What Shakes The Elephant

What Shakes The Elephant

Chapter 34 – Most Of The Time

There was no time at all. It simply ceased to exist as everything unfolded before them. They stood before a giant and legendary serpent, holding their swords and wands out before them as the great beast writhed and shrieked from the pain and anger that drove it.

With its snapping mouth it surged forward at Harry, the long teeth dripping with venom. Harry and Draco immediately sent identical spells to throw it back into the room. They jumped forward and entered the cell. Harry thrashed forward, catching the Basilisk’s mouth with the enchanted sword while Draco, without direction, spun around and blocked off the doorway to cage in the snake.

“Kill! I’ll kill you! You won’t keep me from my freedom! I’ll set myself loose on the world!”

Harry surged toward the snake and realized, much too late, that there were no longer any mirrors in the room. They had blocked themselves into it and now had no protection against the snake once the spells that wounded it and blinded it wore off.

Kill or be killed.

He weaved around the beast, attempting to jump over its coiling body without tripping, dragging the sword over every inch of the serpent’s skin that he could. But the blade was not strong enough to cause dire damage. The wounds, as the sword promised, did not heal, nor show any signs of stemming in blood flow, but they were shallow and would not do irreparable damage unless Harry and Draco continued to fight for hours.

“Draco!” Harry called out, realizing that Draco was on the other side of the Basilisk and was casting Impedimenta spells at it as often as he could, slowing the snake’s movements as it searched for the source of the assault. “You have to give me your sword! I can’t kill it with this one!”

Harry ducked and rolled across the stone ground as the snake flung its tail around to catch Harry in the gut. He groaned, clutching his stomach.

“Why do you need to kill it?” Draco asked, his voice demanding and petulant even in their current situation. “Is this really the moment for your hero complex to come back?”

“Is this REALLY the moment for you to give me a speech?” Harry shot back, stabbing the sword directly into the closest part of the serpent’s tail. It cried out as the blade pierced the protective scales.

“I’ll have you! I’ll rip you in half, vermin! You have blinded me but I’ll smell you still!”

Harry gasped, having forgotten that part. He tried to think of a spell that would cover or dispel their scent but nothing came to mind. Instead he moved like lightning and dove under one of the coils as it rose to allow the Basilisk to move. In his rough movement, however, both his wand and his sword slipped from his hands and scattered over the ground away from him.

The Basilisk shot towards Harry again but Draco shot another spell and caught its attention, directing it towards himself instead. Harry dove for his sword but realized too late that he needed his wand.

The Basilisk was twisting itself around Draco, crushing him in the pulsing muscles of its body. Draco’s arms were not pinned, but he had lost his wand. He stared up at the beast and yet could not reach high enough to deliver a fatal blow.

“Just cut off its head!” Harry shouted. “Or cut it in half, Draco, please, do something!”

Harry ran forward along the ground to fetch his wand but the Basilisk’s massive body was cramped in the space of the cell, having outgrown its cage. It moved violently to further trap Draco and knocked Harry over in the process, covering him with part of its body.

He found himself trapped with only the sword in hand and little air in his lungs. His mind was racing as he could only just see the top of Draco above the Basilisk’s body as the snake squeezed him tighter and slithered closer to him, apparently about to swallow him whole.

Harry couldn’t breathe at all anymore. He couldn’t let Draco die like this. He couldn’t watch and do nothing. He couldn’t understand why Draco was not reacting but he had to do something. He had to get up; he had to save Draco.

Panic and rage filled him at the thought of losing Draco now. He couldn’t lose what he didn’t actually have, but that didn’t matter to Harry. He needed Draco, needed him to survive and live, needed him to be ok. He felt the muscles in his body begin to writhe and tense with the impending danger, with the idea that he could lose this man now.

He would not let it happen. He couldn’t let him go! He couldn’t let him die!

