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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Sixty—Strange Interviews
            “Isn’t life so much better now that you’re living with Professor Snape?”
            It was the question that Draco had been dying to ask Harry ever since he’d seen Harry’s face, pale and tired, on the other side of the fireplace. Professor Snape hadn’t let Draco come visit until the last day before school was due to begin again, insisting that Harry needed time to rest and adjust to his new situation. At least it meant Draco could get back to Hogwarts by leaping through Professor Snape’s Floo instead of riding the Hogwarts Express.
            “What’s better?” Harry turned to look at him. They were in Professor Snape’s office right now. Harry had been working on extra homework, or something. But it was done and the completed potion was in a vial. Draco didn’t have the heart to point out that Harry had made a mistake. There was a blue swirl in the vial that wasn’t supposed to be there.
            “Life. Everything!” Draco waved a hand and sat down in the chair next to Harry. The chair on the right side of him was full of Dash, and Draco wasn’t stupid enough to think anything would make Dash move away from Harry right now. “Being. Existing. Breathing.”
            “Yes and no?” Harry reached out to pet Dash and gave a little shrug. “I mean, I was used to living with Sirius. It wasn’t bad.”
            “Why not?”
            Harry smiled at him suddenly. “Sirius didn’t go around proclaiming that he wanted to practice rituals on me every hour of the day,” he said. Draco nodded importantly. Mother had told him about that. Draco felt proud that she thought he was adult enough to trust him with the information. “He gave me my own room. He let me do a lot of what I wanted. He could tell me stories about my parents…” He trailed off and turned to stare into the hearth.
            There wasn’t even a fire burning there, though. Professor Snape often didn’t keep the one burning in his office, so no one could simply pop in and interrupt him. Draco leaned over to drum a finger on Harry’s arm. “There should be more to living with people than that.”
            “Like people poking you in the arm?”
            “Not all the time,” Draco said, although he was gratified to see Harry’s smile. He had made Harry smile. No one else. “But I want to know why you didn’t write to me until yesterday. Are you that unhappy here?”
            “No. Because Snape would be unhappy if I was unhappy.”
            “That’s not an answer,” Draco snapped, and then wanted to cover his mouth and apologize. Mother had told him that if he was too loud and forward all the time, he might upset Harry. And Harry had enough to upset him, as she had said. When Draco had heard the story of what Black was looking for among the artifacts he’d inherited, he couldn’t agree more.
            “Yes, it is.”
            Harry’s eyes were bright and direct and disconcerting. Draco sighed and said, “All right. But I don’t think it’s a very good one. If you’re only not being unhappy because it would make Snape unhappy, then when are you going to start feeling something for yourself?”
            He noticed Dash had lifted his head and appeared to be listening intently for the answer to that question. Good. Harry couldn’t simply neglect what he wanted.
            Harry frowned at his fingers and arranged them in his lap as if he would find the answer to the puzzle through them. Draco waited. He could be patient when something was important. (His parents would have disagreed, but then, a lot of the time they disagreed with Draco about what was important).
            Harry at last said, softly, “I respect Professor Snape for doing what he thinks is right. And he listened when I talked about some things I thought were wrong, things that Sirius would never have listened to.”
            He paused. Draco, listening, couldn’t help asking, “But?”
            Harry looked up, then back down. “But he went behind my back and he went to the Wizengamot without telling me about. And he’s not sorry for that. I mean—he’s sorry that he upset me. But he’s not sorry for doing it.”
            “Of course he’s not,” Draco said. He winced when Harry glared at him, but to him, this seemed so obvious that he wondered why Harry needed someone to reason it through with him. Maybe Dash had tried and failed. “Who could be sorry for getting you out of a situation that was that bad?”
            “He didn’t tell me!”
            “If he had told you, would you have come with him?”
            “I don’t know. I would have wanted him to explain what was so bad about me living with Sirius.”
