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lomonaaerenTitle: Malfoys Like Snakes
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Lucius/Narcissa, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is a Malfoy twin), angst, drama, violence, minor character death, Horcrux hunting
Rating: : PG-13
Summary: After the destruction of both the diadem and the locket, only one Horcrux is left. Henry Malfoy and his family search for it, while Harry also decides Sirius Black’s fate, Regulus Black and Kreacher find their own way, and Harry deals with the fact that he is now dedicated to the Great Serpent.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s also the final part of my “Like a Malfoy” series, following nine other stories (beginning with “How Like Hatred”) that I would suggest you read first.
Malfoys Like Snakes
“This part of the Manor has not been used since before my father was born.”
Harry couldn’t help his wide eyes as he watched Father unlock the door in front of them. Then again, Father was facing the door and probably wouldn’t notice.
The lock was shaped like a serpent, a silver one, coiled back on itself in such overlapping and twisting knots and patterns that Harry didn’t think he was making them all out, or whether there was only one snake. At least he could see the head, resting on top of the piled scales. Harry tried to take it as a good omen that this one had emeralds for eyes.
“In here, Henry.”
The name gave Harry a little pulse of warmth. It seemed so short a time ago that he had resented it, and now—
Now he wanted to be Henry Malfoy.
He stepped forwards, beside Father. The stairs that led down into the room were of polished black stone, so black that the sudden white light of the torches on the wall reflected from it with dizzying force. Harry was glad that Father was there to lean against, and also that the stairs had polished black handrails along the sides.
The steps led down into a vast space that was filling with more and more light as Father pointed his wand at the sconces on the walls. The floor down there looked a little strange, Harry thought. Then he realized that it was made all of one vast piece of stone, without seams or cracks, and gasped a little.
And the stone was as green as the emerald eyes of the lock, as green as his own eyes had once looked.
“Yes,” Father said, and smiled at him. “It’s overwhelming the first time, isn’t it?”
“Wait. How do you know what it looks like if it hasn’t been used for decades?”
Father laughed, a sound that seemed to wake strange echoes from the walls. “I said used, not looked at. I peered in here as a child whenever Father would let me.”
“Oh.”
Harry took a slow step forwards, to the edge of the top step. Father had said something dramatic would probably happen, and Harry knew that they needed to be here, but he was also pretty tired of dramatic things happening.
The torches flared with a new light when Harry reached the edge. The green color reminded Harry uncomfortably of the Killing Curse, but it was also the deep emerald color of the stone below.
“Why are they doing that?” Harry asked.
He had the impression that Father tried to answer, but his voice drowned beneath a long, shuddering hiss. Harry spun around, his eyes wide.
Part of the floor was moving.
Harry hadn’t realized it, but the patterns in the green stone, which rippled and formed darker streaks and swirls here and there, did look awfully like the patterns of scales.
He stared, eyes wide and enthralled, as the stone molded up, and up. The green revealed itself as a stretching serpent head, with fangs that were as green when it opened its jaws in a lazy yawn. The great head, which was shaped a little like a horse’s and reminded Harry of some pictures of sea serpents he’d seen, came to rest on the top step, less than a meter from him.
Harry shot Father a nervous glance. Father nodded, and Harry remembered what he had said. Something about how nothing that was part of the Manor could hurt a Malfoy?
Of course, rituals that went wrong in the ritual room or something like that could still hurt, but Harry was more reassured than he would have been.
He stepped forwards and extended his hand. The serpent didn’t move, so Harry was the one who had to touch it on a great eye-ridge that felt as if it were made of cool stone, and move his hand slowly back and forth.
The snake hissed softly in Parseltongue, “Chosen.”
Harry jumped. The snake didn’t move, though, and he knew that Father wouldn’t have been able to understand. He was looking at the snake with a slight frown, but no more than that. Harry swallowed. “Chosen? Why do you call me that?”
