Chapter Thirty of 'Leopard's Choice'- Called Out

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Thirty—Called Out

“It seems you have been rather busy since the last time we met, Harry.”

Harry stares at Voldemort, and feels as if someone is pouring dirty water into his wounds. He bares his teeth, and says nothing.

“Have you nothing to say to me, little one?” Voldemort glides a step closer, over the rocky ground of the dream—wherever they are. “Nothing to tell me? No words about how I am portraying you as insane to the rest of the world? About how you could have been expelled from Hogwarts if some of the ancient traditions had been kept up?”

Harry bows his head and tries to tremble and look like he’s overwhelmed. All he needs is for Voldemort to come a little closer, really. Not far at all. Just a little closer…

Voldemort comes a few steps nearer.

Harry snaps his head up and spits out the venom that he’s been working to try and conjure in his mouth for at least two minutes now.

Voldemort screams and flinches back. Harry thinks for a second that’s stupid, because it’s not like anything they do in these dreams is permanent or damaging, and then stares as he watches Voldemort’s flesh smolder where his venom landed.

The realization drops into his head with a crack like Apparition.

He can hurt Voldemort. Maybe he can only use Parselmouth magic, Speaker magic, to do it, but he can.

Harry spits again, and this time, his venom lands on Voldemort’s bare feet. Voldemort doesn’t scream again, to Harry’s disappointment, but he does retreat a step with a glare, and his flesh smokes and begins to dissolve as if covered in some virulent acid.

“What have you done?” Voldemort demands in Parseltongue. “How was I not informed of this?”

If nothing else, this little dream has confirmed for Harry that Voldemort has a spy in Hogwarts. He has no idea who it is, and he’s not sure that he can get any good information from Voldemort’s ramblings, but at least he knows there is one. He snaps his mouth open and shows Voldemort glistening fangs.

“This is impossible.”

Voldemort, at least, seems to think that things in the dream translate to the real world. Harry crouches and then lunges, aiming his mouth at Voldemort’s wand hand—

Which promptly flies up and slaps him across the mouth, and Harry reels back and claps his hands to his smarting lips.

Ouch. Okay, so attacking with his mouth when he isn’t actually a snake probably isn’t the best idea after all.

“You are not used to this form of battle,” Voldemort says, sounding a little calmer now, probably because of Harry’s incompetence more than anything else. “Why not? Did they not train you well, the ones who trained you?”

Maybe he doesn’t think things in the dream are permanent, then. Maybe he thinks the Speakers taught Harry how to make these changes to his body in the waking world, and then didn’t train him well enough to let him actually attack an enemy.

Harry makes a note to ask Lyassa for that training. She’d probably be happy to provide it.

“Why are you not responding to me? Has fear stolen your voice? Have you reshaped your body in such a way that you can no longer speak the noble tongue of snakes?” Voldemort sounds delighted at that prospect.

Harry clears his throat, not sure until he speaks whether his words are going to emerge in Parseltongue or English. “I’m not afraid. A little bored, actually. You brought me here to do what? Rant at me about nothing?”

Voldemort springs forwards, but Harry is expecting it this time, and whirls out of the way. And he focuses his mind on the dreamscape around them. If Voldemort can shape it, then it seems likely that Harry should be able to, as well. He summons a jungle of plants in seconds, and hides beneath the hanging fronds of a huge plant, watching Voldemort as he turns slowly around in the small patch of bare rock that’s still left.

“You are running away from me faster than I thought you would.” Voldemort’s voice is so soft that Harry can’t make out any of the emotions in it, if there are any. “Why are you doing this? Did you acquire more of the traits of Slytherin than I thought when you were Sorted into my House?”

Harry says nothing. This is more an experiment than anything else, to see if Voldemort can sense him. He reaches out with his mind and envisions the stone underneath Voldemort’s feet changing into sharp spikes of rock.

