No Mouth But Some Serpent’s
http://www.fanfiction.net/s/2612486/1/
By Lightening on the Wave
Summary: AU of CoS, Slytherin!Harry. Harry goes back to Hogwarts, determined to protect his brother Connor, the BoyWhoLived, and stay in the shadows. But last year two people learned the truth about Harry... and this year, two more will.
Warnings: Language, violence, eventual HP/DM slash in fourth year and beyond. Also, beyond this point, multiple character deaths, including ones that do not happen in canon. No one is safe. If you find it very hard to read a story like that, bail now.
This story is also considerably darker than first year, and the series will go on getting darker from this point on.
~*~*~*~*~*
Chapter One: The Scabbed Summer
“Harry, are you all right?”
Harry swallowed a groan before it could form, and smiled at his brother, who was sitting up in his bed. Connor was usually too heavy a sleeper to awaken for any sound in the same room. Harry must have sat up harder than he thought, or cried out when the dream let him go.
“I’m fine,” he murmured. “Just a nightmare. I’m going outside to sit for a while.” He threw the covers back and checked to make sure that his pyjamas were fastened all the way up. Then he threw on the jumper he’d worn that day, which was tossed over the end of his bed.
“You’re sure that you don’t want me to come with you?” Connor’s words were already slurring, though, and a yawn slipped out from his throat. Harry let out a grateful little breath. He might wake up, but nothing could keep his twin from going back to sleep.
“I’m sure. Thank you.”
“All right…” Connor was snoring before he could finish the sentence. Harry carefully crept out of their room, shutting the door behind him, and down the stairs. No sounds came from his parents’ bedroom beyond the stairs, and no lights moved in the kitchen. Just to be sure, Harry used a Lumos spell to look at the family’s clock on the wall. Sure enough, everyone else’s hand pointed to IN BED, even Sirius’s and Remus’s, though they weren’t in Godric’s Hollow right now. Harry’s hand pointed to TRUANT, but moved to TRAINING as Harry decided what he would do with his extra time.
He might as well, he thought as he slipped out of the house, just as silently, and padded to the edge of the front lawn. He wouldn’t get any more sleep tonight.
It was two weeks since they had returned from Hogwarts for the summer, and every night Harry had dreamt of two dark figures. One curled in a place far too small for it, crying out in pain and misery. The other thrashed in a place that seemed only slightly larger, a steady stream of whimpers coming from its throat. Harry had no idea what to make of those dreams. He supposed they might be leftovers of the confrontation with Voldemort, but he didn’t understand why they would be attacking him. He could understand if Connor were to have them. His twin was the Boy-Who-Lived, the one with the heart-shaped scar and the connection to Voldemort.
But Connor slept undisturbed, while every night, Harry dreamed.
He shook his head and put it from his mind. He’d had odd dreams during the school year, too, and worrying about them got him nowhere. When and if the significance of the two dark figures ever revealed itself, then he would be ready to do something about it.
For now, he would run through his array of wandless spells.
“Wingardium Leviosa,” he said, concentrating, and when he pulled his hand back, his wand floated in the air. Harry smiled and glanced up at the bright crackle of isolation wards that surrounded their house and separated it from the rest of Godric’s Hollow, somewhat dimming the sight of the stars beyond. The wards had been there all their lives, preventing attack by vengeful Death Eaters and other minions of Voldemort. They also prevented the Ministry from sensing the use of any underage magic within them.
Their mother had once claimed that was an accidental side effect of the wards. Harry doubted it. Lily Potter seldom did anything on accident. Besides, it somehow never got reported to the Ministry.
He hurtled easily through the array of spells he’d practiced so long without his wand that he came near to doing them in his sleep, and which therefore made good spells to use during the transition between sleep and waking. Nox, Lumos, Finite Incantatem, Wingardium Leviosa, Incendio, Accio, Protego, Reducto, the Blasting Curse, and several others, raced forth from his mouth, had their effects, and left him feeling nothing but relaxed and slightly more awake.
Harry frowned when he was done with the lot of them, concentrating. He knew what spell he most wanted to perform next: the cage spell that Voldemort had used on Connor during their deadly battle at the end of May, Cavea. Harry wanted to see if he could do it, and, importantly, reverse it. If he’d known how to reverse it during the battle, he could have spared Connor some pain and panic.
But the last time he had tried it, it had resulted in a pulse of blinding blue light which had beamed through the windows and awakened their parents. Harry had had to apologize and make up a tale of accidental magic while sleepwalking for James, who didn’t know about Harry’s extra training and silent vow to protect his brother. Their mother had taken him aside after that and warned him not to try it again until she was there to guide him.
She was not here now.
Harry closed his eyes and thought of a different spell, Diffindo. He was about to try it when a voice spoke from the grass beside him, startling him badly.
“What are you doing? The magic is disturbing my sleep.”
Harry whirled around and gathered his magic into a single focused point, calling the Protego shield up. That would defeat most hexes, and after so much experience, it was his as swift as thought.
But he saw no one standing on the grass, and he blinked, hesitating. Perhaps Connor had come out to play with him, but he didn’t think his brother was so good at hiding in plain sight, nor at sounding so petulant.
It could be a trick of Sirius’s, he thought, and smiled. His godfather often visited Godric’s Hollow, and he would think it a grand joke to come sneaking up in the darkness and scare Harry like that.
“Very funny, Sirius,” he called back. “You can come out now. You caught me. I was bored and practicing my magic.”
“Who is Sirius?”
Harry saw a movement at the edge of his Lumos spell this time. He stared as the grass parted and a small snake slithered out of it, halting to look at him inquiringly. Her tongue flicked as if tasting his scent.
