![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lomonaaerenTitle: The Choosing Ones
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Pre-Harry/Voldemort, references to James/Lily
Content Notes: AU (Voldemort won the war), angst, references to violence and past character deaths, references to canonical-level child abuse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry had reached the end of his seventh year, which meant the Dark Lord would evaluate him, and probably sentence him to death or exile, depending on how dangerous he thought the son of two people who had perished fighting his regime was. Harry was determined to meet his fate with dignity. What happened in that room at the top of the stairs, however, was nothing he had ever imagined.
Author’s Notes: This is the first of my “Songs of Summer” one-shots, and a fairly dark fic. Heed the warnings.
The Choosing Ones
“Good luck, mate. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
Ron’s words might have sounded convincing to someone who had never met him. Harry just smiled at his friend as he stood from the Gryffindor table. “Thanks, mate. I hope I’ll see you again, but if not, then you’ve been my best friend.”
Ron’s ears turned bright red, and some of the Gryffindors behind Harry rustled and mumbled. Harry ignored all of them. They were secure, in one way or another: purebloods, or half-bloods or Muggleborns who had been raised by pureblood families and spent time under strict observation to ensure they would conform to the Dark Lord’s will. Harry was the only different one at their table, the only Muggle-raised one, the only non-pureblood child of Lord Voldemort’s former enemies.
They would survive. He wouldn’t.
But he could leave them laughing. “Off to impress the Dark Lord with my Acceptables on every NEWT,” he said, and winked.
They did laugh, and if the laughs were hollow, well, Harry was walking away, and wouldn’t need to meet their eyes.
Probably not ever again.
*
Professor McGonagall was waiting for him just outside the Great Hall. She stretched her mouth a little. “If you’ll accompany me, Mr. Potter, the—the Dark Lord is waiting for you in an office near the Defense classroom.”
“Thanks, professor.”
They walked in silence for a few moments. Harry looked around at the stone walls and watched the patterns of sunlight dancing there from the windows they passed. He tried to fill his lungs as deeply as he could with air.
He didn’t want to die. But at least he had had seven years of a life worth living, rather than the worthless one he would have had if he had stayed in the Muggle world, or the shorter one if he had tried to run.
“Mr. Potter.”
Harry blinked and focused on McGonagall again. “Yes, professor?”
“You—know not to be cheeky to the Dark Lord.”
Harry almost laughed. “Professor, I don’t want to die messily. I won’t be cheeky at all.”
McGonagall abruptly stopped. Harry did the same, standing one step behind and below her. She turned to face him with her eyes wide. “You expect to die?”
“Professor,” Harry said as gently as he could. He felt it a little unfair that he was the one who had to reassure people right now when he was also the one walking to his death, but that seemed to be the way it was working out. “You know it means something that I was never allowed to be claimed by a pureblood family the way most Muggleborns are. You know that it means something that my parents’ crimes are the ones most publicized in the history textbooks.”
McGonagall lowered her gaze to the ground. She said nothing for long enough that Harry wondered if she would tell him to run. Harry wouldn’t do that, though. He had no desire to die a torture victim.
If I could live—
Harry cut it off. There was the faint chance of exile, but that only tended to get offered to purebloods who had committed fairly minor crimes. Harry had the shadow of his heritage hanging over him, in all ways.
“I did not think about that,” McGonagall whispered.
“I hope that you’ll remember me.”
His Head of House did something that shocked him: she leaned forwards and hugged Harry hard enough that his spine hurt. Harry felt her shoulders hitch a little. He hugged her back, awkwardly.
McGonagall didn’t say a word, only pulled free and touched the back of her hand briefly to her cheek. “We shouldn’t keep him waiting,” she whispered, and turned away.
Harry followed quietly, trying to memorize the feeling of her hug the way he was trying to fill his lungs with air.
*
The door of the office the Dark Lord had taken over was a heavy stone one with silver hinges. Harry knocked and waited, ignoring the fleeting look McGonagall gave him over her shoulder. She couldn’t help him now.
No one could.
“Enter.”
The door swung open on its own. Harry took one step inside and dropped to his knees, his head bowd. He knew he would maintain silence until the Dark Lord wished to speak to him.
The door swung shut behind him, and the silence endured.
Harry kept his head down, kept his stillness intact. The stone floor was hurting his knees, but that kind of pain wasn’t new to him. The Dursleys had made him kneel for years and scrub the floors, after all. A lot just this past summer.
Would I have wanted to never know magic existed if it meant I could keep on living?
No. No, Harry was certain of that.
“Rise.”
Harry did, keeping his head bowed. He could see just the hem of the Dark Lord’s black robe. He was sitting at a desk that was longer and wider than Harry had expected, or so he thought from the brief glimpse he managed to take. He’d never been in this room before, and he was not going to lift his eyes further.
The Dark Lord studied him in silence. Harry likewise said nothing. The Dark Lord spoke at last, in a voice as smooth and sibilant as Harry had heard it on the wireless. “Raise your head and look at me, boy.”
Harry felt a fleeting indignation at the word boy, but, well, the Dark Lord was not Uncle Vernon. He raised his head.
The Dark Lord’s face was oddly smooth and pale, with what looked like scale-like patterns beneath the surface of the skin. His eyes were a deep red that made Lily Potter’s hair in the pictures Harry had seen seem dull. His hair was dark and had receded far back over the dome of his forehead.
