lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2022-11-30 09:34 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2022-11-30 09:34 pm
[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Shards of the Mirror, Harry/Harry, sequel to Twisted Mirror, R, 1/3
Title: Shards of the Mirror
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Harry Potter
Content Notes: Angst, violence, dark Harry, AU after Sirius’s death, torture, gore, minor character death, underage
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3600
Summary: Sequel to “Twisted Mirror.” Harry Potter and Hadrian Black are two halves of a whole, two parts of a puzzle. But Harry won’t have to make the sacrifices or take the wounds that Hadrian did to defeat Voldemort in his world. Hadrian will make sure of it.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics, chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. This will probably have three chapters, but may have more. Read the prequel, “Twisted Mirror,” first.
Shards of the Mirror
Harry found himself turning instinctively in the direction of Gryffindor Tower when they came out of the Room of Requirement, and only pulled to a halt because of the arm around his shoulders. He turned to frown at Hadrian. “What?”
“We should get out of the school before we’re seen,” Hadrian said softly. Harry found it an eerie experience to look into his own eyes, or at least ones like his own, that were so guarded and cold. They were darting around right now, too, and Hadrian had drawn his wand. “Or before someone comes looking for you.”
“But shouldn’t I…”
“What? Why are you staring at my wand?”
“That’s not holly,” Harry blurted, and then felt his face heat up with a flush as Hadrian raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, it’s not.”
“No, it’s yew. The way I absorbed Voldemort’s spirit, Voldemort’s wand worked best for me. After all, they were brothers.”
Harry nodded slowly. Changing his wand seemed extra creepy to him, but, well, one good thing was that if Harry ever had to disarm Hadrian and fight him, he should be able to use the yew wand just as well.
He looked up, and Hadrian offered him a small smile that seemed to say he knew what Harry was thinking and lots of other things besides. He shook his head a little. “Should you what, Harry?”
“Shouldn’t I tell Ron and Hermione where I’m going? At least leave a note?”
“Do they always bother to tell you where they’re going or what they’re doing?”
Harry felt a hard, unpleasant twist in his stomach, recalling the past summer when Ron and Hermione hadn’t responded at all to his letters pleading for answers. “No,” he said quietly. “I just think they might believe I’d been kidnapped without a note, and they’ll look for me harder.”
Hadrian cocked his head as if to say, That’s not what you were thinking, but luckily, he didn’t say it. “We’ll send them a letter once we’re safely in one of the hidden spots where it will be hard for them or anyone else to find us.”
“The spots that Voldemort knows about?”
Hadrian shrugged a little. “I can easily tell if he’s been there recently or not, and if he hasn’t, then I can fortify it against him.”
Harry wondered why Voldemort having been there recently would make a difference, but he nodded obediently and said, “Yeah, all right.” It would feel kind of good to do to Ron and Hermione what they’d done to him.
Something else occurred to him then, and he said, knowing he sounded forlorn, “I can’t take Hedwig?”
*
The name sounded familiar, and Hadrian blinked before he remembered. He had once considered naming his owl Hedwig. In the end, he’d gone with Phantom, because she was fast and silent and could seem to materialize from nowhere to hurt people who were hurting Hadrian in Slytherin.
In the end, Phantom had died at the wand of an older Slytherin who didn’t appreciate having his ear practically torn off. Hadrian had taken pleasure in roasting that one’s bones.
“She’s too distinctive to use for post,” Hadrian said gently. He understood, as much as he wished he didn’t. Phantom—Hedwig—would have been one of the few friends Harry had who absolutely couldn’t betray him. “But we’ll send her a Patronus and she’ll know to come with us. She’s plenty smart enough for that.”
“You can send a mesage by Patronus?”
“Yes.” Hadrian waved his wand, ignoring the way that it tried to resist his Patronus. It was never very happy doing the kind of magic Voldemort hadn’t been capable of, but Hadrian was its master, not the other way around. With a silent snarl, it yielded, and Harry scrambled backwards as Hadrian’s silvery Hungarian Horntail filled the corridor.
“Go to my counterpart’s snowy owl, Hedwig. Tell her we’re leaving and she should find him.”
The dragon bowed its head and soared through the wall. Harry, meanwhile, stood up and was looking back and forth between the wall and Hadrian with a look of amazement. Hadrian smirked and cast a Disillusionment Charm over both of them.
“Won’t someone see a Patronus that big?” Harry whispered as they made their way towards the entrance of the castle.
