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
- 23
- 24
- 25
Thank you again for all the reviews!
Chapter Twenty-Four—Visions of Jonathan
Jonathan laughed as he looked over his shoulder at George. “You mean no one in your House can tell you apart yet?”
“Nope.” George pulled back the long streamer with a honking dragon’s head on the end that he’d been pointing at Jonathan’s shoulder and swung into step beside him. On the other side, Cedric looked interested. “They just keep not dealing with the fact that we’re Weasleys. That confuses them more than anything else.”
“It didn’t surprise me.”
“It was the Howler from our mum that surprised me. She sent two to the both of us. She knows that we always share!”
“Right on, George.” Fred was there next, putting away a bucket of little round brown balls that Jonathan thought were probably Dungbombs. “I’m going to write a letter to her and tell her that we’re very, very disappointed. Also disappointed that they tore themselves up so fast—”
“We didn’t get to keep any pieces for our collection.” George nodded and smiled a little, although Jonathan could see the pain in his face. “That would have impressed the Slytherins more than just the Howler, y’know—”
“Because our whole life’s goal is impressing our fellow Slytherins.” Fred’s eyes were glittering.
Jonathan sighed. “Do you want me to write to my parents and ask them to write to your mum? I know she would stop sending you Howlers if I asked.” He didn’t know Molly Weasley that well, but he knew she adored his mum and looked up to his dad. Probably because Dad was an Auror. She thought Harry was strange, but Jonathan preferred that when he knew the person would never understand Harry.
“No. We’ll deal with Mum ourselves. And—”
“We have even more revenge to work out.” The twins were looking past him, and Jonathan glanced up and saw Percy Weasley striding towards them.
“Come on,” Cedric muttered next to him. “We’re going to be late for Potions if we keep lingering in the corridor.”
“But I want to help the twins with Percy.” Jonathan had never disliked Percy when he was still younger and at their children’s parties, but he thought he was a pompous twit now.
“We don’t want you to help, mate. No—”
“Offense, but it’s kind of offensive to suggest we can’t take on our dear brother Percy.” The twins nodded to him and went to meet their brother. Jonathan could hear Percy shouting, even though he didn’t know what it was about because Cedric was hustling him around the corner. He winced as they went down the stairs into the dungeons. He felt sorry for Fred and George. He might get a disappointed letter from Mum or Dad about his House placement, but never a Howler.
“I don’t think their parents like the twins much, sometimes,” he confessed to Cedric, who only thought about it and then shrugged a little.
“They’ll need to do well in Slytherin to win attention. And I’m sure their parents love them in their own way.”
“I’m sure you’re right,” Jonathan said, a bit uneasy. And then they stepped into the Potions classroom and he promptly started sneezing, so hard that he sent bogies flying everywhere. Cedric cast some kind of cantrip, but it didn’t work, and Jonathan couldn’t get his breath to tell him what was wrong. He kept sneezing.
“Oh dear, allergic to the ingredients of the Boil Cure Potion?” A smiling professor in glittering lime-green robes swept towards them. “Well, we’ll soon fix that. Nasum commuto!”
Jonathan felt a sharp tingle in his nose, which ended just when he was getting concerned that it might actually make his nose fall off. He glanced up and blinked at his Potions professor. He’d heard Mum talk about Professor Slughorn, but he’d thought the man was going to retire last year. “Um, hello.”
“Mr. Potter! No need to ask who you are, not with that hair! I remember your father playing Chaser on the Gryffindor team as if it was yesterday.” Slughorn chuckled and turned to look at Cedric. “And this is our year’s Mr. Diggory, is it? Very well, very well, sir! You look a great deal like your father.”
“Er, thank you, sir.” Cedric looked as cautious as Jonathan felt. Sometimes people tried to suck up to him as if he was really a hero like Harry, but this felt different, as though Slughorn was trying to flatter everyone he met.
