Disclaimer - I own nothing except a little of the plot.

Challenge - A Harry Potter and Game of Thrones (or A Song of Ice and Fire) Crossover

#1 - During the battle with the basilisk during Harry's second year at Hogwarts, he and the big snake somehow end up in Westeros (Or Essos).

#2 - Harry has to make friends, or something similar, with the basilisk.

#3 - If Harry somehow fixes the basilisk's eyes that were destroyed by Fawkes, he has to be unable to repair its ability to kill with its gaze. He would be able to curb stomp anything and anyone otherwise.

#Edit - And just ignore having a rooster's crow being fatal to the basilisk. Not much point having a giant killer snake if it falls over dead the first time some bird screams at it.

#4 - No having Harry becoming a lapdog to the Starks. He can be as friendly with them as he wants, just not creepily devoted to them.

#5 - When, or if, there is a War of Five Kings, Harry has to be majorly involved in one form or another.

#6 - No slash.

#7 - Everything else is up to you.

"Speak to me, Slytherin, greatest of the Hogwarts Four," Tom Riddle hisses loudly with his arms spread wide.

Harry wheels around to look up at the statue. Dumbledore's phoenix, Fawkes, sways on the young boy's shoulder.

Slytherin's gigantic stone face moves. Horrorstruck, Harry watches the mouth open, wider and wider, to form a huge black hole.

And something stirs inside the statue's mouth. Something slithers up from its depths.

Harry backs away until he hits the dark chamber wall and, as he shuts his eyes tight, he feels Fawkes' wing sweep his cheek as he takes flight. Harry wants to shout for the bird to not leave him, but what chance did a phoenix have against the king of serpents?

Something huge hits the stone floor of the chamber. Harry feels it shudder; he knows what is happening, he can sense it, can almost see the giant serpent uncoiling itself from Slytherin's mouth. Then he hears Riddle's hissing voice.

"Kill him."

The basilisk moves toward Harry; the sound of its heavy body slithering across the dusty floor reaches his ears. Eyes still tightly shut, Harry begins to blindly run sideways, his hands outstretched, feeling his way; Voldemort is laughing.

Harry trips; he falls hard onto the stone and tastes blood. The serpent is barely feet from him; he can hear it coming.

There is a loud, explosive spitting sound right above him, and then something heavy hits Harry so hard that he is smashed into the wall. Waiting for fangs to sink through his body, he hears some more anger filled hissing and something thrashing wildly off the pillars.

He can't help it; he opens his eyes wide enough to squint at what is going on.

The enormous serpent, bright, poisonous green, thick as an oak trunk, has raised itself high in the air and its great blunt head is weaving drunkenly between the pillars. As Harry trembles, ready to close his eyes if it turns, he sees what has distracted the snake.

Fawkes is soaring around its head, and the basilisk is snapping furiously at him with fangs long and thin as sabers. Fawkes dives; his long golden beak sinks out of sight and a sudden shower of dark blood spatters the floor. The snake's tail thrashes, narrowly missing Harry, and before Harry can shut his eyes, it turns. Harry looks straight into its face and sees that its eyes, both its great, bulbous yellow eyes, have been punctured by the phoenix; blood is streaming to the floor, and the snake is spitting in agony.

"NO!" Harry hears Riddle screaming. "LEAVE THE BIRD! LEAVE THE BIRD! THE BOY IS BEHIND YOU. YOU CAN STILL SMELL HIM. KILL HIM!"

The blinded serpent sways, confused, yet still deadly. Fawkes is circling its head, piping his eerie song, jabbing here and there at its scaly nose as the blood pours from its ruined eyes.

"Help me, help me," Harry mutters wildly, "someone, anyone…"

The snake's tail whips across the floor again. Harry ducks; something soft hits his face.

The basilisk has swept the Sorting Hat into Harry's arms. Harry seizes it; it is all he has left, his only chance. He rams it onto his head and throws himself flat onto the floor as the basilisk's tail swing over him again.

"Help me...help me," Harry thinks, his eyes screwed tight under the hat. "Please help me."

There is no answering voice. Instead, the hat contracts, as though an invisible hand is squeezing it very tightly.

Something very hard and heavy thuds onto the top of Harry's head, almost knocking him out. Stars winking in front of his eyes, he grabs the top of the hat to pull it off and feels something long and metal beneath it.

A gleaming silver sword has appeared inside the hat, its handle glittering with rubies the size of eggs. The name Gryffindor is inscribed up the side of the blade.

"KILL THE BOY! LEAVE THE BIRD! THE BOY IS BEHIND YOU. SNIFF. SMELL HIM."

Harry is on his feet, ready. The basilisk's head is falling, its body coiling around, hitting pillars as it twisted to face him. He can see the vast, bloody eye sockets, see the mouth stretching wide, wide enough to swallow him whole, lined with fangs long as his sword, thin, glittering, and venomous.

It lunges blindly; Harry dodges and it hits the chamber wall. It lunges again, and its forked tongue lashes Harry's side. He raises the sword in both his hands.