            Draco nodded. “And he wouldn’t have been able to do that before Black found out and maybe got Dumbledore to come and support him, and then maybe the whole thing would have been stopped. I know you’re upset, but I think Professor Snape did the best he could when he really wanted to save you and you’re so stubborn.”
            “I’m only stubborn about the important things!”
            Draco smiled. “That’s me, too,” he agreed. “For example, my best friend and the boy I like getting a good home, and getting a good person to be his adopted father.” He stood up and walked over to Harry while he was still spluttering.
            “You can’t just—”
            Draco kissed him, to show him what he could just, and Harry sat there stiffly and didn’t return it for a long moment, making Draco think he was really upset, before he sighed and leaned forwards and did it. Draco cradled the back of Harry’s head and stroked his hair. That was the kind of thing he liked someone to do for him when he was really upset.
            It seemed Harry liked for someone to do it for him, too. He rested his head against Draco’s chest when the kiss was done and sighed.
            “I’m sorry that Professor Snape couldn’t do it the way you wanted,” Draco whispered in his ear. “I am sorry for that. But I’m not sorry for having you here, and you being his adopted son.”
            “I don’t—I can’t call him that, though.” Harry had tensed up. “I mean, no more than I could have called Sirius my adopted dad. I only ever had two parents. I’ll find something to call Professor Snape, but he’s my guardian.”
            “You can call him whatever you want,” Draco said. He stepped back from Harry and looked him up and down thoughtfully. “As long as you remember that other people are going to think of you as Professor Snape’s adopted son, and he’d probably be happy for you to call him Father.”
            Harry groaned and shook his head. Dash dropped down from the chair he’d been curled up on and came and coiled around Harry’s legs, giving Draco a clear look he could read over the top of Harry’s knee. Draco nodded. He should stop and not push further. Harry was getting more upset about this than he had been about the thought of Snape going behind his back.
            “Whatever you want to call him will be fine,” Draco said as a peace offering. “I think Professor Snape did this so you could have what you wanted, too. Like someone who’ll let you call him what you want.”
            “Sirius would have let me do that. And Professor Snape said he’s going to give me what I need instead of what I want.”
            Draco ended up shrugging again, a little helplessly, and looking at Dash. He thought Dash probably approved of Professor Snape being Harry’s guardian. Well, he had to, or Professor Snape would have ended up with a bleeding gash in his leg at the very best.
            But Dash had no guidance for Draco right now. He just put his head down on Harry’s leg and let his eyelids tremble a little.
            “You can do what you want, too,” Draco said, and finally came down to the purpose of his visit. He wasn’t going to just sit here and listen to his best friend—his boyfriend, he thought, with a little shiver—just complain and moan about life. “Do you want to play Exploding Snap?”
            “No,” Harry said snappishly, and Draco resigned himself to an afternoon of moaning after all, when Harry added, “What I want to do is fly.”
            Draco beamed. “Let me run to Slytherin and get my broom.”
            So they spent a happy afternoon flying through the roaring wind and the swirling flakes of snow it was stirring up. Draco dived for the Snitch more often, but Harry was the one who actually caught it most of the time, of course. And Draco was the one who saw Professor Snape first, standing on the edge of the pitch and watching Harry’s flight carefully.
            He would be right there with a charm if Harry fell and he needed to catch him, Draco knew.
            “What are you doing, Draco? You missed the Snitch when it flew right in front of you,” Harry started as he dived past Draco and grabbed the Snitch in midair. Then he turned and saw Professor Snape, and his voice fell into quiet. “Oh,” he said flatly a second later.
            Then he turned and went on playing Quidditch. Draco thought he was careful never to look at that part of the pitch again.
            Draco sighed. Harry would get used to it in time, he supposed. And Dash was curled up on the side of the pitch where Professor Snape stood, and watching Harry, too. He didn’t seem distressed, the way Draco had seen him on the night when Nagini attacked Harry.
            In the end, Professor Snape lifted his wand, and something like a silver-and-red firework flew out of the end and up in front of Harry. Harry swerved his broom away from the explosion and turned to stare down at the professor with a peculiar frown on his face.
