Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five of 'A Brother to Basilisks'- Blood of My Blood

[lomonaaeren]

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Four.

Title: A Brother to Basilisks (135/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Eventual Harry/Draco and Ron/Hermione
Warnings: Angst, violence, some gore, AU from Prisoner of Azkaban onwards
Rating: R
Summary: AU of PoA. Harry wakes in the night to a voice calling him from somewhere in the castle—and when he follows it, everything changes. Updated every Friday.
Author’s Notes: This is a canon-divergent AU that starts after Chapter 7 of Prisoner of Azkaban. It will probably run to at least the mid-point of The Half-Blood Prince. It will also be long.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Five—Blood of My Blood

“Do you think that there’s another way I can use blood magic to help you?”

Harry had looked thoughtfully at Draco from the other side of the library table where they’d been doing their Potions homework. “Well, it might be useful if it could apply to people other than Malfoy or Black family members?”

Harry might have meant the suggestion to be an idle thought, but Draco had dug into it. The majority of the books he already had were about blood magic affecting family members, but there had to be something else. And now he had found it.

Blood magic most often refers to magic created by the spilling of blood. But it can also refer to magic acting through the blood that binds a family together. It may also refer to artifacts made of magical blood.

And there was a long chapter on how to create artifacts like this—not surprising, in a book that Draco had taken from the Restricted Section.

Draco hesitated. He was sitting on his bed, reading behind the thick curtains with a few charms that would keep anyone from approaching him or opening the curtains. He’d been about to slip outside and down to the Slytherin common room, and maybe out to the dungeons, to work on creating his first artifact.

But he looked at his pillow, and found that Ultior was awake and watching him.

“This is probably a bad idea to be doing it on my own, right?” he asked his snake. “Especially since everyone’s been after Harry for doing things on his own and not informing people about them.”

Ultior twined around his arm and curled up with his head on the back of Draco’s hand. Draco smiled reluctantly. Well, now he couldn’t do anything, because he would disturb his pet if he did.

“I can take a hint,” he said, and laid the book aside, carefully arranging his arm above his head as he canceled the Lumos Charm and lay down. It wouldn’t do to wake Ultior after he’d already decided he wasn’t going to.

*

“Then what did Dash do?”

“Destroyed Nagini.”

Severus put a hand over his face. Harry watched him for a second, then added, “It’s not like it was my idea to go into that dreamscape or confront Voldemort. It wasn’t even Dash’s idea. He just came to my rescue when he realized that Voldemort had pulled me into the dream.”

Severus sighed. “I am not blaming you,” he said, but there was a sharp struggle in his voice and in the lines around his mouth.

“But you want to.”

Severus dropped his hand and frowned at him. Then he shook his head. “Not precisely. I want to keep you safe, and I am coming to learn how impossible that might be while you share a Horcrux link with Voldemort. Which,” he added with some asperity, “is all the more reason to work on breaking it.”

“I know. And the Elder Wand will help with that.”

Severus glanced away and swore quietly. “I had hoped that you had—”

“Forgotten about that? Dash said you would say so.” Harry shrugged. “I know you want to keep me safe, sir, but you have to learn to put up with this the same way I have to put up with my friends and you endangering yourselves by working on destroying the Horcruxes.”

“Then everyone is in danger, and I suppose we should just put up with that?”

“Yeah.”

“At least say yes if you are defying my authority so cheekily.”

“Yes, sir!”

Severus rolled his eyes. Harry felt something inside him relax. He knew that Severus was a lot different than the Dursleys, but still a small part of him rejoiced and laughed and thought it was amazing every time he got away with something they wouldn’t have tolerated.

“Very well,” Severus said, with a long-suffering expression on his face. “This is what we are going to do. I will be present when you duel Dash to take the Elder Wand away from his influence. I will examine you before and after with diagnostic spells to be sure that you have taken no damage and the Elder Wand has not influenced your magical core in any way.”

Harry blinked. “It could do that?”

“I don’t know for certain, but the Deathly Hallows are some of the most powerful artifacts in existence. Of course it might.”

Harry nodded. “Then I’m glad that you’ll be there. I would never have thought of those kinds of precautions. I’m sort of surprised Dash didn’t suggest them.”

“He probably didn’t need to because he knew I would.” Severus looked as if he’d swallowed one of Dumbledore’s lemon drops. “In the meantime, you will tell your friends what you are doing, and all your professors. If something takes you out of classes for several days, then they’ll know.”

“What about Draco?”

“You will tell him as well, of course.”

“I mean that he might want to be there when I have the duel with Dash.”

Severus stood up and loomed over Harry as if he was a stormcloud passing over the sun. “He will not be. I forbid it.”

“You were the one who made the point that I can’t keep my friends from knowing what I’m doing, sir, and even participating if they want to.”

