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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 Fifty-Seven—A Talk With Narcissa
            “Will you be comfortable here, Mr. Potter?”
            “Yes, Mrs. Malfoy.” Harry sat down cautiously on a chair in the exact center of the room. It was so white that he could barely see the golden flowers on it. He worried his robes would get it dirty. He’d put on wizarding robes to come over here, but not dress robes or anything.
            Mrs. Malfoy took a chair in front of him. There were only two chairs here, which Harry didn’t understand. The room was huge, with a white carpet on the floor that looked like fallen snow. There were no bookshelves, no tables, no pictures, no anything. What did you do with this sort of room?
            But Harry didn’t have time to worry about that for very long, because Dash was grumbling in the back of his head about how uncomfortable it was to twine around the chair, and Mrs. Malfoy leaned forwards and said softly, “I have been talking with Cousin Sirius about ways to free you.”
            “From what?”
            Dash went still, and Harry heard and felt him dart his tongue out. She smells complicated.
            “From the fate that hangs over you.” For a moment, Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes went to the scar on Harry’s forehead. “Cousin Sirius has kept the truth concealed from you because he believes that if you knew, the Dark Lord would know.”
            Harry tried to breathe through the sick clog in his throat, but it was hard. “He thinks I want—he thinks I would just betray all of you?”
            Mrs. Malfoy shook her head a little. “He thinks you have a connection to the Dark Lord through your scar. If you knew all the truth, then the Dark Lord might dream of it. Or perhaps simply pluck it from your head. The Dark Lord is an accomplished Legilimens.”
            “I’m learning Occlumency.” Harry kept trying to breathe. Dash wrapped a coil around his foot and squeezed a little. Let the air flow wherever it can.
            “Cousin Sirius thinks that will not be enough. He also does not trust Professor Snape to do right by you.”
            “He will.”
            “After watching the way the professor looked at you the night of the Yule Ball, when he heard you were in danger, I also trust that he will,” Mrs. Malfoy agreed calmly. “But Cousin Sirius’s enmity for Professor Snape is not rational.” She spent a moment to smooth down her pale robes. “In the meantime, I think we can tell you most of the truth. That ‘most’ is the only truth I know myself,” she added, as Harry opened his mouth. “I think Cousin Sirius is holding something back from me, but I have not been able to wring it from him so far. I think I might, if I keep at it a while longer.”
            “Okay.”
            Harry tried not to feel faint or weak. At least someone was offering to tell him part of the truth. That was more than he’d got from Sirius.
            “I trust you know of the fate you have?”
            “I don’t know. I mean, people think I can defeat Voldemort if he comes back again, but I don’t know how or why.”
            “My son tells me that you have faced him twice already.”
            “Sort of. I mean, once it was his spirit possessing Professor Quirrell. And once it was a piece of his spirit that had been trapped in a diary.” Harry had his breath back now. He looked at her. “That Mr. Malfoy gave Ginny.”
            “Ginny?” Mrs. Malfoy asked for a moment, before she made a soft pass with one hand. “Oh. Weasley.” Harry scowled, because of the way she sounded, but Mrs. Malfoy was already talking again. “Those come close enough to ‘true’ defeats for me, Mr. Potter. But I was referring specifically to the prophecy.”
            “Oh, yes. I know about that.” Harry felt a little annoyed. Sirius was acting like this because of something he’d already told Harry?
            Something false he told you.
            Harry stroked down Dash’s neck. Since Dash had divined that Sirius was lying about the prophecy when he’d first told Harry about it, he had decided he disbelieved in the whole thing. “I know about it,” he repeated, because Mrs. Malfoy was looking at him intently. “I don’t know why he would need you to help him with it. Isn’t it something I have to fulfill on my own if it’s real?”
            “There used to be,” said Mrs. Malfoy calmly, “an art that was the opposite of Divination. It existed to make the future foggier, or if you will, restore free will to the world.”
            Harry thought immediately of the book he used for Divination, Unfogging the Future. He supposed it made sense that an opposite to that could exist. “So people thought it was better not to know about prophecies?”
            Mrs. Malfoy smiled a little. “Not to ignore them. To stop them from controlling us.”
            “But—how?” The only thing Harry could think of off the top of his head was that Sirius wanted to face Voldemort and kill him instead, and he honestly didn’t think that would work. Sirius hadn’t been born at the end of July or had parents who had defied Voldemort three times. Probably the other way around, from the little Sirius had told Harry about his family.
