[Broken Glass Series]: Chapter Twenty-Seven of 'Glassfall'- Speaking the Truth

[lomonaaeren]

“I don’t want you to sacrifice yourself, or give me the Death Eaters, or whatever it is that you think you’re doing.”

Lord Voldemort can feel the swirl of silver and blue currents in his mind, glittering as bright as madness. He wants to drown in them. He wants to unleash the full force of his power on his disobedient son, and make Harry cower and apologize for coming home without permission and leading others into his house—

And then he remembers what happened the last time he gave in to his impulses and hurt Harry.

He restrains himself as strongly as he can, given that his magic is bucking and pleading for release. He also hisses in Parseltongue, “What did you think the ritual I was performing was meant to do?”

“Either change you in some way or give me control of the Death Eaters.” Harry at least does him the courtesy of replying in Parseltongue, which gives Lord Voldemort the hope that he doesn’t want his followers to hear this, either. “I don’t want those things to happen.”

“Why not? I can promise that any Death Eaters who came to you would faithfully follow you.”

“And I don’t want them, Dad!”

Lord Voldemort staggers. Harry stares at him with wide eyes, as green as that night long ago, and takes a tentative step forwards, as if he thinks that he’ll have to catch Lord Voldemort and spare him from falling.

“You called me Dad,” Lord Voldemort whispers at last. His heart is beating oddly in his chest. There should be no reason for it.

But there is.

“I—said it a minute ago, but I didn’t realize I was going to say that again.” Harry’s eyes flicker away from Lord Voldemort and then back towards him. “I apologize.”

“This is the first time I truly heard it. And don’t apologize.”

“Fine. Should we go back to discussing this ritual you were going to do and why I don’t want the Death Eaters to trail around after me?”

Lord Voldemort is tempted to agree. They could move past the moment, and he could hear his son’s reasons for returning home and bringing his followers, and he could judge or give his blessing, and either way Harry would listen to him. It would be a deeper conversation than they’ve had since the night he hurt Harry in the dreamscape.

But something inside him that isn’t silver or blue or green whispers, Don’t let this go.

“No. I want to discuss what you said.”

“What is there to say? I offered to tell you sorry, and you said you didn’t want me to.”

“And I do not. But why did you call me Dad in that moment, when you never did before?”

Harry hesitates for so long that Lord Voldemort doesn’t think he’ll get an answer. Then Harry swallows and meets his eyes.

“I was exasperated with you,” Harry whispers. “And upset with you. It felt like the kind of thing I should yell at you in that moment, even if it never did before.”

Lord Voldemort nods slowly. The thing inside him that isn’t blue or silver or green is chiming slowly, like crystal chains hung inside his skull. “And you want to take it back now? Apologize for it.”

“You aren’t acting much like a dad.”

Again, it would be so easy to accept that and continue raging. Lord Voldemort spreads out a hand and holds it there, hovering between them. Nagini gives one wild hiss by his feet and then settles down when he frowns at her. In the meantime, he looks back at Harry, who’s staring at him with eyes so wide it’s amusing.

“And now?”

“You still—what in the world do you want me to do?”

“Take my hand, Harry. Keep me from sinking. Bring me to shore.”

“I don’t even know what that means!”

But Harry stretches out his hand, because he is gentle, kind, compassionate without being weak, the sunrise of Lord Voldemort’s soul. And sunrise can look pale, but it can also burn with true fire.

Lord Voldemort clasps his son’s hand and steps across the fire attempting to swallow him.

*

“Thank you, my son.’

Harry honestly doesn’t know what’s going on. They’re standing in the same corridor they were before, and Voldemort is looking at him with such calm kindness that Harry can hardly believe this is the same man who was threatening to kill him a few minutes ago.

“What’s going on?” Harry asks. His voice comes out weak and trembling.

“I am your father. Your dad.”

“Yeah, I—know that.”

“But you did not accept it all the way into your heart and mind.” Lord Voldemort’s cool hand reaches out and traces down Harry’s forehead. He finds himself leaning forwards, into that touch, before he can change his mind. “Now you have done so. You accept that I am the monster and the man, your father and the beast.”

Harry swallows. “If you’re really going to be my father, then I need you to not be a beast.”

“And if I am a monster?”

“You know very well that I’ll fight against you.”

“But not leave me.”

Harry feels the prickle of harsh tears along the corners of his eyes. If someone asked him, he doesn’t think he’d be able to say what he’s crying for. “I cant leave you. You’re part of me. But it’s so hard to fight against you.”

“Then we shall not.”

Harry’s wise enough to add the words For now in his head. He looks up at Voldemort and wonders what’ll happen next.

He doesn’t want to harm his father. But he has courtiers waiting in the corridors behind him who depend on him, too, and he’ll fight to defend both of them. All of them.

