[From Samhain to the Solstice]: Chapter Thirty-Four of 'Adagio'- Worlds Will Burn

[lomonaaeren]

“It seems to me that you have had few reports on Voldemort to give me lately, Severus.”

His Mark still twitched and burned a little at the name, but not nearly as badly as it had before he had resumed his old allegiance. Severus shrugged and blew on the tea that Albus had handed him. He could smell no potions in it, and sense none of the faint tingle of alien magic that would mark Veritaserum, so he drank. “He is doing very little, Albus. When he summons me, he talks in circles and hints at what he wants rather than outright commanding me to do it. I suspect that he suspects how close I am to you.”

“And to Harry?”

“He hasn’t made any specific comments about wanting me to harm the boy. But those could be coming.” Not for nothing had Severus served two men who could use Legilimency and learned to talk around them.

“Mm.” Albus leaned back in his chair, staring at the wall. Severus sipped his tea and watched Fawkes instead. “And he has given you no reason for this lack of action?”

“I believe that he is trying to estimate the level of his support. After all, some people remained loyal to him and pulled that absurd stunt at the World Cup last year, but others lied that they’d been under the Imperius. Who truly serves him? How many can he trust?”

“Why is that his main activity?”

Severus smiled grimly, and he didn’t have to feign it. “He was brought down last time, at the height of his power, by something utterly unexpected. I believe that he’s trying to see every step clearly this time, and avoid overconfidence.”

“He cannot do such a thing. Overconfidence is in his blood.”

“His blood?”

“He is a descendent of Salazar Slytherin, Severus. And you know that Slytherin left a basilisk here in a belief that he could purge the school of Muggleborns.”

Severus kept his opinion on the likelihood of that plan to himself, as well as his opinion on whether the Dark Lord would really be influenced by an ancestor a thousand years back. He nodded.

“Leave me now, Severus. I must think.”

Severus stood and put the teacup on Albus’s desk, looking once more at Fawkes as he turned to leave. The phoenix turned his head almost upside-down and gave a long, slow croon that sounded more inquiring than anything.

Severus shrugged at the bird. If Fawkes knew the truth, he wasn’t betraying them for some ineffable reason of his own.

And Severus had had enough of trying to reason with ineffability.

*

“I found something.”

Severus looked up with a start. He hadn’t heard Harry enter the room. In fact, he hadn’t seen his office door open. His eyes darted to Harry, then back to the door, wondering if he needed to be worried about his wards.

Harry shook his head with a little snort. “It isn’t your wards. I finally used that Cloak Dumbledore gave me. It’s—wards slip off it, somehow. And I think you would have seen the door opening if you weren’t marking essays.”

Severus nodded slowly. He had allowed himself to pay so much attention to the essays because he had assumed the wards would be enough to defend him. He might need to rethink that position in the future. “Very well. What is it you wanted me to see?”

Harry was practically beaming, which made Severus smile back, even though he wondered how good a sign this was. Harry took a thick book out of the bag slung over his shoulder, and Severus sucked in his breath. Even from here, he could feel the aura the book radiated, like slimy claws sliding over his skin.

“I found this in Dumbledore’s office—”

“Harry.”

Harry shrugged at him. “Those wards slid off it, too.”

“It was still risky. To expose your magical signature or imprint to other wards that he might have up inside the office, if nothing else.”

“I accomplished it. And I don’t think that he would have let me leave with the book if he really knew I was there and was only pretending not to observe me. Just feel it.”

There was a longing in Harry’s voice that made Severus uneasy, but he had little reason not to trust Harry at present. “All right. What is it called?”

Harry turned the book so that Severus could read the spine. Secrets of the Darkest Art.

“I was doing research on connections between magical beings and humans in the library. I kept seeing references to this book. But even when I got into the Restricted Section, I couldn’t find it. I thought the Headmaster’s office was the next most likely place.”

“Well-reasoned. Five points to Slytherin.”

Harry laughed a little and tapped the book’s cover. Severus watched closely, but it didn’t seem to be attempting to eat Harry’s fingers. “I looked through it for a few days, and I found what we’re looking for, I’m sure of it.” He cracked the book open and spun it around to put on Severus’s desk so he could look into it.

Severus scanned the page, uncertain if he should wince or not from the aura of Darkness that crept from the book. He saw soul magic first, and then Horcrux.

His breath stopped.

He read the rest of the page quickly, then the next one, and then leaned back and stared up at Harry. “You are saying that—you believe the connection to the Dark Lord in your scar is a Horcrux? But there’s nothing here about making living creatures into one.”

“We both know that our lord has gone beyond so many boundaries that that, in and of itself, is not a disadvantage,” Harry said softly, leaning over towards Severus. “And we know that an unexplained magical occurrence happened on the night of Halloween in 1981 that could mean something previously impossible is now possible.”

