Chapter 11: When the Heartbeat Stops

Voldemort, obviously, knew that Dumbledore was keeping an eye on Harry. He'd seen the floo jar in that batty woman's house, kept so very innocuously on the mantel. A very, very stark reminder of a world, so close yet so far, just adjacent to the one he'd been trapped in. Just one fireplace away.

Magic hadn't abandoned him, it never could, but sometimes it felt like he'd abandoned magic. Like he was voluntarily making the choice to stay away, every second that Harry and Voldemort spent in the wonderless Dursley household. Whatever he and Harry could do, sometimes, just didn't feel enough. After experiencing the joys of the wizarding world in all its glory, nothing ever could compare to it. The sweet, sweet rush of magic, like sunlight filling up the darkest, coldest parts of him.

He didn't even have a body, making do with one of an inexperienced little, gullible child. A child who was currently sucking his thumb.

"Put your thumb out of your mouth," he said wearily, and Harry quickly pulled it out, looking guilty. The boy mumbled a quiet apology before finally starting on his cake.

Figg, her name was. She'd given Harry the cake with a small ruffle to his hair, a large enough slice that Voldemort had to force Harry to halve it before digging in, or else he'd get sick. Honestly, that woman was an idiot. He didn't have much faith in her ability to report back to Dumbledore properly.

Other than the floo jar, the house felt horrendously mundane. Well, at least in terms of magic. The Dursleys wouldn't call it normal by any stretch of the word, considering all the cats and the mismatched furniture.

Of course, Dumbledore wouldn't just abandon a child of prophecy, he wasn't quite that senile. Not yet. Even though his choice of leaving Harry with these muggles made him question the fact heavily. The choice of having a squib as his 'spy' even more so. But, well, Voldemort had never considered the man especially smart.

Intelligent, yes, but not smart. There's a reason he was a Gryffindor, after all.

But Voldemort, on the other hand… well. He knew how to make the best of a situation, to take advantage. And he knew what he needed to do. Or what he needed to have Harry do, in any case, his own helplessness aside.

"Harry," he said quietly, and the boy froze at his tone, spoon halfway to his mouth. "Keep eating," Voldemort hissed.

Harry quickly shoved it into his mouth, "What?"

"Do you see that jar on the mantle? The one with the maroon lid?"

Harry hummed back, eyeing it as discreetly as a six-year-old could manage, which wasn't much, but Figg wasn't watching anyway. At least now that Voldemort could see.

"I need you to steal some of the powder inside."

Harry paused, but only for a few seconds this time, his eyes drifting over to Mrs. Figg, where she was cooing over a wet cat, trying to rub it down with a towel. Quiet unsuccessfully. Harry turned back to the floo powder, frowning hard. He opened his mouth.

"It's not just dirt or ash," Voldemort snapped, "It's floo powder."

"What powder?"

"Floo powder, it's a method of travel in the wizarding world."

Harry's eyes lit up, before widening comically as his gaze snapped back to Figg, who continued on with her struggles obliviously.

"Is she–?"

Harry had left his cake in his excitement, and didn't seem too inclined to resume eating. Eve snuck its head out from under his sleeve, tongue flicking against the sweet confection before it turned its head away, hissing in displeasure. Harry quickly shushed it, stroking its head and urging it back in before Figg could see.

"I don't think so. She must be a squib, or perhaps a Muggle Dumbledore is close to, although that's more unlikely."

Harry's mouth pinched a little, eyes turning sad, the way they always did then the topic of squibs got brought up. How sad, to be born within a wonderful world, before being told so very firmly that you did not belong.

The boy was pathetically empathetic.

Voldemort didn't care. As long as he had magic, what did he care for those who didn't? As long as he belonged, no one else mattered.

"Where will I keep it?" Harry asked, looking back at the powder now, instead of going on a spiel about the unfairness of the existence of squibs, and Voldemort stifled a sigh of relief.

"You have to have at least enough for one trip, but not quite so much that Figg notices. Use a napkin, you're small, it's not like you'll need a lot for one trip anyway."

"Right," Harry said slowly, "I still don't know how it works." His hand darted out and he grabbed the napkin he'd been provided with the cake. He glanced back at Figg, who was now wrangling a very muddy cat in her arms. She noticed him looking and smiled wryly at him, at which Harry froze up, looking supremely guilty. Voldemort wished he could whack the boy over the head.

