lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews! This is the end of the story.

Part Three

“I am very disappointed in you, Harry.”

Harry just watched Dumbledore. The last time he’d been in the man’s office, the Headmaster had bound Harry’s magic. Harry wasn’t particularly inclined to forgive after that. Now Dumbledore looked sad and tired.

“Sending an illusion of yourself to classes when you are supposed to be studying for your OWLS is counterproductive to all you are supposed to be learning.”

“Who made it impossible for me to take my OWLS in the first place, sir?”

“I have shared with you my disappointment in the Ministry, Harry. That does not mean that you must compound the disappointment.”

“Oh, no, sir. I don’t blame them. I blame you. I might at least have been able to stay with Sirius or somewhere else where I could study and talk to people. But no, you had to dump me back with Muggles who decided I didn’t need to study magic or hear any words—”

“They kept you safe from a worse fate, Harry.”

“Worse than my mind cracking and you think I’m fucking possessed? No, I think this is the worse fate you were afraid of, and you sit there all righteous and contained and acting as though this is my fault—”

“You won’t use that language to me, Harry.”

Dumbledore could loom when he wanted to, his magic crackling over his shoulders like a lightning storm. Harry just laughed at him.

“I can do worse than that! Do you want me to do worse than that?”

“I want you to attend class, stop sending illusions of yourself, and remember that your friends are your friends!”

“My friends also think I’m possessed and that every decision I make is Voldemort’s decision instead. Can I go now?”

Dumbledore visibly swallowed down rage and sat back down behind his desk. “No, Harry,” he said tightly. “I am going to be forced to place a tracking charm on you, as if you were a child, to make sure that I know where you are at all times, and that your friends do, as well.”

“Why do they need to know?”

“So they can bring you back to yourself!”

Harry just watched him. “They’ve failed so far,” he said, when Dumbledore kept looking at him as if Harry owed him a further discussion. “Why do you think they would succeed just because they know where I am?”

Dumbledore closed his eyes. “If only you knew why this was so important, Harry.”

“Then why don’t you explain it to me?”

“Because with the mindset you have right now, you wouldn’t understand.”

“Ah, you mean I wouldn’t just agree that I’m possessed and you can do anything you want to me because of that. Well, you should have just said so.”

“Why did you let him in, Harry?” Dumbledore asked abruptly, leaning forwards. His magic had gone still and seemed to be listening for the answer to the question along with Dumbledore. “What did he promise you that made it worth it? Why did you let him kill your relatives? You should know that he’ll always ask a higher price than you’re prepared to pay.”

“I killed them for what they did to me. Me. I killed them. Not Voldemort.”

“You are not a killer, my dear boy.”

“Right now, I want to drag your eyes out of your head and stomp on them until they burst,” Harry said conversationally. “I know that I can’t convince you of that because you’re already convinced that it’s Voldemort’s fault and not mine, but you ought to know that’s the way I feel.”

Dumbledore sighed and stared at the far wall. Harry got up and left, feeling the tracking charm hit him as he moved.

He rent it apart with what he could command of the dark fire the instant he was far enough from Dumbledore’s office, and then disappeared into the dungeon, the former potions lab, where Nott had first seen him practicing. Nott had a lot of freedom as a NEWT student who wasn’t taking all the possible subjects he could and a few, like Runes and Arithmancy, that permitted a lot of individual study. Harry had all the time he wanted now that he didn’t need to even keep up the illusion that had been following Ron and Hermione around.

Nott looked up with a small smile when Harry strolled into the potions lab. “Ready?”

Harry nodded. “If you think that your shield this time can resist the magic I’m going to fling at it.”

“I think that I’m going to try, even if I underestimate how much magic I actually need,” Nott said, and raised his wand as he stepped over opposite Harry. The runic circle he’d been working on that covered the floor sparked and added its power to the shield that was forming in front of him.

Harry smiled and let his eyes trace over Nott’s flushed face, his lean muscles, his tense form.

For what he had done in bringing Harry to Voldemort, for the fact that he practiced magic with Harry when no one else would, for not thinking that Harry was just mental or possessed all the time, Nott was rapidly becoming Theo.

