: speech : is Parseltongue
/ speech / is mental speak
:speech/ is mental Parseltongue
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Harry wasn't surprised that the Ministry policy consisted of putting him into a cell pending the arrival of a registered interrogation supervisor, who would then set down his rights and those of his guardians before asking a series of questions in the presence of said guardians. He was surprised, however, that that was what actually happened.
Tom had arrived shortly after Dumbledore's pronouncement, but had left to fill out forms or argue with lawyers or whatever it was that he felt he needed to. Harry found that he didn't particularly care about all that, especially as he was curled up rather happily on Snape's lap- now padded with a conjured cushion. He was still slightly damp from the shower he had taken in the aurors' dressing room to wash off the blood that was splattered all over him. He was beginning to think that being turned into a child was the best thing that had ever happened to him, if he could keep cuddling with people like he was now. It was something he had been too proud to do as an adult, not to mention that no one would have likely cooperated with any attempt to do so. Harry had to suppress a burst of laughter at the thought of his world's Snape cuddling his adult self. Or even now.
He laid his head against Snape's chest and looked over at James Potter who, for some reason, was still staying with them. Harry wasn't complaining, though. His sort-of-father wasn't being an ass like the last time they ran across him, though he was looking at Harry with an odd expression on his face.
"What do you want, Potter?" Snape snapped after James had been staring at the two of them for nearly a minute without blinking.
"A hug." James said, sitting upright and looking at the two of them with a completely straight, possibly even a little melancholy look on his face. "I'm so jealous of the attention you are showering on Harry. It's so rare for you to display affection…" He shook his head and raised his arms helplessly. "I just thought that you would realize my feelings for you before turning into a pedophile."
Harry couldn't hold it in anymore, he cackled gleefully, causing James to look at him in surprise and then smirk and Severus's snarls to increase in intensity. Snape's hand was rubbing along his wand, but he couldn't seem to figure out who he wanted to curse first.
"Oh, Severus." James drew the other man's name out sultrily. "You don't have to use you imagination with that wand, I'm right here."
That seemed to decide Snape, who whipped out his wand and pointed it at James' face. Harry was snorting he was laughing so hard, so hard in fact, that he practically didn't notice when he got dumped onto the floor. Especially as the cushion came with him.
He did notice, however, when the door opened and hit him on the head. He looked up from the floor into confused brown eyes.
"Remus!" James gasped in between dodging a curse and a right hook. "What are you doing here?"
"I was getting my confirmatory test to revoke my werewolf status." Remus said, looking bemused as James skidded to a stop and Severus cast something on him that caused purple cauliflower-looking scissor-like growths to appear on his face. Harry paused in his laughter to try to figure out how that was physically, or even magically possible. He was both stumped and a bit miffed at his obviously lacking prank-hexing education.
"What?" James asked, his voice high and squeaky and his bright red forked tongue flicking out and making a tooting sound.
"You're a werewolf?" Snape asked, looking a bit put out, like he was trying to make a statement, but had ended up with a question. All three of them looked at him strangely, as only Harry was not completely certain that Snape knew that Remus was one in this reality, though he was pretty sure he did.
"I was, yes." Remus said, beaming.
"You remember that, don't you Snivellus? You certainly whined about it enough, though I suppose the trauma might have been too much for your delicate sensibilities." James' taunts were about as potent as a goldfish's as the hex was still active. Which was probably fortunate, as otherwise he might have been hit with something worse.
Remus bent down and pulled Harry to his feet. With him kneeling, Remus's warm brown eyes were slightly below Harry's. Harry looked at him, confused and not sure if he liked being actually taller than someone or feeling like he was being condescended to.
"Thank you, Harry." Remus said simply. "You changed my life."
Harry looked down and sighed. He had known when he had ripped out Fenrir's heart that this would be the result, but seeing his friend, not only alive but free of the curse… it was much more emotional than he had thought it would be. "Well, he deserved it." Harry muttered finally.
At the silence Harry looked up, seeing the shocked expression on Remus' face. "You can talk?"
"Er…" Harry smiled bemusedly, wondering how many times he was going to have to go through this reaction.
"That's wonderful!" Remus said, beaming. Harry was enchanted looking into his eyes- his eyes that used to flash occasionally in a feral gold, but now were very normal, human brown.
"Sort of." Harry replied, thinking to all the questions he was likely going to have to answer soon.
