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lomonaaerenTitle: Burning His Letters
Pairings: Harry/Rabastan Lestrange, mention of canon pairings
Content Notes: AU after fifth year, reference to character deaths and violence, angst, canonical child abuse, soulmate-identifying marks, open/ambiguous ending
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After confronting his soulmate in the Department of Mysteries, Harry had other things to think about—like Sirius’s death, the prophecy, and the fact that he was once again back at the Dursleys. Rabastan Lestrange writing him letters is just another stupid thing Harry has to deal with, as far as he’s concerned.
Author’s Notes: This story is part of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” series of short fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s the sequel to a short fic I posted some time ago called “The Name on His Arm,” so read that one first.
Burning His Letters
Harry lay on his bed with his eyes closed. It was the heart of summer, and his clothes felt as if they had melted into his skin.
Like he had melted at Sirius’s death, he thought.
He was heartbroken and furious and angry, but part of him had already reformed into hard metal from the molten mess he’d been. No one else could vanquish Voldemort? Harry would do the best he could, so that there wouldn’t be any more Cedric Diggories or Sirius Blacks or Longbottoms.
No more dead Potters.
A flutter of wings outside the window made him turn his head. A strange owl alighted on the sill, and Harry raised his eyebrows a little. His uncle hadn’t bothered with the bars this summer, maybe because of the way Harry had stared at him when he came back to the house. But he had thought that his friends would only communicate with him using Pig or Hedwig.
The strange owl hooted softly and hopped across the room to land on the bed. She was a barn owl, Harry thought, her heart-shaped white face haunting and ethereal. He petted her feathers as he took the letter off her leg.
“I have owl treats for you,” he muttered, and picked up the bag next to him.
The owl ate happily, and then swooped over to land on Hedwig’s currently empty perch. Harry smiled a little. “You should know that my owl probably won’t like sharing the room when she gets back,” he said.
The barn owl looked unimpressed.
Harry opened the letter, and saw unfamiliar slashing handwriting across the top of it. He wondered if this might be from Rufus Scrimgeour, the new Minister for Magic. He was getting the Daily Prophet this summer, and knew all about Fudge stepping down and the attacks, the Dementors leaving Azkaban and the sudden onslaught of people who wanted to call Harry “the Chosen One.”
But then he saw the name near the bottom of the second page, and his smile dropped.
Rabastan Lestrange.
The name on Harry’s right arm seemed to thrum and sing with some of the same magnetism that had drawn him and Lestrange together in the Department of Mysteries. Harry gritted his teeth. Nothing had changed since then. Lestrange was still the man who had tortured Neville’s parents into insanity, and Neville was still Harry’s friend.
He concentrated, hard, with the help of the molten metal that Sirius’s death had left behind in him, and watched the letter burn in a flash of wandless magic. Then he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.
The barn owl hooted disapprovingly.
“You might as well leave and tell him that he’s not to send me any more letters,” Harry said, as carelessly as he could. “They’re all going to meet the same fate.”
Only after he was sure the owl had gone did he open his eyes. He was shaking.
*
Why did Fate pair me with someone who’s a murderer and like torture and is evil?
It was a refrain that echoed in Harry’s head more than once over the next few weeks, as Lestrange sent him more and more insistent letters, and Harry burned them all. The barn owl tried to attack him a time or two when he did that, but it only took one time of Hedwig being there and flying straight for Lestrange’s bird to stop that.
More and more letters came. Harry burned them all. And the refrain in his head became, Why did Fate pair me with someone who’s a murderer and like torture and is evil and is so bloody stubborn?
It wasn’t something Harry could answer. He didn’t have his books with him to read about soulmates, the few times that they mentioned them. But thinking back through what he had experienced in the Department of Mysteries, he came up with a theory.
“Soulmates” were more about magical compatibility than anything. Some of the old legends Harry had heard hinted at the increased power that soulmates could have if they fought beside each other or healed the same people. It was all about increasing that power and not about finding someone who was kindred to you.
That idea soothed Harry. He couldn’t help being paired with Lestrange if it was his magic that was evil and not him. And Lestrange probably couldn’t help writing to him. He didn’t particularly want to seize Harry and bring him to Voldemort, probably. He just did it because of the magic.
That was all it meant.
The barn owl brought three more letters after that, and Harry burned them, steadily, parchment after parchment, understanding why what had happened had happened, but determined not to give in.
*
Harry lay in the darkness and stared at the ceiling. He felt as though someone had cast a spell on his bones, pulling them against the surface of his skin. It was hot, and his bedroom was a lot hotter than the rest of the house, as per usual, but that was pretty normal.
