Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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.

Chapter List
- 28
- 29
- 30
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Nine—Certain Tests Failed
            “This is a very serious matter, Mr. Potter.” McGonagall’s voice was hushed, and Harry was reminded abruptly of his aunt when she didn’t want someone to overhear her gossiping. “Do you think that you can tell me again in detail about your dream?”
            Harry did, with Dash supplying some details Harry had been on the verge of forgetting. Honestly, Harry wanted to forget them. It was a regular nightmare, and if it hadn’t been for the suspicion that the thing would stop being a nightmare and become real if he ignored it, he wouldn’t have told anyone.
            I don’t understand this way of protecting yourself, or thinking that you protect yourself. Dash’s tail drummed out a little tattoo against Harry’s ribs, though he stopped at once when he seemed to realize, from the thoughts that darted through Harry’s head, that he was hurting him. Why would you need to hide things that aren’t your fault? They don’t even relate to the Dursleys! No one is going to hurt you for dreaming this dream!
            The last words were almost shouted down their bond, and Harry lost track of his conversation with McGonagall. He swallowed, smiled apologetically at her, and then hissed at Dash, If you can’t understand when you’re in my bloody head, you can go outside for the rest of this conversation. I don’t need you acting as though what I’m doing is absolutely alien.
            Dash was silent for a long moment, his head lying along Harry’s waist as if he was a mere decorative band. Then he whispered, I apologize.
            And me just dreaming a dream could have people branding me as mad or evil, Harry reminded him relentlessly, and tossed all his memories of last year with people whispering about him or running away from him into the front of his mind. I was trying to save Justin, and people still thought I was evil, because I could talk to snakes. Sure, they changed their minds, but it took me killing your cousin or brother or whatever and saving Ginny to make them do that!
            Dash was quiet. Harry waited, but the inside of his mind remained hollow and echoing like the Chamber of Secrets itself. He took a deep breath and turned back to talk to McGonagall.
            “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I just—things are hard.”
            “I know, Mr. Potter.” McGonagall’s eyes were so soft it was almost hard for Harry to meet them. “I know.”
            Harry wanted to say that she didn’t know, that she couldn’t know, that things were horrible and only Dash knew, but that would destroy the whole point of his coming here, if he wasn’t going to tell her the truth. He swallowed down his protests the way that he had always swallowed down the ones he would have made against Dudley, and nodded, then resumed the story.
            When he had finished, McGonagall was paler than before. She nodded once, tapped her fingers on the desk, and cleared her throat. “My immediate suggestion, Mr. Potter, is one that I think you will probably reject. But it is the most sensible one I can give.”
            Vague dread coiled in Harry’s stomach; Dash squeezed around his waist as if to contain it. “What, ma’am?”
            “There is no greater expert on You-Know-Who than Professor Dumbledore.” McGonagall gave him a look of vague pity. “He is also the one in the school who knows the most about curse scars. You should talk to him.”
            “What about Madam Pomfrey?” Harry blurted out, the words tripping over his tongue before he knew he was going to say them.
            “What about her?” McGonagall paused. It seemed she’d been in the middle of preparing to speak, and Harry had interrupted her.
            Harry shivered, but he had been through harder things than this and summoned the courage to face them, so he was going to do it now. “Wouldn’t she know about curse scars and things like that? Wounds that bleed when you dream? I think we should at least talk to her and see what she can do.”
            McGonagall smiled. Harry wondered why.
            Because you used the word “we,” said Dash, which at least proved he was paying attention even if he wasn’t going to speak right now.
            “That may be true,” said McGonagall, and nodded. Her voice became a little more staccato. “I also understand the reason that you’re reluctant to talk to Professor Dumbledore. I would be myself, in your situation.”
            I like her more than I thought I did, said Dash abruptly.
            McGonagall continued before Harry could say anything else. “It is only that, as this may be a matter of important security, you’ll want to talk to the Headmaster eventually. You’ll have to explain things to him.”
            “Because you think Voldemort might threaten Hogwarts?” Harry clenched his fingers into his palms. He ignored the way McGonagall flinched at the name. He thought it was a little silly, but there were more important things to think about right now. “I mean, does Professor Dumbledore think he’d have to attack him?”
            He at least understood why Dumbledore would have been interested in his other two years. The Philosopher’s Stone had been right in the school, and then the Chamber of Secrets was, too, and the basilisk was attacking students who were in the school, too. So Harry had relied on the Headmaster to help him, because he had thought he was the only one who could. Or at least someone who would take an interest.
            But now Harry didn’t trust Dumbledore as much as he used to, and his dream was about a forest far away. How could Dumbledore help Harry combat that?
