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Deconversion	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 23338 -:- 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 Two—Conversations With Two Kinds of Snakes

            “This will be your room, Mr. Potter.”

            The mediwitch who had escorted him here, who’d said her name was Georgianna Ellman, looked at him once and then away. Harry could only suppose that his eyes were changing somehow. Maybe he was getting the split pupils that some of the books he’d consulted in the past week said happened to all Parselmouths sooner or later.

            Or maybe he looked like he was drowning in hallucinations no one else could see. That would do it, too.

            “Thank you,” he said, and stepped into the room, avoiding the patch of floor where a king cobra apparently crouched and stared at him. Then he changed his mind and stepped harshly and deliberately on its tail. The snake opened its mouth in what looked like a parody of an agonized yawn, hissed something Harry couldn’t understand, and vanished. Unaccompanied, he went and sat down on the single bed the room contained, looking blankly at the enchanted window that showed snow-covered mountains.

            He held his breath, almost not realizing it, listening…

            And heard the gentle click of a locking ward that would hold the door motionless better than any merely physical lock could.

            Harry closed his eyes and swallowed. He realized this was for the best. He didn’t want to hurt people, but that was the sort of thing uncontrolled wandless magic ended up doing, and he had that now. He would do anything rather than watch another person collapse the way Kipling had, screaming that he was on fire with the poison and clawing at the puncture wounds that had opened up under his fingers.

            But part of him still wanted to rebel, to shout that he wasn’t doing this and they should trust him more than that. Wanted to escape and run wild.

            He swallowed again, swallowed that part of him, and curled up on the bed. He ignored the way the sheets bent and rustled and a great scaled weight draped over his hips and legs. He didn’t even care what kind of imaginary snake had come to him now. He was just tired.

            It makes me almost willing to give up all my magic, if they could get rid of it. Being a Squib would be better than being a murderer.

*

            Draco stepped into St. Mungo’s through one of the lesser-used entrances—behind what looked like a weed-choked door in South London—and accepted the cup of tea that a bowing apprentice handed him. There were advantages to being one of the biggest donors to St. Mungo’s and part of the committee that had given approval for the recent expansion of the Janus Thickey Ward.

            There might be a few people who suspected that part of Draco’s interest in that ward came from his interest in the Dark Arts in general, and his longing to study his Aunt Bellatrix’s work on the minds of Frank and Alice Longbottom. It was no good knowing the power of the Dark Arts if he didn’t also face the consequences of that power.

            But no one had been impolite to him, and so Draco sipped his tea and sat down on the couch in the comfortable private room, decorated in deep blues and greens that always made him feel as if he was floating underwater, while he waited for Healer Chance.

            Lydia Chance came through the door a few minutes later, her face set in the same blunt, bulldog expression she always used with him. Draco put the tea down, took a moment to calm his reaction to the sight of her auburn hair, and said, “I heard that Harry Potter was being brought here. Or soon to arrive.”

            Chance stopped and looked at him. Then she said, “You ought to know, Mr. Malfoy, that not even you could get through some of the protections we have on his room.”

            “Oh, come,” Draco said with gentle remonstrance, folding his hands on his lap as he watched Chance take her place behind her desk. He had always wondered what weapons she might have hidden in the drawers. He hadn’t had the chance to find out yet. “I haven’t asked you for the key to the wards. What I want is a few minutes of private conversation with him.”

            Chance sat still, thinking about that. Draco waited some more. He donated Galleons to the Healers, yes, but some of them had much simpler needs. He didn’t know if Chance had those requirements at the moment, but he thought it likely.

            She extended her hand. Draco quickly and silently brought a small snakeskin bag out of his pocket, which he tossed to her. As she caught it, small grains rustled. She didn’t sniff at the top of the bag, the way that some unsophisticated users of those seeds did, but her nostrils twitched, and Draco was sure that was the equivalent.

            “Yes, Mr. Malfoy, there might be a way for you to visit Mr. Potter,” she said, and peered at some of the paperwork on the desk in front of her. “That doesn’t mean that you can cast a spell in his room, however.”

            “Then I will require someone to set up the protections of silence around his room,” Draco said, in the perfectly polite voice that was all most people outside of his inner circles ever heard him use. “And to stand guard. It’s essential that we not be disturbed.”

            Chance took another long, still moment to look at him. Draco knew why she did that. Someday, she would decide that the requests he made of her were too much, and that she would be risking not just her job but her conscience—stunted thing that it must be—by letting him do what he asked for.