“At long last,” the snake hissed. “You have come back to the service of the Great Serpent that members of your blood abandoned long ago. And you speak the Sacred Tongue.”
Harry nodded slowly. It would make sense that some Malfoys had been able to speak Parseltongue because of their service to this—Great Serpent. God or being or spirit or whatever one would really call it. Father had been unclear on that.
No one since before Abraxas Malfoy had worshiped the Great Serpent, either.
“I don’t really know how to serve you. But the Great Serpent saved me, and I said that I would serve.”
“I am not the Great Serpent, child, only its mortal representative.” The snake eased its head a little back and then moved its throat as though bringing something up. Harry stepped back, a little unnerved, and afraid that he was about to be vomited on in a mess of stone dust or something. “But the Serpent did want its next servant to have this.”
Harry watched as the snake spat out a rolling, round, stone-shaped object on the top step. With a glance at Father for permission—Father seemed calm—Harry walked over and crouched beside it.
It was—
A stone. Gleaming grey, but with threads of the same dark green and black that worked through the stone snake’s scales. Harry studied it curiously, but he couldn’t see any special purpose to the stone, or carvings on it, either.
“What is this?”
“Your altar.”
Harry leaped up, staring wildly at the snake. It didn’t seem to notice that he was upset. It swayed gently back and forth, and then it turned and sank into the stone floor.
“Wait!” Harry called after it. “I don’t understand! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to worship the Great Serpent!”
“You will find out.”
And the snake disappeared into the stone floor far below with little more than a ripple of the great body. Harry turned and stared helplessly at Father.
“Did it tell you what it thought you should do?” Father asked. He stepped forwards, studying the stone altar, and casting a spell that made it glow blue for a moment. “And what this is supposed to be?”
“My altar.”
Father stared at him.
“I mean, my altar to use in worshipping the Great Serpent,” Harry said a little weakly, realizing that it had probably sounded like he meant to use the altar to worship himself. “The snake said I would know what to do.”
“If it is only a servant and not the Great Serpent itself, then it probably does think that you should speak to the Great Serpent and make the decisions.”
“But I don’t know how.”
Father stood considering the altar for a time. Then he nodded slowly. “I will show you how to speak to the Great Serpent, the way I did when I sacrificed the diadem to it. And then we will see what it wishes to say.”
*
Henry’s face was incredibly serious as the two of them walked over to the ritual circle that Lucius had once used to see the Horcruxes.
But Lucius wouldn’t have it any other way. He might have been forced to dedicate his son to the Great Serpent to save his life and identity as Henry Malfoy. But Henry would be the first Malfoy in generations who would actually worship the being—as he was the first Malfoy in decades to be born with Parseltongue—and he would have to make a lot of decisions that Lucius couldn’t make for him.
Only support, and do what he could.
Lucius squeezed Henry’s shoulder and stepped back as he approached the ritual circle. But Henry paused before he got there, turning to look back at Lucius.
“What is it, son?” Lucius asked, keeping his voice low. It seemed the prudent thing to do, as they stood in that ancient place that would soon be filled with magic more ancient still.
“Do you—do you think that I should give it a sacrifice now?”
“You already have,” Lucius said. “Your freedom, and your service.” As Henry flinched, he wished he had phrased it differently. “I would at least wait to see if it asks for anything else before you make the choice.”
Henry bit his lip and nodded, and turned to face the ritual circle again. Lucius didn’t think it was his imagination that it jumped and sparked with bright flames of blue and gold, half-formed, not formed yet.
“Um,” Henry said, and then he firmed his shoulders and took a step closer to the circle. “Hello. I wish to greet the Great Serpent.”
Those particular words were ones that Lucius had told him to use, and it had also been Lucius’s idea to put the altar that the snake in the Chamber of Green Stone had given Henry in the center of the circle. But Lucius hadn’t really known what to do beyond that, and he hadn’t anticipated what happened now.
