lomonaaeren (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lomonaaeren) wrote2024-07-19 08:45 pm
lomonaaeren) wrote2024-07-19 08:45 pm
Entry tags:
[Songs of Summer]: Broken Glass Life, gen, 1/3 or 4
Title: Broken Glass Life
Pairings: Gen, other than mentions of Lily/Voldemort and James/Lily
Content Notes: AU (Harry is Voldemort’s son), angst, violence, mentions of torture and minor character deaths, present tense, snippet scenes, mentions of past dub-con, drama, kidnapping
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. When Voldemort possesses Harry in the Department of Mysteries, he discovers not only the Horcrux, but the unsettling similarity between their souls and minds. His realization about who Harry really is is passed to Harry as well. A depiction of the months after this, when Harry’s life is in shards.
Author’s Notes: This story is part of my “Songs of Summer” series of short fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It should have three or four chapters, and is based on a request by EllieOrion for a fic like my older story “Conditionally,” but with Tom Riddle as Harry’s father instead of Snape. Please mind the content notes.
Broken Glass Life
There is a moment of darkness and thunder and pain unbearable as Voldemort drives into Harry’s mind and soul, and then—
You are my son.
*
It’s not love that allows Harry to throw Voldemort out of his head. It’s grief, and loss, and the desire to get away from the revelation.
And hatred, so much hatred, overflowing into Voldemort until there is no room for both of their hatreds in Harry’s body.
*
“Harry, my boy, I am so sorry.”
Dumbledore says that he really didn’t know. He speculates on what could have happened to make Voldemort Harry’s father, but he shuts up quickly enough. Harry sits across from the Headmaster with his face in his hands and breathes. The rage has cooled into a thick scar of self-loathing across his entire soul.
“I am sorry that you lost Sirius,” Dumbledore continues. “And I am sorry that I kept so much from you.”
Harry doesn’t respond. What is he supposed to say? That he feels awful, and he understands? Only one of those things is true.
“I would caution you to keep this to yourself, until you know if—”
Harry laughs, in a way that makes Dumbledore stare at him in sudden sorrow. “Oh, don’t worry, sir. The last thing I want to do is spread this around.”
*
Harry is in Gryffindor Tower that night, lying in bed with his arms wrapped around himself and wondering how it will change things if his friends do find out, when a letter in a black envelope appears in a puff of red smoke on his pillow.
Harry stares at it in silence. Then he reaches out and opens it, not really caring if something in the parchment does eat his fingers off. It’s the kind of day.
My son,
You should know that there is only one way this could have happened. I lay with a woman who expressed an interest in the Darkest of magics, and said that she was an Unspeakable. I attempted to recruit her, but she slipped through my nets. I assumed that she had gone back to the Department of Mysteries, and invested no resources in pursuing her.
You should be proud that you come of two Dark, mad lines—
Harry chokes and shakes his head, only skimming through the rest of it. There’s more about Darkness and madness and how this explains things and how Slytherin magic or something like that prevented Voldemort from killing Harry, but there’s nothing that Harry would actually value.
As in, there’s no promise that Voldemort won’t try to kill him again.
Harry sets the letter on fire with a single pulse of wandless magic, and falls bonelessly back against the pillows.
*
“That’s stupid.”
“Harry, the blood protections do make sure that you are safe from—”
“How can they, if Voldemort has the same blood?”
Dumbledore pauses for a long moment, apparently startled. Then he sighs and says, “You are still safe from the Death Eaters there, and your mother’s love is still the power behind the protective spells. She did not love Voldemort, I am certain of that.”
It doesn’t matter. She slept with him.
But Harry doesn’t say anything. It’s clear that Dumbledore, despite keeping Harry’s secret and having invited him to his office for a private chat, is just going to throw Harry back with the Dursleys. Despite Sirius’s death and the—everything—Harry’s found out.
Harry says nothing. What can he say? He does nothing. What can he do?
His friends are talking like his going back to the Dursleys are a foregone conclusion. And where could he go, if not with Hermione or the Weasleys? He has no one else.
Would he seek sanctuary with his father? That’s almost funny enough to make Harry smile.
