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A Brother to Basilisks	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 85173 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 15
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Chapter Forty-Five—The Shadows Speak
            “You understand why I am concerned.”
            Severus didn’t glance at Harry. He had brought along a cauldron that had caused problems with the potions brewed in it over the last several months, despite frequent scrubbing. The problem with testing for the magical residue in it was that the residue could have come from almost any potion, or any spell cast on the cauldron.
            Severus cast another spell, now, as a test, and held his breath as the air above the cauldron brightened for a second. But in the end, he simply had to shake his head. The subsiding light showed that the problem hadn’t come from any potion involving bicorn horn, but in reality, he had known that already. He reached down and crossed another item off his list.
            “And I hope you understand why I have to compete.”
            It was the right time, Severus judged, to turn and study Harry. Direct approaches hadn’t worked; the boy had brushed off Severus’s concern with some natter about his need for Black’s love and approval. So Severus had let him come along to their study session as usual this week, and then had been largely ignoring him.
            “Oh, yes, I understand it now,” Severus agreed blandly, and cast another spell on the cauldron. This only revealed that pure aconite hadn’t caused a problem. “Naturally you wish to please Black.”
            “That’s right. He’s the only adult who’s ever cared for me.”
            Severus concealed the unpleasant stab to the gut that those words caused him, and carefully wrote a few words down on his parchment. Let Harry think they were about the results of his spells, if they were. “It’s strange,” he mused. “I thought you had two parents, once, who were famous for dying to defend you.”
            There was a long, awkward pause. In the pause, Severus heard the rustling of dry scales, and looked down to see Dash curling around the leg of the table.
            Dash regarded him solemnly with the glow from his eyes behind the thick, almost glass-like lids. Severus nodded to him and faced the cauldron again.
            “Of course I love my mum and dad,” Harry finally mumbled. “But I don’t remember them. I need to live with a person I remember. Dash,” he added suddenly. “What are you doing over there? Get away from Professor Snape. You’re disturbing him.”
            Dash didn’t move, though perhaps he said something to Harry that Severus couldn’t hear. Severus shook his head and said, “He isn’t bothering me,” and nothing else. It also hadn’t escaped his notice that the bond between Harry and Dash was under strain, and had been since the release of Harry’s name from the Goblet of Fire.
            Severus thought he knew exactly who to blame for that. Now he needed to conduct the research to prove his methods true, and keep from alienating Harry, and unravel exactly what spell had been cast on Harry to make him so sullen and dedicated to the Tournament.
            Severus didn’t doubt it was a spell. But none of the effects of common mind-control spells were present, and his own Legilimency had revealed no tampering with the boy’s thoughts, either.
            “No one understands.”
            “Not strange, when you don’t explain it to them,” Severus said. He was aware of the troubles Harry was having with his Housemates, as well. Some of them were proud to have a Gryffindor in the Tournament and were smothering him with advice, some were envious and believed he’d cheated, and he and Weasley and Granger were at odds. Weasley thought Harry was in danger and envied him at the same time. Granger had decided, single-mindedly as was her way, that the danger came from one direction, and was attempting to have the Board of Governors oust Moody.
            That will not cure things, Severus was tempted to tell her, but Granger was an explosive bomb, much less used to keeping secrets than Harry. Severus was too cautious to actually take her into his confidence.
            “But I have tried to explain it to them!” There was the sound of Harry scrambling to his feet, and Severus felt it promising enough to look over at him with one eyebrow raised. Harry stood there with his hands on his hips and a steady glare at Severus’s face. “They won’t listen!”
            “What did you say? That you didn’t cheat?”
            “Yes!”
            “That you’re doing this because of Black?”
            “Yes!”
            “Ah,” said Severus, and knew he did it just right, the combination of the judicious nod and the sad sigh, although part him of was burnt by his very success at manipulating this boy he cared for. “Then I’m afraid I’ve found the part that many people don’t understand.” He paused. “Including me.”
            Harry stomped out of the room. Severus counted the seconds. It reached seven before Dash slithered after Harry.
            Slowly, Severus wrote down the names of a few more books that he needed to check. A spell that could affect an implanted bond between a basilisk and a Parselmouth, and make someone bonded to any magical creature at all ignore that magical creature’s advice, was rare.
