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Chapter Text

“Harry?”

Harry blinked and looked up from the lake, which he’d been staring out over while visions of Cedric’s death played in front of his eyes again and again. “Oh, hi, Neville.”

Neville sat down next to him. Harry allowed it. Neville was one of the few people, other than Ron and Hermione, who had stood by him and not whispered behind their hands or acted as though he thought Harry had murdered Cedric. That alone made his company valuable.

“I wanted to ask you something.”

Harry stirred and managed to force his way past his own despair to smile at Neville. He sounded so nervous about something. It had taken real courage for him to approach Harry. “What is it?”

“I wanted to know if you wanted to come to a vampire Court with me and my Gran this summer.”

Harry felt his mouth fall open. Then he closed it, because that probably looked rude, and cleared his throat. “I—wow, Neville, that sounds—interesting. But I don’t know if I can. I always have to stay with my Muggle relatives during the summers.”

“But that would be a bad idea right now, wouldn’t it?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, You-Know-Who could just show up and take you right out of a Muggle house. They don’t have the protections that magical homes do.”

Neville looked a little sick talking about it, but he still talked about it. Harry paused, combing his fingers restlessly through his hair.

He wanted to say that the Dursleys’ house had blood protections around it, but the truth was, he didn’t know how well those would work when Voldemort had taken his blood. It was probably safe, but it wouldn’t be as safe as staying with a bunch of—

“Wait, would vampires welcome me?” Harry struggled to remember what he had read about vampires, but there were really only a few chapters in the book for Professor Lupin’s class last year. “I don’t know—why are you going to visit them?”

Neville smiled. “My great-aunt, Gran’s sister? She married a vampire and got turned by him a long time ago.”

“Really?”

Neville nodded. “That’s what vampires do with humans they fall in love with. They turn them as soon as they can, so that the person can be immortal and with them forever. Great-Aunt Agatha seems happy.”

“They drink blood, though, right?”

“Right! But they would never do that from an invited guest.”

“Would they invite me if you invited me?”

“I promise they would.” Neville hesitated, and then reached out and grabbed Harry’s hand. Harry was so startled that he allowed it, even though he hadn’t really liked anyone touching him but Ron and Hermione since he came back from the graveyard.

“I thought you were dead,” Neville whispered. “You looked like you were about to die when you came back. And then when you confronted—Crouch.” He swallowed. Neville had taken the revelation that they’d had a Death Eater teaching them all year almost worse than Harry, and Harry could see why, after learning about Neville’s parents. “I never want to go through that again, Harry. You’re—almost the only friend I have.”

Harry looked down, ashamed. He hadn’t always treated Neville like a friend. He’d thought Neville was clumsy and stupid. He’d been impatient with him.

But now Neville was offering the kind of protection he thought Harry needed, so Harry wouldn’t end up dead.

“I—I need to train my magic,” Harry whispered, something he’d told no one else since he came back. “I don’t—Voldemort—” Neville flinched, but his hand tightened on Harry’s. “He just kind of tossed me around. I only survived because of luck and because the ghosts of my parents were there. I can’t count on that. I need to learn the kind of magic that he knows. I need to become more powerful to defeat him.”

Neville was pale when Harry looked at him again, but also smiling gamely. “I promise that you can learn that in a vampire Court,” he said. “They practice all kinds of magic, and they have their own code of honor, so they really don’t care much about laws that wizards and witches make.”

“I could practice magic during the summer?”

“Of course you can. And you can learn alongside me. They could probably even teach you about how the magic that let you survive when you were one and You-Know-Who attacked you. Or Parseltongue.”

Neville looked solemn. Harry sat back with his mind whirling. He almost didn’t dare to hope this was a real escape. If it was so simple to just walk away from the Dursleys during the summers, why hadn’t Ron ever invited him to the Burrow to do that, or Hermione to her house?

But maybe it hadn’t occurred to them.

“Yeah,” Harry whispered. “Yeah, I’d like to come, Neville.”

Neville’s smile was still shaky, his face pale, but he squeezed Harry’s hand, and Harry squeezed back.

*

They took a Portkey from the train station, which was nauseating. Harry was still swallowing back bile when they came out of the Portkey on the top of a high mountain. He stared in all directions at the dazzling view, mouth dropping open.

“We are in the Alps,” said Augusta Longbottom, Neville’s Gran. She had peered at Harry in stern silence for a long moment before she’d told him to call her Augusta. Harry wasn’t sure he could, though. “Technically, the Court of the Riviera Pack is near here.”

“Technically?”

“It’s really Underhill,” Neville said. He’d been quiet since they got off the train, but now his eyes were shining with a confidence that Harry had never seen before, and he spoke exactly like Harry should know what he was talking about.

“Underground?”

Neville and Mrs. Longbottom both looked at him with identical shocked expressions. Harry put his hands in his robe pockets and ducked his head. He felt stupid, the way he did whenever he stumbled across some magical thing he didn’t know.

“No,” Mrs. Longbottom said, still peering at Harry. Harry didn’t dare look up, just in case she regretted inviting him along. “Underhill. In the realm of the Sidhe and the faerie-kind. The Lord of the Riviera Pack, Elfric, was once a Sidhe.”

Harry didn’t want to betray his ignorance again, so he just nodded. Mrs. Longbottom examined him one more time, harrumphed, and then reached into her robe pocket and took out a dazzling sapphire that made Harry blink several times.

“This is the token that will bring us to the Court,” Mrs. Longbottom explained, and extended her hand. Neville gripped it and held out his hand to Harry, who took it.

Mrs. Longbottom said a long, cold, sighing word that sounded like wind rushing down a tunnel to Harry. He just barely bit his lip to keep from yelling as blue light flooded out of the sapphire and lit the world around them.

Shadows turned to glittering coldness. Harry thought he could feel his head spinning upside-down and turning inside-out. At the same time, he was speeding through the sapphire’s facets, or something like them, down endless tunnels and through sharp-edged doors.

Someone spoke his name in a shrill laughing voice, and then Harry stumbled, and it was Neville’s voice again. He lifted his head, and his jaw dropped.

They were standing in an immense and shining place. Harry almost thought “cavern,” and then he saw the softness of the walls, covered with tapestries and silver and blue grass, and thought “hill.”

Or “hall.” That could have been it, too.

Everything was full of glittering motion: rushing waterfalls, spinning blades in the air, the wings of silver birds as they darted back and forth, and vampires coming and going in the soft shining light. They turned to look at him, and Harry straightened his back and forced himself to make unnaturally bright blue and red and golden eyes. He had faced down Lord Voldemort. He could do this.

A vampire who looked younger than some of the others stepped forwards and bowed. He wore a costume that looked medieval to Harry, with flowing sleeves and leggings and a long red cape.

“Mrs. Longbottom, Mr. Longbottom,” he said in a voice like a hollow flute. “Welcome. We await an introduction to your guest.” He turned and faced Harry.

His eyes were a bright and blazing green, a color Harry had never seen except in his own reflection and the pictures of his mum. Harry stared in wonder. Then Neville nudged him, and Harry realized he was supposed to introduce himself instead of waiting for someone to do it for him.

He cleared his throat. “My name is Harry Potter. Thank you for, ah, inviting me.”

“I am Lord Constantine,” the vampire said, “Lord Elfric’s grandson in the blood, and his heir. Allow me to escort you to my sire.”

Harry nodded, dazed, and wondered for a second how grubby his little trunk and his school robes looked in comparison to the rich robes that the Longbottoms were wearing. But Neville had said he wasn’t to worry about that, so Harry did his best to just walk after Constantine and not look like he was gaping like a fool.

*

“So.”

If Constantine’s voice was a hollow flute, Elfric’s was a full bass orchestra. Harry bowed in front of him, copying what he saw Neville do from the corner of his eye.

He was pretty overwhelmed. They’d passed through some of the most beautiful rooms he’d ever seen on the way here, and now they were in the middle of a throne room covered with a shallow, shimmering sheet of silver water, surrounding small artificial rocky islands. It was so big Harry couldn’t see the walls or the ceiling.

Elfric sat on a throne on one of the islands, and he was taller than any human, and paler. The way his limbs curved sort of reminded Harry of a praying mantis’s. Instead of hair, even the curly chestnut hair like Constantine had that was too bright to be real, he had shining strands of silver frizz like spiderwebs.

His eyes were black and depthless pools. Harry had been glad to bow so that he wouldn’t have to look into them.