"Sorry, dear, I think this one needs another bath. You finish your cake, alright? I'll be right back," Figg said, clutching at the cat as it tried to scramble away, meowing loudly in protest.

Harry nodded quickly, giving her a grin. His teeth were chocolate smeared.

The woman smiled back and left, looking quite frazzled.

Harry pushed back his chair as noiselessly as possible, quickly making his way over to the fireplace. He picked up the jar, and quickly twisted the lid open, coughing a bit as some of the powder got into his face. A few sprinkles fell into the fireplace, letting off sparks of brilliant green light. Harry reared back in surprise.

"Believe me now?" Voldemort asked dryly, and Harry looked sheepish. The boy, despite literally everything going on in his life right now, often had trouble believing just how much magic existed, just how much magic was capable of. He didn't quite disobey Voldemort when he told him something new to try, but his skepticism was always glaringly obvious to someone literally living in his head.

"Sorry," Harry muttered, before quickly grabbing a very small handful and carefully placing it within the napkin. He closed the jar back up, eyes nervously flicking over to the doorway behind which Figg had disappeared to. Another one of those infernal cats suddenly jumped down from a cat tree built in the living room, causing Harry to startle and drop the jar.

Voldemort reacted without thinking, a thrust of magic, gentle and controlled, made the rapidly falling jar freeze midair. Harry grabbed it quickly, placing it back on the mantle, eyes wide.

"Sorry, sorry," Harry whispered quickly, and Voldemort could feel the boy's heart thundering in his chest as he folded up the napkin into a neat little square to prevent spilling, his hands shaking ever so slightly from the sudden rush of adrenaline.

"Go finish your cake," Voldemort said, wishing he had a body so he could cross his arms and sigh loudly. Harry probably got that impression anyway.

"I can wake her up," Harry said, clutching the dead cat in his arms.

"No."

"I can."

"I know you can," Voldemort snapped. The boy was a fucking idiot. "I don't want you to. It's not a bird or a snake you can easily hide, it's a cat." A dirty one at that, an ugly little creature probably infested with fleas, sentenced to death even before it had been born. It hadn't been alive when Harry crouched down next to it, not like the bird, not for a long time.

"It's a kitty," Harry argued, his hands tightening around it. If it were alive it would probably be mewling in pain from his grip. "It's small."

"No." His tone broke no argument, but he could also feel the sheer determination that emanated from the boy, burning bright and solid as the very stones of Hogwarts itself. It would be admirable if he weren't talking about resurrecting a dead cat and taking it to a home which was actively hostile to anything that didn't belong.

Harry set his mouth in a stubborn expression, scowling, and Voldemort would roll his eyes at it if he could. He sighed audibly, and repeated himself.

But the boy was already stroking the cat's head, a dirty filthy creature that probably starved to death. Its fur matted, leaving dirty streaks through Harry's hands. Voldemort could feel the magic rising in the boy, and both pleasure and exasperation warred within him as the sweet rush of magic went through him.

It took a lot longer this time, the boy growing visibly more frustrated with every second that the cat didn't 'wake up'.

Frustrated tears welled up in Harry's eyes, and Voldemort watched dispassionately. It'll teach the boy to try out such magic on a whim rather than actual study and effort. But it was also concerning, because the last time it had barely taken half the time. Then again, the bird had just died in Harry's own hands that time. Who knew how long the cat had been dead for?

Accidental magic worked on whims and fancies and emotions, which had been quite heightened at the time. Although the boy seemed to be reaching that point, Voldemort thought it was a fair toss-up between what it would actually do, the magic going haywire within, a swirl of colours and feelings.

Maybe the cat would just spontaneously combust in Harry's arms.

Harry's eyes had grown near feverish, his face flushed, and the boy himself did not notice when the cat twitched, only directing more magic into the creature.

"Harry."

"No," Harry snapped, and fed even more magic into the cat– which, well. It wouldn't be good, Voldemort thought, but it might be interesting to see the results. Voldemort almost considered letting the boy exhaust himself. It's not like the cat could become any more dead than it already was, and even though the boy was playing with death magic, for some inexplicable reason he always used healing magic.

And though healing magic had huge potential to go wrong and cause harm, that was usually for the patients rather than the healer. It's not like Voldemort cared about the cat, he could let it explode all over Harry for all he knew. It would distress the boy out greatly, but would also teach him a lesson about not listening to Voldemort.

