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World in Pieces	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > General > General Views: 16431 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter and I am not making any money from this story.

Chapter List
- 10
- 11
- 12
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Chapter Eleven—Hang The Banners
Harry didn’t know how Voldemort had made a connection with him when there was no Horcrux here and no bond tying them together, but he knew what he needed: time to figure it out.
So, although he still wasn’t good at Occlumency, he had a defense, and he unleashed it, flinging chaos at Voldemort, images and memories and sensations and the feeling of love that had driven out the Voldemort in his world when he’d possessed him before, lighting up the darkness in his head with the flashes of silver fireworks.
Voldemort hissed, and Harry could make out the spell-words in Parseltongue that he was using to keep himself here. It was a weird experience, like hearing Latin in English, knowing that he didn’t know the words but he knew what they were meant to do—
Shit. That’s it. Of course. We still have a resemblance, even though we’re from different words and he never cast the curse that marked me. We’re both Parselmouths. There has to be a spell out there that exploits similarities like that, especially if all the people yelling at me in second year were right and Parseltongue usually belongs to Dark wizards. That’s how he’s doing it.
Harry closed his eyes and summoned forth the image that would fight for him, building it out of memory and stubbornness and the sound of his friends’ voices through the bridge they had built that connected the worlds and his hatred of the Order in this world and his bond to the Elder Wand and his commitment to saving other people’s lives. He built it, and he called, he yelled into the depths of his mind, and the magic came out of the bottomless well of his will to fill the image and animate it.
Slytherin’s basilisk coiled in circles and hissed at Voldemort, and then struck, its great fangs flashing.
Voldemort tried to speak to it, to command it, and Harry flew down on the other side of the basilisk, laughing madly. Voldemort would do that, of course, he would try to command the snake in the language he was using to link to Harry’s mind, and he wouldn’t realize that Harry had made the snake unanswerable in Parseltongue. It was only Harry’s voice that it would listen to, no matter which language he was speaking.
Something came in from the side then, another foreign presence, and Harry whirled towards it, wondering if another Death Eater had accompanied Voldemort on his mental flight.
But it was familiar, if foreign in the context of his mind, and he felt it brushing and scraping against the side of his skull and his defenses, touching him, reassuring him—
Snape.
Harry threw another burst of bright chaos up behind the basilisk to keep distracting Voldemort, and dived, twisting, so that he could open up a path for Snape. He didn’t know for certain if Snape would be able to do anything to help him hold off Voldemort, but he did know that he didn’t want to be in the way of the combat they might have. And he trusted Snape enough not to try and baffle him.
He thought he felt an acknowledgment from the mind treading through his own, and then a thin, sharp strike that was probably Snape’s Legilimency, hitting Voldemort from the side and forcing him to defend. At the same moment, the basilisk hit him from the other side, and gave Voldemort two fronts for his war.
And there was a third side, after all, with Harry’s consciousness still unengaged in the battle and free to attack from behind.
Or…beneath.
Harry grinned in delight and descended into the part of his mind where the magic that fueled the basilisk had come from, and began to gather what was left around him, winding it tighter and tighter, like thread around a spool. The magic gleamed and, when Harry spoke a soft word in Parseltongue of his own, began to burn.
*
Severus had forgotten.
He had not often clashed with the Dark Lord before, and never like this. Defending his own mind against the Dark Lord’s Legilimency, while pretending that he was doing no such thing by hiding the existence of his Occlumency shields, was one thing, and he had learned to bear the pain. But this was another mind with the Dark Lord whirling in tight circles around Severus, and Harry winding tight circles beneath both of them, and a basilisk made of light and magic closing in from the other side. Severus had to simultaneously maintain his distance from all of them, choose his weapons, and counter the Dark Lord’s increasingly desperate, sharp-edged throws.
The pain that thundered through him with each successful strike was, he reminded himself, surely not as great as the pain that Harry and the rest of them would feel if he failed.