Harry gripped the sword more tightly and urged it upwards with all of his might and the remaining breath in his lungs. Adrenaline rushed through him like water from a dam and Harry thrust the sword through the Basilisk’s more vulnerable underside. It tore through the skin this time and then some. He did not go as deep as he intended but he still felt the tearing as blood spilled and soaked him.

“Leave him alone, you filthy beast! You will not have him! He is mine, bastard!” Harry shrieked in Parseltongue before he could stop himself or realize what he was saying.

He pulled himself from underneath the serpent’s wounded body as it flung itself around in the air, crushing Draco’s body further. The blond was turning an unpleasant colour of purple that was not his natural complexion and Harry’s terror increased tenfold.

“Draco!!” Harry screamed. His pale fingers were loosening on the hilt of the blade as he fought to breathe. Harry found his wand and cast Expelliarmus to see if it would work to remove Draco from the serpent’s grasp, but it did nothing. Should he have expected it to?

He threw spell after spell until, finally, his Sectumsempra curse hit the Basilisk in one of the wounds Harry had already created. More cuts exploded over its body and it cried out in fits of anger, dropping Draco roughly to the ground and turning on Harry.

“Where are you, little parasite? I’ll eat you first and then feast on your lover.”

Harry unwillingly stopped dead at the words and gave the serpent enough time to throw him against the wall. The thick and muscular body pinned him to the stone and forced him to drop both his wand and the sword. Harry gasped for breath, wriggling as he could to get away but the snake was hovering before him, its eyes threatening to open at any moment and bring the fate that he had so skillfully evaded time and again upon him.

He searched to the side, over the mounds of the Basilisk’s form, for a sign that Draco was alright, feeling that if the blond could at least survive, he could die knowing that Draco would be alright.

But Draco’s body was nowhere and the air was slowly leaving Harry, suffocating him. He fought the urge to scream, to cry, to curse, to do something even more stupid and tilted his head back to look at the ceiling rather than see the eyes of death.

But it was then that he saw it. Draco came soaring over the Basilisk’s head, swinging the shining silver sword above him. He came to a stop above the snakes head and drove the silver blade straight through its skull.

Blood splattered them both and the great and legendary serpent flailed in the air as its muscles relaxed and gave in to gravity. It collapsed in a massive heap of coils, dropping Harry from his position against the wall.

His vision blurred as his head hit the stone and he spiraled into blackness, the blood of the snake pooling around him on the ground of the cell. He heard someone calling to him but so many words and thoughts circled in his mind like a gathering storm that it clouded his brain.

The Basilisk’s words frightened him and caught him off-guard. Lover? Draco was not his lover… Draco was his friend.

Draco was…

He wanted… Draco… he wanted…

“Harry!” a strong voice called to him. His vision cleared and his mind slowed. Draco was sitting, leaning over him and holding him against his chest. Harry groaned softly and could not help but notice how comfortable he felt. “Are you alright?”

Harry let out a breathy laugh and smiled.

“You killed a Basilisk,” he said rather stupidly. “Welcome to the club. We should have matching cloaks.”

Draco gave him the most worried look he had ever seen in his life.

“I think I need to get you to St Mungo’s,” he said in all seriousness. “You have clearly gone mad.”

Harry frowned slightly and shook his head, refusing to get up.

“I’m fine, Draco,” he answered calmly, the after-effects of the adrenaline rush having kicked in. He was crashing now.

“Alright, lie still here,” he ordered carefully. “I need to go collected the venom while it’s still fresh. If I leave it for too long the potency will change and the entire potion will be off.”

Harry nodded deftly, allowing Draco to do as he pleased but rather disappointed when the warmth of his body left and was replaced with the cold stone.

He thought more on the words that the snake had spoken to him. He knew that the snake hadn’t meant anything by it. How could it, it’s just a snake? But still, the comment about being lovers unnerved Harry.

Did he want Draco to be his lover? Did he like the use of the term? No matter his feelings, Ginny had only just passed away and everything was so new to him.

No… that was a lie.

It was a new situation, new in the sense that he had never experienced it before but it did not seem new to him at all. He felt at ease with Draco in a way that he missed from school. He missed the tension between them and missed their fights and their words. He missed the excitement.

