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Chapter Sixty-Eight—A World of Immortals

"I just want to know what it means, is all."

Voldemort had been silent and still since he had met Harry in their clearing. Now he stirred and leaned towards Harry as Harry lounged on the Transfigured tree bench. "Why does it have to mean anything? You said that Salazar Slytherin used the same method of immortality you want to introduce me to."

Harry looked up and nodded, trying to understand the complex expression moving over Voldemort's face. "That's right."

"That simply means that method will work in this world. It is a reassuring thing. But I hardly see why you need to spend more time with Slytherin."

"I mean, don't you want to?" Harry asked, puzzled now. "Since he's your ancestor, and this way, you get family to claim. And you can ask him questions like what he really meant by supposedly wanting to keep Muggleborns out of Hogwarts and—oh, all kinds of things."

"You are not interested in that."

"No. I told you. I think it means something that this is the first world I've found with so many immortals, and so many who are willing to talk about it to me. And ones who are sane."

For a moment, Voldemort's hand, idly spinning his wand, stopped, and his lips trembled in a smile. "I suppose the other versions of me would not count towards your numbering of sane immortals."

"No," Harry said. "But here we have Slytherin, and the conglomeration, and you, once you get back that kind of immortality Slytherin has, and me. There has to be some reason that we're all here. What is it about this world that's so uniquely hospitable to us? Or so innately teeming with ways to become immortal?"

"Enough of that for this evening," Voldemort said unexpectedly. Harry jumped as Voldemort sat down next to him. "I wish to know what you think of the plans I have made with Augusta Longbottom."

"I mean, I think they're fine," Harry said, blinking. Voldemort wasn't the kind who craved someone else's approval when it came to his plans. "Was there something in particular that you wanted me to comment on?"

"You think—you think that they are fine." Voldemort's voice deepened and then slid into Parseltongue. "You think of me less than you once did."

"No, I think that you're stronger than I once believed," Harry countered firmly, also in Parseltongue. He thought it was a good idea right now. "When I came to this world, I thought you were incapable of change, the same way all the other versions of you I knew were. But you're better than that. I was wrong."

Voldemort eased back from him. Harry sat still, not trying to strain his eyes through the darkness, even though of course he could see Voldemort's face perfectly well. It felt like cheating to do that right now. "I mean that you think of me less often during the hours of the day. Hogwarts students fill your mind now. And Slytherin."

Harry checked for a second with his memories of a hundred other times something like this has happened, but he had forgotten nothing—of course. "Are you jealous?" he ventures, astounded.

"You thought me incapable of change. Surely you have seen me jealous before?" Voldemort reached out and let one heavy hand rest on Harry's shoulder.

Harry reached up and touched Voldemort's wrist, not taking his eyes away from the man's face. He felt as if a bubble of wonder was still sitting in the middle of his chest. "But you have absolutely nothing to be jealous of, I promise. Just because we don't see each other all the time doesn't mean most of the people at Hogwarts understand me better than you do. And Slytherin is going to share his method of immortality with you."

"You do not understand. Shall I show you?"

Harry considered him, wondering what Voldemort could show him that was going to make sense of something so strange. Then he finally tilted his head. "If you want."

Voldemort smiled and sat back, drawing his wand. Harry had anticipated words, and felt his curiously prickle in response. Voldemort sketched a long, slow white curlicue in the air, a spell Harry had never seen before. And that was rare enough in his long existence to make him lean forwards.

The white curlicues continued building on each other, hovering in the air, as Voldemort drew. Harry continued watching. He couldn't tell exactly what they were. They blazed like light, but they didn't feel warm when he reached up to touch them. They felt like nothing. And they didn't radiate the sense of life that most magic did, because it was created by living creatures.

"Voldemort?"

Voldemort drew one more white curlicue and then sat back and put his wand away. Harry watched as he held out his hands in front of him, closed into fists. Harry had the brief, absurd thought that he looked as if he was preparing to be arrested.

Then Voldemort hissed in Parseltongue, "Burn," and the curlicues burst into flame.

Harry felt his eyes widen. The curlicues were burning death. The air they passed through stopped being filled with the ghosts of small insects who had died long ago, and the whirling images of leaves that winter had tossed off the trees, and a few birds whose hearts had stopped as they flew over the clearing. Instead, where they passed, the clearing blazed with intense life, the same lack of decay he had seen on Slytherin.

Harry stared at Voldemort and knew his jaw was dropped. "If you knew about this method of immortality all along, why didn't you use it instead of Horcruxes?" he whispered.

Voldemort grimaced and jerked his fists in a sharp motion, and the flames vanished. The air where they had burned, though, remained clear and pure and alive. "It is not a method of immortality."

"Of course it is. If you burn yourself like that, then—"

"I am burning myself, Harry." And Voldemort tipped his head forwards to show a strand of white hair that had appeared among the dark ones.