He reached for a trick he did not like to use this early in the battle, since he had concealed its existence for years, but he doubted that he would have a chance to use it later. The Dark Lord pressed him hard and close, laughing in his ear and scratching against his shields until Severus shook and wanted to vomit. And he was sparing his strength right now, not committing fully to the battle as Severus had thought he might. It could not be long before he would grow bored with that, and strike harder.
Severus could not let that happen.
He constructed what would look like another of his Occlumency shields, a thin, flexible covering that bent like a net and hurled the attacker back—if all went well, and they were not as strong as the Dark Lord—when they tried to cut through. Behind it he placed a certain memory, and then swung his magic away to see what Harry was doing.
Gathering his strength, it seemed. Severus braced his power and waited. If the Dark Lord spent too long in Harry’s mind, then he would damage it permanently, but Severus was sure Harry knew that and didn’t need Severus yelling in his ears to be aware of it.
The Dark Lord approached the Occlumency shield with more than his customary caution, and Severus grimaced in acknowledgment of his expertise here. To be able to tell how long an action took here, where time was subjective and not the same as the concept of time in the world outside, took long practice and a degree of native skill that not every Occlumens Severus had met would have.
For a moment, the Dark Lord tested the flexibility and fragility of the barrier. Then he seemed to lose patience and tried to chop straight through.
That was a mistake—for him, and perhaps for other people, as well. Severus was not sure, at the moment, that his memory would not have consequences in Harry’s mind. But the Dark Lord’s consequences would be worse, and what was most important at the moment was buying Harry time and space to act.
There was a muffled thump, and then the Dark Lord screamed, a thin, high keening here that seemed to cut straight through all the barriers that Severus might have raised against it. The memory-trap had sprung, and Severus had to push himself quickly out of the way, or he would be caught in the undertow and tugged in after the Dark Lord.
From a distance, the trapped memory would seem like a common one, an image of his father. Severus carried many of those in his head, in all sorts of different combinations. But few were like this, so crazed with emotion that merely stepping into one could make the taste of his own blood well in Severus’s mouth again and send him scrambling and flailing for the walls in a flashback.
This was the one the Dark Lord had stepped into, and the full force of the flashback had turned on him. He would suffer the pain now, and he did not, unlike Severus, have a tradition of exits from this memory, or know the techniques that would force himself to stop reacting no matter what else might be happening to him at the moment.
Severus looked quickly beneath him, knowing the Dark Lord might defuse the memory soon and wondering if he had bought enough time.
It seemed so. The abyss beneath him, which he had seen as dark at first, boiled now with silver lightning.
And in the middle of it, rising so fast that Severus would have been blinded were he not now used, a bit, to the conformity of Harry’s mind, was Harry.
*
The strength he’d drawn around himself frightened Harry, in some ways. Dumbledore had always said that the power the Dark Lord knew not was love, and this had its origin in rage. If he threw it at Voldemort, then Harry might only find himself adding to Voldemort’s power instead of defeating him.
Or however that worked. Part of him whispered that he couldn’t fight Voldemort according to the prophecy because, here, the prophecy didn’t work, they weren’t the original bound pair, and who knew what was going on in the Parselmouth bond that Voldemort had used to tie them together?
But he had to believe that he could fight Voldemort if Voldemort could fight him. And just because he had to use unusual methods didn’t mean he would lose. So far, he had resisted Voldemort’s necromancy and his attempt to warp Harry’s mind. He was going to use this weapon, now, and hope it was enough.
And if it’s not, I’ll find something else.
Harry smiled. Hope was what this Order of the Phoenix had forgotten, and what he was going to use to change the contest.
He rose on the outflowing wave of rage and hope and contempt, channeling it all straight at Voldemort, letting him have it in the center of the chest. He took everything he was—the survivor, and the hero, and the friend, and the son of dead parents, and the godson of a dead man, and the friend of a werewolf, and the Gryffindor who might have been a Slytherin—and aimed it at Voldemort.
He was more than a twisted necromancer could understand. He was more than Voldemort could comprehend. He was the Dark Lord that Dumbledore had feared he might become, and the avenger of the dead Harrys, and the possessor of the Elder Wand.