He wipes harshly at his tears and straightens up as Voldemort watches him with approval. It’s so strange. They’ve been meeting in dreamscapes for months, but being in person is different, somehow.

Even though they’re exchanging some of the same words they did then.

“Why did you begin that ritual?” Harry has to ask now. “What was it meant to do?”

“It was meant to transform me into someone you could be proud of.”

Harry stares at him. Voldemort looks back. If he sees anything strange or contradictory in his words, he isn’t letting it through. He just stares, and Harry finds himself believing his father—always a dangerous thing to do with Lord Voldemort.

But he does. But he does.

“How were you going to do that?” Harry asks at last, when his father’s hand moves so that it’s resting on Harry’s shoulder. “Were you going to sacrifice the Horcruxes?”

“How could I do that, when it would damage my dear son and my dear Nagini? No. I was going to grow a new soul. To change my personality to something else. Someone who would have no need of followers. Someone who could be a worthy father, and whom you would like. You have said that I wouldn’t be a good Lord. So I would give up that place, and become someone else.”

“You can’t just—”

“Can’t what?”

Harry’s tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth. He shakes his head. But when Voldemort goes on staring at him, his head cocked to the side like a snake’s or an owl’s, Harry finally manages to find his voice. “You can’t just change your whole personality like that! It would never work!”

“I am a genius. I would make it work.”

Harry doesn’t bury his head in his hands, but only because he thinks it would be unproductive at this point. “Father…”

“Yes?”

“I don’t want you to change your whole personality for me.”

“But then I could be a worthy father. And I would stop being a lord. And you said that I was not a good lord to my courtiers.”

“That’s not…”

Harry doesn’t know the right words. He doesn’t know how to stand there and hear Voldemort argue, calmly and clearly, that changing his personality is the right thing to do, and argue against it.

Because it’s so bloody obvious that it’s not the right thing to do!

But it’s not obvious to his father. To someone insane.

Harry takes a deep breath and manages to ignore the sensation of someone laughing in the back part of his mind. If he’s going insane, he doesn’t have time for it right now and it will just have to happen later. “Will you still be going through with the ritual? Now that you know I don’t despise you?”

“Speak Parseltongue, my son.”

“Whatever language we speak, I still want to know.”

“It seems the best thing to do. So you can have a father you will be proud of.”

“I didn’t—I don’t—I don’t want you to change your whole self just so that I can be proud of you. That was never something I wanted. I just wanted you to stop killing and torturing people and act like a normal dad.”

This time, Harry uses that word deliberately. From the smile that flickers like a snake’s tail around Voldemort’s mouth, he knows it. But he says only, “Surely you see that I must change myself and depart from what I was.”

“Why?”

“Because I hurt you once, and you are the one most precious to me. What else might I do in a moment of impulse, no matter how much I might try to hold back?”

“So you think that this is the only way?”

“Yes. An insane solution for insanity.”

Harry pushes his hair back from his forehead and tries to think. Then he says, “Are you really freeing all the Death Eaters from your service just because I told you that you weren’t acting like a lord? Just for that reason?”

“And because it is unlikely the Dark Marks binding them to me will work when I have regrown a soul.”

“But you don’t need to do that.”

“Yes, I do.”

All right. So some things have changed—Harry’s made his father rethink some aspects of his plan—but others are still continuing. Harry shakes his head in frustration. “What would you do if I asked you to reconsider the whole thing? Just not to do the ritual and continue as before with your Death Eaters?”

“I have given you my reasons. I will not hurt you again.”

“You could swear an oath.”

Voldemort sneers for the first time since he first confronted Harry. “Lord Voldemort is not meant to be bound by such oaths. I will not swear them. But I will turn into a different person who does not need Lord Voldemort’s freedom. Then I might be bound by oaths.”

“How can you even be sure that you’ll feel the same things if you change everything about you? That you’ll want to be my father, or care about hurting me, or want to make me proud, or anything?”

“I have designed this ritual. I know what I am doing.”

“Oh. Um. About that.”

“Yes?”

“We kind of destroyed the pentagram that you were using for your ritual and made sure that no spells like that could be performed in that particular room again. I thought it was the best thing to do?” Harry adds hastily as he watches Voldemort’s eyes grow a brighter and brighter crimson. “My courtiers did it because I asked them to, so you shouldn’t punish them? Um? Please? Sorry?”

Voldemort closes his eyes and stands there long enough that Harry at least eases past the fear that his father is going to explode in rage. Then he opens his eyes again. “No punishment for your courtiers, indeed. I would rather they follow your orders than not.”

“But for me?”

“You’re going to assist me in setting up a new ritual pentagram and doing some of the research so that I can decide which objects will stand in for sacrifices at the points. That was the main thing I had left undecided.”

“But I don’t want you to change yourself!”

