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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.

Chapter List
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Chapter Nine—All Years in a Day
“This is your new home.”
Harry looked around the secure room that Voldemort had deposited him inside. It was bigger than the stone room that he’d spent most of the year and a half in, perhaps because Voldemort knew that he was getting bigger in body. This one had tapestries on the walls, although most of them depicted bloody hunts, and the fireplace took up the majority of one wall. There was a stool and table as well as a bed, a chair that was too big for Harry to climb into and probably intended for Voldemort, and a writing desk with parchment and ink on it. There was a portable desk, too.
Harry turned to Voldemort and cocked his head.
“Use your tongue, Harry,” Voldemort hissed mockingly, stalking towards him. He’d spoken in English during most of their packing and journey, probably because other Death Eaters were helping them, but he would speak Parseltongue with a vengeance now, Harry knew. “You are not a child. I find it tiresome when you act like one.”
Harry nodded. “You want me to practice my writing?”
“I know you remember how.”
“Yes, my Lord. But I can’t always practice it well when I’m this young, for the same reason that I can’t practice much magic. My muscles are weak and not used to the motions, even if I remember how to make them.”
“Then you are to practice until you can write passably,” said Voldemort indifferently, and turned away. “I intend to have you send messages to my enemies.”
“Why would you want to do that?”
Voldemort turned back around, his own head cocked, his hand resting on his wand. Harry kept his eyes on the wand. He had seen more than enough of the harm that it could inflict, in every world.
“Who are you to question me?”
“The person who’s going to be writing these letters, my Lord. And would understand a lot better if he knew why.”
Voldemort considered him in silence for long enough that Harry nearly gave up and turned to the writing desk. But he knew how long it had taken him to master writing the one life that he wanted to try it early: his second, when he was still invested in the notion of telling other people what he was, and not to treat him like a baby. It had taken him months to write even a passable scrawl, and by then, he had thought better of telling his parents in that life who he actually was.
It took him longer to give up the notion of him having an essential being, rather than one that flowed and changed from life to life, but he’d even conquered that delusion at last.
“I wish to make the status quo clear to your parents and Dumbledore,” Voldemort said at last, and Harry started and paid attention again. “It is possible that they have not connected the lack of raids with your presence in my home. And the bargain not to harm your family will be useless if the—other side does not understand and abide by it.”
Harry nodded. That had been something that had kept him awake more than one night: the notion that one of his parents might kill a Death Eater, and enrage Voldemort enough to declare open season again. “And you’ll let me send letters when I’m passable enough at writing them?”
“Yes,” Voldemort hissed, giving Harry an approving, if scaly, look for the Parseltongue. Then he flowed out of the room. The green-and-golden snake went with him. Death-of-Rabbits remained to keep an eye on Harry.
Harry closed his eyes and wondered for a moment whether Voldemort would let him see the replies that his parents were sure to make. Then he sighed and turned towards the desk. Whether or not he ever saw them again, they were still people he wanted to protect.
*
Albus cursed under his breath as the hair, the last one he had from Harry’s head, burst into sparkling flames and burned up completely. He ended up sitting back and stretching the crooks out of his back and neck.
Tom had decided to ward whichever new location he’d moved Harry into against sympathetic magic. Albus found himself wondering whether he had discerned the method Albus had used right away, or whether Harry had been the one to tell him.
I do not understand…
But he had thought and thought on that strangeness, as much as he could, and he still did not understand. Therefore, Albus dismissed the notion of trying to divine what kind of being Harry was now, and turned his mind to another puzzle.
They had to accept the possibility that Harry might someday show up wielding a wand for Voldemort, no matter how much the boy seemed capable of escaping his influence for now. And that meant they needed someone who could effectively counter him, someone whose presence might make Harry hesitate at the very best, and someone as equally well-trained and guaranteed a kind of power at worst.
Albus nodded. He had not begun Jonathan’s training before this because the boy was still young, and because he didn’t know if the focus of a prophecy which had never come true would have any power against Tom. But they had few choices, and Sybill had repeated the prophecy a few midnights ago, staring sightlessly at the wall.
And there was the chance that Tom would someday come after Jonathan, under the heading of “unfinished business.”
It was time.
*
Jonathan listened quietly as Mr. Dumbledore told him about the training he wanted to give him. It was going to be hard. Mr. Dumbledore told him that. And he told him that he had to defeat Voldemort sometime, or at least Voldemort might think so.
