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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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Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Eighteen—The Breaking of Silence
“Please sit down, Jonathan. I have something important to say to you.”
Jonathan sat down, but he kept looking at Mr. Dumbledore. For once, they were alone in the cottage. Mum and Dad were out running errands, and Harry was reading one of his huge books alone in the bedroom. Jonathan tried to keep up with those books, but he had to admit he didn’t understand most of them. Harry knew a lot of things he didn’t know.
That didn’t matter as much when Jonathan had to protect him, of course. It just made things a little harder.
“You know that you would have been the one prophesied to defeat Voldemort.”
“Yes, sir. Mum and Dad told me all about it.” And Harry, but Jonathan already knew that mentioning Harry in front of Mr. Dumbledore usually led to bad things.
“Yes.” Mr. Dumbledore sighed and spent a moment touching his beard as if he was going to comb it. “But since the prophecy didn’t come to pass, we find ourselves in a bit of a limbo. I’ve been training you under the assumption that Tom would come after you at some point. I find myself unsure what his game is at the moment, though.”
Why don’t you ask Harry? Jonathan didn’t need to be told that Harry knew more about Voldemort than any of them. But again, it wasn’t something he could mention in front of Mr. Dumbledore. He settled for looking serious.
“I have never heard of a situation like this, where the prophecy did not come true when it was supposed to. I want to know if you desire to continue this extra training, Jonathan, or if you’d like to be left alone. Merlin knows I’ve demanded more of you than any ordinary ten-year-old should—”
“I’d like to continue it. Please, sir.”
“Why?”
“Because I think you’re right and someday Voldemort will come after me. Just because the prophecy didn’t happen right when we thought it might doesn’t mean it won’t. What if he attacks me someday and I’m not ready because I stopped my training too young? I don’t want someone to get hurt.”
“Well.” Mr. Dumbledore stroked his beard again. “That’s very mature of you, Jonathan. I thought I was putting a burden on your shoulders that no child should be asked to bear, but perhaps if you can handle it...”
Jonathan nodded solemnly back to him. What he said was true. You had to speak the truth around Mr. Dumbledore, because he was a Legilimens and he would notice if you lied. Someday, Voldemort would want to attack him and the prophecy could come true. And Jonathan winced at the thought of someone innocent dying because they got in the way.
But Jonathan just wouldn’t mention the other reasons, like protecting Harry, that he wanted to continue his training, and then Mr. Dumbledore didn’t have to know about them. And he wouldn’t mention that he thought Voldemort would probably come after him because Voldemort would really want Harry.
And Jonathan wouldn’t let Voldemort have him.
“Then we’ll begin with elemental magic, which we haven’t been studying as a separate branch before, although I know that you know some spells of fire and water...”
Jonathan got his parchment and quill out and began to scribble notes. Mr. Dumbledore puffed up importantly. Jonathan pretended not to notice. If he could learn things, what did it matter whether people were puffed up or strutting or shouting?
*
Lord Voldemort looked coolly out the window at the full moon. He had made the oath to not participate in the genocide, killing, or torture of Muggleborns that night, and had assumed Harry would join him in the clearing when he felt the power of the blood and snake scales. But he had not, and neither had he sent a letter.
Lord Voldemort did not like waiting.
In the end, he stirred himself away from the window and moved towards the library that contained the Dark Arts books and artifacts his busy Death Eaters had been fetching him. He walked as silently as he always did, but then he had no reason to suspect anyone except his serpents here.
He and Severus Snape startled each other.
Severus went pale when he saw him. Lord Voldemort halted and watched. He had found more and more, since he had begun his new game, that doing nothing and maintaining silence would bring out more entertaining aspects of his Death Eaters’ personalities than screaming accusations at them or using the Cruciatus Curse. For now, he had little reason to assume that Severus was different.
But it seemed Severus had decided to be different, and he stood with his eyes slightly lowered and his body motionless. Lord Voldemort finally gave a shrug and moved to the right, aiming for the study doorway. He had no need of Severus’s particular skills at the moment, and wished to contemplate either Dark Arts or Harry.
Then he noticed the soft, feral tingle of power.
He turned his head, and focused on Severus’s left hand. It had no potion stains or dust on it—nothing obvious. Still, he knew that Severus had touched something not only Dark in the last hour, but something that Lord Voldemort had marked with possession spells as belonging to himself alone.
Yet still the Cruciatus Curse held no appeal. Instead, Lord Voldemort swung open the door of his study with a touch of his own power, projected around his body like hands, and smiled at his Death Eater.
“I find myself in need of company this night, Severus. Join me.”
The man’s face went that much tenser, that much paler. Not much by either measure, but Lord Voldemort had learned to watch his Death Eaters’ eyes and faces and voices and souls in the last three years. Severus bowed, as he must, and moved into the study first, while Lord Voldemort followed and analyzed the reaction of the tingle of power around Severus’s left hand to the other spells in the study.
When Severus passed by a small black book with blue binding, the power flared. Lord Voldemort gestured for Severus to take a chair near the fire and bowed his head a little so that he could see the book’s title from the corner of his eye.