“Yes, yes, your mother was brilliant at Potions when I had her in class,” Slughorn went on, shaking his head. “Amy Shoehorn! Brilliant, brilliant. And I hear that she makes her living at Charms now. So talented in two fields! Do you think you can echo her, Mr. Diggory? Or your father? Amos had the most instinctive brewing process I’ve ever seen.”
“Er, my father hasn’t brewed potions in years, sir. He mostly leaves that to my mother.”
“And wise, to know when something’s beyond him!” Slughorn winked at Cedric, and then turned abruptly and waved them towards the tables in the front of the room. “You’ll probably want to sit there, Mr. Potter. I know that your lovely mother had no trouble seeing my handwriting, but your father had a few problems with his eyes, as I recall. Would it be right to say that you’ve inherited them?”
“Er, my brother more than me,” Jonathan said as he took his seat. He hoped that Slughorn would do something that would make him more comfortable to be around and Jonathan wouldn’t need to say “er” all the time. He exchanged a look with Cedric, but he only shrugged.
“Well, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was…”
In the end, Jonathan tuned out most of Slughorn’s chatter and let it flow over him, while he glanced over his shoulder as the Ravenclaws who shared this class came in. There was a tall girl in the lead, who had black hair tied severely back from her face; Jonathan mostly noticed her because she had a silver torque around her throat.
And because she was giving him a hateful look.
Jonathan blinked at her and turned to Cedric, waiting until Slughorn was thoroughly distracted welcoming the Ravenclaws and the other Hufflepuffs, who were tumbling in behind them. “Do you know her?”
“Who?” Cedric followed the line of his pointing chin, and snorted a little. “Oh, her. Her name’s Jane Kenbrook.”
“Why would she hate me?”
“Because her uncle was a Death Eater who got killed during the war. Evan Rosier, from what I remember.”
Jonathan kept facing the front, but he wanted to laugh. He also wanted to know what Kenbrook would say if she knew how close Harry was to her precious Dark Lord, and how that Dark Lord would do anything to avoid harming him.
Or his brother. Jonathan wasn’t stupid. He knew that Voldemort would have to earn his loyalty or do something about him to get Harry on his side, because Harry would never abandon Jonathan. So that probably meant Voldemort would hold back on anything that would hurt Jonathan, at least if he had as good control of himself as Harry implied he did.
Slughorn wasn’t nearly as fascinating a teacher as Mr. Dumbledore, but he did slip a lot of information in with his jokes and his bragging about the famous people he knew, so Jonathan had to pay close attention. He did, and wrote down his notes, and then went to get ingredients for the Boil Cure potion when Cedric asked him if he wanted to partner up, which of course he did.
On the whole, Jonathan forgot all about Jane Kenbrook until something sailed over his shoulder and plopped into the cauldron. It was a little silver bag. And that was all Jonathan had time to see before his world exploded in blinding pain.
The potion shot straight out of the cauldron and into his eyes. Jonathan slammed his hands over them and screamed. He tried to use his magic to clean his eyes, but he couldn’t find his wand and he couldn’t see and it felt as though someone was trying to rip his eyeballs out of his head.
“Mr. Potter, move your hands—you have to move your hands—that’s it—”
Someone moved Jonathan’s hands for him, because he wasn’t about to let go of his face. And then there was something cool washing over his eyes, and he sighed. The pain lessened at once. He dropped his hands and blinked up at Professor Slughorn. He wasn’t smiling now.
“A good job that I had the antidote for the Blinding Potion on hand, because this has happened before,” Slughorn said. He turned and stared around the room. “Who did that? Who dared to endanger a fellow student that badly? Reveal yourself!”
Of course no one said anything. Jonathan looked carefully around, mostly to make sure his eyes worked. It looked like they did and he was going to be okay. He sighed and opened his mouth.
But Cedric beat him to it.
