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
- 23
- 24
- 25
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Twenty-Four—Tails in a Tight Spot

            Harry held his breath as he watched the snakes wriggle through the ward. For a moment, their bodies bent and rippled as if flowing underwater. Harry felt the magic of the ward reaching towards them, feeling them out, pulling and snagging and catching. He bit his lip, and winced. His fangs had grown again.

            “They’ll be all right,” Draco said.

            “You can’t know that,” Harry pointed out, and didn’t take his eyes off the snakes. The white serpent was in the lead, and had reached a point where the ward seemed to bend, gleaming, as if reflected in Draco’s mirror. He stuck out his tongue and ducked and corkscrewed his head, but the ward stayed the same. Then he tried to wriggle forwards.

            Harry winced as he felt the scream. It traveled up his arm and to the shoulder where the white serpent most frequently rested. And the scream went and on, the white serpent’s body jangling and jittering back and forth.

            I can’t stand it, Harry thought, and started to stretch one hand out into the ward.

            Draco seized his shoulder and tugged him back. “I’m not going to let you damage yourself,” he said calmly into Harry’s face, ignoring the way that Harry snapped at him with his fangs. “You can make another snake, if necessary. You can’t replace the limbs or the magic that the ward might damage.”

            “I don’t know how I made him in the first place!” Harry yelled, and turned back to the ward, ignoring Parkinson’s gestures for silence. They didn’t know who or what was in the corridor with them, but whatever it was had had plenty of time to come out and assault them by now. What was more important was rescuing his brother, the snake Harry had created, the one who called Draco “cold one,” the most distinct personality he had ever imagined.

            By the time he faced the ward again, the white snake had slid past the twisted part of the reflection. He turned his head and flickered his tongue out at Harry, lidless eyes bright and scolding. Harry found himself sitting down on his arse before he thought about it, and blinked and smiled tentatively back.

            You should not worry so, brother, the white serpent said. He sounded tired, but his Parseltongue was still perfectly clear. You should remember that I am not physical. He flicked his tail at the black-and-tan snakes behind him. And you should remember that I know more than any of them.

            You were screaming, Harry whispered back. Parkinson went taut beside him at the Parseltongue, but she would just have to live with it. Harry was forcing himself to live with the fact that he couldn’t reach through the ward and simply touch his brother.

            I was screaming because it did hurt me. The white serpent coiled around something that looked like a black spiral to Harry and tapped it thoughtfully with his tongue. The spiral flickered and flamed and vanished. The serpent slid through where it had been and turned his head so that his eyes aimed at Harry again. But it does not hurt now.

            Harry bit one knuckle and settled back on his heels, ignoring the way that Draco crouched down beside him. Come back if it hurts you anymore.

            The white serpent shook his tail again, and reached the end of the ward. The snakes that had followed him spread out across the corridor. The white serpent darted his head in a complex pattern and issued a stream of hisses to the rest of the snakes. They joined together in a grid pattern, heads laid to each other’s tails, and the white serpent climbed on top of them and brought his tail sharply down.

            Harry’s eyes watered, the air blurred, his ears trembled, and the ward vanished. The white serpent climbed off the black grid and reared far enough that he could bow his head to Harry, the grinning Draco, and the gaping Parkinson.

            How did you do that? Harry demanded, racing forwards to scoop up his brother again. The black snakes spread out obediently in front of him. Harry eyed them and decided to keep them for the moment, in case they had to deal with other wards.

            It was simple enough, said the white serpent softly. Why would it not be? I simply drew on your talent for finding new Dark paths and found one that opened into the middle of the ward. Then I told the others to assemble into a map of that Dark path and got up on top of them. When someone reaches through into the path from an unexpected direction, then it’s the same as walking the path and destroying the walls that guard it. He paused, then added thoughtfully, I wouldn’t recommend that anyone else use that path now, though.

            Harry shut his eyes and shook his head. Great, now my snakes understand magical theory that I don’t.

