lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Part Four

Harry didn’t know for sure if he would have felt the impact against the wards if he’d been asleep. Voldemort was the one in charge of them, and the one who normally would have gone to defend them.

But Harry hadn’t been able to sleep, and was sitting up in their shared bed reading a book of simple stories in French. He started and looked up as the thump echoed through the house, and his scar burned as Voldemort came awake.

“What is that?” Harry asked, dropping instinctively into Parseltongue.

“Not something you need to worry about,” Voldemort said, his tongue flickering briefly over Harry’s hand. “I will see to it.”

“They attacked the wards?”

“Yes, but not with any strength. Probably whoever it was burned up their spells and their luck with the one attack.”

Voldemort’s voice was encouraging, but Harry stood up and wrapped his robe around him, absently securing the medallion on the front that would surround him with personal shields of Voldemort’s design. “I still want to see.”

Voldemort turned his head a little, stubbornly, but he would have been able to feel through the bond that Harry had no intention of yielding. They left the bedroom together and went down the staircase, turning towards the right side of the house. Harry followed, because he didn’t have any idea of where the attack had landed in the first place. Voldemort must have felt that much.

Voldemort paused when they got to one of the windows that looked out over the sea and drew his wand through the air in a complex pattern. Harry watched a part of the wall waver and dissolve. They were looking straight through it at the cliff above the sea, where a single person in worn robes sprawled senseless.

Harry blinked. There was something familiar about the person, but with his face turned away, Harry didn’t know who it was.

“Amateur,” Voldemort said, and waved his wand to float the body into the air and bring it through the wall. Harry was relieved to note, as Voldemort dropped him, that the person still breathed, although he didn’t stir as Voldemort knelt down next to him and moved his head back and forth.

Harry caught his breath as he saw the boy’s face. He did know him, after all.

Voldemort glanced up swiftly. “Something you want to say, Harry?”

“He’s a Muggleborn I went to school with. Justin Finch-Fletchley. I have no idea what he’s doing here.”

Voldemort turned Justin’s hands upwards. There was some kind of thick, transparent smear on them Harry didn’t understand.

“The potion called Belladonna’s Bane,” Voldemort said, his hisses more clipped now than they’d been just a minute ago. The Horcrux bond filled with swirling emotions as strong as a hurricane. “If it worked, it would have seeped through the wards and destroyed everything living in the house—human, plant, or animal.”

Harry felt a little sick. “You wouldn’t have died, though. Since you have Horcruxes.”

“Do you believe I was primarily concerned about my own safety?”

Harry had to turn his head away for a moment. In the meantime, Voldemort’s fury rose, and Harry turned back to see him aiming his wand at Justin. Harry didn’t recognize the wand motion, but he didn’t have to.

“No!”

Harry didn’t consider the consequences before he simply shoved Voldemort aside. The curse that would have struck Justin flew away wildly and hit the wall, which exploded in a shower of stone. Harry turned so that he was standing between Justin and Voldemort.

“He would have killed you. He will pay for his life with that.”

“You still don’t need to torture him.”

“Death is the penalty for assassination attempts on Death Eaters. What do you believe should be the price for one on you?” Voldemort was pacing in a circle now, although not as if he wanted to get around Harry and hurt Justin. He was entirely focused on Harry, his eyes wide and brilliant. Harry didn’t understand the lashes of emotion that came through the bond, cold and hot, joy and anger. “You know that he came here to kill you.”

“And you.”

“I imagine that you were the primary target.”

Harry breathed out slowly. “Something you’ll never know unless you let him live long enough to question him.”

Voldemort’s tongue darted out as if to taste the air, while the emotions in the Horcrux bond at least slowed down a little. “What is it that you are asking me to do, Harry?”

“Not just make him disappear.” Harry would have liked to speak in English, to emphasize his point, but Justin might wake up any second, and Harry honestly didn’t want him to hear this. “If you’re insistent that you have laws and you’re a—a benevolent dictator or something, then give him a trial.”