Before the basilisk attempts another strike, Fawkes swoops through the air and latches his talons to the top of the giant serpent's head. Harry hesitates only a moment before he bolts into one the tunnels off to the side of the chamber.

Maybe I can find a way out, Harry thinks. I can find another teacher to help. McGonnagall, Flitwick, even Snape.

Harry runs. He runs faster than when his Aunt Marge's dog Ripper chased him up a tree, he runs faster than the times Dudley and his friends had gone "Harry hunting", and he runs faster than he has ever run before.

What may have been seconds or may have been minutes pass before Harry realizes that the basilisk has resumed its chase. As he runs down the long damp tunnel, he can hear the echo of the serpent slithering its way closer and closer.

As his breathing grows heavy and his legs begin to grow weak, Harry spots a swirling mass of something at the end of the tunnel. The colors of blue and orange swirl together; mixing yet remaining separate in a beautiful display of light. Harry thinks the swirls look almost like a mix of ice and fire.

The basilisk closes in on Harry and he, with no other alternative available, rushes into the swirls of color with the ruby encrusted sword held high.

He sees darkness.

Fire is the first thing he feels. He feels it burning through him, coursing through his blood and veins, cleansing his very being with its warmth. It burns and burns, and burns and burns until Harry is left feeling drained and exhausted and energized and powerful all at one time.

The fire leaves him.

Then he feels the ice. He feels as it creeps its way into his bones. He feels it cool the flames left over from the fire. He feels it center on his forehead right where his scar is located, and then he feels like something in his head is shattered to bits. The ice takes away his pain though; the cold is quick to soothe.

The ice leaves him as well.

And then both the ice and the fire come back all at once. They twist and wrap around inside him until he feels as if they will tear him apart. They battle each other, hate each other, caress each other, and love each other. The powers collide over and over and over and Harry's vision goes white.

And he suddenly finds himself being thrown from wherever portal he was in and landing face first in a pile of snow.

Harry spits the frozen water out of his mouth and pushes himself up so he is sitting on his knees. He then looks around at his new surroundings with his jaw hanging open and his eyes wide. He has found himself on top of hill, which wouldn't be that unusual if the land around him wasn't covered in snow as far as his eyes can see.

He then realizes that he can see. Without his glasses!

The glasses that he has worn for the biggest part of his life lay smashed at his feet, yet his eyes can make out details with a perfection that he thinks could only be the result of magic. His robe feels slightly tighter as well, as if they have gotten smaller by a few inches…or he has grown by a few inches.

Harry observations are quickly cut short though.

There is a noise behind Harry and Slytherin's basilisk busts free from the snow. The snake is alerted to Harry's position when he lets out a startled gasp and the basilisk rears back and prepares to strike. Harry raises his sword for the attack, which strangely never comes.

"Master," the basilisk hisses confusedly.

The basilisk sways back and forth, as if the creature has become drunk all of a sudden. It hisses and spits and swings its head from side to side. It then lowers its head down until its level with Harry.

"I not feel master," the basilisk says, still sounding confused to Harry's ears.

Harry briefly wonders what the snake means when it says it can't "feel" Voldemort, but he quickly dismisses it as magic. He looks around the white wasteland that the swirling lights have brought him, and the basilisk as well.

Harry speaks Parseltongue to the basilisk for the first time, "He's not here."

The basilisk rears back as if slapped. "Speaker," the creature states. "Speaker."

The king of serpent's forked tongue sneaks out from the creature's massive jaws and tastes the air.

Harry begins to wonder what the basilisk is going to do now that Tom Riddle is no longer around giving it orders. Thankfully, the monster no longer seems to be concerned with attacking him. He mentally smacks himself for not trying to speak Parseltongue while he was inside the chamber. It wouldn't surprise him if Riddle was controlling it through ways besides just the language of snakes, but he wishes he at least had the wits about him to give it try.

"Master not here," the basilisk asks sadly.

Harry has to restrain from pointing out that he just said that, but he figures he should do his best not to annoy the thing that's over fifty foot long and has teeth longer than his arm. Big teeth, teeth that could impale him in one end and come out the other.

"Not here," Slytherin's pet continues.

Even Dudley isn't this slow, Harry thinks about the basilisk.

To Harry, the basilisk appears to become distraught. It writhers in the snows, digging up what must be years and years of the stuff until the monster has dug itself an indent in the frozen rain large enough for it to curl up into. Hissing more and more, the snake stretches its head to the top of its makeshift nest and sets it next to Harry.

Harry, in an act that he will later consider extremely stupid, gently reaches his hand over and rubs the bright green scales on the side of the basilisk's massive head. To Harry's immense relief, the snake hisses happily at the attention and pushes its skull closer, instead of eating him like Harry feared it may.

"Basilisk master gone. Gone is master," it hisses.

Harry continues to run the giant snake. "I'm sorry," he lies. He is rather happy to be as far from Voldemort as he can get right at the moment.

"Master gone," it repeats over and over.

The basilisk turns its head around and, even with its eyes gouged out by Fawkes, Harry gets the feeling that the creature is staring at him.