So was his inability to fall asleep, honestly, as much as he wished that wasn’t the case.
The pulling sensation was new, but Harry wasn’t really interested in getting up and walking over to the window, where it seemed to be coming from. Either it was something one of the Order guards was doing and so fine, or it wasn’t, and Harry coming close to the edge of the blood protections on the house would be as stupid as hell.
The voice that spoke made Harry jump up and land hard on his arse, staring around the bedroom. But it spoke again, and the words seemed to spiral up his body like Rabastan Lestrange’s name on his arm spiraled around his muscles.
Harry. Harry, come to me.
“Yeah, no thanks,” Harry said aloud. “Not trusting the weird spooky magic.”
Hedwig made a soft sound. Harry turned to look at her. She was standing near the edge of her open cage, staring out the window.
“What is it, girl? Is someone there?”
Hedwig flew over to the windowsill and landed, her head cocked as she continued to stare down. Harry itched with the desire to snatch her back, but he thought going close enough to the window that someone standing on the pavement could see him through it would be a really bad idea.
“Come here, girl,” he whispered.
Hedwig turned and flew back to him on soundless wings, but when she settled on the bed, she didn’t groom his hair the way she usually did. She stared at him with huge eyes instead.
“What is it?” Harry whispered again, leaning closer to her.
Hedwig soared to the windowsill once more and swiveled her head to focus her eyes on him. She made the same soft noise that she had before and did an odd jerk of her body that seemed to be pointing to the pavement.
Harry wavered for a moment. He didn’t think Hedwig had ever led him wrong when she wanted him to do something, or been friendly to someone he should have distrusted.
But on the other hand, maybe the soulmate magic tugging spitefully at him was strong enough to affect her. Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry, girl. I can’t.”
Hedwig gave an angry ruffle of her feathers and launched out the window.
“Hedwig, wait!” Harry scrambled after her, and then caught himself on the sill and thought, That was stupid of me—
Especially since he could see that Rabastan Lestrange was indeed standing on the pavement—the square that Harry could just see out of his window if he really leaned—and stroking Hedwig’s breast feathers where she perched on his arm. Hedwig was smugly ruffled up and leaning against him.
Lestrange looked up with a smile.
Harry hated that he found it magnetic. But he reminded himself again, Compatible magic. It doesn’t make me a bad person.
“Hello, Harry.”
“Bugger off, Lestrange.”
The man looked astonished for a second. Then he shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Merlin, what language. Didn’t anyone teach you manners, Harry?”
Harry laughed, and didn’t care if the croaking sound woke his uncle. At least Lestrange would Apparate away in that case. “Didn’t you hear? Someone you love a lot murdered the people who could have taught them to me.”
Lestrange blinked. Then he said, “I was not involved in that murder.”
“No, just the torture of the Longbottoms, right, I forgot.” Harry rolled his eyes. He was glad that the tugging sensation had stopped, but he hated that this was the most normal he’d felt all summer. “Now are you going to bugger off and go tell your precious Lord about where I live, or are you going to bugger off and keep your mouth shut?”
“Those are not the only options,” Lestrange all but whispered. He was staring at Harry with wide eyes, and his hand had stilled on Hedwig’s back. Harry glared at her. It must be the magical compatibility, because he didn’t think Hedwig was stupid enough to think Lestrange was a good person.
“They are.”
“Why are they the only options, Harry?”
“Because you’re a loyal Death Eater.”
Lestrange was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “I came out of Azkaban. But I came out more sane than my brother and his wife. Do you know why?”
Harry’s stomach twisted at the reminder of Bellatrix Lestrange, who had killed Sirius, who he’d tried to use the Cruciatus on. It hadn’t worked, and her laugh when it hadn’t haunted his dreams sometimes more than Sirius’s fail into the Veil did. “Because you weren’t as mental to begin with?”
Lestrange laughed, a sound that crackled at the back like a dark fire. Harry wondered how many times he had laughed like that around the Dementors, or screamed in a way that affected his laugh. “No. It is because Bellatrix and Rodolphus are soulmates, and so their insanity flowed down the bond they shared and doubled the effects of the Dementors. I, however, had an unfulfilled bond, and the thought of someone waiting for me outside the prison motivated me to survive.”
“How disappointing it must have been for you to realize it was me.”
“No. I think you quite perfect.”
Harry ignored the way his stomach dropped. It didn’t matter. There was no way it could matter. Lestrange could say everything he liked. It didn’t erase what he’d done.
“So quiet, Harry? Why won’t you at least come out of the house so we can talk more comfortably?”
“Because you tortured my friend’s parents.”