“That’s one reason it will travel through the walls. Less likely to be seen that way.”
Harry nodded, absorbed. He was a small boy and a skinny one and an emotional one and a Gryffindor, but he also had a fascination with magic that Hadrian found familiar. Hadrian had only really been able to indulge it as much as he’d wanted once Voldemort was gone and he didn’t have to worry about fighting for his life every month.
Well, now Harry would have the chance. Hadrian intended to teach him and not let him go.
*
They’d landed, after they Apparated, in front of a brick house a little smaller than the Dursleys’. Harry eyed it skeptically as Hadrian performed a series of spells that were apparently important to determine if Voldemort had been there recently. For one thing, it looked Muggle, not magical. For another, it was right in the middle of a forest that rivaled the Forbidden one for thickness and darkness.
“He hasn’t been here in decades,” Hadrian said, tucking away his wand. “Since before his disembodiment. Let’s go.” He reached for Harry’s hand.
Harry let Hadrian take it. He was thinking, as they walked, that Hadrian didn’t need to touch him all the time. But maybe there were wards around the house that meant Harry would get lost if he tried to go through them on his own or something.
They ducked through the low, arched brick doorway, and Harry immediately sneezed. Then he sneezed again when he tried to talk. Hadrian muttered something and waved the yew wand. Dust leaped up into the air and died in a fizzing crackle of black magic.
“Better?” Hadrian asked, turning to face Harry with a frown of concern.
Harry took a deep breath and nodded. “Thanks,” he said, and then managed to clear his throat and shake his head. “Yeah. I suppose nobody’s been here at all, then?”
“No. I’m going to take control of the wards. I wouldn’t be able to if Voldemort had been here more recently, because they would probably only respond to him,” Hadrian added, answering Harry’s earlier question without Harry even having asked it. “And then this place will be a fortress.”
Harry stifled some unease in response to the statement. The Dursleys’ house was supposedly a fortress behind its wards, too, but what it had mainly been was a prison.
“Hey.”
Harry blinked and turned to Hadrian. Hadrian was leaning a little forwards, frowning gently. “Not like the Dursleys’ house, I promise.”
Harry nodded slowly. Unlike everyone else he had ever spoken to, even when he was trying to tell the truth and people were asking questions with a focused air like Hermione, Hadrian knew exactly what the Dursleys had been like.
“All right,” he said. “Will Hedwig still be able to find us with the wards up?”
“She shouldn’t have a problem.”
Harry turned slowly away to explore the house, which at least was a lot bigger on the inside than the outside. That, and not being confined to one room the way he had been at the Dursleys’, should help.
*
Hadrian closed his eyes. The only reason he could claim control of wards around places like this safehouse—which was in a forest that Muggles had been made to forget existed over a century ago—was because he had Voldemort’s spirit mingled with his own. But that didn’t matter, not when he still took pleasure in reaching out and wrenching them free from the bastard’s control.
He was beginning to think that Voldemort in his world had died too quickly. He would enjoy killing this one.
He holstered his wand and went unhesitatingly up the stairs. This house looked exactly like the one he had lived in for part of the summer after his second year and returned to a few times since, including the thick dust on his first entry. He wasn’t worried about getting lost, springing traps, or having someone find them.
He found Harry on the first floor, gaping at the windows on the walls. Hadrian smiled at him, and knew it was softer than his smiles usually were, but shrugged the notion away. It wasn’t like Harry was from his world or would know the difference.
“What? You’ve never seen enchanted windows before? I know the Ministry and Hogwarts have a few.”
Harry cleared his throat and looked at Hadrian with those eyes that made him want to defend and kill and fuck. “I’ve seen them, but never any like this. They look like I can actually step through the window into…into wherever it is that they’re portraying.” And he turned back to the window in front of them, that displayed a shining starfield with a dazzling planet in the foreground. He reached out a hand, then dropped it with an embarrassed sound.
“We’ll go see them,” Hadrian said softly.
Harry pivoted to face him, eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe that you can travel into space, so don’t lie to me.”
Hadrian snorted. “No, but the windows that look like that lead straight into what they picture. Most wizards and witches don’t know a whole lot about space. They imagined this with air, so that’s what it is.” He cocked his head at the window. “They imagined a simple step between this world and the other one, so that’s how long it would take.”
“Have you been there already?” Harry whispered.
“Yes,” Hadrian said, and smiled.