Severus nodded. His throat was thick. He didn’t know how to cope with the emotions swirling inside him, dancing back and forth like snowstorms. He closed his eyes, Occluded until they calmed, and then said softly, “And you do not—you are not upset about the idea that you possess part of the Dark Lord’s soul?”

Harry laughed.

Severus’s eyes flew open, and Harry bent towards him, chuckling. The Cloak was still partially draped across him and sliding across his robes, making them invisible here and there.

“This is the best news I’ve had since Barty revealed himself,” Harry said, and grinned. “We have power over him, Severus. And over Barty, too, although I don’t know why my Horcrux would affect the Dark Marks. Perhaps it’s something to do with the way that the Dark Lord got disembodied.” He tapped something on a page that Severus hadn’t looked at yet. “That level of instability shouldn’t happen with just one Horcrux, in fact. It suggests the Dark Lord made at least two. Probably more, since the diary you destroyed in the Chamber was probably one, as well.”

Severus’s breath caught in his throat again as he thought about the potion the Dark Lord had commended him to brew. To protect artifacts, even against something like basilisk venom…

The Dark Lord had placed power in Severus’s hands, too, although he might not have known it.

“What—do you suggest we do from here?”

“Begin to identify the Horcruxes and gain control of them,” Harry said evenly. “We know from the diary they are probably things important to the Dark Lord, for the most part, which would mean looking into his past. And could you create two versions of your potion?”

“In what way?” Severus asked, but his mind had already leaped ahead. “One that would truly protect the Horcruxes. And one that only seems as if it would. The first to show him during the experimental stages, the last to be the one presented.”

“Yes. I don’t know how much the Dark Lord knows about potions—”

“Theory only.”

“Really? From the way Barty talked about him, he was a student who mastered all the principles and the practical work.”

Severus snorted a little. “Yes, in school. But remember that he was gone for decades, traveling on the Continent and likely seeking out knowledge of Darker magics and perhaps objects to make more Horcruxes. He did not stay in touch with Potions and the developments in the field, which raced ahead in the middle of this century. And when he came back, he did not wield the necessary delicacy.”

“What he did to himself with the Horcruxes—”

“Yes,” Severus breathed. This was the most hopeful he’d felt in half a year, his mind springing ahead and dashing from conclusion to conclusion. Perhaps it would come to nothing in the end, but right now, it felt like it would. “His hands had a tremor that was not noticeable when he was handling a wand. But otherwise? There was a reason that his Death Eaters approached me the instant I began displaying talent in Potions.”

“How old were you?”

“To know it? Fifteen. When the first approaches started, behind a façade of friendliness and lending me books on Potions and Dark Arts? Thirteen.”

Harry’s breath caught. Severus looked at him and found those green eyes blazing with rage. He looked as he had the night the Dark Lord was resurrected, but as if felt pure anger rather than angry joy.

“That is young.”

“Yes. The Dark Lord has never had an objection to finding and recruiting teenagers.”

Harry nodded, his eyes and expression going distant again. Then he murmured, “The brewing task will be yours, of course, and the research mine.”

“I believe Barty would find it suspicious if you started to ask questions about the Dark Lord’s past. And you do not know any other Death Eaters well enough to talk with them about such subjects, I would assume.”

Harry blinked and then looked at him with a faint smile. “Well, that bodes well for the success of my plan.”

“Not knowing Death Eaters?”

“No. That you haven’t noticed how my Legilimency has been sharpening.”

Severus stared at him in silence. He had thought, during Harry’s first year, that his instinctive knowledge of the truth and apparent intuition about others had betokened talent in reading others’ memories, but Harry had concentrated on Occlumency to the point that Severus hadn’t thought he had progressed with Legilimency.

“You believe you can read the Dark Lord’s mind.”

“I already have.”

Severus stared at him again. Harry raised his eyebrows a little. “I know that he confronted his uncle Morfin Gaunt when he was sixteen, and killed his Muggle father and grandparents. I was able to find that memory because of the emotion it emanated. I haven’t seen the deaths yet, only the discussion of them, but I would assume that he probably used one of those deaths to create a Horcrux. Or all three, if you can do that.”

“How is—Harry, how are you doing this? The Dark Lord is perhaps more skilled as a Legilimens than an Occlumens, but he would still defend his mind too strongly for a, forgive me, fifteen-year-old to find his way past his shields.”

“Oh,” Harry said casually. “I’ve been sharpening my actual Legilimency, yes, but also using that little hole in his defenses that the Horcrux connection opens up.”

“A little hole in his defenses.”

“Yes. It used to be a gaping wound, but he pretty much sealed that after he was resurrected. But there’s still a pinprick there. I think he left it open so that he could monitor my emotions.”

“And he may know that you are creeping through and reading his.”

Harry laughed softly. “He feels little but rage and hatred at this point. He can temper that when I’m around, but it expands when I’m not.”

