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His Twenty-Eighth Life	By : Lomonaaeren Category: Harry Potter > Slash - Male/Male > Harry/Voldemort Views: 18821 -:- Recommendations : 1 -:- Currently Reading : 3
Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter. I am making no money from this story.

Chapter List
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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eleven—Unleashed Fury
Lord Voldemort knew the touch of Dementors.
They had sometimes fought for him, but never had they come near one of his fortresses without invitation. When he felt the approaching cold and knew it for the presence of dozens of Dementors, he stood up at once. His wand was aimed. His rage was lifting like wings. Next to him, the two snakes he had begun to infuse with his magic lifted at once to rearing positions.
It was nearly not enough.
The Dementor that opened the door was the largest one Lord Voldemort had ever seen, rippling with colors of grey and silver he knew were unnatural. He aimed his wand without speaking; he could not see what good speaking would do at the moment. The magic was already dancing through him, crackling and arching.
The fools of the Light thought that only a Patronus would drive a Dementor away. They did not know the mastery of soul magic. No one but Lord Voldemort had ventured so far into those waters.
Animam torque.
The magic traveled out from him in a cone of darkness so intense that no other would dare withstand it. Lord Voldemort opened his mouth in a silent laugh, as silent as the spell, as he watched his power seize the bits of the last soul that the creature had eaten and twist them, creating a whirlwind of pure enchantment that wrenched the Dementor apart.
Then he began to run. He knew that Harry must have summoned these Dementors for a reason. They would have no other reason to show up, and there was much magic still hidden in the depths of Harry’s mind that he had not discovered yet. Summoning Dementors as a distraction could easily be among them.
He questioned himself, for the first time, as to why he had not simply plundered the child’s mind for the secrets. And the answer came back to him, damning, but Lord Voldemort always saw himself clearly and understood the secrets of the soul as he did the secrets of soul magic.
He had wanted to take his time. He had wanted to draw them out little by little, and have the child succumb to him, so all that power would be drawn into his service, not forced.
That ends now.
He reached Remus Lupin’s room first. He knew better than to seek in Harry’s. He gestured with his wand hard enough that the door flew off the hinges and disintegrated into dust particles as it flew. When he paced inside, he was not entirely surprised to find the werewolf gone and the chains empty.
But it did not lessen his rage, which filled his head enough to make it seem light. He spun around and drew a wavy line in the air with his wand, while thinking the incantation for the Snake Messenger spell. Another thing that fools thought only a Patronus could do, and they were wrong.
They are always wrong about Lord Voldemort.
The air solidified into a snake of purple and black. Lord Voldemort spoke directly to it. “Severus Snape. Seek for the escaped prisoner Remus Lupin. The Potter child will be with him.” He slashed his wand down, and the snake arrowed away as if all the air were water.
Someone screamed from down a side corridor. Lord Voldemort turned slowly. Of course some of the Death Eaters were Dark wizards and would have trouble casting a Patronus, but that did not mean they would die in front of them.
But when he paced down the corridor, it was to see a soul-drained body on the floor and another Dementor rippling towards him. Dolohov. The man had been a useful servant. Lord Voldemort again raised his wand and destroyed the Dementor that dared to stand against him.
Then he turned to face the rest of the building and began to trace a circle on the floor around him, creating a ritual space that would enable him to dismiss all the Dementors in the manor at once. His breathing was tight and controlled. His eyes were narrow and focused. He could only imagine how lesser beings would tremble at the moment in front of his ruby rage.
Potter will pay for this. I will catch him first, and then his family, and make him watch as I torture them one by one. And then I will make him a Horcrux, bind him indissolubly to me, and rip all the secrets from his mind. He shall not escape by my kindness again.
*
Harry traveled through the shadowy world of the Dementors as long as he could, until he grew worried that Remus might get too cold or not get enough air to breathe. He reformed slowly in the middle of a grove that he recognized; it wasn’t that far from Godric’s Hollow. He’d been here more than once in many lives.
When he came back to himself, he listened and “felt” intently, but didn’t sense any Dementors following them. He relaxed slowly. Yes, very well, that was done with, then. One of the main reasons he hadn’t used this power more often was because he hated it, but he would also, always, draw other Dementors—the perils of being a sort of leader of theirs in his nineteenth life. He could never use it somewhere there were innocents about.
He turned to Remus.
Remus lay on the ground, still pale, his breathing slow. Harry knelt down next to him and wished, not for the first time in this life, that he was older. He could use more magic without a wand then, and more safely, too.
But he spared a little spark of it now to wake Remus up. He got a slow groan and Remus rolling over for his efforts, but the next second, he bolted up and stared around wildly.
“It’s okay, Remus,” Harry said quietly. “We’ve left them a long way behind. The Dementors can’t follow me when I travel like that. They just come to the place where I first reformed myself.”
Remus stared at him. He opened his mouth and then closed it. His throat seemed to be too dry to ask a question.
