The Proud Man's Contumely

Chapter Thirteen:

Weightless. Numb. Devoid of thought. Harry let himself sink deeper and deeper into the darkness, indifferent to its nature. For a while, he couldn't recall a time before it. He felt fresh, and eternal, and completely without identity.

Then, gradually Harry began to notice he had stopped sinking. Consciousness now cradled him, bore him in the dark like a great, listless hand.

Why do you do this?

The voice was so faint, as if someone whispered to him from a distance. Harry scarcely heard it.

"Wh-what?"

Why do you do this?

the voice repeated, closer now. Harry began to vaguely recall that something important had just happened. He had done something. Something awful.

"I-it was an accident," Harry stammered weakly, unable to hear his own voice clearly and wondering if he had spoken at all. He was still uncertain exactly what he was denying. The voice, or rather, whatever the voice belonged to, seemed much closer now. Harry could feel its presence somehow coat him, like pond scum clings to a stone. It was a loathsome sensation. The voice chuckled cruelly.

Your whole life is an accident,

it jeered. Harry recognized this voice, but couldn't place its owner just then, he could scarcely remember himself. Things have a way of going awry for all of us despite our intentions. So stop whining. I know what happened. I know what you did, and it was no accident. Though perhaps you hadn't expected such an...explosive outcome? But what do I care about an old man's trinkets? That little display of yours quite delighted me, actually. Couldn't you tell?

Memories slowly began to surface. A carpet of shattered glass, the tinkle of raining shards. Dumbledore sweating blood. A shriek cut short by a sound like ripping fabric.

What had he done?

"Who are you?" Harry asked apprehensively.

Come now. We both know you are capable of answering that question on your own. Why don't you try another, hmm? One more pertinent.

Harry felt like arguing that there was no reason he should be expected to answer the question himself. Why else would he have asked? But even as he wondered on it, revulsion washed over him, along with a complete recollection of self and the evening's happenings. It was violent in that it was so sudden and full, like striking the surface of icy waters after a long fall. He remembered everything...And could now place the voice.

"Go to Hell, you heartless bastard!"

Ooh. Anger. How entertaining. Haven't tired of it yet I see. Keep it up. You're becoming exactly what I want you to.

"Oh? And just what is that?"

Why, more like me, of course.

Harry snorted in disgust. "I'm nothing like you. You're a madman."

Exploding a room full of baubles and shredding innocuous portraits, these are the pastimes of sane men I suppose? Stop taking on such righteous airs. We are not so different. If you could do such a thing to Phineas, you're all that much closer to doing the same to a living, breathing person. You realize that don't you?

Cold guilt flooded Harry's gut and threatened to make him ill. He'd gone through too much that night to allow himself to acknowledge the severity of what he'd done just yet. Harry wanted to hide, to escape. He knew he didn't have the strength for this confrontation and longed for the void of forgetfulness he'd so recently been torn from.

"Leave me alone," he mumbled wearily. "Get out of my head."

And just how do you know you aren't in mine? Oh be still,

the voice chided. I'm not here to rape your memories, enticing as the opportunity is. And I assure you it would be only too easy at the moment. Call it a show of good faith. I'm just going to talk to you. No harm in that is there?

"What could you possibly have to say to me that I would care to listen to?" Harry said, growing irritable. He was still too tired to be fearful, though reason told him he should be.

Oh. You'd be surprised.

"I somehow doubt it. And what if I just told you to go screw yourself?" Harry spat.

I do believe you already have,

was the darkly amused reply. Though unfortunately for you, you have little choice. See, you've exhausted all your energy throwing your glorious little tantrum, and so for a while longer at least, I have a captive audience. Resentment coiled in Harry, but he could not even muster the will to bark an insulting reply. Once again, he found himself at the mercy of circumstance.

That's right. So what say you curtail that Gryffindor impertinence and give a listen, as we both know how foolishly self-assured you are already. Your kind seems to think your strength is best measured adversely by your show of manners, or lack thereof. You assume defiance and civility cannot exist simultaneously. But without civility, how do you suppose negotiations are made?

"My kind?" Harry inquired with slight incredulity. "You mean people with any ounce of integrity? I guess you think murder is civil. Or maybe manners just come more easily to cowards. Why should I make any deals with you anyway? Just what could you offer me to make me forget you've ruined my life?"

Oh pish tosh. I'm not trying to make you forget anything. Quite the contrary. Besides, do you think you are the only boy ever to be orphaned? To be raised by those who did not love you? That's simply life, I'm afraid.

