Chapter Fifty-Nine of 'The Art of Self-Fashioning'- I Bear the Flame
Chapter Fifty-Eight.
Title: The Art of Self-Fashioning (59/64)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Warnings/Content notes: Angst, canonical child abuse, animal harm in the first chapter, AU, violence, gore, torture, gen (no pairings)
Rating: R (for violence)
Subject: In a world where Neville is the Boy-Who-Lived, Harry still grows up with the Dursleys, but he learns to be more private about what matters to him. When McGonagall comes to give him his letter, she also unwittingly gives Harry both a new quest and a new passion: Transfiguration. But while Harry deliberately hides his growing skills, Minerva worries more and more about the mysterious, brilliant student writing to her who may be venturing into dangerous magical territory. Ravenclaw!Harry, Mentor!Minerva.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a fairly long story that will update every Thursday. The first few chapters will take place in Harry’s childhood and first year; then it will skip ahead to his fifth year. It’s heavy on the angst and gore, but heavier on the magical theory.
Chapter One.
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Fifty-Nine-I Bear the Flame
Harry didn’t know the spell Regulus had cast, but it wasn’t like he could miss its effects.
Flame danced up from Regulus’s body, curling along his shoulders like a mane, draping down his back like a cloak, turning his hair red and yellow like a phoenix’s feathers. He gasped once, and then he leaped forwards and touched the shield that curled around the golden cup hovering in the middle of the room.
The shield broke with a ringing noise that Harry heard inside his head. The cup began to fall. Regulus seized it-the fire on his fingers curled away from the cup’s handle and didn’t burn it-and flung it across the room to Harry.
Lord Dudders gave a wordless snarling noise. The shadows turned black with snakes.
Harry leaped up to the grab the Horcrux, and then went leaping around the room, stomping on snakes each time he landed. Having a kangaroo’s muscles in his legs was more useful than he had anticipated when he first created them.
Lord Dudders stood up from the throne, crouching like a cat. He was tracking Harry with his wand out when Regulus crashed into him, laughing wildly.
The fire did touch Lord Dudders. It must be under Regulus’s control, Harry thought as he paused for a moment in a snake-free area to watch. It would burn what he said to burn and spare what he said to spare.
Lord Dudders screamed, and went on screaming. His white skin was turning the mottled black of fallen leaves, and he clawed at Regulus with fingers that turned crisp and dark almost at once. But Regulus held him for only a moment before he Apparated away, appeared in the same area as Harry, and shot the Killing Curse at him.
Harry leaped over the green beam and tucked the cup away in his cloak pocket. Then he plucked out several more mice and threw them at Lord Dudders. Once again, he cast the spell that exploded them before he reached him, but his face was half-burned through one cheek, his teeth exposed, and it was obvious how much the magic was costing him.
Harry smiled at him.
“Do you know the price for what your Black has done?” Lord Dudders said. Harry had to concentrate to understand him. His missing lips and the hole in his face made his voice slur quite a bit. “The fire can burn through any shield, any defense. But the one bearing it makes themselves the kindling. He will die.”
Harry hesitated, turning to Regulus, who was on the throne and preparing to rush across the room to them, and Lord Dudders cast the Killing Curse at him again.
Honestly, this is just tiresome at this point, Harry thought, as he ducked under it. Doesn’t he know any other spells?
The snakes were crawling towards him, driven by Lord Dudders’s hissed commands, and so Harry would have had to move again anyway. But before he could, Regulus rushed into the mass of serpents and set them all alight.
He no longer needed to touch them with his hands, Harry saw. The flames trailing the sweep of his cloak were enough. The snakes didn’t explode the way Harry’s mice had; they simply vaporized. Not even smears of ash remained where they had been.
Regulus burst through them as if they hadn’t existed, and grabbed Lord Dudders by the arm again. The flames spiraled in, and Harry had to hop backwards as the explosion of sheer heat pushed at him.
“You cannot-” Lord Dudders was screaming, but his voice was shrill with pain and not outrage.
“I know that,” Regulus said, and leaned in harder. He seemed to be laughing. It was hard for Harry to see, though, through the smoke and the streaming flames. He at least didn’t seem to be in pain. “But I can make you suffer, and I already made you give the Horcrux to Harry.”
Lord Dudders actually jolted as if he’d forgotten that, and then he fixed his eyes on Harry. Harry knew he was going to Apparate over to him. He poised his powerful right leg in a position that would let him kick Lord Dudders and waited.