All that, he took. All that, he flung.
Voldemort screamed as it hit him, harder and louder than he had screamed when Snape’s trap, whatever it had been, had snapped shut around him. Harry felt him fighting to free himself, and wondered if they should try to close in and kill him here.
He felt Snape’s thoughts close beside him when he thought about that, and knew in an instant what would happen if they tried it, as Snape fed him images from past conflicts similar to this one that he had participated in.
No. They would destroy Harry’s mind by using it as a battleground, and they could confront Voldemort better later, when he was not fighting for his life. They wanted him to be overconfident, so that he didn’t use some of the desperate tricks that Snape had personally seen him use in the past.
Harry nodded and launched another blast, this time tearing loose the hold that the basilisk had finally managed to achieve on Voldemort. He could feel the Parseltongue bond linking them, and he snapped it. Voldemort writhed and danced, and the fragile protection he had had from Harry’s mind faded. The mind promptly tried to crush him, to reject him, as it would any foreign influence that it felt in itself.
And he was gone.
Harry shivered in the wake of that vanishing. He became aware that he could feel cold and weariness, which meant he was back in his body, and opened his eyes. Snape crouched in front of him, staring into his face, one hand braced on Harry’s chair for balance. His wand was aimed at Harry, too. Harry shook his head and reminded himself it was necessary for the Legilimency a moment before he would have gone for his own wand.
“He is gone?” Snape watched him with his hand tightening on the wand, as though he was used to lunging forwards and blasting another spell if the target wasn’t quite dead. Harry found himself smiling for no reason, and reaching out to touch Snape’s hand. Well, he reckoned that was all right with someone who had just saved his life after a really intense battle.
“Yeah. He is. I don’t think he could take knowing about me all at once.”
Snape stood up, and withdrew, pacing back and forth for a moment with his arms folded. Harry took the time to breathe, and check on how he felt. Well, his bones were shuddering in his skin as though someone had shaken them in a sack, and he felt ill and dizzy and sick to his stomach, and his head split the way it had during Occlumency lessons with Snape in his fifth year, but those were all so much better than what could have happened that he didn’t think he was going to complain.
“How could he get in without the connection that he forged to the version of you born in this world?” Snape asked quietly, without facing him.
“We’re both Parselmouths,” Harry said. “He used that.” He managed to laugh in spite of himself. “He’s probably had nothing to do for years but think up spells to torture people. Or find them. I know that Parselmouths were mostly supposed to be Dark wizards, after all.”
“Then that obviates the solution I was about to suggest.” Snape reached the far side of the room and turned about, his hands clasped behind his back and a deep frown on his face. “Occlumency lessons to block the mental bond,” he added, when Harry raised an eyebrow at him. “But we cannot make you stop being a Parselmouth. You may even need the gift in the future.”
Harry sighed and nodded, leaning back in his chair. “Considering what I had to do to kill him in my world, I’d say that this is a lot harder,” he muttered. “There, I just had to make sure that I destroyed a certain number of objects, and—bang! He was as vulnerable as anyone else. But he was mad, too, so that made it easier.”
Snape stopped and stood staring at the wall with a faraway expression on his face. Harry wondered if he was thinking about his counterpart who had died in Harry’s world. Merlin knew that Harry spent more than enough time thinking about his counterparts who had died here.
“Objects,” Snape repeated.
Harry hesitated. He couldn’t remember how much Snape knew about the Horcruxes, but he also couldn’t see what difference it made if Snape knew how Voldemort had used them in Harry’s world. He was hardly about to cross the abyss between worlds and go about taking Voldemort’s place. “Horcruxes,” he said. “His snake, Founders’ artifacts, me. He placed all his dependence on them, and that meant we could kill him once we destroyed them.”
Snape placed a hand over his forehead, as if massaging an invisible lightning scar of his own. Then he said, “I must think, but there is a book in my library that will help me,” and raced for the bookshelves.
Harry blinked after him, then shut his eyes and leaned back. He would listen to Snape’s crazy ideas later, but for now, he only wanted to rest and hopefully get rid of the headache that was plaguing him.