Voldemort hisses in what is definitely displeasure and pain as he dances away from the spikes. “You are still here, then,” he says. “Have you not wondered why I can bring you here? Why we have this connection in dreams that is not normal for us to have no matter what someone might tell you?”

Harry has wondered that, actually, but he’s not about to ask for clarification from someone who will just lie about it. This time, he conjures a stalking shadow-leopard of the kind Theo battled behind Voldemort, just to see his reaction to it. Voldemort turns with a hiss and a raised wand.

Then he falls still. Harry peers out with one eye from beneath a fern frond to see that Voldemort is staring at the leopard with a complete lack of expression.

When he speaks, it seems to be to the leopard, not Harry. “Why are you here? Did you not learn better from the way I defeated you when I was young?”

That’s interesting. Harry adds some more depth and height to the shadow without replying. There’s no way he could speak that would disguise his voice or make Voldemort think the leopard is speaking, probably.

“Answer. The question.” Voldemort’s voice is breathy. He strikes suddenly, a lash-like motion with his wand that brings a purple curse into being. It flies through the shadow-leopard without striking anything, of course.

Harry shakes his head in wonder. If Voldemort thought about it more carefully, he would probably realize there’s no way the shadow-leopard could intrude on a dream he created to share with Harry. But he isn’t.

Perhaps because of the echoes of Harry’s emotions down whatever connection they share, Voldemort turns away abruptly from the shadow-leopard, his head swiveling slowly back and forth, ears and eyes focused on their surroundings. “Where did you learn about this, Harry?” he whispers. “Why is this the shape you chose to confront me?”

So Voldemort might know something about the history of Parselmouths and their battles with the creature. Huh. Harry doesn’t make any noise, but focuses inwards, trying to wake himself up. If he can alter the dreamscape that radically and create creatures that fooled Voldemort for a moment, he ought to be able to leave it.

“You can never escape me. You should have asked me to explain the link between us when I was patient and willing to do so.”

Silver pain strikes through the link. Harry snatches up the connection he’s found that lies between them like the coils of a waiting snake and shakes it as hard as he can, hurling part of his consciousness down it while keeping the rest to watch Voldemort.

The ground and air around him dissolve, and a second later, so does the pain. Harry rolls to the side and gasps as he wakes up in bed.

In the hospital wing. Where he is because Theo leaped in front of the curse from Burke like an insane person.

Scowling, Harry sits up and checks around him for any disturbance, hoping that the dream with Voldemort didn’t wake Theo up. He sighs when he sees Theo lying in his bed with his eyes open, glittering a little. Theo winks at him and shifts slowly to the side, apparently testing how comfortable it is to sit up.

“You’re an idiot,” Harry tells him.

“I’m a living idiot,” Theo says happily. He stretches one arm over his head back onto the pillow, winces, and brings it back down.

“Did Burke injure you there?” Try as he might, Harry can’t remember a specific cut or other injury on Theo’s arm.

“No, I’ve never been able to stretch that far usually, but I thought I’d try.” Theo winks at him again, and Harry rolls his eyes and sits up, sighing as he sees Severus standing silently in the doorway of the hospital wing.

“I have dealt with Burke.”

“Was it worse than having Harry’s snakes bite him?” Theo asks. “I hope so, sir. I would hate to have to do something to him when the whole point is that he should suffer because of Harry.”

“He will not bother either of you again.” Severus looks back and forth between them, and he can be much stiller than Theo when he wants to be. He Summons a chair from the side and sits down between their beds without disturbing that essential stillness. “You are, I hope, aware that I did not expect one of you to take an injury?”

“Only Theo did. And knowing him, he has some Slytherin reason for it.”

It’s entertaining, to watch Theo’s smile disappear. Or it would be, if Harry didn’t feel so weary. He shakes his head. “Theo, if you want me to do something, I would prefer that you just ask.”

