Something Better Than This

Chapter 15: Worse Than Death

Work they did. Harry didn't know if he and his friends were ever explained to the current students, though he knew some of them watched when Godric took him outdoors and insisted on beginning to teach him swordplay. This was especially interesting since Salazar was remaining scrupulously out of sight, and therefore they had no translator.

That meant the instruction in the use of a sword was performed almost entirely via Legilimency. Harry's scar didn't hurt, but he ended up with a splitting headache the first few times anyway. Mostly right behind his eyes, flashing like the sun on a blade.

He staggered back indoors from the third session, nearly blind in the sudden cool shade but utterly grateful, and slipped as soon as possible into a little-used secret passage.

Naturally, someone was using it.

"Harry." Salazar's voice. "I thought you might find me here. How are the lessons going?"

Harry had to blink repeatedly, waiting for his vision to adjust, before peering at the older man in the soft light. He still couldn't reliably speak Parseltongue without looking at someone or something else that could. "I asked Godric whether he really expected me to be able to learn to use a sword well in a few days," he said, "and he said no."

Salazar laughed at that. "What else could he say? It takes years. But he can at least teach you not to use a sword atrociously, and I suppose he plans to settle for that."

"I don't understand why I'm learning it anyway," Harry said. "I mean... I appreciate the lessons. I really do. I reckon it's good Legilimency practice, too -- you notice I asked him and you weren't even there." He rubbed his eyes. "But there's really not that much use for a sword when I get back to when I came from."

"Is there not?" Salazar asked with some interest. "There are certainly situations now where a blade is more efficient than a spell."

Harry blinked. "Well, it's not as if we don't use knives for... for cooking, or on potion ingredients. But nobody really duels with swords anymore."

Salazar's eyebrows went up. "You told me," he said slowly, "that you and Voldemort use brother wands. And that you intend to kill him."

Harry looked down at his feet. "Yes," he said, thinking he would have to repeat it because he would be speaking English, and was startled when the word came out as a dismal hiss.

When he looked up, Salazar's eyebrows had drawn together. "I was not criticizing the decision," the older wizard said mildly. "I may not be happy about the situation, but I acknowledge that from what you've told me, it is necessary."

Harry blew out a long unhappy breath. "I want everybody to be safe from him," he said. "He's not going to stop, and I don't know how we could hold him without his getting loose somehow, and... it's up to me. I'm not exactly sorry. I want to kill him... but I'm not sure I want to be a killer." He looked into Salazar's puzzled face. "You've killed people, haven't you."

A slow nod. "I have killed Muggles who sought to destroy wizards," Salazar said, "and wizards who sought to destroy rivals -- Hogwarts was not popular among the more secretive guilds," he added at Harry's startled expression. "I have killed brigands both magical and not, who attacked me or my companions on the road, and raiders who would have pillaged my home."

"It doesn't bother you."

Salazar eyed him sharply. "It is not a thing to be taken lightly, nor to seek out wantonly, but I fail to understand why it troubles you to think of killing someone who means to destroy you, destroy those you care about, and whom you cannot confine." His mouth turned up at one corner. "Mercy is the privilege of strength. And wizards are hard to control, even for other wizards. What is done with the intractably criminal, in your time?"

"They go to Azkaban," Harry said. "To prison. It used to be guarded by Dementors, but they went over to Voldemort. The worst criminals were sentenced to the Dementor's Kiss, but--" He stopped. It was hard to be sure in the dim light, with his eyes still a little strange from the hot liquid brilliance of sun on a sword, but he thought Salazar had gone rather white.

"I think," Salazar said, "that for myself, I would regard the sword as a mercy."

"So you think it's better to kill someone?"

"Do you think the Dementor's Kiss leaves them alive?"

Harry opened his mouth, then shut it again. Salazar was already walking away and had nearly vanished into the shadows of the passage.

Harry stood where he was for a while before going to clean up. Some of the extravagant plumbing in Hogwarts was older than he would have been led to believe.

He decided, while soaking, that he was not going to pursue the question with Salazar just yet. He had to admit that the condition of someone Kissed by a Dementor wasn't exactly what he'd call living, but it didn't seem dead either. And after the frank discussion of when Salazar considered it necessary to kill people, Harry hadn't exactly been expecting that kind of reaction to the mention of Dementors.

That evening, therefore, he went in search of Godric. There was no Legilimency lesson scheduled, which made it a little harder, but he had a few ideas where to start looking. Being a Gryffindor himself helped. So did remembering that even if he wasn't quite used to the idea, his presence was public knowledge now and he didn't have to stick to secret passages.

The staff room where they'd met once held Helga and Rowena, as deeply involved in discussion as they usually were when he saw them in the Chamber of Secrets. Harry apologized for intruding, though he suspected that even the Latin attempt was too mangled to be intelligible, and backed out. The Headmaster's office lacked its customary gargoyle, and there was no answer when he knocked.

