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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 Forty-One—Running Lessons
            “One thing you must understand is that the Dark Lord offered the pure-blood families who followed him a promise of influence. That is what they will expect from you.”
            Harry sat back and felt things shifting inside his head. He almost expected Dash to fool around the way he had when Harry was having trouble concentrating on wandless magic, but he didn’t. Dash was curled up at Harry’s feet, intently watching Snape. His tongue darted out now and then, but otherwise, he might have been a sculpture of a snake.
            “I don’t see how I can, though,” Harry said, since Snape had paused like he expected Harry to answer. “I mean, yeah, I have people who will do what I say since I’m the Boy-Who-Lived, but these families aren’t among them, right? Or they would already feel they were allies to me.”
            Snape smiled a little, thinly. “Exactly. They might feel compelled to go along with any demands made of them by powerful people who are already your—fans, but it would be compulsion, and you want them following you freely.”
            Harry sighed and massaged his forehead. It seemed all too complicated and backwards to him.
            He thought of the things he had wanted. Food. Friends. Parents. Escape from the Dursleys. A school with teachers who didn’t think he was stupid. Magic, once he found out about it. Safety from Voldemort. Ginny to stay alive, in second year. For the school to stop rejecting him for being a Parselmouth. Dash to stay safe and with him in third year.
            All of those were…things he had to either find or not find, or other people had to give him. Harry didn’t see how he could ever give “influence” to someone else.
            Oh, he would have been glad enough to trade his fame and power to someone else. Maybe someone else could put on the scar and look like the Boy-Who-Lived for long enough to give Harry some peace. But he didn’t know any spell that could do that, and he thought Snape or Dumbledore would have told him by now if there was one.
            “What can I do?” Harry finally asked. Snape wouldn’t be telling him if there was no solution, he thought. He would probably have offered to negotiate with the Selwyns himself or something, and tell them that they would never get what they wanted out of Harry.
            Snape bent forwards. “You remember that you’ve used your influence twice already. Once to familiarize the public with the concept of you having a basilisk and get them used to thinking of—Dash as something ordinary. Once to acquaint the public with the fact of your abuse.”

            Harry still felt like someone was smearing poop in his face when he heard that word, but he nodded. “But that wasn’t to help pure-blood families. I don’t think they’ll be impressed with it.”
            Snape put his chin on his fist. “The Selwyns own a business that imports wood. Much of it goes for magical purposes, such as wands or Ministry Potions ingredients. But they have competition. What would happen if you endorsed that business?”
            Harry blinked. Then he blinked again. Then he said, “But I don’t even know if my wand is made of wood they imported.”
            Snape sighed. Harry bore it better this time. It had taken him a while to realize that Snape wasn’t like Uncle Vernon every time he did that, or even Sirius.
            “You don’t need to say that,” said Snape. “In fact, it’s better not to make direct statements, in case someone tries to sue you later or claim that you lied. But if you offered the Selwyns the promotion of their business in an article…”
            “How, though?” Harry honestly couldn’t see any way he could do that. “If I just told the papers I wanted to talk them about magical wood the way I did about Dash, everyone would know something was up.”
            “Ah,” said Snape, and he was breathing the words the way he did when he was particularly interested in something. Harry had only heard it before when he was talking about potions. “You allow it to be known that your shopping choices are important to you and link it to an ethical cause. For example, talking about illegal importation, or the use of banned ingredients such as unicorn blood.”
            “People kill unicorns to use their blood in potions?” Harry whispered. His mind was filled with the motionless body of the unicorn in the Forbidden Forest that Voldemort had been drinking from as if it was yesterday. Dash hissed soothingly and leaned against him.
            “They do.” Snape looked at him for a moment, and then nodded. “I think you’ve found the cause that you want to talk about.”
            “Yes,” Harry muttered. He was thinking about the way the Quibbler had just wanted to ask him questions about magical creatures. That would probably be a good place to start.
            Dash rose and wound around his legs, leaning his head into Harry’s lap. I think you’ll be much, much better at this than you think.
