lomonaaeren

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Chapter Seven—A Little Knowledge

“Harry.”

Harry spun around. Gaunt was standing a meter from him, and Harry hadn’t even heard him arrive. He had probably Apparated in a distance away and come in on foot, the one rational part of Harry’s brain that wasn’t exploding like a nova at the moment decided.

For now, he couldn’t care. He gestured sharply with his head to Gaunt and started walking. Gaunt followed him without speaking.

The end of the wards on the Snape property gave way to a small forest several magical families maintained as a source of wild Potions ingredients. Harry went straight to a clearing kept open as a place for picnics and turned around. Gaunt halted behind him, his wand in his hand but his eyes so intense that they hit harder than a spell.

“What is this about?” Gaunt asked slowly.

“I overheard Lily and Snape speaking in the library,” Harry said, his words bleeding into each other. He had to speak, so that Gaunt would understand, but it was so hard to do when the release of the violent magic he needed was only a short distance away. “They talked about an experiment she was running on me. An experiment. Apparently the way Snape has tormented me is part of it. And they mentioned Horcruxes.”

Gaunt went rigid. He had been intense before, but now he stared at Harry as if his gaze could tear the truth from Harry’s mind. “And?” he whispered.

“She knew!”

The trees around the clearing rocked in a blast of soundless wind. Harry clenched his teeth and fought down the magic for just another moment. He didn’t want to make the ground, or Gaunt, explode.

The two people he wanted to make explode were back in the house, honestly.

When he had managed to sit on top of the outburst, Harry opened his eyes, not flinching this time from the way that Gaunt stared at him. “She knew what he was doing,” he whispered. “Snape. She knew. She didn’t care. Or it was part of the experiment. I don’t know which. I don’t know which would be worse. I know that she knew and she didn’t intervene and I want to kill something.”

The last words descended into Parseltongue with a violent hiss, the first time Harry had ever managed to speak without a snake or something that resembled a snake in front of him. Gaunt’s face bloomed into a grin of delight that made him look younger. He nodded.

“Try and destroy me, then,” he said, and flicked a blinding yellow curse straight at Harry.

Harry jumped over it, the way he had trained himself to jump over the kick of an enraged pregnant unicorn, and came down on one knee, beneath the next curse Gaunt had hurled to catch him. He touched his wand to the ground and called out to the water beneath it.

Rise.

There was a bubbling, gurgling noise, and Gaunt sank abruptly to his waist in mud.

Harry still had to dodge another hex, because Gaunt’s wand arm hadn’t been caught by the mud, but now clarity was surging through him, and magic, and awe, and satisfaction. He could do this. He hadn’t been broken by the revelation about his mother and Snape.

I am alive.

The words seemed to explode through him, and he charged forwards into the next curse Gaunt cast, a bright red one, instead of trying to shield. At the last moment, he raised a Shield Charm in the air in front of him, and the curse caught on it and exploded into sparks.

Then he was up in Gaunt’s face, forcing him back into the mud that Gaunt still hadn’t worked his way free of.

An elbow slammed into Harry’s face, nearly breaking his glasses. He ducked out of the way and slammed his own elbow into Gaunt’s jaw—or tried. Gaunt bent back out of his path and avoided the strike, although Harry heard him grunt a little. Then his knee came up and hit Harry in the chest.

Free of the mud, Harry thought, as he rolled, and then raised another shield just in time to deflect something that shone like a bolt of lightning. He breathed out a spell that he had used to distract some of the more dangerous creatures at Pelargonium, and broke four of Gaunt’s toes just as he took a step forwards.

Gaunt snarled as he fell. He sounded like a dangerous creature, like someone Harry would enjoy opposing. He dashed forwards again, but had to stop when he ran into what felt like the strands of a spiderweb.

Shit!

The magic tangled around him and pulled taut. Harry almost lost his grip on his wand. He had to duck and tug his limbs in close to himself—which gave the web more time to wrap around him—and then pulse magic through his hands. The web fell to dust.

By then, of course, Gaunt was right next to him.

He pressed his wand to Harry’s throat and started to speak, but Harry kicked him in the stomach. Despite using a Muggle fighting move before, Gaunt didn’t seem to have expected this one. He fell over with a whoof, and Harry gave one more pulse of magic through his hands and danced backwards.

Something stung his ankle.

He stared down at the serpent that hadn’t been there before, lifting dripping fangs from his flesh. Tom must have conjured it when I was trying to get free from the web, Harry thought. Numbness rapidly spread up his leg, and he fell over, too, but he managed to hiss to the snake, “You should not have attacked me.”

“Speaker says I should.”

Other snakes were wriggling rapidly towards him, and Gaunt had got up and was watching Harry’s wound with a little smile. Harry sighed. He didn’t know how to counteract the snake’s venom, and didn’t know what it would do if it was left too long. He lifted his hands. “I yield,” he called.

“You were foolish to think you could defeat me,” Gaunt said, and flicked his wand up and down and around in a rapid cross-like pattern. The snakes turned to ripples of shadow between one moment and the next.

