Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 22
- 23
- 24
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Three—Saved by the Strangling Coil

            Harry could feel the shredding process beginning, the way that his soul tore loose from its roots. His bones extended in new directions and snapped, and the red embers in the sighthound’s eyes came closer and closer, reaching out and shaking, shattering and tearing, locating what he would have most wanted to keep safe and scooping them out…

            Brother!

            Harry found that awareness of that voice had not deserted him. It was the white serpent, and he still danced and sang and hissed and urged Harry to move and look away from the sighthound. The torrent of Parseltongue words poured past Harry’s ears, or whatever he truly used to hear them, and Harry knew he should respond.

            But the sighthound was closer, those silver legs ending in stone claws on the floor, and the fire was burning. Harry leaned closer, hands heavy on his knees, to give the sighthound a better look at him.

            Something squealed. Something whipped. Something lashed.

            And Harry was squirming on the floor, his spine longer than it had been, his neck flexible, his fangs extending from his upper jaw despite the immense strength of his coils, transformed into a snake deadlier than the anaconda form he usually assumed, and he was more than squirming, he was angry.

            He lunged forwards. His fangs turned for a moment on the dog’s silver legs, but then found the vulnerable flesh above that, and sank home. The sighthound squealed and tried to run. Harry hung on, flinging one coil of his body around its back and bearing down until he heard the bones snapping the way the connections of his soul had done, and pumped all the venom down his fangs that he could.

            The dog flopped and screamed. Its voice was higher and shriller than a human’s. Harry thought so, anyway, because in this form he could more feel sounds than hear them. He leaned in and changed his venom, to something longer-lasting and worse. The sighthound’s veins bulged, turned black, and erupted from its body, sending stream after stream of thick, soapy dark liquid to the floor.

            The poison had reached deep enough by now to touch the heart, which Harry felt as a gong against the side of his head, the part of him that rested on the sighthound’s chest. The creature began to thrash again, though, and Harry knew the poison had not yet succeeded. He was tired of being held up by one enemy, and struck again, placing and planting the poison, watching as the ember-eyes widened. The sighthound’s tongue hung out. It kicked once with stiff legs, and then the neck collapsed sideways and it lay there like that, injured, poisoned, dead.

            Harry pulled himself away with a hiss and turned his head. The white serpent waited for him in a corner of the corridor, bowing his neck when Harry looked at him.

            I am glad that you survived, brother, with no more than a slight tear to your soul, he said, and slid forwards to wrap around Harry exactly as he did when Harry was a human, although in this form, his tail lay on the coils instead of twining all the way around.

            I don’t know how I survived without worse damage, Harry said, his tongue flickering out. He caught the scents of mice behind him, and Parkinson, and Draco, whose scent was flooded and flecked with Dark magic and coolness. He began to slither in that direction, leaving the broken corpse of the sighthound behind him. The corridor had gone still again, as though the Unspeakables’ defense had been broken by the weight of his body on it. I was looking the sighthound in the eye by the time I shifted.

            For long moments, the white serpent was silent, scales rubbing against scales as Harry advanced towards the smells of his companions. Then he said, I think it has to do with you no longer being entirely human. These sighthounds, if I understand them aright from your mind, were made to feed on human personalities and souls.

            I thought I was still human. Capable of changing form, but no more than that. Harry flicked out his tongue so hard that he felt it catch and tear a little on the point of a fang. He lowered his head to the floor and felt the cool texture of the stone on his scales for long moments, trying to calm down. A human with Dark magic.

            The white serpent stayed silent again, until Harry had reached the corner that he knew Parkinson was hiding behind. Then he said, I think that you are less human than you believed. With greater gifts. And you changed when the sighthound’s hold on you became powerful enough, which suggests that you were flowing into a snake in the middle of the pain. Perhaps you are human some of the time, and serpentine the rest.

            Harry flicked his tongue out in response, and then changed back, grimacing as he felt his spine ache and then snap back into place with the vanishing of his tail. Parkinson wouldn’t be happy.

