A Snake Named Voldemort

Chapter 18

"Worse?" Dumbledore questioned, perplexed, and Harry had a moment where he savoured stumping the Headmaster for once instead of the other way around. At least Harry felt the need to explain himself and not leave the other man to find his answers for himself.

"Er, well, I guess 'worse' is relative—it's true, Dark Lords really don't make good pets—but, well...oh, bollocks," Harry huffed. "There's a new policy for the Death Eaters: misbehave and you become Harry Potter's pet."

It took a moment for Dumbledore to process that statement, and when he did his brow furrowed as his eyes widened in comprehension.

"Indeed? Well then." Dumbledore was even more off balanced. "That is a person then and not, in fact, a genuine animal?"

Shaking his head with a sort of indifferent smile on his face, Harry held up the arm which Lady had wrapped herself around. "I call her Lady now, but at one point she was called Bellatrix Lestrange."

Dumbledore's eyes got bigger.

"So yeah: 'worse,'" Harry rambled. "Don't worry, though, she doesn't remember who she was. Er, I guess you could say Lady may be my 'Tommy' lookalike for when I go back to school. Since, you know, the real one is over there...and a little heavy to go around my neck these days." Harry jerked his head in indication of the man behind him, and Dumbledore's gaze flickered in Tom's direction and appeared to study him for several moments. Harry, with his back to Tom, didn't know what the man was doing, but Dumbledore showed no reaction to seeing a noticeably different Tom Riddle before focusing back on his student.

"Even if she doesn't remember who she was, surely it's dangerous to keep her around when you cannot control her."

'Says you who let me keep Voldemort in the Gryffindor dorms,' Harry wanted to say. He didn't, though, and it took a moment for him to remember why Dumbledore didn't think he couldn't control her. He would have hit his head with a brick if he accidentally revealed he was still a Horcrux and could speak Parseltongue like he had with Snape. He would have to remember to keep his mouth shut if Lady really did come with him to Hogwarts.

"Tom gave her explicit directions. She won't disobey him." It wasn't quite a lie, but it wasn't fully the truth, either.

"I'll consider it, Harry," Dumbledore finally said. Harry made the mistake of studying the old man's face, trying to determine if he was suspected or not. Maybe he should have expected it, but when he felt a push in his mind against his still weak Occlumency shields he had to hurriedly rip his eyes away from Dumbledore's probing blue ones before he could read anything.

Straightening fully from his noticeable wince, Harry allowed Lady to curl herself around his neck as he took a moment to calm himself.

"If you're worried I'm Imperio'd or something, you're wasting your time," Harry said, somewhat coldly. "You know I'm impervious to that spell. I'm here, whole and unharmed, on my own free will. He didn't hurt me."

There was a long, tense moment of awkward silence as Harry stood before Dumbledore, giving the man the benefit of the doubt and meeting his eyes straight on once again. The only thing that slightly undermined the edgy interaction was the fact Lady was merrily telling an oblivious bird in the leafless tree that overshadowed them how much she would enjoy eating it. Gods, did she ever shut up?

After a time, Dumbledore sighed. "I apologise, Harry. Perhaps I have gotten paranoid in my old age."

Harry snorted, thinking about understatements, but he guessed he couldn't hold too much against Dumbledore. The man, after all, had spent most of his life fighting Dark Wizards. And maybe that was his problem, that he got so engrossed in his self-imposed task that he lost sight of certain things as they passed him by.