The Bitter Truth
It's hard to pinpoint just one thing as the inspiration for this piece this time. It all started, I suppose, with a line from Evanescence's new song "Wasted on You": Is it in my blood?
I started thinking of Harry trying to process the ability to speak Parseltongue when he doesn't know his family history, has no idea if his ancestors were capable of it, and that started this fic. You'll see other little snippets from that song tying into the story as it progresses. What really inspired the latter part of the story, however, was a tumblr post by thebiwholived, who writes some pretty incredible stories here on ffn and over on AO3. Her vision of Harry after the final battle really struck a chord in me and that impacted what I had already written, which then grew into the fic you see here, so I am gifting this to her because of the incredible inspiration she gave to me. I hope you enjoy!
The snake in the zoo doesn't scare Harry. It listens to him like no one else in his life ever does. And then it is set free by a bizarre set of circumstances which gain an explanation later that summer, yet pales in the uncertainty that comes the next time he speaks to a snake so it doesn't attack another student.
"Being able to talk to snakes was what Salazar Slytherin was famous for," says Hermione after she and Ron drag Harry away from Professor Lockhart's dueling club. "That's why the symbol of Slytherin House is a serpent."
Harry finds that he need some time alone after the bombshell Ron and Hermione drop on him, claims he's tired and retreats to the safety of his four-poster far too quickly to pretend to his friends that he's fine. A descendant of Slytherin, him? How is that possible?
And yet, Harry has already spoken to snakes before. He did it in the zoo, and now he's done it in front of most of the school. And given everything that's already happened, given the fantastic yet horrifying truth that speaking Parseltongue is a gift through Slytherin's line, how can he be anything other than what the school will think him to be?
Is it in his blood?
Before this evening, he would have said no, but now? Harry can't be sure of anything.
Did he attack Mrs. Norris? It doesn't seem possible, he was with Ron and Hermione that entire evening, and yet... had he somehow caused it?
Harry can't think straight about it all. Nothing makes sense. He doesn't think he could be descended from Salazar Slytherin, but the reality is that he does not actually know enough about his own family to claim this with any certainty.
It doesn't help that Parseltongue sounded like English to him the two times he knowingly spoke to a snake. He can't hear anything different whenever he tries on his own, isn't sure if he needs to be in contact with a snake to speak a different language.
Speaking a different language... it sounds so odd, the idea that he can speak another language without even realizing it.
Then Justin Finch-Fletchly turns up Petrified the very next day, and Harry knows it couldn't have been him, but what if it is? Justin was scared of him...
The murmurs and stares get worse after that. Harry keeps his head down, tries to focus on what he can control. But one bright, wintry day he can't help but seek solace, leaping on his broomstick and flying to the far edge of the lake to escape it all for just an hour or two.
Hedwig finds him out there, and Harry knows that Ron and Hermione believe he isn't the Heir of Slytherin, but they are still remarkably nervous about this ability he doesn't even fully understand. Last year it was his scar hurting when Voldemort was near, and now it's this language that apparently only descendants of Slytherin can speak, and what can his friends possibly think of all this?
But Hedwig... Hedwig doesn't care about things like that. She settles next to him and hoots in a gentle, almost soothing way. He strokes her feathers, and feels a sense of calm in her presence he hasn't felt in weeks. To be next to someone who isn't going to be worried about things he can't explain, or fear that he's someone he isn't is a welcome relief in the midst of the turmoil he currently feels.
"Who am I, Hedwig?" he finds himself asking her. He thought he knew. Harry Potter. The Boy Who Lived. The child who once had parents and grew up in a cupboard under the stairs after he lost them. But there's clearly more to him than that. There has to be given the scar and the Parseltongue and the looks cast his way...
"What am I?" he asks now. Is he really a Gryffindor? Had he made a mistake when he begged the Sorting Hat not to put him in Slytherin? Was he just a freak?
Freak. That's what Aunt Petunia had called his mother.
The reality is that Harry doesn't know anything anymore. All he can do is wait for Hermione to finish the Polyjuice Potion so they can interrogate Malfoy and see if he is the Heir of Slytherin. If he is, they can put a stop to all of this.
But if he isn't...
