from his injuries of almost a month ago, watched them tolerantly. Hermione still flushed when she looked at Dash, and helped Harry carefully up and brushed him off.

“Dash was a lot more injured than I was,” Harry said, and grinned at her when he saw her blush deepen until she looked like her face was made of sunlight.

“I know, but—” Hermione bustled around for a second, and then pulled a piece of parchment out of her bag and held it out to him. “What do you think of this? I’ve been working on it all through August, and I really wanted your opinion!”

Harry scanned the parchment in puzzled silence. It seemed to be equations, probably Arithmancy, but he wouldn’t know since he didn’t take Arithmancy. He shook his head and handed the parchment back to Hermione. “I’d let you know if I could make sense out of any of them.”

Ron, standing on Hermione’s other side, snorted. “I think one reason Mum agreed to let us come to Hogwarts two days early is because she got tired of seeing all the equations,” he said in a loud whisper.

“They’re perfectly rational!” Hermione huffed, and then looked a little uncomfortable. “They’re just not complete yet. I’m missing the final variable.”

“What are they?” Harry asked, and craned his head to look at the parchments again. No, they were still missing the magical key that would spell out what they were supposed to be.

“A way of locating the other Horcruxes.”

Harry looked up at her with wide eyes. “You’re brilliant, Hermione,” he said, and then glanced at Ron, who didn’t look surprised. “She told you?”

Ron snorted again. “Yeah, but I said I wouldn’t tell you because I wanted to see the look on your face when you heard.”

“How does it work?” Harry asked, and took up the parchment again and turned it around. But the mixture of numbers, runes, letters, and what looked like geometric patterns made no more sense upside-down than it did right-side up.

“Short version,” Ron added quickly, as Hermione opened her mouth to list things.

“Oh.” Hermione flushed a little, again, and sat down on the side of Harry’s bed. Harry had moved back to Gryffindor Tower since school would be starting so soon anyway. “Well, basically, Horcruxes are really Dark magic. Really Dark.”

“I didn’t know that,” Harry said solemnly.

“Well, it has to do with the splitting of the soul—” Hermione said in all earnestness, and then glared at him. Harry put up a hand, grinning.

“I do want to hear what you discovered,” he said. “I just didn’t need to hear things I already knew.”

Hermione glared one more time, then began again. “Dark magic has a kind of—weight on the world. It stretches the normal connections between magic and its environment. It’s like putting a huge blanket over yourself when you go to sleep at night instead of a thin one. You would notice a difference, wouldn’t you?” She waited for Harry to nod before she took a quill out of her bag and started scribbling. “Arithmancy usually charts the normal order of the world. It’s just things you don’t know already. But you can figure it out because the values of the numbers and the connections between magic and the world stay stable.”

“Okay,” Harry said uncertainly as he watched her draw a circle that, for some reason, was connected to two equations with dotted lines. “I think I see.”

“But Horcruxes distort those relationships,” Hermione said. “So it’s a lot harder to figure out anything that applies to them. They stir up the equations, and that’s probably another reason You-Know-Who chose them, as an extra layer of protections. But if I can just find the right variable to plug into the equations, then I’ll have new ones, ones that can predict the Horcruxes. How many there are and where they are. Because it’ll describe the magical distortion they put on their environment.”

Harry smiled. “You are brilliant.”

Hermione smiled back at him. “Thanks, Harry.” Then she sighed at the parchment again. “Of course, none of us can actually use this until I find a way to come up with the missing variable.”

“You’ll do it,” Ron said, and grinned at Harry over Hermione’s head. “Because you’re brilliant.”

Harry grinned back. He was glad his friends were here. And while he didn’t have any great news like Hermione’s to tell them—he was still unsure about his relationship with Sirius, and he specifically couldn’t tell them about his practice with Dark Arts—he could spend a few days playing Exploding Snap and listening to Hermione’s lectures and reassuring them about Dash’s health.

Good plans.

*

“You know very well that the dummy is only made of cloth and glass,” said Severus calmly as Harry stood there, his wand clutched in his hand, and stared at the figure across the classroom from him. “You can do this.”

“Right,” Harry muttered, with a slight shiver. Then he raised his wand and said, in a flat voice, “Ossa evanesco!”

The force behind the spell was stronger this time, Severus thought critically as he watched the beam of yellow light streak from Harry’s wand and crash against the nearest dummy. The dummy jerked, and the chips of glass that Severus was using to substitute for bones came flying out.

“Better,” Severus said, with a nod. “In time, you will make the bones vanish completely, instead of simply making them fly out of the body.” He watched as Harry paced carefully to stand in front of the next dummy.

Ossa evanesco!”

This time, the beam of yellow light was a little broader and brighter, and the chips of glass came soaring out, but only about half of the amount Severus knew were stuffed into the dummy. The rest sparked and vanished. Severus smiled. “Very good, Harry.”

Harry said nothing as he took up his position opposite the third dummy. Severus stepped forwards to get his attention before he cast the spell. Incompetent as Harry might be for now, Dark Arts was nothing he wanted to get in front of. “What is wrong?” he asked quietly. “Why do you resist being good at this magic as you have at nothing else?”

“It’s Dark Arts,” Harry said. “I believe you when you say that it’s not evil,” he added quickly. “But it’s still magic that only really exists to hurt people.”

“That is what your enemies are trying to do to you.”

“So I should try to do it to them just because? Just what? As revenge?” Harry swung to face him, and his words were escaping so fast that Severus realized how much Harry must have been bottling up. “It’s horrible, Severus. What they did to Dash. What—” He swallowed. “What Dash did to them.”

Severus sat down on the chair that he had conjured which was enough out of the way of the spells that he hadn’t needed to dodge anything yet. “If you have a problem with what Dash did, you must take it up with him,” he said quietly. “But, Harry, it is not wrong simply to fight back. Was what the Death Eaters trying to kill you and Draco and your friends did also wrong?”

“Of course it was! But I expect it from them.”

Severus paused, then nodded a second later. So this wasn’t so much about the spells. It was about the way that Harry was being forced to see himself. He wanted to be a good person, so strongly that he had gone into Gryffindor the minute he heard insinuations about “evil” people in Slytherin.

“I can promise,” he said softly, “that no one who matters will see you as a bad person for doing this. And Dash will never see you that way no matter what happens. Except perhaps your public, and I thought you didn’t care about them.”

Harry jerked, and looked at him. “Then why did you tell me not to tell Ron and Hermione?”

“I was anticipating their immediate reactions, not their long-term ones.” Severus hesitated. “And I still do not trust their discretion. I must tell you that. If Granger even told her parents, there is the chance of her owl being intercepted.”

Harry snorted a little and nodded. Then he faced the third dummy and snapped, “Ossa evanesco!”

The dummy’s side tore open, which wouldn’t happen when Harry reached his full control of the spell, but no chips of glass came soaring out. Severus found himself smiling. “You are incredibly competent when you want to be,” he praised him.

Harry nodded. His jaw was set, but at least it was in the way he set it when he intended to master new magic, no matter how much he might hate it. “Thank you, sir.” And then he stepped back to wait for Severus to repair the dummies so that he could go back to vanishing their pretend bones.

Severus squeezed his shoulder as he passed him. Harry bowed his head, shook a little, and then straightened and nodded.

Severus restored the chips of glass to the dummies, and moved out of the way.

*

Draco carried Ultio and Conflagration entwined around his arms as he walked into the Great Hall. He smiled as he saw Harry sitting at the Gryffindor table, and nodded at him. Then he took his seat among the Slytherins, watching with faint amusement as Crabbe and Goyle shuffled in. They looked as if they didn’t know what table they were supposed to go to until they saw him.

“You look proud of yourself.”

Draco leaned back a little, casually, so that he could see Theodore Nott more easily, and nodded. “I learned a lot of new things over the summer. And I have a new companion.” He turned his arm so that Theo could see Ultio. The little snake obliged by waking up and yawning, stretching his jaws and his tongue, before snuggling up to go back to sleep.

“I see.” Theo’s eyebrows were raised. “Do you think you’re going to get away with keeping him in school?”

“I don’t see why not. The rules have already been stretched to accommodate a much bigger snake.” Draco nodded to the entrance as Dash slid in and made the first-year students waiting for the Sorting shriek and wail and flinch to the side.

“That Umbridge woman,” Theo said, turning to the head table. “I’ve heard she doesn’t like snakes. She’ll probably try to make Potter give his up, too.”

Draco looked up at the professors. It wasn’t like he hadn’t known she would be there; Harry had told him the minute he found out. But it was still unpleasant to see the woman’s squat face and the grin on her lips when she leaned forwards as if evaluating all the students for rule-breaking.

“You head about the little club the Headmistress is starting up?” he asked Theo.

“Like she’ll let Slytherins join it. Or maybe just you, since you’re Potter’s boyfriend.”

Draco had to smile. “No, she said in her letter to me that all students from all Houses were welcome. But I think she’s probably relying on me to spread the word about it, since she doesn’t know which Slytherins would consider it and which would go running to Umbridge.”

“There’s a fine example of House prejudice right there.”

“No. There’s a fine example of how much some of our House hates Harry, now that the Dark Lord has returned.”

Theo went still, only clapping a little as a tiny first-year girl was Sorted into Slytherin. “You think that’s the real reason?”

“Of course it is. I’ve chosen my side, but you know where a lot of our Housemates’ allegiance is going to be.” Draco held Theo’s eyes. After all, just like Draco, his father had been a Death Eater, and not one that Lucius had seen fit to contact about their new ability to take away someone’s Dark Mark.

Theo turned his head away.

“Where do you fall, Theo?” Draco asked softly.

“I haven’t decided yet.”

“Then you should, soon. I don’t think this is a war that will leave a lot of people patience for neutrality.”

Draco turned back to his food. He ignored the way Theo scowled at him, even though he could easily feel it. He wasn’t worried about his personal safety in Slytherin, not with two snakes around to protect him most of the time.

He felt the shape of the vial hanging around his neck through his shirt, and smiled a little.

And not with the new magic that he’d learned over the summer.

*

“Mr. Potter, if I could speak to you for a minute?”

Harry felt as though something had left a slimy trail down his back. He took a deep breath, and reminded himself of all sorts of things, including that Dash was there, and Severus would shield him, and other people had endured worse things, like Sirius being in Azkaban for twelve years, and turned around.

“Yes, Professor Umbridge?”

She walked up to him and smiled at him. Harry thought that maybe her head was a little tilted so that she could purposely exclude Dash from her vision.

“You want to be very careful with that snake around these little children,” she said, and nodded to a cluster of lost Hufflepuffs making their way through the corridor, checking their timetables and the castle walls at the same time. “You never know when he might snap and go after them.”

“I’ll be careful, Professor.” At least at first, Harry was going to try and keep his temper around Umbridge, so that she would be the one who antagonized him and got the blame if something happened.

“And you should also know that the Ministry is going to mandate an educational decree very soon that will make it illegal to have pets in school.”

Not when they can’t find her body, Dash said cheerfully.

Harry kept his face calm with an effort, and said, “Oh, no, Professor! But then how are we going to write to our families?”

“What are you talking about, Mr. Potter?”

“I mean, what about the poor post-owls? There are lots of students who have owls as pets. If we have to get rid of them, then we have no way to communicate with people outside the school!”

Which might be part of the point, Dash mused.

“Of course we are not going to ban owls as pets, Mr. Potter.”

“And the cats,” Harry said, staring into the distance and shaking his head as if this was tragic. “My friend Hermione has a cat. Crookshanks. I hate to think of her having to pack him home to her parents. And my friend Neville has a toad. He’ll be lost without Trevor. I mean, it’s Trevor that usually gets lost, but—”

“You will cease this nonsense at once, Mr. Potter.”

“I don’t understand, Professor.” Harry blinked and looked up at her. “I’m trying to anticipate the future. It’s something my guardian wants me to do more often after the attacks this summer. Can you tell me how the decree will work if it’s not going to ban owls and cats and toads?”

Umbridge’s cheeks puffed out. “We’ll have to look at the wording together and see,” she said sweetly, and then turned and walked away. “I will see you in Defense class this afternoon, Mr. Potter.”

Pretty well for a first confrontation, Dash said, as they started towards Charms again. You could have let me lunge at her and snap at her feet, though. That would have made her jump in an entertaining way.

Harry scowled down at him. You’re not as funny as you think you are.

I’m as funny as I know I am, though.

*

Minerva nodded as she watched the students filter into the classroom that she’d chosen for the Defense club. It was on the fifth floor in a far wing of the castle, about as far as it was possible to get from Umbridge’s classroom and still be in the same building. She had chosen one that went back a long distance, so the entrance was almost a tunnel. That would give her plenty of room to see someone unwelcome coming.

The predictions she had made to herself had proven accurate. There were a few Slytherins in the group, notably Mr. Malfoy and some of the first-years, but not many. There were likewise few Ravenclaws; they wouldn’t yet have got to the point of realizing the Defense book Umbridge had chosen contained no information. Gryffindors and Hufflepuffs mingled and chattered among themselves.

Minerva frowned a little when she realized that George and Fred Weasley were part of the Gryffindor group, and gave them a stern look. They gave her wide grins in return. Minerva shook her head and whipped her wand around her head, loosing the prepared spell that she’d put on a timer.

Students stopped talking and started gasping instead as they watched the classroom rearrange itself. Walls staggered and melted, Transfigured into cushioned, padded swatches of fabric on three sides and mirrors on the other. Minerva found mirrors helpful when she was practicing smaller wand movements and wanted to see exactly where she was going wrong.

The desks that had been in the center of the classroom flew apart and Transfigured into benches, chairs, and light wooden shields that could be shattered impressively by spells. Minerva had trained using those. The distance the splinters flew would tell her something about the relative strength of the spells wielded to break them.

Hanging from the ceilings were more shields, dummies, bags of straw and sand and flour, ropes for climbing, bars of metal and rock, and a few coils of wire. Minerva had seen classmates of hers use the coils impressively as weapons, although she hadn’t been that fond of them herself. But she was going to try to accommodate all kinds of learners in this club, some of whom would be very different than she was.

She turned around and smiled when she was done. The students had either taken seats on the benches or remained standing. Even the Slytherins looks a little impressed.

“Welcome to the Defense Club.” Minerva had given up on creative names for it. From the Weasley twins’ faces, they could imagine some. She might even adopt any suggestion that wasn’t obscene or a pun. “As long as you are here, you will be committed to learning Defense techniques at least two years ahead of where you are now.”

“But what about—” Angelina Johnson began, her face creased in a frown.

“Those of you who are seventh-years will be learning magic usually reserved for Aurors,” Minerva said, and had to smile at the looks on their faces. Mr. Malfoy was whispering with one of the first-year Slytherins. “I have an Auror who’s agreed to help instruct you.” Actually, the Auror had been a member of the Order of the Phoenix who’d suffered some problems in the Ministry when her affiliation became known after Albus’s death, but they didn’t need to know that.

“Wotcher!” said Auror Tonks cheerfully, standing up from behind the chair where she’d been crouched, her hair and skin tone perfectly mimicking the wood. It flowed and changed as they gaped at her. Harry, Minerva was pleased to see, already had his wand drawn. “My name’s Auror Tonks. You’ll learn from me, or I’ll know why not.”

She took a step forwards, probably meaning to look impressive, and tripped over the foot of one of the benches Minerva had Transfigured. Minerva sighed a little as she went down in a heap and the children snickered.

“Sorry about that,” Tonks said, and lifted her head, grinning as her hair shifted to blue. “I promise I actually am good at Disguises! I’m a Metamorphmagus, too. I’ll be able to teach you.” She winked and turned her nose into a pig’s snout.

The Weasley twins immediately began to scribble something on a piece of parchment. Probably trying to figure out a way to do that to someone without having their own Metamorphmagus talents, Minerva decided.

“You will also be split into groups to learn different spells, and to hone talents you may already have,” Minerva told them. She looked straight at Harry. “Mr. Potter, would you mind coming up to demonstrate a spell for us?”

Harry blinked, hesitated, and then moved forwards. Dash slithered alongside him, then curled up in a corner to be out of the way. Tonks was staring at him in frank fascination.

“What spell did you want me to show, Professor?” Harry was shifting his feet and looking around as though he thought she would make him expose all his secrets right there.

“I believe that you know how to conjure a Patronus,” said Minerva calmly. “I’d like some of the others here to see it.”

Harry immediately relaxed and smiled. “Of course,” he said, and traded glances with Dash that made Minerva wish, for a moment, that she could be included as part of their bond before he spun and aimed his wand at the ceiling. “Expecto Patronum!”

The silver blur that came forwards changed quickly into a stag, and cantered around the room for a moment, shaking its antlers. Even Tonks was watching with a bright smile. Most of the students looked as though they’d like to pet the creature. The Weasley twins were once again scribbling on the parchment.

“That’s so brilliant,” said Lee Jordan, almost hanging out of his seat. “How old were you when you learned how to do that, Harry?”

“Third year.” Harry only shrugged when they looked at him. “I’m sure that most of you will pick it up really fast.”

Minerva chuckled behind her hand, and said, “I think that we should at least give them some chances to practice, Harry. Everyone who wants to learn the Patronus Charm, split into groups by year. I’ll be the instructor for first through third year. Tonks, if you’ll take the sixth- and seventh-years? Harry, work with fourth and fifth.”

Everyone quickly got into the groups, ignoring House affiliation for now as they watched Harry and Tonks performing the correct wand movements. Minerva observed them for only a few moments before turning to her own, younger students, most of whom probably would take a year to produce a full-fledged Patronus.

But training them would still teach them more than Umbridge was doing in her classes right now.

Minerva shook off the clinging thought, and concentrated exclusively on introducing Patronuses to a wide-eyed, slightly trembling group of children between eleven and thirteen, reassured that behind her, a basilisk watched the door of the classroom unblinkingly.

Chapter 113: A Real Duel

Chapter Text

“I want to know what you have to offer me, Lucius.”

“Freedom from the Dark Mark.” Lucius sighed and scattered a little more sugar into his tea. He was going to need it to deal with Nero Parkinson, who hadn’t stopped saying stupid things since Lucius had invited him over. “I told you that before. And in return, you join the political coalition I’m building.”

Nero sneered and scarfed up yet another scone. “And what if I just went straight to the Dark Lord with what you offered me, Lucius? You’ll need to come up with some stellar advantages to keep me from doing that!”

Lucius looked calmly back at the man. Inside his belly, his revulsion coiled. Had most of the Death Eaters he had fought and plotted and tortured with been this stupid? Of course, he had never seen most of them outside of meetings and raids. They had been too intimidated by the Dark Lord to speak during meetings, most of the time.

And to think he had once encouraged Draco to cultivate the friendship and attention of Pansy Parkinson. If this was a sample of the wits that would have been passed on…

“I want to know if you’ll consider the offer,” he said, and cast a subtle detection spell on his tea while Nero puffed up with importance again. No, nothing had been slipped into it. He didn’t truly think so, but checking when he was in the company of someone this openly hostile was automatic to him by now.

“I want to know what you can give me besides removing a brand of service that I favor, thank you.” Nero lifted his chin a little.

Lucius said, “Nothing. Freedom for your aid. The bargain is simple.” It has to be simple, or Crabbe and Goyle would never have understood it.

“Then you get nothing, Lucius!” Nero set down his empty teacup and stood up to strut towards his fireplace. “I hope you’ll enjoy your last few days of freedom before I go to the Dark Lord and inform him of what you—”

Lucius stood and said, in a voice calculated to contain just the right edge of panic, “Wait, Nero!”

The idiot turned around, smiling, and Lucius smoothly cast the Memory Charm. He could do it, by now, nonverbally. To the stupid—well, more stupid than usual—look that settled over Nero’s face, he said calmly, “You spent the last half-hour listening to me talk about a business opportunity that you’re not interested in. That’s all.”

“Of course that’s all,” said Nero, and sneered at him again before he threw the Floo powder in the fireplace to leave. Lucius waited to roll his eyes until he was sure the idiot was gone, and then turned wearily back to the remains of his meal.

Fewer outright Death Eaters had wanted to make the transition to freedom than he had expected. He had not bothered to contact the truly fanatical, but then, they were either already at the Dark Lord’s side or truly in Azkaban for the most part. It seemed that, to others, their greed and their hatred of Muggles outweighed any of the advantages that Lucius’s side could offer.

Of course, Lucius also couldn’t offer freedom from the Dark Mark to those who had never been marked. He had to come up with some more tempting bait. And while he could do research to uncover individual weaknesses and wants—for example, Jasper Shafiq was a celebrity worshipper and would be happy for the chance to spend time with Harry—that was time-consuming.

No, I must do something else. Something that will attract attention, be flashy on the surface, and at the same time contain enough seeds that the truly intelligent can look under the surface and realize it is an alternative to the Dark Lord.

“Parkinson didn’t want to join?”

Lucius looked up. Narcissa was bustling into the room, giving a disapproving look at the scone crumbs and rings from the teacup Nero had left on the small table they’d been using. House-elves appeared on cue and began to clean them up.

“No, he didn’t.” Lucius sighed. “Building up support for something I thought was obvious is proving more difficult than I anticipated.”

“That’s because you’re not giving them what they want, Lucius.” Narcissa sat down in the chair across from him where Nero had been, her face as intent as Draco’s when he’d been researching blood magic the past summer. “They joined the Dark Lord to have a free hand at expressing their baser impulses. You aren’t giving them that.”

“But Harry would never stand for it, and it would lead back to me now.”

“I didn’t say that it was the only thing they wanted,” Narcissa said, resting a placating hand on his knee for a moment. “I am saying that you have to tap into their strongest desires. Rational planning is not one of those for most of the Death Eaters or even Dark wizards outside rare individuals like the Greengrasses and Elena Zabini. What else do they want, besides the chance to flex their muscles?”

Lucius closed his eyes and fixed his mind on the past, something he hadn’t done as often as he should have in the past few months. “They wanted to prove their superiority over each other,” he murmured. “Also not something we can allow right now, with the numbers that might follow Harry so limited.”

“What else?”

“They wanted to show off magic to Muggles and prove their superiority that way. Let’s say there’s a remote chance Harry would be willing to allow that. They would still come into conflict with the Statute of Secrecy.”

“Isn’t part of this about size?”

Lucius opened his left eye. “Please tell me that you aren’t talking about the…wands of any of the male Death Eaters, my dear.”

Narcissa laughed, the quiet sound that warmed or chilled Lucius depending on what he’d had to do with making her laugh. “Nothing so crass. What I mean is that our world is limited in size. There are few people they can show off to—fewer when they dismiss Muggleborns and at least half of the non-Dark wizards as unworthy of showing off to. They didn’t even have much to terrorize unless they crossed into the Muggle world, during the last war. There is Hogsmeade, and that’s too near Hogwarts, which they feared. I think dear Bella’s raid there might have been the first one in recent memory. There’s Diagon Alley and Knockturn Alley. And the few mixed villages like Godric’s Hollow and Ottery St. Catchpole, of course. But other than that? The raids the Death Eaters conducted were all on individual family homes or killing obstructive officials in their offices. They never went after the Ministry as a whole. Never St. Mungo’s. Never most of the small businesses outside the Alleys.”

“So?” Lucius asked slowly. What she was saying made sense, and he’d never thought about it in exactly those words before, but he didn’t see how it helped them with their problem.

“So.” Narcissa reached down and pulled a book out of her robe pocket, extending it to him. “I found this when I was helping Cousin Sirius search for a possible solution to the Horcrux in Harry’s scar. I kept it because I thought it interesting, but I didn’t have any reason to use its magic at the time. Now, I think, it might be worth looking at.”

Lucius turned it around. The book was bound in dark blue leather with silver and gilt lettering on the front. No sign of an author’s name. The title said only, Of Extensions.

“A book on wizardspace?”

“A book on creating more space,” Narcissa said quietly. “Pocket houses and streets and buildings and villages inside the ones we already have. Pocket worlds, come to that.”

Lucius blinked. Then he said, “That is—powerful and dangerous magic. Interesting magic. But I am not sure how it would help us.”

“Don’t you see?” Narcissa tucked a strand of pale hair behind her ear and smiled at him. “It would give them new places to build and set up. New places to enchant. New places to create manor houses, if that’s what they want to do, and fill with riches. New places to fulfill the desire to hide away, and never have to come in contact with a Muggleborn or a Muggle. New places to hide from the Aurors, even, which you know some of them will want to do.” She stroked the cover of the book as if strumming an instrument. “For some of them, that will be enough, to fulfill some of the creative urges and urge for more space that they can’t fulfill now. Others will suddenly have more, cheap places for extended homes. And the rest…”

“The rest?” Lucius was thinking of Nero Parkinson, who would probably never want to leave his ancestral home, even if he reveled in the thought of being able to go somewhere that no Muggles would ever see.

“There are ways to reverse the spells, as well,” Narcissa said. “To collapse the spaces.”

“And trap them inside,” Lucius said, and smiled at her, even as he felt a twinge in his heart. “When did you become so ruthless, my darling?”

Narcissa looked at the book instead of answering him, but Lucius was wise to that tactic from Draco and his own schooldays, and waited. Finally, Narcissa looked up, her grey eyes almost luminescent with pain.

“I hoped, when you told me my sister was free and hadn’t spent the past fourteen years in Azkaban, that she could be reclaimed,” she said softly. “But then she tried to kill Draco. I know that was her. I’m certain of it. No matter what the Ministry says.”

Lucius nodded. The Ministry had handled the Hogsmeade attack in a way unfavorable to their policies, first attempting to deny it had happened, then saying that there was no proof the attackers had been trying to hurt anyone instead of trying to defend themselves from the basilisk. Lucius suspected that many knew the truth, but many were also apathetic and simply didn’t want to speak up.

“I told Draco that family shouldn’t kill family simply because I didn’t want to see him going down the road of blood magic.” Narcissa touched the book again. “But he has, and he obviously has a talent for it. This is what I can do, both to sway allies to our side and to provide a safe refuge if we have to go into hiding.”

She looked up. “And to make sure that my very dear sister is repaid for her courtesy.”

Lucius took her hand and kissed it, in silent and devoted admiration.

*

“Mr. Potter. My…sources tell me that you’re quite skilled in Defense. Would you care to come up and demonstrate it?”

Harry made sure that his face was blank as he stood up from his desk and marched towards the front of Umbridge’s classroom. He felt a soft, tickling touch on his ankle and knew it was from Dash’s tongue.

No matter what Umbridge tried to do, she couldn’t harm him very much, Harry thought, as he turned around and faced the rest of the class. Dash would lunge the minute she did. Harry didn’t want Umbridge harmed because it would upset a lot of people at the Ministry, but he also knew that he didn’t want to be tortured or killed.

And Umbridge might have that in mind.

Umbridge walked slowly to the far side of the classroom and drew her wand. Harry clenched his teeth and waited. The first class had just been them sitting at their desks and reading Slinkhard’s useless book. He hadn’t anticipated a duel.

“You need to practice common courtesy, Mr. Potter,” said Umbridge in her soft, chiding voice. “Bowing is part of dueling etiquette, you know. Do bow now.” And she did it, in such a way that she never had to take her eyes off him.

Harry did the same thing, although he could feel the bile burning in his mouth and stomach with how much he hated her.

She cast the first spell, of course; Harry wasn’t going to do something that might make the Ministry angrier at him than they already were. It was a spell Harry didn’t know, which hit the floor as he dodged and made the stone hiss and chatter as though acid were eating into it.

“Dodging isn’t very sportsmanlike, Mr. Potter,” Umbridge scolded him, looking all the while as though a Chocolate Frog wouldn’t melt in her mouth. “I expect you to hold still this time while we—”

Harry cast the spell while she was still speaking, a nonverbal Lumos that Severus had been working with him on. Umbridge stumbled back a step and shrieked as the light flashed into her eyes, and Harry quickly cast a Tripping Jinx. She managed to avid that one, but only barely, and when she lifted her head, she was staring at him.

“Is this your vaunted skill, Mr. Potter?” she demanded. “First-year spells?”

Harry didn’t bother responding. He lifted a Shield Charm in front of himself and waited. Umbridge paced back and forth for a minute as though she was thinking about what to do next, and glanced at the class. Harry didn’t bother to, since he thought it was probably a distraction technique. He was sure they would all be raptly watching anyway.

Then Umbridge spun around and launched a spell that Harry knew all too well at him. “Ossa evanesco!”

Harry certainly couldn’t reveal that he knew the countercurse, but to his relief, the Shield Charm held up against the Bone-Vanishing spell, although it flickered and cracked. Harry skipped backwards, his eyes fixed on Umbridge. He knew now that she wouldn’t hesitate to use Dark Arts.

But he still couldn’t use them openly, because the Ministry would decide that meant he belonged in Azkaban or something.

So Harry stuck to hexes and jinxes that he knew were legal: the Tickling Charm, the Leg-Locker, and the Lumos Charm again when Umbridge was right in the middle of a delicate casting and it seemed most likely to stagger her. It did, and she sneered at him. Harry had to quell Dash’s instinctive movement with a flick of his hand by his side.

“I want to see real magic from you, Mr. Potter!” Umbridge barked, when she’d recovered from the second Lumos Charm. She was moving towards him now, her wand held up. Small shapes started hopping from it as Harry watched. They were bright toads with small orange spots on their backs. One opened its mouth and spat. The spit made a dark splotch on the floor.

They’re poisonous, said Dash, down the bond into Harry’s mind.

I know, and I still can’t use “real” magic, or she’ll start going after me for breaking Ministry rules, Harry said grimly as he watched the toads advance. He recast his Shield Charm, but the nearest toad spat directly at his feet, and he barely skipped out of the way in time. They might be able to leap right through the shield, for all he knew. He didn’t know this spell.

Trust in your political standing. Do it now. Or I will kill her.

Harry took a deep breath, met Umbridge’s eyes, and cast the Blasting Curse straight at her. “Reducto!”

Umbridge ducked out of the way with a shriek, and the curse hit the chair she’d been using instead and broke it apart. The flying splinters hit and crushed some of the toads. Harry hurled a quick Finite at the ones that remained; they flickered out of existence. Probably because they needed Umbridge’s will guiding them, and they didn’t have it, Harry thought clinically. That spell to conjure the toads seemed like a will-based one.

Well done, said Dash, judiciously, down the bond. Of course, you’ve probably made an enemy, but you would have done that whatever happened. And at least you didn’t use illegal magic.

Umbridge stood up, brushing a few splinters of the chair off herself. Her eyes were narrowed, but the spite in them was less than Harry had expected.

“Well done, Mr. Potter,” she said, after a moment. “One point to Gryffindor for finally obeying a teacher.”

Some of the Gryffindors in the class grumbled about that, but Harry was too relieved that things hadn’t gone worse. He gave a small bow to her that he made sure was slow—otherwise, she would probably start complaining about disrespect—and then turned away and sat down in his seat again.

The whole time, his back prickled, he was so sure that she would launch another curse at his spine.

But she didn’t. Instead, she said, “Who can tell me the name of the spell that Mr. Potter used when he held off my spells?”

Hermione’s hand shot into the air. Umbridge ignored her and called on a Slytherin. At least that was something he expected from her, Harry thought.

As he was leaving the class, he caught Draco’s eye. Draco was sliding what looked like a vial on a chain beneath his shirt, and he was so thoughtful and somber that Harry smiled at him. “It’s going to be all right,” he murmured, squeezing Draco’s arm.

“Hmmm? Oh, right, I know.” Draco gave him a distracted smile, then took a deep breath and said, “I’d like to talk to you about something. Can it be this evening? Maybe after Potions, before you go to dinner?”

“Of course,” Harry said, a little concerned. Draco ought to know that he could talk to Harry about anything, at any time, and Harry didn’t know what Draco could have done that Harry would disapprove of—except taunt his friends, and Harry would have heard about that from Ron and Hermione already.

Draco gave him another smile and let him go. Harry shook his head and went away to try and persuade the Gryffindors that he hadn’t done anything worthy of all the back-patting and cheering he received.

*

Draco paced slowly back and forth outside the Potions classroom. Harry had stayed behind to talk with Professor Snape, which wasn’t unusual. But Draco hoped it wasn’t too long. Professor Snape would insist that Harry go to dinner, not skip it.

And Draco had to tell him about what he’d found.

Ultio, curled up on his arm, nudged Draco with his nose in a friendly way. Draco rubbed his back, and fixed his eyes on the door of the Potions classroom.

Harry finally came out, saying something over his shoulder that got him a snort. He smiled when he saw Draco, and Draco reassured himself with that smile. Harry wouldn’t think what he’d done was awful or went too far. He was studying the Dark Arts himself. He would understand.

“What is it?” Harry asked. He didn’t look too surprised when Draco marched them into a corridor further down in the dungeons where no one else usually came.

Draco finally took the vial on the chain out from his shirt. Harry blinked. He said, “I thought you would have some potion in there when I first saw you wearing it. But—it’s blood, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Draco said. and exhaled, and took the plunge, aware all the time of Dash watching him intently from behind Harry. “Over the last month, I started studying blood magic.”

Harry’s eyes fixed on his face right away. “Because you want to find Bellatrix and punish her for what she did in Hogsmeade.”

Draco nodded.

“Draco, you don’t have to—”

“But I want to,” Draco flashed back, and when Harry blinked at him and fell silent, Draco went on, saying all the things that he hadn’t been able to say to Mother when she confronted him about it. “I want to have something special I can do to help, something no one else is doing. You have Dash and your wandless magic and your studies with Professor Snape.” Even here, he wouldn’t name the Dark Arts aloud. “Hermione is brilliant and I know that she’s working on lots of solutions that can help defeat Voldemort. Weasley has a family who’s brilliant, and he can call on them for help, and they’ll come running.”

“Ron is also—”

Draco shook his head. The last thing he wanted to do right no was argue over the qualities of one particular Weasley. “Fine, I acknowledge it. But I don’t have any special talents like that. Ultio only hatched and changed into what I needed him to be when I realized how much I wanted to get my revenge. Blood magic is one way I can do that. And it’s not all about just getting revenge, you know.”

“I’ve never studied blood magic. What exactly does it do?”

Draco relaxed. Yes, Harry will understand. “It does let you track people you share blood with. And it can let you make enchantments and spells stronger if you use a bit of your blood to help them. And it can even let you do necromancy, if you sacrifice a bit of blood to feed the dead.”

“Draco—”

“I’m more interested in something else, though,” Draco interrupted. He leaned towards Harry. “Where does blood stay most of the time?”

Harry looked as if he thought this was a trick question. But he ventured on a guess, and it was the right one, as Draco had known it would be. “In someone’s body?”

Exactly.” Draco reached out and took Harry’s hand. “Now, imagine what it would be like to be perfectly in tune with blood. What happens when you run fast? Or when you’re in the middle of a fight and you need to move faster?”

Harry’s eyes widened. “Your heart beats faster. Your blood pumps.”

“Right. I can make myself faster and stronger this way. I’ve already tried a few duels against Father, and I’m definitely better than I was when I started studying it.”

Harry looked at him with wonder. “That’s great, Draco. Would you mind teaching that to some people in our Defense Club, if Professor McGonagall thinks it’s okay?”

“I wouldn’t mind, but it takes some really intense study to get this good.”

Harry nodded, accepting that. Then he paused. “And what can you do with the blood in other people’s bodies?” he asked quietly, finding his way straight to the one question Draco had hoped he wouldn’t ask.

Draco took a deep breath. “I can make it gallop,” he offered. “I can make someone’s heart beat fast enough that I could probably cause them to have a heart attack. I can probably make it thicken and burn. I know there are spells for that, too, but there’s a difference between blood magic and other spells like that.” He waited for Harry to nod. “There’s no defense against blood magic. At all.”

“Like the Killing Curse,” Harry muttered.

“Don’t be silly. There is a defense against that. It’s called being Harry Potter.”

“Or Horcruxes.”

The dark look on Draco’s face made him sorry that he’d brought it up. But he said, “I can be an asset, Harry. I swear I can be. I’m not as powerful as you, but I have a natural talent for this kind of magic.”

“Oh, Draco.”

Draco found Harry’s hands on his face before he could even think. Harry was staring at him intently, softly tracing Draco’s cheekbones with his fingertips.

“You’re always an asset,” Harry breathed, and kissed him.

Draco gasped and found himself drifting in hazy warmth before he could even catch his breath. His mouth ached. He reached up and caught the back of Harry’s neck, and held him in a kiss that didn’t last long enough, even though it was probably two minutes before Harry broke away, smiling.

“You’re always welcome. You’re always going to be with me.”

Draco leaned in and rested his forehead on Harry’s shoulder. His hand was trembling. Harry caught it and held it.

It wasn’t enough to lessen his quest for Bellatrix’s blood or the shame that someone he was related to had participated in the attack. But it was enough to make him remember what he was fighting for.

Chapter 114: Antagonizing a Snake

Chapter Text

That’s it!”

Harry nearly fell off the bed in his surprise. He and Ron had both been up in their dorms, reading one of the Dark Arts books with the hidden covers that Severus had got him—in his case—or a book about chess—in Ron’s case. Dash had been under both their beds at once, flowing across the narrow corridor of space between them.

Hermione burst into the room and flew towards them. Her cheeks and eyes were shining so much that Harry didn’t know which one was brighter. She slammed down a piece of parchment on the bed next to him and pointed to something on it. Harry turned his head and twisted his body and realized that it was the parchment of Arithmancy equations that she’d shown them at the beginning of term.

“What is it?” Harry asked. The equations confused him as much as they ever had.

“I finally found the variable that collapsed everything into concentric circles radiating out from Hogwarts!” Hermione stabbed her finger at a dot that Harry supposed was Hogwarts. It did have circles around it, but they were crisscrossed by so many other lines that they didn’t look concentric to Harry. “Look. When you assume that there’s seven—things, and you also assume that Hogwarts is the center of everything because it’s so important in V-Voldemort’s life—”

“Why would you assume that?” Ron asked, his nose wrinkling.

“Because of what Tom Riddle told Harry in second year,” Hermione retorted impatiently. “He didn’t want Hogwarts closed. It was important to him.”

“That doesn’t mean—”

“Anyway,” Harry interrupted, and only partially because Dash was filling his head with hissing snickers. “You found out where some of them are, Hermione?”

“All of them, I think.” Hermione beamed at him, and then gave the parchment a slightly disappointed look. “But it means that I’ll have to work hard to understand what all the circles mean. I found them, but I have to find them.”

“You located them, though,” Harry said, and smiled at her. “Hermione, that’s great.”

“Yes, located is the better word. Why didn’t I think of that?”

Harry laughed and grabbed her and spun her around. Hermione squeaked, and her hair flew, and the parchment sailed out of her hand and under Ron’s bed. “Harry, be careful with that! Do you know how long—”

“You didn’t even hear it when he said how great you were,” Ron snorted, and Summoned the parchment from under his bed with a lazy wave of his wand. “Hermione, you’re a genius.”

Those words made Hermione blush. Harry watched with interest. Of course, after some of the ways that he acted around Draco, he couldn’t blame Ron and Hermione for anything they chose to do.

“It was—I mean, it took a lot of time, but anyone could have done that once they understood the basic Arithmancy and came up with the basic concept,” Hermione muttered, and smoothed down the parchment.

Ron flung an arm around her shoulders. “Well, that’s me out, then.”

“Don’t be silly, Ron,” Hermione said, and her voice was the softest Harry had ever heard it. “You have other skills.”

For a second, while they stood looking at each other, sparks seemed to be crackling between their eyes, and Harry thought they’d probably forgotten he was there. He was about to clear his throat and remind them when Hermione squeaked and staggered forwards. Ron looked like he was about to kiss her forehead. He released her, so that she almost crashed to the floor and had to grab onto him to keep from falling over.

Dash! Harry snapped.

Was it my fault that they were standing on one of my coils?

I saw you stick your head out and nudge Hermione in the back!

Is it my fault if they were standing so close to your bed that I could do that?

Ron and Hermione had untangled themselves by then, and Hermione was blushing and clearing her throat. “Anyway, this means we can start looking for them,” she said weakly. “As soon as I study them some more.” She hesitated. “There’s one line that almost overlaps Hogwarts.”

“So one’s here?” Ron narrowed his mouth. “That might explain why we can’t keep Defense professors.”

“Yeah, I think it does.” Hermione blushed as she looked at him again. Then she said, “Um, I’m going to go study it some more.”

She fled down the stairs. Ron turned to Harry with a deathly serious expression. “Mate, keep your snake from pushing me into Hermione again. I don’t care what he thinks, we’re just friends.”

For right now! Dash said chirpily from under Harry’s bed, where he’d retreated fully.

“I’m going to tell him,” Harry said, and he bent down so that he could frown at the basilisk from under the edge of the coverlet. “Dash, people want to handle their own affairs. That means no outside interference, okay?” Even if you think it’s perfectly obvious that they’re going to be more than friends someday. The “someday” is important to them. They want to wait and get it right themselves.

It’s stupid. When you have a mouse in your throat, you don’t delay and let it escape.

I am going to do my best to forget that incredibly disturbing comparison, Harry said flatly, and turned around to smile at Ron. “I talked to him. I don’t know if he’ll listen, but at least I told him.”

“I know that you can’t do much about a basilisk, mate. He’s just determined to do whatever he wants because he has no social graces.” Ron patted his shoulder. “I appreciate that you at least tried.”

I have plenty of social graces!

You don’t demonstrate them very often, Harry told him, and went back to reading, ignoring the complaints Dash regularly launched down the bond. It felt good to get one over on him for once.

*

Invenio fracta!

Severus had to cover his eyes at the sudden explosion of wood and glass and straw from the dummies. He uncovered them when he heard the last bits clicking and settling, and blinked at the mess strewn on the floor.

“More than impressive, Harry,” he murmured. This particular spell, the Fracture Curse, was a process of finding old breaks in an opponent’s body—snapped ligaments, shattered bones, torn muscles—and causing them to break again. Severus had carefully filled the dummies with a mixture of materials that he’d snapped and then cast Reparo on.

It looked as though Harry had found every single one of them.

“Very good,” he went on, and sighed when he turned around and saw Harry drooping. “Are you all right?” He had thought that Harry understood the reasons behind having to learn the Dark Arts, and he’d accepted it. He certainly had been reading the books and practicing. He wasn’t pulling his power back instead of putting it behind the spells, as he had been at first.

“I’m just—why am I good at this?” Harry whispered, avoiding his eyes.

“It’s a talent,” Severus said, and walked over to stand in front of Harry. Harry didn’t look up at him, instead staring blankly at his wand. Severus shook his head. “Do you consider your talent for Quidditch to be a problem, or something you need to apologize for?”

“Of course not!” Harry was squinting at him as if Severus had taken leave of his senses.

“Or your friend Weasley’s talent at chess, or Granger’s gift for Arithmancy, or Draco’s talent for blood magic, or your Parseltongue?” With each choice named, Harry’s head shook more fervently. Severus bent down and looked him hard in the eyes. “But those last two are often considered close to Dark Arts.”

“I don’t care. Nothing that lets me bond with Dash or Draco defend himself is going to be a problem for me!”

Severus spread his hands. “Now, put yourself in my position as your guardian, and think of how hard I have fought to protect you,” he said. “And what will learning the Dark Arts enable you to do?”

“Protect myself.”

“Right.” Severus waited until Harry was looking at him again, although it took long enough that he felt impatience prickle up and down his spine. “You have more than enough understanding to grasp this, Harry. The Dark Arts are spells that will let you defend yourself. Violently, perhaps. But your enemies who do survive those spells—and ones like those you have been practicing are survivable—will be more hesitant to attack you again.”

Harry gave an expressive look at the dummies.

“The broken materials in their bodies were far more plentiful than any broken bones or the like will be in any human,” Severus said dismissively. “Now. Are you going to waste our time talking about tiresome things again, or are you going to continue the practice?”

“Continue the practice,” said Harry, after only the slightest hesitation. He lifted his wand again.

Severus stepped back, and watched as the next spell, one that would shatter the kneecaps of a human and was aimed at huge knobby bone plates he’d attached to the dummies’ legs, flew straight and on target.

Reminding himself that his enemies could survive these spells was the right tactic.

It wasn’t truly a reluctance to defend himself or hurt others that made Harry pause, Severus knew. It was a reluctance to kill.

Another direct strike sent more pieces of bone careening through the air.

And a willingness to cause pain is more than enough to protect him against most enemies.

*

“What is this I’m hearing about you giving others a book that has space expansion charms on it, Lucius?”

Lucius glanced up from the report he was studying. It came from Susana in the Ministry, and contained an expected timeline for when her people might be expected to ally with Harry. “Good morning, Nero,” he said. “To what do I owe this unexpected Floo call?” It wasn’t unexpected at all, of course, which was why Lucius had left this particular fireplace open today. But it wasn’t as if Nero could be expected to know that.

“I want to know the truth, Lucius!”

And I wish for a way to kill you without turning the others against me, but we don’t always get what we want. Lucius arranged his face in an expression of puzzlement. “I’m not giving other people a book on space expansion charms, Nero.”

“Oh.” Nero subsided and blinked for a second.

“I’m giving them copies of a book from the Black library that contains advice on creating manor houses and hidden corners and pocket dimensions,” said Lucius, and nodded at him. “Good day. Please correct the misconception for anyone else who asks you about it.”

“Wait just a minute, Lucius!”

“What? I’ve corrected your misperception, and—”

“I want to know why you’re telling others about this book, and you’re not going to give a copy to me!”

“Because I didn’t think you would be interested,” Lucius said, with a faint shrug. “After all, you’ve always told me that your manor house is grand enough for you, and bigger than the houses of most other families. And people who accept a copy of this book need to become allies of the Malfoy family. I didn’t think you would be interested in that.”

“Fuck you, Lucius,” Nero said, but he was starting to settle down. “I never said I wouldn’t be interested.”

“But interested enough to become an ally?”

“I’m in your Floo, aren’t I?”

“That doesn’t necessarily indicate a potential for alliance.” Lucius tapped a quill sitting on his desk against his lips. “And you originally Flooed me when you misunderstood what the book was about. Do you want—”

“Yes, I misunderstood. Yes, I’m asking for your indulgence now.” Sometimes Nero had self-control, but he didn’t exercise it much. Now, he seemed to be clamping down on his anger, and he spoke quietly. “I want to see that book, Lucius.”

“Enough to swear an oath?”

“Of what kind?”

“That you’ll join with me in my political goals.” Lucius smiled lazily and leaned forwards. He had confidence in his ability to use a Memory Charm through the flames, or he wouldn’t have done this. “Those goals include working with Harry Potter and opposing the Dark Lord.” He listened as Nero choked. “I didn’t think you would be that fond of it.”

“But—Lucius, what do you think you’re going to do when he finds out?”

Well, considering that Nero wasn’t laughing at him and storming out of the room, this was already going better than their last confrontation, Lucius thought. “Listen. What if he can’t find out?”

“Don’t be silly, of course someone’s going to tell him—”

“And if he can’t find us?” Lucius smiled a little at Nero. “If he would have to search the whole of Britain, for houses and refuges tucked inside particles of dust and cracks in wood? Do you really think that he would manage to find all of us, Nero?”

Nero floated there and blinked for long seconds. Then he said, “But the Dark Mark—”

“I have a way to neutralize that.”

Nero wavered. Lucius was honestly surprised. He hadn’t thought he would convince Nero this fast, or maybe at all. But it seemed that his love of getting to torture Muggles was outweighed by his desire for self-preservation.

And probably his desire to get his hands on a book used by the legendary Blacks.

“If you could really do that—”

“I promise that I can.”

“Then I need to think,” said Nero flatly, and shut down the Floo.

Lucius smiled a little. Well, that had gone considerably better than their last talk. And while Nero could still damage him if he went running to the Dark Lord, the rumors were spreading, and others would hear and think on them, and Lucius would gain more new allies than the Dark Lord would.

And if worst came to worst, he and Narcissa and Draco could run to the refuge that Narcissa had already created.

*

“Detention, Mr. Potter.”

Harry felt as though his heart was about to leap out of his chest, because he hadn’t heard Umbridge behind him. Then again, from the jerk of his head and the displeased hiss Dash gave, he hadn’t sensed her, either. Harry turned around. They were at the head of the final staircase that led down to the Great Hall, on their way to dinner. Or Harry and Dash were. He had no idea what Umbridge was doing. “Why, Professor?”

“Yours is not to question, Mr. Potter.” Umbridge’s eyes were glittering like the eyes of a lizard in strong light. “You are to report to my office at seven for your detention.” She turned and started to make her way back down the corridor.

Dash reared up.

Dash, no!

Relax. I’m not going to eat her. But I’m not going to let you suffer for no reason, either. Pretend as if you’re struggling to control me. Dash slithered slowly forwards, his shadow distorted by the flickering torches on the wall, and loomed, hissing, over Umbridge, who stared up at him in jaw-dropped terror.

“Mr. Potter, control your snake.” Her voice was such a faint whisper that Harry could easily have pretended he didn’t hear it, and he did.

“Dash, stop it.” He made his voice low and calming. “I’m sure that Professor Umbridge can remember what my detention is for. Even if she doesn’t want to tell me.” He stepped forwards and reached out to lay a hand on Dash’s scales where they overlapped on the side he’d been wounded on.

Dash tilted his head slowly to the side, his mouth opening. A drop of venom glistened at the tip of one fang. Umbridge squeaked and held still. Harry wanted to tell her not to sound like a small delicious snack, but managed to refrain.

“I’m sure she can remember,” Harry said again, and turned to Umbridge. “You remember, right, Professor?”

Umbridge was made of sterner stuff than Harry had thought, at least when someone was holding the immense basilisk back. She shook herself and said, “I don’t need to answer a student’s question, Mr. Potter.”

Dash promptly flung out a loop of his body, knocking Umbridge from her feet. Then he rolled to the side and tied her up in his coils exactly like he would a meal he was planning to swallow. His head dipped, his venom now splattering on the scales around Umbridge’s face.

“Dash!” Harry yelled it both aloud and down the bond.

I think I should eat her right now and spare everyone a lot of trouble.

Don’t you dare. Harry pressed harder against his basilisk. He was long enough by now that he was able to move that part of his body that imprisoned Umbridge without disturbing the one where Harry leaned at all. “You need to think about this, Dash,” he said. “I’m sure that she remembers what the detention was for. That’s all I’m asking.” And you need to end this one way or the other before someone else comes along and remembers that you’re this dangerous.

Ending it sounds like a good idea.

No! “Please let Professor Umbridge go,” Harry continued aloud. He could only do that because he was shouting down the bond, he thought. He was shaking a little with the effort it took to keep from screaming aloud.

After a moment, Dash released her from his hold, but kept his head looming. Umbridge scrambled away from Dash, her face as pale as Draco’s hair. She stood up, swaying as she balanced against the wall.

“That beast must be destroyed,” she whispered.

This time, Harry couldn’t have said anything to stop it. Dash’s head darted forwards, and he closed his jaws around Umbridge’s arm, pinioning her. Umbridge looked as if she wanted to faint. It seemed to take her a long time to realize that Dash was holding her, but not biting her. She stared at Harry. “Get him off, M-Mr. Potter.”

“Dash, please let her go,” Harry said. “I’m sure that Professor Umbridge didn’t mean it about you having to be destroyed.” He tried to cross his eyes at Umbridge, or something, because he didn’t know if she was smart enough to figure this out on her own. She’d got herself into this position, after all.

Umbridge shivered and nodded. “Of course not,” she said, her voice a parody of its usual honeyed self. “I d-didn’t mean to imply th—that you were less than n-noble.”

Dash made the bond thrum with his amusement. Harry thought feelings of agitation back at him, and Dash let Umbridge go and coiled his tail around Harry in one smooth movement. He carried Harry off down the steps, his tail curled over his back like a scorpion’s.

Don’t you think this is going to make people lose respect for me? Harry thought, as Dash put him down gently at the bottom of the stairs. He looked apprehensively up them, but Umbridge had already departed, which meant that she was smarter than she looked.

No, because anyone who did come along and saw me looming over Umbridge took a different route, Dash said. And you’re not going to that detention alone. I think she’ll forget about what it was for when she sees me.

Severus said we weren’t to antagonize her, Harry argued as he walked into the Great Hall. Ron and Hermione waved at him, and Draco, who had decided that he would sit with them sometimes, smiled at him, and then gave him a sharp look. Harry grimaced. Draco had probably already figured out something was wrong.

That means you have a considerate lover. Enjoy it.

Don’t change the subject.

You don’t need to worry about it. She antagonized us. She gave you a detention for no reason. I’m not going to stand for that, and you shouldn’t, either. You’re worrying about your image? Imagine what will happen if it gets around that you’re doing what she wants every time.

Harry thought about that, and shrugged in response to his friends asking him where he’d been, and decided that he would take Dash with him to the detention.

You have no choice about that.

You seem to not leave me with a choice about much, Harry snapped without looking up from his plate to meet Draco’s narrowed eyes.

I would let you do this if it wasn’t important. But it’s very, very important.

Harry sighed and decided to believe that.

*

Draco stabbed a piece of his potato harder than normal. Ultio lifted his head off Draco’s arm in surprise, and then put it back down when he saw that Draco was eating the potato. Draco stroked his head.

If Dash wasn’t acting upset, then it probably hadn’t lasted long, Draco thought. But he would keep a closer eye on Harry, and if necessary, find out who had been doing this and decide whether he needed to handle them.

He just—he would do anything not to see the shadows that lurked in Harry’s eyes right now. Anything.

Chapter 115: Politics Will Tell

Chapter Text

“You—may go, Mr. Potter.”

Harry raised his eyebrows. He honestly hadn’t thought it would be that simple, to just show up at Umbridge’s office door with Dash and have her dismiss him from detention. But she was averting her eyes from him and shuffling papers on her desk, so she must have changed her mind. Harry nodded and said, “Yes, Professor.”

Then he turned and walked away, ignoring Dash’s many suggestions down the bond for how they might be able to sneak into her office and scare her. Or eat her. It was when Dash offered to let Harry bring some house-elves to cook her that Harry finally said, Look. I know that I have to keep my head down and not make it easier for the Ministry to stir up public opinion against me or take you away. It gets a lot harder when you say things like this.

Dash crawled in silence for a surprising amount of the remaining distance to Gryffindor Tower. Then he said, And have you thought about how easy it would be to start looking weak in the eyes of your followers?

Allies.

Followers. Have you thought about it?

Arguing with Dash over terminology was almost always useless, so Harry turned and leaned against the wall. No. What do you mean? I’ll look weak to them if I’m fighting with the Ministry and Umbridge all the time.

Dash raised the front part of his body so that he was hovering in front of Harry’s eyes. The glow behind his eyelids seemed sharp and serious. I mean that there are worse things than being assigned detention by the pink one, especially after it happens more than once. Your followers might start worrying about a leader who can’t defend himself.

But if I try and then look worse to the Ministry—

You need to look stronger than the Ministry. Don’t worry about offending them. They already hate you. Don’t adjust your actions to their opinion of your abilities. Go ahead and do what you like in spite of them.

Harry sighed. And how would that make me look when it came to compromises and working with people who differ from me? Those were the reasons Severus had told him it would be best to avoid conflict with Umbridge.

The Ministry isn’t interested in compromising. That’s all you need to tell someone if they ask. Tell them that she wanted to take me away from you. That’s a supreme example of stupidity.

Harry frowned and spent a moment thinking about that. Yes, it would probably work, especially with Elena Zabini right there in the school and (hopefully) willing to back up what he said to anyone who asked. But for some reason, it still felt—it made his stomach feel as if he was going to be sick.

I understand, Dash said gently. You’re not used to adults being on your side. You had too many conflicts with them for years. But you’ve started to take a political role that only adults usually hold. You have the right to depend on your—allies—for support and you have the right to refute their accusations if they bring them to you.

Harry swallowed slowly. I suppose you’re right. It’s just that I was so helpless to stop things like people thinking I put my own name in the Goblet or that I was the evil Heir of Slytherin. Why is it going to be different now?

Because you have—allies—who can help you counteract that. And you’re going to be fighting back. Not putting your head down and hoping it all goes away.

Harry tapped his fingers on his arm. What if the same thing happens as last time? he had to ask, because he had to. What if everyone in the wizarding world hates me and fears me even though I have allies?

Then they can teach you to disregard what others say. Dash laid his head against Harry’s neck for a moment. Do you think they haven’t said disgusting things about Elena, or Lucius, or Severus, in the papers? Do you think they always escaped?

That was a good point, Harry had to admit. He reached out and rubbed behind Dash’s eyes, smoothing his plume. Then he said, Okay. Let’s try it.

*

Draco glanced across the Great Hall at Harry the next morning. He’d walked into breakfast with an odd expression on his face. Draco decided he had to get Harry alone on the way to class and talk to him about what was going on.

But then he found out.

The Prophet had yet another article about the Death Eater attack in Hogsmeade, saying that it couldn’t possibly have been real since no one was hurt. Draco shook his head at it and put it aside. Really, Fudge’s administration was in its death throes. And if they didn’t want to help with hunting down Draco’s aunt, that didn’t matter. All the more reason for Draco to go after her himself.

“That’s stupid.”

Draco looked up blankly and found himself gaping at Harry, who was glaring with disdain at the same article. He slammed the paper down on the table and continued talking to Granger and Weasley. He wasn’t actually shouting loudly enough that everyone in the Great Hall could hear him, but he wasn’t trying to keep his voice down, either. And of course everyone went silent and listened when Harry started speaking.

“Of course someone was hurt. Dash was. I don’t care if they don’t think of him as a person, they should have said something about him. And if they didn’t question the inhabitants of Hogsmeade, they should have.” Harry twisted the paper over and then snorted. “Of course it’s by Rita Skeeter. She lives to lick the Ministry’s arse, doesn’t she?”

Draco found his mouth open, and closed it before Ultio, who was curling up his neck in curiosity, could investigate. He’d thought Professor Snape had told Harry to keep quiet and out of intentionally antagonizing the Ministry. This…

This didn’t sound like attempting to keep away from antagonizing the Ministry.

Weasley leaned over to Harry and said something. Harry shook his head and gave Weasley a smile that was probably meant to look mysterious, but to Draco, it looked shaken. He started to stand up. He was going to need to find out what had happened right now, instead of waiting for after breakfast.

Then the professors decided to speak up. Professor McGonagall said sharply, “Mr. Potter! Five points from Gryffindor for language unbecoming of a fifth-year student!”

“Hem-hem,” Umbridge said, and Draco saw her hands sinking into the sides of the table like claws. “Really, Mr. Potter. I’m afraid that it shall have to be detention.”

Several people shuddered at that. Draco at least knew the Slytherins were ones who had already had detentions with Umbridge. He made a note to ask them. Later.

“Why?” Harry asked, and leaned back and looked carefully at Umbridge. Draco wondered if he was the only one who could sense the trembling fragility behind the surface. Whatever had persuaded Harry to do this, he wasn’t as confident as he was trying to look. “Rita Skeeter isn’t part of the Ministry, professor. I just made a statement about how she was lying if she thinks Dash doesn’t matter.”

Umbridge paused. The invocation of Skeeter might be enough to make her back off and leave Harry alone, but Draco doubted it. He remained where he was, though. There was a balance he might upset if he moved now.

“Of course she doesn’t think Dash matters. I never heard that that woman had any value for basilisks.”

That was Elena Zabini. Draco let his eyes go slowly over to her. He’d enjoyed her Transfiguration classes before now, as much as he could when he had to watch her all the time because she might slip a poison onto his desk or an essay she was returning for fun. Right now, she was simply smiling and holding a teacup to her lips, as if she hadn’t just intervened in the debate on Harry’s side.

If one of his allies has intervened, then I can do the same thing, Draco thought, and walked across the Great Hall to stand beside Harry. Narrowed eyes followed him, and Dolores Umbridge’s were two of them.

Draco ignored that. He smiled at Harry and said, in the same kind of voice he’d used that could be heard simply because the Great Hall was so silent, “Come on, Harry. You know Skeeter only cares for what will get her the most outrage. You can’t really expect her to care about Dash.”

Harry smiled at him, a deep happiness at the bottom of his eyes that Draco thought he understood, but didn’t like. Was he that surprised by someone standing up for him? That was ridiculous. Draco did wish he could travel back in time and undo some of the things he’d done during their first two years at Hogwarts, but Harry ought to know better about him by now.

“Yes, I reckon you’re right.” Harry shoved himself down the bench—he was already sitting near the end—so that Draco could have some space. “But it merited saying, anyway. The people who believe these articles are idiots.”

Draco was glad that he hadn’t carried any food or pumpkin juice across the space between the tables, because he would have choked. He gave Ultio a crust of soft bread from Harry’s plate and nodded. “Sometimes she just makes up ‘facts’ for the story. And the people who believe them in the first place can’t tell the difference between those and truth.”

“As much as I agree with your characterization of Miss Skeeter’s journalism, Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy,” the Headmistress said, standing up, “I will ask you to keep your language clean for the Great Hall.” She left then, but not before Draco saw one corner of her mouth twitching up.

I believe Rita Skeeter’s articles,” Millicent Bulstrode said then, her jaw set and stubborn. “She has lots to say about how you lie to the public, Potter. And that Headmaster Dumbledore wasn’t that bad—”

“Really? You can think that, after first year when he took all those points from Slytherin just so that Gryffindor could get the House Cup?”

Millicent flushed and looked around as if wanting support. She got it from a Ravenclaw girl Draco didn’t know, but who sat right beside Cho Chang as if to guard her from anyone aiming a spell at her. “I believe Rita Skeeter, too. She might not always be the best source, but she’s only trying to get the facts. How can anyone believe Potter?”

“Mind telling me why he’s such a bad source?”

The Ravenclaw girl—maybe she was Marietta Edgecombe, the way Draco was starting to think—puffed up and said, “Because he has a basilisk. That means he’s evil. I thought everyone knew that by now.”

There were some embarrassed faces among the Ravenclaws. A blonde girl Draco didn’t know, either, but who had some of the look of a Lovegood, leaned over and said earnestly, “Don’t mind her, Potter. It’s just the Wrackspurts interfering again.”

“Shut up, Loony!” Edgecombe shoved the girl hard enough to knock her off the bench and to the floor.

“That was stupid of you,” Harry said. His voice was soft, but that only meant everyone in the Great Hall shut up to hear him, again. He strode across the hall and bent over to offer a hand to Lovegood. She smiled dreamily at him and let him help her up.

“You really do need to blame the Wrackspurts, and not her,” she said.

“I’ll take that under advisement,” said Harry, smiling at her. Then he faced Edgecombe. “Mind telling me why you think that I’m the evil and stupid one when you just bullied a girl two years younger than you in front of all the Houses and most of the professors?”

Edgecombe looked around at her Housemates, but even Chang was leaning away from her now. She turned back to Harry and seemed to ignore the way that Dash had slithered up behind him and was watching in an interested way over his shoulder. “I mean, it’s just Loony Lovegood. No one cares if we bully her. You’ve never cared before.”

“Dash?” Harry asked, and then hissed something.

Dash slid right up to the edge of the table and parted his jaws what must have been all the way. Draco found himself gripping the edge of the Gryffindor bench without meaning to. Dear Merlin. Those jaws were bigger and wider than Edgecombe.

“I care now,” Harry said. “Maybe I should have before now, but I should have defeated Dumbledore before I did, too, and done something to repair the rivalry between Gryffindor and Slytherin, and not gone along with being entered in the Tournament. What matters is that I’m not going to stand for it now.” He paused. “Now, are you going to bully Miss—” He glanced at Lovegood.

“My name is Luna.”

“Luna again?” Harry turned back to Edgecombe as if he actually expected an answer.

Edgecombe shook her head. Draco thought she looked as though staring down Dash’s throat had actually taught her something. He didn’t want to imagine the lessons.

“Good, then that’s settled,” Harry said. He nodded to Lovegood. “You’re welcome to come and sit with us if you want, but you don’t have to. See, unlike Skeeter, I don’t tell people to do ridiculous things,” he added over his shoulder, and he turned and walked back to his place next to Draco.

Dash followed him, but only after a long, wistful look at Edgecombe. For once, Draco was glad that he didn’t have the ability to listen in on the Parseltongue conversation between Harry and Dash.

Lovegood picked up her plate and followed Harry. She sat down on Draco’s other side and nodded at him. “Hello. My name is Luna Lovegood.”

“I think I figured that out.” Draco said it dryly, but was rewarded for his efforts with a brilliant smile.

“You don’t have many Wrackspurts. That’s good to know. I get tired of warning people about them and then just having them wander away and go right back to listening to the Wrackspurts instead.” Luna sighed. “It’s a terrible burden, being the only one who believes in something.”

“I know all about that.” Harry leaned around Draco to talk to her. “I was the only one who believed in me for a long time. And the only one who believed that Dash wasn’t evil, for a while.”

“Hey, I believed that he wasn’t evil because you said so!” Weasley objected.

“And I was one of the first to become aware of what it meant that you were bonded to him,” Granger added.

Draco shrugged when Lovegood turned expectantly to him. “I was still acting like a git at the time. And I was upset because I wanted to be a Parselmouth and have a basilisk bonded to me, but Harry had to explain to me that it didn’t work like that.”

Luna shook her head. “But all of you should have known at once that Dash wasn’t evil,” she said, her voice soft and sad. “He’s a basilisk. They may act reptilian, but that doesn’t mean they’re evil.”

Dash slithered up behind her and rested his chin on top of her head. Luna only looked up and said, “Hello.”

Draco decided that he would have to just eat breakfast and listen to the conversation for a while instead of participating. Either his jaw was going to drop open and show unattractive, half-chewed food for way too long, or he was going to roll his eyes until they fell out of his head.

Luna went on eating with them and talking to Dash until it was time for them to go to classes. And Draco noticed the way Weasley’s younger sister came up and walked beside Luna then, as if she could keep her safe from all the other Ravenclaws who had bullied her up until that point.

Or, Draco had to concede, reluctantly, as if she knew her before. There’s that possibility, and I have to accept it.

He really was trying not to think the worst of people, including Harry’s Weasley and Gryffindor friends. And if Harry asked Draco about teaching them blood magic, too….then Draco would at least take the suggestion seriously instead of dismissing it out of hand.

*

“Do you require a tonic, Severus?”

Severus jerked a little at the thought of drinking a tonic prepared by Elena Zabini, more than he did from the sensation and sound of her voice at his ear. “No, I’m well. But I wish he would talk with me before he pulled a political move like that,” he said, keeping his voice low enough that Umbridge wouldn’t hear.

“He didn’t? Well.” Elena was hiding her smile more with the tilt of her head than with the teacup near her lips, which had been her tactic when Harry was still in the Great Hall. “I think I prefer this method, actually. It’s obvious that you were surprised. Now no one who hears about it, or who saw it, can accuse you of controlling him.”

“People were saying that?” The existence of the rumors didn’t surprise Severus. He was only annoyed that he hadn’t known about them already.

“Of course they were. But I was taking care to combat the rumors whenever I heard them.”

“In a fatal fashion, or a non-fatal one?”

“I know that we don’t have so many allies I can afford to kill them. But I did make sure the ones who had the non-fatal method were so sick they wouldn’t want to spend more time spreading the rumors.”

Severus watched her as she stood and picked up the stack of Transfiguration books sitting beside her plate. “How close are you to working out the magical object that Harry asked you to invent?”

“It’s probably going to be a potion, and not an object.” Elena tilted her head again. “Not as close as I’d like to be when I’ve put in weeks of effort, but closer than anyone else has ever come. Let’s leave it at that.” And she swept out of the Great Hall with rapid efficiency. A few students watched her go with the kind of terrified adoration that Severus usually saw reserved for professors in Ancient Runes and Arithmancy.

“If it’s a potion, then I should have been the one to discover and invent it,” Severus muttered in a tone that even he knew was petulant, before he finished his own tea and departed to oversee his next Potions class.

He went on silently fuming about what strides Elena Zabini might be making that he hadn’t realized existed, and he was halfway through the second Potions class of the morning before he woke up and realized that particular effect of the success might have been Elena Zabini’s entire point.

She is skilled at what she does.

*

Harry breathed out. So far, the aftermath of his political move to defy the Ministry and Umbridge was—not terrible.

No one had come up to congratulate him, aside from Luna—and he wasn’t entirely sure what she was congratulating him for, so he’d only smiled and nodded—but people were watching him with more curiosity than wariness now. And a few Slytherin students had smiled at him when they looked as if they could glance elsewhere in a second.

And then Montague did come up and incline his head to Harry after lunch, when Harry was leaving the Great Hall flanked by Dash on one side and Draco on the other.

“A few members of my family were considering whether our alliance with you needed to change,” he told Harry in a hushed voice. “My brother knows Umbridge from the Ministry, and he says someone who would surrender to her isn’t someone we should follow. But now—now we know you were playing a long game. Thank you for confirming our faith.” He hesitated, then dipped his head again, this time lower, in something that looked like a bow. Harry stared after him in silent dismay as he hurried to catch up with some of the Slytherin seventh-years.

If people are going to start bowing to me like I’m some sort of fucking lord—

Your Snape would be so disappointed to hear you swearing like that. I wonder if I should take over your voice again so that I can tell him. Dash swirled a loop of his body around Harry’s legs for a minute, but took it away again before Harry could complain that it would keep him from walking. I told you the political move would work. I was right!

Well, yeah, and I do need my allies to respect me. Harry kept walking to Herbology, Draco beside him. Hermione and Ron were arguing about whether it was important to start revising for OWLS in Herbology yet, and Draco was gazing down at Ultio, apparently deciding something. But I don’t want them to bow to me.

Why not? If that’s how they want to show respect—

But that means they’re not showing respect for themselves!

Dash paused with his tongue flickering rapidly in and out. Harry looked around, but didn’t see Umbridge, the only human being who usually prompted that particular response.

Harry. Dash said it gently, and turned his head a little, and Harry realized that he was the one who was making Dash flick his tongue like that. They’re not house-elves. They can make their own decisions. Yes, they might have consequences, but they’re not going to be punished by their masters for following you, or honoring you.

Harry swallowed. I was thinking like that? He wasn’t conscious of it, but then again, Dash could see lots of things in his mind that Harry usually wasn’t aware of.

Yes. Dash swayed against him for a second, making Ron and Hermione shut up and Draco look over at him in concern. You always think like that when it comes to people doing something that shows they consider you a leader.

Oh.

Harry thought about that all the way to Herbology, and then stopped outside the greenhouse as Draco caught his hand. “What is it?” he asked gently. Draco had an expression on his face that said it was important, whatever it was.

“I want to declare my loyalty to you.”

“You’ve already done that, in every way I can conceive of,” Harry whispered, his eyes on Draco’s. They were burning, more than they had when he told Harry about blood magic.

“But I want to do it formally. I want a ceremony. I want to make it clear that your goals are mine. It’ll help convince some people who might be on the fence about whether you’re worthy enough to follow.”

Harry had the feeling that Draco had only added that last bit to convince him, because of the way his eyes burned. Harry let his breath out slowly.

You could think the way you usually do. Or you could let him make his own decision. Dash nudged Harry on the neck.

“Yeah,” Harry said aloud, and it was both an answer to Dash’s thought and Draco’s statement. “Yeah, let’s do it this afternoon after Transfiguration.”

And Draco gave him a piercingly sweet smile then, and stepped back to let Harry walk into the greenhouse. Harry turned his head to watch him until it was turn back or walk into a glass wall.

He had the feeling he wouldn’t like whatever Draco came up with to “declare” his loyalty. But he also knew that he wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Chapter 116: The Loyalty Ceremony

Chapter Text

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 117: Fathers, Godfathers, Guardians

Chapter Text

“You’re willing to teach this magic to anyone who asks?”

Lucius nodded and fought back a shiver as he watched Sanguini pacing slowly around his drawing room. The tame face the vampire showed at Ministry parties was entirely gone. His fingers had much longer nails than were visible most of the time, and his fangs rested on his lower lip.

“What is the price?”

“To be willing to fight loyally beside Harry Potter and the forces he is mustering,” Lucius said. He stuck to simple wording. It was always best, with the way that vampires loved to twist things.

Sanguini shot him a look that was more than startled. “What? I expected you to be teaching this magic and raising this force in your own name.”

Lucius shook his head. “My reputation is tarnished enough that I couldn’t achieve everything needed to oppose the Dark Lord by myself. And, well. I have a complicated relationship with Potter.” He supposed that, after what Narcissa had told him about the letter from Draco the other day—addressed only to her, not to both of them—that one of those relationships might be “father-in-law.” But he needn’t say that now. “Those relationships press me into alliance.”

“Press you? Then perhaps I should refuse, lest I become similarly—pressed.”

Lucius shrugged a little. “You will have your spies at Hogwarts, as I do. What kind of person are they telling you that Harry Potter is?”

Sanguini sat off on another restless tour of Lucius’s study. Lucius rested his hand on his wand in his pocket, and said nothing. He knew a few spells that would subdue vampires. Nothing that would kill one, but that didn’t matter. If he broke Sanguini’s fangs or his jaw, both of which were exquisitely sensitive, then the pain would distract him long enough for Lucius to cast a powerful enough Stunner or get out of the room.

“I have heard that he doesn’t mind consorting with Dark creatures,” said Sanguini abruptly. “That he has a basilisk that follows him around, and no one tries to stop them. Which is absurd, but he’s achieved it.”

“He has a bond with the creature. There were people who were uneasy about it, of course, and I believe that a few parents pulled their children out of Hogwarts last year out of fear that the basilisk might gaze at them. But the bond, and the fact that Potter is a Parselmouth, is guarantee enough for some people.”

“Some Parselmouths have been Dark creatures. They have altered themselves to better fit in with us.”

“I don’t think Potter has any intention of doing that. But it is true that he doesn’t make the same distinction between Light and Dark creatures that the Ministry does—or even between humans and other creatures. I know that the half-giant groundskeeper at Hogwarts is one of his best friends.”

Sanguini blinked for a moment. Then he said, “Hagrid is known to us. And he is simple-minded. Does the boy look for such in his allies?”

Lucius had to laugh. Honestly, he agreed with that assessment of the groundskeeper. But he also knew that Harry wouldn’t, so he sought for a way to convince the vampire. “Potter is…not simple. He can appreciate people the rest of us would never see depth in. No one else could have bonded with a basilisk and controlled him without controlling him, I think.”

“What does that mean? Control him without controlling him?”

Lucius nodded. He had used those words because he honestly thought they were the right ones, but he should have foreseen how Sanguini would pounce on them. “Think about the bond that a basilisk might form with someone. Would it be less than fierce and proud?”

Sanguini had stopped pacing and stood leaning against the mantel with that boneless grace that Lucius both admired and envied in vampires. “No. On the other hand, I do not think I know basilisks well enough to comment.”

Lucius shrugged. “I am learning to know Potter’s Dash—”

“That ridiculous name.”

“It is an English translation of the Parseltongue name that the basilisk decided on for himself.”

Sanguini paused for a moment. Then he gestured for Lucius to go on.

Lucius did, not trying to hide his smug smile. He had known that respect for the wishes of a Dark creature would catch Sanguini’s attention, and Sanguini knew he knew, which meant that he could express it without dancing around the subject. “I am learning to know him. Harry often translates what the basilisk says, although not always and, I am sure, not with the original emphasis. Dash is brutal, opinionated, and honest. He would have no respect for someone who tried to enforce his will over his.”

“Which probably couldn’t be done in the first place,” Sanguini muttered, a deep frown forming on his face. It made his teeth look sharper.

Lucius inclined his head. “But what Potter does is stand up to Dash and explain that what Dash wants might hurt one or both of them. And he’s not against letting Dash loose when it counts, such as against Dumbledore.”

“I am glad that Albus Dumbledore is dead.”

“So am I.” It wasn’t a sentiment that Lucius would have expressed to most of his allies, even Severus, who still harbored complicated feelings about Dumbledore. But he and Sanguini were perfectly in tune for that moment.

Sanguini ruined the moment deliberately. “So they—”

“Negotiate. Form a partnership. A bond can be like that, the old books say, but it can also form with a creature who is intelligent but glad to bend to the human’s will.” Lucius spread his hands. “Potter—he does not think he has the right to take over someone’s will. I think he would be a very poor caster of the Imperius Curse, unless he was convinced that the person he cast it upon would threaten those he cared for.”

“An interesting stance.”

“Yes.”

Sanguini gave a tight, pacing circle of the room, faster than Lucius’s eyes could actually follow. Lucius casually curled his fingers around his wand. He was reluctant to do something permanent unless he had to, but he had never seen Sanguini this abruptly agitated.

“What makes you think that someone like that would agree to ally with us, and give us the victims we must have to survive?”

Lucius let out a slow breath, and relaxed his hand a little. That was an understandable concern, and one that he would not have expected to be phrased in such a reasonable way. “There is a certain ruthlessness to Mr. Potter, as well.”

“I wonder in which way that would be true. The boy you have been describing to me does not sound ruthless.”

“He accepted the death of Dumbledore. If he mourned, he did not show it to anyone. He was primarily responsible for that death, since he did not attempt to control his basilisk—”

“From the reports I have heard of what happened, he would not have been able to control the basilisk.”

“Perhaps,” Lucius said evenly, meeting Sanguini’s unblinking, blood-colored eyes without flinching. The whole point of this exercise was to show that he could be a strong, useful liaison between Harry and the vampires. It would be useless if he kept wincing and acting as if he wanted to shield himself. “But what else I have said still remains true. You would have expected a true Gryffindor to tear himself apart from guilt. But I have not heard Potter speak of it since then.”

Sanguini paused for a second, his fingernails scratching grooves into the marble of the mantel. Lucius remained calm. The house-elves could polish them out later. “You have a certain way of phrasing things I find pleasing, Lucius.”

“There will be a meeting at the next full moon,” Lucius said. And there would. He hadn’t yet told Harry and Severus of it, but that didn’t matter. The important thing was that he would set it up and carry it out, and then neither Harry nor Severus—perhaps more to the point, Severus—would have doubts about his value in the future. “I intend to have other non-human allies there. You will meet Potter. Will you consent to attend the meeting?”

Sanguini looked at him and then opened his mouth in a soundless laugh, baring his fangs. “You smell afraid, Lucius. I do wonder if all your human allies know of this meeting.”

Lucius maintained a bland stare. He had long since given up trying to cover his scent. He had found no spells that would work well, given that he couldn’t judge the results for himself. And someone who did not fear a vampire and a basilisk both was a fool. “They will in time.”

“This promises to be amusing. Then I will be there, with two of my lieutenants.” Sanguini moved abruptly forwards the next time Lucius opened his mouth to speak, his fingers curved and poised. His fingernails gleamed black. “This does not mean that I am agreeing to be an ally. Merely to attend the meeting.”

“Even that is a step forwards.”

Sanguini’s smile flashed again. “Yes, it is. Thank you for the cup of human blood earlier, Lucius. Your own?”

“My wife also contributed.”

“You do take your hospitality seriously,” Sanguini murmured, and then turned and strode towards the far corner of the room. A black radiance formed there, outlining a door, the same way he had entered earlier. Sanguini turned his head, and his eyes picked up the radiance, looking like a mixture of dried and living blood. “Tell your lord to do the same.”

“My l—”

Sanguini stepped through the door, some magic that none but the vampires knew how to make, and vanished. Lucius was left to stare frowningly at his back and wonder if the vampire had failed to realize that Lucius no longer followed the Dark Lord.

Then Lucius rolled his eyes and sneered. The obnoxious creature was referring to Harry. As if he thought that Harry would bind Lucius with the same kind of ties that the Dark Lord had done. The mere thought was ridiculous.

Perhaps Sanguini did not listen closely enough when I said that Harry preferred not to overcome someone else’s will with the Imperius Curse, Lucius thought, shaking his head as he paced over to the door to tell Narcissa what had happened. I hope that he will still add value to the alliance, if he insists on ignoring the obvious.

*

Sirius sighed and read through the last letter Harry had sent him. They’d been exchanging cautious owls for what felt like forever. Of course, it was only three months since he’d arrived back in Britain.

But every hour away from Harry feels like forever since I escaped Azkaban.

Dear Sirius,

Severus says that he won’t read every letter I write to you for all time, just these first ones, until he’s satisfied that I’m not saying something stupid. I don’t know what stupid thing I could say. I know that you and I still need to heal and talk about things before I would be ready to live with you again.

There was a long, jarring scratch under those last words. Sirius gave the ink streak a blank look before he envisioned Snape grabbing Harry’s hand because he was reading over his shoulder and wanted to stop him from writing. Sirius chuckled and skipped down to the next paragraph.

But I do want to meet you again. Thank you for—the house in Hogsmeade. That was unexpected, but I do want to live there again. I just feel too much in danger right now. That attack happened in Hogsmeade on my birthday.

“And the sooner you can stop Voldemort, the better, pup,” Sirius said aloud, leaning back against the chair, and wrinkling his nose as a huge cloud of dust rose from it. No matter how many times he cast spells to clean it or shouted at Kreacher to do it, the chair remained stubbornly dusty.

But I also want to be really sure that you aren’t going to say anything against Slytherins. My guardian is a Slytherin. So is my boyfriend. So please don’t. You can get upset about Death Eaters who attack me and that kind of thing all you like, but it’s not going to be the same as blaming the House.

I love you and I can’t wait to see you again.
Harry.

Sirius spent a moment contemplating the ceiling. It was probably going to be hardest to adhere to not blaming Snivellus whenever he got a chance, because that was automatic by now. And the man had taken Harry from him.

It was probably a good thing.

Sirius winced. Yes, it had been. He hadn’t been treating Harry well, and he’d been so worried about the Horcrux that he hadn’t thought about his godson. But he still resented the way Snape had done it, sneaking about behind his back and never even asking Harry if he wanted to live with him. Harry might have said no, and then what would Snivellus have done?

Sirius felt the smile drop off his face when he realized what name he was thinking. That was exactly the kind of thing Lughborn had worked on with him. He couldn’t think it, or eventually he would open his mouth and that name would come out of it without him thinking.

And then they would have a problem with seeing each other again, because Snape would take Harry away.

Sirius leaned back and began to practice some of the meditation techniques that he had learned with the Lughborns. His name is Snape, his name is Snape, his name is Snape. I don’t have to like him, I just have to be polite to him because he’s Harry guardian for right now. His name is Snape…

*

“Hello, Harry.”

Harry jumped and turned around. He was just coming back from a meeting of the Defense club that Professor McGonagall had been teaching, and the shadowy figure had surprised him when it stepped out of a side corridor. For a second he’d thought it was Nott.

Then the figure flung back his hood and grinned, and Harry smiled back. It was Remus. Harry wondered why he hadn’t sent an owl to say that he was coming, but then again, he might have thought it was less easy to send an owl when he was staying with werewolves.

“Have you learned what you can from Whitepaw?” he asked, craning his neck back so that he could look Remus in the eyes. At least he wasn’t having to do that as often as he had been in the past. He was growing a little.

“Yes.” Remus settled his cloak around his shoulders and glanced to the side. “Dash isn’t with you?”

“He’s just out of sight,” Harry said, and turned his head, although he could only see a flash of purple shadow as Dash slipped away again. “He thinks staying with me all the time makes our enemies more cautious.”

“And he wants to lure them into the open and kill them?” Remus’s voice was disapproving, but not as much as it could have been.

Harry shrugged. “He wants to see what they do. If they attack me, then he’ll attack them. He really does try not to kill them if I ask him not to.” He focused back on Remus again. “Do you think you can teach the discipline you learned to other werewolves? Or does Whitepaw want to teach them?”

“Merlin, no.” Remus shuddered a little. “The woman is impressive, but she doesn’t want to be around other people, even other werewolves, and I don’t want to be around her. It would be best if I could break free of her pack altogether, but some of them might want to be involved. I’ve asked, and they’re thinking on it. For now, yes, I can teach others.”

“Good.” Harry’s mind was racing. Lucius had sent him and Severus that letter the other day about the vampires being ready to stand in alliance with them, or at least some of the ones Sanguini led would, and the full moon would be a good time to meet them. And they had “Susana’s people,” although Harry wasn’t entirely sure what Susana’s people were.

“Do you want me to reach out to the ones Greyback leads?”

“Do you know names?” Harry asked, coming back to the present. “That would be most useful right now. The only names of werewolves Severus could find were the already arrested ones or the ones registered with the Ministry, and of course those people aren’t going to be part of Greyback’s pack anyway.”

“For now, starting with registered werewolves might actually be a good idea.” Remus looked thoughtful. “I can show them and the public that they’re less dangerous on the full moon, and they’ll be less hard to convince than some of those who follow Greyback. And eventually word will trickle to Greyback’s followers.”

“So you don’t know the names of a lot of the people in his current pack.”

Remus blinked at him, as if surprised that Harry had noticed he hadn’t answered the question. “You’ve changed since I last saw you.”

“I don’t have much choice when people are trying to kill me and other people need a political leader.”

“And you aren’t afraid of absolute power corrupting you absolutely, the way it happened with Albus? I’m happy to help you, Harry, but I think all leaders need to be aware of that, and afraid of it.”

Not this again, said Dash, abruptly enough down the bond that Harry jumped. I only just got you convinced that you don’t have to worry for the freedom of every person following you, and now—

You didn’t know what I was going to answer.

Oh. Oh. I can feel the shape of the answer in your mind now. This is good, Harry. Go ahead and poke him with it.

Harry grinned at Dash and turned to Remus. “I used to be afraid of that,” he said. “And then Dash pointed out that I was insulting my allies by assuming that they were like small children and didn’t know the consequences of their own actions.”

Remus blinked. “What?”

“That no one could possibly follow me for a good reason. That I must be corrupt for even asking people if they wanted to ally with me. And some of them do want to be allies and help a little and nothing more. But if someone is looking for a strong leader and someone to save them from Voldemort and I can save them…why not do it?”

“Power corrupted Dumbledore.”

“I’m not an old man with delusions of grandeur.”

Remus spent a moment with his mouth open, as if he was going to comment on that. Then he shut his mouth and looked very hard at Harry. “Is this you talking, or is it Dash?”

Of course it must be me whenever you say something which is not perfectly in accord with the werewolf’s philosophy of life. Dash slid out of the shadows and quietly up to Harry’s side, but Remus didn’t look around. Harry had to admit that he was more impressed by that than by Remus asking the question in the first place. Please do answer and put his silly fears to rest.

“It’s me talking,” Harry said. “But Dash woke me up after I had concerns similar to yours.”

“Being concerned about power is always a good thing.”

Harry stroked Dash’s head and sighed. Is this how tiresome you found me? He didn’t need the image of a fervently nodding head to understand, but Dash sent one. “It’s going to happen anyway,” he said quietly. “The war, people trying to put me in power. There were all those newspaper articles last year that implied I was stupid and a show-off for entering the Tournament but also assuming I’d win anyway, because people think I’m sort of super-wizard. The best thing I can do is control it and make sure that people who want to fight Voldemort with me can do so.”

“You’re not old enough—”

Dash hissed. Remus froze abruptly and stared at him with wide eyes. Harry nudged Dash’s plume harder to the side than he usually did when stroking his head. Was that necessary?

Yes. He’s not only going to knock you out of the mindset you need to win this war and ruin all my hard work, he’s bringing up even newer and stupider arguments!

Harry didn’t need help to see why they were stupid, at least. That would really have exasperated Dash. He turned back to Remus and shook his head. “I wasn’t too young to be the Heir of Slytherin. I’m not too young to be loved and hated. Severus is making sure that I do have adults who can take care of me and protect me. But I’m in this war. And I’m not going to stop being involved because it would make you feel better.”

Remus seemed to age in front of his eyes. “I’m sorry, Harry,” he murmured. “I just—I think of the ways that I could have turned your life upside-down by biting you, and I want you safe from here going forwards.”

Make sure he can do some work to keep you safe. Preferably far away from you.

Harry inclined his head, also making sure to keep his face serene, and looked up at Remus. “It would help if you could come up with some names of registered werewolves, and then we can start from there.”

Remus immediately perked up and began naming off werewolves. Harry listened and nodded, and walked most of the way back to Gryffindor Tower with him putting together a plan for him to approach those werewolves and start spreading the rumors of learning to control their inner beasts that Greyback’s pack would hopefully hear in the future.

Sometimes I think I’m such a disappointment to Father’s old friends, Harry told Dash as they slipped into the Tower.

You are never a disappointment to the ones who matter, Dash said, and nudged him almost hard enough to take him off his feet. Then he extended his neck forwards, and Harry turned curiously with him, to see Severus waiting in the common room.

“Who told you the password?” Harry muttered, knowing from the look on Severus’s face that he would want to know why it had taken so long for Harry to get back.

“Listening to portraits chatter when they don’t think you can overhear them is useful,” Severus said, and stood. “Now. I want you to tell me…”

Harry bowed his head and answered some of the same questions that he had with Remus, but he didn’t mind doing this with Severus. It occurred to him that he should be surprised about that, and maybe a little resentful…

Not when you know that Severus loves and cares for you, while the wolf might only see you as your father still.

And that answer, unlike many of the ones he’d given or been given tonight, satisfied Harry entirely.

Chapter 118: Full Moon Meeting

Chapter Text

“And where do you think you’re going, Mr. Potter?”

Harry pulled up with a small sigh that he concealed. Then he turned around and patted Dash’s neck to keep him from rearing up any further and talking about what a good idea it would be to eat Umbridge right now. “I’m on my way to detention with my guardian, Professor Umbridge.”

The woman waddled towards him, her eyes bright. Probably because she thinks she’s going to get a chance to discipline me.

That’s exactly what she’s thinking. I can smell it. Dash darted his tongue out longingly. So many problems could be solved if—

I know exactly what you’re thinking, and I’m not going to allow it. Harry merely raised an eyebrow at the woman when she opened her mouth to speak. “You know that it is close to curfew, Mr. Potter.”

“Not exactly curfew though, Professor.”

“If you are chopping the edges of rules and trying to get away with something, then I should put you in detention right now,” Umbridge began, fingering the beaded edge of her pink cardigan and simpering.

“He is on his way to detention with me,” Severus said, and loomed out of the shadows in that unnerving way he had. Dash laughed down the bond. Severus stalked towards Umbridge, his robes billowing behind him. Umbridge backed up a step without realizing she’d done so, Harry thought. “If you wish to give him detention on another day, do it when he has done something worthy of it, Madam.”

Umbridge stood uncertainly for a second, seeming to hover between her fear of Severus and her conviction that Harry was up to something. Then she said in a soft, kittenish voice, “I hope you intend to have him scrubbing out cauldrons until dawn. All the young need to be reminded of how lucky they are with some manual labor now and again.”

Harry held himself still. The words reminded him too strongly of the Dursleys for him to be entirely rational about them.

Dash slid under his hand, and Harry stroked him mechanically, while Severus simply stared at Umbridge as if she was less than the dust on his boot. Then he inclined his head and swept away from her. Harry and Dash followed.

I don’t understand her. It’s like she doesn’t learn. You’re almost six meters long now, and she—

She’s one of those people who doesn’t want to understand. She’s convinced of her superiority to the whole world, and she’ll smug and swank around until someone actually does eat her. Dash twitched his head to the side. Now that I think about it, I don’t want that person to be me. She’ll just upset my stomach for months.

Harry choked back a laugh. Does that mean you don’t want to eat my uncle anymore, either? Because he’d upset your stomach even more.

Not at all. Fat is nourishing.

Before Harry could argue back, they halted in front of Severus’s office, and Severus turned to him with a searching glance that had Harry immediately straightening his back. Severus reached out and quietly adjusted the collar of his robes, eyes incredibly intent.

“You will tell me the moment you think you might be in danger,” he said, and glanced at Dash. “Or your basilisk thinks you are.”

“But Dash thinks I’m in danger just breathing and walking around,” Harry protested. “What if he thinks I’m in danger and I don’t think I am?”

“Then you will tell me and I will make the determination.”

After a second of struggling with that, Harry nodded. It was the sort of decision guardians were supposed to make, he knew, and Ron and Hermione probably wouldn’t have thought twice about their parents saying something like that. Harry liked Severus a lot, but he was still getting used to having someone who cared that much.

“Good.” Severus opened the door to his office, and stepped in. Harry followed, and saw the fireplace already glowing the subdued green that meant Severus had put in Floo powder but hadn’t activated it to take them to the meeting yet.

Severus held his shoulder for one moment more, and Harry looked up. He thought Severus was going to tell him something else, and so did Severus, from the way his brow furrowed

In the end, though, all he said was, “Be careful,” and then he tossed a pinch more of powder into the flames and barked, “Foresthide!” In seconds, he was out of sight as he ducked into the flames.

Harry stepped forwards, too, and Dash wrapped prudently around his body. Harry hugged his basilisk’s tail as close to him as he could get it and said, “Foresthide,” making sure to throw the Floo powder away from him and not cough out the name. He’d told Severus about the way he’d accidentally gone to Knockturn Alley during the summer between his first and second years. Severus had stared at him for way too long after he’d said that, and then they’d practiced Flooing etiquette and the names of common places for an hour. A really boring hour. Harry had no desire to repeat it.

This time, it worked, and Harry thought Dash’s thick scales even cushioned him against the bumps and bruises of the Floo ride. He emerged, coughing, from what honestly looked like a temporary fireplace built of huge stones into the middle of a forest clearing. He blinked and lifted his head.

A full moon beamed down from between the trees overhead--which of course it did, Harry thought, Lucius had set the meeting for the time of the full moon. Dark shapes darted around the edges of the clearing, between trees that gleamed the color of blood and obsidian in the moonlight. Several cloaked figures already waited in the middle of the glade. Harry could see a huge stone behind them that looked unnervingly like an altar.

You won't be the sacrifice, Dash reassured him as he loosened his hold on Harry and slid to the ground. More than one person, or cloaked figure, or dark shape, suddenly pulled back with a hiss of their own. Most of them act like they've never even seen a basilisk before, imagine.

Harry bit his lip to hide his smile, and said, Maybe none of them have seen one that was your size.

They ought to know I'm this big. I'm sure they have their own spies in Hogwarts.

Harry winced a little. That was something he hadn't thought about. Do you think we ought to be concerned?

Of course. But concerned is not the same as afraid.

Dash lazily wound his way into the center of the clearing, and Harry straightened his shoulders and followed. He caught more than one astonished, staring glance, but each time, the person who'd met his eyes looked away again. Was that a good sign? Harry hoped it was a good sign.

When he got to the altar stone, or whatever it was, Dash was curled on top of it. Harry stroked the plume on his head and looked around at the gathered figures. Severus stepped up on his right side, a quiet shadow.

Lucius moved in front of him. Draco was standing behind his father, and he met Harry's eyes expressively. Harry smiled back. Lucius must have thought Harry was smiling at him, because he lifted his hands and gestured grandly. "Welcome to the Full Moon Meeting of the Basilisk Alliance!"

At least he had the good taste to name it after me. Dash lifted his head so that he was as tall as Harry, and could rest his chin companionably on Harry's shoulder. I'll give him a quick death if I ever have to kill him.

