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Chapter Forty-Two—A Birthday Gift

Albus considered Fawkes's empty perch, and finally turned away from it. He did not know where his friend had gone, and attempts to find him had turned up nothing. For the moment, he would concentrate on what lay in front of him.

The difficult task that lay in front of him.

Albus picked up the book that he had retrieved from a room only one person had seen the inside of before him, a room carved deep under the mountains of Austria. He balanced it in one hand and studied the black binding with the shimmering silver letters on it.

Was he mad, to be thinking of giving this to Harry? But it seemed to him that a man—a being—who could face down the deadly venom of the Horcrux that had tried to devour Albus was the only one who might understand it.

And the lad's birthday in this body was coming up.

Before he could think better of it, Albus wrapped the book in thick layers of charmed leather that would keep it safe through a flight in rain and storms, and carried it to the Owlery. Several birds hooted at him, but Albus chose the largest, a great horned owl who puffed out her chest as Albus carefully bound the book to her foot.

"Harry Potter," he said. "Please wait for a reply."

The owl bobbed her head and then launched herself out through a window that pointed north. Albus stood and watched her until she was out of sight, and then returned to his office thoughtfully.

He had been more honest with Harry than he had meant to be while the boy was healing him. But it might be that that moment of connection was not too vulnerable. It might, in fact, be useful.

If he could only be sure that the boy would listen to the message the book would send him.

"You could visit Albus for a little while, you know."

Fawkes turned away and hid his head under his wing. He was motionless for long enough that Harry finally sighed and walked out of his room. He supposed he couldn't reconcile a phoenix and a wizard who had disappointed him, and maybe he shouldn't even try.

If Fawkes deigned to appear to a few of Harry's allies who were more firmly on the side opposing Voldemort, it could even be useful. Harry just wished he could do something to improve the phoenix's melancholy.

When he stepped outside, an owl hooted and headed down towards him. It was big enough that for a second Harry thought it was Voldemort's black eagle-owl, and his chest felt lighter. But then it came close enough and he blinked and saw it was the great horned owl Albus used to communicate with James sometimes.

"You have a package for me?" he asked, slightly incredulous, as she landed on the grass in front of him.

The owl bobbed her head in a way that meant she thought it was obvious, and insistently held out her leg. Harry undid the package and then hefted it, uncertain. He thought he could feel the shape of a book in the wrappings.

Why would Albus send him a book? Unless it was a huge pamphlet on the wrongs of devoting his life to Lord Voldemort or something.

The owl hooted again, and Harry nodded. "He wants confirmation that you delivered it? All right." He waved his hand so parchment and ink would fly out of his room, and composed the letter, ignoring the owl's piercing gaze. Who was she going to tell about his wandless magic?

Harry wrote quickly, Received the book, thank you, and held it out to attach to the owl's leg. Apparently he'd taken too long, because she grabbed it and swooped away, wings beating frantically, as if she wanted to get back to Hogwarts before twilight. Harry shook his head and went to sit under the apple tree that marked the back edge of the garden, opening the book.

The first page proclaimed it a diary belonging to Gellert Grindelwald.

Harry thought later that he stared at that page for maybe ten minutes. Then he shut the book and lay down on the grass and stared up at the sky. By now, he was completely used to Dumbledore's history with Grindelwald, since his first life wasn't the only place where it had come out into the open, but here, he couldn't come up with any motive why Albus would have wanted him to know this.

Or was it some kind of test? The book was written in German, which Albus wouldn't have known for sure he could read. Harry, though, had learned the language in his second life and then "learned" it again in others where people thought he really was seeing it for the first time, not remembering it.

He wants to believe even now that I'm not the Master of Death? He needs proof I know things I would have no other way to know?

Harry sighed, sat up, and took the book with him up to his bedroom, where he firmly stuffed it into a corner of the bookshelf. He wasn't going to read it right now, not until he figured out what Albus's motive for sending it was.

You could always ask him.

But, Harry had to admit, that was a matter of last resort. And he would much rather look forward to the upcoming meeting between Jonathan and Voldemort.

Jonathan coughed as he came out of the Side-Along Apparition with Harry into the middle of a forest clearing that seemed to be filled with wooden furniture. Harry gave him a concerned glance. "Was the Apparition too rough?"

Jonathan shook his head. "Just surprising. I don't think I've ever traveled with someone that way and had it be that smooth."

Harry beamed at him, while Jonathan tilted back his head to look up at the trees' intertwined branches and the wooden benches. "He likes to carve things?" he asked doubtfully, even though the curving way the benches seemed to rise up from the roots didn't really look like carving.

"No. He grows them with pure magic out of the stumps and roots that are already there."

