[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Shards of the Mirror, Harry/Harry, R, 2/5

[lomonaaeren]

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Chapter Two

He took a step back and stared at the ritual figure scribed on the ground. It wasn’t a circle, not with what he had to do.

The figure was formed of three spirals of steel embedded into the desolate dirt of a clearing not far from Hogwarts. He had spent hours forging the steel with his magic and the knowledge of the spirit of Voldemort trapped in his soul.

On each end of each spiral waited a Horcrux. A snake Voldemort had possessed in the forests of Albania was on the far end of the third one. He didn’t know for sure that she was a Horcrux, since Voldemort’s memories of that time were blurred, but he wasn’t going to take any chances.

He closed his eyes and began.

The ritual called blood and power from within him, and that was one reason the spirals were there instead of a circle. The circle contained power, and he couldn’t contain this. He had to let it spread around him, and flood over the ground, and listen to the astonished sounds of the soul in his head and the souls in the objects screaming.

They hadn’t known he could do this.

He smiled grimly, and kept going.

The burning began around the third pulse of magic that he sent flooding out over the spirals. For the first few moments, he ignored it. When it knocked him to his knees, he went with it, head bowed, breath whistling in and out of his lungs.

He was glad that he had chosen a ritual that didn’t involve a chant, just magic and will, or he would have certainly lost control of the chant at that point.

He kept breathing, kept forcing. The burning grew worse and crept along his body. He felt Voldemort’s spirit writhing eagerly in the cage of his soul, anticipating getting out and taking him over.

They both knew what this ritual did. He had to give up everything he was, everything that made him Harry Potter. Voldemort thought that meant he would be able to possess Harry’s body, because there would be nothing left of Harry to either control his own body or imprison Voldemort.

Harry gritted his teeth, through his last moments of being Harry Potter, and thought, Not the way it works, you bastard.

The burning magic spiraled through him, and the diadem burst into flames. The locket followed it a moment later.

He braced one hand on the edge of the steel spiral that was now clear of Horcruxes, and crawled forwards until his knees rested on it. He was panting. He could feel the sweat streaking down his forehead, and his chest hurt. And still he continued pushing, the magic flooding out of him and his soul dragging Voldemort’s spirit along with it.

Voldemort seemed to grasp the outlines of his plan then, and screamed.

Harry laughed hoarsely and slammed his palms down on the steel spiral.

The cup and the snake simply faded from sight, and he crawled towards that spiral, resting his fingers on the metal. The flames that had destroyed the first two Horcruxes seemed to be inside him now, roaring and racing high, and his heart and will and mind and being were charred in the wake of it.

And from the middle of that fire…

The diary and the ring exploded, pieces of burning parchment and shards of metal soaring high. He reached out his hands and saw the black shard of his own Horcrux hovering in front of him, twisting back and forth as if confirming what direction it should take.

Harry shoved with all his might, in his last moments of being Harry.

From the heart of the fire, as the last of him burned away, his magic and his body and his name, there ascended nothing but his indomitable will. He was no one at the moment, so he could be anyone he wanted.

And he chose to be someone whose soul still contained Voldemort. He chose to still have green eyes and messy black hair and be a little above the height and weight he had been. He didn’t want to inhabit an entirely different body. This was the one he was familiar with and had taught other people to be afraid of.

Voldemort screamed again, but he was contained. He opened his eyes and stared down at his own hands, resting on his own knees, clad in skin that was seared a sharp pink and free of all the scars he had collected over the lifetime he’d left behind.

My name is…

It took a lot of twisting back and forth in his mind to fashion himself a new name, but he chose it at last. Black, because Sirius might as well do him some good for once. Hadrian, because it was a little like Harry had been.

A little. Not a lot. He was beyond his old self now, soaring through a space of will and power that he hadn’t known existed.

Hadrian Black rose to his feet, and the steel of the spirals sank into the earth. Hadrian ran a hand down his naked chest and then reached for Voldemort’s wand, conjuring robes for himself.

He was glad, now, that he hadn’t tried to retain his holly wand. Voldemort’s wand would work for him since it wasn’t part of the self he had destroyed.

Hadrian Black walked away from Harry Potter’s resting place, and prodded curiously at the memories in his mind. They were inert, now, his but without the sense of living and twisting presence behind them that had always been there when he’d imprisoned Voldemort’s spirit. It seemed that he really had destroyed every trace of Voldemort, which meant destroying his soul. What was left was knowledge that Hadrian had incorporated into his mind.