            Mrs. Malfoy leaned forwards. Harry blinked at her. He suddenly thought she looked like Dash when he was stalking prey.
            That is part of her scent. She smells excited. Tense.
            “To break them,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered. “The art was called Breaking when it needed a formal name. To shatter prophecies, snap them. To disrupt the patterns of fate that loomed over the world and thought they could control humans.”
            Harry gaped at her a little. Then he found his voice and said something he maybe shouldn’t have said. “You really want to do this. You don’t like prophecies?”
            Mrs. Malfoy’s hand fisted in her robes for a second. Now she smells angry, Dash added helpfully.
            Mrs. Malfoy let go of her robes, though, and shook her head. “I fear the implications of this particular prophecy. I had hoped the Dark Lord defeated forever, but if he returns, then the world he would create is not one I want my son to live in.” Her voice was low, but her eyes burned. “My son would never achieve the position he desires and deserves in such a world. He would always be second best.”
            Harry relaxed. He actually trusted that more than he did the things Mr. Malfoy had sometimes told him. At least he knew it wasn’t because Mrs. Malfoy really liked him or was trying to love him the way Sirius tried to do. “All right. So you want to help me defeat him.”
            “No. I want the prophecy broken. I want the Dark Lord dead, but by someone else’s hand.” Mrs. Malfoy paused for a delicate moment. “If you will permit me the liberty, Mr. Potter, I will say that I do not think you able to carry the burden. You are an extraordinary young man, but from what Draco tells me, you survived in part by chance and luck.”
            “Yes.”
            “That is not good enough. A fully-trained adult wizard should face the Dark Lord, or an army of them. Not a teenager.”
            Harry nodded and blinked. He had thought he would feel upset. Or maybe he would have if someone had just told him what Mrs. Malfoy thought, instead of her saying it herself.
            But hearing it this way, he could see the sense. Honestly, he would rather not fight Voldemort. He would do it because Voldemort had killed his parents and was trying to kill him, and because he would probably try to kill Harry’s friends, too. If Voldemort won, then Hermione would die just because of who her parents were. Draco would probably live, but Harry didn’t think Ron and his family would. Professor Snape might live because he was a Death Eater, but he would never live the way he wanted to.
            Dash would die. Because he was bonded to Harry, and Voldemort would never let the basilisk who had battled and injured his snake live.
            “Okay. I agree with you,” Harry said. “But why does Sirius think he has to keep this from me? Just because Voldemort would hear it through the scar?”
            “The Dark Lord does not know the full prophecy, as far as we know. He might target you even harder if he did.”
            “But Sirius already told me the full prophecy.”
            Mrs. Malfoy paused. Then she murmured, “He did not tell me that.”
            Harry just shrugged, not knowing what to say. Sometimes he thought Sirius mixed up what was really happening with his memories of Azkaban and dreams of the Dementors. On the other hand, maybe he shouldn’t be trusted by anyone else, if that was true.
            “I will be having a small talk with Cousin Sirius.” Mrs. Malfoy was staring off into space and murmuring the words to herself, but Harry winced from the savage flash of her eyes. “He cannot expect help if he conceals priceless pieces of information.”
            “I know.”
            Mrs. Malfoy paused, then gave Harry a small smile. “It occurs to me that you do. And you speak from experience with Cousin Sirius.”
            She sighed, and her gaze focused on the wall behind Harry, although when Dash turned and looked, he told Harry there was nothing there. “Some of the early Blacks were Breakers. I have been working my way through their books and artifacts with Cousin Sirius, trying to find ways to snap prophecies in general. It has been…difficult. Many of the Breakers died practicing their art, and so they did not leave records of whether their specific plans had worked.” She passed a hand briefly over her face. “Others talked in riddles because they feared what would happen if their work was found.”
            “Some people want fate to succeed?”
            Mrs. Malfoy took her hand away and looked at Harry in surprise. “Of course. The number of people targeted by prophecies is relatively small, and often those prophecies promise safety to many in exchange for suffering by a few. I would say that the prophecy concerning you and the Dark Lord falls into that category.”
            Harry gave a little shiver. “I don’t think many people are really that cowardly or selfish, Mrs. Malfoy.”
            “That is something where you do not speak from experience. Do you remember the way that people turned on you in your second year, Mr. Potter, when they thought you might not be the perfect savior they fancied they had?”
            “But, I mean—they didn’t know about the prophecy. They were doing that because people were being petrified. Because of Mr. Malfoy,” Harry thought he had to add.
