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Deconversion	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 23334 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 9
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Chapter Eight—Antivenin

            “This is being Master Harry’s bedroom.”

            That was what the house-elf said to him, the house-elf who didn’t look at him with the delight that Malfoy did but also not the fear that his friends did, and the house-elf he could see without snakes crawling all over his vision. That made it normal, and something Harry was happy to accept right now.

            Besides, what he could see of the bed from the door looked like a decadent sea of sheets and blankets. Harry stepped eagerly forwards, and ran his hand down one of the pillowcases. It felt like satin. He sighed, and by his feet the white snake sighed as well, and flowed up the bed. Most of the others had gone, except for the Unspeakable cobra on his wrist. When Harry set it down and told it to slither into a corner, though, it did, curling up near the roaring fire.

            Harry shivered as he tucked himself into the bed, which was a neutral off-white, and wondered if he would become cold-blooded like his snakes. He hoped not. That would be a rather hard thing to control, and would give him a lot of disadvantages in a fight.

            “What will Master Harry be wanting to eat?”

            Harry’s eyelids slipped closed, but his stomach rumbled, too, and he reckoned that he would probably be starving if he woke up later. He forced himself to sit up and say, “I want—soup. Hot bread. Lots of meat. And butterbeer.” Malfoy would probably laugh at him for that last one, but it was warm, and that was Harry’s main requirement for food right now.

            “Master Harry,” the elf said, and vanished. Harry leaned back on the pillows and spent a moment looking around the room, wondering what Malfoy’s decorating choices said about him as a person.

            Not much, as it turned out. Or maybe someone else had decorated this room, or Harry just wasn’t good at reading someone else from their coloring choices. It could have been any and all of those, and Harry would have been forced to declare most of them correct.

            The walls were shades of pale. Sometimes white, sometimes blue, sometimes crystal, Harry thought, but it seemed he could never turn his head fast enough to catch one color actually melting into another; they just sat there and sparked smugly at him. The light from the fire made the colors seem to shift and dance and change, anyway.

            The bed was huge, but not high, which explained how he’d been able to stumble into it so easily. The main feature seemed to be lots and lots of pillows, and a huge fold on the side which Harry thought was a curtain at first but turned out to be piled blankets. He leaned back against the pillow, and nodded. Yes, it bounced beneath him in some places and gave in others. He knew it would be comfortable to sleep in.

            And there was a window that overlooked someplace sunny, at least from the shine through it, and lots of bookshelves, and the enormous fireplace. The ceiling was so high that Harry thought something could be hiding up there, out of reach from the firelight, but at the moment, he didn’t really care if that was so. It would be a struggle to stay awake until the elves came back with the food.

            You must stay awake. Brother. You will need your strength, and you have not eaten nourishing food in far too long.

            Harry turned his head. The white snake was curled up in front of him, body mostly wrapped in coils but head extended in a straight length and eyes fixed on him.

            “Why is that?” Harry asked quietly. “Do I need to feed you, too?”

            The snake laughed quietly, or at least stuck his tongue out and lapped the air in a way that Harry thought of laughter. We do not need to eat, brother. But we feed at your strength, and the things the cold one plans will take most of that.

            Harry wondered why they called Malfoy the cold one, but decided that it probably made as much sense as anything else as a nickname. “So you think that we should stay here?” He reached out, hesitated a moment, and then smoothed his fingers down and around the snake’s jaw when it tilted its head in encouragement. The snake yawned, showing off the delicate fangs that seemed to be the only teeth it had.

            Yes. It is the best den we have found so far, and the cold one will protect you until you are strong. And then there are other places.

            Harry had to admit that sounded sensible, and while part of him wasn’t resigned to trusting the snakes or Malfoy, he didn’t know that he could trust anyone else right now, either. He leaned back on the pillow and waited for the food to arrive.

*

            “I don’t believe you.” Pansy’s voice was flat, her eyes darting as though she was looking for Potter in the background of Draco’s drawing room.

            Draco leaned back and purred at her, lifting his own glass of sweetened water to his lips. He didn’t think he should drink anything alcoholic right now, not with his blood still doing fireworks behind his eyes. “Would I lie to you? Do you want to come over and meet him right now?”

