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A Brother to Basilisks	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 85172 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 15
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

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Chapter Thirty-Six—The Opposite of Clamor
            Lucius gave a small, pleased smile at the letter he had received back from Potter. If he hadn’t known better, he would have said that an adult had dictated it, but since the boy had so few adults he could trust, it was much likelier to have been the boy’s native intelligence flavored with some promptings from his basilisk.
            Mr. Malfoy,
            Thank you for the word of warning about snakes. Yes, Dash can fight and control any snake that comes onto Hogwarts grounds. If Draco doesn’t know how to control Conflagration and needs my help, then I can do that. I’m sending him a letter with some Parseltongue words written down the best I can, so he should be able to communicate with Conflagration soon.
            Yours respectfully,
            Harry Potter.
            Indeed, Lucius thought as he cast the letter into the fire, the only thing he would have changed in the whole of it was the basilisk’s unfortunate name.
*
            Harry gave a gasp as he woke with his scar burning. This time, when he reached up to it, there was blood from it inching down his face.
            Let me see.
            Harry gratefully removed his hand so Dash could make his way up to the scar. Dash studied it with a silent intensity that Harry didn’t think was criticism of him, but the only way he knew for sure was the reassurance he got from Dash wrapping his tail gently around his waist.
            No, said Dash abruptly. There is no broken skin there, no fear that some level of contamination might have come through. But I can taste the scent of a snake.
            Harry froze in surprise. His dream had had a snake in it, as usual, and sometimes two snakes. He didn’t know if Voldemort was trying to summon and control an army of them, or if Harry just dreamed a lot about his snake familiar, or what. Why would you be able to do that?
            That is what I am trying to figure out, said Dash, with a chiding tone in his voice that reminded Harry of the way Snape sometimes talked, and he held obediently still while Dash seemed to run through a bunch of facts in his head. Then Dash spoke again, and his voice was startlingly cold. I think Voldemort is trying to control you the way he would a snake.
            Harry shivered. Can he do that? The things he dreamed about Voldemort commanding his crazy-eyed follower to do, and his snake familiar, were horrible. Sometimes they ate people, sometimes they cast Dark magic, sometimes they collected ingredients for potions that left people bleeding on the ground or plants torn and shredded.
            I don’t know, said Dash, and his voice was low and still cold. He should not be able to. We have our bond. His tail tightened on Harry’s waist again, and Harry grabbed it and hugged it. But the bond that you and Voldemort have is like no other I have studied or seen or heard of.
            Harry would have asked, most of the time, what Dash meant about studying, and when he’d had the time to read a book. But now, he only swallowed and said, I don’t want to be bonded to Voldemort.
            I know, said Dash soothingly, and for a moment, his tail rose and brushed the last of the blood away from Harry’s scar. It’s nothing that you did, though, and it’s not something you can help. I think we need to look at this more closely. Will you let me into your mind?
            You’re already there, said Harry, confused.
            No, the way you did when I adjusted things in your mind when you were trying to use wandless magic.
            Harry hesitated once, because he hadn’t given Dash permission for that and he had wondered ever since exactly what had happened, what he had given Dash permission for. But it probably had to do with Dash being his familiar. Professor Snape had said that familiars could do things like that for their wizards. You can.
            Dash eased closer to him and stared into his eyes. Harry started to ask why he needed to do that, when he had done it last time without the stare.
            Then he gasped as he felt something heavy and smooth sliding through his mind. It wasn’t like the other times he had felt Dash there. This time, he felt as if he had scales himself, as if he had a tail, as if he knew what it was like to move without legs.
            He didn’t know why Dash felt like he had to tell Harry that to help him with his dreams and the bond with Voldemort. But he was glad to know, because he didn’t think he would ever have known otherwise.
            It isn’t a bond.
            Harry sighed. He hadn’t known how much he needed to hear the words until Dash spoke them. But that meant he had a question. What is it?
            There were more sensations that made Harry know what it would be like to carry poison in his mouth. He licked his lips. It would be strange to walk through Hogwarts and know what would happen if he bit someone.
            It’s a connection, said Dash at last.
            Harry felt good enough now to roll his eyes. Because that’s informative.
            I’m still a young basilisk. Dash pulled his mind free of the deep link with Harry’s, and Harry gasped a little. That felt like someone had slid a fang out of his throat instead of into it. But I know it isn’t anything like the one we have. It isn’t your mind that’s connected to his.
            Harry frowned and rubbed his throat. Then what could it be? Why are we sharing dreams?
            Dash curled up with his head on Harry’s knee, his shielded eyes intent on Harry’s face. I don’t know exactly what this is. But I want you to promise me that you’ll get someone to watch over it and monitor it if it starts changing. Professor Snape would be my choice.
