[Broken Glass Life]: Chapter Thirty of 'Glassfall'- Decision-Makers

[lomonaaeren]

“Harry!”

It’s strange, Harry thinks as he pauses in the doorway of Gryffindor Tower, that the first person to come running to meet him is Hermione, not Neville or even one of his ordinary Housemates who don’t know what’s going on. But she is hurrying down the stairs, and she comes over and stands in front of him, staring sternly at him.

“Where did you go? What did you do?”

“You don’t get to ask him that,” Neville says, appearing from nowhere. Well, no, all right, he seems to have been sitting in a clump of chairs near the fireplace. But it’s still out of nowhere as far as Harry’s concerned.

Hermione glares at Neville, but doesn’t bother responding to him otherwise. She just swivels back to Harry. “Where were you?”

“I don’t want to answer that,” Harry says, and then yawns. He didn’t realize until now how much the ritual exhausted him. Yes, he didn’t take an active part in it the way Father did, but he had to watch and feel how much it would hurt if it failed. He had little wounds in his hands that Theo healed before they parted in the entrance hall.

But he can feel a deep warmth glowing in his chest and throughout his body, even though he thinks it’s odd. Voldemort is stopped. Not sane, perhaps, but so much less prone to fits of rage than he was. He even managed to hold a civil discussion with Sirius about similar rituals that sometimes happened in the Black family and a few things Sirius was willing to tell him about Death’s realm.

Harry is content.

“You need to tell me, Harry! I was worried about you!”

Harry leans close enough that only Neville can hear them, although there’s few people in the common room at the moment. It’s late. “Worried about me, or worried about the terrible things you imagined me doing?” he whispered to her.

Hermione flushes and stares at him with huge, hurt eyes. “That’s not fair, Harry!”

“It is. Considering what you’ve done in the past and what you’ve accused me of.” Harry shakes his head at her and turns to look at Neville. “Were you waiting for me?”

“Yeah. Getting a little concerned?”

Neville pitches his voice up at the end into a question, and Harry manages to smile at him as he nods. “Yeah, I understand. But everything’s really good.”

Nevile looks him over as though he’s on the Quidditch team and Harry is claiming that after he fell from his broom. But it doesn’t take much effort for Harry to maintain a contented smile, and Neville finally nods. “Glad to have you back, mate. You’ll tell us what happened in the morning?”

“Of course.”

Neville nods one more time and turns to climb the staircase. Hermione folds her arms and glares at Harry. “Why can’t you just tell me?” At least she’s lowered her voice a little, as though just remembering they have an audience of some of their classmates.

“The way you told me when you and Ron went off to do that stupid thing?”

“I knew you wouldn’t understand!”

Harry just raises one eyebrow.

“I would understand!”

“No, you wouldn’t,” Harry says simply, and climbs the staircase.

Hermione follows him up part of the way, but maybe because he ignores her, or because she’s conscious of what a spectacle she’s making, she ends up just calling after him, “If you were my real friend, you would tell me.”

Harry keeps climbing, and lets the silence speak for him.

When he gets into his bedroom, he finds that Seamus and Dean are asleep, Neville’s in the bathroom, and Ron’s sitting up in bed, leaning forwards so intently that it looks as if he’s going to fall out. Harry just nods to him and then opens his trunk to get out a clean pair of pyjamas. Merlin, he’s tired. He doesn’t think he’ll need to worry about falling asleep tonight.

“Where were you, Harry?”

“I don’t owe you that information.”

Ron recoils. Harry turns and walks into the bathroom. He’s thinking of something as he moves, something that isn’t really that important but that he thinks he wants to do. It certainly can’t make the situation any worse.

But he’ll think about it in the morning. He’s so tired.

*

Hermione makes sure that her curtains are sealed shut with a spell no one else in her dormitory will be able to get past and that she also has Silencing Charms up before she lets herself fall apart.

She sobs into her pillow, her hands locked on either side of it. She shakes as she cries. She can’t remember the last time she did this. Maybe when she was seven and all the girls in her primary school class told her at the same time that they hated her.