Harry took a deep breath and turned to investigate the rest of the room, but then started sneezing again. Hadrian set the dust on fire and walked beside Harry as he moved towards the center of the room, where a gleaming silver design was set into the floor.
“What is this?”
“The seal of the original owners of the house,” Hadrian said, and waited a moment, but Harry continued to stare at the symbol with no sign of recognition. “Peverell.”
Harry frowned at him in incomprehension. Hadrian clucked his tongue a little. “We’ll have to see to your education.”
*
Harry bristled, and he hated it, and he hated that he couldn’t help it, and he hated Hadrian, right then, for making him feel it. “I’m not incompetent,” he snarled. “I’m not stupid. I’m not a child.”
“No, you’re not.”
Hadrian’s voice was low, his eyes glinting in the light of his wand that was the only light in the room besides that from the enchanted windows, and Harry had the strange feeling that Hadrian meant something besides what Harry did. He folded his arms and scowled harder.
“I haven’t had time to study history and things like that when I have to continually fight for my life. You probably didn’t, either.”
Hadrian continued regarding him, and then smiled suddenly. “No, I didn’t. Most of the education I got either came from trapping Voldemort’s soul inside me or after the war when I could read all the books I needed.”
“What’s it like?” Harry asked, because he couldn’t stay angry at himself for very long. Hadrian was just too interesting. “Having someone else’s soul trapped in yours?”
Hadrian considered the answer to the question, which was a good sign as far as Harry was concerned. He didn’t want a flippant answer or a humorous one. Hadrian tapped his fingers against his leg for a second, and then answered.
“It’s like suddenly remembering a book that you never read. The whole thing, the words and the pictures and the title and how long it takes you to turn the pages. I knew Voldemort’s memories, which is how I found the safehouses. I knew all the magic he knew. I knew what it felt like to cast those spells, and I knew how angry he was. I knew his burning desire for revenge and destruction.”
Harry swallowed. “And you don’t think that—affected you at all?”
“I’m sure it did. But I was willing to make the trade. Remember, I was just a lonely, bullied Slytherin first-year when I got his soul.”
“I thought you said you’d made them stop by then.”
“I made them stop openly hexing me. But I was still lonely, and people still bullied me by doing things like muttering comments and then pretending they were talking about someone else.”
Harry nodded gloomily. He knew how that went. Dudley would talk about Harry loudly in primary school, and immediately play dumb (not that it took effort) and innocent if a teacher overheard.
“You said that you would tell me more about the Horcruxes once we were here.”
“I implied it, not told you that,” Hadrian said mildly, but he was nodding. “Let’s get this cleaned up—the Trace doesn’t work here—and get something to eat, and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know. You’ll want to eat first, though, not at the same time.”
“Would you?”
“No, but I’m used to disgusting things.”
Harry held back his instinctive protest—wasn’t this what he had wanted, someone to understand him, and wasn’t this why he had gone with Hadrian, because he trusted his counterpart to protect him?—and just nodded.
*
Harry stared at his hands, which were shaking. Hadrian said nothing, but reached across the table and squeezed Harry’s shoulder. It was what he would have wanted to have done to him, if he had learned this when he was eleven.
And while Harry wasn’t eleven, he was essentially Hadrian before Hadrian had learned everything he knew. Eleven, fifteen, what really made the biggest difference between them was that Hadrian had absorbed Voldemort’s spirit and Harry hadn’t.
Harry finally looked up, blinking. There were tears in his eyes, which he tried to wipe hastily away.
Hadrian understood. Harry was afraid that tears were weak, and he would be mocked for weeping. Hadrian himself usually thought of them as a weakness. But he also understood why Harry was crying, and he didn’t hesitate to stand up, come around the table, and sit in the chair next to Harry, embracing him.
Harry leaned against him, but didn’t sob. Hadrian understood that, too. Sobs had a price, in a cupboard.
“Did Dumbledore know?” Harry finally whispered.
“I think he made some guesses,” Hadrian said. “The one in my world never knew in time, that’s for sure. I don’t know about yours, but it could be one reason that you said he wouldn’t look at you this year.”
Harry closed his eyes and nestled more closely against Hadrian. Hadrian drew him nearer still and bowed his head. It was different to notice his own smell from the outside, to feel hair that was his and not his. He smiled a little. Yes, he had been premature in assuming that the human body would never interest him.
“And what do you think he…”
“He’ll want you to die,” Hadrian said bluntly. He couldn’t allow Harry to fall into wistful guesses about the way things would go, guesses that would do their best to excuse Dumbledore. “He’ll be sorry about it. Like I said, the one in my world wasn’t a bad person. But he never understood me, and Dumbledore in any world would choose to end you rather than let Voldemort survive.”
