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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-Nine—The First Task
            “I wish I knew whether I could trust him,” Harry muttered, opening yet another book on dragons. He also wished he knew whether there were enough books in Hogwarts library with useful advice to make searching this way worthwhile, but that wasn’t a question he could expect Dash to answer.
            Of course not, Dash replied, raising his head and flickering out his tongue to touch Harry’s side. Why would you even bother asking?
            “I mean, he told me the First Task was dragons.” Harry leaned back and stared up at the ceiling of the library. For a minute, he thought a dragon flickered and danced there, but then, he was seeing them everywhere these days. “I mean, can we trust that? Or should we just assume that everything he said was—”
            “Mister Potter.”
            Blinking, Harry lowered his head again. Madam Pince stood in front of him, squinting as though he had his Invisibility Cloak on. Harry ducked his chin. He suspected he knew what she was going to say.
            Sure enough, she did. “This is a library,” she told him, stressing the words so lightly that Harry knew she was pissed. Aunt Petunia had done the same thing when she was angry. “And I know you can speak to that beast of yours quietly. If you can’t, you will have to leave. That is the truth. Do you understand me?”
            Harry nodded, feeling oddly overwhelmed with guilt. He had let down so many people lately and hadn’t kept their good opinion; he supposed that was the cause. “Yes, Madam Pince. Sorry.”
            The librarian sniffed and turned away, while Dash climbed up Harry’s arm and stuck his tongue into Harry’s ear. Even as Harry jumped and sent a few books flying, Dash added, Don’t look now, but here comes one of those students you disturbed.
            Harry turned around, resigned to being scolded by some studious seventh-year Ravenclaw. It wasn’t, though. Instead, Viktor Krum sat down at his table and studied him with a close enough gaze that Harry flushed again.
            “So,” Krum whispered, with a wary glance at Madam Pince’s disappearing back. “You said something about the First Task?”
            I never did tell Krum. Harry had meant to, but then again, nothing had seemed of much concern since “Moody” had told him about the Task but frantically preparing for the Tournament and trying to make Sirius proud.
            “Yes,” said Harry. “It’s going to be dragons.” He wondered how he could get a message to Fleur. He didn’t particularly want to approach her when Dash would probably ruffle all her feathers again.
            Krum did some kind of complicated hiss-whistle between his teeth. “And you did not want to keep the advantage for yourself?” He stared at Harry as if he would see some kind of truth written beneath his skin.
            “I don’t really trust the person who told me about it,” Harry said, rubbing the back of his neck. “So I didn’t know if it was real or not at first. And then I had other problems to worry about, also caused by that person.” He shrugged awkwardly as Krum stared at him. He supposed he could see why it wouldn’t sound very convincing if all you knew was Harry’s scattered words. “So it slipped my mind and I thought it might not be real.”
            “It sounds real.” Krum contemplated his hands for a second, then raised his eyes. “We would owe you a favor.”
            “We?” Harry asked in distraction, wondering if Krum was planning to share the information with Fleur after all, and would save Harry a trip.
            “Headmaster Karkaroff and I,” Krum clarified. He hesitated. “Unless you would like to listen to what he knows about basilisks and be paid back that way, no?”
            Harry looked at Krum. He might not be a Slytherin, as Draco and Professor Snape were so quick to point out all the time, but he knew a deal that was too convenient to be true when he heard one. “You already planned to offer that to me, didn’t you? Why do you want to help me? Or why do you want me in your debt?” Harry didn’t know if trading information about dragons and basilisks would make them equal in Krum’s eyes or not.
            Krum flushed and cleared his throat. “We are fascinated by the basilisk. We are looking for—safety.”
            “Safety,” Harry repeated, mystified. Dash had lifted his head and was watching Krum carefully.
            “Safety from the Darkness that some wizards would bring into our lands.” Krum moved his hands back and forth restlessly for a second, and then suddenly glared at Harry the way Harry thought he would probably look at the Snitch. “Safety from He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named.”
