[From Samhain to the Solstice]: The Transfiguration of the Soul, gen, PG-13, 4.2/4
First part of Chapter Four.
“This place is awfully gloomy.” Hermione glances around Grimmauld Place and shivers.
“Well, it’s been hard to keep it clean when I was only here over Christmas and Easter,” Harry murmurs, flicking his wand to get rid of some of the dust and to light candles as they walk through the kitchen of Grimmauld Place and towards the library.
“Where’s Kreacher?”
Harry glances back at her. “I didn’t tell you? He was raging at me after I inherited the house, and saying that he wasn’t going to serve anyone who was less than a pureblood. I sent him to work in the kitchen at Hogwarts.” He shrugs. “I would have set him free, but I couldn’t chance him going to Bellatrix.”
Hermione flinches a little at his tone on the last name, but nods. “That makes sense.”
Harry takes care to lead her by a different route that doesn’t pass the house-elf heads. There are some things Hermione doesn’t need to know.
It’s easy enough to find the cabinet of curious, mostly Dark objects that Sirius showed him in happier times, and illuminate the whole of it with a soft charm. Harry began using magic in the house last summer, when he’d decided that he didn’t care if the Ministry expelled him from Hogwarts, and no one ever sent a notification. Maybe there are wards on the house that prevent it. Maybe it’s still registered as a residence where adult wizards and witches live.
Harry frankly doesn’t care. He’s going to use magic, and he doesn’t give a shit about the archaic laws.
“Oh, that’s pretty,” Hermione says, as Harry moves a few trinkets and reveals the gleam of the locket. Harry smiles a little. His intuition was right. R.A.B., Regulus Arcturus Black. “Can I wear it?”
Harry throws a glance at her, a little surprised that she can’t feel the Dark magic beating out of the locket like heat, but sees her eyes are glazed. Maybe she does feel it, but it’s acting as a compulsion instead of repelling her like it should.
“No, sorry,” Harry says. “It’s cursed pretty heavily.” That’s even true. He gets his wand beneath the locket’s chain and flips it out of the cabinet. “In fact, I’ll probably have to destroy it. It’s what Sirius would have wanted.”
The mention of Sirius is enough to snap Hermione out of her trance, the way it has been for most of his friends since Sirius’s death. Her face is the picture of remorse as she nods. “Of course, Harry. I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault. You couldn’t know.”
Harry made one more trip to the Chamber of Secrets before they left school, and gathered up the same fang that pierced the diary, still lying gleaming and undecayed amid the wreckage of the place. When he stabs it through the heart of the locket and hears the screaming of the wretched thing, he feels nothing but deep satisfaction.
*
“You know that if you do this, then lots of people are never going to look at you in the same way again.”
Harry laughs softly and stretches back against the huge wingback chair that’s in the sitting room of Grimmauld Place, close to the fire. It’s taken a while, but he’s made it as comfortable as it used to be when he stayed here with Sirius. (And put up a permanent illusion around the house-elf heads so that no one can see them. That was an interesting spell he might use in the future).
“They don’t already hate me?”
Ron grimaces. “Point.” The stories in the Daily Prophet that Harry is lying have continued, despite numerous Death Eater raids on the homes of prominent Wizengamot politicians and the deaths of several of them. Voldemort has essentially taken over the school, too, appointing Snape Headmaster. Harry supposes that’s the final proof that Voldemort hates children.
“Come up with a strategy for me, Master Strategist.”
Ron visibly flushes with pride, while still giving Harry a skeptical glance. “I’m not going to worship you or have whatever fucked-up relationship it is that you have with your Slytherins.”
Harry smiles a little to hear Ron call them “his” Slytherins. It’s the closest he can come to acknowledging what Theodore and Millicent and Draco and the rest are to him. The spell on the Slytherin common room those two years ago still prevents him from talking about the Lordship ceremony in any detail.
But that doesn’t matter. “You don’t have to,” Harry says, leaning forwards. “I want you to do what you do best, besides…”
“Besides what?”
“Standing with me.”
Ron reaches out and wrings Harry’s hand hard, once.
