Because We Are Snakes

Because We Are Snakes – The Basilisk

He landed on the ground like a proverbial sack of potatoes as the TriWizard cup rolled away from him with a loud clank in the deafening silence his abrupt appearance with the very limp body of Cedric had caused. The crowd was deadly quiet and Cedric’s body lay uncomfortably on top of him, one of its arms bent at an impossible angle probably caused by the tumble they took as they flipped over a couple times before the end of the momentum from their portkey entrance caused them to stop rolling.

There was an undignified moment in which the slandered Savior screamed and wailed the loss of Cedric Diggory, even as he was blamed for his fellow champion’s death. He was taken by Moody, who turned out was actually not Moody, and apparently had not been Moody from the beginning.

‘Go figure.’

Things were crazy for several minutes which he barely registered; but he was sure Dumbledore, Snape and Veritacerum had been involved at somewhere during the encounter. He was also sure Crouch Jr. had escaped at some point as well, which was seriously disappointing since Crouch Jr. is certainly that side of crazy and… it was Dumbledore and Snape for Merlin’s sake!

‘Sometimes they can be so useless!’

To Harry it seemed as if half the time the old man was just waiting to see how much metaphorical shit can be piled up on top of him. Through it all and while Madam Pomfrey mended his cuts and healed his bruises, Harry still saw Credric’s soulless eyes. It was all he could think about at the moment because thinking of everything else that had happened at the graveyard would prove to be too much and do no good for his already questionable sanity. Not to mention for his rapidly deteriorating mood after Fudge had pretty much declared Dumbledore insane, Harry an pathological liar/attention whore and everything that came out of their mouths nothing but a collection of hogwash that boiled down to a deep rooted need for the spotlight. All of this right after Dumbledore had related to him Harry’s severely edited account of the events at the cemetery and the assurance that the Dark Lord was back… which the Minister of Magic did not want to believe or make public.

Harry was pissed at Dumbledore for putting him on the spot and spewing his words to a fool like Fudge without even consulting with Harry the use of his name and person as the witness and proof of the return of the boogieman no one wanted to talk about much less believe was back.
So there he sat, in what he had deemed ‘his bed’ in the hospital wing –because he simply spent so much time on the damned thing it might as well be his by now and have a large plaque announcing it as such- thinking about Cedric rather than about the cemetery or how pissed he was that Dumbledore had tried to use him to get the Minister to do his bidding and see things his way which had royally backfired and would probably come back to bite Harry on the ass much like Aunt Marge’s dog had done several times.

His mind kept going to how much he wanted to smack the twinkle right out of Dumbledore’s eyes and in his attempt to get those thoughts out of his head Harry kept going back to thinking of Cedric. It was becoming a vicious circle and he was beginning to wonder when the hell Pomfrey would show up with the dose of Dreamless Sleep that had become their standard -because she just knew if she did not put him out of it he would end up sneaking out of the Hospital Wing and she was not up to chasing him about the school. Harry liked this arrangement, if only for the blissful nothingness which overtook him when the potion deigned to work and the floaty feeling he sometimes got when the stupid potion didn’t. He was sure he was becoming rather addicted to it but that was a secret he was keeping between himself and… well… himself.

‘Back to Cedric you disjointed mind.’ He thought to himself when he realized his internal musings had led him away from his current diversion and into an area he would rather not explore at the moment.
‘We can worry about my supposed-most-likely- addiction to sleep aids later.’

So Cedric…

Cedric had reminded Harry of him, if only in appearance rather than attitude or any other way really. Though the appearance wasn’t really that spot-on either but Harry had been so desperate to see it, to see him in someone… anyone. Must have been the guilt he still felt. When Cedric had apologized for the ‘Potter Sucks’ pins and had begun talking to him in a civilized manner all Harry could do was convince himself that if he survived, and Cho got out of the way because really he could no longer convince himself that he liked her, maybe they could become closer.

Now Cedric was dead, another one that left him, and again Harry knew it was his fault. It was starting to piss him off how the world just kept taking away everything he wanted, as if it had something personal against the idea of Harry being happy in any way or having something that would cause him happiness.

