Chapter 9: Cognizance
Harry woke up to a high pitched squeal and tight arms around his throat. He flailed, hands rising to pry at the bony wrists crushing his neck.
"Oh I love it! It's adorable!" It was a woman's voice, an excited high-pitch. Harry was squeezed and turned, dragged this way and that in an odd parody of an embrace.
"It's not a puppy," someone outside Harry's field of vision grunted, a deeper voice this time, definitely a man's.
At once, the hands let go and Harry dropped onto the wooden floor under him. He coughed, hands rising to rub his bruised throat as he hacked loudly.
Two dainty-looking hands with black nails came into view, resting just a foot away. Harry could see them, his eyes hidden by his fringe of hair.
"Hello?" The woman's voice chirped. She dropped down, lowering until a manic woman's face swam into view, locking eyes with Harry's own eyes. "Hello!"
Harry scrambled back. The woman shifted into a kneel before him and cackled with laughter at his reaction. Her eyes alit at once with amusement at his instinctive fear.
She was tall and thin, with long, thick, and wild black hair, casting a strong contrast to her pale face. Her cheeks and jaw were sculpted with an almost aristocratic beauty Harry almost recognized. She had heavy-lidded dark eyes, giving Harry the impression that she was looking down on something. At the same time, those dark grey eyes glittered gleefully and Harry wasn't entirely sure he wanted to know what she found so funny.
"Who-" Harry croaked, his voice hoarse.
The woman's mouth pursed in concern and, with upsetting speed, she snatched up her wand from a hidden sheath and jabbed it in Harry's direction. "Episkey!"
It felt almost like his neck and throat was filled with cotton. Harry coughed, trying to dislodge the feeling of suffocating.
Then at once, it vanished.
"Better?" The woman cooed, fluttering her long eyelashes and sliding her wand back up her sleeve. She grinned, turning to look up at the two men who were standing by the door. Harry recognised them from the orphanage.
The one on the left, the shorter and thicker of the two, had long hair and a neatly trimmed beard. His face was square, set in a resting scowl as he watched Harry carefully. His eyes glittered maliciously and he gave Harry an uneasy feeling, even though he wasn't doing anything. He reached into his coat and very carefully pulled out a long, dark rope-
"Lutain!" Harry blurted, nearly lunging for the limp figure of his familiar and only hesitating when he saw the woman looking at him curiously.
"Is that the wittle snakey?" She asked the man in a childish voice, blinking and observing Lutain's glossy dark scales.
"Let him go," Harry said quietly, while carefully considering just how hard it would be to set the room around them ablaze.
"Careful," the man warned, setting the snake down on the floor. Lutain was terribly motionless and for a moment, Harry remembered the mother snake and what David had done to her.
"It's dangerous. Killed a boy almost faster than the Lord's," his partner added. He was the taller of the two and rail thin. There was an obvious family resemblance to his partner. They had the same dark eyes. He kept his hair shorter though and he was clean-shaven.
"Really?" The woman asked, a gleeful look in her eyes as she eyed the snake in a new light. She spun suddenly, grabbing Harry again and pulling him against her chest with crushing force. "Oh you are so much better than Cissy's brat!"
Harry swallowed. If Lutain had been awake, he would at least have some sort of leverage-
"Oh!" The woman gasped, leaning back and looking like she'd just realised something. There was an almost terrifying and giddy eagerness in her eyes. "I'm Bella! You're my new brat!"
"What?" Harry hissed. Belatedly he realised he'd been speaking in Parseltongue. "Your new brat?"
The woman, Bella, gave him an over exaggerated pout. "Well Cissy has one. Why can't I?"
Harry was stunned. Was she serious?
"The brat is for the Lord."
At once, Bella snatched Harry back and pulled him closer. "Well he's not here now," Bella whined. She grinned manically at Harry. "You want to stay here! We'll have fun!"
"I-I don't..." Harry started.