*
            Draco made sure that he’d cast all the necessary charms on his bed-curtains to seal them in place. The last thing he wanted was someone to spy through them while he was reading his father’s letter.
            His father’s very important letter. The one in reply to the one Draco had sent him about the way Moody had made Harry fall on the floor.
            Draco opened it carefully and began to read the letter through. He knew he’d probably need to read it more than once to catch all the nuances.
            My son,
            Alastor Moody has been an Auror of high reputation for some years. He was one of the most active in capturing and interrogating Death Eaters during the first war, and he would not have been hired to teach at the school if Dumbledore did not trust him.
            The Board of Governors approved the hiring choice.
            Moody is not a known Legilimens. On the other hand, there is not even a whisper that he is a follower of the Dark Lord.
            It would make sense to draw certain conclusions from these facts. Some of them might be detrimental to Mr. Potter’s safety. Some of them might be things that you should look into.
            Be assured that I will be making inquiries about Moody.
            Your father.
            Draco sat back and stared at the letter, shaking his head. He had hoped for more support from his father. Actually caring about Harry’s safety, for one thing. And telling Draco outright what suspicions he had about Moody, if he was suspicious.
            Then Draco sighed. He might have hoped for more, but that didn’t mean he was going to get it. His father was as cautious as ever. He didn’t write or talk about his experiences during the first war, Draco knew, because of his arrest at the end of it and the way he had been under the Imperius Curse during it.
            Or claimed to be under the Imperius Curse. Draco was getting a headache.
            Likewise, his father wasn’t going to put certain things into a letter that someone else might read, even if it was by abducting the owl or breaking into Draco’s trunk or wherever he stored the letter. Draco couldn’t write anything he wanted, either. If Moody came to know about this, and he didn’t mean Harry any harm, and he made enough noise about it, old scandals about the Malfoy family might get dragged up again. Or the Board of Governors—which was hardly tolerating his father as it was, according to him—might decide that Mr. Malfoy no longer deserved a position on it.
            Draco shook his head and concentrated on those aspects of the letter he could do something about. So Moody might not be a follower of the Dark Lord, but he wasn’t a Legilimens, either. What did those things suggest? Draco turned the conclusions around in his mind for a bit before he sat up.
            Maybe someone else could be pretending to be him. Maybe he’s using an illusion, or Polyjuice Potion!
            Draco wriggled with some excitement, and then studied the letter again. That had to be what his father suspected. But Draco didn’t understand why he hadn’t whispered in the right ears. They didn’t have to be the ears of the Board of Governors. Why didn’t his father tell Professor Snape?
            Because Professor Snape was in the school and so was Draco, of course. Draco could tell him more easily. And it was a test for Draco, probably, to see if he could figure out the truth from the scant clues Father had offered in his letter.
            So all he had to do was tell Professor Snape, and the danger to Harry would be over.
            But Draco hesitated when he thought about that. He knew Professor Snape hadn’t had much luck in talking to Dumbledore about anything, including Sirius Black and the way he was treating Harry. So why should he listen if Professor Snape came up with a random accusation against someone he’d hired?
            And the Board of Governors probably wouldn’t listen, either, for the same reason that his father hadn’t gone to them.
            Someone would need some kind of proof to do something about this. Proof that Draco already thought he’d have to provide.
            He sat up. So he would. He had understood his father’s hidden message. He knew exactly what could be done about it. And he could reveal it in a public place where “Moody” wouldn’t be able to hide or deny who he really was.
            That would get Draco some credit, too. There was a little envious ache in his heart when he thought about his father and Professor Snape helping Harry all last year and Draco not being able to help at all. If he exposed Professor Moody as a fake, then people would have to pay attention to him.
            He would need a distraction, though.
            Draco leaned over the side of the bed and called, “Come,” to Conflagration in Parseltongue, smiling as he unwound from under the bed. This was going to be rather fun. If he managed to disrupt the hold that the Polyjuice had over Moody, or the illusion, then everyone would need to pay attention to him.
            And there might be an admiring stare from Harry, too.
            Draco didn’t want to really admit how much part that motivation played in his actions as he started making clear what he wanted Conflagration to do, but then, he was only admitting it in his head, anyway. No one else ever had to know.
