lomonaaeren

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Chapter Eleven—The Question of Teaching

“And you’re sure that you won’t teach at the school?”

Harry held back a grunt of irritation as he bent down to study the ritual circle that Draco was showing him how to use. It was an exceedingly simple one, made from braided strips of iron and silver alternating, and Harry knew that all it would do was light up in flames when someone ran magic down into it.

Well, when a Parselmouth ran magic down into it. Harry had to do that in conjunction with Sela, and he hadn’t actually managed yet.

“What would I teach them, Draco?” he asked, turning around. Sela, who had waited ungraciously on the floor while Harry examined the circle without her, immediately climbed up his leg and hissed a command for him to put her back on his shoulder. Harry did that without taking his eyes from Draco. “Simple things that probably most of them already know, or can learn from their parents? Ritual magic, when you know yourself that I’m not skilled enough at that yet? Something else to do with being a Parselmouth, which I have no idea of?”

Draco folded his arms and stared at Harry. Harry stared right back. He had no idea what Draco was seeing, other than stubbornness.

Good. That was how Harry felt. He really didn’t want to teach at the school.

“I thought you could teach them history,” Draco said coolly.

Harry blinked, caught off-guard by the request, and tried to play it off by pacing around the circle again. They were in one of the school’s practice ritual rooms, much smaller than the one where they’d summoned Jamie’s snake, but it was still large enough to let him avoid Draco easily.

Or would have been, if he wasn’t conscious of Draco’s stare touching every inch of revealed skin.

Harry cleared his throat a little awkwardly. “I don’t have a NEWT in History of Magic. Do you? If so, then you’d be better-suited to teaching them than I would.”

“Sweet Merlin, Harry, I didn’t mean that. I meant teaching them the history of the war, and how it feels to be persecuted for their gifts as Parselmouths.”

Harry came to an abrupt stop, spinning to face Draco. Even so, he was careful not to step into the circle. Draco had said that would disrupt the magic in unpredictable ways. “Are you insane? You want these kids to learn about the war?”

“In an age-appropriate fashion, of course. Sometimes you’re obtuse on purpose, Potter, I’m sure.”

Harry wished he could have the option of shouting at Draco and storming out of the room, the way he would have before they became friends. He took a deep, calming breath, and shook his head a little. “Fine, Draco. But I don’t understand why you think they need to learn it so young.”

“Because they need to know the uncertain position of Parselmouths in the world,” Draco said. His eyes shone with a near-fanatical light that made Harry blink and pay attention. “Many of them will be much more comfortable with their gift than you were, growing up with it, but they need to know why people might shout at them in the streets or think they’re Dark wizards and witches. Don’t you agree?”

After a moment, Harry nodded reluctantly. It would be stupid to say that he didn’t agree, since he was actually here and learning about ritual circle magic and all the rest from Draco.

But he had to say, “I don’t know what I’d be the best to teach that to them. I’m—a little biased.”

“Biased about what?”

“About the negative effects of being a Parselmouth. Things happened to me that hopefully won’t happen to them.”

“But they could.” Draco walked a little closer around the circumference of the ritual circle and put a hand on Harry’s arm. “Being held by Aurors for no good reason, just because they wanted to accuse you of a crime? Being stared at or hissed at in the streets? Those things could happen to them. They won’t be famous, but they could be infamous.”

Harry sighed. And those things would affect Jamie, too, of course, especially since it would be years before Jamie could really understand why being a Parselmouth might be something he wanted to hide.

He nodded. “All right. A couple days a week, maybe? I’ll need time to think about it and cast it in the mode of stories since most of the kids will be so young.”

Draco smiled a little, triumphant. “Good. Waiting a fortnight or so won’t be a problem. Now, come on. I want to show you how it feels when you pour your magic into a circle.” He stepped away from Harry.

“I don’t know why I let you talk me into this,” Harry complained under his breath as he took up a stance on the other side. “Just because we’re friends doesn’t mean that we have to be ritual partners.”

