[Songs of Summer]: Frazil, sequel to Rotten Ice, R, Harry/Voldemort, 2/4

[lomonaaeren]

Thank you for all the reviews! I have decided to give this a few more parts, because I didn’t get to do everything I wanted to in this chapter.

Part Two

“What do you want me to do, my lady?”

Bellatrix cackles at him and flips her hair over her shoulder. She seems as dangerous as she did a few days ago when she was binding Harry to the chair in the interrogation room, but Harry is still easier around her than he was. Voldemort is much more dangerous, and he’s told Bellatrix that Harry is to be treated well.

“Don’t call me my lady, Harry. That mode of address is for our lord alone.” Bellatrix reaches out and raps his hand with the tip of her wand. “In the meantime, you’re to show me all the defensive spells that you’ve learned.”

Harry blinks, not having expected the instruction, but nods and draws his wand. Bellatrix steps out of the way, and the artificial, magical mist that was hovering behind her clears. Harry finds himself in the middle of an enormous room that seems like it ought to take up more room in the bowels of this particular manor house than it does. He takes a slow step forwards as he sees the targets on the wall.

They look a lot like the Defense targets various professors set up at Hogwarts, but those were stones, or flickering images of goblins and werewolves and the like. These are all static figures.

And all human-shaped.

Harry glances over his shoulder at Bellatrix, who rolls her wrist at him. Apparently he really is supposed to cast at them. Harry lifts his wand, does his best to clear his mind the way he does when he’s diving after a Snitch, and starts casting.

Bellatrix is frowning by the time that Harry makes a target explode, wooden splinters flying into the corners of the room, but then she laughs and claps her hands. “Well done! Well done! That’s what we were looking for.”

“We were?”

Bellatrix winks at him and abruptly steps towards him. Harry flinches before he’s able to stop himself. He knows that some of the Dark Lord’s followers went to Azkaban, but Bellatrix never did, escaping the Aurors’ attempts to capture her time after time. “You’re to get good at spells that can kill enemies, Harry.”

Harry swallows. “I—I don’t know how long that will take.”

“You did perfectly well!”

“That was wood, not flesh.”

“So you think you might hesitate when you have to confront someone from your past? Your father, for example?”

Harry pauses. He can feel the cold that charges through his body, down from his head into his chest, feeling as if it’s leaving ice behind.

The thing is…

He never really let himself think of revenge on his father, because he knew it would never happen. There’s no one around who would help Harry take it, and James is so important to so many other people that he’s guarded day and night when he’s with the Aurors. When he’s at home, Stepmother Elinor or Emily and Vance are always with him. And Harry barely saw James after he went to Hogwarts anyway, not compared with when he was too young to think of taking revenge.

It was never a reality that would happen, so it’s never been a fantasy that Harry indulged in.

Now, though…

Harry turns to stare at Bellatrix. “I was nothing special at Hogwarts. I don’t know if our lord would really want me with him on the battlefield. Or if he would give me a chance to hurt my father when my father is probably the kind of enemy he would want to take out himself.”

Bellatrix cackles again. Harry is getting steadily less afraid as he listens to her. At least Bellatrix wears her anger and hatred openly, instead of smiling at Harry and saying they could just never tell him anything about the Order for no apparent reason, the way Sirius and Remus did.

“The Dark Lord does not necessarily want to spill every drop of Potter’s blood. He might let you have some of it.” Bellatrix leans nearer. “And your father is the only one you hate? The only one who never saw your potential or tried to keep you out of the war?”

Harry swallows. “There are other people.”

“Then picture them. I imagine that the Dark Lord is going to indulge most desires you have. Not all, but who gets all?” Bellatrix cocks her head to the side like a wise raven. “You can kill them, little Potter.”

Kill them.

This is a fantasy that Harry never pictured, either. Sometimes he imagined yelling at Sirius or Remus and making them listen. But the impossibility of that became clear early on, too. Because they always just listened to James.

What if I could do something else? What if I could make them listen to me because I’m hurting them?

Harry’s wand trembles in his hand, but the emotion that opens dark tendrils in his chest is nothing like fear.

“Ah, there it is,” Bellatrix says, so softly that Harry can almost pretend the words are those of his own mind. She paces a step towards him, then stops and conjures a target. It looks so much like Sirius that Harry jumps. But of course, Bellatrix is his cousin and knows what Sirius looks like. “Go on, Harry. Give it a try.”

“What spell?” Harry whispers, unable to look away from the Sirius-shaped target.

