Draco chapter, and run-up to the battle.
Chapter Twenty-Eight: Walk These RoadsDraco was behind Harry, so he couldn't see his expression as he read the words scribed into the stone. But he saw the walls of the corridor change to ice, and he certainly felt it when Harry's rising magic made him black out.
Luckily, it was only for a few moments, and when he woke up and scrambled to his feet, Professor McGonagall was obstructing Harry's passage down the corridor. "No, Harry," she said firmly, one hand on his shoulder. Draco could see that her face was pale, but she didn't back down. "I must know where you are going."
"He's going to rescue his brother, Professor," Draco said, forcing his voice into a drawl. He slipped one hand into his pocket, to feel the warm glass of his bottle and reassure himself that his Harry was still there, somewhere under the cold rage he'd grown. "And I'm going to help him. Now, please step out of the way."
McGonagall whipped around and stared at him. Draco raised his eyebrows. She was more frazzled than he had thought, if the strands of gray hair escaping from her bun were any indication. That settled him.
"Mr. Malfoy, I certainly cannot let two students go into danger—" she began primly.
"Then you'll have to stop me."
Draco closed his eyes and fought back the headache that wanted to overcome him as Harry turned his attention to Professor McGonagall. Harry was angry, and it was an anger beyond anything that Draco had seen in him before. The ice on the corridor walls was spreading, swarming over the stone in delicate tendrils of frost and probing at the ceiling.
"Mr. Potter," said McGonagall. She didn't sound afraid, but she was a Gryffindor, wasn't she? Draco knew they didn't know when to turn tail and run, when it was sensible for their own safety. "I will not let two more students put their lives in danger."
"Tom Riddle has my brother."
Draco risked a glance at Harry's face, and then wished he hadn't. Harry's face and mouth were set in grim lines, but from his eyes, he was screaming steadily, and simply not letting the sound out.
"That does not mean you need to risk your life, Mr. Potter," said McGonagall. She folded her arms.
Interfering old cat, Draco thought. He wished it had been Professor Snape who had found them. He would have understood Harry's intense need to go hunting his brother, at least. He had shared Harry's mind.
As had Draco, and he understood that Harry was not going to be turned aside now. The best thing he could do was keep quiet and go along for the rescue mission, so that Harry had at least one person there who understood him, one who could not be possessed and turned against him. Otherwise, Draco knew, he would go to wherever Riddle had taken his brother—most likely the Chamber of Secrets—alone. And Draco was not going to let that happen.
"It does," said Harry. He was speaking through gritted teeth now, as though he had a headache of his own, and his snake stirred on his arm, sticking her head through the end of his sleeve. "I am the best person to rescue him, for reasons I can't take the time to explain to you."
"Headmaster Dumbledore—" McGonagall began.
Harry laughed. The sound was eerie to Draco, utterly flat and cold. It sounded more than a little like the laughter he'd heard Tom Riddle give, during the battle when Harry fought against him and Draco hovered in the shadows, permitted to watch but not help. He edged closer to Harry. It had nearly driven him mad last time, not being able to help. He clutched at the bottle, and felt the lights shift and press against his palms.
"The Headmaster made decisions you knew about, Professor," said Harry. "And you know what he would say if you went to him. He might agree to help—but he would never go back on those choices. And it's because of those choices that I have to go after Connor."
Draco blinked. He blames Dumbledore for this? I never saw that when I was in his mind. Is this a recent thing? Why didn't he tell me? Where did he learn it? Seething curiosity filled him, and somewhat helped to drive back the pain of the headache.
McGonagall paled, proof that she knew what Harry was talking about. Her eyes closed, and she stood as if debating with herself. Draco scowled at her and then at Harry. We will have things to talk about when we're done fighting Tom Riddle, Harry, specifically about why you're able to trust Gryffindor Heads of House who would stop you from doing what you need to. He edged closer to Harry again, this time standing at his right shoulder, close enough to feel the breaths Harry was drawing in and the very slight cold aura he was putting out. The ice had reached the ceiling now. Draco touched Harry's shoulder, expecting it to be cold, too, and then flinched. His skin felt as if he had a fever.