"Harry." Tom's voice came from behind Remus. Harry looked up at the serious face of his adoptive father… which was an odd thought in and of itself, but the man's face was serious enough that he didn't dwell on it any longer. "Boys." He continued, looking at the three gathered with a raised eyebrow, waving his wand lazily to dispel the cauliflower scissors and the flicking donging tongue from James. "Come along, Harry." Harry left the room, with the three year mates following along behind. Tom gave the three another odd look before moving after the wizards and witches in auror and judicator robes.
They ended up in a room that was much closer than the stadium-style interrogation chamber that Harry had been questioned in before. He wondered if that was because he was technically a minor, or for security reasons, or for some completely unknown bureaucratic one. Tom waved Harry towards a chair that looked about as appealing as his original Snape's… no… Voldemort's lap. Harry felt a strange twinge at the thought, but couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Confused, he looked back at his Snape. All he got was a raised eyebrow and the cushion held out. With a bit of a pout, Harry watched Snape place it on the chair. He looked hopefully back at Remus and James and got a confused look and an amused denial, respectively. Harry sat down on the slightly more comfortable looking perch (that was still not nearly as appealing as a nice warm lap) and crossed his arms. This was becoming less fun.
"Mr. Riddle. You are here representing the interests of this minor child, one Harry O'Donnell?" The wizard on the left asked, looking up from his paper.
"That is correct."
Harry looked around, mildly curious about the proceedings. It seemed so formal compared to what he had been through in the past. Harry noted without much surprise that Dumbledore was sitting in the corner. His gaze was sharp and focused on Harry. Even through the seriousness of the situation, Harry couldn't help but be amused at the old wizard. He was always so intent on the 'greater good'- but this was the first time Harry had been on the other side of it. Well, there had been times when he hadn't really been trusted to stay Light (or rather, few times when he had been trusted) but usually the Headmaster had been trying to do the best he could be him, even while trying to save the world.
/:He isn't the only one with a hero complex.:/ Voldemort noted, almost surprising Harry when he spoke.
/What?/ Harry asked. What Dumbledore did wasn't a hero complex, surely… more like the toil of someone who knew the depths humanity could sink and had dedicated his life to helping everything turn out as best as it could.
Voldemort heard Harry's reasoning and snorted. /:Of course you want to paint it romantically, you do the same thing. You two found a 'Dark Lord Vanquisher' club and discuss at your meetings various ways to manipulate people 'for their own good.':/
Harry was stunned by the bitterness. But he couldn't help but block out the thoughts that were swirling behind and supporting the comment. For a second he could see himself through Voldemort's perspective- how hypocritical he and Dumbledore were, using much the same tactics that the Dark Lords they fought had used, except without the power and conviction behind their actions to take the manipulation and sweeping decisions to their inevitable conclusion. So weak that they couldn't even see the truth even as they 'saved the world.'
Harry snapped out of it, disturbed both that he had been inside Voldmort's point of view at all, and that what he had seen had been… he would have to think about it. Was his need to save people the same thing as Voldemort's terrorizing of them? After all, both of them were taking away the free will of the people they were dealing with.
Harry shifted forward, causing Dumbledore to narrow his eyes and the wizards at the table to look at him and pause the official preliminary questions.
"Albus- do you think there is a difference between forcing people to accept you saving them and forcing them to do anything else?" Harry didn't care that everyone was staring at him, didn't care if he was breaking protocol, or even if what he said ended up proving him guilty. He felt he needed some sort of outside opinion, as the only person he could ask without speaking was not someone who was going to make him feel like he was coming to solid moral ground.
"Of course it is different." Harry noted that the older wizard's voice was frosty and that he hadn't said his name. "Sacrificing yourself for their well being is the complete opposite of using them for your own selfish desires."
"Either way, aren't you taking away their free will?" Harry asked, his voice almost breaking at the last word.
"Would it be better to do nothing? To allow horrible things to happen to people who do not have the power to save themselves, when you have that power?"
Harry frowned uncertainly, moving to sit forward, staring at the table and at the quill that had paused after copying Dumbledore's last statement.
"Harry?" Tom asked, his face soft with concern.
