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Inter Vivos	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42948 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 1
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Chapter Twenty-Eight,
Part Two�Stone

�� Draco
circled the table on which the Elder Wand lay, his eyes narrowed. Then he
glanced over to the Resurrection Stone, brooding on its silken bag. He couldn�t
feel the vibrations of evil that Harry described surrounding the Stone, but
given how intense the Wand�s regard on him was�even without eyes�he didn�t
think he needed to. He knew they were both powerful, both dangerous.

�� And one of
them had to be destroyed.

�� Or maybe both.

�� Draco
pursued his lips and twisted his head back and forth, peering critically at the
Stone and then the Wand. No matter how long he looked, however, he couldn�t see
any similarities. He wouldn�t know them for the Deathly Hallows if he simply
saw them. How long had the Elder Wand gone unrecognized in Dumbledore�s hand?

�� He paced in
another circle, this time concentrating on the Stone by itself. They would need
something extra to fight the power of the Hallows that it carried. He was
confident of that, though as yet his research had revealed nothing solid; there
were so many contradictory legends about the Hallows. But nothing was ever
simple for them, and it made sense that the Elder Wand should have a similarly powerful
companion.

�� Once, it would have been set of companions. Draco
felt a twinge of pain that Harry�s Invisibility Cloak had been destroyed. Not
only would it have comforted Harry and reminded him of his parents if it still
existed, it would have been the most useful of any of the Hallows. No one tried
to kill for possession of it the way they did for the Wand, and just think of all the conversations one could
overhear.

�� On the other hand, if Finnigan had never
destroyed it, then perhaps Harry would never have ventured out of the circle of
his Gryffindor friends, and you would never have become as close to him as you
are now.

�� And that would have been intolerable.

�� Another
circle, and Draco tried to banish the thoughts of what-if from his mind and
concentrate on what was in front of him. He knew there was some key here,
something he could grip and use to destroy the Stone without danger.

�� If he could
only find it.

*

�� Sorry, mate. I don�t think we�ll be able to
reach the Chamber of Secrets. Dumbledore has it under watch now, and even going
outside and trying to work our way around the school with your map doesn�t
work. Dumbledore has the outside entrance guarded, too.

�� Harry
sighed and pushed his hand through his hair. In a way, he�d anticipated this.
Dumbledore would, of course, have been warned when they showed up at the
school, and if he didn�t know what they�d really come for, at least he was
smart enough to think it might be the
venom. They hadn�t been there long, so he might decide they hadn�t had enough
time to take the venom they�d need to destroy four Horcruxes. Putting a guard
on it made sense.

�� But it did
mean that they needed to find another source of basilisk venom.

�� Or I need to find and kill another basilisk.

�� Harry laid
Ron�s letter down. He�d respond later. For the moment, he was feeling too
demoralized to do so.

�� He wandered
away from the kitchen table, where he�d been sitting when the owl came, and up
the stairs. The library was empty for once, which probably meant that Draco had
simply taken the books he needed elsewhere. Professor Snape never spent any
time in here; he seemed to have the same problems with the Black family books
that he did with the Black family itself. Harry drifted along the shelves, his
hand idly brushing spines, his fingers tracing the letters of titles.

�� He ended up
in a corner that contained most of the volumes on Dark Arts and looked at a
few, aimlessly. One Hundred and One
Curses for Your Direst Enemies. The Art of Careful Murder. Muggle-Baiting:
Origins, Practice, History. Poisons and Their Effects.

�� Harry
paused when he saw that last one. For a moment, he wondered if he should study
it at all. Draco and Snape knew more about Potions than he did, and that meant
they knew more about poisons, either the kind that you brewed or the kind that got
used as potions ingredients. Harry knew they would take up another research
project without complaint if he asked them to.

�� But he was
beginning to feel useless, waiting around whilst Snape worked on healing his
mind and Draco worked on the Switching Charm modifications. He knew part of
that came from the general depression Voldemort�s �bites� were inducing in him.
That still didn�t make him feel better.

�� At least this book might distract me from
worrying about Ron and Hermione, he decided, and picked up Poisons and Their Effects.