“Tell me, Harry Potter. What did you expect when you came here today?”
“For you to kill me, my lord.”
Harry thought that he would probably get a laugh then, or perhaps the Dark Lord would feign shock if he wanted to toy with his prey. But instead, the Dark Lord stared at him with slowly widening eyes.
More silence passed. Harry wondered if it was his bluntness that had done it and earned him a painful death after all.
“Why?” the Dark Lord asked at last.
“I’m well-aware of my parents’ crimes, my lord. I know their taint passed on to me.” Harry had thought he would have trouble keeping his voice steady. He’d thought that maybe he would fall to his knees again and beg the Dark Lord to spare him, if it came to that. But amazingly, he was able to stand and speak calmly. The only mercy I’m likely to find today. “Because I’m a half-blood, I’m not as well-versed in magic or its subtleties as a pureblood would be. Because I grew up in the Muggle world and had no pureblood family to foster me, I was—”
“What.”
This word was low, but it made stone flake off the wall. Harry shut up at once. His pulse was thundering in his ears fast enough to make him dizzy, but he stood still and let the Dark Lord stare at him.
What did I say? Harry reviewed his words in his head, but he honestly had no idea. Was he not supposed to mention the word “Muggle” in front of the Dark Lord?
His thoughts scattered as the Dark Lord rose to his feet. He paced towards Harry and stopped less than a meter away, eyes roaming over Harry as though he was a house-elf up for sale. Harry felt his face heat, but he remained as calm and still as he could. The Dark Lord hadn’t given him permission to move.
“Tell me,” the Dark Lord said at last, “why you grew up in the Muggle world.”
“I received an explanation with my Hogwarts letter, my lord,” Harry said. Calm. Steady. He’ll kill you, but you can at least not go screaming to your death. Maybe it’ll be the Killing Curse, the way it was on your parents. That at least doesn’t hurt. “Because my parents’ crimes were so great, no pureblood family wanted me to taint their home with my presence. Likewise, I couldn’t visit any of my friends during the summers or holidays. I had to go back to the Muggle world for the summer and remain at Hogwarts during the others.”
The Dark Lord nodded. His face was distant. Harry wondered if this had been something he’d ordered and then forgotten about. Probably. Why would Harry matter to him, in the grand scheme of things, until his seventh year, when the Dark Lord personally evaluated every student about to finish Hogwarts?
Or if Harry had become a rebel and outlaw. But that hadn’t had happened.
“That should not have happened.”
“I’m sorry, my lord?” Was I supposed to be told about it some other way than in the Hogwarts letter?
“Every magical child is welcome in our world, Harry Potter. The Muggleborns are taken and the half-bloods are found homes with purely magical people. You know this.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then why did you think you were the exception?”
Harry braced himself, even as he felt a current of shock moving through him. He’s going to kill me for some bureaucratic mistake rather than for my blood? “Because of the letters, my lord.”
“The letters.”
“Along with my initial Hogwarts letter—I sent a letter to the Ministry when I got here and saw that everyone else of impure blood in Gryffindor was fostered with a pureblood. I wanted to know if I could be, too. They sent me back a denial, and they’ve sent me a letter a few days before every holiday reminding me to stay here or return to the Dursleys.”
The Dark Lord nodded again. At this point, Harry had no idea what was going on. He just stood still with his hands clasped behind his back, the way he had been so far.
The Dark Lord stirred a little and turned to face him squarely, and Harry understood. The Dark Lord was in the grip of some rage so vast and transcendent that Harry had no comparison for it. He froze.
“Let me look into your eyes, boy.”
Legilimency. Well, the Dark Lord probably thought Harry was lying, because it was unbelievable. Harry was literally the only exception to the Dark Lord’s policy of having all magical children grow up in the wizarding world that he’d ever heard of.
He kept his eyes fixed on the Dark Lord as the man approached and gripped his chin. His fingers were cold and hard. Harry felt the skim of an equally cold mind over his, and didn’t try to resist. He had no idea what would happen next. The Killing Curse?
But instead, the Dark Lord simply and delicately picked through his mind, gazing hard at certain memories. Harry caught glimpses of the Dursleys, of his cupboard, of Dudley’s second bedroom, of the primary school teachers who hadn’t believed him, of the letters the Ministry had sent him, of the way he had dragged his trunk through the Muggle section of King’s Cross all by himself. He stood as quiet and passive as he could, certain that the Dark Lord would kill him for a mistaken motion.
I have no intention of killing you.
Harry started. The words were—they just formed in his head, like imprints on his mind, via what he supposed was a kind of telepathy. They were the most intimate and deepest words he had ever heard in his life.
Your parents committed the sins they committed. You, on the other hand, have striven to be a model citizen, and to love magic. You came to Hogwarts even though you suspected execution awaited you at the end of your seventh year.
Harry shivered and tried to shape words for the Dark Lord to hear in return, although he was no Legilimens and didn’t know if that was possible. I—am a Gryffindor. Stupidly brave.
This time, the chuckle that shook through his body made Harry flush. He blinked, and the Dark Lord gently detached himself from Harry’s mind and cocked his head. “One of the letters referred to sins your parents committed in school. Do you know what those were?”
Harry shook his head, taking a deep breath, reveling that he was still alive to breathe it. “I’m sorry, my lord. I thought that just referred to how they joined the Order of the Phoenix.”
