lomonaaeren

Chapter Sixty-Four.

Title: His Twenty-Eighth Life (65/?)
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.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Sixty-Five—Forgiving Darkness

“Remus. Come in, please.”

Lily spoke the words, but her voice was strained. Remus froze for a second, and then shook his head angrily—at himself—and walked into the house. If she was wary of him, didn’t she have good reasons? He’d spent years and years living with his own wariness, his horror of what he became when the moon was full.

Even as he sat down in a high-backed chair in the Potters’ living room, he realized that he was almost hoping they would agree with him and push him out of their lives again. He could give up and go back to living the way that made the most sense to him, looking after himself the way he would a dangerous beast.

“Tea?”

Remus nodded stiffly as James appeared in the doorway of the kitchen. James nodded and retreated. Remus turned to Lily. If anything, he would have thought that she would have been the one to go make tea while James sat with him to make demands or ask questions.

But she studied him, and there was a cold fire in her eyes that Remus didn’t remember from their old friendship. He cleared his throat with a nervous sound. Perhaps her eyes softened, or perhaps they didn’t.

“One thing you will need to know if you live with us,” Lily said precisely, reaching out to pick up the teacup that was already on the table next to her, “is that we fully understand who and what Harry is, and we have accepted him.”

“I—hadn’t thought ahead to living with you.” Remus cleared his throat again and glanced back at the kitchen, but although he could see James’s shadow moving about in there, he didn’t come out yet. “I—you know all about what Harry can do?”

Lily smiled for the first time since he’d come through the door. “Well, not everything. My guess is that it would take him several millennia to explain that all to us, at least in a way we could understand. But the vague outline of who he is and what he can do, yes.”

“Including what he did to Albus?”

“Yes.”

Lily said it so unflinching. Remus felt admiration and a hopeless envy rise in him. He would never be like that, so able to stand up to the darkness of the world. He sighed. “And you think it’s justifiable?”

“Excusable, yes,” James said, coming out with the tea. He set the cup down in front of Remus, and Remus sniffed automatically, almost wondering if wolfsbane had been mixed in with the liquid. James only raised his eyebrows as he sat down next to Lily. “It hasn’t been poisoned, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No, I know that,” Remus said, choosing not to answer the question of what he was worried about. He swallowed the hot tea and looked at Lily. “I want to know why you accepted this so easily.”

“It wasn’t easily,” Lily said. “But we’d wondered for a long time whether something was different about Harry, and getting confirmation…I wasn’t that surprised. That eased things along a lot. We’d already done the majority of our thinking.”

“And you’re not worried about his—Darkness.”

“I think he’s done things in some of his lives that we would find horrifying,” Lily said. “But then again, I found it horrifying that Albus could cast a spell that stood a chance of permanently damaging my older son’s mind.”

Remus stared at her. “What?”

“That’s why Harry did what he did,” James said. He was leaning back in his chair in a relaxed posture, although his eyes were narrowed in a way that Remus knew meant trouble. “As revenge.”

“Albus wouldn’t—I mean, he valued Jonathan.” Remus had to swallow against some unattractive jealousy, as he thought how little he had been valued by Albus. “He wouldn’t take a chance at destroying his mind.”

“Ah, but he valued controlling him more than he valued his freedom. He presumably thought that Jonathan could prove a weapon against Voldemort.” Lily still flinched a little when she said the name, but her eyes were brilliant and fixed on Remus, and Remus found himself nodding without wanting to.

“And Harry found out about it and freed Jonathan from the spell, but Jonathan still had to act as if he was controlled. That was one reason that Sirius has been teaching Jonathan so many spells the last few years.”

“How—I mean, Albus was good at Legilimency. Wouldn’t he have known that Jonathan was free from the spell?”

“Harry used his power to shield Jonathan’s mind. Albus would have tried it again.” James clenched his hand in a fist that reminded Remus for a moment, horrifyingly, of his own werewolf claws. “Do you understand now why we would forgive our younger son almost everything, and Albus almost nothing?”

Remus had to say it, although he shook a little as he did it. “That doesn’t mean that Albus’s every decision was evil.”

“It doesn’t,” Lily said, with a sharp nod. “I think many of the decisions that he made before he started interfering in the lives of my sons were fine. But I wasn’t going to let him control our actions because he was afraid of Harry.”

“He wasn’t afraid of him—”

“Then you never heard the things he was saying before the end,” James said, with a slashing shake of his head. “The Master of Death this, and the Master of Death that. Nothing sane was coming out of his mouth. That’s why they didn’t have any trouble recommending him for internment at St. Mungo’s.”

“Did Harry do that?”

“Yes.”

