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Deconversion	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 23334 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 9
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this fanfic.

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Chapter Fourteen—Mask of Scales

            “Draco!”

            Draco glanced up and put the paper down. He’d been reading the story on Ashburg, who had of course gone to the press and tried to spill them some nonsense about how frightening Harry was. Since Skeeter, with an instinctive nose for the juiciest parts, had managed to worm out of Ashburg that he had charged the Manor’s gates without concern for wards and had threatened Harry’s snakes, Draco doubted that much harm would come of it.

            But Pansy’s face in the fire told the story of a different kind of harm. Draco slid to his knees in front of the hearth and nodded to show that he was listening.

            “There was a Ministry official peering in at my window a few minutes ago,” Pansy reported, wringing her hands in front of her. “He came that close without my wards going off. What does that mean?”

            Draco laughed aloud. Pansy glared at him. “It means that he didn’t trip your wards,” Draco said, when he licked his lips and got his laughter under control. “You know that very well, Pansy, so why call me?”

            “Because it wasn’t someone I recognized,” Pansy said, words short as the grass in the gardens after the house-elves got done tending to it. “He wore the cloak of an Unspeakable, but it was flung back so I could see his face. What now?”

            Draco rocked back on his heels and spent a moment rubbing his legs, to stretch the muscles and calm down a bit of the excitement climbing through him. “It means that we finally bring forth all our proof about Dark Arts in the Ministry,” he said. “Because only Dark Arts could have got past a Dark witch’s wards.”

            Pansy paused. Draco waited. He knew that she had always been most hesitant about this inevitable step. They had gathered information on the Ministry and the people who used Dark Arts in it for a reason, but those people remained powerful, able to squash mentions of their name in a paper the way that most others wouldn’t be able to.

            A personal intrusion past her wards had given Pansy the anger she needed, though. She nodded. “Let’s go. Will Potter join us?”

            Draco smiled again, and thought of the cobra that Weasley had used against him. “I think the question is of the speed with which he’ll do it, not whether he will.”

*

            Harry was having some trouble in training the Unspeakable cobra.

            It wasn’t like his other serpents, who would respond the moment he raised a hand or a word or a flicker of his will. Instead, the cobra moved sluggishly and only seemed interested in lying looped around Harry’s arm or neck. Harry tried not to imagine that was because it had been bred to strangle people as well as poison them.

            It would listen to him, and it would do what he said. But slowly. And in some of the battle situations that Harry expected to be involved in, that could be deadly.

            “Listen to me,” he told the cobra, who was on the floor in front of him, dull eyes on his face. The white serpent was down, coiled behind it, and Harry tried not to feel that his throat was naked without that particular snake. “When I gesture, I want you to strike at this shadow.” He had stripped the shadow from one of his fingers and left it on the floor, a spell that he had read about in a book from Malfoy’s library. “Do you understand?”

            The cobra watched him. Harry shut his eyes and took a deep breath. Yes, he could create a snake that would answer the needs he might have for the cobra far faster and more efficiently, but that wouldn’t help them much if they faced an army of Unspeakables wielding these bloody things. If he was able to use one of them against their masters, then he might be better at seizing control of others in the middle of a distracting situation, too.

            He stepped back, away from the shadow, and hissed the command.

            The cobra hesitated, but in the end it undulated forwards and struck with its fangs at the shadow. Harry frowned. Still not fast enough. If that shadow was a mouse, it would have had time to scuttle away.

            He heard a door opening behind him, but didn’t take his eyes off the cobra. It had frozen in an unnatural position, head lowered and spreading hood facing the floor. Harry wondered if the magic that powered it was running out, or if it had only a certain amount of venom in its fangs and would give up when it was low.

            “Harry.”

            Harry turned around quickly, both because of what Malfoy had called him and because of the way which he spoke. Sure enough, Malfoy was flowing through the room with a high head and brilliant eyes, and Harry swallowed, feeling his heartbeat expand as though he had a suddenly larger body.

            “Did my friends come back?” he asked.

            Malfoy paused, then said, “Not yet. But an Unspeakable came through Pansy’s wards to spy on her, and he couldn’t have done that without Dark magic. We’re going to send messages to the Dark wizards in the Ministry that we know about them and they should come forwards into the light.” He stepped up to Harry and clasped his hands on either side of his collarbone, which neither the white serpent nor the anaconda lounging on the couch got upset about. Harry lifted his head and tried not to, either. “And I know that there’s evidence in the Ministry itself that would prove some of our contentions. I want to go and get it.”

            Harry shivered. Then he said, “That’s probably what they’re expecting us to do, and they have traps in place.”

            Malfoy smiled. “Traps that can fool someone who was there only a few days before as an Auror? I doubt they can have changed all the wards.”

