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Chapter Sixty-Nine—Slytherin Families

"I don't know why you're so upset about this," Jonathan pointed out as he dug into the plate of spiced noodles in front of him. Knowing where the kitchens were and keeping up friendships with the house-elves was the best. "You already must have known that Voldemort loved you."

"Obsessed with me. That's what I thought he was." Harry was just staring at his own plate of spiced noodles, to the visible distress of the house-elves. Jonathan was a little impressed how oblivious he was being, because most of the time, Harry would have given in and eaten if only to soothe them. "Not in love."

"Now you know, but it's not that much different than how you would have handled him if he was obsessed, right?" Jonathan sucked hard, and the noodle flew into his mouth with a smacking sound.

"That's a disgusting habit."

"So is you acting stupid."

Harry started a little. "I'm not acting stupid."

"Well, maybe you're not. Maybe not acting."

Harry stared at him with his brow furrowed. "You're not usually this annoying."

"No, but neither are you." Jonathan reached across the table and covered Harry's hand with his when Harry started to open his mouth. "Listen to me. You have to know that things won't be much different. Not at most levels. Voldemort's feelings were perfectly obvious. And he agreed to wait for you to grow up, so it's not like you need to do anything right now anyway."

"But if he loves me…"

"Yes?"

"And if he would really sacrifice his immortality to save me." Harry swallowed without finishing the sentence. One house-elf showed up next to them to wave a hand over Harry's plate and warm the noodles back up. Harry didn't notice at all. "That means that maybe all the other Voldemorts I killed could have been redeemed. I thought about that before, but—not in depth. I pushed the thought away. Now I wonder if I did the wrong thing when I killed them."

"Have you ever encountered any sign that the Master of Death can travel back in time? Or go back to all those other worlds that you used to live in?"

"No. Why do you ask?" Harry was finally eating, at least, but he kept his gaze fixed on Jonathan so hopefully that he was dripping sauce on his uniform, too. Jonathan carefully held back his sigh. He knew Harry could spell it away easily enough whenever he wanted to.

"Because that would be the only way that you could change what you did, if you could travel in time or dimensions." Jonathan finished his own noodles with a twirl of his fork and shook his head when the nearest house-elf held out another plate. He did take a bowl of the lemon sorbet they offered him, though. "And since you can't, that means that you should get past the useless guilt and accept Voldemort's courtship already."

"Courtship? What have you been reading?"

"Not a whole lot about that, but I can recognize the obvious when I see it. You know, like Voldemort's feelings and unlike you."

Harry spent some more time pondering his noodles. Jonathan was about to point out that he was driving the house-elves out of their minds when Harry seemed to come to that conclusion himself, and sighed and ate some more. "I just—I feel stupid now, but I did think that he would never sacrifice his immortality for me."

Jonathan shrugged. "So now that you know, stop beating yourself up for being stupid, and think about what you're going to do for the sake of the future instead."

Harry breathed out slowly. "Make sure that he knows he doesn't have to be jealous."

"Who is he jealous of?"

"Salazar Slytherin."

Jonathan tilted his head slowly to the side, to see if things would make sense from that angle, as Sirius sometimes said they did. No, they didn't. "Can you explain to him that he doesn't need to be jealous of Salazar Slytherin because he's dead? And anyway, you never spent time in the era of the Founders, so he can't even be jealous about your past, either."

"Oh, shit, I forgot to tell you," Harry said, sitting back and looking exactly the way he did when Mum sent him a letter because he'd forgotten to reply to the last one she sent. "I—Salazar Slytherin is alive, Jonathan. He used the same method of immortality that I'm trying to get Voldemort to use. And he's been living in a secret room in the dungeons."

Jonathan finished his sorbet with a long slurp and stood up. "Well, let's go."

"Go and do what?"

"You just told me that immortal Salazar Slytherin is living down the corridor and you've already spoken to him and then forgotten to tell me because you're a prat," Jonathan explained, wondering who had taken on the role of explaining the world to Harry in other lives he'd had. "I want to meet him. Come on."

"I'm eating." Harry was hiding his face behind his spoon, and Jonathan honestly didn't know if he was hiding a smile or flushing cheeks.

Jonathan rolled his eyes at his brother and yanked him out of the chair. Harry came with a yelp, and dropped his plate on the floor. Elves immediately scurried in to clean it up. "Yes, yes, you developed an appetite at this point. You can just have it later."

"Jonathan, the elves will be very distressed if you don't let—"

Jonathan snapped his fingers, and Tabby, his favorite elf, who wore bright red bows around her ears, appeared next to them. She carried a little box that was open so they could see the chocolate cake in it. "You've properly prepared now," Jonathan said, and shoved the box at Harry. He nearly made the unforgivable error of dropping it. Jonathan shook his head and sighed. "Now, immortal Salazar Slytherin?"

