[Broken Glass Series]: Chapter Nineteen of 'Glassfall'- Lash

[lomonaaeren]

“Father, I have a question for you.”

“Yes, of course you do.” Lord Voldemort tilts his head. He hopes his heir appreciates the concession he’s made by switching to English instead of Parseltongue. Then again, this might not be the kind of conversation for which Parseltongue is appropriate. “What is it?”

“What do you think a lord’s duty to his courtiers is?”

Not the question that Lord Voldemort believed his son would ask. He weaves his head back and forth on his neck, a motion borrowed from Nagini, as he considers for a moment. Then he says, “To shelter them from enemies and help them climb to power.”

“Not to put them in danger.”

“In some situations. In battle, everyone must fight. In some way. I might have a courtier near me who could handle specialized spells and excuse them from battle because of that, but they would have to use that skill to help the Death Eaters who fought.”

“Um. Okay.”

“What do you think a lord’s duty is to them, my son?”

Harry takes a moment to think, which pleases Lord Voldemort. He has not partially cherished a weak heir.

I cannot speak to his raising.

That reminder makes him snarl in irritation, but it doesn’t break Harry from his thinking. He finally nods and leans forwards.

“I think we owe them what they offer us,” he says quietly. “Protection, shelter, sharing of magic, unwavering loyalty. It doesn’t mean that we’ll never make mistakes, but it means that we have to make up for it when we do.”

Lord Voldemort stares at him. Harry cocks his head. “Nothing to say, Father?”

Lord Voldemort has to drop back into Parseltongue to express his astonishment. “What do you mean by sharing magic?”

Harry frowns at him. “You know, what happens when you bond a certain group of people? When they start sharing magic on their own? I Marked Neville, and now he and Pansy can perform human Transfiguration, where they couldn’t before. They borrowed Corban’s Transfiguration skills.”

“That is a myth.”

“No, it isn’t. You’re in my head, or partially, during these dreams. You would know if I were lying.”

And it is true. Lord Voldemort feels the beat of it around him like a pale and invisible heart. It is the truth.

He sags back into the couch behind him. Harry stares at him, but makes no move to interfere. Perhaps he knows that Lord Voldemort needs a moment to think.

Myth is not the proper word for such things, not if his son has performed them. The proper one is legend.

On the heels of Lord Voldemort’s astonishment comes an immense, roaring wave of pride.

Of course it is my son who can do such things. The best part of myself, containing my soul combined with his. What would he be with as much power as I have and his own character? The loyalty of so many people flowing to him?

“You disapprove of what I did with Lucius,” Lord Voldemort says, returning to English.

“Yes, of course I do.”

“I gave him the knowledge to properly avoid the traps.”

“Well, yeah, but he didn’t.”

“And you would blame me for his stupidity?” The pride is still a torrent flowing through Lord Voldemort, but irritation is rapidly replacing it. He doesn’t understand how one person can inspire so many contradictory emotions in him. There ought to be a simple truth that he can cling to. Either Harry is the best of him and they are in harmony, or they are father and son, with the son far below the father in power and knowledge.

Why is it like this? Why is he like this?

If I had had the raising of him, he would not have been.

And of course that’s the truth. Lord Voldemort shakes his head and returns to the present, however, as he sees Harry’s gaze becoming more fiercely insistent. “Things fell out as they did. Lucius died. He could have used any number of means to circumvent the potion, but he did not. Now he is gone. I do not think of the dead.”

Harry studies him in silence for a long moment. Then he asks, “And what would you do if I died?”

“You will not.”

“But what if I did?”

Lord Voldemort leans forwards. Unexpectedly, it seems that he must make his son understand the value of his own life. Lord Voldemort thought they were past such things. “You will not,” he hisses. “The Horcrux in you will never permit your death. And I will work to keep you alive even if you wish to die.”

“That’s not actually what I meant,” Harry hisses back at him. “I have no desire to die. Too many people are depending on me. I wondered if you would ever think of me again if I died.”