The blue and gold flames sprang up and assumed the forms of serpents. All of them faced Henry and hissed at once, a rising and falling noise that seemed much louder than the one Lucius had heard when sacrificing the diadem.
Lucius flinched, but Harry didn’t. Instead, although his eyes were wide, he took a few more steps forwards, and a few more, and soon he was standing right at the edge of the circle, right in front of the bowing and writhing flames.
He said something in Parseltongue, perhaps the same words that he had used before, but perhaps different. Lucius gripped his wand and wished, fervently, for the first time, that he could understand the tongue of serpents.
The nearest snake, a great beast made of gold and blue flame with what looked like patterned scales down its sides, slithered close to the edge of the circle, and thus close to Henry. Henry bowed his head and spoke with it. Lucius did his best not to shift his weight or his grip on his wand too much.
Narcissa hadn’t exactly approved when he had told her what Henry had to do, but she had accepted that Henry had to serve the Great Serpent in return for remaining their son. She had been more vocal about Lucius’s choice to shut her out of the ritual room.
But for now, Lucius thought that only those who were Malfoys by blood and had a connection to the Great Serpent should be here. And Henry had had a talk with Draco that had resulted in the same thing.
Henry took another step up to the edge of the circle. And then he walked into it, and fell to one knee before the altar.
Lucius sucked in his breath, and held it.
*
It was strange, kneeling here. Harry had never really been religious. The Dursleys had sometimes talked about church, but they’d never taken him there—or gone themselves, that Harry could remember. And his actual family hadn’t really talked about it, either. Harry thought the most religious thing he had experienced was the ritual when the Black family magic had freed him from the Horcrux, and that wasn’t—well, it wasn’t worshipping anyone outside the family, really.
But now, he could feel the presence of something huge and wonderful all around him.
Wonderful. Maybe it was strange to apply that name to a being called the Great Serpent, but that was what he felt.
Harry lifted his head. He locked eyes with the snakes dancing in the golden and blue flames in front of him. When he reached out his hand, shaking but unafraid, one of them broke free of the fire and slithered over to him.
“Henry.”
Father sounded afraid. Upset. Harry looked over his shoulder to shoot his father a soft, reassuring smile, and then went back to looking at the little flame-snake in front of him. It danced back and forth with such excitement that he held out his hand further.
The snake coiled softly around his arm. It felt like putting his finger in a candle, but each time, with the pain he would have expected delayed. Harry stood up.
“You have come to wake us from our slumber.”
“Yes, you could say that. What do I need to do?”
“You need to pay attention to us.”
“That’s not going to be a problem with you, as cute as you are.”
The little snake focused on him and was still for a moment, as though it didn’t know what the word “cute” meant. Then it went back to dancing like a flame. “All of us. You must pay attention to all of us.”
“How do I do that? I don’t think I can see all of you at once.”
“Think about what you value most.”
That seemed odd, but Harry closed his eyes. He thought about his family. Draco, whose soul and magic Harry had shared when they fought off the diadem version of Riddle just a few weeks ago. Mother and Father, whose hugs had become warmer than ever since he’d almost been taken away from them again.
And being a Malfoy. Once, he had feared he would fade into that identity, the name and blood of someone who could treat house-elves poorly, and now all he wanted was to be one of them.
He lingered there for a moment, and then moved on, thinking of other things.
His friends. He of course had had arguments with Ron and Hermione, and he wouldn’t say they were back to the firm friendship they’d had had during his first few years of Hogwarts. He wouldn’t be trusting them with the secret of Horcruxes any time soon. But he still valued them.
Uncle Ted and Aunt Andromeda and Cousin Tonks. And Cousin Regulus, too, whose awkward smile had made Harry want to reassure him that he couldn’t do anything terrible compared to some of Harry’s other relatives.
Flying. Quidditch.
His magic. The ability to learn, the kind of thing he’d once thought he would never have when he was just the Dursleys’ freak nephew stuffed in a cupboard.
Standing up for people. It didn’t always work out, look at the way he’d freed Pettigrew, but it was still right to not abuse people and not kill them out of hand.