�� It was so
thick that he had to hold it with both hands, and it was most comfortable
sitting down with the book balanced across his knees. The print made him
shudder and tap the page with his wand to increase the size of the letters. The
index seemed to be organized mostly by Latin names rather than English ones. If
there were any pictures, Harry didn�t find them in flipping through about a
hundred pages.

�� Grimly, he
started from the beginning and set out to find something that looked like
basilisk venom.

�� Cobra
poison, the Draught of Convulsive Death, hemlock, deadly nightshade (which was
also called belladonna, and made Harry shudder as he thought of Bellatrix,
still imprisoned upstairs in butterfly form), some sort of silver potion that
was poisonous to werewolves, cockatrice venom�

�� Basilisk!

�� Harry sat
up and began reading carefully.

A moment later, he snorted and flung
aside the book in disgust. The entry was so crowded with Latin terms�spell names,
for the most part, but ones that he wasn�t familiar with�and long, convoluted
sentences full of Hermione words that it didn�t help him. He folded his arms
and glared at the book. He didn�t care that he was mostly being sullen because of
the venom in his brain. It was his brain,
and no one else was in the library right now, and he could be sullen if he wanted to.

Is
that any way for the leader of a war to act?

�� Harry
sighed. The worst thing about the confrontation with Mrs. Malfoy was
undoubtedly that her voice lingered in his head long past the point when it should, and it was worse than Hermione�s
had ever been when that was in the same position. Harry had some training in
ignoring Hermione�s nagging, after all.

�� Reluctantly,
he picked up the book again and began to force his way through the passage. He
reminded himself that he didn�t need to understand everything. If he could
learn how common basilisk venom was, and how easily obtained, and what price it
usually sold for, that would be something.

*

�� Severus
slowly lowered the book he held and stared into the fire. He had ended up
taking a room on the ground floor of the Black house, not far from the chambers
he had fitted out as his potions lab. He didn�t need to worry about anyone else
stepping suddenly through the door and surprising the emotion in his eyes.

�� After a
moment, he shut them anyway and pushed the book away from him. It did not hit the
floor, because he would never treat a book like that, but it slid across the
table in a way that might have made concerned him if the furniture was his
heirloom.

�� Still moving
slowly, he linked his hands together behind his head. He would not open his
eyes or try to convince himself to move on. He would linger, silently, in the
sorrow of what he had just learned.

�� All his
tomes agreed that mental damage of the kind Harry bore was worse the longer it
was left untreated. And all insisted that a year was the longest anyone could live
with it and expect to escape permanent scars.

�� Harry had
had the wounds for a year and two months now, since the Dark Lord had possessed
him in the spring before his sixth year at Hogwarts.

�� Severus�s
hands clenched together, the fingers wriggling like worms to break the tight
hold he had imposed on them. He shook his head and restrained them. He would
not allow himself to explode into bitter self-loathing and recriminations. He
knew that Harry wouldn�t wish the guilt on him.

�� More
important than that, the guilt would do nothing to help.

�� Just, as he
was coming to understand, his guilt over Lily�s death had done nothing to make
his atonement better. He had spied and worked to keep Harry safe, and he had
known his actions mattered. Yet, at the same time, he had carried around some
obscure conviction that his suffering somehow sanctified those actions, making
them more important and more holy.

�� Dumbledore exploited that suffering. In you,
it became self-pity and a constant guilt. And Lily would not have wished you to
carry those emotions with you, either, even if you were indirectly responsible
for her murder.

�� What he
most needed information on was not how to undo the impossible. What he most
needed information on was how to do what he could, now.

�� Harry would
have scars, then. That was a usual thing by now, and one Severus was beginning
to think he could not prevent. From the day the Dark Lord had slaughtered his
parents, Harry was destined to be marked.

�� But the
books did not say that Severus would be unsuccessful in saving the boy�s brain.
They did not say that memory loss and mood swings were the inevitable result.
They did not say that he could do nothing but sit by helplessly as Harry
slipped further and further into the death the Dark Lord had intended to
consume him.

�� Severus�s
fingers clenched again, and this time he let them.

