[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Pythonicus, gen, PG-13, 3/4, sequel to Potens
Part Two.
Part One.
Title: Pythonicus (3/4)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Mentions of Lily/James and Lucius/Narcissa, otherwise gen
Content Notes: Time travel, AU, present tense, Unspeakable Harry Potter, violence, gore, brief torture
Rating: PG-13
Wordcount: This part 5300
Summary: Sequel to “Princeps” and “Potens.” Harry has gained the loyalty of many of the young Slytherins, and others he never expected. Now he attempts to find and destroy Voldemort’s Horcruxes and protect and teach his students while avoiding Time’s plans-and his followers’-to make him into a Lord.
Author’s Notes: This should have three parts, and is part of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” series of fics, as well as a sequel to the first two parts of the series, “Princeps,” and Potens. The title is a Latin word meaning “prophetic” or “magical.”
Thank you for all the reviews! This part of the story is going to be four chapters, rather than three, as this chapter grew too long to finish in one day.
Part Three
“Are you all right, sir?”
Harry smiles a little at Severus. The boy’s eyes are wide after watching Harry limp down the stairs and into the kitchen. Harry didn’t even have a chance to make his own cup of tea. Severus shoved one at him immediately, and Harry sat down with the hot cup and drained it. He’s too tired to refuse it after last night.
“Yes, Mr. Prince. I just went through a lot in a short time. Apparating, fighting Voldemort, and rescuing Regulus.” Harry leans back in his chair, wincing. All his muscles are contributing to a chorus of protest that makes him think he might not even be able to hear the chimes if Time decided to talk to him now. “Mr. Black told you what happened?”
“Yes. He said you used his magic, sir. Is that something you could do with the rest of us? Could you have been doing it all this time?”
Harry blinks. Severus’s eyes are wide and shuttered at the same time. Unusually, Harry can’t tell what he’s feeling.
“I used it last night because I had to,” he says honestly. “Voldemort had brought help to the fight-artifacts of his own that strengthened his power-and I don’t think that I could have faced him and escaped the trap without Mr. Black’s help. But if you’re worried about me draining you dry, you don’t need to worry about that, Mr. Prince. It would need both of us to use the oath’s link like that. It’s not something just one person could do from one side or the other.”
Severus turns away from him with a sharp curse and walks to the far side of the dining room.
Okay, Harry thinks, and starts to rise to go after his next cuppa. Severus curses again and hurries over to take the cup, bringing it back full of hot tea and with a plate that has scones and butter on it. Harry grins at him before tearing into it. He’s going to need meat, too, as he knows from long experience with this kind of magical exhaustion, but that can wait.
“Of course I’m not worried about that,” Severus says, sounding as if he’s struggling to control his voice. “I would never worry about that. What I’m worried about is you, sir. You need to call on our magic, if that’s possible for you, whenever you need it. Not wait until you’re in extremis.”
Harry blinks. “Have I given you the impression that I’ve been in a situation this desperate before, Mr. Prince?”
He makes his tone lightly chiding, but Severus neither cowers nor smiles. “No, sir. But you could have used our help when you fought the duel with-Voldemort last summer.”
“I didn’t need it,” Harry says gently. “I intended all along to do what I did, and Voldemort’s arrogance overpowered him, the way it did last night.”
“Do you think he’ll be that arrogant again?”
Harry has to consider it. He does at least think that Voldemort won’t bring Horcruxes to a fight with Harry again, no matter what kind of power they might give him, but that’s not the kind of thing he can explain to Severus. “No,” he says at last. “But a different kind, yes. It’s a flaw as deep in him as his breath. He might take precautions against it, but they’ll never be enough, because he’ll continue to underestimate me.”
Severus leans an elbow on the back of his usual chair instead of sitting down in it. “I never thought to see you overpowered by the same arrogance, sir.”
“You think I am?” Harry chews his scone slowly. Good God, he’s hungry.
“Yes, because you aren’t using all your advantages.” Severus’s eyes are wide and burning now, and Harry no longer has problems reading them. “Use our magic, sir. Let us stand with you.”
Harry looks directly at him. Severus does flinch this time, but doesn’t back away. “You want me to drag fifteen-year-olds onto the battlefield? Sixteen-year-olds? You think that would make me a better man?”
“You don’t have to take all of us. You could leave some of us in a sheltered place and have them feed you their magic across a distance. That’s possible, isn’t it? The way that you managed to find Regulus at a distance and Apparate to him last night?”