Hadrian smiled, and Apparated.

*

Harry hadn’t moved since Hadrian began telling him the story. He knew that he was probably staring, gaping even, with wide eyes, and Hadrian would probably get irritated with that in a second. But he didn’t think that he could close his mouth or look less startled.

What Hadrian had told him was…

“Brilliant,” he said.

“Do you think so?”

Hadrian’s voice was odd, low. Harry frowned at him. Hadrian looked back, his hands clenched on the table as if he was just barely keeping himself from reaching out to pick up his wand.

Or touch Harry, for that matter.

“Yes, I do,” Harry said. “You found a way to get the Horcrux out of you, and you survived. So you were around when I asked the Room of Requirement to give me someone, and I found you.”

Hadrian smiled, but his eyes were shadowed. “The Room would have found someone else for you if I wasn’t available.”

“No one as brilliant.”

Hadrian blinked for a long moment, and then cleared his throat. He stood up. “I think we should get some sleep.”

“You’re not my parent, to give me a bedtime,” Harry muttered, and glanced away. It seemed to him that Hadrian owed him more than just ignoring what he’d said, as though Harry was a child who couldn’t be trusted to know what he was saying.

“No,” Hadrian agreed. “And I’m not your brother, either. I’m you. I know that you’re tired after today, with everything that happened. You were probably dead tired by the time you left Dumbledore’s office, but you didn’t want to admit it.”

Harry sighed and leaned harder against the table. All right, so Hadrian wasn’t responding the way Harry had hoped he would. But yeah, he was tired, so exhausted that his throat and his bones ached with it.

“We have bedrooms here?” he asked. He knew it was ungraciously.

“Yes, of course.”

Hadrian led him up the stairs again and this time turned down a corridor that Harry hadn’t even noticed, lined with shut doors. He opened the nearest one and performed a few spells that eliminated the puffs of dust that filled the interior. Then he did another spell that might have freshened the sheets. Harry noticed a smell like lavender drifting through the air.

He’d always liked that smell, but now he barely noticed it. He stumbled over to the bed and curled up. It was at least as large as his bed at Hogwarts, and the sheets were soft, and that was all that really mattered right now.

“Good night, Harry,” he thought he heard Hadrian whisper, but the darkness was drawing in around him, and he couldn’t remain awake long enough to be sure.

*

Hadrian stood in the doorway, watching as Harry shifted and curled around himself in his sleep.

He didn’t like the way that he had been affected by Harry’s reaction to the ritual. He had thought he would scare and awe Harry, and remind him of how much more powerful Hadrian was. Harry would see that he was ignorant, and he would resent Hadrian for a while, but he would come around in the end, and ask to be taught.

Wide-eyed, shining admiration wasn’t what Hadrian had expected.

Shaking his head, Hadrian stepped up to the bed and smoothed a strand of dark hair back from Harry’s forehead, then turned and walked out, shutting the door behind him. He attached spells to the door that would let him know if Harry got up during the night, and made his way down the stairs again.

Stepping outside the wards and turning to the north, he wasn’t surprised to see a bright white shape winging towards him. Phantom—Hedwig as she was in this world—landed on the door lintel and regarded him with wide, solemn eyes.

“It’s all right,” Hadrian said softly. “We both want to take care of him.”

The twist of Hedwig’s head somehow expressed skepticism, but she only took wing and flew feather-silent over to the roof of the house. This particular cottage didn’t have an owlery. Hadrian trusted she was smart enough to stay nearby, though, if she was smart enough to obey the Patronus message and find them in the first place.

Hadrian closed his eyes and drew a deep breath. Objectively, the air of the forest around him was neither colder or brisker or more invigorating than the air of his own world. He might as well have been there.

But he knew what was the important difference, and he was sleeping in a bedroom upstairs.

Hadrian smiled and turned to mount the stairs again. Although not as tired as Harry, he would need his rest.

Tomorrow, the real changes would begin.

*

“Hermione, have you seen Harry?”

Hermione looked up from her book, blinking. She’d been sitting in the Gryffindor common room and waiting for her friends, but had got lost in the NEWT History book. “No,” she said, as Ron slouched down the last of the steps and over to her. “He isn’t in the bedroom?”

“No. I don’t think he ever came back last night.”