�� He could
still save Harry. It would simply be a more delicate and taxing process, that
was all, requiring greater finesse.

�� He had
never lacked for finesse.

�� He reached
for the books and began, with grim patience, to untangle the own knot of his
emotions and his lack of knowledge, so that he might at least pretend that he knew what he was talking
about when he broke the news to Harry.

*

�� Draco tore
open the letter greedily. It seemed like forever since he�d written to
Ollivander, though in reality only a week had passed since the owl left. He was
so eager that he ignored the tawny bird who�d brought the envelope, and it had
to screech and peck his hand before he absently snatched up a treat and tossed
it over.

�� Dear Mr. Malfoy,

�� I will assume, for the moment, that you are
not mad, or deluded, or intent on wasting an old man�s time, and that you truly
believe you possess the Elder Wand. Not that I do not say you have it. That is something you must excuse my
being skeptical about.

�� Draco
rolled his eyes. �You are an old man,�
he said under his breath. �Fussy and unclear.� He began to circle the table
that he had moved to the end of the bed he shared with Harry. It seemed that
lately Harry spent all his time in the library, chasing some mythical
substitute for basilisk venom, so there was no one there to be bothered by
Draco�s pacing.

�� The Elder Wand is sometimes known as the
Deathstick, for good reason. The vast majority of its possessors�if one is
inclined to put such stock in legend as to grant it, momentarily, the standard
of truth�have died in the attempt to keep it. It has done many great things,
again if one accepts legend as the basis for truth claims, but its mere existence
brings danger. Some believe that the wand itself summons challengers to its
current owner, for it wishes to belong only to the most powerful wizard. How
can it know it belongs to the most powerful if its owner rests unchallenged?

�� Most
wizards who�ve used it are wizards like my father, then,� Draco concluded. �I
can hope that I have an immediate advantage over others who�ve had it in the
past, just from that.�

�� It is, of course, made of elder wood, though
there are disputes about what the core is. The tail feather of the most
powerful phoenix alive, some say. Others disagree, and call it the heartstring
of a basilisk. There was a small contingent in the fourteenth century who held
out for the toenail of a nundu, but they were soundly argued into oblivion in
the wandmakers� journals for their heresy.

�� In spite of
his impatience to learn something more solid than that, Draco laughed. The
wandmakers� disputes sounded every bit as petty as the arguments in the Potions
journals that Professor Snape had sometimes shown him.

�� And as one of the Deathly Hallows and thus
the gift of Death himself, its power is unequaled. It will bring the one who
holds it fame, if only because he will die in a spectacularly messy manner when
some other claimant seeks to duel him. It is believed to add extra strength to
spells, and to sometimes act on its own, using its �intelligence��I have
considered other words, but the legends make this the only possible choice�to create
the most destruction possible.

�� Ah,� Draco
whispered. He looked at the Elder Wand, lying on the table as usual. He was
sure he could feel eyes from it, and that it was aware of his movements. �I knew it. You bloody corrupting thing,
you�re trying to take me over. But I won�t be taken over.�

�� He paused
for a moment to consider how mad he would look, talking to his wand, if someone
else walked into the room, then shrugged. There was no one else here right now,
and he was saying what he thought. He knew Professor Snape talked to himself in
the Potions lab sometimes.

�� I am afraid that is all the knowledge I am
willing to �attest� to about the wand, save for a last and most curious legend.
There are numerous treatises that say the possessor of all three Deathly
Hallows shall make himself the master of Death, but only one I have seen that
makes a claim for �detachable essences.� The Hallows are intimately connected,
given the magic of Death creating them, and one can replace the other. The writer
of this treatise said that he had used two at once, the wand and the stone, and
caused the wand to behave like the stone, and the stone to behave like the
wand. He specifically mentions being able to cast spells with the stone.
Whether the wand could be used to summon shades, he did not say, because the
treatise is burned at that point and the last words missing.

�� I do hope that this satisfies you, and that
you do not bother me again with legends and false facts.

�� Ollivander.

�� Draco
dropped the letter and spun around to face the Elder Wand, laughing. The wood vibrated,
and Draco thought he detected uncertainty in that invisible regard for the
first time.

