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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 List
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Chapter Forty-Seven—A Long-Overdue Talk
            Harry collapsed into the chair in front of Snape’s fireplace and reached gratefully for the cup that Snape held out to him. He didn’t think he would find any alcohol in it, but he gasped a little at the warm liquid that seemed to pour heat through him. Butterbeer. He gratefully drank most of it.
            Dash unclasped himself from Harry’s shoulders and coiled on the floor at his feet. Draco sat down nearer the fire, on a long couch that Harry didn’t remember seeing the last time he was here. Snape stood between the two of them, and slowly glanced back and forth.
            Harry didn’t speak, although he thought Snape and Draco were waiting for him to start. He was simply too embarrassed. What was he going to say? Sorry for not talking to Dash and you enough? Sorry for disbelieving you?
            Part of it was that Harry didn’t entirely understand what had happened. He didn’t know if Moody, or Dumbledore, or whoever it really was, had cast the spell on him the night his name came out of the Goblet of Fire, or before that. He’d been alone with Moody a couple of times. Maybe it was during then?
            Well, I suppose I can start there. “What kind of spell is it that could dim my bond with Dash?” he asked aloud. “And how could someone cast it without me or Dash noticing it?”
            Snape’s face relaxed a bit from its harsh lines, and he turned around and picked up another cup that Harry thought also held butterbeer. He handed it to Draco, who took one gulp and then put it down on the floor beside him. Snape hesitated a second, then picked up a saucer and poured water into it, putting it down for Dash.
            “There are spells that simply do not receive attention because the circumstances that would be propitious for casting them are so rare,” Snape said quietly. “Or they do not occur in our country. For example, people who live next to dangerous merfolk would have to study spells for keeping them out. Because the merfolk in Hogwarts’s lake are peaceful—and too small a colony to threaten us, besides—such spells have never been part of the curriculum at Hogwarts.”
            Harry started. He hadn’t known there were merfolk in the lake.
            Yes, it’s interesting, said Dash. But we can think about it later.
            Harry reached down and put his hand on Dash’s head. At the moment, he was simply grateful beyond words that there would be a “later,” that his stubbornness hadn’t driven Dash away from him forever.
            Dash looked up at him, flicked his tongue, and lowered his head until it was lying on Harry’s left foot.
            “So you’re saying no one would study those spells because basilisks are so rare,” Harry said.
            Snape nodded. He was still tense and quiet, watching. Harry had no idea what he was watching for, though. Maybe he thought Dash was dangerous since he’d seen him in the entrance hall. “And Parselmouths are rarer. The combination of them…” He shrugged. “I think that you see the problem.”
            “Okay,” Harry said. He could at least breathe and act a little more calmly now, not breathless, the way he’d mostly been feeling in the last fortnight. “But Dash said the spell wasn’t gone, just soothed for a while. How can we take it off?”
            Snape hesitated once. Then he said, “I will have to look at your bond.”
            “Is that difficult?” But Harry knew even as he asked that it must be, or Snape would have done it already. “How difficult is it?”
            “It is a kind of Legilimency that demands absolute trust.”
            “In you?” Harry reached down and hugged Dash’s neck. “Because I don’t know if Dash and I have absolute trust in each other right now, and I can’t blame him if he doesn’t.”
            It will be repaired, Dash said, and his tone was soothing enough that Harry had to take a hasty swallow of butterbeer. At least the stinging warmth in his throat dried up some of the tears that would have collected in his eyes otherwise.
            “Yes, in me.” Snape watched him for a moment, glanced quickly at Draco, and then asked, “Do you trust me after what I have said about Black in the past?”
            We need to clear some things up.
            Harry honestly wasn’t sure if it was Dash or him who had that thought, but either way, it was true. He nodded a little, in response to whoever, and put his mug down. “It was never about—Sirius,” he said, and his voice caught on the name. He hoped Snape wouldn’t judge him for that. It didn’t mean that Harry somehow trusted Sirius more than him, at least not now. It was just—the way things were.