And it grew worse the longer Professor McGonagall dithered about whether or not she should stop them.
Hurry up, Draco thought in her direction. Deny us and let Harry hurt you, or stand aside and let him do what he has to. But don't do this. Can't you see that you're hurting him?
McGonagall started as if she'd heard his thoughts, and for a moment looked straight at him. Draco smirked as he met her eyes. That made her frown, and she turned back to Harry.
"I will wait an hour before I go to the Headmaster," she said quietly. "That is all the time I can give you."
"Brilliant," said Harry, in a voice that made Draco wince as it deprived the word of every meaning, and then turned and went to the Slytherin dungeons. Draco followed him, glancing back now and then at the Gryffindor Head of House. She still had a frown plastered on her face, but she didn't seem as if she would renege on her word. Gryffindors didn't, usually.
Draco glanced ahead at Harry's straight back and determined stride, and for a moment wondered if he should insist on stopping to find Professor Snape.
Then he shook his head. No. Harry has to go ahead and do this, and it will hurt him more if I hold him back. Go alone for the ride now, Draco. At least you'll be there when the world explodes.
Once they were back in the Slytherin dorms—which were empty, luckily, as everyone had already gone to dinner—Harry moved quickly. He slipped over to the trunk at the foot of his bed and opened it, pulling out a black armband that made Draco blink. He saw the silver serpent on it as Harry turned it over, though, and smiled slightly. It was a good weapon to take into a Chamber where he might have to battle a basilisk.
Thinking that, Draco searched to the very bottom of his trunk for what he needed, and had just found it when he realized that Harry was walking out of the room.
"Harry!" he cried, standing up.
Harry glanced back at him, and Draco saw eyes like shuttered windows. "What?"
"I'm coming with you," Draco said.
Harry said nothing for a moment, but the air around him turned cold enough that Draco could see his breath the next time he spoke. "No," he said quietly. "I won't risk your life. You're staying here. You can go and tell Professor Snape what's happening. In fact, I would prefer if he knew before the Headmaster."
It probably would be a good idea, Draco thought, but he knew someone else would have to enact it. "No," he said. He removed the bottle from his pocket and placed it gently on the table next to his bed. He didn't want to risk it getting broken. He turned back to Harry. "I'm coming with you," he repeated.
Harry lowered his head slightly, and Draco felt the pain in his brow spike as Harry called his power. When Harry next spoke, he once again sounded more like Tom Riddle than himself.
"I could knock you out and leave you helpless on the floor, Draco. I could hit you with a spell that wouldn't let you remember that any of this happened. I could cast Imperio on you and make you go at once to Snape and say whatever I wanted. Given all that, why are you still insistent on standing up to me?"
Draco looked at the bottle. There was no trace of red, which showed Harry's anger with him. Purple and green danced in a fierce mix that made the glass look like a sky just before a storm.
"Because you wouldn't really do any of those things to me," he said, and turned back to Harry. "I trust you."
Harry closed his eyes. "I should never have given you that bloody thing," he muttered, repeating a frequent lament.
Draco waited.
"I have to do this alone," Harry said softly. "You know what I am, Draco, what I was trained to be. I have to go into the Chamber and rescue Connor, and I fully expect that I may die. There's nothing that says anyone else has to come along and die with me. Why would you want to?"
"Because my loyalty is to you," said Draco. "Not to Connor, or Dumbledore, or whatever fucked-up ideas your family may have had." He was surprised to find that he was shaking, and tried to defuse the tense emotion that filled him by holding up the object that he had retrieved from the bottom of the trunk. "And because I'm the only one here with a really functioning brain."
Harry blinked at the mirror. "What—"
"I felt you think that the snake was a basilisk," said Draco calmly. "And a mirror is, if not a very effective weapon against a basilisk, at least better than marching in empty-handed."
Harry's eyes turned frighteningly blank again, and he made a gesture that could have indicated his magic, or his snake, or the black circlet he'd slipped around his right arm. "I'm hardly going in there empty-handed." He reached for the mirror. "But I could take that. Thank you for identifying it."