*
Another black letter appears on Harry’s pillow a week after he comes back to the Dursleys’. Harry snorts a little as he picks it up. So much for Dumbledore’s theory that Voldemort can’t get through the blood protections.
My son,
You have not responded. You have not spoken. You have done nothing but simply lie in silence. Did you believe it would be so easy to dismiss me?
That is not going to happen. I am here. I am thinking, waiting, coiling. I am patient.
Harry shakes his head. Once again, the letter ends with nothing more than this. No promises of safety, or even a quick death. If there was one of those, then Harry might be tempted to walk outside to meet him.
Harry lies back with his eyes closed, his arms folded behind his head. He turns over in his head, idly, the idea that maybe he isn’t Voldemort’s son at all, that Voldemort just thinks so.
The only way he has to tell for certain, he thinks, is to talk to someone who might be able to confirm the story of Voldemort sleeping with Lily Potter. And Harry does have one person who might be able to do that.
Might.
*
Hedwig brings the letter back from Remus more than a week after Harry sent it out. By then, he’s so weary, so deep in the world of chores and staring at the ceiling and doing nothing else, that he takes the letter as if in a dream.
All it says is, Lily never told me that she slept with anyone other than James.
Harry closes his eyes. All right, then. He has no way of confirming for sure that he is Voldemort’s son.
All he can do is accept that Voldemort believes it, and so he’ll continue acting strange. It really doesn’t matter what the truth is. It matters whether Harry can survive it.
*
No one comes to get him or sends him an owl. There’s not going to be any Burrow this summer, Harry thinks, and no Grimmauld Place, either. Of course, the second thing isn’t a surprise when Sirius is dead and the Order might not even be able to use Grimmauld Place anymore.
He lies there and thinks about it, and he’s a little amazed that he can think of Sirius so—coldly and clearly, so objectively. Is it something wrong with him? Does he not feel emotions like normal people because he is (might be) Voldemort’s son?
When he’s weeding the next afternoon, he decides to try and consider another subject in the same way, to see if he’s capable of it. The first thing that comes to mind is Snape, and he turns over the memories and thinks, like a stranger, what a wanker Snape is, how stupid it is of him to hold a grudge against Harry’s father over his head for years…
Even the word “wanker” seems to press oddly on his thoughts.
When he figures it out, Harry wants to laugh. He’s learned Occlumency, it seems, with nothing to do for weeks but try and clear his mind of the thoughts that it wants to think.
It’s too late, too fucking late, and of no use against Voldemort, anyway. He hasn’t sent Harry any visions in more than a month now, and he’s already found out, or thinks he’s found out, the most important thing.
Is it really the most important?
Harry thinks about that, from the distance Occlumency imposes, and ends up shaking his head. No, it really isn’t. Voldemort will do whatever he’s going to do, torture and kill people and try to torture and kill Harry, and maybe make alliances with Dementors and giants. Nothing has really changed.
Harry gets up from lying on the bed when Aunt Petunia yells at him to cook dinner.
*
Harry gets a few owls on his birthday. They’re strangely reminiscent of the owls from last year, with his friends apologizing about how they can’t tell him things, but Dumbledore said not to. Harry idly pets Pigwidgeon and wonders what they think he can’t know, since Grimmauld Place isn’t a secret to him any longer. Maybe the Order’s new headquarters?
There’s also another black envelope, delivered by a large bird that Harry vaguely recognizes as some kind of falcon. He rolls his eyes as he opens it. One thing he never suspected before all this this started happening: Voldemort is really melodramatic.
To my son and heir, on the occasion of his birth.
Oh, the heir thing is new. Harry lounges back against his pillow, and wonders what Voldemort wants. He doesn’t really need an heir since he never intends to die. Maybe he thinks that using the word will soften Harry up somehow?
If you knew how proud I am of you, you would start.
Harry starts anyway, before he slams down what he’s coming to think of as his Occlumency shields and shakes his head a little. Yeah, this is definitely Voldemort pursuing the softening-up tactic. Maybe he knows how few people in Harry’s life have ever said they are proud of him.
It’s a regrettable thing, but not something Harry is inclined to get upset about, not now. He has too many better things to regret.