“So,” Elfric repeated, and leaned forwards to study Harry. Harry nervously bowed again. “It is a long time since we have welcomed a Parselmouth to our halls.”

Harry nearly froze in panic, but he saw Neville nodding and making “go on” gestures from the corner of his eye. So it must be all right. Harry took a deep breath. “Yes, I’m a Parselmouth, sir, er. Your Majesty.”

“You may say ‘my lord,’” Elfric murmured. He was absorbed as he studied Harry. “You have survived death often for one so young.”

Vampires were undead, Harry remembered that much, so he supposed he wasn’t surprised that they could sense that. He nodded. “Yes, s—my lord.”

“And it is your will to continue surviving for many more years?”

Harry straightened his back. If the vampires could teach him powerful magic, this seemed like the time to ask about it. “Yes, my lord. I’d like to live.”

“Then,” Elfric said, and smiled in a way that bared fangs gleaming like ivory bars, “you shall.”

*

Life in the vampire Court was different from anything Harry could have dreamed.

He and Neville and Mrs. Longbottom were all given rooms in a less overwhelming part of the Court that Neville said was designed for humans, but they didn’t have to share a bedroom or anything like that. Every morning that Harry opened his eyes, he felt like he was dreaming.

The bedroom was a huge, sprawling thing with seven walls, and on all of them were tapestries that seemed to depict vampire history. The floor was covered with a blue carpet that rustled around Harry’s ankles when he walked across it, and might be actual grass. There was a bathroom with a tub Harry could swim in if he wanted, and a desk in a room off to the side of the bedroom that seemed to be made of pure silver, and bookshelves crammed with books.

Harry couldn’t read all of them—most of them seemed to be in other languages—but there were spellbooks in English. He read and he read, and he learned.

There were all kinds of powerful spells that weren’t Dark Arts, he learned. Some of them were variations of Charms or Transfigurations he had already learned. If he Transfigured the air into knives or charmed his enemies’ robes to strangle them, he wasn’t breaking any laws.

It was more than he had ever expected to find.

*

Constantine was more than he’d ever expected to find, too.

Harry had met the young vampire waiting for him outside the round room that contained breakfast on his second day in the Court. Harry jumped a little. He’d opened the door that led out of the dining room by mistake, absorbed as he was in a book he was reading. He’d meant to go back to his rooms. Neville said it wasn’t a good idea to wander around the Court without a guide.

But now there was Constantine in front of him, who bowed his head, smiled a little without showing his fangs, and murmured, “Would you like a tour of the Court?”

“Um.” Harry could feel himself blushing. He hated the fact that he might be being inconvenient or rude, either by refusing the escort or needing one. “I don’t want to put you out. You must have lots of duties.”

“I also have much more time than you do, given that I do not sleep,” Constantine said, and this time, his smile widened and displayed his fangs. Harry didn’t feel threatened, though. Neville had said the vampires would never attack a guest, and so far, Neville had been right about everything else. “I have completed my duties for today, and I would like to spend time with you.”

“Um. Why? My lord.”

“Save that for my grandfather. I don’t need it.” Constantine’s eyes shone. “It has been years since I saw a Parselmouth.”

“I don’t really understand why a vampire would want to speak with me because of that,” Harry admitted. He tucked the book in a pocket of the wide, stretchy silver robe that he’d found waiting in his wardrobe yesterday morning. At least he didn’t have to go around wearing school robes or Muggle clothes. “Do vampires have a close association with snakes?”

“Not all vampires, but our Pack does, because of our Court.”

“What’s the difference between a Pack and a Court?”

“The Pack is the group of vampires,” Constantine said, and waved his hand. Harry followed him down a hall that bent and wavered back and forth as if it was made of mist, and they came out in a room of dazzling blue, as if they were inside the sapphire that Mrs. Longbottom had used to transport them here. “The Court is the place we live.”

“Oh. Okay. Makes sense.”

Constantine nodded. Apparently, nothing could disrupt the faint smile on his face. “This place was ancient when my grandfather found it and began to sculpt it to his will. And even then, it belonged to the serpents.”

They crossed part of the vast room, which narrowed down, with the ceiling sinking towards them, and the walls seemed to float around them. Harry reached out to brace himself on one of the walls, and found Constantine’s cool hand awaiting his.

“It’s just through here,” Constantine murmured, and they seemed to skim through a door and come to rest in front of a carved stone serpent that was so realistic Harry almost expected it to move. Of course it didn’t, but he bowed his head before it and spoke without thinking, unselfconscious about his Parseltongue for the first time in his life.

“Hello, Great One.”

The carving writhed, and the tongue, which had been projecting beyond its mouth, darted back inside. The smooth curves of silver stone flowed into scales, and the snake looped back on itself and studied him.

“I have heard no voices in such a long time. Tell me, do my kind still crawl beneath the sky?”

Constantine caught his breath beside Harry. Harry didn’t know why. He hoped the vampire wasn’t about to show that he was afraid of Parseltongue. That stirred a hurt inside him that he didn’t understand.

“I do not know, Great One. I do not know what your exact kind are. You are not like anything I have seen before.”

The snake extended its neck towards him, and Harry held very still as the slender snout nudged at his arms and shoulders. Then the snake withdrew and extended its tongue again in apparent pleasure.

“My kind are all who speak with a serpent’s tongue and seek with a serpent’s soul. They still crawl beneath the sky. I can feel that you have the language and the soul.”

Harry wondered uneasily what that last part meant, but he knew he probably wouldn’t get answers if he asked. He just nodded and bowed, about halfway as deep as he had bowed to Lord Elfric. It seemed right. “Thank you for the compliments.”

“Truth. Compliments.” The snake seemed to be easing back towards sleep again. “They are the same, and it is well that they are.”

Harry took a step back and bowed again as the serpent returned to sleep, and then turned to face Constantine. To his relief, the vampire was smiling at him in what seemed to be genuine wonder, not fear.

“That was marvelous,” Constantine said. “I have never heard a Parselmouth speak the language so beautifully.”

Harry flushed, and wondered if he should tell the vampire about what Dumbledore had said, that Harry wasn’t a real Parselmouth, but got the power from Voldemort. But he decided that might sound rude. “Thank you.”

“Does he value you, the lord you are heir to?”

Harry blinked. “I’m not sure who you mean.”

“Perhaps it is not time yet,” said Constantine, which didn’t make sense, either, but he went on before Harry could ask what he meant. “Come, I will show you a meadow where time breaks in pieces and returns on itself.”

Harry followed, intrigued, and thinking that was probably going to count as his best summer yet, if it didn’t already.

Chapter Text

“Did you not notice?”

Harry lifted his head and concentrated on the railing running beside him, which was made of warm and shining stone, a milky grey in color. He reached out and touched it, and the railing seemed to ripple and shift towards him.

“Notice what?” Harry murmured, tilting his hand back and forth on the railing. It really did ripple, rising up to touch his fingers. Harry laughed in delight and turned to find Constantine watching him with a faint smile.

“How everything here seems to turn towards you. How it responds to Parseltongue.”

“Constantine, I’m still trying to find my feet half the time.” But Harry looked up at the ceiling, which in this part of the Court was covered by drifting mist and dangling blue flowers, and smiled as he saw the flowers rotating in his direction. “You built the Court on the corpse of a giant snake?”

“Not a corpse. It was still alive when my grandfather discovered it.” Constantine gestured, and Harry followed him down the stairs that the railing encircled. “But he did have to bargain with it for the right to build the Court on its back”

“Is Lord Elfric a Parselmouth, too?”

“No. It’s one reason that the negotiations took long years.”

They descended the stairs the rest of the way in silence. Harry had to admit that part of him was still reeling at the idea that people here looked at his Parseltongue in interest instead of hating him for it.

“Here we are.”

Harry blinked and lifted his head, craning his neck to see the head of the snake rearing above them. It was made of stone, or so Harry thought, but it was a shining grey stone that seemed lit from within by golden radiance that followed the outline of the great creature’s scales. Harry shivered in awe.

“Can you sense what it is?”

Constantine was standing right beside Harry, staring at him in that slightly creepy way he had. Harry decided to ignore how creepy it was as he tilted his head back and closed his eyes. There was a magic flowing from the stone snake that didn’t feel like anything he had ever felt before. He reached out a hand.

For a moment, there were coils shifting against his touch, although Harry knew he wasn’t actually touching anything but air, and a soft hiss in his ear. The hiss carried a name Harry had never heard before but knew at once.

