lomonaaeren

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirteen—Balance of Power

I had a right to kill as many Mudbloods as I wanted.

The words sprawled across the page, written in not only the hand but the sulky tone of the teenage boy he had once been. Lord Voldemort as he was now found it hard not to roll his eyes. He had been that young.

Unlike others, he had a perfect copy of the memory in front of him, and could not soften or deny his own idiocy.

It is not about right or wrong. It is about how unsubtle you were with this plan, and underneath Dumbledore’s very nose.

He wouldn’t have known it was me.

He would have found out, and destroyed you, and then where would I be?

There was a long moment when Lord Voldemort thought he would shut the diary on that lack of response, but spiky black letters danced across the page right when he was about to give up. The same place you have been since I was put here. You would not have noticed the loss of me, and I would not have known anything about you.

Lord Voldemort did roll his eyes this time, permitting himself that much only because he was inside his own, new home, and no one else was there to see him behave in such an immature fashion. He could not believe that he had created a Horcrux this sullen.

And in truth, he was coming to question his own intentions in creating the Horcruxes at all. It did seem as if they were much more trouble than they were worth.

So, as well, were the followers that Lord Voldemort had entrusted the Horcruxes to.

Lucius had cowered over the loss of the diary, but he had not suffered enough. And while Bellatrix’s loyalty had been unshaken, she had been shut away in Azkaban for it, and so the cup was currently beyond Lord Voldemort’s reach.

It is time, perhaps, to consider whether there was ever such a need for Horcruxes like this as I thought there was.

He looked down as more words danced across the diary’s page, and saw that his younger self had written, Are you still there?

Lord Voldemort stifled the temptation to write No, and simply shut the book. It seemed that contact with his Horcrux brought out the worst of his own childish tendencies.

But it was having another interesting effect, one that he wished to study in more detail.

Before he could begin to think too deeply about that, there was a soft hoot. Lord Voldemort studied the tawny owl that had appeared before him. Undoubtedly a school bird, from Hogwarts. It made Lord Voldemort wonder what could possibly have happened that his young informant would need to write to him.

Of course, perhaps he had some details about Ginny Weasley’s fate that would be impossible for anyone beyond Hogwarts’s walls to discover.

When Lord Voldemort took the scroll, he smiled a little at the first words.

Sir,

Thank you so, so much for the Christmas gift. It’s beyond anything I could have anticipated, and I am humbled and grateful. Nor will you find me ungrateful in the future. Anything I can do for you, I will.

But I do have a problem. I’ve tried to think of an equivalent Christmas gift that I could return to you, and I can’t think of one. As you know, I don’t have the money to purchase such a thing anyway.

Can you please tell me what you’d like? I don’t want to stumble or cause offense because I made a wrong guess about what would be valuable to you.

Yours sincerely,
Harry Grayson.

True loyalty would be the most valuable gift I could ask for, Lord Voldemort thought. But he knew that it would be unwise to state it in such words. It might start the boy wondering why Lord Voldemort could not trust the servants he had now.

And Grayson was young, and in Slytherin for a reason. He might mean the words about absolute loyalty and gratitude now, but he could recant them at any time when the burden grew too much for him.

Lord Voldemort turned to a much more pleasant task than contemplating his useless servants or his recalcitrant Horcruxes: letting a young man know, in so many words, that a future favor would be both welcome and expected.

The diary lay next to him, much less useful than he had ever thought it. When the tawny owl had flown away with his letter to Grayson, Lord Voldemort turned to glance at it.

Yes. He would have to reconsider whether he had ever needed as many Horcruxes as he had. There were many things to be reevaluated now.

*

Lily lifted the small vial from its box with a frown. It was several days after Christmas, and she would need to return to Hogwarts for the beginning of the next term tomorrow. She didn’t know anyone who would have waited until now to send her a gift.

“You checked it with the charms?” James leaned intently forwards on the other side of the table.

Lily nodded, her eyes widening as she saw the distinctive golden color of the potion. “I don’t know anyone who would have sent Felix Felicis to someone they hated for her blood or being on the opposite side of a war, anyway,” she whispered.

“But it might not be Liquid Luck.”

James cast some more charms, but they came back as useless as Lily’s had. Lily looked at James over the top of the vial. Her husband frowned at her.

“And there wasn’t a card or a note or anything with it? Or do you think it’s from Horace? He might expect you to just know who sent it.”

“It’s been a long time since I was useful enough to Horace to get a gift like this.” Lily winced a little as she thought about that. Horace might demand the kind of usefulness of Harry one day that would justify a gift like this, but Lily didn’t want to think about what Harry would have to do to earn it.

“But you didn’t say if there was a card with it.”

