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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
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Chapter Seventy-Three—Explosive Strategies

            “Thank you for contacting me before you did anything with the information Draco passed on to you.”

            The words felt hollow in Severus’s mouth. Then again, he had been up for hours, and had just recently gone to bed when Lucius Flooed him with the news of what Draco had said. Now Severus sighed and leaned back in his chair, considering Summoning a vial of Pepper-Up Potion.

            Of course, if he took it now, he wouldn’t sleep for hours again. But he would be able to concentrate more heavily on what Lucius was saying.

            “I woke you?” Lucius gave him the light frown of anyone who didn’t spend all day trying to corral students into a cage of learning. “Of course I did. I’m sorry, Severus. You can go back to sleep. As long as you know the general outlines of my plan, and I know yours, then we don’t need to worry about immediate consequences.”

            That reassurance only made Severus try harder to drag himself out of sleep. “If you think you need to punish Zabini—”

            “I was thinking of moving him elsewhere until the actual trial,” Lucius said. “Somewhere it would be hard for even the Wizengamot to find him.”

            Severus relaxed. Lucius was not so outraged over Draco’s anger that he had disbelieved Severus, then. Severus had shared as much of Mr. Zabini’s history as he could without feeling he had violated the boy’s privacy. “Where?”

            “You said the Mind-Healer staying with Black has an extensive family on the Continent. Would some of them be willing to take the boy?”

            Severus opened his mouth, and found he had no idea. But he did have one objection. “Mr. Zabini performed Dark Arts recently—such as the potion—and has had no objection to them in the past. I doubt they would agree.”

            Lucius snorted. “You forget the default position of Light families, Severus, that every Dark wizard is anxious and eager to repent. They would have the power and the distance to keep him safe from even Britain’s Wizengamot.”

            Severus touched a hand to his head, which was spinning. “That might be true. I still think Lughborn might refuse. He is hardened enough to resist the pleas of a man who wrongfully spent twelve years in prison.”

            “Still.”

            Severus nodded. “If you could contact Lughborn, then? At the very least, Narcissa should be in touch with Black.”

            Lucius smiled at that, for some reason Severus did not recognize. “Oh, yes. Although Black might not want to listen to what she has to say lately. I have the impression he either lied to her or didn’t tell her about something important.”

            “That would make sense of her last visit to me.” Black appeared not to have told her about his confrontation with Harry after the Second Task.

            Lucius shrugged a little. “It honestly doesn’t matter much to me. But I’ll have her contact him.”

            “Thank you—”

            “Get some sleep, Severus.” A second later, Severus was talking to an empty fireplace.

            After a long moment of internal struggle, Severus Summoned a Dreamless Sleep Potion. He would be useless in the next several days if he didn’t do as Lucius had suggest-commanded, and too many people needed him.

            His last drowsy thought, after he had finished his dose of the potion and lain down in the sheets with his eyes closed, was what he was going to do about Draco.

            Lock him in a room with Harry and Conflagration and Dash until they talk about it, and refuse to listen to any pleas to let them out?

            He fell asleep before he could think of anything more complicated, but that last thought did lend a strange color to his dreams.

*

            I suppose I can’t have a life without people staring at me, Harry thought, as he paused that morning to put a sandwich together in the Great Hall before he ran to Charms.

            No. Not when you’re going to be political. Dash stretched himself out before the table and contemplated the lack of mice with a sigh. But you should explain to your friends what’s going on.

            Harry rolled his eyes. He’d spent most of last night talking with Ron and Hermione about how Zabini had tried to poison Conflagration, and how Snape had stopped that, and what Zabini was guilty of, and what they were going to do next, while dancing around Zabini’s abuse. Hermione hadn’t been satisfied, and kept asking him questions. Ron seemed satisfied, but curious, and he darted little glances at Harry when he didn’t seem to think Harry was looking.

            I can’t reveal something that dangerous to them. Harry paused to lick a bit of marmalade off his finger. Snape wouldn’t like it, not after the promise he made me and Draco make to keep things secret.

