Chapter Twenty-Two of ‘The Parselmouth Promise’- Talking

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the last chapter of The Parselmouth Promise. I want to thank you for coming on this journey with me.

Chapter Twenty-Two—Talking

“You don’t need to do this, you know.”

Hermione’s voice was low and anxious. Harry reached out and squeezed her hand without looking away from the door of the room in front of them, a closed white door in a clean white corridor. “I know. And ten minutes is all I’m allowing myself. But I did want to lay out a few choices she has and let her decide if she’s going to make them. She’s the only one who can.”

Hermione swallowed, a loud click of her throat in that otherwise pristine environment. “What are you going to do if she refuses to choose?”

“Leave. And give Seamus some advice when the time comes about enrolling his son in a school full of Parselmouths.”

Hermione sighed as loudly as she had done everything else. “What does Draco think of this?”

“He’s the one who suggested that I come talk to her.”

Hermione whipped around to stare at him. “Really?”

Harry nodded, still not looking away from the door. “He doesn’t like Ginny—more for what she did to me and Jamie than for anything that happened at the school or his family’s old feud with the Weasleys. But he knows that Alex is a Parselmouth, and he wouldn’t turn away any kid because of who their parents were.” He kept Draco’s suspicion that Ginny was a Parselmouth to himself. That was something Draco might have revealed, but Harry knew Ginny wouldn’t want it spread around.

He had enough respect for her, still, not to do that.

Hermione sighed a second time and let go of his hand. “Okay. The sooner you can do it, the sooner it’ll be over, I suppose.”

Harry touched her hand lightly, and then turned around and walked into Ginny’s hospital room, letting the door fall quietly shut behind him.

It looked like the St. Mungo’s hospital rooms that Harry had seen during his time as an Auror, like the Hogwarts infirmary. The white color of the walls was softened a little by an undertone of yellow here, and there were more chairs than normal next to the bed, although Harry suspected some of them might be conjured. But still: chairs, desk, door leading to the bathroom, enchanted window showing a seaside scene (why was it always the sea?), bed.

“Harry.”

Although not usually Ginny in the bed, bar one time when Harry had been in St. Mungo’s that he immediately shoved out of his head, because such a memory was inappropriate here. He turned to look at his ex-wife.

Her face was weary and lined, and she looked as though a lot of life had gone out of her. She leaned against the pillow, staring at him with something too desperate for Harry to name the emotion beyond desperation.

“Please tell me that you cursed me, and you came to remove the curse,” she whispered.

Harry slowly shook his head. “You know I didn’t, Ginny. You know you were marked by Tom Riddle’s diary in the same way that he marked his followers and I was marked by him, and the Parseltongue was passed on that way.” He licked his lips and shifted into the snake language, something that came much easier to him now even with no snake to focus on. “How long have you been able to understand it?”

“I don’t.”

Ginny replied in English, but the answer was proof enough for Harry, even if Ginny wanted to deny it to herself. He held back his sadness and simply said, “Well, I hope that you’ll reconcile with Seamus before you allow this to drive you away from him and Alex.”

Ginny flinched at the sound of Alex’s name. “I don’t understand,” she whispered. “Why couldn’t it leave me alone?”

Her voice was sharp with pain on the last word. Harry didn’t flinch or run away the way he once would have. He said, “I don’t know. I don’t know why all of us were marked this way. I wanted to deny it, too. Jamie was going to be hated by people like the ones who believed Bandler. But it didn’t skip us, and there’s no way that he can be happy by denying it, so I’m working for his acceptance and giving him the best education I can.”

“You gave in to it. I don’t have to.”

“Then you’ll lose your second son the way you lost your first.”

Ginny’s mouth opened. Nothing came out. Harry watched her face turn pale and pitied her, and also wished he’d thought to cast a charm that would count down the seconds so he would know when ten minutes had passed and he could leave.

“No,” Ginny finally whispered. “I have to be able to give birth to a child who doesn’t have this taint.”

“Why? One parent being Marked is enough to pass Parseltogue on to a child, so it doesn’t matter who you marry. They’ll have it. And it’s not a taint. Ginny. It’s the most wonderful gift.” Harry caught himself raising a hand to his shoulder for Sela, even though he hadn’t brought her. He caught himself and snatched his hand down yet, exhaling hard. “I promise, it’s given me and Jamie so much more than I ever thought it could.”

