Title: "Spiritus Mundi"
Author: Shaitanah
Rating: R
Timeline: post-war, Harry is 19
Summary: Harry, an Auror in training, receives an assignment to interrogate Voldemort who is a prisoner in his own dream world. + Harry is so in love, and that love will destroy him. Voldemort has little time left to live, and Harry finally learns the truth. Please R&R!
Disclaimer: Harry Potter belongs to J. K. Rowling. The passage about "bad and worthless" is a direct quote from Richard Shepard's movie 'Oxygen'. I though it to be very fitting for Harry here.
Special thanks: to Mizstorge for beta-reading.
A/N: Thank you so much for your reviews! Guys, you're awesome! And thank you to those who added this story to their favourites and alerts lists! Well, we're almost done here, unfortunately. A hug to those who will catch You Set My Soul Alight reference in this chapter. Gives you smth to think about, doesn't it?
Chapter 9
The Stars' End
My dreams are a bloody fairytale. I'm so full of happiness that it stops me from thinking clearly. It's just me and Tom, and our wonderful journeys, and the most beautiful sunsets I've ever seen, and passionate nights, and the most tender lovemaking. I'm overwhelmed, overjoyed, I'm ready to scream. And in real life I can't stop grinning like a madman. I can't tell anyone about it. I'm dying to share my addiction with them, but I won't allow myself to.
Tom is busy with another painting. He won't show it to me until it's finished. He even disguised it behind an illusion of a blank canvas. I grumble about it and distract him as much as I can. I hug him from the back, babble about something meaningless and stupid… I'm downright crazy!
"I had a weird dream last night," Tom informs me. "I was captured by a bunch of evil faerys and you saved me."
"I saved you, huh?" I tease. "I saved the big bad Dark Lord!"
"Shut up!" Tom manages to squeak past the gasps of laughter.
He pushes me into the tree trunk and silences me with a ravishing kiss. This man can't be Voldemort. I hate Voldemort, I want him to vanish from my life for good, but I never want to lose this person. His hands roam over my body as his hips rub against mine. I never want this to stop. But it does when Voldemort pulls away from me and goes back to his painting. I grunt in frustration.
As the night goes on, I continue to fool about. I ambush Voldemort with a series of random questions just to hear that mesmerizing laughter boil in his throat again.
"Let me see… Favourite colour?"
"Black."
I knit my eyebrows. "Oh come on!.."
"Okay, okay! Midnight blue. And green." He looks at me attentively, straight into my eyes, and repeats in his most seductive voice: "Green."
I probably blush because he snickers. I make a face and fire the next question: "Favourite food?"
"That's so not fair!" Tom sighs pretentiously. "I haven't tried real food for ages. You'll be surprised: it's bread." I gape at him. Not quite what I've expected. "Simple but delicious."
"Hmm… Favourite place?"
His face darkens, but only for an instant. I'm not quite sure I really saw this subtle change. "Far away from here," he says quietly. "Almost at the stars' end."
It's freedom. He sorely misses it. I'm at a loss; I shouldn't have reminded him. I'm powerless to help him, I won't go against my conscience no matter how much I care for him now.
"Come here," Tom says, having noticed my struggle with confusion. I'm indecisive; he grins at me. "Come, I won't bite. Not now at least. Good, close your eyes."
I close them and feel something cold and wet touch my chest. I shiver. It tickles. Tom whispers something softly. It's a brush, I'm sure of it, and he paints something on me. The sensation is almost arousing.
"Now look."
Something indefinite is painted in red colour on the left side of my chest. I begin to laugh. "Is it a target?"
"No, you silly creature! It's your heart."
Come to think of it, the shape of this red stain does have something in common with a heart. Not those hearts you can see elsewhere on Valentine's Day, but a real human heart with its valves and vessels. Tom brushes his fingers against my chest, smearing the paint. It looks like the heart is bleeding onto his hand.
"I need to go now," I say regretfully.
"Ah, you have a date."
"It's not a date, it's just…"
Tom's eyes glimmer ironically. It's almost as if he knows something that I don't know. But that's impossible, isn't it?
Some people would indeed regard it as a date. Not in a lifetime. I just need to chill out. And we really need to talk.
So now we (that's Cho and I) are in the sports centre; the blades of our skates cut the ice, drawing curved lines over its shiny surface. Cho laughs. I'm a pretty awkward skater. My experience traces back to a few evenings when the Dursleys were in a good enough mood to take me to a skate-park with Dudley. So I glide along the arena as gracefully as a goose who doesn't understand why his native river is suddenly hard and impenetrable.