            They wouldn’t spread it around. And then Dash uncoiled abruptly and streaked across the Great Hall, his tail trailing behind him. Harry turned to stare.

            Dash?

            But in a second, he saw what was wrong. There was a shape with muffled outlines moving slowly along the side of the Great Hall, not far from the High Table where Professor McGonagall sat. Probably a Disillusionment Charm, Harry thought, and opened up his connection to Dash’s superior senses. Now he could smell him, like sweat and fear and dust.

            Dash raised his head and butted the figure under the charm square in the chest. He tumbled back on the floor with a cry, and came into view. Several of the Durmstrang students leaped up shouting as Dash wrapped himself around Karkaroff and then lay there looking as though he’d had a good snack.

            No, they probably think he’s about to have a good snack now, Harry thought, and drew his wand with a sigh as Krum started to stride up to Dash. You couldn’t have warned me before you did that?

            You would have gone for Professor Snape or something, said Dash, with an elaborate yawn from the center of his coils. And I don’t have time for that. We had to stop him before he managed to flee.

            You have the water-snakes watching the boat—

            But he might have decided to Apparate instead. Dash faced Harry and ended up with his head close to Karkaroff’s at the moment that McGonagall came striding down the center of the aisle between the House Tables and fetched up not far from them, breathing harshly.

            “What are you doing, Mr. Potter?”

            But she knows, Harry thought in confusion before he remembered that she would need to put on a good show for the people who didn’t. He forced down breathlessness and gave a careless shrug. “Only capturing the man who did me some harm, Headmistress.”

            That made a lot of people start buzzing. Harry didn’t think they would guess the truth, though. After all, Karkaroff was one of the Tournament judges. They would probably decide that he had done something illegal to give Krum the advantage.

            “You could have told me, and I would have called the Aurors.” But McGonagall wasn’t glaring at him disapprovingly. She did understand, then. She nodded once at Harry and gave the man in Dash’s coils a weary glance. “Very well. Igor, we’ll talk about this and get the matter settled in my office.”

            “I will go nowhere like this!” Karkaroff kept from stammering, but Harry could see how violently he flinched when Dash put out a curious tongue to sniff his cheek, and then yawned. The yawn happened to put his fangs very near Karkaroff’s throat. “Tell your snake to release me!” He looked at Harry with wild eyes.

            “I can’t do that,” Harry said evenly. “Not until I know that you’re not going to hurt anyone.”

            “Of course he will not be hurting anyone.” Krum’s voice sounded thick as he paused behind Harry. “What are you doing, Potter?”

            “I think you know,” said Harry, without turning to look at Krum. “And I think you know why.”

            He saw the moment when Karkaroff’s jaw sagged, or almost. Dash’s coil around his neck was keeping it up. Then he actually started struggling harder than ever, and didn’t pause even when Dash gave a warning little hiss that ought to affect people who didn’t speak Parseltongue.

            Harry?

            Harry sighed and said to Karkaroff, “I know it was you who wrote those letters. We have the evidence. We’ll see later whether you can say any words that might make me forgive you.” He had to pause. “At the moment, I can’t think what they would be.”

            Karkaroff just stared at him as if waiting for Harry to laugh and say it was a joke and let him go. Harry turned to Professor McGonagall. “Where did you want Dash to take him?”

            McGonagall closed her eyes once, and then straightened up again. Harry thought he’d seen her do the same thing a lot since Dumbledore’s flight. “Up to my office for now, Mr. Potter,” she said. “I have some things that I should discuss with Madame Maxime and the others.”

            Harry wasn’t sure who she meant, but he knew most people would think it was the other Triwizard Tournament judges. He nodded and looked at Dash, who immediately began to crawl with Karkaroff in his coils the way he’d carried Zabini.

            I think carrying people this way is fun! Are we going to make it a common event? Perhaps, after we’re all done with the people who tried to poison Conflagration, we can practice on Black!