            It was instinctive, said the white serpent comfortably. I merely tried to put it into words.

            Don’t bother next time.

            Don’t ask, then, said the white serpent, and curled up with his head right next to Harry’s neck. Brother.

            “How did they do that?” Draco interrupted, predictably enough.

            “I’ll tell you later,” said Harry, not trusting his own translation abilities from Parseltongue to English at that moment. He leaned forwards and waved his hand where the ward had been. No, it was gone, and when he strained his senses ahead, including having every snake tongue dart out at once, he couldn’t detect any Unspeakables. “I think this corridor is as safe to walk as it’ll ever be.”

            Parkinson grasped her keys and aimed them ahead for a moment, then opened her eyes and nodded to Draco. “I think he’s right.”

            Harry held back the snort he wanted to give, and moved down the corridor instead. He could feel the stone thrumming beneath his feet, but nothing lunged out at them. The doors were fewer now, and had no wards on them. Harry spread his hands out, watching as Draco’s creature once more darted ahead of them, and wondered if the wards were simply so subtle in this part of the Department of Mysteries that they would never sense them before they lashed out.

            Then he heard a weary grunt from ahead, and a voice said, “Harry?”

            Ron’s voice.

            Harry was charging ahead again before anyone else could tell him not to. At least the white serpent remained cool and confident and still on his shoulder, reassuring him that there were no more traps in the way. Draco’s creature bounded aside from him and flattened its sleek, small ears. Parkinson said something harsh, and even Draco called his name in a way that said he suspected harmful wards ahead.

            Harry couldn’t care. Couldn’t stop. Couldn’t slow down. Over and above and beyond the Parseltongue and the Dark magic, these were still the deepest loyalties in his life.

            And he didn’t care, or stop, or slow down, until he was through the door into a room that looked like a cross between a storage cupboard and a hastily-set-up office, and Ron was in his arms.

*

            Pansy stood back with her arms crossed and shook her head when Draco looked at her. Draco shrugged back, and waited in the office doorway until Weasley and Harry were done babbling at each other. Harry could have endangered them by dashing ahead like that, but he hadn’t actually done so, and Draco would wait to give a violent scolding until Harry ran into another sighthound.

            It wasn’t as bad as Draco had thought, really, sharing Harry’s attention with his friends. For one thing, Weasley could see something on Harry’s shoulder where the white snake coiled, from the way his eyes kept wandering over there, and he winced frequently. Harry’s friends would still have trouble accepting his Parseltongue, and would probably never do it in the way Draco could. That guaranteed a bond between them which Weasley and Granger couldn’t replicate.

            And for another, Draco trusted in Harry’s conversion. He had made up his mind to accept Dark magic and walk the Dark paths, and he wouldn’t turn back now. He might regret—knowing Harry, more than once—because it wasn’t the same as choosing it freely, the way Draco and Pansy had. But Draco really didn’t think he would give it up or betray them.

            Weasley finally drew away from hugging Harry and looked at him with wet, messy eyes. Draco silently noted the red rims and evidence of tears that were already there. Well, the Unspeakables might have tortured him. It didn’t necessarily mean that he was weak and unfocused.

            “They told me that you wouldn’t come,” Weasley whispered. “That you had already sent letters saying that you didn’t care what they did to us, and that Dark magic was more important to you than your friends.”

            Draco straightened. Harry opened his mouth, but too slowly, which meant Weasley’s reaction was Draco’s lawful prey. “And you believed them?” he asked, slow, perfect drawl and slow headshake ready for when Weasley glared at him. “I wouldn’t have thought so, but I suppose there’s always a new depth to which a blood traitor will sink.”

            The white serpent on Harry’s shoulder reared and hissed at him, and Harry looked back over his shoulder, flashing his fangs. Draco felt Pansy’s nails digging into his arm—claws would be a more accurate term, when she used them like that—but ignored it. He had needed to say that, and Weasley had needed to hear it.

