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A Brother to Basilisks	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 85173 -:- 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-Six—On Fire
            “Why didn’t you tell us?” Ron was saying, shaking his head as he stood in front of Harry. Hermione stood behind him. They were in a little side-alcove in one of the corridors that led to the Charms classroom, and Hermione had cast a spell that meant they wouldn’t be bothered. Harry reminded himself that he really had to learn that one.
            For now, Dash was wrapped heavily around his arms and waist again. It was a hug, but it also meant that it would be awkward for him to run.
            You knew this would come. You can’t run from it. Dash sounded almost smug about that, for reasons that, again, Harry couldn’t discern. He didn’t understand his own basilisk much lately.
            “Because it’s embarrassing,” said Harry, the same answer he had given Draco, the true one. “I mean, what happened with Sirius and Remus was bad enough. There’s just no one in the world who wants me, is there?” His voice shocked him with its bitterness, and Ron and Hermione were both staring at him. Harry blinked hard, and managed to push down the tears. He was so stupid lately, he thought. He was hovering on the edge of tears all the time, and he never used to do that.
            “It’s embarrassing to say that,” he continued hastily, before his friends could interrupt. “And anyway, Ron, you and your brothers saw the bars on my window when you rescued me last summer. I didn’t—I didn’t want to say anything about it. Ever.”
            “That’s not true, mate!” Ron glared at him. “If we’d known that you were being starved and all the rest of it, we would never have let you go back there.”
            Harry closed his eyes and savored that idea for a minute. Maybe he could live with the Weasleys if Sirius didn’t work out.
            But Harry still wanted it to work out. Sirius had given him his own room, and told him stories about his parents, and all the rest of it. But he still hadn’t apologized, and Harry had to admit that he didn’t know what would happen next.
            “Okay,” he said, and opened his eyes. “But anyway.” He lowered his voice and glanced at the little shimmer in the air that Hermione said marked the spell she’d used. “Is that pretty secure, Hermione?”
            “Of course it is.” Hermione looked as if she was on the verge of tears, too, but she battled them back and nodded fiercely to him. “I wouldn’t come up with something that wasn’t, Harry.”
            Harry gave her a weary smile. “Okay. The reason I did this is that there are other abused children at Hogwarts. If people start investigating my abuse, then they’ll probably find out, and make sure that the other children don’t have to go back to their families, or whoever was abusing them.” Harry had to admit that he wasn’t always sure that it was their families. “I don’t know their names,” he added, as Ron started to open his mouth. “I only know about them at all because of what Snape said. I’m doing this for them, not for me. I mean, I don’t have to worry about the Dursleys again. I’m with Sirius now.”
            “Because of what Snape said?” Ron looked ready to faint.
            “Yeah.” Harry took a deep breath. Maybe this would be harder than just telling them about the abuse, which the article had sort of done. “He’s been—decent about it. Not the best in the world, but he was the one who told me that if we told other people about it, then maybe the rest of them can be safe.”
            “What about you, Harry?” Hermione was there, right beside him, so close that Dash looked at her in interest. Of course, she was the only one who had never seemed nervous hugging Harry when Dash was wrapped around him. “Are you going to be safe if you keep doing this?”
            “Safe from what?” Harry asked, a little blankly. “I mean, I don’t think Voldemort is going to attack me any harder because I don’t live with the Dursleys anymore.”
            “I meant Sirius. And Professor Lupin.” Hermione used the edge of her palm to get rid of the last of her tears, and stood for a moment gazing earnestly into Harry’s eyes. “Are you—have you talked to them about this?”
            Harry clenched one hand on the wall and hurt his palm a little, until Dash wrapped his tail around Harry’s wrist and tugged hard enough to get his hand loose. But Dash didn’t remove his tail the way he usually did when he’d stopped Harry from hurting himself; instead, he tugged it over to him and put Harry’s hand firmly in place on his own head. A bit bewildered, Harry stroked him, and Dash put his head down and flicked his tongue in the equivalent of a sigh.
            “No,” said Harry. “They haven’t talked to me since—what happened. I mean, Professor Lupin asks me questions in class sometimes, but not as much as he used to.”
            “Which is unfair, because it’s your best subject,” Hermione said at once. “He shouldn’t take what happened out on you and ruin your marks!”
            Harry had to smile. That would be one of the things Hermione most cared about, of course, when Harry honestly didn’t care if he passed Defense with a good mark or not.
            “You have to talk to them, mate.” It was Ron, and his voice was gentle, but he was looking at Harry the way he usually only looked at chess pieces who refused to move in the right way to win the game. “They really deserved to know.” He scowled a little. “Like we did.”
            “But you only wanted to know because you wanted to help me,” said Harry. “I’m not sure what Sirius and Lupin are going to want to know for.”
