Chapter Forty-Two: The Heir Game
Harry shook his head slightly when Draco looked at him. Draco was getting damn tired of that. He'd told Harry about his exploits with the Yaxley twins as soon as Harry had been released from the hospital wing, of course, but Harry had only remained silent since.
Well, silent and shaking his head.
"What?" he burst out, when Harry stole another sidelong glance at him over the extra Transfiguration essay that Henrietta Bulstrode was making him write. "Do you mean to damn me as reckless for going up against the Yaxley twins? I knew what I was doing, Harry. No one else might have been able to possess them, but I was. I—"
"Draco." Harry's voice was so deeply calm that Draco found himself shutting up, and blinking. "That's not it at all."
Harry's hand slipped out and cupped his cheek, lifting his head until they were eye to eye. Draco hadn't been far from him before, but now they were close enough that he felt stripped naked. Harry's eyes had an almost perilous mixture of emotions in them, affection and something like awe.
"What you did was wonderful," Harry whispered. "And nothing I would have imagined you capable of doing. The images you describe would have driven most people out of Sylvan's mind, possession gift or not. Merlin, they might have driven most people out of their own minds. I didn't even know if one could pierce through the sacrificial magic that guards them to invade their thoughts at all. But you managed, and you did so well. I'm just thrilled and surprised by that, Draco, and proud of you, and glad that my lover can defend himself. That's all."
He leaned forward and kissed Draco deeply and slowly enough that an immediate fire sparked to life in his groin. This was kissing with intent, as far as he was concerned, and he grabbed Harry's neck when he made to pull back. Harry gave him a calm, wide-eyed look.
"I have a Transfiguration essay to write—"
"No, you don't," Draco argued, pushing the book and the scroll to the floor, and pushing Harry flat where they'd been. Harry went willingly, smiling up at him with bright eyes. Draco leaned down and kissed him again, demandingly, kicking the deep heat into high flames. "Not after that."
Harry turned his head to the side so Draco could access his neck, and sighed blissfully as Draco bent to bite him.
It was only later that Draco considered the possibility that he wasn't the only Slytherin in the room, nor the only person who could use honesty to get what he honestly wanted.
SSSSSSSSSS
Indigena did not know what was wrong with her. She knelt at her Lord's feet, among the remains of dozens of dead and dying Death Eaters. Their arms had bled blue-green goo that consumed their bodies for hours. The stink was awful. Some still died, screaming and thrashing, their cries and struggles both growing weaker as the poison did its work. She and her cousins—and Evan Rosier, she supposed, if one counted him—were the only true Death Eaters left. Lord Voldemort's rage was all around her, black as ink an octopus had shot, with the swirling cold of deep sea water.
All those awful and high and solemn and horrible things, and she had to bite her lip to keep from laughing.
"Indigena."
He might have found her out, and perhaps he would destroy her for that. Indigena could not bring herself to care. She lifted her head just enough to look at the new snake curled around his waist, which he was training to see for him. "My Lord?" she murmured.
"You are skilled in Transfiguration and in weaving with your plants to create a shadow of something that is not," Voldemort breathed.
"Yes, my Lord." Indigena's amusement admitted a bit of confusion. She didn't know why he was asking her this.
"We must push our plan forward, though Feldspar is dead," her Lord said harshly. "A loss for a loss. We are losing, Indigena, in the eyes of the world, and we cannot afford to lose, or Dark wizards will not join us."
After this, I don't think many people will be rushing to join us, no matter how attractive we look, because few people have the ambition to collapse into mush, Indigena thought, but not even the wild irreverent violence of her heart would permit her to say that aloud. "Of course, my Lord," she said instead.
"You will go to your bush that is capable of growing anything," said her Lord. "You will encourage it to grow as close and complete a replica of Feldspar's body as possible. We still need him."
Indigena felt her eyes brighten. A challenge, a true challenge, and one that uses my skills instead of my ability to kill. It felt like too long since she'd had a task worthy of her abilities. "Yes, my Lord," she repeated, and climbed to her feet.
