An Ancient Magic (the White Pieces Remix)

They tell me I have a visitor.

"Who?" I ask, and I keep my composure when the nurse answers, "Harry Potter."

"Why is he here?"

"I don't know. Do you wish for him to visit? We can send him away otherwise."

I think on this for a moment. It's been a long time since I've had a visitor. The staff here in the prison ward of St. Mungo's are finicky about who they let in to visit. Usually, I don't even find out someone's come to visit until after they've been sent home. Accused Death Eaters, even those who have served their sentences, are barred from visiting me. A preemptive strike, perhaps, but one, I suppose, that makes sense. Only one or two have made the attempt, though. Loyalty is thin these days.

"No. Tell him he is welcome."

The hard soles of the warden's shoes click over the wood floor of the hallway as he exits. I am barred from wearing shoes, as are all the other inmates of the prison ward. More humiliating than what I don't wear, though, is what I do wear: A glamour, a cloak of the person I used to look like. It's not a bad bit of magic, per se, but I resent having to wear it. The mediwizard who comes in to cast it tells me it's because I sustained so much magical damage over the years that it may be traumatic for me to see myself, but I know it's for them, for the staff that can't bear to look at Lord Voldemort's face any more than they can bear to speak his name. At least they let me keep my eyes. The glamour for that is probably far too complicated for anyone on this hospital staff.

They did not allow me a mirror until the glamour took effect. It is cast every week like clockwork, ten o'clock on Monday mornings. I would rather live without the glamour than live with its consequence. The moment I am touched, it dissolves. It won't disappear, but the person touching me will know it's nothing more than a veneer of normalcy.

The hinge on the door to my cell -- they can call it a room all they like, but it is still a cell, with the potential to be locked and barred -- creak when Harry enters.

"Here," the guard says to him. "Just tap the pad next to the main door with your wand or your wand hand when you want to leave."

His wand? Interesting. It is my understanding that all wands of visitors to the prison ward are kept in custody until the visitor leaves. Perhaps I've heard wrong. It would be too presumptuous of me to think that I could be so lucky as to have a visitor who was allowed to keep his wand. Or perhaps not. Potter's reputation precedes him. It's possible that he has some kind of special dispensation that allows him to keep his wand when he visits me. I suppose I will find out.

He studies me for a moment when he first sees me. I can tell he's trying not to stare, but he doesn't succeed. The glamour confuses him. Good. His momentary confusion allows me to see what the nurse was talking about : He wears a harness on his left wrist that looks like dragon hide, and probably is. His wand rests in the harness at just the right place so he could grab it in an emergency. No doubt it's held there by magic, a very strong magic.

The strongest magics are the ones that are the most thrilling to break.

I try to smile at him, but my heart isn't in it. I want to know why he is here. "Come in," I say. But instead of interrogating him, because now is not the time, I ask, "Would you like to play a game of chess?"

The chess set is quite beautiful, simple yet elegant, carved from black and white marble. I have owned it since my days at Hogwarts, and occasionally the doctor who comes to see me on Wednesdays, the one who talks but never touches me, the one I don't trust because he uses a Quick-Quotes Quill, joins me in a game. He never wins, and I doubt Harry will, either.

Harry sits down, never taking his eyes off my face.

"It's an illusion, you know," I tell him. "To make me feel better." I can't help but sneer at the last two words. It's to make the St. Mungo's staff feel better, to make Harry feel better -- anyone but me.

"I know," he replies.

"But it won't hold up if anyone touches me."

"I know."

I purposely choose to play white, and even more purposely do not so much as pretend to show graciousness by allowing Harry even the choice of a choice of pieces. Instead, I turn the long wooden storage box along the side of the board so the black pieces are closest to him. He arranges them meticulously, pawns first from left to right, then rook to rook, queen's side to king's. I wouldn't have expected such attention to detail from him. There could be many reasons for it, and if my estimate of him is in any way correct, I will find out what they are sooner rather than later.

Pawn to King-four.

The game is over in a matter of minutes. Harry made all the right moves in response to mine, but he lacks the ability to see the web of possibilities that are spun from every move in chess.

"Another game?" he asks.

Normally I would not continue to fight such a weak opponent, however, he seems to know exactly what he wants. I agree to a second game but do not offer him the white pieces.