Harry stared at him, and then reached out slowly. Voldemort sat where he was for a moment before retreating to the end of the bench. Harry saw a glimpse of light from the corner of his eye and knew he was glowing with flames of his own, but really, he couldn't help it. How in the world could Voldemort have been so stupid?

"You burned your life-force. What, to show me a spell that I hadn't seen before?"

"I knew you hadn't seen it before."

Harry shook his head. "Listen to me, you idiot. I thought was a method of immortality because you made the air look the way it did around Slytherin when I saw him. No trace of dying. But—you're not immortal right now, which means you can't do things like that."

"What does it matter, when you will grant me immortality in the end?"

Harry stared at him again, and then some of the frustration he hadn't even realized he was holding onto escaped him and hovered around him like a dark cloud. "You're an idiot," he hissed in Parseltongue. "I don't want to lose you!"

Voldemort winced from the pain zigzagging through him, but his satisfaction was strong enough that any agony he suffered from this was worth everything.

He admitted it.

Yes, Harry would have admitted his fondness for Voldemort if asked, Voldemort was sure. But not like this, not in a way that made the air around him gleam with darkness and had half-dissolved his body into flashing blue lightning. Not in a way that made it clear Voldemort was important to him as the other immortals in this world were not.

Harry was pacing back and forth in front of him, or at least doing something that could probably be construed as that. In reality, his legs were only half-solid, shifting columns of smoke filled with the blue flames. Voldemort let his own enchantment flow through him, and listened to the words, some of them in Parseltongue, some in English, some in a muttered and hissed language that he didn't know but thought might be the language of Kneazles.

"You're an idiot…can't believe it…don't you understand…don't want to see you end your life before the immortal part of it begins!"

Voldemort took a long, slow breath. He had thought seeing Harry admit how important their friendship was might be enough for this evening, but now it sounded as though Harry was on the edge of another revelation, and Voldemort honestly couldn't resist the temptation to speak.

"If you're not here, I don't want the immortality you would gift me with."

"What?" Harry turned towards him, his mouth hanging open in an undignified fashion that made Voldemort smile.

"You heard what I said. If you still plan to leave this world and die at the end of your mortal span here, then I do not want to be here without you. Particularly if it's a method of immortality that I can't end whenever I want to."

Harry shut his mouth and stared. Voldemort stared back, enjoying the sensation of puzzling him for once. It was not often he got to do it with the Master of Death.

"It's a method of immortality that you could end," Harry said finally, his voice weak. "But…listen, you're afraid of death. That's the one most immutable thing about you, even deeper than the idea that you couldn't change. I know now that was nonsense. But for you not to be afraid of death…"

"Oh, I am," Voldemort said, because at this point of all points he didn't want Harry getting the wrong idea. "Of course I am. That does go deeper in me than anything else, and I'm not surprised that you know it would after your experience with other versions of me." He paused, then added, just as Harry's lips began to form words again, "It goes deeper than anything except for one thing."

"What's the one thing?"

And Voldemort hesitated for the first time, searching for a word that Harry wouldn't reject out of hand, before he found it. "My commitment to you."

Harry was silent, his body coalescing back into a human form. Voldemort sat and was silent as well. He had said what he had come to say, and at the moment, when he didn't know what Harry's response would be, he didn't know what he had to say next.

"I—have you considered that I might never commit back to you the way you want?"

Voldemort tilted his head. "I have. You have made it abundantly clear that it would be unusual for you. But not unthinkable, I believe."

"I still might not."

Voldemort nodded, unsurprised, and waited. Harry stared back at him with growing frustration that made Voldemort have an odd vision of what he must have looked like during his life as a Kneazle, when his ears would have flattened and his tail lashed. A burst of blue lightning struck briefly at the edge of the clearing, but Voldemort wasn't surprised, either, when it didn't set anything on fire.

"Well?"

"I would rather take the chance that you would not commit to me after hearing how I felt," Voldemort said, and kept his voice low, "then take the chance that you would never realize it and continue to believe I fear death more than losing your regard."

Harry's eyes widened. There was darkness and dying suns behind them, but there was also—and Voldemort knew it very well even if he couldn't see it at the moment—the being who had been human enough to retain compassion for his enemy, to start teaching him magic he wanted to know, to believe he could change. The Master of Death was immortal struggling to be mortal, and it was on his mortality that Voldemort was depending now. He waited.

I—I never thought—

Harry stopped and shook his head. He had never thought of what Voldemort's obsession could be based on, no, other than that he had wanted Harry to teach him magic. And he had not thought it could be anything other than an obsession.

But this sounded like.

Harry stepped closer to Voldemort and stared hard at him. Voldemort stared back. He showed no sign of shifting underneath Harry's gaze or being uncomfortable. Harry swallowed. It really did look as though Voldemort was—in love.