My life as well actually, so you'll wring no sympathy from me.

However, speaking of life...well,

lives...that's precisely what I'm offering you.

"What?"

Do try not to be so dense, or this should take all night.

Harry struggled to keep his anger in check. You asked what we were negotiating for, did you not?

"Lives?"

Yes. Though it might be more appropriate to say we're negotiating

with lives. Yours to be specific, and the ones of those you love.

"You've already killed everyone I love," Harry snarled with as much hatred as he could summon.

Oh surely not everyone. So long as you allow yourself to feel, there's always something left to be lost. Haven't I taught you that by now? And with such a passionate heart as yours, I'd imagine there are

several others for me to chose from. The half-breed for instance...take your pick which. Or that mudblood you so shamelessly associate yourself with. Was she very upset by the fate of your friend? Perhaps I should put her out of her misery. You know, a mercy kill, not unlike any compassionate soul might do when they happen upon a wounded bitch.

Before Harry could verbalize his offence, he had a vision of Hermione as she had appeared on the train: corpse-like in the eerie light. Then insult gave way to horror as the image shifted to one of her face as she had held Ron, and her anguished crying rang in Harry's ears. Despair threatened, but before it could prove overwhelming, the vision changed once again. Hermione's agonized expression shifted from one of emotional devastation to one of physical pain, and her cries became shrill and throaty, as if made by one long tortured. Harry gradually came to realize that what he was seeing was no longer a mere memory, and that he now stood in a dungeon-like room of bleak stone. In the floor before him, Hermione writhed, her hoarse, unending screams wrenching at Harry's heart.

"Hermione! No!" Harry screamed, but found himself glued to the spot, unable to reach her to quiet or sooth her. Harry was frantic in his impotence. He stared wildly about the room, hands pressed to his ears as though, should he be unable to hear them, Hermione's screams might cease to spill from her. A flash in the corner, as if of polished wood, caught his eye and he watched as the tip of a sleek, black wand emerged from the darkness borne by a pale hand, almost scaly in appearance, as the figure they belonged to lazily sidled from beneath the cover of shadow.

Lord Voldemort appeared much as he had when last Harry had met him, only his hood was thrown back now, perhaps so Harry could more clearly see the satisfaction on his hideous, inhuman face. He twitched his wand minutely in Hermione's direction so that her screams rose in pitch and volume, but otherwise paid her little attention. His eyes, red and darkly luminous, as though they gained their light by robbing it from the space around them, were locked to Harry's.

Harry tore away from the awful gaze and fell to his knees beside his suffering friend, still unable to reach her. "Stop it!" he roared. Voldemort, to spite the urgency of the cry, only flicked his wand once more, sending Hermione arching off the floor.

"Stop!...Please. I'll do anything. Just...Just STOP!"

Slowly, Voldemort smiled and lowered his wand. Hermione instantly vanished. The space before Harry's crouched form was bare of any trace of her. Harry's heart hammered in his chest and his breath was laboured. His face was wet with tears he was unaware he'd even shed. No longer stuck fast, he crawled forward to swipe at the floor where Hermione had lain. The stones were ice cold. No lingering warmth from the presence of a fevered body. Finally, Harry calmed himself by degrees. It was only an illusion. Not real. Not really his only friend being tortured to death in front of him. Hermione was safe and whole and far from this place.

When his terror subsided sufficiently to make room for it, Harry's absolute loathing for the figure looming over him filled him like liquid so cold it scalds. Without lifting his face, Harry raised a murderous gaze up at Voldemort.

"I dare say, that's gotten your attention."

"You stay away from Hermione," Harry threatened, voice trembling with suppressed fury. "Do you hear me, you twisted fuck? You stay away or I'll-"

"You'll what?" Voldemort sneered, his tight, serpentine nostrils flaring with disgust. He gave a short, quiet laugh. "You have no more power to prevent it than you did the others....Unless, we can strike a bargain." Harry glared up at him but said nothing. "Accept it, Harry. You're no match for me any longer. All your previous 'victories' can be attributed to blind luck and a handicapped opponent. But those times are over. I suggest you not take for granted this one opportunity to escape this game with your life."

He would consider it a game, Harry thought wryly. He closed his eyes, every fibre of his being raged against any semblance of submission to the monster before him. "Just what in hell do you want from me?" he uttered, voice still and insuppressibly defiant.

"Don't be so hasty," Voldemort drawled toyingly. "I believe you have yet to answer the question I put to you. And after all, I asked first."