*

Potter was rapidly becoming Harry.

His eyes shone as he flung curl after curl of magic at Theo, and all of them sped around the shield and made Theo leap quickly back and forth, lifting other shields and other defenses, sweating and swearing under his breath. Once he swore aloud, and Harry simply laughed at him, eyes shining even harder.

Yes, Theo could easily accept his hand in friendship and more than that. After all, bringing Harry to the Dark Lord and accepting his hand as friend and “manager” had won him his freedom.

“I went to talk to Dumbledore right before this,” Harry said at last, when he and Theo had both collapsed on the floor next to the runic circle. “He wanted to put a tracking charm on me so that Ron and Hermione could keep track of me.”

“Did he succeed?” Theo felt tension that he hadn’t experienced for weeks flood back into him.

“He cast it, and I removed it.” Harry rolled over on his back and closed his eyes. “He still thinks they can bring me back from being possessed by the Dark Lord or something like that.” He waved a hand. “I don’t know why.”

“Thank you for calling him the Dark Lord.”

“You don’t like it when I say his other name, so I don’t say it.”

“And you would make that much of a concession just for me? I know that you always spoke his name before.”

Harry tilted his head in Theo’s direction and opened his eyes. “You’re the only person I know right now who doesn’t think I’m possessed or lying about the Dark Lord’s return. Or maybe both,” he added, as if he wanted to be fair and leave open the possibility that someone might be wrong two ways. “Yeah, I’d like to indulge you.”

“You see it as indulgence.”

“What would you see it as?”

“Practicality. Respect.”

Harry laughed a little. “I don’t respect the Dark Lord, not in the fearful way that the rest of you do. He asked me for something, and he can give me something I want, so I agreed. And you’re the one who introduced me to him, and you’re interesting, and I don’t want to make you flinch and squirm all the time. So I call him by his title.”

“I don’t flinch and squirm!”

“Voldemort.”

Theo would maintain that what he did was no more than a swift wince, but Harry laughed at him and went back to lying on the floor with his eyes closed. Theo leaned next to him, and finally asked, “You’re going to leave Hogwarts soon, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. The Dark Lord knows that Dumbledore would probably never give up searching for me, either because he thinks I need to die or because he thinks the Dark Lord would try to use me as a weapon and I would need to be rescued. So the Dark Lord’s preparing a sort of home that’s immune to all tracking magic. I don’t need to stay there all the time, but I can go there on a regular basis and Dumbledore will lose me.”

“You don’t think the Dark Lord would try to imprison you?”

“Do you think he would? What do you know, Theo?”

Theo licked his lips as his name passed Harry’s lips, and as the air around him turned hot with magic that might strangle him at any moment. Frankly, both appealed to him. “It seems to be something the Dark Lord might try. If he’s half as intent on keeping you away from Dumbledore as my father thinks he is.”

“Oh, he could try. But he also hates waste.”

“Why is that important?”

“I would destroy the structure he’s been working on to defeat tracking magic, and he’d have to start all over. I don’t think he would want to.”

Theo closed his eyes and chuckled. Yes, he could see how that would work, and how it would probably keep Harry safe from the Dark Lord imprisoning him. Or at least, the Dark Lord wouldn’t try it more than once.

“Do you think you can just walk away from all this?” he asked idly, waving his hand at the walls and ceiling of the old potions lab, but also just indicating Hogwarts. “Your friends and the chance to earn your NEWTS and the rest of it?”

“The last year destroyed me,” Harry said in a flat, eerie voice. “I don’t have any more chance of becoming the person I used to be than of taking my OWLS right now with the level of knowledge I have.”

Theo opened his eyes. Harry was leaning towards him, gaze fastened on Theo, and Theo licked his lips at the lack of expression in it.

“Do you expect me to be normal, Theo?”

“I never knew the person you were. How can I be hungry for you to be that person?”

Harry spent a moment considering that with his head on one side. Then he nodded and leaned back on his elbows. “Good.”

*

Harry looked around as if he’d never been in Grimmauld Place before, instead of spending months there during the summer. “What am I doing here?” he asked, turning to face Sirius, who had fetched him out of the Floo.