“Anything you want, as long as you destroy him.”

Destroy him.

The instruction sinks deep into Harry’s bones, and he finds himself raising his wand and casting a spell that he spied on some of the Slytherins in his year casting, but has never actually practiced himself.

“Sectus!”

The magic flies away from his wand like an invisible, whirling rope, and slams into the target. Sirius’s head rolls from his shoulders, and shavings of his long black hair rain down around the body. Harry stares at the floor where they lie now, breathing so fast that his lungs hurt.

Bellatrix bursts out cackling again and claps her hands. “There, there, there! We’ll make a killer out of you yet!”

Harry wonders if he should be glad of that. He wonders if he should turn around and run.

But this is the choice he made, even if Voldemort made most of the choice by not killing Harry. And it’s in response to the other decisions that James and the rest of them made, isn’t it? He never got told anything about the war, so he can make his own decisions about it now.

Including what spells to cast, if he likes.

Harry smiles as he pictures what Sirius will say if he ever sees Harry on the battlefield casting like a natural—or an Auror, which Sirius spent a lot of time earnestly telling Harry he couldn’t be—and turns to Bellatrix with a smile. “Do you know any spells strong enough to kill a werewolf? I don’t think I do.”

*

“Are you sure that you need to go to this meeting personally, James? What if it’s a trap?”

James turns to Elinor with a small smile. Merlin, she’s lovely in the sunlight through the window of their bedroom. She reclines in their bed, and her pale skin and blonde hair, sprawled about her, are hardly distinguishable from the sunlight.

“Voldemort said that he would display Harry in some way. I need to be there to reclaim my son’s body, at least.”

Elinor catches her breath in pain and stares down at her hands. Her nails are long and pale pink and lacquered. James sometimes struggles to remember how Lily did her nails, but he knows it wasn’t like this. “I never hated him, James. You know that, right? I was only worried about how violent he would be around the children.”

“I know, Eli. I know.”

“I hope he died quickly.”

“That’s all we can hope for, now,” James says, and comes over to give her a kiss. Elinor tilts her head back, and the kiss starts to get complicated, but James has to pull back with a sigh as he hears the sound of Emily and Vance stirring down the corridor. “Will you tell the kids I’ll be home for lunch?”

“Of course.” Elinor gives him a small smile. “Give You-Know-Who as much defiance as you can.”

“I was born to do that. Of course I will.”

*

Albus stands and looks around the clearing in the Forbidden Forest that Tom’s chosen for their meeting. He thinks it an odd choice, in a way. They’re so close to the wards of Hogwarts. Does Tom merely want to allude to the fact that he managed to snatch Harry so close to those wards? Or is there some other meaning?

Fawkes offers a sad trill.

For some reason, Albus’s familiar chose to accompany him this morning. Albus touches Fawkes’s crest. “You know that you don’t need to be here,” he says quietly.

Fawkes trills again and turns to look into the distance, towards the unwarded part of the Forest where Tom and his Death Eaters will presumably come. He’s perched on the back of Albus’s chair, his long, magnificent tail dangling behind him. Although the day is a sunny one, Fawkes is huddled as he does when rain is falling on him.

“As you wish,” Albus murmurs, and takes another look down the table that will host him, James, Minister Amelia Bones, and their “guests.”

The table is made of the roots of trees that Albus coaxed to grow and Transfigured, in some cases, to make a smooth, flat surface. The chairs are made of Transfigured stone, and there are quills, inkwells, and parchment in front of each seat, in case someone needs to make notes. Otherwise, the only thing unique about this clearing is that Albus has laid a ward over it so that no one can cast a lethal spell here.

He thinks they’re as ready as they can be, and takes his own seat at the head of the table. He tries to touch Fawkes’s tail, but that only results in Fawkes shifting a little so that he can continue staring over Albus’s head into the Forest.

Albus sighs. Who understands the ways of phoenixes.

*

“This is your chance to confront your father. But you must not do it until I give you the signal. Is that clear?”

Voldemort closes his hand over Harry’s Mark and sends a flare of warning through the Horcrux at the same time. Harry swallows and visibly refrains from rubbing his scar. His own young, clear emotions come back through the Horcrux to Voldemort, the kind of shining water that could easily intoxicate Voldemort if he isn’t careful.

I shall be careful.

“Yes, my lord,” Harry hisses.

It is still a wonder to hear Parseltongue from another human’s lips, but Voldemort makes himself drop Harry’s arm and step back. “Good. Nagini!”

