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The Serpent's Gaze, Book Five: The Lernaean Hydra	By : DictionaryWrites Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male Views: 3108 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: The world of Harry Potter and the characters therein belong to JK Rowling; I'm playing in the sandbox, as it were, whilst claiming no ownership and making no money.

Chapter List
- 12
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- 14
He sits at a table, his thronelike chair high behind him, and he slowly looks about the room, unblinking. Malfoy Manor’s main hall is dark, dimly lit only by the dying candles that rest upon the dining table, and although a fire flares in the hearth, it is silent, and he feels no heat from it.
To his right hand sits Hermione, her gaze blank as she stares forwards, and to his left sits Draco Malfoy. He looks down the length of the table, sees friend after friend and ally after ally seated in dining chairs. There are dozens at his table, and the hall seems to stretch on forever to accommodate them. Everyone sits in the same position, back straight, gaze forwards, hands spread flat on the mahogany table – everyone except Lucius and Narcissa Malfoy, for Narcissa’s hand rests on top of Lucius’.
Lucius’ eyes are sunken in, the skin sallow and wrinkled on his face, and Harry can see his skull plainly through the greying, shrunken flesh. On the table, there is a goblet, and Harry takes it, sipping from the red liquid within, and then he leans in, gently tilting Hermione’s chin towards him and pressing his mouth to hers.
Wine (if wine it is) slips from his mouth to hers, and he feels her swallow. Satisfaction reigns: Harry steps on to Percy Weasley.
This is different.
He grabs hold of Percy by his curled red hair, pulls his head back hard, and Percy’s gasping moan is stopped short when Harry crushes their mouths together; wine runs over Percy’s teeth and tongue, but more drips down his lips, leaving him gasping under Harry’s hand.
Blaise kisses Harry soundly; George doesn’t spill a drop; the lips of Lindon Sartorius barely ghost over Harry’s own, but they taste like peppermint and honey. Mouths meeting blend into a strange, mingled mix of memories, forceful or soft, biting or gentle, pleasant or painful. Harry’s lips never meet those of Severus Snape’s: their eyes meet over the table, and Harry feels the wine drain slowly from his mouth although he does not swallow. He stares, hypnotized, when Snape’s Adam’s apple bobs in his throat.
“My lord,” says a voice, and Harry turns his head. The goblet remains clasped in his left hand, and two hands rest slowly over Harry’s own.
“I’m not your lord,” Harry says. His voice echoes. Draco’s eyes shine.
“May I?” Draco asks, his voice silky. Harry takes a slow sip of the goblet (it never empties, why does it never empty? Can all be infinite?), but it is Draco that closes the gap between them. His mouth presses to Harry’s, and Harry gives him all the wine he has, but Draco’s mouth remains on Harry’s, his lips hot and urgent, his tongue licking its way into his mouth, and Harry gasps.
The goblet tumbles to the ground with a metallic clatter, and Draco kisses him ever harder, his hands around Harry’s throat, his pale lips stained with wine.
“Slake his thirst,” begins the chant from the table, and Draco’s mouth becomes rougher and rougher. He is drinking of Harry now, not of the wine, and the chant comes louder and louder, ringing in Harry’s ears: “Slake his thirst! Slake his thirst! Slake his thirst!”
Harry wakes in a cold sweat, filthy and wet from his head to his toe, and he looks at the clock. Three minutes past five. Sighing, he pulls himself out of bed, opens the curtains, and looks outside. It’s the very first day of autumn, but the sky is dark with thick, grey clouds, so dense that barely any sunshine comes through.
Harry frowns. There were no storms forecast for today, and yet…
Harry looks to his Hogwarts robes laid out over his desk, and his fully packed trunk. He needs to shower, needs to get dressed. He can think about his dreams later on.
♌ ♊ ♑ ~ ☾ ϟ ☽ ~ THE LERNAEAN HYDRA ~ ☾ ϟ ☽ ~ ♑ ♊ ♌
With a thunderclap, the black heavens open, and rain begins pouring down in heavy drops, splattering on Harry’s shoulders and his hair as he takes hold of a first year’s trunk and passes it up to Josiah Shaw, a burly Hufflepuff prefect in the sixth year. Anthony Goldstein then levitates it into the shelving unit put aside for the luggage.