            Harry sighed. I hate to put any more burdens on him. He knew that Professor Snape had time to teach him during the summer because he didn’t have any classes, but that would change once people came back in September.
            It would not be a burden. Dash reached out and curled the end of his tail around Harry’s ankle. Or, at least, not as much of a burden as my constant nagging if you don’t do it would be.
            Harry shuddered a little. At least he had been able to escape nagging from the Dursleys when he was in the cupboard, and nagging from Sirius by not spending much time in the house. There would be no escape from someone who was in his head. All right, all right. I’ll ask him when I see him tomorrow.
            Good. Remember that I will know if you don’t.
            Harry laughed and reached down to loop his arms around Dash, gathering him into his embrace. That should sound like a threat, but all it reminds me is of how much I love you.
            Dash didn’t even respond to that, maybe because it didn’t need words. Harry was still learning about things like that. Dash just rested all his weight in Harry’s arms and flicked his tongue out to taste Harry’s scent at the crook of his wrist, where he had said that it was strong.
*
Draco studied the Parseltongue words on the letter uncertainly. Then he looked at Conflagration.
The problem was, even though Harry had sent along instructions about how to pronounce the words, Draco still wasn’t sure that he was going to get it right. Would he really get the right number of S’s in his voice? Or what about the one that Harry had written with a T in the middle of all the S’s? How was he supposed to say that?
Harry did also say that he would have to practice. But he didn’t seem to understand it would be easier for Draco to practice with him.
Time to see what happens. Draco took one more look at the letter, then looked at Conflagration and tried the one with the T in the middle. It was a complicated series of hisses, sh and s sounds, with here and there a vowel thrown in like someone had forgotten it. According to Harry—who had had to write the word with Dash’s help, because he told Draco Parseltongue sounded like English to him—that was the one that was supposed to mean “Stop.”
            Conflagration snapped his head up and hissed something that Draco, of course, didn’t understand. Then he turned as if he was going to crawl into the hearth, and Draco repeated the word.
            This time, Conflagration curved his head back and glared again.
            But he did stop. Did that mean it had worked?
            Draco snatched another look at the letter. There was a word that was supposed to mean “Come here,” complete with f and v sounds. Draco licked his lips and pronounced it as best he could. “Shessshefevess.”
            Conflagration moved towards him slowly, checking with his eyes and tongue as if he thought Draco was going to change his mind any minute. Draco smiled at him and then wondered if snakes would think about smiles in the same way, at least if they weren’t as intelligent as Dash. “Shessshefevess,” he repeated, and held out his hand and wriggled it back and forth encouragingly.
            Conflagration climbed up his arm and twined himself around Draco’s shoulder. Draco wanted to burst with pride.
            Then Conflagration poked him in the cheek with his nose, and kept on poking. Draco pulled back to glare at him, but Conflagration kept poking. Draco tried the word that was supposed to mean “Stop” again.
            Conflagration kept poking.
            Draco gave an aggrieved sigh. He must have more practicing to do.
*
            “I can teach you the basics of an art called Occlumency, which you have already learned part of through learning to concentrate. But it is hard, and would involve me looking into your mind. I am not sure that you wish me to do that.”
            The speech Severus had spent so much time preparing slid out of his lips with an odd naturalness when it came to the moment when he had to utter it. And Harry sat there listening in their practicing room, tracing the outline of the splash Severus had caused on the floor with one nail, but not ignoring him. Severus knew that much, however hard Harry was to read at other times.
            The basilisk had curled up with his head on Harry’s knee and was regarding Severus with unblinking eyes. Well, of course they were unblinking, behind those eyelids that had to stay shut. Severus looked away from them with an effort and back at Harry, who had lifted his head.
            “You wouldn’t ever tell anyone about what you saw in my thoughts?” Harry’s voice was quiet.
            Severus shook his head. “No. I would not.”
            Harry nodded. “I had to ask, because Dash wanted me to ask,” he said, and rested his hand on the basilisk’s back. Harry spent a moment listening with his head tilted to the side, and then smiled a little. “He also wanted to let you know that even though his poison is diluted, it would still be painful if he bit you.”
            “Understood,” said Severus, and managed to keep his voice so calm that he himself was impressed by it. “But in practice, Occlumency works only if student and teacher trust each other. I do not think I can teach Dash. Can I teach you?”
            It was a question he had never asked of Harry in so forthright a fashion before. He supposed he was afraid of what the answer would have been, at least some of the time before now.
            Harry swept him with a quick glance. Then he nodded and stood up, stretching out one hand. Severus didn’t catch on for an embarrassingly long time, but at least he took hold of the hand and shook it once before Harry got upset and pulled it back.