“Just this.” Lily fished out the thin slip of white parchment and handed it over. The handwriting on it was the slanted, perfect kind that came from a Dicta-Quill.

Or the kind of perfect calligraphy that many purebloods learned. But Lily couldn’t really think of any purebloods who wished her well, either.

From a well-wisher, was all the card said. May it keep you safe in what is coming.

For a moment, Lily wondered if this was Severus, but she shook that thought away. She didn’t even know if he had survived the war. And he would have had to include his handwriting on the card. He could never bear it when she didn’t acknowledge him.

“Are you all right?”

“Of course, James.” Lily reached out and squeezed her husband’s hand without taking her gaze from the card. “I just had a thought, but I wanted to hear what you thought about it, because it might not be the best thing for us to do.”

“What is it?” James sounded a little wary.

Lily turned and smiled at him. “What about giving some of the Felix Felicis to Harry? Or even the whole vial, unless you think we should keep some for ourselves.”

“You think that it would really make him think better of us?”

“It’s a rare gift,” Lily said. “And he’s a Slytherin, he’ll know the value of it. We can make it clear that he isn’t expected to do anything for us in return, and this way, we’ll at least have a connection to him. He’ll see that we wish him well.”

“He might just refuse it the way he refused Sirius’s sponsorship for Potions brewing, though.”

“I don’t think he will. I think he’ll grasp the chance. He’ll be cautious around us at first, but it’s too valuable to ignore.”

“If you’re sure.”

“I’m sure. I haven’t always understood our son, but I understand Slytherin psychology.” Lily felt her lips twist for a moment. “Remember that I’m the one who had a Slytherin for a best friend.”

“Have I said sorry about that lately?”

“Not your fault.” Lily sighed. Maybe if she and Severus had gone to school in a different time, they would have managed to remain friends. But contemplating that was like contemplating whether she and James would have managed to retain Harry as their son if they hadn’t been so afraid of what the prophecy might mean for him.

If, if, if. I’m so tired of the if. I want the reality.

*

Harry glanced up as Theo sat down in the chair across from him. Draco had come by earlier for their little ritual of expressing thanks for the Christmas gifts and trying to get more from each other than they were giving. Harry reckoned it was Theo’s turn.

But Theo didn’t say anything about gifts or Draco. He had a very odd expression on his face. “Do you have any idea why Professor Potter is so interested in you?” he asked.

Not this again. Harry shook his head. “Not unless it’s my blood, and because she’s like Dumbledore and really thinks that I’ll be eaten alive here.”

“Other Muggleborns would have.”

Theo was watching Harry closely. Harry wasn’t entirely sure if he wanted to see how Harry reacted to the statement or because he wanted Harry to notice that he wasn’t using the word “Mudbloods.” It didn’t matter, since Harry could give the same answer either way. “Yes, they would have.”

“The reason I’m asking is that I heard her talking to Professor Slughorn about you.”

“Of course she was. What was she saying?”

“That she was going to give you a gift that would mean you’d be in her debt and that would be a way she could finally get to know you.”

Harry felt a spike of such rage push through him for a moment that it felt as though it was piercing through him into the chair. Then he looked more closely at Theo and asked softly, “And did she put it exactly like that?”

Theo paused. It was more a greater stillness than a motion, but Harry knew him well enough by now to understand what it meant. Harry stared, and stared, and Theo finally admitted, “She said that she had a potion you would appreciate, and she would make sure that you knew no return favor was required.”

“Ah.”

“But she’s trying to get you in her debt.”

“I know that. But I’m still interested in that rather creative wording you just tried, Theo.”

Theo swallowed. Harry realized the sound was nervous, the first time he had heard Theo sound like that, and wild satisfaction spread its wings inside him.

This, too, is power.

“I’ll remember in the future that you don’t like creativity.”

Theo’s voice had an edge that said he was trying to recover the upper hand, but his eyes were fastened on Harry’s, and Harry just smiled slightly at him. “Maybe it would be best to remember that I don’t like your kind of creativity,” he said.

“I’ll—remember that.”

Harry leaned back in his chair and chatted idly with Theo about other things for a few minutes, then stood. He wanted to go to the library, where he could be alone, and savor his victory. Because the Dark Lord had taken care of the Heir of Slytherin, whoever it had been, Harry didn’t have to walk with other people anymore.

“Harry.”

Harry glanced over his shoulder. Theo was leaning forwards again, and someone who didn’t know him might have thought he’d recovered his composure.

“Which of us do you prefer? Me or Draco?”

Harry felt a little giddy still with his triumph, and no one was watching them right now. So he let his smile spread across his face, watched Theo’s little hidden flinch, and said, “Why, I prefer the one who doesn’t go out of his way to irritate me.”

“Draco used to say—that word you didn’t like, too.”

