[Broken Glass Series]: Chapter Twenty-Two of 'Glassfall'- Exhaustion

[lomonaaeren]

“It will be fine.”

“Yeah, I wish I could believe that.”

Harry’s about to close his eyes and concentrate on the dreamscape that will summon Voldemort, and he knows that Basilisk knows that, but she still lifts her head and touches his cheek with an insistent nose.

“I will be right here. I can follow you into the dreamscape now. Our bond is deep enough for that. And I will make sure that the blood-master can’t hurt you the way that he did in the past.”

Harry closes his eyes and lets his cheek rest against her. Basilisk wriggles and hisses in pleasure. For a moment, their bond is bright blue and perfectly open, and Harry thinks he can feel his own cheek against her scales and what it’s like to have fangs in his mouth and move without legs.

“Yes, thank you,” Harry whispers, and then he closes his eyes and concentrates on the link in his mind that binds him to Voldemort through the Horcrux.

He doesn’t feel the instant recoil of disgust that he used to when he first learned about the Horcrux. It’s there, and it allows them to speak to each other, and it probably ensures that Voldemort values Harry a lot more than he would just any soon. And it means that Voldemort’s willing to do things like leaving Muggles and Muggleborns alone.

He still wishes it wasn’t there. He doesn’t wish Basilisk or his courtiers or even Voldemort away, but he yearns for the simplicity of the life that used to be his.

It works. In a few moments, a dreamscape blooms around them that’s different from the blank white room Voldemort usually conjures. This one is deep blue and has stars on the ceiling like the ceiling of the Great Hall. Floating candles hover above Harry, although not as far overhead as they would in a larger space. And there’s a chair across from Harry with Voldemort sitting in it, opening his eyes, as if he’s been sitting asleep there for a while.

“Hello, Father,” Harry says. He thinks it’s wisest to start in Parseltongue until he reaches the point of what he came to say.

“My son.”

Voldemort whips to his feet and across the space between them like Basilisk would move, but he stops the minute Harry flinches. Then he holds out his hands in front of him and hisses softly, “I will not hurt you.”

“Yeah, I used to believe you about that, once.”

Voldemort gives a low, distressed sound that reminds Harry oddly of a low bird’s song, far away. Then he whispers, “How can I make sure that you trust me once more?”

“I’m not sure that you can.”

Voldemort turns and paces away from Harry, his head and shoulders bowed. Harry stares at his back and wonders if anyone would believe him if he told them about this. Well, his courtiers would know that he wasn’t lying, but he doesn’t think he could convey to them how surreal an experience it is, to see Voldemort hunched like that.

“Let me have a chance,” Voldemort breathes. “Please.”

And when was the last time that the Dark Lord begged for something?

Harry dismisses the notion from his mind. It isn’t the kind of thing that he’s here to talk to Voldemort about. “I want to know whether you had any intention of hurting Draco because Lucius failed you.”

Voldemort turns around and stares blankly at him. Then he says, “Of course not.”

“Because Draco told me that you came to Malfoy Manor and acted like you were hunting for him.”

That’s something Draco only confessed to Harry this afternoon, when he returned to the school after the period of mourning for his father. Still, Harry’s glad to know it, even as he mourns what it seems to indicate, the complete breaking of Voldemort’s word. At least he’ll know that something has gone drastically wrong.

“I wanted to know where he was.”

“Why? And would you have hurt him if you’d found him?”

“He belongs to you,” Voldemort says, as if that settles the matter. “But Abraxas does not.”

It takes Harry a long moment to remember where he’s heard that name. Right, Draco’s grandfather. “What do you mean?”

“His ghost was there, and still bound to me, because the Dark Mark stretches beyond death. I asked him some questions and tested his loyalty in preparation for ensuring that the allegiance of my Death Eaters would transfer over to you.”

It feels as though Harry’s had to take several distinct breaths, even though only a few seconds pass, before he says dazedly, “What?”

Voldemort accepts the switch to English, and even does it himself, leaning forwards with his hands making sharp gestures in the air. “It’s come to my attention that you’re the best part of myself. And you can shape and mold the loyalty of even a Death Eater who has been with me for years. Witness Corban. I want to make sure that you can have the rest of them.”

“That’s—okay, I might be able to do that, but why would you want me to?”

“I made a mistake with the Horcruxes.”

Harry stares at his father. Even more than an apology, that’s the last thing he thought he would ever hear him say. “What?” he manages, finally.