“Sahafassa,” Harry breathed.

Constantine said nothing, but Harry felt an impression of keen interest anyway. He opened his eyes to see Constantine smiling at him, nodding slightly.

“That is the name the Great One gave to my grandfather when he built the Court,” Constantine said. “And she told him that when someone else came who knew the name without being told by a two-legged creature, that person would be the linchpin of a powerful alliance we might form.”

Harry cleared his throat uncomfortably. He was blushing. “I’m not—I’m not an ally of anyone, Constantine. I’m just Neville’s friend.”

“Are you?”

Harry found himself unsure of the answer to the question when it was asked like that. He ended up shrugging helplessly.

Constantine stood there and stared for a moment longer. Then he turned his head, and his discomforting gaze, away.

“Come, you should see some of the lower floors.”

Harry followed, still wondering what Constantine had meant about an alliance. It wasn’t as though Harry had relatives among the Court like Neville did, or was going to marry a vampire like Neville’s great-aunt had.

Besides, he wasn’t here to wander around the Court and ask questions of the vampires or just speak Parseltongue, no matter how interesting it was. He was here to make himself tougher, to be able to defeat Voldemort.

Harry grimaced and shook his head in annoyance. He hated that he had forgotten his true purpose for even a few days.

I have all summer. But it’ll pass before I know it, and Voldemort will be hunting me again.

*

“Come in, Harry Potter.”

Harry stepped gingerly into the throne room. Constantine had guided him here, but hadn’t accompanied him inside, saying that Lord Elfric wanted to see Harry alone. Harry was frantically revising what he had done over the past few days in his head, wondering if he had somehow been rude to a vampire.

“Calm, little one.”

An avalanche of calm seemed to fall on Harry. It was as if he had swallowed sixteen Calming Draughts at once. He blinked and coughed and got control of himself, glancing away from Lord Elfric with his face burning.

“Sorry,” he whispered. He’d survived the graveyard. He ought to be able to face this vampire Lord who hadn’t actually done anything to kill anyone Harry knew or torture or hurt him.

“It is well.” Lord Elfric shifted back and forth for a moment, and Harry finally turned back and bowed. Lord Elfric waved one of his elegant hands. “You need not bow. Not when you come before me as the heir of a powerful Lord.”

Harry’s mind flickered back to what Constantine had said the other day, and his eyes narrowed. “My lord, I’m sorry, but I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t know any Lords other than you, and Lord Voldemort.”

“It is of Lord Voldemort that I speak.”

Harry opened his mouth, then closed it. He thought. Lord Elfric waited. Harry finally said, as carefully as he could, “My lord, I don’t know what you know about—the way I interacted with Lord Voldemort this last year, but he was trying to kill me only a few days ago. He tied me up, tortured me, killed one of my friends, and took my blood to use in a resurrection ritual.”

Harry heard his voice shaking and hated it, but couldn’t stop it. He was alive with hatred at the thought of Voldemort, and silently vowing that the next time he saw the bastard, he would make Voldemort hurt the way Harry hurt.

Lord Elfric tilted his head back and forth, the way someone else might wag their hand, clearly considering. “And why did he choose you for the resurrection ritual?”

“Because he hates me, and the ritual needed the blood of an enemy.”

“Or the blood of his heir.”

Harry shook his head. “I don’t know much about his family, but I know that he’s Slytherin’s distant descendant, my lord. I know that I’m not.”

“And yet, you are a Parselmouth.”

“That has to do with the magic that flew around the night that he attacked me when I was a baby.” There, Harry thought, that ought to be a safe enough version of the truth, without giving away a lot that the vampires might use against him. “It’s—like handing someone a present or something. It’s nothing to do with inheritance.”

Lord Elfric nodded as if satisfied. “I shall think about this. I make no decisions hastily. The immortal need not.”

He gave Harry a particularly close look as he spoke those words, but Harry didn’t know why. He just nodded and retreated, glad when Constantine started up from what looked like a floating cushion of mist.

“It went well?”

“Yeah, but I don’t know why you grandfather referred to me as Voldemort’s heir. I’m not.”

Constantine smiled as though he’d said something funny, but took Harry off to show him an Underhill garden instead of explaining.

*

“Harry? Are you okay? Gran wanted me to…”

Neville opened the door and stopped speaking. Harry suspected that he knew why. Harry was sitting in the middle of his bed, staring fixedly at the letter that had arrived for him a few hours ago. The scale that had sealed it lay in the middle of the bed. Harry was shuddering over and over again.

“Gran!” Neville called over his shoulder, sounding panicked.

Harry tried to shake himself out of it. He understood why Neville had shouted for his grandmother—he was probably used to having her take care of things—but Harry didn’t want to look this weak in front of Mrs. Longbottom.

As it turned out, he didn’t have a choice. Mrs. Longbottom bustled into the room, took one look at him, nodded a little, and waved her wand. Harry’s bathroom door flew open, and he heard the sound of water pouring into the tub. A moment later, steam started curling out of the door.

“A warm bath, I think,” said Mrs. Longbottom, as if saying what color grass was. “In you get, Harry.”

Harry would have protested if he could have, but his lips and his fingers alike felt heavy and numb. He lets Mrs. Longbottom herd him into the bathroom. She looked away while Harry took off his robes. Then he crawled into the warm water and cried aloud.

“What is it? Too cold?” Mrs. Longbottom raised her wand as if she would cast another Warming Charm.

“No, no, it’s hot,” Harry said, but he could feel the spinning in his head slowing down. The cold was retreating from his limbs, and he leaned back and closed his eyes. Luckily, the steam and the bubbles that Mrs. Longbottom had conjured meant she had no chance of seeing under the water and let Harry be okay with having her in the same room.

Mrs. Longbottom nodded briskly. “The best thing for a shock like this. I’ll leave now, dear, but Neville will sit and keep you company.”

Her tone said it wasn’t optional. But Harry was okay with Neville being around. After all, they shared a bathroom at Hogwarts. “All right. Thank you, Mrs. Longbottom.”

“It will be all right,” Mrs. Longbottom said softly. She didn’t reach towards him, but looked into his eyes in a way that made Harry feel like she just might be telling the truth. “If nothing else, Lord Elfric and Lord Constantine are fond of you, and powerful vampire Lords have a way of banishing any problems.”

She was gone before Harry could ask what she meant about the vampires being fond of him. Harry frowned down at the bathwater. It wasn’t as though he was like Neville’s great-aunt and married to one of them or anything.

Neville came and sat down on the rim of the tub, his face as quiet and courageous as it had been when he’d invited Harry to come to the Court with them. “What happened?”

Harry swallowed air, then said, “I’ll talk about it, but in a minute, okay? I want to—I want to think about it first.”

“Take all the time you need, Harry.”

Harry smiled at Neville, grateful for his silent support, and then reached for the soap and the potion in a small glass bottle that served as shampoo. He silently scrubbed down, partially because he did feel like he should clean himself in water this hot and partially because every time he touched his own skin, it reminded him he was alive.

Not dreaming. Not bleeding to death in the graveyard, either.

He took a deep breath and finally rolled over in the water so that he was facing Neville. Neville, who had taken a book out of his pocket that had a cactus on the cover and had been reading it, immediately put it back in his pocket.

“The letter was from Voldemort,” Harry said. “One of his bloody snake’s scales sealed it.”

Neville’s mouth fell open. “He—wow.”

Harry nodded. He did feel calmer. Some of that was the bathwater, some of that was the reminder that he was alive, and some of it was because it had been more than a month since the graveyard, now, and Harry was getting used to the idea that Voldemort wouldn’t storm Lord Elfric’s Court to get at him. “I know. And the weirdest thing is that it isn’t full of death threats.”

“What did he say?”

Harry hesitated.

“You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to,” Neville said, and hitched up his robe. “But I sort of had the impression that you did want to.”

Once again, Harry felt shame that he hadn’t been a better friend to Neville. He nodded and bit his lip. “Yeah. I—well, I was just thinking about whether it was something anyone should hear.”

“Gran says those are the things that you need to talk about most.”

“She’s probably right.” Harry cleared his throat. “He says that I’m his heir. And his Horcrux.”

Neville’s mouth dropped open. Then his brow furrowed. “I know what an heir is, of course—” he peeked quickly at Harry as if thinking Harry would deny that, but continued on when Harry just nodded “—but I’ve never heard of the other word.”

