Chapter Seven of 'His Twenty-Eighth Life'- Love and Power
Chapter Six.
Title: His Twenty-Eighth Life (7/?)
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 Seven-Love and Power
They held the first candlelit vigil in memory of Harry on the first Halloween after he disappeared.
Jonathan leaned his elbows on the windowsill and watched as his parents went back and forth, lighting candles that were scattered all over the field in front of their house. Their voices were soft, and now and then Jonathan could see his mum’s hair turning red as a flame came up or Dad’s weary eyes.
They were so tired all the time now. They didn’t always have time to play, and Jonathan knew it was all because Harry had disappeared. Jonathan wished he could go and find his brother. He would bring him back home.
But Mum and Dad said, when Jonathan asked that, that he was only four years old and not to be silly.
I’ll get bigger, though. They don’t think about that.
Jonathan nodded. He knew they didn’t think about that. They also thought he would forget Harry. He would talk about remembering him, and Mum would run her hand through his hair and exchange a sad smile with Dad and say it was okay, that they would get Harry back someday and make new memories with him then. They said it was okay to not remember his little brother.
“He’s only four,” Jonathan had heard Mum say to Mr. Dumbledore once. “He was only three when Harry was taken. How can he remember anything?”
But Jonathan remembered everything. The tight grip of the little finger around his hand, and the way he loved his brother, and the way Dad ran around with them both on his back when Dad turned into Prongs. His parents seemed sad about his brother all the time. Someone had to remember the way Harry had been when he was happy. When they were all happy.
Jonathan stood at the window and watched Mum light another candle and set it down in the middle of the dirt so that it would blaze on a rune she’d made out of stones. Jonathan knew the rune was to help Harry come back to them.
He’s going to come back. And I’m not going to be sad. I’m going to find him and bring him back.
*
“I am showing you an amount of trust in this, Severus. Do not betray it.”
Those were the only words the Dark Lord had spoken to him before stepping aside so that Severus could move inside the little cottage where he apparently spent most of his time with the captured Potter child. Severus moved warily, every sense on high alert. It was late December now, and the cold sparkling around him melted away, literally, in the cottage’s back room. A bright fire shimmered on the hearth.
Severus blinked a little at it. Of course the Dark Lord would want to be comfortable tending the child, but he had left at least long enough to fetch Severus, Side-Along Apparate him here, and fill his ears with dire warnings. It was-amazing was not too small a word-unusual that he had left a fire burning to warm the child.
The next thing was the bed, and then the child sitting up on the bed.
Only Severus’s first thought on meeting those green eyes was This is not a child.
Of course, that was ridiculous. What else could a toddler be? He might have his father’s black hair-Severus clutched at his robe sleeve-and his eyes might look old, but of course he was a baby. Anyone taking Polyjuice to replace the Potter children would have run out of the potion long before now, and the Dark Lord’s eyes could pierce any glamour.
Still, as stupid as that thought was, it remained to Severus. He came forwards step by step, and the child didn’t start or stare at him the way most toddlers would greet a stranger. A faint smile lifted the corner of his mouth, in fact, and he nodded.
“I’m a little surprised that Lord Voldemort allowed you here,” he said, in a voice still high-pitched but with a command of inflection and diction that froze Severus in place. “But maybe he’s planning to Obliviate you afterwards.”
“That is incorrect,” the Dark Lord said behind him, as cold as a winter wind, but not as shocking as the child’s use of his name. “I wanted him to see you.”
The child looked at the Dark Lord with a small tilt of his head. “But why? I don’t think I need any more potions that he’s brewing, do I? And I hope that you can improve on the taste of that last one,” he added, suddenly talking to Severus again. Severus ended up clutching his robe sleeve for another reason as those green eyes pinned him. “You invented much sweeter potions in several worlds that I’m from.”
Severus stared blankly. So the child was from another world? But that would not explain his apparent age. Unless he had been cursed to age backwards? Severus remembered reading of such a thing in a Dark Arts book long ago.
“Yes, this is what I wanted you to see,” said the Dark Lord, and his voice was a solemn sigh. “He has been reborn many times, Severus. With all his memories.”
That would make sense, Severus supposed. But he kept in mind that even Dark Lords could be fooled. While keeping that mind carefully away from said Dark Lord, via his averted eyes.
“You knew me in other worlds,” he finally began. It seemed the only right response to that incredible revelation.
“Yes.” The child gave him a faint smile. “You’ve been many things to me. Sometimes a mentor, sometimes a professor-you’ve taught at Hogwarts in about a quarter of those worlds-and sometimes an enemy.” He paused, but then shook his head and changed whatever he had been about to say. “My name is Harry, by the way, but it isn’t usually. Strangely, you’ve almost always had the same name, except in the worlds where your mother fled from your father and moved back in with your grandparents. You usually changed your name to ‘Prince,’ there.”
Severus stared and felt his nostrils flare. He couldn’t say anything. Of course, the Dark Lord could have told Potter these details. He didn’t have to have lived through multiple worlds-ridiculous-and learned them.
