Hey guys, sorry for the long gap between stories, I just haven't been in the headspace to write for the last few months. I have not abandoned any of my fics; I swear. Saying that, this story was sparked by a 28 hour Harry Potter Marathon and is dedicated to Ryudoi Ai, who made such a beautiful piece of artwork based on one of my stories. The piece can be found here (remove the spaces):
: / akatsutsumiayayuki. deviantart art/The-Shattered-Ones-ficart-369763929
Without further delay, I give you 'Obliviate'. Don't own, don't sue.
The Beginning
He should have realised, really.
He should have suspected something.
He should have been vigilant; constantly vigilant.
Voldemort always had a backup plan.
The man once split his soul into seven pieces.
Harry should have known he wouldn't leave anything to chance.
It happened in the Department of Mysteries, but he never thought, never realised.
Harry should have known.
The pain was intense; Voldemort inside of him. Every molecule of his body twisted and bucked, his mind filled with memories and thoughts that chipped at his very humanity when he could no longer identify where Tom Riddle stopped and Harry Potter began.
He played them, really.
Made them think he was doing it for safety.
Made them think he was proving a point, goading Dumbledore for death with Harry's stolen lips.
Voldemort always had a backup plan, and when Harry's stomach burned, when he felt like the man inside him was twirling a blade to make him scream, Harry didn't think anything of it.
Later Madame Pomfrey told him the possession left no lasting damage.
Harry should have known.
Voldemort always had a backup plan.
No one had touched his body after the battle; just used their wands to float him away from what had become of their friends and family. Harry watched the people mill around, lost now they had won, and felt the same emptiness inside.
Harry never thought he would survive the war; not really.
He watched from the stairs as the Weaslys clung to one another, and he wanted that. He wanted the touch, the warmth of living bodies.
Instead he walked around the crumbled stone and smears of red, into the small room where Tom Riddle's body lay.
He didn't look peaceful, not like the peace Harry imagined when thinking about the bodies of those who died to protect him.
He just looked dead.
There was a scrape of feet by the door, but Harry didn't turn to look; didn't look away from the pale waxy face of the man he had killed. The man who was so similar to him that he marked him as an equal. The man that, in many ways, was the last family member Harry had.
Harry reached out to touch his face in a rush of pity and felt the cool smoothness of lifeless flesh.
Then he screamed.
The pain was so intense that he was out before Malfoy had a chance to yell.
They fussed; all of them. They blamed Malfoy at first, but Harry stopped them. Madame Pomfrey could find no curse or damage, and Harry made her treat those who were actually injured rather than hover over him.
They said it was stress; the day catching up with him. Harry let himself believe it.
Malfoy didn't.
Grimmauld place was cleaner than he remembered, and Creature allowed him his space.
Hermione said it wasn't healthy, but with the wards up she was easy to ignore.
It was always easier to ignore.
Harry found himself lost in memories of the past more often than not; sometimes allowing a day or two to pass without notice. He didn't sleep much; not with the nightmares.
Creature forced him to eat, but he threw it up more often than not.
Harry saw the worried looks, and avoided the elf, guilty he had made him worry.
He walked the halls of the old house, and caught a whiff of something that took him back to being fourteen and at the world cup, helpless and scared in the woods while people around him burned.
Creature found him in the corner crying and wrung his long fingers.
Harry should have known.
He nibbled on dried toast, a copy of his old transfiguration book in hand, as Draco Malfoy stepped out of his fire.
He wasn't surprised, really.
Out of all the people Creature would betray his master's orders for, a pureblood and a Black would really be his first choice.
"You look awful, Potter," was all the blonde said.
His hair hung limp and his pale face had taken on a grey tinge; his robes hanging slightly from his thinner frame.
Harry had spoken at the Malfoy trial and had helped them avoid Azkaban, but could do very little about public opinion.
"You don't look so good yourself, Malfoy." His voice was hoarse from disuse, and it took a moment to remember the words.
Malfoy noticed his cautious sentence, but said nothing. Instead, he pulled out a board of wizard chess and began to set it up on the table between them.
"I was never good at chess," Harry said, because if Malfoy wasn't going to mention Creature going to him for help then Harry wasn't either.
"Scared Potter?" He asked, one elegant eyebrow adding to the lines on his face that hadn't been there last time he saw him.
"You wish," Harry replied, and moved his first pawn.
It became a regular thing after that, Malfoy visiting him. Sometimes they played chess or snap. Sometimes they glamoured themselves and walked to the local park. Sometimes they talked; most times they didn't. It was nice, having someone around who understood.
He loved Hermione dearly, but she was always trying to fix him. The Weaslys just wanted to pretend to war never happened.