“Voldemort was a monster! Tom Riddle was worse! And you’re standing there and saying this to me?”

Harry met her eyes steadily. “I’m the one who has the right to say it, if anyone does. I was marked by him more deeply than anyone else. And Sela has been able to soothe my nightmares about him, which you remember nothing can do.”

When we were married. Harry almost thought she would say the words, but Ginny turned her head and stared at the enchanted window. “I suppose Sela is the woman you’ve taken up with,” she whispered. “Some Parselmouth.”

Harry blinked in surprise. He’d thought she would have known, but there was no reason for her to, really. Molly and Arthur wouldn’t have told her. “Sela is my snake. I’m actually dating Draco right now, not a woman.”

Ginny stared at him with her mouth open long enough that Harry wondered if he would have to call a mediwitch because he’d caused her shock. Then Ginny shook her head and demanded, “You’re gay?”

“Bisexual.”

“You never told me!”

“There was no reason for you to know.”

Ginny didn’t seem to know what to say. Harry kept watching her. Ginny finally whispered, “You’ve changed so much in the years since we were a family, Harry. Changed unimaginably.”

“People do that sometimes, when they aren’t so afraid of the shadows of the past that they can’t move forwards.”

Harry had honestly meant that as a comment on his own circumstances, once he had given up fearing his Parseltongue and agreed to move forwards with Draco’s help, not a comment on Ginny’s. But she gave a start at hearing it and said, “Get out. Get out! And stay away from my son!”

Harry turned around and left. The comment about her son was at least reassuring, since it seemed to mean she would accept Alex after all. And she couldn’t seriously be referring to Jamie, whom she had to see was Harry’s.

Harry wasn’t sure that it had been worthwhile to come for his sake or hers, but if he had secured a home for Alex Finnigan in his mother’s heart, then he hadn’t wasted his time.

*

“What are you thinking about?”

Harry sighed and leaned back so that his head rested on Draco’s shoulder. Draco stirred his fingers across Harry’s forehead and hair, and felt Harry close his eyes in enjoyment. He seemed to marvel over the simplest touches.

Rationally, Draco knew that it was probably because he had gone years without dating between his ex-wife and Draco, and had thought he would be alone for the rest of his life. Irrationally, Draco hoped it was just because they suited each other so much in every way that Harry reacted to his and only his touch like that.

Well, it’s not as though I’ll ever have to worry about his seeking out another lover to compare my touch to.

“Why the Marks and the possession and the scar gave us Parseltongue,” Harry murmured. “And gave our children Parseltongue. Voldemort would have hated sharing that gift with other people. He considered himself the only descendant of Slytherin who mattered, and Parseltongue was one of the ways he proved that. Why did it happen?”

“You think that it could only have happened as a result of a plot of his?”

“I’m saying that I know it didn’t, but I can’t think of any other reason that it would have spread like that, or been hereditary.”

“The second part isn’t such a mystery,” Draco murmured, reclining back on his couch, and pulling Harry with him. They were on the third floor of the Manor, the highest point, looking at the stars through the large enchanted window in the room that had been created for just this purpose. It always showed the clearest view as it was each night, dismissing any clouds that might be in the way. “After all, Parseltongue was hereditary among the descendants of Slytherin when it only existed among them.”

“And the first part?”

“Why such interest now? Do you think there’s something wrong with us, that we’re somehow cursed instead of gifted because the gift was passed?”

Harry shook his head, his hair rustling and scratching against Draco’s cheek. And Draco really didn’t believe that Harry thought that, so he calmed down and waited for the answer to his question, still running his hand up Harry’s neck and into his hair. Harry made the softest, most contented noises when he did that, ones that Draco didn’t think he knew he was making.

“Ginny accused me of cursing her when I went to visit her,” Harry said at last. “But I don’t believe that, and I don’t think that she really did, either. I wonder if maybe it wasn’t the magic itself that made the decision.”

Draco started. “The magic of the Marks? But that would have been different than the magic in you, or the thing that possessed Weasley…”

“No. I mean, the magic of Parseltongue. It had been reduced to the Gaunts before Tom Riddle was born, who were hateful and broken. And then it had another chance with Tom Riddle, but he got twisted away from any path that would have made him a better person, and he certainly didn’t want to have children or share it with anyone else. Maybe the magic decided it would have a better chance to spread from person to person and find worthy, righteous ones if it took this path.”

