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batsutousaiTitle: Abandoned: The Re-Write
Author: Batsutousai
Rating: M/R
Main Pairing: Harry/Tom, Harry/Voldemort
Side Pairings: Ginny/Theodore Nott, Seamus/Blaise Zabini, past-Ron/Hermione, Hermione/Luna, others
Warnings: SLASH, mentions of child abuse/rape/torture, language, character death, minor Dumbledore bashing, Grey-to-Dark!Harry
Summary: A complete re-write of Abandon: Before the start of his seventh year, Harry Potter is abandoned in London by his muggle family and finds himself befriending Lord Voldemort.
A/N: As a note, what I call Tom depends on his form. For example, when he looks like he's mostly human, I call him Tom – or Riddle, before Harry was willing to think of him as anything more than an enemy – but when he looks like the snake-faced Lord Voldemort, I'll be calling him that. (This is as much for you readers, as it is a way for me to keep track of which form I'm working with. :')
Chapter Six: Choices
-0-
Tom sneered. "You're such a Gryffindor."
"Why, yes, I am. Thank you for pointing out the obvious."
A sense of rage echoed through the bond and Harry considered the Dark Lord for a long moment, wondering what he'd do. Harry was a legal adult now, as far as the magical world was concerned; their truce could easily be over, if Tom decided he didn't need Harry's answers. Or even if he decided that torturing the answers out of Harry would be simpler.
For his part, Tom was fighting with himself; on one hand, he hated being spoken to so flippantly, and Harry knew it – had used it to his advantage more than once to rile the Dark Lord up both before and during the summer – but, on the other hand, he didn't want to lose this... this strange companionship between them, and he knew that letting his anger rule him would destroy it.
They'd come to a bridge, and it could be burned down, or crossed. And neither of them knew what waited on the other side.
They stared at each other for a long, tense moment.
And then, finally, Tom's face relaxed into a sneer and he said, "Don't insult me, Harry. Your Gryffindor moments are interspersed with Slytherin ones far too often to make anything obvious."
Harry smiled. "Well, the Hat did want to put me in Slytherin."
"Merlin help us," Tom muttered, envisioning how much harder his life could have been with a Slytherin for an arch enemy.
Harry dropped onto his bed, bag of gifts and the things he'd retrieved from the Dursleys falling to the floor with a subdued clatter. "I thought you were planning to piss off until Monday at the earliest."
"Crucioing idiots only amuses me for so long," Tom replied with a sneer.
"Hm. Was that some sort of back-handed compliment about how entertaining I am?"
Tom snorted. "You babble less," he allowed and Harry grinned. "How was your party?"
"It didn't feel much like I'd thought a birthday party would feel," Harry replied, absently tapping his wand against his mattress to make it a bit more comfortable; just because he was used to sleeping and sitting on a worn-out mattress didn't mean he had to. "It was sort of like a normal day with my year mates, but with the added bonus of presents and cake. And no school work, I suppose."
"The difference in having a summer birthday," Tom commented and Harry laughed. "A lot of what makes birthday parties special, from what I've observed, is the meaning of the day itself."
"I suppose," Harry agreed, thinking back to the way his friends would always act on their birthdays. "It seems silly to get excited about a date, though. I mean, I was talking with Seamus' boyfriend about the attack at the end of the school year and he was clearly upset about the whole mess, but he was reluctant to talk about it because it was my birthday. What does the date matter when you need someone to talk to about a traumatic experience?"
Tom shrugged. "It's a day to celebrate another year of being alive."
"I don't like celebrating the fact that I've survived more people," Harry replied with a hint of anger.
Tom just watched him for a moment while Harry calmed his self-hatred. "Most people don't see it that way," he pointed out.
"I am not 'most people'."
"No, you're not," Tom agreed, and they both understood the silent, 'and neither am I'. "But others will expect you to share their own views on the day. They'll expect that you want to acknowledge it and enjoy it without worrying about anything else."