            Professor Snape called, “The wind is getting severe,” and continued the message with a Sonorus Charm when Harry turned away as if he would go on flying. “Come down and get warm, Harry.”
            Draco thought Harry would push it, for a second, and winced. He never liked watching his other friends fight with their parents.
            In the end, though, Harry swept down and landed on the grass after what was at least a partial Wronski Feint. Draco followed him, but purposely slowed down a little, and saw Professor Snape tap Harry’s shoulder with his wand. It had to be a Warming Charm, since Harry stopped shivering a second later.
            Professor Snape said something, too, something soft that just made Harry turn his head stubbornly to the side and clutch at his broom.
            Draco deliberately lagged behind them as they went into the school and back to Professor Snape’s quarters. Professor Snape gave them both hot chocolate there and talked to them about the potions they would brew in the upcoming year. Dash lay down under Harry’s chair after eating bread soaked in chocolate and gave little obnoxious hisses that Draco thought were supposed to be snores.
            All the time, Harry held his hot chocolate close, with a strange expression on his face.
            He’ll get used to it, Draco thought complacently, and drank his own chocolate. It was very good.
*
            “You haven’t told me how you’re going to handle taking points and giving me detentions yet.”
            Severus laid down the book he’d been reading, a history of wizarding families formed from adoption rather than through blood links. Not all the stories were helpful to him, since most of them dealt with ancient wizards who had found children by chance rather than deliberately taking them from someone else, but at least it reassured him that his problems were not unique.
            “Why would I handle it any differently?” Severus asked. He didn’t think Harry expected unfair treatment.
            Harry lowered his eyes for a second. Then he nodded, and turned to leave the room. Dash stayed in place near the fire, though, which made Harry pause.
            “Harry.”
            “I don’t—listen,” said Harry, and he was speaking in a rush, gazing at either Dash or the fire, Severus couldn’t tell which. “I can’t just shake it off if you keep scolding me in class and insulting me, you know? I can’t come back here later and pretend like nothing has happened.” He turned to Severus and stared at him. “Otherwise, it’ll just end up like the Dursleys, where I tried to pretend for a while that I loved them and then I couldn’t pretend anymore.”
            Severus’s voice dried up. He stood up and strode towards Harry, wrapping him a hug so quick that Harry didn’t have the chance to flinch and get away. He held him there.
            Slowly, he felt Harry relax in his arms. Severus continued to hold him, though, even when Harry gave a little wriggle that suggested he wanted to get away. He murmured, “Did you think I expected that of you? And can you tell me something else?” He waited until he felt Harry nod against his chest—yes to both questions—before he asked, “When was the last time I insulted you in class the way I used to do?”
            Harry hesitated again. Then he said, “I thought—now that things have changed a little, I thought you might need to start playing up that act again. You know, to convince Voldemort that you hadn’t changed if you need to go back and spy as a Death Eater.”
            Severus had never even considered that Harry’s thoughts might tend in that direction. He knelt down in front of Harry now, and studied his eyes. Harry looked back, his face open and vulnerable in a way that made Severus wish he was further along in his Occlumency training.
            “There is no way I can be a spy,” Severus told him quietly. “There is no excuse he would accept for gaining custody of you and then not immediately killing or weakening you, or going to find him. That was the end of one phase of my life, Harry.”
            “Taking me in.”
            “Taking you in,” Severus confirmed, and let his arms rest more heavily along Harry’s shoulders when he would have moved. “You were prepared to endure it.”
            “What, having you scold me and then coming back and having to act like nothing had happened?” Harry shrugged. “Yeah, I was.”
            “I am not like them,” Severus said. Harry looked up at him, and Severus touched his cheek. “Not like the Dursleys. Not like Dumbledore, who told you that your happiness must be a sacrifice to the greater good.”
            “I mean, he never actually said that.” Harry’s face was pink. “He really did think I would be happy with Sirius.”
