NOVEL WEB Chapter 54: :)Ch54
"I'll make him better, Hedwig." He said into the silent room. "I didn't really understand with Sirius. I was only thirteen and though I knew the effects of the Dementors, I passed out before they had much of a chance to torture me. I didn't understand the effects and certainly not the long term effects of what being in Azkaban meant. I have a better idea now that I'm older. Sirius was innocent and he could cling to that, he had Padfoot to use as an escape and I know now that he hid a lot from me because I was so young and he didn't want me to worry. Looking back on it now, I can see the pain as he moved, I saw the haunted eyes and the gaunt face and the emaciated body, even though he'd been staying in Grimmauld Place. Though thinking on it, that probably wouldn't have helped him either. He suffered through that for twelve years. Rabastan and Rodolphus suffered for fifteen years, that's as long as I was stuck at the Dursleys. They were in prison though, with the Dementors and I couldn't imagine going through that day after day, year after year. They have to be some of the strongest men I know, just to even survive that place. I know most people get sick and die there or they stop eating or they just straight out commit suicide, but they never gave up. They didn't commit suicide or stop eating. They clung to something, for Sirius it was hope and the knowledge that he was innocent, but what did Rabastan and Rodolphus have? They were guilty, they did torture the Longbottoms into insanity, so what made them cling to life?"
Hedwig hooted and Harry sighed as he dug his fingers into her feathers and scratched down the full length of her body and his lovely owl clicked happily in pleasure of the action.
"I suppose I'll never know now, I'm not as tactless as to ask. Though maybe in a few years, when their imprisonment isn't quite so raw, I'll see if I'll get an answer then, but I won't hold my breath for it."
Harry sighed again heavily and he sent Hedwig off. It was getting dark and she'd want to hunt soon. He put Rabastan's letter back in its envelope and left it on the table as he turned to the other two that had arrived. One was from Lucius, just generally asking after him and if he was alright, which Harry found difficult to admit, but it made his chest tighten with unfamiliar emotions.
He swallowed as the letter choked him up a little and he viciously shoved it aside. What the hell was wrong with him lately? First, the sudden, icy anger, now he was getting choked up and weepy because Lucius had sent him a letter. He was sure that someone was messing with his food, but the house elves of Hogwarts were under a contracted oath to never, ever, put anything in the students' food. The serious binding oath had been administered to all Hogwarts elves in eighteen-forty-three after some nutcase in Ravenclaw had invented a new poison and had tested it out on all the students who had bullied her by asking the elves to put the poison in their food, claiming it was just a harmless prank. It had killed fourteen people and had made twenty-seven others seriously sick. The governors at the time had forced the oath on the poor house elves and it still remained to this day. So no, Harry wasn't worried about anyone playing with his food or drink, but with how he was feeling lately, he could well believe that someone had been slipping him potions somehow.
The third letter was written in unfamiliar cursive, but it had been forwarded to him by Lucius, so he trusted it, to an extent.
The neat, elegant words were evenly spaced on the parchment and there was no signature to speak of at the bottom of the letter, even Rabastan, who obviously couldn't put his signature on anything, especially nothing that he sent to him, left an elaborate letter 'R' at the end of the parchment. It was always perfect as if Rabastan forced himself to do at least that right when the actual letter was a mass of shaky scrawls, jerked lines and unintentional inkblots.
Harry read the letter through and he gritted his teeth as he realised exactly why this letter didn't need a signature…he knew exactly who this was and his hands physically ached to tear it into tiny fucking shreds that he would throw into his living room fire. He didn't though. He controlled himself and breathed deeply and as calmly as he could through the urges to tear up the letter. He was surprised somewhere in the back of his mind that the anger he was feeling was warm and passionate, not the sudden, icy cold explosive anger that he had been feeling recently.
The letter itself would have been quite innocent, had it not been for the person who had written it. Voldemort himself was asking after his health and wellbeing, though he was sure that that was just 'social niceties' as he had phrased it two years ago in that graveyard when he had forced him to bow before their duel. His real reason for writing was very clear further down, when he started asking…no, demanding, he couldn't see the Dark Lord asking anything of anyone, after his thoughts, feelings, and his motivations.
Voldemort insisted that he just wanted to be sure of his stance, that he wanted to be sure that he wouldn't interfere or get in the way of his plans. Harry ground his teeth together and clenched his hands, crumpling the letter in his one fist.
He had been doing his best to ignore the pink elephant, as the expression went, but Voldemort had stripped that away by directly contacting him and Harry knew the red-eyed bastard would expect a reply as soon as possible as well. He couldn't help but wonder if this was another goddamned test as well or maybe it was just another level of the same test. He hadn't reacted to Lucius talking of the Dark Lord at Malfoy Manor, he hadn't reacted to being betrothed to a loyal Death Eater, hell he hadn't even really kicked up much of a fuss about living with and being adopted by a Death Eater, so were they now testing him further?
He couldn't stand the situation he was in, he hated that he had been forced here, into this position and it was all down to Dumbledore. He may have hated Voldemort, but at the moment he hated Dumbledore even more. This situation was all kinds of wrong and he didn't like it, but he had no one left! What was he supposed to do as the adults all fought over him like a mere possession just because he had been indicated in a prophecy and had survived when he damn well shouldn't have? His options had been limited before, but now, thanks to what he'd found out in Gringotts, he had even fewer options now than he'd had before.
He could have chosen to ignore all that he had learnt, though the anger he carried within him, which was slowly fermenting into resentment, would have made that incredibly difficult. How did one forgive and forget something of that magnitude? The abuse, the neglect, the lies and the manipulations. The complete disregard for him as an actual person and the theft of his birthright, the little games that could have easily killed him over the years…all to prepare him for his future purpose, of course. A purpose he hadn't really been told about yet. He only knew that Dumbledore expected him to kill Voldemort. He couldn't do it, he couldn't face off against someone so powerful, so much older than himself. He was sixteen and he was sure that he didn't know a fraction of what Voldemort had stored up in his arsenal over the decades. He would not be anyone's lamb to the slaughter, he didn't care what the reason was. There was always another way. No, he could never have forgiven and forgotten what Dumbledore had done to him. He just couldn't.
Of course, he could have struck off on his own. He certainly had enough money for it, but again, he was only sixteen. What would he do? Where would he go? He had had no idea how to buy a house, he didn't know how to run one or how to pay bills. He couldn't ward his new house as he didn't know how to, he hadn't even known if he was even allowed to buy a house while he was still a minor! All he would be able to do was cook and clean because that's all the Dursleys had taught him in his fifteen-year stay with them. He had needed someone to take him in and teach him how to do everything on his own.
He certainly would not have chosen Lucius Malfoy, of all people, to be the one to take him in, but he had been the only one actually willing to take him in and the man had started to teach him everything that he'd wanted to know about everything and more. All he had to do was ask and suddenly a new stack of books would be delivered to him by a house-elf and if he had any questions after reading them, all he had to do was ask them. It was a foreign concept after the Dursleys. It had taken him a while to get into the rhythm of it, so to speak, where he would read the books given to him and then question Lucius on the things that he was unsure about. He even had his knowledge retention tested when Lucius asked him questions in turn, to make sure that the information he had read had gotten through and stuck in his mind. He was learning at the Malfoy home and it was everything that wasn't taught in Hogwarts, things that he actually needed to know in order to live a normal, independent life in the wizarding world.
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