“The ingredients were in a little silver bag and they came from behind us,” Cedric said. “It was aimed straight for Jonathan’s cauldron. Jane Kenbrook from Ravenclaw was glaring at Jonathan earlier. Sir,” he added, as though he thought there was a chance Slughorn might not believe him without the word.
“Miss Kenbrook. Did you do this?”
“There’s no proof.” Kenbrook’s voice was as haughty as the rest of her.
“That’s not the same thing as saying no, Miss Kenbrook.” Slughorn sounded unhappy. He waved his wand above Jonathan’s cauldron and peered at the result, which was a red mist Jonathan didn’t know. “Of course, if the bag was made of bicorn hide the way it sounds, it would have dissolved the instant it hit the potion. And what is your family known for, Miss Kenbrook?”
“I’m sure I don’t know, sir.”
“Importing bicorn hide.” Slughorn sighed and made his way to the back of the room. “Come with me, Miss Kenbrook. Class is dismissed. Mr. Potter, please go to the hospital wing and have Madam Pomfrey check your eyes and make sure none of the potion remains in them. And come back tonight at seven-o’clock to finish brewing your potion.”
“Yes, sir,” Jonathan said to his back, but he didn’t think Slughorn heard; the classroom had broken out in chatter. He glanced at Cedric. “Thanks, mate. I thought it was her, but I had no idea.”
“It had to be her.” Cedric sounded fierce. “No one in the class but her was glaring at you like that! And it’s stupid! It’s not like you had anything to do with her uncle’s death!”
“I know, but some people will blame you for anything,” Jonathan said, and tried to smile. Cedric didn’t look convinced. “Come on, I need to go to the hospital wing and then hurry so we’re not late for Herbology. Professor Sprout’s probably murder on Hufflepuffs who miss her class.”
“I don’t think Professor Sprout could be murder on anybody if she tried,” Cedric muttered, but he turned and followed Jonathan obediently out of the classroom. “Are you sure you’re all right, mate? Whatever was in that bag—”
“We’re not going to know until Professor Slughorn finishes talking to Kenbrook,” Jonathan told him, and walked out through the door with his shoulders held back and his head held high. He heard more chatter follow him, but he ignored it.
I have to show that I can be tough. Otherwise people are just going to keep on attacking me. And Harry might be disappointed.
*
Things did just seem to get worse from there.
Apparently Kenbrook had friends or cousins or something who were older Ravenclaws. They got angry at Jonathan for “getting her in trouble when there was no proof,” and tried to corner him as he went back to the Hufflepuff common room with Cedric the next night. When that didn’t work—because Cedric had friends in Hufflepuff and no concern about yelling for them—they tried to trip him down the stairs.
Jonathan wound up hanging from the banister while they threw hexes and jinxes at him.
And then Mr. Dumbledore showed up.
He was quietly angry at everybody, and the Ravenclaws gulped and backed down. But then Dumbledore gave a speech at dinner about how Jonathan was a great hero and they shouldn’t touch him, and he might be the only hope that anybody had of surviving Voldemort. That just made everyone flinch and glare at him harder, and then try harder to trip him down the stairs or cast hexes at him in the corridor without getting caught.
Or mock him.
That was the real problem. Jonathan had never known how sensitive he was to words. It wasn’t like Harry or his parents or his friends or Mum and Dad and Sirius mocked him. They understood how he was.
But people muttering behind their hands, “Bet he was too much of a coward to finish You-Know-Who the way he was supposed to,” or, “I heard he was too much of a coward for Gryffindor, even,” or “What kind of soft-bellied Potter ends up as a Hufflepuff?” jabbed at him like Cutting Curses. Jonathan took to running through the corridors on the way to class, and Cedric and the twins talked to him and couldn’t make it hurt less.
It was stupid. Jonathan knew that. They hadn’t been trained by Mr. Dumbledore and they didn’t have Harry for a brother. But it still hurt.
