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Deconversion	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Draco Views: 23338 -:- Recommendations : 4 -:- Currently Reading : 9
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Chapter Nine—In a Snake’s Eyes

            “You think we can trust Rita Skeeter?”

            The way Potter’s voice soared on those last words was really rather charming, Draco thought oddly, as he leaned back and admired the owl he was composing. In this case, the words were less important than the thick, creamy parchment and the watermark near the bottom, set in transparent blue on the paper, that stamped it as his personal property. Skeeter would see that, and that, more than the mere mention of Potter’s name, would guarantee she would read the letter.

            “Not so much trust her as her greed,” Draco murmured, turning his head to the side and trying to make out all the glowing subtleties of the many-layered watermark, as he always did. And as they always did, all the subtleties eluded him. He knew that he did see the Malfoy crest repeated time and time again, and that was enough. He continued writing—only the last line and his signature remained—without looking up at Potter. “She’ll jump at the chance to be the one who writes the first exclusive interview on you. Ever. That’s the prize, the bait, the catch. That you’re giving one after escaping from hospital and discovering that you’re a Dark wizard is the icing, not the cake itself.”

            “I’m not saying that I’m a Dark wizard.”

            Draco looked up. Potter lounged on the couch nearest the fire, where Draco had noticed he usually liked to be. Well, if his blood was beginning to turn sluggish like a snake’s, that only made sense, and Draco was generous with oddities that made sense and showed that Potter was accepting his gift. He didn’t particularly like the glare Potter leveled at him, or the way that the Unspeakables’ cobra on one wrist and the white shimmer that marked a snake of lasting strength and power on the other had both reared up to regard him.

            “But you are,” Draco said. “The moment you decided to accept your power instead of go mad and die, the moment you opened your eyes on the Dark paths, you were.”

            Potter huddled down inside his jumper—honestly, Draco needed to find him better clothes to wear before the interview, he thought Potter was requesting old things from the house-elves on purpose—and looked away. “That’s different from saying it,” he whispered.

            “In print?” Draco asked delicately, rising to his feet. “Where other people can see it, and connect it to you?”

            “Yes.” The whisper wouldn’t have been audible if Draco hadn’t been straining his ears for it.

            Draco crossed the distance between the table and the couch, and knelt down next to Potter. His hands curled around his wrists, and his thumbs rubbed back and forth. Potter’s skin was fever-hot under his touch, his pulse fever-fast.

            “It’s only a declaration,” Draco whispered back, mouth parted so that he stood a better chance of catching Potter’s slightly altered scent. He smelled delicately musty, like a snake shedding its skin. Draco wondered if he knew, and had begun to watch for long, mantled strips on the floor. Perhaps Potter would have scales underneath the top layer. “It’s only the merest sign of the inward revolution that you’ve had to undergo already. Tell me why it bothers you so much.”

*

            When Malfoy was this close, Harry found it hard to think.

            There was no reason for that. He’d never thought the git particularly attractive before, and if he got all giddy about the Dark Arts, well, that was his cause and not Harry’s. Harry was only going along with this for his life and freedom. That was a very different matter than studying the Dark Arts for the reason Malfoy did, that he loved it and wanted Harry to love it, too.

            But perhaps enthusiasm was catching on its own. Harry found his breath coming shorter, and not with the panic that had woken him from confused dreams this morning. He could feel Malfoy’s breath on his cheeks, and was far from disliking the feeling; if the way that the venom sacs inside his cheeks seemed to grow smaller was any indication, far from disliking it. And most telling, the cobra and the white snake had stopped rearing and lain down along his wrists, stretching their bodies out lazily to take advantage of the fire again.

            You can trust him, brother, said the white serpent, around an enormous yawn that revealed his fangs. Malfoy didn’t seem bothered by the fangs centimeters away from his fingers, but then, he couldn’t see them with the same degree of clarity that Harry had, or so he thought. He only wants what is best for you.

            But how can I know that my definition of best and his are the same ones? Harry asked, in subvocal Parseltongue.

            He received a lazy sense of warmth back, and scowled. The useless snakes had gone back to sleep.