Fucking Voldemort.
*
It had been years since Severus had looked at the book, a present from Slughorn the one term he had got a higher mark in Potions than Lily Evans had. It was a rambling book on the Dark Arts, and it contained nothing that Severus could not find in a clearer and more reliable tome elsewhere. He had always thought that Slughorn had given it to him to encourage him to be a magical theorist instead of a Potions master. He already had several Potions masters among his former students; it would be something new to him to take credit for launching a magical theorist in the world.
But now Severus remembered a reference that might help them, and he picked up the book and flicked through the pages, letting vague memories guide him, until he saw the illustration he recalled. It was a simple ink sketch of a wizard holding a stone, his wand poised above it, while whirling concentric rings of magic expanded from it to surround the stone. The caption said the name of the artist; Severus skipped over that impatiently and moved on to the text on the opposite page.
Many wizards have attempted to lengthen their lives by binding part of their souls to an object. These objects are often known as Horcruxes…
Severus growled and skipped to the next page. What he remembered was not the Horcruxes, and he had no interest in either creating one or learning how the Dark Lord had done so. What he wanted was…
Yes.
He touched the line of text, smiled viciously, and stepped back into the main room where Harry rested with his eyes shut. Of course, they could not use a simple version of this trick, because the Dark Lord would certainly have protected himself against it. But they might be able to use the Parselmouth bond he had exploited in Harry to sneak around such protections. And it was not an attack he would have defended himself against that strongly. He might think they would use the Parselmouth similarity, but why this? No, he would think they were using necromancy, or guardian serpents, or the torture spells that he specialized in.
The Dark Lord’s greatest fault, Severus well knew, was that he expected his enemies to be exactly like him, and their priorities and preferences and thoughts exactly like his, if flipped to concentrate on things they thought of as “good” instead of “evil.” It was why he had struck at Harry through his mind. The better he knew him from the shape of his thoughts, the better the chance he had to destroy him.
But this…
He may have revealed how they could destroy him.
Harry opened his eyes and glanced up at Severus as he reached his chair. Severus extended the book.
“Read this,” he said, tapping the line that had told him what the solution might be.
Harry looked at it, and then shook his head. “I don’t know what half the words in that mean,” he said.
Severus drew in his breath in time to keep himself from barking a reprimand. As long as his students were honest about the knowledge they didn’t have, and showed themselves willing to learn, then he could be patient.
And Harry was hardly an ordinary student.
“The Dark Lord had his Horcruxes, which he destroyed,” he said. “But this is a Horcrux in reverse. It may be possible for others to bind his life force to an object, and then to destroy him in destroying it.”
From the way that Harry’s eyes blazed a moment later, Severus knew he had been right in deciding to share this method.

*
The news hit Harry like the taste of mint on his tongue, and he turned back to the book that Snape held out, this time trying to find something that he could understand.
Yes, there were a few things. There were some paragraphs that talked about how Horcruxes were usually valued and important objects, and how the opposite of that would have to be something small and common—though still with an important connection to the enemy that one intended to destroy. Harry couldn’t think of any such thing immediately, but he understood it, and that made his breath catch in his chest and his fists clench.
“We’re going to fucking kill him,” he murmured.
Snape caught his eye, and the smile he gave Harry was dark and twisted, the edge of the sort of smile Harry had always seen when the other one assigned him detention. Now, Harry thought he might have the experience of knowing what it was like to have Snape on his side. “Yes, we are.”
Harry surged to his feet. He still had the headache, but the other pains from his encounter with Voldemort were fading, as he had known they would, and he felt as if he could break stone walls with his bare hands at the moment. “Where should we start the search? And what are you doing?” he asked, because for some reason Snape was laying the book calmly on the shelf next to him.
“We have the method to destroy him,” Snape said. “We will have to do more research.”