And now it’s so much worse, because those girls were never really her friends and only pretended to be for a few weeks. But Harry was. Hermione knows he was. Less than a year ago, they fought in the Department of Mysteries together, and rode thestrals there to save Sirius. Why would you do that with someone who wasn’t a friend?

Hermione finally cries herself out. Her face stings and her eyes feel warm and painful. She sits up and casts a small spell to dim some of the sting. It’s the only kind of relief from the agony she’ll find, she knows.

She can understand why it was a shock for Harry to find out that he was related to Voldemort, and why he wouldn’t want to tell her and Ron right away. But how does it make any sense to go from there to thinking that Voldemort is family to him? Or that his only friends are haughty pureblood Slytherins who would have mocked him for his heritage a year ago?

His mother’s still Muggleborn, no matter who his father is. Why doesn’t that matter to them? Why doesn’t it matter to him?

Hermione tries to imagine what would have happened to her if she’d found out she was Voldemort’s daughter. The notion produces an immediate recoil in her. She would be shocked, of course, and upset. But she wouldn’t defend him, or run away to live with him, or act like he was right.

Why did Harry do it?

Hermione spends a moment to wipe tears out of her eyes.

Maybe he was so lonely during the summer that it was worth it to him. Maybe because he grew up without any parents at all, he thought he had to cling on to the one he had. But I still don’t know why he continued doing that when he came back from the summer and saw us again.

Maybe she’ll never know. Hermione will have to resign herself to one of her best friends being an alien to her no matter how often he explained his motives.

And that hurts.

*

“My lord.”

Isidore’s voice is soft and distant. Voldemort nods as he watches his old friend and courtier stare at him. The title is for courtesy’s sake alone, he knows. Isidore has always been polite, one thing that drew Voldemort to him more than to someone like Abraxas Malfoy or Orion Black, who thought they could look down on the poor “Mudblood” in Slytherin.

Odd that he’s having thoughts like that, when he hasn’t permitted them into his head or his presence for years.

But he flicks them aside like the gnats they are, because he needs to concentrate on Isidore. He asked the man to attend him in the room he’s often used as a throne room since he bought this house for him and his son to live in. But there’s no throne today, only an ordinary chair, and Isidore stands in front of him looking lost.

“What did you want to speak to me about?” Isidore asks. Voldemort sees his tongue and teeth flick in the first approximation of “my lord,” and then he lets the sound die. Voldemort nods to him gently.

“You know as well as I do that no bond of lord and courtier ties us any longer.”

“No.”

“You felt the bond die.”

“I meant that—I agreed with you. That no bond ties us any longer.” Isidore swallows and sits down in one of the tall black dining room chairs when Voldemort gestures to him. “But I would know why. What did I do that you cast me out?”

“It had to do with my son, Isidore, not you.”

“He convinced you to give up the bonds?”

Isidore’s voice is low, considering, not threatening, but Voldemort still finds himself leaning forwards. “I will have a vow from you before you leave that you will bring no harm to Harry.”

Isidore blinks. “I would not, my—I don’t know what to call you now.”

That’s fair enough, Voldemort supposes, with the name that Isidore knew him under once abandoned so long ago, and the title no longer appropriate. He considers for a moment, while Isidore’s hands grow tighter and tighter on his lap.

“Perhaps you should simply call me Gaunt,” Voldemort says at last.

He doubts he’ll use the name himself except when he has to correspond with people who don’t know him. He’s been Voldemort in his own mind for too many years to give that up now, even if he has to strip the title “Lord” from in front of it.

“Would you rather that I call you Voldemort?”

“Could you stand it?”

Holding Voldemort’s eyes, Isidore’s gaze slips downwards as always, and after a long moment, he shakes his head. “I would find it too strange. But I would do it if that’s your preference.”

“Because we are no longer lord and courtier, you don’t need to place my preferences above yours. If we are to be friends and allies, you can make a decision as to what you can bear, and what you cannot.”

Isidore makes a small, shocked noise. Voldemort watches him calmly. In many ways, he’d like to retain Isidore’s friendship. It would give him more continuity between past and present than Harry alone can, and Isidore’s mind is subtle and thoughtful. He could offer Voldemort good advice as always.