He loses again and exhales deeply at the end of the game. I offer him a drink, pumpkin juice, and he drinks it in the same thoughtful silence as he played.

"D'you...fancy another game?"

I can't help but smile. "Masochist."

He doesn't say anything, but I know he agrees.

The next time he comes to visit, I have the same warning of his arrival, but no one asks me if I'd rather he be sent home. Perhaps they assume that since I consented to his company once, I will always do so.

For the time being, I do.

The well-meaning but foolish nurse who serves tea in the day room down the hall allows me to borrow a tea tray for this visit, and she fills the teapot and arranges biscuits on a plate. She leaves just before Harry enters, and when I appear from around the corner bearing the tray, I see him smile almost imperceptibly.

As he eats and drinks, I watch him look around the room. The room itself is at best unremarkable, at worst bleak and hopeless. White walls. Metal-frame bed with a plain green blanket that is functional if not attractive. A plastic table, as prison ward inmates are not allowed metal furniture other than the bed, which is bolted to the floor, and two collapsible chairs. I can feel hope leaving Harry as he looks around the windowless room, and a flash of horror as he studies my chess set. I know what he sees. Even without my wand I can still perform a good bit of magic, enough to feed him an image of the chess set splashed with blood, an image from the end of the war. I could, if I needed to, sustain that image at the front of his mind for minutes, maybe even half an hour, but those few seconds are all he needs for now.

I allow him to break the image and he looks into my eyes. His fear is apparent in his face, lips slack, eyes wide. When I look down, he breathes in relief. It is a good sign; I have not lost the ability to control.

"How did they get you to come here?" I ask.

"I guess it started with the end of the war," he replies. "I don't know if they allow you a paper in here, but...there was a lot in there. Anyway, Hermione got the idea that I could, er, rehabilitate you."

He has the good manners to blush when he says this.

"But that's why she's doing this for me," I respond. "Why are you doing it?"

"I don't know," he says. I get the feeling that he answers many questions that way. "Because Hermione asked me to."

"A Gryffindor to the end." I almost laugh. He doesn't respond, and I ask, "Chess?" but I do not offer him the choice of the white pieces.

~~~~~

His visits are regular now. We have a routine. He talks, and I listen. I listen much more closely than he probably thinks I do, and slowly the ideas come together in my mind: His wand, the charmed harness that holds it in place, his freedom, and the idea that since he was a year old he has carried a part of me within him. Since he was fourteen I have also carried a part of him. All the elements for my new life are there, but the catalyst is not ready yet.

This visit, I have already set up the tea tray, but I am offering cocoa this time rather than tea. When I smile at him, he smiles back. He sits down to his drink, and I hold out a small bottle of Bailey's Irish Cream that the nurse will never notice is missing from the cabinet in the tearoom that is only opened on Christmas.

His good manners make him hold his hand over his cup, refusing the liquor, but I stop him. "You don't have to be a hero here, Harry. You don't have to be perfect. Look who you're talking to."

These last words are what he needed to hear, an affirmation of the strange bond we share. He takes his hand away and nods, and I pour the liquor into his cocoa.

"How are they treating you here?"

"No complaints," I reply. "I have everything I could ever need...except freedom. And magic." I do have some of the latter, of course, but he must be the last person to ever realize that. I look at the harness on his wrist, then back to his face.

"But you're still alive."

"That I am." For what "alive" is worth these days.

I can feel his silence, contemplative. I cannot read his mind, of course, but I know he is focused on the glamour again, possibly trying to reconcile what he sees with what he knows of me now. Or what I let him know of me.

"Tom?"

Bold of him. His testing of my name takes me by surprise, and he knows it, can see it in the way I involuntarily tense my shoulders. I should be more careful with what I express around him. "Could you pass the biscuits?" he asks. "They're a bit far."

He would use my birth name to ask something so banal. I relax and pass him the plate. And now that I think on it, he has opened my door, the one that will eventually allow me to get what I want from him. He is the one that has initiated this familiarity, but I am not the one who needs the environment of comfort and trust. He is.

It is his own fault that he allows me to exploit his weaknesses.

"This is a good thing you're doing, you know, Harry. Truly living up to your hero status."

"I thought you said I didn't have to be a hero." His confusion is palpable. He is still so young. So much to learn.

"You don't have to be. But always, in some way, you will be." Just as I would always be the one who brought him to heroism. "There are certain stains that stay with us. Heroism is one of them."

Pausing for a moment, he nods. I see him take a breath to say something, but he lets it out. I let him sit in silence and sip his cocoa, and when he finishes I suggest a game of chess.

I do not offer him the choice of the white pieces.