The Deathly Hallows and the Master of Death.
Lord Voldemort reached out and casually strangled his own rage. He took the chair across from Severus and studied the fire instead of him, eyes unblinking. This time, he kept his silence and let Severus think and do what he would. He bore the motionless wait in patience for far longer than Lord Voldemort had reckoned.
But in the end, perhaps because he didn’t know that he might walk out of here alive, Severus cracked. He leaned forwards and lowered his voice in the way someone must once have told him was impressive. “Why am I here, my Lord?”
“I wished for company,” Lord Voldemort said, and then watched the small cascade of twitching motions make their way through Severus’s face. He rested his hands flat on the arms of the chair, but his eyes and cheeks would always give him away.
“Why, my Lord? If I may make so bold,” Severus added quickly, apparently thinking that this particular question might be what drove his Lord back to torturing him.
“I have placed spells on all the possessions in this room that mark them as belonging to me. A simple anti-theft measure, in some respects, and practical considering how Bellatrix and the rest acquired them in the first place.” Lord Voldemort leaned back in his seat and pinned Severus with his eyes. “They also tell me when someone has touched them.”
Severus’s left hand twitched and curled in on itself. Lord Voldemort could have placed a jinx that would make his hand assume a twisted position and not release until he gave permission, but he saw no reason to do that. Let Severus feel the stabs of his own panic and mistake it for magic. “I am not sure why you would accuse me of touching a possession of yours, my Lord. It would be foolish to do that without permission.”
“Not so foolish as to use the word ‘accuse’ to my face, Severus.”
“I—apologize, my Lord.”
More silence. Severus did not wish to lie to him, which Lord Voldemort would keep in mind. But he also didn’t wish to admit to touching that book. A fascinating combination of desires. Lord Voldemort kept his hands folded and his eyes alert.
“I wish to know as much about Harry Potter as I can,” Severus finally said, every word as soft and neutral as silk wrapped around a blade. “Ever since you first permitted me the knowledge of his existence, I have thought of him as a dangerous enemy.”
It was easier to strangle the rage this time. Severus had no way of harming Harry; the knowledge of what he was was not sufficient, not when Severus did not rival him in power. “Why?”
Severus blinked and uncurled his hands. “Because he has so much knowledge of the past and future and other worlds, my Lord. He could know of weaknesses that we might think guarded from everyone else. He could figure out secrets based on them being true in other universes.”
“Why would you think me incapable of dealing with the threat he presents on my own, Severus?”
“I—my Lord, forgive me. I was thinking more of my own future and not yours. I thought he would be a danger to me because he appeared to know me so well.”
“And you did not trust me to protect you?”
Severus remained still. It was as entertaining in him as writhing would be in another. Lord Voldemort maintained his steady silence, his expression bland. No matter what Severus admitted, he would think himself headed for pain. He trusted Lord Voldemort to have changed even less than Dumbledore did, in certain ways.
“Forgive me, my Lord.” Severus sank from the chair into a kneeling posture, his head canted forwards and his hair giving off a slight sheen in the firelight. “I am asking for your forgiveness too much, but there is nothing else I can ask.”
“You can offer me something else than questions or pleas.”
“My Lord?”
“The truth.”
As Severus looked back up, Lord Voldemort coiled himself and slipped his power forwards with a hiss of Parseltongue. It was a technique he would never have thought to employ before Harry. He would have smashed at Severus’s Occlumency with brute force, and if he did not break through it, he would conclude there was no Occlumency to break through.
Now, he was as subtle and cunning as he should have been when he found out he was a descendant of Slytherin himself. The trickling nature of the power made it harder for someone to keep out with Occlumency, and the Parseltongue focused his mind on the image of the serpent, feeding even more of his desired qualities into his magic.
He slipped through a crack in Severus’s Occlumency, and found the truth.
Lord Voldemort called up his magic with another flick of his hand, and pinned Severus to the floor with coils that he summoned out of the stone itself. Then he stood and paced towards him. His hands were not still. He folded them behind his back, and then they were.
That Severus would seek to hold something he had learned about Harry back, that he would plot how to use that knowledge against Harry, perhaps to control him, perhaps to make some sort of bargain with him…
Lord Voldemort wanted, badly, to kill.
But he restrained himself. Even if Harry had all but given him permission to attack his own Death Eaters, he did not want to spend the coin of Harry’s tolerance too freely. He could not bear to have that powerful being look at him with disgust in his eyes, or refuse to teach him certain kinds of magic because he wouldn’t use it “properly.”
“So,” Lord Voldemort said, and he knew from the sibilance on the word that he was already most of the way to Parseltongue. He paused and tamed himself. He could not ask questions in Parseltongue of Severus Snape. “I do not think that even you knew exactly what you meant to achieve by retaining these secrets.”
Severus remained pale and silent, but his mask had cracked along with his walls. Lord Voldemort could see the terror simmering behind his eyes now. His fingers curled into the rug and then stopped as if he’d realized only then that Lord Voldemort had formed his chains from the stone of the manor floor itself. He would not break free.