Cling to that, Harry told himself. If the magical compatibility or Hedwig acting like you should talk to Lestrange is confusing, remember that. It’s something simple and straightforward.
“You would hold that against me?”
Harry let his silence speak for him, and drew back from the window. Hedwig fluttered up a moment later and clicked her beak at him.
Lestrange lingered below, still staring until Harry closed the window. Harry rubbed his fingers together and told himself that even if the pulling feeling started again, that would be better than holding, kissing, or touching someone who had helped torture the Longbottoms.
All he needed to do was picture Neville’s disappointed face, and some of his clarity of mind came back. Harry lay down and closed his eyes as Hedwig retreated to her perch, knowing that even if the tugging feeling started and kept him from sleep, he would sleep anyway, sometime, when he was exhausted.
The Dursleys and Sirius’s fall had taught him that.
*
The next letter that arrived was a huge thing, made of what seemed to be a single sheet of silvery parchment folded over and over again. Harry tried to burn it, and the parchment sparked a little and then reflected that fire right back at him.
Harry yelped and ducked. At least he was out in the garden this time, not his room, but still, that could have disastrous.
Lestrange’s barn owl hooted smugly from where it had taken up a perch on the garden fence.
“You’re stupid,” Harry told it, and then flipped the letter open, intending to let it flop into the grass. He might not be able to destroy it, but he didn’t have to read it.
As if Lestrange had anticipated that, along with the way that Harry had burned his letters before, the parchment hovered in midair and spoke in the same half-ruined voice Harry had first heard in the Department of Mysteries.
“From what I understand, you have two objections to being my soulmate. The first is the assault that I participated in when I was only twenty-one, nearly fifteen years ago, and young and impetuous. Is that correct?”
The voice paused. Harry rolled his eyes and went on pulling weeds. Somehow, he was younger than Lestrange, and probably more impetuous, and he had never done anything half as cruel as torturing people into insanity.
The barn owl dived at him.
“Hey!” yelped Harry, ducking.
The owl hurtled up and hovered over him, giving a sound that so snake-like Harry found himself listening for Parseltongue. Then he turned around as the parchment started to speak again.
“Ah, you made a sound. So I know that you are here and listening to this. Good. The other objection I believe you have raised is my loyalty to the Dark Lord, and your conviction that I would turn you over to him and stand by while you were tortured to death. Do I have that correct as well?”
Harry stared at the parchment. He wondered what Lestrange thought he would gain from this. Did he really think that Harry could just—forgive him for torturing people? Hurting one of Harry’s friends? Making Neville suffer some of the same things, if not exactly the same, as Harry had?
They were both orphans deprived of their parents, even if they had other family members.
Family, right, Harry thought, rolling his eyes as his aunt’s voice squealed from the house.
“You’d better be weeding, boy!”
Harry shook his head and bent to his task. She would call him a freak next.
And he sort of was, wasn’t he? With the brand on his arm of a man who honestly didn’t understand why Harry objected to torture and murder?
“Answer me, please, Harry.”
Harry turned towards the parchment. He was sick and tired of this, he thought. He could just keep burning Lestrange’s letters, but all that had made the bastard do was send a letter that couldn’t be burned.
Fine. Harry would give him an unmistakable answer.
“Yeah,” he drawled. “Those are the things that have convinced me you’re a murderous fucking bastard who I can never trust.”
There was a moment’s silence. The parchment continued to hover. Peering at it, Harry thought he could see his words inscribed at the bottom of it, and he smiled a little.
I hope Lestrange is choking on that.
“All I wish to do is be with you.”
“And serve your Dark Lord. I think that’s a pretty good portion of what you want to do, too.”
Again his words appeared. Again there was silence, long enough this time that Harry bent down and pulled several more weeds before Lestrange spoke from the parchment again.
“I shall have to do something about that.”
“No matter what you do to kidnap me or—”
The parchment rolled up and snapped into a thin roll that flew up into the air. The barn owl hurtled forwards, grabbed it, and then turned and swooped over the fence. Harry heard someone gasp, and winced. He hoped that the neighbors didn’t share stories of random owls flying around with Aunt Petunia.
He closed his eyes. Sometimes he would have liked to allow himself to hope that this soulmate was a good person, or that there was a way he could manage to redeem Lestrange and turn him from Voldemort’s service. But that only happened in silly stories.
This was his life.
He turned and bent back to the weeding, which he was certainly going to do one way or another.
*
There were no more letters for the rest of the summer.
Harry sat on his bed sometimes and stared out the window. Hedwig sat and looked with him, as if she missed either Lestrange or the barn owl—even though she had obviously hated sharing her perch and food with the other bird when it was there.
