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Chapter Fifty-Six—The Edge of the Cliff
"Lord Voldemort, may I introduce the conglomeration."
Lord Voldemort narrowed his eyes at the being that stood next to Harry. That it was a being and not the ordinary human woman it looked like he had no doubt, even if that was mostly based on what Harry had said. For one thing, no ordinary human woman would stand that comfortably and calmly in the face of his power.
And power was what Lord Voldemort had unleashed, the minute he had seen someone else walk into their clearing alongside Harry.
"Greetings, Lord Voldemort," the woman said. She was small, perhaps a teenager in body, with brown skin and brown eyes and tangled brown hair that blew back in the wind of his magic. "May I address you without the title? It will become awkward soon."
"I do not care," Lord Voldemort said, ignoring Harry's sidelong glance.
"Very well. Then I should say that I represent a large conglomeration of souls, gathered together from those who had nowhere else to go, and picking up some bodies along the way as well. I am immortal—truly immortal. Not in the same way Harry is, of course, but I also do not need to pursue the pitiful human ways of achieving immortality. Harry tells me you have an interest in becoming a creature like us."
"I have no interest in joining my soul with another's," Lord Voldemort said. "I have had enough trouble reintegrating the scattered pieces of it that I created by mistake, as Harry will have told you."
"All your Horcruxes were deliberate, Voldemort."
"I mean that it was a mistake to create them in the first place," Lord Voldemort said, and met and held Harry's eyes until he nodded a little.
"Not literally immortal in the same way," the woman interjected, her face rippling a bit as though the creature was not used to molding human skin into an expression anymore. "Simply that you wish to live and not die, and in a different way than the Horcruxes would permit."
"That is a fair summation," said Lord Voldemort grudgingly. He could understand Harry's fascination with the creature, but he wished that Harry had not brought it here, and did not seem so fascinated with it.
The creature nodded and sat down on the bench that Lord Voldemort had shaped with his magic out of tree roots. "Very well. Then I can tell you that the nature of this world itself will help with your success, in a way that others would not."
"Why?" That sounded too easy. Lord Voldemort eased around to the side to watch her face more comprehensively, while also watching Harry. He didn't seem alarmed, but studied the being with a faint, fond smile Lord Voldemort did not like.
"Because immortal creatures have already dwelt in it. That alters the nature of the world."
"Is that one reason that you think Voldemort was able have such powerful magic?" Harry leaned forwards. "Maybe a reason that I was born here?"
"The causes are interconnected until it is hard to isolate a single one," the being said, swinging her legs, in a way that reminded Lord Voldemort of the inanities that Muggle fortune-tellers might utter. "But I would not be surprised if that had something to do with it."
Harry fell silent. His eyes were shadowed, and his remarkable mind had darted into some niche that Lord Voldemort could not follow. He ground his teeth. Harry made him uniquely helpless. He could order his followers to tell him what they thought, and they would comply. Or he could use Legilimency to read the truth out of the minds that would defy him. He was used to capturing and torturing his enemies for information.
Harry was beyond all that. Lord Voldemort had to lower himself to asking when he wanted to know, and accepting it if Harry did not want to tell him.
"What are you thinking of?" he asked, and tried to ignore the way the being turned to look at him. He was convinced it was amused.
Harry blinked twice, and the shadowy look departed his eyes, which focused on Lord Voldemort again. That was as it should be. "That there must be paths to immortality, and causes of it, that even I don't know about."
"Master of Death," said the being abruptly. "Why have you not asked those who would know?"
Harry twisted his head hard to the side, one of those movements that made him look most inhuman. "I have spoken with you."
"No. I meant the Deathly Hallows. They must contain some of the secrets you have been looking to know."
Lord Voldemort hoped he was the only one who saw Harry's left hand clench into a fist by his side. "I have asked them in the past. They can't—speak in an understandable way. They can express emotions, and they let me know when I came to the right conclusion about why I was reborn in so many similar times, but they don't speak."
"Have you asked them?"
"Of course! All the time when I was reborn in my second life and I was trying to figure out if it would happen again."
"And not again?" Lord Voldemort would have been pleased that he was not the only target of the creature's mocking voice if the thought of someone mocking Harry had not infuriated him.
"I have tried talking to them, of course. Again and again." Harry shook his head, and ripples of darkness traveled with his hair. He was losing control over his bodily form, then, letting some of the reality out. Lord Voldemort would have been more pleased with the level of comfort it indicated if it were not in front of this stranger. "The Hallows never replied. They can understand what I want, but they don't always do it."