But he can’t force Isidore to stay any longer, and he doesn’t have the bond of the Dark Mark to ensure loyalty. If it turns out that Isidore doesn’t want his friendship. Voldemort will let him go to avoid being stabbed in the back.

“Could you—tell me more about why you decided to do this for your son?” Isidore asks at last.

“What would you not do for your son, Isidore?”

“He would never ask me to give up my service to you, my lord.”

Voldemort smiles at the statement and its quickness, as well as the habitual title at the end. “And Harry did not specifically ask me for this, either. He and I had an argument a little while ago. He accused me of not being a good lord to my courtiers, since Lucius Malfoy had died trying to fulfil my orders. I hurt him in response.”

“You did?”

“Did you think me saner than I was, Isidore? I assure you, until I went through this ritual, I didn’t know how mad I was.”

Voldemort isn’t sure that he would call himself sane even now. He doesn’t know that he wants to. His perspective has always been different from other people’s. He’s seen through their lies, their self-comforting platitudes, and their attempts to reassure themselves that they’re special and above others. He wouldn’t want to give that up even if it would bring him closer to the “sanity” that people brag about.

“I—simply thought you would never hurt your son.”

Isidore is leaning back from him, and eyeing the walls as if he thinks they might open to snap him up, or start running with blood. Voldemort laughs a little and reaches for the glass of water that’s sitting near to hand on the edge of his desk. “I didn’t, either. But now I know better. I knew that I could not stay as I was.”

“And your son?”

“What about him?”

“Does he intend to give up his bonds as well? I think that would hurt Theo.”

Voldemort shakes his head. “Harry is soft-hearted to a fault. He gives in far too often and does what others wish him to. I have only one person who is important to me in this transformed state, but he still has many.”

“Then you value me no longer.”

“You are less important than you were,” Voldemort acknowledges freely, with no sense of guilt. The best thing he can do for Isidore is show him the truth and let him decide if he wants to speak with Voldemort again at all. “I would still not like to hurt you or see harm come to you. But my son is in a different category, and Lord Voldemort is dead.”

Isidore sits in silence for enough time that Voldemort drains the glass of water almost completely. Then he stands up and bows his head. “I will think on this.”

“Please do. I would enjoy your company if you returned.”

Isidore nods once to him, without a smile on his face, and turns and exits the room. Voldemort holds the glass up to the light. He can enjoy looking at the chased silver it’s made of, without valuing it more than he does immaterial things.

Of course, what immaterial things he values have shifted irrevocably.

*

“I would speak with you, Lady Death.”

Sirius barely moves his lips as he speaks. He doesn’t know if calling on her is wise. But he feels like he has to know whether Voldemort fulfilled the death she wanted for him by dying in the center of the ritual pentagram. If he didn’t and Sirius still somehow has to kill him, to take Harry’s father away from him…

He doesn’t know what he’ll do.

There’s a long moment when the cloud descends on him. And then a woman appears on the plain of Sirius’s mind, clad in a white robe and a cloak that obscures her face, except for the sight of bloody teeth.

Sirius falls to his knees. In his mind, anyway. He had to descend far into his mind to accomplish the call, and he thinks his body is currently just lying on a bed in Voldemort’s house.

My second life is so strange.

“You have called to me, my Grim.”

“I—yeah,” Sirius says, thinking he sounds stupid, but also not knowing what to say. He clears his throat. “Can you—do you—can you please tell me the answer to my question?”

“Lord Voldemort has died. The man who survives has no more true Horcruxes.”

“Oh. He, ah, didn’t say anything about that.”

“Yes. He does not know.” The woman laughs, a sound that crashes and crackles like someone walking over autumn leaves. “There are living beings he would claim have Horcruxes within them, but he does not understand the true meaning of the word or why that would be impossible. Do not worry yourself over it, my Grim.”

“And Dumbledore?”

“He will be reaped.”

Her voice is indifferent, calm, cool. Sirius licks his lips and tries to decide how to feel about that. But in the end, the only question he can ask is, “And do you want me to be the one to reap him?”

“There is a meeting upcoming,” Death murmurs. Her head is tilted, and she seems to be listening to a distant sound, although Sirius doesn’t hear anything when he does the same thing. “Between him and one of my Hounds. It may be you in the end, but it might not be.”

