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Inter Vivos	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 42948 -:- Recommendations : 3 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter, and I am making no money from this writing.

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Chapter Thirty�Snake

�� I don�t like this. It�s dangerous.�

�� Harry had
to chuckle as he hugged Sirius. �When has anything since my third year been
safe? Or even before that? Most schoolboys don�t go around killing basilisks
and defeating their enemies in the backs of professors� heads.�

�� But this
is different.� Sirius�s voice was thick as he gathered Harry in his arms. He
still stooped as a result of the torture Voldemort had inflicted on him, and
probably always would, but his hands were strong again, and the way he held
Harry made him relax almost against his will. �This time, your friends are the ones who want you to go
through it. And I don�t know if it�s going to work.�

�� We don�t
really have another choice,� Harry said gently. �Unless I wanted to try to die
to get rid of the Horcrux��

�� You try
that, and I�ll put you in your room for the rest of your life and stand guard
on the door.� Sirius�s voice was thick again, but this time with the sharpness
of a bark, as though he were about to transform.

�� No. I
don�t want that. And I don�t want to die.� Harry leaned his head on Sirius�s
shoulder and let his breath out slowly. �But, Sirius, you have to promise me
something.�

�� Sirius
grumbled inaudibly.

�� Once the
process starts, it�s going to be delicate,� Harry murmured. �Draco said it
would be complicated even if they understood the whole theory and had practiced
it before, but they don�t, and they don�t know how much time they might have to
correct any errors that crop up. It�ll be worse if they�re distracted.�

�� He fell
silent, hoping that Sirius would understand what he was asking for without
Harry having to say it.

�� You want
me to promise not to interfere.� Sirius�s voice was dry.

�� Harry
leaned back and looked up at him. �Yeah.�

�� Sirius
shook his head. He was smiling, but his eyes were dark, in the way that Harry
had seen them when he was chasing Pettigrew. �How can I promise that? You�re my
godson, the only tie I have left to two of my best
friends. And I love you for yourself, too,� he added quickly, as if he thought
Harry might doubt that. �I can�t just stand back and let two Slytherins do
whatever they want to you.�

�� Snape
isn�t involved in this,� Harry said. �He�ll be providing an outside safeguard
on the spells, and that�s really all. Hermione is, though. She isn�t Slytherin,
and she�s always cared for me. She was loyal enough, along with Ron, to stay in
Hogwarts and try to reach the basilisk venom even when they didn�t doubt
Dumbledore the way I did. How can you distrust her?�

�� She could
still overreach herself because she�s too confident,� Sirius said. �Lily did
that sometimes.�

�� Someday
you�ll have to tell me more stories about my parents,� Harry said, and then
stepped back and put his hands on Sirius�s shoulders. �We�d find a better
solution if we had more time. But we don�t, especially not if we want to stop
Voldemort from attacking Hogwarts. Promise me that you won�t interfere if they
let you be there, Sirius. Really, you have to, or I�ll tell them not to let you
in the lab.�

�� Sirius
stared into his eyes, then stood up and turned his back, folding his arms.
Harry waited. Sirius was more mature now than he seemed sometimes. Dealing with
pain and physical disability had forced him to grow up a little, and being
around Snape and Draco and seeing that they didn�t betray Harry had also
changed him.

�� Finally,
Sirius turned around with a sigh that seemed about to split him in half and a
roll of his eyes that made them look as if they�d drop out of his head. �All
right,� he said. �But only because you were the one to ask me, and not Malfoy
or Snivellus.�

�� Harry
glared at him. �Don�t call Snape that.�

�� Their gazes
locked until Sirius dropped his eyes and nodded. �All right.�

�� Harry
hugged him again, and relaxed as he felt Sirius embrace him back. He wouldn�t
have admitted it to anyone, because Sirius would only be too proud and Draco
and Snape would have been insulted, but he was glad that Sirius had promised.
Harry wanted everyone there he possibly could.

�� Which probably means Mrs.
Malfoy has to watch, too.

�� But Harry
was resigned even to that. After all, Mrs. Malfoy probably loved Draco even
more than Sirius loved him. Of course she would want to take a similar position
to Snape and watch for spells or procedures going wrong.