Harry licked his lips. The thought of trying to explain it made him feel ill, clean hot water notwithstanding. “Can you go get the letter and bring it here? Then you can read it.”

Neville swallowed, probably at the thought of touching a letter that Voldemort had touched, but he got up and trotted gamely out of the bathroom. Harry slumped back in the water and closed his eyes.

“Harry? I have it here.”

“All right,” Harry whispered, and had to clear his throat. “Why don’t you read it?”

“You’re sure?”

“Yeah.”

“Okay.”

Neville began to read the letter, mumbling the words to himself. Harry didn’t have to listen. He’d lost count of how many times he’d read the letter since it had arrived two hours ago, and he knew it by heart now.

My heir,

I am sure that you are more than puzzled as to why I am writing to you. It seems that we have both been laboring under misinformation. I went to your house in Godric’s Hollow thirteen years ago because I was following a prophecy that declared a child born at the end of the month of July would be my vanquisher. Of course, you know this. I am setting the scene. Do not tear this letter up and throw it away.

Harry had very much not known about any bloody prophecy.

I thought that I killed your parents and attempted to kill you, only to be disembodied by the backlash of my own Killing Curse. However, far more happened than that. Do not try to tear this letter up. I have spelled it against such things.

That night, you became my heir and my Horcrux. A Horcrux is a magical object in which a piece of the caster’s soul is stored, so that he may maintain his immortality. I did not intend to create a Horcrux out of you, but that is what happened. You bear my soul. I have heard from the vampires of the Riviera Pack that you speak Parseltongue and carry yourself with a grace that must be evident to all who see it as part of Lord Voldemort.

Do not try to burn this letter.

I am in the middle of negotiating an alliance with Lord Elfric’s Pack. He told me that you were residing in the Court and that you believed you had to protect yourself against me. He seemed puzzled at this, because of course no Lord who truly understands Lordship would attempt to destroy his Horcrux or his Heir. Do not try to blast this letter apart.

I will swear whatever oaths you wish that I will never harm you again. I will require a reciprocal oath that you will not try to harm me, either. Do not try to cut this letter apart.

You are facing a different situation than you were this morning, Harry Potter. You are no longer a helpless pawn in this war, and you are no longer simply my enemy. We have much to settle between us. It may be that you require a blood debt of me for killing your parents. I am prepared to pay it.

Do not try to Vanish this letter.

Lord Voldemort.

Neville’s hands were shaking as he lowered the parchment. Harry nodded to him, holding his face stiff. What the hell was he supposed to say? What the hell was he supposed to do now?

Other than trying to destroy Voldemort’s stupid letter, I suppose, he added sarcastically inside his own head.

“Wow,” Neville whispered. “Oh, wow.”

Harry nodded again. The numbness was creeping back. He ducked his head under the warm water and rubbed it over his neck to keep himself from succumbing to the cold again. He wondered idly if the properties of the bathtub were keeping the water as hot as this, or if Augusta Longbottom was just really adept at Warming Charms.

“What are we going to do?” Neville whispered.

Harry blinked at him. “We?”

Neville seemed to shrink into himself, and glanced away. “I see,” he muttered. “If you don’t want me to help you—I know that I’m not the bravest or the strongest Gryffindor—”

“No, no, Neville, I didn’t mean that!” Harry reached out of the water to squeeze Neville’s hand, and Neville smiled tremulously back. “I just—I suppose I’ve got used to thinking of myself as the only one who can really fight against Voldemort.” Neville flinched, but didn’t fall off the side of the tub. “Ron and Hermione help, but I’m always—alone at the end.”

Ron on the chessboard. Hermione on the other side of the fire. Ron on the other side of the rockfall in the Chamber, and Ginny lying helpless on the floor. Cedric lying dead.

Harry didn’t know what to do with anything now. Even Neville’s offer of help only made him feel as if more solid ground was crumbling away from beneath him, the ground of the Way Things Had Been.

Lord Elfric knew. Constantine knew.

Harry closed his eyes and clung to that knowledge. They had known, and of course their remarks made sense now. They wouldn’t be able to understand why Voldemort’s “heir” was fighting him, and would probably think that Voldemort was proud Harry had fought him and survived or something.

Had they been able to sense that he was Voldemort’s Horcrux?

The instant he thought that, Harry was sure they had. And it had probably just added to their curiosity.

He fought against the hysterical laughter that was bubbling up in his throat, because with the mood he was in, he thought he probably wouldn’t be able to stop it. He slumped against the back of the bathtub and took long, deep, thoughtful breaths until his stomach had stopped churning and he could think again.

“What are you going to do?”

Harry opened his eyes and saw Neville watching him with an unreadable expression. Of course. Neville probably thought that Harry would accept Voldemort’s oaths or something, because he wanted to stop fighting this war.

And Harry did of course want to stop fighting the war. But he wanted to stop fighting it because Voldemort was dead, not because—

A sharp prickle ran down Harry’s spine.

If I’m something that makes Voldemort immortal, then he probably can’t die until I’m dead.

Harry had no idea what to do with that information. Of course he would die to defeat Voldemort if that was necessary, and he’d thought it would be at least twice now, with Quirrell and the basilisk. But if he was supposed to be Voldemort’s destined enemy, who would kill Voldemort if Harry died?

Someone else, Harry thought with a sudden flare of spite. One of the people who sits back on their arses and pretends nothing has changed. Dumbledore, the only one he ever feared. Someone else.

“I think I have to die to kill Voldemort,” Harry said quietly, and watched the way that Neville’s face went pale and his head hung.

“There has to be some other way,” Neville whispered. “Right?”

“I don’t see what other way there could be. If I’m this Horcrux thing and I’m holding him to life…”

“There has to be some other way,” Neville repeated.

Harry sighed a little as he looked at the way Neville’s jaw had firmed. He would probably ask his grandmother, although Harry didn’t know what she would do with the information. At the moment, he almost felt indifferent to it. He just knew what he had to do, and he would do it whether or not other people had different ideas.

“Sure,” he said. “What other ways can you think of?”

Neville started chattering nervously about plants that could keep someone in a coma and contribute to potions like the Draught of Living Death. Harry listened and nodded and made interested noises at some points, and made his own plans.

*

“I can feel your sadness on the other side of the cavern.”

Harry started and turned around. He had gone wandering in the Court without a guide, exactly as Neville had said not to do, but he had found that he knew his way back to the great stone snake as if summoned. He’d been leaning against it for what felt like hours now, staring at the golden flicker on its scales. Without a sun or moon overhead, it was hard to be sure of how much time it had been.

Constantine stood in front of him, and he looked oddly—distressed? Harry hadn’t known that vampire faces could actually form that expression, but he supposed now that he’d been stupid. Of course they had emotions like anyone else.

“I found out some terrible news.”

Constantine sat down beside him in a rush, folding his legs beneath him. “What news?”

Harry hesitated, but then reminded himself that he’d thought the vampires knew. “I’m the Horcrux of my mortal enemy.”

Constantine blinked, once and then twice. Then he said, “But that makes you powerful. And surely it is good news? That means he will hesitate to kill you.”

“But it also means that he can’t die as long as I live,” Harry said flatly. He supposed it was different for Constantine, who had probably spent centuries as a vampire and no longer had to worry about dying. Maybe he thought that all living people spent as much time as they could trying to avoid death. “And I want him dead more than I want to live.”

Constantine reached out and seized his wrist. Harry blinked at him. The gesture had been abrupt, and he wondered if Constantine believed Harry would challenge a vampire to a duel so he could die or something.

“No,” Constantine whispered.

“Yes.”

“Harry, please, no.”

Harry shook his head slowly. “I’m pretty sure that you already knew I was a Horcrux. So why would it matter to you whether I live or die?”

“Do you think I spend hours and days leading all our guests on a tour of the Court? Do you think that I bring everyone here to see the Great One?” Constantine nodded to the stone snake behind Harry. “I value your company. You are interesting to me, as no mortal has been in centuries.”

“But I would still die someday of old age, even if I wasn’t a Horcrux,” Harry said. He had practiced saying what he was to himself last night, and he was beyond his initial reaction of choking disgust. All that was left to him was grim determination. “You can’t prevent it, Constantine. The only thing you can do is accept that I want to die the way I want to die.”

Constantine made a soft sound and dropped Harry’s wrist. “I must speak to Grandfather,” he said, and turned and melted into the mist.

Harry stared after him. Then he shook his head and leaned back against Sahafassa.