Harry said nothing to that, because there was nothing to say when Dash was being Dash. He just shifted to the side so that Draco could stand on his left. There were some murmurs at that. Harry ignored them. He knew he was probably going to get murmurs no matter what he did.

"We have many allies here," Lucius said, turning in a circle so that he had the possibility of meeting everyone's eyes at least once. "Creatures considered outcast from 'normal' wizarding society." He sneered the words. "Vampires, werewolves, Dark wizards, speaking serpents, and..." He gestured dramatically at the far side of the clearing.

Harry turned, along with everyone else, to see a small cloaked figure framed by two trees that looked like the opposite sides of a gate. He raised his eyebrows a little. Dash would probably say that was also good taste, to have that dramatic timing down so pat.

Did they name an alliance after me? Then no, I wouldn't.

The figure moved forwards. Harry thought it must be a woman when he spotted a long curl of grey-brown hair sticking out of its cowl, but he didn't actually know. After all, he had heard some vampires kept their hair long, too.

“We are going to welcome the boy that we hope to ally with,” said the figure in a strange, clipped tone, as though it was speaking the words through teeth that were shaped differently than most human teeth. “You may call me Susana, Mr. Potter.” And she lifted her hands and pulled the cowl down from around her face.

Harry gasped softly. He had heard Lucius speak about Susana, and so he knew that he could expect someone non-human, and not a vampire, either. But it was different to see her small, sharp teeth, and the black webs that spread out on either side of her face in place of ears. There were soft scales embedded under her skin. The webs clapped to the sides of her head as she bowed to him.

Is she something serpentine? Harry asked Dash as he bowed back, a little unnerved. Lucius was staring, too, which didn’t help.

No. She smells like fish.

Something out of the sea, then, Harry thought. He straightened back up from the bow and saw Susana gesturing some of the dark shapes forwards. All of them had their cowls down, and the long hair and sharp teeth and other features that she had. And now that Harry was looking for it, he saw webs on their hands, too, connecting their fingers.

“What do you want?” he asked. “If you live in the ocean, are you even affected by things that happen on the land?”

Severus shifted as if he wanted to reprimand Harry for asking that about allies, and even Draco stiffened. But Susana only smiled, as if she’d anticipated and maybe even approved of the question. “We left the seas long ago,” she replied. “We are partially human, you know, and we maintain some loyalty to that side of our ancestry.”

“And the other part of you is—siren?”

“Merrow.” Susana looked unruffled. “We sometimes spend time in water, and our skins can get dry. But otherwise, we’re part of the land. And the Ministry is threatening us, along with the Dark Lord, just like everyone else here.”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t thought her people had joined because they saw a sense of threat, more because they had an opportunity. “Voldemort wants you to join him?”

More than one person hissed at the name, or clutched at their left arms. But Severus didn’t, which Harry thought meant the rest of them ought to get over it.

“Yes,” Susana said, and shrugged. “We can transform ourselves with a magic that is not Transfiguration—unless it’s akin to becoming an Animagus. The Ministry classifies our gifts as Dark. The Dark Lord thinks that makes us his. We don’t want to serve anyone. We can be allies. But never servants.” She smiled fully, and it was a little unnerving. “We fought wars hundreds of years ago to keep that from happening. We aren’t about to go back now.”

Harry nodded slowly. He didn’t understand all the nuances of what Susana was saying, and he’d probably want to investigate it more closely later. “All right. So what do you want to be my allies?”

“Protection if we’re attacked, and a guarantee that we can freely exercise our magic and proclaim our history.”

“What does proclaiming your history mean?”

Smart Harry, to ask about something like that. Dash hugged him with the upper half of his body, which resulted in part of his own lower body toppling off the stone. Harry kept his face as calm and pleasant as he could when he wanted to laugh so badly that he could taste it in his mouth.

“It means that we’re allowed to reveal ourselves, and transform ourselves to look like humans or merrow if we wish,” Susana said. She was watching Dash with the kind of complacency that Harry didn’t usually see on anyone except Draco or Severus, and sometimes not even then. “And that we can show the transformation to other humans.”

That caught Lucius’s attention. “You can teach others to transform?”

“If we gift them with a small portion of our blood.” Susana smiled a little, her teeth so sharp that it seemed as if they were shearing off pieces of the firelight coming from the center of the clearing. “Or mate with them.”

“Why would anyone want to transform to look like that?” Draco muttered, softly enough that he probably thought it wouldn’t be heard. But the webs on the sides of Susana’s face twitched towards him.

“You have never known the glory of the undersea, silly little boy, or you would not ask that question.”

Draco flushed and opened his mouth in a way that Harry knew would only lead to trouble. He reached over and firmly pinched Draco’s mouth shut, giving him an apologetic look and then turning to Susana. “So you go back into the water sometimes? And you can bring humans with you?”

“Wizards,” said Susana, still watching Draco as if she thought he would have an outburst again at any moment. Cautiously, Harry removed his hand from Draco’s mouth. He was flushing furiously, but at least he didn’t say anything. “It doesn’t work with Muggles. And it works best when we share our transformation, instead of just trying to take them with us.”

“We have our transformations, too.”

Harry turned. There was a woman walking towards him who had the shaggy hair and amber eyes that he associated with Remus, but she couldn’t be an actual werewolf, or she would already have changed. She had long scars down one arm, though. Harry supposed she might have been bitten or clawed by a werewolf who wasn’t transformed.

She sat down on the grass in front of Harry and said, “My name is Erica Kelleth. I was a witch, once.”

“Did the attack take away your ability to use a wand?” Harry asked, startled. He knew Remus could use one, so he’d just always assumed that all werewolves could be wizards if they wanted to.

“It took away my ability to get away with using a wand. I didn’t transform into a full werewolf, but that didn’t matter.” Kelleth bared her teeth. “The minute that someone realized what I was, they went around whispering. I’ve lost every job I ever had. I find more acceptance in the packs than I did in wizarding society.”

“I’m sorry that happened,” Harry muttered. He knew Remus had it bad, but he was a full werewolf and that was supposedly the reason for the prejudice. But Kelleth didn’t turn into a monster, and she was still hated.

“Yes, you are sorry,” said Kelleth, after a moment. “Your pardon. It’s been so long since I heard words of sympathy that a wizard meant that I had trouble believing them.”

Harry nodded. “So you want to join our alliance and—what?”

“I want you to promise that you’ll fight for werewolves and people like me to have jobs. And peace. And a place in the wizarding world, if we want it. Although I might be one of the ones who won’t take it.”

“This is an alliance to combat the Dark Lord,” Lucius said, and his voice was so frozen that Harry thought it would break up into glittering ice shards in a second. “And it has no place for people to make demands like that.”

“You already know it’s more than that, Lucius, or you wouldn’t have recruited people like the vampires to join it.”

Lucius stared at him, affronted. Severus shifted in a way that Harry knew meant he was amused. And a figure stepped out of the trees, almost touching Susana, and walked towards him, stooping his head a little. Eyes redder than Voldemort’s met Harry’s.

“I am Sanguini, leader of the vampires. Lucius told me that you will give us more freedom than we have been given so far.”

“What kind of freedom is that?” It was hard to hold the vampire’s gaze, but Harry did it. He didn’t have to ask Dash to know that if he backed down now, he would lose whatever respect they’d given him. As it was, Dash was silent, although he swayed next to Harry and kept his lidded eyes locked on Sanguini.

“To drink from willing victims. The Ministry would forbid us even that, the same way that it tries to deny Wolfsbane to werewolves willing to register.” Sanguini bared his fangs and made no sound, even though Harry had expected a snarl. Harry thought that made him scarier.

It doesn’t when you consider that I’m still able to open my jaws wide enough to swallow him.

A meal that thin wouldn’t nourish you, Harry said absently, and nodded. “I could probably be willing to provide that, if it was willing donors. I wouldn’t let werewolves just run around turning people into other werewolves, and the same thing applies to you.”

Severus tightened his arm as if he thought he would have to bring his wand around in front of Harry and defend him that way, but Sanguini only laughed and licked at his fangs. “Agreed.”

Then he turned abruptly and examined Dash where he coiled next to Harry. “Will you tell me the secret of how you control the basilisk?”

“I don’t control him. I’m just bonded with him,” said Harry, a little wearily. It seemed everyone had asked him this question for years, starting with Draco in third year when he was trying to make himself into a Parselmouth to bond with a basilisk. And then Viktor Krum and the people who had thought he could give them a basilisk egg. “It’s totally his choice to stay with me or do what he wants.”

“Is that so.” But Sanguini didn’t make it a question, which made him less annoying than some people. He examined Dash intently. Harry didn’t think anything passed between their minds, but he stared as if something did.

I would tell you in an instant if something did, Dash reassured him, and Harry relaxed and nodded a little.

“Then I suppose that you may be a human it would be right to leave in charge of an alliance of Dark creatures,” Sanguini said, and bowed his head a little, and moved away.

Harry turned back to Kelleth. “And will the werewolves agree to abide within certain limits?”

“We will.” Kelleth was considering Dash and him with the same quiet, critical gaze. “You must realize that we are not used to trusting humans. That is the source of my reluctance. That, and what my pack may say when I return.”

“I understand,” Harry said, although he was wondering why they’d bothered coming to the meeting at all when they distrusted people too badly to trust his word. He sighed and slung an arm around Dash’s neck as he watched Kelleth melt into the shadows again, and turned to face Susana.

“We will cause you the least trouble,” said Susana, as if she already knew all he was thinking. Harry concentrated on building up his Occlumency shields, just in case she did. He really had to start practicing the art with Severus on a regular basis again. “We want free water to swim in, and the ability to share our magic and transformation. Nothing else.”

“If no human would be pressured into accepting the transformation against their will…”

“Why would we want unwilling converts?” Susana sounded baffled. “That is for the Dark Lord alone.”

Harry nodded. “Then I think we can begin negotiating.” It was one of the phrases that Severus had told him to use when he was unsure what to say, and from the way Susana smiled, she might know that. But she also appeared to accept it.

“Then I will carry the good news to those of my people who are not here tonight.” Susana gestured at one of the women—or Harry thought it was a woman because of her long hair—and she stepped forwards. As Harry watched, the black fins sank into the sides of her head, and she looked like an ordinary, blonde human with pleasant, if slightly bulging, blue eyes. “This is Ellen Fairwater. She will remain with you as a guide and guard.”

“I don’t need any guards with Dash around, though. And how is going to be discreet in a school?”

“It’s so rare to meet a young human who cares about things like discretion,” said Susana, although from the way her eyes sparkled Harry thought she might really want to say something else. “You are to handle her however you wish. I understand there is a lake on Hogwarts’s grounds. Ellen can live there until you have need of her advice.”

“There are merfolk in the lake. Would they treat her well?”

Ellen and Susana exchanged a look that Harry couldn’t interpret, although since Dash remained relaxed beside him, he thought it must not contain a threat to him. Then Ellen nodded and faced Harry and spoke on her own. “We have no quarrel with that particular branch of our family. Yes, I could stay there until something better came along.”

“Okay.” Harry found himself relaxing without thinking about it. “Then I accept.”

Ellen came forwards and clasped his hand with still-webbed fingers that became unwebbed even as he watched. “There are others here who want to speak with you, so I will only take the chance to say thanks.”

Harry nodded and opened his mouth to say something else. Then Dash hissed and lunged away from his side.

Dash, what are you—

Harry stared down at the woman who lay in Dash’s hold. She resembled one of the merrow-people on first glance, but Dash hissed something and tightened his coils, and the illusion faded away from her, leaving a dark-haired woman there who glared at him with eyes full of liquid hatred.

Lucius was the one who identified her, with his own stare of hatred. “Bellatrix.”

Chapter 119: Binding Bellatrix

Chapter Text

“I want to know how she managed to appear as one of your people.”

Susana hissed. The tongue that lashed between her teeth wasn’t forked, the way Harry thought it would be for an instant, but it was strong, muscular, and a lot greyer than most human tongues. “I want to know the same thing,” she said, and stalked forwards, moving like a predator. She loomed over the woman in Dash’s coils. “Speak!”

Harry watched Susana more than he watched Bellatrix. For one thing, he knew she wasn’t going anywhere as long as Dash held onto her.

For another, he had to figure out if this was really a surprise, or if Susana was concealing treachery.

Bellatrix only laughed scornfully, and moved her head so that some of her long dark hair fell away from her face. She couldn’t exactly use her hands to brush it back; Dash had both of those securely pinned at her sides. “There is no reason for me to do so. You know who I serve. You know I will die before I give up my loyalty to him.”

Susana hissed at the woman. Bellatrix curled her lip a little, as if she was disgusted, but did nothing else.

“That’s probably true,” Harry muttered, and saw Lucius nodding from the side. “She was one of the few Death Eaters who didn’t say they were under Imperius. And she went to Azkaban rather than give up serving Voldemort.”

“Then what is she doing here?”

“She used enchantments to make it look as if she had never left Azkaban,” said Lucius. His voice was harsh. He pointed his wand at Bellatrix, but the woman only sneered at him in turn. “I know spells that would compel her to talk.”

Bellatrix laughed again. “You think you can cast the Imperius with enough force to affect my will, Lucius? Not to mention that your little Lord there probably won’t let you use an Unforgivable.” She moved her head scornfully in Harry’s direction.

Harry faced her and clenched his fists. He could feel his own helplessness seizing him, paralyzing his muscles. He thought Bellatrix was right. All you really needed to resist Imperius was a strong will.

Dash?

No good, Dash said gently, as Harry had thought he would. I thought about trying to influence the serpent in her Mark, but it’s been paralyzed with some sort of magic I don’t recognize. Even with the soul of someone who lived hundreds of years ago, I don’t recognize all the spells there are. I’m sorry, Harry.

Harry nodded grimly. Then he—he supposed it would have to be torture. Even though the thought made him sick to his stomach.

But he would have to watch. Looking away would make him a coward.

He’d actually opened his mouth to say something to Lucius, but Draco stirred at his side and leaned forwards. “What have I been training for, Harry, if not this?” he asked softly. “Let me have a turn.”

Harry paused. He knew how much Draco wanted revenge on Bellatrix. He knew Draco had been training just for that.

It didn’t mean Harry was comfortable letting Draco take the risk of getting too close to Bellatrix.

But from the obstinate way Draco’s jaw was set, he also knew that he would get no peace or respect from Draco if he didn’t let him try.

“All right,” he said, and moved out of the way. Draco moved towards Dash and kneeled down in front of his aunt. Dash didn’t let her go, but he watched Draco with interest, even darting out his tongue as if he wasn’t picking up Draco’s scent in a familiar way.

Dash, what do you think?

There are enchantments in shared blood that run deeper than Imperius. That I do know, Harry.

*

“My weakling sister’s weaker whelp,” Bellatrix sneered at Draco as he knelt down on the grass. “What do you think you’re doing, boy? You’ll never amount to anything.”

Draco said nothing. It was odd. He had thought he would be burning with anger the minute he saw his aunt, and for a few moments after Dash grabbed her, then that anger was there. But it had melted into something so cold and calm that he felt as if he were made of little snowflakes sparkling on crystal.

Mother would approve.

Draco reached into his robes and took out the small silver knife he was never without, now. He’d only brought one to the meeting because the full set was more awkward to carry and the last thing he wanted was weapons tumbling out of his clothes in front of allies. Well, they would see them as weapons. Draco knew they were kind of useless outside ritual and against anyone but blood-related enemies. But most people didn’t know that.

From the sudden narrowing of Bellatrix’s eyes, she might be someone who did.

Draco held her gaze and cut the knife gently down the side of his wrist. The flow of blood was immediate, and sparkled a little as the magic in the knives took hold, making his power manifest in the blood. Draco knew plenty of books and people that talked about this kind of thing, but few of them knew what the phrase really meant.

Bellatrix stiffened in Dash’s coils. Yes, she did.

Draco drew a shallow bowl of earthenware out of his robes. The ritual he was going to use was based on a similar elemental one that bound earth and water together. In this case, his blood would substitute for the water. He chanted the necessary words. “Sangius, mors, vita, terra.

The third time he repeated them, he felt the power shudder to life in his hands. It almost made him drop the bowl. But the only thing he had to think of was how disappointed in himself he would be if he did that, and his fingers steadied.

“You cannot do this, boy.”

Bellatrix didn’t sound desperate yet. Draco glanced up with a faint smile, and watched her recoil at whatever she was seeing in his eyes.

“You don’t know the slightest thing about blood magic if you believe what you just said,” he retorted quietly. “And I think the Black family trained their heirs better than that.”

Bellatrix was thrashing in earnest now. Draco ignored the way that she tried to get her hands free. Dash would take care of that. He looked down at the supercharged bowl and turned his wrist so that blood would run into it instead of smear on the sides. Then he dipped the knife into the blood.

There was another shudder of magic. Susana backed away from him, holding Ellen by the wrist as if she thought Draco might suddenly change his mind and engage in blood-battle with someone not related to him. Draco would have snorted, but he couldn’t take his gaze from the bowl and his aunt.

This is real.

The blood rose out of the bowl in a glittering chain. There were soft silver gleams in the bubbles that Draco knew came from the knife, and brown ones that reflected the bowl, and pale yellow ones that were the image of his hair. All of the power he had raised had a counterpart in this new power.

“You cannot force me to drink it!”

Draco merely raised an eyebrow, and blew the chain of blood forwards. For a moment, it hovered in the air, and anxiety threatened to crack Draco’s crystalline composure after all. If he had studied and worked this hard only for the magic to fail him when he most needed it, in front of allies—

But that didn’t happen. The chain hurtled forwards, as lightly as soap bubbles, and settled around Bellatrix’s neck despite her attempts to thrash her head back and avoid it. She screamed, an inhuman sound that made Draco shudder a little.

The chain paid no attention to what she was doing, and neither did Dash, who only tightened his hold a little. Instead, cuts abruptly opened around Bellatrix’s neck, shadowing her collarbone. The chain became liquid again and drained down Bellatrix’s throat, into the cuts, mingling Draco’s blood with her own.

Draco relaxed. He hadn’t been sure, until the last minute, whether he could open his aunt with what the books called “the knife of the mind,” or if he would have to make the physical cuts with the knife, which would have been much less impressive.

Bellatrix screamed again as the cuts sealed, and Draco’s blood began to race through her. She cursed him. She called upon the Dark Lord. Draco held still and watched her, cold again, but also flushed and trembling with triumph.

He had dreamed of torturing his aunt, causing her the same kind of pain she had caused Harry and Dash. Now he knew this was best. Bellatrix forced to betray the master she had sacrificed so much for? This was the better vengeance.

Someone made a sick sound behind him. Draco ignored them. They could look elsewhere if this kind of magic was so difficult for them to observe.

Dash gave a soft hiss. For a second, Draco did glance at him, because there were more problems if a basilisk was displeased than if a human or a vampire was. But Dash only moved his head forwards and leaned his chin on Draco’s arm, then turned his head. When Draco didn’t do anything, he thumped the end of his tail.

Pet me. The demand was clear, and Draco reached out and gently rubbed up and down the scales on the side of his neck.

Well, I’m punishing the woman who hurt him, Draco thought for the first time. Of course he would approve of that. Probably most people would.

He turned back as he watched Bellatrix began to splutter. Susana shifted in front of him and looked straight at him.

“What does this particular blood magic do?”

Well, at least she asked me. Draco found himself keeping his gaze away from Harry and Professor Snape as he answered. If they disapproved, then he really didn’t want to know about it right now. “The blood I’ve infused with my own strength blends with hers. As it circulates through her body, it also replaces her goals and loyalties with mine.”

Susana actually took a step back from him. For an instant, her hand fluttered in front of her teeth as if she thought Draco would pour his blood down her throat, too. “So—this magic only works on blood relatives?”

Draco nodded, checking Bellatrix’s face again. At least she looked paler and less responsive than she had a few seconds ago. The blood magic was supposed to work fast, but none of the books had told him exactly how fast.

“Thank Merlin.”

Draco only smiled a little as he saw Bellatrix’s eyes glazing. It was sort of what he thought she might look like if she was under Imperius. “I think she’s ready to talk now,” he said, and stood and finally turned to Professor Snape.

Who only looked quiet, and impassive, and proud.

“Then I will question her,” Snape said, as Draco had hoped he would, and swept away from Harry’s side until he was standing in front of Bellatrix and meeting her glazed eyes.

Draco took several steps back before he finally dared to glance at Harry.

And had to catch his breath at the light in his eyes, and how hard his hold was when he reached out and gripped Draco’s hand. Draco gripped back and decided, I think we’re going to be all right.

*

Severus bowed his head to Draco, although he thought Draco was too caught up with Harry’s reaction at the moment to see him. Well, that was all right. Harry could reassure him. Draco had looked—

He’d looked like Narcissa, performing that blood magic spell, the few times Severus had seen her power totally unleashed in battle.

He turned back to Bellatrix, and gripped his wand. He was going to make sure that he delved into her mind, and if there were barriers that might hold secrets, he had faith in his ability to rip them apart. “Legilimens,” he whispered as he caught her wide, staring black gaze.

It was a strange sensation to dive into a mind with no barriers at all. Of course, if the blood magic worked as Severus had always been told it did, that made sense. She was now wearing a copy of Draco’s intentions, and he never would have hidden secrets from Severus or worked against Harry.

Severus worked his way quickly through Bellatrix’s mind, pausing in front of flashing memories that showed her meeting with people in the Ministry who had known about the meeting but elected not to go. He grimaced; he didn’t recognize most of those faces. He concentrated on a list of names instead, and they swam towards the surface of her thoughts, represented as if on a piece of parchment.

None of the names were recognizable, either, but Severus knew he could put the memory in a Pensieve and copy out the list that way. On he went, flicking quickly through more images that had little to do with how Bellatrix had escaped Azkaban and come here.

He paused when he glimpsed a dark room with a carpet on the floor decorated in deep purple and black swirls. There was a single fire in the hearth, which gleamed like the inside of a ruby and did nothing to make the room seem any lighter. Severus bent all his will on the memory, which crisped at the edges like a piece of burning parchment.

This was one of those truths Bellatrix would have fought to protect if her mind were still her own, Severus knew, and pushed even harder. Draco’s blood magic wouldn’t last forever.

The darkness wavered and finally came clear, as if Severus had been standing in the room for a while and had his sight adjust. On a low couch that resembled a bed more than it should lay the Dark Lord. There was a spiderweb of purple cracks along one side of his skull, and Bellatrix was dabbing gently at his face with a cloth that looked to be soaked in healing potions.

Severus drifted near enough to listen to what she was saying. Bellatrix’s voice was low and fretful.

“You will come back, my Lord. I have to believe that. Or what did we break out of Azkaban for? What did Rodolphus die for?” She swabbed again, and then peered closely at the cracks as if she thought they would vanish in front of her eyes. When they didn’t, she sighed mournfully and sat back on her heels. “You are the center of my existence,” she told the Dark Lord. “You will wake soon.”

He is still incapacitated from our battle against him, Severus exulted, and then concentrated harder, not on the image but Bellatrix’s knowledge about it. The name of the village where the building stood flashed into his head. Little Hangleton.

He flashed away to another memory, because her mind was darkening around him, and he would soon have too much to fight. He still had to figure out how Bellatrix had disguised herself so effectively to come to the meeting, and what had made Dash suddenly able to sense her. He doubted a sudden failure of her will or magic was the cause.

He saw her weaving enchantments around a pebble, glinting fragments of magic that wove back on themselves until they made Severus’s eyes water. Then she slipped the pebble into her pocket and added another brass-colored strand of power, and in a second she was one of Susana’s people, or at least someone who looked just like one.

Severus hissed out an irritated sigh. So she’d used a variation of the same trick that had let her seem to be in Azkaban. He supposed he should have known that.

Her mind bucked like a horse now. Severus whipped a bridle of his will over it and watched the memory of her standing in the clearing, eavesdropping on their plans, and watched Dash through it.

Dash had his head turned in her direction long before he lunged.

He would never put Harry at risk. So why—

Then Severus sighed to himself. Of course Dash wouldn’t think Harry was at risk when he fully planned to capture Bellatrix before she escaped. And in the meantime, he wanted her to learn important things, the better to torment her when she realized she would never be able to tell them to the Dark Lord.

I am glad that I can figure out how to think like a basilisk, Severus thought dryly, and let Bellatrix push him from her mind. He didn’t stagger when he landed back in his body, although he knew that would have pleased her. Instead, he folded his arms and Summoned the pebble that she’d woven around with magic.

“This is the way that she fooled Susana’s people and the others,” he said, holding it out to Harry instinctively. “It might be interesting to look at.”

Dash took the pebble gently in his jaws and held it there. Well, it wasn’t as though he needed his mouth if he wanted to speak.

“And how did she learn about the meeting?” Lucius demanded intensely.

“From people in the Ministry who are apparently among her contacts, invited but not choosing to accept the invitation,” Severus said, and had to admit he reveled in the pink-flushed chagrin that overtook Lucius’s face. He had been one of the people distributing invitations. “I have a list of names I’ll need you to look at.”

Lucius nodded choppily. He looked as if he’d like to say something else, but Susana intervened.

“And what are you going to do about her?” she asked, pointing at Bellatrix with one foot.

Severus again found himself facing Harry. Only later did he think that was strange, that he had turned there for an answer instead of Lucius, or instead of offering one himself.

But Harry’s face was calm, if pale. He nodded to Susana and said, “We can’t let her go. And even if we sent her back to Voldemort with spells placed on her, I think he might be able to break through them.”

“He is incapacitated right now,” Severus interrupted. Harry turned to him, and Severus smiled without meaning to. The hope on Harry’s face was like the bloom of a sunflower. “The battle we fought against him dealt him a hard wound to recover from. But he will recover, and then I think that he would find a way to break through whatever protections we put in Bellatrix’s mind.”

Harry nodded. “I think the same thing. So—” He settled his shoulders. “We’ll keep her prisoner for a time.”

“In what prison? What’s secure enough to hold her?” Susana’s grey tongue flickered into sight again.

Harry gestured to Dash without any sign of hesitation. Dash listened with his head cocked on one side, probably having a conversation down the bond, before he turned to face Bellatrix.

His eyelids lifted.

Severus had time to look away, but even so, the skin above his spine twitched as if it would crawl off his back. When he turned back after a hiss from Susana, it was to see Bellatrix lying Petrified on the grass, and Dash easing away from her with a motion of his coils as graceful as a shrug.

“I thought that someone would only be Petrified if they met the basilisk’s gaze through a mirror or the like,” Lucius said. There was no tremor in his voice, which Severus admired him for.

Dash hissed something. Harry laughed and translated. “That may be the truth for lesser basilisks. Not for the basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin in him.”

And that made the meeting half-explode. Not everyone had known that truth, Severus saw, and he stepped back out of the way with a slight shudder. It was no surprise that Dash’s gaze did what he wanted it to.

But it was a reminder, again, of how powerful both Dash and Harry were. And how lucky the world was that that power rested in Harry’s hands—the hands of someone reluctant to use even the gifts that were his by right.

*

Harry was biting his tongue in the moments when he wasn’t translating Dash’s self-indulgent answers for Susana, Ellen, the werewolves, and the others who hadn’t known Dash was Slytherin. He wanted to say something. He wanted to acknowledge what had been burning inside him since he saw Draco wield blood magic so effortlessly, and for Harry’s sake.

And for Dash’s. He didn’t even need Dash to tell him how glad he felt that Draco had taken revenge for the curse Bellatrix had cast at him in Hogsmeade.

At first, Harry had almost thought he was going to be sick, watching Draco wield that kind of magic. And then the sensation had settled lower in his stomach and caught fire, and then he knew.

He wanted…

He wanted to go back to Hogwarts and show Draco exactly how much he meant to him.

And instead he had to stand here, and translate, and listen to Dash’s rustling laughter in his head.

At least he could feel it when Draco tightened his fingers around his hand. Harry turned his head.

Draco’s own eyes were afire.

Harry shivered, and forced himself to pay attention to the rest of the meeting that couldn’t go past quickly enough.

Chapter 120: Warmth

Chapter Text

Lucius poured himself a glass of wine, frowning. When he held up the wine to the light, it swirled with bubbles that looked off-color, yellow instead of the pale gold they were supposed to be. Lucius put the glass on the library table without tasting it and paced slowly around the room, staring between the shelves and the fireplace.

How could I have let Bellatrix overhear what we were planning?

Lucius knew that part of it simply consisted of Bellatrix having more contacts than he’d known about. After all, she’d been free much longer than most people realized, too. But his cheeks stung with humiliation as he thought, and he took from his pocket the parchment list of names Severus had written down for him before they departed from the clearing.

I am going to get to work researching them now. I want to know exactly who I can’t count on.

If he wanted to prove something else—namely, that Harry could trust him—Lucius wasn’t about to admit it to anyone.

*

“This will do more than well enough.”

The echoes of the words still hung on the air as Ellen took off the robes she wore and disappeared into the water. Harry blinked, but luckily couldn’t see much of her naked skin, or scales, before she dived. He shook his head and turned to Draco, pressing his hand to draw his attention away from the water.

Draco smiled at him.

The soft, shimmering agitation that had been playing in Harry’s chest before they left the clearing returned. He knew what he wanted. And he ignored the way that Dash was laughing down the bond. If anything, he thought Dash should have been relieved that Harry had made it to this point, and he was going to do something about it instead of letting Draco languish and pine any longer.

I’m glad that you’ll do something about it. I’m just amused at the way you’re treating it. Like no one else in the world ever mated before?

Shut up, Harry muttered, and flushed even harder when he caught Draco looking at him. But Draco looked as if he was going to only urge him on. His hand came to rest on the small of Harry’s back, and he lowered his head. Harry found himself holding his breath. Draco only murmured words into his ear, though.

“I know an empty classroom where we can go and no one will disturb us until we’re done. I’d suggest a bedroom, but…”

Harry swallowed hard and nodded. He saw Draco’s eyes widen. Maybe Draco had thought Harry would back out again at the last minute. Harry found his hand and squeezed it as gently as he could.

“It took me a long time to be ready. But I am now.”

Draco’s smile flashed like starlight in the moments before he turned and walked briskly back towards the school. Harry followed him, glancing at Dash, who was coiled as if he was about to turn and go hunting in the Forbidden Forest.

Don’t wait up.

I shall have fun watching the worries of the others if you do not return by morning, Dash retorted, and slid away with a tap of his tail against the ground. Harry didn’t linger to watch him disappear into the Forest the way he usually would; he hurried after Draco instead.

And there was something better than warmth in his chest, a pulsing, pounding excitement.

We’re going to do this.

*

Draco looked anxiously around the room. He thought it had once been a Potions classroom, based on the shelves that stood around the walls, and so he’d often come here when he wanted to use it for brewing. There were still a few sturdy chairs and one table, but everything else lay in a broken pile of dust-covered fragments against the wall opposite the door.

I can do one thing. Draco waved his wand, and a small whirlwind sprang to life and danced about the room. When it vanished, it took the dust with it.

“Thank you.”

Draco whipped around in surprise and almost hit his hip on the table. Harry was standing in the doorway, his fingers clutching it as if he was having second thoughts. But he let it go a few seconds later and walked into the room, until he and Draco were chest-to-chest. Draco found he was panting, and tried to stop.

“Thank you so much,” Harry said softly. “You’re…”

He didn’t try to define what Draco was, instead reaching up and sliding his fingers gently down Draco’s cheek. Draco turned his head without thinking and took Harry’s thumb into his mouth, sucking on it. It was a gesture he wouldn’t have tried even a few days ago, with Harry so reluctant to pursue anything.

But now Harry gasped out a sharp breath and leaned more heavily against him, staring at his own finger in Draco’s mouth. Draco grinned and did something he’d only dreamed of doing: bit the base of Harry’s thumb where it joined his hand. Harry groaned shakily and leaned harder against him, driving Draco back until he was leaning over the table with Harry resting against him.

“I want, I want—”

“It’s okay, let me,” Draco said softly, and pushed back until he was standing up straight again and Harry was in front of him, eyes dark and impatient with desire. Harry nodded at him and then stretched his neck up eagerly when Draco bent down to kiss him. Draco cradled his cheeks and let the moment stretch out. This was something he’d dreamed of too, even during those times when it seemed like it would be forever until Harry wanted to do something for him.

But then the moment slid past and vanished, and Harry stuck his tongue into Draco’s mouth. Draco grunted, shocked, and staggered backwards again as Harry reached out and cupped his erection through his robes.

“I thought you were going to let—”

“Can’t wait, sorry.” Harry’s voice was breathless, but he didn’t stop talking as he took Draco in hand and started stroking him. “Merlin, just watching you do all that—you’re so powerful, Draco, you’re beautiful, and I know what kind of sacrifice you had to make so you could do that…”

Harry talked on and on, although at some point it turned into babbling nonsense-words. Or maybe Draco’s brain started hearing it that way. He just knew his eyes were rolling back and he was almost sick with the pleasure of Harry’s touch. He caught his shoulders and staggered. Harry eased him back towards the table. He’d finally stopped talking. His face was soft and intent.

Draco’s head was spinning. He reached out, he didn’t know for what, and got a handful of Harry’s robes. Then Harry was leaning close to him and kissing him again, and the world blacked out in a comfortable, beautiful way—

He came.

It was so much more intense than what he did by himself, even though it was still wet and sticky. He half-expected Harry to pull his hand away. But Harry just kept it there, stroking Draco until he stopped shuddering, and then said again, in a kind of satisfied way, “Beautiful.”

Draco kissed him and reached for him. Harry arched his hips forwards, his eyes closed. “That feels so good,” he said, and he rubbed himself back and forth along Draco’s palm.

“Yeah? Wait until you see what else I’d like to do to you,” Draco said into his ear, which made Harry moan. Draco rubbed and rubbed and rubbed, and Harry was bucking steadily, his hips settling into a pattern of thrusts. “Come on, Harry. This is only the first time. We’re going to have so many other times. We’re going—”

“Oh, fuck,” Harry grunted, and bent, and came.

Draco bent over and laid his mouth against the back of Harry’s neck, sucking harshly on it. Harry panted at him and tossed his head back, letting Draco keep stroking him as long as he needed to. Draco only slowly withdrew his hand when Harry started squirming instead of acting pleased.

“You are beautiful, you know,” Harry said, and turned around when he’d got his breath back to smile at Draco.

Draco ducked his head, but he could feel his ears and his cheeks both heating from his blush. “Um, thanks,” he said. “So are you.” And Harry turned an even darker red than he had, which made Draco feel like they were more equal. “Do you know any cleaning spells?” he added. “I don’t know any that wouldn’t scourgify the skin, too.”

“Just a minute.” Harry closed his eyes as if he was trying to remember something, then waved his wand. “Abluo.”

Draco gasped as a warm, wet cloth seemed to travel along his cock for a second. It was invisible, or he might actually have thought Harry had conjured it. “That’s amazing. How did you learn it?”

Harry put away his wand with his ears turning redder than ever. “Severus. I destroyed a dummy that he had me practicing with, and all this fake blood spilled out. He insisted I should know how to clean up the mess if I was going to make it.”

“I like it,” said Draco, and let his hand rest on Harry’s shoulder again as he turned him around to kiss him. Harry responded languidly, his eyelids already drooping, and Draco smiled. Even if he was the one who had used blood magic tonight, Harry had stood up in front of their allies, maintained his temper, had a few shocks, and then come back and—helped Draco. No wonder he was tired.

“You should go to bed,” Draco murmured.

Harry’s eyes opened wide, and Draco snorted a little. “Not with me,” he said. “Not in the way you’re thinking of. I just meant that you should rest.” He glanced over Harry’s shoulder as the classroom door creaked open. The absolute lack of footsteps he’d heard was the main thing that reassured him, and then Dash slid inside and proved him right. “Dash will escort you up to Gryffindor Tower.”

“Since when do I need an escort?” Harry asked, and frowned at him.

“Sine Umbridge and her kind are wandering the corridors,” Draco snapped back, and then put a hand on Harry’s shoulder when he opened his mouth, probably to argue. “Can you indulge me? Just for tonight?”

Harry thought about it, then said, even as he yawned, “Indulging you once means that you’ll want me to do it again.”

Draco only shook his head and kissed him once more. “Maybe so, but for tonight, I would sleep better if I knew that you were safe.”

Harry immediately melted, of course. Ask him to do something for somebody else and you’ve got it, Draco thought, a slight ache in his heart as Harry kissed his chin and stepped back, resting his hand on Dash’s head. “Of course. Say good night to Draco, Dash.”

Dash stuck out his tongue in what Draco thought was a salute, not a mocking gesture—he thought, anyway—and then turned and crawled silently out through the classroom door again. Harry followed, with a few wistful glances backwards. Draco sat back on the table and closed his eyes, reliving the kiss and the moments of their pleasure over and over again.

It was less of an ordeal to sneak back to Slytherin himself when he was done, because Umbridge almost never patrolled the dungeons. However, he did have to deal with the erection that the memories of Harry had brought up.

*

Wake up.

The slither of Dash’s voice down the bond brought Harry startlingly, heart-poundingly awake at once. He turned his head and blinked. Dash’s lidded eyes hovered a short distance from his face, and the yellow glow behind those lids seemed fiercer than ever.

Harry followed Dash’s precautions and spoke only in his mind. What’s the matter?

Umbridge is outside the portrait trying to get into the Gryffindor common room.

Harry shivered. She probably couldn’t do anything, any more than she’d been able to when she’d ordered him to detention, but it was eerie to know that she was brave enough to try after he’d threatened her with Dash.

The woman is stupid, and has too much faith in the power of the Ministry. Any attempt to control her through threats is not going to work. Dash slithered to the edge of the bed and slid off onto the floor, a thump that made Ron’s snores pause for a moment. But he went on snoring a second later, and Harry opened his curtains to watch Dash as he crept determinedly towards the door. Come on.

What are you going to do?

Kill her.

You said that she would give you indigestion.

That’s only eating. Not killing. Killing is much simpler.

Harry tied the robe he’d worn to bed quickly and hurried after Dash, ignoring the way that his bare feet on the floor of the bedroom made him think of Draco. Everything was probably going to make him think of Draco for a while. You can’t kill her. I don’t want you to.

Dash turned the upper part of his body around to face him. For a second, Harry thought he could see straight through the clear eyelids, and into glittering yellow eyes with as much wisdom as they’d shown that night in the dreamscape when Dash revealed that he used to be Salazar Slytherin.

She is a dangerous enemy, Dash said simply. More dangerous still if she has acquired the courage to enter the common room. Will you put yourself and even others at risk because you do not want to watch blood or violence?

Harry took a deep breath. He had the awful feeling that a test of his bond with Dash had come a lot earlier than he’d expected. I know you don’t have to kill her with blood and violence. That’s just—a distraction. But Dash, I still don’t want her dead.

Tell me why her life is more precious than yours.

Have you forgotten that the Ministry already hates us? Harry snapped back. There’s no way that they’ll overlook a second person dying from your bite or your gaze, and they’ll start thinking that they can order me to give you up again.

They are wrong.

I know they are, but that doesn’t mean I just want to walk out there and challenge the Ministry, Dash!

Dash slithered towards Harry and wrapped gently around him. Harry leaned into the coils, warm from the heat of his own body, and tried to push all his conviction into the leaning. You need to think about this. You need to realize I can’t challenge the Ministry.

Harry. Dash’s voice, saying that word, was gentler than anything Harry had heard except Draco’s. What do you think you’re doing, by gathering these allies and getting ready to fight?

We’re going to fight Voldemort, not the Ministry!

Is that what they will think?

Harry swallowed. He had to admit that it probably wasn’t, and Fudge or someone would probably decide that Harry was a horrible rebel against the Ministry and try to cut them down. They might not be thrilled about Harry allying with werewolves and Susana’s people, either. Assuming they knew about Susana’s people.

But he clung to the main argument. None of that means that you should kill Umbridge now.

What about later?

Not later, either!

Dash studied him in silence. Then he abruptly dropped his head and hissed, Let us find out what she wants. You can open the portrait hole for her. I will wait in the darkness. And he slid off with that flowing motion that made him look like black water, unwinding his tail from Harry on the way as he went.

Harry narrowed his eyes a little, but honestly couldn’t see a reason to argue. As long as Dash stayed out of sight, it was pretty unlikely that either of them would do something that would antagonize Umbridge.

He walked down the stairs and over to the portrait. From the sound of it, Umbridge was shouting at the Fat Lady. Harry licked his lips and didn’t turn towards the corner where he knew Dash was waiting, invisible except for his yellow eyes. Harry waited for a second, to give himself time to think of a story in case Umbridge thought he was trying to sneak out after curfew, and then jerked the painting open.

Umbridge had to jump back so that it didn’t hit her. She looked at Harry and narrowed her eyes in that dislike she always had. “Where are you going, Mr. Potter?” she asked, and Harry wondered how anyone could think she was harmless. There was hatred in the back of her voice. “Out for a little wander around the school, violating the rules?”

Harry shook his head. “No, Professor. I heard someone trying to get in and thought it was a first-year who forgot the password.”

Umbridge said nothing for a second. Then she said, “Let me in, Mr. Potter,” and moved past him as if he didn’t exist. When Harry shut the portrait and turned around, she was standing in the middle of the common room, sneering at the décor.

It makes sense that she would hate Gryffindor House. She was probably a Slytherin—

Then she faced him, and she was aiming her wand at him. Harry froze.

Dash did nothing. Harry stared at Umbridge’s wand and waited. He supposed Dash wasn’t doing anything because he had agreed he wouldn’t. Harry wanted to look towards the corner where he’d seen the yellow eyes glistening, but didn’t dare.

“You’ve caused so much trouble, Mr. Potter.” Umbridge’s voice was hoarse, and she moved forwards, her wand trembling so hard that it looked as if her arm had gone frail. “I will not permit it. You won’t trouble the Minister. You won’t set your basilisk on people. You won’t act as though you can control him through the bond, when the truth is that he controls you. Yes, I heard all about the fangs in your mouth when you killed Dumbledore.”

“That’s not—”

I won’t have it, I said!” Umbridge screamed so hard that flecks of spittle flew across the room and touched Harry. “Now. You can surrender and take your punishment like a good boy, and perhaps you’ll be alive at the end of it, or you can resist and then I can tell the Minister that you tragically died as I tried to arrest you.”

Harry tensed. Either choice was going to set the Ministry against him and his allies and make a mess of the whole thing—

“Nothing to say?” Umbridge chuckled softly. “Resisting arrest it is, then. Cru—”

The darkness seemed to well up behind Umbridge, and Dash’s tail-strike took the wand from her hand. Umbridge screamed and clutched her stinging wrist, her eyes wide. Harry Summoned it and turned back just in time to see Dash’s fangs sink into her shoulder.

Umbridge screamed again, but it was already a weak, pathetic sound. She slumped to her knees and grabbed her shoulder. Her whole body was shivering. Harry licked his dry lips and thought for a single second about phoenix tears.

You will not give them to her, even if you can find a phoenix in time. Dash reared up and ended up putting his chin on Harry’s shoulder. Harry still had to shudder and struggle to keep standing. She is going to die.

Yeah, I can see that, Harry whispered. He found himself watching Umbridge even as she dropped to the floor. He also found himself wondering if he had looked like that when the basilisk under the school bit him.

Most likely not. You were always braver. Dash rested his chin harder, and Harry realized at least part of the weight was to keep him from going to Umbridge’s aid. Harry looked down at the floor and heard the moment when she died, when the rattle of breath in her throat stopped.

She was going to torture you.

Harry nodded, but didn’t say anything.

Don’t tell me that you regret her death!

“Of course I do,” Harry whispered, his eyes locked on the floor where he could see one of Umbridge’s feet sticking into the corner of his vision. “Of course I do. It was a terrible way to die.”

And you would want anyone who threatened you to live?

Harry sighed and rubbed his eyes. I just think it’s going to be a lot more complicated with the Ministry because she’s dead, he said, trying to be as diplomatic as he could when Dash could just read his every thought anyway.

If you think that, then think how complicated it would have been if she had succeeded in torturing you.

Harry winced. “Yes, all right,” he said aloud. “Now what do we do?”

Now? You go to your Severus. Dash withdrew from Harry in order to coil next to the body. I keep vigil here, in case someone comes down the stairs and insists on misunderstanding.

I think they might misunderstand even more when they see you crouched over a motionless body, Harry said dryly.

But they won’t interfere if they think she’s about to be a meal. And that state of affairs can last until you come back.

Harry sighed, but turned to climb out the portrait hole. He had no idea what would happen by the time he managed to get Severus up the stairs and back to the Gryffindor common room. It had already been a long day, and Severus was probably asleep by now.

The way I wish I was.

But, in a small part of himself whose existence he probably wouldn’t talk about even if directly asked, Harry had to admit that he was glad Umbridge was dead, complications and all. He didn’t need someone else around who was going to torture him. Voldemort did well enough at that.

A whisper of Dash’s voice drifted down the bond to him as he made his way to the first staircase.

And that is one of the reasons I killed her.

Chapter 121: Getting Rid of the Problem

Chapter Text

Severus rubbed his hand through his hair. His eyes ached and the skin of his face felt as if it was made of dust. But he knew what advice he was going to give, and it would have been the same if Harry had come to fetch him in the morning or now, past midnight.

“We are going to get rid of her body and pretend this never happened. Let the Ministry think she ran away to join the Dark Lord or self-combusted in her arrogance. But a body would only cause us problems right now.”

Dash lifted his head to give Severus a small nod. Severus turned to face Harry. Having his plan approved by the basilisk was a start, but he knew he needed to convince the person who would be the most affected by it.

Harry was nibbling his lip, his brow so furrowed that it almost hid his scar. “But I’m not good at lying. And what if they feed me Veritaserum? Or if they have someone skilled at Legilimency?”

“That is why we have been working on your Occlumency. And if the Ministry force-fed you Veritaserum, they would have much bigger legal problems to worry about than the apparent disappearance of an adult witch who can leave on her own if she wants to.”

“But…”

Severus sighed and knelt down in front of Harry. The Gryffindor common room was still covered with the soft wards he had set up the instant he entered, to keep noise muffled and cast a sleeping spell over the children in their rooms. The wards shimmered like cobwebs lit from within by the moon, covering Harry’s face with softly shifting shadows. “Harry. I know you want to do the right thing. But sometimes the right thing is also the thing that will cause the least fuss and bother.”

“One of my allies might ask where she went.”

“That would be an excellent way to test their loyalty. Spread two rumors and see which one reached the ears of the Ministry first.”

Harry stared at him. Then he said, “You can’t believe that they’re all plotting to betray me.”

“Not all of them. But there’s a reason that you have Elena working on that device to test loyalty, don’t you?” Severus frowned a little. Elena still had not confided her research to him.

“Yes. I know. I just don’t want to think…”

Harry sounded distressed enough that Severus reached out to touch him on the shoulder. “I do understand that. But we have to do what makes the most sense for us, and rooting out traitors among our allies is one of them. Besides, Bellatrix has proven that we can’t anticipate all the magic they know. Leave this to me, please, Harry.”

Harry wavered for a second. Then he said, “I won’t look weak if—”

“No. They would expect an adult, your guardian, to handle it anyway.”

“And you won’t be in danger.”

Harry had taken a step demandingly near to him before he said that, and now his eyes blazed up at Severus like twin embers. Touched, Severus stood up and let his hands rest fully on Harry’s shoulders for a moment, gazing at him with what even he knew was deeper love than he’d ever felt before.

He’d loved Lily. He’d loved Albus, once. But this was—something else.

“No, I won’t. The Ministry won’t dare harm someone like me openly, and I don’t think we’ll see an assassin in the night.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. “All right. Are Dash and I just going to go back to bed and act like we don’t know anything about this? What if Umbridge told someone where she was going before she came here, though?” He hesitated, then added, “And what about the Fat Lady? She knows Umbridge was outside asking to come in.”

“I’ll speak to her.” Severus’s mind was already moving ahead. Minerva commanded the loyalty of most of the portraits in the school now that she had taken on the Headmistress’s role. She would help him with this. “And yes, of course you go back to bed. You need your sleep.”

Harry looked at him as if he was mad, but luckily for Severus, Dash seemed to understand what he meant. He came over and gently herded Harry up the stairs towards his bedroom, glancing back at Severus once to flicker out his tongue and look content and placid.

Severus nodded back and exited the portrait hole. The Fat Lady looked at him with wide, innocent eyes.

“I’ll talk to the Headmistress about it,” Severus said. “But for now, I need you to pretend that you never saw Dolores Umbridge in the corridor today or let her in. Can you do that?”

“Saw who?”

Severus smiled thinly. Even if he would need Minerva’s help to get the portrait’s ultimate aid, he supposed he shouldn’t be surprised that the Gryffindor guardian had disliked Umbridge.

In fact, Severus thought to himself as he started towards the gargoyle that guarded Minerva’s office, I wonder if anyone did? She probably simpered and played up to Minister Fudge, but could he stand her? Did she die alone and friendless?

Once, that might have mattered to him in an abstract way. He had assumed for decades that that was the way he would die.

But not now. Not now.

*

Harry came slowly down the stairs the next morning. It really did feel almost like a dream. Well, either that or he was going to come around the corner and someone was going to point sternly at Umbridge’s body lying there with a huge hole in her shoulder and tell him he was accountable for this.

But when he looked around cautiously, he didn’t see anything. Well, maybe there was a faint spot of blood on a rug, but Dash coiled neatly on top of it before anyone could point it out. Harry nodded gratefully to him and tried to listen to Ron speculating about whether they would have a boring class with Umbridge or a really boring class.

What did Severus do with the body, since you didn’t eat it?

He put it in a powerful acidic potion. I could smell some of the ingredients he was using the minute he got them out of storage. The air currents in the school do odd things to my sense of smell.

Harry turned around and stared at Dash, actually appalled. Ron frowned at him, but then grimaced and nodded. “Yeah, sorry, mate. I keep forgetting how she wants to put you in detention.”

He dissolved her body in acid?

Of course he did. It would cause too much lingering magic in the air if he Vanished it, and the smell would be distinctive even to humans if he burned it. Dash slithered forwards without taking his tail off the spot of blood and wound gently around Harry. Are you all right? What’s the matter?

Harry swallowed roughly. This was probably one of those things Dash would never understand enough to be bothered by.

Yes, you’re right, Dash said. It’s an efficient means of getting rid of the body. Does it need to be anything else?

He sounded really curious. Harry straightened his shoulders and explained as best he could. It’s just not the right way to dispose of a body. I can’t think of anyone’s body I would get rid of that way. He tried to think about it, to make sure, but his mind kept returning to a conjured image of Umbridge dissolving in acid. No one. Ever.

Dash gave a rippling shake of his spine. We disagree.

“Mate?”

Harry managed to look up and contain his sickly smile when he saw how concerned Ron was looking. “I’m all right. I just got graphic details of his last meal from Dash, and I did not need that when we’re about to head down to breakfast.”

Ron shuddered. “No. Don’t tell me. And speaking of breakfast, we’re going and not waiting for Hermione. If she wants to stay up until midnight studying some book about who-knows-what, then she can find her own way.”

Even as Ron dragged him out of the portrait hole and Dash followed, Harry had to admire Ron’s discretion. It more than likely that Hermione was researching Horcruxes and they would all benefit from it, but he wasn’t going to mention anything even close to that where there were other people to hear.

Yes, admire his discretion. It means that you aren’t thinking silly things about your enemies.

Harry tightened his grip on his own rebelling stomach and said, It’s still wrong, Dash. Maybe we had to do it to protect—ourselves. But it was wrong. I never want to forget my feelings about this, or I might wake up a Dark Lord someday.

Dash started laughing. He didn’t stop all the way to the Great Hall. He kept it up when Harry caught Severus’s eye and Severus nodded back to him, pale but composed. Twenty minutes into breakfast, when Hermione finally came flying in through the doors carrying a heavy book and Harry felt he could meet Draco’s eye without blushing, Dash was still rolling over and over on his back, his laughter hissing through Harry’s head.

Stop it! Harry finally snapped. He’d tried to feed Dash, and Dash had actually refused food, something that had never happened before, as far as Harry could work out. What the fuck are you laughing at?

Maybe it was the swear word that Harry so rarely used, but Dash managed to pull himself upright long enough to take a bite of food from Harry’s fingers and answer. You. As if you would ever become a Dark Lord. You don’t have the cruelty or the ambition or the will to hurt people. Giving your guardian permission to do what he needs to do to remove a body is hardly going to make you one. And odd prejudices that you have about dissolving it in acid aside—

Harry shuddered and almost put the bread back on his plate as he thought about that. Dash shot his head forwards and snagged the treat on the tip of one of his fangs before he pulled back, looking pleased with himself.

You can think about it this way if you want, Harry. If I’d eaten her, then she would have been at least partially dissolved in my stomach acids. Even they might not have been able to do anything about the jowls, but you can’t ask for miracles from a basilisk’s stomach. I am enough of a miracle by myself.

Harry shuddered again. I still don’t want to forget my morals.

If I think you are, then I’ll say something about it. And you can’t even ignore me because our minds are connected. What about that?

I don’t trust your moral compass.

You kill one little toad, and everyone turns against you.

Harry sighed, and went to class with Dash sulking in the back of his head. Honestly, he didn’t know what Dash wanted. Of course Harry was going to feel bad about Umbridge’s body being destroyed by acid. That was the kind of person he was.

*

Only Harry, Draco thought, as he held Harry’s hand behind a shield in the library and listened to him pour out his fears for his own soul, would worry about something like this. But that’s the kind of person he is.

“So what do you think?”

“That you should have sold tickets to Umbridge’s poisoning so everyone who hated her could watch.”

Harry gave a small smile and looked down at the table. “But that’s what you say when you’re joking, Draco. Will you be serious for a minute? What do you think about it? Should I have held Dash back?"

Draco spent a minute looking at Dash, who was coiled around one leg of Harry’s chair. Dash lifted his head and gave Draco the definition of a patient look, or at least a patient look through clear, closed eyelids.

Draco decided that meant he couldn’t tell Harry everything he thought. He simply turned back and shook his head. “I wouldn’t have. But you already know that I’m not as nice a person as you are.”

Harry opened his mouth to answer for a moment, then ended up closing it and saying weakly, “Well, I mean, you’re not a horrible person.”

Draco laughed. Harry hastily added, “You fight for what you believe in, and you try to protect the people who are important to you. It’s not always nice, but you don’t need that to be a—a loyal person.”

Draco nodded. “And you know that Professor Snape isn’t always a nice person, either. Would you call him a good one?”

“In a way?” Harry grimaced a second later. “No, I know he is. He took me in when no one else would have. Or could,” he added in a low voice. “I know the Weasleys wanted to, but they’re struggling as it is, and I don’t know if they could have faced up to the fame and the newspapers and—everything.”

Draco wanted to roll his eyes, but held himself back. He also wanted to say that the Weasleys would have eaten up the attention and maybe used some of the money that Harry’s presence would have brought in, once people in the wizarding world knew where he was, to fix up their ratty clothes and equally ratty house.

But he knew Harry liked the Weasleys, so he didn’t.

“Let’s lay aside the self-deprecation for a bit,” Draco said, and ignored the glare Harry gave him. “Yes, you’re right. He did something he wanted to do, and he did it without the selfish reasons lots and lots of other people would have brought to the table. Does that make what he did purely good?”

“Some of the things he’s done aren’t.”

Draco nodded. Harry had come back from some of those discussions with Professor Snape with haunted eyes, and Draco had decided that he wasn’t going to ask. “But it’s up to you how you deal with that, isn’t it?”

“What do you mean?” Harry sat up and focused on him.

“You don’t have to say that he can’t be your guardian and he’s a horrible person just because he does things you don’t approve of. It’s not all or nothing, Harry. Not black or white. I know you can see more nuance in the world than that.” Draco gentled his voice a little when he saw how distressed Harry looked, and reached out a hand. “What’s the matter with seeing it in this action?”

Harry looked away and chewed on his thumb. Then he took his wand out and tapped it on the table. Draco kept looking at him. He didn’t think Harry really wanted to lie. He wanted to say something, and presumably he would say it before they died of hunger or Madam Pince came around the corner to scold them for the noise they were making.

Harry finally swallowed and said, “I hate how much I liked it.”

“What? The—thing Dash did this morning?” Draco was completely confused. Harry wasn’t acting like he blamed Dash for anything, but himself for not restraining Dash. That was sadly typical.

Harry looked up at him with brilliant, haunted eyes, and Draco felt something shift in himself. He’d do a lot to keep Harry from ever looking like that, but he also loved him when he did. He loved Harry in all his moods, even when he was being stupid and self-deprecating.

“What Dash did,” Harry whispered. “And what Severus did. There’s part of me that liked it. That’s happy about it. Even though the rest of me is horrified. What kind of person does that make me?”

Draco understood then. Harry was refusing to see the black and white in this situation because he was afraid he would lose the white forever if he did.

Still, Draco wasn’t going to lie and say that he thought Harry was a horrible person. Harry would only get angrier at him later on for lying than he would right now.

“A totally normal one,” Draco said, and captured Harry’s hand when he would have drawn it away. “Someone who isn’t always going around plotting revenge on his enemies, but is perfectly happy when it happens to them.”

“She wasn’t—”

“I don’t care if she didn’t start out that way!” Draco barely remembered to lower his voice, remembering the people who might overhear them past the shield if he should loudly enough. “She was by the time she came up to the common room last night! She was threatening to torture and kill you, you said so yourself!”

“But if I have a basilisk and I’m as powerful as everyone keeps insisting I am, then isn’t hurting someone like her—overkill?”

Draco sighed and shook his head. Then he said, “No one else is going to blame you and give you the whip that you’re looking for, Harry.”

Harry’s eyes promptly narrowed, something Draco was glad to see. “I’m not looking for someone to whip me!”

His voice had got loud. An older Ravenclaw leaned around the shelf and glared at them until Dash lazily lifted his head. Then she gulped and ducked back out of sight.

“You keep acting like it,” Draco snapped, waiting until he was sure that no more nosy Ravenclaws would intrude on their conversation. “Like you want someone to blame you for not restraining Dash, and all sorts of things that aren’t your fault.”

“It would be easier.”

“Too bad.”

Harry started and looked up. Draco took his hand away and stood up. He was frustrated by the way that Harry kept seeking out someone else to tell him he was wrong. It was wallowing, and that was just as self-indulgent as someone who never thought he was wrong and went through life expecting everyone to cater to him.

“You’re not an evil person,” Draco said. “I’m not going to tell you that you are just because it would make you feel better and more like what your life was with the Dursleys.”

Harry’s face immediately turned as red as his Gryffindor Quidditch uniform, and he jumped to his feet. “I don’t wish they were back in my life! You take that back!”

Draco didn’t even have time to snap, since at that moment Madam Pince swooped down on them and shoved them outside the library doors so fast she might have forcibly Apparated them. Harry ended up staring as Dash slithered out on his own, luxuriantly stretching and rolling his coils. Draco rubbed his face and decided that he would go work on his essays in his bedroom, since he doubted they’d be welcome in the library again any time soon.

“Draco?”

“I do love you,” Draco said, quietly, not looking back. “But I’d like you a lot more at the moment if you got over this self-blame and this urge to think that everything that goes well in your life is about to go wrong.”

He felt Harry standing there, staring at him, as he strode down the corridor and out of sight. But he still didn’t look back.

*

That could have gone better.

Harry winced a little as the thought came from Dash and turned around. “Yeah, it could have,” he muttered, and began the slow walk down to the dungeons, where Severus was waiting to practice Dark Arts with him.

His mind was on the way Draco’s face had looked when he accused Harry of wanting his life with the Dursleys back. So angry and impatient and frustrated. Harry didn’t want to make people look like that. Especially people he loved.

He wanted that more than he wanted to worry about whether he was a bad person for not worrying about Umbridge’s death.

He came to a stop in the middle of the corridor, staring at the wall. A Hufflepuff first-year made an annoyed noise and walked around him. Dash coiled up beside Harry, almost balancing on his tail as he stared inquiringly into his face. What grand revelation have you had now?

Holy shit. What I was trying to do to myself was really twisted.

Dash bobbed his head. Of course. And you see now why I didn’t try to reason you out of it? You were so sure that I was the bad—basilisk in this scenario that you wouldn’t have listened to me. Or Severus, either, since he did something “evil.” It had to be Draco. I’m glad that he finally made you see sense.

Harry blew out his breath softly and kept walking. He’d send Draco an owl, he decided, apologizing and telling him that now he saw what he meant. That way, if Draco didn’t want to talk to him right now, he didn’t have to.

You are growing wiser every day, Dash said, with an approving flick of his tail and flick of his voice down the bond. I must admit I look forward to the time when you require no such reassurance, but it is hardly your fault that it happened today.

“So do I, Dash,” Harry muttered aloud. At least I think I’m in better control of it now.

*

Severus had braced himself for recriminations when Harry came into the classroom where they did most of their Dark Arts practice, but Harry only gave him a slightly embarrassed smile and said, “I’m ready to cast the spells now. Could you conjure the dummies?”

Silently, Severus did so, his narrowed, interested eyes fastened on the boy’s face. Harry took a step back and drew his wand. Then he whirled into the practice with fewer hesitations than Severus had ever seen. Severus watched as dummies erupted into straw and ripped apart as if fracturing before a great wind and blew apart into dangling chunks. He shook his head a little as he watched.

“What brought this on?” he finally asked, when Harry paused for a sip of water that Dash insisted he take.

Harry blinked and looked up. Severus had to stare. He didn’t think he had ever seen those green eyes so clear.

“Some friends shook some sense into me,” Harry said. “And I realized that if other people can live through hiding bodies and using Dark Arts without being corrupted, there’s no reason I can’t.” He grinned a little. “I was acting like I was special and had it worse than other people. You know? The way you always told me I was.”

“Those days are behind us now.”

“Yes. For all sorts of reasons.”

Harry grinned at him again and walked out of the classroom. Severus found himself staring after, and then meeting the basilisk’s eyes. Only when Dash gave him a little nod did he relax completely.

Not what I expected. But I am glad to see my lessons finally bearing fruit.

Chapter 122: Umbridge's Mysterious Disappearance

Chapter Text

Elena sat sipping from the goblet of mulled Awakening Potion that she had the house-elves mix with clear water every morning, and watched the Aurors stalking among the students.

They had appeared yesterday, with orders to search the school for a trace of Professor Umbridge. So far, they’d mostly looked under tables and blustered. And when they tried to find the students who would have a “motive,” they had to confront the fact that there were few students who didn’t.

Elena wrinkled her nose as she watched another Auror face the blood quill carving on the back of another hand. She never had to resort to such crude methods of punishment. A smile, a glance, an inflection in words, was enough for her.

“Your research proceeds well?”

“It depends on what research,” Elena said, and smiled a little at Severus as he sat down beside her. She thought she might know at least part of the answer to the Umbridge mystery. The lingering scent of strong acid clung to him. “Do you mean the device I am attempting to create for Harry that will ensure an ally’s loyalty?”

“Of course that is what I mean,” Severus grumbled, and knocked back a cup of clear water of his own in one gulp. Elena hid her wince. One swallowed delicately, even when one didn’t have a volatile potion like the one she was drinking to ensure a clear head. Perhaps it was just as well that Severus did not depend on manners to score the points he did. “What else would you be doing?”

“I’m sure that you have more than one project in hand at any time one might care to name.”

It was a true comment, but the idler for that. Elena treated lies with care, the truth casually, the way one should be. But the words still made Severus stiffen in place and glance over his shoulder at her. Elena shook her head slightly.

“I mean you no threat.”

Severus smiled with his teeth only. “Then I suppose you’ll take no offense by my saying that I wouldn’t take food from your hand,” he muttered, and turned to the selection of delicacies that had appeared next to his plate.

Of course not. I would hardly cook the food that I poisoned, would I? But it wasn’t worth arguing about, especially now that Elena thought she might know how Umbridge had met her death, so she turned back to face the Great Hall.

She was in time to see Harry walk through the doors and meet Severus’s eyes. Severus nodded back the slightest bit. Harry seemed to relax and let his hand fall on Dash’s head, as if for reassurance, before he went to his seat. Of course he caught her eye and nodded at her as well, but the nod wasn’t filled with silent significance the way his gesture to Severus was.

Elena leaned back with a slight smile. Not the way Umbridge died, then. It’s much more likely that the basilisk killed her to protect Harry. But the way they disposed of her body. What a fascinating secret to know.

*

“And you’re certain that you know nothing about what happened to Madam Umbridge, Mr. Potter?”

They can’t sense anything from you, Dash said from next to the corridor wall, where he was apparently examining a tapestry. It was to avoid making the Aurors even more nervous than they were already, but really, it was also a prime position to swing around and stab someone through the chest with his fangs. They’re just asking because they know that you were enemies.

Harry nodded to both question and statement. “I didn’t like her much. I know the Ministry knows about that. But I didn’t wish her any harm.”

That’s even true. Not that they would appreciate the layers of irony involved.

“One of the people she spoke to at the Ministry the evening before she disappeared said that she was going to visit Gryffindor Tower. Would you know anything about that?”

Harry shook his head again. “Sorry, no. I didn’t see her that evening before I went to bed or anything like that.”

Masterfully done! We’ll make you into a good liar yet.

I don’t want to be—

Dash cut him off with laughter, and Harry turned back to the Auror in front of him, whose strained expression was getting worse and worse. Harry would have thought he needed the loo if he didn’t know better.

“All right, Mr. Potter. If you do remember any time when you interacted with Madam Umbridge that would make it easier for us to find her…”

Harry wished he could come up with a convincing lie that would make them think Umbridge had run off into the Forbidden Forest or something, but Dash and Severus had both warned him that some Aurors could practice Legilimency, so he wasn’t going to try. “Sorry. But I’ll let you know.”

They stepped back, finally, and nodded, and Harry was free to go to the Defense club. He did wonder if that was going to continue, assuming they got a decent Defense teacher, but the Ministry would probably just send someone incompetent and boring again, and they might still be using Slinkhard’s book. So Harry was happy to have a competent alternative.

“Today,” Professor McGonagall was saying when Harry slipped into the classroom, almost the last one to arrive, “we are going to learn how to counter a specific spell that the Death Eaters often used during the first war, the Infestation Curse.”

Dash hissed approvingly down the bond. Harry glanced at him and lifted his eyebrows in invitation to explain, but Dash only coiled himself on his tail and looked at Harry patiently, as if asking whether Harry thought he would really yield the secret like that.

“You fought in the first war, Professor McGonagall?”

Harry blinked. He had forgotten that some people didn’t know that. The speaker was a fourth-year Hufflepuff girl with blonde hair. Harry thought her name might be Hilda or something like that.

“I did indeed, Miss Jackson.” Professor McGonagall gave the girl a faint smile. “And the Infestation Curse looks like this.” She spun around and aimed her wand at the far wall, casting nonverbally. Harry wondered if she didn’t want her students to know what the incantation was, in case they started using it on each other.

I can tell you what the incantation is if you really want to learn it. I approve of this spell!

It didn’t take long for Harry to see why. The curse hit the wall of the classroom, or maybe the air right in front of the wall, and created a wavering, dark mist that immediately solidified. In seconds, a horde of squeaking rats was scampering about, their tails trailing across the floor and their noses twitching. Several students screamed. Not all of them were girls or Slytherins, either.

“The countercurse!” McGonagall said, raising her voice so that everyone could hear her above the sounds of humans and rats alike. “Contra vermes!

The air seemed to sparkle. Then it turned into silver strips of cloth ahead of the rats, and billowed forwards, wrapping each individual rat in a cocoon. There was squirming and struggling for a few minutes, but in the end, the cocoons dissolved and took the rats with them—minus a few that Dash snapped up, Harry noticed. He swatted the basilisk on the back of the plume.

It’s a public service, Dash said, and began working his throat to get the lumps of the rats down. The one problem with that countercurse is that it almost always misses a few.

“The Infestation Curse doesn’t always call rats,” McGonagall was saying when Harry listened again. “It can conjure worms, almost any kind of insects, mice, and others—it sometimes depends on what the caster thinks is the worst fear of the person he’s facing.”

Ron was looking green. Harry knew he was thinking about a variation that could call spiders without even needing to ask. And Ron wouldn’t ask himself, in case someone figured out his fear.

“The incantation to counter it is the one you just heard me speak.” McGonagall looked around at everyone in the room in a way that made them straighten up. Harry wished he could learn to do that.

It’s what you did in the clearing in front of your allies.

Harry flushed hard and tried to ignore Dash. The thing was, he wanted to know how to do it, but at the same time, the thought of imagining himself that way was almost repugnant.

Why?

Hush.

Contra vermes,” McGonagall said, and performed the wand movement with an easy sweep of her hand. For a moment, the air sparkled and then stopped, as if the spell had realized there were no more rats for it to catch. “I want you to practice for twenty minutes, until you’re sure that you have the wand movement and the incantation right. I’ll help you if you need help.” She smiled a little and walked away from the wall, her gaze fastening on Ron. “You want to learn, Mr. Weasley?”

Ron bobbed his head frantically, and Dash snickered. Harry stepped back to give Professor McGonagall room to get to Ron, and shook his head a little at Dash. Just because you could eat the vermin doesn’t mean that you need to make fun of Ron’s fear.

And it would be one thing if he was only afraid of poisonous spiders, or Acromantula. But no, instead he fears the common spiders that ran around the floor of your cupboard as much as all the rest of them.

Harry felt himself flush again when he thought about the cupboard. He promptly practiced the countercurse for a few minutes, until McGonagall nodded at him and went over to the other side of the room to see about the Slytherins. Do you have to bring that up?

I didn’t realize it was a forbidden subject.

Harry sighed and dropped it. He watched McGonagall instead. He didn’t think it was twenty minutes yet when she came up to the front of the room and said, “All right. I am going to call rats again this time, for the ease of giving you the same target as the one I first used.”

“What’s easy about that?” Ron muttered next to Harry. Harry had to hide a smile.

“Ready?” McGonagall looked around, catching eye after eye, and although it didn’t seem to Harry that a lot of the students were looking at her with confidence, she must have seen something that she determined made it okay, because she nodded and cast the Infestation Curse again.

Voices started yelling the countercurse from all sides, and Harry saw wands waved in all sorts of directions, not all of them right. He concentrated as hard as he could on his own magic and made his wand flick through the motions.

He had the satisfaction of seeing two rats that had scuttled towards him caught by the cocoons and dissolved. He was sure it was his spell. He turned to see how his friends were getting on.

Ron had dissolved a few rats and then jumped back from another one. Dash had snatched that one and was already working its fuzzy body down his throat. It looked as though Draco had done incredibly well, since there was a big area of clear floor in front of him and rats still running among some of the other Slytherins. Two Hufflepuffs and one Ravenclaw had cleared their portions of the floor, too, but McGonagall was calmly taking care of some rats who were running for their lives. Other students were trying to magic themselves into part of the walls.

Harry paused when he noticed something he hadn’t consciously noticed before. Where’s Hermione? It’s not like her to miss the chance to learn new magic.

*

It was almost right this time. It was almost perfect. She almost had it.

And the problem was, she couldn’t be sure that she didn’t until she actually made the test, which would destroy at least part of the delicate structure in front of her if she was wrong. Then she would have to study the broken pieces and build it up again.

Hermione scowled and chewed on the end of her quill. The structure in front of her kept its own council, silent and rustling in a clatter of beads and black stones with holes drilled through them and the silver wire that was holding the whole thing up.

Someone coming into the room might have thought the structure was a beehive of wire and black stones, but there was a reason Hermione had chosen the Room of Requirement to shelter her while she worked through the last little twitches of the Arithmantic equations for this, and it was to keep people from entering and making inane comments. Even Ron and Harry, as much as she enjoyed their company, would probably disrupt her concentration right at the precise moment it couldn’t be disrupted, or reach out and touch the structure, or do God knows what.

And she was making little excuses in her head as to why she could put this off. She couldn’t put it off any longer once she knew that was what she was doing.

Hermione stood up, drew her wand, and backed away from the little table where the spiral stood. Then she backed up further. Then she stopped to the side so that the chair she’d been sitting in was out of her line of sight and out of the direct path of the spell she was about to cast.

Then she accused herself of making more excuses, and braced herself for the casting.

Sirihana aloros.

The words weren’t Latin. They weren’t any incantation found in any book Hermione had ever looked up. They were words made of the letters dictated by the numbers in the equations, certain letters corresponding to certain numbers. The problem was that each number corresponded to three or more letters, so figuring out the actual words she had to speak was a challenge.

And figuring out how to pronounce them...

It occurred to Hermione, suddenly, that she hadn’t heard the usual rending crash that would mean the spiral had fallen apart because she hadn’t pronounced the spell correctly and the magic had broken its delicate balance. Hermione could feel herself trembling, fine tremors through the bones of her wrist, as she slowly lifted her eyes.

The spiral was intact. More than that, it was turning slowly in its cage of beads and black stones, the silver wires spinning to create a continuous flowing motion that made sparkles of light flash into Hermione’s eyes. Light, or water, flowing down from the top of the spiral, trickling like actual water, or seeming to because of the places that the wires went among the stones out of sight, and then showed themselves, and then hid again.

Hermione laughed aloud, and then clapped her hands over her mouth. She’d honestly never heard herself sound like that: free, and triumphant, and as if she had solved all the problems of the universe at once.

But you never achieved something like this before, either.

Hermione stepped back and grinned at the slow-turning spiral, then reached out one hand to pat the side of the machine affectionately. It sparked at her, and the spiral turned a little more slowly, but it still kept moving. And as Hermione watched, the grinding of the silver wire against the black stones started to produce a small shower of fine dust, much faster than it would have if the motion was purely natural. The dust showered down on the huge parchment the spiral stood on, a copy of the “map” that would let Hermione identify the location of the Horcruxes.

And where the dust accumulated most heavily, it would map out the rivers and mountains and other landmarks near the Horcruxes. It would be much easier to find them than it had ever been.

Hermione pushed her hair out of her eyes and sat down in the chair next to the table, trembling, feeling her magical exhaustion for the first time. She would let a few hours pass before she found Ron and Harry—and Professor Snape—and told them about what she’d achieved.

For now, she wanted to exult alone.

*

“I have a message for Potter.”

Draco stiffened. He’d been about to leave the Slytherin common room to meet Harry near Gryffindor Tower. He turned around now, making sure that one hand rested on one of his knives, to see Nott standing behind him.

“Do you?” Draco shaded his voice with coolness. Harry had told Draco about Nott approaching him, but Draco still distrusted him, and would until he proved himself in some way.

Nott nodded. His face was pale, and there was a little sweat on his brow. But that could just mean that he was thinking about betraying them. Draco stared at him passively and waited.

“Tell him that a few Death Eaters think you’re—we—whatever—are holding Bellatrix Lestrange in Professor Snape’s quarters at Hogwarts.”

Draco blinked. Bellatrix’s Petrified body was actually in the Chamber of Secrets, tucked in an alcove and covered with a powerful Disillusionment Charm. But it was a good guess, without being so right that Draco would immediately suspect they had another traitor in the ranks.

Which made him wonder where Nott had got the information.

“Which Death Eaters?” he asked, his eyes fastened on Nott. “And why Professor Snape’s quarters?”

“They think he would be the only one powerful enough to keep her under control. And—” Nott swallowed convulsively. “Apparently it’s Yaxley, one of the Averys, and—my father.”

Draco understood the sweat better now. Nott was choosing his side. If this plan got foiled, his father would at least suspect him. Neither the Yaxley family nor the Avery family had children in Hogwarts right now, and no easy way of passing the information on even if one of them had wanted to betray the Dark Lord.

“I see,” Draco said, and didn’t make his voice mocking. Nott was being brave to pass along even this much information. “Do you have any more details you can give me?”

“None except that the raid to get her back is supposed to take place on the night of the next full moon.”

And will probably, therefore, involve werewolves, Draco thought, and withheld a shudder of distaste. He only nodded. “All right. I’ll pass along the message to Harry and Professor Snape.”

Nott nodded, and it seemed to Draco that his shoulders relaxed a little from their tense state. “Thank you, Malfoy.” He turned and walked away to another corner of the Slytherin common room, apparently the perfectly respectable pure-blood once again.

Some of the others glanced curiously at him, but Draco sneered, and they looked away again. Some of these people hadn’t chosen their sides, and might not before the war arrived and forced them to scurry in circles. Draco owed them no explanation.

He went to his meeting with Harry, but he must have been visibly preoccupied, because after kissing him once, Harry leaned back and looked at him in concern, his hands resting on Draco’s shoulders. “What’s the matter, Draco?”

Draco swallowed and stroked Harry’s arm. “They’re planning a raid to try and recover Bellatrix. They think Professor Snape’s holding her. Nott told me. Apparently his father is one of the people who’ll be on the raid.”

Harry’s eyes darkened at once, but that never seemed to mean ordinary fear the way it would in another person, so Draco waited. Then he nodded and said, “When?”

“The next full moon.”

“Then there’s a neat trap we can use to catch them,” said Harry, and half-smiled. “There’s no sign that they know where we really put her or what condition she’s in?”

“Nott didn’t say so. But he might not have heard all the information that they were discussing.”

“We just need to act on what we know, then. Come on.”

Harry led him down towards the dungeons and Professor Snape’s quarters at a dizzying pace. Dash followed them with almost utter silence, as far as Draco could tell, except that his scales scraped against the stone wall sometimes. He glanced over his shoulder as Harry knocked on Professor Snape’s door, and Dash looked back at him and fluttered one of his eyelids in his closest equivalent to a wink.

Draco smiled a little as he faced forwards. He didn’t know what Harry’s idea was, but if his basilisk trusted it, then Draco was willing to wait to learn.

*

Severus listened intently to what Harry said, to what Draco said, and then, with Draco’s permission, watched his memory of the encounter with Nott. It did seem as though Nott was telling the truth—or thought he was. If he had been permitted to overhear that conversation deliberately and then spread the news, it was more than Severus could determine from simply hearing his words.

When he said as much to Harry, Harry only shook his head. “No. I think it’s real. And if we prepare our defenses properly, then it won’t matter much if they don’t show up. We’ll still accomplish something.”

“Not if this is a distraction, and the real raid is happening somewhere else.”

“If we can’t get news of it in time and this is all a distraction, then we don’t know that for certain, either. Lucius hasn’t reported anything, has he?”

Severus shook his head in silence. Draco’s eyes were wide and wondering, but it was Harry he answered the question for. “I do think that he would if he found something. He was humiliated by how his questions and his loose-lipped allies in the Ministry brought Bellatrix to our meeting in the first place.”

“Good. Then we can ask some of Josephine Whitepaw’s pack to be on the Hogwarts grounds and transformed. And there’s that one who came to our meeting, Erica Kelleth. She said she doesn’t actually transform, but she can direct the others. And she seems sufficiently impressed by us to agree to do it.”

Severus stared at him. “You would bring war to Hogwarts?”

“I hope not on the grounds,” Harry said, holding his eyes. “I hope we can stop the attack in Hogsmeade. They’ll need to Apparate in no closer than the gates, anyway, and I’m betting that they won’t come that close, not when they have to know that there are Aurors in the school looking for Umbridge and McGonagall is on the alert. They’ll probably appear in Hogsmeade and then try to approach through the Forbidden Forest.”

“How can you know this?” Severus asked, feeling a little helpless.

“Some of it is those books on strategy Ron has been trying to get me to read forever, and discussing it with him. Some of it is discussing things with Dash. But the rest…” Harry paused, and there was a thoughtful look on his face. “Some of it just feels right.”

Instinct. Leadership instinct. Well, Severus had been telling Harry that he had that, and he had seen how Harry handled himself at the full moon meeting. It was simply disconcerting to see it emerge this way.

Just like Draco was doing, Severus found himself looking at Dash. Dash eyed him and then bobbed his head slowly, once.

Severus swallowed slowly and said, “All right. Then let’s talk about what we’re going to do.”

Chapter 123: Wit Beyond Measure

Chapter Text

“Look.”

Harry leaned forwards and stared as he watched Hermione activate the machine she’d obviously spent a lot of time on. The silver wires started spinning, and then black dust was falling down from the stones, and Harry could see it raining on what looked like a village called Little Hangleton.

“You can find the Horcruxes.” Ron was almost whispering.

Hermione nodded, blushing. Harry grinned. He had to think that had more to do with the way that Ron was looking at her than the way he was.

Of course it does, Dash said idly from near the wall, where he was tracking what he insisted were the traces of rodents. Those two will take longer than you and Draco to realize their feelings. They are more conventional.

Harry wanted to ask what that meant—since it sounded like an insult—but Ron abruptly whooped and leaped across the space that separated him and Hermione, grabbing her in his arms and spinning her around. “You can find the Horcruxes!” he yelled, and it was a good thing they were in the Room of Requirement, Harry thought, or most of the school might have known what Horcruxes were before the end of the day. “Merlin, Hermione, you’re amazing!”

“Put me down, Ron!”

Harry watched as Hermione straightened out her robes and ducked her head away from Ron’s grin, and Ron suddenly lost the grin and stepped slowly back. Then Ron turned and made frantic gestures for Harry to step forwards and say something. The longer Harry waited, the more frantic his grimaces got.

Harry valiantly restrained the impulse to chuckle. He looked at Hermione instead and smiled. “Then this will make finding them a lot easier. It looks like one is near this village of—Little Hangleton?” He craned his neck so that he could see. “And you had another map that said one of them is right here in Hogwarts.”

At least his words made Hermione act like her normal self again. She straightened out her shirt and wrinkled her nose. “Yes, and that one’s actually the most frustrating one! Because the machine acts like it should be right here, but then nothing I can do actually locates it!” She looked around the room in exasperation, saw Ron, and promptly turned in the opposite direction with her ears going redder than his had.

Conventional, Dash remarked, and ate a spider. Harry ignored him.

“It’s still amazing, Hermione,” Harry soothed her. “And maybe it means that the Horcrux is hidden in another version of the Room of Requirement—”

“No, you’re amazing, Harry!” Hermione’s face cleared in a bright smile. “That’s right! Of course it could be! We’ll walk up and down the corridor until the Room tells us what version it is!”

“Um, not without Severus,” said Harry apologetically. Severus was already getting upset at the mere thought of Harry being at Hogwarts during the full moon raid to try and recapture Bellatrix, and Harry wouldn’t even be fighting in that one. “I have to tell him about this, and he’ll probably forbid us to go after it alone.”

“Do you have to?” Ron said. “I mean, it just seems like we never get to have adventures alone together anymore. Draco is always there, or Snape, and I mean, they’re all right, but it’s just never the same…”

“Ron! Of course he has to! He’s being responsible and bringing in adults for once, just like he should, just like we should have been able to when we went after the Philosopher’s Stone…”

Ron shouted back, and by two minutes in, both of them were yelling and had red ears and faces. Harry sighed a little. At least it seemed to have distracted them from the idea of hunting the Horcrux in the Room of Requirement alone.

Conventional and oblivious, Dash said, as he went past Harry’s ankles, tapped a companionable tail on the back of his leg, and then ate a haunch of venison the Room had apparently provided for him. A bad combination.

Is there a reason that you’re eating so much? Harry asked, to avoid agreeing with his basilisk. He did think it would be a long time before Ron and Hermione admitted their feelings for each other, but that wasn’t the same as thinking they hadn’t realized them.

Oh, I am getting close to the time when I will shed my skin in a huge ball. I need more food to reach that point. I am growing rapidly. Don’t tell me you didn’t notice. This time, the Room provided a haunch of beef. Dash lunged forwards and ate it neatly, as if it would escape.

Harry stared at the bulge going down his throat, and swallowed. I—I didn’t realize that you were going to get this big this fast. I mean, the basilisk in the Chamber was a lot bigger than you, but it had centuries to grow.

This body is altered from that basilisk, as I think I have told you in the past. I am not vulnerable to the crows of cocks, and I am not going to take as long to reach my full size. Dash looked up at him and winked one eye behind his clear eyelids in that way he had. I need to be bigger to protect you effectively.

You already protect me effectively—

“Mate!”

Harry started guiltily and turned back to Ron and Hermione, who were both glaring sternly at him. “Sorry,” he said. “What?” Behind him, the Room had summoned another bloody piece of meat for Dash that Harry couldn’t identify, and he was eating it as if he wanted to crawl inside it.

“We’ve agreed that you can tell Professor Snape,” said Hermione, folding her arms and radiating injured dignity.

“But you can do it after we’ve walked past the Room three times and got it to open up,” Ron said. “We’re just going to take a look inside and see if we can find the Horcrux. That’s all. If we don’t see it, then we’ll close the door and wait for him. It’s not like we’ve really stepped inside if that’s all we do.”

Harry hesitated. That did sound like a better compromise than just going after the first Horcrux all by themselves would have been. He knew he wouldn’t have done even that much when they were younger and hunting for Nicholas Flamel and Slytherin’s monster.

Somehow, I don’t think your Severus will be impressed by the semantic difference, Dash remarked. He was slowing down in his gulping now, enough that Harry thought there might be patches of flat scaled neck in between the lumps of his meals.

“No,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I want to tell him right away. I know that he’ll get upset if I don’t.”

Harry—”

That was Ron. Hermione was nodding along. Harry pointed at Ron. “No. For one thing, you’re not the one he’s going to put in detention if we do this and then I tell him.”

“Detention doesn’t matter that much when he’s your guardian, does it?”

“For a second thing, you don’t get the brunt of a disappointed look from having your guardian living in the school with you. Your mum can send Howlers. Can you imagine her just staring at you because she lives in the same place and hears about you doing something dangerous?”

“No, because she wouldn’t just stare, she would scream at me,” Ron muttered, but he sounded convinced. “I just—fine. Let’s do something soon, though, all right, Harry? Something that’s all Gryffindors and no Slytherins?”

Harry smiled and said something he honestly couldn’t remember afterwards, given Dash’s voice in the back of his head.

All Gryffindors except for one Slytherin.

You could let me do something alone with them if it was safe, right?

None of the things that dunderhead is likely to imagine are “safe.”

Harry didn’t get the chance to argue back, because Ron started threatening to go get the Horcrux right now, and Harry had to run down to the dungeons to find Severus. Dash flowed after him, snapping up insects Harry hadn’t even seen scuttling along the corridors, and talking about the merits of hard-boiled eggs and whether he should visit the kitchens.

How big do you think you’re going to get? Harry asked, and got only a snicker for his trouble.

*

Severus strode towards the Room of Requirement. He was impressed that Granger had invented a way of detecting the Horcruxes. He was impressed that Harry had had the sense to come get him before setting off into some dangerous adventure.

He was not impressed that Weasley made striding necessary.

He arrived outside the Room of Requirement to find Weasley just walking up to a door that had appeared on the wall. Granger, standing behind him, widened her eyes and squeaked when she saw him. Severus granted her a nod before he reached out and grabbed the collar of Weasley’s robe, twisting it up around his throat.

Granger appeared as if she wanted to say something, but slowly closed her mouth. Severus guided Weasley around and stared into his eyes. “What do you think you’re doing, boy?”

“Exploring…sir.” Weasley was finding it hard to breathe. Severus lowered him so that his feet touched the floor again. It made it more convenient to shake him.

“You have to understand me,” he said, and lowered his voice as he all but hissed. “You will not drag Harry into anything like this against his will. Or something he told you will be wrong.”

“What’s that, sir?” Weasley had enough breath to speak the words and enough daring to meet Severus’s eyes head-on. Severus clenched his fingers in the miscreant’s collar and gave him another sharp shake, one that made Weasley yelp as something in his neck popped.

“The detentions that I would have served him with will instead fall upon you.”

Weasley looked truly stunned. Severus let him go with a disgusted snarl. Did he believe himself immune from consequences? It was true that Weasley hadn’t had many detentions with Severus himself in his four-and-a-half years in this school, but that could be changed so quickly that Weasley’s tongue would still be flapping a week later.

“We were just going to see where one of the Horcruxes was,” Weasley finally muttered, staring at the floor.

Severus opened his mouth to tell the boy exactly how dangerous one of those Horcruxes was likely to be, but Granger cut in, mercifully for Weasley. “Where’s Harry, sir? And Dash?”

“Harry is in my quarters, as far as possible from your attempts to bring trouble down on his head,” Severus said coolly, and watched in satisfaction as Granger turned pink—and reached out to restrain Weasley from saying something stupid. “Dash is hunting. Now. Do I have to chain you in Gryffindor Tower to convince you to leave this business to adults?”

“But Hermione was the one who invented the Horcrux-finding machine! We should be able to—”

“Detention, Weasley.” Severus had seldom relished giving one more, and watched the deep red color Weasley’s ears turned in vicious satisfaction. “Back to Gryffindor Tower with both of you.”

They scurried off, Granger floating a coil of silver and beads behind her that was probably the Horcrux-finding machine the boy had talked about. Severus shook his head. It was indeed a remarkable achievement, and he would have to speak with her about it later. But he would not mix praise with punishment. That was a mistake he had not made since his first season as a teacher in Hogwarts.

And in the meantime…

He turned to face the door Weasley had summoned. Before he went in, he raised a shield that would spring into being around him the minute something threatened him, even if that thing was physical instead of magical, or subtle instead of overt. His wand was in his hand. A few useful potions were in his pockets.

He still hardly wanted to venture into that version of the Room of Requirement to confront a Horcrux.

Severus grimaced and opened the door with a hand wrapped in soft cloth he had conjured. The silver handle didn’t burn with the foulness of Dark magic, as he had thought was almost inevitable, but that didn’t mean anything. The Horcrux could be far enough back in the room that it didn’t directly influence the door.

Someone coming into the room would be a different matter.

Resolutely, Severus didn’t gape at the piles of rubbish that loomed around him, and moved steadily past broken chairs, what appeared to be a half-shattered Vanishing Cabinet, and some loose coils of tarnished silver and greened bronze that might have been part of Granger’s machine. He was aiming towards the strongest source of Dark magic in the room.

It wasn’t easy. Many of the artifacts radiated some form of foul power, and it was actually harder to distinguish between them with so many broken, because then the magic leaked and didn’t form in the right “patterns” to make it traceable. But Severus was able to analyze many of the sources of magic that called for his attention and then bat them away as irrelevant. They weren’t evil enough for a Horcrux.

In the end, he almost walked past it. He jerked to a stop, though, when a twinkle or flash of light from the gem embedded in the middle of it caught his attention.

There.

Severus approached with careful steps. Cast over the ear of a carved bust was a silver diadem—or it might once have been silver, as the jewel in it might once have been a sapphire. Severus floated the diadem into the air instead of trying to touch it. When he made it spin to the side, he could read the words carved into it.

Wit beyond measure is man’s greatest treasure.

Severus swallowed. It felt as though his throat was burning. This wasn’t something that Voldemort had created, as he had once assumed most of the Horcruxes would be, given the diary. No, this was the lost diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw.

He didn’t lose control of the spell that kept the diadem aloft, but turned it carefully to the side, and began casting the spells that would detect the protections around it. He could find nothing. Severus grew more and more suspicious as he cast, and still nothing happened.

Can he have left it here and not had the time to enchant it? Yet that seems impossible.

Well, if Severus could not find one of the common sets of protections, that might still mean the diadem could ensnare anyone who touched it, the way the diary had. He did not intend to wear it. He waved his wand and wrapped it in the same white, silken cloth he had used to touch the door handle. Then he walked out of the Room, with the diadem hovering beside him, and paced up and down the corridor again.

I need a place to hide the diadem, a room only I can enter.

When he had repeated the words in his head three times, a different door appeared, a weathered panel of dark oak so small that it looked as if it covered a rodent’s burrow. Severus smiled grimly and dropped the diadem in. Then he cast another spell that would let him know the instant someone moved or touched it.

And then he finally turned away and went back down to the dungeons, where Harry was waiting for him.

*

Harry studied Severus carefully as he came through the door into his quarters. It didn’t look as though he was wounded or limping, but Harry still asked. “Did it hurt you?”

“Horcruxes should not, once one knows how to handle them,” Severus said dryly, and then went over to the liquor cabinet and took out a heavy bottle of something golden and seething that Harry had never seen him drink. “The tension was more draining than the process of fetching the thing itself.”

“So it’s hidden?”

Severus gave him a harsh glance that mellowed the instant Harry flinched. “Yes, of course it is. And I’ll make sure that you know exactly where it is and what I’m going to do with it when we fetch some basilisk venom to destroy it.”

Harry reached out through the bond to Dash. Dash had disappeared from Severus’s rooms a little while ago, to go out and hunt some more rodents. Would you be willing to provide the venom to destroy the Horcruxes?

Yes, but I’d rather provide it for several of them at once. It’s draining to produce that much poison.

Harry blinked. The sense through the bond was one of strain, and he wondered what in the world Dash was doing, that he felt like that. Are you all right?

I am, but what I’m doing right now takes a little more concentration than it did when I was Salazar Slytherin and had hands. I’ll talk to you again when I’m done.

The bond snapped silent. Harry sat back and noticed the way Severus was eyeing him. “Dash is all right,” he said, shaking his head. “But he wants to be left alone right now, and it almost sounded as though he was trying to cast a spell or do a ritual or something.”

“Nothing is perhaps impossible for a basilisk who was the Founder of my House,” Severus muttered, and began to sip from the sloshing golden bottle. “What are you going to do with the latest letter from the mutt?”

“Sirius isn’t—”

“Don’t fight with me about calling him that right now, Harry.”

Harry paused, then nodded. It seemed going into that version of the Room of Requirement to retrieve the Horcrux had really upset Severus. “All right. I wrote back to him and told him I was happy to hear from him, but that I don’t really want him handing me any more houses or money or Dark artifacts. And that we were closer to figuring out what to do about my scar. And that we’d like to decide something about that before Voldemort wakes up again.”

“And you did not respond to his offer to meet?”

Harry frowned and looked down at his hands. Honestly, it had been long enough since he’d seen Sirius that the thought of seeing him again was strange. And he didn’t know if Sirius could control himself well enough to keep from flinging insults at Severus.

That wouldn’t be such a problem if Severus would let me see him by myself. But he’s never going to allow that.

“I’ll write back to him tomorrow,” Harry finally said. “And tell him that it’s too soon, unless he thinks he can really control himself when it comes to you.”

Severus was in the middle of lifting his bottle to his mouth, but he lowered it then and stared straight at Harry. “You’re worried about me.”

“Of course I am.” Harry stared at him in turn, wondering why Severus looked so baffled.

“You’re trying to protect me from Black.”

“It’s not like I would need to protect myself.”

Severus swallowed some more of the golden liquor, and then said, “You do not need to worry like that, Harry. I am the adult and you are the child. I am the one who will remove you from the situation if Black becomes abusive.”

“To you?”

“To either one of us.”