            A wave of Mrs. Malfoy’s hand acknowledged that. “But you cannot argue with me that many people are well-pleased if prophecies happen to work out, as long as they do not involve them.”
            “I don’t know. I haven’t studied prophecies.”
            “Even in Divination?”
            Harry shrugged. “Mrs. Malfoy, Professor Trelawney doesn’t do that kind of thing. Draco probably told you.” He leaned forwards. “So you’re looking for some way to get me free of the prophecy, and you haven’t found anything else yet.”
            “That is so.” Mrs. Malfoy frowned at him as if she thought he should be taking this more seriously.
            “All right. But what did Sirius mean when he said that he brought you to the Yule Ball for your professional opinion?”
            Mrs. Malfoy hesitated once. Harry sat there and waited. She would have to realize sooner or later that she couldn’t reveal this much to him and then expect him to trust her if she started lying. And Harry thought concealing the truth at this point was lying.
            “He asked me to look at you and tell him whether I thought you had the strength to survive one of the rituals that we had found. Cousin Sirius is growing desperate. I think he thinks that we must break the prophecy before your next confrontation with the Dark Lord. But the ritual is scarcely survivable.”
            “So he doesn’t care if I live or die?”
            “Cousin Sirius loves you desperately,” Mrs. Malfoy whispered, as if imparting a great secret. “That is precisely the reason he might go off on his own with half-baked plans and do something equally desperate in the name of saving you. And—he told me once, and I think it is the closest he has come to divulging the secret he still carries—that death in the name of freedom was better than what might happen to you.”
            Harry shook his head a little. Dash was already rearing up, hissing so hard that Harry thought Mrs. Malfoy might almost understand the Parseltongue. I knew I could not trust the smelly dog-man. And I’m not sure I trust her, either. She agreed to come along and do this looking.
            “Why did he think you could tell him whether I would survive the ritual?”
            “There are a number of spells traditionally passed down among the women in the Black family, rather than the men. Among them are ones that monitor the health of a child. A child in this case being anyone under seventeen years of age, Mr. Potter,” she added, when Harry opened his mouth to say something.
            Harry closed his mouth and nodded grudgingly, although mostly because Dash had said in his head, I think we should hear what she has to say.
            “A very small and specific subset of them tests a child’s health when it comes to magic. They can detect magical exhaustion, show whether a child has been taking too much of certain potions, detect allergies to common potions ingredients before they manifest, and so much.” Mrs. Malfoy exhaled slowly. “I detected extreme magical prowess in you, and also exhaustion, Mr. Potter. Would you like to reveal why to me?”
            Harry blinked. “I don’t feel exhausted.”
            Mrs. Malfoy looked through him in a way that made Harry blush. He wondered if she looked at Draco this way, and if it explained why Draco might sometimes be terrified of his mother.
            “I don’t. I’d been dealing with the stupid politics of taking someone to the Yule Ball. And I’ve been preparing for the Tournament, and doing research for that. And I practice Occlumency and Legilimency with Professor Snape.” Harry racked his brain for some other way he might have got exhausted, and honestly couldn’t think of anything. “Other than that, it’s just ordinary class things.”
            “Hmmm. Then it may be that you are putting too much power behind your spells, doing with two hands what you could accomplish with the equivalent of one.”
            Harry squirmed. It seemed to him they were getting too far away from the topic of rituals and breaking and so on. “What did you tell Sirius?”
            “There was no way you could survive a ritual of the type we had discovered. I daresay most children could not. It is the kind best used when someone is no longer spending so much time growing their body and one can know that the magic is mostly mature, as well.”
            “What does the ritual involve?”
            “Silver knives placed throughout the body.”
            “Throughout…” Harry let his voice trail off as he tried to envision exactly what that would mean.
            Something I would not let happen to you.
            “When the silver knives are in place,” Mrs. Malfoy continued, her voice pitiless, “then the adults conducting the ritual hold the child still and collect the blood spilling from his wounds. They have to cast spells on the blood to keep it fresh all night, but also change it so that it is essentially another person’s. Then they feed it back into his body and draw the knives out. It is not a pleasant experience.”
            “No shit,” Harry breathed, and then clapped his hand over his mouth.
            Mrs. Malfoy only gave him a mild amused look, instead of scolding him for language the way Snape would have. “Please do not confuse the issue in your mind, Mr. Potter. Cousin Sirius was indeed willing to use this on you, but only to save your life. He would never have suggested it if we had any better candidate for a ritual that would work.”
            “Why would it work?”