            Harry stared. It was true, he knew. The Ministry would spend a great deal of money to make changes to the wards if a criminal managed to break in or escape from a holding cell, but that had happened only twice since Harry had been an Auror, and the tightening of the wards had happened across a period of weeks. Even if they had decided there was a danger that Harry could betray them, most of the traps would be the same.

            And…

            “You’re asking me to give up any allegiance I might still have to the Ministry,” he said, looking Malfoy in the eye.

*

            Draco shook Harry by the shoulders. Perhaps not a wise move, as the white serpent slid towards his ankles in a wave of light and even the Unspeakables’ cobra looked up, but at the moment, Draco didn’t particularly care.

            “Why should you have any allegiance?” he hissed into Harry’s ear. “You’re a Dark wizard now, and whatever private bargain of friendship you might come to with Weasley, the rest of the Department wouldn’t see you the same way. The Minister won’t give you special friendship or favors anymore. All of the Aurors thought you should be in St. Mungo’s, and one of them came here to attack you.”

            “He thought he was rescuing me.” Harry’s face was wide and troubled.

            “I don’t care,” Draco said, and gave him another shake. The white serpent slid forwards again, but Draco pointed to him, and had the happiness of seeing Harry hesitate. “He almost killed your friend. Do you remember that? Why do you have more tolerance for someone who did that to your snakes than for someone who’s trying to give you the most freedom and the best life possible?”

            “In exchange for information.” Harry lifted his shoulders and folded his arms, and broke free of Draco’s hold that way, with a little twist that he must have picked up from the Aurors. The white snake was wrapped around his arm in seconds, hissing at Draco with an emphasis that he knew wasn’t imagined. “You’ve never made that a secret, that you want to know more about Parseltongue in exchange for helping me.”

            “That way, you learn more,” Draco said. “And I’m no altruist, but neither is the Ministry.” He wanted to hit Harry, and he wanted to hold up his hand and make him look at the golden scales that were there all the time now. “Honestly, Harry. Do you really think that they have better intentions for you than I do?”

            “I think that I might hurt someone I don’t want to hurt. Not everyone in the Ministry can be a Dark wizard.”

            Draco rolled his eyes. “No, but the ones who aren’t don’t care enough about you to speak up for you, and the ones who are are hypocrites. Come with us. Or admit that you want to leave, and leave, because you aren’t interested in an alliance with me and Pansy and anyone else we might recruit to it anymore.”

            Harry stood more upright at that, and closed his hands into fists. Small snakes sprouted from them, thread-like, waving in the air like coral strands in the sea. Draco felt his blood heat, but at the moment, he was less interested in the way Harry changed than what he said. So he didn’t look away from his eyes, until Harry closed them and turned his head away.

*

            It’s different. I was loyal to the Ministry—

            And you chose to break that loyalty when you left St. Mungo’s, said the white snake in Harry’s ear, clear and sharp. He had never heard it use such human diction before, or such complex sentences. What do you have left? Only an abstract ideal, and the worry of what your friends will say about you. Only the worry that you might feel good when you raid the Ministry, and your fear that anything that makes you feel good is wrong.

            Harry opened his eyes and nodded. Malfoy only stood there, slim and upright as one of the posts of his gates, and said, “What does a nod mean?”

            “It means that it’s taking me a shorter time now to see that you’re right,” Harry said, and gave him a painful smile. “I already made the decision that’s going to exile me in a lot of people’s eyes. I’m still struggling with what that means and how essentially my whole life has changed, but you’re right, and it has. I’ll come with you.”

            Malfoy gave him a cool smile. Harry wondered why, but decided that it was probably his resistance in the first place that had dimmed Malfoy’s enthusiasm for him right now.

            Well, I’m sorry for that, but if I didn’t consider this fully and decide that I can make the commitment, then I might break in the middle of the raid, and that would be more disastrous for Malfoy and Parkinson than anything else.

            Harry didn’t say it, because he was still learning how to be a Dark wizard, and he would rather agree than disagree with Malfoy right now. “What part of the Ministry are we going to raid?” he asked. “I assume the Auror Department, but what else?” The white snake gave a slow, contented hiss on his shoulder, and Harry reached up to stroke him without taking his eyes off Malfoy.

            “The Department of Mysteries,” Malfoy said, as cordially as if they were discussing the Atrium.

            Harry blinked. Then he said, “I know nothing about the defenses there. I hope you have someone who does.”

            “Blaise did a little work for them at one time, and I have his notes,” Malfoy said, patting the front of his robes. Hidden parchment bent gently back and forth. “And you forgot about the Dark paths. The Unspeakables are curious, and some of them use the Dark Arts, which means steps down the paths whether they like that or not. Some of them, ones that I’m familiar with, open directly into the heart of the Department of Mysteries.”

            Harry stared at him some more. Then he said, “I can’t even imagine—you could do so much. Why wait until now?”