*
None of his people except Draco go back to Hogwarts that year. The rest are in Grimmauld Place with him, under a Fidelius with Theodore as their Secret Keeper. There are certainly more than enough rooms, and now that all of them are of age, casting magic in the rare cases where they need to make a room bigger or the like is no problem.
Harry is working on a spell that will let him track down Hufflepuff’s Cup. Draco is very subtly working on Ravenclaw’s diadem, asking questions of the pureblood Ravenclaws who remain in the school. They’ve left the problem of taking care of the snake until later. It’ll take someone who can get close to Voldemort, and right now, Draco, while still their best choice, isn’t favored enough to do that.
(Harry gave Draco Sirius’s mirror because it’s the only secure way they can communicate with each other. At least he managed to impress on Draco the consequences that would follow from a breaking of that mirror).
“My lord?”
Harry glances up from his notes, and smiles a little at the sight of Greg in the doorway. “What is it, Greg?”
“I-I just needed to know.” Greg licks his lips. “I got an owl from Vincent yesterday. He said that he didn’t understand why I was gone from the school and I should be there and taking the Dark Mark. I’m doing the right thing by being here with you, aren’t I?”
Harry feels his heart swell a little. Sometimes he finds Greg’s single-minded devotion trying, but on the other hand, it’s good to know that there’s one person he doesn’t have to struggle to reassure.
“Yes, you are,” Harry says. “You know that Draco can only be close to the Dark Lord because there’s no other way he can please his parents and make sure he doesn’t suspect him.” Voldemort’s put a Taboo on his name, the bastard, so Harry has to refer to him other ways. “The Dark Lord would kill you for being away from him for even so short a time. I, on the other hand, want to protect you. And you don’t want to leave me and Draco and the others, do you?”
“No.” Greg’s brow is already clearing, and he gives a nod to Harry that’s also a half-bow. “Thank you for clearing that up for me, my lord.”
“Any time,” Harry says warmly.
*
When Harry finally manages to use a spell to track the Hufflepuff Cup to its resting place in the Gringotts vault of Bellatrix Lestrange-something he only knows because he got an image of the vault door to appear in front of him, and Ron’s brother Bill, still working in the bank, was able to tell them who it belonged to-then he has to come up with a way to access it.
And he does. But the magic required is so Dark that Theodore is the only one willing to explore it with him. Or come to the bank with him once Harry determines what he has to do.
“You don’t mind what I’m doing?” Harry asks as he places the severed piece of Bellatrix’s breast in the mold that he’s constructed.
“What does minding and not minding have to do with any of this?” Theodore leans against the door of the potions lab, watching with keen interest as the Preservation-Charm-touched flesh writhes and shapes itself. “This is war. The Dark Lord threatens our existence. He’s threatened your existence since the moment you were born, for a reason that I still don’t know about.”
Harry shrugs. He’s not entirely sure, but he’s come to know that the Department of Mysteries holds prophecies. He supposes that might be the reason. Dumbledore never saw fit to share the exact reason with him, though. “That’s the way I feel, too,” he says, and jerks the newly-formed flesh key that should grant them access to Bellatrix’s vault out of the mold. “But I think it’s a step too far for Ron and Hermione. They still like to think of themselves as good people.”
“And Greg is just too gentle for this, much as I hate to say it,” Theodore mutters, his eyes locked on the key with fascination. “And Blaise…you realize that he’s writing to his mother behind your back?”
“He thinks I don’t know. It’s sort of cute.” Harry smiles a little as he tucks the key into the specially-built wallet he’s prepared. When they come back, he does have a lesson to teach Blaise that Blaise is not going to enjoy.
“I am kind of surprised you didn’t ask Millie or Pansy, though.”
Harry sighs. “Pansy is still researching the binding spell we’ll need, and she doesn’t deal well with being pulled away from that sort of thing and asked to take on another project. Millicent could go with us, but I think she has some of the same gentleness problem as Greg. She practically burst into tears when I told her what I intended to do.”
Theodore blinks. “She did?”
“Yeah.” Harry shrugs. “It’s all right. Bill’s going to get us in, and the rest is easy.”
*
It isn’t easy. But they do, in fact, get into the bank with Bill’s help, introduced as regular customers who need to check on Theodore’s vault, and they Imperius the goblin who drives the cart to take them where they need to go. They get to Bellatrix’s vault and open the door with the key.