            But Severus had already confirmed one thing he had researched, carefully piercing through the official lies and secret-keeping.
            Alastor Moody was not, and never had been, a Legilimens.
*
            “I want to show you some spells that will probably help you against magical creatures.”
            Moody’s words made Harry’s heart skitter up into his throat. He looked down instinctively at Dash wrapped around his legs, and then opened his mouth to say that Dash would never bite him or try to look at him.
            “No,” said Moody, and paced around in front of him, to stare down at Harry with those rolling, bulging eyes. “I mean that you’ll need them for the Tournament. Probably.” He closed his magical eye in a wink at Harry.
            Harry blinked. “Professor? How do you know that?” He hesitated. “Should you be telling me that? Isn’t it cheating?”
            Moody spent a moment casting anti-eavesdropping charms on the door of the classroom instead of replying. Harry opened his mouth to tell him he didn’t need to do that, and ended up closing it. His friends weren’t about to hang around and try to find out what Moody was telling him, now.
            Ron was still shooting him strange glances and speaking to him stiffly. Hermione was occupied with her private crusade against professors bullying students. And Draco hadn’t spoken to him since that day in the library.
            Harry shifted his weight. That didn’t make him very comfortable. But what he had told Snape was true. He didn’t feel as though anyone understood why it was so important he compete here.
            But he couldn’t go through another summer like this one he’d had with Sirius. He just couldn’t. And if he had to get a few strange looks and arguments from his friends in order to live the way that he wanted? That was fine. He would put up with it.
            It is no wonder that they do not understand, said a thoughtful voice.
            You know as well as I do that there’s no spell cast on me, Harry snapped back. You would have felt it the instant it was cast. You told me you know all about that sort of thing and you would have sensed it.
            I said that, Dash agreed, with a slight lowering of his head. But I am a very young basilisk, and it is possible that I do not know everything, after all.
            Harry opened his mouth to ask what that meant, and Moody interrupted. “You know that most magical creatures have certain special immunities to spells?” he asked, waving his wand back and forth. A barrier of orange light, like a cloth hanging from his wand, formed between them. “For example, if you were facing a basilisk, it would be stupid to try and poison it, since basilisks have strong poison themselves.”
            He didn’t even glance at Dash as he spoke. Harry smoothed a hand down Dash’s neck, trying to calm him, and responded, “Yes, Professor. That only makes sense, when you think about it.”
            “Of course it does.” Moody turned around with a faint smile. “Now, I want you to think about ways to get past those immunities.”
            Harry looked at the orange spell for a minute. He thought that was probably part of what he was supposed to figure out how to get past, but he had no idea what magical creature or immunity it was supposed to represent, and… “How, Professor?” he asked, looking up.
            Moody had been watching him with narrowed eyes. He nodded once, as though he had some private question Harry had answered.
            “What are the most dangerous magical creatures you can think of?” he asked.
            Basilisks, Harry thought immediately, and felt Dash stir a little with pride next to him, the first time he’d done that in weeks. But then he thought again, and came up with Acromantulas. He wondered why the Tri-Wizard Tournament people would consider having them fight Acromantulas. Maybe it was just that they knew there was a colony of them in the Forbidden Forest and they wouldn’t have to go far to get hold of some.
            “Acromantulas?” he asked, looking up.
            Moody frowned, and Harry had the impression that wasn’t the right answer. He sought in his mind again, and hit on another one. “Dragons?”
            Moody smiled this time and glanced at the orange spell. If you looked at it and sort of squinted your eyes, Harry thought, you could see it as fire. He shivered, trying to imagine how hot a dragon’s fire would be compared to the relatively innocent gleam of the little spell Moody had conjured.
            “There are several spells that Dragon-Keepers use to handle dragons,” Moody said quietly. “However, I don’t think I have time to teach all of them to you. Spells that resist fire, though, and keep you safe from a dragon’s many other dangerous weapons, are often in the grasp of a third-year student.” Harry wanted to say he was a fourth-year, but he understood what Moody meant. “It’s just that most people don’t think to use them to keep themselves safe from dragons.” Moody turned to Harry, eyes intense. “Would you like to learn them?”
