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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
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Chapter Fourteen—Blowup
            Severus ushered Potter, and his snake, into his office, and then paused and checked the door. There was a Locking Charm on it already, but he strengthened it. He didn’t want to think of what would happen if they got interrupted, and someone took what Severus was saying the wrong way.
            Potter just stood there stolidly and watched him. He usually stroked his snake when he was stressed or upset, Severus had already learned, but right now, his hand lay limply on the basilisk’s back. The basilisk itself had twisted his head in Severus’s direction, but showed no sign of lifting his eyelids or baring his fangs or any other unusual mark of aggression.
            Perhaps this will work. Severus inclined his head to Potter. He knew what he wanted to say, but now how to say it. “Would you care for some tea?”
            Potter’s eyes opened wide enough that he looked as if he was going to bolt. Severus was doubly glad of the Locking Charm on the door.
            He was not so glad about the way the basilisk hissed, and raised his head. A second later, Potter shook his head and murmured, “No.” The basilisk was still, but Potter’s forehead furrowed, and he muttered, “No, really, I don’t think so. No, it’s solid. No, you cannot break it down.”
            Severus hid his immediate reaction to this chattering to the basilisk, which was that it was rude and undignified, and said dryly, “I assume you are talking about my door? I, too, would prefer if you did not break it down.”
            Potter flushed and shook his head. “Sorry, sir. I thought I was speaking in Parseltongue.” He hesitated, and the basilisk’s tail curved up and struck him in the back of the neck. Potter sighed, then said in the same put-upon voice Severus had heard children use when delivering a message from their parents, “Dash wants to know if you’re going to put potions in the tea.”
            “No,” said Severus, and kept his face bland. It was less difficult than he had expected, even though he did not want Potter to challenge him any more than he had when the boy was an annoyance and nothing more. After what he had learned in Dumbledore’s office… “Only the charms that warm it.”
            Potter glanced away from him, cheeks still bright red. “Thank you, sir.”
            A second later, he was gazing at the basilisk, absorbed, in a way that made Severus assume he was speaking down the bond. Severus walked over to a cauldron that he kept for ordinary cooking when he was working late on a potion and could leave it for only a short time, and filled it with water. A second later, he lit the fire and reached for the leaves of the appropriate herbs that he kept on the shelves.
            Potter was watching him again by the time he turned around. “Thanks for taking that so well, sir,” he muttered, as though he assumed his basilisk’s bad behavior required a second apology. He looked around, half-lost, and Severus drew his wand and conjured a chair. Potter dropped into it and poked the basilisk until it dropped and curled more on his lap than on his shoulders. “Not a lot of people would.”
            “I assume that your basilisk is not used to people respecting his opinions?” Severus cast another spell that would make the water’s bubbles as it boiled increase in size, and began to sift in the right herbs.
            “Well, I mean,” said Potter, and touched the snake’s neck. “My Housemates know to respect him now, or they’ll be getting a snap at least. Dash wouldn’t actually hurt them, but they don’t like it anyway.”
            Nor would I, Severus thought, and simply nodded. He was still trying to feel out the steps of this conversation, but he did not think that making such a private confession to Potter right at the beginning was the way to do it.
            Potter folded his arms a second later, as though he was hunching, and stared at Severus out of the corner of his eye. “It’s nice of you to make tea for me and everything, sir, but what is this really about?”
            Fair enough. Severus nodded and said, “In a moment, Mr. Potter. I want to finish the tea first.”
            Potter swallowed, but said nothing else. The basilisk lay down so that he was mostly arranged in Potter’s lap, although the tail dangled off the side of the chair.    Severus thought the basilisk could have managed the trick of curling more tightly still if he had wanted. Most likely, he had done this to leave an escape route open, or simply to see Severus’s reaction.
            Severus finished the tea at last, and handed a cup to Potter. Potter swallowed a scalding mouthful without pausing, then blinked and looked down at the cup. “I’ve never tasted herbs like this before,” he said.
            “They are my own private supply,” said Severus. “I do occasionally brew something besides potions.” That won a weak smile. He sat down across from Potter and gazed at him for a moment, and then said, “Mr. Potter, what kind of home do you come from?”
            Potter’s face closed in such hostility that Severus might have been rocked back had he not been partially expecting it. The basilisk stirred, but Severus paid no attention to him. He knew that the snake would not attack without Potter’s authorization. And Potter would not give it for a mere question.
            At least, Severus thought so.
            “One where my parents died,” said Potter, and then took another sip of his tea. Severus wondered if the boy knew that his hands were shaking on the cup. Probably not, or he would have done something to hide it. “You know that, sir. The first thing you said to me was a comment about the fame that I—that I got the night my parents died.”