Sirius took a deep, complicated breath. If Harry had lost memories and his sense of time badly enough not to recognize the house…

“Ron and Hermione didn’t tell you I wanted to visit with you?” he asked, trying to smile.

“No. I don’t really talk to them anymore, not since they decided that I was possessed.”

“You deny you are?”

“Yes, of course.”

Sirius hesitated. Of course, he had requested that Albus allow Harry to visit him this weekend, a fortnight before Christmas, for a specific reason. Sirius had been denied the chance to spend Christmas with his godson last year. He didn’t want to lose it again this year to Harry’s black fire and staring eyes.

But maybe he could make one more appeal before he did what he’d brought Harry here to do. Just in case.

“You don’t remember me?” he whispered. “You don’t remember how we talked last year—I mean, during your fourth year—about the Tri-Wizard Tournament, and I came back to the country to help you, and I asked you to live with me during your third year?”

“Yes, I remember.”

“But you don’t think that you’re different now? That you must be possessed because you’re so different?”

“I think that you didn’t ask hard enough for me to live with you last year, when it might have made a difference.”

Sirius winced. “I’m sorry, Harry. But you would have been in danger from Death Eaters here, and—”

“Why? This place is under the Fidelius, isn’t it?”

“It’s—it still would have been more dangerous for you to be in the magical world than under the blood protections at your relatives’. Among other things, the Ministry might have thought you were defying their order to leave the magical world and trying to get another wand.”

“Ah,” Harry said, nodding, and for a second, Sirius’s heart soared. But it crashed with Harry’s next words. “So it was better to destroy me and get me to kill people than endanger the Order’s political goals.”

“We didn’t destroy you by sending you to live in the Muggle world! You grew up there! That’s You-Know-Who talking, Harry! He wants you to hate all Muggles just because they exist and don’t have magic!”

Harry looked at him with those wild, blank eyes and shook his head. “You don’t know the first thing about what they did to me, Sirius. I can hate them all I want. They were horrible people who deserved what happened to them.”

“No one deserves to burn alive, Harry!”

“Did they deserve to be shut up in a room for months with no one talking to them?”

“No! No one deserves that, either!”

“Then why,” Harry asked simply, “did you let it happen to me?”

Sirius stared at Harry, who stared back, even angling his body a little towards Sirius as if he assumed he would see something different from that direction. He swallowed, feeling sick, and then turned and walked towards the ritual room.

It wouldn’t make a difference. No matter what he said. Harry was too invested in what had happened to him, in listening to the whispers of Voldemort in his head that had convinced him he was the only person who had ever suffered.

It was time to finish this, to free Harry, and get his godson back.

*

Harry stepped into the room off the library that he’d never been allowed into when staying at Grimmauld Place that summer, and immediately turned around to step out again. There was a runic circle on the floor that was pulsing with silver fire which reminded him of his dark fire.

Sirius shut the door behind them with awful finality.

“Sirius.” Harry’s eyes darted back and forth between his godfather and the closed door. “Let me go, Sirius.”

“You don’t understand what we’re doing, Harry,” Sirius said softly. His face was gaunt and taut in the light of the circle. “I promise, it’s only for your own good. We’ll get rid of the part of you that burns people to death.”

“What about the part of me that’s broken?”

“You’re not broken. You just have Voldemort in your head.”

“What about the part of me that’s broken?”

Sirius shook his head and raised his wand. Harry ducked the spell that was cast at him, which would probably have bound him and shoved him into the runic circle, based on the tangle of ropes that exploded against the wall it hit. Harry snarled with his mouth open, and Sirius gave him a pitying glance.

“You can’t understand right now. It’s like someone being under the influence of the Imperius Curse. But everything is all right, Harry. Going to be all right. I promise.”

Harry looked at Sirius and shook his head. Then he called up the dark fire.

Sirius halted the instant he saw it bubbling around Harry’s hands, and visibly swallowed. Then he looked at Harry as if bracing himself for a dive into a pool. “Are you going to burn me to death, too, Harry? Is someone, a voice in your head, telling you to? You don’t have to listen to it! You don’t have to listen to him!”

