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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
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Twenty-Two--Certain Things Broken
            "Harry? Are you all right?"
            At least that was the first thing he said, Dash murmured, and uncoiled his tail from around Harry's throat. I will remember that.
            Harry wished he could attach the significance to that question that Dash did. Or even really understand why Dash was attaching that significance. He sat there numbly as Sirius knelt down in front of him and looked into his face.
            "Are you there, kid?" Sirius whispered.
            Dash watched from the side. Harry understood that he had to drag himself together and respond, because even if Dash was going to be the one to talk to Sirius, he would have to do it through Harry.
            Harry made his eyes blink and his head turn. It wasn't so hard after all, once he thought about it. He'd done harder things last year, when he'd had to stop Tom Riddle and save Ginny. He looked Sirius in the eye, and Sirius immediately looked down.
            "You could have just told me," Harry whispered. "He almost bit me. What--" He couldn't find the words. There was a big ringing in his ears, and he couldn't find the words. He just sat there and stared and waited for what Sirius would say next.
            "He should have taken his Wolfsbane," Sirius said, and he glanced over at Lupin. Then he stood up and said, "Why's he lying there like that? What happened?"
            "Dash bit him," said Harry dully. He could force himself to answer questions, but he didn't know if he could do more than that. He reached out his hand, and Dash wrapped around his arm. He was cool, soothingly cool. Harry cradled Dash against him and watched as Sirius whipped back around and stared at him.
            "Bit him," said Sirius, with a growl in his voice that reminded Harry of his dog form, and it did seem that dark hair was thickening around his ears and eyes. "I told you that snake was dangerous."
            Dash reared slowly up until he was wrapped around Harry's shoulders and neck. He opened his mouth. Sirius stepped back, his eyes on him, fumbling for his wand. Harry sat there and felt nothing. It was like he didn't even have arms and legs. The needles that pierced them, needles of pain and doubt, had vanished. He watched, and it was as though it was all happening somewhere, in a different place, to someone else.
            Dash hissed, a long, slow, complicated piece of hissing that didn't translate into Parseltongue for Harry. Harry wondered absently if he'd lost that ability too. He might as well have lost everything else that mattered. What was one more thing?
            But instead of Dash undraping himself from Harry and crawling away, or biting him, he dropped and wrapped in furiously tight coils around his shoulders and arms. And from the shadows, trailing their shadows behind them as they moved, came snake after snake. They were all grey and gleaming and had black stripes on their sides and fangs that stuck, long and slender, out of their mouths, like Dash's. They slid and slithered around Harry and Dash and climbed towards Sirius.
            Sirius cast a spell that split the corridor with light and fire and cut through one of the snakes. But it didn't even seem to have been affected. Harry blinked, coming out of it, mildly interested now.
            They are snakes made of shadow, said Dash, and wrapped him tighter still. And I am the King of Serpents.
            The snakes all clustered around Sirius's feet and hissed at him. Then Dash turned and placed his head underneath Harry's chin, and Harry felt his jaw open without him even willing it. Dash's voice flowed forth from his throat, turned into English.
            "You are more concerned about your friend than about Harry."
            It took Sirius a minute to tear his eyes away from the shadow-snakes and answer him. Harry felt as if more air was flooding into his lungs all the time, and things were starting to hurt. He thought they would hurt a lot more in a few minutes.
            "Moony--Moony was bitten," Sirius mumbled, and then he blushed. Harry wondered why for a second. But then he thought he knew why, and he wanted to look away, but Dash's head held his in place. "What the hell are you doing to Harry, anyway?"
            "You cared more for your werewolf friend than anyone else," Dash's merciless voice continued. Harry thought it sounded a lot different than his, rougher and darker, kind of like Snape's, but deeper. "You didn't make him take his Wolfsbane or lock his door. You left him alone in a house with a child who didn't know he was a werewolf."
            "It was Moony's secret to tell," said Sirius.
            "All you care about is his father's friends," said Dash. "Your friends. You don't see Harry at all except as a reflection of James, and you placed a secret that could have got Harry killed above his safety. You are a poor guardian."
            Sirius was flushing more than ever now. Harry lay back against the wall and watched. He felt a little like an abandoned toy. Well, no, not abandoned, not with the tight hold Dash had on him. He just hoped that Dash was able to pick him up and play with him, after this.
            "No one at the school knew, except Dumbledore," Sirius whispered. Then his face hardened. "And Snape, but that was because he nearly exposed Moony's secret to the world when we were students. And Moony thought you would react badly if you knew, because he always gets rejected as a monster." He looked at Harry and leaned forwards as if he would touch Harry's forehead. "Harry? Are you in there?"
