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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter One Hundred and Fifteen—Politics Will Tell
“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.
*
SickPuppy: Harry was still in the mindset that it would be better not to let Dash eat Umbridge. Now? Now he might.
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A Brother to Basilisks