Harry considered that, then nodded. At least Severus wasn’t the kind of martyr who would feel obliged to stay if the insults were “only” being flung at him. “So we’ll see what his response to that is, and if it’s not explosive, then we’re one step closer to trusting him.”

“Yes.” Severus stared a moment longer into the golden bottle, took one more sip, then set it aside. He turned to face Harry. “Did you come to fetch me because you were worried that your friends would walk into the Room of Requirement and you might see them die, or because you were afraid of detention, or for some other reason?”

Harry blinked. “I came to get you because I knew you would be worried if I went along with them.” He considered it, and then added, “And I knew you were the only one scary enough that Ron might back off instead of pushing forwards with it.”

Severus snorted, and sounded for a moment as though he was going to laugh. Then he said, “I repeat that I am the adult, and you the child. You don’t need to look after me.”

“What if I want to?”

Severus’s face softened for a second, and then said, “I would say that is a relic of your upbringing, where you began to think that you were not worthy of love and care.”

Harry scowled at him. “That’s a stupid thing to say.” He ignored the way Severus started and then began to scowl back. Just because the man might put him in detention or something similar didn’t mean Harry was frightened of him now. “Dash would yell at me if I really felt that way. No, I just want to protect you the same way I want to protect Ron and Hermione and Dash and Draco and all the rest of the people I—love.” It was still hard to force that word past his throat, which felt sticky, but he managed. “It’s not different. I want to make sure that you don’t worry and you have what you want.”

Severus closed his eyes in a slow blink. Then he said, “Your reasons make sense.”

Harry swallowed. “And you’re not going to put me in detention for calling you stupid.”

Severus picked up the golden bottle again. “You said my words were stupid, not me.” He began to smile slowly. “And we have recovered one of the Horcruxes.”

That was true, and Harry hadn’t thought about it enough. He smiled back. “True. Do you think we can have a party?”

“Not with your friends, at the moment. I sent them back to Gryffindor Tower and told them to behave themselves.”

Harry laughed. “Then I’ll go get Draco. It can be Slytherins and kind-of Slytherins.” He stood up and made his way to the door, calling down the bond, Dash, do you want to join us?

Silence.

Harry swallowed. He would accept the silence for now, since he thought forcing his way through it would be worse. But he definitely hoped that Dash would return to them soon.

Chapter 124: The Earthquake

Chapter Text

"It's simply set up on a number of contingencies, isn't it?"

Harry smiled at Ellen as she floated in front of him in the middle of the lake. Draco stood behind his boyfriend and studied the set of his shoulders thoughtfully. It was amazing how Harry could go from careful and unsure to being confident in front of his allies like this.

"Yes, it is," Harry said. "What we're going to do if they decide to attack openly is different from what we're going to do if they try and sneak into the castle."

"And different again from what you'll do if they come over the lake."

"What we'll do, right, Ellen?"

There was a little pause. Draco was impressed. He hadn't even needed to coach Harry on noticing the ambiguities in her words.

"Well, of course." Ellen dipped her head. "I didn't mean to make it sound as if I'm not one of your allies, or I won't help you. But I have the impression that this is your plan. Not one you came up with by consulting with Susana."

"She didn't come up with the exact movements, but she did send me a message that it was all right to ask for your help. Because I asked her."

"I see." Ellen looked a little more relaxed now, the things on her throat that Draco thought were hidden gill slits fluttering more rhythmically. "Then I'll ask the merfolk to help me. There should be almost nothing left of them if they come in over the lake."

Draco shuddered, but no one was paying attention to him. Ellen was looking at Harry, and Harry was looking around as if he was imagining Death Eaters getting dragged under the water. "Good," he muttered. "Thank you. Then I'll go need to speak with the werewolves that we'll have on guard duty near the Forest."

"Werewolves can't help you much on the night of the full moon, can they?"

"These are from Whitepaw's pack. They have a mental discipline that means they have their human minds even when they're in their wolf bodies. It's very useful for having them serve as guards."

"I see. Then I wish you good luck and good hunting, Harry."

Draco moved a little to the side so he could see Ellen's face as she sank under the lake again. She looked utterly impressed. Draco had the strong intuition that Harry wouldn't be the only one writing to Susana, and it wouldn't be with complaints on Ellen's part. Harry had handled that interaction well.

Draco had hoped, as he stomped his feet and recast a Warming Charm on himself with fingers that trembled, that he and Harry could go back inside once he'd spoken with Ellen. But Harry kept scanning the ground and air around them with a frown. Draco finally asked, "Do you think they're going to come some way you don't have anything planned for?"

"No," Harry said. He turned around and started walking back towards Hogwarts, and Draco hastened to keep up with him. His legs were already longer than they'd been over the summer, although Harry hadn't commented on noticing his own growth yet. "I'm worried about Dash. He still won't speak to me down the bond, and he's doing this ritual or whatever it is all by himself."

"Why do you think it's a ritual?"

"He made a few comments about how much easier things would be with hands."

Thinking about that, Draco could see it. Dash had shown that he could perform most magic that wizards had to have a wand for, and he didn't seem to mind having others brew potions for him. But a ritual would be a hard task for a snake. Especially one that he doesn't want to show anyone. "Do you have any idea what it does?"

"Makes it easier for him to protect me. I got that much before he shut me out of his mind." Harry stomped one foot hard on a bare patch of mud. "He probably thinks that's protecting me, too."

"Do you want me or Professor Snape to find him and tell him it's not?"

"No. I don't know where he is."

That made Draco pause, at least until he realized Harry hadn't and was still stomping back to the school. He promptly hurried after him once more. "That's dangerous, isn't it? If he's doing a ritual you don't know about, in a place you don't know about?"

"I know. But I can't even ask down the bond now if he's safe, because he's blocking me. And Severus says it would be dangerous to interrupt him even if I could. It might interrupt the ritual and have terrible consequences."

Draco had to nod, reluctantly. He had once almost interrupted a ritual Father was performing, without knowing what the closed door had meant, and both his parents had been far angrier about that than anything else he’d ever done. “All right. But when you want me to look for him, then tell me.”

“You said when, not if.”

“I know what I said.”

Harry only met his eyes for a moment before he averted his gaze, his cheeks far redder than the sharp wind could account for. His thanks were too soft to hear, but Draco saw the little puff of his breath in the cold.

He gripped Harry’s hand, and then they both entered the castle and went to tell Professor Snape about the progress with Ellen and Susana’s people.

*

Harry shivered a little as he watched Erica Kelleth walk among the werewolves from Whitepaw’s pack, positioning them. She hadn’t transformed herself, since she hadn’t actually been turned, but her eyes were brighter than Harry had known human eyes could be, and held a gleam of yellow when she turned and looked at him.

“We are ready,” she breathed. Her hair was crackling and lifted around her as if on waves of electricity, and she tossed back her head and glared at the full moon hovering behind the branches as if she wanted to rise up there and hunt it.

“All right,” Harry said, and nodded to her. When he looked at the werewolves around her—ten of them, all of them at least as tall as his chest and black- or grey-furred—he saw none of the terrifying madness that been in Remus’s eyes when he’d almost bitten Harry. Their eyes shone like Kelleth’s, but they kept silent, and they made no aggressive movement towards him or each other. They sat on their haunches or sprawled at the edge of the Forbidden Forest instead, their ears tilted to every small sound, their nostrils wrinkled.

“I want you to be a strike force,” Harry told them, and cast a Warming Charm on himself when he felt his hands trembling. He prayed it was only the cold on this night, and not fear. If all went well, he wouldn’t even be fighting himself. “Keep watch on the Forest if they try to come that way, but also hit them if they come in on a different angle. I know how fast you can run. If—”

“We know all this,” Kelleth interrupted, and her voice held a hint of laughter. “Why are you telling us again, my lord?”

Harry stared at her. She hadn’t called him that before. “Don’t call me that!”

Kelleth cocked her head and laughed openly this time. It had a hint of a howl to it. “Really? Why not, my lord?”

“I just wanted to review the battle plans,” Harry said, deciding that he was going to answer the less difficult question, and then sighed. “I’ll see you at sunrise.” And I hope you’re all still alive. The hardest thing about the plan had been knowing that he might cost some of these people their lives.

Kelleth nodded to him, her face gone quiet now, her lips closed over her teeth. “You don’t need to worry about us. Pity our enemies.”

Harry smiled a little, and walked back through the forest to the edge of the lake. He could see the shapes of Ellen and the merfolk swirling beneath the surface, but only because he knew what to look for. If Nott and the others tried to make a water crossing, it was doubtful they’d be looking down

Harry still wished Dash was with him. But they had done all they could to prepare.

He stepped inside the castle and walked briskly towards Severus’s warded quarters. The wards extended out into the corridor, and lapped briefly against his skin as if they were trying to taste his intentions. Then they burned away, and Harry stepped up to the door to knock.

Severus opened it at once, and cast a Diagnostic Charm. At first Harry thought it was a spell that was meant to make sure he wasn’t Polyjuiced or glamoured as someone else, and then he recognized the searching outer edges. He scowled at Severus. “All I did was go and talk to Kelleth and her people.”

“Talk to werewolves on the night of the full moon.”

“They’re not dangerous.”

“They do not mean to be.”

Harry rolled his eyes a little as Severus escorted him all the way inside and cast some more spells that would function as personal shields for Harry. He could understand why Severus distrusted werewolves and Harry would never ask him to deal with them, even the mentally disciplined ones from Whitepaw’s pack, but he didn’t know what Severus had expected to find. A hidden bite?

“You would protect them even if they had bitten you.”

Harry winced. Whether that was a result of Legilimency or just guessing too close for comfort, Severus was right. “Fine. So you’re going to cast the spell that’ll let us see into the grounds, right?”

Severus turned and aimed his wand at the wall. His eyes narrowed, and he chanted the long Latin incantation that he hadn’t time to teach Harry in their lessons before this battle was due to happen. Harry held his breath as he watched the wall seem to soften and collapse inwards in a round hole, whirling down into black-purple space streaked with stars. It reminded him of the deep bond he shared with Dash.

Don’t think about Dash right now.

As if Severus had heard that thought, too, the color of the night sky changed, and then it was simply the ordinary one above them, black and pale with the light of the full moon. Harry leaned forwards, and Severus touched his arm for a second as though he thought Harry would fall through. Then he let go.

Harry watched as the viewing portal plunged, and steadied itself at the last moment like a Seeker chasing the Snitch. Now there was a view of the lake, from what looked like the shore. Ellen and her cousins were swimming back and forth still, but Harry could only make out small dark flickers of motion. He glanced up and saw Hagrid’s hut from the corner of the portal, and a glimpse of the gates.

“You think they’ll come that way?” he asked. “Not through the Forest?”

Severus was silent, frowning. His wand tapped against his leg. Harry glanced at it, and then up again.

“Something is wrong,” Severus breathed. “The magic of the night has changed…there’s a Dark feeling there—”

Harry wasn’t nearly as sensitive to Dark Arts as Severus was, but when he concentrated, he thought he could feel it, too: a heavy, brooding feeling that hadn’t been there before. “There isn’t supposed to be a storm tonight, is there?” he asked, and wiped a trace of sweat away from his forehead.

“Do not be stupid,” Severus said, but without heat behind it. “There are—this is something Voldemort has done many times before.”

And then the night swarmed and seemed to crack open, and dark shapes started marching up from the gates, from the very last point they could have Apparated in. Or been Apparated, Harry thought, staring. These shapes lurched. For a wild minute, he wondered if the Death Eaters had come up with Muggle machines.

“Inferi!” Severus spat.

Harry immediately tensed. He was sure the werewolves could attack them, and if they waded through the lake, Ellen and her people would do the same. But they hadn’t been prepared for this many enemies. And there was no telling what would happen if those creatures disintegrated in the water or burst apart in a werewolf’s mouth.

“I have to—”

Severus’s arm shot out and got in front of his chest. “You most certainly do not have to.”

“But I can’t leave them to fight by themselves!”

“They aren’t by themselves. They have each other, and the traps we set up. And the thestrals in the Forbidden Forest, which will defend themselves if the threat is extreme enough. Even the centaurs might join in.”

“You don’t know that for certain,” Harry said. He could feel the urgency pounding through him like a second heartbeat, and it wouldn’t stop. He hadn’t been happy about the plan in the first place when it made him stay inside, but that had been Severus’s price for helping to set up the traps. And now—

He made a dart for the door. Severus caught his arm and held him still. “You’ll distract them,” he said, all cool logic with the bite behind it that had been missing from his earlier accusation of Harry’s stupidity. “You don’t have Dash to protect you right now. And Draco is keeping watch over Bellatrix. Slow down, Harry, and watch.”

With reluctance, Harry turned his head back, even as he reached for the vial of Felix Felicis that hung around his neck in the pendant Hermione had given him. If he could swallow a few drops of it and sneak out into the battle, then he shouldn’t be harmed. It would probably even help him sneak.

But then he saw what was happening in Severus’s viewing portal, and found himself staring with his mouth open.

The werewolves had charged out of the Forest with a massed howl, or so Harry assumed because he saw their heads flung back, but he really couldn’t hear anything. They crashed into the Inferi and wrenched them apart with their jaws, trampled them with their paws, caught them with the side of their fangs and sliced off arms. The body parts flopped and writhed on the ground, but the Inferi didn’t appear capable of healing themselves or reattaching themselves. And when the werewolves smashed their skulls like eggs, they stopped functioning altogether. Kelleth was among them, striking out with a knife Harry thought must be enchanted, from the sparks of explosive light that happened every time her blows landed. The Inferi she touched burned up, the flames crawling up their bodies in an instant and consuming them.

The Inferi had tried to go straight through the lake, but none of them were making it. Ellen and the merfolk surfaced and dragged them down, and some were attacking with weapons Harry had never seen before, blades and tridents of gleaming iron streaked with what looked like salt. Those simply dissolved the Inferi they touched.

It was working.

But new waves of Inferi kept coming out of the darkness, and Harry hadn’t seen the Death Eaters yet. That made him worry they were just edging around the battle, using the Inferi as a distraction, or maybe flying over the castle on brooms. They hadn’t coordinated any massed defense in the air.

“If I could just—”

No.”

This time, Severus’s voice barely sounded human. Harry spun around and stared at him again, but Severus was gazing intently at the viewing portal. He held up his hand. “Can you not feel it? Something else, something Dark beneath the surface of the earth. If they have begun an Earthquake spell…”

Harry swallowed. He knew Hogwarts as a building had wards that would let it resist such a thing, but no one else out in the midst of the battle would be safe from it. Those particular wards didn’t extend over ground that wasn’t built on.

He tried to edge towards the door again. Severus shifted to block him without once looking away from the viewing portal.

Harry reluctantly looked back just as the Death Eaters came soaring across the lake on their brooms. Ellen and her people leaped like dolphins, but they couldn’t reach them. Besides, they were still dealing with the Inferi, who formed almost a solid carpet as they moved across the water. Harry swallowed.

Another tremor seemed to ripple through the image, and Severus made a raw sound. “They may come here. They may find us—find you. I want you to go to the Room of Requirement and hide right now with the other children—”

“Could the Headmistress be using some defense that we don’t know about?” Harry asked as hurriedly as he could. For Severus to want to send him away out of sight instead of keeping him right there meant he no longer thought they could win.

“There is no such defense.” Severus’s voice sounded as if it were clad in iron, and Harry supposed he had to believe him. Even if Dumbledore hadn’t told Severus everything, McGonagall didn’t have any reason to hide it from him.

Harry swallowed and nodded. Then he made for the door, and this time he really did intend to go hide in the Room of Requirement. He only knew a few fire spells that might work against Inferi, and going out there wouldn’t save anyone. It would only hurt Severus if he had to watch Harry die.

Wait.”

Harry froze as though the stone floor was gripping his feet. He’d never heard Severus sound like that.

“Come here.”

Harry edged back to the portal, one hand on his own wand. It sounded almost as though Voldemort had managed to break in and possess Severus, or something. Harry had never heard him sound like that.

Severus was staring into the viewing portal, and he glanced at Harry. “Look at that.”

Harry looked. There was a long crack through the earth of the grounds, running from the edge of the Forbidden Forest to almost the lakeshore. It made Harry feel sick to look at. Why hadn’t he known there were Death Eaters capable of doing things like this? Why hadn’t he prepared some kind of counter to the tactic?

Then he saw the gleaming, heaving, roiling things in the middle of the crack. That must have been what Severus called him over here to see. Harry blinked. Are they raising some creature with tentacles that was sleeping down there?

The roiling things seemed to condense, and then they plunged upwards. And there rose, too, the thing that made them make sense.

Dash!

Dash shrugged off great rolls of earth, his scales gleaming with the newness that meant he had just shed his skin. And no wonder Harry hadn’t understood what those roiling things were. They were his coils. Dash was at least twelve meters long now.

Dash shook himself free of the clinging rock and stretched out his neck. That was all he needed to do to capture the broom bristles of the last Death Eater, who’d lingered behind the others to gape. He snapped his neck to the side and opened his mouth.

Another snap, and the broom and the Death Eater tumbled into his mouth, simply swallowed. Then Dash turned his neck and plunged into the lake, crushing Inferi into paste with simple movements of his tail and the middle of his body.

Out of the earth after him came a swarm of serpents, all of them grey with glowing red eyes. For a hysterical moment, Harry thought they were Ashwinders. But then one of them rammed into an Inferius and crushed its legs to splinters, and Harry understood. They were made of stone.

“The ritual was to give him this power,” Harry whispered, as he watched Dash lazily take down the rest of the Death Eaters. He swallowed another one, and then whipped his head and a coil up at the same time and crushed the broom and legs of another.

“And to increase his size.” Severus’s eyes were narrow and shrewd, and he kept them fixed on the viewing portal as if he thought that he’d never be able to look away again. “I wonder if he kept you out of his head for fear of embarrassing himself if he failed to pull this off.”

“I would still have loved him. It doesn’t matter what he looks like or what powers he has.”

“But you can’t deny that he’s making a vast difference in the battle and sparing our allies casualties that they would have taken otherwise.”

“Yeah.” Harry swallowed as he watched another wave of Inferi smash apart under the stone snakes. Their own attacks in return were utterly ineffective, with sloppy and bony hands alike simply breaking or sliding off the stone the serpents were made of.

Severus’s hand landed on his shoulder. “And I suspect that part of his love for you is making sure that you don’t have to take any risk in the battle at all.”

“But he wasn’t in contact with my mind for a while. He couldn’t know that I planned to go out and fight.”

Dry silence from Severus.

“Fine, maybe he could make a good guess,” Harry muttered as he watched Ellen and the merfolk push Inferi who fell into the lake to the shore so the stone snakes could smash them apart. “That doesn’t mean he knew.”

More dry silence. Harry decided to ignore Severus so that he could concentrate on the rest of the battle, his head still light with relief.

It looked as though two of the werewolves were limping. Kelleth directed them off to the side with a pointing gesture of a wand Harry knew she’d “borrowed,” and then called down fire on several Inferi who’d managed to get around the side of the lake. Harry studied the grass and trees intently in the light of the flames, but he couldn’t see any dead bodies from their own side. Although he wouldn’t be sure until he went and asked Ellen, because he couldn’t see under the surface of the lake now, he hoped none of the merfolk had died, either.

Dash looked around a few minutes later, stretched along the side of the lakeshore like a glowing dark river of lava. But the Death Eaters were dead, and Severus canceled the viewing portal just after Dash began to turn towards the school.

“Go meet him.”

Harry glanced up. Severus was giving him a fond look, and only twitched his head to the side when Harry met his eyes.

“I know well enough that the battle is over, and he won’t thank me for holding you apart from him anyway,” Severus said, with only a small edge in his voice.

Harry grinned at him and then ran out of the rooms and up through the corridors. He spared a thought for the students and professors hiding in the Room of Requirement, but he was sure Severus would let them know that the battle was over.

Harry could check on them later. He could check on the werewolves and the merfolk later. What mattered right now was…

He crashed through the front doors and straight into Dash, who’d slithered most of the way up to the castle. Dash at once lowered his head. His fangs were as long as Harry’s arm now, and his snout big enough to make Harry think of his Firebolt. Harry still leaned against him and closed his eyes.

Why did you shut me out of our bond?

The reason that Severus already surmised. I was afraid that I would fail, or that something might happen to interrupt the ritual.

You know you didn’t have to do this, right? I’m always going to love you no matter what. Harry ran a hand down the dazzling dark green scales on the side of Dash’s neck.

I know that. I don’t care. I wanted to save you, and I wanted to accelerate my growth and gain one of the magical powers that otherwise wouldn’t have been mine for years. Dash hesitated. This is the only time I can do it, though. I’ll have to grow naturally from now on, and there won’t be any new magic for a long time.

I don’t love you because of the kind of snakes you can conjure, you idiot.

Dash leaned harder against him, just on the verge of knocking Harry from his feet. Harry hugged him back as hard as he could, and finally whispered, What are we going to do about you fitting into Gryffindor Tower?

I have plans for that.

Harry let it go. He could ask about them later, just like he could do everything else later. Right now, there was only Dash’s enveloping coils, and love, and the sense of a battle won.

Chapter 125: Building

Chapter Text

“What is your snake doing, Mr. Potter?”

Well, he just saved the school last night. But Harry held his tongue. Even though he knew Severus would have told them all about Dash and the battle, and he’d told a few people himself, that was different from excusing Dash now.

“He’s building things, Headmistress,” Harry told McGonagall.

She stood next to him and folded her arms as she watched Dash wrapped around the set of almost forgotten steps that ran up the outside of Hogwarts. Harry had carefully asked around, on Dash’s request, before he touched them. Apparently, the steps used to lead to a classroom door in one of the outer walls. But the classroom wasn’t used anymore, and since the corridor it opened onto in the inside was long and draughty, no one used the steps as a shortcut, either.

Dash coiled himself hard suddenly, a surge of bright, scaled muscles that Harry felt in his chest. Then he yanked. The stairs collapsed in a shower of stones and with a grinding roar. Harry held his breath, but Dash had been right: the stones bounced from his scales without doing damage. There wasn’t much that could penetrate basilisk hide.

“Dear God,” McGonagall whispered next to him.

Harry twitched a little. Severus had told him he thought Dash should do this at night, so as not to frighten people. But Harry had said they wouldn’t be that frightened and they should do it in the open. Now he had to wonder if Severus was right.

She’s impressed as much as she is frightened. I can smell that in her scent. She’s probably wondering how she could use that strength to defend the school when the Death Eaters attack again. Dash slid away from the rubble and began to nudge it about with his nose. A smart woman.

Just as long as she’s not wondering how she can trap you and keep you there.

Dash glanced at him, a warm quiver running through the bond. Harry sighed a little. He really had missed Dash when he was conducting his mysterious ritual. She’s smart enough to know that no trap could hold me.

Someone could still take you unawares, Harry snapped, and used his wand to float up a load of stone while Dash wrapped one length of his body around some of the rest of it and slithered towards Gryffindor Tower. I don’t want you to get overconfident.

Dash’s laughter was like a warm spring shower down the bond. No one managed to do that in my original life, either, I’ll have you know.

Will you tell me more about your original life sometime?

I should have a reason to fairly soon.

Harry frowned, but before he could ask about that and get some kind of promise of when it was going to happen, they got to the base of Gryffindor Tower. Dash reared up and looked at it carefully. This would be easier if you had let yourself be Sorted into Slytherin, you know, he told Harry.

That prat Draco—

That prat now your boyfriend Draco?

He was a prat at the time!

Dash laughed again, and Harry reveled in it. McGonagall wasn’t the only one watching now as they laid the stones on the ground and Harry floated some of them to the far end, so they formed a sort of broken column laid on the earth; Gryffindors and Slytherins and some Hufflepuffs had wandered out to stare.

“Okay,” Harry told Dash, aloud, because he wanted people to hear this. “So I’m going to float it up when you signal me, right?”

Dash gave him a look of long-suffering. Not patience, either. Just long-suffering.

“Yes, I am,” Harry said firmly, and then he gestured and the first part of the column floated up and hit the side of the Tower. He winced. At least the Tower was sturdy enough and tall enough that it wasn’t a calamity.

Dash leaned forwards and opened his mouth. Some people shrieked and ducked behind McGonagall. Harry rolled his eyes. As if Dash could bite them when he was facing the exact opposite way.

I could bounce my venom off the Tower if I wanted and hit them that way.

Let’s not.

Dash clamped his jaws carefully around different points in the stones and held them there for long moments. Then he moved on to other points. Harry trusted him to know what he was doing. Probably some of Slytherin’s original memories included how to build things.

Now let the magic go.

Harry did. For a second, the stones trembled, but then they stopped. And there they clung, with Dash’s venom for mortar, like a broken tooth to the outside of the Tower.

“Very nice, Mr. Potter.” McGonagall didn’t sound as though she really believed it. “But what are you going to—”

Harry pulled up his magic, like another Dash rearing inside him, and then cast as hard as he could at the pile of stones, the spell Dash had taught him the night before. “Lenis!”

McGonagall staggered back a step as the magic burst out of him. It hit the stones, and Harry held his breath as they smoothed out and jagged pieces settled down and some others surged up, so that they could do what they needed to. And there it was a second later. The first beginning of a smooth ramp up the side of Gryffindor Tower.

“Dash can’t come up the inside stairs anymore,” Harry explained to her and the students who stood gaping around him. “But he still wants to be with me at night, so this is what we’re going to do instead.”

“You can’t just go changing the school around!” one of the Hufflepuffs spluttered.

“But the Headmistress said it was okay, and Dash used to be a Founder,” Harry said, a little baffled. He’d thought people would be afraid of Dash, and maybe of him after they saw the magic he was doing, but he hadn’t thought that would be an objection. “So why do you care?”

The Hufflepuff spluttered some more, and then stalked away. Dash shook his head, which was a lot more impressive now that he was bigger, and said, Pick up some more stone, Harry. We’ll make the ramp go in a spiral around the Tower. Some people aren’t worth speaking to.

Harry shrugged and began arranging more stone. McGonagall stepped up next to him and lowered her voice. “I find myself curious why basilisk venom works as mortar, Mr. Potter.”

“Oh, I asked Dash about that. He said that the venom is deadly, but mostly it’s permanent. He can pull it back if he wants and make it less deadly, and he can make it change a few other properties, too, as long as he’s not changing the permanence of it. So he couldn’t make something that would have to come down in a few months, but he can make this.”

“Hmmm.”

Harry glanced at McGonagall. She was looking grave. But Dash called out for him to pay bloody attention! as some of the floating blocks of stone collided with each other, and so he had to pay attention and worry about what the Headmistress thought later.

*

There is no getting rid of that basilisk.

Minerva had known it, already, at the back of her mind. After all, Harry and Dash had resisted any attempt to make them sever their bond. But somehow it was a lot more noticeable when a snake almost forty feet long and his bondmate were building a ramp up the outside of the school.

And with magic that she knew most students wouldn’t even be able to wield in their seventh year. Did Harry know that?

She supposed, as she watched him direct the stones and consult with Dash and reorder things and smooth them and fetch some more rocks from a half-collapsed wing that no one had done anything about in the time since Minerva had been a student here, that Dash wouldn’t have hidden the truth from him. Harry’s face was creased as he worked, his wand dipping and rising and swirling in a combination of movements. And Dash watched him with pride, as far as Minerva could read a snake’s expressions, and no sense of something hidden.

Minerva watched thoughtfully for as long as she could spare, and then went back into the school. She was due for a meeting with Aurors and the Board of Governors, because they were starting to despair of finding Umbridge.

And she had business of her own to press. While Dash had made sure the Death Eaters attacking the school were defeated, Severus had been the one who suggested hiding the students in the Room of Requirement. He had been without reward or acknowledgment for too long. Minerva would see that he received one.

*

Draco hesitated and glanced at the book in front of him. But it said the same thing it always said, the thing that he had to admit sounded like it might make his aunt useful to them again.

He hadn’t asked Harry or Dash or Professor Snape for permission to be down here. He knew they would say no. But Dash and Harry had had to leave an entrance to the Chamber of Secrets open so that Draco could watch over Bellatrix during the battle. So Draco had been able to come here again, by himself, and Bellatrix was of course where they’d left her, floating in a cage of light.

Draco cut his finger with his dagger and smeared the blood on the ground around the cage, creating a containment spell. The sparks that leaped and flashed from spot to spot where he had already smeared his blood on other visits made him relax. This spell would hold. Even if he somehow broke Dash’s Petrification, his aunt wasn’t going anywhere.

Then Draco reached out and cut Bellatrix’s upper left shoulder with the same dagger.

The blood that flowed out was sluggish. It didn’t matter. It was still linked to his, and Draco knew the tie of mother’s sister was close enough to make all sorts of magic powerful and effective. He closed his eyes and spoke the Latin words under his breath. “Cruor mihi.

The blood jumped in a spray between the cage and his hand, and Draco opened his eyes to see himself cupping a handful of what looked like red ice. It wouldn’t remain that malleable for long. Quickly, he crushed it up with a few motions of his fingers, and then lifted a shard to his mouth and crunched it down.

It tasted foul. Draco closed his eyes and concentrated on the sticky taste that coated his tongue and the bitterness working its way towards the back of his throat.

“Make her loyal,” he whispered. The blood seemed to halt in its trickling down his throat. “Make her loyal to me. Make her do whatever I tell her to. Make the bond permanent. Shared blood is stronger than the magic branded into the Mark on her arm.”

There was a moment when heavy magic hovered in the air, and reached out and seemed to wind cold fingers around Draco’s throat. He tilted his head further and further back, attempting to make it less uncomfortable.

The moment passed, and Draco swallowed the last foul taste and healed both the wound in Bellatrix’s shoulder and his own finger. Then he stood up and removed the containment spell around the cage, cleaning up the last traces of his presence.

This particular blood magic spell had to be cast in stages. Draco would have to come back every day for a week to make sure that the spell had taken.

But if he could make Bellatrix loyal to them, take away a weapon from Voldemort and force her to willingly spill her secrets…

It would be worth it.

*

“What you have done is a remarkable achievement, Miss Granger.”

Hermione flushed and waited for the scathing comment she was sure was coming in a second. Professor Snape never gave out compliments like this. At least, not to Muggleborn Gryffindors.

But Professor Snape only watched her whirling contraption in silence for a long moment, frowning. Then he glanced at her and smiled, inclining his head. Hermione waited. They were in the Room of Requirement again, this time a version different from the place where she had created her machine, but with a table big enough to hold it.

“That does not mean that I want you rushing off to gather the Horcruxes, and taking Harry with you in your mad dashes.”

Hermione shook her head at once. “Of course not, sir. Besides, it seems that one of the Horcruxes is in Gringotts. I wouldn’t dare attack it!”

“Wise of you. I am not sure that consideration would hold Harry back.”

“I know that we have to plan, sir. And I’m not going to just plan with Ron and Harry. We’ll have to talk with you and Draco and the Headmistress and—and all sorts of people.”

Professor Snape gave her a sharp glance, although Hermione didn’t know why. She would have thought that she was telling him just what he wanted to hear. After a moment, however, he gave her a nod and returned to studying the machine.

“You know where the other Horcruxes are?”

“Besides the one in Gringotts, there’s the one in Little Hangleton, near where Voldemort is still lying incapacitated. I think that one might be even more dangerous to get than the one in Gringotts, sir. And there’s one in London.” Hermione frowned down at the map. “It’s hard to tell exactly where, though. Sometimes the machine shows one place, and then the next time it starts turning it collects dust in another part of London.”

“A wizarding home under strong wards, perhaps.” Professor Snape frowned at the map, too. “Well. The one in London will be the least dangerous for us to collect. We will discuss how to obtain it, yes.”

“Sir?”

Professor Snape glanced at her. Hermione took a deep breath and all her courage in her hands, to ask the question that she could never ask Harry or Ron. “Do you think we’ll find a way to destroy all of them and—and leave Harry alive?”

“Yes.”

“And the piece of soul that Voldemort took from Harry to make himself into Harry’s Horcrux? How are we going to solve that problem? It’s just that—it seems destroying a Horcrux is rare in the first place, and things that could leave the piece of soul intact—”

Professor Snape held up a hand. “I do not know all the answers to all the problems, Miss Granger. We may not even be able to find them all in books. This situation is unprecedented. No one can record it if it has not happened before.”

Hermione looked at him in dismay. She had to admit she’d never thought of that. “But—what can we do—”

“You have already learned a lesson that Harry and Weasley still have trouble with, that you cannot rely solely on your own efforts.” Professor Snape held her eyes. “You will work with adults, and together we will discover a way. That is what will happen. That is what you can do.”

Hermione nodded slowly. “Okay. As long as you think that we can help Harry and he’s not going to die.”

“I will never permit that.”

Hermione felt a surge of comfort that she’d never got around Professor Snape before. If he spoke in that deep voice, what he said was going to come true. She relaxed. “Thank you. If you won’t allow us to come along when you go after the Horcrux in London, will you please tell me that it went all right after you collect it?”

“Yes.”

And he said that in the same tone he’d used to say that he was going to keep Harry alive. Hermione relaxed completely. “Thank you, sir,” she said, and then began to run the machine again, trying to make sense of the different dustfalls it made when it came to London. Even a warded house shouldn’t move around that much.

*

Harry leaned against Dash’s side and wiped his face. No matter how many Cooling Charms he’d cast on himself, no matter how many glasses of water he’d conjured and poured down his throat, he was still parched.

“It’s impressive as fuck,” he muttered.

Dash nudged him with his nose. They both leaned back and looked up at Gryffindor Tower.

Besides the ramp that spiraled up the outside now, and the widened window so that Dash could reach inside and lean his head on Harry’s bed, there was a brand new top to the tower. Dash could coil on it and keep watch for enemies. Eventually, he’d said, they’d enclose it and he could have a place to get out of the rain. And even further in the future, they would connect it to the pipes that the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets had used to move around the school. Then Dash could come and go from Gryffindor Tower with no one being the wiser.

But those were projects for another day, for which Harry was abundantly glad. He leaned his head against Dash again and slipped into a doze.

An almost imperceptible thrum down the bond woke him up maybe an hour later. Harry blinked his eyes open and saw Draco standing over him, his expression uncertain.

“You’ve almost missed dinner,” Draco said quietly. “Do you want to go? I think you need to eat after a full day of magic like that.”

He’s right, you should, Dash said, and pulled away the comfortable coil Harry’s head had been resting on. Harry only barely managed to sit up before Dash slid away towards the Forbidden Forest to hunt something. He glared after his bondmate and then smiled at Draco and remembered what he’d wanted to tell him. In a way, this whole day of work had been about giving himself the courage to think about it, and in the end, his decision was still the same.

“Can we go for a walk first? I have something I want to talk to you about.”

Draco gave him a sharp glance, but then nodded. Harry turned and led him around Gryffindor Tower towards the lake, trying not to stumble. Draco immediately slipped an arm under his shoulder and propped him up. “You should go to the hospital wing,” he muttered.

“I should talk to you and then have dinner. That’s going to revive me more than anything else.”

Draco nodded cautiously. “What did you want to talk to me about? Something you can’t say in front of anyone else?” he added, seeing the way Harry looked over his shoulder.

“Something I think you should be the first one to hear. Draco…” Harry realized he was smiling, and let Draco see it. “I can read the words on that scroll you gave me for my birthday.”

Draco’s arm tensed so hard under Harry’s shoulder that it was painful. Harry turned to face him, and nodded. “I can. It’s about how you love me, and you want to be with me for the rest of your life. And how a scroll like that is a traditional gift for Malfoys to give their—future spouses.” Harry had choked a little when he saw those words, and he choked a little now, saying them. “Your father gave your mum a scroll like that. You wanted to do the same for me, even though your mother kept asking if you wanted to. Draco, I love you, too.”

Draco stared at him with dazed eyes. For a minute, Harry wondered if he thought Harry was lying, or just guessing at what was on the scroll. Harry waved a hand in front of his eyes.

Then Draco seized him and kissed him, and Harry laughed into his mouth and went with it, winding his arms tightly around Draco’s neck. It felt as if he’d been missing this, too in the last few days, while he and Severus and everyone else got ready for the battle. The warmth and the relaxation and the trembling limbs as Draco cradled him close…

“Don’t you disappear underground for a ritual that you cut me out of, too,” he muttered into Draco’s lips when the kiss finally relaxed.

Draco started at that, but he couldn’t stop smiling. “What made you decide to read the scroll after all this time?” he whispered, trailing his hand through Harry’s hair.

“Dash. I was thinking this morning about how much I missed him, and what I would do if he died. And I started thinking about how I would miss other people if they died, and I decided that I didn’t want to waste any more time. I picked up the scroll and looked to see if I could read it. And I could. And Draco, thank you for those words. They’re some of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen.”

“Mother was so uncertain.” Draco was breathing harshly, his hands skimming up and down Harry’s arms. “She kept asking me if I wanted to do this because she thought I was too young. Father didn’t try to court her with a scroll like that one until they were both out of Hogwarts, and even then, there were ancestral portraits telling him he was too young. But I told her my feelings weren’t going to change.”

“Of course they won’t,” Harry said simply, and leaned against him. Draco’s arms closed savagely on him again. They stood there for long enough that Harry thought they might have remained until Dash came back from his hunt, but then Harry’s stomach rumbled.

“Shit, I’m an idiot,” Draco muttered. “You still used a lot of magic today and need food, and I’m standing here grinning like a fool and—”

“Look, the only ones who get to insult you are Dash and me, all right? It’s flattering, Draco. How much you love me. How much you want me.”

Draco stared at him with dazed eyes again. Harry grinned and kissed him one more time, then led him towards the school. Dash joined them at a distance, a gliding black shape who watched them until they stepped safely through the doors of the entrance hall.

Even though Harry thought the whole school must know about him and Draco by now, there were still some stares and mutters when they walked to the Gryffindor table hand-in-hand. Harry ignored them. He could feel the quiet confidence Severus had talked about, the confidence that he said Harry would gain someday when he became a good leader, beaming in the center of his chest.

This was where he belonged.

With everybody, Dash said, from somewhere within a pipe.

Hmmm, Harry agreed, and started eating without taking his hand or his eyes from Draco’s.

Chapter 126: In the Blood and Runes

Chapter Text

Draco watched as the flare of light colored like old blood disappeared from around Bellatrix. He licked his lips. If he had done all his reading right, and all his planning, then this ought to be the time to wake her.

He had to admit that the spellbook he’d found this ritual in hadn’t actually said that the magic could overcome the effects of the basilisk Petrification. On the other hand, it didn’t say it could overcome the Dark Mark, either. Draco felt he had to trust the statement that it could “succeed despite any obstacle in the way.

Draco closed his eyes and reached out. There ought to be a link between him and his aunt now—

And there it was. It was so strong and thick that Draco didn’t understand how he’d missed it in the first place. It shimmered like a streak of dull red-orange. Draco laid his will upon it.

The link seemed to roar in his head the way Dash might if he discovered Draco doing this. Draco staggered, but didn’t let the sound throw him from his feet. “Come forth,” he said, thinking the words and speaking them aloud at the same time. “Obey me, my aunt. The shared blood we have between us is too strong for you to resist.

There was a rolling, snapping sound. Draco opened his eyes. Bellatrix was on her feet, a faint shimmer of red far back in her eyes.

Other than the fact that she was moving and the glow, though, she looked exactly as she had when she was Petrified. She was still staring straight ahead of her and all her limbs were stiff. Draco smiled a little. Dash ought to be less angry at him for breaking the paralysis that kept her imprisoned.

You will obey me.

The woman stared at him. Then her lips parted and she said, in a voice as heavy as her tongue, “Yes.

Draco breathed out. This was going to work. And then he would have made a solid contribution to the war effort. He knew that Harry and Professor Snape would say that he’d already made one, but using blood magic on his aunt once wasn’t enough. It wasn’t like that would defend them.

Now, he could make her act against Voldemort. That would be a much bigger contribution.

Something brushed against his ankle.

Draco yelped and leaped as he turned around, which made his cheeks burn a second later, but he honestly hadn’t thought there was anything down here. Any insects had stayed far away while he worked on Bellatrix, and there was no—at least there weren’t supposed to be—any basilisks. Right?

Ultio raised his head and stared into Draco’s face. Draco was more than surprised to see Conflagration behind him. The flame cobra had refused to come anywhere near the Chamber of Secrets no matter how much Draco coaxed him.

“It’s you lot, then,” Draco said, and tried to make sure that his voice didn’t come out high and squeaky, the way it wanted to. “What are you doing down here? Is something looking for me?”

Ultio twined up his arm, looked at Bellatrix, and hissed. Then he turned and looked pleadingly into Draco’s eyes, which didn’t make a lot of sense to him.

Conflagration wrapped his tail around Draco’s ankle, which must have been what Ultio was doing before, and tugged firmly. As Draco blinked at him, still not understanding, the flame cobra turned his head pointedly towards the stairs.

“All right, all right,” Draco muttered. Conflagration probably wasn’t smart enough to know when something was an emergency, and that meant Ultio had come up with this plan. Draco sighed and turned back to Bellatrix. “You will lie down here and act as if you were Petrified until I come down and retrieve you. You will not obey any other command that someone gives you, even if it comes from your Dark Mark or Voldemort himself.

Yes.”

In seconds, his aunt was lying down again, and her muscles locked into what looked like basilisk Petrification to Draco. He sighed again and turned to follow his snakes up the stairs. This had better be good.

*

Someone interesting is coming.

That was the only warning Dash gave him before Draco staggered into the corridor in front of Harry, a snake around each ankle. Draco was off-balance and yelling at Ultio and Conflagration as if he was a Parselmouth. Their hisses back were so agitated that Harry could only make out the word danger.

“What’s going on?” Harry asked cautiously a second later, when he realized Draco was too busy wrestling the snakes to look up at him.

Draco looked up, jumped, and then pressed forwards despite Ultio and Conflagration, his mouth parted. “Harry, you’ve got to talk to them! They pulled me up here like something was on fire, but nothing is and I was arguing with them but they won’t leave me alone and it’s driving me mental!”

What is going on?” Harry asked Ultio, because he thought he was more likely to respond in an understandable way. Conflagration was a magical snake, but not nearly as intelligent as the others.

He was doing something he should not be doing! Powerful magic! He cannot control it!” Ultio let go of Draco’s leg, but only to rear up and dance back and forth as if he was the cobra and had a hood he could flare. “You need to talk to him about it and make sure he can control it before he tries it again!”

Harry blinked at the inrush of information and said, “Okay. Um.” He ended up having to look at Draco, away from Ultio, so he could be sure the words wouldn’t come out in Parseltongue. “He said that you were doing some magic you couldn’t control. Or Ultio thinks you can’t, anyway. What happened, Draco?”

Draco’s face twisted and he actually turned pale. He took a step back, but he tripped over Conflagration, and Harry had to whip his wand around hastily to cast a Cushioning Charm before Draco cracked his head open on the stones. Harry knelt down next to him. He’d been on his way to Charms, but this looked more urgent. “Draco? Are you all right?”

Draco swallowed. Then he said, “If I just asked you to trust me and said I could handle it, would you leave it alone?”

Ultio began hissing in a frenzy, and Conflagration looked as if he was going to bite someone any minute. “Calm the hell down,” Harry hissed. He didn’t know how Parseltongue translated the curse, but it seemed to do some good, because they stopped flailing for at least a second. Harry turned back to Draco. “I would, but Ultio is really concerned. I don’t think I’ve seen him get like that before. Can you tell me what you were doing?”

“It was going to be—a surprise.”

“Like a Christmas gift?”

“Yes! But bigger.”

Harry hesitated. He really did want to trust his boyfriend. Most of the time he could, right? And Draco was giving him this desperate pleading glance that said he should. A snake could worry about something that wasn’t worth worrying about. Dash had done it before.

You also know that I worry about many things that turn out to have a good reason behind them.

Harry grimaced over the reality of that, and looked at Draco again. “Please tell me.”

Draco avoided his eyes, looked up at the ceiling, looked down the corridor, and said, “Aren’t you going to be late for Charms?”

“You’re more important.”

For a second, Draco’s eyes shone, but he looked away and shook his head. “Then trust my very important word that this isn’t something you need to worry about.”

“Please, Draco.” Draco only shook his head again, so Harry sighed and tried another tactic. “You know that I’m probably going to get detention for being late to Professor Flitwick’s class—or missing all of it.”

“That’s why you should go now.”

“And Severus is going to want to know why I got the detention,” Harry continued in a musing tone. “That means he’ll ask some questions, and he’s never satisfied with vague answers. He’ll demand to know why I got it, and I’ll need to tell him, and if my answers don’t satisfy him—which they can’t—then he’ll come and find you.”

Draco’s face was as pale as old cheese by the time Harry finished. “It was going to be a surprise.”

“Not a good one. Not if your snakes are this agitated.”

Thank you,” Ultio said. By now he was curled on Draco’s shoulder, looking irritated enough to bite him if Draco moved. “Maybe now he will tell you, and then we can stop worrying that he was in the Chamber by himself.

Harry waited. Draco seemed to wrestle between his reluctance to tell him and his reluctance to have Severus read his mind for a few minutes, and finally he looked at Harry and sighed. “I was working blood magic on Bellatrix. If I could turn her loyalty from Voldemort, then it would mean we’d have a spy in his ranks, and one we could depend on.”

“No matter what you do to her, she’s never going to be loyal to us—”

“With blood magic, she would! She won’t have any choice. The blood in her veins would make her!”

“I would never trust her,” Harry decided he needed to say. Draco looked so offended. “And neither would Severus. And the rest of our allies would probably follow our lead, even though they don’t know Bellatrix. Sorry, Draco. I just think it’s too dangerous.”

He felt far more than that, a churning sickness in his stomach and a faint, cold wind that seemed to stick close to his skin and lift the hairs on his arms. But he knew Draco would be more upset if he brought that up, so he stuck to his relatively calm words and glanced at the snakes. “How long has he been going down to the Chamber?”

Since the time shortly after the battle.

Harry winced a little, but he knew it was no good asking a snake to think in terms of days and weeks. “Thank you,” he said, and faced Draco, who was giving him the kind of glare that meant he wasn’t about to listen to anything Harry said. “Draco, please. Think about it. Why do you want to make Bellatrix loyal to us so badly?”

“Because she’s my aunt, and she attacked you. And because I haven’t done anything noteworthy in the last little while. I haven’t invented a Horcrux-finding machine like Granger. I didn’t help defend you during the battle. I didn’t—”

“Wait. You’re jealous?”

“I never said that.” Harry had never known that Draco’s nostrils could get so narrow.

“I know you didn’t. But it sounds like it to me.” Harry tried to keep his voice gentle. It seemed silly to him, but obviously it wasn’t to Draco, or he never would have taken so big a risk. “What if I told you that I want you to give this up?”

“I already used the magic. I already broke the basilisk Petrification and she’s lying down there now, ready to get up when I tell her to.”

Harry closed his eyes. He could hear Dash’s hiss down the bond. It seemed that Draco had done something that truly angered Dash, at last. Could you go down there and Petrify her again? Harry asked him.

I could, but I do not know if it would work with the blood magic. Or if it might break the hold Draco has over her and make her run mad, or straight back to Voldemort. I should kill her now. That would waste the least breath and blood.

“Dash wants to kill her,” Harry told Draco. “He doesn’t trust her, at all, and you’ve put people in danger.”

“I haven’t put them in danger!” Draco sounded aghast. “The spell did exactly what it was supposed to do! I have control of her now!”

“And you’re absolutely sure about that? Sure enough that you would let go of her in front of other people and see what happens? That’s what could happen if you marched her up here with the blood magic and let her see other people.”

“I’m not going to do that.” At least Draco was calmer now and he spoke as if he was willing to listen to Harry instead of just yell at him. “The best thing we can do is use her for information on Voldemort. I was going to keep her in the Chamber and speak to her about that. And unless you wanted to send her on some kind of spying mission, I was going to have her stay there.”

“It was still dangerous to break the Petrification.” Dash roared his agreement down the bond. But just as Draco was speaking quietly, Harry felt some of his fears quiet down. If they could just make sure that there was no way Bellatrix could break out and endanger anyone…

“It was.” Draco nodded, staring into his eyes. “And I’m willing to acknowledge that. But the blood magic is advanced far enough now that I don’t know if I could put her back even if I wanted to.”

“You don’t want to?”

“No. This is still something only I can do, something that shows I’m loyal and I’m worth something and you’ll acknowledge me.”

“Of course I acknowledge you,” Harry said, a little helplessly. “I mean, do you think I’m going around kissing everyone I see and calling them my boyfriend? Or that I’m lying about loving you?”

Draco hesitated, then blinked. Dash murmured down the bond into Harry’s mind, I honestly do not believe he thought that far, or beyond any words that sounded good to him.

“No,” Draco said slowly. “But you look up to Professor Snape and Granger. You don’t look up to me. You don’t admire me the way you do them.”

“So this is about wanting me to give all my emotions only to you? Because that’s not going to happen, Draco, and I’m sorry if someone told you it was. But it’s not.”

“Just admire me the way you do them!”

“I think you’re smart,” Harry said, and made himself speak patiently. “But not about this. This was a stupid thing to do, Draco.”

That made Draco scowl and look petulant, which was the last thing Harry wanted. He sighed and raked his hand through his hair. “You’re absolutely sure that you have control over Bellatrix with the blood magic you used?”

“Yes,” Draco said, and perked up enough to smile at him. “Does that mean you’re going to be smart about accepting this, too?”

I don’t see that we have any choice, Harry said to Dash down the bond. Unless you think that you could replace the Petrification.

There are too many unknowns about blood magic. If he could exactly reverse what he did, that would still leave Bellatrix free in the moments before I could paralyze her. And no doubt he would refuse to reverse it, because he thinks practicing dangerous magic makes him indispensable somehow.

Harry nodded, more to Dash than Draco, and then said, “All right. So we’ll leave things the way they are for now. And you’ll control Bellatrix and get information from her. But not as a field scout.”

Draco smiled a little. “We’ll see.”

Harry stepped forwards and let his smile fade. “Draco? Are you listening to me?”

“Of course. I always listen to you, Harry. You know that. I only did this because I want you to listen to me sometimes.”

“Then you know that I’m—” Harry braced himself “—the leader of the group you want to join. And you want to impress me. It’s not going to impress me if you send Bellatrix on a mission when you know that you can’t control her. Or if you sneak out to accompany her. Do you understand me?”

“So you’ll get angry at me for disobeying orders?”

Angrier,” Harry corrected at once. “I’m already angry at you. You did something stupid and dangerous and you won’t reverse it. And now you’re hinting that you’re going to do something even more stupid and dangerous because you’re pouting about me responding to your already stupid, dangerous action. No, I’m not impressed. Yes, I’m angry at you. Do you want to make it worse?”

“No. I want to make a contribution!”

“Then make it by doing what’s sensible next time. And telling someone about your dangerous ideas before you put them into practice.”

“Did Granger talk to you about building her Horcrux-finding machine?”

“Of course she did,” Harry said, wondering what Draco was doing now. “She told us where she thought they were, and she did a lot of experiments to get the machine right. We didn’t see all of them, but we knew what she was doing.”

Draco drooped a little. “Oh. I thought she made it as a surprise.”

“No. Were you trying to make this a surprise for me?” Harry winced when Draco nodded. “I’m sorry, but I’m never going to take something dangerous as a welcome surprise. If Hermione had kept the Horcrux-hunting machine from me, I wouldn’t have liked that surprise, either.”

Draco nibbled his lip for a second. Then he nodded. “I won’t do something like this again.”

Do you trust him to keep that promise, since he’s got away with doing exactly what he wanted when it comes to Bellatrix?

I don’t really see that we have a choice except to trust him, Harry said briefly. If he does do something else, I give you permission to give him a mild bite of poison. Or Petrify him for a while and see how he likes it.

You are also angrier than I thought.

He did something stupid. He could have got himself killed if Bellatrix broke free from his control. Harry breathed out slowly. But he also did it to impress me. So I need to pay more attention to him and remind myself that I can’t—just be ignorant of what it’s like for him.

What is what like for him?

He thinks of me as this glorious leader, and then I spend more time with other people than him. I need to change that. I do love him. I just thought everything was better than it is.

Dash said nothing, but sent a soft nudge of love down the bond. Harry turned back to Draco’s description of what he had done to Bellatrix, absently hissing orders for Ultio and Conflagration to release him.

He wasn’t as much to blame as Draco, but he was part of the reason Draco had done this mad thing. That meant he had a responsibility to make sure that it didn’t blow up in all their faces. And if part of that was spending more time with his boyfriend…

Hardly a price at all.

*

Severus sighed as he listened to the last of Harry’s words fade away. “Draco is reckless. I never thought he would be so reckless. Do you think he has proved himself to you to his satisfaction now, or will he do something else?”

Severus went on watching Harry as he faced the dummies that he had just hit with a powerful curse, and saw the peculiar stillness settle into his face. It was an expression Severus had first seen the night of the battle. Harry was growing into being a leader and making hard decisions, whether or not he realized it.

“He knows the consequences,” Harry said finally. “He wants to deal with me as his boyfriend, but I’m also his—his leader, in a way. So I would have to stop trusting him if he did something like this again. Now that I know what made him do it, I can try to prevent it.”

“It is not your fault that he did this.”

“Why not? I should have seen that he would. I should have spent more time around him and realized what it meant to him that I loved him and other people were doing all these splendid things. Please don’t try to talk me out of this,” Harry added, as Severus opened his mouth. “I know you care about me, too. But if I’m really—a leader, then I have to accept the consequences of my decisions, too.”

Severus had to admit the justice of that, but not aloud, so he moved smoothly on to his next question instead. “You can barely believe it yourself, can you? You stumble every time you’re about to say the word.”

The stillness vanished from Harry’s face, and he blushed like the child he still, in some ways, was. “I just mean—that’s what you want me to be! Why are you teasing me about it?”

“Because I wanted to see how you would respond,” Severus said frankly. “If you always flush and stammer, then you won’t give a positive impression of yourself.”

“Okay. Um. You’re right.”

“Of course I am.”

Harry rolled his eyes a little and faced the dummies again. “Wandless this time?”

“And wordless.”

Harry all but snarled at him, then gestured hard at the dummies with one hand. Severus watched with a critical eye. He hoped to train the gestures out of Harry in the end, too. It was all very well for him to wave a hand like that in the security of the classroom, but when he was on the battlefield and facing someone who knew what it meant—

He leaped into the air himself as lightning crackled out and hit three of the dummies. He stared at them as they burned, then cast the charm that would keep the flames from spreading. He glanced at Harry, who seemed a little dazed.

“Um,” Harry said. “That was better, right?”

“You won’t be perfect until you can control the hand gesture.”

“Of course, Severus.”

“And you need to work on your Occlumency and Legilimency.”

“Yeah, I know.” Harry paused. “Severus?”

“What?”

“You are so bloody impressed right now, aren’t you.”

That it wasn’t a question told Severus that his leap had put paid to his façade. So he smiled, and delighted in the way Harry’s eyes widened.

“Yes, I am. Now get back to work.”

Chapter 127: A Visit to the Chamber of Secrets

Chapter Text

Elena stepped slowly back from the potion. It had turned into a scrim of silver on the bottom of the cauldron, bubbling now and then, violently enough that she still had to hope it wouldn’t literally blow up in her face. But then the bubbles calmed, and what she had was a shining liquid, so bright that it looked like metal from a distance.

Her previous trials hadn’t worked. This time, though, she knew they would.

She deposited the silver potion into a flask that she set on the table beside her, and looked it thoughtfully.

All I need is a test subject. And Harry’s permission to use them as a test subject, of course.

*

“Er, your mother really wants all of us to come for the holidays?”

“Well, not Weasley and Granger for the whole time. But she thought you would probably want to see them on Christmas Day.”

“I didn’t mean Ron and Hermione.” Harry stepped forwards to wrap his arms around Draco as Draco opened his mouth, scowling. “I really meant Dash. I don’t know how he’s supposed to fit into your family’s house or avoid terrorizing your family’s peacocks and house-elves.”

“Oh, no, she meant everyone. I don’t think she believes me when I say how big Dash is now, you know. She hasn’t seen him in months.”

“All right,” Harry said slowly. He knew Severus would agree to come with him. And Ron and Hermione’s families would let them visit for Christmas Day, at least. “Is she going to invite Sirius?”

Draco hesitated for long enough at that that Harry pulled back to look at him. “I don’t know,” Draco finally admitted in a low voice. “She’s still angry at him for not having fully revealed what he was looking for in the Black library. And she knows that Severus isn’t going to want to see him.”

“I’d like to see him.”

“Then consider it done,” Draco said, his voice warming. “Even if you have to see him in a separate room so Severus doesn’t get angry.”

“Thank you.” Harry turned his head a little as he watched Elena Zabini approaching them. “Hello, madam. Do you have something you need to talk to me about?”

“Yes.” Probably because it was just him, Draco, and Ultio in the corridor, Elena revealed the flask that she was carrying. Harry caught his breath at the sight of the silver potion shifting around in it. He didn’t have to great at Potions to know it was unusual. “The loyalty potion is ready, but I would be unwilling to use it unless I have a test subject beforehand. Preferably several.”

Harry hesitated for a second. Then he turned to Draco. “What do you think about Bellatrix?”

Draco’s jaw dropped. Elena said in the restrained, polite tone she always used, “I thought Mrs. Lestrange was still under basilisk Petrification?”

“There’s been a slight mishap with that.” Harry didn’t stop holding Draco’s eyes. “And we don’t need her to stay loyal for a long time in the way that we need allies to do. This would be a good short-term trial for the potion.”

“Why?” Draco hissed, stepping towards Harry and lowering his voice. “Is this a punishment for my—my recklessness or something?”

“This is a good means of testing the potion. If she was still completely Petrified, we couldn’t break it. But I want to see how much you can make her obey—and relax the blood magic so that we can test the potion.”

Draco frowned, but this time it was more considering. “So you want me to let go the hold of the blood magic and then reinstate it?”

“Yes. We have to know how much we can actually trust her around other people. And if the blood magic is all or nothing, we wouldn’t be able to send her to spy on Voldemort anyway.”

Elena’s face was alive, her eyes resting on Draco’s face, then his, with obvious interest. Draco glanced at her, then back at Harry, and seemed to accept someone else knowing that he’d woken Bellatrix from her Petrification. “Yes. Fine. Let me go down to the Chamber and wake her up, then I’ll bring her up here.”

“We’ll all go down to the Chamber. Just in case.”

“I could control her long enough to walk her up a few stairs and down a few corners,” Draco hissed under his breath, even though he was already turning to lead Harry and Elena towards the Chamber’s entrance.

“There are other reasons for this,” Harry muttered, and held Draco’s eyes long enough for him to figure it out. Draco blinked, and then nodded. This was a test of loyalty for Elena as much as it was for her potion.

And if news did make its way to the Death Eaters about the state Bellatrix was in…then Harry would know exactly who to blame.

*

Elena tilted back her head to admire the graceful snakes carved into the stone and the shining green gems that made their eyes on the doors of the Chamber. It was somewhat amazing to think that she had been walking the corridors all these months while this treasure waited below.

“You never come down here normally?” she asked Harry, who was walking beside her.

“No. Bad memories.”

“Ah.” Elena had heard that he had killed another basilisk in the Chamber itself. How that basilisk was related to his bondmate now, if it was, and what said bondmate felt about Harry’s destruction of one of his kind, were things that she accepted had to remain mysteries.

Harry hissed out the password for the Chamber, and the snake-covered doors slid aside. Elena raised her eyebrows at the desolate, dank cavern revealed beyond them. “Salazar Slytherin’s genius for decoration did not extend here?”

“I don’t think that he thought anyone coming here would care about that.”

Elena nodded and followed, letting her gaze linger on corners of the chamber without trying to memorize everything. This was, in the end, the best way to create a Pensieve memory she could study in detail at her leisure. The sound of dripping water was constant, as was the press of cold against her skin.

The block of stone with Bellatrix Lestrange lying motionless on top of it was probably a later addition to the Chamber, she decided, with her lip twitching a little.

“All right,” Harry said, and drew his wand. He gave another hiss, a long and complicated one that Elena expected to open some secret passage or raise the floor. Instead, the wall seemed to boil, and his basilisk slid out to join him.

Elena controlled her shudder, although by the dart of the snake’s tongue and the glance he gave her under his lowered eyelids, he could smell her fear. It was easy to forget how large this serpent was until you saw him at close quarters. The gleam of the green scales, as hard as armor from here, was bad enough, but then Dash yawned and she saw how long his fangs were. The venom that glittered on their tips was as bright as the emeralds on the door.

“Dash is going to be here in case something goes wrong with your control over the blood magic,” Harry said to Malfoy, who scowled at him.

That one needs to learn more self-control, Elena thought idly as she clutched her flask. It was impressive, however, to watch the way that Malfoy simply concentrated on his aunt and she sat bolt upright. Her eyes were already open, but grew less glazed as Malfoy told her to stand. She might have passed for a competent witch in full control of her mind if her movements were a little less jerky.

And that is what we need her to be, or the plan of sending her to spy on the Dark Lord’s soldiers is useless.

“You’re ready?” Malfoy glanced at Elena, and while he looked away from her, Lestrange shuddered a little more.

“Yes.” Elena stepped forwards. “Convince her to open her mouth and swallow this potion.”

Malfoy put his hands on his hips with the force of his concentration, and for a moment, Elena felt an invisible wind all but shoving at her. She rolled her eyes a little. That focus was probably supposed to be on Lestrange.

For the first time, she mourned what had happened to her son for a reason other than it causing him pain. If Harry was inclined to men, Blaise would have been a better choice for him.

Lestrange’s eyes widened, and her mouth opened. Elena emptied a precise five drops of the precious silver potion down her throat. She could easily replicate it now that she had made it, but it took forever to render to its essence.

Lestrange swallowed. Then she blinked and blinked and stared at the wall. Malfoy hissed between his teeth. Elena waited.

“Should I ask her a question?” Harry wondered.

“That would be a way to start.” Elena had expected a more violent response. Then again, she was looking at a woman whose reactions were being strictly controlled.

Harry nodded. “What is your name?”

“Bellatrix Lestrange.” The woman answered in a voice that halted and hitched on the first word, then flowed smoothly on the second.

“Who is your true loyalty to?”

“The Dark Lord.”

Malfoy sighed. “Is this only a more complicated Veritaserum, then? Why use a new potion when we have an old one that works?”

Elena smiled slightly at him, not at all surprised at his attempt to discredit her in front of Harry, and turned to Lestrange. “What would you say if I asked you to change your loyalty?”

“I would say that it would never change.”

“Yes, and you have that Dark Mark on your arm that’s probably supposed to keep you faithful,” Elena murmured. This was an interesting challenge for the first test of the potion. She could have tested it on Snape, but his loyalty to Harry was already absolute. She reached out and concentrated on the potion that had flowed down Lestrange’s throat.

The sticky silvery strands the woman had swallowed turned and strained towards her. Elena caught her breath in delight. Yes, she was sure that she had come up with something new. No other potion or poison she had brewed had this intimate connection with her mind once it had entered the body of another.

This one would.

Elena spun her thoughts, rather than her wand or her hand. If all went well, she would be using this potion in contexts where such a movement would be suspicious. Lestrange staggered a step forwards and lifted a shaking hand.

“What are you doing?” Malfoy hissed. “It’s hurting her, somehow.”

“And you care?”

“She’s my aunt and my weapon.”

Elena smiled a little. “I promise that I won’t kill her. This potion would be no use to us if it was poison.” She made the effort to keep her voice light and happy, all the while she gazed at Lestrange and worked the muscles of her thoughts. She would have to be able to maintain ordinary conversation in the parties this would be used in, too.

Lestrange finished staggering and closed her eyes for a moment, as if she was falling asleep or thinking deeply. Then she opened them and stared straight at Elena. Elena spun her thoughts harder, thinking all the while of loyalty, of faithfulness, of her purpose in making this potion, of why she herself was loyal to Harry, of the great basilisk looming behind her.

There was an intense, trembling moment when a silver mist that Elena thought only she saw lifted from Lestrange’s skin and swirled in the air in front of them. Then Lestrange trembled slowly to one knee and bowed her head.

“My lord.”

She was bowing her head in Harry’s direction. Harry looked sick for a second. Then he caught his breath and said, “All right. Why are you serving me now?”

“Because it makes the most sense. Because you are powerful. Because that is what my blood was telling me.”

The woman said it all in a docile voice that Elena knew was unlike her, but was like the potion. She threw back her head and laughed, ignoring the way that Harry stared at her and the basilisk reared. There was no one here who would truly harm her.

Although Malfoy, from the stab of his eyes, was trying.

*

Dash? I asked her to invent something to test loyalty. Has she invented something that can force people to be loyal instead?

Dash seemed to be listening and smelling at the same time, his tongue flickering. Then he said, I believe so. But I am not sure. The potion—I can smell it on Lestrange’s breath, but it’s unlike anything I’ve smelled before. I could only guess at what it does. Ask her.

Harry nodded a little and faced Elena again. “All right. You can make her do this. But I don’t want to force people to follow me or even stop fighting against me.” Elena’s face took on a look of scorn, and Draco twitched. Harry didn’t care. If they were alike in being Slytherins or Dark wizards or whatever, it didn’t matter. This was a line he didn’t want to cross. “What does the potion actually do?”

“It manipulates the loyalty of the person whose body it’s in. That and their concept of loyalty. It can make them answer truthfully about who they follow, or it can change their minds, or it can reveal their true intentions and loyalties as a fog floating around them. It depends on the intention of the brewer.”

“The brewer?”

“Yes. I manipulated the potion in her after she drank it. And that’s one thing that makes it different from Veritaserum, among other things,” Elena added, glaring in Draco’s direction for a moment.

Harry nodded. “The brewer, and not the inventor.”

Elena opened her mouth, and then closed it abruptly again. She glared at him as if he had told her that he didn’t feel sorry for Blaise. “You—you can’t think that I’m going to—”

“Teach the secret of how to brew the potion to other people, of course. Severus first of all. He has the skill for it.”

“He didn’t have the skill to invent something like this.”

“I’m still asking you to share. Because if you strive to keep it to yourself and something happens to you, then there’s that knowledge of the weapon gone. And more, Elena,” Harry said, and he deepened his voice and let his hand rest on his wand, “I might start to wonder about your own loyalty, if you think the only way to stay with me is to make yourself indispensable.”

Elena stared at him. Dash sent a burst of pride down the bond, and Draco looked as if he might burst out laughing. Luckily, he managed to temper it and simply look calm and interested.

“You wouldn’t give it away to our enemies.”

“Who said anything about doing that? I don’t think there’s any Potions expert who’s more faithful to me than Severus. And why would he teach it to anyone who didn’t follow me? Or you, for that matter.”

Elena hesitated again. Then she said, “It’s natural to feel protective of something you created.”

“Yes,” Harry agreed. “Lots of people feel that, like the ones who invent new spells.” It was something Headmistress McGonagall had told them in the Defense club last week. “But they have to eventually release their new creations, or have them sit uselessly on shelves for the rest of their lives. Is that what you want to happen to your potions recipe?”

“I was picturing using it for you.”

“Of course. And now other people can do the same thing. You’ll have company, and the assurance that your work will survive.”

Elena glared at him, but she was intelligent enough to realize that she shouldn’t challenge him. Or maybe that she shouldn’t challenge Dash. “I suppose that will have to do.” She paused, appeared to be thinking of something, and added, “My Lord.”

Harry recoiled. Elena gave him a faint smile and a mock curtsey, holding the sides of her robes in her hands as she swept it at him. “You should get used to the title. Thank you for your most gracious permission to work for you and the opportunity to invent this potion, my Lord.”

She’s taking the piss, isn’t she, Dash?

She largely is, but I think she’s right when she says that you should get used to the title.

Harry rolled his eyes and said, “Thank you, Elena. Draco, can you order Bellatrix to lie down and not move no matter what happens, unless you command her to?”

“Of course,” Draco said, and sped through the orders. It still made Harry sick to watch someone obey mindlessly like that, but he had felt the same way when Bellatrix was under Elena’s potion. He was never going to be happy with watching someone be manipulated by others.

You should get used to that, too.

No. People can call me Lord, and I can’t stop them, but I refuse to be one like Voldemort. And anyway, it’s just a title, it’s not something that can actually compel me to change my behavior around other people.

Dash only hummed down the bond, which was infuriating, but Harry ignored him in favor of smiling at Draco and leaning up to kiss him. Elena only watched without moving. Harry turned around with a little sigh and addressed her.

“If you’ll accompany me upstairs with the rest of that potion, I’d like you to come to Malfoy Manor with us.”

*

Lucius stared at the silver potion shimmering in front of him. It made sense when Zabini had explained how she’d created it, but he still thought it would be stupid of him to drink it.

Perhaps that doubt showed in his face, because Harry impatiently shook his head. “Of course we aren’t going to have you drink it. What we’re going to have you do is spread the rumor that we have something that can make people loyal to Voldemort.”

“I’m already spreading the rumor that we can remove the Dark Mark!”

“And not that many people took you up on it, right? Well, there will still be some people who won’t on this, either, but I bet there will also be some Death Eaters contacting you to find out your true loyalties. And if you can get the potion into them and find out who’s actually faithful to him and who’s only serving out of compulsion, then we’ll have a much better chance of knowing who’ll respond to the offer to remove the Dark Mark.”

Lucius blinked rapidly. Then he said, “And you think others will also approach us?”

“Yes. People who might be neutral right now but intrigued by the thought of joining Voldemort or making other people join him. People who believe that this potion is something special and want to see what it is. People who think you’re loyal to Voldemort and attempting to catch you out. Maybe even a few new allies.”

“You’re placing a great deal of trust in me after my earlier mistakes.”

“No. I’m placing a lot of trust in the potion that Elena brewed, and in Elena and Severus being able to duplicate it.”

Lucius winced, but concealed it. It wasn’t as though Harry had used the Cruciatus Curse on him. “Very well. You realize it could be some time before anyone begins to respond to the rumors, or before their response gets beyond cautious correspondence?”

“I know that.”

Lucius glanced between Harry, Zabini, and his son, weighing and assessing. Dash had not come with them, but from what Lucius had heard, that was because he would hardly fit through the fireplace now.

“Why are you—” He cleared his throat. He didn’t want to speak the truth, not with Zabini in the room, but he also thought it was hardly likely for Harry to try and humiliate him. “Why are you willing to give me this chance? Is it only because I’m Draco’s father?”

“It’s because I think you can do good work.” Harry rolled his eyes and looked at Elena for some reason. “And you’re not likely to start calling me Lord and bowing down before me, unlike some people. You’ve had enough of that with Voldemort.”

“I would be willing to bow down and call you Lord if it was politically expedient.”

“But it’s not right now, and you should see the disgust in your face when you even talk about it,” Harry said, and grinned. “No, do what you can with this, Lucius. Keep a bit of the potion and use it when necessary. Meanwhile, I’ll have Elena and Severus make more.”

Zabini frowned at that, but if she was the one to make the potion, Lucius could understand why. She wouldn’t want to give up that kind of power and influence in Harry’s court.

Court? Would it come to that, when the man was so adamant about rejecting the title of Lord, and some of the people who served him would be, as well?

It might, Lucius decided as he studied the young man again. And not just because Zabini wanted to annoy him. It might very well come down to the fact that Harry would wind up taking a Lord’s place, whether he wanted to or not.

And in the meantime, Lucius would follow along and obey. And be grateful for this second chance.

*

“The potion is complicated, but not impossible to replicate.”

“Good. I don’t think I want Elena to be the only one who can brew it.”

“Do you distrust her?”

Severus turned away from his cauldron and the small flask with a few drops of the potion that sat in front of him, and saw Harry frowning into the fire. Harry took longer than Severus would have liked to shake his head.

“Not really,” Harry said, looking up. “I simply don’t think that anything should be left completely in one person’s hands, except yours or Draco’s. And even Draco needs to get a little more sense in his head about using blood magic to break a basilisk Petrification.”

“He will, when you tell him that he needs to.”

“But he should have known on his own. Not because I told him.”

Severus eyed him calmly this time. “Is this all about resisting your own power again?”

No. It’s about acknowledging that the stubborn idiot has the ability to hurt himself and I won’t always know in time, and he should have a better sense of self-preservation than that!”

Severus relaxed. Draco had offered him an interesting perspective of the events down in the Chamber, one that did more than complement Harry’s; it revealed things that Harry had kept from him or didn’t realize were important. Or, perhaps, hadn’t noticed.

He is a young Lord. Not because of the basilisk, not because he has powerful allies. For other reasons.

And that, along with Harry’s increasing mastery of Dark Arts and wandless magic, moved them a step closer to the day when Harry could stand up to anyone who threatened him, and preserve his safety indefinitely.

Chapter 128: The Malfoy Christmas

Chapter Text

“Welcome home again, dear Harry.”

Harry could feel himself flushing as Narcissa hugged him. He didn’t think of Malfoy Manor as home most of the time; that was Severus’s quarters, or the house in Hogsmeade that Sirius had given to him, even though he hadn’t spent much time there in the past few months. He did say, “Thanks,” though, and step out of the way for Draco to get his own hug.

Narcissa didn’t hug him right away. She held his shoulders and looked into his face with such smiling pride that Harry felt a kind of ache start in his chest. He wanted a mum.

Of course, either Narcissa or Mrs. Weasley would be happy to do it for him. But Harry also didn’t want to tell them. So he waited as Narcissa kissed Draco’s cheek, nodded to Conflagration and Ultior behind him, and said, “You are looking well, dear.”

“Thanks, Mum,” Draco mumbled, looking as if, unlike Harry, he would do away with the notion of mothers if possible, and then moved out of the way of the Floo. Narcissa turned to face it, her hands clasped in front of her. Harry thought she probably reckoned that Severus would be the next of them to come through.

Instead, it was Dash’s head. And then coils of his body. And then more coils. And then more. The Malfoys’ grand fireplace was large enough to admit him, but Harry was holding his breath until all of his body emerged. He had thought that maybe the Floo travel would cut off some portion of it.

Then it would grow its own head and become a ravaging beast of the Floo connection. The Legendary Floo-Snake.

You’re making that up, Harry said, but with a tremor of uncertainty in his mind that only faded when he felt Dash laughing down the bond. He scowled at him, and then turned and nodded to the wide-eyed, still Narcissa. “Um, this is Dash. Again.”

Narcissa maintained the posture for long enough that Harry was sure she regretted inviting all of them to spend the holidays, which made him wince. But then she made a graceful curtsey, tipping her face all the way towards the floor and showing Dash the vulnerable back of her neck. “You are welcome here, King of Serpents,” she said. “I only ask that you not eat all the peacocks in the garden.”

This is a lady who knows how to treat a guest, Dash told Harry happily. Say my words exactly like that, or I’ll bite you and send you into an hour-long coma.

Harry sighed, even though he knew Narcissa would be thrilled at the compliment, and obediently repeated it exactly as he’d been told. Narcissa smiled and said, “I pride myself on my hospitality. It should not matter whether a guest has legs or not.” She nodded to the large doors that led out onto the gardens, although both of them would have to be opened before Dash could pass them. “Please, my lord. Enjoy yourself.”

I like it when people call you lord better than when they do it to me, Harry told Dash as he squeezed his head out into the garden, gently tapping the doors open with his snout.

We both deserve the respect, Dash said in an absent tone. Harry could feel his tongue darting out, and knew he was scenting the garden for both prey and potential hiding places.

Harry rolled his eyes and turned back to Severus, who glanced at him immediately to make sure he was in one piece. Then he faced Narcissa and nodded to her. “My thanks for having us over, Narcissa.”

“I wanted to see both my son and my future son-in-law. And the rest of you are no trouble at all.”

Harry could feel the way the blushes overcame his face when Narcissa spoke of him marrying Draco in the future. Or bonding. Or whatever traditional wizards did. Draco would probably want a traditional ceremony, and if he didn’t, then Harry suspected that Narcissa would smilingly talk both of them into it.

Severus flicked his eyes over to Harry as if he wanted to see his embarrassment, but nodded to Narcissa and kissed her hand. “If you would show me where you are placing the gifts so that I may add our own?”

Narcissa nodded towards an archway that Harry thought led into the great room where they had enjoyed Christmas before, and Severus floated the presents in that direction. Harry relaxed and stepped out into the gardens to check on Dash.

You could have used the bond for that, you know.

You’re very contrary today, Harry muttered, and found Dash lying in a huge mound of coils in the middle of what looked like an empty flowerbed. There was one peacock pecking around almost at the base of his tail. Harry blinked. Are they that stupid?

No, that one’s hungry and has decided that it’s worth the risk, because it can sense that I’m not. Dash unhinged his jaws to yawn, which did make the peacock squawk and take flight into a small tree nearby. I think I could sleep here in the sun. There are Warming Charms in the gardens so that the flowers stay alive throughout the winter. It’s perfect for me.

Harry reached out and gently ran his hand down the gleaming green scales. Then enjoy it.

I will. You’ll call me in an instant if there’s any trouble or you feel in danger.

It wasn’t a question, but Harry answered it as if it was, still tickling his fingers along the line of Dash’s jaw. I promise.

Dash went to sleep, a soft shrouding of the bond in a sort of guarding mist. Harry smiled at him and walked back through the large doors to greet Lucius and make his way to dinner, which Narcissa had set up to be special.

*

Then again, all the events of Christmas at Malfoy Manor in the next few days were set up to be special.

Harry wandered through an intersecting maze of corridors decorated in fairy lights, or through a garden hedge-maze that he’d never seen before crowned with bobbing white peacock feathers. Narcissa told him that this was the one time of year when she really found the creatures useful. If Harry concentrated hard enough, he thought he could make out a faint tracery of azure in those beautiful white plumes.

In the center of the hedge-maze was a single decorated tree, a pine so magnificent that Harry stood gaping at it. It was even bigger than Dash—

I could still crush it if I wanted.

—and a darker green, and it shimmered with soft, decorative balls of Lumos in slightly different colors that Narcissa had cast herself. The balls started out white at the top of the tree, and then descended into pink and rose and gold towards the bottom, ending up in shining blue and indigo that reminded Harry of the night sky between the stars.

“I’ve never seen anything like this,” Harry whispered.

Narcissa, standing beside him, smiled down at him and squeezed his hand. “I would be unhappy if you had. I rather fancy the conceit being mine alone.”

Harry decided not to tell her about Muggles who had achieved some similar things. Besides, this wasn’t the same thing at all; Muggle lights were never as soft and brilliant as the magic on the tree.

And he didn’t want to upset the woman who was apparently going to be his future mother-in-law. As strange as that was to voice sometimes.

Draco changed, too, with his parents right there with him and the familiar atmosphere of the Manor around him. He seemed to smile more, or maybe just to smile brighter. His touches were shorter but more frequent, and he almost pulled Harry into his lap snogging him one morning. He did spill the pumpkin juice.

“Not so enthusiastic, dear,” Narcissa said mildly from the dining room doorway.

Draco broke apart from Harry at once, and buried his face in his hands. Harry stood back and grinned at him as he straightened his robes. “What, ashamed of our relationship in front of your parents, Drake?”

Draco looked up with his mouth actually dropping open. “Don’t you call me that.”

“But I have to call you something. Sweetheart.”

“Did Dash put you up to this?”

“Of course not. I only want everyone to know that you’re mine, and that no one else can take you away from me. Little dragon.”

Draco flung the empty goblet of pumpkin juice at him. Harry dodged. Narcissa shook her head and waved her wand to clean up the mess, although her mouth was twitching and Harry could see the delight deep in her eyes. “Draco, what have I told you? Throwing objects is uncouth, no matter what someone has done to you.”

“He’s a monster.”

“Nonsense. He is simply being polite. I will have you know that I called your father many pet names when we were first betrothed.”

Draco looked so horrified that Harry leaned against the table as he laughed. When Draco shot him a narrow glance, Harry shook his head. “I won’t call you that if you don’t want me to.” He waited long enough for Draco to relax, and then added, “Drake.”

Draco ended up chasing him around the table, and Narcissa stood back politely until they were done, then said, “You have the right to open any gifts you wish today.”

“Is that a tradition?” Harry asked. He still didn’t know half of the Malfoy family history and traditions. Draco seemed to talk about a new one every time he opened his mouth. Their heritage bristled with them. But Harry found he liked that. He didn’t really know how his parents had celebrated Christmas, or the Potters that he’d never got to meet. Being part of a family that did have all that was comforting.

And it helped erase the memory of the Dursleys and their traditions, so many of which had depended on hurting him.

Narcissa smiled gently at him as if she knew exactly what he was thinking, which made Harry tighten his Occlumency shields a little. There were things he didn’t want her to see as much as there were things Draco didn’t want her to hear. “It’s one that I decided on. And one that my sisters and I had—some years.”

Harry nodded politely and didn’t pry. He had a lot of hard things in his own life, too, but at least his sister wasn’t Bellatrix Lestrange.

Narcissa ushered them both into the drawing room where a smaller version of the tree from the gardens stood, glittering with lights in silver and green. Draco spent his time choosing his gift from under the tree, instead of going for the biggest one right away, the way Harry had thought he would. He finally sat down with a delicate-looking box and began to tear at it, while Ultio watched in interest from his arm.

Harry cocked his head curiously when he saw a present for him in dark red paper. He turned it around and watched the way that the red colors shimmered, looking like there was black in them, before he opened it.

Draco’s gift was a cage made of white wicker filled with mice. He looked up at his mother, who smiled at him and said, “It’ll replenish itself whenever your snakes need a meal. I got tired of Summoning Charms. The cage summons them by itself. And it will produce food and water for the mice from the nearest sources as well.”

Draco smiled at her. “Thank you, Mother.”

Stupid small snakes who need food captured for them. They are not mighty hunters, like me.

Did you just eat another peacock?

Harry actually lost concentration on the bond and Dash’s response when he opened the box. He gasped, drawing Narcissa and Draco’s attention. Narcissa took a step forwards when she saw the sword he held.

“Harry.” Narcissa’s voice was low. She looked at the gift and then back at him, as if she assumed that he would hold the answer on his face. “Who gave you that?”

Harry shook his head and said nothing for a second, turning the sword around. The steel was rippled so that it reflected light in odd ways and with odd colors, but the most present ones were scarlet and gold. The hilt was made of golden wire wrapped around a heavy red material that Harry honestly couldn’t identify. Metal? Bone? It glowed brighter than the reflections from the sword, whichever it was.

Narcissa spent a moment casting spells on the present’s paper, and then snorted as a tiny card flew out and zoomed towards her. “That’s my cousin’s handwriting,” she said. “I suppose that he thought he was being funny, sending you one of the Black treasures.”

“It’s one of the Black treasures?” Draco asked, at the same time Harry asked, “It’s from Sirius?”

“Yes,” Narcissa said to both of them. She was reading the card. Her eyes widened a moment later, and she held it out to Harry. “You should read this.”

Harry gave her a suspicious look, but her face really told him nothing, even if he was getting better at reading the subtle tells in expressions, so he scooped it up and turned it over.

Happy Christmas, pup!

I know that one thing you might wonder about is how to destroy Horcruxes. I’ve given you a sword that you can cover with basilisk venom. I think that’s the best solution, given how you destroyed that diary you told me about in second year. I realized after thinking about it that the Sword of Gryffindor probably has venom in it now, but I don’t think we could get permission from Minerva to take that and run around with it. Here’s a sturdier sword that will do better at protecting you, anyway. You can just put Dash’s venom on it and off you go!

By the way, you probably want to tell your friends not to handle the sword too much. Draco could, because he’s of Black blood, but otherwise the sword defends itself by skeletonizing the hands of anyone who touches it except the recipient.

Sirius.

Harry stared at it, then at the sword again. “You’ve—you’ve seen this before, Narcissa?”

“Yes.” Narcissa crouched down in front of the sword, but even though she was of Black blood, she looked as if she wasn’t about to touch it either, Harry noticed. Her eyes were wide and wondering and wary. “It’s called the Black Star. Supposedly the hilt is made of the bones of the first wizard—or witch—who bore the Black name, whoever they were. It locks onto one owner, usually the descendant of the family who owns the assets. But if that person gives it to someone else, then the recipient becomes the owner.”

Harry stared at the sword again. “It seems—it seems like it’s pretty Gryffindor for a Black blade?”

“That is a reflection of the personality of the owner. In this case, since both you and Sirius are Gryffindors, it’s not a surprise.”

Harry flinched a little when Draco reached out and laid a hand on the hilt, but the sword didn’t do anything to him. He shook his head. “Merlin. Only your godfather would get you a sword that you can personally use to destroy Horcruxes.”

“Only he would be foolish enough to do it.”

Harry looked up at Severus. “Are you angry because you can’t touch the sword?”

Severus’s mouth shut and his nostrils flared, but a second later, he looked away and sighed. “It is a dangerous gift that I have no method of containing. It is likely that Black sent it to annoy me personally as well as give you a weapon capable of destroying our enemy.”

“I’m not sure Sirius thinks ahead that much.”

After a second, Severus inclined his head in acceptance. Harry smiled, put the sword aside, and went on opening his gifts: clothing, books, a delicate silver pendant from Draco that made Harry flush at the gleam of the emeralds that matched his eyes, a new variety of sweets from Zonko's that Ron had chosen, and a pair of warm dragonhide gloves from Hermione. He paused when he opened the final gift, even though he knew perfectly well who it was from.

“Severus?” he asked quietly, glancing at him. The book in his hands held the title Occlumency in huge silver letters. It was the one underneath that that caused him some concern. And the Dark Arts, it said in much smaller gilt ones.

Severus held his gaze and shook his head a little. In the end, Harry nodded and put the book aside with the rest. He understood that they would discuss it later, and he only hoped the book wasn’t what it looked like.

*

“What is the book about, sir?”

Severus sighed as he looked down at Harry’s messy black head. They were pacing slowly through the maze Narcissa had set up in the Malfoy gardens. Feathery snow was turning Harry’s hair and cloak both white. His breath misted in front of him, and Severus knew that the straight, untroubled cant of his head was a lie. He would have called Severus by name if he was comfortable.

“It is time that you learned how to kill with your mind.”

Harry stiffened. Severus leaned forwards to admire the curve of one of the hedges. There were claws and delicate eyes formed by the twining of the branches, and although Severus knew it would have been the house-elves who formed that sort of beauty, it was Narcissa who had come up with the idea.

“Why, sir?”

“My name is Severus.”

“Excuse me for being just a little upset about what you said! Sir.”

Severus sighed and turned to face Harry. He raised a Silencing Charm around them, even though he probably would go and tell everything to Draco anyway. “Listen to me. I would not push this issue if you had a normal mind—”

“Well, thanks a lot.”

Severus shook his head. “Forget about your Dursley-trained reactions to that word for one moment. You don’t have normal defenses on your mind, and you don’t have normal enemies. Lord Voldemort has made a Horcrux with part of your soul. He has already proven that he can invade the link that the piece of him you contain provides him. Don’t you want to know how to block that link?”

“Blocking is different than killing with my mind.”

“But it will, in the end, be necessary. I have studied the problem of the Horcrux. Granted that there has never been a case of two people with mutual Horcruxes bound up in each other, I have still managed to make some progress.”

Reluctantly, Harry paid attention to Severus. Severus knew that pulled expression about his lips and the way his hands were clenched, but he did his best to ignore it. Harry was doing his best to listen, whether or not he wanted to.

“A Horcrux is a guarantee of immortality,” Severus said quietly. “Or so the ignorant consider it. In reality, it can be destroyed, as you learned with Riddle’s diary in second year. What is difficult is coming up with magic of sufficient potency to do so. Basilisk venom and Fiendfyre are the canonical ways.” He breathed out slowly. “Another way is directed will.”

“In what way?”

“If you could command the space that the Horcrux inhabited, if you could take absolute control of the object it was stored in, then you could destroy it. There have been cases—not always identified as Horcruxes, but I have learned how to look for them—where someone who owned the artifact made into a Horcrux by right of blood could command it to break apart. That also destroys the shard of soul.”

Harry blinked. “How could I—you think I could take command of my own mind?”

“And maybe the shard of soul that Voldemort tore away from you, which is embedded in his now. Yes.”

“I would have to assert control of the shard he took from me, not his mind…”

“No, that would be futile.” Severus frowned as Harry shivered, and cast a Warming Charm. Harry lifted his head and studied the snow-covered hedges around them as if he was thinking. “It would take a long time, but that is the only way I can see to destroy a Horcrux that is essentially hidden in the mental world that you and Voldemort share.”

“And Dash. He’s there, too.”

“Yes, you told me that.” Frankly, Severus wasn’t sure that he understood the whole messy business of Voldemort’s resurrection, but he knew it couldn’t have happened at all without the Horcrux in Harry. Destroying that and then reclaiming ownership of his own stolen soul-piece seemed the best course to Severus.

“I don’t know if I should just destroy my own piece of soul, though.”

“Do you imagine that you could have it back and fit it into the place it came from?”

Harry thought about that for a while, and probably consulted with Dash down their bond, and finally shook his head. “No, Dash doesn’t think that would work. The only reason he managed to give me a piece of his soul in the first place is that we already sort of shared that kind of bond, since we’re Parselmouth and basilisk. And it definitely wouldn’t work to try and rip away the piece of soul he gave me and replace it with the one Voldemort stole.”

Severus breathed a little easier. To know Dash approved of his plan was the best guarantee it would work. “Then you will begin learning this kind of Occlumency?”

Harry spent a moment squirming and glancing around as if someone was going to walk up to him and knock him on the head for considering it. Then he nodded. “I reckon that I have to, and if Dash approves of it—I didn’t really think that he would.”

“Good.” Severus breathed away his own fear. “Then we should get back to the Manor. I believe that Narcissa hinted your godfather would be visiting today.”

The way that Harry’s face lit up as if someone had set off a firework reconciled Severus to permitting the visit. He would say out of the room. He would wait for Harry and Black to speak to each other and for Black to actually say or do something threatening before he intervened.

But he would not be far away from the door.

Chapter 129: Dangerous Meetings

Chapter Text

“Sirius.”

Sirius had to prevent himself from running forwards and clasping Harry to his chest—or being hurt when Harry hesitated. Of course Harry wouldn’t be as eager to see him as he was to see Harry. The last Harry knew, he was still mad from Azkaban.

“Hi, pup,” Sirius whispered. Cissy had led Sirius to a comfortable sitting room deep in the Manor with a door that locked and told him sternly that he wasn’t to open the lock or get up from the chair until Harry joined him. Now Sirius hovered near the chair, and swallowed. The loudest noise was the crackle of the fire that he had watched hopefully for hours, planning on what he would say when Harry joined him.

Harry abruptly gave a little sob and raced towards him.

Sirius scooped him up and lifted him off the ground as much as he could; Harry had got both taller and heavier since he’d last seen him. Sirius hugged him and spun him and laughed and probably cried, not that he cared about that. Harry leaned heavily on him and patted his back, and it was honestly, for a few seconds, like everything was okay.

Then Harry leaned back and bit his lip. “Um, I know that you don’t want Snape in here, but I had to have someone.”

“Who?” Sirius asked, looking at the door. He jumped back when an enormous head slid in. “What the fuck?”

Harry laughed and then spoke in Parseltongue. Sirius kept himself from flinching with a manly effort. That was something he and his Healers had worked on, to make sure that he wouldn’t hurt Harry’s feelings when he saw him again.

“Dash, you already know,” Harry said, and looked at him with dancing eyes that were far too innocent.

“Not at that size,” Sirius said, and then swallowed when more of the basilisk slid into the room. He saw now why Narcissa had chosen this sitting room, other than the location and the door. She must have known that it was one of the few places, with one of the few corridors leading towards it, that Dash could fit into. Dash curled up comfortably near the fire, coils completely lapping and swallowing a chair, and flicked his eyelids at Sirius in what was probably a welcoming gesture.

It didn’t feel like one.

Sirius cleared his throat and said, “Um. So. Did you like the sword?”

Harry began laughing quietly. “I love the sword. I don’t think Severus did.”

That’s right, Harry calls the git by his first name. Sirius grinned. “Well, that’s what a godfather is supposed to do, give you gifts that your parents don’t approve of.”

Harry froze for a second. Sirius was just about to ask why when he said slowly, “You called Severus my father. By implication.”

“Yeah. That’s—something I worked on. I’m never going to pretend to like Snape, but he’s part of your life and I’ve got to accept that.”

That got him another flying hug, and another flicker of Dash’s eyelids. Sirius turned a little so that Harry’s back was between him and Dash. The flicker just made him too nervous to do otherwise.

Dash snapped his tongue out in a way that meant he was probably laughing. Sirius didn’t care, as long as he wasn’t Petrified. Or dead.

“I have to ask,” Sirius said, after Harry had spent a little while talking about his other Christmas gifts and some of the time he’d spent with Snape. “Have you figured out a way to remove the Horcrux from you yet?”

Harry grimaced. “It’s going to have to be battle Legilimency, I think. Severus is going to start teaching me. I don’t—it’s going to be difficult. And risky. But it really is the best way. And Severus is a patient teacher.”

Sirius checked some remarks that could have gone wrong, and nodded. “Whatever you have to do, pup. I’m just glad that it’ll finally be gone from your brain.”

“Yeah.” Harry tilted his head and gave him a long, curious glance. “So how hard was it to work with the Healers on figuring out how to heal?”

Sirius grimaced. He didn’t feel like he was completely free of Lughborn even now; he had to write letters to the man and do mental exercises all the time. “Really difficult. Lughborn said something about patterns carved into my brain by Azkaban and repetitive thoughts, and the deeper they are, the harder it is to change them.”

“I know something about that, too. Severus and Hermione talk about it all the time.”

Once again, Sirius prevented himself from reacting to the mention of “Severus.” At least the Healing had done some good. “Lughborn thought I was good enough to come back. He thought—he thought there was still a chance that I would say something that would upset you.”

Harry sighed. “Well, put it this way. My friends and Severus upset me sometimes, too. But at least like this, I know that you don’t mean to say it. And you can apologize. And you’re not going to get me nearly bitten by a werewolf who forgot to take his Wolfsbane.” He gave Sirius a long, even glance, at the same time as the basilisk lifted his head and did the same with his hidden eyes.

Sirius flushed with shame. “I know. I’m so sorry about that, pup.”

Harry reached out and patted his hand. “It’s okay. I know that you won’t ever do something like that again.”

“I want to do something to help in the war effort, though. I mean, I know meeting with you like this is—it’s just a first step, and I still have more to do, and giving you the sword helps, but I want to do something else.”

Sirius had to look away when he spoke. He knew it was ultimately up to Harry, and probably Snape, if he participated in the war effort at all. But Remus had got the chance to do something. Sirius would, too, he hoped. Even if it was difficult or disgusting, that was better than writing a few letters and otherwise watching from a distance as his godson’s life fell apart.

Harry was silent. Sirius looked back at him and found him looking at his basilisk. He was probably communicating with it down the bond.