Harry shivered once, and then stilled. He drew back and stared at Hadrian. Hadrian watched, enthralled, as the last of Harry’s tears dried up and he straightened his back as if he was standing before a dragon.
“What does it mean, now that there are two of us in the world?” Harry asked harshly. “For the prophecy? Are you the power that the Dark Lord knows not, or the Horcrux? Will I still have to die?”
“You’re not dying,” Hadrian said, and Harry looked at him, startled. Hadrian thought back on it, and decided that the words had rather emerged as a snarl. But still, it was true. Harry wasn’t dying, and he was a fool if he thought he was. “I don’t know what it means for the prophecy, not for sure. But we’ll find some other way. In fact…” He tilted his head, memories bobbing to the surface of his mind. Voldemort, at least in his world, had spent a year in the 1960s working as an Unspeakable under another identity.
“In fact, what? I’ve had enough of mysterious silences.”
Hadrian smiled. He hadn’t smiled so much in months, in years. He liked that Harry had bite and wasn’t some whimpering, fainting child, the way Hadrian could imagine Gryffindor versions of himself becoming. “I was just thinking. Voldemort studied prophecy for a while, long before he knew what a prophecy would mean for him. He was studying the split theory.”
“What’s the split theory?”
“It’s the idea that the burden of fate can be split between multiple people. That multiple people can share a prophecy, if it applies to both of them. Neville Longbottom was born a day before you, and technically he could probably split the burden of the prophecy with you. And I think the prophecy in this world really could be, because it already talks about two people, and doesn’t definitively state that you’ll vanquish Voldemort, only that you can do so. So a third person coming in to take some of the burden off you shouldn’t be that much of a stretch.”
Harry trembled and abruptly looked as if he was about to slide to the floor. Hadrian sat up. “Harry?” I know the food wasn’t poisoned, it was under all those Preservation Charms and I checked…
*
He already planned to do it. I was thinking that maybe I could force him into being the subject of the prophecy somehow, and he was already planning to do it.
Harry shook, and put his hands over his eyes. He tried to remember the last time he had utterly trusted someone, and couldn’t.
He had maintained a little bit of resentment and distrust towards Ron and Hermione all year because of their not writing to him last summer. He had distrusted Snape and Dumbledore all year, too, and his confidence in Sirius and Remus had been damaged after what he’d seen in Snape’s Pensive. Yeah, they were idiots at fifteen, but Harry wasn’t like that, so what was their excuse?
Harry had even doubted himself, because of the way he had dreamed of being Nagini and had those visions of the long corridor in the Department of Mysteries. And he had been right to doubt those visions, because he had got Sirius killed, or at least been partially responsible for getting him killed.
And now he could trust Hadrian. Another version of himself, stronger, older, wiser, Darker.
A burden Harry hadn’t even known he was carrying dropped from his shoulders and disappeared.
He pulled his hands away from his eyes and took a long breath. “Good. I’ll—I’ll trust you when you say that I don’t have to die, and there are ways of getting the Horcrux out of me.”
“There are.” Hadrian smiled, an unpleasant expression, but at the moment Harry couldn’t give a fuck. Hadrian was sitting here and telling him the truth and thinking about how to help Harry live, not die heroically. “There are rituals—painful ones, like the one that took my name, but they do work.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“About the ritual that you went through, the one that made you Hadrian Black. And destroyed the Horcruxes, right? You said you had to sacrifice everything you were. That was because it took the Horcrux in you away, right?”
“You’re logical,” Hadrian murmured, and Harry flushed at the praise, which for some reason made Hadrian’s eyes linger on him. “And yes, I’ll tell you.”
“I mean—if it was painful, and you’d rather not—”
“I won’t tell you how long I writhed on the floor screaming.” Hadrian leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “But yes, I’ll tell you most of the details. I know that you’ll keep them to yourself.”
Harry nodded eagerly. There might have been a time when he would have wanted to share with at least Ron and Hermione, but that time was past. He had his own secrets now. They had their own secrets, really, but Hadrian was him, so it was like Harry being able to keep something all to himself.
Hadrian sat there with his eyes shut for a few moments, one hand resting on Harry’s knee. Harry leaned closer to the warmth beating out of him.
A protector, a powerful wizard, and all his.