For some reason, Harry turned around and hugged him. Jonathan hugged him back, a little bewildered, but always happy to accept signs that his little brother loved him.

"Immortal Salazar Slytherin," Harry agreed, drawing back. "Come on."

"This boy does not look like the descendant of my line that you promised me."

"I think we're probably distantly related," Harry said blithely as he watched Jonathan prowl around the rooms, staring up at Slytherin but also at the stones. Perhaps he sensed the peculiar liveliness of the room, Harry mused, even though he wasn't a Master of Death. "Anyway, I'll bring Voldemort to visit you soon."

"Who is this, then?" Slytherin asked, without acknowledging the other ways Harry had spoken. He was still staring at Jonathan with a baffled expression.

"My older brother, Jonathan Potter. He wanted to come see you as soon as he heard that you were alive and immortal."

"From his colors, he is a Hufflepuff student." Slytherin squinted at him. "And I believe I have seen him before."

Harry nodded, unsurprised. Slytherin had already told him that the portraits and other ways of manifesting his spirit outside the rooms didn't always give him the kind of view that ordinary portraits or ghosts would get. "Yes, you have. And anyway, it doesn't matter that he's a Hufflepuff. He thinks that—"

"You're brilliant."

Slytherin glanced at Jonathan and frowned a little at the look on his face. "You think that?"

"Of course I do," Jonathan said, pushing his hair out of his eyes and beaming at Slytherin. "At first I wondered why Harry was going to teach this method of immortality to Voldemort, because I thought that maybe it meant you had to stay in these few rooms for the rest of your life, and I don't think Voldemort would like that. But now I understand. You're using the stones of the walls to store your memories, right? So you don't get overwhelmed?"

Slytherin's mouth opened and stayed open. Harry blinked some more. Then he said, "How did you figure that out, Jonathan?"

Of course, part of him was singing in smug satisfaction that Jonathan had figured it out and managed to impress an immortal Founder of Hogwarts. But it was still something that he wanted to know more about, in more detail. There wasn't anything obvious that betrayed it, or Harry could have discovered it, too.

"It's obvious," Jonathan said, shrugging. "Ordinary human brains aren't meant to be immortal. You'd have to do something with all the memories. And these stones glow with runes that relate to memory. That's the way it is," he drawled, looking back and forth between Harry and Slytherin as if he thought they were stupid to be surprised.

"How did you recognize the runes for memory?" Slytherin sounded on the verge of strangling.

Jonathan sighed. "I read?"

Harry choked back his own response and said, "Well, I mean, it's great that you recognized them, Jonathan, but I didn't, and I know a lot about Ancient Runes. Where are the runes?"

Jonathan studied him for a second with a skeptical expression, as though he thought Harry was messing with him, and then turned and pointed towards the stones in the left corner of the room nearest the door. Harry went over and crouched down, then shook his head. "Even this close, I don't see them."

"They're right there."

Harry stared until shapes seemed to drift into being in front of his eyes, the way clouds would form themselves into shapes when they crossed the sun. He laughed in delight. "So we're not talking about carved runes, we're talking about the shapes the stones make where they join together?"

"I think Mr. Slytherin probably has other runes carved in different places, too," Jonathan said diplomatically, glancing over his shoulder towards Slytherin, who continued to stare at them. "But those are the ones I saw first, and it makes sense that he would want the runes that talk about memory set deepest into the room, right?"

"It makes sense," Slytherin said at once. Now he sounded smooth and normal, nearly the way he had sounded when he first spoke to Harry. "But I am still surprised that someone else managed to see and sense them."

"I like runes. I like patterns. I like puzzles." Jonathan sounded a little embarrassed, even as Harry was thinking of all the puzzles that his brother had been able to put together fast when they were still kids. "And I read ahead on all the books in Ancient Runes. I'm taking that this year, you know."

"I could have used an apprentice with your skills when I was in my last years of human life." Slytherin frowned. "The ones I had were…less than satisfactory."

"Human life?" Jonathan asked, so Harry luckily didn't need to. "Did your transformation make you less than human?"

"More than." Slytherin leaned to the side and stared hard at Harry. "Are you worried for your own Slytherin, Mr. Potter?"

"You could say that," Harry said. "But I don't think that he would mind being different from other human beings. He thinks of mortality as a weakness."

"And you won't dismiss him from your concern because he is different?"

"So you know about the way Voldemort feels towards Harry, too!" Jonathan said triumphantly, again before Harry could say anything. "Good. It'll be nice to have someone else to share the burden with. Harry wouldn't believe me, but maybe he'll believe an immortal Founder of Hogwarts."

