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The Stag and The Snake	By : JBankai89 Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 9713 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 2
Disclaimer: JK Rowling owns Harry Potter, I gain nothing from this but a way to pass the time.

Chapter List
- 12
- 13
- 14
A/N: The page breaks or whatever the hell they're called (~*~) refers to a POV switch. Since it's all in the third person I'm fairly certain that it won't get too confusing. If anyone finds it difficult to follow please let me know and I'll fix it.
A Note on the Tags: I just want to clarify that there will def be noncon touching/sexual assault in this story but at no point will it evolve into rape. I was reluctant to use the rape/noncon warning, because I felt that it might exaggerate the noncon elements in the story. If anyone feels that I was too light-handed with the tagging, I'll add the archive noncon warning. Just let me know.

Part II: Anima Speculo Maledictum

Chapter 1 – The Stag

A natural wonder of forest, greenery spanning for several miles in every direction. The trees are old, maple and oak trees, evergreens and spruces, and craggy rock formations dotted with ivy, the close, claustrophobic proximity of the flora almost suffocating. The early spring birdsong filled the twilight of dusk, and the wood is alive with activity. Squirrels were dashing into their nests for the night, badgers and raccoons were beginning to stir, and a large variety of wildflowers were curling in their petals inward as night consumed the last remnants of the day.

Almost hidden in the dense forest sits a derelict castle. Its once tall and proud towers and walls were now a crumbling mess of rock and clay. Saplings had grown through the ruin, moss had claimed the rock, and nature reclaimed man's attempt to own her. A large, open meadow sits at the ruin's feet, a perfect circle encasing a field of wildflowers. A young stag lay in the shadows of the trees that bordered it, its elegant head rested morosely across its front legs, staring blankly at the ground beneath its hooves.

The shadow of a man appeared quite suddenly. Billowing black robes flared behind him as he strode towards the meadow in the deepening night. He came to a stop close to its centre, most of his form lost in shadow. He watched the stag with an amused smirk. “Come now,” he said to it, “you know it does not work unless you are bathed in moonlight.” The animal looked up, its expression almost mournful. It stood up. Light brown fur with the imperfection of a jagged swath of white upon its head—almost light a bolt of lightning. The beast took several timid steps backward, and the man chuckled. “If you do not step into the light, you will stay that way. Is that really what you want?”

The creature paused, its expression again nearly human. It bowed its head slightly and walked into the meadow. The beast stopped in the centre, and the moon, just past full and beginning to wane, rose overhead. It bathed the animal in moonlight and as it reared the stag was consumed in a pure, white light. A moment later the light dissipated and the stag was gone. A young man sat crumpled amongst the flowers, so small compared to the animal that had occupied the space mere moments before. He stood up slowly, vibrant green eyes glaring at the man under a mass of untidy black hair and round glasses. The older man swept forward and gathered him into his arms, as though he was a most precious treasure.

“You know it pains me to see you like this Harry,” he murmured into the young man's hair, trailing his fingers up and down his back. Harry shuddered under his touch. “If you'd only agree to Bond with me, I'd be more than willing to lift the curse.”

Harry wrenched away from him, still slightly unsteady on his feet, and he shot the man a look of the deepest loathing. “You've asked me the same question, every night, for the past five years.” He spat with disgust. “Do you honestly expect a different answer, Snape? I will never Bond with you.”

Snape's eyes glittered dangerously in a quiet, even rage he reserved only for Harry. He strode forward and grasped the front of the boy's robes before he could get away, and combed the fingers of his free hand delicately through his hair. A lover's touch. Harry shivered. “Then you will be cursed, Mr Potter,” Snape said softly, regarding Harry with a look of intense desire and anger in equal measure. He ignored the boy's desperate struggling, and ghosted a kiss over his protesting lips before adding, “and remain cursed.” He released Harry with a sharp shove, and he fell to the ground. The older man disappeared in a swirl of black, and Harry was left alone.