“Not you, my son. Never you. But the others. I didn’t realize that I was carving pieces of myself away—my mind and magic as well as my soul.” Well, at least he’s still enough Voldemort not to care about his soul, Harry decides dazedly. “I have spent months trying to judge which one is the best part of me. And which ones no longer have anything to do with me. That you are the best is assured. You’ve gathered courtiers around you and gained their loyalty in a way that I never managed. You have embodied the ideals of a Dark Lord in ways I fell short of. You are the best of Lord Voldemort.”

Harry opens and closes his mouth. He feels like he should have a witty response to this, or at least a serious one, but there’s—no ability to say anything. He doesn’t know how to get beyond his sheer incredulity to state a reply.

“Harry?”

“Um.” Harry finally manages to drag his mind out of the ditch it’s crashed into and back onto a smooth path. “None of this makes up for your hurting me.”

“I know. What would?”

“What?”

“What would? I am ready to pay any price.”

This isn’t something Harry expected to hear, either. He stands there helplessly, but at least not long enough for his father to get impatient, before he finally blurts out, “Ending the war for good. Telling your Death Eaters and your courtiers that there will be no more torture or killing of Muggles and Muggleborns. Pulling back your presence so only the ones most loyal to you know where you are. Going into exile.”

“For hurting you? That is not a reparation to you alone.”

“Yes, it is.” At least Harry has his voice back. “The war still dominates my thoughts every day. Wondering when you’ll start again. Fearing you will. Having my former friends stare at me in horror. Me—not being able to trust you.”

“You wish to trust me.”

“Yes,” Harry says, although that’s not the main thing he’s worried about. But he can see why it’s the thing Voldemort would worry about.

His father cocks his head like a hawk regarding a squealing mouse pinned beneath its talon. Harry stares back. He has to act strong, he thinks. Unimpressed. It worked to convince Voldemort that Harry might not forgive him and to get him here, so it has to work now, as well.

“What if I gave you the loyalty of the Death Eaters?”

“They won’t all want to serve me.”

“I can compel them to do so.”

“No,” Harry snaps, and finds himself taking a step closer to his father without even planning to. “You can’t violate their free will that way!”

“Corban was glad enough to come to you.”

“And you really think that the Lestranges would be? Mr. Nott? Snape, if he were still alive? Of course not. They’re yours. You can’t just hand their Marks to me, however you’d do that, and expect them to be happy about that.”

“I would not require their happiness.”

“That, right there.” Harry points a finger at him, and doesn’t care that Voldemort looks as if he’d like to bite that finger off. “That’s the reason we’re too different for something like this to work. For me to trust you again. You would want to just—enslave your people and trust it would be for the best, instead of being a good Lord!”

“Of course I would not trust it would be for the best. I would compel them through the Mark and look into their minds to make sure they meant their oaths of loyalty to you.”

“And I wouldn’t accept them!”

“Why not? A large group of skilled and talented magicals who would defend you and not take to the battlefield against you would be a priceless gift.”

“Because they wouldn’t want to!”

“They would want it because I wanted it.”

“And have you been the kind of Lord who would earn that loyalty?”

Voldemort freezes.

Harry folds his arms and glares at him. “I want to be able to trust you, yes. But not at the cost of other people’s lives or freedom!”

“But they do not matter. Next to you.”

Harry takes a deep breath and closes his eyes. He can remember being young, lying in the cupboard with tears streaming down his face, and wanting to be wanted just for himself. For someone to love him and put him above everyone else, the way Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon did with Dudley.

But he can’t want that at the expense of someone else.

“I’m not going to accept anyone you try to force into my service. Corban made his own decision and we agreed on it. But you can’t force someone. That’s just the way it is.”

“The Dark Mark is a different kind of bond than the kind you gave your servants. Once I alter them—”

“Courtiers.”

“You know what they are,” Voldemort says, shifting back to Parseltongue.

“Yes. Courtiers. People who have a special relationship to me and who I depend on for advice. Isn’t that the way you described them to me last summer when you were coercing me to take some in?”

“They are that, but they are yours. You can treat them the way you want and use them for your purposes as long as you don’t do something that would make them turn on you. Admittedly, with your strange relationship with your courtiers—”

“You haven’t changed a bit,” Harry whispers, dropping back into English. He’s a lot more disheartened than he thought he would be. “We had that argument about courtiers and how you treated them in the first place, and you haven’t changed your mind. They’re just pawns to you. That’s what you got angry about last time, and why you hurt me.”

“I will never hurt you again.”

Harry starts to reply, but then falls silent as a long golden whip of magic extends upwards from the dark blue floor, running around Voldemort’s body and entwining around his neck. Harry stares. Maybe it’s less a whip than it is a vine, he thinks. It seems to grow thorns and to bob slowly back and forth around Voldemort’s neck, as if bowing to invisible people. Harry shakes his head.

