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Chapter Thirty—Snake

"I don't like this. It's dangerous."

Harry had to chuckle as he hugged Sirius. "When has anything since my third year been safe? Or even before that? Most schoolboys don't go around killing basilisks and defeating their enemies in the backs of professors' heads."

"But this is different." Sirius's voice was thick as he gathered Harry in his arms. He still stooped as a result of the torture Voldemort had inflicted on him, and probably always would, but his hands were strong again, and the way he held Harry made him relax almost against his will. "This time, your friends are the ones who want you to go through it. And I don't know if it's going to work."

"We don't really have another choice," Harry said gently. "Unless I wanted to try to die to get rid of the Horcrux—"

"You try that, and I'll put you in your room for the rest of your life and stand guard on the door." Sirius's voice was thick again, but this time with the sharpness of a bark, as though he were about to transform.

"No. I don't want that. And I don't want to die." Harry leaned his head on Sirius's shoulder and let his breath out slowly. "But, Sirius, you have to promise me something."

Sirius grumbled inaudibly.

"Once the process starts, it's going to be delicate," Harry murmured. "Draco said it would be complicated even if they understood the whole theory and had practiced it before, but they don't, and they don't know how much time they might have to correct any errors that crop up. It'll be worse if they're distracted."

He fell silent, hoping that Sirius would understand what he was asking for without Harry having to say it.

"You want me to promise not to interfere." Sirius's voice was dry.

Harry leaned back and looked up at him. "Yeah."

Sirius shook his head. He was smiling, but his eyes were dark, in the way that Harry had seen them when he was chasing Pettigrew. "How can I promise that? You're my godson, the only tie I have left to two of my best friends. And I love you for yourself, too," he added quickly, as if he thought Harry might doubt that. "I can't just stand back and let two Slytherins do whatever they want to you."

"Snape isn't involved in this," Harry said. "He'll be providing an outside safeguard on the spells, and that's really all. Hermione is, though. She isn't Slytherin, and she's always cared for me. She was loyal enough, along with Ron, to stay in Hogwarts and try to reach the basilisk venom even when they didn't doubt Dumbledore the way I did. How can you distrust her?"

"She could still overreach herself because she's too confident," Sirius said. "Lily did that sometimes."

"Someday you'll have to tell me more stories about my parents," Harry said, and then stepped back and put his hands on Sirius's shoulders. "We'd find a better solution if we had more time. But we don't, especially not if we want to stop Voldemort from attacking Hogwarts. Promise me that you won't interfere if they let you be there, Sirius. Really, you have to, or I'll tell them not to let you in the lab."

Sirius stared into his eyes, then stood up and turned his back, folding his arms. Harry waited. Sirius was more mature now than he seemed sometimes. Dealing with pain and physical disability had forced him to grow up a little, and being around Snape and Draco and seeing that they didn't betray Harry had also changed him.

Finally, Sirius turned around with a sigh that seemed about to split him in half and a roll of his eyes that made them look as if they'd drop out of his head. "All right," he said. "But only because you were the one to ask me, and not Malfoy or Snivellus."

Harry glared at him. "Don't call Snape that."

Their gazes locked until Sirius dropped his eyes and nodded. "All right."

Harry hugged him again, and relaxed as he felt Sirius embrace him back. He wouldn't have admitted it to anyone, because Sirius would only be too proud and Draco and Snape would have been insulted, but he was glad that Sirius had promised. Harry wanted everyone there he possibly could.

Which probably means Mrs. Malfoy has to watch, too.

But Harry was resigned even to that. After all, Mrs. Malfoy probably loved Draco even more than Sirius loved him. Of course she would want to take a similar position to Snape and watch for spells or procedures going wrong.

*

Draco took a deep breath and laid the Elder Wand on the table in front of him. It sparked and buzzed once, and then settled into a listening silence. Draco crouched down so he was eye-to-eye with it, assuming that there was an eye located in either end of the Wand. The silence intensified. Draco was sure it was listening, however much it probably despised him for forcing it to do that at the moment.

