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Chapter Two—Unwanted Sacrifices

"Harry Potter."

Harry has become used to hearing his name in Parseltongue, but it still makes him flinch, a little. That's the language Voldemort speaks in his nightmares—the ordinary ones, not the visions. "Lyassa," he says, nodding as he watches the Speaker slither towards him. She's a snake from the waist down only, but her eyes shine in a way he's not used to. "You said that you had good news."

"I do." Lyassa pauses in front of him, in the middle of Severus's drawing room, and bows her head a little to him. "But I wanted to offer you condolences, first, on the passing of your brave companion."

Harry swallows. One thing Parseltongue is really good for is demonstrating sincerity, whether that's about grief or the desire to kill and eat something. He knows Lyassa really does mourn with him. "Thank you."

Lyassa keeps her head bowed for a second, then tosses her scaled ribbons of hair behind her shoulders as she smiles at him. "I wanted to tell you that I know that Theodore Nott does not have to fear his father."

Harry blinks. "I didn't know his stepmother was a Parselmouth."

"His stepmother is me."

Harry knows he's staring like an idiot, something the Speakers have tried to train him out of, but from the way Lyassa is smiling, she enjoys it, for once. Then Harry shakes his head. "But his stepmother is a human woman. That's what Theo said." He emphasizes the name a little, and Lyassa notices, from the way she nods. Then again, Theo isn't likely to be bothered when she'll probably never say the name in English around him.

"Did you forget that we can shift our forms? I married him in my human form, which he had never seen. But he owed you a debt for trying to betray you, and I wanted to make sure that he paid the debt and would not hurt your friend."

Harry swallows back his astonishment and manages to ask, "And you thought this would help me?"

"I have neutralized Tarquinius. He planned to murder your friend because he believed he would be able to replace them with the children he thought his wife was carrying. And I made him send the results of your test with the Silver Hourglass to your guardians."

Harry pauses. It's true that he's been curious about the results of that strange test Tarquinius conducted to measure his magical skills for a while now, but he saw no way of making Tarquinius talk about them to him when he was on the verge of being a danger even to Theo. "It was still something you didn't need to do."

"I doubt your friend will see it that way. Particularly when it means that he can still take his revenge."

"You don't feel at all for the man you married?"

"He regularly did to me what would have been abuse to a human woman." Lyassa's voice turns a shade cooler. "No, I do not."

In the end, Harry just nods. He doesn't think that scolding Lyassa will give the impression he wants to give. Better to tell Theo and let him deal with the consequences in the way he wants. Maybe he'll even be happy for it, the way Lyassa seems to think.

"You said in your letter that you were going to teach me how to use the firestone Chaos left me." Harry takes it out of his pocket. For a moment, it sparks in his hand, and Lion, the winged snake on his shoulder, stretches his neck down and looks at it intently.

"Yes. The gift you have been given is highly unusual, but not unprecedented. And we know how to handle dragon gifts."

"Oh." Harry spends a moment fiddling with the stone. He isn't sure that he likes the idea of the Speakers having access to it, although honestly, he doesn't think they'd steal it. But it still feels like an intrusion on his grief for Chaos.

He sighs and holds out the firestone to Lyassa. She actually pulls back, her tail coiling as if she's going to launch herself at him.

"You will retain possession of the gift, of course. There is no doubt that she meant you to have it, and if we took it, it would—it would be wrong."

Harry blinks. "All right." He's a little startled to find something that is wrong in the Speakers' flexible code of ethics, but not upset. "Then what are you going to teach me to do with it? Summon fire?"

"In a sense." Lyassa smiles. "Why don't you get close to the hearth and comfortable there? This will make things easier."

"So my stepmother has been…you, all along."

"Yes," the massive Speaker in front of Theo says. She has the tail of a shining green snake, and she's a woman from the waist up. Her face is narrow, and Theo can see fangs when she smiles. She has green hair that looks almost normal when the light isn't catching it, either black or brown, and then she stirs and the scales it's obviously made of flicker to life. Theo watches her and wonders why she chose to do this.

On the other hand, that's the kind of question that he has the right to ask as an ally, doesn't he? And someone who the Speakers apparently wanted to avenge. He leans forwards from the low chair in the middle of Harry's drawing room where Lyassa chose to confront him. "Why did you choose to target my father?"

"He was too dangerous to leave alone." Lyassa folds her hands and regards him. "Especially since Harry owed him a favor, and he had the Dark Mark, and he had the results of Harry's tests before the Silver Hourglass."

Theo blinks at that. "Are they so remarkable?" He was tested himself when he was young, as most children raised in the magical world are, so parents will know what kind of schooling they'd benefit from, but he can't remember it being a huge source of excitement.

"I think his guardians will need to know how to properly interpret them."

Theo frowns. "Fine." He studies Lyassa. "And you want to reassure me that it's perfectly safe for me to go home if I need to."