Harry sighs and starts to complain that Severus is too damn smart, but Severus continues. “Sir, in a week I’ll be of age. And you know that I’m not the only one. There’s people like Andromeda and Lucius who’ve already graduated, and people like Tiberius who’ve already turned seventeen. We’re old enough to make our own decisions about who we vote for and cast magic without restriction, that’s what the magical world says. We’re old enough to make our own decisions about going to war, too.”
Harry swears under his breath. Severus smiles a little, obviously understanding the importance of the words if not hearing all of them, but his gaze remains steady.
“I wanted to protect you,” Harry says, in a voice so bitter he barely recognizes it himself. “Help you. Give you an alternative to the pressures that could have forced you to become a Death Eater. You and the others,” he adds, because he doesn’t want Severus to think that this decision is only being made for him. “And give other students a better Defense education and more of a chance to define their own futures.”
“You don’t think that fighting with you is a choice for the future? I know that we’re defending the future from him if we do this, sir.”
“I think that you don’t know what you’re asking. I think that teenagers should never be asked to fight a war.”
“But we’re the ones asking,” Severus says, with a small smile. “And we’re adults. I’ve already told you what to do about the ones who aren’t.”
“You think Mr. Black is going to appreciate that, Severus?”
“He’s not seventeen.”
Severus’s voice is so prim that Harry can’t help laughing. Severus nods to him and then disappears into the kitchen and comes back with a platter full of sausages. Harry can feel the hunger cramping at his stomach, and he reaches immediately for the large fork and knife that Severus brought along.
“You burned a lot of magic last night,” Severus says softly after Harry has eaten over half the platter.
Harry eyes him, and swallows. “I would do the same for any of you, Severus. You have to know that.”
“I do know that,” Severus says. “What I’m saying now is, my lord, you burned a lot of magic last night. What happens if the next time you have to do that, you die, because you’re so reluctant to use one of your best weapons? What if-”
“You are not a weapon.”
The words make the wards pop and twang, Harry’s so furious. Severus leans back in his chair, his hands braced on the table and his eyes wide. Harry turns away from him and goes back to eating. He just doesn’t trust the next words that might come out of his mouth right now.
Severus clears his throat a second later. “I think I’m beginning to understand you better now, and why you’re so bloody reluctant to use us.”
Harry grunts and continues eating.
“Someone used you,” Severus says. “Maybe many people. And that means that you can’t stand to see it happen to others. You’ll take stupid risks and do similar things so that we can’t share the burden with you. But what was it you said to Regulus last year? That we’ll make changes together.”
Harry scowls at him over the top of his loaded fork.
“But don’t we deserve to stand at your side as equals?” Severus raises his eyebrows a little. “To make our own decisions? I hope that we do. I hope that you’ll see it that way.” He reaches out and puts a hand as firm as a Mark on Harry’s arm. “And what your death would do to us, the ones that you’ve tried to keep safe.”
He stands up and leaves the dining room without looking back. Only the magical exhaustion enables Harry to finish the platter of sausages, and then he leans back and looks up at the ceiling as he finishes his tea again.
The Selwyns put up bloody ugly decorations on the ceilings, too.
*
“Yes, sir?”
James’s face is innocent in a way that Harry doesn’t trust. He shakes the Prophet at James where he’s kneeling down in front of the fire. James is on the other side of the Floo, still at the Potter house. “Is this your doing, too?”
James shakes his head. “It didn’t happen at the Ministry, sir, did it? That means that it couldn’t be my dad’s contacts who got it printed.” He ducks his head, but his grin still breaks out like a wound across his face.
Harry glares at the front page of the Prophet. It has a picture of him that someone must have taken at Hogwarts, walking down a staircase with his cloak flaring behind him. He doesn’t remember it, though, or someone pointing a camera at him.
PROFESSOR HENRY SALVARE DEFIES THE DARK LORD!
Beneath it is a surprisingly accurate retelling of what happened two nights ago when he rescued Regulus. Harry drums his fingers in a long roll on the hearth. That means that it has to be one of the Death Eaters who told the reporters the story, although Harry is still a little astonished that they had the wherewithal to print a story that makes Voldemort look exceedingly silly.
And it reports that he’s a Parselmouth. Harry sighs.
“Why are you so displeased, sir? Did the story lie?”
