lomonaaeren

Chapter Forty-Four.

Title: His Twenty-Eighth Life (45/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Eventual Harry Potter/Voldemort; mentions of others, including canon pairings, in the background, and past Harry/others
Rating: R (more for violence than sex)
Content Notes: violence, torture, gore, manipulation, angst, Master of Death Harry Potter, reincarnation, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts
Summary: Harry Potter has been reborn again and again into new bodies as the Master of Death, some of them not human, none of them exactly like his old one—but he has always helped to defeat Voldemort in each new world. Now he’s Harry Potter again, but his slightly older brother is the target of the prophecy, and Harry assumes his role is going to be to support Jonathan in his defeat of Voldemort. At least, that’s what he thinks until Voldemort comes that Halloween night, discovers what Harry is, and kidnaps him. The story of a long fight between Voldemort’s sadism and Harry’s generosity.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a very long fic, exploring some fairly dark character interactions. While the heart of the story is Harry’s relationship with Voldemort, that’s going to change only slowly and over time, and there will be plenty of concentration on other characters, too. Also, please take the tags/content notes seriously.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Forty-Five—Wake the Hounds

“So the Minister is going to do what we say?” Harry stretched out on the bench in the center of the clearing, the one Voldemort had spent the most time carving. It was now almost comfortable enough to lie on without a Cushioning Charm.

Not that he got much chance to try that, because Voldemort cast one before Harry could even finish drawing a breath. Harry glared at him and got a glare right back, before Voldemort said slowly, reluctantly, “He will listen to what we say. Matters would be simpler if you let me cast the Imperius on him.”

“It’s wrong.”

“I did not think that you held much impression of morals, anymore.” Voldemort settled beside him, his eyes gleaming brighter than normal as darkness descended over the clearing. Harry suspected that was one feature about him that would never change, no matter how many Horcruxes he let Harry put back in him. “Was I wrong?”

“I don’t think the Imperius is wrong, under certain circumstances. But someone could notice if you cast the curse. Dumbledore probably checks Fudge for it regularly, and anyone else who’s important in the Ministry. We can use other tactics.”

Voldemort laughed softly, and continued the conversation in Parseltongue. “I should have known that you would never offer such an objection because of conventional morals.”

Harry rolled over, and rolled his eyes at Voldemort at the same time. “I’m a lot more conventional than you think. I wouldn’t still be sane after seventeen hundred years if I wasn’t.”

“You are talking about the focus on routine and trying to appear normal that you have experienced in so many of your lives?”

“That I chose in so many of my lives. Don’t mistake me, Voldemort. If I didn’t try to make human connections, then by now I would be mad. Or a god. Or something that appears in a world like this one and immediately cuts itself off from humans, even if it’s in a human body.”

“Then I am forced to be glad for your insistence on being human.”

Harry looked carefully at Voldemort. His voice had deepened in a way that told Harry what he was thinking. “I am never going to join you in immortality.”

“You may yet change your mind.”

“I told you how important my mortality is to protecting my mind, and you immediately jump to the opposite conclusion? You’re smarter than that.”

Voldemort tensed like a snake about to strike, and Harry realized that he would almost welcome it. He still preferred it when things were more like his other lives. He didn’t want to give up his friendship with Voldemort, but he did want to get rid of the man’s obsession with him.

“You say that you would go mad. On the other hand, you have never tried the companionship of someone who knows what you are and fully accepts it. Someone who is as immortal as you are, who can stay alive as long as you do.”

“Jonathan knows what I am. And fully accepts me.”

“He will die. Unless you intend for him to join us in immortality?”

Harry snorted. “I never intend to become immortal, myself. Not by staying in this life. He can have the books if he wants them, but I don’t think he will. He’s too strongly connected to natural life and he’ll probably have a family and children. I think I would prefer it if he did. I love him, but it’s not fair for him to spend his whole life just being devoted to me.”

Voldemort was silent. Harry thought it was because he wasn’t interested in discussing Jonathan, and started to ask Voldemort if he wanted to talk about another tactic to use during the war. But then Voldemort leaned forwards and placed a hand on the bench near Harry. His eyes flared in the darkness.

“You should consider immortality in this life.”

“Why? I’ve always died and gone on.”

“You could use the same methods to make yourself immortal that you were recommending to me.”

“I could. But I don’t want to.”

“Then I am not enough for you?”

Harry stared. The last thing he had expected to hear from Voldemort was hurt.

He sat back up, watching Voldemort, who still crouched like a great cat and stared at him. The lazy swirl of magic around him, nearly constant when they were in the clearing, had stopped. It remained tight and flat to Voldemort’s skin instead, as if it didn’t know yet if its master would want it to strike out or stay hidden away.

Harry switched back to English, because he thought it was less intimate than Parseltongue. “I’m sorry. I never meant to make you feel like I didn’t value your friendship. But it’s true all the same. I am going to die. My immortality is conditional. I want to keep it that way.”

