![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenTitle: Frazil
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Voldemort, James/OFC, past James/Lily
Content Notes: AU, Dark Harry, Death Eater Harry, violence, angst, present tense, underage, references to child abuse
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3300
Summary: Sequel to “Rotten Ice.” Voldemort has captured Harry, his unwitting human Horcrux, and is making plans to destroy James Potter, the so-called Man-Who-Conquered. Harry is adjusting to life as a Death Eater, and James, Albus, Sirius, and Remus have to ponder the news of Harry’s capture, which they expect to be shortly followed by the news of Harry’s death.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It’s the sequel to my fic “Rotten Ice” and will make no sense without it, so make sure that you read that one first. The title means ice crystals formed in water that does not freeze solid. It will have two parts.
Frazil
Harry’s new Dark Mark itches. A lot.
Harry scratches absently at the darkened skin as he follows the Death Eater down the corridor from the small room where he was detained and bound. His mind is still stunned and whirling. He was resigned to death, with his major hope being that Voldemort wouldn’t torture him too badly before he died.
And now he’s alive and free—well, free in the sense that he can move about the grand manor house that Voldemort’s headquarters are apparently in.
That’s enough for Harry. When he’s been thinking for years that his whole world would narrow to a coffin, the space between walls of this kind is expansive.
“This will be your room.”
Rodolphus Lestrange, the Death Eater Voldemort’s assigned to escort Harry through the corridors, opens a wooden-paneled door not far from the stairs they just came up. Harry looks inside and gasps a little.
“Is it too small?”
Lestrange sounds like he will cringe if the answer is yes. Harry shoots him a baffled look, but just shakes his head and steps inside, staring around at the cream-colored walls and the huge bed and the space. It’s three times the size of the dormitory that he shared with his roommates in Gryffindor Tower, maybe four times the size of the small bedroom where his Muggle relatives liked to shove him.
Larger than his bedroom in Prongs’s Place, James’s home, too. But Harry won’t think of that.
“No, it’s great,” Harry says, and starts to ask if he could have something to eat, but stops when he sees the trunk at the foot of the bed. It’s definitely not the one he left behind in Gryffindor Tower this morning. “Er, where did the trunk come from?”
“Our Lord provided it for you. You will also find robes in the wardrobe, and I know that a house-elf has been assigned to you—Katsy!”
Harry jumps a little as a house-elf clad in a pillowcase and a stunning array of stone necklaces around her throat appears in the middle of the room. Most of the necklaces appear to be made of blue pebbles. Katsy folds her hands and gives Lestrange a sidelong look. “Yes, Master Lestrange?”
“Which of the house-elves has been assigned to Harry?”
“I will be serving Master Harry myself, Master Lestrange, along with the Dark Lord.”
Lestrange gapes as if something is strange about that. Harry, who didn’t grow up with house-elves, can only suppose it’s somewhat strange for the Dark Lord to spare the services of his own elf. He gives Katsy an uncomfortable smile and says, “You don’t have to do that.”
Katsy laughs, an oddly shrill and bouncing sound, like someone’s tossed a bell down a stone passage. “Master Dark Lord is commanding. Master Harry cannot set that command aside.”
Harry stares, then shrugs. He supposes he should get used to doing what he’s told. In a way, it will be familiar. But whereas he just got hauled around like a package and smiled at uncomfortably when it was his dad or other people like Sirius and Remus doing the telling, this way at least he knows what he’s signed up for.
“All right.”
Katsy nods and glances at Lestrange. “Master Lestrange be leaving now. I will talk to Master Harry about the expectations.”
Harry raises his eyebrows higher. Expectations for what? How long to hold someone under the Cruciatus?
Actually, if it were Stepmother Elinor…
Lestrange turns and leaves without a word. Harry supposes that’s what happens when the Dark Lord has a house-elf who distributes his orders.
Katsy faces Harry and spends a long moment scrutinizing him. Harry stands under it without much care. He’s used to disappointing people. Katsy will only be the thousandth in a long, long line.
“Master Harry is understanding his place in the Dark Lord’s hierarchy,” Katsy says at last.
“All right. Do I need to know certain hours that I need to be at meals or anything like that?” Harry sits down on the bed and nearly spills on his back as it sags beneath him. He holds back a gasp. He’s never had a bed this soft.