“You will not.”

“The way that Lucius could have escaped, but didn’t?”

Lord Voldemort stares at Harry. He doesn’t know what his son is getting at, and the uncertainty curls in his belly and gnaws at him. “I don’t know what you wish me to say.”

“Whether or not you would think of me if I died.”

“You will not. I will not permit it!”

The wards around the dream-house quake and soar up as Lord Voldemort lets his power ripple through them. Harry blinks and stares at him with his mouth slightly open. Lord Voldemort settles back and pulls the wards into place again. Perhaps it is just as well that Harry saw this demonstration of his power.

Let him remember how well Lord Voldemort cares for him.

“I see a lord’s dedication to his courtiers as the kind of care that you only appear to lavish on me,” Harry finally says, blinking as if he’s getting some kind of veil on his eyes out of the way. “And I see it as—in this case, you didn’t exercise it.”

“What are you saying, Harry? That I made a mistake? I have made many. Not raising you myself, going after you that Halloween night, not making more efforts to ensure that you were safe—”

“No, Father. Not that you made a mistake. That you did something wrong.”

“Wrong in the sense that it cost Lucius his life? He is the one who didn’t use the information I gave him well enough to preserve his own life.”

“No, Father.” Harry takes a deep breath that seems to push all the air out of his chest. “I mean that you did something morally wrong.”

It’s been years since anyone dared to speak of morality to Lord Voldemort—years since he even tortured a victim who dared to scream at him under torture that he was wrong. He stares at Harry and feels his brain whirring like a Muggle clock without any tuning.

Then his anger rises through his body, slow and long and as hot as a serpent bathed in a fire.

“You dare,” he says, and rises to his feet.

“I dare.”

Lord Voldemort lashes across the room, something he wouldn’t be able to do in a normal setting, but the dream is his to shape as he wills. He grabs Harry by the throat and slams him against the wall near the imagined fireplace. Harry gags. Lord Voldemort shakes him, and Harry goes limp and lets him.

“You dare to say it,” Lord Voldemort hisses into his face. “You dare to prate of morality when you know how much we are above it, how much we are—”

“I know that you said I was different,” Harry gasps. “And now you’re treating me exactly like you would anyone else who defied you. Thanks for giving me this lesson in how being your son doesn’t matter to you, I suppose. I should have known you were lying.”

Lord Voldemort freezes.

Then he drops his son to the floor of the imagined room and backs away, hands in the air, trembling.

Harry stands up, touching his throat. The bruises are already fading, courtesy of his will or Lord Voldemort’s. Lord Voldemort does not know. He does not care. He cares only that Harry is standing there with his throat free and uninjured.

But the way that his son stares at him, with green eyes so bright and flaring that they might be enemies again, doesn’t speak of freedom from injury.

“I knew that it was the same as ever,” Harry breathes. “We’re still enemies, and you would destroy me as soon as I did something that upset you. I believed you, but that’s because I was stupid, I suppose.”

“Harry, no.”

“What? Don’t speak against you? Don’t stand up for myself? Don’t try to be something different than the monster you are?”

“That is not what I mean. I mean that you were right in the first place. I would never hurt you.”

“You just did.”

“That was—an aberration.”

Harry’s lip curls. “An aberration that means I can never trust you again. Well, thanks for proving it, and proving some of the people who said that you were still a monster right.” His voice is as thick with bitterness as Polyjuice Potion is thick with ingredients. “I suppose I should have got used to being wrong.”

He vanishes.

“My son,” Lord Voldemort calls, spinning in place. His first thought is that his son hasn’t retreated from the dream, but just did the equivalent of Disillusioning himself so that he could watch his father’s reaction. “You are still my heir. My Horcrux. My special one.”

Silence.

“Harry!”

*

Harry opens his eyes in his own bed. He’s shaking all over, his heartbeat making him quiver, his breathing so fast that his chest hurts. He rolls over and curls up within and inside himself.

“Harry?”

