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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.

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Chapter Thirteen—In the Family
Harry sighed as he looked around the drawing room. It didn’t look that different than he remembered it, except that some of the furniture was a different color. There were the same photographs and paintings on the walls, and one that had a smear of dust across it as if Lily had just recently spun it around. And of course his memories didn’t include much of Albus sitting on the couch across from them, staring intently at him. Or Jonathan sitting with his arm around Harry’s shoulders (Harry hadn’t had shoulders big enough for that then). Or Lily trying to pour half a tray of food down his throat.
Sirius was standing next to Albus with tears shining in his eyes. He’d already picked up Harry and hugged and shaken him, and only let him go because Jonathan complained. James sat on a chair between the couch where Jonathan, Harry, and Lily were, and the one where Albus sat, and wore the weirdest mixture of a beam and apprehension Harry had ever seen.
“I want you to tell your family what you told me,” Albus said.
Harry raised his eyebrows a little. The tone in Albus’s voice was the same one he always used to get when Harry was a student at Hogwarts and had done something that attracted a little attention and Albus was trying to cajole him to tell the whole truth. It had been worst in the lives where Harry was a Slytherin, but not only there.
“All right,” he said, and faced Lily, because he thought she would take it the worst. “I’ve been reborn over and over again. This is my twenty-eighth life.”
Lily’s hand flew to her mouth. Her eyes widened and shone with the same tears as there were in Sirius’s. “Thank Merlin,” she whispered. “I just wanted to know. I always knew there was something different about you from that night, but I didn’t know what it was.”
Harry gave her a confused smile. He was glad that she was taking this so well, even if it was hard for him to go through more than once. “Well. I have a perfect memory. So I remember all of my childhood here, as well as I remember my first life. I was the Boy-Who-Lived in that life, and you were my parents.” He glanced at James.
“Boy-Who-Lived?”
Harry blinked. “Right.” That title had been in a majority of the worlds he’d lived in, but here, Voldemort had never confronted Jonathan. “It means someone who managed to survive Voldemort’s attack. Sometimes it’s a Girl-Who-Lived. Usually it ends up with the Killing Curse he tries to use being reflected back on him, and then his body’s been destroyed and he’s a wraith for a decade or so.”
“How could he survive if the Killing Curse—”
“How could someone survive the Killing Curse?”
James and Sirius spoke at the same time, and then glared at each other. Harry rolled his eyes. “He uses a method of immortality that means his spirit stays bound to the world,” he said. “And it was sacrificial love that protected me in my first life, and other children in other worlds.” He looked at Lily.
Lily nodded slowly, sadly. “Yes, of course. I was willing to die for you that night.” Her eyes became veiled. “But I couldn’t.”
“I was actually going to die for Jonathan,” Harry said, and ignored their expressions of shock and horror, and Sirius’s, “But you’re just a kid!” That only proved that the truth about his immortality hadn’t sunk in yet, even though they all seemed to accept that he could talk and reason like an adult. “I summoned up my magic and got ready to do it. But Voldemort looked into my mind and saw what I was with Legilimency. That was why he stole me.”
“But why not just kill you and then kill Jonathan later, to prevent the sacrifice?”
“Don’t even say that, James!”
Harry ignored the way Lily hugged him after that, his gaze on his father. “Because he wanted to take me away and use me as a kind of living grimoire about how I’d conquered him in other lifetimes.”
James shuddered. Sirius jumped into the gap. “But you weren’t always the Boy-Who-Lived?”
“I wasn’t. But I always fought Voldemort.”
Lily cupped his cheek and turned his head around before Harry could focus on the horror and compassion in his father’s eyes. “My poor baby,” she whispered. “It was always your war. But no one made you?”
“Only in my first life,” Harry said. He deliberately didn’t look at Albus. He wasn’t yet ready to talk about the tangled mess that had been their relationship in his first life. Of course he’d long since forgiven that Dumbledore, but he’d never had to talk about it to the living man before. “After that, I always chose.”
“Why? Why not run away and live in some place where they wouldn’t make you fight?”
“Sometimes I did that after he was defeated.”
“But why?”
Harry sighed out slowly and looked straight into the green eyes that were a mirror of his own, and more loving than he’d seen them in thousands of years. “Why did you fight with the Order of the Phoenix? You could have left. You could have run back to the Muggle world, and probably most of the pure-bloods wouldn’t have tried to follow you. But you stayed and fought. Because it’s the right thing to do.”
Lily nodded slowly, blinking a little. Harry could see the soft gleam of tears along her eyelashes. “I just—how did you avoid falling into hatred and bitterness across so many lives?”