“The outcome will be the same.”

“But you’ll look fairer, and no one will be able to say that he just vanished and use his name to stir up discontent against you.” Harry stepped slowly forwards, since Voldemort had stopped circling, and put a hand on his arm. “Do it for me,” he added softly.

Voldemort laughed as softly, while the bond heated and warmed with happiness that Harry didn’t understand. “I thought you said that you would not try to seduce me? When you are not good at it, and I would know exactly what you were doing?”

“I’m asking you to do it even knowing that.”

Voldemort bent his head—yes, Harry was sure that his neck was longer than it had been a few days ago—and brushed his tongue against Harry’s wrist. “It shall be done.”

*

“Who helped you brew Belladonna’s Bane?”

Harry sat stiffly in the ornate chair at Voldemort’s side, and tried not to show how uncomfortable he was. He was the one who had asked for this, he reminded himself again and again. A trial in public, and a confession under Veritaserum, as Voldemort now mandated in all trials, and an execution with the Killing Curse.

Harry already knew that he couldn’t spare Justin’s life. He could spare him torture at Voldemort’s hands, and that was all.

Justin was seated in front of him and Voldemort on a simple wooden chair, with an audience that mostly consisted of Death Eaters, although there was the odd Ministry worker or reporter sprinkled in among them. They were in the very courtroom at the Ministry where Harry had once been tried for underage magic. Harry was sure that wasn’t a coincidence, if the low hum of contentment flowing through the Horcrux bond was any indication.

“Hermione Granger,” Justin said, in a voice as wooden as his chair.

Harry closed his eyes. He hoped that no one who was staring at Justin would look at him right now. He couldn’t keep his reaction from showing on his face.

Or ringing down the bond.

“She will suffer for this,” Voldemort said, while one hand reached across the gap between their chairs to stroke Harry’s shoulder.

Harry shoved as much negation as he could down the bond. He didn’t want Hermione to suffer. He wanted to understand why she’d done this, he wanted it not to have happened, he wanted Voldemort to be the uncomplicated enemy he’d always done his best to destroy—

He wanted things to go back to the way they were before.

“Where did she purchase the ingredients?” Voldemort asked, ignoring Harry’s denial for the moment, his hand still resting firmly in place on Harry’s shoulder.

“I don’t know.”

Most of the other questions that Voldemort asked Justin, he answered the same way. It seemed that he hadn’t been involved much in the actual plan to brew the potion, only trusted with the coordinates of Voldemort and Harry’s home and told to Apparate there and fling the potion against the wards. Apparently, Hermione had believed the potion would destroy the wards, too.

Justin also didn’t know how Hermione had got the Apparition coordinates.

By the end of the interrogation, Harry was sitting with his head bowed and his clenched fists beside each other in his lap. Voldemort glanced at them once, his eyes rising to Harry’s face. Then he turned away and addressed Justin again.

“For your actions against Harry Potter-Gaunt, you are sentenced to death by the Killing Curse. Macnair.”

Walden Macnair stepped forwards with a big, nasty smile. Apparently, he was allowed to execute humans now, and he enjoyed every nuance of the work. Harry just stared in silence as he drew his wand.

The green light of the Killing Curse flew. Justin slumped over in his chair. Harry didn’t think he’d even been given the time for the Veritaserum to wear off, which meant he had essentially died calm and not knowing what would happen.

Small mercies.

Apparently, he was filling the bond with enough chaos that Voldemort didn’t want him in public anymore. He swept to his feet and cast some kind of spell that made his black robes long and encompassing, closing around Harry and shielding him from sight. Harry could hear the crowd murmuring, but couldn’t make out any of the distinct words. That might be a spell from Voldemort, too, come to think of it.

Voldemort gave several crisp orders to—someone. Harry felt Voldemort catch his arm. He stood and walked away with him, numb and feeling as though something frozen in him had begun to break up into jagged shards.

He didn’t want to be in public when it happened.

