Title: Even Angels Fall
Author: Head Girl
Pairing: Voldemort/Harry
Rating: eventual M
Summary: Occurs during an AU OotP. Harry is led toward the dark by the wizard who should be his enemy.
A/N: The story begins during the scene in the Department of Mysteries.
Part One
Amid the sound of breaking glass, Harry and his friends fled, dodging the orbs that fell from the teetering shelves that toppled noisily to the ground. Harry clutched the prophecy for dear life as he led the others to what he hoped was safety. With a liberal use of Stupefy to confound pursuing Death Eaters, they found themselves clearing the room and heading toward nearby offices. Hiding was not to be, as they were soon found and put through their paces again.
They were a poor match for Death Eaters, seasoned wizards, though they'd held their own for some time. The only thing that Harry could think of was to draw them away from his friends. Dodging hex upon hex, Harry sprinted from the room, hoping, praying that the dark wizards would follow him. It was he who held what they wanted, the shining orb of the prophecy clutched tightly in his hand. He didn't want his friends to be forced to pay the price for his foolishness and stupidity.
His idea worked as he'd hoped. Harry could soon hear Bellatrix growl in annoyance as she and the others closed in behind him. Another step forward, and solid ground gave way to air as Harry fell, tumbling down to the room below and landing painfully on his back. Groaning, he gained his footing, his eyes drawn momentarily to the dais that held a stone archway, a rippling veil in its center. No sooner than he'd stood, Harry was approached by several Death Eaters. It wasn't long until he had backed up until one hand clutched at the dais.
To his horror, Harry saw the form of Neville rushing down to his aid, but all too quickly he was caught, his wand falling uselessly to the ground as he twisted in a Death Eater's grip. Bellatrix approached him, pressing her wand to his throat, murmuring something into Neville's ear in a parody of intimacy as he shivered. Harry never felt so helpless, not even in the cemetery a year ago. For it had been he that led them all to this. They'd trusted him, he'd trusted his own mind, and this is what it had wrought. The truth of Snape's words on the Dark Lord's hold on his mind returned to mock him. He couldn't dwell on this for too long, for Malfoy senior now stalked toward him.
"An admirable effort, Mr. Potter," the man drawled as he glided toward him, "but futile nonetheless. Hand me the prophecy, and you and your friends may yet know mercy."
Harry watched the older wizard stretch out his hand, waiting. Harry looked down at the glowing orb that he held, knowing full well that Malfoy was lying. He'd take the prophecy and him to Voldemort. And his friends would have no better fate. Still, he found his hand extending toward the blonde, who smirked faintly as the prophecy was almost in his grasp. Then in a fit of bravery or madness, Harry hurled the prophecy to the ground below, hearing a Death Eater gasp from somewhere behind him as it shattered into numerous splinters of useless glass.
Malfoy's face twisted with rage as he drew his wand, "You insufferable little-"
He cast a hex, and Harry's head whipped backward as he was taken with sudden dizziness, his vision blurring. Distantly, he heard the sound of screaming, of hexes being fired off as he wavered on his feet. Harry began to fall forward as if in slow motion, recognizing his godfather's voice rising above the din as he headed toward him. Then Harry was caught in strong arms, wisps of long hair falling against his face as he was swept against a broad chest. As Harry's eyes closed he felt a pull at his center, falling into blackness as he was spirited away to places unknown.
Back at Grimmauld Place, Sirius paced back and forth, agitatedly running a hand through his hair. Remus tried to get the other man to sit, but he was inconsolable. The scene of Harry falling unconscious into Malfoy's arms as the man spared him a smirk before activating a portkey tormented him. If only he'd been quicker, if only he'd managed to reach them.
Moody entered with other members of the Order, his face a grim mask. "We've searched all known areas, but no sign of the boy."
"If only I'd arrived sooner," Sirius remarked, his face full of poorly-hidden misery.
"It's not your fault, Sirius," Remus began.