“The Dark Lord is having certain expectations of you,” Katsy says, and sits down on pure air. Harry blinks, wondering if powerful magic like that is common with house-elves, but then Katsy is listing points off on her fingers, and he has to pay attention. “You will be polite to the Death Eaters. You will not insult them. You will ask questions in a polite tone if you have them.”
Harry nods. That sounds simple. He just hopes that it’s not going to be a situation like it was with Stepmother Elinor, where Harry thought he was being polite and she accused him of disrespect. Disrespect evolves very quickly under those circumstances. “All right.”
“You will ask most questions of the Dark Lord. You will be polite to him. You will learn Dark Arts. You will be on time for meals and lessons. You will tell the truth. You will come with him when he is directing battle on the front lines.”
Harry blinks. Wouldn’t Voldemort want someone untrained in dueling away from the front lines? But this is probably a condition of his becoming a Death Eater, and Harry will do a lot to keep his life and the protection Voldemort promised him. He nods. “All right.”
“You will listen to me. You will not endanger your life. You will not write to anyone until the Dark Lord approves the letter.”
A bitter snort leaves Harry before he can stop himself. “I don’t have anyone to write to.”
“You are still showing the letters to the Dark Lord. Say you understand.”
“I understand, Katsy.”
Katsy nods in satisfaction and stands. “Those are all the rules. I will come back when it is time for evening meal and show you to the dining room.”
“Um, could I ask for a little food now? I’m really hungry.”
Katsy examines him, then nods. “I am bringing you chicken soup and buttery bread. It is being the best for invalids.” And she disappears before Harry can protest his status as an invalid.
Harry leans back with his hands behind his head, and stares up at the crystal chandelier, and lets his mind drift for what feels like the first time in his life.
*
“There’s no doubt that Voldemort has Harry?”
“None whatsoever.”
Albus’s voice is soft, but James can still hear what he says. He whirls around and strides to the far side of the Headmaster’s office, slamming his hands on the sill of the enchanted window. He stares out at an image of the ocean and thinks that his mind is more tumultuous than its waves.
He’s always been aware that Harry has some kind of connection to Voldemort. It’s why they couldn’t include him in the Order or the resistance effort generally, because Voldemort could just read the secrets out of his mind. He also knows that if Harry’s been captured, he’s as good as dead. Voldemort will torture him because of his connection to James or try to keep him as a hostage and leverage him against the war effort.
James will not allow that.
Part of him, achingly, deeply, will always love Lily, and will always love the son he had with her. But he couldn’t keep Lily safe, and once he learned about the connection to Voldemort, he knew he couldn’t keep Harry safe, either.
The war is more important than any single person, except James himself, the man born to fight it.
“How did he—capture Harry?”
“Harry heard that there was a Gryffindor student held captive in the Forbidden Forest who could not return to the school. He went in to rescue them.”
James swallows. At least he can be sure that his son will die because he was trying to do the right thing. The circumstances of his life have been tragic, especially with Voldemort influencing him so that Harry hated his stepmother and was too violent to be around James’s other children.
Now James can hope that Harry will rest in peace.
“Has Voldemort sent a message yet?” he asks, his voice surprisingly heavy in his own ears.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
James turns around, shocked. It would normally have been the first thing Albus would have told him. Maybe he thought James needed time to mourn. He doesn’t know how long James has had nightmares about this inevitable conclusion. “What?”
“He says that he would like to meet in a week’s time, when he plans to display Harry to you.” Albus reaches up and caresses Fawkes, his own form of seeking comfort. James will go home and hug Elinor and his children. “I assume that he means he will display Harry’s corpse.”
“I should prepare Sirius and Remus,” James murmurs. His friends have been cautious about getting too close to Harry, involved in the Order as they are, but now they can be together and mourn without restraint.
“Yes, it would be a good idea. James…”
“Yes, Headmaster?” James turns around. He was starting to walk out of the office, assuming Albus would want to be alone to think of his own response to the message, but the last question is filled with the sound of heartache.
“Do you think there is any way we could have prevented this?”