His ideals.
“That will do.”
Harry started and opened his eyes. The small flame-snake coiled around his arm had stopped dancing back and forth and was watching him with huge golden eyes that blazed and shimmered with extra fire. Harry gasped a little.
“You have shown that you are worthy of dedication to the Great Serpent, that you carry passion and fire in your soul.”
“I—that’s what it wants? Passion?”
“Of course. Those of your ancestors who served it have been the most passionate of the Malfoy family, the strongest of spirit and fire. Those without much flame could not muster the interest in anything but themselves.”
Harry supposed that made sense, but then again, he’d never thought of a god as being passionate before.
But he wasn’t used to thinking about gods, either.
“Turn to the altar and offer a dedication. Speak of yourself and what you value.”
Harry hesitated, then turned to the altar and began speaking in Parseltongue. He thought his speech was pretty much a rambling mess, but it included everything he’d been thinking about, even his caveats about his friends and how hard it had been for him to bond with his family at first.
The snake listened and then said, when he was done, “One more thing you must do.”
“What’s that?”
“You have several names you could go by within the circle. Choose the one the Great Serpent shall call you.”
Harry swallowed. His throat hurt. But at the same time, he knew that there was only one choice he wanted to make.
“Henry Malfoy.”
A wave of hissing rose from the snakes of flame that still danced around the edges of the circle. Harry felt as though all the hair on the back of his neck was standing up. But he knew the snakes weren’t being threatening. They were simply accepting the name he had chosen, heralding him.
The name he had chosen that marked him as a Malfoy as much as anything else.
“It is so,” the snake coiled around Harry’s arm said, and it sounded satisfied. “You will put me back on the altar now.”
Harry did, and watched as the flame sheeted around the altar, losing the form of a serpent, becoming a flicker of dancing fire. And then he felt as though his magic was moving around him, shifting within him, and something entered the circle that hadn’t been there before.
Harry bowed his head, shivering. It wasn’t even feigned. He couldn’t imagine how someone could encounter this force of power and glory—it felt like a sunrise that hadn’t yet happened—and not worship it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Father had fallen to one knee, too.
The power moved around him, gentle, testing. And then it blazed in his soul, and Harry buried his face in his hands, sobbing.
It felt like love.
There were too few people in his life who had ever loved him.
“I am here now. You will be cherished for your gifts, and I will help you defeat your enemies. I will help you make common cause with those you can trust, and tell you how to wield your magic in a way that will develop you into a great mage. I have watched over your family, but I have been helpless except when someone called upon me. But I am here, with you, now.”
Harry shivered and pressed as close to the invisible, warm power as he could when he couldn’t exactly see or touch it. The coils looped around him like the scales of a great snake.
He must—he wanted—
Harry reached out a blind hand, and opened his eyes to find himself staring at a great golden eye, many times larger than his head. He would have snatched his hand back, but it didn’t seem to mind his touch, even with his fingers resting right on its eyeball.
“I am here.”
Harry opened his mouth, honestly not sure what he was going to say, but what came out, in Parseltongue, was, “I’m here, too.”
The Great Serpent hissed in contentment and then reared high above him. That was the only way Harry could describe the movement of its magic and warmth. Then it poured itself through air and vanished.
The flames on the altar and around the ritual circle flickered out in the same moment, and Harry was kneeling, alone and loved and warm and bereft.
He stood up, slowly, hobbling as though he’d injured his leg—he almost felt as though he’d injured something, maybe his soul—and turned around.
Father was staring at him with shining eyes. After a moment, he stood up from his kneeling posture, and came forwards to put an arm around Harry’s shoulders.
“You are a wonder, my son.”
Harry leaned close, and let Father lead him back upstairs, to where Mother would fuss over him and Draco would ask questions.
But that was fine. Right now, he was fine being with his family.
