His Twenty-Eighth life

5. Launched on the Waters

"I wish to understand something."

Harry slowly opened his eyes. He'd been drifting deep on the waters of his memory, looking for things that might help him escape Voldemort, but also simply reliving some of the more pleasant parts of his lives. "What's that?" He was almost two years old now, and he had managed to force his tongue and throat to respect the English words.

Voldemort sat on the chair across from him, the only furniture in the room. Harry slept on a blanket folded on the floor and sat cross-legged on the floor itself, and Voldemort still Vanished all the mess he made and brought him food on a plate he gave Harry directly.

The monster frowned now, and said, "Use Parseltongue."

"You can use it, my Lord." The words meant nothing to Harry, they flowed past him, and that only seemed to infuriate Voldemort more—but not enough that he had insisted that Harry stop calling him by his title yet. "I prefer to use English, so that I don't forget how to speak it."

"You think you will see others you can speak to again?"

"You think that you'll keep me from everyone forever? My Lord."

Voldemort shifted again, frowning. Death-of-Rabbits lifted her head and looked back and forth between them as if trying to decide what to do about a conversation that she could only understand half of. Sensibly, she dealt with it by curling up and going to sleep. Harry heartily wished that was an option for him.

"I have no reason to reveal you to others. You could tell them what you told me, and then the knowledge would no longer be an advantage."

Harry nodded slowly. Yes, he could see that. And he wasn't worried about what the effect would be on him as he would have been about a normal child. He had the memories of past lives, human voices and faces and smiles and touches, to keep him company. He had already learned them. "All right. What did you want to know, my Lord?"

Voldemort leaned forwards. "I considered you my sworn enemy when I brought you here, and I laid down the conditions of you not escaping and sharing knowledge. I did not say that you must spend every day quietly, or not ask questions. Yet you rarely do. Why?"

Harry blinked. It wasn't something he had thought Voldemort would ask questions about, but rather take as his due for being an intimidating bastard. "It's easier for me. And you don't need that."

"I don't need what?"

"You don't need me running around and asking questions. Trying to meet Death Eaters would only make you harm my family, anyway, so I won't try. Asking questions isn't such a hardship, you aren't torturing me." Harry paused. He wondered if he should say the next thing on his mind, but Jonathan might be in trouble if Voldemort read it out of his head. "And if you're here with me, it keeps you from doing things like torturing someone else."

Silence. Voldemort's hand worked open and shut on the arm of the chair. Harry just watched him in silent bewilderment. He didn't know what was wrong, but it didn't feel like something easily settled.

Finally Voldemort said, in a hiss so low that Death-of-Rabbits woke up with a start, "You have considered yourself my implacable enemy in every world since the first one you were born into."

"Yes, my Lord," Harry said, wondering where this was going.

"You have sometimes even thought that you were born again and again to destroy me, rather than because you collected the Deathly Hallows."

"I thought that. I don't believe it's the truth, now. Otherwise, I would probably have been born as the Boy-Who-Lived more often. This is the first time for centuries that I've even been born a Potter."