            Draco held her gaze, and smiled. He had precautions in place for the day that she finally made her decision, but that really wasn’t the point. He never asked for much, and he made his requests neat and small and easy to fulfill. He would rather have future help than press a point home out of pride.

            Most of the time.

            Chance nodded and stood. “I’ll escort you myself,” she said. “They would have expected me at Potter’s room sometime in the next hour, anyway.” She picked up a sheaf of paperwork and what looked like a roll of bandages and led him towards the door.

            Draco made a mental note of that. Healer Chance’s work was with those who had severely damaged magic, with curses inflicted on them that had drained it or crossed strangely with their own power and thus resulted in unpredictable madness every time they cast a spell. They were probably already thinking about cursing Potter into Squibhood.

            Not on my watch.

            Every trace of that was gone from his face as he bowed and gestured Chance to go on before him. He would retain Potter for the Dark Arts, yes, or at least try to, and learn as much as he could about Parseltongue from him before he lost his magic, if that was what he was determined to do. But he need not alienate his allies. That was the action of a crass man, and no word had ever less applied to him.

*

            Harry turned around when he heard someone knock on the door. He didn’t think he had been asleep, but rather in some strange half-waking, half-dozing state where he tried to imagine his future and saw nothing but a blank.

            The snake draped around him was an anaconda, and its scales shone more than any Harry had ever seen; it was beautiful. It lifted its head and flicked its tongue out, and then flowed back into place, hissing only when Harry disturbed it by pushing towards the edge of the bed. You need not fear, it told him. One comes who is a friend.

            Harry shut his eyes and felt the pulsing cold in himself. If that was just something mad he was hearing from an equally mad voice, that was one thing. But if it turned out to be true, that suggested his senses were extending, or that on one level, the snakes were real.

            He couldn’t take that.

            “Mr. Potter?” The voice was unfamiliar, brisk in the way that said its owner had never thought about being anything else. Harry was glad that enough of his Auror instincts remained to let him judge that, at least. “My name is Healer Lydia Chance. I’ve brought someone who wishes to speak to you for a few minutes before I talk to you.”

            Harry cast a triumphant glance at the anaconda. That showed what it knew, and that he was just mental. A Healer who sounded like that wouldn’t be a friend. He called back in a rusty voice, something he didn’t remember because it wasn’t important, and he was using all his mental strength to cling to the present moment and the important things right now.

            He briefly saw the Healer as the door swung open, but most of his attention fixed on the man who stepped inside with silence wards going up behind him and the door shutting immediately.

            Malfoy?

            He either said that aloud or his astonished stare did it for him, because Malfoy smiled and nodded. “Potter,” he murmured. “I heard about your Parseltongue taking over your life and your mind. I came to chat.”

            Harry closed his eyes. If the news had already spread to someone like Malfoy, who had no reason to pay attention to him, then there were probably articles everywhere now, and people clamoring for him to be put down, and people calling him the next Dark Lord, and—

            Then he shook his head, sharply, and told himself to stop it.

            What does it matter to you? You aren’t going to read those stories; you won’t see those people. You’re here until the Healers decide what’s wrong with you and cure you, and you can always ask not to have the Daily Prophet delivered.

            That released some of the icy clutch on his muscles, and he sat back down on the bed and managed to smile at Malfoy. “Come to gloat at the fallen?” he asked. His voice was a croak, but at least he saw from the way Malfoy focused on him that he wasn’t speaking Parseltongue. “I reckon there’s little enough for you to see. It’s not really visible.”

*

            Yes, it is, Draco wanted to say. How can you not know? But then, one of the things that had remained constant about Potter through the years was a congenital lack of attention to his own appearance.

            Potter’s eyes looked wider than ever and had a dull sheen that Draco had never seen in them, probably because he had never seen Potter backed into a corner before. His hair had obviously seen more combing by fingers than brushes in the last month. His robes had small holes and tears that Potter could have fixed easily enough with a Reparo, and hadn’t bothered to. His wrists looked as thin as reeds, his body gaunt when he turned and the robes flowed around it. He opened and closed his eyes more rapidly than he should have, too, but he didn’t seem to notice.

            “I came to offer you an opportunity,” Draco said, and cast a single, comprehensive Cleaning Charm on the chair that was available, pulling it around in front of him so he could straddle it. Most of the time, he wouldn’t adopt an attitude so casual, but he thought it might win him points with Potter right now. The man had never liked formality, and the Healers would have given him a full dose of that, anyway.

