Chapter Thirty-Seven of 'His Twenty-Eighth Life- A Full-Fledged Alliance
Chapter Thirty-Six.
Title: His Twenty-Eighth Life (37/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Eventual Harry Potter/Voldemort; mentions of others, including canon pairings, in the background, and past Harry/others
Rating: R (more for violence than sex)
Content Notes: violence, torture, gore, manipulation, angst, Master of Death Harry Potter, reincarnation, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts
Summary: Harry Potter has been reborn again and again into new bodies as the Master of Death, some of them not human, none of them exactly like his old one-but he has always helped to defeat Voldemort in each new world. Now he’s Harry Potter again, but his slightly older brother is the target of the prophecy, and Harry assumes his role is going to be to support Jonathan in his defeat of Voldemort. At least, that’s what he thinks until Voldemort comes that Halloween night, discovers what Harry is, and kidnaps him. The story of a long fight between Voldemort’s sadism and Harry’s generosity.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a very long fic, exploring some fairly dark character interactions. While the heart of the story is Harry’s relationship with Voldemort, that’s going to change only slowly and over time, and there will be plenty of concentration on other characters, too. Also, please take the tags/content notes seriously.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Thirty-Seven-Full-Fledged Alliance
“Thank you for coming to meet with me.”
Acanthus had to slow down a little when she entered the private room of the Scarlet Ribbon. It was a restaurant in Diagon Alley that let wizards reserve space and never asked the reason. It was also neutral ground for everyone, with its extreme magic-dampening wards. Acanthus had thought it was a good choice of meeting place, and so had her parents.
But they truly hadn’t expected to see a child who looked barely nine years old alone here.
“Greetings, Mr. Potter,” said Mother after a moment. She had worn her most formal gown, the one that Acanthus usually saw only on the eve of a few great holidays, and she held out the silver skirts as she curtsied to Potter. Behind her, Father, in his dark robes that Acanthus knew were flattering, bowed. Pansy giggled and hid her face.
Acanthus restrained her sigh. As her parents reminded her often, Pansy was only nine years old.
Potter’s age. It made Acanthus wonder more and more if they had made a mistake.
“We did expect you to be somewhat older,” Father said, taking the risk of letting possible displeasure fall on him. He had raised her to do the same, since Acanthus was his first child. “Or to have an adult guardian with you.”
Potter gave them a faint smile and raised his hand. Acanthus found herself gasping as fire took form there, a small dragon that spread its wings and looked around with bright eyes. A second later, it zoomed around the room, making Acanthus duck, and landed on Pansy’s shoulder, nuzzling at her. Pansy giggled and reached out to pet the little creature, but it turned into smoke before her hand could touch it.
It was hard for Acanthus to close her mouth. She knew that making fire into a shape, and controlling it like that, and making the flames clever enough not to burn clothes but possibly to burn flesh-because it had disappeared when Pansy reached out for it-were all signs of great control. Mother and Father had probably even noted things that she missed.
Potter was very powerful.
“Please sit down,” Potter said, and nodded towards the small round table with five chairs around it in the center of the room.
Acanthus saw the moment Mother decided that Potter was genuine. She lifted her chin and said, “Thank you, sir,” walking over to sit down. Father followed her, and held her chair out for her. Acanthus held it for Pansy, and then they were facing Potter’s chair in a semicircle.
Potter sat down calmly, so calmly that Acanthus didn’t think it was silly to see his legs dangle. His eyes never left them. Acanthus wondered if he could really know which spells each of them could cast just by looking. It felt like it.
Potter raised his hand, and a silver teakettle floated into the room from an even smaller one off to the side. A tray loaded with milk, cream, sugar, scones, honey, cups, and some marzipan followed. Potter lowered the tray easily into the center of the table and brought out another one that held cups, plates, spoons, and delicate little knives.
“Extravagant, Mr. Potter,” said Father.
“Not really.”
Acanthus wanted to choke at that statement. Just how much power did he have? But she kept silent and sipped the tea and let her parents do the talking. She’d done all she could by getting them to listen to Jonathan. Now she just had to let whatever was going to happen next happen.
