lomonaaeren

Chapter One Hundred and Thirty-Nine.

Title: A Brother to Basilisks (140/?)
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 Forty—Spreading the News

Severus stood back and watched the owl whose leg he had attached the message to winging steadily away. It was the fourth one he had sent this morning, and at the moment, he pondered if he needed to send anymore. There weren’t that many people not currently allied to them who he thought would be useful allies.

“What are you doing?”

Severus turned and saw Harry standing behind him, wrapped in a green cloak that wasn’t warm enough for the chill bite of the wind in the Owlery. He cast a few Warming Charms. Harry glared at him. Severus ignored that. It was practically a routine for them now. “Informing some potentially useful people about the potion that Voldemort managed to brew.”

Harry blinked and shifted his weight. Hedwig was sitting on his shoulder, nuzzling against his cheek, and he petted her absently. “But he can’t brew it anymore.”

“They don’t need to know that.”

Harry took a step forwards. Hedwig hooted at him and then took flight to another perch in what looked like offense when Harry just went on staring at Severus. “But if we let them believe he could kill them any second, that’s horrible.”

“It would also convince them to start following you. We need more allies, and we need to convince more of them not to go to Voldemort’s side instead.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t think it’s a noble goal if we can only accomplish it by making people live in fear.”

“Then it’s not a noble goal,” Severus said blandly. “Luckily, you have me for the less noble work that we need to do.” He strode towards the door of the Owlery, and Harry followed him at once.

“I suppose you’ll tell me I don’t understand politics if I tell you to call those owls back.”

“I would tell you that you don’t understand making fear work for you, and that you are more like Albus than Voldemort if you have me call the owls back. Albus wanted only people who would follow him willingly and join up for noble ideals. We’ve already gone past that point. Unless you think Lucius joined to free the poor oppressed Muggleborns.”

“No. But he didn’t join me because he was afraid—” Harry stopped abruptly.

“Yes, he did,” Severus said quietly. It hurt him a little to see the way Harry looked at him now, but he had to know the truth. “Fear that his family would be harmed. Fear that Voldemort would manage to call him back and maybe even command his loyalty using the Dark Mark. Fear that Bellatrix would betray them.”

“All right, maybe he sort of did,” Harry said, after an uncomfortable moment as they walked down the tower stairs and Severus said nothing else. “But did you consider that telling them Voldemort could do that might make them rush to join him, so that he doesn’t do that to them?”

“I also pointed out Voldemort’s growing instability. They cannot trust that he would not use that potion on them simply because he is angry and reckons that he can get more allies.”

Harry sighed. “It’s still lying. And they’ll probably get told the truth when they come over to my side.”

“Until and unless they do, there is no reason to tell them.”

Harry said nothing, and Severus pressed his lips together to keep from smiling victoriously. Harry disagreed, but he was hardly about to scold Severus or punish him. And that reminded Severus, once again, of how lucky he had been to end up like this, when he could have had had a much more cautious and distant relationship with Harry based on some of the choices both of them had made.

How lucky I am that I found my way from the Dark Lord to a kind of light shining in the darkness.

*

Lucius stepped out of the fire, and blinked when he saw Draco standing next to Harry on the other side of the Headmistress’s office. Draco hadn’t said he would be here. Now, he gave his father a calm, even look and then faced the center of the office again.

Clarence was already there, with Leila Greengrass kneeling and silent at his side. She had her wrists bound with a silver chain, but Lucius wasn’t foolish enough to think for one minute that that was the thing really keeping her subdued. Her eyes darted around, but in an odd, lingering way, so that she seemed to be looking at everything twice.

Elena’s potion, or some other method, had worked. They would have to remove the potion from her system when she got ready to make the Vow. Lucius did not care, however. He was here to watch the Vow, not make it.

Minerva McGonagall rose from behind the desk and looked at him in much the same way Draco had. “I still want to know how this managed to happen, Mr. Malfoy,” she murmured. “It is—frankly ridiculous that we should have ended up on the same side of the war.”