"Are you ready to proceed with the questions?" The Ministry questioner asked. Harry looked at him and really saw him for the first time. The wizard looked a lot like a teacher that Harry had had at his Muggle school. The man had been sort of out of it, not really noticing when the students acted up or beat up Harry. But he couldn't blame the man- he, and this questioner, had exuded such helpless benevolence that Harry couldn't attribute a mean thought to him. He sort of looked like Dumbledore did, if Dumbledore really was the person he tried to project, and not a supremely powerful and manipulative wizard.
"Yes." Harry sighed.
"Your name is Harry O'Donnell?"
Well, if he was technically adopted, then he supposed it was. "Yes." Harry said, noting that the color of the quill was getting a bit greyer from the pristine white it had been.
"Is that the full truth, Harry?" the man asked gently.
"No?" Harry asked, watching the feather turn back pure white. "I'm adopted? So it's my name now."
"What was your name before?" the man asked, Tom made a coughing noise in his throat but didn't make any comments.
"I don't remember." The pen turned pitch black, confirming that it was reading if Harry was telling the truth or not. Harry was curious how it worked, though he probably wouldn't understand the magical theory behind it anyway. "I don't want to say." He said instead, and the feather turned back white.
The examiner looked at Harry curiously but was about to go on when Dumbledore cut him off. "Do you know what that quill does?"
Harry saw no reason to not answer. "It turns black if I'm lying."
The examiner smiled at him. "That's very impressive for you to have figured out, Harry."
"Harry figured out the intention gnome as well." Dumbledore said, his tone pointed.
"Indeed?" The examiner said mildly, mostly ignoring the older wizard. "Do you like puzzles, Harry?"
"Sure."
"What kinds of puzzles are your favorites?"
Harry looked over at Tom, confused. What kind of questioning is this? Or maybe he is being tested?
"It's ok, answer the question, Harry." Tom said, smiling.
"I don't know." Harry thought back to what puzzles he had solved in the past. Back in his first year there had been the ones that had guarded the stone, but really Ron and Hermoine had taken care of those… maybe during classes? But he wasn't really all that academic. "Maybe tactics?"
Everyone in the room tensed. /: Way to assure them you are not a Dark Lord, Harry.:/ Voldemort commented dryly.
"Like in Quidditch?" Harry offered, wincing a bit internally.
"You like Quidditch?" The examiner continued, humming a bit to himself. "Who is your favorite team?"
"Er…" Harry hadn't really followed Quidditch too avidly outside of Hogwarts. "The Canons?" He offered, hoping they still… already? existed.
He didn't get a sense either way, though, from the responses of the examiner. "Why do you like them?"
"A friend did." Harry said. Does? Will? "I like Hogwarts games." Harry offered. Tom looked at him sharply. Harry started to feel a bit nervous.
"Have you been to Hogwarts before?"
Harry frowned. He couldn't answer no or maybe, as he had in his other dimension. Had he been to Hogwarts before in this one? He decided to not say anything.
"He hasn't before this year." Tom said calmly.
"I see."
Harry winced, this time externally. This whole thing was giving him a head ache. /:We could blow up the Ministry.:/ Voldemort suggested hopefully. Harry didn't dismiss the idea out of hand like he probably should have.
"We already established that Harry has memories from a previous life." Tom said evenly.
"At the least." Dumbledore added. Tom didn't react to the comment.
"Indeed." The examiner said, smiling at Harry. "How about school, how do you like school, Harry?"
/:Merlin's balls! Just let me talk to them.:/
/Because they can all speak Parsletongue./ Harry scoffed.
"That expression, Harry- is there something that bothers you about the question?"
"The question? It just seems pretty pointless to me. But the expression? I was talking to the soul of a Dark Lord. He's actually quite humorous at times."
"Harry!" The cry came from many throats, and one mind.
"What?" Harry asked, throwing his arms up. "I'm tired of being so Slytherin about everything. It's so stressful." He ignored the scandalized looks from his Head of House and assistant, as well as the furious hissing inside his mind. He crossed his arms and pouted some more. He knew he was being childish, but short of actually taking up Voldemort on his offer, it was the only option he felt he could live with without screaming in frustration.
The examiner chuckled and Harry glared at him, though his eyes remained hazel.
"Alright, Harry, what is it you want to say?"