            Harry winced. “Look,” he said. “I can probably try to—I am going to fight him when he turns up. But how could I get to your school or wherever else you live if he came there? If he’s anywhere,” Harry added. He didn’t have any idea where Voldemort had gone after he fled Hogwarts in first year. He ignored Dash’s mutter about his dreams. They only showed forests, nothing definite. “I can’t even Apparate yet. I’m just fourteen! There’s nothing all that special about me!”
            Krum gave an eloquent glance at Dash.
            Harry shook his head. Sometimes he hated that he’d let other people think he was the reincarnation of Slytherin. For all he knew, Krum might not believe that or care about that—for one thing, Harry had no idea if Salazar Slytherin was important in other countries the way he was in Britain—but it had still started all of this nonsense.
            Never think that, said Dash, with a snap in his voice that was unusual for him. It was Voldemort who started this. Or if you want to think about what happened in the last few years, it was the diary and Voldemort’s spirit and Dumbledore. You did nothing wrong.
            I still probably let them think that I could do more than I can, Harry thought miserably, but he had to say something. Krum was starting to look concerned. “I just—I can’t make an alliance with you because I would have nothing to offer you that would interest you,” he said. “You’re a seventh-year! You can probably defend yourself loads better than I can.”
            Krum’s face relaxed. “That is the only thing worrying you, yes?” He gestured in a way that was as eloquent as the way he’d glanced at Dash, but this time, Harry was less sure of what he was saying. “It is the future that we have concern for, not the present. You will grow. You will become stronger. And in the meantime, we will be safer as your allies than standing alone.”
            There it was again, that bit about futures and investments that Professor Snape had said would happen. Harry restrained the urge to giggle hysterically. You should be dignified when accepting their alliance, Dash told him, and he was probably right.
            “Then I accept your alliance,” Harry said. “And any information about Dash you can give me. And—well, we can discuss other things after the First Task.” He paused. “Can you tell Fleur about the dragons for me? I would, only.” He gestured at Dash.
            Krum laughed and stood up. “Yes, I will. You are a good one, Harry Potter.” He nodded at him and added, “We will have a meeting with my Headmaster after the First Task.”
            “We will,” Harry said, although he had no idea what he would say to Karkaroff and suspected that Dash didn’t know either. Then he sat there, feeling like a prat, as Krum gave him what was practically a bow and turned away in a leisurely manner.
            We still have dragons to prepare for, Dash said a second later, a second that Harry had spent staring after Krum. Although I have an idea that may work.
            Harry turned hastily to him. “What do you mean?” he asked, managing to keep it to a whisper at the last instant as Madam Pince glanced in their direction.
            Dash tapped his nose on the page in front of Harry. Turn back. There was something about dragons’ bodies that I want to read.
            Harry hopefully flipped the pages. He just wanted to face the dragon and get it over with. He wanted to live. But he wanted to do well if he could. He was in the stupid Tournament, he might as well do it.
            There was a little creeping hope, too. If he could show that he was brave in the Tournament, then it might show other people in his House that he was still a Gryffindor. He’d been getting some suspicious looks about spending so much time with Draco and Snape.
            Those who will despise you for that are not worth getting upset over.
            Sometimes you sound so much like a human adult it’s creepy, Harry complained, and flipped more pages.
*
            Hermione leaned forwards from the stands set up around the arena where Harry and the other Champions would compete for the First Task. Her lip felt raw with how much she’d been biting it, and her hands flew raw with how hard she had to clench them so she wouldn’t hurt Ron.
            “I don’t think he put his name in the Goblet,” Ron said for the fiftieth time. “I just think he was stupid to take risks like this. Why didn’t he leave the Tournament when he found out that he hadn’t actually been chosen to compete? That’s all I want to know.”
            Hermione twitched in annoyance. She was going to hit Ron with a copy of Hogwarts, A History, really she was, if he didn’t shut up soon.
            Unfortunately, she hadn’t brought one to the arena, and Ron had a habit of not shutting up until someone answered his questions. So Hermione made her voice as nice as she could, and asked, “Would you have backed out if your Mum and Dad had told you they were proud of you and you were finally acting like a proper Gryffindor?”
