Chapter Six of 'His Twenty-Eighth Life'- The Person He Becomes
Chapter Five.
Title: His Twenty-Eighth Life (6/?)
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 Six-The Person He Becomes
“And we have no more hope than ever of retrieving Harry.”
Albus closed his eyes and winced. He hated hearing anyone’s voice sound so dead and hopeless, but especially Lily’s. He remembered the first time he had seen her, walking into the Great Hall at Hogwarts at eleven years old, looking as if all the fire of her life burned in her green eyes. The dark-haired, skinny boy at her side had given Albus less hope, but even him he had tried to save.
And now, this.
“No,” he said, opening his eyes and forcing himself to face the disaster that his carelessness had caused. If I had only insisted that Peter burn all those scraps of paper… “I’m sorry, Lily. We know that Harry’s alive, but not where he is. To make such a device, I would have to have some of his blood.”
“And I didn’t get it while I had the chance.” Lily sat with her hands dangling in her lap, her eyes fastened on the western window. The sun was descending on the sixth of August, exactly a week past Harry’s second birthday. “I’m a failure.”
“You are not, Lily.” Albus pressed her shoulder. She shivered, for a moment, and then pulled away and stood up to pace around the drawing room. Albus watched her, his chest aching. “You still have a fine son you can be very proud of. Jonathan needs you. And you cannot let your understandable grief over Harry tear you apart.”
“I thought last year that the worst thing was not to know.” Lily stopped moving, but still gave more attention to the sunset than to Albus. “That nothing could be worse, because how in the world could it? And now I know that he’s alive, I realize the worst thing is not being able to bring him home with us.” She bowed her head, then paused.
Albus waited. He had sensed on his last two visits that she wanted to discuss something with him when she hesitated, but she had always extended the hesitation and pulled herself back from the brink at the last moment when James or Sirius came in. Since they were both from home with Jonathan this time, Albus hoped she could tell him.
He did entertain the notion that this was about Remus. He hoped so. Lily and James had distanced themselves from Remus because they thought he might succumb to Tom’s reaching out to the werewolves, and then Remus had vanished on the Continent. Albus thought he might be able to find him if he searched.
Out of what he considered a misplaced sense of guilt, neither Lily nor James had asked about Remus since the attack on Halloween.
“I-how can Jonathan do what he’s meant to do when he didn’t destroy Voldemort the first time around?” Lily whispered abruptly. “I-it’s ridiculous, but I don’t know what to tell him. It would be one thing to tell him he was under the doom of a prophecy. I was always glad that he was too young to understand. But now-what do we tell him? Is the prophecy going to come true or not?”
Albus privately believed that it would, but his belief was not a substitute for the truth. He sighed and crunched one of the lemon drops he had brought along. Lily and especially James used to like them. “I don’t know.”
“So how do we get him ready? Or do we even have to get him ready?” Lily collapsed back on the couch and looked at Albus with a numb expression in her eyes that filled Albus with that helpless ache again. “Maybe he’ll never fight Voldemort at all?”
“I think it is likely that Tom will come against him again someday.”
“But then why take Harry?” Lily’s words were tumbling fast enough now that Albus became suddenly convinced that this was the real question she had wanted to ask him, not whether Jonathan would face Tom or not. “And Harry-I showed you my Pensieve memory of how he was behaving, Albus. That night. The way he was talking. How do you explain that?”
Albus frowned slowly and sat back. The truth was, he had no explanation for that. The closest he could come would be possession, but only one being in the room that night had been capable of such a thing, and there was no reason Tom would possess the boy to fight him. And things like Tom’s full name were knowledge that he wouldn’t have voiced aloud for any reason.
“I don’t know.”
“You always don’t know,” Lily said. Her voice was as low and bitter as the sheen of her eyes.
Albus took her hand and said in as soft a voice as he could when he wanted to weep, “I know, my dear. Part of this is my fault, my failure. The rest…I do not think that we can anticipate anything about Harry. Not why Tom wants to keep him alive, not what he was doing that night, not what he may do if he returns to us. It may be that Harry is something very special. I only ask that you keep an open mind.”
“But he can’t possibly be a match for Voldemort,” Lily said it with her eyes fixed on the photograph that stood with its back to the room, always. “That’s what I’m worried about. He might survive, he might live, but he only had fifteen months with us. If we ever see him again, what will Voldemort have twisted him into?”
“That is why I am asking you to keep an open mind,” said Albus, with as much calm determination as he could. “A child intelligent enough, or gifted enough, to speak as he did with Tom that night means that he might escape corruption as other children would not. More ordinary children.”
Lily only closed her eyes. “I want my little boy back.”
Albus ended up patting her shoulder, because although he could offer words of comfort, Lily obviously wasn’t ready to hear them yet. “I know, my dear. I know.”
*
“I require a potion to make a child able to use the toilet right away, Severus.”