James softens. He knows that Albus carries his own burden of guilt in regards to Harry. He spent years researching to try and come up with a way to end the connection that Voldemort embedded in Harry’s mind and soul before James killed the bastard.
“No,” James says. “We all tried to find a way. And your responsibility is less than mine, Albus. You were only my friend and his Headmaster. I was his father.”
“Was.”
“It’s done now,” James says, and all the burdens hang from his soul. He hopes that the last ones will be dropped soon, with the knowledge that Harry had a quick, clean death. Maybe Voldemort would have been enraged enough at Harry’s connection to James to kill him swiftly. James can only hope. “We have to move forwards.”
Albus stares at his desk, and then nods. “Yes, we do.”
James goes back to squeeze Albus’s shoulder once. He knows the Headmaster well enough by now to realize that Albus won’t want a hug. But James does, and so he departs to his home, where Elinor will be waiting, and will hug him. For all that she never liked Harry, she loves James and will honor his needs.
*
“Should I have done something more, Fawkes?”
Albus’s phoenix lifts from his perch and circles over Albus’s head with a soft, mourning trill in his voice. Albus finds that strange, because Fawkes did not know Harry, but then Fawkes lands on Albus’s shoulder and rubs his head gently against him.
Ah, of course.
“You are affected by my own mourning, are you not?” Albus asks softly, and trails his fingers through Fawkes’s feathers. Fawkes just rubs his head more insistently on Albus’s cheek. “I wish I had thought of something we could do to save Harry. To make sure that he never fed any information down the connection to Voldemort, to integrate him more strongly within his own family, to spare him from being the son of a man who had to worry about war all the time….I wish there was something.”
Fawkes sings one more symphony, incandescently sorrowful, and flies back to his perch. He sits there staring out the window towards the Forbidden Forest, and Albus turns away. It is a failing in himself, but he cannot look at the place Harry was taken.
“The only path forwards is to mourn the dead, and to avenge them,” he whispers. Gellert said that to him after Ariana’s death. Overcome by hatred then, Albus only found it deeply hypocritical of his former lover.
Now, he is at last in the situation it was meant for.
*
“I’m sorry, my lord, am I in the wrong place?”
“Why would you be?” Voldemort folds his hands and watches as his Horcrux hesitates in the doorway of the dining room. “You are with me, and I will go over some more expectations of your role that I wished Katsy to leave for when we were alone.”
“I thought we were eating with the other Death Eaters, that’s all.” Harry makes his way to the chair across from Voldemort, as cautious as a fawn. When he sits down and glances at the food in front of him in bewilderment, Voldemort decides to try an experiment.
“It is escargot,” he says, and picks up one of the napkins beside him. “You eat it like this, and you extract the meat like this…”
As he speaks, he reaches out to the connection that he discovered with Harry earlier today. Now that he knows about it, he can’t imagine how he missed it before. It is there like a door between their minds. He only has to knock, and it opens.
He sends through subtle approval as Harry reaches for his napkin, subtle disapproval when he doesn’t pull the meat free the right way. And Harry responds without seeming to notice the emotions, guided by Voldemort’s light touch through a meal that he has never eaten before.
He can feel me. I wonder how much?
When Harry makes a face of enjoyment as he eats one of the snails, Voldemort gently pushes through his own pleasure. Harry halts, blinking, and raises a hand to his scar.
“Was that you?” he asks, eyes fixed on Voldemort.
Yes, yes, look at me, look at me always—
But that is the kind of obsessiveness that made Voldemort go after a toddler when he heard half a prophecy. He sits back in his chair and cocks his head. “It was. Do you enjoy the food?”
“Yes. Did you not want me to? I’m sorry, my lord.”
“I am not your father,” Voldemort replies in Parseltongue, and Harry jolts, eyes rising to meet his. “I will not punish you for expressing natural emotions or eating food that I presented to you. Stop acting as though I will.”
Harry nods slowly, warily. Then he says, “I did enjoy it. I’ve never had it before.” He reaches carefully for another snail.
Voldemort watches him for a moment before returning to his own meal. While his discovery of the ways he can influence Harry through the Horcrux link is interesting, he will have to be careful about exercising any undue influence on him, and carefully mold his behavior. A priceless sculpture is not made by hacking at the marble.