            “The most common way of cheating a prophecy is to change it so that one of the conditions no longer applies. By changing you into a different person, which transforming the blood and feeding it back into you would qualify as, then the prophecy might break.”
            “Might. Might.”
            “I did say that Breaking was a mysterious art.” Mrs. Malfoy spread her hands. “As I said, many children could not survive that ritual. Breaking was most often practiced on adults, anyway.” She cocked her head, suddenly as alert as a hawk. “One thing I often wonder is why Dumbledore did not take you somewhere else and rear you in secret, training you, until you became an adult and would have more chance of facing the Dark Lord on an equal footing.”
            Harry didn’t wonder that. “I don’t know for sure, but Professor Dumbledore said something once about how our choices make us who we are. I chose not to go into Slytherin when I had the chance and the Hat said I would do well there. That was part of what made me a true Gryffindor.”
            Mrs. Malfoy gave Dash a quiet little glance.
            “That was before I had Dash. I mean, I killed the last basilisk I saw before him.” Harry reached down and petted Dash’s plume just to let him know he wouldn’t do it to him. The tickle of Dash’s tongue against his palm was amused. “Fawkes—Dumbledore’s phoenix—came and dropped the Sorting Hat on my head. Then I got the Sword of Gryffindor and used that to stab the basilisk.”
            “Hmmm. And he must have assumed if you were hidden away and trained, rather than reared in the Muggle world and then expected to face the Dark Lord with no training, you would not make your own choices? The future would have been chosen for you?”
            Harry felt like he was going to die from his blush. That sounded stupid and not as convincing as it had been when he’d come up with the answer. “I mean—I think so. I suppose I’m not sure.”
            “No, I fear you are right.” Mrs. Malfoy’s eyes caught on fire again. “What Dumbledore fails to realize is that you can have no true choice when the prophecy forecloses every path of action for you, and you are turned again and again to face the Dark Lord.”
            Harry opened his mouth, then shut it with a little click, and only spoke when he thought for sure he did understand about her. “You’re really serious about this.”
            “Yes. If Breaking were still more widely-practiced, that is what I would be.” Mrs. Malfoy gave Harry a faint smile. “I will continue to help Cousin Sirius conduct research among the Black legacy, which I can only gain access to through him, as he is the legal heir. But I think it is time to turn my attention to the Department of Mysteries.”
            “Department of Mysteries?”
            “The Unspeakables, in the Ministry. They study spells, artifacts, and other—well, mysteries—they cannot tell the wider public about. It is known, however, that one of their most common subjects is prophecies.”
            Harry nodded slowly. That made sense. “Are you going to tell Sirius about that?”
            “In moderated form. On the one hand, there has been enough hiding of tactics that can only serve us if we know about them. On the other hand, he has not shared enough with me for me to trust him.”
            Harry nodded again, sadly. He knew what that was like. And Dash would have reminded him if he didn’t.
            He had one more question to ask, though, and he hoped like hell that Mrs. Malfoy would tell him the truth. “Why do you care so much? I mean, about me? You could care about breaking prophecies in general, but why do you want to break this one so badly?”
            This time, Mrs. Malfoy sat still as if thinking about her answer. Then she nodded, stood, and crossed the small space that separated them, putting a hand on his shoulder. Harry leaned back so he could see her whole face.
            “Because my son has chosen you. From the way he talked about you in his letters and last summer, I knew you were his dear friend before he decided that he liked you in a more intimate fashion. And I will see my son happy. Neither the possible world that might come about if you fail to defeat the Dark Lord nor the loss of his best friend is acceptable.”
            Harry swallowed through what felt like a bunch of needles pressed against his throat. He managed to lift a hand and touch Mrs. Malfoy’s. She smiled back at him and looked down at Dash, who had slithered out from under the chair to gaze up at her.
            “There is one favor I’d like to ask, Mr. Potter. I understand that the harm you came to on the night of the Yule Ball was no fault of yours. But do try to refrain from rushing into harm that you can avoid. I’ve invested enough research and time in you by now to feel annoyed about it being for nothing.”
            Harry gave her a shy smile. “Of course. Dash wants me to stay out of trouble, anyway. Thank you, Mrs. Malfoy.”
            She bent down and kissed him on the forehead. It was a fleeting kiss that made Harry close his eyes. He couldn’t remember if his mother had ever kissed him like that, but he liked to imagine she did.
            “Thank you, Harry, for being a best friend to my son. And maybe more than that.”
            Hearing the curious tone in her voice, Harry opened his eyes. He wondered if Draco hadn’t told her. It seemed strange he would keep something like that concealed, but on the other hand, Harry had seen Mrs. Malfoy’s scary side.