Hermione sighed and shut the book with a snap. “Well, he might be wandering the school to try and take his mind off—you know.” Seamus wasn’t far behind Ron, and he gave them both a suspicious look before walking through the portrait hole. Hermione didn’t want to mention Sirius’s name in front of him.

“Yeah.” Ron’s face was somber. “Reckon we ought to look for him?”

Hermione thought about it, and thought about the way that Harry would probably want to be alone for a while, before shaking her head. “If we haven’t seen him by lunchtime, we’ll ask Dobby to look for him. I think he could find Harry buried underground.”

“Yeah,” Ron said again, but this time he was smiling. He fell into step beside her as she turned to leave the common room. “I hope we can help Harry. He’s lost enough.”

Hermione nodded. She had some hope that Dumbledore wouldn’t stick Harry back in the Muggle world this summer. Or at least he might be able to visit her and her parents. Surely the Dursleys couldn’t object to that.

“We’ll be there for him,” she said. “And if he wants us to do more than that, we’ll try. I hope that he talked to Professor Dumbledore and got some things cleared up, though.” It had bothered her that the Headmaster had avoided Harry all year.

Ron’s shoulders straightened. He had grown taller in the last few months, of course, but he had also grown firmer, Hermione thought. Something like last year’s fiasco with Ron not believing Harry when his name came out of the Goblet would never happen now.

“I hope Dumbledore did or I’ll go up and drag him down his office stairs by his beard to make him talk to Harry.”

“Ron!” scolded Hermione, but she couldn’t help but smile.

*

“We’re going to go destroy the wards on the Dursleys’ house.”

Harry looked up with wide eyes from the breakfast on the table, which contained so much bread and marmalade and so many sausages and scones that he didn’t think he could eat half of it. Hadrian had even found a pitcher of pumpkin juice from somewhere, and was drinking his second glass of it. His face was utterly calm, his eyes focused, and he didn’t look at all as if he had just said what he’d said.

“What? I mean, I know what, but why? I never have to go see them again, so—” Harry tensed. “Unless you—”

“I would never abandon you to them,” Hadrian said quickly, reaching across the table to rest his hand on top of Harry’s.

Harry relaxed a little, cautiously. Those words at least sounded sincere. And Hadrian’s hand lingered, a heavy, warm presence that made him relax more almost against his will. He ate another sausage.

“Then why?”

“Because as long as they exist, Dumbledore might try to force you back there.” Hadrian shook his head a little. “I don’t think he’ll catch up with us, but if he does, I don’t want to take the chance.”

“You think he would—”

“I don’t know as much about him as you do, so you tell me, Harry. Do you think he wouldn’t?”

Harry squeezed his eyes shut. It was true that Dumbledore had told him about the prophecy, finally, and sworn that he wouldn’t keep secrets from him again, but Harry didn’t trust him. Not to keep Harry away from the Dursleys, anyway. He shook his head.

“Then we have to destroy the wards,” Hadrian said, and smiled behind his glass of pumpkin juice. “Besides, you want revenge, don’t you?”

“I hadn’t—thought about it.”

“I know. Because you decided when you were young that you would never get that revenge, and you didn’t want to live longing for a hopeless dream.”

Harry swallowed. That was the sort of thing he never would have told anyone else, not even Ron or Hermione, because he was afraid that they might think he was weak or terrible to want revenge on his family in the first place. And he had given up on the dream, anyway. He had friends and a life that didn’t have the Dursleys in it for ten months of the year.

But he had also lost Sirius, his only hope for living away from the Dursleys. And he knew the prophecy. He was doomed to die unless he somehow managed to destroy the Horcruxes before then.

Harry looked at Hadrian, and knew he didn’t need to explain any of that. A deep, abiding weariness he hadn’t known he carried faded.

“Let’s go destroy them.”

*

Hadrian had never bothered to come back to the Dursleys’ home in his own world; with his knowledge of Voldemort’s safehouses, he had simply stayed away during the summers and kept on the move whenever he’d thought someone might be tracking him.

But looking at this house and the twisted shimmer of wards around it, he felt a deep satisfaction. They might not be his aunt and uncle and cousin, exactly, but they were terrible people.

And they had hurt Harry.

That was unforgivable.

Hadrian smiled and moved forwards, Harry beside him. Harry had his Invisibility Cloak, and had cast it over both of them. Hadrian liked the feeling of it, although he had enough trust in his Disillusionment Charms that he didn’t need the Cloak.