            Draco won’t care.

            That could have been the voice of his thoughts or the white serpent. At the moment, it comforted Harry no matter what it was. He pushed off from the floor, stumbled, caught himself on the wall, shook his head to try and accustom himself to hearing sounds again, and then rounded the corner.

            Parkinson had her wand aimed at him, but it shook. Draco stood beyond her with his arms folded and his large eyes fixed on Harry. Harry spoke to him, so that he didn’t have to think about the expression on Parkinson’s face. “I saw the sighthound, and it started to tear me apart with its eyes. But I changed into an anaconda in the middle of it, and poisoned it. I don’t think the Unspeakables have another one. They usually hunt in packs, and it would have rushed out and joined the other one when it saw me poisoning it.”

            “How could you poison it?” Parkinson sounded as if she would break and run. “You don’t have fangs in that form.”

            “This time, I did,” Harry said, glancing at her. “I think my magic knew what I would need, and granted that gift to me.”

            Parkinson shut her eyes. Her face had gone so still that Harry would have said she was meditating, or practicing Occlumency, except he could also make out the rapid rise and fall of her chest. She lowered her wand, but it took a physical effort, as though she was pushing against air.

            “If the sighthound is dead, then we can venture down the corridor, I think,” Draco said. “In a group this time, and without the speed that you tried.” He eyed Harry. “You should realize by now that you’ll be safer in company.”

            “I don’t know that,” Harry said. He might as well be blunt if he was going to actually rescue Ron and Hermione, not get into trouble or go into battle with a threat at his back. “I want to know why Parkinson hates shapeshifters, and I want to know now. Is she going to suddenly curse me instead of our enemies? I want to know.”

            Draco looked at Parkinson. She stood there with her head bowed and her breath coming in and out in slow, large puffs. She waved a hand without looking up. “You might as well tell him,” she said. “I’ll need to take a few minutes to get back to myself and the point where I can fight beside him without wanting to kill him.”

            Harry faced Draco with his arms folded. This ought to be good. He had fought beside people he hated before, and he had never tried to kill them. If Parkinson prided herself so much on being Slytherin and more practical than the stubbornly Gryffindor Harry, she ought to have been able to do the same thing.

            The white serpent hissed agreement on his shoulder.

*

            Draco sighed. He could wish that Harry had not asked now; he could wish that Pansy had explained before now. But wishes would not change reality. He had learned that the year that he cowered against walls of one sort or another—classroom walls, walls in the Manor—and wished for some means to stop the torture and the pain in front of him. Only action helped.

            “All right,” he said. “A werewolf tortured Pansy.”

            “If it was only that, I could get over it,” Pansy said, her voice slight and sharp and small, like a glass dagger.

            Draco looked at her in silence, wondering if she wanted to tell her own story after all. But she waited, and then flapped her hand a moment later, silently giving Draco permission to do it for her.

            Draco nodded, and turned to face Harry. “She was investigating where one particular Dark path went. It opened into the lair of some werewolves who had managed to keep away from wizards and thus from the registration and the automatic kill-on-sight policy that the Ministry adopted some years back. One of them recognized her for what she was and—held her there. He threatened to bite her, but never did. In the end, she managed to escape.”

            “That doesn’t explain what it was like,” Pansy whispered.

            Harry turned to face Pansy. “Then you tell me,” he said, his voice less loud and offensive than Draco would have expected from him when he was urging Pansy to do something that was so much against her inclinations. “You’re the only one who can give me the real perspective, I think.”

            Pansy lifted her head and studied Harry for long enough that Draco thought she was starting to emerge from the fear and see him as an individual, as she had done before Harry shifted. Then she nodded.