I never thought about that.

Harry did say, "You know what I am. You know that I might never be able to love you the way you want."

Naming the emotion seemed to charge the air between them, at least for Harry, but Voldemort didn't flinch. He kept gazing straight on at Harry, his eyes deep and calm in a way that Harry felt should have belonged to him, or who was the Master of Death around here? A second later, Voldemort smiled.

"It is amazing that you believe that."

"Why?" Harry controlled the impulse to step back and cross his arms across his chest. He didn't want to look as if he were retreating from Voldemort. And he wasn't retreating. He was just—trying to get comfortable.

"Even after all these lives that might have dulled the edge of your morality," Voldemort breathed, "or might have made you give up on human beings because we're shortsighted and demanding and impatient and full of hatred, you have retained your ability to love. That you might not be able to love me is the last thing I am afraid of."

Harry gave his head a small toss. "I'm human, too, you know."

"And yet, at other times, you're trying to distance yourself from me by claiming that you've been alive for so long and you know more than I do and you're some kind of being like a mountain or a forest or a lightning storm that wouldn't be a fit mate for me." Voldemort held himself in place, eyes intense, although Harry was certain he wanted to move forwards. "Make up your mind, Harry. And stop acting like a coward."

Indignation sparked to life in Harry brighter than any anger had been in a hundred years. "I am not a coward!"

"You're acting like one," Voldemort repeated, his eyes still full. "Are you human or the distant being? Decide."

"Both. I'm both." Harry tried to gentle his voice and the fire wanted to build up in him. He turned his eyes away from Voldemort and stared at the ghosts of past trees hovering around the present ones. "And that's why I wouldn't be a fit mate for you."

"I don't understand."

"Because I'm both, and that would cause problems for you," Harry murmured. "You expect me to be like the Master of Death all the time, I think, and that means—"

He stopped, because Voldemort was laughing. Harry glared. "Don't lie! You want me to be the immortal being who can grant you immortality too and can teach you magic that you've never heard of. And you get impatient when other people act like I'm human."

"I get impatient because other people do not understand the kind of human you are." Voldemort had stopped laughing and was giving him an indulgent smile that Harry didn't find much better. "They look at you and decide that you are but a child because that is what they see. I suppose Augusta's followers will be a little different now that you have appeared to them as an adult," he added thoughtfully. "But for the most part, they still have wrong conclusions about you. I think your parents do as well. And your brother."

"Don't talk about my parents and Jonathan."

"As you will." Voldemort watched him in silence as part of Harry unfolded into darkness and he called it back, banishing the images of stars tumbling before his eyes. "What are the other reasons that you do not wish to be with me?"

Harry hesitated. "I wouldn't phrase it like that."

Voldemort froze. Harry wondered what he'd said now. It took a long moment for Voldemort to breathe in a trembling voice, "So you would want to be with me if not for whatever imaginary obstacle you see as in the way?"

"Well." Harry swallowed. Voldemort was electrified, staring at him, his hands balanced on air. "If I could be with anyone."

"You took lovers in other lives."

"I'm eleven!"

"Then I will wait."

"Those lovers didn't know who I was!"

"How lonely that must have been for you," Voldemort said, dropping his voice abruptly, and making Harry feel as if he'd just fallen into a river. Voldemort's eyes burned, fixed on him, because of course they did. "To be with someone who would love you in limited ways, to whom you had to lie to all your lives."

Harry shut his eyes tightly. Shit. Yes, Voldemort had touched on the truth that had always lurked in the back of Harry's head even though he'd opened his heart because he didn't want to turn into a cold, arrogant, immortal bastard. Yes, it had been hard to keep lying to them.

"Will you not," Voldemort breathed, as Harry opened his eyes again, "embrace the chance to have someone with you who knows exactly what you are and wants the truth?"

Harry paused, staring into the distance. Yet another illusion he'd had about Voldemort had been peeled away, it seemed. He wondered numbly if he would ever come to the end of the surprises in this world.

He turned to Voldemort. "I need time."

"As you will."

Harry frowned at him. "You know you can disagree with me. You don't need to act as if you're giving in all the time."

Voldemort half-smiled. "I am disagreeing with you about the thing I want most in my life. That is quite enough."

Harry nodded slowly, and then they stood there in the darkness that was awkward because Voldemort didn't seem to find it so. Harry finally exhaled and held out his hand. "All right. Thank—you for telling me."

Voldemort solemnly shook his hand, not trying to do anything else. Harry backed up one step at a time, and then released his hold on his body and let it all turn at once into darkness and fire.

Voldemort didn't flinch. In fact, he looked delighted.

And the sight of that alone would have tempted Harry beyond measure.

I am in so much trouble.