And then, at the very end, he told Jonathan that he might have to fight Harry.
Mr. Dumbledore paused for a long time after that. Jonathan looked down and picked at a thread hanging off the couch. He could remember how Harry had never grabbed at the threads like another baby, but lain in his lap and just looked up at him when Jonathan promised to protect him.
“Do you think you can do that, Jonathan?” Mr. Dumbledore’s voice was big and slow and sad. It sounded like Mum and Dad’s voice when they talked about Harry.
Of course not. Never.
But Jonathan already knew that adults ignored things when you said them like that. Sirius just ruffled his hair. Mum and Dad sighed and smiled and might cry, at least Mum. Mr. Dumbledore would nod at him and then keep on doing whatever he was doing in the first place.
So Jonathan looked up and lied. “Yes, sir.”
And in the meantime, he held the real reason silent in the back of his head. He’d noticed that Mr. Dumbledore couldn’t really tell you’d lied if you looked away from him. And Jonathan did want to learn how to fight.
He would even fight Harry, if he had to.
But only to stop him. And then he would go and stop Voldemort so that Harry could come home with him.
He had to be trained to do that.
*
“It took you long enough.”
Harry grimaced a little as he stretched out the muscles in his arm and then handed the letter to Voldemort. The man began to read it with such concentration that Harry was able to study him without him looking up for a few seconds. His scaly hands were clenched on the paper, and his brow furrowed.
He really wants me to send the letter to my parents. And it has to be me, not someone who could just write for me. Why? It’s not like Mum and Dad have seen my writing before and would know whose it is.
Voldemort glanced up at him, and his mouth moved in a slow smile. It wasn’t as lipless as Voldemort’s mouth had been in most worlds, probably because he hadn’t gone through a rebirth ritual this time. “You are still focused on your parents.”
“Yes, my Lord.” Harry didn’t see the point in lying. After all, Voldemort had to know that he was only controlling Harry in the first place because of the threats he had made against his family.
Voldemort put the letter down and prowled over to him. Harry sat with the portable writing desk on his lap, soaking up the summer sunlight; it had taken him literally months to learn how to write, as he had warned Voldemort it would. Voldemort put one of those scaly hands on his cheek.
“It is not your parents I am focused on,” Voldemort murmured, and withdrew his hand after a second. “When you learn what I think of, then you will understand.”
He took the letter and left the room. Harry stared after him with his brow furrowed. That had to mean Voldemort was going to concentrate on Jonathan, still thinking he might be the prophecy child.
But Harry had the uneasy feeling that that wasn’t true, either.
*
“Dodge!”
Jonathan spun to the left and gasped as the curse ripped past him. He didn’t know for sure, but he thought Mr. Dumbledore was casting hard spells. Ones that could hurt him and make his nose bleed or hurt his feet instead of making them just stick to the ground.
“You have to concentrate, Jonathan,” said Mr. Dumbledore, lowering his own wand. “You want to be able to face Voldemort and defeat him, don’t you?”
“But it’s going to take longer than this,” Jonathan said softly, staring at the ground. They were in the meadow outside the cottage where he had watched his parents light candles for Harry last year.
“I know it is.” Mr. Dumbledore knelt down in front of him and put his hand on his shoulder. Jonathan stared at the hand. Mr. Dumbledore didn’t take it away. “But there’s a difference between trying and not trying, Jonathan. What would happen if you didn’t try?”
Jonathan had to think about it. It was hard. Everyone was always telling him he had to try at everything, like Sirius telling him that he would have to try and turn into an Animagus. It was hard to think past that. “We won’t get Harry back?” he finally asked.
“And Voldemort will win.”
From the slightly disappointed tone in Mr. Dumbledore’s voice, Jonathan wondered if he should have said that first. But both of them were true. So he just nodded.
“Good.” Mr. Dumbledore stood up and smiled at him. “You’re the prophecy child. I know you have stronger magic than this. This time, try to dodge and study the curse from the side at the same time. Can you see the way it makes the air around you waver? What do you think would happen if you had to raise a shield against it?”
Jonathan thought what would happen was he couldn’t raise it. But he nodded, and took up his stance again.
*
Lily stared at the letter that purported to be from her son. It had come hours ago, and other than the time she’d had to let go of it so Albus, James, and Sirius could read it, it hadn’t been out of her hands since.
She didn’t know whether to believe it came from Harry or not. On the one hand, if it did, that meant that some of her worst fears were nonsense. Harry was alive and still had enough limbs to write. He was allowed to write. Lily knew she would have recognized the subtle slant that came from using a Dicta-Quill.
