A/N: OK, before you jump on me, no, it's not very long. But it was 'plant day' for me today, and I had to tend to my orchids most of the afternoon. I had a lot of babies in need of their own pots, and that takes some time to work out.

I'm also a bit preoccupied these days with my trip to Ireland. I am now less than a month away and it's practically all I think about. That and the twelve million things my boss had thought up that 'suddenly need to be done' before I leave.

So, bear with me,

and as always,

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: Go back and read the one before the one before this.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN: LOOKING INSIDE YOURSELF

Voldemort tapped his foot against the floor in front of the chair he sat in. He had given her all the assurances she could possibly ask for that Black was all right. Certainly more than he would have normally allowed anyone. She still simply wasn't taking his word for anything. And it bothered him. A great deal more than he knew he should let it.

With a sigh he sat back in the chair and leaned his head back. He thought into the future. Something that was facing him constantly. As soon as he got rid of this nuisance of a wizard, then what? He would still have the same problems he had had before. A temporary truce did not make his problems disappear. He still had his Deatheaters. Though his hold on them was tentative, it was still there.

And what about the body he was in? Arabella and Potter expected him to give it up when everything was settled. That was another problem to work on. He would prefer to keep it. It suited him. It allowed him to move about in the world again and no one looked at him twice. That day in Diagon Alley had been an experience he hadn't had in far too long. To stand in a crowd and be able to simply observe people coming and going. It was like being let out of a cell after years of confinement. All the tastes and sounds and feelings he had been missing out on all these years. A few weeks simply wasn't long enough to reacquaint himself with all the pleasures of life.

The key to his problem there was the witch, Arabella. If he could sway her over to his side, the boy would follow. Potter did whatever she said with a blind devotion he envied her. But how to win her over?

Voldemort thought over the situation. Arabella liked Black, but she remained cautious and wary of him. But why? He was everything Black was. Even better.

She liked Black's body, there was no doubt of that. But it was the same body he was in, so there was no problem there.

Black was funny, entertaining, fun to be around..., and charming. Well, he could do charming. He had charmed people all his life. And wasn't he, in fact, already doing that? He was being nice to her, something he found he actually enjoyed. He talked with her. Made her smile. And she seemed to be responding to that. She wasn't nearly as hostile to him as she had been in the beginning.

So what else was there?

He thought of how perfect things would be to have her at his side. To be able to show the world that the 'oh so prim and proper Auror' Arabella Figg had switched her allegiance to him. And if he could sway her, who else could he convince to join him?

Voldemort narrowed his eyes as he thought. Yes. What it would take was some thought and a certain amount of charm. And he could be charming.

Glancing at the time, he sighed as he pulled himself up from the chair.

It was time to go see what the old werewolf had found out.

Seated once again in Dumbledore's office, Voldemort had resumed his foot-tapping almost as soon as he sat down. Lupin was quietly conferring with the old wizard while they waited for the rest of the group to arrive. Presently Arabella arrived, followed closely behind by the elder Black brother. But no one else seemed to be coming since as soon as Black took his seat Lupin turned his attention to the gathering.

"Well," he became, "I am happy to say that the news is, in part at least, good."

Voldemort scowled at the man. "In part? What part?"

Lupin turned a casual smile to the man. One that Voldemort would swear was barely masking a certain smugness on Lupin's part.

"Sirius'." He answered.

"What has my...problem...to do with Black?"

The smile never wavered. "From what I've been able to tell, everything."

Voldemort leaned back in the chair and crossed his arms over his chest. This was starting to sound very bad to him. "Explain."

The smile remained. "Let me ask you a question first." Lupin replied. "How long have you noticed that you powers were fading?"

Voldemort thought for a moment. It wasn't something he had noticed right off, so pinpointing the date it started would be difficult. But once he did realize what was happening, it was all too obvious to him. "The second day I was working with Harry on the defense skills. Before the boy arrived, I always ran through the series of tests I would put him against. It was a type of warm up exercise for me. That day it was far harder to fend off the attacks than I remembered. I rechecked the spell, thinking I had perhaps maaaaa...ybe...misspoken a word." he corrected himself quickly.