*

�� Draco took
a deep breath and laid the Elder Wand on the table in front of him. It sparked
and buzzed once, and then settled into a listening silence. Draco crouched down
so he was eye-to-eye with it, assuming that there was an eye located in either
end of the Wand. The silence intensified. Draco was sure it was listening,
however much it probably despised him for forcing it to do that at the moment.

�� If you do
something to me whilst you fight the Horcrux,� Draco said calmly, �if you try
to sabotage us, or push Harry�s soul out of his body to wither and die, or let
the bit of the Dark Lord take him over, then I�ll sever the bond between us.�

�� The Elder
Wand wavered one inch, and then promptly settled down again. Draco imagined he
could hear it cursing itself for being so stupid as to show a reaction. He
grinned at it, and stared walking in a circle.

�� I can find
the weak point in the bond again, now that I�ve found it once,� he said.
�Imagine that. Imagine me bearing down with pressure because you�ve displeased
me. Imagine yourself existing without an owner, and without another one likely
to take you up, because no one has conquered me. Imagine your long, long
existence coming to an end.�

�� The Wand
spun in a complete circle and came back resting a little off-center. Draco
paused and waited. He wanted more acknowledgment than that, some sign that the
Wand understood his threat and would obey him.

�� He could
hear Granger�s shrill voice if he concentrated. Are you mad, Malfoy? If you threaten it, then it just has all the more
reason to turn on you!

�� Draco,
though, was gambling that the Elder Wand�s psychology wasn�t like that. Without
the reminder, it certainly would have tried to betray him. It would have
decided that he�d forgotten about the weak point in the bond, too caught up in
the discovery about switching souls, and then it would have acted when he was
most vulnerable, in the midst of the carousel process.

�� Now, it
knew that he remembered. It knew that he could, at the very least, say he would leave it behind, even if it
was proud enough of its appeal to suspect that wasn�t true. And it could count
itself duly warned.

�� Yes, it
might still try something. But in that case, Draco would simply cut the bond
and rely on another possible defense. That defense was a wild gamble and almost
certainly wouldn�t work, which was why Draco wanted the Wand�s cooperation. But
he would not leave himself at the mercy of a piece of wood, no matter how
powerful. He intended to be the master, not the slave.

�� After
several moments, the Wand seemed to realize what he wanted. A low, sullen buzz
sounded from it.

�� Make the
same sound if you believe me,� Draco whispered.

�� More
silence. Then the exact same buzz.

�� Draco
smiled, and snatched up the Wand. It trembled as if it wanted to burn him, but
it didn�t. Draco tucked the Wand into his waistband and left the room to revise
the incantations for the Switching Charms one more time.

�� Twelve hours until we do
this.

*

�� Harry
smiled reassuringly at Ron as they walked into the room Draco and Hermione had
chosen for this, the attic of Grimmauld Place. �Doing this has to hurt less
than dying because Voldemort has a piece of his soul in me,� he said.

�� Ron
muttered something under his breath that sounded like �bloody cheerfulness.� Harry snorted. If he
couldn�t see that both Harry�s cheerfulness and Hermione�s shrill refusal to
discuss a possible failure were attempts to make themselves
believe this would work, then he wasn�t very astute at psychology.

�� But I
reckon he never was, Harry had to admit, as Ron
took his place along the wall with Sirius, Snape, and Mrs. Malfoy. Ron�s
strengths lay elsewhere.

�� Draco stood
by a small table on which a book lay, holding the Elder Wand. He held himself
still, but Harry knew him well enough to see the tension in that stillness.
Draco read the words in the book to himself, mouthing them but with no sound,
his eyes shadowed and his mind far distant from the room.

�� Hermione
had her own table, her own book, and a vial of basilisk venom in front of her.
From conversations he�d overheard, Harry knew Draco had disagreed with her
about having that available, but she�d chosen to anyway, and that was the way
it was in the end. Draco still gave her quick disgusted glances from time to
time. Hermione didn�t notice, since her head was almost literally buried in her
book. If she was reading the words aloud to herself, then Harry couldn�t see
it.

�� Harry took
his place between them, in a tightly warded circle. He didn�t recognize the
runes and Arithmancy equations drawn on the floor. He didn�t think he was meant
to. He looked out the window on the opposite wall for a moment, absorbing the
sunlight there.

�� It might be
the last time he ever saw it.

�� Harry shook
his head. I shouldn�t think like that. I
should have more faith in Draco and Hermione than I do.