Question? What bloody question? Harry bit back the curse on his tongue. Voldemort, it appeared, could not have been more delighted by a reply of any kind as he was by the absence of one. He was practically jovial when he asked, "Why do you do this?"

"Do. What?"

"Why, continue to let that dotard bolster the futile hope that you might defeat me?"

"It's not futile," Harry said in a low, confident voice.

"Oh really? With each passing day I grow stronger. Each day my forces multiply. My minions can be found in every nook and cranny of the Wizarding World. I have spies the world over...though more importantly, I have a valuable few very close to home." Voldemort smiled as if he'd just made some marvellous joke at Harry's expense. And Harry tried desperately to banish all thoughts of Professor Snape.

"And just what do you have in your favour?" Voldemort went on, oblivious. Harry attempted to mask his relief with a show of expected unease. "An old fool, long passed his prime, trying to recreate his past glories through an inept band of rag-tag volunteers?" Voldemort chuckled mockingly. "Then there's you of course. Do you really think your patronus will be enough to drive me away? Or perhaps you expect me to cower before your awesome skills of disarmament when next we meet? No. Your hope is futile." Voldemort stowed his wand in his robes as if to punctuate what he considered to be Harry's harmlessness. Harry wondered if he dared check to see if he still bore his own wand, or if it would, in fact, be to any avail to draw it.

"However, I'd personally like to think, considering the handful of times you've narrowly succeeded in eluding my grasp, that perhaps you were a modicum brighter than the blasé masses that Dumbledore so effortlessly steers using their own desperation as reins. The fools are ever willing to swallow whatever line he feeds them so long as it sounds impressive and virtuous and makes them feel secure. But you, so long and so far removed from their world...I really thought you'd have caught on to his games before now."

"You're trying to trick me," Harry said collectedly, finally rising to his feet. "It won't work."

"No," Voldemort insisted lightly as though speaking to a child. "I'm trying to enlighten you, in hopes of our mutual benefit. I've no reason to lie to you any longer, Harry. This is no longer between me and you." Harry eyed him distrustfully, and Voldemort levelled a sombre gaze at him.

"...But Dumbledore, he likes to keep you in the dark, doesn't he? Likes to show you only enough to keep the embers burning," he said in a knowing tone. "Oh I understand his reasoning. Minions are easier to manipulate when they are ignorant. The only problem with that tactic is there's always the threat of backfire. It only takes a single voice of reason in their ear to send those carefully constructed lies crashing down. Disillusionment is too often counterproductive to manipulation...and he is manipulating you, you realize."

"You're a liar," Harry said dismissively, but the unease that shifted his weight on his feet was no longer feigned. "You're the manipulator."

"Am I?" Voldemort replied, raising what passed on his hairless, featureless face as an eyebrow. "Don't tell me you've never thought about it, never questioned the man's intentions." Harry didn't respond.

"Oh my. You really haven't." The fiend grinned, a hideous sight. "How amusing. I hate to break it to you, Harry, but you are little more to him than a weapon against me. You are a tool in his aged hand. And one that is quickly losing its usefulness. You're predictability was once to his advantage. And now it's shifted to mine." Harry scowled at him. "Don't you see what he's doing? What he's always done? He dangles you before the masses and spreads word of your heroics in order to placate them. But he never lets them have you completely. He always keeps you well under his wing...under his control. I wonder what the grasping populous would think if they learned the truth. That their 'saviour' is simply mediocre. That he cannot even control his own 'awesome' powers. What would they think if they learned what really happened at the ministry that night, how you needlessly endangered so many of your fellow students and baited your godfather's death-trap."

"No! That's a lie. It wasn't my fault," Harry bleated.

"Hmm. Tell yourself that if it helps you sleep at night. Though you're probably right. It wasn't entirely your fault. Though I doubt Dumbledore is nearly as upset by his contribution. It truly was a pity. Black was a very valuable card. Imagine now those same drones discovering that you and Dumbledore were so closely associated with a murderous traitor in the Dark Lord's service. Not very becoming of someone meant to vanquish me."

Rending open such a tender wound as Sirius' death left Harry feeling frail and lost. That Voldemort lamented the loss as well forced Harry to abandon his attempt to shift the blame to him. And he had no other readily available scapegoats.

