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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-Three—Certain Things Explained
            “So, what the hell happened the last time you were home?”
            Draco knew that using words like that, so different from his usual language, would at least get Harry to pay attention. And it had. Harry turned around and gaped at him a little, then raised his fists and rubbed at his eyes.
            “I—something that really hurt,” Harry said, looking as startled as Draco that he was responding.
            Draco leaned back against the library bookshelf and folded his arms. They were in the middle of a research project on basilisks. Or, rather, Draco was, and Harry had let himself be dragged along to the library, because Harry was letting himself be dragged everywhere these days. He barely seemed to notice when Draco grabbed his arm, though he would have protested violently before.
            No, the one Draco kept his eye on for protests was Dash. But he had only given Draco a glance, and then returned to his slumber around Harry’s neck.
            “Then tell me about it,” Draco urged softly. “Or is that something that Gryffindor friends don’t do for each other, but Slytherin friends do?”
            “Sympathize?” Harry was trying to hold onto his smile when his face was that pale and Dash was butting up against his hand. Draco counted the seconds, and hadn’t even reached three when, sure enough, the smile disappeared. “Of course they sympathize with me.”
            “But they haven’t noticed the way you look, have they?” Draco lounged closer against the bookshelves. “Come on, Harry,” he added, when Harry opened his mouth to defend himself. “I know they haven’t, or we would have heard something about it before now.”
            Harry shut his eyes. Dash was wound all down his arm now, and he seemed to be holding Harry back from doing something drastic. Draco winced. He still wanted to know, but he wondered if what had happened was even worse than he thought.
            Probably. Everything about Harry sometimes seemed worse than he thought, from the way Harry had reacted to his initial attempts at friendship, to the fact that he couldn’t help Draco get a basilisk or teach him Parseltongue.
            But Draco was trying to move past that. Harry looked really bad. And Draco felt a little smug that he had noticed but other people hadn’t. So he said as gently as he could, “Come on. Tell me?”
            “All right,” said Harry dully. “But you can’t tell anyone else, all right? Because part of it isn’t my secret, and I shouldn’t have pried, and that means if someone starts spreading it around—”
            He stopped. Draco looked up, then looked down at his hand, where Harry was also staring. Dash was wrapped about Harry’s wrist and gently squeezing. Or it looked gentle, anyway, but it must have hurt, because Harry winced and tried to yank his hand away, hissing—in English—“Dash, what are you doing?”
            Dash looked up at Harry. Of course Draco couldn’t hear what he said, and he wouldn’t have been able to understand it if it was aloud, anyway, but he would wager he knew.
            “It doesn’t matter whose secrets you found out,” he said. “Right? Dash still thinks that you don’t have anything to apologize for, and he wants you to stop.” Draco sniffed. “I can see why. You can’t have anything to apologize for when you look like that.” He leaned near, and Harry looked desperately up at him.
            Merlin. Harry looked like—like he wanted to die.
            “Listen,” said Harry, and he sounded as though he was whispering to a lot more people than just Draco. Maybe Dash, then, Draco thought, and told himself to stop being jealous. How could he be jealous of Dash? Of Harry for having Dash, maybe, but not a basilisk himself. “I found out that—that Professor Lupin is a werewolf.”
            Draco felt his eyes widening, and widening. “Impossible. My father!”
            “I don’t know what your father has to do with it.” Harry buried his head in his arms, and Draco sat down beside him so he could go on listening. “He’s always taken this Wolfsbane potion and locked himself away somewhere on the full moon, I reckon. But this time, he didn’t lock the room in Sirius’s house where he was, and he fell asleep and forgot to take his Wolfsbane potion.”
            “Fuck,” Draco breathed, wincing a second later. His father would never forgive him if he could hear Draco using language that vulgar, but it was the first word that came to mind as Draco looked in sick fascination at Harry’s arms and legs, wondering where the bite was.
            “He didn’t bite me,” said Harry, looking up and catching Draco’s gaze. “Dash bit him first, and his poison is diluted, so it put Lupin to sleep but didn’t kill him. And then Sirius came back, and he got upset because Dash is dangerous.”