“Both of us want the best for our families, I am sure,” Lucius murmured back. “Even if in your case, your family is the students of Hogwarts rather than one made by blood.”

McGonagall sighed wearily and nodded, then stepped around her desk and over to Clarence. “I assume you did use a potion? Can you release her from it? And is she actually going to make the Vow and mean it?”

Clarence shivered a little. “I understand the scope of her crimes, Headmistress. I’ll make sure that she knows she’ll die if she doesn’t do this. And thank you for agreeing to serve as our bonder.”

McGonagall nodded and drew her wand. Clarence bent down and ran a finger along the silver chain that tied his wife’s wrists. It shimmered and grew darker for a second, and Lucius’s attention sharpened as he saw thick drops of liquid running along the links.

Ingenious. Somehow, Elena had invented a potion that could be drawn out of the body by means of touching an object that touched the skin of the subject. Lucius had never seen anything like that, and he was not foolish enough to think it a property of the chain rather than the potion.

Let us hope that Elena Zabini stays loyal to Harry, if she must be politically active, Lucius thought, and faced Leila Greengrass as he watched the blankness fade from her eyes. She leaned back on her heels and stared up at her husband.

“You did this to me,” she said. Her voice had no inflection.

“And you committed at least seven murders and released an enemy of the boy I pledged our family to.” Clarence didn’t sound nearly as weak-willed as he had when he was in Lucius’s study telling him about how his wife had freed Cyan Scrimgeour. He just sounded blank. “You’re going to tell us everything now, Leila.”

“Our family doesn’t need a protector. Especially one who’s just a boy. We can stand on our own. I can protect us.”

“You were found out and blackmailed. Even if what you say was true, then it isn’t now. You would do anything to protect our secrets, and who can say that next time, it won’t be something that ends up aiding the Dark Lord more directly?”

Leila frowned as if she truly didn’t understand. Lucius thought she might not. She wasn’t stupid, but she was used to thinking of herself as the center of the universe, her desires as the only ones that mattered. Doing something that would benefit people other than her family had never crossed her moral horizon.

“I asked Headmistress McGonagall to be here as our bonder,” Harry said, stepping forwards. “But you have the right to request someone more neutral.”

Lucius shot a frown at Harry. Yes, technically Leila did have that right by tradition, but Lucius would much have preferred to skip it.

Harry ignored him, so focused on Leila that Lucius felt an unaccustomed stir of jealousy himself. “Do you understand what you did?” he demanded, sounding a little hoarse. “Do you understand the danger you could have put me in?”

“But Cyan Scrimgeour ran away to live somewhere else, and it’s not like he tried to assassinate you more than once.”

Lucius shook his head. There were some pure-bloods so self-centered they would buy that argument. It sounded like Leila was one of them, although before now he hadn’t taken her that way.

But I hardly knew her at all if she was going around killing people who opposed the laws she wanted and I never realized it.

“More to the point, you could have harmed my allies,” Harry continued, apparently disregarding Leila’s answer. “Does that matter to you? What if the consequences of this harmed your family?”

“They wouldn’t have.”

Harry sighed and stepped back. “Are you going to make a confession? Do we have a way to make her do it?” he added over his shoulder, and Severus stepped forwards at once. Lucius hid a sigh himself. That question had just been for show. Of course Severus was loyal to Harry, and of course he would be right there with Veritaserum.

“You can do this with Veritaserum or without,” Clarence told Leila. His voice sounded weary now instead of blank, much the way Harry’s had. “I would prefer it without, but I know that I can’t really trust you.”

“You shouldn’t let them use truth serum on me anyway. You’re my husband.”

“And you weren’t careful enough to avoid being caught and let yourself be blackmailed! Forgive me if I don’t trust your judgment,” Clarence added, sarcasm thick enough that Lucius would have laughed if he’d been a different man.