Voldemort bends down towards him. Harry braces himself for a yell or something similar, while Basilisk hisses softly to him.

“Too bad.”

“What?”

“You are my son, and you will have to accept that you have a father. One who can make his own decisions, and who also has reasons for not wanting you to disrupt his ritual. Isidore has assured me that discipline is very important for children. You will have to help me rebuild the ritual you disrupted. That’s the way it is. Your courtiers are excused.”

Harry stares at Voldemort with his mouth open. Voldemort tilts his head, and Harry slams his mouth shut, shaking his head a little.

“I just—”

“Now you know what the ritual is for, and you know that it wasn’t for something like trying to destroy all my Death Eaters or you. You know that I will survive it and become the person I want to change into. You will help me rebuild it.”

“I—don’t want to.”

“Too bad.”

Harry opens and closes his mouth. He thinks he ought to be able to say something, something that will bring Voldemort around and make him see how crazy this is. But then again, that Voldemort is crazy is the exact problem that he’s been trying to solve.

“Does that mean I can go back into the ritual room and tell my courtiers that this was a mistake and they’re free to go?” he asks, hating how meek his voice sounds.

Voldemort switches back to English with a nod. “You may. But you will stay here until the end of tonight so that we can speak to each other.” And he turns his back and vanishes up the corridor in a swirl of robes. Nagini hisses sulkily at Harry and follows him.

Harry stands there in stunned silence until he watches the door close behind his father and the dark tendrils of magic completely vanish. Somehow, he lost track of the fact that it was swirling lazily behind Voldemort all this time. He was so focused on his father’s face and words that he forgot about it.

After how many long moments he doesn’t know, Harry turns and marches stiffly back into the ritual room so that he can give his courtiers the news. Whether it’s good or not, Harry honestly doesn’t know.

*

“I worry about leaving you here, my lord.”

“If I’m not safe here, then I’m not safe anywhere, Theo.”

Theo watches Harry. He seems shocked, more than anything. His eyes dart around the room as if seeking a place to rest. They flinch away from the destroyed ritual pentagram that’s now little more than a smear of ashes, that Theo does notice.

And of course their bond, which is full of little spiky slivers of red and grey that Theo hasn’t experienced before.

“Your father might still try to hurt you, my lord.”

“He did not.”

Theo glances over his shoulder at Corban, irritated. Apparently the man spent the whole of the confrontation between Harry and the Dark Lord behind a barrier of some kind that the Dark Lord must have raised, unable to interfere or make himself known. But he did hear what was going on.

Theo wishes he’d been there himself. He wants to be sure that he’s making the right direction—that Harry is making the right decision to stay for the night.

But if he remained here, he would have disobeyed his lord. And if he’s serious about claiming Harry as his lord and reassuring Harry that it’s fine for him to claim Theo as his courtier in return, he can’t randomly disobey.

He would need a better reason than this to do so.

Much to his irritation.

“I think it sounds mad,” Pansy says, twirling a curl of hair around her finger. At least she’s using her clear influence with Harry for his good, not just to his detriment, Theo thinks, reluctantly impressed. Pansy flicks Theo an edged smile that says she feels what he’s thinking down the bond, and turns back to Harry. “Why did you come here with the purpose to destroy your father’s ritual and then change your mind?”

“Because I thought he was madder than he is.”

“What did you think he was doing with the ritual, exactly?” Justin asks. The bond tying him to Theo flickers with sharp silver. Theo’s not entirely sure what that means, but at least Justin’s asking the questions that Theo would feel uncomfortable asking.

“I thought he was going to destroy himself. Or me. Instead, he intends to regrow his soul and become a different person.”

“But you can’t do that through a ritual,” Draco blurts.

“He told me that he’s a genius and he can do it.”

“If anyone can, it’s the Dark Lord,” Corban says. Theo shoots him a sharp glance, in case he’s longing too much for the service he left, but Corban only looks back in a way that makes Theo feel childish. “He’s not as much of a genius as he claims, but he’s inherently in tune with magical theory in a way that only the most powerful witches and wizards are. I think we should accept his word.”

“The word of a liar and a madman.”

“The Dark Lord rarely lies,” Corban says, and grimaces a little. “He would say that he doesn’t need to.”

Pansy and Draco and Neville all turn and glance in Theo’s direction. At least some of them have sense. Theo can admit that. He lifts his chin and says, “My lord, with your permission, I’d like to stay with you.”

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Theo.”

“Why not?”

“He agreed to exempt you—all of you—from his wrath for destroying the ritual. He considers that you’re my courtiers and have to obey my orders.” Harry snorts at the end of that sentence, and the bonds that tie Theo and the rest are dancing with such suppressed laughter that Theo finds it hard to tell what originates with whom. “But if you stay here, he might take exception to you and—do something I’d have to defend you against.”