The goblins seem to suspect something is up on the way out of the bank, but they don’t actually attack. Harry keeps his eyes straight ahead.
He doesn’t have that many Galleons left in the trust vault, and he has a large store at home, the money that Sirius cleaned out of his own vault when he thought the Ministry might try to track him down by keeping a watch on his transactions. If the goblins do prevent him from coming back here again, Harry has enough to survive.
And now they have the cup, and they’re putting together the last parts of the plan they’ll need to confront Voldemort on the battlefield. Harry would really like it if they could destroy the last Horcrux from Voldemort, either the cup or the diadem or the snake depending on how it falls out, in front of him.
He would like Voldemort to know that he’s mortal before he dies.
*
“You have to know that the binding spell we’re going to be using is a precursor to anti-Apparition spells. But because they focus on one particular person, and prevent them from leaving an area no matter what, they were banned as Dark centuries ago.”
Harry stares into Pansy’s eyes as they sit in the Black library. “I know that. What is so important that I have to study them separately?”
Pansy grimaces and leans forwards over the table separating them. Her voice is so quiet that Harry has to strain to hear her above the crackle of the fire. “These spells require intimate knowledge of the target. They were often used to imprison ex-lovers. I don’t know how you can use them on the Dark Lord.”
Harry has to smile. “I’ve been inside his mind. We share a link of sorts, forged the night that he tried to kill me.”
“Which time?” Pansy snaps, even though she looks a little awed.
Harry laughs. No matter what happens, Pansy remains intensely practical. He does like that about her. “The first time.” He doesn’t intend to tell her about the Horcrux he once carried, or the hole left behind by it, in any detail, but this is enough to be going on with. “My hatred is so similar to his that he never even knew I was in his head. I can tell you some of his memories, and what he hates, and what he enjoys. Will that be enough?”
“Yes,” Pansy says, sounding a little dazed. “Yes, that will be enough.”
She eyes him cautiously as they discuss how to prepare the spell that will prevent Voldemort from fleeting the battleground, which they’ve already chosen as Hogwarts. Harry frankly likes that caution, too.
*
“Blaise.”
Blaise whirls around, dropping the letter he was about to post on the floor of the Owlery. Harry leans on the doorframe and stares at him. Blaise hesitates, then says, “This isn’t what it looks like.”
“Oh, this isn’t another letter to your dear darling mother putting everything down as insurance in case I Memory Charm you or the like?”
Blaise backs up a step. He visibly wants to ask how Harry knows that, but checks himself. Harry stands up straight and considers Blaise against the background of the soft, nervous hooting of the owls.
In truth, another charm like the one that Harry once put on the Hogwarts Owlery’s windows has the birds bring him the letter first, so that he can read it and decide whether to send it on or not. He’s only let a few of Blaise’s messages through.
“I wasn’t betraying you,” Blaise whispers. “I swear. The owls will never be captured by the Dark Lord’s forces. She would never join him.”
“She might if she saw profit in it.” Harry takes a slow step forwards. “I told you once before, Blaise, that I don’t appreciate it when you interfere like this.”
Blaise shivers. “You didn’t specifically say that Umbridge was your kill or that I shouldn’t send post to my mother…”
“Because I thought you would be smart enough to deduce it on your own.” Harry shakes his head. “And I do have a punishment for you, Blaise, little as I liked the idea of it at first. But twice is no coincidence.” He draws his wand and begins to make the intricate motions he needs, while hissing the incantation in Parseltongue.
“My lord…”
Blaise only calls him that when he’s desperate for something to stop happening. Harry looks him dead in the eye and keeps casting.
In the end, an ice-blue serpent with white stripes forms on the floor of the Owlery. With a near-soundless rush of wings, the owls take flight in fear. The serpent moves a few inches forwards, and then stops and glances back at Harry.
“Bite him and ensure his loyalty,” Harry commands it, then stares at Blaise as the snake crosses the last distance between it and the other boy. “Do you know what this snake will do?”
“No, my lord.” Blaise looks close to fainting.
