Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

A Brother to Basilisks	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 85173 -:- Recommendations : 2 -:- Currently Reading : 15
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
- 81
- 82
- 83
Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Eighty-Two—Shields of the Soul

            Severus put yet another book down and rubbed his forehead again. Despite the idea that Dash and Harry and Draco and Harry’s friends supported, he had come across nothing that would indicate giving away a piece of one’s soul and using it as a shield to block a different piece of soul was possible.

            It sounds as if it should be. It sounds as if it should be a matter of metaphor, not hard logic, and that is the kind of thinking that marks the greatest potions brewing and spell creation.

            But even in the sort of metaphorical thinking that tended to power rituals and the like, there needed to be a procedure. If someone used fire in their ritual because they were fighting a creature made of water or someone they thought of as linked to water, then they would have to find a source of fire. They couldn’t walk out in front of their enemy with hope and nothing more.

            Where do I begin?

            Severus paused, then. There was the possibility that he could design something himself, wasn’t there? He had invented his own spells and his own potions, as well as making modifications to existing draughts. He could do this. The problem was how long it might take, to come up with the right symbolic manifestations and lay them together in the right order.

            But is there any indication that Harry is going to die tomorrow of this problem with his link to the Dark Lord?

            Slowly, thoughtfully, Severus closed the book. No, there was not. And he did have a possible excuse to gain the time he needed, one he had never used, although the other professors did so with some regularity.

            So, although it was almost midnight, he nevertheless went up the stairs and knocked on the door of the Headmistress’s office.

*

            “I’m sorry,” said Minerva blankly, after having stared at Severus for long enough that he should have revealed what kind of change was driving him. “You want me to announce to the rest of the school that you’re sick? What will Harry think?”

            “Harry will know the truth. I’ll make sure he does.” Severus sipped from the cup of tea that Minerva had mainly offered him because she didn’t know what else to do. His feathers weren’t ruffled, she thought with some admiration. “What the others think does not matter.”

            Minerva blinked. That sentiment wasn’t new, but who he was doing it in the service of certainly was. Before, he would have insisted on teaching his classes even if he was sick with a cold that made him lose his voice. He had, before, often. Then, the “others” who didn’t matter had been his students and the other professors.

            “Why should I be the one that announces it?” Minerva asked, just to be contrary, and to see what he would say. Severus had certainly never asked her for a favor before. He had simply demanded them, or done something that forced her to respond a certain way and then classed it as a favor later.

            “Because I’ll be in the dungeons doing some delicate and complicated ritual work.”

            “And you don’t think it’s a good idea to let the others know that?” Minerva shook her head. “You knew neither Filius nor anyone else would disturb you, Severus.”

            “But the students might.”

            Minerva had to both pause, and then acknowledge he was right. In particular, the Weasley twins might find the idea of disrupting a ritual conducted by their most hated professor too fascinating to resist.

            “Very well,” she said. “I hope that you’ll find some way to help Harry.” She leaned back and considered him. No, nothing in his face had changed, or the way he walked and stood, or the way he gripped his teacup. She shook her head. “Is all his influence on the soul?” she murmured, not sure if she intended for Severus to hear her or not.

            He did, and he seemed to know exactly what she was talking about, although there was a wry, sharp upturn to his lips that she didn’t understand. “It may be,” he said. “And it may be that which saves the rest of us.” He put the cup down, inclined his head, and moved to the door. “Thank you for the tea, Minerva.”

            She watched him go, wondering. Of course she hoped he could help Harry, and she was glad that Harry had someone to turn to besides her and Sirius.

            She just wondered why she had never observed such an incredible transformation happening under her nose.

*

            “But you can’t know everything that’s going to happen in the Third Task. That’s what bothers me about it.”

            Harry rolled his eyes at Draco. “It was only luck and coincidence that I found out what was going to happen in the First Task before it did. The Second Task had that clue, but this one doesn’t. And I know. It’s a maze. It would be impossible not to know by now.” The Third Task was a week away, and the talk of the school.