They’d both forgotten something. The next time Lord Dudders Apparated, he took Regulus with him. They reappeared in front of Harry, still burning, and fried the cobras who tried to rear up and attack Harry. The smell of burning flesh made Harry have to force down the temptation to gag.
Lord Dudders screamed and screamed. Harry stared at him, not Regulus. He could barely stand pain. That was worth knowing.
“How does it feel, Voldemort?” Regulus leaned forwards, shoving Lord Dudders into the side of the throne he’d been sitting in. His hands were still glowing, incandescent. There was no sign of the blisters that were racing up Lord Dudders’s arms. “To know that you’re going to lose, and to people who aren’t even the Boy-Who-Lived?”
Lord Dudders tried to cast some other spell. It didn’t work. Regulus laughed, and Harry moved a little to the side.
Regulus’s face showed only joy.
Lord Dudders flailed out with one hand, and a snake levitated from the floor and wrapped around his arm. When it lunged, trying to bite Regulus, fire shot down its throat and it was ash before it finished the motion. Lord Dudders had already Apparated again, and Harry started to make his way over to them through the smoke and the blaze.
“I am immortal!”
“But not invincible,” Regulus replied, and bore down harder. His hands had moved back to Lord Dudders’s face. Now there were holes in both cheeks, and his forehead was little more than steamed bone. Harry thought he would have been hurt more, but he’d probably worked the kinds of curses and charms on himself that meant he was incredibly hard to damage.
“Regulus.”
“Yes, Harry?” Lord Dudders tried to wrench himself away again, but that thin body wasn’t very strong. Regulus forced his face back around, smiling, and thrust his hand down Lord Dudders’s throat. His screaming stopped as his vocal cords charred.
“Let him go. You can’t kill him, and I don’t want you to die.” Harry spoke the words feeling as though someone else had burned them out of him.
“That’s a pity,” Regulus agreed, and Harry had no idea what part he was agreeing to. “I’m going to make this as easy as I can for you before I go, though, Harry. There are even a few people who might abandon him once they realize how hideous he’s going to be.” His hands bore in and twisted, and a chunk of Lord Dudders’s collarbone was a gaping, seared hole.
“Why did you do this?” Harry whispered. He watched as they Apparated again, ending up near the throne once more. Lord Dudders had become a silent, maddened thing, thrashing and trying to bite at Regulus. The threat might have looked more effective if he still had teeth.
Regulus cocked his head. “Because we needed the Horcrux, and I recognized the spell he used to shield it. There was no way we could have got through it.”
Harry blinked slowly. It was surreal to have this sort of conversation while Lord Dudders was burning almost to death, but if the spell did what it apparently did, then there would be no other chance to have it. “But why sacrifice yourself like this?”
Regulus’s explanation got interrupted when Lord Dudders Apparated again, but once more he crashed into the wall on the far side of the throne room. Regulus smiled and shook his head. “The pain is interfering with his concentration to Apparate somewhere else. Because this was the only way. The shield around the Horcrux would have given anyone who touched it an incurable disease, probably plague. That’s why he dared to show it to us.” His hands twisted again, and Lord Dudders threw back his head and cried without a voice as yet another chunk of his neck fell off. “Well, that and the shield is unbreakable by normal means.”
Harry clenched his hands. “You could have told me about the spell, and I could have cast it.”
“You make no sense,” said Regulus, in a condescending tone that made Harry bristle even as he circled to the side to try and see Regulus’s face better. “I’m doing this so that you can destroy the Horcruxes and succeed against Lord Dudders. And I should have let you die? Besides, the Flame-Bearer has to be perfectly willing.”
“I would have been.”
“Not when you’re probably thinking about all the other objectives you have left to achieve.” Regulus’s voice was soft. He twisted his hands again, and Lord Dudders fell to his knees. His head was little more than a skull with some tatters of burned flesh clinging to it now, Harry saw. That he wouldn’t be able to die only made it worse.
“I had little meaning in my life before these last few months, Harry,” Regulus added, drawing his gaze again. “Sometimes I thought I should have died during the war, the way I almost did attempting to retrieve the locket. No family left, no one I really cared for, only intense boredom and the unwillingness to kill myself.” He bent his head down and gave Harry the most genuine smile Harry had ever seen from him. “Thank you for letting me die in a way that has purpose, meaning.”
“I don’t want you to die.”
“This is the way I chose to do it. And I didn’t want you to die, either, the way you would have if you’d tried to break the shield on the Horcrux. And I’m selfish. My desires should prevail.”
“I’m not healed. Not the way you wanted me to be. Not a normal person.”