*
“He’s really gone?’
“Yes, Padfoot, he is. I’m so sorry.”
Sirius turns away and leans his head on the doorframe to Harry’s bedroom, closing his eyes. He waited here for news, hoping that what they heard was wrong and Harry didn’t get captured by Voldemort or played some grand prank and has been hiding up in Gryffindor Tower all this time. Although Sirius might have to kill him with his bare hands if that really was the case.
But it’s not a joke. He’s gone.
Sirius takes a long, complicated breath, and James squeezes him on the shoulder. Luckily, he then knows enough to retreat and leave Sirius to stand there with his nauseated thoughts.
What else could we have done? How could we have kept you safe?
Harry doesn’t answer. He’ll never answer now.
Sirius lifts his head and stares through eyes mostly blinded by tears into the room that used to be Harry’s when he was a kid. Since he started at Hogwarts, he’s only stayed in it during the Christmas and Easter holidays, the rare few times that he came home. Sirius knows that Elinor preferred Harry to spend those holidays at Hogwarts, the way he spent the summers with Harry’s Muggle family.
I should have said something. Why didn’t I say something?
But Sirius knows why. The night that Lily died doomed his godson. Every time Sirius looked into Harry’s eyes, every time he heard him laugh, he knew the sight and the sound was tainted. Harry was always doomed to an early death, either because You-Know-Who would take him to hurt James or because—
Because someday Albus would have worked up the courage to kill him due to the connection he shared with the Dark Bastard.
Would Sirius have had the courage to stand in the way of that spell?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.
I didn’t love him the way he deserved to be loved. That took more courage than I had.
Sirius closes his eyes. In some ways, this is a relief. It means that Harry will never know for certain that Sirius chose his friends over his godson. But the pain is still lodged under his heart, haunting him like a time-delayed curse.
He randomly picks up one of the blood-red pillows from the bed, as randomly drops it back. Harry decorated the room in red and gold, the few times he came home after he Sorted Gryffindor. James decorated it that way before that. Sirius’s eyes go restlessly to the Quidditch poster of Puddlemere United on one wall. Harry’s old Quidditch Captain got tapped to play for them, if Sirius is remembering correctly.
He doesn’t know if he remembers correctly. He became so involved in the Order in the past few years that there was very little he could talk to Harry about. Any conversation might have revealed secrets for You-Know-Who to snap up.
There isn’t—
There isn’t a happy ending to this, even if Harry is still alive right now. Perhaps especially if Harry is still alive.
Sirius lies down on the bed and closes his eyes, trying his best to bury himself in memories of happier days.
*
Remus stands on top of the Astronomy Tower and stares across the grounds at the Forbidden Forest. The evening breeze tugs insistently at his robes, and Remus remembers wishing, as a young child, that he could fly without a broom.
Those dreams died an instant death when he became a werewolf. He would never be capable of powerful magic like that again. All his magic would go to fueling his monthly transformations, and then fighting them.
But against all predictions and sense, he found friends who were prepared to love him and defend him. And when Harry was born, he thought everything was perfect, that he’d found a family and a child to love as well.
Lily died, and Harry—
Harry turned into a Dark creature, just like Remus. But without even the salvation of Wolfsbane.
Remus clenches his shaking hands down at his sides.
He’s been in the Forest all afternoon, trying to track Harry’s scent with his own enhanced sense of smell. Everything he could find told the same story as Harry’s footprints. Harry ran into a clearing where at least two other, older wizards were waiting for him. There was a brief scuffle, and then they took Harry and Apparated with him.
Harry isn’t coming back.
Remus tilts his head back and howls. The sound isn’t anything like what he would make in wolf form, but it’s still deep and loud and terrifying. He can feel creatures in the Forest falling silent as they listen to it, and there’s a cacophony of barking from the direction of Hagrid’s hut a few seconds later.
Remus slumps on the Tower with his hands over his face.
He chose his friends over Harry. He hopes that Harry would understand, if Remus explained it to him.
But he wishes he could have chosen both. He wishes he would have been here to stop Harry from getting taken to You-Know-Who. He wishes he could at least guarantee Harry a fast death.