Leila stared at him without moving. Those opaque eyes didn’t exactly frighten Lucius, but they did say, far more than Clarence’s words did, that there was no way they could trust Leila. They would never be able to release her from the Unbreakable Vow.

“Veritaserum, then,” Clarence said, and moved out of the way. McGonagall tensed as if she would interfere, but in the end, she didn’t. Severus swooped down, drawing the potions vial out of his sleeve.

Leila threw herself forwards, rolling on the floor and towards the side table that held a large pile of books. Lucius had no idea what she intended to do, other than perhaps use a heavy book as a weapon. But Severus bound her with a wordless spell and poured the Veritaserum down her throat.

Even that didn’t do much to affect the blankness in her gaze. Lucius shivered and was glad that she wasn’t looking at him.

“I want to know who blackmailed you.” Harry’s voice was remarkably steady. Lucius had to admire him, as self-sacrificing and ridiculous as he was about many things.

“I believe her name is Andromeda Tonks.”

Lucius made a sharp movement before he could stop himself. Harry caught his eye and lifted his brow. Lucius nodded and stepped back, out of Leila’s line of sight. She wouldn’t be able to do anything against them right now, but she would retain knowledge of what she had seen when she was under the potion.

“And why do you believe that?”

“Because that was the name that was signed to the letters.”

Clarence let out a bitter snort. “What other reason do you have for believing that?” he demanded. “I know I took a smarter woman as my wife than to have her simply accept an enemy’s signature.”

“I met with her. She looked the way Andromeda Tonks did when I met her before.”

“Polyjuice,” Severus murmured.

Lucius nodded. He didn’t know Andromeda well—she had been burned from the Black tapestry before he and Narcissa had married—but he couldn’t believe that a woman who had defied her pure-blood family to run away with a Muggleborn would be working for Voldemort.

“What knowledge of your crimes did she demonstrate?” Harry asked. His eyes had gone back to wary stone. Lucius felt a vibration outside the door that he thought probably meant Dash was curled up on the stairs that led to the Headmistress’s office.

“She said that she knew the names of all my victims. She had the map where I’d buried them. She told me that if I didn’t do as she said, I would spend the rest of my life in Azkaban and be unable to protect my family.”

Lucius blew his breath out through his nose. It seemed that had been an effective threat, as much as he wanted to shake his head over it. Leila had committed her crimes out of the misguided belief that she was protecting her family, and it made a bit more sense now that she had argued with her husband and claimed that she would be able to do it on her own.

“How did you create the potion that freed Cyan Scrimgeour?”

For the first time, Leila Greengrass struggled against the potion. Lucius raised his eyebrows, wondering if she had used some magic or ingredient that she thought would disgust her husband. She’d answered the other questions without a care.

“I didn’t invent it,” Leila finally said, lowering her head a little. “I received the base from Tonks and then worked on it to create a less volatile version that wouldn’t poison the people around the cell and perhaps alert the Ministry to what had happened before we could escape with Scrimgeour.”

Lucius wanted to roll his eyes as he realized why Leila had fought so hard against answering that question. She hadn’t wanted to admit that she didn’t invent a potion she had used.

“Give us the ingredients list,” Severus said. He had straightened a little away from the wall. “Both of the base you received and the potion you improved.”

Leila recited a list that meant little to Lucius, and perhaps little more to Harry, from the way his brow was furrowed. Then again, there was a reason that Lucius had always preferred to let someone else do his brewing. He had no hesitation in paying for the skillful execution of an art he didn’t always understand.

“I see,” Severus said. He tilted his head at Harry and murmured, “A few of the ingredients cross over.”

Which Lucius didn’t understand at all, but no one seemed eager to improve his ignorance. Harry simply nodded and faced Leila. “Did you notice any distinguishing marks, jewelry, or clothes on Andromeda Tonks?”