~~~~~

Months pass, and many of his visits are repeats of themselves. He asks intrusive questions and I answer them as easily as I evade his moves on the chessboard. Still, as with any art practiced well on a regular basis, his chess game is improving.

"You're getting better," I tell him.

"Might actually beat you one of these days."

"Perhaps. Or perhaps I will pull something new, and you'll be just as behind as before." He may be Harry Potter, hero to the rest of the world, but here he is a young man unsure of himself who plays a mediocre game of chess.

"Well. You thought that before, didn't you?"

The war. Yes. I pause. "Yes. But bravery gets you nowhere in chess."

"No, I suppose not."

I can tell that my reticence is bothering him. That is his problem, not mine. I motion a rook forward and he turns his concentration back to the game, pressing his lips together. He isn't paying attention to the game, but to me. He is losing control of the center of the board.

"Can I ask you something?" he says.

"You just did." My patience for him has grown threadbare over the months of monotony, and I have thought more than once about refusing his visits due to his inane questions.

"Why did you choose the things you did as 'desirable' in a wizard?"

His need to know about the war is a thirst, one I can never quite slake. I suppose it's only natural, though, to want to know a side of something that changed the wizarding world. "Well, purebloods should be fairly obvious."

"You're not a pureblood."

This is not the first time I have been challenged with this fact. "But I did everything to make sure that no one like me would ever occur again. And the other things...." Are really none of his damn business, but if he refuses to fetter his questions, then I shall not fetter my answers. "I'm assuming you're referring to my intolerance of homosexuals?"

I am right. His cheeks turn pink.

"Homosexuality does nothing for the wizarding community," I continue. "It is not, in and of itself, an undesirable trait, but engaging in it exclusively means fewer children." He has the chance to call my hypocrisy on this, as I never married nor sired a child, but he is smart enough to remain silent. His reward is my hand on his. "So, as long as one produces children and provides for them, what one does with one's body is one's own business, is it not?"

"Yes, I suppose." He says this to our hands, rather than to my face.

"Good." I take my hand back slowly, allowing my fingers to linger on the delicate skin on the back of his hand, and smile. "That question was a bit personal, though, Harry."

"I know. Sorry."

"No need to apologize. You've given me something to...look forward to each week." I catch his eye across the chessboard.