The family he had chosen, as well as being the one made from blood.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Lucius/Narcissa, otherwise gen
Content Notes: AU (Harry is a Malfoy twin), angst, drama, violence, minor character death, Horcrux hunting
Rating: : PG-13
Summary: After the destruction of both the diadem and the locket, only one Horcrux is left. Henry Malfoy and his family search for it, while Harry also decides Sirius Black’s fate, Regulus Black and Kreacher find their own way, and Harry deals with the fact that he is now dedicated to the Great Serpent.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s also the final part of my “Like a Malfoy” series, following nine other stories (beginning with “How Like Hatred”) that I would suggest you read first.
Malfoys Like Snakes
“This part of the Manor has not been used since before my father was born.”
Harry couldn’t help his wide eyes as he watched Father unlock the door in front of them. Then again, Father was facing the door and probably wouldn’t notice.
The lock was shaped like a serpent, a silver one, coiled back on itself in such overlapping and twisting knots and patterns that Harry didn’t think he was making them all out, or whether there was only one snake. At least he could see the head, resting on top of the piled scales. Harry tried to take it as a good omen that this one had emeralds for eyes.
“In here, Henry.”
The name gave Harry a little pulse of warmth. It seemed so short a time ago that he had resented it, and now—
Now he wanted to be Henry Malfoy.
He stepped forwards, beside Father. The stairs that led down into the room were of polished black stone, so black that the sudden white light of the torches on the wall reflected from it with dizzying force. Harry was glad that Father was there to lean against, and also that the stairs had polished black handrails along the sides.
The steps led down into a vast space that was filling with more and more light as Father pointed his wand at the sconces on the walls. The floor down there looked a little strange, Harry thought. Then he realized that it was made all of one vast piece of stone, without seams or cracks, and gasped a little.
And the stone was as green as the emerald eyes of the lock, as green as his own eyes had once looked.
“Yes,” Father said, and smiled at him. “It’s overwhelming the first time, isn’t it?”
“Wait. How do you know what it looks like if it hasn’t been used for decades?”
Father laughed, a sound that seemed to wake strange echoes from the walls. “I said used, not looked at. I peered in here as a child whenever Father would let me.”
“Oh.”
Harry took a slow step forwards, to the edge of the top step. Father had said something dramatic would probably happen, and Harry knew that they needed to be here, but he was also pretty tired of dramatic things happening.
The torches flared with a new light when Harry reached the edge. The green color reminded Harry uncomfortably of the Killing Curse, but it was also the deep emerald color of the stone below.
“Why are they doing that?” Harry asked.
He had the impression that Father tried to answer, but his voice drowned beneath a long, shuddering hiss. Harry spun around, his eyes wide.
Part of the floor was moving.
Harry hadn’t realized it, but the patterns in the green stone, which rippled and formed darker streaks and swirls here and there, did look awfully like the patterns of scales.
He stared, eyes wide and enthralled, as the stone molded up, and up. The green revealed itself as a stretching serpent head, with fangs that were as green when it opened its jaws in a lazy yawn. The great head, which was shaped a little like a horse’s and reminded Harry of some pictures of sea serpents he’d seen, came to rest on the top step, less than a meter from him.
Harry shot Father a nervous glance. Father nodded, and Harry remembered what he had said. Something about how nothing that was part of the Manor could hurt a Malfoy?
Of course, rituals that went wrong in the ritual room or something like that could still hurt, but Harry was more reassured than he would have been.
He stepped forwards and extended his hand. The serpent didn’t move, so Harry was the one who had to touch it on a great eye-ridge that felt as if it were made of cool stone, and move his hand slowly back and forth.
The snake hissed softly in Parseltongue, “Chosen.”
Harry jumped. The snake didn’t move, though, and he knew that Father wouldn’t have been able to understand. He was looking at the snake with a slight frown, but no more than that. Harry swallowed. “Chosen? Why do you call me that?”
“At long last,” the snake hissed. “You have come back to the service of the Great Serpent that members of your blood abandoned long ago. And you speak the Sacred Tongue.”
