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Chapter Thirty-Six—The Burning Realm
"What is Parseltongue besides a language?"
Lyassa glances up at him from where she coils in the middle of the sitting room floor, watching Harry's attempts to conjure a snake with glass fangs. It's the first step to using magic that will make a serpent that can incorporate bits and pieces from the environment around him, which is a more technically demanding but less mentally stressful type of magic than imagining what kind of effect he wants the venom to have. "What?"
Harry takes a deep breath and leans forwards. "The leopard visited my dreams the other night. It told me to ask what Parseltongue is besides a language."
He doesn't plan to take the leopard's word without investigating, of course, but he does want to ask the question. It seemed to him that the leopard had a reason for phrasing it that way. And Lyassa was pretty insistent about having him visit the Speakers' realm with her at the beginning of their alliance. Why? It's not like their lessons in the human world have gone badly, from what Harry can tell.
Lyassa remains silent for some time, her tail twitching. But Harry has learned with Severus that such things don't necessarily mean she's going to refuse to answer. He holds his peace.
Lyassa finally rocks forwards a little and admits, "We have been pushed back into our realm and away from the human world for a long time because of the shortage of Parselmouths among your kind."
"But Voldemort's one. Wouldn't he have brought you back and closer?"
Lyassa spits. Harry jumps, even though she hasn't aimed that venom at him. And venom it is; it's making the floorboards where it landed hiss and bubble. Harry stares at it and hopes Severus won't be too angry about potentially fixing a hole in the floor.
"Do not say such things," Lyassa hisses, and her tail is making a mess of the carpet it's sweeping across. "We will not accept such things."
"All right," Harry says cautiously, not taking his eyes off her. "But I still want to know the answer. Why couldn't Voldemort—bring the worlds closer?" It's odd to speak like that, but it seems to be what she's saying.
Again Lyassa remains silent for some time with a twitching tail, but this time, Harry knows it's probably agitation and just waits for what she'll say. Finally, Lyassa snaps her head up, showing her fangs and the bright inhuman shine of her eyes, and says, "He corrupts Parseltongue when he uses it, so trying to bring our world closer to yours by reaching out to his magic would have corrupted the path we took, and the alliances we forged among the humans, and the magic we used."
"Just because he died and could come back?"
"That is part of it, but not the only thing. His current body is unnatural. His survival is unnatural. What he did with the basilisk that you told me about is unnatural. He could kill, and that would not be unnatural. We kill. Our kin that do not use magic kill." She looks at Lion on Harry's shoulder for a moment. "But we kill because we must, for food or in self-defense, and not the way he does. He wants to kill everything other than himself. He wants to rule over a world of corpses. And that is the kind of world we would have become and come back to if we had called out to his magic."
Harry shivers, feeling the fear course through him. "I didn't know that. I thought he wanted to rule. Have power over people. Keep some of them alive to serve him."
"So he says. So perhaps he tells himself. But his deepest desire is to annihilate everything other than himself, so that no one else may have the privilege of life, while his continues on and on."
Harry considers that for a long moment, more somber than he expected to be. Voldemort seems more unstoppable than ever when he thinks like that, totally willing to kill or hurt anyone. He doesn't want to protect his Death Eaters, then, or the werewolves who are allied with him, or any giants or vampires or goblins he persuades to fight on his side. He'll sacrifice them like everyone else who's not him.
But something doesn't make sense to Harry, and so he has to ask the question. "How do you know this?"
Lyassa gives him a faint, grim smile. "Yes, it is not as though he is whispering confessions to us in the nighttime. The only Speaker who has shared dreams with him is you."
"I'm not a Speaker," Harry says, but uncertainly. The word in Parseltongue sometimes seems to only refer to Lyassa's people and sometimes to refer to anyone who's a Parselmouth.
Lyassa leans forwards. "Yes, you are."
Harry just nods a little, not agreeing or disagreeing, the same way he has to handle Severus sometimes. "All right. But you didn't explain how you knew. You haven't spoken with him directly. It's not the kind of thing he goes around saying, because then no one would serve him unless they had to. So how do you know?"
"That," Lyassa says, and spread her long fingers, "reaches the answer to your other question, what Parseltongue is besides a language."
A spark of light forms between her palms, turning back and forth, glowing with sharp white energy. Harry has seen ones like this before. The Speakers use them to move around, doing their own version of Apparition. Lyassa told Harry before that the sparks lead directly from the human world to the Speakers' realm when they want them to.
"Without Parseltongue, we could never do this," Lyassa whispers. "It is an ancient language of magic. You may have heard of some superstitions that say you should never give your true name to someone else, because they could use it to control you? That names are a kind of language that describes a reality, deeper than other words?"