The Head of Gryffindor, then? Knocking on the third door of the evening evoked a gruff "Veni," and Harry pushed the heavy door open. Fire and candlelight played over rough stone walls; the room was warm after the cool halls and a little stuffy with the smell of smoke and beeswax.

Godric stood at a table, poring over a long scroll. He examined Harry's expression for a moment, then tapped the scroll with his wand. It rolled up, and he moved it aside.

Harry stepped up to the other side of the table, fixed his eyes on Godric's, and tried to push out the thoughts that went with what he was about to say. "I have some questions. Do you have some time?"

"This scroll will be with me longer than you will," Godric replied.

Harry smiled a little at that. As he had, Godric was speaking the words as he thought them. Hermione would probably have been concentrating on matching up the meanings to the sounds; Harry just let the voice wash over him and worked on following the ideas presented to him. "Thank you," he said. Now how to bring up the subject... oh. Thinking about it while Godric stared at his mind probably counted. This kind of conversation wasn't much good for careful wording.

"I'd prefer plain speech anyway," Godric said. "But a little more organization wouldn't go amiss."

"I was talking to Salazar about having to kill Voldemort," Harry blurted, "and he asked what wizards in my time did with the intractably criminal. I said they were put in prison guarded by Dementors, or Kissed at the worst...." He winced at Godric's expression. "Are you going to walk off too?"

Godric snorted. "Where would I go? This is my study." A slight shake of his head. "Dementors are appalling things. Despair made to walk, and given a mouth to feed. The Dark Arts embodied, you might say. If this is intended to be a worse punishment than death, it sounds like a success, but I wonder if the price is worth paying."

"The price?"

"The Dark Arts always exact a price. Their deceit is to lead the user to believe that what is lost never mattered."

Harry tilted his head. "So Horcruxes...."

"Are old magic. All sacrifice is. But they are a perversion of it." A thin smile. "In one way, a wizard who has made a Horcrux does acknowledge the value of a soul. But not of a whole one. In his selfishness he mutilates himself."

"But the Dementors," Harry said. "I react really badly to them, but I don't just... walk off if somebody brings them up."

Godric shook his head again. "Their effects are certainly horror enough, even without the Kiss. We have no cure for exposure but time and tenderness. But--"

"What about chocolate?"

A pause. Harry could feel Godric's puzzled leafing through the accompanying images. "I'm not familiar with the substance."

"Oh. It's from South America...." This wasn't conveying much more information. Harry forced a globe into his mind and spun it gently. "I guess you don't have it yet. Never mind. Sorry."

"I'm tempted to try the voyage, but for some reason I doubt I shall. As I was saying, however, I think Salazar may be less troubled by the fate of your criminals than by the fact that consorting with and controlling Dementors, even inflicting them on others, appear to have become acceptable in your time. That these are not treated as magical crimes in themselves." A wry look. "Frankly, I don't blame him. Those who do attempt to command Dementors lend credence to certain Muggle accusations that we consort with devils."

"Why did he say they don't leave the victim alive?"

Godric looked puzzled. "After a Kiss? The soul is gone from the body, isn't it?"

"Well, yes... but the body is alive."

They stared at one another for a moment. Harry had the definite impression that there was a failure of communication.

"The body functions," Godric said slowly. "I am not sure I would call it living. The mind might still be present, but I believe after experiencing the Kiss it must inevitably be in ruins." He frowned. "Perhaps not for this Voldemort of yours, after everything he's done to his soul himself."

"They're working for him, anyway," Harry said.

"I'm not surprised." Godric studied him carefully. Harry felt a bit awkward, as if he had gone to the doctor to be poked and prodded, but he held still. At last Godric said, "You seem ambivalent."

"Sir?"

"You recognize that this Voldemort must die. In part, you want to kill him. But you are not comfortable with the idea." Slowly, "Neither Muggles nor wizards of your time are comfortable with the idea. The wizards... have deceived themselves that by using the Dementors, they do a lesser evil. And keep their hands clean."

Harry shifted uncomfortably. "I know the Dementors are awful. Anyway, they listen to him, not me."

"That's probably better for your soul. Stick to the Patronus."

Harry let out an exasperated breath. "If using Dementors is so bad, won't killing him make me like him? Won't wanting to?"

Godric shook his head. "Are you planning to make a habit of killing wantonly, at a whim and at your convenience?"

"Of course not!"

"Are you planning to kill him for revenge, or because it is necessary?"

Harry grimaced and answered as honestly as he could. "A... little bit of both."

"Only human." Harry felt he must have looked surprised; Godric grinned. "I think you need to be careful, but at the moment you're worrying too much."

