lomonaaeren

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Chapter Thirty-Seven—Bending the Truth

“You’re going to meet Everett again? So soon after the last time?”

“He said that he has a gift for me he can’t send by owl post.”

Draco blinked doubtfully at Harry, who just raised an eyebrow at him and arranged his cloak around himself with a glance into the mirror of the fourth-year boys’ bathroom. Draco could see the reason for cleaning oneself up when going to meet the Dark Lord. He was just a bit offended that Harry never primped like that for him and Theo.

“You look as though you’re going to explode and make me clean up the bits of your head, Draco. What’s wrong?”

Draco flushed at the image, and more at the genuine concern in Harry’s voice. It did seem that Harry was allowing himself to show that emotion more lately, and meaning it almost always. “I just—you never dress up like that for me and Theo.”

“I always wear nicer clothes on the Hogsmeade weekends.”

“But not dress robes.”

“The Yule Ball.”

Draco scowled at his courted. “With that kind of relentless logic, you should really be in Ravenclaw.”

Harry laughed a little. “I think we both know that they could never hold me.”

No, Draco thought with the kind of helpless adoration he felt whenever Harry truly laughed or smiled, they couldn’t.

But he cleared his throat and said, “Well, anyway, don’t take up too much time. Theo and I are going to wait for you to have lunch, and since it’s the last Hogsmeade weekend of the year, we won’t have another.”

“I know that very well, Draco.”

Draco was about to try reinforcing the words anyway, but then Harry took a long step towards him. Draco’s mouth dried up. Harry put a hand on his shoulder and smiled at him, a long, lingering smile that reached all the way back into his hazel eyes, which looked greener than usual this morning.

“I’ll still be wearing these clothes when I see you and Theo in the afternoon,” Harry breathed.

Draco just barely managed to nod before Harry brushed his lips across Draco’s cheek, then turned and walked out of the bathroom.

Draco stared at himself in the mirror. His eyes looked as wide and startled as if he’d used glamour charms on them, and his mouth was swollen—how, he wondered, when Harry hadn’t even kissed him there? His cheeks were so pink that he looked as if he’d pinched them.

Draco closed his eyes, opened them.

Theo was waiting. And Draco found that he wanted to pass on the warmth and desire that Harry had managed to spark in him with that one brief kiss. It would be…entertaining.

That isn’t the right word.

Draco told himself to shut up, straightened his own robe collar, and went to find Theo.

*

“It looks…intricate, sir.”

Lord Voldemort watched in amusement as his apprentice carefully evaluated the shield amulet Lord Voldemort had brought him. Yes, it was intricate. The chain that would go around his throat coiled back on itself, links braided together before spreading out again. The pendant itself, shaped like a smooth oval on the surface that would face the front, was highlighted on the back with dozens of tiny, carved runes. And the whole thing shimmered from silver to gold and back again, the metals blended on a deep, magical level by Lord Voldemort’s own power.

“What is it made of, sir?” Harry looked up at him.

“Gold and silver, blended with my own power.”

Harry bowed his head as if he’d been honored. Of course, he had. Lord Voldemort nodded. “Once you put it around your neck, it will alert you of hostile intent within a hundred meters and protect you from powerful curses,” he said. “Protecting yourself from hexes and jinxes will of course be up to you.”

“Of course,” Harry murmured, and slipped it over his neck.

The pendant immediately began to shimmer. Lord Voldemort watched critically as the runes lit one by one. The blue-white light projected into the air around Harry’s throat from behind the pendant told him that they were working as intended, but he’d still rarely given someone something this strong before. He wanted to make sure it took.

Harry sighed a little as the glow dimmed and the chain looped back on itself a bit, tugging the pendant up so that it hung comfortably in the hollow of his throat. “Thank you, sir. No one’s ever given me something like this.”

“I would be put out to find someone had,” Lord Voldemort said mildly, and leaned back, studying Harry with careful eyes. Harry was slowly turning his head back and forth. “Is something wrong?”

“There’s hostile intent from someone outside the door.”

Harry spoke the words softly, gripping his wand beneath the table. Lord Voldemort stood and paced around Harry fluidly towards the door of the Hog’s Head. It wasn’t entirely unexpected that someone might be waiting to rob Harry if they’d seen him enter here. Hogwarts students were rare in the area of the pub.

“What are you doing, now?”

That was the old man behind the bar, the one Lord Voldemort pretended not to know was Aberforth Dumbledore. He turned his head and pinned the man with cool eyes. Aberforth paused, then stepped back with his hands in the air.

“Investigating a threat to my apprentice,” Lord Voldemort said. It sometimes jarred him to hear his voice emerge deeper than it was, but he didn’t speak with his normal voice to anyone outside a Privacy Charm now. “I trust that we don’t have to have words about that?”

Dumbledore licked his lips and shuffled backwards. “No.”

Lord Voldemort shook his head and faced the door of the pub, letting his magic glide out in front of him like a great, invisible serpent. The hostility that Harry’s pendant had told him about came back at once, waiting right outside the door. One person, probably cloaked in a Disillusionment Charm.