“No. They did not become Order members until they had finished their seventh year,” the Dark Lord said, and Harry cradled the precious fact about his parents to himself, for all that he knew he should hate them. “The reference eliminates many of the people who might have written those letters.”
Harry glanced up at the pale, serpentine face, the Dark Lord’s stillness, and made an educated guess. “You know, my lord.”
The Dark Lord turned the flat gaze of a serpent on him. Harry shivered a little, but stood his ground. The resignation that had marched his legs here had gone, and now he wanted desperately to live, but—
He also thought he was going to live.
Perhaps his defiance pleased the Dark Lord in some respect, because a wide, terrifying, fascinating smile split his face. “Yes. I assigned the task of seeing to your wellbeing to someone I thought would appreciate it, given that he had—an attachment to your mother. I knew he had not taken you in himself, but I thought he had placed you with an appropriate foster family.”
“He’s the reason I grew up in the Muggle world?”
“Indeed. And…” The Dark Lord tilted his head and snapped his fingers. A bright wall of transparent blue lit up around Harry. “The reason you have a ward around you that would send any owls you tried to write to him.”
Harry blinked. He hadn’t been aware of that, but then, he hadn’t sent any owls to his friends, ever. It was strictly forbidden for wizards or witches in the Muggle world to communicate by owl, and the rest of the time, Harry was around his friends in Hogwarts or separated from them for only a few weeks by holidays. It wouldn’t really have been worth it to write.
“That seems risky. He could have been found out.”
The Dark Lord nodded. “He took me seriously when I said that I had little interest in your placement, as long as you did not grow up to rebel against me. I would have interfered if I had known where he had placed you, of course. It seems his hatred of your father overruled his fondness for your mother. And for that, Harry, I am deeply sorry.”
Harry’s breath rattled in and out of his lungs. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do anything but stand there and stare.
The Dark Lord didn’t strike him down for it. He stood and watched Harry with a faint trace of curiosity in his expression, as if his own apology had taken him by surprise.
How long has it been since he apologized and meant it?
Reality came back in a wave as hot as his breath. Harry blushed and lowered his eyes. “Thank you, my lord,” he whispered. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“I did want to ask you about something I saw in your mind, Harry.” The Dark Lord’s voice altered, although Harry couldn’t define the change. “A memory when you were seven, in your aunt’s garden.”
Harry did his best to search his memories for that, but all the days in the garden blended together, honestly, as did most of the chores he’d done when serving his relatives. “I’m sorry, my lord. I don’t know what you mean.”
The Dark Lord caught his breath and stared at him with wide eyes. Harry had to force himself not to cringe. Had he said something so stupid after all that the Dark Lord was going to end his life? Where was the invisible line between pleasing the Dark Lord and annoying him?
Wherever the line was, it seemed he hadn’t crossed it yet, and the Dark Lord’s reaction was about something else. He took a step forwards, staring intensely at Harry. “Can you understand me when I speak to you like this, Harry?”
“I—of course, my lord. English is my native language.”
The Dark Lord’s face split in yet another smile. Honestly, Harry was beginning to think he could spend the rest of his life making this great wizard smile that way. “But we are not speaking English, Harry.”
Harry stared at him, mouth slightly open. All he could think was that someone had cast a spell on him at the Gryffindor table to make him speak French or something—
But no, he would have noticed. And he really didn’t think any of his Housemates were cruel enough to do that the day he’d thought he was about to be executed, no matter how much they liked pranks.
“Please explain it to me, my lord,” Harry whispered. “I can’t understand it.”
“You can,” said the Dark Lord, and then went on, while the idea that the Dark Lord had made a joke almost wiped Harry’s mind like an Obliviate. “You are speaking Parseltongue, Harry. As your memory in your aunt’s garden showed you doing so with a snake. Why would you have done that, I wonder? Do you know?”
Harry shook his head in numb wonder. “I—I could speak to snakes, my lord, a few times. But never often, and after I learned about magic, I thought it was because the Ministry was checking up on me. That the snakes were magical illusions or constructs or something of the kind.”
The Dark Lord cocked his head. “What did you think of magic before you received your Hogwarts letter?”
“I learned about it from the Hogwarts letter, my lord. My relatives knew it was real, but they didn’t tell me. They just called me a freak before that, and I thought my magic was—freakishness, and accepted it that way.”
The Dark Lord took a breath of such rage that Harry cowered, certain that he had finally done something that had displeased the man enough to put execution back on the table. But the Dark Lord shook his head a moment later. “Another thing I will have to thank Severus for,” he said softly. “You have no idea how you came to speak Parseltongue, Harry?”
“I’m sorry, my lord. No idea whatsoever.”
“I think I do.”
Harry blinked and barely kept himself from asking why the Dark Lord had asked him, then. Just because he might have a chance of surviving the day didn’t mean pulling out Gryffindor cheek was a good idea. “Yes, my lord?”
The Dark Lord reached towards him. Harry literally stopped breathing as that long, pale hand, tipped with deadly-looking nails, slid beneath his chin, and had to start himself again with a cough when the moment lingered.
“Your mother was a genius in Runes and Charms,” the Dark Lord murmured. His eyes were as intense and hot as the fire they resembled. “I know that she was recruited several times by the Department of Mysteries, but she refused them, as she wished to continue fighting in the war with the Order of the Phoenix instead—you have an opinion about that, Harry?”