Severus blinked in utter silence. It was the most unusual request he had ever received from the Dark Lord. He kept silent, of course, as he watched the man pace around his potions lab, because odd request or not, it would not do to question the one who held the power of life and death over him. But he did wonder.
There was the child the Dark Lord had taken from the Potters, of course, but it was nearly a year since then. Severus did not believe for an instant that the Dark Lord would keep a helpless enemy for so long, instead of growing bored and torturing him to death. And any boy old enough to talk, as Pettigrew had hinted this one was, would have reproduced Potter’s defiant attitude and got himself killed.
Lily’s son.
But although Severus’s chest squeezed shut, he did not reveal that. He had long been used to living without a heart, according to the other Death Eaters. “Yes, my Lord,” he said. “How old is the child now?”
“Does that matter?” The Dark Lord ceased to pace, but stood looking away, his hands clasped behind his back.
And this is why he keeps a brewer, instead of attempting to do it himself. Severus did not roll his eyes, either. “I must know how to attune the potion, my Lord. It would be different doing it for a toddler than it would be for an infant.”
“A toddler, then. Just past his second birthday.”
It is Lily’s son. But Severus did not wonder, because it was not his place to wonder around the Dark Lord-not if he wanted to remain alive, and he did. Perhaps his life was small and heartless and worthless, but he had his own private space to brew, a house far from Cokeworth that he went to each day, permission to wander the wildest spots of the world in search of ingredients. No one else had ever offered him the freedom and luxury that the Dark Lord did.
“Yes, my Lord. I will modify an existing potion, and it will be ready in a week.”
“Good.” The Dark Lord swept out of the room in the abrupt way he had, as if dismissals or farewells were something that happened to other people. Of course, that was true, and Severus saw no reason why the Dark Lord should artificially restrict himself for the sake of a non-existent audience.
As he began to work, jotting down lists of notes on the recipe for a potion that he often used to keep prisoners from shedding inconvenient bodily fluids during torture, Severus turned over suspicion like a black stone. It was out-of-character for the Dark Lord to keep the child, yes, especially when he had not even been the reason the Dark Lord had gone to the Potters’ home.
But then, at least to Severus’s dispassionate eye, the Dark Lord had been acting out-of-character for some time now.
He was often half-absent, not fully in the moment when discussing who next to attack and torture as he always would have been. To Severus, he seemed to be listening for some distant shout, or thinking of some plan that had not yet come to fruition. Except that the Dark Lord would never have shown such weakness in front of his Death Eaters, and he had never meditated so long over a plan before.
For that matter, withdrawing the Death Eaters from battle and ordering them to attend solely to business in the Ministry was out-of-character as well. Severus could imagine nothing that would have stopped him before this. Severus himself appreciated the quiet, appreciated that he could go on brewing his potions instead of regularly interrupting them for a distasteful killing or round of Cruciatus, but he knew the others were foaming at the leash.
Especially Bellatrix. I think she expected the Dark Lord to send her after the Longbottoms. Severus carefully jotted down the exact number of crushed lunatic-flower pods he had in his bottom drawer. She may yet break the leash and strain against the Dark Lord's orders, convinced she is doing him a favor.
Severus snorted. If that was so, she would die, and he would bid her farewell without regret. Although perhaps distracted, the Dark Lord showed no more disposition than ever to tolerate rebellion. He had already fed Quintus Crabbe--chopped up in several pieces--to his several snakes for grumbling about the lack of raids.
But Severus simply could not imagine what power the Potter child could hold over the Dark Lord. As a hostage, yes, but he could simply feed him the Draught of Living Death and bargain with the Potters for their older child. And nothing else Severus could imagine made sense. The Dark Lord was not the sort to rape the boy. Severus found it hard to think of the Dark Lord in a sexual context at all.
Severus shook his head. His only chance to getting some answer to his questions was to keep quiet, brew what he was told, and continue to impress the Dark Lord. In time, perhaps he would be invited to view the Potter child, and get some answer for the unanswerable.
*
"You never act afraid when I'm around you."
"That's because I'm not," Harry said calmly, turning to face Voldemort as he watched him come through the door. Death-of-Rabbits crawled at his heels, along with a shimmering green snake banded with gold Harry had never seen before--either individually or as a species. Harry blinked and tried not to stare. "We've had this conversation before, my Lord."
"One can have different answers to questions asked at different times," Voldemort hissed, and extended a flask of potion that shimmered like his new serpent. Flecks of red and blue danced in the green liquid along with gold, though. "Drink this. I am tired of the limitations of your child body."
"What is it?" Harry asked, his curiosity detached. Honestly, he wasn't afraid of much that could happen to his body, either. If he died, he would be reborn. He would only be saddened at leaving Jonathan and Lily and James.
"A potion to make you toilet-trained."
Harry couldn't contain the twitch of his lips, amazed that "toilet-trained" could actually translate into Parseltongue. "That might be useful, yes," he said, and took it from Voldemort's hand and gulped it down.