"Understand, Harry," Voldemort continued, looking down at him in some grotesque mockery of gentleness. "I'm not telling you these things simply to wound you. I'm merely attempting to help you see your position more clearly. All your life you've been subject to misfortunes, punishments really, for some unknown crime. Simply being who you are has made you the target of attack, ridicule, abuse, suspicion...unwanted, unwarranted praise or prejudice. Why, Harry? Why carry this cross for the sake of an unappreciative, undeserving public? Who are you fighting for? Do you really want to be a martyr? You wish to die, like your parents, needlessly? In vain?" At the mention of his parents, Harry's resentment nudged itself back to his attention. Damn the bastard's audacity. "Aren't you tired of being a soldier on the front lines of a war you did not begin, cannot end...following directives you had no hand in deciding and only think you comprehend? You seem to enjoy playing Dumbledore's fool."

"Dumbledore isn't using me," Harry objected hotly. "He's helping me. He cares about-"

"Ha. Cares? If that's affection, I praise the day my heart turned cold. What is he helping you to do exactly? Prepare for the next potential suicide mission he devises for you? Open your eyes, Harry. He's training you, yes...to do what he'd rather not. Ever since he got you back in his greedy little hands five years ago, he's been moulding you. Don't you remember what happened then?"

"

I saved the Philosopher's Stone from you," Harry replied with cool satisfaction.

"Tsk. Wrong. Do you think he would have ever allowed the Stone to survive if he thought there was any real chance of it falling into my hands? The timing was also very convenient don't you think? I had lain dormant for years. There had not been a single whisper of my return, no chance of it really. Convenient that the Stone, one of the only things in existence powerful enough to resurrect me, that might tempt me from hiding, just happened to emerge from obscurity in the same year...nay, the very same day...that the 'Great Harry Potter' made his entrée back into the Wizarding World. I didn't fully appreciate it at the time, but I've had plenty of opportunity to reflect, now haven't I?" Voldemort stepped toward Harry and bent slightly to look him meaningfully in the eye. "He was showing you to me with that little stunt. And he was testing you."

Harry squinted sceptically at the villain and scoffed lightly, but an icy tremor of doubt played up his spine. "You're full of shite." Voldemort laughed at that, the same cruel, mirthless laughter Harry always heard whenever a dementor approached. It made Harry shudder.

"Dumbledore's 'protections' surrounding the Stone were far too elementary to be aimed at me. The challenges were set in place for your benefit. And I imagine, considering your limited experience, that your performance was quite heartening, despite that you were aided by others. How tickled he must have been. He set bait for one soldier and snared three."

Despite himself, Harry allowed himself to wonder about Dumbledore's lenience that year. He wondered about the ease with which he'd found the Mirror of Erised, seemingly by accident, while wearing the invisibility cloak given him by the Headmaster, as if it were a kind of endorsed permission slip for Harry to misbehave. Harry wondered why, if the Mirror was as treacherous as Dumbledore made it out to be, it hadn't been better hidden, or why he'd been allowed to visit it several times. Harry looked up at Voldemort, trying to rekindle the revulsion for him he'd felt only moments ago, yet found himself, instead, waiting anxiously for him to continue.

Voldemort smiled and his eyes danced as he looked at Harry now, as if he could practically see the thoughts racing through the young man's head. "And when you proved yourself somewhat capable," he went on, beginning to pace leisurely back and forth in front of Harry, never breaking eye contact, "the next year he had you do a bit of housecleaning for him. He could not find the Chamber of Secrets on his own. Merlin knows how many years he'd searched for it in vain. So he let you find it for him. I wonder that he did not somewhat resent you for that, succeeding where he, the Great Albus Dumbledore, had failed...a bitter sting he'd felt once before. Perhaps that's why he let you exterminate it for him as well. He gave you the tools to do so, naturally. Much like one supplies a maid with a feather duster. But where was he when you faced certain death down in the cold, wet darkness? Keeping his feet dry, that's where. In more ways than one."

Harry had to repeatedly remind himself that Voldemort was a liar. Harry knew that he was only trying to mislead him, that he would say anything. But Harry had a hard time concentrating on this inner voice. It was overpowered by the one that flowed like blood-soaked silk from the mouth of the man before him.

"He couldn't come," Harry argued, more to himself than to Voldemort. "He'd been suspended. He couldn't-"

"Do you really think a sheet of parchment could keep Albus Dumbledore from any place he truly desired to be? In case you haven't noticed, much like you and I, he has never been one to let frivolous things like rules stand in his way...at least, not when they do not already suit his purposes. Don't be so naive, Harry. It doesn't become you."

"Stop using my name like we're friends or something," Harry blurted peevishly, unsure why it suddenly so agitated him. "I don't like you to use it. It..." It reminds me too much of talking to Dumbledore.

