His Twenty-Eighth life

19. Elemental, My Dear Harry

I have made the oaths you demanded. It is time for you to fulfill your promise.

Harry swallowed and put the parchment down on top of the chair that he'd moved into his room when he decided that the other one was really too small. He could have used the Elder Wand to Transfigure the smaller chair, but he tried to avoid doing that around his parents. And Lily had looked so happy when he asked for something.

And you're trying to think about a subject that doesn't matter to avoid dealing with the one that does.

Harry grimaced, nodded to himself, and picked up the quill that was always lying ready next to an inkwell. His parents thought he wrote to the other children he'd met at carefully supervised parties.

Yes, I owe you the secrets that I promised you. I thought about sending you reading material, but the grimoire I wanted apparently doesn't exist in this world, or else only in private collections. So I'll come to you and start instructing you in the blending of the elements. On the new moon, the clearing that we met in when you gave you first oath in blood and snake scales.

Harry held the letter out to Voldemort's black owl before he could change his mind. The owl promptly winged through the window and out of sight. Harry swallowed as he watched it go.

He did believe the conclusions he'd come to before. Whether it was his lesser number of Horcruxes or for some other reason, this world's Voldemort really was different from the others Harry had known.

It didn't make helping him feel any less strange.

*

Lord Voldemort stood waiting in the clearing at sunset. They hadn't specified an exact meeting time, but the hour when the light drained from the world seemed most relevant to him.

And then he heard the crack of Apparition, and knew he had judged correctly. He smiled with thin lips as he watched Harry stride towards him across the clearing. And it was striding, despite the child's body he was imprisoned in.

He will not be so imprisoned forever.

Time must pass. For now, Lord Voldemort intended to enjoy the present moment. He nodded and said, "You will teach me how the elements interact with each other in magic? As the fire and stone you showed me interacted?"

"Yes, but more than that." Harry waved the Elder Wand absently, and a pair of roots rose above the ground and Transfigured into two benches of smooth wood. Lord Voldemort sat slowly on the one nearest him. The Transfiguration was a feat he could have matched himself, which made the rioting feelings in his chest as he watched it strange.

Perhaps I simply admire the smoothness of the movements with which he brought the benches into being. Perhaps that is something he will also teach me.

"Elemental magic theory tends to concentrate on how different the elements are from one another, which makes weaving them together difficult. But it doesn't concentrate much on the spaces in between, the places where the elements are already blended."

"I have not heard of such theory. Perhaps you will show me?"

Harry looked at him with those green eyes that Lord Voldemort could watch gleam forever, and then nodded and waved the Elder Wand again. The air in front of him congealed and spun slowly. In seconds, a wheel had taken its place, divided into four large blades like a windmill. Lord Voldemort stared. Even after several moments of study, he could not figure out what the wheel was made of.

"The four elements," Harry said, and snapped the wand out again, although Lord Voldemort had the sneaking suspicion that he could have used wandless power if he wanted to. Different symbols formed on the blades: a long snag of flowing flames, a curling drop of water, a tumble of stones, and a cloud with a face blowing the wind forth. "You can move the elements around and pair them in different ways." The symbols began to jump, so that now fire and water were directly across from each other on the wheel, then earth and fire, then air and fire. "But what about the spaces in between?"