Harry finally shook his head one day and told himself it was for the best. Wasn’t this what he’d wanted? He hadn’t responded to any of the letters, and he’d fumed to Hedwig about the way that Lestrange kept writing them anyway.
He didn’t get to leave the house that summer, except for a brief journey with Dumbledore to convince a professor named Slughorn to teach at Hogwarts. Then he came back, and there were some letters for his sixteenth birthday.
There was nothing from Lestrange.
Harry nodded at last that evening, his mind cooling and bending into its new metallic shape. Yes, he’d told his soulmate to go away, and Lestrange had listened.
When they met again, it would be at the end of each other’s wands.
Lestrange had accepted that. Harry had to do it, too.
*
“Harry!”
Harry leaned into Hermione’s arms and let himself be hugged. Ron hugged him, too, and then ushered him onto the Hogwarts Express with a companionable clap on his shoulder, already talking about Ginny and the twins’ new shop in Diagon Alley.
Harry listened in silence. He hadn’t been allowed to go to Diagon Alley, since the Weasleys could get his books and other supplies for him, as Mrs. Weasley had written to him, and it was better for him to stay behind the wards.
Harry hadn’t known why until he’d got a letter from Ron, a few days ago, that hinted most people knew the truth about his soul-mark. Someone had seen it after the battle in the Department of Mysteries, probably, when he’d been too heartbroken over Sirius’s death to bother hiding it.
They probably thought they were protecting him from Lestrange.
Harry thought for a moment about telling them the truth, but then he put that realization aside, the same way he had about Lestrange no longer sending him letters. This was what he would have to live with.
He didn’t expect to step into the compartment where Neville sat and have his friend turn a ghost-pale face towards him. Or, well, he’d kind of expected that, since Neville probably knew about Harry’s soul-mark, too, but he didn’t expect the emotion Neville was looking at him with.
Not fear. Not loathing. A shock so vast that Harry had the impression it’d happened weeks ago, but was still echoing through Neville’s soul
“You had to have been the reason,” Neville whispered. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“What are you talking about, Neville?”
Neville reached into his robe pocket with a shaking hand and took out a folded piece of parchment. Harry immediately snatched it and unfolded it, his blood pumping through his veins at the thought that that bastard Lestrange had written to Neville, taunting him—
But it wasn’t a letter at all. It was a complicated document covered with numbers and runes. Some sort of combination of Runes and Arithmancy, Harry thought, as sure as he could be when he hadn’t taken either of those classes.
He blinked at Neville. “I don’t understand.”
“Someone sneaked into St. Mungo’s and reversed my parents’ brain damage.” Neville laughed, a wet clicking sound that caught in his throat and made him sound like he was on the edge of tears. “That parchment is talking about the theoretical basis of how they managed it, as the Healers understand it. No one knows exactly how it happened, because it’s fucking impossible.”
Harry’s legs gave way and he thumped down onto the seat across from Neville, reeling. At least in part because he was pretty sure he’d never heard Neville swear before. “It’s—what—what are your parents like now, Neville?”
It maybe wasn’t the most sensitive question, but Neville just wiped real tears away and whispered, “They know me. They’re relearning how to walk. They still have trouble with tremors and things because those are normal side-effects of the Crucatius. But they—they’re awake. They’re going to have a hard time physically for a long time, but mentally, they’re fine.”
Harry stared at the report in his hands, then remembered it didn’t make sense, and handed it back to Neville. Neville grabbed it, but went on staring at him.
“Why do you think I had anything to do with this?” Harry asked.
“Because the Healers who looked at my parents said the only time they’d seen anything like this was when they got a chance to see a few victims rescued from Death Eaters who had been healed again so they could be tortured fresh the second time.”
“Are—do they think your parents are going to relapse?”
“No. But the reversal like that—the only person who could have—”
A parchment sparked into being in the air next to Harry. He turned his head and stared at it as it unfolded. It was made of thick silvery cloth-like material, the way the parchment Lestrange had sent to him in the garden had been.
It didn’t speak aloud this time, though. Instead, words raced across it as though they were being inscribed in the parchment the way they might have been carved into marble.
I begged a boon of the Dark Lord that would allow the Longbottom parents to return to their normal selves. It will take time and effort, but they will make a full recovery.
One of your objections to me is dismissed. I have atoned for my failings in a way that cost me a favor with several other Death Eaters as well as the Dark Lord. I have dropped in position in his ranks.
How will you respond?
Your move, Harry.
The End.