            Potter stared at him. Then he rolled his eyes and said in ridiculous singsong, “No, you may not have an interview with me, or write my biography, or talk to me about your charity, or have my autograph, or take my picture.”

            Draco smiled, and let his appreciation of Potter’s humor show in the smile. “That’s not what I want,” he said. “Do you have to say that a lot?”

            Potter stared at him again, but a faint smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You wouldn’t believe how many times,” he said. “And thank God for that. Here I was thinking that you’d gone completely mental.”

            “You may still think that,” Draco said. “But I am quite serious when I tell you that you should consider something other than Healing for your Parseltongue difficulties.”

            “Oh, that’s why you’re here,” Potter said, and perceptibly brightened. “To tell me to let the hallucinations go on until I fall over a cliff or something. I knew it would make sense if I just waited long enough.”

            Draco met his eyes, and smiled a little, and said, “It’s nice to know that you’re still sane about one thing. Isn’t it?”

            Potter’s hands clenched at once, on a wand that wasn’t there, and he made a little noise that told Draco his defenses were even more broken-down than Draco had thought. Then he just braced himself and said, “Say your piece and leave, Malfoy. It won’t matter, anyway, since I already came to the Healers.”

            “Let me guess,” Draco went on, sliding into the supremely soft voice that Pansy had told him was his most persuasive. “They’ve told you that you can focus to get rid of the snakes speaking to you, to avoid calling them, to avoid hurting other people. That there’s some secret and special cure that you can have if you just concentrate enough.”

            Potter froze and stared at him in a way that reminded Draco this man was still an Auror, and he shifted his own position to get his hands near his wand.

            “So you know something about the way they treat insane Parselmouths.” Potter twisted his shoulders back in a defiant pose. “Fine. I reckon there must be some information on it. Got that from the Dark Lord’s diaries, did you, little Death Eater?” His eyes flickered to Draco’s left arm.

            Draco didn’t get angry, because Potter was the weak one in this situation, and he only challenged Draco in order to try (futilely) for a higher position. “No,” he said. “Books in my father’s library. Their ‘cure’ is a lie, Potter. They’ll study you, oh yes, to have more information on Parselmouths on hand, but they’ll take your magic or your sight and speech. Those are the only methods someone has ever found to strip a wizard of that inherent gift.”

            Potter sat upright. Draco watched him, the way that he was almost slipping off the bed despite the tight grip he had on the blankets, and smiled.

*

            No. No. That can’t be right. Ron would have said something about it. Healer Lyons would have said something about it. No.

            And, Harry reminded himself swiftly, Malfoy had always lied to him. He had lied to get Harry in trouble, he had lied to make Harry do stupid things like show up for a duel late at night, and he had lied because it delighted him. There was that whole mess with Rita Skeeter during fourth year—

            But he also told me the truth—as he understood it—about Sirius and my parents. In that case, he thought telling me the truth would hurt worse than the lie. Always assume that he means to hurt you.

            In this case, it meant it could be the truth. And Ron and Hermione loved him, but they had no more idea about the usual treatments for Parselmouths in hospital than Harry did. Only that, at some point in the past, the Healers had managed to make Parselmouths stop being a problem.

            Which could, yes, involve “solutions” like the ones that Malfoy was talking about.

            Harry breathed in, and out, and fixed Malfoy with a steady gaze through the fading remnants of his shock. He wondered what Malfoy would say if he knew that his chair, to Harry’s sight, was draped with shining vipers, blue and green and black. Harry didn’t know what kind all of them were, but he knew they could kill if they bit. If he commanded them to bite.

            That, mad though it was, gave him the strength to meet Malfoy’s eyes and say, “I’m willing to give up my magic rather than hurt someone else.” Malfoy’s lip curled, and Harry smiled meanly at him. “Besides, you’re wrong. Those aren’t the only fates for Parselmouths, as your experience with Voldemort should have told you. He was murderous and insane, but I don’t think it was because of his Parseltongue. I can live with it, somehow—”

            He stopped, because Malfoy had leaned forwards, and his body and his chair said, “Ah,” even more than his throat did.

            “You don’t know how the Dark Lord managed to survive being driven insane by his Parseltongue?” Malfoy was smiling, and dark embers burned in the back of his eyes, in a way that made Harry sure that he would be sorry he had raised the issue. But he stared back, because that was better than looking at the anaconda loosely draped over the bed behind him and the spitting cobras that had begun to twine around the doorframe. “You truly do not know?”

