lomonaaeren

Part Twenty-One.

Part One.

Title: Silver Shadow Snake (22/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairings: Gen other than background Lucius/Narcissa
Content Notes: For this part, mild angst
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Harry wasn’t sure when he first started noticing the odd doubleness of Professor Quirrell’s familiar, but he had no doubt it was there. And since no one else was doing anything about it, he thought it was probably up to him.
Author’s Notes: This is the beginning of a longer story arc, which will be updated every Saturday. You should read the other fics in the series first: Children of the Sun series.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Twenty-Two

“What do you want to do, though?” Draco was frowning as though he thought what Harry had asked for was hard to understand.

Harry stroked Golden’s neck and looked thoughtfully at Kali. She balanced lightly on Draco’s shoulder, as always, although she leaned forwards to get a better look at him and Golden. “Can you talk to her?” he asked Golden in Parseltongue.

Draco drew in his breath sharply, as he tended to do when he heard the snake language, but didn’t back away. Golden bobbed his head and leaned up, putting most of his upper body in Harry’s lap. He hissed at Kali in a slightly accented version of Parseltongue, or at least that was what it sounded like to Harry. “Can you understand me? Speaking with familiars in the past has sometimes been difficult for me.”

Kali hissed back, although her response was impossible for Harry to grasp, the “accent” that Golden had covering every word. Golden spoke shortly and Kali answered him, again. She kept giving Harry suspicious glances as she did. Harry had to grin.

Golden slumped back in Harry’s lap finally and said, “She says that she understands us, but she thinks it is a waste of time. Silver familiars are more powerful, and golden familiars are most powerful of all, and that is the way it stays.”

“So she won’t help us?”

“No, she will. She would do anything I ask. But she thinks it’s going to be useless, and she needs to make her opinion known.”

Kali hissed at them once more and then took wing and soared out of the library. Harry leaned back so he could watch her go, and he thought she was flying towards Ravenclaw Tower, but he wasn’t sure. Maybe she was going to talk with Hermione and Regina.

“Familiars can speak to each other,” Harry said, returning his attention to Draco. “And Golden—he doesn’t say much, but he approved when I started thinking that maybe they don’t believe in the hierarchy in the same way humans do.” He kept the fact that Kali apparently did to himself. Draco didn’t need to know his dragon was a prejudiced little thing.

“What’s going to happen if you can gather enough of them together?”

“A revolution.” Harry thought he had been honest with his friends about that before, but Draco flinched.

“What would happen after that, though? I mean, would I still have people respecting me? My parents always told me that of course anyone would respect a Malfoy, but they also say that only people with silver and gold familiars really matter, so—I don’t know.”

“You’ll matter to me,” Harry said fiercely, reaching across the table to grab Draco’s hand. “I can’t tell about other people. So much of what they do doesn’t make a whole lot of sense to me. But maybe that’s just because I didn’t grow up in the wizarding world.”

“So you don’t know for sure what would happen,” Draco said sharply.

“No. That’s what revolutions mean. But I know that people who have copper and tin familiars would have more respect. And maybe even people with bronze familiars.” Harry thought people with bronzes were sort of in the middle. Julian seemed happy enough, and his family, and Ron. But then, he hadn’t met all that many people since he came into the wizarding world, so he didn’t know.

And people like Narcissa Malfoy would despise them anyway.

Draco, oddly, calmed down after that. “Okay. As long as you’re admitting that you don’t know what would happen.”

“Not to people with silvers,” Harry admitted. “Not even to me and Golden. But I know that I don’t want people bowing to me and calling me a lord because of an accident that I happened to be born with.”

“Golden familiars are more powerful, though. They just are.”

“Does that make Dumbledore right, then? Should he be able to get away with anything because he’s powerful?”

Draco wriggled in place and glared at him. “You know the answer to that. Of course I don’t think Dumbledore should be able to get away with anything he likes.”

“Then we need to think about the rest of it, too. Whether people with tin and copper familiars belong at the bottom of the hierarchy, and whether there should be a bottom anyway. Whether people with silver familiars should be strutting around just because they’re at the top of the hierarchy most of the time. Whether people with golden familiars need to be called Lord and obeyed.”

“But if you—it’s what you did on the train. And since then. You’re using the fact that you have a golden familiar and we respect you to make us do what you want, and think about the things you’re saying.”

Harry grinned, while Golden swayed back and forth for a second next to him. “Yeah, I am.”

“But that’s—you can’t do that.” Draco sounded more perplexed than anything else, like he was slowly talking himself through it. “I mean, you can’t use people’s reverence for people with golden familiars against them. That’s just wrong.”

“I think it might be Slytherin,” Harry admitted. “Maybe I belong in more than one House. But I don’t care. As long as it works, that’s what I want to happen.”

Draco continued to glare at him as if this was some kind of personal betrayal. Then he sighed and said, “All right, so you already know that I’m going to follow you and do what you want. So even if it’s sneaky, I’ll help. And if Kali can’t convince other familiars to come talk to us, then we’ll find some other way.”

Harry frowned. “I never said that you had to be a loyal follower like that.”

“Well, then you can bugger off,” Draco said, and grinned at him. “Because I’m choosing to follow you like people with silver familiars follow people with golden ones, so we can stop the following someday in the future. I’m just doing what you’re doing.”

Harry scowled uncertainly at him.

“Get used to it,” Draco said happily.

*

“You will be sorry for what you’ve done when the Dark Lord returns, Severus.”