Harry stopped the motion he’d made, flushing. “Not one that you need trouble yourself with, my lord.”
“I decide what troubles me and what does not, my Harry.”
Dizziness hit Harry, and he had to concentrate to say, “I was just thinking that she might have been a genius, but she was also kind of stupid, my lord.”
The Dark Lord laughed, a blade of sound that cut into Harry’s ears and that he immediately wanted to hear again. “She was, at that,” he said. “But she was more than clever enough to have created a spell that would give you Parseltongue.”
“Why would—why would she have wanted to do that, my lord?” Harry loved his parents and missed them and hated them and despised them, and he was learning several new facts about them from this conversation, but nothing that would have caused that decision to make sense.
“There was a prophecy.”
The Dark Lord spoke only those words and then watched him intently. Harry had no idea what he waiting for, and he hated to disappoint him, but he said only, when a moment had passed, “Sorry, my lord. I don’t know what that refers to.”
The Dark Lord smiled slightly. “At least some things have gone right. There was a prophecy that a child born at the end of July would be the one who could vanquish me.”
“I—my lord, how am I still alive?”
The Dark Lord’s laughter came again, this time lower and darker and more intimate. Harry shivered and cast his eyes down. He should not be thinking things like that, especially not with the Dark Lord being such a master Legilimens and still touching him.
“I did not enter one of several traps that was prepared for me. I killed your parents, and stayed away from you.” The Dark Lord shrugged, a sinuous ripple of motion that reminded Harry of a cobra swaying to the tune of a flute. “I directed that you not learn of the prophecy, because you might seek to fulfill it. But you did not, and there is no harm in it now. Your mother, however, might have thought you stood more of a chance of defeating me if you were a Parselmouth. Like me.”
Harry swallowed and wondered how he should feel about it. His mother, this brilliant woman, who had come up with a spell that Harry had never heard of. His mother, this courageous woman, who had fought the Dark Lord.
This madwoman who had believed in a prophecy and altered her baby so that he might have a better chance of winning her war someday.
Harry blinked away something that was too hot to be tears and looked up at the Dark Lord again. “What happens now?”
“What do you want to happen, Harry?”
“I could—go back downstairs and find an apprenticeship like the others? Find a job in the Ministry? Maybe retake my NEWTS?” He hadn’t done his best on them. How could he, when he had believed he would die?
“You could,” the Dark Lord agreed, his voice as heavy as gold. “But you could do something else.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Accept an apprenticeship with me. I have never had a Parselmouth to train, because there have been none.” For a moment, the Dark Lord’s eyes blazed, but he let the anger—at whom?—go. “I would train you to walk paths of magic that have felt the touch of no feet but mine for centuries. To wield powers that would ensure you were respected for the rest of your life, at least by everyone not fool enough to think less of you because of your blood.”
Harry shivered. He knew what he wanted to say, but there was something he wanted to bring up first. “You killed my parents.”
“Yes.”
“You—don’t want to kill me.”
“No. You are the closest person to myself I have ever found, a Parselmouth—and someone who grew up in the Muggle world with Muggles who did not appreciate them. No, Harry Potter, I would no more kill you than I would crush a phoenix egg.”
Harry swallowed again. Perhaps the Dark Lord would crush a phoenix egg if he thought it was worth it to him. Harry had always heard that he was eminently practical.
Is it practical to be telling me about his childhood? Or touching me like this and telling me about the prophecy and sparing my life?
Harry had first thought, when he walked up the stairs this morning, that he would give everything for a normal life. He had had no thought of an extraordinary life. He had just wanted what he had to continue on.
And now there was a whole vision spread out in front of him, a position of power, of security. No one could ever randomly kill him for his blood if he was at Lord Voldemort’s side. No one could shove him back into the Muggle world, or snap his wand, or Obliviate him—all options that had been on the table for some rebellious Muggleborns and half-bloods.
No one could hurt him like this mysterious Severus had done again.
The knowledge that this Severus was still out there—at least for now—was the final lock on the decision, but not the only one. Harry smiled and leaned forwards. “My lord, you tempt me.” The teasing was risky, but he was sure he could get away with it.
Especially since he didn’t think he had dropped back into English yet.
The Dark Lord’s smile could be a blade sliding under Harry’s ribs, but he preferred to accept it as a promise. The Dark Lord’s hand wandered along the side of Harry’s face, and there seemed to be scales on the pads of his fingers.
That only made him another new thing, though. A thing—a future—that Harry was ready to embrace.
“You stand ready to commit yourself to me?” the Dark Lord hissed. When Harry concentrated, he thought he could hear the difference between Parseltongue and English.
Harry stared into his eyes and promised with all the recklessness of the Gryffindor he was, “Forever.”
“You will never regret it.”
*
The Dark Lord Voldemort cradled Harry Potter’s face between his palms, and learned that he could still recognize the meaning of wonder.
He had never thought he would find another Parselmouth in Britain. He had never thought he would find someone who could stand at his side, potentially as an equal.
He had never thought he would lay the prophecy to rest, and would simply have to ignore it forever.
But instead…
Instead, he had all those things. And he had the possibility of joy, which was more than the rest. Long years of lonely immortality ruling magical Britain had taught him that.
As his hands slid over Harry Potter’s face, Voldemort thought, I will make sure that he never regrets it.
The End.