Harry starts as Voldemort’s familiar enters the room. Voldemort glances sideways at him and realizes that he never introduced the two of them. He waves his hand. “My familiar, Nagini. This is my human Horcrux, Harry. My dear, you are to keep him safe if someone at the parley threatens him.”

“Yes, my Tom.”

Voldemort grimaces. He has never managed to break Nagini of referring to him by the name she first knew him as. Then again, the translation in Parseltongue is closer to “hatchling with pointed teeth,” so it’s unlikely that others would hear it as his name.

“Tom?”

Voldemort turns to Harry and let his eyes flare with all the anger that being reminded of his filthy Muggle father brings up in him. “You are not to speak that name. You are to forget that you heard it.”

“Yes, my lord.” Harry ducks his head.

Voldemort reaches out and brushes his hand down Harry’s Mark again, this time sending a flare of pleasure. It’s something he can do with every Mark, but rarely bothers with. Harry’s mouth falls open in a gasp of surprise as much as sensation.

How much pleasure has he ever felt?

Perhaps not much, Voldemort has to concede. He is virtually certain his Horcrux is a virgin. And he did not grow up with a family who honored his right to exist. Even the fondness mortals usually extend to each other was denied him.

Well, perhaps I shall do something about that.

“My lord?” Harry asks quietly, his eyes lowered.

“Yes, Harry?”

“How am I going to stay hidden? Will I stay in the shadows and then step forwards when you signal me?”

“No.” Voldemort smiles and reaches up to let his fingers rest on Harry’s scar, sending a burst of pleasure through it the same way he did with the Mark. Harry’s mouth opens in a silent cry. Voldemort lays aside temptation and intrigue and many other things, save his own pleasure as Harry’s glazed eyes flutter slowly open. “You will come with me, cloaked and hooded, and sit in the chair beside me. At the appropriate time, you will remove the hood. Nagini will be under our chairs, hidden by a Disillusionment Charm.”

Harry nods. He has his breathing under control again. He links his hands together behind his back. “Your will be done, my lord.”

“Yes,” Voldemort hisses. “Always.”

*

James looks around the clearing at the table and chairs and barely controls a sneer. It seems such a tame and domestic setting for the taunting he knows Voldemort has prepared for him. How will these chairs look when the blood of Harry’s dismembered body is dripping all over them?

Albus shouldn’t have cooperated in doing this.

James shakes his head roughly and sits down in the chair at Albus’s right hand. Albus would probably argue that they needed a semblance of normality precisely to make the horror of what Voldemort did to Harry worse. James can’t argue against it, exactly. He just hates the necessity and the game-playing and the indulgence of a monster’s whims.

Give him a good duel any day.

“James, good to see you.”

James smiles and nods at Amelia Bones, the first tolerable Minister they’ve had since he became an Auror. She sits on Dumbledore’s left and glances towards the other seats at the table. “You-Know-Who is bringing that many Death Eaters with him?” Her voice hardly trembles, give her credit.

“We do not know exactly how many are coming,” Albus says calmly. “We only know that Voldemort requested this many chairs.”

Before James can say anything about how terrible it is that they need to cater to the self-proclaimed Dark Lord, a series of sharp Apparition cracks sounds. Amelia sits back and puts her hand on her wand below the level of the table. Fawkes gives a soft croon. Albus only watches.

James has to stop himself from reaching for his own wand when the Lestranges prance out of the forest, Bellatrix in the lead. She’s evaded capture so many times, once when she was almost in the holding cell. James has lost so many fine Aurors to her. He wishes he could damn the temporary peace treaty that holds them in this place and simply cut her head off.

Of course, the one who follows the Lestranges manages to be worse. Evan Rosier gives James a murky smile as he takes the seat at the left hand of the throne-like chair opposite Albus’s. So many murders on that one’s hands, but because he uses poison, they’re much less detectable than Bellatrix’s. Rosier still moves around in magical society as if he’s an innocent politician who just happens to support pureblood supremacy.

I want to kill him.

But James can’t, and the ward that Albus cast over the clearing isn’t the only reason why. Retrieving Harry’s body is more important. He leans back with a little huff, and Albus’s hand touches his shoulder briefly.

Voldemort comes out at last, with a shimmer of motion near his feet that immediately makes James wary. But not as wary as the slender, cloaked figure who walks at Voldemort’s side. Is this some new ally? There aren’t many of the Death Eaters whose faces Voldemort would want to hide.