The small talk Mother and Father made while they took the scones and tea and arranged them as they wanted concerned the size of the room and the convenient location of the restaurant. Potter only looked at them and waited. Mother nodded at last, in the way that she used to nod to Acanthus and Pansy when it was time to go to bed, and looked sternly at Potter.
“How does your power accord with your age?”
“I considered not telling the truth, but there’s too many questions you would have if I didn’t, and it would get us distracted from our main purpose here. I’m immortal, Mrs. Parkinson. Several lifetimes old. Each time I reincarnate, I keep all my memories. So it’s not so much that I have more magic than the average wizard as that I know all the ways to get around the constraints on a wizard’s power. All the exceptions to the magical ‘laws’ that people think are permanent. Everything.”
Acanthus was breathing hard, and hearing herself do that, blushed a little and put down her tea. She had time to learn these things. If Potter knew them, then maybe he would be willing to teach them to her.
And other people, of course, but she would always be one of the first. Now she knew where Jonathan got some of his strange, secretive air and probably some pf the spells that he knew.
“That’s impossible,” Father said.
“How could you be immortal?” Mother added.
Pansy gave a nervous little giggle, but ducked out of sight when Potter looked at her. Acanthus sighed. It was a trial having a sister like Pansy. She only hoped that Potter realized not everyone in the family was like her.
“Perhaps these will answer your questions?” Potter extended his hands, and objects were there, popping into being out of nowhere. Acanthus jumped. You couldn’t just Summon things through the wards like that, and even then, you would see them flying.
But as she stared at the objects Potter held, she began to see why she might not have seen these things flying. She swallowed nervously and glanced at her parents. Father’s eyes were a little glossy. Mother reached out silently to touch the fabric of the Invisibility Cloak.
“There are-the Deathly Hallows?” Father’s voice was slow.
“Yes,” Potter said calmly. “I found them in my first life, by accident. I didn’t know I was collecting them or what would happen when I did. But when I did, suddenly I found myself able to return from death. And since then, I can never truly die. I return to life in a new world every time.”
Acanthus remembered what he had said about his memories. To have a leader who knew secrets that perhaps no one else in this world would ever discover-someone who might even have known them before-seemed a lot better than merely having a powerful leader.
She turned to her parents and did her best to look at them imploringly. Father was already looking at Mother in much the same way. Mother nodded, her hair, up in a chignon, bobbing along as she did. Pansy was holding her hands to her mouth, probably not understanding much except that she was looking at artifacts from a children’s story.
“Mr. Potter.” Father had a nice smile when he wanted to, although Acanthus mostly only saw him use it to friends. “We would be honored if you would be our ally. We may need more proof of your incredible claims, but what we have seen is enough to convince us you are powerful.”
“You should know that I value loyalty.” Potter considered them slowly, his eyes lingering on all their faces, as if Pansy and Acanthus were every bit as important as their parents. “I don’t want to find myself with someone trying to stab me in the back. You’ll need to take a few oaths before I fully trust you. And you may not like all my goals.”
Mother looked a little reserved at that. Acanthus wanted to roll her eyes. The Parkinson family had its power, its money, but they couldn’t accomplish as much as they could if they allied with someone stronger. And this was better than the Malfoys any day. Lucius Malfoy was a weak person, Acanthus thought. She’d only met him a few times, but she already knew that he said anything he thought someone wanted to hear.
Father nodded with incredible slowness, Acanthus thought, but Potter didn’t seem insulted. “As long as the oaths don’t require us to harm family.”
“It would never require you to do something like that.” Potter gave them a small smile. “Only to keep my secrets and not harm other people who are my friends or allied with me.”
“Not to help you?”
“I can accomplish most of the things I want to do on my own. Mostly, I want to interest people in standing aside rather than joining Dumbledore.”
Acanthus saw both Mother and Father sit up like their Crups when the house-elves brought fresh bacon to the table. She hid her smile. Now they were feeling like this was a really good idea, now that they had more ideas what Potter wanted.