“But it’s something I wanted your help with. And I know that you’re eager to help your friends.”

“Yeah, laugh it up,” Harry said under his breath, and then reached up, put one hand on Sela’s back, and began to concentrate on the circle.

*

Draco tried not to show how intense his relief was as Harry actually began to summon his power to the surface of his skin. He had thought it possible that Harry would go back on this promise at the last minute even if he still wanted to maintain their friendship.

“He is prickly and not easy to be with,” Edwina said, lifting her head from Draco’s shoulder to watch Harry and Sela across the circle. “I am not sure why you wanted to be with him so much.”

“I wanted his friendship, just as he wanted mine,” Draco said absently. Magic was swelling around Harry now, glittering blue waves twisting in serpentine shapes through the air towards the circle. “And his magic complements mine. I want that, too.”

“If you say so.”

Draco touched Edwina’s head with a small chuckle. She had always thought that they did their best work alone, and that the other Parselmouths whom Draco practiced ritual craft with added little.

But that was precisely the reason that Draco was watching with bated breath now as Harry poured his magic into the circle, making it shimmer and spark, and then grow vivid blue flames that raced back and forth along the edges. Harry could add a lot, if he chose to.

And if he and Draco could grow enough trust between them to build such craft.

The blue flames glowed and sprang up, curving towards the center of the circle like fangs. Then they froze. Harry blinked and stepped to the side as though looking for a means to make them move, even reaching out with one hand towards them.

“Don’t touch them,” Draco called, thrilled that the power of the ritual meant it was inadvisable to converse in English. There was something—wondrous about speaking Parseltongue to Harry. “They need to stay like that until I add my own magic and we see how they respond.”

“All right.” Harry moved a little backwards. “And are you going to do that now?”

Draco nodded and turned to Edwina. She rose at once in the slow dance that they used when they were performing ritual magic together, hood spread as she sent the magic roaring down their bond. Draco caught it easily and tossed it towards the ritual circle, braced for the clash of magic that usually happened when he touched Pansy’s magic, or Greg’s, or anyone other than Scorpius’s.

There was no clash. His magic ran easily into the circle, and the flames began to move again as his power touched them. Draco swallowed as he watched the flames bow to each other and then surge along the circle, flickering up into large, sharp points alternating with smaller ones like canine teeth.

“What…”

Draco smiled at Harry. He could feel their compatibility, and how easy it would be to intertwine himself and Edwina into Harry’s bond with Sela. He held back, though. Harry looked almost overwhelmed as it was.

“This is what two Parselmouths can feel when they’re suited to work together,” Draco said, in as lulling a voice as he could manage. He added, “What do you feel?”

Harry took a deep breath and bowed his head.

“Please try to tell me, Harry,” Draco prompted when a moment had gone past.

Sela moved slowly back and forth on Harry’s shoulder, hissing so softly that Draco couldn’t make out, if it was even words. Harry swallowed and looked up at Draco. “I feel as though someone’s standing right behind me. Ready to guard my back.”

Draco nodded. “I feel as though I’ve finally found someone whose back I want to guard.”

Harry glanced at the alternating flames. “I don’t understand what they’re showing. What is it?”

“That we can combine our powers to make all sorts of ritual magic possible.” Draco nodded to an especially high flame that reared like the outline of a mountain for a moment before it sank back. “The height of the flames shows that we can achieve strong or small magical effects, as we please. The way the flames move shows how much compatibility we have, which is quite a lot; they would be slow or frozen if there was nothing there.” Draco paused, but Harry glared at him, and Draco was reminded of how many people had lied to his friend down the years. “And that we felt nothing but pleasure when we joined our magic means that we won’t have any mental or magical struggles when putting together a ritual, which is something that often plagues Parselmouths.”

“Why?”