“I wanted to demonstrate to other Slytherins how deadly you are.” Theo doesn’t sulk, but he’s coming closer to it at the moment than Harry’s ever seen him. Even his eyes, which have a shade of green in them as usual, are downcast, and he’s frowning mightily. “I knew that you had to do something to impress them so they wouldn’t think you’re soft after the way you helped Pansy. And you wouldn’t have agreed to do something that’s bad enough.”

“We could have used illusions to accomplish the same end. There was no need for you to get really injured or for me to really attack Burke.”

“There was no reason for Burke to attack you in the first place,” Severus says, showing exactly how this conversation is going to end. “I have convinced him that he was in the wrong, and he will not be doing it again.”

Harry eyes him and decides that they’re unlikely to get more information than that right now. “When I was dreaming, I saw Voldemort.”

Severus turns to face him at once, and from the way he stares, Harry is going to talk to him later for not mentioning this at once. But Theo leans forwards and nods. “I could sense that you were having a dream, but I couldn’t get into it. I wonder if that means that he’s devised some way to keep me out.”

“He offered to tell me something about the link between us, but I didn’t take him up on the offer, since he would be lying anyway. I wanted to see if I could change the nature of the dreamscape, and my body. I managed to spit venom that hurt him, and change the rocky landscape into a jungle. And then I summoned that shadow-leopard that you fought, Theo.”

Theo clenched his hands into the sheets. Harry wouldn’t be surprised if claws are shredding them. “The actual creature?”

“No. An image. But Voldemort knew what it was, and addressed it in Parseltongue.”

Severus’s eyes are half-lidded. “A surprise, but not that much of one, I suppose. Whether or not he was educated by Speakers, Voldemort probably knows the history of Parselmouths, and that of the creature they opposed.”

Theo offers a low snarl, and then seems to get hold of himself as Professor Snape glares at him and shakes his head, curling his claws back in towards his hands. “I wish I could have been there to hurt him for you, Harry.”

“I don’t need you to hurt people, Theo,” Harry says, and knows this is something they’re going to have to talk about, perhaps when Theo gets out of the hospital wing. “I don’t need you to get hurt. I need you to stay alive, and be my friend.”

Theo gives him what seems to be an honestly confused look. Harry holds back his sigh. This is one difference, at least as he sees it, between being a leader and being a Lord. Being a leader is fine. He can delegate things, and figure out what things people need and give them to them, and people are loyal to him. But being a Lord makes people think they need to be of service, and that seems to have done a number on Theo’s head.

“If Voldemort thinks he had something to tell you about the connection between you, then we should begin to investigate it ourselves,” Severus murmurs. “And next time, perhaps you could get him to talk about it. We may be able to pick through the shards of his lies and figure out something that way.”

Harry doubts it, actually, but he nods anyway. It’s different to have someone on his side who thinks they can do this than to just listen to Voldemort’s lies himself.

“How soon will you be up and around?” he asks, turning back to Theo.

Theo’s chin jerks up a little, his eyes going hard and wide, but he nods as though he’s answering some kind of summons. “It won’t be long. Madam Pomfrey already said that she wants to keep me here more as a precaution than anything else.”

Harry nods. “I’m glad that you didn’t take any permanent harm,” he says. “And I meant what I said about you being an idiot. Don’t jump in front of a curse like that for me again, Theo. I don’t want you to do it.”

Theo eyes him in silence for a second, then finally nods. “All right. If you don’t want me to.”

Harry contains his sigh and faces Severus, who just looks smug about…something. “What’s our next step, then?”

“It may already have been taken for us,” Severus says, and brings the Daily Prophet out from behind his back. Harry grimaces as he accepts it. He assumes that he’s going to see something horrific from Rita Skeeter on the front page again.

Instead, there’s a headline that makes him choke and be glad that he wasn’t eating or drinking anything right when he read it.

TOM MARVOLO RIDDLE: THE REAL NAME OF YOU-KNOW-WHO?