He didn’t have that much summer left. But enough to plan what he was going to do.

I will not be Lord Voldemort’s Horcrux.

Chapter Text

“My lord has sent me to you.”

Harry shifted, embarrassed and intrigued and confused and unsure. He was standing in a cave that he hadn’t seen before when he was wandering around the Court with Constantine, and which Constantine hadn’t explained why they were visiting now. It was an immense crystal place, with a ridged floor and walls that Harry actually felt pressing close to him, unlike other places that he’d visited in the Court.

The vampire facing him now was so pale that Harry thought he could see her bones beneath her skin. Her hair fluttered around her, a whiter version of Lord Elfric’s fuzzy silver cobweb hair. And her eyes were liquid black, without pupils. Harry almost expected them to flow out of her eyesockets and down her cheeks like oil.

“Um, I don’t know why,” Harry admitted, when it became obvious that the vampire was waiting for an answer.

“My name is many, but for now, I am called Pythoness.”

Harry blinked, a faint memory stirring. “Like the oracle?”

“Yes.” Pythoness paused as if listening to voices that Harry didn’t hear. Then she turned away with a snap of the robes she wore, which were silver and curled around her like snakes’ coils. “Come with me.”

Harry followed her further into the crystal cavern, squinting. He didn’t think the light was brighter here than the faint, sourceless radiance that lit the rest of the Court, but it had more things to reflect off. It was like walking across a field of snow in the sunlight.

Eventually, they came to a hump of the wall in what felt like the back corner of the cave, and Pythoness reached out and laid her hand on it. A sharp crystal extruded from the rest and pierced her flesh. Harry gasped as he watched the slash open bloodlessly and continue to look like that no matter how deep the crystal went into her hand.

“Why isn’t it bleeding?” he whispered.

“I control my blood,” Pythoness said, “as all vampires. Now be quiet.”

She couldn’t back up her command with the kind of will that Lord Elfric could bring to bear, or maybe she just wasn’t doing it, but Harry shut up. He watched in fascination as the skin on Pythoness’s wound writhed back and forth, and then knit itself together so that it was wrapped around the crystal.

Pythoness turned her hand over and stared down at the crystal, twisting it so that it flashed sparks of light. Harry had to squint at some times, and turn his head away at others.

“I can see the prophecy that connects you to your lord.”

Harry swallowed revulsion. Arguing about whether or not he was really Voldemort’s heir wouldn’t do anything. The vampires all seemed convinced that he was. “What is it?”

“It is held in an orb in the Department of Mysteries. Be quiet, and I will go further and see if I can hear as well as observe it.”

Harry fell silent again. Pythoness closed her eyes and twisted her head back and forth the way she had been doing with her hand. Harry jumped when she faced him and he discovered that he could see the darkness of her eyes behind her eyelids the way he had thought he might be able to see the bones beneath her skin.

“I hear the prophecy,” Pythoness breathed, and then she began to sing, unexpectedly, in a high, soft voice. Harry was so distracted by the tone and the song that he almost forgot to listen to the words.

But then he heard them, and went cold.

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches…born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies…the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not…and either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives…the one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord will be born as the seventh month dies…”

In the silence, Harry swallowed.

He did wonder, as if from a distance and through a crystal curtain much like the glittering ones in the cavern, why Voldemort hadn’t talked about how they had to slaughter each other.

And then a flame of anger woke in Harry, and he understood. Voldemort hadn’t said anything about that because he wanted to trick Harry into being his good, obedient little Horcrux and supporter, and reminding Harry that one or both of them would have to die wasn’t conducive to that goal.

“My lord asked me to relay the prophecy to you.” Pythoness’s eyelids flickered open. Harry was so enraged that he didn’t even flinch when her odd eyes appeared again. “Have I done as he asked?”

“Yes, you have. Thank you,” Harry added as he turned on his heel. He would make his way back to his suite of rooms, and he thought he could do it without Constantine’s guidance.

Of course, Constantine was waiting for him when Harry came out of the prophecy cave, and he quickened his steps to walk alongside Harry as Harry stalked up the crystal stairway that had led them down here. It hadn’t looked like this before, but like a ramp made of some slick, black, obsidian-like stone. Nonetheless, Harry was absolutely sure that he was going the right way.

“Was she able to tell you the prophecy?” Constantine asked.

“Yes.” Harry managed to slow down, but more because his breath and heart were laboring, and he didn’t want to gasp out what he had to say in case he looked weak. “She said that it’s a prophecy that Voldemort and I are destined to kill each other.”

“What? How can a lord and his heir kill each other?”

Harry spun around to face him. They were on what looked like a landing in the midst of drifting fog, which shone lavender at the edges and was filled with a low hum. Harry didn’t care. He wanted to settle this stupid misunderstanding once and for all.

“Voldemort and I aren’t lord and heir,” Harry snarled at Constantine. “He didn’t father me. He hates me. He wants to kill me as his mortal enemy, and the prophecy confirmed that he’ll do that. Or we’ll kill each other.” Harry honestly couldn’t imagine a scenario where he managed to survive Voldemort, even with the inferno of anger towering inside him. “He took my blood and used it in that resurrection ritual, and he tortured me, and he killed my friend. He fully intended to kill me. It’s only coincidence that he didn’t.”

“What happened?” Constantine whispered. His eyes were wider than Harry had known a vampire’s could go.

Harry took a step back and closed his eyes. “Our wands are brothers. They have feathers from the same phoenix. We cast spells at each other at the same time, and they got locked in this cage of golden light. And the spirits of his victims came out of the wand. The ghosts of my parents and my friend he’d just killed. And they helped me escape.”

Constantine was silent. Harry opened his eyes and discovered that the vampire had vanished, in fact, and Harry had been talking to silent, humming, fog-filled air for Merlin knew how long.

Harry swallowed against the unexpected stab of hurt. It was still true that he knew the way back to his rooms, and he turned and walked towards them.

He had a letter to write.

*

Voldemort, Harry wrote.

(He wasn’t going to call him Lord, not when he didn’t respect him and everyone else around Harry was doing it with more than enough fervor).

I don’t understand what you think you’re doing, trying to claim that I’m your heir and you won’t kill me. Of course you can’t make that promise. What did you think you were doing, telling me about the prophecy but not telling me that it says we have to kill each other? Did you think I would ever trust you after that?

Of course not. But then, you only think about yourself.

I’m not going to take any oaths from you. You still killed my parents and Cedric. You still tortured me. It doesn’t matter what you think of me. The only thing that matters is what I do and what I think of myself. Just because you don’t think that I should want to fight you doesn’t matter. Because I saw what you didn’t tell me.

We’re still destined to kill each other, and that doesn’t change because you want it to. And because I’m a Horcrux, I know that I would keep you alive indefinitely if I lived. So I’ll make sure that I don’t. I’ll go out struggling against you. I’ll irritate you until you have no choice but to kill me.

How weak will that make you look to the vampires? What kind of alliance can you have with them when you’ve killed your own heir and Horcrux?

(Harry gagged as he wrote that, but it didn’t matter. What he had told Voldemort was true. The only thing that mattered was what he thought of himself, and he had decided that he could live with the disgusting Horcrux thing for long enough to ensure that he wouldn’t live with it any longer after that).

You’re an idiot. I wish I could see your face when you get this letter, but then again, I’ve already seen you snarling in anger and hatred. It’s nothing new.

I’d sign this, but you’re stupid if you don’t know who it’s from.

Harry sat back, panting with rage, and read through the letter. It made the words that he had already been thinking seem to sear into his head, but that was all right. And maybe he had misspelled something, and maybe it was blotchy, but that was fine. He would still get the meaning across to Voldemort.

And make him angry. That was something, too.

Harry folded the letter up and called for Hedwig. She swooped down towards him, hooting softly. Harry knew she liked the Court. She didn’t have to stay in a cage here, and even though they were technically underground, she could fly through the caverns and across the enormous rooms all she liked.

Harry presented her with the letter. “Take this to Voldemort.”

Hedwig twisted her head slowly backwards.

“Yeah, I know what I’m doing,” Harry said. He had expected to falter and not feel that way at some point during this process, but the satisfaction was still burning in him. “Come on. Take it to him. He wrote to me, it’s only fair.”

Hedwig gave a soft ruffle of her feathers, as if to say that she didn’t think it was the same thing, but she did grab the letter and fly away. Harry tracked her flight. Constantine had said something about how owls could find their way in and out of the Court because the magic recognized their presence as not a threat.