Harry looked up. Despite his earlier claim to be tired of thinking like a Slytherin he weighed his options. "I have something dangerous in me, but I doubt that there is anything anyone can do about it. Has there ever been two souls in one body, both who are Horucruxes to each other? I don't think so. I've tried suicide and exorcism. That didn't work. At all. And I'd rather not try anything else. Pain I could live with if it meant that I could be free, I would suffer through it. But I've got this disturbing feeling that I'll just suffer. Possibly forever."
The wizards and witches in the room looked at him, most with horror, some with fear. Harry just shrugged and leaned back against the chair with a sigh. Nothing they could do to him would be worse than what he'd done to himself- with the help of his deceased loved ones. He scowled but didn't open his eyes as discussions went on around him. He decided not to pay attention to it. Maybe he could Apparate away and join the centaurs in whatever they were doing and figure out what files the dragon had been talking about. Centaurs were normally a pretty good sort, and Harry had a pretty good idea about what their problem was with the wizarding world. This reality was much better about muggle prejudice, but if anything was worse about non-humans, and even infected humans like the werewolves. If they labeled him as non-human, maybe he would be forced to go rogue with them. The idea had a certain charm to it, though Harry was uneasy, both to leave the people he had met so far, and because it seemed like the gateway to becoming a Dark Lord. Again, in one of their cases.
/: You should pay attention to what they are saying- they are deciding your fate without you :/
/Since when has anyone taken my opinions into anything anyway? It might as well be another damn prophecy./ Harry grumbled, not paying any more attention nor opening his eyes. /You can give me the main points later./
/: Or just tell you whatever I want to in order to get you to do what I want.:/
/Yeah. You could./ Harry said, fantasizing about escaping and killing more of Fenrir's pack. It was the most useful he had felt since waking up in a kid's body.
Voldemort didn't say anything else, though his thoughts swirled against Harry's contemplatively.
"Harry?" Harry opened his eyes, looking at Tom, who was looking distinctly frazzled. He smiled weakly at Harry, making the smaller boy think that it hadn't been the first time that his name had been called. "They are ready to leave you, do you have anything else you want to say?"
Harry looked at the examiner, who still looked quite friendly, to the three women behind him, who all looked rather hostile. /Quick version?/
There was a pause in which Harry thought the other version wouldn't answer him. /:They are talking about Dementors.:/
"I don't want to hurt anyone." Harry said and left it at that. He knew that they would take it as a threat, but he wasn't quite sure that he hadn't meant it as one.
Harry felt the cold coming upon him and grinned. They weren't playing around.
"So, you ostracize people that get attacked by werewolves, but you still associate with Dementors?" Harry shook his head. "I suppose discrimination is considered irrationalfor a reason." He stood from the chair and tucked the pillow under his arm just as the Dementors entered the room. They had taken his wand, but so had Voldemort when he had been captured.
/: More than once. :/ Voldemort was sure to point out, his soul purr/hissing in anticipation.
Dumbledore was standing up from where he was leaning against the wall, looking like he was getting ready to sacrifice himself again to contain a menace.
Harry lifted his arm to the Dementor. The creature's dry crackling hiss came to Harry's ears and the sound of screaming and the flash of green lights played in the back of his mind as he gathered a handful of the cloth in his hands. They looked small and fragile against the billowing cloth and the fabric burned in the way of things that were intensely cold.
"Harry, please, get away from that. Come here, I'll protect you." Tom sounded frantic, desperate. But Harry didn't have to look back to know that Dumbledore would stop, or at least try to stop Tom before anyone could save Harry from the horror in front of him.
"It's alright, Tom." Harry said. He felt an odd tugging, that was somehow familiar. Or rather, was familiar to one of them.
/:It's trying to take out our souls.:/ Voldemort seemed much more pleased than the statement seemed to warrant. /:It isn't working. It will never work.:/
/You don't know that./ Harry said, watching his last hope for vanquishing Voldemort slipping through his increasingly frost-bitten fingers. Memories were pushed through him, compression of years of studying soul magic and forbidden Dark Arts running over him and attempting to merge with his consciousness. If he could trust what he was being sent, then Voldemort is telling the truth. More than that, the outside pull of the Dementor had given enough of a basis to see that they could determine that nothing would be likely to tear them apart- it seemed that even a brief holiday in the afterlife was not going to break the binding between them.
"Prophecies are apparently stronger than how much you can suck." Harry told the Dementor matter of factly. "Which I suppose is good- it was a pretty stupid plan." Only a moment had passed while he was conversing with himself- Tom was still struggling to get to him, the aurors and Dumbledore keeping him back. James, Snape and Remus were huddling against the wall, looking pale. Huddling in a big ball against each other, actually, much to Harry's amusement.
