New chapter. Still own nothing.


Bright, blinding light was the first thing to hit Harry's eyes when he woke again. He blinked a few times, adjusting to the light, before taking a look around. Realizing that Tom must have taken his glasses off as his vision was blurred, Harry patted his hand haphazardly on the bedside table, until it finally landed on his glasses. Harry placed them on his face before he looked around the room again. He really needed to use the bathroom, but which door was that? And what about the magical bond?

He turned to look at his hand, only to find the bond gone. Deciding to get up and search for the toilet, Harry moved to the wall with two doors. He opened the one on the left first, gasping at what he saw, an expansive walk-in closet with an insane number of all types of clothes. Harry had never been vain, but even he had to admit that the closet was something to be loved.

He shook his head, deciding to go back to his original quest. Moving out of the closet, he headed to the door on the right of the Slytherin crest. He opened it to find precisely what he was looking for. The bathroom was spacious, with a jacuzzi sized sunken bathtub in the back, a glass shower right in the middle of the bathroom, a black sink on the left side, and the toilet, also black in color, on the right. Again, the floor was black marble; the walls, however, were a calm white. The back wall, the one behind the bathtub, was charmed to depict a relaxing scene of the ocean. Harry found himself entranced with it all.

For someone who shared a bathroom his entire life, this was more than he could wish for. He closed the door behind himself and decided that a quick soak in the bathtub wouldn't harm anyone. He allowed himself to relax all his muscles and release all the pent-up tension in the hot water. After what seemed like an eternity in the tub, Harry finally got out, wrapping himself in the black bathrobe he found hanging next to the tub. He exited the bathroom just to find Tom resting on the bed. Harry stared warily at him, unsure on what he was supposed to do. Suddenly, Tom spoke, "get dressed. We'll talk after"

Startled, Harry jumped and moved quickly to the closet. Tom had had his eyes closed; how did he notice him? No matter. Harry searched for underwear and something comfortable to wear. After searching the closet, he found a pair of black cotton pajama pants and a deep green silk robe. He put them on and went back to the bedroom. Taking a moment to observe Tom, Harry noticed the man looked exhausted, as if he hadn't gotten an ounce of sleep.

Finally, Tom stood and walked to the door with the silver snake sculpture, "I'm sure you have many questions. Come with me. We can talk in my study. There's tea waiting for you there"

Harry nodded and reluctantly followed after him. As he crossed through the door, he found himself in a spacious living room. The floors were black marble, again, but the walls were a calm creme color. The ceiling, Harry noticed, was enchanted to show the sky outside, just like the Grand Hall at Hogwarts. To the right, there was a fireplace with extravagant carvings, a black leather couch was facing it with a small glass coffee table in between. Behind the couch, on the left wall, was a black door with the same silver snake as the one in the bedroom. Glancing at the door he just exited from, he found the snake again. Harry's inspection was interrupted by Tom's voice, "the door to the left opens to your personal study. The snakes are locks. You can only open them by speaking in Parseltongue. The only exception to this is your mother; the lock will open when it detects her magical signature. You don't have to unlock it when you want to exit. If a non-speaker wants to enter, they must wait for you to grant them access from the inside by speaking in parseltongue. As you can tell, this whole suite is yours"

Harry nodded solemnly, he still felt lost after all the revelations of the day before. Or was it night before?

"How long have I been sleeping?" Harry asked softly, voice barely above a whisper.

Understanding what Harry really wanted, Tom answered, "you were unconscious for ten hours after the events of the cemetery. It's four in the afternoon now, which means you slept for seven more hours after our conversation"

"I wouldn't call it a conversation," Harry snorted.

"There was only silence after that as Tom lead Harry around the giant manor they were in. Harry payed attention to the way, trying to remember so that he wouldn't get lost later on. It was too confusing, however, and he knew he would not find his way back.

"I'll give you a tour of the house later and accompany you until you learn your way. Your brother comes back in a few days, so he can help you as well. You should know, we don't have any house elves, so you'll have to excuse the dreadful food. I'm afraid I have no prowess in the kitchen. Your mother was always better than me in that area"

"Why don't you have house elves? I thought someone as rich and powerful as you would enjoy having one"

"Other than the fact that they lack proper speech, I find most of them to be untrustworthy. You are all too familiar with the situation with Dobby, for example"

Harry nodded. It made sense. But then, his mother, this Bellatrix, was a pureblood, from the Black family no less. Would such a pureblood accept doing house duties?