Pairings: Harry/Rabastan Lestrange, mention of canon pairings
Content Notes: AU after fifth year, reference to character deaths and violence, angst, canonical child abuse, soulmate-identifying marks, open/ambiguous ending
Rating: PG-13
Summary: After confronting his soulmate in the Department of Mysteries, Harry had other things to think about—like Sirius’s death, the prophecy, and the fact that he was once again back at the Dursleys. Rabastan Lestrange writing him letters is just another stupid thing Harry has to deal with, as far as he’s concerned.
Author’s Notes: This story is part of my “Songs of the Stormy Season” series of short fics being posted between Halloween and the winter solstice. It’s the sequel to a short fic I posted some time ago called “The Name on His Arm,” so read that one first.
Burning His Letters
Harry lay on his bed with his eyes closed. It was the heart of summer, and his clothes felt as if they had melted into his skin.
Like he had melted at Sirius’s death, he thought.
He was heartbroken and furious and angry, but part of him had already reformed into hard metal from the molten mess he’d been. No one else could vanquish Voldemort? Harry would do the best he could, so that there wouldn’t be any more Cedric Diggories or Sirius Blacks or Longbottoms.
No more dead Potters.
A flutter of wings outside the window made him turn his head. A strange owl alighted on the sill, and Harry raised his eyebrows a little. His uncle hadn’t bothered with the bars this summer, maybe because of the way Harry had stared at him when he came back to the house. But he had thought that his friends would only communicate with him using Pig or Hedwig.
The strange owl hooted softly and hopped across the room to land on the bed. She was a barn owl, Harry thought, her heart-shaped white face haunting and ethereal. He petted her feathers as he took the letter off her leg.
“I have owl treats for you,” he muttered, and picked up the bag next to him.
The owl ate happily, and then swooped over to land on Hedwig’s currently empty perch. Harry smiled a little. “You should know that my owl probably won’t like sharing the room when she gets back,” he said.
The barn owl looked unimpressed.
Harry opened the letter, and saw unfamiliar slashing handwriting across the top of it. He wondered if this might be from Rufus Scrimgeour, the new Minister for Magic. He was getting the Daily Prophet this summer, and knew all about Fudge stepping down and the attacks, the Dementors leaving Azkaban and the sudden onslaught of people who wanted to call Harry “the Chosen One.”
But then he saw the name near the bottom of the second page, and his smile dropped.
Rabastan Lestrange.
The name on Harry’s right arm seemed to thrum and sing with some of the same magnetism that had drawn him and Lestrange together in the Department of Mysteries. Harry gritted his teeth. Nothing had changed since then. Lestrange was still the man who had tortured Neville’s parents into insanity, and Neville was still Harry’s friend.
He concentrated, hard, with the help of the molten metal that Sirius’s death had left behind in him, and watched the letter burn in a flash of wandless magic. Then he lay down on the bed and closed his eyes.
The barn owl hooted disapprovingly.
“You might as well leave and tell him that he’s not to send me any more letters,” Harry said, as carelessly as he could. “They’re all going to meet the same fate.”
Only after he was sure the owl had gone did he open his eyes. He was shaking.
*
Why did Fate pair me with someone who’s a murderer and like torture and is evil?
It was a refrain that echoed in Harry’s head more than once over the next few weeks, as Lestrange sent him more and more insistent letters, and Harry burned them all. The barn owl tried to attack him a time or two when he did that, but it only took one time of Hedwig being there and flying straight for Lestrange’s bird to stop that.
More and more letters came. Harry burned them all. And the refrain in his head became, Why did Fate pair me with someone who’s a murderer and like torture and is evil and is so bloody stubborn?
It wasn’t something Harry could answer. He didn’t have his books with him to read about soulmates, the few times that they mentioned them. But thinking back through what he had experienced in the Department of Mysteries, he came up with a theory.
“Soulmates” were more about magical compatibility than anything. Some of the old legends Harry had heard hinted at the increased power that soulmates could have if they fought beside each other or healed the same people. It was all about increasing that power and not about finding someone who was kindred to you.
That idea soothed Harry. He couldn’t help being paired with Lestrange if it was his magic that was evil and not him. And Lestrange probably couldn’t help writing to him. He didn’t particularly want to seize Harry and bring him to Voldemort, probably. He just did it because of the magic.
That was all it meant.
The barn owl brought three more letters after that, and Harry burned them, steadily, parchment after parchment, understanding why what had happened had happened, but determined not to give in.
*
Harry lay in the darkness and stared at the ceiling. He felt as though someone had cast a spell on his bones, pulling them against the surface of his skin. It was hot, and his bedroom was a lot hotter than the rest of the house, as per usual, but that was pretty normal.