“Dumbledore is your enemy?”
“Not by choice,” Potter admitted. “He knows about my powers and he’s convinced that I’m a danger to the world that he wants to create. Mostly, so far, I’ve pretended to go along with him and to be frightened myself of what I can do. But sooner or later, I need to either move more openly against him or help someone who wants to. That means the fewer people he has fighting on his side, the better.”
“You want to avoid open warfare, right?” Acanthus asked. She thought she was right, but she wanted to see if she was.
Potter smiled at her. He looked a lot older when he did that. “Yes. I don’t want people to die simply because they sincerely believe something.”
“Sincere beliefs are a good reason for people to die,” Mother muttered, but she did it under her breath. She met Father’s eyes, and Father nodded and took out a scroll of the parchment he always carried with him.
“Shall we discuss the wording of this oath?”
*
“I-really don’t like this spell, Sirius.”
“And I really hope that you don’t ever have to use it, Jonathan. But it saved my life once, and it’s the kind of Dark Arts that both Harry and Dumbledore would want me to teach you. Well, maybe with Dumbledore, not so much want, but he’d expect it. At the very least, you need to know how to cast it so that you can learn the countercurse.”
Sirius watched with his chest aching as Jonathan took his slow place in front of the dummy Sirius had created. They were back from Christmas holidays, at Hogwarts, in one of the training rooms that Sirius had carefully protected against anyone outside it being able to sense Dark Arts. And the Entrail-Expelling Curse was one of the Darkest spells.
Sirius remembered being made to learn it himself, how he’d tried to refuse, and how his mother had forced him to. He grimaced, scratching at an old scar on his shoulder for a second. He’d persevered through learning it for the same reason he wanted Jonathan to, so that he could learn to cast the countercurse that would tuck someone’s entrails back inside them.
And then the curse itself had saved his life, in a battle with one of the Death Eaters during the war.
Jonathan licked his lips and then kind of flopped his wand around and said, “Obscurus expulso!”
Sirius sighed as he watched a splash of purple light against the dummy’s stomach. There were bags of sand and colored rocks inside that would spill out when Jonathan succeeded. “I know that you didn’t try your hardest.”
“How do you know that?”
“The way you deliberately messed up the wrist movement. Come on, Jonathan. I won’t make you cast this again once you know how to do it. Then I’ll cast the curse on the dummies, and you can practice the countercurse.”
The poor kid’s face was utterly pale, the few little freckles he had and which Sirius didn’t usually notice standing out. But he nodded and said hoarsely, “Obscurus expulso!”
The spell ripped into the dummy’s stomach this time and produced a small rent in the cloth. Sirius nodded. “That’s a lot better. Now let’s keep practicing at this so you can get even better, okay?”
“O-okay.”
Sirius winced and stood out of the way as Jonathan went back to casting. He hated the idea that he had to act like his mother did when she was teaching him to cast this spell. But then he reminded himself that he had never locked Jonathan in a dark room filled with doxies as punishment or forced him to eat slugs until he vomited.
The better he can do at this, the better he’ll do at fighting other people who did go through that sort of training.
*
Lord Voldemort lifted his head and turned it slowly in the direction of the breeze that blew from the back of the glade, sniffing. There was a scent there he had long missed, sweet enough to make his mouth water. He stood and strode towards it, watching the shadows the moon threw.
And the small one that had formed at the back of the clearing, beneath some crooked branches.
“Harry,” he said. “At last.” He didn’t think he needed to say more than that. The sound of the welcome in his voice would be enough.
“Voldemort?”
Lord Voldemort nodded, watching as Harry drew back the hood of a fur-lined cloak that was new. It must have been a Christmas gift. For a moment, Lord Voldemort felt his stomach boil at the thought of someone else’s gifts touching Harry, at the thought of Harry treasuring them, but then he soothed himself. He had simply not had the time to present his gift to Harry yet. When he did, then Harry would wear it as he was now wearing the cloak; he would cherish it.