            All the snakes hissed as one, with a force that made Sirius flinch. Harry felt a distant emotion when he saw that. Was he glad? He supposed that part of him was. Not in a mean way, he thought. Not really. He didn't want Sirius to be bitten and suffer from poison, if the shadow-snakes could have poison--and he thought they did. He just wanted him to acknowledge that what he'd done was wrong.
            The thought made him convulse. Fear rode him, and he lowered his head and had to close his eyes as hot tears forced their way out from underneath the lids.
            He could have been killed. And Sirius didn't care.
            Harry had thought he had.
            "Oh, Harry, Harry, kid," said Sirius helplessly, but he didn't dare move nearer. The ring of snakes was tight around him. Harry reached up and put a hand on Dash's neck, but he couldn't move it further than that. Dash was still so tightly wound.
            Dash? Can you pull back and let me have my voice again? I need to talk to Sirius.
            Not right now, said Dash, cold, imperious. There are more things I need to say to him.
            "How did it happen that he came to be in the house without this Wolfsbane drug and without a locked door?" Dash asked, coldly.
            Sirius stood back up again and folded his arms. His gaze went back to Lupin. Harry looked into his eyes and saw all this caring.
            He supposed it was for Lupin, and not him. He even supposed dully that that shouldn't be a surprise. Sirius had known Lupin all his life, or at least since he went to Hogwarts, and he'd known Harry for a few months.
            That does not matter, Dash roared inside his head, and murmured aloud, "I am waiting for an answer to my question."
            "Snape brought over the potion as usual," Sirius whispered, still looking at Lupin. "He does always go up to meditate before he takes it. He says it makes him more relaxed and less likely to make mistakes. I think he must have fallen asleep." He cast a spell that made Dash tighten and hiss and even Harry tense, but all it did was throw a shaft of light from his wand into Lupin's room, like a more powerful Lumos. Sirius stared, then sighed and said, "Yeah. I can see the goblet of Wolfsbane still sitting in the corner. I'll make sure he takes it before he comes back to consciousness, even if I have to force it down his throat." For once, he sounded appropriately grim.
            "That does not give an answer to the riddle of the unlocked door," Dash said.
            "I don't know what happened there any more than you do," said Sirius shortly. "We'll have to ask Moony when he wakes up."
            Moony, Dash said. I should have known from that stupid nickname. I failed you as much as the rest of them, Harry. His hold loosened, and he took his head from beneath Harry's chin, rubbing against Harry's cheek instead. I am sorry.
            It isn't your fault, Harry said down the bond. He was using glamours to hide his scent. Then he looked up at Sirius and whispered, "I could have kept the secret. If you'd just told me he was a werewolf. I'm good at keeping secrets. I would have known it was dangerous. But I just thought his disease made him look ugly, and I was going to see him and tell him that it didn't matter what he looked like."
            "Harry," Sirius said, and hesitated and glanced down at his feet. The shadow-snakes had vanished. Harry hadn't even noticed them go. "That's you again, right?"
            Harry nodded and stood up. His legs were shaky, and he leaned against the wall. Dash rubbed his head against Harry's cheek again. You need to get warm, and you need to have something to drink. Tell the useless dog-man to take you down to the kitchens and get you something warming, and then come up and make sure the creature has its Wolfsbane. If he comes after you again, I will open my eyes.
            "I need to get warm, and I need something to drink," Harry recited obediently. He felt Dash coil and relax gently around his wrist, telling him that this was right, that he was going to feel better in a few minutes. Harry managed to calm down a little at that. "And then Dash thinks that you should come up and make sure--he takes his Wolfsbane." Harry didn't think he could call Lupin Professor right now, and he had never called him Remus or Moony.
            It would be hard to think of him as Moony right now. Harry started to shiver again.
            "Of course! You were probably in shock." Sirius jumped forwards and hugged him. Dash did nothing, but Harry could feel Sirius holding his breath when he realized that he'd just hugged Dash, too. "Come on, kid."
            He led Harry down the stairs. Harry glanced back once at the sleeping werewolf, but Dash said, I can call the snakes and send them up the stairs again if I have to. I told you I was the King of Serpents. They can bite even when apart me from me.
            Harry relaxed completely. Then he wondered if he should. He was relaxing because someone else was promising violence. It seemed...wrong.
            You're relaxing because someone else promised to protect you. The way they always should have. The way they all should have. It shouldn't all be left up to one small basilisk.
            I know, Harry whispered, and rested his chin on Dash's scales as Sirius led him down the stairs. It's not fair to you.
            Or to you, and Dash sounded strangely intense when he was speaking the words, the way he had when he argued with Harry in Snape's office. You know that, right?