            Malfoy’s grin was as narrow as his eyes. “Because I have to take risks as a Dark wizard, but that includes choosing the ones I take, because otherwise I might not live to practice some of the magic I want to. And I never had enough strength beside me to take on the Department of Mysteries before. Simply because I can reach into it doesn’t mean I can overpower the guards waiting for me there.” He paused. “You will come.”

            Not a question, and perhaps Harry should have been angry at that, but he’d already done his flailing for today, and wasn’t interested in sounding like an immature child who didn’t understand the decisions he’d made again. He nodded. “I’m in.”

*

            Hours later, standing in his bedroom as he prepared for the assault on the Department of Mysteries, and Draco was still filled with a searing, tingling bliss that threatened to scrub all other emotions and cares from his mind if he thought too much about it.

            He had to shut his eyes and lean one hand on the mirror in front of him to get some of it back. Then he opened his eyes, fixed them on the reflection of his collar, and carefully slipped his hand to the side, then back in, in a certain motion he had first learned when opening the gate to one of the furthest paths.

            The reflected collar sagged a bit, but Draco felt no change in the weight of the real one. He smiled. Blaise had reported mirrors among the Unspeakables. If Draco encountered them, then he had a weapon.

            He turned away and listened for the whoosh of the Floo. That would be Pansy, arriving. Draco nodded. He heard Harry stirring in his room down the corridor. It was almost time to leave.

            Draco opened the door and found Harry stepping out. He looked uncertainly at Draco and touched the front of the tighter green robes that Draco had given him, but didn’t speak.

            Draco looked him over with approval. The robes were close to Harry’s body, not close enough to restrict his movements, but not flowing; there were too many things with sharp teeth in the Department of Mysteries that might snare the edge of a trailing cloak or hem. They had silver buttons, and Draco had already shown Harry the things the buttons could change into and explained how they worked. And around Harry’s neck, his arms, his legs, his waist, gamboled what looked like at least fifty snakes, of all colors. Indeed, Draco only knew the color of his robes from a glimpse of green here and there. The whole of Harry’s body, instead, was a mass of colors, clad in snakescale armor.

            On top of his head, on the shaggy dark hair, rose the white serpent like an Egyptian crown. Draco let his eyes burn over the last few inches of Harry’s body, and return to his face. “You look stunning tonight,” he whispered.

            Harry flushed, only visible on his cheeks, and nodded choppily. “So do you,” he said, and looked at Draco’s pale grey robes with a cock of his head. “But not armed.”

            Draco smiled and tapped his temple with one finger, his wand with the other. “When a Dark wizard is this armed with spells, then he doesn’t need the presence of snakes like yours. Magnificent though they are,” he added loftily as he watched the shape of the white serpent grow a bit indistinct and sway towards him. Disrespect towards the serpents produced by Parseltongue was enough to remove the sight of them, then. Draco didn’t want that to happen.

            Harry accepted that with another nod, and then turned his head towards the stairs. Draco caught the fast glimpse of a forked tongue darting out between his lips. “Is that Parkinson coming?”

            “You could use first names,” Pansy said, appearing at the top of the stairs. Draco felt Harry start at the sight of her. She wore her dark hair bound back and high on her neck with a cage of wood around it, and her robes looked like Harry’s under the snake-scale. On them shone tiny golden keys, apparently fabric, but Draco had been on the other side of those keys in a duel and knew the harm they could inflict. Pansy’s wrists were wound with silver wire, and her smile glinted on her lips as she watched Harry notice it, but her next words were to Draco. “You’re ready to open the paths?”

            Draco nodded, and let some of his joy leave him. He still found happiness in walking the paths, of course he did, or he never would have become a Dark wizard. He had seen enough of those wizards who did things for duty instead of pleasure. His father had been one, before the end, and Severus another.

            They could teach him. He would not allow them to rule him.

            “Come here,” he said, and held out his hands. Harry stepped up and clasped his wrist without hesitation. Pansy, on the other side, arranged herself more closely, so that she was holding on to the middle of his forearm.

            Draco closed his eyes. The joy was solemn now, and he filled his mind with images of the dangers on the paths, the ones that had to make him respect them—and to walk them without respect for what would happen was impossible. The Hanging Tree. The White Lake. The black mountain at the center of all his dreams, and his nightmares, when he dreamed of what had come swarming down its slopes to fight him.

            Draco opened his eyes and breathed out—

            And closed them again, and opened them somewhere else.

            He could feel the stillness of Harry’s snakes as they looked about. They would wonder whether they were physically here, or only mentally, the way that Harry had walked the paths he’d discovered in hospital. Harry’s own tongue was darting out again as he sought sensory clues, his eyes flaring.