            “So he has a pet werewolf,” said Draco. “And he was upset because he cares more about the pet werewolf than you.”
            It wasn’t until Harry went white that Draco wondered if he should have put it like that. But Dash gave a hiss that honestly sounded as if it agreed, and Harry swallowed a little and clenched a fist, staring down at it. Then he shook his head.
            “That’s what it seems like. But why would Sirius want me to live with him and give me a room and everything if he was just going to kick me out the minute Lupin was in danger?” Harry dragged in a painful breath. “I just wish he’d told me. And Dash wishes more than that, but I can’t let him hurt Sirius or Lupin.” He put a hand on Dash’s neck.
            “I’ll help,” Draco told Dash, knowing perfectly well that Dash would at least understand him from hearing the words through Harry’s ears. “How dare they.”
            “Draco.” Draco looked up. Harry was staring at him, shaking his head a little. “Listen. You don’t need to do anything. It’s—they explained, and Lupin forgot and fell asleep. It was horrible seeing him coming at me, but—it’s not like they did it on purpose.”
            “That doesn’t matter.” Draco smiled at Harry, and Harry blinked. Draco supposed that Harry had never seen him smile when he was furious before. It was, to be fair, not the expression Draco usually wore when yelling insults at Harry. “They let a monster endanger you. They should never have done anything like have a werewolf in a house without letting people take proper precautions. And now I can do something to them.”
            “What can you do?” Harry blinked at him. “No offense, but I think they both know more spells than you. They’re adults.”
            “I can go to my father and get Lupin sacked,” said Draco smugly. “They might not like him very much right now, but the Board of Governors will have to listen if we prove there’s a werewolf at the school!”
            “Don’t do that!”
            Draco blinked and leaned back. He was having a hard time keeping up with Harry’s mood swings, he thought. Now Harry was on his feet and pointing one trembling finger at Draco. Dash had reared up and was mostly on the ground, his body wrapped around Harry’s leg but his head swaying back and forth between them. Draco was sure he understood what was at stake here. He just didn’t know why Dash was so hesitant. Didn’t he want to protect Harry?
            “Why not?” Draco asked. “Lupin proved that he didn’t really care about you when he failed to take the bloody Wolfsbane!” Swearing was kind of fun. Maybe Draco would have to do it more often, although not in the hearing of his father. “You should lose him his job. He shouldn’t teach at a school if he’s going to be that careless!”
            “He wasn’t at the school, though.” Harry’s arms were folded so tight that Draco thought he was hurting his shoulders. Then Harry shifted his stance a little and winced, and Draco was sure of it. “He was at Sirius’s house. I think he was going there every full moon since Sirius got freed. I just never knew what it was for.”
            “I don’t care,” Draco snapped, irritated. “Unless you think that makes it better because he could only hurt you, or something.”
            “Yes, of course that makes it better,” said Harry, staring at Draco. “It’s better to have one person in danger than a whole bunch of them.”
            Draco jumped to his feet and waved his arms. Great, he thought in one corner of his brain, now Harry’s making me just as bad as he is. “But you wouldn’t feel that way if it was me, right? Or Weasley, or Granger?” He managed to keep from sneering when he talked about Harry’s friends. Really, he thought Harry ought to be proud of him.
            “Of course I wouldn’t.” Harry looked a little stunned, his eyes wide, one hand lifted as if he was going to fend off what Draco was saying.
            “Then get Dash to explain that I don’t feel any differently when it’s you.” Draco tapped his foot on the floor.
            There was a long, silent moment—silent for Draco, at least—when Draco hoped that Dash was doing just that. Then Harry sighed and said, “Listen, Draco. Don’t do that. Maybe—maybe it won’t ever matter. I don’t think Lupin will ever forget his Wolfsbane again. Sirius said he was shocked about what happened.”
            “He didn’t apologize?” Draco was going to accept, for the moment, that werewolves were something more than deadly dangerous beasts who should be put down at once and kept away from normal wizarding society, because Harry wouldn’t listen to him if he tried to talk about that. But he was horrified by the notion that Lupin wouldn’t apologize to someone who didn’t believe werewolves were deadly dangerous beasts who should be put down at once and kept away from normal wizarding society.