            “Ron is not a blood traitor,” Harry said. “I won’t listen to you say that again.”

            “You will, if it fits the situation,” Draco said. “I know not all the old terms apply, but the way my parents taught them to me, a blood traitor is a coward who doesn’t face up to the consequences of his actions—who wants all the pleasant things, like house-elves, while ignoring the cost you pay to keep them. Weasley wants your sympathy, and for you to ignore that he was ready to believe you wouldn’t come.”

            “I didn’t say I believed it.” Weasley was sinking his fingers into Harry’s shoulders, which made no sense to Draco, but he nobly forgave Weasley once he noticed the chains wound around him, linking him to the floor. “Just that that was what the Unspeakables had said.”

            “Ah,” Draco murmured, with a wise nod. “But you didn’t qualify it. You didn’t say that you immediately discounted the tales of those letters, or understood them as an intimidation tactic without accepting them into your heart. You implied that the experience was so horrible Harry should apologize.”

            Weasley tilted his head to the side as slowly as though a lead weight was hanging from his ear. “Are you real?” he asked. “Seriously?”

            Harry straightened up and turned to put himself between Draco and Weasley. “He doesn’t need to hear any more of that,” he whispered. “I never thought he believed what they were telling him. He only—he only wanted me to know.” He reached back and stroked Weasley’s shoulder with one scaled hand, while his face bulged out at the sides with venom. Draco looked at him with a little pity. He doubted Harry would bother with the venom sacs if he knew how hot they made Draco.

            “Perhaps he doesn’t need to hear any more of it, then,” Draco conceded, and let his head fall down in a graceful bow so that his hair swayed to a stop around his cheeks. “But you don’t need to have more guilt piled on you from your friends, either.”

            “They weren’t trying,” Harry said, and then shut his eyes and shook his head. “Hermione isn’t even here,” Draco thought he heard him mutter as he turned back to Weasley. “We’ll need to get you out of your chains and help you up on your feet, Ron,” he whispered. “Can you do that for me? Can you show me the location of the locks?”

            Draco sniffed, and stepped back so that he could stand beside Pansy, who kept giving him these agonizingly painful meaning looks. He didn’t see what Granger not being there had to do with it.

*

            Harry realized he was shaking as he knelt next to Ron. Draco’s words or the mere consequence of having a friend taken here, in the Department of Mysteries, where Merlin knew what could have happened to him?

            He decided that he didn’t have to care, and put his hands beneath Ron’s arms, whispering encouragement, as Ron began to lift the chains.

            “They always did up the locks in a specific order after they took me to the loo,” Ron said. “First the one on the left, then the bottom two on the right—from the bottom up—and then the one around my neck.” He touched the one that hung in the hollow of his throat like an ugly pendant, wincing.

            Harry nodded again and knelt down to examine the lock on the left. Ron caught his hand, and Harry looked up. Ron’s eyes were terrible in a way that made Harry squeeze his hand, and wish, for once, that Draco was out of the room.

            “I didn’t mean that I believed them when they told me that you weren’t interested in saving me,” Ron whispered. “Only that was what they said. And why I was awfully glad to see you.”

            Harry just nodded back. Trying to put those things into words right now would lead to more arguments that weren’t important, as long as Ron was still a prisoner and Hermione remained locked up behind more of those wards.

            He did think, as he worked on the locks and conjured small blue snakes that could pop into the middle of the tumblers and report back from the inside, that Ron’s stare was lingering on his scaled neck, his fangs, his puffed-out cheeks. And that Ron flinched a time or two from meeting Harry’s eyes when he asked a question about the spells the Unspeakables had used on his locks.

            But that wasn’t something they could do anything about. This was what was important, the smooth metal under his hands and the way Ron reached out to him sometimes.

            The last of the locks came undone, and Harry backed away. Ron slung his arms at the chains, and the links clattered to the floor. Ron stood up with an enormous stretch that made Harry smile. He could only imagine how being cooped up in chains for days at a time had felt. That was something that had never happened to him, despite all the shit flying around his life.