Later we sip hot chocolate in a local café and talk about a lot of things: our final years at Hogwarts, our common memories, the future, carefully avoiding the war, and the deaths, and months of recovering. And then she leans into me and kisses me. I don't part my lips, and the kiss is awkward, not really a kiss at all.
I pull away, saying: "I'm sorry, we shouldn't–."
"No, I'm sorry, Harry," Cho says, embarrassed.
God, I hate the silence. Cho looks away, blushing. I cover her hand with mine and say softly:
"This isn't gonna work." She's silent, so I continue: "I wanted to win the TriWizard Cup to impress you, you know. And I wanted to go to the ball with you. And you were my first kiss."
Cho lowers her eyes, smiling. I take a deep breath and say: "But I love someone else."
"I know!" she says with sudden passion. I have to restrain myself not to gape at her. She does!? "But she'd want you to be happy. To move on. I know Cedric wouldn't want me to be lonely."
Oh…
I wet my lips, trying to think up a sensible answer. This is really… embarrassing. But, well, if she thought I meant Ginny, then… okay.
"I understand. But it's… I can't, Cho, not now. Too little time."
I really hate her for being so sweet and compassionate. She likes me, and she's ready to disappear from my life again out of loyalty to my dead girlfriend.
"If only I hadn't spoiled everything!" Cho whispers. "Tell me, would we have still had a chance?"
I squeeze her hand in mine and kiss it tenderly. "No, it's not your fault."
The fault is always mine.
Discussing Cho with Voldemort is not the best idea, but I need someone to hear me out. He still works on that painting. His face is unreadable when I relate my conversation with Cho. It's even more unreadable when I speak insecurely about Ginny. I make him believe what Cho believes: that I meant Ginny when told her I was in love.
I don't want to talk about Ginny, but I recall her lifeless body in the hospital bed and I can't stop.
"Enough!" Voldemort cuts me off icily. "You are alive. What more do you need?"
I gape at him. I can't comprehend this sudden change. He looks less like Tom Riddle now; the features of his true face shimmer through his mask like expression.
"I'm sick of you always feeling sorry for yourself, Harry!" he goes on mercilessly. "If she survived, what would you do? Marry her? Have a dozen children? Please! But she's dead, Harry, dead as dust, and all your pathetic whining can't bring her back!"
"What's happened to you?" I ask, refusing to believe my ears.
"You happened! You come here only when you wish to, be it every night or once a week. You keep asking me stupid questions I have no answers for. And in the morning you go back to life while I'm trapped here. And no!" he throws up his hand, preventing me from speaking. "Do not tell me it is my choice. Between Azkaban and this, what would you choose?"
He looks at me with such disdain that my lips begin to tremble. And for a moment I really believed him. I believed that he'd changed.
"I want life! I want real air, real food, I want my power! I'm the greatest sorcerer in the world!"
"Albus Dumbledore is the greatest sorcerer in the world," I object weakly.
Voldemort laughs unpleasantly. His eyes flash crimson. "Was! Your dear Dumbledore has been feeding worms for the past three years! And you, his favourite, his last hope, are no more than Lord Voldemort's fuckboy!"
"Shut up!" I yell, glaring at him with hate. "Shut up!"
"Or what!? You'll give my body to the Dementors? Go ahead, Harry! But your courage will falter just like it always does. You're not that cruel." His voice is hoarse, but he continues shouting, throwing his ruthless accusations at me. All I want is to shrink somehow, become invisible. "You know why you didn't kill me, Harry? In spite of what you told me, I know: you didn't do it because you're a coward!"
"I am not a–."
"Oh yes, you are! You're here because you're afraid. You're afraid of the world without me because it's all you know. I came into your life side by side with magic itself. I am magic!"
Once again, the world shifts and blurs around us. It grows dark. We're in a countryside. It seems all too familiar. I've been here before. The stone cottage that rises from the velvet green weed before us was no more than burnt ruins, yet now it's whole. I can hear a woman screaming.
"How dare you!?" I roar as I lunge at him. It looks like a mean jest to me. I attempt to hit him, but he dodges my blows, moving with incredible speed and elegance.
"You made me do it, Harry!" he laughs. "You shouldn't have upset me so!"
I get punched in the face and sink into the grass. He bends over me and taunts me with a shallow kiss. I jerk away and provoke another burst of laughter.
