Adult-FanFiction.org : Harry Potter

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
- 13
- 14
- 15
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Chapter Fourteen—Fire and Earth, Fire and Blood
Harry was resisting.
Lord Voldemort stood in the middle of the ritual circle with the forces of Fire and Earth playing through him and holding him perfectly in balance, and he strove to understand. He had never encountered anyone able to resist even the smallest portion of elemental magic before. And while Harry was powerful, he could not cut his own heart or stop walking on the earth. He must come.
The resistance continued, and then the flames recoiled back on him. Nothing touched the earth part of the ritual, but the fire was being cooled and redirected. And without two elements, Fire and Earth was not strong enough to pull on anyone.
Lord Voldemort answered the dying fire with his own incandescent rage. He would win. He would know what was happening. He directed a small portion of his immense strength to bringing him a vision of Harry Potter in this moment. Perhaps he was in Hogwarts and standing in the middle of his own ritual circle. That would explain some things.
But what formed in front of his own closed eyelids was not a ritual circle or Albus Dumbledore or a vision of the boy. It was a twisting, sliding cloud of fire. In the heart of the cloud blazed a hard red center like a ruby. And all around the ruby shone stars.
What is this? Lord Voldemort hissed in mental Parseltongue, flicking out his magic again like a forked tongue. You will tell me!
This is what my soul looks like, Harry’s voice said, steady and unafraid, and so much more adult than the voice he’d used to speak aloud to Lord Voldemort in the past few years. You wanted to see what I looked like in this moment. Here I am.
Lord Voldemort did not have time to separate stars from fire or debate with himself what the ruby at the heart of it meant, because in the next moment Harry attacked.
His motions were nothing like the clumsy ones he had made with his child’s body, or the smoother ones Lord Voldemort had become used to seeing as Harry adapted to using his muscles under his Lord’s direction. They were hardly motions at all, instead lashes of pure magic, a natural force like the volcano that had created the basalt in the ritual circle. Lord Voldemort jerked his head back with a snarl when some of it sped past him.
Then he realized that he hadn’t been the target of that particular lash. Instead, Harry latched onto the side of the ritual circle and pried it apart. Now Earth and Fire were separate again, as they had been a moment before, but both belonged to Harry.
You are trying to destroy me? There was no fear in Lord Voldemort, only rage as hot as the flames.
No. I’m trying to show you something.
In the sight of the world between worlds where they fought, Lord Voldemort watched Harry Potter—or the thing that called itself Harry Potter, because what it was was greater than any single name—braid Earth and Fire together. The magic of the being’s soul danced around them, threading through them, stringing them with stars of power that Lord Voldemort knew instinctively could be left behind without weakening the being that left them there.
It was not something Lord Voldemort could have done, and simply by staring at the stars, he couldn’t tell what Harry was building, either.
The knowledge of his own weakness made him grind his teeth, but he didn’t interfere. It had been years since he caught a glimpse of magic he didn’t know the end of the moment he knew the beginning. He wanted to see what would happen next more than he wanted to destroy it, or even Harry.
The braided strands of elemental power ended up as one glittering coil, something like the coils of an enormous snake that Lord Voldemort had seen in ancient paintings in a tomb in Rome that he had broken into. When Harry sank back a little—even his immense magic wearied by the effort of such a plaiting—Lord Voldemort could not tell where one element had ended and the next began.
It is pretty, but what is it for?
Watch, Harry said, his mental Parseltongue as loud as a trumpet, and then reached out and flicked another touch of power against the coil.
It went tumbling through a space that was not inside the ritual circle and yet was, and Lord Voldemort caught a glimpse of it. It was opening a tunnel into the heart of the earth, into the shaft of a volcano. He watched as magma swelled through hidden chambers at the heart of the rock, and created new stone, and the great explosion when the volcano finally vented its wrath.
Why did you show me this?
This is the kind of view that Muggle scientists could never have, and even wizards would die of the fumes before they could get this close. Harry’s voice was soft, and not with weariness. No magic could hold up against the fire. But talk to the elements kindly enough, and they’ll tell you where they came from. Isn’t this wondrous, to see something that no one else ever will?
Lord Voldemort said nothing. He watched new rock created, and he measured the strength of the opponent who rested beside him.
Then he turned and attacked, at the moment when another explosion was swelling out of the vision and he knew he would be able to take Harry at his most off-guard.
But Harry was ready, his magic curving up and around him like tangling ropes, and Lord Voldemort found himself on his knees in the ritual circle, his head bowed and tingling with the power that Harry forced into him.