            “We’ll make sure they help you.” Ron drew his wand menacingly, and again Harry had to smile. But it was true that Sirius probably wouldn’t expect an attack from Ron the way he would from Snape or Draco.
            “Thanks,” said Harry, and dried his eyes while Ron clapped him on the shoulder. “Like I said, I don’t—really know yet. But I’ll talk to them.”
            Ron nodded, looking appeased, and they made their way towards Potions. Harry straightened his shoulders and leaned his chin on Dash’s neck for a moment. He knew his friends and Dash would make sure that no one hurt him about this, at least as much as they could, but he didn’t know what was going to happen, and that always made him a little nervous.
            I prefer it when I have something straightforward to do, like preventing Voldemort from stealing the Philosopher’s Stone.
            Anyone who hurts you, I will coil around their legs and trip them.
            Harry blinked and looked down at Dash. What happened to offering to bite them?
            You didn’t want me to. And my diluted poison is not painful enough, since it only put the wolf to sleep. If I can make someone fall in the right manner, I can break several bones.
            Harry rolled his eyes. Ron and Hermione saw him do it, but they were used enough by now to his silent conversations with Dash that they didn’t comment.
            At least one thing is normal, Harry thought, and that was the main thing that kept him walking down the corridor towards Potions instead of running madly away.
*
            “The next person who asks Mr. Potter a question about the newspaper article will find themselves elbow-deep in newt guts for the rest of the year.”
            That shut people up, Harry noticed. He didn’t manage to flash a grateful smile to Snape, because people would ask why and Snape’s part in it was something the article had left out, but he relaxed when mouths slammed shut and people leaned away from him.
            Neville blew something up then, and Snape stormed towards the front of the classroom. At least this time, it didn’t appear to have splattered sixteen other people in the vicinity, Harry noted idly.
            “Harry.”
            The voice seemed to reach into Harry’s stomach and curl around something there, like it was going to pull an organ out. Once, Dudley had threatened to hang Harry on a meat hook, which was probably something he’d seen on the telly, since Harry didn’t think he’d be capable of coming up with a threat like that on his own. Now, Harry felt like it was actually happening.
            He turned around in his seat and sort of gaped at Sirius, who stood in the door to the classroom with his cloak swirling around him the way that Snape’s seemed to billow whenever he was moving. He stared at Harry, and Harry could see anguish in his eyes that went on and on as if it was the beginning of a long, dark path.
            Harry’s guts twisted miserably again. He hadn’t wanted to hurt Sirius, he thought. He hadn’t ever wanted to hurt Sirius. But this was what happened when something happened to part him from Sirius and then he didn’t go talk to him.
            He started to stand up, because he knew that Sirius would just come get him if he didn’t. But then he found he couldn’t move. He blinked and looked down. Dash was curled around his waist and around the back of the chair at the same time, forming a chain that kept Harry effectively locked in.
            This isn’t funny, Dash, Harry said, and he reached out to yank at Dash’s plume, the only vulnerable part of his body, really. Dash promptly twisted his head so the plume was wound in and protected by his coils. His covered eyes peeked guilelessly out at Harry.
            It isn’t funny, I agree, said Dash. None of this was ever funny, from the moment the smelly dog-man decided that he would leave you alone in the house with a werewolf. But at least I’m sparing you further humiliation.
            Harry opened his mouth, ready to yell in English if it would do any good, and then Snape arrived.
            His entrance was even more dramatic than Sirius’s, honestly, Harry thought, with a kind of numbed admiration. Snape’s robes not only billowed behind him, they snapped. He stood there looking down his nose with such a level of haughtiness that Harry felt as if he’d shrunk three inches. He wondered, miserably, if Snape was going to yell at him for Sirius being in the classroom.
            Then Harry realized he wasn’t the one Snape was glaring at.
            “You dare to disrupt my class,” said Snape. He might have sounded like he was able to speak Parseltongue if you didn’t know any better, Harry thought, staring in fascination. There were certainly enough hisses crowded around the edges of his words. “You dare to saunter in as if you own the world, and command a boy who has already missed enough class to miss again, that you might satisfy your own craven curiosity.”
            Harry felt as if his heart would leap out of his chest. He had wondered how Snape was going to defend him without revealing that he was helping Harry with things, but of course this was the way. He hated Sirius anyway, and he mocked Harry’s academic performance on a regular basis. The two together would make a more than adequate disguise.
            “You don’t have the least idea of what was in the paper this morning, do you?” Sirius asked, his voice low and ugly. Harry thought he might use the name Snivellus, but apparently Sirius would get to a point where he was so angry that he couldn’t. “Because you don’t read articles about Harry. The last thing he needs right now is more people who will abuse him.” He turned to Harry. “Come on, kiddo. We need to talk.”