*
            Blaise didn’t like to think much about politics. It was the sort of thing that his mother would handle until he was in his sixth year and had some OWL marks to make a reputation for himself, anyway. But he didn’t ignore the political articles in the papers, and he had paid more attention since people had started to come to him for advice on sending allegiance rings to Potter.
            It paid to be known as the voice of reason who had to be talked to and talked to before he would “reluctantly” give his opinion.
            But it was difficult to ignore politics when they came to you, the way they did when screams broke out in the Great Hall during lunch. Blaise glanced up from his food and then froze, staring.
            Draco’s flame cobra was slithering straight towards Professor Moody, hissing. The fire dancing up and down on his hood was hot enough that Blaise could feel a hint of singeing from here.
            Draco ran after the cobra shouting, “Conflagration! Come back! Stop! What did Professor Moody ever do to you?”
            Blaise narrowed his eyes. He’d heard Draco practicing Parseltongue words on the snake in the dead of night when he thought everyone else was asleep. That didn’t mean it would be good Parseltongue, but he ought to be able to command the cobra better than this.
            Which meant something else was going on here.
            The flame cobra coiled up at Moody’s feet and raised his head and hissed again. Moody stood there staring down the snake. Blaise would have expected some laughter by now, or a spell that threw Conflagration back into Draco. Instead, though, Moody seemed to be thinking of something else.
            Not frightened. Not impressed. Only outside it and waiting for someone to prove why he should care about this. Blaise nodded slowly. Honestly, that was the way he wanted to be. Maybe he should spend more time studying Moody.
            Draco bellowed out a spell Blaise didn’t recognize, except the last part of the incantation was “Fluctuatio!” It was probably supposed to snatch Conflagration up and send him flying back to Draco the way Blaise thought Moody should have done.
            It didn’t do that, though. There was a small whirlwind of blue sparks from Draco’s wand, and they all blew straight at Moody’s face, the sound they were making even louder than the screams in the hall from a cobra being loose. They hit Moody’s face and robes and played over them like a tiny flickering storm. Blaise blinked and leaned forwards again. They looked like a spell his mother had showed him that could tear down some illusions.
            Is Professor Moody under an illusion?
            Moody finally lifted his wand and swatted it gently at the sparks, muttering under his breath. They dissipated, and Moody stood there, looking exactly as he had always done, but making a long stride forwards to face Draco.
            Well, no, maybe not exactly the same. Blaise thought his magical eye was dulled a little. But he thought that was adequately explained by the next, slowly-building roar.
            “So you’re the sort of Slytherin who goes around attacking professors, eh?” Moody circled to the side and examined Draco, who was standing in terrified silence, with both eyes at once. “Throwing sparks into their faces that could affect the sight in a magical eye, are you? One of my enemies who wants to blind me?”
            Draco had gone pale, but he was standing still and not turning around even when Moody circled behind him. He had gathered up Conflagration again and draped him around his shoulders.
            “No, professor,” he said. Blaise listened, but couldn’t hear any hint of a tremor in his voice. “I just—I just was trying to get Conflagration to come back to me, and I mixed it up with the sort of spell that would have produced sparks. They have similar last words, you know. Sorry.”
            “You could have used a Summoning Charm.” Moody’s voice was low and rage-filled, and the screams had all died down. Blaise suspected that listening to Moody was more important to people at the moment than screaming their little hearts out over a snake. “I think you learned that recently in Charms, didn’t you?”
            Draco widened his eyes. In a few years, he’s going to be really good at manipulating people, Blaise thought with the part of himself that always noticed things like that, after the early…education he’d had. “I didn’t think of that, professor. I’m really sorry.”
            “I think you do need a lesson,” said Moody, and flicked his wand. Blaise sat up, staring. That flick was familiar. But he didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he knew the spell that Moody was using.
            The spell that turned Draco, a second later, into a small, squeaking, flailing mouse, and set him down on the floor in front of his snake.