“I wished to speak with you,” Lord Voldemort said, and watched Harry cast some spells around the clearing that seemed meant to secure their discussion in utter privacy. “I am surprised that you came this time, however, when you did not respond to my letters in the past.”
“I wanted to talk to you, too.” Harry took a slow breath. “And the Deathly Hallows brought me something that belongs to you. For what reason, only they know.” He scowled for a moment at his wand, which-Lord Voldemort did not think it was merely the moonlight deceiving his vision-seemed to wriggle like a puppy. Then Harry laid the wand aside and drew a wrapped package from his pocket.
Lord Voldemort knew the presence of his Horcrux before Harry undid the wrappings. He reached out and let his hand glance down the diadem. For a moment, he relived the triumphant moment of finding it in the tree where everyone else had missed it for a thousand years, how many would have rejoiced to know that the Lost Diadem of Rowena Ravenclaw was lost no more, but he was the only one who knew.
Then he stepped back and told Harry, “Finish it. Rejoin this piece to my soul.”
“It means that you won’t have as many Horcruxes left.” Harry’s eyes narrowed. There was no strong light in the clearing, and so Lord Voldemort did not know why he squinted. It irritated him not to know why.
“I mean to give up the Horcruxes,” Lord Voldemort told him. “I have said this before. Do you find me so easy to disbelieve?”
“No. But I thought you would be irritated with the Hallows for stealing it. And me for having it,” Harry added, after some thought that seemed to course through him like a wave of lightning.
“I can think of no one I would trust more to have it.”
Harry just blinked at him. Lord Voldemort sighed and sat down on the grass. He would prefer to be sitting already if he experienced the same level of discomfort he had last time when a piece of his soul was rejoined and a Horcrux destroyed.
Harry took a step slowly nearer him, then another, and finally held out his hand. His wand sprang into it. The Cloak was rising around them abruptly, a rippling darkness against the stars, and Lord Voldemort thought he saw the stone spinning above Harry’s shoulder, enclosed in a sphere of red light.
“I want to try something different this time,” Harry said gently. “Something that I think might be less traumatic for you.”
“I would still have to relive my victim’s last moments, would I not?”
“Yes, but that was the first time I’d ever reattached a piece of someone’s soul. I think I might be able to do it better this time.”
“Do as you will,” Lord Voldemort murmured. “I trust you in all things.”
For some reason, Harry shuddered a little, but then he nodded. His wand rose and gestured, and the stone came forwards to hover over the tip of it, the sphere that enclosed it turning green. Harry leaned forwards and blew on the sphere. At once it expanded, and then Harry’s hands and hair, and the hovering cloak, shimmered the color of new spring leaves.
“This way,” Harry said, in a voice that made it clear he was talking to the Hallows rather than to Lord Voldemort, and laid his wand on Lord Voldemort’s shoulder in a way that reminded him of a sword used to dub a knight.
Lord Voldemort lifted his head in time to see the sphere around the Resurrection Stone turning an even more brilliant green, and then it dived at him. He thought he wouldn’t be able to keep himself from flinching, which would probably have been disastrous, but the Elder Wand held him as still as a glacier.
The Stone hit him between the eyes, and the world dissolved. Again Lord Voldemort felt the stone of Hogwarts beneath his feet as he walked to the Room of Hidden Things to conceal the Horcrux. Again he felt the grip of the smooth silver beneath his hand as he retrieved the diadem from the tree where it had been secreted centuries ago.
And he felt compressed, in one nerve-destroying moment, the agony of the man he had killed to make the Horcrux.
He felt the life of cold, hard, endless work, the dampness of the forest on a morning after rain, the slant of blue sky overhead that sometimes the man had looked at because it was the only sight of beauty he could afford. He saw his own death steaking towards him with the movements of a stick he could not understand, and even knowing with his own being that it was a wand did not change the endless terror. He saw the regret for the countless small cruelties of ordinary life, the ones his victim had caused and the ones he had been a victim of.