Arabella coughed next to him, causing him to turn to her.

"Misspoken?" she stated, answering his stare. "Could you even say the word 'mistake' without fear of bursting into flames or something?"

Voldemort frowned at her, but quickly turned his attention back to Lupin. "There was nothing wrong with the way I set up the spell. The fact was, I simply couldn't defend against the attacks as I had the day before. After that, I started to notice almost daily that my powers were not what they use to be. And day by day they seem to be fading a little bit more."

"All right." Lupin replied. "Now let me ask you another question. How much effort have you been expending to keep Sirius 'locked away'?"

Voldemort frowned again. "What has that to do with anything?"

"Humor me." the man answered with the same infuriating smile.

Voldemort sighed. "Black has been more of an irritant than usual lately. I have had to block his influence more than usual in order to keep him under control."

Arabella quickly turned back to him. "You said he was all right! That he hadn't been harmed!"

"And he hasn't!" Voldemort snapped back. "Believe me, I have been more than tolerant with the man for your sake. The least you could do is show a little appreciation!"

Arabella stopped short. "What does that mean? 'Show a little appreciation'?"

"It means that you still walk around like at any minute you expect me to suddenly start blasting everything in my path into oblivion. And that is totally avoiding the fact that it has somehow managed to escape your keen senses that currently I couldn't blast so much as a fly into oblivion on one of my good days!"

"Back to the matter at hand," Lupin interjected calmly. "The point is, you have been cutting Sirius off from any influence in his body more and more. Subsequently, you have also noticed a sharp decline in your powers."

Voldemort narrowed his stare. "Are you suggesting that Black is responsible for what has been happening to my powers? Because if he is..."

"I am suggesting he is responsible 'indirectly'." Lupin stated.

"Indirectly?"

"Indeed. Sirius himself has had very little to do with your loss of your powers. That you can only attribute to yourself."

"Me?" Voldemort gave a slight laugh. "You're suggesting I did this to myself?"

"More than likely without knowing it." Lupin added mildly. "You have to remember that Sirius is half of the whole in the sum of the body you both now occupy. What effects one, effects the other. Therefore, if you try to cut Sirius out, you are, in effect, cutting your powers in half. The harder you work to keep him under too tight a reign, the more sever the drain on your own powers. Successfully cutting him off from any influence at all would be to leave yourself with only half of your original ability, magically speaking."

"So what do you suggest?"

Lupin smiled at the man. "Lighten up."

"Lighten up?"

"Stop treating Sirius like the enemy within. Like it or not, he's a part of you, and you can't function wholly without him being allowed his fair share, as it were."

"So your saying I have to let Black have more freedom."

Lupin merely nodded in answer.

"How do I know any of this is the truth? You could be just grasping at straws, or just coming up with some inane answer to try and help your friend."

Lupin shrugged. "It's an easy enough hypothesis to check."

Voldemort's frown deepened. "How?"

Lupin's smile returned. "Like I said, 'lighten up'."

Voldemort paused, then finally lay his arms back down on the arms of the chair and closed his eyes. He didn't really see the old werewolf's suggestion accomplishing much, but still, it never hurt to try. And he could keep enough of a hold on Black to reverse the effort at any time. Just as soon as he saw for himself that there was nothing to be accomplished by following Lupin's suggestion.

But as he slowly loosened his hold, allowing Black's personality closer to the surface, Voldemort paused. Along with the feeling of Black's consciousness rising in him, Voldemort could practically feel the surge of power coming with it. Like water under pressure, he could feel the tension building within him.