But that still argued an adult intelligence somehow resided in a child’s body, if he had received and understood those details.
Severus glanced at the Dark Lord. The shining ruby eyes were fixed past him on the child. Potter sat up a little as if in response to the flick of the whip in that look, and half-shrugged before he turned to Severus.
“You’ve been so many things,” he said quietly. “So have I. I don’t know exactly what Lord Voldemort wants from you, but if he allows it, then I can tell you-well, things that you might have wondered about.”
“I want you to tell him anything that will not endanger my goals in this world.”
The Dark Lord’s voice was as soft and eager as a cat’s tongue. Severus faced the boy again. Potter. If he could think of him that way, he could calm his churning thoughts and stop mentally comparing the green eyes with Lily’s.
He needed to stop comparing the green eyes with Lily’s.
“All right,” said Potter, and he looked at Severus, considering. “Are you curious about how you became a professor at Hogwarts?”
Severus found his tongue. “Yes.” It was something he had never considered. He had known he would hate teaching-he had sometimes interacted with other students in his House that way, and it had been excruciating-and he couldn’t conceive of any universe where he would have changed his mind.
“Well, it was usually because you had something that you felt you had to atone for,” Potter said thoughtfully. “In some worlds, that was getting Lily Evans killed-”
“What?”
“In some worlds, you accidentally betrayed her,” Harry said gently. “I call her Lily because although she’s my mum in this world, and she was in one other, too, she’s usually not. But you cast curses that hit her in the middle of battle, once. She’s never fought on Lord Voldemort’s side, always against him. So sometimes you decided that you had to switch sides and support what she fought for. And Dumbledore thought he could make the best use of you by turning you into the Potions professor at Hogwarts.”
Severus stared. There were so many questions that could be asked, but he dreaded asking any of them, knowing who waited behind him.
He finally chose the safest one of the many that had blossomed in his mind with Potter’s words. “You said-do you not respect the Headmaster? He’s fought against the Dark Lord, and you clearly respect your mother for doing so.” Better to call her your mother instead of Lily, because he knew how his voice would tremble on the name.
Potter gave a smile much too complex for his face. “I respect him, but not in an uncomplicated way. He hid a lot of secrets from me in my first life, and expected me to figure everything out at the last moment and do exactly as he’d planned on. I did, but it was mainly luck. And since then-well, he hasn’t always trusted me when I did try to help the side that fought against Lord Voldemort. He’s been suspicious of my intelligence, or because I was in Slytherin, or because-”
“You were in Slytherin.” A Potter in that House violated Severus’s sense of the order of the universe even more than the thought that he might end up as a teacher.
Harry grinned. “I wasn’t always a Potter, I think I hinted that. Sometimes I was born into a pure-blood family where it would have been unthinkable for me to do anything but go into Slytherin. And I couldn’t always bargain with the Sorting Hat. Sometimes I was that way, not just due to my family’s pressures.”
“Bargain with the Sorting Hat?” The Dark Lord glided in front of Severus, all his attention focused on Potter. Severus stirred a little. He had never seen the Dark Lord like that, even during the initiations to the ranks of the Death Eaters when he stared so hard at the ones receiving the Dark Mark.
“That was my first life.” Potter flushed a little. “The Hat wanted me in Slytherin even then. I didn’t have any knowledge about other worlds. I just wanted to avoid a real prat named Draco Malfoy that I’d met on the train.”
“A House is more than a single person,” Severus saw the chance to remark. He had to remember that this child was a Potter. It was the only way that his sanity stood a chance of surviving.
The Dark Lord turned to look at him, but what stung more was Potter’s soft, merry laugh, and his response, “Or more than four people. It was so hard for you to remember that, when you were dealing with the Marauders. You were a horrible teacher, by the way. For Gryffindors especially.”
Severus lowered his eyes and swallowed beneath the Dark Lord’s gaze, although he longed to make a retort. It seemed that even a young Potter had the capacity to sting him beyond reason.
“I wished you to understand,” said the Dark Lord, his voice so eerily devoid of rage that Severus risked a glance up. The Dark Lord stood with his hand caressing the golden-and-green snake that had wound up his arm. His eyes were still impossible to meet. “What Harry is. What he has been in other lives.”
Why? Severus looked back and forth between Potter and the Dark Lord. It made no sense. Potter was potentially as powerful a weapon as a sentient grimoire, although he was probably only telling the Dark Lord the truth out of a noble and stupid Gryffindor self-sacrificing impulse. Why would Lord Voldemort think that he should share this knowledge with anyone?
And then it struck him. He jerked his chin down before he thought about it, and then he couldn’t look away from the sharp glint in the Dark Lord’s eyes.
The Dark Lord wanted Severus to know that this source of knowledge existed. He wanted him to think about it and dream of the questions he could ask-
All the while knowing that the true wealth inside that head rested in the Dark Lord’s possession. That he could never access it unless the Dark Lord allowed it.
It was a petty power play, and there could be nothing so calculated to drive Severus mad as to be denied this knowledge of other worlds.
