His Twenty-Eighth life

15. Meditation

Lord Voldemort thought. And thought.

Harry was a being that had existed for centuries, but not in the same body or the same life. He had somehow maintained his sanity. He had maintained his magic. His perfect memories probably helped to account for that. If he had had to start over in each life, he would not have been truly immortal, only someone who could reincarnate, the way some wizards believed every being did.

Lord Voldemort thought. And thought.

Harry had somehow retained his compassion and mercy, whereas all the laws of the mind Lord Voldemort knew would have dictated those wearing away like stone with water dripping on it. He had spared Lord Voldemort. He had not turned against those who betrayed him in various lives. He seemed to believe that they were truly reborn anew or different in each life even as he maintained his continuity.

Lord Voldemort thought. And thought.

Harry's mercy was conditional. That part was familiar. But he had not spared Lord Voldemort on the condition that he cease fighting, or turn to the Light, or serve him, all terms that Lord Voldemort could imagine Dumbledore using. He had simply done it on the condition that Lord Voldemort refrain from attacking some people who would not have been important to him in any case if not for their relation to the Potters.

Lord Voldemort thought. And thought.

There was a place somewhere in these thoughts he was striving to reach. He would find it. He would.

*

Harry leaned back and rubbed his face. It had been six months since he'd escaped from Voldemort's custody, and the things that hadn't changed outweighed the ones that had.

Jonathan was still everywhere he was, and only the other day had said something about not wanting to go to Hogwarts until Harry could, even though he was old enough to enter two years earlier. Harry had argued with him, but Jonathan wasn't budging so far.

Dumbledore still wanted Harry to write to him all the time and teach him all the "secrets" he knew about various Death Eaters and kinds of magic. Harry had cautioned him that the things he knew to be true of Death Eaters in other lives might not be the case here; Voldemort's most feared Death Eater in his life as Humphrey Longbottom didn't appear to even exist here. Dumbledore had wanted him to write them down anyway, and Harry had just finished giving the Potter owl yet another missive.

Lily still fed him and fussed over him and thanked him for telling her the truth. If she looked at him with frightened eyes sometimes, or teary ones, or hugged him hard right after he wrote one of his letters for Dumbledore...that was still so much better than the relationship they might have had that it filled Harry with a vast relief.

James was prone to random hugs out of nowhere, and he was the one who tried to treat Harry more like a child. Sometimes he called him "Har," and he still transformed into a stag and ran around the garden with Harry on his back. Harry accepted it and hugged him back. Even if James was laboring under a misconception, at least it was a lot nicer one than it could have been.

And Remus avoided him, and gave him strange looks when he did visit and he didn't think Harry was looking. At least Lily and James were welcoming him into their lives again. It didn't matter much to Harry how Remus treated him. It was worth being a little uncomfortable for Remus to be happier than he'd been in half a decade.

Sirius was the one who had changed most. Sometimes he treated Harry like a boy, sometimes like an adult, and he kept asking him trick questions to try and catch him in a lie. He really didn't seem to believe Harry at all. Of course, it was only Sirius's bad luck that Harry's perfect memory made him remember everything he'd ever said to Sirius. If he had lied, he'd remember that, too.