“All right,” Harry said slowly. “I’ll discuss this with Severus. To make sure he approves. Because I don’t think he approves of lots of choices that I make when it comes to you.”

“What does he have to say about it? If he—”

But Harry frowned at him and said, “Because he’s my guardian, Sirius. Remember, the position you forfeited?”

Sirius felt as though someone had stomped an enormous shoe on his chest. He slumped back in his chair and stared at Harry, who was wincing himself, and nodding. “Yes, all right, Dash,” Harry said. “Sorry. Dash says I shouldn’t have said that to you. He can smell that you’re sincere and you’re doing as much as you can to make up for this.”

“So—he knows that I really want you to succeed?” Sirius managed to clear his throat and ask the question after one or two tries.

“Yes,” Harry said. “And—I mean, I never doubted that you wanted me to succeed, Sirius. I know that you’re against Voldemort. You proved that when you were searching frantically for some way to get the Horcrux out of me.”

“But?”

“But you’re careless. And I don’t think that I’m ever going to be your ward again. I think—I think I want Severus in that position.”

Lughborn had told Sirius again and again that he’d have to accustom himself to that, that Harry was unlikely to want to leave someone who had provided him with stability for the last year, but it still made Sirius blink, hard. Then he muttered, “And he’s never careless? He hates me. He hasn’t tried to prejudice you against me?”

“He’s said things sometimes.” Now Harry looked uncomfortable, but he took a deep breath and reached out a hand that Dash immediately moved under. “But he apologizes for them later. And he wouldn’t let me come to meet you without some kind of guardian, but—is that—is that unwise?”

Sirius sighed, and tried to pour out all his negative emotions about Snape. “Okay. Fine. But when can I see you again?”

Harry grinned at him. “This visit isn’t even done yet, and you want another one?”

“I always will. I didn’t do the best job of showing it, but—I do love you, pup. I love being with you. I love being your godfather.”

Harry swallowed, his eyes very wide. If he was communicating down the bond with Dash, he didn’t show it. “Th-thank you, Sirius. I love you, too.”

Sirius relaxed, and started asking about all the rumors he’d heard about the battle at the school and the way that that Defense professor had disappeared, and Harry happily answered them. Dash coiled next to his chair all the while, watching Sirius with those lidded eyes that Sirius could at least pretend were benevolent.

He wasn’t sure if he believed it, all the time. But Lughborn had told him that the more he played at something, the truer it became. So he would do this.

For Harry’s sake. Because he loved Harry with all his heart.

*

“What am I going to have to do to learn battle Occlumency?”

“At the beginning, it is much like regular Occlumency,” Severus said in the indifferent tone he’d chosen for this evening. He couldn’t let Harry sense how fast his heart was beating as he watched his ward settle himself in one of the protective circles the Malfoys had in their Manor. Dash, lingering near the door, could undoubtedly sense it. “But you must sharpen your determination to keep someone out of your mind. Give your shields lethal edges.”

Harry had started to close his eyes and breathe in meditation, but his eyes popped back open. “So I could kill someone looking into my mind?”

“That is the idea, yes.”

Harry looked at him with troubled, vibrant eyes. “I—I don’t know if I can do that, Severus.”

“You will do it, or you and Voldemort will remain intertwined with the Horcruxes between you, and you will have no success at freeing your soul from his.”

Harry hunched down with his eyes on the floor. Dash hissed something, tongue darting briskly between his fangs, and Harry glared at him. Then he straightened up and said, “I don’t like killing people.”

Severus would have winced back from the tone of desperate unhappiness if he had let himself. “I know. And you know that you have no choice. Not about one person.” If one could call Voldemort a person, but Severus wasn’t sure that Harry would respond well to attempts to dehumanize his opponent.

Harry grimaced and nodded. Then he went back into the meditation. Dash flicked his tongue out again. Severus wished he could know what the basilisk had said.

“Imagine,” Severus said when he thought Harry was probably in the best mind-mood for Occlumency that he’d achieve, “that your shields are forming up to guard your mind. But instead of simple shields, they have glittering edges.”

“How many?” Harry whispered, in the blank tone that indicated he was as deep in the trance as he could get and still speak.

“All the way around. They are made of power and will, but also metal. They can cut. They can slice apart the thoughts of a Legilimens who seeks your mind.”

Harry started, and his eyes popped back open again. “What happens if I slice apart someone’s thoughts? I mean, does it hurt and then they go back to their body? Or does something else happen?”

“Return to your trance,” Severus said, with enough of a glare that Harry obeyed, although he looked reluctant. “And what happens varies. If they are deep enough in your mind, their own mind may be sliced apart. They may drift away, helpless, and leave their bodies alive but mindless, much the way that the victim of a Dementor’s Kiss appears.”

“So I would be a murderer.”

“Do you expect that many people you care about killing to read your thoughts?”

“Well, you.”

Severus smiled a little, and was glad that Harry didn’t have his eyes open to see the smile. “I assure you, I have my own weapons. You may need to test yourself against a few others to make sure that your shields can handle many kinds of Legilimency, not mine alone, and in that case, I will advise you how to use less fatal measures against them. You can do this, Harry. But you will need the killing edge as well.”

Harry nodded and said, “All right. But just imagining the shields with metal edges isn’t going to make them sharp enough to do anything, is it?”

“Imagine them that way, and then we will test them to see how much force you still need to put behind them.”

Harry’s breathing deepened even more, and Severus waited until he gave the faintest of nods. “Good. Now open your eyes, concentrating as hard as you can on the image you’re holding in mind right now. Don’t fight me.”

Harry did it, and Severus slipped easily, gently, inside his mind, then turned to study the shields that were now behind him. They did look as though Harry had begun to picture them like great wheels with metal spokes on the edges. Severus nodded, then slipped back out.

“You have the image that you can build on,” he said. “Don’t forget it. But the only thing that can make them sharp is your intention.”

Harry’s face shut down again, and Severus was sure that the image he’d been holding onto had fled the surface of his mind. “You mean I have to want to hurt someone.”

“That’s right.”

Harry looked at his hands. Severus waited for him to speak, but the only thing that happened was a gentle nudge from Dash’s nose through the doorway. Severus finally sighed and asked, “And you cannot muster the thought that Voldemort or another intruder into your mind might hurt someone else if they find your memories? That can power the shields.”

“I could do that as long as I wasn’t actually fighting someone else,” Harry said quietly. “I could keep that in reserve. But the moment when it was happening…I think I’ll probably draw back and flinch because I wouldn’t want to hurt someone.”

“Why not, if that person is an enemy?”

Severus didn’t bother to keep the exasperation out of his words, and Harry straightened at once, as if glad that he didn’t have to sit in the meditating position any longer. “Because I don’t know if I can kill to keep myself alive!”

Severus slowly moved a step back and exchanged a look with Dash. As far as he could make out on a snake’s face with no ability to smile or frown, Dash didn’t look surprised. His tongue darted out a little faster than normal, however.

“You have fought to preserve your own life in the past.”

“Because I was thinking about coming back to Dash, or you and Draco, or all the people who might be hurt if I didn’t! It’s easier when it’s a physical fight and I can see someone coming at me and they have a wand. But if it’s a mental battle, then I’m afraid that right at the minute when I need to make the shields sharpest—”

“You would balance your life against the life of your attacker and falter.”

“Yeah.”

Severus thought about it for a time, partially because it was a problem he would never have had and therefore wasn’t sure to recommend as a solution, and partially to give Dash a chance to speak up. But he did not, and Severus finally said, “Although it makes the shields less of a good solution as well, I can show you how to make them less lethal.”

Harry smiled at him. “Thank you, sir.”

“It will take more work to master,” Severus warned him. “To sharpen your shields to a killing edge, it requires you only to reach an extreme, to have the intention to lash out and sever the link to an enemy’s body at any moment. To maim them, you have to have more control, and you have to memorize and construct several different kinds of shields, so that you can call up the right one at the right moment.”

“Could I injure them instead?”

“No. I will teach you to maim, or nothing.”

It hurt Severus to say that, but it was the truth. As frustrating as it would be for Harry to labor for years on some method less guaranteed to work on reclaiming the Horcrux than battle Occlumency and Legilimency, Severus would not teach him half a defense. Harry was too soft-hearted as it was. His idea of a light injury could leave his mind wide open while he was trying to feel out the extent of the damage he had done to his enemy.

Harry clenched his fists.

“You were willing to learn Dark Arts and become a leader, I thought. Have you changed your mind?”

“I can do those for other people. But I can’t stop thinking of my mind as mine, Severus. I wouldn’t set up lethal traps on my trunk to protect my things, either. Or ones that maim. They’re just things. These are just thoughts.”

“You have already had memories of battle plans that would be fatal for your allies if discovered. That will happen again. You will maim those who seek to take them, Harry, or I will not teach you.”

Harry spent a moment battling with his own reluctance. Severus kept silent. He thought he should leave it to Dash to sort this out.

*

I still can’t understand why you want to maim them instead of kill them. Think of all the uses we could put their corpses to.

Shut up, Dash, Harry snapped down the bond. He was breathing fast despite himself, his hands clenched as he imagined cutting someone off from their body and making them into a vegetable, or…

What happens if you maim someone’s mind, anyway?

Dash wound a coil thoughtfully up so he could look at the skin. I might shed soon. And while I’m drawing on my own past knowledge here instead of the books that Severus gave you, I imagine this hasn’t changed. It works like a Memory Charm on some people. Other people will have actual brain damage. Some of them might lose some of their ability to use magic, including Legilimency. It varies based on how hard you strike back and where the blow lands.

Harry closed his eyes more tightly still. If he could see this as protecting his allies, then he would be all right with it. He had to remind himself of that again and again.

Your own life is worth all the protection I can give it. But I can’t protect you this way. I can only give you magical strength for the battle Occlumency and Legilimency that you’ll need to perform, not do it myself.

And it wouldn’t be fair to ask you if you could. Why should I make you do something I wouldn’t do myself?

Because I’m so much more practical than you are? Dash offered, sounding a little baffled. That is not a reason.

Harry let out a watery chuckle. He hadn’t realized how much he hated the thought of leaving someone without a mind until Severus talked about it. He’d got over a lot of his baggage from the Dursleys, but apparently not the notion that his life was worth less than other people’s.

I would eat them if I thought it would help.

I’ve told you before, that much fat is bad for you. Harry patted Dash’s neck and turned to look at Severus. Severus had apparently committed to waiting silently, but he straightened up now and raised his eyebrows a little.

“I’m going to do it,” Harry said. “I’ll concentrate as hard as I need to on the thought of what someone might take out of my mind otherwise.”

Severus inclined his head. “Excellent, Harry. I think you will find it easier than you believe. You are a good user of defensive magic. In the end, this is defensive. No one will have reason to trigger the traps unless they are trying to probe into your thoughts, where they should not be.”

Harry nodded slowly. “But you told me that I’ll also have to master battle Legilimency. That’s going to be offensive magic, isn’t it?”

Severus only watched him.

Harry grimaced. “Yeah, stupid question.” He sat back down and started meditating in the way that would put him in the right frame of mind to engage with the sharp shields again. He pictured them rolling around his mind like enormous wheels. They had metal spokes and metal centers and metal everywhere. Kind of like giant bicycle wheels.

At the same time, he concentrated on the faces of his allies. Susana and her people. Ellen and the werewolves of Kelleth’s pack. The Gryffindor students who were participating in Professor McGonagall’s Defense classes, and the people from other Houses, too. Theo, who had risked everything to help him once.

Ron. Hermione. Severus. Sirius.

Draco.

Maybe it was fucked-up—a thought he buried immediately so it wouldn’t be floating near the surface of his mind when Severus tried Legilimency to get through—but yeah, it was easier to think of defending himself when he knew he was doing it for his allies, and not his own measly little self.

I really would like to eat your aunt and uncle.

Harry smiled at Dash’s wistful tone, opened his eyes, and turned his head to face Severus. “I’m ready. Try to get through.”

Severus slammed into his shields. Harry turned them outwards and softened them as much as he could, and when Severus began to send his own power flowing through the shields, Harry clapped the edges down.

Severus was more than quick enough to dodge, as Harry had hoped. He watched, though, as his guardian’s eyes widened and the smile that crept onto his face took on an edge almost as sharp as that of the shields.

“That is remarkable improvement in a short time. You have a talent for this, Harry, and we are going to make sure that you continue to improve.”

I can do it. I can please him and I can protect my thoughts and I’m going to do everything well enough that I don’t have to kill anyone.

And if you do, Dash said, stretching out another coil to admire it, I am more than happy to serve as the weapon.

Chapter 130: No Holding Back

Chapter Text

 

“Again.”

Harry tightened his shields and forced himself to sit still as Severus’s blast of Legilimency came sailing in to hit them. Learning this aspect of battle Occlumency was difficult. Harry was better off when he could either move or make mental movements, the way he did when he turned his shields into giant spoked wheels.

This time, Severus cracked one of the shields, and a trickle of memories about running from Dudley’s gang leaked through before Harry blocked them. He opened his eyes, the beginnings of pain thundering through his head, to see Severus kneeling in front of him and looking grave.

“You must get stronger at this,” Severus intoned quietly. “I use much less force than Voldemort will.”

Harry nodded. “I don’t think it’s what it is before,” he said. “I mean, when I didn’t want to hurt people,” he added, as Severus raised an eyebrow.

“Oh? Then what is the cause of your persistent weakness?”

Harry bristled at the word “weakness,” but managed to speak calmly. “I’m used to moving when I’m defending myself. Either dodging spells or dodging Bludgers. Sitting behind my shields and waiting for something to happen is—boring.”

Severus paced slowly back and forth in front of him for a moment, then nodded. “I can definitely understand why that would be a problem for you. Very well. We will switch our focus from battle Occlumency to battle Legilimency for the moment. That is an art of motion—hardly anything but.”

Harry curled his fingers into his hands, and then pictured Voldemort attacking Hogwarts and slaughtering his friends. Slaughtering Draco.

That went home like an arrow to the heart. Harry exhaled slowly and said, “All right. I’ve been reading that book you got me, but I’m still not entirely sure what the best thing is to begin with. What is it?”

Severus spent a moment casting spells on the door, and Harry waited as patiently as he could. They were back at Hogwarts now, the Christmas season ended, and there was always the chance that a Slytherin student who needed their Head of House might interrupt them otherwise.

Severus turned back to face him. “Battle Legilimency is an art of anger and hatred.”

Harry frowned a little. “The book only mentioned that in the first chapter. If it’s so important, why keep the information back?”

“Because many people find it disconcerting. They would rather learn battle motions first and battle emotions later. I do not think that will work for you.” Severus stared him dead in the eye. “You must let go of your unwillingness to hurt others in order to make this work, however.”

“I can do that.” Harry ignored the skeptical look Severus gave him. He knew that it didn’t look as if he could do something like this, but he had made his peace, as much as possible, with the notion that he had to kill Voldemort.

Anger and hatred would be harder, admittedly. Harry had had to push down those emotions all the years that he lived with the Dursleys, and then again when people made fun of him here, because he kept thinking that the other people who hated him were just kids and could he really hate them for being scared of him when they thought he was the Heir of Slytherin or something?

Harry breathed out slowly. “I can hate Voldemort. I can feel fury at him. I kind of wish Dumbledore was still alive, so I had another target, too, but this is a good beginning, right?”

“If Dumbledore was still alive, we would never have advanced to this point in our training. He would have stopped me and trained you himself, if he even thought that you needed to learn Occlumency.”

Harry nodded in acknowledgment. “Can I meditate for a little while? I need to dredge up some emotions towards Voldemort.”

“You won’t have the chance to do that in battle,” Severus said, but he was already raising the silencing spells that he always used when Harry asked to do this same thing in his quarters.

“I know, but that’s why I’ll do it this way the first time only,” Harry answered calmly, and shut his eyes, sitting down on the stone floor. It felt a lot more comfortable than the first time he’d done it.

Of course, the minute he dipped beneath the surface of his mind, he encountered his bond with Dash, who swam up towards him and said cheerfully, I can offer you all the hatred of Voldemort you need!

Thanks, Dash, but this is something I need to do on my own. I need to pull up all the things that I pushed down through the years.

Dash sent the equivalent of a nod down the bond and retreated a little, hovering at a distance as Harry went down, and down, into the swarming snarls of his mind that he hadn’t organized yet. Severus had focused a lot more on surface emotions and conscious thoughts, which made sense. It wasn’t like a lot of people would have the chance to look at this part of Harry’s mind in the first place.

He found memories that he grimaced at, times in the cupboard when he’d been cold and hungry and shivering and convinced he was going to die, loneliness during second year, keen pain from first year when he’d lost all those points trying to rescue Norbert and his House had shunned him. But he didn’t hate the Hogwarts students right now, and hating the Dursleys was pointless when he would never see them again. Down and down he delved.

And he found it, in the scrap of memory that he’d always assumed was tragic rather than rage-inspiring.

His mother’s scream. Voldemort’s laugh. A flash of green light.

If it wasn’t for him, I would have grown up with my parents. They loved me. Unconditionally. They would have loved me even if I was a Parselmouth and had a basilisk and got Sorted into Slytherin.

He thought of the other people who loved him unconditionally, people that Voldemort would try to take away from Harry the minute he regained consciousness. Ron. Hermione. Severus.

Draco.

Harry felt as though a barrier inside himself had been shoved away, and a flood of cool, bright emotion filled him. He hovered above it much as Dash was hovering above the bond for a moment until he recognized it.

Fury.

Harry rode it back to the surface of his mind, feeling as though some limb that he’d never known he had was waking up and stretching. Oh, he’d been angry before, of course. But that had always been a quick flash of temper that burned itself out a few minutes later, or maybe an hour, at once. This was cold anger. He could use it.

He opened his eyes, and Severus nodded slowly. Harry wondered for a second whether the emotion was so visible in his eyes, and then noticed that the stones he was sitting on felt rather slick and uncomfortable. He glanced down and stared. A puddle of ice surrounded him, creeping away until it almost touched the walls.

Well done. Dash sounded delighted. I knew you could access this kind of power if you wanted, but I wasn’t sure how to make you want.

Harry blinked and then took heart. If his anger could affect stones that way, then it would affect Voldemort even worse when he got it properly trained and used it for his battle Legilimency.

“I’m ready,” he told Severus.

Severus didn’t give him any warning. This time, the stroke of force that came for Harry was keen and painful. Severus wasn’t trying to read his thoughts through his Occlumency shields this time, but to rip his mind open and give him the kind of crippling headache that Harry used to get all the time from the mere practice of Legilimency.

Harry whirled the rage up against it.

It was a darting, quicksilver thing, and Harry pictured it as a serpent, because he more or less had to. It grabbed Severus’s force strike and shook it hard. Severus tried to withdraw, and Harry pursued, darting around all over his mind and catching a quick glimpse of memories here and there, but mostly focusing on making the one who had hurt him like this dead.

Or the nearest equivalent.

He pulled back only when he heard a shout from Severus, and opened his eyes to find the man kneeling on the floor, his hands to his neck. Harry immediately rushed over to him. He could see a series of red punctures around the edges of Severus’s throat that looked remarkably like the wounds left behind by a snake’s fangs.

Harry had already opened his mouth to apologize when Severus looked up. He immediately stiffened and thrust out his hand as if he was trying to force Harry away from him. “I am well.”

“You don’t look like it,” Harry snapped.

For an instant, Severus blinked, as though he didn’t think the rage would still be lingering near the surface of Harry’s mind, and then he began to smile. “You did it.”

“I did,” Harry muttered, wishing he could feel happier about his victory. He had never once thought Legilimency could cause physical wounds like that, at least unless the person who was defending their mind cut the attacking Legilimens off from their own mind and left their body a vegetable.

“Do not dare regret it,” Severus said, with a harsh tone to his voice that Harry doubted was due to the wounds. He stood, swaying for a moment, and then caught hold of the edge of his desk before Harry could offer to support him. “You did something extraordinary. I was practicing Legilimency for a year before I could do something like this.”

Harry frowned. “I don’t really think I’m more talented at the mind arts than you are, Severus.”

Severus looked at him. “Of course not, but you may indeed be more talented at offensive Legilimency. You are right that you need an art of motion. That may be a way to compensate for your lack of talent at using your shields as weapons.”

Harry nodded. He could do it, but this was a lot more effective. “How good do I need to be at this to take on Voldemort, sir?”

“Better than you are now.” But Severus smiled at him, and Harry knew that the words weren’t bitter. At least he had managed to find his way past the block and the boredom that learning offensive Occlumency was giving him.

*

Hermione frowned at her Horcrux-detecting machine and turned it off so that the spirals went still. She had tested it every day, and still it told her that one of the Horcruxes in London was leaping around all over the place. It didn’t make sense. Why would someone who had a Horcrux in their possession move like that? They should still either be living in one place—or lying dead in one place, if the Horcrux had killed them—or they should be moving in a certain direction.

Harry had told her about the diary Horcrux wanting to unleash the basilisk on the rest of the school. Could this Horcrux have a goal, too? Something that made it move its owner all over London?

Hermione blanched as she thought that maybe this Horcrux had managed to possess someone and get a body back. She didn’t want to think about that, either, but she had to.

All right. She scribbled some conclusions down on the piece of parchment the Room of Requirement had given her and turned her attention to the other Horcruxes. One in Gringotts, she had realized, and there was no way to go after that one right now. And one in a village called Little Hangleton.

Surely that one would be easier to find than the one that kept leaping all over London. To find, if not actually to attack, since it seemed to be near Voldemort.

Hermione knew she might not be allowed to go along with whoever was sent to retrieve it; Professor Snape seemed pretty sure that no one except him should do it. But maybe she could come up with a plan to tackle some of the protections, based on her knowledge of the diary Horcrux and the Horcrux in Harry.

Content now that she was doing something useful again, she began to write down her likeliest guesses as to wards and traps.

*

“I don’t see why we need to wait to do this experiment if you really do have her under absolute control, Draco.”

Draco glanced at Harry. Harry was waiting near the entrance of the Chamber of Secrets with Dash curled behind him. He seemed a lot less tense than the last time they’d been down here, and Draco had to admit he felt the same way—at least until he looked back at the woman lying motionless on the black of stone in front of him.

“You know that I’m not as confident about that as I was,” Draco said sharply, and saw Harry’s nod from a corner of his eye. He swallowed. “I can—I can control her, but I don’t know everything that I should know about the Dark Mark.”

“Dash has a plan for that.”

Draco stepped back so that Dash could slither forwards and look at Bellatrix, while keeping his eyes carefully concealed beneath that transparent pair of lids. Dash swayed his head back and forth slowly, now and then flicking his tongue. Then he turned to Harry, and Harry looked at Draco. “Could you move the sleeve up her left arm, please?”

Draco didn’t mind, especially because he thought Dash’s request had probably been something a lot less polite until Harry translated it. Dash positioned his head carefully, according to some calculation of angles that Draco didn’t understand. He even turned as if to look back at the roof or walls of the Chamber more than once.

Then he plunged his head down.

Draco couldn’t help jumping back, even though that jolted Conflagration and Ultior and made them hiss as they tried to rearrange themselves on his body. Draco stared as one of Dash’s fangs went into Bellatrix’s arm.

“You decided to kill her?” he whispered.

Harry touched his shoulder. “No. Watch.”

Draco did, and saw the Dark Mark beginning to shift and dance on Bellatrix’s arm. Dash moved his head, his fang now free of her skin, and the serpent that made up most of the Dark Mark followed him as if he was a charmer.

Dash was almost dancing, at least from the neck up, as gracefully as a much smaller snake. The Dark Mark unraveled further and further, the skull turning into more coils of a snake, and then reformed. This time, though, Draco could see subtle differences. The snake was bigger and had a glimpse of small marks beside its darting tongue that could be venomous fangs. The skull seemed a little more hollow or a little more tilted to the side than Draco remembered. Of course, it wasn’t as though he spent all his time looking at the Dark Mark, either, so he might be misremembering.

“That’s done,” Harry said. He sounded tired himself, even though Dash had been the one biting and dancing. “Dash can modify his poison when he wants. This time, it’s buried in the Dark Mark so that if Voldemort does manage to seize control of her, it’ll kill her before she can tell him anything, and if she does start having disloyal thoughts, it’ll force her back under control. It can work with Elena’s potion or your blood magic.”

Draco nodded. “You don’t really need me at all, do you?” His voice was less bitter than it would have been a year ago, but he was thinking. Harry had allies who could do amazing things. So far, Draco had managed to use his blood magic to cause problems, and that was really all.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Harry took a step towards him. Draco blinked. Harry swore more often than he used to, but not all that often. “I need you because you’re Draco. Not because I have a certain quota of allies and I need them all to act like allies to me.”

“But you need them not to be an active danger to you, either.”

“Well, yes. But you’re not an active danger anymore, either. Draco.” Harry spoke his name softly and touched him on the shoulder. “Did you really think that I still blamed you for the mistake you made?”

“Using Dash to control Bellatrix like this—”

“Is just another form of insuring that we’ll get what we need out of her and that she won’t manage to betray us. It’s not a judgment on you.”

Draco sighed and let go of his paranoia. He was better at doing that now than he would have been a year ago, too. “Fine. Then what do you want me to do with her first? Are we going to send her back to Voldemort to spy on him, or, I mean, his caretakers? Or are we going to use her to go after a Horcrux?”

“Spying first,” Harry said decisively. “We don’t have anyone else who can do that well yet, and we don’t have any idea what the traps around the Horcruxes are like. She might trip them and die as easily as anyone else.” He looked up at Dash and hissed something in Parseltongue. Dash, whose head was still swaying back and forth, answered lazily.

“But we do have to get hold of the Horcrux in Little Hangleton soon,” Harry added, more softly. “Dash thinks Voldemort is getting closer to waking up.”

*

Sirius froze when a noise sounded behind him. It was like ash setting into the fireplace from a log shifting, but he hadn’t lit a fire in the library of Grimmauld Place. He’d been in here reading for hours, and there was still just enough sun coming through the windows that he hadn’t seen the necessity of lighting the hearth.

Given what some of his more paranoid ancestors had installed in the house, there were too many things that sound could be to make Sirius comfortable.

Sirius laid his hand casually on his wand. He’d opened some doors and disturbed some ancient dust in cupboards to find that sword for Harry. Maybe some guardian had come alive and was wandering around the house.

The noise sounded again.

Sirius stood and moved slowly in its direction. He found himself relaxing his breathing and making his steps silent even though he probably shouldn’t have to do that and even though he didn’t know yet if it was something alive. Perhaps some bit of loose magic was sparking and waving around, the way the wards had been when he first came back to the house. Or perhaps it was something alive, but a bat who had wandered inside or something similar harmless.

Even as he thought about that, he knew it was impossible. The wards didn’t allow animals to pass them, harmless or not.

When he heard the sound again, he was close enough to it to make out the muffled cadences of it. Banging, as though the thing was caught inside a container. That eased his fears a little. It wasn’t already out, whatever it was.

And some of the Black protective defenses could be incredibly aggressive about keeping inside the objects they were meant to imprison.

He finally eased around a corner, and saw a large black cabinet standing in front of him. Perhaps it had been gilded at one point or otherwise decorated, but now it just looked old and grim and dusty. The banging made the glass door vibrate.

Sirius cast a wordless spell that had been drilled into his head when he was young. It would let him identify the material making up whatever it was targeted at. Flesh, wood, metal, and a dozen other things could be detected that way.

The impression the spell brought back to him was cold hardness against his tongue, studded with facets. Something made of metal and covered with jewels, most likely.

Which didn’t really narrow it down any. Sirius had been astonished by how much jewelry, most of it corroded, tarnished, or cursed, his mother had left behind.

He also didn’t know what would have made a piece of jewelry move on its own, after presumably being kept in the cabinet for many years. Sirius set up an overlapping series of shields that would defeat most curses and Dark Arts, and then unlocked the cabinet’s door with a murmured, “Alohomora.”

The minute the door was open, the thing flew out and began rolling over and over in the center of the carpet. Sirius narrowed his eyes. It was a locket, apparently made of gold and covered with emeralds. It didn’t seem similar to anything his family would have owned. Too gaudy for his mother’s taste. But perhaps an heirloom—

The locket flipped itself over to show the front, and Sirius hissed at the sight of the emerald S, just a short distance away from being a serpent. And the sense of the overwhelming, suffocating darkness that struck him a second later drove him back a step.

The locket began to crawl towards him. Or at least that was the only thing Sirius could think to name the disgusting way that it moved on its chain, as if it was an extra foot, and humped its curved body along on top, like a snail.

Sirius struck it with a Blasting Curse before it got far. He didn’t expect it to damage the Horcrux, so he wasn’t disappointed when it went skittering back in a circle instead of flying apart. For a second, it lay there, its menace still pouring off it to fill the room like invisible smoke. It seemed to be plotting what to do next.

Sirius took a step towards it.

It vanished.

Sirius cursed and spun in a circle, his wand uplifted, his mind filled with visions of the locket flying at him and strangling him with its chain. But the Dark magic had vanished from the room along with the locket. His wild circles made him do nothing but stumble against the fireplace.

Sirius licked his lips and looked around the room for a few minutes. No, nothing here.

And he thought he would know if the locket came into the house again. But just in case, he started strengthening the wards against that happening again. He didn’t want the locket trying to kill him in his sleep.

Then he sat down to write a letter to Harry. And, through him, to Snape.

They deserved to know what exactly one of Voldemort’s Horcruxes looked like, and maybe a description would be of use in finding it.

Chapter 131: Shadowed Awakening

Chapter Text

Severus smoothed his hands along the sides of his robes. His pockets, full of potions that could heal and create barriers and ease pain, clinked reassuringly at him. He turned to face Harry and nodded. “I am as ready as I can be.”

“Good. Then Dash is ready, too.”

Severus stared hard as the basilisk slithered forwards. They stood in the Forbidden Forest, well out of sight of the castle and well beyond the protections that made Apparition near Hogwarts impossible. “I am going alone,” Severus said.

“I’m not defying your decree that I stay here,” Harry replied, smiling a little. “But Dash insisted that you not go anywhere near Voldemort’s current resting place or the Horcrux in Little Hangleton without him. You’ll just have to figure out how to cope with having more protection than you counted on.”

Severus scowled at Harry. “This is revenge for the times that I forced you to take someone with you or consider before running blindly into some bloody stupid situation.”

Harry’s smile widened. “It sure is.”

Severus considered Dash dubiously. “There is no way for me to Apparate him.”

Dash tossed his head, making the rising scarlet plume there bob, and hissed something at Harry. Harry shook his head. “You don’t have to work any harder to Apparate him than you would a chain of people that are all touching each other. Size doesn’t matter, it’s whether you have a firm hold on them or they have a firm hold on each other.”

“I have never tried to Apparate a chain of people who are all touching each other!”

“Then this is good practice. Who knows when we might have to use a tactic like that in the war?”

Severus didn’t know how Harry said all that with a straight face, but he managed, which meant Severus had to do something about it. He still made vague threatening noises at Harry as he reached out and laid a hand on Dash’s slick, cool scales. The basilisk seemed to give him an amused look, which made it worse.

“You have already sent Bellatrix?” Severus added. Only adding a mad former Death Eater to this Apparition could have made it worse.

Harry nodded. “She’s waiting near the Little Hangleton house. If there’s any Death Eaters patrolling the Horcrux’s hiding place, then she’ll cause enough of a distraction to draw them off.” He sounded utterly confident about that. Severus eyed him, but Harry had explained the combination of the loyalty potion Bellatrix had taken, Draco’s blood magic, and Dash’s modified venom in her. It indeed ought to be enough.

Severus reached out and put his other hand on top of Harry’s head. “If I don’t return,” he said quietly, “you know what to do.”

“You’ll return. It’s one of the reasons that I’m sending Dash with you.”

Severus frowned—he thought it had been Dash’s idea to come with him, not Harry’s to send him—but Harry waved at him and smiled, and Severus had little time before he would have to return and teach classes. He turned on his heel and disappeared, part of him privately doubtful about his ability to haul a gigantic basilisk through space with him.

It worked, however, although as they appeared on the stony hillside that Severus had scouted out some days before, Dash crushed some of the plants and sent pebbles rolling downhill. Severus watched him carefully as he removed his hand. Dash flicked out his tongue to scent the air, then turned and swung his head in the direction of the Riddle house.

“We are not raiding it,” Severus said, more harshly than he meant to. He wished, as he often had, that there was some easier way to communicate with Dash when Harry wasn’t here to translate.

Dash shook his head in a way that made the plume sway and to Severus seemed to reflect impatience. Then he eased his body in a long ripple of scales down a slightly less steep part of the hill. Severus followed, his wand drawn.

The basilisk slid around several larger rocks and trees, but over most of them, and Severus only had to duck out of sight once, when he saw a robed figure moving below. They had already passed through several layers of Muggle-Repelling Charms. The Death Eaters would get more paranoid the closer and closer Severus and Dash came to the current resting place of their Lord.

Severus took out a handful of the same black powder that Granger’s Horcrux-detecting machine left behind as it worked, and cast it into the air. At once it fell into the shape of a black arrow on the ground, pointing to the east.

Dash cocked his head.

Waving his wand to gather up all the powder and make sure that it collected in the small glass jar hanging from his belt, Severus gave the basilisk a wary look. He could think of no reason that Dash would disapprove of his way of tracking Horcruxes, but then, he didn’t always understand how Dash thought or acted.

Dash flicked his tongue again in what might have been amusement, and slid down the hill through the small clumps of trees, flattening smaller ones and roots as he went.

“Prat of a basilisk,” Severus said, but he made sure he said it quietly.

The hillside leveled out as they approached the edge of the Death Eaters’ patrol perimeter. Severus used the black powder that indicated the direction of the Horcrux three times more, and Disillusionment Charms twice. He also cast a spell that Harry told him he’d found in one of the obscure library books he’d read while looking up information on Horcruxes. It would hide his scent if the Death Eaters included any werewolves.

When he cast the spell, Dash looked at him and slowly shook his head, then flicked out his tongue emphatically.

“I don’t care if you can smell me or not,” Severus whispered back harshly. He could feel the pressure of magic against his senses increasing. He doubted all of it came from the long-ago protections that Voldemort had would have placed on the Horcrux here; if nothing else, he wouldn’t have wanted to reveal to a potential traitor that this location was so heavily guarded. Most of it was probably more recent protections. “You know exactly where I am anyway.”

Dash moved in front of him as they crossed what appeared to be a dry streambed and then went down an old road. A small shack had appeared in front of them. Severus cast a quick glance around to make sure there were no Death Eaters here and then threw the black powder again.

It pointed straight at the shack.

Severus gathered the powder for what he hoped would be the final time, and they approached the shack. Dash shouldered in front of him again as they came to the door. He reached out and tapped it with his nose, then recoiled.

“Warded?” Severus asked softly. It wasn’t too hard communicating with Dash as long as he asked questions that would be answered yes or no.

Dash bobbed his head. Severus drew his wand and carefully pressed the tip against the air in front of the door. Swirling bands of blue and gold showed up. Severus narrowed his eyes. “Shit,” he said succinctly.

Dash looked at him.

“They require someone with a functioning Dark Mark to pass, or the Dark Lord himself. I am not sure—”

Dash turned his head towards the far side of the hill, where the enchanted Bellatrix waited. She was supposed to cause a distraction if they needed one, to go in and rejoin the Death Eaters if they did not. Severus sighed. “I suppose you are right.”

Dash flicked his tongue out and kept it extended for a full minute. Severus didn’t understand how that worked to call Bellatrix, but supposed it had something to do with the venom he had placed into her Dark Mark. Bellatrix came crawling and creeping in through the bushes a few minutes later.

Severus nodded at the door. “Have her bare her arm and tilt it so that the Mark faces the wards on the door flat-on.”

Dash hissed, and Bellatrix did as Severus had required, her face remaining a disturbing amount of blank and dead. Well, that was the way things had to be, sometimes, Severus reminded himself as he watched the blue lines break and the gold ones unspool. And this was still far cleaner than the tactics that the other side of the war used.

In seconds, the doorway was clear. Severus ducked through it, leaving Bellatrix and Dash (by necessity) outside.

The shack was an overpoweringly dirty place, and Severus’s eyes were watering in seconds. He cast a charm that would clear them and looked deliberately around, searching for something out-of-the-way. There was a broken chair in the center of the room and the remains of what might have been either an armoire or a table; Severus couldn’t tell. A door that probably led back to a bedroom stood ajar.

And in one corner was a swimming mass of darkness, not visible but making him want to vomit anyway.

“I found the hiding place of the Horcrux,” Severus said, making sure not to speak too loudly. For all they knew, it could attract the thing’s attention, and it might move in the unnerving manner of the one Black had described in London. “Dash, what are you going to do now?”

The light in the shack darkened as Dash’s head filled the doorway, so enormous that Severus was forced to use a Lumos Charm. For a moment, Dash’s hidden eyes surveyed the room. They locked on the same floorboard that Severus had found without him needing to direct them.

Then Dash bowed his head, slowly, so that his snout rested on the other floorboards of the shack. His tongue darted out, again, and continued to do so, as if he was speaking in silent Parseltongue to the spells guarding the Horcrux. Severus waited. For all he knew, that was exactly what Dash was doing. Maybe Voldemort had used Parseltongue to hide it, for all he knew.

Then Dash reared back and brought his head down on the floorboards hard enough that Severus staggered.

The one protecting the Horcrux popped out of place. With it came a lessening of the foul protective spells and an increasing of another kind of darkness. Severus found that he could see more easily, but breathing was harder. This cold, slimy blackness seemed to reach right down into his lungs and strangle him.

Dash hissed. Severus didn’t feel any change in the blackness pouring out of the space beneath the floor, but it must have done something, because Dash slithered forwards. His tongue was darting in and out with frightening speed. Then he plunged his head down, and his fangs snagged in something beneath the floor and pulled it out.

It was the most beautiful thing Severus had ever seen. He stepped forwards as if he had seen Harry in danger.

But this was more than that. This was other than that. This was so glittering and round that Severus couldn’t imagine not possessing it. He reached out. The ring was wrapped around the fang of a giant basilisk, true, but Severus could not imagine Dash hurting him, either. He would put the ring on, and he would know the secrets that eluded him now—

Something hit his legs and knocked him to the floor. Severus rolled, angry that he could no longer see the glittering prize, and came back to his feet in time to see Dash swallow the Horcrux.

“What are you doing?” Severus screamed. Dash gave him an empty look and crawled towards the door where Bellatrix still crouched.

Severus leveled his wand, and then found himself pausing. In fact, he couldn’t think of any spells that could harm a basilisk as large as Dash. He trembled for a second, and then closed his eyes and passed his hand over them.

What was wrong with him?

He had never seen the ring before, and he knew it was a Horcrux, and most of the time, he didn’t have any desire to possess jewelry anyway. Rings would either get caught on the rim of cauldrons or dissolve when some fumes and liquids touched them. Necklaces had the nasty habit of slipping out from beneath robes when you least expected it, and were too easy to become weapons in the hands of one’s opponents. Bracelets had much the same problems as rings and necklaces combined, distractions and slipping weapons.

That wasn’t me. I wasn’t in my own head at that moment. The Horcrux was.

That frightened Severus more than he ever remembered being frightened.

He lowered his head and found that Dash was watching him somberly. Severus nodded shakily to him. “Did you—destroy it?”

Dash shook his head. At the moment, Severus was too unnerved to question why, or why being swallowed by a basilisk swimming with venom wouldn’t destroy the thing. He turned to face the door instead.

There was a Death Eater there, standing behind Bellatrix with his hand on her shoulder. He smiled nastily at Severus, and it was only then that Severus recognized him; he was covered with grime that made it hard to do otherwise.

“So,” said Walden Macnair. “Intruding so near our Lord’s house and enslaving one of his own, traitor?” He squeezed Bellatrix’s shoulder and grinned up at Dash, who had turned to loom behind Severus’s shoulder. “And bringing illusions of basilisks with you as well. You didn’t expect someone who could see past your weapons to confront you, eh?”

Severus blinked once, and Dash moved a little. Severus sensed the opening of his eyes and turned his head away.

Macnair laughed. “Good illu—”

Then he was dead.

Severus waited until he was certain that Dash had put his deadly gaze away, and then turned around. Dash was unhinging his jaw and eating Macnair’s body with a swift efficiency. Bellatrix still crouched in the doorway, still alive.

“Someone has to meet your gaze directly, is that it?” Severus asked, feeling weak. “And without looking into a mirror or through the lens of a camera or something like that?”

Dash waited until he was less busy with his head to nod. Severus didn’t watch the bulge that made its way down his throat. Then Dash turned his head and pulled back out of the doorway of the shack, slithering towards the hillside they had come from.

Severus knew what he had to do, and tapped Bellatrix on the shoulder. She turned her blank eyes on him. “You should go back to Lord Voldemort,” he whispered. “You were his most loyal follower. You should protect him as he lies helpless, shouldn’t you?”

Bellatrix’s eyes flared with an incandescent blue light for a moment, as Harry had told him they would. Then she nodded and hurried away from the shack, although still with a slight jerkiness to her movements if one knew how to look. Severus hoped like hell that no one would look, and walked away from the shack to follow Dash.

They were most of the way back to the Apparition point when Dash reared most of his body off the ground, hissing in agitation. Severus immediately cast a Disillusionment Charm. If Death Eaters were coming up on them, they would easily have seen Dash rise like that.

But Dash didn’t immediately slither down the hill to eat someone else. Instead, he let the full weight of his body rest on the ground, and stared sightlessly, accusingly, in the direction of the village.

“What is it?” Severus asked warily, once he was sure that he wouldn’t have to draw his wand for battle.

Dash looked at him and flicked his tongue out. For a minute, Severus thought it was a generic attempt to smell something, and then realized that Dash was aiming the tongue at his left arm.

“You mean that he’s awakened,” Severus whispered. He looked towards the Little Hangleton house, and breathed out slowly. He hoped that Bellatrix was already there. It might distract the Dark Lord a little to find out what had happened to her, or rather the story that she would spin for him.

And we should leave, before he realizes that someone has pierced the secret of his Horcruxes.

Severus turned and plunged up the hill to the Apparition point, with Dash following.

*

Why did you swallow the Horcrux?

It was the fastest way to neutralize it. Dash was swaying slowly back and forth on the piled stones that led up to Harry’s window in Gryffindor Tower. The enchantments on the ring were getting to Severus in a way that the diary or the traps on the diadem never managed. And.

Harry leaned backwards a little so that he could scratch Dash’s eye-ridges. That’s the kind of pause that means more comes after it. What?

There is the matter of the stone on the ring.

Harry waited, then sighed. Are you going to make me drag everything out of you? Why? What can make you hesitate like this? He winced a second later as he realized he might not want to know.

The stone on the ring is one of the Deathly Hallows.

Harry blinked, then blinked again. “What?” he asked aloud. Dean, who was doing homework on his bed, gave Harry a mild glare. “Sorry,” Harry added, and then turned back to Dash. I have no idea what you mean.

It is a children’s tale, or widely believed to be, among wizards. Dash turned his head so that Harry could scratch at the base of his plume. They are three artifacts that three brothers won from Death himself. The Elder Wand, a tool of great power. The Resurrection Stone, which can summon the spirits of the dead. The Invisibility Cloak, which can hide anyone who wears it from Death’s sight.

I have a cloak, Harry whispered down the bond. But so do lots of people.

The stone on the ring is definitely the Resurrection Stone. I’ve felt it before. I would know.

In your other lifetime, you mean.

Yes. Although it wasn’t called the Resurrection Stone then.

Harry waited, but Dash didn’t seem inclined to say anymore. All right, Harry finally murmured. So your venom and the acids of your stomach can’t destroy the stone, then? What about the ring itself?

That I can destroy with my venom. But the stone may protect the Horcrux. Voldemort might even have designed it that way. I have it stored in a safe pocket of my stomach where it can’t get lost or damaged right now. We’ll work on it later.

But you know that the Horcrux can’t possess you?

Dash turned his head so that his tongue touched Harry’s brow, the scar that still lay there. Do you even know how possession works? I thought Severus had touched on that in your lessons about battle Occlumency and Legilimency.

Um, I mean, he’s talked more about how he thinks I should destroy the Horcrux in me and the one Voldemort’s made that’s a piece of my soul. Possession is one of those worst-case scenarios we haven’t discussed much.

It relies on some kind of link or similarity between the spirit and the victim. When Voldemort possessed Quirrell, there must have been some part of Quirrell that agreed, or that Voldemort could appeal to—ambition to punish his enemies, for example. Voldemort might be able to possess you because of the Horcruxes linking you. He can’t possess me. There is no link between us.

His Parseltongue?

I am the soul that was the originator of his magical bloodline. If anything, I should be the one who’s able to use Parseltongue against him, not the other way around.

All right, Harry said doubtfully, but Dash nudged at him and retreated down the ramp of stones, leaving Harry to go to bed with a whirling mind.

*

“What’s that?”

Hermione turned around with a frown. Ron was right; there had been a slight ringing sound behind them, as if someone had knocked a piece of armor over. They were on their way to Charms, but Harry had stayed behind to talk with Professor Snape, and Hermione supposed the Slytherins might be inclined to ambush them without Harry around. It still seemed unlikely, though, so she didn’t draw her wand as she stepped around the corner.

There was something small and yellow on the floor. Hermione looked around, but she couldn’t see anyone who might have dropped it. It looked like a piece of jewelry. She supposed that one of the upper-year girls might have lost it. Some of the seventh-years in Gryffindor wore far too many adornments, as much as it pained Hermione to say that about someone in her own House.

She walked over to the jewelry to see what it was. So far all she could see was a long, thin golden chain, which lay coiled around the thing as if it had broken and slipped off the neck of the girl who wore it. Hermione couldn’t actually see a break in the links, though.

“Hermione?”

“Yes, just a second, Ron.”

“We’re going to be late for Charms!”

Just a second, Ron,” Hermione repeated, annoyed, and reached out to grasp the chain. There must be a weak place somewhere she couldn’t see when it was lying coiled on the floor like that.

There was a faint ringing sound, and Hermione wondered if it had been the one she and Ron had heard a minute ago. Although what had fallen over when she was holding the locket in her hand—

Locket?

Hermione lowered her eyes slowly, the way she might move around a venomous snake in an attempt to persuade it not to bite her.

The locket was crusted with more gold than Hermione thought practical for a piece of jewelry. And it had a snake on the front made of emeralds. Hermione had seen that before, when they were researching items that might be Horcruxes. It was Slytherin’s crest, one that the books had insisted would appear on the things that he had actually left to his descendants, instead of the many copies floating around.

“Ron,” Hermione said, keeping her voice calm.

What?’

“This is a Horcrux. The one that Sirius told Harry was moving around all over the place. It’s probably going to try and possess me in a second. I want you to run back and tell Professor Snape what’s happened.”

Ron gaped at her for a second. Hermione caught his eye and jerked her head fiercely back down the corridor. Ron turned and ran faster than Hermione had ever seen him run for anything but a Quidditch game.

And then there was very great pain.

Chapter 132: Horcrux Destroyer

Chapter Text

Ron crashed through Severus’s door without pausing to knock. Harry turned to his friend in shock. Ron was panting and his face was so bright red that Harry almost moved to cast a Cooling Charm on him.

“The locket Horcrux is here and it has Hermione!” was the only thing Ron blurted before he turned around and ran back the other way. The door swinging behind him was the only sign that he’d been there.

Harry and Severus stood there staring at each other for a second. Then Severus snatched up a potion sitting on the desk in front of him and ran after Ron. They passed Hufflepuffs and Ravenclaws coming in for their Potions class who ducked out of the way, murmuring about Professor Snape and how they’d never seen him like that.

Harry, meanwhile, was reaching out along the bond to Dash. You heard what he said?

I know it from your memory. I will be coming up through the pipes.

Harry nodded and then increased his speed, overtaking Ron, who had already been running hard. He came around the corner and saw Hermione slumped against the wall. The locket Horcrux was in her hand, and Harry could see the corners of her palm turning red around it. The chain had reached out, longer than Harry knew it could be, and was looped around her neck.

As Harry took a step towards her, the chain tightened, and Hermione opened her eyes and gasped. Harry stopped. “It’s choking her!” he called over his shoulder to Severus, who had stopped running at the same moment.

“Don’t come any nearer.” Hermione whispered the words, trembling. Harry clenched his fists. The locket’s chain was so tight around her throat that he could see her flesh standing up around it. “It’s going—I can hear it, it says that it’s going to kill me if you’re any closer—”

I am here.

One of the walls next to Hermione swung open. Dash came slithering out and turned his head to face the locket. Harry couldn’t understand what he said next. It almost sounded like Parseltongue, but it was all rushing and had strange twisted sounds in it. If Harry had heard it and hadn’t known it was coming from Dash, he would have thought it was the wind.

The locket opened.

A mad, laughing, dark thing surged out of it. It looked like smoke with red eyes to Harry. It had twisting coils and legs at the same time, sticking out of its side. It looked like someone had cooked a human and a snake together and fused their skin. It hissed back at Dash in the same language he had used, and then it switched to English.

“Awake again! You think to subdue me now, when I have learned to leave my body and command the shards of my soul? You think that I will yield to you, fallen soul of my ancestor? You have much to learn!”

Dash didn’t move, except for the slight swaying back and forth that Harry thought he did all the time anyway. His eyes were fixed on the locket. He didn’t unlid them to stare. He only stared back at the laughing thing.

The black creature turned and touched Hermione’s face with a filthy claw. Ron and Harry tried to shout at the same time and run forwards. But Severus’s arm slammed into place like a bar against Harry’s chest, and Ron slammed against an invisible shield that Severus might have raised.

“I am going to hurt her before I kill her,” the creature said, and its voice dripped so many things that Harry could only hear the contempt clearly.

Dash lunged.

Harry didn’t understand exactly what he was seeing, but somehow, Dash’s mouth closed around the creature even though it seemed to be made mostly of smoke and embers. Dash reared back with the thing thrashing in his jaws, and then he shook his head and threw it against the wall. Harry heard what sounded like a faint series of pops, and wondered, with the distance of shock, if its fragile bones were breaking.

Did it have bones to break?

The creature floated back into the air. It didn’t laugh again. It only focused on Dash, and spoke in the hissing language that wasn’t Parseltongue. Harry darted his eyes over to Hermione, wondering if he could run over to her and free her, but she still had the locket’s chain wound tight around her neck even though the spirit wasn’t there right now.

The spirit began to grow. In seconds, a swaying shadow basilisk as big as Dash occupied the corridor.

“If I tell you to run,” Severus said in a conversational voice, “that is what you will do. You will run and not look back.”

Harry said nothing. He loved Hermione and Dash too much to abandon them. He knew Severus cared more about Harry than he did about Harry’s friends or Dash, but that was too bad. Harry wasn’t going to obey, not this time.

Severus started to say something else, but right then, the creature attacked Dash.

Dash flicked himself sideways, and the stone wall shook where his body met it. But it also meant that he had coiled himself around the creature that had come out of the locket, and he was crushing it. Harry watched with his mouth open.

It’s a shadow. How can he be hurting it?

Dash heard the question down the bond and responded without a flicker of his lidded eyes. It had to make itself solid to hurt me.

And then finally, finally, he opened his mouth, and his fangs stuck out, delicately gleaming with venom. The shade he held began to struggle even harder. It probably recognized the doom coming for it, Harry thought. Or he hoped that, at least. He wanted the thing to suffer for what it had done to Hermione.

The creature turned back into shadow abruptly and flowed out of Dash’s embrace. It reformed as a much smaller snake in front of Hermione, dancing desperately, and spoke in English. “I will kill her if you do not cease attempting to harm me!”

Dash opened his mouth and spat.

The venom landed precisely on the locket’s chain and the emerald S on its front. The locket immediately screamed, and Harry had to cover his ears, even though he knew he looked ridiculous and he didn’t want to stop looking away from Hermione. The sound shuddered on and on, echoes rolling through Harry’s head, pain and agony and fear and hatred.

Then it stopped. Harry opened his eyes and saw that the locket was a twisting, steaming mess on the floor. Hermione, touching her throat and the red lines the chain had left there, didn’t look as if she had been harmed at all.

Harry rushed forwards to hug her, right behind Ron. Hermione hugged them back, her shoulders starting to tremble for the first time. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “It was stupid of me to pick it up, but I didn’t know—”

“Just shut up sometimes, Hermione,” Ron said, and hugged her harder and harder, until she wheezed.

Maybe that was what made Severus intervene. “You need the hospital wing, Miss Granger,” he said. “Nearly being strangled may have done damage to your throat and windpipe that cannot be seen.” He stared down Ron when he opened his mouth to protest, and Ron finally grumbled and looked away. “Now,” Severus added when Hermione just stood there in their embrace.

“Of course, you’re right, professor,” Hermione said, and wiped her eyes. She gave Ron and Harry both a shaky smile. “You’re going to come with me?”

“Of course I am!” Ron said.

“Dash and I will be along in a minute,” Harry said, and reluctantly turned to face Dash. He didn’t know if the conversation he thought he needed to have with his basilisk would actually have results, but he felt he had to try.

Dash coiled his tail along the floor as Ron and Hermione and Severus all disappeared in the direction of the infirmary, although Severus looked back more than once. What is it? What did I do? I thought I was a hero, and here you’re looking at me like I tried to bite someone other than the Horcrux.

Harry took a deep breath. “Did you know that you could spit your venom like that so that none of it would hurt Hermione?”

I know how to aim.

Dash sounded offended enough that Harry backtracked a little. “I mean—you aimed, and I know you took care of the Horcrux. Thank you.” He stared down at the twisted lump of metal on the floor. He never would have been able to guess it was a locket once if he hadn’t already known. “But were you willing to risk Hermione’s death so that you could destroy the thing?”

I knew that I would not cause her death.

Harry hesitated again. Then he gave up on playing subtle games. No matter how hard Severus and Draco tried to help him with them, he was never good enough at them anyway. “You know what I mean.”

I took a risk that could have resulted in her dying if I had missed, yes. I cannot reduce the potency of my venom when I aim to kill one person or object that is close to another I don’t wish to harm. Dash swayed in place, staring down at Harry. But I knew I wasn’t going to miss.

Harry finally nodded slowly. He didn’t want to accuse Dash of not caring about his friends the way he thought Severus probably didn’t. And he had to trust that if Dash had thought there was a large risk to spitting his venom at the Horcrux, he would have found some other way to handle matters.

Exactly. Dash gently ducked his head so that his chin was resting on top of Harry’s hair. Harry staggered a little from the weight. Sometimes he thought Dash forgot that he wasn’t as small as he’d been for years. You don’t want any risk at all to come to those you love. I know. But that’s the way it will be, especially since your friends have involved themselves in hunting the Horcruxes in the first place. You weren’t as anxious when you sent me with Severus to find the ring Horcrux, were you?

Of course not. Harry reached up and ran his hands gently down the sides of Dash’s neck, until he saw his head sag and his tongue dart out in what looked like delight. But I knew that Severus can take care of himself. Hermione and Ron—they’re a lot more helpless than he is.

They would not be delighted to know that you see them that way.

I know. Harry carefully lifted Dash’s chin away from his head—although it only happened because Dash was cooperating—and took a deep breath. I think I need to do some more meditation. Adjust my perspective even more.

That, Dash said, with a twist of his neck that made it look as though he was going to dart it down any second, would be a good idea.

*

Granger was going to be fine, Madam Pomfrey told them after a quick check of the wounds on the girl’s neck and some healing spells that eased the bruising there and on her windpipe, and the blisters on her hand, but she did want to keep her in the hospital wing overnight for observation. She seemed to accept Severus’s story of a curse practice gone wrong, although her eyes glinted at him for a second before she turned away.

Severus stood looking down at the girl, noticing the way she flushed and avoided his eyes. Then again, most of his students did that, so it was difficult to draw any conclusions from such behavior. “How are you feeling, Miss Granger?”

“Tired, sir.” Granger managed to avoid squeaking. “I think I probably won’t need sleeping potions. But otherwise fine.”

“No trace of a lingering dark aura, such as you probably felt around the Horcrux when you touched it?”

“No, sir. The minute that Dash’s poison destroyed the locket, I felt the darkness that was clutching at me lift.”

Severus nodded thoughtfully. If she had noticed such a marked difference, there was a good chance that no fragment of Voldemort’s soul lingered in her, after all. He actually had no idea if it was possible for someone who had already made that many Horcruxes to subdivide his soul further and embed a shard in an unprepared object, but given the one that lay behind Harry’s scar, he was not prepared to take chances. “Very well. Contact me at once if you notice symptoms you might attribute to possession.”

“Yes, sir. Sir?”

Severus, on the verge of leaving the hospital wing, turned back and lifted his eyebrows at the girl. Granger was playing with her bedsheets as if they were the chain of the locket, her teeth fastened on her lip.

“How do you think that Horcrux was able to move around? I mean, none of the others were. They stayed in what had to be their original hiding places.”

“I am not entirely sure, Miss Granger. It may have something to do with the strength of the soul shard in that piece, or the nature of the locket before it became a Horcrux. I have read descriptions of Slytherin’s locket. It was said to be magically powerful.”

“The shadow said—it said something about being able to leave a body and command the shards of a soul. You don’t think Voldemort—?”

That was something Severus had wanted to think about before addressing it with Granger, but it seemed he would not be that lucky. He grimaced and gave it due consideration. Then he said, “I think we must remember that Horcruxes can lie, and so can Voldemort.”

“Yes, sir,” Granger said, but only because she was closing her eyes, Severus thought, did the suspicious glint in them fade. It was much worse than the glint that Poppy had shown him a short time ago.

Severus sighed and returned to his lab. He would need to conduct some more research into possession and spirit travel, and he feared what answers he might find.

*

“I think that we must destroy the other Horcruxes we have gathered. We dare not risk keeping them around if Voldemort can manage to possess them as he managed with the locket.”

Harry settled back with a blink. That wasn’t what he had expected to hear when Severus had called him to his office that morning. He had expected some other condemnation of his recklessness. “All right,” he said slowly. “But what can we do about the one in me? Dash doesn’t even know if it’s possible to get rid of it now as long as Voldemort has that one he also created in him.”

“Perhaps I should have said that we should destroy the objects we have. Your Occlumency and Legilimency are forming their own barriers to the possession that Voldemort might otherwise try to inflict on you.”

Harry nodded, reassured. “So we have the diadem. And the locket is gone, and the diary. We have the ring—if Dash will ever let it out of his stomach,” Harry added, and saw the grimace that Severus gave in acknowledgment. “We can’t do anything about the one in me or the one in Gringotts yet. Dash told me the other day that he thinks that giant snake that follows Voldemort around everywhere has to be a Horcrux. She’s done things that should be impossible if she’s not one.”

Severus nodded slowly. “Seven total, if that is true. It would make sense. Seven is a powerful magical number.”

“Do you think Voldemort is going to try to make more, now that he knows we’ve destroyed one?”

“I do not know if he can. I would have to consult other books, perhaps some of those in the Black library, to be sure, or ask Dash. But his soul is so unstable that he already created one accidental Horcrux in you. How could he smash it apart again, without tearing himself from the world and becoming a wraith once more?”

“I still don’t want to take the chance,” Harry muttered, shivering a little as he thought about it.

“I know. That is why I think we should destroy them now. We know Dash’s venom can harm them. And there seems little to be gained by keeping the diadem and the ring. Your Horcrux is a special circumstance and will need more labor than we have put forth so far. Can you ask Dash to bring the ring here?” Severus had already turned away to the cabinet that Harry knew held the diadem.

Dash? Harry asked down the bond.

I know what you have been talking about, Dash said quietly, anticipating Harry’s next question. There is something you must know about the ring before we attempt to destroy it. I am on my way down through the pipes.

Harry told Severus what Dash had said, and noticed the slow nod of acknowledgment. Severus didn’t look as if he relished the coming conversation. Well, neither did Harry, for that matter. He opened the door into the corridor; none of the pipes actually ran into Severus’s office.

Dash slid out of the wall soundlessly a second later. He already had his mouth closed tightly around a small object, which he spat out on the floor. Harry blinked. It was the ring, but with a strange coating, almost like spiderwebs, wrapped around the rock that Dash had called the Resurrection Stone.

“What is that?” Severus was holding himself stiffly in check, which Harry could understand. He had told Harry about what had happened to him when he and Dash went after the ring. But Harry couldn’t sense any fascination or compulsion coming from the object. Perhaps Dash’s venom had neutralized it.

What we need to contain the Resurrection Stone. Dash darted his tongue out when Harry translated and Severus sat down abruptly on the couch behind him. Yes, the Deathly Hallows are real, and much older than they are thought to be. Do you want to discuss this, or do you need a minute to recover?

“I am well,” Severus said, even before Harry could translate the last bit. He was staring at the stone and the ring, but not in the way that said he wanted to put it on. “I had not thought—I suppose I thought the legend of the Deathly Hallows might be based on real artifacts, but that they still existed…”

They cannot be destroyed, Dash said softly. I am somewhat surprised they could be created, in truth. But he shook his head when Harry asked him what he meant. He waited until Severus recovered and drew his wand. He cast a spell that Harry knew was meant to sever the stone from the ring.

Nothing happened.

“Damn,” Severus breathed, and looked up at Dash. “Does that have to do with your protection, or something else?”

The indestructible nature of the Stone is protecting the ring. Dash lowered his head until it was level on the floor next to the ring, and darted his tongue out. Harry didn’t think he was smelling it so much as brooding. That means that we must seek out some means other than my venom to destroy it. While I am a unique basilisk, I was still born in the body, and my egg created, after the Hallows came into the world. We need something older than they are.

“How can something be older?” Severus shook his head as Harry translated. “I thought of the Sword of Gryffindor, but that would only work because of the basilisk venom in the blade, and that basilisk was also younger than the Hallows, wasn’t it?”

Dash bobbed his head. Harry frowned a little. “Is there some other curse that would destroy a Horcrux anyway? I know Hermione didn’t find many spells when we tried to look them up, but Sirius said there was a way, one spell. He just didn’t want to use it because it was a spell that I might not survive.”

“Fiendfyre.” Severus’s voice was flat. “But would even that destroy a Deathly Hallow?”

No. Dash shook his head at the same time, meaning that Harry didn’t have to translate that part for Severus, but then he paused so long that Severus was giving them both narrow, anxious glances again. But it should do for any Horcrux. We must find a way to break the bond between the Hallow and the Horcrux.

“This is most inconvenient,” Severus muttered, which made Harry want to laugh at the understatement. “I can only hope that we don’t find any other Horcruxes protected by the Hallows.”

That, at least, will not be a problem. Dash hesitated for another long moment. Then he said, There may be a way, if you use Harry’s Invisibility Cloak. A Hallow will not war against another Hallow.

Harry raised his eyebrows, but translated that, too. Severus was still looking faint and like he needed to sit down again by the time Dash finished.

“My ward has been walking around with Death’s Cloak.”

It didn’t exactly belong to Death.

Harry translated that and then asked down the bond, Are you going to explain that?

Dash didn’t reply for another long time. Then he said, We owe each other a grudge, the Hallows and I. I can tell you what to do to make the Resurrection Stone break loose of the ring, but I cannot actually help.

And he wouldn’t say another word about it, so Harry finally left to go get the Cloak from the Tower in disgust.

I love Dash, but sometimes it’s inconvenient when he decides he needs to be Salazar Slytherin instead of my basilisk.

Chapter 133: Dash and the Deathly Hallows

Chapter Text

“I have the Cloak,” Harry panted, staggering through the door and brandishing the cloak as though he expected to deflect a bull with it.

Severus nodded, not moving. His eyes were fixed on the Resurrection Stone, more than the ring itself. He had wanted to be sure that the ring would have no more power over him, but it was the stone that was truly dangerous. The distance Dash kept from the Horcrux, and the way he averted even his covered eyes from it, was enough to tell Severus that.

“Are you going to tell us what is so strange about the Hallows when it comes to you?” Severus asked as he picked up the Cloak and turned to face the ring Horcrux.

Dash gave him a slow, incredulous glance, conveyed more by the turn of his neck than any expression. Severus actually did not need the translation Harry made for him a second later. “He says that you didn’t phrase the question well.”

“Excuse me for being a bit overwhelmed by the presence of two of the Deathly Hallows in my quarters,” Severus said, and made his voice dry enough that Dash flinched, although oddly enough, Harry did not. “Am I going to learn about their relationship with Salazar Slytherin, or their grudge, or whatever it is, before we attempt to separate the Hallow from the Horcrux?”

Harry flinched this time, and Severus knew it was because of the edge to Dash’s hiss. “No,” he muttered.

“I am going to find out sooner or later,” Severus told Dash as he drew his wand. The ring Horcrux continued to sit idly in the middle of the floor, not exerting any special pull, doing nothing. Then again, that was what Severus had thought it was doing in the middle of the shack where he and Dash had found it. “You might as well tell me now.”

Harry coughed a second later. “He said that might impress students who are slacking off on their homework, but it doesn’t impress him,” he translated dutifully when Severus turned to him with a raised eyebrow.

Severus sighed, and changed the subject. “What do I need to do with the Cloak?”

Harry listened, head cocked in that odd way that Severus was getting more and more used to, and then held out his hands. “Dash says that I’m the one who actually needs to remove the Resurrection Stone, since I’m the owner of the Invisibility Cloak.”

Severus yielded the Cloak with a hard stare. Harry shrugged. “He says he doesn’t have a choice, and I’m the Cloak’s owner.”

That much was true, as much as Severus had sometimes wished otherwise in the last few years and when James Potter possessed it. He watched narrowly as Harry turned and stepped towards the Horcrux. Then he stopped at a hiss from Dash. A second later, Severus lifted his wand again.

A grey mist was seeping into the air from the Resurrection Stone.

*

What is it doing? Is this some way that it’s trying to protect itself? Harry asked Dash. He could feel his hands trembling, and did his best to steady them. Just because he did have to do this himself didn’t mean it was any more dangerous than some of the things he had already accomplished.

I am not sure. Let me listen.

But Dash didn’t listen. Instead, he gave the same kind of sliding hiss that wasn’t really Parseltongue that he’d used before with the shadow of the locket Horcrux. The mist danced back and forth, but didn’t respond that Harry could hear, instead spreading out to form a rough shape like a shamrock.

Then Dash lunged abruptly forwards.

The smoke met his snout and broke apart. Before it could reform again, Dash coiled his tail and struck at the ring, sending it flying into the wall. Severus followed that with a Blasting Curse a second later, but Harry wasn’t surprised when the ring rolled away undamaged. It took something a lot worse than a mere fifth-year spell to hurt a Horcrux.

This time, the ring rose and flew towards Harry. Harry ducked and swept the Cloak above him on instinct, trapping the ring inside like it was a fish inside a net. Immense struggles promptly ensued. Harry staggered back a little, surprised at how fierce even that little bit of resistance was.

Do not let it go! Dash commanded down the bond.

Harry nodded and folded the Cloak in and in on itself, cupping the ring and the Stone. Except it suddenly felt as if he held two separate objects. He resisted the temptation to open the Cloak and check, keeping a wary eye on Dash as he slithered closer.

“Is it separated?” Severus asked hoarsely. He had his wand aimed at the floor now. Harry knew he wouldn’t want to do anything that might target Harry.

Yes and no.

Harry rolled his eyes as he translated. “That was less than helpful, Dash.”

But at the moment, Dash reminded him far more of a stalking predator than a playful basilisk. He was circling warily towards the Cloak, his tongue dating out. He finally said, Physically, the Stone is separated from the Horcrux. But magical bonds still tie them together. This is—deeper than I thought. Voldemort did not know what the Resurrection Stone was, so I thought that he didn’t do anything to make it tied to the ring. But he did something else. Some form of protection that I have never seen before.

Harry swallowed before he translated. It wasn’t a good sign when a wizard who had lived over a thousand years before didn’t know what he was looking at.

“If he does not know what the protection is, then he does not know how to overcome it, correct?” Severus asked. He had a knife in his left hand now, his wand still in his right. Harry hadn’t even seen him draw it, and frowned a little.

You trust him to be in the same room with you without continually trying to defend yourself, of course you didn’t notice when he drew it, Dash said briefly down the bond. And I do not know how to overcome it.

“Then what do we do with the stone and the ring?”

For now, keep them in the same place. I’m afraid the Cloak will have to stay wrapped around them. If you held all three, then maybe we could convince the Stone to join its fellows and ignore the call that binds it to the ring.

“But we don’t,” Harry said, although he noticed the thoughtful frown on Severus’s face. “Do you know something, Severus?”

“Rather say that I might know something,” Severus murmured. “Give me time to investigate it and see if it’s true. In the meantime, you will leave the Cloak with the Stone and the ring in my quarters?”

Harry didn’t see that he had any other choice. He let it go with a sigh. It would have been amazing to destroy two of Voldemort’s Horcruxes on the same evening, but that would probably have been too much luck.

Besides, he thought as he and Dash left Severus’s office, he had things that he needed to talk to his basilisk about.

*

Severus, meanwhile, had isolated a memory in his Pensieve and was plunging back into it. It was the memory of the last moments when Albus had been alive, and threatening Harry by trying to strip him of his bond to Dash. Severus forced himself to keep his eyes averted from the sight of Harry’s pain and distress, and instead studied the wand that was rolling into a corner of the cavern that Albus and Flamel had chosen for their ambush.

The memory ran out before anything happened. Severus sat back, his eyes closed and one hand rising to massage his temple. No one, that he had seen, had picked up the wand. That meant he didn’t know who had it now, if the Ministry had confiscated it as evidence or if perhaps someone had taken it away and even buried it with Albus.

But he had come close enough to the wand in the memory to see that the carvings of elderberries on it were real, not something he had imagined.

Albus had the fucking Elder Wand. How could he have had it so long and no one noticed?

But when he thought about it, Severus had to admit that he hadn’t ever stared for long at Albus’s wand. No one did, really. It wasn’t polite among some older wizards, and the younger ones, Severus thought with a touch of despair, too often considered observation an art that someone else should practice for them. It was not so surprising, after all, that Albus had walked around wielding a Deathly Hallow for years and escaped scrutiny.

Severus did pause when he remembered another bit of wand-lore, and some of the lore surrounding the Elder Wand in particular. He dipped his head into the memory and watched the moment when Albus had died, when Harry had told him to duck and Dash’s gaze had knifed into Albus.

No. Severus had not blasted the wand out of Albus’s grasp, as he had half-hoped he had done. The wand had indeed simply fallen and rolled when Albus died.

Which meant, if Severus understood such matters correctly, that Dash was now the master of the Elder Wand.

Severus stepped out of his quarters and wrapped a Disillusionment Charm around himself to stop students from questioning him impertinently. Then he stalked towards the kitchen.

For the first time in years, he needed a lot of Firewhisky.

*

“Okay.” Harry turned to face Dash. They were most of the way to Gryffindor Tower, but Harry had asked Dash to pause in one of the few corridors that was both bare of other people and large enough for a basilisk to turn around. “Listen. I want to know what kind of links you have with the Deathly Hallows.”

Dash said nothing for some time, his head dancing with the small motions that he seemed to use most of the time now, as if he wanted to appear as snake-like as possible. Harry only stared at him. The bond pulsated in the back of his head. Dash had chosen him, he reminded himself. He had bonded with him, had become Harry’s basilisk. That meant he loved him. That meant Harry could trust him.

Even if it didn’t feel that way at the moment.

“Why are you so reluctant to confess it to me?” he finally asked. “Is it a secret like you having Salazar Slytherin’s soul? Because I adjusted to that, you know.”

Dash finally lifted his head, and Harry blinked. He thought Dash was feeling—

It’s so bloody embarrassing, Dash said down the bond, confirming the emotion Harry had thought he saw hinted at, somehow, in the corners of Dash’s mouth and the way he turned his neck.

“Embarrassing,” Harry said blankly.

Yes, it is. I was a renowned wizard when I was alive, and some people revere me more now that I’m dead than they ever did when I lived. Not that they know what I was really like. I created a new kind of basilisk as Salazar Slytherin. I founded a school. I have other magical accomplishments that are probably moldering in journals somewhere.

“Where are the journals?”

Not important right now. Can we focus on the embarrassing thing before I lose the will to talk about it?

Harry nodded slowly. “Fine. Then tell me what you mean about the Deathly Hallows, and why it’s so embarrassing.”

Dash sighed and said, Those artifacts are ancient. I do not know who made them. They ought to have been impossible to make, according to magical theory as I understood it when I had the body of a wizard, and nothing I have learned since has changed my mind.

“What’s so remarkable about them? I mean, I know my Cloak is powerful, but it’s just kind of an upgrade on a regular Invisibility Cloak, right?”

No. It is a thing of a different kind, which masquerades as an Invisibility Cloak. And the Elder Wand cannot be unbeatable, and the Resurrection Stone should not be able to call back souls—not real souls instead of the mockery that necromancers use to fill the bodies of Inferi. Yet they can both do those things.

Harry found himself swallowing. If he could see his parents—he could use the stone just once, and talk to them—

Do not. That is the kind of thing that leads to people falling under the Stone’s spell.

So it’s not just to talk to the dead, then? Or it can’t really talk to them? Harry leaned on the wall and tried to forget about the sudden surge of joy that had filled him when he thought he might have a way to talk to his mum and dad.

Dash wrapped his tail around Harry and nuzzled close, holding him so that Harry was surrounded by warmth. It can talk to them. But it has killed its owners in the past by making them long to join the dead. They most often commit suicide.

Harry licked his lips while he tried to await the melting of the frozen lump in the center of his chest. That didn’t happen to the Gaunts?

They did not understand what they had. The Stone is the most hidden of the three Hallows. The Wand and the Cloak at least have an obvious purpose even if you don’t understand their greater power. The Stone…no.

Harry nodded, and then said, “Don’t think I haven’t noticed that you’re deflecting me. What’s your link to the Hallows and what’s so embarrassing about it?”

Dash sighed and drooped his head as if he would prefer to sprawl across the floor. But he said, Someone brought the Hallows to the castle. No, I honestly don’t know who, he added, when Harry sent a pulse of warning down the bond. It may have been that it was a troop of wandering wizards, who were our guests for one evening. It may have been students who found them and didn’t realize what they were. The Hallows can move with their own purpose when they want to, and they might have wanted to be gathered together at that particular time. All I know is that they were there, and they spoke to me.

“Did they want you to wield them?”

They wanted me to bear the Wand. They said that the Cloak was destined for someone else, and I shouldn’t use the Stone. I already had my own dead to regret, by that point. But I refused them and told them the Wand should have another master. I was more interested in living and continuing my experiments than in having ultimate power.

“They didn’t like that.”

Of course they didn’t. Fucking Hallows, Dash muttered, which made Harry laugh aloud before he cast a Silencing Bubble around himself. No one was supposed to be in this classroom, after all. The Wand hovered in the air and tried to defeat me. It could have forced me to claim it if it had conquered my own wand. I cast a curse that repelled the Elder Wand and would have broken it if it could be broken. But I took a step backwards from the force of the blacklash, and sat down on the Stone.

“So what?” Harry asked, when a long moment had passed and Dash’s neck hadn’t lost its embarrassed weave.

So sitting down on it and tumbling it over the way I did turned it three times. I suddenly had the spirit of my dead mother watching me with hollow eyes. I panicked. I picked up the nearest thing and flung it over the spirit.

“Which was—the Invisibility Cloak,” Harry said, because now he was realizing this story must go a certain way. “You turned the Resurrection Stone with your arse?”

I told you it was embarrassing.

Harry shook his head. “It just sounds bizarre.” But he did have to smile at the thought of Salazar Slytherin, as he had been then, summoning a spirit he hadn’t even meant to with his arse. “When you threw the Cloak over the spirit, then what happened?”

Dash lowered his head with a sibilant sigh. The Deathly Hallows interacted in a way that was never meant to happen. The Cloak could touch the spirit, which no other Invisibility Cloak could have. The spirit became a living woman again. Her name was Kendra, not my mother at all. She wandered away from the castle, and who knows what tale she told when she was in a village again. The Cloak and the Stone, meanwhile, cursed me.

What did they curse you with?

That I might come into contact with the Hallows, again and again, and always fail to stop them from doing what they wished, until I met at last the true master of the Hallows. I saw them twice more in my life, and each time it was a disaster. The first time…You know that there used to be another tower where Ravenclaw Tower now stands?

“Um. No?” Harry winced at the look Dash gave him. “The history of the school itself isn’t really something I studied in any depth, Dash.”

After a second, Dash tilted his head in acceptance. I was the one who had the ability to remedy that, and I did not. Very well, then. There was another tower. The second time that I refused to master the Elder Wand, that tower fell. Luckily there was no one in it at the time, but disfiguring the school, the building I loved with all my heart—I didn’t take it well.

“And the third time?”

That was when my wife died.

The thick tone at the end of Dash’s sentence told Harry that he didn’t wish to speak of it. He nodded and put a hand on Dash’s neck for a second. Then he murmured, “And you didn’t encounter them again after that? That seems like a weird curse.”

They thought I would be reborn as someone else, someone who could be tormented by the Hallows and who might not even know why until he died and was a spirit again. They didn’t know that I would cast my soul into a basilisk’s egg and arrange to be reborn that way.

“I’m sorry.” Harry stepped close and leaned against Dash, offering as much warmth and weight as he could. “Do you think they’re going to torment you in this life?”

I don’t know. That particular cloak you carry hasn’t seemed like it wanted to try. But it was never in contact with the Stone before during your lifetime. And the Wand…

“What about the Wand, Dash?”

Dash draped his head over Harry’s shoulder. It was Dumbledore’s wand. I killed him, which means I mastered it. That fucking Elder Wand tricked me into mastering it at last.

Harry stood there and blinked into the darkness. Then he said, not sure what the response would be, “What if—what if I battled you and you let me win it? Would that take it away from you? Or someone else could, like Severus?”

Dash reared back, his eyes very wide. Then he hissed, but it wasn’t Parseltongue, just the cursing of a wild snake. Harry waited with his arms folded and his expression very stern until Dash calmed down and looked at him again.

That might actually lift the curse, Dash whispered. You would be the master of the Hallows.

“What?” Harry thought of the wrapped bundle that contained the ring and the Stone. “No, I wouldn’t.” A wash of cold traveled down from the scalp of his head to his feet. “I only own the Cloak.”

But you would master the Wand if you were able to beat me. Dash’s tail stirred excited patterns in the dust on the floor of the classroom. And the Stone—it can be inherited, but it can also obey someone it’s given to. Technically, I probably own it right now, since I was the one who took it from its hiding place. Or maybe Severus does. But either way, one of us could give it to you.

“I don’t want to be the master of the Deathly Hallows!”

You don’t want to help me escape a deadly curse?

Harry sighed loud and long enough that other people would have backed off, but Dash only went on watching him expectantly. “All right,” Harry finally said, knowing he was being anything but gracious. “But what happens then? If someone really does master the Hallows and not just one or two of them?”

My curse lifts!

“But what about me? What happens to the person who does it?”

Dash looked at him, and Harry could feel the bond thrum with surprise. Then he coiled around Harry, so close that Harry had impenetrable walls of scales on either side of him. Harry relaxed before he thought of it. Most people wouldn’t react that way to almost being smothered by a titanic basilisk, but most people didn’t have the experience of the last few years that he did, to know how safe he was right now. He stroked the nearest pattern of small scales in a rhythmic pattern and sighed.

Of course nothing bad would happen to you. I am your basilisk. I would not let anything happen.

Harry held him tighter, and tighter, until Dash actually shifted away a little to get his breath. And then Harry said, “Then let’s work to make sure that I can master the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone. I don’t want them to torment you anymore.”

Dash’s pulsation of joy down the bond filled the world.

Chapter 134: Moving Voldemort

Chapter Text

“Do you think you should worry about the Deathly Hallows right now, when there are the Horcruxes to deal with?”

Harry winced as Severus’s voice grew as sharp as an icicle. Well, when he put it like that… “Yes, but we can’t destroy the ring Horcrux until we figure out how to properly separate the Stone and the ring,” he pointed out. They were in Severus’s quarters, sitting on thick, overstuffed chairs in front of the fire. “And that could take a while. I mean, do you want to destroy the diadem we already have? That ought to be easier.”

“I am concerned that you are making plans without looking ahead or thinking.”

“I’m thinking now that you’re telling me about it,” Harry muttered, looking at his feet. He hated how resentful he sounded, but the fact was, he hadn’t wanted to think about more than becoming the master of the Hallows. That was going to change enough, even if it was only freeing Dash from his curse. And he didn’t want to confront the diadem if it was going to manage to hurt his friends the way the locket had hurt Hermione.

“Harry. Look at me.”

Harry took a quick breath and lifted his eyes. Severus was staring at him with a softened expression, and he continued in an equally softened voice before Harry could look away. “Do you think I would force you to do this? I am only trying to provide the counsel of good sense.”

Harry swallowed. Then he said, “I just don’t want the Horcruxes to hurt my friends. Sending you after the ring was hard enough, and you had Dash with you. Then Hermione got caught. She would have died if not for Dash, too. I just—”

“I know. But aside from the fact that you do not seem concerned about your own skin,” as usual said Severus’s expression, “there is the fact that your friends will never be content to sit on the sidelines while you act.”

“I know.” Harry was thinking of how desperate Draco had been to learn blood magic to help him, and how much research Hermione had put into the Horcruxes, and how hard Ron had worked to distract them when they got too overwhelmed and depressed by their research.

“You cannot force them to sit out. You cannot force me to do anything.” Harry smiled in spite of himself. “So. Think about a battle plan, a strategy to confront these things you cannot change instead of wishing them away.”

Harry sat back and thought about it. Then he said, “One of the things you could help me with is becoming the master of the Deathly Hallows.”

Severus narrowed his eyes. “I asked you to think of a strategy that would not—”

“It’s not going to leave you out. I’m asking you to help me, aren’t I?” Harry protested. He did quiet a little at the look that Severus gave him, but he maintained his stubborn stare. “But if you’re asking for a strategy that’s going to keep me absolutely safe, then you should know I’m not going to come up with one.”

Severus sighed noisily. “Explain to me why becoming more involved with the Deathly Hallows than you already are is necessary.”

“Because Dash told me a little more about them than he did already.” Harry ignored the way Severus rolled his eyes. He hadn’t been impressed to find out that Salazar Slytherin had once turned the Resurrection Stone with his arse. “He said that the Deathly Hallows constantly seek new things. They’ve existed longer than he has. They get—well, I don’t know if you could call it bored because they’re not human, but that’s essentially what it is. Do you think they would ever have seen a mutual human Horcrux before?”

Severus paused. “Go on,” he said in a low voice.

Harry nodded to him. “I think you’re right that battle Legilimency is the only way to get rid of this fucking Horcrux in my soul—” Severus glared at him but didn’t scold him for the language “—but what if we combined it with the Elder Wand? Or all three Hallows? It would give them a challenge I’m sure they’d never have faced before.”

“That might be possible. I am reluctant to devote time to it.”

“Why?”

“Because I am reluctant to become further involved with the Hallows.”

“You don’t need to be, though, Severus. I’m the one who’s going to free Dash from the curse. You said yourself that after you looked at the memory of Dumbledore losing the wand, you know you’re not its master.”

“You are too young to do something like this.”

Harry stared at him, then snorted. “And was I too young to defeat a basilisk in my second year? Or bond with a basilisk in my third one? Or enter a Tournament, or try to defend a Philosopher’s Stone, or—”

“Yes, very well,” snapped Severus. His grip tightened on the arms of his chair for a second. Then he sighed and said, “It is only that I wished to spare you from yet another burden. I did not expect to find you willingly taking it up.”

“It’s all right, sir,” Harry told him quietly. Severus looked so unhappy that Harry felt he had to give him something. “It’s not like you could have known that it would be so important or Dash would be so involved with them.”

“You are doing this because he is your basilisk.”

“Yes. And because I do think that we could use the Elder Wand on the Horcruxes, including this one in my head. Dash said that the wand wants to be wielded by a wizard of ultimate power. It can probably get rid of the Horcrux because it won’t want someone else having that kind of claim on me.”

“Has it occurred to you that in that case, the wand might well try to make its way to Voldemort? Or what would happen if he dueled you and won?”

Harry gave him a tired grin. “Not that my original wand would be any better. Dash told me that brother wands can’t duel without locking into something called Priori Incantatem.”

Severus nodded slowly. “Very well. But you will have me at your side for every step of this foolishness, do you understand? No trying to do it on your own.”

“Yes, Severus. I understand. Thank you.”

There was nothing like the wonder on Severus’s face when he listened to and trusted what Harry was saying. Harry reached out and squeezed his hand. Then he got up and went to find Dash.

*

Harry opened his eyes in the darkness, and blinked. He knew he hadn’t gone to sleep in the hospital wing; Hermione had come back to Gryffindor Tower yesterday. But this looked like the hospital wing. It had shrouded shapes all around him, and he tried to stand and make his way towards the back of the room and felt heavy and dizzy and sick.

Welcome, Harry Potter.”

Harry spun around. There was a sleek shape standing behind him, teeth bared in what Harry would only call a smile if he was feeling stupid. Voldemort. At his side coiled Nagini, rising as if she had only more and more body to unfold.

A party? Why wasn’t I invited?

Dash manifested next to Harry in the next second, his size even in the dream making Nagini hiss and Voldemort take a step back. Harry decided at that instant that he was going to live. Because he needed to get back to his body safely and tell everyone he knew that Voldemort had taken a step back from his basilisk.

It is a party,” Dash said, aloud so that Voldemort and Nagini could hear them. “And I insist on being invited.”

“Tell your snake that if he tries to poison me or Nagini, he will only poison you down the Horcrux connection that we share.”

The snake is right here and can hear you for himself, Fishbelly.

Fishbelly? Harry asked down the bond. Voldemort was staring at them, his hand resting on Nagini’s head as if he was thinking of Apparating out of the dreamscape. Harry hoped he did. He was clinging hard to the humor and the fear he’d seen in Voldemort and didn’t want to start feeling fear of his own again.

He’s as white as a fish’s belly. And it’s not like he deserves any respect, now is it?

Harry laughed, and that seemed to be what finally pushed Voldemort to attack. His wand snapped forwards, and a coiling curse like blue light shot out of it. Harry danced backwards, and then Dash’s body was in between them, shielding him, and the blue light melted into nothingness. Voldemort stared down at his wand as though he didn’t understand what had happened.

Little fishbellies shouldn’t play with magic they don’t understand.”

Voldemort hissed out a command, and Nagini started towards them, hissing threats so thickly that Harry couldn’t understand them as individual Parseltongue words. He tried to cast a spell at her, but Dash was still in the way.

And Dash said softly, “Oh, I’ve learned some tricks since last time, since you made my bondmate a Horcrux of his own. Shall I show you?”

”You are not worthy of being called Salazar Slytherin,” Voldemort spat. “You are not worthy of bearing his soul. If you could understand the power that I have accumulated since I came back in this form—”

Yes, I’m sure you had a nice, long rest, and that makes you feel more powerful than you deserve. Listen to me, Fishbelly. Ashammmmsss!”

Harry didn’t know what that word meant, but the dreamscape shook as though Dash had slammed the full might of his body against it. Nagini reeled back, bent as if some enormous force had pressed down on her nose.

And Voldemort began to scream.

Harry peered around Dash and saw Voldemort clawing at his eyes, his fingers curled as if he was trying to pull something out of his face. But Harry couldn’t see anything piercing Voldemort’s eyes, not even the fang he had thought would be there. He gave Dash a suspicious look. What did you do?

He is right that I have to be careful how I use my venom when the Horcrux connection between you still exists. He is wrong that that means I can do nothing to him. I have learned how to manipulate the connection itself from fighting that locket he made, and the ring taught me more. I have convinced his eyes they can’t see.

Could he do the same thing to me?

He would have to be willing to twist the Horcrux connection. His fear of death prevents him from doing that.

Harry was going to object that that didn’t mean Voldemort wasn’t about to do it, but then Nagini struck. Dash turned and picked up the dream-representation of her, shaking her back and forth until Harry knew he would have snapped her spine if he was capable of doing it here. At least, when Dash hurled her into a corner of Harry’s mind, she wouldn’t be coming back to attack any time soon.

Voldemort seemed to have finally countered the magic on his eyes. His gaze was full of brilliant loathing as he slowly straightened. “Does your little bondmate know all the secrets that you bear, unworthy King of Serpents?”

Such an insult truly wounds me. And of course he doesn’t. I haven’t had time to tell them to him yet.

Harry sent a vibration of alarm down the bond. What was Dash doing, admitting this kind of weakness to Voldemort? Of course he was going to take advantage of it!

Trust me.

Harry swallowed and nodded. Of course he did. But he also didn’t see what provoking Voldemort was going to do except enrage him.

Voldemort was laughing now, a horrible sound like someone choking on chunks of food. “Oh, Harry. Did you know that your serpent bears not merely the soul of an infamous Parselmouth and the founder of my House and the begetter of my line, but the soul of an infamous madman?”

Harry didn’t say anything, because he didn’t know where Voldemort was going with this. If he was still talking about Salazar Slytherin, then Harry didn’t think that anything Dash had done during his life as that man was going to change Harry’s perception of him now.

He made sure that he would be known heroically, but that is not what I have found out.” Voldemort took a step to the side so that for a second Harry saw his face, and then Dash moved with what felt like patience to separate them again. “I have found that he murdered eighty people when he struck out at them with a spell that shifted stone and earth. They vanished into the pit he opened beneath them. They were buried alive.

Harry blinked as he remembered the stone ramp that Dash had helped construct up the side of Gryffindor Tower to Harry’s window. It made sense that he would be familiar with the magic of earth-moving.

Nothing to say?” Voldemort taunted. “Are you that shocked that a serpent who pretends to be your friend has done this?”

Harry shook his head, even though with Dash’s bulk between them he wasn’t sure that Voldemort could see it. It just—it made sense in a kind of way, but maybe it hadn’t had time to sink in yet, because he couldn’t imagine it mattering that much to him. He cleared his throat. “Is there some point to this story?”

Your basilisk is not perfect!

Aside from the fact that I never claimed to be so? Those eighty people were part of a force attacking the castle, Voldemort.” Dash yawned and gave a rippling stretch that sped all the way to his tail. “You have done worse to enemies. ‘Burying mine alive’ meant they died quickly, as they only had mud to breathe in.

You were a hypocrite if you position yourself on the side of Light now!

I don’t. Whatever gave you that impression? I position myself on Harry’s side.

Despite that, Harry could hear the undertone in Dash’s voice, or perhaps just sense it through their bond. He leaned forwards and pressed a firm hand against Dash’s spine. Of course he didn’t resent Dash or think of him differently because of what Voldemort had revealed. If nothing else, Harry hoped he was smart enough to understand when Voldemort was trying to drive a wedge between them.

Can you do any more of that magic that blinded him? he asked down the bond.

I could, but then we increase the chance that he would figure out how it works. And I think it would be better to use it when we truly need it. Dash’s tongue darted out, sampling currents of the air that Harry couldn’t feel. I want to try something, though. I couldn’t kill Nagini when I tried before. I think I may know how to, now.

Harry’s hand tightened on the edge of a scale before he could stop himself. Do you have to? I love you, Dash. I don’t want you to get hurt.

Dash pressed gently against his touch for a second, and then bobbed his head. Meanwhile, Voldemort was hissing, “I am your descendant, purer in blood and magical strength than you were! I claim the mantle of the family!

Do what you must. It’s not like I can wear cloaks or be taken seriously by human politicians anymore, since I’m a snake.

But Dash’s response was almost absent. Harry wasn’t surprised when he reared and then brought down the full force of his considerable body, not on Voldemort, but on Nagini coiled next to him.

Voldemort and Nagini both screamed at once, and then Voldemort gave a breathless laugh and called out, “Yes, yes, if you think you can hurt her, try it, basilisk! You will only encounter the strength of the ever-living!

I have within me the strength of the reborn.

Harry wasn’t sure what made Voldemort scream again when Dash stated that, but he did, and then Dash abruptly coiled. Harry could see it happening, and could feel it happening. It was as if he pulled all of himself, magic and scales and strength and the sense of him that Harry always got through their bond, into a smaller pocket. And then he wrapped that around Nagini and crushed her.

Harry felt the moment that the Horcrux in Nagini died. It was a strange sensation, like a full-body shiver happening to someone else that he could somehow sense. He tossed back his head with a gasp, and the scream that came from Voldemort’s lips was echoed by something deep within himself.

The Horcrux shard.

Dash was suddenly wrapped around Harry, the sense of him pulsing down the bond as strongly as a heart attack, and then both of them were out of the dreamscape and in a room Harry didn’t recognize. He stared around. The stones of the walls said Hogwarts, but he wasn’t in his bed, the way he knew he had been when Voldemort attacked him in the dream.

“Where,” he whispered, and then swallowed. His own voice was hoarse, as if he had spent the night screaming in unison with Voldemort as Nagini died.

I took you from the Tower. I thought the screams and any noises of the battle that came through might disturb your roommates. Dash’s eyes were luminous as he swayed back and forth over Harry. His scales were dull, and Harry swallowed.

What did destroying Nagini cost you?

Dash was silent for long enough that Harry started looking for wounds, but in the end, Dash twitched his head. It cost me magic that came from inside myself. I thought about what my venom and Fiendfyre have in common. They consume utterly. They don’t just wound life; they consume every speck of life. There are magical ways of raising the dead, even if you can’t summon their spirits, but you can’t resurrect a body killed by my venom or by Fiendfyre.

“So what did you do, if not actually use your venom against Nagini?”

I inundated her with my hatred and my anger. The parts of myself that I don’t show you very often. I thought about destroying her, getting rid of all of her, not her body or her spirit, and it worked.

“And that isn’t who you are now. Not that hatred, not that anger. It drained you.”

Yes. And so did the conversion of the emotion into magic. Dash dipped his head so that his tongue was softly sliding across Harry’s forehead. He will be angrier now that he knows two of the Horcruxes are gone. I don’t know for certain if he realizes the diary is yet, but if he does, that will increase his panic.

“You think he’s going to carry the war to us? Or attack me?”

Both fronts is what I would suspect.

Harry grimaced and nodded. Of course Voldemort would do the most annoying thing he possibly could. He leaned against Dash for a second and closed his eyes. “I wish there was something else we could do. Hurt him, prevent him from getting a foothold in my mind, send him back to sleep...anything.”

We are making progress towards defeating him. We have dealt him a great blow by destroying his Horcrux.

Harry looked up doubtfully. “Do you think we have? Or will he just go and make another one?”

Dash snorted, always an odd sound to hear from a snake, and his tail swept restlessly across the floor for a second. It is still a blow. He cannot easily subtract another piece of his soul to put into his next Horcrux. The body he has constructed depends on the bonds he has with you and the shard of him you carry within you, as well as the shard of you he carries. He cannot be sure that breaking off another piece of his soul would not break that web. He must remain as he is.