            “But you don’t know exactly what traps and tricks they’re going to put into it.” Draco’s face was taut. “And they said they changed it after Karkaroff was exposed, but how do they know what kind of input he might have had?”

            Harry shook his head again. They were sitting in a tiny classroom deep in the dungeons, not far from the entrance to Slytherin. Harry thought this must have been used for a NEWT class, because there wasn’t room for more than five or six chairs, but the walls and floor were so thick with dust he knew the class must likewise have ended a long time ago. It at least made a better place than the library to talk and practice spells without being overheard.

            “At some point, I have to trust something. If I start worrying about what they didn’t change after Karkaroff was exposed, then I have to start wondering about whether it’s really going to be a maze, and if half the judges are secretly on Delacour’s side, and whether someone might be planning to ambush me at the center just to prevent me from winning. I can’t go around distrusting everything.”

            “I do. I distrust most people who get close to you.”

            “That’s nice of you, but Dash already does it. You don’t need to.”

            Draco folded his arms. “Do you want to practice for what you’re going to encounter in the maze or not?”

            Harry sighed, but said nothing. Draco wanted to help him “prepare” for the Third Task, which was a lot harder than it looked since Harry didn’t actually know what kind of beasts or traps would be awaiting him. Harry thought they should practice general Defense, but Draco wanted something more specific.

            “Here,” Harry said, struck with an inspiration as he looked over at Dash’s long, lanky bulk asleep in the corner. “Why don’t we practice with different kinds of guardian beasts? There might be some. Griffins and sphinxes and things like that. They’d want to protect the Cup, wouldn’t they? And if Dumbledore had any influence, well, we know he liked using beasts like that. The troll and Fluffy in first year.”

            “Fluffy?”

            Harry started. He and Draco talked about everything now, and often things from past years didn’t come up. He thought he’d told Draco everything about the Chamber of Secrets and the basilisk in it because he was so fascinated with Dash, but he’d forgotten to mention the Philosopher’s Stone.

            “The three-headed dog that was guarding the Philosopher’s Stone in first year,” he said, as he cast the Clearing Charm Snape often used that moved all the chairs back against the wall. Then he thought about how he would conjure or Transfigure a griffin. It wasn’t a spell Professor McGonagall had had them practice, after all. “It was pretty fierce, but you could put it to sleep if you played music.”

            He felt something boring into the side of his skull, and turned around to find Draco staring directly at him.

            Harry snorted a little. “Is this the part where you tell me I shouldn’t even know about things like that, and I tell you that you sound like Professor Snape?”

            At least he won’t sound like me, said Dash, sleepily. He’d hunted in the Forbidden Forest the night before, and come back so smug that Harry knew he’d brought down one of the deer that used to run faster than he could slither. I think you should know all about dangerous creatures to tell me where to bite.

            Harry rolled his eyes a little and turned to Draco. “Well?”

            “You shouldn’t know about things like that.”

            “You sound like Professor Snape.”

            Draco didn’t smile. He looked off to the side and gave a little blast of breath. Then he said, “It really isn’t funny, Harry. There could be absolutely anything in there.”

            “I know,” Harry said, and tried to gentle his voice so he didn’t sound condescending when he saw the way Draco glared at him. “But I am trying, Draco. Really. The problem is, there could be absolutely anything in there. But doesn’t the fact that I’ve already survived things like three-headed dogs and giant chess games reassure you that I’ll probably come alive through this, too?”

            “Giant ch—” Draco raised his hand as Harry opened his mouth to explain. “Never mind. You’re perfectly right that one of us doesn’t really need to know about them.”

            Harry beamed at him.

            “Okay. Dangerous magical creatures, then.” Draco paused. “But I don’t know how to conjure or Transfigure one. Do you?”

            There is another solution. Dress me up with a glamour and pretend that I am the beast.