Harry sighed. "The Killing Curse is an Unforgivable, you know. Like Cruciatus and Imperius."

"The Killing Curse...."

"You know. Avada Kedavra. Some of the worst Dark Magic. That's how Voldemort killed my parents, and how he tried to kill me." Harry touched his scar. "I don't know how to get rid of him and keep him from going on the way he has been except by killing him, but I thought that was why the spell was bad. Why would it be any worse to kill someone with a spell than with... I don't know... poison." His eyes flicked up to the long weapon currently stored in its scabbard on the wall, easy to lift up and belt on. "Or a sword?"

"Why is it better to get your way by persuasion than deceit?" Godric's eyebrows knit. "As for the spell choice, to the best of my knowledge Avada Kedavra is the incantation for a healing spell, which at once complicates the question and answers it."

"A healing spell?" Harry was shaking his head, almost involuntarily. That made no sense.

"Oh, yes, and one of the most powerful. Not against injuries, but diseases, festerings, or tumors. Occasionally poison. Let the thing be destroyed. It's not easy on caster or patient, but with sufficient will and magical power, it can cure things nothing else will touch."

"But it's--"

"Been perverted, from what you tell me. It's possible that that's what makes it so horrific. To turn a healing spell against its nature would be the same type of act, though not the same degree, as killing a unicorn." He looked off into the distance, in deep thought, before returning his eyes to Harry's. "Or it could simply be that in order to use it, you must teach yourself to think of another person not as an enemy, but as a disease."

Harry stopped to digest that. "Even if that's it, though," he said slowly, "how can you use the same incantation for different spells?"

"Intent matters. How else could you cast nonverbal spells?"

"I think the incantations."

"Accidental magic, then. And while some of the more advanced nonverbal spells do involve too complicated an intend to have a proper incantation, even in simple ones, think -- do you verbalize, even to yourself, every detail of what you want to happen?"

Harry supposed that he did not.

"Besides, I'm certain you must have experienced ambiguous speech before. The sort of lie where one technically speaks the exact truth, or part of it, but intends the listener to understand something wholly different." Godric's mouth quirked. "If you don't want to admit either to using it or to having been deceived, I will merely suggest you can find examples in the words of both lawyers and prophets."

Harry snorted a little at that. "Somehow I don't think I'll be trying it as a healing spell any time soon."

"Fair enough." Godric gave him a measuring look. "Do you intend to use it for its altered purpose?"

Harry let out a breath. "I don't want to. I don't know if I can. But I don't know how else to deal with him. I'm not sure a sword is going to... work out."

"It's possible," Godric said slowly, "that you will not have to. That in the end something else will intervene, that another solution will present itself, even that the damage he has done himself will destroy him. But you have to consider... what you want. And what will really accomplish it." His eyes flicked up. "Salazar is like a brother to me, but he and his students too often fail by seeing what appears expedient, and not the other consequences of their deeds. Guard against that."

"Er," Harry said, "I'm in your House."

"So you are. That doesn't make it any less of a danger." Thoughtfully, "Have you ever looked into Helga's mirror, Harry?"

"What?" Harry was entirely confused now. But then the images in Godric's mind began to look familiar -- a large mirror, with an inscription around its frame.... "Helga Hufflepuff made the Mirror of Erised?" Harry yelped. "But it's dangerous!"

"So?"

"But... I mean... it lures people to forget to go anywhere else, and just end up trapped there dreaming. Doesn't it?"

"Remember, we're talking about Helga, here. She... well, she is quite fond of a few dreamers here and there, and she's certainly not afraid to look up at the stars and think of seizing them herself. But she's never seen any point in merely looking, and not reaching up. She doesn't approve. And most of her students, like her, are not so inclined to sit and look at an illusion in a mirror instead of going and trying to make their desires reality." His eyes narrowed. "Do you want to be adept at a spell that requires you to nurture in yourself the ability to be cruel?"

"I have to, don't I, if I'm going to kill him. And I don't see any other way this is going to end."

"Maybe there isn't. But no. You can give him a merciful death--"

"He's afraid of dying more than anything else in the world."

Godric smiled. "We already established that he's a fool. But you can give him a clean death for the sake of all he would destroy if you let him have his way, and for your own sake let that pay for all he's destroyed before."

With an unexpected surge of bitterness, Harry said, "It's not enough."

"No. But it's all you can take from him. If you are not sated with that much revenge and with the life you win for yourself, then you are venturing into unwontedly dangerous waters. I don't think that is what you want."

"I want my family back." The barest whisper.

"Everyone's family dies," Godric said gently. "Make a new one. There's a girl, isn't there? Look into Helga's mirror, but then go and do what you must. Don't waste your life in dreams... or on regrets. That much, I think, is the same advice you'd get from any of us." Godric paused. "And try to keep up your swordwork."

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