A second later, Hadrian opened his eyes, nodded once, and began.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry Potter/Harry Potter
Content Notes: Angst, violence, dark Harry, AU after Sirius’s death, torture, gore, minor character death, underage
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3600
Summary: Sequel to “Twisted Mirror.” Harry Potter and Hadrian Black are two halves of a whole, two parts of a puzzle. But Harry won’t have to make the sacrifices or take the wounds that Hadrian did to defeat Voldemort in his world. Hadrian will make sure of it.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “From Samhain to the Solstice” fics, chaptered stories being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. This will probably have three chapters, but may have more. Read the prequel, “Twisted Mirror,” first.
Shards of the Mirror
Harry found himself turning instinctively in the direction of Gryffindor Tower when they came out of the Room of Requirement, and only pulled to a halt because of the arm around his shoulders. He turned to frown at Hadrian. “What?”
“We should get out of the school before we’re seen,” Hadrian said softly. Harry found it an eerie experience to look into his own eyes, or at least ones like his own, that were so guarded and cold. They were darting around right now, too, and Hadrian had drawn his wand. “Or before someone comes looking for you.”
“But shouldn’t I…”
“What? Why are you staring at my wand?”
“That’s not holly,” Harry blurted, and then felt his face heat up with a flush as Hadrian raised an eyebrow at him. “Well, it’s not.”
“No, it’s yew. The way I absorbed Voldemort’s spirit, Voldemort’s wand worked best for me. After all, they were brothers.”
Harry nodded slowly. Changing his wand seemed extra creepy to him, but, well, one good thing was that if Harry ever had to disarm Hadrian and fight him, he should be able to use the yew wand just as well.
He looked up, and Hadrian offered him a small smile that seemed to say he knew what Harry was thinking and lots of other things besides. He shook his head a little. “Should you what, Harry?”
“Shouldn’t I tell Ron and Hermione where I’m going? At least leave a note?”
“Do they always bother to tell you where they’re going or what they’re doing?”
Harry felt a hard, unpleasant twist in his stomach, recalling the past summer when Ron and Hermione hadn’t responded at all to his letters pleading for answers. “No,” he said quietly. “I just think they might believe I’d been kidnapped without a note, and they’ll look for me harder.”
Hadrian cocked his head as if to say, That’s not what you were thinking, but luckily, he didn’t say it. “We’ll send them a letter once we’re safely in one of the hidden spots where it will be hard for them or anyone else to find us.”
“The spots that Voldemort knows about?”
Hadrian shrugged a little. “I can easily tell if he’s been there recently or not, and if he hasn’t, then I can fortify it against him.”
Harry wondered why Voldemort having been there recently would make a difference, but he nodded obediently and said, “Yeah, all right.” It would feel kind of good to do to Ron and Hermione what they’d done to him.
Something else occurred to him then, and he said, knowing he sounded forlorn, “I can’t take Hedwig?”
*
The name sounded familiar, and Hadrian blinked before he remembered. He had once considered naming his owl Hedwig. In the end, he’d gone with Phantom, because she was fast and silent and could seem to materialize from nowhere to hurt people who were hurting Hadrian in Slytherin.
In the end, Phantom had died at the wand of an older Slytherin who didn’t appreciate having his ear practically torn off. Hadrian had taken pleasure in roasting that one’s bones.
“She’s too distinctive to use for post,” Hadrian said gently. He understood, as much as he wished he didn’t. Phantom—Hedwig—would have been one of the few friends Harry had who absolutely couldn’t betray him. “But we’ll send her a Patronus and she’ll know to come with us. She’s plenty smart enough for that.”
“You can send a mesage by Patronus?”
“Yes.” Hadrian waved his wand, ignoring the way that it tried to resist his Patronus. It was never very happy doing the kind of magic Voldemort hadn’t been capable of, but Hadrian was its master, not the other way around. With a silent snarl, it yielded, and Harry scrambled backwards as Hadrian’s silvery Hungarian Horntail filled the corridor.
“Go to my counterpart’s snowy owl, Hedwig. Tell her we’re leaving and she should find him.”
The dragon bowed its head and soared through the wall. Harry, meanwhile, stood up and was looking back and forth between the wall and Hadrian with a look of amazement. Hadrian smirked and cast a Disillusionment Charm over both of them.
“Won’t someone see a Patronus that big?” Harry whispered as they made their way towards the entrance of the castle.
“That’s one reason it will travel through the walls. Less likely to be seen that way.”