"Yes." Lyassa smiles in a way that makes her fangs appear less prominent, but Theo doesn't assume she's doing it to comfort him. The Speakers seem to care very little for the comfort of humans whose names aren't Harry Potter. "I have your father under a form of mind control that does not allow him to defy me, and I have ordered him to leave you strictly alone."

"I worry that he might find a way around it."

"That is an irrational fear."

"Then I am prey to irrational fears." Theo relaxes back against the cushions on the couch and watches as Lyassa's tail stops twitching. If she attacks suddenly, he's in a good position to at least fire off one curse, and he's in the house with a Potions expert who should be able to get him some antivenin. "But I appreciate what you did for me."

Lyassa continues to study him as if he's prey, which makes Theo clench his hand tighter around his wand. But at last she nods and sweeps from the room with her tail the last part of her to disappear.

Theo sighs. He has no doubt that his father is under a form of mind control, and is safer to approach than he's probably been in years.

But…

Theo's mother thought she was safe at one time. Theo believed his father would never harm him, at one time. He studied the potions that he used on his father for so long because he wanted to make sure that there was no way his father could combat them, and because he had to hide his research, to make absolutely sure there was no way his father could anticipate what he was doing and kill him for it.

For right now, Theo will stay where he is, although he will make requests of his father with more confidence in them being answered than normal.

And he'll also keep his eye on Harry, the way he prefers to. Why should he sleep in another house halfway across the country when he's linked to Harry in his dreams?

Draco flings the book across the room in disgust. Honestly, why can't he find some way to countermand his father's final order to the Malfoy house-elves with less effort than this? It can't be the first time that someone was deprived of their inheritance by an ill-worded demand to elves. And elves can be got around. They're far more literal than wizards, after all.

Unfortunately, that's part of the problem, from what Draco's been finding. It's actually easier to get around a complicated, in-depth order to elves that leaves a lot of loopholes and things that they weren't explicitly told not to do. From what he knows, his father told the Malfoy elves not to listen to anyone but him, and so they won't.

There's not much arguing you can do with that.

A slight shadow stirs in the doorway, and Draco looks up to see Hecuba Selwyn standing there. His stomach clenches uncomfortably as he stands up and nods to her. There aren't that many pure-bloods who make him feel this way, and the rest of the Selwyn family doesn't, but even his father would have been wary about crossing Hecuba.

"Young Mr. Malfoy," Selwyn says. "My condolences on the death of your father."

Draco stares at her, unable not to. She has to know that Lucius Malfoy died trying to kill Harry Potter, and didn't she swear loyalty to Harry for a month?

Selwyn seems to know what he's thinking, which Draco sincerely hopes is just because she's so intelligent and not because she used Legilimency. He didn't feel the fluttering probe in his mind, though. She comes into the library with a smile and shuts the door behind her. Draco keeps himself from reaching for his wand, but it's difficult.

"Be at ease," Selwyn says. "I only want some information. We can trade."

"If I betray something about my cousin, then both my cousin and my mother are going to be after me," Draco says flatly. "And I'm sorry, but they scare me more than you do."

"Is that true?" Selwyn wonders, and holds out a hand palm up in front of her. Draco stares at it, unsure what he's supposed to be seeing, but noticing that the air over it wavers as if she has an illusion there.

Then the illusion breaks, or maybe the magic comes fully into being. There's a small black rat crouched there. It looks as if it's made of glassy obsidian rather than a true animal, but it has small, bright teeth, and wicked, sharp claws, and it edges forwards to the edge of Selwyn's hand and makes a growling sound.

Draco feels himself sweating under his robes. He's seen Harry conjure fire in the same way, and Disarm people with his hand, and conjure a shield, but he's never created an animal. Selwyn is more powerful than Harry is.

"Be at ease," Selwyn repeats, and there's an odd note in her voice that takes Draco's attention away from the rat for a second. He sees that her arm is shaking where she holds it out, and there's also sweat on her forehead.

All right. So conjuring the rat wasn't easy for her. Draco is still afraid, but less so than he would have been if she'd managed to hide the effort it took her.

Selwyn closes her eyes and bows her head for a second. Then she nods and looks up. Her face is clear enough that Draco feels terror skitter lightly across his mind.

"What kind of information do you want?" he whispers. "And isn't your promise of loyalty to Harry keeping you from doing this?"

"Ah, but you had a falling-out, and are not exactly a friend under his protection." Selwyn smiles and pulls her hand back towards her. The rat leaps from it before it falls entirely down to her side and scuttles up to her shoulder, to sit with its nose wrinkling. Its beady little eyes are still fixed fiercely on Draco. "And I told you, I don't intend to hurt you. I want some information on Harry Potter's personality."

Draco swallows, his eyes on the rat. Harry's personality can't be that much of a secret, really. And it's not like he's going to give Selwyn information on the defensive magic Harry can do. Not even the wandless magic.