Jonathan grinned. "I'm glad that you've got someone who can understand you."

"I didn't say he did!"

"No, but if he's powerful enough to grow furniture out of stumps and roots, then he has strong magic, and that makes him a good friend for you," Jonathan said sternly. Harry sometimes acted as though he could just hide in the house with their parents forever and never make friends, but he'd told Jonathan that he was going to Hogwarts. That meant he was going to meet other kids his own age.

Jonathan thought Harry would probably explode if he didn't have at least one friend who knew who he really was and was as powerful as Harry. Jonathan would have exploded without the twins and Acanthus and Cedric, although he hadn't told Cedric about Harry yet.

A movement on the edge of the clearing made Jonathan turn around expectantly. A man who looked almost normal stepped into the moonlight. Jonathan blinked. He had red eyes, all right, but he had dark hair that was only a little scraggly and a face that wasn't too pale.

"Is that Voldemort?"

"Of course it's Voldemort!"

"He just doesn't look ugly enough to be Voldemort, that's all."

Voldemort paused in walking towards them. Harry closed his eyes and stood there drawing his breath in and out of his nostrils as if that was something that would calm him down. Jonathan doubted it would. He turned and held out his hand politely. "Do I have to call you Lord Voldemort, or can I leave off the title?"

Voldemort stared at him in what could have been fury or icy hatred, but Jonathan wasn't afraid. Not with his brother there. Harry would protect him if Voldemort exploded into a curse-hurling machine.

Memories of Harry's brother when he was two years old were of no use understanding the boy who stood before him now.

He looked a little like Harry, and still more like James Potter. His hazel eyes had something odd and settled about them, though, as if he understood exactly where he came from, who he was, and his purpose in life. Lord Voldemort had only once seen eyes like that. They were—

Impatiently, he drowned the memory and tore its wet corpse apart. He stepped towards Jonathan and said, "I would prefer Lord Voldemort. I accept the other name from no one but Harry."

"I told you he understood you!" Potter told Harry in a loud whisper, and grabbed Lord Voldemort's hand, and shook.

Lord Voldemort continued to stare. He could recall driving strong Dark wizards into whimpering submission with the power of his eyes alone. But the mere memory caused a wisp of embarrassment to blow up inside his soul, and it did nothing at all to Jonathan's blinding grin as he drew his hand back.

Then Lord Voldemort glanced at Harry.

And he knew that any loss of influence he had suffered in giving up his Horcruxes one by one had been worth it.

Harry was almost lounging even though he was also standing upright, his gaze fixed on both Lord Voldemort and his brother. His ancient eyes were calm for once, his mouth curved in a smile that Lord Voldemort had never seen before except when he spoke of some of his past lives that he had married and had children in. He did not have magic crackling around him, ready to spring and defend, as he had almost always had in the past.

It was enough. More than enough.

Lord Voldemort turned to Jonathan Potter and said, "From Harry's brother, I will not require the title."

The young Potter's face lit up. Harry's smile grew a little more. Lord Voldemort valued one reaction more than the other, but he understood that he must have one to have the other. They could not part from one another, any more than an intestinal parasite could from its host.

"It's nice to finally meet you," Potter said, studying him as if he thought that Lord Voldemort would vanish from sight at any second. "Harry talks about you all the time, but he didn't mention that you could be calm."

"Jonathan."

"Well, you didn't mention it!" Potter said, turning around to frown at Harry. "I was just making an observation. You're always talking about how you speak to him, and then he gets upset, and then you don't speak for a while, and then he wants you to be immortal with him, and you don't want that, and you argue—"

"I can indeed be calm," Lord Voldemort interrupted, because he thought it best. Harry's face was flushing, and he was inclined to resent anything that would interrupt Harry's good mood on his birthday. "And I wish to persuade Harry to be immortal with me, but by now, I am resigned to the fact that I may not succeed."

Harry narrowed his eyes. Lord Voldemort smiled at him. No, he was not resigned, but that was something he would share with Harry later, in private.

"I wanted to save my birthday present for Harry for when you could be there," Potter announced, easily stealing his attention back. Lord Voldemort would admit that he had been foolish about many things, but he would never tire of seeing Harry's reaction to receiving gifts. "Here, Harry." Potter held out a thin package that made Lord Voldemort suspect what it was before Harry opened it.

The wrapping paper was yellow and black, because Potter was still a child, for all the trust Harry showed him and the maturity he might display. Lord Voldemort told himself not to forget it.

"A wand holster." Harry smiled at Potter, and the air in the clearing seemed to transform, becoming as soft and warm and welcoming as the air of Hogwarts on a summer's day. "Thank you, Jonathan." He turned it around. "And it has the symbol of the Deathly Hallows on it…Jonathan, how much did this cost you?"