Regulus widened his eyes and ran his hands down Lord Dudders’s spine, which was also burning now, with a kind of transparent flame Harry didn’t know the name of. “Do you think a normal person would choose to die this way? I didn’t want you to be exactly like everyone else. Only further away from the edge of self-destruction. And I’ve achieved that.”
Harry only stared at him, and could say nothing else. Regulus winked at him, and looked like the pictures of Sirius he had shown Harry, so reckless and brave.
Then he whirled to face Lord Dudders, and bent down to say something into his ear that Harry couldn’t hear. It made Lord Dudders open the hole of his mouth and writhe, though, and then he wrenched free of Regulus and Apparated.
Regulus stood there for a moment, his hands lifted, the flames coiling around him. Harry knew what was about to happen. With no enemies left to destroy or defenses left to eat through, the fire would destroy the one who bore it now.
But there was no pain in Regulus’s face as he looked at Harry and tilted his head. “Take care of yourself, Harry. Always remember that you’re worth more than just your magic and the healing of your parents.”
The flames bent down and clamped Regulus in their jaws, and he was suddenly a brilliant white explosion, a gleaming star of fire. It whirled around. For a second, Harry thought it would streak at him, like ball lightning, and he prepared to meet it.
But he should have known that even this kind of remnant of Regulus would never harm him. The flame condensed on itself a moment later, a point of brilliance so intense that Harry had to shield his eyes with his claws.
When he looked again, the room was empty, and there was not even any warmth left, but the warmth of the cup Horcrux against his side.
*
Minerva didn’t recognize Harry’s face when he walked into the house.
Of course she’d been searching for him, and then waiting for some kind of news, particularly when she realized that Regulus was gone as well. That lessened her fear that Harry had gone off to do something suicidal because of Mr. Boot’s death. But that Harry came back alone, and without Regulus beside him…
Harry took a golden cup out of his cloak and set it on the kitchen table without a word. Then he looked at her, and Minerva saw the shards of broken pain that, this time, he hadn’t managed to bury.
“What happened?” she whispered.
“Regulus made himself a Flame-Bearer to destroy the shield around the Horcrux. He said something about it causing some sort of plague otherwise. And then he burned Lord Dudders as much as he could while he was telling me farewell…”
Harry’s voice trailed off. Minerva clenched her hands together. She was familiar with both the shield Harry was talking about and the Flame-Bearer spell, and the fact that bearing the flame would have allowed Regulus to break through the shield.
And she knew very well what happened to someone who became a Flame-Bearer.
What she wasn’t familiar with was the swimming wetness in Harry’s eyes.
“I don’t understand,” Harry whispered. “He never made any sense to me, and then he decided to die that way, and he didn’t even give me a choice…”
Abruptly, a different kind of shield Minerva had never known was there shattered deep inside Harry. He lifted his hands and tried to cover his face and turn away from her as the first sob tore out of him.
Minerva could only guess how deep and old the defenses that had kept him from weeping were. But she wasn’t going to allow him to rebuild them, not when he was already suffering from grief and rage.
She strode around the table and wrapped her arms around him. Harry leaned his head on her chest. He was still sobbing, but with bewilderment as much as pain, Minerva thought.
“How long has it been since you cried?” she whispered, stroking his hair. She didn’t think he had heard, or would respond, but his voice came gasping up.
“Since I was six. That’s the last time I remember.”
Minerva shut her eyes and held him still. His sobs were already dying; his voice had sounded almost normal when he spoke. There was a barrier broken, but the damage from the Dursleys had gone so deep that Harry was already reassembling it.
Harry didn’t let go of her, though. He held on, and Minerva thought that was as much of a change as she should wish, or hope for.
*
Harry thought of something else, through the maze of his shock and grief, after he’d stood there letting Professor McGonagall hold him for maybe ten minutes. He pushed back and asked, “Why are we still here?”
“I hardly thought you’d want to go upstairs and speak to the others yet.” Professor McGonagall pushed her glasses up her nose. “I don’t know that the-spell Mr. Black put on the others will hold and make them ignore this now that he’s dead.”
“Not that. Regulus told me all sorts of things about Black properties being passed down exclusively in the family line. I thought the house would kick us out with him dead. I shouldn’t have been able to walk back in at all.”
Harry could still feel shards of glass crunching in his chest when he talked about Regulus, but that was the way it was, the way it had to be. He would keep on talking about it, and maybe someday, he would understand and accept it in the way he to accept Terry’s death.
“If anything, Bellatrix should have inherited it.”