            “Of course I would!”
            Dash stirred beside Harry, but said nothing. Harry reached out and smoothed a hand down Dash’s back, trying to calm him. He had to understand that this was probably Harry’s best chance of surviving the Tasks. Dash couldn’t be allowed to help, and Harry didn’t have as much knowledge or training as Fleur and Krum did.
            “Good,” said Moody. “Watch my wand movements carefully. This one can be difficult to grasp.” He aimed his wand at the far wall, and for a second, his face became still and calm. Harry blinked as he watched him. There was something familiar about the way Moody looked, as though he was someone Harry had seen before.
            But he forgot about it when Moody made a complicated motion with his wand that looked as if he was tying a bow on top of a present and roared, “Abstineo ignem!”
            The shield he’d conjured came into being with a red flash. It didn’t look at all like the Shield Charm that Harry had been learning. Instead, it was a counterclockwise whirl of red pendants in front of Moody, like he’d conjured a pinwheel. It floated back and forth, and spread out now and then, pulsing like a beating heart.
            An interesting kind of magic, said Dash.
            Harry started. He’d been so intently staring at the spell that he’d almost let his attention to Dash and their bond lapse for a moment, the first time he’d done so in—well, maybe ever. He stroked Dash’s neck again and asked, What makes it interesting?
            It doesn’t quite exist.
            Harry would have asked what that meant, but Moody was rounding on him, staring at him with fiercely gleaming eyes. “Can you do the same thing, boy? Imitate the exact wand movement and conjure the shield to get what you want?”
            Harry swallowed. He wondered for a second if he really could imitate that wand movement. Already, he was forgetting exactly how it had looked, and instead, imagining the motions that someone would use to tie a bow—whether or not they were really the movements Moody had made!
            But he didn’t want to back down or show fear in front of Moody. It would only confirm the man’s ideas that he was a coward. So Harry said, “I think so, professor,” and faced the far wall the way Moody had. He didn’t think he needed to cast at the wall, but he supposed it would raise the shield in front of him and direct his magic away from any people and furniture in case something went wrong.
            As strongly as he could, Harry imitated the wand movement and called out the incantation. “Abstineo ignem!”
            The red that erupted from his wand was wrong; Harry could tell that immediately. Moody’s spell had been more orange, and it had obeyed him instead of shuddering and flying all over the place. Harry ducked instinctively, and felt Dash wind around him to encourage him to stay on the floor.
            The red light flew overhead and slammed into the wall behind Harry. Harry smelled burning, and then Moody said something calm and cast a kind of water spell that put it out.
            “That was unexpected,” said Moody. “Although it does tell me that you’re a more powerful wizard than I thought you were.” He stooped and brought his craggy face down towards Harry. “And that you didn’t pay as much attention to imitating my wand movement as you should have.”
            “Sorry, professor,” Harry croaked, standing. He was swaying back and forth with exhaustion and tension. Using that spell had taken a lot out of him. Dash wound about his legs and supported him. “I’ll—be more careful next time.”
            Moody studied him for a moment, then snorted and shook his head. “No use doing it right now. You’ll drop your wand before you do anything useful.” He waved one hand at Harry. “Go and rejoin your friends.”
            “But professor, I do want to learn—”
            “And you will.” Moody softened his words with a small smile. “But not today. Go and study and think about what you want to learn, and why.”
            Harry nodded and staggered out of the classroom. To his surprise, Hermione was waiting for him, instead of going around collecting signatures for her petition. She straightened up the minute she saw him and put a hand to her mouth.
            “Harry! You look awful. What—”
            “Professor Moody was having me practice some spells that I had trouble with during class,” Harry interrupted. He wanted to tell Krum and Fleur about the dragons, because that would make things fair, but he wasn’t going to tell Hermione, especially not in the middle of a corridor with lots of people around. “I’m okay, though. I just need some lunch.”
            No. You need some perspective.
            Harry had had to ignore a lot of what Dash said lately, and this was no exception. He gave Hermione a single smile and wobbled off towards the Great Hall. At least Dash moved beside him instead of trying to knock him down, or wind around his legs and do the basilisk equivalent of sitting on him, or whatever he thought Harry needed to learn.