“Yeah, I knew that,” Harry said, eyeing him. Snape had gone back to watching him as if—as if he would fall apart at any instant. It had been the look he used when Harry was telling him about the Dursleys. Harry blew air through his teeth. This is why I hate talking about them. Because then people always decide that I’m a child and weak, and I don’t want to have them think that. “But we could get started, right? I can go and start looking for other books on this in the library, and you can—I don’t know, make a potion that would tell us the right object to use or something. Or what the object looks like when we’ve successfully got him tangled up with it.”
Snape paused, then murmured, “That is in fact a useful notion. I will look into it.” He went on before Harry could rejoice too much in his triumph, however. “There are other things I think we must do. We will need allies outside the Order.”
“Since we can’t trust them not to bite us in the arse,” Harry muttered.
Snape raised his eyebrows and said, “Your language leaves something to be desired in the realm of elegance, but yes. I was thinking of your meeting the rest of the Weasleys.”
Harry sat back down in the chair, and for a moment listened to the roaring in his ears. It had other sources, but most of it came from the thought of seeing Fred—alive—and Ginny. And Mrs. Weasley. A Mrs. Weasley who had never fought Bellatrix, in this universe. A Ginny who didn’t have any memory of how they had dated a year ago.
“I don’t think I can fool them,” he said at last.
Snape shook his head. “I was thinking of telling them the truth. We cannot fool them for long, no, and they are accustomed to depend on Albus’s leadership even as he exiles them outside the main body of the Order. You will need dependable allies, however.” His eyes glittered for a moment. “Molly Weasley looks for the defenseless by instinct. You will appeal to her instincts. I foresee little difficulty in getting her to turn against Albus once she understands how you were stolen from your world, and how you were not the first.”
Harry swallowed again. “But her son is part of the Order, and the Weasleys—I mean, they’re special to me in my own world, but they’re always loyal to family first. Why would you think that she would pay any more attention to me than to Ron?”
Snape laughed. Harry stared at him, because this really sounded like honest amusement, not mockery at the expense of someone else.
“Parents listen to their children, yes,” Snape said, when the laughter seemed to have shaken him like a limp rag and left him needing the shelf for support. “But not always. And the more secrecy surrounding these summonings—of which there is a great deal—the more likely Mrs. Weasley is to believe that her son has been involved in something wrong by her standards and needs opposition.”
Harry paused. He hadn’t thought about it that way before. The Dursleys had never cared what he did, one way or the other.
And you can stop thinking about them any time, you know.
Harry grimaced and took the useful part of that thought, cracking it like a nut for the meat. “All right,” he said. “So where should we invite them to meet us? It’s not like they could come here to Hogwarts without Dumbledore finding out about it and trying to stop us.”
*
Severus paused and considered the boy in front of him. Once again, he had to evaluate the thrust-out jaw and the brilliant depths of the green eyes, and wonder how much of that came from true bravery, perhaps even Gryffindor bravery, and how much of it was simple bravado or resignation. Yielding to what he could not help.
And then Severus snorted. Does this version of Harry yield often? Does he seem likely to?
“I have a place that might suit,” Severus said casually. “I maintained one house that both the Dark Lord and Dumbledore are aware of, so that they might be sure they had me under observation at all times. But there is another, one that I acquired thanks to an...accident.”
Harry eyed him, perhaps wondering if it was an accident that Severus had caused, but said only, “Where is it?”
“I do not wish to name the location even here,” Severus said. He knew that he had warded his quarters from Dumbledore’s observation as well as he might, but even the loss of the secret about how he had been training Harry would matter little next to the loss of the secret of this, his last safe bolthole. “I will take you there this evening, and I can owl Apparition coordinates to Mrs. Weasley that will give her a clear picture of the meadow next to it.”
“And you aren’t worried about the Weasleys finding their way back from there?” Harry asked, with a prickly sound to his voice that Severus could not figure out, unless the boy was preparing to fight for him. In such a case, he might well sound like that. “I mean—if they know where to Apparate to, they might not know how to get past your wards, but they could show someone else. Like Dumbledore.”
