Chapter Seventy-Eight of IAATB: Standing, Look to the End
The title of this chapter, likewise, comes from “Hymn to Proserpine”: “Though all men abase them before you in spirit, and all knees bend,/ I kneel not neither adore you, but standing, look to the end.”
And now, the monster under the bed.
Chapter Seventy-Eight: Standing, Look to the End
The moment he landed back in his bedroom at Silver-Mirror with Draco and Snape, Harry broke from them. He headed for the library; they could think that he was studying summoning spells or a way to kill a Dark Lord who was immortal, if they wanted. At the moment, he did not care.
He slammed the door behind him with magic, and put locking and warding spells around it that Jing-Xi would have had trouble getting through. Then he bowed his head and wrapped it in his arms as he dropped to the floor. Short, muffled screams burst from his mouth, cries of pain he could no more stifle than he could have grown wings and flown to the moon.
Connor was the last Horcrux.
Chains of understanding, long buried beneath the earth of his mind, burst into being, ripping his view of Voldemort and his brother up and setting the pieces down in a new, jagged pattern. He could not doubt his conclusion. It made too much sense.
Piece after piece after piece tumbled into place in his mind with a click and a clack and a thunk like fire.
Lady Death had shown the number seven to Regulus when he asked after Horcruxes. Regulus had assumed it meant six Horcruxes and one piece left for Voldemort-seven shards of soul.
“Death showed me the number seven. That makes sense. Seven is a magically powerful number. He split his soul into seven shards- one each for six Horcruxes, and one for himself.”
Oh, yes, it made sense, Harry thought, with his understanding eating him like acid. But it had only been an assumption. It could as easily have meant seven Horcruxes, but Regulus had not interpreted it that way, and everyone else, guided by the way he thought, hadn’t interpreted it like that, either.
The tide of comprehension and bitterness swept him up and on.
The bird had tried to show Harry the locations of Horcruxes, and Lady Death had done the same thing for Regulus. One of them was the desk that had contained the Ravenclaw wand, one the burrow where at the time Voldemort had kept the Hufflepuff Cup, one the shack where Slytherin’s shade and the ring had waited, and one-
One had been Hogwarts.
Where, at the time, both the Sword of Gryffindor and Connor had been.
Harry was crying hard enough that the skin around his eyes felt stretched and swollen, but he could not stop, either weeping or thinking. More and more came springing out of the darkness like a clawed creature, dragging the past into the harsh and unforgiving light, making sense of Voldemort’s actions in a way that no other explanation could have.
The Stone had said that there was a place in Harry’s aura for a third person, someone connected to both him and Voldemort. And Harry, in going through the Imbolc ritual and reliving in his alternate world the night when Voldemort had come to Godric’s Hollow, had seen the Killing Curses flash, connecting him, Voldemort, and Connor in a bent triangle. That was the idea that had almost managed to scratch its way into his head when he was at the house a few minutes ago.
A triangle. The third. Someone else bound to this endless turning of soul and magic, by his blood bond to Harry and the fact that Voldemort had lodged a shard of soul behind Connor’s scar.
The part of Harry’s mind that tried to deny reality asked frantically, But wouldn’t we have sensed something amiss with Connor? Wouldn’t Voldemort’s evil have manifested itself in him somehow? How can he be the Horcrux then? The others all felt evil.
Harry began to laugh bitterly, and he could not stop. Connor’s compulsion gift. Where had it come from? It could be inherited, but neither Lily nor James had had much evidence of it in their family line.
But Voldemort was a compeller.
Harry had once half-entertained the idea that Connor was Voldemort’s magical heir, too, only taking the one magical gift that Harry himself did not bear. But, yes, it could have been the shard of soul stirring in Connor, expressing its evil the only way it knew how. Merlin knew it had certainly reacted strongly to the tutelage of Sirius, and especially Voldemort in Sirius’s body, and Tom Riddle, when he vanished into Connor’s head in second year, had been able to wield it like a veritable sword. If the connection between them was not Connor being Voldemort’s magical heir-and surely he would have pulled on the Dark Lord’s magic, too, if that was the case-then what was it? A Horcrux connection would serve.
Tom Riddle.
Harry closed his eyes and fell into the memory of the Chamber. The silent self reared again above the younger Dark Lord, having frozen Connor into a statue, and Harry could hear the words he spoke then.
“Not him. Never him. It was you, it must have been, and the nature of our connection-“
That had been the moment when Riddle discovered that Harry was the Boy-Who-Lived; he had assumed before that that Connor was, and that he could only use Harry’s scar at all because of Harry’s connection to Connor. Harry had assumed that “the nature of our connection” referred to that stunning moment, too late, when Riddle recognized his true enemy.
But what if it had meant that he recognized Connor as a Horcrux, and only in that moment, too late to do anything about it?
Tom Riddle had been a rather immature and thoughtless shard of the Dark Lord’s soul, Harry thought, with a speed and clarity that astonished him. Click and clack and thunk went the pieces of his mind.