            Yes, I do now, Harry thought. But it made him wonder, if Sirius wasn't doing his job of protecting Harry, what he could do next, and whether Harry should trust him.
            Don't trust him. But trust me, and I'll protect you while you're here. And maybe someday, he can make it clear why he wanted to have you around if his best friend meant so much more to him. That's a question I'd like to ask.
            Harry rubbed Dash's head and said nothing while Sirius bustled around the kitchen getting a cup of hot tea ready and filling it with sugar and lemon and cream until it seemed that it would probably mostly be sweet things. Maybe he would let Dash use his voice to ask the question someday, but not right now. Right now, he wanted to sit there and drink the tea and listen to Sirius creak back up the stairs to see about Lupin and the Wolfsbane.
            And forget that he had almost died tonight. Again.
*
            Severus would have to be blind not to notice the change in Harry when he came back from the mutt's house. His face was still white, and he responded to the jokes and gibes of his friends with only the ghost of a smile.
            And one hand was always touching the basilisk, even in Potions when he had to use the other hand for stirring the cauldron or chopping ingredients or taking notes. He kept a death grip on the creature's tail if nothing else, and sometimes he leaned his head sideways and rested his cheek on the serpent's scales.
            The signs of weakness made Severus nervous, but he had to admit there would be fewer consequences to it this year. Draco was no longer someone who tried to notice Harry's every weakness and point it out to the other Slytherins, and the rest of the school finally seemed to have decided that the fun of "gawking and whispering about Harry Potter" was less important than the pain of "having a giant serpent angry at you." So Severus thought it had passed unnoticed for most people other than him.
            He held Harry after class, and Harry only gave him a weary glance from glazed eyes and nodded. Severus held back the impulse to immediately find Black and curse him, and shooed Harry's friends out before he turned to him. Harry still had a hand on the bloody basilisk, stroking down his neck as if the snake was the one who needed the soothing.
            And he held still for a moment before he responded to Severus's obvious, unspoken question, as if he was asking the bloody basilisk whether it was a good idea for him to do so.
            "Something happened over the weekend," he said. Still dully. He rubbed the basilisk with both hands this time and looked at the floor. "And I s'pose I can tell you about it because Sirius said you already know."
            Severus held onto his patience with both hands. "Know what?" he asked.
            "Know that Professor Lupin is a werewolf."
            A chill calm settled over Severus. He thought, carefully, how much distance there was between him and the nearest vial of poison, and which one would cause the least disturbance to the Wolfsbane should he add that to the liquid. He had a plan in mind in seconds, if Lupin had hurt Harry.
            "No, he didn't bite me," said Harry, who must have been watching him more closely than Severus had thought. He glanced at the basilisk, who opened his own mouth in what might have been a yawn, but Severus had watched him closely before this and knew better. "Dash bit him before he could."
            "He should not have been without the Wolfsbane," said Severus, and put aside thoughts of the poison for now. At least, a fatal poison. One that rendered Lupin mildly uncomfortable the day afterwards and required to stay close to a loo was still possible. "Or in a place that you could reach him."
            Harry shut his eyes. "They told me Lupin had a skin disease that he was embarrassed to discuss with anyone else. I wanted to show him that I was fine with it. Sirius said that he must have fallen asleep while he was meditating and forgotten to take the Wolfsbane."
            "And to lock his door, of course," Severus muttered, thoroughly disgusted. He had told the Headmaster that a werewolf was not safe to be around children, but Dumbledore was more infatuated with the Marauders now than he had been during their school years. He had passed some evenings at the Head Table talking of the great injustices they had suffered, Black in prison and Lupin hounded from job to job.
            And this is why.
            "I don't know if wolves can lock doors," said Harry, his head still down, his hand constantly caressing the basilisk's scales. The basilisk nudged him in the ribs, and he looked up at Severus. "I mean, Dash says I shouldn't try to excuse him."
            Severus nodded. "You should not." He experienced a brief spasm of regret that he and the basilisk could not communicate more directly. He was sure they would find even more to agree on than they did now.
            "But...I don't understand it." Harry was huddled around Dash, and if no one else had seen this, they were even more moronic than Severus had thought them. "They could have just told me Lupin was a werewolf. Then I wouldn't have pried. But Sirius was still going on and on about how it was Lupin's secret and he just can't bear to have it exposed even a couple hours afterwards."
            There was an anger in Severus that he was not ready to examine, which was more than his customary grudge against Black. He tried to bury it by asking, "And what did Lupin say?"
            "I don't know." Harry's voice was tinier than Severus had ever heard it. "He was gone the next morning before I woke up."