            “I know they took Hermione somewhere away down the corridor,” Ron said, and pointed out the door. “I never knew which room. They didn’t keep us together after they realized that you were trying to contact us by Floo,” he added bitterly. “They thought we were dangerous, or so they told us.”

            “Another intimidation tactic,” Draco said from behind Harry, his voice as smooth as the locks. “They would want you to believe—”

            “I know all about intimidation tactics,” Ron said flatly. “I was an Auror. I learned them.”

            “Was?” Parkinson asked.

            Ron gave a twitch of his hands that Harry knew meant he was nervous. Ron’s body language was an open book to people who knew him—which, luckily, probably meant that they didn’t have to worry about either Parkinson or Draco learning it any time soon. “I don’t know what I’ll go back to. For all I know, the Ministry mandated that we be put down here, not just the Department of Mysteries. And it doesn’t matter right now. What matters is rescuing Hermione.”

            “We could stand to know, as Dark wizards, whether you’ll still be hunting us,” Parkinson muttered, but she stepped back and let Ron out into the corridor. Harry had to go around her, and pass close by Draco.

            Draco took his arm and held on for a minute, looking so steadfastly into his face that Harry blinked as he gazed back.

            “Good,” Draco said, and smiled at him as he released his arm. “I thought that you might have tried to change the way your eyes look to please Weasley.”

            Harry rolled his eyes. “I appreciate what you’re trying to do, Draco, but you don’t have to,” he said, stroking Draco’s hand quickly in passing. “I think that Ron can put up with the way I look long enough to rescue Hermione. That’s all I care about.”

            “Then you shouldn’t object to the way that I care about it,” Draco said smoothly. “Someone has to watch out for the bigger picture while you concentrate on the smaller one, after all.”

            Harry shut his eyes and stepped past Draco. Sometimes he thought he loved him, and sometimes he thought he would murder him if he had to listen to him for long enough.

            Well, at least half my life is normal, then.

*

            Pansy dropped back towards Draco as they walked up the corridor towards the place where Weasley thought Granger had been taken. “I don’t really think they’ll manage to remove her as easily,” she murmured. “It would make sense for the Unspeakables to use different traps and wards on them, in case one of them was rescued.”

            Draco tilted his head, not quite in agreement, but did say, “It’s strange that the Unspeakables haven’t tried to attack us in some other way, now that the shock of Millicent’s distraction is past.”

            Pansy nodded, and faded away down the corridor. She could look for doors out that didn’t concern the Dark path where Harry’s giant snake waited, Draco thought. He trusted her more than anyone else in the Department with them at the moment, other than where her reactions to Harry were concerned.

            Or perhaps I trust her and Harry equally, he thought, as he stopped in front of the fork in the corridor and tilted the mirror so that his creature could run ahead of him again. She has her weakness in her fear of shapeshifters, and Harry in his fear for his friends.

            He leaned back against the wall of the corridor and listened to the low-voiced debate between Harry and the Weasel.

            “I think the wards should be the same as the ones that I was behind,” Weasley muttered. “And you managed to break them without trouble.”

            Harry touched the white snake on his shoulder. Draco didn’t think he was aware of making the gesture anymore, but Weasley watched his hand apparently rise and rest on air—or so Weasley would see it—with a troubled expression. “I risked my snakes to do it,” Harry said. “Yes, they might be the same, but there’s no reason to assume that. I’ll go slowly and come up with a kind of snake that can pass them.” He knelt down and began to look at the apparently empty air in front of him.

            Draco heard his creature scrape its claws and snap its teeth. As far as it was concerned, it should have been the first one into the fray, but Draco knew it would have already disarmed the wards if it was capable of it.

            Weasley knelt down next to Harry. “Then it was your Parseltongue that got you this far,” he said. Draco listened keen-eared, wondering if that was a tone of resignation he heard to the Weasel’s voice. He could only hope so, for Harry’s sake.

