A Brother To Basilisks (a Drarry fanfic)

Chapter 8: Communing With the Snake

Is he ever going to give you an answer, or is he just going to sit there smoothing down his beard and smiling?

Harry tipped his head to the side so that his cheek brushed against Dash's scales. Not just that. See the way his eyes shifted to focus on me when I did that? He's disturbed about something.

Dash curled so that a stray coil was wrapped around Harry's neck and started squeezing lightly. Then he could say it, instead of sitting there and acting like he's going to say something any moment, but then not saying it.

Before Harry could answer, Dumbledore said, "So, Remus, you are sure this is the real Peter? And there's nothing else you want to tell me?"

Professor Lupin had been looking at Pettigrew with a fixed stare for at least as long as Dumbledore had sat behind the desk in McGonagall's office stroking his beard. Now he shivered and looked up. "It's the real Peter Pettigrew, all right," he said, and then turned around and stared at Pettigrew again.

"How did it happen?"

Harry was glad McGonagall was there. He wanted to say something, but he had no idea what to say, and he thought it was the same thing with Ron. Ron kept opening his mouth, then closing it again. He caught Harry's eye now and went a little red, and Harry tried to nod reassuringly.

"I don't know," Lupin said blankly. "I think--I thought that Sirius was the Secret-Keeper for Harry's parents. But even if Sirius is a Death Eater, too, it doesn't make any sense that he would have hunted Peter down then." He shivered again and abruptly turned to Dumbledore with an expression that Harry thought was a little pathetic. "Unless Peter was a spy? Like--like other people were said to be?"

Who are those other people? Dash asked, and stroked Harry's earlobe with his tongue again. But no one was really paying attention to them at the moment, so no one was disturbed.

"No," said Dumbledore, and at this voice, Pettigrew cowered and put his arms over his head. "Peter was not a spy." He leaned in. "Unless Peter explains it to us, then it seems I will just have to make my own guesses."

Harry waited--he thought they all waited--but the silence was full of the sound of Pettigrew breathing fast, and nothing else. Dumbledore finally straightened up and made a sighing sound.

"I think that Sirius Black was still the original Secret-Keeper," he whispered. "I was there during most of the discussions James and Lily held, when they were preparing to hide." He turned abruptly to Harry. "You were there, too, Harry. So young, with the way you reached out and tried to play with my wand."

Harry tried to smile back, but he knew it was shaky. Dash made a noise in his head that resembled his fangs scraping down bone--and Harry wasn't sure that he wanted to know more about why that noise seemed so familiar. He thinks he's going to win you over now? He ought to know that I'm on your shoulder, and he's not going to do anything so ridiculous.

Harry chose not to respond. It was a glimpse of his childhood he was getting from Dumbledore, and there was still a man huddled over there who was involved, somehow, in his parents' deaths.

"And James gave several good reasons for Sirius being the Secret-Keeper," Dumbledore continued. "He was James's best friend, and there was no way that he would turn to Voldemort--" Harry did have to admire how Dumbledore ignored the way Lupin shivered and McGonagall flinched and Pettigrew moaned and Ron jumped out of his chair "--because of his dislike of the Dark Arts. He had conflicts with his family, the Blacks, over being Dark, and ran away to live with James as soon as he could."

Harry felt as though he couldn't be more attentive. It was like his ears were growing, stretching towards Dumbledore. He knew his eyes were wide. He could sit here for the rest of his life and listen.