lomonaaeren

Chapter Thirty-Three.

Title: His Twenty-Eighth Life (34/?)
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-Four—Christmas Calling

“Jonathan!”

Harry raced to meet his brother as he got off the train at King’s Cross, leaping and grabbing him around the waist. Jonathan laughed and staggered back; Harry wasn’t much shorter or lighter than he was, now. He hugged him back and then held out an arm as Lily stepped up to them, her smile making her face appear brighter than normal.

“I’m so glad you’re home, Jonathan,” Lily said, and hugged them both at the same time before kissing Jonathan on the cheek. She looked up as Sirius got off the train. “And we have somebody to thank for training you, I see.”

Sirius smiled and nodded at them all, although his gaze lingered longest on Harry. Harry thought Lily noticed, but she only gave a strained smile and started to herd them away from the train. “Come on. We’re Apparating this time. I’ve had enough of the Floo for today.”

Sirius laughed as he strolled beside them, his hands in the pockets of his fur-lined robe. “You drop something on the way through, Lils?”

As their mother started the tale of how the Floo had tried to eat her gloves, Harry dropped back beside Jonathan. “You’ve been all right?” he asked quietly.

Jonathan met his eyes and nodded. “Yes. Dumbledore still thinks that the Occlumency he can see in my mind is the real thing.” He kept his voice soft enough that no one else would be able to hear them, but Harry wandlessly raised a few protective charms around them anyway. “And Sirius is brilliant. There are a few strange things, though.”

“What strange things?”

“Well, first, whenever I was outside watching Quidditch or doing homework or practicing with Sirius, I had the sensation someone was watching me. I tried to use a few spells to figure out if it was true, but I couldn’t find anyone. Neither could Sirius.”

Harry nodded slowly. It was possible that Voldemort had set up some kind of monitoring spell. Harry would figure it out. “And what’s another strange thing?”

Jonathan checked to make sure their mother was thoroughly distracted by Sirius’s questions, and then reached into his robe pocket. The parchment he pulled out crackled in a way that told Harry how expensive it was. He picked up the letter with a frown. There was a flowering thorn tree on the seal.

“The Parkinsons?” Harry knew their crest from other worlds, but it was possible it had changed here.

Jonathan nodded, though. “You know Acanthus Parkinson? Who won’t leave me alone?”

“Yes.” In no other world had Pansy had an older sister, although sometimes she had older or younger brothers. Harry would have to watch how he stepped with Acanthus, since he had no way to predict her actions from the past.

“She wanted to follow me because she was sure I was going to be powerful. But then she figured out I followed someone—”

“Jonathan.”

“What? It’s true.” Jonathan just shrugged inside his robes. “And she started writing to her family. I think she was trying to persuade them to offer you an alliance. It took her a long time. But there’s the letter.”

Harry had to tuck it away as Lily and Sirius caught up with them again. Sirius gave him a pained-looking smile. Harry only smiled back at his mother and began to talk exactly like any other child about how much he was looking forward to opening the high pile of presents under the Christmas tree.

“Something happened, didn’t it?” Jonathan muttered to him under cover of Sirius beginning to describe all sorts of absurd gifts that he couldn’t really have bought for them, and Lily hitting him on the shoulder.

“Yes. But I have to tell you later.”

Jonathan only nodded, accepting that, and continued walking beside him, shoulder-to-shoulder, as they made their way to the Apparition point. Harry stared at his hands and felt his eyes fill with tears he could never shed. He didn’t deserve his brother.

*

“You can have one small glass of mulled wine. But only one!”

Sirius watched Lily fussing over her boys, dictating their food and how they sat in their chairs and the time they would go to bed and now how much wine they could have, and he wanted to shake his head and groan. Did Lily want to drive them away? Jonathan put up with the fussing with a sort of amused tolerance, but he had already grown beyond it. And Harry played a part. Right now, that part was The Good Child that his parents obviously wished existed.

How can you forget what he is, even for one minute?

But Sirius reminded himself again, as Harry’s eyes briefly caught his, that that was why he was important. He knew the truth. He could give the boys a chance to be their real selves with him. And he could intervene when he saw Jonathan’s mouth starting to twist with exasperation that, unlike Harry, he didn’t have the maturity to hold back. He laughed loudly, which of course drew Lily’s attention.

“What is it now, Sirius?” The way she put her hands on her hips reminded him of the way she had looked in Hogwarts, when Prongs had first been drawn to her. Sirius pasted a leer on his face and fluttered his eyelashes.

“I was just thinking, since there’s mistletoe hanging above us…”

“There is no—” Lily looked up and noticed the small sprig that Sirius had floated to the top of the arched doorway before dinner. Lily shot him a frown, but with enough light in her eyes that Sirius felt his grin grow more genuine.