As if reading his mind, and Harry realized he probably did, Tom explained further, "up until your sister came along, Bellatrix and I were perfectly content living with no one to serve us. We only used a few rooms and it wasn't that hard to keep everything clean. Bellatrix also seemed to enjoy cooking, so it wasn't a big deal. It was after Polaris was born that the need for servants came along, so I finally decided to buy a few house elves then. However, I was, and still am, extremely selective with those I decide to bring into my home. I put spells on them to ensure that they would serve us and only us. Each of them was tied to one of us. The elves tied to Polaris and me supposedly died when we died. I have yet to see what happened to Bella's elf. Your own should still be alive. You can try calling out to him later. His name is Tobby"

At that point, Tom and Harry had arrived in front of an extravagant wooden door with carvings of snakes.

"Open," Tom hissed in parseltongue. The door opened to reveal a beautiful large study. Tom waved for Harry to sit on the seat in front of the desk as he poured himself a glass of Firewhiskey. He placed a cup of warm tea in front of Harry before taking a seat behind the desk. Tom leaned back in his chair and stared at Harry, "what do you want to know?"

Harry thought hard about what he wanted to ask first. Finally, he settled on the most obvious, "what happens to me now?"

Tom took a sip of his whiskey before answering, "that's something you have to decide by yourself. I can tell you the options you have and what would result from them, but what you do is entirely up to you." Tom leaned closer to Harry before continuing, "option one: you pretend none of this ever happened. You pretend that I tortured you and that you escaped. You go back to the Light Side and blindly follow them again. In which case, I would have to neutralize you. I will not harm you. I refuse to harm my own son. Still, I will not allow for you to disrupt my plans. I would have to take you as a prisoner. Option two: you join the Dark Side, standing next to me as the Prince of Darkness and the Heir of Slytherin. This means that your whole life will be turned upside down as you come to uncover all the truths the Light and Dumbledore have kept from you. You will gain unlimited power and knowledge, as well as a respected position in the Pureblood circles. The price for your elevation would be that the people you care about will most probably leave you, but you will have your real family standing by your side. Option three: you take a neutral stance on the war. In that case, you would greatly frustrate Dumbledore. I would have to make you take a vow to not join the Light. You go about your life in whatever way you want to as if the war does not exist. This, however, does not stop the Light side from hunting you down. Option four: you disappear. You don't join the Dark Side nor the Light Side. You don't even show your face to anyone. You completely disappear. In that case, I will secure a residence for you, but no one can know. The Light Side will frantically search for you, including the people that claim to care for you. The Dark Side rejoices, although stays wary of your return. No one ever knows whether you're alive or dead. Your friends mourn, and you never get to meet your family"

Harry refused to look Tom in the eye as he sipped his tea. What do you do when your whole life is revealed to be a lie?

Tom sighed, "You have until the end of the month to make your decision, this gives you five days. I won't give you more time. I need to make plans. Until then, what other questions do you have?"

Harry looked up nervously, "can you tell me about Bellatrix?"

Tom moved abruptly, pulling out a photo album. He handed it to Harry, who opened it to see pictures of a beautiful young woman with wild black curly hair, full pouty lips, and lidded dark eyes. Tom smiled sadly as he watched Harry, "Bellatrix is... unique. She's wild and untamed. She's one of the strongest people I have ever met. Not even my toughest Death Eaters can stand up to her and come out as the victor. She's brilliant, her intellect had many men question themselves. She's passionate... don't make that face, I'm not talking about her as a lover... as I was saying, Bellatrix is incredibly passionate. Once she believes in something, she will fight for it to the death. She's also very loyal. She would die for the people she cares about. To be honest, she's the best witch you could ever meet"

Harry looked up from the album to stare at Tom. The older man never seemed as human as he did in that moment, speaking about the woman who held his heart. Then another thought entered his head and Harry's brows furrowed, "what happened to her?"

Tom's sad look turned into one of controlled rage, "she's in Azkaban. Have you heard of what happened to the Longbottoms?" Tom waited for Harry to answer with a quiet "no" before he continued, "Frank and Alice Longbottom, Neville Longbottom's parents, were tortured to insanity after my disappearance on Halloween. The ones responsible were four Death Eaters: Bellatrix Black, Rodolphus Lestrange, Rabastan Lestrange, and Bartemius Crouch Jr. Due to the fact that she had Orion to care for, Bellatrix didn't want to go. She had even instructed Rodolphus not to go. The imbecile thought that by "avenging her children," he would gain Bella's affections, so he directly disobeyed orders from the Dark Lord's lover." Tom paused then, taking a moment to huff in annoyance. After a moment, Tom looked at Harry, who raised a questioning eyebrow, silently asking Tom to move on with the story.