So was his inability to fall asleep, honestly, as much as he wished that wasn’t the case.
The pulling sensation was new, but Harry wasn’t really interested in getting up and walking over to the window, where it seemed to be coming from. Either it was something one of the Order guards was doing and so fine, or it wasn’t, and Harry coming close to the edge of the blood protections on the house would be as stupid as hell.
The voice that spoke made Harry jump up and land hard on his arse, staring around the bedroom. But it spoke again, and the words seemed to spiral up his body like Rabastan Lestrange’s name on his arm spiraled around his muscles.
Harry. Harry, come to me.
“Yeah, no thanks,” Harry said aloud. “Not trusting the weird spooky magic.”
Hedwig made a soft sound. Harry turned to look at her. She was standing near the edge of her open cage, staring out the window.
“What is it, girl? Is someone there?”
Hedwig flew over to the windowsill and landed, her head cocked as she continued to stare down. Harry itched with the desire to snatch her back, but he thought going close enough to the window that someone standing on the pavement could see him through it would be a really bad idea.
“Come here, girl,” he whispered.
Hedwig turned and flew back to him on soundless wings, but when she settled on the bed, she didn’t groom his hair the way she usually did. She stared at him with huge eyes instead.
“What is it?” Harry whispered again, leaning closer to her.
Hedwig soared to the windowsill once more and swiveled her head to focus her eyes on him. She made the same soft noise that she had before and did an odd jerk of her body that seemed to be pointing to the pavement.
Harry wavered for a moment. He didn’t think Hedwig had ever led him wrong when she wanted him to do something, or been friendly to someone he should have distrusted.
But on the other hand, maybe the soulmate magic tugging spitefully at him was strong enough to affect her. Harry shook his head. “I’m sorry, girl. I can’t.”
Hedwig gave an angry ruffle of her feathers and launched out the window.
“Hedwig, wait!” Harry scrambled after her, and then caught himself on the sill and thought, That was stupid of me—
Especially since he could see that Rabastan Lestrange was indeed standing on the pavement—the square that Harry could just see out of his window if he really leaned—and stroking Hedwig’s breast feathers where she perched on his arm. Hedwig was smugly ruffled up and leaning against him.
Lestrange looked up with a smile.
Harry hated that he found it magnetic. But he reminded himself again, Compatible magic. It doesn’t make me a bad person.
“Hello, Harry.”
“Bugger off, Lestrange.”
The man looked astonished for a second. Then he shook his head and clucked his tongue. “Merlin, what language. Didn’t anyone teach you manners, Harry?”
Harry laughed, and didn’t care if the croaking sound woke his uncle. At least Lestrange would Apparate away in that case. “Didn’t you hear? Someone you love a lot murdered the people who could have taught them to me.”
Lestrange blinked. Then he said, “I was not involved in that murder.”
“No, just the torture of the Longbottoms, right, I forgot.” Harry rolled his eyes. He was glad that the tugging sensation had stopped, but he hated that this was the most normal he’d felt all summer. “Now are you going to bugger off and go tell your precious Lord about where I live, or are you going to bugger off and keep your mouth shut?”
“Those are not the only options,” Lestrange all but whispered. He was staring at Harry with wide eyes, and his hand had stilled on Hedwig’s back. Harry glared at her. It must be the magical compatibility, because he didn’t think Hedwig was stupid enough to think Lestrange was a good person.
“They are.”
“Why are they the only options, Harry?”
“Because you’re a loyal Death Eater.”
Lestrange was quiet for a long moment. Then he said, “I came out of Azkaban. But I came out more sane than my brother and his wife. Do you know why?”
Harry’s stomach twisted at the reminder of Bellatrix Lestrange, who had killed Sirius, who he’d tried to use the Cruciatus on. It hadn’t worked, and her laugh when it hadn’t haunted his dreams sometimes more than Sirius’s fail into the Veil did. “Because you weren’t as mental to begin with?”
Lestrange laughed, a sound that crackled at the back like a dark fire. Harry wondered how many times he had laughed like that around the Dementors, or screamed in a way that affected his laugh. “No. It is because Bellatrix and Rodolphus are soulmates, and so their insanity flowed down the bond they shared and doubled the effects of the Dementors. I, however, had an unfulfilled bond, and the thought of someone waiting for me outside the prison motivated me to survive.”
“How disappointing it must have been for you to realize it was me.”
“No. I think you quite perfect.”
Harry ignored the way his stomach dropped. It didn’t matter. There was no way it could matter. Lestrange could say everything he liked. It didn’t erase what he’d done.
“So quiet, Harry? Why won’t you at least come out of the house so we can talk more comfortably?”