She knew what her Lord would do with Feldspar's body. She found that she did not truly care, however. His plan had been in motion for a long time, long before Indigena began doubting her own loyalty, and if there was anyone who deserved the full fury of it, it was its targets.
SSSSSSSSSS
Aurora ran a weary hand through her hair. Erasmus had been speaking about Harry's defiance of not just British law, but international law, for the past two hours, and there were only so many ways that phrases about the same thing could be combined to sound fresh and new.
"—doesn't understand that I am trying to think of the larger picture and life after the war—"
To her horror, Aurora had to bite her tongue to keep from retorting something about life during the war, and how that was at least as important as British wizards being able to freely travel in Europe some distant day. She smoothed her face out and shook her head. I may keep all the ridiculous sentiments to myself that I like, but sharing them with Erasmus is out of the question.
Unfortunately, Erasmus, who'd been pacing the paperwork shop that had become her office, turned around in time to see the headshake. His body bristled, and his mouth puckered in defense, as it did whenever he found someone who disagreed with him. "What is it?" he hissed.
Aurora stared at him in silence. She could see the brightening gleam in his eyes—not just fanaticism, but his own weariness of the situation. She could see his body strained taut with stress. One word in the right place, one kick at the weakest point of the structures holding him up, and he would collapse.
He is a terrible wartime Minister. The stress is destroying him. He might have done well in peacetime, but we'll never know.
Oddly, it was that observation, which she would have agreed with carelessly if anyone voiced it, that crystallized things for Aurora. She sat up and pinned Erasmus with a fierce gaze, which seemed to both startle and please him. Obviously he thought she had retained her interest in his rambling speech even as it passed the two-hour mark.
She had not. She had simply realized that Erasmus, being a terrible Minister, was making the Ministry die with him as a player in the war. And Aurora would not have that. She had not linked her fate inextricably with his, but she had linked her fate, she thought, inextricably to the Ministry's. It should be the refuge and the friend of those who were only trying to live through the war, those who did not want to fight and should not have to make the choice to do so. Aurora counted herself no friend of Voldemort, and though she was more sympathetic to what Harry was doing lately, he required things of his followers she could not give. That left the Ministry as her sole place to stand.
And she was interested in standing, not running off.
"Just thinking that you're absolutely right, sir," she said crisply. "There are things about ordinary wizarding life Harry ignores. He might think he knows them and has taken them into account, but he hasn't. He would have to listen to advisers to have the full picture. No single wizard can comprehend everything about Britain's situation right now."
Erasmus nodded, pleased. Aurora watched the numerous ambiguities in her speech swim right past him. "Good," he said. "That is good, Aurora, that is right. I trust that I can leave you in charge of drafting a statement to the International Confederation explaining that Harry doesn't intend to obey their decree, and requesting help?" He moved towards the door. "We will need Lord-level wizards to handle him."
You've had four in Britain already, and three of them were on the same side. And now you want to invite more in? Oh, yes, let's openly change the balance of power among the strongest wizards and witches in the world, and see what happens!
But Aurora was beyond saying something like that. Events had left Erasmus behind. The events might be only in her own head for now, but they would soon enough move into the real world. She could regard Erasmus with a sort of distant pity. He was so irrelevant, and soon he would know it.
"Of course, sir," she said.
Erasmus nodded one more time, and shut the door behind him. Aurora spent a few moments carefully drawing up the long list of titles that would have to go at the head of a letter to the Confederation, watching the closed door the while. If he suddenly came back in because he wanted to discuss something else with her, he should see her there.
But he didn't return, and when Aurora subtly cast a spy spell that let her see through the door and into the hall beyond, he didn't stand there, and there was no sign of his Auror guard.
Aurora rose smoothly to her feet, and turned. She knew exactly whom she should speak to about unseating Erasmus and starting a subtle rebellion against the trend of the Ministry. It would not look strange for two of the Order of the Firebird to be together in the same office, anyway.