            “Maybe more,” he echoed. It was the only safe thing he could say at the moment.
            Mrs. Malfoy gave him a little smile, nodded, and swept out of the room. Harry followed her with his eyes until she was out of sight, and then sighed and glanced down at Dash.
            You think she’s telling the truth.
            I know she is. Unless she’s come up with some way to fool my sense of smell. Dash climbed slowly up Harry’s leg, taking pleasure, it seemed, in threading his coils one by one until he was fully in Harry’s lap and almost drowning Harry in scales on his skin and warmth in his mind. He leaned his head on Harry’s chest. Harry stroked his plume. And humans can’t really do that. They don’t know what they smell like, so they don’t know what to conceal.
            Harry half-sighed and changed the subject. Do you think Professor Snape is going to like the Christmas gift I got him?
            Unless he is a complete git—ah, no, that would be the smelly dog-man. Dash drew back from him and lifted his head solemnly until Harry could see his hidden eyes, glowing like lamps. And I like the one he promised to me.
            Harry blinked. He had never thought Snape would get Dash a Christmas gift on his own, without going through Harry. How would he even know what Dash wanted? What do you mean?
            He is brewing a potion that will give me back my poison.
            Harry sat there and thought about it. He wanted to say that Dumbledore would scream at them if he found out about it, but of course that was true anyway, and Dash wouldn’t think it was important.
            Dumbledore is already angry at us, Harry finally pointed out. Is that the kind of thing you want to risk?
            I never want to risk your death again. And for some reason, my gaze does not work on Voldemort’s snake. My venom might. I will not chance you dying.
            Harry asked one question that had never occurred to him before, even though it was like pushing through poison of his own to ask. What would you do if I died, Dash? Would you leave and make sure that you were safe?
            I would seek out the person who killed you and kill them. Then I would kill everyone who depended on them or looked up to them or who they cared about. And their animals. And I would set the shadow-snakes around their house or property to bite anyone who came in. And then I would follow you.
            Harry closed his eyes. He didn’t know what he had to say to convince Dash not to do that, so he went for the next best thing. You know I wouldn’t want you to kill other people. Not even the one who killed me, if my death was an accident.
            Dash’s tongue darted out and smoothed over the skin of his cheek, up and down, as though he was tracing a pattern only he knew. I know that. But I also think you are very unlikely to die as the result of an accident. And I will punish any deliberate murder that way.
            Why, though? I mean, I’d be dead. It would be too late for me to feel better about it or use the deaths as a warning to other people.
            Because that is what basilisks do. Dash paused a moment, and then said, in a gentle voice Harry had never heard from him, I’m not human, Harry. I know it can seem that way because I have a sense of humor and I can read and understand English because of my bond to your mind, but I’m not. Don’t die. Because I won’t have any connection to the human world then.
            Harry simply held Dash, and said nothing. They stayed there until Draco bounced into the room looking for them, and talking about going out onto the Quidditch pitch. Then Dash flowed down, and Harry was happy to follow Draco and climb onto a broom.
            Dash watched them from the ground, his neck turning back and forth. Harry looked down at him, and wondered whether he should feel worse than he did.
            Because he did feel a little prickle of fear at the thought that his death could mean the deaths of so many other people.
            But he also felt—the only way he could describe it was warm—that someone would care that much about him to want to avenge him.
*
ChaosLady: I think you can clearly see Sirius’s reasoning in this chapter, and it does sound like you’ve figured out what he’s hiding.
moodysavage: Thank you! I enjoy writing this story, and I’m glad that you liked Lucius’s POV. He’s not misunderstood, I suppose, but it’s actually easy for me to write him in a different way; given enough reason to and advance notice, I think he could change sides, or reason himself into it.
moon: Thanks. I really appreciate it.
mariah: Thank you!
SP777: I thought that gesture might have been a little too weighty for fourteen-year-olds.
I do have an idea, but it’s only individual scenes so far, not a coherent plot.
MzPurpleMist: Thank you! Snape is, in fact, going to make his move in the next chapter. And Harry feels sorry for Sirius, but he’s getting more exasperated with him; seeing Narcissa’s exasperation kind of made him feel validated to feel his own.
It’s so hard to say what would have happened if James and Lily had lived. Presumably if they had, Harry wouldn’t be the Boy-Who-Lived anyway, so Dumbledore wouldn’t have any reason to be so personally involved in his life.
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A Brother to Basilisks