The one they had faced at the end of third year had been an older version of Voldemort, cannier and more experienced. And he had threatened to kill Draco and Snape, had delighted in describing to Harry throughout the corrupted justice ritual how he would torture them.
He had said he would keep Connor alive.
“Why, I have been training him these past three months. It would be a shame to let such a well-trained and natural compeller go to waste. Imperio should remove any obstinate moral fixations he has, and then I have a follower skilled in doing Dark magic.”
Yes. A follower with a piece of himself inside him. Harry wondered if Voldemort had shivered with delight and irony when he called Connor a natural compeller.
Click sang the puzzle pieces.
Connor had flared with white light at the end of their first year, when Voldemort attacked him in Quirrell’s body. Harry had thought it was his natural purity that saved him. Snape had assumed it was Harry’s love. But while a willing sacrifice might very well create such a protection, Harry had not given up his life. He had lain there helpless while Quirrell attacked Connor.
And then there had been the white light that flared around Connor when the shard of Tom Riddle tried to attack him in McGonagall’s office.
Harry had not been able to find information like this, because books on Horcruxes were so rare, but he wondered if it would be impossible for two shards of a soul to destroy each other, for Horcrux to be wielded against Horcrux, and if there was a book somewhere that described the reaction when that nearly happened as a flare of white, shadowless, pure light.
Clack sang the puzzle pieces.
Voldemort-the piece of Voldemort Harry had faced again and again, the man holding his brother captive now-must have known what Connor was from that confrontation at the end of first year. After that, he had not tried to kill him.
Oh, he had endangered his life. He had sent Rabastan to cast the Severing Curse at him during the Second Task of the Triwizard Tournament. But he could easily have ordered his follower to use the Killing Curse, if Connor’s life wasn’t important to him, if he wanted to bring despair to and break Harry.
He had used the spell during their fifth year that would have locked Connor in a dreaming coma, unable to come out unless a Marked Death Eater felt genuine willingness to help him, but that spell would not have killed him.
Connor had run into the midst of an attacking vampire hive, but none of them had attacked him.
When Voldemort tested his control over Evan Rosier by having him lure Connor out of Hogwarts during their sixth year and to Hawthorn’s house, Indigena Yaxley had appeared in time to defend Connor and prevent Rosier from killing him-and Harry was willing to bet Indigena Yaxley knew all about the Horcruxes.
And Voldemort had Connor now, torturing him endlessly, but always healing him.
Thunk, sang the puzzle pieces, and rolled to a stop.
What will you never do, Harry?
Kill my brother, he answered Voldemort, and lifted his head, eyes dry and staring into the distance.
He remembered the long incantation Voldemort had cast over Connor early on in the torture session, before Snape could force the Dreamless Sleep down his throat. Harry had not recognized the spell, and had discounted it when it appeared to have no immediate effect, more concerned with the other things that Voldemort did to Connor in the name of hurting him. But he would wager, now, that the spell was an Unassailable Curse, insuring that his last Horcrux could not be destroyed without a willing sacrifice. Even if Harry had the strength of will to kill his brother, someone else would still have to die to make it possible.
It was no wonder that Voldemort was so confident. Harry might be able to delay going to Connor, for a little while, because Draco had asked him to.
He could never kill him, any more than he could kill Draco.
The world might fall under the reign of darkness, and still Harry could not willingly harm him.
Voldemort has-
And then, he stopped. All the breath rushed out of his lungs, as it had yesterday when he first struggled under the pain of what was happening to Connor, and he stared, while the puzzle pieces shifted twice and reoriented into a new pattern.
Voldemort had trapped him with what he would never do.
But he was notoriously bad at estimating what Harry would do.
And there was a way. Small and nimble, creeping around the edges of what was possible and permissible, but there was a way to destroy the Horcrux and yet not have to kill his brother.
It would even fulfill the prophecies.
Harry wore a small smile that he knew held no joy. He rose to his feet and gave a rippling stretch, arms over his head, and a small nod. He could do this. He would do this. He would tell Snape and Draco he knew why Voldemort could not be killed, and tie it to the prophecy. The prophecy mandated that an elder stand at his right shoulder, didn’t it? But it had to be a different elder each time, and Snape and Draco had already both fulfilled the role once, with Falco and Dumbledore respectively. Harry could not kill Voldemort until he brought along someone else who loved him. Peter would do.
It sounded perfect. It sounded beautiful.
It was a lie.
But they would not know that.
Harry let out a soft breath, and went to unlock the door and comfort his father and lover, who were no doubt frantic. He would explain the need to wait a while before they left, to brew some rather specialized healing potions for Connor. And it was true that his brother would probably die if they simply tried to remove him from Voldemort’s lair.
He didn’t think he could have done this, had his Occlumency pools still been in place. He would have considered things too objectively. But his emotions were free now, and Harry knew exactly the level of guilt he could live with.
I’ll make myself human past the doubt, he told the prophecy echoing in his head. Don’t you worry about that.
The dogs-head in his left palm burned softly, as if in response, or promise.