The twins tried to help him by pranking people, but they were busy fighting their own battles in Slytherin. And they thought some of the insults that got hurled at Jonathan were so stupid they were pathetic. They would have laughed back at people and mocked them, Jonathan knew. He wished he could do that.
In the end, the best help came from an unexpected direction. Jonathan was throwing stones into the lake while Cedric did homework next to him and dreading the walk to the Great Hall when someone above him said, “The way you react only gives them more fuel.”
Jonathan turned around, blinking. Acanthus Parkinson stood there. She gave him a disappointed look and said, “You should have been in Slytherin. Then they wouldn’t dare taunt you like this, because they would be afraid you knew Dark magic. Budge over.”
Jonathan budged over, ignoring the suspicious look from Cedric. At least Acanthus wasn’t one of the Slytherins who had been taunting him. “They’re probably going to say I know Dark magic next.”
“Why?”
“Because some of them still don’t know why I knew to accuse Kenbrook of putting that bag in my cauldron. They’re wavering back and forth between Divination and Dark Arts, last I knew.”
“Yet another reason to have you in Slytherin,” said Acanthus. “You want to ask the Hat? It might reconsider.”
Jonathan shook his head. He wasn’t about to tell someone who seemed cheerful at the thought of Dark Arts that he’d been put into Hufflepuff because of his loyalty to Harry. “I can’t. Just—Acanthus, what are you doing here? Don’t you have somewhere that you want to go?”
“You think I don’t want to be here?”
“I think you want to hear the gossip,” Cedric said, popping his head up from the other side of Jonathan and giving Acanthus an unfriendly look.
Acanthus flattened her hand over her heart. “And here I was going to tell you what some of my Housemates had planned for tonight. But if you don’t want to hear about it, that’s fine.”
“Another ambush as we’re going down into the dungeons?” Jonathan had been grateful for a while that Ravenclaw Tower and the Hufflepuff common room were so far apart, but given the proximity of the Slytherins in the dungeons, he was starting to regret where he lived.
“No. Worse. They’re going to steal your wand and hex someone so it’ll look like you did it.”
Cedric puffed up like an angry badger. “No one is going to believe that.”
“If they make the hex bad enough and someone comes along to use Priori Incantatem on your wand, why wouldn’t they?”
“Who would know that spell and just be wandering around in the corridor?” Cedric asked, and his tone or maybe the question made Acanthus bristle.
“One of the prefects. I didn’t ask too closely. I only overheard this plan and carried it to you at risk of life and limb if any of the other Slytherins find out. It’s mostly the older ones who are in on this, you know. The ones who can remember their Death Eater relatives who died when the war was still going on.”
Jonathan nodded slowly. He knew he had to go to Mr. Dumbledore about this. Harry wasn’t here for him to run to with his problems. His parents couldn’t respond in time because sending them an owl would take too long. Professor Sprout would cluck her tongue and tell him that she respected him and believed in him, but she wouldn’t do anything. She hadn’t done anything about the bullying so far.
“Why do you have that expression?” Acanthus asked.
“Because I have to involve Professor Dumbledore, and I don’t want to.”
“Why not?”
“He’ll make this a bigger deal, the way he did with that announcement at breakfast.”
“That announcement at breakfast was extraordinarily ill-judged.”
“Wait a minute,” Cedric said, breaking in. “You trust this particular Slytherin, Jonathan?”
“Yeah.” Jonathan just shrugged at the look Acanthus gave him. “You can’t deny that you’ve done some things as a House that are untrustworthy.”
“What are you going to do?” Acanthus seemed to decide his concerns weren’t worth addressing.
“Go to talk to Dumbledore and hope for the best.”
It was a decision made with all the information that Jonathan had at the time. Later, he would wish he hadn’t made it. But it was the only option at the time.
*
Anaelyssa: Thank you!
SilentxxDreamer: And afraid this may read as another one, even though I don't intend it to!
- 23
- 24
- 25
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

His Twenty-Eighth Life