“Why?” Voldemort’s breath still sounded like the soft warning hiss of a snake even though he had also switched back to English. “What benefit do you think it would gain you that remaining immortal with me would not?”

“Like I said, I think it’s the thing keeping me sane. I would have become mental if I’d continued living in my first life after everyone I was close to had died. The same thing would happen to me here. If I lost Jonathan and Sirius and Mum and even Dad and Remus and Albus, as infuriating as they can be—”

“But you would have me. That is the difference.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it again. But Voldemort pressed closer, and his magic was buzzing now like the tail of a rattlesnake, and Harry knew he had to speak. “I’m sorry. That’s not enough.”

Voldemort flung himself away, and for a moment the air of the clearing was as dark as midnight in the inside of a cave with his anger. Then he was gone. He Apparated so loudly that Harry winced and raised a hand to rub his ear.

Then he leaned back on the bench with a sigh. He wished he could have given another answer, but he did have to tell the truth.

*

Acanthus ignored the way she could feel Flint staring at her back. If he wanted to come over to her and have an actual conversation, then he could. But she wasn’t going to do anything to answer his rude staring.

By the time he cleared his throat, breakfast was half over. Acanthus turned around and nodded. “Yes, Flint?”

“You spend a lot of time with a Gryffindor for someone who’s Slytherin.”

Acanthus did her best to assume a patient expression, but she could feel disapproval tugging down the corners of her mouth, while Flint just blinked at her. She had thought Flint was going to approach her about a possible alliance with Jonathan, but no, it was just House prejudice. “I follow the power,” she told him in a clipped voice, and stood up.

“Huh? How can there be any power in that?”

Acanthus turned to consider him. He sounded genuinely puzzled. Of course, he sounded that way about everything from Gryffindor’s House colors to the existence of planets. “Maybe I could tell you.”

Flint had enough instincts to bob his head. “In a less public place?”

“That might be the suggestion of someone intelligent.”

Flint flushed dully, but didn’t snap at her. “Then you need to find someplace less public.”

Than the Great Hall at breakfast? Not that that’s difficult. “Meet me in the alcove opposite the statue of the one-eyed witch. It might be that I’ll have something to say to you.”

“Might be?”

Honestly, the stupidity of his inbred family alone is an argument against blood purity. “Will be,” she said. “If two smart people show up,” she couldn’t help adding over her shoulder, while she picked up her bag and swept out of the Great Hall.

*

Jonathan halted cautiously near the alcove next to Acanthus. He didn’t really think she was leading him into a trap, not when she was loyal to Harry, but he didn’t think he knew as much magic as Flint, either.

“What are you going to want me to do?” he asked Acanthus once they saw that Flint wasn’t there yet. “Cast some strong magic to impress him?”

“I did promise him power. Normally I would say that you could talk more about politics, but given that it’s Flint, you’ll need something flashier. One of your spells would be great if you think you can get away with casting it in the corridors.”

Jonathan smiled. With the way that Dumbledore thought he had him under control, Jonathan believed he could get away with it even if Filch and Mrs. Norris were hiding around the next corridor. “Fine,” he said, and started to warm up his wrist with small flicks of his wand. “I know something flashy that won’t even hurt him.”

“You think you can impress me, Potter?”

Jonathan watched Flint walk towards them. He was a burly fifth-year who seemed to have a sneer for everyone and everything, except maybe the members of his Quidditch team when they’d just won. But Acanthus only rolled her eyes at him. “Would I have told you about him if he couldn’t, Flint?”

“Who knows why you do anything, Parkinson?”

“I think she’s really easy to understand,” Jonathan put in, because he did. He’d spent enough time around Acanthus to know what she wanted: power and respect, probably the reasons that she got Sorted into Slytherin in the first place.

“I don’t.” Flint folded his arms and looked down his nose at Jonathan. “You’re an even more annoying second-year than she is, since you’re not even a Slytherin. If you really think you can impress me, go ahead and try.”

Jonathan turned around and aimed his wand at the far side of the corridor. He already had a spell in mind that he and Sirius had practiced during their latest dueling session. “Ignis lapis!”

The fire jumped away from his wand and hit the wall, and then began to melt the stone there. It made a terrific fountain of light that blazed away and leaped up and down like real water. It didn’t even hurt the stone of the floor of the rest of the wall, since it could only make the stone it was actually targeted at burn. Jonathan grinned.

“Enough! Enough, Potter!”

Flint was actually shouting. Jonathan ended the spell and turned around to stare at him. He hadn’t thought a Slytherin would be that scared by the spell. But then he saw even Acanthus was standing away from him with her hands tucked behind her back.

“Where did you learn that?” Flint whispered, his eyes darting around.

“From someone who’s training me,” Jonathan said, with a slight shrug. “It’s important that I know that kind of spell if I have to fight in a war someday.”

Flint stared at him with his nostrils flared. Jonathan still didn’t know what was going on. Had Flint been hit by that spell when he was younger or something? Jonathan hoped he hadn’t. It was a harsh spell.

“I believe you, Parkinson,” Flint said abruptly. “Spend time with Potter all you want.” And he turned and stomped off down the corridor.