I have been revising memories of your exploits from those of my followers who have come into close contact with you, Lucius and Severus and others. I am overjoyed that you have survived long enough for me to meet you properly. I am astonished at your luck, your prowess, your strength. Few thirteen-year-olds could learn to summon a Patronus, and fewer fourteen-year-olds could learn to throw off the Imperius.
Harry wonders if the letter is meant to impress him.
I am less pleased that you destroyed the diary, but you have, of course, made up for that in your own way. I do not doubt that Dumbledore has reassured you that he will find some way to free you from the curse, but I would prefer that you think of it as a gift, rather than a curse.
Harry reaches up and feels his scar. Is that what Voldemort’s talking about? Or maybe the connection between them? Harry wouldn’t describe learning Occlumency as freeing him from it, exactly.
If you open your mind to me at midnight, I will tell you something I think that you will find of interest.
Right, like Harry’s going to do that. He’s been enjoying his freedom from random dreams and blazing anger. He folds the letter and tucks it underneath his pillow.
Maybe something of the language has worked on him after all, because he doesn’t really want to get rid of it, although he takes the letters and packages from the other owls and shoos them out the window without a reply. His friends are free to take it as him being blazingly angry at them, but if they ask, Harry will just tell them that it’s obviously not safe to exchange letters. That thought makes him smile for the first time in weeks.
He lies back down on his pillow, where the letter from Voldemort lies, and watches the passing lights of cars drift across the ceiling until morning.
*
“Boy! Come downstairs!”
It’s unusual for Aunt Petunia to summon him in the middle of the day without specifying what chore she wants him to do, but Harry’s not really curious. He turns and trots down the stairs, halting in the middle of the last step.
Voldemort is standing there.
Well, technically Tom Riddle is standing there. Harry has never seen this particular face, but he can relate it to the diary from second year well enough. His cheekbones have sharpened with age, his dark hair is streaked with grey, and his eyes are a brilliant red.
Harry stares at him and thinks that he is going to die. Maybe if he doesn’t provoke Voldemort, he will give Harry that quick death Harry’s been fantasizing about.
“He says he’s one of yours,” Aunt Petunia complains, in a nasal tone that makes Harry think Voldemort must be hiding the red eyes and the general air of menace from Muggles. Aunt Petunia would probably be barricaded in the kitchen otherwise. “You’re to do your business upstairs and quietly, do you understand?”
A Killing Curse is probably pretty quiet, unless someone stands in the way and explodes the house the way my mum did.
But there is no one to stand in the way for Harry, not anymore. He nods and says numbly, “I understand,” and then motions Voldemort up the stairs.
Voldemort smiles at him and walks up. Harry watches the back of his heels, and sees that he’s wearing grey socks, to go with the nice grey Muggle suit that probably allowed him to get up to the door without being screeched at by the neighbors.
You’d think he’d wear a color that he won’t have to spell blood off. Unless that’s the point.
Harry nods. He’s more calm than he expected even with the Occlumency. But maybe it’s just because gibbering terror doesn’t matter now. He steps into his bedroom and closes the door behind Voldemort, then turns to face him.
“I’m ready.”
“You do not even know what I am going to propose, my son.” Voldemort smiles at him. His teeth look more pointed than they should, although Harry can’t remember if that was the case in the graveyard or not. “My heir.”
“Why call me that? You’re immortal, so it’s not like there would be anything to inherit anyway.”
“I cannot be proud that you inherited my Parseltongue?”
Harry snorts. The manipulation tactic is obvious. “Dumbledore says that I didn’t inherit that from you—or rather, from any Slytherin ancestor. I got it because you transferred some of your powers to me that Halloween night when you attacked me.”
Voldemort goes still abruptly, in a way that reminds Harry of a snake before it strikes. Then again, that’s just an apt comparison. He stares at Harry. Harry stares back.
“I would not have thought that he’d told you that secret.”
“Well, he only told me when I asked him after the diary, and why I was a Parselmouth. He said that it didn’t make me Slytherin’s Heir. Just that you transferred something.”
“Something.”
Harry doesn’t understand Voldemort’s emphasis on that word, so he says nothing.