He wishes.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Harry/Voldemort, James/OFC, past James/Lily
Content Notes: AU, Dark Harry, Death Eater Harry, violence, angst, present tense, underage, references to child abuse
Rating: R
Wordcount: This part 3300
Summary: Sequel to “Rotten Ice.” Voldemort has captured Harry, his unwitting human Horcrux, and is making plans to destroy James Potter, the so-called Man-Who-Conquered. Harry is adjusting to life as a Death Eater, and James, Albus, Sirius, and Remus have to ponder the news of Harry’s capture, which they expect to be shortly followed by the news of Harry’s death.
Author’s Notes: This is one of my “Songs of Summer” fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It’s the sequel to my fic “Rotten Ice” and will make no sense without it, so make sure that you read that one first. The title means ice crystals formed in water that does not freeze solid. It will have two parts.
Frazil
Harry’s new Dark Mark itches. A lot.
Harry scratches absently at the darkened skin as he follows the Death Eater down the corridor from the small room where he was detained and bound. His mind is still stunned and whirling. He was resigned to death, with his major hope being that Voldemort wouldn’t torture him too badly before he died.
And now he’s alive and free—well, free in the sense that he can move about the grand manor house that Voldemort’s headquarters are apparently in.
That’s enough for Harry. When he’s been thinking for years that his whole world would narrow to a coffin, the space between walls of this kind is expansive.
“This will be your room.”
Rodolphus Lestrange, the Death Eater Voldemort’s assigned to escort Harry through the corridors, opens a wooden-paneled door not far from the stairs they just came up. Harry looks inside and gasps a little.
“Is it too small?”
Lestrange sounds like he will cringe if the answer is yes. Harry shoots him a baffled look, but just shakes his head and steps inside, staring around at the cream-colored walls and the huge bed and the space. It’s three times the size of the dormitory that he shared with his roommates in Gryffindor Tower, maybe four times the size of the small bedroom where his Muggle relatives liked to shove him.
Larger than his bedroom in Prongs’s Place, James’s home, too. But Harry won’t think of that.
“No, it’s great,” Harry says, and starts to ask if he could have something to eat, but stops when he sees the trunk at the foot of the bed. It’s definitely not the one he left behind in Gryffindor Tower this morning. “Er, where did the trunk come from?”
“Our Lord provided it for you. You will also find robes in the wardrobe, and I know that a house-elf has been assigned to you—Katsy!”
Harry jumps a little as a house-elf clad in a pillowcase and a stunning array of stone necklaces around her throat appears in the middle of the room. Most of the necklaces appear to be made of blue pebbles. Katsy folds her hands and gives Lestrange a sidelong look. “Yes, Master Lestrange?”
“Which of the house-elves has been assigned to Harry?”
“I will be serving Master Harry myself, Master Lestrange, along with the Dark Lord.”
Lestrange gapes as if something is strange about that. Harry, who didn’t grow up with house-elves, can only suppose it’s somewhat strange for the Dark Lord to spare the services of his own elf. He gives Katsy an uncomfortable smile and says, “You don’t have to do that.”
Katsy laughs, an oddly shrill and bouncing sound, like someone’s tossed a bell down a stone passage. “Master Dark Lord is commanding. Master Harry cannot set that command aside.”
Harry stares, then shrugs. He supposes he should get used to doing what he’s told. In a way, it will be familiar. But whereas he just got hauled around like a package and smiled at uncomfortably when it was his dad or other people like Sirius and Remus doing the telling, this way at least he knows what he’s signed up for.
“All right.”
Katsy nods and glances at Lestrange. “Master Lestrange be leaving now. I will talk to Master Harry about the expectations.”
Harry raises his eyebrows higher. Expectations for what? How long to hold someone under the Cruciatus?
Actually, if it were Stepmother Elinor…
Lestrange turns and leaves without a word. Harry supposes that’s what happens when the Dark Lord has a house-elf who distributes his orders.
Katsy faces Harry and spends a long moment scrutinizing him. Harry stands under it without much care. He’s used to disappointing people. Katsy will only be the thousandth in a long, long line.
“Master Harry is understanding his place in the Dark Lord’s hierarchy,” Katsy says at last.
