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A Brother to Basilisks	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 85172 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 15
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter One Hundred and Four—Plumed Serpent
“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.
*
LadyinBlack: Thank you!
SP777: Thanks! And no, I really hate love triangles, so I won't be doing one. I can only deal with them where one character misunderstands the nature of another's interest; the "traditinoal" love triangle with one character in the middle angsting over which person to pick only makes the character in the middle look like an idiot.
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A Brother to Basilisks