            It would be like Mudbloods getting upset at somebody who defended them from pure-bloods. It was just wrong.
            “No,” said Harry in a harsh croak, and then he faced Draco. “Look, drop it. This is why I didn’t tell anyone.”
            “No, you didn’t tell anyone because you have no common sense,” Draco said, and his voice only rose a little on those last words. He was glad they were in an isolated corner of the library. Otherwise, Madam Pince probably already would have thrown them out for yelling. “You need to get Lupin sacked! Or out of the house!”
            Harry closed his eyes. Then he said, “Look, Draco. Sirius didn’t tell me about it, and he must have had his reasons. I don’t think Lupin has anywhere else to go. I don’t—I don’t want anyone to lose their homes because of me. Okay?”
            Draco opened his mouth to say something else, something scathing, and then paused. He suddenly knew, he was sure, what Harry was really afraid of, but he wouldn’t say that, either.
            Harry was afraid that his godfather might choose Lupin over him, and kick Harry out.
            Draco knew it as though someone had branded the words on his forehead. It wasn’t the kind of insight that he’d expected to have, but there it was.
            And he had to decide what to do with it.
            He swallowed, and decided he would keep it secret. Harry hadn’t said it aloud. He would deny it if Draco tried to convince him of it. Or he would run away, and Draco hadn’t put all these weeks of effort into becoming Harry’s friend for nothing.
            So. Even though, as far as Draco was concerned, Black had already chosen Lupin over Harry, Draco would have to stay quiet for now, because Harry needed time to come to terms with that.
            Draco glanced at Dash and muttered, “Will you protect him from any more werewolf attacks?”
            Dash slowly extended his neck flat, then bobbed his head once. Draco relaxed. It wasn’t an absolute guarantee that Harry wouldn’t get hurt, but it was a lot better than having no one living in the house who cared about Harry’s safety.
            “I don’t want to cost anyone anything,” Harry whispered, his eyes down. “I don’t want Lupin to lose his job or his house. I don’t want Sirius to lose him.” He paused, and Draco thought he was about to add something else, but he didn’t.
            Draco nodded and patted his shoulder—not the one that Dash had twined himself back up and around—and said nothing. He would wait until Harry could accept it, if he had to.
            It was still bloody stupid, and Harry was being a pissant little martyr. But Draco supposed that was the sort of thing you had to put up with when you had friends who weren’t just with you because your father had ordered them to be.
*
            “You know why I have called you here, I think.”
            Dumbledore’s voice was as gentle as falling snow. Harry was glad of that as he sat down in the chair in front of Dumbledore’s desk, because Dash’s voice was in his head, and it was a long way from gentle.
            He’s called you here to apologize for Lupin, so Lupin won’t have to do it for himself. He’s called you here so he can go on making you feel bad when you’ve done nothing wrong. I want to bite him. I want to call the serpents on him.
            Harry laid one clenched fist on Dash’s neck and shook his head. You can’t do that, he thought back. I still want to have Sirius in my life, and you know Sirius would never let us back in the house if you bit the Headmaster. He didn’t understand the depth of the connection between Sirius and Dumbledore, honestly, but he knew it was there.
            Dash twisted around and laid his neck along Harry’s chin. You want to stay with Sirius, but you would never abandon me, would you?
            Harry tilted his head down so his cheek was against what he had to call Dash’s cheek, for lack of a better word, and said nothing. Dash had to know, from the connection thrumming through Harry’s blood, what the link between them meant. No, Harry would hate to abandon anyone else, but he would do it before he left Dash.
            “Harry?”
            Harry sat back and looked up again. Dumbledore had his hands folded on his desk, but they were clasped tightly around each other, and Harry thought he had probably been waiting for a few minutes for Harry to pay attention. He swallowed and said, “You want to apologize for Professor Lupin.”
            Dumbledore gave a long, soft sigh and looked down at his hands. “How much do you know what of what your godfather suffered when he was young, Harry?”