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Pre-Harry/Voldemort, references to James/Lily
Content Notes: AU (Voldemort won the war), angst, references to violence and past character deaths, references to canonical-level child abuse
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. Harry had reached the end of his seventh year, which meant the Dark Lord would evaluate him, and probably sentence him to death or exile, depending on how dangerous he thought the son of two people who had perished fighting his regime was. Harry was determined to meet his fate with dignity. What happened in that room at the top of the stairs, however, was nothing he had ever imagined.
Author’s Notes: This is the first of my “Songs of Summer” one-shots, and a fairly dark fic. Heed the warnings.
The Choosing Ones
“Good luck, mate. I’m sure you’ll do fine.”
Ron’s words might have sounded convincing to someone who had never met him. Harry just smiled at his friend as he stood from the Gryffindor table. “Thanks, mate. I hope I’ll see you again, but if not, then you’ve been my best friend.”
Ron’s ears turned bright red, and some of the Gryffindors behind Harry rustled and mumbled. Harry ignored all of them. They were secure, in one way or another: purebloods, or half-bloods or Muggleborns who had been raised by pureblood families and spent time under strict observation to ensure they would conform to the Dark Lord’s will. Harry was the only different one at their table, the only Muggle-raised one, the only non-pureblood child of Lord Voldemort’s former enemies.
They would survive. He wouldn’t.
But he could leave them laughing. “Off to impress the Dark Lord with my Acceptables on every NEWT,” he said, and winked.
They did laugh, and if the laughs were hollow, well, Harry was walking away, and wouldn’t need to meet their eyes.
Probably not ever again.
*
Professor McGonagall was waiting for him just outside the Great Hall. She stretched her mouth a little. “If you’ll accompany me, Mr. Potter, the—the Dark Lord is waiting for you in an office near the Defense classroom.”
“Thanks, professor.”
They walked in silence for a few moments. Harry looked around at the stone walls and watched the patterns of sunlight dancing there from the windows they passed. He tried to fill his lungs as deeply as he could with air.
He didn’t want to die. But at least he had had seven years of a life worth living, rather than the worthless one he would have had if he had stayed in the Muggle world, or the shorter one if he had tried to run.
“Mr. Potter.”
Harry blinked and focused on McGonagall again. “Yes, professor?”
“You—know not to be cheeky to the Dark Lord.”
Harry almost laughed. “Professor, I don’t want to die messily. I won’t be cheeky at all.”
McGonagall abruptly stopped. Harry did the same, standing one step behind and below her. She turned to face him with her eyes wide. “You expect to die?”
“Professor,” Harry said as gently as he could. He felt it a little unfair that he was the one who had to reassure people right now when he was also the one walking to his death, but that seemed to be the way it was working out. “You know it means something that I was never allowed to be claimed by a pureblood family the way most Muggleborns are. You know that it means something that my parents’ crimes are the ones most publicized in the history textbooks.”
McGonagall lowered her gaze to the ground. She said nothing for long enough that Harry wondered if she would tell him to run. Harry wouldn’t do that, though. He had no desire to die a torture victim.
If I could live—
Harry cut it off. There was the faint chance of exile, but that only tended to get offered to purebloods who had committed fairly minor crimes. Harry had the shadow of his heritage hanging over him, in all ways.
“I did not think about that,” McGonagall whispered.
“I hope that you’ll remember me.”
His Head of House did something that shocked him: she leaned forwards and hugged Harry hard enough that his spine hurt. Harry felt her shoulders hitch a little. He hugged her back, awkwardly.
McGonagall didn’t say a word, only pulled free and touched the back of her hand briefly to her cheek. “We shouldn’t keep him waiting,” she whispered, and turned away.
Harry followed quietly, trying to memorize the feeling of her hug the way he was trying to fill his lungs with air.
*
The door of the office the Dark Lord had taken over was a heavy stone one with silver hinges. Harry knocked and waited, ignoring the fleeting look McGonagall gave him over her shoulder. She couldn’t help him now.
No one could.
“Enter.”
The door swung open on its own. Harry took one step inside and dropped to his knees, his head bowd. He knew he would maintain silence until the Dark Lord wished to speak to him.
The door swung shut behind him, and the silence endured.
Harry kept his head down, kept his stillness intact. The stone floor was hurting his knees, but that kind of pain wasn’t new to him. The Dursleys had made him kneel for years and scrub the floors, after all. A lot just this past summer.
Would I have wanted to never know magic existed if it meant I could keep on living?
No. No, Harry was certain of that.
“Rise.”
Harry did, keeping his head bowed. He could see just the hem of the Dark Lord’s black robe. He was sitting at a desk that was longer and wider than Harry had expected, or so he thought from the brief glimpse he managed to take. He’d never been in this room before, and he was not going to lift his eyes further.
The Dark Lord studied him in silence. Harry likewise said nothing. The Dark Lord spoke at last, in a voice as smooth and sibilant as Harry had heard it on the wireless. “Raise your head and look at me, boy.”
Harry felt a fleeting indignation at the word boy, but, well, the Dark Lord was not Uncle Vernon. He raised his head.
The Dark Lord’s face was oddly smooth and pale, with what looked like scale-like patterns beneath the surface of the skin. His eyes were a deep red that made Lily Potter’s hair in the pictures Harry had seen seem dull. His hair was dark and had receded far back over the dome of his forehead.
“Tell me, Harry Potter. What did you expect when you came here today?”