Constantine.

Harry leaned back against the pillows at the head of his bed and closed his eyes. He hadn’t realized how much he had enjoyed having someone escort him around and not act like they were in awe of him because of the whole Boy-Who-Lived thing. Even Neville got like that sometimes, like when he assumed Harry would find some way to triumph over Voldemort without dying.

But Constantine had run away as soon as Harry had questioned his stupid ideas about lords and heirs. So he wasn’t really a friend, after all.

Harry would still miss him.

*

“Harry.”

Constantine dropped from the ceiling, where he’d been clinging like a bat, and landed in front of Harry. Harry gave him a flat look. He’d been walking through some of the corridors that shifted and flowed like water but always guided him, on his way back to visit with Sahafassa. While it was hard to determine the passage of time here, as always, he did think it was at least three days since he’d seen Constantine.

“Go away.”

“Why?”

“You acted like I told you something terrible when I told you about my wand and Voldemort’s being brothers. Well, congratulations to me, I’ve officially terrified a vampire.” Harry threw his hands in the air. “The last thing you should want to do is spend time with—”

“I had to speak to my grandfather,” Constantine interrupted.

“I didn’t know that!”

“I was not terrified of you.”

Harry shook his head. “It doesn’t really matter. We’re just from two worlds so different that they’re never going to meet.”

Constantine’s eyes widened until they looked as if they might spill down his cheeks, the way that Pythoness’s liquid dark eyes had looked. “What do you mean?”

“You think it’s an honor to be the heir of your grandfather. And he’s a fine Lord, so it probably is an honor.” Harry didn’t want to sound as if he was being disrespectful, but he wasn’t going to just go along with what Constantine and Lord Elfric were saying about lords and heirs, either. “But I’m not Voldemort’s heir. I’m his enemy. He wants to kill me. So no matter how many times you say that I’m Voldemort’s heir and everything will be fine, it’s not true!”

He discovered that he was panting, and cut himself off with a scowl. He didn’t want to look weak in front of a vampire who would probably despise him now. Harry wondered if he could request from someone that Constantine stay away from him in the future. Who would he talk to? Lord Elfric, maybe? Pythoness?

“Harry, wait.”

Harry hadn’t even realized that he’d taken a step away down the corridor. He turned back to Constantine, and froze, staring.

Constantine was kneeling on the floor with his arms stretched out in front of him. His hands were empty and curved up, and his neck was curved back so that he should have been looking straight up at the ceiling, but he was looking up at Harry instead. Probably no one but a vampire could have maintained that pose.

“What are you doing?” Harry whispered.

“Showing you that I am contrite,” Constantine said. His voice didn’t vary, but his eyes were locked on Harry, burning as bright as ever. “You could break or bite my neck this way. I carry no weapon and my fingers are not claws. I am surrendering to you. I am sorry for any harm that I caused you, any distress, emotional or physical.”

The words rang in a way that Harry knew meant they were ritual. Neville had explained to him how much of vampires’ lives was guided by ritual. It had to be, Neville had said. They were dangerous people and could too easily wipe out half the Court if one of them took offense and the others had no way of stopping it.

Harry sighed. “I’m not a vampire, Constantine. You don’t need to apologize like that to me.”

“But you could be one.”

“What?”

Constantine swayed forwards a little without leaving his kneeling posture. He was watching Harry intently. “I know that your friend told you about his great-aunt who is married among us.”

“Yeah, he did,” Harry said, still puzzled. He’d met Agatha briefly—she spent most of her time with Mrs. Longbottom—and he didn’t really see any difference between her and the other vampires. “How is she connected to Voldemort? Or you apologizing to me? Or you saying that I could be—”

Harry cut himself off. A jolt as great as when he’d first read in Voldemort’s letter about being a Horcrux settled into his bones.

“You want to turn me,” he whispered.

“Yes.”

“Because you want to marry me.”

“Yes.”

Harry shook his head several times. Constantine bowed his head further back, until his neck must really hurt. Or not.

“Am I to understand that you are rejecting my apology and my contrition?” he asked softly. “Must I find some other way to apologize to you?”

“I’m not rejecting it, I’m bloody confused by it!” Harry snapped back. “Why in the world would you want to marry me? I’m fourteen—fifteen!” In the timelessness of the Court, it was also hard to remember that his fifteenth birthday had already gone by. “I’m destined to die at the hands of a madman! I can understand why you might have wanted to when you thought that it was going to be some sort of political coup to marry Lord Voldemort’s heir, but now that you know—”

“I was content to wait,” Constantine said softly. “I am immortal, Harry. I would wait for you as long as I needed to. I didn’t want to press my suit too soon, in fact, because I thought it would make you uncomfortable. But I meant what I said about spending more time around you than I usually do with visitors, admiring your Parseltongue, admiring your strength.”

“You didn’t say anything about that last one!”

“I thought I did.”

Constantine was looking puzzled again. Harry put his hand over his eyes with a sigh. Constantine had probably said something in that indirect, riddling way of his, and Harry had completely missed it.

“You belong here in a way that I rarely see with any visitors, Sidhe or human, vampire or ghost,” Constantine continued. Harry wanted to ask something about the ghost visitors, but Constantine was going on. “Do you understand how rare it is to find your way through the corridors of our Court without a guide? That the magic that embraces you is the sort that is usually hostile to outsiders?”

Harry scowled at him. “I don’t know how I know the way. I just do.”

“That is remarkable, too.”

Harry shifted uneasily. He didn’t—

Well, he had been thinking that he didn’t like the way Constantine was looking at him, but that wasn’t true. It was just unfamiliar. It would be better to say that he didn’t understand the way Constantine was looking at him.

“I can wait,” Constantine said, and bowed his head. “I will wait. But I could not stand for you to think that I despised you, or hated you. I do not despise you. I do not hate you.” His words were almost turning into a chant, and Harry shivered. “The Horcrux you bear makes you all the more interesting, Harry.”

And they were back to that. The reminder was like a shock of cold water in Harry’s face. He took a deep breath and shook his head. “No, Constantine. I have to die because I can’t bear for Voldemort to survive. And if I were turned into a vampire, then the Horcrux would probably die.”

“That is what I was going to offer as a solution.”

Harry stared at him, waiting for him to see the obvious contradiction. Constantine only stared at him.

“If the Horcrux died,” Harry said slowly, clearly, “then the things you find so fascinating about me would fade, too. And I would lose my Parseltongue. Then I would also lose whatever magic lets me speak to the Great One and makes me so at home here. Turning me into a vampire would work to let me survive, but it wouldn’t let us—get married.”

Speaking the words gave him a surreal feeling. How could someone want to marry him?

(In the back of his mind, a voice that sounded liked Aunt Petunia’s laughed and said that even for a wizard, he was a freak).

“That is what I had to speak to my grandfather about,” Constantine said, and gave Harry a shining, hopeful smile that kept Harry silent. “There are ways to turn someone that do not exactly kill them, and that leave a human perspective intact. They’re not often used, because of course most vampires who will live centuries do not want to think of time and life as humans do.

“But I think we could modify that magic. We could allow you to have your Parseltongue and whatever other gifts the Horcrux gives you—like understanding the corridors here—but remove the connection to Lord Voldemort.”

“But then I wouldn’t be his heir. And that’s why you want to marry me.”

“I want to marry you because of who you are, not what you are. I am talking about ways to preserve the former. There are other ways to solidify the political alliance,” Constantine said, and his smile flashed fangs. “Besides, who would tell Lord Voldemort that we have removed the Horcrux? That you are no longer precisely as you were, any more than you are precisely human?”

Harry’s mouth ran dry. Precisely human.

He shook with fear and temptation. Constantine finally unfolded himself from that ridiculous apology posture and stood in front of Harry looking the most human Harry had ever seen him, because he looked uncertain. His eyes searched Harry’s.

“What is it that you fear?” he whispered.

“Not being human,” Harry whispered back.

“We should speak with my grandfather. He will have a way to explain this better than I could.”

“Why?”

“Because he is older and wiser in the ways of the blood,” Constantine said simply. “Come, Harry.”

And even though Harry could have found his way to the throne room on his own, he thought, thanks to the strange Horcrux-inflected magic or Parseltongue-inflected magic beating in him, he accepted Constantine’s hand.

He still shook.

If I can find a way to survive…

At the same time, he knew that he might not, and that he couldn’t let himself be blinded by faith or temptation. Voldemort still had to die.