So he didn't say anything as Harry continued feeding magic into the cat which had already started twitching, too caught up in himself to even notice. The boy was starting to tire himself out, and the cat showed no signs of exploding. Voldemort sighed again and decided to warn the boy before he could exhaust himself into unconsciousness, which would be a huge hassle since the Dursleys wanted him back before seven and it was already half past six, the sun setting and street lights turning on one by one.

"Harry, that cat's awake," he said quietly, watching as Harry startled before stilling. He slowly stroked an experimental hand down the back of the cat– kitten, as Harry had said– from head down the back, making the cat purr loudly and stretch out her paws, snuffling against his pant legs.

"Look!" Harry said, beaming even as he listed to the side dazedly, "I did it!"

"I can see that."

"I proved you wrong, I said I could do it and I did it," Harry crowed, an expression of glee plastered over his face as he kept giving the filthy cat scritches. At this rate, the boy will end up giving himself some sort of vermin-inflicted disease.

Voldemort could only hope his inherent magic could keep him safe and immune to some of the more common illnesses and diseases. Wizarding children got sick less frequently after reaching a particular age, and usually only came down with more severe things that their magic couldn't prevent. But if an adult wixen had already been sick for a while and only just recovered, they did end up catching things like common colds as well, their magical stores depleted and unable to fight.

Harry perpetually ran on half-empty stores because he was an idiot who couldn't follow good advice when it was literally screaming at him inside his head.

Voldemort turned back to the smug expression Harry wore and said, "I never said you couldn't do it. I said you shouldn't."

Harry just shrugged, "I don't care. I wanted to help the kitty. She looked so sad."

"She didn't look anything, Harry." Dear Merlin, how delusional were kids? "She was dead."

"And now she's not. Look at the way she's purring, she looks happy now. Don't you want her to be happy?"

"I couldn't care less what she looks like, or whether she's happy or not."

"That's very mean of you." Harry didn't sound very upset or accusatory as he said that, now well-versed in what did and didn't concern Voldemort. He was still cuddling up with the damn cat like the Dursleys would let him wash up when he went home, and not make him wait until the next morning no matter what filth he was covered in. And then make him clean up the mess too.

Voldemort was just about to tell him off for the same when he felt the same thing Harry did, freezing up in place.

"Mr. Lord…" Harry breathed, eyes wide. Voldemort himself felt like someone had hit him over the face with a bat. "She has a heartbeat."

Yes, he could feel that. Almost too vividly. The heart thumping under Harry's hand, pressed against the cat as she kept purring and purring and purring, trying to nuzzle her head into Harry's other hand.

"She's still not a real cat," Voldemort said automatically, "Not in the way she had been, before her death."

She couldn't be. It was one of the laws of magic. You could prevent death, but you couldn't reverse it. Not truly. And besides, the cat had the characteristic green eyes that Iris did, a brilliant grass green that looked unnatural. Stray kittens were also supposed to be ridiculously skittish, and this one was anything but skittish.

"She's a real cat," Harry said. "Just because she's not really alive doesn't mean she's not a real cat. And if she's not alive then why does she have a heartbeat?"

"A heartbeat isn't always an indication of life," he said, as calmly as he could even as his mind whirled with possibilities. "We can stimulate the heart, both magically and in the muggle way. It doesn't mean the person is alive." He knew about it, the way Muggles sometimes used electricity to restart the heart. How very barbaric. How very ingenious. But you could only keep a heart beating forcefully for so long, even with magic, when the body itself had given up. It would just be a corpse with a beating heart.

Just how powerful was the boy, if he could reanimate a corpse with a beating heart?

"Stimulate?" Harry interrupted.

"Restore," Voldemort said, a little impatient. "Make it beat, even when it has stopped. It's not real life." He hesitated. He didn't want to answer a flood of questions, but… "Sometimes, very few times, a person can be revived. But revived and resurrected aren't the same."

"Uh," Harry said blankly. Voldemort often forgot he was just six years old. And now he'd made the mistake of breaching the topic, so he wouldn't let it go either. An inquisitive, curious mind wasn't a bad thing, per say, but Voldemort would rather he weren't the target of that curiosity and inquisition.

"A revived person is… just someone who is brought back from the brink of death, they hadn't truly died, their body had stopped for a moment but the soul hadn't left." It was hard to put this into words that a child would understand. Hard to explain because he'd studied this several decades ago, hard because even if he had an excellent memory, it had deteriorated with the rest of his mind as he strayed further into the dark arts. Still, he continued, "A resurrection is bringing life back to a doubtless lifeless body. Both of these are extremely hard, but a resurrection can only be done by magic, whereas a revival is sometimes possible without magic. Although both are stupendously hard."