Neville and Luna understood, to a point. They fire called sometimes.
The first time Draco came with him to visit Teddy, Harry buzzed with nerves. He held the small boy who grinned and babbled while Draco talked to him with his usual quiet drawl. Teddy laughed and changed his eyes to Harry's emerald green and his hair to a silvery blonde, and something changed in Draco's face; something soft and wild and not altogether different from how he looked at Harry most days. It made Harry feel nervous, like there wasn't enough air in the room.
When the left Andromeda didn't hug Malfoy like she did Harry, but her smile was warm.
Hermione hugged him tightly at platform 9 ¾ and Harry ignored the roll of his stomach in favour of lifting her slightly from the ground. There were tears in her eyes when he let go, and Ron's face was tight as he clapped him on the shoulder.
"Didn't think you were coming," he said gruffly, and Harry nodded, not wanting to tell them how long he stared at the letter marked with the Hogwarts seal before his hands would stop shaking enough to open it.
"I think it will be nice," he said instead. "A year without anything. Just being normal for once."
Hermione's lip wobbled threateningly and Ron's face darkened. Draco watched from a nearby pillar.
He was always watching.
Harry caught his eye and they exchanged a nod, slow and cautious, before the others bustled him onto the train.
Hogwarts was different. They had spent sometime after the battle putting the castle back together, but there were still walls that looked ready to crumble and bloodstains on the floor. It didn't look nearly as safe as it did when he first saw it, and knew by Neville's nervous twitching and Ron's white knuckled grip on his robes that he wasn't the only one who still saw bodies on the ground.
The eighth years, as they had been dubbed, were given small rooms on the third floor, where Dumbledore once kept a three-headed dog. Harry laughed when he saw it, but no one else did. He knew some of them thought he was mad. Sometimes he agreed with them.
With so few of them returning, no more than thirty, the staff didn't bother separating them into houses. No one complained about it and Harry couldn't help but think of the fight this would have gotten before the war. Instead the group drifted silently to their own amusements, more like the castle ghosts than the people they used to be.
Harry noticed McGonagall's worried gaze, but avoided her.
Class was normal, for once.
They caught up on what they had missed while their families fought and died, helping the teachers fix the castle between classes.
Harry had always screamed in his sleep. The Gryffindor boys had grown used to it over the years, but it frightened the Ravenclaws and Hufflepuffs to no end. The first time Harry had woken to a pale and terrified Draco shaking him awake, his breath cooling his sweat-soaked forehead. Harry looked around at the faces peering through the dark and knew had had dreamed of Voldemort again.
Harry threw up on the floor.
Classes were normal, and there was no plot to kill Harry and there was no one he had to save. It was nice. He played Quidditch with Ron on the weekends and studied with Hermione on the weekdays and played chess with Draco when he was free. His friends, who might have said something about it before the war, were silent on the matter.
Sometimes they treated him like glass, and it made him angry, made his magic lash out and crack the wards the teachers tried so hard to repair. Sometimes they treated him like a bomb about to go off, and it broke him.
They were in Charms when it happened. Glass goblets were handed out and Flitwick bounced about the front of the classroom, waving his wand expertly, but Harry couldn't hear him. Instead of glass, he saw wrought gold with a badger engraved on the side. He heard the rattling of Voldemort's soul, the screaming of a tiny evil voice, felt the burning metal press him from all sides. His stomach twisted, and then the glass goblets shattered as one, the air filled with tiny shards of glass that spun and whirled in a cloud of pain.
Students ducked under tables as the glass fell and Harry panted, robes clinging to his sweat-soaked skin.
"Well," said Flitwick. "That wasn't exactly what I had in mind…"
All eyes were on Harry and he shook, his stomach rolling, avoiding the eyes of Hermione and Ron and especially Draco, who had made sure he ate that morning.
"Mr Potter?" asked the professor, and then Harry lunged forward and vomited all over his shoes.
Neville was the one who took him to the hospital wing, but Draco was only a minute behind him. The two boys stared at each other, as if sizing the other up, before Neville glanced at Harry and nodded.
"Take care of him," was all he said, giving Harry's hand a squeeze as he left the room.
Draco didn't go to Harry's bed, but he wasn't far from it. Their eyes met, and Harry was the first to look away.
Madame Pomfrey bustled over before either could speak.
"Potter, I can't say I didn't expect to see you here this year; I only hoped it would be further into the term."
Harry said nothing but leant back, allowing his body to relax and his mind drift. Pomfrey huffed at Harry's unique show of consent and began her diagnostic spells, Draco hovering not far behind.
Her gasp made Harry look up and the other boy start. She glanced at Draco, disbelieving, then met Harry's eyes.
