What Dies Inside, Part 4.
The smell was unspeakable as he picked his way up through the house. He had seen it countless times before now, in the dark from a cemetery, again through the pensieve with Dumbledore and a thousand times in his nightmares. He stepped over the crumpled and bloated bodies of Death Eaters, all but oozing from the folds of their robes and ridiculous masks. The hindquarters of a particularly rotund corpse protruded from a wall where the timbers had split and broken to accommodate it, one of its hands having an odd, silvery sheen.
“Couldn’t scarper away fast enough eh?” Harry asked the humming pile as he pushed into the master bedroom.
The disgusting, serpentine wreck buried in the enormous, ornate, black-clad four-poster haltingly raised his wand.
“Avad….ava….” The incantation was interrupted by a burst of throaty coughing.
“Sorry, didn’t quite catch that?” Harry mocked as he walked to the side of the bed and wrenched the wand from his hand.
“How….how…..dare you?!?” Voldemort spat at him, simultaneously snatching for his wand and trying to writhe away.
“It really is the same as mine isn’t it?” Harry ignored him, turning the wand over in his hand before slipping it into the folds of his robe. He tipped a pile of scrolls and papers off a chair and pulled it up to the foot of the bed before sitting down to examine the room. The curtains were all drawn and the air was thick with dust and the putrid stench of sick and urine and human decay. Scrolls and books and strange apparatus covered every surface, the desiccated ingredients for potions strewn about or staining the floors. “I love what you’ve done with the place.”
“Come to kill me have you?”
“No.” Harry shook his head.
“You couldn’t anyway, you pathetic weakling. You still haven’t a clue where the last of my Horcruxes lie,” Voldemort wheezed.
“I don’t really care,”
“Then why are you here?” His horrid visage creased up with confusion.
“To watch you rot,” Harry answered honestly. “You said it yourself, you can’t ever really die without the Horcruxes being destroyed, which I have absolutely no intention of doing. You see, it seems that whatever I’m meant to do, be that killing you or dying trying, I’m still meant to do it. As you can see, I’m a picture of health. Course, just because I’m meant to do something doesn’t mean that I will and like you said, you can’t die. It does, however, look like you can suffer,” Harry smiled coldly at Voldemort. He liked to think he saw a flicker of dawning realisation in those emotionless slits.
“So it’s to be gloating then is it? I think I could even still best you at that boy. Where….where would you care for me to begin? Hmm?…Your parents perhaps? Their flea-ridden friend?…No? Dear old…Dumbledore? The litter of ginger whelps? That insufferable mudblood?” His vitriolic tirade left him panting, Harry making every effort to keep his face as determinedly serene as could be.
“You know something? You can’t upset me Tom, you can’t even make me angry. You see, I’ve got nothing left to lose, nothing left that you can ever take from me, in a twisted kind of way, I’m free. But it seems like there might be something you’ll want from me before too long.” Harry grinned at him.
“Do not call me by that name!” Voldemort shouted at him.
“What? Tom? What’re you going to do about it Tommy? Cough at me?” Harry mocked him.
“I’ll…I…” he began and then started up coughing again. He wiped a blood-encrusted hand across his mouth. “I take it…that you’re intending to lay blame for this whole affair at my door?”
“No. I know you had nothing to do with it, but it’s because of you, because of you that this all happened.”
“Then it is, by equal measure, because of you.”
“I know that too.”
“Then why have you come?”
“Revenge.”
“If…if you were to help me….we could, we could find an answer to this, we could find a way to restore things, to bring them all back…” Voldemort put to him in a tone of reason. Harry knew enough to know that it was cunning, not fear.
“Can you hear yourself? Help you?!” It came out with something of a bitter laugh. “I just came here to tell you that while now, I may be alone, at least I’ve had things beyond anything that you’ll ever experience, I’ve had a home and family and friends and love.”
“You think I care anything for such things?” Voldemort responded venomously.
“I know you do. You wouldn’t have become this thing without not having them. So, that said, I would stay but y’know, things to do Tom, things to do. Sun on my face, wind in my hair, birdsong and sea breeze and all of that. And you know, if you ever want a taste of what you’re missing…” At that Harry touched a finger to his scar. It was the reason he had known Voldemort was still alive, the reason he had known where to find him. He hadn’t spoken of it to the others to keep from souring some last sense of justice. “Y’know Tom, there was a time when I would’ve liked nothing better than to kill you. But now…personally…I hope you live forever.” Harry smiled quietly as he stood up and moved to the door.
“Wait….Harry…don’t go….” It might not have been fear, it might have been cunning, but Harry knew true loneliness when he heard it.
“Goodbye Tom.” Harry didn’t look back.
~
Harry visited a range of places after that. He wandered the halls and the towers of Hogwarts, would’ve slept a night in his old bed if the Fat Lady had been anywhere to be found. He didn’t ascend the tower of that fateful night, he probably never would. He had planned to visit Dumbledore’s office but no number of confectionaries that he named allowed him access. His map showed no names and no footprints, even the ghosts seemed to have gone, the portraits all empty, still and quiet.
He sat instead on the grass before Dumbledore’s tomb, staring at the wind worn marble and picking at the grass, speaking to Dumbledore of all that had happened and of nothing in particular.
He stood, for the first time, outside the house where his parents had died but didn’t go in. From there he travelled long and far. It took time to find the little town that he was looking for, it had been years ago after all. He rowed a boat out to the little island on a bright, clear day, the waters choppy and the sky distantly threatening rain but he did it with the sun on his back and the wind in his hair. Flocks of gulls called from on high and farmed the burgeoning schools of fish.
He might go looking for Hedwig, Fang and Crookshanks in the coming week but today was to be a quiet day. He sat down on the couch in the dingy little shack and set out a bottle of whiskey and his cigarettes and a lighter. He then put his bag on the floor and took out the gateaux he had taken from the freezer of a local supermarket, not really looking at the gun he’d taken from a dead soldier. He always kept it in the bottom of his bag and at the back of his mind just incase things became all too much. Rather primitive indeed, he thought with a smile.
Meticulously sticking candles in the cake, he lit them one by one, then sat back and stared around at the dilapidated little guesthouse. He poured himself a drink and lit a cigarette, letting the candles burn until the wax ran into the icing before blowing them out. He wasn’t really sure where to go next, but he could figure that out tomorrow, not today. He took a drag and then let out a long sigh, looking around at where his life had really begun.
“Happy birthday Harry,” he laughed an old, hollow laugh “I guess you really are the boy who lived.”