Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 110
- 111
- 112
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter One Hundred and Eleven—Revenge in Motion
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.
- 110
- 111
- 112
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

A Brother to Basilisks