She opened the door of the room where she knew Cupressus Apollonis most often worked, and blinked when she found him facing her, a faint smile curving his lips. He placed his fingers together in a triangular shape and nodded to her. "Come in."
Aurora stifled irritation as she shut the door. Just because Cupressus was a bit faster than she was at seeing the obvious was no reason to turn against him. She had worked with people far more difficult than a smug Light pureblood bastard, Merlin knew.
"You know," said Cupressus, staring into her eyes. "You know that turning closer to Harry's side while preserving as much of the Ministry's neutrality and original mission as we can is the only way for those things we love to survive."
Aurora nodded. "I do." She leaned forward. "The question is, how do we do it?"
Cupressus pulled a long scroll from the side of the desk with a flourish. "I am so joyful that you happened to ask."
SSSSSSSS
The rage had passed like a storm, like a wind on the sea, like the flying buttresses of cloud that guarded too many places in his islands to be coincidence and were signs of the presence of the Dark Lady Kanerva Stormgale. He was beyond rage and into the cold swamps of hatred.
No one could match Lord Voldemort for brooding, not for regretting lost chances. Should the soul-pattern be destroyed? Harry knew about it; Lord Voldemort had felt that spark of knowledge from him before the contact between their minds cut off. And while the power in that would gather and grow until Midwinter, it left him unable to take vengeance for his fallen Death Eaters in the meantime. And the wild Dark was chancy. Binding it, even with its own interest, was no guarantee that it would join him when Midwinter came.
But no, he could not turn. The pattern was nearly complete now, and had its own momentum; it would probably continue growing, summoning flesh and blood from his three remaining Death Eaters in order to finish itself. It had its own match and its own map in Harry's soul, and so long as that existed—which it would until Midwinter—it did not have need of a human vision to guide it. That simply made the matter more convenient.
But Lord Voldemort, he needed to do something to express his hatred. Being where it had all begun was no longer enough. Knowing the third was no longer enough. Anticipating the expression on Harry's face when the hammer fell and he knew everything was no longer enough.
And Harry had turned the trick of tormenting him back upon him.
The snake around his waist hissed. The basilisk eggs tucked in the corner of the burrow warmed themselves as under a summer sun and did not speak yet. The hatred in his mind throbbed like a beating heart.
There was—one thing he could do. One thing that Harry's own actions had neglected to protect him against. But it was risky, and he would have only one chance. More important, thought the Lord Voldemort, high and deep in the darkness, it would require some pain to himself.
But it would cause more pain to Harry.
He looked ahead into the darkness, and chose.
SSSSSSSSSSS
Harry frowned slightly at Connor. "Of course I understand that, Connor," he said. Why his brother would have been reluctant to come to him about this, he couldn't understand. "We were so close when we were children, because we didn't have anyone else. Of course you can feel neglected if you think I'm closer to other people than you." He reached out and put his hands on Connor's shoulders, ignoring the way that his right hand flinched at contact with the cloth of Connor's robes. It was only freaks of pain that dashed through his flesh which made him feel that way sometimes, and he could put up with them. "What I wish is that you had told me about this before."
Connor turned his head and glared the other way. Harry wasn't fooled. Connor's sullenness was a defense mechanism most of the time. He wanted other people to go away on the surface, but digging deeper and forcing him to confess what really bothered him yielded rich results.
"I didn't want to," Connor muttered at last. "You always seemed so happy, Harry. And I wanted you to be happy for once in your life." Then he turned back and scowled. "But it's not wrong to want to have a relationship with my brother, is it?"
"Of course not." Harry looked around for a moment. Connor had met him with a torrent of words about feeling neglected in the hallway near Gryffindor Tower, and there was no comfortable place to sit. In the end, he conjured chairs and pushed them back near the wall so that they wouldn't completely obstruct the corridor, then sat Connor down in one. As he took the other, he made sure not to look away from his brother's hazel eyes. "What kind of relationship do you want us to have that's different from the one we have right now?"