“All right. Do I need to know certain hours that I need to be at meals or anything like that?” Harry sits down on the bed and nearly spills on his back as it sags beneath him. He holds back a gasp. He’s never had a bed this soft.
“The Dark Lord is having certain expectations of you,” Katsy says, and sits down on pure air. Harry blinks, wondering if powerful magic like that is common with house-elves, but then Katsy is listing points off on her fingers, and he has to pay attention. “You will be polite to the Death Eaters. You will not insult them. You will ask questions in a polite tone if you have them.”
Harry nods. That sounds simple. He just hopes that it’s not going to be a situation like it was with Stepmother Elinor, where Harry thought he was being polite and she accused him of disrespect. Disrespect evolves very quickly under those circumstances. “All right.”
“You will ask most questions of the Dark Lord. You will be polite to him. You will learn Dark Arts. You will be on time for meals and lessons. You will tell the truth. You will come with him when he is directing battle on the front lines.”
Harry blinks. Wouldn’t Voldemort want someone untrained in dueling away from the front lines? But this is probably a condition of his becoming a Death Eater, and Harry will do a lot to keep his life and the protection Voldemort promised him. He nods. “All right.”
“You will listen to me. You will not endanger your life. You will not write to anyone until the Dark Lord approves the letter.”
A bitter snort leaves Harry before he can stop himself. “I don’t have anyone to write to.”
“You are still showing the letters to the Dark Lord. Say you understand.”
“I understand, Katsy.”
Katsy nods in satisfaction and stands. “Those are all the rules. I will come back when it is time for evening meal and show you to the dining room.”
“Um, could I ask for a little food now? I’m really hungry.”
Katsy examines him, then nods. “I am bringing you chicken soup and buttery bread. It is being the best for invalids.” And she disappears before Harry can protest his status as an invalid.
Harry leans back with his hands behind his head, and stares up at the crystal chandelier, and lets his mind drift for what feels like the first time in his life.
*
“There’s no doubt that Voldemort has Harry?”
“None whatsoever.”
Albus’s voice is soft, but James can still hear what he says. He whirls around and strides to the far side of the Headmaster’s office, slamming his hands on the sill of the enchanted window. He stares out at an image of the ocean and thinks that his mind is more tumultuous than its waves.
He’s always been aware that Harry has some kind of connection to Voldemort. It’s why they couldn’t include him in the Order or the resistance effort generally, because Voldemort could just read the secrets out of his mind. He also knows that if Harry’s been captured, he’s as good as dead. Voldemort will torture him because of his connection to James or try to keep him as a hostage and leverage him against the war effort.
James will not allow that.
Part of him, achingly, deeply, will always love Lily, and will always love the son he had with her. But he couldn’t keep Lily safe, and once he learned about the connection to Voldemort, he knew he couldn’t keep Harry safe, either.
The war is more important than any single person, except James himself, the man born to fight it.
“How did he—capture Harry?”
“Harry heard that there was a Gryffindor student held captive in the Forbidden Forest who could not return to the school. He went in to rescue them.”
James swallows. At least he can be sure that his son will die because he was trying to do the right thing. The circumstances of his life have been tragic, especially with Voldemort influencing him so that Harry hated his stepmother and was too violent to be around James’s other children.
Now James can hope that Harry will rest in peace.
“Has Voldemort sent a message yet?” he asks, his voice surprisingly heavy in his own ears.
“As a matter of fact, yes.”
James turns around, shocked. It would normally have been the first thing Albus would have told him. Maybe he thought James needed time to mourn. He doesn’t know how long James has had nightmares about this inevitable conclusion. “What?”
“He says that he would like to meet in a week’s time, when he plans to display Harry to you.” Albus reaches up and caresses Fawkes, his own form of seeking comfort. James will go home and hug Elinor and his children. “I assume that he means he will display Harry’s corpse.”
“I should prepare Sirius and Remus,” James murmurs. His friends have been cautious about getting too close to Harry, involved in the Order as they are, but now they can be together and mourn without restraint.
“Yes, it would be a good idea. James…”
“Yes, Headmaster?” James turns around. He was starting to walk out of the office, assuming Albus would want to be alone to think of his own response to the message, but the last question is filled with the sound of heartache.
“Do you think there is any way we could have prevented this?”