            He was a fool. But Severus did not say that. From what little Harry had told him, part of that was tangled in Dumbledore’s mind with fantasies of making up his imprisonment to Black, and Black being a favorite student of his, the way that Draco had been to Severus in the past.
            “But he did not ask you if you would be,” Severus said. “He assumed. I intend to ask, and ask again. I’m going to do it right now.” He stopped what he thought was an instinctive attempt to turn away, and moved Harry back so that he could look into his face again. “Harry, are you happy with me?”
            Harry wriggled and looked away. Severus patiently moved his head back until Harry was looking him in the face again.
            “I’m worried,” Harry whispered.
            “About points and detentions? I will not expect you to serve any more detentions than the average student. I may have to make sure they are not with me, however, as I would be suspected of being too lenient with you.”
            Harry wriggled again. “I’m worried about how you’ll punish me for getting detention in the first place.”
            “Ah,” said Severus, and suddenly certain moments he had shared with Harry in the last day made more sense. He carefully moved so he could see Harry’s face again. Harry stood up straight and looked at him grimly, as if he assumed that he would lose Severus’s love in a moment, so he’d better memorize his face.
            “I would never ask that you suffer more than the detention,” Severus said.
            Harry stared at him.
            “It is the punishment for whatever you were doing,” Severus told him. “Acting out in class, disrespect, wandering out of your bed wearing your Invisibility Cloak…” Severus let his teeth grind when he thought of that, but his fear wasn’t something Harry had to be responsible for. “I would prefer that you not do those things. But I would only punish you if you did something that another professor didn’t immediately correct with point loss or a detention.”
            “And how would you punish me then?”
            “By asking you to explain to me why you did it,” Severus said. “Then confinement to Gryffindor Tower, or a room here if you thought that time in Gryffindor Tower would prove too hard to resist escaping. In cases of especially severe infraction, taking your broom or perhaps forbidding you to spend time with your friends.”
            Harry watched him again. Severus waited. “I will never take food from you,” he added at last. “Or insist that you suffer physical pain to please me.”
            Harry closed his eyes.
            That was what he was afraid of, Severus thought, and waited with his arms around Harry until Harry relaxed against him with a low noise. It wasn’t a sob, not really, but it was close to that, and Severus felt a soft ache stirring up in him. If only Harry could trust him more…
            But then, the years that had made Harry who he was had already passed, and Severus could not keep mourning them. He would have to accept Harry as he was now, and continue working to ease his fears and give him a home.
*
            “What did you want to see me about, sir?”
            Harry kept his eyes on the wall over Dumbledore’s head. He’d been startled when Dumbledore decided to call him to his office, and Snape had been furious. Harry thought the only reason Snape had allowed him to go was because Dash had accompanied him, and still lay curled up around Harry’s feet like an enormous blanket.
            Harry had wavered about whether he wanted to go. But in the end, he did want to hear what Dumbledore had to say to him.
            And if any of it was about Sirius.
            “I think you know, Harry.” Dumbledore put his hands together on the desk and regarded Harry with mild disapproval.
            That’s probably a trick to make you look at him, Dash said knowingly in the back of his head. He had kept silent through a lot of the time Harry spent with Snape. Harry understood, at some level, that it was because Dash wanted him and Snape to talk. But it was comforting to hear his basilisk’s voice now. He wants you to feel guilty and trip yourself up.
            But Harry wouldn’t. He wished, desperately, that things had worked out and he could have stayed with Sirius. Of course he did. But Sirius was sick and needed help, and Snape…
            He’d already been helpful. He’d already made it clear that he didn’t think of Harry as his father anymore, and that he wouldn’t treat Harry unfairly. He was protective of his safety in a way Harry didn’t think Sirius would ever have thought of.
            “I don’t really know, sir,” Harry said finally, when Dumbledore stayed silent and Harry thought they might sit here for the rest of the afternoon if he didn’t say something. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t have asked.”
            “That does sound like cheek, Harry. And I am only trying to help you.”