“Stay behind me, Harry.”

“Yes, sir.”

Lord Voldemort threaded his way forwards. The hostile intent didn’t move. He wondered if it was someone who had decided to rob anyone who came in and out of the pub, or if it was for Harry alone.

He stepped out and turned sharply to the left, before the waver of magic in the air that marked the watcher could move. He lashed out with his hand and caught the elbow of someone fairly tall and skinny, but not as tall as most adults would have been.

“Hey—”

Lord Voldemort exerted his magic to crush the Disillusionment Charm, and the freckled, red-haired face of a very definite Weasley came into view. Lord Voldemort hissed softly, and the freckled face grew pale.

“You know this person, Harry?”

“Fred Weasley, I think.” Harry came out of the pub to stand neatly next to Lord Voldemort, his eyes a little wide. “I didn’t expect him to see him in Hogsmeade. He and his twin didn’t come back this year.”

“Because you brain-damaged my twin,” the Weasley gasped. He was still held in the flow of Lord Voldemort’s magic, but he managed to twist around enough to try and spit at Harry. Lord Voldemort dried the saliva on his lips before it could land. “We know it was you. They might have said it wasn’t you, but we know it!”

Lord Voldemort had heard a little about that exploit from Harry, but not much. “It was you?” he asked, glancing at his apprentice.

“Of course, sir. I wasn’t going to let them get away with bullying me.”

“Not—bullying! You bloody—”

“That’s enough of that, I think,” Lord Voldemort murmured, and increased his pressure on the boy until he thrashed, on the verge of passing out. He glanced at Harry again. “Do you want him punished for this?”

“Yes, but not in a way that could trace back to me. Or you, sir.”

Lord Voldemort smiled. “Trust me. You don’t need to worry about that.” He drew his wand and rested it against Weasley’s forehead, drawing them into a little alley that ran along the side of the Hog’s Head. No one would be very curious about what was happening here, but it was best to avoid notice.

“Tell me, boy,” he murmured to Weasley, while Harry paced after him, his eyes an almost eerie shade of green at the moment. “Are you familiar with the True Heart Curse?”

“There’s nothing cursed about having loyalty and love,” the boy snapped.

“If you knew,” Lord Voldemort sighed, but he had lost much of his passion for teaching Gryffindors in the past thirteen years, Remus Lupin being the sole exception. He glanced at Harry. “I know that I had you read a book that contained the spell.”

“Yes, sir. It’s a curse that turns the love someone feels against them, making them believe that nothing matters more than taking care of the ones they love. And soon they begin to neglect their own health, forget about the needs of their bodies. I believe the book said that most people under the curse died of starvation.”

“Indeed.” Lord Voldemort felt his lips curl in a proud smile, and let them. The Weasley wasn’t going to report this, and no one except Harry here knew his true identity, anyway. He turned back to the boy. “You’ll suffer under this until you die.”

“That isn’t—that isn’t right! That isn’t fair!”

“Neither is what you planned to do to my apprentice.”

“I was just going to—hurt him.”

“As I said,” Lord Voldemort murmured coolly, and raised his wand.

Harry watched intently as he cast the curse. It wove itself into and around the Weasley’s chest, aiming for his heart, a conceit of the mage who had created it. In truth, Lord Voldemort thought it might have been even more powerful if wrapping around the skull, since it affected the brain more than anything else.

But he didn’t need to worry about such matters, he thought, stepping back and using a Memory Charm to trick the Weasley into thinking he’d waited outside the pub and Harry had never emerged. The boy wouldn’t remember who had cast the curse. Most of the world around him wouldn’t know there was a curse. And what happened to him would seem a natural consequence of his suffering under the burden of worry and fear over what had happened to his twin.

When Weasley had staggered off, Harry bowed to him, eyes glinting. “Thank you, my lord.”

“I promise that you’ll be kept safe,” Lord Voldemort murmured, reaching out to trace his fingers through a protective rune in the air above Harry’s head. It wouldn’t do much without parchment or stone to inscribe it in, but it was an extra little blessing in addition to the pendant that Harry wore. “And whether or not my gift might have saved you, now we won’t have to find out.”

Harry offered him a small smile. His eyes, green as they were at the moment due to the light, seemed damnably familiar. But Lord Voldemort had accepted that he would never be able to bring the bearer of that color to mind. So worked the geas that enwrapped Harry.

But a new thought struck him as he stood there and bade farewell to his apprentice. He couldn’t overpower the geas—he had tried—and he couldn’t get around it from the outside.

What would happen if he went inside?

Lord Voldemort smiled, and increased his pace to the Apparition point. He had a new theory that he wanted to test.

*

Albus sat with his head in his hands. The other occupant of the office remained silent and unimpressed, as usual.

“You’re sure,” Albus said, without looking up and in truth without a question in his voice.

“Would I be here reporting to you if I wasn’t bloody sure?”