“Bite you and inject a venom into your body that will kill you if you ever think about betraying me again.” Harry smiles pleasantly. “And I do mean think. Actions aren’t enough, not anymore, not when I need to correct a fault in your thinking process.”
Blaise bows his head and keeps himself there as the snake wriggles closer. “Thank you for your mercy, my lord.” Then he screams as the snake bites.
Harry watches from the frozen part of him that showed up when Sirius died, and nods when the snake is done. There’s a reminder, a blue scar on Blaise’s arm, but it won’t do anything until and unless he thinks about betraying Harry again.
“Don’t make me feel like a fool for letting you live,” Harry says casually over his shoulder as he aims for the entrance to the Owlery.
“No,” Blaise whispers, still on his knees, shaking from the pain. “No, I won’t.”
*
Draco does finally manage to charm the story of Ravenclaw’s diadem in more detail from a few of the Ravenclaws-including Luna Lovegood, who stayed at the school and apparently escaped targeting by the Carrows because they never knew that she was part of Harry’s private Defense group-and provides Harry with a detailed description of it. Harry uses the detailed description to cast a second tracking charm.
He has to cast it again and again. Each time, the vision widens a little, but it still doesn’t give him much to go on at first. The diadem hangs on an ugly bust…which stands on top of a cabinet…which is next to a broken armchair…which is next to bare stone walls…
Harry vents to Draco about his frustrations through the communication mirror, only to have Draco’s eyes widen and a small laugh escape his lips.
“But I know that cabinet, my lord,” he says. “That’s the Vanishing Cabinet I brought the Death Eaters through last year. It’s in a version of the room that we held our defense group in. It’s full of rubbish and broken things.”
Harry grins, and can feel his lips stretching in victory. “Don’t go after it, Draco. I don’t know what a Horcrux like that would do to an unprotected mind. The diary managed to charm someone into writing in it. I think the diadem would try to charm someone into wearing it.”
“My lord.” Draco bows his head, flushed with triumph.
“But, Draco? Very well done.”
And Draco’s flush at that is even brighter, and Harry closes the mirror with a smile and goes to talk to Ron.
Their strategy moves into its endgame.
*
Summoning Voldemort to Hogwarts turns out to be simple enough. Harry sends him a letter full of “coy” references to diadems and cups and lockets, and that makes Voldemort reply in a maddened fashion on the front page of the Daily Prophet, threatening to execute every non-Death Eater student at Hogwarts unless Harry comes there on such and such a date.
And so they go, armed with their wands and memorized spells and shrunken brooms and the basilisk fang. Harry sends Ron and Hermione in through the tunnel that leads from Honeydukes, with instructions to go down to the second-floor girls’ bathroom, where one of the carved snakes is waiting to open the way to the Chamber of Secrets. Harry suspects they’re going to need the second basilisk fang, since he’ll probably have to give the one he carries to Draco when he gets close to the snake.
Harry then casts the binding spell around the grounds of Hogwarts, sitting on his broom outside the window of Gryffindor Tower to get the height he needs and visualizing the pitch, the Forbidden Forest, the lake, Hagrid’s hut, and every other feature he’s come to know so well before he casts. Voldemort will be able to Apparate or Portkey in, but he won’t be leaving.
He’s barely dropped his arms from casting the spell when the communication mirror in his pocket glows. Harry frowns as he takes it out. This isn’t part of their strategy.
Draco’s face is there, but his voice is so low Harry knows that he’s in company. “My lord, the Dark Lord is sending Crabbe and me to the Hidden Room.”
To retrieve the diadem. He doesn’t need to say it. Harry nods and closes the mirror. Then he turns and nods to the others, who are hovering nearby on brooms of their own, the better to be faster and maneuverable around the grounds when the Death Eaters begin to arrive.
“Ready to fly?” he asks them.
*
Retrieving the diadem from the Hidden Room doesn’t go at all like Harry thought it would, despite it being easy enough to find on top of its bust and cabinet once Harry knows what he’s looking for. Crabbe and Draco show up faster than Harry looked for, and Draco takes one look at Harry and backs out of the room.
Draco does mouth one word before he goes. Fiendfyre.