�� Draco
clapped his hands together. �I�m studying Switching Charms,� he told the wand
smugly. �And you and the stone have detachable essences. Maybe I can switch
them the way that experimenter did, and that would get past any extra
protection the Horcrux might have because it�s one of the Hallows.�

�� Then he
paused and considered it. Would that
actually work? The Stone would become the Wand, and that might make it as hard
to destroy as the original Stone was.

�� A loud,
angry buzzing brought him out of his thoughts. Draco raised an eyebrow when he
realized that the Wand was tapping against the table as though a wasp were
trapped in the core.

�� You don�t
get an opinion,� he told it calmly, and conjured a glass cage of the kind that
Snape kept Aunt Bellatrix imprisoned in. No sense taking chances.

*

�� Harry
tugged another poison book off the shelves and grunted in irritation. He knew
there was an answer here somewhere, but it didn�t seem so obliging as to reveal
itself. He�d looked in sixteen of them now, entirely using up the last week
whilst Sirius worked hard on his physical training with Madam Pomfrey, Mrs. Malfoy
watched him in cold silence, Snape brooded over the books that would presumably
tell him how to heal Harry�s mind, and Draco looked at the Elder Wand with
narrowed eyes. Harry had no idea what he was thinking most of the time. Draco
had tried to explain, but he was using esoteric magic terms that Harry would
have had to read another whole book to understand, and Harry�s worsening emotions�sudden
anger, deepening despair, ridiculous guilt�kept getting in the way. It was best
if they made love and didn�t try to speak.

�� Harry knew
it was only temporary. He trusted Snape to save him. (And how strange that was to say; it would have been mad
six months ago and unthinkable five years ago). But he still didn�t like it.

�� And he
thought that if he could find something else beyond basilisk venom to destroy
the Horcruxes, then he would have made a contribution to the process, no matter
how small it was. There had to be something
he was good at beyond hurting people and fighting cabinets.

�� He opened
the seventeenth book, looked at the index�most of them were much
better-organized than Poisons and Their
Effects�and flipped to the section on basilisk venom. Then he cursed. This
one was very brief, and seemed to repeat only facts he already knew, about the
rarity of basilisks and how to hunt one with a mirror. In disgust, he glanced
at the last line of the entry, hoping against hope it would tell him something
new.

�� The only thing that can compare to basilisk
venom in deadliness is Fiendfyre.

�� Harry
froze. Then he tossed the book in the air and whooped.

�� He didn�t
know what Fiendfyre was�some Dark Arts spell relating to fire, probably. But
what mattered was that finally, finally, he had some real substitute for
basilisk venom.

�� The
discovery even made the pulsing sadness that had invaded the center of his mind
in the last few days withdraw.

�� He heard
pounding footsteps outside in the corridor, and then Sirius limped hastily into
the library, his eyes wide and alarmed. He stopped and stared when he saw Harry
dancing in the middle of the library and a book lying on the floor behind him. �Harry?�
he said. �Is something wrong?�

�� Harry
rushed towards him and hugged him, careful, even as he did it, to keep his arms
in the places that Sirius could tolerate. His twisted spine was still a
problem, though with Madam Pomfrey�s patient work it straightened a little day
by day. �Oh, Sirius, I�m so happy,�
he murmured into his godfather�s shoulder.

�� Sirius
gripped him back with an embrace that lost its uncertainty in a few moments,
and whispered into his ear, �Finally.�

�� And that
made Harry laugh again, though perhaps not for a good reason.

�� Fiendfyre. I�ll find out what it is and use
it to destroy the Horcruxes. No, I don�t know for certain whether it�ll work,
but if it�s as deadly as basilisk venom that�s at least a good sign.

�� And I�m so tired of feeling hopeless.

*

�� Severus
shut the door of the library quietly behind them. He had talked to Harry about
healing his mind in the bedroom he shared with Draco�and Severus was surprised
Narcissa hadn�t had a fit about that
already�or Severus�s own chambers, but neither was neutral enough territory.
The library was better, though they had removed all the books first. Harry
might lash out with accidental magic if he was hurt badly enough, and Severus did
not want half their research prospects set on fire.

