Chapter Text
There is a sound to triumph. It sounds like the hollow whine of an unleashed animal, finally set free to roam. The sound pierces right through the cold stone walls and dark corridors of the castle, sharp as a bell until it reaches the main hall.
Harry can barely feel his feet by the time it does, and his skin itches from the uncomfortable woolen robes they are all forced to wear.
He is shifting from side to side until the dark glares of his black-clad neighbors force him to stop.
Not that the robes are not of the highest quality, Harry muses, fitting for the highest ranking in this new world order.
Nevertheless, the Dark Lord isn’t one to worry about physical comforts. So removed is he from such weakness.
Too soon the doors open, Harry can't decide if he feels relief that in a moment he will be able to sit down or heart wrenching anxiety at the prospect of the Dark Lord. This state of comfort and discomfort is a permanent one.
Harry takes a deep breath: it has been twenty months and a day since the last battle.
Twenty months and a day to The Rebirth, as they now called it. Twenty months and a day since Harry had died.
This fact alone, Harry thinks as he bites his lip, is enough for him to call it a rebirth. Here he agrees with Voldemort.
He avoids the temptation to look to his left, eyes cast downwards. Sanity is precious in a place like this, and Harry takes any small comfort he can get.
It is a new world, it is a rebirth of sorts and he can play by their rules and still stay true to himself.
When the bell rings, they take their cue to sit down; tables appear in front of them- overloaded with delicious food. The hall is filled with muffled sounds of fabric and wooden chairs moved across stone mingled with relieved sighs of men who had to spend hours waiting for their lord.
Harry feels the hunger; the delicious smells are not unlike Hogwarts.
Probably the food is prepared by the same little hands, mingled with tears.
Harry pushes dark thoughts away; the guilt of feeling any hunger in a place like this is soon gulped down with some pumpkin juice.
He must eat and he must live.
A few moments later and Harry feels a sharp elbow to his right, forcing him to look up.
Isaac has big black eyes and a hooked nose, he is the ugliest man Harry has ever seen and yet the shining intelligence in those black depths gives him an air of nobility that commands respect.
He reminded him of Snape.
"Looks like it was a good day, doesn’t it?"
Harry casts a careful gaze upwards; the Dark Lord is sitting on his white stone throne, clad in crimson robes, gently petting his wand. Nagini is draped around his neck, he scales glowing.
Harry feels a cold thrill run through him as he always does when looking at Voldemort.
He feels power surge through him like an electric shock, as painful and as thrilling. Voldemort isn’t human, he shouldn’t be judged by human laws. Harry sees him as something else, a demon, a manic ghost, a prophet of evil.
Sitting on his throne with luminescent skin and red eyes unfathomable, it is hard to describe him. Harry sees the way the Dark Lord is slightly slouched in his chair and the way his long fingers keep dancing on the wand.
"It does seem that way" he quietly answers Isaac and turns back towards his meal. Isaac is perceptive as ever and notices Harry's discomfort.
"You don't like looking at him do you?" Harry shrugs "or maybe I just want to eat my meal?"
This comes out sounding defeated so Harry quickly deepens his voice and adds "or maybe I don't like your questions, Isaac".
Unfortunately, the Death Eater isn’t easy to distract "It is not that you fear him like the others, is it? Let a man have is curiosity won't you Shimael."
Harry feels his heart hammer in his chest and tries to meet Isaac's gaze but the death eater simply smirks and digs back into his meal.
If Harry wasn't so disgusted with his other options for company he probably would have stayed away from Isaac, one of the few sharp minds around.
He was right about the others, they are afraid of Voldemort, so afraid they never look him in the eye.
Isaac like Harry was fearless, but Harry felt it was more due to his inherent pessimism rather than to what was Harry's prolonged exposure to Voldemort and Gryffindor bravery.
Harry actually heard him say once "I'm going to die at the lord's hand one day, why not enjoy the wine?" He wasn't kidding either.
It was true, Voldemort wasn’t very soft with his loyal servants and sometimes they displeased him enough to die.
Isaac was loyal but not obedient, and therefore realistic about his chances.
Perhaps that is why Harry was first attracted to him in those early hard days, he sensed that rebellious nature and craved to be near it, especially when he could do very little to express his own lack of obedience.
Just then Harry observed a Death Eater across the table slice his silver knife into the eye of his neighbour, it wasn’t a pretty sight.
The bleeding Death Eater was retaliating back with fervour. Some Death Eaters even dared to cheer the fight on.
Such crude brutality was common enough that Harry kept chewing and simply wondered if they will be punished.
Voldemort hated physical fights, acting like muggles was not tolerated.
Surprisingly, the Dark Lord didn’t give a sign he was bothered, looks like Isaac was right- it was a good day.
That could only mean one thing, Voldemort found something that made him more powerful than he already was.
This wasn’t a good scenario for Harry.
He tries the potatoes and hears a loud thump. The left Death Eater has fallen, he isn't moving and Harry wonders if he is dead.
Finally, Voldemort rises from his chair, his face a frozen mask as always. Harry was sad to see the food disappear.
"Up you animals" the quite voice was enough to silence the very air in the room. They stood up behind their chairs, like scorned school boys.
The Dark Lord walks down from his throne; he glides towards the fallen figure above of which stood now a much-hunched figure of a death eater. Voldemort seemed to walk like a snake or like a ghost from an old fairy tale.