Sirius bows his head. He has to accept that ambiguity the way he’s had to since he awoke in Death’s realm. “Yes, my lady.”

“You have served faithfully, my Grim. A gift.”

Sirius thinks that she’s saying his service is a gift, but instead, she tosses something at him that sparks and shines like a silver coin. Sirius scrambles to catch it with a yelp, and she laughs at him in the moment before she fades away.

Sirius opens his eyes and shakes his head. That was different from any other encounter with Death he’s ever had, and he doesn’t know what to make of it.

He shifts, and something bounces off his shoulder as if tossed and falls onto the bed.

Sirius picks it up, his pulse accelerating. It’s a silver coin, in truth, with a dog’s face on the reverse and a design on the obverse that he can’t read at all. The letters seem to drift and dance in his vision when he tries.

Sirius shakes his head again and tucks the coin away in his robe pocket, where it presses coldly and unnaturally against his leg. He doesn’t know what that means or what he’s going to do with it. As with all of Death’s gifts, he supposes, he’ll know when he sees it.

In the meantime, at least he can be relieved he won’t have to deprive Harry of his father. And curious about what she meant about living Horcruxes not truly existing.

*

“There’s someone here to talk to you, Nott.”

Theo opens his eyes and blinks. He went to bed maybe half an hour ago, he sees when he reaches for his watch, and that means it can’t be anywhere near dawn. And it’s apparently Crabbe who woke him up?

“What?” he asks, but Crabbe is already lumbering back to bed and refuses to turn around. Theo shakes his head and slides past the curtains, looking around.

There’s no sign of anyone. Theo sighs, annoyed. Crabbe probably had a dream and decided that meant he should wake Theo up.

“Theo.”

The voice is instantly familiar, of course, but it still takes Theo a moment to respond, because it’s so unexpected to hear in this context. Then he turns around and feels his jaw fall. Father is standing near the doorway of the bedroom, pulling his hood back as Theo watches and shaking his hair out.

“Father? Are you all right?” The only thing Theo can imagine bringing Father here is some sudden illness, or perhaps a Ministry investigation by the Aurors or something similar.

“I am well.” Father gives Theo a tempered smile. “And I’m sorry for waking you up. But I have questions that I think only you can answer, and I didn’t realize that you would be asleep already.”

It is still before eleven. Theo nods. “Of course I can talk to you, Father.”

They go down to the common room, which is empty. Theo thinks that Father probably came in through the fireplace, and either terrified anyone in the common room into leaving or made them decide independently that it would be a good idea. Theo sits down in his usual chair when he’s studying with Draco and Pansy and blinks at Father.

Father pulls his left sleeve up without ceremony. Theo nods to see that his forearm is bare.

“Are you coming to ask Harry to perform some ritual to ease lingering discomfort or something?” he asks. “Of course he would.”

“No. I am coming to ask you whether you think a chimera should take its place.”

Theo blinks and stares, and blinks and stares. As long as he can remember, he wasn’t welcome to touch the Dark Mark. He could ask questions, but part of Father’s life always remained private, revolving around the Dark Lord and his court. Theo assumed without asking that it would be the same with his life with Harry.

And of course it is. Father isn’t asking him to reveal his lord’s secrets. He’s asking Theo to talk about what he thinks of Father possibly becoming Harry’s servant.

Theo clears his throat. “I, well, it wouldn’t be anything like it was when you served the Dark Lord.”

“I know that.”

“Do you, Father? That’s what I need to know before I answer any of your other questions. You had a powerful and important place at the Dark Lord’s side, and I think you were the most valued of his courtiers. Harry could come to trust you, but younger people would be above you in his regard. I would be above you. Could you tolerate that?”

Father’s eyes widen a little. Then he smiles. Theo doesn’t know what to call the smile. He’s never seen anything like it before. “You have wisdom beyond your years, my son.”

“I had a good teacher.”

Father nods briefly. Then he leans back and closes his eyes. Theo knows without asking that he wants to think about it, so he turns his head to contemplate the fire.

*

“Theo?”