He was not liking this recent turnabout of his mind and, blessedly, Pomfrey came about with a potion for him while he was in mid exploration of his thoughts and he sighed with hopeful relief.
The taste of Dreamless Sleep in his mouth was as disgusting as expected though not as disgusting as the one he brewed himself – secretly of course – so that he could escape the horrors of his life if only in sleep. Snape, though a terrible excuse of a human being in Harry’s opinion, was always such an excellent Potions Master and Harry’s ridiculously low quality renditions could not even compare.
As usual tough, he was doomed; there was something again in the very fuckedup design of a world that clearly must hate him which made it so the damn potion only worked for him about one out of five times. This was not one of those lucky occasions.

The void his mind had been after he had fallen asleep morphed steadily into images of the Chamber of Secrets.

Faukes lay knocked out near the corpse of the basilisk after it had been hit by the snakes tail while it thrashed blinded and Harry had a fang protruding from his person. Ginny was still on the cold floor in the process of being drained and Tom stood over her imperiously. Harry knew he had to save Ginny, he simply could not come back without her alive. All his efforts to have a place in the Wizarding World would come crumbling down around him if he didn’t present himself as the savior they all wanted and losing Ginny, his best friend’s little sister, would crush the image in the mind of the Wizarding World at large. He didn’t want that, he knew he was not the perfect golden boy they thought him and in all honesty he would never be, but he did not want a repeat of the way they had treated him all year while thinking him the Heir of Slytherin. He had to be the golden boy, he had to be the Savior he knew he was not but could damn well pretend to be, and to keep his image he had to come back with Ginny… alive.

“I can’t let you kill her.” He had said, to which Tom’s answer had been a very cutting “So you let yourself die for her?”

“Why?” Tom had asked. “You are dying Harry and all for people who only care about you while you fit the perfectly squared box they have made for you.”

“Because I have nothing else. I don’t want to remain with my relatives if at all possible and if I am to leave as soon as I can I can’t have people making a target out of me. I must be what they need me to be so that I find acceptance and can live in peace.”

“Peace! Acceptance! Where has that acceptance been all year when they judged you for possessing a skill they don’t approve of simply because they don’t understand?”

Harry had no answer, anything he said would have sounded hollow and fake. He didn’t want to lie to Tom.

“You are dying Harry… and all for nothing. What does it matter if the blood traitor dies?”

He almost considered giving up, honestly, if he died what did he care if Ginny survived? But then, Faukes awoke and he knew he could not say to Tom the things he wanted to. At least in his death he wanted to be remembered as the good person he was not. He had no idea how much the familiar connection between a phoenix and his bonded allowed then to communicate and it scared him because Faukes was coming and he would know what Harry had done. He didn’t know if the fire bird could tell Dumbledore that in the end Harry had died without even attempting to save the girl and defeat the memory of the Dark Lord.

So he acted in a purely selfish way, motivated by his need to be loved, and with his mind fading from the poison dragged himself toward the diary and plunged the Basilisk fang into it.

Tom looked at him, his face etched the image of betrayal, and instantly Harry regretted his actions. Regretted ending the life of the one being who had truly listened to him in all his life. He had wanted acceptance and had forgotten that was exactly what Tom had given him when all others had deserted him. Tom had been his friend, even if he had turned out to be a shade of his enemy. With the older boy he had been the closest he had ever come to being completely honest. During the weeks he had spent with the diary, Harry had begun to develop warm feelings he had never had the chance to name for the boy who only existed as ink and memories on a tattered book.
As darkness took him, Harry wished that Tom would someday forgive him, and that maybe they could see each other at the other side.

Images swirled around propelling him from one heart wrenching scene to another, each darker and crueler than the one before all set to the haunting tone of a phoenix’s song.

His dreams were plagued with that one look of betrayal and disbelief in Tom’s face. Over and over he saw his friend die by his hand, disappearing in ink and ash before him.