"They can speak if you ask them the right questions."
"And I suppose you know how to do that?" Harry's voice was etched like words on a glass pane, and he drifted a little away from the being, feet leaving the ground. Lord Voldemort caught his breath, and hoped neither of them noticed.
"I know at least how to pose the question." The being got to her feet. Lord Voldemort saw a sharp blue-silver light flicker into being above her head. "Bring the wand before me. We will begin with that, since it is the most fearsome of them."
"Fearsome," Harry mouthed, but shook his head and extended his hand. In seconds, the Elder Wand rested there. It had its own subtle glow of power, which Lord Voldemort did not think it usually bore.
Does everyone respond in some unique way to this being?
The woman halted in front of the wand and looked down at it. Then she traced one slow finger down the elderberry carvings near the end of it. Her eyes shut, and her head fell back, exposing her throat. Her breath came out of her in a steady hiss, but no matter how closely Lord Voldemort listened, it did not sound like Parseltongue.
"What is she doing?" he murmured to Harry.
"I have no idea. Now hush."
Lord Voldemort had never expected that he would live to be told "hush," even if it was by the Master of Death. He turned his stare on Harry. Harry showed no respect for the weight of it. He kept watching the being with a kind of anticipation that Lord Voldemort was at least partially sure his interactions with Harry had never excited.
I cannot kill an immortal conglomeration of souls. Lord Voldemort considered that as he watched the being's breath slow and nearly stop, and added in his mind, And I cannot strike back at it out of jealousy, or Harry would not forgive me.
A pale glow the color of rowan berries abruptly rose around the carving the being had touched. Lord Voldemort leaned in, reluctantly interested. He would probably never get to see this kind of magic again, and there were few in existence in any world who had.
The glow spread out to encircle the being's hands, and she continued to speak in the hissing language that was not Parseltongue. From Harry's furrowed brow, he didn't recognize it, either. The Elder Wand vibrated and continued to emit the light. As far as Voldemort could tell, it didn't speak back.
Still, the being stepped back after a second and caught her breath in a sudden rush. She spoke to Harry at the same moment as the light died. "The wand said that your path to immortality is unique. There are others who have mastered different versions of the Deathly Hallows as they existed in other worlds, but none who have chosen to be reborn as you have."
Harry smiled faintly, but with the shadow of ancient sadness to it. Voldemort extended his hand, then drew it back. "I suspected that. Now that I know I chose to be reborn…" He trailed off and shook his head. "What else did it say?"
"That you could choose to give the Hallows up and be mortal, to have this be your last life, but only if you found someone else to take them from you."
Harry caught his breath sharply. His eyes widened, and the iris began to move in a lazy pattern that Voldemort had never seen before. He found himself stepping forwards, and stopping. He had no idea what would come next, either as a good action or a word out of his mouth.
"I could—I could see all the people I've loved who died in other worlds," Harry whispered. "My first parents, and Sirius, and all my children, and my brothers and sisters, and Hermione and Ron…"
Lord Voldemort did not recognize those names, other than to guess that Sirius was probably the same man who bore the name "Sirius Black" in this world. He did not like the litany, even so. It sounded as though Harry was preparing to pull away from him, as if he would prefer the afterlife that probably did not even exist to spending more time with Lord Voldemort.
"How do you know you will go there?" Lord Voldemort asked abruptly. "Do you have any idea what lies after death? Or is it only death that you can see?"
Harry glanced at him once in confusion. "I can see death. You know that. What happens to something once it's died, I don't know. But I know souls can come back when I use the Resurrection Stone and some other kinds of magic, and the souls I summoned with the Stone have often told me of the peace they experience."
"And what is one of the first things you learned about the Resurrection Stone?" asked the being, unexpectedly stepping back into the conversation.
"What do you mean?" Harry asked, but the way his eyes opened and closed told Lord Voldemort he understood what the being meant.
Instead of asking another cryptic question, the being spoke the answer. "The Stone lies, Master of Death. Even to you. When you wield it for some other purpose than simply summoning the shades of those you have lost, it obeys you, but it obeys its nature, its making, when turned three times. The spirits that come back entice you to join them. What if there is no peace, and they are manifestations of the Stone's deception?"
"I don't understand," Harry croaked, and closed his eyes. "You're giving me hope with one hand and taking it away with the other."