Harry huffed. "Yeah, I know that. And, sure, when I was younger I would have enjoyed that sort of insistence that we ignore anything bad, but we're in the middle of a war right now and there's no point in ignoring that. Bad things have happened and I'm not going to sacrifice someone else's happiness for a single day without worry."
Tom shook his head. "Gryffindor."
Harry's lips twitched with a smile. "Admit it, if you'd been in my place and someone brought up an event that wasn't usually discussed during a birthday at your party, you would have let them have at."
"I wouldn't have tried comforting them."
"Well, no, but you don't comfort people. You just glare at them and curse them a bit until they're better."
"Cursing people on my birthday," Tom said with a pleased expression. "I'd enjoy that."
Harry rolled his eyes. "You would."
They smiled at each other then, at peace with their now-familiar banter.
"Did you get anything good?" Tom asked, nodding at the bag next to the bed.
"Mostly books and sweets," Harry replied with a shrug, even as he leant over and reached into the bag. "Nev gave me a plant, though. Should put that in the window."
"Your friend gave you a plant," Tom said, tone almost disbelieving.
Harry grinned. "I'm convinced he's some sort of earth elemental," he admitted as he located the plant in the bottomless bag and pulled it out.
"Hellebore?" Tom asked, eyeing the plant with some surprise.
"Yup." Harry got up and gently set it to one side on the windowsill, adding a sticking charm to the bottom to keep Hedwig and his friends' owls from knocking it over. "It's good for any number of potions that I can make. It's nice to have a ready supply, since it goes bad so quickly, and I like taking care of plants sometimes."
"Hm. You think this friend is an earth elemental?"
"Yeah. He's an absolute master with all things green and growing; top of the class in Herbology. I've seen plants that were almost dead practically bloom just from him touching them." Harry smiled a bit fondly. "His gran finally let him at their greenhouse unsupervised after he got an Outstanding on his Herbology OWL. He's always going on about how peaceful it is in there, especially now that the gardeners aren't mucking about, pruning bushes and such."
Tom raised one eyebrow. "That does sound rather like an earth elemental. I hadn't thought there were any left. People with an affinity for Herbology, certainly, but not actual elementals."
Harry shrugged and reached into his bag to start unpacking his things. "At least he got something out of his mess of a life," he replied quietly. When Tom gave him a questioning look, Harry said, "Neville Longbottom."
Understanding dawned upon the Dark Lord. "Ah. One of those rare children who survived their parents."
"His parents are still alive," Harry pointed out.
"That depends on your definition of the word, I should think," Tom replied and Harry inclined his head in agreement. "What sort of mess was made of his life, then? Other than his parents."
Harry considered the Dark Lord from next to the bookcase he'd conjured for his library. "Because seeing your parents every year and them never knowing who you are isn't traumatic enough."
"I said nothing of the sort."
"You implied–"
"You implied there might have been something more," Tom shot back before Harry could start a fight. "You said his whole life was a mess and mentioned that his grandmother wouldn't let him in the greenhouses alone until two summers ago. I'll give you that not having proper parents around would make life hard – you and I both understand that far too well – but you're talking about something else."
Harry hummed and turned back to his books, admitting, if only to himself, that the Dark Lord knew him far too well if he'd been able to read so much about a simple statement. "His family thought he was a squib until he was eight," he explained. "He was often placed in dangerous situations by his relatives, in the hopes that he'd perform some accidental magic."
Tom stiffened at that knowledge. "His magical relatives?" he demanded.
Harry eyed the Dark Lord curiously, feeling the echo of the man's fury and disgust. "That's the only sort he has." When Tom only seemed to get angrier, Harry asked, "You thought only muggles could be cruel to their children?"
"Most abuse is delivered by the hands of muggles," Tom replied tightly.
"Abuse of magical children, sure. Abuse of squibs, though..." Harry shrugged. "It's a fear of the unknown. Muggles don't understand their magical offspring and can react with violence. The same is true for squibs born to magical parents; what does it say about you that your own child can't use magic?"