            McGonagall hesitated again. Then she said, half-whispering as if she thought someone was hiding behind the wall and would jump out on her if she spoke too loudly, “You should know that Professor Dumbledore was very active in the first war against…You-Know-Who. He will have an idea what the nightmare means, and the bleeding in your scar.”
            Harry grimaced. On the one hand, he didn’t want that nightmare again, and he also wanted to do what he could to fight Voldemort. But he didn’t see how Professor Dumbledore could actually help him right now.
            “Do we have to tell him?” he asked.
            “Not right away,” said McGonagall, to his relief. “We can go and see Madam Pomfrey first, and see whether she has any potion or salve that can soothe your scar.” She stood up and pulled her cloak around her.
            Harry gave her a grateful smile. “Thanks, Professor McGonagall.”
            McGonagall hesitated at the threshold of the office. “Do you mind telling me what has gone wrong between you and the Headmaster, Mr. Potter? I feel I would be of more help in offering suggestions if I knew.”
            She doesn’t smell simply curious, Dash said in a cold voice, after having extended his tongue. But curious enough.
            It’s still my choice what I tell her, Harry reminded him, and turned back and gave McGonagall a smile he hoped was convincing. “He thinks that I need to forgive Sirius something that happened between us, and I don’t want to. And he…he acts like he cares more about Sirius than me.”
            “Sirius was one of his favorite students,” McGonagall murmured, as if that excused it, and Harry knew the bitter taste of disappointment. At least she wasn’t marching him straight to Dumbledore, but it seemed as if he should also agree that Sirius was right and Dumbledore was right and everyone except Harry was right.
            “Good at Transfiguration?” Harry had to ask, because he didn’t know why that would have been the case otherwise.
            “No, I was the Transfiguration professor even then.” McGonagall hesitated again, and then sighed and muttered, “He was Dumbledore’s favorite student in much the same way you are, Mr. Potter—because he got in trouble but benefited others when he did it, and he was clever and devil-may-care and chased trouble with his laughter flying.”
            Harry’s teeth clicked together hard enough that his mouth hurt. How could he complain about Sirius to her, then? No matter what he said, she wouldn’t understand. And it sounded like it was still okay to think about Sirius as a child even though he should have been an adult by now.
            But then, I always knew that I would have to be the adult when it came to Sirius.
            Harry knew that, and the conviction, the reinforcement, of his knowledge should have left him unmoved or actually strengthened him. It was stupid that he couldn’t make his feet move after Professor McGonagall for long moments.
            They walked through the mostly empty corridors towards the infirmary, and McGonagall murmured out of the side of her mouth, “I hope that you can work with Professor Dumbledore again. It might be essential to the course of fighting You-Know-Who. And…” She hesitated. “I hope he apologizes for what he did to you.”
            He won’t, said Dash briefly. He’s too convinced that he’s right.
            And Harry was afraid Dash was right, but he managed to nod and murmur politely enough, he thought, that McGonagall was content to take him to Madam Pomfrey instead of asking more awkward questions.
*
            Severus did not turn his head as he walked before the Gryffindors that morning, but he could walk as if absorbed in the papers he held and listen to students who had no idea he was listening at the same time, and that was exactly what he did.
            “I wish you’d let us know that you were going to visit Madam Pomfrey,” Weasley was hissing at Harry, who kept his head bowed as though it was vital he count the number of flagstones he was walking over. “We waited for you in the Tower, and I thought maybe some Slytherins had pranked you or something.”
            “They’ve stopped that, mostly,” Harry muttered. “No. I went to her to see if she could make my scar stop bleeding.”
            Severus nearly lost his grip on the papers, but if he dropped them or turned around, the Gryffindors would glance up and notice he was paying attention to them, not simply walking down the corridor. Or perhaps they would notice him for the first time. With Granger and Weasley’s tight focus on Harry, Severus would have put good money on them not noticing him at all.
            “Could she?” Granger.
            “A little bit,” said Harry. “See, the puffiness is gone, look.”
            Severus immediately touched his wand to the paper on top of the pile—a pitiful exam from a boy who would earn a Troll mark in any case—and Transfigured it into a mirror. He could see well by angling it only a little in front of his face and continuing to walk slowly. Harry had stopped in the middle of the corridor and was letting Granger lift his fringe. The basilisk had his head on the boy’s shoulder, appearing to look up intently despite his covered eyes.
            Severus could see the scar, which he only now realized he hadn’t consciously noticed in some time. He supposed he could put that down to his relationship with Harry improving, but it was also testimony to how hard Harry tried to hide the thing.
            And it was red now, standing up and out from Harry’s flesh, and there was a bloody lining all along the edges of it that Severus did not think was there normally. As he watched, one drop of blood welled out.