James glances at Albus. Albus is frowning, but gives his head a slight shake. He doesn’t know who that is, then.

The figure takes the seat at Voldemort’s right hand, and the flash of motion disappears under the table. James clasps his wand and makes his voice as pleasant as he can. “Where is my son?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know.”

James bares his teeth. “You were the one who called this meeting to say that you had news about Harry—”

“The son you never cared for? Yes, I am sure it would be a relief if I returned his body to you and you could see that I had tortured him to death. It would be a confirmation of your own importance.”

James stares at Voldemort and says nothing. This is—this isn’t what he was expecting. Voldemort usually snaps insults, mostly about Lily and James’s poor taste in marrying a Muggleborn woman, and rages about the defeats he’s suffered at James’s hands. This teasing, this riddling, isn’t like him.

“Give him back, Voldemort.”

“Oh, shall I?”

“Yes.” James leans back, waiting for Harry’s mutilated body to appear above the table. It appears that he will have to give up the fantasy of a quick death.

“Very well,” Voldemort says, and waves his hand.

*

Harry didn’t realize how much his heartbeat would shake him when he saw his father again. He hasn’t seen him for months, since he spent Christmas at Hogwarts this year, and now he’s just—

He thinks I’m dead. He gave up on me without even an attempt to interrogate a Death Eater or storm one of Voldemort’s mansions or anything.

The cold, sluggish emotion Harry has felt for James so long ignites. Now Harry knows what hatred feels like, and it’s nothing like the emotions he felt for the Dursleys or Stepmother Elinor. This is pure. This is incandescent.

I hope I get to kill him. I hope my lord will share.

Harry flips the cloak’s hood back, and laughs aloud when he sees that his father looks like he’s taken a spear through the gut.

“Hullo,” Harry says, and makes it sound as cheerful and unaffected as possible.

“Harry,” James whispers. “Harry, what are you doing—”

“My boy?”

That’s Dumbledore. Harry shrugs at him without taking his eyes from James. Maybe Dumbledore was the one who made James believe in the idea that he should give up on Harry, but James is the one who chose to do what he did. Besides, Dumbledore is a Potter family friend and Harry’s Headmaster. He doesn’t owe Harry the duty of a father.

Not like James. Not like the man who is already beginning to look as though he thinks this is a personal insult and nothing more than that.

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him—

James gasps and chokes, his hands flying to his throat. At the same moment, a throbbing pulse of pain tears through Harry’s scar and his Mark simultaneously. Harry manages to keep from bending over, but he opens his mouth in a gasp, and James straightens up at the same moment.

“How did you break the ward to keep anyone from using lethal magic in this place of parley, Tom?” Dumbledore’s voice is low and wrathful, and Harry feels all the hair on his arms rise as the Headmaster stands. “I made sure that—”

“You laid wards against wanded spells. It seems that young Harry here hates his father so much that he used accidental magic to nearly kill him.”

“Harry?”

James’s voice is confused and young, Harry thinks scornfully, as if he’s the teenager who has the right not to understand the situation. Harry sneers at him and says, “You sent me to stay with Muggles who abused me, just because you wanted a perfect family that didn’t include me. You didn’t care about anything I was or did. You decided that I was going to die young and you convinced me of the same thing. Why wouldn’t I join someone who actually saw value in me instead of just another way to get at you?”

“Harry, he is using you to get at me! He’ll kill you any second! He just captured you because you’re my son—”

“There’s more reason than one he values me.”

Amelia Bones gives a faint shriek at the sound of the Parseltongue. Dumbledore’s jaw drops open. But it’s the fear in James’s eyes that makes Harry laugh in the next instant, and he knows from the pulse of pleasure all through his body that Voldemort approves.

“How can you possibly be a Parselmouth?” James whispers. “I’m not. Lily wasn’t.”

“And you think everything important about me comes from the two of you?” Harry snorts. “You spent years pushing me away, Father, not able to see me for what I am. Of course I hid my Parseltongue from you.”

“But how can you be one?”

“What matters is that I am,” Harry says, and then he turns his left arm and shakes his sleeve down. He’s not sure this will surprise James that much, but it’s still worth showing off. “And something else you hate and fear, too. Why not? You already treated me like rubbish.”

He is wrong. The revelation of the Dark Mark does make an impact on James. He sags back against his chair and lifts his hand to shield his eyes and—

Begins to cry?