"It's not a problem," he replies, and quickly looks back to our game. Which he is losing.

~~~~~

When he comes to visit again, he is visibly disturbed. I wonder for a moment if he had a fight with his little Mudblood friend. It wouldn't surprise me. All the better for my ultimatum, I suppose.

I close the door behind him when he enters, and he sits down. I pour more liquor than usual into his cocoa and think absently that I will need to figure out sometime before Christmas what to do about the now obviously diminished supply. I have placed our chairs closer together than usual, which is disadvantageous for a game of chess, but I doubt we'll be playing today.

"How is your life going, Harry?"

He raises an eyebrow before answering. "Okay, I suppose," he says. "I still see a lot of Hermione, but Ron's wrapped up at the Ministry most of the time, trying to clear out...uh, you know. And everybody still expects me to show up at all these big events, just because I'm their pet hero."

"They don't appreciate you," I say as I watch him sip his drink. "Look what you've done for me, not because you're a hero, but because you're Harry."

With a smile, he says, "It's been my pleasure."

He doesn't know the half of it. "It could be more of a pleasure."

Disbelief twists his face. He knows what I've said in the past regarding homosexuals. Of course, whether he's listened to it is quite another question. He should not be so incredulous, if he's paid half a mind to what I've said.

"I mean it, Harry. You're a very attractive young man." I am generally not one to flatter, not so observably, but Harry does not seem like the type who would notice otherwise. And if I didn't need him to regain my freedom, my magic, my life, I would wait for him to come to me. Instead, I reach to trace my finger along his jaw. I had forgotten what it was like to touch someone so...alive. For a split second I can hear the rush of his blood, like the ocean, all the tiny cells carrying oxygen to his extremities. He does not reach to push my hand away, though I know I must feel cold to him. I feel goosebumps form under my fingers.

"If this is what you really want...," he says, his voice taut with uncertainty.

"It is."

"Okay."

If I wanted to, I could knock him flat on his back, but a gentle touch is always the most powerful. I know as I kiss him that I feel cold to him, but his mind will fill in the warmth. He parts his lips, but not without resistance, as I reach into his mouth with my tongue. As I break from him, he takes my wrist and cannot stop a gasp as he looks down to see his fingers embedded in the glamour, my façade an ether around him, like a ghost.

"Are you all right, Harry?" I ask. I feign concern. What I am feeling...there is no other word but triumph.

"Y--yes, fine," he replies.

I kiss him again, and he allows me to open the front of his robes. He must know that I will push him as far as he can go, and then a little further. Underneath his robes he wears a white cotton oxford shirt. I am not in a mood to fiddle with seven buttons, so I reach for his belt.

Reaching through layer after layer of his clothing is like traveling to the core of the earth, warmer as I get closer to the center. It only takes him a moment to come, and he falls back into his chair panting, beads of sweat on his upper lip. He doesn't think to reach for his wand to clean himself, not that I am surprised. I clean both of us with a damp washcloth knowing the water is probably a little colder than he would like.

"Oh, I'm sorry. You're still..."

"It's all right." Seeing him so weakened, knowing he went to it willingly, is more reward than any orgasm could be. "Another time. Perhaps...you could bring some lubricant next time."

I suppose we'll need it, but knowing that I will occupy his thoughts until his visit is more important.

I almost offer him a game of chess. I've half a mind to let him play white.

~~~~~

On his next visit, I close the door behind him and pull him to me for a kiss. I have missed his warmth, his life force. With my tongue in his mouth I unbutton his shirt and shove it off his shoulders. It catches at his wrists, and I see I've forgotten his cufflinks. He pulls his head back and raises his hands, working at the tiny screw mechanisms himself.

"You're wearing a lot of clothing," I whisper as he unhooks one cufflink and more slowly than one would think he'd allow, puts the pieces back together.

"More fun to undress that way," he says with a smile. The crisp fabric of his shirt rustles as it falls to the floor. We join in another kiss. I allow him to pull the hem of my shirt from the waist of my trousers, and to hold my wrists over my head as he removes the shirt.

I am always careful in what I allow him to do, but he does not know this, which is the way it should be.

Once again, I muse as I kiss and nip at his stomach, Harry Potter could be my downfall. If I am not judicious I could lose myself to his body. He reaches for my hair, forgetting it isn't real, and instead rests his hands on my head. More than his kisses, his hands on my head send heat through me.

He stumbles when he has to remove his shoes. Shoes gone, I remove his trousers and underwear. The look on his face is surprise clouded by bliss. I do not think he realizes for several moments what I am doing to him.

"Is this all right?" I ask, pulling back and looking up into his face.

"God, yes." He closes his eyes, which I do not appreciate, but the fact that I have taken him this far towards my goal keeps me from saying anything. Moments later, he says, "Stop, or I'll never make it long enough to --" The plea to stop makes me only want to try something else, to pleasure him even faster. "No, really, stop or I'm going to come," he threatens.

This is my territory. I am the one who threatens here.

I look up at him, acknowledging that I have heard him, but I simply smile and continue what I was doing. I can sense more of him than he thinks I can. He is only minutes from coming, if that.

Harry holds my head and where I would tell anyone else to put their hands somewhere else, I allow him to stay until he comes.

The beginning of his end is complete.

"How was that?" I ask.

"Bloody hell," he murmurs, his knees weakening beneath him.

"I take it that's good?"

"Yes, of course."

Something seems to snap in his mind. He turns toward his robe and rifles through it, holding up a small jar. "I guess this won't do much good, will it?"

"Well, we could still use it." For all his heroism, he isn't always so bright.

"But I'm...oh." He looks away from me as he blushes. "Oh. I don't know, Tom."