Harry did look sometimes, fascinated by the way Voldemort commanded a room with his presence and quite voice alone. Everyone held their breath; Harry supposes no one is going to mourn these two brutes. A year ago, Voldemort has started to collect his little group of servants. He wasn't picky about their blood status, magical power, money or brains. No, he wanted them to be loyal and easy to bend.
His old pureblood supporters were killed in the great battle, imprisoned and sent away in moments of paranoia or simply killed in Voldemort's raging haze during the previous year. Voldemort still kept some intelligent minds around, but more and more the death eaters started to resemble nothing but thugs. Harry was thrilled at that weakness, hoping that Voldemort's paranoia will be his downfall. After all, the new death eaters were sometimes too stupid to know how to follow the rules of their lord. Loyal but weak, Harry almost pitied them.
The Dark Lord stopped and did this peculiar thing where he angled his head in thought. Harry wasn't sure Voldemort really showed anything through body language unless he chose to. He enjoyed toying with others, creating dramatic suspense before the blow.
"What is this on the floor?" he says.
Frightened silence and then "My Lord I was protecting your honour! I was I was…" When Voldemort kept angling his head in question the Death Eater started crying "he was being rude my lord!" Harry is watching in anticipation with everyone else. Voldemort finally straightened his back and did the most horrific thing Harry has ever seen him do: he smiled.
The corners of his mouth turned upwards and his eyes blazed in crimson mirth. "Are you saying this thing on the floor is rudeness?"
He asked and at the quick nods of the frightened death eater (who looked about to fall on the floor himself) waved his pale hand in the air "I agree with you, rudeness is a terrible sin". The poor Death Eater screamed in agony and Harry couldn't hold his body from cringing.
The Dark Lord looked up and surveyed the assembled figures; "Rudeness at dinner is especially unpleasant don’t you agree?"
A quite hum was his answered and Harry watched the two fallen bodies take fire and turn to ash before his eyes. A demon indeed, Harry thought, a demon holding the fires of hell at his fingertips.
As they slowly walked out of the hall and to their rooms, Harry felt his heart sink.
His hopes and careful cataloguing of Voldemort's weaknesses all meant nothing in front of such wandless magic, such power. He felt himself resign to this existence, to this fate he could not tolerate on most days.
With a heavy heart, Harry climbed the stairs to his bedroom. He has seen so much meaningless death and violence within the stone walls of Voldemort's castle, so much suffering. Harry felt numb with it, even worse, he at times delighted in the suffering of his enemies and the guilt ate at his shell of numbness- reminding him this wasn't defeated, not yet. He was Harry James Potter, he was here for a reason and Voldemort will fall.
Finally, Harry reached the familiar oak door of his bedroom wing; the door opens with the touch of his thumb. Every bedroom was soaked with Voldemort's magic, to let in only those who belonged.
The bedroom is big but stark, containing only a bed and a small table. The black robes are dropped to the floor every evening, house elves clean them and bring them back by morning. Voldemort likes things to stay organised and clean.
Harry really can't complain about that either. A large bathroom is attached to the bedroom and Harry heads to take a shower. He doesn’t feel dirty the way he did for the first year when each day he wanted to scrub his skin raw from the blood and the guilt. In those early days, all he wanted was to shed his new skin and be reborn again as just Harry. Harry with glasses and hand me down clothes and Ron and Hermione by his side. He can still hear their laughter sometimes; feel their presence in his dreams before they turn into nightmares soaked in sweat.
The warm water washes over his skin, and Harry lets his head fall against the slippery wall. He needs to rethink his plans, his hopes have been naïve. Voldemort is getting stronger and waiting is not enough anymore. Harry knows the waiting game is over. He has let himself simply hope that one day Voldemort will slip and he will have his chance, he was wrong.
Harry wraps himself in a towel and tiredly walks towards the fogged up mirror. His fingers draw circles on the glass and lines like lightning bolt scars. This mirror has saved him. When Harry woke up from death, whole and breathing- so very much alive, this mirror showed him his face. He looks at those eyes now, still his own but pale grey not green. The fog clears and Harry traces the now familiar mask of a face. The face is average, unremarkable, the nose slightly thin and the lips full. Long clumps of brown hair are lanky lines farming his cheeks.
"This is day 609 of my rebirth. My name is Shimael and I'm in Poenari castle." This is the face of his new life.
The towel falls and Harry traces the skin, scars on his left hip from a battle he never participated in. Strong muscles, a light shadow of hair on his chest, Shimael is older than Harry. Harry dies in the last battle, he truly did.
When he accepted his fate and closed his eyes into the white light he felt at peace.
But the white light became unbearable and Harry found himself waking up to the sunlight- real warm sunshine on his face. Was it all a dream? The room is unfamiliar and the window opens into a breathtaking hillside view. Green, vast landscape that feels like home.
He is breathing, joyous at being alive. That is how Harry has found himself reborn into a new body, three years after Voldemort's triumph and the great battle. He was reborn as a Death Eater.
Harry wasn’t the kind to believe in fate but he knew a second chance when it hit him in the face. He was there; he had a prophecy to complete.
So he when the embers of his grief and anger died down, he was able to look into this mirror- that same mirror that freaked him out into screams and terror when he first encountered his new reflection.
This time he saw something else- he saw his own eyes in the strangers face and he saw the eyes of all who died for him.
The twinkling eyes of Fred, the soft eyes of Ginny, Lupin sadly smiling and Sirius darkly brooding all reflected there.
More importantly, he saw the new body as armour against any harm. The skin of a Death Eater proved to be the best armour he could hope for. He was reborn and in this new world order, he wasn't going without a fight.