"I mean, he's impulsive," Draco says, trying to imagine how his mother would approach a request like this, what she would say. It doesn't help much to realize that she would never be caught in this situation in the first place. "He was a Gryffindor before he was Sorted into Slytherin, and that's still there. He doesn't delegate enough."

"What does that mean?"

"There are things other people could easily do. His followers. I mean, his friends. And he doesn't let them do them. He just tries to do everything himself."

"Ah," Selwyn sighs, like Draco has told her something she dearly wants to know. She props her chin up for a second on the rat's back, then touches it with a finger in the middle of its spine. It dissolves into black flecks that disappear into the carpet like soot. "Would you say that he tends to take responsibility for anything that happens around him? Whether it was his fault or not?"

Draco frowns. "No."

"Why not?"

"He didn't take responsibility for my father's death," Draco snaps. His chest aches, and even though he knows that Lucius was taking his chances being a Death Eater, well, he didn't die at Voldemort's hands, did he? He burned to death in dragonfire. Draco can't imagine what an infinity of pain that must have been. "He didn't put enough spells on his bloody dragon to protect people from her."

Selwyn frowns at him as if he isn't telling her what she wants to know. But Draco is a little braver now that the rat is gone, and his mind is working. He folds his arms and looks away from her.

Show her what she expects. Your sulkiness, your weakness.

Draco can do that. Even if he thinks that he shouldn't need to protect Harry and someone who didn't restrain a dragon from burning someone to death should be able to take his chances, the plain fact is that other people don't agree. And Draco is already in a fragile enough place when it comes to his cousin and Harry.

"You imagine that he could have controlled the dragon?"

"Sure. There were times that she wanted to burn other people and didn't." This is the truth, and Draco turns back to Selwyn. "Students in school, things like that. The only person she actually killed before Father was Fenrir Greyback, and it sounds like Harry was taken by surprise when she killed him. I don't think anyone knew Greyback could sneak through the wards at Hogwarts."

"Hmmm." Selwyn is tapping her fingers together in slow motions that make it look like she might snap them any second. Draco keeps a wary eye on them and tries to convince himself that no other threats will appear there, but it's sort of a useless reassurance. "What about the werewolf scars the boy bears?"

Draco shrugs. "Honestly, I don't think much about them. They're not as noticeable as they were. I don't know anyone who thinks much about them."

"A source of weakness?"

"You mean, because people might ignore them until they don't?" Draco doesn't have to feign the uncertainty in his voice. "I don't know. I know a lot of people were upset when it first happened, but not even the paper has mentioned Harry being attacked by Greyback in a while."

"That should change."

Draco keeps quiet. That isn't something he has the power to change, but he does have the ability to go to his mother right after this and warn her about the incoming threat.

As if she hears his thoughts—which can happen—Selwyn looks at him and smiles. "I don't think I need to tell you to keep this between ourselves, do I, young Malfoy?"

"What are you doing with my son, Madam Selwyn?"

Draco wants to collapse with relief as he sees his mother come to a stop in the library door, which she's opened. Selwyn doesn't spin around, but Draco couldn't have expected that. She turns slowly instead, shaking her head a little as if in amusement.

"Why, teaching him politics, Madam Malfoy."

"I have reserved that charge for myself. Not that you could have known, of course." Mother is smiling as she glides towards Selwyn, but her eyes are bright in a way that Draco thinks the other woman is bright enough to take as a warning. "I do hope that you wouldn't begin with a lesson in keeping secrets, of course. My son is still young enough to need guidance on this."

"Well, of course. He is your son. You should train him better."

That's probably meant as a parting shot, but Draco doesn't care. He's shaking a little as he watches Selwyn depart. His mother gently lays her hands on his shoulders and gazes into his eyes, asking for permission to read his thoughts.

Draco grants it, and watches her mouth tighten.

"Well. I have little faith in that oath Harry made her swear, if it results in this." Mother shakes her head and steps back. "Thank you, Draco. I understand your complicated feelings towards Harry perfectly—" and Draco thinks she actually might, since she was just inside them "—but I am glad that you played a good political part in this."

"Despite telling her so much?"

"Most of it she could have learned elsewhere. And she wanted to manipulate you with grief for your father, and you realized what she was doing and didn't let her do it."

Mother gives him a bright, soft smile, the kind that makes Draco's heart feel like it could probably float out of his chest. He nods.

Mother nods back and glides out of the room.

Draco watches her go, then begins to look for other books. This time, researching house-elves doesn't hold as much appeal. He wants to know more about political games that people have played in the past, and the Black library is good about holding books that discuss such machinations in obsessive detail.

And wandless magic. He wants to know more about it. If Selwyn could impress him so much with it, even though he knew what she was doing with it, how much more could Draco use it to impress someone who isn't expecting it?