Harry nodded, absorbed. He was a small boy and a skinny one and an emotional one and a Gryffindor, but he also had a fascination with magic that Hadrian found familiar. Hadrian had only really been able to indulge it as much as he’d wanted once Voldemort was gone and he didn’t have to worry about fighting for his life every month.
Well, now Harry would have the chance. Hadrian intended to teach him and not let him go.
*
They’d landed, after they Apparated, in front of a brick house a little smaller than the Dursleys’. Harry eyed it skeptically as Hadrian performed a series of spells that were apparently important to determine if Voldemort had been there recently. For one thing, it looked Muggle, not magical. For another, it was right in the middle of a forest that rivaled the Forbidden one for thickness and darkness.
“He hasn’t been here in decades,” Hadrian said, tucking away his wand. “Since before his disembodiment. Let’s go.” He reached for Harry’s hand.
Harry let Hadrian take it. He was thinking, as they walked, that Hadrian didn’t need to touch him all the time. But maybe there were wards around the house that meant Harry would get lost if he tried to go through them on his own or something.
They ducked through the low, arched brick doorway, and Harry immediately sneezed. Then he sneezed again when he tried to talk. Hadrian muttered something and waved the yew wand. Dust leaped up into the air and died in a fizzing crackle of black magic.
“Better?” Hadrian asked, turning to face Harry with a frown of concern.
Harry took a deep breath and nodded. “Thanks,” he said, and then managed to clear his throat and shake his head. “Yeah. I suppose nobody’s been here at all, then?”
“No. I’m going to take control of the wards. I wouldn’t be able to if Voldemort had been here more recently, because they would probably only respond to him,” Hadrian added, answering Harry’s earlier question without Harry even having asked it. “And then this place will be a fortress.”
Harry stifled some unease in response to the statement. The Dursleys’ house was supposedly a fortress behind its wards, too, but what it had mainly been was a prison.
“Hey.”
Harry blinked and turned to Hadrian. Hadrian was leaning a little forwards, frowning gently. “Not like the Dursleys’ house, I promise.”
Harry nodded slowly. Unlike everyone else he had ever spoken to, even when he was trying to tell the truth and people were asking questions with a focused air like Hermione, Hadrian knew exactly what the Dursleys had been like.
“All right,” he said. “Will Hedwig still be able to find us with the wards up?”
“She shouldn’t have a problem.”
Harry turned slowly away to explore the house, which at least was a lot bigger on the inside than the outside. That, and not being confined to one room the way he had been at the Dursleys’, should help.
*
Hadrian closed his eyes. The only reason he could claim control of wards around places like this safehouse—which was in a forest that Muggles had been made to forget existed over a century ago—was because he had Voldemort’s spirit mingled with his own. But that didn’t matter, not when he still took pleasure in reaching out and wrenching them free from the bastard’s control.
He was beginning to think that Voldemort in his world had died too quickly. He would enjoy killing this one.
He holstered his wand and went unhesitatingly up the stairs. This house looked exactly like the one he had lived in for part of the summer after his second year and returned to a few times since, including the thick dust on his first entry. He wasn’t worried about getting lost, springing traps, or having someone find them.
He found Harry on the first floor, gaping at the windows on the walls. Hadrian smiled at him, and knew it was softer than his smiles usually were, but shrugged the notion away. It wasn’t like Harry was from his world or would know the difference.
“What? You’ve never seen enchanted windows before? I know the Ministry and Hogwarts have a few.”
Harry cleared his throat and looked at Hadrian with those eyes that made him want to defend and kill and fuck. “I’ve seen them, but never any like this. They look like I can actually step through the window into…into wherever it is that they’re portraying.” And he turned back to the window in front of them, that displayed a shining starfield with a dazzling planet in the foreground. He reached out a hand, then dropped it with an embarrassed sound.
“We’ll go see them,” Hadrian said softly.
Harry pivoted to face him, eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe that you can travel into space, so don’t lie to me.”
Hadrian snorted. “No, but the windows that look like that lead straight into what they picture. Most wizards and witches don’t know a whole lot about space. They imagined this with air, so that’s what it is.” He cocked his head at the window. “They imagined a simple step between this world and the other one, so that’s how long it would take.”
“Have you been there already?” Harry whispered.
“Yes,” Hadrian said, and smiled.
Harry took a deep breath and turned to investigate the rest of the room, but then started sneezing again. Hadrian set the dust on fire and walked beside Harry as he moved towards the center of the room, where a gleaming silver design was set into the floor.
“What is this?”