            Dash threw a loop of his body over Harry’s lap, and Harry stroked it softly before he continued. “It was just about the fact that I don’t have anywhere to live if Sirius doesn’t take me in. And he’ll only keep me there if he loves me. I know that for a fact. I don’t think he could ever have someone who he didn’t love living with him, even if I was his best friend’s son.”
            Harry looked up. Snape’s face was hard. Harry wasn’t sure what that meant. Maybe the spell had affected his ability to read Snape’s expressions, too.
            Harry looked down, and hastily continued. “So part of it’s legal. If Sirius doesn’t keep me, I have to go back to the Dursleys. I know I do. There is no one else who has any sort of legal right to—parent me, or they would have done it by now.”
            Draco said, “If you’d said something about that, then I could have told my father to fight for you. He can argue with the Board of Governors. He can argue with lots of people. He could argue that we should be the ones to have you. I think you’re related to my mother through the Black family tree, just like he is. She could adopt you, and we could have you.”
            Harry shivered a little. He wondered how he could say what he needed to say without telling Draco that he would rather Lucius Malfoy—and the mysterious woman writing to Sirius—weren’t in control of him.
            But luckily, there was something else he could say. “He could convince the Board of Governors, but they’re not the ones with the power over me,” Harry said, stirring a little. “Could he convince Dumbledore and the Ministry?”
            “Why would he have to convince Dumbledore?” Draco asked.
            Harry frowned at him, and Snape said, “He is correct. While Dumbledore may not have any more legal responsibility for Harry than for another student now that Black is in the picture, he was instrumental in moving Black’s adoption of Harry forwards as fast as it went. He would be a formidable foe should he think that we are trying to slip around too much of his precautions.”
            “Precautions?”
            Harry smiled faintly. It was a little funny to think that this was one thing he might know more about than Draco, especially since Draco was the one who had taught him so much about pure-blood politics and what it would mean for Harry to be accepting these rings from these families.
            You need not lord it over him.
            Harry nodded in response to Dash’s silent chiding and said, “I think he wanted Sirius to take me because he likes Sirius. And because Sirius was, well, he was a Gryffindor and on Dumbledore’s side during the war. Even if your dad hadn’t been a Slytherin, there was no way that he was on Dumbledore’s side, so…”
            “Those rumors about him serving the Dark Lord are exaggerated.”
            “Perhaps not the best topic that we could be pursuing right now,” Snape said smoothly. “This was about where you would live during the summers, Harry?”
            “Yes.” Harry gave Snape a look. He had thought it was the spell making it hard for Snape to connect with him and teach him, but he did wonder if Snape was also just that blind. Surely he ought to have known that Harry was concerned about who would keep him all along?
            Snape only blinked once and touched his chin as if a beard grew there. Harry was glad, right now, that it didn’t. It would have reminded him too much of Dumbledore.
            “You see yourself as having no power against Black and Dumbledore,” Snape said. “No power to escape them, I mean.”
            Harry shook his head. “Not now that they’ve agreed I should live with Sirius and be in the Tournament.” He swallowed and looked down at Dash. “Dash offered to take me away from everything and protect me in some other place, but I don’t want to leave my friends and everyone I love here, either.”
            It might still be the best solution, Dash said, but his voice was peaceful, unlike the other times he’d made that offer. He at least seemed to have accepted that it wouldn’t happen because Harry didn’t want it.
            “The only solution is to raise your power.”
            “I don’t know what that means,” said Harry, and glanced over at Draco. Draco was frowning a little, but he didn’t get a chance to say anything before Snape started talking.
            “It means that you need to take advantage of those who are ready to be your allies.” Snape actually knelt down on the floor, to Harry’s shock, and met his eyes with a sober look from only a short distance away. “You need to let them know that it will benefit them for you to be more powerful.”
            “But other than the sorts of things you told me to offer the Selwyns, how can I do that?” Harry felt limp and helpless. “I can’t offer newspaper interviews to everyone, and what if I end up doing awful things to make them more powerful?”