            Conflagration turned his head. His flames had died, but Blaise could see in his tense, quivering body how ready he was to pounce on the mouse and eat it. He slithered what would have been a human step forwards. His head was pointed straight at Draco.
            “A-Alastor! What are you doing?”
            That was McGonagall, and she was running down the middle of the Great Hall with her wand waving. From the way Conflagration was coiling up, though, Blaise didn’t think she was going to get there before the snake ate Draco.
            Someone should use a Summoning Charm. But that person wasn’t Blaise, who hadn’t got it right yet.
            “Ssshanfaffa!”
            Blaise snapped his head around at the Parseltongue, and saw the flame cobra stop dead at the same moment. Potter was walking into the room, the basilisk dropping to the floor and unfolding like a long wave.
            Blaise cursed under his breath. He had forgotten how bloody big that basilisk was. At least ten feet now, his head snapping down and his tail covering the distance to curl around the cobra and hold him motionless.
            Any actions Blaise took against Potter would have to take the bloody basilisk into consideration.
            McGonagall had reached Moody by then, and she was speaking breathlessly but so fast that Potter couldn’t get a word in edgewise, though from his face he would have liked to. “Alastor! You cannot go around Transfiguring students and nearly getting them eaten by their pets!” She waved her wand, and the mouse flew into the air and began changing back into Draco. McGonagall took a step up to him the minute he was human again, and put her hand on his shoulder. “Are you all right, Mr. Malfoy?”
            Blaise stirred restlessly. Sometimes he wished that McGonagall could be the Slytherin Head of House. She didn’t give people that cool judging gaze the way Snape did, and she treated everyone pretty impartially except when it came to Quidditch.
            “I feel like I’m going to vomit,” Draco whispered.
            “Yes, that’s standard after violent human Transfiguration,” said McGonagall, and gave Moody a glare that promised him no good. “Mr. Potter, if you would escort Mr. Malfoy to the hospital wing?”
            Potter twitched. The basilisk did the same thing, at the same time. He had probably wanted to set the basilisk on Professor Moody, Blaise thought, and shuddered a little. He hoped that he never accidentally pissed Potter off. It was a horror waiting to happen.
            “Now, Mr. Potter? And do take his snake with you.”
            Potter gave a choppy nod and then turned to Draco and said something. Draco nodded back. The two of them walked to the door with Potter yapping something at Draco and the basilisk and the cobra following them.
            Blaise turned back to Moody. His magical eye looked normal again, although he was grimacing as he wiped at his mouth. He’d apparently taken a drink from his flask. Blaise wondered why someone would carry a healing draught around that tasted so awful, and then snorted a little. It was probably so he couldn’t be easily poisoned, or something like that.
            “I have never seen such outrageous behavior from a professor,” McGonagall began, and then seemed to realize how many people were watching her raptly. She flushed and led Moody out of the Great Hall. Blaise slumped back in disappointment. He did see the Weasley twins nod to each other and then stroll casually in the direction of the door. Idly, he thought about sitting near some Gryffindors in the library the next day to see if he could overhear their gossip.
            “Oh, poor Draco!”
            That was Astoria Greengrass, tears standing in her eyes. She’d always had a bit of a crush on Draco, Blaise thought. Her remark was setting the tone of conversation around the table, too.
            Blaise didn’t want to listen to yet more bitter remarks about how unfair the professors (other than Snape and McGonagall) were to Slytherins. He knew that already. He wanted to think about the whole attack, about what Draco had thought he was doing, and how Moody’s magical eye had looked after the sparks had flown into it.
            And he wanted to think, too, about how bloody terrifying that sodding basilisk was.
            And wonder if there wasn’t something he could do about it.
*
            “You are going to keep him on.”
            Severus made the words flat. That disguised how much he wanted to explode.
            “Of course I am.” Albus folded his hands in front of himself and gave Severus a patient smile. “The Board of Governors has already discussed this incident and agreed that Professor Moody was provoked. Given his history of trauma related to battle violence, his reaction was understandable. And young Mr. Malfoy wasn’t hurt.”
            Severus started to open his mouth, and then closed it again. The Board of Governors wasn’t objecting? After the hell that Lucius must have raised among them?