“Because bitterness doesn’t last,” Harry said quietly. “And hatred doesn’t, either. It burns out. Love is the only thing that lasts. Believe me, I’ve seen that. And I always went and lived some other constellation of experiences later, when I might never see a person I hated in one lifetime, or they might be my best friend or my family.” He’d had to do a lot of rethinking of the Black family in particular when he’d been born their son. “I chose to feel love and compassion instead. That was my choice. Like fighting Voldemort was my choice.”
“I just don’t see how it could have been.”
Harry smiled at his mother and took her hand. “It’s okay. We’ll get along just fine and it’s—good to know that you’re not going to reject me because I’m immortal.” He wanted to say that she was mortal and that was why she didn’t understand outliving bitterness, but that would only drive a wedge between them.
Maybe later I can describe it to them as a tree. Some of those big trees are the only things that live as long as I do. Do they stop putting forth leaves just because they’ve lived a long time?
Content with that decision, Harry turned back only to see Albus studying him frowningly. “And the rest of it,” he said.
Harry grimaced. He hadn’t thought he would keep this secret, but he hadn’t wanted to tell his family all of it at once. Jonathan was the only one who didn’t look curious, though. Even Lily was watching him, and Sirius and James had the look in their eyes that Harry had come to call the “Marauder investigative glance” when he’d been born into the same time period as them.
“All right,” he said. “I’ve been lots and lots of different things in different lives. One of them was a Dementor. That was how I escaped this time. I changed into my Dementor form and breezed through the walls to rescue Remus. And other Dementors always come flocking when I do that. They distracted the Death Eaters.”
“You rescued Remus?” Sirius was the only one who asked, and he had such hope in his eyes that Harry had to smile at him. Lily and James were silent, and Jonathan just pulled Harry harder against him. Harry thought he was really going to like having a big brother.
“Yeah. I stayed with Voldemort as long as I did because he promised not to harm my family if I would.” Harry ignored the way most of them flinched. Albus didn’t, and Jonathan was probably too young. “But he didn’t extend that promise to anyone else I cared about. He captured Remus and he tortured him, and I begged him to spare him. But Voldemort just laughed and acted as if I was weak for asking. So I broke the bargain.”
He wasn’t immediately worried, since he’d felt the strength of the protections around the house when they Apparated in and they wouldn’t allow anyone to get even two miles away without screaming in protest. But he was glad that he was here now, and Voldemort hadn’t had the time to attack while Harry was talking to Albus.
“The rest of it, Harry,” Albus prompted.
Harry blinked, then sighed. “All right. I’m the Master of Death, apparently, since I collected the Deathly Hallows accidentally in my first life.” He held out his hand and shook it as hard as he could, and the Elder Wand still stuck. “The Elder Wand was Headmaster Dumbledore’s wand. Now it’s decided it’s mine.”
James opened his mouth to say something, but there was a sudden rustling down the corridor that Harry remembered as leading to their bedrooms. A door burst open, and the Potter Invisibility Cloak came rushing around the corner and dropped down behind Harry, spreading its sleeves to cuddle him like arms.
James made a choking noise. The others stared. Jonathan was the only one who didn’t move, even though Harry knew he must have become partially invisible.
“And this is another Hallow,” Harry said, pushing his face out from beneath the cloak’s hood. He knew better than to try to get it to let go of him right now. He thought it had only waited this long because it had expected him to come and get it in a while. “The only Invisibility Cloak that stays good down the years.”
“That’s true,” Lily breathed. “I never thought about it, but that one you bought me as a gift unraveled so soon, James…”
“It’s decided that it belongs to you,” James said, with a resigned glance at Harry. “Well, as long as it protects my children, it doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t have to worry,” Harry said. “I’m going to do my best to protect Jonathan.”
Everyone looked at Jonathan then. Harry thought they probably thought of him as too young to realize what was going on, but Harry wasn’t actually sure of that. Especially when Jonathan leaned harder against him, and said, “And I’m going to protect Harry.”
“What about the Resurrection Stone?”
That was Albus, and his eyes were gleaming in a way that Harry definitely didn’t like. He managed to shrug. “I don’t know where it is right now. It could be almost anywhere. I imagine it’ll find me when it’s ready.”
As a matter of fact, Voldemort had hidden his ring Horcrux in the Gaunt shack in almost all worlds. But Harry was telling the truth. There were other worlds where the ring was hidden in wild places, and he was tired right now. He didn’t want to think about confronting the Resurrection Stone until he could think of why in the world the Hallows would have come to find him now, when they never had before.
Is it just that other people know I’m their Master now?
That didn’t seem likely to Harry, and he felt uneasiness move and throb in him even as he leaned against his brother and let his parents hug him again, and Sirius shake his hand and ask questions about Remus, and kept an eye on the wards.
*
He can transform into a Dementor.