            “Black and Dumbledore have already done awful things, though!” Draco burst out. “And Moody, or whoever that really is.”
            “But I can’t just be horrible because they are.” Harry winced a little at the look of incomprehension on Draco’s face, but kept pushing ahead. “I mean—I can’t take revenge on them, or do horrible things in the name of taking revenge on them. That would only make me as bad as they are. And it wouldn’t make people trust me, anyway. Who would trust me if I might turn on them?”
*
            When he does think, he brings up good points.
            Severus could admire those points without intending to honor them, however. He would not lose Harry to Gryffindor self-righteousness any more than he would to his love for Black or the spell that Dumbledore had cast.
            “You can’t do horrible things, that is true,” Severus said, and inclined his head to Harry. Harry watched him with quiet eyes. This close, Severus could see the lines of strain and tension around them, and how Harry’s hand, which rested on Dash’s head, trembled more than a little. “But we aren’t asking you to do horrible things. We are asking you to defend yourself.”
            Harry shut his eyes. “I don’t see what the difference is.”
            “You don’t?” Draco interrupted, and Severus let him because he thought Draco might do more good than he could right now. “It isn’t horrible to defend yourself! I did that against Dash, and he doesn’t even bear me a grudge, does he?”
            Dash lifted his head and shook it gently back and forth. Severus surprised himself with how much he relaxed. Having his basilisk and his human friend at odds might have been a horrible weakness for Harry.
            “Yes, fine,” Harry said. “But how do I know when I’ve gone too far? What if I think that I’m protecting myself and I’m actually doing something to someone else that was as bad as what Sirius did to me?”
            Severus snorted, and let Harry hear it. Harry glanced at him, frowning. Severus shook his head. “You cannot do something like that because you are not in power over anyone else, the way Black is over you.”
            Harry glanced down at Dash. Dash tilted his head back and let his eyelids quiver in the way that always made sweat break out on Severus’s neck. But whatever message Harry had got from Dash seemed to reassure him, because he nodded and turned back to Severus.
            “All right,” he said. “But still…I don’t have a lot of money to give these people, and not all of them believe that I’m the reincarnation of Slytherin, and I can’t do interviews promoting all of them. What do I have to offer?”
            “Now you’re thinking like a Slytherin,” Draco said in satisfaction.
            Severus would not have put it so, but from Harry’s small smile and the equally small twitch of Dash’s tail, it seemed that that way was not objectionable to them. All the better, Severus thought, and launched into an explanation.
            “What you offer them is an investment,” he said, and Harry’s interested gaze turned to him. Dash must have been able to absorb enough of what an investment was from Harry’s mind, because he only turned his head further towards Snape. “You are not yet powerful, and you might never be if you made certain decisions. But you could be. Show them that they have the chance to influence you as a rising power, that you’ll take their advice into consideration in exchange for their support. The future will pay for the present.”
            Harry blinked several times. “But if I just take their advice into consideration—what would they think of that? I could do something they wouldn’t like at all. I might not take their advice. Is it enough of a payment?”
            “Yes,” said Severus. He wanted to smile, but then Harry would more than likely think Severus was making fun of him, so he didn’t. “They understand that it’s not a guarantee, any more than most investments are. You make them, and you hope for the best. If you deliberately betrayed them, that would be one thing.”
            “I wouldn’t want to do that.” Harry’s hand tightened for a second so that his fingers pressed as five separate points on one of Dash’s scales.
            No, you are enough of a Gryffindor for that. Severus nodded once. “And you must give your allies incentive not to betray you, either. Don’t let them see you squeamish. Present yourself as someone calm and mature and thinking about things.”
            “The way I wasn’t with the Tournament and Sirius.”
            “Yes.” Severus wanted to lay a hand on Harry’s shoulder and tell him it was all right, but that wouldn’t eliminate the effects of his bad decisions in the last few weeks. “That might have done you some damage already. Think closely about your next moves.”