Voldemort got that from the bond, or maybe Harry even whispered a request that he didn’t remember. Voldemort gathered him close, turned to smoke the way he had done to approach the house, and blew him into the air.

Harry went along with him, and listened to the noise of breaking ice in his ears.

*

By the time they reached the house, Harry had broken up enough that he was struggling in Voldemort’s arms with grief and rage. Voldemort flew through one of the windows and straight to the trapdoor Harry had seen once before, which led into the mirrored room. Voldemort’s arm solidified long enough to pull open the trapdoor, and then he blew in and down.

Harry felt himself set on his feet, and snatched his holly wand from the holster it usually rested in on his arm. He screamed and launched his first spell, one that didn’t have any incantation behind it. It manifested as bubbling red fire that struck one of the mirrors.

The mirror melted and ran down the wall. The rest of the glass stayed intact.

It felt mocking. Harry twisted on one heel and launched a sharp attack against the mocking reflection, which blew apart in a blast of shards as he landed. But there were still more mirrors around them, all intact, all showing Harry’s twisted, red face and his wand as he raised his arm.

His next spell didn’t have a name, and neither did the ones after that. Red serpents and black, green fire and grey, hail and ice and acid and water, splashed out of Harry, and the mirrors absorbed them or cracked or melted or splintered. He moved, restless, still full of fury, and the mirrors vanished in huge swathes like Nagini’s skin when she shed her scales.

Finally, his magic wouldn’t respond to him anymore, except for hard painful tingles up his arm when he aimed his wand, and his legs were too exhausted to bear him. Harry crashed to his knees, raising his hands to cover his face, shaking.

His rage was still there, stalking back and forth inside his chest and screaming the way he could no longer do. He was so caught up in it that he had no idea if Voldemort was still there or not, and he started badly when cool arms wrapped around his chest.

“Come, let me take you to your room,” Voldemort whispered.

“This is all your fault!” Harry screamed at him, his voice hoarser than he had known it would be, his throat rawer and more scraped. He must have been yelling. He hadn’t realized it. “If you hadn’t existed, or if you’d just stayed dead when I reflected the Killing Curse back at you! I could be alive and free and my friends wouldn’t have tried to kill me!”

Saying it aloud for the first time shocked Harry back into something like reality. He was kneeling in a room that had apparently been designed to contain his magic, and he was shaking, and Voldemort was the one who sat beside him, holding him.

Voldemort, who would probably kill him now, for what he’d said.

Harry looked up, hopeful, but Voldemort only stared at him and shook his head. He said nothing, either in English or Parseltongue, as he gathered Harry in his arms and flew them up through the trapdoor again. Harry thought it shut behind them, but he was too tired to care.

He fell asleep on his own bed, in his own bedroom, moments after Voldemort laid him there, and he was alone when he woke, too.

*

A house-elf served him breakfast at the table, where Voldemort wasn’t. There was a pile of post. Harry dug through the letters until he found the one that he had known must be there, somewhere, a large letter in Hermione’s handwriting with a cracked golden seal on it. When he pressed the sides of the seal together, Harry thought he could just make out a phoenix’s head.

Harry turned it over.

Dear Harry,

It feels strange to write that and know it’s probably for the last time. I’m sorry that it’s come to this. But maybe it would have come to this from the first moment we realized we couldn’t tell you the truth, or Voldemort would have known it, too.

Voldemort is evil. There’s no way to convince you of that, maybe. But he is. And he’s corrupting you with his proximity. Once, you would never have agreed to serve a dictator. You would have died first. You wouldn’t have become so completely detached from the world and acted as though everything was fine as long as you didn’t have to see it.

Ron and I don’t really want to kill you. But the way we think of it, our friend probably died a long time ago. We’re only honoring his memory and making sure that his corpse isn’t marched around and used like an obscene puppet by Voldemort any longer.