Severus leveled him with a particularly deadly stare, but unfortunately for him, it still wasn’t a patch on a basilisk’s. Harry waited long enough to be sure that Severus wasn’t going to give in and let Harry do what he should be able to do, and then sighed gently. “Severus, if Draco wants to be there, then I have to let him be there. I can’t treat him as lesser than Ron and Hermione. It wouldn’t be fair.”

“I would not suggest that your Gryffindor friends be there, either.”

“But you didn’t act as though it would be unreasonable to even invite them to be there. Why, Severus? What’s the matter with Draco?’

“You will need your utmost concentration on this duel,” Severus said, sitting down and staring at him with disapproval that did actually make Harry squirm a bit in his seat. “The Elder Wand will sense anything less than that concentration and refuse to leave Dash, if all the legends about it are true, even if Dash never intends to hurt you or win. And Draco, I have noticed, is a distraction.”

“I’m not a teenage boy controlled by my hormones!”

“Draco would still be a distraction.”

“No, he won’t.” Harry calmed his voice down when Severus gave him another warning glare. “Severus, I promise. I’m not going to let myself glance over at Draco and start daydreaming about kissing him during the duel. And anything else—to say anything else would happen is insulting to Draco, and to me. Do I act like I can’t control myself on a daily basis?”

“No.”

“Well, then.”

Severus frowned at him, then sighed. “Very well. Tell him and allow him to be there.”

“I won’t use the word allow. But thank you.”

*

Draco could feel his blood tingling under his skin as he stood in the middle of the Chamber of Secrets, which had been deemed the only space large enough for Harry and Dash’s duel. For once, he wasn’t thinking about how he was going to use his magic to help Harry.

It was enough to watch a legend about to happen.

Professor Snape hovered tensely nearby. He had about fifty potions vials at his feet, although Draco didn’t know why. It wasn’t like he would need any of them. Hermione and Ron stood next to Draco, behind the same cordon of golden magic that Snape had insisted was necessary to contain him.

Draco looked around the Chamber one more time, memorizing the placement of the pillars and stones that might be different in a minute. Then he fixed his gaze on Harry and Dash. He didn’t intend to remove it while the duel lasted.

Dash crawled into the middle of the Chamber of Secrets and lowered his head a little. Harry walked out to face him, looking absurdly small. He bowed, too. At Dash’s side was the Elder Wand, a small twig that Draco could only see by craning his neck.

“Begin,” Professor Snape said.

Dash darted his head forwards, so quickly that Draco gasped. But Harry dodged and said something too softly for Draco to hear, or maybe just too softly for him to hear over Hermione’s screaming and Ron’s swearing.

The spell that blasted into Dash wrapped around his mouth and tied it shut. Spiderwebs? Draco thought, staring. It really did look like spiderwebs. He hadn’t had the slightest notion that Harry knew a spell like that.

He scowled. He’s going to teach me that spell when this is over.

Dash reared his head back, coming within a meter of smashing into the ceiling, and then swept his tail out. Harry leaped over it and then reached out his hand and suddenly clutched a broom. Draco blinked. His Firebolt was down here, somehow? Draco didn’t know where that had come from, either.

From Professor Snape’s displeased hiss next to him that was almost Parseltongue, that wasn’t something Harry had discussed with his guardian, either.

Dash aimed his tail and sent it at Harry like a spear, but it was already too late, with Harry rising on his broom until he was the one to almost reach the ceiling of the Chamber. Then he started to circle like he was chasing the Snitch. Draco wondered what the hell he could be about. Dash didn’t have the use of his fangs right now, but he could still raise his head and try to smash Harry against the stone.

A second later, that was precisely what happened.

But Harry whirled to the side, so fast that for an instant Draco saw a blur of him in the air like a pinwheel, and dropped onto the back of Dash’s neck. Dash made an intense hissing sound through the spiderwebs around his mouth. Draco hoped he was proud, instead of angry.

Harry lunged up Dash’s neck, using scales like steps. Dash began to twist and roll to the side, apparently to the crush him. But Harry made it all the way to his head first, and poised his wand right over Dash’s right eye, and yelled, “Surrender!”

The shout seemed to echo back from the stones of the Chamber in a way that Draco thought Tom Riddle’s dying scream must have.

Dash froze. For a second, he lay there with his head swaying back and forth, as if he was considering his chances of trying to do something to Harry anyway. Draco held his breath, then found himself coughing and swallowing as Hermione pounded him on the back.

Dash hissed finally and lowered his head, never disturbing Harry’s wand where it pointed at his eye. Harry nodded, stepped off the head, and said something to Dash in Parseltongue before he leaned over to pick up the Elder Wand.

There was a flare of light so brilliant that Draco flung his hand up to hide his eyes even though he was dying to see what happened to Harry. The light swung wildly around the room, blazing and lighting up the furthest corners. Draco whimpered breathlessly for a second and then found that there was a louder sound than that: Dash’s echoing hiss, which rose and then died down like a surging wave.