“The seal of the original owners of the house,” Hadrian said, and waited a moment, but Harry continued to stare at the symbol with no sign of recognition. “Peverell.”
Harry frowned at him in incomprehension. Hadrian clucked his tongue a little. “We’ll have to see to your education.”
*
Harry bristled, and he hated it, and he hated that he couldn’t help it, and he hated Hadrian, right then, for making him feel it. “I’m not incompetent,” he snarled. “I’m not stupid. I’m not a child.”
“No, you’re not.”
Hadrian’s voice was low, his eyes glinting in the light of his wand that was the only light in the room besides that from the enchanted windows, and Harry had the strange feeling that Hadrian meant something besides what Harry did. He folded his arms and scowled harder.
“I haven’t had time to study history and things like that when I have to continually fight for my life. You probably didn’t, either.”
Hadrian continued regarding him, and then smiled suddenly. “No, I didn’t. Most of the education I got either came from trapping Voldemort’s soul inside me or after the war when I could read all the books I needed.”
“What’s it like?” Harry asked, because he couldn’t stay angry at himself for very long. Hadrian was just too interesting. “Having someone else’s soul trapped in yours?”
Hadrian considered the answer to the question, which was a good sign as far as Harry was concerned. He didn’t want a flippant answer or a humorous one. Hadrian tapped his fingers against his leg for a second, and then answered.
“It’s like suddenly remembering a book that you never read. The whole thing, the words and the pictures and the title and how long it takes you to turn the pages. I knew Voldemort’s memories, which is how I found the safehouses. I knew all the magic he knew. I knew what it felt like to cast those spells, and I knew how angry he was. I knew his burning desire for revenge and destruction.”
Harry swallowed. “And you don’t think that—affected you at all?”
“I’m sure it did. But I was willing to make the trade. Remember, I was just a lonely, bullied Slytherin first-year when I got his soul.”
“I thought you said you’d made them stop by then.”
“I made them stop openly hexing me. But I was still lonely, and people still bullied me by doing things like muttering comments and then pretending they were talking about someone else.”
Harry nodded gloomily. He knew how that went. Dudley would talk about Harry loudly in primary school, and immediately play dumb (not that it took effort) and innocent if a teacher overheard.
“You said that you would tell me more about the Horcruxes once we were here.”
“I implied it, not told you that,” Hadrian said mildly, but he was nodding. “Let’s get this cleaned up—the Trace doesn’t work here—and get something to eat, and then I’ll tell you everything you want to know. You’ll want to eat first, though, not at the same time.”
“Would you?”
“No, but I’m used to disgusting things.”
Harry held back his instinctive protest—wasn’t this what he had wanted, someone to understand him, and wasn’t this why he had gone with Hadrian, because he trusted his counterpart to protect him?—and just nodded.
*
Harry stared at his hands, which were shaking. Hadrian said nothing, but reached across the table and squeezed Harry’s shoulder. It was what he would have wanted to have done to him, if he had learned this when he was eleven.
And while Harry wasn’t eleven, he was essentially Hadrian before Hadrian had learned everything he knew. Eleven, fifteen, what really made the biggest difference between them was that Hadrian had absorbed Voldemort’s spirit and Harry hadn’t.
Harry finally looked up, blinking. There were tears in his eyes, which he tried to wipe hastily away.
Hadrian understood. Harry was afraid that tears were weak, and he would be mocked for weeping. Hadrian himself usually thought of them as a weakness. But he also understood why Harry was crying, and he didn’t hesitate to stand up, come around the table, and sit in the chair next to Harry, embracing him.
Harry leaned against him, but didn’t sob. Hadrian understood that, too. Sobs had a price, in a cupboard.
“Did Dumbledore know?” Harry finally whispered.
“I think he made some guesses,” Hadrian said. “The one in my world never knew in time, that’s for sure. I don’t know about yours, but it could be one reason that you said he wouldn’t look at you this year.”
Harry closed his eyes and nestled more closely against Hadrian. Hadrian drew him nearer still and bowed his head. It was different to notice his own smell from the outside, to feel hair that was his and not his. He smiled a little. Yes, he had been premature in assuming that the human body would never interest him.
“And what do you think he…”
“He’ll want you to die,” Hadrian said bluntly. He couldn’t allow Harry to fall into wistful guesses about the way things would go, guesses that would do their best to excuse Dumbledore. “He’ll be sorry about it. Like I said, the one in my world wasn’t a bad person. But he never understood me, and Dumbledore in any world would choose to end you rather than let Voldemort survive.”