Severus had told him the results of the conversation he had spied on in Dumbledore’s office some time ago. But Lord Voldemort had not moved from the position he had taken, staring out an open window of the Manor into the grey twilight.
On the floor at his feet, Death-of-Rabbits was sleeping in a loose ball. Lord Voldemort knew that, was aware of that, and aware of all the other lives in the vast house. Who had died, who was mourning, who was shaken, who could not be trusted to face down another invasion of Dementors if it happened.
It would, at least once more. Lord Voldemort would have the Potter boy back. And the boy would doubtless transform and call the Dementors with that transformation. They would be drawn whether or not he willed it.
Lord Voldemort was certain of that. He knew there were things Severus was keeping from him. He was content to let them rest for now. He had another goal, and one that Severus’s poisoned tongue would not hinder him from accomplishing.
The boy could turn into a Dementor. He was immortal. He knew about Horcruxes, about a thousand other Dark Arts. He could speak Parseltongue. He had other skills, doubtless, that Severus had not learned about or sought to keep from him.
Lord Voldemort at last moved from the window. He strode through the room with graceful, precise steps, and opened the door so that Death-of-Rabbits could pass through it. That was only convenience for the snake, and for the way it could follow him. Lord Voldemort could turn to smoke himself and fly if he so wished.
Potter had spent months with Lord Voldemort and could still defy him, pretend to surrender and then never do so, and break the bargain that had protected his family with impunity once he found out that it did not cover non-blood family. Lord Voldemort knew others, fully adult and human individuals, who would have broken under what he had inflicted.
Lord Voldemort moved towards the ritual room in the center of the house. Behind him slithered Death-of-Rabbits, and the other serpents that he kept as spies in various corners of the manor began to follow. By the time he reached the ritual room’s door and circumvented the protections on it by pressing one hand flat into the circle of obsidian on it, he had an honor guard worthy of his status and power.
Once, all he had desired was for the population of wizarding Britain to cower at his feet. And the death of Albus Dumbledore, admittedly, but he had dreamed only of that death. He had not assumed he would get a chance to torture the old man first. He was too dangerous not to kill right away.
The door to the room opened. Lord Voldemort moved inside like the Lord he was, the one who had the right to enter here, and tuned around in the circle in the center. It formed the same shape as the circle on the door, but although smooth and black, it was not made of obsidian. This was basalt magically preserved before being dipped into the magma of an active volcano and charged, therefore, with the most potent processes of fire and earth.
The one thing he had never imagined was the desire to break a specific individual, to make that individual acknowledge him and accept that Lord Voldemort was his Lord in truth. Because there had been no one who had deserved that much of his attention.
The ritual circle around him began to glow and lift its flames in response to his will. Lord Voldemort closed his eyes. In the darkness, he could see the great volcano that had created this stone and forged it.
But now there was.
Lord Voldemort began to chant. The words welled out of his mouth, out of his perfect memory, thick as lava, toxic as a volcano’s fumes.
And his will traveled into the earth, through the bedrock that had birthed the forces this circle was made of, and through the air, through the thrumming warmth that drove the heart of the one he sought.
And touched that one, who had to walk on the earth and live with the warmth in his veins of primal fire. And pulled.
*
Harry gasped and bent over as he felt the tug begin on his heart—on his heartstrings, the literal ones. He recognized the ritual that Voldemort was using at once, of course. He’d faced it and countered it often enough in other lives.
But it cost an enormous amount of magic, and had sometimes killed wizards of lesser power who had tried to use it against the Weasley or Black or Granger or Longbottom or Muggleborn wizard that Harry was. He was amazed that Voldemort would consider that worth it.
I suppose I should have thought through depriving him of his favorite plaything, and that his vengeance might be against me rather than my family, Harry thought in some annoyance. He stood up, wavering a little on his feet. There was the relentless compulsion to follow the pull, of course, but that didn’t matter right now. A day ago, he would have been hard-pressed not to obey. He was magically exhausted, and his body was still only a few years old.
But now, he had the Elder Wand, and merely touching it made a different kind of fire than the one Voldemort was relying on rise up in his chest.
He aimed the wand in the direction of the pull, said to Albus, “Sir, he’s using Fire and Earth. Keep the others out of the way,” and began to chant. The room around him was bucking and quivering with the strain, the magic trying to impose the reality of the ritual circle where Voldemort stood over the Potter family home. Harry faced down the strain. His will rose to mingle with the fire and the magic.
Not my family. Never again.
You want a battle, bastard? You have one.
*
SickPuppy: Thank you! And yes, Harry does feel sorry for himself when he thinks of that life. :)
Jan: It will take a long time for Harry's parents to even really understand what he is, so Jonathan's promise wouldn't be tested against them for some time to come.
Anaelyssa: Thank you!
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His Twenty-Eighth Life