*

            Lucius smiled a little as he sat down in the commanding chair of his study, the largest room on the ground floor of Malfoy Manor. “Thank you for seeing me so soon. It’s urgent, or I wouldn’t have summoned you.”

            “I wish you wouldn’t use words like summoned. It’s offensive to our dignity,” complained Mark Reubens, one of the senior Wizengamot members who was short enough and had a big enough buildup of hair and moustache that it was like talking to an ambling hedge.

            “Then I apologize,” said Lucius, and glanced at the other two men out of the corner of his eye. One of them was Pluto Flint, the great-uncle of the boy who had once commanded Draco on the Slytherin Quidditch team. He was hulking and unsmiling, had muscles like iron, and seemed disposed to forgive any sense of insult by gazing intently at Lucius.

            The other was Jordan Damirini.

            It had been easy enough to figure out who had to be abusing Zabini. And Lucius knew he was taking a risk, inviting the man here. But he wanted to set certain events in motion, and look later as if he had had official sanction for them, or he ran the risk of being reprimanded.

            “Mr. Damirini,” said Lucius, speaking directly to him, “a…delicate situation has arisen. As you know, I have a son.”

            Damirini folded his hands directly beneath his chin. He seemed to think it made him look erudite, or at least Lucius had assumed that was the effect he was going for in the private meetings of the Wizengamot. “In his fourth year at Hogwarts now?”

            “He is,” said Lucius, with a nod. He didn’t intend to bring up Zabini at all, for fear of triggering wariness in Damirini, but he did intend to sound him out on this. “And he has done certain things that a parent must disapprove of. Not the sort of sins a man can shrug off later in life. Or even as a teenager. But the kind of problems a child must pay for.”

            Damirini gave a private smile. “What do you think I can help you with, Lucius? As far as I know, you apply all your own discipline.”

            “You have connections in Italy, I know.” Lucius adopted an earnest face. “What would happen if I were to send a child off to the Continent for a year? That is, what kind of guardians would he need? How far do you think he would have to go to chance fewer people in Britain being able to contact him?”

            “Aaaah.” Damirini leaned back and stared at the ceiling. Flint watched, immobile, not protesting. He was the sort to wait in case any outcome didn’t immediately make sense to him, in the expectation that eventually it must.

            Reubens, of course, did try to object. “Lucius, if you only wanted to talk to Jordan, why—”

            Lucius raised a hand without looking away from Damirini, and Reubens fell silent. Once again he was muttering into his moustache, though. Lucius only hoped that the feast the house-elves would serve before he left would make up for what was admittedly a dirty trick.

            “Well,” said Damirini, bringing his head down at last, “I would have to know a little more about what the boy did before I could make any recommendations.”

            I’m sure you’d like to know, said Lucius, and gave him a fond, exasperated smile, the kind a father would use when thinking about his son. I’m sure that you enjoy dispensing what you think is punishment.

            “Nothing that can be mentioned in polite society.” Lucius gave a little shudder, and ignored Reubens’s much larger one. Reubens was too cowardly to gossip, the prime reason Lucius had chosen him as one of the witnesses for this meeting. Later, he would need people other than himself to recall Damirini’s words and trap him with them. Flint, as always, was immobile. “If you would prefer to use your imagination…”

            Flint glanced at him curiously. Reubens missed the nuance, but looked ill.

            And Damirini fell for the trap without noticing the ambiguity inherent in those last words. “Yes,” he said, and his smile brightened until Lucius wanted to hit him. He refrained, but it was difficult. “I think I can imagine. Well.” He tapped his fingers together. “I can look around Italy and roust up some connections who might contact you, Lucius. It’s been long enough since I visited that I’m afraid I’m no longer as qualified to offer advice as I once was.”

            Lucius inclined his head. Damirini hadn’t condemned himself as much as Lucius had hoped. It was time to lead him a little deeper. “Then you would say the methods of punishment on the Continent are harsher?” He leaned minutely towards the other man, who was still handsome, with few scars marring his pale brown skin, his black hair still thick and shining. “You have personal experience of them?”