"Potter, you should have come to me sooner dear boy! Running around the castle in your condition, it isn't healthy!"
"What condition?" Harry thought maybe he should put more emotion into his voice, but didn't have the energy.
Madame Pomfrey looked more shocked.
"Potter, you are pregnant!"
Harry laughed this time, and felt disorientated at how brittle it sounded.
He couldn't remember the last time he laughed.
"Good one; I'm a bloke, I can't get…you know."
Madame Pomfrey did a few more spells, muttering to herself about irresponsible teachers and ignorant muggles, and Draco looked a little betrayed.
Harry didn't know why; it wasn't his fault Pomfrey's spells were wrong.
"Potter, wizards in the magical world are more than capable of conceiving. Mr Malfoy should have informed you of this before giving you the appropriate potions and taking advantage of you."
It was Harry's turn to look betrayed, but Draco shook his head, raising his hands slightly in defence.
"I swear Potter, I did no such thing. I swear. I swear."
"Well, I've never been shagged by anyone so forgive me for not believing you."
Pomfrey frowned and cast more spells, nodding slowly as different colours appeared above Harry's stomach.
"This pregnancy is magical; it appears you grew a womb naturally and the genetic material of the other father was passed on through a spell. I should call the headmistress-"
"Who is the other father? Can you tell?"
"Well, yes, but I would prefer if we sent for the headmistress first-"
"Tell me. Please. I need…I need to know who did this to me."
He was feeling dizzy again, and he could hear the windows of the hospital wing begin to crack with the pressure.
Pomfrey cast several more spells and a smoke cloud appeared.
"You conceived five months ago, which would be around the time of the Battle of Hogwarts. It is possible you were hit with a stray spell…"
The smoke took form, gathering as Harry had seen in his second year, written by the echo of a memory. Harry thought for a minute he was in a flash back again, but the choked gasp of Pomfrey and the sudden clasp of Draco's hand in his own proved that he was still there, that it was all really happening.
The smoke before them spelled out the simple name: 'Tom Marvolo Riddle.'
Harry felt the room spinning even as Draco waved away the smoke, breaking apart the name as if it was never there.
But it was.
Pomfrey's face had gone a pale white and her wand hand shook.
"That can't be. Potter…Harry…please tell me that you didn't, that he didn't-"
"No, never!"
She drew in a deep breath and stepped away from his as if his touch would burn. Her eyes drifted outside and stayed there.
"In ancient times, when arguments between wizards were settled by duels to the death, pureblood families created a spell that insured their line would carry on. In the likelihood that one would die, the wizard cast a spell on himself that would pass his genetic material onto the first person who touched his body. As it was tradition for the victor to close the eyes of the fallen, the winner of the duel would be left pregnant. The spells have been banned for centuries for obvious reasons, but…"
But something being illegal or banned never stopped Lord Voldemort.
Harry remembered the burning in his stomach at the end of fifth year that left painful twinges for months. He remember the shock of magic and agony when he touched Voldemort's corpse.
He always had a back-up plan.
Harry should have known.
Pomfrey was talking again, but Harry had missed most of it.
"The foetus is protected by the spell, but I may be able to find a potion to get rid of it. You will be fine, Mr Potter. Trust me."
She didn't look at him at all, and he saw how her lip curled at the word 'foetus'.
A foetus.
A baby?
A thing in his stomach that was part Voldemort.
But it was also part his mum and his dad.
It was part of him too.
Harry didn't realise he was crying until he felt Draco wipe the tears away. The blonde said nothing, but Harry preferred it that way.
"I just wanted one year," he rasped, no longer caring how broken he sounded.
"One year to be normal, to be a teenager. One year where nothing happened to me. That's why I came back to Hogwarts. One last year before I had to go and face the world again. I'm never going to get that though, am I? I'm never going to be normal; and neither will the baby. It's bad enough that any kid I had would have to live with being the child of the boy who lived. But this…this is worse. People will judge it and want to hurt it for something it had no control over. It will never be able to live a real life. I just wanted one year; but I don't deserve it."
Hermione and Ron chose that moment to rush in and hurry to Harry's side, shooting nasty glances at the youngest Malfoy as they hushed away Harry's tears. Draco allowed himself to be elbowed aside, to drift into the background as Harry curled into a ball and wept silently.
Draco couldn't handle that silence.
Not when those emerald eyes were screaming so loudly it was choking him.
Draco made his way to the medi-witch, watching as her quill flew across the parchment so fast the ink splattered and ran. She turned when she noticed him, but his wand arm was faster, raised before she even knew he was there.
Draco thought of the baby and of loyalty and of his life debt to the Potter boy.
Mostly he just thought of the look in Harry's eyes.
"Obliviate."