Voldemort gave Harry an indulgent, condescending chuckle. "Oh very well. What should I call you then? Potter? But Potter will always be your father to me. And I don't think of you as your father." Harry raised a timid look up at him, almost ashamed of his own childishness in the matter. "You remind me of him, of course. But you are not nearly hypocritical enough. Neither do you have his penchant for indifferent cruelty. Prejudice isn't to be reviled only when it doesn't suit one's personal tastes. It's almost a shame Dumbledore got to him before I did." Harry met Voldemort's eye steadily, upset but unsure how much offence he could take at the remarks. After all, Harry knew so little about his father, except what he'd seen in photos, and the Mirror...and what he'd witnessed in the pensieve.

"So. Harry. Are you considering what I'm telling you? Dumbledore would have let you die in the Chamber, along with that Muggle-lover's daughter. Just as he would have allowed you and your friends to kill yourselves on that obstacle course he'd devised for you your first year at school."

"You're wrong," Harry said, but the remark lacked conviction.

"All acceptable sacrifices in his grand design. And there have been so many potential sacrifices. Think back to that farce almost two years ago. The Tri-Wizard tournament, 'a positive step toward healthy internationally relations', an attempt to unify the world against me.

"How does it feel to be bait, Harry?" Voldemort asked in a near whisper, his pacing now a circling, not unlike that of a wistful vulture. A voice from Harry's memory sounded in his ears.

A useful distraction. Nothing more.

"Do you think that, had Barty not beaten him to it, Dumbledore would not have entered your name into the Goblet himself? If he hadn't wanted you to compete, he'd have found ways to remove you. Laws don't exist for men like him. You, your friends, the other champions...all expendable, all sacrifices for the sake of reaching me. He allowed you to participate in those games, those widely publicized games, in order to lure me in."

"No," Harry said quietly, eyes falling closed.

"Though, he underestimated me. His trap backfired. All these years he's had you on display, trying to draw me within striking distance. But I humbled him with that stroke, made him rethink his strategy. Afterwards he tucked you away, hid you, as he should have all along if he had cared at all for your safety. He's not the omniscient you think him to be. He's learning as we go, just as you are, just as I am. We're learning from each other...and never so much so as we did that night a few months ago. That night you learned the value of doubt. I learned you no longer merited my concern. And he...he learned that a certain gangly, ungrateful teenager is quickly becoming more trouble than he is worth."

"No. You're lying. I can't trust you," Harry whined, desperate to believe it.

"Dumbledore is no better than I am, Harry. Actually, I'd say he's worse. He's the coward, hiding behind a mask of righteousness. Where as I have never made any excuses for what I am. He's just as ruthless as I am, though his real crime is, perhaps not murder, but apathy. He allowed you and that boy to be in the tournament, knowing full well the danger. Counting on it. And so essentially, he allowed that boy to die in front of you."

"No."

"He allowed Sirius Black to fly from his safe haven and to his death."

"No."

"And he practically killed your parents himself."

"Enough!"

"Ask your Potions Master the truth about that one."

Harry squeezed his eyes shut and brought his palms to his temples, trying to push out Voldemort's voice and the thoughts it elicited...trying to stave off the crushing pain of suspected betrayal. "You're lying. You are false. You...You're just playing with my head," Harry keened.

"Oh. A game is being played here, Harry," came the slippery voice right at Harry's ear. "But you aren't a competitor any longer." Harry opened his eyes and looked at Voldemort...confused, aching, searching the repulsive visage so close to his own. The cold fire in Voldemort's red eyes flared and Harry stumbled back a small step.

"The game being played has nothing to do with right and wrong. It is a game for power, played by the powerful, and played with the lives of the weak...That would be you. You have always only been a pawn. This battle is between Dumbledore and myself."

"What do you want from me? Why am I here?!" Harry bellowed, half mad with the ambivalence that raged in him.

"I only want to help you."

"Bullshit!" Harry spat. "I suppose you've forgotten that you were the one who involved me in this. You killed my parents. You ask who I'm fighting for? All I've ever fought for is my life. Because you insist on threatening it!"

"And I'm telling you I might be persuaded to threaten it no longer!" Voldemort hissed, apparently running out of patience with Harry. His voice was sinister and threatening in itself. It chilled Harry to the bone.

When Harry appeared sufficiently submissive, quieted without cowering, Voldemort continued , somewhat calmer but no longer making any attempt at benevolence.

"I have a proposition for you. I want you to stop being Dumbledore's lackey."