Voldemort tilts his head back and forth some more, in imitation of a snake considering something. Or maybe an owl. Harry isn’t an expert on what animals his supposed father resembles the most.
“Yes, I will tell you,” Voldemort says at last. “Understand that I am not rewarding you for failing to open your mind at midnight. It simply seems that I will be able to explain some of the truth to you.”
“Understood.”
This is the most surreal conversation Harry can ever imagine having.
Voldemort’s tongue darts out, licking the air with more emphasis than Harry remembered him being able to do. “You are my Horcrux.”
He pauses, apparently expecting something from Harry. But all Harry has to give him is blank incomprehension. He blinks. “What does that mean?”
“There is a piece of my soul in you. You are one of the objects that assure my immortality.”
Everything pauses.
Harry is vaguely aware that he’s sunk to his knees and planted his fingers in his hair. He’s screaming, but internally. There’s not a sound coming out of his throat. Voldemort has taken a step nearer and is staring down at him.
It makes sense, in a twisted way. Why the curse scar wouldn’t fade, and Harry can feel Voldemort’s emotions and speak Parseltongue. Not that Harry has ever heard of a Horcrux, or knows if it’s possible to create a living one—
You are one of the objects that assure my immortality.
What does he know about that? Nothing, really.
He finally finds his tongue enough to say, in English, “Well, if you saw that I was your Horcrux, maybe that’s what you felt. The familiarity. Rather than me being your son.”
“You are both. And infinitely precious.”
Harry tilts his head back and laughs.
The laughter turns quickly to hysteria, rushing into a strangled shriek. Voldemort casts a spell that Harry doesn’t know, but it chokes him, and he slumps over, clawing at his throat now, his eyes bugging out.
All this time, Voldemort really wanted to kill him by asphyxiation. Who knew?
Voldemort bends down so that his eyes are a few centimeters away from Harry’s. They’ve become the world. “You shall live as I do, and you shall never die,” Voldemort whispers. “And I will teach you to master your weak mortal body, your weak mortal mind, in ways that you would never dare do now.”
Harry tilts his head back as the choking spell fades, and laughs desperately.
A Stunner hits him, and he knows no more.
Pairings: Gen, other than mentions of Lily/Voldemort and James/Lily
Content Notes: AU (Harry is Voldemort’s son), angst, violence, mentions of torture and minor character deaths, present tense, snippet scenes, mentions of past dub-con, drama, kidnapping
Rating: PG-13
Summary: AU. When Voldemort possesses Harry in the Department of Mysteries, he discovers not only the Horcrux, but the unsettling similarity between their souls and minds. His realization about who Harry really is is passed to Harry as well. A depiction of the months after this, when Harry’s life is in shards.
Author’s Notes: This story is part of my “Songs of Summer” series of short fics being posted between the summer solstice and the first of August. It should have three or four chapters, and is based on a request by EllieOrion for a fic like my older story “Conditionally,” but with Tom Riddle as Harry’s father instead of Snape. Please mind the content notes.
Broken Glass Life
There is a moment of darkness and thunder and pain unbearable as Voldemort drives into Harry’s mind and soul, and then—
You are my son.
*
It’s not love that allows Harry to throw Voldemort out of his head. It’s grief, and loss, and the desire to get away from the revelation.
And hatred, so much hatred, overflowing into Voldemort until there is no room for both of their hatreds in Harry’s body.
*
“Harry, my boy, I am so sorry.”
Dumbledore says that he really didn’t know. He speculates on what could have happened to make Voldemort Harry’s father, but he shuts up quickly enough. Harry sits across from the Headmaster with his face in his hands and breathes. The rage has cooled into a thick scar of self-loathing across his entire soul.
“I am sorry that you lost Sirius,” Dumbledore continues. “And I am sorry that I kept so much from you.”
Harry doesn’t respond. What is he supposed to say? That he feels awful, and he understands? Only one of those things is true.
“I would caution you to keep this to yourself, until you know if—”
Harry laughs, in a way that makes Dumbledore stare at him in sudden sorrow. “Oh, don’t worry, sir. The last thing I want to do is spread this around.”