Draco finally uncovered his eyes when the brightness stopped shining. Harry was swaying in place, staring at the Elder Wand with his mouth slightly open as though he’d been asking the answer to a question and the Wand had replied.

Then he collapsed.

Draco tried to leap the golden rope of light that cordoned him off, but Snape was faster. He was over to Harry and Dash in seconds, bending and forcing a vial of potion down Harry’s throat. He had to massage his throat to get him to swallow it, Draco saw. Harry was fine, or at least from the sound of his breathing he was fine, but he was unconscious.

“What happened?” Draco whispered. He looked up and found Dash’s head swaying slowly back and forth, but Dash said nothing. Not that he could have interpreted the Parseltongue without Harry being awake, Draco thought mournfully.

“An answer I would like to have myself,” Snape said, and Draco shied away before he thought about it. Snape’s eyes were resting on Dash, and they were merciless. Draco found himself not wanting to get in between.

*

He never said this could happen. He never said this could be a result.

Severus worked furiously, his hands flying as he dumped other restorative potions, a painkiller, and a potion that should bring Harry back to consciousness into his recalcitrant ward. Nothing was working. Harry still lay sprawled on the floor with that same stentorian breathing, and Dash still swayed above them with light movements.

“You said nothing like this would happen,” Severus snarled at Dash, who only regarded him with a blaze of yellow eyes under his lids and said nothing.

“Um, Professor,” Granger spoke up, biting her lip when Severus spun to look at her. “Technically he only said that things would be all right.”

“And a period of unconsciousness for your friend that has no visible cause is all right, then?”

“I mean, maybe he has to adjust to the Elder Wand or something,” Weasley muttered, blushing as Severus turned to look at him. “I didn’t say it was a good theory, sir.”

Severus continued to watch Dash, who continued to watch him with no sign of pity or remorse. Severus wanted to break his scales, snap his neck, send his great head and scarlet plume sprawling on the floor—

He reined himself in as sharply as he could. That way lay grief and a rift between them that would be hard to mend. He reached out and curled his fingers gently around one of Harry’s hands, trying to tell by the warmth and pallor of his skin how close he was to waking.

He discovered that he was holding a clenched fist. Severus frowned, turning Harry’s hand over. There was nothing that should have been in his left hand, not when the right one was clutching the Elder Wand.

But Harry’s hand was undeniably curled shut. Severus wrenched at it, and found that some small hard object was in the middle, or at least it felt that way. Harry’s hand still wouldn’t open. He braced his fingers on either side of Harry’s wrist and got ready to try and remove the object by main force.

Dash’s head knocked into him and sent him sprawling.

Severus sat where he was for a moment, stunned, recovering. Then he turned his attention on Dash and stared at him in silence. He could feel the outrage rising like bubbles in his throat. In a moment, he would open his mouth and says something unforgivable.

For the sake of Harry, who was lying now on the floor with Dash’s body partially overlapping him, he managed to hold back. But he did say, “You know what that object is.”

Dash bobbed his head.

“The Resurrection Stone?” Severus hadn’t seen it in the Chamber, how no idea how it would have separated from the Horcrux ring in the first place, but it was possible.

Another nod.

Severus braced his hands beneath him and stood slowly. Absolute silence came from the corner where the children stood, and he was glad of it. If Weasley or Granger had laughed now, if Draco had made some snide remark, Severus would have spoken the unforgivable words to them. “Does he need to remain in this sleep until whatever is changing with the mastery of the Hallows has finished changing?”

Nod.

Severus held himself back from saying or doing anything for a moment, remaining quiet in the middle of the room. Then he moved forwards and gently Lightened Harry’s body before lifting him into his arms. He met Dash’s gaze, or as much of it as he could behind the shielded eyes. “It would not be wise to try and keep me from taking Harry to get the help he needs,” he snarled quietly.

Dash’s tail twitched, as if to say that he wouldn’t dream of it, and then he accompanied them back to the doorway of the Chamber of Secrets, only turning around when he’d lifted them on his head through the pipe back to Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom.

Severus allowed the children to say whatever they wished to the unconscious Harry, and then took him to his own quarters and placed him, motionless, on the bed. He stared at him in silence, before turning away to Floo Poppy. It would take some time to debate with her so that she would accept Harry being under Severus’s care instead of her own in the hospital wing, but the thought suited him better than sitting beside Harry’s bed, unable to do anything.

*

Harry floated in the middle of a vast green void.

It was like being on the inside of an emerald. Bright veins and sparks dashed past him. Now and then he drifted past a darker line that might be the inside of a facet. He reached out and found that he could touch nothing except cold mist. He called out for Severus, Draco, Dash, Ron, Hermione.

Nothing except silence came back to him. Harry wondered for a moment if he was dead.