“Why do you want a father who acts this way?” Justin asks.

“Because I never had one.”

Justin blinks, then flushes. Theo smiles. Maybe Justin feels a level of discomfort when he coaxes their lord into admitting something so personal, but the only thing Theo can think is that it marks their lord as different from any other Theo has ever heard of.

Then again, Harry is already much that way, and Theo knows it.

“Of course,” Justin murmurs. “That makes sense.”

“I’m glad you think so.”

It’s clear that Harry’s going to stay and no one can change his mind. But that doesn’t mean Theo has to let him stay alone. “If I had your permission, my lord?”

“What reason would I give my father?”

“That I want to apologize for destroying his pentagram and I’ll help you reestablish it for his ritual.”

Harry regards Theo with his head on his side. Then he says, “He might accept that.”

“But do you?”

Harry takes a quick breath that ends with him blowing air out of his lips. “I wish that wasn’t the only thing that mattered to you, Theo.”

“Unlike some mad geniuses around here, my lord, I’m not about to rewrite the laws of my own nature to please you.”

Harry scowls at him, then shakes his head. “Why am I even arguing with you? I know I’m going to lose. Yes, you can stay, Theo. And I promise to fight for you if my father gets angry at you.”

“Thank you, my lord.”

Harry scowls at Theo for the deep bow he gives, but honestly, Theo’s feeling like he wants to give one. He could imagine being dismissed coldly and outright by the Dark Lord for even making such a suggestion. If he even would have if he’d become a Death Eater, really. The thought wouldn’t have crossed his mind.

His lord is a rare lord, and that’s all the more reason for Theo to want to protect him.

He feels silent questions from most of the others, and he nods around their circle while Harry is arguing about something with his familiar. Yes, he’ll do whatever he has to do to make sure Harry returns in one piece to Hogwarts. He would never do anything else.

*

Lord Voldemort is more than content. His son’s accepted the truth, though with less peace and happiness than Lord Voldemort thinks he ought to feel. But when it comes to controlling his heir’s emotions, he has been forced to accept that things always go wrong.

All he can do is offer Harry the truth, and see what he makes of it.

He’s a little less happy about the fact that young Nott’s going to remain with Harry, but the boy is part of Harry’s court, and the one who stands closest to him, the way that Isidore has often done for Lord Voldemort. And the boy does seem sincerely repentant about damaging the ritual. It seems that all of them believed Harry’s idea that Lord Voldemort was going mad.

Madder.

But soon he will not have to deal with that problem.

He’s explaining, with the help of a diagram, what he wants Harry and Nott to do when a twang of the wards jerks him around. This is certainly not a welcome visitor, someone Apparating to the edge of the grounds. He tells Harry without looking at him, “Stay behind me,” and asks Nagini to go investigate the new visitor.

Nagini comes back more quickly than he anticipated, even sulkier than she’s been before. “It’s just a dog,” she says, and flicks her tail so that it hits Lord Voldemort’s feet.

“Do not be silly, Nagini. A dog could not have Apparated.”

“This one did.”

Lord Voldemort is about to continue a self-evident argument of reality with Nagini when Harry hesitantly clears his throat. “It could be my godfather,” he offers. “Sirius could have located me and turned into a dog after he got here, because he doesn’t know what kind of reception he would get.”

“Your…godfather.”

“Yes. What I said.” Harry lifts his chin defiantly, and truly, Lord Voldemort would never wish to quell the fire burning in his eyes. But it would be nice if, some of the time, it were less hot.

“And how would your godfather find you here?” Lord Voldemoet asks softly. Nagini coils by his feet, hoping, he knows, for the chance to strike. Young Nott is standing motionless behind Harry, also ready to strike. Lord Voldemort keeps his eyes on his heir’s face, however. It’s the most likely direction for a threat.

“He came back from the dead determined to protect me,” Harry says. “And he has some abilities that came from being in Death’s realm that I don’t fully understand. So either way, he would be able to find me.”

“You didn’t tell him where the house was?”

“No.”

And it’s a blunt enough statement that Lord Voldemort’s Legilimency would warn him of a lie. He runs his hand down his face in frustration, and then turns around and snaps, “Nagini. Escort the dog here.”

“But it’s a dog.”

“Yes, I understand. But in this case, the dog is also a human.”

“Disgusting,” Nagini comments, before she slithers away to bring Sirius Black into the room.

Lord Voldemort shakes his head, and waits until the large black dog—certainly a Grim—appears before he starts to speak again. Before he can, however, Black transforms into a man and blurts, “Harry, Dumbledore has some kind of plan to lure you into a trap. I don’t know for sure who it was, but he says—he says he has one of your courtiers, and that he’s going to send you a note about how they’ll go to Azkaban unless you return his wand.”

Lord Voldemort smiles. Suddenly, it sounds like things are getting interesting again.