“I think someone is trying to force me into a ritual—”

“It won’t do anything to you if you’re not possessed!”

“You can take my word for it that I’m not!”

Sirius faltered in a way Harry hadn’t thought he would. His hand holding his wand rose, wavering, to the side of his head. “Then why did you do it?” Sirius whispered. “Why kill your only family if he didn’t make you do it?”

“They shut me in a room and didn’t talk to me for nine months!”

“I went through worse!” Sirius yelled back, as if the words had broken loose from someplace inside of him. “I was tortured by Dementors and had to relive getting my best friend killed every day for twelve years! Every day! I still didn’t snap and kill people the instant I got out!”

“I suppose,” Harry said, gathering the black fire closer and closer to him, winding out thinner and thinner tendrils, “that just makes you superior to me, Sirius. Better. Whatever. Here’s your prize.”

He lobbed a concentrated ball of the fire at his godfather. Sirius ducked out of the way, his eyes wide with panic, and Harry rushed past him, sheathed in black and crackling flames that snapped at Sirius when he reached out a hand to restrain him.

Harry came out into the library of Grimmauld Place and let the fire go.

Shrieking, Kreacher came popping in, probably to try and save the books. Harry watched him without comment. No one had tried to save him. Everything and everyone was more important than he was. Grimmauld Place. The Order. The Order’s influence with the Ministry.

Sirius mattered more to himself than Harry mattered to him.

Harry lifted his arms higher, and the flames rose with him. As they ate at the structure, they ate at the Fidelius and the wards. Harry only had to wait a few moments before a hole opened in the magic, enough to allow the fire to wrap around him and bear him away.

He didn’t know if Kreacher would manage to put out the fire or not. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t be coming back here.

*

“Have you seen Harry lately?”

Hermione stared at Professor Dumbledore. He’d come up to her and Ron outside the Great Hall with that question, but only some hours after Harry had disappeared. Hermione knew Sirius had taken Harry to his home for one more try at reversing the possession.

Now, the expression on the Headmaster’s face made her reach out a hand. Ron’s landed in hers. Hermione’s finger traced the rough scars on the back of it, and she straightened up and took a breath.

Harry had suffered, horribly and unjustly. But he hadn’t been the only one. And Hermione would do anything to bring her best friend back to himself and ensure that he didn’t cause suffering he would feel guilty about for the rest of his life when he woke up.

If he wakes up. If we can bring him back to himself.

“Did it not work?” Ron whispered. “What—Padfoot was going to do?”

“Alas, it did not.” Professor Dumbledore seemed to be bracing himself to tell them something worse, which made Hermione clench Ron’s hand harder. “Harry set the house on fire and escaped. Sirius escaped as well, but Kreacher burned to death. I didn’t know if Harry had come to you or not.”

Hermione closed her eyes, feeling ill. There could be no doubt that Voldemort was in complete control of Harry now. Harry never would have struck at Sirius no matter how upset or angry he was feeling.

“You want us to talk to him when we see him?” she asked.

“No. Keep your distance. I will be in charge of keeping him contained.” The Headmaster started to say something else, but then shook his head, drew his wand, and walked towards the front doors of the castle without looking back.

Hermione started shaking. She leaned on Ron’s side, and Ron put his arm around her.

“What do you think is going to happen?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Hermione said, watching the last of Dumbledore’s robe disappear outdoors while her heart lay, almost unbeating, in her chest. “I don’t know, but I think it’s going to—it’s going to end Harry one way or another.”

“He was already gone,” Ron whispered, and they leaned their heads together.

*

Theo wasn’t stupid. He had seen the way that Dumbledore stood speaking to Weasley and Granger, and the way that Harry was absent from dinner. More, Harry had missed the appointment they’d made in the old potions lab before dinner to practice curses.

Theo followed the other Slytherins down to the dungeons, but sought out an alcove where he could cast a spell without being seen. He closed his eyes and stood as still and calm as he could make himself, sinking into the cold pool of his mind where he went when he practiced Occlumency.