"And you are carrying too many things already," said Draco, slipping the mirror into its cloth and the cloth into his pocket. "I'll just hold this for you."
Harry stared at him for a long, long moment. Then he shook his head and whispered, "Why?"
Draco snorted. "Do you really want to have this out now, when Riddle is doing Merlin knows what to your brother?"
He was sorry for what he'd said a moment later, as Harry sucked in a breath and closed his eyes, gripping the sides of his head. Then he managed to open watering eyes and focus on Draco. "I think we have to. I don't want to hurt you, and I don't want to let you come with me, either. Please, Draco. I have to know. You say that your loyalty is to me. You've defied your father and manipulated him for me. You refused to give up our friendship even when I made it clear that I thought you would. Why?"
Draco swallowed. His hands were shaking. It didn't help that his own truest answer sounded inane, even to him.
"Because you're Harry," he said. "You're you. That's all I really know, Harry. I like you and I'm loyal to you, and if you don't tie me up or Obliviate me or Apparate away from me right now, then I'm coming with you."
Harry closed his eyes. Draco stood in silence for a long moment, unsure what his response would be. He could almost feel the pressure in his head urging Harry's steps forward along the road to the Chamber. If he chose to walk that road alone, despite all Draco's impassioned pleas, there was really nothing Draco could do to stop him.
And he didn't want to stop him, if Harry made the decision to go alone, he thought. That was the difference between him and someone like Professor McGonagall—or maybe Dumbledore, if Harry had really learned something disturbing about the Headmaster. He trusted Harry. He trusted him to make the right decision. He wasn't afraid of his power except in an abstract sense. He didn't think Harry had to be chained up and coerced to walk the right road. Whatever road he chose to walk was, by definition, the right one.
And I am such a child, to be standing here and thinking such wide-eyed Gryffindor thoughts.
They were the truth, though. And Draco's parents had always taught him never to lie to himself. At least he knew he had the wide-eyed Gryffindor thoughts, and could put them to use instead of avoiding them.
"Thank you."
Draco opened his eyes, and saw Harry stretching out his hand towards him. He hurried forward to clasp it, before Harry could change his mind, and leaned his head on Harry's shoulder, trying not to show how profoundly relieved he was that Harry hadn't simply taken up on his offer and forced him to stay here somehow. He couldn't even imagine Harry's torment, lingering up here while Connor was in danger, but he would have felt a faint shadow of it, if he'd had to stay here while Harry walked into that same danger.
Harry turned his head so that his nose brushed Draco's hair. "Besides," he added, "Sylarana has just reminded me that I don't actually know the way to the Chamber, so dashing out the door and hoping to get there first wouldn't work."
Draco's laugh was quiet. In the midst of everything, and even thinking of facing Tom Riddle and a basilisk, he could feel a great hope bearing him up. He set most of it aside for right now and said, "Is there any way you could find out? What were you planning to do, anyway, if you went alone?"
"Just go to the girls' loo where all the attacks happened and root around," said Harry. "The entrance to the Chamber is there, but I don't know where it is. Riddle took the memories from me—"
Abruptly, he froze, and Draco realized Sylarana was probably speaking into his mind. He held his peace. He was jealous of the Locusta's connection to Harry, of course he was, but now wasn't the time to voice it.
"What is it?" he asked, when Harry just went on staring, white-faced.
"Sylarana doesn't think Riddle took my memories of opening the Chamber with him, or destroyed them," said Harry, through obviously numb lips. "She thinks that he put them in the box. It would have been the most convenient place for him to store them, and now that she thinks about it, she can remember small sensations in that part of my mind the time that I Petrified Neville."
Draco clutched at Harry's hand again, convulsively. He had seen the box while he was connected to Harry's mind. It was nothing he wished to see again. It had frightened him more than Riddle had, in its way. Riddle was an open menace. The box was a lurking one.
"Do you have to open it?" he asked.
Harry again paused, apparently communing with Sylarana. "She'll let me," said Harry, "but she's afraid I'll get overwhelmed by the memories without someone to anchor me, and she'll be busy waiting to shut the box again as soon as I've found the memories I need." He let out a deep breath, and his eyes met Draco's. "And she says that she can bind you, briefly, to my mind, since you were already connected to me once before. Can you hold me steady while I go into the box?"