This was not what he had expected. Apparently the old werewolf wasn't as smart as he pretended to be and had overestimated, underestimated, or simply failed all together to correctly estimate the result of allowing Black additional freedom. Focusing his own mind, he work as quickly as he could to reign the power back in. But it was like trying to stop a leak with a piece of cloth. The more you pushed into the hole, the wetter the rag became, simply absorbing the water. Trying the stop the build up of power, he was simply channeling it through himself, not stopping it. It needed an outlet. A target to expend itself on. For a second he thought of the old werewolf. It would serve him right for miscalculating so badly. But even as his hand searched for his wand, he discarded the idea. Arabella liked the old werewolf. It wouldn't serve very well to singe his fur just to make a point.

Pulling his wand out, Voldemort directed it at the far wall, releasing a bolt of light that hit the wall with enough force to shake the surrounding room.

When the dust settled, Dumbledore got up and leaned over his desk, staring out of the large hole in the wall of his office as Lupin coughed slightly.

"I suppose I should have mentioned that." He said in a voice that seemed to seek to belied that fact that half of the east wall of Dumbledore's office now lay in the adjoining field.

Voldemort turned his gaze slowly back to the man. "You suppose you should have mentioned it?"

"Well, for several days you've only been using about half of your full magical ability. It's really sort of like taking a cork out of a bottle of seltzer...after you've given it a good shaking."

"You could have warned me."

"I didn't expect you to act so quickly on my suggestion. You usually tend to...think things over for a few days first."

"Well, no real harm done," Dumbledore interrupted the exchange between the two as he slowly sank back into his chair, "except to my wall, of course. I think it would be best if we allow Voldemort the day to get things...back under reasonable control, and then meet again to discuss our next step."

As everyone left the room, Orion held back, intercepting Lupin, the last to leave the office, in the corridor and all but dragging him into a small room off to the side.

The door barely slammed shut before the Unspeakable turned to the man. "You weren't telling the whole truth in there." he started immediately.

Q&A

Family Relations

CelticHeiressFiona:

Awesome chapter. But I realized something as I'm reading. Even as much as everyone hates Voldemort, they're getting to know him, the man that no one ever sees. So what's gonna happen when Harry is supposed to kill him eventually? Not saying that it's going to happen in this fic, because I don't know. But just thinking about it. Oh and Arabella's got some 'splaining to do! Sure, we know that smile wasn't anything but Harry doesn't know that. Please update soon!

Yes, indeed. And that is, sort of, the point of this story. The man Voldemort 'could' have been. Now, how is this going to effect Harry in that he is suppose to kill Voldemort? Well, you answered that yourself, sort of. That isn't part of this story. Although the decision Harry has to ultimately face does come very close, currently he is much more interested in just keeping Sirius safe. And since killing Voldemort would be, in effect, killing Sirius, that just isn't an option at the moment.

Now, give poor Arabella a break. It can't be easy that every time you look at a man that you know is your enemy, you see the man you love. It has to be a bit confusing, and she's already under a lot of stress. Plus, added to that, Voldemort isn't being near his usual horrible self. He's actually being...nice. I've said it many time before. Long before Tom Riddle became Voldemort, he was just your everyday wizard. But he still managed to gather around himself a fairly large group of people, convincing them that the way he thought was right and justified. That takes a lot of charm and charisma. And trust me, currently he is having a barn sale on both.

Harry has a lot of things he is going to have to figure out. But foremost in his mind right now is why his godmother is smiling at Voldemort. Why she has breakfast with him. Why she seems to always be talking to him, and a whole lot of other 'why's' he doesn't have any answers to right now. But his patience is growing very thin on this subject, and very shortly he is going to be looking for those answers from a most unlikely source.

MasterLupin:

Well I think that now that Lupin is on the case, he'll find some ingenuse solution to the problem and anger Voldermort at it's simplicity and not haveing forseen the solution himself. Voldermort will have a hissy fit then accept Lupin's solution. Harry will be caught by Arabela accedently, he will be covertly(as best a teenager can) following her trying to figure out Voldermorts intentions with her; which in turn, will lead to a conversation with Arabela about her feelsing to this new Voldermort.
How's that for a bold prediction?

You definitely were not peeking at my notes this week.