"Damn it, Snape!" Sirius exclaimed as he whirled on the man, who appeared too calm for Sirius' tastes as he sat in a nearby armchair. "Don't you have any decent information on their hideouts?"
Snape glared at him, sneering. "Don't try to turn this back on me, Black," he spat. "I'm not responsible for Potter running off on fool's errands."
"Then what use are you if you can't-"
"What use are you if you can't even protect the one you were charged with? I seem to have done more of your job of late, Black." Snape folded his arms against his chest. "It seems naming Pettigrew as secret keeper wasn't Potter's only mistake."
Sirius lunged at him, prevented by Remus' sudden hold on him. "You greasy little-"
"I make a convenient scapegoat for you as always. You'd do better figuring out how to get your fool godson out of the mess he's walked into instead of picking fights with me," Snape suggested in a voice that was anything but kind.
Dumbledore's voice forestalled the remark that Sirius had been about to give. "Gentlemen, bickering will get us nowhere." He turned toward Severus as he took a seat on the couch. "Is there anything that could be of help? Any places that you've had meetings where Harry may have been taken?"
"No places other than what Moody and the others have already checked." Snape's face turned grim. "It's possible that the Dark Lord has purposely not told me of this hiding place, Albus. He may be withholding information from me. I wasn't even summoned tonight, despite the fact other Death Eaters were mobilized. Perhaps I'm not as trusted as I previously thought."
"Some spy you make," Severus heard Sirius grumble, but didn't deign to comment as he was left to ponder the implications of being left out of the loop though he was presumably a member of the Dark Lord's inner circle. Dumbledore frowning and looking very much his age was an echo of his own dark thoughts.
When Harry woke, it was to the knowledge that, for now, he still lived and was being held somewhere cold. He struggled up off of the hard floor, peering around in the dim light cast from a high window. Was he in a cellar of some sort? The area itself was bare except for a threadbare blanket in a heap in a far corner. Harry tried the door, but as he expected, it was locked tight. Sighing, there was little that Harry could do but wait. He sat against one wall, drawing his knees up to his chest and resting his head on them. Had his friends managed to escape? He was almost certain that he'd heard Sirius' voice. Surely he and the other members of the Order rescued them. At least, this was what Harry hoped.
Some time latter, he heard a key turn in a lock and the door creaked open. Gaining his feet, Harry eyed the two Death Eaters warily. Without a word to him, they quickly approached, each of them grabbing an arm, causing Harry to struggle fruitlessly against them for a moment before they began to haul him out of the room and up a long flight of stairs. Realizing that struggling was getting him nowhere, Harry calmed somewhat. Taking in his surroundings, he realized that they were in a mansion of some sort, but that it seemed in disrepair. The halls were lit with candlelight, tattered wallpaper giving the scenery an eerie look. Soon, Harry was in what appeared to be the former dining room, but now it was a throne room of sorts, Voldemort sitting regally at the head of the room with his Death Eaters lining the side walls. On either side of the Dark Lord's throne stood Lucius and Bellatrix.
Rising with his usual grace, Voldemort stepped off of his throne, gliding toward his prey with long strides. Harry's knees felt weak, but somehow, he managed to remain standing on his own accord. Voldemort could feel the fear rolling off of the boy in waves. It was exhilarating, a balm for all the annoyances he'd suffered because of one Harry Potter, The Boy Who Lived but Not for Much Longer.
"Harry Potter," Voldemort uttered in a smooth voice. Harry flinched at the sound of it. "At last you are within my grasp. At last, I will be rid of you. But first, I must know whatever of the prophecy you learned, the prophecy that you so rudely shattered when you had no right to."
"I won't tell you anything," Harry said with a bravery he hardly felt. "You'll learn nothing from me."
Voldemort grinned suddenly as if Harry had told a rather funny joke before raising his wand and cheerfully saying, "Crucio."
Harry squirmed and the two Death Eaters that had held either arm let him fall to the ground where he writhed. The pain was maddening, inescapable, seeping into every pore, lighting fire to every nerve. As suddenly as it started, the pain was gone. The teenager lay panting on the cool floor, his hair plastered to his face by sweat.