The tremor that passed through him made him hiss, but not recognizable words, although both snakes started and looked at him. Harry closed his eyes and listened to his body. He could feel the way the potion surged through his veins, "teaching" nerves and muscles lessons they would have needed more time to learn on their own. Harry's mental control was perfect, but his bodily control always depended on his age.
I'm sure Snape brewed this. It's like that potion I drank so much in my fifth life, but better-adapted.
Harry kept his eyes closed a moment longer than necessary, so Voldemort wouldn't use Legilimency to read his memories of the man who had been ally and enemy in so many lives, and his lover in his twenty-third. Voldemort didn’t particularly need to hear the memory of Laurence Prewitt’s father disowning him. When he glanced up again, he started. Voldemort's face, with its tatters of Tom Riddle on display, was less than an inch from Harry's nose.
“You are the only one I know who would swallow a potion I gave them from my own hands, without asking what was in it.”
Harry wrinkled his brow. “But I asked what was in it and you told me. My Lord. Besides, wouldn’t most of your Death Eaters obey an order without question?”
Voldemort didn’t immediately back away or fly into a rage. Harry had thought he would. Despite the title that he added and that was as meaningless as flies’ wings, Voldemort took his own power and his Death Eaters seriously.
Instead, Voldemort laughed, the sound low and his breath as foul as a grave. Harry didn’t reach up and pinch his nose shut, but he wanted to. And unlike a normal child, he would have known what the gesture meant.
Everything is different about me, Harry thought, and let the thought pass through him and away like saying the title Voldemort wanted. He’d had that thought before, countless times in countless lives, and it would turn him bitter and self-pitying if he let it. Harry never wanted to be either.
“You are the only one who would dare to say anything like that to me,” Voldemort whispered, and began to circle. His eyes were intense, so deeply burning that Harry found it impossible to look away even though he had to turn in a circle and crane his neck to hold the gaze. “There is no one else like you, in all the universes.”
“No, probably not,” Harry said slowly. He wondered why Voldemort was acting like this was new information. Harry had been defying him and telling him secrets and doing things that surprised him for almost a year. He’d never acted like this before.
No Voldemort had ever acted like this before. This one seemed saner than usual. Harry had to wonder if he’d made fewer Horcruxes, but it wasn’t the kind of thing one could ask about.
“That makes you unique,” Voldemort said, and a sharp shiver inundated Harry’s body, because he’d spoken in English.
“That-would be true.” Harry licked his lips and tried to ignore the way Voldemort was breathing on his forehead now, the place where the lightning bolt scar had never been but once. Hell, it hadn’t always been a lightning bolt scar in the other lifetimes, when someone else was the prophesied savior. “Is there something new that you wanted me to tell you about that? My Lord.”
Voldemort laughed, a low snarl like a prowling tiger getting ready to charge. Then he reached out and tilted Harry’s head up with one of his spider-like hands. Harry went with it, ignoring the slight pain in his neck. Pain was as intense a reminder of life as love.
“You seek to resist me,” Voldemort said. “That makes you more valuable, not less. Because you are something to measure myself against. Because I can learn things that you will tell me either to manipulate me or in a fury of passion.”
Harry tried to lean back, but Voldemort’s fingers tightened. And then they let him go, making Harry float, for a moment, in terror as deep as that which had consumed him when he first woke in his nineteenth life.
“Because when I have conquered you,” Voldemort hissed, “there shall be nothing I cannot win.”
He turned and swept out of the room in that way he had. Death-of-Rabbits followed him. The green-and-gold snake wrapped herself around the chair leg and kept a watch. Harry stared blankly at her.
A second later, as sudden as Apparition or Voldemort’s departure, a toddler-sized bed appeared in the bedroom, covered in dark blue silk sheets. And a wardrobe next to it, filled with miniature robes the right size, and heaped pillows, and a small chair, and a smaller table.
Harry recoiled. He knew house-elves had brought them; their means of arrival wasn’t the mystery. Why they were there was the problem.
“Master said that you are to be using those,” the snake hissed, and slid one pair of eyelids down, and went to sleep.
Harry sat still in his place. Of course he knew why Voldemort was doing this. Of course he knew. Tools of entrapment, relaxation, to get Harry on his side and make him forget what Voldemort had always been, in all the worlds.
But the difference-the thing that caused the terror that pulsed in him like a heartbeat-was that none of the other Voldemorts would ever have done this. No matter how much sense it made or how much they would have wanted him on their side. They simply didn’t have the emotional capacity to understand why it was a good idea.
Because that required empathy.
And yet, this one doesn’t have it, either. I’ve heard him speak. I know that much.
Which left sanity.
And made Harry wonder, just as he had been reborn a Harry Potter who didn’t bear the brand of the Chosen One for the first time, if Voldemort had been born, or created himself, as the one Voldemort who could not be stopped.
Chapter Seven.
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