Severus looked away and cleared his throat. “May I ask another question about how I ended up betraying Lily in his first life?” In truth, Severus wanted to ask far more than that, but he thought he should phrase the questions in as limited a way as possible, for now.
“No.”
Severus looked back before he could stop himself, and the Dark Lord stood there with his head bowed and a soft expression on his face. The softness was that of rotting meat. It was the satisfaction of a desire.
“No, you may not,” the Dark Lord said, and his voice sighed and shivered along Severus’s spine. “Perhaps, at some time in the future when I am particularly pleased with your work, I will let you ask.”
Severus couldn’t help himself. He turned to Potter, and Potter gave him a faint smile and said, “If I told you despite what he wants, then he might harm you.” A spasm of emotion distorted his face, for too short a time for Severus to be sure what it was. “Or my family.”
“How can they be your family when you have been born in so many lives?” Severus asked, frustration strangling his voice, and then flinched as he waited for the pain of the Cruciatus. He had asked another question of Potter without the Dark Lord’s permission.
But nothing happened, and Severus cautiously glanced over his shoulder. The Dark Lord leaned forwards and almost swayed with what seemed to be the satisfaction of another desire.
“Yes, Harry,” he said. “Tell us.”
Potter sat up a little straighter. His gaze was firm on Severus, although he seemed to divide it with a motion of his head to include the Dark Lord as well.
“I’ve lived so many lives,” Potter began, his voice hollow and strange. Severus felt the few small hairs on the back of his neck that hadn’t already stood up rise. “But that just means that I have more people to love. More people to see from different angles. I’ve never been exactly the same in any life. Even in my first life, although I had the same parents as this time around, everything else was different. And-what’s the point of holding grudges from life to life, when the same people you hated in one world might surprise you and be your best friends in another one? It would be ridiculous. I held the grudges at first, and then I found out how stupid that was.”
Severus could only stand there, and listen, and try not to sneer. But the Dark Lord asked the question he would have asked. “And why have you not grown bored and cynical because you live again and again? Why choose love-” the word was the bark of a rabid dog when he spoke it “-over power?”
“Because it’s always different,” Potter said, and gave them a puzzled look. “Choosing power over love would get boring, too, you know, if you did it all the time.”
“I would never be bored with power and immortality.”
“You haven’t tried it yet,” Potter said, and although Severus winced in instinctive anticipation of seeing the child made to writhe with pain, he also noticed how inarguable the words sounded, at least to Potter.
“How long have you lived?”
It took Severus a moment to understand the question, but Potter seemed to grasp it instinctively-yet another thing that irritated him. Potter’s eyes went cloudy, and he looked off into the distance. Then he nodded, as though he’d been counting, and he looked back at the Dark Lord and said simply, “Adding all my lives together, more than seventeen hundred years.”
There was a silence, as complex as the smile that had been on Potter’s face earlier. Severus moved a slow step away. The expression on the Dark Lord’s face as he stared at Potter was not one he wished to understand.
The Dark Lord started-started, as if he were still human-and roughly gestured Severus out the door. Severus went. He was in time to see the Dark Lord conjure a chair and sit down in front of the bed to continue questioning Potter.
Severus shuddered and said nothing. He could envision living that long, if only by casting his imagination in the direction of a phoenix. But he could not imagine choosing love and opposition to the Dark Lord in every life.
There are two inhuman beings in that room.
*
“You will tell me what it means to you to have lived that long.”
Harry tucked his hands around his knees and studied Voldemort’s face. He looked like a wolf on the verge of swallowing something delicious. And Harry had enough experience of both normal wolves and werewolves that he was an expert on that look.
It reminded him of life number nineteen, too, but life number nineteen could go hang as far as Harry was concerned.
“You don’t mean why I chose love instead of power, do you? Because that’s a choice it would take forever to explain.”
“We have forever, Harry Potter,” Voldemort murmured, but he chuckled and waved a hand before Harry could do something stupid like remind Voldemort of his own limited lifespan in this form. “No, and neither do I care to explore such a philosophy. Explain to me what it means to you to be immortal. Truly immortal. Alive forever.”
Harry examined his expression again. And there it was. The expression he had never seen on Voldemort’s face before, deeper and stronger than the wolf-hunger. A yearning towards another human being.
He thinks he’s corrupting me. And there are times I’ve been afraid of that. But I understand more about the human heart than he does.
And with triumph singing through him, Harry began to speak of things that he’d never told anyone.
What it was like to awaken with his memories, to pass through the centuries knowing he would have to let his loves and his friendships alight on his arm like a wild creature and flutter away again. How it was best to let go and remember, not take hold. How he sometimes thought that he was the oldest being in the universe, and then he would laugh and remember mountains and sequoias.
And if the Dark Lord Voldemort drank it up because he was convinced that he would someday become like Harry…
What of it? He would not do that, not unless he got the Deathly Hallows away from Harry. And there were times that Harry thought he might welcome knowing a life was his last.
There are times it would be nice to rest, he thought wistfully, and then focused his eyes on Voldemort and felt his determination congeal.
But not until he’s defeated or changed. If this is going to be my last life, then I’m going to make it count.
Chapter Eight.
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