“Because you tortured my friend’s parents.”
Cling to that, Harry told himself. If the magical compatibility or Hedwig acting like you should talk to Lestrange is confusing, remember that. It’s something simple and straightforward.
“You would hold that against me?”
Harry let his silence speak for him, and drew back from the window. Hedwig fluttered up a moment later and clicked her beak at him.
Lestrange lingered below, still staring until Harry closed the window. Harry rubbed his fingers together and told himself that even if the pulling feeling started again, that would be better than holding, kissing, or touching someone who had helped torture the Longbottoms.
All he needed to do was picture Neville’s disappointed face, and some of his clarity of mind came back. Harry lay down and closed his eyes as Hedwig retreated to her perch, knowing that even if the tugging feeling started and kept him from sleep, he would sleep anyway, sometime, when he was exhausted.
The Dursleys and Sirius’s fall had taught him that.
*
The next letter that arrived was a huge thing, made of what seemed to be a single sheet of silvery parchment folded over and over again. Harry tried to burn it, and the parchment sparked a little and then reflected that fire right back at him.
Harry yelped and ducked. At least he was out in the garden this time, not his room, but still, that could have disastrous.
Lestrange’s barn owl hooted smugly from where it had taken up a perch on the garden fence.
“You’re stupid,” Harry told it, and then flipped the letter open, intending to let it flop into the grass. He might not be able to destroy it, but he didn’t have to read it.
As if Lestrange had anticipated that, along with the way that Harry had burned his letters before, the parchment hovered in midair and spoke in the same half-ruined voice Harry had first heard in the Department of Mysteries.
“From what I understand, you have two objections to being my soulmate. The first is the assault that I participated in when I was only twenty-one, nearly fifteen years ago, and young and impetuous. Is that correct?”
The voice paused. Harry rolled his eyes and went on pulling weeds. Somehow, he was younger than Lestrange, and probably more impetuous, and he had never done anything half as cruel as torturing people into insanity.
The barn owl dived at him.
“Hey!” yelped Harry, ducking.
The owl hurtled up and hovered over him, giving a sound that so snake-like Harry found himself listening for Parseltongue. Then he turned around as the parchment started to speak again.
“Ah, you made a sound. So I know that you are here and listening to this. Good. The other objection I believe you have raised is my loyalty to the Dark Lord, and your conviction that I would turn you over to him and stand by while you were tortured to death. Do I have that correct as well?”
Harry stared at the parchment. He wondered what Lestrange thought he would gain from this. Did he really think that Harry could just—forgive him for torturing people? Hurting one of Harry’s friends? Making Neville suffer some of the same things, if not exactly the same, as Harry had?
They were both orphans deprived of their parents, even if they had other family members.
Family, right, Harry thought, rolling his eyes as his aunt’s voice squealed from the house.
“You’d better be weeding, boy!”
Harry shook his head and bent to his task. She would call him a freak next.
And he sort of was, wasn’t he? With the brand on his arm of a man who honestly didn’t understand why Harry objected to torture and murder?
“Answer me, please, Harry.”
Harry turned towards the parchment. He was sick and tired of this, he thought. He could just keep burning Lestrange’s letters, but all that had made the bastard do was send a letter that couldn’t be burned.
Fine. Harry would give him an unmistakable answer.
“Yeah,” he drawled. “Those are the things that have convinced me you’re a murderous fucking bastard who I can never trust.”
There was a moment’s silence. The parchment continued to hover. Peering at it, Harry thought he could see his words inscribed at the bottom of it, and he smiled a little.
I hope Lestrange is choking on that.
“All I wish to do is be with you.”
“And serve your Dark Lord. I think that’s a pretty good portion of what you want to do, too.”
Again his words appeared. Again there was silence, long enough this time that Harry bent down and pulled several more weeds before Lestrange spoke from the parchment again.
“I shall have to do something about that.”
“No matter what you do to kidnap me or—”
The parchment rolled up and snapped into a thin roll that flew up into the air. The barn owl hurtled forwards, grabbed it, and then turned and swooped over the fence. Harry heard someone gasp, and winced. He hoped that the neighbors didn’t share stories of random owls flying around with Aunt Petunia.
He closed his eyes. Sometimes he would have liked to allow himself to hope that this soulmate was a good person, or that there was a way he could manage to redeem Lestrange and turn him from Voldemort’s service. But that only happened in silly stories.
This was his life.
He turned and bent back to the weeding, which he was certainly going to do one way or another.
*
There were no more letters for the rest of the summer.