            Ron choked a little. “Sirius told him that?”
            “That’s what he said.” He said it to you, too. But in some moods, Ron was just impossible to get through to. Hermione had tried to tell him that when he got upset about Viktor Krum sitting at a table in the library and staring at her. He didn’t understand that Viktor was just shy and wanted some help with his homework for Defense.
            “I would have liked to be in the Tournament, though,” Ron persisted in a low voice as the first Champion strode out of the tent they’d gone into. It was Fleur Delacour. “I mean, Mum and Dad would finally notice me then…”
            His voice trailed off. Hermione followed his gaze, saw the way his glazed eyes were fixed on Fleur, and rolled her own eyes. Fine. If that’s the way it is, that’s the way it is.
            The wavering Disillusionment Charm that they’d had up to conceal the dragons dropped then. The crowd gasped. Hermione’s heart gave one enormous thump before it sank. There were three dragons there, and she recognized one as a Chinese Fireball and one as a Hungarian Horntail. Delacour was heading straight for the third one, the Common Welsh Green, crouched above its nest of eggs and snarling at her.
            If she has that one, then Harry has a more dangerous one. Hermione darted a glance at the Hungarian Horntail, and then wrapped her hands around each other. It might be the Chinese Fireball. It might.
            But with Harry’s luck, she didn’t think it would be.
            The day seemed to soar and blur around Hermione. Delacour sang, a song that seemed to charm half the audience as well as the dragon; it curled its head slowly down in front of its eggs, its eyes half-lidded in the way that Hermione knew meant Dash was sleepy. Delacour darted forwards and tried to Summon the golden egg.
            It bounced and rolled and hit the blinking dragon’s nose. In a second, the Welsh Green raised its head and breathed hard.
            Delacour squealed and tried to dodge out of the way of the rush of fire. She didn’t manage, and for a second Hermione gasped along with everyone else. She didn’t like Delacour and the way she enchanted Ron, but Hermione didn’t want her to die, either.
            When the fire cleared away, they saw Delacour whirling around and putting out her flaming skirt with an expert blast of water. At the same time, she held out her wand and uttered a short, commanding incantation. The golden egg rolled the rest of the way and slammed into her waiting hand. Then she fled back towards the tent.
            Madame Maxime awarded Delacour the maximum points possible, of course. Karkaroff gave her a three. Hermione sniffed. He’s probably going to do the same for everyone but Viktor.
            She blushed a little as she thought about that. Viktor was kind and talented, and he was—interesting to talk to. But Hermione didn’t want him to get a good score only because his Headmaster was biased towards him.
            Luckily, it didn’t look as if that would happen. Dumbledore gave Delacour nine points, and the other two judges, men Hermione hadn’t met but thought were named Bagman and Crouch, gave her a ten and a seven respectively. At least she would have a decent number of points when she went to compete against Viktor.
            And it was Viktor who came out of the tent next, looking as calm and solid as he did when he was listening to Hermione explain Defense to him.
            He headed straight for the Chinese Fireball, and Hermione sighed a little. Yes, that meant Harry was going to have the Hungarian Horntail. She tried to hope that he had a strategy in mind. He had told her he did, but he also didn’t want to discuss it because it relied on practicing something with Dash.
            He’d smiled at her when Hermione demanded that he tell her what it was anyway. And then Hermione had gone quiet because she thought maybe it was something Harry was also going to practice with Professor Snape, and she hadn’t wanted to press.
            She wondered if Harry was so blind that he couldn’t see the glances Professor Snape gave him in class, much softer ones than he gave anyone else. Maybe he was. Maybe Hermione was the only one who could see them. Ron hadn’t given any sign that he’d noticed them.
            Then again, Ron is oblivious to an awful lot, Hermione thought, noticing that he was cheering for Viktor and chattering about his Quidditch skills at the same time. He only thought of Viktor as a Quidditch player, not anything else.
            You might not get to think of him as anything else, either, Hermione scolded herself, and leaned forwards to see how Viktor dealt with his dragon.