“What in the world is that?”

“I made a vow.”

“You—can you even make vows in a dreamscape like this? Without your wand? Without promising on your magic?”

“It’s easier in a dreamscape like this, actually.” Voldemort’s gaze is calm and unwavering. “It means that there is little pressure from other kinds of magic, and as you can see, whether one means the vow is immediately visible.” He extends his arms and moves them slowly. The golden vine immediately winds down to wrap around his wrists.

“I never even knew about pressure from other kinds of magic.” Harry turns his head a little. “Basilisk?”

His familiar slithers up his leg to his arm. Voldemort watches her, but makes no attempt to interfere as Basilisk rears and lets her tongue out to dart through the air.

“He is telling the truth. He is indeed bound. And that vow would be neither visible nor so bright a gold if he were lying. It would break.”

Harry pets her and stares warily at Voldemort. He trusts Basilisk, but she’s been wrong about Voldemort before.

“What would make you trust me?”

“I already said.”

“And I have made an offer to present my Death Eaters to you so that they cannot get out of control and kill and torture again, but you don’t want them.”

Voldemort actually sounds on the verge of whining about that like a child. Harry takes a deep breath and holds it for a restless moment, then releases it. He has to remember that his father is insane.

His father wants a relationship with him and claims to cherish Harry above all the rest of his Horcruxes and his Death Eaters. But still, insane.

“I told you that I don’t want your Death Eaters under the circumstances that you’re offering them,” Harry finally says, when he thinks he can trust himself to reply calmly. “If you can come up with some other method to keep them from hurting people, or if they were ready to give me their allegiance willingly, then we could talk.”

“We could.”

Harry goes back to staring at Voldemort. The man seems to have seen some sort of vision and is smiling beatifically into the distance, so Harry actually turns around to see what Voldemort sees. But nothing is visible there except the far wall of the room he created, dark blue like the rest of it.

“I will set it in motion at once.”

“Set what?”

“A plan I have been working on.”

“Please, Father, tell me what it is,” Harry says, and tries his best combination of a winning smile and a coaxing tone. His stomach is sinking with the conception of what Voldemort might try to do otherwise. “I’d like to know.”

“I wish it to be a surprise.”

Damn it.

Harry does his best to hold his face calm as he shakes his head. “I can’t guarantee that a surprise which comes out of nowhere will make me trust you more than I do now.”

“This surprise will be the ultimate sign of my commitment to change. To make sure that none of mine, none of my court or followers, can get out of control and kill or torture anyone you would care about again.”

Voldemort looks as if he wants to skip in place, almost ready to wave his hands around. Harry takes a slow, deep breath. “You really won’t tell me?”

“No. I’ll let you have time to think about it. And to decide if there is something else you need from me, to trust me. That would let you tell me what it is, before the end.”

“What end?”

Voldemort gives him a deranged smile and flickers out of being like a flame going out in a hearth. Harry spins around looking for him, and the dark blue walls dissolve. He finds himself on his knees in the middle of his bed, almost spilling over the side. He catches himself before he does it, and curses quietly.

“The blood-master did not hurt you.”

“No, but he seems madder than ever. I don’t know that I can trust him.”

“He did vow not to hurt you again.”

“But he might do something else insane.”

Basilisk gives a hiss and their bond turns deep purple, a sign that she’s probably going to argue with him, but before they can get deeply involved in it, someone tugs on Harry’s sealed-shut curtains. Harry curses again under his breath and tucks Basilisk down behind his pillow. She gives a hiss of outrage, which he ignores.

“Yeah?” he calls, trying to sound casual as he leans back on an elbow.

“It’s Ron, mate. Can we talk?”

Harry closes his eyes. Honestly, he wants to refuse. The last thing he wants to hear is more justification of why going after the wards in Lestrange Hall was a good idea, or why he’s evil, or why Voldemort is evil.

On the other hand, maybe this is going to be a flat apology, or an argument that will start and then end so that he can go to bed.

“All right,” he says dully, and opens the curtains. He casts a Silencing Charm, but he can still feel the question down his bond to Neville, about whether Harry wants his Gryffindor courtier to interfere. Harry sends back the feeling of a shaking head, and pulls Ron into the bed, shutting the curtains behind him.

“Go ahead,” Harry says, when Ron sits there and stares at his hands. He does want to get this out of the way, but he’s a little impatient now. He wants to sleep.

Ron takes a deep breath and looks up at him. “Professor Yaxley talked to me and Hermione.”

“Yeah, he said.”

Harry reckons it doesn’t matter whether he pretends Corban isn’t his courtier now. Ron and Hermione know.