Don’t bother to beg Voldemort for our lives or the like. Ron and I have already left Britain. It’ll be harder to work against Voldemort’s regime from abroad, but we’ll manage it. You know that we have the skill and the determination to carry it off. And we’ll find and destroy the other Horcruxes, too, no matter how long it takes. Maybe it’s a task that we’ll pass on to our children.

Voldemort might not be mortal right now, but you are. When we do manage to strike you down, then he’ll lose another Horcrux. And Professor Dumbledore was all but certain he couldn’t make any more.

Tell him anything you want. Show him this letter if you want. You probably would anyway, not because you want to but because he’ll read the truth out of your mind. I know you can’t help it. I feel nothing but pity for you.

I can only hope that someday, when you die, you’ll understand what we did, and how we had to adapt our plans. There can’t be any freedom for you anymore, but that’s the same as the rest of Britain, who will never be free under a dictator.

Yours, once,
Hermione Granger.

Harry lowered his head onto the table and folded his hands around the letter. He was still for a long time.

*

“Potter? Potter, what are you doing?”

The voice wasn’t one Harry recognized, and he lifted his head and blinked. His neck hurt. He grimaced, realizing that he had fallen asleep on the table, and he was ragingly hungry, and his body ached with how he’d leaned his head into his hands.

And the Horcrux bond was absolutely closed, absolutely silent.

Someone stepped into the dining room, and Harry flinched in anticipation for a moment before he realized the figure was too short for Voldemort and absolutely not Hermione or Ron. The person walked towards him, stopping halfway there to peer at him, and Harry breathed out as he recognized Blaise Zabini.

“I didn’t know you were supposed to visit today, Zabini.” His voice croaked. He picked up a carafe of water nearby, which began to sparkle with cold as soon as he touched it, and poured some into a glass.

“Originally, I wasn’t supposed to be here until tomorrow.” Zabini took a chair a few down the table from Harry. Harry felt an obscure relief that he wasn’t opposite him, in Voldemort’s usual seat. “But the Dark Lord came to my mum’s house and said that you needed me today.”

“I don’t need anyone today,” Harry said flatly, and swallowed his water. Then he reached over to his plate, which still had eggs and bacon on it perfectly preserved and steaming, courtesy of the elves. He began to eat, snapping and gulping, hoping that his horrible manners would offend Zabini enough to make him go away.

“Uh, no, I think you do.”

Harry glared over at Zabini. Zabini just sat there, his legs twitching back and forth a little, and ignored it when Harry sighed at him, hissed at him in Parseltongue, and ate with his mouth open. He did tilt his head a little when Harry put one elbow down on top of Hermione’s letter and it crinkled.

“Is that what upset you? Mind if I look at it?”

Harry sighed. Maybe this was what would make Zabini leave, either because he would agree with Hermione and be horrified or because he would think Harry was weak to have been affected by it. He tossed the parchment across the table and watched Zabini catch it and smooth the creases out.

He seemed to take a long time to read it, longer than Harry had thought he would. He couldn’t help sneaking glances over at him. The third time he did it, Zabini looked up and caught him at it. He half-smiled.

“Do you want the short or the long version of why this is a load of bollocks, Potter?”

“Of course you would think that way. You were in Slytherin.”

“Not everyone in Slytherin supported the return of the Dark Lord,” Zabini said calmly, “as you know very well. But also, no one in Slytherin conspired to see you married to him. That’s the short version, Potter—excuse me, Potter-Gaunt. Granger’s blaming you for something that she forced on you.”

“She’s right, though. I could have refused. I could have made him kill me.”

“And then he would probably have killed Granger and Weasley, too,” Zabini said cheerfully, “and presumably she’d be screaming at you in whatever afterlife you’d share. Okay, the longer version.

“Why did Granger and Weasley urge you to marry the Dark Lord if they knew that he could read secrets out of your head? I didn’t believe they were supporters of the marriage at first when I heard it. I thought it was a rumor. But then there were all sorts of newspaper articles about it, and I was at the wedding and saw them practically shoving you forwards. So that was the first stupid mistake on their part.