Moving carefully, Harry conjured a glass and filled it with water, then held it out. As Remus sipped, he tried to find the words. He had never told anyone but Voldemort about his lives before. He just wanted to be normal when he was living them. He wanted the people he loved to love him in return, not quiver in terror.
From the way Remus cringed away from him, that second goal was already shot. Harry swallowed and tried to speak as calmly as he could.
“I’m not really a child, Remus. This is the twenty-eighth life I’ve lived.” Remus spluttered into the water. Harry hastily conjured some more, ignoring the warning twinge in his back that spoke of performing too much magic. He hoped Remus could Apparate them out of here when they were done talking. “I keep reincarnating. Sometimes I’m human, sometimes I’m not. I know a lot of the same people in my lives, though. I’ve known you before. And Mum and Dad. And Snape, and—Dumbledore.” Remus looked like he might expire if Harry called Dumbledore by his first name. “And Sirius, and Voldemort. I’ve always helped fight Voldemort. In my first life, I was the one who had a prophecy about me that said only I could defeat him. So I know how to kill him.”
Remus drank and drank, enough that Harry almost used Aguamenti again. Then he said, “None of this makes any sense. I know what I felt. How in the world are you a Dementor?”
Harry tried to smile. From the way Remus flinched, he failed. Well, he’d kind of expected that. “In my nineteenth life, I was one.”
“But—Dementors aren’t human.”
“Neither are Kneazles, or snakes.” Harry had to work to keep his voice level. He told himself it was just because he’d never had this kind of conversation before, but really, he had to wonder at how good he was going to be at talking to anyone who wasn’t Voldemort or a snake. “And some people say werewolves aren’t human. The point is that they’re still sentient beings that can communicate.”
“Serpents are?”
“If you can speak Parseltongue. Which I do.”
Remus went on looking at him with round-eyed astonishment. Then he finally shook his head and latched on to something else. “But if you can do all those things, why were you with Voldemort? Why didn’t you escape long before I was captured?”
Harry grimaced again. Here it is. “Partially because turning into a Dementor calls Dementors. They always notice me and swarm wherever I am. Not now,” he added hastily as Remus tried to reach for his wand and turn around and drop the cup and scan their surroundings all at the same moment. “Not when I travel as one for a while. Only when I first use the power. That means Death Eaters are dealing with Dementors right now.”
“But—if it only hurts Death Eaters—”
“Voldemort essentially ended the war because we made a bargain to keep my parents and Jonathan safe,” Harry said. He felt strange speaking his brother’s name aloud. Voldemort never did. “We had a bargain. I tell him what he wants to know, he keeps them safe. I could have escaped any time. But besides the cost of my power, I didn’t want to break my word.”
Remus stared down into the cup for long enough that Harry checked over his shoulder. He was less worried about pursuit from Voldemort than he would have been otherwise—he doubted Voldemort knew he’d fled as a Dementor or that he could travel that fast—but you never knew.
Remus finally looked up. Harry turned to face him, and ended up recoiling. There was something he had feared to see all along in Remus’s eyes.
“The Death Eaters aren’t innocent,” Remus whispered. “Even if some of them regret taking the Dark Mark, they still did it. And they’re going around torturing innocents. Or they did, before the last four years. Voldemort himself is terrible. Why would you—you could have ended the war and you did nothing but sit there and—” He choked.
And that would be the other cost of my power, Harry thought, aching. He had never told anyone about his lives before, but he had sometimes demonstrated other abilities. And every single time, the people he showed them to had turned on him, sure as they were that powerful, offensive magic was always the best solution and should have been used at once, instead of giving people time to change their minds or Harry time to find another way. Harry would have remained Voldemort’s prisoner rather than show Remus the truth, if he had thought it at all possible that Voldemort would let Remus go.
But it was true—perhaps—that he could have ended the war. Harry swallowed and settled back on his hands. “Unfortunately, when I’m in a child’s body, there’s not much I can do,” he said quietly. “The magic I’ve already done is about the limit. I’m going to have to rely on you to Apparate us home.”
Remus completely disregarded that, still staring at him with narrowed eyes. “You’re infinitely powerful.”
“Not infinitely,” Harry said, and then wanted to writhe under the look that Remus gave him. “I mean, pretty powerful. But I’m still mortal. I can still die.”
“But you’ll just wake up somewhere else. How is that not infinite?”
Harry sighed and spent a moment casting around for the words. He knew how he’d explained it to himself, but Remus wouldn’t want to listen to metaphors. And he was out of practice even attempting to explain his own abilities. The last three or four lifetimes he’d only shown them in front of people who would either not believe what they were seeing and keep the secret, or who’d died before they could say anything.
“Every life matters to me,” he said finally. “It’s not that I hate living or find it boring. I try not to cling too deeply to any one lifetime, because I know that I will go on. But I remember everything that’s ever happened to me, Remus. I remember loving you and Mum and Dad, and I remember loving people who were born on the opposite side of the war. The way I was a few times. It makes it difficult to hate anybody.”