            “You can,” said Harry. “I know that you aren’t going to betray anything you see to anyone. And—and not only because of Dash’s threats.” His voice broke for a second.
            Severus nodded once, not looking away from Harry. The moment was one of those fragile ones that they seemed to have distressingly often, when Severus was providing something to Harry that not enough people had provided to him before, in the place of those others who should have been pleased and proud to do it.
            “Good,” Severus said, when he thought enough time had passed that he could say it. “And the first thing you have to remember is that you can use the concentration trick, but that is not all Occlumency is. Occlumency is also about protecting your mind so that someone else, a Legilimens—”
            “The one who can read minds?”
            Severus nodded. If nothing else, he thought, the interruption was good training for further moments he would share with Harry, when he would need to be braced for far more frequent interruptions. “It is about trapping them and slowing them down. It is a far more defensive art than wandless magic…”
*
            Harry was sitting at breakfast with his head whirling, trying to remember all the things that he’d have to buy for his fourth year at Hogwarts. That included rats and mice for Dash, cages to keep them in, books on Occlumency—well, Professor Snape had said Harry could borrow his, but Harry wanted a few of his own—parchment, ink, quills, the books in the Hogwarts letter, a new cauldron, owl treats for Hedwig, new bristles for his Firebolt, a new bag for his books that seemed like they were going to be heavier this year, and—
            “Harry, when did you plan to meet up with Hermione in Diagon Alley?”
            Harry blinked and looked up. Sirius was sitting hunched forwards in his chair, staring at yet another letter he had received the other day. Harry gave a mental shrug. He hadn’t paid that much attention to what Sirius was doing with letters lately. He assumed Sirius was still getting some from Draco’s mum, though.
            “About eleven. Why?”
            Sirius licked his lips. “Do you think you could go a little early? I mean, I could Apparate you there, and you could—wander around until you found Hermione and her parents? You wouldn’t get in trouble if you went early, right?”
            Does he forget who you have with you? Dash asked, and lifted his head above the level of the table to flicker his tongue at Sirius.
            “Not while Dash is with me,” Harry said. “If anyone tried to attack me, they’d regret it.”
            Sirius smiled, but he looked a little desperate. “I mean, you wouldn’t get into trouble because you went looking for something that you shouldn’t. Like you did when you heard Dash calling you.”
            Now that I have you, you aren’t going to do that anymore, said Dash promptly. I’ll be the only basilisk bonded to you.
            Harry rolled his eyes, because he had to, but he reassured Sirius, “Dash doesn’t want me doing that any more than you do.”
            Sirius gave Dash that bug-eyed look he got whenever he and Dash turned out to have anything in common, and then mumbled, “Right. Right. So we can go now?” He stuffed the letter into his pocket and stood, offering a hand to Harry.
            Harry nodded. “Of course we can.” He reached down to pick up Dash, only to find that Dash had already looped himself around Harry’s shoulders and waist enough that Harry didn’t really have to pick him up. Harry gave him a grateful smile and stood up, only to encounter Sirius’s shaking head and raised eyebrow. “What?” Harry added.
            “You don’t have to carry him everywhere. I’m sure he has leg—I mean, scales that will get him from place to place.”
            It just really upsets him that Dash is a snake, Harry thought in wonder. He still can’t get used to it even though he and Dash have both been with me for almost a year.
            “Well, Dumbledore told me that he needed to be close to me at all times when we were in school, and I’ve done the same thing when I took him up to Hogwarts,” Harry said, shrugging. “So it makes sense to carry him. And he likes being carried.”
            And what I like and do not like are no concern of yours, smelly dog-man.
            Harry tapped Dash on the nose for that. Dash clung to him and looked as unrepentant as only a basilisk could.
            “What did he say?” Sirius was eyeing Dash with more intense interest than any he’d shown during the summer.
            “Oh, an insult,” said Harry, and didn’t translate it.
            Although Sirius still looked as if he would have liked to know, he went to get his cloak and boots. Harry shook his head at Dash and went to collect his vault key from his rooms; there would be no getting money out of Gringotts without that.
            Why do you insult him? He matters to me.
            Frankly, I don’t know why.
            Harry chose to keep silent on that, as well.
*
            There were some people who might say she was stupid because she was “only” a Muggleborn and didn’t know everything they did about the wizarding world. There were even some people who probably thought she was stupid because she was a girl. When she was in Muggle school, she’d certainly encountered people who thought that, and who didn’t like it that she knew all the answers, because boys were supposed to.
            But Hermione Granger was not stupid. And she knew that Harry had had a good summer and a bad summer both the instant she saw him.
            Harry walked up to her parents and greeted them quietly. They’d agreed to meet at Flourish and Blotts. Hermione knew her parents were a bit overwhelmed with all the wizards and magic around them, but they both calmed down when they were in a bookshop. You couldn’t do much to make books different from themselves.