“Of course. But you said it more often, and Draco did me the favor of getting me on the Quidditch team, and let me stay at his house last summer.”

“Do you think I couldn’t do the same things?”

“Maybe you could have. But do I need you to, Theo? I believe that’s the question you should ask yourself.”

“I could have…”

Theo trailed off. Harry waited, but he didn’t say anything. Harry nodded, smiling.

“I don’t think that you’ve thought much about me and what I could get from you, Theo. I believe that you’ve thought about your competition with Draco, and thought about why it might be fun for you to win the competition. But what can you do for me? Why should I give you the chance instead of just becoming a follower of Draco’s?”

Harry had no desire to become a follower of anyone except perhaps the Dark Lord, and even there, he wanted to be a Potions brewer who would remain mostly independent, not a Death Eater. But that wasn’t the kind of thing that he would say to Theo.

Theo, frankly, didn’t deserve to hear the truth from Harry, either.

The silence continued, maybe because Theo was still reeling from the notion of being responsible for what he said and did when it came to Harry. Harrys shrugged, turned, and walked up the stairs to the dormitory.

*

I never thought that he disliked me so much.

Of course, Theo had seen the fire in Harry’s eyes when he’d told Theo that he hated the word Mudblood. But that had been a one-time thing, Theo had thought. After that, Harry had gone back to playing a passive role, and the drama had been one in which Theo and Draco took the active roles. Draco was the competitor, the opponent. If it had been a Quidditch game, Theo and Draco would have been the rival Seekers, and Harry the Snitch.

Theo had thought.

It seemed he had been wrong.

Theo leaned back slowly in his seat and closed his eyes. He might not have done this if more people had been in the common room, but they weren’t here. So he let himself have this moment of weakness.

He had underestimated Harry. He had underestimated his own investment in the game, honestly. The thought that Harry might turn to Draco should have been annoying, not something that ignited a firestorm of rage and panic inside him.

Theo swallowed and put one hand over his heart.

He could do this. He would become a player in the game again. He would show Harry that he could offer more than grudging acceptance of not insulting him, that he had more to offer than rival gifts to Draco’s.

Theo’s father had taught him how to be a strong and cunning person, but he had also taught him how to change tactics when something wasn’t working.

I can do this. I can show Harry how valuable he is to me.

And best of all, Draco doesn’t know how the game has changed.

Even as he thought that and smiled a little to himself, Theo had the idea that something about the thought was wrong, that something else mattered most. But after a moment of thinking, he couldn’t determine what that was, and put it aside. He had other things to think about, like how he would change his behavior towards Harry.

*

“Mr. Grayson? Can you wait a minute?”

Harry turned around with a bright, calm expression on his face. He wasn’t eager, he wasn’t rude, he wasn’t doing anything but giving a professor the attention she deserved.

Even if part of him felt she didn’t deserve it, other people wouldn’t agree with that. And she’d once again chosen to approach him in public, this time when he was leaving Transfiguration.

Other students turned around to stare, of course. Harry ignored that. He couldn’t control Professor Potter’s actions. He just waited.

Professor Potter gave him a faint smile. Perhaps she hadn’t thought the audience would be so large. “I wanted to offer you a gift,” she said, and reached into her pocket.

“No, thank you, Professor.”

“What?”

It felt good, part of Harry acknowledged, to wound someone else, to be the one who drove the knife home instead of dodging it. He smiled blandly at the professor. “I don’t think it would be right to accept a gift from a professor. Other students don’t get them, so it wouldn’t be fair.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Harry could see Granger nodding vigorously. He didn’t roll his eyes, but it was a near thing. He was pretty sure that Granger would accept a gift if it was for her, the same way she had thought she should be able to investigate the Heir of Slytherin on her own as a student.

“But you don’t know what the gift is.”

“Sorry, Professor, I would rather not know. I think it would unfairly influence my decision.”

Professor Potter stared at him as if she just couldn’t believe this. Harry gave her one more meaningless smile, and turned and walked away.

What does she want to accomplish? Does she just think that I can be useful, the way Draco and Theo and the Dark Lord do?

That was probably it, Harry thought. Professor Slughorn had mentioned on one occasion that Professor Potter had been a talented Potions student. Maybe she wanted to start a business or something and thought Harry would make a prime target for someone she could hire and not pay much because he was Muggleborn.

Or maybe that didn’t make sense. But Harry had no hypothesis that did. As far as he knew, Professor Potter wasn’t approaching other Muggleborns like this.

She’ll just have to live with disappointment.

*

Lily closed her eyes and turned away from the stares of her students. She had failed, again.

She didn’t understand why. Weren’t Slytherins supposed to jump at the benefits and advantages of situations like this?

I don’t know what to do next.