Harry smiles, delighted. Fiendfyre is a proven way to destroy Horcruxes, he knows that much from his research, but none of them ever managed to master the spell enough to count on it. Their one big experiment almost burned down Grimmauld Place.
But Crabbe knows how to cast Fiendfyre. And when they can close it in a magical room and outfly it, it won’t matter if they can control it.
It certainly won’t matter what happens to Crabbe.
Crabbe is so easy to taunt, so easy to fool. Harry gets him to believe that the diadem, which of course belongs to the Dark Lord, has an enchantment on it that can only be broken by Fiendfyre, and then casts the thing into the flames when Crabbe casts the spell.
They circle above the flames, Millicent spitting at Crabbe when he looks to her in what might be a desperate plea for help. They dive through the door of the room, and Harry looks back-
In time to see the green flash of what must be the Killing Curse, as Crabbe kills himself rather than face death by Fiendfyre.
Harry shrugs. As if it matters.
*
Outside the Hidden Room, Harry places the basilisk fang in Draco’s hand, and murmurs, “The snake. Whatever you have to do.”
Draco nods, his eyes brilliant. And then he runs to “deliver the news” about the diadem and Crabbe’s death to Voldemort.
Harry intercepts Ron and Hermione on the fifth floor. They proudly present the second basilisk fang to him, and Harry hefts it and smiles. He can feel the deadly potency of the venom straining to get out of the fang and mark its way into his flesh. This time, it would kill him, not having a Horcrux to feast on.
But it can’t get out of the fang without help. And Harry is going to use it to kill the cup, and he is master of it.
There is an exquisite pleasure in mastery.
*
Of all the places that Harry expected to track Voldemort, he didn’t expect to find him in the Shrieking Shack.
But that’s where his tracking spell led him, and Harry wonders if he’s going to have to kill Voldemort here, without an audience. No, wait, an audience of one person. Two people. Nagini coils on the floor, and Snape kneels in front of Voldemort.
No, Harry doesn’t want it to happen here. It would be too easy for the Death Eaters to construct conspiracy theories about Voldemort still being alive if he does, and Harry doesn’t know that he could kill the snake, and the cup, and Voldemort, in one move.
He wants their strategy to work, besides. They spent so much time on it. With a sigh, Harry starts to ease back into the tunnel.
Then Voldemort’s rambling turns to accusing Snape to being the Master of the Elder Wand. Harry blinks in surprise as he remembers the fairy tale of the Three Brothers, and Draco mentioning in passing that Voldemort appeared to be obsessed with the Elder Wand. He thinks he needs the most powerful wand in the world to face Harry.
And he does have a wand that might be elder wood, and certainly isn’t the yew one, turning and turning in his hands. But it won’t work for him, and he thinks Snape is the reason why, since the wand belonged to Dumbledore and Snape conquered Dumbledore and must have won the wand’s allegiance by killing him.
But didn’t Draco actually disarm Dumbledore…? Harry has to conceal a muffled, hilarious laugh as he crouches under the Invisibility Cloak and watches Voldemort unleash Nagini on Snape. When Snape lies on the floor with blood running from his neck, Voldemort turns, blasts a hole in the wall, and departs with the snake.
Harry crouches down next to Snape, staring at him. He could certainly save him. This is a snakebite, and Harry ought to know how to heal one.
But should he?
Then Harry thinks of one very good reason why he should. And his smile is dark as he goes to work.
*
“VOLDEMORT!”
Harry’s shout rings across the battlefield, and turns every head there.
Greg and Millicent have chopped their way through the Death Eater ranks, getting them close enough to be heard. Draco is standing beside Voldemort, his eyes wide with excitement. Nagini curls between the two of them, her head uplifted and her tongue flickering back and forth. Harry thinks he can see a trace of Snape’s blood on her fangs.
“Harry Potter.” Voldemort says the name like a curse, like a prayer. “You are-”
He cuts off as Harry holds up Hufflepuff’s cup, and smiles.
At the same moment, he nods to Draco and Blaise, and they strike, perfectly in unison. Draco stabs the basilisk fang deep into Nagini’s neck, and then beheads her with a Cutting Curse as she shrieks and struggles. Blaise, who begged for the privilege of wounding Voldemort to make up for the letters he sent to his mother, casts a spell that releases a glittering chain of white lightning into Voldemort.