Common wisdom said a Dark wizard couldn’t cast a Patronus, and it was a spell Theo had never mastered himself. But there was a variation of the spell he could do. He had just never successfully cast it before.

Calm. Cool. Control.

Theo felt his wand move in the right pattern almost without feeling as if he directed it. When he opened his eyes, there was a small, shadowy raven fluttering in front of him. Theo sighed, and noticed for the first time how similar it looked to Harry’s dark fire.

“Go to Harry and tell him that Dumbledore is looking for him,” Theo said.

The miniature raven spread its wings and vanished up through the wall. Another advantage to it was that it wasn’t as showy as a Patronus, and even if Harry wasn’t alone when it found him, there was a good chance no one else would notice it.

Theo sagged back against the wall, tapping his wand nervously against his leg. All he could do was wait.

*

Harry had landed in the Forbidden Forest and was walking through it towards the school. His magic knew the way. His dark fire had also already burned an Acromantula alive and beheaded something with tentacles for lunging at him, so the rest of the Forest’s wildlife knew to stay away.

A small raven appeared fluttering in front of him and said in a creaky version of Theo’s voice, “Dumbledore is waiting for you.”

Harry paused and looked towards the school. He had had the fire back here instinctively, but of course Dumbledore would probably already know what had happened if he had spoken with Sirius. Grimmauld Place was closed behind Harry.

Why not Hogwarts? What did he really have to come back for? The days when it would have made a difference to him to be here were dead. So was the boy who would have benefited from them.

So were the people that boy had loved.

Harry nodded and lifted a hand. A dark flame appeared in front of him and all but replicated the raven. Harry didn’t know the exact spell Theo had used, but he didn’t really need to.

“Go to Theo and tell him that I’m going to Malfoy Manor,” Harry said.

The raven took flight, and he turned and marched towards the border of the anti-Apparition spells where he had come in. His trunk was back at the school, along with his Firebolt, but it would be no trouble to have an elf fetch that.

Now that the decision was made, in fact, Harry felt his shoulders relax. He began to hum under his breath, and then to sing. The sound echoed through the Forest as his voice rose and burrowed into the trees.

He heard unicorns fleeing from his presence, and smiled.

*

It was hours before Theo could sneak out of the school and use the half-giant’s Floo to go to Malfoy Manor. Apparently, people had been told that Harry Potter was missing, and Hagrid had been told to wait in his hut in case Harry came there.

But now he’d been pulled away to join the search efforts, and Theo tossed in Floo powder with a sense of anticipation that made him dizzy.

Narcissa Malfoy met him and guided him right away to the Dark Lord’s throne room. Theo slipped to a knee when he came in, but he saw immediately that he wasn’t the focus of attention. The Dark Lord was sitting on his throne and hissing at Harry in Parseltongue.

Theo stood up and leaned against a pillar, idly deciding that he would learn to understand Parseltongue, if not speak it, before long.

*

“You say that you will not let me keep you. Then how am I supposed to keep you safe?”

“I said I would stay in the place you built to resist tracking spells for a while. It will be good until Dumbledore gives up looking for me. But if you try to confine me to a single room, I will burn you.”

Voldemort leaned a little closer, his hands closing like talons on the arms of his throne. “Do you think I would stand for that?”

“Do you think I would stand for being confined?”

Voldemort leaned back again and stared at him. Then he said, “Do you think you could burn me?”

“I think that your body’s not exactly natural,” Harry said, and a curl of flame hissed into being on his shoulders. “I think that I might be able to disembody you the way I did years ago. Yeah, I could do it.”

Voldemort arched his neck, a motion so similar to his familiar’s that Harry blinked, and hissed wordlessly at him. But Harry just watched. Yes, Voldemort was prone to lash out at anyone who threatened him. But Harry was his Horcrux, and Voldemort had explained a little of what that meant.

A part of himself was the one who practiced deadly magic. Voldemort would take it better coming from Harry than he would a random Death Eater.

Voldemort leaned back at last with a wave of his hand and another wordless hiss, though this one became angry words after a moment. “If you think that I will allow you to run back to Dumbledore, you are mistaken.”

“If you think that I want to go back to Dumbledore, you’re a fool.”