In the hospital wing, Harry was assaulted by nightmares about Tom and the Chamber all night. Nightmares that showed him as he truly was; his outward image reflecting what lay waiting inside. What he had become in the Chamber after the Basilisk had sunk its fang onto him. In his nightmares he was hunted as the unsuspecting Wizarding population finally saw the truth behind their so-called savior and decided to rid themselves of such a monster. In his nightmares Tom stood just out of reach as Harry ran and the older boy asked the green eyed youth how he could have ever found him beautiful.

It was early morning when the nightmares relentless grip on his mind slipped and he dragged himself to consciousness, the sun had yet to rise in the horizon. He was sweaty and cold but most importantly he needed to empty his bladder.

Making sure to grab his glasses, Harry shuffled his way to the bathroom adjacent to the Hospital Wing with the energy of a recently animated Inferi. He would only have two minutes of peace before the charm on the bed alerted Pomfrey that her ward was out of his bed and walking about an she came to check on him.

Harry made it to be bathroom and closed the door behind him, thankful that it was not too far from ‘his’ bed. Upon relieving himself he moved to the small sink to wash his face not really paying much attention to anything, but when he lifted his eyes to look into the mirror his heart nearly came out of his chest in panic.

‘Fuck.’ Was about the only coherent thought to cross his mind.
He hated when this happened on its own and thought he had gotten it under control already.

Yellow eyes looked back at him, their slanted reptilian pupils promising death to those who looked upon them. It took him less than a second to register the sweet taste filling his mouth and when he opened his mouth his suspicions were confirmed, his pointed and elongated canines were seeping out the clear green liquid he knew to be the most potent venom in the world.

To his horror, his nails had also elongated and he could already feel the tingle on the top of his head and going down his back following the line of his spine. Harry tried to calm down to stop the process but nothing he did seemed to work, this was going to happen it appeared, whether he liked it or not. The events of the previous day coupled with the nightmares must have been to much for his system.
The tingle shifted to a warm sensation and he barely had time to take his clothes off before he accidentally ripped them apart. The emergence of his emerald colored spiked dorsal fin and the much smaller caudal fin would have shredded his pajamas like a knife through butter. On the crown of his head a small vibrant red spiked crest peeked out from between the mess of Potter hair. Small silvery-green scales formed glistening patches on his hipbones, shoulders, lower back, knuckles, and feet, as well as a line of very fine scales over his cheekbones and going down the center of his forehead and over the bridge of his nose.

He had no idea why of all times his body had chosen to do what it felt like but it was most inconvenient, particularly when Pomfrey had begun to knock on the door demanding to know if he was okay in there.

“I’m fine,” He told her. “Will be out in a minute.”

The Savior of the Wizarding World prayed to all gods who might listen to have pity on him and allow him to return to his more human and expected look.

Sadly it was not to be, as apparently and as he had suspected all these years, no one was listening up there or whoever was in charge of running this world simply did not care that he was in a deep state of terror at the moment. Several things happened at the same time; Pomfrey began to turn the handle of the door, his fins extended longer than the two and a half inches they had been since the day they made their first appearance, his yellow eyes began to glow –for lack of a better word-, his body felt like it was burning and the most excruciating pain he had ever experienced assaulted him as it centered somewhere between his tailbone and his pubic area.

Harry let out a pained gasp/whimper sort of sound even as he threw his body onto the door to prevent the Mediwitch from finding out his not so little secret.

“Mr. Potter! Open the door this instant!” The woman shouted and Harry bit his lips to the point of bleeding to keep himself from screaming at the pain in his lower body.

It felt as if something was tearing into his insides, trying to make a hole through them.

As suddenly as it started, the pain left, and it left him panting for air and even more sweaty and cold than he was before. He caught his reflection in the mirror and with a sigh of relief noticed he was back to his normal appearance.

He felt faint and drained. Reluctantly he stepped away from the door uncaring that he was naked, because Poppy had seen it in various states of undress so many times he could not give a damn anymore, and allowed the woman in.

“Mr. Potter!” She was about to reprimand him when her sentence turned into “Why in Merlin’s name are you naked?!”

Thankful for a quick mind –even if muddled by pain and exhaustion- Harry managed to reply “I was about to take a shower” before he passed out in the middle of the small bathroom.

Poppy was absolutely distraught.