“Let first years onto the train first, please!” Harry calls over the bustle of the station, and he is glad to step away from the platform and back under the roof of the station. “Smith, did you hear me?” Harry grabs Zachariah Smith by the back of the robes, pulling him back, and he makes a polite gesture to the three shy girls moving cautiously through the crowd. They each give him grateful smiles and uncertain glances to Smith, and hop up onto the train.
“Who died and put you in charge, Potter?” Smith asks, getting closer so that they’re nose to nose, and Harry lets out a derisive sound.
“I did,” Harry retorts, and he shoves Smith away. He wishes he could take points off already, but points can’t be given or taken away until the hourglasses are primed during the opening speech of the year, according to the short manual of rules he’d received in the post a few days before. “Hey, hey. Are you alright?” He catches a desperate-looking girl by the shoulders: she has blonde hair that is feather-like around her head, and she is looking hurriedly from one side of the station to the other.
“My sister, I’ve lost my sister!” she says, bouncing on her heels. “I only stepped away for a second, and then she was gone, and I—”
“What’s your sister’s name?” Harry asks, cutting through before the little girl can work herself up any more.
“Daphne!” Keeping his hand gently on the girl’s shoulder, Harry puts his wand to his throat and murmurs Sonorus. He puts on the most officious tone he can muster, deepening his voice a little, and straightening his back; despite her embarrassment, the little girl laughs.
“Can Daphne Greengrass please come to the lost and found? We are at the righthand side of the platform, below the green lamp. I repeat: can Daphne Greengrass please come—” Harry laughs as Daphne shoves him hard in the chest, and he watches as she grabs hold of her sister, pulling her close. Dispelling the charm, Harry says, “You must be Astoria.”
“Hi,” she says; although no longer panicked, she now seems positively shy, and her hand tremors as Harry shakes it.
“I’m Harry Potter,” he says quietly. “I’m in the same year as your sister.”
“More’s the pity,” Daphne says, but her lips quirk up at the sides, and she ducks her head to try to hide her smile. “Come on, Astoria. Would you like to sit with me and Tracey, or shall we go and find a first year carriage for you?”
“Uh—” Harry turns away, letting the Greengrass sisters step up onto the train, and he can’t help but find himself a little amused. Daphne is such a severe girl, and seeing her become so tender around her sister is strange to him. And yet Harry can’t shake the idea that if things were different, if the world wasn’t on the very cusp of war, perhaps she might not be so tender. Perhaps Astoria Greengrass would not have been so upset or so lost or so very distressed.
Above them, there’s another clash of thunder, and although most of the children moving through the station barely seem to notice, Harry sees a dozen adults, most of them parents, flinch and look around them, searching for an enemy which isn’t there.
“What does it say, Cecilia?” Harry had asked when they’d walked into the kitchen together; Celia had been moving with her head down, her gaze focused on the inside of her teacup.
“Do you put much stock in divination, Harry?”
“I do if you do.”
“There’s a crown here. That’s nobility, or success.” Harry had caught a glimpse of the cup, and he had seen nothing but black blobs of tea leaves clinging to the sides of the ceramic.
“For you?” he’d asked. She had shaken her head.
“For you.”
“What else?”
“Somebody’s going to die. Somebody important.”
“Important to whom?” Harry has asked. “To me?”
“You’re asking the right questions,” Cecilia had murmured, and she’d flicked on the tap, rinsing the mug under the stream of water. On the side, cooling down on a wire rack, were a series of neatly-made and dusted scones: Draco had worked at them carefully that afternoon, though Harry had already known they wouldn’t be the same as his father’s, much as Draco would try. “You should have taken Divination as a subject.”
“I couldn’t do that,” Harry had murmured. “It’d drive me mad: I’d see omens everywhere.”
“Yes,” Celia had agreed immediately. “You probably would.”
“Mr Potter,” says a voice behind him, and he turns, looking into the strong features of Billy O’Neill, the conductor of the Hogwarts Express. His uniform, bright red with golden trimmings to match the Express itself (it had been commissioned by a British alumnus some century before), gives him the air of a military sergeant, and yet the way he looks at Harry makes him feel strange, as if he’s looking to Harry for orders.
“Hi there, Mr O’Neill,” Harry says, giving him a nod of his head, and when O’Neill presses an envelope into Harry’s hand, subtly, Harry quickly tucks the page into his inside pocket. “How are you feeling?”