Harry snorts and glances at Voldemort. “He’s such a pathetic enemy,” he murmurs. “I realize that you probably have to kill him yourself because of the way he’s opposed you, my lord, but if you ever decide that you would rather sacrifice him to your newest Death Eater, please let me know.”

Voldemort laughs, and even Rodolphus flinches from the sound. Bellatrix laughs in response, and Evan Rosier, who Harry has only talked with a little, looks at both of them with a faint smile.

“I will let you know,” Voldemort murmurs.

*

What happened? Where did I go wrong?

James understands now that the taint he feared Voldemort left on Harry was an active taint, not a passive one. It’s not just that Harry has a connection to Voldemort. It’s that he’s part of Voldemort, and was corrupted long ago.

James weeps because he misunderstood that. He weeps because the boy he spent years mourning for never existed, or maybe ceased to exist by the time he was six or seven years old. He’s gone, he’s gone.

James’s real son could never hate him like this. Could never become a Death Eater. Could never say something that would make Voldemort laugh like a monster crouching in a cellar.

He was blind to think that anything of Harry remained to salvage.

And James decides that since wandless magic can get past Albus’s ward, he might as well try himself to hit back at the thing walking around wearing his dead son’s skin. He opens his eyes, tries clumsily to shape his hatred and grief into an arrowhead, and lets it fly at Harry—no, the imposter who stares at him with merciless green eyes.

Something surges up from beneath Harry’s chair and snaps jaws on the air, swallowing the magic that James shaped. The Disillusionment Charm falls then, and James recoils at the sight of the enormous serpent who twines itself along the back of Harry’s chair, hissing threateningly at James.

“You brought your familiar with you, Tom?” Albus’s voice is glacial in its disapproval, but doesn’t have nearly the pain that James would have expected. Then again, they aren’t alone and can’t talk to Harry the way they would if Voldemort wasn’t there.

“You brought yours, Albus.”

James starts. He forgot that Fawkes was there, the same way he forgot the flicker of motion that went underneath Harry’s chair. But he forces the knowledge away and leans forwards. It’s just occurred to him that Harry might be under the Imperius Curse, and his cheeks burn with self-disgust. He should have checked for that before—

“Harry,” he says, and leans over the table. “Look at me, please.”

“Why, Father?”

But Harry does, and James hopefully checks his eyes. There isn’t a sign of any glaze to them, though, or the slightly larger pupils that victims of the Imperius Curse often have. James leans back in his chair, swallowing.

No. It really just is that Harry is tainted.

This is worse than if he had been tortured to death. James buries his head in his hands.

*

The meeting lasts a little longer after that, with Albus making empty promises and emptier threats, but Voldemort is bored enough not to try and keep track of the words. What matters is James Potter slumped over in his seat and the emotions surging through his Horcrux.

Harry has discovered the pleasure of hatred. It is an intoxicating thing.

And Voldemort did not anticipate how strongly Harry’s joy would pass through the Horcrux to him. It makes him want to take Harry somewhere private and induce pleasure in him for reasons other than just putting Harry off-balance or binding his Horcrux closer to him.

So, he cuts off one of Albus’s platitudes by waving his hand and standing. “I have accomplished what I came here to do. Do not be surprised when my newest Death Eater joins me in battle.”

“I am surprised that even you would condemn a child to fight on the battlefield, Tom.”

Surprisingly, Voldemort doesn’t feel as much rage at the name as he usually does. It’s as though Harry acts as a valve, of sorts, draining his anger before it can build up. Voldemort only smiles and says, “Not as surprised as I am that you would yield a young man before even properly searching for him.”

He turns away, his arm over Harry’s shoulders, and ignores the way that Bellatrix and Evan stay to taunt Potter. They can do whatever they want. Nagini is still with them, and the ward preventing lethal spells is still laid over the clearing.

They reach the Apparition point and vanish back to Voldemort’s manor, and he immediately pins Harry against the wall. Harry goes still, his eyes wide, a trickle of fear brushing against Voldemort’s mind.

Time to soothe that. “You were magnificent,” Voldemort hisses, leaning closer. “If it were not that I need Potter’s death to be public so that everyone learns the folly of opposing me, I would have let you kill him.”

Harry’s eyes widen further. Then he smiles and dips his head. “Thank you, my lord.”

Once again, he feels pleasure, and once again, it floods Voldemort and feels the way that sunlight used to feel after a month of cloudy London days.

Yes. Voldemort will keep this pleasure, this joy, this man. He will keep his Horcrux.