James softens. He knows that Albus carries his own burden of guilt in regards to Harry. He spent years researching to try and come up with a way to end the connection that Voldemort embedded in Harry’s mind and soul before James killed the bastard.
“No,” James says. “We all tried to find a way. And your responsibility is less than mine, Albus. You were only my friend and his Headmaster. I was his father.”
“Was.”
“It’s done now,” James says, and all the burdens hang from his soul. He hopes that the last ones will be dropped soon, with the knowledge that Harry had a quick, clean death. Maybe Voldemort would have been enraged enough at Harry’s connection to James to kill him swiftly. James can only hope. “We have to move forwards.”
Albus stares at his desk, and then nods. “Yes, we do.”
James goes back to squeeze Albus’s shoulder once. He knows the Headmaster well enough by now to realize that Albus won’t want a hug. But James does, and so he departs to his home, where Elinor will be waiting, and will hug him. For all that she never liked Harry, she loves James and will honor his needs.
*
“Should I have done something more, Fawkes?”
Albus’s phoenix lifts from his perch and circles over Albus’s head with a soft, mourning trill in his voice. Albus finds that strange, because Fawkes did not know Harry, but then Fawkes lands on Albus’s shoulder and rubs his head gently against him.
Ah, of course.
“You are affected by my own mourning, are you not?” Albus asks softly, and trails his fingers through Fawkes’s feathers. Fawkes just rubs his head more insistently on Albus’s cheek. “I wish I had thought of something we could do to save Harry. To make sure that he never fed any information down the connection to Voldemort, to integrate him more strongly within his own family, to spare him from being the son of a man who had to worry about war all the time….I wish there was something.”
Fawkes sings one more symphony, incandescently sorrowful, and flies back to his perch. He sits there staring out the window towards the Forbidden Forest, and Albus turns away. It is a failing in himself, but he cannot look at the place Harry was taken.
“The only path forwards is to mourn the dead, and to avenge them,” he whispers. Gellert said that to him after Ariana’s death. Overcome by hatred then, Albus only found it deeply hypocritical of his former lover.
Now, he is at last in the situation it was meant for.
*
“I’m sorry, my lord, am I in the wrong place?”
“Why would you be?” Voldemort folds his hands and watches as his Horcrux hesitates in the doorway of the dining room. “You are with me, and I will go over some more expectations of your role that I wished Katsy to leave for when we were alone.”
“I thought we were eating with the other Death Eaters, that’s all.” Harry makes his way to the chair across from Voldemort, as cautious as a fawn. When he sits down and glances at the food in front of him in bewilderment, Voldemort decides to try an experiment.
“It is escargot,” he says, and picks up one of the napkins beside him. “You eat it like this, and you extract the meat like this…”
As he speaks, he reaches out to the connection that he discovered with Harry earlier today. Now that he knows about it, he can’t imagine how he missed it before. It is there like a door between their minds. He only has to knock, and it opens.
He sends through subtle approval as Harry reaches for his napkin, subtle disapproval when he doesn’t pull the meat free the right way. And Harry responds without seeming to notice the emotions, guided by Voldemort’s light touch through a meal that he has never eaten before.
He can feel me. I wonder how much?
When Harry makes a face of enjoyment as he eats one of the snails, Voldemort gently pushes through his own pleasure. Harry halts, blinking, and raises a hand to his scar.
“Was that you?” he asks, eyes fixed on Voldemort.
Yes, yes, look at me, look at me always—
But that is the kind of obsessiveness that made Voldemort go after a toddler when he heard half a prophecy. He sits back in his chair and cocks his head. “It was. Do you enjoy the food?”
“Yes. Did you not want me to? I’m sorry, my lord.”
“I am not your father,” Voldemort replies in Parseltongue, and Harry jolts, eyes rising to meet his. “I will not punish you for expressing natural emotions or eating food that I presented to you. Stop acting as though I will.”
Harry nods slowly, warily. Then he says, “I did enjoy it. I’ve never had it before.” He reaches carefully for another snail.
Voldemort watches him for a moment before returning to his own meal. While his discovery of the ways he can influence Harry through the Horcrux link is interesting, he will have to be careful about exercising any undue influence on him, and carefully mold his behavior. A priceless sculpture is not made by hacking at the marble.