Draco did not even hesitate before nodding. He did not want to see the box. He was not entirely sure that he wanted to see the inside of Harry's head right now.
But he knew, more than either of those, that he did not want to see Harry dead.
"Thank you," Harry whispered, and extended his hand. He was shaking lightly. Draco wondered if he was afraid of the box, or of losing Connor, or of letting Draco into his head. Probably some combination of all three, Draco thought, as he watched Sylarana move down Harry's arm.
He took a deep breath, and tried to prepare himself, as Sylarana wound about his wrist, trying their hands together.
Nothing could have prepared him.
He plunged into the middle of gold and light and noise, a dark field flooded with radiance. He could see little through all that, and he could hardly hear anything through the deafening song. Draco winced. The song was beautiful, but so loud… how did Harry sleep with it in his head?
"I help him."
Draco jumped and turned around. A different kind of golden fire shone in the midst of the fiery gold, and he realized it was Sylarana. He was hearing her voice, and though she hissed and he knew it was definitely not English, he still understood her. He let out a little sigh. Wait until I tell Father about this. He'll never believe it.
If I tell him. If he would try to use this to hurt Harry…
And he was the one who hurt Harry in the first place. If not for the diary, none of this would have happened.
Draco focused on the matter at hand. He had his own tangled and confused thoughts, yes, but the important thing right now was Harry. He followed the thread of gold until he reached the box. Beside it curled a tendril of glittering dark and gold that Draco suspected was Harry, or a representation of him. The box looked just as bad as it always had, though this time, instead of the locks that Draco thought it had possessed, it shone with the Locusta's shifting coils.
"Are you ready, Harry?" she asked, and Harry's voice gave soft assent from everywhere around them. Draco felt Sylarana turn her attention to him. "Hold him as he plunges."
Draco nodded, and reached out, curling his arms around the tendril of dark and gold. It seemed to be enough.
Sylarana shifted, and relaxed her hold, and the box opened.
Draco felt fear seize him as the lid lifted just a bit, and darkness and cold swarmed around them. But Harry was going into it, was twisting fearlessly among the memories stored there, searching for the ones he wanted, and Draco had to go with him, had to fall with him, had to hold him steady as Harry searched and sorted.
Draco saw some of the memories himself, of course, because there was no way to avoid that when he was immediately next to Harry.
Harry reading a book under his covers by the light of the Lumos spell, studying frantically to try to get the Shield Charm right, convinced that Voldemort could come tomorrow and kill Connor, and he would not be ready—
Lily crouched in front of Harry and asked him to try the spell again. She knew it hurt, but practice was the only way to get it right. Harry nodded, and gulped, and tried the spell again. This time, it worked—
Lily whispered to Harry that everything would be well, even as she stroked his head and soothed him. He was four, nearly too young to remember, but he did remember that he'd had an argument with Connor and his head had begun to ache, and it had hurt until his mother came and soothed him with a few words. Words were his medicine—
Remus Lupin, and saying something about abuse—
Draco screamed. He was burning, the fire behind him surging forward as they met that memory. The golden light and the beautiful song didn't like that memory at all, Draco sensed. It was supposed to be crisped away to ashes and never trouble Harry again. It should not have been in the box.
"No, it should not have been," said Sylarana, her voice beyond anxious. "It happened after he stopped using the box. How did it get in there? Harry? Harry!"
But Harry could not hear them. He was far beneath them, Draco thought, plunging further and further into the darkness, and if he had not found the memories he needed already, then perhaps he was caught up in the whirl of half-forgotten things he'd placed here, all the resentments and fears and petty jealousies.
He watched Connor at the center of attention, himself so quiet and reserved that no one really thought he wanted attention. And he didn't, he supposed, but sometimes he wanted it, and the secret that he and his mother shared wasn't enough. And he had to stop thinking that, because then he might be jealous of his brother, and then he might hurt him, and how could he let that happen?