Harry shivered once, and then stilled. He drew back and stared at Hadrian. Hadrian watched, enthralled, as the last of Harry’s tears dried up and he straightened his back as if he was standing before a dragon.
“What does it mean, now that there are two of us in the world?” Harry asked harshly. “For the prophecy? Are you the power that the Dark Lord knows not, or the Horcrux? Will I still have to die?”
“You’re not dying,” Hadrian said, and Harry looked at him, startled. Hadrian thought back on it, and decided that the words had rather emerged as a snarl. But still, it was true. Harry wasn’t dying, and he was a fool if he thought he was. “I don’t know what it means for the prophecy, not for sure. But we’ll find some other way. In fact…” He tilted his head, memories bobbing to the surface of his mind. Voldemort, at least in his world, had spent a year in the 1960s working as an Unspeakable under another identity.
“In fact, what? I’ve had enough of mysterious silences.”
Hadrian smiled. He hadn’t smiled so much in months, in years. He liked that Harry had bite and wasn’t some whimpering, fainting child, the way Hadrian could imagine Gryffindor versions of himself becoming. “I was just thinking. Voldemort studied prophecy for a while, long before he knew what a prophecy would mean for him. He was studying the split theory.”
“What’s the split theory?”
“It’s the idea that the burden of fate can be split between multiple people. That multiple people can share a prophecy, if it applies to both of them. Neville Longbottom was born a day before you, and technically he could probably split the burden of the prophecy with you. And I think the prophecy in this world really could be, because it already talks about two people, and doesn’t definitively state that you’ll vanquish Voldemort, only that you can do so. So a third person coming in to take some of the burden off you shouldn’t be that much of a stretch.”
Harry trembled and abruptly looked as if he was about to slide to the floor. Hadrian sat up. “Harry?” I know the food wasn’t poisoned, it was under all those Preservation Charms and I checked…
*
He already planned to do it. I was thinking that maybe I could force him into being the subject of the prophecy somehow, and he was already planning to do it.
Harry shook, and put his hands over his eyes. He tried to remember the last time he had utterly trusted someone, and couldn’t.
He had maintained a little bit of resentment and distrust towards Ron and Hermione all year because of their not writing to him last summer. He had distrusted Snape and Dumbledore all year, too, and his confidence in Sirius and Remus had been damaged after what he’d seen in Snape’s Pensive. Yeah, they were idiots at fifteen, but Harry wasn’t like that, so what was their excuse?
Harry had even doubted himself, because of the way he had dreamed of being Nagini and had those visions of the long corridor in the Department of Mysteries. And he had been right to doubt those visions, because he had got Sirius killed, or at least been partially responsible for getting him killed.
And now he could trust Hadrian. Another version of himself, stronger, older, wiser, Darker.
A burden Harry hadn’t even known he was carrying dropped from his shoulders and disappeared.
He pulled his hands away from his eyes and took a long breath. “Good. I’ll—I’ll trust you when you say that I don’t have to die, and there are ways of getting the Horcrux out of me.”
“There are.” Hadrian smiled, an unpleasant expression, but at the moment Harry couldn’t give a fuck. Hadrian was sitting here and telling him the truth and thinking about how to help Harry live, not die heroically. “There are rituals—painful ones, like the one that took my name, but they do work.”
“Will you tell me about it?”
“About what?”
“About the ritual that you went through, the one that made you Hadrian Black. And destroyed the Horcruxes, right? You said you had to sacrifice everything you were. That was because it took the Horcrux in you away, right?”
“You’re logical,” Hadrian murmured, and Harry flushed at the praise, which for some reason made Hadrian’s eyes linger on him. “And yes, I’ll tell you.”
“I mean—if it was painful, and you’d rather not—”
“I won’t tell you how long I writhed on the floor screaming.” Hadrian leaned back in the chair and crossed his legs. “But yes, I’ll tell you most of the details. I know that you’ll keep them to yourself.”
Harry nodded eagerly. There might have been a time when he would have wanted to share with at least Ron and Hermione, but that time was past. He had his own secrets now. They had their own secrets, really, but Hadrian was him, so it was like Harry being able to keep something all to himself.
Hadrian sat there with his eyes shut for a few moments, one hand resting on Harry’s knee. Harry leaned closer to the warmth beating out of him.
A protector, a powerful wizard, and all his.
A second later, Hadrian opened his eyes, nodded once, and began.