*
“He’s really gone?’
“Yes, Padfoot, he is. I’m so sorry.”
Sirius turns away and leans his head on the doorframe to Harry’s bedroom, closing his eyes. He waited here for news, hoping that what they heard was wrong and Harry didn’t get captured by Voldemort or played some grand prank and has been hiding up in Gryffindor Tower all this time. Although Sirius might have to kill him with his bare hands if that really was the case.
But it’s not a joke. He’s gone.
Sirius takes a long, complicated breath, and James squeezes him on the shoulder. Luckily, he then knows enough to retreat and leave Sirius to stand there with his nauseated thoughts.
What else could we have done? How could we have kept you safe?
Harry doesn’t answer. He’ll never answer now.
Sirius lifts his head and stares through eyes mostly blinded by tears into the room that used to be Harry’s when he was a kid. Since he started at Hogwarts, he’s only stayed in it during the Christmas and Easter holidays, the rare few times that he came home. Sirius knows that Elinor preferred Harry to spend those holidays at Hogwarts, the way he spent the summers with Harry’s Muggle family.
I should have said something. Why didn’t I say something?
But Sirius knows why. The night that Lily died doomed his godson. Every time Sirius looked into Harry’s eyes, every time he heard him laugh, he knew the sight and the sound was tainted. Harry was always doomed to an early death, either because You-Know-Who would take him to hurt James or because—
Because someday Albus would have worked up the courage to kill him due to the connection he shared with the Dark Bastard.
Would Sirius have had the courage to stand in the way of that spell?
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know.
I didn’t love him the way he deserved to be loved. That took more courage than I had.
Sirius closes his eyes. In some ways, this is a relief. It means that Harry will never know for certain that Sirius chose his friends over his godson. But the pain is still lodged under his heart, haunting him like a time-delayed curse.
He randomly picks up one of the blood-red pillows from the bed, as randomly drops it back. Harry decorated the room in red and gold, the few times he came home after he Sorted Gryffindor. James decorated it that way before that. Sirius’s eyes go restlessly to the Quidditch poster of Puddlemere United on one wall. Harry’s old Quidditch Captain got tapped to play for them, if Sirius is remembering correctly.
He doesn’t know if he remembers correctly. He became so involved in the Order in the past few years that there was very little he could talk to Harry about. Any conversation might have revealed secrets for You-Know-Who to snap up.
There isn’t—
There isn’t a happy ending to this, even if Harry is still alive right now. Perhaps especially if Harry is still alive.
Sirius lies down on the bed and closes his eyes, trying his best to bury himself in memories of happier days.
*
Remus stands on top of the Astronomy Tower and stares across the grounds at the Forbidden Forest. The evening breeze tugs insistently at his robes, and Remus remembers wishing, as a young child, that he could fly without a broom.
Those dreams died an instant death when he became a werewolf. He would never be capable of powerful magic like that again. All his magic would go to fueling his monthly transformations, and then fighting them.
But against all predictions and sense, he found friends who were prepared to love him and defend him. And when Harry was born, he thought everything was perfect, that he’d found a family and a child to love as well.
Lily died, and Harry—
Harry turned into a Dark creature, just like Remus. But without even the salvation of Wolfsbane.
Remus clenches his shaking hands down at his sides.
He’s been in the Forest all afternoon, trying to track Harry’s scent with his own enhanced sense of smell. Everything he could find told the same story as Harry’s footprints. Harry ran into a clearing where at least two other, older wizards were waiting for him. There was a brief scuffle, and then they took Harry and Apparated with him.
Harry isn’t coming back.
Remus tilts his head back and howls. The sound isn’t anything like what he would make in wolf form, but it’s still deep and loud and terrifying. He can feel creatures in the Forest falling silent as they listen to it, and there’s a cacophony of barking from the direction of Hagrid’s hut a few seconds later.
Remus slumps on the Tower with his hands over his face.
He chose his friends over Harry. He hopes that Harry would understand, if Remus explained it to him.
But he wishes he could have chosen both. He wishes he would have been here to stop Harry from getting taken to You-Know-Who. He wishes he could at least guarantee Harry a fast death.
He wishes.