            “He threatened to bite me, kill me, turn me, rape me, eat me.” Pansy’s voice was flat, but Draco could hear the resonances underneath the surface, and hoped that Harry could, too. “For hours. He kept me there, caging me with his claws, and whispered the words. The rest of his people were asleep, or away, or they didn’t care what he did with me. He told me that if I moved at all, he’d have me. So I stood there, and my legs trembled, and my eyes blinked, and each time he made a move like he would bite me or cut me. And he turned his eyes to wolf eyes, and his fingernails to wolf claws, and he showed me his teeth. He was very good at only changing parts of his body. The mingling of human and animal features is what scared me about you, and disgusted me.”

            “But you managed to get away in the end,” Harry said, looking at Pansy’s hands as if he expected to see fur sprouting on the back of them.

            “Only you, Potter, would minimize my suffering like that because it wasn’t exactly the same as your own,” Pansy said. Draco could hear the savage recoil in her tone, and knew she hadn’t expected Harry’s disapproval, not really.

            “I didn’t mean it like that,” Harry said, jerking his eyes back up, and taking a step forwards as if he would touch her. Draco got hastily between them, because he didn’t think that was a good idea right now.

            “Then enlighten me.” Pansy laid her wand along her arm and aimed it casually at a corner of the room. Draco wondered if Harry realized the angle; this way, the spell or whatever else she used could reflect off the stone and hit him. The white serpent, at least, recognized that, from his deadly stillness. “What could you say that would make it better?”

            “I only mean that you did escape in the end,” Harry whispered. “That he didn’t hurt you. That you did triumph.”

            “He didn’t hurt me,” Pansy said, and her teeth would have done credit to a werewolf after all.

            “I mean,” Harry said, and looked so totally wretched that Draco wondered how anyone could consider him a powerful and evil Dark Lord, “physically.” He rubbed a hand over his face, and then dropped it and gave Pansy the sort of embarrassed smile that Draco had seen him wear in Hogwarts. “Sorry. I’m not good at this.”

            Pansy spent a few seconds watching him, and then sniffed. “No. You’re not.” She turned to look down the corridor. “Anyway. That’s why I hate shapeshifters. I did escape without becoming one, but if you think that experience wasn’t enough to prejudice me against them—”

            Harry opened his eyes and mouth and then shut them quickly. Draco approved. If he had been about to tell her her prejudice was wrong, now was not the time. And if he hadn’t been, it probably would have been something else as clueless and wrong at the present moment.

            “We need to rescue Ron and Hermione, sighthounds and spinning corridors or not,” Harry said, and turned to Draco. “Do you have a plan?”

            “I do,” Draco said lightly, which made Pansy glare at him. Draco shrugged back at her. Just because she had concentrated on her own argument with Harry and her own magic was no reason to be surprised when he could make a contribution.

            “What is it?”

            How good is it to have Harry watching me like that, waiting for my help? Draco thought, and had to fight to keep from closing his eyes as pleasure flooded his body. Keeping his gaze locked on Harry’s face, he reached into his robes and removed a smooth, flat mirror.

            Harry blinked, but said, “Mirrors got us into trouble here once before. Are you sure this one will work?”

            Draco nodded and decided to show them, instead of wasting time explaining. He crouched down and held the mirror out in front of him, tilting it so that it reflected a section of the corridor and the office doorframe, but not the whole thing.

            Immediately, the reflection bulged and rippled, and a dark creature started to life out of it, a creature with slender legs and a long neck like the neck of a greyhound in silhouette. It turned back and forth, and then the dark creature raced forwards to the point in the corridor that the mirror reflected. It halted and turned its head to look back at them.

            “Draco.” Pansy’s voice had a keenly controlled edge that made Draco wince a little, but, well, he had invited this when he didn’t tell them about his weapon, and it was more than enough to see the surprise and gratification on Harry’s face, or should be for any reasonable Dark wizard. “What is that thing?”

            “Something that can guide us,” Draco said. “It will disarm any traps that the Unspeakables have laid, as long as I reflect its route with this.” He waved the mirror back and forth, and the creature scuttled up the walls as the new reflections came into view, checking them and then freezing again. “I should have used it in the first place, but I wanted to let you check, and then, well, Harry charged.”

            Harry flushed, and nodded. “Well, let’s use it now. I hate to think of what Ron and Hermione are suffering.”