            He looked back up at Malfoy, and answered honestly, because he was too surprised by the snakes’ behavior to do otherwise. “Because I don’t think of myself as a Dark wizard, someone who really loves it and studies the magic. And not someone who’s corrupt and violent, either. That’s what the rest of the wizarding world is going to think, and my friends…” To his horror, his voice cracked. The white snake tightened around his wrist. Harry swallowed and continued, determined to show no more weakness in front of Malfoy. “We can’t change the reputation of the Dark Arts that way. I’d think you would care about that. I go around proclaiming I’m a Dark wizard and they’ll just tuck me away in those categories that you say are mistaken. They won’t judge me any differently. It won’t make any difference to them that I’m me and not a random Dark wizard.”

            Malfoy studied him for a moment, head on the side in a way that made him look like a curious cat. Then he reached out and ran his fingers from Harry’s knuckles up his forearm, pausing only to lift his hand over the cobra. Harry started and twitched, feeling the prickle of Malfoy’s nails at the end of fingertips that felt smooth.

            “You misunderstand,” Malfoy said gently. “You emphasize that you haven’t changed, and your reputation is the thing that readers will take away from the article. It’ll matter that you’re Harry Potter more than it will matter you’re a Dark wizard.”

            Harry stared at him, and then shook his head. “You’re wrong about that,” he said, and then corrected himself as Malfoy arched his eyebrows. “I mean, I think you’re wrong.”

            “You have more knowledge of how to fight a public relations battle than I do?” Malfoy chuckled, and the sound made Harry want to stretch. He told himself to stop it. He was just reacting that way because Malfoy was the one who understood and helped him, not because Malfoy had any special insight or attraction for him. “I am interested to hear that, considering how poorly you came off in the speeches and interviews you did give.”

            “Not public relations.” Harry closed his eyes and hid himself in the darkness behind them, the one place he could be private now that he heard the voices of the snakes only when he chose to listen. “But I know how I come off, and you’re overestimating the power my name has just the way that all the people who thought I could make some great change in the Ministry and slow down corruption did. Kingsley tapped me for that, you know, the first year I was in the Auror program. Thought people would stop nepotism and taking bribes because I told them to. Ha. I don’t think so.”

            “Instead, they started figuring out what bribes you would take?” Malfoy asked gently.

            Harry opened his eyes and stared at him. He hadn’t told that much even to Ron, because the whole subject made him feel dirty, and it was such a resounding failure that he had slipped back into Auror training without a murmur. “How did you—”

            “I know the way the Ministry works,” Malfoy said, and came smoothly to his feet. “And I know more about the Dark Arts than you think, and how many wizards in Britain practice them. I think it’s time to show you the Net.”

            Harry blinked at him. “I didn’t think you were at home with Muggle things like that.”

            Malfoy laughed, long and deep, and the laughter made something coalesce in Harry’s chest, though it was probably the snakes’ reaction and not his. Snakes would like anyone who gave them a warm house, Harry thought defensively. “If Muggles have named one of their inventions after mine, that only shows that even they might think of a good metaphor in time. But I am sure mine is rather different.” He held out his hand. “Will you come with me and see?”

            Harry hesitated, but he had already made the biggest decision, and traveled past the place where he could have refused Malfoy’s hand. He took it.

*

            Draco smiled as he opened the door of the large room beneath the Manor that had once been the cellar dungeons and had changed completely when it came into his possession. He knew that Potter had bad memories of this place, but other than walking with stiff shoulders along a couple of the corridors, he seemed well able to handle it.

            Draco heard Potter gasp behind him, but he didn’t turn to look at the expression on his face right away—partially because he wanted to savor it, and partially because he always liked to admire the Net himself.

            It filled the room, a long, spiraling stretch of silver wires spreading away from a single cauldron in the middle. Draco had based it on the orb weavers’ webs, as the most intricate natural models he could find that were still within his building capacity. Delicate lines hooked to the corners of the ceiling and the single enchanted window that Draco had installed for just this purpose; thicker ones wrapped the cauldron itself and soared over the walls. There was beauty here, and intricacy. Draco enjoyed both. He sometimes thought it was why he had so taken to the Dark Arts, because there were more spells in that branch of magic, and the variations on them and the clever things that could be done with them were neverending.