"Stupendously?"

Voldemort wanted to hit his head against a wall, or something. He would have, actually, if he could. What wouldn't he give to be able to do that. Sometimes he missed having a body in more ways than one, missed it not just because this was a half-life, but also because he hadn't realised just what he had when he had it. He supposed it wasn't a dilemma that most others face, being bodiless, completely intangible. But he wished he could just… move. Have limbs again. Be something more than a voice, a consciousness cobbled together with an accidental horcrux and leftover magic.

"Extremely," he answered.

"How do I know the difference?"

"It's harder to tell with animals but, well. Your creatures all seem to have the same blowing green eyes. Revivals don't do that."

"Have you ever revived someone?"

Voldemort scoffed, "No."

He was rather in the business of doing the opposite. He didn't really have anyone he wanted alive bad enough to want to go through the hassle of a revival. And, well, for the resurrection part, he supposed creating inferi was a kind of resurrection, if a twisted, dark version of it. And of course, there were the several rituals he was planning to have Harry do when he was older and more stable, to resurrect himself.

"Resurrected?"

Could inferi be called true resurrections, though? Voldemort wasn't quite sure. They were just… moving corpses. "Not the way you do."

"Wait– you have?" Harry gasped,"In some other way?" He sounded far too energetic and excited for someone who'd nearly drained himself to unconsciousness trying to bring a dead cat back to life.

There we go, always with the questions. Even he hadn't asked that many questions, he'd just go to the library and find the answers himself. He knew Harry didn't have the advantage of a magical library at his disposal, but why did he have to bear the brunt of it?

"You should go home, Harry," Voldemort said tiredly. He'd really rather not deal with this. He wanted to rest, but sleep wasn't real in this existence either. Nothing was real. "It's late. Where will you keep the cat?"

Harry blinked down at the creature in his lap, "I, um."

Eve had sneaked out of Harry's sleeve again, and was winding itself around his fingers, sniffing at the cat curiously. The cat appeared completely serene, lending to the theory that it wasn't a normal cat. Not anymore.

Harry cleared his throat, "Well, I can just tell her to… to hide? Iris doesn't need to eat, right? So I don't have to worry about feeding her. What do you mean you have resurrected someone before?"

"If you're late the Dursleys won't be happy."

"But you've gotta tell me about it!" Harry whined, and the kitten mewed. Harry quickly shushed her and climbed to his feet, stumbling and blinking spots from his eyes. He had truly given his everything into trying to get the cat to 'wake up', hadn't he? His determination was commendable, even if his intelligence wasn't. "You were so surprised when I woke Iris up, but if you've done it before too, then it can't be that rare, right?"

Well, that was insulting. Voldemort had done many things that most wixen could not even conceive of. What made Harry think just because he'd made inferi made the act of resurrection ordinary? The boy had a severely skewed idea of just how powerful Voldemort had been— still was.

"Go home, Harry," Voldemort sighed, the only 'physical' reaction he could show anymore. What a sad, diminished life he had been forced into, what a foolish man he'd been. Overconfident. "I'll tell you about it some other time. I doubt you'll forget."

Besides, he hadn't just resurrected someone. It had been several someones, Voldemort thought. Inferi that Harry had seen before, in his dreams where Voldemort's memories leaked forth.

But he didn't have the energy to hash it out today. And anyway, he had much more interesting things to ponder over. Like the fact that Harry had resurrected a cat with a heartbeat. An unnaturally slow heartbeat, but a heartbeat nonetheless. What did it mean? How much further could Harry go? Could he give these creatures a normal heartbeat? Replicate other functions? Induce drives to eat and drink and sleep? Would it mean his creations just circled back to inconvenience after reaching their magical peak and prime?

What feats could Harry perform with proper training, a wand, and a more mature magical core?

A part of Voldemort felt… jealous. Jealous of this boy, who was stupidly kind and empathetic. Who had power even beyond what Voldemort did. Little Tom had thought himself so special for being able to speak to snakes, to make others do what he wanted. And he had been, he'd been so very special. Still was, beyond compare. But Harry… Harry had power beyond compare, beyond what Voldemort had seen before.

And he was Voldemort's.