Tom hissed an angry sound. "That's no reason to abuse a child!"
"There's never a reason to abuse a child," Harry returned quietly, "but that doesn't mean it doesn't happen." He considered Tom's tense form for a long minute, then asked, "Is that why you hate muggles so much? Because they abuse magical children?"
Tom was silent as he struggled to get his temper under control; it wasn't Harry he was angry with, and he had no intention in taking his rage out on this particular undeserving person. (For once.) Eventually, he felt controlled enough to admit, "It is part of it."
"Only part of it?"
Tom turned to watch the teen organise his small library, further calmed as much by Harry's own quiet emotions as he was by his own will. "You heard about the Blitz in muggle primary, did you not?"
Harry glanced over at the Dark Lord. "Yeah. Weren't you at Hogwarts during that time, though?
"I was," Tom agreed quietly, "and I didn't return for Christmas, but they were still cleaning things up when we got back for the summer. I was in London during one of the V-weapon attacks the summer of '44, however, and that was...terrifying."
Harry looked away, feeling the echoes of old fear from the Dark Lord. "I'm sorry," he whispered.
Tom stood from his chair and moved over to the window, staring out over the street below. "Muggles are dangerous," he said with conviction. "They abuse magical children out of fear and they have destructive power that far surpasses anything a witch or wizard could ever do. Can you imagine what would happen if they ever discovered us? If they could manage to aim a bomb at Diagon Alley?"
"They never hit Diagon during the war?" Harry asked, surprised.
Tom smiled a bit bitterly. "Twice," he said. "Purely on accident, mind, but, sure, they hit the alleys. A few people died, but no one considered it too much of a risk. They thought muggles could never actually pose a real threat, especially since the spells commonly put on shops kept the building from taking too much damage."
Harry thought about that. "Could the buildings stand up to one of the nuclear bombs the muggles started making at the end of the war?"
"No," Tom said with certainty, "and anything that did survive wouldn't be habitable for weeks, what with the radiation."
Harry bit his lip, a thought coming to him. "What if they could aim and hit Hogwarts?"
Tom glanced over, expression grim. "The way their targeting systems are advancing, they should be able to manage it in a few years, in spite of the wards."
"Fuck." Harry rubbed at his forehead.
Tom nodded. "Tell me, Harry, knowing that, would you ever tell a muggle about our world?"
"No," Harry replied. He wouldn't have before he knew there was a chance the muggles could destroy Hogwarts. Even without Ministry policy, he wouldn't have told anyone; he'd lived with the Dursleys for long enough to know better.
"Then why let wizards and witches marry muggles?"
"Just because I don't want to marry a muggle–"
"Every time someone marries a muggle, they chance us being found out," Tom hissed, eyes bright with fervour. "Every time one of us even dates a muggle, there's a chance we'll be found out!"
"You can't go around, dictating who people can and can't love!" Harry snapped. "We endanger ourselves just as much when wizards and witches don't know how to bloody dress! Maybe we should have classes about how to fit in with muggles."
"You want us to live beside them? Living with the muggles you've lived with, you actually want to stay among them?"
"Not all muggles are bad! For every muggle that would see us dead, there's at least one who would be happy to live in peace with us. You can't just deem them all dangerous without giving anyone a chance!"
"I don't have to give muggles a chance!" Tom spat. "I've seen all I want to see of them!"
"You've seen the worst and ignored anything good in them!" Harry snapped back, dropping his bag to the ground and stepping forward into the Dark Lord's personal space. "Tell me, Tom, did you ever, during your entire childhood, see a muggle that you thought might be worth letting live? Was there ever a muggle who reached out and offered to do something nice, just because they could?"
Tom bared his teeth and refused to answer.
