Chapter Forty-Six of 'His Twenty-Eighth Life'- Cold War
Chapter Forty-Five.
Title: His Twenty-Eighth Life (46/?)
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 Forty-Six-Cold War
Harry sighed when he saw the stubborn expression on Cicero Flint’s face. Apparently he thought that Harry should be an adult if he was the Master of Death, and explaining that he had been reincarnated many times and was only currently in the body of a ten-year-old child wasn’t impressive enough.
Harry palmed the Elder Wand. He was in the same small restaurant in Diagon Alley where he had taken a private room to impress the Parkinsons, but the Flints clumped up in chairs and stared at him and said nothing at all.
“What else should I do to convince you?” he asked. The Resurrection Stone had got suspicious stares, the Elder Wand squints, and they’d declared the Cloak just an ordinary Cloak. The Hallows were vibrating behind him, ready to release any magic he desired on the unbelievers. Harry thought they might have called the Flints heathens if they could speak.
“Show us your true master.”
Harry stared at Cicero blankly. “I’m sorry?”
Cicero was Marcus Flint’s uncle, and although Harry had only met Marcus today (in this lifetime), he could see the resemblance. He had a hulking jaw and hulking shoulders and a slow, contemptuous voice. “The man who commands you. The man you owe allegiance to. It’s not Dumbledore. Who is it? Is it the Dark Lord?”
“I’m the Master of Death.” Harry’s voice got lower despite himself, and despite knowing it didn’t sound nearly as impressive now as it would after his voice changed. “No one commands me.”
“No ten-year-old can be the Master of Death. Tell us, boy, if you want us to ally with you.” Cicero leaned back and looked behind one of the delicate screens near the wall as if Voldemort or Dumbledore might be hiding there. “Come out, or we’ll punish your boy-toy in ways you won’t like.”
Harry fought to keep a hiss of Parseltongue from escaping. Now he was remembering the many, many reasons he’d never allied with the Flints in any world before. “I am who I say I am. Perhaps we shouldn’t be allies if you can’t accept that.”
“Those are the Deathly Hallows. But who commands them? Not you. Did your daddy give them to you to play with?” bleated Claudius Flint, who was some kind of older brother to Marcus. Only Marcus himself looked uneasy, but Harry wasn’t sure if that was because he was marginally smarter than the rest of his family or because he’d seen Jonathan’s display of power firsthand.
“My father is not the Master of Death, either.” Harry slowly rose to his feet. “Perhaps a demonstration would be in order?”
“You talk as if you’re an adult. Cute, kid.” Cicero sneered at him. “Still not impressive enough for a Flint. Show us who really stands behind you, and we’ll talk. Unless it’s old man Parkinson, of course. Not enough brains for us to bother following him.”
I sincerely hope they’re talking about their own lack of brains.
Harry turned and looked into the air above Cicero's head. The swirl of darkness that formed in response to his stare depressed him, as always, with how quickly it came. Then again, the Deathly Hallows did always wait for him to use them. He shouldn't ignore them as often as he did if he wanted more reluctance for these little displays.
"Did you hear us, boy? You--"
"You are going to die five years from now," Harry said softly, "on the twenty-fourth of June, in 1995. You're going to die from a heart attack as you hop up and down to watch the Third Task of the Tri-wizard Tournament. I can see the hedge maze they'll create so that most of the people outside it don't see what's going on and the Champions are isolated from help. Your heart has always been bad. It beats erratically even now, but you think you have it under control with Soothing Potions and Cheering Charms. It could be almost any stress that would make it burst, but it's going to be this one. You have a gambling problem, don't you? And you're going to make one more desperate bet on who wins the Tournament, one that you're convinced will get you back the three-quarters of your fortune that you’ll have gambled away by then." He turned and met Cicero's eyes. "I would stop relying on those potions if I were you. You probably make your heart worse because of the amount of aconite that's in them."
Utter silence filled the room. Harry let the darkness recede from his vision along with the knowledge, and watched Cicero's face.
"Tricks!" barked Claudius. "Anyone could pretend to predict the future and do it with about as much accuracy!"
Harry sighed and turned a little to the side, reaching back into the past of this world. It was always a bit more difficult to look at things that had happened before he was born in a particular place, but only a bit.
"You had an aunt," he said. "No, wait, a great-aunt, your father's mother's sister. Arabella Rookwood. She was one of those indomitable old women who seem as if they'll go on forever. But your uncle on your father's side, Nero Flint, got impatient and murdered her for the sake of some money he was sure would come to him. He broke into her house when she was about to go to bed on the night of the nineteenth of December in 1979. He used a golden dagger to stab her to death, because a golden dagger is the symbol of a family called Irelde that you were having a feud with at the time and he thought it would make the Aurors blame them. But gold is too soft. The point broke off the dagger when your aunt started to fight back. Nero panicked and stabbed her in the eye with an ordinary steel blade. Then he gutted her for--well, it apparently satisfied his sadism. And he stole twenty Galleons she'd taken out of Gringotts the previous day and stored in a small strongbox under her bed. He was caught less than two hours later. The dagger was a distinctive blade forged for him alone and he left it behind when he fled."