Ron turns a bit red, but forces down whatever he wanted to say immediately and pushes on. “And he told us about…you and how you wanted to restrain—Voldemort, and the changes that you want to make. The changes that maybe only you can make.”

“So?” Harry doesn’t mean to be so abrupt, but his mind is still revolving uneasily around the things Voldemort said, and the fact that he doesn’t know what half of them mean. What’s the surprise Voldemort wants to plan for him? What does he think he can do if his Death Eaters won’t serve Harry?

“It—I don’t think there’s a chance unless we can work with you.”

“A chance to do what?”

“End the war.”

Harry breathes out slowly. Of course ending the war matters to him, and he shouldn’t be so surprised that it matters to Ron and Hermione and probably some Order members as well. He just got used to thinking that their main motivation was manipulating him.

“All right. So what do you want?”

“We want to work with you.”

“We?”

Ron flushes, but continues holding Harry’s eyes. “Well, Hermione seems pretty upset, and she doesn’t trust Yaxley since he’s a Death Eater. And I don’t know about the rest of the Order. But I think it’s worth trying.”

Harry spends a long moment studying Ron and trying to determine if he’s lying. He might be. This might be another way to get close to Harry and try to twist him back to the Order’s side, or away from Voldemort’s, or wherever they think he’s landed.

But Ron just keeps siting there, and he doesn’t get angry and pull back, the way Harry thinks he would if this were a lie. So maybe it’s real.

Harry takes a deep breath. “Okay. But I can’t—I can’t deal with you, Ron. There’s too much bad history between us now, and what you did by going to Lestrange Hall—” He stops himself, because he’s already told Ron and Hermione how fucking stupid they were, and if they ignore him, he’s got nothing more to say. “It’ll have to be another member of my court.”

“I won’t talk to Malfoy,” Ron says, the expression on his face congealing.

“I wouldn’t let you talk to Draco anyway,” Harry snaps, and ignores the hurt on Ron’s face. “It’ll be Justin.”

“Finch-Fletchley?”

“Yeah. He originally joined my court for similar reasons, to keep an eye on me and make sure that I wouldn’t be—evil, basically, or have unchecked power. And he’s Muggleborn. He’ll be able to deal with Hermione better.”

“If she ever comes around.”

“Right. But I’ll expect you to be polite to Justin and listen to what he says. All right?”

“I don’t go around calling Muggleborns Mudbloods or anything like that!”

“Of course not, but there are other ways to be impolite. Or impatient, or treat someone like dirt because they don’t agree with you. And I’ve seen you do that for the past few months with me. I won’t have one of my courtiers treated that way.”

“Why do you treat them as if they’re so special?”

“They made a commitment to me,” Harry says softly, wondering as he does if he can use some of the same words with Voldemort. “They took up a bond and swore an oath, and they’re taking a chance when I’m unpopular with the Order and my father might turn his back on me. They trust me. I have to trust them, and protect them.”

“You have to treat prejudiced Slytherins that way? And Death Eaters? And Hufflepuffs who thought you were the Heir of Slytherin?”

“Yes. Because they swore to me.”

Ron stares at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”

“That is abundantly clear,” Harry says. Then he wants to wince both at how close to Parseltongue his voice has come, and because he’s using the kind of language and intonation that Voldemort would.

But Ron just pulls back, his cheeks flushing. “You sound like you don’t want to work with us after all.”

“I think that we need to think about it. And you need to talk to Justin. He’s the one who can answer some of the questions that you have.”

“We were your best friends.”

Harry stares at Ron and thinks of all the things he could say. But honestly, he said most of them already. Or they wouldn’t land right. Or he would need endless grace and patience to phrase them in a way that Ron would accept, and he doesn’t have that.

He’s tired. Physically and mentally.

“And now you’re not,” he says softly.

Ron reels back like Harry slapped him, looking horrified. Harry turns away, shaking his head. “Leave and go back to bed, Ron.”

Ron does, not without a lot of backwards glances, as if he thinks that Harry’s going to change his mind. But Harry doesn’t, and his curtains fall shut behind Ron. Peace at last, he thinks, and drops onto the pillow.

Basilisk wriggles out, hissing at him.

“Sorry.” Harry scoops her up. “And you don’t need to scold me like you’re doing. Of course I’m not going to accept Ron and Hermione back after what they did.”

“I thought you might. Your friends are important to you.”

“They are. But they’re not my friends,” Harry says, and makes himself think it, say it, believe it.

He has courtiers, and friends, and Sirius. And allies. Ron and Hermione could be allies, if they’re sincere about helping him.

But friends? No. Not now.

Never again.