            “Oh, yes.” Damirini smiled, and Lucius no longer needed to lead him. “I can say I have experience of them with children even younger than your son.”

            Snared. Lucius sighed in what would look like relief—it was, but not for the cause Damirini thought—and nodded. “Then you should definitely give me the names of your contacts.” That might net him the names of other people who had abused Zabini, as well, he thought. “I’ll need them.”

            “I’ll tell them,” Damirini promised, and Lucius let the conversation wander into other channels, Wizengamot business and gossip that would be useful in guiding the course of the Ministry.

            Reubens left first, still muttering as loudly as he dared through the crumbs around his mouth about the waste of his time. Damirini saw himself out, giving Lucius a smile all the time as if he thought he and Lucius shared the same tastes. Lucius remained calm. It was to his advantage that the man should think that, no matter how repugnant the notion was. Damirini now thought he had blackmail material on Lucius, and would rest secure in the notion instead of investigating him. And since he had kept his own secret of abuse so well all this time that Lucius had never suspected it, he was unlikely to start blurting out Lucius’s “tastes” to anyone else.

            Only Flint remained, telling Reubens that he had business to discuss with Lucius. And he did. Lucius had informed him ahead of time that he had important information.

            “I’ll support that bill you wanted,” Lucius told him, after the house-elves had indicated the other two were safely out of the house. “The one about introducing Muggleborns to the world on their tenth birthdays. If you support me in a trial.”

            “And the trial has something to do with Damirini?” Flint let his eyes flicker to the chair where the man had sat, then back to Lucius.

            Lucius nodded solemnly. “And the questions I asked today.”

            Flint smiled. “I don’t know exactly what you’re talking about, Lucius, but that’s what always makes it interesting.” He flexed his fingers as if he was gripping the edge of a cliff like an eagle. “Let’s bargain.”

*

            “Where are we going to find a judge for the Tournament?” Madame Maxime asked for the tenth time. She wasn’t naturally a shrill-voiced woman, but now her voice seemed to stab through Minerva’s head every time she spoke, adding to the pounding pain of her headache. “And does this mean that Durmstrang, they will not be competing?”

            It was the tenth time that she had asked that question, too.

            Minerva said, “We will send to Durmstrang for another professor, Olympe. Perhaps their Deputy Headmistress. I understand that she’s expressed interest in judging the competition.”

            “And we are not to know her?” Maxime gestured around the office, then pulled her hand back to rest in her lap with a dancer’s grace. “Not until she arrives, and we are perhaps to see that she has interest like Karkaroff in cheating? No!”

            Minerva closed her eyes. Things would be so much simpler if she could explain to Maxime what Karkaroff’s real interests had been, but she didn’t trust Maxime not to violate Zabini’s privacy, or Harry’s, for that matter. She was still more interested in the Tournament and Delacour having a fair chance to compete than she was anything else.

            Which meant, for now, it was prudent to use the ready-made cover story of Igor’s position, that he had attempted to cheat to help Krum in the Tournament, and been caught at it by Harry’s basilisk.

            “We’ll do what we can,” Minerva said, and was glad to turn towards a knock on the door, even if it was a new problem. “Yes?”

            Viktor Krum came into the room. He glanced at Maxime and then away again, in a manner that appeared to infuriate her. But he said to Minerva, “You are able to talk about my Headmaster, Headmistress?”

            “He’s being held by the Aurors for now,” Minerva said. They knew a little more, namely that he had encouraged another student to commit an act of sabotage on Mr. Malfoy’s snake. They didn’t need more than that, at the moment. Unlike Zabini, Igor was an adult, and they were more than happy to charge him with something.

            “But there must be a way of getting him free.”

            Maxime sniffed and said, “Of course you would be asking this. You. Now.”

            Krum ignored her completely and continued to look at Minerva. Minerva wished she could walk away in response. Find a quiet spot, sit down, and rest. It was impossible with so many people depending on her, and she wished now that Albus hadn’t done what he’d done solely because of the work it piled on her.