He reaches out a sightless hand to scoop Basilisk up. She coils close, hissing so softly and continuously that Harry finds it hard to make out her words. Their bond is bright red and orange and flowing with anxiety.

“The blood-master hurt me,” Harry finally whispers, when he thinks that he can speak.

“Why? He promised not to do such a thing!”

Basilisk sounds genuinely outraged, which makes Harry smile a little. He rolls over and touches Basilisk with one hand on her head. She’s swaying, dancing, and then she breaks the charm so that she can roll over and visibly wrap around his neck.

“I am upset with him. I shall speak with him.”

“I don’t think you can speak with him, can you? You don’t have the ability to start a dream that summons him like he does.”

Or like I do, maybe. That’s something Harry still doesn’t know the limits of. He’s kind of surprised that he managed to disappear from the dream and wake up at all. Voldemort usually seems to have complete control there.

What he did to me…

Harry shudders a little and shakes his head. He’s been trying to avoid thinking about it, but of course he has to. He supposes part of him must have trusted Voldemort more than he thought. Trusted him to keep his word. Not to hurt Harry.

Instead, he’s just broken it. Harry has no doubt that Voldemort really does regret it and will do his best to make up for it, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that it happened in the first place. Harry will never be able to fully trust him again.

Does that mean that I can’t trust him to keep his word not to harm Muggleborns or my friends, either?

Harry breathes out slowly. Maybe it means that. He’ll just have to go along with it and do his best to defend people if it does.

And recover from the unexpected hurt of having his father turn on him like that.

I knew he was still insane. I knew it. This isn’t really a surprise. It’s just a…

Disappointment.

Basilisk continues to rant about how she’ll talk to Voldemort and what she’ll do to him. Harry lies listening to her quietly, and sometime between one moment and the next, slips into sleep.

Even though the phantom bruises on his spirit still hurt.

*

Narcissa places her hand on Draco’s shoulder. Apparently, his lord delivered both him and Lucius’s corpse to the edge of Malfoy Manor’s grounds with extreme gentleness, although Draco hasn’t revealed many details about how. He also charged Draco with a message for her that he would accept her loyalty and Mark her “if she still wished it.”

As though his father’s insanity has tainted the way we would see him.

Of course, Narcissa understands why the young man, who grew up away from magic and seemed continually surprised whenever he mastered a Dark Arts spell last summer, might think that way. It’s only a wonder that he still does, or that he believes she would blame him for Lucius’s death instead of Draco’s protection.

Narcissa has always known who was to blame for Lucius’s loyalty to the Dark Lord. It was Lucius himself, first and most primarily. He sought a path to power and believed he found it. Narcissa can even understand why he believed that at one point, although not why he went on believing it when the Dark Lord grew madder and madder.

Or why he went to the graveyard at the madman’s summons. Why he volunteered their home to hold that beast. Why they are standing here now with his death weighing on them as heavily as the touch from a Muggle’s hand that Lucius feared so much he once told her he would cut off his arm and have it regrown if one touched him there.

Oh, Narcissa knows.

Knows that there is only one path they can take now, and Harry Gaunt has promised it to them. Knows there is no way out but through.

Lucius’s body lies on the black altar that Malfoys have used to honor their dead for centuries. Candles flare and float around him. There are showers of light coming from above him, too, as glinting images of moons in the roof of the mausoleum beam down on him.

Draco is crying softly against her side. Narcissa draws him against her and bends down to kiss his forehead.

Lucius would have despised those tears. He told Draco again and again that he must be strong, and that he must care for nothing but the family and his lord. Granted, at the time he thought it was the Dark Lord Draco would have been despising now.

But Lucius is dead, and his wishes matter no longer.

Narcissa bows her head and closes her eyes. She doesn’t intend to speak her thoughts aloud. They would hurt Draco, and she doesn’t wish to do that. He loves his father, as a boy will.

But he must grow up now. He’s not a boy any longer, even if he acts like one. His childhood ended the minute he allowed Gaunt to put a Mark on his arm.