*
Harry is in Gryffindor Tower that night, lying in bed with his arms wrapped around himself and wondering how it will change things if his friends do find out, when a letter in a black envelope appears in a puff of red smoke on his pillow.
Harry stares at it in silence. Then he reaches out and opens it, not really caring if something in the parchment does eat his fingers off. It’s the kind of day.
My son,
You should know that there is only one way this could have happened. I lay with a woman who expressed an interest in the Darkest of magics, and said that she was an Unspeakable. I attempted to recruit her, but she slipped through my nets. I assumed that she had gone back to the Department of Mysteries, and invested no resources in pursuing her.
You should be proud that you come of two Dark, mad lines—
Harry chokes and shakes his head, only skimming through the rest of it. There’s more about Darkness and madness and how this explains things and how Slytherin magic or something like that prevented Voldemort from killing Harry, but there’s nothing that Harry would actually value.
As in, there’s no promise that Voldemort won’t try to kill him again.
Harry sets the letter on fire with a single pulse of wandless magic, and falls bonelessly back against the pillows.
*
“That’s stupid.”
“Harry, the blood protections do make sure that you are safe from—”
“How can they, if Voldemort has the same blood?”
Dumbledore pauses for a long moment, apparently startled. Then he sighs and says, “You are still safe from the Death Eaters there, and your mother’s love is still the power behind the protective spells. She did not love Voldemort, I am certain of that.”
It doesn’t matter. She slept with him.
But Harry doesn’t say anything. It’s clear that Dumbledore, despite keeping Harry’s secret and having invited him to his office for a private chat, is just going to throw Harry back with the Dursleys. Despite Sirius’s death and the—everything—Harry’s found out.
Harry says nothing. What can he say? He does nothing. What can he do?
His friends are talking like his going back to the Dursleys are a foregone conclusion. And where could he go, if not with Hermione or the Weasleys? He has no one else.
Would he seek sanctuary with his father? That’s almost funny enough to make Harry smile.
*
Another black letter appears on Harry’s pillow a week after he comes back to the Dursleys’. Harry snorts a little as he picks it up. So much for Dumbledore’s theory that Voldemort can’t get through the blood protections.
My son,
You have not responded. You have not spoken. You have done nothing but simply lie in silence. Did you believe it would be so easy to dismiss me?
That is not going to happen. I am here. I am thinking, waiting, coiling. I am patient.
Harry shakes his head. Once again, the letter ends with nothing more than this. No promises of safety, or even a quick death. If there was one of those, then Harry might be tempted to walk outside to meet him.
Harry lies back with his eyes closed, his arms folded behind his head. He turns over in his head, idly, the idea that maybe he isn’t Voldemort’s son at all, that Voldemort just thinks so.
The only way he has to tell for certain, he thinks, is to talk to someone who might be able to confirm the story of Voldemort sleeping with Lily Potter. And Harry does have one person who might be able to do that.
Might.
*
Hedwig brings the letter back from Remus more than a week after Harry sent it out. By then, he’s so weary, so deep in the world of chores and staring at the ceiling and doing nothing else, that he takes the letter as if in a dream.
All it says is, Lily never told me that she slept with anyone other than James.
Harry closes his eyes. All right, then. He has no way of confirming for sure that he is Voldemort’s son.
All he can do is accept that Voldemort believes it, and so he’ll continue acting strange. It really doesn’t matter what the truth is. It matters whether Harry can survive it.
*
No one comes to get him or sends him an owl. There’s not going to be any Burrow this summer, Harry thinks, and no Grimmauld Place, either. Of course, the second thing isn’t a surprise when Sirius is dead and the Order might not even be able to use Grimmauld Place anymore.
He lies there and thinks about it, and he’s a little amazed that he can think of Sirius so—coldly and clearly, so objectively. Is it something wrong with him? Does he not feel emotions like normal people because he is (might be) Voldemort’s son?
When he’s weeding the next afternoon, he decides to try and consider another subject in the same way, to see if he’s capable of it. The first thing that comes to mind is Snape, and he turns over the memories and thinks, like a stranger, what a wanker Snape is, how stupid it is of him to hold a grudge against Harry’s father over his head for years…
Even the word “wanker” seems to press oddly on his thoughts.