But if—

If I can fool the great deceiver…

Chapter Text

“My grandson tells me that you may be interested in becoming a vampire.”

Harry bowed and nodded. Being in the throne room was as overwhelming as it had been the first two times. Harry wondered suddenly if Lord Elfric ever left the room, and what he did if he didn’t.

Well, why would he have to do anything but sit on the throne and stare into the distance if he wanted? He could have food brought to him, and he was a vampire, immortal, the way Constantine had said.

“Why are you interested in becoming one?”

“Because Constantine said—”

“You call my grandson Constantine and not Lord Constantine?”

Harry flinched and shot Constantine a glance. They’d come into the throne room together, rather than Constantine waiting outside the way he had outside Pythoness’s cave, and Harry wondered now if it had been a mistake to do exactly as Constantine told him.

But Constantine simply regarded him with those bright eyes and smiled, and Harry took a deep breath as he turned back to face Lord Elfric. “Yes, my lord. At his invitation.”

Lord Elfric stared at him with eyes that held the greater inferno of Constantine’s brilliance and seemed to ponder that for a moment. Then he nodded. “Very well. You would want to change into a particular kind of vampire, I suppose, so that your Horcrux would not die?”

“I would want to make sure that I kept Parseltongue, my lord, and the magic that lets me move around the corridors of the Court without a guide,” Harry said. He had rehearsed the words in his head on the way here with Constantine, but they didn’t sound as impressive as they had when he was the only one hearing them. Harry took a deep breath and plunged forwards anyway. “Constantine said that he had discussed turning me with you, in such a way that I would sever the connection to Lord Voldemort.”

“Why do you want to sever your connection to your lord?”

Harry hadn’t been prepared for the question, even though he thought now that he probably should have been. After all, Constantine had been baffled by that, too.

But now, the anger struck him and overflowed.

“He is not my lord,” Harry snapped. “He’s my prophesied nemesis and attempted murderer. He’s tried to kill me again and again, one time in the graveyard a few months ago, and once when I was just a baby! He didn’t even intend to make me a Horcrux. That’s what his letter said. I’m accidental.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness out of his voice. It wasn’t like he wanted to be a Horcrux, of course not, but at least it would have been good to know that Voldemort had deliberately made him that way and then decided he was too dangerous to live. It would have meant he was valued.

“Even an accidental heir, a lord may desire to keep around.”

Harry simply shook his head. “I’ll never forgive him for killing my parents and Cedric,” he said hoarsely. “He’s the reason I grew up where I did. And my Muggle family—” He cut himself off. He couldn’t tell them about the Dursleys. They would decide that they had to soothe him, and he—he wasn’t that weak.

“Tell me about them.”

Lord Elfric’s will wrenched at his, and Harry bit his tongue. He took a step backwards.

“Grandfather.”

Constantine’s voice was low and level. Respectful, maybe, but Harry couldn’t hear much more than warning in it. Lord Elfric tilted his head, and something silent seemed to pass between him and Constantine.

Harry noted that with one half of his mind. The other part was still fighting the compulsion Lord Elfric had put on him to speak.

“Very well,” Lord Elfric said. “Keep your secrets.”

The compulsion let him go. Harry bent over, gasping, and stood up, staring at Lord Elfric. He didn’t feel compelled to avert his eyes this time. He had to say what was burning on his tongue even if it made things worse for him in the Court. “Don’t do that again.”

Lord Elfric stared at him, and laughed. Harry shivered as the sound prickled all over his skin like splinters of ice.

“Grandfather.”

Lord Elfric’s laughter stopped. He shook his head. “You are a surprise, Harry Potter. Every time I think that my grandson has told me the last of the surprising things you have done and there are no more, you reveal another.”

“I couldn’t resist what you told me to say for much longer.”

“You resisted at all. I think you could have resisted the compulsion I put on you to be calm the other day if you’d wanted.”

Harry ended up shrugging. He didn’t want to say that he wasn’t sure of that, or that he hadn’t wanted to resist it, because he wasn’t sure what was true and he didn’t want to sound arrogant. But he was pretty good at resisting the Imperius Curse. He supposed this was just another version of it.

“At first,” Lord Elfric continued, his tone musing, “when my grandson came to me and said that he desired to marry and turn you at some point in the future, I thought he was simply infatuated. Yes, you have Parseltongue, and you are the heir of a powerful wizard, but there are many other people in the world who fit those criteria. And Constantine will be powerful enough that I need never force him into a political marriage.

“But then he told me about the way you found your path around the Court without a guide. How you recognized the Great One and knew what her name was without being told. How you had suffered so much in fourteen years of your life but still held your feet. How your power burned in you. Now I know he has made the right choice.”

Harry took a slow, deep breath. He could keep yelling at Lord Elfric about the compulsion, but he didn’t think it was the right time. “So what’s your decision? My lord.”

“You need not speak the title. I would not call it from those who do not speak with true respect in their minds.” Lord Elfric tilted his head to the side and braced his chin on his fist, the most human gesture Harry had seen him make yet. “And your resistance has ensured that you passed the final test. You are a fitting mate for Constantine, if you decide to become his. I will turn you in such a way that it destroys the Horcrux but retains its powers.”

Harry closed his eyes, and felt Constantine lean close to him.

*

“Oh, Merlin, Harry, you’re what?”

“I’m going to let them turn me into a vampire so that I can get the Horcrux removed from me without losing the Parseltongue.”

Neville flopped back on the bed in Harry’s suite and stared at him. Then he began to laugh, helplessly.

Harry gave the ghost of a smile and sat down on the chair across from Neville. Honestly, looking at it from the outside, he could see why it might strike someone as funny. He was running straight into the arms of a bunch of Dark creatures because he didn’t want to be the Horcrux of a Dark Lord.

But it wasn’t that funny when he was living it. He had to do something. The urgency had burned in him more and more the longer he thought about it. He knew that he didn’t have a good handle on the way time was passing, but Neville had said that he and his grandmother would leave for Britain a week before the new school term started. That meant Harry had a few weeks at most to do something about this.

Once back at Hogwarts, he wouldn’t have the books or access to the vampires of the Riviera Pack anymore.

“But you really mean it,” Neville said, and stopped laughing with a sigh. He sat up. “Who’s going to turn you? Constantine?”

Harry snorted. “No. I did ask, but he was incredibly offended. Something about that making him my father in the blood.”

“Huh. I wouldn’t have thought of that. Great-Aunt Agatha was turned by Obsidian, the vampire she’s married to now, after all.”

Harry smiled, glad that even Neville, who seemed so wise in the ways of the vampire Court, might have made that mistake. “I suppose it depends on how you do it. This kind of turning is going to—give me a human perspective. Make me sort of not a full vampire, you know?” he added, to Neville’s blank look. “Or maybe it’s because your aunt and Obsidian were married before he turned her.”

“You know, I think she said something about that once. How she and Obsidian married by rite of blade before he turned her.”

“See.”

“But—Constantine isn’t going to marry you when you’re just fifteen, is he?”

Neville looked terribly concerned. Harry had to swallow back a laugh of his own.

He supposed it was concerning, sort of. Especially for someone like Neville, who’d had his grandmother at his side all his life, and had an adult he could trust.

But Harry was burning. He had to do something. He had to. His anger at Voldemort had collided with his anger at the idea that he was a Horcrux. And his anger over Cedric’s death, and his anger about the prophecy, and his anger about the possible fact of the vampires manipulating him. He had to do something.

Now.

“Did you—did you tell Ron or Hermione about it?”

“I haven’t exchanged a single letter with Ron or Hermione since I got here.”

Neville blinked and shifted. “Do you think their owls couldn’t get through the wards? I know the Weasleys’ owl is pretty old.”

Harry had to snort at the thought of Errol trying to fly into a vampire Court, but he shook his head. “No, Hedwig has no problem with it. I think that they’re scared to write to me, maybe. Worried that they’re going to say the wrong thing about Cedric or Voldemort.” He shrugged the hurt away. “So I won’t tell them.”

“I sort of thought you might—send them a letter to at least warn them.”

“Why?”

“They’ve been so close to you for so long. I thought you would ask their advice.”

“This is mine,” Harry said with a fierceness that he hadn’t expected, and which almost made Neville fall off the bed. “This is my decision. No one else can help me with it. I trust them, I really do, but Hermione isn’t going to find any better solution by doing research, and Ron wouldn’t be able to help with his strategy skills. Stopping Voldemort is my job. The prophecy said so.”