Harry didn't bother standing up. He pulled his knees forward, and wrapped his arms around them. He pressed his forehead against his thighs, and sighed miserably. Five years trapped in a deep forest, cursed to live his days as a stag, and his nights as a human. He trembled, the thin robes he had been forced into by his captor were uncomfortably revealing, and did little to keep him warm. Harry turned his head to the side, and looked around the meadow; his prison. Snape did not need chains or dungeons to keep Harry when the curse did all the work for him. He could not chance leaving or going too far, because if he was unable to return to the meadow by moonrise, he would be unable to change back.

Harry felt tears sting his eyes, though they never spilled. He ached. Hopelessness had long consumed his mind, happily nudged along by Snape. What little resistance he still had, he saved for rejecting the man's nightly request. Any more than that was just exhausting.

His mind went back to that night. He felt almost consumed with anguish at the recollection of it. Not for the first time, he wondered what may have happened if he or Draco had bothered to tell Sirius or Remus, or even Lucius what had happened with Snape. Would it have made a difference, or would he still end up here? The thought of Draco made his stomach twist into knots of newfound grief.

Harry had been so happy. Of all the people he'd imagined to bring him such joy, he never thought it would have been that boy. Would he ever see him again? Harry could not untangle the toxic remarks of Snape's from what he truly believed. Draco cared for him, but did he still? It had been so long. Was he being foolish, holding onto the memory of the boy who had shown him romantic love for the first time? Harry's stoicism broke, and clutched his knees as a sob escaped from him. “Draco.”

~*~

“Sirius?” He looked up at the call of his name. Once so youthful in spite of his age, his face now carried deep lines and a hollowed, empty look in his eyes. The years, the fevered searching, and the disappointment had been unkind to his visage. He felt weary, older than his years, and just so very tired.

His Bonded appeared in the doorway, and Remus's expression softened slightly. It was one he had seen often in recent time. It was the sad, pitying expression one might give to a widower. “How long have you been in here?” Remus's tone was not accusatory, angry, or even disapproving. Sirius looked around him, feeling a dull ache as he took in the haphazard Gryffindor flag pinned to the faded blue wall, the duvet upon the bed fresh and clean, while the desk, wardrobe, and bookcase were coated in a fine layer of dust. Harry's room was virtually unchanged. Sirius knew he would need his room back when they found him.

“I just—” Sirius said, his voice was barely a hoarse whisper. “I wanted to sit with him.” The words made the older man's stomach tighten, as he was engulfed in momentary grief. His vision became hazy, and he looked down to the frame in his hand. A young, bespectacled boy, waved up at him with a jovial smile.

Remus stepped inside, his expression turning to genuine grief as he joined the man upon the edge of the bed. Sirius bent forward, pressing his fingers into the corners of his eyes in a feeble attempt to compose himself. “I know he's alive, Remus. I just know it. He'll need somewhere to stay when he comes back...” He trailed off, raking a hand through his hair. Remus didn't speak, but wrapped an arm around Sirius's shoulders, neither discouraging or encouraging his unwavering faith, and just held him.

~*~

“Draco please, be reasonable!” Narcissa's pleas followed the young man as he burst from the parlour and into the adjoining hall. His normally fair skin was red with his anger. His mother's attempts to placate him made his anger flare all the more.

“Reasonable!” Draco almost shrieked the word in his disbelief. He paced in front of her, refusing to meet her eye. “How is organizing a Beltane celebration specifically for me to find a husband supposed to help me?” He whirled around and met his mother's eye with a nasty glare, before returning to his pacing. He needed to find Harry. He didn't need anyone to replace him.

“Now really,” Narcissa stood up and stepped in front of her son, forcing him to stop his angry pacing. “The contract has been nullified. It was nothing but a pile of ash when the Ministry Archives people found it the next morning. Harry Potter is dead, Draco. You need to move on, and finding someone you can settle down with will help you do that!” The words cut deep. How could his mother say that? Harry wasn't dead. He just wasn't.

“He. Is. Not. Dead.” Draco all but yelled each word, inches from his mother's appalled face. He stepped back, taking several deep breaths in an attempt to calm himself and reorganize his thoughts, though it did little to help. He raked his fingers through his white-blond hair, and lowered his tone of voice. “He's not, mother. I know he's alive. I don't know how, but I just know it.” He turned, intending to storm from the room.