            “Sorry,” Harry said, and nothing else. Dash was making some creative threats in the back of his head. Harry just hoped he wouldn’t laugh at any of them. Then Dumbledore would suspect Harry wasn’t taking this seriously.
            And Harry thought he probably did have to show he was taking it seriously, if only because otherwise, Dumbledore would get upset and suspicious.
            “Your going away hurt Sirius.”
            Harry learned then that he could be ready and braced for something like this, and it would still hurt. He flinched, and Dumbledore nodded slowly, the way he had when Harry was trying to explain where Dash had come from.
            “He only wanted to know that you were safe,” Dumbledore said. “He only wanted to make you happy.”
            He is different, said Dash abruptly. Different from the way he was the last time you talked to him, I mean. He seems more like his normal self again. I wonder why that is?
            Dash could think about that all he liked. Harry was only interested in answering these questions and getting out of Dumbledore’s office as fast as possible.
            “I know that,” he said. “But he couldn’t make me happy, sir. He was always talking about making sure I wasn’t a Slytherin anymore, and he didn’t like my friends, and he compared me to my father, and he was talking about a ritual that he wanted to use to cure me. Do you know what he was talking about?”
            Dumbledore looked old for a second. Harry sighed soundlessly. He knew that Dumbledore knew, but he didn’t think he was going to get a straight answer. Dumbledore would say something else about needing to protect Sirius.
            “Do your choices not matter, Harry?” Dumbledore asked, and for an absurd moment Harry thought Dumbledore was going to say that Snape had taken Harry against his will. But instead, he continued, “Don’t you remember choosing to be a Gryffindor? Would you reverse that choice now?”
            “I want to be both,” said Harry. “A Gryffindor Parselmouth. Why can’t I? I mean, Sirius can be uncomfortable with it all he likes, but that doesn’t mean I can’t be it. Just because Sirius thinks so. Why?”
            Dumbledore shook his head slowly back and forth. “Oh, my dear boy,” he whispered. “If you knew what the prophecy says in full, if you understood that you will probably need to die to save the world—”
            “Sirius told me the full prophecy.”
            Harry said out of habit, even though his stomach had turned cold and Dash had lifted his head with a threatening hiss. I’ll need to die?
            You won’t. He means that he will send you to your death if necessary to fulfill the prophecy, and to make Black happy. He might let Black kill you for this ritual. But I will take you away before I let that happen.
            When Harry could stop shaking and look at Dumbledore again, he saw that his face was grey. He was frightened by Dash’s hissing, Harry thought at first, but then he saw Dumbledore’s lips moving and actually listened to his voice.
            “Sirius told you the full prophecy?”
            “Yes.” Harry stood up. He wasn’t interested in staying longer. He didn’t see why he had to stay longer, because Dumbledore would only make these insane claims that no one could back up. “Is there anything else, sir?”
            Dumbledore waved him off. Harry looked back once before they left the office. He could see that Dumbledore had turned to face the fire and had his hands folded in his lap and a very old look on his face.
            Good. Let him be old. He might not get the chance later, when I kill him for threatening your life.
            Harry answered as lightly as he could, and they moved on their way, while Harry’s mind buzzed.
            I could understand him being upset if Sirius had told me whatever he thinks would get back to Voldemort. But why the prophecy? Why did he tell Sirius the prophecy in the first place, if not to tell to me?
*
     ChaosLady: Thank you!
moodysavage: Thanks! Draco is still more sanguine than Harry about the possibility, but at least Harry does have that possibility in his mind now.
Mariah: Thanks! They will discuss it, but Snape needs something more than just “don’t participate in it,” which was his instinctive move.
Lunar: Dash may eventually reach that stage. He has already grown several feet in a year.
SP777: Because I haven’t been able to come up with a new plot for one.
MzPurpleMist: Harry still isn’t thinking in terms of facing Voldemort. He’s more detached from Voldemort than in canon, partially because of Dash.
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A Brother to Basilisks