There was some more Parseltongue arguing, but Harry knew when he had won. Or managed to compromise. That was the art Dumbledore and Sirius hadn’t learned, Harry thought. Even his friends. They just thought they knew what was best. What was best for him. And that he couldn’t really have changed that much in his year (excuse him, nine months), because then they would have to face up to their guilt.

Voldemort would compromise because it was fundamentally about protecting his own strength and safety. Harry would rather accept that than anything else.

As he turned away from Voldemort, he caught Theo’s eye, and smiled. Theo took that as permission to follow Harry to his room. It was a nice enough suite with a bathroom and a window and a large wardrobe, Harry supposed. He burned out the lock on the door, and then it was even nicer.

Narcissa Malfoy, who had been the one to lead Harry to the suite, looked pained, but departed without a word. Harry turned to Theo, and spent a moment considering Theo’s hovering, his anxious eyes.

Then he came forwards to grasp him and hold him and taste him.

*

Theo started when he felt Harry’s hands on his body, but he couldn’t pretend that part of him hadn’t known this was coming. He leaned in, and Harry’s mouth was waiting for him, hotter than Pepper-Up Potion, and Harry drew him back against the wall and slipped a hand between Theo’s legs as if he had always known what he was looking for.

Theo arched, unable to speak at the moment, his mouth occupied with Harry’s tongue, but he did slide a leg around Harry’s waist and manage to shift back and forth, stirring up friction between them.

Harry snarled, and for a moment, dark fire formed like a crown around his temples. Theo froze in fear. Harry just shook his head, though, and grabbed Theo’s hands and spread them wide, against the wall, with his own, while his groin and his tongue worked Theo.

Theo’s eyes crossed. His body surged, he felt as though he was burning with more than the dark fire could have done to him, and he gasped, and was gone, falling, flying, rising, crashing, surrendering.

*

It turned out that coming with another person was pretty satisfying.

Harry leaned his head on Theo’s chest while his stomach trembled and the muscles in his legs felt as if they’d turned to treacle. He absently ran a hand over Theo’s chest and down, and then Theo jumped and made an embarrassed noise.

Harry pulled back and blinked at him. “What is it?”

“You just—you touch my cock like you own it.”

Harry smiled at him. “You like it, so what’s the objection?”

Theo blushed hot enough that maybe his face could have burned down the Dursleys’ house on its own. Harry laughed and stepped away from him. “I’m tired, so I’m going to sleep,” he said. “But you can stay here if you want.” It was the biggest concession he knew how to make, for the one who had helped save his freedom by telling him Dumbledore was waiting.

“I—I’d like that.”

Harry just nodded at him and went into the bathroom to clean up. He heard Theo, steps hesitant, entering behind him. Harry found that he trusted Theo not to stab him in the back, literally or otherwise.

If he did, Harry would just kill him. But he really didn’t think it would be necessary.

Theo washed his hands and brushed his teeth after Harry, and then followed him back out and curled up with him in the bed that was as big as about half the prison Harry had endured. Harry lay with his ear on Theo’s chest and listened to his rapidly beating heart, while the fire he could create spread around them.

He could destroy anything that came after him. He would never again be imprisoned by walls closing in.

Harry fell asleep smiling.

*

Albus sat in his office with his hands folded over his eyes, after hours of searching in which he had decided that Harry would not return, and wondered what the best course of action would have been. To do the ritual Sirius had planned on his own, calling Harry to his office so that he couldn’t flee? To destroy the Horcrux no matter what the cost? To never have brought Harry back to Hogwarts at all, and in contact with people who could take him to Tom?

There were no answers, including to his own questions of whether they were going to lose the war.

Albus would have to assume Harry had fled into the night, to Tom or out of the country, and continue pushing forwards.

And he would fight the war in memory of the boy Harry had been before Tom had got hold of him, the boy who had looked with him confused but obedient eyes in Grimmauld Place the August before last, the boy who had been incapable of murder and had seen the best in everybody.

Albus had not stopped Harry becoming one of Tom’s victims, after all. But he would try to ensure that Harry was one of the last.

The End.