"I believe Bella initially only went to reprimand Rodolphus, to force him to leave the Longbottoms alone, but then seeing them and the temptation of avenging her children got the best of her. You see, Frank and Alice Longbottom were two of the people present during the raid that killed Polaris. I guess she just couldn't get over her anguish. Obviously, the Light did not give her a fair trial and she was sent to Azkaban, along with Rodolphus and his brother, Rabastan. I plan on rescuing her and all my Death Eaters from that dreaded place. Rodolphus will be punished though"

Harry chewed on his lip anxiously. Sirius had been a mess after escaping from Azkaban. He tried to hide it, but Harry knew that even a year later, Sirius still suffered from the trauma he went through in that dreadful place. Bellatrix was still in there. What would she be like once she escaped? Would she be just like Tom described her or too traumatized to function? Would Tom save all the others?

"What about Rabastan and Bartemius?"

"You already know Barty Crouch Jr. He was undercover at Hogwarts this year as the DADA Professor. I believe you know of Polyjuice Potion and its uses, and you're intelligent enough to put the pieces together. Barty shall rejoin the ranks once the school year ends in a week. As for Rabastan, he's a good enough Death Eater although he can be a bit daft sometimes. I don't have any plans in regards to him at the moment"

Harry nodded understandingly. He mulled over Tom's answers before thinking of his next question, "how is Sirius related to me?"

"Ugh. That filthy mutt. He was your mother's cousin, up until he got disowned when he was sixteen"

"What about the two other people on the parchment? Tonks, I think that's their last name"

"Andromeda Tonks was your mother's sister. She was also disowned when she decided to run off, marry a muggleborn, and join Dumbledore and the Light. Nymphadora is her daughter"

Harry's next question came directly, "why did you give me Bellatrix's last name, not yours?"

"I didn't want to give you my filthy muggle father's name. It offered a way for me to leave behind that name. And we thought it was a great way to honor her pureblood heritage"

"When did you two get married?"

At that, Tom looked a bit sheepish, "we never did get married. It was never the right time. I plan on changing that once I rescue her"

Harry snorted at that bit of information. He can only imagine what sort of scandal it was in the pureblood community… to have three children out of wedlock… for some reason, it still seemed like the sort of thing that Tom would do...

Harry thought over what else he wanted to ask when a vital question entered his mind and he was alarmed that he'd only thought about it now. Tom could see the wheels turning in Harry's head and knew that he would have to answer the next question as explicitly as possible. The next words from Harry's lips left him a bit confused, however. "What about the Dark Arts?"

"What about them?"

"what 'what about them'?! You use Dark Magic, Tom! It means you perform and use evil! I can't be like that! I'm not evil!"

Tom nodded as he waited for Harry to finish his little rant before addressing the issue, "Harry, I want you to wholly understand what I'm about to tell you. There is no such thing as Dark Magic and Light Magic. Magic in and of itself is not evil or good. You can't label something inanimate as evil or good. It is the intent and use behind magic that can be described as Dark or Light. Mudbloods and the likes of Dumbledore are the ones who decided that what I and the other purebloods do is 'dark', simply because it did not sit well with them. They were uncomfortable with what we do so they labeled us and our traditions malicious and evil, even though most of what we do has a 'Light' equivalent or can be used for good. Take for example the family identification potion. It is labeled by the Light Side as dark simply because it needs blood to work, yet here it is revealing the truth to you. And just for your information, there is no Light equivalent of that potion. Thus, had you not used it, you never would have found out the truth. Another example is the Imperius. You have heard about it from Barty. It is considered Dark because it takes a person's will away from them, yet I have, and many wizards and witches before me, have used the Confundus Charm, which is not a Dark spell, to achieve the same result as the Imperius. What is it that makes this one different than the other? Nothing but how comfortable mudbloods are with them"

Harry gulped nervously. Tom's argument made sense. It made so much sense that Harry was suddenly frightened of himself as he reconsidered his ideals. Harry felt a headache coming on as he questioned everything he had ever been taught. He didn't know what was right and what was wrong anymore. What was he supposed to believe? What was he supposed to do? His whole world was turning around him and he had no constants to ground him through it. He was unsure of everything but one: he wanted to know more.


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