“Yes.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Lucius smiled at Harry. “She’ll respond to simple yes and no questions with that kind of answer. You’ve got to ask in more depth if you’re going to get what she noticed.”

“Right.” Harry rolled his eyes a little, and Lucius stood there for a second, mentally comparing the whole interaction to the last time he’d spoken to Voldemort. “Should have known. All right. What were the distinguishing marks you noticed?”

“A ring. It was silver, and had a chunky black stone on it. The stone had sharp enough angles that it would have scored a cauldron’s sides. It glinted like obsidian, but I knew it wasn’t. The silver looked tarnished, as if it had been dipped in an improperly-brewed Cleansing Potion.”

Lucius rolled his eyes. Merlin, and I used to think that Severus was obsessive about Potions.

“Was that the only thing you noticed? Or,” Harry added hastily, “were there are any other pieces of clothing or jewelry or marks that you would recognize again? What about scars?”

Lucius shook his head. Asking about scars when they were probably dealing with someone under Polyjuice Potion was a fool’s endeavor. The potion would flawlessly mimic the scars that Andromeda Tonks herself bore. Of course, perhaps they could begin to narrow down the people who would have access to Andromeda’s hair.

“She had a silver pin on the collar of her cloak. She wore it stabbed through sideways, as though she didn’t care who saw it. It was also tarnished.”

Lucius saw Minerva stiffen out of the corner of his eye. He ignored that for now. Leila had finished speaking, though, and was sitting there and staring straight ahead the way most Veritaserum victims did when they didn’t have questions to answer at the moment. Her breathing had slowed until she no longer sounded as if she might erupt in shouting.

“Can you think of any other questions to ask?” Harry finally said, turning to everyone else in the room as if his mind was as blank as Leila’s.

“Yes.”

Lucius jumped when he realized that the word came from Leila. Harry turned back to her, eyes narrowed in slight confusion. “You can think of another question I ought to ask? What is it?” At least he followed the slightly inane first question up with one that would get an interesting response, Lucius thought.

Leila still stared straight ahead, but she said in a calm voice, “Yes. You could ask why I thought I could protect our family on my own.”

“Why did you think that? Why would you ever think that?” Clarence sounded as if he had something caught in his throat. Lucius could understand that. He would be a mixture of heartbroken and furious if Narcissa had put their family at risk in such a way, through overestimation of her own prowess.

Not to mention jeopardizing our political alliances. But then, my Narcissa would never do that. Lucius felt his usual mixture of glee and pity that there was only one Narcissa in the world and that he was the one who had married her, leaving others vulnerable to the mistakes of their own spouses.

“Because I have invented a potion that can poison people from a distance, and all I had to do it was employ it on anyone who threatened our family.”

There was a long silence. Lucius did notice, in interest, that Severus’s fingers had tightened into fists, and that Harry had gone still. Had they heard rumors of something like this? Or was it an advance in potions-making that he didn’t understand?

“Why wouldn’t you use it on the woman who blackmailed you into freeing Cyan Scrimgeour, then?” Clarence demanded. It somewhat surprised Lucius that he was the first to recover, but then, Leila’s words had struck Severus and Harry with a peculiar force.

“Because she promised me that my secrets were in other hands and would be revealed if she died. I would need to know at least the names of those who held those secrets so that I could be sure to poison them as well.”

“You can poison people based on their names?” Severus had recovered, and there was a brilliance in his eyes that Lucius resigned himself to not understanding right now. Later he would corner Severus and demand an explanation.

“Yes.”

“That is—an amazing breakthrough.” Severus sounded a little dazed. “There are rumors in old texts of ancient potions that could heal or poison from a distance based on the resonance of names, but no one I know ever claimed to have actually managed the rediscovery of—”

“It’s also dangerous. And haven’t we dealt with enough potions like that?” Harry demanded, turning to face Severus.