Harry nodded slowly. It would make sense that some Malfoys had been able to speak Parseltongue because of their service to this—Great Serpent. God or being or spirit or whatever one would really call it. Father had been unclear on that.
No one since before Abraxas Malfoy had worshiped the Great Serpent, either.
“I don’t really know how to serve you. But the Great Serpent saved me, and I said that I would serve.”
“I am not the Great Serpent, child, only its mortal representative.” The snake eased its head a little back and then moved its throat as though bringing something up. Harry stepped back, a little unnerved, and afraid that he was about to be vomited on in a mess of stone dust or something. “But the Serpent did want its next servant to have this.”
Harry watched as the snake spat out a rolling, round, stone-shaped object on the top step. With a glance at Father for permission—Father seemed calm—Harry walked over and crouched beside it.
It was—
A stone. Gleaming grey, but with threads of the same dark green and black that worked through the stone snake’s scales. Harry studied it curiously, but he couldn’t see any special purpose to the stone, or carvings on it, either.
“What is this?”
“Your altar.”
Harry leaped up, staring wildly at the snake. It didn’t seem to notice that he was upset. It swayed gently back and forth, and then it turned and sank into the stone floor.
“Wait!” Harry called after it. “I don’t understand! I don’t know what I’m supposed to do or how I’m supposed to worship the Great Serpent!”
“You will find out.”
And the snake disappeared into the stone floor far below with little more than a ripple of the great body. Harry turned and stared helplessly at Father.
“Did it tell you what it thought you should do?” Father asked. He stepped forwards, studying the stone altar, and casting a spell that made it glow blue for a moment. “And what this is supposed to be?”
“My altar.”
Father stared at him.
“I mean, my altar to use in worshipping the Great Serpent,” Harry said a little weakly, realizing that it had probably sounded like he meant to use the altar to worship himself. “The snake said I would know what to do.”
“If it is only a servant and not the Great Serpent itself, then it probably does think that you should speak to the Great Serpent and make the decisions.”
“But I don’t know how.”
Father stood considering the altar for a time. Then he nodded slowly. “I will show you how to speak to the Great Serpent, the way I did when I sacrificed the diadem to it. And then we will see what it wishes to say.”
*
Henry’s face was incredibly serious as the two of them walked over to the ritual circle that Lucius had once used to see the Horcruxes.
But Lucius wouldn’t have it any other way. He might have been forced to dedicate his son to the Great Serpent to save his life and identity as Henry Malfoy. But Henry would be the first Malfoy in generations who would actually worship the being—as he was the first Malfoy in decades to be born with Parseltongue—and he would have to make a lot of decisions that Lucius couldn’t make for him.
Only support, and do what he could.
Lucius squeezed Henry’s shoulder and stepped back as he approached the ritual circle. But Henry paused before he got there, turning to look back at Lucius.
“What is it, son?” Lucius asked, keeping his voice low. It seemed the prudent thing to do, as they stood in that ancient place that would soon be filled with magic more ancient still.
“Do you—do you think that I should give it a sacrifice now?”
“You already have,” Lucius said. “Your freedom, and your service.” As Henry flinched, he wished he had phrased it differently. “I would at least wait to see if it asks for anything else before you make the choice.”
Henry bit his lip and nodded, and turned to face the ritual circle again. Lucius didn’t think it was his imagination that it jumped and sparked with bright flames of blue and gold, half-formed, not formed yet.
“Um,” Henry said, and then he firmed his shoulders and took a step closer to the circle. “Hello. I wish to greet the Great Serpent.”
Those particular words were ones that Lucius had told him to use, and it had also been Lucius’s idea to put the altar that the snake in the Chamber of Green Stone had given Henry in the center of the circle. But Lucius hadn’t really known what to do beyond that, and he hadn’t anticipated what happened now.