            Instead, she stiffened her shoulders and said in response to both Krum and Maxime, “He’s safe. He’s going to be charged. There will be another judge coming from Durmstrang so that the Tournament can go on. No blame attaches to you, Mr. Krum. You can’t talk to him yet, but you can tell your fellow students that no one else suspects them because of what Headmaster Karkaroff did.”

            “What did he do?”

            Minerva looked Krum in the eye. Harry had said something about Krum coming up to him in the library to talk about basilisks. “I think you know what he did,” she said.

            Krum paled and glanced away. Meanwhile, Madame Maxime pounced on those words the way Minerva should, she supposed, have anticipated that she would. “What are you saying? The boy knew! Then he has cheated, too. Yes?”

            “No,” said Minerva. “He did not know the means of the Headmaster’s crime, or what he would use to do it. And as for advantages in the competition, Olympe, I suspect that all the Headmasters at the time tried to do what they thought was best for their champions. Albus was teaching Harry advanced spells under the guise of Professor Moody—”

            “I have never—”

            “Miss Delacour seemed most unsurprised to see those dragons on the morning of the First Task,” said Minerva softly. She didn’t want to use threats like this, but she couldn’t have Maxime interfering, either. “More unsurprised than a lot of people would have assumed. Of all the dangerous creatures or obstacles that we could have selected for the First Task, who knew it would be dragons? Who would have assumed?”

            Maxime narrowed her eyes for a moment, and then she looked away and gave a grudging nod, storming out of the office. Minerva didn’t care how angry she was. She couldn’t cause any personal trouble now, and the whole structure of the Tournament—the Ministry people invested in making sure it succeeded, the other judge coming from Durmstrang, the students themselves—would push back against her efforts to have the Tournament canceled or the points readjusted.

            “You need to tell me what really happened,” Krum pleaded.

            Minerva turned towards him. “Your Headmaster tried to poison Harry’s basilisk.”

            “He cares for the basilisk!” Krum made a gesture as though he was in deep water and trying to catch a bar to hang onto. “He would not—”

            “Does he care for the basilisk, or for the power it represents?” Minerva sighed when Krum stared at her. “I know a lot about your Headmaster’s history and why he might feel threatened. And Harry told me some of the things that you talked about when you conversed with him in the library.”

            Krum winced and looked at the floor. “I did not—Harry does not think I am doing—”

            “He doesn’t think you were part of the effort to poison his basilisk,” said Minerva, and then softened her voice a little when she saw the look of utter misery the young man cast at her. “But he does think that your Headmaster might have done it to try and make Harry give him a basilisk. Because of these people in Europe who need protection.”

            Krum was silent for long enough that Minerva thought he would turn around again and walk out. But then he nodded and said, “I am going to write a letter,” and walked away.

            Maybe he’ll try to persuade those people who need protection, if they really exist, to come forward, Minerva thought. It was certainly the best outcome she could imagine, at least for them. And it would undermine the sorts of justifications Igor would try to use.

*

            Draco lingered behind in Potions, and when Harry stood up with Dash lapped around him like an affectionate blanket, Draco hurried towards him. He had Conflagration with him, wrapped around his wrist like a bracelet, and Professor Snape had kindly looked away from that even though Draco wasn’t supposed to bring the snake with him to class.

            “We need to talk,” Draco said, planting himself in front of Harry.

            Harry looked at him without surprise, and nodded. “Yes, I think we do. Let’s get lunch from the Great Hall and then go out by the lake.”

            Surprised, because he’d thought Harry would argue, Draco followed. In the meantime, Dash looked back at him over Harry’s shoulder and gave a series of three sharp hisses Draco could identify. They weren’t in Parseltongue, though.

            Dash was laughing.

            Draco scowled. I don’t see what he has to snicker about.

*

            moodysavage: No, Lucius was always going to get Snape’s side of the story first. But he doesn’t intend to sit back and leave everything up to other people, either.

            SP777: Keeping Blaise safe, maybe. But Harry and Draco do solve some of their problems in the next chapter.
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A Brother to Basilisks