Then is it Harry?
Harry doesn't want to know the answer to that. He just wants the truth, bitter or not.
It would be nice to say that things got better, but it isn't. And it doesn't.
Malfoy isn't the Heir of Slytherin. Harry still doesn't know why he can speak a different language. The strange diary he finds ends up leaving him with more questions than answers, and then it is gone days later, his belongings strewn across the dormitory floor. Harry has to hold onto his knowledge that this isn't coming from him, but it isn't until Hermione turns up Petrified that the students around him finally relent in their persistent belief that he's the one behind the attacks.
It still doesn't explain how Harry can speak to snakes.
Nothing does.
And then Harry stands within the bowels of the Chamber of Secrets facing something impossible:
Tom Marvolo Riddle, Lord Voldemort as a teenager, laughing and taunting as the life drains from Ginny Weasley's unconscious form on the stone floor, the strange diary lying next to her.
Voldemort can talk to snakes. He can control them, make them do his bidding.
Why is it that Harry can do the same?
Harry doesn't have time to ponder this as he fights for his life. For Ginny's life.
He doesn't have time to worry about it when he's stabbed by one of the basilisk's fangs and lies dying on the chamber floor.
He can't think about it when Fawkes heals him and brings him the diary.
Instead, he reacts.
And then Riddle is screaming, writhing as ink spurts in droves from the diary around the puncture Harry has made with the basilisk fang.
He's gone.
Ginny wakes up.
And then Ginny is crying, terrified she's going to be expelled for something she had no control over. Harry has no idea how to help her when there are still so many unanswered questions in his own mind. He does what he can, all but implores Dumbledore to believe that it wasn't Ginny's fault, and thankfully, Ginny is not blamed.
There is still the doubt, the worry, the fear that this — Parseltongue — is as much a part of him as his messy hair or green eyes.
That it's in his blood.
Dumbledore assures Harry at last, at long last, that this is not the case. It isn't something he inherited from his parents.
The bitter truth is that it comes from Voldemort, that he accidentally transferred some of his powers to Harry. It explains speaking Parseltongue, the pain in his scar, and in the weeks before the Third Task, it explains the strange dreams. It explains the way his scar burns at Voldemort's touch in the graveyard, the increasing visions as Umbridge terrorizes the school, the way he gets sudden lurches of emotions that aren't his as Voldemort's mood changes throughout each day while he tries and fails to master Occlumency.
This strange, bitter truth helps him make sense of the pain of Voldemort possessing him in the wake of Sirius's death. It even explains the way Voldemort is able to use Occlumency against him, giving him a year's respite from pain and visions, giving him a chance to live, to be Quidditch captain and pine after Ginny when she's obviously moved on (except she really hasn't, and the weeks with her are the best in his life), to learn what he must do to survive and defeat Voldemort once and for all.
It explains everything.
Until it doesn't.
"... a fragment of Voldemort's soul was blasted apart from the whole," Dumbledore tells Snape in a memory, "and latched itself onto the only living soul left in that collapsing building. Part of Lord Voldemort lives inside Harry, and it is that which gives him the power of speech with snakes, and a connection with Lord Voldemort's mind that he has never understood."
Harry knows what Horcruxes are by this point, knows the diary was one, has worked tirelessly to track down and destroy the remaining ones, but this...
This explains his reality. At long last, Dumbledore has passed him the bitter truth.
It was never in his blood, but it may as well have been.
Harry has been tainted his whole life and never realized it. Had he been waiting for a miracle, something that would neatly tie up the loose ends and allow him to live?
For a moment, it feels like he's frozen in time, years wasted where he could have had the time to come to terms with the bitter truth that faces him now.
Will he ever be the same?
No, of course he won't. He'll be dead.
He can't tell Ron and Hermione this bitter, awful truth he has to face, can't bear the thought of the looks on their faces before he has to walk to his death. He doesn't dare tell anyone that he has to go into the forest, unarmed and alone, and stand there while Voldemort finishes what he started that Halloween night so long ago.
But there's still the snake.
Harry's come too far to slip and stumble now, but with Nagini still alive, there's no hope of ending Voldemort once and for all.