            “You said he was tired,” Pansy reminded him, but her fingers clenched at her sides as if that could keep her from falling out of a high tree.

            And that, more than anything else, told Draco what was wrong. He leaned forwards and pitched his voice gently. “You’re scared. Now that we have Potter, you have to admit that my plans are real, and they could change the world. You don’t want to.”

            Pansy opened her eyes, and closed them. She said, her voice steady, “You know that I want practice of the Dark Arts to be legal again, Draco. It’s not that. I want to be what I am, a Dark witch, in full sight of everyone.”

            Draco nodded, and waited. He thought he could speak her next words for her, if he wanted to be so crass, but he would not. Pansy deserved the same independence and sense of strength that Draco was trying to promote in Potter.

            The same as that which Draco deserved, in fact. But at the moment, he didn’t think he lacked it, which made it all the more serious for him to hold back a little and let other people develop it for themselves.

            Pansy licked her lips. Then she said, “I didn’t believe you. I know what you hoped, but I didn’t think you would ever manage to persuade Potter to join you, and without that—we didn’t have the chance you thought we did. We might have managed it in the future, but only with a different kind of planning. You were placing too much hope on Potter. I think I counted on that.”

            Draco leaned forwards, to answer the unspoken question. “The Healers didn’t tell him the truth until too late, and then they did it in such a terrible way—this is speculation, but informed speculation—that he had no choice but to fight back if he wanted to live. And then his friends showed up, in the grip of that particular terror that only the Dark Arts inspire. That was the last straw, I think. He bound his friend Granger himself, and left it to me to fight Weasley. He trusted me not to hurt him.”

            “And did you?” Pansy lounged back in a more comfortable chair, by the looks of it, her legs crossed and her smile wicked.

            “Pansy,” Draco said in shock, and placed his hand delicately over his heart. “Are you saying that you don’t trust me?”

            “I only know that there are many different ways in which you carry your promises out,” Pansy said, and wrapped her legs around each other, grinning at him. “Anyway, you didn’t answer this time. What did you do?”

            “Weasley can’t fight us now,” Draco said. “And I acquired the weapon he was using. I am rather impressed with it, and I think it can further our studies.” He paused, and then had to explode out of his chair and pace back and forth. Pansy moved a little closer to the fire to watch better, he saw out of the corner of his eye. “Pansy, this is finally happening. We’re finally going to promote real magic again. Magic that’s powerful, that you can only master if you face it.”

            “And that’s another means of closing Muggleborns out of the wizarding world,” Pansy murmured.

            Draco shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind them so much if they’d face the Dark Arts and learn them like anyone else. But there are so many of them in Hufflepuff and Gryffindor, and that prejudices them against real magic before a Slytherin even gets to open their mouths.”

            Pansy snorted. She knew as well as him that Hufflepuffs didn’t have the open prejudice against Slytherins that Gryffindors did, but they encouraged their Housemates even more, by their passive acceptance of certain things as “good” and “right,” to only do and believe in those certain things. By the time that Draco or someone like him could find them and teach them about their own aptitudes, it was generally too late.

            “If we can get Granger on our side, she could be a powerful advocate,” Pansy said, and then grinned at him. “And I want to be there when you talk to her.”

            “You can,” Draco said, making his smile all the bigger. “In fact, I wanted to know if you would come here to meet Potter, when he wakes up.”

            Pansy blinked rapidly, and Draco felt the dizzying swirl of his thoughts again. He was moving so fast that his best friends and closest allies couldn’t keep up with him. He knew that he might have to slow down for them to catch up, but he really didn’t think so. They should, instead, speed up and run beside him, he thought, so they could know the wind in their faces in the same exhilarating way.

            Pansy finally inclined her head and said, “If you really think it best. If you think he wouldn’t run the other way the moment he saw me in the room.”

            Draco made his smile more winsome. “He began walking the Dark paths by himself; he found his way to them without instruction. And he let me show him the Hanging Tree. It would take more than your mere presence to frighten him.”

            Pansy’s eyes glinted, and Draco knew no baited hook could have taken a fish more effectively. Pansy walked the Dark paths herself, but it had taken her months to face the Hanging Tree, and even now she shuddered when she considered that she might end up there. She would want to meet, and better if she could, someone who had done the things she could not.