"You're still such a fool," Voldemort told him as he circled. Harry noted how his voice still held that same degree of satisfaction. And why shouldn't it? He'd been as foolhardy as anyone had ever accused him of being, playing right into the Dark Lord's hands. "Everything I want, I get eventually, even you, child," the wizard continued.
Soon, Harry found a long fingered hand pulling him to his knees by his collar. The Dark Lord bent to regard him. Voldemort's eyes seemed to burn his flesh as they searched his face. "I don't expect to tell me, Harry. I intend for you to show me." He lifted Harry's face with the tip of his wand so that they were staring into each others eyes. Suddenly that wand was pointing and Harry watched thin lips form around the word, "Legilimens."
For a fleeting moment, Harry offered resistance, but all too soon, it shattered into a thousand pieces as if it had never even been. Then Harry knew pain, more than anything he'd felt at Snape's hands during his ill-fated lessons in Occulmency. He knew horror as every memory he'd ever had was rifled through. The agony, the humiliation, and the occasional joy were all displayed for the Dark Lord to see, his mind so many pages of an open book.
You won't last two seconds if he invades your mind, Harry heard then saw Snape say in his memories as if on cue. Somewhere around him came Voldemort's echoing laughter. "You should have listened to him, Harry. Severus has always been a clever one. So he tried to teach you Occulmency. Dumbledore's meddling, no doubt. Interesting." Then the dark wizard was searching again, searching until he found something that made him gasp and pull free of Harry's mind. The boy fell forward as the man stepped away, Harry falling to his hands and knees as he panted.
If Harry hadn't been so drained from the encounter, he would have seen that moment when Voldemort stumble backward momentarily with widened eyes until he regained his usual poise. If Harry had had half the talent that Snape possessed, he could have taken advantage of Voldemort's shock to delve inside to see the memory of Voldemort looking into the black depths that existed on the fringe of Harry's soul and recognizing a piece of himself staring back at him. As it was, this was not to be, and when Harry had recovered enough, he looked up into a thoughtful Voldemort's face.
"What to do with you now, Harry Potter?" Voldemort asked himself. "What to do?"
Bellatrix stepped forward. "Give him to me, My Lord," she told him eagerly, "I'll make sure he pays tenfold for what he's done to you."
Voldemort regarded her shining eyes before saying, "No, dear Bellatrix. I don't want the boy harmed." Harry could hear the implied "yet" that the dark wizard had left off. "For now, he shall benefit from my hospitality until I decide otherwise." Voldemort gestured to two young Death Eaters who stepped forward.
"Bring Mr. Potter to the room at the end of the hallway upstairs. Be sure he comes to no unfortunate… accidents on his way there," he added in warning.
Harry soon found himself pulled from the floor and nearly dragged out of the room. He looked over his shoulder to see Voldemort speaking in a low voice to Lucius and Bellatrix.
When the trio reached the end of the hallway, Harry found himself dragged into the room and tossed unceremoniously onto the bed. Thinking that the two men would leave him alone, he started as he saw one of them shut the door with them still inside. Warning bells went off when the man cast silencing and locking charms on the door.
"What are you doing, Trevor?" The first Death Eater asked the one who'd cast the charms. "The Dark Lord said-"
"Not to harm him, I know. I'm not going to hurt him. I'll be as gentle as possible."
"No!" Harry exclaimed in rising panic as the Death Eater approached him. His friend hovered near the door as if unsure.
When Trevor neared, Harry kicked out, catching the man in the chest. Harry scrambled off of the bed only to find himself thrown to the floor by an irate Death Eater.
"So that's how you want it, eh?" the wizard told him, anger lighting his eyes. "I don't mind playing a little rough, but you won't like it very much, boy." He backhanded Harry , his head whipping to the side with the force of the blow.
"Come on, Trevor! If the Dark Lord finds out-"
"He won't find out!" Trevor insisted as he wrestled with the teenaged wizard on the floor. He managed to get Harry's hands over his head. "We can just Obliviate him afterwards. Now come over here and help me."