            The topic caught Harry off-guard. “I know he was in Azkaban,” he said. “And I know—I mean, I think his family was terrible to him. But that’s all I really know.”
            “I am glad to find that you can have compassion for him,” said Dumbledore gently. “Compassion is a rare trait in one so young. But then, you haven’t had a normal childhood.” He paused and looked at Harry.
            I would never tell you. Never, never, never. Harry felt as if he could push enough rejection at Dumbledore to shove him out of his chair on the other side of his desk, but at least Dumbledore didn’t appear to feel it. He only sat there and finally spoke again when he seemed to realize that Harry didn’t want to answer.
            “His family rejected him,” said Dumbledore quietly. “He was Sorted into Gryffindor, and his family had always been Slytherin.” He paused, but Harry had no idea what to say. Sirius hadn’t told him much about his family, and that remained true. “He had a younger brother, Regulus, whom his parents decided would take over and be made family heir in his stead. So, while Sirius had been raised thinking he would inherit everything, he found himself reduced to the status of a pensioner.”
            Harry listened, and said nothing. He thought that it was sort of like the way Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon had always reminded Harry that he was taking food out of Dudley’s mouth. But in that case, he didn’t know if he would be Regulus or Sirius.
            “His parents tortured Sirius.” Dumbledore was looking at Harry over his glasses, so gravely that Harry wanted to choke. Dash wound a small portion of his neck along Harry’s throat and into his hair, but for the moment, Dumbledore didn’t appear to notice, even though most of the time he was jumpy and nervous around Dash, and he would have noticed right away. “They used Dark curses on him. They beat him. They tried to break his spirit through compulsion spells, but he managed to resist that. And they tried to take away his friends.”
            Harry found it hard to speak. Of course that would horrify anyone, but he thought that most people wouldn’t be able to feel the horror the way he did. If the Dursleys had been wizards, or if they had known about Ron and Hermione and tried to take them away…


            He’s manipulating you, said Dash, simply, coolly. He’s explaining the similarities between you and the cowardly dog-man so that you will forgive the dog-man anything. Can you not see?
            Harry looked down, and nodded a little, and said nothing. He could see, but that didn’t diminish the fact that he was sorry for Sirius. It was still horrible for him to have to go through that. His parents still stounded like the Dursleys.
            You are not responsible for his suffering. Or for compassionating it.
            “In the end,” said Dumbledore, leaning back behind his desk and watching Harry while Harry thought of how he should respond to Dash, “Sirius gained the courage to run away. He went and stayed with a good friend of his. That friend’s family welcomed him warmly, and Sirius had a home he could never have imagined.”
            “You mean my dad’s family, right?” Harry was sure, and he thought he’d heard something about this from Sirius, before, but he wanted to ask anyway, just to see what Dumbledore would say.
            Dumbledore smiled, so warm and deep that Harry nearly smiled back before he remembered it wasn’t for him. It was for Sirius, and the way that Dumbledore said he’d had the courage to run away.
            It’s never for me, Harry thought, and looked down and stroked Dash’s small scales behind his eye again.
            “Yes,” said Dumbledore. “And he remained with James’s family, and managed to recover from his hurts. But then Azkaban, and the death of his best friend, wreaked damage again.” He hesitated, then added, “I want you to have a family and a chance to heal, too, Harry. But I ask that you be patient with Sirius. Lupin was one of the friends who comforted him when he was at Hogwarts, and although Sirius didn’t live with him, he was instrumental in giving Sirius the courage to survive. Sirius isn’t yet—experienced in dealing with you as a godson. He tried to have his godson and his old friend in the same house without considering the consequences. But truly, he didn’t mean what happened.”
            Harry braced and looked up at Dumbledore. “And what about Professor Lupin?”
            Dumbledore looked shocked. “Do you think he chose you as a deliberate victim, Harry? Of course not! If he had bitten you, I am sure he would have regretted it for the rest of his days.”
            All about their pain and their regret, Dash said, his voice as scorching as a shot of venom. He cares nothing for what you suffered.