And now he had it back and it felt as though a hole had been filled inside of him.

Did he love Draco?

Could he love Draco?

Why was he considering love?

Harry felt so confused by his thoughts and feelings. He still had so much to learn about the other man, so much to understand and so much to give in return. There were problems strewn along the way ahead and Harry knew it. Obstacles that were seemingly impossible to overcome but had that ever stopped Harry in the past?

In fact, in the past, it normally made him more and more determined to succeed.

--Well, fuck.—

Draco came back to his side just as Harry began to prop himself up, feeling his strength and awareness of reality slowly returning to him. He turned a soft shade of red, though it didn’t show underneath the blood that still splattered his face. He then realized, he was soaked and disgusting.

“I told you to lie still,” Draco scolded him with dabs of concern. Harry gave him a look.

“I told you to cut its head off but you didn’t listen to me either,” Harry retorted, groaning as he sat himself against the wall.

“I couldn’t cut off the head,” Draco shot, placing a very large jar next to them. It was filled with a clear liquid that curled into tendrils of smoke between the surface of the venom and the stopper Draco had placed on the container.

Harry paused, considering Draco’s position at the moment and he realized that it had probably been terrifying to someone who has never faced that fate before. He nodded softly.

“It’s alright, Draco,” he soothed, feeling bad for his outburst. “I understand.”

Draco shot him a glare as though he understood exactly what Harry was insinuating and did not appreciate it.

“I couldn’t cut off the head because it would have cut off the supply of venom and we would have lost the whole thing,” he snapped, displeased. “We would have risked our lives for nothing and thank god I didn’t give you that damn sword, otherwise who knows what you might have done.” He tossed his hair aside and Harry realized that it, too, was dripping in blood. Somehow it did not detract from his beauty.

--Beauty… fuck… --

“I’ll have you know I was trying to protect you!” Harry spat, feeling rather miffed now. “You looked like you were dying.”

“I was in shock,” Draco exclaimed suddenly. “Do you know what it feels like to me to hear you speak like a snake??”

As soon as Draco admitted this, his eyes widened and he tensed briefly before attempting to regain his face. Harry shot him a questioning look.

“What do you mean?” he asked more kindly than before. Draco said nothing and looked away, clenching his jaw and Harry studied the muscles of his cheeks that suddenly became taught.

“You have to understand,” he said softly, finally giving in. “The last time I heard anyone speak in Parseltongue it was Voldemort when he lived in our house… and that was the most frightening time of my life. He would tell the snake to eat his victims and tortured all his followers with the threat that they might be next.” He dropped his head, looking at the ground underneath him. Harry had the urge to hold him and comfort him. “To hear that kind of speech again… I thought it would just bring back those horrible memories… make me feel that afraid and vulnerable again…”

“Did it?” Harry asked quietly, giving in and reaching a hand out to rub Draco’s upper back. He looked up again.

“No,” he answered, turning to look slowly at Harry through his blond (and currently red) locks. “It made me feel something entirely different.”

The combination of the piercing gaze, the way his hair fell over his face and the words he spoke made Harry burn with need and anticipation. But now was not the time, it couldn’t be the time. He could not let himself do this…

He just couldn’t.

They sat in silence for a few moments, Harry all the while pushing his desire away in favour of more rational thoughts.

“We should get out of here,” he said finally, letting out a moan as he got to his feet. He ached everywhere. Draco nodded next to him and got up as well.

“Oh, by the way,” the blond added. “This is yours.”

He handed Harry the broomstick he had flown and Harry’s jaw dropped.

It was his Firebolt.

-----------

A/N: whoa admission there. Harry being the weirdo he is and I’ll explain the bit about the Firebolt.

I love these two. Barking mad, both of them, but that’s alright.

Hope you liked it!

Oh, and it’s my birthday tomorrow so I won’t be able to post, I’m afraid, but Saturday, things should be up! *lovelovelove*