The Dementor was getting impatient, it lowered its head to his, the mouth becoming more visible. Harry was ready for it.
A hand pulled him back from the creature, and made the thing step back. Harry looked up in confusion to the auror. She looked down at him with a frown. "No letting yourself get Kissed, now, kid. You haven't been through all the trials, the committees, the paperwork and such." She looked like she would rather just get it over with now.
"See, Tom. He is in good hands." Harry looked back at the Dementor, which looked as annoyed as Harry was that the confrontation had been interrupted. "We can't let him back into the school." Dumbledore said with finality and a tone that really got on Harry's nerves, especially if he meant what Harry thought he meant. "The Ministry won't take a child to Azkaban…" though Dumbledore clearly felt that that would be best, "but there need to be precautions in place in the holding cells."
/:Just kill the damned Dementor.:/
Harry smirked suddenly. He twisted out of the auror's grasp, his red eye dull with deeper sparkles and the green one glowing almost yellow-bright. He leapt onto the Dementor, pulling off it's hood and grabbing it's bony white skull. If only it had a pair of red glowing eyes it might be as ugly as Voldemort's reincarnated body was.
The spell was fueled by a touch of indignation at the comment, but it only made the blinding silver of the spell all the more impressive. "Expecto patronum!" Harry crowed. The patronus formed inside the Dementor, tearing it apart from the inside out, converting it into a sparkling corporeal patronus. Instead of the stag he was expecting, though, it was in the form of a goat.
Harry stared at it. It stared back before twisting around into the hallway, chasing after the other Dementor that had come. The inhuman wails trailed off down the hallway. Inside the room there was silence. Inside Harry's head there was a minor battle of wills.
/A goat?/ Harry asked, putting mental pressure on the other soul to get it to speak to him.
/:Yes, a goat. My patronus is a goat. Happy?:/
/A bit, yeah./ Harry laughed a bit. Though he was disturbed that Voldemort's patronus had come out, not his. What did that mean, exactly?
A hand came down on his shoulder and Harry whipped around, his instincts from the war almost making him cast a spell wordlessly and wandlessly right into Dumbledore's face. The man looked worried. If it weren't Dumbledore Harry might have been tempted to say he looked scared. Harry looked up at him and frowned, then over at the three original aurors with their wands out, and the several more that had entered the room since he dissolved the Dementor. Tom was standing back, looking both smug and afraid as well. Severus had no expression on his face whatsoever, Remus looked confused and James looked impressed and pleased. James' expression worried him the most. It was like having the Weasley twins grinning at him- nothing good ever followed.
Harry scratched at his arm and his hand encountered shredded cloth. Harry looked down in surprise. His robe was in shreds. It looked like it had been hit with some serious spells.
/:You were. If you are going to pay this little attention to what is going on, why don't you just give control over to me? I'll kill all these aurors, get us out of here and we can take over the world with those non-humans raiders.:/
/What, and together we will be more powerful that I can possibly imagine?/ Harry scoffed. /I don't think so./ It was quite worrying that he hadn't noticed being attacked at all, though that would certainly explain the reaction of the room. Harry started as he realized he had been feeling the tatters of the cloth with his right hand- the same hand he had held onto the freezing cold cloth with so long that it had turned his fingertips black. Now he raised his hand to his face. The fingers were unharmed.
Harry looked up at Dumbledore. The old wizard's eyes hardened.
Harry slipped around him and ran to Tom, who wrapped him into a warm hug. "I don't know what to do." Harry whispered. He was lost. He wasn't sure what to do, or what he wanted to do. He felt like he wanted to tear apart warm bodies until he could find no more. But he was pretty sure, or at least hoped, that those feelings were coming from the other, not from him. "Help me?"
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A/N: I'm feeling like I'm on some sort of writing roll! Praise staying up all night in order to do Black Friday shopping! As such, I think I can have the next chapter out maybe this week. Just needs a few finishing touches.
Also- wow on the hate for poor Dumbles. I wasn't trying to make him evil or anything. I feel that it is perfectly reasonable to want a dark object/ potential homicidal lunatic out of the school. Harry's not the chosen one or anything in this reality, remember. He's just some orphan they found in a field.