�� He watched
as Harry sat down in a chair, facing him, and bowed his head. His face was pale
as cheese, his breath shallow and quick. Severus wished he could sit down and
take his hand, but he had to be on his feet and ready to move quickly if Harry
did lash out.

�� Meet my
eyes, Harry,� Severus said, with all the gentleness he possessed, which still
left his voice sounding like a raven�s.

�� Harry raised
his head and, slowly, shivering, met Severus�s gaze. The moment he did, Severus
spoke the spell softly and slipped into his mind.

�� Again he
built the shields that would contain the most fragile whole parts of Harry�s
mind away from the damage that he would have to inflict. Then he turned towards
the suppurating holes and concentrated until his own thoughts were as flat and
peaceful as he could make them.

�� Earlier, he
had envisioned a sharp pick of crystal, shaped like the lightning bolt scar on
Harry�s head. All the books had agreed that it was better if the �tools� used
to heal the victim�s mind had some powerful symbolic effect. Severus reached
out with the lightning bolt, his solidified thought, and dug into the largest
and messiest wound, the one that had contained the information about the tiara.

�� Harry screamed.
Severus, flicking his magic like a whip back and forth between his body and the
mind spread out in front of him, managed to avoid the first lash that might
have killed him. Two of the bookshelves began to burn, but luckily the Black
wards to contain a disaster like that had been activated, and they came down as
a wet blanket on the flames.

�� Severus dug
again, and black drops of sick, stinging poison flew up towards him. He flicked
his mind back, keeping the lightest touch of Legilimency on Harry�s thoughts.
If he once allowed the poison into his head, he might contract the infection himself.

�� He brought
the second tool into play, an envisioned tube of crystal that drew the poison
up and out of Harry�s mind. It would spill harmlessly into an imagined void.

�� If Severus
managed to pull the rest of it out of Harry�s mind without being killed by
accidental magic or driving Harry mad with the pain.

�� Those
initial moments were the only clear ones. After that it became a long nightmare
marked with flashes of brightness, like attending sickbeds during a plague.

Severus ducked a formless Blasting
Curse aimed at his head, and it caused a dent in the wall behind him that sent
flakes of plaster floating out.

He saw Harry writhing before him in
agony so great that it distended his mouth but wouldn�t let him make a sound.
His pity as strong as his anguish, Severus built another muffling wall before
he went back to work at the wounds.

He stepped gingerly across the
scattered swamp of Harry�s mind, past bubbling tar pools and erupting poison
that was doing its very best to eat Harry�s sanity. He felt the despair
rippling away from that poison, and he cursed the Dark Lord with every ounce of
sincerity left to him.

The crystal tube broke away in his
hands, and he had to imagine a new one, at the moment and on the fly, without
any of the long work of envisioning he�d put in the previous day.

Harry screamed his name, pleading for
him to stop. Severus discovered a new use, then, for the long training in
coldness and stoicism that he�d had when he played a Death Eater without any
true heart for the torturing part of the work.

And then it was done, done, with Severus standing in the
middle of Harry�s mind and shaking because the magnitude of the task made him
literally unable to imagine that it was done. At last he swallowed, stepped
back, and leaped into his own body again.

He opened his eyes.

Harry crouched with his head
between his hands. Severus knew he would have a headache that only deep,
drugged sleep could cure. He already had Dreamless Sleep Potion at hand, and he
started to turn away to fetch it, thinking Harry would want a few moments with
no one looking at him.

And then he felt arms wrapped
around him from behind.

�Thank you,� Harry whispered. �I
can�t imagine what that must have been like for you. It was horrifying enough
from my end. Thank you.�

Severus eventually turned around to
embrace Harry, but first he had to close his eyes and stand very still.

*

qwerty: Thank you!

Yami Bakura: Thanks! I promise
there�s more angst coming up before everything gets better.

MewMew2: Thank you for reviewing.

Thrnbrooke: Here�s the next
chapter-part!

Sneakyfox: Thank you! I hope Snape�s
opening up here satisfies you.
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Inter Vivos