James said those words as if they weren’t horrifying, and his gaze was steady on Remus. Remus tried to work the saliva into his mouth, but it was stuck down in his throat and refused to come out.

“And you can still go on defending him,” Remus breathed, looking back and forth between Lily and James.

“Did you not listen to what we said about not knowing everything, but accepting Harry the way he is?” Lily asked. There was an enormous amount of weariness in her voice now, but Remus wasn’t sure why. Surely she should understand where he was coming from? “And what Albus did to Jonathan’s mind?”

“That still doesn’t excuse what Harry did to Albus.”

“Why is driving someone mad worse than enslaving them for life?”

Remus turned his head away. “I don’t mean—I shouldn’t have to make decisions like that. I haven’t gone through what Albus or Jonathan did. I can’t say which was worse.”

“The thing is, Moony,” James murmured, his voice kind but as firm as Lily’s, “you have to make those decisions now. And sitting there and saying that you can’t make them is another way of making them, you know, if you think about it. You sound like you’re on Albus’s side and you’ve decided that and there’s nothing that we can do to change your mind. Is that true?”

Remus looked down at his hands. They were trembling, and he was glad that he had already set his teacup aside. He was speechless, paralyzed, frozen, except for that trembling, and confronted by the only thing that he feared as much as his werewolf nature.

Who was he to make choices like this? To make evaluations? There was so little he knew. So much he had been mistaken about. What happened if he made the wrong decision? Either Harry would terrorize the world and Lily and James would stand behind him, or he was justifying what sounded almost like the Imperius Curse.

“I can’t choose,” he said, and closed his eyes when he realized he sounded hysterical. But that was the way he felt. He shivered and shook and waited for James to take the lead the way he always had for so many years.

“Not this time, Moony.”

Remus cracked a cautious eye open. James was standing in front of him, but he didn’t have the reassuring smile on his face that Remus was familiar with. In fact, he looked as if he was grinning the way Remus imagined his wolf form grinning when it was ready to tear out someone’s throat.

“We let you put off taking responsibility for too long,” James continued. “We said that it was understandable that you were so afraid of hurting someone, what with your curse, and so we took up the burden. But now, there’s no one to make the choice but you. Albus is in St. Mungo’s, and he’ll stay there until Harry either decides he’s paid enough or until he’s no longer a danger to Jonathan, I’m sure. Our sons have revealed themselves to us. Sirius is on our side. So, you see, the only one who can decide to stand with us or betray us is—you.”

“How can you say that?” Remus breathed. “What happens if I had the choice to stand in Harry’s way and didn’t, and then later it turns out that he’s something terrible that wants to rule the world?”

“Be careful about calling my son a thing,” Lily said.

Remus nodded, although what she'd said was like a jolt in his breast. He hadn't thought she would take his words so literally. "I apologize. I just. I keep thinking, wondering, what if I make the wrong choice and then it turns out that I hurt people? Hundreds of people? Thousands of them?"

"So you refuse to make any choice at all."

"Yes, exactly." Remus was relieved. Lily sounded musing, not like she blamed him. That ought to excuse him from this decision.

"That's not acceptable."

Remus spun back to face James, feeling as though someone had started his heart galloping like a wild Abraxan. Always before, his friends had understood, and he'd never wished to return to being a child as desperately as he did now. "But it's still--"

"Because you're hurting people, right here and now, by not making that decision," James continued.

"I am? Who?" Remus tried, confusedly, to remember anyone Albus might have introduced him to who was on Harry's side now, and only came out of the confusion when James knelt in front of him and took his hands.

"Us," he said quietly. "Our whole family, and Sirius, who keeps lamenting to me how one of our best friends turned out to be such a coward. Harry, who knows you from other worlds and says that most of the time you're stronger than this. Do you really want to keep putting off the decision and lose our friendship because of hypothetical harm you might do random strangers?"

"I," Remus said, and swallowed through the dust in his throat. "I am still being courageous. Harry needs someone to stand up to him. To bind him."

"No one can do that," Lily said gently. "We have to rely on his conscience. If he hasn't gone mad or started hurting the world so far, after so many lives, then I think we can say that he has a strong one."

Remus buried his head in his hands. "After what he did to Albus?"

"After what Albus did to Jonathan, how can you be on his side?" James asked, and his voice had gone cold. He withdrew his hands from Remus's. "You're putting far too much weight on the loss of one single ally, and acting as though--"

"Let me, dear," Lily said. Remus looked up to see her leaning towards James and breathing something into his ear. Remus's wolf-enhanced hearing might have been able to tell him what it was, but he refused to use his senses that way.

James turned and left the room. Lily sat down in the chair across from him again and regarded him thoughtfully. "What is it that you're really afraid of, Remus?"