Potter grinned at him. "Nothing."

"Jonathan."

"No, really. Dumbledore asked me what kind of gift would convince you that he's kinder and more welcoming than you think he is. I don't know if he really wants to reconcile with you or if he's only pretending to reconcile, but this is what I said. And you notice it's extra-long, so that it's the right length for the Elder Wand?"

"So I have to thank Dumbledore for this?"

"No. Thank me, because I'm the one who came up with the idea!"

Lord Voldemort watched as Harry gave his brother a helpless smile. It was one that Lord Voldemort had never seen directed at him. It was one, he suspected, that Harry would only give the child who seemed to accept the whole of what he was.

Lord Voldemort could not stand to be left out. Although he had planned to wait until the end of the evening to give Harry his gift, he raised his wand and Summoned it from behind the tree where he had placed it.

Harry shot him a puzzled glance as the small package landed in his hand. "You got me something this size? Let me guess, it's a ruby worth more than anything else in the world."

What is worth more than anything else in the world stands in front of me. But Potter would probably laugh if he heard the words, and even Harry might. Lord Voldemort was not yet in the business of embarrassing himself, even when he felt the emotion. He nodded to the wrapped box. The paper, unlike the childish colors that Potter had used, was flat and black.

Harry unwrapped the small box, and Lord Voldemort saw his eyes narrow. The box was big enough to contain several precious stones, and Harry probably thought that was what he was receiving.

He opened it. And froze, except for his eyes. The glance he flicked Lord Voldemort was one of glazed disbelief.

Potter, of course, bounced over to the side to see what the gift was, and broke the moment, but it had lasted long enough for Lord Voldemort to smile. Harry understood the import of the gift, which was far more symbolic than practical.

"A crown? What—Harry, why would he get you a crown?"

"Technically, it's not a crown," Harry said slowly, his eyes once again returning to Lord Voldemort's face. It suited Lord Voldemort that Harry should look at him even when his brother stood at his side, practically hopping as he tried to see the gift. "It's a diadem."

He turned it. Lord Voldemort watched the starlight flash from the crystal he'd sculpted it from. He was no artist with chisel or hammer, but he knew how to use magic, and he knew what it was to shape things to his will. He had made a copy of Ravenclaw's diadem, although much smaller, of crystal rather than of silver, and studded with small emeralds rather than one large sapphire.

"I wonder," Harry said, "if I put it on, what dreams it would give me."

Lord Voldemort inclined his head. "It will guard your dreams. You can seize control of them at any moment, as well, if you sleep with that on your head, and you will be able to go back and look at past memories from many different angles, to see what courses of action you might have ignored."

"So it's a Pensieve, too."

Lord Voldemort nodded. It was a valuable gift, but not nearly as valuable as he could have scrounged up out of his manor or his followers' possessions to give Harry.

No, the symbolic value lay in that Lord Voldemort was giving someone else a crown when he had once desired to rule all himself. Harry would understand the gift and the unspoken words bound up in the delicate transparent tracery that wandered like ice along the top of the diadem.

He did not have the words to tell Harry how much his desires had changed without making him uncomfortable. But his magic could speak for him.

"That's brilliant!" Potter said. "I'd like to try it sometime—"

Voldemort could not restrain the snarl in his voice. "I made it for Harry and no one else. It will wither the skin of anyone else who touches it."

Harry put the diadem hastily back into the box, and glared at him. "You didn't think to mention this before I almost let Jonathan touch it?"

"I said it before he touched it."

Harry squinted at him as if contemplating being angry about that, and then sighed and said, "Right. Now, I'd like to have my birthday meal."

Potter and Harry had brought lemonade and sandwiches and cake, and Lord Voldemort had brought elegant carved fruit, steaks swimming in their juices, bread as white as death and honey as golden as life, and a roast peacock. Potter gaped at everything and then dived on it with a cheer. Harry squinted at him some more.

"You didn't have to."

"Neither did I have to make the diadem for you, or meet your brother."

Harry flushed and turned away to entertain his brother, including explaining how to eat a peacock. Lord Voldemort sat on the blanket they had turned the grass into, eating; he found he had had more appetite for food since Harry had begun to restore his humanity. But most of all, he watched Harry.

Harry was still young as far as this life and this body were concerned. He still probably thought of Lord Voldemort more in the light of his kidnapper and his sometime friend than anything else.

Lord Voldemort was immortal. He would wait the eight years, the ten, the twenty, perhaps more, that it would take for Harry's perceptions of him to change. His desires would not change again, and he would not tire.

In the meantime, he could enjoy a birthday meal with Harry and his brother.