Harry glares harder at James, who’s given up and is laughing quietly into his hand. “No, it didn’t. But it means that people will be looking harder at me as some lone hero to save them. That’s not what needs to happen, Mr. Potter. People need to stand up for themselves, or fear is still going to rule them. If they put too much faith in me and I fall-”
“Then we’re all fucked,” James says, dropping his hands from his face. He looks entirely serious.
“Mr. Potter. Your language.”
“You don’t get to say that to me.” James’s voice is low, intense, and Harry suffers a brief sensation of what he probably sounded like when he stood up to Voldemort in the other timeline, defending Harry and his mother. “You know very well that it’s not just us who would be fucked-over. The people who aren’t doing anything about Voldemort won’t do anything even if you try to encourage them. Headmaster Dumbledore isn’t doing enough, but some people still depend on him. You’re our choice, Professor. I don’t know how or why, or where you came from, but you need to take the lead. And you need to use any weapon at your disposal to take out that sorry bastard.”
Harry narrows his eyes, but it’s nothing more than Severus already told him, if phrased somewhat differently. “Were we at Hogwarts, Mr. Potter, I would take so many points from Gryffindor.”
“I didn’t know truth-telling was an offense, sir.”
Harry rolls his eyes, and James grins again.
*
“No.”
“But-”
“I don’t take the oaths of twelve-year-olds,” Harry says, and he frankly doesn’t care how harsh his voice is right now. He needs to discourage this-this nonsense. “The youngest person I’ve allowed to swear to me was fourteen at the time. So put your wand away and get out of my classroom.”
“I’m almost thirteen!”
Harry gives in to the temptation to shut his eyes and just inhale and exhale for a moment. He supposes it’s a just punishment, for his sins, that the first Ravenclaw to decide to approach him to swear an oath is Gilderoy Bloody Lockhart.
“I could be an asset,” Lockhart adds, obviously proud of the word that he probably learned from someone else.
I hope he didn’t Obliviate that person, too, Harry thinks crossly. But he manages to open his eyes and smile at Lockhart. “That’s nice, Mr. Lockhart. But I’m not doing this for assets. I’m swearing oaths to protect people who need protection. Do you need protection?”
Lockhart takes a full minute to ponder that. Then he sighs and puts his wand away. “No, sir. But if I did, you would let me swear my oath?”
“I would protect you. But I meant what I said about not taking the oaths of twelve-year-olds.”
“I’m going to be thir-” Lockhart catches Harry’s eye and evidently decides that he doesn’t need to repeat it. “Right,” he says faintly, and then turns around and leaves.
Harry leans back in his chair and massages his temples.
“Done intimidating children for the day, Henry?”
Albus is lingering in his doorway, because of course he is. Harry is frankly a little surprised that Albus didn’t approach him right after the Christmas holiday ended, but maybe it took the man a while to decide on what he wanted to say.
“Done teaching,” Harry says, and motions Albus to a chair in front of the desk while locking the door. He doesn’t have to be available right now, and there’s still half an hour to dinner.
Harry does hope that whatever Albus wants to say to him will be finished by then, because otherwise there’s a pack of Slytherins and Gryffindors who will probably come looking for him.
“I can’t say I like what you’re turning the children at this school into,” Albus begins, conjuring a chair for himself the way he did at the Board of Governors’ meeting instead of taking a desk. Harry figures that’s a psychological ploy so that he doesn’t look like a child. It slides off Harry like water off brick. “Or what you’re turning yourself into?”
Oh, the direct approach. “Protectors? People who watch out for each other?” Harry frowns and leans forwards to look into Albus’s face without making direct eye contact that would give him some purchase for Legilimency. “I’m concerned, Headmaster. If you think that I shouldn’t be doing that, then I’m not convinced you’re the right person to hold the office that you do.”
Albus breaks out into spluttering, of course, and Harry sits back with a little smile, watching. Albus gets control of himself, and says, “I did not mean that. I mean that children should not be involved in war.”
“They are, whether or not they want to be. Mr. Rosier’s father would have Marked him as the slave of a madman. Mr. Black’s parents were similarly prepared to sacrifice him. And you didn’t seem to be singing the same tune when you were talking about having Mr. Potter and Mr. Black the elder join your Order of the Phoenix.”
Albus frowns at him. “I wouldn’t have involved them in the activities of the war while they were still underage. Only had them spy, gather intelligence-”
“How? Or were you going to ask them to become Marked Death Eaters?’