When he figures it out, Harry wants to laugh. He’s learned Occlumency, it seems, with nothing to do for weeks but try and clear his mind of the thoughts that it wants to think.
It’s too late, too fucking late, and of no use against Voldemort, anyway. He hasn’t sent Harry any visions in more than a month now, and he’s already found out, or thinks he’s found out, the most important thing.
Is it really the most important?
Harry thinks about that, from the distance Occlumency imposes, and ends up shaking his head. No, it really isn’t. Voldemort will do whatever he’s going to do, torture and kill people and try to torture and kill Harry, and maybe make alliances with Dementors and giants. Nothing has really changed.
Harry gets up from lying on the bed when Aunt Petunia yells at him to cook dinner.
*
Harry gets a few owls on his birthday. They’re strangely reminiscent of the owls from last year, with his friends apologizing about how they can’t tell him things, but Dumbledore said not to. Harry idly pets Pigwidgeon and wonders what they think he can’t know, since Grimmauld Place isn’t a secret to him any longer. Maybe the Order’s new headquarters?
There’s also another black envelope, delivered by a large bird that Harry vaguely recognizes as some kind of falcon. He rolls his eyes as he opens it. One thing he never suspected before all this this started happening: Voldemort is really melodramatic.
To my son and heir, on the occasion of his birth.
Oh, the heir thing is new. Harry lounges back against his pillow, and wonders what Voldemort wants. He doesn’t really need an heir since he never intends to die. Maybe he thinks that using the word will soften Harry up somehow?
If you knew how proud I am of you, you would start.
Harry starts anyway, before he slams down what he’s coming to think of as his Occlumency shields and shakes his head a little. Yeah, this is definitely Voldemort pursuing the softening-up tactic. Maybe he knows how few people in Harry’s life have ever said they are proud of him.
It’s a regrettable thing, but not something Harry is inclined to get upset about, not now. He has too many better things to regret.
I have been revising memories of your exploits from those of my followers who have come into close contact with you, Lucius and Severus and others. I am overjoyed that you have survived long enough for me to meet you properly. I am astonished at your luck, your prowess, your strength. Few thirteen-year-olds could learn to summon a Patronus, and fewer fourteen-year-olds could learn to throw off the Imperius.
Harry wonders if the letter is meant to impress him.
I am less pleased that you destroyed the diary, but you have, of course, made up for that in your own way. I do not doubt that Dumbledore has reassured you that he will find some way to free you from the curse, but I would prefer that you think of it as a gift, rather than a curse.
Harry reaches up and feels his scar. Is that what Voldemort’s talking about? Or maybe the connection between them? Harry wouldn’t describe learning Occlumency as freeing him from it, exactly.
If you open your mind to me at midnight, I will tell you something I think that you will find of interest.
Right, like Harry’s going to do that. He’s been enjoying his freedom from random dreams and blazing anger. He folds the letter and tucks it underneath his pillow.
Maybe something of the language has worked on him after all, because he doesn’t really want to get rid of it, although he takes the letters and packages from the other owls and shoos them out the window without a reply. His friends are free to take it as him being blazingly angry at them, but if they ask, Harry will just tell them that it’s obviously not safe to exchange letters. That thought makes him smile for the first time in weeks.
He lies back down on his pillow, where the letter from Voldemort lies, and watches the passing lights of cars drift across the ceiling until morning.
*
“Boy! Come downstairs!”
It’s unusual for Aunt Petunia to summon him in the middle of the day without specifying what chore she wants him to do, but Harry’s not really curious. He turns and trots down the stairs, halting in the middle of the last step.
Voldemort is standing there.
Well, technically Tom Riddle is standing there. Harry has never seen this particular face, but he can relate it to the diary from second year well enough. His cheekbones have sharpened with age, his dark hair is streaked with grey, and his eyes are a brilliant red.
Harry stares at him and thinks that he is going to die. Maybe if he doesn’t provoke Voldemort, he will give Harry that quick death Harry’s been fantasizing about.