"If you do something to me whilst you fight the Horcrux," Draco said calmly, "if you try to sabotage us, or push Harry's soul out of his body to wither and die, or let the bit of the Dark Lord take him over, then I'll sever the bond between us."

The Elder Wand wavered one inch, and then promptly settled down again. Draco imagined he could hear it cursing itself for being so stupid as to show a reaction. He grinned at it, and stared walking in a circle.

"I can find the weak point in the bond again, now that I've found it once," he said. "Imagine that. Imagine me bearing down with pressure because you've displeased me. Imagine yourself existing without an owner, and without another one likely to take you up, because no one has conquered me. Imagine your long, long existence coming to an end."

The Wand spun in a complete circle and came back resting a little off-center. Draco paused and waited. He wanted more acknowledgment than that, some sign that the Wand understood his threat and would obey him.

He could hear Granger's shrill voice if he concentrated. Are you mad, Malfoy? If you threaten it, then it just has all the more reason to turn on you!

Draco, though, was gambling that the Elder Wand's psychology wasn't like that. Without the reminder, it certainly would have tried to betray him. It would have decided that he'd forgotten about the weak point in the bond, too caught up in the discovery about switching souls, and then it would have acted when he was most vulnerable, in the midst of the carousel process.

Now, it knew that he remembered. It knew that he could, at the very least, say he would leave it behind, even if it was proud enough of its appeal to suspect that wasn't true. And it could count itself duly warned.

Yes, it might still try something. But in that case, Draco would simply cut the bond and rely on another possible defense. That defense was a wild gamble and almost certainly wouldn't work, which was why Draco wanted the Wand's cooperation. But he would not leave himself at the mercy of a piece of wood, no matter how powerful. He intended to be the master, not the slave.

After several moments, the Wand seemed to realize what he wanted. A low, sullen buzz sounded from it.

"Make the same sound if you believe me," Draco whispered.

More silence. Then the exact same buzz.

Draco smiled, and snatched up the Wand. It trembled as if it wanted to burn him, but it didn't. Draco tucked the Wand into his waistband and left the room to revise the incantations for the Switching Charms one more time.

Twelve hours until we do this.

*

Harry smiled reassuringly at Ron as they walked into the room Draco and Hermione had chosen for this, the attic of Grimmauld Place. "Doing this has to hurt less than dying because Voldemort has a piece of his soul in me," he said.

Ron muttered something under his breath that sounded like "bloody cheerfulness." Harry snorted. If he couldn't see that both Harry's cheerfulness and Hermione's shrill refusal to discuss a possible failure were attempts to make themselves believe this would work, then he wasn't very astute at psychology.

But I reckon he never was, Harry had to admit, as Ron took his place along the wall with Sirius, Snape, and Mrs. Malfoy. Ron's strengths lay elsewhere.

Draco stood by a small table on which a book lay, holding the Elder Wand. He held himself still, but Harry knew him well enough to see the tension in that stillness. Draco read the words in the book to himself, mouthing them but with no sound, his eyes shadowed and his mind far distant from the room.

Hermione had her own table, her own book, and a vial of basilisk venom in front of her. From conversations he'd overheard, Harry knew Draco had disagreed with her about having that available, but she'd chosen to anyway, and that was the way it was in the end. Draco still gave her quick disgusted glances from time to time. Hermione didn't notice, since her head was almost literally buried in her book. If she was reading the words aloud to herself, then Harry couldn't see it.

Harry took his place between them, in a tightly warded circle. He didn't recognize the runes and Arithmancy equations drawn on the floor. He didn't think he was meant to. He looked out the window on the opposite wall for a moment, absorbing the sunlight there.

It might be the last time he ever saw it.

Harry shook his head. I shouldn't think like that. I should have more faith in Draco and Hermione than I do.