Harry took a long, slow, deep breath. He hadn’t wanted to ask that question before because he wasn’t sure he could stand to hear the answer, and because just dealing with the Horcruxes Voldemort already had had begun to seem overwhelming. But now...Now there was a light. He could see it.

Someday they might be able to run to it.

“I can do this,” he whispered. “Dash, we can do this.”

He felt the tongue of a weary basilisk sweep across the scar on his forehead again. Yes, we can.

Chapter 135: Blood of My Blood

Chapter Text

“Do you think that there’s another way I can use blood magic to help you?”

Harry had looked thoughtfully at Draco from the other side of the library table where they’d been doing their Potions homework. “Well, it might be useful if it could apply to people other than Malfoy or Black family members?”

Harry might have meant the suggestion to be an idle thought, but Draco had dug into it. The majority of the books he already had were about blood magic affecting family members, but there had to be something else. And now he had found it.

Blood magic most often refers to magic created by the spilling of blood. But it can also refer to magic acting through the blood that binds a family together. It may also refer to artifacts made of magical blood.

And there was a long chapter on how to create artifacts like this—not surprising, in a book that Draco had taken from the Restricted Section.

Draco hesitated. He was sitting on his bed, reading behind the thick curtains with a few charms that would keep anyone from approaching him or opening the curtains. He’d been about to slip outside and down to the Slytherin common room, and maybe out to the dungeons, to work on creating his first artifact.

But he looked at his pillow, and found that Ultior was awake and watching him.

“This is probably a bad idea to be doing it on my own, right?” he asked his snake. “Especially since everyone’s been after Harry for doing things on his own and not informing people about them.”

Ultior twined around his arm and curled up with his head on the back of Draco’s hand. Draco smiled reluctantly. Well, now he couldn’t do anything, because he would disturb his pet if he did.

“I can take a hint,” he said, and laid the book aside, carefully arranging his arm above his head as he canceled the Lumos Charm and lay down. It wouldn’t do to wake Ultior after he’d already decided he wasn’t going to.

*

“Then what did Dash do?”

“Destroyed Nagini.”

Severus put a hand over his face. Harry watched him for a second, then added, “It’s not like it was my idea to go into that dreamscape or confront Voldemort. It wasn’t even Dash’s idea. He just came to my rescue when he realized that Voldemort had pulled me into the dream.”

Severus sighed. “I am not blaming you,” he said, but there was a sharp struggle in his voice and in the lines around his mouth.

“But you want to.”

Severus dropped his hand and frowned at him. Then he shook his head. “Not precisely. I want to keep you safe, and I am coming to learn how impossible that might be while you share a Horcrux link with Voldemort. Which,” he added with some asperity, “is all the more reason to work on breaking it.”

“I know. And the Elder Wand will help with that.”

Severus glanced away and swore quietly. “I had hoped that you had—”

“Forgotten about that? Dash said you would say so.” Harry shrugged. “I know you want to keep me safe, sir, but you have to learn to put up with this the same way I have to put up with my friends and you endangering yourselves by working on destroying the Horcruxes.”

“Then everyone is in danger, and I suppose we should just put up with that?”

“Yeah.”

“At least say yes if you are defying my authority so cheekily.”

“Yes, sir!”

Severus rolled his eyes. Harry felt something inside him relax. He knew that Severus was a lot different than the Dursleys, but still a small part of him rejoiced and laughed and thought it was amazing every time he got away with something they wouldn’t have tolerated.

“Very well,” Severus said, with a long-suffering expression on his face. “This is what we are going to do. I will be present when you duel Dash to take the Elder Wand away from his influence. I will examine you before and after with diagnostic spells to be sure that you have taken no damage and the Elder Wand has not influenced your magical core in any way.”

Harry blinked. “It could do that?”

“I don’t know for certain, but the Deathly Hallows are some of the most powerful artifacts in existence. Of course it might.”

Harry nodded. “Then I’m glad that you’ll be there. I would never have thought of those kinds of precautions. I’m sort of surprised Dash didn’t suggest them.”

“He probably didn’t need to because he knew I would.” Severus looked as if he’d swallowed one of Dumbledore’s lemon drops. “In the meantime, you will tell your friends what you are doing, and all your professors. If something takes you out of classes for several days, then they’ll know.”

“What about Draco?”

“You will tell him as well, of course.”

“I mean that he might want to be there when I have the duel with Dash.”

Severus stood up and loomed over Harry as if he was a stormcloud passing over the sun. “He will not be. I forbid it.”

“You were the one who made the point that I can’t keep my friends from knowing what I’m doing, sir, and even participating if they want to.”

Severus leveled him with a particularly deadly stare, but unfortunately for him, it still wasn’t a patch on a basilisk’s. Harry waited long enough to be sure that Severus wasn’t going to give in and let Harry do what he should be able to do, and then sighed gently. “Severus, if Draco wants to be there, then I have to let him be there. I can’t treat him as lesser than Ron and Hermione. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“I would not suggest that your Gryffindor friends be there, either.”

“But you didn’t act as though it would be unreasonable to even invite them to be there. Why, Severus? What’s the matter with Draco?’

“You will need your utmost concentration on this duel,” Severus said, sitting down and staring at him with disapproval that did actually make Harry squirm a bit in his seat. “The Elder Wand will sense anything less than that concentration and refuse to leave Dash, if all the legends about it are true, even if Dash never intends to hurt you or win. And Draco, I have noticed, is a distraction.”

“I’m not a teenage boy controlled by my hormones!”

“Draco would still be a distraction.”

“No, he won’t.” Harry calmed his voice down when Severus gave him another warning glare. “Severus, I promise. I’m not going to let myself glance over at Draco and start daydreaming about kissing him during the duel. And anything else—to say anything else would happen is insulting to Draco, and to me. Do I act like I can’t control myself on a daily basis?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

Severus frowned at him, then sighed. “Very well. Tell him and allow him to be there.”

“I won’t use the word allow. But thank you.”

*

Draco could feel his blood tingling under his skin as he stood in the middle of the Chamber of Secrets, which had been deemed the only space large enough for Harry and Dash’s duel. For once, he wasn’t thinking about how he was going to use his magic to help Harry.

It was enough to watch a legend about to happen.

Professor Snape hovered tensely nearby. He had about fifty potions vials at his feet, although Draco didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he would need any of them. Hermione and Ron stood next to Draco, behind the same cordon of golden magic that Snape had insisted was necessary to contain him.

Draco looked around the Chamber one more time, memorizing the placement of the pillars and stones that might be different in a minute. Then he fixed his gaze on Harry and Dash. He didn’t intend to remove it while the duel lasted.

Dash crawled into the middle of the Chamber of Secrets and lowered his head a little. Harry walked out to face him, looking absurdly small. He bowed, too. At Dash’s side was the Elder Wand, a small twig that Draco could only see by craning his neck.

“Begin,” Professor Snape said.

Dash darted his head forwards, so quickly that Draco gasped. But Harry dodged and said something too softly for Draco to hear, or maybe just too softly for him to hear over Hermione’s screaming and Ron’s swearing.

The spell that blasted into Dash wrapped around his mouth and tied it shut. Spiderwebs? Draco thought, staring. It really did look like spiderwebs. He hadn’t had the slightest notion that Harry knew a spell like that.

He scowled. He’s going to teach me that spell when this is over.

Dash reared his head back, coming within a meter of smashing into the ceiling, and then swept his tail out. Harry leaped over it and then reached out his hand and suddenly clutched a broom. Draco blinked. His Firebolt was down here, somehow? Draco didn’t know where that had come from, either.

From Professor Snape’s displeased hiss next to him that was almost Parseltongue, that wasn’t something Harry had discussed with his guardian, either.

Dash aimed his tail and sent it at Harry like a spear, but it was already too late, with Harry rising on his broom until he was the one to almost reach the ceiling of the Chamber. Then he started to circle like he was chasing the Snitch. Draco wondered what the hell he could be about. Dash didn’t have the use of his fangs right now, but he could still raise his head and try to smash Harry against the stone.

A second later, that was precisely what happened.

But Harry whirled to the side, so fast that for an instant Draco saw a blur of him in the air like a pinwheel, and dropped onto the back of Dash’s neck. Dash made an intense hissing sound through the spiderwebs around his mouth. Draco hoped he was proud, instead of angry.

Harry lunged up Dash’s neck, using scales like steps. Dash began to twist and roll to the side, apparently to the crush him. But Harry made it all the way to his head first, and poised his wand right over Dash’s right eye, and yelled, “Surrender!”

The shout seemed to echo back from the stones of the Chamber in a way that Draco thought Tom Riddle’s dying scream must have.

Dash froze. For a second, he lay there with his head swaying back and forth, as if he was considering his chances of trying to do something to Harry anyway. Draco held his breath, then found himself coughing and swallowing as Hermione pounded him on the back.

Dash hissed finally and lowered his head, never disturbing Harry’s wand where it pointed at his eye. Harry nodded, stepped off the head, and said something to Dash in Parseltongue before he leaned over to pick up the Elder Wand.

There was a flare of light so brilliant that Draco flung his hand up to hide his eyes even though he was dying to see what happened to Harry. The light swung wildly around the room, blazing and lighting up the furthest corners. Draco whimpered breathlessly for a second and then found that there was a louder sound than that: Dash’s echoing hiss, which rose and then died down like a surging wave.

Draco finally uncovered his eyes when the brightness stopped shining. Harry was swaying in place, staring at the Elder Wand with his mouth slightly open as though he’d been asking the answer to a question and the Wand had replied.

Then he collapsed.

Draco tried to leap the golden rope of light that cordoned him off, but Snape was faster. He was over to Harry and Dash in seconds, bending and forcing a vial of potion down Harry’s throat. He had to massage his throat to get him to swallow it, Draco saw. Harry was fine, or at least from the sound of his breathing he was fine, but he was unconscious.

“What happened?” Draco whispered. He looked up and found Dash’s head swaying slowly back and forth, but Dash said nothing. Not that he could have interpreted the Parseltongue without Harry being awake, Draco thought mournfully.

“An answer I would like to have myself,” Snape said, and Draco shied away before he thought about it. Snape’s eyes were resting on Dash, and they were merciless. Draco found himself not wanting to get in between.

*

He never said this could happen. He never said this could be a result.

Severus worked furiously, his hands flying as he dumped other restorative potions, a painkiller, and a potion that should bring Harry back to consciousness into his recalcitrant ward. Nothing was working. Harry still lay sprawled on the floor with that same stentorian breathing, and Dash still swayed above them with light movements.

“You said nothing like this would happen,” Severus snarled at Dash, who only regarded him with a blaze of yellow eyes under his lids and said nothing.

“Um, Professor,” Granger spoke up, biting her lip when Severus spun to look at her. “Technically he only said that things would be all right.”

“And a period of unconsciousness for your friend that has no visible cause is all right, then?”

“I mean, maybe he has to adjust to the Elder Wand or something,” Weasley muttered, blushing as Severus turned to look at him. “I didn’t say it was a good theory, sir.”

Severus continued to watch Dash, who continued to watch him with no sign of pity or remorse. Severus wanted to break his scales, snap his neck, send his great head and scarlet plume sprawling on the floor—

He reined himself in as sharply as he could. That way lay grief and a rift between them that would be hard to mend. He reached out and curled his fingers gently around one of Harry’s hands, trying to tell by the warmth and pallor of his skin how close he was to waking.

He discovered that he was holding a clenched fist. Severus frowned, turning Harry’s hand over. There was nothing that should have been in his left hand, not when the right one was clutching the Elder Wand.

But Harry’s hand was undeniably curled shut. Severus wrenched at it, and found that some small hard object was in the middle, or at least it felt that way. Harry’s hand still wouldn’t open. He braced his fingers on either side of Harry’s wrist and got ready to try and remove the object by main force.

Dash’s head knocked into him and sent him sprawling.

Severus sat where he was for a moment, stunned, recovering. Then he turned his attention on Dash and stared at him in silence. He could feel the outrage rising like bubbles in his throat. In a moment, he would open his mouth and says something unforgivable.

For the sake of Harry, who was lying now on the floor with Dash’s body partially overlapping him, he managed to hold back. But he did say, “You know what that object is.”

Dash bobbed his head.

“The Resurrection Stone?” Severus hadn’t seen it in the Chamber, how no idea how it would have separated from the Horcrux ring in the first place, but it was possible.

Another nod.

Severus braced his hands beneath him and stood slowly. Absolute silence came from the corner where the children stood, and he was glad of it. If Weasley or Granger had laughed now, if Draco had made some snide remark, Severus would have spoken the unforgivable words to them. “Does he need to remain in this sleep until whatever is changing with the mastery of the Hallows has finished changing?”

Nod.

Severus held himself back from saying or doing anything for a moment, remaining quiet in the middle of the room. Then he moved forwards and gently Lightened Harry’s body before lifting him into his arms. He met Dash’s gaze, or as much of it as he could behind the shielded eyes. “It would not be wise to try and keep me from taking Harry to get the help he needs,” he snarled quietly.

Dash’s tail twitched, as if to say that he wouldn’t dream of it, and then he accompanied them back to the doorway of the Chamber of Secrets, only turning around when he’d lifted them on his head through the pipe back to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

Severus allowed the children to say whatever they wished to the unconscious Harry, and then took him to his own quarters and placed him, motionless, on the bed. He stared at him in silence, before turning away to Floo Poppy. It would take some time to debate with her so that she would accept Harry being under Severus’s care instead of her own in the hospital wing, but the thought suited him better than sitting beside Harry’s bed, unable to do anything.

*

Harry floated in the middle of a vast green void.

It was like being on the inside of an emerald. Bright veins and sparks dashed past him. Now and then he drifted past a darker line that might be the inside of a facet. He reached out and found that he could touch nothing except cold mist. He called out for Severus, Draco, Dash, Ron, Hermione.

Nothing except silence came back to him. Harry wondered for a moment if he was dead.

Not dead.

The voice vibrated uneasily under his skin. It was as if he heard his bones speak. Harry turned his head and saw a trio of objects hovering in front of him. He somehow wasn’t surprised to see his Invisibility Cloak spread out like a triangle. The Wand and the Stone lay on top of that.

This is where you must be to master us.

“I thought I’d have to master the Stone separately,” Harry said aloud. He had no idea how to speak silently like the Hallows did. “I thought I was only getting the Elder Wand from Dash.”

No. All of us. And now we must see if you are truly worthy of owning us.

That was all the warning Harry had before the Hallows flew at him like rival players in Quidditch. He darted aside, suddenly able to control his movement. The Hallows streaked past him and turned around, glaring as much as they could without eyes.

Hold still and let us burn you. Or do you never want to wake from this sleep?

“I want to wake up, but letting you burn me doesn’t sound conducive to survival.”

Those who will be our Masters must undergo a trial of pain.

Harry reminded himself that he was doing this to help Dash—and honestly, the only part of this place that comforted him was that he couldn’t sense Dash’s warnings not to do this kind of thing if he couldn’t feel the bond. He spread his arms, and held still, although it was hard, when the Hallows rushed at him again.

He had thought it would be physical pain that he had to endure. Instead, grief flooded him. Harry screamed in shock before the sorrow grew so intense that he had to focus only on it, and he didn’t even know if he was still screaming or not.

He knelt beside graves, and wept. He walked through the rain and contemplated killing himself. He brought back the shades of the dead, and they hurried him on to death with their whispers. He fell dead to the floor and saw his enemies claim his wand. He brewed potions to extend his life and then grieved as he watched others he loved die. He floated, trapped as a helpless ghost, while others repeated the same mistakes that had killed him. He was torn apart by monsters, stabbed in the heart by murderers, caught in spell crossfire, died of ravaging fevers, slipped away in the night with ice-cold hands clutching at his heart and the knowledge of who would find his body in the morning.

Stop! Please stop!

We cannot stop. To master us, you must understand what is left behind by death.

Harry surfaced gasping for a moment from yet another vision of a circle of mourning faces. Not experience death?

There was no answer. Instead, the Hallows pulled him back into visions of watching people thrash themselves to death from poison and plague, and dying of old age and seeing people fall to their knees, and dying young and watching spouses grieve until their hearts broke.

The grief piled up until it overflowed. Harry reached desperately for his bond with Dash, for his memories of Draco and Ron and Hermione and Severus. He had to back out, had to remember who he was and what he had to live for.

The Hallows tugged him back under. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? said a sharp, rasping voice in his ears, as Harry whirled through burning alive and watching others burn alive, fighting Muggles and watching villages half-destroyed by them until the wizards fled by Apparating. To master us, to take up the burden that would have weighed someone else down otherwise? To take our curse from your bondmate?

Harry did his best to struggle out of the pain again, and remember what Dash had said. The Hallows were bored and liked novelty. They had cursed Dash for doing little more than making mistakes.

He said, I don’t think that you can subject me to every kind of grief without making me go mad. How many times have you done this, anyway?

There was silence. Harry opened his eyes and found himself floating in the inside of what seemed to be a giant emerald, again. He turned around and studied the three Hallows in front of him, which seemed to shimmer a little more than they had before.

Well? Harry demanded, this time silently.

There has been no Master of Death before you, said the sullen trio of voices in his head.

That’s what I thought. So you’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you? Just to suit your sense of what’s proper.

What’s proper is very important! If the Hallows had had a tail, it would have been lashing the way Crookshanks’s tail sometimes did.

But you’re making it up. I’m going to wake up now, and I’m going to have mastered you anyway.

Harry turned and hurled himself at one of the darker veins that ran overhead, the ones that he suspected formed the outer shell of the dream he was trapped in. There was a roaring, cracking noise over his head, and the shards rained down on him. Harry powered through them and found himself opening his eyes on a bed in Snape’s quarters.

Severus leaned over him and stared into his eyes for a long moment.

“I came back as myself,” Harry croaked. His throat was so dry that Severus handed him a glass of water even before he could ask. Harry swallowed most of it and lay back, half-shutting his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Nearly midnight. You have been asleep for seven hours.”

Severus’s voice was tight. Harry reached out and clasped his hand. “I’m sorry. The Hallows wanted to test me, and it was a long time before I could tell them to bugger off and wake up.”

“Tell them to bugger off…?”

But the magical exhaustion from the duel and whatever exactly had happened when he began to master the Hallows had moved through Harry again. He found himself drifting. He did reach out down the bond with Dash, though, before he fell asleep, and say, You’re free.

Back came such a wordless wave of love that Harry fell asleep again smiling.

Chapter 136: Destruction

Chapter Text

“You are about to witness the destruction of the diadem and the ring.”

Hermione shifted a little as she saw Professor Snape finish the ring of crushed herbs—she didn’t recognize all of them, but she knew aconite when she saw it—around Ravenclaw’s diadem and the Gaunt ring. She would have loved to spend a little more time with the diadem, examining it and answering some historical questions.

But Professor Snape and Dash had both said it was too dangerous, and Hermione knew better than to go against them when they both agreed.

Professor Snape stepped back until he was almost against one of the pillars in the Chamber of Secrets. Dash waited by the door, and Harry stood next to him with one hand on his scales and a flask of something in his hand. Hermione thought it was a potion, but she had to admit she didn’t recognize one that bubbled like that on sight.

“Ready, then?” Harry asked, and turned to hiss something to Dash when Professor Snape nodded. Dash coiled his body back along the wall as Harry approached the two Horcruxes lying in the center of the circle.

The diadem began to twitch, and the ring rolled to the side. Hermione caught her breath.

Harry didn’t seem afraid. He just lifted his hand, and for a moment, black seemed to flash from his fingers, followed by a complicated burst of grey light. Hermione found herself shielding her eyes, even though it wasn’t really very bright. Then Harry whirled around and hurled the grey shining thing at the circle.

It blazed away from him, like a dull Snitch, and then hung in place just above the crushed aconite. Hermione still couldn’t focus on it, but she thought it might be the Resurrection Stone. It shone and rotated, and the two Horcruxes abruptly froze, as though the stone had placed chains on them.

Can it do that? Hermione had to admit she had no idea, and questioning Harry about the capabilities of the Deathly Hallows didn’t seem like it would be productive right now.

Harry curled his fingers together and spat something so complicated that Hermione honestly wasn’t sure if it was Parseltongue or Latin or English. The Cloak suddenly swirled around his shoulders, but Hermione could still see him. And there was a rattle in his pocket as though the Elder Wand was there and yearning to come out, even though it didn’t actually do that.

Then Harry raced forwards and tossed the steaming contents of the potions flask on the Horcruxes, both at the same time.

Hermione shrank backwards and put her hands over her ears as she heard faint, thin, far shrieks. Not a potion, basilisk venom, she thought, queasy and sick, as she watched the ring begin to dissolve. The diadem resisted a moment longer, the sapphire in it burning as though it could set the poison on fire.

And then both of the Horcruxes were gone, and enormous black stains were left on the stones in their places. Harry sank to his knees, panting. The Cloak settled down, and now part of it was making part of Harry’s body vanish. The Resurrection Stone fell to the floor with a little clatter, and then rolled back to Harry and tucked itself into a robe pocket that Hermione noticed wasn’t the same one the Elder Wand was in.

“Wow,” Ron said, shaking his head and rubbing his ear with one hand as though he’d been deafened by the shrieks. “Why did you use the Hallows for that, Harry?”

“We were kind of testing a theory,” Harry said, and leaned to the side and stretched as though his back was hurting him. Hermione opened her mouth to recommend a healing potion for that, but Professor Snape came over and forced one down Harry’s throat before she could. “I didn’t want to destroy two Horcruxes at the same time, but both Dash and Severus thought the Hallows would make doing it easier.”

“They did make doing it easier,” Professor Snape said, and then force-fed Harry another healing potion before he stepped back and stared at him critically. “Not that I think you should have done that,” he added, sounding like he was continuing an argument they’d had before. Hermione clamped her hands over her mouth so that she wouldn’t give a shocked giggle.

She was still wary around Professor Snape, sometimes, but it was harder when she saw him acting like a father to Harry.

“You were the one who wanted to destroy two Horcruxes at the same time!”

“No, Harry. I wanted Dash and I to destroy them, and you to watch from behind protective layers of shielding. Or preferably not be in the room at all.”

Draco looked as if he saw this all the time, but Ron’s ears were red and his eyes were a little wild. Hermione coughed and spoke before Ron could say something explosive just to get rid of the tension. “Do you think that Voldemort felt that?”

“I would not be surprised,” Professor Snape said, his voice slow and considering as he handed Harry another potion. Dash slithered forwards to examine the remains of the Horcruxes, or so it seemed to Hermione; she had to admit she wasn’t always the greatest at reading snake body language, even after knowing Dash for three years. “Which means that he may grow desperate…”

He shot a sharp look at Harry, or at least at the scar on his forehead. Harry sighed heavily. “Yes, if he does, you’ll be the first to know.”

Hermione thought Professor Snape didn’t really look satisfied at that, but then, she wasn’t sure what would have satisfied him. She wasn’t sure what would have satisfied herself.

*

Harry opened his eyes and found himself back inside the thick-veined emerald that the Hallows had confined him to when he was unconscious. He sighed and folded his arms. “Seriously? Why do you want to talk to me this time?”

The air in front of him spun, but only one of the Hallows appeared. It was the Elder Wand, and it had a pulsing, shimmering light to it that made Harry’s head ache a little. It danced back and forth. Harry’s eyes followed it, but only for a moment. Then he looked around for the others.

I am the only one here.

“Why?” Harry countered, stubbornly speaking aloud. He had the feeling the wand didn’t want him to, but, well, screw what the wand wanted.

Because you used the Stone today to destroy the Horcruxes, and you are comfortable with the Cloak. But you refuse to use me. You keep up with that pathetic holly thing. Why?

Harry stared a little more, then said, “If that last word had a touch more whine to it, then I would swear you’re jealous.”

The Wand sped towards him, pointed at his eye. Harry held himself still, not flinching. This was a dream, which meant he could feel the bond connecting him to Dash, for one thing. And he doubted the Elder Wand would really stab his eye out. It would be difficult for Harry to be the powerful Master of the Death the Wand wanted, then.

It did halt a few centimeters in front of him and then floated back. What must I do to convince you to put the holly thing aside and fully bond with me?

Harry frowned. “I thought I bonded with you when I became the Master of Death.”

You accepted the Hallows as a whole. Not me specifically.

“Well, I don’t reckon there is much you can do. I don’t want ultimate power. I like my wand. It suits me.”

I could give you so much more.

“What, though? You can’t resurrect my parents.” Harry had thought about calling up their shades with the Resurrection Stone, but he didn’t need the Tale of the Three Brothers to warn him that was a bad idea. They would never be his real parents, or even as real as the reflections in the Mirror of Erised. “What should I demand from you that I don’t already have? I’m building a family, I have my friends, I have Dash, I have Draco. What?”

The Elder Wand paused. Then it said, You do not want money? You do not want power? You do not want…

Harry laughed. “Even you can’t come up with many other things that I should want. And no, I don’t. I want to be left alone with my friends and family. I want to destroy the rest of Voldemort’s Horcruxes. I’ll do that even if you refuse to help. I want to bond more deeply with my basilisk. How can you help me do that?”

The Elder Wand said nothing. Instead, it fuzzed and faded from in front of him, and Harry found himself in a more ordinary blackness, which became a dream.

*

Draco smiled grimly as he read the letter Bellatrix had sent by owl from Voldemort’s hiding place. She wouldn’t remember writing the letter at all, much less attaching it to the owl. That was the best method that Draco had been able to settle on, after discussion with Harry. There was still the chance that someone would see her writing or posting it, but Bellatrix remained frightening enough to chase someone away if they did that.

And vanishing to give direct reports would have been even riskier, if another Death Eater discovered her absences.

Draco tucked the scroll into his left sleeve and went to find Harry. He found him on top of the Astronomy Tower, watching as Dash played below with some of their allies, including a few werewolves from Whitepaw’s pack. It was noon on a Saturday, so there was no chance of them shifting, but they could use the movements and feints Dash taught them when they did assume wolf form.

“Draco.” Harry turned to him with a hand out, a rich smile spreading over his face.

“Harry,” Draco said, and walked up to him and started snogging him, not caring that they were in full view of their allies below. Harry’s hands flailed for a second before they settled snuggly around Draco’s hips.

“Not that I’m complaining, but was there a reason for that?” Harry asked, licking his lips as he stared at Draco with dazed eyes.

“Yes,” Draco said. He took the scroll out from his sleeve and extended it to Harry. “Read it.”

Harry accepted it with a faint doubtful look and bent his head. A second later, his eyes shot up to Draco. “Is she serious?”

“Well, no. I think she’s probably still a Lestrange, not a Black anymore.”

Harry punched Draco in the shoulder, presumably for that extremely Gryffindor pun, and then shook his head and stared back down at the scroll. “So the destruction of those Horcruxes has wounded Voldemort that much?”

“Yes.” Draco grinned and leaned back, ignoring the way that some of the people on the ground were gaping at him. Yes, you wish you had Harry, but you don’t, and you never will, he called silently to them. “From what she says, a part of his strength was taken away from him with each one. I suppose the destruction of the diary in our second year didn’t hurt him that much because he was still a wraith at that point. But now we’ve destroyed four of them in close succession. What did you think would happen to him?”

“I don’t know. I suppose I thought they couldn’t hurt him even when they were destroyed because they’re meant to make him immortal.”

Draco gloried in the fact that he was the one who had brought that sparkle back to Harry’s eyes. “Did you read the whole thing yet?”

“No, someone was distracting me with horrible puns,” Harry retorted, but he did look down and keep reading. He pursed his lips in a silent whistle as he reached the end and turned around to stare at Draco again. “So. No jokes this time. He’s lost the use of his hand?”

Draco nodded. “And that’s only what she could see. There might be more, but he would have hidden it.”

“He’s really going to lose, then.”

“Didn’t you know that already?”

“It was something that was hard to appreciate intellectually, even if I thought I understood it,” Harry said vaguely, still staring into the distance. “Well, at any rate, he’s going to lose as soon as we understand how to get this bloody one in me destroyed.”

“I know. But we’ll figure it out.” Draco wrapped an arm around his waist. “Between battle Legilimency and the Deathly Hallows, we have a good chance.”

Harry shifted about for a moment, his gaze still fixed ahead. Then he turned around and stared at Draco. Draco caught his breath. He hadn’t seen that particular look in months.

“What about this—” he said, and then let his voice trail away. What should he care about what had aroused Harry, except that something had, and Harry wanted to share that sensation with him?

Harry tugged insistently on his hand. Draco yielded and let Harry march him off the Tower.

He did look back once to see Dash offering them an amused twist of his neck, right before he knocked down one of the yelping werewolves.

*

Harry shoved Draco back onto his bed. They’d come up here, sneaking through the common room under the Invisibility Cloak, and now Harry pulled the curtains of his bed shut and spelled them so they would stay that way. He didn’t want to be interrupted.

Draco propped himself up on his elbow and stared at Harry with his mouth open a little. Harry grinned at him and then pounced on him. Draco gasped as Harry slammed their mouths together and started unbuttoning Draco’s robes at the same time.

God, Harry was on fire. Just the thought that they were going to win this war, that they were going to be free in the future, and that Draco was the person who had first really made him believe that—

It was amazing. The way it made him feel was amazing. And it meant that Harry wanted to do something amazing for Draco in return.

He unbuttoned Draco’s robes clumsily, because it was hard to stop kissing him, and then squirmed impatiently down his body and slid his pants off. Draco had sucked in his breath and was holding it, his stomach tense with it.

Harry poked him in the belly and made him lose all the air. Then he licked his lips and clamped his mouth around Draco’s erection.

Draco got all the air back again, or that was what it sounded like, blurting and bleating. His arm flailed out. He nearly smacked Harry in the ear. Meanwhile, Harry had to pull back, coughing. Sucking his boyfriend definitely wasn’t as easy as snogging him.

“Let’s slow down,” Draco said, his cheeks flushed a brilliant pink. He reached down and drew Harry slowly up so that he could kiss him again. Harry glanced down and hoped that his own flush wasn’t as bright as it felt like.

“We can go slowly if we want,” Draco whispered.

“I want to suck you off, though,” Harry said, barely able to get the words out. It had felt so natural when he was doing it, but now that he had to actually talk about it, his throat hurt and he wanted nothing so badly as to look away from Draco’s gaze.

“I know. And I want that, too.” Draco’s hips canted up just from thinking about it. “But let’s go slowly.”

And he kissed Harry and eased him back down his body so that Harry felt as if Draco’s hands were everywhere, somehow cradling both his hips and his head at the same time. Then he was kneeling on the bed, and Draco was helpfully lifting his cock, and Harry swallowed and lowered his mouth.

This time, he didn’t try to go so deeply, and Draco was expecting it. The little excited hiss he made was still wonderful. Harry eased his mouth down further, and further. Draco was breathing through his nose at this point, keeping his legs on the bed by sheer force of will.

“You can move,” Harry whispered, but his words came out as vibrations against Draco’s skin. He pulled back and repeated it.

“Don’t—want to choke you.”

“I might like that,” Harry said, and Draco reacted by freezing. Harry put his hands on Draco’s hips and took him in again, this time hollowing his cheeks and sucking slowly instead of trying to make him come right away.

It was better this way, his nose full of the scent of sweat, and Draco breathing out hopelessly and helplessly, his hands rising and falling into place on Harry’s shoulders. Harry’s skin tingled under his robes, and that was when he fully realized that he hadn’t ever undressed. Well, it didn’t matter. What mattered was the heat of his mouth, and the way he was going to make Draco absolutely come.

He still didn’t do everything right. He knew he lapped too hard, and once he scraped with his teeth and Draco whined a complaint. Harry whispered an apology, pulling his mouth off completely, and Draco glared at him.

“I didn’t need to hear that that badly.”

Harry grinned and leaned down again, and this time, he thought he got it mostly right. At the very least, Draco froze again, and then grabbed Harry’s hair and hung on. And being forced down a little on Draco’s cock was good.

He was hard and twitching, so hard that he honestly thought he might come before Draco did. But either way, he shaped his mouth in the right way, and he sucked, and he moved his tongue a little to the side, and Draco did come for him.

Harry managed to swallow part of it, and thought he was doing well at that. So much just dripped out of the side of his mouth, and he coughed and wiped it, and then he looked up and saw how Draco’s face was, and he smiled.

Draco forced him abruptly down on the bed, so abruptly that Harry’s head spun as it bounced off the pillows. That was better than having it bounce off the bedpost, though, the way it almost had. Harry lay there in a daze and watched as Draco ripped at his jeans. Then his own mouth was in place, and he was waving his wand around, too. Harry blinked and wondered if he was casting a spell to make his mouth hotter.

Do they even have spells like that?

But then he found out what the spell really did, as Draco’s slick fingers slid behind him and pressed against his entrance. Harry gasped and spread his legs, and Draco’s fingers were dipping inside him before he thought about it, faster than his sluggish brain could react.

Harry’s back arched, and he thought, I hope I’m not dirty, and Draco, what?, and his mouth opened and blurted something—

And Draco swirled his fingers around like he was stirring bathwater or something, and then his fingers found something else. Harry screamed.

He flung his arm across his mouth a minute after, because Draco had pulled his head back from Harry’s cock and was looking at him in wonder.

“Knew it,” Draco said, which made no sense, and lowered his head like he was going to put his mouth back.

Harry was more concerned with something else. “D-did we cast s-silencing spells on these curtains?” he asked. He turned his head away, even though his hips were jutting and yearning for Draco’s mouth. And his arse for Draco’s fingers.

It felt unreal.

“I don’t know, I don’t care, your roommates aren’t up here and no one came looking when you screamed like that, be quiet, I want to get back to it,” Draco said, so all at once that Harry’s brain could only figure out the words by going back over them, and then dipped his head and fastened his mouth around Harry.

And sucked.

At the same time, his fingers swirled around inside Harry again.

Harry kept in a cry this time by the sheer force of his arm coming down over his mouth. His body wasn’t helping. Pleasure zinged through him like the first time he had tasted sweets, after he came to Hogwarts. He humped at the air, or maybe Draco’s hand, and it was good, it was warm, it was wet where Draco sucked his cock, he wanted—

He couldn’t even name what he wanted.

But still, Draco gave it to him.

Fingers in his arse, mouth fastened around him, and Harry came. Draco swallowed expertly, at least until he coughed and sat back, rubbing his lips. But Harry could still see the smug smile they’d curved into, and how he crawled up Harry’s body to settle next to him, rubbing off the white traces somewhere along the way.

“Did you clean your hand, too?” Harry muttered when Draco reached up to caress his hair.

“Maybe.”

Harry jerked back, but Draco laughed softly and caught him close. “Yes, of course I did. It’s one of the first things I learned to do after I used that spell.”

“You’ve—used that spell before?”

“Yes. On myself.” Draco spoke as if it was completely normal, even though it was making Harry’s face turn a heart-rending red. “I must say, I would have used it on you sooner if I knew what a reaction you were going to have.”

Harry buried his face in the pillow. Draco pulled his hair out of the way and kissed behind his ear. “Don’t worry. I think it’s sweet. You’re so into me. You’re so into what I can give you.” His voice was already getting breathy again.

“I don’t want another round right now. I want to sleep.”

“Fair enough.” Draco flopped a hand on his hip and closed his eyes. Harry waited a second, and then picked up his own wand where it had almost rolled under the pillow and cast a detection spell.

No, he hadn’t put silencing charms up around the bed.

He buried his face even deeper and hoped like hell no one had come in.

Chapter 137: Affliction

Chapter Text

“You do have to study for the OWL’s, Harry.”

Harry sighed and turned away from the common room fire. He knew from his bond with Dash that he was moving through the pipes that led to the Chamber of Secrets right now, which meant he at least wasn’t outside in the thunderstorm pounding down on the castle. “I know, Hermione. But I’m more concerned about why he hasn’t made a move in the last month.”

Hermione still glanced around before she leaned forwards to answer, even though all the other students were involved in the game of Exploding Snap taking place on the other side of the common room. “Maybe he’s too crippled to? That sounds like the best theory to me.”

“It’s not what Dash thinks.”

“Well, if Dash has a theory, mate, you’ll probably believe it, right?” Ron yawned noisily and propped his feet up on the back of the couch, scattering parchments and crumpling up the study schedule Hermione had made for them. He blithely ignored the way Hermione hissed at him. “He’s right most of the time.”

“Three years ago, would you have believed you’d be saying that about a snake?”

“He’s a bloody basilisk, mate. Not a regular snake.”

“That would have just made it worse—”

“Harry. Study.”

Harry sighed and went back to memorizing lists of Potions ingredients that Hermione had shoved at him. He knew that he needed to know these for the OWL’s. He knew the bloody tests were important, too, since it seemed that he would be living through the war after all, something he had once questioned.

But his mind worried and nagged at the idea. The reports Bellatrix had sent to Draco said that Voldemort hadn’t recovered the use of his left hand. He spent a lot of his time secluded in a room that doubled as a Potions lab, without telling Bellatrix what he was doing in there. He had also acquired Potions ingredients that had made Severus frown, because he said they were all either extremely common or almost useless.

Perhaps Voldemort really was so wounded that he was flailing around to find a solution and hadn’t found one yet.

But Harry worried.

*

Lucius glanced up slowly from the books spread on the desk in front of him, despite knowing that Narcissa never would have allowed this man so far into the house if she didn’t trust him. “Ah, Greengrass. You’ve been rather absent of late.”

“I wanted to wait and see what happened with Lord Slytherin.”

Lucius sighed and turned his chair fully to face Clarence. He’d taken a seat across from Lucius, near the fireplace, and looked as if he could sit there until the world ended. “Harry doesn’t like it when you call him that.”

“He’ll have to deal with it. He hasn’t kept me informed of his plans. I sent him a letter, and he ignored it.”

“That’s because you told him to give up his alliance with the werewolves. Did you really think that was going to work, Clarence?”

“I wondered whether they were going to be loyal to him. I did hear about the battle in front of Hogwarts, and they were loyal enough then. But how long will that last? They know little of that particular value.”

“Just like you?”

Clarence bristled, but then leaned slowly back in the chair. “I wanted to have a more prominent place in the court that I suspected was forming around Lord Slytherin. But he seems to be focusing on battle-alliances, instead, more than Ministry politics.”

“If you regain his trust, then you might be one of his prongs aimed in that particular direction,” Lucius offered, and saw the greed in Clarence’s eyes. “We would like to have some information. For example, Cyan Scrimgeour escaped his confinement and his punishment for attacking Harry at the one party he hosted. Can you blame him for not being eager to get into close quarters with your kind again?”

“I had nothing to do with Cyan’s escape.”

“But someone did, and it’s more likely to be someone who was at that party and pretending to be one of Harry’s allies than otherwise. Find out who it was, Clarence. That’s your ticket back into Harry’s good graces.”

Clarence considered it, then nodded. “I notice you address him more often by first name than by title. Bold of you, Lucius.”

“I know him well enough to know his dislike of that title,” Lucius said. “And, well, it would hardly do to be so formal with my future son-in-law.”

“What? You don’t have—”

Then Clarence went still in a satisfying way. Lucius did his best not to show how satisfying it was, and only nodded. “Harry has been clear about his preference for my son,” he said, and studied Clarence.

The other man sat in silence for a moment longer, then drew a breath. “You have all the luck, Lucius.”

“You could have had it if you had maintained closer contact with Harry. Or if you had volunteered to take up an active role in his army, the way Elena did.”

Clarence shuddered a little, and said only, “I want to stay far away from Elena,” before he left the room.

*

“Potter? Can we talk a minute?”

Harry turned around. For a minute, he didn’t think he knew the stiff, pale girl who stood behind him. Then he frowned a little. “Daphne Greengrass, right?”

“Yes.” The girl looked beyond him to where Ron and Hermione were just getting up from the table, the way they tended to do when any Slytherin who wasn’t Draco or one of his acknowledged allies approached him. “Look, I want this to be in private. I—can’t keep you from telling anyone else, but I want this to be in private.”

Harry studied her for long enough to make Greengrass shift uneasily, then nodded to Ron and Hermione. “You might as well remain here. You know what I have protecting me.”

The reminder of Dash just seemed to make Greengrass stiffen more, but Ron grinned cheerfully and sat down at the Gryffindor table again. “Right, mate. See you in a while.”

Hermione gave him a more circumspect smile, and more of a warning look at Greengrass, who looked as if she was going to ignore her anyway. “Yes, of course, Harry,” she said, and went back to the thick book that she’d taken from the library.

Harry led Greengrass out of the Great Hall and across the entrance hall until they were next to one of the corridors that no one normally took unless they were on their way to Charms. He didn’t think they needed more privacy than that, given that Greengrass had approached him in front of the entire school at breakfast. “Yes?”

“My father told me that Draco’s father gave him a task.”

“Yes.” Harry wasn’t surprised by that, since Lucius had owled him the other day. “Someone who attacked me at a party managed to escape from prison in the Ministry. I want to know what happened to him.” He paused. It didn’t look as though anything of this was news to Greengrass, which made Harry wonder about her reasons for approaching him. “Why are you upset about it?”

“Because my father had nothing to do with Cyan Scrimgeour’s escape!”

“I didn’t think that he did. But I would like to know who did, and your father has a lot more power in the Ministry than most of my allies do.”

For a second, Greengrass looked as though she would accept that, and then she squared her shoulders. “He was your ally at one time! But then you said nothing to him, and went around accepting alliances from the likes of Elena Zabini.”

“I was unaware that you had any problem with me, Miss Greengrass.”

Harry wanted to sigh as Elena stepped out from one of the shadows framing the entrance hall. Greengrass was staring at her in the way that most people had stared at Dash when Harry first got him. “She’s not going to poison you just for saying something uncomplimentary about her, Greengrass.”

“Not right now, of course,” Elena said, and smiled at Greengrass. “It would cause such a mess to do it right here, where students could step in it and track it on the way to their classes.”

Harry gave Elena a stern look that she merrily ignored, and turned back to Greengrass. “I wanted allies who could do tasks I assigned them and who would respond when I sent them owls. I know I sent at least one owl to your father that he didn’t answer.” It had actually been Severus who’d sent it, but Harry had written the letter.

“I—my father was busy.”

“Let me see if I can translate that.” Elena smiled at Greengrass again. “It means that her father didn’t know who would win the struggle between you and the Dark Lord at that point in time, and wanted to wait and see who would best repay him for his alliance. Then it became obvious that you’re making allies left and right and wounding the Dark Lord, so he made his decision.”

“That’s not the way it was at all!”

“Not the way it was at all, Professor Zabini.”

“Sorry, Professor Zabini,” Greengrass muttered, and hunched her shoulders. “But it wasn’t.”

“Anyway,” Harry cut in, because he didn’t actually enjoy watching Elena torment people any more than he enjoyed watching Dash play with his prey, “I want to know I have people at my side I can trust. If your father finds out who freed Scrimgeour, then he passes the test and I’ll welcome him among my allies again.”

“It’s not fair to make that reliant on him passing the trial, though,” Greengrass muttered. “Not when we might all need your protection from the Dark Lord soon.”

Harry shook his head. “I would be fighting Voldemort regardless of how many allies I have.” He ignored the way Greengrass flinched so hard she almost fell to the floor. “This is just about how much your father benefits from it. But he has to take up some of the danger and make some of the effort, too.”

“Indeed,” Elena said. “And we all know how much Clarence Greengrass hates making an effort.”

Greengrass glared at Elena, but only turned around with a mutter. Harry looked at Elena in turn. She shrugged and shook her head. “Don’t worry about it. Old grudges between our families. If her father does what you want, I’ll be able to welcome him into our alliance with no problem.”

Harry nodded absently. Then he reached up and rubbed his scar. He hissed when his hand came away gleaming.

“That is blood.” Elena had coiled up like a cobra about to strike. “Something is happening with the Dark Lord?”

Harry!

Dash’s voice came thrumming down the bond, and Harry promptly hurried across the entrance hall to the point where one of the pipes that Dash liked to use opened up. It opened as he watched, the stone sliding aside, and Dash came writhing out and dipped his head down. His eyes were furiously aglow behind his eyelids.

“What is going on?” Harry whispered. He leaned against his basilisk and felt Dash place his head between Harry and anyone who might come out of the Great Hall. “Is he trying something that pulls on the connection between us?” He wasn’t going to talk about Horcruxes in a public place even if he mostly trusted Elena.

I think it’s more likely that you’re feeling a reflection of something he feels himself at the moment. That Horcrux between you isn’t like a normal one. Dash turned his head slowly to the side and flicked out his tongue. I think—

And Harry screamed as his vision tunneled and then opened up to the sides on a place that wasn’t Hogwarts, a forest full of scattered bodies and slowly crawling ones and running ones.

Do you like this, Harry Potter? Voldemort’s voice asked in his mind. It was a disgusting link. It felt like someone was smearing vomit all over Harry’s thoughts. Do you enjoy knowing that I can kill your allies whenever I like?

Stop it! Harry screamed at him, and tried as hard as he could to do something--lunge against Voldemort's control, move the right hand that was the only one that worked, call on Dash's magic. But Dash couldn't reach him, other than the faint sense of connection that told Harry they were still linked.

That was at least one thing Voldemort was doing. Learning to control the link so Dash couldn't reach us at all.

Voldemort laughed in his head, a whistling, whirling whip of cold. Are you not glad? So that you can be here and watch your allies die? One of the trembling figures on all fours at his feet tried to bite Voldemort's leg. He turned away and twisted his right hand, and the woman began to convulse.

Stop doing this!

But no. Why should I? It is time for your werewolf pack to realize there are penalties for standing against me.

Harry stared around, and now he did recognize some of the people who, in wolf form, had helped stop the assault on Hogwarts. He'd been introduced to most of them as humans, after all. Harry struggled again under the limits of Voldemort's control, and, when it remained as firm as ever, turned in the one direction he could imagine helping.

What are you--Stop!

Not as much fun when you're the one doing the asking, is it? Harry snarled at him, and went right back to unraveling the Horcrux and sending as much pain as he could muster down the connection. He felt his own body trembling, heard distant screams that might be his own or those of the people around him. But he didn't care. If he could make Voldemort hurt enough, then he would run away and stop hurting Josephine's pack. That was all Harry could think of.

I will make you care, Voldemort hissed into his ears, and did something complicated that Harry couldn't follow. Suddenly, the entire werewolf pack stood up at once and lurched towards the edge of a hill that seemed to end in a cliff.

I control their movements now. I control how long they live. If they fall and lie there with broken limbs, how much do you think they will suffer? Leave the Horcrux, Harry Potter, and they will die a merciful death!

Harry felt someone ram against the wall of the link between him and Voldemort, and knew from the size of the blow that it had to be Dash. He ignored that for the moment and focused on speaking to Voldemort. You're going to kill them no matter what I do.

That is true. But you control how mercifully they go.

Harry's brain swirled, feeling as though it was dissolving, instead of the Horcrux, into chaos now. But before he could completely give up or attack Voldemort again, someone else spoke. This voice was cold and gasping.

You wanted to know what I can give you? This.

Harry didn't hesitate. He moved in a way that he knew meant his real hand had seized the Elder Wand. He turned and flung an uncoordinated blast of power into Voldemort's face.

The scream that echoed down the Horcrux link then was like nothing Harry had ever heard. And the pain affected Harry, too. His world vanished for an instant in the brilliant blast of it. He didn't loosen his hold on the Elder Wand or the link with Dash, but those were the only things he was certain of in a world of agony.

Die.

Harry felt the word attack him and then splash away from him, soft and useless, but it traveled like an arrow beyond him. Harry screamed again when he felt the deaths of the pack that had helped him, maybe all of them.

Then Voldemort Apparated. The pain seemed to end as he went, maybe because Voldemort had Apparated beyond the Elder Wand's reach and it couldn't torture him anymore. But he lost track of such certainties as the world around him melted into flaring white and then the black of unconsciousness.

*

Granger was the one who fetched him. Severus raced into the entrance hall and saw Dash wrapped around something clasped in his coils. Or someone. Given that Greengrass was standing back with her hand over her mouth, and Granger had said she had followed Harry from the Great Hall, no one would account Severus wise for his guess in who Dash was cradling.

"Out of the way," Severus said, clipped, to Elena Zabini, who stepped back with eyes narrowed as if wondering whether she should be offended. Severus would deal with her later if she was. He had eyes for nothing but the small lump in the center of Dash's coils, thrashing the way prey would on its journey down the basilisk's throat.

"Let him go, Dash."

Dash hissed at him, and his lids above his eyes trembled. Severus halted. He clenched his hands in front of him and cursed the lack of another Parselmouth in the castle. Dash obviously feared for his bondmate enough that he might attack without thinking, and Severus had no way to translate his words.

Well, he would have to make do with what he did have, namely his own intentions and words. He held out his hands in front of him and let Dash see the vials of healing potions he held. The serpent might not recognize them by sight, but his tongue was darting out constantly in his agitation, and he could by smell. "I've come to heal Harry," Severus said in a conversational tone, "the minute you put him down on the floor and allow me access to pour the potions down his throat."

Dash slowly moved his head over the vials, his tongue darting out each time. Severus only became aware that he was gripping his wand when he realized that his knuckles hurt from the tight hold. Then he eased back and waited.

Even though it was torment for each second that passed as Dash decided whether to trust him.

Dash finally bobbed his head in a nod and released Harry in a sprawl on the floor. Greengrass made a choked sound. Severus knew why. Harry's limbs were twisted as if Dash had squeezed him on purpose for a meal and his face was pale and carved with deep lines around the mouth.

Severus knew those signs. Harry had been subjected to painful Legilimency and magic so powerful that it mimicked the Cruciatus Curse if it wasn't actually that. He knelt at once and slid one healing potion for physical pain down Harry's throat.

Harry trembled a little, and his left hand opened. It held the Elder Wand. Severus stared at the thing warily, even though it didn't seem poised to strike, while he worked frantically over Harry. Another potion would send him into true unconsciousness, where he couldn't exacerbate the pain to his mind by thinking over and over again along the same pathways of thought, and the third would heal broken bones. The fourth eased the terrible lines in his face, the fifth repaired a broken tooth he'd got in his thrashing, the sixth healed torn muscles...

Severus Summoned more potions from his quarters when he ran out, never looking away from Harry's face. He had almost lost him, he understood, although not how.

Harry finally groaned and opened his eyes when Severus fed him the seventh potion. Severus paused. That should not have been possible when one of the first doses had bound him to true unconsciousness. But Harry turned his head and met his eyes.

"Are they--all right?"

Severus only had to turn his head to verify that Weasley and Granger were, and he did not have to do that much to verify Dash. "Your basilisk and your friends are well. I will have to call Draco--no, there he is," he added, as Draco pushed his way to Severus's side.

"I mean, I mean Josephine's pack." Harry's breathing was labored and Severus tried to sneak another vial into the side of his mouth, but Harry whipped his head back and glared at him. "Stop that! I mean that Voldemort was slaughtering Josephine's pack. I want to know if they're all right!"

"We have no way of verifying that without sending an owl." Severus kept his voice quiet and sympathetic, but didn't move. He understood how much that would torment Harry, but then again, that was why Voldemort would have done it. He had to hold still and make sure Harry was well before he worried about allies. "I can do that, but it might not return until tomorrow."

"Send one to Remus. Ask him to Apparate to Josephine's pack instead."

"Why?"

"Because there might not be anyone left alive there to respond," Harry whispered, and then his head sagged to the side and the potion Severus had tried to pour down his throat in response began to trickle out of the corner of his lips.

His will defeated the potion. His will, no more. Severus swallowed back his own fear and lack of understanding and settled the last potion in Harry's stomach by massaging his throat so he wouldn't choke.

"I need to leave, Professor Snape."

Severus glanced up at Greengrass, who had stood by his side and watched him for longer than he was comfortable with in any case. "Go," he said curtly, and she darted off. Granger, Weasley, and Draco moved in.

"Is he going to be all right?"

"How did he wake up like that?"

"What did he say about the werewolves?"

Severus answered without paying much attention to his own words, his eyes fastened on Harry's face. It remained slack and quiet and non-responsive. But he thought he knew, now, what Voldemort might have been doing with the Potions ingredients he had been reported as gathering.

And he was afraid.

Chapter 138: Trial by Ordeal

Chapter Text

“The owl came back from Remus?”

“It did.”

Harry closed his eyes and leaned back a little harder against the pillows. He already knew part of the truth. Severus would have told him right away if the news was good. “Remus said that they were all dead, didn’t he?” he whispered.

Severus hesitated and moved in to fluff up one of his pillows. “You should drink one of the Calming Draughts I have ready for you,” he murmured. “You can do nothing for the dead and nothing for the allies you still have if you exhaust yourself.”

“I’ll drink a Calming Draught and go to sleep if you just tell me the truth about Whitepaw’s pack,” Harry whispered. He reached out and managed to catch hold of Severus’s wrist even though he didn’t have his eyes open. Severus’s hand flexed rapidly in his hold, and Severus released a stuttering breath.

“All but five are dead.”

Harry nodded and released Severus’s hand, but resisted when he felt the cool lip of a vial full of Calming Draught at his lips. “You also promised yesterday that you would tell me what Voldemort was doing with those potions ingredients he was getting. You said that you finally knew.”

Severus swallowed audibly and then murmured, “He was producing a potion that would allow him to control others from a distance. They do not need to ingest the potion. Instead, certain ingredients combine with the brewer’s magic so that he can control their movements. That was why the werewolves suffered and died even though he appeared to cast no spell on them.”

Harry opened his eyes, and Severus took the chance to dump the Calming Draught down his throat. Harry swallowed, staring dully at the walls of Severus’s quarters in the meantime. His stomach contracted as though he was going to throw up, but the potion kept him from doing that.

“You should rest,” Severus murmured.

“How do we stop him from using that potion on us?”

“We cannot,” Severus said, quietly. “The potion goes off very quickly, however, so it is unlikely that Voldemort has any at the moment. But if I were him, I would maintain a batch of ingredients frozen under stasis in all but the last stages of brewing, so that I might prepare them quickly the moment I had need of them.”

“So he could make you suffer and die at any time. Or me. Or Draco. Or Dash. Or Ron. Or Hermione.”

“He could,” Severus agreed. “But Harry, how is that different from before? We knew that if he attacked, he could—”

No. It is different.” Harry sat up despite the Calming Draught and Severus both trying to press him back into the pillows. “Before, he would at least have to risk his skin and maybe one of the Horcruxes if he came near enough. Now he can stand at a distance and slaughter us all!”

He hadn’t realized his agitation was radiating down the bond so much, but in a few seconds, Dash was there, crawling rapidly into the room and flicking his tongue out. He looked at Severus for a moment, then bowed his head and dropped it so that his neck was a solid wall next to the bed. He wrapped Harry in a delicate coil.

Harry clung to him, not caring that Dash couldn’t really stop it at the moment, not caring that most of Dash’s body was still outside the door of Severus’s quarters and he’d have to go outside to really hug him. False comfort was better than no comfort at all, right now.

There is a chance, Dash said down the bond.

What is it? Harry knew his voice was thin and listless. He didn’t care. There was nothing they could do, and he could already feel—Severus had told him once he would know what madness felt like when he experienced it. And right now, Harry knew that he was a few mental inches away from that happening.

You have a powerful artifact that wants to gain your favor.

Harry pulled slowly back from Dash and turned his head. The Elder Wand had been lying on a table next to the bed since Severus had carried him here. It vibrated gently now, and Harry reached out and picked it up, feeling the carvings of elderberries warm against his palm and glow with eagerness.

“But how can you stop Voldemort from just brewing his potion even if we destroy all the ingredients?” Harry whispered.

It was the Elder Wand that answered, a slick, buzzing voice that made Harry wince in disgust. We destroy the part of his mind that holds the knowledge.

Dash wound tighter around Harry, to the point where Harry would usually protest it, and flicked his tongue out in quick emphasis. It is the best thing to do. The brain damage would accelerate the damage caused by the destruction of the Horcruxes. We might render Voldemort less dangerous by the time that we need to actually confront him.

Harry thought about it as he held his hand on Dash’s scales and ignored Severus’s polite, agitated questions from outside the hug. He didn’t really have ethical objections to destroying part of Voldemort’s mind. He had always known he would need to do it anyway, since he would be destroying the Horcrux that had some kind of tie to Voldemort’s mind.

But he did wonder if he would be able to do it before Voldemort brewed more of that potion and used it somehow to punish Harry and his allies.

Do it now, suggested the Elder Wand. Harry was relieved that he could tell that wand’s voice apart from Dash’s in his mind.

But perhaps we could tell Severus our plan, since he seems about to expire if he doesn’t get an answer.

Harry let Dash pull gently back, and put the wand down on the table just as gently. He smiled in an embarrassed way at Severus. “Sorry. We were just coming up with a plan that would destroy part of Voldemort’s mind and keep him from using the potion.”

“We.” Severus’s eyes traveled back and forth from Harry to the Elder Wand, and only lingered on Dash for a moment.

Harry nodded. “The Wand has enough power to do it. It’s not—I don’t think that I’m ready to take on Voldemort with battle Legilimency. But we could do this. And that way, it won’t matter if he still has the ingredients. He won’t be able to remember or have the ability to brew it anymore.”

“You are talking about destroying his brewing skill.” Severus probably wouldn’t have looked tense to anyone else, but Harry knew him well enough to see it. “It is—perhaps the only thing that would work.”

“Yes,” Harry said, and reached a hand out. “But I would never do that to you, Severus. You have to know that.”

“The Wand might want to.”

“Then I won’t be its Master anymore,” Harry said. “I won’t ever take it out or use it again if it tries to hurt you.”

I can hear you, the Wand said in what sounded like a sulky mutter. That’s fine. There were always people that my temporary masters didn’t want to hurt.

The buzz retreated, and then Dash said softly into the back of Harry’s mind, It doesn’t like there being limits. It will press you, and it will try to make sure that you learn to prize power over anything else.

Luckily I have a basilisk who used to be Salazar Slytherin to ground me, Harry told him, and Dash’s tongue touched his arm before he pulled his head back and looked around at Severus, giving him a solemn nod as a promise of his own.

“It was not that I truly feared you would,” Severus said, his voice steady although his face was pale. “Or that I object to such a thing happening to Voldemort. It was only the knowledge that someone could.”

Harry nodded. “I don’t—there’s not much I can do except act to stop this.” He swallowed, and Dash licked the side of his face this time. “And I think I have to act now, before he can do anything that will harm anyone else.” He lay back on the bed and gripped the Elder Wand again. Dash arranged himself carefully next to the bed, as much of him as would fit through the door into Severus’s quarters.

“You are saying that—” Severus looked a little ill.

“I have to go now,” Harry said, and then he closed his eyes and willed himself to leap the distance between his own mind and Voldemort’s. The fact that the man insisted on maintaining the Horcrux link was going to make him all the more vulnerable.

There was a shimmer and a twang, and Harry was away from his body and somewhere that hurt him.

*

Severus stared at the motionless body lying on the bed, and the motionless basilisk lying beside it, and felt a tremor of helplessness seize hold of him. He turned away and sat down on the chair in the corner of the room, his head bowed and his chin resting on his balled fists.

He wanted so badly to protect Harry. And he didn’t know how. It wasn’t a comfort to know that even Dash sometimes found the task difficult.

Harry was stronger, in some ways, than he’d ever been. But he still wasn’t as skilled in battle Legilimency as Severus would have liked, and now he was going to face a battle on the home ground of a master Legilimens.

Severus wished he could pray. As it was, he simply went to assemble all the healing potions he could think of, all the ones that Harry would need when he came back.

*

Harry screamed as the pain shook him and tore him away from the comforting links that bound him to Dash and the Deathly Hallows. He hadn’t known how comforting the Hallows were until they were gone. He was being shaken, his bones broken, his skin torn, his head crushed and bleeding—

That is enough of that.

The voice blazed through the bond Harry and Dash shared, and lessened his sobs. He found that he could feel Dash after all. He opened his eyes.

He was floating in a red darkness that reminded him of the emerald one that the Hallows had kept him in while they argued with him, but this one didn’t have facets. It didn’t have a floor, or walls, or anything except the space and the pain. Dash was somewhere near him, but Harry could only vaguely see him as a crimson blob that was a little more defined than everything else. Harry tried to shift closer to him anyway.

Dash bowed his head and touched Harry with his tongue again. Then he said, We can still work together to defeat him.

How? asked the voice that laughed from every side, and made Harry choke back another scream from the agony. I am the master here!

Abruptly, the space shifted, and they were somewhere else, somewhere that hurt more still. Harry gritted his teeth and fought through it. They appeared to be in a smooth, bone-white place, and in front of him was a dark red, veined thing that he instinctively knew was the Horcrux bond that held him and Voldemort.

And something else. The Elder Wand was back, but wary, not showing itself fully. Harry knew without asking that it didn’t want Voldemort to tear them apart again, and he was likely to do that the moment he noticed it.

I am going to destroy you, Voldemort said to him, and his voice purred at a deep level that made something worse than Harry’s skeleton or his heart ache. I am going to make you hurt. I am not going to kill you. The Horcrux will not bring you back. I am simply going to make you wish that you were dead.

Harry felt himself slipping into a dread so intense that it incapacitated him. How in the world had he thought he could come here and just—

Because you can. Dash’s voice slipped through him, and eased away some of the pain and panic. You can do this. I think it will cost you more than we thought, but coming here was not a mistake.

We do not want it to cost him anything. The Elder Wand sounded annoyed. Harry kept a wary eye on the way the white light around him shifted, but so far, Voldemort didn’t seem to have sensed his ability to speak with his companions.

It may happen anyway. It’s more important for Harry to destroy Voldemort’s ability to brew this potion than it is to return to his body completely undamaged.

Maybe it was something about the simple way Dash put it, but Harry found himself calming down, and nodding. Dash was right. He was willing to get hurt as long as it meant he didn’t have to live with the mind-numbing desperation that any moment, something would happen to one of his friends. What had happened to Josephine’s people was bad enough.

That is not what I agreed to, the Elder Wand snapped.

But it’s what we have to do because we’re here and fighting Voldemort on the ground of his own mind, Harry snapped back. Shut up.

That surprised the Wand enough to do so, and Harry picked it back up, or sort of. He was still in an imagined place that was mostly composed of Voldemort’s thoughts, after all. What mattered was that he had the ability to strike back, and remembering that lifted him out of the paralysis that had begun to consume him.

Nothing to say, Harry? Voldemort was gloating.

I can do this. I just have to accept the fact that it’s going to hurt.

Harry settled himself with one more deep breath. Then he hurled all the power of the Elder Wand—not at the blob that marked the Horcrux connection tying him and Voldemort, but at the part of the mind that he knew held the knowledge of brewing.

Voldemort’s shrill scream was one of surprise, but he struck back at once. Harry felt as though someone was emptying out of his mind like blood. Voldemort hit, and hit, and Harry knew what Dash meant when he said that Harry might not return to his body completely undamaged. It might be brain damage, the same kind they were trying their best to inflict on Voldemort.

I would still rather have that than the fear, Harry thought, and returned to his own determined pulping of that area of Voldemort’s mind.

Voldemort snarled and launched himself onto Harry, grabbing onto his magic like some sort of spider. Harry gasped and thrashed. It didn’t matter. The sucking and pulling at his magic grew worse, and Harry wondered if he would wake up a Squib.

Better not to wake up at all—

The sucking grew worse. Harry felt his attack faltering. Any second, his arms would drop to his sides. He would give in and just let Voldemort do what he wanted, because the thought of waking up magicless was horrible.

You can’t think anything like that! Dash roared down the bond, and Harry moaned in pain, because right now even that was making shattered shards move and try to repair themselves, and Harry didn’t have the energy. You give in to him and feed him strength when you think like that!

With a deep breath, Harry removed all thoughts that he might wake up as a Squib from his head. He was only going to destroy Voldemort’s knowledge of brewing potions, and then he was going to go home. No matter what condition he woke up in. No matter what his brain was like. He was going home to Severus and Draco and Ron and Hermione.

And Dash.

This time, the Elder Wand came in behind him as an arrow-shaped attack, and the magic that hit Voldemort was more powerful than anything Harry could have summoned alone. And the pain that came back to him was worse, too.

He forced himself to ignore it. He remembered the werewolves, and that was bad enough to drive him on. They had to take away this weapon from Voldemort. So he struck, and struck, and struck, and the Wand helped him, and Dash lent his strength when he could and whispered fierce encouragement down the bond the rest of the time.

Harry felt something twist and crack free in his own skull in the moment when Voldemort finally screamed in a long, trailing note, and the Elder Wand said, It is done. His knowledge of brewing is gone from him.

Harry didn’t know what had happened to him in turn. He didn’t try to think about it right now. He reached out to Dash.

Bring us back home?

Of course. A basilisk always knows where his body is.

And Harry felt himself pulled through nothingness, which at least was better than the echoing pain.

*

Severus didn’t want to acknowledge how relieved he was as he watched Harry’s limbs stir on the bed. But he held some of the relief back until Harry’s eyes opened and he could see that they were bright green instead of red.

And Dash lifted his neck and carefully laid his chin across Harry’s legs. Severus was sure he wouldn’t have done that if Voldemort had come back inhabiting Harry’s body.

“Severus?” Harry muttered, and coughed.

And he remembers me. Considering the amount of damage that Harry would have inflicted on himself destroying part of Voldemort’s brain, and the fact that they were linked, that had not been a guarantee.

Severus’s hand trembled as he picked up one of the vials. He forced himself to set it down and wait until his fingers were steady before he picked it up again. He desperately wanted to soothe Harry’s throat and make him feel better, but he would be guilty of criminal waste if he dropped it.

“I am here,” he murmured as he gave Harry a general pain-killer and then a Calming Draught and then a headache potion when he groaned and clutched at his eyes. “I will always be here for you, Harry.”

A second later, he winced at the echo of those words in his own head, but Harry didn’t seem to have noticed. He sighed and rolled to his side. “Feels funny,” he muttered. “Fuzzy. I think—I destroyed part of my own brain to destroy part of his, Severus.”

Severus nodded, then realized that Harry really wasn’t looking at him, and murmured, “I surmised as much. Can you—what did you lose?”

“I don’t really know?” Harry’s voice was still a bit slurred, but getting stronger, which made Severus sure that he hadn’t sacrificed his ability to talk. “I think—I remember you and Draco and Hermione and Ron. I know I’m in Gryffindor. I remember Dash and everything. I remember Sirius and Narcissa and Remus and Lucius. I just—”

Then he froze.

“What is it, Harry?” Severus whispered, kneeling down beside the bed so that Harry need not strain his neck trying to see him.

“I can’t—I know that I heard my mum dying when Dementors came near me,” Harry whispered, and there was a sound of tears in the back of his voice that made Severus stretch out an instinctive hand, even though he knew he couldn’t prevent this, it had already happened. “But I can’t remember what she sounded like.

Severus pulled Harry into his arms and closed his eyes. There was nothing he could say to that. “You don’t remember anything else?” he whispered.

“I know my mum had green eyes like mine,” Harry whispered against his neck. “I know I saw her and Dad in the Mirror of Erised in my first year. But that’s all. It’s a fact. It doesn’t have any context. I can’t remember what I saw.”

“If you saw a picture of them—”

“I’d know it was them. But I don’t—I don’t have any connection. They’re just names. I can’t remember—Sirius told me some things about my dad, I know he did, but I can’t remember what I felt when I heard it—it’s gone.”

Harry did begin to weep then. Severus held him and said nothing. He met Dash’s hidden eyes, and Dash simply inclined his neck.

Severus imagined what Dash would say if he could speak.

This is a sacrifice Harry didn’t want to make. But it’s still better than knowing Voldemort could reach out at any time and slaughter everyone he holds dear simply by brewing the right potion.

Severus agreed with that unspoken statement. It still made him bow his head and hang onto Harry in silence, and wish the sacrifice—not undone, but that it need never have existed, that it need never have happened.

That Voldemort had never existed.

That, after all, would be the best thing that could have happened, Severus thought.

Chapter 139: Drowning in Memory

Chapter Text

“I still don’t understand exactly what happened.”

Harry sighed and didn’t refuse to answer just because Draco would be even more extremely annoying if that happened. They were sitting near the top of the Astronomy Tower, and even though Harry had come up here to be alone, Draco had followed him. He would start trying to “cheer him up” again if Harry waited, and Harry just wasn’t willing to listen to it.

“All right,” he said, when Draco leaned an elbow on the stone and stared at him expectantly. “I still know my mum and dad were called Lily and James Potter. I know my mum had red hair and eyes like mine, and my dad had messy hair and glasses and didn’t get along with Severus. But...”

“Yes?” Draco put a gentle hand on his knee.

Harry leaned against his boyfriend’s shoulder and closed his eyes. Dash was patrolling the school through the pipes right now. He’d tried to reassure Harry through the bond, too, and frankly they were getting sick of each other. “It’s just—look, how do you feel about knowing which constellation Orion is?”

“Er, what? I mean, I know what it is, and I know where it is, and I could identify it for you in the Astronomy textbook—”

“But you don’t feel that strongly about it, right? You wouldn’t care that much if it suddenly disappeared from the sky or if you had to spend time thinking about it. It’s just there.”

“Yes,” Draco said slowly. “I might feel a slightly stronger connection to it than some people because of the Black tradition of naming children after stars and constellations, but I wouldn’t feel the same sense of—being disconcerted that I would if the constellation Draco disappeared.”

Harry nodded without opening his eyes. “It’s the same way for me and my parents. I know I knew them once. But I don’t feel the same sense of connection to them anymore.”

Draco sighed and tightened his hands everywhere, on Harry’s knee and running his fingers through his hair. “I’m so sorry, Harry.”

“Sirius and Remus and even Severus are going to show me some Pensieve memories so I can start to know them again,” Harry breathed. “But it’s not the same.”

“No, it wouldn’t be.” Draco swallowed. “Harry, look at me.”

Harry turned his head, and found Draco holding out his hands as if he could shield Harry from the evils of the world. His eyes were bright with determination, the same kind Harry had seen when Draco said he could control Bellatrix using blood magic.

“I can’t keep you safe from what’s already happened. But I swear, Harry, no matter what, I’m going to help you work on those memories and build love for the people you do remember.”

Harry kissed him, a kiss touched with desperation, but Draco didn’t seem to mind that it was. He just held Harry close instead, kissing his scar and then his hand and then the back of his neck, and they ended up lying together on the top of the Astronomy Tower, just holding each other with Harry’s head tucked into Draco’s neck.

It wasn’t exactly what Harry had come up here seeking. But he knew Draco wouldn’t let him go.

At the moment, that was as comforting as the bond with Dash that pulsed always in the back of his mind.

*

Lucius raised his eyebrows a little when the fireplace sparked to life in front of him. He knew who was Flooing him, of course, but he honestly hadn’t counted on an answer so soon, or perhaps ever. He lowered the protective spells that would prevent the connection from forming, and watched as Clarence Greengrass’s face appeared in the flames.

“I found out something about Cyan Scrimgeour,” Clarence said, holding his gaze.

“And?”

“This connection isn’t secure.” Clarence grimaced as he spoke, probably aware of what he was revealing. “May I come through?”

Lucius sorted possibilities in his head and spoke with a slight chill in his voice. “You may.” He moved away from the hearth and held his wand comfortably in his pocket as Clarence materialized.

Clarence limped over to a chair in front of Lucius’s desk and sat down. Lucius watched him and judged the limp wasn’t feigned. “Can you ask a house-elf for wine?”

Lucius snapped his fingers, told the little elf that appeared to bring port from the cellar, and offered it to Clarence in silence. Clarence didn’t say anything until he had swallowed several sips. Then he put down the glass and stared at his hands.

“My wife,” he finally said, looking up. “Leila was the one to free Cyan Scrimgeour.”

Lucius had expected no less when Clarence said the Floo connection wasn’t secure, but he couldn’t understand the possible motive. Leila Greengrass had always been a quiet, retiring woman, seemingly uninterested in politics except when legislation came up that might affect Potions ingredients. She had been content, as far as Lucius knew, to follow her husband’s lead when it came to voting and supporting certain Ministry flunkies.

“Why?”

Clarence sighed and took a parchment from his pocket that had been folded several times to fit, since it was much bigger than a letter. “Because of this.”

Lucius accepted it, and frowned when he did. It appeared to be a map, but of a part of Wales he wasn’t familiar with. Only the name of a mountain on the far right side told him what country it was in at all. “What is this? And what are the dots that are marked with names?”

“That was a map that Cyan Scrimgeour blackmailed Leila with.” Clarence hesitated once. “The dots are where the bodies are buried.”

Lucius jolted, but managed not to show it visibly. He glanced up slowly at Clarence, but the man was looking at the floor. “Leila. Your wife. A—multiple murderer?” Just from glancing at the hand-drawn map in the admittedly dim light of the fire, Lucius couldn’t tell how many dots there were.

“Yes.” Clarence sipped enough wine to empty half the glass before he spoke again. “You know that Potions is her one passion and the only thing that she cares enough to vote on or campaign for.”

Lucius nodded, wary. It was true that sometimes debates came up as to what ingredients should be restricted or whether Britain should impose harsher penalties on people accused of smuggling, but that was hardly worth murder.

“These are all people who wanted to declare certain potions illegal. Or certain ingredients illegal.” Clarence gestured towards the map without looking up from the floor. “For example, there’s a dot over on the far left that has a name of a woman that—well, it doesn’t much matter who she was. But she was a member of the Wizengamot. And she wanted to say that any potions made with human blood should be declared completely illegal in Britain.”

Lucius felt as though his lips had turned to stone. “That’s ridiculous. Don’t they know how many healing potions are made with it?”

“Not most of the Wizengamot, is my guess. That legislation came near to passing. But my wife’s victim was the main voice behind it, and once she died, the others who had supported the bill didn’t have the interest to continue fighting for it. Especially since their leader had died from a disease that a potion made with human blood could have stopped.”

Lucius narrowed his eyes. “I know exactly who you’re talking about, and that disease was natural and had been in her family for years.”

Clarence closed his eyes and drained the rest of his wine.

“Her body did vanish,” Lucius said, tracing the old memories in his mind the way he might trace the contours of a helpless enemy’s face with his wand. “But I assumed the family wanted a private funeral.”

“No. My wife buried it. She was afraid that someone might discover the truth if they had it to hand to examine.”

Lucius drew a difficult breath. “So your wife is a skilled and accomplished murderer. You think that someone blackmailed her into freeing Scrimgeour, then?”

Clarence nodded.

“You must have compelling proof.”

Clarence stirred in a way that was familiar for the first time since he had brought the news to Lucius. “I do. And you can stop mocking me. Do you think this is easy for me to deal with, the knowledge that I didn’t know anything about the woman I’m married to, and that she acted against someone I’m allied with? It’s not.”

Lucius allowed the echoes to die away, the greatest respect he could give to Greengrass right now, and then inclined his head. “I am interested to see what kind of proof you managed to find.”

“Besides the map, this.” Clarence withdrew a packet of letters from his robe pocket, thick enough that Lucius’s fingers twitched. “I don’t know who they’re from. But they offered to hide the evidence of the murders forever if Leila did as they asked. And they outline the kind of vanishing that Scrimgeour had to go through. It had to be precise and thorough and impossible to trace.”

“Is your wife careless enough to leave these lying around, though?” Lucius made no motion to reach for the letters yet. This could still be a lie or a trap.

“She’s been selling a few of the statues that she collected over the years,” Clarence said, in a voice that made it clear how choked his throat was. “I thought that she needed money to buy some of the Potions ingredients I said I wouldn’t buy for her anymore. Now I wonder if she was getting rid of evidence.”

“And…?”

“These letters were underneath a statue, in a little cabinet carved into the top of a table. I think she probably forgot they were there. When I went into the bedroom, I looked down and saw the hollow in the table.”

Lucius cast a few elementary spells on the letters, so that he could make sure there was nothing attached to them that would attack his skin or corrode his reason. Clarence was scowling at him by the time he finished. “I’m not that unsubtle, Malfoy.”

“You’re not clever enough to have noticed all the murders that your wife committed,” Lucius retorted, and then looked through the letters.

The writing was smooth enough, with a complete absence of any individual features, that Lucius was sure it had been done with a dictation charm. It laid out details in a way that made Lucius wince. Yes, Leila Greengrass was dangerous, and he wouldn’t be letting her near Draco, Narcissa, or Harry in the future.

The details were convincing enough that Lucius could believe they were true, although of course he had no way of knowing for certain. He laid them down and looked at Clarence. “And your wife doesn’t know you took them?”

Clarence shook his head. “I copied them and left the copies in the cabinet. I know some things, Lucius.”

“That doesn’t mean she wouldn’t have charms set up—”

“I know that.” Clarence’s fingers tightened in his robes again. “I took all the precautions I reasonably could, Lucius. I know that she might have left these letters as a decoy and a lure. I know the map might be false. I know that someone besides my wife might have been involved in Scrimgeour’s escape. But I brought the evidence to you, because what else could I do?”

Lucius nodded. In fact, he didn’t think the map was a forgery. Leila Greengrass had believed it enough to do as the blackmailer wanted. “How did you figure out that she was involved in the escape in the first place? That she actually did what the letters commanded?”

“You know that the escape said green dust was left on the floor in front of Scrimgeour’s cell?”

Lucius had to pummel his brain for a bit, but then he nodded. “Yes, that’s right. Dust they thought was from plants used in a ritual to open the locks and keep Scrimgeour invisible until they could smuggle him out of the Ministry.”

“I know what that dust is,” Clarence whispered. “I see it all the time in the lab when Leila’s finished one of her experiments. I didn’t even connect it—didn’t even think—about it at first. Why would my wife want to do something like this? But I obtained a sample of the powder and compared it magically and physical to the dust Leila uses. It’s the same.”

“Then you think she used a potion, not a ritual?”

“Yes. She’s always fussing at me about how potions can do more than most people think they can. It makes sense, Lucius. Too much sense.”

“She would get along well with Severus and Elena Zabini,” Lucius murmured, without paying much attention to what he was saying. He was turning the letters and the map over in his hands. “Do you think she would continue to be responsive to this blackmail and betray you and Harry in the future?”

“Yes,” Clarence said. “She probably wouldn’t even think of it as betraying me. Potter doesn’t matter to her, he’s just some political ally. The influence of the House of Greengrass is what matters to her.”

Lucius had to snort a bit. “And she thinks you’ll have any left if you don’t join Harry?”

“She doesn’t think that way at all, Lucius. She assumes we can stand on our own.”

Now that he thought about it, Lucius supposed that made sense. Leila simply had no sense of the larger political picture, as appeared from her only becoming interested in politics when Potions ingredients or certain laws were being debated. She would assume that betraying Harry wouldn’t matter any more than plotting murder would, as long as it got her what she wanted.

“Then what do you intend to do to make up for her betrayal and ensure it doesn’t happen again?”

Clarence struggled in silence. Lucius watched him and felt no pity. He would have known at once if one member of his family felt strongly about an alliance he had negotiated, or didn’t understand it. Clarence should have spoken with his wife as well as his daughters and made sure they were all on the same footing.

Clarence finally looked up and said, “I intend to ensure that she makes a full confession, tells me and Harry when she knows about Scrimgeour’s escape and the person who blackmailed her, and comes over to our side.”

Our side, very good, Clarence. It was still a good thing that Lucius was handling this situation, though, since Harry would have been all but disarmed by now, and eager to listen and give them another chance. Lucius merely smiled without showing his teeth and said, “And you think that will make up for it?”

“It’ll have to.” Clarence’s face was blank now, not the reaction that Lucius had hoped to provoke. “I can’t kill my wife.”

“No, but you will also have to make sure that she never does anything like this again.”

Clarence clasped his hands in front of him. “And what do you suggest, Lucius?”

His voice had a sharp bite, but Lucius didn’t care. He reveled in the chance to offer advice to others and put them in his debt. There were other seductions of power that other wizards might yield to, but this was the only temptation Lucius had ever found adequate to his needs and requirements.

“That you place her under an Unbreakable Vow. She might not care about much, but I assume she cares about her own life. This is the best way to make sure that it never happens again.”

Clarence stared at him in silent intensity. Lucius stared back, far more calmly. He didn’t intend to retract what he had said. It was the best way to have that certainty that would let them trust Clarence and Leila. It might not be the best solution for Clarence and Leila themselves, but Lucius was in the business of providing the best solutions for allies, not enemies.

Clarence finally murmured, “She would never agree to that.”

Lucius shrugged. “Then I can’t guarantee that she will be welcome on Harry’s side. I can’t guarantee that I’m going to pass the information on to him neutrally. I can’t guarantee that Severus Snape, in particular, will let this rest here instead of aggressively moving to take care of the problem.”

“You would tell them the truth when it might get Leila murdered?”

Lucius laughed. “You are displaying distress at the fact that your wife acted in a way contrary to the alliance that you have set up and made things more difficult for you, not that she committed murder. Spare me your hysterics, Clarence.”

Clarence clamped his lips shut and sat in silence for a long moment. Then he drew a deep breath. “If I am essentially accepting Harry as the leader of my family, then I ask for his help. I want a safe room at Hogwarts where I can bring Leila and hold the Unbreakable Vow with a binder who won’t hurt either one of us. And I want a potion to subdue her.”

Lucius inclined his head. “Those things are reasonable. And of course it will take a subtle potion to subdue a wife who knows her way around potions.”

“Yes. I will ask for the—help of Severus Snape or Elena Zabini.”

Lucius nodded without saying which one he intended to secure. Of course, it was Severus. He would never trust Elena without an Unbreakable Vow of her own, and even then, she would find a way to slide around most of his precautions, he thought. “Very well. I will deliver the message. In the meantime, Clarence, make sure that your wife is contained and not threatening anyone else on our side.”

Clarence left with his lips still pressed together, but said nothing. Lucius went to write an owl and promise success.

And not only for Clarence or the effort to make sure that most of the people they surrounded themselves with were loyal to Harry. He was making up for his own mistakes and proving his value to the cause. Always a wise thing to do, even if his son was going to be bonded to one of the most politically powerful wizards in recent history.

*

Severus heard Lucius out without moving, and then nodded. “I understand what you mean. But I will ask that you ask Elena instead.”

Even though it was often hard to read facial expressions through the Floo and the green flames, Severus knew that he had startled Lucius. His eyebrows flew up, his mouth gaped open and then snapped shut. A second later, he said, “And you truly believe that she will be as loyal to Harry and as committed to making sure that the one who freed his enemy does not stray again?”

“Not as loyal,” Severus said. “But she’s held at Harry’s side by a combination of her desire to be on the winning side and curiosity about what he might ask her to do next. Inventing that loyalty potion has changed the course of history, slow as history might be to realize that. She’ll do well enough.”

“So why not you, Severus?”

“I have another Potions project that is taking all my time and energy.”

Lucius looked honestly perplexed, although Severus took a moment to realize that because it wasn’t an expression he had seen on Lucius’s face in years. “Something more important than stopping a traitor?”

“Yes,” Severus said simply, and watched Lucius wrestle with that.

Lucius finally sighed. “Then I will ask Elena. You realize that she may say no?”

Severus shrugged. “Not if you go through Harry for the request. I doubt that she would refuse anything that he asked of her, and I daresay that anything you asked of Harry, he would grant at the moment.”

“Why?”

“I shall leave that up to Harry to tell you.”

Lucius scowled, and Severus wondered how he had never realized how petulant an expression that was. “Severus, if you were the one asking, I would reveal the truth to you.”

Severus could not help himself. “Oh, would you? You would do it if you thought of it as an asset to yourself. And that is one reason that Harry trusts me more than you.” He shut down the Floo before Lucius could retaliate.

Then he turned back to the simmering cauldron that had occupied his attention all morning. He had told Lucius the truth. He had a potion that was far more worth his labor than a poison to corral a woman that carefully-placed Stunning Charms would corral just as well.

He intended to make sure that the future Horcrux battles did not damage Harry’s mind further. But first, in case Voldemort managed another strike like the one that had taken the memories of Lily and James Potter away, he was inventing a potion that could add an emotional component to Pensieve memories, infusing them with what the memory-owner had felt at the time.

And then he would hold the mutt and the wolf at wandpoint, if necessary, to fill the Pensieves with memories. He would do the same himself with his memories of Lily.

Harry would have his parents back. What Severus could not heal, he would compensate for.

That was the way he was when he finally had someone to love.

Chapter 140: Spreading the News

Chapter Text

Severus stood back and watched the owl whose leg he had attached the message to winging steadily away. It was the fourth one he had sent this morning, and at the moment, he pondered if he needed to send anymore. There weren’t that many people not currently allied to them who he thought would be useful allies.

“What are you doing?”

Severus turned and saw Harry standing behind him, wrapped in a green cloak that wasn’t warm enough for the chill bite of the wind in the Owlery. He cast a few Warming Charms. Harry glared at him. Severus ignored that. It was practically a routine for them now. “Informing some potentially useful people about the potion that Voldemort managed to brew.”

Harry blinked and shifted his weight. Hedwig was sitting on his shoulder, nuzzling against his cheek, and he petted her absently. “But he can’t brew it anymore.”

They don’t need to know that.”

Harry took a step forwards. Hedwig hooted at him and then took flight to another perch in what looked like offense when Harry just went on staring at Severus. “But if we let them believe he could kill them any second, that’s horrible.”

“It would also convince them to start following you. We need more allies, and we need to convince more of them not to go to Voldemort’s side instead.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a noble goal if we can only accomplish it by making people live in fear.”

“Then it’s not a noble goal,” Severus said blandly. “Luckily, you have me for the less noble work that we need to do.” He strode towards the door of the Owlery, and Harry followed him at once.

“I suppose you’ll tell me I don’t understand politics if I tell you to call those owls back.”

“I would tell you that you don’t understand making fear work for you, and that you are more like Albus than Voldemort if you have me call the owls back. Albus wanted only people who would follow him willingly and join up for noble ideals. We’ve already gone past that point. Unless you think Lucius joined to free the poor oppressed Muggleborns.”

“No. But he didn’t join me because he was afraid—” Harry stopped abruptly.

“Yes, he did,” Severus said quietly. It hurt him a little to see the way Harry looked at him now, but he had to know the truth. “Fear that his family would be harmed. Fear that Voldemort would manage to call him back and maybe even command his loyalty using the Dark Mark. Fear that Bellatrix would betray them.”

“All right, maybe he sort of did,” Harry said, after an uncomfortable moment as they walked down the tower stairs and Severus said nothing else. “But did you consider that telling them Voldemort could do that might make them rush to join him, so that he doesn’t do that to them?”

“I also pointed out Voldemort’s growing instability. They cannot trust that he would not use that potion on them simply because he is angry and reckons that he can get more allies.”

Harry sighed. “It’s still lying. And they’ll probably get told the truth when they come over to my side.”

“Until and unless they do, there is no reason to tell them.”

Harry said nothing, and Severus pressed his lips together to keep from smiling victoriously. Harry disagreed, but he was hardly about to scold Severus or punish him. And that reminded Severus, once again, of how lucky he had been to end up like this, when he could have had had a much more cautious and distant relationship with Harry based on some of the choices both of them had made.

How lucky I am that I found my way from the Dark Lord to a kind of light shining in the darkness.

*

Lucius stepped out of the fire, and blinked when he saw Draco standing next to Harry on the other side of the Headmistress’s office. Draco hadn’t said he would be here. Now, he gave his father a calm, even look and then faced the center of the office again.

Clarence was already there, with Leila Greengrass kneeling and silent at his side. She had her wrists bound with a silver chain, but Lucius wasn’t foolish enough to think for one minute that that was the thing really keeping her subdued. Her eyes darted around, but in an odd, lingering way, so that she seemed to be looking at everything twice.

Elena’s potion, or some other method, had worked. They would have to remove the potion from her system when she got ready to make the Vow. Lucius did not care, however. He was here to watch the Vow, not make it.

Minerva McGonagall rose from behind the desk and looked at him in much the same way Draco had. “I still want to know how this managed to happen, Mr. Malfoy,” she murmured. “It is—frankly ridiculous that we should have ended up on the same side of the war.”

“Both of us want the best for our families, I am sure,” Lucius murmured back. “Even if in your case, your family is the students of Hogwarts rather than one made by blood.”

McGonagall sighed wearily and nodded, then stepped around her desk and over to Clarence. “I assume you did use a potion? Can you release her from it? And is she actually going to make the Vow and mean it?”

Clarence shivered a little. “I understand the scope of her crimes, Headmistress. I’ll make sure that she knows she’ll die if she doesn’t do this. And thank you for agreeing to serve as our bonder.”

McGonagall nodded and drew her wand. Clarence bent down and ran a finger along the silver chain that tied his wife’s wrists. It shimmered and grew darker for a second, and Lucius’s attention sharpened as he saw thick drops of liquid running along the links.

Ingenious. Somehow, Elena had invented a potion that could be drawn out of the body by means of touching an object that touched the skin of the subject. Lucius had never seen anything like that, and he was not foolish enough to think it a property of the chain rather than the potion.

Let us hope that Elena Zabini stays loyal to Harry, if she must be politically active, Lucius thought, and faced Leila Greengrass as he watched the blankness fade from her eyes. She leaned back on her heels and stared up at her husband.

“You did this to me,” she said. Her voice had no inflection.

“And you committed at least seven murders and released an enemy of the boy I pledged our family to.” Clarence didn’t sound nearly as weak-willed as he had when he was in Lucius’s study telling him about how his wife had freed Cyan Scrimgeour. He just sounded blank. “You’re going to tell us everything now, Leila.”

“Our family doesn’t need a protector. Especially one who’s just a boy. We can stand on our own. I can protect us.”

“You were found out and blackmailed. Even if what you say was true, then it isn’t now. You would do anything to protect our secrets, and who can say that next time, it won’t be something that ends up aiding the Dark Lord more directly?”

Leila frowned as if she truly didn’t understand. Lucius thought she might not. She wasn’t stupid, but she was used to thinking of herself as the center of the universe, her desires as the only ones that mattered. Doing something that would benefit people other than her family had never crossed her moral horizon.

“I asked Headmistress McGonagall to be here as our bonder,” Harry said, stepping forwards. “But you have the right to request someone more neutral.”

Lucius shot a frown at Harry. Yes, technically Leila did have that right by tradition, but Lucius would much have preferred to skip it.

Harry ignored him, so focused on Leila that Lucius felt an unaccustomed stir of jealousy himself. “Do you understand what you did?” he demanded, sounding a little hoarse. “Do you understand the danger you could have put me in?”

“But Cyan Scrimgeour ran away to live somewhere else, and it’s not like he tried to assassinate you more than once.”

Lucius shook his head. There were some pure-bloods so self-centered they would buy that argument. It sounded like Leila was one of them, although before now he hadn’t taken her that way.

But I hardly knew her at all if she was going around killing people who opposed the laws she wanted and I never realized it.

“More to the point, you could have harmed my allies,” Harry continued, apparently disregarding Leila’s answer. “Does that matter to you? What if the consequences of this harmed your family?”

“They wouldn’t have.”

Harry sighed and stepped back. “Are you going to make a confession? Do we have a way to make her do it?” he added over his shoulder, and Severus stepped forwards at once. Lucius hid a sigh himself. That question had just been for show. Of course Severus was loyal to Harry, and of course he would be right there with Veritaserum.

“You can do this with Veritaserum or without,” Clarence told Leila. His voice sounded weary now instead of blank, much the way Harry’s had. “I would prefer it without, but I know that I can’t really trust you.”

“You shouldn’t let them use truth serum on me anyway. You’re my husband.

“And you weren’t careful enough to avoid being caught and let yourself be blackmailed! Forgive me if I don’t trust your judgment,” Clarence added, sarcasm thick enough that Lucius would have laughed if he’d been a different man.

Leila stared at him without moving. Those opaque eyes didn’t exactly frighten Lucius, but they did say, far more than Clarence’s words did, that there was no way they could trust Leila. They would never be able to release her from the Unbreakable Vow.

“Veritaserum, then,” Clarence said, and moved out of the way. McGonagall tensed as if she would interfere, but in the end, she didn’t. Severus swooped down, drawing the potions vial out of his sleeve.

Leila threw herself forwards, rolling on the floor and towards the side table that held a large pile of books. Lucius had no idea what she intended to do, other than perhaps use a heavy book as a weapon. But Severus bound her with a wordless spell and poured the Veritaserum down her throat.

Even that didn’t do much to affect the blankness in her gaze. Lucius shivered and was glad that she wasn’t looking at him.

“I want to know who blackmailed you.” Harry’s voice was remarkably steady. Lucius had to admire him, as self-sacrificing and ridiculous as he was about many things.

“I believe her name is Andromeda Tonks.”

Lucius made a sharp movement before he could stop himself. Harry caught his eye and lifted his brow. Lucius nodded and stepped back, out of Leila’s line of sight. She wouldn’t be able to do anything against them right now, but she would retain knowledge of what she had seen when she was under the potion.

“And why do you believe that?”

“Because that was the name that was signed to the letters.”

Clarence let out a bitter snort. “What other reason do you have for believing that?” he demanded. “I know I took a smarter woman as my wife than to have her simply accept an enemy’s signature.”

“I met with her. She looked the way Andromeda Tonks did when I met her before.”

“Polyjuice,” Severus murmured.

Lucius nodded. He didn’t know Andromeda well—she had been burned from the Black tapestry before he and Narcissa had married—but he couldn’t believe that a woman who had defied her pure-blood family to run away with a Muggleborn would be working for Voldemort.

“What knowledge of your crimes did she demonstrate?” Harry asked. His eyes had gone back to wary stone. Lucius felt a vibration outside the door that he thought probably meant Dash was curled up on the stairs that led to the Headmistress’s office.

“She said that she knew the names of all my victims. She had the map where I’d buried them. She told me that if I didn’t do as she said, I would spend the rest of my life in Azkaban and be unable to protect my family.”

Lucius blew his breath out through his nose. It seemed that had been an effective threat, as much as he wanted to shake his head over it. Leila had committed her crimes out of the misguided belief that she was protecting her family, and it made a bit more sense now that she had argued with her husband and claimed that she would be able to do it on her own.

“How did you create the potion that freed Cyan Scrimgeour?”

For the first time, Leila Greengrass struggled against the potion. Lucius raised his eyebrows, wondering if she had used some magic or ingredient that she thought would disgust her husband. She’d answered the other questions without a care.

“I didn’t invent it,” Leila finally said, lowering her head a little. “I received the base from Tonks and then worked on it to create a less volatile version that wouldn’t poison the people around the cell and perhaps alert the Ministry to what had happened before we could escape with Scrimgeour.”

Lucius wanted to roll his eyes as he realized why Leila had fought so hard against answering that question. She hadn’t wanted to admit that she didn’t invent a potion she had used.

“Give us the ingredients list,” Severus said. He had straightened a little away from the wall. “Both of the base you received and the potion you improved.”