“For you to kill me, my lord.”
Harry thought that he would probably get a laugh then, or perhaps the Dark Lord would feign shock if he wanted to toy with his prey. But instead, the Dark Lord stared at him with slowly widening eyes.
More silence passed. Harry wondered if it was his bluntness that had done it and earned him a painful death after all.
“Why?” the Dark Lord asked at last.
“I’m well-aware of my parents’ crimes, my lord. I know their taint passed on to me.” Harry had thought he would have trouble keeping his voice steady. He’d thought that maybe he would fall to his knees again and beg the Dark Lord to spare him, if it came to that. But amazingly, he was able to stand and speak calmly. The only mercy I’m likely to find today. “Because I’m a half-blood, I’m not as well-versed in magic or its subtleties as a pureblood would be. Because I grew up in the Muggle world and had no pureblood family to foster me, I was—”
“What.”
This word was low, but it made stone flake off the wall. Harry shut up at once. His pulse was thundering in his ears fast enough to make him dizzy, but he stood still and let the Dark Lord stare at him.
What did I say? Harry reviewed his words in his head, but he honestly had no idea. Was he not supposed to mention the word “Muggle” in front of the Dark Lord?
His thoughts scattered as the Dark Lord rose to his feet. He paced towards Harry and stopped less than a meter away, eyes roaming over Harry as though he was a house-elf up for sale. Harry felt his face heat, but he remained as calm and still as he could. The Dark Lord hadn’t given him permission to move.
“Tell me,” the Dark Lord said at last, “why you grew up in the Muggle world.”
“I received an explanation with my Hogwarts letter, my lord,” Harry said. Calm. Steady. He’ll kill you, but you can at least not go screaming to your death. Maybe it’ll be the Killing Curse, the way it was on your parents. That at least doesn’t hurt. “Because my parents’ crimes were so great, no pureblood family wanted me to taint their home with my presence. Likewise, I couldn’t visit any of my friends during the summers or holidays. I had to go back to the Muggle world for the summer and remain at Hogwarts during the others.”
The Dark Lord nodded. His face was distant. Harry wondered if this had been something he’d ordered and then forgotten about. Probably. Why would Harry matter to him, in the grand scheme of things, until his seventh year, when the Dark Lord personally evaluated every student about to finish Hogwarts?
Or if Harry had become a rebel and outlaw. But that hadn’t had happened.
“That should not have happened.”
“I’m sorry, my lord?” Was I supposed to be told about it some other way than in the Hogwarts letter?
“Every magical child is welcome in our world, Harry Potter. The Muggleborns are taken and the half-bloods are found homes with purely magical people. You know this.”
“Yes, my lord.”
“Then why did you think you were the exception?”
Harry braced himself, even as he felt a current of shock moving through him. He’s going to kill me for some bureaucratic mistake rather than for my blood? “Because of the letters, my lord.”
“The letters.”
“Along with my initial Hogwarts letter—I sent a letter to the Ministry when I got here and saw that everyone else of impure blood in Gryffindor was fostered with a pureblood. I wanted to know if I could be, too. They sent me back a denial, and they’ve sent me a letter a few days before every holiday reminding me to stay here or return to the Dursleys.”
The Dark Lord nodded again. At this point, Harry had no idea what was going on. He just stood still with his hands clasped behind his back, the way he had been so far.
The Dark Lord stirred a little and turned to face him squarely, and Harry understood. The Dark Lord was in the grip of some rage so vast and transcendent that Harry had no comparison for it. He froze.
“Let me look into your eyes, boy.”
Legilimency. Well, the Dark Lord probably thought Harry was lying, because it was unbelievable. Harry was literally the only exception to the Dark Lord’s policy of having all magical children grow up in the wizarding world that he’d ever heard of.
He kept his eyes fixed on the Dark Lord as the man approached and gripped his chin. His fingers were cold and hard. Harry felt the skim of an equally cold mind over his, and didn’t try to resist. He had no idea what would happen next. The Killing Curse?
But instead, the Dark Lord simply and delicately picked through his mind, gazing hard at certain memories. Harry caught glimpses of the Dursleys, of his cupboard, of Dudley’s second bedroom, of the primary school teachers who hadn’t believed him, of the letters the Ministry had sent him, of the way he had dragged his trunk through the Muggle section of King’s Cross all by himself. He stood as quiet and passive as he could, certain that the Dark Lord would kill him for a mistaken motion.
I have no intention of killing you.
Harry started. The words were—they just formed in his head, like imprints on his mind, via what he supposed was a kind of telepathy. They were the most intimate and deepest words he had ever heard in his life.
Your parents committed the sins they committed. You, on the other hand, have striven to be a model citizen, and to love magic. You came to Hogwarts even though you suspected execution awaited you at the end of your seventh year.
Harry shivered and tried to shape words for the Dark Lord to hear in return, although he was no Legilimens and didn’t know if that was possible. I—am a Gryffindor. Stupidly brave.
This time, the chuckle that shook through his body made Harry flush. He blinked, and the Dark Lord gently detached himself from Harry’s mind and cocked his head. “One of the letters referred to sins your parents committed in school. Do you know what those were?”
Harry shook his head, taking a deep breath, reveling that he was still alive to breathe it. “I’m sorry, my lord. I thought that just referred to how they joined the Order of the Phoenix.”