Harry nodded, taking that for an admittance. "There are good people, just as there are bad ones. And, yeah, we've seen more of the bad ones, but that's no reason to condemn all of them. Never mind that they outnumber us nearly a thousand to one."
"Five thousand," Tom muttered, looking away.
"What?"
"It's a little over five thousand to one in Britain. It's a little over fourteen thousand to one worldwide."
Harry shook his head. "Okay. So, five thousand to one. You're planning to kill them all?"
"I don't want to kill them," Tom replied, leaning back against the window frame and away from Harry. "I just want to keep them from finding out about us."
Harry considered that. "Yeah, okay. But how?"
"I'm still working on that bit."
Harry smiled at the petulant tone in Tom's voice. "Okay. What would you do about the muggleborns? If half your problem with muggles is their abuse of magical children, would you really leave the muggleborns with possibly abusive parents?"
Tom sniffed. "Pureblood families can take them in once they start performing magic."
Harry frowned. "You'd take them away from their parents? Even if the parents would love their kid?"
"I would put them with people who could protect themselves from a child with accidental magic that can't be controlled," Tom corrected with a sneer. "Put them with parents who could explain things to them, so they could start school at the same level as their peers without needing to have everything explained to them and take up a teacher's time."
Harry grimaced. "Still, you're taking a child away from their blood parents. Isn't that a bit cruel?"
"No."
Harry shook his head and returned to putting the last of his books away. "Your Death Eaters would never be okay with housing muggleborns."
"Much of their problem with muggleborns is how they don't know anything about our culture and are more likely to go and marry a muggle than a pureblood or half-blood."
"Seriously?"
Tom shrugged. "Well, there is the long-held belief that anything that comes from a muggle is inferior, therefore their spawn would be less than a pureblood, but I believe that if we take the children away from their muggle parents and put them with magical parents, that will become less of an issue."
"Huh. Well, you know more purebloods than I do." Harry reached into his bag and pulled out the pile of picture frames he'd retrieved from the Dursleys. "You do know that killing everyone off won't make them too happy with you though, right?"
"If I have to lead our people through fear–"
"Now I know you're a sociopath," Harry muttered under his breath.
"–then that is what I will do. Things need to change, and they never will with so many people following Dumbledore in his crusade to accept all muggles as good and kind souls."
"He's not leading some crusade about how good muggles are!"
Tom raised an eyebrow. "He didn't leave you with muggles who abused you for sixteen years in spite of your own wishes?"
Harry sighed and looked down at the photo of his parents, Sirius, and Remus. "It was for my own protection."
Tom scoffed. "Of course it was," he agreed sarcastically when Harry glared at him.
Harry huffed a bit and turned away to find somewhere to put his photographs. He finally just cleared off the table that had come with the room and set his pictures on it, quietly saying, "If anyone else comes into the room, you lot will have to freeze, right? I'm living with muggles who don't know about magic now..."
Tom leaned over his shoulder and considered the people in the photos, all of whom eyed him curiously. "You're collecting pictures of dead people," he commented.
"Yeah, what of it?" Harry shot back, glaring at the man. "Someone should."
Tom reached forward and pointed at a scowling Marietta. "She was a Death Eater," he said and the people in the other pictures turned to look at the Ravenclaw while Cho hurriedly backed away from her best friend.
Harry rolled his eyes. "I know that, but she deserves to be remembered just as much as everyone else here."
Tom straightened and considered Harry's back curiously as the boy tried to get Cho to stop inching away from a wounded Marietta. Once Harry had straightened himself, Tom said, "I had wondered why her allegiance was never made public. The Dark Mark doesn't fade with death, but no mention was ever made of hers. How did you keep them from finding out?"
Harry gave the Dark Lord an irritated look. "What makes you think I had anything to do with it?"
"You keep a picture of her, even though you knew she was mine," Tom said as if it explained everything.
Harry sighed. "I asked her Dark Mark to go away," he admitted.
"You asked it to go away," the Dark Lord repeated, disbelieving.