He swore it would wound Voldemort. Harry didn’t know if he should believe him. But, in fact, that is what happens. Voldemort shrieks like his dying snake, leaning over to the side, cut almost in half.
Blaise and Draco retreat in haste. Harry drops the cup on the ground and lifts the basilisk fang above it.
“I destroyed the locket last summer,” Harry says casually, “and the diary in my second year. Dumbledore destroyed the ring the summer before last. You know the fate of the diadem and the snake. How much for the last Horcrux, Voldemort? For the last-the very last-of your immortality anchors?”
Voldemort swallows, trying to look as if he would spare Harry if he spared the cup, Harry’s certain. “Give it to me,” he says hoarsely. “I will swear to spare you if you give it to me.”
Harry laughs, and brings the basilisk fang down on the cup.
Voldemort screams along with the dark mist that rises from it, and starts to inch backwards. But Blaise’s curse has cut him too deeply, and he has to pause and deal with it.
Into the gap, screaming the way she did when Harry cut off her breast, Bellatrix Lestrange hurtles.
It really is too good. Harry’s heart beats with gladness as he launches the spell that will behead her, and the curse behind it that will preserve her head in a living state so that he can do whatever he likes with it. As Bellatrix’s body falls one way and her head the other, Harry nods to Millicent, and she dodges towards it and scoops it up.
And Theodore smiles and strolls forwards as Harry draws the hood of the Invisibility Cloak around his head and fades from view.
“I’m so glad that I ignored my father and chose not to follow you,” Theodore says casually, eyeing Voldemort with just the right amount of disdain. “Look at you. Almost cut in half by a seventeen-year-old. You can’t protect your followers, you can’t protect your pet snake, you can’t even kill a baby. Why is anyone afraid of you again?”
He shakes his head, and Voldemort answers with a howl of rage. Harry chuckles inwardly as he gets behind him. When he asked for someone to distract Voldemort’s attention from him after the destruction of the cup Horcrux, Theodore immediately volunteered. Apparently these are things he’s been wanting to say to Voldemort for-a while.
Some of the Death Eaters dash forwards and try to rescue their Lord. Millicent, Greg, Hermione, Ron, Blaise, Pansy, and Draco are all in their way, and the air flashes with the spells that Harry’s taught them.
From hiding, like the “cowardly, dishonorable” Slytherin Dumbledore always thought him, and as he’s not sure he would have been able to do if Voldemort had been able to see it coming and counter it, Harry launches the spell he’s chosen to end the murderer of his parents.
It hits Voldemort and spreads in through his back, liquefying his organs. He begins to scream and doesn’t stop. Harry drops his hood again and turns to watch him, wondering if Voldemort will turn and see him as he dies, just a hovering face in the air. That might be its own brand of horror.
But that doesn’t happen. Harry’s spell, combined with Blaise’s, is too much for a mortal Voldemort to overcome, the way Blaise promised it would be when he discussed being the one to hit Voldemort with the curse. The writhing, snake-like creature goes up with a flash of blood and gore, burning where it falls. Harry uses another fire curse just to make sure.
When he glances up, the Death Eaters are already fleeing. Harry lets them go. He needs a few of them to hunt down in his old age.
And now, he has a visit to make.
*
“Welcome back, sir.”
It’s hilarious how Snape flinches and jumps when he comes awake. He grips the blankets as if he thinks that he can take them up and fling them like a weapon. Harry grins inwardly and lounges back in the chair next to the bed. Yes, he thought about leaving Snape to die, but this is a much more drawn-out revenge than he’ll be able to take on anyone else but Bellatrix.
Snape works through his coughing, and his glaring. Harry enjoys the first and endures the other, and finally Snape gets to the point where he can speak.
“What are you doing here, Potter?”
Of course, Harry knows why Snape is asking that question. The snakes did tell him a lot about the conversations between Snape and Dumbledore, and what they assumed Harry would have to do to get rid of the Horcrux in his head.
“I lost the Horcrux when I was much younger.”
Snape’s eyes go wider than they’ve probably been in his life. “What?”