            He turned and smiled at Potter, who tilted his head back to gape at the threads on the ceiling. There, they formed the thickest and most interesting of the spirals, imitating the eye of a maelstrom. Draco saw serpent-shadows swaying around him, perhaps because it was colder here or because they wanted to protect Potter from something unfamiliar. Draco inclined his head and spoke with courtesy to them as well as to Potter.

            “Be welcome here. Nothing in this room can hurt you. They are quite inert unless touched, and even then, they only give information.”

            Potter snapped his gaze back to him, and Draco sighed in delight to find that his eyes had gone slitted again, to see the tips of his fangs peeking out from under his upper lip. Potter could remain like that forever, and Draco would never tire of looking at him. “What do you mean?” Potter asked hoarsely. “What is this?”

            Draco smiled at him. “A single thread grows from that cauldron for every wizard in Britain who performs a Dark Arts spell,” he answered, gesturing at the center of the Net again. “And grows thicker the more they do.”

            Potter gaped at him, and then up at the ceiling, and then at the floor. Then he said, speaking as if the words were forced out of him by the nudging of a triangular head, “And where’s my thread?”

            Draco reached out, took his wrist—certain slotted shapes seemed to be forming there, under the skin—and led him towards the far left wall of the room. There lay a shining thread, silver-black, with the gently undulating movement of a serpent’s body. He reached out, guiding Potter’s hand with his, and made sure that their fingers touched the thread at the same time.

            The thread sang, a low, ringing chime that Draco thought he would be able to hear better with his body than his ears, at least if he was hearing it for the first time. From the look on his face, Potter was too stunned to really note how he heard it. Draco laughed as they watched the tiny note appear, floating on the air, surrounded by a parchment-colored rectangle that made it easier to see the letters against the background of the Net:

            Harry James Potter. Parselmouth, user of Unforgivable Curses during the second war, used the Imperius Curse his first year of Auror training, walking the Dark paths.

            Potter tugged his hand back as if burned. Draco turned to face him, and waited for either praise or damnation. Coming from Potter, either would be exciting enough to make his face burn and his cock harden.

            And as long as he could tame that excitement and use it to work for him instead of the other way around, then Draco would welcome all the arousal that Potter could pour through his veins.

*

            Harry felt his fingertips tingling as if stung, though he knew that Malfoy hadn’t infused the strands of the Net with poison. Instead, he stared at the letters floating there, and even the part about the Imperius Curse, which he hadn’t thought anyone knew, and felt how incredibly dangerous this could be, at least if Malfoy took it into his head to blackmail anyone.

            “How does it know?” he asked quietly, and turned to face Malfoy, while the white snake twined up his arm and out to examine the thread more closely. Harry hoped it would tell him anything it learned. He understood that the snakes were mostly extensions of his senses, but he didn’t understand how they perceived the world; he was more than happy to let them do it and then report back to him. “How did you manage the spells that would tell it, rather?”

            Malfoy’s smile curved across his face, deep in the way it had been when he showed Harry the Hanging Tree. The more dangerous the manifestation of the Dark Arts was, Harry thought, the more Malfoy appeared to enjoy it. Of course, that only underlined the question of why he had caught Malfoy sometimes looking at him with the same smile.

            “It was an effort,” Malfoy said. “And involved several days of casting, and several days of potions. But I think of this as the most magnificent of my achievements. That is why Dark Arts are not solely useful in battle or politics, as most people think they are. You could not cast this in the split second that you might have to decide, in a battle situation.”

            Harry bit his lip and tilted his head to study the way his thread spiraled around another. “No, you couldn’t,” he said quietly. He didn’t know what else to say. He agreed with Malfoy that it was magnificent, but he was also wary of inflating Malfoy’s head with too much praise.

