A Brother To Basilisks (a Drarry fanfic)

Chapter 24: Truths Carefully Measured

"Do you feel ready to talk about it?" Severus asked.

He had sometimes been told—though not in recent memory—that his voice was most soothing when it was at its deepest. He tried to keep that in mind, his eyes gently on Harry and the basilisk that had curled up in his lap the moment he sat down. The basilisk's tail was long enough to dangle down the boy's knee and to the floor. Of course, that was partially because the boy himself was not tall.

Will he be willing to talk about that as well, what made him that way? Severus wondered, but as yet, he didn't know. He would have to wait and see.

Harry looked up. He had one hand on a particular thick, diamond-shaped scale behind the basilisk's head, and was pressing down as if he wanted to keep the snake from striking at something. Severus judged the distance between their chairs and moved a little further back.

"I can," said Harry. His voice was soft, but strong. "Dash was just trying to persuade me to talk about what Sirius and Lupin—did to me as a form of abuse, too. But I don't want to do that. I'm only going to talk about the Dursleys."

Severus suffered a fierce stab of disappointment, one which nearly made him want to compare it to a basilisk bite to test which one hurt more. But he had never expected Harry to turn on Black this soon. He nodded and said, "Then tell me what you would consider saying."

Harry gnawed his lip for a second. The basilisk watched his face and didn't move. Then Harry glanced up at Severus and muttered, "The cupboard and the—the way they didn't feed me a lot."

"The starvation?" Severus used the word deliberately. Merlin knew it would come up once they started talking about this, and the last thing they needed was the child flinching like a startled hare before someone else's first mention of it.

Harry squeezed his eyes for a second. "I still ate."

The basilisk looped one coil around his arm. "I did," Harry insisted, opening his eyes and looking down at the snake. "Just not as often as Dudley did!"

"Dudley being your cousin," Severus murmured, as if anxious to help Harry along. In reality, he was, but he did wonder how prepared Harry would be to face a ravenously curious wizarding world if he still reacted by throwing delays in the path of an ally.

"Yes," Harry said, and turned towards Severus with the light flashing off his glasses. "I mean, that's natural in a way, right, sir? That Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon would care more about what Dudley ate than me? Because he's their son and I'm just their—nephew." He trailed off near the end, as if hearing what he was saying.

Or because he saw the expression on my face, Severus's thoughts supplied to him. He said aloud, only, "Do not presume to defend them to me, Mr. Potter."

"I'm not really trying to defend them." Harry traced one hand over the part of his lap that the basilisk didn't occupy. The snake promptly moved so that he was under Harry's hand. Severus understood and approved, although he might not have been able to put the reason why into words. "I just—they said so many things about that during my childhood that I understand what they mean."

Severus waited, and waited. It took longer than it should have for Harry's gaze to rise and find his.

But when it did, Severus said, with a fixed smile that he thought Harry would probably take note of, "You may understand what they said. But let me ask you a question. Would you understand it if it was Mr. Weasley's parents starving him? Or Miss Granger's parents starving her?"

"They would never!" Harry snapped at once.

So quick to defend others, and never himself, Severus thought. It would have annoyed him as recently as a month ago. Now, he only felt profoundly tired. "Answer the question, Mr. Potter." Among other things, if Harry really was ready to take an abusive adult's side, then he would be useless in trying to help the other children with bad homes.