"I told you. Failing people. Hurting people." Remus looked away. It was why he had never been able to accept the wolf in himself, which some people had suggested as a way of becoming more at peace. All he needed was to think he was in control, and then have the wolf spring out at someone snarling.

"But you're already doing that. Why is it better to pause and refuse to make a decision rather than go ahead and stop the pain? Does it make you happy?"

"I've never been unhappier in my life," Remus whispered, shaking. At the moment, he could only call up some tattered memories of joy, mostly when he had been a child and was lying on the grass in the sunlight with the other Marauders, plotting a prank.

"Then what do you have to lose by making the choice?"

"Morality!" Remus snapped, unnerved by the calm way Lily watched him. He had always thought she was more moral than James, the way she had yelled at him for playing pranks and refused to countenance even bullying Slytherins. "I can't give up being a good person because you want me to!"

Lily shrugged. "Then you should also refuse to give up being a good person because that is what Albus would have wanted."

"He was the one who taught me morality!"

Lily's face changed, but Remus couldn't read the expression that came over it, and he refused to sniff her scent for a clue. "I see. And of course he could never be wrong."

"If he made a wrong decision about Harry, then--" Remus shut his eyes.

Lily stirred, and Remus heard the soft sound even though he hated hearing it. "Yes?" she encouraged. "I think you're almost there, Remus."

"If he made a wrong decision about Harry," Remus whispered, his lips aching, "then he might have made a wrong decision about me."

It had haunted him for years, from the memory of Severus Snape's face as he loomed in a tunnel and barely scrambled out of range of Remus's snapping jaws. Albus had trusted him, and Remus had nearly killed someone else. Didn't that mean that the people who said werewolves were too dangerous to be schooled around normal children were right and Albus should never have let him attend Hogwarts?

But Albus had forgiven him, allowed him a second chance. Question Albus, Remus knew, and he had to question whether he should have been expelled.

"I think that he didn't," Lily said. "Just because he could have doesn't mean he did."

"But he could have."

Lily rolled her eyes, which shocked Remus enough that he shut up and blinked at her. "You can dwell in dreams and uncertainties and impossibilities," Lily said, her voice growing sharp. "Or you can move forwards with the people who do care about you. James does. Harry does. Jonathan does, although he doesn't remember you that well because he never saw you that often."

"You didn't include yourself in that list," Remus mumbled. "Or remember that you thought I might be the traitor during the war."

"I am sorry for that, Remus." Lily looked honestly distressed, and shook her head slowly. "There were all sorts of clues there to Peter's true intentions, and I can't believe we overlooked them. Or thought we should keep you away from us."

"But do you care about me?"

"I find it harder when you're so intent on downplaying your ability to make choices, and choosing to hurt my sons."

"But I didn't! I didn't choose anything!"

Lily shrugged. "Think about what you're saying. If you didn't choose anything, that also means that you didn't choose to oppose Albus when he did those mad things. Or choose to look at Harry and see what he is. Or believe the truth James and I are telling you about what Albus did to Jonathan's mind."

Remus closed his eyes and shivered. "If I chose to stand with you, you'd help me control it?"

"Control what?"

"The b-beast in me." Remus hated the way his voice wobbled, but if Lily and James were right, it was no more shameful than anything else he had done so far. "It always wants to get out. You'd help me control it and hold it back?"

"Dear Remus." Lily's voice sounded sympathetic, but Remus couldn't open his eyes to look. "Of course we'll make sure that you have a locked room and all the Wolfsbane Potion you need."

"Not that." Remus forced himself to look. Lily was leaning forwards, one hand paused as if in the act of reaching out to him. She studied him intently. "I mean--you'll keep me from corrupting other people?"

Lily sighed and blinked, something that might have been a tear visible in her eye and then gone. "If that's what you want, then we'll help you work on it."

Remus nodded. There was a huge blob in his throat, but he worked to swallow for a bit, and then managed to choke out, "Thank you. I was always happiest with my friends. I can't believe I left them."

"Just keep in mind that James and I have children, now. This agreement includes them too."

"Of course," Remus whispered. Honestly, the things he had heard about Harry today had just confused him further. He wanted to give up thinking about this. He needed someone else to make the decision for him. Maybe then it would make sense.

As he let his eyes slip closed and James came back from the other room to grip his shoulders and give him a friendly shake, Remus decided that he much preferred the certainty settling over his shoulders like a cloak. He had never much liked the wisdom about werewolves needing a pack, given that it only brought him closer to seeming like an animal, but he had had one with the Marauders, and with Albus.

He would have another one now.

And if they could help him protect others from his contagion, then perhaps someday he would be able to join in protecting them, too.