lomonaaeren

Chapter Thirty-Two.

Title: His Twenty-Eighth Life (33/?)
Disclaimer: J. K. Rowling and associates own these characters. I am writing this story for fun and not profit.
Pairing: Eventual Harry Potter/Voldemort; mentions of others, including canon pairings, in the background, and past Harry/others
Rating: R (more for violence than sex)
Content Notes: violence, torture, gore, manipulation, angst, Master of Death Harry Potter, reincarnation, suicidal thoughts, suicide attempts
Summary: Harry Potter has been reborn again and again into new bodies as the Master of Death, some of them not human, none of them exactly like his old one—but he has always helped to defeat Voldemort in each new world. Now he’s Harry Potter again, but his slightly older brother is the target of the prophecy, and Harry assumes his role is going to be to support Jonathan in his defeat of Voldemort. At least, that’s what he thinks until Voldemort comes that Halloween night, discovers what Harry is, and kidnaps him. The story of a long fight between Voldemort’s sadism and Harry’s generosity.
Author’s Notes: This is going to be a very long fic, exploring some fairly dark character interactions. While the heart of the story is Harry’s relationship with Voldemort, that’s going to change only slowly and over time, and there will be plenty of concentration on other characters, too. Also, please take the tags/content notes seriously.

Chapter One.

Thank you again for all the reviews!

Chapter Thirty-Three—Confrontations in the Dark

“Are you all right, Harry?”

Harry leaned hard against his brother for a second, his eyes closed. He absorbed as much comfort as he could. Jonathan was still alive and unhurt, and he would be for as long as Harry had power in the world.

In the back of his mind, the Deathly Hallows snarled eagerly, begging him to unleash them against the people who would hurt his brother, or him, or anyone else that he wanted to bring under his protection.

But Harry forced himself to stand up and move back from Jonathan. He was older than his brother spiritually and mentally, and he had to be the one who would offer comfort. “I’m fine,” he said quietly. He added a few twists of magic to the air around him that would make everyone in the castle temporarily forget about the top of the Astronomy Tower unless they were already standing there. “But I got Voldemort to reabsorb a Horcrux.”

Jonathan stared at him. Then he abruptly gave a whoop and started dancing around the top of the Tower. Harry blinked after him.

“But that’s wonderful,” Jonathan said, and halted in front of Harry, and grinned at him until Harry thought his face might rip. “Why act as though you need to be rescued from it?” He abruptly reached for his wand. “Unless that bastard did something to you after you helped him do it?”

“Such language from an eleven-year-old,” Harry told him primly. “No, it just took a lot of power, and things have happened since then that I didn’t expect. Like Sirius coming to me and wanting to teach you Dark Arts.”

“Yeah, that was strange. But he was great last week, and I think it’ll help.”

“Oh, I know. I just think—I have to make some decisions now, and I’m still not used to making them in a world where everyone knows about my powers. I don’t want to do something that would disrupt someone’s life or warp their worldview.”

“But each life is separate from all your other lives, right? You’re not more likely to be reborn as one person than another? Or one person in the next world isn’t going to be like the person they were in the last world, just because?”

“Right,” Harry said, blinking, not sure where Jonathan was going with this.

Jonathan shrugged a little at him. “Then I don’t think you need to worry about disrupting people or warping people. This is the world we live in. You’re part of it. People will make the decisions and take the actions they will anyway. Just because they know about your powers doesn’t mean that you’re automatically doing something wrong.”

Harry blinked some more. Then he smiled, and his tone wasn’t teasing at all when he said, “So wise for an eleven-year-old.”

“Someone has to be when you start falling all over yourself with guilt.”

Harry nudged him in the ribs, and then said, “Do you think you can work with Sirius and Dumbledore in a holding pattern for a while?”

“Easier to work with Sirius. Unless you mean just put Dumbledore in a holding pattern?”

“You are wise, and I mean it,” Harry told his brother. “Yeah, that’s more of what I meant. There are things I want to do, but they’re all going to take time. Reaching out to allies and convincing Voldemort to absorb the other Horcruxes and making the war look more and more unreasonable in different people’s eyes.”

“I think I can keep things the way they are.” Jonathan hesitated. “Do we have to pretend to be at odds? I mean, he’ll ask me about you, and that Occlumency will keep my answers vague, but he probably won’t be satisfied with vague ones very long.”

“No. He probably wouldn’t believe it anyway. Just tell him that I don’t discuss the details with you. Because that’s going to be true.”

“It is? Why?”

Harry braced himself. He had known he would be making this decision, and that Jonathan wouldn’t like it, but he’d underestimated the depth of displeasure in Jonathan’s eyes. “Because even if it’s true that I can’t really warp people off their destined paths with my power, I can corrupt innocents. I’m going to be doing things that—I’m used to, but I don’t want to make you live with. I want to preserve your innocence.”

“I’m learning Dark Arts from Sirius! I’m not going to be innocent for long.”

“I know. But you don’t want to watch some of the things I’m going to do, either. Not even in your imagination. Let me keep you safe, all right?”

Jonathan stood there and fumed in silence. But then he asked, “Are you going to tell me all about it one day?”