Narcissa will get hers, and wear it, and allow it to light her way into the future, which isn’t filled solely with revenge. She has to live for her son, and she has to guide the Dark Lord’s son, who will need such guidance even as the last of his childhood burns out of him.

But revenge has its place. And she will have hers.

*

“It didn’t go well.”

Theo already suspected that, in truth, the minute he felt purple and black darkness drown the bond that he shares with his lord. But he stands quietly beside the polished wall of the ritual room and watches Harry pacing back and forth, his head bowed.

“Why not?” Theo finally asks, when he realizes that Harry will go on pacing all night if Theo lets him.

Harry turns to face him. His eyes are wide and full of despair, and he reaches up and touches his throat if there’s an invisible collar there. It’s probably just his invisible snake, Theo reassures himself. He doesn’t think Harry would hide injuries from him.

But if it isn’t…

Well. The Dark Lord will find himself with an enemy on another front.

And it doesn’t matter how much part of Theo’s soul hurts, at the idea of setting himself against his father’s Lord.

“He attacked me.”

Theo stares at Harry with an open mouth, wondering for a second if he’s exaggerating. But then he hears an angry hiss from Basilisk, who appears a moment later, as something—either her magic or Harry’s—disrupts the Disillusionment Charm. Harry puts Basilisk on the floor, where she sways and dances, while he paces around her.

“What?” Theo finally whispers. “Then my advice wasn’t good after all.”

Harry turns to Theo at once, his bond overflowing with confidence and friendship. Theo finds himself straightening his shoulders and his spine. Part of him thinks that he shouldn’t take this much from Harry, who’s obviously spending a lot of himself to give Theo this emotion.

Another part of him knows that this is part of what makes Harry a lord that so many people would die for.

“It wasn’t your fault,” Harry whispers fiercely. “I used the kinds of questions you told me to ask, about a lord’s duty to his courtiers. And I tried to bring him back to some sense of his duty towards Lucius, and Lucius’s family even if he thought that he had to punish the man for—some reason.” A guilty writhe in the bond denotes a secret, but Theo keeps quiet, sure that he’ll eventually learn what that is. “I thought I could do it. I thought I could remind him of what he told me himself about the wizards and witches who are valuable parts of a Lord’s court. I really thought I could.”

He trails off, staring down at the floor. Theo reaches up and clasps Harry’s shoulder, feeding as much as he can of the same emotions Harry gave him back through the bond.

“And what happened?”

“He got angry at me bringing up morality. He called it prating. He grabbed my throat and shook me. And I only brought him out of it by reminding him that he promised never to hurt me, and asking him what he was doing right then.”

Theo lets out a slow, careful breath. This is bad, he has to acknowledge. He really did think there was no chance that the Dark Lord would strike at Harry. Or, at least, he would only use words, not actions.

And even then, Theo would have guessed a spell. Not a Muggle method. Not his hands.

Harry truly angered him.

“Do you think that…”

“Yes? Please, speak your mind, Theo. I don’t mind if my courtiers give me advice, I’m never going to be my father.”

Basilisk gives an emphatic hiss. Harry turns and hisses back to her. She at once flows over to him and swarms up Harry’s arm to his shoulder, where she hisses some more things to him. Harry strokes he back and murmurs in a voice that Theo thinks would be too soft for him to make out the words in even if Theo spoke Parseltongue.

“What is she saying?”

“Oh.” Harry keeps flushing when someone catches him speaking Parseltongue. Theo thinks it’s adorable, in a way, but he wishes that his lord took more pride in his abilities. “She was someone else who reassured me that Voldemort would never hurt me. And now she’s upset that he did, and she’s apologizing to me, and she wants to bite him.”

“She has good taste.”

Harry just shakes his head and says nothing. Then he whispers, “I think I have to distrust his word about not harming people I care for, as well.”

“Why?”

“If he would hurt me, someone he supposedly values, what would he do to you or Draco? Or Pansy, who I don’t think he would value at all, since she’s not a daughter of one of his courtiers? Corban, if he starts thinking that he’s a traitor?”