“Of course not! Mr. Potter is extraordinarily good at sneaking around the school without being seen. I would have asked him to gather some intelligence from Death Eaters’ children for me, that’s all.”
By “extraordinarily good at sneaking around the school,” you mean he has an Invisibility Cloak. Harry shakes his head. “Not all Death Eaters’ children want to become Death Eaters. I believe I just mentioned a few instances.”
“They might still have valuable things to say.”
“If they did, I would know about them. Did it occur to you to ask me?” Harry demands, thoroughly exasperated. “Or to ask someone who’s out of school and committed to resisting Voldemort?”
Albus opens his mouth, then shuts it again. “I cannot trust what you are doing,” he says. “You are building an army, and they are as loyal as any Death Eater.”
Harry rolls his eyes at the ceiling. “So you can only trust yourself to lead an army of students,” he says. “You can only trust Gryffindors. You can only trust yourself to resist Voldemort. Did I miss anything?”
“I cannot trust someone who takes so much glee in breaking up families.”
“What do you know about it?” Harry asks softly. “When did you try to get students families who would protect them, Albus? You sent Tom Riddle back to the Muggles again and again. You would have seen Mr. Rosier Marked. Were you intending to use him as a spy? Is that why you’re upset that I interfered?”
Albus looks so outraged that it takes him a long moment to find his tongue. “I would not have sacrificed someone like that!”
“And Tom Riddle?”
“I was not Headmaster when Mr. Riddle was a student here. I had no power to allow him to stay in the school.”
“You had the same power I have now. I’m not Headmaster, either. You could have sworn an oath to him, or even just checked up on him. Instead, you denied him the ability to get to safety. In the middle of a war.”
Albus flinches, which Harry would take as a victory if he didn’t think that Albus flinched more because he was thinking about the man who had led part of that war rather than the child Tom Riddle. “You do not know what he was like, even as a child…”
“I know some.” Harry raises his eyebrows at Albus. “I know that you seem to have decided he needed to be punished for stealing the belongings of others. I agree that that doesn’t promise a good future, but why was punishment the first thought in your head, instead of trying to guide him onto a moral path?”
“How do you know these things?” Albus sounds horrified, subdued.
“That doesn’t matter as much as your answer to my question.’
Albus looks away. Harry waits. Albus finally says, “I thought that punishment would set him on the moral path. No one among the Muggles in that orphanage could stand up to him. He needed to be shown the errors of his ways, and that there were people in the world stronger than he was.”
“Wow,” Harry says, with a long sigh. “Now I think I understand the basis of so much of your reasoning, and it’s not reasoning that I would want to expose my own students to.”
“Do you intend to challenge me to a duel, then?”
Albus’s voice is soft, but his hand tightens at his side, and Harry knows that he’s an inch away from grasping his wand. Harry laughs loudly in response. Albus blinks and sits back in his conjured chair.
“Of course not. I’m focused on my students and on Voldemort. That’s enough challenges for any man.”
“What do you want, then?”
“I want you to understand that I’m not your bloody enemy, Albus. It’s just that I’m not your bloody follower or rival, either. I’ve told you what my goals are. If you have to distrust me because of that…what, why? Because I don’t do exactly what you want when you want it? I’ll tell you something, neither does the army of students you think I’m building.”
Albus hesitates for a long time. Finally, he speaks. “At one point I made a horrible mistake by trusting someone who was charming and seemed aligned with my goals on the surface, and I’m not the one who paid the price for that mistake. It was other people.”
“I should have known that this would go back to your guilt complex over Grindelwald,” Harry murmurs. “Don’t worry. I have no intention of falling in love with you and trying to kill your sister. Or, well, it would have to be your brother, now.”
Albus rises to his feet. “I want to know how you know this!”
“You haven’t covered your tracks as well as you thought you did,” Harry says gently, and watches Albus turn and stalk out of the room. Then he permits himself to sigh.
This goes back to Albus’s fear of making another mistake, of trusting the wrong person and getting some other innocent killed. At least Harry knows it’s not going to crop up as a personal animosity in the future. Albus will just do his best to sabotage Harry in other ways.
And that probably shouldn’t be comforting, but hey, he always feels better when he understands something.
*
“Riddle wants me to serve in place of my father.”
“I assume you mean as more than just someone who’s Marked.”