“Tense,” O’Neill admits immediately. He stands straight beside Harry, his hands neatly behind his back, his chin high and his shoulders squared. Harry scans the platform as they stand together, unable to keep his gaze still, and O’Neill continues, “I don’t remember a day like this in all my life, Mr Potter, and I’ve been the conductor of this train for near twenty-five years. The driver, Sam, in forty years there’s never been a day like this, and her da said he’d never had a day like it neither.” People are looking at Harry as they pass him by, and Harry sees the mix of fear, uncertainty and admiration in their eyes, and he can only imagine what they’re saying to each other about him and his ill-fated “duel” with Voldemort in Diagon Alley.
“It doesn’t bode well,” Harry murmurs. “But I don’t want to freak anybody out, either: Aurors will be keeping an eye on the train’s progress, so we’ll be safe, I think.”
“We’ve always had a beacon on the train, just in case. Sam’s a first-rate wizard, of course, but you know…” I’m a Squib, Harry finishes for him in his own head. O’Neill’s name had come up at one or two meetings in Grimmauld Place, and while Harry hadn’t shared his knowledge of O’Neill’s leanings with Lockhart, he’d been passed over as someone to introduce to the Order of the Phoenix.
“I know,” Harry says. “I’ll see you, Mr O’Neill. Good luck.”
“You too, Mr Potter. You stay safe, now.” O’Neill begins to call over the crowd, his brogue carrying on the air and cutting through a lot of the English voices, louder and more powerful. Definitely something like an army sergeant.
The prefect carriage isn’t difficult to find. Harry sits down beside Tracey Davis, the other Slytherin prefect, and looks around the room: with twenty-four prefects in all, the prefects are awarded an entire carriage to themselves at the end of the train, with a long table they can each sit around.
The Head Girl – a beautiful Gryffindor girl with long tresses of flaming red hair – chairs the meeting, and it’s obvious to Harry how very nervous she is, but the Head Boy keeps giving her encouraging nods as she speaks. They’re given the password for the Prefect’s Bathroom – aloe vera – and given information about that year’s weekly prefect meetings, which are to be held on Thursday evenings.
It’s simple stuff, standard, and much of the meeting seems to be a rehash of the information in the prefect’s manual, established verbally for the sake of clarity, and Harry loses a little interest, choosing to glance around the table and examine his fellow prefects. Ravenclaw have selected Cho Chang and Anthony Goldstein; Hufflepuff have Hannah Abbott and Ernie McMillan.
“And as for rounds, we’ll establish a schedule this Thursday. New Prefects, we’d like you to do rounds of the castle for an hour in the earlier evening, just after common room curfew. We like to have at least two prefects on for each hour, but there’s less pressure on you, as you’re still getting the hang of it.”
“Are we doing rounds on the train?” Harry asks.
Patricia Simpson, the Head Girl, blinks at him. “Um,” she says, her cheeks flushing red, and she hesitates before saying, “Er, well, we usually leave that up to personal choice, you know.”
“You don’t think there’s a more pressing need to keep an eye out this year?” Harry asks, his tone blunt. Patricia’s gaze flits from his eyes up to the scar on his forehead, and Harry clenches his fist under the table.
“Um, ah, well, I— That is to say, I, um, I think—” The red flush slowly drains from Patricia’s face, her flesh paling, and she sits heavily down in her seat. Harry turns his head to the side, exchanging a withering look with Tracey Davis, and then he stands up.
“Excuse me, then,” he says, and he walks out into the corridor. He begins to move up and down the train, checking on individual carriages and speaking with people in each of the cars. There’s a little anxiety among some of the older students, and Harry can see that many of them are stiff and uncertain, but the younger students seem a little less aware of what’s going on.
“Hi, Harry! How’re you?” Dennis Creevey asks excitedly, and Harry gives him a wan smile; he’s been walking up and down the train for several hours now, and it’s beginning to take its toll. Excitedly, Dennis bounces from his place on the carpet, and Harry looks between him and Beth Wei, who are heavily involved in a game of cards. Artemis Henderson and Ned Buttress are both fast asleep in the corner of the carriage, and another second year Harry doesn’t recognize is watching the card game with a rapt expression.
“I’m great, Dennis. You guys okay in here?”
“Mmm,” Beth Wei says, pushing her glasses further up her nose and looking up at Harry. “You look good. I heard you died.”