            “The Imperius Curse in your first year of training,” Malfoy said easily, coming directly to the point that Harry had hoped he wouldn’t. But he reckoned that he would have to learn to defend himself at his weakest points, and so he straightened his shoulders and met Malfoy’s gaze.

            Malfoy didn’t ask why. He didn’t have to.

            Harry sighed. “There was one instructor who told me that he was sure I didn’t deserve to be there, and that I would fail his exams no matter what happened. I thought it didn’t matter, that I could still stay in the program if I explained the situation to Kingsley. But then Kingsley wasn’t re-elected that year, and this man kept gloating that he was going to destroy me. I found out that he thought I hadn’t won the war fast enough, that someone with the innate talent for Auror work everyone else thought I had would have spared the Aurors the burden they had to carry.”

            “During the war?” Malfoy’s voice rang with the sound of a bronze gong. “Half the Aurors then were busy following the orders of the Dark Lord!”

            “Only because of Pius Thicknesse,” Harry snapped, his pulse quickening and the white snake turning from its study of the thread to rear beside him. “They weren’t to know that he was under Voldemort’s control.”

            Malfoy leaned towards him, his eyes wide with something Harry could only describe as the delight of battle, or maybe delight in dangerous things. “Will you stop making excuses for them?” he whispered. “They didn’t find the solution for the Parseltongue driving you mad, did they? They didn’t stand by you, but let Weasley cast you into St. Mungo’s.”

            “I’d hurt someone,” Harry said, and that reminded him that he didn’t know whether Kipling had lived or died, and hadn’t thought to ask since he was at Malfoy’s house. Well, he would probably live, since he was on the mend the last that Harry had heard. “And I used the Imperius Curse on this instructor to make him stop harassing me. I didn’t tell you that, either. That’s something normal people don’t do.”

            “Maybe not normal people,” Malfoy said. “But Dark wizards do.”

            Harry closed his eyes and stood there for a moment, letting the white serpent hiss without words, soothing him, and more vipers come into being around his legs. Vipers seemed to be his weapon of choice, he thought, perhaps because he found it easier to imagine new varieties of them, with new kinds of venom. He didn’t imagine them biting Malfoy, because that wasn’t what he wanted, but knowing they were there helped.

            “I’ve done horrible things, that’s all I’m saying,” he said at last. “And I can’t blame them for not realizing during the war that they were obeying the orders of someone under Imperius.”

            Silence. Harry wondered for a moment if Malfoy had left the Net chamber, and then heard footsteps in front of him. He hadn’t managed to open his eyes fully before Malfoy slapped him.

            The white serpent tried to strike at once, hissing, but Harry had lifted his arm to half-defend himself, and that spoiled the serpent’s lunge. It tried again, but by that time, Harry had recovered his balance, and hissed an order to stop. The white snake turned its head and locked eyes with him.

            He did that to prove a point, Harry said in subvocal Parseltongue. Let’s see what it is, and if I don’t like it, then you can bite him.

            That seemed good enough for the white snake, as far as it went. The head settled back against Harry’s shoulder, and the dead eyes locked on Malfoy, although the curl and surge of the great body remained, so that it was ready to pump in venom at a moment’s notice.

            Harry licked his lips, swallowed, and said, “All right, Malfoy. So do you want to tell me why you did that?”

*

            Draco relaxed his stance and pulled back his free hand from his robes, where it had hovered over a bezoar. He didn’t actually know if that would protect him from the special poisons that Potter had the ability to generate, but he knew Professor Snape had told him he believed it would be effective against Nagini.

            “Because you continue to blame yourself,” he said. “That’s what cripples you the most, not love for your friends or anything else.” Potter started, and Draco laughed. “Did you think that I believed love didn’t exist? It does. There are even some wizards who enter the Dark paths because of love. Not as common a motive as revenge, perhaps, but something being less common doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. They should have remembered that when they were telling you that no sane Parselmouths existed.”

            Potter bit savagely at the corner of his mouth. Draco calmed his own excitement when the blood began to run, and stood there for a moment watching Potter deal with the new perspective that Draco had opened to him.