He watched James flying a kite with Connor, and wished he were as close to their father as Connor was. But James and Connor were more alike, and James didn't really understand Harry's liking for books, and why should he? Neither Harry nor Lily had ever told him what they were doing. He had no reason to understand them. But that unreasonable longing was still there.
Harry glanced up from where he'd just wandlessly performed the Summoning Charm, and his father stared at him from the doorway. Harry looked back, challenging James to respond somehow, to ask him what had happened, why he knew wandless magic, and why he was keeping it a secret. Instead, James stepped back and shut the door and never mentioned it again. And Harry saw the fear in his father's eyes, and buried a seed of contempt deep, deep under the surface of his mind, where it could never flower into full-blown scorn.
Harry lay on the grass in front of their house, beyond exhausted with all the magic he'd been practicing, and ran lists of pureblood customs over in his mind. Meanwhile, almost below his level of hearing, a voice shrieked that he was tired and wanted to go to bed. But he hadn't had much chance to study last night, because Sirius and Remus had come to visit, and they'd had a party to celebrate Sirius's birthday. He had to make up for lost time now. Voldemort was coming, and he couldn't be a child.
He said his vows, over and over, and sometimes he violently hated them, but he always caught and extinguished the hatred before it could go too far.
Draco persevered through all of them, though he suspected that he was crying back in his own body, and kept his hands strongly clasped around Harry's waist. And then he felt Harry rising back through the box, the memories of how to open the Chamber of Secrets lodged in his brain.
Draco caught a glimpse of those, too, as they soared outward again, and nodded. A sink, then, with a snake on a tap, and when a Parselmouth commanded it to open in Parseltongue, it would. A good way of protecting the Chamber from almost everyone but Slytherin's descendants.
He thought that, because the memories he'd seen had left him numb with shock. That would end in a moment, and he would speak to Harry, but until then…
He opened his eyes, and found himself back in his own body. Sylarana was unwinding from his hand. She darted up Harry's robes to his neck and wound around it, crooning. Or so Draco imagined her hiss to sound like.
He wished he could understand what she was saying. He wished he could find the words for the emotions he'd experienced in the box. "I'm sorry" was not enough, and neither was "Harry, are you all right?" He really wanted to say, "Don't you want to cast Crucio on your parents?" but he had the feeling Harry wouldn't want to hear that.
Harry murmured something in Parseltongue, the hissing words slipping from his mouth in a fluid stream. Then he took a deep breath and closed his eyes. Draco watched his mask drop back into place over his pain and everything else he felt. He scrubbed at his own cheeks, and felt tears there.
"Harry," he whispered, figuring that was a good start.
Harry's shoulders hunched, and he snapped, "Don't. We have to go rescue Connor. Or I have to."
"I'm still coming with you," Draco assured him, patting his pocket to be sure the mirror was there and then following Harry out the door. "But I'm worried about the box. Why were there memories in there that shouldn't have been? How could you use the box when Sylarana locked it?"
"I think the box almost opened when—when that happened," said Harry, his tone thick with an emotion Draco couldn't identify. "And I managed to slip that memory in there." His voice strengthened. "It's ridiculous, anyway. I remember now. Remus was going to accuse our mother of abusing me." He snorted. "That's rich, isn't it?"
"It's the truth," said Draco.
Harry turned and looked at him, and Draco shut up. Harry still had the cold anger in his eyes, and that desperate need to do something, to go and fetch Connor, but he was trembling on the edge of an even bigger explosion. It wouldn't do much to trigger that explosion, Draco sensed. Seeing his own memories had shaken Harry. And he had plumbed further than Draco. Merlin knew what else he had seen.
Draco made a private decision in that moment. When this was all over, when Harry had Connor back and could think about something else, then he was going to drag Harry to someone who could help, by force if necessary. Professor Snape would be his first choice. Then he'd go to his parents. Merlin, he'd fetch Harry's werewolf if he had to.
No one did that to one of his friends and got away with it.
Harry didn't seem to notice Draco's decision. Perhaps the silence was all he'd wanted. He nodded, his face smoothing out. "Thank you for not saying anything about it, Draco."
That's what you think, Draco thought, and followed Harry to the loo on the second floor.