“He says he’s one of yours,” Aunt Petunia complains, in a nasal tone that makes Harry think Voldemort must be hiding the red eyes and the general air of menace from Muggles. Aunt Petunia would probably be barricaded in the kitchen otherwise. “You’re to do your business upstairs and quietly, do you understand?”
A Killing Curse is probably pretty quiet, unless someone stands in the way and explodes the house the way my mum did.
But there is no one to stand in the way for Harry, not anymore. He nods and says numbly, “I understand,” and then motions Voldemort up the stairs.
Voldemort smiles at him and walks up. Harry watches the back of his heels, and sees that he’s wearing grey socks, to go with the nice grey Muggle suit that probably allowed him to get up to the door without being screeched at by the neighbors.
You’d think he’d wear a color that he won’t have to spell blood off. Unless that’s the point.
Harry nods. He’s more calm than he expected even with the Occlumency. But maybe it’s just because gibbering terror doesn’t matter now. He steps into his bedroom and closes the door behind Voldemort, then turns to face him.
“I’m ready.”
“You do not even know what I am going to propose, my son.” Voldemort smiles at him. His teeth look more pointed than they should, although Harry can’t remember if that was the case in the graveyard or not. “My heir.”
“Why call me that? You’re immortal, so it’s not like there would be anything to inherit anyway.”
“I cannot be proud that you inherited my Parseltongue?”
Harry snorts. The manipulation tactic is obvious. “Dumbledore says that I didn’t inherit that from you—or rather, from any Slytherin ancestor. I got it because you transferred some of your powers to me that Halloween night when you attacked me.”
Voldemort goes still abruptly, in a way that reminds Harry of a snake before it strikes. Then again, that’s just an apt comparison. He stares at Harry. Harry stares back.
“I would not have thought that he’d told you that secret.”
“Well, he only told me when I asked him after the diary, and why I was a Parselmouth. He said that it didn’t make me Slytherin’s Heir. Just that you transferred something.”
“Something.”
Harry doesn’t understand Voldemort’s emphasis on that word, so he says nothing.
Voldemort tilts his head back and forth some more, in imitation of a snake considering something. Or maybe an owl. Harry isn’t an expert on what animals his supposed father resembles the most.
“Yes, I will tell you,” Voldemort says at last. “Understand that I am not rewarding you for failing to open your mind at midnight. It simply seems that I will be able to explain some of the truth to you.”
“Understood.”
This is the most surreal conversation Harry can ever imagine having.
Voldemort’s tongue darts out, licking the air with more emphasis than Harry remembered him being able to do. “You are my Horcrux.”
He pauses, apparently expecting something from Harry. But all Harry has to give him is blank incomprehension. He blinks. “What does that mean?”
“There is a piece of my soul in you. You are one of the objects that assure my immortality.”
Everything pauses.
Harry is vaguely aware that he’s sunk to his knees and planted his fingers in his hair. He’s screaming, but internally. There’s not a sound coming out of his throat. Voldemort has taken a step nearer and is staring down at him.
It makes sense, in a twisted way. Why the curse scar wouldn’t fade, and Harry can feel Voldemort’s emotions and speak Parseltongue. Not that Harry has ever heard of a Horcrux, or knows if it’s possible to create a living one—
You are one of the objects that assure my immortality.
What does he know about that? Nothing, really.
He finally finds his tongue enough to say, in English, “Well, if you saw that I was your Horcrux, maybe that’s what you felt. The familiarity. Rather than me being your son.”
“You are both. And infinitely precious.”
Harry tilts his head back and laughs.
The laughter turns quickly to hysteria, rushing into a strangled shriek. Voldemort casts a spell that Harry doesn’t know, but it chokes him, and he slumps over, clawing at his throat now, his eyes bugging out.
All this time, Voldemort really wanted to kill him by asphyxiation. Who knew?
Voldemort bends down so that his eyes are a few centimeters away from Harry’s. They’ve become the world. “You shall live as I do, and you shall never die,” Voldemort whispers. “And I will teach you to master your weak mortal body, your weak mortal mind, in ways that you would never dare do now.”
Harry tilts his head back as the choking spell fades, and laughs desperately.
A Stunner hits him, and he knows no more.