            Snape’s wand flicked negligently, and Sirius’s arm was stuck to the doorframe. “As you said,” Snape murmured, “the last thing he needs…”
            The look of rage on Sirius’s face made Harry flinch back. He hadn’t thought Sirius could look like that. He hadn’t when he was asking Harry if Lupin was okay, if he was okay. Harry tried to stand once more, found himself locked in, and raised his voice.
            “It’s okay, Professor Snape. I do have to talk to Sirius. Let me just leave.” He yanked on Dash’s coils as he spoke, but Dash seemed to have turned into steel, and Draco was staring at Harry from the other side of the classroom and shaking his head as if he wanted Harry to stay put and not go away with Sirius.
            “He is disrupting my class,” said Snape, with another Parseltongue-sounding hiss, and his wand swished down again. This time, Sirius went staggering back from the door, and Snape shut it with a third swish. Harry thought for a second Sirius would come banging back in, but although he seized the door and rattled it, it didn’t open.
            “Now,” said Snape, after another spell that abruptly sealed off any noise from beyond the door, “what are the rest of you standing around and gaping at me for? Longbottom, if you have managed to achieve another disaster, I will recommend that your grandmother place you in a special school for idiots.”
            Harry gave Snape a weak glare as he went past. He didn’t have to keep picking on Neville. Snape only looked back with no emotion on his face at all, and went away to stare gloomily into Crabbe and Goyle’s cauldron.
            “Why did he come in here like that?” Hermione whispered fiercely as Harry turned back to his potion with Ron. Dash had finally loosened his hold, probably because he knew that Harry wouldn’t be able to get through the spells on the door, either. “He should have waited until later and then asked you about it in privacy!”
            “I don’t know,” Harry whispered back. “I haven’t talked to him, remember?”
            Ron started to say something else, but Snape swept by, and Ron gulped and shut his mouth at the look from a mere corner of his eye. Harry sighed as Snape turned and walked in the other direction. He knew why Snape was trying to spare him from talking about this, but he would have to eventually.
            But he could at least put it off for the duration of Potions class, which he supposed was the point. He turned back to his cauldron.
*
            Severus had heard insistent chimes from his Floo during the class. A charm he’d cast years ago let him hear the Floo in his rooms or his office all the way across the school. It was the only way, Dumbledore had said, that he could be sure of reaching Severus when he had vanished into a haze of brewing.
            This time, though, Severus casually ignored the sound until the end of Harry and Draco’s Potions class. Dumbledore ought to have known better than to contact him while it was still ongoing. Luckily, his next class was NEWT students, whom he could leave alone for ten minutes without them killing themselves.
            “The instructions are on the board,” he said curtly as his older students sat down and took out their supplies. “I must be elsewhere for a short time. If you are so foolish as to try to do something that you know would displease me, you will be obliterated when you return.” Ordinarily, he would have made his threats more explicit, but with this class, he saw no need. They immediately hunched over their cauldrons in silence.
            Severus swept out regally, and walked towards his office. The Floo chimed again as he stepped into the room. Severus nodded and opened it, arranging himself so that he looked bored.
            Dumbledore’s face was grave and calm as he stared at Severus. “I suspect you know what I want to see you about,” he said.
            “I can spare you ten minutes,” Severus said briefly. “I am, after all, teaching.”
            Dumbledore paused. Severus knew that he hadn’t expected the opposition.
            But you should have, Severus told him silently, while they both stared at each other and Severus strengthened his Occlumency barriers. While he was confident in their strength to keep out the Dark Lord, who was a stronger Legilimens than Dumbledore, the Headmaster was more subtle, and it was possible for someone like that to slip into an unwary mind. When you favor Black so outrageously, you should have expected an opposing side to form.
            “Nine minutes,” said Severus, when enough time had passed that he felt justified.
            Dumbledore nodded grimly. “Then please come through to my office, Severus.” He vanished from the fireplace, but left the flames blazing.
            Severus cast a spell that would warn him when nine minutes had gone by, and stepped through the flames. When he came out of it, he was ready, which was the reason he was able to cast a spiderweb-like shield to catch the flying blow of Black’s fist.
            Black yelped as his arm rebounded from the shield and nearly hit him in the face. Severus watched him coolly, and then turned back to Dumbledore, who sat behind his desk. “I do not enjoy being lured into ambushes, Headmaster,” he said, pitching his voice low. “If that is the only reason you brought me here, I will go.”
            “No, no,” said Dumbledore. He shot a quick glance at Black, and sighed. “Do sit down, Sirius.”
            No apology demanded, even for attacking a professor, Severus noticed, and moved to the chair he usually took when he was in Dumbledore’s office. This time, though, he stood in front of it, instead of sitting down, and kept his casual, neutral gaze fixed on Dumbledore. Yes, he should have realized long since that opposition would form. I suppose he didn’t care.