            His mind went back to the owl he’d received last night when he went to the Owlery to talk to Hedwig. It had been from Sirius, and had only contained a few short lines, but Harry remembered the last one best.
            I’m proud of you.
            He was finally doing what he had to to make peace with Sirius. With that in mind, he wasn’t going to pay attention to anything else. The Tournament, and peace in the house for next summer. Then he could start thinking about other things.
*
            Draco blinked and tore his gaze away from the Gryffindor table. He had to accept that no matter how soulfully he stared after Harry, Harry was probably never going to pay attention to him again. Hell, he was barely paying attention to Dash and his friends as it was.
            But right now, there was something more immediate than eventual acceptance calling Draco’s eyes away. Conflagration had been curled up around his feet, but now he was rearing up, weaving his body back and forth. He seemed to be dancing to an unseen tune.
            Draco wondered if someone had cast a spell that affected a snake, and looked around suspiciously. But Moody was talking to Dumbledore and didn’t seem to have an eye on Draco, even his magical one. All the Durmstrang students sat away from him, and not even the ones who sometimes seemed to be hostile to him in his own House looked up from their plates.
            A few did when Conflagration shot towards the doors of the Great Hall, but they laughed when Draco chased after him. They probably assumed that Draco had “lost control” of his cobra again, the way that had supposedly happened when he confronted Moody.
            This time, Draco had no idea what was going on, and he was huffing by the time he and Conflagration got into the corridor. “Stop!” he tried to command in Parseltongue, but Conflagration ignored him and kept slithering on.
            “Come!” Draco tried, but that was also ineffective. Conflagration was heading straight for the doors that led out to the grounds. Draco growled and drew his wand. They were learning the Summoning Charm now. He thought he could Summon Conflagration back to him and have it really work.
            “Peace, Draco.”
            Draco froze, and looked around. The whisper had sounded as if someone was right beside him and whispering into his ear, but nothing was.
            Then Draco happened to look down and see his own shadow stretching away from his feet. There was a distinctly snake-shaped edge to the shadow. As Draco watched, it arched up and waved an imperious tongue at him, then slithered after Conflagration. Meanwhile, his flame cobra was jinking his neck sideways, as though to tell Draco, “See, stupid?”
            Draco didn’t see, not at all. But he blinked and took off after the shadow, because he thought waiting, at this point, would be the stupidest thing of all.
            He ended up just outside the doors, in a patch of shadow where his own disappeared. Draco clutched his wand. He didn’t know any spell that could make a voice sound in his ears and a snake appear in his shadow like that, but on the other hand, he also didn’t know any spell that could keep Moody concealed when Draco had cast a very powerful revealing charm on him.
            Then a head moved towards him, and Draco started. All he could see was that it was something large and dangerous-looking. He had his wand drawn and a chant on his tongue before the head came into sight.
            It was Dash.
            Draco lowered his wand because he didn’t have any other way to convey his astonishment. He stared at Dash with his mouth open, and blinked, and said nothing. Then he whispered, “Why?”
            Dash moved a little towards him. He looked much bigger than he usually did when he was wrapped around Harry’s shoulders and legs, but there was also a dullness about his scales that made Draco think he should have been bathing, and wasn’t. He turned his head almost upside-down to lay it in the dirt at Draco’s feet.
            “I can speak like this only through my shadow-serpents,” he said, and this time Draco saw the flicker of a snake-shape at the edge of the shadow thrown by the castle’s walls. “It is uncomfortable and exhausting, but easier with you because you know a little bit of Parseltongue.”
            Draco lifted his head. “That answers how,” he said, utterly astonished at himself. A short time ago, he wouldn’t have dreamt of contradicting a basilisk. “It doesn’t answer why.”
            “That is true. It doesn’t.” Dash flicked his tongue out and turned his head for a second as though scenting for enemies, then turned back to Draco. “But I can speak to you in a way that I can’t to Snape or Granger, though I did try with them. And in a way I can’t speak to Harry.”
            Draco felt his eyes widen. “Did something damage your bond with Harry?”