Lucius grimaces and nods, picking up the glass of Firewhisky Harry poured when Harry nudges it pointedly towards him. “Yes. He-well, he got the idea that my father won’t be released from Ministry custody any time soon. I personally believe that Father is prolonging his stay in the holding cells so that he doesn’t have to face Riddle and pay for his failure.” He throws back some of the Firewhisky, and then chokes and coughs.
“Slowly, Mr. Malfoy. I think your fiancée would pay someone to murder me if I killed you, or perhaps just come do the deed herself.” Harry smiles a little when Lucius does, although Lucius’s expression fades almost at once. “Now. How did the other Death Eaters take the revelation of my Parseltongue?”
“Several of them have quietly disappeared,” Lucius says with satisfaction. “Others are claiming increased family duties at the meetings we have, and thus lack of general ability to respond to the call. I don’t think any of them are the kind who will come to you and ask to have their Marks made inactive or replaced, but at least we’re depriving him of followers.”
Harry nods. “They wouldn’t even know that I could render their Marks inactive, so there’s no reason for them to come to me.” And that’s the way he likes it. He wants to maintain the lives of innocents, but he sees no reason to take committed Death Eaters under his protection, so he’ll protect innocents by removing them from the killing field. “And Riddle himself?”
“He’s gone quiet, my lord, which I don’t like. I think he’s planning a more involved trap than the one that snared Regulus.”
“Probably,” Harry says grimly. “Listen, Lucius. There’s something I wanted you to look for, if you can do it without danger to yourself, in the Malfoy library.”
“A book that you need to defeat him, my lord?” Lucius puts down the Firewhisky and sits up. “I’ll be honored to do whatever I can.”
“Two things. First, stop calling me ‘my lord.’” Harry waits until he gets a nod, although an unconvinced one, and then goes on. “And it’s a book, yes, but not a book of lore. It’s an artifact that Riddle might have given your father. A small black book with the initials T. M. R. stamped on the front.”
“Only might have given my father, my l-sir?”
“I don’t know if he has or not. It’s possible that Riddle moved it. It’s a precious artifact to him, something he can use to strengthen his power as he did during the trap when he built the fire-cage. Don’t touch it with your bare skin, whatever you do. You might find yourself compelled to open it and write in it.”
“And that would be disastrous.” Lucius nods without asking for any more verification. “I can look for it, sir. I’ve moved out of the house, but it wouldn’t be unusual for me to come back and search for something I needed.”
Harry relaxes with a loud sigh. “Good.” This is both a way to let Lucius feel like he’s doing something useful and the easiest way to get the Horcrux, if it is there. Riddle might or might not know that Harry is hunting the Horcruxes specifically. He will if he’s gone to the island and found the ring missing, but on the other hand, he might think that Harry used the Fiendfyre snakes just to destroy a pair of power-boosting artifacts, not destroy pieces of his soul.
“Yes.” Lucius hesitates, and Harry makes an impatient little twirling motion of his hand at him.
“Ask.”
“I’m that obvious, am I?” Lucius smiles, but it’s largely without humor. “Severus told me about how you drew on Regulus’s power to save him from the trap, and suggested that you might be able to do the same thing with any of the people you swore oaths with.”
“Yes, I think so,” Harry says, as calmly and neutrally as he can. “I would only do it if I had to, though, or if we managed to set up a trap for Voldemort where it would be useful. It’s not a pleasant experience for either one of the people in the link.”
“Regulus says that he was thrilled to be able to do something to help in his own escape.”
“I’ve laid out my conditions clearly, Mr. Malfoy.”
Lucius shakes his head a little sadly. “All right.” He drains the last of the Firewhisky and stands. “If you change your mind, please realize that Narcissa and I will both be honored to stand with you.”
Harry nods to him, and escorts him to the Floo. Then he goes back to his chair and stares, brooding, into the fire.
Ravenclaw’s diadem isn’t in the Room of Requirement, and Harry has checked, thoroughly. He doesn’t know how Voldemort could have got in and removed it, but then again, he moved his locket before last summer. Perhaps he came to the castle in some kind of disguise during the holidays and took it.
And the blood splatters on the page that Harry is trying to get the location of the Horcruxes from aren’t cooperating.
Harry sighs, and goes to bed.
*
“Please come with me, Mr. Salvare.”