I'm not saying your wrong, since your prediction is left open to a wide Variety of interpretations and could be seen as correct via this chapter. However, I would not say 1) that Lupin's solution was simple, nor 2) that Voldemort threw a hissy fit over it.

Now, as for the rest of it, ah...no. I do not foresee Harry getting caught spying on Arabella and Voldemort. First off, spying isn't required. They're fairly out in the open about everything (ok, except that bit in her room), and all Harry has to do is look. His problem currently is that he is looking beyond the obvious and make it into something that suits his own view of things instead. Always a bad idea.

The last part...ummmmmmmmm..., you're a bit closer there. Maybe you did manage a quick peek. Arabella is definitely getting more than a little confused over her feelings for Voldemort. Currently, she's surprised to find she actually likes him. He's a bit of an irritant, but he's also thoughtful, kind, charming, and in his own way, funny. Definitely not the man she's dedicated a good part of her life to fighting against. It has to confuse the dickens out of someone to be in that situation.

Heather:

You are making voldie to human. I understand that he is a plot point for u but it is like u are forgetting ur main characters the characters that matter to your readers harry, sirius and bella, though they have somewhat decent story lines nothing impressive, nothing that makes me care about what they are doing or what is going on with them. Which is kinda weird because I should care but I just don't. They have become somewhat boring side characters. I love ur writing in my humble opinion u are one of the best authors on this site but, i don't know maybe I just wasn't prepare for U to take this story in this direction. Anyway interested to see hoe u will end this story.

Oh dear. You are not going to like this story. At least not the next few chapters.

Hang in there with me though. Arabella and Harry do come back more to the forefront of the story. Sirius, as I have warned all along, is not seen much in this story. He is very much a background character. But he comes out as part of the main focus in the last installment, Family Ties, which wraps up the Family story arc.

As for Voldemort being too human..., Dear, that's the whole point of the story. I can't very well leave it out. This part of the story is, in part, looking at the man Tom Riddle would have been had he not become Lord Voldemort. I realize it is difficult for people who have read the books past the fourth one to reconcile Rowling's Voldemort with mine. But I stopped reading after GoF for a number of reasons. Mostly, I lost faith in the books overall. But also, it would have skewed my view point very badly while I worked on this story.

Now, is Voldemort going to turn into the ultimate wonderful human being and start having morning tea with Dumbledore while they discuss how silly they've been hating each other all these years and how much more they could have accomplished being friends and working together?

You seriously expect me to answer that?

Skahducky:

As for the reason Sirius was killed in the fifth book and another death followed in the sixth book (I won't mention who in case you don't know and don't want to know), I think it's because Harry needs to defeat Voldemort on his own, so J.K.Rowling was giving Harry a little push towards independence by taking away his one parental figure in life. It also awakened Harry to the reality of what he's facing. When he and the others went to the Ministry of Magic, Harry didn't seem to realize that dealing with Death Eaters and Voldemort can lead to the deaths of his friends, and Sirius' death showed him how wrong that notion was. Harry ran into that situation seemingly without a doubt that he, Ron, and Hermione would make it out alive. It was only when Neville, Luna, and Ginny showed up that he began to have doubts, probably only because he doesn't trust their abilities as much as he trusts Ron's and Hermione's.

I understand that Voldemort in this fic is more Tom Riddle as he would have been than Lord Voldemort. However, this is after he poured all his efforts into trying to get Harry, Sirius, Dumbledore, and all the others killed. So, how much is Sirius' personality affecting his to make him the person he appears to be now? (Didn't somebody say before that Sirius' personality could come out more if people started treating Voldemort like they would Sirius?) Anyway, I really liked this chapter, and I'm looking forward to finding out what's wrong with Voldemort's magic. Please update soon!

Still doesn't make me feel any better about it, Dear.

And no worries, I've already had the Reader's Digest version of Book VI given to me. No surprises there.

Ohhhhhhhhhh! I am SOOOOOOOOOOOOOO glad you ask that! Is no one else thinking about this!

How is Voldemort going to get around the fact that for four years his number one thing to do every day he woke up was kill Harry? That under the smiles and pleasant conversation, he is still Voldemort. He still did a lot of really nasty, bad things.