Severus surveyed Quirinus impassively. Or the man who used to be Quirinus. At this point, Severus had no way of telling how much of the man still remained. He could be lying about anything, and the fervent shine in his eyes could be the Dark Lord or it could be Quirinus desperately striving to escape his grasp. He couldn’t even see the Dark Lord’s familiar in the body of Quirinus’s the way Harry could.

It didn’t matter. He was here to gather information, and he didn’t need to do that by asking Quirinus’s permission.

Severus drew the vial from his robes slowly, having to admit to himself that he enjoyed the way Quirinus’s eyes fastened on it and then widened. Quirinus shook his head slowly, as though to clear some fluff from his brain, and then leaned forwards and fastened his gaze on Severus over the edge of the ward that contained him.

“You would not dare use that on me.”

“Why not?” Severus’s voice was gentler than he had known it would be. He wondered, for a moment, whether his oath to Harry was influencing him.

“Because—it would be illegal.”

Severus gave Quirinus a soft smile, for the first time grateful that the spirit of the Dark Lord inhabited his body. And it must be so. Quirinus had never been a Death Eater and would not have recognized the potion otherwise. Severus hadn’t brewed it since the war. “Only if someone could look for this potion because they knew it existed. The Death Eaters who remain in the Ministry’s service would not be so foolish.” Around his neck, Shadowstriker uttered a little hiss, approving of his logic.

“There will be—they’ll check—I’ll tell them!”

“I very strongly doubt that the Ministry will appear at all to listen to either Quirinus Quirrell or Lord Voldemort,” Severus said, and ignored the way the Dark Mark on his arm burned. He had to get used to saying the name if he was going to be around Harry. Harry would certainly expect him to. “Now, do hold still, and we can take this potion the pleasant way.”

Of course Quirinus flung himself away from the edge of the circular blue ward to the chair in the center, his rabbit cowering beside him. Severus sneered one more time, and slashed down with his wand, aiming at the vial.

The potion disappeared, and reappeared inside Quirinus’s throat, at the base of the esophagus. He had to swallow or choke, and instinct won out. He sagged back in his chair, staring at Severus with hatred.

Severus smiled back, slow and nasty. An intriguing property of the potion was that it could cross any ward. He had invested it with that particular quality at the Dark Lord’s behest.

It thrilled him, the part of him that had become a Death Eater, to know that he was now using that potion against the man who had wanted it to exist.

Quirinus started to feel the effects a few minutes later. His eyes drooped shut, and his familiar dropped into sleep like a stone at the same time. Severus nodded. That was the other main way in which this potion differed from Veritaserum. Sometimes a familiar could help a powerful wizard resist Veritaserum, simply because it had not also swallowed the potion. This took the familiar out of the equation.

Quirinus opened glazed eyes. It was his subconscious that answered when Severus posed the question, “How did you become possessed by the spirit of the Dark Lord?”

“I was traveling in Albania,” whispered Quirinus. “I wanted to seek out the remains of Lord Voldemort. I was foolish then. Young. I thought I would become a renowned wizard if I fought him. I found him, and fought him. I lost. He entered my body.”

Severus grimaced. He supposed he should have known that Quirinus had sought out the Dark Lord deliberately. It was otherwise far too much of a coincidence that the Dark Lord had managed to possess a Hogwarts teacher. “Explain to me how Lord Voldemort survived being disembodied.”

“He—”

Quirinus abruptly spasmed. His mouth was open, but he was making no sound. His hands flew up and then down again, hitting the sides of the chair rapidly. His feet were drumming on the floor. There was a clenching and rippling in the muscles of his stomach as if he was about to throw up.

Severus narrowed his eyes. It was true that he’d never tried the Sleeping Truth Potion on someone possessed. Perhaps it was a mistake.

But finally Quirinus took a deep breath, and whispered, “He has objects that tie him to this world. That keep his soul from moving on. His familiar is part of it.”

Severus considered that. Familiars were widely believed to be an extension of a wizard’s soul, so perhaps Voldemort had used soul-magic. That would explain why his familiar had been disembodied at the same time and come with him, although not how he had done it.

But he doubted he would be able to get much more than that out of Quirinus. Voldemort would fight to protect the knowledge. And his potion could only access Quirinus’s mind and what he knew to be true, not the possessing spirit, and only put Alanna to sleep, not Nagini, Voldemort’s silver serpent. It was entirely possible that Voldemort had never told Quirinus the mechanics of his survival.

Severus asked a few more questions, to learn exactly where in Albania the Dark Lord had been and how long he had possessed Quirinus, and then moved on to what his plan had been in Hogwarts. “What was he looking for here?”

“The Philosopher’s Stone. Albus was hiding it here, we heard. He thought it could return him to his body.”

Severus widened his eyes. The thought shook him enough that Shadowstriker hissed soothingly and touched his narrow head to Severus’s cheek. Severus petted him. while staring at the slumped Quirinus in deep thought.

Albus had been hiding the Stone here? Of course it was possible, since he was a close friend of Flamel and might have asked him to lend it out. But to put it in a school full of children, and lure Voldemort here on purpose, and make it so that he might have been able to take it—

Why?

Severus asked that question, but received only the empty, “I do not know,” which he thought was true.

Other questions about the process that Voldemort had intended to use the Stone for or how long Quirinus thought he could survive received the same answer. Severus finally sighed and cast the spell that would send Quirinus and Alanna into true sleep, then walked away from the warded circle. There were questions that they would have no answer to unless they managed to trap the Dark Lord’s spirit as it fled Quirinus’s body when the ritual was complete and question it later.

And Severus was reluctant to suggest any modifications to the possession ritual, which would be complex enough as it was. Perhaps best to let the spirit go and strengthen their defenses in the future.

And begin doing research on rituals, spells, and objects that would corrupt a familiar.