“A kiss on the hand. James said last year that’s all you get.”

“James isn’t here,” Sirius whined, and he could do whining pretty well, given that he spent a quarter of his time in a form that used it as a native sound. “What he doesn’t know won’t hurt him.”

“A kiss on the cheek.”

“One on the lips, and a tango.”

“You are incorrigible.”

As Sirius got up to flirt and banter and protest and joke, he caught Jonathan’s eye, and saw how his face had smoothed down again. He also got a small, grateful smile from Harry.

Sirius smiled back at them, and then faced Lily and set about trying to get past the cheek she was presenting him. To his surprise, it was actually more fun than just playing the game on its own would have been. It was sad, yes, that Harry’s parents—both of them, probably—couldn’t see who he was, or who his brother was. But Sirius felt like a master spy this way, as if he was thirteen again and trying to sneak into the Slytherin common room.

For higher stakes, but at least this suits me better than keeping court in Grimmauld Place all alone.

*

“Are you going to tell me what happened or not? It’s obviously something to do with Voldemort.”

Harry nodded and looked out the window for a second. There was a dusting of frost on the hard ground, but mostly it seemed inclined to freeze until the air felt like chiming crystal around him, not actually snow. “Yeah. I was trying to convince Voldemort to absorb another Horcrux. I couldn’t understand why he was playing so coy. The kind of immortality that he wants still can’t be achieved until he absorbs all of them, even though he isn’t going to do it exactly the way I thought he was.”

“Okay.” Jonathan sounded confused. “But what? You had an argument?”

“You could say that.”

“Sure, I could, but you’re the one who was actually there. I want you to tell me.”

Harry started, and then smiled ruefully at his brother. Jonathan had got more forceful since he went off to Hogwarts. Well, that was what Harry had wanted, someone who would stand up to him and not always be in his shadow. “This actually happened a month ago. I didn’t want to tell you anywhere near Hogwarts, and I had to wait to find the right words.”

“To do what?”

“To explain it to you.” And Harry drew in his breath and began, grateful that Lily thought they were both asleep up here.

*

“All you have to do is tell me where one of the Horcruxes is, and I can go and get it, and then you can absorb it. I don’t see what’s difficult about this.” Harry heard the ragged tone of his voice, and sighed. He really should Apparate away and leave the argument with his incredibly stubborn friend—partner in war—student—whatever—until tomorrow.

“You told me you knew where they were.”

“In other worlds! But then the Resurrection Stone wasn’t with the Gaunt ring, the way it’s been in almost all other worlds, so now I don’t know for sure. And I don’t want to pry into that, anyway. I want you to just tell me!”

For a moment, after that shout, no one said anything. It was a brilliant night, the moon out and full above the trees. Harry stood looking at it for a second, instead of Voldemort. Maybe the sight of that clarity would calm him down.

“You should be with me.”

Harry turned around at once. This was the first sign of yielding Voldemort had shown in weeks. “What? To hunt down the Horcruxes?”

“No.” Voldemort flowed to his feet and paced towards him. He’d been sitting on one of the benches that they’d Transfigured from tree roots. The more time they spent in the clearing, the more it came to look like some kind of outdoor classroom. He was staring at Harry with his eyes wide open and his mouth parted in that rictus-like grin that Harry knew meant trouble.

He managed to convince himself to stand still as Voldemort came up and prowled around him in a full circle. At least he didn’t feel the same terror about having Voldemort at his back that he would in most worlds.

Voldemort halted in front of him and said softly, “I wish to be immortal with you.”

Harry frowned at him. “I haven’t found any way to share the Deathly Hallows. Even in places like this world where one of them had another master, like the Elder Wand did with Dumbledore, they end up coming to me and staying with me.”

“Delightful fool,” Voldemort said, in a tone that Harry thought bordered as closely on affectionate as he could permit himself. “I meant that I wish to become immortal through the altered method I have devised—”

“I know—”

“And I wish you to apply that same method to yourself. I wish you to be immortal with me.”

Harry froze. Then he shook his head. “No.”

Voldemort showed his teeth again. Harry didn’t know how he could tell the difference between a snarl and a grin with Voldemort using the same expression for both, but he could. “You would stay with the same wheel of rebirth and life in worlds where no one knows who you truly are? You would give up the peace you have found here, with your brother? With me?”

His voice had lowered to the point that Harry couldn’t tell what kind of emotion was behind it. Harry stuck his hands awkwardly in his pockets. He couldn’t imagine reaching out to Voldemort right now. He took a slow, deep breath. “I have peace with you and Jonathan. And sometimes with Sirius, when I can talk to him about things that wouldn’t alienate him. I don’t have any peace otherwise. You know very well that I wish no one else had found out the truth about my powers.”

“You would give up this life?”

“All things die, Lord Voldemort.”

“I will not.”