But I'm trusting them with my life and my soul. Maybe having faith in them beyond that is a bit much.

At last Hermione shut her book with a hard snap. Draco followed suit a moment later .Then they came together between the tables, and Draco gave Harry a small, encouraging nod. Harry smiled back. He hoped none of his doubt showed in that smile. I'm just facing reality in acknowledging they could fail, that's all.

From the corner of his eye, he could see Sirius twitch as if he wanted to reach forwards and stop the whole business. Narcissa had no expression on her face whatsoever; the traces of suffering Harry had seen the other night were gone as if they'd never been there. Snape had his eyes narrowed and continually flickering back and forth between Draco and Hermione. Of any of the spectators, he was probably the most capable of understanding the magical theory they were using.

Ron stood there with a bit of nervousness on his face, but a much steadier gaze than anyone else. Of course, he trusts Hermione absolutely.

Draco began to chant the first of several Switching Charms. Hermione followed him with words that were more familiar to Harry, since he'd been the one to use Fiendfyre on the tiara and the Resurrection Stone. The runes inscribed around the sides of the circle flared with golden light. A moment later, the equations glowed red.

Draco and Hermione's voices soared higher. Harry wanted to keep his eyes open, to smile at Draco and show he was confident, but he felt an irresistible temptation to close them. So he did, and breathed in silence for a few minutes, looking at the insides of his eyelids.

A low, snarling sound reverberated through him. Harry started. It sounded like some old and terrible beast waking up.

And then pain ran through him in a liquid river of fire, worse than the headache Snape had inflicted on him when he ripped Harry's memories from him during their first Occlumency session, which until then had been Harry's standard of agony. He screamed, and slumped to the floor—

There was carpet beneath him that didn't shine with the heat and light of the runes and the equations. There was a wand in his hand.

And his head felt lighter, in a way he couldn't explain, as if a weight bound to it since he was born had dropped off. He blinked and raised a hand to touch his brow, pausing when he saw the fingers were longer and paler and slimmer than the ones that he recognized as his own, not crisscrossed with as many dirt or calluses.

They did it. They really did it.

He looked up in wonder and saw his own body in front of him. His face was squinted up, his scar standing out, an angry red, and his eyes shut. Draco clutched at his hair and made a soft moaning noise. Harry raised the wand he held instinctively, and then realized that it had no magical force inside it; he might as well as have been clutching an ordinary plank.

Of course. Draco took the essence of the Elder Wand with him when he switched into my body.

"Draco," he said, and struggled not to be distracted by the fact that his voice didn't sound like his own. "Are you all right?"

Slowly, Draco fought a pair of green eyes open. He was grimacing, but he made some effort to smile when he caught Harry's gaze.

"Perfectly all right," he croaked. "We—did it once, and now we're about to do it again." He dropped his voice into a soothing whisper. "It'll hurt every time we switch, because the Horcrux is desperate to keep hold of you. But you'll have to try and keep from speaking, all right? It distracts me."

Harry heard Hermione's frantic chanting come from the side, and saw the red and golden light of the runes and equations taking on the harsher glow of Fiendfyre. He thought about what would happen if Draco got distracted, about the way he might dissolve into ashes as the tiara and the Resurrection Stone had, and swallowed. Then he nodded.

"Good!" Draco used Harry's voice to speak the incantation of the next Switching Charm, and Harry shut his eyes.

He screamed in spite of himself as the spell rotated him back into his own body. This time, the pain seemed to course up from his feet rather than downwards from his head, but it was still there, and he didn't think he would ever get used to it. It was too sudden, too violent.

The snarl was audible this time, and Harry thought he heard a faint, muffled voice saying, I have lived in your head for sixteen years, and I am to give up my best chance to hold onto your soul? I think not.

A sudden fact occurred to Harry, who blinked. They were performing this ritual on the day that Draco and Hermione had finally felt capable of trusting their magic, but it was also Halloween, sixteen years to the day that he had destroyed Voldemort's original body and received the shard of his soul.