“Yes, well, I got up again,” Harry says. “Call for a prefect if you need anything.” He slides the door closed. He stops in one of the connecting carriages, looking outside of the window. Water comes down the windows in thick, fat drops, and even though they’re several hours of London now, a set of black clouds seems to track the Express through the English countryside.
“Have we reached Scotland yet?” comes a voice from behind him, and Harry glances back. Draco comes slowly to stand beside him, looking out of the window, and Harry shakes his head.
“We’re nearly at the border,” Harry answers, and Draco looks at him, examining him carefully. Harry thinks of the dream, thinks of Draco’s mouth on his and Draco’s hands around his throat, and most of all, thinks of the chant: Slake his thirst. Slake his thirst. “Are you alright?”
“Yes,” Draco murmurs. “Apparently you made Patricia Simpson faint.”
“Oh, I didn’t make her faint,” Harry mutters, crossing his arms over his chest and trying to keep the scowl off his face. “She faints at the barest stimuli – Fred was saying she was fainting every day during her O.W.L.s. I don’t know how she’s supposed to be Head Girl if she loses consciousness at the first harsh word.”
“You look tired.”
“I didn’t get much sleep,” Harry admits. “I was up late, and then I had a nightmare. Was awake much earlier than I wanted to be.”
“Come sit down for a bit. You need to eat something, Harry.” Draco is looking at Harry with a lot of care, as if he’s worried Harry might snap at him for daring to say so, but he’s right, and Harry knows it. With a reluctant nod of his head, he follows Draco to the compartment he’d taken a while back: Theodore is reading a book in a script Harry doesn’t recognize, and Blaise is looking studiously out of the window. Hermione is sat on the floor, reading her own book.
“Glad to see everybody’s feeling cheery and chatty today,” Harry says dryly, and when Theo silently presses a cauldron cake into Harry’s hand, he sits down and begins to eat it. He looks at Blaise’s finely chiselled features, but Blaise barely seems to notice Harry’s there. “Sorry about the prefect thing, Theo. Were you surprised?”
“Not really,” Theo says mildly, turning a page in the book – he’s reading it, Harry realizes, from right to left. He supposes it’s Hebrew. “I wrote a letter to Professor Snape in May, saying that if I was in considerations for the role of prefects, I would prefer to be removed from the list.” Harry and Draco share a look, and then both chuckle.
Theo looks up, glancing between the two of them. “What?”
“Nothing,” Draco says, amused. “Go back to your studying.” Harry sits back, taking small bites of his cauldron cake, and when Hermione leans back against his knees, he relaxes a little more. Lightning flashes across the sky with such force that they all shift in their seats, but despite the storm outside, Harry is able to close his eyes for a few moments. Just a few moments – just to let him rest his eyes for a little while.
♌ ♊ ♑ ~ ☾ ϟ ☽ ~ THE LERNAEAN HYDRA ~ ☾ ϟ ☽ ~ ♑ ♊ ♌
“Something must be done,” Severus says. The balcony they stand on is enchanted, and the rain that comes down from the grey skies is gently persuaded to change its direction, leaving them dry where they stand.
“We cannot move to do anything out of the ordinary,” Albus says quietly. “We have placed a group of Order members in Hogsmeade, as well as having Aurors stationed outside the gates and some patrolling the road between the castle and the village. Severus, this is intended only to scare the children.”
“And if anybody is killed tonight, Albus? Will that scare the children?” Despite himself, he knows that Albus is right, and he looks out over the grounds. Mud runs in brown rivers down the hilly path that winds down to Hogwarts house, and the lake’s surface is choppy and black. Severus and Gibbon had each been instructed to remain at Hogwarts that evening, so as to not arouse suspicion, but there will be an attack today… And yet, where?
In Hogsmeade? In Diagon Alley? In both?
“How are you getting on with Professor Gibbon?” Albus asks, in a delicate tone. Severus looks down at his own hands, which are rested on the balcony’s edge wall. It had been Albus who had suggested Severus spend less time coming directly to his office, and yet here Severus feels much more exposed, despite the lacking visibility of the day, and the fact that Gibbon had left the castle to perform some “errands” in the village. It is barely one o’clock in the afternoon, and yet Severus could easily believe it was midnight, it is so very dark.