“I was wondering when you would ask that question.”
Harry snapped his head up, heart beating like a hummingbird’s, because it was Regulus’s voice. But the misty image of him that strolled into the kitchen through the far doorway was obviously not the real one. Harry reached out towards him anyway.
The image halted well short of them, though, and wasn’t looking quite at them, which told Harry it wasn’t going to respond to reality the way the living Regulus would have done. He rearranged himself so that he stood in front of Regulus’s gaze. It was full of the same pride and admiration he’d shown Harry when he was dying.
“I have no children. I can’t stand the thought of my cousins getting anything I own. Well, maybe Andromeda would be all right. But we haven’t spoken in too long for me to be sure of that. And I don’t really care about her that much. I care about you, Harry. Thank you for waking me up and bringing me back to the real world.”
For as long as it lasted. For Regulus to make this, he must have suspected he would die soon. Harry blinked rapidly, and focused on the image as it held up a hand.
“There are a few artifacts that really can’t be touched by anyone without Black blood. But they’re still yours. You can make the decision about what to do with them, whether that’s throw them away or pass them on to Andromeda or something else. Just don’t give them to Narcissa or her brat, that’s all I ask.”
Harry snorted. Beside him, Professor McGonagall gave the beginning of a sound that might have been a laugh, and then cut it off.
“Otherwise…” Regulus drew himself up, coughed a little, and began. “I, Regulus Black, being of strong magic-”
Most of the Blacks probably couldn’t say they were of sound mind.
“-leave all of the Gringotts vaults belonging to the House of Black, the house at Number Twelve Grimmauld Place, the Dark Manse, the Shining Retreat in Wales, and all their contents to Harry James Potter, adopted my heir with a strand of hair from his head that I took when he was sleeping and a drop of blood shed willingly in my defense, because of his ties to my elder brother Sirius and because of the life-debts I owe him and because he kept me from dying in misery.” The image turned his head, and even with everything, Harry was sure that the reflected, transparent eyes were looking directly at him. “It was a good death, Harry, no matter what happened to me. I’m sure it was.”
The image shut its mouth, and for a moment Harry thought its task was done and it would fade. Then it paused and added, “If you do manage to waken your parents, tell your mum that I always thought she was pretty and your dad that I got to know you first.”
There was a soft burst of light that made Harry flinch, because it was too much like the flame that had consumed the real Regulus at the end of his spell. Then it snapped into the body of the image, and both froze and faded.
Harry closed his eyes. He wanted to be by himself. Gently, he patted Professor McGonagall’s hand when she reached for him and cast a Disillusionment Charm on himself so that he could go upstairs without running into Neville or the others.
Once he got into his bedroom, Yar, whose wing he had healed earlier, perched on the headboard and Spellmaker and Cross curled up at his feet. Harry yielded himself to the thoughts that he needed to have.
But he knew one thing. The grief was uppermost right now-but only right now. The rage at Regulus’s death had joined the rage at Terry’s death that bubbled and danced below the surface of his mind.
He was going to destroy Lord Dudders now. He hoped Lord Dudders knew the death walking towards him.
*
Neville sat on his bed, holding Dapple. Ron and Hermione had both gone to bed after hearing the news about Mr. Black, and Neville was glad. He had wanted to be alone to mourn, and to think.
He had known people would die in the second war from the time he was-well, actually, he could never remember being young enough not to know. Gran was always warning him that Voldemort wasn’t gone and that he would come back someday. She hadn’t known anything about the Horcrux, but that didn’t matter. That was why Neville got all the training. No one would have bothered if they’d thought Voldemort was defeated forever like most of Britain did.
But somehow he had never pictured these casualties. Terry, who had just been a kid in school like him. And Regulus, who had opened his home to them and tried to protect Neville even when they knew he was a Horcrux.
So Neville sat and shivered and pondered, and he felt the last remnants of his fear drop away.
He would walk up to Voldemort and let him cast the Killing Curse to destroy the Horcrux, if that was what it took. If it made people stop dying and let Harry kill Voldemort finally, once and for all.
When Neville heard Harry stirring, he went and knocked on his door. Harry opened it. His face was utterly calm, his eyes utterly focused. Neville nodded at him.
“Let’s do it,” he said. “Let’s do it as soon as we can.”
Harry leaned towards him, and smiled. It was a small thing, but they were too close for Neville not to see every movement of Harry’s face, even in the dim light of the corridor.
“He’s already dead,” Harry said softly. “Let’s make sure his brain catches up with his body.”
Chapter Sixty.
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