            “I have changed my mind about you. I no longer think of you as a mindless celebrity.”
            The basilisk hissed. It was an unnerving sound, and all the more so when Severus knew that the creature was picking up not only on Potter’s emotions, but on the sense of Severus’s words as filtered through Potter’s mind. There were other ways Potter could have reacted that would have made a difference in the basilisk’s own reaction.
            Then again, if Severus had not begun to believe there was something extraordinary about Potter and his reactions, he would not be here now talking to him. And the basilisk was occasionally useful as a guide to what was plunging through the inside of Potter’s too-hidden mind.
            “That’s nice, sir,” said Potter. “Was that because I thanked you for testifying at Sirius’s trial?”
            Severus started to answer, then paused. “Only partially,” he said, and then shook his head. “Leading the discussion away from your home will not work, Mr. Potter. I knew you grew up with Muggles.”
            “Then you know all you need to.”
            “No,” Severus said. “I do not.” He leaned back and wondered if perhaps bluntness would work better than gentle indirection. It seemed that Potter already sensed what Severus wanted to ask. “Did they abuse you?”
            The basilisk dropped from Potter’s lap and slithered across the floor in a rustling pour of dark green scales. Severus moved his wand, and a shield sprang up in front of the snake. It was a shield he had specially tweaked himself, and the magic in it was strong enough to resist most Dark creatures.
            It was true that Severus had never tried to resist a basilisk, and as the snake twined up next to the shield and looked at him, more straight-necked and intelligent than any cobra, he didn’t know if it would be enough.
            “I take it that question is not welcome,” Severus said blandly, eyes on the clear, thick lids closing away the creature’s dangerous gaze.
            “You could say that. Sir.”
            Potter’s face was nearly black with rage, and his hand positioned in his pocket as if curled around his wand, when Severus looked at him. Potter managed to loosen his grip with an effort, but he still shook his head. “You don’t need to know.”
            “There are peculiar reasons that I do.”
            Potter cast him a burning glance, and then held out his arm. It took a minute, and a hiss of Parseltongue that sounded like rattling dice to Severus, but the basilisk flowed back across the room and climbed onto Potter’s lap again.
            “No,” Potter said. He sounded a little more recovered when he could stroke the overlapping small scales on the back of his basilisk’s neck and look down at the plume that was slowly flattening under his caresses. “You might have reasons, but I don’t have to bloody agree with them.”
            “Language,” said Severus. He could feel his temper rising, and resolved not to explode. That would only increase the separation between him and the boy. It was already fragile enough, this truce between them. “Listen, Mr. Potter. I think that I might have the power to change your situation. I could—”
            Potter gave him a glance, and shook his head. “I don’t need that,” he said. “I already have someone who’s going to make sure that things change.” Again his hand lingered on the basilisk’s neck.
            “That would be a violent solution,” said Severus. In truth, the answer Potter had given him was a clarification, although far from a detailed one. “I’m sure the Headmaster would prefer that you avoid such things.”
            Potter gave him a small, dark smile. “Do the reasons that you want to know more about my family have to do with Headmaster Dumbledore?”
            “Yes,” said Severus. It wasn’t damaging to give away that much information, anyway.
            Potter nodded. “Leave me out of it.”
            “Excuse me?” Severus could usually anticipate the twists that his students’ minds made, the leaps and conclusions that they jumped to, but this one, he didn’t understand even in a basic outline.
            “You’re angry with him, or something. Maybe because he never told you I was almost Sorted into Slytherin.” Potter started to stand up, swinging the basilisk around his shoulders. His gaze didn’t move from Severus’s, but for once, Severus wasn’t even tempted to reach for his Legilimency. “I don’t want to—I don’t want you to put me between you. I don’t want to trick him or lie to him or anything.”
            “Even though he has not always treated you as well as he could have?” Severus was reaching for straws now, he knew, but he wanted to keep Potter from walking out of the room without actually testing Potter’s anger against his Locking Charm.
            “What do you mean by that?” Potter snapped. “He had to dilute Dash’s poison to make sure other people were safe! I know that! I accepted that!”
            “But first he looked into your mind,” said Severus. He eased back and put down his teacup on the desk. He would not prevent Potter from walking out the door if he had to, he decided. This situation was not utterly unsalvageable. “He has not always listened to you, either. And he was the one who placed you with the Muggles that you live with.”
            Potter’s face was white. He shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. I’m going to live with Sirius, now. And that’s something that the Headmaster promised. He said it was okay!”