“When I destroyed the diary in my second year.” Harry leans back and smiles, just a little, at the little noise that Snape can’t stop from escaping him at that point. “I got bitten by the basilisk, and the venom slashed through me and destroyed the Horcrux in me. I lied about being healed by the phoenix tears. I was never in danger, not when the venom actually preferred to destroy something like the Horcrux. It would have made better prey for the basilisk. More delicate prey.”
“But-how did you know what it was called? Or what it did?” Snape is half-choking, and Harry doesn’t think it’s because of his mostly-healed throat-wound.
“When the shade of Tom Riddle saw that I wasn’t dying, he broke,” Harry says, and Snape jumps at his tone. “He already knew what I was, apparently, from the feel of me when I touched the diary. He told me about Horcruxes and that I was one, and that he was, too. There was no one reason why we couldn’t ally, he said. Two smaller pieces of one greater being.”
“And then what happened?”
Harry smiles, because he has to, at the way Snape is leaning forwards. “I stabbed the basilisk fang through the diary anyway, and watched as Tom Riddle was destroyed, the way he always should have been.”
“But you retained Parseltongue,” Snape says, and squints at the scar on Harry’s forehead.
Harry shrugs, although he’s a little impressed despite himself that Snape apparently never bought the lie Dumbledore spread around about Harry losing his Parseltongue after that. “The Headmaster had a theory that I got it from the Horcrux, but that was just a theory. It turns out to have always been in me. With how common the hatred for Parseltongue is, maybe a lot of my ancestors were Parselmouths and just hid it.”
“As if a Potter would be that intelligent.”
“More intelligent than you would believe.” Harry chills his tone, making Snape flinch. Good. He should understand what the future will be like. “I used snakes a lot, you know. Real ones, carved ones, painted ones. I knew all about your plot with the Headmaster to make me walk to my death. Neither of you noticed that a snake had replaced Dippet in one of those portraits in his office and was listening to you.”
It’s something of a sacrifice to tell Snape about the snakes, but not much of one. The time is coming very soon when Harry won’t be a student anymore, and thus he won’t be able to command the snakes of Hogwarts. And unless he’s very much mistaken, Snape won’t be a professor for much longer if he has a choice.
Snape stares at him. “You-you had a connection to the Dark Lord. Or why would he be able to send visions through it to you?”
“That was the hole left by the Horcrux, not the Horcrux itself. It didn’t close until I killed him.”
“How did you kill him?” Snape is whispering, and looks annoyed with himself for the fact, but also as if he can’t stop. That weakness is everything Harry has always wanted to see on his face.
Harry lifts one shoulder and lets it fall. “I destroyed his last Horcrux in front of him. The cup. Hermione and Ron fetched a basilisk fang from the Chamber, and I got Draco to behead his snake. He was the only one who could get close enough.”
“Draco Malfoy is a Marked Death Eater.”
“Oh, dear. And you still doubt my Parseltongue? That a powerful Parselmouth couldn’t convince the snake in his Mark to work for me instead of the master who brought it into being in blood and pain? He’s been mine since first year, through his own decision that I was up to something, and once he realized that his father intended to brand him and sell him as a slave, he was even more mine.”
And that is true, except perhaps the way that Draco was his from first year. Although Harry will maintain that Draco made himself Harry’s with his obsession with him. If he had never thought there was a grand plan, would they be sitting here?
Perhaps not. Harry might have been mostly a Gryffindor and have trod Dumbledore’s path.
Not that he’ll be thanking Draco for it. His minion has a swollen-enough head as it is.
Snape hesitates, shrinks away from him, and then seems to brace himself. “You were telling me how you killed the Dark Lord.”
“Yes, I was.” Harry looks up and away for a moment, savoring the memory. “He went mad, essentially, when he realized he was mortal. Well, madder. He tried to flee. But I’d already used binding spells around the battlefield to make sure he couldn’t-”
“How did you learn those?” Snape demands, and starts coughing again. Harry patiently waits out the fit. He wants Snape to hear everything, to savor everything.