“He thinks of us as bosom friends, it would seem,” Severus replies. Gibbon has come to his office twice merely to socialize, and it is to Gibbon’s liking that they walk back to Hogwarts together on the occasions that they are summoned by the Dark Lord. Gibbon’s cheer chills Severus to his very bones, and the casual way he views their summons worries him for more reasons than one. “Just this morning, as we returned form the Dark Lord, he was denigrating Maxie Caine to me.”
There is a pause. Severus takes the smallest amount of petty satisfaction in it.
“Oh?” Albus says.
“Yes, yes,” Severus says, turning his head. “According to Professor Gibbon, Albus, Maxie Caine is an enemy among us. Being as he is, of course, a homosexual.” Albus’ mouth tightens slightly, and Severus returns Albus’ discomfort with a savage smile, showing his yellowed teeth. “Oh, yes. Would you like to know what he said to me? He said, Severus, these deviants are becoming bolder in recent years: they must be stopped. One propositioned me, in the very middle of Red Stockings, on Fargo Alley! I say, Severus, what would you do? If one of these disgusting little creatures offered you his member?”
“And what did you say?” Severus gives a shrug. He feels uncomfortable in his own skin, wearing this papery disguise to go unnoticed among the Death Eaters, as if he belongs there. He is nothing Gideon Gibbon could admire: he is a Half-Blood, is he not? And an Irishman, and a homogenital. Stupid word, created by men who know little of the English language.
“I said, “Oh, I don’t know, Gideon. Put it in my mouth?” Severus bites out.
“Severus,” Albus scolds, but there is no shock in his voice: he knows better than to show shock when Severus is frustrated. “Do not be so crass.”
“I didn’t say anything,” Severus murmurs, looking out over the grounds. Hagrid is holding a lantern high above his head, barking orders to the reluctant herd of Thestrals to come for their dinner. Through the mist of rain, he is but a brown blob far beneath them, and Severus cannot make out the majority of his words before they are swept away by the wind. “I changed the subject. He thinks Caine is a corrupting influence, that he encourages steadfast Pureblood men to lose their sense.”
“Caine is bedding the other Death Eaters?”
“Bedding implies he’s taking something of an active role,” Severus murmurs. “Bartemius has taken a shining to Caine, and Caine would hardly be in a position to refuse if he wished to.”
“Does he wish to?” Albus asks, but what does it matter? Caine can’t be saved: Severus knows that. He always did. “Perhaps you ought take the boy under your own wing.”
“What?” Severus turns his head, staring at the old man, but Albus is intentionally looking out over the grounds, so that he need not meet Severus’ searching eyes. “My apologies, Albus, it did not occur to me that the best way to keep young Caine from the abuses of my fellows might be to abuse him myself!”
“I was hardly suggesting—”
“I know exactly what you were suggesting,” Severus hisses. “You think I might soften myself, is that it? Show some vulnerability, allow myself to be romanced? Caine is a child, and you would have me charm him into my bed.”
“For the boy’s sake, Severus, if not your own.”
“Don’t make this about sacrifice.” What is it that runs through that old man’s head? Severus’ skin crawls at the very thought of Caine turning his lovestruck gaze on Severus himself, at the idea of acting possessively with the other Death Eaters – an act certain to end in his own demise, as the Dark Lord makes it perfectly clear who Caine belongs to.
“Severus,” Albus says quietly. He is standing before Severus all of a sudden, and he places his hands upon Severus’ shoulders, very gently. Severus feels hemmed in by the sudden touch, and he stiffens, but he does not pull away. “I did not mean to insult you. You are trying your best, my boy, and I cannot fault you for that. I was referring to your educating the boy, Severus, not mounting a seduction of him.”
Severus feels shame mount within him, and much to his chagrin, he feels a flush of slight blood come into his cheeks, tinging the white skin red.
“You are too sensitive, I think, to Gibbon’s prejudices,” says Albus softly, and when he draws his hands away, Severus is torn between relief and a wish that the contact would continue. “Just because he thinks you a monster doesn’t mean you are one.”
“I am one,” Severus retorts, without any real malice in his tone. “I must prepare for the Slytherins.” He sweeps from the balcony and into the castle, making his way quickly down toward the dungeons: he can be grateful, at least, that Gibbon seems to lack any real knowledge of many of the shortcuts within the castle’s walls, and is so many floors above his head.
And tonight…
Severus only wishes he knew what would happen tonight.
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The Serpent's Gaze, Book Five: The Lernaean Hydra