“Yes, when you’re older and I don’t think it’ll hurt you to know,” Harry said quietly.

“Then I can live with it. But I want you to know that I’m here to protect you too. So if you feel the way you did at first tonight, come and talk to me, okay? I don’t want you to carry your burdens all alone.”

Harry smiled fiercely at Jonathan. He’d never had a sibling like this in all the worlds he’d lived in. “I promise.” He leaned forwards and hugged Jonathan one more time, absorbing the comfort that his brother’s arms locked around him gave.

Then he released the spell that caused others to forget the existence of the Astronomy Tower’s summit, and led Jonathan down towards the Hufflepuff common room. He would Apparate once he was beyond the spells that covered Hogwarts.

But he had to be sure his brother was safe, first.

*

“Ah, Severus. Join me, won’t you?”

Severus tried to hide the shaking of his hands as he put aside the book he’d been staring at uselessly for the past half-hour. He kept concentrating on words, skimming passages, opening books he’d already read, hoping for some crack in the Dark Lord’s curse. There must be one, if he could look hard enough. No curse was infallible.

But he had not found a passage yet. And now the Dark Lord stood in the doorway of the library, watching him with a comprehension more mocking than a sneer would have been.

He had made a request. Therefore, Severus stood and reluctantly followed him down the main corridor of the manor, towards a window that looked out over the gardens the Dark Lord had been more interested in lately.

Severus stood stiffly next to the windowsill, staring down at the insipid flowers and square garden beds. He avoided the Dark Lord’s gaze for as long as he was permitted. It didn’t matter, now, not with the permanent gateway that the Dark Lord had opened through his Occlumency.

“I found out that you intended to set Bellatrix against Harry.”

Severus cringed. Yes, he had suspected that, after the last time Bellatrix had sneered when he had seen her. He wondered now if it would be death at last. He might prefer that, with his mind spinning in tight circles of old knowledge and his plans for revenge all frustrated.

“I was displeased.” The Dark Lord turned to face him. For a moment, the light about his face flickered, which made Severus start. Why was the Dark Lord wearing a glamour? But he banished the thought as the heavy red eyes landed on him. “But I have thought about the plan, and found some merit in it. Particularly after some things that Harry had told me about his other worlds.”

Severus stared at the Dark Lord. If he intended to turn on the Potter boy, why did he keep calling him by his first name? “What do you mean, my lord?” he whispered, and kept his voice respectful and low only with the kind of control that had enabled him to leave the Marauders alive.

The Dark Lord lifted a hand and gestured lazily with his yew wand. A force seized Severus and crushed him to the ground. He screamed, for a moment sure that the pain meant his legs had shattered, or his elbows had turned backwards.

But the pain was entirely mental. The Dark Lord dug through his thoughts and spiraled around the most private areas of his mind, channeling all his power into a narrow rush through the doorway that he had opened in Severus’s Occlumency the last time. There seemed to be more of it, which baffled the small part of Severus still able to think clearly. How could a wizard be more powerful than ultimately powerful?

Words echoed deep in his mind, neither telepathy nor Parseltongue nor the kind of thought-trading that some powerful Legilimens could do amongst themselves, but commands that seemed to imprint themselves in his blood.

“You wish to turn on me. You will go to Dumbledore. You will volunteer to tell him everything that you know about my plans. You will even reveal the curse I have placed you under with regard to gaining new knowledge.”

Severus screamed again. The words were losing distinction as they tumbled through his brain, blurring, winding themselves in his own thoughts, making of him what he had most feared and despised the thought of becoming.

A puppet.

“You will do exactly as I say. You will convince Dumbledore that he has a loyal spy in the Death Eater camp, even if that spy has only turned to him out of anger and bitterness over the curse infecting his brain.”

Severus tried to fight, calling up his own distaste for the Headmaster of Hogwarts who had let Gryffindors get away with bullying him. He worked on his memories of serving himself, choosing the Dark Lord’s side because that would let him spend his time brewing more experimental potions.

It didn’t matter. Lord Voldemort’s voice flowed over his perceptions of reality and rewrote them.

“Above all, you will convince him that I am making more and more Horcruxes, that I am mad about them, that I distrust everyone and that I am chopping my soul into confetti. That is my master plan, to make so many that no one can locate them all. I even distrust Harry, who I had seemed close to, because he would be horrified if he knew the truth.”

The Dark Lord had Horcruxes? How many? Even that madness—

Yes, that madness. That was what was finally going to drive Severus from his side at last. He wanted to win, not serve someone so mad that he would cast away good servants who only wanted to brew experimental potions and be left in peace. It was the madness of the Horcruxes that had led him to place the curse on Severus that he had.

Horcruxes would even make the Dark Lord turn on Potter. And Horcruxes were the knowledge that he would carry to Dumbledore.

The knowledge pounded him. How many there were—thirteen. Where they were hidden—graves, townhouses, ordinary Muggle buildings in London. What they were—ordinary objects that no others might glance at more than once. Lord Voldemort had outgrown the notion that he needed to place the shards of his soul in grand, indestructible pieces of art. Ordinary stones and bricks and furniture and the like would do as well.