"I get to teach you all those fun things! I get to teach you spells and how to fight and-" She gasped, suddenly buzzing with excitement again. "And curses!"
Curses? He had to admit, he was very interested, but... There was something about this woman that set him off, something about the two men too. He tried to recall the names of the people his parents warned him about when he was a child. "What's your full name?"
"Bella! Bellatrix Lestrange!" She giggled, running one of her black-painted fingernails through Harry's messy hair. "Can I name you Septimus?"
"What-" Harry started, for a moment his thoughts distracted from trying to remember by Bella's question. "No! I have a name!"
"He's a Potter, the other twin," the thin man said. "The one his family-"
"They are not my family!" Harry snarled angrily, temporarily forgetting just how precarious his position was.
"You were in an orphanage! I adopted you! You're mine! Done!" Bellatrix said, her expression gleeful as she settled back on her heels under her long, poofy black dress. "You'll live here!"
Harry stopped as the full situation set in. Bellatrix Lestrange... Bellatrix Lestrange... The name was so familiar. And then it hit him. She was related to Sirius, a cousin or something. He'd only ever spoken about her with disdain, never saying a good thing about the "deranged Lestrange."
But then... she was actually showing him a tremendous amount of affection and she actually wanted him…
That was new. Harry hadn't ever been wanted before.
"I'll keep you safe," she cooed, pressing his head against her chest where beneath the corset and frills, a loud rhythmic heartbeat thumped in time to the almost clawed hand stroking through his hair. "I'll give you all you want and I can teach you things and you will be so powerful!"
It actually sounded heartfelt to Harry, almost as if she really did want a child.
'No,' his mind whispered. 'She wants you.'
But Sirius had never had anything good to say about her! Harry was pretty sure that she was a Death Eater! There were so many reasons why he should do his level best just to get away from this manic madwoman, but those arguments were increasingly meaningless when measured against the fact that she actually wanted him.
"Stay with me," she spoke, her voice enthralling Harry into a growing sense of contentment, "I'll be what you never had."
Harry liked the sound of that.
Harry was hurriedly escorted into another room by Rabastan, the taller of the two men from before, he was pushed relatively gently through the large doors before they closed softly behind him.
The room that Harry now found himself in was large and empty except the large fireplace and a short squat man in the corner who curled in on himself. The man had a face that reminded Harry of Piers.
There was a tall, high-backed chair in the middle of the room, facing a low green fireplace directly across the room.
Harry shifted his weight, incredibly uncomfortable without the muscular chill of Lutain under his clothing.
He felt something stir, something deep in the crevice of his mind which leant his body comfort. He relaxed, rather against his will as something clicked and felt so abnormally right about being in the room.
It scared him, as much as he loathed to admit it.
"I smell prey." A distinctly feminine voice whispered, a low lilt similar to the python he'd released by accident lifetimes ago. There was a soft shuffling noise, the familiar sound of scales sliding over carpet, and from in front of the fireplace the largest snake Harry had ever seen peered around and looked at him with eyes that seemed to glow.
"A hatchling, large hatchling." She huffed, looking put out at the realization, "Hard to eat."
The man in the corner whimpered quietly, shifting and looking almost terrified.
"Why were you brought here?" The voice was raspy and somehow at the same time high-pitched. It sent a shiver of fear down Harry's spine. He swallowed and somehow, inexplicably, he knew.
This was Voldemort.
Harry didn't know what to do. He felt like he wanted to cry.
"Let me eat him," the large snake hissed.
"Why," Voldemort- it had to be him- demanded again. "Why were you brought before me?"
Harry fidgeted under the unwavering stare of the huge snake, which watched his every move. Lutain's words came back to him once again. "Make yourself necessary."
Harry straightened, taking a calming breath and forcing away his terror. He knew what to say.
"My name is Harry Potter and you have beautiful scales." Harry knew Lutain was always pleased with compliments about his hunting prowess. "Your eyes must scare prey so well."