"I just—I want—" And Connor stopped and paused as if confounded, as if he didn't really know what he wanted. It had been Harry's experience that most people didn't. At least Connor was more aware of the costs and consequences of his desires than most people had the experience to be. He waited.
At last, Connor murmured, "I feel alone, sometimes. I know that's not true. I have you, and Parvati, and Ron, and Hermione, and more friends if I ask them to come a little closer. But I'm the only person with the last name of Potter in the world. I'm close to you, but I don't have importance and a unique gift in the war effort the way that Draco and Snape do, to justify their closeness."
"You will never have to justify anything," Harry said firmly.
"I feel as though I do." Connor's fingers twined anxiously together. "And I don't know how. I've tried and tried, but I don't think I'll be able to learn my Animagus form before Christmas holidays. I don't know how to help you in battle, Harry. I didn't even do anything when I had Death Eaters directly beneath me during the attack on the Quidditch game. How can I help you when I'm so useless in battle?"
Harry blinked. "Connor," he said. "I don't—I'm not leaving the world, or becoming part of a different one, just because I have to fight Voldemort. I don't only want people around me who can contribute to that effort. I want people living in safehouses, yes, if they're too frightened to fight, or if they're too young or otherwise incapable of it. But why would you think that you had to start being someone other than my brother just because there's a war on?"
Connor shrugged, staring at the floor. "I don't know. Everyone else was two people, who they used to be and the person who could help you, so I thought I had to be two people as well?" He mumbled the last words.
I wish he felt as though he could talk to me before matters got to this point. But it was hardly something Harry could scold him for, considering how well he kept his own secrets. He gently rubbed Connor's shoulder instead, and sought for words that would reassure his brother.
"Look," he said at last. "Even if we can't share a battle-bond for the year of the War, or however long it lasts, we shared something in our childhood that no one else will ever approach. You know me better than anyone else, Connor—all the little things." He paused, but his longing to keep what he said next secret was nothing next to the longing to reassure Connor. "Sometimes I think Snape and Draco want to pretend that everything which happened before I was eleven doesn't matter, that it was just a shadow I've thrown off now. And that's not true. You're the only person left who knew me all along, Connor. That is all I would ever need from you. You could become great in battle, and I wouldn't love you any more. You're my brother."
Connor leaned close to him, and to Harry's relief, his eyes were bright and the jumping pulse in his throat had relaxed.
"Thank you, Harry," he whispered. "If I feel that alone again, I'll remember this, or come to you."
"I'm glad—"
Harry closed his eyes and shuddered as he felt an invisible hand grip his throat. It hurt. Fingers clamped down around his windpipe and started to choke him. When he stood and turned south, the pressure eased for a moment, then began again as if it had never been interrupted. It reminded him of nothing so much as the pinching that the wild Dark had used to lure him to the battlements.
"Harry?" Connor's voice sounded very far away.
"Someone's choking me," Harry whispered.
But now, along with the touch, came a voice. It was flat and smooth, without inflection—probably not human, Harry decided. It intoned words from a short distance away. When he concentrated, Harry realized the words were his name and a sort of legal refrain, repeated over and over again.
"Harry. Born Harry Potter. Not without a surname. Offered Black, offered Snape, offered Malfoy, offered Opalline, offered Burke. But one claim over all holds him. One claim in the name of magical heir, not in the name of legality or rejected blood."
The voice paused, and then began repeating the passage again. This time, Harry felt a twinge in his mind to accompany it. He knew exactly where the twinge originated: the part of his thoughts that held and contained the pool of darkness.
Connor was shouting his name now. Harry had no strength to respond, though. He'd dropped to his knees, and the voice and the twinge and the choking sensation grew until they became all the world. This time, when the voice reached the end of the passage, it didn't turn back to the beginning as before, but continued.
"One claim as magical heir, for magical heirs are the most sacred and valued of children, and no one sane refuses the claim. By the name of the one born Tom Marvolo Riddle and called Lord Voldemort, by the power shared, by the magic flowing between them, the lord calls his scion home."