“You were the one who invited me to try and destroy you.” Harry held still as Gaunt came up and knelt beside him, although it was difficult. Letting as big a threat as Gaunt close to him with a wand in his hand was…

It was difficult, Harry repeated to himself, and held still as Gaunt cast what felt like a modified Scourgify on Harry’s wound. Harry hissed between his teeth, but the wound flared with the kind of pain and numbness that Harry had felt so far for one more second, and then faded.

“I custom-designed those snakes and their venom. You were not wise to oppose them.”

“I needed to oppose someone,” Harry said, and didn’t miss the way that Gaunt’s eyes lit up when Harry spoke in Parseltongue. He moved a step nearer, as if he would make Harry speak again. Harry just shook his head at him and rose to his feet. “I feel better now.”

“What exactly happened with your mother and your stepfather? Tell me everything.”

Harry wanted to snap that Lily wasn’t his mother, but the truth was, it wouldn’t have hurt so much if he didn’t feel some kind of connection to her. He sighed and told Gaunt about the conversation in the library. Gaunt listened, nodding intently, and just that kind of silent attention was a balm to Harry.

He mattered more to someone than potions and experiments did.

“Hmmm,” Gaunt said, in English, when Harry was done with the story. “There is something I want to try. Will you grant me permission to cast a spell on you?” He lifted his wand as if Harry might have forgotten what it looked like.

“What kind of spell?”

“One that will reveal other spells cast on you.”

Harry blinked. He wondered if there was some kind of curse that made both Lily and Snape dislike him, but he suspected that would have been too simple. Sometimes people just—disliked a person. “Yes. Go ahead.”

Gaunt backed off and cocked his head for a moment as if studying the optimum distance he needed to walk from Harry. Then he nodded and cast. The spell was silent, so Harry didn’t know what to make of the soft yellow light that flew towards him and surrounded him. It seemed to crash against his skin for a moment before it widened outwards again.

Harry glanced down and found himself surrounded by an intense glow. It seemed to be brighter around his shoulders and head. He conjured a mirror. Gaunt let his hand fall as if he had been about to do the same thing, and watched Harry intensely as he stared at his reflection.

The yellow glow threaded out like a—a map, that was the only thing Harry could compare it to. Little roads or threads extended from his temples and his scar and his eyelids back towards the Snape house. When Harry turned to face the property’s wards, the threads grew brighter and tugged a little.

There were other roads among those, ones that were larger and had a clearer yellow glow that made them almost transparent. Harry raised his hand and frowned when he saw the same threads manifesting around his fingers.

“What does this mean?” he asked, glancing back at Gaunt. “I’ve never heard of a spell that would make—”

His voice dried up when he saw the murderous expression on Gaunt’s face. Harry backed up a step, cautiously lifting his wand. He might not be able to do much more to defend himself against Gaunt than he’d already done, but he would do his best.

Gaunt stared at him for a second, then shook his head. “I have no grudge against you, Harry, and no wish to harm you,” he murmured. He gestured, and the yellow glow died. “This is a most insidious charm.”

“What is it?”

“It’s called the Heart’s Return. Originally, when it was developed in the seventeenth century, it was meant to reconcile warring family members and ensure that they would return to their homes so that they could argue out the quarrel that had driven them apart instead of ignoring or destroying each other. But this one has been cast on you alone, not the rest of your family. It is meant to make you return. To bind you to the property. To make you obsessed with the thought of winning your mother’s regard back and the regard of your sisters. Without this, you would probably have moved away the instant you turned seventeen, dusted your hands of your so-called family, and never thought of returning.”

Harry blinked and swallowed, blinked and swallowed. Gaunt watched him and seemed to be waiting for him to ask questions, but Harry felt as though the center of his soul had frozen into ice-tipped waves, and—

Harry spun around, aimed his wand at an oak tree, and screamed. The scream was wordless. So was the magic that burst out of the wand.

Harry had no idea what he was doing or what he was going to do until the spell struck the tree. Then it turned it into a monstrous, wriggling worm with a red tongue sticking out of its mouth, as if it was a legless dragon. It felt on the ground and writhed back and forth.

Gaunt’s wand flashed a second later, bright green with the Killing Curse, which slew the creature Harry had Transfigured. Harry stood there, his chest heaving, and stared in silence at the corpse.

“I have never seen a Transfiguration like that.”

The last thing Harry wanted to discuss was power or whatever Gaunt was babbling about. He took a deep breath and whispered, “Does that mean that all the attachment I have to my sisters is a result of the spell?”

“I would not assume all of it. But without that spell, you might have been content to let them fade into the background, or loved them only a little.”

Harry closed his eyes. His love for his sisters had never felt unnatural to him. Why would it? They were the only people in his family who had never hurt him, who didn’t owe anything to him, who Harry wanted to be with just because he loved them.

But it did seem strange, now that he thought about it, that he had gone to France to get a job and no further. That he had come back at all, and accepted Snape’s obviously fraudulent offer to pass the Potions NEWT.

“Can you break the spell?” he asked without opening his eyes.