Trust me, this was a very hard part of the story for me to manipulate to my own use. I couldn't just ignore it. It did happen per canon. So there has to be a reason for it. You'll see some major story manipulation coming up in the next few chapters, so watch for it.

Silverfox:

There, finally caught up again! ... Do you even still remember me? Unfortunately work got in the way of fanfiction reading this year. (I never want anything to do with any 'big project' again, thank you very much boss.) ... Bo the babysitter? Didn't you once say that he had the mental level of an about three year old child? Isn't that a bit too immature for a babysitter? ... Anyway, my suspicion is that Hershel's attackers ran from Bo and Voldemort's current problem is probably caused by some sort of incompatibility with Sirius' body. (Well, you'll have to get him back out of there again sometime and the easiest way is, if he wants to leave on his own. ;) ) ... As for the book six discussion, I too recommend you read it. It's my favourite out of the lot so far, much better than number five.

I know the feeling, Dear. Between this, my job, the project I am suppose to be working on for my agent, a new story in the works, and my so called 'life', I haven't much time left for anything else. I use to do review of my own on stories, but had to give that up because I simply didn't have the time anymore. Maybe after I get home from Ireland I can do some serious time management and get things a bit more under control.

I understand big projects at work too. I just got done rewiring four wire closets, before the end of the month (September) I have to rewire an office, move another office, upgrade two phone systems, and start preparation to bring a T-3 line and two PRI's into our central hub. There are days I hate my job.

Bo is actually a wonderful babysitter. True, he sometimes is no better than a three year old, but he has his more lucid moments. Think of him this way. Bo isn't from 'around these parts', so to speak. He literally comes from a different realm. (That's as far outside of canon as I'm planning to step at the moment.) Now, in being that sort of...being, and as that he is a bit unfamiliar with things here and how they work, he tends to like to be very focused in his tasks. In other words, when you tell him to do something, he really puts his whole heart and soul (?) into it. So, if you say, "Bo, I want you to watch these five kids for me and make sure no one a) hurts anyone else, b) catches anything or anyone else on fire, c) does anything a Grade One magic reversal squad member can't fix, or d) leaves the premises", that's pretty much what you're going to get. When you return, no one will be hurt, no one and nothing will be on fire, the magic reversal squad may or may not have been to your house, and everyone will still be present and accounted for. But the flip side of that is, you have to be very S.P.E.C.I.F.I.C. with Bo. He tends to give into a wide variety of interpretation otherwise. Take the above situation. Bo would most likely look at that as 1) define 'hurt'. Slightly damaged? Moderately Damaged? Seriously damaged? What? 2) for what period of time? Can it be on fire for a short period, can it be singed slightly, or are you talking not at all? 3) would that be you're standard Grade One squad member, or someone who just skimmed by on their entrance exam? 4) can they leave and come back? Do you want them here all the time, or just to be here when you get back?

See, you're typical three year old.

Oh, have a gold star, Dear! ()(Gold star that keeps getting erased in the uploading for some reason.) Yes indeed. They left when Orion, Katlin, and Bo arrived. It had to be one of those three that they didn't want to face an encounter with, and you nailed which one.

I'll give you the second one on a stretch. It's sort of an incompatibility problem. And indeed, Voldemort has to willingly leave the body in order for Sirius to take full control again. That makes it a bit stickier in trying to separate them. No spell, ward, charm, or anything else can force Voldemort out of the body. He has to want to leave. And you can't get him to leave by making it uncomfortable for him (ie: torture), since anything you do to the body, Sirius feels as well.

Well, I can't see how Book VI could be any worse than Book V, Dear. In my opinion, Rowling had no where to go but up.

All reviews are as of 08/27/2006.

And remember;

We are watching Ernesto (What self-respecting hurricane wants to be called 'Ernesto'?) out in the Atlantic. It is now said to be headed for Daytona Beach by Wednesday afternoon. Delays in posting may follow.