Harry shrugged, then nodded. "Well, told, more like, I suppose."
"The Dark Mark doesn't go away just because some boy tells it to," Tom snapped.
"Normal boys don't speak Parseltongue," Harry replied drily.
Tom blinked, then made a noise of understanding. "Good point. Didn't think of that." He looked curiously at Harry. "Why did you tell it to disappear, then? She's the one who let my people in. She threatened everyone in that castle."
"We all make stupid choices," Harry admitted quietly. "I may not have liked Marietta's choices, but that doesn't mean she wasn't a good person."
Tom sneered. "How is it that I always forget how obnoxiously Gryffindor you are?"
"Wishful thinking," Harry replied, rolling his eyes. He glanced at his watch and hummed. "Lunch?"
Tom checked the time himself, then nodded. "I'll meet you around the block," he said and apparated.
Harry shook his head, then made his way out of the hostel, dodging questions about where he was off to and promising Rosie that he'd be back in more than enough time to clean the whole hostel before supper. Then he was out and around the block, pleased that, for once, he could apparate himself to France.
Harry had just finished with cleaning the second floor when Bill's head poked around the edge of the stairwell. "Hey, Harry?"
Harry smiled at the older man. "What can I do for you, Bill?"
Bill didn't smile back. "There's someone here for you, but he don't look very friendly. I can tell him to leave, if you'd prefer?"
Harry shook his head, well aware that most people he knew wouldn't let themselves be deterred by a 'mere muggle'. "I'll be down in a moment," he promised and gathered his supplies to take upstairs and put away. A few moments later, he was on his way back down, cap firmly over his scar. (Although, if someone knew to ask for him at the front desk, a disguise probably wouldn't matter much.)
As it turned out, Harry needn't have bothered with the cap. As soon as he started down the stairs to the first floor, an angry voice roared, "I told you to stay away from my family!"
Harry gave his uncle an unimpressed look. "If you lot had let me pack before you dumped me out on my own in the middle of London, I wouldn't have come back," he replied drily. "I doubt you wanted my freakish things in your house, anyway."
Out of the corner of his eye, Harry saw Bill looking shocked by the display, and it occurred to him that he should probably either deal with his uncle quickly or get them somewhere a bit more private. The last thing either of them needed was for their dirty laundry to be hung about, and Vernon didn't always know how to hold his tongue when he was this angry.
"We never wanted anything freakish in our house," Vernon spat, "especially not you!"
"Yeah, well, I promise not to return again. So piss off," Harry returned a bit flippantly.
"How dare you speak to me like that!" Vernon roared and then he was in Harry's face, hand around his throat and a part of Harry wondered if he hadn't perhaps been spending too much time insulting Tom and surviving it.
"Hey!" someone shouted, and Vernon was pulled away. "Back off, man!"
Arms came to support Harry while he regained his breath. "You okay?" Zack asked from behind him.
Harry nodded and glanced over at where Vernon was glaring at Bill and Ashley, who had pulled him off their hall mate. Harry shrugged off Zack's hands. "I think you should go," he said to his uncle.
Vernon glared at him, but turned and walked out the door without another word.
Harry breathed in relief.
"Sorry, Harry," Bill said, walking over. "I didn't think he'd get violent, or I would have turned him away."
Harry smiled. "Don't worry about it." He leant down to pick up his cap, which had got knocked off in the kerfuffle. "Well, I'll probably go catch a nap before supper. It's been a long day."
"You're okay, though?" Zack asked, falling into step with Harry as he started up the stairs.
"I'm fine, Zack. Really."
"You don't need ice or anything?"
Harry chuckled and shook his head. "I'm fine."
Zack didn't look too convinced, but he let Harry disappear into his room without any other questions as to his health.
As soon as Harry got into his room, he took a pain potion, then lay down and fell asleep.
Voldemort completely ignored the meeting around him in favour of his own thoughts. Really, the meeting wasn't that important – they always covered the same information – and if something interesting did come up, Lucius would tell him later.