"I would like some reciprocation this time, and I'm not sure you're in much shape for anything that requires much concentration." I hate having to spell it out for him, but he's not going to give me what I need otherwise. On the other hand, there is the idea that I've debauched him to the point where he will allow me to do whatever I want, and freedom is closer than I think should that be the case. "If I'm the one on top, I can do all the work."

"All right, then."

I take the jar and inspect the contents. Severus made this. I know his signature scent, like Earl Grey tea and leather. He swore to me it was to cover up the less pleasant scent of the finished product. I think he even thought I believed him.

"Well, are you going to do it or not?" Harry asks after a minute.

"I suppose so." After my escape, I know I will look back on this moment and laugh. Harry Potter survived a war only to be undone by his most primal wanting. I lead him to the bed.

It has been a long time for me, of course, and possibly but not probably even longer for him, but he begs for it even though he is in pain. I take my time, assimilating myself to his shape, his needs, and I whisper, "I always said you were a masochist."

This seems to inspire him. He cannot stop, will not refuse me, and in his lust he has given me the chance at life.

"Thank you," I say breathlessly when I come.

Harry merely nods.

~~~~~

When he wakes a month later, he smiles.

"Accio," I say, bringing his levitating body to me.

His wand is an odd fit in my hand, but it works, and it works better than any other wizard's wand would. I can still feel that important connection to the wand's core. That is why no one but Harry could have given me what he did. The wand, I can tell, is holly. A plant closely associated with life and rebirth seems appropriate here. Maybe this was meant to be my wand, after all.

Something fires in his mind and he sits up in midair. He turns his wrist the way anyone else would do to look at his watch. The dragon hide sheath, charmed to protect his wand, is empty.

For being such a complex piece of magic, it was remarkably easy to break.

"Morning," I say.

"Why did you -- how --"

"This?" I spin his wand in my fingers. "What's the description of this spell, Harry? A person has to be closer to you than your own skin to remove this?"

He blinks. I wait for the realization to overtake him, and when it does, I switch to speaking Parseltongue. It's not that I believe that anyone from St. Mungo's is listening, not now, not after I've been here so long with perfect behavior. No, I want him, for once, to listen.

"Let me tell you a story, Harry. There was once a little boy. His name was Tom. He hated the name. He went to a magic school and learned to do magic, and with the magic he erased Tom and built exactly what he'd always wanted. And then along came another little boy who took it all away, just by surviving. And the boy who used to be Tom salvaged it anyway, rebuilt what he'd lost, but the little boy showed up again and took it all away again. Then they put the boy who used to be Tom into a little room and told him if he played nice they might let him out sometime. But the second little boy came and tried to be nice, and the first boy thought that he might be able to use him, since after all the second little boy had magic only a fuck away, and the little room was only guarded against big magics--not hovering charms, or summoning charms. So he plotted his revenge, and one day he managed it, and he escaped the little room to go reclaim what was his. And he wouldn't let the other boy stop him a third time, so he killed him--and the second boy didn't protest, because he thought that the boy he called Tom really loved him, and he waited until it was too late."

There's something so...Muggle about having to use a knife instead of Harry's wand, but I want him to see, to feel everything. I pull the knife from behind my back and it glints in the candlelight from the wall sconces. "The nurses down the hall are always so obliging," I say, "just happening to show me where they keep everything, because they think I'd like to help serve tea."

"Wouldn't you?" Harry asks faintly.

"No, of course not. But certain things do have their uses."

"Wh--what are you going to do?"

I take his wrist. "Nothing, Harry. Nothing at all."

My motions are swift. One cut on his right arm, following the vein that extends from his elbow to his wrist, and one on his left, where the Dark Mark would be. He still has the scar from where Wormtail cut him the night I returned. Suspended in place, he cannot move away from me as I bleed him.

Staying to watch him die would almost be too satisfying, but the temptation...the temptation is strong. It's been a long time since I was tempted to anything like that. But I don't need to stay, and I won't.

"Goodbye, Harry, and thank you ever so much. Finite Incantatem."

The glamour falls as I leave the room.

I hear him as he dies, his moan of, "Tom," a plea almost more desperate than his plea for me to fuck him. I can feel him, too, a chill in my own blood as his drains from his body and pools around him. He is more a part of me than I want him to be, but I have no choice in that matter.

The spell, this ancient magic of giving yourself to another, works both ways.