            Harry rolled his eyes as Dash slid over to join them. It seemed he’d decided that what Harry and Draco were doing was more important than digesting his huge meal. “But you’re not really a griffin or whatever else they decide to put in the maze. You’re faster than they are and you have venom that they don’t.”

            I have been rather slower than usual this morning, thanks to the size of the doe I took. You didn’t notice?

            Now that Harry thought about it, he did remember Dash crawling rather sluggishly after him into the classroom where he and Draco had come to practice. He’d even asked about being carried, but with such huge bulges in his stomach, he would have weighed more than Harry could comfortably carry.

            And honestly, he hadn’t been able to comfortably carry him for months now.

            “Dash has volunteered to practice with us,” he told Draco, when he saw Draco regarding him with that patient, immobile stare he adopted whenever Harry was talking to Dash and he didn’t know what they were talking about.

            “Well, it’s a better solution than the ones I can think of,” said Draco, after obviously standing there and contemplating it. There was a reluctant note in his voice that made Harry glance at him curiously as Dash slithered into the middle of the room and obligingly reared part of his body off the floor so that Harry could disguise him.

            He thinks I might hurt you. He should know that I would never hurt my bonded. He paused a moment, then added, Intentionally.

            Harry smiled at him. I know. “Worried, Draco?” Harry added aloud, as he managed to cast a glamour of a few feathers and a beak for Dash’s head. It was the best he could do, using a spell he’d seen Mrs. Weasley cast that charmed furniture to look nice. “I promise, Dash won’t play nice with you, but he won’t kill you, either.”

            Draco glared at Dash. Dash snickered unhelpfully in the back of Harry’s head. Harry shivered a little. Trying to describe a basilisk’s snicker to anyone else was doomed to failure.

            “Well, good, then,” said Draco, sticking his nose up in the way that meant he hated to be right there, but didn’t want to leave and go elsewhere, either.

            Harry snorted, and let Draco have his try adding some feathers to Dash. They looked more solid than his, but they were plain brown, while Harry’s were red. He grinned at Draco.

            Draco didn’t seem to notice. He backed up and eyed Dash critically. “Father would never accept it,” he said, or Harry thought he said, in an undertone. Then he caught Harry’s eye and flushed. “Not that we’ll show it to him.”

            “It” is ready to play.

            Dash uncoiled before Harry could even open his mouth to reply to Draco’s words. He struck with his nose at Draco, who tumbled back in front of him, shouting. Harry had no idea if that was because it looked like a sharp beak was going to peck Draco or if it was because he knew what a basilisk’s fangs could do.

            Draco fell to the floor. Dash turned and flowed silently towards Harry. And it was silent. He’d somehow muted their bond so that Harry couldn’t feel him as well as he normally did.

            Harry flicked his wand. A Shield Charm sprang up between them. But Dash reared back and looked at it for a moment, and then dashed his head against it. By pure strength, Harry thought, and not any magic, the shield broke into flying silver pieces of light that slammed past Harry and gouged holes in the walls.

            Normal magical creatures can’t do that! Harry danced out of the way of the nose reaching for him.

            But you keep saying there might be anything in there. Maybe another dragon. And you need to learn to watch out in more than one direction.

            Harry tripped over the tail that Dash curled around his ankles, and fell to the ground with a curse. Dash laid himself down on top of Harry and looped his neck around Harry’s throat. I win. I demand a forfeit.

            If there was another dragon, I could just talk Parseltongue to it, and I wouldn’t have to fight it at all.

            Did you hear me? Forfeit!

            Harry rolled his eyes. Yes, oh great and terrible basilisk. What do you claim for your forfeit? Honestly, he blamed Dean and Seamus for that one. They’d been practicing dueling last month and Dash had gone to watch.

            Pet me. Right above my eye-ridge. Keep going until I tell you to stop. Dash let a little more of his weight rest on Harry and sighed, his tongue flicking as he tasted Harry’s scent. And tell your little friend that he can’t actually pierce my scales with those charms he’s trying to use.