Sighing, his friend cast a binding spell on Harry's hands as he neared. Try as he might, he couldn't budge them. In dawning horror at what was about to occur, Harry looked up into the man's pleased face.
"Don't worry," Trevor told him. "The two of us will treat you to our special brand of hospitality."
Harry squirmed, trying to kick at the two men as one unbuttoned his shirt and the other tried to divest him of his trousers. He willed himself not to cry, yet his vision blurred with unshed tears. He would endure this, endure and survive as he'd always done with every other slight against him. But some are worse than others, Harry thought as he gazed up at the ceiling.
Voldemort was in the midst of instructing Lucius on their next line of attack when he felt the distant sense of fear, of horror. Placing a hand to his temple, he ignored Lucius' inquiry as to his wellness in favor of focusing elsewhere. Of sliding into the mind that held a piece of his own. Of looking through a pair of green eyes that gazed up at a person moving to take a place between his thighs. Cursing, the Dark Lord spun in a flurry of dark robes to head out of the room and up the stairs. His robes flaring as his stride became a near run, he leveled his wand at the door at the end of the hallway, spitting a curse at it. The wood buckled, exploding into the room with a satisfying loud crack and flying of splinters. In shock, the young man moved off of Harry. Whatever explanation the Death Eater had been about to give caught in his throat as a dark form slithered forward faster than he could catch his breath to scream, fangs lodging deep in his throat. The other Death Eater had moved to the opposite side of the room, cowering as he watched Voldemort's familiar slither away from his friends writhing form. A wave of Voldemort's hand, and Harry was free, scooting until his back hit the wall and attempting to pull his trousers up with trembling hands.
Harry regarded Voldemort warily. The dark wizard's eyes were trained on the young man lying sprawled on the floor who gurgled as venom ripped through his body, his form quivering until it finally lay still. Voldemort stepped over the corpse to approach his other servant who had pressed himself against the far wall.
"What part of 'I don't want the boy harmed' do you not understand?" Voldemort asked as he toyed with his wand.
"It wasn't my idea!" the Death Eater insisted as he gestured toward his friend's corpse. "He-"
Voldemort didn't give him a chance to finish his thought. "I have little need of servants who don't know how to obey me. AvadaKedavra." Harry flinched, turning his eyes away as green light enveloped the man. His body slid down the wall, a look of horror forever frozen on his face. Voldemort turned toward the Death Eaters standing just beyond the ruin of the doorway. "Clean this up," he instructed.
Harry watched Voldemort's approach, absently noting how the other Death Eaters dragged the bodies from the room. The dark wizard crouched to regard him.
"They didn't harm you," Voldemort said with certainty. But how could he have known? "There is nothing that can happen in this place without my knowledge," Voldemort told him in answer. "If you have any ideas of escape, put them from your mind."
Harry found the nerve to gaze directly into red eyes. "Why did you help me?"
Voldemort loomed close enough for Harry to be warmed by the wizard's expelled breath. "Your life is mine, Harry Potter. You continue to live at my sufferance, at my whim. Whatever good or ill to be visited upon your mind or body is of my design. Mine and no one else's." He reached out a hand toward Harry as the boy flinched, pushing back his hair to expose the lightning bold-shaped scar etched into Harry's flesh. "I earned that right when I gave you this."
He straightened and Harry shivered, his words and his own fate finally sinking in. It would only be a matter of time, wouldn't it, before he was no longer of interest to the dark wizard. He'd already gleaned whatever information Harry possessed out of his thoughts. Harry was woken from his reverie by the sound of Parseltongue being whispered. As Voldemort strode from the room without a backward glance at him, Nagini slithered forward. Startled, Harry climbed back onto the bed. The serpent regarded him for a moment, tasting the air nearby with her tongue before slithering up onto the coverlet to coil across the bottom of the large bed. Unnerved, Harry pushed himself against the headboard, drawing his knees to his chest and watching the serpent uneasily as she slipped off into a light slumber.
TBC