            “You should ask my father.” Unable to be left out of the conversation for this long, Draco had bounced to his feet and come over to Harry’s side to look at him with hopeful eyes. “He’ll be happy to fight for you.”
            “But will he be happy to—invest in me?”
            The hesitation before his words was nothing too damaging for Harry, Severus judged. He was simply getting used to this new language and deciding what he would have to say and not say.
            “Of course.” Draco’s nose made its usual journey up to point at the ceiling. “You’re my friend.”
            Harry paused. Then he said, “No offense, Draco, but I think it might take more than that. He might think we’re good friends but I don’t have anything to offer your family.”
            “Yes, you do!” Draco bristled all over. “You’re the Boy-Who-Lived and famous and capable of doing all the things for us that you’re going to do for the Selwyns and the others! That has to be worth something!”
            Harry winced this time. Severus sat back and wondered what would come out of Harry’s mouth next. Perhaps his trust in Lucius had declined since the man had helped him with his abuse.
            But the next thing Harry said was, “But what if Voldemort comes back and he chooses to follow him instead?”
            He didn’t look at Severus, but Severus was nonetheless certain, for a moment, that the boy had wanted to. Presumably Harry had more trust in him than he did in Lucius Malfoy. Severus turned and waited to see what Draco would say. He had to admit, he was interested.
*
            Why is everyone looking at me like that?
            Draco shook his head irritably. He knew the answer to Harry’s question. The only strange thing was that Harry and Professor Snape didn’t already know it.
            “I know that he wouldn’t be able to—choose,” he said, because that was the closest he would come to admitting his father was “evil,” the way that Harry seemed to want him to. “You’re my friend. What would the Dark Lord think about that, and about Father not bringing you to him right away if he was really a loyal servant? Father hasn’t done that. So he already made his choice.”
            Professor Snape looked thoughtful in a way that Draco didn’t like. It suggested he didn’t believe Draco, and that made Draco want to bristle. But before he could, Professor Snape simply nodded and said, “Yes, Draco, thank you. That makes sense.” He glanced at Harry.
            “It does.” Harry hesitated, then held out a hand.
            Draco clasped it and shook it solemnly. He didn’t know if it was really enough to make up for the fight they’d had. He thought Harry should at least have hugged him to show how sorry he was for that. But he understood why Harry didn’t want to do it in front of Professor Snape, either.
            “Now.” Professor Snape stood back up and divided his gaze between them. “You must go forward with the Tournament, I’m afraid. Revealing the truth would be too great a challenge to the Headmaster’s power, and would reveal our motivations before we have sufficient allies to back the challenge up. I would let Professor McGonagall and Granger take care of that aspect for now. But you can make the Tournament work for you as well, Harry.”
            Draco grinned a little. Professor Snape might want to keep it secret that he was teaching Harry Occlumency and politics, but anyone who was in the same room with him and heard him call Harry by his first name would know the truth. Draco suspected there was a reason he mostly used “Mr. Potter” in class.
            “How?” Harry leaned back and pulled most of Dash into his lap. The parts of Dash that remained on the floor were his tail, which he swept lazily back and forth, and his head. Draco watched the way that drooped and his tongue shot out, and thought it was the most relaxed he’d seen Dash in a while.
            “There are various plans we should make depending on how the Selwyns respond to your article and what the Headmaster attempts to do in the future,” Professor Snape began.
            As they talked, Draco felt a pleasant buzz traveling through his veins. At first he thought it was just because they were finally doing something, and he was happy, but a second later, he recognized it.
            So that’s it. Father always said that I would know it when I felt it.
            Draco smiled. It was good to know that being excited by intrigue was hereditary.
*
            Draco walked beside Harry and Dash as they made their way out of the dungeons. Harry had known that he would, and had already braced himself. In some ways, this was going to be more difficult than apologizing to Dash.