“We have the essence of snakes that are most often solitary hunters, at least among the species bonded to Parselmouths,” Draco murmured. “And our magic is fiercely protective of our independence. It’s hard for us to bond even with a snake and let them into our minds and magic—what’s wrong?”

Harry had leaped as though someone had goosed him, but he settled down now and reached up as if to make sure that Sela was still on his shoulder. Draco considered that a positive sign, although he was also a little concerned that Harry hadn’t known where she was as he should have if their bond was complete.

“I have to let her into my magic?”

“You haven’t completed—” Draco cut off the words he wanted to say. The ritual was still in progress. He took a deep breath and nodded to the circle. “Withdraw your magic from it. I’ll do the same thing, and that will end it.”

He thought this was a conversation best had in English, if only so that he would have the benefit of making sure that Harry knew exactly what he wanted to say.

*

“I told you that our bond wasn’t as deep as it could have been.”

“Yes, I knew that already,” Harry snapped as he paced back and forth in front of the fireplace. Draco had brought him to a small room on the second floor of Malfoy Manor that Harry hadn’t seen before. It was all done in shades of gold, and frankly the golden mantel and the gold-framed mirror above it were a bit much. “I still don’t want you in my mind with those nightmares I have.”

“Well, that explains a lot.”

Harry turned, narrowing his eyes. Draco had come into the room behind him, and Harry hadn’t meant him to hear the part about the nightmares, but he supposed it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, either. He met Draco’s gaze evenly. “What does?”

“If you don’t have a complete bond, it’ll be much harder for you to access the depths of Parselmouth magic that our kind can command.” Draco leaned against the wall near the fireplace, his fingers rising to stroke the head of his cobra. Edwina hissed softly at him, with no words as far as Harry could tell. “The ritual we performed today was relatively simple. Others won’t be.”

Harry shrugged. Draco glared at him. Harry finally grimaced and said, “That would be preferable to me to allowing someone else to share my nightmares.”

“I have no idea why.”

“They’re violent and disgusting. And they make me look weak.”

Draco uttered an exasperated noise. “You think Sela cares about that? Or will take advantage of it?”

“I don’t know. I don’t want to make myself look weak.”

“You look far weaker having constant nightmares and not being able to take care of your son!” Sela said, and her tail snapped out to hit him in the neck. Harry accepted the blow without flinching. Sela twisted so that they were eye-to-eye, her tongue darting out in agitation. “What do you think I will have seen that I haven’t seen yet?”

Harry hesitated. There was another option than allowing Sela to access his mind, he realized then. He could speak about the nightmares and their content aloud, and then they would understand the worst about him without having to experience it for themselves.

And if Draco walked away after that, if Sela turned her back on him…

That would be a relief, Harry silently acknowledged. It would hurt, but it would be a relief to know they knew the worst and there were no depths he could sink to in their eyes. And maybe it would show Draco that he had been wrong about Harry and Harry wasn’t a great teacher of history for the school.

“All right,” Harry said quietly. “My connection to Voldemort came about because I had a piece of his soul in me.” He touched his scar. Draco was staring at him, but not recoiling yet, so Harry went on. “I was a living Horcrux, an artifact that someone uses to tether themselves to life using a piece of split soul. I had to die to get it out of me. I’m still not entirely sure why I was able to come back to life, but I think the Killing Curse hit the shard of soul and not mine. That’s the only explanation I have, anyway.” He shrugged away thoughts of the Deathly Hallows. He had left the Resurrection Stone in the Forbidden Forest and buried the Elder Wand with Dumbledore, and even if that didn’t matter and he was somehow still the Master of Death, the stories about it were so confused that Harry didn’t know whether to attribute his “resurrection” to them.

“I’m not hearing what your nightmares are about yet.”

“Being that Horcrux,” Harry told him. “Having that disgusting connection to Voldemort. And it manifests as snakes.” He swallowed. “I dream of snakes poisoning Ginny. Poisoning me. Poisoning James. I lost—I lost my marriage to Parseltongue, Draco. James lost his mother. Why do you think I resisted it so long?”