            “He probably did,” Severus agreed. Thinking about it, he wasn’t sure if he needed detailed confirmation of his relatives’ abusive tendencies from Potter. “Very well. If you wish to go, you can.” He waved his wand, and the door sprang open.
            Typical Potter; now that he could leave, he acted as if he didn’t want to. He glanced back and forth suspiciously between the door and Severus, and then set his heels. “Why are you asking this?”
            “I asked him why he had believed your godfather when he did not believe me about certain things I had told him when I was a student,” said Severus. He thought that neutral enough. “And it occurred to me that he did not believe you, either. And that—well. He hinted something about your family that disturbed me.”
            The basilisk bowed its head and hissed softly into Potter’s ear. Potter either didn’t notice or didn’t care. “What could he have hinted? What are you talking about? You’re not making any sense!”
            Neither are you, if nothing is truly wrong. But Severus knew how he would have reacted if someone had tried to confront him about his family when he was a student, and although he didn’t want to think of Potter and himself in the same thought any more than he had wanted to name Black and himself in the same breath, he could not ignore reality.
            “I don’t mean anything that we can discuss right now, Potter,” he said. “Do go away.”
            The basilisk hissed again, but once again it was at Potter instead of at Severus. Potter stood white-faced and shaking for another long moment, and then wheeled and was gone into the darkness outside the door.
            Severus sat down and looked at Potter’s unfinished cup of tea, shaking his head. That could have gone better.
            Yes, it could have. But Severus at least had confirmation of several things:
            Something was wrong with Potter’s family life.
            Potter also suspected that the Headmaster wasn’t being honest with him, although whether he would do anything about it seemed unlikely. As the Headmaster was unable to face his mistakes, Severus feared that Potter would prove unable to confront the consequences of the Headmaster playing with his life.
            Potter would restrain the basilisk if he ever came after Severus, or the basilisk would manage to restrain himself.
            And this was not the end. Potter had not fled cursing Severus’s name and vowing never to trust him again. That left the path open for another conversation at a later date, when Severus might have figured out the right questions to ask and the right vulnerabilities to reveal.
            Severus sighed and sipped from his own tea. No, not a perfect conversation, but better by far than it could have been.
*
            He was right, you know.
            Harry gazed up and around. He hadn’t even looked where he was going when he ran away from Snape’s office. He’d just gone deeper into the dungeons, and that meant running until the walls seemed to blur around him. Now he was in a corner of the dungeons he didn’t recognize, a rough corridor that looked as though someone had hacked it through solid rock.
            There is a lot wrong with those Muggles you grew up with, and the old man should not have left you there.
            Harry shut his eyes. He wasn’t crying. That was good. There was some other strange choking sensation in his throat, though, and that wasn’t good.
            Dash rested his head on top of Harry’s hair. Harry could feel the soft dart of his tongue, which was so light that it tickled. Harry made an absent swatting motion, and Dash dodged easily and came down to wind around his neck again. Why didn’t you tell him about that? I don’t think he would make fun of you, because I would bite him. He might take you away from there.
            I don’t want anyone to know, Harry snapped. He could have spoken aloud, but he was in enemy territory, Slytherin territory, and noise would alert people. He turned to find his way back to the stairs out of the dungeons.
            Why not? I know, and your friends must know at least a little, because they saw the bars on your windows. And the old man knows.
            Sometimes Harry liked the way Dash could access his memories without him saying a word, and sometimes he really, really didn’t. Because what happens at the Dursleys’ is private. That’s why.
            Why? You are not making sense. And my human should always make sense, because I do.
            Harry shook his head restlessly and walked carefully around the corner, peering to make sure there were no Slytherins waiting to ambush him. Because I don’t want anyone to know it.
            There was a long silence, as though Dash had decided to accept the argument. Harry was glad. It was hard enough to convince Dash to accept arguments most of the time, even ones that included instructions not to eat other people.
            Then Dash said, Ah. I understand now what it is that Hermione means when she talks about circular reasoning.
            Harry snorted in exasperation, and then yelped when someone reached out from behind a nearby corner and grabbed his arm. He spun around with his heart hammering, reaching for his wand, and wondering why Dash hadn’t warned him someone was there.
            You didn’t say to warn you against this one. You wanted me to talk to him, in fact.
            That at least told Harry who it was, and he relaxed and shook his head in irritation when he saw a pale face. “Malfoy. What do you want?”
            “Were you spying on me?” Malfoy demanded.
            Harry blinked. “How could I? Professor Snape just brought me down here for—” The truth wouldn’t make much sense, given that it didn’t make much sense even to Harry. “To discuss a detention. How could I know that you would be here, or even follow you? You’re not making sense.”