            (Hermione had never told them about the Monster Book of Monsters).
            Harry looked better than he did after a summer at the Dursleys’! He wasn’t all pale, and he had a confidence to his walk that Hermione usually only saw when he won a Quidditch game. But he also had a sad look in his eyes as he stared at Dash, and Hermione thought they were probably having an upsetting conversation.
            Then he saw Hermione, and maybe especially Mum and Dad and how frightened they were because he had a giant snake draped all over him, and gave an apologetic smile and held out his hand. “I’m sorry if Dash upset you,” he said. “And I know that we met before, but we didn’t get to talk that much. Harry Potter.”
            Dad gave a weak little smile as he shook Harry’s hand, even as he looked hard at Hermione. Hermione nodded in reassurance. She had explained about Dash to her parents, and if she hadn’t managed to convey his sheer size and the way he considered the world as if he was looking for threats to Harry, well, it was probably because she hadn’t read enough descriptions of basilisks.
            Or because Dash had grown. She knew that last year he had fit around Harry’s shoulders and waist with maybe some of his tail trailing down Harry’s leg. Now he looked as though he could sheathe Harry in his coils and not notice.
            “Well, Harry,” said Mum, and Hermione smiled a little. Her mum was always the one who would cover up some mistake that people made in front of her father, or mistakes that Dad made. “Hermione tells us that you have a lot of books to buy for next year. Can you recommend some books about wizards for Muggles? There are so many!”
            “Oh, Mum, I told you I’d recommend them,” said Hermione, because she didn’t think it was a subject Harry had actually studied much.
            “I can, actually,” said Harry, and Hermione blinked at him in surprise. He gave her that little shrug and smile that sometimes infuriated her. He’d done exactly the same thing when he’d disappeared during the night and came back with Dash. “Sirius had some to help introduce me to the wizarding world. I was raised by my aunt and uncle,” he added, presumably for Mum and Dad. “They’re Muggles, too.”
            Dad relaxed a little. Hermione smiled at him. She had known how uncomfortable he was around all the wizards and witches who thought you had to have grown up in their world to really matter. She was proud of him for coming along anyway.
            “This is a good book,” said Harry, pulling one off the shelf. “A Basic Muggle’s Introduction to Non-Muggleness.” He handed it to Dad, ignoring the way Hermione tried to grab it. Well, that meant Hermione would have to get her own copy.
            She did that with most of the books Harry pulled off the shelves, which made Harry snicker at her, although some of them were their schoolbooks and that just made sense. Then she held up the copy of a book he had just bought, and blinked. She had memorized the letter Hogwarts had sent, and it wasn’t on there.
            “Harry?” she asked, pointing to the title of Concentration Like Glass.
            Harry flushed and looked around for her parents. But Mum and Dad were at the end of the aisle, examining the Galleons and Sickles they had exchanged for Muggle money earlier that day; they looked dubious. Harry explained in a low voice, “Professor Snape has been teaching me Occlumency. It’s this mind art that involves defending your thoughts from people. He thinks it might help me shield my thoughts from—Voldemort.”
            Hermione flinched despite herself at the name, and then felt silly. Words were only words. It wasn’t rational to be afraid of them all the time.
            “You think that you’ll be able to master it?” she asked, looking at the book in fascination.
            “I think so,” said Harry, and he grimaced a little. “Professor Snape has been working with me on wandless magic. If I can do that, I think I can do this. He said some of the techniques are the same.”
            Hermione nodded in determination. “Do you think you’ll still be working with Professor Snape after school starts?”
            Harry turned red and looked aside to pet the back of Dash’s neck. “I don’t know. He’ll be busy, you know?”
            And probably still willing to help you. But Hermione knew that Harry needed this, and that he didn’t want to stay too close to Snape for some reason, so she reached out and took his hand instead. “Then I’ll work with you. We can have our own Occlumency study group.”
            Harry beamed at her, and Hermione added Concentration Like Glass to her own bag. Then they turned around and walked towards the front of the shop with her parents, Harry talking about how Ron would probably be so full of his trip to Romania to visit his brother Charlie that they would get tired of hearing about dragons.
            Mum casually slung an arm around Hermione’s shoulders as they went towards the front of the shop. Hermione leaned against her and watched as Dash gently squeezed Harry’s waist.
            She was glad that Harry, who didn’t have parents and didn’t sound like he got along well with Sirius, had someone. Even if it was the most dangerous snake in the world.
*
pooh: Yes, although he doesn’t really want to admit it to himself.
SP777: It’s going to be fun! Especially for Draco. ;)
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A Brother to Basilisks