Albus sighed and lifted his head, staring at his brother. Aberforth had his arms folded and a sneer on his face, as always when he had to come to Hogwarts.

Or when he had to see Albus, more likely. Albus always tried to be fair to the brother who had suffered the most when Ariana died.

“No, you wouldn’t. But—you didn’t hear the words to the curse that he cast on Fred Weasley?”

“The bastard cast it silently. And I had to creep nearer slowly, or he would have heard me. I missed what was probably the description of it the tall bastard was giving to the little bastard.”

Albus nodded. His head ached as if it had been cut open, but he couldn’t deny that Aberforth had always given him honest, accurate information—or only missing certain details because of circumstances like having to hide his approach. What he had said was true, and it didn’t matter what worry it stoked in Albus’s heart.

In this case, stoking the fear that the Dark Lord had returned in the guise of a man named Everett Peverell, and had taken Harry as his apprentice.

How did we go so wrong? Yes, we did wrong by Harry, no one can deny that, but enough to drive him to the service of the Dark Lord?

Albus finally sat back and shook his head. He had to deal with the world as it was, not the world as he wished it should be.

Even if his brother was raising a supercilious eyebrow at him across the room.

“Thanks for bringing the information, Aberforth,” Albus said quietly. “I’ll deal with it. If Peverell comes to your pub again, I would appreciate your gathering any information you can.”

Aberforth chuckled, always an unsettling sound. “I know how to keep myself safe, Albus. Pity not all the members of our family did.” And he stood and walked away without looking back, the door banging behind him.

Albus closed his eyes again. Now he could fully let the heartbreak spread through him, and not because of Aberforth’s last words. That was an old, old wound, one Albus had to take responsibility for healing.

But Harry, who was now an enemy…

Harry.

*

“Why do you have your hair up like that, Lils?”

“It helps when I’m showing them some of the stickier Muggle products,” Lily began, and then spun around to face James with a shriek.

Her husband was smiling at her, and his eyes were focused. He reached out a hand, and Lily almost flew across the bedroom to his side, clasping it tightly as she leaned against him.

“I can see,” James whispered, and then he burst into laughter that she hadn’t heard in years, deep and strong, the laughter of the time when they’d still had hope that they would be able to reclaim Harry as their son. “I can see!”

Lily leaned against him and showered his face with kisses. Then she called Patrick and Arianna in to celebrate. She would make sure that their professors and teachers knew the reason she wanted them to miss class.

The poison had finally ceased to be as effective, then, or the Healers’ most optimistic predictions had come to pass and James was beating it. No matter what the cause, Lily’s heart was pounding with gladness.

Thank you. Thank you, fate, or whoever this was.

*

Lord Voldemort stood across from Sirius Black in the ritual circle. Remus Lupin stood on the outside, his muscles bunched, but calm enough that his control over Black was keeping that man calm, too.

Lord Voldemort began a low chant, one that made the air around them spiral and shine and begin to glow with representations of all the magic that he and Black carried on them. He ignored Lupin’s indrawn breath. It might reveal some of his secrets to the man, but Lord Voldemort judged him wise enough not to try to do anything about them.

The glow formed in many places on Black’s body, especially around his neck, in a collar pattern symbolic of Lupin’s control. But the strongest one was visible as a wavering drape of green cloth around him.

Lord Voldemort half-smiled. The color of the Killing Curse. Appropriate. And something like the color that Harry’s eyes had been in Hogsmeade.

“My lord? What are you trying to do?”

“Create a physical representation of the geas,” Lord Voldemort answered, not taking his eyes from Black. “I will awaken soon if I falter as I go through.”

“My lord—”

Lord Voldemort sprang forwards, calling all his magic into being around him so that it formed a spear-like projectile with himself in the center. He crossed the ritual circle in the blur of a moment and slammed into the geas.

And screamed.

The geas crashed down on him and crushed him, and the violence of its strength swept Lord Voldemort off his feet. He trembled, crouched on his heels as he fought his way slowly back to a standing position, while the unrestrained light leapt around him and tried to force him back out the way he had come.

Lupin was shouting something. Lord Voldemort had to ignore it, because it might distract him from this struggle.

And then he would die. Or at least this body would. He knew it as surely as if someone had whispered it into his ear.

Step by slow, torturous step, he struggled to the other side of the geas, the one he had been aiming for, the one that Lupin and Black both stood on. There was a secret here concerning his apprentice. He would find it. He would know what it was.

Anything else was unacceptable.

The pressure eased so suddenly that Lord Voldemort stumbled again. But he was in the free space on the other side of the geas beside Lupin and Black. No special knowledge filled his mind, but he was sure that they could now speak of the truth to him without choking.

Panting, he turned to Lupin. “Tell me the truth that the spell kept from me.”

Lupin blinked and licked his lips. Then he said, “Harry Grayson’s true name is Harry Potter.”

Lord Voldemort blinked back. Then he let his head loll to the side as he laughed.

It was so simple. It made sense of so much.

And he could not wait to tell Harry.