Severus shook his head. “There are defenses,” he said, and chose to say no more for now. He could not explain the defenses until Harry saw them in action, and mentioning them in detail now might be enough material—if Dumbledore had found a way to invade his quarters—to enable someone who knew the history of pure-blood families to find the house. “Can you name a reason we should wait?”
Harry hesitated, then said, “Not unless you need to think up a reason to tell Dumbledore we’re going. Or a way to get us out of here.”
“I have both already in mind,” Severus said, and stood. “Keep well back from the fire when I call Dumbledore. He must not have any notion that you are listening.”
Harry cocked his head at Severus. “The safest thing would be for you to tell me to go into another room.”
“Yes?” Severus asked, not understanding. “If you make no noise and do not reveal yourself, then it will be the same as if you were not here.”
Harry shook his head. “But you’re going to let me stay and listen. There are a lot of people who wouldn’t do that.”
Severus gave him a thin smile. “You are an adult, and a warrior,” he said. “I think you can make the decision for yourself, and unless there is a chance of you breaking out in rage and alerting Albus, I prefer to let you make it.”
“Thank you,” Harry said, calm and precise, and then cast a Disillusionment Charm over himself and took up his station near the wall.
Severus turned back to the fireplace, and then had to wait some moments after all to contact Albus. If he spoke to him smiling like this, Albus would wonder what had happened to put him in such a good mood.
*
Harry felt the hard edge of the bookshelf poking into his back, and grunted for a moment with the pain. Then he realized that the pain mostly came from his face, where he had his teeth clenched shut tightly enough to break some of them. He took a long, careful breath and opened his mouth to release it.
He’s your enemy, but that’s all the more reason that you can’t let him know you’re here.
Harry nodded to himself, and then the hearth flared to life. Dumbledore’s face floated in the middle of the green flames and beamed at Snape. Snape, squatting before the hearth in a position Harry would have thought he’d refuse to take because it was so uncomfortable, merely grunted.
“Have you secured Harry’s consent to return to his own world, Severus, my boy?” Dumbledore asked. “I thought you might. You are the only one of us who appears able to do anything with him.”
If you only knew, Harry thought, and decided that Dumbledore probably couldn’t hear a sneer.
“I have come up with a solution to the problem, Headmaster,” Snape said in his usual expressionless voice. Harry had never heard his own version of Snape report a Death Eater meeting to Dumbledore, but he imagined he might have sounded like this. “I intend to persuade Potter to accompany me to Spinner’s End.”
“Why, Severus?” Dumbledore blinked and gave Snape more attention than ever. Harry wondered if it was his imagination that the Headmaster’s eyes rested on the place in the room where he stood for a moment.
It has to be. Or we’re in more trouble than I knew.
“You did know that this Potter was not raised by—Black—in his own world?” Snape asked, with a fine cough of disgust that Harry wished he had come up with to use on Malfoy. Either Malfoy, really. “That he was raised by Lily’s Muggle relatives and thus had no one to tell him of his parents?”
Harry clenched his teeth again, and only relaxed when it was that or reveal to Dumbledore where he was by the way he breathed. Trust Snape. You have to.
“I had picked up on hints of that, yes.” Dumbledore studied Snape. “And that makes the profound divergence his universe has undertaken from ours all the more curious, since we know that the events in both were the same up until the time that Voldemort killed his parents—”
“Yes,” Snape said sharply. “The same. Which means that someone who can tell him the truth about his parents here will be telling him the same truth he might have received in his own universe, had the boy the courage to have asked there.”
Harry reached down and put his hand on the Elder Wand in spite of himself. The wand all but leaped into his hand, and Harry thought he could feel a question, an eager growl, in the back of his head. It wanted to be wielded.
Not yet, Harry thought back to it, and listened. Snape should have a bloody good reason for this.
“I see,” Dumbledore said. “And you will offer to tell him the truth about his parents? Will that be enough, Severus?”
“I also have photographs that Lily Evans gifted me with,” Snape said, and his voice had descended to a soft, nasty tone that made Harry’s skin prickle. “Of herself, and some of herself with James. I intended to destroy them, but—I could not quite bring myself to do so.”