“Draco Lucius Malfoy we are not finished,” Narcissa cried to his retreating back. “Don't you dare stalk off to that mutt and his wolf again!” The jibe towards Sirius and Remus was the last straw, and after turning back briefly to glare at his mother, the youngest Malfoy stormed out.

The past five years had been hell for Draco. He was disgusted with himself on so many levels, a self-loathing he was wholly unused to experiencing. How could he not feel such crushing guilt, after what he had spent years doing to him? Bully. The word made him feel sick with shame. His mind filled constantly with memories of his treatment of Harry. Abandoning him in the forest, nearly getting him killed on more than one occasion, pointedly ignoring him, and relishing in his guardians' reluctance to stop in and help him. He wanted to lay blame on Remus and Sirius, but he couldn't bring himself to do it. So much of it was on him.

Hogwarts was another piece of his past that he felt himself going over with a fine tooth comb. Maybe if he had been more forthright in his affections, instead of using their last year to manhandle him, things may have turned out differently. A wave of nausea washed over him. How could he have let this happened?

Draco looked up, his memories clouding his physical actions, and he found that he had walked to the new Apparition spot, with little focus on where he was actually going. He could never bring himself to use to old one—remembering that that had been the scene of Harry's kidnapping, he couldn't return there. He just couldn't. Taking a slow breath to calm himself and push away the memories, he turned on the spot and threw himself into the void.

Though Remus and Sirius had told him on numerous occasions that he was welcome to Apparate directly into their flat, but his old habits of wizarding etiquette refused to die. Instead, brought himself inside the building's front doors, and ascended to the little flat. He knocked three times upon the hardwood of the door, and it was thrown open almost at once. Sirius's wide-eyed hopeful expression fell almost at once.

“I'm sorry Sirius,” Draco said, as the older man stepped aside to let him in. “My mother's trying to organize some sort of party to find me a husband.” He rolled his eyes. “So the ensuing screaming match with her caused me to be a little tardy today.”

“It's fine Draco,” he said in a clear attempt to sound casual, marred slightly by his obvious disappointment. Draco did not feel upset by the man's reaction to seeing him at the door. They were all praying for Harry's return. “Do you have any ideas of how we can proceed with our search?” He followed Sirius's lead into the sitting room, joined a moment later by Remus and a floating tea tray.

Draco barely acknowledged the tea and cakes, and instead pulled out a frayed and creased scroll of parchment from the inside of his blazer. To the horror of his parents, he had begun wearing Muggle garments more and more often, his small way of remembering Harry. He unrolled the map, showing a vague outlined sketch of the British Isles, and after spreading it flat on the table in front of him, he prodded the lower half of the map with the tip of his wand.

Almost at once, the drawing disappeared, and the parchment was refilled with a highly detailed map of southern England. “I'm still not entirely certain who could have taken him,” Draco said, his eyes scanning the map intently as he spoke, “for a while I thought it may have been Severus, but he's still at Hogwarts, and he isn't acting any differently, from what I've seen and heard. I'm starting to think his words at Harry and I that night might have been an empty threat.” He jabbed at the map again, several segments of the black ink suddenly changed to a muted red. “The problem is, there was easily over a hundred guests that night, and a good portion of them were definitely Death Eaters that claimed to be innocent, and there's not really a concrete way that I know of to divide the innocents from the liars.”

“Keep in mind that Severus was a double agent for many years,” Remus reminded him calmly, while he poured a good measure of milk into his teacup, turning the brew almost white. “While I am reluctant to lay blame on him, you can't rely on how he is acting as a deciding factor. The same can be said for many of the free Death Eaters. If they were clever enough to escape Azkaban, you can be sure that it will be difficult to wheedle a confession out of them.”

“That's true,” Draco said, frowning a little, and returned his attention to the map. “We've canvassed most of the known wizarding communities here,” he pointed to the red parts of the map, “but could it be possible that he's being held elsewhere, like a Muggle city?”