“He didn’t before. He let Corban swear to you.”

“But he’s changing his mind. He’s mad. I should have thought more about that. Mad, Theo. Which means he can’t be reasoned with.”

Theo swallows slowly. Then he says, “I would beg you to consider this, my lord. He hasn’t made an attack on any Muggleborns or Muggles today, or I think we would have heard about it in the evening edition of the Prophet. That means, hopefully, that he’s holding to his word. That he’s upset about having attacked you and made you miserable.”

“Or maybe he made an attack and concealed it. Or he tortured someone to death, but it was someone who was already a prisoner. Then we wouldn’t have heard about it.”

Theo pauses. That’s a possibility that he can’t shove aside. But at the same time, he feels—unshakably certain that the Dark Lord will regret this. He doesn’t know why, except for that expression on the Dark Lord’s face during the ceremony where Harry Marked him and Draco.

And maybe stories that his father told him about the Dark Lord, too. He’s never turned on the people he valued as much as he now values Harry.

Even if that only seems to be his familiar and Theo’s father.

True, he turned on Lucius, or at least didn’t take enough care with his courtier’s life. But Lucius had already betrayed him.

“At least don’t act hastily,” Theo says. His voice is soft and soothing, and he sees Harry reacting to it, his shoulders drooping a little. “Think about what might happen, and prepare for it, but wait until—”

“Harry!”

The door of the ritual room flies open, and Theo drops into a crouch. But it’s only Longbottom, who hurries in and blurts out, “I didn’t even realize it, because I wasn’t looking for them, but no one’s seen Ron and Hermione in a couple of days.”

Harry stands back up. His eyes are suddenly desolate, and his bond is worse, lighting with blue and green fire. Theo glances sideways at Longbottom, who’s wincing, and guesses that he’s getting some of it, too.

“He wouldn’t,” Harry whispers. “They’re two people I specifically asked for protection for.”

“You think he’s changed his mind?” Longbottom asks quietly. He’s alert, but his hand is inching towards his wand. Theo admires that. He might not have much use for Longbottom in general, but they’re bound in a group now, and they’re comrades. “Why would he do that?”

“I asked him some questions he didn’t like.”

Longbottom blinks and looks astonished. But he rallies quickly. “It has to be more than that, right? It would have to be if Ron and Hermione did something really stupid.”

“Maybe they did.”

Harry abruptly strides past them, out of the ritual room. Longbottom jumps a little when Basilisk slithers after their lord, but he doesn’t comment on the snake. Instead, he looks at Theo.

“What’s going on?”

“The Dark Lord hurt him in a dream,” Theo says. “It’s possible that if he would attack Harry, everything else he told Harry really has changed, and there’s no way for it to change back.”

Longbottom closes his eyes, opens them, and rubs the Mark on his left arm. Theo curls his lip a little. “Wishing you hadn’t made the decision you did?”

Longbottom lifts his head, and there’s pride and something more in his eyes, the kind of mettle that Theo can admit the best Gryffindors have. (There’s a sentence he never thought he would think). “No. I made this choice, and it’s mine. But if we have to fight the Dark Lord…” He quirks a smile. “I’m just getting used to the idea, that’s all.”

Theo nods slowly. “You’re all right, Longbottom.”

“If we’re both courtiers of the same lord, can’t you call me by my first name?”

“Yeah, I reckon,” Theo says, more than a little surprised that Longbottom would have the courage to ask that. But he reminds himself that they’re on the same side, and he can stop being surprised by that any time now. “Fine. You’re all right, Neville.”

“And you, Theo,” Neville says, and leaves the ritual room, hurrying after Harry and Basilisk. When Theo leans around the corner of the door, they’re already out of sight.

He lengthens his own stride. He’s learned already that uncomfortable things happen when Harry tries to handle matters on his own.

And besides, Theo can’t think of a place that he would rather be than at his lord’s side.