Leila recited a list that meant little to Lucius, and perhaps little more to Harry, from the way his brow was furrowed. Then again, there was a reason that Lucius had always preferred to let someone else do his brewing. He had no hesitation in paying for the skillful execution of an art he didn’t always understand.

“I see,” Severus said. He tilted his head at Harry and murmured, “A few of the ingredients cross over.”

Which Lucius didn’t understand at all, but no one seemed eager to improve his ignorance. Harry simply nodded and faced Leila. “Did you notice any distinguishing marks, jewelry, or clothes on Andromeda Tonks?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Lucius smiled at Harry. “She’ll respond to simple yes and no questions with that kind of answer. You’ve got to ask in more depth if you’re going to get what she noticed.”

“Right.” Harry rolled his eyes a little, and Lucius stood there for a second, mentally comparing the whole interaction to the last time he’d spoken to Voldemort. “Should have known. All right. What were the distinguishing marks you noticed?”

“A ring. It was silver, and had a chunky black stone on it. The stone had sharp enough angles that it would have scored a cauldron’s sides. It glinted like obsidian, but I knew it wasn’t. The silver looked tarnished, as if it had been dipped in an improperly-brewed Cleansing Potion.”

Lucius rolled his eyes. Merlin, and I used to think that Severus was obsessive about Potions.

“Was that the only thing you noticed? Or,” Harry added hastily, “were there are any other pieces of clothing or jewelry or marks that you would recognize again? What about scars?”

Lucius shook his head. Asking about scars when they were probably dealing with someone under Polyjuice Potion was a fool’s endeavor. The potion would flawlessly mimic the scars that Andromeda Tonks herself bore. Of course, perhaps they could begin to narrow down the people who would have access to Andromeda’s hair.

“She had a silver pin on the collar of her cloak. She wore it stabbed through sideways, as though she didn’t care who saw it. It was also tarnished.”

Lucius saw Minerva stiffen out of the corner of his eye. He ignored that for now. Leila had finished speaking, though, and was sitting there and staring straight ahead the way most Veritaserum victims did when they didn’t have questions to answer at the moment. Her breathing had slowed until she no longer sounded as if she might erupt in shouting.

“Can you think of any other questions to ask?” Harry finally said, turning to everyone else in the room as if his mind was as blank as Leila’s.

“Yes.”

Lucius jumped when he realized that the word came from Leila. Harry turned back to her, eyes narrowed in slight confusion. “You can think of another question I ought to ask? What is it?” At least he followed the slightly inane first question up with one that would get an interesting response, Lucius thought.

Leila still stared straight ahead, but she said in a calm voice, “Yes. You could ask why I thought I could protect our family on my own.”

“Why did you think that? Why would you ever think that?” Clarence sounded as if he had something caught in his throat. Lucius could understand that. He would be a mixture of heartbroken and furious if Narcissa had put their family at risk in such a way, through overestimation of her own prowess.

Not to mention jeopardizing our political alliances. But then, my Narcissa would never do that. Lucius felt his usual mixture of glee and pity that there was only one Narcissa in the world and that he was the one who had married her, leaving others vulnerable to the mistakes of their own spouses.

“Because I have invented a potion that can poison people from a distance, and all I had to do it was employ it on anyone who threatened our family.”

There was a long silence. Lucius did notice, in interest, that Severus’s fingers had tightened into fists, and that Harry had gone still. Had they heard rumors of something like this? Or was it an advance in potions-making that he didn’t understand?

“Why wouldn’t you use it on the woman who blackmailed you into freeing Cyan Scrimgeour, then?” Clarence demanded. It somewhat surprised Lucius that he was the first to recover, but then, Leila’s words had struck Severus and Harry with a peculiar force.

“Because she promised me that my secrets were in other hands and would be revealed if she died. I would need to know at least the names of those who held those secrets so that I could be sure to poison them as well.”

“You can poison people based on their names?” Severus had recovered, and there was a brilliance in his eyes that Lucius resigned himself to not understanding right now. Later he would corner Severus and demand an explanation.

“Yes.”

“That is—an amazing breakthrough.” Severus sounded a little dazed. “There are rumors in old texts of ancient potions that could heal or poison from a distance based on the resonance of names, but no one I know ever claimed to have actually managed the rediscovery of—”

“It’s also dangerous. And haven’t we dealt with enough potions like that?” Harry demanded, turning to face Severus.

“If this one was on our side, however.” Frustratingly, Severus didn’t finish the sentence, simply inclining his head to Harry and appearing to rely on whatever knowledge or secret they shared. Lucius resolved to get closer as soon as he could.

“But we don’t have a way to bind this woman to our side! Not when she simply murders whoever she likes!”

“So did Elena Zabini, and yet she’s loyal to you,” Lucius felt compelled to point out, because no one else was filling the silence. It was ridiculous that no one was filling the silence.

“She’s loyal to me because of matters concerning her son, and because I let her have some revenge, as she sees it.” Harry folded his arms and studied Leila with a frown. “This is a woman whose family was allied to me and yet who still didn’t think she needed to be on my side. I don’t know what we can do to convince her.”

“Mr. Potter? If I may?” Clarence stepped forwards.

“So far, you haven’t been able to convince her, either, Mr. Greengrass,” Harry said, more kindly than Lucius really thought Clarence deserved.

“I know, my—I mean, Harry. But there’s one aspect to the situation that I didn’t know about until now. If you’re going to honor her as the inventor of a unique potion, then she might be willing to go along with our side for that honor.”

Harry turned to Severus. Severus tilted his head and then his hand up and down in an uncertain motion. Lucius felt an ache of envy. He could have been the one who stood in that position, if he had been quicker to realize what it meant that Harry Potter was bonded to a basilisk and growing close with his son.

Well, he would do his best to make sure that he was not left out of future interactions. And an official betrothal would give him some power as the father-in-law of the Boy-Who-Lived…

He shot a glance at Draco, who had said nothing. That was highly unusual for his son. Draco just looked at him and said nothing, his mask flawless. Lucius was encountering a great deal of frustration this weekend.

“We can honor her if she remains loyal to us,” Harry said in a tight, flat voice. Lucius wondered if he knew how much it sounded as if he was using the royal “we.”

Clarence nodded and then held out a hand without removing his gaze from his wife. Lucius thought it insulting, but Severus handed him the antidote to the Veritaserum without so much as a blink, and Clarence fed it to Leila.

Leila took a deep breath and exhaled. Then she looked at Clarence and said, “Nothing I said under that potion concerned the extent of my ability to defend our family. I can do it without surrendering my loyalty to them.”

“You told us about the poison you invented,” Clarence said. “And they are willing to make sure that you receive credit for its invention and the honor that you would otherwise never get, because of the Ministry being willing to arrest you on sight.”

Leila paused. Then she looked at Harry and Severus, her gaze lingering longest on Severus. Lucius sighed, wondering if that was only her respect for him as a fellow brewer or because she still didn’t understand the dynamics of power between Harry and his followers. (Then again, sometimes Lucius felt as if he didn’t understand them, so he couldn’t entirely blame her for that).

“You are not willing to give me up to Azkaban?” she asked finally, reaching up with one hand to push her hair away from her face. Lucius tensed, but she seemed entirely caught up in studying Severus. “I thought you would, because the ideals you hold are so Light.”

“The original ideals Harry held were Light,” Severus corrected her, his voice deep and slightly bored. “I have tempered them somewhat with my own. And if you are willing to use your poison in his service, I will temper them still further.”

Leila sat in silence, and then her eyes darted over to Harry. “You really have bonded with a basilisk?” she asked. “And it really bears the soul of Salazar Slytherin?”

Harry sighed. “He is his own person. But yes, he does have that soul. And he’s committed to protecting me, so if you intend to do something to hurt me—”

“I will swear the Unbreakable Vow.”

Minerva stepped forwards with her wand already drawn to act as bonder, so Lucius didn’t get the chance to volunteer as he would have liked to. But as he watched Leila kneel and hold out her hand, clasping Harry’s, and heard the strong voice she spoke the Vows in, he thought that they might have bound her tightly to their side after all.

None of which diminished Lucius’s wariness around her. Or his longing to stand in Severus’s place.

But there are other things of value I can bring to this alliance.

Chapter 141: Declaring Loyalties

Chapter Text

Harry leaned back against Dash’s flank. They were on the shore of the lake, and Dash didn’t object to being a couch right now, but Harry wanted to sit on the ground. He thought it might make him feel less like he was going to float away after that grueling session with Leila Greengrass.

How can someone even be that selfish? Harry complained to Dash down the bond. It was like I saw into her mind while she was making the Vow, and she doesn’t care about anyone in the entire world except four people! Herself and her husband and her daughters. How can you not think about more than that?

Dash lowered his head and touched his tongue gently to the scar on Harry’s forehead. There are people like that, who think they’re being clever and playing a game that the entire world plays. They’re actually not clever enough to realize that their games are going to blow back on them, because they never pay enough attention to other people to see that they’re getting annoyed.

Harry sighed and looped his arm around Dash’s neck, a motion Dash was more than happy to encourage. “We had to do the Vow because we can never trust her,” he said aloud. “The most we can do is bribe her.”

“I’m afraid my father is in the same category.”

Harry started and looked over his shoulder, then relaxed and smiled a little when he saw Draco. He held out his hand. Draco came over and sat down next to him without a word. He did take Harry’s hand, but there was a piercing quality to his gaze that made Harry a little uneasy.

“Did, um,” Harry started. “Did your father say something about that? Because I thought he did think about people outside his family. That’s why he realized Voldemort was a danger to you in the first place.”

“I was referring to my father as someone you had to bribe.” Draco leaned against Dash’s flank, too. “Do you know why I didn’t say anything in that session where you bound Mrs. Greengrass?”

“No.” Harry had tried to talk to Draco afterwards, but Draco had just shaken his head and said there was something he had to do, then slipped off. Harry hadn’t seen him for the rest of the day.

“Because my father was behaving strangely during it.” Draco squinted at the sun as if trying to make it set, his shoulders so tense Harry rubbed one automatically. “I went to go talk to him. He told me he wasn’t pleased that I stood back and let others take the lead.”

Harry stared. “What? I mean, there was nothing your blood magic or your other expertise could have done during that Vow! I would have asked you if there was.”

“I know, Harry. But I think my father’s ambition has turned in a different direction now. For a long time he wanted to be the most valued Death Eater. Then he wanted to stand high in Ministry politics. For a little while he was completely focused on keeping me and Mother safe. Now—”

“He wants to be my most valued follower,” Harry whispered, the pieces clicking together in his mind.

Draco nodded. “He wasn’t happy that I stood there and said nothing because he thinks his value to you depends mostly on me. You have to show that you prize me every moment or he thinks you don’t.” He hesitated. “And I think, from some hints he dropped, that he wants to replace Severus.”

“As my guardian?”

“No, no, I don’t think so,” Draco said hastily. Harry knew he was very against anything that would make them seem like brothers to other people. “Just as someone you trust. He told me that there were moments you and Severus seemed to be communicating silently, almost the way that Voldemort used to do through the Mark with his Death Eaters. I think he envies that.”

Harry shook his head, fighting to keep a smile from breaking out on his face. “To think I would hear about the day Lucius Malfoy envies Severus Snape,” he muttered when Draco raised an eyebrow at him.

Draco snorted. “At least I don’t think we need to worry about some stupid stunt from him. He’s past that stage, and anyway he saw where it got Mrs. Greengrass.”

Harry nodded, but absently, his mind going back to Lucius’s behavior in that meeting. Yes, he’d spent a lot of time staring at Severus and Harry instead of watching Leila, which was kind of strange when Harry thought about it.

But it also made him tired. He was so tired of people thinking that they should get close to him so that he could give them what they wanted, when most of the time Harry wouldn’t give it to them even if he could.

Dash turned so that he could touch Harry’s scar with his tongue again. I think things are coming to an end very soon.

Harry turned so that his face was resting more fully on Dash’s flank. Why do you say that?

We have caused so much damage to Voldemort that he must fear what he’s going to lose in the eyes of his followers. We’ve damaged his brain, his hand, and his Horcruxes. What will he lose next? He’ll want to finish us so that he doesn’t look dangerously weak for losing to a child—for that is how he will try to portray you, no matter how many people you have following you or that you’re bonded to a basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin.

Harry smiled a little. But we don’t know how many of his followers know about the brain damage and the Horcruxes. Probably not very many.

The hand would be harder to hide. Dash’s tongue slid over his forehead one more time. And it might be that, after all of this is over, people will look at you to lead them less, and you can have a more peaceful life. But right now, I think we ought to start to make battle plans.

Harry swallowed and sat up. “You think that we have enough allies and power on our side now to cause that much damage to Voldemort?” he asked. Draco looked back and forth between them without taking his arm from around Harry’s waist.

Yes. It will be hardest to neutralize Voldemort, and that’s why we have to continue to weaken him. Dash paused, his tail drawing slow, random patterns on the ground. And I think that you shouldn’t fight in the battle.

Harry narrowed his eyes. “Fuck that! I’m not going to abandon my people when they need me.”

“What is Dash saying?” Draco interjected, looking fairly narrow-eyed himself.

“That I should abandon people.”

That’s because you never listen to me when I want you to, Dash said, his tone as exasperated as a mother smacking a child on the back of the head. Listen to me, will you? The battle, when Voldemort is at least partially distracted, is the time that I was thinking we’d attack the Horcrux bond between the two of you.

Harry swallowed, his throat dry and stinging. “But won’t you have to be patrolling and protecting the place we choose to have the battle? Not sitting with me?”

What does the fate of anyone else matter to me compared to your own? No, of course I will be protecting you and helping to get rid of that Horcrux.

“I know that we’ve discussed ways, but between how unpredictable the Elder Wand is and the fact that we have to use battle Legilimency…”

The Elder Wand rattled in his pocket, as if to say that it had its own version of unpredictability. Harry ignored it, watching the way that Dash’s eyelids fluttered as if he was thinking about lifting them off his eyes.

I know there are ways to do it. I think that we shouldn’t try them until we’re absolutely ready and Voldemort is distracted by the rest of the battle.

Harry clenched his hands into fists. “So the rest of the battle—where people will be fighting for their lives—is just a distraction?”

Of course not. It’s a distraction for Voldemort, not other people. I fully expect your friends to fight and your allies to kill some Death Eaters. And we should make sure that no one simply picks up the mantle of blood prejudice when Voldemort is defeated and continues on as if nothing has happened. But it’ll be less important than the battle happening with your mind for a staging ground.

“You know that Severus is going to want to help.”

He can help by making sure that no one breaks in and disturbs us, and by making sure that he’s taught you as much as he can about battle Legilimency before we begin. And we do have a few other things to take care of, like the Horcrux in Gringotts. But this stalemate can’t continue forever. Voldemort would snap and do something like poisoning the werewolves of Josephine’s pack again. We can’t drive him to that extreme. Or, at least, I could, but I know that you don’t like it.

Harry said nothing and simply looked across the water into the Forbidden Forest. Draco continued sitting beside him, warm and comforting, his arm around Harry’s waist. Harry closed his eyes and wished for a moment that he was just a normal boy, no Boy-Who-Lived, no dead parents, nothing but his boyfriend with him.

You wouldn’t have met me, then.

Harry gentled his touch on Dash’s scales. Sorry for thinking that. But you know our bond might end anyway?

Harry didn’t think anyone else would have noticed the ominous stillness that took over Dash at that, no matter how much attention they paid to him. What are you talking about?

The Horcrux is what gives me my Parseltongue abilities. When it’s gone, then I won’t be able to speak with you or other snakes anymore—

Dash swung around, hissing. Harry lost his hold on him, and Draco had to tighten his own grip on Harry’s waist as Dash swung to face them. “What the fuck is going on?” Draco muttered, but he did it into Harry’s back between his shoulder blades.

“We’re dealing with a bloody temperamental basilisk, is what!” Harry said, and kept his stare on Dash, whose eyelids were again trembling as if he was going to raise them.

You are deliberately trying to provoke me. Dash quieted, and left only the ripples of his anger to run through his body, making the dirt rustle around him. You don’t really think that you would lose our bond because you lost the Horcrux.

“I told him that my Parseltongue might vanish when we destroy the Horcrux,” Harry told Draco. He turned away from the expression on Draco’s face to look at Dash again. I don’t want it to! I just said that it might.

You think that I am bonded to the remnant of Voldemort inside you instead of you?

Harry hesitated. He knew the wrong answer, but he also thought there was a trap here for the right one. Er—no?

Then do me the favor of supposing that I know who I have bonded to. Dash lowered his head at last, and something smoked in the dirt near the line of his jaw. A drop of venom, Harry realized, which had slid free of his fangs and then down his face. The Horcrux’s destruction will only free you from the looming kind of despair that tries to take advantage of you at moments like this.

“He thinks that’s ridiculous, right?” Draco murmured into Harry’s neck, and then promptly distracted him by planning a kiss right there.

“Yeah.” Harry tilted his head, giving Draco more space to kiss. “He says that he’s bonded to me, not the part of Voldemort hiding behind my scar.”

“Of course he is.” Draco sound so scornful that Harry was grateful he hadn’t spent a lot of time talking about this with his boyfriend. “Harry.” He turned Harry around with his hands on his shoulders. Draco’s gaze was deep and searching and made Harry want to run away as he’d used to do when people tried to ask him about the Dursleys. “You don’t believe that all of your talents and gifts come from that Horcrux?”

“Of course not! But the Parseltongue is one that’s supposed to be hereditary and only coming out of Slytherin’s line, and—”

It is more complicated than that,” Dash hissed aloud, turning his head so that he seemed to be looking back along the length of his body. “Even in the days of my original body, there were multiple families who possessed it. Just not very many in Britain, and fewer who flaunted it openly after my bad reputation started to grow.

Harry blinked. Oh. Of course. There could have been multiple Parselmouths around who hid what they were once they found out what it would make other people think of them. “Well, now I feel stupid.”

“It’s a rather one-sided conversation, here.”

“Sorry, Draco. Dash was just saying that multiple people even in Britain had it, but they might not have announced it after his, I mean, Salazar Slytherin’s, reputation started to spread.”

“Hmm. That’s true. Wouldn’t it be something if people started thinking well of Parselmouths again because of all the good deeds you’ve done?”

Harry hadn’t even considered that, but it was certainly a more appealing thing to try and live up to than being known as the killer of Voldemort or the Boy-Who-Lived. He slung an arm around Draco’s shoulders. “Have I told you lately that you’re brilliant?”

“You might have,” Draco said, drawing Harry closer with his eyes shining. “But I’m always open to hearing it again.”

*

Draco read over the letter from Bellatrix, frowning. He didn’t think his control over his aunt was slipping—the blood magic link in his mind felt as firm as it ever had, and there was also Mrs. Zabini’s potion—but her description of the actions that Voldemort was taking was disturbing.

“What’s bothering you, Malfoy?”

Draco started and looked up to see Theodore Nott sitting across from him. Draco folded the letter slowly. It was true that he’d been sitting in the middle of the common room and anyone could have come up to him and asked about that letter, but he was still uncertain how much of Theo’s loyalties really lay with Harry. “Some bad news from home.” That would even be true, if Father kept up this collision course with Professor Snape Draco was foreseeing.

“You don’t have to put me up that way.” Theo leaned towards him, his voice soft and hoarse. “I think we’re on the same side.”

Draco froze his smile. There were older Slytherins watching them from the corners whose loyalties he wasn’t uncertain of. “Well, you could put it that way,” he returned, in an almost exact echo of Theo’s words, and stood. “I need to go to the Owlery.”

“I’ll come with you.”

Draco wanted to grind his teeth, but instead, he just asked for Ultio to come with him. Ultio rode his upper arm and watched Theo carefully the whole time. Draco kept his eyes focused straight ahead. It was true that Theo had already helped them, but he hadn’t done anything since then. Draco didn’t want to risk exposing their secrets to someone who was still looking to save his own skin.

But if he was, Theo behaved with unusual openness by tugging insistently on Draco’s sleeve and making him stop in the middle of the corridor. Draco turned around with an irritated huff. “What is it, Nott?”

“I only wanted to know what the letter said.”

Draco gave him a single slashing look and continued to walk. That look should have driven Theo from his side, but he continued to tag along. Draco sighed. He supposed he wasn’t as good at those looks as Professor Snape was. “Look, you must know I’m not going to tell you that. So why are you really here?”

Theo gave a single shiver, and then cast a charm that made the air around them turn dark and thick. Draco immediately seized his wand, but Theo shook his head. “It’s just a spell that will foil any attempt to eavesdrop on us. Even spells that someone has cast on clothes and bricks in the corridor won’t work. The portraits and ghosts can’t hear us, either.”

Draco raised his eyebrows, but used the modified spell his mother had taught him that would detect the nature of magic anyway. The numbers that came back to him weren’t ones he’d seen before. They did broadly reflect this to be a kind of protection charm against listeners, though.

Draco lowered his wand. “Well? I’m listening.”

Theo clenched his fists in front of him. “The Dark Lord is planning some sort of huge initiation. I know it because I got an invitation. He wants everyone who he owled to come to him on the dark of the moon next month and receive the Dark Mark.”

Draco stared. “That makes no sense. My father said all the initiations he knows about were private and the Death Eater who went through them had to swear to tell no one else, either.”

Theo gave a quick shrug. “Maybe he’s changed his tactics because he needs new Death Eaters. Anyway, I thought I’d tell you.”

“And you want something for this, of course.” It wasn’t the sort of thing Harry would have guessed, but then, Theo could have gone to Harry with this information, too. There had to be a reason he’d approached Draco.

“Of course I do.” Theo’s smile was weak and wobbly in a way that would have terrified Draco if he had seen it before the war really started. As it was, he couldn’t think of anything else being terrifying compared to Voldemort. “I’m a Slytherin.”

“What do you want?”

“I think I need to leave the school.” Theo raised a hand, even though Draco hadn’t started objecting. “When I don’t show up to that initiation—and I have no intention of becoming a Death Eater—then my life is pretty much forfeit. If Voldemort didn’t kill me himself, he’d have someone he initiated who’s in Slytherin do it.”

Draco narrowed his eyes. “So you want sanctuary.”

“Yeah. With your family.”

“You really think my father will go for that?”

Theo shrugged. “Just because some people choose to be deaf doesn’t mean I do. Professor Snape is obviously against Voldemort, but on the other hand, he’s right here and he’s going into the thick of battle. He wouldn’t make a good protector for me. Your father, on the other hand…if the rumors are true and he’s found a way to get rid of the Dark Mark, he’s against Voldemort, but he wouldn’t be on the front lines.”

“My father knows plenty of spells!”

“And I’d imagine Potter still has him working behind the scenes, trying to find a way to make the battle less costly, because that’s the way your father likes to work.”

Draco huffed. He couldn’t really deny that characterization, as much as he’d like to. “You realize that it’s not just my father who would have to give his consent for you staying at the Manor? Mother would, too.”

“I can be charming when I need to be.”

Draco grimaced a little. He knew that Mother wouldn’t really say no. Theo and his father had visited the Manor when Draco and Theo were both younger, and as much as his father was a lost cause, Mother wouldn’t want to give up on someone Draco’s age. “Then I’ll owl them and ask them in code. You’ll probably have to talk to them through the Floo before you go, though.”

Theo nodded. “I would expect nothing less. Thank you, Draco.” He paused as though he was going to say something else, then shook his head, canceled the charm, and hurried away.

Draco looked at Ultio and discovered that he had his snout pointed straight at the wall. Draco squinted along the length of his snake’s nose and then felt his eyes widen. “Dash was right there and overheard everything, didn’t he?” he muttered.

Ultio bobbed his head thoughtfully. Draco gave the wall a grateful glance and kept walking. At least the only thing he would need to write now was to ask his parents if Theo could seek sanctuary. Dash would make sure that the news of the mass Death Eater initiation reached the right ears.

*

“A mass initiation at the dark of the moon.” Severus hadn’t stopped pacing since Dash brought the news to Harry and Harry brought the news to him. “He has never done something like that before.”

Harry absently petted Dash’s neck. He was mostly out in the corridor, his body draping along the stones. “Well, maybe it’s because he’s running low on Death Eaters. He wants to induct some impressionable people who’ll serve him instead of running away or taking their Marks off?”

“Perhaps.” Severus halted, staring straight ahead. “Unless…”

“Yes?” Harry asked when perhaps five minutes had passed in silence. He liked to give Severus the time he needed to say something, but this was a lot longer than usual.

“There is a ritual that could be performed at the dark of the moon, with innocent blood,” Severus said. “I hesitate to think that Voldemort would have had enough time to set it up, but—we need the letter that Mr. Nott was sent. It should contain enough clues to let us know if the initiation would happen in the kind of place the ritual would need.”

“What kind of ritual is it?”

“To bathe in innocent blood and temporarily absorb the victims’ magic.” Severus turned to face Harry, and his face had gone pale enough that Harry prepared to Conjure a chair to catch him if he fainted. “He would be able to win, then.”

No, Dash said down the bond into Harry’s mind. We are not going to let that happen.

Well, of course we aren’t, but we have to prevent him from conducting the ritual anyway, Harry sent back, irritably.

I think, Dash said, and Harry could feel the trickle of smugness in the back of his mind, that we can have our own countermeasure ready to go. Not just stopping the ritual, but bringing this insane war to an end.

Chapter 142: Lucius Makes His Move

Chapter Text

Lucius stared at the artifact that had removed his Dark Mark. At the moment, it sat in the middle of an enormous circle of ash and rubies. It had been the best method he'd been able to research as to how to contain the box while he altered its original purpose.

Are you certain this is the best course of action? asked the voice in the back of his mind that always lingered there. It was Narcissa's.

"To retain our place in Harry's ranks and ensure that Draco always has value to him, yes," Lucius murmured.

He took a step back from the circle and raised his wand. The circle began to vibrate in silence, a tremor that raced through the ash and made it rise in small spirals, and made the rubies sway in place, a gleam of stray light shooting through them. Lucius had learned to work with moving magical circles as a boy, when his father tutored him with strict exactness in every form of Dark magic. They could often overcome defenses that completely still circles could not.

Abraxas Malfoy had also taught Lucius about the wall of resistance that he would encounter when he used circles like this; they empowered the artifact's or the person's defenses for a short time before they broke them down. This wall was larger and firmer than any Lucius had met before. Usually the walls felt like dust at best, like ice at worst. This was stone.

Lucius shook his head. "You are still only a thing," he told the box. "You are not more powerful than I am."

And he struck, coiling his force behind the lunge like one from a snake's neck. The box vibrated in front of him and then abruptly tilted on one corner. Lucius blinked. That was easier than he had expected it to be.

The force that came surging back the other way felt like the snake's lunge reflected. It knocked Lucius to the floor, and the circle of ash and rubies fell abruptly still. Lucius stared as a blinding headache spread across his brow and flashes of light cut across his vision.

The box had gone back to being nothing but an object a moment later. There was no trace of the magic that had made it strike back at Lucius. There was also no trace of the magic he had spent, the sort that should have affected it.

A second later, the door opened and Narcissa stepped inside, staring from him to the box. "What did you do?"

"Possibly, miscalculated," Lucius murmured.

*

"We have to choose a suitable ground for the battle, among other things." Severus ignored the hostile stare he could feel coming from Weasley's direction. Apparently, he took his self-appointed task as strategist for their side seriously, and thought Severus shouldn't have "interfered." Severus bent over a map of Britain spread out on the table in his quarters. "Hogwarts is out of the question."

"I agree," said Clarence Greengrass, whom Severus found stuffy, but who at least had proved his loyalty by finding out his wife's betrayal. "Too many children here. We need somewhere that has a stronghold guarded by wards."

"But we can't stay in the stronghold once the battle begins." Draco was tapping his fingers together and frowning at the map. "And I don't know a lot of pure-blood families who would like us sacrificing their manor houses like that."

"The stronghold is going to be a distraction," Harry said. He was standing near the door with his arms folded and his head tilted in the way that Severus knew meant he was communicating with Dash, who had his own head thrust through the doorway behind Harry. "Everything is going to be a distraction."

"From what?" Clarence demanded.

"The battle that's going to happen between me and Voldemort." Harry ignored the way Clarence still flinched at the name, although Severus would have liked to discuss it. He leaned forwards instead, his eyes intense. "I think we need to have a stronghold as a target for Voldemort's forces and to make him think there's some goal he needs to achieve by taking it. And there will be guerilla forces joining the battle as distractions."

"While you..."

"Attack Voldemort in my head through the mental link Dash has managed to establish to him, since Dash is a basilisk and Voldemort is a Parselmouth."

Severus raised his eyebrows. Was that the lie they had chosen to keep the presence of the Horcrux quiet? That satisfied some questions that might otherwise have arisen. Clarence looked more settled already.

Still, because he was Clarence Greengrass, he asked, "You've managed to set up a link when the Dark Lord is a master Legilimens who's going to guard his mind?"

"Yes," Harry said, his gaze distant. Severus thought he was seeing the coming battle in his mind rather than engaging in speech with Dash, however. "This isn't the sort of link he can shut off unless he wants to cease communicating in Parseltongue. And I don't think he does."

"There is something we have to do before the battle, though," Granger sad.

Severus caught her gaze and nodded in understanding. They needed to find the Horcrux that they had still not destroyed, the one that Granger suspected was in Gringotts, and the only one left other than the one--the pair, Severus sometimes thought of them--that bound Harry and Voldemort together.

But they could not say as much in front of Clarence Greengrass, and Severus only nodded again. "Consider it handled."

"Really, Severus?" Harry had snapped back to the conversation from his long-distance staring and was looking at Severus with an eyebrow raised. "We haven't found a path to it yet."

"What are you talking about? Maybe I could help, or my wife could."

"Forgive me," Severus said, in the kind of tone Greengrass would well understand, and know was not about begging for forgiveness at all. "But I am not sure that your wife should be trusted with any of the information we've discussed here tonight."

Greengrass glared at him. "She swore a vow."

"Only with prodding." Harry had opened the door so that Dash could fit as much of his vast neck as possible through it, and he stroked the scales, his voice even as he gazed at Greengrass. "She can use the potions that you claim she's developed on our side of the battle. I don't think it would be a good idea to trust her with more than that, especially not right now."

"She won't like doing that if the battle is as much of a distraction as you say it is."

"So don't tell her." Harry's voice was smooth. "In fact, I think that when you go and discuss things with her, you should think carefully about the tone you want to take. Thank you for lending us the benefit of your expertise."

Greengrass shot them an angry, baffled glance, and stood back against the wall. As much as Severus had wished to dismiss the man himself, he felt compelled to float a thought near the surface of his mind, atop his Occlumency barriers, catching Harry’s eye. It is not wise to make enemies of your friends, Harry.

Harry answered in the same way, with an unhidden thought and a bland gaze. He's as much an enemy as a friend already, given that his wife betrayed us and now he's suggesting that she be included in things. Harry shook his head a second later and turned back to face the rest of the room. He seemed to have grown a great deal in a short time, Severus thought privately. His hand remained on Dash's scales as he turned to face Severus. “We need to bring in Lucius."

"Why?" Severus asked warily. Draco had filled him in on his suspicions about his father.

"Because I intend to stage that distracting battle at Malfoy Manor."

Severus stared at Harry. Harry only looked calmly back at him, one hand moving again to smooth down Dash’s scales.

“What?” Clarence blurted. “But how in the world is Lucius going to agree to that? He values his ancestral grounds above anything else!” He turned and glared at Draco. “How in the world did you agree to that?”

Draco only spared Clarence a glance that was as calm as Harry’s. “I was the one who suggested it to Harry.”

“But why?”

“I value my chosen allegiance as much as my father values the grounds.”

And let Clarence think that that only means loyalty to Harry, if he wants, Severus thought, a little shaken. He had once believed that nothing would shake Draco from placing his family above all. He had worshipped Lucius in his younger years at Hogwarts; he was devoted to his mother. There were no other Malfoys left after a few generations of only children and the first war with Voldemort, and precious few Blacks. Who else would Draco give his love to?

From the softened look on Draco’s face when his eyes met Harry’s, and the equally softened look he got in return, Draco had chosen. Severus grimaced to himself. I hope Lucius will be as calm when he finds out.

“That doesn’t tell us why Malfoy Manor’s the best candidate, though,” Granger pointed out. Severus was irritated to see her smiling slightly. So she had known about this, or at least thought the choice logical. Had everyone known except him and Clarence Greengrass? Severus did not appreciate being put in the same category as a fool.

“Several reasons,” Harry said at once. “Dash has looked at the wards. They’re not as impressive as Hogwarts’s wards, but they’re damn close. They’re likely to convince Voldemort that Malfoy Manor is our real stronghold and give our attackers a place to retreat if something goes wrong.”

Draco nodded. “And it makes sense, given how close Harry and I are known to be.” He glanced once at Weasley. “No offense, Ron, but the Burrow doesn’t exactly have the kind of wards the Manor does.”

Weasley only nodded, indeed without offense, something else Severus would once have believed he would never have witnessed. “I know. And I’m not sure I’d want Voldemort targeting my family, anyway.”

“That, and there are places that Dash can fit into in the Manor, that are private enough to make sure that the battle won’t disturb us.” Harry’s eyes were shining now. His hand had stopped its stroking, but Severus thought he had rarely witnessed Harry in as much accord with his basilisk as he was now. “So we’ll be able to conduct the strike we need against Voldemort more easily than we could in lots of places.” He smiled at Clarence. “The advantages are real as well as just ones that will convince Voldemort this is our real battle plan.”

“This is still a fool’s plan,” Clarence said. His hands were clasped behind his back. He looked as though anger had won the war over fear in his mind. Severus lifted one eyebrow. He was willing to eliminate that problem, if asked, although so far Harry hadn’t consented.

“Your objection is noted.”

Harry hadn’t changed the look on his face, had barely changed the tone of his voice, but it seemed that Clarence had some sense, as little as it might be. He swallowed, nodded, and backed down. “Then you’re going to tell the others?”

“Yes. And leak the news among the Marked students here, so that Voldemort gets the intelligence that we want him to without being too suspicious of it.”

“I heard there was something else…”

Harry raised an eyebrow, and Clarence nodded and sighed and left. Harry waited for Severus to put up the charms that would seal the door and give them privacy, then turned to the rest of them.

“The ritual that Voldemort wants to perform to drain the magic of newly Marked students is probably going to happen this new moon,” he said bluntly. “We can’t set up Malfoy Manor to be a good battle site by then.”

“So what are we going to do to help them?” Granger asked. She was practically vibrating in place, but she had her eyes fixed on Harry with an expression of ultimate faith.

“That’s what I wanted to tell you,” Harry said. “We could do something that would stop the ritual—but it would also provoke Voldemort into attacking, and we still wouldn’t be ready. So, Dash came up with an alternative plan.”

He turned the same look of faith on the basilisk that Granger had given him. Severus flinched, unable to stop himself. He really didn’t look forward to the day that Dash would fail Harry. And it had to be coming. Everyone failed at the last.

Dash glanced at Severus as if he could feel the doubt, but then gave a series of long, low hisses. Draco rolled his eyes a little. “Some of us are used to Parseltongue and still can’t understand it, Harry.”

“I know, but he wanted to speak it aloud first,” Harry said quietly. “Anyway. What he’s saying is that we have the power to keep the students Voldemort’s invited here at Hogwarts, instead of letting them go to Voldemort.” He gestured at Dash, and Dash’s eyelids fluttered above his eyes. “Dash can Petrify them.”

Severus paused. “That would not save the older Death Eaters that he might drain power from.”

“I know, and I don’t know what to do about them.” Harry shook his head and closed his eyes. His face looked much more worn and older than it had when he was speaking to Clarence. Draco went over to stand next to Harry without a word. Harry leaned back against him in the same kind of silence.

“My father has tried to contact those he knows have the Mark and has offered to relieve them of it,” Draco murmured, stroking Harry’s hair. “Too many of them distrust him, though, I think it’s possible that Voldemort will pull them in and drain them no matter how we try to appeal to them.”

“There is no way of striking through the Dark Mark?” Severus asked, although he had no idea and was simply tossing out ways that he thought might delay the inevitable. “You have no power over it because you have a Horcrux linked to Voldemort?”

Harry shook his head. “Dash tried when we had Bellatrix in captivity, but nothing he came up with worked.” He looked between Draco and Dash. “Nothing you can come up with, either?”

“No,” Draco whispered. Dash shook his head with a soft rattling as his scales collided with the wall.

“I’ve been looking new moon rituals up in the library,” Granger volunteered. “But they’re really difficult to interrupt from the outside. The person who’s performing them creates a magical ink between himself and a concentrated area of darkness, which works better than the concentrated light from the full moon because…” She caught Severus’s eye and flushed. “Anyway. That’s probably the exact reason Voldemort chose one.”

“I suppose,” Harry said, after a long moment of strained silence, “we can only save the ones who are so young that they didn’t have a lot of time to see how things could go wrong in the first war. Not the ones who did and who chose to keep sticking with him.”

“Maybe he can only do the ritual with people who aren’t Marked, even?” Draco asked, but his voice sounded hollow. “That’s why he wants the ones who aren’t initiated yet, like Theo, to come to him?”

Severus shook his head. “There is no evidence of that. We have to assume the worst, that he will kill many of the Death Eaters and become more powerful than before.”

Draco was the one who leaned on Harry this time. Weasley took a deep breath and said, “Okay. Well. Then that means that we can’t save the Death Eaters. Can we start talking about what we are going to do about the new moon?”

Severus winced at Weasley’s bluntness, but he had to admit it was probably the best choice to make. They could agonize for years and still not make the right choice, and they did not have years.

Dash hissed something, and Harry nodded. “Brace ourselves.”

“That will require explaining the situation to my father, then.” Draco sounded as if he was the one about to brace himself.

“Yes.” For a moment, Harry’s hand snaked behind him and squeezed Draco’s wrist. “I planned on talking to him through the Floo, but if you think going to the Manor would be more effective—”

“I think I should be the one to do it.” Draco had squeezed Harry’s hand in return, but now he stepped away, and Severus slowly raised an eyebrow. There was strength carved in the lines of Draco’s face that he had once believed he would never see.

“All right.” Harry smiled once at Draco and turned to Severus as Draco slipped out of the room. “Did you have questions?”

“You seem to have decided most of what I would have asked you without my input.” Severus regretted the firmness of his tone when Harry winced, but on the other hand, he didn’t back down the way he once would have.

Harry simply took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said. “There are things that I have to do, like destroy Voldemort by getting that Horcrux out of my head. And Dash can offer good strategies, and Draco is one of the people who said that Malfoy Manor would be a good idea.” His gaze darted briefly to Granger and Weasley. “And I talked about a few things with Ron and Hermione that I didn’t with you.”

“Will you leave us, Miss Granger and Mr. Weasley?” Severus asked without looking away from Harry.

“Sir—”

“When you’re looking at Harry like that—”

“Please, you lot,” Harry said. He hadn’t glanced away from Severus, either. “I know why Severus wants to talk to me. And I do have some questions to answer from him.”

Granger and Weasley hesitated a long time and made irritating noises, but at least they left. Severus spelled the door shut after Dash had finally removed his head. “Why did you tell them and not me?”

Harry’s eyes widened a little. “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize it would upset you so much.”

“I am not upset.”

“Hurt you, then. I’m sorry.”

Severus fumed about that for a minute, then inclined his head sharply. He would allow that characterization of what he had gone through. “Why did you tell them and not me?” he repeated.

“I was afraid that you would focus so much on the danger to me that you wouldn’t see the advantage of the plans.”

Severus paused, wishing he had something to do with his hands at the moment. Harry looked quietly at him, and it was hard to understand the expression on his face. Not entirely the expression of the young man that Severus had thought he knew so well, though.

“You think that I care so much about you that I would put the defeat of Voldemort in danger?” Severus was not sure that he recognized the note in his voice, either.

Harry tensed his muscles as if he was about to draw his wand. “Yes.”

Severus nodded slowly. Put like that, it did make sense. And unfortunately, he knew all the many, many excellent reasons that Harry had to go into danger. Severus could have taught him battle Legilimency for years and it would still have been risky when he finally decided to confront Voldemort.

That did not stop the impulse he had to bundle Harry away into an unfrequented corridor of the castle and feed him the Draught of Living Death, or any other potion that would keep him from marching obliviously into danger.

Severus sighed out, explosively, at last. “You have thought about this in depth and made the decision that it’s right to use Malfoy Manor, and to confine yourself and Dash in one of the rooms. And you think that Lucius is going to agree.”

Harry smiled a little. “He wants to be important to our war, and he isn’t satisfied with what he has right now. Yes, I think he’ll listen to Draco.”

*

“He wants to use what?”

“He wants to use Malfoy Manor as the site of the last battle that we’re going to fight with Voldemort.”

“And you consented to this.” Lucius heard his own voice too low and angry to actually make the sentence a question, but his son only gazed back at him through the flames, cool and unaffected.

“I consented to it because I think it’s the best plan. And because I thought I could talk you into it.”

Lucius looked at Draco and felt a deep coldness move through his limbs, positioning them in a way that would have made him ready to lash out at an enemy. “Did you, now,” he murmured.

“I know that you want to be important to Harry’s cause, Father, and that you no longer think that my existence is enough to maintain that importance.” Draco’s expression hadn’t changed; in fact, his lips were the only things moving on his whole face. It was—disconcerting. “This is a way to let you ratchet up your importance again, if you like. And I believe Harry when he says that there won’t be much danger to the Manor itself.”

“You would risk the home of your ancestors for—”

“For someone I love? Yes, I would.”

“That is not how I was going to complete that sentence.”

“It’s how I would.” Draco leaned further forwards, for all that the fireplace simply gave Lucius a better view of his face. “You raised me to protect the people I love, Father. You probably never thought that would involve anyone outside the family, at least not until I was much older. But this is the way my life turned out, and it’s Harry I love. You can accept that or you can accept your diminishing relevance in the world we’re going to have after the war.”

Lucius froze for a moment, his fingers gripping the sleeves of his robe. He thought, he was almost sure, that Draco couldn’t see that from the angle he’d adopted. “You are very confident in yourself,” he hissed.

“I’m confident in Harry, and Dash, and Professor Snape, and all the other people who are on our side and the plans we’ve prepared to end the war,” Draco said, with a minute shrug. “Are you going to be one of the people who I can have confidence in, Father? Or are you going to stand against us?”

Lucius tightened his mouth, and his hold on his own temper, and thought. Then he nodded shortly. “You may tell your—Harry that you can stage the battle at Malfoy Manor.”

“Thank you, Father,” Draco said. “Your cooperation is appreciated.” And he vanished from the fire before Lucius could so much as draw breath.

Lucius stared in silence at the place where he had been, wanting so badly to Floo to Hogwarts and take Draco to task that his teeth hurt from where he was grinding them.

But at the same time, the neat way Draco had seen his desires, and used those desires to position himself in a more valuable way within Harry’s ranks, and outwit his father at the same time—

That kind of political maneuvering is what I raised him for. I have to be proud of him, much as I would rather not be.

Chapter 143: The Rite of the New Moon

Chapter Text

“Do I have to do this?”

Harry looked at Nott and felt pity swelling up in his throat like bile. He swallowed so that he wouldn’t spit, and shook his head. “Not if we had some other way. Or if you want to hide somewhere in Hogwarts. Or if you think you could leave and find sanctuary somewhere.”

Nott closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall of the dungeons outside the Slytherin common room. “I don’t have any better idea. And my father is a Death Eater.”

Harry nodded. He understood, far better than Nott had any idea of. His relatives had been no sanctuary, either. And maybe Sirius would be someday, but he hadn’t reached that level yet. Harry touched the side of Dash’s neck.

A light, flickering touch next to him, like a shadow that had a bit of weight. It was Dash’s tongue. Then Dash turned to face Nott and lifted the first set of eyelids from his eyes. Harry heard Nott’s breath catch, and then nothing else.

He opened his eyes to see Nott leaning back on the wall, Petrified, staring straight ahead while barely breathing. Harry sighed and Levitated him, floating him down the corridor to a room that Dash said had been abandoned since the time of the Founders. Dash’s nose was the one that poked the stone wall in exactly the right place and made a huge, darkened space open up.

Harry was about to cast a Lumos Charm, but Dash hissed, “Lights,” instead, and the walls flared with soft, brilliant white light, more like Muggle electricity than torches. Harry looked around in interest. There were wide, shallow stone steps down to what looked almost like a dais, with a dished space in the middle of it, and comfortable chairs that must be under Preservation Charms facing it.

What was this place? Harry asked as he floated Nott towards one of the chairs.

An area where we could present music and stories to each other. Dash slithered down the stairs easily and curled up in the dished area in the middle of the stage, turning his head back and forth. We had music teachers in Hogwarts then, and visiting bards, and sometimes stores told in common.

There was enough weight of mourning in his voice that Harry didn’t ask any further questions. He made sure that Nott was arranged comfortably. Dash could control his Petrification, unlike the hunger-maddened basilisk Harry had killed a few years ago, and Nott wouldn’t have to eat, drink, or eliminate.

“Maybe we could bring this area back into common use after the battle,” Harry suggested as they walked back out of the room and Dash closed it up with a sweep of his tail against another stone.

I would like that, Dash said down the bond, and glanced over his back for long moments before he joined Harry in journeying to the Slytherin common room to Petrify the next victims, willing or not.

*

Severus circled around the potion, watching it with narrowed eyes. The dark purple color was not what he had hoped for. While he understood the experimental nature of any first attempt, he should at least have got closer to a pale lilac than this.

A blue light sparkled like a star in the corner of his vision. Severus wanted to close his eyes and groan aloud, but he did not. That meant someone wanted his attention at the door of his office. And it meant he would have to interrupt his brewing for now.

His mood did not improve when he found Elena Zabini standing in the corridor, waiting for him. She gripped her robes and gave a little curtsey. Severus stared at her flatly.

“I think I might be able to help you,” she said brightly, and brushed past him into the office without waiting for an invitation.

“I do not think you know what I am working on,” Severus began, his temper already heating. If Harry had gone behind his back and talked about this, he would not be able to accept it as easily as he had accepted Harry withholding the news of the final battle’s location.

“Oh, I only know because I overheard your boy’s friends talking about it,” Elena said dismissively. “As it happens, I have been working on something like that myself, but not to recall happy memories.”

“Another means of tormenting your enemies?”

Elena glanced at him. “Not unless I use it to figure out that there are more to torture. Blaise claims that he doesn’t remember everything about the way his abuse unfolded. The potion I want to make will bring those memories to the forefront and put them into a Pensieve, so that I can sharpen their details little by little without making him relive them.”

Severus paused, then inclined his head. “It sounds intriguing, but that is not what I am currently brewing.”

“No, I know that. You are trying to make Pensieve memories more emotional. Well, that’s a fine goal, and it relates to mine. We can help each other.”

Severus held back his reaction. “My own experiments are coming near to fruition, Madam Zabini. While I appreciate the offer, I fear that adding another brewer now would require more preparation than it is worth.”

“You say that, without having the least idea if it’s true,” Elena said, and turned around to study the dark purple potion sitting on the shelf above the cauldron. “That’s your latest attempt? It doesn’t look anything like what it’s supposed to.”

Severus shook his head. “You would not know that, because you do not know what ingredients I am working with. We are both bound by our loyalty to Harry, and I would hate to see us come to an argument. Please leave.”

“You must be using snowdrops, of course. They’re the usual base in emotion-enhancing potions. And that means that you’ll be aiming for a pale lilac color, not this mess.”

She was right about both the ingredients and the color, but Severus did not intend to tell her so. “Do not force me to make my request less polite, Madam Zabini,” he breathed.

Elena started and turned away from the potion she had been staring at as if attempting to memorize each swirl of different delicate colors in the flask. “You were serious about asking me to leave?”

Severus did not reply, but waved his wand so that the door to the office swung open and stood open.

Elena considered him, then shook her head. “This offer isn’t one that I’ll repeat very often, Severus.” She did move towards the door, but she kept watching him as if she assumed that he would either change his mind or cast a curse at her back any second.

“I am very well-pleased to hear that, Madam Zabini.”

Elena didn’t flounce of the room or get upset the way Severus had assumed she would when he refused the help. She simply glided out, and the door Severus had opened shut behind her as if she had never been there.

Severus spent the next ten minutes casting a series of spells to make sure that she hadn’t brought any poisons into the office or cast any curses that might evade cursory detection. He was not much less uneasy when the spells revealed nothing.

Madam Zabini would not have earned the reputation she had for herself if she was careless. But in the end, Severus went back to his brewing and notes because it was all he could do and there was nothing obviously harmful.

He did not think, too much, about what would have happened if he had accepted her help.

*

“You really think that he’s going to invite me to witness this ritual? But why? What purpose would that serve?”

To make you despair. Dash was proceeding beside Harry along the lakeshore, his head tilted and his tongue darting out to catch scents that Harry couldn’t even guess at, although he did know that if they were important, Dash would relay them to him down the bond. The war has become personal for Voldemort. The last time I was in his head, I found more desire to cause you pain than to win.

“Wow.” Harry stopped walking and slid down against the trunk of a tree, staring up at the grey sky overhead. Warming Charms covered his hands and face, and he absently cast another one along Dash’s scales. Then he switched to speaking down the bond, because there were certain things he wouldn’t say aloud no matter how alone they seemed to be. Why did he start doing that?

You have taken so much from him. Dash stretched out next to him, his neck in contact with Harry all down the side of his body. That is almost certainly the reason. He wants to claim back some of his own.

Harry nodded, although it still seemed silly to him. What happens if he finds out through my mind that we knew about this already?

There are not so many bad consequences of that, given that the one who told us about that is Petrified in the school.

Harry nodded uneasily. He knew that Nott would be under his protection when he woke up, and the other boy was wise enough not to venture near his father or anyone else who might have reason to capture him and take him to Voldemort. It made Harry worry anyway, though. It probably always would.

And when the rite begins and he doesn’t have as many victims as he thought, do you think he will kill the mature Death Eaters?

Not all of them, no. He needs at least some people on his side to help him with the attacks and raids, and the ruling if he wins.

Which we won’t let him.

Of course we will not let him. Dash dipped his head and let his chin rest on Harry’s side for a second. Even that was nearly enough weight to knock him over. Do you think that between me and you, we cannot prevent him from winning?

Harry sighed and scratched carefully behind Dash’s eye-ridges, watching the way it made the yellow light flutter as if in bliss. I worry that I still haven’t mastered battle Legilimency I worry that the Elder Wand might throw me over at the last minute because it will decide Voldemort would make a better master. I worry that Voldemort is so powerful and everyone fears even the mention of his name, while they don’t seem afraid of me.

Dash gave a chuckle that made Harry’s hand and the bond vibrate at the same time. In the end, we will be using neither pure battle Legilimency nor the pure power of the Elder Wand, but a combination of those things. You don’t need to master the Legilimency completely when it won’t be the only kind of magic in the mix, and you don’t need to trust the Elder Wand when you won’t be relying solely on it.

Harry bit his lip, but nodded. Then he leaned back against the trunk of the tree behind him and closed his eyes. When do you think this “invitation” will arrive?

It’s not like Voldemort to be patient about showing off what he thinks is his genius. I assume that we’ll get one early in the evening, so that he can brag to you before he would have to begin the actual process of draining the magic.

Harry swallowed and whispered, You’re right. Dash pressed closer to him still, until Harry was sitting lapped to his chin in coils. “I’ll still be glad when this entire war is over, though,” Harry added aloud, because his mind was starting to ache with all the bond-speaking he was doing and he knew that he would want to rest it before the moment when Voldemort pulled him into the connection between their thoughts.

All of us will. Dash’s voice felt as deep as the earth as it traveled through Harry.

*

Severus saw the moment when Harry snapped to attention and stared into the distance. He touched his left arm, for the first moment since he had got rid of it regretting the absence of the Dark Mark. It would have given him a much clearer picture of the instant that the ritual started.

“Has Voldemort pulled you into his mind?” Severus demanded, coming up to stand beside Harry. They were in the room off his quarters where Harry sometimes slept, and Harry himself rested on a bed. Dash was behind the walls in the nearest pipe, as close as he could get without breaking through stone. They had considered doing this outside so Dash could wrap Harry in his body, but there was simply too much chance that someone would see or overhear them and guess what was happening.

Harry had dealt with enough gossip and rumors that he was Slytherin’s Heir or a Dark wizard or otherwise terrible before he became Severus’s ward. He would deal with no more.

“Yeah,” Harry said, in a breathy voice that made Severus glance at the stock of healing potions out of the corner of his eye. He heard a rustle in the outer room where Granger, Weasley, and Draco waited. Severus had demanded that they stay out of the way unless he needed help to hold Harry’s thrashing body down.

If Harry thrashed at all. They had made their best guesses, but none of them truly understood how this would go.

For a moment, Severus thought he saw a red flash in Harry’s eyes, and then they went completely glazed and he dropped to the bed. Severus let his hand hover in front of Harry’s face; his eyes were open and he was breathing normally, but he didn’t respond. He might as well have been unconscious.

Severus took a deep breath and stood back. So that had gone as well as he supposed it could for the first few moments. He stepped into the outer room and found that there was an instant silence, although Draco had been saying something when he walked out.

“He is in the midst of it,” Severus said simply. “I would ask that you not disturb me unless the school is burning down or my potions are exploding.”

“Of course, sir,” Granger murmured. She was the only one to say something aloud. Weasley and Draco simply nodded, faces tight and pale.

Severus retreated back into the inner bedroom, and sat down in the chair next to Harry. His hands had lifted and poised in front of him, claws curled in the air. Severus looked helplessly at them, wondering f it was the best thing to force them back down to Harry’s side, or not. It might make Harry panic, wherever and whenever he was.

In the end, Severus reached out and caught one of those claw-like hands, hoping to reach through the mists veiling Harry’s sight, and reassure him that he was not alone.

*

“Ah, Harry. Welcome to my inner sanctum. One made with the intent of keeping even our friend out of our minds.”

Harry looked around without responding. He felt an instinctive surge of panic that Dash might not be able to reach him, but on the other hand, he didn’t know that was what was happening yet, so he would wait and see.

The room around them seemed to be a solid mass of green, the color of the Killing Curse, but ripples ran through the walls after he watched them for a moment. It looked as if it was made of water covered with pond-scum the longer Harry stared, really. He faced Voldemort. “You wanted it to be made of water?”

Voldemort looked horrible. Harry knew that the dream-representation of him didn’t exactly resemble the body that Voldemort really lived in, but he wondered how much Voldemort really had a choice at this point. His face was almost a skull, the skin on it thin and pulled-back, and the left side of his body dripped a steady stream of black blood that reminded Harry of the black blood that tended to come out of Horcruxes. He saw where Harry was looking and gave a laugh that sounded like he was choking on someone’s intestines.

You cannot face the consequences of your great work, Harry? And you call yourself a hero? Do you doubt yourself yet?” Voldemort asked, dropping into Parseltongue.

“No,” Harry said, calmly, in English. “I know that you still have to be dealt with. And you didn’t answer the question. Did you make the room by mistake and you don’t really understand why it’s made of water? It’s okay. I have problems understanding symbolism sometimes, too—”

Voldemort gave a jagged snarl, and Harry winced as he felt pain run over his forehead in probably the exact same place the scar would be if he was awake. He took a slow, deep breath and raised an eyebrow. “And you still can’t control your emotions.”

For a moment, Voldemort stood there, shivering as if he was made of water, too. Then he said, “Your meager attacks upon me cannot counteract my greatest triumph, Harry Potter. Behold!” And he gestured with one hand, and the nearest wall of the room slid aside like the water it resembled.

Harry found himself staring at a bleak field, which seemed to have been burned of all its grass. There was only trampled black earth there, and something thick and wet that Harry thought was a ring of blood. There were bodies lying in the distance, and Harry shivered himself, with grief and rage. Voldemort had killed innocent people to make that circle, he was sure.

A bunch of Muggles,” Voldemort hissed, sounding as if he was actually worried for a second, even though Harry knew he was enjoying every part of this. “Nothing for you to concern yourself with.

“To me it doesn’t matter if they’re wizards or Muggles,” Harry said, and resisted the waves of guilt that were trying to hit him. He had known Voldemort would do this, he reminded himself again. The most important part was figuring out how to stop him.

Voldemort laughed, a noise like someone tearing his throat apart. “Then you shall see them suffer whether you will or not,” he said, and seemed to manipulate something with his hand in the air, almost like turning the knob of a door. Harry held his breath against a stench that never arrived. Of course, he and Voldemort weren’t actually next to that pile of corpses.

“Now,” Voldemort said, and then he froze and Harry heard his voice speaking as if from a distance. “Alecto! Amycus! Where are the children?”

Harry swallowed hard against nausea, at the thought that Voldemort might have just gone and found some random children. But then he reminded himself that Voldemort wouldn’t have bothered with Muggles for the ritual itself. He wanted to increase his magic, and Muggles didn’t have any.

“There are—” The voice that answered was a woman’s, making Harry shudder a little. He hadn’t realized that Voldemort had any female Death Eaters except Bellatrix. “The children haven’t arrived yet, my lord.”

Voldemort paused. Then the man in front of Harry came back to life and whipped around, his mouth gaping wide. The gesture would have been more threatening if he’d had fangs to bare, the way Nagini used to. “You! What have you done, Harry Potter?

Harry grinned at him, glad that at least one thing had gone right, and apparently none of the young wizards or witches Voldemort had summoned to the “initiation” had come. “What makes you think I had anything to do with this?”

What did you do?” Voldemort repeated, and then pain slashed through Harry’s mind again, so suddenly and unexpectedly that he shrieked.

He felt what seemed to be immense fluffy clouds wrap around him, cushioning some of the impact, and leaned back against the darkness and the green walls, breathing hard. Dash was wielding the bond like a shield to take and deflect the pain.

“I will have an answer.” Voldemort was speaking in English now as if he thought Harry might be more willing to tell him the truth that way, and he had begun to stalk in a narrowing spiral pattern that looked as if it was homing in on Harry. “You will tell me.”

Harry remained silent and did nothing more, although he did glance at the “window” Voldemort had opened that showed the circle of blood on the grass. There were a few people in robes moving around, bending down as if giving something to the bodies.

Inferi, said Dash’s voice down the bond. They are almost certainly raising them as Inferi.

Harry swallowed. That was disgusting and also something he wished he could have prevented, but he had come to accept, at long last, that there was only so much he could do, even if he did have the Deathly Hallows and a basilisk on his side.

I resent coming last on that list.

Harry started to reply, but Voldemort abruptly grabbed his chin, or did the equivalent of it within the dream realm, and jerked his head up so that Harry’s eyes were staring into his. Voldemort hissed, “You will ignore me no longer.” And Harry felt the impact like a worm tunneling into his mind.

He fought as hard as he could, but all the barriers that he put up in Voldemort’s way just dissolved like mist. Since they were actually in the middle of a connection between their minds, maybe battle Legilimency just didn’t work.

But Voldemort was the one who reeled back, screaming. Harry stared at him as he clutched his own head, not understanding, and then there was a shimmer and Dash appeared between them, his head uplifted and his tail coiled as if he was going to launch a spell from it. His tongue darted out in rapid movements that Harry thought he would have known were triumphant even without the bond.

“I made it impossible for you to intrude!” Voldemort snapped.

Amazing that I do not have to obey you,” Dash said, and then lowered his head and drove forwards, hitting Voldemort in the chest with his snout. Voldemort tumbled off-balance, and at the same time, the rippling green walls thinned around Harry.

He didn’t have to be told to reach out and grasp the scales at the back of Dash’s neck, and then Dash was whisking him away through what felt like a tunnel-like Apparition. Harry managed to look back once to see Voldemort getting slowly to his feet.

And the rage on his face was terrible. It would haunt Harry’s dreams.

But not nearly as much as the new moon ritual would have if they hadn’t Petrified all the students who might have gone.

*

“He’s waking up.”

Severus started and turned around. Draco was standing in the doorway of the small room where Harry had lain for two hours now, and his eyes were fixed on Harry. Severus immediately turned back, annoyed beyond measure that someone who had been in another room should have seen the signs first.

But yes, Harry was twitching, and the eyes he opened had no red in them even if there was a great deal of pain. Severus reached for the nearest painkilling potion and handed it to Harry. Harry didn’t even protest before he swallowed it.

Severus settled down tensely next to him on the bed, ignoring the fact that Draco had now come up to the other side and was fervently grasping Harry’s hand. Both of them needed to be here right now. And Weasley and Granger were peering in at the door.

“Did it work?” Granger blurted at the same moment as Draco asked the question in a quiet voice. At least they didn’t glare at each other for the coincidence the way they would have once, Severus thought.

Harry gave them an exhausted smile and nodded. “No one showed up to the ritual, or at least none of the people he was expecting to come.” Then he bowed his head. “He did kill Muggles to build the ritual circle.”

“You cannot have known what victims he would choose.” Severus kept his voice low and commanding. “I forbid you to blame yourself for them.”

“I know. That’s exactly what Dash said. And Voldemort tried to read the truth out of my mind, but Dash got in the way. I don’t think he got anything. And I hadn’t realized, sir.” Harry beamed up at Severus for a moment. “He couldn’t even use the adult Death Eaters he still has Marked. The ritual has to be innocent blood.”

Then Harry abruptly passed out. Draco made a concerned noise and leaned closer, but Severus shook his head at him. “I was expecting this, Mr. Malfoy.” Long since, he thought but did not say.

“And he’s really going to be all right, sir?”

What have the times come to when a Weasley looks at me for reassurance? Severus thought, but he kept his expression calm as he nodded. “He will indeed, Mr. Weasley. He simply needs rest, both physical and mental.”

“Oh, thank Merlin,” Weasley whispered, and dropped into the chair Severus had intended for himself.

Severus allowed himself to relax, a bit. He had no doubt that Dash was nearby in the walls, ready to intervene in case something went wrong.

It was—refreshing to know that he had allies he could actually count on in the task of keeping Harry safe. More than one.

Even if several of them are underage still.

Chapter 144: Outdone

Chapter Text

 

Draco watched as Harry stirred from his sleep for the second time since he’d fallen unconscious. The first time, his scar had begun bleeding and Professor Snape had given him a potion that sent him right back to sleep again. But now, at least when he opened his eyes and met Draco’s, there was no sign of blood on his forehead.

“Are you all right?” Draco asked, reaching out to stroke Harry’s head. The book he’d been reading slid from his lap to the floor, but at the moment, he didn’t much care.

Harry nodded slowly, sitting up as if he thought his head might explode again in pain any second. He paused and turned to face the wall. Draco waited him out. He knew what Harry’s expression looked like when he was speaking to Dash by now.

Harry sighed a second later and faced Draco. “Dash said that I’ve been unconscious for three days.”

“Yes,” Draco said quietly. “Well, mostly. You woke up once, but Professor Snape sent you back to sleep when he saw how your scar reacted.”

This time, Harry touched his scar, as if he expected to feel the dried blood there. “Has that—I mean, I know I’ve missed my classes, but—”

“If the professors don’t realize by now that you’re more focused on winning the war than anything else, they’re idiots,” Draco said, shocking Harry into soft laughter. “And what’s the worst that happens? You have to retake your OWLS, or take them after the war? That’s a small price to be paid for ending him forever.”

Harry looked considerably more cheerful now. “You’re right. Not that Hermione will ever let me take my OWLS after the war. I’m sure that I’ll be marching into those classrooms along with everyone else.”

“Granger can shove it if she bothers you.”

“Draco, come on. You were calling Hermione and Ron by their first names not that many days ago.”

“That was before these last three days,” Draco said, and smiled a little grimly as he watched Harry’s eyes widen. “Yeah. Granger kept trying to get me out of here. She said I had to attend class and Professor Snape was taking care of you.”

Harry cleared his throat. “She didn’t think that Severus had to teach classes?”

“She’s very much into accepting whatever adults want to do as right, at least if the adults aren’t people like Dumbledore.” Draco sighed. He did feel a little bad about the argument he and Granger had had, but she’d tried to drag him away from Harry’s bed at wandpoint. He’d aimed his wand back, and then there was some shouting, and neither of them had said anything as bad as they had in the past but he’d made her back off. “I hope that I can make it up with her later. Right then, though, I was more concerned with staying next to you.”

“Not that I’m disappointed,” Harry said, and leaned up to kiss him lingeringly. “But I am surprised Severus allowed it.”

“He realized he wasn’t doing much good if he just stayed here,” Draco said, with a shrug. He was stretching the truth a little. But if he had cast the spells that had made Professor Snape feel tired and convinced him to surrender his post to Draco, he certainly wasn’t about to admit that in front of Harry. “And I wanted to watch you.”

“Even though I was barely stirring?”

“To make sure that you stirred again.”

Harry swallowed and nodded. “I can understand that. All right, Draco. You look as though you’re going to start forcing some food down my throat if I delay any longer. Or aren’t you?” he added.

Draco sighed and reached for the tray of food, porridge and soup, that had been standing ready under a Warming Charm since a house-elf had delivered it hours before. “I didn’t realize the intention was so visible on my face.”

“I ought to know you by now.” Harry sat up so that he was leaning back against his pillow, but he gave the tray a bit of a disgusted look when Draco helped him balance it across his knees. “Do they think I was sick or something? This looks like the kind of food an invalid would eat!”

“You haven’t had regular nourishment for three days. Of course the elves are going to be a little cautious. And you should be, too.”

Harry shot him an apologetic look and picked up the spoon. “Okay. Thanks. Did Severus just spell the food directly into my stomach?”

“Water and potions only. Aren’t you hungry?”

“I’m never all that hungry after something like this happens,” Harry muttered, but he did begin sipping at the soup. Draco watched him closely, and sat back when he realized that Harry seriously intended to eat everything, no matter how much he might not have liked it.

“What do you think Voldemort is going to do next?” Draco asked, when he was sure that making Harry pause in his eating for a while wouldn’t hurt anything.

Harry looked up at him. “I really don’t know. He was infuriated when he realized there wouldn’t be any Death Eater children showing up, and he knows that his Horcruxes are in danger. I’d expect him to do something else that will hurt my allies and something that will protect the remaining Horcrux.” He frowned at his bowl. “I just don’t know what they are.”

“Well, we’ll have to go ahead with our diversionary battle anyway,” Draco said. He still felt a glow of pride in his chest when he thought of the way he had faced his father down and made him yield. He wouldn’t listen to any plans that would move the battle out of Malfoy Manor for that reason, if nothing else. Well, if it really needed to happen, of course, but he didn’t want to surrender his triumph for a lesser reason. “Should I tell Bellatrix to feed Voldemort false information?”

Harry hesitated for a long time. Draco wondered who he was thinking of: Draco, or Bellatrix, even. Or maybe he was just communicating with Dash and discussing the best thing to do with him.

Someday, I am going to know, Draco thought. He knew that Harry would probably find Draco’s desire to know everything about his every thought overwhelming. So he would wait, and earn his trust.

Harry finally focused back on him and nodded. “Yes. We have to get him looking at Malfoy Manor, almost as much as we need to find a way to get hold of that Horcrux in Gringotts.”

Draco smiled a little. “We could ask Bellatrix about that, too, you know? I should have thought of it before.”

Harry’s mouth fell open a little, and Draco preened. That wasn’t something even Dash had thought of, he knew, or Harry wouldn’t have looked so surprised.

“Of course. You’re brilliant, Draco.”

“I know that, but it’s always nice to hear it again,” Draco said, reaching out to clasp Harry’s hand. “Now. What’s the best way to get him looking in the direction of the Manor? I mean, if we’re going to feed him this false information anyway.”

Harry bit the inside of his mouth, and Draco leaned forwards to soothe what had to be a slight pain away with a brush of his lips. Harry sighed and opened his mouth, and Draco happily deepened the kiss. He would have been even happier to crawl into the bed with Harry and deepen other things, too, if a cleared throat near the door hadn’t stopped him.

“This is the way that you watch over your unconscious boyfriend, is it?” Professor Snape asked dryly, setting down what looked like another tray of broth and oatmeal on the small table by the door.

Draco flushed, but forced himself to meet Professor Snape’s eyes evenly. He wasn’t going to back down just because someone had surprised him. “If that’s what he needs, sir, of course I’m happy to give it to him.”

Harry made a soft choking sound and said hastily, “We were just discussing ways to lure Voldemort into battle by feeding him false information through Bellatrix, Severus.”

“Of course you were.”

“We were.” Draco blessed Harry silently for sounding a lot more convincing than he would ever have managed by himself. Harry sat up and ignored the vivid blush of his own that was working its way down his neck. “Draco said that maybe Bellatrix would know something about that Horcrux in Gringotts, too. Why not? She’s one of Voldemort’s most trusted followers, and he still thinks she’s loyal to him.”

“That might be true,” Professor Snape acknowledged, and Draco’s heart lifted for a second before the professor’s next words sent it violently crashing back to earth. “That does not mean that we will gain any useful information from Draco compelling her to tell him.”

“You’re only jealous that you didn’t think of it first,” Draco snapped.

There was a long, thick silence that coiled back on itself like Dash would have if he was in the room. Draco felt himself flushing so hard that he would have liked to faint. It would have been better than staying awake to see the expression on Professor Snape’s face.

“Is that so?” Professor Snape turned and picked up the tray, and set it across Harry’s knees, removing the one Draco had given him. “I would begin with the broth. The oatmeal might be too thick for you.”

“You know that Draco didn’t mean it, Severus.” Harry didn’t touch the broth. Draco wished he would. It would probably soften the professor’s mood a little, and maybe create a distraction that would allow Draco to sneak out of the room without attracting any more attention. “He said what he thought right at that moment, but he didn’t mean it.”

“I think he did.”

Draco swallowed. “Sorry, sir.” There, that was the hardest part done. Now he should be able to leave without Professor Snape glaring at him as if he was considering whether he could get away with using the Decapitating Curse on Draco.

“Are you?”

That was worse yet. Draco had some idea of how to respond to his father now when he said things like that, but his mother would still have been difficult. And Professor Snape was worse than either of them, especially since he hadn’t looked at Draco once.

“He really is,” Harry said, cutting in and taking on the awkwardness on himself because he was brilliant like that. “Anyway, Dash agrees with him and thinks it’s a great idea.”

Draco smiled at Harry, and tried to promise all sorts of good things with that smile, which wasn’t easy, considering how little practice he’d had before he and Harry got together. Father hadn’t considered tempting smiles a good thing for a Malfoy to know. Harry only grinned back, so it must have worked well enough, and turned to speak with Professor Snape as Draco slipped out of the bedroom.

Draco stood with his back against the wall out in the corridor for a moment. Now that he knew Harry would be fine, he had two goals for the coming week. First was to find out a way to order Bellatrix to feed Voldemort false information and gather anything she might know about the Horcrux in Gringotts.

Second was to find some way—some book, some resolve, some path to walk—that would make him feel more like an equal to Professor Snape. It wouldn’t matter if it took years. Draco wanted this.

He wanted to show that he was just as worthy to stand at Harry’s side as his guardian was.

*

“Are you sure?” Harry stared at Draco. He’d been allowed to start attending classes again this week, and right now he was sitting out in the sunlight on a tree root by the lake. Ron and Hermione weren’t with him, since Hermione had Ancient Runes right now. Severus only seemed to trust him when they were both there together, as if by themselves they would have encouraged Harry into some irresponsible Gryffindor prank.

“That’s what the letter said, and the blood magic makes it so that my aunt can’t lie to me.” Draco had a really stubborn tilt to his chin when he wanted to, Harry mused, and he could make sitting down next to Harry seem like an act of royal condescension. “The Horcrux is in her Gringotts vault.”

Harry hesitated. “And what would happen if we sent her after it? Or suggested to Voldemort through her that the Horcrux was in danger?’

“Right now, I think he would just kill her. He’s too paranoid about the Horcruxes. Even if he didn’t think we’d somehow suborned her, he’d probably kill her if she reminded him that she knows about the location, too.”

Harry nodded. He still didn’t want to kill someone if he didn’t have to, and Bellatrix would be useful, too, if they let her live for a while longer.

“All right. Then we still need to figure out a way to get into Gringotts, but at least we know where we’re looking.”

The problem about getting into Gringotts is solved now, Dash said down their bond. He was on the lakeshore, too, but a few meters away, draped in the water. Harry had no idea what the Giant Squid made of Dash’s tail rippling and coiling through the lake.

He thinks that I am one of his kind who has chosen to walk on the land for some reason. I will go into Gringotts.

Harry shook his head. “The goblins have magic that even you don’t understand,” he said, aloud for Draco’s benefit. Draco at once went still and respectful, the way he tended to when Harry and Dash were having a conversation. It made Harry as uncomfortable as all hell, but that wasn’t something he wanted to talk about right now. “They could kill you. They have dragons down in the depths of the bank.”

You think a dragon would challenge me? Dash sounded amused.

Harry turned to look at him, narrowing his eyes. “Of course. You might be as big as some of them, but you would still burn.”

I am the King of Serpents for a reason, Harry.

“Dragons are lizards, not serpents!”

Oh, dear. I think they would find that far more insulting that my assuming sovereignty over them. Dash drew his tail out of the water and looked at the scales for some trace of a polish, or maybe shine, that eluded Harry. I am a magical serpent, and the King of them. The dragons are related to magical serpents. They will permit me to go by.

Draco cleared his throat with a diffidence that Harry hated. “Am I correct in assuming that he says he would be safe because he’s the King of Serpents?”

“Yeah. And you don’t need to be so formal, Draco. We’ve been boyfriends for months now, and you’ve known Dash for years.”

Draco grinned. “Fine. Then he’s right. Dragons are more common than basilisks, and they value things that are rare and precious. No dragon would hurt Dash. It would be like hurting one of their own treasures.”

Harry blinked. He hadn’t thought of it that way, but it made sense. “Is that true, Dash?”

Of course it is.

“Then why didn’t you phrase it that way to me in the first place?”

You wouldn’t trust me to protect myself or know how much I can stand without extra reassurance? I’m hurt. Dash curled his neck and watched water splash down his throat and catch in the shining scales again. Besides, I wanted Draco to have some part to play in this as well. He often feels left out when we talk in private or when you spend more time with me than with him.

Harry certainly wasn’t about to repeat the last part aloud, but he turned to Draco. “He says that I should trust him more.”

“Well, you should. I would, if I had a basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin.”

Harry only rolled his eyes to that, and leaned his head against Draco’s shoulder. The spring was warming around them, but there was enough of a chilly breeze that Harry was glad for the cloak wrapped around his own shoulders and the Warming Charms on the collar and hood. Draco stroked the side of his face.

“We’re going to win, you know that?” Draco asked quietly. “I know that I was the one who wanted you to reassure me when you were getting ready to go confront Voldemort about the new moon rite, but I really believe it now. We are going to win.”

“But people can still die along the way and we could win ultimately.” Harry swallowed and felt the prickle along his eyes that he wouldn’t admit to anyone, although Dash’s soft hum down the bond said he knew. “You and Dash and Severus and Ron and Hermione…losing any of you would kill me.”

Draco’s hand stroked his hair at the same time as Dash crawled out of the water and towards them, leaning his head against Harry’s legs for a moment. The weight made the breath rush out of Harry’s lungs, but Draco’s words were steady, almost an echo of Dash’s down the bond.

“You would keep living for the rest of us.”

I would insist that you keep living for the rest of them.

Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t want to admit it out loud, when Draco might take offense, but he knew the loss of Dash would hit the deepest at first. Severing a bond that struck to the core of his being the way his bond with Dash did would hurt so much that he thought his heart might simply stop.

It will not. I would sever the bond in my last breaths so that you would endure the grief and the pain of losing me, but not the actual moment of my death.

Harry grunted, but said nothing. He knew he could never change Dash’s mind, and talking to him about it was just a waste of time.

What a lack of trust you have in me, Harry. Dash’s head came to rest on the grass beside him, close enough that Harry could feel his breathing and the soft brush of a forked tongue against his arm, but didn’t have that overwhelming weight placed on him the way he did before. I would do anything to ensure that you survive.

Harry swallowed roughly. “I know.”

“What is Dash talking about now?”

Harry opened his eyes reluctantly. Somehow Dash’s death seemed more likely when there was bright sunlight around them and the lack of dark privacy that their bond had. “Dash is saying that he would do anything to make sure I survive.”

“So would I.”

Harry leaned his head on Draco’s shoulder again. He would just have to accept the fervor Draco used to say those words, even though his mind balked at imagining what Draco would do to prove them. He wasn’t going to get either Draco or Dash to change their minds.

You won’t. But I’m here, and I’m only planning for my death because I never want to be caught by surprise and hurt you needlessly. I do plan to survive. And there is little in Gringotts that can hurt me.

Harry put a hand on Dash’s head and scratched behind his eye-ridges, and they sat in silence in the rich sunlight until Severus came looking for them.

*

“Miss Granger, are you paying attention to me?”

Hermione took a deep breath and looked up at Professor McGonagall. She knew it was an honor that Professor McGonagall had decided to speak to her personally about her future career. Most of the time, that task would have been left up to other people, usually the Head of someone’s House. McGonagall was still technically the Head of Gryffindor, but other professors were taking over more and more of her duties.

Hermione knew she should be honored. But her mind was on the upcoming battle at Malfoy Manor instead.

“No, I can see that you aren’t,” Professor McGonagall said, sipping from a cup of tea. She ignored Hermione’s sudden flinch and flush. “Very well. Tell me, Miss Granger, what holds your attention instead? Is it more important than your future?’

“Well, I mean,” Hermione said, nibbling her lip and wondering how much of the details Harry would be comfortable with her telling the former Head of their House, “it sort of is. Because my career is my distant future and this is my immediate future.”

“Does this have to do with the war and You-Know-Who?”

Hermione started and nodded.

“You do not have to think about such things all the time, Miss Granger.” Professor McGonagall’s voice was unexpectedly soft. “I’m sure Mr. Potter will understand if you can put aside your thoughts for a short conversation with me.”

Hermione smiled shakily and forced the thoughts about Dash and Malfoy Manor and the Horcruxes and Gringotts away. “Okay, Professor. So what do you think of the documents I submitted to you?”

“I think they show unusual talent in spell creation and the invention of ingenious devices.” Professor McGonagall turned the papers about the machine that Hermione had made to find Horcruxes over on her desk several times. “However, I wondered how much you had looked up about the working conditions of spell-creators.”

Hermione blinked several times. “Nothing. Is it—one of those things that only pure-bloods are supposed to be able to do, Headmistress?”

She was all prepared to be indignant, but Professor McGonagall only laughed a little, which made Hermione smile sheepishly at her. “Not at all. Only that it can be rather difficult to find all the rare materials one needs for inventions, not to mention the money to travel to faraway places in search of the wild ingredients or rare knowledge or mentors.”

“So I need a patron?”

“Yes. Frankly, though, such people are rare enough as it is, and they tend to work often with more established spell-creators than you will be for years to come yet.” Professor McGonagall leaned forwards. “What I think you need, Miss Granger, is the might of an organization that knows how to recognize talent and fund it behind you. I suggest that you look into becoming an Unspeakable.”

Hermione felt her mouth fall open. “I never even—all the requirements for it are kept secret!”

“Not secret, but not publicly available at the Ministry the way information about other careers is. The Unspeakables assume that those who truly desire to join them will dig a bit, and not be put off by obstacles that would frustrate lazy students.” Professor McGonagall arched her eyebrows a bit. “I know you are anything but lazy, Miss Granger.”

“Yes,” Hermione said slowly, while her mind spun a bit. “So it only depends on looking around? Not connections or who you know?”

“Yes. Although I would say few people have more connections than the best friend of the Boy-Who-Lived.”

Hermione blushed, but her mind was darting down those new pathways. She had researched becoming an Unspeakable as she had other Ministry careers like an Auror, but when she hadn’t found much, she had assumed all the positions went to well-off pure-bloods with family members in the Department of Mysteries or some such. She had never thought that they would want someone to dig for the secrets they were keeping.

“I can see that you need to think a bit,” Professor McGonagall told her kindly, and handed her a parchment with some cryptic notes written on it. “This will get you started in researching the correct questions, however.”

“Thank you, Professor McGonagall,” Hermione whispered back, and left the office with the parchment in hand and a whole new, careful path opening up in front of her.

For the first time, she looked into the future and felt like she was truly managing to see past the war. For the first time, she could do something other than hunt Horcruxes and be the resident Gryffindor genius.

She felt alive. It was wonderful.

Chapter 145: Decoys

Chapter Text

Harry swallowed as he looked at the men and women standing in front of him. It seemed insane that they were willing to follow him and listen to him. They were all so much older than he was. And some of them had to be more powerful magically.

Harry took a deep breath and glanced again at the trust in their eyes. They had come here because they trusted him in the first place, he reminded himself. Susana’s people, and the few survivors of Josephine’s pack who had been away and traveling when Voldemort’s spell struck them, and Remus, and Severus, and some of Lucius’s allies, and a few women that Narcissa Malfoy had brought in and vouched for.

And they were outside, too, near the Hogwarts lake under the crescent moon. That made him feel calmer than it would if they were all inside and he was sitting at the head of a table or something.

“All right,” he said. “So you know that the battle at Malfoy Manor is going to be more of a decoy than anything else, but that doesn’t mean the deaths will be less real.”

“Death is always real,” said the werewolf woman waiting off to the side, near the very edge of the group. She had introduced herself as Cara Emmanuel. And her eyes were bright amber and full of grief. Harry reminded himself he had to pay attention to her, but he couldn’t always let her lead the plans. She had already wanted to charge straight at Voldemort’s Death Eaters.

Harry nodded. “Yes, it is. But I wanted to ask if you were going to refuse to participate in the attack because it might seem less ‘real’ to you knowing that it’s meant to distract Voldemort.”

Only a few people in the group flinched at the name. Remus was the one who slowly shook his head. “Whatever we can do to stop this war, I’m going to do. And you’re the one who’s going to be facing the ‘real’ danger.”

Severus still looked displeased at that, but he and Harry had already had this argument. There was really no way for Severus to follow Harry into the mental battlefield he and Voldemort would meet on. The best he could do was watch over Harry’s body and intervene if something seemed to be going wrong, the way he had when Harry was yanked into Voldemort’s mind on the night of the new moon.

“How soon will it happen?” asked the hooded woman who Narcissa had referred to only as a Black cousin.

Harry glanced at her, wondering, and said, “Before the end of the school year, I think.”

“But that’s only a few months!” It was one of the werewolves who spoke, his eyes sparking golden in the light of the moon.

Harry nodded. “I know. But I don’t think we can wait much longer. Either Voldemort will try another strike like the one he did against your pack, or he’ll simply go mad and strike at some time and place we can’t predict. We have to bring him onto ground that we choose and battle him there.”

“Is it true that you kept some of the Death Eaters’ children from going to meet him and having their blood spilled?”

Harry turned to the woman, a Parkinson cousin, whom Lucius had vouched for. “Yes, Heliotrope.” Calling adults by their first name was honestly one of the strangest parts of this to happen. “Dash Petrified them, and they stayed in a safe place for a few days until I thought their parents had probably stopped looking for them.”

“You have my gratitude for that,” said Heliotrope unexpectedly. Harry blinked at her, and she added, “Theodore Nott is my cousin.”

Harry nodded uncertainly. “All right. So what do the other Death Eaters think of Voldemort trying to take their children away from them?”

Heliotrope grimaced. She had long hair bound in a cable down her back, and sharp brown eyes that watched Harry as if waiting for him to shed his skin and become a monster. “Some of them are so loyal to the Dark Lord that they don’t care.”

“But others?”

This time, he won a sharp smile from her. “The others are disgusted by the idea that the Dark Lord would have taken the magic, and the flesh and blood, of their children. You’ll have Death Eaters who have turned traitor in the ranks, Mr. Potter.”

“How many of them do you really believe would turn? Who are they?”

“I don’t feel comfortable giving all the names,” said Heliotrope. It was blunt enough that Harry heard a displeased growl from the werewolf emissary who had spoken last. Heliotrope didn’t look as though she cared. “But I do know that one of them is Victor Crabbe.”

Harry sighed. That was more than he’d expected. “Do they want to be free of the Dark Mark? We can do that.”

“It wouldn’t serve any purpose yet,” said Heliotrope. “They have to be able to know when the Dark Lord is summoning his Death Eaters and respond to that. But they do have one gesture of good faith to give you.” She turned and motioned behind her.

Harry tensed as the air seemed to open like a door, and someone neither he nor Dash had detected at all stepped into being. Dash, do you know that spell?

They forgot to conceal him from my sense of smell. They’re only doing this to be dramatic. Accept it, and then tell them that they’re never to do anything like that again.

Harry nodded in response, his eyes fixed on the heavy face of the man. It did look as though he was related to Vincent Crabbe. The man cleared his throat and knelt in front of Harry, his wand presented across his palm.

“He will make an Unbreakable Vow of loyalty to you,” Heliotrope announced. “I will be the bonder.”

Harry felt the urge to shiver in disgust, and stiffened his shoulders. He had to accept this, as little as he liked the thought of someone being bound with a Vow like that. He knew what Dumbledore had done to Severus with one, and it even seemed too much like the slave-vows of the Dark Mark.

On the other hand, the man was here of his own free will, and that had to mean something. Right?

Harry moved to kneel on the grass in front of Victor Crabbe, his hand extended. Crabbe clasped it, moving carefully. When he felt the grip, Harry knew why. This was a man who was probably in the habit of casually crushing the fingers of anyone he shook hands with.

“You will choose the terms of the Vow,” said Heliotrope, standing with her wand in her hand. Harry was aware of the coiled power in both Severus, who was watching the Parkinson woman’s back, ready to curse her if necessary, and Dash, down the bond.

“I thought—since it was your idea, I thought you were going to set the terms of the Vow,” Harry told Mr. Crabbe.

He blinked and shook his head. “I would get something wrong.”

Like father, like son, Dash murmured down the bond. Use it to impress people and get them to follow you, Harry. Let them see how much even grown wizards and witches will fawn over you.

I don’t want them to fawn, Harry snapped back, but nodded and said, “Will you swear not to betray me to Voldemort?”

Mr. Crabbe’s hand flinched and jerked against his when he said Voldemort’s name, and his face turned even more pale and sweating. But he nodded as Heliotrope made what must be the appropriate motions with her wand. “I will.” And a burning link of fire encircled their joined hands.

Harry took a deep breath. “Will you swear to obey my orders, even if you have to fight alongside Muggleborns and other people you despise?”

Mr. Crabbe looked a little surprised, but maybe it was just because Harry had used the word “Muggleborns” instead of the one that he would be more likely to hear. He nodded. “I will.” The second link of fire took its place.

Harry knew he only got one more term. He thought for a moment, aware of the audience’s silent, critical gazes, before he asked, “Will you swear to give as much information as you can from your position as spy in the Death Eaters’ ranks, and the strength of your wand arm when we need it?”

Mr. Crabbe brightened, probably because the last one sounded like something he’d like to do. “I will.”

The third band of fire writhed into being about their hands.

Heliotrope Parkinson took a deep, huge breath, as if she had been waiting for something to go wrong and the fire to burn them, or Mr. Crabbe to disagree with the Vow. Then she stepped back and said, “As your binder, it is done.”

The flames vanished, and Harry stood up. Mr. Crabbe stood up, too, and bowed to him. Harry managed to hold back his sigh, but it was pretty hard.

You will grow used to the homage in time, Dash said, with the comfortable voice of someone who was already used to it.

I don’t intend to. The war will end soon if we do everything right, and then they won’t have a reason to bow to me.

The bond was so silent that Harry narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Dash? Are you there? What are you thinking?

But Severus started to speak then, and Harry had to pay attention to other things. He was going to remember it, though, and push Dash on what exactly was going through his head when he thought about the finish of the war.

*

“I’m glad you’re not angry, Mother.”

“Of course not. I enjoy the thoughts of being in the midst of battle again, after all my years distant from it.”

Draco eyed his mother’s back nervously, but she was walking through the manor’s largest drawing room and studying the glass windows thoughtfully, as if considering how to protect them from launched curses. He sighed. He supposed that he deserved that after tricking his father into having the decoy battle here.

“And you think I am lying or exaggerating to punish you,” Mother added, not glancing over her shoulder. “I assure you that I am serious, Draco. I have felt as though I have done little in the way of persuasion or protection, unlike you and your father. Now I can do both.” She turned around with a little smile.

Draco took a long step backwards, one that almost meant he tripped over the chair behind him. He caught its arm and stared at his mother in silence.

“Yes,” Mother said, touching her wand and glancing around. “I shall have to read up on some of the Dark curses that I have not practiced since I was younger. It will be interesting to see whether the Dark Arts theory has changed in that time.”

She swept out of the room, pausing only to glance at Draco over her shoulder. “Is something wrong?”

“Um,” said Draco, because there was no graceful way to say You looked exceptionally bloodthirsty just then to his own mother. He managed a sickly smile and a shake of his head as he trailed after her. “No.”

“Good. Then come help me set up defensive spells for the windows in the library. I will be most displeased if some of these books get burned.”

*

I want you to promise me that no matter what happens during the battle, you will not hesitate.

Harry glanced up from the treatise on battle Legilimency that Severus had found for him, frowning at Dash. They were up in Gryffindor Tower again—well, Harry was in his bedroom window and Dash was lounging on the steps outside the window. “What do you mean? Do you think Voldemort is going to do something horrible while I’m fighting him?”

Dash turned his head, his eyes sparking yellow beneath his lids, and Harry obeyed the command that didn’t come down the bond but something more primal, scratching behind his plume. Dash sighed and draped his head over the top of the steps. He’s Voldemort, and he lives to be horrible. Of course he’ll do something to strike at your allies while you’re fighting. He’ll try to distract you. And just because some of his Death Eaters have changed sides doesn’t mean all of them have.

“That doesn’t explain why you’re giving me a specific warning. What do you expect to happen?”

Something horrible.

Harry leaned his head against Dash’s and closed his eyes. Warmth from the sun had soaked into Dash’s scales, and it soaked into his skin now. Harry stayed like that until the pain from his bent neck became too much, and straightened up. I wish that you would give me a clear prophecy if this is a prophecy, he said silently, because Seamus had started to give them slightly nervous looks. (For some reason, Harry being next to a giant basilisk was one thing, but him speaking aloud to him was something else).

Dash let his head shake in something like negation, causing a ripple down all his scales that made them lift and clash together. It’s not a prophecy. I just want to make sure that you won’t get distracted because you’re worried about your allies. Once you begin to tear your soul free, you can’t stop.

Why do you know that, though? Not even Severus knows that for sure.

Dash stroked Harry’s arm with his tongue, and Harry sighed. It didn’t escape his notice that Dash was touching the place that other people carried the Dark Marks, but Harry didn’t know the significance of that, and doubted Dash would explain it. I can feel it through the connection between our souls. If you hesitate, then I could find myself under the control of Voldemort, along with you. And I would wish to die before I let that happen.

Harry swallowed. You promised that you would make every effort to survive.

Unless you do not, I know. Dash’s tongue touched his forearm again. But your freedom is most important to me. Can you promise me to press ahead, and not glance around at any distractions?

“I can promise to try,” Harry said in a low voice, ignoring the almost-glare that Seamus gave him.

And with that, it seemed, Dash would be content.

*

Ron sighed and leaned back, idly tossing a Quaffle that someone had brought up from the Pitch in the air, and only listening with half an ear as Hermione chattered on about being an Unspeakable. Really, he was happy for her, and it sounded like a great thing for her, but he wasn’t interested in becoming that, and there was only so long he could listen to it.

Of course, that brought up the wretched question of what he did want to be, which Mum and Dad and Bill and Charlie and even the twins had been pressing on him more and more about lately.

Planning to open up that shop’s turned the twins all sober and respectable, Ron thought, and then changed his mind as he watched someone across the common room turn into an immense canary. Okay, not really. But it had made them have a future, and it had made Mum proud of them, and now everyone was acting like Ron was in his seventh year and needed a future, too.

Really, what he wanted was to be a professional Quidditch player. But he knew he wasn’t a good enough Keeper or Chaser for that, and Beating was beyond his strength, and after seeing Harry fly for the Snitch, he would never think he was a good Seeker again.

But what else did he want, since that wasn’t going to happen?

Ron missed the Quaffle, and spluttered as it hit him on the nose. Harry glanced up with a faint smile from his book, and the twins gave him speculative looks.

“Looking to join the ranks of the pranksters, Ronniekins?” George asked. Well, Ron was pretty sure it was George.

“No,” Ron said, rolling his eyes. “I dropped the Quaffle. That’s not a mistake you would make.”

Fred and George looked at each other for a minute, and then Fred strode over and sat down next to him. Well, Ron thought it was Fred. “Time for a private chat, Ronniekins?” he asked.

Ron started to object that it wasn’t, but George lifted something like a shimmering screen around him and came over, and he sighed. Well, now he was probably going to get subjected to the latest version of a Canary Cream.

But instead, George leaned forwards and peered into his eyes. “What do you want to do, Ron?”

“With my future? I told you, I don’t know that yet. Just because Hermione and Harry know doesn’t mean everyone else has to!”

“No, I get that,” Fred said, which so astonished Ron that he stopped talking. “But you seem so miserable about not knowing. I mean, there must be something, right? But you’re moping around here like someone who accidentally ate a Pissing Cream when they meant to eat a Canary Cream.”

“Not that we would know anything about such a thing.”

“Right. Not at all. I’m just saying, if such a thing existed, you look like someone who would eaten one.”

Ron didn’t smile, which seemed to alarm the twins more than anything else. He just shook his head and glanced away.

“Ron? Seriously, is there something we can do?” Fred touched his arm the way someone might have done if he was sick.

“I want to play Quidditch. Professionally, I mean. But I know I’m not good enough to go in for that. Not like Harry, he’s brilliant at it. And someone might even take Malfoy because he’s pretty brilliant and he’s got the name and connections. But what do I have that would interest a professional team? Nothing, that’s what.”

The twins exchanged frowning glances, and Ron sighed. He knew they would tell him to get over it. Or pull a prank or something, and he would have to pretend that he found it funny, the way he always had to.

Maybe this time, he would manage to frown through it, and they wouldn’t call him humorless or whatever their latest insult was. Ron folded his hands behind his head and silently dared them to do their worst.

But George (probably) said, “You know, there are other positions on a Quidditch team than just a player.”

“Like I’m ever going to be rich enough to own a team name or something like that,” Ron said. He thought about it a bit longer, then added, “Or a pitch, or a school.”

“I was thinking,” Fred began, and George nodded and picked up from him.

“That someone who’s a good strategist—”

“Good at chess, say—”

“Could be hired to come up with different strategies for the teams to use in their games, and—”

“Ways for them to fool the other teams. Yeah.” Fred nodded with a distant look in his eyes, then shrugged and glanced at Ron. Now there was a smile dancing at the corners of his mouth that looked as if it might break free from hiding any second. “But I’m sure I don’t know where they would get anyone like that.”