Harry nods. He doesn't really remember where he heard that, but he knows he did. Possibly Theo or Blaise said something about it. They seem likely to know about it.
Lyassa turns her hands over, and the white light brightens between her fingers until it glows enough to send shadows dancing around the room. "Parseltongue is like a language of those words, but we can't work magic merely by speaking them. Instead, we work magic by speaking them with intent, describing what we want to exist. I speak a description of this sitting room when I come here, and it brings me in."
Harry starts and looks up at her. "That sounds like it would have to be really precise, or you could go somewhere else."
"Yes. It also strings nets to trap descriptions that may exist in the future, but do not exist yet. We spoke the nets into being for Voldemort's mindset long ago. It didn't work to let us know what he wanted while he was still a wraith or in a construct body that changed constantly with the additions of new flesh. There is no way to describe something so impermanent. But once he had resurrected himself, we could speak the description of his body and we knew the mindset would appear. Know the body, know the mind."
Harry can hardly breathe. It sounds like immense power, and yet also power he doesn't understand.
Then again, it also sounds like the magic that Lyassa has been teaching him to practice. He has to imagine those snakes with the venom he wants when he conjures them, and speak the Parseltongue words that bring them into existence. It's not just an ordinary spell. Or for the ones that are, maybe the spell is old words charged with intent that bring the desired result forth.
"And you know he wants to destroy the world."
Lyassa looks up. "Yes. And we know he is corrupt beyond hope of reasoning with him. He has tried to force his intent into being, not by describing what he wants to exist or know in Parseltongue, but by simply ripping it from the fabric of the world. The holes left behind will begin, sooner or later, to unravel."
Harry breathes out. "Why do you think the leopard told me to ask you about Parseltongue? Did it not think you would share the knowledge with me?"
Lyassa sneers, and her tail twitches again. "The leopard is not as bad as Voldemort, but they are creatures different in degree, not kind. It could never imagine sharing knowledge or power with someone else, so it could not imagine we would, either."
"How do I stop it from visiting my dreams?"
"That is the kind of thing I cannot describe in words here without fully shifting into our realm," Lyassa says quietly. "You should come to visit, Harry. Indeed, you should."
"You could describe it in English," Harry says, and narrows his eyes at her, waiting as more minutes drag by with audible ticks from the large clock Severus installed in the corner of the room.
Lyassa dips her head, unblinking eyes fastened on him. "No, I couldn't. English does not have the words."
Harry exhales in frustration and runs his fingers along his scalp. "So we're right back to where we started? With me having to choose whether to visit your realm or stay here?"
"We made a mistake presenting the choice before as though you had no choice," Lyassa murmurs. "We were merely so desperate to have a congenial human Parselmouth in this realm, so we can visit it easily, that we didn't emphasize the power of your decision. But you can choose, Harry."
"But you won't tell me how to stop the leopard visiting my dreams in the realm I stand in."
"I cannot."
Harry thinks about it, swinging his legs back and forth where he sits on the couch. Lion is flapping his wings on Harry's shoulder, but when Harry reaches up to touch his scales, he has only praise to offer for Harry's touch and no advice. Harry finally asks directly, "What do you think about visiting the Speakers' realm?"
"It would be grand! Because they are the Speakers!"
Harry smiles despite himself. Lino is gentle and trusting when it comes to people who aren't threatening Harry and would never distrust a Speaker who is teaching Harry the kind of magic that led to Lion's existence. This is a decision Harry has to make on his own.
He turns to Lyassa and spends a few more moments considering her. The light spins between her palms, and she looks back at him with those eyes that no human would ever have. But the eyes that Harry gets to see, the eyes of someone he gets to work with, because they can both speak Parseltongue.
He makes his decision.
"I'll visit your realm."
"What was it like?"
Severus is trying to keep his voice as calm as possible. He knows how Harry reacts when someone questions him too sternly, and that's to retreat into a shell and smile and give answers that are as false as Voldemort's promises of peace. So he doesn't let himself react the way he wants to the fact that Harry ran away to some realm not even in the same world as this one this afternoon. Instead, he sips tea and waits for Harry's faraway look to clear a little so that he'll say something.
"It was like—being in the middle of a dream."
Harry speaks distantly, eyes focused on something not the far wall of the study behind Severus's head. Again Severus has to tamp down his anxiety and irritation and not say something that would drive Harry away. He reminds himself that being a guardian involves compromise on both their parts.
It still does not make it easier, to sit and wait for the words to drip out of Harry's mouth.
