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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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Harry fought, twisting as hard as he could in the grip of the Dark magic. He kept reaching for Snape’s shield charm, thinking it must be around here somewhere, knowing that he would succeed if he could only find it—
But the laughter kept echoing around him, and there were dark red shadows on either side of him, breaking and twisting apart, winding like serpents to escort him down.
“Looking for this?”
Harry thought he saw the chain with Snape’s charm dangling ahead of him. He lunged for it, and the image broke apart in his fingers. Harry stared at it in silent shock, not sure what he was supposed to do or say.
“It is weakened, after how much it had to stand up to earlier. It defended you from Dumbledore and alchemy.” The laughter echoed again, mingling with the hisses from the serpents at Harry’s sides, which were only nonsense to him, not Parseltongue. “I suppose I should thank you. One of your greatest defenses down, and one of my greatest enemies dead…only to leave you vulnerable to Lord Voldemort.”
Harry lifted his head. He had stopped drifting, or falling. There was something solid beneath his feet now. He could stare into the darkness and see that it was tinged red, as if from the light of a fire. He began to shiver, and couldn’t stop.
There was a chair in front of the fire. It sat with its back to him, but Harry thought he knew what he would see when it turned around.
He wasn’t sure that his mind would survive the sight.
“You should have known better than to oppose me, Harry Potter.” The voice was so low and the words so throbbing that Harry honestly wasn’t sure whether they were in Parseltongue or English. “You should have known better than to think you would get away with it…”
Harry straightened his spine, his breathing painfully fast. “Big words for a man who hasn’t even showed himself yet,” he said, even though he knew he probably would regret that in a minute.
The chair turned around. Harry felt a scream bubbling up in his throat, and did his best to control it. He had to control it. He had to do what he could to win this battle, or he was going to die.
Something small floated out of the chair. It was a malformed baby, or that was what it looked like, with small, bulbous arms and a head that dangled on its neck. It was surrounded by a mixture of red and black. Firelight, Harry thought, trying to bolt backwards instinctively, and foiled when the serpents around him tightened their grip. And blood. And something else he thought might be poison.
It was disgusting. Especially when the baby’s red eyes fixed on him and he showed sharp little teeth, like a rat’s.
“It was so perfect. I only had to wait until you exhausted yourself and your basilisk so greatly that he could not come to your defense. And there is no way, now, that I need to wait for a risky ritual and someone to actually kidnap you. My loyal servants. No, Harry Potter, why should I do that, when I can simply…”
There was a flickering motion Harry didn’t understand, but then he did, and he recoiled. The baby had a long, forked tongue, black and yellow-spotted like some dying fungus, and he lashed it out and into Harry.
“…take a bit of your soul.”
Harry screamed the next second as pain danced through him. It hurt, it hurt so much. There was pain in his belly and his kneecaps were shattering and his arms were breaking and someone was slamming an iron rod into his elbows over and over. He fell to his knees, retching, or he did in some world.
But he was also still upright between the serpents, and Voldemort was carefully biting away a piece of something inside him.
The chewing went on, and on. Harry screamed, and screamed, and tried his best to reach for Dash. They were bonded. They should still be bonded at the deepest level, and if he could only reach that level and make Dash understand what was happening to him—
He will not come, Harry Potter. He is exhausted. Shut away from you.

The voice was inside his inner mind, the place that only Dash had ever touched. Harry screamed again, and bent forwards with his arms around his stomach, and stood motionless in the grip of the serpents.
He remembered hearing that the Cruciatus Curse could make people go mad. He thought he could feel that happening to him. Something was slipping away, anyway, and it was probably his sanity, in the face of all this pain.
Sanity? Oh, no. That’s only your innocence, boy.
The chewing closed in on him. Harry felt for a moment as if it had stopped, and even though he knew it was stupid, he lunged against the bonds that held him, trying to run away, trying to get away.
Then the mouth jerked, and Harry screamed again.
Voldemort had chewed a bit of his soul free, and he was yanking on it, tearing and rotating his head, or his tongue, or his jaws, or whatever he was really using to do this, and Harry screamed again, and his throat vibrated with the sound, and Voldemort laughed and laughed in his head until Harry did want to go mad, because that would mean he wouldn’t have to hear the laughter anymore.
The sound stopped.
Harry opened his eyes, honestly not sure what he would see. Maybe he was mad, and then he would be upset because he wouldn’t ever see Dash again, but that might be a price worth paying if the pain was stopped.
Of course, there were still ripples of pain running around him, like a river. Just not the sound of the laughter anymore. Harry stared down at the river that was visible here, dark and covered with stars, and then looked up.
In front of him stood Voldemort.