Severus had found out these secrets at the risk of life and limb, only because he was the greatest Occlumens the world had ever seen. Only because he could read the Dark Lord’s mind when the Dark Lord thought he was reading Severus’s.

He would use the Occlumency to hide things he didn’t want Dumbledore to see. Like his resentment of the Marauders and the Potters. He would do it.

He would become the master spy.

The torture ended at last, with the Dark Lord withdrawing from Severus’s mind in apparent disgust. Severus lay there, breathing, and barely dared to glance up at the Dark Lord, who was looking aside from him.

“Get out of my sight,” the Dark Lord spat.

Severus stood and bowed deeply, because that would maintain the necessary deception. He knew that Dumbledore would value the information he brought, but he also knew that he would need to be able to come back. He retreated when the Dark Lord stood motionlessly staring out into the gardens, apparently bored.

He would wait. A day, perhaps two. Enough to make the Dark Lord think that Severus had accepted this violation of his mind and soul as he had accepted all the others.

And then he would go, and have his revenge.

*

I need to see you.

Voldemort’s note said nothing more than that, but Harry came to the dark clearing in the woods. He had to admit to some curiosity as to how Voldemort had taken to absorbing the locket Horcrux.

Voldemort was waiting in the form that Harry had last seen him in, his eyes brilliant in the darkness. He made a short motion with his hands as Harry came towards him, and Harry halted. For a minute, he’d thought he was going to draw his wand.

But he didn’t, and instead Voldemort only whispered, “Harry.”

“Voldemort,” Harry said slowly, confused. He’d thought Voldemort would treat him with either greater warmth, because the Horcrux would have given him some of his emotions back, or greater coldness, because he wouldn’t want to show what he was feeling. This neutrality was unsettling.

Voldemort sighed and did draw his wand this time, but only to Transfigure a tree root into a bench that he sat on. “Will you join me?”

Harry nodded and went to take his place next to Voldemort. The Deathly Hallows were awake and watching in the back of his mind if he needed them, but despite the fact that Voldemort’s wand remained drawn, resting down near his side, Harry didn’t really think he would.

Voldemort watched him pensively, enough for Harry to decide that, yes, having a piece of his soul back had affected him. Then he asked, “Would you be opposed to me keeping one Horcrux for the purposes of immortality?”

“Yes,” Harry said at once. “If you’re missing even a shard of your soul, then you still won’t be able to attain any other method of immortality. You have to have them back, Tom.” Then he flinched, because Voldemort in any other world would react to that name with attempted murder.

“I do not like that name.”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

“Voldemort is still the name I chose. I will keep it until I think of a better one.”

“All right,” Harry said. This was one of the most surreal conversations he’d ever taken part in. “Why do you want to keep one Horcrux? I think you probably already knew what my answer would be.”

“Because attaining any other method of immortality will take some time,” Voldemort said, and lowered his voice until it sounded as though he was speaking through fog. “And in the time between absorbing the last Horcrux and attaining that method, I will be—mortal. I will be afraid.”

Harry stared with his mouth open. He’d assumed Voldemort would be afraid, but it wasn’t as though he’d thought he would ever admit it.

He moved without thought, laying his hand over Voldemort’s and squeezing it. Voldemort turned to him with a tempered flare of triumph in his eyes.

Probably wanted me to touch him. Harry would have rolled his eyes about Voldemort’s obsession, but accepting the truth he’d spoken and showing that it mattered was the only thing Harry wanted to do right now.

“Fear is natural,” Harry said quietly. “You might think that’s hypocritical for me to say, when I die every time knowing I’ll wake up and live again, but I fear losing the worlds I live in. The people I love. I always wonder whether they’ll be okay without me, especially if I die in the middle of a battle or something.” Or before you’re defeated, he thought, but that wasn’t the kind of thing he could say right then. “I wonder whether I benefited the world by living in it, all the time.”

“Why would you care about that?”

Voldemort’s brow was furrowed, the white scales that still seemed to linger beneath his skin standing out. Harry smiled faintly and withdrew his hand from Voldemort’s, or tried. The long fingers clenched around his, and stayed shut.

All right, then. Resigned to having his hand held, Harry said, “Because I try to make a difference in the world I lived in. To make it better. To heal people, love them, make them happy.”

“You have never lived just for yourself? You have never done things in those worlds to make yourself happy?”

“Of course I have. But a selfish act that would make someone else permanently unhappy?” Harry swallowed. “The only times I did that were in my first life, when I didn’t have the memory that I do now, or when someone else needed the results of that selfish act more. And each time, I do regret it. I can perfectly remember the guilt I felt every time something like that happened, Voldemort. I try not to cause other people pain because it means causing myself some.”

Voldemort was silent. Then he asked, “And if I told you that I needed you to remain with me tonight, not showing me magic, not asking me questions about when I will be ready to absorb another Horcrux?”

“I would do it,” Harry said simply.

And they did—sitting side-by-side on the Transfigured bench, long into the night, watching the stars and listening to the wind. At some point, Voldemort let go of his hand.

Harry still remained by his side.