Theo opens his eyes and blinks. It’s a little embarrassing that he fell asleep when Father was making such an enormous decision. But he sits up without letting more than a small flush on his cheeks show. Father taught him to control his emotions, and Theo has tried to be even better about it since he became Harry’s courtier. Theo has to be able to provide a pillar for his lord to lean on at least some of the time.

“I’ve made my choice.”

“Yes?” Theo asks softly.

Father leans forwards. His face seems leaner than it usually does, and Theo wonders abruptly how well Father’s eaten and slept since the Dark Lord severed the bond between them. “I want to bear a chimera.”

Theo lets out a slow breath, then smiles. He realizes that he was hoping Father would make that decision. His own emotions were so confused and tangled before that he wasn’t sure. “That’s wonderful.”

“And you can put up being in a court with your father?”

“Yes, Father. Until Harry came along, I assumed I would need to serve beside you under the Dark Lord, and that never caused me any pain.”

“A good point.” Father tilts his head, then stands up. “I will need some time to think about it before I can welcome another bond. To mourn the loss of what might have been. Perhaps a week?”

“Of course. I’ll tell Harry.”

“Good.” Father moves forwards and sets his hand gently on Theo’s forehead. Theo looks up, and Father smiles at him. “You are the best son I could ever ask for. Go to sleep.”

“Yes, Father.”

Theo manages to stumble up the stairs and into his bedroom without waking anyone. Almost the instant he stretches out on the bed, he goes to sleep.

His last waking thought for the night is that he’s glad he’s turned into someone multiple people can be so proud of. Including himself.

*

Isidore steps out of a Hogwarts Floo for the second time in two days and smiles at Corban, who’s setting up glasses of Firewhisky on the table in front of him. “No more waiting, old friend.”

“Theo did tell me that you wanted some time before you approached my lord.”

Isidore waves his hand and walks over to pick up a glass of the Firewhisky. “That’s not what I meant. I still want some time to mourn what was lost and think about the past. But for right now, I want to toast the future.”

Corban smiles at him. It strikes Isidore, who hasn’t seen Corban in a few months, how much more relaxed his friend seems. The lines of anxiety don’t curl as prominently beside his eyes, and he’s lifting a glass in toast to Isidore before Isidore even thinks about it.

“To the future, then. And Lord Harry.”

“To Lord Harry,” Isidore says softly, before he clinks his glass and takes a long swallow, feeling the drink roll down his throat in a burning wave.

And he and Corban do sit and talk of the future. Corban describes how he came to the school looking to face and soothe the demons of his past, and found even more demons settled than he’d thought. Isidore laughs, and listens, and nods thoughtfully at a number of the things that Corban tells him.

He does have a question of his own to ask, the single most important one. He slips it casually into the middle of their conversation after he and Corban have laughed over Corban being turned into a goat.

“And do you think it’s likely that Lord Harry will follow the path of his father someday and abandon his courtiers?”

He keeps his tone calm and inquiring. Corban, who by this time is a little drunk, doesn’t seem to notice. Good.

“Oh, absolutely not.” Corban shakes his head and gives a faint hiccough before he sips from the glass again. “It’s—well, even when the Dark Lord had his courtiers, he wasn’t attached to people, did you notice? He would have given any of us up for someone who’d told him how to defeat Dumbledore, or for a rare magical book.”

Isidore can’t say that he feels exactly the same, since he was one of the Dark Lord’s inner circle, but Corban’s words are true enough as it pertains to the ordinary Death Eaters. “I see. And Lord Harry doesn’t do that.”

“No. He cares too much about us to abandon us. He might get killed, I suppose.” Corban’s hand tightens on the glass, a fierce expression coming over his face. “But I’m going to do my best to prevent that from happening.”

“And I will, as well,” Isidore says, which makes Corban nod his head in satisfaction and change the subject.

Later, as he’s stepping out of the Floo into the deep silence of his own home, Isidore wonders if Harry Gaunt, or Potter—the Dark Prince, the Dark Lord’s son—will think him weak for not being able to stand on his own. No matter how much freedom he might have under a new lord’s reign, Isidore knows that he won’t do well without respect.

But he doubts it. Harry might be irritated by having someone else who wants him as a Lord, from what Corban said. But he’ll do his best.

And so must I.