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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
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Chapter Thirty—Thunder in the Distance
“Harry, I need to talk to you.”
Lily’s voice was soft but determined. Harry turned towards her and couldn’t help smiling. He had heard her sound like that before, but never in this life. If she was finally coming to her senses and realizing that he wasn’t a child and she couldn’t treat him like one…
“What did you need to say, Mum?” Harry followed her into the drawing room where he had confronted Voldemort a long time ago.
Lily took a sharp breath and turned around. “I want to know if you’re on the same side as Albus.”
Harry widened his eyes, partly because he wanted to hold down the twitch of his expression. “I am, Mum. Voldemort…I kind of feel sorry for him, because I know why he acts the way he does, but he kidnapped me and kept me from growing up with you and Dad and Jonathan. It’s not something I can forgive him for.”
Lily relaxed, leaning back on the chair behind her. Harry watched her and felt a gentle sorrow pulse under his breastbone. Unlike Jonathan, who knew who he was and could love him anyway, Lily wanted to treat him like a child and not like it at the same time.
And Voldemort just understands me.
Harry shoved that thought aside. Voldemort did now, with his fragmented soul fueling his obsession with Harry’s magic. He wouldn’t once he had the pieces back together and the Horcruxes melted down and forgotten.
“I wondered,” Lily said softly into her hands, cupping them across her face. “Because I know Albus is worried about your magic being Dark.”
Harry sighed. “We had a talk about this, Mum. Voldemort threatened Jonathan, too, did you know? I can’t stand for that. Some of the magic I use may be Dark sometimes, but it’s for the greater good. Albus understands. At least if I use that kind of magic, then it keeps someone else from having to do it.”
“Oh, Harry.” Lily was looking at him with those expressive green eyes now. Harry knew some people found his own eyes more expressive, even Severus in some universes, but his never looked exactly like hers. “I should have known that you’d be as strong and self-sacrificing as you were when you were a baby.”
Her face paled a little. Harry waited to see if she would say something about him standing up to Voldemort and speaking like an adult, but in the end, she shook her head, gave him a pained smile, and murmured, “You’re not going to live your life through the war, I hope. It should end soon. What’s the final point that Albus is aiming at?”
It has ended, Harry wanted to say, but it was the kind of thing he wouldn’t have been able to convince even Sirius of if Sirius hadn’t come to that conclusion on his own. “Defeating Voldemort.”
Lily laughed, and there was a light springing up into her face again. “I meant more than that. Does he think Jonathan is going to fight? Or you?”
“I think he hopes that Jonathan won’t have to, but he also has to still think about the prophecy.” Harry sat down on the couch across from her, and watched her face. She seemed to be drinking in every single word he said, which convinced him that she really didn’t know more than this. “He’s training Jonathan hard, in curses and other kinds of magic.”
“What do you think about the prophecy? Do you think it still holds true when Jonathan didn’t face down Voldemort?”
“Well, he has plenty of time to do that. And I never did hear the whole prophecy, you know.”
Lily blinked. “You never did,” she said finally. “Right. Of course. We were careful never to say the whole thing around you when you were children, even though it wasn’t like you could have understood it…”
Her voice trailed off uneasily, and Harry blinked at her and said nothing. Now she knew that he could have understood, and perhaps she was thinking back on some of the things they had done and wondering what Harry had thought of them.
But once again, Lily didn’t want to face the fact that he wasn’t an ordinary child. She was the one Harry would have Obliviated if it had been possible. “Right. This is the prophecy.” She took a deep breath and began to recite.
“Born to those who have thrice defied him, born on Midsummer’s Eve, the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches. The Dark Lord shall mark him as his equal, and he shall have the power that the Dark Lord knows not. They must meet, for neither shall be truly alive while the other survives. The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord shall be born on Midsummer’s Eve.”
Harry frowned thoughtfully. The similarities and differences from the first prophecy he’d lived under were obvious. And he had to wonder if the power that Jonathan had was Harry. And that second-to-last line…no, neither Voldemort nor Jonathan might be truly alive if they were engaged in a tug-of-war over Harry.
“You see why it’s so important for you and Jonathan to stay on the right side of the war?”
Harry looked up and blinked. “Yes, I see. Mum, I’m really going to try. I don’t want to fight my own brother.”
Lily confirmed that she had no idea what the bond between him and Jonathan was really like by bending down and hugging him as hard as she could. “I know, sweet one. You’re—you’re still my son, for all that you scare me sometimes. And Jonathan is my son, too, and I know that you could never turn on him.”
I wonder why Jonathan would turn on them for me?
But it was one of those mysteries that Harry didn’t really want to solve, so he went on to asking something that he needed to know. “Does Dad know about this, too? I mean, does he want to know if I’m going to be on Albus’s side in the war?”