“There is a simpler method of achieving power over him than the Horcruxes, then. You could simply threaten him to—”

“But that wouldn’t protect you, so it’s not what I want.”

Severus had to close his eyes. He could have said many things, including that it was the part of a professor to protect his students and not the other way around, but given who both he and Harry were, normal strictures did not apply to them. He simply sat there and basked in the idea that, after all, Harry had helped him.

Then he opened his eyes and nodded briskly. “Very well. But we will also both have to be able to keep this from him.”

Harry’s mouth trembled on the edge of a smile. “Have you tried to read my mind lately, Professor?”

“No,” Severus said slowly. “I would not wish to intrude on your privacy.”

“Try now.”

Severus turned in his seat to face Harry. Harry was waiting with open hands and patient eyes at the far side of the office. Without the invitation, Severus wouldn’t have thought he was practicing active Occlumency.

He reached out with the same flicker-quick probe that had revealed, two summers ago, the memory of Harry speaking with young Mr. Nott.

He shrieked in pain in the next second, rocking back in his chair. Harry was immediately beside him. “Severus?”

“Just a moment,” Severus said, his eyes closed, as he reordered his mind from the devastating pain that had ripped through it, much like having a hand cut off. He swallowed and opened his eyes. “That was—”

It had been like stepping into the middle of a storm of knives.

“I reached a point in practicing Occlumency that I couldn’t advance beyond,” Harry said quietly, still with that ghost of a smile. “I knew I wasn’t going to be good enough to keep our secrets from the Dark Lord, or probably to stay uncaught while I read his mind. But I remembered what you and Barty had both said about me having a gift for Legilimency.”

“So your defenses are offenses.”

“Yes. Any attempt to touch my mind will be cut off by what’s essentially a sharp, continually active Legilimency probe.”

“To keep that active all the time…”

“I use the energy that other people would use on other things.”

“Harry?”

Harry tilted his head, and his smile was the most frightening one Severus had ever seen him give, a half-winsome thing with the razors of his Legilimency behind it. “On making friends, worrying about their marks, thinking about Quidditch strategy. I have a lot of energy left when I care about two people, and about keeping them safe.”

Severus swallowed, his eyes locked on Harry’s. He had never received a declaration of such devotion, although once he might have made one.

But now…

Perhaps, after all, he came close to it.

But he coughed and managed to say, since Harry would be expecting him to answer, “I thought you cared for Barty?’

“In the sense that I enjoy what he has to teach me,” Harry said. “And he did make sure that I didn’t get put in the Tournament, per their original plan. He was the one who suggested to the Dark Lord that they might as well try to recruit me instead. But his first loyalty is always to the Dark Lord. He would tie me down on an altar in a second if the Dark Lord suggested he sacrifice me.”

Severus nodded slowly. It seemed that Harry had the ability that Severus did not, to cut himself off emotionally and immediately from people who betrayed him.

Or who did not put him first. It would explain why he had never called the Slytherins he dominated his friends. They all had families, other friends, different loyalties that would get in the way of doing things for Harry.

He is more ruthless than the Dark Lord.

But perhaps it was only that the Dark Lord had more multifaceted plans. Even in the first days of his fascination with the Death Eater cause, Severus had known that the Dark Lord’s first loyalty lay with himself.

“Do you think we will be able to keep this secret with the Dark Lord’s closest follower living in the castle with us?”

“I’ve kept it with the Dark Lord himself in my head.” Harry smiled slowly, and no, this was the most frightening smile Severus had ever seen him give, pouring across his face like blood from a wound. “I promise, Severus, we can keep it. We’re going to be safe. And we’re going to be free.”

“I haven’t heard you speak of freedom before. Or of power.”

“They seemed out of reach. Safety had to come first, and at one point, I thought I would never get it. But now I have it, and I’m going to make sure that no one can take it from us.”

Us.

Severus folded that word into his soul, and, for the first time, truly laid down the burdens he had carried because of the Dark Mark and his Vow to Albus. In the end, his Vow came down to protecting this boy, who had returned the protection more wholeheartedly than Severus could ever have guessed.

From now on, he would work for his own safety, peace, and freedom, and Harry’s, without worrying about the rest of the world, or whether they had damned it.

Perhaps the world should look after itself.

Harry seemed to notice the way that he had shifted, and his smile grew brighter and gentler. He drew his wand and flicked it, and the light that represented his vows and burdens manifested again as chains and collar and cuffs on Severus’s body.

But this time, it was obvious that the light was less bright, the links less thick.

And there was a new chain, probably because Harry had cast the spell a little differently this time. It reached directly from Harry’s chest to Severus’s, and was doubled, reaching back.

“Yes,” Severus whispered. “My first loyalty has lain with you for a long time, and this only proves it.”

Worlds could have burned in the light of Harry’s smile.