“No. They did not become Order members until they had finished their seventh year,” the Dark Lord said, and Harry cradled the precious fact about his parents to himself, for all that he knew he should hate them. “The reference eliminates many of the people who might have written those letters.”
Harry glanced up at the pale, serpentine face, the Dark Lord’s stillness, and made an educated guess. “You know, my lord.”
The Dark Lord turned the flat gaze of a serpent on him. Harry shivered a little, but stood his ground. The resignation that had marched his legs here had gone, and now he wanted desperately to live, but—
He also thought he was going to live.
Perhaps his defiance pleased the Dark Lord in some respect, because a wide, terrifying, fascinating smile split his face. “Yes. I assigned the task of seeing to your wellbeing to someone I thought would appreciate it, given that he had—an attachment to your mother. I knew he had not taken you in himself, but I thought he had placed you with an appropriate foster family.”
“He’s the reason I grew up in the Muggle world?”
“Indeed. And…” The Dark Lord tilted his head and snapped his fingers. A bright wall of transparent blue lit up around Harry. “The reason you have a ward around you that would send any owls you tried to write to him.”
Harry blinked. He hadn’t been aware of that, but then, he hadn’t sent any owls to his friends, ever. It was strictly forbidden for wizards or witches in the Muggle world to communicate by owl, and the rest of the time, Harry was around his friends in Hogwarts or separated from them for only a few weeks by holidays. It wouldn’t really have been worth it to write.
“That seems risky. He could have been found out.”
The Dark Lord nodded. “He took me seriously when I said that I had little interest in your placement, as long as you did not grow up to rebel against me. I would have interfered if I had known where he had placed you, of course. It seems his hatred of your father overruled his fondness for your mother. And for that, Harry, I am deeply sorry.”
Harry’s breath rattled in and out of his lungs. He couldn’t speak. He couldn’t do anything but stand there and stare.
The Dark Lord didn’t strike him down for it. He stood and watched Harry with a faint trace of curiosity in his expression, as if his own apology had taken him by surprise.
How long has it been since he apologized and meant it?
Reality came back in a wave as hot as his breath. Harry blushed and lowered his eyes. “Thank you, my lord,” he whispered. “You don’t know how much that means to me.”
“I did want to ask you about something I saw in your mind, Harry.” The Dark Lord’s voice altered, although Harry couldn’t define the change. “A memory when you were seven, in your aunt’s garden.”
Harry did his best to search his memories for that, but all the days in the garden blended together, honestly, as did most of the chores he’d done when serving his relatives. “I’m sorry, my lord. I don’t know what you mean.”
The Dark Lord caught his breath and stared at him with wide eyes. Harry had to force himself not to cringe. Had he said something so stupid after all that the Dark Lord was going to end his life? Where was the invisible line between pleasing the Dark Lord and annoying him?
Wherever the line was, it seemed he hadn’t crossed it yet, and the Dark Lord’s reaction was about something else. He took a step forwards, staring intensely at Harry. “Can you understand me when I speak to you like this, Harry?”
“I—of course, my lord. English is my native language.”
The Dark Lord’s face split in yet another smile. Honestly, Harry was beginning to think he could spend the rest of his life making this great wizard smile that way. “But we are not speaking English, Harry.”
Harry stared at him, mouth slightly open. All he could think was that someone had cast a spell on him at the Gryffindor table to make him speak French or something—
But no, he would have noticed. And he really didn’t think any of his Housemates were cruel enough to do that the day he’d thought he was about to be executed, no matter how much they liked pranks.
“Please explain it to me, my lord,” Harry whispered. “I can’t understand it.”
“You can,” said the Dark Lord, and then went on, while the idea that the Dark Lord had made a joke almost wiped Harry’s mind like an Obliviate. “You are speaking Parseltongue, Harry. As your memory in your aunt’s garden showed you doing so with a snake. Why would you have done that, I wonder? Do you know?”
Harry shook his head in numb wonder. “I—I could speak to snakes, my lord, a few times. But never often, and after I learned about magic, I thought it was because the Ministry was checking up on me. That the snakes were magical illusions or constructs or something of the kind.”
The Dark Lord cocked his head. “What did you think of magic before you received your Hogwarts letter?”
“I learned about it from the Hogwarts letter, my lord. My relatives knew it was real, but they didn’t tell me. They just called me a freak before that, and I thought my magic was—freakishness, and accepted it that way.”
The Dark Lord took a breath of such rage that Harry cowered, certain that he had finally done something that had displeased the man enough to put execution back on the table. But the Dark Lord shook his head a moment later. “Another thing I will have to thank Severus for,” he said softly. “You have no idea how you came to speak Parseltongue, Harry?”
“I’m sorry, my lord. No idea whatsoever.”
“I think I do.”
Harry blinked and barely kept himself from asking why the Dark Lord had asked him, then. Just because he might have a chance of surviving the day didn’t mean pulling out Gryffindor cheek was a good idea. “Yes, my lord?”
The Dark Lord reached towards him. Harry literally stopped breathing as that long, pale hand, tipped with deadly-looking nails, slid beneath his chin, and had to start himself again with a cough when the moment lingered.
“Your mother was a genius in Runes and Charms,” the Dark Lord murmured. His eyes were as intense and hot as the fire they resembled. “I know that she was recruited several times by the Department of Mysteries, but she refused them, as she wished to continue fighting in the war with the Order of the Phoenix instead—you have an opinion about that, Harry?”