            Severus had had enough.
            He lowered his pile of papers and turned around. Weasley had just leaned forwards to examine Harry’s scar, and he froze as though Severus had caught him doing something wrong. In Severus’s mind, he had. He could understand why Harry would have kept quiet about the scar, because he was a martyr and that was the way he worked, but Granger and Weasley should have known better.
            “How long has this been happening?” he demanded, striding up to them.
            “Since I had a dream a few nights ago.” Harry’s voice was calm and quiet, and he looked at Severus as if he knew Severus would not hurt him. Which was exactly right and what he should think, and Severus knew it, but his veins still heated with the implication that he didn’t have the right to scold Harry.
            You don’t. You aren’t his legal guardian, and you know the stink Black would raise if he thought you were interfering with his right to be a confidant to his precious godson.
            Since Black likely thought of Harry as no more than a playing piece on the board of a game between the two of them, however, Severus saw no reason why he had to pay attention to that stink. He bent down towards Harry. “Let me see.”
            “You already saw,” Harry muttered, truculent, but he let Severus brush his hair away and look again. Severus hissed under his breath. Harry folded his arms and waited until Severus dropped his fringe, then looked away.
            “You’ve gone to Madam Pomfrey,” Severus diagnosed, his mind coiling around at sharp speed. “Who else?”
            “Professor McGonagall. She was the one who took me to Madam Pomfrey.”
            Severus stared at him, but Harry blinked stubbornly back at him, and now Granger and Weasley were leaning in from the sides, eager to confirm his story. “That’s right, sir,” Granger said, with the pursed mouth that always made Severus try to avoid calling on her in class. “Harry was telling us just that now. He went to Professor McGonagall about it last night, and she took him to Madam Pomfrey.”
            “What did the mediwitch tell you?” Severus asked, still directing his question at Harry. He saw no value in talking to Granger when she would only repeat information that he could get less circuitously from Harry.
            There was a long moment when he thought Harry would turn his back and stomp away like the boy he had stopped being. But then he blinked and glanced aside, incidentally stealing Severus’s chance to skim his surface thoughts.
            “That it looked like I’d been picking at it,” Harry muttered. “She did give me a cream to put on it.”
            “What is the real cause?” Severus pitched his voice low. That seemed to be one of the ways to get Harry to trust him. He suspected that Harry had had enough of raised voices, and might welcome, or at least pay attention to, one voice that was the opposite.
            Harry shivered, once, and then nodded. Severus knew the nod wasn’t an answer to his question. It seemed to be Harry deciding that he could trust him, after all.
            “The dream was about a woman walking in a dark forest, and getting eaten by something that rose up from the forest floor and wrapped around her.” Harry’s voice was also low, and precise. “Professor McGonagall thought it had something to do with Voldemort. She said I should talk to Dumbledore, but I don’t really want to.”
            “Professor Dumbledore, Harry!” Granger seemed unable to resist the impulse to correct Harry even when she should resist it, Severus thought, icily annoyed. “And you didn’t tell us about that!”
            Harry twitched one thin shoulder blade and then reached down. The basilisk was wrapping around his leg as if he wanted to rest his head on the floor. Severus was as glad that Harry was restraining the snake. It made Weasley and Granger look at him, and gave Severus the chance to unclench his hand from the fist it had made.
            “Did you avail yourself of her advice?” he asked, at his most arctic.
            Harry was staring at the floor in that way he had which Severus most intensely despised. Once, he had despised it because it meant he couldn’t read the brat’s mind and he was probably plotting mischief or hiding a smirk while Severus tried to tell him something for his own good. Now, he despised it because it meant Harry was shrinking back into himself and recoiling from advances he had already made. Severus repeated the words in a less cold tone, and Harry glanced up at him.
            Severus held his eyes without trying to read his mind, this time. That would only put the boy off further, particularly if he sensed Severus doing it. And perhaps it was time Severus showed a measure of trust in Harry, in turn.
            He waited, and Harry said, “No. I didn’t want to talk to him, about this or anything else. Not since—” He shook his head and fell silent, and Severus knew from that that Harry hadn’t filled his friends in about everything.
            Or perhaps simply doesn’t want to refer to it aloud, Severus considered while Granger protested, “But this isn’t about Sirius, Harry! I’m sure that Professor Dumbledore would be able to discuss this with you without saying anything about Sirius. Right?” She squeezed Potter’s shoulder and glanced up at Severus as if she expected him to agree.
            “I would not take that wager,” said Severus, and Granger looked as if a saint had climbed down off his pedestal and declared that he didn’t like his halo.