            Draco, he thought as they made arrangements to meet later, understood the same impulse. He had looked on his father and Professor Snape and wanted to practice the same kind of magic that they did. And he had looked at Potter and wanted to be as good a Seeker as he was, as beloved, as famous.

            The last desire might never happen. But by acting as a mentor to Potter when he was walking the Dark paths, he could at least show that he wasn’t intimidated by him, and get the satisfaction from showing off his powers.

            After that, there was nothing to do but have a small meal and indulge in a bit of Potions experimentation while he waited for Potter to descend.

*

            Harry opened his eyes, shuddering. He had dreamed that Ron and Hermione were standing in front of him, their arms folded and their faces cold and closed. They had told him, without words, that they hated his Parseltongue and his snakes and that because he was using them willingly, he could never come back and live with his friends. Then they turned their backs, and left Harry to the hell of a cold, dark universe.

            Not so cold with us. Brother.

            The nose of the white snake rose into view, and its intense eyes examined him. Harry reached out and rested a hand on its head, which felt warm from the fire, closing his eyes so that the shudders could drain out of him.

            Was that the kind of price he would have to pay, if Malfoy was right and he couldn’t turn back from his commitment to the Dark Arts? It seemed worse to him at the moment than the spitted heart on the Hanging Tree, or whatever other punishments awaited less than committed seekers on other paths.

            But he had paid that price already, if Malfoy’s words about Ron were true, if he trusted his eyes when it came to Hermione. His friends wouldn’t simply accept and congratulate him on the Parseltongue. He had to prove that going Dark wasn’t the same as going mad, and there could be sane Parselmouths.

            Harry swung his legs out of bed and sniffed at his armpits, wrinkling his nose. He hadn’t had a bath or shower since he was in hospital. He looked around now, and made out a door in a shadowy corner of the bedroom, behind a bookshelf. Snakes flowed and dripped around him as he hastened towards it.

            The house-elf who had brought his meal—or at least Harry thought it was the same one—appeared with a little bow and handed him a green dressing robe, then hung a dark shirt and trousers and formal robes on a rack behind the door. The bathroom was enormous, white tile or marble with silver fixtures. Harry stepped into the shower and looked in vain for a door or curtain, but when the water began to descend like rain from the showerhead above him, he realized there was a spell hovering in midair above the edge of the stall that caught the water and directed it back in.

            And the water was as warm as the summer rain it resembled. He relaxed and closed his eyes so that he could work the thick-scented shampoo he’d found into his hair, as well as avoid watching the water run brown down his skin.

            When he wanted to dry himself, there were fluffy towels available, and he wrapped the dressing gown around him while he dried his hair. He peered into the enormous mirror that Malfoy had hanging on the wall, and snorted. Well, his hair was never going to lie flat. He would have to do the best job he could with the array of combs available, and Malfoy would have to live with the result.

            Harry continued staring into the mirror when he was finished, though. This close, he could see other changes. Yes, his pupils had altered, and his cheeks still bulged out slightly with the venom sacs, and concentrating on his front teeth altered them so that they flickered longer and thinner. And now that he looked, there was something faint and black running along his temples under the bottom of his hair. He reached up and touched it, turning his head to the light so that there was no mistaking it.

            No, he had been right. He bore a thin band of green-black scales right there.

            Harry shivered and licked his lips. He forced himself to turn his back so that he could trace the scales all around the curve of his skull. He wondered if scales would eventually replace his hair, but so far, he didn’t think that had happened. Instead, the scales were growing where he had had skin before.

            He shut his eyes for a moment, and then resumed combing and flattening, while the serpents curled comfortingly around his legs.

            Only what I accept. Only what I commit to. If I find the changes distressing, then they’ll stop. That’s what Malfoy implied, and that’s what I have to believe, until I find some evidence that it’s otherwise.

*

            Draco looked up from the chart of experimental ingredients in front of him at the same moment as Pansy turned away from her book of Arithmancy equations. They had both heard the slight footsteps proceeding towards the drawing room.