            You’re learning to value sense, at least, even if you’re not learning to express it, said Dash approvingly.
            Harry ignored him, squinting at Malfoy. Malfoy was a little pale, and he looked as though someone had dragged him facedown through dust, although that could just have come from the dusty part of the library where he’d been searching. He huddled over something Harry assumed was the big book about Slytherin he’d been holding earlier. “What’s the matter, Malfoy? You look ill.”
            “I want to know if you were spying on me,” Malfoy insisted.
            “No, for all the reasons that I just told you,” Harry snapped. Honestly, he was starting to wonder why he’d ever been concerned about Malfoy. He was just a git, all the way through. “I’ll leave now, and then you can ask the shadows if they were. They’d probably give you the exact same answer.” He turned away and tried not to stomp on his way up the corridor that he hoped would lead to the stairs.
            You’re not stomping, said Dash, twining around his arm and looking up into his face with what Harry knew was affection, although at the moment it didn’t necessarily feel like that. But you are sulking.
            Harry ignored that. He had tried and tried to be nice to Malfoy, and this was the only result he got. He didn’t know what Malfoy’s problem was, but he would try to ignore him from now on. At least until he apologized and made it clear that he regarded Harry as something more than just a means of procuring him a basilisk.
            Good, said Dash. That means you can spend some more time making me understand why you wish to go back to your Muggles.
            I don’t want to do that, Harry said. He was on the stairs leading up now. He wondered what he would say to Ron and Hermione if they asked him what Snape had wanted. Surely it must be all over the school by now that he had come up behind Harry in the library and hauled him off somewhere.
            Then what not tell this Professor Snape about it? Or your smelly dog-man? Apparently, Dash objected to the canine scent that hung around Sirius, although he had said that was partially because he hadn’t tasted a dog yet. Either one of them would make sure that you didn’t have to go back.
            It already doesn’t matter, because we’re going to live with Sirius, and I don’t have to go back.
            Then it shouldn’t matter if you talk about them either, because the situation is over and mentioning it can’t hurt you.
            Tell me, do basilisks have arseholes to vanish up?
*
            Once Draco was sure Potter was gone, he let out a shaky little breath and leaned back against the wall. That had been close. He had been about to cast the spell that would start the darkfire burning, and although Potter had looked as though he was oblivious to anything except whatever anger consumed him, Draco knew he would have smelled that.
            Or his basilisk would have.
            When I command my own basilisk, Draco thought, as he turned back to the ritual preparations in front of him, I shall tell it to let me know right away when it smells anything unusual. And that includes Potter’s basilisk.
            He examined the small firepit he had created on the floor, and then nodded. He thought this would work. The instructions in the book—and how clever Draco had been, to think of looking in the history section of the library, where someone might hide secrets that other people wouldn’t find!—were pretty clear.
            Draco crouched down in front of the firepit and took a moment to breathe deeply and clear his mind, the way that Professor Snape said he must if he wanted to judge situations objectively. Then he touched his wand to the edge of the firepit and murmured, “Ignis inferiae.”
            There was a long moment when Draco thought the spell wouldn’t work, because it flickered on the edge of his wand as though reluctant to approach the rowan twigs and holly berries that Draco had ordered by owl from Hogsmeade. But then the spell caught, and Draco smiled as the small black flames danced up and down on the twigs and berries, eating them alive.
            Alive, but they’re dead, Draco thought a second later, and shook his head. He was running on little sleep. He knew that wasn’t a good thing, but he wanted so badly to find the Chamber of Secrets.
            When the fire had burned itself out, Draco reached out and carefully stirred through the ashes. He ignored how hot they still were, and cast them quickly on the floor in front of him. This worked like Divination magic, Salazar Slytherin’s book had said, but only if they were used right away after the fire.
            “The way to the Chamber of Secrets,” Draco whispered as he threw them.
            The ashes landed in what looked like a tangled, random cluster, and Draco drew in his breath sharply in disappointment. But the more he looked, the more he realized there was a pattern there. Letters. Not a map or a key, but a riddle.
            Draco hastily got out the parchment he had kept in his pocket to draw something, and wrote it down instead. He didn’t take his gaze from the ashes until he had got every last letter.
            Of course, it looked like a complicated riddle and he knew it would probably take him a long time to solve. But at least this was a beginning step.
            And he didn’t care how long it would take him to find the Chamber, as long as he would finally have a basilisk at the end of it.
*
ChaosLady: Thank you!
Jester: I’m afraid both of them would resist those things.
Meechypoo: Harry might have to save his ass even sooner than that.
staar: Maybe if Snape hadn’t wanted to talk to him about abuse, Harry would have.
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A Brother to Basilisks