“I’m giving you the chance to keep going,” Harry said, while privately he thought that all things died at last, and someday Voldemort would follow his body’s natural inclination into death, when the world held no more pleasure for him. “I don’t want the same chance.”

“You should want to stay alive. For me.”

Harry jerked a little, but didn’t look into Voldemort’s eyes. Then he might lie to humor him, and that would be more disastrous to all the rest. He shook his head. “I respect you. I’m willing to help you make your choice and attain your path because I think it’s the best for you. I’m not willing to make the same one.”

Voldemort hissed at him, but not in Parseltongue, and went back to circling around him. Harry gentled his breathing. It was strange. Even after so many years of peace with this Voldemort, and his own great magic, he still experienced fear at having his enemy encircle him. Then again, four years of peace didn’t mean much against literal millennia of war with the same person.

“I wish you to.”

“Your wish is not enough when it comes to me.”

“I cannot believe that you would be happy being born into a twenty-ninth life. Without your brother or the guarantee that you would even be human.” Voldemort was silent long enough that Harry almost turned around to look at him again, but then he began to speak. “Without me.”

Harry swallowed. Perhaps he should have seen this coming, but he honestly never had. He fastened his eyes on Voldemort’s, and murmured, “I do not want to be immortal. I was never meant to be—what I am. I gathered the Hallows on accident. I didn’t know I would be reborn until the first time I was, and it took me another life to realize that it would probably happen again. I don’t wish to go further down the path of immortality than I already have.”

Voldemort was still, head cocked like a bird with a particularly juicy worm in front of it. Then he said, “You would abandon me.”

“What are you talking about?”

“You would die eventually, and I would still be alive. What is to keep me sane when you are gone? Who would anchor me as you have? Who would believe, as you have, that I am capable of pursuing my ends with politics instead of war?”

Harry stared again. Then he said, “There’s no reason that you should go mad when you’ve reabsorbed all the Horcruxes. You’ll be sane then, and I don’t think you’re stupid enough to tear up your soul a second time. A sixth. Whatever.”

“But Lord Voldemort is—”

“What did I tell you about the third person?”

“Let me finish the sentence,” Voldemort said, and the tone of his voice made Harry fall silent. “Lord Voldemort is a persona that I created. I could not sustain it, most of the time, without some level of death and terror. But I have done it the last four years without those. Because I have you.”

“You’ll manage,” Harry said, and smiled at him. From the way Voldemort stiffened, that smile probably said some things Harry didn’t want it to say. But he felt as though he was walking through a nightmare. He had to end it somehow. “You’ll be sane, remember? And you’ll have those years to figure out better ways of living and keeping yourself occupied. If you win the war with Dumbledore, then you can also exercise your power in ways that you can’t right now.”

“What about immortality terrifies you?”

“People are meant to die, Voldemort. Maybe other people are reborn the way I am, but just don’t remember their past lives. It’s not like I’d know or they’d know. But…I’m tired. I thought I was going to see my parents at the end of my first life, who I never really got to meet, and Sirius, who I barely knew then. Instead, I went on to something else. I’ve come to terms with it. I can’t come to terms with the thought of endless life and watching everyone I know in this world die and leave me behind, when I know that I’ll never see them again. I wouldn’t even see any other versions of them again if I stayed here.”

“You would see me.”

Harry paused and then inclined his head. “That’s true. But it’s not enough for me.”

“You would be enough for me,” Voldemort hissed, and for the first time in months, the magic around him was thick with rage. Harry cautiously called the Elder Wand into his hand. “Why is the compliment not returned? What must I do, Harry?”

“Nothing?” Harry offered in confusion. “I don’t want to dictate your life. I’m just saying that you shouldn’t make your decisions to reabsorb the Horcruxes or reach for a new kind of immortality dependent on me, because I’m never going to join you.”

Voldemort roared. A lash of icy power soared towards Harry. Harry lifted the Elder Wand and it parted on either side of him, although he felt the magic wither the grass and frost the trees. He grieved that for a moment, then took a steady breath.

“I’ll return when you’re more rational,” he said, and Apparated away, wondering anew how to make Voldemort understand something that the Master of Death understood as the axis that drove the universe.

*

“And he hasn’t communicated with me since then.”

Jonathan reached out and gripped his hand. Harry started up from his mindless stare at the fire and smiled wearily at his brother. “Thanks. It’s not something I should be surprised about. And he’ll probably want me back at some point, if only because he can’t safely manage the Horcruxes on his own. But I do miss him more than I thought I would.”

Jonathan didn’t say anything, just maintained the quiet clutch of his hand. Harry sipped his hot chocolate and looked out the window at the frost and felt the steady presence of his brother beside him, warming him more than the fire.

I could never give this up, no matter what kind of immortality Voldemort promised me.