He was worse than the images Harry had seen of him in the photographs of the past, worse than the deformed baby. His skin was pale and his fingers were long and looked as if they had claws at the end. He was tall and slender and he had no hair. His mouth had the same pointed teeth when he laughed.
But that wasn’t the worst. What made it the worst was that he didn’t have red eyes, like the baby, or dark ones like the Tom Riddle Harry had confronted in second year. His eyes were the same brilliant green as Harry’s.
“So strange that you forgot about me,” Voldemort murmured, and began to pace in circles around him. Harry floated, and turned to face him, not because he wanted to but because the serpents, or whatever was really holding him, turned him at Voldemort’s will. Voldemort leaned forwards and peered at him with a pensive frown. “When I am your worst enemy, when I alone had the power to inflict a soul-wound on you the likes of which you have never seen. Harry Potter…”
He lifted his hand, and laid his long fingers on Harry’s scar. There was a flash of light and searing blood in Harry’s sight, and he began to cough desperately. Such pain, it was like his nose and his cheek and his glasses all being broken at once.
“I do not think you can ignore me now,” said Voldemort, and dropped his hand back to his side. “Not when I know that you have a piece of my soul, and I carry a piece of yours.”
Harry stared at him through eyes blurred with agony, and Voldemort laughed again, the sound of something dark sneaking out of the cupboard under the stairs. “I would not long remain ignorant of that, Harry,” he said, and caressed the left side of Harry’s face, leading to another blaze. “Not when we forged this connection in dreams without effort, and not when I knew your basilisk had tried to bite my dream-form and poisoned you instead. It is the only logical explanation.”
Harry managed to find his voice, down somewhere under all the layers of hatred and fear and despair. “Then—what are you going to do? Kill me now?”
The laughter again, echoing around him, and Harry screamed without regard for his throat or who was hearing him. Voldemort finally stopped, and leaned forwards, his forehead resting against Harry’s scar. The pain had ebbed enough that Harry finally began to understand how much Voldemort controlled here, and he shuddered and sobbed.
He would hurt because Voldemort wanted him to. He would recover because Voldemort wanted him to. He had no power here.
“I would have some trouble killing you now, Harry, when I carry a piece of your soul. When I am your Horcrux as much as you are mine.”
No.
The denial echoed in Harry’s head and through the dark-lit space around him, but it had no effect on Voldemort or the noises he was making, which were too choked by amusement to get out of his throat. Harry twisted and fought, and then hung there, because Voldemort willed it so, hating and hurting and hopeless.
“I wonder if you fully comprehend all I can do, now,” said Voldemort in a murmur, stepping away and raising his hand. The white skin that sheathed it flickered, and for an instant, Harry saw tanned, lightly freckled skin that he was sure was his. He had to look away, nausea eating into his belly. “Look like you. Touch your mind. Understand you from the inside out. Take advantage of soul-bonds.”
Harry stiffened. No—
“But yes, Harry,” said Voldemort, dropping into Parseltongue. “Take advantage of soul-bonds. Command your basilisk, with whom you have a soul-bond. Let us try it, shall we? Dash, come to me! Lord Voldemort commands it!”
*
Draco shot upright in his chair. There was something happening in front of him, and he didn’t immediately know what it was. Nor did he remember where he was until he got his hands screwed into his eyes and some of the sleep out of them, and saw the bed in front of him, with Harry thrashing and whimpering.
Hospital wing, Draco thought dazedly, and then Potions reaction? And then Nightmare!
“Harry!” Draco hissed under his breath, leaning forwards to shake him. “It’s all right! You’re here, it’s all right, Dumbledore and Flamel didn’t manage to transform you! And Dash is all right, and Professor Snape and I and your friends are all right!”
Harry didn’t wake up. He continued screaming. But now he was making no sound, and there was ugly, bloody sweat breaking out all over his skin. Draco felt fear grip and shake him as it hadn’t since the night of the Yule Ball.
“Harry!”
Dash was a motionless, sleeping lump when Draco tried to poke him. Draco even tried to cast the Awakening Charm, but either it didn’t work on basilisks or Dash was that exhausted. He remained motionless.
“Madam Pomfrey!” Draco shouted, but she didn’t come. He didn’t have any idea where she was, and no time to get her.
Draco took off running straight towards the dungeons, towards the one person he could be sure was going to be there, if only because he would be too tired to go somewhere else after the battle with Dumbledore. Professor Snape would know what to do, how to rescue Harry. It was an article of faith that Draco wouldn’t allow himself to doubt.
Behind him, he heard something harsh and heavy stir, and hoped that meant Dash was awakening at last. It had sounded like his tail falling to the floor.