Draco was silent, thinking about that. He continued stroking Harry’s hair. Harry leaned against him and said nothing, his breathing so gentle that Draco might have thought he was asleep if he hadn’t sensed the slight tension in Harry’s muscles as he awaited the answer.

“I suppose we can never know for sure,” Draco said at last. “And I’m reluctant to think that magic can make decisions like that. It would mean that we’re much more pawns than we think we are, that our decisions matter much less. And I’d have to question why it never stopped Tom Riddle or the Gaunts before they became like they did, if it has good intentions.”

“Maybe it can’t revoke itself.”

“What?”

Harry tilted his head so that he was looking at Draco almost upside-down. “Maybe it can’t take itself away from anyone who has Parseltongue, whether or not they were born with it. Maybe it can only spread. So it can choose to spread to new families or new people, but if they became bad people, it wouldn’t be able to stop them or take itself away. It could only choose to try again with someone else.”

Draco bit his lip. That theory made no sense, not as he understood magic and in particular Parseltongue. But at the same time, he felt an odd sense of rightness settling into his bones at Harry’s words.

He pushed the idea away. He didn’t want to consider it, even though if Harry’s theory was right, their decisions and ideas were still their own. It was still what they chose to do with Parseltongue that mattered. If they rejected it completely, the way Weasley had and the way Harry had for so long, it didn’t reject them, or compel them to accept it. And obviously it didn’t compel people to act a certain way, if Riddle and the Gaunts were one set of examples, and the rest of them were another.

“It doesn’t really matter,” he murmured, and feathered his fingers so hard through Harry’s hair that he drew a gasp from him. “Does it?”

“No, I suppose not,” Harry said, and turned around to kiss him.

Draco put aside thoughts of magical theory for the much more pleasant thought of how to show Harry how much he loved him.

*

Harry opened his eyes to a dream of an intense field of green grass. He turned slowly around in a circle, frowning. The field was a little familiar, but not enough that Harry could say if he’d been here before. There was a creek running somewhere off to the side, visible only as a white flash, and the long grass was starred with violet flowers.

“Welcome.”

Harry started and turned around, one hand rising to his shoulder. A soft hiss reassured him that Sela was with him. She flicked her tongue but didn’t say anything as a young man, perhaps a few years younger than Harry, came walking towards them.

Like the field, he was vaguely familiar. He had a long nose, a quiet smile, and dark hair. His eyes were so dark that Harry wasn’t sure of their exact color, and he wore a green cloak and robes almost the color of the grass. He halted a few meters away from Harry and studied him with bright eyes.

“Do I know you?” Harry asked. “I feel like I should, but I don’t.” This also didn’t feel like a regular dream, nor one of the nightmares that he hadn’t been able to wake up from before Sela came into his life, and nothing like his visions of Voldemort.

“You would have heard of me, but not heard me,” the man said, and shook his head. “My name doesn’t matter, much. What matters is that you have Parseltongue, and I’m glad that you’ve finally learned to respect it and listen to it.”

Harry nodded, but decided not to say anything directly about that. Really, he had heard more than enough from Draco and Sela about how he should have respected his Parseltongue before this. “Was I right about it choosing certain people in the hopes of spreading through them and finding new wielders?”

The man paused. Then he said, “Not exactly.”

“Oh.”

“It is a blood-bound gift most of the time,” the man said quietly, “and so, it couldn’t have passed down except to Tom Riddle’s descendants. But Tom Riddle did weave one final poison into the Dark Marks, and perhaps even into the Horcruxes, that would have affected their destroyers. The serpents in the Dark Marks were supposed to turn on the Death Eaters after he died and inject venom into their veins.”

“But that didn’t happen. Was he not powerful enough after all?”

“No. It didn’t happen because you came back to life.” The man gave Harry a sudden, delighted smile that made Harry blink, and the faint sense of familiarity faded. “Because your sacrifice transformed everything of Tom Riddle in the last moments he was alive. His victory into defeat, his immortality into mortality, his potential mastery over the Elder Wand into subjection to it, potential death for your allies into survival, and the curse in the Dark Marks into a gift.”

Harry breathed out slowly. He almost didn’t want to ask, but he had to. “And the mark the diary left on Ginny? Is she right that I’m the reason she is the way she is?”