Draco shouted the next incantation, and Harry writhed and shrieked as his soul was again torn from the grasp of something that felt like hooks sunk in his bone and spirit. But he did his best not to speak when he found himself in Draco's body again, although he was shaking with reaction this time, and nearly dropped the wand he held.

Screams don't seem to distract him. Words, he said.

Which is good, because I don't think I could have kept silent even if I wanted to.

*

Severus stood back, watching the process narrowly, and holding his wand ready to restrain Black if the mutt did something idiotic. For the moment, he only watched himself, and muttered, and grasped at the air with clenched hands, but Black's idiocy had a trick of rapid evolution. Severus considered himself more than usually virtuous because he had refrained from taunts so far.

And perhaps I did that because Harry asked me to. But still, I am sure the virtue is on my side, and not on his.

Then he began to sense something else. That was incredible, given the dense hum of various forms of combined magic in the air, but he had always been good at growing used to spells relatively quickly and looking beyond them. It had made him invaluable to the Dark Lord, who had sometimes posted him on the outskirts of a raid to detect the approach of Aurors.

Severus turned in a slow circle, making sure to choose moments when neither Draco nor Granger was looking at him. The last thing he wanted was to shoot an unexpected shadow or flicker across their vision. Draco had emphasized the delicate nature of the process quite enough for Severus, who had known some potions that were as delicate.

And yes, there it was. Outside the house, a gathering, growing cloud of Dark magic drew nearer and nearer. It spat and sang like a storm, and Severus could feel the leap of individual bolts of lightning if he concentrated.

Given the date, he might have dismissed it as the buildup of belief from the Muggles, who created similar clouds on Easter and Christmas, but for that Dark edge. Not even Halloween was enough to excuse how malevolent this felt.

The Dark Lord might.

Severus moved back step by step until he found himself next to Narcissa. She was the only one in the room he could trust at the moment. Draco, Harry, and Granger were rather involved, Black was incompetent to do things the quiet way, and Weasley, though he could be called upon in a crisis, was too immature still in magic and instincts. But Narcissa turned to him with quiet slowness, clearly responding to him whilst doing her part to avoid distracting the participants in the ritual.

"I believe the Dark Lord may have learned of this sanctuary," Severus breathed against her neck. "If he tries to enter the room, we must be prepared to repel him."

Narcissa's eyebrows rose, but she didn't waste their time asking how that could have been possible, or worrying about the outcome. She lifted her wand instead, and stood ready. Severus started to turn to Black and Weasley; he could not trust them as much, but he could, perhaps, send them out of the room to weave wards. He was unsure how the wards would interact with the magic that Granger and Draco were employing if they remained in the room.

And then the wards on the outside of the building trembled in a way that let Severus know his parchment owl from Pettigrew had arrived. He narrowed his eyes. Could the magical storm simply be the Dark Lord's anger at learning of his servant's betrayal? He may not yet know where we are, unless he traced the owl—

The bird soared into the room.

Attached to it, and hanging grimly on for dear life, was a shrunken rat, with a shrunken Nagini wrapped about the bird's body—

And the Dark Lord soared in directly behind, his body wavering on the air like a stream of smoke, his mouth open in crazed laughter.

Severus had one moment to regret giving Pettigrew a way to breach the wards around Grimmauld Place and find him, and then the Dark Lord had settled to the floor and the clash of spells was deafening.

*

Draco knew something was wrong as soon as he opened his eyes in his body the next time. When he was Harry, he concentrated too intently on the Switching Charms and the strange sensation of burning salt and fire—the Elder Wand fighting with the Horcrux—to let himself be distracted. He had known it would have to be that way from the beginning. There were so many distractions in Harry's body, so many things he would let himself explore if he had the time.