By the time they got there, of course, there were students wandering around and staring, and professors trying to herd them away. Harry cast a Disillusionment Charm on them both before they rounded the corner. Draco wrinkled his nose at the unfamiliar sensation, but had to admit it worked. They sneaked into the loo without anyone noticing them. Not even the wailing ghost of a young girl who appeared out of a toilet seemed to see them. Draco found himself slightly relieved for that.
Harry strode to the sink from his memories and bent down, aiming his mouth directly at the small carving of the snake. He hissed. Draco assumed he hissed the word for "Open," as the sink began whirling in the next instant. White light flared for a moment, so brilliant that Draco couldn't help but glance nervously over his shoulder at the ghost, and by the time he looked back, there was a tunnel into the floor.
Draco grimaced, thinking of the slime that was probably down there.
"Come on," said Harry, showing a Gryffindor-like lack of fear, and jumped into the pipe. Draco gave a grimace of resignation and leaped after him.
The slide that followed, twisting and turning in several different directions and fighting frantically not to lose either his wand or the mirror, was not Draco's idea of fun. He resolutely ignored the slime that got on his robes and his longing to shriek like a first-year. He would land, and everything would be all right, and when everything, including the helping Harry part, was done, he would make Harry buy him some new robes.
Harry abruptly vanished ahead of him. Draco tried to be prepared, but he couldn't find anything to hold onto.
He shot out of the end of the pipe, and would have hit the ground hard, but Harry's shouted "Wingardium Leviosa!" caught and held him. Draco floated gently to the floor, patted his pocket to make sure the mirror was still intact, and nodded to Harry. Harry's wand flared with Lumos, but it didn't really illuminate his face; it made him look half-mad instead. He nodded back to Draco and then moved forward, his eyes on the floor ahead of them. Draco swallowed as he heard the crunch of something that sounded like bone under Harry's feet.
But he had come this far, and even if he was afraid, he wasn't going to back off and leave Harry alone simply because of that. He followed.
Harry walked among the scattered bones as though he saw this kind of thing every day, and from what Draco knew about his home life, perhaps he did—or worse. Draco himself cringed and kept away from the skeletons, though his eyes insisted on identifying them. Rat, mouse, bat…
Then he squeaked as they caught sight of an enormous snakeskin ahead, looped over and over itself like a spider's web.
"What is that?" he whispered.
"We're fighting a basilisk," Harry said back.
Draco looked at him, and found him standing with his head tilted back, studying the snakeskin as though it were a set of Potions ingredients to be diced and cut into the proper measures. He turned briefly to look at Draco, and Draco swallowed. Harry had gone cold again. In fact, now that he was watching for it, he caught the faint gust of ice around Harry as he moved forward.
Draco was at a loss for how Harry could have done that, plunged so deeply into the freezing fury at Tom Riddle when he'd seen his memories of his parents and what they had done to him, but he could hardly ask. They were on the verge of battle now.
Draco wasn't sure what he thought about that. He'd accepted, in a vague way, that he might have to fight in a War someday, when and if the Dark Lord came back. But here he was, only twelve years old—well, almost thirteen—and going into a room where he knew he would have to fight a basilisk, and maybe Harry's possessed brother.
More, he was fighting the Dark Lord. Or some version of him.
Draco supposed he knew where he stood then. It was almost comforting. He set his shoulders back and followed Harry again, more confidently than before.
He found Harry standing in front of a pair of enormous stone serpents, staring up at them. Their eyes shone in the light of the Lumos, and Draco felt an odd shiver in his belly when he realized they were emeralds, as green as the Locusta's eyes.
As green as Harry's.
Harry looked at him, his face solemn. "Last chance to back out, Draco."
Draco stiffened. "You insult me by thinking of it."
Harry smiled thinly. "You're right. I'm sorry." He faced the serpents and hissed again. Draco wished, in a moment of pure selfish jealousy that he used to distract himself from his sweating palms and rapidly beating heart, that he could understand what Harry was saying.
The wall groaned and cracked open, in a jagged shape that reminded Draco of Harry's scar, and the serpents dropped out of sight. Draco came forward slightly so that he stood at Harry's shoulder, and they walked into what waited for them.