*
            Draco was watching the tent instead of the dragons. He heard the roars as Krum cast some sort of curse—from the syllables, something that would at least partially blind the dragon—but he couldn’t look. He felt as if there was a string tethering his head to the tent, and it would hurt if he turned away from it, if he moved too far.
            Then again, it also hurt to look. He swallowed again and again, but that didn’t ease the pain in his chest and throat, a pain that made him feel as if he was getting a cold.
            I just want Harry to be all right.
            Harry had told him that he was training with Dash to get his strategy just right, but the judges wouldn’t actually let him use Dash in the Tasks themselves. When Draco had pointed that out, Harry nodded and said he knew, but there was still something he could practice with him.
            Draco didn’t see why Harry couldn’t practice with his friends instead. Like Draco.
            A series of snapping and cracking sounds did make Draco turn around briefly, but all he saw was the dragon roaring and stomping on its own eggs, while Krum ran back and forth trying to get the golden one. Draco knew that there were Dragon-Keepers standing by ready to restrain the dragons if they tried to come into the audience, so he didn’t care. He turned back to the tent again.
            It seemed like forever until Krum finished and the Dragon-Keepers calmed the Chinese Fireball down or healed it or did whatever they did. Krum limped off the field with a few burns, and the scores began to show among the judges. Draco didn’t care. His hands were so damp that he soaked his robes when he rubbed them on his legs.
            And then Harry came out and headed straight for the Hungarian Horntail, the most dangerous dragon there.
            Draco almost wished he didn’t know that.
            Harry moved liked he was marching, and he didn’t look into the stands. Draco squinted, trying to see if maybe he had Dash with him under a Disillusionment Charm. Then he jumped as he felt something scaly and cool touch his foot.
            When he looked down, there was Dash, winding up like a cobra beneath Draco’s bench, watching the contest as if he thought Harry could do just fine on his own.
            Draco felt more of the sweat roll down his back, and thought it must be turning his robe transparent. He tried to lean down and whisper to Dash, even though he had no idea if Dash could understand English without Harry’s mind to translate the words. “You let him go alone?”
            Dash pointed his head forwards at the field. Draco turned around, panting with his fear.
            Harry didn’t appear to be doing anything. He was staring straight at the dragon, his wand down at his side in a relaxed clutch. Draco stared frantically. Why wasn’t the dragon attacking him? Or why wasn’t Harry raising a shield?

            Then Draco realized that Harry was doing something. He was hissing.
            The Horntail raised his head and arched its neck further and further, eyes fixed on Harry in a way that made it seem as if it was trying to figure out how many bones it could crack in a single bite. Then it opened its mouth and gave a rasping, gurgling noise that made Draco’s spine itch.
            It was hissing back. Just at a much lower volume and in a much less defined way than Harry could hiss.
            Dash leaned his head on Draco’s foot and flicked his tongue out in three precise touches against Draco’s calf. Draco was pretty sure he knew what that meant. Dash was chuckling.
            And the stands were erupting with screams as Harry walked closer and closer to the Horntail, and the dragon curled its head down to meet him, mouth open. Harry stepped onto the monster’s tongue.
            The Horntail’s jaws closed.
            Draco was the one who screamed the loudest.
*

            Standing on the dragon’s tongue, in the middle of the dragon’s mouth, Harry felt as if his courage was about to melt down his shoulders and end up in the middle of the tongue just like his feet were.
            But he had practiced and practiced this with Dash, off by himself where his Parseltongue couldn’t get anyone upset, and he was confident in it. Dragons could speak Parseltongue with the aid of a Translation Charm, and that had been the spell Harry had used on himself before he came out of the tent. Even then, he’d had to practice the dragon dialect with Dash.
            And the Hungarian Horntail had been intrigued with what he wanted and what he offered. He would get the golden egg and remove a false one from her clutch, and in return, she would get to taste the magic that blazed around him and to remind the humans around her that she wasn’t to be trifled with.
            A literal taste.