            “Yes. I can find no evidence of the spell’s existence, but I know it must be a spell. There is nothing else that could come between the two parts of a bond such as ours.”
            Draco thought about that, then nodded. “Yes, you’re right.” He didn’t actually know all that much more than Harry did about bonds between Parselmouths and snakes. Legends of Slytherin aside, there wasn’t that much out there.
            But for the first time, he was glad that he’d read Slytherin’s cursed book last year, because there was one mention in there of this kind of thing that he remembered. “Did someone use a Gryffindor artifact on you?”
            Dash’s head came up so fast that Draco jigged back automatically. “What?”

“It—was something I read last year,” Draco said. He looked at Dash’s shielded eyes, and then away. For the barest second, he had thought they were about to open. “That someone tried to damage the bond between Salazar Slytherin and a snake he had with the power of the Sorting Hat, because it was Gryffindor’s hat. But I don’t know if his snake was a basilisk, and I don’t know if anyone could have used the Sorting Hat like that on you.”
He shut up, because Dash was hissing, and the hiss was a tidal wave of fury that rose and went on rising, sweeping Draco up. He felt his legs weakening and a whimper rising up his throat, and he knew he wasn’t the target of the hiss.
Just the one who brought the news.
“I knew and should have known.” Dash’s head unfolded and he towered above Draco. Draco hadn’t appreciated, before, because Dash kept mostly to the ground, what it meant for a snake to be ten feet long. It meant he was rearing to almost twice Draco’s height, for one thing. “An artifact of Gryffindor would belong by right, and could only be used by right, by the Headmaster of this school.”
Dash swirled around, facing the front of the castle again. His body snapped, aligning all the coils and tail behind his head. His mouth opened, and Draco caught sight of his fangs. He flinched and gasped.
            “Most spells like this end with the death of the caster,” said Dash casually.
            “I—what?”
            Draco thought a second later he must sound stupid, because it was perfectly obvious what Dash wanted to do, but Dash only replied, “I shall go to the Headmaster’s office and wait for him there. Then I shall have a little look at him.”
            “No! You can’t!”
            Dash turned slowly towards him. Draco found himself falling on the ground, and not because Dash had opened his eyes. It was just—having all that force concentrated on him was different from seeing it defending Harry.
            “Are you worried about me leaving a body? You need not be. My jaws unhinge for a reason.”
            “You—you can’t! Because it’ll get Harry in trouble!” Draco knew he was babbling. “And there are portraits in his office who watch everything! My father told me! And his phoenix! You can’t tangle with one of those! Harry told me that he killed the last one of you with a phoenix.”
            Dash unrolled his tongue between his fangs. It lingered in the air, and Dash thought he was witnessing a gesture of contempt.
            “Harry is already in danger, and I have offered to take him out of the school and away from the war. I will do it now. As for the portraits, they are not immune against my poison or my serpents.” More small shadow-heads were popping into existence now, along the edges of Dash’s shadow, Draco noticed. “And as for his phoenix…it has not been near the Headmaster lately, have you noticed? Perhaps it has grown disgusted at its master’s actions and departed. Perhaps it is near the time of its burning. I care not.”
            Dash swirled towards the school, moving in a cloud of shadows. Draco opened his mouth to scream for help.
            And then he wondered what in the world someone would say, if they came out of the school and saw Dash like this. Dash might be destroyed as a dangerous creature. Harry would still get in trouble.
            His father would say there were always other things he could do, and Professor Snape would probably say the same thing. But Draco could think of only one thing.
            He jumped in front of Dash. Dash stopped moving and stared at him. Draco trembled a little, but raised his wand.
            “You’ll need to get past me first,” he said, and raised a Shield Charm.
*
Silver: Sirius no longer thinks he’s hurting Harry, though.
Doodle_Penguin: I update every Friday. Did you mistake the date?
SP777: Ultimately, Harry controls the bond. Dash would not be doing this at all if he hadn’t given up hope of getting Harry to listen. Then again, things aren’t exactly normal between them now.
starr: Well, Draco’s not crying now.
ChaosLady: Well, not on purpose.
moon: Thank you!
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A Brother to Basilisks