            “But I was the one who cast the Imperius Curse,” Potter whispered. “And I was the one who hurt Kipling.”

            Draco clucked his tongue. “And do you think that someone else would feel the same crippling guilt, if they had hurt Kipling? Would Weasley? Would I?”

            “You wouldn’t,” Potter flared, and the creamy swirl above his wrist swayed in Draco’s direction the way it had when he slapped Potter. “But Ron would. He’s a good person.”

            Draco smiled at him. “Then a good person would have surrendered and gone along with the Healers when they wanted to neuter him? And he wouldn’t have walked the Dark paths and refused the gift of the Hanging Tree? And he wouldn’t have bound one best friend and left someone else to fight the other?”

            Potter paused. Draco could feel, if not see, the emotions swinging wildly back and forth in him, and wondered if even Potter knew which way he would jump in the next instant. He was still committed to thinking of himself as a good person, but that jostled with his new definition of himself as Dark wizard.

            Draco leaned forwards and spoke words that he hoped would be all the more compelling because softer.

            “That guilt isn’t what you need to feel. It doesn’t do anything for you. It didn’t prevent you from casting the Imperius Curse, and it didn’t prevent you from using the snakes as weapons. What can help you do that is knowledge. Knowledge of yourself as a Dark wizard, the risks you’ll take, and the way that you should really think about other people. They don’t have the right to unrealistic expectations of you, and you don’t have the right to blame yourself for crimes that you’ll excuse them for. Why shouldn’t there be one standard for everyone, and that standard includes you?”

            He could have said much more, about how Weasley had used a snake as a weapon and so on, but he thought that he should leave his words time to work. He stepped back and waited.

*

            The white snake coiled, a string of coolness, along Harry’s neck, and said at last, with its tongue darting in many different directions, I do not like the fact that he struck you. But what he says makes sense.

            Harry swallowed. His throat burned as though he was the one who had swallowed poison, and the motions of the vipers around his feet had increased until moving would be like walking through a sea of weed.

            If Ron could use snakes as weapons…

            If the Aurors could use Unforgivable Curses during the wars and not go to Azkaban…

            If other people could give interviews to the papers and use them to their advantage, as political tools…

            Those were all things that Harry would have made excuses for. Maybe for Ron most of all, but he wouldn’t have said the others were wrong. But if he did those things, he was wrong.

            Why?

            Why should be the only one held to arbitrary, unfair standards? Why should he be the one feared, hated, detested above all, and why should he think that he deserved no sympathy, when he would have found sympathy for someone else in the same situation?

            Either everyone is treated the same way, or you acknowledge differences among people and make them. But not everyone, and then you.

            Harry swallowed. “I don’t know if I can speak to Skeeter today,” he said, while the warmth of poison in his throat seemed to loosen and the delighted white snake touched the corner of Harry’s eye with its tongue.

            “It will take longer than that to arrange the interview anyway,” Malfoy said, and caught Harry’s elbow. His voice was soft, so soft that Harry could make out no emotion. “Rather overwhelming to find that everything you’ve believed can be overturned, isn’t it?”

            Harry only nodded. He opened his eyes and stepped back to stand on his own, but the snakes twined around him, and he could feel his resistance to the interview melting.

            He wanted to speak with Ron and Hermione, and continue his friendship with them. But he also wanted to stop feeling so bad about his Parseltongue all the time, and he wanted to defend himself so that the Ministry and St. Mungo’s wouldn’t try to take him into custody again.

            Perhaps he had the right to do both, not only the first.

            And as he stood there, thinking about it while Malfoy’s eyes and the white serpent’s shone, he could feel the perhaps melting.

*

            Mehla_Seraphim: Not really! It comes from people telling me that I didn’t describe surroundings often enough, so since then I try to give at least a glimpse of what the room looks like.

            polka dot: He is still fighting Malfoy. And he probably wouldn’t be so overwhelmed, but he’s alone and had something pretty scary happen to him before this, something no one else could give him the hope of recovering from.

            Talltree-san: Don’t worry, Harry can control them. But they do tend to slip out when he’s stressed or not concentrating on them.
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