"Needs new master," the basilisk says. "You's be basilisk's master."

Harry blinks in surprise. "Okay," he hisses back, assuming it would be best not to argue. "I'll be your master from now on."

It lets out a pleased sound and lightly pushes its nose into Harry's chest. The push still has enough force to push Harry's form over into the snow though, and despite all that he has gone through he laughs. What he is actually laughing about he isn't sure, but laugh he does. His hand reaches up to pat at the basilisk and, the moment his hand touches the serpent, a jolt travels down his arm and through his body.

Harry jerks his hand back in alarm. "What was that?"

"You is master now," the basilisk hisses happily.

And Harry knows the basilisk speaks the truth, as something new has appeared inside him; a connection of sorts, like a string linking Harry to the monstrous serpent. He now realizes what the basilisk meant when it said that it could no longer feel Voldemort. He assumes that the heir of Slytherin had a connection like this as well and that the portal they came through must have somehow broken it.

Harry smiles and resumes petting the creature. He never would have thought this is how his attempt to save Ginny would turn out.

Harry eyes widen in alarm. Ginny, he screams in his mind. He had somehow forgotten all about Ginny.

Harry kneels down in the snow and begins digging as quickly as he can. He hopes, he prays, that maybe there's another portal that will take him back to the chamber. He thinks there should be, that there has to be. He has to save her!

He needs to save her.

He digs and digs and digs until his hands begin to freeze and he reaches the ground underneath the blanket of white. Yet there is no portal. There is no way for him to get back into the chamber. There is no way for him to save his best friend's little sister.

Harry sits back in the snow and wipes at the tears that have begun to fall down his cheeks.

"Master," the basilisk hisses in confusion.

"It will be okay," Harry says to himself more so than the snake, as Slytherin's monster has no reason to be upset that Ginny is most likely long dead and the young Voldemort free from the diary. "It will be okay."

Harry isn't sure how long he lays there, in the snow and leaning against the basilisk's side. He thinks about Ginny lying lifelessly in the chamber, about Ron still trapped in the collapsed tunnel with no way out, and about Hermione lying petrified in the hospital wing. He thinks about what will happen when his friends discover he failed, that he couldn't save the youngest Weasley, and what will happen whenever he gets home.

If he gets home…

By the time Harry musters the strength and willpower to rise from his place of despair, the sun has risen high in the sky and his stomach has grown hungry. His bones pop as he stands and stretches out his limbs, and Harry's action causes the basilisk to stir from the slumber it had fallen into.

Harry stares out at the snowy expanse before him and wonders where in the world he is. His first thought is Antarctica, but he can clearly see some trees in the distance and he is pretty sure the ice continent doesn't have any.

Harry rubs a hand over the side of the beast he now has a magical connection to, the beast that was trying its best to murder him not long ago. "Do you have a name," he asks in Parseltongue.

"Basilisk."

Slytherin obviously wasn't very creative," Harry thinks. At least it won't be hard to remember.

Harry sighs and continues to look around. Nothing he sees looks even vaguely familiar, and considering it's the beginning of summer, he figures he must be in a place pretty far north. He considers the idea that maybe he is in Iceland or Greenland, as he can't remember which is supposed to be the snowy one.

"Do you know the way home," Harry asks Basilisk hopefully.

The giant snake stares back at Harry with the bloodied remains of its eyes.

Harry wishes he had his wand with him. That way he could at least make a fire to keep warm until he figures a way back to Hogwarts.

"Well we can't stay here," he says. He glances up at the basilisk. "Would it be okay if I ride on your back?"

The snake's head twists around and its massive fangs hook into the back of Harry's robes and lifts him onto the monster's back.

"Watch the teeth," Harry says with apprehension. Getting nicked and dying from poison isn't something he wants to do.

"I not able to harm master," the snake hisses back.

Harry eyes that holes the snake's teeth left in his robe warily. Maybe the basilisk is right and it can't harm him, maybe the bond they now have would protect him from its poison, but it most definitely isn't something he plans to ever test. Ever.

Harry fidgets around on the snake's back, turns Gryffindor's sword around so he doesn't accidentally stab Basilisk on accident, and then looks toward the direction that he thinks is south.

"Okay, Basilisk, let's go." He points forward.

The serpent zips forward at speeds much faster than Harry was expecting and he is forced to tighten his legs and attempt to get a stronger grip on its green scales. Snow is pushed out of the way and thrown to the side of the snake, and a massive trail is left on the ground that they travel.

Harry hunkers down in an effort to keep some of the cold wind out of his face and squints toward the horizon. He may not know where he is, how exactly the swirling portal got him there, or which way he should now go. But, he does know that despite the fact that he failed Ginny and his friends, he isn't going to just lie down and die in this frozen wasteland.

So he will do the same thing he has always done. The thing he did when Voldemort attacked his home and hit him with the killing curse. The thing he did during the few times his Uncle Vernon got carried away with a punishment. The thing he did when the possessed Quirrell tried to kill him for Nicholas Flamel's stone.

Survive.

Author's note: I would love to hear any opinions about this. So please drop a review and let me know what you think.