“Second, if it’s so important to them to free Britain from a dictator, why aren’t they getting their own hands dirty? Did Granger bring the Belladonna’s Bane here herself? No, she sent Finch-Fletchley to do it. I suppose that proves that she and Weasley learned well from Dumbledore, at least. Always use pawns instead of risking yourself.

“Third, they deliberately removed you from the board. What did they expect you to be able to do as the Dark Lord’s husband, except influence him to do things like give Finch-Fletchley a trial? They took you out of the war, and now they’re raging because you won’t keep on fighting that war in your own marital bed.” Zabini snorted. “And pardon me for mentioning it, but you’re not like my mother, who can do that.”

Harry raised his head and stared at Zabini. His thoughts were whirling, and he wanted to say that Dumbledore hadn’t been like that and he should have figured something out and Hermione’s words made sense, but he ended up saying, “I shouldn’t have shown you that letter. Now he’s going to kill you, too.”

Zabini rolled his eyes. “Do you think I would be here, in this extremely private place with the Dark Lord’s husband, if he didn’t trust me? No, he’ll read my mind and remove any memories that he really doesn’t want me to keep. Which may be this whole conversation, admittedly.” Zabini waved a hand. “But he’s not going to kill me. He values his alliance with my mother too much. And I don’t think he wants to upset you any further than you already are.”

Harry closed his eyes. Maybe he could get Zabini to leave if he sat there and was boring long enough.

Instead, Zabini started a long discussion of the flaws in Hermione’s letter-writing.

“Pompous, isn’t she?” he muttered, and Harry heard the crackle of parchment as he turned the letter around. “Oh, ‘corrupting you with his proximity,’ that’s a good one. Shame that she never thought of the way that Dumbledore corrupted her with his. Oh, look at the flourish on that y, she was feeling proud of herself right there. I imagine her biting her quill while dreaming up more insults—”

“Look,” Harry said, opening his eyes at last. “She’s right.”

Zabini laid aside the letter. “About what?”

“I—I did start telling myself that it was all I could do to sit beside Voldemort and maybe influence him to be more merciful now and then. But I should have tried to fight back. I should have tried to kill him—”

“Right. And how were you going to accomplish that when he’d know your every move before you made it?”

“It wouldn’t matter if he did or not. I still should have died fighting.”

Zabini rolled his eyes again. “You know very well that wouldn’t have happened. I can’t pretend to know everything about why the Dark Lord values you, but it’s obvious he does. So he would have bound you, or maybe knocked you unconscious for a while, and kept you there until you were ready to be rational.” He drummed his fingers on his knee. “Besides, what about your vows?”

“What?” Harry blinked at him. Their vows had been in Parseltongue. No one else should have known what they’d said.

“They published an English translation of the vows in the papers the day after the wedding,” Zabini explained, apparently understanding Harry’s blankness. “You promised to protect the Dark Lord. How could you have attacked him?”

Harry closed his eyes. He was remembering Hermione hugging him on the day of the wedding, telling him that there was a reason they wanted him to get married to Voldemort, and she hoped she would be able to tell him someday.

She didn’t know what we were going to say in the vows. But she knew when the translation was published. And she still thought…

Harry’s thoughts wisped away to ash. He felt very tired, and hungry. He opened his eyes and ate some more of the bacon and eggs.

“So, did he bring you in to pacify me?” he asked, when he realized that Zabini was watching him eat with a bored expression.

“No, he brought me here to talk some sense into you,” Zabini said crisply, sitting up.

“Why in the world did he think you would be a good friend for me?”

“Because there are ways our positions in life are similar,” Zabini said, and gave Harry a sharp smile. “People who want my mother’s favor come and ask me questions, or give me gifts, or beg audiences with me and try to sway me to their way of thinking. Now that you’re showing signs of emerging from your seclusion at the Dark Lord’s side, the same thing will happen with you. He thought I could help prepare you for that life.”

“I don’t want that kind of life,” Harry said softly.