            Draco wondered if Pansy could hear, as he could, the sounds of snakes moving, too, like someone continually taking an indrawn breath.

            And then Potter was there, standing with his fingers pinching shut the folds of his formal robes around himself. He wore black, because that was what Draco had directed the house-elves to give him, except for the shirt, which was the same shade of dark green as the center of his eyes now. He paused, stared at Pansy, and then nodded and faced Draco, his mouth opening in what looked like a challenging hiss.

            He didn’t speak in Parseltongue, though. “What is she doing here?” he asked Draco, eyes tracking back to Pansy as though she was a sign of plague.

            Draco smiled and stood up. “This is Pansy Parkinson, my best friend and collaborator in my scheme to bring the Dark Arts to life,” he said, and left it up to Pansy to tell Potter which branch of the Dark Arts she specialized in. It was rude to mention that when someone could have the pride of telling a stranger herself.

            Potter turned to face Pansy, and they locked eyes. Draco blinked, surprised when Pansy’s smile deepened. He had thought she would shrink in the face of Potter’s power or challenge him with all the sulkiness about this plan that she couldn’t show to Draco. Instead, she looked distinctly delighted, and rose to her feet to hold out her hand a moment later.

            “You never insulted me by refusing to take my hand,” she said easily. “I’d still like to shake yours. Will you?”

            Potter turned his head and blinked at Draco for a moment, as though to ask what the hell was going on here. Since Draco didn’t know himself, he half-ducked his head and shrugged, spreading his hands wide.

            Everything was up to Potter, and he didn’t send Pansy fleeing to scream about his rudeness elsewhere. Instead, he reached out hesitantly and accepted her hand. Draco saw her eyelashes flutter as her fingers slid around Potter’s wrist, and for a moment, flashes of green lightning seared his vision.

            Then he choked it back. So Potter’s power made him hard. That didn’t mean he and Potter would ever sleep together. Dark or not, Potter remained a Gryffindor, and for them, that required a level of trust that Draco didn’t think they could climb to.

            Unless he changes in other ways. He’s already changed more than I thought if he can reach the Dark paths on his own.

            Draco choked hope this time. It might happen, it might not. The important thing was to keep their eyes on the goal of getting the Dark Arts accepted, and remember that, along the way, other gifts might appear that could be accepted with pleasure.

            “You’re strong,” Pansy said, and opened her eyes again to give Potter a look of invitation that made him rear back. Draco smiled, and didn’t care that Pansy might see it when she turned in his direction again. Yes, that was exactly the wrong way to get someone like Potter—still unsure of his footing in the Dark Arts and this alliance—to sleep with her. He hoped that she remembered it.

            If she knew it, Pansy didn’t seem abashed. She sat down again and told Potter, “My specialty in the Dark Arts is tracking and finding spells.”

            Potter remained standing, with the cobra curled around his wrist and the swirling mist that Draco knew was the snakes draping his shoulders. “That doesn’t sound Dark,” he said. “Why would the Ministry ban them?”

            Draco smiled in spite of himself this time. Those were the kinds of questions that he needed Potter to ask if they were to be partners in this endeavor, questions that probed into the nature of the Ministry’s decisions on the matter—and Draco’s and Pansy’s—instead of simply and mindlessly accepting things the way they were.

            Then he caught Pansy’s eye, and cut the smile off his face. It won’t do to become besotted with Potter himself, instead of his power. Luckily, I can use Pansy as a scale of when I’m heading in that direction.

*

            Harry knew that there were currents swirling around him that he didn’t understand, and that likely had something to do with the way the smile disappeared from Malfoy’s face and the prim way that Parkinson folded her arms in. But he could figure them out later. For now, he just wanted to know the answers to the obvious questions.

            He swayed a little as he waited for Parkinson to speak, and the white snake lifted his head and hissed in agitation. Brother. You should conserve your strength, still. Sit.

            Harry was glad enough to do that, bracing his hands carefully out to the sides so that he wouldn’t simply collapse. Then he focused on Parkinson again, whose expression had changed. Harry didn’t know enough about her to figure out what raised eyebrows and pursed lips signified, though, so he just watched, and waited.