“Those nightmares aren’t about things that happened, then,” Draco finished with a blank face. “They’re about—things you fear happening. Things you think could have happened. Things you think other people will be disgusted by?”

Harry nodded. “And they almost always involve snakes. I don’t think adding Sela to them will make any difference. If anything, she might make them worse.”

“I will not make them worse!”

Harry rolled his eyes, and didn’t care if Draco or Sela saw it. “I’m not accusing you of doing it on purpose. I’m saying that seeing one snake appear among others won’t be something I deal with well.”

“I could help you.”

Harry shrugged. “I don’t think you can,” he said, and turned back around to stare at Draco with a curious expression, wondering what he would say, if he would make some accusation or let things go with a shudder.

*

“I don’t think either of us despise you for being a Horcrux,” Draco said, and hid a smile as he watched the way Harry took a long step back.

It wasn’t funny, exactly. The fact was tragic, that Harry thought someone would abandon him the minute he confessed to it. And he certainly hadn’t had any choice about being a Horcrux, and had obviously been carrying around the idea that he was disgusting and would disgust others for years.

But at the same time, it was—

He just doesn’t understand.

“I am not disgusted by you,” Draco said quietly. “Obviously, I haven’t seen your nightmares, and I don’t know how bad they are, so I won’t say you shouldn’t be disturbed by them, or by the snakes that are appearing in them. But I will say that they don’t sound as if you need to keep them from other people, or your bonded serpent, because they’re uniquely scarring. And blaming Parseltongue for the loss of your marriage—”

“It did make me lose my marriage! Ginny’s trauma over Parseltongue meant she couldn’t even stand to be around me or James!”

“That is her fucking problem,” Draco said evenly, and watched the way Harry blinked as if confronted by a new revelation. “She could have gone to a Mind-Healer. She could have accepted that she would always hate it and ask that you not use it as much as possible. But instead she chose to throw her hands up and storm away like a spoiled brat.” He leaned in. “She left her child behind because she prized her trauma more than him—what?”

Harry’s mouth was hanging a little open. He swallowed and murmured, “I said something similar to her. I’ve hated the memory for years because of how cruel I was.”

“You were telling the truth. And regardless, she’s not part of your life or James’s now, by her own choice. Do you want to sacrifice your peace of mind to her forever? Because it seems like that’s a factor in your holding back from bonding to Sela. Not solely the nightmares, not solely the Horcrux, but because you worry about what your ex-wife would think of it.”

Harry spent a couple moments swallowing, starting to speak, and then swallowing again. Draco waited. Maybe a Gryffindor would have jumped in right away, but he knew how to hold back when he had to.

Harry finally whispered, “I—I hoped that someday, James could have a relationship with his half-sibling and his mum. If he fully embraces Parseltongue and so do I, then that might not be possible for them.”

“You can’t control that,” Draco said. Personally, he thought Harry was beyond naïve to assume that Weasley would allow James near any precious Parseltongue-free babies she had, but he didn’t need to say so. “They’re the ones who will have to decide on their relationship—and the siblings, when they’re old enough. You don’t need to hold yourself back or stifle your son or live with nightmares or not bond with a serpent because of what she would think.”

Harry nodded slowly, eyes distant. Then he glanced at Draco. “You didn’t go into detail about your reaction to the Horcrux.”

Sela was silent, although Draco paused to give her time to speak if she’d wanted. So he stepped up to Harry, put his hands on the other man’s shoulders, and said as clearly and calmly as he could, “That was not your fault.”

Harry was quiet. Draco shook him a little and added, “I can’t do anything about people who came before me and how they reacted. But I can say this. It wasn’t your fault. I don’t find you disgusting because of it.”

Harry looked up slowly. His smile was slow in coming, and still tentative, but Draco felt as if he had bathed in sunlight when he saw it.

“Thank you, Draco.”