“If you want to influence the Dark Lord at all to mercy, you need to take it up,” Zabini said. “And maybe you can take up the fight that Granger and Weasley are talking about, if only in that limited way.”

“I should have done what they asked.”

“Oh, come on, not again,” Zabini said, bringing down a hand on the table and making Harry start. “We already talked about how that would be impossible, both because of the Dark Lord reading your thoughts and because of your vows to him. Granger and Weasley are idiots for thinking nothing would change. Of course it’s bloody changed. You can’t fight him the way they want to. So don’t. Do it another way.”

“That he’ll know about?”

Zabini shook his head. “When I ask my mother for things, of course she knows that I’m asking because I want them or because someone’s made me a good offer. But she can see the advantages of giving in sometimes. Or she might grant someone a favor because it’s a good thing for her, too. You can do that with the Dark Lord.”

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it. He looked blindly at the letter from Hermione still resting near Zabini’s hand.

Why had he been so convinced she was right?

Because Justin was dead, and his friends had tried to kill him, and then he’d read that letter when he’d been at an emotionally low point. But that didn’t mean she was right. And like Zabini had said, if Hermione had wanted him to stay exactly the same and freely die fighting Voldemort, she shouldn’t have followed that insane plan for the marriage.

“Do you know where he is right now?” he asked Zabini quietly.

“He said that he was finding out how the Apparition coordinates for your house got out.” Zabini looked a little uncomfortable. Harry wondered why. “But he also said that he would come back if you call him.”

Harry tilted his head back and reached out along the Horcrux bond. There was a shut door on Voldemort’s side of it, which was why he hadn’t felt anything there since he’d woken up. Harry didn’t have the power to lift that door, but he could knock.

He did.

There was a long, echoing silence that felt eerier than anything Harry had experienced so far that morning. This was the silence of someone listening and not responding, instead of merely not being present.

Then the door lifted.

Harry gasped as he felt the whistling chaos of Voldemort’s emotions descend on him. There was curiosity, and wariness like a cat’s tail lashing back and forth, and rage that stung Harry like snow, and happiness that got snatched back before it could reach out too far. Harry extended his hand before he thought about it, and reached out with his own emotions.

He asked Voldemort to come home.

He received the surging song of assent, and then the emotions dimmed a little. Voldemort must have narrowed the Horcrux bond so that he could focus more effectively on what was in front of him.

Harry opened his eyes, and saw Zabini staring at him. “What?” he asked.

“I felt the magic shift in the room when you did…whatever you did,” Zabini whispered. “I know that the Dark Lord is the most powerful wizard I’ve ever met and the strongest one in Britain, but you’re powerful, too.”

Harry shrugged, while he felt his face heat up. “No offense, Zabini, but can you leave the way you came? I think that when he arrives, this is a conversation we should have in private.”

“Yeah, a house-elf brought me here. It can take me back.” Zabini stood up, eyes steady on him. “Do you need me to swear an oath that I won’t talk about what I read in the letter to anyone until the Dark Lord has decided if I need to be Obliviated?”

“Yes. I’d rather not have to ask him for mercy for you.”

Zabini, his dark face going a little grey, hastily made the vow and then left the room, calling for “Cassie.” Harry finished his breakfast and tucked away Hermione’s letter into his robe pocket. He couldn’t guarantee that Voldemort wouldn’t leave again immediately if he saw it, to go and hunt Hermione and Ron down.

And he needed to keep it close to him. Not because she was universally right, but because he needed to keep that perspective in mind.

He couldn’t live the way he had, just drifting along in Voldemort’s orbit, if he was going to be of any good to anyone but himself. On the other hand, no, he couldn’t kill Voldemort. And he wasn’t going to try.

He felt the emotions sharpen and deepen as Voldemort arrived. Harry opened his eyes and turned around, and Voldemort stepped through the doorway of the dining room, his head canted to the side as though studying an invisible aura of magic around Harry instead of Harry himself.

“You are ready to talk?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Harry said, standing. “Yeah, I want to.”