But for the moment, Draco didn’t turn back. He hurled himself down stairs, and through corridors, and around corners, ignoring all the tricks that Hogwarts usually used to trip people up or slow them down. Harry needed Professor Snape, and he needed him now.
*
Harry felt as though he hadn’t yet tasted the depths of despair when he saw Dash appear on the floor at his feet. The room had been taking on more definition as Voldemort called out in Parseltongue, again and again. Now it looked like the Chamber of Secrets, although without the water and with more furniture.
Dash lifted his head and twisted it slowly back and forth. He said nothing. But he went still when he saw Voldemort, except for his tongue flicking in and out of his mouth.
“Yes, that’s right,” said Voldemort, and his voice was sweet and coaxing. “Come to me, my beautiful basilisk.”
Dash slithered slowly forwards. Harry began to shudder, and couldn’t stop, shaking with what felt like shock. Dash was never this silent. It meant—it might mean that he was under Voldemort’s control…
Of course it does, Harry.
That was a silent voice again, echoing inside Harry’s head the way no one but Dash had ever been able to do, and Harry watched in silence himself as Voldemort bent down and slid his spindly arms underneath Dash’s bulk. Of course, with him controlling everything in this place between souls where their minds met, he could give himself the strength.
Part of Harry was amazed he could still think that clearly, despite everything, but the rest of him was occupied with watching as Voldemort broke into breathless laughter and turned around. Dash lay coiled in his arms like a statue, or a piece of snake jewelry Harry had glimpsed once in Knockturn Alley, his head lifted and held motionless in the air.
“What a sensation! Now I can see why you enjoy having a basilisk so much, Potter. I understand—”
Dash moved.
Harry had never seen speed like that. From motionless statue to sudden, whipping blur, Dash simply went. He was coiled around Voldemort in seconds, and squeezing, and squeezing, and squeezing.
Harry kept staring, kept waiting for him to use his fangs or his gaze. But Dash didn’t. He squeezed, and squeezed, and squeezed. He lifted another coil and flung it around Voldemort’s face when Voldemort tried to incant a spell.
Suddenly the bonds holding Harry were gone. Harry fell forwards, tumbling onto his knees and gasping harshly at the impact. He tried to stand, but the room was weaving around him and he couldn’t tell the right direction to run in.
Dash?
Dash spoke, but not to him. I am not an ordinary basilisk, he spat, his tongue flicking out to brush Voldemort’s lipless mouth. Maybe you should have thought of that before you tried to control me.
And then he opened his mouth, his jaws dislocating, and rammed straight at Voldemort’s face. Voldemort screamed. Harry stared as he watched Voldemort’s jaws get forced wider and wider in turn, and Dash dive down his throat, wrapping him from both inside and out, moving in search of something.
You cannot take the boy’s soul-piece from me! It is buried too deeply! A condition of my existence!
Harry’s eyes shut of their own accord in pain as he felt something tugging on him. I think he’s right, Dash, he whispered, having no idea if Voldemort would manage to hear him along their bond or not. I don’t think you can just patch a piece of broken soul back in.
Dash didn’t answer him, but kept diving. Harry could feel himself start vibrating in pain. His eyes teared and he whined, ducking his head and wrapping his arms around his chest. It wasn’t nearly as bad as what Voldemort had put him through when he was making the new Horcrux, but it was bad enough.
We have to go, Dash. We have to leave it with him and go. I don’t even know what he did to create this, not really. Let him go!
It was only the last, shouted words that made Dash uncoil from Voldemort and slither over to Harry. He wrapped himself around Harry and looked deep into his eyes. I can get you out of here. And I can’t kill him, not yet, but I can do something else. Will you trust me?
Harry nodded without thought. Dash probably didn’t even need the motion to sense how much Harry trusted him. He reached out with a soft tongue and nuzzled it against Harry’s cheek, then reared and dived straight at the floor.
It parted in front of them, as soft as some dreams Harry remembered having in the past, when they were normal dreams instead of visions or previews of torture. He was falling, he thought, but it wasn’t a horrible fall. And Dash was wrapped around him and wrapping tighter, as if he wanted to choke Harry the way he’d choked Voldemort.
Why did you constrict him like that?
As joined as they were, Harry didn’t need to ask the question. The thought wandered across his mind, and Dash’s answer wandered up to it in return. He’s immune to my gaze and my fangs as long as he has part of your soul. But he’s vulnerable that way. And I was hoping I could make him cough up the piece he took.
Harry shivered. Now that he was getting beyond the pain and the immediate reach of Voldemort, he could feel something else. And that something was Dash’s rage, so immense and thick and sliding that it was like he stood on the back of another basilisk.
Here. Here we are.