“So it’s infinite.”
Harry gave up on completely convincing him. He reminded himself, again, that he didn’t have to be forgiven. He just had to forgive other people. This life would be uncomfortable if he didn’t have the love of his parents and other people, but it wouldn’t be as hard as the nineteenth. “My compassion, I suppose you could call it that.”
Remus snorted and glanced away from him. Then he said, “I don’t have my wand.”
Harry nodded. “Did you master wandless Apparition?”
Remus stared at him. “I have, yes. I still want my wand.”
“Sorry, I don’t know where it went,” Harry said. “I would try to go back and get it, but I really can’t transform again right now.” He couldn’t wait to be older than five. Then simple things like the use of one power and a little wandless magic wouldn’t exhaust him so much.
“That’s all right.” Remus turned his head away. “The bigger problem is that—Lily and James—they never decided that I was trustworthy again after You-Know-Who took you. They haven’t invited me back, and I don’t know where they are.”
Harry supposed he should have anticipated that difficulty, although he wondered what in the world his parents were thinking. “To Hogwarts, then,” he said. “You can Side-Along me there? And Dumbledore will know where my parents are, and he can hopefully have Madam Pomfrey help you.”
“You’re going to tell Dumbledore what you are?”
“Do you care? Of course I am.”
Remus flinched. Then he said, “It’s not—it’s not that I don’t care. But I don’t understand how you can be the way you are. Why aren’t you bitter? Why aren’t you going mad already? If you’re not mad and you’re not bitter, then you can choose a side of the war, and the right one is ours.”
Harry cocked his head to the side and said nothing, but a little hope fluttered to life in his chest. If Remus could already sound that curious about his lives, it meant that he might forgive Harry someday. Harry had heard objections like this from people who ended up accepting him, or at least accepting part of what he was.
“Being bitter is self-indulgent,” Harry told him quietly. “I wanted to kill myself in a few lives, but I knew I would only go on to something else, and it might not even have the good aspects that particular life did. And I’ve always had people I loved. That was the important thing. It was go mad or be sane and love people. I chose the second one.”
“If you love people, then don’t you have a reason to fight Voldemort? He’s incapable of love.”
Harry only nodded, because even if this version of Voldemort was more sane and self-aware than most of the ones he’d known, he had no idea what love was. “But I was resisting fighting out of love. The very first thing he threatened was to go back and kill Mum and Dad and Jonathan if I didn’t cooperate with him.”
“So you chose three people above the greater good?”
Harry felt his eyes narrow. “Didn’t you do that, when you ran around with my dad and Sirius and Pettigrew in Animagus form? Chose the good of the werewolf above the good of anyone you might have encountered in the Forest?”
Remus recoiled so hard he fell over. Harry shook his head, already sorry, but he couldn’t say it because Remus was demanding in a harsh babble, “How—how do you know about that—we never told—”
“It was true in several of my other lives, including the first one,” Harry said, holding his eyes. “True in this one as well, I see.”
Remus looked away again. This time, his breathing was rushing about, and Harry didn’t think it came from any torture Voldemort might have inflicted on him. He was probably beginning to believe, at last.
“All right,” Remus finally whispered. “If you’re telling the truth, then it’s more than I can deal with alone. And if you’re not, then Albus is the best person to unravel the lies.” He extended his arm, his eyes firmly fastened to the side, instead of on Harry.
Harry sighed soundlessly and took Remus’s arm. He supposed he could always vanish, if they absolutely refused to listen to him and wanted him to kill lots of people. He could work against Voldemort from the shadows, or outside Britain. If he could do it when he was a damned Kneazle and had to bury Horcruxes in his litter tray, then he could do it now, when he was merely a young, distrusted human.
I just hope this is going to work out, he thought, as they vanished and reappeared outside Hogwarts. Remus was staggering. Harry threw a hasty arm around his waist, but he had to sag against a tree and lean there. Harry waited, watching Remus worriedly. He didn’t know what Voldemort had done before he got there.
Later, he could only assume he hadn’t seen it coming because he was so busy watching Remus.
Something small and hard hit him in the side of the head. Harry staggered and fell. At least he knew it wasn’t a Stunner or he would already have been unconscious. He rolled and reached out—
And his hand closed on something that trembled and sang and sent a shocking amount of magic through his system. Harry stared at it.
He was holding the Elder Wand. And, looking up, he could see both the broken window high on the side of the castle and the old wizard who was leaning out of it, looking at him with both eyebrows raised.
Harry groaned a little and looked down at the Elder Wand. It snuggled against his side like a happy pet, and when Harry tried to open his fingers and let it fall, it simply clung to his palm as if it had been hit with a Sticking Charm.
“Well, shit,” Harry said.
*
Anaelyssa: Thank you! Voldemort did think that only Harry's family was covered by that bargain. So, in that sense, he didn't break it on purpose.
Jan: Thank you! Yes, he hated that life, utterly.
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His Twenty-Eighth Life