He trusts Neville with the knowledge that the snake must die before he sets off beneath his Cloak of Invisibility.
Seeing Ginny in the grounds not even a minute later, however, almost undoes him.
Ginny has never once doubted him since he saved her life five years ago. She has been kind and caring, nights playing Exploding Snap in the common room without having to say much, then risking her life to come with him to the Department of Mysteries.
And that's to say nothing of those sunlit days a year ago when they were together, his arm around her waist, her leaning against his legs, holding hands, her fingers in his hair, warm skin pressed to warm skin away from everyone else...
Harry longs for her touch in that moment as she helps another girl head to the castle, a girl who wants to go home. He wants this for her, wants Ginny and the girl to be able to get to safety.
After all, he is home right now, back in the one place that has been more of a home than the Dursley's could have ever been. He watches Ginny for a moment, wants nothing more than to touch her one last time, or to be dragged back from what he must do.
He can't.
Would Ginny even want to touch him now, knowing he has been tainted his entire life with a bit of the same soul that almost killed her five years ago? If she knew, would she be disgusted with every caress, every kiss, every moment where it was just them and only them? Because it wasn't, not really. There has always been something — someone else — there.
It has to go.
And so Harry must die.
He thinks Ginny might sense him as he passes, notices her head turning his way, but he can't stop moving toward the forest, toward his inevitable ending.
Towards death.
He has to be ready to die. He has to be strong enough to change from a survivor to a sacrifice.
Then he recalls the golden snitch he has been carrying all this time and finds himself with the Resurrection Stone, finds himself drawing comfort from those who have already passed on.
He can't take comfort from the living anymore. It's why he didn't go find his friends, why he made himself continue past Ginny.
He might as well already be among the dead.
Soon, far too soon, he stands in the forest clearing, Voldemort's wand on upon him, scared but steady as he faces what he should have known would always be his ending, and as the wand lifts in his direction, he thinks of Ginny, her blazing look and the feel of her lips on his one last time —
The mouth speaks the words, the world flashes green, and Harry knows no more.
Except there is more.
Much more.
The thing that has tainted Harry his entire life is gone, destroyed by Voldemort's curse.
But Harry is not dead.
He gets answers, far more answers than he's ever gotten before, and returns to the forest, returns to living — perhaps simply regaining consciousness — with a final chance to end this once and for all.
His mother saved him once, and Narcissa Malfoy saves him now in desperation to find her son.
It's incredible, how a mother's love shapes his fate so very much.
When all is said and done, Harry returns the Elder Wand to Dumbledore's tomb and allows himself the one thing he has been denying his right to have for so long.
Ginny's touch.
He can't tell her about how he's been tainted, not yet. Maybe not ever. Holding her in his arms is a balm to his tormented soul he isn't worthy of but seeks all the same.
Ginny holds his hand through every funeral, kisses him so very gently when he can't form the words to express his failings, and he doesn't know how to admit that the things that had seemed so odd about him before Voldemort's death had actually been a part of something vile, a contamination in his very soul.
He already explained everything to Ron and Hermione, but he can't bring himself to admit how much the truth has horrified him.
He can't tell anyone.
So he throws himself into the rebuilding of the Wizarding world, gives names of known Death Eaters who still need to be tracked down, wakes in a cold sweat so often he doesn't quite know what it is to sleep anymore, and lets Ginny hold him in the moments he has nowhere else to be.
He can't tell her about the whispered words and sick, unclean feelings that plague his every dream.
"You have allowed your friends to die for you..."
He can't tell anyone how dirty he truly feels beneath the layers and layers of heavy, irrepressible guilt.
He sees the worried looks, but Harry has long been a man of action, not idle, and he can't bring himself to slow down.
Slowing down means thinking too much.
Being tainted has brought so much trouble. Harry himself has brought about so much trouble. He has to fix things, has to make amends for all that has happened because he didn't die, not like Remus and Tonks and Fred and so many of his friends and classmates who shouldn't have had to die. The bitter truth of it all is that they all deserved better. If only he had been faster, had put the clues together quicker...
Harry knows he's pushing himself too much, but it can't be helped. It's just what he has to do. It's what he owes.