They were at the deep level again, Harry decided, staring around and trying not to breathe too hard. Stars slid past them, bright smears of light against darkness that pressed on Harry’s skin. Harry could still feel Dash’s coils more strongly, though. He shivered again. Are you going to do something that can reverse the Horcrux process?
Dash said nothing for a moment. Then he said, I am going to do something that will repair the gaping place in your soul and make it less vulnerable. I think you’re right about not being able to get the piece of soul back from Voldemort for you.
He sounded so forlorn that part of Harry melted, and it was like a soothing balm to the pain that Voldemort’s curses had left. He reached out and stroked Dash’s neck, making him sigh and stretch. I don’t mind if you can’t do that. We’ll figure something out. It didn’t happen the way anyone thought it would, but that wasn’t your fault.
Dash was silent for long moments, his tongue darting. Then he said, Harry, look at me.
Harry lifted his head fearlessly, even when he saw the clear lids over Dash’s eyes trembling. He knew what he was going to see. He didn’t care. Dash had said he couldn’t kill Voldemort with his gaze while he carried part of Harry’s soul. That must mean he couldn’t kill Harry, either.
Harry fell into golden depths.
They were like layered suns, fire that was brighter and clearer than Fawkes’s. Harry heard himself catch his breath, and thought he could have gone on staring for years, eons, ages. He reached out and laid his hand on Dash’s neck.
Now.
Harry felt as though something had wrapped him up, probably the fire from the suns. But this wasn’t painful. Harry would have screamed, even though it was Dash, if it had caused him more pain. Instead, there was simply flame, heat, trickling warmth, and Harry laughed and reached out to the small ball of golden light floating towards him. He felt like a child again.
There is one thing I must tell you before you accept it, Dash whispered, and the ball of flame halted just beyond his reach.
I’ll be sharing your soul with you if I take that, won’t I? Harry discovered that he felt amazingly calm. He reached out again, and the ball bobbed up and down as if it was Dash’s head nodding in surprise.
Yes. But more than that, Harry…we already partially shared a soul, which is why Voldemort thought he could command me. Again, somewhere outside and beneath the fire, Harry felt Dash’s rage shifting. This is going to change you a bit. You can summon my fangs more quickly, now. You’ll have a shadow of scales beneath your skin. You might acquire some shapeshifting abilities. And some of the beliefs that people have about you are going to come true.
As long as I don’t turn evil or something like that, I don’t care.
Dash sighed as though Harry had relieved him greatly, and then he said, No. Nothing like that. We’ll still disagree as much as we always did on you participating in this war and risking everything in order to rescue your friends.
Harry laughed happily and continued to hold his hands out, fingers stroking the side of the ball of fire. Well, come on, Dash. Let me have it.
The ball of fire blazed towards him, until it was all he could see.
And then it was him. Harry gasped with his mouth open, then vomited flames like a dragon. He watched in a daze as they raced away from him and made the emblem of a bridge before him. Harry stood on one side of it.
On the other side was a rearing, glorious basilisk, as big as the one Harry had battled in the Chamber of Secrets, a scarlet plume as long as Harry’s arm streaming from his head. His fangs dripped poison on the floor that made holes in the imagined stone. Power surged and sang around him, and now and then Harry caught a glimpse of a robed human figure inside his body, a figure that looked familiar.
That’s the way you’re going to look when your power is full-grown, isn’t it? Harry asked, awed. How many years will that be?
I don’t know.
Dash’s voice was ringing, gentle, and Harry found himself leaning back in shock as their souls collided. He had no idea what Dash saw, but he thought he could guess, because the human figure within the basilisk was spinning, and Harry thought, when he could see the face fully, he would see his face—
But he didn’t, unless it was the way Harry himself was going to look when he was a lot older. This man was stooped, and wore thick, old-fashioned robes, and a long beard. Harry caught his breath. Is that Dumbledore?
Of course not. Dash’s voice was reassuring, and Harry had another sensation of giant coils wrapping him, supporting him and cradling him. But when I told you that some people’s beliefs about you would come true, Harry—
There was a soundless clash of thunder, the opposite of the kind of dazzling flash that Harry had had when Voldemort touched his scar, and then he was floating inside shadows made of light and acid and darkness and power, and he knew why the human figure looked so familiar.
It wore the face of the statue that he had once seen in the Chamber of Secrets.
That’s what he meant by people’s beliefs about me coming true, Harry thought, and the last revelation split his consciousness and flung him headlong into sleep, and safety.
Dash had the soul of Salazar Slytherin.
*
ANON: Thank you so much! I hope you like the developments in this chapter, as well.
I think many people's lives would be easier if they had their own basilisk. :)
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A Brother to Basilisks