            “It was,” Harry said, and then closed his eyes and rubbed his hands together. Smoke blossomed up from between them, and Draco thought he could make out eyes and tongues and delicately flicking bodies. But Harry held them out and towards the wards before Draco could make sure that he recognized them as snakes. They wriggled forwards and through the net of magic, and Weasley flinched.

            Draco would have, too, but the white snake wasn’t with them this time. Harry would be less hurt if a snake he had just created had died. He settled against the wall, and waited. He would have looked at the wards, but he couldn’t separate the darting forms of might-be-snakes from shadows with any accuracy, so he listened to Weasley and Harry instead.

            Weasley was breathing as though someone had left an iron weight pressing on his chest. Draco rolled his eyes. Honestly. Apologize and get on with it. For people who valued them, Gryffindors made apologies incredibly hard to struggle through.

            Weasley waited until Harry was leaning in on his palms and knees, peering after his snakes, which wasn’t the way that Draco would have done it. He would have wanted Harry’s full attention on him if he was going to apologize. Then he cleared his throat and mumbled the words. Draco frowned and cast a careful charm. People like Weasley really had no concern for eavesdroppers.

            “What?” Harry turned his head, but kept one eye on the wards. Draco approved. One eye was still more than someone like Weasley deserved, but at least Harry had restricted the amount of focus he was going to waste on him.

            “I’m sorry,” Weasley said.

            Because it was Harry, his face softened and he held his hand out as though Weasley had given him the treat of his life, instead of a grudging admission come too late. Weasley took his hand and nodded, and then released it and turned away as soon as possible.

            Draco nodded, too. Perhaps that was a sensible way to do it, after all. Take up as little time as possible, and don’t let the person you’d wronged ask any questions.

            And it makes a convenient way to hide any disgust that he still feels about the way that Harry looks.

            Draco half-smiled. Weasley needn’t worry. Draco could amply fill the role of Harry’s best friend any time he wanted.

*

            Harry wished he had the time to have a full conversation with Ron, explain and listen and talk, and especially explain why he agreed that Parseltongue was Dark magic but Ron’s reactions and attacks had still hurt him.

            There were things that were more important right now, though. Like Hermione.

            And no matter what happened after they rescued her, Harry doubted that he would ever go back to having the same relationship with his friends that he’d had before he discovered he was a Parselmouth.

Or rather, a Parselmouth who’s going mad, Harry thought, as he held his fingers out and snapped them in response to the instructions that the white serpent gave him. It never mattered before that.

The snakes he’d sent through the wards were doing well so far. They’d negotiated several different turns and corners, based on what the white snake told him, and they’d reached the halfway point. The wards changed here, linking up to the ones that were on Hermione herself, and they had to be more careful now.

Harry leaned forwards so far that he felt a hand come down on his back to hold him in place. He smiled at Ron over his shoulder, and continued coaxing the snakes forwards, hissing the instructions the white serpent gave him. To the left. Three of you in front—no, a different three. You need to—

Then there was a soft, sighing noise from the ceiling, and it unfolded down towards them. Grey-cloaked figures, in stiff cloth that looked like armor, came out of the shadows behind the wards at the same time, and aimed their wands at Harry’s snakes.

Well, Harry thought, in the moment before the spells flew and the situation exploded, at least we know where the Unspeakables are hiding now.

*

            disgruntledfairy: Thank you! I’m afraid this chapter does end with a cliffhanger, too, (oops), but the next two won’t.

            she-who-waits-in-darkness: Thank you so much!

            Seiren: Thanks. I thought Pansy’s fear deserved a good explanation, since there’s no reason for her to simply be afraid of Dark magic, the way Hermione and Ron are.

            Draco’s pet doesn’t have a name; it’s really never existed before.

            Talltree-san: Poor Pansy. Yes, it would have been better if she had worked together with Harry better, but this is a good enough reason not to, I think.
- 23
- 24
- 25
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