But now…

When he looked over his shoulder, the Dark Lord was there, standing with his arms folded and a slight, superior smile on his face, whilst Black fought with a pudgy man who had to be Pettigrew and his mother faced off against a giant snake. Professor Snape and Weasley—Weasley's face was an awful white—circled the Dark Lord, trying to get at an adequate crack in his defenses, or a crack.

Harry screamed. Draco gave him a quick glance, but saw him too consumed by the pain he was dealing with to notice what was happening behind them. But Granger squealed at that moment, and Draco saw the Fiendfyre that was tightening in a ring around Harry waver. For a moment, leaping chimeras appeared in it, as if it would strike out at them.

"Granger!" Draco snapped, hurling all the cold authority into his voice that Lucius had once tried to command when dealing with his son.

She turned to look at him, tears streaking down her face, and Draco felt himself regret what he was about to do. But he had no choice.

"We have to keep going," he said. "Do you understand? No matter what you see outside the circle or who dies, we have to keep going." He spoke as quickly as he could and still give her some chance to understand him; Harry's scar had an evil red glow that he didn't like at all. The Horcrux was probably making some stronger attempt to gain control of him. "I can't do this without you, Granger."

Granger's gaze flickered wildly to her boyfriend. The Dark Lord made a casual gesture, and a long, bloody wound opened down Weasley's shoulder. Draco winced. His father had made him learn the Flaying Curse. Draco never wanted to use it.

"But—" Granger whispered.

"We have to," Draco hissed to her. "Otherwise, the Horcrux will still live in Harry, and nothing will make any difference, even if we let Harry out of the circle and he tries to fight him."

He saw the moment when Gryffindor courage, a colder and harder kind than was common, made the decision for Granger. She nodded once and faced the circle again, her voice rising in the Fiendfyre incantation. Weasley called her name in a hopeless, sobbing voice.

Granger flinched, but kept on.

Draco nodded to her, a greater commendation than she would ever know, and turned back to finish his own task.

*

Severus knew they were going to die.

It was a dull knowledge, like lead, and as heavy in his belly. The Dark Lord had hardly to use his magic. It was all around them, like the great storm that Severus had sensed approaching, and that alone did its part to crush their spirits.

Weasley was brave, but all the skin on his arms and half his chest had already been lost to the Flaying Curse. Severus had tried to defend him, but would have paid with his wand hand if he'd persisted. And so he made the decision that Weasley could be sacrificed, but Draco and Harry and Granger could not.

The Dark Lord's gaze was heaviest on him. "Severus," he whispered. There might have been no one else in the room, so idle were the gestures that condemned Weasley to the Flaying Curse. Weasley screamed, and a splash of warm blood landed on Severus's side, but he did not take his attention from his own Shield Charms. The Dark Lord laughed approvingly. "A good show, my old friend. I shall enjoy killing you."

And then there was the sound of glass breaking, and a loud shriek, and an equally loud, tormented hiss. Severus spun around.

Narcissa lay on the ground, bleeding from a long slash down her neck. Severus understood, and grieved. Nagini's bite had got through her defenses, and though he had a sort of antivenin, it was down in his potions lab. He had armed no one in the room with it, believing that they would not face the snake until later.

But scattered around Nagini were shattered pieces of a potions vial, and the snake was writhing across the floor in random, uncoordinated patterns, uttering what Severus could only assume were shrieks in Parseltongue.

He understood when he glanced back at the tableau of Granger, Harry, and Draco, and saw what was missing. In her last act of defiance, Narcissa had Summoned the vial of basilisk venom that Granger had laid aside on the table and cracked it over Nagini's head. The snake, the last Horcrux, was dying.

Even as Severus watched, she slumped over and lay still. The Dark Lord simply stared, as paralyzed with shock as anyone else.

Narcissa closed her eyes and ceased breathing in much the same moment.

And a dark-glittering shard of soul rose from the snake's body and darted straight for Black, who was obliviously engaged in combat with Pettigrew, and did not see it coming.