“Pansy,” Harry says, and lets Snape see the carelessness of his shrug. “Her father’s library. Then Gregory and Millicent fought for me against the Death Eaters, and Blaise launched a spell that wounded Voldemort.” Snape clutches at his arm, which makes Harry want to sneer-Draco never reacted that badly to the pain from Voldemort’s name-but he keeps talking. “I don’t even want to know where he got it. Theodore distracted the bastard by taunting him and reminding him that he hadn’t followed his father’s footsteps into the Death Eaters while I crept up behind him and stabbed him in the back with a curse that liquefied his organs.”
Snape remains silent for a long moment, and finally says, “That is not the way I expected you to fight,” just as Harry starts to stand, thinking he’ll have to create a moment to reveal the rest of what he wants to reveal.
Harry turns to look at him, and finally, finally lets the hatred surface. Snape flinches back from him harder than ever.
It’s so sweet that it’s hard for Harry to speak. But he has to, to complete his revenge.
“You were intending to have me march to my death. You made my life hell every day in Potions because of your grudge against a dead man I can’t even remember, while you refused to take my part against any Slytherin who tried to hurt me because ‘Slytherins stick together.’ Not something you remembered when I was the Slytherin in question, of course. I studied defensive spells on my own because our Defense professors were bloody useless, and you wouldn’t let me even cast in class when it was your turn. I put up with Dumbledore making constant little comments about how I couldn’t trust Draco, or Millicent, or Pansy, or any of them, and acting like my friendships with Ron and Hermione were corrupting them. I lost Sirius, and everyone except my friends told me it was my fault, even though Dumbledore was the one who believed Bellatrix Lestrange when she came to him and pretended to have repented. Every adult I knew sent me back to a hell every summer. I was on my own, and every one of them thought I wasn’t a real Gryffindor or a real Slytherin.”
Harry cuts himself off then, pretending to be so deeply-affected he’s about to lose his temper. Let Snape still underestimate him, if he ever comes against him again. But Harry doesn’t think he will, not after the revelation he still has to give. Harry’s just too used to planning two steps ahead to give it up now.
He glances away, and continues, “I won anyway. Despite you. Despite Dumbledore. Despite Bellatrix.” He smiles, to get to see Snape’s horror. “Whom I beheaded on the battlefield. That felt bloody good.”
Snape touches the wound on his neck. “How did I survive?”
“I found you in time, and healed Nagini’s bite.” Harry has to snort at the look on Snape’s face. “The spells I learned on my own, and you think I never learned ones that could heal a snakebite? Being a Parselmouth helped as well, of course.”
“Why?” Snape breathes. “Why did you save me, if you hate me?”
Here it is. Here’s the part he’ll hate most. Harry steps forwards and stares at Snape.
“Partially for my friends,” he says, and he’s not lying. “There are still some Slytherins you were a good Head of House for, and you turned some of them from the Death Eaters’ path. I reckon you can go on doing that in the future, standing up for them against the common bigotry and leading them away from the temptation of Dark Arts. And they didn’t need the grief of your death, little as they would have had to grieve for if they really knew you.”
“Partially-that. And partially what?”
Harry smiles. It’s the first real smile he’s ever given Snape, and it freezes the man. As well it should.
“My father saved your life, and that meant you owed me a debt by inheritance,” he says. “But you paid that back by saving my life in first year when I might have died after I burned Quirrell. Now you owe me a debt.
“I want you to live a very long, long time, Snape. And know that you breathe by my grace. Every day.”
Harry turns and stalks out of the hospital wing. He can feel Snape falling to pieces behind him, but if he stays he’ll laugh, and that’ll let Snape recover some ground.
Harry doesn’t want him to. He wants to keep Snape under his thumb for every day for the rest of his life.
Harry leans on the wall outside the hospital wing and breathes out slowly. He can hear distant screams, still, as wounded from the battle are treated. But he needs this moment to ride out the last of his immediate revenge, and reflect on how good it feels.
Is this how sex feels? He’s never had it. Some people say it’s really good
I get to find out, now, Harry reminds himself, as he stands up and starts walking towards where his friends wait. Life can’t be all tormenting Bellatrix’s head with memories of when her lord fell.
But I don’t know for sure what comes next. I don’t know what a normal life is like.
Harry smiles. He thinks that, for a certain dose of “normal,” he’ll enjoy finding out.
But for now, he has a head to torment.
The End.