Harry lowered his eyes and found more than one member of the Flint family staring at each other. "Oh, did I speak some secrets aloud?" he asked. "You ought to have known that might happen when confronting someone who claims to be the Master of Death."
A woman who had introduced herself as Lesbia Flint, Cicero's sister, flung a dagger at him. Harry melted out of the way. There were lots of ways he could have avoided the blade, but he chose to step into the other world where death crowded him and appear again off to the side. It probably looked like silent Apparition. There was no reason for Lesbia to start and press a hand to her heart, while the others gaped at him. The loudest sound was the ringing dagger falling to the ground.
"It appears that we don't have anything to talk about," Harry said, gathering his magic around him. "I wasn't allies with your family in any other world and I can't be in this one, either. I wish you good luck with allying with Voldemort, if that's what you want to do."
"Wait!"
That was Lesbia, surprisingly. Harry tilted his head at her. She had stood up and advanced a step towards him. "Yes?"
"You spoke the truth about Great-Aunt Arabella's murder?"
"Yes."
"How do we know that?"
"If you have cause to distrust every word I say, then we're not going to be good allies--"
"No. Just. Please. No one would tell me how she died or why Nero was arrested for it. I didn't attend the trial as I was out of the country at the time and the others swore that Nero had been accused by people in the Ministry who were jealous of him and wanted to see the Flint family's downfall." Lesbia took a deep breath. She was a tall, heavyset woman with dark auburn hair. Harry couldn't remember seeing her among the Flints in his previous lives, but then, that didn't mean much. "She was my favorite relative."
"Yes. I'm telling the truth. The conviction was quick." Harry glanced up again. This information was only tangentially related to Arabella Rookwood's death and therefore harder to see, but still his since it connected to that death. "There was too much evidence against him."
"It was for money."
"Yes." Harry wondered idly if it was the motivation that made her disapprove of the murder. He hadn't known any Flint who would think that was a horrible motive, but again, he didn't know all of them that well.
"Great-Aunt Arabella didn't deserve to be murdered for money." Lesbia turned to Cicero, her hands clenched in a way that told Harry she was about to go for her wand. "Other people in this damn family might have, but not her! Never her! And you told me that someone else must have killed her, and it wasn't Nero!"
"It wasn't! He was framed!"
"I believe the Master of Death that he did it."
"Then you can follow your new master and get out of this family."
Harry sighed and Apparated. He hoped that something better would come out of this mess than seemed likely right now. At least he thought he could probably depend on Marcus Flint not to mistreat Jonathan at Hogwarts.
When he got back to his bedroom, he wrote a quick note to Voldemort telling him what had happened and adding, You would have enjoyed it. You probably had at least one Flint among your Death Eaters. Did they always squabble like this?
It wasn't until he went to the owlery that he hesitated and reminded himself he wasn't supposed to be speaking to Voldemort. Well, surely a quick note on the process of gathering allies for the war couldn't hurt.
*
"Are you sure that you'll be able to give me advice through this thing, Mr. Gaunt?"
Lord Voldemort touched the identical device occupying the collar of his robe, a silver pin that looked as if it had a gaudy ruby in the curl of metal at the top. "I am speaking to you through it now, Minister," he pointed out. No trace of a sigh made its way through his voice. He stood in an office down the corridor in the Ministry from Fudge's. There were no Aurors inside, but they did stand guard outside the door.
Fudge was easy enough to fool. Lord Voldemort did not intend to alert the possibly sharper Aurors.
"Oh. Yes. Of course. Um. But you're sure the spells will prevent Dumbledore from overhearing you when you speak?"
"Yes." Lord Voldemort imagined carefully removing strips of skin from the backs of Fudge's thighs. The man had a lot of fat there. It would take enough time that he might be able to enjoy himself and calm down enough to leave some of the skin.
He imagined Harry's disappointed expression, then, and that removed the pleasure from his thoughts as effectively as Lord Voldemort could have removed Fudge's skin. He clenched his hands and forced his mind back into calm channels as Fudge babbled at him again.
"All right, then. If you're sure. I'm going to see Dumbledore now." Fudge turned a little away from the jewel he wore, by the sound, and called, "Come in!"
At least his voice does not jiggle like his legs, Lord Voldemort thought, and closed his eyes. There was nothing in this room that he needed to see. When he detached his consciousness from the topmost layer of his mind, then he could glide easily down the corridor and insert a tendril of magic into Fudge's office that would give him sight.
Fudge was seated, twitching and twisting, in his own chair, but a grander one waited for Dumbledore on the other side of his desk than had waited for Lord Voldemort in his guise of "ambassador from the Dark Lord." Lord Voldemort withheld another sigh. The more Fudge pandered to Dumbledore's notions of grandeur, the more respect he would demand.