“If this one was on our side, however.” Frustratingly, Severus didn’t finish the sentence, simply inclining his head to Harry and appearing to rely on whatever knowledge or secret they shared. Lucius resolved to get closer as soon as he could.

“But we don’t have a way to bind this woman to our side! Not when she simply murders whoever she likes!”

“So did Elena Zabini, and yet she’s loyal to you,” Lucius felt compelled to point out, because no one else was filling the silence. It was ridiculous that no one was filling the silence.

“She’s loyal to me because of matters concerning her son, and because I let her have some revenge, as she sees it.” Harry folded his arms and studied Leila with a frown. “This is a woman whose family was allied to me and yet who still didn’t think she needed to be on my side. I don’t know what we can do to convince her.”

“Mr. Potter? If I may?” Clarence stepped forwards.

“So far, you haven’t been able to convince her, either, Mr. Greengrass,” Harry said, more kindly than Lucius really thought Clarence deserved.

“I know, my—I mean, Harry. But there’s one aspect to the situation that I didn’t know about until now. If you’re going to honor her as the inventor of a unique potion, then she might be willing to go along with our side for that honor.”

Harry turned to Severus. Severus tilted his head and then his hand up and down in an uncertain motion. Lucius felt an ache of envy. He could have been the one who stood in that position, if he had been quicker to realize what it meant that Harry Potter was bonded to a basilisk and growing close with his son.

Well, he would do his best to make sure that he was not left out of future interactions. And an official betrothal would give him some power as the father-in-law of the Boy-Who-Lived…

He shot a glance at Draco, who had said nothing. That was highly unusual for his son. Draco just looked at him and said nothing, his mask flawless. Lucius was encountering a great deal of frustration this weekend.

“We can honor her if she remains loyal to us,” Harry said in a tight, flat voice. Lucius wondered if he knew how much it sounded as if he was using the royal “we.”

Clarence nodded and then held out a hand without removing his gaze from his wife. Lucius thought it insulting, but Severus handed him the antidote to the Veritaserum without so much as a blink, and Clarence fed it to Leila.

Leila took a deep breath and exhaled. Then she looked at Clarence and said, “Nothing I said under that potion concerned the extent of my ability to defend our family. I can do it without surrendering my loyalty to them.”

“You told us about the poison you invented,” Clarence said. “And they are willing to make sure that you receive credit for its invention and the honor that you would otherwise never get, because of the Ministry being willing to arrest you on sight.”

Leila paused. Then she looked at Harry and Severus, her gaze lingering longest on Severus. Lucius sighed, wondering if that was only her respect for him as a fellow brewer or because she still didn’t understand the dynamics of power between Harry and his followers. (Then again, sometimes Lucius felt as if he didn’t understand them, so he couldn’t entirely blame her for that).

“You are not willing to give me up to Azkaban?” she asked finally, reaching up with one hand to push her hair away from her face. Lucius tensed, but she seemed entirely caught up in studying Severus. “I thought you would, because the ideals you hold are so Light.”

“The original ideals Harry held were Light,” Severus corrected her, his voice deep and slightly bored. “I have tempered them somewhat with my own. And if you are willing to use your poison in his service, I will temper them still further.”

Leila sat in silence, and then her eyes darted over to Harry. “You really have bonded with a basilisk?” she asked. “And it really bears the soul of Salazar Slytherin?”

Harry sighed. “He is his own person. But yes, he does have that soul. And he’s committed to protecting me, so if you intend to do something to hurt me—”

“I will swear the Unbreakable Vow.”

Minerva stepped forwards with her wand already drawn to act as bonder, so Lucius didn’t get the chance to volunteer as he would have liked to. But as he watched Leila kneel and hold out her hand, clasping Harry’s, and heard the strong voice she spoke the Vows in, he thought that they might have bound her tightly to their side after all.

None of which diminished Lucius’s wariness around her. Or his longing to stand in Severus’s place.

But there are other things of value I can bring to this alliance.