            “Sirius says that you ignored his reasonable concerns about Harry,” Dumbledore began.
            “He burst into my classroom during the time when Potter is supposed to be learning Potions,” said Severus. He would have to choose his words carefully, or expose too soon exactly how much he knew about Harry and how involved in the situation he was. “You have urged me in the past to treat Potter exactly like another student, Headmaster. Well, then I must be concerned about his academic record. He is in danger of getting a T in my class already, due to poor performance. I saw no reason to allow his godfather to come into the room to shout at him.”
            “I wouldn’t have shouted!” shouted Black.
            Severus turned his neutral gaze on him. “You called his name as you came in. You gave no sign that you were sympathetic. You sounded angry.”
            “Did you, Sirius?”
            Dumbledore sounds doting, Severus thought, and managed to keep his lip from curling by thinking of an offer Lucius had made to him more than once, that Severus could become his private Potions master. Severus had always refused because of what he owed Dumbledore—what he had thought he owed Dumbledore—for keeping him out of Azkaban, because of his vow to Lily, and because he had no desire to be in Lucius Malfoy’s grip.
            But the thought was tempting at the moment. Were he in that position, he would never have to deal with Black.
            “I was angry he hadn’t told me,” Black muttered. “But—” He spun around and snarled at Severus. “What do you have to do with it? You’ve never cared about Harry, so expecting me to believe that you do now is pretty rich!”
            Four minutes. Severus inclined his head and said in a colorless voice, “I am attempting to treat the boy more like other students. That means no special favors, but no disdain, either. And I would cast out Lucius Malfoy if he interrupted my class demanding to speak to his son in such a way. Or Molly Weasley, or any other parent. Neither of you are being treated as special, Black.”
            Unlike the treatment that you have received from Dumbledore. Severus hoped that the man would hear the unsaid words, although from the enraged way Black gaped at him, he had taken them the wrong way if he had.
            Three minutes, thought Severus, and turned back to Dumbledore. “Was there anything else that you wanted me for, Albus?”
            Dumbledore looked at him over his glasses, but that gesture had ceased to endear him to Severus long ago. Severus simply looked back without expression, and Dumbledore seemed to realize he had wasted a minute, because he pressed his fingers together and murmured, “Did you know anything about the confession that appeared in the newspaper this morning, Severus?”
            “Confession?” Severus cocked his head. “What an interesting word. As if Mr. Potter was the criminal.”
            Black made some noise that didn’t achieve the dignity of words, but Dumbledore held up his hand, and he subsided for a second, glaring at Severus with naked hatred. “Severus. I must ask you again. Did you know?”
            “Why would I?” Severus whispered. “I am neither the man who was supposed to act in loco parentis when Potter was at school, nor his godfather, nor his guardian.”
            Dumbledore peered at him again, but Severus had not only his Occlumency shields up, but his bored and long-suffering expression as well. Dumbledore would find that he had little to accuse him of, even if he persisted.
            One minute.
            “You might have taken his side in certain recent disputes,” said Dumbledore, and his eyes flickered to Black, “considering the unfortunate similarities between you. But that doesn’t mean that you should have concealed important information you learned about Harry, Severus.”
            Black was staring too stupidly to have picked up on the insinuation of Severus’s own abuse, Severus decided quickly. He had once had to make such snap judgments all the time, and risk his life by them. He was risking his dignity now, and he still thought he was right.
            “Would you have listened to him if he reported it?” he whispered. “Would you have understood why having his trust in his guardian butchered was more devastating to him than it might be to some other children?”
            Half a minute.
            “I would have listened to him!” Black yelped.
            Dumbledore took on a gentle, almost indefinable aura of disappointment. Since Severus didn’t intend to pay him any attention because of that, he just stared icily, and Dumbledore finally looked away and made a small motion with his head. “I understand that you have classes to return to, Severus.”
            “Yes,” said Severus, straightening up just as his charm buzzed at him. “My NEWT students. Fortunately, they can be left without supervision for a small period of time.” He bowed his head a little. “Excuse me, Albus. Black.”
            He took one look back at Black as he exited via the Floo, and hoped that his eyes said it all for him.
            Do not cross me. Harry has someone at his back now who won’t listen to your pathetic excuses and let you use your abuse as an explanation for abusing someone else.
            Do not get in my way.
            On the other hand, if Black did not grasp it, Severus thought with a thin smile as he whirled away, he would enjoy the consequences. Black would not, but that hardly mattered.
            He will not hurt Harry again.
*

            ChaosLady: Thank you!
Meechypoo: Dumbledore is already plotting on how he can catch Harry alone and give him a little lecture.
starr: Thank you! No, some people at least would move heaven and earth to avoid him ever having to go back to the Dursleys.
Severus1snape: Thank you!
SP777: Technically, he already has, but yes for future chapters as well.
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A Brother to Basilisks