The blue and gold flames sprang up and assumed the forms of serpents. All of them faced Henry and hissed at once, a rising and falling noise that seemed much louder than the one Lucius had heard when sacrificing the diadem.
Lucius flinched, but Harry didn’t. Instead, although his eyes were wide, he took a few more steps forwards, and a few more, and soon he was standing right at the edge of the circle, right in front of the bowing and writhing flames.
He said something in Parseltongue, perhaps the same words that he had used before, but perhaps different. Lucius gripped his wand and wished, fervently, for the first time, that he could understand the tongue of serpents.
The nearest snake, a great beast made of gold and blue flame with what looked like patterned scales down its sides, slithered close to the edge of the circle, and thus close to Henry. Henry bowed his head and spoke with it. Lucius did his best not to shift his weight or his grip on his wand too much.
Narcissa hadn’t exactly approved when he had told her what Henry had to do, but she had accepted that Henry had to serve the Great Serpent in return for remaining their son. She had been more vocal about Lucius’s choice to shut her out of the ritual room.
But for now, Lucius thought that only those who were Malfoys by blood and had a connection to the Great Serpent should be here. And Henry had had a talk with Draco that had resulted in the same thing.
Henry took another step up to the edge of the circle. And then he walked into it, and fell to one knee before the altar.
Lucius sucked in his breath, and held it.
*
It was strange, kneeling here. Harry had never really been religious. The Dursleys had sometimes talked about church, but they’d never taken him there—or gone themselves, that Harry could remember. And his actual family hadn’t really talked about it, either. Harry thought the most religious thing he had experienced was the ritual when the Black family magic had freed him from the Horcrux, and that wasn’t—well, it wasn’t worshipping anyone outside the family, really.
But now, he could feel the presence of something huge and wonderful all around him.
Wonderful. Maybe it was strange to apply that name to a being called the Great Serpent, but that was what he felt.
Harry lifted his head. He locked eyes with the snakes dancing in the golden and blue flames in front of him. When he reached out his hand, shaking but unafraid, one of them broke free of the fire and slithered over to him.
“Henry.”
Father sounded afraid. Upset. Harry looked over his shoulder to shoot his father a soft, reassuring smile, and then went back to looking at the little flame-snake in front of him. It danced back and forth with such excitement that he held out his hand further.
The snake coiled softly around his arm. It felt like putting his finger in a candle, but each time, with the pain he would have expected delayed. Harry stood up.
“You have come to wake us from our slumber.”
“Yes, you could say that. What do I need to do?”
“You need to pay attention to us.”
“That’s not going to be a problem with you, as cute as you are.”
The little snake focused on him and was still for a moment, as though it didn’t know what the word “cute” meant. Then it went back to dancing like a flame. “All of us. You must pay attention to all of us.”
“How do I do that? I don’t think I can see all of you at once.”
“Think about what you value most.”
That seemed odd, but Harry closed his eyes. He thought about his family. Draco, whose soul and magic Harry had shared when they fought off the diadem version of Riddle just a few weeks ago. Mother and Father, whose hugs had become warmer than ever since he’d almost been taken away from them again.
And being a Malfoy. Once, he had feared he would fade into that identity, the name and blood of someone who could treat house-elves poorly, and now all he wanted was to be one of them.
He lingered there for a moment, and then moved on, thinking of other things.
His friends. He of course had had arguments with Ron and Hermione, and he wouldn’t say they were back to the firm friendship they’d had had during his first few years of Hogwarts. He wouldn’t be trusting them with the secret of Horcruxes any time soon. But he still valued them.
Uncle Ted and Aunt Andromeda and Cousin Tonks. And Cousin Regulus, too, whose awkward smile had made Harry want to reassure him that he couldn’t do anything terrible compared to some of Harry’s other relatives.
Flying. Quidditch.
His magic. The ability to learn, the kind of thing he’d once thought he would never have when he was just the Dursleys’ freak nephew stuffed in a cupboard.