“Anything's possible unfortunately,” Sirius said, his tone much calmer than Draco had expected it to be. “In a city like Muggle London there are millions and millions of people. It maked finding one face in the crowd a little difficult.” Sirius fell silent for a moment, his face falling in momentary despair, then added, his voice taking on a hoarse quality, “we'll need to come up with some kind of strategy if we plan to move on to non-wizarding areas.”

“I was thinking maybe one of those magical detection charms, like the Improper Use of Magic Office uses, but they can be a little vague.” Draco grimaced a little, but tapped the map again, allowing it to rewrite itself to show the whole of Muggle London in perfect detail.

“It's an idea, but we'll likely just be going in circles, and chances are we'll end up locating Muggle-Borns more than anything else.” Remus sipped his tea, his expression thoughtful.

“So back to square one, then.” Sirius massaged his temples, shifting his gaze to the crackling fire in the grate.

“Sirius,” Draco said suddenly, pressing his fingers against his chin thoughtfully. “How does your Animagi transformation work?” Both Sirius and Remus stared at him quizzically, surprised at the sudden subject change.

“Why do you want to know?”

“Well, your form is a dog, right? Well do you have like...the same animal instincts as a true dog would? If we gave you something of Harry's after you transformed, would you be able to follow his scent?” Following his question, Sirius lapsed into silence, the thumb and forefinger of his right hand rubbing his stubbled chin thoughtfully.

“I've never tried it,” he said after a moment of contemplative silence, “I haven't had a need to use it. But my senses are...maybe not heightened, but different.” He lifted his gaze to meet Draco's eyes. “Perhaps we should experiment with it before we get ahead of ourselves, though.”

Two hours later, Draco found himself in a situation that definitely did not befit his status. “Is this really necessary?” he asked the pair for the dozenth time, shivering a little as he peeled off his blazer.

“We need to test your theory, Draco,” Remus said patiently. It was not the first time they'd had this discussion. “Sirius knows me too well, so as the phrase goes, you're it.” Remus's eyes glittered with amusement, and Draco shot him a dirty look.

“I don't see why we need to play some ridiculous form of hide-and-seek, though. Why can't we just...I don't know, hide things for Sirius to find?”

“What am I, a Locater Spell?” Sirius looked no more pleased with the proceedings than he did. They had been standing in a clearing just beyond the Malfoy Manor. Draco's family technically owned the surrounding land, and as such they were less likely to be disturbed, though that did not stop his parents from snooping in on their activities. “Besides,” Sirius added, “considering we're looking for a person, not a thing, it would probably be best to use something with hot blood in its veins, so to speak.”

“If my father catches us, I'm dead,” Draco mumbled sullenly, but offered no more protest. “All right Remus, do it.” He tossed the man his jacket, absently rubbing his arms against the slight chill. Remus caught it deftly and turned to Sirius, raised his wand, and tapped the man's forehead once. Sirius grimaced as a blindfold coiled itself tightly around his eyes and something similar to Professor Sprout's fluffy earmuffs covered his ears. If Draco hadn't been so consumed with worry about whether or not this would work, the image would have been rather funny. Remus nodded to Draco silently, and he took off into the wood.

Draco and Remus had decided early on that they should forgo making the task easy for Sirius and working up to something more difficult. If it was to work, it had to work now. He ran, darting through the trees, feeling the warmth of the aftereffects of Remus's charm following him, erasing his footprints until he was well out of sight.

The forest darkened around Draco as he moved, the thick trees making it look closer to twilight or predawn than the spring afternoon it happened to be. Draco threw himself behind the trunk of a thick oak and paused to catch his breath. The brief sprint had helped to warm him slightly, despite the chill in the air as the season desperately clung to the coattails of winter. After a moment, he heard a rustle in the wood behind him. He did not pause to see if it was Sirius or some other animal, and took off running again.

The wood fell into silence again, and a dark shadow fluttered like a curtain caught in the breeze. A man with black robes and sallow skin stepped out from the shadow. “Play your games Mr Malfoy,” he whispered, watching a great hulking mass of canine streak past, not even noticing him, “you will never find him.”
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The Stag and The Snake