When they reached the boundary of the wards, the things tingled and spat at him. Hadrian laughed a little. That just proved that the wards provided more protection to the Dursleys than they ever had to Harry. They could sense Hadrian’s intentions towards the Muggles and didn’t care at all that he was doing this to protect Harry.

“How are you going to destroy them?” Harry whispered.

“We are going to destroy them,” Hadrian said, and extended his hand. Harry blinked at it, but accepted it slowly. Hadrian hauled Harry close against his side, the way he had done when they left the Room of Requirement. As far as he was concerned, it was the place Harry would occupy most of the time very soon, so he might as well get used to it.

Besides, Hadrian liked having him there.

“Think of everything you experienced here,” Hadrian said softly. “The cupboard, how they only gave you a bedroom when they thought they had to, the way they laughed at you, how they called you freak, Aunt Marge and Ripper, the starvation, the chores, the lies about your parents…”

Harry closed his eyes slowly. When he opened them again, they shone with a fire that had become very familiar to Hadrian during the last few years whenever he’d looked into the mirror.

“Yes, there,” Hadrian said softly. He would have liked to coax Harry further into rage, into the kind of anger that would allow him to torture his relatives to death, but that would be too far, too fast right now, just like trying to alienate Harry from his friends or Dumbledore instead of taking him away. Eventually, he would reach that level of anger. “Come on.” He raised his wand.

Harry’s holly wand rose at the same time, although Hadrian hadn’t even seen him draw it. Hadrian smiled. It was years since something had been able to surprise him. This was kind of thrilling.

They focused on the house, and although they hadn’t discussed what incantation to use, it was no surprise to Hadrian when they both spoke the same word in unison.

“Bombarda!”

The spells hit the wards at the same time, with the same amount of power. Hadrian tugged Harry close again and raised a shield as the wards splintered, cracks racing through them and then lashing out in random bursts of magic. Harry nestled close, his head bowed and his eyes closed, at least from what Hadrian could feel against his side.

It was just as well, since it kept Harry from seeing how vulnerable the house appeared in the moment after the wards first fell. There was no doubt in Hadrian’s mind that the wards had been protecting the Dursleys from notice by the Muggle authorities, and also by magical ones. There were lots of people who could notice things they hadn’t before and have questions, now.

And lots of people who would want to…talk to the Dursleys.

Hadrian smiled. He would have liked to torture Harry’s so-loving relatives, but letting someone else do it would be nearly as satisfying. Perhaps this world’s Voldemort could show up with a few Death Eaters.

“Hadrian?”

Harry whispered his name. Hadrian dragged his attention away from the house and looked at Harry. “Yes?” he asked softly.

“I—I think we should leave. Dumbledore had a Squib friend of his, Arabella Figg, who’s probably already noticed what we did.”

Hadrian cursed. He remembered Mrs. Figg, of course, but he had left the Dursleys too young to ever know she was a Squib. “Come on, then,” he said, and gave up all fantasies of other revenge. He whirled Harry into a Side-along Apparition, and they came down safely inside the wards of their safehouse, which would prevent anyone else from coming through.

“Is it bad that I don’t feel bad?”

Hadrian choked down his scoff, and reminded himself that Harry was young in a way that had nothing to do with being a few months younger than Hadrian due to the way time moved between their worlds. Hadrian shook his head. “They hated you and they abused you.” Harry made a little protesting noise, probably because he hadn’t thought of it as abuse, but Hadrian plowed on. “What we did was already too good for them.”

“Yeah,” Harry said after a minute. “I reckon…”

“Yes?” Hadrian placed a hand under Harry’s chin and gently urged his head up.

Harry looked at him with wide eyes before looking down, but Hadrian gently shook his chin, and Harry looked up again.

“I reckon that you’re the only one who would understand how much I wanted to hurt them,” Harry whispered. “I didn’t even let myself think it until now.”

Hadrian smiled and drew him close. He would have liked to kiss him, but Harry wasn’t ready.

“I understand,” he said instead. “I approve.”

Harry shivered, perhaps at the tone in Hadrian’s voice. Hadrian nudged him gently into the house, not taking his arm from around Harry. He liked touching Harry, and he would be doing quite a lot more of it in the future.

From the way Harry leaned into him, he didn’t particularly want to let go, either, which was an excellent start.