"I am not saying that no afterlife exists." The being's voice was without emotion, but in a way, Lord Voldemort supposed, that was a kindness. "I am the last one who can say that, when souls unlike the ones I collect go somewhere. I am saying that you cannot rely on the Resurrection Stone to tell you what that afterlife is like. It is full of lies."
Harry swallowed air. Then he nodded. "All right. Thank you for telling me."
His voice was distant, and Voldemort knew he had to act quickly. Other times Harry had spoken that distantly, he had disappeared and not returned for months or weeks at a time. Now, Voldemort said, "Is an immortal life truly so disappointing, Harry?"
Harry glanced at him. His irises had gone dark enough that there was no green left in his eyes. His shoulders stretched in and out like wings that beat with his breath. "Not disappointing," he said, his voice a sigh of wind. "Only that I suspected I was shut out of the afterlife, and now I know that even if I found someone else to take up the Hallows, I might not be able to see those I love again."
"I do not know for certain," the being said. She sounded almost apologetic. "Perhaps you would simply reunite with your loved ones in the traditional way. I do not know. But you cannot count on what the Stone has told you."
"Yes," Harry said, and his voice became fainter and his body became a dark outline filled with swirling, twining smoke. "I heard you."
Voldemort spoke softly. "If you could stay in one world, and not have to deal with the chaos of growing up again, and had immortal companions, would that not make keeping the Hallows worth it?" He would even be willing to endure the being's company if it would keep Harry by his side.
Harry said nothing. His body was only a hollow, crystalline shell around a tornado of smoke now. And then any illusion of a human creature disappeared and the tornado flew off into the sky.
Lord Voldemort turned to the being in front of him, who stood as still as if she were a human, and watched Harry fly away. "You have caused this," he whispered. "If you had not told him those things, he would not have left."
"I only told him what was the truth." The being looked very inhuman now, eyes ancient and distant. "And he needed to know that the afterlife the Resurrection Stone promised him might not be the truth."
Lord Voldemort could acknowledge that with one part of himself. He would not have wanted Harry to seek someone else to give the Hallows to and then kill himself over a false hope. But still—"He might take years to accept that he could be an immortal creature with other immortal creatures, not a being alone. I was close to persuading him. And now you have turned him back."
"If you think that, you underestimate him." The being leaped into the air, and blue-silver light flashed around her. A second later, the body flowed away, apparently pulled by a stronger force that made the human form stream like a kite, and was gone.
Lord Voldemort watched her depart, and thought how, not long ago, he would have thrown magic that would burn that body to bones and shreds.
But he would not now, because Harry valued the being's company, and the being must value the human bodies it collected around itself.
I hate that I consider him so highly.
Harry coiled, a sleek form of black invisibility, high in the branches of an oak tree above a pool of water, and looked down at the clusters of dead and dying diatoms and writhing life in the water. Being around small life-forms always made the world seem to fill with rippling sheets of color like the Northern Lights, as their brief lives sped past and new ones sprouted.
If you find someone else to take the Hallows…
Harry had never seriously considered being free of them. And he knew very well that the only reason the conglomeration's words had hit him as hard as they had was because that freedom had been held out to him, and then snatched away.
You could find someone else to take them. Voldemort would do it.
But Harry shook his head. He already knew Voldemort would refuse. For some reason, he wanted to live in the same world with Harry at his side, not simply find another means of immortality than the Horcruxes.
And what do you want?
Harry wanted peace. He wanted immortality on his terms. He wanted to keep on dying and going from world to world. He wanted to have an immortal life with people who wouldn't, like him, die.
He wanted to redeem Voldemort.
Silently, he leaped out of the tree and reformed on the bank of the pool. Some of the small life-forms scattered at the disturbance of a human so nearby. Harry held out his hand and dipped it into the water, watching death cascade down from his palm.
He could do nothing about the unique position he held until he had decided what he wanted. Any decision he made in haste would be unfair to the people he was asking to help support him in it.
Harry opened his eyes and let himself return fully to his human form. A frog croaked in surprise and splashed away hurriedly. Harry looked after it and saw the black bones glittering in the small body, through a wash of silver light.
He was the Master of Death. He could keep being that if he wanted. Even if he gave the Hallows to someone else in the end, that wouldn't mean he would see anyone in the afterlife right away. He had no intention of cutting this life short.
He wanted to make sure that Voldemort reabsorbed the Horcruxes and started down another path to immortality.
Harry breathed out slowly. So now he knew. He just wanted someone to confirm his decision, if he could.
And that meant going to see Jonathan. It was too long since he had talked to his brother.