�� But I�m trusting
them with my life and my soul. Maybe having faith in them beyond that is a bit
much.

�� At last
Hermione shut her book with a hard snap.
Draco followed suit a moment later .Then they came together between the tables,
and Draco gave Harry a small, encouraging nod. Harry smiled back. He hoped none
of his doubt showed in that smile. I�m
just facing reality in acknowledging they could fail, that�s all.

�� From the
corner of his eye, he could see Sirius twitch as if he wanted to reach forwards
and stop the whole business. Narcissa had no expression on her face whatsoever;
the traces of suffering Harry had seen the other night were gone as if they�d
never been there. Snape had his eyes narrowed and continually flickering back
and forth between Draco and Hermione. Of any of the spectators, he was probably
the most capable of understanding the magical theory they were using.

�� Ron stood
there with a bit of nervousness on his face, but a much steadier gaze than
anyone else. Of course, he trusts
Hermione absolutely.

�� Draco began
to chant the first of several Switching Charms. Hermione followed him with
words that were more familiar to Harry, since he�d been the one to use Fiendfyre on the tiara and the Resurrection Stone. The
runes inscribed around the sides of the circle flared with golden light. A
moment later, the equations glowed red.

�� Draco and
Hermione�s voices soared higher. Harry wanted to keep his eyes open, to smile
at Draco and show he was confident, but he felt an irresistible temptation to
close them. So he did, and breathed in silence for a few minutes, looking at
the insides of his eyelids.

�� A low, snarling sound reverberated through
him. Harry started. It sounded like some old and terrible beast waking up.

�� And then
pain ran through him in a liquid river of fire, worse than the headache Snape
had inflicted on him when he ripped Harry�s memories from him during their
first Occlumency session, which until then had been Harry�s standard of agony.
He screamed, and slumped to the floor�

�� There was
carpet beneath him that didn�t shine with the heat and light of the runes and
the equations. There was a wand in his hand.

�� And his head
felt lighter, in a way he couldn�t explain, as if a weight bound to it since he
was born had dropped off. He blinked and raised a hand to touch his brow,
pausing when he saw the fingers were longer and paler and slimmer than the ones
that he recognized as his own, not crisscrossed with as many dirt or calluses.

�� They did it. They really did it.

�� He looked
up in wonder and saw his own body in front of him. His face was squinted up,
his scar standing out, an angry red, and his eyes shut. Draco clutched at his
hair and made a soft moaning noise. Harry raised the wand he held
instinctively, and then realized that it had no magical force inside it; he
might as well as have been clutching an ordinary plank.

�� Of course. Draco took the essence of the Elder Wand
with him when he switched into my body.

�Draco,� he said, and struggled not
to be distracted by the fact that his voice didn�t sound like his own. �Are you
all right?�

�� Slowly,
Draco fought a pair of green eyes open. He was grimacing, but he made some effort
to smile when he caught Harry�s gaze.

�� Perfectly
all right,� he croaked. �We�did it once, and now we�re about to do it again.�
He dropped his voice into a soothing whisper. �It�ll hurt every time we switch,
because the Horcrux is desperate to keep hold of you. But you�ll have to try
and keep from speaking, all right? It distracts me.�

�� Harry heard
Hermione�s frantic chanting come from the side, and saw the red and golden
light of the runes and equations taking on the harsher glow of Fiendfyre. He thought about what would happen if Draco got
distracted, about the way he might dissolve into ashes as the tiara and the
Resurrection Stone had, and swallowed. Then he nodded.

�� Good!�
Draco used Harry�s voice to speak the incantation of the next Switching Charm,
and Harry shut his eyes.

�� He screamed
in spite of himself as the spell rotated him back into his own body. This time,
the pain seemed to course up from his feet rather than downwards from his head,
but it was still there, and he didn�t think he would ever get used to it. It
was too sudden, too violent.

�� The snarl
was audible this time, and Harry thought he heard a faint, muffled voice
saying, I have lived in your head for
sixteen years, and I am to give up my best chance to hold onto your soul? I
think not.

�� A sudden
fact occurred to Harry, who blinked. They were performing this ritual on the
day that Draco and Hermione had finally felt capable of trusting their magic,
but it was also Halloween, sixteen years to the day that he had destroyed Voldemort�s
original body and received the shard of his soul.