“Do you think—I know that prophecies are ambiguous. Do you think that maybe you misunderstood this one?”

“It says that neither of us can live while the other survives.”

“Um. Not that ambiguous.”

Harry nodded. He also considered it telling, not that he would say this to Neville, that Voldemort hadn’t written back after the letter Harry had sent him. He probably reckoned now that there was no point in trying to manipulate Harry with sugary words when Harry knew the whole prophecy. So he was doing his best to pretend that he’d never said anything.

And preparing for war.

I’m going to prepare for war, too. Watch out, Voldemort. Watch out, “lord.”

*

“It will hurt.”

“I know, my lord. I’m prepared for that.”

“Titles, now?”

Harry half-shrugged. He was kneeling in front of Lord Elfric in the middle of a space he hadn’t seen before, but which had felt to his Horcrux-enhanced senses as if it was somewhere near the middle of the Court before they had snapped and fizzled like electrical wires and stopped guiding him. “You’re going to turn me, my lord. If I didn’t have respect for you, I wouldn’t have agreed to come this far in the process.”

Lord Elfric said nothing, but paced in another circle around Harry. Harry was kneeling on a grooved stone floor shrouded in what seemed to be the inevitable crystal fog of this part of the Court. There were soft ringing sounds coming from the fog, and sounds like someone dragging a sack across the floor.

Harry wasn’t afraid. He was far more afraid of staying Voldemort’s Horcrux and what it would mean for him than of anything that would happen during the turning ritual.

“It will mean more than a bite.”

“Yes, my lord. Constantine mentioned that.”

Constantine had described what he could of the ritual, including the place, the time—midnight in the world outside, “moonfall” in the Court, whatever that meant—and how his grandfather would have to bite Harry on the throat. But he had said he couldn’t tell Harry everything, looking away from him as if ashamed.

“I would do it if I could, but I cannot.”

“I don’t expect you to,” Harry had said, and had taken Constantine’s hand and squeezed.

The look of awe Constantine had given him had made Harry wonder what it would be like if they did get married someday.

But as Constantine had said, they would have all the time in the world to decide if that was what they wanted.

“It will include bites from others.”

Harry tensed now at Lord Elfric’s words, flickering his eyes away from him and into the mist. The dragging sounds came back to him, and he licked his lips.

“Constantine said that you would—I mean, that you would have a special relationship with me as the vampire who turned me, the way you turned Constantine’s mother in the blood. Will the other vampires who bite me have that kind of relationship with me, too?” Honestly, Harry wasn’t sure how he felt about having one “father in the blood,” let alone multiple parents.

Lord Elfric laughed, a sound that buzzed like insects crashing into a hard surface. “Did I say that the other bites would be from vampires?”

The dragging sound repeated, and two large serpents coiled into being as if called out of the mist, moving slowly towards him.

Harry stared at them with his mouth slightly open. They were glorious, something he had never expected to say about a snake. They were a brilliant silver and looked as if they might be made of metal. Their eyes were a bright green, like his, like Constantine’s. Their necks curled back as they neared Harry, and hoods flared out around their heads.

“Are they cobras?” Harry whispered, unable to take his eyes from them.

“Such words cannot define them,” Lord Elfric said. “Those words are the coinages of a later world. Suffice it to say that they will bite you, with your permission, and you will be able to keep your Parseltongue.”

Harry hadn’t spoken a lot to snakes before he had come here, and the basilisk had been a source of pain and terror to him. But these snakes reminded him of how beautiful the Sahafassa was, and he gladly extended his wrists when Lord Elfric told him in a quiet voice he should.

The snakes nosed towards him and flicked their tongues against his wrists for a moment as if testing the scent of his skin. Then their heads darted out, and they bit.

Their fangs were so sharp that Harry didn’t even feel them pierce the skin. Then he shuddered as he felt the venom pour into him, shining beneath his skin. He shivered as the pain began to penetrate him, the pain of both the bites and the venom.

“Come here, Harry.”

Lord Elfric was holding out his hand. Harry scrambled towards him and managed to stand with his help. The stone floor was tilting around him, the whole room spinning, and sometimes the grooves on the floor seemed to be above his head. Harry shuddered and wrapped his arms around himself. It was difficult to think.

“Hold still.”

Lord Elfric put no compulsion into his words the way he had tried before, but it was still easy to obey. Harry tilted his head to the side when Lord Elfric pushed gently at him. Then Lord Elfric murmured a few words that sounded like bubbles popping. They mimicked that effect, too. Harry lost track of them as soon as they were spoken.

Something sharp and piercing took him in the throat.

Harry gagged and tried to cry out. It was impossible. The world resumed its faster spin, and Harry reached up and grasped at something. It was hard and solid under his hand. He thought it might be Lord Elfric’s shoulder.

The blood poured out of him. Weakness followed it. Harry stumbled and would have fallen, but then something pressed against his mouth, so hard that he opened it. It felt like the glass lip of a Potions vial.

For a moment.

Then life poured down his throat.

It burned so much that Harry’s eyes crossed and he tried to spit it out. But he couldn’t. Lord Elfric’s hand was firm on his back. And then Harry leaned nearer and began to suck at it, because it had altered taste in a moment, from burning to brilliant, like he was drinking down a fountain of power.

The clashing fires in him stirred and plunged together. There was the burning of the venom, and the burning of death, and the burning of life, and the burning of the pain of the wounds at his wrists and throat—

Harry fell.

*

The world fractured and split apart, and there was the crystalline clarity of the moment in between.

Harry remembered being mortal. Remembered the burning anger that had caused him to send that letter to Voldemort. Remembered how much he had desired to do something that would stop himself from being a Horcrux.

He had been like that, but he no longer was.

Now, he thought of long years stretching out in front of him. He saw the strength and speed that his body would have, and knew that he could defend himself against Voldemort’s magic, if by nothing else, than by simply running away. He felt the yearning that came from the thought of his enhanced senses, how he would smell blood and see the light from the stars as it truly was.

The crystalline moment cracked and fell apart. Harry gasped and went to his knees.

He opened his eyes and there was no fog, not anymore.

“How do you feel, my son?”

Lord Elfric asked the question in a low voice, but it sounded almost like a shout to Harry. He blinked and braced his hands flat on the stone floor. He could feel the grooves, so endlessly fascinating—

“Harry?”

Right. Lord Elfric had asked him a question. Harry felt a trickle of amusement at himself, and sighed a little. Good. He had kept some human emotions, not become inhuman and hard to read like the vampires.

Lord Elfric had promised that some parts of Harry’s human perspective would remain intact. It seemed he had kept his word.

“Fine, my lord.” Harry cleared his throat.

“Call me Father.”

Tears stung Harry’s eyes like grains of sand. He hadn’t thought of that, despite Lord Elfric being the one who turned him. He had a father in the blood now.

Someone who would protect him. Someone who would watch over the progress of his courtship with Constantine, which Harry did still want, and who could tell him if he thought it was going wrong. Someone Harry could complain to.

“I feel fine,” Harry said, and stared down at his wrists. The wounds were gone as if they had never been. “Healed.”

“That is very well.”

Lord Elfric’s hand stroked his hair. Harry looked up, and then looked away. Lord Elfric was a glowing spear of light sheathed in an immortal form. Looking at him too much with vampire eyes simply wasn’t possible. Harry thought now that it wasn’t simply respect that made many of the Pack look at the floor when Lord Elfric was near.

“Thank you,” Harry whispered.

“There are no debts between family.” Lord Elfric’s hand squeezed his shoulder lightly. “Now, I think my grandson is waiting for you.”

“It’s going to be a little weird, your son dating your grandson, right?”

Lord Elfric laughed. “We think of each blood lineage as separate, Harry. You are not at all related to Constantine’s mother in the blood, and I would not have taken Constantine as my heir if he were not magically compatible with me, which is more important than who turned him. You will be fine.”

They passed through a door that turned into an obsidian circle and disappeared, and Constantine, who was clinging to the side of a basalt wall in a way Harry knew instinctively he could do too now, swung to the floor and stared at them with wide, hopeful eyes.

Harry smiled at him. “It worked.”

Constantine moved towards him with steps as delicate as a swan’s. He bent his head but did not touch his lips to Harry’s hand. “I will wait as long as you need.”

Harry smiled again. Perhaps it would be centuries, he thought.

But he had the centuries now. He was free.

The End.