The choking and the twinge grew so bad that Harry came close to Apparating immediately. He was sure he would have ended up at Voldemort's side if he did.
He couldn't breathe.
He forced that fact away, slamming it behind the walls of his training to ignore pain, and faced the facts that mattered. Voldemort was performing the Heir-Call. It was rarely used; most parents didn't want to summon their magical heirs back to their sides and bind them for the rest of their lives, which was what the spell did, even after a severe quarrel. And most disowned wizarding children could protect themselves against the spell easily enough by marriage, joining, or adoption into another family.
Harry had no surname, though, and magical heirship was considered more important than merely legal inheritance, so Voldemort could assert a claim.
There was an easy protection against that, of course. Name a family now, bind himself to that family, and Voldemort's call must cease.
But Harry refused to let himself be driven into that. He had made the decision to reject his blood heritage freely. When and if he chose another lineage to replace that one, it wouldn't be a stopgap measure like this one was, but a carefully considered decision.
By the time he finished that thought, he was gasping on the floor, and his vision burst with patches of black and red. His body rattled limply to Connor's shaking. Had he ever had the strength to move and walk on his own? It seemed he hadn't.
Voldemort's laughter intruded over the calm repetition of the voice invoking the Heir-Call. The twinge grew worse. Harry knew which hold Voldemort was using to summon him, of course: the dark parts of his mind, the parts most similar to Voldemort's, which he'd swum while trying to learn the secrets of his silence.
But that was not all he was, even if sometimes it felt like it, even if he associated mostly with Dark wizards and used mostly Dark magic.
Harry opened his eyes carefully, and drew on the air, using his magic to force it into and out of his lungs, making himself breathe as if he were a bellows. Connor's anxious face loomed over him. Harry forced his hand to move and clasp his twin's wrist. It was a tight enough grip that Connor winced, but that heartened Harry. That meant he had some strength left for something besides Apparating to Voldemort's side and bowing down, which was rapidly becoming his overriding motive.
"Connor," he whispered. "Cast a spell into me."
Connor fumbled for his wand and drew it out so quickly that he nearly hit himself in the head with it. His voice trembled, but he managed to whisper, "Rictusempra."
Harry gasped as the Tickling Charm settled over him, and began to jolt him, nearly sliding his hand from Connor's. Perhaps it hadn't been the best choice, but he wasn't going to criticize it now.
Connor had Declared, and he was Harry's twin. Light magic struck down and through Harry's body, and he drew on the current of it, felt Voldemort in his Darkness flinch away from it, and began to sing.
Through the song, the voice of a phoenix, he called to the Light, again and again, remembering that he could have mercy, that he could forgive his enemies, that he limited himself, that he valued free will, that in many of his morals he was more Light than Dark. His magic swelled around him, blue flames on his arms, and then struck in a lashing golden coil at Voldemort.
The murmuring voice fell silent in confusion. Harry grinned, though it felt as if he struggled to lift his lips against stone weights. He was Voldemort's magical heir in many ways, but not entirely. He had Parseltongue and the absorbere gift from him, and their ability to cast Dark spells drew on the same energy, but the Dark Lord had never loved or understood the Light. Harry believed he did both. He just chose not to join it.
The Light glittered in his mind's eye, and then the choking sensation on his throat and the twinge in his brain began to ease. Harry burned the threads of blackness that connected him and Voldemort, knowing it probably would cause some damage to him, too, and not caring. How dare Voldemort think he could use the Heir-Call. Just because Harry had rejected Potter did not mean he would consent to have another name forced on him, to be Riddle or whatever ridiculous substitution Voldemort might have devised.
For one moment, one spinning moment, they were face-to-face, Voldemort's eyeless white mask floating before him, and Harry loaded his voice with all the venom he could to spit back at him.
Your heir in magic, but never in spirit, in temperament, in hatred or cruelty. Not yours! Mine!