            “No, I mean,” said Harry. “He hasn’t apologized. He hasn’t looked me in the eyes. I don’t know what he’s thinking. I think he cares more about what happened to him than what happened to me, though.”
            Dumbledore shook his head at once. “He doesn’t understand how to deal with the crushing weight of his own guilt. And what happened is a shocking thing. I have made him swear to carry a ring that will blaze with light and an alarm to wake him up in case he ever falls asleep before taking his Wolfsbane again. You don’t have to worry about that carelessness harming you, Harry.” He hesitated, then added, “I’m afraid that Professor Lupin hasn’t been treated well by the wizarding world, either. You must have patience with him.”
            I can translate that, said Dash, and his tail was a blur of motion in the corner of Harry’s eye. He wants you to remember that he could send you back to the Dursleys at any time. If you don’t have this home and be patient with the dolts that call themselves adults, then you’ll lose any home. Harry, if you listen to him and forgive them—
            You don’t know what I’m about to do, Harry whispered, and he felt Dash pause. He looked up into Dumbledore’s eyes and sighed. “I’ll try to have patience, sir, but they haven’t acted like they’re sorry. Sirius yelled at me for letting Dash bite Lupin. They acted l-like they cared more about each other than me.”
            And Harry’s fists curled, and he felt his voice tremble, because he didn’t want to, he didn’t want to, but he thought he was going to lose Sirius over this, but things couldn’t stay the same. Dash wouldn’t let them. And Harry had never really had Lupin to lose. Not if they could keep the secret from him.
            “They could have told me Professor Lupin was a werewolf,” he told the Headmaster sullenly. “Then I wouldn’t have intruded.”
            “They did several things wrong,” Dumbledore agreed softly. “I ask you again, have patience. All of you are new at this. Sirius at being a godfather, Professor Lupin at having people who will help him and love him, you at having a family. It will come more easily in time.”
            Harry sat there and let it all wash over him. He was listening to what Dumbledore said, but he was listening to other things, too. He thought about what Dumbledore had said about Sirius having an awful family, and he thought of what Snape had said about other people here having awful families.
            Well. Harry couldn’t change Professor Lupin being a bloody coward or what Sirius had suffered or what he had at the Dursleys’, but he was going to change some things for some people. He felt Dash lift his head and stare at him. Harry just mumbled a few more replies to Dumbledore, and then left the office and walked towards Snape’s office. Dumbledore seemed to think the conversation had gone well, and Harry had agreed to forgive Sirius and Lupin.
            Harry thought maybe he could forgive people, but he would have to do it later and not because the Headmaster asked him to.
            He knocked when he got to Snape’s office, and Snape opened the door and stared at him in utter silence. He had a bubbling flask of something in one hand, purple. Harry didn’t recognize it.
            He stared at Snape instead and said, “I want to know how we should tell people about my abuse. Because I’m sick of people suffering.”
            Dash curled around his neck, but said nothing. Harry just felt a deep, warm thrum from his basilisk. It wasn’t exactly like contentment. It was more—
            As though Dash admired him and didn’t know what to say next.
            Harry petted Dash’s plume and looked at Snape and also said nothing, and finally Snape nodded and stepped back from his office door. Harry took a deep breath and walked in.
            He was doing this because he didn’t want anyone else to suffer, and because he wanted people to be proud of him, and—
            Maybe because telling people about what the Dursleys had done to him, if he had to, wouldn’t hurt as much as the suffocating sensation that gripped him right now when he thought of Sirius and Lupin.
*
Severus1snape: At the moment, Harry isn’t sure he likes them, either—even though he really wants to be around them.
ChaosLady: Thank you!
starr: Yes, Harry feels that way.
Meechypoo: Harry is struggling so hard right now. He wants to forgive them, but doesn’t want to forgive them too soon at the same time. And Dash would, honestly, kill Sirius and Lupin if he thought there was the slightest chance Harry would ever get over that.
SP777: Because Sirius has legal custody of him. There’s no way he would surrender that to Snape.
ravenna: Thank you! Poor Draco. At least he’s starting to lose that obsession, a little.
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A Brother to Basilisks