Standing up for people. It didn’t always work out, look at the way he’d freed Pettigrew, but it was still right to not abuse people and not kill them out of hand.
His ideals.
“That will do.”
Harry started and opened his eyes. The small flame-snake coiled around his arm had stopped dancing back and forth and was watching him with huge golden eyes that blazed and shimmered with extra fire. Harry gasped a little.
“You have shown that you are worthy of dedication to the Great Serpent, that you carry passion and fire in your soul.”
“I—that’s what it wants? Passion?”
“Of course. Those of your ancestors who served it have been the most passionate of the Malfoy family, the strongest of spirit and fire. Those without much flame could not muster the interest in anything but themselves.”
Harry supposed that made sense, but then again, he’d never thought of a god as being passionate before.
But he wasn’t used to thinking about gods, either.
“Turn to the altar and offer a dedication. Speak of yourself and what you value.”
Harry hesitated, then turned to the altar and began speaking in Parseltongue. He thought his speech was pretty much a rambling mess, but it included everything he’d been thinking about, even his caveats about his friends and how hard it had been for him to bond with his family at first.
The snake listened and then said, when he was done, “One more thing you must do.”
“What’s that?”
“You have several names you could go by within the circle. Choose the one the Great Serpent shall call you.”
Harry swallowed. His throat hurt. But at the same time, he knew that there was only one choice he wanted to make.
“Henry Malfoy.”
A wave of hissing rose from the snakes of flame that still danced around the edges of the circle. Harry felt as though all the hair on the back of his neck was standing up. But he knew the snakes weren’t being threatening. They were simply accepting the name he had chosen, heralding him.
The name he had chosen that marked him as a Malfoy as much as anything else.
“It is so,” the snake coiled around Harry’s arm said, and it sounded satisfied. “You will put me back on the altar now.”
Harry did, and watched as the flame sheeted around the altar, losing the form of a serpent, becoming a flicker of dancing fire. And then he felt as though his magic was moving around him, shifting within him, and something entered the circle that hadn’t been there before.
Harry bowed his head, shivering. It wasn’t even feigned. He couldn’t imagine how someone could encounter this force of power and glory—it felt like a sunrise that hadn’t yet happened—and not worship it.
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Father had fallen to one knee, too.
The power moved around him, gentle, testing. And then it blazed in his soul, and Harry buried his face in his hands, sobbing.
It felt like love.
There were too few people in his life who had ever loved him.
“I am here now. You will be cherished for your gifts, and I will help you defeat your enemies. I will help you make common cause with those you can trust, and tell you how to wield your magic in a way that will develop you into a great mage. I have watched over your family, but I have been helpless except when someone called upon me. But I am here, with you, now.”
Harry shivered and pressed as close to the invisible, warm power as he could when he couldn’t exactly see or touch it. The coils looped around him like the scales of a great snake.
He must—he wanted—
Harry reached out a blind hand, and opened his eyes to find himself staring at a great golden eye, many times larger than his head. He would have snatched his hand back, but it didn’t seem to mind his touch, even with his fingers resting right on its eyeball.
“I am here.”
Harry opened his mouth, honestly not sure what he was going to say, but what came out, in Parseltongue, was, “I’m here, too.”
The Great Serpent hissed in contentment and then reared high above him. That was the only way Harry could describe the movement of its magic and warmth. Then it poured itself through air and vanished.
The flames on the altar and around the ritual circle flickered out in the same moment, and Harry was kneeling, alone and loved and warm and bereft.
He stood up, slowly, hobbling as though he’d injured his leg—he almost felt as though he’d injured something, maybe his soul—and turned around.
Father was staring at him with shining eyes. After a moment, he stood up from his kneeling posture, and came forwards to put an arm around Harry’s shoulders.
“You are a wonder, my son.”
Harry leaned close, and let Father lead him back upstairs, to where Mother would fuss over him and Draco would ask questions.
But that was fine. Right now, he was fine being with his family.
The family he had chosen, as well as being the one made from blood.