            He waited until they were in the entrance hall, and Dash had reassured him that no one lurked nearby. Then he turned around and held out his hand when Draco would have walked past him. Draco stopped at once, though, giving him a faint smile.
            Harry swallowed. “I’m sorry.”
            “You said that once already.”
            “But I really, really mean it.” Harry sighed and looked at Dash. Dash only wound into a series of random patterns on the floor. “I didn’t know what I was doing, but I should have. I should at least have thought about it.”
            Draco obviously thought that one through for a while, from the way his brow wrinkled. Then he nodded. “Okay. But there’s one thing I want.”
            “What?” Harry asked, a little warily. All the talk of Slytherins and plots and political allies in the dungeons had left him a little paranoid about what someone might ask for.
            “This,” Draco said, and he took a step forwards, and before Harry could even think about what was happening—that habit he needed to cultivate—Draco was hugging him, more tightly than anyone ever had except Hermione and Mrs. Weasley.
            Harry froze, and Dash hissed in the back of his head, Are you going to let someone get away with only doing that? He’ll step back in a second, and he’ll think you don’t like him!
            I do, Harry argued, but he didn’t have a lot of friends who liked to hug. So he just put his arms around Draco, stiffly, and when Dash hissed at him again, he pressed his arms down against Draco’s back and shoulders. Draco gave a long, slow sigh. Harry hugged him again, more firmly this time.
            “I’m sorry that I didn’t listen to you,” Harry whispered to him. “I could have, and it would have been better all around. But now I hope we’re friends again.” He held Draco tighter. Draco had told him about the way he’d stood up to Dash and why, and it was—Harry couldn’t even comprehend what kind of courage that must have taken to stand up to a basilisk you weren’t bonded to, the way Harry was.
            “It’s much better now.”
            Draco sounded contented, almost sleepy. Harry didn’t laugh, though. He knew Draco’s feelings would be hurt if he laughed now. Maybe later he would, when they were good friends again and this was something they could joke about.
            Draco finally stepped back from him, smiled, and said, “I’m going to write to my father tomorrow and tell him a little bit about what you’re doing in the next few days, so he’s not taken by surprise.” Then he turned towards the dungeons.
            “Good night, Draco,” Harry called after him.
            Draco blinked, turned towards him, smiled, and then replied, “Good night.”
            Harry walked away, humming. Dash trailed behind him, and then gently curled a loop of his middle around Harry’s foot and kept him there when they were on the last flight of stairs before Gryffindor Tower. Harry blinked down at him.
            Dash arched his neck up. Harry slowly scratched his neck and kept on scratching. Dash shut his eyes and whispered, Please trust me next time. I might not have been able to feel the spell or identify it right away, but I still knew there was something wrong.
            Harry nodded. And did you really want to eat Dumbledore? And would you really have run away with me?
            Yes. Dash twisted his neck. Because my loyalty is to you alone, and not the wizarding world, and not the war.
            I want to stay here and keep Voldemort from taking over, though.
            Dash just looked at him. Harry turned aside. Sometimes, anyway. Not all the time.
            Just acknowledge those other times, and we’ll get along fine. Dash gently trailed his tail along Harry’s ankle, then began crawling up the stairs again. Now, I’ll stay awake tonight and guard your sleep, and touch your thoughts for signs of the spell that’s hurting our bond.
            Harry could remember a time a few hours ago when that suggestion would have horrified him. Now he smiled and let a glancing hand touch Dash’s head.
            And the sensation of a huge pile of snake curling vigilantly around him in his bed and lessening the headache that had started pounding again made him only sigh and snuggle closer, and remember what Dash had said.
            Because my loyalty is to you alone.
            Yes, it was good to have someone like that. If he could trust it and believe in it. And Harry really thought he could, now.
*
ChaosLady: At the very least, McGonagall has gone to demand of Dumbledore what the fuck he was thinking.
SP777: They will have other talks over the next several chapters, as well. I’m glad that you liked the “unleashing” of Dash.
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A Brother to Basilisks