Harry stopped the motion he’d made, flushing. “Not one that you need trouble yourself with, my lord.”
“I decide what troubles me and what does not, my Harry.”
Dizziness hit Harry, and he had to concentrate to say, “I was just thinking that she might have been a genius, but she was also kind of stupid, my lord.”
The Dark Lord laughed, a blade of sound that cut into Harry’s ears and that he immediately wanted to hear again. “She was, at that,” he said. “But she was more than clever enough to have created a spell that would give you Parseltongue.”
“Why would—why would she have wanted to do that, my lord?” Harry loved his parents and missed them and hated them and despised them, and he was learning several new facts about them from this conversation, but nothing that would have caused that decision to make sense.
“There was a prophecy.”
The Dark Lord spoke only those words and then watched him intently. Harry had no idea what he waiting for, and he hated to disappoint him, but he said only, when a moment had passed, “Sorry, my lord. I don’t know what that refers to.”
The Dark Lord smiled slightly. “At least some things have gone right. There was a prophecy that a child born at the end of July would be the one who could vanquish me.”
“I—my lord, how am I still alive?”
The Dark Lord’s laughter came again, this time lower and darker and more intimate. Harry shivered and cast his eyes down. He should not be thinking things like that, especially not with the Dark Lord being such a master Legilimens and still touching him.
“I did not enter one of several traps that was prepared for me. I killed your parents, and stayed away from you.” The Dark Lord shrugged, a sinuous ripple of motion that reminded Harry of a cobra swaying to the tune of a flute. “I directed that you not learn of the prophecy, because you might seek to fulfill it. But you did not, and there is no harm in it now. Your mother, however, might have thought you stood more of a chance of defeating me if you were a Parselmouth. Like me.”
Harry swallowed and wondered how he should feel about it. His mother, this brilliant woman, who had come up with a spell that Harry had never heard of. His mother, this courageous woman, who had fought the Dark Lord.
This madwoman who had believed in a prophecy and altered her baby so that he might have a better chance of winning her war someday.
Harry blinked away something that was too hot to be tears and looked up at the Dark Lord again. “What happens now?”
“What do you want to happen, Harry?”
“I could—go back downstairs and find an apprenticeship like the others? Find a job in the Ministry? Maybe retake my NEWTS?” He hadn’t done his best on them. How could he, when he had believed he would die?
“You could,” the Dark Lord agreed, his voice as heavy as gold. “But you could do something else.”
“Yes, my lord?”
“Accept an apprenticeship with me. I have never had a Parselmouth to train, because there have been none.” For a moment, the Dark Lord’s eyes blazed, but he let the anger—at whom?—go. “I would train you to walk paths of magic that have felt the touch of no feet but mine for centuries. To wield powers that would ensure you were respected for the rest of your life, at least by everyone not fool enough to think less of you because of your blood.”
Harry shivered. He knew what he wanted to say, but there was something he wanted to bring up first. “You killed my parents.”
“Yes.”
“You—don’t want to kill me.”
“No. You are the closest person to myself I have ever found, a Parselmouth—and someone who grew up in the Muggle world with Muggles who did not appreciate them. No, Harry Potter, I would no more kill you than I would crush a phoenix egg.”
Harry swallowed again. Perhaps the Dark Lord would crush a phoenix egg if he thought it was worth it to him. Harry had always heard that he was eminently practical.
Is it practical to be telling me about his childhood? Or touching me like this and telling me about the prophecy and sparing my life?
Harry had first thought, when he walked up the stairs this morning, that he would give everything for a normal life. He had had no thought of an extraordinary life. He had just wanted what he had to continue on.
And now there was a whole vision spread out in front of him, a position of power, of security. No one could ever randomly kill him for his blood if he was at Lord Voldemort’s side. No one could shove him back into the Muggle world, or snap his wand, or Obliviate him—all options that had been on the table for some rebellious Muggleborns and half-bloods.
No one could hurt him like this mysterious Severus had done again.
The knowledge that this Severus was still out there—at least for now—was the final lock on the decision, but not the only one. Harry smiled and leaned forwards. “My lord, you tempt me.” The teasing was risky, but he was sure he could get away with it.
Especially since he didn’t think he had dropped back into English yet.
The Dark Lord’s smile could be a blade sliding under Harry’s ribs, but he preferred to accept it as a promise. The Dark Lord’s hand wandered along the side of Harry’s face, and there seemed to be scales on the pads of his fingers.
That only made him another new thing, though. A thing—a future—that Harry was ready to embrace.
“You stand ready to commit yourself to me?” the Dark Lord hissed. When Harry concentrated, he thought he could hear the difference between Parseltongue and English.
Harry stared into his eyes and promised with all the recklessness of the Gryffindor he was, “Forever.”
“You will never regret it.”
*
The Dark Lord Voldemort cradled Harry Potter’s face between his palms, and learned that he could still recognize the meaning of wonder.
He had never thought he would find another Parselmouth in Britain. He had never thought he would find someone who could stand at his side, potentially as an equal.
He had never thought he would lay the prophecy to rest, and would simply have to ignore it forever.
But instead…
Instead, he had all those things. And he had the possibility of joy, which was more than the rest. Long years of lonely immortality ruling magical Britain had taught him that.
As his hands slid over Harry Potter’s face, Voldemort thought, I will make sure that he never regrets it.
The End.