"And what? Join you? Go to Hell," Harry said shakily.

"It is impolite to interrupt," Voldemort said tersely, drawing closer to loom over Harry. "I want nothing to do with you any longer. Which is why we're here."

"B-but what about the prophecy?"

"It no longer concerns me. I realize now that my belief in it, and effort to nullify it, was precisely what lead to it's partial fulfilment. An annoying trait of prophecies, they usually require some faith in them in order to come to fructuation, as though they feed off it. I'll not make that mistake again." It was only then that Harry remembered that Voldemort had never heard the end of the prophesy, neither can live... Otherwise he had a feeling he wouldn't take the chance of leaving him alive, belief or no. He quickly pushed the thought from his mind.

"No. I no longer seek to kill you. I would not give Dumbledore that advantage. It's true what I told you. You've become more trouble to the old man than you are worth. The threat to your life now comes from him, not me. He'd be rid of you, but will not do the deed himself. It would be so much better for him if I did that for him. Yet another tragedy he could sing about to the public, something he could use to rile them against me. But we won't let that happen, will we Harry? We mustn't be his puppets."

Even if any of this was true, Harry had no control over any of it. He had never had.

"What do you expect me to do about all of this?" he asked, confused, tired.

"Nothing."

Harry blinked. "What?"

"Just because I do not thirst for your blood does not automatically remove you from this equation. Dumbledore will, as always, try to shepherd you into confrontation with me. Do not let him. Behave, for once in your life. Do what you should have done all your life and look on everything through a lens of doubt and scrutiny. Do not put me in a situation where I have no choice but to end you." Harry was beginning to understand. "I cannot prevent my Death Eaters from protecting themselves, or me. And as I've said, their ignorance is what makes them malleable. I could never explain to them the merits of keeping you alive at any cost. So I say to you: Be a good, inactive little boy and do not meddle in matters you do not understand. And in return, I promise there will be no Dark Marks floating over the houses of you and yours, provided you all stay within them and mind your own business...Do we have a bargain?"

"You want me...to do nothing."

"I always knew you were a sharp one," Voldemort said drolly.

"And if I do...nothing...you won't come after me, or the Weasleys, or the Grangers."

"That is the proposition."

"But others. You'll kill others."

"You must break eggs, my dear boy, as the saying goes."

Harry stared mutely at Voldemort. This was it. This was the answer to all his prayers, his one chance at freedom. This was his chance to turn his back on it all and be rid of the expectations and fears that haunted his life.

But as often as he'd dreamed of this, now that it was within reach, he didn't know if he could accept it. Regardless of Dumbledore's aims, Dumbledore didn't torture and kill people. Dumbledore wasn't the tyrant Voldemort was. Harry could imagine the world under Voldemort's reign. Should he win this war, any semblance of peace or democracy would be obliterated. Finally, Harry began to truly understand what freedom meant. It was not the absence of responsibility. Freedom was the willing acceptance of it, for its own sake, for the sake have having the ability to chose one way or the other. The helplessness Harry so detested would soon be absolute should he buckle now. And he slowly realized that he'd never truly been helpless, only indulgent of the delusions of weaker men.

Still, it was hard, so hard to refuse this. It was so difficult to convince himself his strength had not, in fact, already been spent.

"I...I can't," he finally forced from his lips, closing his eyes.

"Nonsense. Of course you can. It's so simple, even someone of your ineptitude can master it."

"No. I mean I won't. I won't be your puppet either. I won't do anything to help you."

Harry could practically feel Voldemort's momentary rage emanating from him. He seemed to swell, and the walls of the room shook as though they would fall. Harry started, but tried not to cower. However the mood was short-lived.

"It doesn't matter really," Voldemort said finally, sneering smugly. "I'll win in the end. This was simply an attempt to avoid some annoyance on my part. Either you take what I offer...or I take everything from you. You're changing Harry. I see it in you. I see myself in you. And I'll stoke those fires until they burn down to ash, until your heart's as cold as mine. You revile me for a murderer. But I tell you, I will see your hands bloody before this is over. And I will gain more satisfaction from it than you could possibly know." Harry glared at Voldemort, hating him, hating the ring of prophecy in his words. "Either way, I shall win. I don't need your spoken acquiescence right now. We have some time...Think on it. But don't think too long."

As Harry glowered at him, Voldemort began to fade. The stone walls around them broke apart and dissolved. Harry was drifting once again in darkness, and Voldemort's soft laughter echoed through the void.

Think on it, Harry...Think on it.