On the other hand…
The content of the letter.
Dear Mum and Dad,
Lord Voldemort said that I was to write to you. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say here, but I suppose if he lets the letter fly away with an owl and doesn’t rip it up, then it’s good enough.
So I’ll write what I think you want to know. I hope that’s enough.
Lord Voldemort doesn’t treat me all that badly. I have enough to eat, and I spend most of my time alone, but he comes and talks to me enough that I don’t get lonely or bored. I’m working on my magic, or what I can perfect of it since I don’t have a wand. Sometimes I talk with the snakes that he leaves as my guardians.
I am a Parselmouth. But I suspect you already knew it.
What else? We made a bargain that’s going to keep you safe. That’s one reason that he decided to take back all his Death Eaters and stop making raids. Sometimes I think that he can’t have stopped it that easily, but I suppose he could if they actually listen to him. I’m just not used to anyone having that amount of control over crazy people.
I can’t come home as long as that bargain is in effect.
I wish I could. I want to see all of you. I miss seeing Dad turn into Prongs, and hearing Mum tell me stories, and I miss Jonathan. Please tell my brother I miss him. I don’t know if he can read yet, but show him this letter if he can. I miss Sirius and Dumbledore, too. Please tell Sirius not to do anything reckless. I know he’s prone to it.
I don’t know yet what’s going to happen in the future. I don’t know if Lord Voldemort is ever going to let me see you again. There’s nothing much I can do at the moment to threaten him, but I know he wants me to stay here. And I would trade my life in a heartbeat for your lives if that’s what it takes. That’s what I was going to do the night he came into the house.
I love you. I wish there was something else I could say.
Harry.
Lily lowered the letter and stared at Albus. His face seemed to have aged so much that Lily could think of some people, occasional Order members, who might not recognize him.
“What is he?” Lily whispered. “I don’t mean Voldemort.”
Albus sighed. “You realize that this letter most likely did not come from Harry, Lily? Tom has many clever tricks up his sleeve. To pretend to be your beloved son and disguise his handwriting is not at all beyond him.”
Lily looked the letter. She didn’t know why, couldn’t have explained her conviction if Albus had asked her to. Or if James, who was sitting huddled on a couch on the other side of the room, asked her to.
But she knew Harry had written it.
She spread her fingers over the parchment and heard it crackle. Yes, she knew it was him.
And she just wanted to know what he was, if he was possessed by some great spirit of knowledge, or if a ghost had taken up residence inside him when he was young, or what. She could love him if he had great and terrible magic, even if he was someone else. But she needed to know.
So she could love him.
*
On Albus’s advice, they didn’t write back.
*
Lord Voldemort rejoiced. He lifted his glass of snake venom to empty skies day after day, with no owl soaring back to deliver some letter that he would, of course, have doctored before he showed it to Potter. His cleverness roared and sang in his blood. He knew he was a genius, but the world acted properly when it returned it to him as a mirror.
He was a fool to think that I cared as much about the boy who might have been the prophecy child.
Lord Voldemort had read more of Divination since then. He knew about prophecies that coiled around and stung the one who thought to lift them, like adders in more than one way. He knew about hatred and bitterness and plans gone sour because of prophecies, because one listened to the Seers who supposedly gave them in the first place.
He was not a “one.” He was Lord Voldemort. He was beyond every rule, above every law and the common ways of destroying oneself.
Harry Potter, wise as he was, full of the shifting power of the fearlessness of death, did not understand what Lord Voldemort wanted, what his gambit with the letter had been. That was because he was not a genius. He was old and strong, but he had his blind spots.
He could never think that this was the outcome Lord Voldemort had hoped for. Let Harry Potter pour out his heart onto parchment. Let him write and wait. When no answer came back, he would grow older in his bitterness.
And Lord Voldemort would have what he wanted. Because Lord Voldemort always did.
He cannot see himself as the one who is my focus. He is too blinded by concentration on his parents, on his brother—on others. And that will keep him from opposing me until it is too late, until his worry over Dumbledore’s side festers and turns into hated because they did not respond to him.
Who will he have to turn to then, but me?
Was not Lord Voldemort wise?
*
Anaelyssa: Let Harry grow up a little first! Then he can take Voldemort down a peg.
SickPuppy: Yes, at the moment rescue isn't likely. At the moment.
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His Twenty-Eighth Life