The man was bad enough at politics that Lord Voldemort had started to wonder if he had gained his office merely because of his susceptibility to bribery and nothing else.
"Ah, do come in, Albus," Fudge said, while his hand twisted underneath his desk. "You wanted to talk to me about the rumors of this war that you keep saying we're about to have with You-Know-Who."
"Voldemort, Cornelius. Call him by his right name. Fear of the name increases the fear of the thing itself."
Lord Voldemort sneered without sound. That name without title was one he had granted only to Harry. He fantasized about turning Dumbledore's blood to boiling lead. No, perhaps only to fire, and only a bit at a time. Otherwise, it would kill him too quickly.
"And they are not rumors." Dumbledore regarded Fudge as if he, too, thought of the man as an insect he would like to crush, but perhaps without flaying him first. "They are the simple truth. While he is quiet for now, Voldemort might restart the war any second."
"Can you tell me why he has pulled back and acted as if peace is his intention, then, Albus?"
"To catch us off-guard, of course. To make us lower our defenses and go back to living life on a normal footing, the way so much of Britain is already doing."
"But we've had years of peace, Albus. Can this plan really last so long? It would erode the loyalty of his followers, as well."
Lord Voldemort raised his eyebrows. That was more insight than he had expected Fudge to be able to come up with on his own. He adjusted his posture a little so that he was comfortable and could concentrate on the tendril of magic that was inside the office instead of on where he was standing in his own room.
"He does not need other followers. I fear that he has one so powerful the others could not compare."
“Who is that?”
“Harry Potter.”
Lord Voldemort murmured to the pin on his collar, “Harry Potter is a child. Ten years old. Ask him why he is so powerful as to make the rest of my lord’s followers look like nothing.”
The words came from some part of him that was still rational. It was a small part. The world had begun to blaze and shift in his vision. If Dumbledore truly intended to reveal the extent of Harry’s power to someone as dangerously incompetent as Fudge, Lord Voldemort would declare war again. After he had Obliviated Fudge and replaced him as Minister.
“You expect me to believe that a child is a powerful Death Eater, Albus? Are you mad?”
“You do not understand that boy, Cornelius. Or perhaps I should say that you have no reason to understand the creature that is hiding behind the mask of a boy.”
Creature. Lord Voldemort flexed his fingers and felt as if he had claws at the ends of them.
“You’re saying that the Potters’ child isn’t human, Albus? Is he a werewolf?”
“Nothing so common, Cornelius. He is the Master of Death.”
There was a long pause. Then Fudge laughed.
Lord Voldemort eased back, and ceased to flex his fingers. “The right response,” he murmured to the pin. “But do not laugh too long. Ask what he would have to gain from telling you such lies.”
“The Master of Death is a legend, Albus. Is there a reason that you want me to react negatively to the Potter boy? A reason that you chose him as your scapegoat?”
Lord Voldemort smiled thinly. Yes, that was more like it.
“I promise that he is the Master of Death, Cornelius. I have proof.”
“Of what sort?”
“I can show you my own memories in a Pensieve of the boy declaring to me that he is the Master of Death.”
“Albus Dumbledore is a Legilimens,” Lord Voldemort said instantly. “Consider whether he would present the memories to you as they happened or not.”
It seemed Fudge might have been doubtful of that before Lord Voldemort cautioned him, because he said, “I should warn you, Albus, that Pensieve memories from a Legilimens are rarely admitted as court evidence. Specifically because you can tamper with them, you understand.”
“But these aren’t court evidence, are they, Cornelius? This is just one matter of one friend proving the truth to another friend.”
“Now, really, Albus. Are you claiming me as a friend after some of the letters you’ve sent me?”
“An ally, then.” Lord Voldemort focused through the tendril of magic again and saw a calm smile on Albus’s face. The smile was twisted at the edges and less calm than it otherwise looked, however. “What would it cost you to listen to me, Cornelius?”
“I don’t want to be prejudiced against a child,” Cornelius said flatly. “And prejudicing me against him is what you’re trying to do, Albus, so don’t look disingenuous,” he added.
“If I cannot convince you that Voldemort is a danger, Cornelius-”
“You’ll need stronger material than a grudge against a ten-year-old, Albus. Like some actual proof. Now get out of my office.”
Lord Voldemort watched with some satisfaction as Albus departed, and whispered the appropriate compliments to the pin to be carried to Cornelius’s ears, while he considered. Perhaps Albus revealing the truth or hinting around about it to a few select people would not be so deadly as Lord Voldemort had feared. It would mean that Harry would begin to assume the status in some minds that he was entitled to. It would mean that Lord Voldemort did not need to plant seeds himself.
He went home in a fine mood, one improved when he found the owl Harry had sent waiting for him. He read the contents, and laughed.
Yes, for once, his plans and Albus’s would dovetail nicely.
Chapter Forty-Seven.
This entry was originally posted at https://lomonaaeren.dreamwidth.org/1027012.html. Comment wherever you like.