“Look at me, please, Harry.”

It was the “please” that made him open his eyes, not the command. Gaunt didn’t seem like the kind of person who said “please” to anyone.

But it was indeed Gaunt and not someone wearing his skin who stood in front of Harry now, his hands lifted as if to frame the sides of Harry’s face. Harry stared at him and said nothing. Gaunt looked oddly—enthralled. Was he just surprised by the looks of the spell? Did he want to study it or something?

“They have done many terrible things to you,” Gaunt whispered. “I promise that we will find them all out, and make them pay for all of them. Lily for the experiment. Snape for the abuse. And anyone else you want to pay.”

Harry swallowed. “I don’t know why.”

“What do you mean?”

“Why you would do this when they’re the ones who found you and paid you in the first place. Why you care so much. Is it just because we’re both Parselmouths? Or because I told you the truth instead of lying to you?” Harry didn’t know where he had got the impression that lots of people might have lied to Gaunt over the years, but he had it.

Gaunt moved a step nearer, his eyes locked on Harry’s face. Harry waited for his answer, his pulse beating thunder-loud in his throat.

“You are right that your telling the truth helps me,” Gaunt hissed slowly. “But the other answer is bound up with what you are. What I am.” He cocked his head. “You have never heard the word Horcrux before Lily said it?”

Harry shook his head.

Gaunt spent a moment staring over Harry’s head and into the forest, his face locked in a frown. Then he nodded and looked at Harry. Harry stood straighter. He was sure that Gaunt had made a decision, and was about to tell Harry the truth, in return.

“A Horcrux is a soul container. Some powerful mages use them to become immortal. They commit a murder and split their soul, and the soul-shard is locked within the container. As long as the container endures, they cannot die.”

Harry stared at him. Then he swallowed. “Voldemort made one?”

“He made several.” Gaunt reached out and brushed his fingers across the lightning bolt on Harry’s forehead. “And you are one.”

*

Harry felt as if the world had come to a crashing halt.

He reeled away from Gaunt’s touch, falling against the trunk of a tree. He lifted trembling fingers to his face and held them there, but nothing happened. He didn’t burst out shouting. He didn’t burst out crying.

He should have. But the revelation that his mother was experimenting on him, and the one that she had bound him to Snape’s house somehow, had taken all his tears and his rage. He was just left with numbness, as if he were standing in the middle of an icefield.

“I’m sorry, Harry.”

Gaunt sounded sincere for some reason. Harry swallowed and said nothing. There was nothing to say.

“This is not the way that I would have preferred that you find out,” Gaunt murmured, his voice soft and distant. “But yes, I suspected what you were. I knew it when you spoke Parseltongue. The Dark Lord is a Parselmouth. It makes sense that he would have transferred part of that gift to you. More sense than someone in your mother’s Muggle family or the Potter line being a Parselmouth and no one else ever knowing.”

Harry stared into the darkness.

“I was looking for the Dark Lord’s Horcruxes,” Gaunt continued, speaking more slowly than ever. “I’m—fascinated with the process. And because of the lack of care I took, I was turned into one myself.”

Harry shook his head, then. “He’s dead,” he whispered. “Voldemort is dead. There’s been no sign that he’s returning, not in all the years since I supposedly defeated him.”

“That doesn’t mean that his other Horcruxes don’t linger in the world,” Gaunt said, his voice on the edge of a hiss again. “It doesn’t mean they aren’t capable of defending themselves.”

Harry blinked. “You were caught by one?”

“I was, indeed.” Gaunt moved a step closer. “And that means that I feel some kinship to you, Harry, and—well.” He gestured in the direction of Snape’s house. “I am capable of feeling that someone who is kin to me should not have been trapped in this way. Should not have been experimented on.”

Harry shuddered at the sound of the Parseltongue, which he only understood because of his father’s murder. He raised his hand to the scar, which he only had because of that murder, too.

Lily must have known what Harry was. Had that helped her convince herself it was okay to experiment on Harry? Since he was only a Horcrux, and not really human?

Harry shuddered and shut his eyes.

“This has been overwhelming for you, I can see,” Gaunt whispered. “You need time to rest and recover and think about it. Decide what to do next. Come with me. I can give you shelter and make sure that you have the chance to sleep and think about it.”

“But why would you? Just because we’re both affected by Horcruxes—”

“Are Horcruxes.”

Harry swallowed. “I didn’t know that it—went that deep for you. I’m sorry.”

Gaunt looked at him without speaking for long moments, and then abruptly smiled. “It has been a very long time since someone said that to me and meant it,” he said. “Another reason for me to offer you shelter. I don’t like owing people.”

Harry wanted to say that Gaunt owed him nothing, but—

He was swaying on his feet. He was raked by numbness and rage and tears.

There was no way that he could go back “home” and pretend to be normal in front of Lily and Snape.

So he held out his arm, and Gaunt smiled at him, and they Apparated together.

Harry wasn’t really aware of where they had arrived. He just knew there was a soft bed beneath him, and a long fall into darkness, and he embraced both of those eagerly, for the chance to not think for a while.