“Why, Severus,” Dumbledore said, and his smile grew wider. “There is the heart that you spend so much time denying you have.”
No, Harry thought, his own heart bounding up and knocking against his ribs. That’s the heart that he can convince you he has, because you want to believe in it so badly.
Snape made a gesture to dismiss Dumbledore’s praise—or accusation—his eyes still intently locked on the older man. “So you agree to my plan?”
“I may, as soon as I understand what it is.” Dumbledore twinkled some more. “So you intend to—” He paused inquiringly.
Snape let his teeth grind. Well, on listening to the sound, Harry was less sure than he had been at first that it was voluntary. “Ask him to come to my house to look at the photographs,” he said. “And offer to trade him the information I can tell him, for the promise of more, if he will cooperate with us. That way, we need not summon another version of him, which each time leaves me too exhausted for the next day to concentrate much on my potions.”
“We need not secure his willing cooperation, you know,” Dumbledore said, as if he was the one making the bargain.
Harry saw the way Snape’s shoulders and spine went stiff. He made a mental note to ask him about it later.
But then Snape proved that Harry didn’t have to, and that he could probably trust the great git after all, because he murmured, “You intend to use that spell, Headmaster? The one from which there is no coming back? I must protest.”
“I do not intend to use it,” Dumbledore said, and gave such a drawn-out sigh that anyone would have thought he was the victim in this scenario. “I fear that I must, if Harry does not cooperate with us, but I do not want to.”
What spell? Harry thought, and tried to project his thoughts telepathically at Snape. Make him mention which one.
But Snape must have decided that the risk was too great to ask Dumbledore about the spell when he was supposed to already know about it. So he made a few more evil plans, took a few more compliments with grumbles and snarls, and then shut the Floo connection. Then he turned around and looked evenly at Harry.
“What was the spell?” Harry asked. “The Imperius Curse?”
Snape pursed his lips the way the other version of him sometimes had when Harry asked him a question in Potions, but replied, his voice neutral. “Worse. One can resist the Imperius Curse, with a strong enough will. This spell—this spell takes the body of the person summoned to our universe as a vessel. It fills that body with the desire to obey the commands of the summoners. Your personality, your identity, would be extinguished.”
Harry said nothing, because it was difficult to know what to say.
Snape glanced slightly at him, and nodded. “I will write an owl to the Weasleys this afternoon.” And he quietly left the room.
Harry sat down in the chair and buried his head in his hands. So, along with defeating Voldemort and convincing the Weasleys that he needed their help and finding out what had happened to the original Harry here—
He had to find out what had happened to Dumbledore. Because the one Harry knew would never have made such a decision.
Would he have? He set me up to die.
Harry sat there for a moment, sorting through older memories and more recent ones, and finally the only answer he could come up with was, I don’t know.
But I’m going to make sure this one never gets hold of me, and there’s only one way to do that. Once I get out of Hogwarts, I’m not coming back.
Harry raised his head and took a deep breath. That would take a lot more planning than just going to this secret house of Snape’s. He would need to know more about the literal lay of the land, and find more allies, and learn even more about the spells that were necessary to defeat Voldemort. They would have to find an object to bind his life-force to, if they were going to take that path, as soon as possible.
Harry smiled grimly and lifted his head higher.
Let’s get started.

*

            Zip: Thanks! As you saw in this chapter, it was the Parseltongue bond that Voldemort used, and he attacked as soon as he could make it work.

            unneeded: Ultimately they’ll have to take some risks, and maybe use Memory Charms if it turns out that someone’s not trustworthy.

            moodysavage: Thank you so much for the reviews! Snape does pick up on a lot, yes, but he doesn’t want to press Harry about all of it right now.

            Occasionally, I am merciful and do not end with a cliffhanger. ;)

            And no, I do think in some respects that it’s cool that Harry could be dangerous, although Harry himself might not think so.

            kyandoru: Snape might not be able to do a lot about Harry’s past by himself, but he may be able to encourage Harry to do something.
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World in Pieces