            Draco reminded himself that Harry would probably feel just as bad for Draco if he was the one captured and suffering, and then reminded himself that he would have never been so stupid as to let the Unspeakables capture him in the first place. So he need feel no jealousy of Weasley and Granger.

            Jealous of Weasley and Granger. There’s a thought I believed I would never think.

            He went forwards at a crouch, aiming the mirror down the corridor, and as each new reflection came into being, the slender creature sprang forwards, aiming at new walls and doors and waving its legs over them. Now and then a ward that Harry must have bypassed struck out and sparked or snapped on its legs, and once the greyhound-like jaws snapped and severed one. Draco smiled. My magic is still the best magic.

            Harry touched him once on the back as they followed, in a way that seemed to say he agreed with Draco. Draco shook his head, smiled, and kept his eyes focused forwards so that his pride wouldn’t distract him.

            Which was why he saw the way the shadows moved and boiled off to the side, and how a figure in a grey robe came clattering towards them as if moving on wheels.

            “Down, now,” Draco said calmly, aiming the mirror directly at the figure. He had no doubt that his creature could take care of it, but it would be messy, and he didn’t want Harry complaining about his snakes or Pansy about her face and hair.

            The creature ran towards the Unspeakable, whose wand was moving up and down, his lips lagging behind in the incantation. Draco didn’t know what he had seen first, Draco’s creature or the way he was bent over the mirror, but either way, it seemed to stun him, and his weapon faltered.

            Then the creature reached him.

            It sprang, legs locking on his shoulders, jaws clamping down so that the slender head nestled under the Unspeakable’s chin. Then its body flexed and snapped backwards like one of Harry’s snakes, and the next moment, flesh and blood were flying. Draco ducked in spite of himself, and turned the mirror; he didn’t know exactly what would happen if the flying gore landed on the glass, but this was a time that he was willing to give up knowledge for the sake of survival.

            The Unspeakable’s head dropped to his chest in the next instant, and the slender creature rocked to the ground and stood there balancing for a few seconds. Then it began to lope down the corridor. Draco licked his lips and moved past the bloody mess that had been the defender, knowing Harry and Pansy were still behind him. Harry, he thought, wouldn’t abandon him no matter what, and Pansy could accept magic as violent as Harry’s provided that it didn’t come along with actual shapeshifting.

            They were going to find Harry’s friends and make the Unspeakables pay. Draco loved it when a plan functioned the way it was supposed to.

*

            Harry wondered what the hell he and Parkinson would have done without Draco.

            Well. He probably wouldn’t be here, honestly; he would be searching Ron’s Place and wondering where the Ministry had taken his friends, or he would be in St. Mungo’s still crawling with snakes, or he would be dead. And Parkinson would be sitting at home undisturbed.

            This was the result of Draco finding out what they needed to know, setting up payments with his contacts and friends, and binding Harry and Parkinson together as allies. Harry wasn’t going to forget what he owed him.

            Even if I don’t have money to pay him back, there are other things I can do.

            Harry became aware that he was moving more solidly, as though he had a weight in his belly to balance him. He smiled and continued watching the corridor ahead. It didn’t branch yet, and the doors on either side of them stayed in the same place, to his relief. He didn’t want to have to cope with the revolving floor again.

            Then they did come to a fork, and Parkinson immediately stepped up beside Draco, nodding to get his attention. “This is where they are,” she whispered. “The two different places behind the wards that I sensed before.”

            Draco nodded to her, his face impassive, and then bent down and held the mirror so that it reflected the fork. The spider-hound scurried up the right corridor, halting in a moment and reaching out to pluck the air as if it was a web.

            “Ward,” Draco whispered, eyes half-closed when Harry looked at him. “A powerful one. I think this one will cost us to break.” He reached towards his collar, moving his hand slowly, as though the strength of the magic he meant to fetch out was reflected in the gesture he used to make it.