            Harry blinked and looked over. He hadn’t even realized that Dash had another coil wrapped around Draco. He was just so big, by now, that it was easy to lose track of him, especially when Dash’s head was looming right over Harry. Draco was wrapped from throat to ribs, and he was scowling. He did have his wand free, but trying to cast small Cutting Charms at Dash’s scales really didn’t work.

            “Dash says you’re his prisoner,” Harry told Draco.

            “A Malfoy never gives up!” Draco declared, and kept firing curses until Dash lazily turned his tail and snared Draco more firmly around the middle, holding his wand arm down. Then Dash decided that nothing outside Harry and his petting hand existed, and lay there soaking up the attention, ignoring Draco’s increasingly loud demands to be freed.

            You’ll have to do it sooner or later.

            You mammals need to remember how patient a snake can be. Dash opened his mouth in one of those long fanged yawns that Harry suspected he used to intimidate other animals in the Forbidden Forest. If I want to hold him for later, then I’ll do it. And I have decades to make up my mind on anything I’m thinking about. Probably centuries.

            That made Harry pause, shaken. How long was Dash going to live? And what was he going to do if Harry didn’t live that long with him?

            “Harry?”

            It was unusual for Draco to notice something was wrong and call him on it before Dash did. Harry chose not to answer Draco for now, even though he knew it would make him more upset, and instead question Dash. Are you going to live that long? Like the basilisk in the Chamber of Secrets? Slytherin, or whoever made you, made you different from him. Do you think you’ll live that long?

            I’ve been feeling a kind of magic in my bones, Dash said. I know I can do more things, sometimes, although I don’t know everything I can do yet. But I can sense the potential waiting to unfold. And that means that I can sense the length of my life, too. I know it’ll run that long, Harry. His voice was gentle.

            Harry took a deep breath and said, But you also told me that you’ll die if I do.

            Both things are true. Just because one thing can happen doesn’t mean it will. I have the potential to live that long. But I might die in the war. Yes. Those things are true.

            “Harry.”

            Draco sounded upset now, and like he was trying to breathe under Dash’s huge weight. Harry shivered a little and answered him. “I was just talking with Dash, Draco. He—he says that he could live centuries. That startled me.” He gave Draco a feeble smile. “Sorry if I upset you. I was just surprised.”

            “Oh.” Draco was quiet, thinking, and then asked, “But could he come up with a way to make you live that long, as well?”

            Sometimes that one thinks like a snake. Dash lifted his tail and uncoiled it from around Draco. He can have his freedom as a reward for his intelligence.

            Harry tried to ignore that revelation, and the way Dash’s weight seemed to push down on him harder with no one to share it. “Yes, he wants to do that,” he said. “But I’m not sure I want to live forever.”

            Draco stared at him. “How could you not want that?”

            “I mean, people do horrible things in pursuit of immortality. Look at Voldemort and his Horcruxes. Would you be willing to have me do something like that, Dash?” Harry added, turning his head carefully to the side. He had to look at Dash sideways or he would start speaking in Parseltongue, the way he did automatically most of the time when he was looking at a snake.

            No.

            Harry nodded in relief, and then Dash added, I would not have you do something like that because it would drive you insane to split your soul. I see nothing wrong with having you do something like that if I was there and could control it and make sure it would work and not drive you mad.

            Harry had nothing to say to that, especially since Dash finally slithered away from his chest and let him sit up. But he did keep his eye on the basilisk, wondering if this was the same Dash he knew who’d been sleeping peacefully in the corner of the classroom a few minutes ago.

            Maybe not. But it’s the same one who keeps saying that he’ll take me away from the war, and threatened to die if I do.

            I don’t threaten. I don’t need to. I promise.

            Another conversation Harry didn’t feel like having right now. He looked away and managed a weak smile at Draco. “Do you think Professor Snape could help us practice next time? He might be more successful in telling us how a real beast behaves and showing us how to oppose one.”