            Severus leaned forwards. "What has he said since you have been back at school?" Lupin could not easily have avoided Harry there. He would have to have spoken.
            "He just calls on me to answer questions, in class." Harry was staring at Severus's boots as if they were the most interesting thing in the world. "He doesn't answer mine."
            Severus reached out, slowly, the way he would if he was trying to creep up on a magical creature whose willingly donated hair or feathers he needed, and slowly cupped Harry's chin. Harry didn't immediately raise his head, but the basilisk lodged his head beneath Severus's hand, and Harry had to look up then.
            His eyes were too big and glossy, not in tears yet, but in the state that could so easily become them.
            "Why didn't they tell me?" Harry whispered. "Why is it so important for Lupin to keep his secrets and not talk to me?"
            Severus had many answers for that, but...
            Be too bitter, and you will lose him forever.
            "They have been like that since they were young," he murmured instead, while wondering when his relationship with James Potter's son had become so important to preserve at all costs. "They had secrets when they were young, some of the same ones. And I do not think they have changed. Black went to Azkaban for twelve years. He has not grown up."
            He paused, but Harry was listening to his words, absorbing them, while the basilisk was giving him one of those complicated looks that were hard to judge. Harry whispered, "What about Lupin? What excuse does he have?"
            None.
            That was what Severus wanted to say, but again he restrained himself. He said carefully, "I think that Lupin is obsessed with his own secret. He has been rejected from jobs and homes for it. He cannot comprehend that someone is willing to offer him a fair chance, even if they know what he is."
            "So it didn't matter who it was? He wouldn't have trusted them?" For some reason, Harry's face was lightening.
            After a moment's search of his own mind, Severus discovered the reason, one he should have thought about before now. Even when he was brave enough to do something like say he would speak about his abuse, Harry didn't want to stand out from others. He wanted to be treated the same as they were. Suggesting that Lupin might have refused his confidence to Harry because of who he was would devastate him.
            But if he was only one of the many mistrusted ones, then Harry could accept that.
            Even if he should not have to, Severus thought viciously, and responded to Harry, "That's right. I must admit, I had thought he would make an exception for the son of his best friend."
            "It's all right that he didn't," said Harry, and stared at his feet again. But his breathing was calmer, and the glossy sheen had faded from his eyes.
            Severus grimaced, now that Harry was no longer looking at him. He could see why this would soothe Harry, but the fact remained that he should not have had to accept such treatment, that he should be able to demand better, and Lupin and Black should have given him better.
            "Do you think I should talk to Professor Lupin again, then?" Harry asked, and his voice was soft and anxious, hoping for one sort of advice. "If he doesn't mean to be angry at me."
            He has no right to be angry.
            Severus only inclined his head. "I cannot predict what he will say. But yes, I believe that would be productive."
            Even if it would allow Lupin to get away with this bloody secrecy for a little while longer. Even if it would encourage him to believe he had been in the right. Harry would need support when the news of his abuse went public, and although Severus planned to be the majority of that support, it would help if Lupin and Black were solidly behind Harry.
            And it was becoming too obvious that they would only be so if their image of Harry matched the reality. Severus could only hope that when Harry was more adult, he would find the courage to question that kind of conditional support and break away if he wished to. But for now, it was better that he manipulate them, unknowingly, with guilt if he could.
            "Thanks, Professor Snape." Harry said it in a rush, and looked towards the door of the classroom. "Can I go? Defense is next."
            Reluctant though he was to send Harry back to associate with those who would place their own needs above his, Severus nodded. He had to work within constraints himself, this time those of the school. He could take no responsibility for Harry. It would be too strange for too many, limit his effectiveness if the Dark Lord returned, and have no legal basis.
            That he even wanted to was an astonishing revelation to him. But for now, he would simply live with that revelation instead of trying to pursue it.
            "Thanks," said Harry, and flashed him a smile that made Severus go breathless before he ran out of the room, supporting the basilisk with an arm around its neck.
            Severus leaned against the wall for a moment with his eyes closed. He could do nothing more for now. He had done something that would have--he hoped--impressed Lily with its generosity.
            Well. Nothing more is a lie.
            He straightened, and went to find certain potions that would be untraceable to him and easy to slip into Black and Lupin's food.
*
            ChaosLady: Thank you!
            staar: It isn't, but at least Snape can help Harry be more comfortable with it.
            eros: Thank you!
            Meechypoo: Bad enough that Harry no longer relies emotionally primarily on them, although he might not put it that way himself. His primary emotional relationship right now is with Dash.
            SP777: Sirius has explained the truth, I think, unflattering to him and Remus though it might be.
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A Brother to Basilisks