No, Voldemort was far too busy thinking about his morning with Harry, especially their conversation in the teen's room. He kept turning things over in his head, wondering if there was anything different he could have said or done that would have made Harry more welcoming of his cause. After all, if he couldn't bring himself to kill the boy, wouldn't it make sense to bring him to his side?
But something in particular kept bumping its way to the front of his thoughts: the Longbottom boy. Something about him was bothering Voldemort's subconscious and it was demanding he focus on that. But what was so important about a pureblood that had been abused because he might have been a squib? It made sense that the boy's magic would have been protecting him from the abuse and making him appear a squib...
Ah... His magic wouldn't have started protecting him until after the abuse had started. They should have seen signs before they started knocking him about...unless his magic was already working to protect him from something. Some previous abuse, likely of a sort that would need constant care for a few weeks. What sort of abuse would do that? Something that no one would have noticed?
And then it clicked and Voldemort focussed on his people, red eyes seeking out the Death Eater he wanted. "Bella," he called over the fool who was reporting on something the Department of Mysteries was working on, shutting them up.
Bellatrix stepped forward, a fanatical gleam in her mad grey eyes. "Yes, my Lord?"
"The night you tortured the Longbottoms, did you do anything to the boy?" Voldemort demanded, and something in his voice promised pain for the wrong answer.
"The boy, my Lord?" Bellatrix asked, looking confused, and she wasn't the only one, but none were daring enough to question the Dark Lord.
"Yes, the Longbottom boy. Did you do anything to him?"
Bellatrix looked around the room, hoping for a clue as to what was going on, but no one had an answer, so she looked back at the Dark Lord and said, "I thought torturing him might get us the answers we needed, my Lord. I held him under the Cruciatus for some time."
Voldemort nodded. "How long?" he asked.
Bellatrix shrugged, uncertain and uncaring, but her husband quietly supplied, "Almost a full minute, my Lord."
Voldemort nodded again. "Bella, do you know why we don't torture children before they start at Hogwarts?"
Bellatrix shook her head. "Because their magic is volatile before they start receiving some instruction?"
"Not quite. Try again."
"Because they're not old enough to be in our way?"
Voldemort smiled a cold smile. "No, Bella. We don't torture children before Hogwarts because it damages their magic."
"Damages their magic, my Lord?" Lucius asked from just to Voldemort's right, and the Dark Lord wondered if his question wasn't more out of concern for Draco, rather than being curiosity of any other form.
Voldemort relaxed back on his throne. "You are aware that a child's magic spends until their seventeenth birthday growing and supporting them?" Lucius and many other Death Eaters with children nodded. "Part of that magic's job is to protect them from harm. For most children, this means healing cuts and bruises and easing growing pains. For a child that has been tortured, the magic will focus on healing that, and a greater amount of magic will be put towards that duty. The child won't have access to that magic until they turn seventeen."
Understanding dawned in some eyes while others were still confused. Lucius whispered, "The Longbottom boy was thought to be a squib."
"Correct, Lucius," Voldemort agreed, turning his cold smile on a wide-eyed Bellatrix. "We don't torture children, Bella."
"But, my Lord, we had to be sure!" Bellatrix cried, falling to her knees. "The parents could have known something!"
"Crucio," Voldemort intoned and the woman screamed. He held her under it for almost an entire minute, then motioned for the Death Eater whose report he'd interrupted to continue.
Somehow, Voldemort didn't think Harry would be pleased that the Dark Lord tortured someone, even if it was on the behalf of the teen's friend.
Abandon the Prequel: Sixth Year
Abandon chapter 01
Reclaim chapter One
Abandoned Chapters:
One || Two || Three || Four || Five ||
Eleven || Twelve || Thirteen || Fourteen || Fifteen || Sixteen || Seventeen || Eighteen || Nineteen || Twenty
INCOMPLETE
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