“Yeah. Seems a shame, really.” George was bobbing his head as if to music only he could hear. “That it’s such a good idea, and they can’t hire anyone who could do that for them. Shame, shame.”

“Shame,” Fred echoed, and then both of the twins posed with their hands tucked under their chins, pensively staring into space.

“You great gits,” Ron said, and shoved them. It didn’t break them out of their poses. “Listen, even if that’s a brilliant idea, it’s not like I’m going to get hired as a strategist for a Quidditch team!”

Someone is giving up before he even applies himself,” sang Fred under his breath, shaking his head a little.

“Yes, someone thinks too little of his own talents,” George said, in a tone of horror. “And might even belief that guff about being too much in the shadow of the older Weasley brothers, or something like that.”

“It just seems like such a shame.” Fred let his head droop, and wiped away an imaginary tear making its way down his cheek.

“Such a shame that I can’t stand it.” George clapped a hand over his heart and sagged backwards until his head was almost lying in Ron’s lap. Ron shoved at him, but George had gone all over dead weight and wouldn’t move. “Take me from this cruel world, where people believe such terrible things!”

“Shut up, George,” Ron snapped, his cheeks flaring red. Even if people couldn’t hear them through the privacy charm, he knew they were looking, and that was enough to make him horrified himself, at the thought of what they might assume was going on.

“I’m not George, I’m Fred.”

Ron narrowed his eyes. “Are not.”

“He’s coming around, brother mine!” George sat up straight as if someone was Levitating him and grabbed Fred’s arm, leaning towards him with an awed expression. “If he can tell the difference between us, what can’t he do? Even someday find himself as strategist for a winning Quidditch team!”

“But how can I do that kind of thing?” Ron complained. He felt a bit better now that it seemed his brothers actually thought he might do this kind of thing, but that didn’t show him the path to get there. “I don’t have the connections that you’d need, and there aren’t a whole lot of Quidditch teams with strategists anyway.”

“But they need them,” George pointed out. “I was listening to Angelina and Katie talk about it from a letter Oliver sent them. He’s playing for Puddlemere United and all he can talk about is how much they need someone to actually tell them what they should do instead of listening to the players’ egos all day long.”

“And as for connections,’ Fred added, his head tilted to one side in the way that Ron thought privately made the twins look like perfect demons, “I don’t think that there’s much more prestige to be found than being Harry Potter’s best friend. Do you?”

Ron hesitated. Then he said, “No?”

“Is that a denial?”

“That’s—” Ron firmed his shoulders. Truth be told, even he was getting tired of his own complaints. “That’s a statement. Of thanks, because now I’ve found something I might actually be good at.”

“Good,” said George. “Then we’ll leave you to think about it, and go back to planning the shop that is going to bring us fame and Galleons and fit women.”

“Let’s change the order of that,” Fred added enthusiastically, and they banished the privacy charm and wandered away.

Ron turned his attention to a new problem as he lay back on the couch. If he did want to be a strategist for a Quidditch team—and it sounded good, almost as good as being a player himself—how was he going to go about it? He could come up with winning chess strategies and he could probably come up with winning Quidditch strategies, too, so he should be able to come up with this.

If the twins exchanged smug glances with each other, for once Ron was perfectly happy to leave them to it.

Chapter 146: Night of Shattered Mirrors

Chapter Text

Harry woke gasping and so certain that something was wrong that he reached out his hand and found the Elder Wand in it. He sat up in bed, staring around and trying to see what lurked in the shadows outside his closed curtains.

But nothing moved. Now and then he heard one of his roommates sigh and turn over, but they were all hidden behind their bed-curtains, and they should have felt safe anyway. No reason that he should have awakened...

You don’t ask the snake who’s connected to your mind and has senses keener than any human if he has any advice, of course. Of course not.

Harry jumped. He’d been so on edge that even Dash’s voice in his head was enough to sound like a tolling bell. He controlled his emotions with an effort and managed to murmur, “Do you sense anything?”

I do, but the threat is coming from within your mind, not from outside it.

Harry grimaced. He didn’t need to ask if it was Voldemort, because of course it was Voldemort. He settled back against his pillows and closed his eyes to concentrate on Dash’s voice and his Occlumency. Do you know what he’s doing? Is he about to snatch me away from my body like he did on the night of the new moon?

Silence for long moments. Harry could feel Dash swaying back and forth, sending out rippling inquiries into the distance. He forced himself to wait even though he wanted to jump up and down and shout. His roommates’ breathing continued, steady and soft.

Voldemort’s mind is closed to me, Dash said. Even the link that usually exists between you because of your Horcrux is shut. I didn’t know that he could do that.

Harry tensed up. Dash’s voice was slow and casual, but Harry could sense the worry throbbing under it the way he had been able to sense Dash swaying. Do you think that means that he knows—well, everything we’ve been trying to keep from him?

No. Dash’s response was quick enough to be reassuring. He would have to open it wider to sense that, and we would have been able to grab hold of him in return. He can’t read your mind right now because of how tightly the link’s shut. It’s the opposite of what he would have to do to have access to it.

Harry bit his lip and nodded. Then what about the danger I felt? How can that come through if there’s nothing that links us? Or, I mean, if the link isn’t open right now? he added, because he knew Dash would say that the link still existed.

I think—

Harry screamed as the link abruptly tore wide open once more. The Elder Wand throbbed and bounded in his hand, and Harry saw the Invisibility Cloak flapping up over the side of the bed like a huge bird. Somewhere, the Resurrection Stone was tingling and spinning. And someone yelled his name in a concerned voice that sounded like Ron’s.

None of it mattered. Harry was spinning faster and faster down a dark tunnel that abruptly swallowed him up.

*

Ron clapped his hand over his face as the wall abruptly exploded in front of him.

Dash’s head came through the stone, looping back and forth around the beds, aimed straight for Harry’s. Ron shouted for people to be calm, even as a curse blasted from Seamus’s wand and scorched the curtains on Neville’s bed. It was easy to forget how big Dash was when you didn’t see him in the flesh for a while.

“Hold up, Seamus! He’s trying to help Harry!”

“How can you tell?” Seamus was aiming his wand in a shaking hand. “It’s not like you can speak Parseltongue, and it sure looks like he’s going to swallow someone to me!”

Ron couldn’t get his breath before Dash tore open the curtains on Harry’s bed and coiled around him, his tongue flickering out. His eyes were still shielded by his eyelids, or they would all be dead or Petrified, Ron knew, but Dash’s eyelids quivered as though they would lift any second.

It took all of Ron’s courage to march up to him and ask, “Is there anything we could do?” But he reminded himself that he was still Harry’s best friend, and Harry would be upset with Dash if he paralyzed or killed Ron.

Dash turned his neck and stared down at Ron with motionless eyelids this time. Then he shook his head in a gesture that was weirdly human and wrapped most of his body around Harry, staring motionlessly at the wall.

Ron hesitated. For all that Dash was still right now, he had the impression there was a huge struggle going on, one that might be bigger than Dash himself.

“I want you to tell me if we can help,” he said, and ignored the way that his throat dried out with the command. “I mean, if there’s something that can keep Harry comfortable. Or help you save him. Or something.”

There was a long, long moment when nothing happened, and Seamus caught his breath and muttered something about ungrateful snakes. Then Dash’s tail moved a little, before some kind of spell caught the curtains of Harry’s bed and slammed them shut. Ron was sure that they would be as immovable as a wall if he went over and tried to open them.

He herded the others down to the common room, looking over his shoulder. Dash was still looped over the broken rubble of the wall and into the room. Neville said something anxious about the cold air of the night hurting the plant on his bedside table, but from what Ron could see, Dash was blocking that hole so effectively that no night air would come in.

I just hope Harry is all right, Ron thought, and sat in the common room with the other blokes, trying to talk calmly, and wishing for Hermione.

*

“I have decided that it is time to free myself from you, Harry Potter.”

Harry turned around, breathing shallowly. He didn’t seem to be in the mindscape that Voldemort had pulled him into before, or the “ground” between their minds that he had seen when Voldemort created the Horcrux. Instead, he was in a black sky, speckled with stars except for a shining shaft of light near him. Voldemort stood within the shaft of light.

He was smiling in a way that made Harry flinch. Voldemort laughed, presumably at the sight of the flinch, and shook his head. “You could have had so much more if you had joined me than you have now.”

Harry didn’t bother responding. He was too busy analyzing things. Voldemort must be confident if he wasn’t attacking immediately. That wasn’t the way Harry had thought he would react after Harry and Dash had foiled his rite on the new moon. Had he found some other deadly potion or spell like the one he had used to attack Josephine’s pack?

Harry reached for Dash. And yes, the connection was gone. Blocked. He swallowed and focused on Voldemort.

“Does your silence mean you agree with me, Harry Potter?” Voldemort taunted, and lifted his yew wand, or maybe a simulacrum of it. Harry didn’t move or speak. Voldemort narrowed his eyes. “Do you really believe that you can break free of me now?”

Harry still said nothing, concentrating on reaching out to Dash. He’d thought he felt an odd trembling, as though the blockage on their bond was pulling aside like a curtain. And then he felt something else.

A weight in his left hand. A weight in his right hand. A weight on his shoulders.

“What are those?”

Harry didn’t have to look down. He knew that he now held the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone, and the Cloak was draped over his shoulders, although he didn’t seem to be going invisible here. He steadied his breathing. If it came to a clash of power, he still wasn’t as strong as Voldemort, but he might manage to hold him off for a while.

Who are you?”

The Parseltongue made the “air” around Harry throb, and he found himself walking a step forwards without willing it. Voldemort reached out a long-nailed hand, his fingers moving and uncoiling like worms wriggling in the air. His smile now was something out of nightmares, or the night that he had made the last Horcrux and tied Harry to his soul in the first place.

You have no choice now.

Harry was drifting, nearly to Voldemort, when he felt the twitch in the back of the bond again, someone reaching for, lunging for him. But the person needed him to reach back, and that meant breaking the tug that Voldemort had on him. Harry managed it, leaning back, not physically but with his will, the way he resisted the Imperius Curse, and yearning, calling, speaking…

Dash, come through!”

Voldemort laughed when the words simply died in the “air” around them, and shook his head. “I told you that I have blocked your connection to me. No one can oppose me when I choose to make myself the ultimate power, as I have made myself here.

Harry felt a sharp throb from his right hand, and then it was rising in front of him, dragged along by a greater force even as another such force propelled him towards Voldemort. The Elder Wand was shining like phoenix fire.

“I find that I am annoyed by your toys,” Voldemort said in English. He reached out with a negligent hand, towards the wand. Harry saw the shadow of his hand coming from some great distance, reflected by something that hadn’t been there a second before. It hovered behind Voldemort like a silvered mirror.

The reflective light grew closer and closer, and, staring at it, Harry almost neglected to pay attention to the Elder Wand. Voldemort’s hand closed on it.

And then he screamed in fury and pain, and the flames that raced up his arms were dancing in a splendid orange color that Harry hadn’t even seen when Fawkes burned.

The fires coiled around Voldemort’s hands and face, and he spat orders to them to stop—in Parseltongue. Harry found himself laughing without knowing he would, slightly hysterically, unable to stop. Did Voldemort think that the fire was some form of serpent magic? And why? Simply because he thought that he had to be able to control everything?

The mirror was growing brighter and closer, and then it broke open. Dash’s head slid through, and he was between Voldemort and Harry in seconds, swaying his vast bulk back and forth like a cobra.

You cannot! I closed the connection! You cannot!

You forget who holds part of my soul,” Dash hissed, and then he turned and seemed to commune with the Elder Wand for a second. The only thing Harry knew for sure was that Dash wasn’t communing any extra with him. Then they began to back up cautiously, Dash twined around the air in front of Harry.

I am master here!”

It seemed to be with an enormous effort, but Voldemort put the flames out. Then he advanced again, his hand beckoning, and Harry felt the pull urging him towards Voldemort. He wanted to resist, but he had finally realized that this wasn’t like the Imperius Curse, an imposition from outside. This was inside, from the Horcrux, pulling on the bond of souls that joined them.

Dash spoke to Harry down the bond, his voice dim and echoing. He’s right. He’s master here, because he created this place by closing his mind to you in the first place. And we have to do something else to break free.

Harry took a deep breath and flung open all the doors of his soul down to the lowest, letting Dash see all his desperation and power. Do whatever you need to do. Take whatever strength you need from me. I’m willing to do whatever I have to do.

Including becoming the Master of Death?

Harry blinked, and found that he was almost to Voldemort, around Dash’s bulk. What do you mean? I thought I already was, with the Hallows choosing me.

No. To be the true Master of Death, you must embrace that power and use it with intent to kill.

And Harry understood the difference, then. He felt a spasm of old pain that might have been his or Dash’s, but his hand was tightening around the Elder Wand, and the Cloak fluttered on his back in a wind no one could feel, and the Stone was blazing in the palm of his left hand, the one not locked around the Wand.

“What are you doing?” Voldemort’s eyes were abruptly wide, and Harry could see them gleaming in a way that might have been rage or fear. “Stop! Go back! Do not bring that near me!

But Harry was already most of the way to him, and the Elder Wand leaped yearningly from his hand as if it considered itself a guard and then—

It stabbed Voldemort in the left eye. Followed by the Stone, which whirred to the right and embedded itself there.

The night crazed around them with Voldemort’s scream, and Harry wondered only then what might happen because he was in a mental world that Voldemort had designed, when he got hurt by something like this—

Dash surged forwards and wrapped around Harry as the night began to crack again. “We have to go,” he hissed urgently.

“The Hallows—”

Can take care of themselves!”

Harry still found himself staring over his shoulder as Dash dragged him quickly and brutally through the cracks and over them, towards something that Harry supposed was the waking world. Voldemort had one hand on the Wand now and one hand on the Stone, and Harry swallowed nervously. He hoped that didn’t mean that Voldemort was about to become the Master of the Hallows.

Think you that we claim so lightly?” a voice asked Harry in his mental ear, a voice like snowfall. Harry started, disliking the sensation of a voice where only Dash usually spoke to him, but then relaxed when he realized it must be the Cloak.

Of course it is, Master.

There was a slight sneering tone to the remark that Harry didn’t like, but then, there wasn’t much that he did like about being the Master of Death. He closed his eyes and held still as Dash dragged him through one of the cracks and he found himself back in the waking world, gasping, his eyes twitching open.

“Harry!”

*

In the end, Ron hadn’t been able to help himself, despite knowing there would probably be nothing to see while Dash was helping Harry. He’d gone back to the fifth-year boys’ bedroom, and was in time to see Harry look up and at him, his face dazed.

Dash was off to the side of the bed now, his head hanging a little as if he was exhausted. Ron glanced at him as he reached over to hug Harry. Dash only bobbed his neck and then went back to what might have been sleep.

“Are you all right? What happened?” Ron asked, and then bit his lip and fell silent over the other questions he would have liked to ask. Harry looked overwhelmed enough trying to answer those two.

“Voldemort somehow created a connection between our minds that was open to me but excluded Dash,” Harry said, after a glance at Dash himself as if to make sure that he was understanding this right. Ron nodded. “He was going to consume me—kill me. And it was also closed to any harm I could have done him.”

“Shit, mate,” Ron said weakly, sitting down on the bed beside Harry. He knew why Harry didn’t want to talk about what had happened in more detail, not wanting to say the word “Horcrux” aloud in a place that might not be secure, but Ron was still shivering imagining what might have happened. “How did Dash get to you?”

Dash said nothing, and neither did Harry for a moment, his eyes going slightly glazed the way they did when he was in mental communion with Dash. Then he shook his head. “I think Voldemort must not have closed all the entrances that our bond can make,” he said.

It sounded like bollocks to Ron, but it was the only answer he suspected he was going to get. He nodded again. “Then how did you get away?”

“The Deathly Hallows showed up and attacked Voldemort.”

Ron stared at him in silence, and Harry got red in the face for a second. “What, don’t you believe me?” he demanded, with a hiss to his voice that told Ron how strongly he was resisting the temptation to speak in Parseltongue.

“Of course I do.” Ron shook his head. “I’m just thinking that nobody else could speak that sentence and have it make sense in their life.”

Harry laughed weakly and leaned back on his pillow. “Well, I didn’t ask them to do that. And I still don’t understand everything that went on completely. But—I think this is the last time that Voldemort is going to do something like this.”

Ron narrowed his eyes. “Are you all right, Harry?”

“Shaken. Still in pain from some of the things he did. Why?”

“Because there’s something you’re not telling me.”

Harry took a deep breath and exchanged a glance with Dash for a second, although how he could when Dash’s eyes were hidden behind hid eyelids was something Ron had never understood. Then Harry murmured, “This is the last time that Voldemort’s going to do something like this, I told you.”

“Yes?”

“The Deathly Hallows attacked his eyes. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s blind, Ron. And he hates me so much now that—that it means the next strike is going to be the last one.”

Ron stared at him. Then he said, “Can I go tell people that my best mate blinded You-Know-Who? I think I have bragging rights.”

Ron.

Harry sounded annoyed enough to be on the edge of Parseltongue, and Ron raised his hands. “All right. But that’s pretty brilliant, you have to admit.”

Harry rolled his eyes and snuggled further back into the blankets on the bed. “I don’t have to admit anything. I just have to say that this is going to make things harder, and not in a way that we really anticipated.”

“All right.” Ron reached out to touch Harry’s arm, after a glance at Dash to make sure he could. Dash only watched him calmly, with what looked like perfectly ordinary closed eyelids. “But I’m proud of you anyway.”

“Be proud of Dash and the Hallows. They were the ones who came to get me out of there.”

Ron would have said more, but the Hallows manifested over Harry’s bed at that moment in a rain of light and glory, and he never got the chance.

Ron heard gasps from the ones who had followed him back up the stairs, Neville and Dean and Seamus alike, as the Wand and the Stone drifted down to rest on Harry’s bed, one on either side of him. The Cloak appeared at the same time, draped over Harry’s pillow but not turning it invisible, and glowing with the same radiant gold-green that had marked the initial appearance of the Hallows. Harry gaped at them before turning resigned eyes towards their other roommates.

Neville was smiling. Dean looked awed. Seamus had put his wand away, but was glaring at the Wand and the Stone as if he thought they had shown up on purpose like that to disrupt his sleep. Not that anyone had been asleep, Ron thought, and that was what he was going to say if Seamus brought it up later like the git he looked like at the moment.

“And that’s torn it,” Harry muttered, so low that Ron thought he was the only one who heard him. Well, and Dash, of course. And maybe Neville.

“Torn what?” Seamus demanded, which proved that apparently everyone had been near enough to hear it. “What are you actually saying that you’re in charge of, Potter? What is that second wand lying next to you?”

“The Elder Wand,” Ron said, because the secret was going to come out anyway and he thought it would sound more impressive when he said it. Or maybe not, he reflected in irritation as Seamus simply stared at him blankly. “The Deathstick. You know, from the Tale of the Three Brothers? The one that doomed Antioch Peverell?”

Seamus snorted. “Right. Like I’m going to believe that. From now on, leave me out of any adventures you lot have, all right?” And he stalked dramatically across the bedroom, and flung open the curtains of his bed dramatically, and climbed in and lay down, muttering under his breath.

Ron looked at Harry, who had an eyebrow raised. Harry shrugged. Ron sighed. Of course Harry wasn’t going to claim even the portion of glory that was due to him. That just wasn’t the way he was made.

“Is it really?” Neville breathed, and Ron saw that he had drawn closer and was staring at the glowing Wand and Stone with starry eyes.

“Is it what?” Dean asked. “I’ve never heard of the Tale of the Three Brothers.”

Ron smiled and began to tell it, glancing at Harry from the corner of his eye in case he objected. But Harry had lost his glare, and his eyes were fluttering shut. Even as Ron looked at him, he began to snore.

Ron nodded in satisfaction. That was as it should be, and in the meantime, he could get on with spreading the story.

Harry might not like it that much, but he might need it, when it came to getting allies for the war.

Chapter 147: March to Battle

Chapter Text

“Are you all right, Harry? You've been shivering all day.”

Harry looked up and gave Severus a pasty smile. Severus commanded himself with all the strength that had ever been necessary when Longbottom was blowing up cauldrons on a regular basis, and said, “You can tell me if there’s something wrong.”

“I know that, sir. I promise Dash and I didn’t leave you out of this last battle on purpose.”

Severus nodded. He knew that, he understood that, and he was not about to explode any further over it. Dash had had to enter the mental world Voldemort had constructed and rescue Harry the moment he understood what was happening, of course. He had not had time to summon Severus or alert him of what was going on before the battle commenced.

It still bothered Severus that he had not been there during what sounded like the most danger Harry’s life had ever been in.

He forced himself to focus and said, “I am still waiting for an explanation about the source of your shivering. That is happening now.”

Harry gave him a fleeting smile and settled back against the couch in Severus’s quarters, his hand resting on Dash’s head. Dash had found a secret passage that curled around the back of Severus’s quarters and had insisted on entering it and sticking his head out of the sliding wall to be beside the couch where Harry rested. “I understand, sir. And I think it’s just that the Horcrux link is open wider than normal, and I’m getting Voldemort’s rage and terror.”

Severus paused. “He feels terror?”

"Of course he does." Harry was smiling now, so cockily that it reminded Severus of James Potter, but he couldn't bring himself to scold Harry. "He's mad with fear, sir. He doesn't want me to succeed, but he's sure that I'm going to."

"Is it only this latest battle that convinced him?"

"No." Harry grinned more widely, and now he didn't look like James Potter at all, and part of Severus relaxed. "I can't be sure, but I think, based on what he feels and the owl Lucius sent last night, that more and more of his Death Eaters are going to get their Dark Marks taken off."

Severus blinked, then laughed softly. Yes, he could understand how seeing the supposedly invincible Dark Lord abruptly be deprived of his eyes would unnerve someone. Voldemort might have weathered losing one eye, but not both--even if he could likely use his ability to command snakes to see through their eyes.

How much would someone believe that Voldemort was seeing through a snake's eyes, in any case? Severus thought, puzzling himself with his own joy. They might think it was impressive magic, but it wouldn't bring their loyalty back. Too many of the Death Eaters were people prone to asking themselves, as Severus would have in their place, why someone capable of such impressive magic wasn't capable of defending himself from a fifteen-year-old boy.

"I think we should tell Lucius to get that artifact of his ready," Harry continued.

Severus nodded, but his mind had turned onto a different path. "Do you think it likely that Voldemort will even wait for the decoy battle at Malfoy Manor? What happens if he attacks before then?"

Dash let out a complicated-sounding hiss, one that Harry listened attentively to. Then he nodded to Severus. "Dash says that we can't let that happen, sir."

"I do not see how we can prevent Voldemort from attacking when he wants to."

"You're still acting as though he's powerful and unwounded with a lot of loyal followers, Severus," Harry told him patiently. "It's going to be a lot easier to hold him back now. In fact, Dash thinks we might have to prod him into action when we want him to attack."

Severus nodded slowly. Harry had a point. Severus had been acting that way because he had never seen Voldemort when he wasn't in a position of power, despite knowing more about his weaknesses in the years since the first war. He had to stop letting his memories overly influence him.

"So how do we prod him ahead and yet make sure that he attacks at the right time?"

Harry smiled and let a hand rise to rest on the ridges behind Dash's left eye. "There's a way to do it, sir. Trust Dash to know."

*

Lucius chuckled as he raised his wineglass in a toast to the fire. "Everything is working out, Severus. Three more Death Eaters came to me to have their Dark Marks removed today."

Severus nodded, but with distant, unfocused eyes. Lucius felt a prickle of irritation. He had done something rather remarkable, and he was sharing this information with a valued ally. He could do with some more notice.

Then Severus's eyes sharpened again, and Lucius hid a shudder. He had forgotten what it felt like when Severus really focused on him, without the excuse of Lucius's greater social standing to limit him. "Who were they?"

"Juniper Nott, a cousin to the boy in Draco's year," Lucius said, watching him carefully. "Amalthea Selwyn. Sarah Landers."

"The last name I don't recognize."

Lucius sniffed. "A half-blood who joined the Dark Lord's ranks after her schooling in Ireland. Her mother was a Greengrass. She evidently thought that she could endear herself to her Greengrass relatives in that way. They had disowned her mother for marrying a Muggleborn."

"Ridiculous blood politics," Severus said, with a flick of his fingers. "What changed her mind?"

"Apparently, she was already halfway there when Clarence Greengrass joined Harry." It was easier now for Lucius to admit that it was Harry's side they had all joined, not his or Severus's. "But then she saw the Dark Lord when he was blind and raging. She was one of the personal guards on his room that night. She slipped away as soon as she could and ran, leaving most of her possessions behind to allay suspicion. She might need shelter and money. I doubt Clarence would give her anything."

"But she has recent information on Voldemort."

Lucius had resigned himself to the fact that Severus would probably never refer to the Dark Lord by his title again. He nodded. "The most recent of any of our recruits today. Nott and Selwyn have been in hiding for weeks."

"Harry will want to speak to her."

Lucius hesitated. "I did promise her a bed in the Manor for tonight. I can easily fetch her."

"Then do so." Severus turned and moved his head out of the Floo as if looking over his shoulder. "We will be waiting for her." The fire sparked and went out, the flames sinking low as if abashed that they no longer held any green.

Lucius stared into his wineglass and carefully exhaled his anger. He knew Severus was close to Harry, holding a position of confidence and trust that Lucius would never assume. He would be father-in-law to the Boy-Who-Lived, he thought, and that would have to be enough.

He was also, he realized a moment later, the man who had a growing number of Death Eaters in debt to him. Although they might offer information to Harry and Severus and hope fervently for their side's victory, they wouldn't feel that personal sense of obligation that they did to Lucius, the man who had performed a miracle and removed their Dark Marks.

Lucius smiled and lifted his wineglass in a toast to the ceiling this time. He wouldn't be able to change the kind of man he was, but perhaps he didn't have to.

*

"Harry, my mother needs to talk to you."

Draco had been the one to deliver that message, looking rather pale, and so Harry had followed him to the Headmistress's office. He assumed that Narcissa would speak to them through the Floo, but instead, she was waiting in the office with an unusually stern-featured Headmistress McGonagall next to her. On Narcissa's other side was a cloaked figure who Harry thought was a woman, if only because she had long tendrils of dark hair escaping from under her hood.

"I have something to show you, Harry," Narcissa said. "And I need you to listen to me instead of arguing with me. I meant to show you earlier, but that was at a meeting when others needed your attention more."

Harry narrowed his eyes and reached down the bond to Dash. Dash responded with a hum. He didn't think there was any danger. Harry relaxed and asked, "This is the person who was at the meeting where Mr. Crabbe swore loyalty to me?"

"Yes," said Narcissa. "And I need you to promise that you won't attack when you see her face."

"If she promises not to attack me."

"Believe me," Narcissa said softly, "I wouldn't have brought her around you or Draco without being sure of that."

"That's not the same as a promise."

"True enough." Narcissa turned her head towards the hooded woman, and there was a long passage of silence. At last, the woman sighed a little and tilted back the cowl.

Harry reeled back. His first thought was that Bellatrix had somehow snapped Draco's blood magic control over her, come back, and put Narcissa under the Imperius Curse. It was the only way that he could ever think Draco's mother would let her mad sister so close to them.

Draco stepped up behind him and put a hasty hand on his back. "Trust my mother, Harry," he whispered. "Really look at her."

Harry had already done that, and he started to relax almost at once. Now that he was looking, he could see that this woman wasn't Bellatrix. She had heavy dark hair and dark eyes and a similar face, but there were lines around her eyes and mouth that Bellatrix didn't have, and grey in her hair. Harry thought the lines meant she could probably laugh at something other than an enemy's misfortune.

"Cissy thought it best to introduce me like this," the woman said in a low voice. Narcissa gave her a measured look, as though she didn't appreciate the nickname, but the woman might not have noticed because she was turned away. "My name is Andromeda Tonks."

Harry closed his hand into a fist. "So what part did you have to play in blackmailing Leila Greengrass and getting her to free Cyan Scrimgeour?" he demanded.

"I know you suspected me of that," Andromeda said wearily. "In truth, nothing. Did you know that family members' magical signatures can grow similar the longer they live together?"

"No. My family is Muggle."

Andromeda looked startled for a second, and then her face folded down into a smile. "Of course. Forgive me, Mr. Potter. Well, family members can have a similar magical signature if they have lived together long enough. And particularly if they have some of each other's possessions and access to each other's hair..."

"Yes, we suspected someone might have been impersonating you with Polyjuice," Harry said. He told his heart to calm the hell down. Her resemblance to Bellatrix wasn't that startling, now that he'd had the time to get used to it. "But I hope that you're not accusing Mrs. Malfoy of posing as you."

"No. Our mother, Druella Rosier."

Narcissa closed her eyes tightly. Harry glanced at her and at Draco, and saw no dissent. It seemed that they, at least, believed Andromeda.

He nodded shortly and turned back to face Andromeda. "How did you discover that?"

"Narcissa broke through the wall of silence that I'd set up around us when she believed that I might have acted against you. And against Draco. My sister will dare things for her son that she never would on her own."

Harry remembered Draco saying that his mother had only written to Andromeda a few times, and had given up when all her owls had returned with the letters. He glanced at Narcissa. She looked a little flushed.

"She told me that she recognized the story of Leila Greengrass's blackmailer wearing a tarnished silver pin jabbed sideways through her clothing. That's a Rosier accessory that my mother could never bring herself to give up." Andromeda swallowed. "But my sister thought that perhaps it might still be me, because she doesn't know me at all--"

"It had been twenty years since we last spoke," Narcissa snapped. Harry felt Draco jump next to him, and he shifted backwards so that he was pressed gently against Draco. Draco sighed and leaned against him.

"And after all, my mother and I had frequently traded possessions, since before my disowning I wore the same kind and size of robes as she did," Andromeda continued, her voice utterly flat. "The pin might have wandered into my rooms and been taken with me when I absconded to marry my Muggleborn husband." For a second, Harry thought she would turn her head and look at Narcissa, but she didn't. "And if I had lost my senses enough to support a blood purist Dark Lord, I might also have worn the pin as a signal of some sort."

"There is also the part where I thought our mother was dead," Narcissa said, in a scathing tone that was a less polite version of the one Harry remembered her using on Sirius.

"You had no proof of her death," Andromeda said, staring straight ahead. Her hands clenched in the sleeves of her robes. "You suspected me instead. You thought I would turn my back on everything I stood for--"

"This is fascinating," Draco interrupted, in his own scathing tone, "but I think we should try to figure out what to do about my insane blood purist grandmother instead."

There was a long moment of silence when Harry thought Andromeda and Narcissa might continue arguing anyway, but Andromeda nodded shortly and turned to stare at Narcissa. "It was Mother. I'm not surprised that she still had some of my hair for the Polyjuice. You remember how she was getting before Father's death. Saving every scrap of hair and drop of blood that someone shed, out of a belief that someone could harm us with it."

"Or because she wanted to use it herself." Narcissa's hands were fisted in the skirt of her robes.

"There is that." Andromeda's mouth was a slash in her face. "But she wore the pin as a challenge, and perhaps as a signal to people who might see her in my form and remember that pin."

"Then she meant to lure us out." Narcissa shook her head. "None of this serves to tell us where she is or what she wants."

"To punish me for marrying my Ted," Andromeda said, her eyes brilliant with rage. Harry relaxed a little more. Now that he had seen her angry, he could absolutely confirm she was nothing like Bellatrix. "To reassert her authority. She had so little of it with Father around," Andromeda added viciously. "You know it's why she was obsessed with punishing us, because he didn't care about disciplining us at all and just wanted us to stay out of his sight and be silent when he had guests over."

"Mother," Draco whispered. Narcissa glanced at him. Draco shook his head. "You didn't tell me any of that. That your childhood was like that."

"I didn't want to give you nightmares," Narcissa said. She shot a look at Andromeda that Harry could only describe as displeased. "And I doubt that my dear sister has told her daughter the truth, either."

"Nymphadora knows a little more than your Draco," Andromeda admitted, her shoulders slumping for a moment. "But only a little."

"Nymphadora?" Harry asked, horrified enough to be jolted into speaking. "Did you really name your daughter that?"

"Not you, too," Andromeda said. "I'll admit that the name hasn't been used in recent generations, but Nymphadora is a perfectly lovely traditional Black name. It's not my fault that my daughter has decided she prefers to go by Tonks."

"Why did you name her a traditional Black name, though, if you wanted to break away from all those traditions?" Draco asked in a skeptical voice, and Harry bit his lip to keep his shoulders from shaking.

"Do not blame me, please, for wanting some connection with my heritage, even if it had rejected me," Andromeda said, all of her muscles stiffening.

"I don't think this line of conversation is productive," Narcissa intervened. "I contacted my sister to ask her about her role in possibly using Leila Greengrass against Harry, but now that I know she's innocent, there's still the question of tracking down my mother and confiscating her collection of blood and hair."

"Or she might pretend to be you next?" Harry asked.

"That is exactly what I am afraid of," Narcissa said. "And she could do more damage as me, because I am more highly-placed within your forces."

"A moment, Mother," Draco said, before Harry could speak. Harry turned to see him staring narrow-eyed at Andromeda. "How do you know that Aunt Andromeda is innocent?"

"I would not lie to my sister," Andromeda hissed.

"But you also maintained years of silence and then only spoke to her when Mother engaged you in some kind of intense conversation we don't know much about," Draco said. "I know my mother wanted her family back. She might ignore warning signs from the only sister she has left. Permission to use blood magic on you, Aunt Andromeda?"

Andromeda gasped and wheeled around to stare at Narcissa. "You have encouraged him in blood magic? Are you mad?"

"It's a decision that Draco made on his own, to help the war effort," Harry said. He knew Andromeda wasn't used to the way they did things in their ranks and therefore she was inclined to dismiss Draco, but he didn't want her to do that. "He's already used it successfully. It isn't mad."

"You can't know that," Andromeda said, still only speaking to Narcissa. "You can't know what blood magic does to someone, in the long run."

"Why not? I've studied many books, and I've taken precautions," Draco said, sounding offended. "And I have Harry and Mother both here to help me if I do something that goes over the moral line."

"I'm afraid that you must speak to my son about that, as he is the one who's made the decision to use that type of magic," Narcissa said, smoothing down her robes and looking with a serene smile at Andromeda.

Andromeda turned back to Draco with a reluctance that made Harry wonder how often she listened to her daughter. "I am telling the truth."

"Then that's what the blood magic will show." Draco drew a small knife that he had purchased recently, which Harry thought was pure silver, and gently sliced open his palm. Then he held out his hand to Andromeda.

Andromeda sighed, but extended her hand. Harry kept to himself the knowledge that, even if blood magic was so awful, she knew exactly what to do. Andromeda let the blood welling from Draco's cut drip into her own hand, spent a moment standing there with it resting on her skin, and then curled her fingers inwards, letting Draco slice into the back of her knuckles.

Draco spoke a few soft words, of which Harry could only make out sanguis and familia. Then Draco spread his hands wide, and said in a voice like a trumpet that made Andromeda start, "Veritas!"

The blood spun away from his hands and revolved in the air like a chain of light trailing after a comet. In seconds, it was brilliant, gleaming, and silver-edged. Some of the silver-edged blood returned to Andromeda and gleamed around the edges of her cut before losing the light and melting into her skin, knitting the wound after itself as if it had never been made. The rest returned to Draco and did the same thing to the cut in his palm.

Draco smiled and caught Harry's eye. "She's telling the truth, and she is who she says she is," he murmured, leaning against Harry in the momentary flare of exhaustion that seemed to overtake him when he used blood magic like that. "What?" he added, probably because he'd caught Andromeda's eye. "Your mother impersonated you once, you said. It wasn't impossible that she was standing here now."

Andromeda pursed her lips shut and nodded. "I suspect that Mother is also the one responsible for freeing Bellatrix from prison, and she may have used my form to do it. But I haven't been specifically accused of anything by the Ministry or the guardians of Azkaban."

"Then wait until you are," Narcissa said firmly. "No reason to go around volunteering information to them. It's not as if they're family."

"We'll stand beside you if someone does accuse you, Mrs. Tonks," Harry said as soothingly as he could, watching Andromeda's mouth twitch. She probably did try to be more law-abiding than most of the Malfoys or Blacks ever had. "But for the moment, we need you to focus on helping us as much as possible."

Andromeda nodded slowly. "Then there's at least one thing I can tell you that I doubt most people on either side know."

She paused. Harry held back a snort this time. She might be law-abiding, but she had all the Black sense of drama.

"Bellatrix used to visit me even after I was disowned," Andromeda said, and Narcissa caught her breath with a sharp noise. Andromeda smiled sadly at her. "Not because she cherished me or wanted to show me support. She would do it when she was drunk and wanted an audience to brag to. I was lonely enough for my family that I indulged her until Nymphadora was born, when she started making threatening noises about cursing half-blood children of blood traitors--" Andromeda shook her head. "At any rate. She came to me one day especially excited because the Dark Lord had given her something to guard."

"It's a Horcrux," Draco drawled. "In her Gringotts vault. Harry's basilisk Dash is going to go get it for us."

Harry had to work even harder on choking back his snort this time when Andromeda stared at them blankly. "He's showing off, but we do know that much," Harry said. "Thank you for the information, though."

"Do you know what the Horcrux is? Or how Bella chose to guard it?"

"No," Harry admitted, with a glance at Draco. Draco shook his head and then examined his nails for a moment in a deliberately uninterested way. "That's information that we would be glad to have."

Andromeda relaxed slowly, as if she had assumed that they did know everything because they knew one fact. "Good. It's a golden cup, which once belonged to Helga Hufflepuff. It has a badger on the side and two handles. From what Bella said, she put a charm on it that will make it burn to the touch and duplicate itself endlessly."

Narcissa made another sharp noise. "The Gemino Curse," she explained, when Harry looked at her. "Not all that much trouble usually, but in a confined space like a Gringotts vault, it could be."

Harry smiled at Andromeda. "Thank you for sharing that information, Mrs. Tonks. I'll specifically have Dash look for that when he goes into the Lestrange vault." He refrained from saying that Dash probably would have been able to smell out the Horcrux by himself. More information was always good.

"Good." Andromeda relaxed for a moment, and then turned towards Narcissa and Draco. Her face altered, acquiring a more open, vulnerable expression. "Now, could I get to know my sister and my nephew again? Our every conversation so far has been guided by the need to trade information. I want--I want my family back."

Draco gave Harry a glance, and Harry nodded him towards Andromeda and Narcissa, his heart aching a little. Of course he didn't need Harry's permission to speak to his own aunt. Harry hoped he'd never given the impression that he did. Harry never wanted to be that kind of tyrant in charge of every aspect of his lover's life.

Professor McGonagall cleared her throat, and Harry jumped. He had honestly forgotten she was there. "I am sure Mr. Potter and I can vacate the office for a little while," she said. "Take as much time as you need, Andromeda, Narcissa."

She moved past them and down the staircase with Harry. Harry glanced at her. "Did you have something you wanted to talk to me about?"

"Not really." Professor McGonagall sighed and shook her head. "When Mrs. Greengrass described that pin that the supposed Andromeda Black was wearing, I thought immediately of Druella. She always used to wear that pin when she was a student here, which overlapped with my own time. But I had heard that Druella Black had supposedly died years ago, and after all, she could have left the pin to her daughter. There was no proof at that point that it was someone Polyjuiced as Andromeda Tonks rather than Andromeda turning her back on the ways I thought she'd followed." She shrugged. "Perhaps I should have said something."

"It's all right, Headmistress," Harry said, and squeezed her hand. "I think part of the problem is just how secretive the Blacks and some of the other pure-blood families are. They didn't spread around the news that Druella was still alive, so you didn't know."

"Yes, that is true." Professor McGonagall stared straight ahead. "Mr. Malfoy has become accomplished with his blood magic."

"Yes," Harry said cautiously. From what he could tell, the kind of magic Draco practiced wasn't formally illegal because he could only use it on family members, but he did wonder suddenly what Professor McGonagall might feel compelled to tell someone.

Professor McGonagall must have caught his eye, because she smiled and touched him once on the shoulder. "Fight your war as you must, lad. I'll support you as necessary."

Harry nodded, with equal caution, and stepped out as the staircase came to an end. He stood with eyes closed for a second as the Headmistress walked off in the opposite direction, silently communing with Dash, even though he knew that Dash would have got the information about the protections on the Hufflepuff cup the minute he did.

I have what I need, Dash said finally. I am going tonight.

Harry inhaled, exhaled, inhaled, exhaled, and forced himself to remember the sight of the Elder Wand and the Resurrection Stone destroying Voldemort's eyes to calm down. "Yeah," he whispered. "Okay."

Chapter 148: One Night in Gringotts

Chapter Text

“Promise me that you’ll take as many precautions as you can.”

I don’t even know what precautions I would take. I’m going to enter the bank and bypass magic that can’t stop me. What would you like me to do?

Harry huffed and stepped forwards to hug Dash’s nose when he bent it down to brush gently against Harry’s chest. “Prat of a snake. You know that the goblins might still have come up with something that could hurt you.”

Unlikely. Am I not Salazar Slytherin? Am I not a mature basilisk, the only one of my kind on Britain’s soil? Am I not the mightiest of magical creatures? Am I not—

A braggart,” Harry replied in Parseltongue as he stepped back from Dash and turned his head to look at Severus, who was standing by to Apparate the basilisk.

Dash hissed wordlessly at him and turned his head away to admire his scales and the sleek shine of them. Harry gave a single, deep breath and met Severus’s eyes. Severus inclined his head and touched, for a second, the pouch at his side that contained a potion Harry didn’t know much about. Severus had said that it would “distract the goblins,” whatever that meant.

Harry had asked if Severus really wanted to do that, when it would mean that he probably wouldn’t be able to bank in Gringotts again. Severus had laughed and asked if Harry really thought he was keeping money there anymore, what with the outbreak of true war.

And that was as much as he would say about it. Harry would have to trust that he could handle himself, just as he would have to trust that Dash could. Both of them had given him such incredulous looks when Harry had asked about going with them that he hadn’t tried again.

“I—I wish there was something I could do,” Harry said hoarsely, now, and Severus nodded and reached out to hug him instead of scolding him for saying the same thing again. Dash dipped his head and flicked his tongue gently over Harry’s cheek. Harry reached up and curled his arm firmly around the basilisk’s neck, while still hugging Severus, then stepped back. “And I suppose that it’s no good asking you to turn back the instant you’re in danger.”

Being in the bank with a Horcrux is inherently dangerous. But I’ve already told you why I’m not worried. This time, Dash’s voice down the bond was gentle.

“No, of course,” Severus said at the same time, so that Harry spent a moment trying to sort out the different voices. “Even if I leave the Apparition point, I would need to return to it to Apparate Dash out again when he has the cup.”

Harry nodded and bit his lip. “Then—my good wishes go with you.”

Severus hugged him one more time, fiercely, and then turned and laid his hand on Dash’s scales, closing his eyes. Harry hadn’t asked exactly where in Diagon Alley they were going to Apparate, what place was big enough to hold a basilisk but clear enough of people that Severus could be relatively sure of no one occupying the same space. He simply looked at Dash’s closed eyes and savored the slight flick of his tongue until Severus mustered up the necessary power and concentration.

Then they were gone.

Harry shivered a little from the stretched nature of his bond with Dash, and then walked slowly back towards the school, down the path from Hogsmeade. The evening was coming on.

*

Severus appeared in the corner of Knockturn Alley that he’d remembered from long years of coming here to search for less legal ingredients. This was practically a courtyard between buildings, a place where some shop had stood until it had been torn down and the ground where it stood cursed.

Dash coiled on the stone, turning his head slowly back and forth. Severus cast the necessary illusions that would make Dash look as if he were smaller and partially made of shadows. Not that many people would question the appearance of a giant snake in Knockturn Alley, but there currently was only one basilisk in Britain and Severus didn’t want to give advance warning of what they had come to do.

“Ready?” he asked softly when he was done, and Dash bobbed his head and slithered out through the narrow gap, not quite a doorway, framed by the dilapidated boarding houses on either side of them. Severus tilted his hood back over his face and followed.

They proceeded up Knockturn Alley quickly enough that few people had the chance to even get a look at them. It was close to sunset, and the Alley would be changing its shift from the hags and warlocks to the Darker creatures who drew some of their strength from the night. Severus kept one hand on his wand and the other on the pouch that contained the wrapped Enmity Potion. If he broke the glass on that before it was time, it would be months before he could brew it again.

They entered Diagon Alley, and a few people gave them nervous looks and intensified their scurry in a different direction. Severus kept his gaze fixed forwards, and waited until he saw the white front of the bank loom up, gleaming, in the distance.

He wrinkled his nose, the only sign he would allow of the unease brewing in him. His mother hadn’t been that free with stories about the wizarding world—probably, Severus thought now, because she had few that would make her look good—but she had often told him the ghastly ones. What goblins did to thieves had been her favorite.

We have no choice. We have to get that Horcrux.

They were fifty meters from the bank soon, then thirty, then ten, then one. Severus stopped Dash with a light touch to his side. Dash pulled in his tail so that he fit more comfortably within the confines of the illusion and turned his gleaming, shielded eyes to Severus.

“From this point forwards, I will remain as long as I can safely distract the goblins,” Severus told him in a low form. “I will return to the place where we Apparated in thirty minutes no matter what, then an hour from that point, then two hours.”

Dash only bobbed his head. He and Severus had a private agreement between them, which would only have upset Harry if he had learned of it, that Dash would make his way back home if he didn’t appear at the Apparition point in two hours. A basilisk, even one who was alone and carrying a Horcrux, had far more ability to defend himself against enraged goblins or the creatures they might summon than Severus did.

Severus took a deep breath and drew out the Enmity Potion from its pouch. He knew it wasn’t his imagination that the glass against his hand chilled as the potion reached out to him, seeking to ensnare his mind.

Severus allowed it no chance. He whirled and tossed the flask against the wall of the bank.

It shattered, and the potion sighed out, manifesting to Severus’s eyes as stretching shadow-snakes that raced up the walls and disappeared the minute they made contact with the roof. Others arched around to the doors. Dash flicked Severus’s cheek with his tongue once, the way he had Harry, and then sped towards the doors in turn, his neck arched and his form shedding part of the illusion as Severus watched.

A second later, the sound of enraged screams came from inside the bank.

Severus stepped back and closed his eyes, his hands lowered at his sides and his mind reaching out. This part of the procedure should work fine, since he had brewed the potion perfectly. But even for someone with as much skill as he had, to reach out and connect with a spilled draught without allowing it to affect him was difficult.

In this, he succeeded. He let his thoughts dance lightly along the top of the Enmity Potion, riding them, and the potion welcomed him in and let him see what the goblins saw.

The Enmity Potion was designed to conjure both the illusions and the hatred of one’s mortal enemy. Severus had never seen the creatures who were apparently attacking the bank now. They resembled walking trees, but only below the waist, and split into waving stalks above them, each one having a single eye or mouth at the end. Great champing teeth opened in the middle of their “trunks,” and they lunged towards the goblins—in the goblins’ minds—laughing and speaking some incoherent babble of words.

Severus nodded. He didn’t need to know what they were, perhaps creatures from the time before the goblins had ever seen sunlight. It didn’t matter. He just needed to create a distraction that would seem to fit in with the beasts’ attacks.

He opened his eyes and sketched a runic pattern in the air with his wand. In seconds, shadowy trees “sprouted” in the cobblestones next to the bank, their enormous branches cutting off any trace of light from the doors and windows, and their roots appeared to reach under the steps. Severus added a pattern that would seem to create a chant that the goblins would hear as a threat to their gold.

Goblins came racing out the front doors, chopping wildly with axes at the trees. They faded back from the chops and then apparently renewed themselves, still chanting threats to Galleons. Severus Disillusioned himself and moved around to the other side of the bank. There was every chance that he could get caught by a half-crazed goblin who didn’t know what he was doing if he stayed still.

In the meantime, he wove more illusions, although ones that weren’t dictated by the Enmity Potion. Instead, he filled the air with fire and apparently poured it down on the bank. That should confuse the goblins who might not have been caught by the potion, and keep wizards who might interfere away from Gringotts.

Screams and the sound of battle continued to erupt from the bank. Severus worked his way around all the sides, using illusions and now and then a Repelling spell when a goblin warrior came too close to him. He stood back when half an hour had passed and Apparated to the place in Knockturn Alley where he and Dash had arrived with a bit of regret.

He hadn’t been able to act this directly in Harry’s defense in what felt like months.

*

Harry closed his eyes as Dash reached out to him through the bond. This wasn’t something he had told Severus about. He had practically demanded that his basilisk reach out for him at some point as he made his way through the bank. Even if he could do nothing physically, he had to be there, had to participate in some of the dangers that he was saying Dash should risk.

You know very well that I am the one who volunteered for this.

Harry sent nothing through the bond but an acknowledging thrum, still watching via Dash’s eyes as the basilisk slid deeper and deeper into the bank. So far, it was going better than Harry had thought it would. Severus’s potion was keeping the goblins so occupied that even the ones who bumped into Dash thought he was something else. Half the time they cowered away instead of attacking.

Do you know what they’re seeing? Harry asked, at the same time as he thought he might not want to know.

Ancient enemies from the time before they lived in our world, Dash said softly, as he located a tunnel that didn’t look any different from the others to Harry, and squeezed down it. He could bend and mold his body in ways that Harry didn’t understand when he wasn’t riding inside it and feeling the sensations.

Goblins aren’t native to our world? Harry could feel his own eyes blinking hard.

Why act so surprised? It’s not as if wizards are native to Earth, either. Dash came across a set of tracks that Harry vaguely remembered riding down in a cart. He swayed his head back and forth for a second, and listened for a dim sound that Harry could only describe as the cry of the wild Horcrux. Then he headed downwards in a swift pouring of flesh and scale.

What? Harry demanded as his mind caught up with Dash’s words. That’s ridiculous. We’re humans. Muggleborns come from humans.

And you think that wizards wouldn’t be capable of forming themselves into a shape that was similar enough to a native Earth species to allow them to interbreed?

Harry stared at the curtains of his bed, which for a moment overwhelmed the vision of Gringotts, and then rapidly shook his head. You’re joking.

Magic can accomplish many things, Harry. Especially when the wizards who made such changes then didn’t tell their descendants much, and those descendants went right ahead and kept shaping the magic with their own will to survive. In periods when wizards are more concerned about inbreeding, more Muggleborns come to exist. In periods when they’re convinced that “pure” blood is better and they’re expanding and have plenty of people to marry, Muggleborns are only one in a thousand human births in any one country.

How do you know this, though? If no one else knows it?

Dash’s voice was very gentle as he slithered down a tunnel so dark that Harry could only sense it through Dash’s heightened sense of smell and the scrape of stone against his scales. You forget who I am. It wasn’t such ancient history when I was alive.

Harry was still trying to ponder that and decide for sure if he believed it or not when fire split the darkness in front of Dash. Dash reared back, and Harry’s angle of vision changed abruptly when a dragon came trotting and snorting out of the tunnel.

Harry stared, his mouth open a little in spite of himself. The dragon was ancient, its scales seamed with what looked like frost, and the fire flickered and went too quickly for him to be sure what species it was. There were horns around the face, though, and a thick chain around its neck, buried so deeply in the scales that it looked as if they had grown over it.

Great, how are you going to get past that? Harry asked Dash.

This time, I think you have forgotten what I am.

Before Harry could ask what Dash meant by that, he opened his eyes.

The dragon stiffened as it stared forwards, and then collapsed on its side. Dash slid past it and deeper into the bank. The edge of his tail tapped against the dragon’s chains with disapproval. I think I am going to speak to the goblins about the way they treat the reptiles they keep captive here, Dash said down the bond.

I didn’t know you could Petrify a dragon.

Why would my power depend on the size of the victim?

Harry didn’t want to say that there was no reason it should, and he just hadn’t paid attention to that part. Instead, he muttered, How close do you think you are to the vault with the Horcrux?

Close. It’s much easier to sense its darkness here than it was above the surface with all the bulk of the bank and the magic of the goblins in the way. Dash paused to lift his head and flick out his tongue. You should be able to smell it.

I’m not as experienced at using your senses to… But Harry let the words trail off as he did extend himself through Dash’s mouth and tongue and felt the thready reek of what smelled like unbelievably ancient and foul spoiled meat. If Voldemort has senses like this, how do you think he made any Horcruxes at all?

Dash flicked his tail in that motion that was his equivalent of a shrug as he slid down another cart track and then reached the lip of an immense, black stone cliff. Water sluiced past him and down in a seemingly endless fall. Dash stared down and murmured, He bonded with a viper but not a basilisk. That might mean he’s as stupid in this as everything else.

Dash. Tell me you’re not going down there.

There’s where the Lestrange vault is and the stink is coming from, Dash said, and drew himself back, coiling for a second. Then he launched himself forwards in a long slide down the cliff beside the waterfall.

Harry drew his breath in to shout at the stubborn, stupid snake, and then realized that Dash was climbing, gliding gracefully from stone to stone and looping his body around the smallest projections from the cliff like a sidewinder. He groaned and leaned back against the solid pillow behind him for a second. You’re an arsehole.

What? Did you think I was really going to leap the way you did down that chute to the Chamber of Secrets in your second year? You keep forgetting that you’re bonded to a smart basilisk, Harry. I think I’m going to have to order you some books on us. This is just disgraceful.

You weren’t even hatched when I went down into the Chamber the first time.

I know, or you wouldn’t have done that. Dash reached the bottom of the cliff and turned his head, flickering his tongue out again. The vault isn’t much further. That means they’re likely to have stronger protections than a dragon or an illusion-destroying waterfall around here.

That’s what the waterfall did?

Books, Harry. Books and lessons.

Harry would have answered, but a fireball came blazing out of the darkness and hit Dash’s scales. Dash didn’t scream or even swear in Parseltongue, but his pain echoed through the bond and down the connection into Harry’s head and heart. He clutched his head and knew that pitch had been part of that fireball.

Use your eyes! Use your fangs! Harry screamed down the bond. You were just the one who was bragging that you’re a goddamn basilisk!

This is a machine, Harry! Not one that’s operated by goblins, either. Dash ducked his head and strained his eyes through the darkness, and wavering lines of light seemed to cut it. It looks like a catapult built on Muggle plans.

What can you do about it?

Accept a few more hits and use a different advantage that comes with being a basilisk as brilliant as I am.

Harry gave a choked-off cry as another fireball hit Dash, but he was already surging towards the catapult. Harry saw the device for a second, a throwing arm that was already cranking back and the flaming pitch in it, and then Dash tossed a coil of his body around it and squeezed so hard Harry thought he would squeeze his own ribs out through his scales.

Then Dash slumped to the floor, and Harry breathed with him as he unwound himself from the wreckage of the device.

It was clever of them to come up with something that would deter so many magical enemies just because they couldn’t figure out how it works, Dash said, nudging the wreckage on the floor with a curious nose for a moment before he turned and made his way up the tunnel. Of course, this isn’t the last defense we’ll face.

Another dragon? Harry asked. He thought it was a reasonable guess. The air down here was much warmer than it had been above the waterfall, although Harry mainly felt that not as heat but the incredible liveliness that shivered through Dash’s body.

No, I don’t think so. Dash came around the corner, and paused. Harry looked forwards and nearly flinched from the brightness of the fire that filled the corridor.

Blood-fire, Dash said, sounding curious more than anything. Flames that only someone of goblin blood or someone related to the family who owns the vaults could pass through. He darted his tongue out. It has its weaknesses, of course. If a goblin or a member of the family turns traitor, it’s not much of a protection.

Harry forced himself to speak slowly. And you don’t have a plan to get past it.

I have a plan. It’s simply going to hurt more than a little. Retreat from the close connection we have right now. I don’t want the bond to render you unconscious.

Harry sent a push of emotions down the bond even as he did as Dash had instructed. Do you know that you’re the most infuriating basilisk on the face of this earth?

It’s nice to have my accomplishments praised.

Before Harry could retort, Dash thrust forwards with his neck, and opened his eyes at the same time. Harry stared, ignoring the nauseating way that the curtains of his bed mingled with the vision of Dash attacking the fire. How could he think that was going to work? The fire wasn’t something he could kill or Petrify—

There was a nose like a thousand half-strangled birds trying to sing, and Harry screamed despite himself as pain rushed over his skin, glad that Severus wasn’t there at the moment. Dash slithered through the flames, and half-crushed them with his huge bulk. Trembling, Harry wondered if that had been the plan, and opened his mouth to yell at Dash for the stupidity of it.

Then he closed it again. Dash had turned his head so Harry could see back along the tunnel, and the flames were completely gone, far more so than they should have been if Dash had counted on simply smothering some of them with his body. Harry let out a hesitant, shaking breath, and Dash bobbed his head up and down.

They’re gone.

How did you do that, though? Harry demanded as he watched Dash swing towards the Lestrange vault. It wasn’t alive, you couldn’t kill it—

I see that you will need still more books and lessons, Dash murmured, halting in front of a door that Harry assumed was to the Lestrange vault and stretching his neck upwards. A basilisk is death, Harry. To almost everything. It’s true that most of us only kill living things because prey is all we need to use our gifts for, with an exception for self-defense. But we can kill whatever we want.

Harry sat there blinking while Dash coiled his neck into nearly a bow shape. All right. The way past the vault door is going to take more time than I thought.

Harry breathed out slowly, even though he knew that Dash and Severus had planned for a few hours. Why is that? Do you not have enough magic left to kill the door?

Dash sent a laugh at him. I could if it was only a door, but it’s a mixture of alive and unliving, which is almost impossible. There’s a living creature embedded in that door, and it’s full of hate and madness. Its only purpose is to kill anyone who tries to make an unauthorized entrance.

Dash, could you—leave and try again later?

Are you a Gryffindor or not? Dash chided him, and then reared back and struck, hard, at the door, at the same moment as ringing alarms filled the corridor with malice.

Oops, Dash added. I think the goblins noticed us.

Chapter 149: Break Free

Chapter Text

Severus swore under his breath as he watched the goblins turning and flowing back into the bank. Something had gone wrong, something deep enough to distract their attention from the illusions of their mortal enemies. Oh, a few remained to hack at the tree-creatures, but not nearly enough to make a difference in the battle that was coming.

And he was sure the battle was coming to Dash.

Severus hesitated. For a moment, his logical mind warred with his heart, but his logical mind won.

He could do nothing to help Dash. He had no idea where the basilisk was right now, and he was as likely to get killed by a goblin’s axe before he reached that point as he was to help. And Dash, if he survived, might retrieve the Horcrux and come back to the Apparition point while Severus was still inside the bank.

If the unimaginable happened and Dash died, then Harry would need Severus to hold the remnants of his mind together.

He would stick to the plan.

Severus folded his arms and spun on his heel, Apparating back to the small courtyard between buildings in Knockturn Alley. No immense snake was waiting for him, as he supposed he should have known. He closed his eyes for a second, and hissed, not in Parseltongue, just in frustration.

Then he Apparated again. He would hold to the plan.

*

Shit.

Indeed, Dash said crisply down the bond. A minute later, Harry felt a sharp ripple travel through Dash that he didn’t understand, and then Dash reared back and opened his mouth to face the half-living Lestrange vault door.

What do you think you’re doing? You’re not a dragon, to breathe fire, Harry snapped. Get out of there, you great idiot!

What would be the point of that when we haven’t retrieved the Horcrux? And it’s not fire that I can breathe.

Dash opened his mouth wider and sprayed the entire vault door with his venom, such enormous quantities of it that Harry stared in shock. Green liquid was pooling and flowing down the door to settle into the corridor, and there was a breathless silence that made Harry wonder if it had somehow affected the goblins’ alarms as well.

Then a rippling shriek filled the corridor.

Harry screamed and saw the bed-curtains around him for a minute before the vision of the bank returned. He still clapped his hands over his ears. He had never heard anything like that; mad, full of hate, dying. He was still shuddering long after the echoes faded.

What did you do? he whispered as Dash eased towards the door of the Lestrange vault again.

Killed the living part of it. The trick is to kill the entire thing at once, or the spells binding the living part to the unliving one will keep it alive, no matter how large the wound, Draco said, as he began to twitch his coils. Harry wondered if he was going to vomit up his next weapon. Now the door is stone. And stone—

Dash reared up to his full, impressive height, making Harry’s view of the whole corridor change dizzyingly, and then flared his eyes open. The stone flaked and crumbled in front of his gaze, much the way the fire had.

Is vulnerable, Dash said, and slithered into the vault over the sudden pile of rubble.

Harry listened intently as Dash circled through the vault, tongue flicking out as he scented for the Horcrux. I don’t hear the goblins. Did they decide whatever had bypassed their defenses was too intense to tackle?

Hardly. Dash sounded amused. I think that, rather, they were distracted thoroughly by your Severus’s potion, and even goblins in their own territory would take more time than this to cover the distance from the door and overcome the residual effects of the potion.

They should still be coming, though.

I agree. Dash raised his head to the level of a shelf set back into the stone, and Harry saw the golden cup gleaming there. He wanted to recoil, even separated from it as he was by hundreds of miles. The sheer reek of a Horcrux was unmistakable.

How are you going to lift it? Harry asked, when he had caught his breath. I don’t think you should touch it.

Dash nodded and drew his head back a little. Harry waited, but he could hear distant bells now and the sound of shouted orders. At least some of the goblins had recovered from the potion, then.

Dash opened his mouth further and once again summoned a torrent of venom.

Dash! Harry cried out in shock as he watched the green liquid drench the Horcrux. That was…that was the simplest method, he had to admit. But they hadn’t discussed it, and he simply hadn’t imagined that something like this was going to happen.

I cannot chance part of my body touching it, Dash said simply as the poison cascaded onto the floor and began to dissolve gold and silver and bronze and probably other magical items Harry couldn’t see. Neither you nor Severus could defeat me if I was possessed by one of the bloody things.

I know, I just didn’t think…

And now I need to leave, Dash said, and whipped around again to face the door of the vault.

Seven goblins were standing there, holding long stone tubes that made Harry swallow nervously. He wasn’t sure what kind of weapons they were, but he had no doubt that they were weapons. And what exactly would they do to Dash?

Nothing that I do not want.

Dash slithered casually towards the goblins. Two of them raised stone tubes. The others hefted battle-axes. One of them asked a question, but it was in Gobbledegook, so Harry didn’t understand it.

They’re warning me that I’m going to die. Dash’s tongue darted out. Stubborn things. Let them stand before this.

And he twisted his body to the side and flicked his tail, and the tide of venom that had been pooling in the bottom of the vault rushed towards the goblins.

Stubborn they might be, but they had good instincts, for which Harry was grateful. He didn’t really want Dash and Severus to kill people. The goblins dived out of the way as the poison washed past them and into the corridor, where it started to eat at the stone. Dash, meanwhile, was already out, not flinching as the poison washed against his scales. It felt like nothing more than a light bath to Harry.

I should hope it feels that way, Dash scolded him as he slithered across the corridor and into one of the tunnels that led off it. It would be a poor basilisk who’s vulnerable to his own venom.

Harry sighed and decided that he wouldn’t get much out of questioning what would happen if a basilisk was vulnerable. How are you going to get out of the bank with the goblins alerted? he asked, as he watched doors blur past as Dash slid upwards faster than Harry had known he was capable of.

I’m going up.

Harry sent the feeling of rolling his eyes down the bond. You know very well what I mean. How are you going to escape when they know that you’re here and exactly where you are?

You don’t know that. Dash reached a cliff wall that Harry didn’t remember being there on the way down and swarmed up it. In seconds they were gliding along what looked like a marble wall with glinting water beneath it. For all you know, they could still be running in circles and coping with the last of Severus’s potion.

But at least some of them saw you, Harry moaned a little. They’ll want to destroy you for breaking into the bank, and they’ll probably want to destroy the Potter vaults, too.

You think a goblin would do that? Dash abruptly plunged into the water and began to swim, and Harry gave up on understanding the geography down here as he watched the water widen into what looked like an underground lake.

What? Yes, of course they would do it if they were angry enough.

Dash chuckled, his tongue lashing the air again as he crawled up on the far shore of the lake, which was dark enough to look like basalt. You still don’t really understand goblins, Harry. They’ll have listened to the rumors about me being the reincarnation of Salazar Slytherin or at least you taking the position of Slytherin’s Heir. It’s the Slytherin vaults they’ll target.

Harry blinked for a bit, while Dash squeezed himself through a tunnel that should have been too small to contain him and came up against a blank stone wall. He scented along it for a moment, then reared back and drove his head forwards. The stone crumbled and fell about him, and Dash kept going, over the lip of another waterfall and onto a set of cart tracks that made Harry swallow.

And what’s in the Slytherin vaults? he managed to ask as Dash coursed up the cart tracks and took a left at the top of what had seemed a slight hill until they climbed it, heading ever upwards. Anything that you’ll be sorry to lose?

Dash chuckled again and murmured, Goblins waiting up here. As for the vaults, they’re extraordinarily hard to get into. Those were the days that goblins would let you add your own enchantments to the vault doors, not just the contents.

And inside?

One Galleon each. Those were also the days when all you needed was one Galleon to hold a vault.

Harry snickered and watched the curtains of his bed flicker back into being around him. He clapped his hand over his mouth and hoped that he hadn’t woken anybody up.

Are you sure that you’re going to be able to get out of there? he whispered as he watched the stone walls fly past them. Dash paused at one point and broke down another one that revealed a new set of cart tracks behind it.

I am sure of it, Dash said, and then he ducked his neck as something whistled closely over his head. Harry gasped as he saw the reflected light of flames glinting on the metal of the tracks, and he wanted to twist to see what was behind them, but he was bound by the angle of Dash’s head and eyes.

“Stop, basilisk!”

Dash didn’t actually stop, but he slowed. The tunnel ahead of him was filled with goblins, more of them with the stone tubes that must have fired the blast of flame, and some with axes and swords. The largest goblin, in the front of the horde, scowled at Dash.

“You are not to move further,” he said. “You will suffer the penalty of anyone who breaks into the bank.”

Dash gave a loose, rippling motion of his coils that Harry thought he was the only one there to recognize as a shrug, and lifted one set of eyelids.

Petrified goblins tumbled back out of the way, and Dash kept slithering, over them and up and on. Harry winced. Did you crush any of them when you did that? He managed to make it sound, he thought, like a neutral question, not one that was as irritated as he actually had been.

Dash chuckled at him and kept moving. They are bruised, but alive. I don’t actually want to kill goblins, but neither do I mind their deaths.

What you said about them coming from another world...

Wizards do, too. I told you.

What did you mean by that?

That they come from another world. That all of you do. All of us do. Basilisk eggs were constructed for the first time here, I believe, at least in the way that most people breed them, but the ideas would have come with them from the other world.

Harry shook his head, full of questions. Why didn’t anyone else tell me this? Where was the world? Why did they leave it? Could we go back there someday? Do you think that it would be better than—

I am trying to escape a bank here, Harry. Why not put the questions to sleep and ask me them in a little while?

Harry swallowed back his protests and folded his arms behind his head. His bed flickered into view around him again, but he pushed the vision away.

As long as Dash was in Gringotts, then Harry planned to stay with him.

*

Severus felt a surge of relief he would have denied if asked as he watched Dash crawl into the Apparition courtyard. He reached out and rested his hand on the scales for a second. Dash dipped his head and nodded slowly, his lids locking in place over his blazing yellow eyes.

“Good,” Severus whispered, knowing it was the best reassurance he would get when he didn’t speak Parseltongue, and then Apparated them. He thought he could hear the sound of distant running footsteps, and wouldn’t be surprised if the goblins had tracked Dash into Knockturn Alley.

He staggered as they landed at the base of the path from Hogsmeade again. That was a roughness he hadn’t anticipated, and he looked carefully down at his robes to make sure that he hadn’t picked up some kind of tracking charm or dragging weight.

Dash touched him with a gentle tongue again, and Severus thought he knew what the basilisk was saying. Severus had cast a lot of magic in a short time, Apparated several times in the last hour, and transported a giant basilisk at the last, something he hadn’t done since the first hop. It was understandable that he would be fatigued.

Severus nodded his understanding and thanks, and then turned around with a scowl as he watched the lanky figure running towards them from Hogwarts. “He promised that he would at least try to get some sleep,” he muttered.

Dash fluttered his tongue next to him and slithered up the path. Severus saw Harry throw his arms around Dash, and something in him relaxed, even though he was annoyed at Harry for sneaking through the castle after curfew. That bloody Invisibility Cloak had been a thorn in his side long before Harry became Master of Death.

“Thank you for bringing him back,” Harry told Severus, and then gave him a long, steady glance. “You’re not hurt?”

Severus snorted. “Of course not. I am not the one who took the risk of going into the bank.” He glanced at Dash. “And because I could not communicate with him directly, I do not know the fate of the Horcrux.”

Infuriatingly, that got him an eyeroll from Harry. “You know you could have asked him a yes-no question, and he could have bobbed his head for yes?” Harry asked, his arm draping securely around part of Dash’s neck.

“There was no time.”

Harry’s face softened then. “I know. I saw—most of the attack and the escape through Dash’s eyes. Thank you for everything, Severus. I know that the goblins would have killed Dash if you hadn’t brewed that potion, and there’s no way other than Apparition he could have escaped so quickly.” Dash hissed as if disagreeing, but if he was, Harry didn’t bother translating. “You’re a miracle-worker.”

And if he had to share Harry with Dash, Severus thought, at least he got these declarations from Harry, so much warmer than he could have imagined even a year ago.

He dredged up a smile. “You are welcome. And the fate of the Horcrux?”

“Dash destroyed it with his venom. He didn’t want to try moving it, and he couldn’t have Levitated it or carried it in his mouth.”

Severus nodded, content. A Horcrux that someone else destroyed so Harry didn’t even have to come into contact with it was the best kind, in his way of thinking.

“Come on,” Harry murmured, to what might have been either of them, although he was looking at Dash. “You’ll get the healing and rest that you need up at the school.” And he began to tug on Dash’s neck as if he intended to bring him to Madam Pomfrey by himself.

Dash probably went only because he wanted to indulge Harry, but Severus was glad enough to follow. Thoughts of his warm bed had begun to wend through his mind, larger than even the contentment.

*

“Are you—are you disappointed?”

Harry stared blankly at Hermione and Ron for a second, then shook his head. “Disappointed? Of course not! Are you mental? I think it’s great that you’ve found things you want to focus on!”

Ron relaxed and gave him a relieved smile, then opened his mouth, probably to begin talking again about opportunities to train as a strategy coach for Quidditch teams, but Hermione interrupted. “You say that, but I can’t believe you aren’t disappointed, Harry. We were helping in the war effort, and now—”

“One way or the other,” Harry interrupted her quietly, “the war effort is going to be over soon, Hermione.” He winced when he saw how pale she got, but continued. “You helped a lot by researching the Horcruxes and giving us a way to find them, but right now, the only ones left are the one in me and the one in Voldemort. If you can even think about them separately,” he added reluctantly. He honestly wasn’t sure if he could, as disgusting as it was to imagine himself tied to Voldemort like that. “So either we’re going to win or he’s going to kill me. That’s it.”

“Don’t say that.” Hermione looked as if she was about to start scolding him, but Ron swung an arm around her shoulders and interrupted her.

“He has to say it, Hermione. He has to at least think about it so that he can be prepared.” Ron took a deep breath and focused on Harry. “So do you want us to be part of the battle or not?”

“If you want, then I thought you could join Fred and George.”

Ron blinked. “What are they going to do?”

“Stay behind the lines in the decoy battle at Malfoy Manor and use their pranks,” Harry said, smiling a little as Hermione huffed. “Honestly, they’ve been developing some pretty interesting things. I think they’re going to take the Death Eaters by surprise.”

“They should be studying for their NEWTS,” said Hermione, brushing her hair out of her eyes as she focused on Harry.

Harry shrugged a little. “I don’t think they care, Hermione. It would matter if they wanted to work at the Ministry, or—if there wasn’t a war. But there’s no NEWT you need for opening a shop the way they want to do.”

“They should still—”

Ron hastily interrupted, probably recognizing as well as Harry that they didn’t need that lecture right now. It wasn’t like the twins were even around to hear it. “What do you think is going to be the best step?”

“We can still herd him in the right direction, but only once, I think,” Harry said quietly. “Severus and Dash don’t want me to interact with him at all in the next week, and I agree. If we try to lure him into some other trap before then, he won’t take the bait when we really want him to.” He hesitated. “Draco is going to use Bellatrix.”

“You know I still don’t agree with blood magic,” Hermione muttered, but it seemed to be reflexive. Harry ignored her.

“I think that’s as good a plan as any other we’re going to get that.” Ron grimaced and settled back in his chair. “What happens if he doesn’t listen, though? Are we going to be able to get him to Malfoy Manor?”

Harry hesitated, and Ron leaned in and focused on him again. “Harry?”

“If worst comes to worst, then we’re going to use me as bait. Voldemort won’t be able to pass up the chance to attack me once he sees where I am.”

“You’re not going to really be going outside unguarded, of course.” Hermione looked as if she wanted to punch him, or maybe punch Severus and Dash. “Professor Snape would never have agreed to that.”

“No, but we might have to make me look that way.” Harry licked his lips. “But that’s only if Draco’s plan with Bellatrix doesn’t work. Right now, we have no reason to think that it won’t work.”

Hermione nodded tensely. Ron was the one who whispered, “What happens if you die during the war?”

“If it defeats Voldemort, mourn me and live,” Harry said, as sharply as he could. “If he takes over Britain, please, both of you, run.”

“We’d want to stay and avenge you,” Ron said, jutting his chin up in a way that was every inch the proud Gryffindor.

“I know that. But I would be dead, and if for some reason I am watching from the afterlife or aware for some reason…” Harry swallowed. He didn’t want to bring up ideas that Voldemort might be able to hang onto his spirit and torture him like that, even though Dash had told him how accomplished Voldemort was at necromancy. “I want you to leave.”

Ron and Hermione exchanged agonized glances. “That’s what you’d really want,” Hermione checked in a low voice.

Harry nodded firmly. “I know—I know that Dash would go on a rampage to avenge me, and I’ve already talked to him about it and failed to change his mind. And I don’t think I could make Severus and Draco leave. Voldemort would probably hunt them down and try to kill them especially anyway. But please. Promise me.”

Ron was the first to take his hand and clasp it firmly. “All right, Harry. If that’s what you really want.”

“Yes,” Hermione whispered, taking his other hand. “We promise.”

Harry closed his eyes and hugged them. It wasn’t a perfect assurance, especially considering that he didn’t even know if they would manage to flee if Voldemort won and blocked all the ways out of the country, but it was the best he was going to get for right now.

You have that from them, and you have my assurance from me.

Harry sighed. You know I would prefer it if you left, and lived.

What reason do I have to live, if you are dead?

And that, Harry thought wearily, was as much as he was going to get out of Dash. He leaned harder into his friends’ embrace and sighed.

Chapter 150: Farewells

Chapter Text

“I wish I could help somehow, Mr. Potter.”

Harry smiled up at her, and Minerva held back her own sadness at the adult nature of that smile. “You’ve already helped out a lot, Headmistress. Just knowing that someone’s here to take care of the school and keep students safe is a help. And you gave Hermione that advice about becoming an Unspeakable.” Harry hesitated for a second and glanced around her office as though he was looking for hiding places. “I’ve never seen her so happy.”

Minerva reached across the desk and clutched his hand. Harry clutched hers back. There was a long silence between them, and then Harry gently retracted his arm.

“You know I might not survive this battle.”

Minerva caught her breath, and tears stung the corners of her eyes, but Harry was relying on her to be strong, so she nodded.

“I’ve left a will that says who should get what.” Harry hesitated. “I hope that you’ll distribute some of the bequests if you can, and of course that you’ll consider fleeing the country for your own safety.”

“I’m too old to start over elsewhere.” Minerva had already anticipated this. Harry was the kind of warrior who would fight better knowing that people were safe or at least had promised to be safe, but she couldn’t give a different answer. “If it comes to that, I’ll die in defense of my school and my students.”

“I hope it doesn’t come to that,” Harry whispered. “It shouldn’t come to that.” His eyes glazed for a moment, which was a sign that he was usually in communion with his basilisk. Then he shook his head, and his gaze snapped back to her. “We’re going to do everything we can to make sure that we defeat Voldemort on the mental battlefield.”

“Good,” Minerva whispered. “If only I could help you bear some of this burden…”

“Like I said, you have.” Harry stood up. “Good-bye, Headmistress. I hope I’ll see you in a few days.”

He turned and strode down the moving staircase that led away from the office. By listening intently. Minerva thought she could make out the shuffling of basilisk scales within the pipes and tunnels that curved through the walls, as Dash tracked him down and out.

Minerva closed her eyes and sat still for a long moment. Then she stood up and went to make sure that all the school defenses she could control from the Headmistress’s office were ready in case she needed them.

*

“You know I would be happier if you stayed behind.”

“You know it’s a lost argument before you try to make it,” Draco said lightly without looking up from the book in front of him. Harry was only able to see part of the title where it was braced against his knee. Something about Darkest Curses. “Therefore, don’t make it. Go and do something else.”

Harry stared at his boyfriend for a long second, and then swallowed. “There’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you. Something else,” he added, with a faint smile, when the corner of Draco’s eye twitched.

“What, then?” Draco looked up at him, but left his finger in the book.

Harry told himself that it wasn’t really just because Draco appeared more interested in the book than him that he said what he did next, but it was part of the reason. “I want to know if you’ll go to bed with me.”

Draco gasped and dropped the book on his foot. Harry was glad that they were in his room off Severus’s quarters and wouldn’t have to worry about anyone intruding the way they would in the Gryffindor boys’ bedroom or the common room. “What?” Draco whispered.

Harry smiled at him and reached up to start removing his robes without taking his eyes from Draco’s.

Draco watched him get undressed with dazed eyes for a long moment, and then shook his head sharply and stood. “If you say that this is because you don’t want to die a virgin, I am going to hex you.”

I told you he would say something like that, Dash muttered down the bond.

Stop paying attention, you perverted old basilisk, Harry retorted, and Dash laughed before a barrier went up in the bond. Harry shook his head at Draco.

“I want to know what it’s like to hold you, kiss you,” he said, and took a breath long enough and deep enough that he didn’t know when he would come to the end of it. But he had to, because Draco was gaping at him, waiting for him. “To be inside you.”

Draco closed his eyes. Harry waited, then added, “But if you’re not ready for that, I’d like to have a different kind of sex with you and then sleep beside you tonight.”

“No,” Draco breathed, his eyes fluttering open, and for a second, Harry’s heart sank. But then he saw the trembling hand that Draco was reaching towards him. “I didn’t mean—I mean, yes. To the first part. Not the second part. I’ve wanted to know that for a while, but I didn’t know how to approach you when the war was going on and you were thinking about everything and it seemed—everything else seemed so much more important to you than I did.”

Harry cursed under his breath and stepped up to Draco, gripping his shoulders and kissing him. “I’m sorry,” he said against Draco’s lips. “I never meant to shut you out like that. Things have been important, but not more than you. I’m going to try my very best to pay more attention to you in the future, okay? I’m sorry.”

“That sounds like a promise to survive the battle.”

Draco’s eyes were intent on his, searching, and Harry had never seen him look more like an adult. He nodded. “I’m going to try my very best,” he repeated.

“I can’t ask for certainty,” Draco whispered, and for a second, Harry thought he would leave. But then he began hastily to strip off his own shirt, his eyes raking over Harry’s bare chest like warm claws.

Harry smiled at him and reached down to take off his pants and trousers. Then he picked up his wand and shot a quick Locking Charm at the door, followed by Silencing Charms. The last thing he wanted Severus to know was what they were doing in here.

Meanwhile, Draco was breathing nosily, and when Harry turned back to him, he was still half-dressed. “What’s wrong?” he whispered.

“You’re naked.”

Harry grinned at that, and moved forwards to place his hands on Draco’s hips. “I know,” he whispered. “And I’m going to be even more naked when you get undressed.”

A second later, he thought that was a stupid thing to say, and he was almost sure that he felt Dash snicker down the bond. But Draco took it seriously. His eyes were darker and wider than Harry had ever seen him, and he was almost panting with his arousal. He got naked, too, after that, and his cock was so perfect that Harry couldn’t wait. He reached out and touched it.

Draco closed his eyes and bucked his hips once, then held consciously still. Harry was sure it was conscious. “You’re going to make me come before anything happens,” Draco whispered.

“We’re young, we’ll get it up again,” Harry said, and Draco shuddered and twitched and opened his eyes and frowned at him.

“It’s embarrassing,” Draco said, and dragged him forwards and into a sharp kiss before Harry could say anything else.

*

Draco didn’t know how Harry could so unselfconscious. He was conscious of everything, from the way his fingers trembled as he clutched at Harry to the way that their mouths brushed when they kissed.

But he did, desperately, want to know what it was like to have Harry inside him, and he had for a while. So he opened his mouth and his legs and his body, and let Harry kiss him until he was afraid he was going to come again. And he let Harry lead him to the bed.

One concern came up, though, that he couldn’t dismiss, and he wrestled his mouth free from Harry’s to ask, “Dash isn’t going to be spying on us, is he?”

“No, I shut off the bond,” Harry said, his voice soft and dazed, and his eyes locked on Draco’s groin. “Or he did. I told him that he was a perverted old basilisk if he tried to spy on us…” He trailed off and took such a deep breath that Draco wondered if he was going to back out of this. “Draco, can I please touch?”

Draco laughed, soft and pleased, and spread his legs wider. “Of course, Harry. I didn’t realize that you were waiting for permission,” he teased, and had the pleasure of seeing a blush race across Harry’s face like spilled red ink.

“I—I wanted to, but it looks…I want to so much,” Harry said, as if that made sense, and caught Draco in a loose grip.

Draco let his eyes roll back and gasped out as Harry stroked him. “You have as much permission as you need,” he whispered.

And Harry seemed to take it seriously, at last, because he climbed on top of Draco and kissed him, and Draco was right there.

*

Draco was so beautiful like this.

Harry felt bits of his own worries burning away as he stared at his boyfriend. He had wanted to do this because it might be the last chance they’d ever have to, and he wanted Draco, and he wanted to know what this was like. But now—

It seared every doubt and idea that was separate from it to ashes, and he was just glad, just grateful, to be with Draco.

Harry had spent most of the day thinking about what he’d do if Draco agreed to sleep with him, which meant he had the right means nearby to make it possible. He sat up and cast a few careful spells, then put his wand aside as Draco gaped at him.

“That’s—that feels weird.” Draco wriggled experimentally and hissed as some of the lube Harry had conjured dripped out of him and onto the sheets.

“Sorry?”

“No, I think it’ll feel good. But you know I could put up with a bit of pain.”

“I can’t,” Harry said flatly, and Draco’s eyes focused on him. “Not right now.”

After a second, Draco nodded, and even smiled at him. “So I know the lubrication charm. What else did you cast?”

“Charms to relax your muscles,” Harry said, and moved forwards so that he was settled between Draco’s legs, rocking a little. “And one to enhance your pleasure. I want you to feel really good.”

“Tell me why.” Draco’s eyes were already going hazy just from the brush of Harry’s cock against his arse.

“Because I want you to agree to do this again in the future,” Harry whispered, and Draco laughed a little and arched up to meet him. “And because—I love you so much, Draco. Someday I’ll be under you like this, and you can cast the same spells or prepare me with your fingers, whatever you want, and I’ll remember this.”

Draco gripped his hair for a second, and Harry followed the pull down and kissed him. Then he sat back, because Draco was honestly enthusiastic enough that Harry was throbbing with anticipation. “Ready?”

Draco nodded. “I think you made sure of that.” Abruptly, he paused and shot a panicked look at the door. “You—you did put a locking charm on it, right? Tell me you put a locking charm on it.”

“Of course I did,” Harry said, and rolled his eyes as he began to sink into Draco. And then he tossed his head back and gasped and held very still.

“Is something wrong?”

“No, it’s just.” Harry gritted his teeth against the extreme pleasure that was trying to melt his spine. He reached out and caressed Draco’s hair with a shaky hand, and Draco watched him with narrowed, worried eyes. He opened his mouth as if to say something, and Harry groaned and shook his head.

“How does it feel for you?” he finally asked, whispering not because he wanted to, but because that was the way he came out.

“Full,” Draco said, and laughed a little when Harry glared at him. “I mean, I think it’s supposed to feel different when you start moving, but right now, that’s what it feels like. Do you think you could move in a few minutes?”

“It’s overwhelming,” Harry said. “You were worried about embarrassing yourself, but I’m going to do that if I don’t count backwards in my head or something.”

Draco snorted and reached up to clutch his arms. Harry groaned again as the pressure around him shifted. Draco planted a quick kiss on his mouth and said softly, “One thing you said to me is that we’re young and we have all night.”

“I don’t think I put it—in those exact words—”

Draco laughed at him. Harry glared at him, and Draco rolled his eyes. “Yes, very scary, Mr. Potter. I thought the one who bottomed was supposed to be the one going breathless and staring mindlessly at the wall and stuttering.”

“I was not staring mindlessly!”

“Trust me, you were.” Draco ran a possessive hand up his arm, and smiled as Harry’s muscles flexed. “Come on, I promise, it’s going to be fine. Let’s go.”

It was partially the mounting desperation in Draco’s tone and partially the sensation of a snicker in his head down the bond that made Harry abruptly throw his back into it. He was not going to have Dash laughing at him, and he wasn’t going to disappoint Draco.

He couldn’t even say, at first, which motivation was stronger.

And it was satisfying, in all sorts of ways, to see how Draco’s eyes widened, and his breath did start coming short, and his nails raked red lines down Harry’s arms as he tried to grab onto something, anything. Harry chuckled and snorted and went breathless and rocked, and he could see how the waves were rolling through Draco and it was better than anything he’d ever had. Harry was sure of that.

“How are you—how are you—” Draco made a motion beneath him that seemed to be recoiling and pushing back all at once, and his eyes rolled and his chest heaved.

“I’m fine,” Harry said. “How are you?” But then he gasped at the intense squeeze of pleasure around him, and that made Draco glare at him and rake his chest with his nails this time.

“We’re—not going to get off going this slow.”

“Someone said we had all night,” Harry retorted, and put his hands on Draco’s hips to hold him still. He was starting to wish he had slammed a pillow underneath there, too, since they were steadily sliding down the bed.

“I want to go faster,” Draco said, glaring at him as if that would change things. Harry hated to admit how it did make his breath catch and his cock jump inside Draco, but Draco felt it. He smiled and stretched out slowly and luxuriously on the bed.

“I want to go faster,” he repeated, and glanced at the sheets. “And we’re going to slide right off the bed if we keep going.”

“Then why would going faster work?” Harry had managed to beat back some of the intense tide of pleasure, but he moved again as he spoke, and the waves that shuddered up from his cock made him bite his lip desperately.

“Going faster in another way,” Draco said, and pulled abruptly off Harry’s cock and crawled towards the pillows. “Come on, I’m going to put a pillow on the bed, and you’re going to lie on it.”

“You want to be on top?” Harry’s voice was hoarse, and his head was spinning. Honestly, right now that sounded like as good a plan as any to him. Mostly he wanted Draco to come back here so that they could finish what they’d started.

“Sort of. Do it.”

Harry lay back on the pillow that Draco was arranging, and opened his mouth to ask another question—

When Draco turned and sank down on his erection again, with a little moan and flex of his hips that made Harry rise right to the edge again. “Oh, yeah.” Draco rocked himself. “This is much better. You’re still, and I can control things, which is clearly the way it should be.”

“F-fuck, Draco.” Harry reached up and clutched at Draco’s hips in turn. Now he was the one leaving scratches behind, and Draco was the one who was smiling and looking perfectly pleased about that.

“Generally,” Draco agreed, and then bore down and squeezed, and Harry forgot everything else in favor of fucking his boyfriend.

It was messy and noisy in a way that Harry hadn’t anticipated with the lubrication running down between them and the bed squeaking and their skin meeting. He had a stray thought that he was really glad that he’d cast the Silencing Charm at the door, and then Draco gave a harsh bump, and thought went away.

There was nothing but warmth for a while, nothing but tightness, and Draco’s eyes on him, and his hands resting on Draco’s hips, and Draco whispering and whimpering things that Harry couldn’t understand. Harry was silent almost all the time except when Draco raised and lowered himself especially hard, and then he grunted.

“Not very vocal, are you?” Draco narrowed his eyes as he stared down at Harry. “Let’s see if we can’t change that.” And he rearranged himself with some shifting of his hips, and then sat down fast.

Harry shouted, and there were mingled echoes of Draco’s name in there somewhere. He thought Draco should be satisfied with that, but Draco kept shifting, and bearing down, and squeezing, and clasping, and gripping him, and raking him with his nails, and all that Harry really knew was that it was dissolving into a wonderful mess.

And then he knew it was the sort of wonderful mess where he was going to come, and nearly panicked, because what sort of boyfriend would he be if he got off first and just left Draco there? He reached out and clumsily stroked Draco’s cock where it was projecting over Harry’s stomach.

That was the hidden key he’d been looking for, it turned out. Draco’s mouth sagged open, and he gave a muted cry. Then he shot all over Harry’s chest, and it was satisfying in its own way, but not as much as—

The orgasm that grabbed Harry, and wrung him out, and made him lie there dazed after it ended.

*

Draco coughed. He hadn’t expected to open the door of Harry’s room and walk almost straight into Professor Snape.

“Did you have fun last night?” Snape asked in a level voice.

Draco clenched his fingers for a second in the sides of his robe, and tried to ignore both the flush rising up his cheeks and the conviction that he had forgotten to put on some essential item of clothing. “Yes, actually.”

Professor Snape gave him a blank stare. Draco walked past him and picked up the book he had brought with him last night but had forgotten to bring into Harry’s room. He no longer thought he was going to learn some great group of curses before the decoy battle, but he would continue studying it to refresh what he already knew.

“He is not going to die.”

Draco shot the professor a long look. He had another odd feeling, this time that he was the oldest one in the room. The professor was staring into the fire instead of at him.

“Harry promised me that he would take the very best precautions he could,” Draco said quietly. “It’s not the same as promising to survive, but I know what’s reasonable to ask for from him.”

“He is not going to die.”

“You’ve taught him as best you can,” Draco said. Was he really doing this? Really reassuring one of the most formidable men he knew? “He’ll do the best he can with battle Legilimency. And he has Dash. That’s an advantage that no one else in history could say.” Although Draco had to pause after that and try to remember whether there was some historical Slytherin he was forgetting who had bonded with a basilisk.

“He must live,” Professor Snape whispered, interrupting his thoughts again.

Draco only nodded this time, because if what he had said so far didn’t reassure the professor, he wasn’t sure what could. Professor Snape was just opening his mouth to say something else when he abruptly turned his head and faced the door behind Draco. Draco turned and looked.

Harry was standing there in a set of simple robes and the saddest smile Draco had ever seen. Draco managed to swallow, but it was a hazard with his dry throat. For a moment, Harry’s eyes snagged on him, and he nodded a little as though to say that he understood how hard this was for Draco.

He can’t, Draco thought, suddenly vicious. He can’t possibly.

Maybe some of that showed on his face, because Harry cleared his throat and turned away from Draco, to face Professor Snape. “Could you order a light breakfast—”

Professor Snape took a long step forwards and seized Harry in a harsh embrace.

Draco looked away before he could sniffle, and then opened the door to let himself into the corridor. He had—other things to do, and he wanted to leave them to their privacy.

Harry would try his best to survive, yes. But who knew if he would actually manage to succeed?

Chapter 151: At Malfoy Manor

Chapter Text

“How will we know if you’ve survived?”

Harry’s expression was sad for a second. Then he shook his head and sighed a little. “If I come back or other people tell you I survived.”

Hermione’s hands clenched for a second, and she took a deep breath to calm herself down. They were standing in one of the large sunlit rooms of Malfoy Manor, and frankly she didn’t feel at home here. Too much was made of marble and gold, and the portraits had whispered about her. “I mean, how do we know if it’s you or Voldemort in your body? If he manages to possess you through the link?”

Harry gazed at her steadily. “What makes you think that Dash would let my body survive if that happened?”

Hermione could feel her mouth drop open a little, but she could hardly feel her anger through her shock. She only stared at Harry and then whispered, “You can’t—you couldn’t—he wouldn’t do that.”

Harry nodded. “We already discussed it. For the record, I don’t think there’s much chance of Voldemort possessing me that way.” He reached out and hugged her, gently touching her cheek and one of the tears that Hermione hadn’t realized she was crying. “Other things are more likely, like me dying first. But Dash won’t let my body walk around playing a host to that bastard. I promise you, Hermione.”

“That’s not comforting!” she sobbed, and grabbed hold of him. Harry leaned towards her and nodded a little.

“Yeah, I know. Sorry. But—I thought if I could put at least one of your fears to rest, it would be better than if you were just left to feel them all at once.”

Hermione said nothing, but just clung to him until Draco came into the room. He eyed her for a second, then snorted. “Trying to take my boyfriend away, Granger?”

“As if I could.” Hermione stepped back and wiped her eyes with one hand. She knew things had changed between them, and thought she could guess why, but she wasn’t about to name it aloud. It was too embarrassing for everyone involved, including Ron. “Just—don’t make this a permanent good-bye, Harry.”

Harry’s smile didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m going to try not to.” He glanced at Draco. “How much control do you have of Bellatrix?”

Hermione sighed. She understood why Draco’s blood magic control over his aunt was necessary, but she would never like it. It was essentially enslaving someone even if she never knew it.

Harry eyed her in a way that said he understood her objections, but he was still paying attention to Draco as he replied, “I can make her do whatever I want and make her think it’s her idea. I don’t think there’s any reason for Voldemort to suspect her.”

Harry nodded and swallowed like someone who’d been running a marathon. “All right. I need you to tell her to tell Voldemort that I’m wounded and magically exhausted, and that I’m depending on the Malfoy wards to shelter me.”

Draco frowned and asked the question Hermione would in his place. “How is she supposed to have acquired this knowledge?”

“She saw me. Bring her to the Manor, Draco.”

Draco squeezed his hands once and then nodded and closed his eyes. Hermione turned away from him a little. She might have to endure the fact that he had control over another human being, but she didn’t have to watch it.

“And you’re really going outside the wards?” she asked Harry.

Harry nodded and pulled out his Invisibility Cloak from one pocket. The wand in his hand was the Elder Wand, Hermione noticed, and with it, he cast a complicated illusion spell with a twist of a hiss at the end that she supposed Dash must have taught him. There was a shimmer in the air around him as if he was standing above a patch of heat, and then Harry bore a twisting wound that cut across his chest from the shoulder to the waist, dripping with blood.

Hermione took a long breath and stopped herself from reaching out. At least Draco, when he opened his eyes, didn’t look any happier than Hermione did.