Fill a vessel with too much magic, and it will shatter, Harry’s voice said, cool behind the pounding of the headache. Will that be your fate, Lord Voldemort?
It would not be his fate.
Lord Voldemort coiled deep within himself, so deeply that no one else had ever been able to sense it. Not the serpents, not Dumbledore when he was at Hogwarts, not any enemy who had challenged him in formal duel or battle since he changed his name. There was blackness at the center of his soul, and he found it and he dived deep, deep, and he came up holding that strength in his jaws and he wielded it like a whip against the magic holding him.
There was a confusing moment of snow and fire, his body freezing and burning both at once, and an unending howl in his ears. Lord Voldemort swayed with dizziness, snarling out of habit when he felt a hand come down as if to help him. The hand was snatched away.
When he could see again, he was in the middle of the ritual circle, the black stones drained around him, and he was alone.
Lord Voldemort knelt there, patient as the predator and the genius he was, and waited. Had he destroyed Harry? Left him too weak to press the attack?
But the next second, he knew the answer to that question. A golden net reached down to him, draping around his neck and snapping his head upwards. It had no existence in the world of sight; he could see it only when he closed his eyes.
Lord Voldemort found his head forced back to the point that his neck ached, and then magic flicked him on the nose like an errant Crup.
Rage exploded through him, but the rage was weakened by the effort of that long dive and the elemental forces he had felt pressed against him, and he found himself panting while Harry’s voice spoke to him, cool as wind, flowing as water.
That was stupid of you. You ought to know that you can’t use magic like that except against someone who’s either standing right in front of you or connected to you the way that I used to be connected by the Horcrux. But I’m not in this life, so what did you think it would avail you? Why do it?
He paused. Lord Voldemort said nothing. The rage was in his throat, choking him. He wanted to hurt something, wanted to fling the door open and find a Death Eater and break his neck. But he couldn’t move at the moment, still held in the grip of Harry’s power and the trembling of his muscles from the dive and the magical contest.
I suppose there’s no answer for my question, except that you’re consumed by anger and hate and you thought it was a good idea. Harry sighed as though Lord Voldemort had disappointed him, which was ridiculous. Lord Voldemort terrified, he destroyed, he made abject, he conquered. He did not disappoint people.
For a moment, the silence continued, while Harry’s magic eddied around him in disagreeable sharp-edged streams. Then Harry spoke again, and his voice had gone cold rather than cool.
Very well. I thought maybe you would take the vision into the volcano as the peace offering it was. But you won’t. Probably you lost that ability a long time ago. I’ll say this only once: Leave me alone. Leave my family alone. That includes all of my family, the people like Remus Lupin and Sirius Black as well as my brother and my parents. And Albus Dumbledore and other professors at Hogwarts and other members of the Order of the Phoenix.
Lord Voldemort was nearly so drained that he could not respond—the way that he could not force his muscles to move, and this was intolerable—but pride gave him the spur to respond. If I hurt them?
Then I’ll dedicate myself not just to defeating you, the way I did in other worlds. I’ll destroy you.
Lord Voldemort laughed, feeling the wavering red spark of anger like a ruby on fire at the heart of the coldness. That is a distinction without a difference.
Is it? I know you. I know you better than anyone else in all the worlds. I know that what frightens you most is death, but if that was all, you would have made Horcruxes and hidden them and never set yourself up as leader of the Death Eaters, because living forever would be all that mattered to you. No, you want immortality on every level. You want your name remembered and feared. If you keep hunting me, I will destroy your Death Eaters. I’ll make sure that everyone forgets both your name and the terror of you. I’ll destroy your Horcruxes and also everything that you put into them and everything that you wanted to memorialize with them. No one will know that you existed. There’ll be no record even of poor Tom Marvolo Riddle, orphan boy, at Hogwarts. I’ll destroy the award that poor befuddled Dippet gave you for Special Services to the School. My vengeance will be that complete.
Lord Voldemort said nothing. He felt as though the words were spinning in a void inside him, and he wanted to scream. But screaming would imply that he was frightened, and that was not the truth.
He was furious. He wanted to claw Harry Potter’s eyes out and place them and the boy’s essence in a homunculus that he would force to watch the destruction of not only every person the boy was related to in this life, but every one he’d been related to in other lives. The Longbottoms, the Weasleys, the Prewitts, the Blacks, everyone. Then Harry would learn the audacity of threatening Lord Voldemort.
There was silence in response, as if Harry didn’t want to leave until he thought his message had been received. Lord Voldemort had no intention of giving him that satisfaction.
But then the magic clamped down. It tightened. And pain such as Lord Voldemort had never known flooded him, as that magic struck at the root of his own power, and began to twist, and threatened to sever it at the root.