            That argued that either the Board of Governors didn’t care at all about Draco—which Severus did not believe given how Lucius had managed to influence them into bending the rules for Draco’s snake—or something else was going on. Perhaps Lucius husbanding his advantage for the moment, to raise the outrage later, when it would be connected to another cause and could do him more good.
            No, certainly Lucius waiting to spend that advantage until later. And Draco will be avenged.
            Given that, Severus suspected that pursuing the Board of Governors route would do no good. But he had to put up at least enough of a show that Albus didn’t suspect what Lucius was doing.
            “If he had Transfigured a Gryffindor student, would you be saying that?” Severus asked smoothly. “For example, if it was Mr. Potter? Or would it take a complaint from Black before you took it seriously?”
            Albus just frowned at him. “I sincerely doubt that Mr. Potter would do anything like that in the first place, Severus.”
            There it is. Albus had called Harry “Mr. Potter” in the last few conversations Severus had had with him. The habit had never been frequent with him before, since he had always used Harry’s first name in the apparent attempt to push them together.
            Something was different about Albus. Changed.
            And Severus was going to find out what.
            “Severus? What’s wrong, m’dear boy?”
            It would never do to reveal his suspicions too early, either. Severus shook his head roughly and stood. “I’m sorry, Albus. But it does suggest to me that you don’t care as much about Slytherin students as about others.”
            That led into a more familiar series of comforting, empty noises about how of course Albus didn’t mean that, and he valued Slytherin students as much as any others, and so on. Severus heard him out, nodding, and escaped the office as soon as he could.
            He had his own research to do, and one potion in particular that he wished to prepare.
            And Harry’s lessons to step up.
*
            That was enough. There were lots of things that made Malfoy wrong, but this was more wrong. A professor should never have done that to a student.
            Hermione raised her chin and marched into the hospital wing. Harry was sitting next to Malfoy’s bed, talking to him quietly. Dash was looped around Harry’s shoulders, but Hermione didn’t see Malfoy’s snake. Harry stopped talking and blinked at her, and Malfoy glared as if Hermione had thrown a mud pie in his face.
            Hermione ignored that and said, “They’re letting Professor Moody stay. He’s not even being punished or reprimanded by the Board of Governors.” She moved a step forwards. “That’s wrong. There are all sorts of laws about what you can Transfigure other human beings into, so why aren’t they being applied in the school? I know about the laws because I looked them up,” she added, since Malfoy’s mouth was opening and he was probably going to ask how she knew. “And I found out that the Ministry hasn’t given permission for anyone to cast Unforgivable Curses at the school since it was founded, even for professors.”
            “Well, Moody said something about special dispensation on the first day,” Harry protested. Malfoy was just silent. He was the one blinking this time.
            “We’re going to find out,” said Hermione, feeling the rightness of the cause race through her like a flame. “And we’re going to show him that he can’t do that. Professors should never mistreat their students.”
            Harry and Malfoy both seemed too shocked to say anything, but Dash reached out and gently tapped Hermione’s shoulder with his nose. Hermione smiled and touched him on the back of the neck, which made him tilt his plume happily back and forth.
            “Well,” she said to Harry, “they shouldn’t.”
            Malfoy apparently didn’t want to show her a genuine smile of any kind and wiped it off his face an instant after it appeared, but the important thing to Hermione was that Harry was nodding, and Dash hissed softly and contentedly, the way he did when he was lying in front of the fire in the Gryffindor common room.
            And the flame still leaped inside her.
            People shouldn’t get away with doing wrong things. Even if they’re professors.

*
ChaosLady: Thank you!
Solay: I think Draco overreacts to everything. Witness this chapter. As for Moody casting Imperius Curses on the students, he did it in canon.
starr: Snape isn’t stupid, but he is cautious, and he doesn’t want to do things like challenge Moody in the open because…look what happens.
SP777: No, I don’t have any of the story written in advance, usually, unless I know that I’m going to be gone on a day that I would post and I write it to post early. This chapter was just written today, and most of mine are written on the day of posting.
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A Brother to Basilisks