“You transformed the damage she carried with her. She had had nightmares about the Horcrux before that. They ceased, for the most part, and some of the shadows within her mind drew back. You couldn’t heal her completely, and you can’t fault yourself for that. But she is better than she would have been.”

Harry blinked. “All of that, even though the Horcrux was gone?”

“Yes,” said the man, and gave Harry a half-bow. “The Parseltongue that came through the Horcrux—a living human Horcrux, something even Tom Riddle never dreamed of—was bound into you, and didn’t disappear when the Horcrux did. That was the only way that it could have been passed on other than by blood, which no one knew because no one had been mad enough to make one like you before.” The man shrugged. “And because that was within you when you died and chose to come back, the Parseltongue was transformed in everyone, the serpent a gift instead of a curse. Once it did have hold of new wielders…”

“Then it got passed down by blood again,” Harry murmured.

The man nodded. “And I could appear in your dreams. I suppose I could have done it before this, but you were in no mood to hear me for a long time. And I did want to reassure you that it wasn’t the magic’s own free choice, exactly, so that your lover wouldn’t worry about cursed or compelled by it.”

“Even though this might make me more likely to think I’d cursed Ginny?”

“I think you can bear it, and you can understand that you did what you could for her. That is different than it being your fault.”

Harry took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Sela twined close around his neck, but she said nothing. Harry wondered if she knew that he had to struggle with this final revelation by himself.

What would have happened if Harry hadn’t somehow transformed the Parseltongue and the Horcrux taint by coming back to life?

Well, Voldemort probably would have won, in the first place, and Ginny might have died. Jamie and Alex would never have been born. Or Ginny might have succumbed to much worse trauma and depression than she’d been carrying, especially if she still wouldn’t have sought out a Mind-Healer.

I convinced myself that the worst thing was what happened. I never thought about what might have happened in other timelines, or even that this one might be the best one.

Harry opened his eyes and took a deep breath. “If Ginny never forgives me and there’s some truth to the fact that I was behind her Parseltongue, I can live with that,” he said. “But I don’t think I’ll be telling her about this dream.”

The man laughed. “No. I wouldn’t tell anyone about this except your lover, and perhaps your sons when they come of age.”

“Who are you?” Harry asked, and stared around the meadow again. “And where is this place? I can almost name you and it, but…”

“This is the place where you came to die and confront Tom Riddle,” said the man quietly, “the way it looked a thousand years ago. I thought it an appropriate place to meet you when I came to tell you the truth about your Parseltongue.”

“And you?”

The man flipped his green cloak’s sleeve up, and showed a thin, bright line of silver down the inside of it. “Salazar Slytherin at your service.”

Harry blinked. The man did look a little like the statue in the Chamber of Secrets, but only a little. He had to ask, “And you’re happy about Parseltongue being a gift for me, a half-blood? Happy with me for killing the only descendant you had left?”

Slytherin smiled. “I have changed my mind about many things since I died, many follies that I committed when alive. I know that blood means little or nothing now, not in the way I thought it did. I grew obsessed with it in the first place because I knew it was the only way I could pass Pasrseltongue down.” He held his hand towards Harry, palm open and up. “But look at how many descendants I have now. And you to thank for them.”

Harry leaned slowly forwards and touched Slytherin’s palm with his own, and the dream dissolved around him.

*

He woke in Draco’s bed, curled up next to his sleeping partner, who had an arm around Harry. Harry blinked at nothing, the dream bright and unfading in his mind, and murmured to Sela, “You saw him? You heard him?”

“I did.” Sela curled herself down so that her head was at eye-level. “But I think you needed to talk to him yourself.”

Harry nodded slowly. Perhaps he had. Perhaps he needed to know the truth behind how Parseltongue had spread, and receive the blessing of Salazar Slytherin, who had been the reason behind so much of what Voldemort did.

And he did know it, now. And he knew that he had managed to save Draco’s life, and Pansy’s, and so many of the other Parselmouths he knew.

He would choose this world, Harry thought drowsily, already slipping back into sleep, with Jamie and Scorpius and he and Draco able to speak to snakes, even with Ginny blaming him, even with the uneasy relationship she might have with her other son, even with the trouble he had gone through because of Bandler’s and others’ prejudice against Parseltongue. This world with Sela on his shoulder.

And Draco, the greatest gift Parseltongue had given him, at his side.

The End.