"It was…it was like being in the middle of a dream," Harry repeats, but this time, his voice is a little firmer. Something in Severus that wondered if part of Harry was wandering in a confused haze, like the ones that possesses Seers who stare too long into crystal balls, settles. No, he's simply trying to put the experience into words. "Yes. There was no firmness to anything. It was a dream made of cloud and flame."
Very poetic, Severus thinks, but doesn't let himself say it. "And were the Speakers able to explain a path to you to keep this leopard-creature from invading your mind?"
Harry startles and then nods. His eyes snap back into focus. "Yes. They were able to build a…picture in front of me with words. It's not the kind of thing that they could do in this world. Lyassa says the fabric of our world is too firm."
"She means unable to be manipulated as easily with Parseltongue?"
"Yeah."
Again Severus refrains from giving his opinion of what a good thing that is. "And do you feel that you have a new understanding of Parseltongue as a language, or more than a language, now that you have visited their realm?" It was something he was curious about when Harry first mentioned why he'd gone, but he's spent all their time until this point just getting Harry to speak coherently.
"Yes," Harry says, and his smile twists across his face like a snake itself. Severus cannot tell for the life of him whether that expression is a happy or an unhappy one. "It's so fluid, Severus. Everything moves around there, and you have to speak and imagine to get where you want to go. Eyes open and close in the walls. Or sometimes there aren't any walls. There are so many soft and drifting things that I don't know what to call them."
Severus nods slowly. He thinks he can get a picture of a sort. It doesn't stop him from wishing that Harry would have told him he was going, or wishing that he spoke Parseltongue himself and could understand better.
"Then the journey was worth it," he says. He sips his tea again, and then adds as casually as he can, "And they gave you the tools that may hold Voldemort out of your head?" It still stings that he wasn't able to teach Harry Occlumency that could do that.
"Not…exactly."
Severus's eyes narrow. "And why not?"
"The leopard is an enemy of the Speakers, and of all Parselmouths. They know techniques for fighting it. But Voldemort is a particular kind of corrupt Parselmouth that they've never encountered before. It'll take a lot more than that to fight him."
Severus has the feeling that something is hiding under the words, that perhaps the Speakers told Harry another reason why it wasn't possible. But he holds his peace, and nods. It's not like he would be able to know what is going on if he drives Harry off or expends too much effort into peering underneath the words.
"Then it was worth it," he repeats, and sips his tea, and is glad to see Harry do the same, his eyes bright and focused on the human world.
Harry doesn't know how to explain the Speakers' realm, at least with more than the words he's already used with Severus.
It was made of insubstantial, drifting dreams. White and gauzy red clouds rushed past him, and that was like being in the middle of a valentine. There were shifting curtains of green and blue that made him feel he was underwater. And he walked on a floor that exerted only the slightest of pressure on his feet, while red and gold fire swayed past without touching him.
When he spoke Parseltongue, whatever he desired appeared. The first thing was a thick, circular tower big enough for all his friends and family, and surrounded by shimmering wards of the kind that Voldemort could never pierce. The kind of place that Harry sometimes dreams of, whenever he tires of thinking about fighting the war and just wants to retreat from it, taking everyone with him that he cares about.
But he knows that wouldn't really work. He would feel too bad for the other people terrorized by Voldemort. He would want to save even the ones like Cornelius Fudge, who is stupid and irritating, but doesn't deserve Voldemort.
And Voldemort would find some way to rip down those wards and get behind them. Harry's certain of that, no matter how much time he spent imagining them or how many Speakers he got to help him.
But he did get to see the path that he can build from his mind to others', and how to block that path. With it, he can either hold the leopard out altogether or invite it into his mind and trap it in a landscape of constantly shifting and changing prisms that only Harry can anticipate or control. Lyassa warned him about the dangers of that, of course.
When he asked about a way to build or block a path to Voldemort's mind, Lyassa summoned another Speaker, one Harry didn't meet before, in a shining black serpent form. She considered Harry for a long time and then spoke.
"The bond that ties you together is not one of minds. It cannot be blocked by Occlumency or Parseltongue. It is one of souls."
Harry asked more about what that meant. The serpent drew back and looked at him in what Harry thought was offense. Lyassa was the one who answered, with soft gliding hisses that Harry knew meant she was deeply moved.
"You share a piece of his soul, or he shares a piece of yours. It is impossible to tell at this point."
That's the part that Harry doesn't know how to handle. He can imagine several reactions if he talks about it to Severus right now: he would feel even worse about not being able to teach Harry Occlumency, or he would be horrified and try to pull Harry out of Hogwarts, or he would…
He might feel disgusted if Harry is carrying a piece of Voldemort's soul around.
Harry just needs a little time to get used to it. Then he'll tell him. And other people who can be trusted to keep the secret.
Just.
A little time, to assimilate his own crawling disgust.