Harry nods and falls into step with his fellow Unspeakable. They sent him an owl yesterday to tell him that they’ve made some progress on the research into what happens when a prophecy is disrupted by someone coming back to before the birth of one of the participants in it, and where that person might not be born again in a different form, either. Harry thinks that they’ll go to the Time Chamber.
Instead, they go to the room that contains the prophecy orbs. Harry pauses a moment in deference to his own memories, and to let the humming fill something in his head.
He feels wistful. This was the room where he spent a few months studying before he came back through time, although he didn’t find a definitive answer to the question that he asked his colleagues to research, either (not a surprise when he was studying the shards of the orbs instead of the orbs themselves). He can think of Ron and Hermione and Sirius as he used to be as he stands here.
But he puts the thoughts aside as he did years ago. When he decided that the second war had wrought too much harm to their world-and he did-then he put aside all thought of remaining with his friends. He’s lost them. He’s lost the life he was living. A decade of research preparing to go back in time has reconciled him to that loss as much as he can be.
“This way, Mr. Salvare.”
Harry pauses when he comes to a mostly empty shelf. It’s not the one that held the old prophecy about him and Riddle, at least as far as he can remember. In fact, there’s only a tiny spark of light on the shelf that doesn’t look like a prophecy orb at all. He wonders if this is some experimental spell that the Unspeakables need him to interact with.
Then he gets closer, and catches his breath.
It’s a tiny prophecy orb, one that is growing like a plant from a seed.
He stares at the cloaked figure next to him, and the man, or woman, nods. “Yes, Mr. Salvare,” they say. “A new prophecy is forming. It’s too small to hear yet, and I don’t think that even you could truly touch it. But you are welcome to try.”
Harry reaches out and passes his hand through the orb. He can feel a little warmth, but nothing solid. He settles back with a sigh. “This is-does this happen? I thought that prophecy orbs could only form after a prophecy has actually been spoken.”
“Few people who are the subject of prophecies have traveled in time,” the Unspeakable says simply. “And fewer have caused such enormous changes that are close to their original role once they have gone back in time.” They tilt their head a little, and Harry does, too, to listen to the chimes ringing out.
“Yes, well,” Harry says, as he stares at the orb. It’s too small to make out the writing on it, either, only that there is some. That surprises him, but if a prophecy can come into being by itself, why can’t it label itself, too? “Thank you for telling me.”
*
“Can I come through? Please?”
Lucius’s midnight Floo call is a surprise, and so is his hurried whisper through the fire. Then again, if he has the diary, he might not have much time before Voldemort realizes it’s missing, or he might be wary of holding onto it when he knows that it can corrupt him.
“Of course.” Harry gestures with his wand, and the protections on the Floo dissipate. He was already awake. His oath-bond to Lucius has been jangling and ringing for the last hour. He longed to go to Lucius’s side, but he held still because of how faint the warning was. Lucius might only have been in danger because he was picking up the diary or had to spin some tale to Voldemort about why he was in Malfoy Manor’s library. Harry showing up could have done more harm than good.
Lucius sighs and steps through the Floo, dusting himself off thoroughly. He glances around and swallows. “You-you promise that we’ll be alone?”
“Yes, we will.” Maybe Harry was wrong and the danger related to some Death Eater meeting Lucius was at, rather than the diary. “Do you have the book I asked you to find?”
Lucius shakes his head. “This is something else. I have to make sure that we won’t be disturbed, though. The consequences if this gets out…” He shudders.
“I promise that we won’t be.” Harry raises a few extra wards on the door to make sure, although it’s rare for even his oathsworn to disturb him in his quarters. They’re more likely to come to him in his office. “Now, what is it?”
He turns straight into a powerful Stunner. Harry collapses to the floor, fighting for breath, not quite unconscious. It’s difficult for the wands of his oathsworn to hurt him.
But not impossible, Harry thinks as he watches the Polyjuice disguise melt and shift from Lucius’s face, if they’re wielded by someone else.
He feels like he should have known that it wasn’t Lucius. The bastard never once tried to call him by a title.
Voldemort bends down towards Harry and laughs once, a sibilant dark sound. “I think it will be difficult for anyone else to find you, where I am taking you,” he says, and a Portkey grabs Harry as it did once, long ago.
The chimes as he flies through space are muted, but insistent, there.
If history is repeating itself, that means I live, Harry thinks grimly, and readies himself as best he can for what’s to come.
Part Four.