He was the man, and it lasted less time than had the previous set of memories, but packed all into one moment like that, it made Lord Voldemort scream.
With fury. With despair. With rage that he had not known that he would feel this before he killed the man, and been wise enough to avoid it. And as he felt a sensation like someone drawing thread and needle across his heart, he wavered, and the emotions crashed in on him again.
He found himself kneeling in the grass, where he had begun, his hand rising to trace his fingers over his cheek. His first thought was that he had bled from the eyes. And then he drew his hand back and saw the gleam of something transparent on his fingers.
I am human enough again to shed tears.
“Shit, I’m sorry. I thought that would be less painful for you, but-it really wasn’t, was it?”
Lord Voldemort raised his head, slowly, and blinked past the gleaming red veil that wanted to cover his eyes. There was a renewed sense of anger, as well, and it would be so easy to dive into that and leave the recovered humanity the Horcrux had given him behind. But he did not wish to. Instead, he reached out and grasped Harry’s hand where it rested on the Elder Wand.
Harry looked at him in radiant concern, head cocked slightly. Lord Voldemort found his voice. “You-feel sorry for me. What about the man I killed?”
“I think the only justice for him is making sure that his death matters. That you feel so horrible about it that you won’t ever create another Horcrux.” Harry hesitated, then reached out and covered Lord Voldemort’s hand with his. “There’s so little I can do for the dead. Sometimes I can escort a ghost to their proper rest. That’s about it. I have to save my compassion for the living, and maybe it means that not as many people will die.”
Lord Voldemort nodded. There were cracks spinning through his being and threads of light cutting across his eyes, but this time, he did not wish to retreat to deal with his emotions. Perhaps healing the break in his soul had inflicted honesty on him as well, because he knew those emotions’ names now.
“I will never give up trying to persuade you to be immortal with me.”
Harry sighed. “I know that. But I’ll always refuse you. And sooner or later, the end of this life will come, you know. I’ll need to die and go on because my body has aged. You’ll be left alone. I’d consider whether that’s something you want. If you can’t find anyone else to share your immortality, it would be a lonely existence.”
Lord Voldemort clutched the hand that rested on the Elder Wand. “You can stop yourself from aging. You know as many methods of being immortal as I do-far more!”
“I don’t want to be.” Harry shook his head, his eyes direct and clear and honest. “You’ll lose this argument, Voldemort. You can keep on having it if you want to. I won’t stop being your friend. But I’m not going to yield to you. Can you make your peace with that?”
Lord Voldemort studied him intently. The red veil had disappeared from his vision, and seemed to have taken some other kind of dimness with it. Before, expressions on other human faces, other humans’ emotions, had often been a mystery to him. Now he could see the soft lines around Harry’s eyes, and the way those eyes shone.
He will always resist me as long as I am openly pressuring him.
Lord Voldemort slowly inclined his head. Let Harry assume it was in assent to what he had said instead of Lord Voldemort’s own internal thoughts.
Then I will not pressure him openly. I will simply become important enough to him that one day he will decide to become immortal to retain me.
“If you think that you have to do that,” he said, and released his death grip on Harry’s hand slowly. “Thank you for healing my soul.”
Harry grinned and conjured a mirror with a twist of his hand. “You look different now, did you know that? More like the shade of yourself that I’ve sometimes seen emerge from Horcruxes.”
Lord Voldemort stared at himself. The black hair that had grown in a tonsure shape on his head was filled in now, although still with a bald patch at the top of his scalp that might have echoed the place where a diadem would rest. His face seemed less pale, his forehead higher, his eyes less slit, although still crimson. He raised a hand and saw that there were lines on the palm again.
“I’m glad you’re becoming more human.”
Harry’s voice was so soft that Lord Voldemort nearly missed what he said. But he shot a quick glance at him and found that he could interpret the signs of gladness and relief on Harry’s face.
“As am I,” Lord Voldemort said after a moment.
And if their motives for being glad of that thing were not the same, the emotion was.
Chapter Thirty-Eight.
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