            Parkinson inclined her head a moment later, as though paying tribute to Harry’s ignorance, and said, “So. The finding and tracking spells I’ve mastered tell me where someone’s heart’s desire is hidden. Or their secrets. Or the most valuable possession in their houses.”

            Harry flushed, because he felt stupid for not figuring out why the Ministry might have banned those. But—“They still don’t sound Dark,” he said, throwing a glance at Malfoy. “Not in the way that Malfoy defined the Dark for me, with risks to the caster.”

            Parkinson smiled. “The spells are difficult to explain to someone who hasn’t cast them, but basically, they allow me to confront the protections surrounding those secrets and…other things I hunt…in a nonmaterial realm, rather than physically. It’s spiritual combat, mental combat. That can tear bits and pieces off the unprepared caster, not to mention what it could do to someone who’s trying to get through Dark protections. I’m a Dark witch.”



She spoke it the same way Malfoy did, Harry thought, as if it was a source of pride. He wondered if he would ever think of it that way, rather than just what he had to put up with in order to gain control over Parseltongue.

Because he had no intention of allowing Malfoy to control him, or going along with more than absolutely necessary. Malfoy had rescued him, and Harry owed him a debt for that, and would pay his debts. But he wouldn’t let Malfoy make him into a puppet, an obedient slave of his plans to legalize the Dark Arts.

            “So.” Malfoy leaned back and looped his ankles across each other. Harry would have found it laughable once. Not now. “The news that you escaped won’t yet be out, Potter, any more than the news of what they told you was. It’s the kind of news the Ministry will want to control, because it could cause a panic, and the Healers, because it would make them look bad, that you preferred my tender mercies to theirs.” When he smiled, Harry thought, his cheeks bulged as though he had food hidden in them. “So we have a little time. We need to begin moving, though, so as not to allow our enemies to checkmate us.”

            “They know where we fled to,” Harry pointed out. “They know that we used illegal spells to oppose them, too.” He swallowed as he thought of Hermione’s pleading eyes, of what Ron had probably looked like. “How in the world are we going to make that look good?”

            “It’s a good thing that you have such big eyes,” Malfoy said, cocking his head. “And I’ve already noticed the shape of your pupils changing since you came here. I think you can control them and make them perfectly round again, if you want. It seems to depend on how close you are to the snakes at any given moment, how much magic you’re using.”

            “What do my eyes have to do with anything?” Harry said, and folded his arms in tight to his sides when he noticed one of the vipers who had put the Healers to sleep moving towards Malfoy. He didn’t want to attack him.

            It would not be an attack, brother, said the white snake. Only self-defense.

            Yeah, well, I don’t want that, either, Harry hissed, although mentally rather than aloud, and felt the snakes draw back.

            The sensation that swept through him when he felt that made him shiver. It was…indescribable, to think that he had such control over something he had thought only a few days ago would destroy his life.

            He looked back to Malfoy, who was smiling at him.

            “We’re going to give the papers a sob story,” Malfoy said calmly. “All about the mean Healers and how the Ministry didn’t help you, complete with photographs of your giant eyes and your noble, sobbing face. It’ll look better if your pupils are round for that. For other audiences, you can let them fall back into the shape I think is natural now.”

            Harry drew in his breath to say that he would never do anything like that…

            And let it out again. He had also once thought that he would never command conjured snakes to attack people, or fight his best friends.

            He nodded. “When do we start?” he asked.

*

            moodysavage: Harry has a clue. He doesn’t know everything Draco plans, but he would resist certain things.

            And yes, I think fighting Ron would have damaged their relationship.

            cocobyrd87: Thank you! Ron’s jealousy, I think, is not a factor here, because he isn’t jealous of going mad or talking to snakes.

            SP777: Well, Harry can spit as a human, too…

            But no, now that he’s accepted the gift, he will be in charge of the physical changes he got through.

            Talltree-san: Thanks! Harry is acquiring snake-like traits, as you can see with the scales here, but they’ll remain small or go back to human if he concentrates. These are the changes that happen when he’s not paying attention, basically.

            suicidein_angeleyes: Thank you! I appreciate it.

            Smaffa: Thank you! This is one of my favorite stories at the moment.
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Deconversion