The snake reared back so suddenly and unexpectedly, it almost looked like she was going to strike. She raised herself up, towering high, coming almost to Harry's shoulder. She tasted the air repeatedly, as though trying to decide what this new development meant.
"Harry Potter..." Voldemort drawled, drawing the words out. "And you speak Parseltongue. Fascinating."
"You are not prey," the snake decided, lowering herself and sliding towards Harry. She tasted the air again curiously. "You speak. Do you know others that speak?"
"I have a close friend. His scales are dark and his strike is quick," Harry offered, feeling more comfortable with every passing moment.
The snake seemed pleased and turned to slither back towards the fireplace, where it was warm.
"Harry Potter," Voldemort hissed again. And now his voice held something different. It sounded almost like he was laughing. "The Boy-Who-Lived."
"N-no," Harry blurted out, this time in English. He took a few unconscious steps forward, his mind screaming at him the whole time to get away. "That's- that's Skylar."
"Do you not think," Voldemort started, his voice cold and hateful, sending another shiver down Harry's spine. "That I know which child I struck?"
Harry felt a weight settle on his shoulders.
"Skylar is-"
"No," Voldemort laughed. Harry had no idea just what was so funny. "The old fool...he is wrong."
Dumbledore was wrong.
Skylar wasn't special. Skylar had never been special to begin with.
Harry never had to be- He couldn't wrap his mind around the concept. Lily and James were wrong, everyone was wrong.
The man in the corner seemed to have found his backbone. He sneered and somehow found the situation amusing as well. He chortled out a series of nasally giggles that were more irritating than Harry would have ever expected.
Harry had been thrown away- and he was the one that should've been protected!
Suddenly, Harry felt overcome by a wave of indescribable rage. Depression, anger, and potent self-loathing washed over him and, as the short, balding man continued his irritating laughter at Harry's misfortune, Harry wanted someone to hurt.
Harry watched, almost outside of his own body, as the balding man stopped laughing and gasped. His eyes bulged. He fell to the floor, his entire body twitching, wracked with spasms. He took great gasping breaths, but he couldn't scream, couldn't make a sound.
Dumbledore had been wrong, Harry's life had been a lie.
The room filled with high-pitched laughter, breaking Harry's concentration. Harry blinked, the buzzing in his ears ended and the now whimpering man on the floor let out a relieved breath. Harry realised that he'd done that. He'd been angry and he wanted to hurt someone.
"So much potential," Voldemort mused. A small, skeletal hand tapped slowly on the armrest and Harry now wondered why Voldemort hadn't risen to face him. Something about that hand just looked wrong…
"Nagini, I-" Voldemort stopped, suddenly. "Boy!"
Harry jolted, panic rising once again.
Then something exploded in his head and Harry dropped to the ground clutching his forehead with both hands. There was something moving through his mind, bringing searing pain before it shifted suddenly, becoming calming and relaxing, soothing like rain on scalding skin. Harry blinked dazed, feeling tears running down his face.
The large snake now identified as Nagini was very close to Harry's face, peering down at him intently.
"Nagini, fetch Bellatrix. She may show our new... guest around his new estate."
Harry mused distantly, how the large snake was going to communicate with the witch.
"Den-mate!" Nagini hissed pleased, sliding over towards the door and pushing it with her blunt snout. "Hatchling! Teach to strike, teach to hunt!"
The balding man was still twitching on the floor, leaving Harry alone with the creature in the chair.
Somehow, the part of him that had felt relaxed suddenly made sense. Harry couldn't explain it, but there was a part of Voldemort that felt so soothing and it whispered sweet nothings that it was right to be here.
His mind was stagnant with turmoil. Skylar was destined to be the Chosen Boy. Skylar was the one prophesized.
It had never been Harry. It had never been Harry.
The epiphany finally sunk into the recesses of Harry's mind- the full ramifications of the information striking him in a single clear moment.
He made the rat faced man beg for mercy.
Weekly Power Status
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