Harry hardly breathed. He recognized the snake’s markings, variegated black on gold. If he tilted his head to the side and squinted just a bit, he could make out the shape of a skull and crossbones, repeated several times. This was a Locusta snake, a magical creature rare in Great Britain. One small bite from it could kill a man, and one snake contained enough poison altogether to down a whale. Worse, the venom itself was magical, altering from hour to hour to try and counteract any antivenin applied to it, and the snakes were clever and sadistic enough to hunt small children when they were angry, and to direct their poison to linger instead of killing at once.
Harry did not know how a Locusta had crossed the wards into Godric’s Hollow. He did not know how it was speaking to him. He did know that he didn’t want it anywhere near Connor.
“Go away,” he whispered, wishing he knew Avada Kedavra, and readying his magic in an attempt to put all his will behind the Blasting Curse. “Just go away.”
“Why should I? I just arrived here. And I am rather enjoying your company.” The snake slithered a few inches nearer. “It is not often that one finds a mortal who can speak to serpents. I knew one, once, but she and I did not have much in common. She spat at me and told me to leave after less than three seasons around me.” The snake lifted her head and twined back and forth in dancing patterns, which made the skull shine forth from her all the more strongly. “Am I not beautiful?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” said Harry. “I can’t talk to snakes.” The fact that he was, and understanding this one right back, was beginning to bother him. He tried not to let it. The important thing, as always, was to protect Connor.
“Oh, yes, you can,” said the Locusta, sounding amused. She lowered her head and blinked her eyes at him. They were a stunningly bright green, like Lily’s when she was angry. “You could some time ago, at least, when your battle disturbed the Forest I was living in, and I watched you fight the other one who talks to serpents. He gave an order to his snake.” The Locusta gave a small angry hiss which Harry thought meant the same thing as an offended pureblood matriarch’s sniff of disdain. “Degraded creature. That she lets him so command her! I would die before submitting to such control.”
“You saw Connor’s battle with Voldemort?” Harry breathed. He remembered Voldemort speaking to Nagini, ordering her to attack, but—“He talked in English.”
“He did not,” said the Locusta, and inched a bit nearer. “He commanded her in Parseltongue. You understood him. You speak Parseltongue even now, but to your ears it sounds as your own language. I do not know why that is.” She did not sound very interested in it, either. “I followed you because I was curious about you, and from what I have seen, you will do very well.”
“Do very well to do what?” Harry kept his wand leveled at her, and remembered other things he’d heard about Locusta snakes. They struck very fast, nearly as fast as runespoors. They were self-willed, serving no master for very long. The wizards who kept the snakes to breed them or observe them or milk them for their venom almost all died, and the snakes wandered on, free, making the mere possession of a Locusta a high crime in Britain.
Of course, from what Harry could remember, none of the wizards who had studied them had ever been Parselmouths.
And neither am I, he thought at once, his mind abruptly boiling on the edge of hysteria. Only Dark wizards have that talent, and I’m not Dark. I’m not. The Sorting Hat put me in Slytherin, but Connor said I was still good. I must be.
“Take care of me,” the Locusta said, pulling his attention back to her. Harry scolded himself for having lost it in the first place. Whether or not he was a Parselmouth, it was not as though he was ever going to use the gift, so he would not worry about it. “I require someone to care for me, to burnish my scales and tell me I am beautiful and feed me the choicest bits of their food. I like eggs. And milk. And the flesh of birds. And sweets. And—“
“I am not going to take care of you!” Harry hissed back at her, and for a moment, he thought he heard his voice the way she must be hearing it, full of intricate twists and turns and soft sibilants. It was certainly not speaking English.
He blocked the thought from his mind. He was not evil. He would not let himself be.
“Yes, you are,” said the Locusta. “I’ve watched you. Your dearest possession is that lump of a boy who shares your nest. If you do not take care of me, I will bite him.”
Harry swallowed. He knew she could do it. There was no way he could watch Connor every moment of the day and night, and unless he destroyed her now, she would find some way through and bite him.
Unless I destroy her now.
He lifted his wand, about to unleash a curse, but the Locusta moved, darting forward, looping herself up his leg, and coiling around his left arm. Harry prepared to be bitten, but changed the angle of his wand. He would still kill her, even if she died. He had always been prepared to sacrifice his life for Connor. He could do it now.
The Locusta did not bite him. Instead, she shimmered once, and then she was gone.
Harry brought his wand closer, to see his arm by the light of Lumos. The Locusta was a bright golden-and-black pattern on his left forearm. Harry poked it with his wand. He felt nothing but skin.
Like the Dark Mark, he thought, and for a moment trembled with revulsion.
My name is Sylarana, said the Locusta’s smug voice in his head. You will care for me and make much of me, while I stay with you like this, or I will come to life and bite your lump of a boy. Or anyone else I want to.
“How can you?” Harry whispered. “I never heard that Locusta snakes could do this.”
We can, with one who speaks to serpents. And I want to. Now, pet me and make much of me.
Harry stroked the skin of his arm, feeling ridiculous, but not daring to do anything else. He thought up a few compliments that made his mouth feel full of sugar, and murmured them.
Her contented hissing resounded in his mind a moment later.
Harry fought back the desire to be sick, and went on petting her.
“Mum! Mum!”
Harry looked up, smiling. He and Connor had spent most of the day outside—Harry doing the extra homework that Professor Snape had assigned him over the summer, Connor studying the books of magical history that Lily had insisted he start reading—and the heat had struck Connor half-stupid. Harry wasn’t at all surprised that, when the Weasleys’ battered old owl, Errol, had stumbled through the special hole created in the isolation wards for him, Connor had seized on both Errol and the letter he carried to distract himself.
From the sound of his twin’s voice now, Harry thought the letter had carried good news.