�� Draco
shouted the next incantation, and Harry writhed and shrieked as his soul was
again torn from the grasp of something that felt like hooks sunk in his bone
and spirit. But he did his best not to speak when he found himself in Draco�s
body again, although he was shaking with reaction this time, and nearly dropped
the wand he held.

�� Screams don�t seem to distract him. Words,
he said.

�� Which is good, because I
don�t think I could have kept silent even if I wanted to.

*

�� Severus
stood back, watching the process narrowly, and holding his wand ready to
restrain Black if the mutt did something idiotic. For the moment, he only
watched himself, and muttered, and grasped at the air with clenched hands, but
Black�s idiocy had a trick of rapid evolution. Severus considered himself more than usually virtuous because he had refrained
from taunts so far.

�� And perhaps I did that because Harry asked
me to. But still, I am sure the virtue is on my side, and not on his.

�� Then he
began to sense something else. That was incredible, given the dense hum of
various forms of combined magic in the air, but he had always been good at
growing used to spells relatively quickly and looking beyond them. It had made
him invaluable to the Dark Lord, who had sometimes posted him on the outskirts
of a raid to detect the approach of Aurors.

�� Severus
turned in a slow circle, making sure to choose moments when neither Draco nor
Granger was looking at him. The last thing he wanted was to shoot an unexpected
shadow or flicker across their vision. Draco had emphasized the delicate nature
of the process quite enough for Severus, who had known some potions that were
as delicate.

�� And yes,
there it was. Outside the house, a gathering, growing cloud of Dark magic drew
nearer and nearer. It spat and sang like a storm, and Severus could feel the
leap of individual bolts of lightning if he concentrated.

�� Given the
date, he might have dismissed it as the buildup of belief from the Muggles, who
created similar clouds on Easter and Christmas, but for that Dark edge. Not
even Halloween was enough to excuse how malevolent this felt.

�� The Dark Lord might.

�� Severus
moved back step by step until he found himself next to Narcissa. She was the only
one in the room he could trust at the moment. Draco, Harry, and Granger were
rather involved, Black was
incompetent to do things the quiet way, and Weasley, though he could be called
upon in a crisis, was too immature still in magic and instincts. But Narcissa
turned to him with quiet slowness, clearly responding to him whilst doing her
part to avoid distracting the participants in the ritual.

�� I believe
the Dark Lord may have learned of this sanctuary,� Severus breathed against her
neck. �If he tries to enter the room, we must be prepared to repel him.�

�� Narcissa�s
eyebrows rose, but she didn�t waste their time asking how that could have been
possible, or worrying about the outcome. She lifted her wand instead, and stood
ready. Severus started to turn to Black and Weasley; he could not trust them as
much, but he could, perhaps, send them out of the room to weave wards. He was
unsure how the wards would interact with the magic that Granger and Draco were
employing if they remained in the room.

�� And then
the wards on the outside of the building trembled in a way that let Severus
know his parchment owl from Pettigrew had arrived. He narrowed his eyes. Could the magical storm simply be the Dark
Lord�s anger at learning of his servant�s betrayal? He may not yet know where
we are, unless he traced the owl�

�� The bird
soared into the room.

�� Attached to
it, and hanging grimly on for dear life, was a shrunken rat, with a shrunken
Nagini wrapped about the bird�s body�

�� And the
Dark Lord soared in directly behind, his body wavering on the air like a stream
of smoke, his mouth open in crazed laughter.

�� Severus had
one moment to regret giving Pettigrew a way to breach the wards around
Grimmauld Place and find him, and then the Dark Lord had settled to the floor and
the clash of spells was deafening.

*

�� Draco knew
something was wrong as soon as he opened his eyes in his body the next time.
When he was Harry, he concentrated too intently on the Switching Charms and the
strange sensation of burning salt and fire�the Elder Wand fighting with the
Horcrux�to let himself be distracted. He had known it would have to be that way
from the beginning. There were so many distractions
in Harry�s body, so many things he would let himself explore if he had the
time.

�� But now�

�� When he
looked over his shoulder, the Dark Lord was there, standing with his arms
folded and a slight, superior smile on his face, whilst Black fought with a
pudgy man who had to be Pettigrew and his mother faced off against a giant
snake. Professor Snape and Weasley�Weasley�s face was an awful white�circled
the Dark Lord, trying to get at an adequate crack in his defenses, or a crack.