Lily sighed a little. “He asked me to ask you. I think he was afraid that you might be Dark and he didn’t want to face that.”
While James had never been as non-confrontational as Remus in the worlds that Harry had lived in, he had to admit that James had sometimes not been much better, either. It seemed this was another one of those lives. Harry nodded slowly. “There have been lives that are worse than others.”
“What do you mean, Harry?”
“In some lives, I have used Dark magic.” Harry didn’t want to betray his side of the war, but neither did he intend to lie to his parents. And anyway, this was something Albus would tell them and try to hinder Harry with if he didn’t confess it.
Lily put her hands over her mouth. Then she shuddered a little and asked, “And were you born into Dark families in those worlds?”
“Most of them.”
“That explains it, then.” Lily gave him another hug, her voice growing fiercer, as if she could keep his past from mattering. “You didn’t have someone to influence you in the right way. You needed to grow up around Light witches and wizards so that you knew the right thing to do.”
Harry concealed a soundless sigh. She seemed to forget that he had both done that and had a perfect memory. If it had been that simple, without his memory, then this life would have been entirely different.
“Now come on and let’s have lunch together, baby. We don’t eat by ourselves enough. And I feel like I never spend enough time with you. You’ll be off to Hogwarts in less than two years! My baby boy!”
Harry let her guide him into the dining room with a hand on his arm. She would never understand some parts of him, and right now he had to hope she wouldn’t, so that she couldn’t blab to Albus about them.
He kept his sighs to himself, and smiled and made ordinary conversation with his mother over lunch. That wasn’t a skill he thought he could ever forget even if his memory had been less extraordinary.
*
“Thank you for coming, Augusta.”
“My son and daughter-in-law are naïve fools,” Augusta said as she sat down opposite the desk from Albus and refused the cup of tea with a shake of her head. She’d been drinking it all morning, laced with Calming Draught, after another argument with Alice over whether Neville should get some dueling training now. Augusta could feel the war looming over her like a stormcloud. Alice insisted Neville was a child and didn’t need that. “You-Know-Who isn’t dead. At this point, can he even die like a normal human?”
“It’s extremely unlikely.”
For a few minutes, Albus was silent, stroking his beard with one hand. Augusta didn’t let it bother her. She knew he never made decisions on the spur of the moment the way he liked to pretend, but she would let him get away with pretending. It didn’t matter that much to her.
Finally, Albus turned to her and said, “I know something about his method of immortality.”
“And you want my help in getting rid of it?”
“Them. He’s made Horcruxes, Augusta.”
Augusta only stared, which she hated, but she’d honestly never heard of the things. Albus seemed to recognize that, as he smoothly took up the explanation a moment later. “He committed murders that split his soul, and buried the shards of his soul in different objects.”
Augusta recoiled. “And what does that actually do?”
“It means that if something destroys his physical body, his soul won’t leave the physical world. He’ll linger here until he finds some way to get his body back. But if the Horcruxes are destroyed, there will be no anchor for his spirt, and he would simply depart.”
“Then all we’d have to do is destroy his body,” Augusta muttered, mind racing.
“Yes. Which will not be a simple task. But considering the magnitude of the task before, and its ease comparatively…”
Augusta smiled, and she knew she showed all her teeth from the slightly wary look Albus gave her. She didn’t care. She finally had someone who agreed with her on the important things about this war, and that meant she could smile the way she wanted. “What information do you have on the potential locations of the Horcruxes?”
“Locations, little as yet, although I am investigating places that were important to Voldemort in his past.” Albus politely ignored her flinch. “Hogwarts is definitely one, but considering the size of the castle, it will not be easy to narrow down. But I am almost certain that some of them are Founders’ artifacts.”
“Because he was—”
“Obsessed with his Slytherin bloodline and heritage as a child, and it was one of his main recruiting tools to get Death Eaters to follow him.” Augusta bit back her irritation as Albus interrupted her. She nodded. “It connects to his obsession with Hogwarts. I haven’t been able to find any Gryffindor artifact that he might have corrupted. The only ones that are well-known are the Sorting Hat and the Sword of Gryffindor, both accounted for.”
“But Ravenclaw?”
“Surely he would have looked for Rowena’s diadem.”
“Could he find something that has been lost for a thousand years?”
Albus slowly nodded. “I wouldn’t put anything past Voldemort.” This time, Augusta straightened her shoulders and managed to stop herself from flinching. “Where he might have found the diadem or hidden it, though, I do not know. I am tracking that as the best lead, but work is going slowly.”
“And Slytherin?”
“Slytherin had more artifacts than most floating out in the world. I know that he was inquiring for them when he worked at a Dark artifacts shop in Knockturn Alley immediately after he left Hogwarts.”