Harry resisted the temptation to plaster a hand over his face. Slytherin at least wore an expression of good-natured bewilderment, which was preferable to several of the other options.

"Do you need to say in these rooms permanently because of your memories, though?" Jonathan asked Slytherin with a frown. "I still don't think Voldemort would like that."

"I cannot stray far from them without calling most of my memories back into my head," Slytherin admitted. "Which is a different thing. If I called back all my memories, I would never have to return here, but that would be a bad idea for reasons you have already identified. Human brains were never meant to hold such a store of memory."

"But what is it like to have some of them stored outside your head? I mean, do you have weird blanks? Do you forget the names of your family and then wish that you hadn't done that and they were still in your head?"

Slytherin turned his head and stared pointedly at Harry without answering Jonathan. Harry let his lip quiver a little as he turned his hands innocently over. He hadn't promised Slytherin a meeting free of interrogations. And he thought some of the questions would probably do Slytherin good, and call him back to acting human however different he might actually be.

"It is rather like having some of your memories stored in a Pensieve," Slytherin explained. "I am still aware of events as having happened and people as existing, but they feel distant to me, without emotional content."

"Hmm. And what would happen if Voldemort wanted to store some of his memories, too?"

"Then I assume that he would have to undergo a process like the one I used," Slytherin said, a shade coldly. He turned his head, and Harry stepped into the conversation.

"We're still discussing things, Jonathan," he explained. "It's not even certain yet that Voldemort is going to use this method of immortality."

"But you want him to."

"I know, but there are others that exist and aren't as destructive as Horcruxes. He could use one of them instead."

Jonathan frowned and glanced at Slytherin. "Did he tell you a lot about Voldemort?"

"Only that he was my descendant and he had repaired the man's soul." Slytherin's speech was a little stilted now. Harry had discerned that Slytherin didn't much like the idea that Harry had enough power as the Master of Death to restore someone's soul. Or maybe he hated the reminder that his descendant had been stupid enough to create Horcruxes.

"Well, he didn't tell you enough, then," Jonathan said decisively. "Voldemort would do anything that Harry asked him to. So he'll use this method of immortality because it's the one Harry wants him to use."

"We don't know that for sure."

"Oh, yes, we do, Harry," Jonathan said, blithely disregarding the way Slytherin had given them both an even deeper frown. "Honestly, the way he writes about you is a little disgusting sometimes."

"What do you mean, the way he writes about me?"

Jonathan widened his eyes, and Harry had a more than distinct impression that he had stumbled on a secret Jonathan hadn't meant to let out, this time. "Oops," Jonathan said. "Can you forget I said that?"

"No, I cannot," Harry said, and stalked a few steps closer. "Jonathan—why did you never tell me about this apparent correspondence you have with Voldemort?"

"Well, you didn't tell me about yours until a few years ago."

"I don't have secrets from you!" Harry stopped speaking when he heard a soft, amused noise from Slytherin, and glanced over his shoulder. "Yes, fine, perhaps it would be a bit hypocritical of me," he muttered, and by this time, he no longer even know who he was talking to. He sat down at the table carved of stone that sometimes seemed to be in the room and sometimes not. "But I am worried about the amount of influence I have over Voldemort."

"Why?" Slytherin asked. His nose was still wrinkled. "If you managed to stop my idiot descendant from becoming insane, that sounds like a good move to me."

"I—I'm not used to having this much influence over anyone," Harry admitted. "Not since I was in my first life and people looked up to me as a celebrity, anyway."

"Why did they do that?" Slytherin asked.

Harry glanced at him. "For killing Voldemort, who was immortal then. I was a carrier of a Horcrux of his myself, behind my scar."

Slytherin stared at him. "He did that insanity more than once?"

"I think in every world I've been born into, yes. But I think now that I might have been sending myself to worlds where I would have a familiar threat to face." Harry sighed, not wanting to get distracted on that topic of conversation, and turned back to a smug Jonathan. "Anyway. I'm worried that he might follow me slavishly. I don't want that."

"Then tell him you don't want that, and he won't."

"I don't want to have that level of influence over him, either!" Harry snapped, but he got a grin from one inhabitant of the room and a blank look from the other, and he slumped back with a sigh. "I'm going to have to get used to it, aren't I?"

"At least this time you admitted it," Jonathan said in a loud whisper, and shook his head when he caught Slytherin's eye. "You don't want to know how long I've tried to get through to him about this."

"Do bring my descendant here," Slytherin said imperiously, "and perhaps I can negotiate between you. And perhaps I can have a word or two to say to him about Horcruxes."

All right, Harry admitted to himself, no matter how long I live, I don't think I'll get another chance to see Salazar Slytherin telling off Voldemort about his Horcruxes.