He was tainted. Is he still? It doesn't matter. Every life lost is his fault, after all. So he carries on, giving and giving regardless of whether or not he has more to give because he owes this to every broken family he couldn't save, every life lost because he wasn't faster, every person who sacrificed to keep him alive when he had no right to such a thing —
He can see the concern in Ron and Hermione's eyes as they leave for Australia to find Hermione's parents, in the looks Andromeda Tonks shoots him when she thinks he's distracted with visiting Teddy, his little godson who will never know his parents. He feels it in the way Mrs. Weasley attempts to make him eat more than he's capable of at every meal he attends, in the way Ginny holds his hand tightly every moment she is by his side. George watches him with clear worry in his dull gaze when he has every right to hate Harry for the torment he suffers now without his twin — without Fred by his side.
But Harry can't give in, can't slow down in the light of all the destruction caused by everything he's done and everything he is and ever was.
It all comes to a head about three weeks after the final battle. Harry can't sleep, as much as he wishes he could, so he slips out of The Burrow in the early hours of the morning and sits at the edge of the pond, thoughts disordered and painful.
"I thought I might find you here." It's Ginny, her threadbare housecoat wrapped tightly around her small frame in the chill outside. Harry shrugs and looks away from her at the still water that lies before him.
"Just needed some air," he finally mutters.
Ginny hums a bit and settles down next to him. They sit in silence, shoulders lightly touching, and it's nice to just exist without demands for his time and efforts for a bit.
"Harry..."
Of course, he should've known Ginny would only let him go on for so long before making demands of her own. He's been telling her about everything, the prophecy, the lessons with Dumbledore, even the Horcruxes and the hunt for the remaining ones after Dumbledore's death.
There's one thing he hasn't told her.
He doesn't know if he can.
"Something's been bothering you for a while now," says Ginny softly as the sky to the east turns the faintest of pinks. "It's been hard to be patient enough to let you tell me on your own, but I think I've held out long enough."
Harry stiffens despite himself and immediately thinks of fleeing somewhere else, anywhere else. He knows what she's going to ask him, knows that he won't be able to refuse if she does.
"What aren't you telling me?"
The words are spoken so quietly Harry barely hears them, but hear them he does. He closes his eyes and tips his head back, not wanting to answer, not wanting to admit why he went into the forest that night.
But he can't deny Ginny any longer.
"I..." But the words won't come. How can he explain the taint he once feared to be in his blood had been Voldemort's own soul? How can he burden Ginny with this horrible truth? He'd barely gotten into it with Ron and Hermione, but if he tells Ginny now... will she leave him?
"Harry," says Ginny, "there's nothing you could ever tell me that would make me hate you." She's listened to Harry describe using two of the Unforgivable Curses without flinching, this is true. But this... this bitter truth he's carrying, he can't see how she would be able to stay at his side or touch him again after this.
There's also the reaction she had to discovering the diary contained a piece of Voldemort's soul. She had been horrified by that revelation, ill at ease over the thought that something so vile had possessed her, shuddered in disgust, and Harry has been certain ever since that when he finally tells her that Voldemort's soul had been a part of him from the night his parents were murdered up until he walked into the forest expecting to die, she will be finished with him. This has to be the line she won't be willing to cross with the full knowledge of how unclean Harry has always been.
Speaking to her about the diary also reminds him of the strange thought he'd had upon seeing Riddle's name upon it, a name that felt familiar, like an old friend he'd forgotten.
It hadn't been him feeling that way.
It had been the Horcrux.
What else had been that part of Voldemort? How much of Harry was really him?
All the same, he can't keep hiding the bitter truth. Ginny deserves better than that. And if she decides she's through with him after this...
He's already six feet low. Waiting for a miracle isn't going to help him move on when Ginny inevitably leaves him.
He has to tell her.
"Snape's memories," he finally forces himself to speak as he refocuses his gaze on the pond. "It was more than his friendship with my mum or the work he did for Dumbledore. He... he learned — Dumbledore told him the night he tried to kill me, a piece of his soul was blasted apart from the whole and latched itself to the only living thing in the area."
Harry falls silent, waits for Ginny to put it together, to understand what he can't quite bring himself to say.