            I showed you how to do it! It’s not my fault if you did it badly.

*

            The clue was metaphors, as Severus had decided on. But his conscious mind, most unreasonably, had decided that only a real object he could hang the metaphor on would do.

            It was most often that way in potions, too, Severus thought with the most distant part of his mind as he stood in the ritual pentagon he had drawn. Usually, when he invented or modified a potion, he had to draw a picture of ingredients, or actually brew the original potion and study the way it bubbled. Perhaps it was weakness, but he couldn’t deal with a mental projection alone.

            The object convinced him that he wasn’t going mad, that he could shape the metaphors around something unyielding and look at it in case it broke.

            Or I do.

            Right now, the pentagon was part of that physical object, a ritual creation that Severus could feel comfortable in. He knew that most of the time, he would simply have used a circle, but a pentagon “felt” more strongly magical to him, and his feelings were important at a moment like this.

            In the center of the pentagon, he had inscribed a five-pointed star. He stood now on one point of the star. In the center of it, and thus also the center of the whole ritual design, hovered a small, shield-shaped piece of silver.

            Severus drew his wand. The piece of silver had come from several Transfigurations and a few hours of brewing the potion that would melt and soften the metal for what he had in mind. Perhaps he could have worked it faster with fire, but the point now wasn’t speed.

            The point was making the metaphor of shielding Harry’s mind with his soul come to life.

            Severus moved to the next point of the star, clockwise from the one he’d been standing in. The shield spun to face him, imbued with the spells Severus had already forced into it. As he moved, it also began to glow softly. It was picking up the ritual energy that traversing the design gave it.

            Severus hopped to the next point of the star, and then turned and focused on the shield as strongly as he could, drawing a memory forth from his head. It was the memory of how he had felt when he first took Harry from Black and resolved to try and be a good guardian from him.

            He whipped his wand forwards, slinging the memory at the shield as he would at a Pensieve. The glow brightened.

            Severus moved to the next point of the star, and now the memory was when he had first decided Dash would be good for Harry. Then the next, and now he was thinking of how brave Harry had been confessing his abuse at the hands of the Dursleys. The next, and it was the memory of how he had punished Petunia.

            The memories built on each other, and so did Severus’s traverses of the design, and so did the sharp rings of energy building around the shield. By the time Severus brought forth the last memory, the shield was surrounded by separate, overlapping spheres of blue and white and silver, and Severus found it hard to look at.

            Severus took a deep breath and cast the memory into the point where the spheres all crossed. The memory of how he had decided that he loved Harry and wanted to protect him and keep him safe from all harm.

            There was an oddly soft “plop,” as though he had thrown a simple pebble into a pool. And then the explosion outwards, consuming the shield as the energy spread and was released again.

            Severus felt himself thrown from his feet before he could plan for it. He twisted frantically even as he fell, because if he crossed the outside of the pentagon or the star he would be paying in pain—

            And then he realized he had landed on blank stone, innocent of ritual designs, and gasped aloud in relief. His elbows throbbed, but he had achieved his goal. The ritual had consumed all its components, transformed them all into the energy of love and protection.

            And it throbbed in his chest, a second heartbeat a note behind his own, a little warm glow of raised and borrowed magic that Severus could focus towards a specific purpose. Severus touched his chest with a shaking hand. The energy glowed back at him, warm against his fingers like a purring cat.

            Severus stood. He would have to rest, because of course the energy he raised had been mostly his own.

            But now he had the shield. Now he thought he could block the link between Harry and the Dark Lord, or at least give Dash long enough to battle the shard of soul that blocked the way right now, and perhaps even help Dash destroy it.

            I am glad.

            The words were as deep as his exhaustion, and Severus went to bed instead of trying to think of others.

*
            SP777: He’s about a year and a half old.
- 81
- 82
- 83
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

A Brother to Basilisks