“What is going on?” Jonathan asked, turning to Acanthus. At least she’d taken her hands out from behind her back again, although she still looked more shaken than Jonathan would have preferred. “Is there something about that spell that’s forbidden, or—Dark or something?” He knew that Sirius had taught him Dark spells, but he hadn’t specifically mentioned that the Stone Fire spell was one.

“It’s the fact that you could cast it at all.” Acanthus looked at him and tilted her head up and down in a strange nod. “Flint knows that no ordinary second-year ought to be able to do that. He wouldn’t be able to do that. There are people in the world impressed by raw magical power. I have some in my own family. And Flint’s one, too.”

“Oh.” Jonathan thought about that. “Should I not have done that? Is he going to go and spread it around Slytherin that I have more power than I should and know spells that a second-year shouldn’t know?”

“No. He’s going to be impressed enough to keep his mouth shut. And to stop interfering with me.”

“Okay.”

“Besides, he doesn’t have to spread the word around Slytherin. I’m going to do that.”

“Acanthus!” Jonathan glared at her. “We don’t want people thinking that I’m trying to get up some kind of rebellion against Dumbledore or something!” He whispered the words, even though he’d already cast a privacy spell around them, the same kind that he used when he was showing spells to Acanthus and the twins. “The Slytherins are incredible gossips, you know that, especially some of the upper years!”

Acanthus shrugged. “They need to know that they can either follow you or not, but they need to know about you, Jonathan. That’s the only way that you can have a power base.”

“I don’t want a power base! For all the reasons I just told you!”

“So you don’t want people to know they have an option for someone to follow other than Dumbledore? You don’t want to have people know about your brother?”

Jonathan hesitated. “How is people being impressed by me going to help them follow Harry? And you know that Harry isn’t into displays of raw magical power like the one I just gave Flint.”

“This is getting the ground ready for next year.” Acanthus was speaking with exaggerated patience now, shaking her head a little as if she was trying to help Jonathan but thought there was no helping some people. “Making sure that people know about your brother when he comes to school here. Then he can have a whole bunch of people following him around and protecting him. You want that, don’t you?”

Jonathan studied her suspiciously. It made sense, but still, he had to wonder just what Acanthus’s game was.

Acanthus caught his eye and began to laugh quietly, shaking her head. “Come on, Potter. You think I want to follow someone myself who no one knows about? And they would all laugh at my family for following? Of course not. I’m doing this for myself as much as for you, if you can accept that much.”

Jonathan nodded slowly. “Yes, all right. But how do you know that Dumbledore won’t hear about this and do something about it?”

Acanthus put on such big eyes that Jonathan would have believed it if he didn’t know her. “I was only trying to make sure that people knew about Jonathan Potter, sir! He’s the one whose family has been hurt by You-Know-Who, and he’s training to go up against him! Some people probably lied and twisted rumor, but I didn’t mean any harm!”

“He’ll think you meant harm just because you’re a Slytherin,” Jonathan said, but his lips twitched a little. Acanthus had actually spoken without a single lie, and that was going to be important since Dumbledore was a Legilimens. “If he tries his mind-altering spells on you? Or reading your mind?”

Acanthus gave him a demure smile. “I am really, really looking forward to it if he does.”

*

Harry sighed and put his head in his hands. Now there was a letter from the Flints, of all families, inquiring in a Flint’s version of delicate language whether he really was plotting to lead a resistance against Dumbledore.

“The Flints,” he told Fawkes, who was checking over his feathers one by one on the perch next to Harry’s bed. “I’ve never been allied with them in any world!”

Fawkes looked up and gave an absent trill, then went back to hunting the imperfection among his feathers. Harry stared at the letter, shaking his head. He’d thought he would make allies, sure, but he’d thought they would come through Sirius, his mother, maybe Voldemort—not his little brother.

Then he sighed, and began to write an answer. He supposed he could do the same thing with them that he had with Acanthus’s family: meet with them outside Hogwarts and show them convincing evidence that he was the Master of Death. It wouldn’t much matter if he actually met with Marcus, the one who had seen Jonathan perform “an impressive display of magic,” according to the letter.

He sent off the letter with Fawkes, frowning, and sat rapping his fingers against the table. He had thought that he was going to conduct a resistance against Dumbledore mostly by helping other people. He hadn’t counted on leading the resistance himself.

Then Harry snorted and flopped back in his chair. “Well, who said that that part was going to be different from other worlds?” he muttered, and turned to the letter that had been occupying him before the one from the Flints arrived.

It was on sleek black parchment, the letters printed in white, and had a soft gleam that made it look as if it was made of oiled wood. The seal was a rearing basilisk, and the letter said only, I miss you. I would miss you more if you died.

Harry decided simple was best, wrote, I am not going to be immortal with you, using a spell on the back of the parchment, and cast another spell that would make it seek out Voldemort. He watched it flap out the window with a frown on his face.

He missed their complex relationship, too, but his answer to that question was not ever going to change.