Then the magic whirled them apart, and Harry belled in pure triumph as the connections holding them failed. He realized he was lying on the floor, clutching his brother's hand and howling like a mad thing. He didn't care. Voldemort had done his worst, and Harry had won. He could howl all he liked.
"What was that?" Connor whispered, when he seemed content that Harry wasn't choking any more. He lowered his wand to the floor with a careful click.
"Voldemort tried to summon me," Harry said, and his voice was hoarse. He didn't care. He'd won, and he'd retained a part of his life as his own even when Voldemort tried to force him to give it up. Take that, you bastard. "It didn't work because you were here, and you're my twin, and you're Light, and we still have a connection that won't let me go. I rejected the Potter name, but I never rejected you, Connor. Even if I'm his magical heir and don't have a last name, he can't summon me that way." He closed his eyes.
"Maybe you should think about a last name," Connor muttered, as he gently pried his hand free.
Harry wasn't fooled by his tone. He knew his brother was grinning, caught somewhere between pride and embarrassment.
"No," said Harry. "Not until I want one." He closed his eyes more firmly than before, and took a deep, rattling breath. He would have to stand in a moment, and explain things to people.
For right now, though, they weren't here, and he didn't have to.
SSSSSSSSSS
Monika raised an eyebrow and stepped away from the scrying pool in which she'd watched with interest as Lord Riddle tried the Heir-Call on Harry.
He was able to resist it. Interesting. Of course, he should become the heir of someone else soon, or perhaps the Dark Lord might try it again, with the wild Dark's help, and win this time.
She touched the worm wound around her arm and shook her head. Poor creature. It had so looked forward to being used. She had designed it carefully, knowing that when Harry killed his enemy, she would need to send the creature into him, have it drink as much of his essence as it could, and then pull it free and place it into herself. It would feed on her like the tapeworms it mimicked, draining her of some physical energy and mass, but giving her back magic in return for it, as waste. Meanwhile, her own magic would keep her alive and help restrict the worm's damage.
She gave a final, regretful glance at the pool she had charmed to warn her of any unusual interactions between Harry and Lord Riddle, and shook her head again.
Not today, then. Too bad.
SSSSSSSSSSS
"I told you so," Alexandre said lazily, waving one hand and dissipating the image in the prophecy-pool before Pamela's shocked eyes.
Pamela gazed blankly for a moment at the pool of liquid prophecy, the last remnants of fates that had already come true and had collected in this wild jungle where Alexandre made his home by some quirk of nature or magic. Then she covered her eyes and leaned back against a tree in thought.
"Should we involve the others?" she asked at last.
"Name me one who will help us rather than try to use Monika's worm for his own gain," Alexandre told her, voice extremely dry, "and I will fly to his home at once to speak with him."
Pamela sighed. "Coatlicue—"
"Cannot stand the sight of me, if you have forgotten, and will simply assume I am lying and wish to convene a full meeting of the Pact." Alexandre shifted, his robe rustling as it brushed the tree. 'There are problems with too strict a definition of Light."
Pamela nodded reluctantly. The Light Lady of Mexico was her dearest friend after Jing-Xi, but she also would never do something so simple as lie. She would want Monika dealt with before the full Pact, if she believed Alexandre's story at all. And Monika would deny it and destroy the evidence, and the whole trial would be useless.
"Jing-Xi?" she asked.
"Has her hands full with her own country and trying to help Harry within the limits the Pact set out," Alexandre said in a voice full of oil. "One more piece of knowledge could set her over the boundary of what the Pact deems acceptable. Besides, she would go to confront Monika immediately, would she not?"
"Damn," said Pamela. "Yes, she would." She pulled her hand from her eyes and frowned at him. "And you, Alexandre? Do I dare ask why you don't want the power that Lord Riddle wields?"
His dark eyes glittered when he smiled. "You forget, Seaborn. I know prophecy. I know the moment of my death. And that power would do me no good. It is not my destiny to have it." He cocked his head, and the glitter was gone. "But we two may do something about it. Yes?"
Pamela nodded and stared at the prophecy-pool again. She did not see that they had any other choice.