-It'sss time to choossse which ssside you're on,- he hisses maliciously. –The one that makesss you feel bad and worthless; or the one that makesss you feel ssso bad and worthless that it actually makesss you feel good?-
His eyes are the darkest shade of blood-red, the deep, beautiful and terrifying colour. I wrap my arms around his neck and make him kneel beside me. I press myself closer to him and claim his lips in a ravishing kiss, pouring my lust and my despair into it. Pure darkness.
He tears away my clothes; I dispose of his. It's rough, and it's insatiable, and it's painful, and I want more of it. I want him to make me forget that I'm such a coward, and a horrible whiner, and the goddamn Chosen One. I scream his name in the end. It's Tom, it always is. No way will he make me scream 'Voldemort'. The name of the one that murdered my family.
"Why can't we be normal?" I ask him later.
His skin smells faintly of honey. That smell has been clinging to me everywhere ever since Ginny passed away. I can't get rid of it.
"We are what we are," he repeats thoughtfully.
"I hope you realize that I'm not gonna break you out of Azkaban. So no 'join the Dark Side' crap, okay?"
Voldemort chuckles and surveys me with a strange glimmer in his eyes.
Kingsley invited me to see a show of Metamorphmagi at a theatre. I never even suspected such beauty could exist. A whole new universe unfolds like a huge exotic flower before our eyes. They dance to the music of harps and cellos that pours on stage somewhere from above. They change their shapes and colours and sway around each other in liquid and sensual movements.
A mythical creature with blue skin and eight arms reaches out towards our box. I practically jump on my seat. Kingsley grins. It begins to spin, so that all I see is the mixture of blue and gold that shines on its fingers. The music stops and a high, gentle voice rises to the dome-shaped ceiling.
I skew my eyes and spot Nichols in the upper box. He's a bigwig now, sharing the box with heads of departments and the Minister himself. Fortunately, Scrimgeour couldn't make it here tonight.
"He's far from pleased with your work, Harry," Kingsley whispers. "We've come to the conclusion that it is pointless to continue the interrogation."
I frown. I don't like the turn of the conversation. "What exactly do you mean?"
"Voldemort is going to be executed."
"You can't!" I utter in a shrill, high-pitched voice. Kingsley tugs at my sleeve with warning; a few heads have already turned in our direction. He offers them an apologetic smile. "It's just not right," I say. "Give me another… week! One week; I promise I'll make him talk!"
"You already promised. A dozen times. That's not the point, Harry. Try to understand. It's not my idea, not even Stephen's."
I grow cold inside. That's not right, damn it! I silently curse Scrimgeour and all the blasted Wizarding World. He's asleep, he can't be present at his own trial, that's fucking murder! That's not fair. That's atrocious…
"I'm afraid this is getting too personal," Kingsley says. "Do not forget who it is we're talking about."
"I remember! I know better than anyone else does what Voldemort really is. But everyone deserves a second chance, don't you think?"
"I agree. Everyone but him."
I turn away from Kingsley's hard look and let the brilliance of the show consume me. It's drawing to an end. The dancers summon beautiful staffs encased in silver and tap on the floor in unison. Echo thunders beneath the ceiling. The music is reduced to quiet jingling somewhere at the background. Whistling, knocking, clapping grows louder along with monotonous chants of the choir. Suddenly it dies down, and a powerful voice, a union of many voices, utters:
"HAIL TO THE CHOSEN ONE WHO DEFEATED HE-WHO-MUST-NOT-BE-NAMED!"
I swallow nervously and lean back. Somebody directs light on our box. Kingsley pushes me forward, making me get up. I bow and wave at everyone, and they cheer as if it were only yesterday that I dragged the bound Dark Lord to Azkaban. I wasn't alone that day, but the truth isn't what they care about. The world wants a hero. Here I am.
I should probably fill Voldemort in on account of what's awaiting him, but I can't find the strength to discuss it. Besides, he surprises me with another unexpected request.
"Could Sally come and live with you?" he wants to know.
The Newfoundland lies by my feet and stares at me with undisguised curiosity. I pat his large head and ask: "Why? What's wrong? Are you tired of him?"
"No, not at all. It's just that he's a real dog and he needs real air, real food and other real dogs to play with. I can see that he's a little tried by these surroundings. And he likes you."
Sally yelps as if in confirmation of this statement. I can't hold back a smile.
"Sure, I'll take him. He'll come to visit, but not often. It's pretty hard to make him lie still while I chant the spell."
Tom laughs. I look at him studiously. Is it possible that he suspects something?
I dream again. In dreams I hear her call my name. I reach out for her, and I see…
I see…
I finally see the truth.
I wake up screaming,
"LIAR!"