Harry sat on his bed sometimes and stared out the window. Hedwig sat and looked with him, as if she missed either Lestrange or the barn owl—even though she had obviously hated sharing her perch and food with the other bird when it was there.
Harry finally shook his head one day and told himself it was for the best. Wasn’t this what he’d wanted? He hadn’t responded to any of the letters, and he’d fumed to Hedwig about the way that Lestrange kept writing them anyway.
He didn’t get to leave the house that summer, except for a brief journey with Dumbledore to convince a professor named Slughorn to teach at Hogwarts. Then he came back, and there were some letters for his sixteenth birthday.
There was nothing from Lestrange.
Harry nodded at last that evening, his mind cooling and bending into its new metallic shape. Yes, he’d told his soulmate to go away, and Lestrange had listened.
When they met again, it would be at the end of each other’s wands.
Lestrange had accepted that. Harry had to do it, too.
*
“Harry!”
Harry leaned into Hermione’s arms and let himself be hugged. Ron hugged him, too, and then ushered him onto the Hogwarts Express with a companionable clap on his shoulder, already talking about Ginny and the twins’ new shop in Diagon Alley.
Harry listened in silence. He hadn’t been allowed to go to Diagon Alley, since the Weasleys could get his books and other supplies for him, as Mrs. Weasley had written to him, and it was better for him to stay behind the wards.
Harry hadn’t known why until he’d got a letter from Ron, a few days ago, that hinted most people knew the truth about his soul-mark. Someone had seen it after the battle in the Department of Mysteries, probably, when he’d been too heartbroken over Sirius’s death to bother hiding it.
They probably thought they were protecting him from Lestrange.
Harry thought for a moment about telling them the truth, but then he put that realization aside, the same way he had about Lestrange no longer sending him letters. This was what he would have to live with.
He didn’t expect to step into the compartment where Neville sat and have his friend turn a ghost-pale face towards him. Or, well, he’d kind of expected that, since Neville probably knew about Harry’s soul-mark, too, but he didn’t expect the emotion Neville was looking at him with.
Not fear. Not loathing. A shock so vast that Harry had the impression it’d happened weeks ago, but was still echoing through Neville’s soul
“You had to have been the reason,” Neville whispered. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
“What are you talking about, Neville?”
Neville reached into his robe pocket with a shaking hand and took out a folded piece of parchment. Harry immediately snatched it and unfolded it, his blood pumping through his veins at the thought that that bastard Lestrange had written to Neville, taunting him—
But it wasn’t a letter at all. It was a complicated document covered with numbers and runes. Some sort of combination of Runes and Arithmancy, Harry thought, as sure as he could be when he hadn’t taken either of those classes.
He blinked at Neville. “I don’t understand.”
“Someone sneaked into St. Mungo’s and reversed my parents’ brain damage.” Neville laughed, a wet clicking sound that caught in his throat and made him sound like he was on the edge of tears. “That parchment is talking about the theoretical basis of how they managed it, as the Healers understand it. No one knows exactly how it happened, because it’s fucking impossible.”
Harry’s legs gave way and he thumped down onto the seat across from Neville, reeling. At least in part because he was pretty sure he’d never heard Neville swear before. “It’s—what—what are your parents like now, Neville?”
It maybe wasn’t the most sensitive question, but Neville just wiped real tears away and whispered, “They know me. They’re relearning how to walk. They still have trouble with tremors and things because those are normal side-effects of the Crucatius. But they—they’re awake. They’re going to have a hard time physically for a long time, but mentally, they’re fine.”
Harry stared at the report in his hands, then remembered it didn’t make sense, and handed it back to Neville. Neville grabbed it, but went on staring at him.
“Why do you think I had anything to do with this?” Harry asked.
“Because the Healers who looked at my parents said the only time they’d seen anything like this was when they got a chance to see a few victims rescued from Death Eaters who had been healed again so they could be tortured fresh the second time.”
“Are—do they think your parents are going to relapse?”
“No. But the reversal like that—the only person who could have—”
A parchment sparked into being in the air next to Harry. He turned his head and stared at it as it unfolded. It was made of thick silvery cloth-like material, the way the parchment Lestrange had sent to him in the garden had been.
It didn’t speak aloud this time, though. Instead, words raced across it as though they were being inscribed in the parchment the way they might have been carved into marble.
I begged a boon of the Dark Lord that would allow the Longbottom parents to return to their normal selves. It will take time and effort, but they will make a full recovery.
One of your objections to me is dismissed. I have atoned for my failings in a way that cost me a favor with several other Death Eaters as well as the Dark Lord. I have dropped in position in his ranks.
How will you respond?
Your move, Harry.
The End.