“I have—someone who used to fancy me, and also used to work at that shop.” Augusta grimaced. It would mean stirring up old memories to go investigating that particular connection, but she’d been widowed for years. It would at least bring no dishonor on her husband or call that connection into question. “I hope you’ll accept information from that quarter?”
“What is his name?”
“Virgil Burke. One of the smaller branches, though, not the main family.”
“Anyone who has a connection to Tom Riddle’s childhood could be valuable.” Albus smiled at her, and unlike her own smile, Augusta knew this one was sincere. “Thank you, my dear. It’s been much more valuable than I imagined, having you as part of my side.”
Augusta reached out and patted his hand, while she vowed to remember that stab about “more valuable than I imagined.” “I’ll owl Virgil tonight. It’ll probably take him a few days to respond. It’s been years since he heard from me, and he’ll be cautious.”
“Was he a Death Eater?”
“I doubt it. You-Know-Who was only taking the battle-tested through most of his reign, right? Or at least those willing to torture. Dear Virgil is as much of a coward as my dear grandson.”
Albus’s smile turned even softer. “Take the time you need. Voldemort thinks himself immortal, but so is our cause.”
*
Lord Voldemort rose to his feet the minute Harry Apparated into the clearing. He held the locket, gleaming, in his hand. He saw the moment Harry came to a stop at the sight of it, and the way his magic coiled lazily in the air around him, ready to strike if necessary.
“What is the matter, Harry? This is harmless to you.”
“I know what Horcruxes do.”
Harry’s voice had the resonant timber that Lord Voldemort heard so seldom, since most of the time he feigned to have lived only this life. Lord Voldemort moved a step forwards and lowered his own voice, to preserve the moment. “Indeed? But did you ever face a fully-awakened Horcrux while in the presence of your other Voldemorts?”
Harry thought about that, his eyes resting now on the locket, now on Lord Voldemort’s face. Lord Voldemort watched the way they darkened and shone. He had to search through his memory, Lord Voldemort thought, and make sure that the words he spoke were accurate, because that was Harry all over.
“No,” Harry said at last.
Lord Voldemort nodded. “Then you would not know that I am the dominant soul. I have not splintered myself as far as I planned.” And that was all he could say on the matter. The weakness involved in such an admission clogged his throat, even if he knew he could trust Harry not to betray him.
He opened the locket. For a moment, dark swirling colors danced there, as if the inside of the Horcrux were made of opal. Then they snuffed out, and Lord Voldemort reached in and scooped out the shards of soul, the one he had placed there and the trailing shred of his victim’s. It, too, was dark and had traces of red. Lord Voldemort would not have looked to distinguish it from his own if Harry had not lent him that book.
He would have been able to. But he would not have looked.
“What are you doing?” Harry breathed out. He stared at the subtle, shimmering mass that stretched like jeweled silk over the center of Lord Voldemort’s palm. “I don’t think you’re supposed to—I mean, you’re not supposed to be able to—”
“I know, my dear,” Lord Voldemort said softly, testing. Harry didn’t look up at the endearment. His eyes were wide, a different color yet again from the one they’d had while he was sifting through his memory. “You may touch, if you like,” Lord Voldemort added, and held out the mingled souls on his pale palm.
Harry looked up at that, his eyes reflecting the swimming shades of the magic. “I couldn’t!”
“It will not damage anything.”
“But, I mean—it’s your soul.”
“Which I valued so little that I placed it in a locket made special only because one of my ancestors owned it.” Instead of under your guardianship. “I wish to have you touch it.” Lord Voldemort moved his hand closer with a swaying motion of his arm, watching Harry with devouring eyes all the while. Harry swallowed roughly.
“Your arm is not a snake,” he muttered, but he did reach out and skim his fingers quickly through the mass of soul.
Lord Voldemort gasped. It felt as though a hand was petting his inner organs, so intimate a touch that he swayed towards Harry. Harry pulled his hand back at once. “Did that hurt?”
“No. It only made me—feel.”
Harry promptly retreated to the damnably polite mask that he wore almost all the time when he thought Lord Voldemort was getting close to him, which was why him not looking up at being called “dear” had been such a triumph. “Ah. Well. What are you going to do to it? I’ve read that book. I know it never said anything about pulling the souls out of the Horcrux.”
“I know. I have another method.”
“Do you.”
Lord Voldemort smiled at the dark tilt to Harry’s face, the way he curled his hand at his side as if he would lash out. “Yes, I do. I am going to give your death magic something to do, as well. You told me that the Hallows were becoming restlessly. This is a task worthy of their magnificence.”
Harry stared at him with his eyes slightly narrowed, and said nothing.
“Come,” Lord Voldemort said, and stepped backwards with his hands full of the glorious shadow of his soul—of his souls. “Reintegrate me, Master of Death.”
*
Anaelyssa: Sirius is a little grossed-out, but he did notice them!
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His Twenty-Eighth Life