“To join both sides of the war? To manipulate me? To make Harry pay attention to you and somehow hold something over his head?” Lord Voldemort calmed further as he spoke the words. Yes, they were all true from the memories that had sliced past him. “All of those and none.”
He stepped off to the side and spent a moment admiring the smooth stone chains that held Severus captive. He couldn’t have summoned anything like them three years ago, before Harry’s escape. He had been forced to focus on finesse and his own lust to match Harry’s power and control.
Another thing he had to thank Harry for. Another thing Severus would have taken away, if his own plot to incense Lord Voldemort against Harry had succeeded.
Rage stirred in him, but it was lazy and cold this time. Lord Voldemort paused, and smiled.
He had the perfect punishment, one that would satisfy him far more than the Cruciatus Curse would.
“You hid memories from me,” he told Severus, whose fingers clenched in the rug again. “You envied Harry’s memories of other worlds, and feared what he might know about you and use against you someday. I therefore find this more than fitting.” He drew his wand and caressed it, mourning, for a moment, that he did not yet have the tutoring from Harry to dispense with it. Then he pointed the wand at Severus. “Finis memoriae.”
Severus arched with a silent cry of despair under the manacles as the spell struck him and spread a spiderweb of green and purple lines over the top of his skull. Lord Voldemort watched impassively as the web sank strands into his Death Eater’s ears and wormed deep into the brain. When the spell faded, he nodded.
“You—you have not taken all my memories, my Lord,” Severus whispered when he appeared to find his voice.
“No. I do think that some potions you have brewed are useful, and even your Occlumency skills could be. If used by the right person.” Lord Voldemort smiled with gentle brutality when Severus looked up at him. “But this particular variation of the spell will allow me to touch your memories on a regular basis, and see in an instant anything you have hidden from me.”
Severus blinked and shifted. “That—you are generous, my Lord.”
“I am.” Lord Voldemort snapped the stone chains with a thought and walked from the library. He wondered when Severus would notice the other dimensions of the spell, the ones that Lord Voldemort had not seen fit to identify for an errant Death Eater.
Severus might read new books. He might study all he liked. But he would learn nothing new from reading again. New spells, potions, history, and daily news would trickle through Severus’s fingers and escape him forever. He could learn new information now only by hearing it—or overhearing it. If he fancied himself a spy, he would do much more listening than he had before.
And now Lord Voldemort had a permanent doorway through Severus’s Occlumency walls.
He was pleased enough that when he returned to his room, he wrote a letter to Harry about it. No need to sit back and wait for his equal to reach out to him, after all.
*
Harry closed his eyes and listened as Remus beat a hasty retreat into the house. He was standing in the back garden, a small portion of which Lily had given him when Harry asked for it. His clustered flowers and Potions ingredients nodded around him.
It was soothing. It helped lessen the hurt that flared in his chest whenever he tried to speak to Remus.
His understanding was as vast as always. Remus had such a hard time speaking and looking at Harry because almost his first introduction to him had been as a Dementor. Remus’s self-loathing meant he also loathed Dark creatures. In some worlds, he had overcome that loathing enough to befriend other werewolves, or at least use some of those creatures in his teaching demonstrations, the way he had in Harry’s first life.
Not here. Not now.
Harry sighed and leaned back against the stone wall that surrounded the garden. A light rain was falling. He tilted his head up to it and let the soft mist soak his face. Jonathan was away from home today, learning elemental magic with Dumbledore, or he would have demanded to know what was wrong.
Harry had to remember that he couldn’t force people to be his friends or his family. Remus was entitled to his opinion. And it wasn’t like Harry was fond of the Dementor part of himself. It had taken him over three years to use it to escape Voldemort.
But sometimes….it did hurt.
Voldemort’s black owl slanted towards him. Harry raised an eyebrow and snorted. He’d felt the second oath take effect last night. He simply hadn’t expected a letter about it when he failed to visit. Voldemort would grow angry at him eventually, and give up this notion he had of—what? Doing more than learning from Harry?
Harry took the parchment from the owl and unfolded it. Voldemort immediately launched into a description of what he’d done to Snape.
Harry bowed his head and rubbed his head over his brow, which sometimes still felt bare without that lightning-bolt scar. Voldemort wasn’t the same kind of arrogant and evil as before, but there was no denying he still had those traits.
So what did it say about Harry that he found this letter from Voldemort comforting in a way that his interactions with Remus and Dumbledore were never going to be in this life?
The black owl fluttered and hooted at him. Apparently it wanted a response. Harry turned the parchment over and wrote a short condemnation of Voldemort’s actions, then lifted it high. The owl grabbed it and swooped away.
He’ll take even that condemnation well, because I’m deigning to notice him.
Harry closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and went back to weeding the flowers. People were all kinds of strange, but plants still needed to be cared for and fed and watered. At the moment, their constancy seemed like the best thing in all the worlds.
*
Anaelyssa: Thank you!
Yes, Harry worries for Jonathan, too.
Fenrirsboy: Well, Harry is still at the point where the thought horrifies him, too. :)
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His Twenty-Eighth Life