            Harry shuddered as the saliva washed around him and the dragon’s tongue curled and flexed, making it hard to balance on. He had never known that dragons could taste magic and wanted almost to drink it. It was one reason that wizards would never tame them, Harry understood now. The wizards were the source of too much magic, magic that the dragons wanted to swallow and play with.
            Only a minute or so, he’d warned the Horntail. Otherwise, the Dragon-Keepers would probably start firing spells. Harry tossed back his sweat-soaked hair from his forehead and counted down the seconds, then raised his wand and tapped on the inside of the Horntail’s upper jaw.
            For a second, she didn’t move, and Harry felt as though someone had started his heart into overdrive. But then she grunted and lowered her head, and when her mouth opened, Harry stepped out calmly, bedraggled but alive.
            Here is the egg you wanted, the Horntail hissed, moving the golden egg forwards with a delicate touch of her claw. Harry was a little surprised she could be so delicate, but then again, he supposed female dragons had to be if they wanted to move their clutches.
            Harry bowed, trying not to hear the plop of dragon saliva to the ground around him and the screaming of the crowds, which didn’t sound all ecstatic. Thank you, Great One.
            Your magic tastes interesting. The Darkness of it is as strong as the Light.
            Harry froze for a second, but the dragon was only making conversation, he thought. Thank you, he said again, and gathered up the golden egg, and turned to walk back to the tent.
            The screaming crowds didn’t let him get that far. McGonagall came hurtling towards him, shaking her head, and grabbing him by the arm, and then not seeming to know what to do, until she hugged him. Ron and Hermione poured down with the rest of the Gryffindors, and the minute Harry caught Ron’s eye, he knew things would be all right again.
            Draco came hurtling into the middle of the field to hug him.
            Caught by surprise, Harry went down beneath him, borne off his feet. Draco sat back beside him and stared. Then he grabbed him again and whispered, “What in the name of Merlin were you doing?”
            “Teaching people what they can expect from me,” Harry said, and nodded to the spectators who were asking him questions but talking too fast themselves to listen for the answers. He lowered his voice. “I wanted to show them that I have a Slytherin side but I can also be a Gryffindor.”
            “What?”
            Harry winced a little. Apparently Draco didn’t consider that a good excuse for stepping into a dragon’s mouth. “Well. That was what I wanted.” He caught Ron’s eye again. Ron was hopping up and down with impatience, seemingly wanting to come up and hug him. “And I think it worked.”
            “Why didn’t you tell anyone what you intended?”
            Harry blinked and glanced over at Draco. “Because you would have tried to stop me.”
            From the way Draco’s face darkened, that also wouldn’t be good enough. But Dash was flowing over to Harry, coiling around him and nudging the golden egg in a faintly interested way, and the judges were giving him their scores. Harry saw that they were perfect tens from everyone except Karkaroff and Madame Maxime, but their scores were still pretty high.
            Well, fine. Harry wanted a shower to clean off the dragon saliva more than he wanted to know his scores right now.
            He didn’t get off the field, though, before Dash said abruptly, Snape incoming, and a hand touched Harry’s shoulder for a second only—still strongly enough to leave bruises on his shoulder.
            “Mr. Potter,” Snape hissed. “We are going to have a talk about this.”
            “Sure, sir,” Harry said automatically, adding in his head Right after the talks I’ll have with Draco and Ron and Hermione and Professor McGonagall and…
            But Ron and Hermione were with him then, hugging him in spite of his soaked condition, and Harry thought he could turn his attention to other things.
*
MzPurpleMist: Thank you! Ron will be more supportive of Harry now that their tiff is over. Honestly, what Hermione said in this chapter resonated a lot with him, although not in ways Hermione intended; Ron started thinking about how he would have liked to enter the Tournament to distinguish himself. So he is more sympathetic to Harry now.
Easyreader: For the moment, McGonagall, Snape, Lucius, and sort of Harry and Draco are working towards a slow removal of Dumbledore, so it won’t happen right away.
But Dumbledore is definitely not happy about the way that Harry used Parseltongue in this chapter. Not happy at all.
ChaosLady: Thanks!
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A Brother to Basilisks