�� Harry
screamed. Draco gave him a quick glance, but saw him too consumed by the pain
he was dealing with to notice what was happening behind them. But Granger
squealed at that moment, and Draco saw the Fiendfyre
that was tightening in a ring around Harry waver. For a moment, leaping
chimeras appeared in it, as if it would strike out at them.

�� Granger!� Draco snapped, hurling all the cold authority
into his voice that Lucius had once tried to command when dealing with his son.

�� She turned
to look at him, tears streaking down her face, and Draco felt himself regret
what he was about to do. But he had no choice.

�� We have to
keep going,� he said. �Do you understand? No matter what you see outside the
circle or who dies, we have to keep going.� He spoke as quickly as he could and
still give her some chance to understand him; Harry�s scar had an evil red glow
that he didn�t like at all. The Horcrux was probably making some stronger
attempt to gain control of him. �I can�t do this without you, Granger.�

�� Granger�s
gaze flickered wildly to her boyfriend. The Dark Lord made a casual gesture,
and a long, bloody wound opened down Weasley�s shoulder. Draco winced. His
father had made him learn the Flaying Curse. Draco never wanted to use it.

��

�But�� Granger whispered.

�� We have to,� Draco hissed to her.
�Otherwise, the Horcrux will still live in Harry, and nothing will make any
difference, even if we let Harry out of the circle and he tries to fight him.�

�� He saw the
moment when Gryffindor courage, a colder and harder kind than was common, made
the decision for Granger. She nodded once and faced the circle again, her voice
rising in the Fiendfyre incantation. Weasley called
her name in a hopeless, sobbing voice.

�� Granger
flinched, but kept on.

�� Draco
nodded to her, a greater commendation than she would ever know, and turned back
to finish his own task.

*

�� Severus
knew they were going to die.

�� It was a
dull knowledge, like lead, and as heavy in his belly. The Dark Lord had hardly
to use his magic. It was all around them, like the great storm that Severus had
sensed approaching, and that alone did its part to crush their spirits.

�� Weasley was
brave, but all the skin on his arms and half his chest had already been lost to
the Flaying Curse. Severus had tried to defend him, but would have paid with
his wand hand if he�d persisted. And so he made the decision that Weasley could
be sacrificed, but Draco and Harry and Granger could not.

�� The Dark
Lord�s gaze was heaviest on him. �Severus,� he whispered. There might have been
no one else in the room, so idle were the gestures that condemned Weasley to
the Flaying Curse. Weasley screamed, and a splash of warm blood landed on
Severus�s side, but he did not take his attention from his own Shield Charms.
The Dark Lord laughed approvingly. �A good show, my old
friend. I shall enjoy killing you.�

�� And then
there was the sound of glass breaking, and a loud shriek, and an equally loud,
tormented hiss. Severus spun around.

�� Narcissa
lay on the ground, bleeding from a long slash down her neck. Severus
understood, and grieved. Nagini�s bite had got through her defenses, and though
he had a sort of antivenin, it was down in his potions lab. He had armed no one
in the room with it, believing that they would not face the snake until later.

�� But
scattered around Nagini were shattered pieces of a potions vial, and the snake
was writhing across the floor in random, uncoordinated patterns, uttering what
Severus could only assume were shrieks in Parseltongue.

�� He
understood when he glanced back at the tableau of Granger, Harry, and Draco,
and saw what was missing. In her last act of defiance, Narcissa had Summoned the vial of basilisk venom that Granger had laid
aside on the table and cracked it over Nagini�s head. The snake, the last
Horcrux, was dying.

�� Even as
Severus watched, she slumped over and lay still. The Dark Lord simply stared,
as paralyzed with shock as anyone else.

�� Narcissa
closed her eyes and ceased breathing in much the same moment.

�� And a dark-glittering
shard of soul rose from the snake�s body and darted straight for Black, who was
obliviously engaged in combat with Pettigrew, and did not see it coming.

*

�� qwerty:
Thank you!

�� SP777:
Well, I do hope that you enjoy the pace of the plot in the next few chapters.

�� And I
sometimes go by reviews, but many fics that have lots
of reviews contain clich�s I no longer enjoy.

�� SamuraiSaaya: Snape, alas, was not threatening enough to
control Peter.

�� After this
section, there should be two more: the last part of Chapter 30 and the
epilogue.
- 37
- 38
- 39
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Inter Vivos