Harry reads the article with steadily widening eyes. There’s a lot about Tom Riddle’s childhood and how he left the school with some of the highest marks in its history, then worked at Borgin and Burke’s after his seventh year. A lot of people had been surprised, the article says, because of his academic promise. But it is clear now that this was a position that allowed him to seek Dark artifacts and valuable contacts from behind an unassuming façade.

It goes on like that, how Tom Riddle vanished on his journey around the world and many people assumed he was dead. But then he came back, the article says, and changed his name to Voldemort, and became the “Dark Lord”—the article puts it in quotes like that—who’s trying to take over the British magical world.

Harry blinks at the article in wonder for a long moment. It says that Tom Riddle’s a half-blood, the son of a woman of the Gaunt family and a Muggle, and that he grew up in a Muggle orphanage. Those are probably the two most damaging facts that Harry can imagine getting out there. Without those, someone might know who Tom Riddle really was but never seek out the truth for themselves.

He looked up. “I’m surprised the Prophet printed this. I don’t think Skeeter wrote it, either.” The article is too dryly factual, without the insinuations that she likes to put in to even her most serious writing.

“It will make them money,” Severus says lightly. “And I suspect that it was too juicy for them to resist, now that Rita Skeeter is neutralized.”

Harry blinks. “What?”

“Did someone kill her?” Theo looks as if he would have liked to have been there. Well, all right, so would Harry. He can admit that in the privacy of his own head.

“No,” Severus says. “I have heard about a deal negotiated, however, that means Rita Skeeter cannot write any more articles about Harry, including articles that mention him, on pain of having her illegal Animagus form revealed.”

“Her what?”

Harry and Theo say that at the same time, and they exchange glances that make Harry’s chest feel warm. Theo might have done something stupid with jumping in front of that curse, but at least they’re still friends.

“She is a beetle Animagus, apparently.” Severus studies his fingernails. “It at least makes sense of how she sneaked into sensitive areas and revealed secrets that she had no business knowing. It turns out Narcissa Malfoy knew, and has politely threatened her into line.”

Harry opens his mouth to ask why she didn’t do that earlier, and then remembers that he wasn’t exactly friends with Draco for a while. It makes sense that Mrs. Malfoy would hang onto that weapon until the point when it would do her family good, too.

Sirius would probably say that I’ve become too much of a Slytherin.

But Sirius has made enormous strides in accepting “Slytherins” in general, so Harry just smiles and shakes his head a little. “Well, good. Then maybe we can use the Prophet’s greed for our own purposes.” He flicks the paper with a finger. “Do we know who did this?”

“I do believe that I saw Minerva looking unusually smug this morning.”

“Headmistress McGonagall?” Theo says, a little stunned.

“Huh, well, I’m glad that she’s on our side,” Harry says, although really, he knew she was on his side when she opposed the students who wanted to expel him, if not earlier. “Tell her thank you for me, would you?”

A second later, he realizes that he’s delegated that chore to Severus as if Severus was a follower, and flushes. But Severus shakes his head when Harry opens his mouth to apologize. “It’s all right, Harry. I will indeed tell her. And I suspect she will take the thanks better coming from another adult than she would someone she perhaps still thinks of as a child.” Abruptly, Severus stands. “You should return to the Slytherin common room soon. There are rumors that you have been wounded, as well, and that you don’t dare show your face to Burke, who of course would supposedly be able to take you down again easily.”

“Harry, you have to get back there,” Theo says at once.

“Politics,” Harry hisses, and it doesn’t matter that neither of them can understand Parseltongue. They both smile like they know exactly what he’s said. Harry stands up with a shake of his head and stalks towards the entrance from the hospital wing, watching from the corner of his eye as Theo settles back into bed.

“I meant what I told you,” Harry murmurs.

“I’m listening, my lord.”

Harry rolls his eyes and takes his leave, for something that promises to be much less full of people listening to him.

If I could also be sure it would be less full of people calling me “lord,” that would be fantastic.