It doesn't take long.
"You were a Horcrux."
The words are said without any identifiable tone to them. Harry doesn't know if that's a good thing or not.
"Yeah," he sighs, still staring at the still pond water, unable to bring himself to see Ginny's reaction to this information. "It — it's why I could speak to snakes, and it's why I had that connection to Voldemort, the visions and such. He never knew, he didn't realize his soul was so unstable..."
"You told me the only way to destroy a Horcrux is to render it beyond repair." Harry still can't tell what Ginny's thinking, but he nods.
"Dumbledore told Snape I had to — to —" Harry can't say it, runs his hands through his hair in frustration. Finally, he decides to skip the word "die" and moves onto the other part. "He said Voldemort had to be the one to do it."
"He had to be the one to kill you," says Ginny, and Harry still can't tell what she's thinking.
"Yeah," he says.
There's a moment of silence, and then it begins to spill out of him, every fear and worry he had ever had about himself, about Parseltongue, his scar, the dreams and visions, all of it.
"I've been — tainted, all these years — and it — it was inside me the whole time, and I feel — God, I feel so unclean, and I don't know how much of me was ever me and how much was him—"
He wants to rage at the injustice of everything that has ever happened to him, wants to scream and never stop, and he does, the panic and fear and utter disgust of who and what he was and is overwhelming and painful and —
Ginny's arms are around him.
She... she's hugging him.
Ginny hasn't left.
Somehow, impossibly, miraculously, Ginny is still here.
Her touch is as warm and soothing as it has always been, and even if she is disgusted or horrified at what he was, what he is, she has not left his side.
Before Harry knows it, the screams have turned to harsh sobs that attempt to steal his breath, sobs that wrack every inch of his wretched person, and he curls into Ginny, the dam that has held back so much completely obliterated as hot tears track down his face. She holds him close, one arm wrapped around his trembling shoulders, the other carding through his hair.
Harry doesn't understand why she's still here, but the comfort she offers as he falls apart at long last is a soothing balm to his tortured heart and mind.
He cries and cries until he has nothing left to give, Ginny still wrapped around him, holding him close and (when the sobs begin to subside) he hears her whispering softly.
"It's okay, I'm here and I'm not going anywhere, let it all out Harry, I've got you..."
When Harry is spent, he can barely keep his eyes open as a wave of exhaustion overtakes him. The last thing he is aware of is Ginny leaning over him as she cradles his head in her lap, smiling with tears in her eyes as she gently runs her fingers through his hair, and then, at long last, Harry rests without nightmares.
When he comes to hours later, he finds himself lying on the camp bed in Ron's room with no memory of how he got there. It's dark outside; Harry has no idea how long he slept, but he feels...
He feels lighter somehow, less burdened by the weight of all he has carried.
Someone shifts, and Harry realizes he's not alone in the camp bed. Ginny is there, spooned behind him, an arm lying across his waist.
"You're awake," she whispers.
"You're here," he returns hoarsely.
"Where else would I be?"
Harry shrugs. He doesn't know what to say.
"You said you thought I wouldn't want to be with you," says Ginny at length, and Harry tenses up, but Ginny runs her hand that was draped over his waist along his side as if to calm him. "He didn't taint you, Harry. Your kindness and ability to love — Voldemort never had that. If his soul fragment had really influenced you, then you wouldn't either, but you do."
Harry forces himself to turn over so he can face Ginny. Her face is shadowed, but her voice is gentle, as is her touch. "You have always been Harry," she says. "You've been through hell, but you have not once given into the depths of horror that Voldemort was capable of. How could I not want to be with you?"
"Ginny —" Harry starts, but then Ginny is kissing him with more intensity than he thinks he's ever experienced, and even though a part of Harry still questions if he's worthy of it, he gives in, pulling Ginny against him, one hand in her hair and the other pressed against her back.
"There's no one else I want," she whispers against his lips, and Harry is lost in her embrace, tears on his face that could easily belong to either of them, and Harry finds himself faced with a new truth, sweet and bright against the bitter truth of his existence up to now:
Ginny is here. She isn't going anywhere.
And Harry knows that, at last, he can move forward to something better.