            “But he’s the Headmaster of this school,” Granger started to argue. In her eyes, Severus supposed, that would make him a saint, or the near equivalent. As a guardian of academic knowledge and an authority figure wrapped into one, it was hard to imagine someone Granger would respect more.
            “Which means that he knows what about this?” Harry suddenly demanded. He looked as surprised as any of them that he had spoken up, and Severus thought the only one not surprised was his basilisk, who reached back up and wound about Harry’s leg again. “I mean, yeah, he’s knowledgeable and all, but what would he know about curse scars?”
            Severus made out the sound of students nearing them down the corridors. He grimaced. This was not the ideal place to have such a conversation in any event, but having it in front of students was worse than simply having it in public. “Continue walking,” he directed. “Should someone ask a question, say that I have decided to make you serve one last detention.”
            “But that’s lying,” said Granger.
            Weasley spoke up for the first time. Severus did not think the boy stupid, as he once had, but he did seem to let Granger and Harry take the lead more often, unless he was angry. “We know it is, Hermione. But remember what happened last year when people kept finding out Harry’s secrets? It was horrible. Let’s keep walking.”
            Granger’s mouth firmed down to a thin little line, and she did start walking. She thought she could fight all battles with the power of honor and truth, Severus thought, weary. And with the power of the Headmaster.
            He wondered how soon she would become disillusioned. He knew that Harry was reluctant to enter conflict with the Headmaster, for a number of excellent reasons, so it might be a long time.
            “Harry?” Severus murmured, keeping his voice low enough that it would be hard enough for the boy’s friends to overhear what he said, let alone students who were more focused on the upcoming summer holiday and Leaving Feast.
            Harry walked without speaking for a bit, then whispered, “McGonagall was hinting some things about Dumbledore fighting Voldemort in the first war, but she wouldn’t tell me outright. What good is that? No one can tell me what they think ought to reassure me, because I’m not old enough for it or something?”
            Severus sighed noiselessly. Minerva had not handled things as badly as she could have, but she had clearly underestimated the level of Harry’s distrust of the Headmaster. Not a hard thing to do, when Harry was so careful to let few people know about it.
            “Dumbledore was active in the first war, yes,” he said, and Harry’s eyes shot to him. “He led a group called the Order of the Phoenix, which frequently opposed the Dark Lord. Several of the Order’s members were killed, in fact. Your parents among them. So it is likely that he would know more about the Dark Lord’s manifestations than many other people would.”
            Harry closed his mouth a little, and then muttered, “If anyone would ever tell me about that, instead of just hinting around that it’s a dark secret I’m not meant to know, I wouldn’t mind it so much.”
            “The Headmaster probably does not think you old enough to know,” said Severus, and shrugged when Harry looked at him. “But you are old enough to know the story behind your godfather’s supposed betrayal of your parents, and to reveal your abuse, and to know about Lupin. I believe that you will not dash away and use this knowledge in ways detrimental to your health.”
            Harry’s friends had gone silent, watching Harry more than they did Severus. Harry walked in silence too for long moments, then let out a noiseless sigh of his own and muttered, “I really don’t think I can. I mean, I don’t even know where that forest is. It’s not like I could try to help the woman.”
            Severus hadn’t even thought of that particular reason Harry might put himself in danger. He had thought more in terms of trying to conquer the Dark Lord.
            But, of course, this was Harry, who considered himself duty-bound to act like an adult to his ridiculous godfather and save a basilisk from eternity alone in the depths of the castle.
            “No, you could not,” Severus agreed, and glanced sternly at Harry. “Now, come to my office so that we may maintain the detention pretense, and I will give you a potion for the scar that will work better than the salve Pomfrey used.”
            “Will it actually stop the bleeding if it has something to do with Voldemort?” Harry glanced from Severus to the basilisk, and Severus wondered what kind of silent conversation they were holding now. It was unlikely that the snake would know anything about bleeding curse scars if Harry didn’t; most of his knowledge seemed to come from what he saw or heard inside Harry’s head.
            “It should,” Severus agreed. “It was made to stop bleeding, whether or not it comes from a curse scar.”
            They had turned towards the dungeons, and Granger had stepped up to Severus’s side and opened her mouth as if to ask another question, when a voice like a bark rang out, and Severus closed his eyes in silent exasperation.
            “What are you doing with my godson, Snivellus?”
*
ChaosLady: Thanks!
starr: She did believe him, and she wouldn’t tell Dumbledore behind his back, but she does think that it would be for the best if he would simply go to Dumbledore.
Meechypoo: Harry isn’t going to like Sirius butting in like this, but he will attempt to handle it gracefully.
moon: Thanks!
SP777: Good point.
- 28
- 29
- 30
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

A Brother to Basilisks