Lord Voldemort screamed. He would never have begged for his life, as confident as he was that the Horcruxes would restore him if he someone ever managed to destroy his physical form. But for his magic, he would beg.
Mercy! Spare me!
I want you to believe me. That I can destroy your immortality, and your memory, and I will do both if you dare to strike at my family. Or anyone else that I might once have called family, simply because you want to be even with me.
Lord Voldemort drifted in pain and silence and bewilderment. What Harry was asking of him—had no end. There was nothing he could do if he could not strike for revenge and if he backed down before an enemy. His Death Eaters would notice his weakness and turn on him. And there might be those among his Death Eaters whom Harry had called family in the past.
There were no paths away from this place. It was the first time since he had been a helpless child who thought he was a Muggle that Lord Voldemort believed he had no recourse.
Harry paused for a second. Then the clamping power pulled back, and Lord Voldemort breathed in the silence of his magic.
I will make no allowance for those who have chosen to be Death Eaters in this life. If they’re still with you and they try to betray you or attack you, then discipline them all you like.
Such generous permission, Lord Voldemort murmured back, but the bewilderment had not eased. Harry could have cut off access to his magic. Why would he not? Lord Voldemort would have done it if he could have.
I cannot. The bitterness tried to overflow his mouth like the venom of a milked snake. He swallowed and did not permit it to leave, but he would not hold himself back when he next met a Death Eater.
I could have destroyed your magic only at the cost of my own, Harry said quietly. I won’t hesitate to use that weapon if I need to, but I would rather not. Refrain from attacking my family, and I won’t need to.
His presence vanished from Lord Voldemort’s mind before he could retort. He found himself kneeling in the center of the ritual circle with his head hanging down so that his chin nearly touched his chest. He shook his head and straightened up wearily. Then he closed his eyes and composed himself. He would meditate before he left the room and attacked the first Death Eater he saw like a starving animal.
He did not understand an enemy who would spare him. Most of the time, he would have thought such a foe weak, but he had felt the shimmering strength that wrapped around him, and the delicacy and finesse behind that vision of the volcano. Harry Potter was not weak.
But there was nothing that Lord Voldemort could fully fail to grasp. He would meditate on that as well, and in the end he would understand. Harry Potter was not so important or special that he was beyond the reach of the greatest mortal intellect that had ever lived.
He might be unique. And Lord Voldemort would know what to do with that knowledge once he’d decided on it.
*
Jonathan almost held his breath as he watched Harry, even though his baby brother was just standing there with his wand extended and trembling in his hand and his forehead all wrinkled. His arm shook now and then. It still looked harder than all the training that Mr. Dumbledore had made Jonathan go through.
Then Harry almost collapsed. Jonathan picked him up and put him back on the couch. Harry was near his own size, but it was still easy. Maybe just because he wanted to do it, Jonathan thought.
“What happened, Harry?”
Mum was holding onto them both again. Jonathan only wriggled and squirmed enough to make sure that he got to hold Harry, too. Uncle Sirius was watching them all with worried eyes, and then Father came up and hugged them from over the back of the couch.
“I need to know what happened,” said Mr. Dumbledore, and his voice was quiet and insistent.
Jonathan scowled at him. “Can’t you see he’s tired? Leave him alone.”
Mr. Dumbledore looked totally at a loss for words. Jonathan supposed people didn’t say things like that to him every day. But maybe he didn’t bother people like this every day. Jonathan nestled down into Harry’s hair and closed his eyes.
“We just got our son back, Albus,” Father said, his voice thin. “Leave him alone, yes. Leave us all alone, for right now. I’m sure that Harry did something so that Voldemort can’t break through the protections and can’t attack us right now. And he kept himself from being taken by Voldemort. Right, Harry?”
“Right,” Harry said, and then he actually started to snore. Jonathan blinked. Well, that just proved that he was more tired than he’d looked.
“Leave, Albus.”
Jonathan thought Mr. Dumbledore might have argued, but Uncle Sirius took his arm, shook his head, and escorted him out the door. Uncle Sirius did glance back once at Father and nod. But Jonathan didn’t know what that meant.
He didn’t think he needed to, either. His little brother was back.
*
Jan: Well, he might be forced to grow up soon!
SickPuppy: The adults will struggle more later. Right now, they're just too relieved to have Harry back.
InvidiaRed: Sure, but even if you assume that, would Voldemort assume that? Of course not. Now Harry has set out a much more specific bargain that Voldemort is going to have to agree to.
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His Twenty-Eighth Life