            “Oh, honestly, Draco, I can handle this one,” Parkinson said, and stepped forwards. Her hands held two keys each, Harry saw, all but one golden. The exception was a dark blue key that looked as if it was made of cobalt. Parkinson sketched it back and forth, muttering under her breath, and then looked up.

            Her face had gone pale. Harry immediately curled his hands around the white serpent and moved towards Draco.

            “This will more than cost us to break,” Parkinson whispered. “The ward is set up to hurt whoever’s behind it when it goes off.”

            “So, Harry’s friends,” Draco said, and tilted the mirror so that his creature had to scuttle up on the wall. Harry imagined that he could feel the cut-out eyes watching them in disgust. That he should hesitate to break the ward because of harm to something behind it would make no sense to the creature, Harry suspected.

            “Yes,” Parkinson said, and moved out of the way to let Harry in.

            Harry rested his hands on the air and tried to feel the ward, although he could have solved the problem already if he could do that. Then he turned abruptly to Parkinson. He knew his eyes were too wide and his breath came too fast, but he wasn’t going to apologize for that, not when it was Ron and Hermione on the line. “Do you know—”

            “I can’t tell you anything about what’s beyond the wards,” Parkinson said flatly, shaking her head. “I already mentioned that. Sorry, but it’s still true. Your friend Weasley could be there, or Granger, and there could be other wards that are tied to them and will hurt them if we break them. But I can’t tell. Sorry.”

            Harry closed his eyes and waited for a moment. Yes, he did believe that she was sorry, as he wouldn’t have before she told him about the origins of her fear of shapeshifters.

            But that didn’t solve the problem of how to rescue Ron and Hermione.

            Brother, said the white serpent, curling close and surrounding Harry’s ear with a curve of wet tongue. We can go under and through, perhaps.

            You and me, or you and the other snakes? Harry asked, opening his eyes and turning his head. He could see Parkinson shuddering from the corner of his eye at the sound of the Parseltongue, and Draco pressing close with his face pale and fascinated. Harry had to ignore both reactions, though, because what his snake was saying was more important.

            The other snakes and I, said the white serpent, as prim as McGonagall correcting Harry’s grammar. His tongue darted out again. There are subtle gaps in the wards, ones that were left because they believed that no creature could come through them. But snakes are long and slender, and can go through.

            Harry hesitated. Then he said, The Unspeakables know about us now, or at least they know that we’re the ones who broke into the Department of Mysteries the last time. Wouldn’t they have set traps for snakes?

            The white serpent stuck his tongue out again as though touching the subtle currents of scent circulating through the air, the ones Harry couldn’t sense unless he borrowed the snakes’ tongues. Then he twitched his neck back and forth. I don’t sense other traps. I think we can make it.

            Harry swallowed and nodded, and explained the plan to Parkinson and Draco. Draco’s face didn’t change, although he reached out and let his hand hover above the white serpent’s neck, just at the place where it blended into his body. Parkinson bobbed her head sharply once and said, “If they can do it, let them do it. I know that I can’t.”

            Harry crouched down and closed his eyes, summoning the toughest snakes he could imagine, armored almost like lizards along the back, with dense scales and tough fins of skin and leather. They crawled around him when he opened his eyes, sand-colored and black, with darting tongues and glowing fangs.

            You won’t imagine extra protection for me? The white serpent arched up to touch him on the nose with his cheek.

            I know you don’t need it, Harry said, and let his hand smooth up and down his back.

            The white serpent tickled his ear with his tongue again, and then slid towards the wards. Behind him came the other snakes, which Draco could see, or barely see, from the way he squinted.

            Harry stepped back as they went through the wards, and waited, and hoped.

*

            disgruntledfairy: Thank you! Pleased that you’re enjoying both the sex and the adventure. ;)

            polka dot: Not as much as Pansy wishes he had changed, certainly.

            SP777: Hopefully her explanation was sufficiently convincing as to why.

            Talltree-san: Yes, Although not for a reason he really enjoys.

            Seiren: Thank you!
- 22
- 23
- 24
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Deconversion