Not dead.

The voice vibrated uneasily under his skin. It was as if he heard his bones speak. Harry turned his head and saw a trio of objects hovering in front of him. He somehow wasn’t surprised to see his Invisibility Cloak spread out like a triangle. The Wand and the Stone lay on top of that.

This is where you must be to master us.

“I thought I’d have to master the Stone separately,” Harry said aloud. He had no idea how to speak silently like the Hallows did. “I thought I was only getting the Elder Wand from Dash.”

No. All of us. And now we must see if you are truly worthy of owning us.

That was all the warning Harry had before the Hallows flew at him like rival players in Quidditch. He darted aside, suddenly able to control his movement. The Hallows streaked past him and turned around, glaring as much as they could without eyes.

Hold still and let us burn you. Or do you never want to wake from this sleep?

“I want to wake up, but letting you burn me doesn’t sound conducive to survival.”

Those who will be our Masters must undergo a trial of pain.

Harry reminded himself that he was doing this to help Dash—and honestly, the only part of this place that comforted him was that he couldn’t sense Dash’s warnings not to do this kind of thing if he couldn’t feel the bond. He spread his arms, and held still, although it was hard, when the Hallows rushed at him again.

He had thought it would be physical pain that he had to endure. Instead, grief flooded him. Harry screamed in shock before the sorrow grew so intense that he had to focus only on it, and he didn’t even know if he was still screaming or not.

He knelt beside graves, and wept. He walked through the rain and contemplated killing himself. He brought back the shades of the dead, and they hurried him on to death with their whispers. He fell dead to the floor and saw his enemies claim his wand. He brewed potions to extend his life and then grieved as he watched others he loved die. He floated, trapped as a helpless ghost, while others repeated the same mistakes that had killed him. He was torn apart by monsters, stabbed in the heart by murderers, caught in spell crossfire, died of ravaging fevers, slipped away in the night with ice-cold hands clutching at his heart and the knowledge of who would find his body in the morning.

Stop! Please stop!

We cannot stop. To master us, you must understand what is left behind by death.

Harry surfaced gasping for a moment from yet another vision of a circle of mourning faces. Not experience death?

There was no answer. Instead, the Hallows pulled him back into visions of watching people thrash themselves to death from poison and plague, and dying of old age and seeing people fall to their knees, and dying young and watching spouses grieve until their hearts broke.

The grief piled up until it overflowed. Harry reached desperately for his bond with Dash, for his memories of Draco and Ron and Hermione and Severus. He had to back out, had to remember who he was and what he had to live for.

The Hallows tugged him back under. This is what you wanted, isn’t it? said a sharp, rasping voice in his ears, as Harry whirled through burning alive and watching others burn alive, fighting Muggles and watching villages half-destroyed by them until the wizards fled by Apparating. To master us, to take up the burden that would have weighed someone else down otherwise? To take our curse from your bondmate?

Harry did his best to struggle out of the pain again, and remember what Dash had said. The Hallows were bored and liked novelty. They had cursed Dash for doing little more than making mistakes.

He said, I don’t think that you can subject me to every kind of grief without making me go mad. How many times have you done this, anyway?

There was silence. Harry opened his eyes and found himself floating in the inside of what seemed to be a giant emerald, again. He turned around and studied the three Hallows in front of him, which seemed to shimmer a little more than they had before.

Well? Harry demanded, this time silently.

There has been no Master of Death before you, said the sullen trio of voices in his head.

That’s what I thought. So you’re making this up as you go along, aren’t you? Just to suit your sense of what’s proper.

What’s proper is very important! If the Hallows had had a tail, it would have been lashing the way Crookshanks’s tail sometimes did.

But you’re making it up. I’m going to wake up now, and I’m going to have mastered you anyway.

Harry turned and hurled himself at one of the darker veins that ran overhead, the ones that he suspected formed the outer shell of the dream he was trapped in. There was a roaring, cracking noise over his head, and the shards rained down on him. Harry powered through them and found himself opening his eyes on a bed in Snape’s quarters.

Severus leaned over him and stared into his eyes for a long moment.

“I came back as myself,” Harry croaked. His throat was so dry that Severus handed him a glass of water even before he could ask. Harry swallowed most of it and lay back, half-shutting his eyes. “What time is it?”

“Nearly midnight. You have been asleep for seven hours.”

Severus’s voice was tight. Harry reached out and clasped his hand. “I’m sorry. The Hallows wanted to test me, and it was a long time before I could tell them to bugger off and wake up.”

“Tell them to bugger off…?”

But the magical exhaustion from the duel and whatever exactly had happened when he began to master the Hallows had moved through Harry again. He found himself drifting. He did reach out down the bond with Dash, though, before he fell asleep, and say, You’re free.

Back came such a wordless wave of love that Harry fell asleep again smiling.