“What is supposed to have caused a wound like that?” Draco asked sharply.

“Dash attacking me.”

There was silence, but Hermione didn’t care for it. It just meant that she could hear her own quick breathing more clearly than ever. Draco’s eyes started to open wide, and then he controlled himself with a little jerk of his head. “The breaking of your bond?”

Harry nodded. “If all the other bait we’ve laid out for him doesn’t bring Voldemort, that ought to do it. I’ve had a fight with Dash and I’m vulnerable.”

Draco gave a huge, careful breath. “I hate you for even making me think that could happen,” he muttered, and walked out of the room. Harry watched him go with weary eyes.

“You—didn’t really have an argument with Dash, of course.” Hermione knew it was ridiculous even as she asked it, which was one reason she labored to make it a statement instead of a question, but she couldn’t help the little quiver of worry she felt. Draco was right, even thinking about it was horrible.

“No.” Harry shook his head. “But we know that we can’t lure Voldemort into a full mental fight against me if he thinks I’ll have Dash’s full support.” He didn’t even seem to mind standing there with illusory blood dripping down his chair, Hermione thought. It was disgusting and disquieting and lots of other things. “He lost too badly last time. And we have to bring him into my mind.”

Hermione let out an unexpected sniffle and grabbed Harry in a hug that he didn’t seem to expect. But he hugged her back, after a second, and Hermione tried to take comfort in the strength of his arms.

“You’re going to come back,” she said, like a command. “You’re going to survive.”

“I’m going to do my very best.”

Among the many things Hermione hated about this situation was that she had to be content with that.

*

“I want to lend you mental strength in your battle with Voldemort.”

“No.” Harry didn’t look up from the Elder Wand, which he seemed to be communing with by turning it back and forth over and again through his fingers.

Severus paused. They were in a little-used solarium on the first floor of Malfoy Manor, with large glass windows which Harry would exit to go outside the wards. He had expected argument, not to be turned down.

“You will need me,” Severus said, and kept his voice as patient as possible. Everything about the situation sharpened his temper, from Harry’s lowered eyes to the spelled wound cutting across his chest, but he would get nowhere if he sounded irrational. “Dash won’t dare to reveal himself too openly in your mindscape. You will need me.”

“I need you to survive more.”

Severus felt his anger slip through his grasp even as he tried his best to hang onto it. “What if I do not want to live if you die?”

“That’s the kind of thing Dash says,” Harry muttered, looking up at last. “I hoped you would be a little more controlled than he is.”

Severus caught his breath sharply at the look in Harry’s eyes. “I am already making your task harder,” he said.

“Yeah.” Harry put the Elder Wand away and stood up, and then took two steps forwards and caught Severus in the hardest embrace he could ever remember feeling. Severus hesitantly put his arms around Harry in return. Harry burrowed his face into Severus’s chest and let out a long sigh.

“I’m going to try,” Harry whispered. “That’s the only thing I can do. And some of the people who are fighting the Death Eaters to serve as decoys could still die, and you could still die, and Ron and Hermione and Draco could still die. And Dash. And me. But I need to know that you’re where I put you.”

Severus felt something like a smile stretch his mouth wide. “Adapting to the label of general at last, then.”

“Someone needs to lead right now, and most people seem to think it should be me.” Harry clung to him. “I love you. I need you to stay as safe as you can. I know you can defend yourself better than most other people and you even survived helping Dash break into Gringotts, but—this is going to be more dangerous.”

“I hope you know that I will intervene only if I feel that you are in mortal danger.”

Harry nodded against his chest, but said nothing. Finally, he stepped back and murmured, “I should get outside the Manor so that tale Bellatrix is going to spin for Voldemort of me being wounded and separated from Dash is as true as possible.”

Severus made the decision to let him go. It still took more effort than he liked to persuade his arms and hands to listen to him.

And more effort than he could ever acknowledge to anyone as he watched Harry out of sight.

*

Harry swung the Cloak off over his shoulders. After he had put his little display on near the wards, the Cloak had got him to a small copse of trees near the outside of the Manor, where a few of Josephine’s people were waiting. The werewolves nodded to him and then focused on the shimmer near the edge of the wards where they all expected Voldemort and his remaining Death Eaters to attack.

Apparently he had recruited a few new people, but not enough to make the werewolves worried. Harry still worried, though. Voldemort would be fighting with all the wrath of a cornered animal who had to know that most of his Horcruxes were destroyed.

And Harry wasn’t sure if his plan to destroy the last one would actually work.

Harry shook his head. It didn’t really matter whether he had thought it would work or not; it was still something he needed to do. He faced the grass that would become the battleground.

Lucius had agreed to weaken the wards in the precise ways Harry had specified, knowing that otherwise Voldemort would probably hammer on them until they broke, anyway, and that would be more harmful to the grounds and the family, including him. Harry could see a slight shimmer in the air that indicated the weaknesses, but it was faint and gone when he turned his head, like a wisp of drifting spiderweb.

You are ready.

Harry nodded as shallowly as he could. The werewolves beside him were focusing ahead, and he didn’t want to distract them. I am, he said, sending his voice through the bond in the kind of dim ripple Dash had taught him to pull off. They would hide Dash in Harry’s mindscape as much as they could, but Harry had no hope of winning this battle alone.

You will not fight it alone. And that is not true, in any case.

Harry said nothing. He thought he understood the state of his battle Legilimency, and what it was and wasn’t, better than Dash.

Dash started to say something else, but Harry sent back a response that was only a pulse of emotion. They didn’t want to strengthen the strained bond too much and fail to lure in Voldemort.

Dash, stubborn Dash, spoke anyway, of course. If we do not survive, and we might not, let me say it has been an honor to be your basilisk.

Harry’s eyes burned, but he dismissed the tears as swiftly as he could. He wrapped himself in silence around Dash, as if he had hugging coils.

You are much more suited to be a venomous snake than a constructor.

Harry was still laughing silently to himself about that when Voldemort arrived.

*

Lucius tensed as he watched the man who had once been his Lord walk to the wards on the edge of the manor, accompanied by a group of dark-cloaked and hooded followers. Still more than Lucius would have liked, but far fewer than he would have had a short while ago. Lucius felt a smug smile tug at his lips.

“Imagine if you died at this moment and that expression was frozen forever on your face.”

Narcissa sounded disapproving. Lucius caught her close and kissed her hard enough to make her gasp. He drew back and said, “I would much rather die with this one, my darling.”

Narcissa bowed her head so that her hair shielded her face and clasped his hand. Their fingers wrapped together, they turned as Voldemort used the Sonorus Charm to project his voice over the wards.

“You will come out here and face me, Potter. And then this bloodshed will be avoided. I will promise your allies quick deaths.”

“Liar,” Narcissa said. Lucius merely nodded in silence. Voldemort would never let anyone he believed a traitor, or anyone important to Harry, die a quick death. His fury would probably lead him to only kill Harry outright if he won, and the rest of them would survive for years as his toys to torture.

It was why Lucius and Narcissa had made a silent pact to be each other’s death, and Draco’s, if Voldemort looked to be winning.

“Too much of a coward to believe me, Potter? I—”

Harry moved into sight then, his steps slow and faltering. Lucius swallowed hard as he caught a glimpse of the illusion across his chest in the moment before Harry turned to face Voldemort. Had he not known it was an illusion…

“What is this?” Voldemort’s voice was full of a cruel delight before it dropped into Parseltongue. Lucius clenched harder on his wife’s hand, frustrated as he had been at few things in his life that he couldn’t speak the snake language.

“Lucius.”

Remembering what he had said about the expression he wanted on his face when he died, Lucius stopped clenching Narcissa’s hand and stole one more kiss.

*

You have argued with your basilisk.

Harry didn’t even have to feign his flinch; the rasping way that Voldemort’s words crawled over his skin made him feel unclean. He dipped his head and shrugged a little. “You don’t have to—it wasn’t like that.

The best thing was that with the way he was speaking, it wouldn’t even sound like a lie to Voldemort’s Legilimency-informed ears.

Voldemort laughed, and the laughter was even worse than the Parseltongue. “You are weak, Harry Potter. If I had bonded with a basilisk, I would have made the beast bend to my will.”

Harry couldn’t help himself. He snorted. “Even if the basilisk you bonded with had the soul of Salazar Slytherin himself?”

He was a man at one point. Now he is a beast. And he is fallen from our high beginnings if he thinks of me, his descendant, as an enemy.

Harry didn’t really have anything to say to that, and anyway, the decoy battle was beginning behind him. Josephine’s people, some of Susana’s, and Elena Zabini had begun to attack the Death Eaters. Elena had insisted, and Harry thought she was probably looking forward to testing out her loyalty potion in a battlefield form and seeing if she could turn some of the Death Eaters in front of their comrades and demoralize them that way.

Voldemort checked the battle once with a fluid twist of his head over his shoulder that made Harry’s stomach lurch a little; he hadn’t realized how far Voldemort had gone into being like a snake. Then he looked at Harry again. “And you will do nothing to help your obviously doomed allies?”

Harry uttered a brave little laugh that he made into a choke as he watched one of Josephine’s people die, cut down by a Severing Charm that removed her head. Another thing he didn’t have to feign, he thought, while his blood scalded him and his stomach churned. “You’re doing nothing to help yours, either. Did you bring them along just to satisfy your death fetish?

Voldemort stared at him in what seemed to be true surprise. Harry smiled at him and continued in English. “I mean, it’s obvious, isn’t it? What with the way that you named your followers Death Eaters and all that. You would suck Death’s cock if it had one.”

Voldemort’s control broke, and he flung himself forwards with a roar. But mentally, not physically, which was the thing Harry and Dash had planned on. Harry locked eyes with him and screamed in pain he didn’t have to pretend to either as Voldemort tore into his mind.

So many things about this weren’t pretense. Harry just had to hope that one of the real things was his chance to win.

*

Draco had closed his eyes the minute Voldemort attacked Harry, because he couldn’t bear to see more. But in the meantime, he had his own part to perform. He and Harry and Dash had discussed this again and again, and he had to act fast, because Harry wasn’t sure of his own ability to conceal the information when Voldemort attacked his mind.

He reached out and touched the thrumming blood connection between him and Bellatrix. She had been crouched with her wand in her hand, aiming it at the nearest of their allies who were attacking the Death Eaters, but she froze and quivered in response to Draco’s touch on her mind.

Draco swallowed hard. He would have to command her to do something now that went against her very nature, instead of working with it the way others of his orders had, and he only hoped that his control would hold.

Kill the Dark Lord.

Bellatrix’s cold black devotion to Voldemort surged up against him at once. The Dark Lord was her Lord, and immortal, and he couldn’t die. There was no way that she would attack him-

Draco grabbed hold of the bucking force that was Bellatrix’s mind, and rode it to submission with a simple agreement with her. Of course she was right. Of course the Dark Lord couldn’t die.

But the ritual that had brought him back was wrong. This body was wrong, Draco whispered to his aunt, feeding her all the poison that had built up through his planning. His mind twisted and sang as if it was hers, and he knew what she would believe, what would make her believe him. The ritual had warped him. If she killed the Dark Lord, because he was immortal, his next body would be sweeter. Stronger.

Draco gagged as he thought that, but the dark force of his aunt’s mind finally calmed. She turned and aimed her wand at Voldemort.

Avada Kedavra,” she said, and the spell was sweet on her lips, her eyes devoted as she watched the body fall. Then she sat down next to it and folded her arms, awaiting his miraculous resurrection.

Draco swallowed, feeling as though his throat was on fire. Most of his body was, actually, burning with the effort that it took to control the blood magic. He had done as he had promised, and the spirit of Voldemort was now trapped in the mental world Harry and Dash had created, unable to retreat to that particular body.

And now he had one more thing to do.

Draco reversed the tide of the thought, and poured new poison into Bellatrix’s mind. What had she done? Ritual or not, warped or not, that had been the body her lord had created for himself, the body she had longed to touch—

(Draco promised himself a long session of vomiting when this was over).

And he would be displeased with her. He might not ever trust her to guard his back again. And if he wanted her, well, the Dark Lord was an accomplished necromancer and could call back her spirit.

She had to pay for her presumption. The Dark Lord was the one who would decide her fate, and not herself. She had never belonged to herself from the moment the Dark Lord placed the Dark Mark on her arm.

Bellatrix turned her wand to rest against her throat. In the end, it was easy, Draco thought, as he tore himself free of her mind, panting and shaking. Part of her had longed to escape from the moment he had placed her under the blood magic control, and perhaps she had known that this was the best way.

She used the Killing Curse. Draco didn’t dictate that. Maybe some people would have said it was too easy a way for her to die, but Draco didn’t care how she killed herself, as long as she did it.

Draco opened his eyes. He was lying on the floor of his parents’ drawing room, although he had started out up in his bedroom, which had a window he’d been able to see Harry through. Someone had carried him down here, he realized. He tried to sit up and failed.

Professor Snape crouched over him and handed him a healing potion. Draco picked it up and gulped it, trying to decide what exactly was in Professor Snape’s eyes.

“Well done,” Professor Snape whispered.

Draco nodded and closed his eyes. He wished he had the same kind of mental bond with Harry that Dash did, so that he would know exactly what was happening now, and if he had trapped Voldemort’s spirit the way he’d tried to.

But the true thing was, he’d tried. And resting was all he could do now.

Chapter 152: To the Edge of the Cliff

Chapter Text

Voldemort’s body is dead.

Harry didn’t question how Dash knew that. He’d probably picked up something from Voldemort that Harry hadn’t because he was too busy screaming.

He’d thought he was prepared to have Voldemort in his mind because of their battles in the past, but nothing could have prepared him for this, the crushing, ripping, blasting, poisoning presence. He felt as though someone was strangling him with two hands and disemboweling him with clawed hind feet. And the whole time, Voldemort’s enraged voice hissed in Parseltongue directly into the center of his thoughts.

I am going to claim you and swallow you, boy. The Horcrux that you have will be shifted into another object, and you will be trapped alive for eternity, thanks to the Horcrux that I have within me. You are powerless. You are gone—

Harry screamed again, and dropped the veil that had protected Dash’s presence in his mind. He hadn’t intended to do it this soon, but then again, he’d had no clue that Voldemort’s assault would be so furious.

Voldemort shrieked in what seemed like a mixture of panic and hatred this time as the curtain fell and Dash surged forwards down the path of Harry’s mind, the path of their bond.

I am here, Tom Marvolo Riddle.

Dash’s voice rang and drifted in Harry’s mind the way Voldemort’s had, but now he wasn’t in so much pain. He could breathe. And he flung himself straight down the bond and into the link between him and Dash, and braced himself like a rock in the ocean to offer all the aid to Dash that he could.

For a moment, Dash encircled him in privacy, and spoke in a deep voice that Harry was absolutely sure Voldemort couldn’t hear. You want me to fight him for you?

I’ll work on unraveling the Horcrux, Harry said, because he knew that he had to. And healing from the wound that it’s going to tear in my head when it’s removed. But you need to battle him.

I will do that, bonded.

This time, Dash’s voice was formal and echoing, and Harry swallowed nervously, wondering if they’d made a ritual magical promise or something. But now wasn’t the time to worry about it. Dash faced Voldemort, and Harry turned to look at the Horcrux connection that spiraled like a thick rope between him and that bastard.

For a moment, he shook with doubt; it didn’t look any different than it ever had. And then his eyes caught on the far end, or what he could see of the far end, where the rope seemed to disappear into the thick haze that marked the end of his own mindscape and the beginning of Voldemort’s.

The rope was frayed.

Harry stared blankly for a second, and then grinned. He couldn’t stop grinning, either, even with the echoes of the earlier agony in his body, as he reached eagerly for that frayed part. This must have happened because Voldemort had died. Even though he was in Harry’s mind, he was also a bodiless wraith at the moment, and that meant the Horcrux had been shaken loose from its place in a mortal body.

It wasn’t dead, not by a long shot, but it had been weakened. Harry and Dash had come up with the plan to kill Voldemort’s body to ensure that he couldn’t flee Harry’s mind and their trap, but it had other advantages, too.

He encircled the fraying end of the rope with magic, and tugged—and nearly went flying through his own mind. He gasped. Weakened or not, the fucking thing was immovable.

And then he remembered the ways that they’d had to destroy the other Horcruxes, and nodded. Standing, Harry reached down the bond towards his battling basilisk, knowing he would be forgiven the interruption even if Dash was, in a way, terminally busy.

Dash, I’m going to need your venom.

*

Contempt and hatred were so thick in him that he had a hard time concentrating on the battle.

The boy. The bloody boy. Trapping Lord Voldemort in his mind as if he had a right. Bonding with a basilisk and taking Parseltongue for his own gift as if he had a right. Lord Voldemort would strip him of his body and make him into the wraith whose existence he had suffered for thirteen years.

The bodiless wraith whose existence he was suffering right now.

Lord Voldemort ignored the tremor of doubt. He was not bodiless. He was in a body suited for him, prepared for him by the dark kernel of his Horcrux. He was going to make his enemy suffer.

And the basilisk’s stubborn defense was soon to be overcome. The creature was weakened by the foolish compassion that a true snake never would have felt. Even as Lord Voldemort launched a slashing offensive of battle Legilimency, it sank into the basilisk’s mind and ripped a chunk free, because the beast was turned towards the child, feeding him strength that he must have asked for.

Who would have thought that a basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin would be so weak? Perhaps Lord Voldemort would also free that soul from its unworthy vessel, and bind it to a better object, and teach his ancestor what it meant to walk the world as a wizard again. One firmly under the control of his descendant, of course. He could not be trusted otherwise.

The basilisk turned back to face him, and spat venom. Lord Voldemort accepted the brunt of the attack, which was only imagined venom here, not real, and prepared a counterattack that would envelop both the serpent and the child it was so desirous to shield in fire.

Then he began to scream as pain suddenly jolted into the center of him, down the link that bound him and Potter at the depth of Horcruxes.

He managed to catch sight of the child spitting basilisk venom onto the connection before his vision was filled with an enormous snake’s head once again.

*

The rope was fraying again in front of Harry, but more slowly than any other Horcrux had disintegrated from the venom. He told himself that he should have expected that, and that he would not panic, and spat again. A few more strands dissolved.

What’s going to happen to the bit of your soul that I have and the bit of my soul that Voldemort took? he asked Dash, and then felt bad about it. After all, Dash was in the middle of battling Voldemort.

But Dash answered him, so calm and steady that Harry wouldn’t have known he was in the middle of a battle if not for the echoes in his mind. The connection between your minds is the connection between the piece of your soul that he claimed and the place where he tore it out of you. And it is weakened itself now that the body he created as part of the resurrection ritual is gone. Bear down, put pressure on it, and see what happens!

Harry nodded and did exactly as Dash had said. More poison dripped and trickled and ringed the stupid rope, and it throbbed and hissed at Harry in a way that made it seem like a snake and not like a rope at all. But it was also disappearing as it snarled, and Harry sucked in a relieved breath. He was also relieved that it wasn’t speaking to him in Parseltongue, honestly.

Harry!

That was the only warning Harry received before something heavy slammed into him and sent him reeling back. He turned around, as much as it was possible in the strange world of the mindscape, and saw Dash hissing, wounded, a long slash in his scales that trickled what looked like blood.

Dash!

He’s attacking our bond, Dash hissed. I thought I could keep him focused on me and on protecting the Horcrux, but he must have figured out what we were doing. Or else he just panicked when you started attacking the connection.

Harry would have answered, but another slam forced him away from the connection between his mind and soul and Voldemort’s. He attempted to plant his feet and stand steady, but it kept pushing, and pain began to pulse so deep within his being that he suspected he wasn’t letting himself comprehend the full thing, in case he started to go mad.

Dash!

I’m trying, Harry. For the first time since Harry could recall, Dash’s voice was deep and strained. I am—

And then Dash was the one shrieking, and Harry was caught up in a blast of pain so thick so that he couldn’t think of anything else but that. It felt as if his muscles were tearing off his bones. He shrieked and screamed in tandem with Dash, and fell back, shaking, when the attack finally stopped. He had no idea what had happened.

Voldemort’s voice spoke then, triumphant, snarl-hissing the way the Horcrux had.

What made you think that this was going to be so easy? If you can attack the bond that joins us, I can attack the bond that joins you!

Harry wondered for a second what that meant, but then he knew what it had to be. Just like there was a rope of sorts stretching from the Horcrux in him to the Horcrux in Voldemort, there had to be one of sorts stretching from Harry to Dash. After all, Dash had replaced the piece of soul torn from Harry with a piece of his own.

And when he felt Voldemort tearing at them again with what felt like steel claws, he knew that was exactly where the bastard’s attack was aimed. Tearing out a piece of soul left them vulnerable—or maybe Dash was vulnerable anyway because he had a soul that used to be human. An ordinary basilisk probably wouldn’t have been open to that kind of attack.

That is true. Dash spoke abruptly, sounding exhausted. He had dropped every trace of the illusion that had masked their bond from Voldemort, and Harry could feel the thrum of his love and worry. I am sorry for opening you to more pain, Harry.

Harry shook his head and tried to answer, but another shock of agony tore through the bond, and he gasped instead. But he at least sent his emotions, and he hoped that got through the feeling that he would rather have suffered all sorts of vulnerabilities than give up his bond with Dash.

He hoped he wouldn’t need to give it now.

When I attack him again, Dash continued, quietly, I’m going to do something that will rip the piece of my soul away from you. That will leave a wound in your mind, but it will also destroy that particular link that connects us. He won’t be able to use it to hurt you anymore.

I don’t want to give up our bond!

Not the primary bond between our minds, just the secondary one created by the gift of my piece of soul to you. Can you bear this?

Harry swallowed and sent back the feeling of assent, despite the fact that he could sense pain already building and hear the hiss of Voldemort’s mocking laughter. Dash hadn’t hidden the conversation with him. Harry wanted to scrub himself clean with lye at the thought that Voldemort was deep enough inside his mind to be part of their bond.

You cannot do such a thing, Voldemort hissed. Such soul-magic is beyond a beast.

Is it beyond a basilisk with the soul of Salazar Slytherin and the Master of Death? Dash drew himself up, and Harry had the impression of vast power coiling and stirring in his mind, like Dash’s physical body when he moved it. Animam voco!

Harry did scream again as yet another ripping sensation assaulted his mind. This time, it felt as if it came from within himself, as if a hand he hadn’t known he had had reached out through his skin and ripped off a scab.

Now, Harry!

Still reeling from the pain, Harry nonetheless knew what he had to do. Voldemort’s attack had gone past him like a punch because the bastard had misjudged. Harry turned towards the link between his mind and Voldemort’s and poured a drenching flood of basilisk venom on it.

Voldemort screamed in a ringing way that seemed to encircle Harry in a pool of sound. He wanted to faint, but if he could even faint with an intruder in his head, Dash probably wouldn’t let him. Harry gasped and poured more venom, and more, and more, aware that the wound in his head had abruptly stopped aching, but the clawing, clanging agony from Voldemort had replaced it.

Keep attacking him, Harry. If you pause now, then he’ll do something to try and keep the Horcrux with him.

Harry obeyed, envisioning the rope between his and Voldemort’s minds, and seeing it fraying more and more. He didn’t know why Voldemort wasn’t coming closer to defend it, but he supposed Dash was somehow getting in the way.

Now, Harry!

Harry was about to complain that he’d already been doing what Dash said and didn’t know what else he was supposed to do that was new, but then he realized something was flying towards him. He turned and caught it.

It was the piece of soul that Voldemort had taken from him.

It was corrupted, and blackened, and horrifying, and Harry shouted his rejection. But Dash tightened their bond and gave it a quick shake, startling him, when he would have thrown it away from him again.

You have to cleanse it!

Harry wasn’t sure how he was going to do that, and he sent his terror back to Dash. Dash ignored him, which had to meant that it was getting hard to fight Voldemort, and he needed Harry to figure this out on his own.

He really had to do this alone.

Trembling, revolted, Harry accepted the soul-piece back into himself. It was already attempting to cling to the place that Voldemort had torn it from, anyway. None of Voldemort’s Horcruxes had done that when they destroyed themselves, Harry thought numbly, but it wasn’t like Voldemort had been right there to receive them, either.

Harry wrapped himself around the piece of soul, and stared at it, or sensed it with his mind in a way that was kind of like staring. He heard Dash hissing, and Voldemort responding violently, but he wasn’t concentrating hard enough to understand what they were saying. Dash was confident, from the thrum that traveled down their bond, and that was all Harry could ask for.

How the hell was he supposed to cleanse a piece of himself that had been part of Voldemort for so many months?

But even as he gingerly probed around the edges of the ragged piece of soul, he found a cleaner part of it, less tarnished. Harry touched it and found it integrating itself back into his soul.

Maybe what he had to do was think of clean things, happy things? The kind of thoughts that Voldemort would never have?

Harry closed his eyes and did so, concentrating as hard as he could on his love for Draco, for Severus, for Ron and Hermione, for Hogwarts, for Sirius, for Dash, all of them lapping back and forth in a great concentrated sea of shining warmth. He heard a choking noise, and quickly forced his eyes open again to look.

More of the tarnish had drained away from the piece of soul. And Harry found that he couldn’t tell as easily where the rips between it and the rest of his soul had been.

Immensely cheered, Harry went back to concentrating on his happy memories. If they were the key to defeating a Dementor, a creature that could feed on souls, why not something like Voldemort, too?

*

Lord Voldemort had not allowed himself to feel this way in a long time.

He had attempted to ignore the change in his emotions as he struck out, again and again, at the creature that did not deserve to have once been his ancestor. But no matter how he struck, the basilisk was there, turning, fluid, in front of him, and he could feel the connection between him and the Potter brat growing weaker.

He was afraid.

Lord Voldemort snarled as the word intruded itself into his consciousness, and flowed forwards again, effortless, calling on all his magic. He was still immortal! He would possess the Potter brat’s body and use that to his advantage as he walked in among all the other fools who thought that Potter could survive this kind of battle.

I would bite you first.

But that would kill your precious Potter brat, Lord Voldemort hissed back, and tried a new attack, one that flowed along the basilisk’s flank towards the side. Any moment now he would manage to reach out and—

He was blocked again by a scaled mound of flesh, and he scream-hissed as he had not done since Nagini died. Dash’s tail shifted towards him, and Lord Voldemort had to move out of the way. In this mindscape, he knew that he could not resist a physical blow from the tail the way he would have in the outer world.

I would rather have him dead than your slave, the basilisk hissed, and then opened his eyes. Lord Voldemort resisted the Petrification, but with difficulty. He knew what basilisks were capable of, which meant part of him wanted to freeze in the face of that stare no matter how impossible it was to freeze a soul.

Impossible…

He had once been known for overcoming the barriers of the impossible.

And if he had to obey the laws of magic he knew to be real here or resist them with difficulty, the basilisk was subject to the same limitations.

He focused his magic into a blast of cold, and the basilisk shivered in response. The snake would have to use at least some of his formidable mental strength to battle the temptation to slow down, and that was a good thing for Lord Voldemort. Either he truly slowed, or he would have to divert his energy from the battle.

And Lord Voldemort knew exactly what he wanted to do, had known since the basilisk had torn away the piece of Potter’s soul powering his Horcrux from him.

He breathed more cold, and the basilisk pushed back against him, but his will was only the equal of Lord Voldemort’s, and Lord Voldemort smiled. He would win this fight, and he would take hold of Potter.

I told you that you would not.

You thought I was talking about possessing him. And I am not.

The basilisk shifted to open his eyes again and spit venom, but Lord Voldemort was almost adept at ignoring the venom by now, with how many times Potter had used it on the link between their minds. He slid forwards like a rush of water, and surrounded Potter. Potter didn’t seem to notice for a moment, still working on weakening the link between them, and then he gasped.

You cannot do this!

For the first time, the basilisk sounded panicked. Lord Voldemort smiled, and did not answer. It seemed unnecessary, when his enemy knew what he was doing and feared him as he had wanted. He stretched out, his soul following the path that, once established, was not so easy to destroy.

He would blend with Harry Potter, not merely possess him, and then the basilisk would be unable to hurt him, curled as he was in the bond that the two of them shared.

*

What is he doing? Dash, what is he doing?

Harry had felt Dash’s panic down the bond, but he couldn’t tell anything more than that. Voldemort seemed to have retreated, even. The sense of his soul wasn’t as strong as it had been before. Harry started to stand up and ask Dash if that meant they’d won and Voldemort couldn’t do anything else now that Harry had cleansed the piece of soul and got rid of most of the Horcrux links.

Then he felt it, the cold, clinging, tarry fingers of Voldemort’s soul forcing their way into his mind. He understood.

And he cried out.

This was worse than the pain that Voldemort had assaulted him with so far. This was a corruption of his own being. Already he could feel pieces of himself softening and dripping away, like a rock worn away by water incredibly fast. He knew that he had grown up with the Dursleys, and he knew that he had grown up in an orphanage. He had escaped death, and he had embraced Horcruxes in an attempt to conquer his fear of it. He despised Voldemort, and he was Voldemort. He loved Dash, and he envied—

No! Harry battered his way past the false memories and the bits and pieces of Voldemort that were trying to convince Harry that he was part of this monster. He held onto his bond with Dash. He had never envied anyone else that kind of bond. He had it, and he knew Dash, down to the soul. He didn’t want to conquer him and make him less than he was, and he didn’t despise him for having the form of an animal.

He loved Dash.

There was a balked, frustrated snarl, and for a moment, Harry thought that he had managed to win free. But then Voldemort bore in and squeezed some more, and Harry had a tumbling, clear, terrifying moment when he realized that he couldn’t actually remember what love felt like. It echoed in his head as an empty, meaningless word.

No. Dash’s voice was as calm as the ripple of water. I will not let this happen.

There was a long, complicated time when Harry’s head was full of pain and his soul was tearing again, or darkening, and then he felt something wrap around him. It was warm and full of love, and Harry hugged back before Voldemort’s embrace began to drag him away again.

I will not permit it.

And then Dash rolled, and Harry realized he was wrapping himself around Voldemort, great coil after coil of mental power, and dragging him away from Harry. Voldemort was raging and shouting, and there was a touch of pain in Harry where the Horcrux bond was weak, and then—

Then the Horcrux bond snapped, and Harry felt every trace of Voldemort’s presence gone from him.

He opened his eyes in time to see Dash, coiled so tightly around Voldemort that no trace of that foul presence was visible, turn and sink his fangs into his own side.

Harry and Dash’s bond snapped, too.

Chapter 153: Broken Bonds

Chapter Text

Harry had been in pain, during this battle and before that, in his cupboard and from arguments with Draco and Severus and Sirius, and Ron and Hermione. From Dumbledore’s betrayal. From the Chamber of Secrets. From knowing that he had killed someone when he was eleven years old.

But nothing like this.

Every cell of his body seemed lit and blazing with white light, and agony. Harry tried to draw his breath to scream, and couldn’t. It was as if he didn’t have a voice anymore. The end of his broken bond with Dash burned through him, and he wondered absently if he would actually forget what it was like to speak from this.

It was memory that gave him strength to pull himself back together from the drifting pieces. There was no other strength in him, nothing except the remembrance that Dash had done this for a reason, and that reason was defeating Voldemort and getting the Horcrux out of his head.

It had to be—

It had to be done.

Harry stumbled, turning around, and fell to his knees. The mindscape around him had turned to a vast, silent hall that he imagined was sort of what the Great Hall at Hogwarts would be like without people or the enchantment on the ceiling or light. He forced himself forwards, and there was the Horcrux link there. Harry reached out and imagined Dash’s venom pouring from his hands onto it.

He wondered for a second if he would still have access to Dash’s venom given their broken bond, and the flood beneath him twitched and grew fainter.

What you believe is what is real here.

That was something Severus had said about battle Legilimency, and Harry was determined to remember it. He forced the pain out of his mind, and continued pouring the venom.

You would succeed faster with our help.

Harry turned his head, or made the motion that was the analogue of that in the mindscape—honestly, it was just better to act as if the mindscape was real life, he thought—and found the Elder Wand hovering beside him. He managed to clear his throat and find words after all. “Why didn’t you offer help before?”

You were not desperate enough to accept it before.

Harry thought about arguing, but the sunset of pain his head said that he could not. He didn’t even know if Dash was still alive. He didn’t know it instinctively, the way he once would have, because their bond was gone—

Harry shook off the temptation to fall back into that maelstrom of agony, and gripped the Elder Wand. How can you help me destroy the Horcrux link faster when nothing I’ve tried so far has worked?

If you can imagine and thus create what’s real here, then you can imagine that you are capable of casting a spell that will devastate the Horcrux link.

Fiendfyre. Harry nodded. He didn’t know that he could have cast it in the real world, but this wasn’t the real world. This was the world inside his mind, where their bond had been severed—and the Horcrux link still existed.

The Elder Wand floated into his hand. Harry felt the Cloak settle heavily onto his shoulders, but he didn’t bother to look at it, or glance around for the Stone. His gaze was fixed on that immovable rope in front of him.

He lifted the wand and spoke the incantation.

For a moment, there was thrumming magic filling him so thickly that Harry was surprised Voldemort didn’t turn from his battle with Dash to find out what he was doing. But he shivered and kept his gaze on the rope, and then fire leaped out of his wand, spreading in front of him, and darkly clawing at the air.

There were jaguars there, and dragons, and phoenixes, and basilisks. Harry caught his breath, but felt the warning pulse from the Elder Wand, and kept casting instead of turning to look at Dash or break down sobbing the way he desperately wanted to.

The fire began to eat into the rope.

And then Voldemort’s shriek filled Harry’s mindscape, echoing from distances that it was hard for Harry to even imagine, and Harry was smiling despite himself as he turned around to look at the battle, finally.

*

Lord Voldemort’s world was one with the pain, and he did not understand how he had been pulled away from his connection with Potter. One moment he was wound in and around the child’s soul, binding with it, becoming him to the extent that someone would have had to kill him to be rid of Lord Voldemort.

And the next moment, he simply—was not.

He was rolling around air, wrapped around the basilisk if he was wrapped around anyone, and the venom and the strength were crushing him to the point that Lord Voldemort found himself fighting for his very life. His very existence. He had had Horcruxes, and they were gone. He had had a hold on the Potter child, and it was gone.

He could feel the venom shredding him, bit by bit. He knew that he was dead if he did not get free of the basilisk

But his very terror made him fight the harder, and he knew that he had injured the bond between the basilisk and Potter. He was pulling more and more steadily away when more pain struck him, coming from an unexpected direction.

His soul, or whatever was left of it.

Lord Voldemort shrieked, but the basilisk did not let go of him. Lord Voldemort believed that he could see through the basilisk’s scales, believed it fluidly and fervently, the way he had believed he was the Heir of Slytherin after learning of his heritage, and the great body around him did go partially clear, like frosted glass, and he could look towards Potter.

Potter held a stick of pure light in his hand, and fire poured away from him to encompass the Horcrux link between their souls. There was so much color in that fire that it nearly tore Lord Voldemort’s eyes from the stick. But what Potter held was indeed a wand, and one of extraordinary power.

How could Potter believe that much in his wand, here, without the bond with his basilisk to back him up?

The basilisk bit and crushed him again, and Lord Voldemort’s fear welled up. He would lose—was about to lose—every chance to survive, and make his enemies pay, if he lost his control now. He had to dominate and possess the basilisk, since he had been forced out of the Potter boy’s body.

He turned and drew upon his own venom. He was the one who had enhanced Nagini’s venom, before her untimely death. He was the one who knew what poison should down a basilisk. And he spread it out in flickering, cold tendrils through the beast’s body, dragging and pulling on the soul that had once been his ancestor’s.

His ancestor’s.

Lord Voldemort began to laugh so wildly that he nearly choked. He reached out and tapped that soul, that soul of Salazar Slytherin that had once had a piece placed within the Potter child’s body.

The soul shivered and responded to him. It responded to him! Lord Voldemort had the blood of Slytherin. He had once borne a piece of the child’s soul. He was in control here, and he would make the basilisk crawl before him as a worm when he wore its body.

Right after he had killed Potter.

The basilisk was trying to resist him, but it might as well have tried to resist its own blood. Lord Voldemort was master here. He reached and joined himself with the soul beating like a pulse under the surface of the scales. He could already feel those coils becoming his, himself getting used to the weight that he would place on the earth as he slithered over it.

Perhaps this had been his destiny, after all. The modified resurrection ritual where he had taken a piece of Potter’s soul had granted him a body that was serpentine in many ways. Perhaps coming to a snake’s body was only the natural end result of that, especially since so many serpents were so much stronger and more commanding than most humans.

The basilisk reached out then and—did something. Lord Voldemort did not understand what it was doing. How could it be reaching out to Potter, when he had felt the bond break himself?

But something was moving and twisting in the mindscape between Potter and the beast, something he did not grasp but disliked. Lord Voldemort wound himself tighter and tighter, a constrictor of his own power now, determined to make his new servant obey him and forsake Potter.

*

Harry could feel his eyes watering fiercely. It seemed that while the Elder Wand and maybe the other Deathly Hallows were mostly powering the Fiendfyre, he had to do his own share, too, and the flames were eating directly from his magic.

But it was working. Harry could feel the connection between him and Voldemort lessening, lessening, and the shard of Voldemort’s soul that still clung to his burning steadily away.

Behind you!

That was the Elder Wand’s voice, for all that Harry, hearing it in his inner mind for a moment, wished it was Dash. And then he realized that there was a second voice, humming around it, speaking to him.

Yearning.

Reach out to me.

It meant turning away from the Fiendfyre, maybe abandoning the chance to sever the Horcrux link between him and Voldemort, but Harry frankly didn’t care. He would have done anything for Dash. He reached out and caught the faint filament of soul wavering towards him even as he spun around.

An apparition surged towards him. One part of it was Dash, his eyes covered with his eyelids still and his head turning blindly back and forth as if fighting a net. The other part was an elongated nightmare of Voldemort’s face, his teeth grown into fangs and his pale skin into blazing scales. His mouth was aimed directly at Harry, large enough to clamp down on his mindscape-body and swallow him whole.

Rather than backing away, Harry reached out and caught the flickering thread of Dash’s soul and wrapped it around him like a shield of spidersilk, holding it there and closing his eyes as Voldemort’s mouth started to descend on him.

And then he realized why the connection was happening in spite of the fact that he and Dash were no longer bonded.

Dash had interacted with the Deathly Hallows before, too. They sent up a clashing wave of light all around Harry, and Dash’s spirit or soul passed through it and huddled next to him, next to the Resurrection Stone, over Harry’s heart.

Voldemort’s soul hit the wall of protection raised by the Hallows—

And dissolved.

Harry heard the shrieking, but he didn’t know exactly what it meant, and he didn’t care. He clung to the remnants of Dash around him, the faint echo of their bond, and only paid attention a few minutes later when he heard the Elder Wand clanging annoyingly in his head, like an alarm bell.

Destroy the Horcrux link! We have the chance to destroy Voldemort completely if you do that!

Harry spun around and poured his magic into the Fiendfyre again. He saw the Horcrux rope, as he still thought of it, crisping and burning in front of him, and then a wisp of darkness tried to get in between him and it. Harry stared straight through it, the Elder Wand murmuring to him that he must not blink, and then a golden wolf raised its head from the Fiendfyre conflagration and bit through the dark wisp casually.

There was an almighty ache from his scar for a second, something that sent Harry to his knees and made him cling harder to Dash.

And then, the pain was gone.

Harry found himself kneeling on what seemed to be a marble floor, although he knew it was just another part of his mindscape that he might not have pictured this way originally. He blinked and cleared his hair from his eyes with trembling fingers, then sat back and found himself staring around a space that seemed strangely empty.

Of course, if he was right, the Horcrux was gone, and so was every trace of the connection that had once bound him to Voldemort. The Deathly Hallows were a quiet thrum at his side, as if, since they had used so much magic to counteract Voldemort, they had nothing left. And his bond with Dash had been severed. Dash couldn’t be in his head anymore.

Harry closed his eyes and reached out to talk to the Elder Wand. He had to speak to someone to confirm what he suspected. It wouldn’t be something he wanted to use just his own understanding of. Is Voldemort gone?

The Wand’s voice sounded more distant than it had, confirming Harry’s impression that its magic was almost spent. Yes. He risked everything on that attack. He wasn’t tethered to anything but you and the basilisk. The basilisk managed to get inside our protection, and that was the end of Voldemort’s link with him. And you broke the Horcrux connection.

Harry nodded slowly, wishing his brain didn’t feel so empty, wishing more than anything that the bond still filled it. Why did Dash sever the bond?

Yes, poisoning himself did that. I wondered if you were clever enough to notice. It’s good that you did. I would hate to think that we have a fool for a Master.

Harry wanted to argue about that, but he also thought the Wand was trying to distract him, so he ignored the words. Why did Dash sever the bond?

The Wand was quiet. Instead, a gleaming grey point of light that Harry supposed must be the Resurrection Stone floated up in front of him. He wondered for a second why he imagined it as so brilliant, but discarded the notion. For all he knew, the Resurrection Stone was interacting with him in his mind and was influencing the way he pictured it.

Voldemort had wound himself in it, in you. He had corrupted it. There could be no hope of maintaining the bond as it had been. Of course he had to snap it.

Harry swallowed and reached out to Dash. This close, he could sense another mind along his, and something that might be Dash’s breathing, but nothing else. Nothing of the presence that had been his support through confusing days, weeks, months, years. What felt like a lifetime, even though it hadn’t been quite three years since he had bonded with Dash.

Can it come back?

This time, the Cloak replied, a voice that sounded something like a hunting horn muffled by fabric. You can only have it back by speaking to your basilisk and seeing if he will make it so. It would need to be new, not one built on the ashes of the old.

Harry nodded and turned his head, intending to ask Dash right there, but already the landscape was rippling around him and dissolving the way Voldemort’s soul had when he tried to get past the Hallows’ defenses. Desperately, Harry grabbed at it, but this time it slid right out of his hands like water.

What’s happening?

The Elder Wand replied. Maybe they were taking turns, or maybe the Wand was snappish because it was tired, but it sounded sharp. You’re falling unconscious. Why wouldn’t you be? Your body and your magic have been under a tremendous strain.

Harry opened his mouth to argue against that, because of all the things that had happened to him he thought the severing of his bond with Dash was the worst, but clouds of darkness swept in, and there was no marble floor, or Hallows, or Dash, anymore.

His last memory was reaching out to his basilisk, and a glimpse of what appeared to be a heavy neck bowed with mourning.

*

“—Dash!”

Draco started up as Harry woke. It had been hours since he had so much as stirred after Dash carried his body off the battlefield. And now he had woken up calling out first for Dash, of all people.

Draco sighed and reached for the cup of water that had been standing under a Stasis Charm on the small table next to Harry’s bed. He couldn’t blame Harry for calling for Dash, especially because Professor Snape seemed to think something had happened to Harry and Dash’s bond.

It didn’t stop him from wishing that he had been the first person Harry wanted to see.

“Draco?”

At least Harry sounded wondering and properly grateful when he did see Draco in front of him, even as he grasped at the cup of water. Draco tilted it only enough that Harry could drink without the water spilling, and nodded. “You’ve been unconscious since the end of the battle. That was more than a day ago,” he added, and then winced at the accusing tone in his voice.

“More than a day.” Harry swallowed and wrapped an arm around Draco’s waist. Draco had to adjust his posture so that he wouldn’t spill the water, but Harry didn’t seem to notice. “I’m sorry for making you worry.”

“We knew some things,” Draco said, because he didn’t want Harry to think that they’d been sitting around in helpless silence. “The Dark Marks on the arms of the Death Eaters on the field withered, so we knew Voldemort was really gone. And Dash carried your body to the Manor and you were still breathing, so we knew both of you had survived.”

Harry nodded. His eyes were enormous. “Dash severed our bond because Voldemort was winding himself in it and we had to make sure that he wouldn’t be able to possess me.”

Draco swallowed and tightened his arms around Harry, but he actually had no idea what to say. He’d thought Dash had remained outside the Manor because his size might have strained some of the floors’ weight capacities, but this made sense, too.

“I—why could he do that so easily?” Harry was mumbling into Draco’s shoulder when Draco listened to him again. “He acted like it didn’t bother him at all! He just went ahead and did it.”

“He probably was hurt himself,” Draco said. He didn’t know for sure, but he knew Dash cared about Harry. “But it’s not as if he could tell you that after the bond was gone. You couldn’t speak at all when you were fighting Voldemort in your mind, could you?”

“Not after the bond was severed.” Harry shuddered once more and then settled more firmly into Draco’s arms. “There wasn’t—it was all about what you believed in, there, and what you thought magic could do. I didn’t have the time to speak to him in Parseltongue, and I don’t know that he would have—heard me there. It wasn’t like speaking aloud, the thoughts I got from him in the bond.”

Harry seemed to be drifting off into melancholy again, and Draco asked the first question he could think of, despite the fact that it might upset Harry more. “Are you still a Parselmouth? I mean, did it go away when you destroyed the Horcrux?”

Harry gasped and looked around for a second. Draco knew what he was thinking of and grabbed his school robes off the chair next to the bed, holding them up so Harry could see the Slytherin crest.

Harry looked at it and hissed softly. Draco nearly hurt himself with how fast he sagged back against his chair. The thought of how much Harry would have been wounded if it had turned out that he’d lost his Parseltongue ability…

Well, it just didn’t bear thinking about, that was all.

“Thanks.” Harry smiled at Draco and then seemed to notice how scratchy his voice was. Draco put his robes down and picked up the cup of water again. This time, Harry’s hands were steady enough to hold it himself, but Draco continued to tilt it for Harry. He liked to think he was making a difference.

“And you and Severus and everyone else are all right?” Harry asked, when he’d swallowed the water and leaned back against the pillow. Draco set the cup gently on the table and then gave in to the impulse he’d been suppressing since Dash had brought Harry back.

He kissed him, deeply enough that Harry gasped and Draco started. He hadn’t meant to make it so that Harry couldn’t breathe or something. But Harry grabbed his neck when Draco would have pulled away and dragged him partly on top of him.

So Draco reckoned it was probably all right.

When they’d kissed so long their mouths had gone numb, or it felt like that, anyway, Draco leaned his head on Harry’s chest and answered his question. “Severus and Ron and Hermione and I are fine. A few of Josephine’s people died on the battlefield. Mother and Father weren’t in the fighting at all, and neither was I after I made Bellatrix kill Voldemort’s body—”

“You’re amazing.”

Draco laughed softly at the note of astonishment in Harry’s voice. Maybe that was a little vain of him, but it was better than visibly preening the way he’d wanted to do. “Why? You were the one who came up with that plan.”

“But you were the one who actually made it work. And she—killed herself afterwards?” Harry’s voice was delicate.

Draco nodded, and then shivered. “I know I have a talent for blood magic, but I honestly don’t know if I can ever do something like that again, Harry. It was disgusting.”

“I would never ask you for that.” Harry took his hands and smiled up at him. “I can’t envision another situation like this where it would be necessary, anyway. Even if there’s another war, we won’t be at the forefront of it again.”

“Oh.” Draco became aware that his mouth was hanging open, and that Harry was staring at him as if waiting for him to explain himself. Draco closed his mouth and thought about what to say. “I—thought that you would probably want to do this again if some other Dark Lord comes along in the future.”

Harry laughed, a fierce sound that Draco liked better than any other laugh he’d ever heard him give. “No. I fought enough. If some other Dark Lord comes along, wizarding Britain can handle it themselves. I’ve sacrificed enough…” He trailed off, and Draco knew he was thinking again of his severed bond with Dash.

Draco kissed his cheek and wrapped his arms around Harry again. He hoped the bond could be renewed. Harry seemed to think it could be, or he would have been more hopeless.

And he treasured what Harry had said. They might have to fight in a war if it rose again, probably because Dark wizards wouldn’t leave Harry alone, but they wouldn’t have to be at the center. He would hold Harry to that promise.

*

Severus gently eased the door of Draco’s bedroom open. He had known that Harry was awake and sane and healthy because of the mass of monitoring charms he’d put on him before he went to get some sleep after almost a day of watching, but he still needed to see it for himself.

He caught his breath when he saw Harry and Draco sleeping entangled on the bed. Surely Harry must have awakened if that was the case, and—spoken? Asked about them? Eaten something? A glance at the table next to the bed showed that the food on the tray all seemed to be there, but the cup that Draco had filled with water had been moved.

He at least has some water inside him, then, Severus decided, and walked slowly closer to the bed, wondering if he could cast a diagnostic charm without waking Harry or Draco.

When he stopped at the edge of the bed, Harry’s head turned slightly. Severus held his breath. He had not wished to wake him up.

But Harry only smiled up at Severus, his face clear and untroubled despite the shadows in the back of his eyes, and mouthed the words, “I’m fine.” He held Severus’s gaze for a long moment, as if to make sure that he understood the message, then turned his head to rest in the crook of Draco’s neck again.

Severus reached out and touched Harry’s shoulder, then nodded and left the room. Only when he had closed the door did he allow himself to slump against the wall and close his eyes.

They were alive. They were all alive.

Chapter 154: Renewal

Chapter Text

They said that it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to come into the house and see you there.

Harry took a deep breath as he gazed up into Dash’s shielded eyes. Dash was swaying gently back and forth, his tongue tasting and testing the air, and then sliding back into his mouth. He looked uninjured by the battle, but then, it hadn’t been a physical one.

Harry sighed and leaned for a second against the trunk of the immense black oak that served as the center of the Malfoy gardens. He didn’t have any physical injuries, either, but he felt like a wet rag just from walking the distance from Draco’s bedroom to the gardens. He braced himself and turned to face Dash.

“Would you ever have given up our bond if you had a choice?” he asked, because he needed to know the answer to that question.

Only if it was a choice between saving your life and retaining the bond.” Dash was focused on him utterly now. Even the swaying had stopped. “I told you that before, Harry. Your life matters to me in ways that you cannot imagine. If you died, I would take revenge, and then I would die. And if preserving your life meant sacrificing the bond, that is a choice I would make again.

Harry swallowed. “And you can—renew the bond? We can renew it?”

Dash hesitated. Harry closed his eyes against a surge of dizziness and despair. This was the answer he had feared, which was why he hadn’t asked the question before. He made himself sit up a little more. “What do we have to do?”

It would require you to survive a bite. And without the bond protecting you from my venom, I do not know how you can.

Harry blinked open his eyes. “That’s all?”

You have a strange definition of all.

Harry shook his head, ignoring the fact that Dash’s tail had begun to scrape along the ground in an agitated way. Once, he would have known for sure that it was agitation and not some other emotion, but he still tried to ignore his sense of loss. “No, I mean—I already survived a basilisk bite once, in my second year, before I knew you. I did it with the help of Fawkes’s tears. We need to find some phoenix tears, and then we can do this!”

Dash’s eyelids quivered, and then he lowered his head to the ground. “Would you let me smell your blood? Taste it?”

“Of course I would,” Harry said, and felt his own face soften, heard his voice do it. Then again, Dash wouldn’t know the automatic answer to that question anymore, when he couldn’t feel Harry’s emotions through the bond.

Harry drew the Elder Wand—it was always with him now, since he had faced Voldemort in the mindscape—and cut himself carefully on his left arm. There was a long well of blood in the moments before Dash’s tongue fluttered out of his snout, and he drew back, his tail scraping across the ground again.

“What is it?” Harry asked quietly, trying to keep his voice as gentle as he could. He wouldn’t upset Dash more than he was already upset, he told himself firmly. He wouldn’t act as though this was a betrayal. No one had betrayed anyone. Voldemort was the one to blame for severing their bond.

The smell of venom in your blood is so strong. I don’t know why I never noticed it before.

“Why would you have looked for that?” Harry shook his head, and found himself smiling. He didn’t want Dash to always be this uncertain and self-conscious, but right now, it was kind of charming. “You probably thought it was just your smell if you did sense it. Can you smell the phoenix tears, too?”

No. I don’t think that Fawkes ever wept into your blood, while the venom would have been injected.

Harry nodded. “That’s true.” He used the Elder Wand to scrape up some of the blood, and the Wand glowed and sparked in his hand, as if it approved of being bathed like that. Harry rolled his eyes and tried to ignore the stupid thing. It got on his nerves all the time. At least the Stone and the Cloak behaved better. “You need to taste it, too, right?”

Yes.

Dash came closer slowly, his body seeming to slink along the earth as if he were an ordinary snake. Harry waited a moment for the indignant retort that should have thrummed along his veins about that, and then remembered, again, that Dash couldn’t hear his thoughts or share internal jokes. He swallowed.

They really had to get the bond back as soon as possible.

Dash lowered his head, and his tongue wrapped around the Elder Wand. Harry wondered for a second if he was going to swallow the damn thing and end at least one of Harry’s problems. But Dash could be delicate when he wanted to, no matter how big he was, and he lifted his head thoughtfully and flickered his tongue out again, clearly and carefully tasting.

“Well?” Harry asked. “Does it taste like chicken?”

Dash hissed at him, but it wasn’t Parseltongue words, just unintelligible sounds. He seemed so involved in the taste that he didn’t have time for words. Then he coiled back and tilted his head towards Harry, for a moment his eyelids trembling as if they would lift after all.

It tastes like you. And I think I know the best way to restore the bond now.

“I thought you already knew that?”

Dash didn’t answer, but slid a little further forwards, and Harry gently pulled the Elder Wand back, more sensing that he should do it than knowing for sure. Dash lowered his head to the ground and opened his mouth. Harry blinked at the sight of the fangs.

“What do I have to do now?”

Since you already survived a basilisk bite, I can’t simply bite you and inject my venom to bind us that way. We don’t need the phoenix tears. You’ll need to walk into my mouth to prove you trust me.

Harry swallowed. “And are you going to eat me?”

You have to prove you trust me.

Harry closed his eyes, but he did trust Dash, and he thought going into his own basilisk’s mouth couldn’t be worse than half-letting the dragon in the Tournament eat him, the way he had in the First Task. He moved forwards, his eyes still closed, and felt the cool tongue shifting beneath him. He had to duck, but otherwise Dash’s mouth was large enough to hold him completely.

The darkness inside seemed complete when he looked around, even though there was the obvious gleam of light from behind him. Ahead, he could see the long tunnel of Dash’s gullet, and above him, the fangs shone with the edge of venom.

Harry reached up without thinking about it, and gashed his arm on the rightmost fang.

Dash reared up in what seemed to be shock, and spat him out. Harry rolled to his feet and stared down at his arm. He could see the long black line of the venom gushing up it. He wondered for a second why it hadn’t reacted that fast when he was in the Chamber of Secrets, but maybe it had and he just didn’t remember it. Some of his memories of that time were a little blurred, honestly.

Harry! What are you—

“It felt right, so I did it.” Harry lifted his arm, and saw the black line hesitating at his elbow, instead of continuing further up his arm. “I think you know what you have to do, Dash.” His voice thrummed with certainty, even though he couldn’t have predicted the next steps.

Dash lowered his head until his eyes were right in front of Harry. Harry tried to calm his quick breathing and stared back, and didn’t move when he saw those eyelids lifting. He only hoped that no one was looking out the windows of the Manor right now, or he might spend the next month Stunned and chained to a bed somewhere.

Draco might like that part.

Harry focused and took a deep breath as Dash’s eyes opened.

The gaze struck all through him, and seemed to turn all the blood in his body to radiance. Harry found himself blinking, dazed, in the light that poured from him. Or didn’t pour from him. He could no longer decide if he was seeing through his own eyes or floating somewhere above his body, and his lungs were full of soft clouds.

He didn’t die, he realized as he came back to himself. And when he lifted an arm, he knew he wasn’t Petrified, either.

“That was the next step in restoring the bond?” he asked.

Yes,

Harry cried out and flung his arms around Dash’s neck as the word echoed through his head. He buried his face in Dash’s scales, and honestly, he didn’t care if he was crying. No one would be able to see it, anyway, even if they were looking out the windows.

I needed to be fully inside your mind, Dash said, and his long tongue slid up the side of Harry’s neck. I didn’t know how to accomplish that because I didn’t know how you would survive the venom and my gaze if you weren’t already bonded to me. But I forgot about the basilisk venom you had in your blood. It defended you long enough for my venom to integrate, and then, because my gaze usually freezes someone’s blood to kill them and then turns it back to ordinary liquid, you weren’t vulnerable anymore. Gazing at your blood was like gazing at my own venom.

Harry nodded, not understanding all of that, but not needing to. The reverberation of the bond in his mind was the best thing he’d ever felt. He leaned down next to Dash, and slid down until he was actually sitting on the ground.

You might want to get that arm looked at.

Why? Harry sent back down the bond, utterly thrilled at their ability to do so, and then glanced at his arm. There was a long slash down it, and there was a line of black skin along the sides where the venom had bubbled. He blinked.

It isn’t hurting me.

And do you think either Severus or Draco will accept that excuse?

Harry sighed. “No,” he said aloud, and wrapped his arms around as much of Dash’s neck as he could. But I don’t want to go in right now. You still can’t fit in Malfoy Manor, and I still want to be with you.

Dash hissed softly and curled his huge warm body around Harry. I cannot say that I want you to leave. Very well. We can have a few hours.

*

“It looks worse than it is.”

“And it looks horrible.”

Lucius paused. He had come to give a report to Harry about the few Death Eaters who had survived the battle, and had thought he might have to wake him from sleep, but hadn’t anticipated his son being there. He peered slowly around the corner.

Draco was standing in front of Harry, staring at a long wound on his arm. Lucius stared at it, too. He hadn’t heard that Harry had been hurt like that in the battle, but then again, mostly Draco and Severus and Granger and Weasley had surrounded Harry like a wall since then, keeping all others away. And Draco and Severus wouldn’t have mentioned that kind of thing in their relief at having Harry alive.

The wound was ugly, a slash from either a very strange Cutting Curse or a blade. Skin had died in black lines along the edges. Lucius frowned harder. No, this had to have happened after the battle, then. Severus ranted on a consistent basis about Harry’s foolish actions. There was no way he wouldn’t have mentioned this.

“But it was necessary to resume the bond with Dash.”

Lucius winced as the pieces fell into place, especially as he saw the subtle horror on his son’s face. The bite came from a basilisk fang. He stepped back around the corner so that he could sigh loudly and neither Draco nor Harry would hear him.

That didn’t prevent Lucius from hearing them, of course.

“Did he mention why it looked as though your flesh is dying around it?”

“Because it’s a basilisk bite.”

Harry sounded patient. Lucius sighed for the boy this time. He could have told him that being patient with Draco would have angered him further. Draco was far too much like his mother that way.

“You couldn’t know you would survive that when you let Dash bite you.”

“He said that he could smell the basilisk venom in my blood from the encounter in the Chamber of Secrets during our second year, so I did know. And anyway, you can’t blame him for biting me.”

“Why not?” Draco sounded hostile. Lucius pinched his nose.

“Because I reached up and gashed my arm on his fang.”

Lucius decided that this profound silence was the moment to turn the corner and pretend that he hadn’t been there all along. He coughed a little when he saw the frozen expression on Draco’s face. “Draco, if I might borrow Harry for a minute?”

“I’ll tell you what year I’m done being furious with him,” Draco said, staring at Harry and not moving.

Harry rolled his eyes at him and turned around. “You knew I was going to do something like that. The bond with Dash means too much to me. I was lonely without it,” he said over his shoulder to Draco. Then he faced Lucius and straightened his shoulders. “Yes, sir?”

Lucius really wanted to lecture, but he did manage to hold himself to a tight nod. “I wanted you to know that a few Death Eaters did survive the battle, although very few. I said I would ask if you wanted to decide what happens to them, or if you’d prefer to leave that task up to the Ministry.”

Harry blinked several times. “Why would it be my right to decide what to do with them?”

Lucius admired his son-in-law quite a bit, but he did think Harry’s modesty excessive sometimes. “Because right now, there are precious few people in wizarding Britain who would deny you anything, and I thought you might like a bit of revenge.”

“I’m tired of being the Boy-Who-Lived,” Harry said, shaking his head. “I know that I’ll have to do the occasional interview and the Ministry will probably make me accept an Order of Merlin or something, but frankly, I’m getting rid of as many of the responsibilities as I can. If I started adding to them now, people would expect me to do it forever.”

“Would it displease you if I took some revenge?”

“Are you going to torture them?”

Lucius fought back a shiver as those intense green eyes focused on him. He didn’t doubt that Harry was serious about trying to leave the mantle of the Boy-Who-Lived behind, but he wondered how successful the young man would really be. He would become extraordinary in a different way, most likely. He wouldn’t be able to help himself.

“Only with taunts,” Lucius heard himself saying. He hadn’t intended to be that honest.

Harry studied him, mouth twitching in a way that Lucius could have done without, and then snorted and stepped back. “All right. I think you have the right to that, at least.”

“We aren’t done discussing this basilisk wound on your arm, Harry Potter,” Draco said.

Harry sighed and lost the awe-inspiring aura that had hovered around him for a moment. He turned back to Draco. “Come on, Draco. I had to do this to get the bond back! If it helps, Dash was just as horrified as you at first.”

“Then he should have bloody well waited until someone else was around who could monitor the situation! And don’t think that I’m going to trust you if you say something different, given that you’d be translating for him…”

Lucius shook his head and walked away. He supposed that if he sometimes didn’t get exactly what he wanted from having the Boy-Who-Lived as his son-in-law, Harry also shouldn’t get his way all the time just for dating his son.

*

“I am beyond glad that you survived.”

Harry smiled up at Severus as he came into the room, and Severus felt a tight coil in the center of his stomach relax. He didn’t want to argue with Harry the way Draco had done, but that had left open the possibility that Harry would want to argue with him. Severus drew up his chair on the side of the bed and nodded to the new basilisk wound on Harry’s arm. “May I see?”

Harry bit his lip as if the request made him unhappy, but nodded. He extended his arm, and Severus bent over and studied the edges of the wound. Crisp and black, as if someone had traced them in ink.

“Do you feel any pain from the wound?” Severus asked, taking an anti-scarring paste in a small flask from his belt.

Harry shook his head. “I haven’t felt any since after the moment it happened, actually.” He propped his arm up on the bed and watched calmly as Severus gently smeared the paste along the sides of the cut. “I promise, any pain I felt was less than the pain of not having Dash with me.”

Severus paused. He was aware of that, but he honestly didn’t care. “And you won’t need to do something like that again?”

He thought he had controlled the tremor in his voice well enough, but Harry leaned towards him and gently put a hand on Severus’s arm, tracing the pain of an invisible basilisk bite of Severus’s own. “I promise.”

“Very well,” Severus said, when enough time had passed that he’d decided he should believe Harry. He sat back and studied him. “Lucius told me that you refused to take revenge on the Death Eaters who had survived.”

“Yes.”

He said it so calmly, Severus thought, so balanced, as if renewing the bond with Dash had given him back something he’d been lacking. Severus nodded. “I did wonder if you had some plan for the next few years, or a career that you wanted to assume, that you hadn’t shared with me.”

Harry smiled and leaned harder on him. Severus curled his arm around him and closed his eyes. Yes, Harry was alive. Part of him hadn’t believed it even when he saw him breathing under Draco’s hand.

“No,” Harry murmured. “I have a few ideas, but none of them involve chasing Dark wizards, or being a politician, or taking on any more importance in the wizarding world than I have to.”

Severus nodded more slowly. “And you still have two more years at Hogwarts.”

Harry smiled. “Yes. Two more years to be a schoolboy, and have a normal school year, which is something I haven’t ever had.” He leaned back on his pillows. “If someone tries to drag me into an international scandal or political intrigue because of the scar on my forehead, I’m not going to be patient with them.”

The sunlight coming in through the window darkened, and Severus glanced up to see Dash’s head poking in through the frame. Dash’s tongue darted out at him, and Severus thought he could feel something like a breath sweep past him—or a blessing.

“Nor is Dash, I imagine,” Severus murmured.

Harry’s smile blazed in a way that Severus couldn’t remember seeing before. Some of it was probably the renewed bond, but he could also imagine that some of it was because, finally, the greatest shadow Harry had borne had lifted.

“No.”

*

“We caught up with our mother.”

Harry blinked at Narcissa Malfoy and took a long moment to remember what she must be talking about. Severus frowned at him on the other side of the table, and Harry put the spoonful of soup into his mouth and swallowed, since he knew the glare would be more about that than about the delay he was making in answering Narcissa.

“Your mother who pretended to be Andromeda,” he said, and looked at Andromeda, who was sitting on the other side of the table. She nodded encouragingly at him. Harry looked back at Narcissa. “Is she dead?”

“In some ways, I’m sure she wishes she was.” Narcissa’s eyes had a slight shine to them that reminded Harry of a cat’s. “She has been confined by vow and spell to never pretend to be anyone but herself again. She cannot even lie with her signature on a letter.”

“And she can’t leave our parents’ house again,” Andromeda added. “Given that she’s alone there except for our father’s ghost, I can imagine that she’s going to have a miserable time. Which is exactly what she deserves.” She trailed off for a moment and stared into the distance. “If I had known she was alive…”

“You would have had to do exactly what you did,” Narcissa said firmly. “You know she was firm in her resolve to help the Dark Lord.”

Andromeda nodded and then went back to peeling an orange. She seemed to be calmer, which was a good thing, Harry supposed. He still didn’t know her very well or know how to take her. He turned back to Narcissa. “Do you think that you could help me with some of the political nonsense?”

“I thought you didn’t want to be involved with politics at all.”

“I’ll have to be, in that I’ll have to politely refuse interviews and invitations and things like that,” Harry said. “But I want to just tell them all to fuck off, I don’t really want to be polite. Can you teach me how to do that without offending them?”

Dash was laughing in his head, a wonderful thing. Andromeda appeared to have choked on the piece of her orange. Narcissa studied Harry with bright eyes that made him want to squirm, and then nodded. “I can do that, Harry, but you are going to have to be polite in your language as well.”

“Oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t know it was rude to talk about being polite.”

Narcissa sighed, but Sirius’s voice interrupted. “It’s obvious that you’re going to need some help, Cissy. I think that’s where I come in.”

Harry popped up from his chair and charged around the table to hug his godfather. Sirius hugged him back with gentle hands that didn’t shake the way they had the last time Harry had seen him. “It’s all over,” Sirius whispered to him. “It’s all safe, kid.”

“Does that mean that your Mind-Healers have said that you can come back?”

“They haven’t said I’m cured, but I’ve come as close as I’m likely ever to.” Sirius hugged him a lot harder now. “And if your guardian says it’s okay, of course.”

Harry started and drew back to stare at Severus, who was standing in the other doorway of the dining room, opposite the one Sirius had entered by. “He can visit, right?” Harry asked, and then swallowed as he heard the harsh pleading note in his own voice. Severus might not care for that much.

“Yes, of course. With supervision.”

And Harry didn’t care much about the stern tone in Severus’s voice as he went over to hug him, or for anything except the soaring feeling of possibility and hope in himself.

And the equally soaring sound of Dash’s laughter.

Chapter 155: A Sunrise in Rose and Red

Notes:

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of the story. Thank you so much for following me all this way.

Chapter Text

Hermione checked the parchment in her hand, and then nodded and cast the Feather-Light Charm on her robes. After that, it only remained to clear her head of the stupid fear of heights that had appeared all by itself, and then she took a step forwards and down through the trapdoor that she had gone through in first year with Harry and Ron.

Her robes billowed gently around her, slowing her descent. Hermione also cast a small variant of the Lumos Charm ahead of her that landed on and clung to the walls of the stone corridor beneath her. At last she stood on the floor with soft light glowing around her and no Devil’s Snare.

This time.

Maybe next time someone came down here, the Devil’s Snare would be back.

Hermione walked through the corridors until she came to the room that had held the giant chess match the last time that she’d seen it. This time, there was a series of black trilithons there, pillars with a gigantic rectangular stone resting sideways across the top of them. Hermione squinted at the trilithons. She thought they were basalt, but she couldn’t be sure.

Regardless, she needed to find the right one.

She walked slowly around the circle they formed, the circle she had known they would form, trailing her hand along the stone. Her eyes were all but useless here, despite the glow of the charm that had followed her. She closed them and let her fingers roam and explore, until she felt a small notch that was too sharp to be a crack.

Hermione stood still and traced the shape, over and over, until she was sure. It was the rune Sowilo. Hermione turned and walked into the circle between that trilithon and the one on its right.

There was a bright flurry of sparks, and Hermione found herself surrounded by a copper circle set into the floor that glowed a dull red. Hermione ignored the way that more and more runes ignited along the sides, and sat down, arranging her robes carefully around her legs. In seconds, the runes and the red glow together had formed what looked like a panel of a mirror in the air opposite her, and a face appeared above the halfway point.

“State your name, and how you divined that the maze was here.”

“Hermione Granger, fifth-year student at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.” Hermione added that last one because the face, a bland woman’s face with white skin and brown eyes and brown hair, frowned as if trying to place her. “I knew it was here because I read about the tests to enter the Unspeakables, and how desire to do it could call a maze in a hidden spot. After that, it was just a matter of determining where the maze would be, and how I could get through it.”

The woman’s eyebrows lifted. “It is still a remarkable achievement for a fifth-year student to have divined that the maze had appeared here.”

Hermione smiled a little. “I don’t think that you would accept unremarkable candidates into the Unspeakables, madam.”

“True enough.” The woman looked at her thoughtfully for a moment longer, then turned and seemed to speak to someone outside the edge of the mirror whom Hermione couldn’t see. When she turned back, she’d acquired a scroll of parchment and a silver quill with a shining nib. “I want you to tell me exactly what your academic achievements are and what makes you want a career in the Department of Mysteries.”

Hermione swallowed back a tight lump in her throat—here was a place where she wouldn’t be despised for being Muggleborn or mocked for her intelligence—and began to speak.

*

“Ron, how did you do that?”

Ron shrugged, and tried to keep his grin down. It didn’t work very well. “It was just a matter of seeing what was obvious, Oliver.”

Obvious, the man says.” Oliver Wood snorted and clapped Ron on the shoulder. He’d come back to Hogwarts when Ron wrote to him to say that he wanted to design strategies for Quidditch teams in the future and could use the feedback of someone who was a professional player. “That could only be designed by someone who understood the twins as Beaters and Harry as Seeker.” He looked up and seemed to admire the broken Bludger pieces still falling from the edge of the Quaffle’s hoop. “A genius at strategy, in other words.”

Ron gnawed his lip. “But does that mean that I can only design strategies for teams I know really well? What happens when I have to see a team play for the first time?”

Oliver laughed aloud. “You study them and you learn! And then you design the strategy.”

“Really? You think I can do that?”

Ron despised the way he sounded like he was asking for reassurance—around his brothers, that was a way to get a prank or a lecture slid down his throat really quickly—but Oliver nodded at the pieces of the Bludger again. “Someone who has that level of insight is going to have no problems.”

Ron basked in that. He’d admired Oliver like mad in the three years they’d shared at Hogwarts together, and dreamed of playing on the Gryffindor team before Oliver graduated. He hadn’t managed that, but at least he knew that Oliver had a reason to admire him back.

“Hey.” Oliver was trying to sound casual about it, but the way his hands shifted on the broom handle were anything but casual, and Ron focused on him, wondering. “D’you think you might want to come see Puddlemere United play next month?”

“I—you mean it?” Ron had no need to ask about paying for tickets. He knew what Oliver was offering.

Oliver smiled at him. “Of course. I don’t expect you to work as well with my team right away as you did with Harry and Fred and George, but we should always get started early on the advantages that could let us win, don’t you think? And it’s not even cheating the way that some of my teammates want to do.”

Ron laughed. Of course Oliver was looking for a way to win that wouldn’t involve cheating. He wasn’t a Slytherin, but he would still look for some way that he could avoid being a Slytherin and achieve the victory.

“Thanks, Oliver.”

“No, thank you.” Oliver looked around the Hogwarts Quidditch pitch with a satisfied glance, and then snatched up his broom, which he’d been carrying without flying on it. “I think I’m going to ask Harry and the twins for a game.”

Ron nodded and started to turn back towards the school, but Oliver caught his shoulder. “What?” Ron asked, looking at him.

“You aren’t going to stay here and advise us? See how the game changes when I’m there with your brothers and Harry?”

Ron tried not to show how much he felt like a little kid at the moment as he nodded casually and sat down in the Quidditch stands. “Yeah. Yeah, I reckon I am.”

Oliver grinned at him and took off into the sky, calling for Harry, who responded by swerving his broom towards him. Ron lounged back and watched, no longer resenting that he had been left off the team.

He had an important role, here, one that he had to keep an eye on, one only he could do.

*

“What are we going to do with them?”

Harry turned to study Draco, where he stood in the entrance of the chamber that held the basilisk eggs. “That’s one thing I called you here to discuss.”

Draco swallowed the shard like an eggshell in his throat and wandered a little into the chamber, watching the eggs as they gleamed in the soft light. “Why ask me? I promise that I don’t want a basilisk anymore.” Conflagration, who was asleep on his shoulder, was more than enough, Draco thought.

“No, but it’s a complicated decision, and I trust you,” Harry said. “I don’t want to leave them down here forever with no hope of hatching, the way Dash might have been if I hadn’t been there. They deserve to live.”

“But?” Draco said, and leaned closer to watch the dance of firelight through the side of one of the eggs. The size of the snake inside, huge though it was, gave him a fond memory of when Dash had been the same size. Conflagration woke up on his shoulder and darted out his tongue in silence, scenting Draco didn’t know what.

“But there are so many people who might mistreat them. So few Parlsemouths who can truly bond with them the way I did with Dash.” Harry paused then and grimaced, and Draco thought Dash might be reminding him of certain things through their bond. That was confirmed when Harry muttered, “And Dash says none of them would have the soul of Salazar Slytherin, so they might not have as deep a bond with anyone else as he has with me.”

Draco smiled, and didn’t care if Harry saw it. He was talking back to Dash anyway, from the slightly blank expression on his face. “Well, I think you should approach it by searching for people who would be worthy to bond with a basilisk first, rather than hatching them and hoping for the best.”

“How do I determine their worthiness?”

From the way that Harry was looking at him, this was the part that he truly wanted help with. Draco tilted his head. “Why not see how they interact with other magical creatures? That would give you an idea if they see them as worthy partners in building a future, people in their own right, or if they would probably see a basilisk as just a tool.”

Harry paused. “Do you think I could ask the goblins and werewolves? Most of the others probably wouldn’t tell me.”

“Those are good ideas,” Draco said, nodding. “You have those contacts with Josephine’s pack. And I think that you’re going to have to consider something else.” He paused until Harry turned to look at him. “You’re going to have to find some way to neutralize their gaze and their venom while they’re young.”

Harry grimaced. “I’d hate to think of them left without ways to defend themselves.”

Draco snorted. “You’ve been living with Dash too long. Like he says, he’s unusual. He was willing to shield his eyes and not bite most humans, but will some of these other young basilisks? Especially if they do bond with humans and then sense their humans in danger? One basilisk was one thing, but if they become common and people think that there’s no way to control them, it might be worse for those basilisks to be alive than contained in the egg.” He looked towards the wall he thought Dash was probably behind. “They might event hunt down Dash, if they get scared enough.”

Harry looked discouraged, but nodded. “Yeah, you’re right. I suppose we have a long way to go before we can think about releasing some of them from the eggs.” He shook himself visibly and turned to Draco. “And you?”

“And me, what? I told you I don’t really want a basilisk anymore.”

Harry smiled and laid a hand on Draco’s shoulder. “I asked you down here to answer one question, but I wanted to know the answers to some of the others. Will you continue studying blood magic? Do you have a career in mind that you want, the way Ron and Hermione do?”

“For the next two years, I’m going to do the minimum of studying for my OWLS and NEWTS,” said Draco firmly. “I have a lot of time to make up my mind, and it’s not like my parents are ready to drive me out of the Manor if I don’t start working. I’d rather do something much more interesting.”

“What’s that?”

Draco snatched Harry around the waist and backed him up against the wall. Harry’s eyes widened, and his breath started rushing out of his lungs at a pace that Draco watched with a smile.

“Snogging the life out of my boyfriend,” Draco responded, and proceeded to do just that. If Dash was laughing at Harry down the bond, at least Draco didn’t need to listen to him.

*

“You know that I’m probably going to have to have Mind-Healing for the rest of my life.”

“I know that, Sirius. I wouldn’t be here with you if I minded that.”

Or if Malfoy or Snape or Dash minded. But Sirius couldn’t begrudge Harry that, not when he thought back on the mess that his mind used to be. He nodded and shifted a little so as to get more comfortable on the hearth in front of the fireplace. “So, is Hermione driving you mad having you study for the OWLS?”

Harry laughed a little and shook his head. “Do you know, she’s been busy with her own project? She hasn’t told me what it is yet, even though Ron and I asked. But I think she will when she’s ready, so I can wait until then.” He stretched and turned his head a little, maybe to make sure that neither of his friends were around, Sirius thought, amused. Or at least that Hermione wasn’t. He had done the same thing when he used to gossip about Remus or James. “And even McGonagall isn’t getting after me as much as I would expect.”

“Well, you did save the world.”

Although seeing through the green flames of the Floo made it hard to be sure, Sirius still thought Harry blushed. “I did not,” he protested. “Well, anyway, just one corner of it, and then just from the political mess Voldemort would have caused.”

“You think Voldemort would have been content with Britain?”

“I don’t know. He was pretty mad at the end. If I didn’t put him down, I think someone else could have, once we’d taken care of the immortality problem.”

Harry looked so genuinely pained that Sirius gave up on his plans to tease his godson some more, and just nodded. “That sounds reasonable,” he said, and carefully pushed away the many things he wanted to say about how many adult wizards had been afraid to face Voldemort themselves and how “taking care of the immortality problem” would also have been beyond most of them. “Got a lot of fan letters lately?”

Harry groaned, but at least he was willing to talk about this, which was more than he was about the defeat of Voldemort. “You wouldn’t believe it. Everything from people my own age proposing marriage—some of them right here in Hogwarts!—to people from other countries wanting me to move there. Or lead them, or something. It’s mental.”

“They want to get married in Hogwarts?”

“They go to Hogwarts,” Harry said, and shook his head. “If they can’t even walk up to me and ask me for a date, what in the world are they sending me marriage proposals for?”

“Perhaps they’re trying to think of a way around that persistent boyfriend of yours.”

“Then they might as well have all kinds of fantasies,” Harry said, and smiled the way James had smiled when Lily finally agreed to go to Hogsmeade with him. “I’ve chosen who I’m going to marry.”

Because Harry, and James, would have expected it from him, Sirius teased him a little about Draco, but let it go when he saw Harry looking uncomfortable much the way he had when they talked about him defeating Voldemort. Sirius was thoughtful as Harry closed the connection, and he turned around and studied Narcissa, who was sitting behind him.

“Why look at me that way, Sirius?” she asked, putting down her teacup. “It didn’t sound as if anything about that conversation was unexpected.”

“I just never realized how deeply modest he is,” Sirius said. “I mean—I knew that he was uncomfortable with his fame, but that was a given. He was raised away from all of it, and the level of fame that they’ve given to a boy has always been absurd. But—James would have gloried in doing something no one else could do. If he hadn’t gloried before that in things like being the youngest Seeker in a century.”

Narcissa didn’t smile, but her eyes shone in a way that was deeper, somewhat, given the way that the Blacks had tended to express emotions. “I think you should work more on separating the father and son in your Mind-Healing.”

“Yeah.” Sirius sighed and then said something he couldn’t have said to Harry without putting undue pressure on him, and hadn’t yet worked up the courage to say to his Mind-Healer. “Sometimes I wonder if I should do something other than what—I mean, other than the good thing to do, because it’s what James would have wanted.”

“Would James have wanted you to tease Harry until he was uncomfortable?”

“No. I mean. He would have expected me to encourage Harry to accept the fame. And to find a girlfriend.” There, he’d said it.

“I never heard that James had any problem with a man dating men.”

“Not that so much. But James told me over and over when Harry was a baby how much like him Harry was, how much like a perfect Potter. Potter men have married women for generations. Mostly pretty girls they met their first year at Hogwarts, even. I know that what I should do is exactly what I’m doing, but sometimes I wake up from a dream of James being disappointed with me.”

There was no one else he could have said that to. He and Narcissa hadn’t been close growing up, but for whatever reason—maybe the same reason that had led her to reconcile with Andromeda and make sure her insane mother was imprisoned in her house—there was a sense of family between them now.

“Harry is different,” Narcissa said simply. “I don’t imagine that many Potter men have defeated Dark Lords.”

Sirius had to laugh. “No. Some fought them, but before Voldemort, there was Grindelwald, who—never mind.” He had figured out quickly that Narcissa didn’t like to talk about Dumbledore.

Narcissa nodded. “Then you don’t have to worry about raising Harry exactly the way James would. James, forgive me, died before he could raise him. And do you truly think he would be disappointed in the man Harry became?”

Sirius leaned back and thought about that, which was hard to do when he’d just awoken from a dream of his friend lamenting how Harry could have married a Gryffindor girl like his mother. “No,” he said finally. “How could anyone be disappointed in Harry? Just look at him!”

Narcissa smiled at him. “I do approve of him as a potential son-in-law, too, which Draco knows very well. I think this is guilt speaking more than actual belief in what James would have done. And, well, you have much more to feel guilty for and to make up to Harry than not raising him to be exactly like his father, or the way his father would have wanted.”

Sirius relaxed with a long sigh. Even though the words made him wince, he’d needed to hear them. And no one except Narcissa would have been stern enough to speak them to him.

“Thanks, Cissy.”

“You’re welcome, Padfoot.”

*

“Mr. Potter. A moment of your time.”

Potter turned around and nodded to her. Elena took a moment to study his face. There was still the boy whom she had followed in him. In fact, there should be more boy than man, given that he had reverted back in many ways to being as “normal” as possible after the defeat of the Dark Lord.

And yet, she considered him more a man now. Perhaps that was simply his new confidence, or the way he tended to walk as if someone was not out to kill him.

At least, as if a Dark Lord were not out to kill him. Which is true now.

Shaking away the indefinable sensations as she realized that Potter was waiting for her to speak, Elena nodded to him and said, “My son seeks a return to Britain. And perhaps to attend Hogwarts next year.”

Potter blinked, and then he was Harry again, staring at her with a confused sheen in his eyes. “Okay. What about it?”

“He is, not unreasonably, unsure that you will not want his presence here, after what he did to your betrothed’s snake,” Elena murmured, looking into the corridor where the young Malfoy waited for him. Malfoy was watching her, but she couldn’t be sure if he’d heard Blaise’s name or if that was simply the same protectiveness for Harry he always displayed. “But he asked me to ask.”

Harry hesitated for a long time. Then he said, “Blaise was a victim of his uncle as much as Draco was a victim of Blaise. I think both of us would be fine with him coming back as long as he promises never to make another move in the direction of our snakes.” He glanced at Malfoy, who nodded, although his face had gone as blank as a mirror with no one standing in front of it. “That’s something that would have to be non-negotiable.” He grimaced a little. “Otherwise, I don’t feel comfortable dictating someone’s Hogwarts education.”

“He’ll take his exams abroad,” Elena offered. “But otherwise, everything should be in place for his transfer back to the school next year.”

She looked directly at Malfoy. He stared back at her, then nodded.

“With the same conditions as Harry pronounced,” he said. “I’m fine with it.”

Elena closed her eyes briefly. It had been one of the final obstacles in the way of her son returning to Britain, but she had been afraid it would be one of those that couldn’t be overcome. “Thank you, Mr. Potter, Mr. Malfoy. I mean it.”

“You’re welcome.”

There was enough silence that Elena opened her eyes again. It wasn’t Harry’s way to linger when thanks were being discussed; he still got charmingly embarrassed about them. He had set up a special spell to direct his post to a different location unless he knew the sender, he’d received so many letters that evidently offered distasteful promises.

“I wanted you to know,” Harry said softly, “that if I find you using the potions you’ve invented to poison anyone, not just someone I consider a friend or ally, that I would be most displeased.”

Elena slowly inclined her head. Well, there went the plans that she and Malfoy’s father had half-made to experiment on the few former unrepentant Death Eaters still around. But Lucius had already warned her that it was unlikely Harry would either grant his permission or remain ignorant of their plans.

“I understand,” she added, when Harry continued to look at her.

“Good, then.” Harry gave her one of those smiles that could still make him look like a flustered little boy, and walked out of the classroom.

Elena gazed thoughtfully after him. She had heard from a few allies—ones who had stayed well out of the war—that since she was so close the Boy-Who-Lived and had expertise in potions, it would be a simple thing to get control of him with a subtle draught. She had replied that he had a Potions master for a guardian and she wouldn’t dare try, and let them assume, as well, that she was afraid of the basilisk.

But the truth was that she didn’t want to try. Harry was refreshing enough that it would have been a shame to subjugate him.

She might even have given him a promise not to experiment on the former Death Eaters without his asking for it.

Well…perhaps.

*

Remus held out his hands in front of him. They were trembling, but even as he watched, they slowed, then stilled.

Because he had chosen to make them do so.

He stood and reached for the clothes he’d tossed in the corner last night when he began the transformation. He stared out the window of the small cottage he was in and watched the sun rise.

He’d still used Wolfsbane last night when he did the transformation. For all the claims of the few werewolves who had survived Voldemort’s attack that they could do without it entirely, Remus didn’t think he was ready to trust himself like that yet. He still winced at remembering the note in Snape’s voice when he asked what Remus had been doing behind an unlocked door with Harry in the house.

But he had concentrated on making the transformation hurt less, not being so swallowed up in pain and fear and self-loathing that he could think of nothing but how much it had hurt. Therefore, he had tried to apply the techniques that the people in Josephine’s pack had shown him.

And it had worked.

I am stronger than my curse. I am the inhabitant of this body, and although I might have to change, I shall say how it goes.

He’d never really felt like he was in control, Remus admitted to himself. When he was in Hogwarts, he’d felt like he couldn’t openly oppose some of the more cruel pranks that James and Sirius wanted to play, even after they tried to use him against Snape, because they might abandon him if he pushed. When he was in the Order of the Phoenix, he’d gone on dangerous missions on Dumbledore’s orders, because people already suspected him of being a traitor and he’d wanted to prove he wasn’t one. That full moon night he could have killed Harry, he’d felt helpless to change things, to protest that it was a mistake, to do anything but be swept along by the flood of events because guilt had paralyzed him.

But now he was thinking of himself in a different way.

And he might have, if a life that wasn’t exactly normal, still a life that was far more pleasant and peaceful than it had ever been.

Remus smiled. Time to make another decision that he would have been terrified to make before because it would have felt like he was imposing himself. He would send letters to Sirius and Harry, tell them how he was feeling, and ask to visit.

If they said no, or if Snape told Harry to say no, then Remus would live with it. It wasn’t the end of the world.

Very little was.

*

Minerva glanced at the blank spot on the wall, and then glanced away again.

It should have held Albus’s portrait. She was sure that there were some people who would believe that it still should. They would point to the good Albus had done in life, decades before he ever knew of Harry Potter’s existence.

But Minerva couldn’t bring herself to hang the portrait. Perhaps it was unfair. Perhaps it was terrible. Her own memories burned too bright and clearly, though, especially that Albus would have been willing to destroy one of the things that brought Harry strength and joy.

Every day, Minerva saw more clearly how his bond with the basilisk had affected Harry positively. And being rid of You-Know-Who, too, of course, but that wouldn’t have happened without the basilisk. Harry laughed more. He smiled more. He took chances that he wouldn’t have, speaking out in class even when he might be wrong. He was sparing more time for people who weren’t his close friends, including younger children in Gryffindor.

He wasn’t driving himself mad with fear of the future. And Minerva felt as if he would have, without the basilisk at his side.

Perhaps that was irrational. Minerva had got letters from people who had known Albus in life that said it was. They urged her to put his portrait on the wall and create some kind of memorial for him as the first anniversary of his death approached, glossing over the crimes he had committed against Harry.

Or, as one letter from Elphias Doge had put it, “not forgetting, but forgiving.”

Minerva just shook her head and burned the letters in the fireplace. It wasn’t her place to forget or forgive, even if part of her mourned the man she knew and the man he’d used to be.

She couldn’t stop other people from holding memorials of their own, and maybe she couldn’t stop someone else from putting up a portrait of Albus if they did it after she retired from the Headmistress post. But while she was here, she would resist it.

The better thing to meditate on was the brightness of the world now.

*

Severus stood in silence beside the door of Harry’s room in his quarters, watching as Harry read the letter from Sirius Black.

Harry hadn’t said what the letter contained, or the ones before it. Severus hadn’t cast charms on them to detect any spells. He was trusting Harry and Dash to do that. He hadn’t opened them. He hadn’t demanded to know the contents. He hadn’t made the point that if Black wanted Harry to stay with him, he would have to demonstrate more conclusively that he’d changed than just writing a few good letters.

But it was taking all his self-control not to do that, not to say that.

Harry looked up from the letter at last. “Sirius wants me to come visit him this summer.”

Severus nodded with his best neutral expression, then blinked. “Visit?”

“Yes, of course. Is it okay?”

“Yes,” Severus said, still a little dazed. “I—”

“Yeah?”

“I thought he would want you to come live with him.”

Harry considered him with uncomfortably direct eyes for a long moment as he folded up the letter and put it away. “Why would Sirius do that? He knows that I have a guardian I—enjoy living with, and we’re not even close enough to the point that we could share a house for months, anyway.”

Severus nodded slowly. There was an odd sensation in his head, as if he had been holding his breath and now was letting it go to breathe in scented smoke instead of air. “Of course. I should have thought of that.”

Harry stood up and faced him with the same kind of directness that Dash sometimes used. Severus suppressed the urge to scowl for fear that Harry would take it wrongly and think he needed reassurance. It was still odd to see a basilisk’s expressions on a human face, however they might be bonded.

“You are one of the most important people in my life,” Harry said simply. “I love you. I’m not going to leave you. I might open my life to share with more people, but that’s not the same as abandoning you. I thought you knew that.” He breathed out and watched Severus carefully.

“I do know that,” Severus whispered. “I am simply too used to seeing Black as a rival.”

That might not be the whole of it, but Severus thought it was a large part. Even Lily, if he thought of it in a particular way, had preferred Black in the end, despite how malicious he was.

But that underplayed the extent of what Severus had done himself to force her away, and he didn’t think he should do that. Not when Harry was standing in front of him and watching him with those bright eyes that saw so clearly.

“I love you,” Harry repeated, and then he crossed the small distance between them and folded his arms around Severus’s waist, leaning against his chest.

Severus held him close and tried to feel only the beating of Harry’s heart, and not how easily that beat might stop. There were some people in the world very dedicated to ensuring that beat didn’t stop. He should—think about that.

*

Harry lay with his head pillowed on Dash’s flank, watching the sun set over the lake. Next to him, Draco had curled up, but he hadn’t said anything since they’d come out here. Harry thought he was still a little dazed by the effort the OWLS had taken out of them.

So was Hermione, for that matter, but she was up in Gryffindor Tower revising her answers, as best as she could remember them, and obsessing over what she might have got wrong. Harry smiled and shook his head fondly. His friends were all different from his boyfriend, who was different from Severus, who was different from Dash, but he counted himself lucky to have them all in his life.

I should hope that I am different from melodramatic human teenagers, Dash said down the bond. Did you really assume that we would be the same?

The way you say that tells me that teenage basilisks get up to some drama, too, Harry said, and snuggled more firmly against Draco. Draco glanced at him and smiled.

“Is my father trying to pressure you into politics again?”

Harry snorted and rolled his neck so that a persistent pain that had been lurking there since the Transfiguration written exam would go away. Something hummed past him, and he didn’t swat, just in case it was the kind of rare insect Hagrid would be upset with him for injuring. “No, just sending me letters about how much I could change if I wanted to.”

“I would count that as pressure.” Draco tensed under his arm. “Do you want me to speak to him?”

Harry turned his boyfriend’s chin and kissed him, long and slow and deep. Draco arched up against him, and Harry felt again the love pulsing through him that he’d felt the night before the battle, the night he’d thought he’d die.

Part of him had been afraid that they’d never recapture that intensity once the battle was past, or even that they would fall apart from each other, that the only reason they’d come together was the pressure he’d been under from Voldemort seeking his life. But he knew now that he’d been silly to worry about that. This was the kind of love that led to marriage. He knew that. All Sirius’s teasing about pretty Gryffindor girls—which Sirius only seemed to do because he thought it was some kind of obligation, anyway—didn’t change that.

“I don’t count it as pressure,” Harry replied lazily. “Not the way telling me about actual abuses of power would be. And it’s not your burden to fix, love. Your father is the way he is. If a war and being freed of his Dark Mark didn’t change him, I don’t think I can.”

Draco coughed, then said, “I agree.” And he hesitated. “They really do care about you, you know. Father and Mother.”

“I know, and I appreciate it.” It was Harry’s turn to hesitate. “Severus does not, ah, think you’re the worst option I could have chosen.”

Draco laughed loudly enough to make people on the other side of the lake turn to stare at them and Dash stir beneath them. “I know he’ll never act exactly like a normal parent would, and I don’t hold that against him,” he said. “Besides, I never want to fail or disappoint you. He’s a good guarantee that I won’t.”

“Don’t let him distress you,” Harry said, a little lamely. The last time Draco had been visiting Harry in his quarters off Severus’s rooms, Severus had been staring at the door when they came out as if he was calculating how many Potions ingredients Draco’s body would make once it was chopped up.

“I understand who he is. I understand who I am, and who I want to be. There’s still some distance between those two concepts. Don’t worry. I want to bridge the gap.”

Harry leaned harder on Draco. Draco leaned back, and together they watched the sun sink and felt the basilisk breathing beneath them.

*

It was deep night. Darkness ruled from the top of the towers in the castle to the underground Chamber that still ran with water and with the silent, mourning echoes of the stones for their basilisk.

The darkness sighed and slid. There were reaching fingers of it in the windows, looking out with glass on the night. There were sliding fingers that thrummed like souls in the dreams of the people in the beds.

But less darkness than there had been two months ago, when the one who called himself a Dark Lord had been destroyed.

The night sang, and there was one who listened to that song and understood it. Who could read the prophecies in it, if he concentrated. Who knew what was to come. About the Gate that led to the world goblins and wizards had first come from and the Serpents’ Congress and the destinies that awaited the one who had decreed he was done with destinies.

Then again, none of them involved a Dark Lord, and many of them involved justice and light and peace.

He thought his human would be pleased to know that his future involved such things.

As he slid through the pipes inside the walls where he had walked as a human, as he rejoiced in the steady glow of the bond in the back of his mind and listened to the songs of the night, Dash was a bondmate and the soul of Salazar Slytherin and a triumphant warrior and a protective snake anticipating the future.

But most of all, he was a basilisk.

That would never change.

Dash touched his Harry’s mind once more, and went back to the hunt.

The End.