            “I’m sure you’re going to tell me,” Harry told him, and shut his eyes. That didn’t diminish the hissing voices in his ears. He wondered how the Healers would take away his ability to hear snakes even if they cursed him dumb and blind.

            “He was a Dark wizard,” Malfoy said. “Parseltongue is a Dark gift, and those who survive are the ones who embrace their gifts. Turn to the Dark, Potter. It’s the way to survive.”

            Harry gave a small snort. “This is pathetic, Malfoy,” he said. “Voldemort made more convincing recruitment speeches than you.”

            “Oh, I didn’t expect to convince you today.” Malfoy stood up and brushed imaginary dust off his sleeves. Harry wondered if he had felt the caressing forked tongues of the vipers and sought to remove their touch as well. The vipers didn’t react to Malfoy as they did to Ron and the Healers, though. Their sway was slower, almost—approving.

            Of course they would approve of someone evil, like them, Harry told himself, and jerked his head around to focus on Malfoy again. “Then why come and visit me?”

            “Because I thought that you didn’t know what your options were.” Malfoy looked at him and smiled. “And I was right.”

            “You know nothing about me,” Harry said, and then shut his eyes and rubbed his forehead. His scar didn’t hurt, but a blinding crown of pain suddenly seemed to squeeze his temples, and he lay back with a groan.

            “It’ll get worse,” Malfoy’s voice said, cool and pitiless. “You have no idea how much worse. Snakes all you can see, your body unable to move except by slithering, your bones seeming to shape and reform themselves, your sense of balance gone. Your comprehension of English gone. Embrace it, Potter. Don’t fight it. Control the snakes. That’s the only way you can live as a wizard in full control of himself.”

            Harry would have loved to say something cutting, but the pain stabbed down into his mouth and into his tongue, as though trying to force him to grow fangs. By the time he thought of something to say, the door had shut.

            No Healer came in. Perhaps Malfoy had told them how he was acting right now, and they had decided to leave him alone until he recovered some sense.

            This time, Harry wondered if he would. In addition to the pain gripping his head, every time he opened his eyes he saw flickering patterns in the air that resembled scales in shape and color, and overlaid everything he looked at. He could hardly see the serpents through them, although he felt it when they piled on top of him, vipers curled around his throat and cobras on his arms and anaconda draped across his legs. They felt more solid and real than ever.

            I don’t have to yield to it, he thought, and dug down deep for the concentration that Healer Lyons had talked about, the focus that had enabled him to banish some of the snakes earlier. I can live and die a Light wizard.

            If Malfoy was right, “die” was his only real choice.

            He was lying to hurt me. He must have been.

*

            Draco nodded to Chance and walked away, his steps so light that he felt as if he were floating, his hair drifting around his head, his eyes filled with lightning. He sucked in a deep breath of the clear air and spread his palm flat in front of him, then closed his fingers in.

            He had a grip on Potter’s soul. He had seen the man’s desperation, smelled it rolling off him, sweat-rich, sweat-sweet. He was going mad, or so it would seem to him, and the Healers could do nothing for him. It would increase until he took one of the two cures they offered to him.

            Or until he embraced the life that was still strong in him, as a man of twenty-seven who hadn’t even lived ten years past the war.

            Draco performed a little dance step in the middle of the corridor, once he was sure that no one was watching him. He felt as he had when he’d collected the last of Severus’s notes from a drunken wizard who had no idea of their worth.

            It was still possible that he might not own Harry Potter, might not lead him at last into the study of the Dark Arts that he had so often disdained. The man had surprised Draco before, with stubborn flashes of stupid will.

            But to know that he was close to it, revenge and ownership all at once…

            And to have one of the world’s few living Parselmouths with me is not to be sneered at.

*

            moodysavage: Aren’t they? That’s one reason it won’t be easy for Harry to just give in and go along with what Draco wants.

            unneeded: I understand. In this case, the betrayal will be only accidental; Ron and Hermione really don’t know what the Healers usually do to Parselmouths, and only want Harry to get help. But yes, it probably will have mind games on Draco’s part. Harry will be a Dark wizard, though, not a Dark Lord.

            SP777: Thanks! I thought you might be happy that I’m finally writing a Parseltongue story. ;)

            Talltree-san: Thanks! This story should be about 25 chapters long, and I think it’s really going to be interesting to write.
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