            Pansy, who’d been here before, tilted her head back and admired the flat, peaceful sky overhead, with three white moons in a row and one large, corpse-pale star. “Are we ready to walk?” she asked.

            “A moment,” Draco murmured, and spoke to Harry. “You have to stay close to me. You have to stay holding onto me. Or there’s no telling where you might end up, and most people can’t walk the paths alone.”

            “Even with snakes to lead them.” It wasn’t a question. Harry had seen the path of rough black sand beneath their feet by now, and the trailing ribbons of shadow that crossed it, obscuring the boundaries. And he would have heard the shrieks and peals of wild bells and laughter from the darkness on either side.

            “Yes,” Draco said, and then called upon his memory of the first time he’d walked this path and struck his foot against the dirt.

            The shadows shivered. Across them, like a shimmering path of moonlight across open water, spread a yellow glow. Draco strode forwards, walking only on the yellow, not letting his feet touch anything else, and Pansy and Harry folded in behind him, avoiding the shadows, avoiding the edges of the path. They, unlike him, could walk on other things than the light, the faint margin of safety he’d opened and which would linger behind him for a short while.

            But there was no one save Draco who could open the way.

            It was awkward and shuffling, but Draco took that as only another challenge to walking the paths. It was easier than his first navigation of this part of the Darkness, anyway. He fixed his eyes ahead and remained attentive, always, to the way the light flickered and danced, changed and charged, the way he was attentive to the first fumes and bubbles of a dangerous potion.

            Something shrieked off to the side of the path, and a hand reached onto the dirt—well, something that changed constantly between a paw and a hand. Draco turned to the side, so that one foot was still safely on the path of light, and stamped on the reaching limb with the other one. The shriek came again, a swift, bubbling sound that died into a chorus of many cries, and the hand retreated. Draco smiled again. He did like to imagine that the creatures who tried that and suffered for it were being torn to pieces by a pack of their own kind.

            He lifted his head and walked forwards, and after a moment of hesitation—which Draco hoped didn’t imply that Harry was getting skittish—the others followed.

*

            Harry had never been in a place like this. He had never imagined that one existed.

Up until now, he would have said that his strangest experience had come the first time he explored the Department of Mysteries or in the Forbidden Forest when he was using the Resurrection Stone. But this was something else. He could feel the darkness on his skin like thick grass on a summer’s night, could hear whispers constantly darting around him, as though each of his serpents felt a different kind of vibration.

Since the darkness, and the things in it, wanted to lure them off the paths, Harry expected offers of temptation. Freedom, peace, money, reconciliation with his friends. But there were other things in the whispers, and he couldn’t believe how tempting they were.

Knowledge. Fearlessness. The ability to walk out into the darkness, among the creatures who groped for them, and see them as they were.

Harry half-shook his head, and concentrated on following Malfoy. He knew the temptations to walk off the path really were only that, temptations, and he could ignore them if he wished. But he had never expected that it would take so much effort.

Does this mean I’ve changed in some way since I became a Dark wizard? he asked the white serpent.

No, brother, said the white snake, and flicked out its tongue to taste the night around them. He sounded cool and causal, though curious. You have unlocked the door to a quality that has always been inside you. Or why so much investigation of mysteries when you were a child? Why did you have to know who Nicholas Flamel was, who was the Heir of Slytherin, what Snape’s real allegiances were? One coil of the gilded white body slid down and rubbed along Harry’s temples. Now you have learned more about yourself, and now you have new mysteries that you might dare to investigate.

Harry swallowed. The narrowness he had felt enclosing him since he came to Malfoy Manor—life without his friends, life under siege by people like Ashburg and tactics like the Ministry freezing his Gringotts accounts—began to slide away.

There were worlds out there to explore, if he dared to tread them.

            Malfoy paused in front of him, and then reached out and ripped something from the air. Harry, just behind him, could feel the clench and tense of muscles in Malfoy’s arm and back. Then the ripping motion produced blue-black, hazy light, creating a tear down the middle of the world ahead of them, and Harry blinked, even that faint illumination concentrating strongly with the night they stood in.

            “Now,” Malfoy said. “Follow me, and be ready.”

            Harry heard the soft gasp of Parkinson’s delighted breath. And he felt the same delight stirring in him, suppressing the retort that none of them could be ready when they didn’t know exactly what guards the Unspeakables might have waiting.

            Together, they went forwards.

*

            SP777: Harry took on the aspects of a black mamba briefly. It doesn’t mean that he looks that way all the time. Likewise, his other snake aspects tend to come out when he’s under stress. When he’s not, he can control them pretty well.

            No, it was just a story that I wanted to do.

            Talltree-san: If the white snake had died, Harry almost certainly would have killed Ashburg. But now that Draco has calmed him down, he probably won’t. He still isn’t used to holding grudges for a long time.

            Runespoors might! It’ll depend on the direction that I want to take this.
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